Re:Presidents that work for terrorists
on
Google Terror Threat
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Terrorism is about threat, and continously emphasising that threat is only helping the terrorists.
Can we make a mantra out of this?
Yes, a bomb in a work building killing up to thousands of people at a time is scary, but terrorism only becomes terrorism when a unique freak occurrence invokes a pervasive fear in people. Otherwise, its just a unique freak occurrence or "act of god".
Lets say that 500 people were killed in each of two different scenarios. 1) 500 people died in a building due to an earthquake. 2) 500 people died due to a deliberately set bomb.
Same net death count, but which one is more likely to be labeled as "terrorist"? And once the buildings are rebuilt and people go about their lives, what would be the difference between their lives? Odds are, the only difference would be how much one concentrates on and thinks about the event, and much of what they will think about will be in terms of fear. Now, imagine that the bomb was found to be set by a psychotic child and he was safely secured in a mental facility. Then, the fear would go down, and almost completely disappear. Now, if the bomb was by a network of organized people that have planned for years to deliberately set the bomb. The fear goes up. Why is that? It must have something to do with the deliberateness and all of that organization and planning. Keep in mind, that there are plenty of jobs and places to live that are much more dangerous than working in an office building.
Do people that have these dangerous jobs live in perpetual fear? Cab drivers, policemen, fishermen, rock stars, astronauts, soldiers? Hell no. At most, if they are that concerned for their family, they quit doing what they are doing and do something else. Otherwise, they just take it as being an acceptable risk to die doing what they want to do. For example, its an acceptable risk to drive for most people. Its the number one accidental way to die, yet people still do it, and do crazy variations of it like not wearing a seatbelt, driving when impaired from sleep deprivation or alcohol use, or driving at excessive speeds or in inclimate weather. So, even when there is a known risk of death, I don't know of anybody that is in fear of driving. Maybe have the sense to not do it under certain circumstances, but nowhere near a pervasive fear.
So, what is there to fear about going to work in an office building? Look hard. I'm sure you will figure it out.
Besides, you can be sure that with such a hot subject and the way research is financed/politiced there will be more research 'debunking' this even if it turns out to be true after all.
some of us we did notice the reports that his (John Stewart) viewers were the best-informed of people who got their "news" from television
I didn't think of him. Yes, he is probably the best source for news that you can get from cable or satellite, but he doesn't rock the boat any more than your average political comedian.
Except maybe for your local crime...
I watch the local "news" about once a year to humor myself. I particularly like the "random killing segment" where they go locally and around the country talking about random deaths. How is that really going to benefit anybody is beyond me, but it must be at least entertaining for the viewers.
Most bloggers do not charge for their works, therefore they are not billionaires, therefore they can expect no consideration from the current administration.
Nor do they spread propaganda on behalf of the current administration.
Besides the BS that CBS did with the Bush service record, what mainstream media source has done anything earth shattering since watergate? (And in my ignorance, before?)
How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?
For one, the 44 minute program was pretty much paid for the night before by advertising dollars.
But in general, I've noticed this trend as well. Compare the prices for the latest Led Zeppelin releases on CD and DVD. The DVD has about 2x the content (over 300 minutes vs an estimated 180 minutes) in 3 different sound encodings but the CD costs _more_.
Wait. What makes "digital" lossy but non-digital non-lossy?
This whole thing is getting weird. By definition, all recorded music is "lossy". In fact, the best recording gear simply makes more pleasing alterations and distortions than the lower quality stuff. If they were to simply transfer the soundwaves completely "losslessly", then there would be no difference in equipment whatsoever, it would all be exactly the same.
Now, the difference between "lossy" and "lossless" encoding techniques of an _already recorded_ soundfile is that the lossy one cannot ever be converted back to the original file, but a lossless one will.
Its the difference between JPEG compression and zip compression. JPEG is lossy, you can best see it with straight lines and very subtle color changes across a wide surface, even more so when the compression is "better", meaning a smaller file size, but the quality of the picture will suffer. You cannot ever recreate the original digital file from the JPEG.
Zip, hopefully uncompresses the files exactly as they were compressed. Its not a good idea to transfer source code, executables, documents in a lossy format, because you can never get back the original.
