Firefox sends the http header X-moz: prefetch for
prefetch requests.
Not if you use a header-stripping privacy proxy.
More realistically, though, I would worry about this as the ultimate
in the rick-rolling / goatse spectrum... Trick someone into clicking
the wrong link, and instead of annoyance or disgust, they get to spend
10 years in club-PMITA.
But of course, that could never happen with our infallable
justice system, so I should just take my soma and relax.
If I am directly responsible for procuring 100% of the
business, and you are responsible for creating a product
that retains that business, then I trump you anyday.
Following your hypothetical - Without me, you have no product to
sell. Without you, I still have the product, just not an efficient
way to get it to market.
The combination benefits us both, but don't get all uppity
that you "make" the company. Put bluntly, I can do your job
(admittedly not as well as you). You can't do my job at all.
If I make half as many sales without you, I make the same, and you
starve in the gutter.
This is what people don't understand: sales *is* hard. If it
were easier, you'd get paid more.
Selling refridgerators to Esquimos takes work. Selling gasoline to
an SUV owner takes nothing more than physical presence.
Most products fall between those two, but if you believe "sales" really
takes hard work, you most likely don't really care about serving
your customers' needs, just closing the sale - Which means I would
neither work for/with you nor buy from you.
scientists face challenges in how to communicate good science to
a polarized US public.
I consider this a non-issue. How do you explain science that may conflict
with personal beliefs? "Welcome to wrongville, population: You. I'll give
you a free bus ticket out, but if you don't want to ride, please feel free
to go to the edge of a cliff and disbelieve in gravity".
Less irreverently... You can't argue facts with people who base their
stance on dogma. They have no factual basis to disprove, and no matter
how convincing or simple your argument, they can always respond
"god did it".
I didn't say it took energy to maintain a pressure. Neither does it take energy to maintain a temperature difference.
You implied it, though.
But, let me put that another way - Humans know of, and regularly use, low-tech near-perfect cheap "pressure insulators", such as
the classic "lined steel tank". The closest we have to a near-perfect thermal insulator, aerogels, still leak energy to (or from)
the environment much, much faster (usually above 0.006W/M2K) than the lined steel tank leaks pressure, and at massively
higher cost than steel (currently, a quarter-sized irregular chunk goes for around $50).
Additionally, use and transmission of electricity produces heat as a waste product, meaning the more you use a
cold-superconductor (which don't truly have no electrical resistance, just very low) the more work it
takes to maintain its temperature. No similar negative feedback loop exists for pressure - in fact, a positive
feedback applies, in that increasing temperature tends to increase pressure (though not permanantly, as the temperature
will return to ambient eventually).
So, how exactly is this a good alternative to colder superconductors?
Because you can maintain a given pressure without the continual input of energy.
Temperature (in either direction) has the annoying habit of doing its best to
match that of the ambient environment.
Not to mention the fact that SiH4 autoignites at room temperature.
In the presence of oxygen, yes... Fortunately, you can buy small glass containers that
maintain an anoxic environment at four for a dollar, under the name "light bulbs".
Pressure is often more expensive to safely maintain.
Don't think in terms of working with compressed gasses - Think of something more like
a propane tank, where once you have it in there, it just sits there and doesn't really take a
whole lot of maintenance. Keep it out of the sun and avoid mechanical stresses, and it will
stay compressed and not do nasty things like burning/exploding for decades.
If voters don't understand the voting system, then they might as well not even be voting.
Why do you think we have the electoral college and a representational democracy in the
first place?
The vast majority of idiots out there shouldn't vote. Anyone who can't articulate the
"other" candidate's position as well as their favorite's, shouldn't vote. Anyone who can't
explain their own candidate's position on most issues, shouldn't vote. Anyone who
pulls the "party" lever, should not vote.
So does it bother me that people don't understand the nasty complex computers that count
their votes?
It bothers me that, as someone who does understand technology, current electronic
voting machines fail miserably both on accuracy and auditability. But that most people
don't understand the underlying technology?
Jobs said the version of Flash formatted to personal computers is too slow on the iPhone
...ie, your $600 toy has the CPU power of a TI-85. Enjoy playing text-mode Tetris on it, though...
while the mobile version of the media player is "is not capable of being used with the web.
