You have to look out for people trying to game the system. I'd run a battery in my commuter car for a few years, until it started to degrade. Then take it to a 'station' and swap it out for a good one. I'd keep 'filling up' until I got one that was practically new. Then I'd stop 'filling up' and charge my batteries at home.
Batteries are like propane tanks, that are emptied of it's contents, but the bottle remains unchanged.
With elections coming in many areas, I would not be surprised to find a number of front organizations providing misinformation online.
Like Fox News?
Seen the YouTube video of the "random likely voter" that is voting in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, and was lucky enough to be chose by Fox twice for their so-called "focus group"?
Better yet, learn at least three vastly different languages at at least a high intermediate level, or even master them.
Make sure one of those languages is a popular dialect in India, and another is a popular dialect of Chinese, because from where I'm sitting that's where all the jobs will be in a few years.
How many cable boxes max hang off the distro points? What is the bandwidth like between those and the head ends?
Several thousand. Nearly all cable plants are not HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax). The best you'll get is OC-12 down to the distribution head. Not nearly enough to handle all the separate requests on a rainy Sunday night. The cable companies will still have to depend on delayed start to implement some amount of multicast, and depend on most viewer watching non-VoD channels.
If there was a way to Thumbs down every feminine hygiene, Burger King, and other junk I'm not interested in, and Thumbs up things I like,pretty soon they'd have an idea of what I like.
Unfortunate for us, their job is to get us to like (or at least make us think we like) things that we wouldn't otherwise.
What happens with this virus spreads itself around, and then takes over a automated weapons manufacturing plant? I'll tell you what happens. It becomes SELF-AWARE. That's what happens. The next thing you know, we'll have governors showing up naked in deserted places and then beating up biker guys for their clothes. We have to stop this NOW!, before someone gets the bright idea of making a TV series about it.
In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to be stupid. Cue a downward spiral as each member tries to not end up in the upper 50% of their group.
It's because if you know something, then you're the expert. If you're the expert, then you're responsible for doing the work.
I've become dumb at home. From setting the VCR clock, to programming the thermostat, to putting together all the Christmas gifts, it was always my job, because "your are smart" and "you can figure things out." Any and all electronic devices were mine to figure out how to use and operate for the rest of the family.
Well, I began to realize that my sons were growing up to be STUPID. All the foolishness came to a halting stop. All Christmas presents came wrapped in the original packaging. I refuse to read anyone else's user manual. Everyone gets a piece of technology that they are required to learn about and operate. I still step in if possible mistakes look expensive, but on the whole my wife and boys seem to be getting smarter and my life is less tedious.
People aren't dumb. They're lazy (and smart enough to stay that way 8*)
My father was once on a flight that dumped fuel over the ocean, circled back, and landed five minutes after takeoff.
Airplanes have a maximum takeoff weight, and a maximum landing weight. They are not necessarily the same. If the plane is dumping fuel over the ocean, I deduce that it was probably a transoceanic flight. The plane had a long way to go and would want to carry as much fuel as possible. Someone could get sick, and the pilot would need to turn back to the airport. The landing gear can't hold the plane and all that fuel during that one hard bump when the wheels touch down (or the brakes can't absorb all that extra kinetic energy before the end of the runway), so the pilot dumps some weight before turning around.
The only 'incident' that may have occurred on you're fathers flight is that a very important passenger got to the airport late. Dumping fuel is SOP for whatever reason makes economic sense to the airline controllers.
I've watched several documentaries on people "resisting" Wal-Mart. I can't think of any single 'resistance fighter' that wasn't a small store owner. The fact that these small stores, with their high prices and limited selection, go out of business so quickly would indicate that the great majority of people find their product offerings to be very appealing.
I'm an urban resident, and I shop at Wal-Mart. I don't find their crap to be any less appealing than the crap at Lowe's, Home Depot, Target, Food Lion, the local flea market, etc. It's all the cheapest made object that will just barely do the intended job till the warranty runs out, because experience proves that is what people REALLY want. You can cry and whine that you're willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority are eyeing the price tag, and not much else.
$20 for a downloable CD? I, like many my fellow Americans, will wait till a REAL CD is in the bargain bin for $9.99.
My buddy and I even made up names with random letters in a string of 15 or 20, then some porn words stuck on the end ".com".
So there's the answer to the problem. Bombard the servers with requests for random names. The sleazoids will be forced to either go through the names manually, looking for likely candidates, OR they'll have to register everything...which might tend to get a tad expensive. A script that would hit the whois server with a single randomly generated name every time someone logged into a linux box would probably not put undue hardship on the root servers, but still generate way to many names to feasibly register.