If a car manufacturer produces a car that has a faulty part, is the engineer held laible? Hell no! its the company.
I just thought of something about how ridiculous this whole thing is. Liable is a civil matter, not a criminal one. Civil suits follow the money. If my $10 million project was screwed up because of a problem that an individual coder made (who I don't even know the name of), I'll go after the company. They have deeper pockets than an individual, and it would be worth my costs to my lawyers.
After getting fueled by the flamebait article, I just realized that the whole topic is mute. Its not worthy of suing an individual over such a matter, so even if it were law, nobody would do it.
I think coders should be held responsible, within a company, for poor code that they write, but overall the company should be held liable for bad code that it ships.
Me too. A pink slip for the former, and a lawsuit for the latter.
Sure, let's sue the pants off anyone who does anything wrong. Let's make it impossible for anyone to create anything new or different. Cradle-to-grave protection, ensured by armies of well-intentioned and socially-responsible attorneys -- that's the sure way to economic success!
Better watch out, I have a patent pending on such a thing right now. Anybody with such a plan will have to license it from me!
Why not make CEO's personally liable for not putting the code through proper QC channels and selling it over-promised.
Bingo.
Holding the developer responsible for security bugs is bullshit, unless he is the soul proprietor of the business. Otherwise its a team effort. Ever hear of code walkthroughs? Ever hear of QA & QC?
What if a building spontaneously collapses like WTC 7 that was built to code and inspected? Is the architect still liable then? Hell no.
That brings up the point that there are no real formal standards for coding or software development, nor certifications, no regulations, or anything. An auto mechanic has more hoops to go through than a software developer or a software company. Sure there is CMM, but anybody knows that a decently organized sourceforge projects is CMM 5 (or whatever it is called now).
Also, keep in mind that especially in a commercial setting, its not up to the coder to determine when the code is done. Its up to some arbitrary deadline that was promised to the customer, end of quarter or year, or whatever, but I know of no commercial setting where a coder has the responsibility to say "No, this code is not done yet, we cannot ship it". AFAIK, that is unheard of, it is shipped anyway, even against their better judgment.
So, yeah, if its a one man show, sure hold him responsible, but otherwise the company is responsible. Keep in mind that even if it were one individual, I'm sure the "company" would be held liable, not the individual.
This is making a fuss about nothing. All these years, the USA have never -- never -- abused its position of the Internet governor. There was no corruption scandal concerning the DNS root servers, which cannot be said about many "international" organisations (which are simple ruled not by a single country, but by an oligarchy of the USA, the EU and several other nations). So why change it?
Agreed. I have many, many more spam and firewall rules specifically against other countries. About 50% of my spam gets hit with one rule that reverse lookups the URLs that resolve to be in Korea or China. I have another spam rule for cn, br, ru, tw being in the headers.
I'm not one to come to the US's defense just because I was born there. But in general, we are fairly honest people. Sometimes I'm shocked, but then I realize that its usually more expensive to do shady but legal business than to do it straight.
I F*** with computers all day, the last thing I want to do is come home and mess with them some more just to watch TV.
Bad geek. Turn in your badge immediately!
I too fuck with computers all day, and its the last thing I want to do at home, especially for something as trivial and supposedly mindless as watching TV.
When and if TIVO starts implementing the auto-delete feature on shows, I may re-evaluate. (if it affects what I watch) but for now Tivo is still great.
I've never used a Tivo, but I have a Motorola HD-[PD]VR, and I love it. It auto-deletes shows in pretty much a FIFO manner. The only exception is if I tell it to keep something longer or until I manually erase it. I assumed this was a feature of a Tivo and all DVRs.
I've had no issues with anybody using the DVR at my house. There are only a couple of very minor bugs in the system, other than that it surpasses my expectations.
Tivo, I believe is going to be bought (purely for the brand-name recognition) or they will fold. They were definitely way ahead of their game a few years ago, but it appears as though others have caught up or surpassed them in anything besides name recognition.
Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.
Personally, I am about there with my mental illness, and at many times the gun does seem objectively as the better option.
