I spent a good part of my childhood just a few miles away from the lucky side of the Iron Curtain. One of the things that our teachers told us was so bad about East Germany was the fact that they "kept files on their citizens! Normal people, like you and me!"
So what do we tell the kids, today?
Call them Santa's Black Op Elf Files. Santa has to know whose been naughty or nice!
This doesn't seem to impact my company, but at some point I fear regulators will start requiring more stringent data retention processes (among other IT tech processes). SOX has already hurt large companies, hopefully they don't start pushing some its fundamentals down to the little (non-public) folks.
Plan for it. If the government doesn't do it, the larger companies that have to will start forcing the government to go after smaller to midsized companies that aren't following the rules that they have to. Why should you be exempt just because your company is smaller? I could see a new e-mail niche open up for those that host business class e-mail where its part of the cost of the business class e-mail accounts to store all e-mail for x number of years. I wouldn't be surprised if there were companies that offer that kinda of service.
Successful? Absolutely. Ethical? Not a bit. Everything Microsoft did in order to gain its "successful" position has been completely ethically bankrupt--unfair competition, shady deals, outright theft (see Stac), the list goes on and on.
Is Bill smart? Certainly. Probably not that much technically (as is often said, what has he done himself since the Altair days?), but businesswise he's probably better than the very best Mafia dons in being able to barely skirt the law and use every dirty trick he can invent in making his business more successful, no matter who it hurts.
But the question is, do you really want someone smart, in a criminal way, to run the country? I certainly don't.
You just made Bill Gates seem like the perfect option for president. Bill wouldn't pass any radically new laws while in office. Bill would re-org what he can. Bill plays and bends the existing rules as far as he can. Our last couple of presidents have done a thing or two that folks don't think was quite legal. I'd feel better about myself knowing that Bill will stay within the legal bounds, but may be breaking the ethics or spirit of the rules as long as he gets results. There is a part of me that would like nearly any business man to be President for two terms rather than politicans.
While I can't say I love the idea, I'd probably rather have Bill as President than most of the people who run. I was thinking this too. How sad that one of the most reviled of businessmen is actually attractive compared to so much of the other options when it comes to President.
Well, lawyers, politicans, and actors seem to be the normal governmental options. Bill Gates looks good next to them.
A lot of corporate entities didn't upgrade to XP from 2000 for a few years either. Some places STILL run a significant number of 2000 workstations and some servers.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Vista isn't going to really launch in the business/government sector until atleast 6 months or service pack 1 for Vista is released. Oh, you'll see a few scattered desktops here and there. (Managers that just want Vista.) But any IT department that actually has some sort of say in when they rollout hardware and software will be waiting for everyone else to beta test Vista in a production environment and wait for forums to actually have some solutions to problems. In 6-9 months after Vista is released, then governments or businesses will seriously actually think about upgrading to it. Right now, Vista is just for the bragging crowd, IT folks, and who ever is (un)lucky enough to get a brand new computer in that time frame.
Not that I see this coming to commercial flights any time soon (if ever), but: having the pilot not actually on the plane would make airplane hijacking a hell of a lot harder. If the pilot can't be personally threatened, and isn't directly faced with passengers being threatened*, it would be easier for "don't go along" training to be effective.
I read your idea. The first thing that popped into my mind is having an airport command station with 20-30 pilots flying planes. Why try to hi-jack a plane as a weapon when it would be much better to break into the right plane command center and instantly have control of 20-30 planes?
Um, I don't really trust humans piloting any type of vehicle: lawn mowers, cars, trucks, boats, jet skis, buses, trains or planes. Let's the sad truth: there are idiots that show up drunk, stoned, or sleepy for work in every industry. Do you want some one that may be a little high, a little drunk, or sleepy driving you around anywhere?
Let me just say that I am so tired of the the rampant bias against wikipedia in education. I have had teachers go on 10 minute rants on how horrible of a site it is. I also am frustrated with the fact that during these rants generally there are no facts, studies or examples given to why they believe wp is untrustworthy only that anyone can change it so that means it is bad. Are there bad articles in wikipedia?
I've got a first grader and I'm almost shocked by how many requests to look up information on the internet their are. Every time that I help my daughter with her home work, we use wikipedia. It's not been an issue. I wonder if it'll be an issue in HS or college by that time though wikipedia's role may have become more defined to the educational set.
Human life isn't important at all to the Earth's ecosystem Unless you're one of the Humans.
It doesn't matter if the earth's ecosystem recovers or not if all the humans are dead. And it really doesn't matter what the cause of the climate change is, human or natural if the earth's climate changes to a point where it can no longer support human life; we're all gone. If there's something we can do about it and we don't because we keep saying "We don't know that were the cause", we're stupid deserve what we get.
