While other commenters have mentioned your alerting system should be disabled as its essentially worthless, theres a pretty simple fix if the IP's are known. Add their public ips to your router as additional WAN's or secondary IP's. Their traffic should now become unroutable and dropped before the appliance even tries to examine them. Or you could add a managed switch in front of your WAN which drops/blocks traffic from those IP's.
Problem with doing these sorts of things is that over time your systems become a confusing mess of strange kludges and workarounds. Port scans really are super normal, and the true issue is your appliance not behaving as you'd desire.
I find myself yet again in agreement with hawking. Of course predicting the future is a great way to find yourself wrong... but we wouldnt be human if we didnt try.
Bottomline is that AI has a couple very serious threats to humans, the first being its use by humans as a weapon against others humans for power and control. In the not very distant future it really wouldnt be hard for a small group of people to use AI (and non AI) to essentially control most of the worlds industry, production and so forth... and its not a real big leap to posit the possibility of a hitler style "solution" being run by some cult or political group.
The second is alittle more long term but the competition for resources would be a real tangible reason for AI to either directly or indirectly compete us out of existence. If AI ever reaches a stage where it cannot be assailed or "beaten" through warfare it may very well find itself "forced" to gradually curtail or even eliminate the human population as being inefficient... or as a threat. Technially speaking it may not need to do so in a violent direct manner, it could just ensure we dont have children... or that we have drastically fewer of them each generation (allowing us to live out mostly happy lives).
I personally hold out a belief that humans will intergrate well before fully capable digital only AI comes to fruition. I dont think it will be long before we start getting implants and other "aids" connected to our brains... small and discrete at first - but over time becomming more and more intergrated to a point where whats biological or not may not even be distinguishable. while im a fan of purely biological humans i think this would actually be the best outcome - and the most likely.
My greatest fear is that AI does get rid of us.... and then does nothing of worth, i think the human capacity to easily and readily imagine things WAAAAYYYYYYYYY outside of reality may never be achievable in AI. And i question if AI can ever generate a sense of purpose, desire and direction which has allowed humanity to advance in extraordinary spurts since we created our first structured civilisations. when you think about the fact that gentically speaking we are basically the same as our wild lawless animal ancestors you can imagine just how spectacular our brains/behaviors really are. the "emergent behavior" of the human species as a group may not be reproducable by an AI.... and that could be a truely sad loss for the galaxy.
indeed, perhaps it isnt nukes, environmental suicide or war... maybe AI is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Im no braver than you, and will not get anywhere near this for the same reasons.
But that is the actual point of "when good men do nothing"... its when people WITH families and other considerations (something to lose) are NOT brave enough to act on what may very well be dangerous, its when they dont act evil is allowed to thrive.
What rational white person from the 50's in the dixey south with a family and kids, a small business and the protection of the community would brave the wrath of their neighbors and the KKK to protect some relatively unknown (to them) and anonymous black people?
As i said before, im no braver - and the point of that statement was to ellucidate that sometimes horrible things thrive because "good men" like you and i have good reasons not to shed our cowardice.
Your kinda screwed. A lot of the big providers (and small) use blocklists garnered from a bunch of companies who may or may not be responsive - and more often than not simply dont care about the small guy... amongst those companies ive had the most grief with SORBS for my various clients. Some lists you can get off of, others are essentially impossible... amongst which are the "Dynamic IP" and "home user" lists.
When people set up which block lists to use, there are a couple that are not for specific offenders, but are instead simply full lists of all the known IPs in an ISP's block - such as all DSL / cable modem users. the thought being that you can block all email originating from peoples home connections, etc... which is under the presumption that legitimate emails will never come from cheap consumer grade connections which to be fair are largely spam. Problem is there are tons of small businesses with essentially "home" connections... even under business accounts they get lumped into the same IP ranges.
The real issue is that in the last few years - particularly since gmail came about... email itself has begun to concentrate in only a few major providers hands... namely intermedia, office365 and gmail. As less and less small/medium sized businesses have their own mail servers the big boys have less concern for keeping things more flexibly acceptable - very few outfits have their own exchange servers anymore, i dropped my last internally maintained client mail server a few years ago, even bigger companies dont want to run exchange in house anymore - its just not worth it in most situations that dont have regulatory or legal requirements. The less companies that run their own mail servers the greater the liklihood that legitimate mail will only come from the major providers (and the less likely wholesale blocking of IP's is going to cause the sales team to freak out when their clients arent getting emails - which is honestly the only way ive ever seen IT departments actually lower their filter strength - usually after being yelled at by the sales execs).
In order to deal with this problem we have found the best lasting solution is to use a store and forward relay service such as spamstopshere or setup your own via a micro instance in amazon. Postifx and Mailenable (windows) are two great programs that do the trick quite well. By setting up your own instance with a public IP which is more "trsuted" (comming from a major source of servers which have other large mail hosts running in the same IP block) you avoid all sorts of problems... you will have to do the normal MX, SPF and rDNS things as well for full compliance.
In general this is better anyways, as you probably also want an inbound store and forward for those outages you memntioned (no lost emails!), and youll get the probably unneeded benefit of masking your real world address (one of my clients got a detailed direct bomb threat from a guy who found their address using an IP lookup - their address was otherwise unlisted).
a micro instance on amazon is VERY cheap, and can be used for other things - like a simple website, a connection monitor etc..
why would it waste any time fretting? i presume its decision is by the very nature of computing and evaluation a function of math... therefor the only decision to cause delay would be the one wherein the odds of success are 50/50... but it needs not be delayed there either... just roll a random and pick one to save first.