Oh, and I can't "stop it".
I will say however that "mental illnesses" are not by definition as clear as a regular illness. Mostly because the diagnosis is fairly subjective with much of the input coming from the "ill" person. And I would agree with your thesis for a more temporary problem, something like a stress related obsessive compulsive disorder that goes away when the stress does.
On the other hand, I have suffered from my problem for as long as I can remember (bipolar disorder) and a smorgasbord of prescription and street drugs is what I do to feel better and be able to get along with people. I'm about to add another prescription drug, and if that does not help, I personally think I am going to give up. I predominately am depressed, and that may not mean much to somebody that does not have depression, but let me tell you it is tough. Imagine having blurred borderline hallucinogenic/paranoid thoughts while feeling like shit much of the time. Sometimes I feel so bad, I can physically feel my face drooping. You know, that "long face" that people get when they are upset. Sometimes I won't even realize that I'm that bad off and I'll notice things like people that I do not know well will not maintain eye contact with me. My sleep is sometimes wacked. I woke up this morning at 4AM dicked around on the computer until 6 something, slept until 10, now I'm at work.
For me, it has gotten to the point that I simply don't have normal feelings anymore, and I simply don't care about much. I'm way behind at my job that is my "dream job", that I don't really care about anymore either. I'm actually a geek that used to date girls and whatnot, but now I've even lost that desire.
I'm sorry, but this is not a preference. If there was anything I could change about myself, it would be this. I can accept everything else, change it, or deal with it. Feeling the way I do much of the time is not fun, and its not fun for people around me.
what is scary is the liklihood that drug companies will find a pill to cure you of the addiction to the Internet
Depending on the individual, there are already pills for that. MDMA, Xanex, valium, hydrocodone, morphine, etc work on a decent range of people.
Kidding aside, this is not a medical problem that a pill can fix.
Addictions are an avoidance, they are not the problem in themselves. They are learned behavior that requires a relatively short time for reinforcement. To my knowledge, people do not get addicted to anything that takes more than a few hours to "get off", and usually its much less than that. Yes, they can get to the point where they do become problems like health issues, but taking care of the health issues is not going to fix the addiction. (eg, putting a new liver in a longtime chronic alcoholic will not help them drink less).
If I speed down the road, but not too bad I get a fine.
If I speed down the road going too fast, I have to go to court, potential of jail time, fines, etc.
If I continue to do these things over and over again, I'm labeled as a habitual offender and have other court fun to go through.
Microsoft on the other hand just has to keep doing what they are doing and paying fines and now doing "community service" by putting advertisements for a competitor on their websites (which I think is wrong).
Personally, I would prefer just to be in the fine department for my behavior. Where do I get these privileges?
You can get greater than linear speedup on a system like this because you can keep more of your task in memory.
This in supercomputing circles is called superlinear speedup and it is defined that by using X number of processors, you get performance greater than X*n processors. And, to my knowledge it is only achieved when applications are able to keep a good part of their program on the processors cache, not the main system memory. If memory was the limitation and not CPU power, then throwing a ton of memory in a box is much cheaper than throwing CPUs and memory in multiple boxes.
Now, the Xeons do a bit better than the run-of-the-mill P4, but 10x faster? No way.
I caught the math/editorial error as well. I'm guessing its supposed to be the equivalent to 1,500 PCs, that is what I would say. Also, AFAIK Xeons and Pentiums are the same besides the unlocking of the SMP mechanism and more options for cache which may help specific applications. A guy I work with has benchmarked Xeons and Pentiums, and has found that clock per clock they are the same. Aside from the cache and the SMP, I've always thought that "Xeon" was just a marketing term for a "server pentium".
A firewall should never be required to run any PC, because no PC should ever respond to a connection attempt that it wasn't designed/configured to handle. A firewall's sole purpose is to close ports that should not have been open in the first place.
Those two sentences are mutually exclusive (slaps virtual moderators).
Windows leaves those ports open "for a reason". I don't know what it is, but it is intentional.
If slavery and civil rights were held to a popular vote, there's a good chance the laws never would have passed.
Great examples of some of the better laws in the country:) Prohibition is missing though.
