Describing a group based on its behaviour as a group doesn't mean you think it's an individual. Corporations exhibit sociapathic bahaviour. Ants build complex structures. I don't think either one deserves the rights of personhood.
So either SSDs are really hard to erase, or really hard to recover. I'm so confused.
All I know is that if SSDs were really hard to erase, and I was in the business of recovering data that other people didn't want recovered, this is exactly the kind of story that I would tell them so that they would continue using SSDs.
People often do stupid things, and young people tend to do them more. The trick is to not do stupid things that are terribly permanent while you're younger, so you don't have to live with them when you're older, and perhaps wiser.
This is confounded by the fact that this generation (as stated by anyone from the previous generation) is that they are raised in an environment where instant gratification is the norm. This leads to a tendency to not put off, say, that need for intimacy until they have made the foundation on which the rest of their life will be built.
Of course, this applies to me when I was younger, too.
I can live with not R'ing TFA, but not even reading the summary? Is it really that complicated? Mozilla will no longer have big releases for Firefox. They will be smaller, and more frequent. Therefore, the difference between 3 and 4 will presumably be bigger than the difference between 4 and 5. Can you think of a more clear way to describe this, other than prefacing with "Firefox Not Dead But"?
From everything I've heard, that's not how it works. People with eyesight in that range have better range of focus, not necessarily better acuity of vision.
My brother is a pilot, and has better than 20/20 vision. He's approaching the age where he'll need bifocals, and is not (yet) wearing glasses. I'm not sure what his acuity of vision is, but I would be unsurprised to find it is also high.
My vision is poor. Without glasses, I can't read a book that's 18 inches (45 cm) away. On the other hand, with my glasses on I can easily read, for instance, the bbclarity font on my blackberry at 17 points from a distance of about 5 feet (1.5 m). I'd say my acuity of vision is on the high end (or my optometrist is very good at helping me get the right corrective lenses).
Remember, there are two physical components to human vision. Just like with digital cameras, we have a lens and a sensor. No matter how good that sensor is, a bad lens will still give you a distorted picture. And if your lens is performing normally, it still won't be able to produce results that are beyond the theoretical capacity of the sensor. Since we have a deformable lens, it's not surprising that some people can have a wider range of focus than others.
The key difference is, for every thing you describe, we can do it better. For space, we can only do less. Smaller payloads, shorter missions, lower orbits. The only saving grace has been that technology has improved at an exponential rate, so we can do more with less. And that's not going to help much when (statistically, there is no if) there's a big rock pointed in our direction.
Except it's not a re-enactment, it's a re-attainment. I'm hard pressed to think of another milestone like this that we've achieved, and then lost the capability to repeat. That's amazing and disappointing to me.
I know some people who were really turned off by the male nudity. Honestly, it's something you don't see a lot of in mainstream American society, and they probably could have done things to minimize the exposure (contrived shots with conveniently placed furniture, for instance). But I agree, this wasn't meant for kids.
A lot of the Windows apps I use are auto-updating (preferably on app start), and it's one of the features I look for. Also, Windows 7 Update carries drivers from third parties as optional components, which is (potentially) handy. After all, if you're going to check for updates to your OS, it helps if you check for updates to the components that directly interface with your OS.
You know what? I'm not a fan of seeing schlongs in just about any movie I watch, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it in Watchmen, either. But, I understood perfectly why they did it, and I agree with that decision. You have a person who is so far removed from humanity that not only is the need for clothing not present, but the recognition that he might want to put clothes on as a courtesy is incomprehensible, as well. How can you effectively present that case when you make the person behave like everyone else does?
I agree, the gender of God is controversial. So is whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, believe it or not. My point was, most Christians believe God is male, and that number probably jumps in the Catholic flavours of Christianity. And that it was totally tangential to the discussion at hand, which was why adding another controversial topic was a detraction from HornWumpus's argument.
You might want to look into that claim 'However, the church entity did try to conceal the abuses.' because they've got a smoking gun in Ireland.
The cover-up of the chester priests was started and run from Rome. If their was an activist god like many Christians choose to believe she would smite many of their asses. She has done much worse for less (their claims).
First, I'll chuckle politely with your claim that "many Christians choose to believe she would smite many of their asses." If you're going to criticize people, don't spin it with your beliefs - it weakens your own argument. The vast majority of Christians believe in a male diety, quite possibly due to the line "Our Father, which art in Heaven" (KJV).
Second, and more importantly, actually read the comment you reply to, rather than going off on a rabid attack. Quoting you, which you quoted the GPP, emphasis mine: 'However, the church entity did try to conceal the abuses.' . And then you: because they've got a smoking gun in Ireland. Those two statements seem to agree, which, combined with your opening phrase, "You might want to look into that claim," implies you disagree, even though both of your stated opinions don't.