Sounds like a case of a unnecessary recursive loop to me (where the even odds of save/fail cause the robotic savior to keep reevaluating the same inevitable math in hopes of some sort of change). Maybe the halfway solution is the first tiome you hit a 50/50 you flip a coin and start acting on saving one party while continuing to re-evaluate the odds as you are in motion... this could cause a similar loop - but is more likely to have the odds begin to cascade further in the direction of your intended action.
Hands down the most reliable and easy to use dual wan, VPN enabled Router for quick deployments, silent, low power consumption, handles PPTP, ipsec, etc...
I am no fan of their quickVPN software (a third VPN option included with this router), but it works as well if you dont like pptp or if you find IPSEC too much of a pain to setup.
Plus it has DUAL WAN connections, so you can use a hotspot or DSL, or the neighbors connection as a failover (or you can load balence them, or bind stuff, etc...).
Pfsense is a huge winner as well, though youll need to buy silent low cost hardware to run it (and its a good deal more involved - though considerably more powerful).
We use these two for all of our client locations with offices of up to 100 or so people, for at least 7-8 years or more.
No links, Really? in many years of reading his site daily i'm not sure i recall when a story was posted without a single f*cking link to the source material or supporting info.
Perhaps this thing is entirely made up... i think ill start submitting stories now - or is this a Beta story?
So the ONLY people willfully kept in the dark are the soldiers meant to protect us? Are the very people who are the most likely to know the dirt anyway?
F$%^ing brilliant. Next up, weapons ban limited to the army.
Hey soldier, this dam is broke, please fix it... here's a spoon
Sorry man, your mostly wrong. I commend you and your accomplishments, and my own background reinforces that FORMAL eduction (getting a piece of ink on a piece of paper) is inherently meaningless.
HOWEVER, you and me do NOT a trend make. Just because X amount of people like us can kick massive booty in the real world without the benefit of a highscool diploma or a college one doesnt degrade the value thereof.
Statistically speaking, a high school diploma is a SIGNIFICANT variable on life expectancy, incarceration rates, income potential and every other metric you want to throw at it, even despite (some degree) of relative IQ. Your employment opportunities are severely limited for each level of academic accomplishment you cant proove, particularity in technical fields and more explicitly for the high school level. Indeed you become almost unemployable.
So while you can say graduating doesn't GARUNTEE success, youo cannot compare that with the likelihood of failure if you dont graduate. in the simplest form its simply a matter of risk management on the employers (and/or clients) side.
Not trying to rain on your parade, but i don't think anyone should be a cheerleader for NON-COMPLETION of scholastic advancement in our society no matter how successful they've managed to be. Should our society change so significantly as to measure a persons worth through other means... then fine. But in todays world it is an UNDENIABLE fact that your level of educational attainment has a very DIRECT cor-relation towards your quality of life and earnings potential.
If anyone thinks any of the CPM ad networks or major sites will allow this for even an instant, your eye is not on the money.
If they use such tech for the less easily encrypted protocols... you'll find those as well slowly pushed into it.
Which leaves the ISP's with two options if they wish to pursue this, they can proxy everything their customers connect to and essentialyl monkey in the middle the whole affair (not possible due to sheer processing/bandwidth... yet)... or they may form an alliance with the ad networks (scarier more likely prospect).
My god man, the oh noes of it all.... First off... does anyone remember amazons A9 system... which also had a street level view attached to a map? Google is great, but they didnt pioneer everything. And i certainly dont remember an uproar about that.
In any case, Orwellian? jeez... Ive found the street level view exceedingly helpfull looking for Real Estate, finding certain stores (from memory) and tons of other things youd be quite thrown off to think would be helpful... Does a single shot of a public treet taken once every (X*years !? interval?) randomly long amount of years somehow constitute an all seeing eye effect that'll oppress the masses under an omnipresent authority?
NO.
If this guy wants to bust out the tin foil hat, look at the MSN maps six satellite real-time triangulating updating app their work on... thats something that can make the average joe wonder if they're being tracked by evil accountant monkeys. Or maybe even making a mention of... oh i dunno... London insano CCTV setup (and the one they're looking to build out in NYC). Until then... stop link farming add views for dumb articles.
Your close to the banana, but not quite there.... theres a variety of complicating issues with this.
The first and foremost (for any system of extremely progressive taxation) is real tax havens, I dont mean illusary non-citzen ones... but the very real threat that a society that implements extreme taxation on its resource leaders will litterally suffer expatration. People would swear off their american citizenship and be gladly welcomed into ameniable nations (and would apply for citizenship there... which would be granted on account of their resources).
Remember... a really rich person would gladly pay taxes at 50% in france or where-ever over 90% in the USA... even if it meant giving up their citizienship.
Youd need to implement some pretty heavy handed anti-emmigration and/or foreign income protectionisms that would be very oppresive and likely ineffective to pull it off.
I personally have often contemplated similar methods... such as an income cap... or other such devices... where-in there is that same similar form of control... i also thought maybe instead of capping or taxing away the money we could instead force charity/non-profit for excess income.
So a person who makes over 5 million a year must invest 90% of his/her additional earnings into charitable foundations (revieed and approved by the government as being real and socially beneficial) and the like... but of their choosing. In this way a person could still spend their earnings according to what they think is best (funding charities that do the thing they believe in), but wouldnt be outright loosing all their "hard earned" cash to thrid parties who may use their money against their intrests.
Even that system would be hard to prevent flight of capitol with.
Considering everything... without a worldwide enforcement.... it would be damn hard to implement anything too aggresive... as wealth is only usefull to an individual during their lifetime... i think the path of least resistance is to slowly but surely become much more aggresive with our inheritance taxes.