The way to break a scam is to make it expensive to continue. A similar scheme could work for spam. Go through the filtered emails, making a list of URLs. Wait for slow network usage, and do a throttled wget to/dev/null on the websites. Once they can't sell Viagra from their DDOSed site, they'll stop. Someone will eventually try spamming with a URL of a big corporation. The big CEO will sit down with the Pres, explain their problem, the finally the FBI, CIA, NSA, MADD, and AARP will all be called out, and the spam problem will finally be brought to an end. (Heh, I jest...but only slightly).
An ox is a really dumb animal, but if I'm in third world country and have a field to plow I'd like to have one around. I don't mind the fact that the ox is big and dumb, because I accept that is what it is and use the ox for what it is good at.
Governments and large organizations likewise have a place in this world. They are adept at handling massive projects that don't require lots of thinking. They're good at passing out millions of social security checks on the same day every month, but they suck at finding the three that got lost. They are a marvel at creating and distributing millions of plastic widgets, but will have to buy a small company to invent a new plastic widget. Large organizations are like big, dumb farm animals. They need tight reins and intelligent control to keep them on task.
The biggest problems occur when they push their way into places where they shouldn't be. Then they become...(Sorry, but I gotta do it)...an ox in a china shop.
Now we just need for the scientist to find the aliens that were stored down there in ancient times by the alien predators. Then we can harness them as a military weapon to defeat the terrorist.
Of course, they will get loose just as the predator aliens are returning for a hunting expedition. Then we will need Sigorny Weaver AND Arnold Schwarzennager to defeat them and stop them from turning the entire human population into baby food.
What, for me, is surprising is that this wasn't already the case. This strikes me as so fundamental and so basic, and shows just how much profiteering is going on in the cellular industry. Despite having infrastructure investment costs orders of magnitude cheaper than copper, and a less-than-complete requirement for cellular coverage,
You don't even have to go that far. The decision not to provide battery backup is economically foolish. The bastards CHARGE BY THE MINUTE. A power outage means that you're not making money. Money that could be used to pay for batteries that will keep your tower running when the mains go out.
If you transplanted the entire current human population to 3000 years ago, the vast majority of them would die off in short order. The number you would have left would possibly be equal to or greater than the population of 3000 years ago. What's more, the resulting population would have a greater genetic diversity, and evolution would proceed to optimal adaptations at a greater pace.
Who the hell fixes the cars? How do they DRIVE the cars? They have enough trouble with menial tasks that it makes no sense that the society in the movie actually survives.
Indirectly, you're making a statement about a society based on technology that they don't understand. I just found out that Industrial Arts classes have been phased out of local area high schools over the last few years, when I started asking around about using a brake on the sly to bend a couple pieces of aluminum.
Think about it a minute. Could you spot weld a panel on the car you're driving? I know to many people that haven't a clue on how to change the oil in their cars. More and more of the manufacturing is being set up to be done by machines, with only a select few being aware of the technical details of what is involved. Most of the people are button pushers. The technical guys are circuit board swappers. As more is automated, technical knowledge is condensed. Carried to the absurd extreme, eventually everything is fully automated and technical knowledge disappears.
At that point, society will, like the jet without fuel, coast to an unavoidable crash.
One of the real problems that you have is that violent crime rates (robbery, murder, rape, etc) have been dropping for a long time.
In what age group.
There was a big stir at my younger son's middle school because of some gang violence. The same day, there was a stabbing at my older son's high school. Many parents kept their high-schoolers at home today, because there were some rumors going around that there was going to be a shooting. (My son was leaving early, because the wrestling team had an out of town tournament, so I let him go.)
I personally don't think the statistics show a rise in juvenile crime, but I don't think the statistics of overall crime apply as much as the specific category.
Dude, even when I was in high-school, the free textbooks usually had a lifespan of less than a couple years. After being lugged around for a couple years, rained on at the bus stops, and doodled to death, the books were uselessly unreadable after a couple of students had passed through them.
I can't see them standing up any better in a third world environment. Just making the OLPC waterproof should make it easily outlast most textbooks, and it is already pretty much doodle-proof.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
You have to look out for people trying to game the system. I'd run a battery in my commuter car for a few years, until it started to degrade. Then take it to a 'station' and swap it out for a good one. I'd keep 'filling up' until I got one that was practically new. Then I'd stop 'filling up' and charge my batteries at home.
Batteries are like propane tanks, that are emptied of it's contents, but the bottle remains unchanged.
With elections coming in many areas, I would not be surprised to find a number of front organizations providing misinformation online.
Like Fox News?
