I worked at trimble navigation, radio group in sunnyvale, ca in the summer of 2000. One of my projects was stressing flash eeprom in the embedded systems we were developing, using rapid thermal cycling, and finding ways to exceed and recover flash beyond manufacturer's rated duty-cycle spec. Yes, we all know this is similar to MTBF calcs and not the same as real world failure modes (*cough* google's hard drive paper). The funny thing was, flash rated at 10^5 writes, even after 10^6+ writes it simply wouldnt fail. What I read is that the failure modes were generally single bit column errors (multiple bytes with the same error), or sector stuck errors. The way to get longer useful life is simply use bigger flash and 2D ECC.
As a 15 year veteran of both IT and Software Development in both academia and industry, there are multiple issues involved.
Does Bill Gates have other intentions?
Immigration puts a downward pressure on wages because now everyone in the world is competing for *your* job. Protectionism be damned, I guess.. in the future, if you're American, you're going to be poor like the rest of the world, even if here in Palo Alto, the rent for a modest 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom is $1500 USD/month.
Specialization
Applicability and focus of candidates. You need someone with a proven, focused track record who can deliver and do a reasonable job for the pay.
Human resources and management, specifically hiring practices of "cold-call" applicants.
The number one task of a manager is to hire the right people ("resources" is the euphemism). Often, H.R. staff, and sometimes managers, have no clue the difference between an EE and a CS major, much less what they do. I see many messy, unfocused roles/responsibilities where a company tries to get a Windows SysAdmin to also be an Oracle DBA... the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-nothing scenario... nothing is for free. The other point is that a degree does not automagically confer intelligence nor superior work product. The fact that companies, such as google, sort people initially based on degree alone is short-sighted, but it's a cold, imperfect world and they dont have anything better.
Résumés are hard to validate
Anyone can write anything they wish. The trick would be to form something of a credit bureau; a worker need not write a resume, jobs seek them. Consider asking for durable letters of recommendation, since it is unlikely your old boss will be in the same job in two years.
Degree of preparedness from degrees, certificates and experience.
The university I attended was a so-called "top 50" school (which, in itself, it is meaningless to rank universities on arbitrary metrics). In the major, the circula was generally not relevant to industry (except academia), and unnecessarily difficult for the average student. Many a sleepless nights coding some stupid program that serves no useful purpose. In addition, there was a complete side-stepping of any mention of any particular platform except Linux. Gee... Windows is used in at least 75% of businesses, why not learn how to write a simple GUI application? Nope! Besides, The I know for a fact many people who graduated from the program and went on to become construction worker and police officer. Some really couldn't hack it in industry due to the fact they cant code their way out of a paper bag, they managed to graduate somehow. Still others cheated their way through, copying code and problem sets... (it happens, especially at Ivy Leagues, and worse... homework for profit, grade inflation and double-standards).
Another fallacy is the need to educate everyone. "If everyone had a million dollars, no one would become a janitor because no one would clean shit up."
The point is: industry and academia should work together, to create useful candidate who can pick a specialization.
For example: create *useful* academic-backed certification paths that do not require degrees: tech support, jr. system engineers, etc. Bring back trade schools for people who do not care about Turing Completeness, and don't put them in charge of developing enterprise backup software. Bring back mentoring. The old guys know the tricks from the mainframe days (virtualization, SaaS and consolidation are rapidly dragging us back). This tacit knowledge (not specific details) are crucial to maintain.
High-turnover of workforce.
With people moving around so much, one needs a way to check references with some degree of authoritative confidence. Again, job/career credit bureau(s) simplify this, as do other tools, such as l
Political correctness, where will it end? Obviously this country (the US) either has a vocal minority that trumphs the will of the majority; or is fairly represented, and therefore is extremely puritanical in actuality. Either way, the problem is, the moral framework in this country is not consistent. Look at the media: simulated sex, sexualization of children, etc., but showing female genitalia is going too far. Where's "the line?" It seems as if "the line" has been pushed so far, it no longer makes sense to have such a notion. Parental responsibily, *bah*, they gave that up to teachers and the gov't long ago. Oh, and you can't say a list of seven words or describe excretions, unless it's on cable or between the hours of X and Y, because a kid could hear! *gasp* Sometimes, I think kids nowadays learn those seven words first, before "mommy" and "daddy".