Fundementally the drive to excell and suceed is almost always balenced with the reward.... which is most of the time implemented through money. We dont want to sap that drive.... so let people become as rich as they can be within our current (or somewhat modified) progresive tax system.... but lets remove inheritance... lets say that a person can give no more than a set amount to their prodigy (10x the median household income per child)... and that the rest (upon death) must be given over to the charities of their choosing.
This would be a system that once again, gives the right of choice to the earners of money... allows them to keep and have as much as they can earn post taxes... during their lifetime.... allows them to invest freely and widely and spend like crazy if they like (and may encourage it as death will part them of all).... ensures a significant but not unfair inheritance to all their children and allows them to keep their money even past their life in causes that they believe in and brings honor to their name.
Think of it as a highly incentivized philanthropy.
As much as i like your intent in the line of thinking youve thrown forth there are simply errors in it that dont stand to current scientific understanding.
First off, dark skin is the adaptation, light skin is not considered an adaptation except possibly in extreme environments (snow covered) where pale skin would equal cover. That largely doesnt govern the reasoning, even if combined with the hypothesized belief that lack of melanin represents less expended effort of the body for its fabrication (which in large over all sums of populations would in turn mean reduced consumption of resources).
In short, its very easy to point to the advantages of dark skin in a sun-heavy environment, indeed, ALL humans are endowed with that adapatation (see tanning)... but the inverse does not stand so well... its one of the main reasons light skin is a recesive trait (though not entirely since its covered by a bunch of gene pairs).
Secondarily, the assertion that kenyans consitute a race, or even that they are geneticly more pre-disposed towards winning marathons is ultimately flawed. in 2001 the Boston marathon (in recent years otherwise won by the kenyan group) was won by a Korean... Lee Bong-Ju... not exactly something you'd expect. The womens version has been won somewhat frequently (again with large kenyan presence) by russians.
Likewise, the NYC marathon has in recent years been won by a brazilian, mexicans, and italians. The women having been usurped by a brit and a latvian.
I bring this up because we only cite the winners as evidence, when the pack and top contestants are considerably more varied. The truth is that good training, national intrest (read funding), pride, and temporal grouping make such trends appear. Shuold a group of canadians win over the next few years your assertion would shift to say cnadians are genticly predisposed to such an environment.
We are all tempted to say that BLACKS are better suited to athletic prowess than non-blacks... this is a very very old almost impossible to kill bias in our cultural history... right along with the assumption of BLACKS being less inteligent.
However that is EXACTLY the trap. Imagine an UPBRINGING (NOT genetic predisposition) where you spent 90% of your life out-doors... not in school.. not working in an office, etc... imagine living a life where you didnt take the bus, bike, car, or train to school.... but rather walked... or ran those miles... imagine such a upbringing in a BIG OPEN land in addition to weather that is rarely bad (snow). Given those conditions on a large scale... what are the chances youd have a population that was more athletic?
One of the best Kenyan runners has been running to and from school since he was very little several miles A DAY. But that doesnt stop a korean or an italian from competing.
This racial debate is incredibly complicated because of the pre-sumption of statisical relevance where there is not sufficient evidence of equaly comparable conditions. We could of course based on statistics say that the British are geneticly predisposed to making crappy food, drinking tea, and sounding like pompous snobs with bad teeth.
Mind you, this doesnt preclude very real genetic differences betweens groups of people (sickle-cell animia vs malaria, green eyes, asiatic stature, native american alcohol tolerance, etc...), but you must be very carefulkl in WHAT difference your attempting to assert as evidence... becuase most that seem to be the "obvious" or "accepted" ones... tend to be the worst and most inaccurate ones.... the ones that end up labeling you as a racist, and worse still... lead to the kind of bad science that turns into genocide.
some of you might remember that trixbox started out as asterisk@home.
Ive run A@H 1 and 2 and even trixbox... and i must say... ever since KerryG and fonality took full control and essentially "killed" the A@H branding/identity/ethic/attitude the projec has gone seriously downhill.
Ive had run-ins with kerry before... and all ill say in this public forum is that the guy really isnt a positive influence.
The forking of the porject into CE and Commercial versions was only exacerbating the underlying shift towards an essentially exploitive distro. Requiring a internet connection to trixbox in order to configure your own box? requiring a user account on their site to configure what is obstensibly supposed to be open source based projects? Maybe these actions arent WRONG per say... but cetainly the ethics are questionable.
The truth is, ever since it went this way, ive actually decided NOT to upgrade my A@H 1.3 version. The bells and whistles arent really worth it.
Im hoping some other distro, or fork will come along that remains true to the principals they started with.
Its really sad to see, consdiering how excelent the work that went into A@H / trixbox is. These guys have done a wonderfull job packaging several complicated and time-consuming products together into an easy and accesable distro. However... somewhere along the way someone *cough* kerry *cough* fonality *cough* decided to push those efforts into LOCK-IN style profitability.
(theres nothing wrong with getting commercial support pacakges... but forcing people to sign up to your organization and forking a far less than active sub-version on your comomunity is an insult)
One sentance reply : "First they came for the jews, and i did not speak out, for i was not a jew."
If that doesnt stop them in their tracks you have a lot of deconstructing to do before you can really address the core issues. The problem here is that people are not afraid of their government anymore, this US was founded on the idea that the government is NOT to be trusted... its a strange concept to most peolpe, but it works in that fundementally it requires the "people" and the "government" to watch over each other... not a one way street as it is increasingly becoming.
When germany made the transition from being a government of the people to being a government that controls the people... the jews and various "others" began to dissapear.
How much do we have to give up to our governing powers before people start to dissapear?
