> Information and services will still be scarce...
Information is not scarce. Any scarcity is artificially created, by measures such as DRM and IP, in an attempt to turn information into capital and prop up existing economic systems.
Indeed, one can generalise the entire 'Free Software' movement as an attempt to remove 'artificial scarcity' from information. Now you see why monopolists hate Free Software, as it threatens their entire power/wealth base.
Basically, as processors have gotten faster, the resources attached to the processor have gotten correspondingly larger. Thus it takes more clock cycles to initialise these resources and get them ready for use (ie. 'boot' them). The end result is boot times will be approximately constant (as observed).
By way of comparison, my first computer had 6kB of RAM and a 3.6MHz processor. 6kB/3.6MHz = 0.002. As one would expect, this computer booted in milliseconds!
You have just inferred that the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are terrorists. How do you know this? Has a judge told you so? Perhaps it was a politician who told you so? Wouldn't being imprisoned by a politician make one a political prisoner?
Why do record and movie companies get away with this? Is it because of their close affiliation with media companies? Does this lead to their actions never being reported, so the electorate never finds out what laws are being passed in the movie/record companies' favour?
Are politicians so dependent on positive media spin that they dare not refuse such laws? So many questions.
Would it be realistic to modify Glade to build the menus for a DVD? Perhaps the additional user interface element would be as simple as an additional file type as an option in the 'save as' dialog box (save as... DVD menu)?
> Does this mean that SuSE will stop being one of the best KDE distros out there and follow the way of the Gnome?"
KDE is now part of Debian, so if SuSE drops KDE it is always possible to divert effort into making Debian the best KDE distro (as well as the best GNOME distro).
One would have to make sure the printing technology was 'perfect'. What if there was some residual image of the 'red' layer superimposed on the 'white' layer (for example, heat leaking between the two layers of a thermal printer)? Then it would be possible to 'reverse engineer' a receipt and the ballot may no longer be secret.
Incidentally, most of the alternative suggestions offered by slashdotters seem to compromise the secrecy of the ballot. Secrecy might not seem important to the average slashdotter, but it is important if your family will disappear when you get caught voting for the opposition.
The XYZ connector company has announced a new line of connectors. According to their press release:
"Our new "Durax"(tm) connectors are available in both male and female sexes. To improve performance in vibrating environments, we have used laser ablation to yield a smoother contact surface for more intimate mating, leading to reduced resistance...
>...why doesn't it have all the features of Windows...
Maybe because they are features the users don't want?
>...unpopular, tedious, but necessary work might never get done...
But with such a large pool of talent, the chances are jobs which one person finds to be 'tedious' will be matched with at least one person who finds it to be an interesting job.
Also, if the job is that pressing, a way will be found to automate it and so minimise the time spent on tedium.
> I don't BillG has any trouble sleeping at night...
It is a delusion to think that money makes one slep easier. Personally I think once you have enough money to pay for the cost of livng, excess money becomes a source of worry (because you have to 'manage' it). Okay, your opinion may be different, but recognise it for what it is: a personal opinion.
I find a good policy is to never make simplifications without telling the reader. Usually the simplifications lead to longer term confusion. When a simplification is made, at least let the reader know the nature of it.
I acknowledge that such writing requires a lot of thought and would probably have required more of your time than you were prepared to invest in a slashdot post.
I gather Feyman was very good at explaining complex things in a clear way, without making simplifications. For example, in his book QED, the only simplification he claimed to have made was to neglect polarisation effects. Even here he explained that he was making a simplification and gave enough basics that a knowledgeable reader could derive the missing information. (As a particle physicist, do you a agree with this last paragraph and are you aware of any other information left out of QED?)
Umm, no, I didn't say anything about "modern music is crap".
There is plenty of good music out there. It just isn't being produced by the major record labels, who to a good approximation are the 'record industry'.
Not take a deep breath, calm down, and stop putting words in my mouth.
> Now if they could only use this data to somehow put out better music...
Naah. They'll use it to reduce the quality of the music down to the 'most efficient level', whereby the quality of the music is just above the level at which it stops selling.
Perhaps we need to build such a feature into spam filters? When spam is detected, the filter runs the spam through a version of ELIZA to generate a sane response. It then autoposts this reply to the spammer (possibly using a bogus address), all without user intervention.
Note: Using bogus addresses may allow the spammer to filter out the autoreplies, as they just eliminate all replies which come from addresses they did not send to.
Perhaps spammers will deploy Baysian filters in an attempt to detect autoreplies?
I guess there is the danger of ELIZA making an excessive promise on your behalf. How to guard against this?
So the user thinks they are typing their password into site XYZ's mega secure web site, when they are actually typing it into IBM's not so secure widget? What are the consequences when this 'password widget' gets cracked? The user is not aware of even the possibility of a crack because they are not aware the widget exists.
Not to mention the possibilities for a virus/worm installing its own version of a 'password widget', which the user will again not be aware of.
I guess this is another step along the road to removing the analog frontends in radio frequency systems, to be replaced by digital frontends connected to the antenna.
So what's the vote: will RF designers be obsolete, or will digital designers have to become RF designers?
>you paid for your PC and no advertiser, whether a spammer or a pop-up advertiser, has a right to steal your bandwidth or storage.