My point is that you shouldn't use terms or eco rants like "the Earth is dying." Because the Earth will do just fine after humans are gone unless we totally glaze the Earth's surface from nuclear war. I think after the "Cold War" that we won't have a major nuclear war. I do think that sooner or later we will have some more nuclear attacks by other countries, but it'll be mainly a regional matter except for the mass panic of the anti-nuke crowd that such and such country is armed and using nukes in its conflict. I actually do want us to take some little measures, but nothing like "taxes" just to make eco crowd happy. Why? Cause the eco crowd are complainers and won't be happy with any solution because all solutions have some sort of negative eco or political impact. Just don't use terms like the Earth is dying. We may or may not be loosing our habitable land area. We need to find out the cause and take some sort of measures. I don't think that we need to do something really drastic though.
I have no idea what little things Vista will include to increase uptime and make my life easier. eye candy
That's actually what I thought the only benefit of WinXP Pro over Win2000 were. It turns out that there are real benefits to using WinXP Pro rather than Win2000 in a networked environment on hardware that can handle it. I predict that Vista will be really bashed as only eye candy by/. for about 3 months after its release and then some one will find out some pretty cool features that really make it worth the update. I'm taking a wait and see attitude.
"If part of an industry that is (very) close to the cause of pollution suggests to take certain actions that mostlikely will cost them money in the short run, then you know something is wrong."
Or you know that car manufacturer runs a cleaner shop than their competitors and will benefit from such a tax. Don't ever think business has more than one goal. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little more if it means your competitors will pay a lot more.
Car manufacturers would love for a federal law mandating only "new" as in within 5 year old vehicles on the road that would increase vehicle sales across the board.
The key point is this: whether you believe in Global Warming or not (I do) the fact is that the Earth is Dying(tm). If we don't force the big companies -- and the individual citizens -- to face up to this fact, all solutions we'll apply to this problem will be too little, too late. There are solutions available right now . Carbon Tax is one of them, and it's probably one of the most effective.
This is total BS. The Earth's ecosystem isn't in any danger of dying. Let's be really honest though. The global environment that we've gotten used to is changing because of some reason. Well, the Earth is be human habitable in 500-1,000 years? Who knows? Here is something else to think about 90% of life on Earth could die, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Earth would recover given a few thousand years. Human life isn't important at all to the Earth's ecosystem and unless we kill off 100% of Earth's ecosystem it'll do just fine. Change in weather or using Earth's resources will have some effect maybe postive, maybe negative, but unless we went all out nuclear war Earth will survive just fine. Be honest there are only a handful of really scary things that can really screw up Earth: asteriod impact, volcanoes, the sun, natural climate change, humans and other wild life. Humans have been negatively effecting the Earth for thousands of years, atlittle global warming won't hurt the Earth. I'm more worried about when we start fiddling with bioenginnering. I can see us building better critters and releasing them all over the place and coming back to be the next plague of locusts in a few generations.
Things are not going well over there at all. I used to hear my Commander In Chief say stuff like..."...stay the course...",..."...bring them on..."..."we'll get him (Bin Laden) dead or alive..."..."We'll prevail..." and the latest was "all major military operations are complete and the US has prevailed." Such rant is now gone.
Let's not forget that it was the same rant/rhetoric 30 years ago and because we could not escape reality, we had to face it and lost the war. Do not get me wrong. I support our troops. What I do not support is the bigotry and the "I know it all attitude" our leaders have.
If we had to fight them over there so that we do not fight them here...then let's put in mind the fact that we've lost close to 3,000 lives in this war. The number is about the same as those lost on 9/11.
It's reading things like this that make me glad that I don't watch TV or listen to radio news anymore. Honestly, I hate hearing about 9/11. Why? Because most people that I speak with seem to want to just bomb any and all of the Middle East. They want revenge not justice. I'm happy that only 3,000 soliders have died and that we haven't committed mass genocide over there. I actually find it funny reading the occasional Democrat reply that the whole Iraq thing wasn't needed. Oh, but it was. We didn't get it out of our system with the first middle eastern country so we needed to a better stronger target. What better than we one we fought with last time? While, part of does think most of war was a waste of money, I understand the political PR reasons for it. The public were demanding action and let's face it homeland securty and our airport searches are a joke. A big flashy war is something that the public mindset can get into and understand and can cast as villians those in Iraq or those shooting at our soliders. Wake me up when the US public has gotten "revenge" for 9/11 out of its system and come to bit of sense. Changing parties wasn't quiet enough, I think that'd have happened reguardless. We are slowing down and getting over 9/11, but it's going to always be with us like Pearl Harbor. I'm thankful that we've not dropped nukes anywhere in the middle east though I still hear occasional joke about it.
Or because you can't actually get them fixed. The insides of even a semi-modern TV are surface-mounted, machine-soldered ICs and small components, not servicable by most humans, particularly since many individual parts aren't available to repair companies. So, you have to buy an entire "module", only available as a "spare part" that costs roughly 75% of the price of the latest model.
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
It's ironic, I actually blame CAD/CAM for our shoddy stuff. CAD/CAM can be used for good, but let's be honest, they've used it to reduce cost. When you had 3-5 year factory warranties on purchases of devices over $200 the enginners used to use the best parts that they could to make sure that their average failure rate was far past that warranty period. As a side consumer benefit, some very well designed items made before computers are still quite usable. I'd say from the 90s onward CAD/CAM has been so common that enginners can pick cheaper but "o.k." or "good enough" parts for a 1 month to 1 year warranty. Why worry about the device after that?
