I kind of wonder why it is they completely shut it down instead of just letting it continue to run?
Also, it occurs to me: if human civilization manages (somehow) to survive long enough to move out into our planetary system, derelict hardware like Kepler, left to orbit indefinitely, will become great 'astroarchaeology' finds for later generations, brought back and restored as museum exhibits.
Are you kidding me? Any starfaring alien civilization that takes a good long look at us doesn't bother stopping by, we're currently an embarassment to truly civilized beings and not worth their trouble. If we survive another thousand years or so we might be worthy of being contacted, but now? Hell, no. We can't even get along with ourselves, let alone a truly alien species. It would be a disaster for both species.
I can't possibly imagine why anyone would want to leave Earth!
That's because you have zero imagination and no ability to think beyond your next meal. A starfaring alien civilization would look at someone like you and decide you're not actually 'sentient', you're just a clever animal with lots of toys. Thankfully, however, the Bell Curve is a real thing, and not all of us are on the left side of it like you are.
At this point in time, my feeling is that the real obstacle to humans getting off this planet is humans themselves; we've dug ourselves a hole quite deep, what with human-caused climate change, and of course the fact that we can't even manage to get along with ourselves ("you look different than I do so I hate you", "you believe in the Invisible Sky-God different than I do, so I hate you", "you're not heterosexual, therefore I hate you", "your politics don't echo mine, therefore I hate you", and so on; no damned wonder starfaring alien civilizations won't contact us) all threaten to crash our entire civilization and send us back to the stone-age and/or cause an extinction-level event that decimates our entire species. Also add to this that even if we manage to dodge those, we don't seem capable of voluntarily controlling our own numbers, therefore population pressure will eventually cause wars over real estate and resources; clearly we need to get off this planet, but our problems are growing faster than our ability to handle them, and our technology is growing orders of magnitude faster than our ability to cope and adapt to it in positive ways. Honestly, I fear for our entire species.
(Any idiot can drive a car now-a-days, but back at the beginning, you had to know how to start it and crank it by hand, how to light the lights (candles!), and the correct fuel to add.)
Not that I've ever owned a Model A or a Model T.. but my father was interested in them, and I believe in his youth owned at least one or two of them, and in his old age, had a restored Model A roadster.. but I digress. So far as I remember, not only did you have to know how (and have the physical fitness) to hand-crank the engine to start it, you also had to understand how to manually adjust the spark advance, the fuel mixture ratio, when to use the choke, and of course the 'transmission', such as it was, was a pedal on the floor (where you'd expect a clutch pedal today), and all I remember about that was that the pedal all the way up was high (3rd) gear. Yes, it took some know-how to drive back then.;-)
A chainsaw is and should always be just a tool. The tool should not be what's in charge. When all you are is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when all you are is a chainsaw, what do you think the world looks like to you?
Too bad you're an AC, you won't even see this.
Up until recently I'd been babying along an old AMD-64 single-core system, but it would choke out so bad on Google Maps that it was nigh-unto unusable; I'd have to sit there for at least a full minute before it would all load. For what should be a simple mapping webpage you shouldn't have to have a quad-core 3GHz system with graphics card in a PCIE x16 slot, FFS. Face it: it's bloated as fuck.
When I read shit like this, it validates my choice to move to Linux that much more.
Currently running Ubuntu 18.04LTS and no regrets! Screw you, Microsoft.
This guy is applying this to just the Internet, whereas I apply it to everything: our technology, in general, has evolved orders of magnitude faster than our species has evolved physiologically, especially our brains. If you use as objective an eye as possible you can see where the comparatively fast development of technology has created problems. In some ways, we, as an overall species, would have benefitted from many technologies developing slower, allowing us time to adapt better. Not that it matters now, of course; it would take a total collapse of our global civilization, to the point where nobody knows how most of our current technologies work anymore, to bring us back down to a level commensurate with our level of evolution; essentially nobody is going to give up what they already have. But we could slow things down overall a bit rather than overloading everyone with more, more, more.
As someone else pointed out, Chicago has a long history of rampant corruption, as well as a long history of being in financial straits. This is desperation on their part.
What'll happen is this: similar to how many Chinese get around the the Great Firewall, people who can grok how to do it will do an end-run around the 'tax' by using a VPN, TOR, or something similar, if possible (depends on how the tax is levied).
Something else that might happen: people will say 'fuck this' and just not use the services that have the tax.
Something like this tax, if adopted nation-wide, would have a chilling effect on 'streaming services'. I don't even like 'streaming services' myself, I think they're just another trap to suck money out of people's wallets, but allowing bullshit like this to flourish would inevitably have a chilling effect on the Internet in general, hastening it's destruction. Imagine an overall Internet 'tax', for instance: every single byte transferred, for instance, being taxed. Politicians would love it. The Rich wouldn't care about it (they have money) and the Middle Class and below would take it in the shorts, living in a world where you're severely hamstrung without Internet access, but struggle to pay for even the lowest level of it.
Therefore bullshit like this 'tax' has to be quashed, firmly and quickly.
