I know why this got modded funny (Billy G mockery), but really,
we should consider it insightful rather than funny.
Yes, for servers, you (sometimes!) have a reason to run with huge
amounts of RAM. For a desktop machine, even a high-end developer's
machine, if you need that much memory, you need better tools. No "but
the project requires it" allowed. If the requirements demand more than
4GB on a laptop, you have a problem long before reaching the "physical
availability of suitable hardware" phase of development.
Now, I don't mean to say that situations can't exist where you
would need that much memory. But you don't stick it on
a laptop. You host the build environment on a "real" server, and
either connect remotely or even (gasp!) do the work at
work.
There are countries left which don't want to join?
Which ones (apart from Norway and Switzerland)?
You can't really just ignore Norway and Switzerland...
You also can't call some of the existing members "willing".
Case in point, the French and Dutch votes a year and a half ago on
the EU constitution, or the monetary unit currently used in the
UK.
The EU seems, to me, like a means of shoring up Europe's
weaker economies, while providing a clean regulatory environment
for the stronger economies to target nearby emerging markets.
At the same time, no one seems happy with the arrangement.
So you have a lot of countries that pay lip service to EU
membership, then fight EU rule every step of the way.
I know, right? Daring to think that people would bother to learn
how to properly feed and care for a $500+ investment. I can act
like quite the insensitive bastard some days...
Also, why should I care? Sometimes I just want to get my work done!
And I just want my car to get me to work. But if I don't know the condition
of literally hundreds of seemingly-irrelevant aspects of that vehicle,
it either won't continue getting me there every morning for very long, or in
the worst case, won't get me there at all. From whether or not it has
fuel and wiper fluid and a full compliment of working lights, to where I put
the key in and which way to turn it and how far and if it wants the
brake/transmission/lights/door/seatbelt in a certain state to start, to
when I need my next periodic maintenance, to the countless conditions I
might need to notice and evaluate while actually on the road.
I consider myself an advanced windows user, but I'm still not sure at all
times what every application and service and background process is doing.
I don't need to know exactly how my transmission works, but I do
need to take action if I find a pink puddle under my car.
On my machine right now, I have 38 processes running, which includes 35
services lumped into a half-dozen "svchost"s. I can't claim to know exactly
how each of those 67 tasks (38+35-6) does its job, but I do know whether or
not it "should" run under normal conditions.
Computers seem to be heading in the direction of becoming
more like appliances
They won't ever get there, in their present form.
You may see a lot more dedicated computer-like devices, such as
DVRs, email/web "appliances", and personal organizers; But the realm
of general-purpose computing will always remain all but closed
to those unwilling to invest the time to learn the basics. And by the
basics, I mean a hell of a lot more than MSIE, Word, and Outlook.
Even beyond knowing what should run, though, even a total novice
user should have the basic grasp of "I didn't just try to do anything
that should require administrative access, why does it want elevated
permissions?". If your microwave oven wants the PIN to your ATM card,
you shouldn't need the message to appear in a different color to clue
you in to the oddness of the request.
If you tell me you DO know EVERYTHING that is happening -- well you are
very special.
No. Not special. Just "curious". If I open Task Manager (I actually
use Sysinternals' Process Explorer, but same idea) and see something I
don't recognize, I look it up. Simple as that. It doesn't take a
genius or even hours of research, just Google and and a spare 30 seconds.
So yeah, if you won't invest that much time (per process) in operating
an expensive machine, then you shouldn't use a computer. Or a car. Or
any power-tools. Or reproduce. ESPECIALLY reproduce.
And if it makes me an "elitist", or just a plain ol' bastard, for
thinking that some things in life require learning how to do them
right - So it goes. But I don't get infected with spyware,
so, take that as you will.
But under the Advertising for Motor Vehicles Voluntary
Code of Practice, fantasy cannot be used when it contradicts, circumvents
or undermines the code.
[...snip...]
BUT, as it turns out, a literal reading of the applicable Code
suggests to The Advertising Standards Board that the complaints
are legitimate.
Two biiiiiiig problems there...
First, you quoted an ambiguously self-referential standard there:
Under the code, you can't do foo if it "undermines" the code.
By that reasoning, you can say that anything violates some
subjective interpretation of the intent of the code. The word "fantasy"
just adds color without any real meaning, as anything short of a
documentary would tend to fall into that category.
Second, the phrase "Voluntary Code of Practice". Voluntary means,
in both the legal and logical sense (which rarely coincide, but in this
case they do), "ignore this". Just a distraction from real rules,
the sort that have teeth.
That pops up a UAC dialog, but because RunLegacyCPLElevated.exe
is set to run those Control Panel plug-ins with full administrative
privileges, the dialog is bordered by Vista's own greenish color to
signify the file is part of the operating system.
So we make fun of Homeland Security for their meaningless color-coded
threat levels, but take the colored borders of confirmation dialogs
on Vista as gospel?
Sorry, this does not constitute a threat. Just one more indication that
we need some form of licensure before letting people anywhere near a
computer.
