Fuck you. Your "feels" don't fucking matter in the real world.
Please learn this as quickly as possible so you can stop being a festering boil on the ass of society and can start contributing something to humanity other than childish bitching and moaning (we're more than full up on that).
You're not a victim (you're just an every-day asshole). So stop trying to seize victimhood as a status symbol.
If you don't, you're going to be mocked, mercilessly, for the rest of your existence. (Oh, and did we mention that we sell razors? Down the road, not across the tracks!)
Remember Jeremy Hammond from LulzSec? He was doing this kind of shit years ago. Partly with HackThisSite.com. But he was also teaching people how to break into systems and sites in IRC. Unfortunately, the raging dumbass was doing this with systems that belonged to his employer, MacSpecialist (now defunct). Worse, the the systems contained live customer data INCLUDING CC info.
At the time he wasn't exactly popular in the local hacker scene in Chicago (he's and his crew had been making unmitigated asses of themselves). So, mysteriously, a copy of the IRC logs of him doing this made it to his employer the next morning. Did you know? The first thing an employer will usually do when given evidence that they can corroborate that you're using their systems without authorization? FIRE YOUR STUPID ASS!
Hopefully the n00bs teaching other Anonytards will be a bit more circumspect.
Seriously, if they're going to opt to not vaccinate their kids, they should be obligated assume liability for every child their unimmunized kid gets sick. As such, they should also be obligated to take out an insurance plan to actually PAY for the medical bills of children made ill because of their decision.
It's another one of those technologies that's always "5-10 years away" for real utility.
While we're WELL in advance of the abortion that was VRML, the fact is, the tech is far from ubiquitous, and just as far from ubiquitous usability (if not further).
Even current-gen stuff, 20 years on from basic VRML, is crude and generally nausea-inducing.
It's Not A Good Thing when a significant percentage of your product's prospective audience hurls and needs a lie-down after a few minutes of use.
Now, on the plus side, the interest in VR is accelerating development in the mobile and gaming frontiers, where they were starting to stagnate a bit. Hopefully it will keep up momentum.
Otherwise, we'll be talking about the Next Big Thing in VR in another 20 years.
It's also possible that certain purchase decisions (taking into account best practices for matching hardware and software) were not taken into account when the system was built/purchased.
Like all the people buying these used multi-core Xeons because they scream through Cinebench, but then finding out that HEY! Adobe products run like ass on them since Adobe doesn't really scale well beyond 4 cores...
Sorry, should have made a mention of things like video editing as well. You're in one of those niche areas where you're benefiting from newer technology a bit more than your mythical "average desktop user".
The majority of PCs are basically glorified Web/Office machines, for which they're totally overpowered.
So it's really really easy to see how a machine could last 10 years with minor upgrades now. The realistic performance gains for these sorts of workloads is basically nonexistent.
And yes, you're right that the economic stagnation is helping this correction along.
And yes, as you (and I in previous posts) have noted, that smartphones, tablets and the various "niche" products have cut heavily into PC sales. As these devices are generally powerful and functional enough to perform tasks which people used to keep a laptop on hand for.
That's mainly why I call this phase a "correction". Since people were generally over-buying relatively expensive, not-quite-suitable laptops for things that can now be handled by tablets, phablets and phones.
Seriously, today's PCs are GROTESQUELY overpowered for anything but certain types of games.
I'm running a six year old hex-core CPU (i7 970) with a 2 year old video card (GTX 970) and an SSD boot disk.
I'm not doing 4K gaming. It's primarily a workstation (see WORK) and I do a bit of light gaming on the side.
There's literally no reason I couldn't go another 5 years on this machine.
I also have an older laptop (Thinkpad T61p). It's still fine for web browsing and light gaming as well. RAM is maxed out and it's running off an SSD boot disk too.
It does what I need it to, so I have zero reason to replace it.
Can anyone seriously fault me for not spending another couple grand to refresh these machines?
Honestly, the PC market was in the Moore's Law bubble so long, that it's LONG overdue for this sort of correction.
We'll probably see decreasing sales over the next 5-10 years as people are keeping their workhorse machines longer.
Current equipment will need the time to age out. And, once it does, we should see the sales cycles stepping up again, though never again to the levels they were.
The thing is, if a security researcher asked for a unit to do security testing on, no permission would be forthcoming.
The security researcher, being a voter, has a legitimate interest in the safety and security of the voting system. Also, as a voter, this person is ALREADY supposed to be able to access the system. It's the fault of the people setting up this system that his ability to access the system is that broad. And, since the equipment is being purchased with taxpayer funds, there's a legitimate school of thought that permission for access is already implicit.
Criminals bent on subverting the voting system are NEVER going to ask permission.
Actually no. Because most US rare earth mines? The reason their costs are so high? Environmental regulation. Because they're digging up tons of Thorium with the rare earths. Which is a treated as nuclear waste. So it's not a labor pricing problem. It's because China didn't give a shit about the environment and was dumping tons of radioactive byproducts into the general environment in a concerted effort to undercut the rare earths market.