So please, before you trash Congress for against "the will of the people," bear in mind that is exactly why Congress exists; so that when the time is appropriate, Congress can go against the majority of the people in order to protect the minority.
So, these poor rich people get protected and everybody else gets punished. I think that this is the subverting that the gp was talking about.
But the biggest problem, the BIGGEST problem is seeing the same commercial 3 times per show.
Late night Comedy Central here in the US.
The other weekend I was watching a Chris Rock standup act that came on at like 1AM and it was uncensored. I find it particularly annoying when every other word is BLEEPed out. I completely enjoyed the show, but I had to stop watching it live and record it because there were "Girls Gone Wild" ads at _every commercial break_. In fact, I backed up and watched most all of the show again without the ads.
I have a little lower tolerance because I have a DVR, but even my friend was particularly annoyed, and thanked me for recording it and watching something else and going back to the program.
When two single guys have issues seeing almost naked hotties, something is wrong.
eBay and PayPal aren't exactly known for instilling confidence in their customer base.
True. Although it appears as though the slashdot summary is inaccurate and eBay is only acquiring the payment processing division of Verisign. Now, why a random part of an online company is worth $370 million is beyond me.
This is a slippery slope for Verisign, who issues SSL certs and must by definition be trustworthy.
They don't have to be trustworthy by definition, only trusted. Big difference, and being trustworthy helps being trusted, but its not a requirement. Many people distrust the government, but have no problem trusting the value of their money.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone see the contradiction here?
Its not a contradiction, its called irony.
Terrorism is about threat, and continously emphasising that threat is only helping the terrorists.
Can we make a mantra out of this?
Yes, a bomb in a work building killing up to thousands of people at a time is scary, but terrorism only becomes terrorism when a unique freak occurrence invokes a pervasive fear in people. Otherwise, its just a unique freak occurrence or "act of god".
Lets say that 500 people were killed in each of two different scenarios. 1) 500 people died in a building due to an earthquake. 2) 500 people died due to a deliberately set bomb.
Same net death count, but which one is more likely to be labeled as "terrorist"? And once the buildings are rebuilt and people go about their lives, what would be the difference between their lives? Odds are, the only difference would be how much one concentrates on and thinks about the event, and much of what they will think about will be in terms of fear. Now, imagine that the bomb was found to be set by a psychotic child and he was safely secured in a mental facility. Then, the fear would go down, and almost completely disappear. Now, if the bomb was by a network of organized people that have planned for years to deliberately set the bomb. The fear goes up. Why is that? It must have something to do with the deliberateness and all of that organization and planning. Keep in mind, that there are plenty of jobs and places to live that are much more dangerous than working in an office building.
Do people that have these dangerous jobs live in perpetual fear? Cab drivers, policemen, fishermen, rock stars, astronauts, soldiers? Hell no. At most, if they are that concerned for their family, they quit doing what they are doing and do something else. Otherwise, they just take it as being an acceptable risk to die doing what they want to do. For example, its an acceptable risk to drive for most people. Its the number one accidental way to die, yet people still do it, and do crazy variations of it like not wearing a seatbelt, driving when impaired from sleep deprivation or alcohol use, or driving at excessive speeds or in inclimate weather. So, even when there is a known risk of death, I don't know of anybody that is in fear of driving. Maybe have the sense to not do it under certain circumstances, but nowhere near a pervasive fear.
So, what is there to fear about going to work in an office building? Look hard. I'm sure you will figure it out.
Besides, you can be sure that with such a hot subject and the way research is financed/politiced there will be more research 'debunking' this even if it turns out to be true after all.
Yeah, they probably were studying MDMA ("ecstasy") this time. http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/000078.html
some of us we did notice the reports that his (John Stewart) viewers were the best-informed of people who got their "news" from television
I didn't think of him. Yes, he is probably the best source for news that you can get from cable or satellite, but he doesn't rock the boat any more than your average political comedian.
Except maybe for your local crime...
I watch the local "news" about once a year to humor myself. I particularly like the "random killing segment" where they go locally and around the country talking about random deaths. How is that really going to benefit anybody is beyond me, but it must be at least entertaining for the viewers.
