No. Individual human beings may (or may not) be smart. People, as a whole, are stupid. You get enough of them in a room and they become unable to make a decision. Herd mentality kicks in, folks start worrying about what other people think.
yet humanity is not currently enslaved.
Depends on who you're talking about, when, and where. There are plenty of people on this planet right now who may as well be called slaves. And plenty of other people who have very little choice in their lives.
Why? Because people are intelligent enough to know that's a bad idea.
Bad idea for who? It's a bad idea for me to work 50+ hours a week for crap pay... But it's a good idea for my boss to find some sucker who'll do it. And if my boss has some political leverage, some lobbyists, some deep pockets... Well, maybe I won't get so much choice in where I work, or how long I work, or what I'll be paid.
If robots are ever more intelligent than us, they'll also be intelligent enough to make good decisions.
To hell with good decisions, I want to make my own decisions.
Frankly, I'd rather have the more intelligent beings in charge. They would actually make more intelligent decisions!
Like what, outlawing pointy objects because we stupid humans might hurt ourselves? Getting rid of all junk food because it isn't healthy? Consolidating people into perfectly-designed arcologies because they waste less space? What about individual wants and desires? Or are those automatically secondary to what's intelligent?
It's humans that should not be trusted.
Trust is over-rated. With the exception of my wife and parents, I don't trust anyone. Everyone's got their own agenda.
They're just consistently intelligent enough.
What's great about leadership by human beings is that they're so predictable.
Some people want power, some want pleasure, some want money, some want sex, some want prestige... But everyone's looking out for themselves ultimately. Everyone's trying to meet their own goals. Figure out what their goal is, and you know exactly what they'll do.
Look at the politicians in office, have any of them truly surprised you? Ever?
Look at the way they campaign, and how people react to their messages. Any surprises there?
At least with human leadership you can understand what's going on. Maybe you've got different goals, but at least you're both human. You're both thinking in terms of human timespans, about human goals.
Put a machine in charge and who knows what it'll want, or whether we'll be very happy with its goals.
Obviously you can't plug in a single external HDD, leave it in the building all the time, do nightly dumps to it, and call it a backup. That's wrong for at least a half-dozen reasons.
But what's wrong with buying a pile of external drives and using them just like you would a tape? Plug one in every day, run the backup, and then store it someplace safe offsite. Seems to me that it would work just the same as a tape.
If you've got software that only runs under Windows... Or you've got users who are completely unable to learn a new OS... Or your school/corporate/office/whatever policy doesn't allow Linux... Or the machine isn't yours to reload... Then Linux isn't much of a solution at all.
And even if Linux is a real, viable option, it doesn't solve the entire problem. It might very well take care of malware... But what about SPAM email with explicit crap in it? And advertising popping up on websites? Will Linux magically fix all that as well?
I mean, I like Linux. I run it at home on most of my systems. But just saying "linux doesn't get malware" really doesn't address the original question.
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
I mean, I can count on one hand (I know I know) the number of times I've actually had porn flash up on my browser when I was not looking for it....in all these years.
How bad a problem is this actually? From anecdotal evidence, I'd have to guess if someone has porn on the screen....they were looking for it.
Depends on the situation, the user, etc... But, yes, it does happen accidentally.
You can throw some pretty innocent phrases into Google and get some pretty interesting results. Some torrent search sites, which are very popular for folks looking to download music, have pretty explicit advertising on them. And it's entirely too easy to wind up on somebody's mailing list and get deluged with advertisements for various adult services. Some malware pops up advertising as well, sometimes it is of the adult variety.
I do too, although arguably street view is a lot more useful for that. You're not going to be looking at where you're going from 200 miles up when you get there, so why do you need to see it from that angle if the purpose is to get an idea of what it will look like from the ground?
I live in Upstate NY, and around here we don't get a street view of much.
The satellite imagery is actually pretty helpful. A map just basically shows you a bunch of lines representing streets, it doesn't give you a feeling for what's in the area. The satellite imagery, however, will show you whether it's a residential or commercial area. And if you see a big building with lots of long, yellow vehicles in its parking lot you can guess that it's a school. Or you might see an interesting structure or grove of trees or something that makes a decent landmark.
Okay, here's an "artificial barrier": You're an IT administrator for a bank. You support about 35 mission-critical applications that go to a mainframe.
All those applications were written for Windows 95. Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and will still work.
Actually... Not such a safe bet. Lots of Win95 code no longer works under XP/Vista. Whether or not your specific applications will work just depends on what weird code they relied on.
Why keep the mainframe? Because it's the only thing that's gone through the laborous process of being documented, audited, and certified for use. Those certifications could run into the tens of millions of dollars, plus another fifty million to retool your existing infrastructure, minimum.
I don't know what this mainframe has to do with the argument about Microsoft's supposedly-higher standards... That mainframe won't be running Windows. And it will likely be able to talk to just about anything you put in the building - Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
If everything is working, why would you rebuild at all? Unless some software vendor is forcing you to upgrade to the latest and greatest, which doesn't run on your current systems... But that happens on Windows plenty often. I just recently had to sell a client a whole new server, new hardware, new (Windows) OS licenses because their software vendor made them upgrade to the newest version to keep support.
But... Aside from vendor pushes... Linux has some of the best hardware support out there. It'll run on just about anything. The odds of you being able to get your existing system up and running on shiny new hardware are much better if it's a Linux system.
Promiscuity is a "large" number of sexual partners. Large being purely subjective in this case. Just because someone is labeled as promiscuous does not mean that they're sleeping with a different person every night, nor does it mean that there's no value attached to the sex that they have. People in long-term, loving multiple-partner relationships are often labeled as promiscuous.
Hedonism is seeking pleasure above all else, that feeling good is your highest calling. This doesn't necessarily mean sex - it can also mean drugs, alcohol, food, whatever. And, yes, pursuing your own happiness/pleasure at the expense of all else does lead to many ills - social and otherwise.
The loss of shame leads to many, many social ills.
Personally, I've found that shame is rarely useful.
Shame comes in two flavors - your own, and everyone else's.
