Oh, I know it. I'm in the same boat. Besides, I actually like some of the fringe benefits of having TiVo...the user-friendly remote is easy to navigate with your eyes closed, the UI is very nice. It's just that the company is afraid to take on the networks who got fat and happy and don't like innovation. They want to strike a deal with TiVo so the units will automatically delete pay-per-view viewings after a certain period of time. They want to put banner ads up on the screen while I'm fast forwarding. They want to do all sorts of boneheaded stuff when none of these things were issues with VCRs.
Is there really a huge difference between fast forwarding a tape through commercials and fast forwarding a TiVo through them? Does anyone think that anything has fundamentally changed? Did the networks try to strike a deal with tape manufacturers to make tapes that only hold PPV movies for 24 hours, and VCR manufacturers to require those special tapes to tape PPV events?
No, because it was impractical and silly. The only difference between then and now with the PVRs is, now it's practical and silly.
Well, wait a minute. It's clearly unethical if the screensaver sends random data to these spammers web sites--that's clearly a DDoS attack. On the other hand, if it's not random data and it's, say, business opportunities and offers of various useful products that the spam sites might want to know about, I'd say this screensaver is providing a valuable service to them!
You know, it would be really cool if TiVo would handle conflicts intelligently. For instance, if there's a conflict due to overlap, you should be able to tell it to split the difference, switch at the beginning of the second show, or switch at the end of the first show. It's just too bad that you can't build this kind of logic into TiVo--if only it were a computer-like device that would allow this sort of thing.
(Yes, that's sarcasm people.)
The wave of the future is to build 4 tuners into every PVR. Then this ceases to be a problem...no conflicts, ever, ever, ever, and networks will have to think of some other smarmy tactic to upset their customers.
Like I said, they already have your information man. You've got to have some trust with your government. The tinfoil hat brigade doesn't know it (or maybe they do), but they're either extreme libertarians or outright anarchists by default. Either way, it's an ideological position that doesn't take into account the practicalities of real life (and I'm a bit tired of seeing it vaunted to the status of "common knowledge" here on/.).
You've hit the nail on the head. I've been fighting for years to bring back human switchboard operators and replace all the textile weaving machinery with manually operated looms. Sure, if we make these changes 99% of the calls made everyday won't go through and we simply wouldn't be able to clothe everyone...but people need jobs!
I think we could probably cut unemployment to zero tomorrow if we got rid of all the agricultural equipment and went back to hand-picking crops. When will people learn?
One thing that I didn't say that I probably should have...the education you *can* receive at different universities is about the same, if you're self-motivating. If you're like me and most other human beings, you want to be at a university where the people aren't necessarily smarter than at other universities, but more motivated. That's the real difference between MIT and some state school...the kids at MIT may not be any smarter on average, they're just more motivated. And that helps you stay more motivated.
So the people that go to "better" schools do typically learn more and get more out of the experience for that reason. But that's not to say you couldn't learn just as much sitting by a lake in a log cabin reading books and scratching on a chalk board by candlelight.
I'd be careful depending on regionally known schools. Part of the reason I've managed to maintain an even keel throughout the economic downturn is my willingness to go anywhere in the country to work for a good offer. That plus the network makes you very employable. If you know you're going to live in a certain area for the next 5 or 10 years, that's great, but that can really, severely limit the size of the net you can cast when looking.
It's not that you'll get a better or worse education. It's that you'll get a better or worse personal network. That's all it is.
I graduated from a prestigious university (not necessarily known for CS, in the spirit of full disclosure, but in the top 10 most presigious US News & World Report) with a CS degree, and I can tell you that most people I went to school with do no better or worse than anyone else simply by relying on the prestige of their degree. The people who do well are those who regularly play a role in alumni activities and contribute to the alumni social network. And, for whatever reason, the more prestigious the institution the more active the alumni are about helping each other out.
