This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
One of the greatest advantages of living in a digital age is that digital storage is cheap enough that you can be a "pack rat".
If I could legally have searchable access to every book ever written, why wouldn't I want to? If I could listen to every piece of music I was aware of (and some that I wasn't) why wouldn't I want that?
What next, suggest the demolition of public libraries because they cost money and contain books that are seldom or never read?
Prosperity requires certain things should be available in abundance. Information is one of these things. (Air, water, food, education and medical care are others. But what's the bet I get called a socialist for this view.)
This kind of moronic bullshit is brought to you by same people who want us to stop using air conditioners in summer because it wastes electricity, given us abominable public transport that's backwards compared to 10 years ago and have killed our ability to play in the back yard under a garden sprinkler due to water restrictions. (I live in Australia and in Sydney you can't even hose a car or hard surface without worrying about being issued a fine). Organizations are just looking for an excuse not to provide services.
Gigapixel might sound cool, but there are very few real applications and a lot of downside to Gigapixel images.
First of all consider that only 4 of the bastards will fit on a DVD. For 6 megapixel uncompressed raw you could hold 750 pictures. Better yet you can hold 4500 pictures compressed down to 1Mb each. Storage costs money. If you want them to be convenient you're going to want to keep them on a hard disk (which costs significantly more than DVD per gig).
Next consider that manipulating the pictures will be a nightmare. You'll need something more specialized than Photoshop which, even when supplied with the latest desktop machine with plenty of memory and processor power will slow to a crawl on an image much larger than a few tens of megabytes. There may be an argument for a 30 or 40 megapixel camera, but until the rest of the technology advances the megapixel count just isn't a bottleneck for most photographers.
Also consider that if you want a Gigapixel you can do that today with 84 SLRs (84 x 12megapixel - or 167 x 6megapixel if you want to go cheaper). If the subject is nice and still, you could do this with 1 camera and 84 shots.
This is interesting stuff. Its just not very practical, particularly for the hobbyist. Photography is an expensive enough hobby without pushing absurd limits. I'd rather see CF cards come down further in price, and particularly dSLR and lenses come down in price. I'd like to see image stabilization and 10x optical zoom and beyond become standard. (The image stabilization part won't happen any time soon thanks to IP law)
While we're at it I'd like to see dSLR equipped with a 2nd CCD in the viewfinder or in place of the mirror so you have the choice of an optical viewfinder or CCD on the screen. Better yet I'd like to see the CCDs become so good that you truely don't need an optical viewfinder or mirror. (This means they'd have to work well in low light and not cut out momentarily when the picture is taken). ie. I'd like to see the SLR merge with the point and click into something truely revolutionary. Heck I'd even want to see waterproof cameras as standard before I would want to see a gigapixel camera.
What you're talking about is a mechanism for checking for corruption, which I grant you is one benefit of using MD5.
However if you're talking about security, verifying the MD5 matches an ISO is meaningless unless the MD5 sum is from a trusted source. In the case of your Gentoo upload you're trusting whatever server/mirror you're using to update hasn't been corrupted.
The CSM tries to appear even handed and does give both sides on arguments such as evolution. But in all honesty if it was aiming to be a secular and unbiased scientific magazine the very first thing the publication's staff would do is change its name.
Be honest. How many of you have checked the MD5 sums on a file with a TRUSTED source, as opposed to from the same source you got the file? How many of you do this regularly?
THAT is the biggest problem with MD5 for most users.
Stop right there. Whenever any organization with religious motivations starts to tell you that technology is bad, you should take it with a grain of salt.
I work at a helpdesk. Among the non-geek, there are two web browsers: "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". Both groups recognise it by the blue "e" icon.
Oh good you have the internet! Can you please give it to me on a floppy next time you see me? And also I keep getting these strange popups asking me to buy Viagra, what do I do? Could you come over and fix it for me. I'll give you a can of coke for it. Oh and one more thing, my computer is only 4 years old and it is running very slowly on the latest software. Can you fix it for me. If you can I'll tell all my friends and you can fix all of theirs for free too.