Your own shame is typically a result of realizing you did something you probably shouldn't have. I find it is typically better to think things through the first time and avoid the shame alltogether. When I'm trying to make a decision "I might be ashamed" doesn't enter into it - "is it a good decision" does. And typically, if it's a good decision, there's no call for shame.
Everyone else's shame is an attempt to get you to conform to what they think you should be doing. "You ought to be ashamed!" is someone telling you that you did something they don't like. Unless it's someone you genuinely value - your spouse or parent, for example - those are empty words. I personally couldn't care less whether some random person thinks I should be ashamed or not.
The "if it feels good, do it" philosophy is bunk.
If it feels good, why wouldn't you do it?
Certainly doing it, whatever it may be, to excess is probably going to be bad. But in moderation, as a responsible human being, why not? Why not have sex? Why not eat cake? Why not drink beer? Why not go skiing? Why not read a book? Is there something inherently noble in depriving yourself of pleasure? Is there something wrong with enjoying yourself?
Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.
Most of the time "degeneracy" is a subjective label. If you agree with what someone is doing, to the extent that they're doing it, they're OK. If you don't agree with it, or if they're doing it too much, they're degenerate. And what exactly we label as "degenerate" is strongly influenced by our own morals and values - not any objective analysis.
If someone likes to read books, are they degenerate? What if they go through a book every single night? What if they avoid social contact in favor of reading? What if they get so hooked on reading that it starts affecting their work? What if they just can't put down a book during lunch and never get that TPS report done? Are they degenerate? Somehow that word just doesn't seem to fit, does it? Addicted maybe... They've certainly got issues... But degenerate?
Now what if they really like having sex? What if they have sex with someone different every night? What if they spend all their time trying to hook up with a new partner? What if their sexual encounters start affecting their work? What if they get caught fooling around with someone during lunch? I'm guessing the world "degenerate" seems a lot more fitting in this case.
Most of the western world (not just the US) has been conditioned by immersion in Judeo-Christian values to view sex as somehow separate from normal life activities. It's something secret, sacred, or dirty that polite people don't really talk about. It's something that should only happen between married couples... Or something that should only happen with a certain frequency... Or something that shouldn't involve people of the same gender, or power tools, or animals, or chains, or whatever... Sex has values and judgments attached to it that eating, for example, doesn't. Yet both of those are completely natural, and often pleasurable, parts of human existence.
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
I'm not much of a Patriot... I've spent the last 8 years feeling downright embarrassed to be an American... And we've certainly got plenty of skeletons in our national closet... But the US isn't the problem.
Sure, we're a little self-righteous and fundamentalist... A little quick to look for military solutions rather than political ones... But we're not the only ones.
Human beings are fundamentally stupid creatures. We've been waging war on each-other since the dawn of time. If we don't have a real reason to fight we'll make something up. There were wars for thousands of years before the US was born, and there will be wars for thousands of years after the US is gone.
It's rather comical that so many people out there are trying to break DRM and band themselves as allies of the open source movement in some way. The thing is, the legal framework, the right of the copyright holder to issue a license, is the same for software with DRM as it is without. If we have a legal system where copying images, songs and books is tolerated, then we also have a legal system where taking GPL code and subverting it will be tolerated as well.
The GPL is a license that dictates how a work can be copied and distributed - which was the intent of copyrights originally. To control who can copy and/or distribute a work, to make sure that the author actually gets something for their effort.
DRM, on the other hand, restricts how someone who already has a copy of the work is able to use it. DRM keeps me from reading my ebook on the device of my choice. DRM keeps me from listening to my music on the device of my choice. DRM keeps me from re-installing the software that I purchased because it has been activated too many times.
Most folks on here, and in the open source community at large, don't really have a huge problem with copyright. They may have issues with various current implementations or protection periods... But most folks are ok with the idea of an author/creator getting paid for their work in some way.
DRM though... DRM isn't about keeping people from making unauthorized copies. DRM is about selling people one copy of a movie for their DVD player, and a second copy for their PC, and a third copy for their iPod. DRM is about the middle-men (not the content creators) dictating how you use the content.
Wake me up when they make a nice, expandable, mid ranged desktop class Mac. I still think that's the big gap in their lineup.
I agree that such a machine would be great... And it's really what I would personally be interested in... But I can't fault them for not offering such a beast.
People don't upgrade/expand their computers anymore. Even with Windows workstations... Folks buy some kind of pre-configured off-the-shelf box from HP, Dell, or whoever. They use it for a year or two, fill it full of crapware. When it gets slow they throw it out and buy a new pre-configured off-the-shelf box.
I remember people predicting this, mostly the fundies. They were laughed at. The gist of the flameage was "That won't ever happen, you guys need to STFU and let us scientists get on with the science."
I'm not sure where you were... But around here folks were responding with "yep, it's only a matter of time."
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
We are so doomed.
Is it a bad idea?
At this stage they're just screening and letting folks know how their kids are going to look... What's wrong with that?
And eventually, when we get to the point of custom-building kids, what's so wrong with that? How different is that from all the rampant plastic surgery out there today?
Oh, I'm well aware of the possible consequences... We could wind up with no genetic diversity, and a species-wide susceptibility to some disease. Could wind up with new kinds of genetic discrimination. All kinds of horrors may ensue...
But that isn't really something in our control, is it? Various groups around the United States will undoubtably declare this stuff a sin and ban it - and they won't use it. The US Government might very well ban it... Would've been more likely under the last administration, but it might still happen... But that won't stop other governments from allowing it. And people from all over the world will flock to wherever it is available.
In short, people will make their own decisions - regardless of what you, or I, or any government approves of. And there's really nothing you can do about that.
Thats all fine and dandy, except, where I work someone has to prioritize our assignments, one of those is getting the backup scripts up and working for nightly backups, but so far that job has been prioritized way below adding new fizzbang to the interface.
Currently I'm just grabbing a new snapshot of the database once in a while.
(On the positive side we know we can recover our backups, that at least is verified)
I see this all too often with our clients... Backups are considered a low priority because everything is up and running right now. Nobody wants to waste time/money on something that isn't necessary right now.