Okay, that one doesn't even make sense. Unless it in some way requires use of the cellular-telephony-specific
hardware in an iPhone, it will work "with the web", on a PC (or Mac, as the case dictates).
Once again, Master Steve turns the screws, and the fans will cry out, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
it would be interesting to see what you folks think about why
these kinds of items are (or are not) necessary to test the validity
of MediaSentry's methods and procedures.
Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused
shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial
jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by
law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;
to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance
of Counsel for his defence.
The US constitution says so.
We need no more reason than that.
However, to address your question as it relates to "methods and procedures",
I can write a program that draws all manner of fancy charts and graphs and
tables of numbers next to names of things I own, which clearly and directly
calls you seventeen different kinds of thief. That doesn't make any of
that true, however - GIGO.
do you realize that these restrictions have been in place since 1962
Do you realize (and the FP even says as much) that this involves a NON-AMERICAN
company denied access to its own name because of a dick-waving contest that
Kennedy lost (by default) almost 40 years ago?
Once again, those who seem historically ignorant
...As opposed to the geographically ignorant (unless we've "brought democracy" to Spain in the
past few hours and I missed the announcement...)?
doesn't the existance of an intermediate life form (monkeys)
show that "natural" selection lost
Darwin never said we evolved from Monkeys. He said that we and
monkeys and apes and all primates and, more generally, all life on Earth,
descends from a common ancestor.
we now have humans (selected appearantly) anda monkeys together (the
life form that "lost").
"Winning" doesn't mean destroying the parent species - An adaptation
that allows access to an alternate source of food would lead to evolutionary
viability without reducing that of the parent species whatsoever.
Another is "missing" fossil evidence showing these half ape creatures
morphing into man, along with all of the other itermediate life forms for
every other evolved creature that's out there.
Do you personally have a picture of every one of your ancestors, traceable
back to Adam and Eve? Well then... I guess that proves that God created
you (or your father, or grandfather, or whatever oldest relative of whose
existance you have solid proof) in your/their current form, fresh from the
dust and His breath. And, as a result, Jesus didn't die for your
sins, oh non-son-of-Adam. Suck brimstone, unsaved wretch!
So I would go so far as to say real evidence contradicts postulates of evolution
The absence of evidence doesn't prove the contrary stance.
not just some ho hum redneck teacher...
True - In this case, we have a ho-hum redneck voted into a dangerously powerful
government position by her ho-hum redneck constituents.
In Crysis, for example, there is so much input/output between switching weapons, suit settings, reload,
not to metion run-of-the-mill aiming and movement. There's just no way without even a minor component like
some sort of eye motion scan.
True - But think about how much better you could control all the little things you describe if you didn't
need to explicitly use some form of motion-activated input device for the basics (two-axis motion and
firing a weapon, for example)... You could use the mouse for targetting while moving in an entirely
different direction (many games let you map those to different inputs, but good luck effectively
actually doing so - Even though we have the cognitive capacity to do the same task IRL without breaking
a sweat).
If it works well, I'll be the first to happily call myself an unbelieving douche
No, fair enough - As much as I truly hope this works well, I certainly won't rush out to buy
one. If it pans out, though, even for simple boolean inputs, I'd say it has the potential
to revolutionize gaming input as we know it. One of those and a WiiMote-like device, and suddenly
gaming looks more like Mickey-the-Sorcerer's-Apprentice commanding the elements, than the
carpal-tunnel-inducing setups we have today.
True. But if you add the missing "o" in there, Google gives 3500 hits, and
Wikipedia defines it as "In biology a signal or biopotential is an electric
quantity (voltage or current or field strength), caused by chemical reactions
of charged ions.
The apparent problem is that both of their wives are members of the board of directors of
"Florence Parking", and Wikipedia is reporting it.
Um... I fail to see the problem.
If a conflict of interest exists and someone points it out, you can't (successfully) sue
them for defamation. Stating the truth counts as a rock-solid defense.
Also, not too long ago we heard about a similar situation of a blog owner sued
for comments posted by a third party - And the courts found that you can't hold
the blog owner responsible for those comments. Wiki seems like an analogous
situation, IMO, even though not quite a blog.
