Wow, that would have been a REAL pain if I was trying to grab the latest UK (BBC) TV coverage of Formula 1.
Good thing that it happened now, and not in March.
But seriously, anyone that actually stored files for future use on any of those file sharing networks deserves to lose them just on principle. Dumb way to store data. And anyone that thinks or argues that those sites are not there primarily for the purpose of "sharing" music, TV and Movies is just plain lyin.
You'd have to be crazy to scoop anything at random, and you search for very specific file titles. Why do you think that Google started making it harder to search file sharing sites, spawning dedicated search engines for megaupload and it's ilk.
Yeah, Baby, Yeah!!
Fook Mi (and my kind), then Fook Yu.
Thanks Anon, you do together what we can't accomplish alone.
I'm not 100% for EVERYTHING you have done, but you are batting 0.800 in my books.
Apparently the Internet and the Freedom that it embodies has become a dangerous thing, according to multi-national commercial interests. This is in line with the recent aggressive anti-Internet tactics adopted by most Communist and Totalitarian Governments around the world, and now with SOPA and it's ilk, the USA has joined forces with it's greatest enemies. As the USA becomes more and more isolationist, it has apparently made the calculation that since "America" champions the cause of "Freedom" around the world, it must leave Internet censorship to the private sector, while the US Government retains the ability to wash it's hands of any actual participation in the restrictive legislation that results from sicking the corporate dogs on freedom. Canada, luckily, is in no mood lately to bow to US pressure, mostly due to the big brother tactics employed by US based pressure groups to control or deny Canada's economic best interests starting with Keystone XL. The USA is Canada's largest trading partner, and it may come as some surprise to Americans that Canada is also THEIR largest trading partner, and the supplier of a large percentage of their domestic Oil needs. Not to mention fresh water, hydro-electric power etc. With the Government currently in control in Ottawa, American paternalism may be in for a shock when we start shipping oil to the east instead of to the south, and adopt a attitude of "chuck you farley" in our relations with the ultra-liberal Obama "administration".
Canada is no longer in a position of having no option but to ride the coattails of American prosperity, we are now in a position to dictate policy based on our own best interests, and American lawmakers had better wake up to that fact before it bites them in the ass. Unfortunately, based on recent US policy, it is an unlikely scenario, too bad for them.
Duh.
The research that was required in order to build the systems capable of landing a craft with Men on it and returning them safely to the Earth had nothing to do with information sharing between Contractors and Educational institutions that were doing it?
What did they use to communicate around the Country, Snail Mail and Homing Pigeons? Did they do all the calculations required on a slide rule, or maybe use time sharing on main frames?
Please think before you speak, AC Troll
RE:"2) Most of the Earth is not visible from Russia. Are these 'frequent' failures all over the same part of the Earth, or is he playing with words?"
Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house..
You got it Hedwards,
The real issue is the brain drain that has been forced onto NASA by cutting the STS, even flying once a year would have kept the Engineering and Mission Control expertise employed, which would (IMHO) have been a small price to pay to keep those fine folks focused on Manned Flight. Not to mention the 100,000 jobs that depended on the STS program. Even the fine folks who sold the toilet paper to the refab facilities took a hit. This is what most people choose to ignore when a major industry slows or shuts down, it's not just the jobs at the sharp end that take a hit, theres a serious trickle down effect.
Actually, if you really look at the historical results of the US Space Program (from inception), you get Integrated circuits (useless, right?) advanced materials science (carbon fiber etc), information systems (DARPANET=Internet), Communications systems (GPS, Telecommunication Satellites etc) and so on, and so on, right down to Tang.
Not a bad return, financial and societal, for a $25 Billion investment to put a Man on the Moon.
We all profited.
Yeah, you are probably right, but remember, the US is still reduced to renting a ride from the Russians to get a man into LEO now that we (stupidly) killed off the STS. Which one is the real failure?
What an embarrassment, from "The Country that put a Man on the Moon" to equality with most developing nations..
The root cause is one that is all too common in many industries, not just Aerospace. Cutting costs by way of hiring children to do grown-up work.