Anyhow, people are dumb, corporations are run by people, and intelligence of a mob is inversely proportional to the exponent of the population times the log of their intelligence; ergo, large corporations must be really dumb.
At least in Europe, you can see soft-core pr0n on TV and no one gets upset.
"...
BEDEVERE:
What makes you think she is a witch? VILLAGER #3:
Well, she turned me into a newt. BEDEVERE:
A newt? VILLAGER #3:
I got better. VILLAGER #2:
Burn her anyway!..."
Viacom channels on DirecTV also display the messages. I just wish that I wouldn't have to pay for commercials, and shit like QVC, HSN, etc. You should be able to pick (and pay for) only the channels you want, subsidizing stupid channels is anti-competitive and wasteful.
Management Information Systems: you dont do shit but maybe VB, Fortran or some other equally worthless language. Of course, you're not exactly qualified to do anything either... Btw, my CS degree didnt require very much coding... it's mostly irrelavent theory, math, algorithms, and the occasional program. Coding is a monkey-skill, soon to be outsourced to India or made obsolete by better languages/engineering methods and higher-level scripting. Ideally, you should be able to write code w/o any redundant structures, algorithms, lines, etc. Look into Abstract Syntax/Semantic Languages, and Graph-based Programming.
I used the obscure "define:" google feature, ehehe... perspicacity. Would it be cheaper in key-strokes to write "savvy?" Maybe I could make a living rewriting/. articles for grammar? Oh wait, that was a pun on the word in question. Maybe not, as I have always had a certain superbity against writing. Oh no! I am writing, I better stop before I write more! I can't stop wr
[ CONNECTION RESET BY PEER ]
The noun "perspicacity" has 2 senses in WordNet.
1. shrewdness, astuteness, perspicacity, perspicaciousness -- (intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings))
2. judgment, judgement, sound judgment, sound judgement, perspicacity -- (the capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions)
Industrial Flash EEPROMs last several orders of magnitude more than rated, especially Atmel... that stuff goes for 10^7-10^8 easy, even during thermal-extreme-cycling endurance testing. With ECC/FEC/R-S/Turbo coding you can effectively increase data reliability by using more bits (decreasing bit entropy). This does not take into account the radiation levels that affect the bus or other choke-points.. maybe NASA should be using fully mirrored RAM? Do they have a fully parallel backup unit? I mean for $300M, it should fly around the room and do your taxes.
Programs on encrypted USB rom carts? What about having all programs (but maybe not data) reside on a card (not copied to a computer)? If you want a program, you have to buy it and plug it in. And if you want to uninstall it, just remove it. =D It's sure is low-tech, but that wouldn't that stop most pirating? Product activation and typing in long serialz is a waste of time and effort.
Speaking of the "steallar" USPTO: who is the commissioner of this PoS? Political appointee or a committee of morons? Where do we petition for their resignation? (I think it's a good idea... Recall the USPTO!!!!)
Yet another case of neophyte biz-marketeers turning geek-jargon into bizwords. "Broadband" is only the width of the channel, "throughput" is more important. Also, "baud" is not necessarily a "bit" ("baud" is one packet of signal waveforms in linear combinations of FSK/PSK/ASK etc in a unit-time), etc. etc.
Like my former ASME Fellow boss said, "QA/QC, ISO 900x is hog-wash." You can test all day long for things that you know will pass and avoid testing for things that might fail. *STAMP* "Approved, MIL-SPEC"
What about developing a low-cost, one-time-programmable (OTP, probably a fuse-map via strobing rows & cols) USB, and maybe Firewire, ROM single-chip solution? Could this be made cheaper than a CD (and all the support equipement)? One single chip could replace the entire CD manufacturing process with a unversal, solid-state OTP media than could hold anything from an OS, apps, etc. Just think, a chip could be "burned" from a kiosk containing software/songs/etc., or replace CD-Rs.