Have I personally gotten jobs through people I know/knew through university? Yes. Have others I know? Yes. If I didn't lift a finger to keep in contact with that network, would it help me at all to have my degree simply on my resume? Marginally, it might help me get my foot in the door, but the interview is the proving ground. Don't pass that, and it won't matter if you have letters from Caltech, MIT, and Carnegie-Mellon.
They're not interested in individuals. The govt's interested in assessing which school districts and sending kids on to college. That's it. That's what this whole thing is about.
If they're allowed to trace the path of kids through the school system, then they'll have good data on how the public education system is doing in terms of percentage of kids that graduate and go on to institutions of higher learning. Without that data, they have no way of knowing if they're making any progress as they implement changes. Or worse, what if the changes they implement actually cause more students to quit after high school? Wouldn't this be valuable information to have?
As a scientifically minded person, I'm always amazed when people ask that things be made better or different in a certain way, and then flout all attempts to put any kind of measure on that thing.
This is paranoia. They can't tell who made it to college and who didn't if they don't know one or the other. It'll be hard to collect the identities of kids that didn't go to college, wouldn't it? So they have to get the names of those who did.
As for a draft and all that other stuff...they already know when you turn 18 because they know your b-day when you get your SSN. If they wanted to auto-register you for the selective service, they already know everything they need to know to do that.
We can't say the politicians should do something about our poor education, but then flout every attempt they make with these paranoid attacks.
I think this is a great idea. It's just a shame that they have to use paper and pencil, because I understand that's a notoriously bad way to collect data. If only they had a computer-like device connected to the TV that received every remote click so they could know exactly what's going on...
Oh well, I guess that's a pretty ridiculous idea, huh?
Interesting. However, if we can guarantee somehow that the 10-20% is a representative sample, then statistically, they would reliably (to some degree of statistical certainty) predict what everyone would think anyway, right?
You're saying that the power consumed by running SETI vs having a computer on but not running SETI costs more power-wise than burning a 100W light bulb? You're crazy. (You have to keep in mind that the server was running ANYWAYS...it's not like they would have otherwise shut it down when SETI wasn't running...SETI was only running when it would have been on and burning cycles anyway. Course, you must not have read the article very closely or any of the comments if you didn't figure this out on your own.)
Far as I understood this guy wasn't some programmer. He was the admin responsible for maintaining the machine he had SETI on. If he was a programmer, than the glib manager needs to reassess the infrastructure that allows anyone in the company to access production servers to install stuff. I work for a software company, I can't even install stuff on the QA servers...only designated QA people and IT people can do that.
I'd also like you to tell us about your "complex calculations," since you describe them with such flair and exacting numbers.
I'd be happy to tell you all about my analysis. First, I--LOOK OUT!!! What the hell was that!? Did you see it? It just went flying right over your head!
The issue is not merely one of "did something bad."
I'm not saying this guy made a good choice or that we should encourage such behavior. I'm just saying that, unless there were mitigating circumstances like a history, it's awfully cold to bounce someone right out of a job near the end of their career. It very possibly cost him his pension, and he's not likely to work again. If they really wanted him out, at least they could have offered him early retirement or something.
Plus, from the way the boss held himself out in public, it sounds like he was gunning for this guy for a while or he's just generally of a dickish nature.
Nothing is more powerful in the human brain than the ability to make connections between things that aren't actually connected. This ability works extremely well when we realize the connections are simply an analogy to help us understand something, such as the connection between e-mail and regular mail, which are two completely different things and in no real sense related. This ability works against us in cases such as yours, though.
Your argument concerning natural resources is valid, up to a point at least. But it certainly isn't enough to explain why Europe survives decades of wars and the black plague *relatively* unharmed (from a historic point of view), while Africa never recovers and just starts new wars.
In the book I suggested you read, Jared Diamond argues that civilizations have developed as they have exclusively due to their immediate environment and the natural resources of that environment. At different points in the development of a particular civilization, different environment and natural resources are required to allow that population to stay on its same trajectory.