Seen the YouTube video of the "random likely voter" that is voting in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, and was lucky enough to be chose by Fox twice for their so-called "focus group"?
Better yet, learn at least three vastly different languages at at least a high intermediate level, or even master them.
Make sure one of those languages is a popular dialect in India, and another is a popular dialect of Chinese, because from where I'm sitting that's where all the jobs will be in a few years.
How many cable boxes max hang off the distro points? What is the bandwidth like between those and the head ends?
Several thousand.
Nearly all cable plants are not HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax). The best you'll get is OC-12 down to the distribution head. Not nearly enough to handle all the separate requests on a rainy Sunday night. The cable companies will still have to depend on delayed start to implement some amount of multicast, and depend on most viewer watching non-VoD channels.
If there was a way to Thumbs down every feminine hygiene, Burger King, and other junk I'm not interested in, and Thumbs up things I like,pretty soon they'd have an idea of what I like.
Unfortunate for us, their job is to get us to like (or at least make us think we like) things that we wouldn't otherwise.
They do offer something worthwhile...it's called "the programming". Or did you think those shows were created by magical gnomes inside an oak tree?
Like a programming language, the VR simulator would not be complete until it could simulate itself.
Without some compelling proof (which he lacks) this is nothing more than a conversational topic over a bag of weed.
You are completely and utterly wrong.
It's also a way to fish for grant money without doing any REAL work. 8*)
What happens with this virus spreads itself around, and then takes over a automated weapons manufacturing plant? I'll tell you what happens. It becomes SELF-AWARE. That's what happens. The next thing you know, we'll have governors showing up naked in deserted places and then beating up biker guys for their clothes. We have to stop this NOW!, before someone gets the bright idea of making a TV series about it.
Aaaah!!! We're to late. Run for the hills!!
In fact, in some circles it's become fashionable to be stupid. Cue a downward spiral as each member tries to not end up in the upper 50% of their group.
It's because if you know something, then you're the expert. If you're the expert, then you're responsible for doing the work.
I've become dumb at home. From setting the VCR clock, to programming the thermostat, to putting together all the Christmas gifts, it was always my job, because "your are smart" and "you can figure things out." Any and all electronic devices were mine to figure out how to use and operate for the rest of the family.
Well, I began to realize that my sons were growing up to be STUPID. All the foolishness came to a halting stop. All Christmas presents came wrapped in the original packaging. I refuse to read anyone else's user manual. Everyone gets a piece of technology that they are required to learn about and operate. I still step in if possible mistakes look expensive, but on the whole my wife and boys seem to be getting smarter and my life is less tedious.
People aren't dumb. They're lazy (and smart enough to stay that way 8*)
My father was once on a flight that dumped fuel over the ocean, circled back, and landed five minutes after takeoff.
Airplanes have a maximum takeoff weight, and a maximum landing weight. They are not necessarily the same. If the plane is dumping fuel over the ocean, I deduce that it was probably a transoceanic flight. The plane had a long way to go and would want to carry as much fuel as possible. Someone could get sick, and the pilot would need to turn back to the airport. The landing gear can't hold the plane and all that fuel during that one hard bump when the wheels touch down (or the brakes can't absorb all that extra kinetic energy before the end of the runway), so the pilot dumps some weight before turning around.
The only 'incident' that may have occurred on you're fathers flight is that a very important passenger got to the airport late. Dumping fuel is SOP for whatever reason makes economic sense to the airline controllers.
I've watched several documentaries on people "resisting" Wal-Mart. I can't think of any single 'resistance fighter' that wasn't a small store owner. The fact that these small stores, with their high prices and limited selection, go out of business so quickly would indicate that the great majority of people find their product offerings to be very appealing.
I'm an urban resident, and I shop at Wal-Mart. I don't find their crap to be any less appealing than the crap at Lowe's, Home Depot, Target, Food Lion, the local flea market, etc. It's all the cheapest made object that will just barely do the intended job till the warranty runs out, because experience proves that is what people REALLY want. You can cry and whine that you're willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority are eyeing the price tag, and not much else.
$20 for a downloable CD? I, like many my fellow Americans, will wait till a REAL CD is in the bargain bin for $9.99.
My buddy and I even made up names with random letters in a string of 15 or 20, then some porn words stuck on the end ".com".
/dev/null on the websites. Once they can't sell Viagra from their DDOSed site, they'll stop. Someone will eventually try spamming with a URL of a big corporation. The big CEO will sit down with the Pres, explain their problem, the finally the FBI, CIA, NSA, MADD, and AARP will all be called out, and the spam problem will finally be brought to an end. (Heh, I jest...but only slightly).