... houses look dirtier since all paint was mandated to "prevent" smog, while scientific tests prove this shit to be "totally worthless" in all it's claims. How many useless walls would you need to clean Los Angeles? Wouldn't it make sense to control emissions at the source from two-stroke engines (lawn mowers, leaf-blowers, etc.), Diesel engines, and industry? Why didn't we sign the Kyoto protocol? We should spend more effort on ways to use less resources and use resources more efficiently, such as Fuel Cells as energy storage instead of batteries, solar-assisted preheating of household water, energy recovery (shower drain, drier exhaust, etc.), Mylar/vacuum surrounded hot-water pipes and more. For example, surface-air heat-exchange is extremely inefficient, why the hell do server farms still use big-ass HVAC with fans in servers? Those fans produce heat and require current. Why aren't there redundant liquid cooling of components? A data center in Alaska or other remote region could utilize both hydroelectric power and cooling capabilties of the environment (within reason). It would be quiet, and the interconnects/couplers could easily be made durable and rack/blade-compatible. Redunant pumps and valves and pairs of lines into every heatsink would ensure real redundancy. HVAC/Heat-sink/fans are just not up to the energy-density task of heat removal in an efficient manner.
Humans, the most ecologically-altering specie ever.
Agreed, businesses only care about maximizing profit at any human cost. We have the capacity to change laws, but not the motivation nor the attention to so affect change. We allow ourselves to be screwed, so we are complicit in this (silence gives consent, read "A Man for All Seasons"). If we really cared, we would ask for a raise or overtime benefits or unionize or whatever.
The problem is that America will eventually become a play-ground for the well-to-do, and a service economy for the pleasure and maintenance of the upper-crust. We will all be teants in their apartment blocks and sharecroppers to their land.
More troubling is the National Debt (currently 70% of anual GDP), and more specifically, the Total Public Debt is a ticking time-bomb. It's a loan on future taxes that must be paid (or we default, and become another USSR). If I was operating almost a nine months behind in payments, I think my creditors would be camping on my door-step.
DirecTV sends guide update data for TiVo on the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night (because those cheap bastards don't give you 24 hours/day of programming). The phone line is for some DRM or similar other data to keep you from using the equipment for free (that you paid for). This is total razor-blades/inkjet-cartridge greed. And, they fucking spy on you. Use MythTV or other real DVR. TiVo is the Apple of DVR "pay-pay-pay for those updates! 10.2? we're not going fix that, get 10.3 for $130. who cares if your iPod battery doesnt work? or you have to class-action sue us to fix the powerpc powerbook or iBook." Btw, class-action's are a fucking joke.... opt-out bullshit, pennies-on-the-dollar, sweet-heart, slap-on-the-wrist carte-blanc that globally denies any further action against a defendent forever. The legal system is completely gamed in favor of the rich... one only need to look at the constiuency of jails. *cough* OJ *cough* Jackson *cough* Bill Gates *cough* Ken Lay *cough* robber-barrons rule forever... stop dilluding ourselves, there exists an aristocratic, mega-wealthy elite that are effectively above-the-law. Wow, this was related somehow to TiVo? Colin Powell's son, the FCC Chairman, (Nepotism?) sez it's "God's device." I wonder if that somehow violates the spirit of the "Seperation between Church and State." Oops, did i say "spirit?" I meant comps and free trips from the MPAA and big media conglomerates are somehow rationalised as "not bribes." Who the fuck are the kidding, themselves?
