Explain the difference if you can. I briefly looked into it and there seems to be a lot of solar panels that use glass still. They use different kinds but glass is quite common.
I am actually noted by everyone except you as being overly logical and not especially emotive.
You are likely referring to me being emotional because you think I see it as an insult and you tend to make every post to me with the intention of offending me.
You can't do that. You lack the ability.
Your comment is merely further trolling.
My question was quite serious, why are you trolling me specifically? There are plenty of people on this forum radically less stable than myself. If you desire to poke at explosive and unstable people... I could point you at dozens of others.
So why me? I suppose it is probably because I respond at all to you? I imagine most people just ignore you. Which possibly is either boring or even emotionally painful for you. I can't presume to read your mind. But your behavior does suggest some kind of mental instability or sickness on your part.
You became enraged with me over my psychology post of perhaps a month ago. Why was that post so offensive to you that you decided to troll someone for a full month after that?
As to why I was wrong, I was not... you merely offered an additional variable which would apply to some portion of the population.
Your observation was like pointing out a casual grammatical error that wasn't especially meaningful. If you think anti communist sentiment in eastern europe is mostly or purely anti Russian then you are in error.
Should I now presume to be correcting you? By your standards I guess I am, eh?
Yes, some portion of the people that are anti communist in eastern europe are simply anti russian and attribute the one with the other. However, a great many of them never wanted to be inducted into the communist state in the first place. No one asked them if they wanted to be in it and the first change they had to get out - they did. And they're not especially interested in further experiments with communism.
My position on this issue is that the casual hipster communists in the West might have more mature and realistic expectations of what to expect from a communist society if they had opportunities to live in them.
I want them to get that opportunity in a safe and sustainable way. And I want to be entirely fair to the communist model by giving it the best chance it has to succeed. I even want them to do well if at all possible because we can apply them to solving other problems in our society. Use it as a relief valve for those feeling dissatisfied with capitalism.
What is more, there are an enourmous number of crypto communists in our society and frankly I'm tired of fencing with their sophistry as they pretend to be something other then what they obviously are... I am hoping that if given a reasonable and attractive way to express their ideal social model without subjecting me to an authoritarian system that I suspect is unsustainable on any large scale... that they'll stop putting forward dishonest arguments in the hope that society can be slowly "nudged" into communism.
I just want everyone to get what they want... limited to what they have a right to personally demand.
If we ignored costs we could all eat caviar on the moon.
The main issue with solar is the depreciation. Assuming they last forever... they'd be absurdly inexpensive. Of course they don't. They tend to wear out after 10-20 years depending on what various manufactuers say.
But the really silly thing is that they are not built to be maintained. They can only be built at the factory and when they wear out you have to throw them out.
How green is that especially when the vast majority of the solar panel is going to be roughly identical to how it was when it rolled off the manufactoring line.
What we should be looking at AMONGST OTHER things is figuring out specifically what is not working with an old worn out cell and either how you prevent that situation through maintenance, redesign the cells so they can be maintained, or we need some sort of micro manufacturing system for solar cells.
If you could buy a machine that made solar panels... ideally not with silicon wafers... choose a cheaper material even if it is less space efficient. And then rather than sell the panels you sell the machine that makes the panels.
The guy with the panels on his roof doesn't even need to own the machine but someone in the area probably should have enough manufacturing capacity to maintain the existing solar infrastructure.
Look, all costs are just supply and demand. In the case of solar panels the issue is supply. There is lots of demand for them. The costs get pushed up by a lack of supply. So we need more production and that production has to assume lower prices because it will be a higher supply environment.
Democratizing the manufacturing of the panels solve the problem because the big industrial producers make more money with the cost of panels higher. It isn't in their interests to push the prices lower.
If you move those companies away from selling toast and instead selling toasters... we might get a dramatically lower price.
Someone is going to be upset that I'm advocating the less space efficient panels. The more efficient ones have unreasonably high quality control requirements to be practical in the applications I'm discussing. We need something simple and robust and cheap. Something that when it breaks or wears out can be patched or repaired without going to any great expense.
The core of windows 7 is less than a gigabyte. I've seen versions of it clock in at a very modest size.
Regardless, those space limitations are temporary.
It is beyond obvious that the MS operating system should be modular and an advanced set up should provide more options as to what is installed and what is not. Controlling for all the shit that doesn't need to be installed, you could limit the size of the OS dramatically.
Your correction on eastern europe was obvious and not especially interesting. I hoped to draw you into a more incisive dialog.
My effort was not wasted. It was an investment in a prospective discussion that did not happen. True, the investment did not pan out but if you do not make the effort then it can never happen.
Your absurd attempt to slight me for attempting to have a discussion with you is merely evidence that you did not join the discussion in good faith.
The most reasonable option would probably be to have two CPUs in the phone.
You have an ARM cpu to do background processes and you have some x86 processor in there that is compatible with desktop functions. You could set it up so that both CPUs treated the other like a peripheral. Giving each isolated ram and their own ownership of their own partition of the memory card shouldn't be a big deal.
That said, it would be even better if the x86 processor could just be made to be mobile friendly.
As to messy UIs, MS is a big enough company to handle it. Especially since most of the coding etc is not going to change that much.
I also think it isn't unreasonable if certain features are locked to a give UI. For example, if you're modifying the registry, I don't think you need a touch GUI version of regedit etc. Also when you deal with say the TV interface, you really don't need to maintain the GUI as TV friendly for more than what you would on the TV. So again, deep system settings could be desktop standard GUI.
As to what program providers do, that is up to them. I think you'll find that some program providers will PICK a GUI they want to primarily support and largely ignore the rest. This wont' matter in most cases. A touch centric GUI on a program that is being used on a computer with a keyboard and mouse is going to be fine. A little clunky but functional. Only the very popular open source projects and the AAA flagship applications are going to bother putting compatibility for lots of GUIs. And they have the manpower to do that if they want.
As to what people choose to use, you're assuming the default is going to be the same on all machines.
First, most people are not installing their own operating systems. It is installed either by the OEM or it is installed by your company IT department. And THEY will chose which GUI you will default to. If you don't like the GUI they defaulted you to, then you can change it.
However, the primary GUIs should remain consistent pretty much for the foreseeable future. Changing up the interface is sort of like releasing a car with a joystick instead of a steering wheel. No one gives a fuck what you found out in a focus group. If your car can't use a steering wheel you're going to have problems. This is what happened with Vista and Windows 8. Windows 7 by and large was MS putting the steering wheel back. Then they took it out again in Windows 8 and then were screamed at so they put it back in in 8.1.
I am perfectly fine with you innovating. However, if you take the steering wheel out and smugly tell me it is better that way... expect an unhappy customer. I do not care what your focus group says. Maintain a standard GUI. Go nuts with alternatives. Anything you like. Take away the primary GUI and I'm coming for someone's nuts.
As to consistent hardware, you're saying this like this is hard or special or something. PC game makers do just fine with variable hardware. Yes, consoles have consistent hardware but that doesn't mean much. That just means you have one version of the operating system with one set of drivers that are slightly better debugged than what the PC people deal with. So what.
Look, I'm not taking your console away. By your xbox. I'm just saying that there is a net gain if the xbox is actually just a streamlined subsidized by licenses gaming PC.