For instance, Mesopotamia served as the cradle of civilization because the natural resources present in that area required very little already-existing technology to support an agrarian community; it was fertile land and the region had animals which could be domesticated to work the land. Living in proximity with domesticated animals was the source of non-nomadic people's increased immunity, and this eventually leads to the answer to your question about how Europe was able to recover from the Black Plague. It also explains why Europeans were easily able to conquer the native North American people, who had no such immunities. The following tidbit of history seems to fly in the face of your theory: it was indeed non-white people that began civilization, and would hold on to that cultural and societal dominance for thousands of years.
While you're at it, please explain why European settlers changed North America in less than a hundred years from a country only sustaining a few thousand tribesmen into the global economic leader.
Well, I don't have a calculator handy, but I'm pretty sure I can do this in my head. North America was settled by Europeans around 1600 (some, I'll point out, by the definition I think you're using, non-white, such as the Spanish). The US didn't emerge as a global superpower until around World War I, the 1910s. That's roughly 300 years, not 100, and much of the success of the US in pulling this off has to do with the labor performed by black African slaves and others that were imported and more or less treated as property (such as the Chinese that built our railroads in the mid-19th Century).
As I mentioned above, though, the main thrust of this achievement is due to the right-place/right-time effect enjoyed by the earliest Europeans that settled the Americas. They had already achieved the technology in Europe necessary to exploit the natural resources of the New World which remained unavailable to its native people. There was a certain hump that had to be overcome technologically before this continent would give up its wares, and whites would not have been more successful if they'd been confined to North America their entire history.
And then why the white population of any state is directly proportional to average wealth, while non-white population is directly proportional to more crimes and less education.
This is directly due to the unique history of the United States. You are observing a particular statistic and inferring a causal relationship where there is none; there is only a correlation here. For instance, I might say that shoe size is a direct indicator of intelligence for the general population, and that is supported by statistics. But this does not mean that it would be sensible for me to conclude that men, having larger feet, are generally smarter than women
The real question is, how bad is the thing this guy did? Does it rise to the level of termination? How much taxpayer money did he waste? How much risk to security did he cause? Were there other mitigating circumstances, such as already being told not to do this once before, or did he have several other questionable items on file?
I've run a few calculations of my own to determine how much taxpayer money he wasted, and I arrived at 35 cents/year electricity-wise. According to a careful analysis and security risk assessment, the mean cost per year of additional security problems due to SETI is roughly 3 cents/year (it would be much lower, but my complex analysis takes into account that this was a production server for the government of an entire state, and we all know that government production servers run calculations that are of great value and importance...this particular production server was most likely figuring out how to balance Ohio's budget heavily on the surplus side so that the state could afford to treat little old ladies compassionately when they cannot afford health care instead of leaving them to die in the street; or perhaps it was about to finish a calcuation that would allow Ohio to do away with gang violence and ensure that would-be gangsters grow up and get good jobs in marketing). This brings us to a grand total of 38 cents/year.
Now we must also consider the intangibles. First, it is important that government organizations are ruled with an iron fist. Working for the state is not like having a normal job...at most workplaces, bosses are expected to treat their employees with great care and respect. But as we all know, in government organizations, it is far more important to ensure that the governmental workers are terrified at every moment they'll lose their jobs for any reason at all; otherwise, the system quickly degenerates into utter chaos. We must keep government workers in this constant state of fear in order to guarantee that they scurry around and look busy even when they have little to do. This is necessary because if they do not look busy at the foot soldier level, people may begin to realize that politicians have directed an undue amount of funds from the state and federal legislatures to the enterprise-in-question unnecessarily, and these extra millions of dollars are actually of little direct benefit to the people. Rather, it gives the government a place to put money for the current year's budget until the politicians find a way to redirect it to other important state affairs, such as assuaging special interest groups and paying lobbyists in order to get reelected. This is important because if our exalted leaders, who have the best interests of the people at heart and who shoulder an enormous responsibility to them while meeting the highest standard of ethics, cannot secure reelection, the government could fall to corruption and waste.