I don't really have anything against our let's buy a replacement rather than repair culture. I don't think including spare parts for things that are likely to fail would help. What I'd really like the government to do though is require that all of our new replacements be designed to be easily taken apart and recycable though. That would atleast help reduce e-waste by allowing some portion of it to be recycled.
Yes, for an old laptop, that could be a bad idea.:-) My experience: I sourced a replacement battery for a 5 year old Fujitsu laptop direct from Fujitsu who had it stocked all these years. Even though the new battery was virgin, it had deteriorated in storage. Instead, repack your battery
Depending on how old your laptop is, it might actually make more sense for you to buy a whole freaking new laptop rather than buying replacement batteries. I've had really flaky luck on reman. laptop batteries. We've looked around and battery prices range from $200 - $250. Depending on your needs, that kinda of replacement price makes one of those $600-700 laptops sound like a nice little purchase instead of the replacement battery.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
I agree that DIY PCs are nearly a thing of the past and will only increasing become more so. Actually, I'm thinking of DIY PCs that you can build some one for less than they can buy from Dell or Gateway. A geek just can't buy the parts cheaper than Dell or Gateway. Part of me really wanted to go all out and build my own on my last PC purchase, but I couldn't justify it in price. I went with a Dell and been happy with it.
I've not played with Vista yet. I the computer guy looking over about 70 desktops and 30 laptops. The desktops have slowly been replaced from Win98 to WinXP Pro. The laptops were replaced from Win95 to Win2000. We've only had a handful of HD crashes to deal with and most software problems could be fixed with system restore or other nice little tools. It's very easy to look after these desktops now. We don't upgrade PCs around here. We replace them with entire new systems in 3-5 or 5-8 years. I'm kinda mixed on the whole idea of bloat in MS. I've actually come to depend on some of those features so its not bloat any more. I have no idea what little things Vista will include to increase uptime and make my life easier.
Anyone want to lay odds regarding whether the TV networks will view this as a problem or an opportunity? Of course, they'll see it as a problem that must be "solved," rather than an opportunity to be seized. There is so much money to be made here for innovative and visionary content providers, so much cross-promotion and integration they could take advantage of, and yet you just know the "old guard" will fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo, even as their marketshare/revenues decline over the upcoming years.
Due to economic reasons, I'm still on dial up and can't justify cable. My wife and I can justify the purchase of entire season of a series on DVD though. I don't really think that it's going to be up to the networks to do anything about it. It'll be up to those who own the rights to each of the shows about how they want to milk it. I'm just waiting for the day that any recorded television show from any channel/network could be viewed/downloaded on-line with some type of localized updatable ad box as part of the video. I have nothing against ads. I just wish that ads could get me DSL or Cable or faster internet. I've had to live with ads all my life. I just view ads as part of our culture.
For many watching online is more of a shared experience. How many families really sit down and watch programs together and when they do, how many actually communicate during them. Many of the media sites offering video content have chatrooms, forums, and other collaborative places that are the online equivalent of talking around the water cooler. So yep gone are the days of dad yelling at Jr. to shut up because the fishing show is on, now dad can watch outdoor sportsman and talk to others that like the same thing.
Why is communicating via online viewed as "isolation" even on slashdot of all places? I remembered how great I felt in college and had ready access to people that like anime and manga. My wife doesn't like it, and the kids are abit young for most of the plot lines. If I actually wanted to converse with anyone about anime or manga, I'd have to go online or bore someone senseless with my tastes. We need a new term that means those that are into something can else find others that are into the same topic online and chat about it. Isolation isn't the term that I'd use.
Why is fusion receiving such a tiny (relatively speaking) amount of funding? Why is the Western world not rushing the project. At a risk of sounding cliched, it seems to me that if the 300-500 billion thus far spent on the Iraq war had gone into fusion research, we could have 10-20 different experimental approaches (essentially, trying all the major possible reactor designs) and commercial reactors in a few years.
Cause it would make much more sense to spend the money on thorium fission instead of fusion, solar, wind, hydro power, or tradional nuclear. Nuclear is expensive and takes a bit to of time to build. We've got loud mouths that don't want any within country. That oil thing during during the 1970s should never have happened. We should have been on nuclear way back then. Solar, we've only just within say the last decade or so made it worthwhile to go after, you have land use issues with that one. Hydro used to be the easiest environmentally friendly option until we decided that land and wild life were important and needed saving so now new massive dams are out. Wind was seen as the next best thing to solar for a long time. Damn, bird lovers and those that think that the wind mills are either ugly or loud even at a distance off shore proved that one unworkable. We've been using coal and natural gas apparently there isn't that much outcry against that power solution. (Rolls eyes.) I'm sorry but I've given up on ever having fusion. Why? I recall reading articles on both fusion in popsci as a kid during the 80s. It was always just around the corner. Well, its 20 years later and fusion is still "just around the corner" or "give us another 20 years and a few billion." I'm just sick and tired of hearing from environmentalists and global warming folks that we should use one of these energy means, and then as soon as someone trys it, they complain and try to shut it down ASAP. Actually, I'd say any of the "alt" energy solutions could work if we just spent a few billion and bought products rather than spending it all on R&D. Solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear are production ready now. Let's decide what we need more of and just build it rather than complaining endlessly.