As to strong reasons why things are the way they are, then things would never change and common misconceptions would never be alter.
The reason things are the way they are is because of console history. It is a legacy business model from a time when gaming PCs didn't really exist and the hardware was very different. Think of the computer you'd need to buy to get something as nice as a Nintendo NES for game playing. The market has iterated on what is largely a restrictive Japanese business model for a long time and it is a game Microsoft especially doesn't need to play. Sony frankly profits from the status quo because if it were to change they'd be boned. MS is apparently competitive in this setting but they could utterly crush their competition if they shifted.
I suspect they'd be hit with more monopoly lawsuits were they do this and nothing screaming success like your market competitors being so frustrated with competing with you in the open market that you start begging the government to make the bad man stop.
First, I think many GUIs should be provided by MS and should be optional for users.
For example, if you want the traditional XP type desktop, I think MS should permit that for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying it should be butt ugly but the same buttons should be in the same places that do the same things. You can update the look of those buttons or add animations but the same buttons in the same places.
Also have a tablet interface for people that have touch screens etc.
Also have a tv remote type interface.
Also, a purely text based interface is good.
If I missed something, then just assume I suggested it. Just put them all in there.
Second, there is no good reason for the Xbox to be incompatible with the PC and the PC incompatible with the xbox. Xbox games shoul run natively on a windows machine. They are intentionally made to not work that way and that's a dumb move. Why do that? To push your console? But the console doesn't make money. The GAMES make money. Not the console. The console actually loses money initially and it takes years for the company to so much as break even on the initial console costs.
Now, a possible compromise here is that MS could say "we will permit any Xbox game to run on any windows machine but we will only permit MS approved products to run on the Xbox. And then you make part of that approval process that the company agrees to give a percentage of game sales to MS. I believe this is how Xbox games work. So MS would lose NOTHING by doing this. They'd actually start getting a cut of licensing money for PC games effectively. And porting games back and forth wouldn't be required because they'd effectively be inter-compatible systems.
Another fun thing they could do with Xboxes is permit them to work as totally normal PCs. Again, I basically think the Xbox should just run windows with TV centric GUI. But if I want to surf websites, do my taxes, or check my email on my xbox, it should be something that works basically the same way as on the PC. Why not? That would if anything improve the value of the xbox.
MS could annihilate Sony with something like this... bridging the gap between the console and the PC so that they're the same system. That would mean
Third, I'd like to see more tablets and even phones running desktop operating systems with fully accessible memory. I'd like the firmware chip for example to just be a micro SD card hiding under the battery. So if something goes wrong you can pull the stupid chip, pop it into another machine, sort out whatever went wrong, and then put it back into the phone.
here people are going to point out "but the gui on a desktop is wrong for a phone"... No shit? What is the title of my comment? My point is that you can have many GUIs for the same operating system. I'd like to see MS really grasp that and possibly during installation query the user to choose which GUI they want the system to default to on boot. It should be something that can be hot switchable without having to log off first or something.
Basically what we're talking about here are different versions of Explorer.exe. Have explorer be the old school GUI and then have a different version for whatever other variation you're interested in.
MS could instantly have more apps on their phone than any of their competitors because all the windows apps would run on one of their phones. Now sure, most of the GUIs for most of those programs are going to be inappropriate. However, just as MS can make multiple GUIs for Windows, so too can you make multiple GUIs for those programs. Ideally, MS would pave the way there by having different GUIs for their Office Suite etc.
Now see this in operation in the corporate world... imagine if corporations could put desktop apps on your phone?
Here people are going to point out the whole x86/arm thing about the various CPUs not being inter-compatible etc. I am aware. I don't credit the notion that you can't put an x86 CPU in a phone or tablet. The only thing that would be r
First off, I'm not getting rid of markets. The existing market will exist as it does now.
Second, the infrastructure is what we're giving to the union.
Third, central planning is what CEOs currently do and the labor union should be able to handle the administration of a single fucking factory.
As to it being a boondoggle, I expect some of those ventures to fail. I am in fact counting on this to occasionally fail because sometimes things just fail... but more importantly some of the labor unions are run by idiots. And those people need to fail so that they lose prestige in their community.
I do think that labor unions are capable of running a factory. There might be some cultural shifts required because they won't be able to point at the "man" and blame the "man" for everything. They'll have to make sacrifices when times get tight which is what a company does when it lays people off. The union will have that option or possibly reducing wages or increasing hours worked or something. How they make ends meet is up to them.
But the goal of something like this is that it be self sustaining. That is, instead of paying out welfare money indefinitely for structurally unemployed people... we jump start jobs for people in what will ultimately be private ventures.
They must be made small enough that it isn't the end of the universe if the go bankrupt. So don't build mega factories. Do small ones. Try to keep it down to a couple hundred people per factory with independent control. That way when one of them inevidibly fucks up and destroys itself it isn't a huge deal.
Something that a lot of people don't grasp is that failure is a very important part of learning and a very important part of building anything. You need to be able to fail or you can't learn.
So, set a few of these up and let them just run with it. Some will kill themselves and some will succeed. The ones that succeed will be the example of what to do and the ones that fail will be the example of what not to do.
I think we could rehabilitate a good deal of the rust belt with something like this... Try it in Detroit or some other place that has a lot of abandoned industrial space.
Bring in some business experts to help figure out how best to capitalize on the existing infrustructure and labor force. Then take volunteers... ideally starting with unemployed people or underemployed people that have the skill sets required to contribute. And then see if you can make it work with a government grant that ultimately can be billed against the welfare roles because you'll be reducing long term welfare payments. You'll also be bringing new money into the community because most businesses tend to help the business of other businesses in the area. Even if you're just talking about sandwich shops or something. People working need to eat. So the more this works the more associated businesses can profit.
The alternative is just surrendering to indefinite failure and unemployment for fucking millions. And that is an attitude that needs to be taken out back and shot. Defeatism is not constructive.
As to anti communist versus anti Russia, there is certainly something to be said for that. However, if you listen to people from eastern europe they'll also tell you things about how it was hard to get stuff or how unfair the system was or how people had no confidence in the economic process.
And while you can say that maybe that is just some "the grass is always greener on the other side" type stuff... that is a double edged sword and it is my point that if people in a capitalist society were subjected to "communist spaces"... little zones of communism, they might appreciate that it isn't quite what they thought it would be.
Keep in mind, we've had communes in the US since BEFORE the founding of the United States. The Amish maintain some of the most successful and long lasting examples of that. But we had a great upswing in communes during the 60s and guess where that went? Not very far. Because people decided they didn't like those life styles.
You have people that live in cities and apparently want a more urban life style with access to modern industrial amenities.
Well, that is entirely impossible given the old school commune system. You can't sustain anything you can't build yourselves. And again, people seem to want communism but they don't want to actually have to deal with the consequences of that.
So I'm trying to help you. You want a communal life style while sacrificing as little of what you consider modern living as possible. Okay. Lets look at how we do that without imposing a totalitarian authoritarian communist super state.
I WANT you to get what you want for YOURSELF. What you want for other people especially against their will because you see it as for the greater good or because you think you know better what other people want than they do is not credible. I'm not going to permit or entertain that. However, if YOU want to live a certain way, then I am certainly happy to help you do that with as many censenting adults and their children as want to sign on to it. And I think it could be really positive.