There's another intangible here as well. We must ensure that, in order to keep turnover low in the more significant positions, we allow managers in governmental organizations to indulge in behaviors that suit their personalities so they will feel a high level of job satisfaction. In this case, Mr. Hayes' personality is obviously one of vindictiveness and unfairness. In order to keep him satisfied at his job, we should support his right to paint this employee as a man who believes in space aliens and was willing to sacrifice the safety and security of the resources of the state of Ohio and waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to pursue his absurd search for little green men. We must, just for this moment, overlook the fact that this is serious research going on at several esteemed institutions around the country, many of which are public institutions supported by public funds. We should also probably forget about the scientific summits, attended by the likes of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, that addressed such projects as SETI. In this case, it is much better for everyone involved to focus on the fact
I hope that everything gets replaced with one superior thing. What's wrong with putting all of the information that flows in all its forms on one medium? At least we can focus our resources on developing that one medium then, and everyone will be a lot happier.
I love the IP phone network I have at work. I can send an email and attach a voicemail to the email. When I click record, my IP phone on my desk rings, I pick it up, record the message after it beeps, and it's attached to the email. I send the email, and it shows up both in the recipients email inbox and their voicemail inbox.
(Or, you don't have to send the accompanying email so they think you called when they were away from the desk. This is great when you want to give someone information without having to talk to them directly, such as the UNODIR...that's "unless otherwise directed", and you never want to invoke it when you're talking live. As in: "Unless otherwise directed, I'm going to murder your dog and sleep with your wife. *Definitely* make sure you let me know beforehand if you have a problem with this." Of course, your cell phone is off and you're on your way before the recipient can stop you, and you can always say later, "Why didn't you just say you had a problem when I gave you the chance???" Heh. Gotta love UNODIR.)
I've never had this happen, but I've heard if you don't break a car in by varying the speed frequently, the engine can "set a memory" around a certain speed. (I suppose this happens because of wear in the cylinders that cause the car to drift up or down to whatever speed you were doing for a long time?)
My dad told me of his 72 Plymouth Fury that he broke in at 72mph, and then whenever he was within about 5mph of 72mph, either way, it would drift towards that speed. I *think* he said he had cruise and the same thing would happen, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering it correctly. Anyone out there know if 72 Furies even came with cruise?
Not sure how relevant this is nowadays, though. Manufacturing processes have advanced to the point where tolerances in engines are 1/10th or better what they were back then. Cars nowadays may not even be able to set memories at all.
(Then again, everyone seems to be complaining about crappy foreign cars...so who knows.) =)
Plus, you could use a thing like that to get out of a speeding ticket. All you'd have to do is show up in court with documents proving that the car's been diagnosed by a certified mechanic with that problem, and then make up some excuse as to why you haven't been able to get it fixed (can't afford it, not covered under warranty, can't find a mechanic qualified to work on it, etc). You'd only have to convince the cop that you were using cruise, and from there on out it's a slam dunk case. Just don't show up in front of the same judge twice.
If this is really how you feel, and not just a troll, then I'd say you have to overcome your background. I say that because people like you never get their ideas from empirical evidence, reality, facts, careful, well thought-out analysis. They get it from prejudice passed on from others, usually parents.
If you really do look into the matter, you'll figure out that the trajectory of developing civilizations are more or less fixed by availability of natural resources. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Hell, read anything and you'll be better off.
That's not quite right. It wouldn't be ludicrous to think that immunity is expressed in equal amounts across all of humanity unless we had evidence to the contrary.
What about sickle-cell...doesn't that only affect blacks? Yes, in larger numbers--but it's not related to the genes that make these people dark-skinned. It's related to the genes that give those populations increased resistance to malaria. Dark skin gives resistance to harsh sun, harsh sun is correlated with tropical climates, tropical climates have mosquitos the size of your little finger carrying malaria...that's the chain of correlation, but there's no causal link here. If northern white populations had been exposed to malaria in high amounts over many years, then sickle cell would have developed in those populations all the same. Similarly, if white populations moved to a tropical climate, they'd get darker skinned over many generations.