Then they have some kind of horrible software crash that eats all their data... Or the hardware goes up in a puff of smoke... Or the building floods... And all of a sudden they're scrambling to get things back up and running.
Usually after a disaster like that they'll take backups more seriously... If they're still in business.
lesson #1 on the 'net you can't tell the major corporation from the kid in a garage
lesson #2, trust no-one with your data
1 and 2 don't really matter if you've got a backup. Who cares if it's some kid in a garage if you've got a backup? If it's more convenient to have your data on some kind of web service, go for it! But make sure you've got a backup.
lesson #3 disaster recovery capability only exists after it's been tested
lesson #4 backups are useless unless you can prove you can recover from them
This is really where things fall apart over and over again. I've seen tons of clients with no backup at all... Or a backup that they've never tested and they just assume it's working correctly.
It isn't a backup unless you can take it off-site, and it isn't a backup unless you know you can get your business back up and running with it.
Argh, why not just add a backup or replication database on one of the spare Mac Minis?
That way you would have needed a complete server farm disaster to mess things up irretrievably.
Replication gives you redundancy, much like RAID does. It lets you survive a hardware failure or two. It is not a backup. If the building burns down, or a tree falls on your server room, or lightning fries everything you are still screwed.
What they needed was a backup. A tape, or removable HDD, or a flash drive, or a CD, or something that can be taken out of the building on a regular basis. Once a day, once a week, once a month... Whatever.
Then, no matter what happens to your live hardware, you've got a backup you can restore from. Buy some new hardware, throw your backup at it, done!
No retailer gives you a decent price for used games. They'll buy it from you for $5 and then sell it to someone else for $45.
Well, maybe if they're selling it on eBay... You might be able to get a halfway decent price on there.
Dude, where I live, you get something like 60% of the initial price for recent games. I've already sold shitty games bought for 45 euros, to get 30 euros. Older games are not the same matter, of course. What on hell is the name of the franchise who rip off people so much (so that I know when I come back to live in Austin, TX)?
I exaggerate somewhat... And it's been years since I worked at EB... And these days I do all my shopping on-line... So it is entirely possible that things aren't quite so bad these days.
But when I used to work for Electronics Boutique (now GameStop) we would routinely buy back relatively new titles for $10 - $15... maybe $25 if it was incredibly popular. Then we'd re-sell them for $40 - $45.
You hardly saved anything buying a relatively new title pre-owned. And you hardly got any money by selling it back. It was crazy. Someone would have to sell three or four new(ish) games to us in order to buy a single new(ish) pre-owned game.
But, of course, the company loved this. Pre-owned games were almost pure profit for them. Folks would use the money you gave them on store merchandise... You didn't have to ship the games anywhere... And then you re-sold the title for a huge mark-up...
This is entirely possible. When I used to work at EB there were plenty of people who obviously had plenty of disposable income. These were typically Highschool/College students who didn't really have a whole lot of bills to worry about. They'd buy pretty much anything - didn't matter what the reviewers were saying, didn't matter how many hours of gameplay... As long as there was some sex or violence, they'd buy it. And then they'd be back in a day or two to complain about it... But they'd buy the next piece of overpriced crap too.
Actually, looking at what I've just written... Maybe that's the dynamic we're seeing in action right now.
For years the target audience for video games has been dependents - little kids, or highschoolers, or college folks who aren't paying their own bills. Gaming is gaining acceptance, and gamers are growing up. More and more people these days enjoy playing video games, but they've got bills to pay and can't afford to blow $50 on a piece of crap.
2) finish the game ASAP to sell it back and buy the next one.
People may actually be doing this... But it'll only be as a side-effect of having finished it already. No retailer gives you a decent price for used games. They'll buy it from you for $5 and then sell it to someone else for $45. Nobody is going to intentionally buy a short game with the idea that they can sell it back and the price won't be so bad.
Well, maybe if they're selling it on eBay... You might be able to get a halfway decent price on there.
I paid $50 for WoW, another $15 a months, another $50 for Burning Crusade, another $50 for Lich King... And I feel that is cheap entertainment. I play at least an hour a day, and have been doing that for the last couple of years. I'm still finding new things to do. It is still entertaining me.
Similarly, I paid $50 for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade a couple years back. I've kept that installed on my computer and I play it at least once a week. For a couple years. Again, well-worth the money spent.
Then there are games like Red Alert 3 that I don't play for more than a week because they're absolute crap. Or FPS titles with a 7-hour storyline...
If I'm going to spend $50+ for a game, I want to be entertained for a good month at the very least.
Maybe we should resolve the ethical concerns before we perform the science...
This is opening Pandora's Box.
How, exactly, do you propose to resolve the ethical concerns before we even know what they are?
You're suggesting that we sit down and thoroughly examine all the possible ethical concerns ahead of time and come to some kind of consensus...
Never mind the fact that we can't even get everyone to agree on how human beings should be treated, let's all figure out how we're going to treat our human/animal hybrids.
And then, after tons of debate and discussion it turns out we can't even make human/animal hybrids. Tons of wasted time and effort.
Or maybe our hybrids turn out to have no more brainpower than the animals they were hybridized with, but we've already decided that they should have the right to vote.
Or maybe our hybrids turn out to be far smarter than us and take over.
We need a main, reliable, one size fits all DESKTOP distro. that's what we need.
Well, don't we already have that?
Ubuntu could probably be called a main, reliable, one-size-fits-all desktop distro. Or, if you don't like the non-free stuff in Ubuntu you could just go with Debian... It isn't quite one-size-fits-all, but it is damn close. Or you could go with Fedora instead...
Of course, I just listed off three different distros (and there's a ton that I didn't list). And people will complain that this is exactly the problem - there are too many choices. Folks will say we need just a single one-size-fits-all desktop distro...
and yes, all other distros should continue, for really many of them are for niche markets.
Well, if we aren't going to somehow outlaw all these other distributions, how are we going to arrive at a single desktop distro? How will we convince everyone to get behind the golden distro? How will we even choose the golden distro? What if someone disagrees and continues to develop their own desktop distro?
linux basically equals webserver as of now. whereas many IIS servers house 1-2 company sites (and many of them are in-house boxes), linux distros host hundreds each.
but on desktop we dont have a strong name presence so that when you name it, everyone will know. we need that.
