The problem with pictograms is they don't mean squat to someone who doesn't already know what they mean. If that weren't the case, Egyptian Hieroglyphics would still be in active use...
Well. After my "holier than thou" comments on cheap DVDs, I ended up having to "burn" my USB stick to do the actual install/upgrade. It turns out my laptop drive isn't DVD-R compatible, only DVD+R. *LOL*
The upgrade itself was painless, though time consuming. It took about 3 hours once I finally had the USB burned. All of my database servers, VLC, etc. seem to work just fine. (Lenovo Z580 with dual-core i7, originally shipped with Windows 7 Home.)
I'd always planned to burn.isos anyhow, so this is a good option for me. (Yeah, yeah, "USB stick, blah, blah". Why am I going to use a $5 USB stick instead of a $0.50 DVD for something I don't expect to use more than once or twice?)
Even "Blue Chip" companies like IBM are a pale shadow of their former selves. Microsoft has lost billions on failed acquisitions and "new technology" that never took hold of the market.
The point is, former success and profit are no guarantee of the same in the future. Companies come, and companies go.
Expecting to be employed by one single company for an entire career is a fools game in the internet age. The sooner you wake up to the fact that even if you do save a company from itself, you're not going to be appreciated nor rewarded for your efforts, the sooner you can start planning a career of moving from one interesting job to the next.
Anyone who is targeting the executive levels of business knows damn well they are going to get their next "promotion" by jumping ship for another company, leveraging their current skills and position as the experience needed for a higher level position. You just flat out don't get promoted into those positions by companies any more, because they don't want you to leave your current role if you're doing a good job. And if you're not doing a good job and are replaceable, they're going to replace you anyhow with someone who isn't replaceable, or they're going to farm out the work of your position to some agency that uses cookie-cutter staff to fill the role.
Companies don't owe you anything, and you don't owe the company anything -- especially not "loyalty."
Get over the idea of "saving" the company. Do your job, do it well, find a better position, and get the hell out while the getting is good.
I run a P4 3.8GHz single core system as my main desktop, even though I do development with it. Switching to a newer Core i5 system will make it run 10 times as fast, but as the runtime on my huge (tuned) code base is under 5 minutes already, it really won't save me *that* much time compared to *editing* the code. It will save on build time, which is a boon to me, but even that savings is only due to the nature of my build process -- I do full instead of incremental builds.
I do plan on buying a new machine in a few months when I've saved the money, but my main point is that the hardware we use has been "good enough" for a good decade. It is the crappy software the people shovel out that drives hardware upgrades nowadays, not the actual need for faster hardware.
So it is to the hardware manufacturer's benefit that as much software as possible be absolutely incompetently written crap so that people will buy the latest shiny-shiny because their old one is "too slow."
Even a megapixel display at 24 bits required 3MB per frame... and a megapixel display has been "low end" for a lot of years now!
Seriously, though -- why does everyone sneer at the fact that not everyone is a gamer? Why are gamers so god damned fucking ARROGANT about their "my dick is bigger than yours" hardware?
The point is to write a "feel good" letter because "we tried to stop them."
Besides, everyone knows the US military and it's mega corp providers are probably the biggest researchers in this area, probably have been for 50+ years, and are unlikely to ever give up their funding just because a bunch of people with degrees think they should do so.
As the letter points out, the technology needed is widely available. That means that even Joe Blow in his basement could work on such AI systems. From there it's just a matter of connecting the AI to a weapons system, and there is no shortage of remotely-controllable weapon systems already. (Drones, anyone?)
Personally I applaud the letter writers for trying. They're incredibly naive to think their letter will have any impact on the decision makers, but they did try!:P
It amazes me how many rappers are gang-bangers first, and "musicians" second. So many of them put their loyalty to "the gang life" above everything else.:(
Not everyone wants the noise of an add-on video card. Some of us don't game, and only need "good enough" graphics to drive the display manager requirements. Add on a dollar or two saved on the power bill per year, less money spent on the power supply, and the money saved for the no-longer-necessary add-on graphics card, and built-in CPU graphics sounds like a "win" to me.