Today it seems that the $25 Billion that the USA spent to put a Man on the Moon was money well spent, in that it layed the groundwork for the technical industries that have made 21st Century life possible for all the world.
They need to spend another $250 Billion on Aerospace to lay the foundation for another 50 years of innovation and to keep ahead of the pack.
You totally miss my point. Yes, if I'm at work, restrict me to your hearts content, I don't care. But on my personal device, stay the hell out of my way. If I mess things up, TFB for me, I will have to deal with the consequences of my actions (and BTW, in all probability learn something in the process). See this link to see how people can actually die because of hand-holding software, an extreme case yes, but in principle, an appropriate comparison. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
This brings up an excellent point that I've been considering for a while now. I was forced to work with a Win7 PC and absolutely hated the changes made to Explorer. I looked at some boards and saw that I am far from being the only one with the same issue, but 99% of those posts were replied to with (paraphrasing) "Get with it, new is good".
No, it's not.
It occurs to me that most Computer/SmartPhone/Tablet manufacturers would rather that you didn't have deep access to the OS or file system. And tailor all current OS's to limit access as much as possible. I bet that 10 years down the road, you won't be able to see the root of your HD no matter what you (legally) do. And therein lies the pernicious nature of "Upgrades". LESS power to the people, and power to the people was the driving force behind the PC revolution in the first place. We have been had by Apple, MS etc. They want total control.
I know it sounds like I wear a tinfoil hat, but think about it, it's where we are heading, and Apple is, perversely, the worst offender.
If Woz wuz dead (sorry woz, I know your out there), he'd be rolling already.
PS, can freedos run with 16gb of RAM?
Yeah, good memories..
I still have a couple of shoe boxes in my garage full of 3.5" floppies, full of 100-250k programs that I downloaded from local BBS's in the 80's.
I kept them all, mostly because I'm a data packrat, but also because I spent SO much time downloading them all over my 1200 baud modem..
Doubt that they would even work nowadays, and I'd have to dig up an old PC with a floppy drive to even check.
Oh, and if anybody cares, I have a full version of Windows 2.0 on 5 1/4" (floppy) floppies. No way to check that either, although it's been in a dry, EMI free place for many years, so decent chance of being functional.
C:\> dir/w
After bitterly complaining about changes to Explorer in Win 7 (like many others) and being told over and over to "get with the program and quit bitching", I came to the conclusion that there is a conspiracy to Dumb Down computers, force migration to much more limited devices ("Smart" phones and Tablets) all in order to limit the power of the Personal Computer.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have much less access and file system power as a "basic" PC consumer than I had way back in DOS days.
Is there a "conspiracy" to get those pesky power users out of the PC platform and onto a more controllable type of device?
Based on the utterly unusable Win7 file system, I think so.
And before I get totally trashed for not migrating to Linux, bugger off. Why should I learn a whole new OS when I was perfectly comfortable and capable with my old XP machine. That is exactly the same argument that MS (and it's Tech "Experts") uses to justify the migration to 7.
I just want my old Explorer back, and I want to kill Aero without nasty consequences.
Sidebar:
Just got an i7 2600 w/16gb Ram, Raid 0 array and relatively decent vid card, should be good right? But now that I have disabled Aero, have all kinds of video/desktop performance issues. Counter-intuitive, but true. Why am I forced to look at eye candy when I really don't want it.
Jeesh. And I can't even install my "old" copy of XP Pro, drivers for my hardware not available...
Not a happy camper
OK, here's my horror story.
Had Bell for years, then all of a sudden about thre years ago started getting $20-30+ extra charges on my bill. Checked it out and I had been put on a UBB plan without my knowledge or consent. So, obviously, I told them to take their internet service (and satellite and phone as well) and shove it.
Went to a small ISP called Acanac for 5mbs DSL service unlimited for $18.95 mo. for the first year, going to $24.95 mo after that with $5.00 mo for a dry loop connection. And Shaw had bought out Starchoice and was offering really good Satellite TV packages with more standard HD channel than Bell for 42.00 mo. And then I got Vonage for the Phone at (I think it was $20.00 mo.) So overnight, my "Media" costs went from 150.00 mo. to $80.00 mo.
All is well, right?