Of course there's name recognition - the name is Linux.
What's that netbook run? Linux What're you using to run your database server? Linux Wow, cool desktop, what is it? Linux How can I keep from getting all these viruses? Linux How did you get that file server running so cheaply? Linux
Folks recognize the name Linux. It's been in the news here and there... It's showed up in magazines and product information and newspapers here and there. They recognize Linux at least as much as they recognize Windows or Macintosh.
Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.
They do. Routinely.
Molten Core was added after launch as a free patch.
The entire Silithus zone was redone in a free patch, and two new raid zones (Ahn'Qiraj) were added.
Zul'Gurub was added as a free patch.
Naxxramas was added as a free patch.
And that's just the stuff that was added after retail... Tons more stuff was added, free of charge, after Burning Crusade was rolled out.
Black Temple was added as a free patch.
The whole Sunwell Plateau thing was a free patch.
Zul'Aman was added as a free patch.
And that's just the large changes... Tons of quests and dungeons have been revamped and tweaked. Dustwallow Marsh is nothing like it used to be. New factions and quests were added for the Skyguard and Ogres...
Television is rapidly replacing radio as a standard, baseline means of keeping up-to-date with what's going on in the world.
Does the American digital TV include digital radio stations? I listen to the digital radio stations broadcast in the UK regularly, via my digital TV (they can obviously fit many audio+HTML-like graphics streams into the space of one audio+video stream).
I don't own a radio, but I'm considering getting one (a digital radio). Something that can stream internet radio but isn't noisy like my PC would be better though, maybe I should just find an old laptop.
Honestly, I'm not certain that we have any digital radio stations over here. Everything I listen to is analog, as far as I'm aware.
The television is an entertainment device, nothing more. We have so much more to worry about in this country other than if someone will continue view ads on the tv when we move on from an archaic system.
Do I have this wrong? Is there something else about television that I am forgetting?
Television is rapidly replacing radio as a standard, baseline means of keeping up-to-date with what's going on in the world.
Local news, national news, political coverage, important informational announcements, emergency information...
Yes, you can get all that on a radio. Or the Internet. Or a news paper. But that doesn't mean that all television is useless fluff. And there are a lot of people these days who don't own radios, don't have bandwidth, and down get newspapers. Like it or not, television is nearly omnipresent.
I do agree that an awful lot of time, effort, and money is being wasted on this transition. Just flip the switch already! Cut it all over to digital and call it done. Yes, people will lose their signal... But it isn't like an extra week or two, or even a month or two, is going to make much of a difference. At some point we're just going to have to bite the bullet and make the switch. There will be fallout. It really doesn't matter how long we wait, there will be some portion of the populace that is not ready.
If you have ever had to walk a n00b, who thinks that webmail is email, through setting up POP3, then you would know the answer to that question.
This isn't about replacing POP3 or IMAP, those are unquestionably superior, this is about expanding the subset of POP3 or IMAP features that can be accessed by people whose technical knowledge doesn't extend far enough to set those up.
My job basically consists of supporting n00bs of all flavors. I routinely have to set up POP and IMAP email for them. Google has some very good documentation on their website that is tailored to several popular email clients. Or you can take control of their machine with something like LogMeIn or VNC. It isn't nearly as impossible as you seem to think.
I understand the appeal of simply going to the same, familiar Gmail web interface that you normally would... But I really don't think it'll make things all that much easier. In fact, it may confuse people even more when their familiar Gmail web interface behaves in an odd manner because it is offline.
Personally, for folks who are routinely working offline, I just set them up with an IMAP client and teach them to use it all the time. Then there's little difference when they're online...they just don't send/receive...everything else works the same as always.
It's getting to the point where the only solution is going to be dumping data to more HDDs
What's wrong with that? Data storage is data storage...
Just because tape is the old man, that once upon a time was the end-all solution for backing up everything, doesn't mean there's really any benefit to it, today.
Tape backups are more of a legacy system that just kept on being used and minimally improved as technology progressed. The writing has been on the wall for well over a decade.
Tapes are relatively small, sturdy, and lightweight. An LTO4 holding 1 TB is quite a bit more portable than a 3.5" HDD with a similar capacity.
For years now we've been able to sell our clients a single-tape backup solution... Leave a tape in the drive when you go home for the night, the backup runs, you grab the tape and put it someplace safe in the morning. It's fairly easy to get people to throw a single tape in their purse/briefcase and take it home with them. And we don't have to worry too much about those tapes being jostled or dropped.
Laptop drives are nice and portable... And there are some great external USB drives... But I worry about reliability. I'm not sure how well a HDD would hold up to being jostled around in a purse or briefcase all day long.
Every time a new, larger drive comes out, people say, "That much data in one drive is dangerous!"
So here's what you do. Go buy ten 200GB drives. RAID them together. Who do you think will lose data, you, with ten times the possible failure points, or me with only one?
Just back it up, biznatch!
Well, of course backups are the solution. And anyone with half a clue and some important data has nobody to blame but themselves if they don't have a backup.
But if you've got 10x 200 GB HDDs, and one of them fails, you've only lost 200 GB. And in a RAID setup you might not even notice that single drive failure...which means you can easily slot in a new drive and never lose any data.
While if you're running 1x 2 TB HDD, and that one drive fails, you're pretty much hosed. In this situation you'll be rebuilding your working set from a backup, which might very well take a while. It's certainly more disruptive than slotting in a new drive while your RAID keeps everything up and running with no downtime at all.
The part that concerns me is that live storage seems to be outpacing backup capacity. Sure, LTO4 can hold about 1.5 TB with decent compression... But that isn't even the full capacity of a single one of these drives. RAID a few of them together and you've completely exceeded that tape's capacity. It's getting to the point where the only solution is going to be dumping data to more HDDs, or selling robotic tape libraries to everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to stop letting Hollywood think for you.
And what, let you think for me?
People are smart,
No. Individual human beings may (or may not) be smart. People, as a whole, are stupid. You get enough of them in a room and they become unable to make a decision. Herd mentality kicks in, folks start worrying about what other people think.
yet humanity is not currently enslaved.