You're not going to get rid of capitalism. You couldn't kill if you won every election. Capitalism existed in the heart of the soviet union during the middle of the cold war. If the soviets couldn't kill it then how could you possibly do it? What is more, nations at the very least must trade with each other and those trades are going to operate on market forces.
I'm just saying that to point out that my position on capitalism is not threatened by even the most violent and extreme communist views because they are spitting at the Sun. Nothing they do there can matter ultimately.
What I actually want to protect are individual rights and freedoms. Things like property rights, freedom to work where you want, freedom to work in the jobs you want, freedom to move around the world as you please, etc.
So long as you don't fuck with that, I'm happy to give you as much communism as you want. Just don't force me into it and I'm cool with it. I think the commune model is an excellent compromise.
And we can set up urban communes. We already have coop condo buildings. Why not do that but extend it farther so that not only is the building managed by a coop but the entire community is managed by a coop? Such that people don't have to pay rent in the building or worry about employment because the coop itself does various economic activities that fund the needs of the residents. The residents must of course participate in those activities but I see no reason why you couldn't have very successful coops.
That way people have a social and economic support network so if people get sick or injured or whatever they are taken care of by the community. And you just have a more traditionally human experience. Your coop becomes your tribe. These are your people. And you live in a big city where if you need something then you need to pay other tribes to get their resources for yours.
I think it is an excellent compromise. If you a communist or a progressiv
I wish more people lived in them and not for the reason some might think.
See, people have very unrealistic notions of communism and communal living. You don't appreciate property rights, the free market, etc until it is gone. Look at eastern europe and generally you see populations that are more fanatically anti communist than pretty much any societies on earth including the US. And that is because they lived through it.
And no, I'm not saying that all communist systems must be oppressive autocratic regimes that trample on people's rights. However, I am saying that there are a lot of aspects of that sort of system that are no advertised on the box and you don't really understand what you're buying into until you've lived in it for awhile.
Which is why I think communes are fantastic because they give people a good first hand practical knowledge of how that system works without forcing people that don't want to live in it to join or giving said systems authority over people in a non-consensual way.
I also think the kibbutz system is quite excellent and I really think we should try them out as an alternative to the current urban welfare systems. That is, rather than just give people EBT cards and government housing, you instead plop them in an urban commune. The concept would be that they'd self organize, have some productive businesses that they collectively ran, and generally look after each other in a supportive and helpful environment. Look at the gangs... THAT is the community self organizing to the extent it is able under those conditions. You have young men standing up saying they want to be part of something, that they want respect in their community, that they want some agency in the community... and how can they possibly get that besides going to the gangs? Sure, they could study in school and run for city council or something but that is very much divorced from the culture of those communities. And while you'll point out that the gangs are often seen in a negative light, they are respected, they do generally look after their own members, and they do give their members a sense of purpose in life.
So the kibbutz system or some other commune system should be tried as an alternative. And you could even subsidize them to some extent with government funds. It can't be more expensive than the EBT, welfare, medicaid, etc costs.
I am an arch capitalist radical libertarian. That is where I stand. However, above all I believe in people being able to choose how they want to live. And it seems like a lot of people want to live a more communistic life style and I'm going to practice what I preach by saying that if that is what people want... they should get it. I would say they should be limited to what they can obtain through consent. That is, you shouldn't be able to force people to join, keep people from leaving, or otherwise force people to do things. However, so long as you can get people to consent to your commune, I'm perfectly happy with it.
Something I'd like to try for example would be giving labor unions abandoned factories. The "rust belt" is littered with abandoned industrial infrastructure and dying unemployed factory labor unions that are increasingly on federal welfare. Well, what if we took some of that welfare money and just bought the factories and then gave them to the labor unions? Doubtless they'd need to renovate and buy new equipment etc... but we could raise the money for that rather easily if it were understood that in the process we'd be taking thousands of people off the welfare rolls.
As funny thing about Marxists is that they don't seem to understand what Marx was all about. He was about german, hard working, factory workers owning the "means of production"... the factories. He didn't envision pseudo intellectual never employed hipsters demanding government cheese so they could spend all day posting mean tweats. And he didn't envision generations of welfare families basically raising their children on the government dole to live on the government
You can't assume an emotion of rage from anything I wrote there... *yawn*
Skimming over more stupid insults... and you conclude with the statement that I shouldn't post on slashdot.
This is a very odd statement from you because you don't post on slashdot. You Anonymously post on slashdot. Which means no one can point at posts you've made and say "remember when you said this" because none of your posts are searchable in that way. You've intentionally made yourself unaccountable even to claims of personal hypocrisy. As such, you have no grounds to question my conduct in this community.
The only reason I am able to audit you at all is because you've been trolling me for weeks and while you comment anonymously your posting patterns are very distinctive. No one has ever trolled me on this forum for more than a day or so. You're the only one.
And that's something that I find interesting. Why are you focusing on me? I mean, you must literally have my account name bookmarked and then you click on it to see if I've posted anything new, and then you write some thoughtless comment such as "you're a meanie and I don't like you"... which never has any contextual relevance.
Why do you hate me so much and what motivates you to troll me? I'm not asking you to stop... that would of course be counter productive. Trolls desire nothing more than to know they're effecting people. Any request for you to be civil or rational is just going to be rejected.
So instead, what I'd actually like to know, is why you are trolling me in the first place?
As I remember, I picked you up roughly around where I said psychology was bullshit or something to that effect. It was weeks ago so my memory is a bit hazy. From that point onward, you've obsessive stalked me on this forum.
Given that your behavior is demonstrably aberrant and seemingly disturbed in some manner, are you a psychological patient?
Was your offense due to my questioning a discipline that suggests it can help you?
What drives you to make comments? Your posts are so mindlessly hateful that they're not even offensive. You're just this cartoonish personality that says baseless nasty things for no reason.
I mean, you're obviously a troll... that's obvious. But you're such a fail troll that I don't know if you're like a troll in training or you're just too stupid to know how to do it properly.
See, to be an effective troll you have to actually effect people which means being better at making a credible argument. Your comments about my education level for example are so obviously fallacious that they are meaningless. And once you strip out that comment your post contains nothing but your obvious intent to offend... which is just sort of sad.
I believe Cicero once said something to the effect that "there is no reason to be offended because all insults are either true or false. True insults afford you no right to be offended because they are the truth. False insults are not worth your offense because they are false."
And I personally live by that. I don't get offended. The most you can do is annoy me by continuing to be an idiot. But you lack the wit and guile to actually offend me.
And the vast majority of "drones" don't include anything like that in it, be it an autopilot capable of doing more than just hovering or possibly homing in on the radio transmitter if signal is lost, or be it any kind of awareness as to its GPS location.
Most drones just remote controlled helicopters with some added circuitry to maintain a stable hover using four propellers that are stabilized more through some sort of digital gyroscope more than anything else.
Equating that with a "drone" is goofy.
A drone is s proper robot. Programmable, able to perform reactive commands, etc. I mean, a fucking actual drone is a drone. And the vast majority of shit called a "drone" is just a fucking remote controlled helicopter.
Well, the whole point of a file like that would be to create plausible deniability. You release a limited file on your website mostly to show you created something and then using a pseudonym or other proxy you release a complete/FIXED file that is what people will actually use.