"then they came for the -teachers-, and i did not mind, for i was not a -teacher-"
"Then they came for me, but there was no one left to speak out for me"
Should arabs hold you responsible for Bush's bullshit? yes. And they do. This is why its important for those of us against him and his regime work to oust his administration, and even impeach if appropriate.
Should you be held to task for the civilian deaths in Iraq?
yes, see above.
Peaceful Japanese were burned by nuclear fire for no reason at all. How about if this was your family?
Peacefull? While certainly civilians, peacefull they were not. You cannot in any way look at japan at that time (and the previous THIRTY+ YEARS) and call their society and structuring there-of peacefull at all. Simply put, japan was THE MOST expansionist authoritarian regime on the planet for nearly the entire first 40 years of the century. Hitler didnt conquer a third of the land or a tenth of the people japan did, japans atrocities during this time are un-comparable... only the russian purges could come close.
I appreciate the opportunities I have in America... But sometimes this is too much. Seriously.
I am going to need to stop posting. This touched a too sensitive nerve.
these topics are never easy, but one should never loose site of context when judging previous decisions and times. The nuclear bomb will always be controvserial... however 250k dead (total) comparative to contemporary atrocities and compounded with the likely death-toll were the bomb not dropped given a russian entry into the eastern theater of war, or starvation of the jpanaese populace by blockade, or even the continued existance of a power regime in japan that had ruled out-right and unquestioned for decades and was unquestionably ruthless... is a small number indeed.
Were the blockade to continue and japan surrender without loosing "face", its almost as certain the same amount of japanese would likely have died from A:the blockade, B: war with their formerly conquered lands, and C: the almost inevitable internal purges that follow a authoritarian regime loosing tremendous political face (expecially post-war), where everyone is accusing their neighbors of being a spy or a sabateur, and countless thousands or millions (russia, cambodia, china, germany...) die as the scapegoating runs rampant.
While no-one likes the thought of a nuke, or being the people who actually used one (twice)... we should all gain a little perspective and (ironicly, sadly, remorsefully) be thankfull that the bomb WAS used THEN in its infancy .
There is a reason those messages are so laborious with unnecesary pauses and bad order of menu options etc...
The time you spend with your answering machine is money to the Tel-Co. If you have Pay-As-You-Go it DEFINTLY counts as 10c/minute. Considering that they bill you for two minutes even if you hang up at 61 seconds, its a very easy way for them to make millions.
No joke, the more time you spend on the phone going through the various menu's the more time gets racked up, even if your on a plan your still burning minutes just trying to leave a message on someone elses phone.
Text messaging is almost worse in its cost vs value, a singel text message is generally 10-20c (sending party and recieving party), and generally requires at least one reply... another 10-20c... so one excahnge = 4 minutes of talk time. 4 minutes on the phone could accomplish a lot more... and uses way more bandwidth, but once again the tel-co's have it setup so that the more laborious the process, the more it costs you.
Fantatsic idea, how about we get rid of all those useless lights on routers, access points, modems and ethernet jacks.
also lets get rid of the lights used in power indicators.
And while were at it, why not get rid of the lights in clocks too?
I mean who needs a caps or num lock key light right? you'll know when you start typing anyway.
Cause i personally LOVE having no idea if things are working or not with annoying visualfeedback, ill just wait until i try to use them., then ill know!
Dont get me wrong... there are plenty of useless lights that are super annoying and very bright (expecially when in your bedroom during sleepy time). And some of them are unnecesary... but advocating removal of activity lights, power lights? does the guy hate people? A grudge against tech support?
I can only imagine tech support calls. User: "help, my computers not workin" tech: "ok, is your computer on?" User: "i dunno, how can i tell?" tech: "go under your desk and feel your case, if its not hot its probably off, but if its just been turned on you may need to look in the back of your machine and feel for a small wind from the fan, if its a fanless PC then put your ear against the machine and see if you hear a slight whir of a harddrive" user: "whats a harddrive sound like?" tech:.... (you dont know!?) user: "oh wait the screen is on now!, but i have no internet" tech: "do you see your router?" (switch, hub, modem, linksys, wireless card, etc...) user: "its the thing my ether cable is connected to right" tech: "yea, now spin it on the table, if it keeps spinning like a hard boiled egg, its working" user:....................
I wasn't gonna say anything, but after reading the extensive stupidity and silliness of the general SD response to this issue i feel i have to comment.
Some have suggested drugging the astronaughts with anti-libido supplements.
Some have suggested sending swingers and/or "free love" astronaughts, under the impression that they would somehow be emotionally better suited to the long journey.
A very few have suggested single sex crews.
Some have suggested standard couples (non-swinging/Free-love)
Some suggested robots (sigh)
Of all these options, the standard couple arrangment is almost without question the one best suited to the mission. There is a better solution, being one where-in we send a LARGE ship with many people, and thus produce a situation where-in you develop a community larger than a few people. Communities (even small ones) deal much better with long-term isolation.
In any case, here's some of the reasons most of the above would be problematic.
A: Anti-Libido supplements would have side affects, in males testostrone is also responsible for a certain degree of drive, while an excessivly driven crew member is a recipe for disaster a host of docile crew members posses an equal risk to the crew, These people must have a lot of dedication and some degree of juice to go three years nearly solitary. I would suggest a very muted anti-sexual drug, to just slightly dullen their desires, as opposed to attemping to chemicly castrate them.