I'll gladly join in on the MS bashing - when appropriate. In this
case, any blame rests solidly with users who have no idea what
they should or shouldn't let run on their computers.
there is little to no physical force behind it; the destructive energy is heat. Things won't explode
like they do in Star Wars and other sci fi/fantasy movies and shows.
The satellite-based lasers for Star Wars (Reagan's wet dream, not the Movie) primarily worked
by kinetic activity.
A cutting laser doesn't take anywhere near 67kW, but they work fairly slowly (slow enough for
an armored target to take countermeasures). Instead, you want to basically vaporize a few nm
of the surface, resulting in exactly the sort of explosion you say doesn't happen.
Search Google for "arc flash"... Though a much more mundane effect, it gives the general idea...
Basically, if you vaporize copper bus bar by shorting it out, it produces a pretty impressive
"explosion" due to the copper suddenly occupying 67,000 (no connection to the laser from the FP,
just a coincidence) times its original volume.
Considering that both TFAs couldn't even decide whether this advancement relates
to launch vehicles, LEO satellites, or deep space probes... I think we can safely
overlook the confusion over the number of totally inapplicable mechanical
torque-to-speed conversion devices contained.
Good catch, though, you beat me to it - Even staying within the sad analogy to
gears, they describe this as a five-speed that skips right from first to fifth.
I think I'd avoid using the links as technical references on this one.;-)
Then the student must take the docs to a local bank to
receive the wire, and there are often fees
In what countries can you not legally give (reasonably small
sums of) money to someone??? Documentation of why they received
it? "Services rendered", "gift", or in some of these bass-ackwards
places, just write "dowry". Or if local banks cause the problem,
just send them cash in their local currency - problem solved.
This involves a mere $4500. Not suitcases full of unmarked bills.
Why do you think all the Indian H1Bs send their familes so much
jewelry, rather than wiring funds back home? Hint - It has nothing
to do with a preference for ugly jewelry.
We have to do things legally and right, not just the expedient.
That works in the US and most of Western Europe. In the rest of the
world, "legally and right" means "never". You want it done at all,
do it the expedient way (which more often than not, involves giving what
amounts to a pittance for us to 17 levels of government peon).
What you are recommending, in some countries, is illegal and
could put our students in danger of being arrested.
Thus the need to include a "gratuity" for the local police. Simple
enough concept, people - The world doesn't run on law-n'-order, it
runs on alpha males looking the other way after getting "their" cut.
Or maybe powering up the drives off and on is more stressful to the components
You just posed the one question to which I'd actually have liked to know the answer...
Turn it on and off as needed (minimize runtime), or leave it on all the time if you'll
use it at least a few times per day (minimize power cycling).
I know that counts as something of a religious issue among geeks, but I'd still have
liked a good solid answer on it... It even has implications for whether or not we should
let our non-laptops spin drives down when idle.
Oh well, better luck next study (or I can find my own collection of 100k drives to test,
I suppose).
Everything else in there, I think most of us us already knew... Except
the "infant mortality" one really surprised me.
I have to wonder, though, did she include DOAs in that, or did she only
include drives that worked at least for a few minutes/hours/days? I
have to strongly suspect the later - I can't argue with the statistics
from 100k drives, but my personal experience with a few dozen drives has
shown that they have a strong bias toward either never working, or
working for at least a year.
Love the RAID5 stat, though... Perhaps this study will finally convince
people to only use RAID for performance or huge-JBOD reasons, never
for (the illusion of) reliability.
What about Easy-Bake Ovens? Or Creepy Crawler Thingmakers?
Perfect examples of why people should switch to CFLs.
Even ignoring the energy wasted in the form of heat, I've seen recessed
light sockets with considerably less ventilation than the two
toys you mentioned. We proably don't want to know how hot it
gets in there...
The reason people use gmail instead of the owner furnished email system
is because owners can, and do, read their mail!
I say this as a huge proponent of personal privacy, so don't take it the
wrong way, but...
Why do you use your work email for anything you wouldn't want your boss
to read?
Seriously, I just don't "get" it. I have a work account, and a few personal
accounts. And NEVER the two shall meet.
I like off-color jokes. I like porn. I have social, religious, and political
views rather divergent from my employer. But that has never caused me the
least bit of trouble, because while at work... I do work. Sure, I read
Slashdot... Hell, in IT, I'd consider anyone who doesn't as dangerously underinformed
on current events in their field. But my personal life has very little bearing on
my behavior while at work.
I just really don't understand people who get busted looking at porn at work, or
fired for sexual harassment via corporate email or IM systems. Not to say I work
myself to death - I most certainly don't. But if I want a distraction on a
slow day, I'll read some fluffier tech material, or perhaps work on some personal
coding that I can justify as vaguely work-related if someone catches me. If you can't
go eight hours without porn or blonde jokes... Well, I just don't know what to say.
To use a old-school analog analogue, do people have trouble refraining from calling
phone-sex lines at work?