That way you aren't releasing dangerous tech on your website because its limited and hunting down RabidPussy15 is not something the lawyers have shown any facility for over the years. Perhaps the NSA might get somewhere but going over the way they've busted people over the years... they've mostly made really stupid mistakes. If you use a different account every time you proxy a new file, possibly run it through one of the many anonymizing systems... I think it should be functionally impossible to prove it came from you. Unless you left meta data on the file saying it came from Ted's computer. Then that's just death by stupidity again. Always check the metadata.:D
The thing that annoys me most about this issue is all the government regulators that jumped on them like they were anything new.
We've had remote controlled helicopters and airplanes for ages. Most drones are basically exactly that. There is a dude that stands there with a controller, and he moves it around and the "drone" which is just a remote controlled helicopter moves around in response.
Fucking shocking.
But so many fuckwits have these notions of defense industry military assault drones in their tiny little heads that they think some 500 dollar toy some dude assembled in his backyard is somehow in anyway analogous.
Here is the first thing you need for a real drone - Autonomous flight. Practically none of the things we call "drones" can do that.
Even in this case they laughably are trialing a "drone" that leaves the line of sight of the operator as if that would somehow be an innovation for a fucking drone.
Not only should a REAL drone be able to do that but I should be able to OD on cocaine and die and the drone should still follow its programmed flight plan largely unaffected by my twitching corpse with blood foaming out of my nostrils.
Look, I'm cool with the government regulating stuff because they're after all the warlords that have claimed our asses. But can they at least be competent warlords?
I have this feeling when I read government actions... It sounds like some old lady that just misheard something her grandson told her and is massively overreacting and misunderstanding everything in the most disastrous way possible. That is the government is sounding batty, senile, reactionary, and generally out of touch with things not Matlock related.
Here is what I want with drones:
1. If the drone is operating over private property, is not rising more than 500 feet above the ground, and the relevant airspace is not being used by commercial or military aircraft then let me do whatever the fuck I want. Obviously I shouldn't fly a giant glowing blow up doll airship over my property to annoy my neighbor, Ned Flanders... But if I'm being reasonable then leave me alone. I don't even want to fill out a form. Leave me alone.
2. If the drone is relatively light then I don't want to hear a lot of bitching about health and safety. Fucking birds crash into stuff all the time and children throw balls over fences... in either case you could be hit my a confused sparrow or some out of no where ball... and we don't expect health and safety to get involved with any of that. Little remote controlled or even autonomous flying craft aren't going to hurt anyone. Most of them could drop right out of the sky right onto your head and they wouldn't do anything. They're as light as possible by design because the little shitty motors and the little crappy batteries can't handle anything heavier. Now, for bigger craft... fine. But for the little stuff, give me a break.
3. If forms are to be filled out, then they need to work something like a pilot's license or a driver's license. That is... you fill out some forms, maybe take a test, pay some fee to the relevant warlord, and then you're good to go. This means amongst other things that Amazon etc get to fly their fuck planes if they can fill out a form and pay a fee. To those that say "what happens if their drone falls out of the sky and damages my rose bushes!'... same thing that would happen if UPS hit your rose bushes with their truck. Why is complicated all of a sudden?
4. Assuming we can master steps 1-3, I'd like to see drones used throughout our society. For delivery, for surveillance, for crop dusting, for real estate photography, for police chases, for forest fire surveillance AND actually going to the relevant lake/water source, grabbing X hundred gallons, and dumping all that on the forest fire... and really an endless number of cool shit.
Now someone is going to say "but the warlords scare me and I don't really like the idea of the warlords having stuff that makes them scarier"... well my overripe
Apparently every law firm and every accounting and most of the investment banks have shit management then. Because that is just standard throughout many industries... especially for junior employees. You can't do that to senior employees which I am guessing is part of the problem.
Some businesses need that sort of work done and some others don't. The ones that do, are going to need a lot of young programmers they can beat the hell out of on a regular basis without getting a lot of shit back.
Is it fair? No one owes you a job and no one is stopping you from quitting. So is it fair? It is the free market. Deal with it or swim back to mother russia... There's nothing I can really say to someone that doesn't grasp how the free market works.
I downloaded them immediately when they went live and I don't even have a 3d printer. They're also all over the torrent networks still.
So... totally pointless.
What the state department really stopped was FURTHER files. DD put out the files to print a lower receiver for an AR15 and the files for that liberator gun. Potentially they could have put more out by now had they not been gagged.
As to going forward, I'd suggest they try this... The lower receiver blanks are sold legally right now. I think they're 80 percent complete and because they're not 100 percent they're technically just pieces of metal. So why not do that with the gun files. Make them 80 percent complete and leave it to the internet to fill in the remaining 20 percent. Really you could just leak the complete file under an anonymous name but keep your organization associated with the 80 percent file. That way you might get by this state department nonsense.
... You're assuming the work is something uber creative and not something super tedious.
Some things just take a long time to do and they take a long time to do no matter who you are... this is why the law firms throw their junior lawyers at things like "discovery" for example and why big accounting firms use their legions of junior accountants to do audits.
Take something like the audit... you have to go through spread sheets and then actually pick the fucking phone up and query some percentage of the information in the spreadsheet against what other suppliers say etc. Lets say a company says they bought 100,000 units of X for Y dollars in January... how do you audit that faster than the junior accountant that picks the phone up and calls the supplier?
You can't.
Same thing with discovery in law firms. Discovery is all about sitting there and reading through THOUSANDS of pages of tedious bullshit to try and find something that you could sue someone for. And while IBM says they're going to get Watson to do Discovery, until they do... its going to be done by legions of junior lawyers. Because they're cheap and you can treat them like fucking animals.
And that's the thing. Some programming outfits need cheap programmers that they can treat like fucking animals. Now everyone is telling "but they shouldn't need to do that"... well, perhaps but if they think they do then that's who they're going to hire. And while you're going to tell me you know what you're talking about... the reality is that it seems like a LOT of the outfits are avoiding the oldsters.
Here is something that might help... what about age segregation? I'm sure part of this is the cultural divides The kids likely click with each other a bit better then the old guys and the old guys click with each other better than the kids. So why not just break them up and have them do whatever each group does best?
I don't know... I know there are some companies that actually prefer older engineers because they're more experienced. I forget the company, a networking company hired a bunch of laid off Motorola engineers and used them to create some nifty wireless networking products. I don't think they have a single engineer under 50 and I saw a few that looked like they were pushing 70.
Here is the big issue I have, I don't think this is a civil rights issue. I think it is an issue of managing the labor force.
Join a law firm as a junior lawyer or an accounting firm as a junior accountant.
They won't tell you that you'll be knocking your brains out to keep up. But they're perfectly happy if you drop out because there's plenty more where you came from. So the firms beat the hell out of new employees. And generally the rule in accounting is about 4 years of getting shat on... after which you can leave the company in good standing and get hired by other companies that want an in house accountant/lawyer.
Something of that nature could be going on in programming especially in the big programming houses.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey bingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Explain the difference if you can. I briefly looked into it and there seems to be a lot of solar panels that use glass still. They use different kinds but glass is quite common.
I am actually noted by everyone except you as being overly logical and not especially emotive.
You are likely referring to me being emotional because you think I see it as an insult and you tend to make every post to me with the intention of offending me.