B: Swingers and "Free Love" would be a horribly bad idea, while i understand the SD fantasy of banging everyone hot space-chick in sight without any emotional attachements or reprecusions... it is only a fantasy. Swingers, Free-Lovers, and others of the same type are generally more sexually driven int he first place (a bad thing for space), and secondarily humans are not imune to love, covetous behavior, and lastly jaelousy... expecially so if in an environment where theyd be forced to see someone they've subconsciously (or consciously) become attached too F%^%ing someone else. Add to that the fact that NO-ONE is going to be 100% cool with being "available" to all members of a crew, even if they are free-love or swingers... its still a consentual act, and in situations where consent is a factor (unless you want the equivilent of date-rape in space) you will inevitably end up in a situation where certain crew members would be "left-out" because they are un-desirable or less-desirable. That causes conflict... unless of course you think an environment where one guy (alpha male?) is having sex with multiple women while the other males are not wont cause huge resentment.
Single sex crews have worked many times throughout human history, countless endevors of all-male parties have been used since nearly the begining of written history. As the initial missions would not be for colonization, this is actually a valid proposition. However, men have had coping methods for such situations which could be undesirable... the first being homo-sexual behavior (see spartans), the second being hyper-aggresiveness and competitiveness (see war/armies). Amongst women similar behavior also becomes apparent.. while women have a lesser degree of conflict with homo-sexual behavior, they are subject to even more stressfull competive social behavior.
Robots is just retarded. It doesnt address the issue, which is how to get HUMANS on these missions. We are already sending robots... we WILL send robots... that's inevitable.. the question is when we want to send people, how do we do it. Alternatively, two robot aided solutions come to mind. A: send sleeping (cryo, not fully-developed yet) ships crewed by robots.. waking crew upon arrival, or B: send robots first, then send massive colony ship (the large population allows normal sexual dynamics with less of the negative affects associated with small crews.
But of all of the above, the best option is going to be regular couples who have gone through earthside testing for extended
I know all our immediate reaction is to say "censorship!" and "oppression!", etc...
But the truth is, these guys have made a truly offensive game that is super deliberatly made to be offesnive/controversial... and/or heartless. Note that these descriptions are all my "feelings" / opinion... and therefor the government should have no place or right to ban such items... as that would be a transgression of free speech.
But that doesnt mean i have to listen to or play their game, and it doesnt mean slamdance has to admit their game or allow it in their contest.... and it also means slamdance can at their descretion change their minds on the admissibility or PR of a game.
If someone made a game called "nigger killer" that placed the gamer as a Klan leader... or Jew Burner where you follow the exciting role of a Nazi Furnace operator... guess what... chances are no matter how well developed that game was... 99% of people wouldnt want anything to do with them... and free/private gaming organizations would likely reflect those views by choosing not to entertain those games.
Its the devlopers free speech right to make the game, and thankfully its slamdances right to choose to axe it... and my right to choose to think slamdance did the right thing.
i hope this is a sign that consumers are not willing to play with the type of DRM that is unclear and difficult to deal with. DRM is never going to leave entirely, but most of the implementations nowadays are much more difficult to use and move about than physical media.
The zune is a particularly clear exmaple of this.
However i suspect the ipod has simply hit that monopoly status like Windows in which even if the competitors were good (or better) their chances of making inroads against the market leader are severly limited.
i personaly think the ipod is best of breed, but even still one has to wonder.
Without Microsoft, you would probably still be using MacOS Classic on a PowerPC, dreaming of the day you could smoothly run multiple tasks and not have one crashing program bring down the whole OS with it.
Unlikely, as addressed by other posters, apple has had next gen OS operations running almost continuously throughout their entire existance, innovation is key to non monopoly players survival. And the mac while popular at times was never near the monopoly level MS has gained.
It's faster, cheaper and runs more software. Oh, and it's not a "knockoff".
Also not true, I read your secondary post, im not sure where you think XP can outperform a mac on 1/2 the hardware, i HAVE clean XP installs with performance tuned to minimum impact on PIII 800mhz w/512mb ram. That alongside a 3rd gen G3 imac with OSX 10.4. And the iMac is WAAAAAYYYY faster (still slow for me). Mac's have always performed better under cmparable hardware under their contemporary OS's. Also, a 5 year old mac is much more usable than a 5 year old PC. I understand you may not agree, but if you look in peoples houses and offices, you will find much more older macs still being actively used with much less complaints than any PC counterpart, this eventually address's the issue of cost. There is no question a PC at purchase is outright cheaper, but when you factor in maintence and lifespan, the equation balences out and begins to tilt towards the mac over time.
as to programs, there is no question at all that a MS has magnitudes more software than OSX, i used VPC, and now parallels and boot camp offer near full speed alternative, but i dont think those are admissible comparisons. MS simply has way more market, and with that way more programs. But of course if you want the best, cutting edge media programs that is about the only stronghold Apple has.
Are you Mac Zealots still talking about that TCO study that compared Windows 3.1 and System 7 ?
It never ceases to amaze me that some... PC zealots?... think its untrue. I myself am a deeply experienced windows & network admin from IOS to NT through 2k3. I tend to prefer windows for my day to day work, but that doesnt negate the advantages of OSX and apple's all in one hardware package. the TCO IS LOWER for 90% of purchasers, i myself am not a fan of the high initial cost, and thus buy macs only with explicit need, but that doesnt belie the fact that they simply hold their value longer and tend to break less often as well as remaining productive for a greater period of time.
sorry fella, most windows boxes are hard core thin margin commodity products of just passing grade quality to keep the razor/blade sales rolling through the largest manufacturers. I personally think this is a good thing, as economicaly the cost of PC's continues to drop for the average joe, but it does come with its own caveats.
Maybe we should all live in a hive, possibly with a monarch as a king?
How about we sleep only in standing closets, or pull out rolling beds?
Maybe we could all live life in a gigantic bunk house with public showers?