Let's not confuse expression of genes with presence/absence of those genes. Just because I don't have dark skin doesn't mean I don't carry the gene for it. We all do, or the near-step mutation that would result in it. Same with disease resistance.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I know it. I'm in the same boat. Besides, I actually like some of the fringe benefits of having TiVo...the user-friendly remote is easy to navigate with your eyes closed, the UI is very nice. It's just that the company is afraid to take on the networks who got fat and happy and don't like innovation. They want to strike a deal with TiVo so the units will automatically delete pay-per-view viewings after a certain period of time. They want to put banner ads up on the screen while I'm fast forwarding. They want to do all sorts of boneheaded stuff when none of these things were issues with VCRs.
Is there really a huge difference between fast forwarding a tape through commercials and fast forwarding a TiVo through them? Does anyone think that anything has fundamentally changed? Did the networks try to strike a deal with tape manufacturers to make tapes that only hold PPV movies for 24 hours, and VCR manufacturers to require those special tapes to tape PPV events?
No, because it was impractical and silly. The only difference between then and now with the PVRs is, now it's practical and silly.
Well, wait a minute. It's clearly unethical if the screensaver sends random data to these spammers web sites--that's clearly a DDoS attack. On the other hand, if it's not random data and it's, say, business opportunities and offers of various useful products that the spam sites might want to know about, I'd say this screensaver is providing a valuable service to them!
You know, it would be really cool if TiVo would handle conflicts intelligently. For instance, if there's a conflict due to overlap, you should be able to tell it to split the difference, switch at the beginning of the second show, or switch at the end of the first show. It's just too bad that you can't build this kind of logic into TiVo--if only it were a computer-like device that would allow this sort of thing.
(Yes, that's sarcasm people.)
The wave of the future is to build 4 tuners into every PVR. Then this ceases to be a problem...no conflicts, ever, ever, ever, and networks will have to think of some other smarmy tactic to upset their customers.
Like I said, they already have your information man. You've got to have some trust with your government. The tinfoil hat brigade doesn't know it (or maybe they do), but they're either extreme libertarians or outright anarchists by default. Either way, it's an ideological position that doesn't take into account the practicalities of real life (and I'm a bit tired of seeing it vaunted to the status of "common knowledge" here on /.).
You've hit the nail on the head. I've been fighting for years to bring back human switchboard operators and replace all the textile weaving machinery with manually operated looms. Sure, if we make these changes 99% of the calls made everyday won't go through and we simply wouldn't be able to clothe everyone...but people need jobs!
I think we could probably cut unemployment to zero tomorrow if we got rid of all the agricultural equipment and went back to hand-picking crops. When will people learn?
One thing that I didn't say that I probably should have...the education you *can* receive at different universities is about the same, if you're self-motivating. If you're like me and most other human beings, you want to be at a university where the people aren't necessarily smarter than at other universities, but more motivated. That's the real difference between MIT and some state school...the kids at MIT may not be any smarter on average, they're just more motivated. And that helps you stay more motivated.
So the people that go to "better" schools do typically learn more and get more out of the experience for that reason. But that's not to say you couldn't learn just as much sitting by a lake in a log cabin reading books and scratching on a chalk board by candlelight.
I'd be careful depending on regionally known schools. Part of the reason I've managed to maintain an even keel throughout the economic downturn is my willingness to go anywhere in the country to work for a good offer. That plus the network makes you very employable. If you know you're going to live in a certain area for the next 5 or 10 years, that's great, but that can really, severely limit the size of the net you can cast when looking.
It's not that you'll get a better or worse education. It's that you'll get a better or worse personal network. That's all it is.
I graduated from a prestigious university (not necessarily known for CS, in the spirit of full disclosure, but in the top 10 most presigious US News & World Report) with a CS degree, and I can tell you that most people I went to school with do no better or worse than anyone else simply by relying on the prestige of their degree. The people who do well are those who regularly play a role in alumni activities and contribute to the alumni social network. And, for whatever reason, the more prestigious the institution the more active the alumni are about helping each other out.