People now are more separated than they are connected. Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there. This is pretty much the norm.
Um, you'd let your kids run around outdoors? I don't mind my kids playing in the backyard, but I'd freak at the thought of them playing in the front yard or with random neighbor kids. I know that I'm anti-social. I don't want to get out to know my neighbors. I could care less. My wife does church and the scout thing with the kids outside of school. That my kids are even involved in scouts freaks me out. My wife trusts people. I don't. I don't trust neighbors, school teachers, church leaders, scout leaders, police, politicans, and door to door sales people (including girl & boy scouts and school kids including mine.) I trust the adults in the family, but not any of the kids. I have a fence in the backyard and can be fairly certain that neighbors and/or strangers aren't there. I'm socially unconnected except to family and a very small set of friends. I like things that way. I don't want to know everyone in the neighborhood or their gossip. I also don't want them to know anything about me or my family. I assume the worst and can be surprised by any good things that happen in life.
I thought this was what unicode was for. The only 3 scared characters that I wouldn't want messed with are the ":", "/", and "." How come we don't have a unicode DNS solution so countries could use the entir unicode address pool for domain names? I've read postings basically bashing the non-English world for not being invovled with the original tech so being left out. So that's a valid reason to discrimnate now? What used to get me excited about slashdot was the unquie solutions that you could find in the comments for real world problems. Used to be, on slashdot at the mere suggestion of a unicode DNS solution some one would either find one or write one. Now a days we get bitching and moaning regionalism about how either the US is behind the rest of the world due to our policies or that the US is better than rest of world because we speak English. Ug. Slashdot drives me batty sometimes.
I say that non-English countries should just do it. If it breaks Standard US or European IE or FireFox by putting the domain name in the address bar, no loss to your country.
While the journalist in me applauds the decision, I have to wonder how far the underlying principle is going to be taken. If victims of libel can only pursue action against the original poster, what about cases where the original poster is anonymous? If no one but the original poster holds responsibility for the content -- even when it's known to be false and defamatory -- the opportunities for intentional, unfettered smear campaigns would seem to be enormous.... I mean even more enormous than under our previous understanding of libel protections. I'm willing to pay an awful lot for free speech. Just hope I'm not on the receiving end of one of these smears.
I'm exactly of the exact opposite opinion. I find that it was horrible for judge to rule this way. He is basically openning up the online world for massive libel with no little recourse from those that were libeled. Libel isn't something that newspapers or journalist would like. It's basically for the subject to correct and recieve damages for blantantly wrong and/or hurtful statements about the individual. This is a blow true speech. False lies can now be spread in the online world as "free speech" and not punished except by that original poster. (Like that person will ever turn up.) I think that damages should be against any news reporting agency that falsely reports news and at a min. the news reporting agency should have to pay a fine and remove the article or reference.
"Forums" shouldn't be considered news sources though. Would you quote any AC posting from/. reguardless of moderation as a news source? Forums should be considered like water cooler chat. It is out there and broadcast, but the forum postings aren't meant as "news" and shouldn't be spread as such. If a libelous statement was posting on slashdot's main page in the summary or headings, then I think slashdot should be held accountable. If within thread some posters make libelious statements, then those postings should be removed. I hope no other site actually uses slashdot posts as "news" articles. Actually, with blogging and the general stupidity of people it is possible. I occasionally copy a few links from slashdot threads, but I'd never use a slashdot quote as a serious quote from an individual.
And people keep telling us that USA kids don't do science. Shit.
Shh, you aren't allowed to tell anyone outside the US our secret. We've never stopped doing science. It's just that this kid won't be remembered and used as an example to follow by the student body. That sports team that once made it to state or actually won at state; those guys the teachers and students can name most of them off the top of their head. We still have lots of kids that do science and think that its fun, but you'll hardly hear about it except maybe on slashdot, because "science is boring" and we don't have half-time cheerleaders and a band supporting us.
Really, it's that pesky part where we try to actually make it produce energy and break even that is stumping us right now.
I just had a vision of highschool physics teachers showing one of these things at the beginning of the school year and saying to the class: "Any one want a nobel prize? Figure out how to make this produce more energy than you put in, and you'll be in the running." I remember my phyics teacher. He would have done just for the class reaction and to see if anyone actually would try to improve it.
Slashdot Mirror
I spent a good part of my childhood just a few miles away from the lucky side of the Iron Curtain. One of the things that our teachers told us was so bad about East Germany was the fact that they "kept files on their citizens! Normal people, like you and me!"
So what do we tell the kids, today?