Why not get rid of cars and bus's and airplanes and boats entirely? Heck, weve got internet now, everyone can telecommute right?
in fact, why not just jack everyone into a grid... lets call it... a matrix. And allow them to interact in a virtual world that resembles our own? Maybe a second life... nah.. i like matrix.
And maybe we could tweak that virtual world to remain always near perfect, but not quite perfect.
Humanity like most life is designed to consume resources as much as it can, the gambit is wether or not we can find a way to maintain our growth through such consumption. Compression and self-lessness are only positive if they are natural or necesary. Compelling our current society to live in pods would be foolish, detremental, and likely a catastrophe. While condensed living is a requirment in most major population centers, youd be surprised at just how comfy people who live in rural or semi-rural europe/asia/America/Africa are in terms of space.
This planet is BIG... REALLY BIG... on a magnitude thats hard to describe. You could suggest we all go underground too, with equally disasterous results. But te key to our "evolution" is to be the first bit of life to succesfully get off this rock in a self sustainable manner.
Which is exactly why population density not being a preffered condition is a good thing, it forces us to open up new frontiers and search for more space... you know... doing that "life" thing.
We keep growing like this and we might die.... We stop growing, and we will die for sure.
by deleting or overtly damaging their accounts, you effectivly alert them to take more proactive actions in hiding their trails.
Instead, this data should be used to covertly keep an eye on their account and account use, indeed, once these predators have been identified anyone contacted by them or looking at their page should get an alert with a warning about who that person is. Or simply make it ipossible for that account to contact or be contacted by children et al.
A passive approach will keep more of the predators unaware that they have been compromised, which means better tracking and better protection of children in subtler ways.
If we outright remove their accounts, they will know theyve been found out, and they will compensate accordingly, making them that much harder to find.
Slashdot Mirror
While other commenters have mentioned your alerting system should be disabled as its essentially worthless, theres a pretty simple fix if the IP's are known. Add their public ips to your router as additional WAN's or secondary IP's. Their traffic should now become unroutable and dropped before the appliance even tries to examine them. Or you could add a managed switch in front of your WAN which drops/blocks traffic from those IP's.
Problem with doing these sorts of things is that over time your systems become a confusing mess of strange kludges and workarounds. Port scans really are super normal, and the true issue is your appliance not behaving as you'd desire.
I find myself yet again in agreement with hawking. Of course predicting the future is a great way to find yourself wrong... but we wouldnt be human if we didnt try.
Bottomline is that AI has a couple very serious threats to humans, the first being its use by humans as a weapon against others humans for power and control. In the not very distant future it really wouldnt be hard for a small group of people to use AI (and non AI) to essentially control most of the worlds industry, production and so forth... and its not a real big leap to posit the possibility of a hitler style "solution" being run by some cult or political group.
The second is alittle more long term but the competition for resources would be a real tangible reason for AI to either directly or indirectly compete us out of existence. If AI ever reaches a stage where it cannot be assailed or "beaten" through warfare it may very well find itself "forced" to gradually curtail or even eliminate the human population as being inefficient... or as a threat. Technially speaking it may not need to do so in a violent direct manner, it could just ensure we dont have children... or that we have drastically fewer of them each generation (allowing us to live out mostly happy lives).
I personally hold out a belief that humans will intergrate well before fully capable digital only AI comes to fruition. I dont think it will be long before we start getting implants and other "aids" connected to our brains... small and discrete at first - but over time becomming more and more intergrated to a point where whats biological or not may not even be distinguishable. while im a fan of purely biological humans i think this would actually be the best outcome - and the most likely.
My greatest fear is that AI does get rid of us.... and then does nothing of worth, i think the human capacity to easily and readily imagine things WAAAAYYYYYYYYY outside of reality may never be achievable in AI. And i question if AI can ever generate a sense of purpose, desire and direction which has allowed humanity to advance in extraordinary spurts since we created our first structured civilisations. when you think about the fact that gentically speaking we are basically the same as our wild lawless animal ancestors you can imagine just how spectacular our brains/behaviors really are. the "emergent behavior" of the human species as a group may not be reproducable by an AI.... and that could be a truely sad loss for the galaxy.
indeed, perhaps it isnt nukes, environmental suicide or war... maybe AI is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Im no braver than you, and will not get anywhere near this for the same reasons.
But that is the actual point of "when good men do nothing"... its when people WITH families and other considerations (something to lose) are NOT brave enough to act on what may very well be dangerous, its when they dont act evil is allowed to thrive.
What rational white person from the 50's in the dixey south with a family and kids, a small business and the protection of the community would brave the wrath of their neighbors and the KKK to protect some relatively unknown (to them) and anonymous black people?
As i said before, im no braver - and the point of that statement was to ellucidate that sometimes horrible things thrive because "good men" like you and i have good reasons not to shed our cowardice.
Your kinda screwed. A lot of the big providers (and small) use blocklists garnered from a bunch of companies who may or may not be responsive - and more often than not simply dont care about the small guy... amongst those companies ive had the most grief with SORBS for my various clients. Some lists you can get off of, others are essentially impossible... amongst which are the "Dynamic IP" and "home user" lists.
When people set up which block lists to use, there are a couple that are not for specific offenders, but are instead simply full lists of all the known IPs in an ISP's block - such as all DSL / cable modem users. the thought being that you can block all email originating from peoples home connections, etc... which is under the presumption that legitimate emails will never come from cheap consumer grade connections which to be fair are largely spam. Problem is there are tons of small businesses with essentially "home" connections... even under business accounts they get lumped into the same IP ranges.