Have I personally gotten jobs through people I know/knew through university? Yes. Have others I know? Yes. If I didn't lift a finger to keep in contact with that network, would it help me at all to have my degree simply on my resume? Marginally, it might help me get my foot in the door, but the interview is the proving ground. Don't pass that, and it won't matter if you have letters from Caltech, MIT, and Carnegie-Mellon.
They're not interested in individuals. The govt's interested in assessing which school districts and sending kids on to college. That's it. That's what this whole thing is about.
If they're allowed to trace the path of kids through the school system, then they'll have good data on how the public education system is doing in terms of percentage of kids that graduate and go on to institutions of higher learning. Without that data, they have no way of knowing if they're making any progress as they implement changes. Or worse, what if the changes they implement actually cause more students to quit after high school? Wouldn't this be valuable information to have?
As a scientifically minded person, I'm always amazed when people ask that things be made better or different in a certain way, and then flout all attempts to put any kind of measure on that thing.
This is paranoia. They can't tell who made it to college and who didn't if they don't know one or the other. It'll be hard to collect the identities of kids that didn't go to college, wouldn't it? So they have to get the names of those who did.
As for a draft and all that other stuff...they already know when you turn 18 because they know your b-day when you get your SSN. If they wanted to auto-register you for the selective service, they already know everything they need to know to do that.
We can't say the politicians should do something about our poor education, but then flout every attempt they make with these paranoid attacks.
You're a Nielson family?
Cool. Keep an eye posted on this thread--I'll get back to you with all the shows you should watch and not watch.
Heh. I bet you get that all the time, huh?
I think this is a great idea. It's just a shame that they have to use paper and pencil, because I understand that's a notoriously bad way to collect data. If only they had a computer-like device connected to the TV that received every remote click so they could know exactly what's going on...
Oh well, I guess that's a pretty ridiculous idea, huh?
Interesting. However, if we can guarantee somehow that the 10-20% is a representative sample, then statistically, they would reliably (to some degree of statistical certainty) predict what everyone would think anyway, right?
No, these people are right. It's a waste of time to vote. Don't bother.
(That way, my vote counts more!)
You're saying that the power consumed by running SETI vs having a computer on but not running SETI costs more power-wise than burning a 100W light bulb? You're crazy. (You have to keep in mind that the server was running ANYWAYS...it's not like they would have otherwise shut it down when SETI wasn't running...SETI was only running when it would have been on and burning cycles anyway. Course, you must not have read the article very closely or any of the comments if you didn't figure this out on your own.)
Far as I understood this guy wasn't some programmer. He was the admin responsible for maintaining the machine he had SETI on. If he was a programmer, than the glib manager needs to reassess the infrastructure that allows anyone in the company to access production servers to install stuff. I work for a software company, I can't even install stuff on the QA servers...only designated QA people and IT people can do that.
Plus, from the way the boss held himself out in public, it sounds like he was gunning for this guy for a while or he's just generally of a dickish nature.
Nothing is more powerful in the human brain than the ability to make connections between things that aren't actually connected. This ability works extremely well when we realize the connections are simply an analogy to help us understand something, such as the connection between e-mail and regular mail, which are two completely different things and in no real sense related. This ability works against us in cases such as yours, though.
In the book I suggested you read, Jared Diamond argues that civilizations have developed as they have exclusively due to their immediate environment and the natural resources of that environment. At different points in the development of a particular civilization, different environment and natural resources are required to allow that population to stay on its same trajectory.
For instance, Mesopotamia served as the cradle of civilization because the natural resources present in that area required very little already-existing technology to support an agrarian community; it was fertile land and the region had animals which could be domesticated to work the land. Living in proximity with domesticated animals was the source of non-nomadic people's increased immunity, and this eventually leads to the answer to your question about how Europe was able to recover from the Black Plague. It also explains why Europeans were easily able to conquer the native North American people, who had no such immunities. The following tidbit of history seems to fly in the face of your theory: it was indeed non-white people that began civilization, and would hold on to that cultural and societal dominance for thousands of years.
