In theory I agree with you and almost said that myself but it's better that someone else said it first.
Internet has reached the point where you can't think of it as a 'boutique' or 'luxury' service, not when the government uses it to conduct business with the citizenry. Therefore private companies shouldn't be allowed to have a business model that treats it as such. If that continues it'll kill the Internet entirely.
The problem with 'competition' in this case is this: who owns the cables on the poles? Lots of smaller ISPs have to lease lines from, say, AT&T for instance. There's nothing preventing AT&T, in this example, from either saying "nah, we don't want to lease them to you" or "okay, but we're going to charge you up the ying-yang for them". Even making everything wireless won't solve this problem, there's only so much bandwidth.
If this passes a vote, then Net Neutrality lives to see another day.
If it doesn't pass, then those who voted against it will have declared themselves on the issue.
Either way it's time for them all to get off the fence.
This gave me an idea: Could you grow silicon crystals in a 3-dimensional pattern that would do what these feathers do? If you could wouldn't you be able to create extremely efficient solar cells?
It's not a matter of whether they understand the technology or not. They just don't give a damn. They want access to EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME, and Constitional rights be damned. This is the true nature of the mind of your average law-enforcement type. Your 'rights', to them, are more like 'privileges, which can be granted and revoked at their will and whim, because they have guns.' This is why we're supposed to have checks and balances built into our criminal legal system, and this is why it's important to preserve and enforce those checks and balances, to preserve our Constitutional rights. Otherwise we're no better than some country like Russia or North Korea. We must always be vigilant against the rise of the Police State.
Yeah, except the big ISPs are probably going to start divvying up what was the Internet in favor of a de-evolution back towards walled gardens. Between that and the Great Firewalls that some countries have and/or their restrictive policies for the Internet, it's getting hacked to bits.
Your instincts are good, perhaps bolstered by other related news articles. Even if Google isn't outright using these as surveillance devices in people's homes, it's been proven by security researchers that they can be easily leveraged into being surveillance devices, listening (and watching, in the case of those with cameras) 24/7.
Several years ago I used to pose a theoretical scenario to people where they'd have cameras and microphones watching and listening in on them in their homes. "Why would anyone do that?" some with say. Others would regurgitate the same tired-out line: "I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to fear". I was, of course, dismissed as the 'tinfoil hat' crowd. Now it's 2018 and guess what? People are carrying around a GPS-enabled tracking device capable of audio and video recording (smartphones). They're voluntarily filling their homes with audio/video surveillance devices that are always on (so-called "digital assistants" like Google Home, Amazon Echo, etc). In a 1984-esque twist, televisions with a camera and microphone ('smart' TVs). People's cars are filled with cameras and microphones. There are cameras and microphones all over in public, at intersections, in stores and shopping malls. Everywhere. So I'm a 'tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist'? I think not. I think most people are painfully DUMB, and worse, they still don't see it, even when it's right in front of their faces.
You can't possibly 'copyright' a block of pseudorandom numbers. That's what white noise is, in the digital sense. ANYONE can generate white noise digitally, it's easy. I suppose you could claim someone copied your file full of random numbers, but spectrally it's going to be exactly the same regardless of whether you copied it or generated it yourself.
Serious question for/. professionals: Other than high CPU usage by your browser, how do you detect a rogue cryptocurrency miner? Second question: How do you block a rogue cryptocurrency miner from running and/or shut it down?
I know it doesn't stand a chance. It's another case of having to change hearts and minds, and it usually takes major disasters to get through to people on that level.
Burning most plastics isn't energy-efficient, and also most plastics produce rather nasty toxic chemicals when you burn them. Burying them in a landfill like they used to would be less toxic overall than burning them.
A large part of the problem is much plastic waste isn't recyclable. Another large part of the problem is the plastic that is recyclable, isn't practical to recycle, costing more to do so than you get out of sale of the recycled material. It'd be nice if we'd produce fewer throw-away things, or things that aren't durable, but that's also less profitable therefore it won't get off the ground in a capitalist world. The focus is always on sell, sell, sell and getting consumers to consume, consume, consume so there's little interest in getting people to buy fewer things that last longer.