Most bloggers do not charge for their works, therefore they are not billionaires, therefore they can expect no consideration from the current administration.
Nor do they spread propaganda on behalf of the current administration.
Besides the BS that CBS did with the Bush service record, what mainstream media source has done anything earth shattering since watergate? (And in my ignorance, before?)
How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?
0 08PX8P/qid=1129144470/sr=8-11/ref=pd_bbs_11/104-09 63173-9088738?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846
0 08OWZC/qid=1129144470/sr=8-12/ref=pd_bbs_12/104-09 63173-9088738?v=glance&s=music&n=507846
For one, the 44 minute program was pretty much paid for the night before by advertising dollars.
But in general, I've noticed this trend as well. Compare the prices for the latest Led Zeppelin releases on CD and DVD. The DVD has about 2x the content (over 300 minutes vs an estimated 180 minutes) in 3 different sound encodings but the CD costs _more_.
Link for DVD http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
Link for CD http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
Oh, people still buy the CDs at the higher prices or via iTunes. Now I know why they are more expensive.
Wait. What makes "digital" lossy but non-digital non-lossy?
This whole thing is getting weird. By definition, all recorded music is "lossy". In fact, the best recording gear simply makes more pleasing alterations and distortions than the lower quality stuff. If they were to simply transfer the soundwaves completely "losslessly", then there would be no difference in equipment whatsoever, it would all be exactly the same.
Now, the difference between "lossy" and "lossless" encoding techniques of an _already recorded_ soundfile is that the lossy one cannot ever be converted back to the original file, but a lossless one will.
Its the difference between JPEG compression and zip compression. JPEG is lossy, you can best see it with straight lines and very subtle color changes across a wide surface, even more so when the compression is "better", meaning a smaller file size, but the quality of the picture will suffer. You cannot ever recreate the original digital file from the JPEG.
Zip, hopefully uncompresses the files exactly as they were compressed. Its not a good idea to transfer source code, executables, documents in a lossy format, because you can never get back the original.
If a car manufacturer produces a car that has a faulty part, is the engineer held laible? Hell no! its the company.
I just thought of something about how ridiculous this whole thing is. Liable is a civil matter, not a criminal one. Civil suits follow the money. If my $10 million project was screwed up because of a problem that an individual coder made (who I don't even know the name of), I'll go after the company. They have deeper pockets than an individual, and it would be worth my costs to my lawyers.
After getting fueled by the flamebait article, I just realized that the whole topic is mute. Its not worthy of suing an individual over such a matter, so even if it were law, nobody would do it.
I think coders should be held responsible, within a company, for poor code that they write, but overall the company should be held liable for bad code that it ships.
Me too. A pink slip for the former, and a lawsuit for the latter.
Sure, let's sue the pants off anyone who does anything wrong. Let's make it impossible for anyone to create anything new or different. Cradle-to-grave protection, ensured by armies of well-intentioned and socially-responsible attorneys -- that's the sure way to economic success!
Better watch out, I have a patent pending on such a thing right now. Anybody with such a plan will have to license it from me!
Why not make CEO's personally liable for not putting the code through proper QC channels and selling it over-promised.
Bingo.
Holding the developer responsible for security bugs is bullshit, unless he is the soul proprietor of the business. Otherwise its a team effort. Ever hear of code walkthroughs? Ever hear of QA & QC?
What if a building spontaneously collapses like WTC 7 that was built to code and inspected? Is the architect still liable then? Hell no.
That brings up the point that there are no real formal standards for coding or software development, nor certifications, no regulations, or anything. An auto mechanic has more hoops to go through than a software developer or a software company. Sure there is CMM, but anybody knows that a decently organized sourceforge projects is CMM 5 (or whatever it is called now).
Also, keep in mind that especially in a commercial setting, its not up to the coder to determine when the code is done. Its up to some arbitrary deadline that was promised to the customer, end of quarter or year, or whatever, but I know of no commercial setting where a coder has the responsibility to say "No, this code is not done yet, we cannot ship it". AFAIK, that is unheard of, it is shipped anyway, even against their better judgment.