Which you can buy standalone for $15, or get a halfway decent 5 minute
line-interactive UPS, and still stay comfortably under $120 for the combination.
I've been charged with making a specific user interface style guide for a
suite of software by my employer. I'm not quite sure where to start
You don't know where to start because you don't work as a tech writer!
Tell your tightwad boss to pick someone more suited to the task - Even the
weenies in Marketing can probably do the task better than an engineer (unless
you just happen to have a background in technical writing, but it sounds like
that doesn't fit into your job description/requirements).
Geeks can do anything - That doesn't always make us the best person for
every job even tangentially related to "computers". If you want me to
design a website, I can make it do anything HTML supports, but prepare for
a color scheme that makes most people's eyes bleed...
Or, for
$29.99[Not a paid/sponsored link, I have no connection to Amazon except as a
normal customer], you could get a real power strip, suitable for mounting
along the back or side edge of your desk (keeping the plugs off the floor where
fallen drinks tend to go).
I don't see the half-truths or the lies, and of course BJB isn't going
to affirm/deny the validity of the documents in question, as that would
just disclose more info on their client's business.
FTA: "Julius Baer denies the authenticity of this material"...
and "The documents in question are protected and prohibited from unauthorized
publication".
These exist as mutually exclusive concepts. If someone posted fake documents,
those documents have no legal protection; if someone posted real documents, then
they count as authentic. BJB has no authority, however, to "protect" privacy rights
concerning records that don't exist except as works of 3rd party fiction.
Of course, the very fact that BJB had standing to file suit in the first place
more-or-less makes the authenticity of the documents a slam-dunk. But either
way, they've basically said "you stole our data, and made it all up to boot!",
of which exactly half (at most) can count as the truth.
Yup. Heard of it, tried it for about a year (and with a decent WAP, too,
not the $19.99 Linksys special), got sick of having my connection flake
every few minutes, and went back to wired.
If you can lay fibre across the bottom of an ocean
You mean to compare 7+ layer armored "sharkbite" cable with the sort of
single nearly-naked fiber you'd use as a patch cable? You have waaaaay
more money than I do!
I work in a telephone exchange and trust me, it take more than a dog
stepping on it to kill one of the fibre patch leads used there
You probably have much higher quality fiber (or more accurately, fiber with
much stronger jacketing) than the than what average Joes would use.
But that example about the dog came from real life... A 50ft run (which at
the time cost some ungodly amount - well over a dollar per foot), destroyed
with one misplaced paw.
Sorry, why would you leave any cables out where people can step on them?
Because very few of us have the luxury of hardwired data jacks in every room
of the house. Personally, I have exactly three hardwired drops in my house, with a
switch at all three, but that still requires running a cable (at least) down the hall
if I want a connection anywhere other than my office, library, or living room.
And even if you do have God's Own LAN, you probably still don't want to run a
new wire or three through your walls just so a few friends can come over for a LAN
tournament of your favorite FPS.
"He's also suggesting that this be done in a non-standard way"
No, he suggested that five years ago
We don't yet have the technology described (wave division multiplexing)
in our homes because very, very few of us want to bother with fiber in
our homes at all.
You can push an amazing amount of data over glass, no one would claim
otherwise. You can't, however, drape it across the floor and
up the stairs to your switch for a quick LAN connection... Not only
does terminating a fiber suck, the first time the dog steps on that little
yellow wire, end of connection. By contrast, I've used Cat5 as a structural
material (tied a PC to a hook on the ceiling with it) WHILE USING IT
for data.
So no, we won't see terabit ethernet anytime soon, unless someone figures
out a way to push it over copper.
This is just not going to happen. Why? Because there
is still a question of physical wiring involved.
Don't confuse "becoming their own ISP" with "becoming your ISP".
The average user's home server does not count as a "destination", as used here.
ISPs don't threaten to make you pay more if you want all that wonderful ad
revenue to keep flowing your way.
Instead, this deals with only the biggest of players (such as Google), where
the telecos have basically done their best to make the cost of Google acting
as its own ISP lower than merely paying someone else for a fat pipe. Under those
conditions, why wouldn't Google want to take their ball and go home (or in
this case, take their ball and build their own stadium)?