While I wholeheartedly agree with everything you're saying (we appear to be from the same 'tribe' if you know what I mean), what in reality you're asking our species, as a whole to do, is to evolve faster. As I see it, it's our poor caveman brains that are at the root of many of the socio-political problems that plague our planet-wide 'civilization' (using quotes because many times I am dubious about whether what we have is really 'civilization' at all). We, overall as a species, tend to be more 'reactive' than 'thinking', driven more by hardwired instincts and emotions than by slowing-down-and-thinking-things-through. It of course is even worse with anyone under the age of approximately thirty, which is about when the brain puts the finishing touches on it's development; up to that point people are even more emotional, more reactive, and more impulsive. I'm not saying that we can't teach kids using better methodologies than we do, we most certainly can! But the way of education of late, at least here in the U.S., has been to focus on passing standardized tests, giving the illusion of being intelligent and educated, rather than focusing on teaching kids how to think. I of course am painting with a very broad brush here because I must for brevity's sake, and I know that as with all things there are those who are above the curve (as well as, sadly, below it). But at least on the education side of things that's what I see as a large part of the problem: getting kids to be good at taking tests (so public schools can continue to justify their budgetary needs) at the expense of teaching them life-skills like critical thinking.
Of course (public) education in this country is now going to be faced with another major roadblock to quality education, in the form of Betsy DeVoss, who would like nothing more than to gut the public school system by way of diverting funding for it with 'vouchers' that will, ironically, only benefit private religious schools, which of course are not likely to encourage 'freedom of thought' or 'critical thinking' in their students. Meanwhile even more severely underfunded public schools will then either close, or only be able to provide the poorest kids with the poorest education imaginable, simultaneously increasing the gulf between the rich and the working poor and producing an entire generation of kids who aren't educationally prepared to make it in the modern world.
It is my opinion that in order to bring about the reforms in public education necessary to produce kids who are both properly filled with knowledge and who know how to think, we're going to have to halt the agenda of certain special interest groups in this country, swing the socio-political needle leftwards back to the middle, and bring the focus of education back to what's most important: producing generations of adults who are both knowledgeable enough and thinking enough to take on living in the 21st Century in a thoughtful, rational way. This should be (and always should have been!) among the highest priorities of our society -- but we have lost our way, apparently.
I voted for Jill Stein, purely as a form of political protest. I was still registered as Independent then and refused to vote for either one but didn't want to be That Guy who doesn't vote at all. Now I've more or less been forced to register as Democrat so my vote will help restore the balance -- but if they try to trot out Hillary again I may have to vote 3rd Party again. And by the way I have nothing but contempt for the whole "vote for the least bad" thing.
But see your 'slightly compromised security' can't be quantified; it's a known unknown, and worse, the threats themselves are unknown unknowns. This really brings it to the point of being a binary proposition; you're either completely secured or you're completely unsecured because you can't get anywhere near an accurate read on the level of threat or even the form the threat(s) will take.
The 'fun' computers I used to own were all hand built by yours truly and were based on microprocessors that aren't even as powerful as current tech microcontrollers. I had much more fun with a 6MHz Z80B and 64kB of RAM, CP/M, and a C compiler than I've ever had playing with anything since my first XT clone. Of course these days I don't come home and play with any hardware anymore unless something is broken and I don't write software because there's just no point and frankly I'd rather be physically active outside than sit indoors staring at another screen. But if I were a teenager/twenty-something now, I'm not so sure I'd give a damn as much about computers, because they're just not fun, you can't actually build anything anymore. Other than, as you say, microcontrollers. But electronics in general has also become much less 'fun' because all the new and hot hardware requires you to spin a whole multi-layer PCB just to get it up and running in the most basic ways. You really can't go very far with perfboard and a soldering iron anymore, not like you used to. Also the days of surplus stores is long gone, and much of my materials came from such places. Hell, there used to be half a dozen electronics stores within 25 miles of me, and now they're all dead and gone. You want anything serious anymore, you have to have it shipped in. *shrug* it's just not as fun as it used to be. There seems to be little to discover, and the younger generation seems to turn their nose up at anything that isn't strictly digital.
Between this and his publicly stated desires to shut down certain news organizations and an entire television network, how is it not obvious to every single person in these United States that the 'person' (using the word loosely here) we're dealing with should never have been elected POTUS in the first place? Seriously, it's like we're living in a perpetual nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
In theory I agree with you and almost said that myself but it's better that someone else said it first.
Internet has reached the point where you can't think of it as a 'boutique' or 'luxury' service, not when the government uses it to conduct business with the citizenry. Therefore private companies shouldn't be allowed to have a business model that treats it as such. If that continues it'll kill the Internet entirely.