So, yeah, if its a one man show, sure hold him responsible, but otherwise the company is responsible. Keep in mind that even if it were one individual, I'm sure the "company" would be held liable, not the individual.
Yeah, just like we joined them in using the metric system.
l l.html
1893 isn't that recent, especially in American consciousness http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mendenha
This is making a fuss about nothing. All these years, the USA have never -- never -- abused its position of the Internet governor. There was no corruption scandal concerning the DNS root servers, which cannot be said about many "international" organisations (which are simple ruled not by a single country, but by an oligarchy of the USA, the EU and several other nations). So why change it?
Agreed. I have many, many more spam and firewall rules specifically against other countries. About 50% of my spam gets hit with one rule that reverse lookups the URLs that resolve to be in Korea or China. I have another spam rule for cn, br, ru, tw being in the headers.
I'm not one to come to the US's defense just because I was born there. But in general, we are fairly honest people. Sometimes I'm shocked, but then I realize that its usually more expensive to do shady but legal business than to do it straight.
I F*** with computers all day, the last thing I want to do is come home and mess with them some more just to watch TV.
Bad geek. Turn in your badge immediately!
I too fuck with computers all day, and its the last thing I want to do at home, especially for something as trivial and supposedly mindless as watching TV.
When and if TIVO starts implementing the auto-delete feature on shows, I may re-evaluate. (if it affects what I watch) but for now Tivo is still great.
I've never used a Tivo, but I have a Motorola HD-[PD]VR, and I love it. It auto-deletes shows in pretty much a FIFO manner. The only exception is if I tell it to keep something longer or until I manually erase it. I assumed this was a feature of a Tivo and all DVRs.
I've had no issues with anybody using the DVR at my house. There are only a couple of very minor bugs in the system, other than that it surpasses my expectations.
Tivo, I believe is going to be bought (purely for the brand-name recognition) or they will fold. They were definitely way ahead of their game a few years ago, but it appears as though others have caught up or surpassed them in anything besides name recognition.
Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.
Personally, I am about there with my mental illness, and at many times the gun does seem objectively as the better option.
Oh, and I can't "stop it".
I will say however that "mental illnesses" are not by definition as clear as a regular illness. Mostly because the diagnosis is fairly subjective with much of the input coming from the "ill" person. And I would agree with your thesis for a more temporary problem, something like a stress related obsessive compulsive disorder that goes away when the stress does.
On the other hand, I have suffered from my problem for as long as I can remember (bipolar disorder) and a smorgasbord of prescription and street drugs is what I do to feel better and be able to get along with people. I'm about to add another prescription drug, and if that does not help, I personally think I am going to give up. I predominately am depressed, and that may not mean much to somebody that does not have depression, but let me tell you it is tough. Imagine having blurred borderline hallucinogenic/paranoid thoughts while feeling like shit much of the time. Sometimes I feel so bad, I can physically feel my face drooping. You know, that "long face" that people get when they are upset. Sometimes I won't even realize that I'm that bad off and I'll notice things like people that I do not know well will not maintain eye contact with me. My sleep is sometimes wacked. I woke up this morning at 4AM dicked around on the computer until 6 something, slept until 10, now I'm at work.
For me, it has gotten to the point that I simply don't have normal feelings anymore, and I simply don't care about much. I'm way behind at my job that is my "dream job", that I don't really care about anymore either. I'm actually a geek that used to date girls and whatnot, but now I've even lost that desire.
I'm sorry, but this is not a preference. If there was anything I could change about myself, it would be this. I can accept everything else, change it, or deal with it. Feeling the way I do much of the time is not fun, and its not fun for people around me.
what is scary is the liklihood that drug companies will find a pill to cure you of the addiction to the Internet
Depending on the individual, there are already pills for that. MDMA, Xanex, valium, hydrocodone, morphine, etc work on a decent range of people.
Kidding aside, this is not a medical problem that a pill can fix.