Say what now? I like the concept of "evolution" for exactly
the opposite reason - the simplicity of it.
As an engineer, I agree with you on that. I wouldn't, however,
say that it makes the concept "intuitive".
Look around you at every-day phenomenon... Do new species form in the sea-foam
and crawl out by lunchtime? When a dog has puppies, do they walk upright due to
the "evolutionary pressure" that would make them more well adapted to human
living environments? When two cars collide, does a bigger and better car
appear from the wreckage, or do you just have two wrecks?
You and I (and likely, most slashdotters) have learned, through long
years of study and hard work, that simple processes can lead to emergent
phenomena massively more complex than those simple processes themselves. I
would even call that "beautiful", one of the most elegant aspects of our
universe (whether or not some intelligence can take the credit for the
idea). But to call that intuitive or in any way obvious, I would have to
disagree.
Even if God created the world 6,000 years ago exactly as it was
6,000 years ago, and let evolutionary processes take it from there,
would it really matter?
Yes - For precisely the reason evolution feels counterintuitive in the
first place.
When you consider evolution as something like a set of totally random
genetic experiments, you invite comparisons to other statistical phenomena,
such as coin-tossing. Evolution amounts to saying "we tossed the coin 10,000[*]
times and came up heads each time".
In order for that to sound even remotely plausible (for a fair coin), you
need to add in the idea "it took us a trillion coins, each flipped a trillion
times, before we ended up getting 10k heads in a row". In a timespan comprehensible
to human experience (we may not experience 6000 years personally, but can at least
mentally grasp the idea of 100 or so human lifetimes), you simply can't run that
experiment. You need to consider timespans of hundreds of millions of years for
that string of 10k heads to appear.
Thus, when dealing with someone who imposes the arbitrary premise that
Earth came into existance in 4004BCE, you can't rationally justify
(macro)evolution. It just doesn't happen on that timescale.
* - Before the probability geeks jump all over me, in a trillion
trillion (10^24) coin flips, you would only actually expect to see
a longest string of 79 heads in a row. Evolution actually cheats a
bit by throwing away the fair coins and favoring those that come
out heads more often than not - But it still takes simply
inconceivable spans of time for real results to occur naturally.
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox sends the http header X-moz: prefetch for prefetch requests.
Not if you use a header-stripping privacy proxy.
More realistically, though, I would worry about this as the ultimate in the rick-rolling / goatse spectrum... Trick someone into clicking the wrong link, and instead of annoyance or disgust, they get to spend 10 years in club-PMITA.
But of course, that could never happen with our infallable justice system, so I should just take my soma and relax.
If I am directly responsible for procuring 100% of the business, and you are responsible for creating a product that retains that business, then I trump you anyday.
Following your hypothetical - Without me, you have no product to sell. Without you, I still have the product, just not an efficient way to get it to market.
The combination benefits us both, but don't get all uppity that you "make" the company. Put bluntly, I can do your job (admittedly not as well as you). You can't do my job at all. If I make half as many sales without you, I make the same, and you starve in the gutter.
This is what people don't understand: sales *is* hard. If it were easier, you'd get paid more.
Selling refridgerators to Esquimos takes work. Selling gasoline to an SUV owner takes nothing more than physical presence.
Most products fall between those two, but if you believe "sales" really takes hard work, you most likely don't really care about serving your customers' needs, just closing the sale - Which means I would neither work for/with you nor buy from you.
scientists face challenges in how to communicate good science to a polarized US public.
I consider this a non-issue. How do you explain science that may conflict with personal beliefs? "Welcome to wrongville, population: You. I'll give you a free bus ticket out, but if you don't want to ride, please feel free to go to the edge of a cliff and disbelieve in gravity".
Less irreverently... You can't argue facts with people who base their stance on dogma. They have no factual basis to disprove, and no matter how convincing or simple your argument, they can always respond "god did it".
I didn't say it took energy to maintain a pressure. Neither does it take energy to maintain a temperature difference.
You implied it, though.