Depends on who you're talking about, when, and where. There are plenty of people on this planet right now who may as well be called slaves. And plenty of other people who have very little choice in their lives.
Why? Because people are intelligent enough to know that's a bad idea.
Bad idea for who? It's a bad idea for me to work 50+ hours a week for crap pay... But it's a good idea for my boss to find some sucker who'll do it. And if my boss has some political leverage, some lobbyists, some deep pockets... Well, maybe I won't get so much choice in where I work, or how long I work, or what I'll be paid.
If robots are ever more intelligent than us, they'll also be intelligent enough to make good decisions.
To hell with good decisions, I want to make my own decisions.
Frankly, I'd rather have the more intelligent beings in charge. They would actually make more intelligent decisions!
Like what, outlawing pointy objects because we stupid humans might hurt ourselves? Getting rid of all junk food because it isn't healthy? Consolidating people into perfectly-designed arcologies because they waste less space? What about individual wants and desires? Or are those automatically secondary to what's intelligent?
It's humans that should not be trusted.
Trust is over-rated. With the exception of my wife and parents, I don't trust anyone. Everyone's got their own agenda.
They're just consistently intelligent enough.
What's great about leadership by human beings is that they're so predictable.
Some people want power, some want pleasure, some want money, some want sex, some want prestige... But everyone's looking out for themselves ultimately. Everyone's trying to meet their own goals. Figure out what their goal is, and you know exactly what they'll do.
Look at the politicians in office, have any of them truly surprised you? Ever?
Look at the way they campaign, and how people react to their messages. Any surprises there?
At least with human leadership you can understand what's going on. Maybe you've got different goals, but at least you're both human. You're both thinking in terms of human timespans, about human goals.
Put a machine in charge and who knows what it'll want, or whether we'll be very happy with its goals.
HDs are NOT backup media.
Why not?
Obviously you can't plug in a single external HDD, leave it in the building all the time, do nightly dumps to it, and call it a backup. That's wrong for at least a half-dozen reasons.
But what's wrong with buying a pile of external drives and using them just like you would a tape? Plug one in every day, run the backup, and then store it someplace safe offsite. Seems to me that it would work just the same as a tape.
Linux solves the malware problem.
Sometimes.
If you've got software that only runs under Windows... Or you've got users who are completely unable to learn a new OS... Or your school/corporate/office/whatever policy doesn't allow Linux... Or the machine isn't yours to reload... Then Linux isn't much of a solution at all.
And even if Linux is a real, viable option, it doesn't solve the entire problem. It might very well take care of malware... But what about SPAM email with explicit crap in it? And advertising popping up on websites? Will Linux magically fix all that as well?
I mean, I like Linux. I run it at home on most of my systems. But just saying "linux doesn't get malware" really doesn't address the original question.
I have to ask...do people REALLY that often, hit porn sites by accident?
I mean, I can count on one hand (I know I know) the number of times I've actually had porn flash up on my browser when I was not looking for it....in all these years.
How bad a problem is this actually? From anecdotal evidence, I'd have to guess if someone has porn on the screen....they were looking for it.
Depends on the situation, the user, etc... But, yes, it does happen accidentally.
You can throw some pretty innocent phrases into Google and get some pretty interesting results. Some torrent search sites, which are very popular for folks looking to download music, have pretty explicit advertising on them. And it's entirely too easy to wind up on somebody's mailing list and get deluged with advertisements for various adult services. Some malware pops up advertising as well, sometimes it is of the adult variety.
I do too, although arguably street view is a lot more useful for that. You're not going to be looking at where you're going from 200 miles up when you get there, so why do you need to see it from that angle if the purpose is to get an idea of what it will look like from the ground?
I live in Upstate NY, and around here we don't get a street view of much.
The satellite imagery is actually pretty helpful. A map just basically shows you a bunch of lines representing streets, it doesn't give you a feeling for what's in the area. The satellite imagery, however, will show you whether it's a residential or commercial area. And if you see a big building with lots of long, yellow vehicles in its parking lot you can guess that it's a school. Or you might see an interesting structure or grove of trees or something that makes a decent landmark.
Okay, here's an "artificial barrier": You're an IT administrator for a bank. You support about 35 mission-critical applications that go to a mainframe.
All those applications were written for Windows 95. Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and will still work.
Actually... Not such a safe bet. Lots of Win95 code no longer works under XP/Vista. Whether or not your specific applications will work just depends on what weird code they relied on.
Why keep the mainframe? Because it's the only thing that's gone through the laborous process of being documented, audited, and certified for use. Those certifications could run into the tens of millions of dollars, plus another fifty million to retool your existing infrastructure, minimum.
I don't know what this mainframe has to do with the argument about Microsoft's supposedly-higher standards... That mainframe won't be running Windows. And it will likely be able to talk to just about anything you put in the building - Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
If everything is working, why would you rebuild at all? Unless some software vendor is forcing you to upgrade to the latest and greatest, which doesn't run on your current systems... But that happens on Windows plenty often. I just recently had to sell a client a whole new server, new hardware, new (Windows) OS licenses because their software vendor made them upgrade to the newest version to keep support.
But... Aside from vendor pushes... Linux has some of the best hardware support out there. It'll run on just about anything. The odds of you being able to get your existing system up and running on shiny new hardware are much better if it's a Linux system.
Actually, promiscuity is simple hedonism
Promiscuity != Hedonism
Promiscuity is a "large" number of sexual partners. Large being purely subjective in this case. Just because someone is labeled as promiscuous does not mean that they're sleeping with a different person every night, nor does it mean that there's no value attached to the sex that they have. People in long-term, loving multiple-partner relationships are often labeled as promiscuous.
Hedonism is seeking pleasure above all else, that feeling good is your highest calling. This doesn't necessarily mean sex - it can also mean drugs, alcohol, food, whatever. And, yes, pursuing your own happiness/pleasure at the expense of all else does lead to many ills - social and otherwise.
The loss of shame leads to many, many social ills.
Personally, I've found that shame is rarely useful.
Shame comes in two flavors - your own, and everyone else's.