WRONG>
Bell came around my neighbourhood "upgrading" their lines and cut me off. I was standing not 10 feet from my front door when the Bell Tech did it, and asked him how long it would take to reconnect, he told me that since I was not a Bell customer and even though he had just cut my line and was stsnding in front of the box that he did it on, I would have to contact my ISP, they would have to contact Bell and arrange fopr a service call to reconnect me. Fuming, I did just that, was told 3-5 business days. Meanwhile, no phone, no web.
To make a long and painful story a lot shorter than real life, it eventually ended up taking 58 DAYS to get my internet connection restored. Bell simply ignored my ISP's requests, and they went through 5 seperate escalations in an attempt to get me back up and running. It never did get done. My wife was screaming about not having a phone so she independently (doncha hate it when they do that) called Bell to get a land line reconnected (no alternative to Bell for land line, and I refuse to have anything to do with Rogers). I still had no Internet. I ended up having to get my ISP to kill my dry loop and piggyback on top of my land line, treated as a new account before I could get back online.
During the 58 Days, I called the CRTC, send an email they said (right, to some black hole address), I spent hours trying to find SOME phone number at Bell that I could call, ended up at Corporate, "can't talk to you, you aren't a Customer, contact your ISP". Called my MP, she was busy taking kickbacks from local developers, and never responded.
So, Bell and Rogers just use the CRTC as a diversion for disgruntled end users, nothing ever gets done, and whatever you try is drowned in legalese and bureaucratic bulls**t. F**k them all, and the horse they rode in on.
The end result of all this is that I don't dare call about poor speeds, in case Bell comes and "Fixes" my lines again.
Scumbags.
I hope they rot.
I was somewhat surprised that they completely shut down the Tevatron, since I am sure that many Corporations or Research Companies would drool at the chance to gather data specific to various technologies that are out there now in the Commercial world. It would be interesting to know if the Accelerator could be made to be commercially viable..
Good. Glad he's gone, and according to his own beliefs, exists no longer in any form. He was an a-hole masquerading as an intellectual. And did far more harm than good. Ho hum, Time to move on
I have no way to get solid numbers, but going by the standard rule of thumb for Canada/USA comparisons (10% of US numbers for Canada), we are in a similar boat on media, except that here there are only three major media corporations, and they also control 90% of Internet access as well. The CRTC (Canadian version of the FCC) has been in bed with these three under the guise of "protecting Canadian content" for over 40 years. And Bell Canada along with Rogers Communications own 90% of the Canadian Cell network and just got together to purchase the most lucrative sports franchise in the world, the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club (worth almost double what the Yankees are worth at 1.3 billion for 75% of the Franchise.
So weep not, my American friends, you have it good down there...
If you are dumb enough not to be aware that you are installing this crap as well when you install a cute little toy app, then too bad for you.
It reminds me of an old tech support joke, some dim user complaining to a tech, and after ten min of getting nowhere, he says, "Do you still have the box that your PC came in?" "Yes", "Then pack the PC up in the box, take it back to the store that you bought it from and tell them that you are too effing stupid to own a computer"
Nyuk, nyuk.
Almost as good as " I broke my cup holder"
Awright!! a good, well reasoned argument form someone with a vocabulary. However. I would suggest that the definition of a Science does not include Psychology, in which experimentation does not produce results that can be DISPROVED. I would also suggest that many branches of Medicine fall into the same category. That is why an MD has a "practice". Possibly drug testing may fall into the Science category, but not the Practice of Psychology. It's an ART, not a SCIENCE. Call me a stickler for details, but people that have a vested interest in promoting their chosen profession as a "Science" have included many crackpots over the years, and the Mental Health field is not exactly a beacon of integrity.
Psychology is NOT science, see what Richard Feynman, a somewhat intelligent guy had this to say on the subject..
" I would offer that very good minds can practice psychology, people with deep experience and wisdom and understanding. Psychology obviously has value to many, many people, and also makes deep metaphysical arguments about the world and our understanding of it, yet, its just not a science." Feynman's assesses psychology as a cargo cult science, "(It) follows all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something..."
Slashdot Mirror
RFO brother. Well said.