You can't do that. You lack the ability.
Your comment is merely further trolling.
My question was quite serious, why are you trolling me specifically? There are plenty of people on this forum radically less stable than myself. If you desire to poke at explosive and unstable people... I could point you at dozens of others.
So why me? I suppose it is probably because I respond at all to you? I imagine most people just ignore you. Which possibly is either boring or even emotionally painful for you. I can't presume to read your mind. But your behavior does suggest some kind of mental instability or sickness on your part.
You became enraged with me over my psychology post of perhaps a month ago. Why was that post so offensive to you that you decided to troll someone for a full month after that?
As to why I was wrong, I was not... you merely offered an additional variable which would apply to some portion of the population.
Your observation was like pointing out a casual grammatical error that wasn't especially meaningful. If you think anti communist sentiment in eastern europe is mostly or purely anti Russian then you are in error.
Should I now presume to be correcting you? By your standards I guess I am, eh?
Yes, some portion of the people that are anti communist in eastern europe are simply anti russian and attribute the one with the other. However, a great many of them never wanted to be inducted into the communist state in the first place. No one asked them if they wanted to be in it and the first change they had to get out - they did. And they're not especially interested in further experiments with communism.
My position on this issue is that the casual hipster communists in the West might have more mature and realistic expectations of what to expect from a communist society if they had opportunities to live in them.
I want them to get that opportunity in a safe and sustainable way. And I want to be entirely fair to the communist model by giving it the best chance it has to succeed. I even want them to do well if at all possible because we can apply them to solving other problems in our society. Use it as a relief valve for those feeling dissatisfied with capitalism.
What is more, there are an enourmous number of crypto communists in our society and frankly I'm tired of fencing with their sophistry as they pretend to be something other then what they obviously are... I am hoping that if given a reasonable and attractive way to express their ideal social model without subjecting me to an authoritarian system that I suspect is unsustainable on any large scale... that they'll stop putting forward dishonest arguments in the hope that society can be slowly "nudged" into communism.
I just want everyone to get what they want... limited to what they have a right to personally demand.
hey bingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Bingo.
If we ignored costs we could all eat caviar on the moon.
The main issue with solar is the depreciation. Assuming they last forever... they'd be absurdly inexpensive. Of course they don't. They tend to wear out after 10-20 years depending on what various manufactuers say.
But the really silly thing is that they are not built to be maintained. They can only be built at the factory and when they wear out you have to throw them out.
How green is that especially when the vast majority of the solar panel is going to be roughly identical to how it was when it rolled off the manufactoring line.
What we should be looking at AMONGST OTHER things is figuring out specifically what is not working with an old worn out cell and either how you prevent that situation through maintenance, redesign the cells so they can be maintained, or we need some sort of micro manufacturing system for solar cells.
If you could buy a machine that made solar panels... ideally not with silicon wafers... choose a cheaper material even if it is less space efficient. And then rather than sell the panels you sell the machine that makes the panels.
The guy with the panels on his roof doesn't even need to own the machine but someone in the area probably should have enough manufacturing capacity to maintain the existing solar infrastructure.
Look, all costs are just supply and demand. In the case of solar panels the issue is supply. There is lots of demand for them. The costs get pushed up by a lack of supply. So we need more production and that production has to assume lower prices because it will be a higher supply environment.
Democratizing the manufacturing of the panels solve the problem because the big industrial producers make more money with the cost of panels higher. It isn't in their interests to push the prices lower.
If you move those companies away from selling toast and instead selling toasters... we might get a dramatically lower price.
Someone is going to be upset that I'm advocating the less space efficient panels. The more efficient ones have unreasonably high quality control requirements to be practical in the applications I'm discussing. We need something simple and robust and cheap. Something that when it breaks or wears out can be patched or repaired without going to any great expense.
Nearly all of that is non-essential.
The core of windows 7 is less than a gigabyte. I've seen versions of it clock in at a very modest size.
Regardless, those space limitations are temporary.
It is beyond obvious that the MS operating system should be modular and an advanced set up should provide more options as to what is installed and what is not. Controlling for all the shit that doesn't need to be installed, you could limit the size of the OS dramatically.
Your correction on eastern europe was obvious and not especially interesting. I hoped to draw you into a more incisive dialog.
My effort was not wasted. It was an investment in a prospective discussion that did not happen. True, the investment did not pan out but if you do not make the effort then it can never happen.
Your absurd attempt to slight me for attempting to have a discussion with you is merely evidence that you did not join the discussion in good faith.
Good day.
There is no reason the next generation xbox cannot simply be a PC.
That's my point.
As to porting and emulating... none of that would be very hard if MS weren't intentionally obstructing the such projects.
The most reasonable option would probably be to have two CPUs in the phone.
You have an ARM cpu to do background processes and you have some x86 processor in there that is compatible with desktop functions. You could set it up so that both CPUs treated the other like a peripheral. Giving each isolated ram and their own ownership of their own partition of the memory card shouldn't be a big deal.
That said, it would be even better if the x86 processor could just be made to be mobile friendly.
As to messy UIs, MS is a big enough company to handle it. Especially since most of the coding etc is not going to change that much.
I also think it isn't unreasonable if certain features are locked to a give UI. For example, if you're modifying the registry, I don't think you need a touch GUI version of regedit etc. Also when you deal with say the TV interface, you really don't need to maintain the GUI as TV friendly for more than what you would on the TV. So again, deep system settings could be desktop standard GUI.
As to what program providers do, that is up to them. I think you'll find that some program providers will PICK a GUI they want to primarily support and largely ignore the rest. This wont' matter in most cases. A touch centric GUI on a program that is being used on a computer with a keyboard and mouse is going to be fine. A little clunky but functional. Only the very popular open source projects and the AAA flagship applications are going to bother putting compatibility for lots of GUIs. And they have the manpower to do that if they want.
As to what people choose to use, you're assuming the default is going to be the same on all machines.
First, most people are not installing their own operating systems. It is installed either by the OEM or it is installed by your company IT department. And THEY will chose which GUI you will default to. If you don't like the GUI they defaulted you to, then you can change it.
However, the primary GUIs should remain consistent pretty much for the foreseeable future. Changing up the interface is sort of like releasing a car with a joystick instead of a steering wheel. No one gives a fuck what you found out in a focus group. If your car can't use a steering wheel you're going to have problems. This is what happened with Vista and Windows 8. Windows 7 by and large was MS putting the steering wheel back. Then they took it out again in Windows 8 and then were screamed at so they put it back in in 8.1.
I am perfectly fine with you innovating. However, if you take the steering wheel out and smugly tell me it is better that way... expect an unhappy customer. I do not care what your focus group says. Maintain a standard GUI. Go nuts with alternatives. Anything you like. Take away the primary GUI and I'm coming for someone's nuts.
As to consistent hardware, you're saying this like this is hard or special or something. PC game makers do just fine with variable hardware. Yes, consoles have consistent hardware but that doesn't mean much. That just means you have one version of the operating system with one set of drivers that are slightly better debugged than what the PC people deal with. So what.
Look, I'm not taking your console away. By your xbox. I'm just saying that there is a net gain if the xbox is actually just a streamlined subsidized by licenses gaming PC.
As to strong reasons why things are the way they are, then things would never change and common misconceptions would never be alter.