The real issue is that in the last few years - particularly since gmail came about... email itself has begun to concentrate in only a few major providers hands... namely intermedia, office365 and gmail. As less and less small/medium sized businesses have their own mail servers the big boys have less concern for keeping things more flexibly acceptable - very few outfits have their own exchange servers anymore, i dropped my last internally maintained client mail server a few years ago, even bigger companies dont want to run exchange in house anymore - its just not worth it in most situations that dont have regulatory or legal requirements. The less companies that run their own mail servers the greater the liklihood that legitimate mail will only come from the major providers (and the less likely wholesale blocking of IP's is going to cause the sales team to freak out when their clients arent getting emails - which is honestly the only way ive ever seen IT departments actually lower their filter strength - usually after being yelled at by the sales execs).
In order to deal with this problem we have found the best lasting solution is to use a store and forward relay service such as spamstopshere or setup your own via a micro instance in amazon. Postifx and Mailenable (windows) are two great programs that do the trick quite well. By setting up your own instance with a public IP which is more "trsuted" (comming from a major source of servers which have other large mail hosts running in the same IP block) you avoid all sorts of problems... you will have to do the normal MX, SPF and rDNS things as well for full compliance.
In general this is better anyways, as you probably also want an inbound store and forward for those outages you memntioned (no lost emails!), and youll get the probably unneeded benefit of masking your real world address (one of my clients got a detailed direct bomb threat from a guy who found their address using an IP lookup - their address was otherwise unlisted).
a micro instance on amazon is VERY cheap, and can be used for other things - like a simple website, a connection monitor etc..
good luck
why would it waste any time fretting? i presume its decision is by the very nature of computing and evaluation a function of math... therefor the only decision to cause delay would be the one wherein the odds of success are 50/50... but it needs not be delayed there either... just roll a random and pick one to save first.
Sounds like a case of a unnecessary recursive loop to me (where the even odds of save/fail cause the robotic savior to keep reevaluating the same inevitable math in hopes of some sort of change). Maybe the halfway solution is the first tiome you hit a 50/50 you flip a coin and start acting on saving one party while continuing to re-evaluate the odds as you are in motion... this could cause a similar loop - but is more likely to have the odds begin to cascade further in the direction of your intended action.
Seems silly to me.
Hands down the most reliable and easy to use dual wan, VPN enabled Router for quick deployments, silent, low power consumption, handles PPTP, ipsec, etc...
I am no fan of their quickVPN software (a third VPN option included with this router), but it works as well if you dont like pptp or if you find IPSEC too much of a pain to setup.
Plus it has DUAL WAN connections, so you can use a hotspot or DSL, or the neighbors connection as a failover (or you can load balence them, or bind stuff, etc...).
Im blown away noone has mentioned this router as i see it everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Pfsense is a huge winner as well, though youll need to buy silent low cost hardware to run it (and its a good deal more involved - though considerably more powerful).
We use these two for all of our client locations with offices of up to 100 or so people, for at least 7-8 years or more.
No links, Really? in many years of reading his site daily i'm not sure i recall when a story was posted without a single f*cking link to the source material or supporting info.
Perhaps this thing is entirely made up... i think ill start submitting stories now - or is this a Beta story?
Come on guys!!
So the ONLY people willfully kept in the dark are the soldiers meant to protect us? Are the very people who are the most likely to know the dirt anyway?
F$%^ing brilliant. Next up, weapons ban limited to the army.
Hey soldier, this dam is broke, please fix it... here's a spoon
I think he could probably fly a whole lot farther if it weren't for the drag created by his monstrously huge friggin balls.
that is one brave dude
Sorry man, your mostly wrong. I commend you and your accomplishments, and my own background reinforces that FORMAL eduction (getting a piece of ink on a piece of paper) is inherently meaningless.
HOWEVER, you and me do NOT a trend make. Just because X amount of people like us can kick massive booty in the real world without the benefit of a highscool diploma or a college one doesnt degrade the value thereof.
Statistically speaking, a high school diploma is a SIGNIFICANT variable on life expectancy, incarceration rates, income potential and every other metric you want to throw at it, even despite (some degree) of relative IQ. Your employment opportunities are severely limited for each level of academic accomplishment you cant proove, particularity in technical fields and more explicitly for the high school level. Indeed you become almost unemployable.
So while you can say graduating doesn't GARUNTEE success, youo cannot compare that with the likelihood of failure if you dont graduate. in the simplest form its simply a matter of risk management on the employers (and/or clients) side.
Not trying to rain on your parade, but i don't think anyone should be a cheerleader for NON-COMPLETION of scholastic advancement in our society no matter how successful they've managed to be. Should our society change so significantly as to measure a persons worth through other means... then fine. But in todays world it is an UNDENIABLE fact that your level of educational attainment has a very DIRECT cor-relation towards your quality of life and earnings potential.
see below for starters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
average income of HS grad : 36k
average income of masters : 78k
average income MD / ESQ : 100k
average income doctorate : 96k
Average income NO high school degree : 22k
HUGE discrepancy.
redirect Http://youriste.com to https://yoursite.com/ before anything is served.
If anyone thinks any of the CPM ad networks or major sites will allow this for even an instant, your eye is not on the money.
If they use such tech for the less easily encrypted protocols... you'll find those as well slowly pushed into it.
Which leaves the ISP's with two options if they wish to pursue this, they can proxy everything their customers connect to and essentialyl monkey in the middle the whole affair (not possible due to sheer processing/bandwidth... yet)... or they may form an alliance with the ad networks (scarier more likely prospect).
My god man, the oh noes of it all.... First off... does anyone remember amazons A9 system... which also had a street level view attached to a map? Google is great, but they didnt pioneer everything. And i certainly dont remember an uproar about that.