Mosty likely, HP will implement some form of steganography that will digitally sign every document you print without you knowing it. *insert tinfoil hat jokes here*. The truth is, the more digital technologies permeate everyday live, the easier it is for big businesses to bend you over your wallet and intrude in our lives. Take Microsoft and their pending implementation of DRM in bios hardware... we're looking at the possible death of all non-Microsoft operating systems, and spyware intrusion on a whole new level. "Please insert your official national identification card to complete product activation, after which you cannot return this product.... Thank You, Mr. John Davis Smith. You have agreed to have Microsoft as your primary health provider, banking services, telecom, insurance, and day-care provider. Please respond within five seconds to decline additional offers."
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The simple solution: Stop buying HP and tell them to go fuck themselves! Secret government DRM is insane. What's next, tape recorders that notify the Secret Service if you say "President" or other keywords? The shit people put up with is unbelievable, maybe the masses are just too stupid to see they are being led to slaughter like a bunch of fucking dumb cows. These morons think the only way is to blindly accept everything imposed on them with open arms or a whimper. "Oh well," they say, "I don't have time to complain since my wife, kids and I have to work 5 jobs and we don't have time to care about our rights." Frankly, this attitude pissed me off to no end. Our soldiers fought and died to protect big businesses' tax loop-hole while the working poor (i.e., the downwardly-mobile "middle" class) is being taxed and raped in every conceivable manner? This continous squandering of our freedoms and rights is a bitter rape of our values and ideals. This ought to be called "The Land of the Free*** and the Home (for sale by owner, inquire within) of the Brazen Swindlers and Slick Marketing/Lawyers/Politicians/Confidence Artists." Old-man-owner-says --- "Sorry sonny, I needed my Proposition 13 (one-time tax shelter for angry, misguided, old, home-owners Californians in 1970's) to keep my $1,000,000 value house I paid $15 for in 500 B.C. so I wouldn't have to pay $10,000/yr in taxes to fund your school, but it's too bad you don't have books nor a roof in your school that doesn't leak nor classes with 50 pupils, and schools overloaded to 350% of capacity." In the final analysis, dumb people are reactionary... they only act when something immediately affects them.
"That's right, ignorant masses, by all means, don't watch C-SPAN, and AVOID VOTING, accountability is not needed, it's our money not your taxes. Government isn't exciting, interesting, nor important; you don't need to pay attention to the issues, politics, SIGs/PACs/lobbyists, and overt bribery; your voice will never be heard by any politician. Leave the governing to the 'experts' and don't question anything."
"This fish is no good to me, it has only one ass."
In otherwords, so they've generated sperm in a dish? *Yikes*! I guess men's days are numbered.
Next step, proteonics & functional genome cataloging & engineering. Then, we will have complete computational models for every organism, including human, and be able to solve virtually every possible disease pathway through computationally generated cures.
Conquer death? If we could save our perfectly sequenced copies of our DNA at birh, could we potentially use gene therapy to patch our faulty genes? Granted that different faults are distributed throughout different cells; we're like a collection of bad photocopies of our original cells. The other problem is non-dividing/replaceable tissues (women's egg sacks, nerve cells, etc.). The other problem is entropy... how much material/labor/power/heat/money would be required to return you to a more pristiene state? In the future though, I suspect it would be possible to extend life to around 1000 yrs.
... if you really want overtime, your job is going to India. Let's see... $60/hr Union job, 15 min smoke breaks every 30 min, "I just work here, Bub."-attitude, and older "untrainable" workers (vs.) $10/hr illegals paid under the table (physical services like cleaning) and Indian contract workers in Mumbai for $6/hr. If you can't do 5-6x their work, you better look for alternate employment, im sorry, but we're in a period economists call "transitory frictional adjustment." Any attempts to prevent it legislatively (min wages, etc) will only make it worse, last longer, and prevent the markets from reaching equilibrium. It's sad, but it's a fact of live, and we're all going to have to adjust to a world market and quit thinking isolationism will solve everything. It will just leave us behind, since India and China are growing at around 8%/yr on avg and are destined to be even bigger economies that the US. The US is not the be-all-end-all of world economies, we can't rest on our laurels. The only constant is change.