The reason things are the way they are is because of console history. It is a legacy business model from a time when gaming PCs didn't really exist and the hardware was very different. Think of the computer you'd need to buy to get something as nice as a Nintendo NES for game playing. The market has iterated on what is largely a restrictive Japanese business model for a long time and it is a game Microsoft especially doesn't need to play. Sony frankly profits from the status quo because if it were to change they'd be boned. MS is apparently competitive in this setting but they could utterly crush their competition if they shifted.
I suspect they'd be hit with more monopoly lawsuits were they do this and nothing screaming success like your market competitors being so frustrated with competing with you in the open market that you start begging the government to make the bad man stop.
First, I think many GUIs should be provided by MS and should be optional for users.
For example, if you want the traditional XP type desktop, I think MS should permit that for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying it should be butt ugly but the same buttons should be in the same places that do the same things. You can update the look of those buttons or add animations but the same buttons in the same places.
Also have a tablet interface for people that have touch screens etc.
Also have a tv remote type interface.
Also, a purely text based interface is good.
If I missed something, then just assume I suggested it. Just put them all in there.
Second, there is no good reason for the Xbox to be incompatible with the PC and the PC incompatible with the xbox. Xbox games shoul run natively on a windows machine. They are intentionally made to not work that way and that's a dumb move. Why do that? To push your console? But the console doesn't make money. The GAMES make money. Not the console. The console actually loses money initially and it takes years for the company to so much as break even on the initial console costs.
Now, a possible compromise here is that MS could say "we will permit any Xbox game to run on any windows machine but we will only permit MS approved products to run on the Xbox. And then you make part of that approval process that the company agrees to give a percentage of game sales to MS. I believe this is how Xbox games work. So MS would lose NOTHING by doing this. They'd actually start getting a cut of licensing money for PC games effectively. And porting games back and forth wouldn't be required because they'd effectively be inter-compatible systems.
Another fun thing they could do with Xboxes is permit them to work as totally normal PCs. Again, I basically think the Xbox should just run windows with TV centric GUI. But if I want to surf websites, do my taxes, or check my email on my xbox, it should be something that works basically the same way as on the PC. Why not? That would if anything improve the value of the xbox.
MS could annihilate Sony with something like this... bridging the gap between the console and the PC so that they're the same system. That would mean
Third, I'd like to see more tablets and even phones running desktop operating systems with fully accessible memory. I'd like the firmware chip for example to just be a micro SD card hiding under the battery. So if something goes wrong you can pull the stupid chip, pop it into another machine, sort out whatever went wrong, and then put it back into the phone.
here people are going to point out "but the gui on a desktop is wrong for a phone"... No shit? What is the title of my comment? My point is that you can have many GUIs for the same operating system. I'd like to see MS really grasp that and possibly during installation query the user to choose which GUI they want the system to default to on boot. It should be something that can be hot switchable without having to log off first or something.
Basically what we're talking about here are different versions of Explorer.exe. Have explorer be the old school GUI and then have a different version for whatever other variation you're interested in.
MS could instantly have more apps on their phone than any of their competitors because all the windows apps would run on one of their phones. Now sure, most of the GUIs for most of those programs are going to be inappropriate. However, just as MS can make multiple GUIs for Windows, so too can you make multiple GUIs for those programs. Ideally, MS would pave the way there by having different GUIs for their Office Suite etc.
Now see this in operation in the corporate world... imagine if corporations could put desktop apps on your phone?
Here people are going to point out the whole x86/arm thing about the various CPUs not being inter-compatible etc. I am aware. I don't credit the notion that you can't put an x86 CPU in a phone or tablet. The only thing that would be r
First off, I'm not getting rid of markets. The existing market will exist as it does now.
Second, the infrastructure is what we're giving to the union.
Third, central planning is what CEOs currently do and the labor union should be able to handle the administration of a single fucking factory.
As to it being a boondoggle, I expect some of those ventures to fail. I am in fact counting on this to occasionally fail because sometimes things just fail... but more importantly some of the labor unions are run by idiots. And those people need to fail so that they lose prestige in their community.
I do think that labor unions are capable of running a factory. There might be some cultural shifts required because they won't be able to point at the "man" and blame the "man" for everything. They'll have to make sacrifices when times get tight which is what a company does when it lays people off. The union will have that option or possibly reducing wages or increasing hours worked or something. How they make ends meet is up to them.
But the goal of something like this is that it be self sustaining. That is, instead of paying out welfare money indefinitely for structurally unemployed people... we jump start jobs for people in what will ultimately be private ventures.
They must be made small enough that it isn't the end of the universe if the go bankrupt. So don't build mega factories. Do small ones. Try to keep it down to a couple hundred people per factory with independent control. That way when one of them inevidibly fucks up and destroys itself it isn't a huge deal.
Something that a lot of people don't grasp is that failure is a very important part of learning and a very important part of building anything. You need to be able to fail or you can't learn.
So, set a few of these up and let them just run with it. Some will kill themselves and some will succeed. The ones that succeed will be the example of what to do and the ones that fail will be the example of what not to do.
I think we could rehabilitate a good deal of the rust belt with something like this... Try it in Detroit or some other place that has a lot of abandoned industrial space.
Bring in some business experts to help figure out how best to capitalize on the existing infrustructure and labor force. Then take volunteers... ideally starting with unemployed people or underemployed people that have the skill sets required to contribute. And then see if you can make it work with a government grant that ultimately can be billed against the welfare roles because you'll be reducing long term welfare payments. You'll also be bringing new money into the community because most businesses tend to help the business of other businesses in the area. Even if you're just talking about sandwich shops or something. People working need to eat. So the more this works the more associated businesses can profit.
The alternative is just surrendering to indefinite failure and unemployment for fucking millions. And that is an attitude that needs to be taken out back and shot. Defeatism is not constructive.
As to anti communist versus anti Russia, there is certainly something to be said for that. However, if you listen to people from eastern europe they'll also tell you things about how it was hard to get stuff or how unfair the system was or how people had no confidence in the economic process.
And while you can say that maybe that is just some "the grass is always greener on the other side" type stuff... that is a double edged sword and it is my point that if people in a capitalist society were subjected to "communist spaces"... little zones of communism, they might appreciate that it isn't quite what they thought it would be.
Keep in mind, we've had communes in the US since BEFORE the founding of the United States. The Amish maintain some of the most successful and long lasting examples of that. But we had a great upswing in communes during the 60s and guess where that went? Not very far. Because people decided they didn't like those life styles.
You have people that live in cities and apparently want a more urban life style with access to modern industrial amenities.
Well, that is entirely impossible given the old school commune system. You can't sustain anything you can't build yourselves. And again, people seem to want communism but they don't want to actually have to deal with the consequences of that.
So I'm trying to help you. You want a communal life style while sacrificing as little of what you consider modern living as possible. Okay. Lets look at how we do that without imposing a totalitarian authoritarian communist super state.
I WANT you to get what you want for YOURSELF. What you want for other people especially against their will because you see it as for the greater good or because you think you know better what other people want than they do is not credible. I'm not going to permit or entertain that. However, if YOU want to live a certain way, then I am certainly happy to help you do that with as many censenting adults and their children as want to sign on to it. And I think it could be really positive.