Yes, things like this WILL disrupt some jobs. But, in the long run, it'll create other jobs and move people away from those areas where automation simply does things better.
Save for vanity/specialty crafting, automation basically put metalsmithing out to pasture. We don't really see much call for buggy whips (or buggies period). In many cases, huge farms can be managed by a remarkably small workforce.
Sure, some people are gonna be butthurt that tech stole their job. Get over it.
And that's assuming that such technology is foolproof (which is highly optimistic). Most fingerprint readers used in setups like this tend to be rather inexact and thus easily bypassed.
And if it's chipped so that it won't work except in proximity to a mated fob of some kind, well, if the two of them are wrestling around for the gun, how close is it to said fob? *BANG!*
The other thing is, Mark Okrand (the guy who fleshed out the Klingon language) has sold books on the Klingon Language.
* The Klingon Dictionary * Klingon for the Galactic Traveler * Conversational Klingon (this had an accompanying Audiobook with Michael Dorn).
Unlike Tolkien, an actual effort was made to push Klingon out into the fanbase and public at large.
Now they're trying to take their ball and go home.
TOUGH SHIT.
It's like the estate of L.L. Zamenhof trying to take back Esperanto.
Also, unless Paramount and CBS actually have an actual "work for hire" contract (on paper) with Jim Doohan, the rights to Klingon reside with HIS estate.
The basic point is that firearms are simple, generally well designed, reliable mechanisms.
Adding all this "smart gun" crap is just going to make them less reliable.
And, again, this will do NOTHING to stop criminals from illegally obtaining firearms that don't have these sort of stupid mechanisms in there to inhibit them.
So, again, you're implementing this to punish law-abiding citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
And let us know once these things reach actual production...
Fuck you. Your "feels" don't fucking matter in the real world.
Please learn this as quickly as possible so you can stop being a festering boil on the ass of society and can start contributing something to humanity other than childish bitching and moaning (we're more than full up on that).
You're not a victim (you're just an every-day asshole). So stop trying to seize victimhood as a status symbol.
If you don't, you're going to be mocked, mercilessly, for the rest of your existence.
(Oh, and did we mention that we sell razors? Down the road, not across the tracks!)
Yes? AND?
We've been INTENTIONALLY modifying our crops for thousands of years. Selecting the traits that best suit our needs.
People are just ticked that we did it playing God in a lab this time, rather than playing God with controlling natural selection.
No you're thinking of Roundup resistant crops.
And no, you'll still use more herbicides and insecticides on "organic" crops.
Why? Lower overall efficacy.
No self-respecting member of The Church of the All Natural Plant Food would EVER stoop to disbelief in a report about The Great Satan GMO!
Honestly, I don't give a shit if they "go away" or not.
However, like Hammond, if they fuck up royally enough, they'll "go away" for a while regardless.
To Federal Prison.
Then, I'll just point and laugh.
Remember Jeremy Hammond from LulzSec?
He was doing this kind of shit years ago. Partly with HackThisSite.com.
But he was also teaching people how to break into systems and sites in IRC.
Unfortunately, the raging dumbass was doing this with systems that belonged to his employer, MacSpecialist (now defunct).
Worse, the the systems contained live customer data INCLUDING CC info.
At the time he wasn't exactly popular in the local hacker scene in Chicago (he's and his crew had been making unmitigated asses of themselves).
So, mysteriously, a copy of the IRC logs of him doing this made it to his employer the next morning.
Did you know? The first thing an employer will usually do when given evidence that they can corroborate that you're using their systems without authorization?
FIRE YOUR STUPID ASS!
Hopefully the n00bs teaching other Anonytards will be a bit more circumspect.
Seriously, if they're going to opt to not vaccinate their kids, they should be obligated assume liability for every child their unimmunized kid gets sick.
As such, they should also be obligated to take out an insurance plan to actually PAY for the medical bills of children made ill because of their decision.
Get away from her YOU BITCH!
I pretty much agree with all of this.
I'm sick of functionality being stripped from Firefox to be replaced with stupid, non-browser-like GIMMICKS.
As if Trump weren't objectionable enough!
PayPal...UGH!
Honestly, I wouldn't get your hopes up on VR.
It's another one of those technologies that's always "5-10 years away" for real utility.
While we're WELL in advance of the abortion that was VRML, the fact is, the tech is far from ubiquitous, and just as far from ubiquitous usability (if not further).
Even current-gen stuff, 20 years on from basic VRML, is crude and generally nausea-inducing.
It's Not A Good Thing when a significant percentage of your product's prospective audience hurls and needs a lie-down after a few minutes of use.
Now, on the plus side, the interest in VR is accelerating development in the mobile and gaming frontiers, where they were starting to stagnate a bit. Hopefully it will keep up momentum.
Otherwise, we'll be talking about the Next Big Thing in VR in another 20 years.
It's also possible that certain purchase decisions (taking into account best practices for matching hardware and software) were not taken into account when the system was built/purchased.