But, let me put that another way - Humans know of, and regularly use, low-tech near-perfect cheap "pressure insulators", such as the classic "lined steel tank". The closest we have to a near-perfect thermal insulator, aerogels, still leak energy to (or from) the environment much, much faster (usually above 0.006W/M2K) than the lined steel tank leaks pressure, and at massively higher cost than steel (currently, a quarter-sized irregular chunk goes for around $50).
Additionally, use and transmission of electricity produces heat as a waste product, meaning the more you use a cold-superconductor (which don't truly have no electrical resistance, just very low) the more work it takes to maintain its temperature. No similar negative feedback loop exists for pressure - in fact, a positive feedback applies, in that increasing temperature tends to increase pressure (though not permanantly, as the temperature will return to ambient eventually).
So, how exactly is this a good alternative to colder superconductors?
Because you can maintain a given pressure without the continual input of energy. Temperature (in either direction) has the annoying habit of doing its best to match that of the ambient environment.
Not to mention the fact that SiH4 autoignites at room temperature.
In the presence of oxygen, yes... Fortunately, you can buy small glass containers that maintain an anoxic environment at four for a dollar, under the name "light bulbs".
Pressure is often more expensive to safely maintain.
Don't think in terms of working with compressed gasses - Think of something more like a propane tank, where once you have it in there, it just sits there and doesn't really take a whole lot of maintenance. Keep it out of the sun and avoid mechanical stresses, and it will stay compressed and not do nasty things like burning/exploding for decades.
If voters don't understand the voting system, then they might as well not even be voting.
Why do you think we have the electoral college and a representational democracy in the first place?
The vast majority of idiots out there shouldn't vote. Anyone who can't articulate the "other" candidate's position as well as their favorite's, shouldn't vote. Anyone who can't explain their own candidate's position on most issues, shouldn't vote. Anyone who pulls the "party" lever, should not vote.
So does it bother me that people don't understand the nasty complex computers that count their votes?
It bothers me that, as someone who does understand technology, current electronic voting machines fail miserably both on accuracy and auditability. But that most people don't understand the underlying technology?
No. Not in the least.
Jobs said the version of Flash formatted to personal computers is too slow on the iPhone
...ie, your $600 toy has the CPU power of a TI-85. Enjoy playing text-mode Tetris on it, though...
while the mobile version of the media player is "is not capable of being used with the web.
Okay, that one doesn't even make sense. Unless it in some way requires use of the cellular-telephony-specific hardware in an iPhone, it will work "with the web", on a PC (or Mac, as the case dictates).
Once again, Master Steve turns the screws, and the fans will cry out, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
The US constitution says so. We need no more reason than that.
However, to address your question as it relates to "methods and procedures", I can write a program that draws all manner of fancy charts and graphs and tables of numbers next to names of things I own, which clearly and directly calls you seventeen different kinds of thief. That doesn't make any of that true, however - GIGO.
do you realize that these restrictions have been in place since 1962
...As opposed to the geographically ignorant (unless we've "brought democracy" to Spain in the
past few hours and I missed the announcement...)?
Do you realize (and the FP even says as much) that this involves a NON-AMERICAN company denied access to its own name because of a dick-waving contest that Kennedy lost (by default) almost 40 years ago?
Once again, those who seem historically ignorant
doesn't the existance of an intermediate life form (monkeys) show that "natural" selection lost
Darwin never said we evolved from Monkeys. He said that we and monkeys and apes and all primates and, more generally, all life on Earth, descends from a common ancestor.
we now have humans (selected appearantly) anda monkeys together (the life form that "lost").
"Winning" doesn't mean destroying the parent species - An adaptation that allows access to an alternate source of food would lead to evolutionary viability without reducing that of the parent species whatsoever.
Another is "missing" fossil evidence showing these half ape creatures morphing into man, along with all of the other itermediate life forms for every other evolved creature that's out there.
Do you personally have a picture of every one of your ancestors, traceable back to Adam and Eve? Well then... I guess that proves that God created you (or your father, or grandfather, or whatever oldest relative of whose existance you have solid proof) in your/their current form, fresh from the dust and His breath. And, as a result, Jesus didn't die for your sins, oh non-son-of-Adam. Suck brimstone, unsaved wretch!
So I would go so far as to say real evidence contradicts postulates of evolution
The absence of evidence doesn't prove the contrary stance.
not just some ho hum redneck teacher...