For me it was about 1 in 3000. I'm anonymous, from my browser settings, anyway. Anyone on/. who really wanted to could probably find me in a day if they tried.
At some point the responsibility shifts from Microsoft to VMWare. Where the responsibility for alerting customers lies is maybe not clear yet.
The update has broken a few things for me. Half my desktop gadgets are not functioning properly. There are some other glitches that I noticed with my AV software, though I'm still confirming on other PCs.
And those gadgets that broke. Are they MS gadgets, or third-party? If MS, then I think it's safe to say that MS screwed up somewhere...
Secondly, the way the system works affords no transaction anonymity. And for a currency to be 'real' this is a big deal.
I have long felt that in order for any currency to work, it must be able to be 'stolen'. In other words, you must be able to use it to engage in transactions that are not legally sanctioned.
While I don't agree that currency is valid if it can be stolen, anonymous transactions are important. (Of course, anonymous transactions imply the possibility of coerced transactions, which is close to the same.) From what I've seen, you can change your bitcoin address arbitrarily, so it can be different between any two transactions. Of course, if the change is logged, it becomes rather pointless.
Personally, I'm curious about this. I think I'll have to look into it more.
A general rule I've used more than once, which seems pretty damned obvious but just never seems to be followed very much is: If you want to keep a secret, the first step is don't tell anyone.
The US estimate for flu deaths is between 30k and 60k per year, depending on how the statistics are calculated (whether you include pneumonia caused by flu, for instance). Source. Traffic fatalities in 2009 are approximately 33k. Source.
US flu percentage: (60k/300M) = 0.02%. World flu percentage: (500k/7B) = 0.007%. So the US sees three times as many deaths by flu than in the rest of the world (not quite accurate, for a few reasons, but close enough), as you said, probably due to better health care leading to longer lives and more elderly dieing of the flu.
US car percentage: (30k/300M) = 0.01%. World car percentage: (1.2M/7B) = 0.017%. So you're half as likely to die of a car accident in the US than in the rest of the world (same caveat as above), again, likely due to all the safety measures in place, and in spite of the additional miles per person due to the sparse population.
All that said, flu deaths aren't a lot more common in the US (as an example of a civilized country, traffic-wise and healthcare-wise, and representative of the majority of slashdot users), they are merely as common as car fatalities. Even more so than on a global scale.
And this is why simultaneous has a scientific definition. There is a frame of reference where any one of the three options (dinosaurs died first, star supernovaed first, both happened at the same time) is (more or less) correct.
First, is it good or bad? It seems that in the case of anime, it's good.
Second, it's copyright infringement. Sorry, but I'm not of the opinion that just because a law has been passed that it signifies something important. Moreover, in some cases, breaking the law is more important than keeping the law. For instance, I walk down the street, glance through a window, and see someone in need of medical attention. Do I leave them to die, or commit breaking and entering? In other cases, the law is wrong. The classic example is Rosie Parks. "Whether it's good or bad, it's still anti-segregation...I have no problem with laws protecting segregation, so long as we don't require separate buses for them colored folk." It sounds like a ridiculous statement, doesn't it, and there are people who believe that IP laws encroach on our freedoms just as much as segregation did.
Maybe we should stop thinking of this as a problem, but as a solution. As in, "What do we do with all the people who blindly trust whatever 'the gadget' says, and don't employ any critical thought in the process?" Kind of like: this bash comment.
Businesses aren't going nor should they care if a format is open or not. They just want a reliable product to be delivered to their customers.
The one key issue with that statement is that if you release a royalty-encumbered product that you can't charge for, you're on the hook for some amount of money. Hence the push for open formats in web browsers, and why a company may be uninterested in producing a free product that opens them for lawsuits at some time in the future.
This isn't a problem for paid-for products, because you can purchase royalties for the patented technologies and it becomes part of the product cost. So goes the theory, anyway.
But in a parallel universe, you don't don't care about this, so what difference does it make what you say here?
( My objection with multiverses is that the idea of explaining a coin flip by adding a whole extra copy of the universe seems to be a gross violation of Occum's Razor, not to mention conservation of energy )
Which is a better response than "In some universe, I actually committed murder instead of just wishing that guy would die, and that makes me feel bad, so I don't want to believe in it." Just keep in mind that our model of the universe doesn't match the reality already, so something more involved is required. Whether when we figure it out we say "It's so simple in retrospect" or "Wow, the universe is more complicated than we thought" is hard to tell until we actually have a better model than what we do right now, and doesn't violate the part of Occam's Razor that the answer can be complicated and correct, so long as there isn't an equally correct model that is less complicated.
Slashdot Mirror
Describing a group based on its behaviour as a group doesn't mean you think it's an individual. Corporations exhibit sociapathic bahaviour. Ants build complex structures. I don't think either one deserves the rights of personhood.