I'd have to agree. Was having problems w/ plain ghetto Keytronic 104 + M$ IntelliMou$e Explorer^H^H^Hiter. Now ive been fiddling w/ a G4 PowerBook, seems to be better.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi,
Flash is typically *rated* for 10^5 writes.
I worked at trimble navigation, radio group in sunnyvale, ca in the summer of 2000. One of my projects was stressing flash eeprom in the embedded systems we were developing, using rapid thermal cycling, and finding ways to exceed and recover flash beyond manufacturer's rated duty-cycle spec. Yes, we all know this is similar to MTBF calcs and not the same as real world failure modes (*cough* google's hard drive paper). The funny thing was, flash rated at 10^5 writes, even after 10^6+ writes it simply wouldnt fail. What I read is that the failure modes were generally single bit column errors (multiple bytes with the same error), or sector stuck errors. The way to get longer useful life is simply use bigger flash and 2D ECC.
Regards
Immigration puts a downward pressure on wages because now everyone in the world is competing for *your* job. Protectionism be damned, I guess.. in the future, if you're American, you're going to be poor like the rest of the world, even if here in Palo Alto, the rent for a modest 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom is $1500 USD/month.
Applicability and focus of candidates. You need someone with a proven, focused track record who can deliver and do a reasonable job for the pay.
The number one task of a manager is to hire the right people ("resources" is the euphemism). Often, H.R. staff, and sometimes managers, have no clue the difference between an EE and a CS major, much less what they do. I see many messy, unfocused roles/responsibilities where a company tries to get a Windows SysAdmin to also be an Oracle DBA... the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-nothing scenario... nothing is for free. The other point is that a degree does not automagically confer intelligence nor superior work product. The fact that companies, such as google, sort people initially based on degree alone is short-sighted, but it's a cold, imperfect world and they dont have anything better.
Anyone can write anything they wish. The trick would be to form something of a credit bureau; a worker need not write a resume, jobs seek them. Consider asking for durable letters of recommendation, since it is unlikely your old boss will be in the same job in two years.
The university I attended was a so-called "top 50" school (which, in itself, it is meaningless to rank universities on arbitrary metrics). In the major, the circula was generally not relevant to industry (except academia), and unnecessarily difficult for the average student. Many a sleepless nights coding some stupid program that serves no useful purpose. In addition, there was a complete side-stepping of any mention of any particular platform except Linux. Gee... Windows is used in at least 75% of businesses, why not learn how to write a simple GUI application? Nope! Besides, The I know for a fact many people who graduated from the program and went on to become construction worker and police officer. Some really couldn't hack it in industry due to the fact they cant code their way out of a paper bag, they managed to graduate somehow. Still others cheated their way through, copying code and problem sets... (it happens, especially at Ivy Leagues, and worse... homework for profit, grade inflation and double-standards).
Another fallacy is the need to educate everyone. "If everyone had a million dollars, no one would become a janitor because no one would clean shit up."
The point is: industry and academia should work together, to create useful candidate who can pick a specialization.
For example: create *useful* academic-backed certification paths that do not require degrees: tech support, jr. system engineers, etc. Bring back trade schools for people who do not care about Turing Completeness, and don't put them in charge of developing enterprise backup software. Bring back mentoring. The old guys know the tricks from the mainframe days (virtualization, SaaS and consolidation are rapidly dragging us back). This tacit knowledge (not specific details) are crucial to maintain.
With people moving around so much, one needs a way to check references with some degree of authoritative confidence. Again, job/career credit bureau(s) simplify this, as do other tools, such as l
Lucy Liu Robot: You're one sexy man [mechanical voice] Philip J. Fry!
Obviously this country (the US) either has a vocal minority that trumphs the will of the majority; or is fairly represented, and therefore is extremely puritanical in actuality. Either way, the problem is, the moral framework in this country is not consistent. Look at the media: simulated sex, sexualization of children, etc., but showing female genitalia is going too far. Where's "the line?" It seems as if "the line" has been pushed so far, it no longer makes sense to have such a notion. Parental responsibily, *bah*, they gave that up to teachers and the gov't long ago. Oh, and you can't say a list of seven words or describe excretions, unless it's on cable or between the hours of X and Y, because a kid could hear! *gasp* Sometimes, I think kids nowadays learn those seven words first, before "mommy" and "daddy".