True - In this case, we have a ho-hum redneck voted into a dangerously powerful government position by her ho-hum redneck constituents.
Scary.
In Crysis, for example, there is so much input/output between switching weapons, suit settings, reload, not to metion run-of-the-mill aiming and movement. There's just no way without even a minor component like some sort of eye motion scan.
True - But think about how much better you could control all the little things you describe if you didn't need to explicitly use some form of motion-activated input device for the basics (two-axis motion and firing a weapon, for example)... You could use the mouse for targetting while moving in an entirely different direction (many games let you map those to different inputs, but good luck effectively actually doing so - Even though we have the cognitive capacity to do the same task IRL without breaking a sweat).
If it works well, I'll be the first to happily call myself an unbelieving douche
No, fair enough - As much as I truly hope this works well, I certainly won't rush out to buy one. If it pans out, though, even for simple boolean inputs, I'd say it has the potential to revolutionize gaming input as we know it. One of those and a WiiMote-like device, and suddenly gaming looks more like Mickey-the-Sorcerer's-Apprentice commanding the elements, than the carpal-tunnel-inducing setups we have today.
The online porn experience would be greatly simplified.
If you can focus your brainwaves enough to move the mouse and click links while "experiencing" porn, you do it wrong.
Bioptentials is not a word.
True. But if you add the missing "o" in there, Google gives 3500 hits, and Wikipedia defines it as "In biology a signal or biopotential is an electric quantity (voltage or current or field strength), caused by chemical reactions of charged ions.
The apparent problem is that both of their wives are members of the board of directors of "Florence Parking", and Wikipedia is reporting it.
Um... I fail to see the problem.
If a conflict of interest exists and someone points it out, you can't (successfully) sue them for defamation. Stating the truth counts as a rock-solid defense.
Also, not too long ago we heard about a similar situation of a blog owner sued for comments posted by a third party - And the courts found that you can't hold the blog owner responsible for those comments. Wiki seems like an analogous situation, IMO, even though not quite a blog.
BTW, IANAL, of course.
Not a surge protector
Which you can buy standalone for $15, or get a halfway decent 5 minute line-interactive UPS, and still stay comfortably under $120 for the combination.
I've been charged with making a specific user interface style guide for a suite of software by my employer. I'm not quite sure where to start
You don't know where to start because you don't work as a tech writer!
Tell your tightwad boss to pick someone more suited to the task - Even the weenies in Marketing can probably do the task better than an engineer (unless you just happen to have a background in technical writing, but it sounds like that doesn't fit into your job description/requirements).
Geeks can do anything - That doesn't always make us the best person for every job even tangentially related to "computers". If you want me to design a website, I can make it do anything HTML supports, but prepare for a color scheme that makes most people's eyes bleed...
Gee, and all for the low, low price of $120.
Or, for $29.99[Not a paid/sponsored link, I have no connection to Amazon except as a normal customer], you could get a real power strip, suitable for mounting along the back or side edge of your desk (keeping the plugs off the floor where fallen drinks tend to go).
Hmm, decisions decisions...
I don't see the half-truths or the lies, and of course BJB isn't going to affirm/deny the validity of the documents in question, as that would just disclose more info on their client's business.
FTA: "Julius Baer denies the authenticity of this material"...
and "The documents in question are protected and prohibited from unauthorized publication".
These exist as mutually exclusive concepts. If someone posted fake documents, those documents have no legal protection; if someone posted real documents, then they count as authentic. BJB has no authority, however, to "protect" privacy rights concerning records that don't exist except as works of 3rd party fiction.
Of course, the very fact that BJB had standing to file suit in the first place more-or-less makes the authenticity of the documents a slam-dunk. But either way, they've basically said "you stole our data, and made it all up to boot!", of which exactly half (at most) can count as the truth.
What, you never heard of wireless?
Yup. Heard of it, tried it for about a year (and with a decent WAP, too, not the $19.99 Linksys special), got sick of having my connection flake every few minutes, and went back to wired.
If you can lay fibre across the bottom of an ocean
You mean to compare 7+ layer armored "sharkbite" cable with the sort of single nearly-naked fiber you'd use as a patch cable? You have waaaaay more money than I do!