My personal opinion of Python: Since I learned how to code in C and assembler, Python gives me an ice-cream headache with all it's weirdnesses. It's a Heinz-57 of programming languages, taking from all over the place, and some of the syntax just made me want to throw things once I discovered them.
Guess what? As clever as Python and Java are, you can't effectively write an entire operating system in them, or a high-performance driver like a graphics card driver in them. You could try, but the result would be bloated and slow and effectively useless. So we have compiler languages like C/C++ that require you to actually be a competent programmer who can write code with proper error checking and error handling. I'm not saying that when you have an entire platoon of programmers all working on parts of the same project (vis-a-vis graphics card driver or OS) that there aren't going to be bugs that crop up, but slapping training wheels onto them isn't necessarily the solution to the problem either.
Note also another 'language' that would have this same problem, and for which there is no substitute for in the highest-performance applications: assembly language. Yes, Virginia, we still use assembly language in some places, so far as I know. Then you really have to know what you're doing.
Maybe the solution to this problem is to educate and train our programmers more thoroughly and carefully.
But do we really know where mosquitoes fit into the overall biosphere and what the real-world consequences are of them being wiped out as a species? Practically a rhetorical question since I don't think we have enough knowledge to really understand everything about how any species affects things overall.
What the hell is so gods-be-damned wrong with being more cautious about things with potentially far-reaching consequences? And again I assert: China. They're not going to be cautious, they want world dominance in all things and screw the consequences. Wouldn't at all be surprised if as we speak they're doing genetic experiments on humans. (Yes, I think the Chinese government are monsters.)
I am almost always shouted down for it, but I agree that we're forging ahead with genetic modifications without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be, and it's a one-way street, once it's done you can't take it back, and we won't know what the ultimate consequences will be for decades or centuries -- or maybe a matter of just years, if we're really unlucky. Worse, there could be consequences we'll never even realize are due to something we've modifed genetically; imagine our species dying out and never even understanding why it's happening?
Ironically I'm not even worried about this on an emotional basis. There's already enough GMO that's been released into the wild that it's already too late to do anything about it, and countries like China are even less cautious about doing it than anyone else. One way or another our fate is already sealed. Odds are about even that those of us alive right now won't live to see any possible negative consequences; it might take several generations before anything shows up.
Slashdot Mirror
I kind of wonder why it is they completely shut it down instead of just letting it continue to run?
Also, it occurs to me: if human civilization manages (somehow) to survive long enough to move out into our planetary system, derelict hardware like Kepler, left to orbit indefinitely, will become great 'astroarchaeology' finds for later generations, brought back and restored as museum exhibits.
You don't get to advertise your shitty website here for FREE, you asshole. Fuck off.
Are you kidding me? Any starfaring alien civilization that takes a good long look at us doesn't bother stopping by, we're currently an embarassment to truly civilized beings and not worth their trouble. If we survive another thousand years or so we might be worthy of being contacted, but now? Hell, no. We can't even get along with ourselves, let alone a truly alien species. It would be a disaster for both species.
I can't possibly imagine why anyone would want to leave Earth!
That's because you have zero imagination and no ability to think beyond your next meal. A starfaring alien civilization would look at someone like you and decide you're not actually 'sentient', you're just a clever animal with lots of toys. Thankfully, however, the Bell Curve is a real thing, and not all of us are on the left side of it like you are.
Anyway..
At this point in time, my feeling is that the real obstacle to humans getting off this planet is humans themselves; we've dug ourselves a hole quite deep, what with human-caused climate change, and of course the fact that we can't even manage to get along with ourselves ("you look different than I do so I hate you", "you believe in the Invisible Sky-God different than I do, so I hate you", "you're not heterosexual, therefore I hate you", "your politics don't echo mine, therefore I hate you", and so on; no damned wonder starfaring alien civilizations won't contact us) all threaten to crash our entire civilization and send us back to the stone-age and/or cause an extinction-level event that decimates our entire species. Also add to this that even if we manage to dodge those, we don't seem capable of voluntarily controlling our own numbers, therefore population pressure will eventually cause wars over real estate and resources; clearly we need to get off this planet, but our problems are growing faster than our ability to handle them, and our technology is growing orders of magnitude faster than our ability to cope and adapt to it in positive ways. Honestly, I fear for our entire species.
(Any idiot can drive a car now-a-days, but back at the beginning, you had to know how to start it and crank it by hand, how to light the lights (candles!), and the correct fuel to add.)
Not that I've ever owned a Model A or a Model T.. but my father was interested in them, and I believe in his youth owned at least one or two of them, and in his old age, had a restored Model A roadster.. but I digress. So far as I remember, not only did you have to know how (and have the physical fitness) to hand-crank the engine to start it, you also had to understand how to manually adjust the spark advance, the fuel mixture ratio, when to use the choke, and of course the 'transmission', such as it was, was a pedal on the floor (where you'd expect a clutch pedal today), and all I remember about that was that the pedal all the way up was high (3rd) gear. Yes, it took some know-how to drive back then. ;-)
A chainsaw is and should always be just a tool. The tool should not be what's in charge. When all you are is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when all you are is a chainsaw, what do you think the world looks like to you?
