"until people see robots going down the street killing people..."
We already have this, except those robots are made of flesh and blood, instead of silicon and steel. Call me when the people rise up to put an end to this kind of programming.
"Rabies is so rare that, unless you are a veterinarian or do certain types of health work, you're much more likely to get struck by lightning. You can get immunized successfully after exposure."
Here's the problem with that approach: by the time the symptoms surface, you are as good as dead. And getting immunized after exposure is great if you know you have been bitten by a rabid animal (hence the focus on capturing animals that have bitten animals, and testing them for Rabies...), but if you are bitten in your sleep (bats, rats, etc.), or don't think much about that squirrel's / dog's / cat's bite (or what have you)...why put yourself in such a precarious position? We live on as planet filled with animals, many that we aren't paying attention to on a daily basis, and yet they are a part of our lives. Why would you play the lottery with such a horrible disease? Look up some YouTube videos of human beings infected with Rabies -> a gun and a bullet would be a blessing.
"Smallpox has been eradicated."
You forgot this: *. It still exists, albeit in labs, where it is being "studied." Also, the US has a giant stockpile of Smallpox vaccine for every US citizen. And yes, healthcare professionals have access to the vaccine. Smallpox can supposedly be brought back from the dead very easily (may be FUD, may not, check your mileage).
"Oh, and I think the tuberculosis vaccine is of limited use. Not very effective and makes screening for TB difficult."
The BCG vaccine is widely used outside the US. As for the false positives it can create using TB skin tests...this is not so much an issue with TB blood tests. But yes, you are right about its variable efficacy: 0%-80% per person. They are trying to fix that with a booster shot (of a different design; MVA85A?), or going with a different primer altogether.
And we are agreed that the standard (or old vaccines as you call it) are a good idea.
Also, a question just for you, Hep A, but no Hep B?
My (standard set of )vaccines are up to date, and then some. Still working on getting a few (that are considered 'optional' by our lovely US insurance companies...price of a vaccine is in the hundreds, price of a hospital stay is in the tens of thousands, yet which option do they seem to promote?), some of them will be tricky to get since they aren't available in this country yet (Hepatitis E, etc.), and others you seem to need to know the secret handshake to get (Bubonic Plague, possibly Smallpox).
On the bright side, I've been vaccinated against things like: Hepatitis A &B (as I said, completely caught up), Rabies, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), Tetanus, Diphtheria...
The Cholera vaccine, Vaxchora, seems to be a bit of a disappointment, as its potency drops off in months (may be useful for a short trip, but for those of us who want to get at least a year of decent immunity out of it...no). There's another, Dukoral, which appears to improve in immunity over time, so I might go for that, but there's a question of whether it will be easily available.
And then there's the Anthrax vaccine, which Passport Health offers to the general public, which I have on my list of things to get. Multiple shots, I grant you, and realistically, like The Plague (Black Death), chances are you are a goner if you inhale the spores, as opposed to drink something laced with them or touch something covered in them, but some immunity can be better than none.
The Hepatitis E vaccine is made available via the Chinese, but I believe Mexico (and some other Central American countries) may have it available, so it might be worth picking up while on vacation.
The US military has a vaccine for the Adenovirus, through a singular supplier, though I am not sure how to get access to that. Same with The Plague (Bubonic Plague, The Black Death) as the vaccines for these are still being produced, but the manufacturer isn't listed (from what little I've glanced), and nobody is offering it (i.e. you can't walk into a travel clinic and ask for it, nor is it something that you can ask your family doctor to order for you...).
Additional diseases that we have vaccines for, but are not available to the general public in this country (this is not a complete list): Tick-Borne Encephalitis, Q Fever, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis, Smallpox.
There are also many vaccines being developed, such as the vaccine for Malaria, Zika, etc.
Remind me, when was Ryzen released? In earnest, I mean. PC sector is undergoing some switches.
Additionally, it appears that some of the larger OEMs have finally gotten the message that SSDs for the system mount / OS drive is mandatory, and that going with larger SSDs is better; although, it may be some time before you see a Samsung 960 PRO NVMe of an appropriate minimum size (1TB+) standard on anything.
Now if they can offer better networking (10GBe, or even 5GBe would do), better audio (never use integrated audio, save on a laptop, and even then...; sticking the SoundBlaster logo on something meant more 20 years ago, there are other contenders, perhaps HT Omega? that might be worth looking into...). And a shift away from iGPUs, which are great if you like using a terminal all day, but will have trouble handling 1080p streams from Crunchyroll (well, Flash may be to blame as well, and compiling in the background...but a dGPU used on the same setup seems to alleviate these problems).
And RAM is cheap, even the good stuff, especially in bulk. No reason not to load up the system with something decent, and take sales away from your competitors.