Here we have the single point that makes this entire FP one big strawman...
Yes, IT takes some measures to protect corporate data, both from inappropriate
access, and from erroneous (or malicious) deletion.
The bulk of this "clash", however, involves two points - Maintainability,
and the difference between personal and corporate liability.
Maintainability... Given a network of dozens, or even hundreds, of users,
homogeneity means everything. If it takes an extra 15 minutes to
solve a five minute problem because each user has their own bizarre
configuration and preferred tools, you've wasted three quarters of my
time vs just using the tools provided. And speaking of "provided", IT
simply doesn't have the time to check each and every machine daily
for pirated software. "Oh, but just fire anyone that has pirated software"...
Yeah, sure, at up to 50k per violation and the need to replace a presumeably
qualified (if careless) employee - Not an option as a default policy.
And I haven't even mentioned that people expect support from IT on
anything and everything they can find on their machines... Guess what? I
don't know everything. I can fix and teach Outlook, ThunderBird, Netscape,
Eudora, Calypso, Elm, Pine, and perhaps a few dozen clones thereof, but I
still won't have a clue how to fix your problem with FooMail; and
even if it works similarly enough to one I do know that I can walk right
through it, I won't know that until you've already wasted the time it takes
me to visit your office (times two, since presumeably neither of us
will get anything else done in the meantime).
As for liability, take the GMail example... In many companies (anything
healthcare related, anything publically-traded, and just a good idea
in most cases) you have legal minimum retention times for email; On
top of that, since those emails count as a liability, you want to
enforce that same period as a maximum retention time as
well. GMail makes both impossible - You can't guarantee
the legal minimum, and you can't automagically delete mail after
that time. For that matter, you can't even guarantee that you'll
ever again have access to a terminated-for-cause employee's email
five minutes after security escorts them out.
You also need to worry about the motivation for using
third-party email... If a company provides its own email server with no
unreasonable content or size filtering, why would employees use GMail for
work-related material?
The same applies to IM (though admittedly far fewer companies host their
own IM than host their own email).
I (and most IT workers) don't seriously give a rat's ass what you do on your
office computer - Your productivity only matters to you and your manager.
I really don't care if you want to play Solitaire all day long. So this has
nothing to do with control. But when I get reprimanded (or worse) for
letting a random user get the company fined tens of thousands of dollars or
under criminal investigation for unknowingly hosting kiddie porn, yeah, you
can bet the farm I'll choose "lock your machine down" every time.
I think the question author of TFA really wants to ask is whether the
slashdot community would find him acceptable if it learned that he was
doing this proxy bypass of high school rules.
Excellent post, but I have one criticism...
Morality means checking which way the societal wind blows. The
FP author did exactly that, on a topic that remains very much a grey
area in the modern Western world.
We oppose Chinese or Iranian governmental censorship, yet irrationally
believe in doing almost anything "for the kids". The topic at
hand represents the intersection of those two beliefs - Can we censor
what they see for their own good?
I would personally say no, we cannot. Kids need to experience the
world to learn how to deal with it. And doing that online, while it
certainly comes with its own set of dangers, certainly adds one
more layer of safety than naively stumbling into similar situations in
the real world.
Given that CFLs are in fact a pile of shit that are actually
about half as "bright" as the packaging claims
So buy ones rated twice as bright as the ones you replace,
and you'll still drop the electric consumption by half.
Oh, but then you'd complain that they look too bright and don't
work well on a dimmer (the one fault I will grant CFLs
still have, though they continually get better and can now go
down to about 10% before stalling).
and take time to warm up before they produce even that
Uhh... No. The el-cheapo ones have perhaps a quarter second delay
before they turn on, then maybe up to five seconds to "warm
up". Better ones have no perceptible delay, and come on right at full
brightness.
Y'know, I do oppose outright bans like this. But from reading
Slashdot, I'd swear we live in a world where life-and-death
hinges on people doing complex color matching within milliseconds
of leaping into any and every room of their homes... "Nein!
Your sample has 1.4% too much cyan. Your mother dies."
Anyhow, do they even make CFLs for, say, ovens? Freezers?
Chandeliers? Can they operate at 500 degrees in my oven?
No, yes*, yes, no - But all completely irrelevant.
Although the linked article doesn't say so, I'd wager the
actual text of the legislation only deals with standard E26
and E27 bulbs. Although you can get CFLs in E12 (candelabra
style), too few people use any significant number of them to
make it worth enforcing; and you just can't get CFLs bright
enough to serve the same purpose as a quartz/halogen floodlight.
So everyone can stop panicking that they'll have to throw out
all their appliances for want of incandescent indicator lights.
* Though not technically CFL, LED lighting would also satisfy such
proposed legislation, and works at extremely low temperatures.
I'd hardly call solid-state drives a "crackpot" technology.
Not crackpot, but still prohibitively expensive.