Wow, that would have been a REAL pain if I was trying to grab the latest UK (BBC) TV coverage of Formula 1. Good thing that it happened now, and not in March. But seriously, anyone that actually stored files for future use on any of those file sharing networks deserves to lose them just on principle. Dumb way to store data. And anyone that thinks or argues that those sites are not there primarily for the purpose of "sharing" music, TV and Movies is just plain lyin. You'd have to be crazy to scoop anything at random, and you search for very specific file titles. Why do you think that Google started making it harder to search file sharing sites, spawning dedicated search engines for megaupload and it's ilk.
Yeah, Baby, Yeah!! Fook Mi (and my kind), then Fook Yu. Thanks Anon, you do together what we can't accomplish alone. I'm not 100% for EVERYTHING you have done, but you are batting 0.800 in my books.
Apparently the Internet and the Freedom that it embodies has become a dangerous thing, according to multi-national commercial interests. This is in line with the recent aggressive anti-Internet tactics adopted by most Communist and Totalitarian Governments around the world, and now with SOPA and it's ilk, the USA has joined forces with it's greatest enemies. As the USA becomes more and more isolationist, it has apparently made the calculation that since "America" champions the cause of "Freedom" around the world, it must leave Internet censorship to the private sector, while the US Government retains the ability to wash it's hands of any actual participation in the restrictive legislation that results from sicking the corporate dogs on freedom. Canada, luckily, is in no mood lately to bow to US pressure, mostly due to the big brother tactics employed by US based pressure groups to control or deny Canada's economic best interests starting with Keystone XL. The USA is Canada's largest trading partner, and it may come as some surprise to Americans that Canada is also THEIR largest trading partner, and the supplier of a large percentage of their domestic Oil needs. Not to mention fresh water, hydro-electric power etc. With the Government currently in control in Ottawa, American paternalism may be in for a shock when we start shipping oil to the east instead of to the south, and adopt a attitude of "chuck you farley" in our relations with the ultra-liberal Obama "administration". Canada is no longer in a position of having no option but to ride the coattails of American prosperity, we are now in a position to dictate policy based on our own best interests, and American lawmakers had better wake up to that fact before it bites them in the ass. Unfortunately, based on recent US policy, it is an unlikely scenario, too bad for them.
Double Duh. Obama Logic
Duh. The research that was required in order to build the systems capable of landing a craft with Men on it and returning them safely to the Earth had nothing to do with information sharing between Contractors and Educational institutions that were doing it? What did they use to communicate around the Country, Snail Mail and Homing Pigeons? Did they do all the calculations required on a slide rule, or maybe use time sharing on main frames? Please think before you speak, AC Troll
RE:"2) Most of the Earth is not visible from Russia. Are these 'frequent' failures all over the same part of the Earth, or is he playing with words?" Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house..
You got it Hedwards, The real issue is the brain drain that has been forced onto NASA by cutting the STS, even flying once a year would have kept the Engineering and Mission Control expertise employed, which would (IMHO) have been a small price to pay to keep those fine folks focused on Manned Flight. Not to mention the 100,000 jobs that depended on the STS program. Even the fine folks who sold the toilet paper to the refab facilities took a hit. This is what most people choose to ignore when a major industry slows or shuts down, it's not just the jobs at the sharp end that take a hit, theres a serious trickle down effect.
Actually, if you really look at the historical results of the US Space Program (from inception), you get Integrated circuits (useless, right?) advanced materials science (carbon fiber etc), information systems (DARPANET=Internet), Communications systems (GPS, Telecommunication Satellites etc) and so on, and so on, right down to Tang. Not a bad return, financial and societal, for a $25 Billion investment to put a Man on the Moon. We all profited.
Yeah, you are probably right, but remember, the US is still reduced to renting a ride from the Russians to get a man into LEO now that we (stupidly) killed off the STS. Which one is the real failure? What an embarrassment, from "The Country that put a Man on the Moon" to equality with most developing nations..