While you're at it, please explain why European settlers changed North America in less than a hundred years from a country only sustaining a few thousand tribesmen into the global economic leader. Well, I don't have a calculator handy, but I'm pretty sure I can do this in my head. North America was settled by Europeans around 1600 (some, I'll point out, by the definition I think you're using, non-white, such as the Spanish). The US didn't emerge as a global superpower until around World War I, the 1910s. That's roughly 300 years, not 100, and much of the success of the US in pulling this off has to do with the labor performed by black African slaves and others that were imported and more or less treated as property (such as the Chinese that built our railroads in the mid-19th Century).
As I mentioned above, though, the main thrust of this achievement is due to the right-place/right-time effect enjoyed by the earliest Europeans that settled the Americas. They had already achieved the technology in Europe necessary to exploit the natural resources of the New World which remained unavailable to its native people. There was a certain hump that had to be overcome technologically before this continent would give up its wares, and whites would not have been more successful if they'd been confined to North America their entire history.
This is directly due to the unique history of the United States. You are observing a particular statistic and inferring a causal relationship where there is none; there is only a correlation here. For instance, I might say that shoe size is a direct indicator of intelligence for the general population, and that is supported by statistics. But this does not mean that it would be sensible for me to conclude that men, having larger feet, are generally smarter than women
The real question is, how bad is the thing this guy did? Does it rise to the level of termination? How much taxpayer money did he waste? How much risk to security did he cause? Were there other mitigating circumstances, such as already being told not to do this once before, or did he have several other questionable items on file?
I've run a few calculations of my own to determine how much taxpayer money he wasted, and I arrived at 35 cents/year electricity-wise. According to a careful analysis and security risk assessment, the mean cost per year of additional security problems due to SETI is roughly 3 cents/year (it would be much lower, but my complex analysis takes into account that this was a production server for the government of an entire state, and we all know that government production servers run calculations that are of great value and importance...this particular production server was most likely figuring out how to balance Ohio's budget heavily on the surplus side so that the state could afford to treat little old ladies compassionately when they cannot afford health care instead of leaving them to die in the street; or perhaps it was about to finish a calcuation that would allow Ohio to do away with gang violence and ensure that would-be gangsters grow up and get good jobs in marketing). This brings us to a grand total of 38 cents/year.
Now we must also consider the intangibles. First, it is important that government organizations are ruled with an iron fist. Working for the state is not like having a normal job...at most workplaces, bosses are expected to treat their employees with great care and respect. But as we all know, in government organizations, it is far more important to ensure that the governmental workers are terrified at every moment they'll lose their jobs for any reason at all; otherwise, the system quickly degenerates into utter chaos. We must keep government workers in this constant state of fear in order to guarantee that they scurry around and look busy even when they have little to do. This is necessary because if they do not look busy at the foot soldier level, people may begin to realize that politicians have directed an undue amount of funds from the state and federal legislatures to the enterprise-in-question unnecessarily, and these extra millions of dollars are actually of little direct benefit to the people. Rather, it gives the government a place to put money for the current year's budget until the politicians find a way to redirect it to other important state affairs, such as assuaging special interest groups and paying lobbyists in order to get reelected. This is important because if our exalted leaders, who have the best interests of the people at heart and who shoulder an enormous responsibility to them while meeting the highest standard of ethics, cannot secure reelection, the government could fall to corruption and waste.
There's another intangible here as well. We must ensure that, in order to keep turnover low in the more significant positions, we allow managers in governmental organizations to indulge in behaviors that suit their personalities so they will feel a high level of job satisfaction. In this case, Mr. Hayes' personality is obviously one of vindictiveness and unfairness. In order to keep him satisfied at his job, we should support his right to paint this employee as a man who believes in space aliens and was willing to sacrifice the safety and security of the resources of the state of Ohio and waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to pursue his absurd search for little green men. We must, just for this moment, overlook the fact that this is serious research going on at several esteemed institutions around the country, many of which are public institutions supported by public funds. We should also probably forget about the scientific summits, attended by the likes of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, that addressed such projects as SETI. In this case, it is much better for everyone involved to focus on the fact
I hope that everything gets replaced with one superior thing. What's wrong with putting all of the information that flows in all its forms on one medium? At least we can focus our resources on developing that one medium then, and everyone will be a lot happier.