For RAM drives, you have basically $70/GB, and good luck finding the
hardware to use them... The iRAM (which they apparently renamed to
"GC-RAMDISK", with comparable (ie, no) availability) looked promising,
even came down to a reasonable price, but as I just mentioned, no
one seems to actually have them in stock.
The situation looks quite a bit better for flash... You can get 4GB CF cards,
which will work in a dirt-cheap (I've seen them under $10) CF-to-IDE
adapter, at a pretty decent $8/GB ($1800 for 32GB? Ouch! Fire anyone
that suggests that solution over a 4GB x 8 "IDE" RAID for under $450).
Flash still has two serious drawbacks, though, in that it has a finite
number of writes, and writes occur glacially slow (even by modern
HDD standards). A good RAID configuration would relieve some of the
burden of the write speed, but I'd still worry about the useful lifetime.
But yeah, I'd have to agree, not exactly tech at the tinfoil-beanie level
of obscurity. Just expensive for the size you get.
Enough to make one. If there's content people want, they'll
break joost too
Why bother?
This doesn't mean you won't get the same content on YouTube,
exactly like you can today. It just makes an alternative
source for one type of content, namely, music videos.
This doesn't even relieve Viacom of their burden under the
DMCA to find and fire off a takedown to Google for each
infringing video. They apparently have confused "we won't
license this to you" with "people will stop uploading
infringing material". Silly Viacom... We outnumber you
a million to one, do you really think you can find and
remove content faster than we can re-upload it?
Now, if Joost starts hosting significantly higher quality
(like HD) content, sure, you'll see a crack for it. But
AFAIK, they currently have the same pixellated crap as GooTube,
so why would anyone switch?
I'm in his boat, where I've not come across anyone (on the Interwebs or in real life)
who claimed to be afflicted with Asperger's.
Read just about any vaguely medical or psych related slashdot thread and search for the
word. I too have noticed this bizarre concentration of people claiming Asperger's here
on Slashdot.
And I'll second the GP's idea, that I would consider it nice to have a test for it so we
can get past all those who have self-diagnosed themselves looking for a medical excuse to
their awkward social behavior.
And I say this as a geek with relatively poor (but passable) social skills myself - Not
because I have some disease, but because I just don't give a flying rat's ass what
people think of me.
I guess I don't understand this. The point of an OS upgrade is that things change,
hopefully for the better.
Most people don't want an OS upgrade, they just want a functional OS.
We geeks may hope a bigger better shinier OS will run more efficiently and securely,
with better support for newer hardware that an older OS might not have had the
resources to deal with effectively. Most people, however, read "better" and
translate it as "easier to use". If they already know the basics of XP,
"different" does not match their idea of "better".
Do you know why it's a "memory hog", as you put it?
Well, for starters, because it runs an SQL server in its default
config! Yeah, I can't count how many times Grandma has bemoaned
the lack of an MS-SQL on her XP box.
As far as XP availability, I'm guessing that's more a function of
companies like Dell or HP not wanting to sell XP
Admitedly true. When I said that, I meant that your average Joe,
going into Best Buy, will have zero (or very nearly that) choices
that don't run Vista, and most likely only from machines so underspec'd
that they can barely run XP, nevermind Vista.
But even beyond that, why wouldn't Microsoft want to promote their new OS?
Again, I can't disagree there, but I still see it as "wrong" to all but
force the issue.
A comparison of first-week retail sales of Vista compared
to first-week sales of XP back in 2001 found that Vista sales
were 60% lower.
And of those who did buy Vista, most didn't even want it!
I've helped four friends/family/FOAFs out so far who just
bought a new PC and wanted to know how to get rid of Vista (the
major OEMs no longer even give you a choice of XP).
They all, without exception, had the same set of complaints...
They didn't know where to get at all the normal Windows tools, and
despite having "upgraded" for a faster computer, their new machines,
it felt significantly less responsive (I've translated a bit, and
removed the streams of obscenities).
Short of piracy (or actually buying XP), I explained to them how to
make Vista as XP-like as possible. Still not perfect, still a
CPU and memory hog, still moved quite a bit around from the XP
layout, but at least they could then use it.
Pathetic. If Microsoft wants to offer a new OS, fine. But they've
gone out of their way to make it almost impossible to get a new,
legal copy of XP, just so they can boost Vista's market penetration.
what OS they want?
I think the interest in this stuff, thankfully,
goes beyond the cold war
Interest, yes (as this FP proves). Practical application, though?
Fluidics never "caught on" for a reason - It requires relatively huge
parts to get anywhere. Check out the pictures in the linked article
for examples - He even mentions that his second try at the desired
logic gate technically worked, but didn't allow sufficient flow to
do anything with.
Even considering use in a water or air powered device, I have to
wonder if any remotely useful device made using water-gates
(no pun intended) could compete pricewise with a device using an
low-end CPU and a small parasitic turbine off the input fluid
stream.
Nope, it actually comes out very slightly flat of E(-11)... 185.1 half-steps
below A4.
Of course, at such low frequencies, even a tiny measurement error can
make a huge difference... If we had just 11mHz, that drops the note by
almost a full step.