So there's the answer to the problem. Bombard the servers with requests for random names. The sleazoids will be forced to either go through the names manually, looking for likely candidates, OR they'll have to register everything...which might tend to get a tad expensive. A script that would hit the whois server with a single randomly generated name every time someone logged into a linux box would probably not put undue hardship on the root servers, but still generate way to many names to feasibly register.
The way to break a scam is to make it expensive to continue. A similar scheme could work for spam. Go through the filtered emails, making a list of URLs. Wait for slow network usage, and do a throttled wget to
Geesh!! We send a car a million miles away, and STILL everyone just sits around waiting for a wreck!
An ox is a really dumb animal, but if I'm in third world country and have a field to plow I'd like to have one around. I don't mind the fact that the ox is big and dumb, because I accept that is what it is and use the ox for what it is good at.
Governments and large organizations likewise have a place in this world. They are adept at handling massive projects that don't require lots of thinking. They're good at passing out millions of social security checks on the same day every month, but they suck at finding the three that got lost. They are a marvel at creating and distributing millions of plastic widgets, but will have to buy a small company to invent a new plastic widget. Large organizations are like big, dumb farm animals. They need tight reins and intelligent control to keep them on task.
The biggest problems occur when they push their way into places where they shouldn't be. Then they become...(Sorry, but I gotta do it)...an ox in a china shop.
I wonder what the peaceful applications of this could be?
Killing enough of the enemy has been known to cause peace.
Heh! I'm just sayin'....
NASCAR got this software years ago. They used it to optimize all their race tracks.
Now we just need for the scientist to find the aliens that were stored down there in ancient times by the alien predators. Then we can harness them as a military weapon to defeat the terrorist.
Of course, they will get loose just as the predator aliens are returning for a hunting expedition. Then we will need Sigorny Weaver AND Arnold Schwarzennager to defeat them and stop them from turning the entire human population into baby food.
What, for me, is surprising is that this wasn't already the case. This strikes me as so fundamental and so basic, and shows just how much profiteering is going on in the cellular industry. Despite having infrastructure investment costs orders of magnitude cheaper than copper, and a less-than-complete requirement for cellular coverage,
You don't even have to go that far. The decision not to provide battery backup is economically foolish. The bastards CHARGE BY THE MINUTE. A power outage means that you're not making money. Money that could be used to pay for batteries that will keep your tower running when the mains go out.
But think of it this way:
If you transplanted the entire current human population to 3000 years ago, the vast majority of them would die off in short order. The number you would have left would possibly be equal to or greater than the population of 3000 years ago. What's more, the resulting population would have a greater genetic diversity, and evolution would proceed to optimal adaptations at a greater pace.
Who the hell fixes the cars? How do they DRIVE the cars? They have enough trouble with menial tasks that it makes no sense that the society in the movie actually survives.
Indirectly, you're making a statement about a society based on technology that they don't understand. I just found out that Industrial Arts classes have been phased out of local area high schools over the last few years, when I started asking around about using a brake on the sly to bend a couple pieces of aluminum.
Think about it a minute. Could you spot weld a panel on the car you're driving? I know to many people that haven't a clue on how to change the oil in their cars. More and more of the manufacturing is being set up to be done by machines, with only a select few being aware of the technical details of what is involved. Most of the people are button pushers. The technical guys are circuit board swappers. As more is automated, technical knowledge is condensed. Carried to the absurd extreme, eventually everything is fully automated and technical knowledge disappears.
At that point, society will, like the jet without fuel, coast to an unavoidable crash.
Dude, you ever been to a WWF Smackdown event?
One of the real problems that you have is that violent crime rates (robbery, murder, rape, etc) have been dropping for a long time.
In what age group.
There was a big stir at my younger son's middle school because of some gang violence. The same day, there was a stabbing at my older son's high school. Many parents kept their high-schoolers at home today, because there were some rumors going around that there was going to be a shooting. (My son was leaving early, because the wrestling team had an out of town tournament, so I let him go.)
I personally don't think the statistics show a rise in juvenile crime, but I don't think the statistics of overall crime apply as much as the specific category.
Dude, even when I was in high-school, the free textbooks usually had a lifespan of less than a couple years. After being lugged around for a couple years, rained on at the bus stops, and doodled to death, the books were uselessly unreadable after a couple of students had passed through them.
I can't see them standing up any better in a third world environment. Just making the OLPC waterproof should make it easily outlast most textbooks, and it is already pretty much doodle-proof.
Before YouTube, in the US all we had was CBS, NBC, and ABC. The uneducated or misinformed had all the audience they could stand.
(Tongue only half-way in cheek).