Call them Santa's Black Op Elf Files. Santa has to know whose been naughty or nice!
This doesn't seem to impact my company, but at some point I fear regulators will start requiring more stringent data retention processes (among other IT tech processes). SOX has already hurt large companies, hopefully they don't start pushing some its fundamentals down to the little (non-public) folks.
Plan for it. If the government doesn't do it, the larger companies that have to will start forcing the government to go after smaller to midsized companies that aren't following the rules that they have to. Why should you be exempt just because your company is smaller? I could see a new e-mail niche open up for those that host business class e-mail where its part of the cost of the business class e-mail accounts to store all e-mail for x number of years. I wouldn't be surprised if there were companies that offer that kinda of service.
Successful? Absolutely. Ethical? Not a bit. Everything Microsoft did in order to gain its "successful" position has been completely ethically bankrupt--unfair competition, shady deals, outright theft (see Stac), the list goes on and on.
Is Bill smart? Certainly. Probably not that much technically (as is often said, what has he done himself since the Altair days?), but businesswise he's probably better than the very best Mafia dons in being able to barely skirt the law and use every dirty trick he can invent in making his business more successful, no matter who it hurts.
But the question is, do you really want someone smart, in a criminal way, to run the country? I certainly don't.
You just made Bill Gates seem like the perfect option for president. Bill wouldn't pass any radically new laws while in office. Bill would re-org what he can. Bill plays and bends the existing rules as far as he can. Our last couple of presidents have done a thing or two that folks don't think was quite legal. I'd feel better about myself knowing that Bill will stay within the legal bounds, but may be breaking the ethics or spirit of the rules as long as he gets results. There is a part of me that would like nearly any business man to be President for two terms rather than politicans.
While I can't say I love the idea, I'd probably rather have Bill as President than most of the people who run. I was thinking this too. How sad that one of the most reviled of businessmen is actually attractive compared to so much of the other options when it comes to President.
Well, lawyers, politicans, and actors seem to be the normal governmental options. Bill Gates looks good next to them.
A lot of corporate entities didn't upgrade to XP from 2000 for a few years either. Some places STILL run a significant number of 2000 workstations and some servers.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Vista isn't going to really launch in the business/government sector until atleast 6 months or service pack 1 for Vista is released. Oh, you'll see a few scattered desktops here and there. (Managers that just want Vista.) But any IT department that actually has some sort of say in when they rollout hardware and software will be waiting for everyone else to beta test Vista in a production environment and wait for forums to actually have some solutions to problems. In 6-9 months after Vista is released, then governments or businesses will seriously actually think about upgrading to it. Right now, Vista is just for the bragging crowd, IT folks, and who ever is (un)lucky enough to get a brand new computer in that time frame.
Not that I see this coming to commercial flights any time soon (if ever), but: having the pilot not actually on the plane would make airplane hijacking a hell of a lot harder. If the pilot can't be personally threatened, and isn't directly faced with passengers being threatened*, it would be easier for "don't go along" training to be effective.
I read your idea. The first thing that popped into my mind is having an airport command station with 20-30 pilots flying planes. Why try to hi-jack a plane as a weapon when it would be much better to break into the right plane command center and instantly have control of 20-30 planes?
Um, I don't really trust humans piloting any type of vehicle: lawn mowers, cars, trucks, boats, jet skis, buses, trains or planes. Let's the sad truth: there are idiots that show up drunk, stoned, or sleepy for work in every industry. Do you want some one that may be a little high, a little drunk, or sleepy driving you around anywhere?
Magnetic Storage Using Magic
There now everyone can understand.
Isn't that how all tech. that you don't understand works?
Let me just say that I am so tired of the the rampant bias against wikipedia in education. I have had teachers go on 10 minute rants on how horrible of a site it is. I also am frustrated with the fact that during these rants generally there are no facts, studies or examples given to why they believe wp is untrustworthy only that anyone can change it so that means it is bad. Are there bad articles in wikipedia?
I've got a first grader and I'm almost shocked by how many requests to look up information on the internet their are. Every time that I help my daughter with her home work, we use wikipedia. It's not been an issue. I wonder if it'll be an issue in HS or college by that time though wikipedia's role may have become more defined to the educational set.
Human life isn't important at all to the Earth's ecosystem
Unless you're one of the Humans.
It doesn't matter if the earth's ecosystem recovers or not if all the humans are dead. And it really doesn't matter what the cause of the climate change is, human or natural if the earth's climate changes to a point where it can no longer support human life; we're all gone. If there's something we can do about it and we don't because we keep saying "We don't know that were the cause", we're stupid deserve what we get.
My point is that you shouldn't use terms or eco rants like "the Earth is dying." Because the Earth will do just fine after humans are gone unless we totally glaze the Earth's surface from nuclear war. I think after the "Cold War" that we won't have a major nuclear war. I do think that sooner or later we will have some more nuclear attacks by other countries, but it'll be mainly a regional matter except for the mass panic of the anti-nuke crowd that such and such country is armed and using nukes in its conflict. I actually do want us to take some little measures, but nothing like "taxes" just to make eco crowd happy. Why? Cause the eco crowd are complainers and won't be happy with any solution because all solutions have some sort of negative eco or political impact. Just don't use terms like the Earth is dying. We may or may not be loosing our habitable land area. We need to find out the cause and take some sort of measures. I don't think that we need to do something really drastic though.