(Incidentally, for those curious on how to calculate this, just take
log2(Hz/440)*12. That will equal the number of half-steps away from
(middle) A4, at 440Hz (thus the magic constant given above).
Slashdot Mirror
4 GB should be enough for everyone.
I know why this got modded funny (Billy G mockery), but really, we should consider it insightful rather than funny.
Yes, for servers, you (sometimes!) have a reason to run with huge amounts of RAM. For a desktop machine, even a high-end developer's machine, if you need that much memory, you need better tools. No "but the project requires it" allowed. If the requirements demand more than 4GB on a laptop, you have a problem long before reaching the "physical availability of suitable hardware" phase of development.
Now, I don't mean to say that situations can't exist where you would need that much memory. But you don't stick it on a laptop. You host the build environment on a "real" server, and either connect remotely or even (gasp!) do the work at work.
There are countries left which don't want to join? Which ones (apart from Norway and Switzerland)?
You can't really just ignore Norway and Switzerland... You also can't call some of the existing members "willing".
Case in point, the French and Dutch votes a year and a half ago on the EU constitution, or the monetary unit currently used in the UK.
The EU seems, to me, like a means of shoring up Europe's weaker economies, while providing a clean regulatory environment for the stronger economies to target nearby emerging markets. At the same time, no one seems happy with the arrangement. So you have a lot of countries that pay lip service to EU membership, then fight EU rule every step of the way.
Ah, elistism at its finest.
I know, right? Daring to think that people would bother to learn how to properly feed and care for a $500+ investment. I can act like quite the insensitive bastard some days...
Also, why should I care? Sometimes I just want to get my work done!
And I just want my car to get me to work. But if I don't know the condition of literally hundreds of seemingly-irrelevant aspects of that vehicle, it either won't continue getting me there every morning for very long, or in the worst case, won't get me there at all. From whether or not it has fuel and wiper fluid and a full compliment of working lights, to where I put the key in and which way to turn it and how far and if it wants the brake/transmission/lights/door/seatbelt in a certain state to start, to when I need my next periodic maintenance, to the countless conditions I might need to notice and evaluate while actually on the road.
I consider myself an advanced windows user, but I'm still not sure at all times what every application and service and background process is doing.
I don't need to know exactly how my transmission works, but I do need to take action if I find a pink puddle under my car.
On my machine right now, I have 38 processes running, which includes 35 services lumped into a half-dozen "svchost"s. I can't claim to know exactly how each of those 67 tasks (38+35-6) does its job, but I do know whether or not it "should" run under normal conditions.
Computers seem to be heading in the direction of becoming more like appliances
They won't ever get there, in their present form.
You may see a lot more dedicated computer-like devices, such as DVRs, email/web "appliances", and personal organizers; But the realm of general-purpose computing will always remain all but closed to those unwilling to invest the time to learn the basics. And by the basics, I mean a hell of a lot more than MSIE, Word, and Outlook.
Even beyond knowing what should run, though, even a total novice user should have the basic grasp of "I didn't just try to do anything that should require administrative access, why does it want elevated permissions?". If your microwave oven wants the PIN to your ATM card, you shouldn't need the message to appear in a different color to clue you in to the oddness of the request.
If you tell me you DO know EVERYTHING that is happening -- well you are very special.
No. Not special. Just "curious". If I open Task Manager (I actually use Sysinternals' Process Explorer, but same idea) and see something I don't recognize, I look it up. Simple as that. It doesn't take a genius or even hours of research, just Google and and a spare 30 seconds.
So yeah, if you won't invest that much time (per process) in operating an expensive machine, then you shouldn't use a computer. Or a car. Or any power-tools. Or reproduce. ESPECIALLY reproduce.
And if it makes me an "elitist", or just a plain ol' bastard, for thinking that some things in life require learning how to do them right - So it goes. But I don't get infected with spyware, so, take that as you will.
Two biiiiiiig problems there...
First, you quoted an ambiguously self-referential standard there: Under the code, you can't do foo if it "undermines" the code. By that reasoning, you can say that anything violates some subjective interpretation of the intent of the code. The word "fantasy" just adds color without any real meaning, as anything short of a documentary would tend to fall into that category.
Second, the phrase "Voluntary Code of Practice". Voluntary means, in both the legal and logical sense (which rarely coincide, but in this case they do), "ignore this". Just a distraction from real rules, the sort that have teeth.
That pops up a UAC dialog, but because RunLegacyCPLElevated.exe is set to run those Control Panel plug-ins with full administrative privileges, the dialog is bordered by Vista's own greenish color to signify the file is part of the operating system.
So we make fun of Homeland Security for their meaningless color-coded threat levels, but take the colored borders of confirmation dialogs on Vista as gospel?
Sorry, this does not constitute a threat. Just one more indication that we need some form of licensure before letting people anywhere near a computer.
I'll gladly join in on the MS bashing - when appropriate. In this case, any blame rests solidly with users who have no idea what they should or shouldn't let run on their computers.