I might keep on using my fanless NVidia card on my next box, but I'm going to wait and see whether I can saturate my drive IOs while putting up with the shared memory of the built-in GPU first. If I can saturate the drive, I'll save the power load and stick with the built-in graphics. Besides, Intel has a better reputation for their drivers on Linux than NVidia does. Not that I've ever had problems with the NVidia drivers myself, but in theory they can be a problem.
There are a number of websites that try to push interstitials to the desktop. When I get those blank pages with AdBlock Plus installed, I just close the browser tab. The story or photos are NEVER interesting enough to put up with that kind of shit.
Not so. CTV and CBC here in Canada pay the BBC for the shows they air from across the pond. I presume the BBC buys content from CBC and CTV as well. I know, for example, that BBC America buys "Orphan Black" from Space here in Canada. Were you to allow foreigners to access CTV's website, they could watch Orphan Black for free instead of their local broadcaster paying for the rights.
I'm sure the BBC offsets a pretty penny selling Doctor Who around the world.
Still, I'm not so sure Hollywood would object all that much to being able to sell to a market of half a billion people with a single broadcaster's contract. But what it might do is price the media out of the range where any single broadcaster could afford to pay for it, because they're still constrained by the market revenue of their local nation and not getting paid by the entire half billion worth of people.
It's all well and good to say "down with geoblocking" until you realize that geoblocking is how the market share is divied up between broadcasters. None of the broadcasters in the world is set up on the basis of serving the globe, not even "giants" like NBC, CBS, ABC, or the BBC.
HP tried to step back in history today to more profitable and professional times, unfortunately reality refused to cooperate and they were still bleeding money like a sieve. Worse, their engineers were now leaving because they were pissed off by the dress code.
But they leave ownership of the posts and content the responsibility of the user. In fact they explicitly deny responsibility for content in their TOS.
There is a world of difference between claiming ownership/copyright over something and claiming you have permission to use something. And that difference is key in this ruling. The content targeted by the warrants is the property of the user, not Facebook.
Therefore Facebook has no more legal standing in the issue than someone who leases a storage locker to someone who gets served with a warrant, or a bank that provides a safe deposit box to someone who is subsequently served with a warrant. Their only option is to raise the issue of the cost of servicing the warrant.
I do not want some corporation arbitrarily deciding whether it is going to interfere with an investigation, nor do I want them having the authority to decide which warrants are valid and which are not. Those decisions are up to the judges who sign the warrants.
Any beef you have with the judges involved or the secrecy of the courts involved is a separate issue. It is not up to arbitrary corporations to pass judgement on the courts.
I don't want some corporation arbitrarily interfering in investigations. I don't want some corporation acting as judge, jury, and executioner deciding what is valid and what is not. Those decisions are up to the judge signing the warrants.
It is no more "bullshit" than a bank being required to open a safety deposit box when a warrant is presented against whoever is leasing the safety deposit box. That search is happening on bank property, but the bank does not have legal standing to challenge the warrant.
We do NOT need internet-enabled corporations running rampant over the law as if they had no legal responsibilities nor limitations on the scope on what they're allowed to do. There are often CLEAR examples of similar situations with physical property, but the weasels in the "new" digital world would like to claim that they're above those precedents.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with pictograms is they don't mean squat to someone who doesn't already know what they mean. If that weren't the case, Egyptian Hieroglyphics would still be in active use...
Accenture? Better double that initial estimate to $18 billion, and count on it rising further. :(
Well. After my "holier than thou" comments on cheap DVDs, I ended up having to "burn" my USB stick to do the actual install/upgrade. It turns out my laptop drive isn't DVD-R compatible, only DVD+R. *LOL*
The upgrade itself was painless, though time consuming. It took about 3 hours once I finally had the USB burned. All of my database servers, VLC, etc. seem to work just fine. (Lenovo Z580 with dual-core i7, originally shipped with Windows 7 Home.)