I work in a telephone exchange and trust me, it take more than a dog stepping on it to kill one of the fibre patch leads used there
You probably have much higher quality fiber (or more accurately, fiber with much stronger jacketing) than the than what average Joes would use. But that example about the dog came from real life... A 50ft run (which at the time cost some ungodly amount - well over a dollar per foot), destroyed with one misplaced paw.
Sorry, why would you leave any cables out where people can step on them?
Because very few of us have the luxury of hardwired data jacks in every room of the house. Personally, I have exactly three hardwired drops in my house, with a switch at all three, but that still requires running a cable (at least) down the hall if I want a connection anywhere other than my office, library, or living room.
And even if you do have God's Own LAN, you probably still don't want to run a new wire or three through your walls just so a few friends can come over for a LAN tournament of your favorite FPS.
"He's also suggesting that this be done in a non-standard way"
No, he suggested that five years ago
We don't yet have the technology described (wave division multiplexing) in our homes because very, very few of us want to bother with fiber in our homes at all.
You can push an amazing amount of data over glass, no one would claim otherwise. You can't, however, drape it across the floor and up the stairs to your switch for a quick LAN connection... Not only does terminating a fiber suck, the first time the dog steps on that little yellow wire, end of connection. By contrast, I've used Cat5 as a structural material (tied a PC to a hook on the ceiling with it) WHILE USING IT for data.
So no, we won't see terabit ethernet anytime soon, unless someone figures out a way to push it over copper.
This is just not going to happen. Why? Because there is still a question of physical wiring involved.
Don't confuse "becoming their own ISP" with "becoming your ISP".
The average user's home server does not count as a "destination", as used here. ISPs don't threaten to make you pay more if you want all that wonderful ad revenue to keep flowing your way.
Instead, this deals with only the biggest of players (such as Google), where the telecos have basically done their best to make the cost of Google acting as its own ISP lower than merely paying someone else for a fat pipe. Under those conditions, why wouldn't Google want to take their ball and go home (or in this case, take their ball and build their own stadium)?
Say what now? I like the concept of "evolution" for exactly the opposite reason - the simplicity of it.
As an engineer, I agree with you on that. I wouldn't, however, say that it makes the concept "intuitive".
Look around you at every-day phenomenon... Do new species form in the sea-foam and crawl out by lunchtime? When a dog has puppies, do they walk upright due to the "evolutionary pressure" that would make them more well adapted to human living environments? When two cars collide, does a bigger and better car appear from the wreckage, or do you just have two wrecks?
You and I (and likely, most slashdotters) have learned, through long years of study and hard work, that simple processes can lead to emergent phenomena massively more complex than those simple processes themselves. I would even call that "beautiful", one of the most elegant aspects of our universe (whether or not some intelligence can take the credit for the idea). But to call that intuitive or in any way obvious, I would have to disagree.
Even if God created the world 6,000 years ago exactly as it was 6,000 years ago, and let evolutionary processes take it from there, would it really matter?
Yes - For precisely the reason evolution feels counterintuitive in the first place.
When you consider evolution as something like a set of totally random genetic experiments, you invite comparisons to other statistical phenomena, such as coin-tossing. Evolution amounts to saying "we tossed the coin 10,000[*] times and came up heads each time".
In order for that to sound even remotely plausible (for a fair coin), you need to add in the idea "it took us a trillion coins, each flipped a trillion times, before we ended up getting 10k heads in a row". In a timespan comprehensible to human experience (we may not experience 6000 years personally, but can at least mentally grasp the idea of 100 or so human lifetimes), you simply can't run that experiment. You need to consider timespans of hundreds of millions of years for that string of 10k heads to appear.
Thus, when dealing with someone who imposes the arbitrary premise that Earth came into existance in 4004BCE, you can't rationally justify (macro)evolution. It just doesn't happen on that timescale.
* - Before the probability geeks jump all over me, in a trillion trillion (10^24) coin flips, you would only actually expect to see a longest string of 79 heads in a row. Evolution actually cheats a bit by throwing away the fair coins and favoring those that come out heads more often than not - But it still takes simply inconceivable spans of time for real results to occur naturally.