As per the HHGTTG, he is fulfilling the role of the Galactic President admirably. People can't stop watching him, or talking about him, and in doing so, he is providing the very useful service of drawing attention away from those with real power. Remember, the role of the Galactic President is always filled by the most controversial candidate, the one who brings about finely tuned outrage.
Won't happen. MS is willing to do anything but lead these days. If it's OS design, they follow Apple; if it's social media apps, it's Facebook. I think it's just a matter of courage here; the people @ MS who really want to work for those companies don't have enough to submit their resumes, and get the hell out of the way.
Look, it's a known fact that the Firefox developers wish they were working for Google. This is more apparent with every new release, as more 'Chrome' 'features' find their way into an otherwise usable web browser, and support for other platforms (, etc.) continues to drop, with no end in sight.
If you ever wish to remain relevant, you had best put someone (a human), on a celestial body, and quick. The Moon is always an option, as is Mars, Venus, etc. But at the current rate things are going, people are focusing a bit too much on...earthly affairs. They are forgetting that there are other worlds out there, and that they are accessible to us; hence, they begin to care too much about what they have here, in front of them. And as such, they are beginning to feel claustrophobic, even when there is plenty of space, both on Earth and elsewhere.
Face it, the vast majority of people are going to buy some, if not most, of some variant of these accessories (don't need the screen if you're hooking it up to an existing HDMI screen, etc.). Who in their right mind would argue for a 10/100 network connection in this day and age? Or a slow ass MicroSD card as their boot device (there may be some faster variants with adapters, but still, capacity will be limited; thus you are stuck putting the boot partition on one device, and everything else on another, which is, even on an Ubuntu-flavored derivative, a PITA). Just solder a pair of SATA connectors (+ controller) onto the board, and be done with it; combined with the GbE controller, it's going to bring the cost of the board up a whole $2. Another $1 for the SO-DIMM connectors. Call it the Raspberry-Pi 3++. Hell, here's another $1, put another two SO-DIMM sockets on it, and do what Intel has had serious trouble doing with their laptop implementations for the longest period of time: make it past 16GB of RAM.
"FWIW, it also turns out, I've spent hundreds on multiple raspberry pi's + accessories"
Which you would have to, unfortunately (as a once fellow, and many times tempted to again, RPi owner). It's a cheap device that requires buying tons of accessories to get somewhere, which, after you do so, you come to realize you want a proper PC to do the programming / debugging / etc.
I'll buy a RPi again when it comes with USB 3.0 (and here we are, transitioning into 3.1...), SATA (also as a boot device, and not USB to SATA, I don't want to pay the processor tax), and some RAM (8GB minimum, but if you make it expandable (even to 16GB+) with SO-DIMMs, you can ship it with no memory....I'll take care of the rest). And yes, I know there are other 'options' that offer some of the above, but aren't RPi, but they have even less support that this device.
That's our future descendants' power source, after the coal runs out (because nuclear power, like keeping that fork you're holding out of your eye, is simply too much for the human race to handle; and 'renewables' are putting us back at the mercy of the elements...).
"The NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP) works with agency innovators who wish to use this collaborative model for transferring their technology to the commercial marketplace..." while they are actively engaged in technology transfers from both our allies, enemies, and neutral parties to the US...
Surprising number of German innovations become available to American businessmen, even before German researchers fully publish their results. God Bless America.
I'm touched by their faith in their computer systems. One wonders if one of their computers instructed them to shove a power cable up their ass and go screaming, naked, out into the crowds in an airport, if they would follow through...
WAN -> Firewall -> Firewall -> LAN. Each firewall from a different company, and some tinkering with the router configuration to make even compromised computers not sure where they are.
Also helps if you use machines with a completely alien architecture to what everyone else is running. Viva la Alpha, MIPS, etc. It's not that you can't attack them, it's just that your custom forged 'PC' is now in the.000000000000001% bracket of commonality with everything else out there. Do you know how much of a bastard it is to setup cross-platform compilers (with a recent version of GCC)? How about writing code for an architecture you can only emulate (need to go buy the machine, cost you a little; plus running an Alpha can triple your power costs, both in the electricity it uses to power itself and the amount of AC you need to stop sweating while being in the same room as it)? And you still have to go back to school to relearn things like memory management as things work a little different in the Alpha world than the x86 / x64 world.
Slashdot Mirror
"until people see robots going down the street killing people..."
We already have this, except those robots are made of flesh and blood, instead of silicon and steel. Call me when the people rise up to put an end to this kind of programming.
"Rabies is so rare that, unless you are a veterinarian or do certain types of health work, you're much more likely to get struck by lightning. You can get immunized successfully after exposure."