It's nuclear, their is nothing to fear, unless you are one with that bizare fear that something that is glassified then incased in indestructable storage containers that are then moved to remote areas has even a remote chance of ever harming you.
I'm not afraid of anything ENcased in indestructible storage containers. There's no such thing as an indestructible storage container. If you think there is, you've been watching too many info-mercials.
Welcome to your new Hot Electrolysis System. With proper care and maintenance your systems will give you years of trouble free hydrogen production. Follow these instructions carefully:
1) Connect water pipes
2) Take a nuclear reactor (not included) and...
At this point you start to wonder how efficient
3)...super compress the water..
At this point you realize you're going to be fired because you bought your company an impractical dud..
Oh no another guru with a set of life changing observations. Go away...
"Imagine users as very intelligent but very busy"
He's obviously never dealt with the same users as me or it would be "Imagine your users as 90% stupid and unmotivated/lazy, 10% intelligent and bored".
Use the edges and corners of the screen to make your controls virtually infinite
This reminds me of "When you catch the grasshoper then you will be ready to leave". What a bunch of balloni.
1. Don't put road blocks in the way of your users. 2. Only pop up a dialog if it contains useful information 3. If at all possible, use non-modal status indicators
We've gone from crptyic to obvious. I could add "4. Don't make the computer explode and kill your user". Duh!
Use the power of the computer...The computer is powerful: use the computer's power to help the user
You have never felt the power of the dark side. Join me Luke and I will complete your training!
Make similar items easy to distinguish between as summary of point 3 then in the next point...Make items easy to distinguish and find and Make items that do different things distinctive
This guy should be in charge of data backup - redundancy is a good thing there.
These five points represent a small but important part of UI design.
No sir these are the irrelevant, ill thought out prattlings of a PhD. student that have come into vogue and made it as/. news.
A better summary: Don't make your interfaces confusing by adding similar options that do very different things, and for goodness sake remember the user is trying to get something done and isn't necessarily interested in tech.
The people I know who think they can do it can't do it either. Mod this guy up please!!!!!!
Excellent point. Lots of fools think they can produce good code when exhausted and the clean-up job afterwards is a bitch. Unfortunately that may be enough to make you meet some arbitrary management deadline so some managers (and sales people) are happy to force people to do this so the company can profit - usually at great expense to the customer.
The only time to do this sort of thing is when you're _forced_ to. I'm talking legislated deadline that means you will cease trading if you don't meet it. Even then it better be a short stint.
Certianly a great number of supporting applications helped, but I wonder where the OSS movement would be today with the Linux kernel.
Using the BSD kernel? Or onto another operating system under the open source banner. Don't get me wrong the Linux kernel is a great piece of work but don't fool yourself the time was right and give or take 5 years it was going to happen.
No one's work is irreplaceable. Even scientific discoveries and inventions often end up being made by more than one person at around the same time, because the knowledge and circumstances of the times are the same.
Re:What happens when a human gets shot
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
Put it this way. Would you trust the same people who drive you around to be as careful if their own lives weren't on the line? Would you trust the technology and the driver if your mate offered to drive you home by remote?
Re:What happens when a human gets shot
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
Dude. All I have to say is that we do pilot aircraft remotely. Fly-by wire bypasses.
And do you let anyone do this over the net for a couple of hundred bucks?
What happens when a human gets shot
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It's going to be possible for off site hunting accidents and off site manslaughter.
How about making it illegal to operate a weapon remotely for anything but military purposes? The further you remove a person from the carnage the more it seems like a game, and the less thought and respect for life you're likely to see.
There are real consequences to this hunting. Animals die. You wouldn't pilot an aircraft with real people in it by remote control via a flight sim or camera setup.
Their model is obviously not right. Maybe somebody slept through the class where they said, "If your program's output doesn't match common sense, it's probably your program that's wrong."