Your own shame is typically a result of realizing you did something you probably shouldn't have. I find it is typically better to think things through the first time and avoid the shame alltogether. When I'm trying to make a decision "I might be ashamed" doesn't enter into it - "is it a good decision" does. And typically, if it's a good decision, there's no call for shame.
Everyone else's shame is an attempt to get you to conform to what they think you should be doing. "You ought to be ashamed!" is someone telling you that you did something they don't like. Unless it's someone you genuinely value - your spouse or parent, for example - those are empty words. I personally couldn't care less whether some random person thinks I should be ashamed or not.
The "if it feels good, do it" philosophy is bunk.
If it feels good, why wouldn't you do it?
Certainly doing it, whatever it may be, to excess is probably going to be bad. But in moderation, as a responsible human being, why not? Why not have sex? Why not eat cake? Why not drink beer? Why not go skiing? Why not read a book? Is there something inherently noble in depriving yourself of pleasure? Is there something wrong with enjoying yourself?
Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.
Most of the time "degeneracy" is a subjective label. If you agree with what someone is doing, to the extent that they're doing it, they're OK. If you don't agree with it, or if they're doing it too much, they're degenerate. And what exactly we label as "degenerate" is strongly influenced by our own morals and values - not any objective analysis.
If someone likes to read books, are they degenerate? What if they go through a book every single night? What if they avoid social contact in favor of reading? What if they get so hooked on reading that it starts affecting their work? What if they just can't put down a book during lunch and never get that TPS report done? Are they degenerate? Somehow that word just doesn't seem to fit, does it? Addicted maybe... They've certainly got issues... But degenerate?
Now what if they really like having sex? What if they have sex with someone different every night? What if they spend all their time trying to hook up with a new partner? What if their sexual encounters start affecting their work? What if they get caught fooling around with someone during lunch? I'm guessing the world "degenerate" seems a lot more fitting in this case.
Most of the western world (not just the US) has been conditioned by immersion in Judeo-Christian values to view sex as somehow separate from normal life activities. It's something secret, sacred, or dirty that polite people don't really talk about. It's something that should only happen between married couples... Or something that should only happen with a certain frequency... Or something that shouldn't involve people of the same gender, or power tools, or animals, or chains, or whatever... Sex has values and judgments attached to it that eating, for example, doesn't. Yet both of those are completely natural, and often pleasurable, parts of human existence.
And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...
I'm not much of a Patriot... I've spent the last 8 years feeling downright embarrassed to be an American... And we've certainly got plenty of skeletons in our national closet... But the US isn't the problem.
Sure, we're a little self-righteous and fundamentalist... A little quick to look for military solutions rather than political ones... But we're not the only ones.
Human beings are fundamentally stupid creatures. We've been waging war on each-other since the dawn of time. If we don't have a real reason to fight we'll make something up. There were wars for thousands of years before the US was born, and there will be wars for thousands of years after the US is gone.
It's rather comical that so many people out there are trying to break DRM and band themselves as allies of the open source movement in some way. The thing is, the legal framework, the right of the copyright holder to issue a license, is the same for software with DRM as it is without. If we have a legal system where copying images, songs and books is tolerated, then we also have a legal system where taking GPL code and subverting it will be tolerated as well.
The GPL is a license that dictates how a work can be copied and distributed - which was the intent of copyrights originally. To control who can copy and/or distribute a work, to make sure that the author actually gets something for their effort.
DRM, on the other hand, restricts how someone who already has a copy of the work is able to use it. DRM keeps me from reading my ebook on the device of my choice. DRM keeps me from listening to my music on the device of my choice. DRM keeps me from re-installing the software that I purchased because it has been activated too many times.
Most folks on here, and in the open source community at large, don't really have a huge problem with copyright. They may have issues with various current implementations or protection periods... But most folks are ok with the idea of an author/creator getting paid for their work in some way.
DRM though... DRM isn't about keeping people from making unauthorized copies. DRM is about selling people one copy of a movie for their DVD player, and a second copy for their PC, and a third copy for their iPod. DRM is about the middle-men (not the content creators) dictating how you use the content.
Wake me up when they make a nice, expandable, mid ranged desktop class Mac. I still think that's the big gap in their lineup.
I agree that such a machine would be great... And it's really what I would personally be interested in... But I can't fault them for not offering such a beast.
People don't upgrade/expand their computers anymore. Even with Windows workstations... Folks buy some kind of pre-configured off-the-shelf box from HP, Dell, or whoever. They use it for a year or two, fill it full of crapware. When it gets slow they throw it out and buy a new pre-configured off-the-shelf box.
I remember people predicting this, mostly the fundies. They were laughed at. The gist of the flameage was "That won't ever happen, you guys need to STFU and let us scientists get on with the science."
I'm not sure where you were... But around here folks were responding with "yep, it's only a matter of time."
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
We are so doomed.
Is it a bad idea?
At this stage they're just screening and letting folks know how their kids are going to look... What's wrong with that?
And eventually, when we get to the point of custom-building kids, what's so wrong with that? How different is that from all the rampant plastic surgery out there today?
Oh, I'm well aware of the possible consequences... We could wind up with no genetic diversity, and a species-wide susceptibility to some disease. Could wind up with new kinds of genetic discrimination. All kinds of horrors may ensue...
But that isn't really something in our control, is it? Various groups around the United States will undoubtably declare this stuff a sin and ban it - and they won't use it. The US Government might very well ban it... Would've been more likely under the last administration, but it might still happen... But that won't stop other governments from allowing it. And people from all over the world will flock to wherever it is available.
In short, people will make their own decisions - regardless of what you, or I, or any government approves of. And there's really nothing you can do about that.
Thats all fine and dandy, except, where I work someone has to prioritize our assignments, one of those is getting the backup scripts up and working for nightly backups, but so far that job has been prioritized way below adding new fizzbang to the interface.
Currently I'm just grabbing a new snapshot of the database once in a while.
(On the positive side we know we can recover our backups, that at least is verified)
I see this all too often with our clients... Backups are considered a low priority because everything is up and running right now. Nobody wants to waste time/money on something that isn't necessary right now.