So either SSDs are really hard to erase, or really hard to recover. I'm so confused.
All I know is that if SSDs were really hard to erase, and I was in the business of recovering data that other people didn't want recovered, this is exactly the kind of story that I would tell them so that they would continue using SSDs.
Not that I'm paranoid or anything.
Here, have a sig.
People often do stupid things, and young people tend to do them more. The trick is to not do stupid things that are terribly permanent while you're younger, so you don't have to live with them when you're older, and perhaps wiser.
This is confounded by the fact that this generation (as stated by anyone from the previous generation) is that they are raised in an environment where instant gratification is the norm. This leads to a tendency to not put off, say, that need for intimacy until they have made the foundation on which the rest of their life will be built.
Of course, this applies to me when I was younger, too.
I can live with not R'ing TFA, but not even reading the summary? Is it really that complicated? Mozilla will no longer have big releases for Firefox. They will be smaller, and more frequent. Therefore, the difference between 3 and 4 will presumably be bigger than the difference between 4 and 5. Can you think of a more clear way to describe this, other than prefacing with "Firefox Not Dead But"?
From everything I've heard, that's not how it works. People with eyesight in that range have better range of focus, not necessarily better acuity of vision.
My brother is a pilot, and has better than 20/20 vision. He's approaching the age where he'll need bifocals, and is not (yet) wearing glasses. I'm not sure what his acuity of vision is, but I would be unsurprised to find it is also high.
My vision is poor. Without glasses, I can't read a book that's 18 inches (45 cm) away. On the other hand, with my glasses on I can easily read, for instance, the bbclarity font on my blackberry at 17 points from a distance of about 5 feet (1.5 m). I'd say my acuity of vision is on the high end (or my optometrist is very good at helping me get the right corrective lenses).
Remember, there are two physical components to human vision. Just like with digital cameras, we have a lens and a sensor. No matter how good that sensor is, a bad lens will still give you a distorted picture. And if your lens is performing normally, it still won't be able to produce results that are beyond the theoretical capacity of the sensor. Since we have a deformable lens, it's not surprising that some people can have a wider range of focus than others.
The key difference is, for every thing you describe, we can do it better. For space, we can only do less. Smaller payloads, shorter missions, lower orbits. The only saving grace has been that technology has improved at an exponential rate, so we can do more with less. And that's not going to help much when (statistically, there is no if) there's a big rock pointed in our direction.
Except it's not a re-enactment, it's a re-attainment. I'm hard pressed to think of another milestone like this that we've achieved, and then lost the capability to repeat. That's amazing and disappointing to me.
If Mythbusters took this on, they'd say it's impossible to get to the moon. But rockets look cool when they blow up.
I know some people who were really turned off by the male nudity. Honestly, it's something you don't see a lot of in mainstream American society, and they probably could have done things to minimize the exposure (contrived shots with conveniently placed furniture, for instance). But I agree, this wasn't meant for kids.
A lot of the Windows apps I use are auto-updating (preferably on app start), and it's one of the features I look for. Also, Windows 7 Update carries drivers from third parties as optional components, which is (potentially) handy. After all, if you're going to check for updates to your OS, it helps if you check for updates to the components that directly interface with your OS.
You know what? I'm not a fan of seeing schlongs in just about any movie I watch, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it in Watchmen, either. But, I understood perfectly why they did it, and I agree with that decision. You have a person who is so far removed from humanity that not only is the need for clothing not present, but the recognition that he might want to put clothes on as a courtesy is incomprehensible, as well. How can you effectively present that case when you make the person behave like everyone else does?
I agree, the gender of God is controversial. So is whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, believe it or not. My point was, most Christians believe God is male, and that number probably jumps in the Catholic flavours of Christianity. And that it was totally tangential to the discussion at hand, which was why adding another controversial topic was a detraction from HornWumpus's argument.
You might want to look into that claim 'However, the church entity did try to conceal the abuses.' because they've got a smoking gun in Ireland.
The cover-up of the chester priests was started and run from Rome. If their was an activist god like many Christians choose to believe she would smite many of their asses. She has done much worse for less (their claims).
First, I'll chuckle politely with your claim that "many Christians choose to believe she would smite many of their asses." If you're going to criticize people, don't spin it with your beliefs - it weakens your own argument. The vast majority of Christians believe in a male diety, quite possibly due to the line "Our Father, which art in Heaven" (KJV).
Second, and more importantly, actually read the comment you reply to, rather than going off on a rabid attack. Quoting you, which you quoted the GPP, emphasis mine: 'However, the church entity did try to conceal the abuses.' . And then you: because they've got a smoking gun in Ireland. Those two statements seem to agree, which, combined with your opening phrase, "You might want to look into that claim," implies you disagree, even though both of your stated opinions don't.