Too bad you're an AC, you won't even see this.
Thanks, Javascript!
When I read shit like this, it validates my choice to move to Linux that much more.
Currently running Ubuntu 18.04LTS and no regrets!
Screw you, Microsoft.
This guy is applying this to just the Internet, whereas I apply it to everything: our technology, in general, has evolved orders of magnitude faster than our species has evolved physiologically, especially our brains. If you use as objective an eye as possible you can see where the comparatively fast development of technology has created problems. In some ways, we, as an overall species, would have benefitted from many technologies developing slower, allowing us time to adapt better. Not that it matters now, of course; it would take a total collapse of our global civilization, to the point where nobody knows how most of our current technologies work anymore, to bring us back down to a level commensurate with our level of evolution; essentially nobody is going to give up what they already have. But we could slow things down overall a bit rather than overloading everyone with more, more, more.
As someone else pointed out, Chicago has a long history of rampant corruption, as well as a long history of being in financial straits. This is desperation on their part.
What'll happen is this: similar to how many Chinese get around the the Great Firewall, people who can grok how to do it will do an end-run around the 'tax' by using a VPN, TOR, or something similar, if possible (depends on how the tax is levied).
Something else that might happen: people will say 'fuck this' and just not use the services that have the tax.
Something like this tax, if adopted nation-wide, would have a chilling effect on 'streaming services'. I don't even like 'streaming services' myself, I think they're just another trap to suck money out of people's wallets, but allowing bullshit like this to flourish would inevitably have a chilling effect on the Internet in general, hastening it's destruction. Imagine an overall Internet 'tax', for instance: every single byte transferred, for instance, being taxed. Politicians would love it. The Rich wouldn't care about it (they have money) and the Middle Class and below would take it in the shorts, living in a world where you're severely hamstrung without Internet access, but struggle to pay for even the lowest level of it.
Therefore bullshit like this 'tax' has to be quashed, firmly and quickly.
Oh! You're right, of course, I totally forgot: Asia.
LOL China.
Done.
Yeah, that was one of the weirdnesses that made my eyes roll at first.
My personal opinion of Python: Since I learned how to code in C and assembler, Python gives me an ice-cream headache with all it's weirdnesses. It's a Heinz-57 of programming languages, taking from all over the place, and some of the syntax just made me want to throw things once I discovered them.
The way I like to put it, is that he has all the subtlety and finesse of a chainsaw.
Guess what? As clever as Python and Java are, you can't effectively write an entire operating system in them, or a high-performance driver like a graphics card driver in them. You could try, but the result would be bloated and slow and effectively useless. So we have compiler languages like C/C++ that require you to actually be a competent programmer who can write code with proper error checking and error handling. I'm not saying that when you have an entire platoon of programmers all working on parts of the same project (vis-a-vis graphics card driver or OS) that there aren't going to be bugs that crop up, but slapping training wheels onto them isn't necessarily the solution to the problem either.
Note also another 'language' that would have this same problem, and for which there is no substitute for in the highest-performance applications: assembly language. Yes, Virginia, we still use assembly language in some places, so far as I know. Then you really have to know what you're doing.
Maybe the solution to this problem is to educate and train our programmers more thoroughly and carefully.
You need to be MEDICATED and perhaps INSTITUTIONALIZED. Get the fuck OFF SLASHDOT with your Tourettes Syndome of the Keyboard nonsense, you jackass.
I dunno. Seems to me more like uploading something to the Internet: once it's out there, almost impossible to delete every copy of it.
I second the motion.
But do we really know where mosquitoes fit into the overall biosphere and what the real-world consequences are of them being wiped out as a species? Practically a rhetorical question since I don't think we have enough knowledge to really understand everything about how any species affects things overall.
What the hell is so gods-be-damned wrong with being more cautious about things with potentially far-reaching consequences? And again I assert: China. They're not going to be cautious, they want world dominance in all things and screw the consequences. Wouldn't at all be surprised if as we speak they're doing genetic experiments on humans. (Yes, I think the Chinese government are monsters.)
Yes, I agree with you, but this is one of those things that you can't take back or reverse the damage it causes if you're wrong.
I am almost always shouted down for it, but I agree that we're forging ahead with genetic modifications without fully knowing what the long-term consequences will be, and it's a one-way street, once it's done you can't take it back, and we won't know what the ultimate consequences will be for decades or centuries -- or maybe a matter of just years, if we're really unlucky. Worse, there could be consequences we'll never even realize are due to something we've modifed genetically; imagine our species dying out and never even understanding why it's happening?
Ironically I'm not even worried about this on an emotional basis. There's already enough GMO that's been released into the wild that it's already too late to do anything about it, and countries like China are even less cautious about doing it than anyone else. One way or another our fate is already sealed. Odds are about even that those of us alive right now won't live to see any possible negative consequences; it might take several generations before anything shows up.