Here's the problem with that approach: by the time the symptoms surface, you are as good as dead. And getting immunized after exposure is great if you know you have been bitten by a rabid animal (hence the focus on capturing animals that have bitten animals, and testing them for Rabies...), but if you are bitten in your sleep (bats, rats, etc.), or don't think much about that squirrel's / dog's / cat's bite (or what have you)...why put yourself in such a precarious position? We live on as planet filled with animals, many that we aren't paying attention to on a daily basis, and yet they are a part of our lives. Why would you play the lottery with such a horrible disease? Look up some YouTube videos of human beings infected with Rabies -> a gun and a bullet would be a blessing.
"Smallpox has been eradicated."
You forgot this: *. It still exists, albeit in labs, where it is being "studied." Also, the US has a giant stockpile of Smallpox vaccine for every US citizen. And yes, healthcare professionals have access to the vaccine. Smallpox can supposedly be brought back from the dead very easily (may be FUD, may not, check your mileage).
"Oh, and I think the tuberculosis vaccine is of limited use. Not very effective and makes screening for TB difficult."
The BCG vaccine is widely used outside the US. As for the false positives it can create using TB skin tests...this is not so much an issue with TB blood tests. But yes, you are right about its variable efficacy: 0%-80% per person. They are trying to fix that with a booster shot (of a different design; MVA85A?), or going with a different primer altogether.
And we are agreed that the standard (or old vaccines as you call it) are a good idea.
Also, a question just for you, Hep A, but no Hep B?
My (standard set of )vaccines are up to date, and then some. Still working on getting a few (that are considered 'optional' by our lovely US insurance companies...price of a vaccine is in the hundreds, price of a hospital stay is in the tens of thousands, yet which option do they seem to promote?), some of them will be tricky to get since they aren't available in this country yet (Hepatitis E, etc.), and others you seem to need to know the secret handshake to get (Bubonic Plague, possibly Smallpox).
On the bright side, I've been vaccinated against things like: Hepatitis A &B (as I said, completely caught up), Rabies, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), Tetanus, Diphtheria...
The Cholera vaccine, Vaxchora, seems to be a bit of a disappointment, as its potency drops off in months (may be useful for a short trip, but for those of us who want to get at least a year of decent immunity out of it...no). There's another, Dukoral, which appears to improve in immunity over time, so I might go for that, but there's a question of whether it will be easily available.
And then there's the Anthrax vaccine, which Passport Health offers to the general public, which I have on my list of things to get. Multiple shots, I grant you, and realistically, like The Plague (Black Death), chances are you are a goner if you inhale the spores, as opposed to drink something laced with them or touch something covered in them, but some immunity can be better than none.
The Hepatitis E vaccine is made available via the Chinese, but I believe Mexico (and some other Central American countries) may have it available, so it might be worth picking up while on vacation.
The US military has a vaccine for the Adenovirus, through a singular supplier, though I am not sure how to get access to that. Same with The Plague (Bubonic Plague, The Black Death) as the vaccines for these are still being produced, but the manufacturer isn't listed (from what little I've glanced), and nobody is offering it (i.e. you can't walk into a travel clinic and ask for it, nor is it something that you can ask your family doctor to order for you...).
Additional diseases that we have vaccines for, but are not available to the general public in this country (this is not a complete list): Tick-Borne Encephalitis, Q Fever, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis, Smallpox.
There are also many vaccines being developed, such as the vaccine for Malaria, Zika, etc.
Remind me, when was Ryzen released? In earnest, I mean. PC sector is undergoing some switches.
Additionally, it appears that some of the larger OEMs have finally gotten the message that SSDs for the system mount / OS drive is mandatory, and that going with larger SSDs is better; although, it may be some time before you see a Samsung 960 PRO NVMe of an appropriate minimum size (1TB+) standard on anything.
Now if they can offer better networking (10GBe, or even 5GBe would do), better audio (never use integrated audio, save on a laptop, and even then...; sticking the SoundBlaster logo on something meant more 20 years ago, there are other contenders, perhaps HT Omega? that might be worth looking into...). And a shift away from iGPUs, which are great if you like using a terminal all day, but will have trouble handling 1080p streams from Crunchyroll (well, Flash may be to blame as well, and compiling in the background...but a dGPU used on the same setup seems to alleviate these problems).
And RAM is cheap, even the good stuff, especially in bulk. No reason not to load up the system with something decent, and take sales away from your competitors.
As per the HHGTTG, he is fulfilling the role of the Galactic President admirably. People can't stop watching him, or talking about him, and in doing so, he is providing the very useful service of drawing attention away from those with real power. Remember, the role of the Galactic President is always filled by the most controversial candidate, the one who brings about finely tuned outrage.
Right. Block all the pr0n sites. That will start WWIII.
Because if it's one thing that the wealthy aren't good at it, it's rewriting these kinds of laws to punish the foolish who try to implement them. /s
May as well have posted that they have finally unveiled a working perpetual motion machine.