I'd always planned to burn .isos anyhow, so this is a good option for me. (Yeah, yeah, "USB stick, blah, blah". Why am I going to use a $5 USB stick instead of a $0.50 DVD for something I don't expect to use more than once or twice?)
The worst mistake we could make is to try to simulate emotions. That's what true psychopaths do -- simulate and fake their emotions.
So city slickers need something to piss on?
Any farm boy can tell you all you need is the wind at your back and you're good to go. Literally. :P
Even "Blue Chip" companies like IBM are a pale shadow of their former selves. Microsoft has lost billions on failed acquisitions and "new technology" that never took hold of the market.
The point is, former success and profit are no guarantee of the same in the future. Companies come, and companies go.
Expecting to be employed by one single company for an entire career is a fools game in the internet age. The sooner you wake up to the fact that even if you do save a company from itself, you're not going to be appreciated nor rewarded for your efforts, the sooner you can start planning a career of moving from one interesting job to the next.
Anyone who is targeting the executive levels of business knows damn well they are going to get their next "promotion" by jumping ship for another company, leveraging their current skills and position as the experience needed for a higher level position. You just flat out don't get promoted into those positions by companies any more, because they don't want you to leave your current role if you're doing a good job. And if you're not doing a good job and are replaceable, they're going to replace you anyhow with someone who isn't replaceable, or they're going to farm out the work of your position to some agency that uses cookie-cutter staff to fill the role.
Companies don't owe you anything, and you don't owe the company anything -- especially not "loyalty."
Get over the idea of "saving" the company. Do your job, do it well, find a better position, and get the hell out while the getting is good.
I run a P4 3.8GHz single core system as my main desktop, even though I do development with it. Switching to a newer Core i5 system will make it run 10 times as fast, but as the runtime on my huge (tuned) code base is under 5 minutes already, it really won't save me *that* much time compared to *editing* the code. It will save on build time, which is a boon to me, but even that savings is only due to the nature of my build process -- I do full instead of incremental builds.
I do plan on buying a new machine in a few months when I've saved the money, but my main point is that the hardware we use has been "good enough" for a good decade. It is the crappy software the people shovel out that drives hardware upgrades nowadays, not the actual need for faster hardware.
So it is to the hardware manufacturer's benefit that as much software as possible be absolutely incompetently written crap so that people will buy the latest shiny-shiny because their old one is "too slow."
"Ha-ha!"
-- Nelson
What would be fitting is for all those "settlements" to be automatically overturned and the troll forced to refund the money.
But I know it doesn't work that way. If you wuss out and pay the toll, there is no getting your money back from the troll.
Do you comprehend the difference between the old 32-bit SPARC processors and the ones Oracle sells now?
I thought not.
Turn in your geek card.
Even a megapixel display at 24 bits required 3MB per frame... and a megapixel display has been "low end" for a lot of years now!
Seriously, though -- why does everyone sneer at the fact that not everyone is a gamer? Why are gamers so god damned fucking ARROGANT about their "my dick is bigger than yours" hardware?
The point is to write a "feel good" letter because "we tried to stop them."
Besides, everyone knows the US military and it's mega corp providers are probably the biggest researchers in this area, probably have been for 50+ years, and are unlikely to ever give up their funding just because a bunch of people with degrees think they should do so.
As the letter points out, the technology needed is widely available. That means that even Joe Blow in his basement could work on such AI systems. From there it's just a matter of connecting the AI to a weapons system, and there is no shortage of remotely-controllable weapon systems already. (Drones, anyone?)
Personally I applaud the letter writers for trying. They're incredibly naive to think their letter will have any impact on the decision makers, but they did try! :P
It amazes me how many rappers are gang-bangers first, and "musicians" second. So many of them put their loyalty to "the gang life" above everything else. :(
Not everyone wants the noise of an add-on video card. Some of us don't game, and only need "good enough" graphics to drive the display manager requirements. Add on a dollar or two saved on the power bill per year, less money spent on the power supply, and the money saved for the no-longer-necessary add-on graphics card, and built-in CPU graphics sounds like a "win" to me.