The problem with 'competition' in this case is this: who owns the cables on the poles? Lots of smaller ISPs have to lease lines from, say, AT&T for instance. There's nothing preventing AT&T, in this example, from either saying "nah, we don't want to lease them to you" or "okay, but we're going to charge you up the ying-yang for them". Even making everything wireless won't solve this problem, there's only so much bandwidth.
If this passes a vote, then Net Neutrality lives to see another day.
If it doesn't pass, then those who voted against it will have declared themselves on the issue.
Either way it's time for them all to get off the fence.
This gave me an idea: Could you grow silicon crystals in a 3-dimensional pattern that would do what these feathers do? If you could wouldn't you be able to create extremely efficient solar cells?
It's not a matter of whether they understand the technology or not. They just don't give a damn. They want access to EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME, and Constitional rights be damned. This is the true nature of the mind of your average law-enforcement type. Your 'rights', to them, are more like 'privileges, which can be granted and revoked at their will and whim, because they have guns.' This is why we're supposed to have checks and balances built into our criminal legal system, and this is why it's important to preserve and enforce those checks and balances, to preserve our Constitutional rights. Otherwise we're no better than some country like Russia or North Korea. We must always be vigilant against the rise of the Police State.
Yep. More surveillance.
Yeah, except the big ISPs are probably going to start divvying up what was the Internet in favor of a de-evolution back towards walled gardens. Between that and the Great Firewalls that some countries have and/or their restrictive policies for the Internet, it's getting hacked to bits.
Your instincts are good, perhaps bolstered by other related news articles. Even if Google isn't outright using these as surveillance devices in people's homes, it's been proven by security researchers that they can be easily leveraged into being surveillance devices, listening (and watching, in the case of those with cameras) 24/7.
Several years ago I used to pose a theoretical scenario to people where they'd have cameras and microphones watching and listening in on them in their homes. "Why would anyone do that?" some with say. Others would regurgitate the same tired-out line: "I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to fear". I was, of course, dismissed as the 'tinfoil hat' crowd. Now it's 2018 and guess what? People are carrying around a GPS-enabled tracking device capable of audio and video recording (smartphones). They're voluntarily filling their homes with audio/video surveillance devices that are always on (so-called "digital assistants" like Google Home, Amazon Echo, etc). In a 1984-esque twist, televisions with a camera and microphone ('smart' TVs). People's cars are filled with cameras and microphones. There are cameras and microphones all over in public, at intersections, in stores and shopping malls. Everywhere. So I'm a 'tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist'? I think not. I think most people are painfully DUMB, and worse, they still don't see it, even when it's right in front of their faces.
Am I right?
Mod OP up.
Exactly. Also good luck with trying to 'open source' 10nm die fabrication.
tuna
French: "you don't have"
Bulgarian: "ton"
Chichewa: "we have"
Czech: "tonne"
Greek: "ton"
Romanian: "thunder"
Sesotho: "we have"
Shona: "we have"
Swahili: "we have"
Tamil: "supporting"
Turkish: "Danube"
Urdu: "muddy"
Xhosa: "we have"
Zulu: "we have"
Heh, yeah, that's another one, and don't forget "PIN number". :-)
"Inu" translates to "dog", so stop saying "shiba inu dog", either say "shiba inu" (and stop there) or say "shiba dog".
You can't possibly 'copyright' a block of pseudorandom numbers. That's what white noise is, in the digital sense. ANYONE can generate white noise digitally, it's easy. I suppose you could claim someone copied your file full of random numbers, but spectrally it's going to be exactly the same regardless of whether you copied it or generated it yourself.
I (and hopefully others) understand you're being funny, but (sadly) it seems to be over some people's heads. ;-)
Serious question for /. professionals: Other than high CPU usage by your browser, how do you detect a rogue cryptocurrency miner?
Second question: How do you block a rogue cryptocurrency miner from running and/or shut it down?
I know it doesn't stand a chance. It's another case of having to change hearts and minds, and it usually takes major disasters to get through to people on that level.
Burning most plastics isn't energy-efficient, and also most plastics produce rather nasty toxic chemicals when you burn them. Burying them in a landfill like they used to would be less toxic overall than burning them.
A large part of the problem is much plastic waste isn't recyclable. Another large part of the problem is the plastic that is recyclable, isn't practical to recycle, costing more to do so than you get out of sale of the recycled material. It'd be nice if we'd produce fewer throw-away things, or things that aren't durable, but that's also less profitable therefore it won't get off the ground in a capitalist world. The focus is always on sell, sell, sell and getting consumers to consume, consume, consume so there's little interest in getting people to buy fewer things that last longer.