Anyhow, people are dumb, corporations are run by people, and intelligence of a mob is inversely proportional to the exponent of the population times the log of their intelligence; ergo, large corporations must be really dumb.
At least in Europe, you can see soft-core pr0n on TV and no one gets upset.
Script excerpt from M&tHG http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/witch-tr
60 - 75 Hz gives me a headache
80 Hz is barely tollerable
85 Hz is okay
90 Hz is so-so
100 Hz is good
I can tell the difference within 60 - 110 Hz with about +/- 5 Hz precision.
Viacom channels on DirecTV also display the messages. I just wish that I wouldn't have to pay for commercials, and shit like QVC, HSN, etc. You should be able to pick (and pay for) only the channels you want, subsidizing stupid channels is anti-competitive and wasteful.
Management Information Systems: you dont do shit but maybe VB, Fortran or some other equally worthless language. Of course, you're not exactly qualified to do anything either... Btw, my CS degree didnt require very much coding... it's mostly irrelavent theory, math, algorithms, and the occasional program. Coding is a monkey-skill, soon to be outsourced to India or made obsolete by better languages/engineering methods and higher-level scripting. Ideally, you should be able to write code w/o any redundant structures, algorithms, lines, etc. Look into Abstract Syntax/Semantic Languages, and Graph-based Programming.
[ CONNECTION RESET BY PEER ]
Goolge finds good ol' Princeton/MIT resourcesIndustrial Flash EEPROMs last several orders of magnitude more than rated, especially Atmel... that stuff goes for 10^7-10^8 easy, even during thermal-extreme-cycling endurance testing. With ECC/FEC/R-S/Turbo coding you can effectively increase data reliability by using more bits (decreasing bit entropy). This does not take into account the radiation levels that affect the bus or other choke-points.. maybe NASA should be using fully mirrored RAM? Do they have a fully parallel backup unit? I mean for $300M, it should fly around the room and do your taxes.
the non hidden features i use alot are quoting "some phrase like this" and excluding TLD's like -site:com -site:edu etc.
Programs on encrypted USB rom carts? What about having all programs (but maybe not data) reside on a card (not copied to a computer)? If you want a program, you have to buy it and plug it in. And if you want to uninstall it, just remove it. =D It's sure is low-tech, but that wouldn't that stop most pirating? Product activation and typing in long serialz is a waste of time and effort.
Speaking of the "steallar" USPTO: who is the commissioner of this PoS? Political appointee or a committee of morons? Where do we petition for their resignation? (I think it's a good idea... Recall the USPTO!!!!)
Yet another case of neophyte biz-marketeers turning geek-jargon into bizwords. "Broadband" is only the width of the channel, "throughput" is more important. Also, "baud" is not necessarily a "bit" ("baud" is one packet of signal waveforms in linear combinations of FSK/PSK/ASK etc in a unit-time), etc. etc.
The only sure things in life are: misery, death, taxes, change, and corruption.
Like my former ASME Fellow boss said, "QA/QC, ISO 900x is hog-wash." You can test all day long for things that you know will pass and avoid testing for things that might fail. *STAMP* "Approved, MIL-SPEC"
What about developing a low-cost, one-time-programmable (OTP, probably a fuse-map via strobing rows & cols) USB, and maybe Firewire, ROM single-chip solution? Could this be made cheaper than a CD (and all the support equipement)? One single chip could replace the entire CD manufacturing process with a unversal, solid-state OTP media than could hold anything from an OS, apps, etc. Just think, a chip could be "burned" from a kiosk containing software/songs/etc., or replace CD-Rs.
Is Wolfram crazy, eccentric, grandeos or a Scientologist?