For me it was about 1 in 3000. I'm anonymous, from my browser settings, anyway. Anyone on /. who really wanted to could probably find me in a day if they tried.
At some point the responsibility shifts from Microsoft to VMWare. Where the responsibility for alerting customers lies is maybe not clear yet.
The update has broken a few things for me. Half my desktop gadgets are not functioning properly. There are some other glitches that I noticed with my AV software, though I'm still confirming on other PCs.
And those gadgets that broke. Are they MS gadgets, or third-party? If MS, then I think it's safe to say that MS screwed up somewhere...
>
Secondly, the way the system works affords no transaction anonymity. And for a currency to be 'real' this is a big deal.
I have long felt that in order for any currency to work, it must be able to be 'stolen'. In other words, you must be able to use it to engage in transactions that are not legally sanctioned.
While I don't agree that currency is valid if it can be stolen, anonymous transactions are important. (Of course, anonymous transactions imply the possibility of coerced transactions, which is close to the same.) From what I've seen, you can change your bitcoin address arbitrarily, so it can be different between any two transactions. Of course, if the change is logged, it becomes rather pointless.
Personally, I'm curious about this. I think I'll have to look into it more.
A general rule I've used more than once, which seems pretty damned obvious but just never seems to be followed very much is: If you want to keep a secret, the first step is don't tell anyone.
The US estimate for flu deaths is between 30k and 60k per year, depending on how the statistics are calculated (whether you include pneumonia caused by flu, for instance). Source. Traffic fatalities in 2009 are approximately 33k. Source.
US flu percentage: (60k/300M) = 0.02%. World flu percentage: (500k/7B) = 0.007%. So the US sees three times as many deaths by flu than in the rest of the world (not quite accurate, for a few reasons, but close enough), as you said, probably due to better health care leading to longer lives and more elderly dieing of the flu.
US car percentage: (30k/300M) = 0.01%. World car percentage: (1.2M/7B) = 0.017%. So you're half as likely to die of a car accident in the US than in the rest of the world (same caveat as above), again, likely due to all the safety measures in place, and in spite of the additional miles per person due to the sparse population.
All that said, flu deaths aren't a lot more common in the US (as an example of a civilized country, traffic-wise and healthcare-wise, and representative of the majority of slashdot users), they are merely as common as car fatalities. Even more so than on a global scale.
Worldwide flu death is estimated at between 250k and 500k per year. Car accident fatalities are estimated at 1.2 million per year. So the difference is a factor between 2 and 5 (not terribly high), and in the opposite direction from what you supposed.
And this is why simultaneous has a scientific definition. There is a frame of reference where any one of the three options (dinosaurs died first, star supernovaed first, both happened at the same time) is (more or less) correct.
You bring up two points, and they intertwine.
First, is it good or bad? It seems that in the case of anime, it's good.
Second, it's copyright infringement. Sorry, but I'm not of the opinion that just because a law has been passed that it signifies something important. Moreover, in some cases, breaking the law is more important than keeping the law. For instance, I walk down the street, glance through a window, and see someone in need of medical attention. Do I leave them to die, or commit breaking and entering? In other cases, the law is wrong. The classic example is Rosie Parks. "Whether it's good or bad, it's still anti-segregation...I have no problem with laws protecting segregation, so long as we don't require separate buses for them colored folk." It sounds like a ridiculous statement, doesn't it, and there are people who believe that IP laws encroach on our freedoms just as much as segregation did.
This is so Inspector Gadget...
Maybe we should stop thinking of this as a problem, but as a solution. As in, "What do we do with all the people who blindly trust whatever 'the gadget' says, and don't employ any critical thought in the process?" Kind of like: this bash comment.
Businesses aren't going nor should they care if a format is open or not. They just want a reliable product to be delivered to their customers.
The one key issue with that statement is that if you release a royalty-encumbered product that you can't charge for, you're on the hook for some amount of money. Hence the push for open formats in web browsers, and why a company may be uninterested in producing a free product that opens them for lawsuits at some time in the future.
This isn't a problem for paid-for products, because you can purchase royalties for the patented technologies and it becomes part of the product cost. So goes the theory, anyway.
But in a parallel universe, you don't don't care about this, so what difference does it make what you say here?
( My objection with multiverses is that the idea of explaining a coin flip by adding a whole extra copy of the universe seems to be a gross violation of Occum's Razor, not to mention conservation of energy )
Which is a better response than "In some universe, I actually committed murder instead of just wishing that guy would die, and that makes me feel bad, so I don't want to believe in it." Just keep in mind that our model of the universe doesn't match the reality already, so something more involved is required. Whether when we figure it out we say "It's so simple in retrospect" or "Wow, the universe is more complicated than we thought" is hard to tell until we actually have a better model than what we do right now, and doesn't violate the part of Occam's Razor that the answer can be complicated and correct, so long as there isn't an equally correct model that is less complicated.