Addictions are an avoidance, they are not the problem in themselves. They are learned behavior that requires a relatively short time for reinforcement. To my knowledge, people do not get addicted to anything that takes more than a few hours to "get off", and usually its much less than that. Yes, they can get to the point where they do become problems like health issues, but taking care of the health issues is not going to fix the addiction. (eg, putting a new liver in a longtime chronic alcoholic will not help them drink less).
If I speed down the road, but not too bad I get a fine.
If I speed down the road going too fast, I have to go to court, potential of jail time, fines, etc.
If I continue to do these things over and over again, I'm labeled as a habitual offender and have other court fun to go through.
Microsoft on the other hand just has to keep doing what they are doing and paying fines and now doing "community service" by putting advertisements for a competitor on their websites (which I think is wrong).
Personally, I would prefer just to be in the fine department for my behavior. Where do I get these privileges?
You can get greater than linear speedup on a system like this because you can keep more of your task in memory.
This in supercomputing circles is called superlinear speedup and it is defined that by using X number of processors, you get performance greater than X*n processors. And, to my knowledge it is only achieved when applications are able to keep a good part of their program on the processors cache, not the main system memory. If memory was the limitation and not CPU power, then throwing a ton of memory in a box is much cheaper than throwing CPUs and memory in multiple boxes.
equivalent power of nearly 15,000 PCs ...
Total processors: 1644
Now, the Xeons do a bit better than the run-of-the-mill P4, but 10x faster? No way.
I caught the math/editorial error as well. I'm guessing its supposed to be the equivalent to 1,500 PCs, that is what I would say. Also, AFAIK Xeons and Pentiums are the same besides the unlocking of the SMP mechanism and more options for cache which may help specific applications. A guy I work with has benchmarked Xeons and Pentiums, and has found that clock per clock they are the same. Aside from the cache and the SMP, I've always thought that "Xeon" was just a marketing term for a "server pentium".
If MS just did their job and made a secure OS, like OpenBSD (or the other BSDs), there wouldn't be a huge market for security band-aids.
Ah, but many believe that MS does more with their os than make a secure one and remind people of it.
Want to look at a secure desktop (that is BSD based), take a look at OS X, and it does more than be secure to boot.
A firewall should never be required to run any PC, because no PC should ever respond to a connection attempt that it wasn't designed/configured to handle. A firewall's sole purpose is to close ports that should not have been open in the first place.
Those two sentences are mutually exclusive (slaps virtual moderators).
Windows leaves those ports open "for a reason". I don't know what it is, but it is intentional.
If slavery and civil rights were held to a popular vote, there's a good chance the laws never would have passed.
:) Prohibition is missing though.
Great examples of some of the better laws in the country
So please, before you trash Congress for against "the will of the people," bear in mind that is exactly why Congress exists; so that when the time is appropriate, Congress can go against the majority of the people in order to protect the minority.
So, these poor rich people get protected and everybody else gets punished. I think that this is the subverting that the gp was talking about.
But the biggest problem, the BIGGEST problem is seeing the same commercial 3 times per show.
Late night Comedy Central here in the US.
The other weekend I was watching a Chris Rock standup act that came on at like 1AM and it was uncensored. I find it particularly annoying when every other word is BLEEPed out. I completely enjoyed the show, but I had to stop watching it live and record it because there were "Girls Gone Wild" ads at _every commercial break_. In fact, I backed up and watched most all of the show again without the ads.
I have a little lower tolerance because I have a DVR, but even my friend was particularly annoyed, and thanked me for recording it and watching something else and going back to the program.
When two single guys have issues seeing almost naked hotties, something is wrong.
eBay and PayPal aren't exactly known for instilling confidence in their customer base.
True. Although it appears as though the slashdot summary is inaccurate and eBay is only acquiring the payment processing division of Verisign. Now, why a random part of an online company is worth $370 million is beyond me.
This is a slippery slope for Verisign, who issues SSL certs and must by definition be trustworthy.
They don't have to be trustworthy by definition, only trusted. Big difference, and being trustworthy helps being trusted, but its not a requirement. Many people distrust the government, but have no problem trusting the value of their money.
Even 20ms delay makes me crazy (~1 frame).
To put it another way. 20ms is about the same as moving a speaker about 20 feet. That should be pretty clear to anybody how significant that is.