Relativity doesn't match "common sense". Quantum mechanics doesn't match "common sense". If it goes beyond the experiences of the every day your "common sense" is not suited to extrapolating results and whether or not something matches common sense you better check and recheck your results. (Until you've checked their model thoroughly you're not in a position to dismiss it out of hand).
Science is not about fudging the results so they match "common sense". its that attitude that prevented the heliocentric solar system from being the standard model for many years. No offence intended but I think its you who fell asleep in science class.
Why is it that people are so scared of nuclear plants, i would find global climate change to be a lot worse than the ever reducing risk of a nuclear accident. I'd rather have a few square miles potentially ruined than a certain change to the global system.
Oh yeah that's right nuclear accidents are easily contained and climate change is much more frightening.
You can't be serious. Ever heard of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? THAT is why people are scared. As the plants proliferate the chances of no accidents happening approaches zero pretty quickly. Nuclear accidents are not going to affect just a few square miles. Try half the globe to varying extents.
Perhaps the downturn in jobs is a consequence of the downturn in IT innovation?
No its because of the IT bust. Greedy people finally realized that innovation does not mean instant profit. You still have to provide value, and you still have to make sure that your project is economically viable if the intention is to make money. Innovation often COSTS money, but once others can emulate it, the result is progress and the bar is raised. This is why IP law (*SPIT*) exists - to try to ensure that if you innovate you can be the one who profits. (Unfortunately in practice all you do is stifle lots of other companies).
Mate unfortunately/. has become one of the most hyper-critical judgemental boards I frequent. Don't let it get to you. If you say anything that is unpopular, questions the values of certain software (noteably any free software) or could be construed as doing so, you end up being flamed. That's just the way it is here right now unfortunately.
Let me guess. Is this going to be modded off topic? Do I give a flying !@#$?
Slashdot Mirror
One of the greatest advantages of living in a digital age is that digital storage is cheap enough that you can be a "pack rat".
If I could legally have searchable access to every book ever written, why wouldn't I want to? If I could listen to every piece of music I was aware of (and some that I wasn't) why wouldn't I want that?
What next, suggest the demolition of public libraries because they cost money and contain books that are seldom or never read?
Prosperity requires certain things should be available in abundance. Information is one of these things. (Air, water, food, education and medical care are others. But what's the bet I get called a socialist for this view.)
This kind of moronic bullshit is brought to you by same people who want us to stop using air conditioners in summer because it wastes electricity, given us abominable public transport that's backwards compared to 10 years ago and have killed our ability to play in the back yard under a garden sprinkler due to water restrictions. (I live in Australia and in Sydney you can't even hose a car or hard surface without worrying about being issued a fine). Organizations are just looking for an excuse not to provide services.
Gigapixel might sound cool, but there are very few real applications and a lot of downside to Gigapixel images.
First of all consider that only 4 of the bastards will fit on a DVD. For 6 megapixel uncompressed raw you could hold 750 pictures. Better yet you can hold 4500 pictures compressed down to 1Mb each. Storage costs money. If you want them to be convenient you're going to want to keep them on a hard disk (which costs significantly more than DVD per gig).
Next consider that manipulating the pictures will be a nightmare. You'll need something more specialized than Photoshop which, even when supplied with the latest desktop machine with plenty of memory and processor power will slow to a crawl on an image much larger than a few tens of megabytes. There may be an argument for a 30 or 40 megapixel camera, but until the rest of the technology advances the megapixel count just isn't a bottleneck for most photographers.
Also consider that if you want a Gigapixel you can do that today with 84 SLRs (84 x 12megapixel - or 167 x 6megapixel if you want to go cheaper). If the subject is nice and still, you could do this with 1 camera and 84 shots.