The root cause is one that is all too common in many industries, not just Aerospace. Cutting costs by way of hiring children to do grown-up work. Today it seems that the $25 Billion that the USA spent to put a Man on the Moon was money well spent, in that it layed the groundwork for the technical industries that have made 21st Century life possible for all the world. They need to spend another $250 Billion on Aerospace to lay the foundation for another 50 years of innovation and to keep ahead of the pack.
You totally miss my point. Yes, if I'm at work, restrict me to your hearts content, I don't care. But on my personal device, stay the hell out of my way. If I mess things up, TFB for me, I will have to deal with the consequences of my actions (and BTW, in all probability learn something in the process). See this link to see how people can actually die because of hand-holding software, an extreme case yes, but in principle, an appropriate comparison. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
This brings up an excellent point that I've been considering for a while now. I was forced to work with a Win7 PC and absolutely hated the changes made to Explorer. I looked at some boards and saw that I am far from being the only one with the same issue, but 99% of those posts were replied to with (paraphrasing) "Get with it, new is good". No, it's not. It occurs to me that most Computer/SmartPhone/Tablet manufacturers would rather that you didn't have deep access to the OS or file system. And tailor all current OS's to limit access as much as possible. I bet that 10 years down the road, you won't be able to see the root of your HD no matter what you (legally) do. And therein lies the pernicious nature of "Upgrades". LESS power to the people, and power to the people was the driving force behind the PC revolution in the first place. We have been had by Apple, MS etc. They want total control. I know it sounds like I wear a tinfoil hat, but think about it, it's where we are heading, and Apple is, perversely, the worst offender. If Woz wuz dead (sorry woz, I know your out there), he'd be rolling already. PS, can freedos run with 16gb of RAM?
yeah, the bitch goddess of memory management..
Yeah, good memories.. I still have a couple of shoe boxes in my garage full of 3.5" floppies, full of 100-250k programs that I downloaded from local BBS's in the 80's. I kept them all, mostly because I'm a data packrat, but also because I spent SO much time downloading them all over my 1200 baud modem.. Doubt that they would even work nowadays, and I'd have to dig up an old PC with a floppy drive to even check. Oh, and if anybody cares, I have a full version of Windows 2.0 on 5 1/4" (floppy) floppies. No way to check that either, although it's been in a dry, EMI free place for many years, so decent chance of being functional. C:\> dir /w
After bitterly complaining about changes to Explorer in Win 7 (like many others) and being told over and over to "get with the program and quit bitching", I came to the conclusion that there is a conspiracy to Dumb Down computers, force migration to much more limited devices ("Smart" phones and Tablets) all in order to limit the power of the Personal Computer. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have much less access and file system power as a "basic" PC consumer than I had way back in DOS days. Is there a "conspiracy" to get those pesky power users out of the PC platform and onto a more controllable type of device? Based on the utterly unusable Win7 file system, I think so. And before I get totally trashed for not migrating to Linux, bugger off. Why should I learn a whole new OS when I was perfectly comfortable and capable with my old XP machine. That is exactly the same argument that MS (and it's Tech "Experts") uses to justify the migration to 7. I just want my old Explorer back, and I want to kill Aero without nasty consequences. Sidebar: Just got an i7 2600 w/16gb Ram, Raid 0 array and relatively decent vid card, should be good right? But now that I have disabled Aero, have all kinds of video/desktop performance issues. Counter-intuitive, but true. Why am I forced to look at eye candy when I really don't want it. Jeesh. And I can't even install my "old" copy of XP Pro, drivers for my hardware not available... Not a happy camper
OK, here's my horror story. Had Bell for years, then all of a sudden about thre years ago started getting $20-30+ extra charges on my bill. Checked it out and I had been put on a UBB plan without my knowledge or consent. So, obviously, I told them to take their internet service (and satellite and phone as well) and shove it. Went to a small ISP called Acanac for 5mbs DSL service unlimited for $18.95 mo. for the first year, going to $24.95 mo after that with $5.00 mo for a dry loop connection. And Shaw had bought out Starchoice and was offering really good Satellite TV packages with more standard HD channel than Bell for 42.00 mo. And then I got Vonage for the Phone at (I think it was $20.00 mo.) So overnight, my "Media" costs went from 150.00 mo. to $80.00 mo. All is well, right? WRONG> Bell came