Dislaimer: I'm not a tax expert, but I play one when I talk to my friends into letting me do their taxes.
;-)
Need any new friends?
there is little to no physical force behind it; the destructive energy is heat. Things won't explode like they do in Star Wars and other sci fi/fantasy movies and shows.
The satellite-based lasers for Star Wars (Reagan's wet dream, not the Movie) primarily worked by kinetic activity.
A cutting laser doesn't take anywhere near 67kW, but they work fairly slowly (slow enough for an armored target to take countermeasures). Instead, you want to basically vaporize a few nm of the surface, resulting in exactly the sort of explosion you say doesn't happen.
Search Google for "arc flash"... Though a much more mundane effect, it gives the general idea... Basically, if you vaporize copper bus bar by shorting it out, it produces a pretty impressive "explosion" due to the copper suddenly occupying 67,000 (no connection to the laser from the FP, just a coincidence) times its original volume.
Where are geras 2-4?
;-)
Considering that both TFAs couldn't even decide whether this advancement relates to launch vehicles, LEO satellites, or deep space probes... I think we can safely overlook the confusion over the number of totally inapplicable mechanical torque-to-speed conversion devices contained.
Good catch, though, you beat me to it - Even staying within the sad analogy to gears, they describe this as a five-speed that skips right from first to fifth. I think I'd avoid using the links as technical references on this one.
Then the student must take the docs to a local bank to receive the wire, and there are often fees
In what countries can you not legally give (reasonably small sums of) money to someone??? Documentation of why they received it? "Services rendered", "gift", or in some of these bass-ackwards places, just write "dowry". Or if local banks cause the problem, just send them cash in their local currency - problem solved.
This involves a mere $4500. Not suitcases full of unmarked bills.
Why do you think all the Indian H1Bs send their familes so much jewelry, rather than wiring funds back home? Hint - It has nothing to do with a preference for ugly jewelry.
We have to do things legally and right, not just the expedient.
That works in the US and most of Western Europe. In the rest of the world, "legally and right" means "never". You want it done at all, do it the expedient way (which more often than not, involves giving what amounts to a pittance for us to 17 levels of government peon).
What you are recommending, in some countries, is illegal and could put our students in danger of being arrested.
Thus the need to include a "gratuity" for the local police. Simple enough concept, people - The world doesn't run on law-n'-order, it runs on alpha males looking the other way after getting "their" cut.
Or maybe powering up the drives off and on is more stressful to the components
You just posed the one question to which I'd actually have liked to know the answer... Turn it on and off as needed (minimize runtime), or leave it on all the time if you'll use it at least a few times per day (minimize power cycling).
I know that counts as something of a religious issue among geeks, but I'd still have liked a good solid answer on it... It even has implications for whether or not we should let our non-laptops spin drives down when idle.
Oh well, better luck next study (or I can find my own collection of 100k drives to test, I suppose).
Everything else in there, I think most of us us already knew... Except the "infant mortality" one really surprised me.
I have to wonder, though, did she include DOAs in that, or did she only include drives that worked at least for a few minutes/hours/days? I have to strongly suspect the later - I can't argue with the statistics from 100k drives, but my personal experience with a few dozen drives has shown that they have a strong bias toward either never working, or working for at least a year.
Love the RAID5 stat, though... Perhaps this study will finally convince people to only use RAID for performance or huge-JBOD reasons, never for (the illusion of) reliability.
What about Easy-Bake Ovens? Or Creepy Crawler Thingmakers?
Perfect examples of why people should switch to CFLs.
Even ignoring the energy wasted in the form of heat, I've seen recessed light sockets with considerably less ventilation than the two toys you mentioned. We proably don't want to know how hot it gets in there...
The reason people use gmail instead of the owner furnished email system is because owners can, and do, read their mail!
I say this as a huge proponent of personal privacy, so don't take it the wrong way, but...
Why do you use your work email for anything you wouldn't want your boss to read?
Seriously, I just don't "get" it. I have a work account, and a few personal accounts. And NEVER the two shall meet.
I like off-color jokes. I like porn. I have social, religious, and political views rather divergent from my employer. But that has never caused me the least bit of trouble, because while at work... I do work. Sure, I read Slashdot... Hell, in IT, I'd consider anyone who doesn't as dangerously underinformed on current events in their field. But my personal life has very little bearing on my behavior while at work.
I just really don't understand people who get busted looking at porn at work, or fired for sexual harassment via corporate email or IM systems. Not to say I work myself to death - I most certainly don't. But if I want a distraction on a slow day, I'll read some fluffier tech material, or perhaps work on some personal coding that I can justify as vaguely work-related if someone catches me. If you can't go eight hours without porn or blonde jokes... Well, I just don't know what to say.
To use a old-school analog analogue, do people have trouble refraining from calling phone-sex lines at work?
IT's mandate to protect corporate data
Here we have the single point that makes this entire FP one big strawman...