I have no idea what little things Vista will include to increase uptime and make my life easier.
/. for about 3 months after its release and then some one will find out some pretty cool features that really make it worth the update. I'm taking a wait and see attitude.
eye candy
That's actually what I thought the only benefit of WinXP Pro over Win2000 were. It turns out that there are real benefits to using WinXP Pro rather than Win2000 in a networked environment on hardware that can handle it. I predict that Vista will be really bashed as only eye candy by
"If part of an industry that is (very) close to the cause of pollution suggests to take certain actions that mostlikely will cost them money in the short run, then you know something is wrong."
Or you know that car manufacturer runs a cleaner shop than their competitors and will benefit from such a tax. Don't ever think business has more than one goal. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little more if it means your competitors will pay a lot more.
Car manufacturers would love for a federal law mandating only "new" as in within 5 year old vehicles on the road that would increase vehicle sales across the board.
The key point is this: whether you believe in Global Warming or not (I do) the fact is that the Earth is Dying(tm). If we don't force the big companies -- and the individual citizens -- to face up to this fact, all solutions we'll apply to this problem will be too little, too late. There are solutions available right now . Carbon Tax is one of them, and it's probably one of the most effective.
This is total BS. The Earth's ecosystem isn't in any danger of dying. Let's be really honest though. The global environment that we've gotten used to is changing because of some reason. Well, the Earth is be human habitable in 500-1,000 years? Who knows? Here is something else to think about 90% of life on Earth could die, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Earth would recover given a few thousand years. Human life isn't important at all to the Earth's ecosystem and unless we kill off 100% of Earth's ecosystem it'll do just fine. Change in weather or using Earth's resources will have some effect maybe postive, maybe negative, but unless we went all out nuclear war Earth will survive just fine. Be honest there are only a handful of really scary things that can really screw up Earth: asteriod impact, volcanoes, the sun, natural climate change, humans and other wild life. Humans have been negatively effecting the Earth for thousands of years, atlittle global warming won't hurt the Earth. I'm more worried about when we start fiddling with bioenginnering. I can see us building better critters and releasing them all over the place and coming back to be the next plague of locusts in a few generations.
Things are not going well over there at all. I used to hear my Commander In Chief say stuff like..."...stay the course...",..."...bring them on..."..."we'll get him (Bin Laden) dead or alive..."..."We'll prevail..." and the latest was "all major military operations are complete and the US has prevailed." Such rant is now gone.
Let's not forget that it was the same rant/rhetoric 30 years ago and because we could not escape reality, we had to face it and lost the war. Do not get me wrong. I support our troops. What I do not support is the bigotry and the "I know it all attitude" our leaders have.
If we had to fight them over there so that we do not fight them here...then let's put in mind the fact that we've lost close to 3,000 lives in this war. The number is about the same as those lost on 9/11.
It's reading things like this that make me glad that I don't watch TV or listen to radio news anymore. Honestly, I hate hearing about 9/11. Why? Because most people that I speak with seem to want to just bomb any and all of the Middle East. They want revenge not justice. I'm happy that only 3,000 soliders have died and that we haven't committed mass genocide over there. I actually find it funny reading the occasional Democrat reply that the whole Iraq thing wasn't needed. Oh, but it was. We didn't get it out of our system with the first middle eastern country so we needed to a better stronger target. What better than we one we fought with last time? While, part of does think most of war was a waste of money, I understand the political PR reasons for it. The public were demanding action and let's face it homeland securty and our airport searches are a joke. A big flashy war is something that the public mindset can get into and understand and can cast as villians those in Iraq or those shooting at our soliders. Wake me up when the US public has gotten "revenge" for 9/11 out of its system and come to bit of sense. Changing parties wasn't quiet enough, I think that'd have happened reguardless. We are slowing down and getting over 9/11, but it's going to always be with us like Pearl Harbor. I'm thankful that we've not dropped nukes anywhere in the middle east though I still hear occasional joke about it.
Or because you can't actually get them fixed. The insides of even a semi-modern TV are surface-mounted, machine-soldered ICs and small components, not servicable by most humans, particularly since many individual parts aren't available to repair companies. So, you have to buy an entire "module", only available as a "spare part" that costs roughly 75% of the price of the latest model.
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
It's ironic, I actually blame CAD/CAM for our shoddy stuff. CAD/CAM can be used for good, but let's be honest, they've used it to reduce cost. When you had 3-5 year factory warranties on purchases of devices over $200 the enginners used to use the best parts that they could to make sure that their average failure rate was far past that warranty period. As a side consumer benefit, some very well designed items made before computers are still quite usable. I'd say from the 90s onward CAD/CAM has been so common that enginners can pick cheaper but "o.k." or "good enough" parts for a 1 month to 1 year warranty. Why worry about the device after that?