... houses look dirtier since all paint was mandated to "prevent" smog, while scientific tests prove this shit to be "totally worthless" in all it's claims. How many useless walls would you need to clean Los Angeles? Wouldn't it make sense to control emissions at the source from two-stroke engines (lawn mowers, leaf-blowers, etc.), Diesel engines, and industry? Why didn't we sign the Kyoto protocol? We should spend more effort on ways to use less resources and use resources more efficiently, such as Fuel Cells as energy storage instead of batteries, solar-assisted preheating of household water, energy recovery (shower drain, drier exhaust, etc.), Mylar/vacuum surrounded hot-water pipes and more. For example, surface-air heat-exchange is extremely inefficient, why the hell do server farms still use big-ass HVAC with fans in servers? Those fans produce heat and require current. Why aren't there redundant liquid cooling of components? A data center in Alaska or other remote region could utilize both hydroelectric power and cooling capabilties of the environment (within reason). It would be quiet, and the interconnects/couplers could easily be made durable and rack/blade-compatible. Redunant pumps and valves and pairs of lines into every heatsink would ensure real redundancy. HVAC/Heat-sink/fans are just not up to the energy-density task of heat removal in an efficient manner.
Humans, the most ecologically-altering specie ever.
Agreed, businesses only care about maximizing profit at any human cost. We have the capacity to change laws, but not the motivation nor the attention to so affect change. We allow ourselves to be screwed, so we are complicit in this (silence gives consent, read "A Man for All Seasons"). If we really cared, we would ask for a raise or overtime benefits or unionize or whatever.
The problem is that America will eventually become a play-ground for the well-to-do, and a service economy for the pleasure and maintenance of the upper-crust. We will all be teants in their apartment blocks and sharecroppers to their land.
More troubling is the National Debt (currently 70% of anual GDP), and more specifically, the Total Public Debt is a ticking time-bomb. It's a loan on future taxes that must be paid (or we default, and become another USSR). If I was operating almost a nine months behind in payments, I think my creditors would be camping on my door-step.
DirecTV sends guide update data for TiVo on the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night (because those cheap bastards don't give you 24 hours/day of programming). The phone line is for some DRM or similar other data to keep you from using the equipment for free (that you paid for). This is total razor-blades/inkjet-cartridge greed. And, they fucking spy on you. Use MythTV or other real DVR. TiVo is the Apple of DVR "pay-pay-pay for those updates! 10.2? we're not going fix that, get 10.3 for $130. who cares if your iPod battery doesnt work? or you have to class-action sue us to fix the powerpc powerbook or iBook." Btw, class-action's are a fucking joke.... opt-out bullshit, pennies-on-the-dollar, sweet-heart, slap-on-the-wrist carte-blanc that globally denies any further action against a defendent forever. The legal system is completely gamed in favor of the rich... one only need to look at the constiuency of jails. *cough* OJ *cough* Jackson *cough* Bill Gates *cough* Ken Lay *cough* robber-barrons rule forever... stop dilluding ourselves, there exists an aristocratic, mega-wealthy elite that are effectively above-the-law. Wow, this was related somehow to TiVo? Colin Powell's son, the FCC Chairman, (Nepotism?) sez it's "God's device." I wonder if that somehow violates the spirit of the "Seperation between Church and State." Oops, did i say "spirit?" I meant comps and free trips from the MPAA and big media conglomerates are somehow rationalised as "not bribes." Who the fuck are the kidding, themselves?
Mosty likely, HP will implement some form of steganography that will digitally sign every document you print without you knowing it. *insert tinfoil hat jokes here*. The truth is, the more digital technologies permeate everyday live, the easier it is for big businesses to bend you over your wallet and intrude in our lives. Take Microsoft and their pending implementation of DRM in bios hardware... we're looking at the possible death of all non-Microsoft operating systems, and spyware intrusion on a whole new level. "Please insert your official national identification card to complete product activation, after which you cannot return this product.... Thank You, Mr. John Davis Smith. You have agreed to have Microsoft as your primary health provider, banking services, telecom, insurance, and day-care provider. Please respond within five seconds to decline additional offers."