Yes, IT takes some measures to protect corporate data, both from inappropriate access, and from erroneous (or malicious) deletion.
The bulk of this "clash", however, involves two points - Maintainability, and the difference between personal and corporate liability.
Maintainability... Given a network of dozens, or even hundreds, of users, homogeneity means everything. If it takes an extra 15 minutes to solve a five minute problem because each user has their own bizarre configuration and preferred tools, you've wasted three quarters of my time vs just using the tools provided. And speaking of "provided", IT simply doesn't have the time to check each and every machine daily for pirated software. "Oh, but just fire anyone that has pirated software"... Yeah, sure, at up to 50k per violation and the need to replace a presumeably qualified (if careless) employee - Not an option as a default policy.
And I haven't even mentioned that people expect support from IT on anything and everything they can find on their machines... Guess what? I don't know everything. I can fix and teach Outlook, ThunderBird, Netscape, Eudora, Calypso, Elm, Pine, and perhaps a few dozen clones thereof, but I still won't have a clue how to fix your problem with FooMail; and even if it works similarly enough to one I do know that I can walk right through it, I won't know that until you've already wasted the time it takes me to visit your office (times two, since presumeably neither of us will get anything else done in the meantime).
As for liability, take the GMail example... In many companies (anything healthcare related, anything publically-traded, and just a good idea in most cases) you have legal minimum retention times for email; On top of that, since those emails count as a liability, you want to enforce that same period as a maximum retention time as well. GMail makes both impossible - You can't guarantee the legal minimum, and you can't automagically delete mail after that time. For that matter, you can't even guarantee that you'll ever again have access to a terminated-for-cause employee's email five minutes after security escorts them out.
You also need to worry about the motivation for using third-party email... If a company provides its own email server with no unreasonable content or size filtering, why would employees use GMail for work-related material?
The same applies to IM (though admittedly far fewer companies host their own IM than host their own email).
I (and most IT workers) don't seriously give a rat's ass what you do on your office computer - Your productivity only matters to you and your manager. I really don't care if you want to play Solitaire all day long. So this has nothing to do with control. But when I get reprimanded (or worse) for letting a random user get the company fined tens of thousands of dollars or under criminal investigation for unknowingly hosting kiddie porn, yeah, you can bet the farm I'll choose "lock your machine down" every time.
I think the question author of TFA really wants to ask is whether the slashdot community would find him acceptable if it learned that he was doing this proxy bypass of high school rules.
Excellent post, but I have one criticism...
Morality means checking which way the societal wind blows. The FP author did exactly that, on a topic that remains very much a grey area in the modern Western world.
We oppose Chinese or Iranian governmental censorship, yet irrationally believe in doing almost anything "for the kids". The topic at hand represents the intersection of those two beliefs - Can we censor what they see for their own good?
I would personally say no, we cannot. Kids need to experience the world to learn how to deal with it. And doing that online, while it certainly comes with its own set of dangers, certainly adds one more layer of safety than naively stumbling into similar situations in the real world.
Given that CFLs are in fact a pile of shit that are actually about half as "bright" as the packaging claims
So buy ones rated twice as bright as the ones you replace, and you'll still drop the electric consumption by half.
Oh, but then you'd complain that they look too bright and don't work well on a dimmer (the one fault I will grant CFLs still have, though they continually get better and can now go down to about 10% before stalling).
and take time to warm up before they produce even that
Uhh... No. The el-cheapo ones have perhaps a quarter second delay before they turn on, then maybe up to five seconds to "warm up". Better ones have no perceptible delay, and come on right at full brightness.
Y'know, I do oppose outright bans like this. But from reading Slashdot, I'd swear we live in a world where life-and-death hinges on people doing complex color matching within milliseconds of leaping into any and every room of their homes... "Nein! Your sample has 1.4% too much cyan. Your mother dies."
just tax on the electricity used per square foot. That way you encourage everyone to lower their kWh.
...Or live in a mostly-dark McMansion, which has the same
effect (tax-wise).
Anyhow, do they even make CFLs for, say, ovens? Freezers? Chandeliers? Can they operate at 500 degrees in my oven?
No, yes*, yes, no - But all completely irrelevant.
Although the linked article doesn't say so, I'd wager the actual text of the legislation only deals with standard E26 and E27 bulbs. Although you can get CFLs in E12 (candelabra style), too few people use any significant number of them to make it worth enforcing; and you just can't get CFLs bright enough to serve the same purpose as a quartz/halogen floodlight.
So everyone can stop panicking that they'll have to throw out all their appliances for want of incandescent indicator lights.
* Though not technically CFL, LED lighting would also satisfy such proposed legislation, and works at extremely low temperatures.
I'd hardly call solid-state drives a "crackpot" technology.
Not crackpot, but still prohibitively expensive.
For RAM drives, you have basically $70/GB, and good luck finding the hardware to use them... The iRAM (which they apparently renamed to "GC-RAMDISK", with comparable (ie, no) availability) looked promising, even came down to a reasonable price, but as I just mentioned, no one seems to actually have them in stock.