Then they have some kind of horrible software crash that eats all their data... Or the hardware goes up in a puff of smoke... Or the building floods... And all of a sudden they're scrambling to get things back up and running.
Usually after a disaster like that they'll take backups more seriously... If they're still in business.
lesson #1 on the 'net you can't tell the major corporation from the kid in a garage
lesson #2, trust no-one with your data
1 and 2 don't really matter if you've got a backup. Who cares if it's some kid in a garage if you've got a backup? If it's more convenient to have your data on some kind of web service, go for it! But make sure you've got a backup.
lesson #3 disaster recovery capability only exists after it's been tested
lesson #4 backups are useless unless you can prove you can recover from them
This is really where things fall apart over and over again. I've seen tons of clients with no backup at all... Or a backup that they've never tested and they just assume it's working correctly.
It isn't a backup unless you can take it off-site, and it isn't a backup unless you know you can get your business back up and running with it.
Argh, why not just add a backup or replication database on one of the spare Mac Minis?
That way you would have needed a complete server farm disaster to mess things up irretrievably.
Replication gives you redundancy, much like RAID does. It lets you survive a hardware failure or two. It is not a backup. If the building burns down, or a tree falls on your server room, or lightning fries everything you are still screwed.
What they needed was a backup. A tape, or removable HDD, or a flash drive, or a CD, or something that can be taken out of the building on a regular basis. Once a day, once a week, once a month... Whatever.
Then, no matter what happens to your live hardware, you've got a backup you can restore from. Buy some new hardware, throw your backup at it, done!
No retailer gives you a decent price for used games. They'll buy it from you for $5 and then sell it to someone else for $45.
Well, maybe if they're selling it on eBay... You might be able to get a halfway decent price on there.
Dude, where I live, you get something like 60% of the initial price for recent games. I've already sold shitty games bought for 45 euros, to get 30 euros. Older games are not the same matter, of course. What on hell is the name of the franchise who rip off people so much (so that I know when I come back to live in Austin, TX)?
I exaggerate somewhat... And it's been years since I worked at EB... And these days I do all my shopping on-line... So it is entirely possible that things aren't quite so bad these days.
But when I used to work for Electronics Boutique (now GameStop) we would routinely buy back relatively new titles for $10 - $15 ... maybe $25 if it was incredibly popular. Then we'd re-sell them for $40 - $45.
You hardly saved anything buying a relatively new title pre-owned. And you hardly got any money by selling it back. It was crazy. Someone would have to sell three or four new(ish) games to us in order to buy a single new(ish) pre-owned game.
But, of course, the company loved this. Pre-owned games were almost pure profit for them. Folks would use the money you gave them on store merchandise... You didn't have to ship the games anywhere... And then you re-sold the title for a huge mark-up...
Biggest scam ever.
I guess that people who play those FPS:
1) don't give a shit about the price
This is entirely possible. When I used to work at EB there were plenty of people who obviously had plenty of disposable income. These were typically Highschool/College students who didn't really have a whole lot of bills to worry about. They'd buy pretty much anything - didn't matter what the reviewers were saying, didn't matter how many hours of gameplay... As long as there was some sex or violence, they'd buy it. And then they'd be back in a day or two to complain about it... But they'd buy the next piece of overpriced crap too.
Actually, looking at what I've just written... Maybe that's the dynamic we're seeing in action right now.
For years the target audience for video games has been dependents - little kids, or highschoolers, or college folks who aren't paying their own bills. Gaming is gaining acceptance, and gamers are growing up. More and more people these days enjoy playing video games, but they've got bills to pay and can't afford to blow $50 on a piece of crap.
2) finish the game ASAP to sell it back and buy the next one.
People may actually be doing this... But it'll only be as a side-effect of having finished it already. No retailer gives you a decent price for used games. They'll buy it from you for $5 and then sell it to someone else for $45. Nobody is going to intentionally buy a short game with the idea that they can sell it back and the price won't be so bad.
Well, maybe if they're selling it on eBay... You might be able to get a halfway decent price on there.
It depends a bit on the title...
I paid $50 for WoW, another $15 a months, another $50 for Burning Crusade, another $50 for Lich King... And I feel that is cheap entertainment. I play at least an hour a day, and have been doing that for the last couple of years. I'm still finding new things to do. It is still entertaining me.
Similarly, I paid $50 for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade a couple years back. I've kept that installed on my computer and I play it at least once a week. For a couple years. Again, well-worth the money spent.
Then there are games like Red Alert 3 that I don't play for more than a week because they're absolute crap. Or FPS titles with a 7-hour storyline...
If I'm going to spend $50+ for a game, I want to be entertained for a good month at the very least.
Maybe we should resolve the ethical concerns before we perform the science ...
This is opening Pandora's Box.
How, exactly, do you propose to resolve the ethical concerns before we even know what they are?
You're suggesting that we sit down and thoroughly examine all the possible ethical concerns ahead of time and come to some kind of consensus...
Never mind the fact that we can't even get everyone to agree on how human beings should be treated, let's all figure out how we're going to treat our human/animal hybrids.
And then, after tons of debate and discussion it turns out we can't even make human/animal hybrids. Tons of wasted time and effort.
Or maybe our hybrids turn out to have no more brainpower than the animals they were hybridized with, but we've already decided that they should have the right to vote.
Or maybe our hybrids turn out to be far smarter than us and take over.
We need a main, reliable, one size fits all DESKTOP distro. that's what we need.
Well, don't we already have that?
Ubuntu could probably be called a main, reliable, one-size-fits-all desktop distro. Or, if you don't like the non-free stuff in Ubuntu you could just go with Debian... It isn't quite one-size-fits-all, but it is damn close. Or you could go with Fedora instead...
Of course, I just listed off three different distros (and there's a ton that I didn't list). And people will complain that this is exactly the problem - there are too many choices. Folks will say we need just a single one-size-fits-all desktop distro...
and yes, all other distros should continue, for really many of them are for niche markets.