You're not going to get rid of capitalism. You couldn't kill if you won every election. Capitalism existed in the heart of the soviet union during the middle of the cold war. If the soviets couldn't kill it then how could you possibly do it? What is more, nations at the very least must trade with each other and those trades are going to operate on market forces.
I'm just saying that to point out that my position on capitalism is not threatened by even the most violent and extreme communist views because they are spitting at the Sun. Nothing they do there can matter ultimately.
What I actually want to protect are individual rights and freedoms. Things like property rights, freedom to work where you want, freedom to work in the jobs you want, freedom to move around the world as you please, etc.
So long as you don't fuck with that, I'm happy to give you as much communism as you want. Just don't force me into it and I'm cool with it. I think the commune model is an excellent compromise.
And we can set up urban communes. We already have coop condo buildings. Why not do that but extend it farther so that not only is the building managed by a coop but the entire community is managed by a coop? Such that people don't have to pay rent in the building or worry about employment because the coop itself does various economic activities that fund the needs of the residents. The residents must of course participate in those activities but I see no reason why you couldn't have very successful coops.
That way people have a social and economic support network so if people get sick or injured or whatever they are taken care of by the community. And you just have a more traditionally human experience. Your coop becomes your tribe. These are your people. And you live in a big city where if you need something then you need to pay other tribes to get their resources for yours.
I think it is an excellent compromise. If you a communist or a progressiv
I wish more people lived in them and not for the reason some might think.
See, people have very unrealistic notions of communism and communal living. You don't appreciate property rights, the free market, etc until it is gone. Look at eastern europe and generally you see populations that are more fanatically anti communist than pretty much any societies on earth including the US. And that is because they lived through it.
And no, I'm not saying that all communist systems must be oppressive autocratic regimes that trample on people's rights. However, I am saying that there are a lot of aspects of that sort of system that are no advertised on the box and you don't really understand what you're buying into until you've lived in it for awhile.
Which is why I think communes are fantastic because they give people a good first hand practical knowledge of how that system works without forcing people that don't want to live in it to join or giving said systems authority over people in a non-consensual way.
I also think the kibbutz system is quite excellent and I really think we should try them out as an alternative to the current urban welfare systems. That is, rather than just give people EBT cards and government housing, you instead plop them in an urban commune. The concept would be that they'd self organize, have some productive businesses that they collectively ran, and generally look after each other in a supportive and helpful environment. Look at the gangs... THAT is the community self organizing to the extent it is able under those conditions. You have young men standing up saying they want to be part of something, that they want respect in their community, that they want some agency in the community... and how can they possibly get that besides going to the gangs? Sure, they could study in school and run for city council or something but that is very much divorced from the culture of those communities. And while you'll point out that the gangs are often seen in a negative light, they are respected, they do generally look after their own members, and they do give their members a sense of purpose in life.
So the kibbutz system or some other commune system should be tried as an alternative. And you could even subsidize them to some extent with government funds. It can't be more expensive than the EBT, welfare, medicaid, etc costs.
I am an arch capitalist radical libertarian. That is where I stand. However, above all I believe in people being able to choose how they want to live. And it seems like a lot of people want to live a more communistic life style and I'm going to practice what I preach by saying that if that is what people want... they should get it. I would say they should be limited to what they can obtain through consent. That is, you shouldn't be able to force people to join, keep people from leaving, or otherwise force people to do things. However, so long as you can get people to consent to your commune, I'm perfectly happy with it.
Something I'd like to try for example would be giving labor unions abandoned factories. The "rust belt" is littered with abandoned industrial infrastructure and dying unemployed factory labor unions that are increasingly on federal welfare. Well, what if we took some of that welfare money and just bought the factories and then gave them to the labor unions? Doubtless they'd need to renovate and buy new equipment etc... but we could raise the money for that rather easily if it were understood that in the process we'd be taking thousands of people off the welfare rolls.
As funny thing about Marxists is that they don't seem to understand what Marx was all about. He was about german, hard working, factory workers owning the "means of production"... the factories. He didn't envision pseudo intellectual never employed hipsters demanding government cheese so they could spend all day posting mean tweats. And he didn't envision generations of welfare families basically raising their children on the government dole to live on the government
You can't assume an emotion of rage from anything I wrote there... *yawn*
Skimming over more stupid insults... and you conclude with the statement that I shouldn't post on slashdot.
This is a very odd statement from you because you don't post on slashdot. You Anonymously post on slashdot. Which means no one can point at posts you've made and say "remember when you said this" because none of your posts are searchable in that way. You've intentionally made yourself unaccountable even to claims of personal hypocrisy. As such, you have no grounds to question my conduct in this community.
The only reason I am able to audit you at all is because you've been trolling me for weeks and while you comment anonymously your posting patterns are very distinctive. No one has ever trolled me on this forum for more than a day or so. You're the only one.
And that's something that I find interesting. Why are you focusing on me? I mean, you must literally have my account name bookmarked and then you click on it to see if I've posted anything new, and then you write some thoughtless comment such as "you're a meanie and I don't like you"... which never has any contextual relevance.
Why do you hate me so much and what motivates you to troll me? I'm not asking you to stop... that would of course be counter productive. Trolls desire nothing more than to know they're effecting people. Any request for you to be civil or rational is just going to be rejected.
So instead, what I'd actually like to know, is why you are trolling me in the first place?
As I remember, I picked you up roughly around where I said psychology was bullshit or something to that effect. It was weeks ago so my memory is a bit hazy. From that point onward, you've obsessive stalked me on this forum.
Given that your behavior is demonstrably aberrant and seemingly disturbed in some manner, are you a psychological patient?
Was your offense due to my questioning a discipline that suggests it can help you?
What drives you to make comments? Your posts are so mindlessly hateful that they're not even offensive. You're just this cartoonish personality that says baseless nasty things for no reason.
I mean, you're obviously a troll... that's obvious. But you're such a fail troll that I don't know if you're like a troll in training or you're just too stupid to know how to do it properly.
See, to be an effective troll you have to actually effect people which means being better at making a credible argument. Your comments about my education level for example are so obviously fallacious that they are meaningless. And once you strip out that comment your post contains nothing but your obvious intent to offend... which is just sort of sad.
I believe Cicero once said something to the effect that "there is no reason to be offended because all insults are either true or false. True insults afford you no right to be offended because they are the truth. False insults are not worth your offense because they are false."
And I personally live by that. I don't get offended. The most you can do is annoy me by continuing to be an idiot. But you lack the wit and guile to actually offend me.
And the vast majority of "drones" don't include anything like that in it, be it an autopilot capable of doing more than just hovering or possibly homing in on the radio transmitter if signal is lost, or be it any kind of awareness as to its GPS location.
Most drones just remote controlled helicopters with some added circuitry to maintain a stable hover using four propellers that are stabilized more through some sort of digital gyroscope more than anything else.
Equating that with a "drone" is goofy.
A drone is s proper robot. Programmable, able to perform reactive commands, etc. I mean, a fucking actual drone is a drone. And the vast majority of shit called a "drone" is just a fucking remote controlled helicopter.
No I don't.
I am well aware that they're mostly making a political statement. However, it is not as yet made to the powers that be.
So to be effective they're going to have to release more gun designs and of a higher quality or the powers that be aren't going to budge.