I love the IP phone network I have at work. I can send an email and attach a voicemail to the email. When I click record, my IP phone on my desk rings, I pick it up, record the message after it beeps, and it's attached to the email. I send the email, and it shows up both in the recipients email inbox and their voicemail inbox.
(Or, you don't have to send the accompanying email so they think you called when they were away from the desk. This is great when you want to give someone information without having to talk to them directly, such as the UNODIR...that's "unless otherwise directed", and you never want to invoke it when you're talking live. As in: "Unless otherwise directed, I'm going to murder your dog and sleep with your wife. *Definitely* make sure you let me know beforehand if you have a problem with this." Of course, your cell phone is off and you're on your way before the recipient can stop you, and you can always say later, "Why didn't you just say you had a problem when I gave you the chance???" Heh. Gotta love UNODIR.)
I've never had this happen, but I've heard if you don't break a car in by varying the speed frequently, the engine can "set a memory" around a certain speed. (I suppose this happens because of wear in the cylinders that cause the car to drift up or down to whatever speed you were doing for a long time?)
My dad told me of his 72 Plymouth Fury that he broke in at 72mph, and then whenever he was within about 5mph of 72mph, either way, it would drift towards that speed. I *think* he said he had cruise and the same thing would happen, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering it correctly. Anyone out there know if 72 Furies even came with cruise?
Not sure how relevant this is nowadays, though. Manufacturing processes have advanced to the point where tolerances in engines are 1/10th or better what they were back then. Cars nowadays may not even be able to set memories at all.
(Then again, everyone seems to be complaining about crappy foreign cars...so who knows.) =)
Plus, you could use a thing like that to get out of a speeding ticket. All you'd have to do is show up in court with documents proving that the car's been diagnosed by a certified mechanic with that problem, and then make up some excuse as to why you haven't been able to get it fixed (can't afford it, not covered under warranty, can't find a mechanic qualified to work on it, etc). You'd only have to convince the cop that you were using cruise, and from there on out it's a slam dunk case. Just don't show up in front of the same judge twice.
If this is really how you feel, and not just a troll, then I'd say you have to overcome your background. I say that because people like you never get their ideas from empirical evidence, reality, facts, careful, well thought-out analysis. They get it from prejudice passed on from others, usually parents.
If you really do look into the matter, you'll figure out that the trajectory of developing civilizations are more or less fixed by availability of natural resources. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Hell, read anything and you'll be better off.
That's not quite right. It wouldn't be ludicrous to think that immunity is expressed in equal amounts across all of humanity unless we had evidence to the contrary.
What about sickle-cell...doesn't that only affect blacks? Yes, in larger numbers--but it's not related to the genes that make these people dark-skinned. It's related to the genes that give those populations increased resistance to malaria. Dark skin gives resistance to harsh sun, harsh sun is correlated with tropical climates, tropical climates have mosquitos the size of your little finger carrying malaria...that's the chain of correlation, but there's no causal link here. If northern white populations had been exposed to malaria in high amounts over many years, then sickle cell would have developed in those populations all the same. Similarly, if white populations moved to a tropical climate, they'd get darker skinned over many generations.
Let's not confuse expression of genes with presence/absence of those genes. Just because I don't have dark skin doesn't mean I don't carry the gene for it. We all do, or the near-step mutation that would result in it. Same with disease resistance.
Anyone who succumbs to some kind of disease doesn't deserve sympathy. They're weak. If they can't handle the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.
<cough><cough><cough><HOOOOAAAACHCHHKKK > 'Scuse me.
We have. They're called vaccines.