This is interesting stuff. Its just not very practical, particularly for the hobbyist. Photography is an expensive enough hobby without pushing absurd limits. I'd rather see CF cards come down further in price, and particularly dSLR and lenses come down in price. I'd like to see image stabilization and 10x optical zoom and beyond become standard. (The image stabilization part won't happen any time soon thanks to IP law)
While we're at it I'd like to see dSLR equipped with a 2nd CCD in the viewfinder or in place of the mirror so you have the choice of an optical viewfinder or CCD on the screen. Better yet I'd like to see the CCDs become so good that you truely don't need an optical viewfinder or mirror. (This means they'd have to work well in low light and not cut out momentarily when the picture is taken). ie. I'd like to see the SLR merge with the point and click into something truely revolutionary. Heck I'd even want to see waterproof cameras as standard before I would want to see a gigapixel camera.
What you're talking about is a mechanism for checking for corruption, which I grant you is one benefit of using MD5.
However if you're talking about security, verifying the MD5 matches an ISO is meaningless unless the MD5 sum is from a trusted source. In the case of your Gentoo upload you're trusting whatever server/mirror you're using to update hasn't been corrupted.
D00d do u kn0w h0w f3w 0f th3 c0d3rz I w3rk w1th g3t l33t sp3ak? 1t Sh0uld b3 a un1 c1a33 w1th 3xamz nd a11!
The CSM tries to appear even handed and does give both sides on arguments such as evolution. But in all honesty if it was aiming to be a secular and unbiased scientific magazine the very first thing the publication's staff would do is change its name.
Be honest. How many of you have checked the MD5 sums on a file with a TRUSTED source, as opposed to from the same source you got the file? How many of you do this regularly?
THAT is the biggest problem with MD5 for most users.
The Christian Science Monitor...
Stop right there. Whenever any organization with religious motivations starts to tell you that technology is bad, you should take it with a grain of salt.
I work at a helpdesk. Among the non-geek, there are two web browsers: "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". Both groups recognise it by the blue "e" icon.
Oh good you have the internet! Can you please give it to me on a floppy next time you see me? And also I keep getting these strange popups asking me to buy Viagra, what do I do? Could you come over and fix it for me. I'll give you a can of coke for it. Oh and one more thing, my computer is only 4 years old and it is running very slowly on the latest software. Can you fix it for me. If you can I'll tell all my friends and you can fix all of theirs for free too.
Oh yeah and I really need it like tomorrow night.
It's nuclear, their is nothing to fear, unless you are one with that bizare fear that something that is glassified then incased in indestructable storage containers that are then moved to remote areas has even a remote chance of ever harming you.
I'm not afraid of anything ENcased in indestructible storage containers. There's no such thing as an indestructible storage container. If you think there is, you've been watching too many info-mercials.
Welcome to your new Hot Electrolysis System. With proper care and maintenance your systems will give you years of trouble free hydrogen production. Follow these instructions carefully:
...super compress the water..
1) Connect water pipes
2) Take a nuclear reactor (not included) and...
At this point you start to wonder how efficient
3)
At this point you realize you're going to be fired because you bought your company an impractical dud..
No I'm not being serious.
Oh no another guru with a set of life changing observations. Go away...
/. news.
"Imagine users as very intelligent but very busy"
He's obviously never dealt with the same users as me or it would be "Imagine your users as 90% stupid and unmotivated/lazy, 10% intelligent and bored".
Use the edges and corners of the screen to make your controls virtually infinite
This reminds me of "When you catch the grasshoper then you will be ready to leave". What a bunch of balloni.
1. Don't put road blocks in the way of your users. 2. Only pop up a dialog if it contains useful information 3. If at all possible, use non-modal status indicators
We've gone from crptyic to obvious. I could add "4. Don't make the computer explode and kill your user". Duh!
Use the power of the computer...The computer is powerful: use the computer's power to help the user
You have never felt the power of the dark side. Join me Luke and I will complete your training!
Make similar items easy to distinguish between as summary of point 3 then in the next point...Make items easy to distinguish and find and Make items that do different things distinctive
This guy should be in charge of data backup - redundancy is a good thing there.
These five points represent a small but important part of UI design.
No sir these are the irrelevant, ill thought out prattlings of a PhD. student that have come into vogue and made it as
A better summary: Don't make your interfaces confusing by adding similar options that do very different things, and for goodness sake remember the user is trying to get something done and isn't necessarily interested in tech.