Let's face it, the cost of the bandwidth and storage is tiny. The real cost is your time and lost productivity due to the interruption. Perhaps it come down to the fact that you should have an expectation of privacy while in a private place (in your home in your 'personal space' on your own computer).
Maybe now is the time to bring out some serious open/free MPEG4 tools in an attempt to kill off all these non-standard formats? If it's time for a change, why not provide an alternative?
Slashdot Mirror
Information is not scarce. Any scarcity is artificially created, by measures such as DRM and IP, in an attempt to turn information into capital and prop up existing economic systems.
Indeed, one can generalise the entire 'Free Software' movement as an attempt to remove 'artificial scarcity' from information. Now you see why monopolists hate Free Software, as it threatens their entire power/wealth base.
Also, one of the supposed advantages of molecular assembly is that there is no waste, so material requirements are minimised.
1GB/3GHz = 0.3 Byte/Hz
32MB/100MHz = 0.3 Byte/Hz
Basically, as processors have gotten faster, the resources attached to the processor have gotten correspondingly larger. Thus it takes more clock cycles to initialise these resources and get them ready for use (ie. 'boot' them). The end result is boot times will be approximately constant (as observed).
By way of comparison, my first computer had 6kB of RAM and a 3.6MHz processor. 6kB/3.6MHz = 0.002. As one would expect, this computer booted in milliseconds!
You have just inferred that the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are terrorists. How do you know this? Has a judge told you so? Perhaps it was a politician who told you so? Wouldn't being imprisoned by a politician make one a political prisoner?
Are politicians so dependent on positive media spin that they dare not refuse such laws? So many questions.
Would it be realistic to modify Glade to build the menus for a DVD? Perhaps the additional user interface element would be as simple as an additional file type as an option in the 'save as' dialog box (save as... DVD menu)?
KDE is now part of Debian, so if SuSE drops KDE it is always possible to divert effort into making Debian the best KDE distro (as well as the best GNOME distro).
Incidentally, most of the alternative suggestions offered by slashdotters seem to compromise the secrecy of the ballot. Secrecy might not seem important to the average slashdotter, but it is important if your family will disappear when you get caught voting for the opposition.
They did:
Fortunately, the device industry's analysis looks like:
so there is a chance sanity may prevail.
Here is the AAC Licensing FAQ. Lots of answers there.
"Our new "Durax"(tm) connectors are available in both male and female sexes. To improve performance in vibrating environments, we have used laser ablation to yield a smoother contact surface for more intimate mating, leading to reduced resistance...
femto
Maybe because they are features the users don't want?
> ...unpopular, tedious, but necessary work might never get done...
But with such a large pool of talent, the chances are jobs which one person finds to be 'tedious' will be matched with at least one person who finds it to be an interesting job.
Also, if the job is that pressing, a way will be found to automate it and so minimise the time spent on tedium.
> I don't BillG has any trouble sleeping at night...
It is a delusion to think that money makes one slep easier. Personally I think once you have enough money to pay for the cost of livng, excess money becomes a source of worry (because you have to 'manage' it). Okay, your opinion may be different, but recognise it for what it is: a personal opinion.
I acknowledge that such writing requires a lot of thought and would probably have required more of your time than you were prepared to invest in a slashdot post.
I gather Feyman was very good at explaining complex things in a clear way, without making simplifications. For example, in his book QED, the only simplification he claimed to have made was to neglect polarisation effects. Even here he explained that he was making a simplification and gave enough basics that a knowledgeable reader could derive the missing information. (As a particle physicist, do you a agree with this last paragraph and are you aware of any other information left out of QED?)
Does this mean IBM is to Novell as Microsoft is to SCO?
There is plenty of good music out there. It just isn't being produced by the major record labels, who to a good approximation are the 'record industry'.
Not take a deep breath, calm down, and stop putting words in my mouth.
Don't you mean the Internet Underground Music Archive? (since 1993)
Naah. They'll use it to reduce the quality of the music down to the 'most efficient level', whereby the quality of the music is just above the level at which it stops selling.
Note: Using bogus addresses may allow the spammer to filter out the autoreplies, as they just eliminate all replies which come from addresses they did not send to.
Perhaps spammers will deploy Baysian filters in an attempt to detect autoreplies?
I guess there is the danger of ELIZA making an excessive promise on your behalf. How to guard against this?
Here it is:
#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
printf( "%i\n", rand() );
return(0);
}
So the user thinks they are typing their password into site XYZ's mega secure web site, when they are actually typing it into IBM's not so secure widget? What are the consequences when this 'password widget' gets cracked? The user is not aware of even the possibility of a crack because they are not aware the widget exists.
Not to mention the possibilities for a virus/worm installing its own version of a 'password widget', which the user will again not be aware of.
And in reply, I think "What if each user controller their own router?"
So what's the vote: will RF designers be obsolete, or will digital designers have to become RF designers?
Let's face it, the cost of the bandwidth and storage is tiny. The real cost is your time and lost productivity due to the interruption. Perhaps it come down to the fact that you should have an expectation of privacy while in a private place (in your home in your 'personal space' on your own computer).
Maybe now is the time to bring out some serious open/free MPEG4 tools in an attempt to kill off all these non-standard formats? If it's time for a change, why not provide an alternative?