The situation looks quite a bit better for flash... You can get 4GB CF cards, which will work in a dirt-cheap (I've seen them under $10) CF-to-IDE adapter, at a pretty decent $8/GB ($1800 for 32GB? Ouch! Fire anyone that suggests that solution over a 4GB x 8 "IDE" RAID for under $450). Flash still has two serious drawbacks, though, in that it has a finite number of writes, and writes occur glacially slow (even by modern HDD standards). A good RAID configuration would relieve some of the burden of the write speed, but I'd still worry about the useful lifetime.
But yeah, I'd have to agree, not exactly tech at the tinfoil-beanie level of obscurity. Just expensive for the size you get.
Enough to make one. If there's content people want, they'll break joost too
Why bother?
This doesn't mean you won't get the same content on YouTube, exactly like you can today. It just makes an alternative source for one type of content, namely, music videos.
This doesn't even relieve Viacom of their burden under the DMCA to find and fire off a takedown to Google for each infringing video. They apparently have confused "we won't license this to you" with "people will stop uploading infringing material". Silly Viacom... We outnumber you a million to one, do you really think you can find and remove content faster than we can re-upload it?
Now, if Joost starts hosting significantly higher quality (like HD) content, sure, you'll see a crack for it. But AFAIK, they currently have the same pixellated crap as GooTube, so why would anyone switch?
I'm in his boat, where I've not come across anyone (on the Interwebs or in real life) who claimed to be afflicted with Asperger's.
Read just about any vaguely medical or psych related slashdot thread and search for the word. I too have noticed this bizarre concentration of people claiming Asperger's here on Slashdot.
And I'll second the GP's idea, that I would consider it nice to have a test for it so we can get past all those who have self-diagnosed themselves looking for a medical excuse to their awkward social behavior.
And I say this as a geek with relatively poor (but passable) social skills myself - Not because I have some disease, but because I just don't give a flying rat's ass what people think of me.
I guess I don't understand this. The point of an OS upgrade is that things change, hopefully for the better.
Most people don't want an OS upgrade, they just want a functional OS.
We geeks may hope a bigger better shinier OS will run more efficiently and securely, with better support for newer hardware that an older OS might not have had the resources to deal with effectively. Most people, however, read "better" and translate it as "easier to use". If they already know the basics of XP, "different" does not match their idea of "better".
Do you know why it's a "memory hog", as you put it?
Well, for starters, because it runs an SQL server in its default config! Yeah, I can't count how many times Grandma has bemoaned the lack of an MS-SQL on her XP box.
As far as XP availability, I'm guessing that's more a function of companies like Dell or HP not wanting to sell XP
Admitedly true. When I said that, I meant that your average Joe, going into Best Buy, will have zero (or very nearly that) choices that don't run Vista, and most likely only from machines so underspec'd that they can barely run XP, nevermind Vista.
But even beyond that, why wouldn't Microsoft want to promote their new OS?
Again, I can't disagree there, but I still see it as "wrong" to all but force the issue.
A comparison of first-week retail sales of Vista compared to first-week sales of XP back in 2001 found that Vista sales were 60% lower.
And of those who did buy Vista, most didn't even want it!
I've helped four friends/family/FOAFs out so far who just bought a new PC and wanted to know how to get rid of Vista (the major OEMs no longer even give you a choice of XP).
They all, without exception, had the same set of complaints... They didn't know where to get at all the normal Windows tools, and despite having "upgraded" for a faster computer, their new machines, it felt significantly less responsive (I've translated a bit, and removed the streams of obscenities).
Short of piracy (or actually buying XP), I explained to them how to make Vista as XP-like as possible. Still not perfect, still a CPU and memory hog, still moved quite a bit around from the XP layout, but at least they could then use it.
Pathetic. If Microsoft wants to offer a new OS, fine. But they've gone out of their way to make it almost impossible to get a new, legal copy of XP, just so they can boost Vista's market penetration.
what OS they want?
I think the interest in this stuff, thankfully, goes beyond the cold war
Interest, yes (as this FP proves). Practical application, though?
Fluidics never "caught on" for a reason - It requires relatively huge parts to get anywhere. Check out the pictures in the linked article for examples - He even mentions that his second try at the desired logic gate technically worked, but didn't allow sufficient flow to do anything with.
Even considering use in a water or air powered device, I have to wonder if any remotely useful device made using water-gates (no pun intended) could compete pricewise with a device using an low-end CPU and a small parasitic turbine off the input fluid stream.
is 10 Millihertz B Flat?
Nope, it actually comes out very slightly flat of E(-11)... 185.1 half-steps below A4.
Of course, at such low frequencies, even a tiny measurement error can make a huge difference... If we had just 11mHz, that drops the note by almost a full step.
(Incidentally, for those curious on how to calculate this, just take log2(Hz/440)*12. That will equal the number of half-steps away from (middle) A4, at 440Hz (thus the magic constant given above).