around my neighbourhood "upgrading" their lines and cut me off. I was standing not 10 feet from my front door when the Bell Tech did it, and asked him how long it would take to reconnect, he told me that since I was not a Bell customer and even though he had just cut my line and was stsnding in front of the box that he did it on, I would have to contact my ISP, they would have to contact Bell and arrange fopr a service call to reconnect me. Fuming, I did just that, was told 3-5 business days. Meanwhile, no phone, no web. To make a long and painful story a lot shorter than real life, it eventually ended up taking 58 DAYS to get my internet connection restored. Bell simply ignored my ISP's requests, and they went through 5 seperate escalations in an attempt to get me back up and running. It never did get done. My wife was screaming about not having a phone so she independently (doncha hate it when they do that) called Bell to get a land line reconnected (no alternative to Bell for land line, and I refuse to have anything to do with Rogers). I still had no Internet. I ended up having to get my ISP to kill my dry loop and piggyback on top of my land line, treated as a new account before I could get back online. During the 58 Days, I called the CRTC, send an email they said (right, to some black hole address), I spent hours trying to find SOME phone number at Bell that I could call, ended up at Corporate, "can't talk to you, you aren't a Customer, contact your ISP". Called my MP, she was busy taking kickbacks from local developers, and never responded. So, Bell and Rogers just use the CRTC as a diversion for disgruntled end users, nothing ever gets done, and whatever you try is drowned in legalese and bureaucratic bulls**t. F**k them all, and the horse they rode in on. The end result of all this is that I don't dare call about poor speeds, in case Bell comes and "Fixes" my lines again. Scumbags. I hope they rot.
I was somewhat surprised that they completely shut down the Tevatron, since I am sure that many Corporations or Research Companies would drool at the chance to gather data specific to various technologies that are out there now in the Commercial world. It would be interesting to know if the Accelerator could be made to be commercially viable..
Glad he's dead, and he won't be missed. Poor misguided soul.
Good.
Glad he's gone, and according to his own beliefs, exists no longer in any form.
He was an a-hole masquerading as an intellectual. And did far more harm than good.
Ho hum, Time to move on
I have no way to get solid numbers, but going by the standard rule of thumb for Canada/USA comparisons (10% of US numbers for Canada), we are in a similar boat on media, except that here there are only three major media corporations, and they also control 90% of Internet access as well. The CRTC (Canadian version of the FCC) has been in bed with these three under the guise of "protecting Canadian content" for over 40 years. And Bell Canada along with Rogers Communications own 90% of the Canadian Cell network and just got together to purchase the most lucrative sports franchise in the world, the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club (worth almost double what the Yankees are worth at 1.3 billion for 75% of the Franchise. So weep not, my American friends, you have it good down there...
? I mean, really, ?
If you are dumb enough not to be aware that you are installing this crap as well when you install a cute little toy app, then too bad for you. It reminds me of an old tech support joke, some dim user complaining to a tech, and after ten min of getting nowhere, he says, "Do you still have the box that your PC came in?" "Yes", "Then pack the PC up in the box, take it back to the store that you bought it from and tell them that you are too effing stupid to own a computer" Nyuk, nyuk. Almost as good as " I broke my cup holder"
Awright!! a good, well reasoned argument form someone with a vocabulary. However. I would suggest that the definition of a Science does not include Psychology, in which experimentation does not produce results that can be DISPROVED. I would also suggest that many branches of Medicine fall into the same category. That is why an MD has a "practice". Possibly drug testing may fall into the Science category, but not the Practice of Psychology. It's an ART, not a SCIENCE. Call me a stickler for details, but people that have a vested interest in promoting their chosen profession as a "Science" have included many crackpots over the years, and the Mental Health field is not exactly a beacon of integrity.
Psychology is NOT science, see what Richard Feynman, a somewhat intelligent guy had this to say on the subject.. " I would offer that very good minds can practice psychology, people with deep experience and wisdom and understanding. Psychology obviously has value to many, many people, and also makes deep metaphysical arguments about the world and our understanding of it, yet, its just not a science." Feynman's assesses psychology as a cargo cult science, "(It) follows all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something ..."