I don't really have anything against our let's buy a replacement rather than repair culture. I don't think including spare parts for things that are likely to fail would help. What I'd really like the government to do though is require that all of our new replacements be designed to be easily taken apart and recycable though. That would atleast help reduce e-waste by allowing some portion of it to be recycled.
Yes, for an old laptop, that could be a bad idea. :-)
My experience: I sourced a replacement battery for a 5 year old Fujitsu laptop direct from Fujitsu who had it stocked all these years. Even though the new battery was virgin, it had deteriorated in storage.
Instead, repack your battery
Depending on how old your laptop is, it might actually make more sense for you to buy a whole freaking new laptop rather than buying replacement batteries. I've had really flaky luck on reman. laptop batteries. We've looked around and battery prices range from $200 - $250. Depending on your needs, that kinda of replacement price makes one of those $600-700 laptops sound like a nice little purchase instead of the replacement battery.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
I agree that DIY PCs are nearly a thing of the past and will only increasing become more so. Actually, I'm thinking of DIY PCs that you can build some one for less than they can buy from Dell or Gateway. A geek just can't buy the parts cheaper than Dell or Gateway. Part of me really wanted to go all out and build my own on my last PC purchase, but I couldn't justify it in price. I went with a Dell and been happy with it.
I've not played with Vista yet. I the computer guy looking over about 70 desktops and 30 laptops. The desktops have slowly been replaced from Win98 to WinXP Pro. The laptops were replaced from Win95 to Win2000. We've only had a handful of HD crashes to deal with and most software problems could be fixed with system restore or other nice little tools. It's very easy to look after these desktops now. We don't upgrade PCs around here. We replace them with entire new systems in 3-5 or 5-8 years. I'm kinda mixed on the whole idea of bloat in MS. I've actually come to depend on some of those features so its not bloat any more. I have no idea what little things Vista will include to increase uptime and make my life easier.
Anyone want to lay odds regarding whether the TV networks will view this as a problem or an opportunity? Of course, they'll see it as a problem that must be "solved," rather than an opportunity to be seized. There is so much money to be made here for innovative and visionary content providers, so much cross-promotion and integration they could take advantage of, and yet you just know the "old guard" will fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo, even as their marketshare/revenues decline over the upcoming years.
Due to economic reasons, I'm still on dial up and can't justify cable. My wife and I can justify the purchase of entire season of a series on DVD though. I don't really think that it's going to be up to the networks to do anything about it. It'll be up to those who own the rights to each of the shows about how they want to milk it. I'm just waiting for the day that any recorded television show from any channel/network could be viewed/downloaded on-line with some type of localized updatable ad box as part of the video. I have nothing against ads. I just wish that ads could get me DSL or Cable or faster internet. I've had to live with ads all my life. I just view ads as part of our culture.
For many watching online is more of a shared experience. How many families really sit down and watch programs together and when they do, how many actually communicate during them. Many of the media sites offering video content have chatrooms, forums, and other collaborative places that are the online equivalent of talking around the water cooler. So yep gone are the days of dad yelling at Jr. to shut up because the fishing show is on, now dad can watch outdoor sportsman and talk to others that like the same thing.
Why is communicating via online viewed as "isolation" even on slashdot of all places? I remembered how great I felt in college and had ready access to people that like anime and manga. My wife doesn't like it, and the kids are abit young for most of the plot lines. If I actually wanted to converse with anyone about anime or manga, I'd have to go online or bore someone senseless with my tastes. We need a new term that means those that are into something can else find others that are into the same topic online and chat about it. Isolation isn't the term that I'd use.
Why is fusion receiving such a tiny (relatively speaking) amount of funding? Why is the Western world not rushing the project. At a risk of sounding cliched, it seems to me that if the 300-500 billion thus far spent on the Iraq war had gone into fusion research, we could have 10-20 different experimental approaches (essentially, trying all the major possible reactor designs) and commercial reactors in a few years.
Cause it would make much more sense to spend the money on thorium fission instead of fusion, solar, wind, hydro power, or tradional nuclear. Nuclear is expensive and takes a bit to of time to build. We've got loud mouths that don't want any within country. That oil thing during during the 1970s should never have happened. We should have been on nuclear way back then. Solar, we've only just within say the last decade or so made it worthwhile to go after, you have land use issues with that one. Hydro used to be the easiest environmentally friendly option until we decided that land and wild life were important and needed saving so now new massive dams are out. Wind was seen as the next best thing to solar for a long time. Damn, bird lovers and those that think that the wind mills are either ugly or loud even at a distance off shore proved that one unworkable. We've been using coal and natural gas apparently there isn't that much outcry against that power solution. (Rolls eyes.) I'm sorry but I've given up on ever having fusion. Why? I recall reading articles on both fusion in popsci as a kid during the 80s. It was always just around the corner. Well, its 20 years later and fusion is still "just around the corner" or "give us another 20 years and a few billion." I'm just sick and tired of hearing from environmentalists and global warming folks that we should use one of these energy means, and then as soon as someone trys it, they complain and try to shut it down ASAP. Actually, I'd say any of the "alt" energy solutions could work if we just spent a few billion and bought products rather than spending it all on R&D. Solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear are production ready now. Let's decide what we need more of and just build it rather than complaining endlessly.