No, just the one. Swimming through space. With four elephants on its back. Carrying the world on their backs.
Firmware updates. Same reason the Floppy Drive is still around.
Won't happen. MS is willing to do anything but lead these days. If it's OS design, they follow Apple; if it's social media apps, it's Facebook. I think it's just a matter of courage here; the people @ MS who really want to work for those companies don't have enough to submit their resumes, and get the hell out of the way.
Look, it's a known fact that the Firefox developers wish they were working for Google. This is more apparent with every new release, as more 'Chrome' 'features' find their way into an otherwise usable web browser, and support for other platforms (, etc.) continues to drop, with no end in sight.
Dear NASA,
If you ever wish to remain relevant, you had best put someone (a human), on a celestial body, and quick. The Moon is always an option, as is Mars, Venus, etc. But at the current rate things are going, people are focusing a bit too much on...earthly affairs. They are forgetting that there are other worlds out there, and that they are accessible to us; hence, they begin to care too much about what they have here, in front of them. And as such, they are beginning to feel claustrophobic, even when there is plenty of space, both on Earth and elsewhere.
A Clamshell-like Chassis you say?: https://www.amazon.com/Officia...
Battery?: https://www.amazon.com/Makerfo...
Screen?: https://www.amazon.com/Raspber...
Mouse & Keyboard?: https://www.amazon.com/Wireles...
Face it, the vast majority of people are going to buy some, if not most, of some variant of these accessories (don't need the screen if you're hooking it up to an existing HDMI screen, etc.). Who in their right mind would argue for a 10/100 network connection in this day and age? Or a slow ass MicroSD card as their boot device (there may be some faster variants with adapters, but still, capacity will be limited; thus you are stuck putting the boot partition on one device, and everything else on another, which is, even on an Ubuntu-flavored derivative, a PITA). Just solder a pair of SATA connectors (+ controller) onto the board, and be done with it; combined with the GbE controller, it's going to bring the cost of the board up a whole $2. Another $1 for the SO-DIMM connectors. Call it the Raspberry-Pi 3++. Hell, here's another $1, put another two SO-DIMM sockets on it, and do what Intel has had serious trouble doing with their laptop implementations for the longest period of time: make it past 16GB of RAM.
"FWIW, it also turns out, I've spent hundreds on multiple raspberry pi's + accessories"
Which you would have to, unfortunately (as a once fellow, and many times tempted to again, RPi owner). It's a cheap device that requires buying tons of accessories to get somewhere, which, after you do so, you come to realize you want a proper PC to do the programming / debugging / etc.
I'll buy a RPi again when it comes with USB 3.0 (and here we are, transitioning into 3.1...), SATA (also as a boot device, and not USB to SATA, I don't want to pay the processor tax), and some RAM (8GB minimum, but if you make it expandable (even to 16GB+) with SO-DIMMs, you can ship it with no memory....I'll take care of the rest). And yes, I know there are other 'options' that offer some of the above, but aren't RPi, but they have even less support that this device.
Who believes the US government doesn't have a full copy of the source already?
"And they learned nothing."
That's our future descendants' power source, after the coal runs out (because nuclear power, like keeping that fork you're holding out of your eye, is simply too much for the human race to handle; and 'renewables' are putting us back at the mercy of the elements...).
But that happens every four years, at least according to a portion of the country...
Never said it was unbreakable, just making it a little bit more difficult.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but Stuxnet runs on Windows, which is a monoculture...
"The NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP) works with agency innovators who wish to use this collaborative model for transferring their technology to the commercial marketplace..." while they are actively engaged in technology transfers from both our allies, enemies, and neutral parties to the US...
Surprising number of German innovations become available to American businessmen, even before German researchers fully publish their results. God Bless America.
I'm touched by their faith in their computer systems. One wonders if one of their computers instructed them to shove a power cable up their ass and go screaming, naked, out into the crowds in an airport, if they would follow through...
WAN -> Firewall -> Firewall -> LAN. Each firewall from a different company, and some tinkering with the router configuration to make even compromised computers not sure where they are.
Also helps if you use machines with a completely alien architecture to what everyone else is running. Viva la Alpha, MIPS, etc. It's not that you can't attack them, it's just that your custom forged 'PC' is now in the .000000000000001% bracket of commonality with everything else out there. Do you know how much of a bastard it is to setup cross-platform compilers (with a recent version of GCC)? How about writing code for an architecture you can only emulate (need to go buy the machine, cost you a little; plus running an Alpha can triple your power costs, both in the electricity it uses to power itself and the amount of AC you need to stop sweating while being in the same room as it)? And you still have to go back to school to relearn things like memory management as things work a little different in the Alpha world than the x86 / x64 world.
Water is a chemical.
*waves hands* You will want things that others want, because other want those things *waves hands*
Why, when they're getting all this free exposure?