Look at the gun control people, have they altered their message at all? I mean even 1 percent? Nope.
So... it is clearly time to get a bigger hammer.
Well, the whole point of a file like that would be to create plausible deniability. You release a limited file on your website mostly to show you created something and then using a pseudonym or other proxy you release a complete/FIXED file that is what people will actually use.
That way you aren't releasing dangerous tech on your website because its limited and hunting down RabidPussy15 is not something the lawyers have shown any facility for over the years. Perhaps the NSA might get somewhere but going over the way they've busted people over the years... they've mostly made really stupid mistakes. If you use a different account every time you proxy a new file, possibly run it through one of the many anonymizing systems... I think it should be functionally impossible to prove it came from you. Unless you left meta data on the file saying it came from Ted's computer. Then that's just death by stupidity again. Always check the metadata. :D
The thing that annoys me most about this issue is all the government regulators that jumped on them like they were anything new.
We've had remote controlled helicopters and airplanes for ages. Most drones are basically exactly that. There is a dude that stands there with a controller, and he moves it around and the "drone" which is just a remote controlled helicopter moves around in response.
Fucking shocking.
But so many fuckwits have these notions of defense industry military assault drones in their tiny little heads that they think some 500 dollar toy some dude assembled in his backyard is somehow in anyway analogous.
Here is the first thing you need for a real drone - Autonomous flight. Practically none of the things we call "drones" can do that.
Even in this case they laughably are trialing a "drone" that leaves the line of sight of the operator as if that would somehow be an innovation for a fucking drone.
Not only should a REAL drone be able to do that but I should be able to OD on cocaine and die and the drone should still follow its programmed flight plan largely unaffected by my twitching corpse with blood foaming out of my nostrils.
Look, I'm cool with the government regulating stuff because they're after all the warlords that have claimed our asses. But can they at least be competent warlords?
I have this feeling when I read government actions... It sounds like some old lady that just misheard something her grandson told her and is massively overreacting and misunderstanding everything in the most disastrous way possible. That is the government is sounding batty, senile, reactionary, and generally out of touch with things not Matlock related.
Here is what I want with drones:
1. If the drone is operating over private property, is not rising more than 500 feet above the ground, and the relevant airspace is not being used by commercial or military aircraft then let me do whatever the fuck I want. Obviously I shouldn't fly a giant glowing blow up doll airship over my property to annoy my neighbor, Ned Flanders... But if I'm being reasonable then leave me alone. I don't even want to fill out a form. Leave me alone.
2. If the drone is relatively light then I don't want to hear a lot of bitching about health and safety. Fucking birds crash into stuff all the time and children throw balls over fences... in either case you could be hit my a confused sparrow or some out of no where ball... and we don't expect health and safety to get involved with any of that. Little remote controlled or even autonomous flying craft aren't going to hurt anyone. Most of them could drop right out of the sky right onto your head and they wouldn't do anything. They're as light as possible by design because the little shitty motors and the little crappy batteries can't handle anything heavier. Now, for bigger craft... fine. But for the little stuff, give me a break.
3. If forms are to be filled out, then they need to work something like a pilot's license or a driver's license. That is... you fill out some forms, maybe take a test, pay some fee to the relevant warlord, and then you're good to go. This means amongst other things that Amazon etc get to fly their fuck planes if they can fill out a form and pay a fee. To those that say "what happens if their drone falls out of the sky and damages my rose bushes!'... same thing that would happen if UPS hit your rose bushes with their truck. Why is complicated all of a sudden?
4. Assuming we can master steps 1-3, I'd like to see drones used throughout our society. For delivery, for surveillance, for crop dusting, for real estate photography, for police chases, for forest fire surveillance AND actually going to the relevant lake/water source, grabbing X hundred gallons, and dumping all that on the forest fire... and really an endless number of cool shit.
Now someone is going to say "but the warlords scare me and I don't really like the idea of the warlords having stuff that makes them scarier"... well my overripe
Apparently every law firm and every accounting and most of the investment banks have shit management then. Because that is just standard throughout many industries... especially for junior employees. You can't do that to senior employees which I am guessing is part of the problem.
Some businesses need that sort of work done and some others don't. The ones that do, are going to need a lot of young programmers they can beat the hell out of on a regular basis without getting a lot of shit back.
Is it fair? No one owes you a job and no one is stopping you from quitting. So is it fair? It is the free market. Deal with it or swim back to mother russia... There's nothing I can really say to someone that doesn't grasp how the free market works.
I downloaded them immediately when they went live and I don't even have a 3d printer. They're also all over the torrent networks still.
So... totally pointless.
What the state department really stopped was FURTHER files. DD put out the files to print a lower receiver for an AR15 and the files for that liberator gun. Potentially they could have put more out by now had they not been gagged.
As to going forward, I'd suggest they try this... The lower receiver blanks are sold legally right now. I think they're 80 percent complete and because they're not 100 percent they're technically just pieces of metal. So why not do that with the gun files. Make them 80 percent complete and leave it to the internet to fill in the remaining 20 percent. Really you could just leak the complete file under an anonymous name but keep your organization associated with the 80 percent file. That way you might get by this state department nonsense.
If they were permitted to
... You're assuming the work is something uber creative and not something super tedious.
Some things just take a long time to do and they take a long time to do no matter who you are... this is why the law firms throw their junior lawyers at things like "discovery" for example and why big accounting firms use their legions of junior accountants to do audits.
Take something like the audit... you have to go through spread sheets and then actually pick the fucking phone up and query some percentage of the information in the spreadsheet against what other suppliers say etc. Lets say a company says they bought 100,000 units of X for Y dollars in January... how do you audit that faster than the junior accountant that picks the phone up and calls the supplier?
You can't.
Same thing with discovery in law firms. Discovery is all about sitting there and reading through THOUSANDS of pages of tedious bullshit to try and find something that you could sue someone for. And while IBM says they're going to get Watson to do Discovery, until they do... its going to be done by legions of junior lawyers. Because they're cheap and you can treat them like fucking animals.
And that's the thing. Some programming outfits need cheap programmers that they can treat like fucking animals. Now everyone is telling "but they shouldn't need to do that"... well, perhaps but if they think they do then that's who they're going to hire. And while you're going to tell me you know what you're talking about... the reality is that it seems like a LOT of the outfits are avoiding the oldsters.
Here is something that might help... what about age segregation? I'm sure part of this is the cultural divides The kids likely click with each other a bit better then the old guys and the old guys click with each other better than the kids. So why not just break them up and have them do whatever each group does best?
I don't know... I know there are some companies that actually prefer older engineers because they're more experienced. I forget the company, a networking company hired a bunch of laid off Motorola engineers and used them to create some nifty wireless networking products. I don't think they have a single engineer under 50 and I saw a few that looked like they were pushing 70.
Here is the big issue I have, I don't think this is a civil rights issue. I think it is an issue of managing the labor force.
Join a law firm as a junior lawyer or an accounting firm as a junior accountant.
They won't tell you that you'll be knocking your brains out to keep up. But they're perfectly happy if you drop out because there's plenty more where you came from. So the firms beat the hell out of new employees. And generally the rule in accounting is about 4 years of getting shat on... after which you can leave the company in good standing and get hired by other companies that want an in house accountant/lawyer.
Something of that nature could be going on in programming especially in the big programming houses.