While I wholeheartedly agree with everything you're saying (we appear to be from the same 'tribe' if you know what I mean), what in reality you're asking our species, as a whole to do, is to evolve faster. As I see it, it's our poor caveman brains that are at the root of many of the socio-political problems that plague our planet-wide 'civilization' (using quotes because many times I am dubious about whether what we have is really 'civilization' at all). We, overall as a species, tend to be more 'reactive' than 'thinking', driven more by hardwired instincts and emotions than by slowing-down-and-thinking-things-through. It of course is even worse with anyone under the age of approximately thirty, which is about when the brain puts the finishing touches on it's development; up to that point people are even more emotional, more reactive, and more impulsive. I'm not saying that we can't teach kids using better methodologies than we do, we most certainly can! But the way of education of late, at least here in the U.S., has been to focus on passing standardized tests, giving the illusion of being intelligent and educated, rather than focusing on teaching kids how to think. I of course am painting with a very broad brush here because I must for brevity's sake, and I know that as with all things there are those who are above the curve (as well as, sadly, below it). But at least on the education side of things that's what I see as a large part of the problem: getting kids to be good at taking tests (so public schools can continue to justify their budgetary needs) at the expense of teaching them life-skills like critical thinking.
Of course (public) education in this country is now going to be faced with another major roadblock to quality education, in the form of Betsy DeVoss, who would like nothing more than to gut the public school system by way of diverting funding for it with 'vouchers' that will, ironically, only benefit private religious schools, which of course are not likely to encourage 'freedom of thought' or 'critical thinking' in their students. Meanwhile even more severely underfunded public schools will then either close, or only be able to provide the poorest kids with the poorest education imaginable, simultaneously increasing the gulf between the rich and the working poor and producing an entire generation of kids who aren't educationally prepared to make it in the modern world.
It is my opinion that in order to bring about the reforms in public education necessary to produce kids who are both properly filled with knowledge and who know how to think, we're going to have to halt the agenda of certain special interest groups in this country, swing the socio-political needle leftwards back to the middle, and bring the focus of education back to what's most important: producing generations of adults who are both knowledgeable enough and thinking enough to take on living in the 21st Century in a thoughtful, rational way. This should be (and always should have been!) among the highest priorities of our society -- but we have lost our way, apparently.
I voted for Jill Stein, purely as a form of political protest. I was still registered as Independent then and refused to vote for either one but didn't want to be That Guy who doesn't vote at all. Now I've more or less been forced to register as Democrat so my vote will help restore the balance -- but if they try to trot out Hillary again I may have to vote 3rd Party again. And by the way I have nothing but contempt for the whole "vote for the least bad" thing.
See above: https://slashdot.org/comments....
But see your 'slightly compromised security' can't be quantified; it's a known unknown, and worse, the threats themselves are unknown unknowns. This really brings it to the point of being a binary proposition; you're either completely secured or you're completely unsecured because you can't get anywhere near an accurate read on the level of threat or even the form the threat(s) will take.
The 'fun' computers I used to own were all hand built by yours truly and were based on microprocessors that aren't even as powerful as current tech microcontrollers. I had much more fun with a 6MHz Z80B and 64kB of RAM, CP/M, and a C compiler than I've ever had playing with anything since my first XT clone. Of course these days I don't come home and play with any hardware anymore unless something is broken and I don't write software because there's just no point and frankly I'd rather be physically active outside than sit indoors staring at another screen. But if I were a teenager/twenty-something now, I'm not so sure I'd give a damn as much about computers, because they're just not fun, you can't actually build anything anymore. Other than, as you say, microcontrollers. But electronics in general has also become much less 'fun' because all the new and hot hardware requires you to spin a whole multi-layer PCB just to get it up and running in the most basic ways. You really can't go very far with perfboard and a soldering iron anymore, not like you used to. Also the days of surplus stores is long gone, and much of my materials came from such places. Hell, there used to be half a dozen electronics stores within 25 miles of me, and now they're all dead and gone. You want anything serious anymore, you have to have it shipped in. *shrug* it's just not as fun as it used to be. There seems to be little to discover, and the younger generation seems to turn their nose up at anything that isn't strictly digital.
Between this and his publicly stated desires to shut down certain news organizations and an entire television network, how is it not obvious to every single person in these United States that the 'person' (using the word loosely here) we're dealing with should never have been elected POTUS in the first place? Seriously, it's like we're living in a perpetual nightmare.