Like all the people buying these used multi-core Xeons because they scream through Cinebench, but then finding out that HEY! Adobe products run like ass on them since Adobe doesn't really scale well beyond 4 cores...
Sorry, should have made a mention of things like video editing as well. You're in one of those niche areas where you're benefiting from newer technology a bit more than your mythical "average desktop user".
The majority of PCs are basically glorified Web/Office machines, for which they're totally overpowered.
So it's really really easy to see how a machine could last 10 years with minor upgrades now. The realistic performance gains for these sorts of workloads is basically nonexistent.
And yes, you're right that the economic stagnation is helping this correction along.
And yes, as you (and I in previous posts) have noted, that smartphones, tablets and the various "niche" products have cut heavily into PC sales. As these devices are generally powerful and functional enough to perform tasks which people used to keep a laptop on hand for.
That's mainly why I call this phase a "correction". Since people were generally over-buying relatively expensive, not-quite-suitable laptops for things that can now be handled by tablets, phablets and phones.
Seriously, today's PCs are GROTESQUELY overpowered for anything but certain types of games.
I'm running a six year old hex-core CPU (i7 970) with a 2 year old video card (GTX 970) and an SSD boot disk.
I'm not doing 4K gaming. It's primarily a workstation (see WORK) and I do a bit of light gaming on the side.
There's literally no reason I couldn't go another 5 years on this machine.
I also have an older laptop (Thinkpad T61p). It's still fine for web browsing and light gaming as well. RAM is maxed out and it's running off an SSD boot disk too.
It does what I need it to, so I have zero reason to replace it.
Can anyone seriously fault me for not spending another couple grand to refresh these machines?
Honestly, the PC market was in the Moore's Law bubble so long, that it's LONG overdue for this sort of correction.
We'll probably see decreasing sales over the next 5-10 years as people are keeping their workhorse machines longer.
Current equipment will need the time to age out. And, once it does, we should see the sales cycles stepping up again, though never again to the levels they were.
Have had dealings with Wipro.
Some of their US staff aren't bad. Not great, but not bad.
But their overseas staff. Jesus fuck!
I've seen more technical aptitude at a luddite convention...
OH NOEZ!
Say it ain't so Joe! Say it ain't so!
The thing is, if a security researcher asked for a unit to do security testing on, no permission would be forthcoming.
The security researcher, being a voter, has a legitimate interest in the safety and security of the voting system.
Also, as a voter, this person is ALREADY supposed to be able to access the system. It's the fault of the people setting up this system that his ability to access the system is that broad.
And, since the equipment is being purchased with taxpayer funds, there's a legitimate school of thought that permission for access is already implicit.
Criminals bent on subverting the voting system are NEVER going to ask permission.
and all we need to do is get thorium based reactors going. Issue solved.
EXACTLY!
Actually no. Because most US rare earth mines? The reason their costs are so high?
Environmental regulation. Because they're digging up tons of Thorium with the rare earths. Which is a treated as nuclear waste.
So it's not a labor pricing problem. It's because China didn't give a shit about the environment and was dumping tons of radioactive byproducts into the general environment in a concerted effort to undercut the rare earths market.
So we can look forward to a future of people who plonk down in front of a box, don't move and die of blood clots?
YAY!
Sorry, this is a bullshit argument.
Yes, things like this WILL disrupt some jobs.
But, in the long run, it'll create other jobs and move people away from those areas where automation simply does things better.
Save for vanity/specialty crafting, automation basically put metalsmithing out to pasture.
We don't really see much call for buggy whips (or buggies period).
In many cases, huge farms can be managed by a remarkably small workforce.
Sure, some people are gonna be butthurt that tech stole their job.
Get over it.
Note that I said "almost nothing".
Not "nothing".
And that's assuming that such technology is foolproof (which is highly optimistic). Most fingerprint readers used in setups like this tend to be rather inexact and thus easily bypassed.
And if it's chipped so that it won't work except in proximity to a mated fob of some kind, well, if the two of them are wrestling around for the gun, how close is it to said fob? *BANG!*
The other thing is, Mark Okrand (the guy who fleshed out the Klingon language) has sold books on the Klingon Language.
* The Klingon Dictionary
* Klingon for the Galactic Traveler
* Conversational Klingon (this had an accompanying Audiobook with Michael Dorn).
Unlike Tolkien, an actual effort was made to push Klingon out into the fanbase and public at large.
Now they're trying to take their ball and go home.
TOUGH SHIT.
It's like the estate of L.L. Zamenhof trying to take back Esperanto.
Also, unless Paramount and CBS actually have an actual "work for hire" contract (on paper) with Jim Doohan, the rights to Klingon reside with HIS estate.
The basic point is that firearms are simple, generally well designed, reliable mechanisms.
Adding all this "smart gun" crap is just going to make them less reliable.
And, again, this will do NOTHING to stop criminals from illegally obtaining firearms that don't have these sort of stupid mechanisms in there to inhibit them.
So, again, you're implementing this to punish law-abiding citizens.