Well, if we aren't going to somehow outlaw all these other distributions, how are we going to arrive at a single desktop distro? How will we convince everyone to get behind the golden distro? How will we even choose the golden distro? What if someone disagrees and continues to develop their own desktop distro?
linux basically equals webserver as of now. whereas many IIS servers house 1-2 company sites (and many of them are in-house boxes), linux distros host hundreds each.
but on desktop we dont have a strong name presence so that when you name it, everyone will know. we need that.
Of course there's name recognition - the name is Linux.
What's that netbook run? Linux
What're you using to run your database server? Linux
Wow, cool desktop, what is it? Linux
How can I keep from getting all these viruses? Linux
How did you get that file server running so cheaply? Linux
Folks recognize the name Linux. It's been in the news here and there... It's showed up in magazines and product information and newspapers here and there. They recognize Linux at least as much as they recognize Windows or Macintosh.
Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.
They do. Routinely.
Molten Core was added after launch as a free patch.
The entire Silithus zone was redone in a free patch, and two new raid zones (Ahn'Qiraj) were added.
Zul'Gurub was added as a free patch.
Naxxramas was added as a free patch.
And that's just the stuff that was added after retail... Tons more stuff was added, free of charge, after Burning Crusade was rolled out.
Black Temple was added as a free patch.
The whole Sunwell Plateau thing was a free patch.
Zul'Aman was added as a free patch.
And that's just the large changes... Tons of quests and dungeons have been revamped and tweaked. Dustwallow Marsh is nothing like it used to be. New factions and quests were added for the Skyguard and Ogres...
Blizzard has rolled out a lot of stuff for free.
Television is rapidly replacing radio as a standard, baseline means of keeping up-to-date with what's going on in the world.
Does the American digital TV include digital radio stations? I listen to the digital radio stations broadcast in the UK regularly, via my digital TV (they can obviously fit many audio+HTML-like graphics streams into the space of one audio+video stream).
I don't own a radio, but I'm considering getting one (a digital radio). Something that can stream internet radio but isn't noisy like my PC would be better though, maybe I should just find an old laptop.
Honestly, I'm not certain that we have any digital radio stations over here. Everything I listen to is analog, as far as I'm aware.
being wasted over this is insane in my opinion.
The television is an entertainment device, nothing more. We have so much more to worry about in this country other than if someone will continue view ads on the tv when we move on from an archaic system.
Do I have this wrong? Is there something else about television that I am forgetting?
Television is rapidly replacing radio as a standard, baseline means of keeping up-to-date with what's going on in the world.
Local news, national news, political coverage, important informational announcements, emergency information...
Yes, you can get all that on a radio. Or the Internet. Or a news paper. But that doesn't mean that all television is useless fluff. And there are a lot of people these days who don't own radios, don't have bandwidth, and down get newspapers. Like it or not, television is nearly omnipresent.
I do agree that an awful lot of time, effort, and money is being wasted on this transition. Just flip the switch already! Cut it all over to digital and call it done. Yes, people will lose their signal... But it isn't like an extra week or two, or even a month or two, is going to make much of a difference. At some point we're just going to have to bite the bullet and make the switch. There will be fallout. It really doesn't matter how long we wait, there will be some portion of the populace that is not ready.
If you have ever had to walk a n00b, who thinks that webmail is email, through setting up POP3, then you would know the answer to that question.
This isn't about replacing POP3 or IMAP, those are unquestionably superior, this is about expanding the subset of POP3 or IMAP features that can be accessed by people whose technical knowledge doesn't extend far enough to set those up.
My job basically consists of supporting n00bs of all flavors. I routinely have to set up POP and IMAP email for them. Google has some very good documentation on their website that is tailored to several popular email clients. Or you can take control of their machine with something like LogMeIn or VNC. It isn't nearly as impossible as you seem to think.
I understand the appeal of simply going to the same, familiar Gmail web interface that you normally would... But I really don't think it'll make things all that much easier. In fact, it may confuse people even more when their familiar Gmail web interface behaves in an odd manner because it is offline.
Personally, for folks who are routinely working offline, I just set them up with an IMAP client and teach them to use it all the time. Then there's little difference when they're online...they just don't send/receive...everything else works the same as always.
What's wrong with that? Data storage is data storage...
Just because tape is the old man, that once upon a time was the end-all solution for backing up everything, doesn't mean there's really any benefit to it, today.
Tape backups are more of a legacy system that just kept on being used and minimally improved as technology progressed. The writing has been on the wall for well over a decade.
Tapes are relatively small, sturdy, and lightweight. An LTO4 holding 1 TB is quite a bit more portable than a 3.5" HDD with a similar capacity.
For years now we've been able to sell our clients a single-tape backup solution... Leave a tape in the drive when you go home for the night, the backup runs, you grab the tape and put it someplace safe in the morning. It's fairly easy to get people to throw a single tape in their purse/briefcase and take it home with them. And we don't have to worry too much about those tapes being jostled or dropped.
Laptop drives are nice and portable... And there are some great external USB drives... But I worry about reliability. I'm not sure how well a HDD would hold up to being jostled around in a purse or briefcase all day long.
Every time a new, larger drive comes out, people say, "That much data in one drive is dangerous!"
So here's what you do. Go buy ten 200GB drives. RAID them together. Who do you think will lose data, you, with ten times the possible failure points, or me with only one?
Just back it up, biznatch!
Well, of course backups are the solution. And anyone with half a clue and some important data has nobody to blame but themselves if they don't have a backup.
But if you've got 10x 200 GB HDDs, and one of them fails, you've only lost 200 GB. And in a RAID setup you might not even notice that single drive failure...which means you can easily slot in a new drive and never lose any data.
While if you're running 1x 2 TB HDD, and that one drive fails, you're pretty much hosed. In this situation you'll be rebuilding your working set from a backup, which might very well take a while. It's certainly more disruptive than slotting in a new drive while your RAID keeps everything up and running with no downtime at all.
The part that concerns me is that live storage seems to be outpacing backup capacity. Sure, LTO4 can hold about 1.5 TB with decent compression... But that isn't even the full capacity of a single one of these drives. RAID a few of them together and you've completely exceeded that tape's capacity. It's getting to the point where the only solution is going to be dumping data to more HDDs, or selling robotic tape libraries to everyone.