People now are more separated than they are connected. Through a combination of technology, and paranoia, we've started sealing ourselves off from the world around us. How often do you see kids playing in your neighborhood on a summer's day? I was visiting my folks this summer and I know for a fact the neighborhood they live in is filled with little kids. Not a single one went outside to play the several days I was there. This is pretty much the norm.
Um, you'd let your kids run around outdoors? I don't mind my kids playing in the backyard, but I'd freak at the thought of them playing in the front yard or with random neighbor kids. I know that I'm anti-social. I don't want to get out to know my neighbors. I could care less. My wife does church and the scout thing with the kids outside of school. That my kids are even involved in scouts freaks me out. My wife trusts people. I don't. I don't trust neighbors, school teachers, church leaders, scout leaders, police, politicans, and door to door sales people (including girl & boy scouts and school kids including mine.) I trust the adults in the family, but not any of the kids. I have a fence in the backyard and can be fairly certain that neighbors and/or strangers aren't there. I'm socially unconnected except to family and a very small set of friends. I like things that way. I don't want to know everyone in the neighborhood or their gossip. I also don't want them to know anything about me or my family. I assume the worst and can be surprised by any good things that happen in life.
I thought this was what unicode was for. The only 3 scared characters that I wouldn't want messed with are the ":", "/", and "." How come we don't have a unicode DNS solution so countries could use the entir unicode address pool for domain names? I've read postings basically bashing the non-English world for not being invovled with the original tech so being left out. So that's a valid reason to discrimnate now? What used to get me excited about slashdot was the unquie solutions that you could find in the comments for real world problems. Used to be, on slashdot at the mere suggestion of a unicode DNS solution some one would either find one or write one. Now a days we get bitching and moaning regionalism about how either the US is behind the rest of the world due to our policies or that the US is better than rest of world because we speak English. Ug. Slashdot drives me batty sometimes.
I say that non-English countries should just do it. If it breaks Standard US or European IE or FireFox by putting the domain name in the address bar, no loss to your country.
While the journalist in me applauds the decision, I have to wonder how far the underlying principle is going to be taken. If victims of libel can only pursue action against the original poster, what about cases where the original poster is anonymous? If no one but the original poster holds responsibility for the content -- even when it's known to be false and defamatory -- the opportunities for intentional, unfettered smear campaigns would seem to be enormous. ... I mean even more enormous than under our previous understanding of libel protections. I'm willing to pay an awful lot for free speech. Just hope I'm not on the receiving end of one of these smears.
/. reguardless of moderation as a news source? Forums should be considered like water cooler chat. It is out there and broadcast, but the forum postings aren't meant as "news" and shouldn't be spread as such. If a libelous statement was posting on slashdot's main page in the summary or headings, then I think slashdot should be held accountable. If within thread some posters make libelious statements, then those postings should be removed. I hope no other site actually uses slashdot posts as "news" articles. Actually, with blogging and the general stupidity of people it is possible. I occasionally copy a few links from slashdot threads, but I'd never use a slashdot quote as a serious quote from an individual.
I'm exactly of the exact opposite opinion. I find that it was horrible for judge to rule this way. He is basically openning up the online world for massive libel with no little recourse from those that were libeled. Libel isn't something that newspapers or journalist would like. It's basically for the subject to correct and recieve damages for blantantly wrong and/or hurtful statements about the individual. This is a blow true speech. False lies can now be spread in the online world as "free speech" and not punished except by that original poster. (Like that person will ever turn up.) I think that damages should be against any news reporting agency that falsely reports news and at a min. the news reporting agency should have to pay a fine and remove the article or reference.
"Forums" shouldn't be considered news sources though. Would you quote any AC posting from
And people keep telling us that USA kids don't do science. Shit.
Shh, you aren't allowed to tell anyone outside the US our secret. We've never stopped doing science. It's just that this kid won't be remembered and used as an example to follow by the student body. That sports team that once made it to state or actually won at state; those guys the teachers and students can name most of them off the top of their head. We still have lots of kids that do science and think that its fun, but you'll hardly hear about it except maybe on slashdot, because "science is boring" and we don't have half-time cheerleaders and a band supporting us.
Really, it's that pesky part where we try to actually make it produce energy and break even that is stumping us right now.
I just had a vision of highschool physics teachers showing one of these things at the beginning of the school year and saying to the class: "Any one want a nobel prize? Figure out how to make this produce more energy than you put in, and you'll be in the running." I remember my phyics teacher. He would have done just for the class reaction and to see if anyone actually would try to improve it.
Quit trying to add stuff to the atmosphere, it's where the problems started in the first place.
No, we just need to build gaint cloud generators around our cities. Let's just A/C the out doors a little.