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The simple solution: Stop buying HP and tell them to go fuck themselves! Secret government DRM is insane. What's next, tape recorders that notify the Secret Service if you say "President" or other keywords? The shit people put up with is unbelievable, maybe the masses are just too stupid to see they are being led to slaughter like a bunch of fucking dumb cows. These morons think the only way is to blindly accept everything imposed on them with open arms or a whimper. "Oh well," they say, "I don't have time to complain since my wife, kids and I have to work 5 jobs and we don't have time to care about our rights." Frankly, this attitude pissed me off to no end. Our soldiers fought and died to protect big businesses' tax loop-hole while the working poor (i.e., the downwardly-mobile "middle" class) is being taxed and raped in every conceivable manner? This continous squandering of our freedoms and rights is a bitter rape of our values and ideals. This ought to be called "The Land of the Free*** and the Home (for sale by owner, inquire within) of the Brazen Swindlers and Slick Marketing/Lawyers/Politicians/Confidence Artists." Old-man-owner-says --- "Sorry sonny, I needed my Proposition 13 (one-time tax shelter for angry, misguided, old, home-owners Californians in 1970's) to keep my $1,000,000 value house I paid $15 for in 500 B.C. so I wouldn't have to pay $10,000/yr in taxes to fund your school, but it's too bad you don't have books nor a roof in your school that doesn't leak nor classes with 50 pupils, and schools overloaded to 350% of capacity." In the final analysis, dumb people are reactionary... they only act when something immediately affects them.
"That's right, ignorant masses, by all means, don't watch C-SPAN, and AVOID VOTING, accountability is not needed, it's our money not your taxes. Government isn't exciting, interesting, nor important; you don't need to pay attention to the issues, politics, SIGs/PACs/lobbyists, and overt bribery; your voice will never be heard by any politician. Leave the governing to the 'experts' and don't question anything."
Almost, except you can't browse DNS (like you can UDDI, LDAP, DAP, NDS, AD, NTLM, Netbios) unless you have a tier-1 zone updates subscription. =)
"This fish is no good to me, it has only one ass."
In otherwords, so they've generated sperm in a dish? *Yikes*! I guess men's days are numbered.
Next step, proteonics & functional genome cataloging & engineering. Then, we will have complete computational models for every organism, including human, and be able to solve virtually every possible disease pathway through computationally generated cures.
Conquer death? If we could save our perfectly sequenced copies of our DNA at birh, could we potentially use gene therapy to patch our faulty genes? Granted that different faults are distributed throughout different cells; we're like a collection of bad photocopies of our original cells. The other problem is non-dividing/replaceable tissues (women's egg sacks, nerve cells, etc.). The other problem is entropy... how much material/labor/power/heat/money would be required to return you to a more pristiene state? In the future though, I suspect it would be possible to extend life to around 1000 yrs.
"What a Brave New World, with such geeks in it."
... if you really want overtime, your job is going to India. Let's see... $60/hr Union job, 15 min smoke breaks every 30 min, "I just work here, Bub."-attitude, and older "untrainable" workers (vs.) $10/hr illegals paid under the table (physical services like cleaning) and Indian contract workers in Mumbai for $6/hr. If you can't do 5-6x their work, you better look for alternate employment, im sorry, but we're in a period economists call "transitory frictional adjustment." Any attempts to prevent it legislatively (min wages, etc) will only make it worse, last longer, and prevent the markets from reaching equilibrium. It's sad, but it's a fact of live, and we're all going to have to adjust to a world market and quit thinking isolationism will solve everything. It will just leave us behind, since India and China are growing at around 8%/yr on avg and are destined to be even bigger economies that the US. The US is not the be-all-end-all of world economies, we can't rest on our laurels. The only constant is change.
I'd have to agree. Was having problems w/ plain ghetto Keytronic 104 + M$ IntelliMou$e Explorer^H^H^Hiter. Now ive been fiddling w/ a G4 PowerBook, seems to be better.