I might keep on using my fanless NVidia card on my next box, but I'm going to wait and see whether I can saturate my drive IOs while putting up with the shared memory of the built-in GPU first. If I can saturate the drive, I'll save the power load and stick with the built-in graphics. Besides, Intel has a better reputation for their drivers on Linux than NVidia does. Not that I've ever had problems with the NVidia drivers myself, but in theory they can be a problem.
There are a number of websites that try to push interstitials to the desktop. When I get those blank pages with AdBlock Plus installed, I just close the browser tab. The story or photos are NEVER interesting enough to put up with that kind of shit.
If Windows won't roll back to a working install, it kind of moots the point of taking recovery snapshots before installing updates, doesn't it?
Not so. CTV and CBC here in Canada pay the BBC for the shows they air from across the pond. I presume the BBC buys content from CBC and CTV as well. I know, for example, that BBC America buys "Orphan Black" from Space here in Canada. Were you to allow foreigners to access CTV's website, they could watch Orphan Black for free instead of their local broadcaster paying for the rights.
I'm sure the BBC offsets a pretty penny selling Doctor Who around the world.
Still, I'm not so sure Hollywood would object all that much to being able to sell to a market of half a billion people with a single broadcaster's contract. But what it might do is price the media out of the range where any single broadcaster could afford to pay for it, because they're still constrained by the market revenue of their local nation and not getting paid by the entire half billion worth of people.
It's all well and good to say "down with geoblocking" until you realize that geoblocking is how the market share is divied up between broadcasters. None of the broadcasters in the world is set up on the basis of serving the globe, not even "giants" like NBC, CBS, ABC, or the BBC.
HP tried to step back in history today to more profitable and professional times, unfortunately reality refused to cooperate and they were still bleeding money like a sieve. Worse, their engineers were now leaving because they were pissed off by the dress code.
I hope they do arrest your ass if you're yapping/texting on a cell phone while driving -- and taze you for good measure!
Is it any surprise that someone who is focused on the task at hand is more effective than a scatterbrain chasing a dozen different things at once?
Since when is data access cellular service?
Silly me, I thought cellular service metrics were about call completion and drop rates.
But they leave ownership of the posts and content the responsibility of the user. In fact they explicitly deny responsibility for content in their TOS.
There is a world of difference between claiming ownership/copyright over something and claiming you have permission to use something. And that difference is key in this ruling. The content targeted by the warrants is the property of the user, not Facebook.
Therefore Facebook has no more legal standing in the issue than someone who leases a storage locker to someone who gets served with a warrant, or a bank that provides a safe deposit box to someone who is subsequently served with a warrant. Their only option is to raise the issue of the cost of servicing the warrant.
I do not want some corporation arbitrarily deciding whether it is going to interfere with an investigation, nor do I want them having the authority to decide which warrants are valid and which are not. Those decisions are up to the judges who sign the warrants.
Any beef you have with the judges involved or the secrecy of the courts involved is a separate issue. It is not up to arbitrary corporations to pass judgement on the courts.
I don't want some corporation arbitrarily interfering in investigations. I don't want some corporation acting as judge, jury, and executioner deciding what is valid and what is not. Those decisions are up to the judge signing the warrants.
It is no more "bullshit" than a bank being required to open a safety deposit box when a warrant is presented against whoever is leasing the safety deposit box. That search is happening on bank property, but the bank does not have legal standing to challenge the warrant.
We do NOT need internet-enabled corporations running rampant over the law as if they had no legal responsibilities nor limitations on the scope on what they're allowed to do. There are often CLEAR examples of similar situations with physical property, but the weasels in the "new" digital world would like to claim that they're above those precedents.