The people I know who think they can do it can't do it either.
Mod this guy up please!!!!!!
Excellent point. Lots of fools think they can produce good code when exhausted and the clean-up job afterwards is a bitch. Unfortunately that may be enough to make you meet some arbitrary management deadline so some managers (and sales people) are happy to force people to do this so the company can profit - usually at great expense to the customer.
The only time to do this sort of thing is when you're _forced_ to. I'm talking legislated deadline that means you will cease trading if you don't meet it. Even then it better be a short stint.
test
Certianly a great number of supporting applications helped, but I wonder where the OSS movement would be today with the Linux kernel.
Using the BSD kernel? Or onto another operating system under the open source banner. Don't get me wrong the Linux kernel is a great piece of work but don't fool yourself the time was right and give or take 5 years it was going to happen.
No one's work is irreplaceable. Even scientific discoveries and inventions often end up being made by more than one person at around the same time, because the knowledge and circumstances of the times are the same.
Put it this way. Would you trust the same people who drive you around to be as careful if their own lives weren't on the line? Would you trust the technology and the driver if your mate offered to drive you home by remote?
Dude. All I have to say is that we do pilot aircraft remotely. Fly-by wire bypasses.
And do you let anyone do this over the net for a couple of hundred bucks?
Youf forgot sales tax on toilet paper
It's going to be possible for off site hunting accidents and off site manslaughter.
How about making it illegal to operate a weapon remotely for anything but military purposes? The further you remove a person from the carnage the more it seems like a game, and the less thought and respect for life you're likely to see.
There are real consequences to this hunting. Animals die. You wouldn't pilot an aircraft with real people in it by remote control via a flight sim or camera setup.
Sorry if my thoughts are a little scattered.
*covers ears* La la la la......
Their model is obviously not right. Maybe somebody slept through the class where they said, "If your program's output doesn't match common sense, it's probably your program that's wrong."
Relativity doesn't match "common sense". Quantum mechanics doesn't match "common sense". If it goes beyond the experiences of the every day your "common sense" is not suited to extrapolating results and whether or not something matches common sense you better check and recheck your results. (Until you've checked their model thoroughly you're not in a position to dismiss it out of hand).
Science is not about fudging the results so they match "common sense". its that attitude that prevented the heliocentric solar system from being the standard model for many years. No offence intended but I think its you who fell asleep in science class.
Why is it that people are so scared of nuclear plants, i would find global climate change to be a lot worse than the ever reducing risk of a nuclear accident. I'd rather have a few square miles potentially ruined than a certain change to the global system.
Oh yeah that's right nuclear accidents are easily contained and climate change is much more frightening.
You can't be serious. Ever heard of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? THAT is why people are scared. As the plants proliferate the chances of no accidents happening approaches zero pretty quickly. Nuclear accidents are not going to affect just a few square miles. Try half the globe to varying extents.
Yes /. has become rather redundant ;-)
They knew what the interweb was and could spell HTML yet, somehow, commanded over 50k a year.
:-)
Are you saying that for 50k a year they should not know these things?
Sorry, know what you meant but just couldn't resist.
Perhaps the downturn in jobs is a consequence of the downturn in IT innovation?
No its because of the IT bust. Greedy people finally realized that innovation does not mean instant profit. You still have to provide value, and you still have to make sure that your project is economically viable if the intention is to make money. Innovation often COSTS money, but once others can emulate it, the result is progress and the bar is raised. This is why IP law (*SPIT*) exists - to try to ensure that if you innovate you can be the one who profits. (Unfortunately in practice all you do is stifle lots of other companies).
Mate unfortunately /. has become one of the most hyper-critical judgemental boards I frequent. Don't let it get to you. If you say anything that is unpopular, questions the values of certain software (noteably any free software) or could be construed as doing so, you end up being flamed. That's just the way it is here right now unfortunately.
Let me guess. Is this going to be modded off topic? Do I give a flying !@#$?