... oh i dunno... London insano CCTV setup (and the one they're looking to build out in NYC). Until then... stop link farming add views for dumb articles.
In any case, Orwellian? jeez... Ive found the street level view exceedingly helpfull looking for Real Estate, finding certain stores (from memory) and tons of other things youd be quite thrown off to think would be helpful... Does a single shot of a public treet taken once every (X*years !? interval?) randomly long amount of years somehow constitute an all seeing eye effect that'll oppress the masses under an omnipresent authority?
NO.
If this guy wants to bust out the tin foil hat, look at the MSN maps six satellite real-time triangulating updating app their work on... thats something that can make the average joe wonder if they're being tracked by evil accountant monkeys. Or maybe even making a mention of
--LionelC
Your close to the banana, but not quite there.... theres a variety of complicating issues with this.
The first and foremost (for any system of extremely progressive taxation) is real tax havens, I dont mean illusary non-citzen ones... but the very real threat that a society that implements extreme taxation on its resource leaders will litterally suffer expatration. People would swear off their american citizenship and be gladly welcomed into ameniable nations (and would apply for citizenship there... which would be granted on account of their resources).
Remember... a really rich person would gladly pay taxes at 50% in france or where-ever over 90% in the USA... even if it meant giving up their citizienship.
Youd need to implement some pretty heavy handed anti-emmigration and/or foreign income protectionisms that would be very oppresive and likely ineffective to pull it off.
I personally have often contemplated similar methods... such as an income cap... or other such devices... where-in there is that same similar form of control... i also thought maybe instead of capping or taxing away the money we could instead force charity/non-profit for excess income.
So a person who makes over 5 million a year must invest 90% of his/her additional earnings into charitable foundations (revieed and approved by the government as being real and socially beneficial) and the like... but of their choosing. In this way a person could still spend their earnings according to what they think is best (funding charities that do the thing they believe in), but wouldnt be outright loosing all their "hard earned" cash to thrid parties who may use their money against their intrests.
Even that system would be hard to prevent flight of capitol with.
Considering everything... without a worldwide enforcement.... it would be damn hard to implement anything too aggresive... as wealth is only usefull to an individual during their lifetime... i think the path of least resistance is to slowly but surely become much more aggresive with our inheritance taxes.
Fundementally the drive to excell and suceed is almost always balenced with the reward.... which is most of the time implemented through money. We dont want to sap that drive.... so let people become as rich as they can be within our current (or somewhat modified) progresive tax system.... but lets remove inheritance... lets say that a person can give no more than a set amount to their prodigy (10x the median household income per child)... and that the rest (upon death) must be given over to the charities of their choosing.
This would be a system that once again, gives the right of choice to the earners of money... allows them to keep and have as much as they can earn post taxes... during their lifetime.... allows them to invest freely and widely and spend like crazy if they like (and may encourage it as death will part them of all).... ensures a significant but not unfair inheritance to all their children and allows them to keep their money even past their life in causes that they believe in and brings honor to their name.
Think of it as a highly incentivized philanthropy.
As much as i like your intent in the line of thinking youve thrown forth there are simply errors in it that dont stand to current scientific understanding. First off, dark skin is the adaptation, light skin is not considered an adaptation except possibly in extreme environments (snow covered) where pale skin would equal cover. That largely doesnt govern the reasoning, even if combined with the hypothesized belief that lack of melanin represents less expended effort of the body for its fabrication (which in large over all sums of populations would in turn mean reduced consumption of resources). In short, its very easy to point to the advantages of dark skin in a sun-heavy environment, indeed, ALL humans are endowed with that adapatation (see tanning)... but the inverse does not stand so well... its one of the main reasons light skin is a recesive trait (though not entirely since its covered by a bunch of gene pairs). Secondarily, the assertion that kenyans consitute a race, or even that they are geneticly more pre-disposed towards winning marathons is ultimately flawed. in 2001 the Boston marathon (in recent years otherwise won by the kenyan group) was won by a Korean... Lee Bong-Ju... not exactly something you'd expect. The womens version has been won somewhat frequently (again with large kenyan presence) by russians. Likewise, the NYC marathon has in recent years been won by a brazilian, mexicans, and italians. The women having been usurped by a brit and a latvian. I bring this up because we only cite the winners as evidence, when the pack and top contestants are considerably more varied. The truth is that good training, national intrest (read funding), pride, and temporal grouping make such trends appear. Shuold a group of canadians win over the next few years your assertion would shift to say cnadians are genticly predisposed to such an environment. We are all tempted to say that BLACKS are better suited to athletic prowess than non-blacks... this is a very very old almost impossible to kill bias in our cultural history... right along with the assumption of BLACKS being less inteligent. However that is EXACTLY the trap. Imagine an UPBRINGING (NOT genetic predisposition) where you spent 90% of your life out-doors... not in school.. not working in an office, etc... imagine living a life where you didnt take the bus, bike, car, or train to school.... but rather walked... or ran those miles... imagine such a upbringing in a BIG OPEN land in addition to weather that is rarely bad (snow). Given those conditions on a large scale... what are the chances youd have a population that was more athletic? One of the best Kenyan runners has been running to and from school since he was very little several miles A DAY. But that doesnt stop a korean or an italian from competing. This racial debate is incredibly complicated because of the pre-sumption of statisical relevance where there is not sufficient evidence of equaly comparable conditions. We could of course based on statistics say that the British are geneticly predisposed to making crappy food, drinking tea, and sounding like pompous snobs with bad teeth. Mind you, this doesnt preclude very real genetic differences betweens groups of people (sickle-cell animia vs malaria, green eyes, asiatic stature, native american alcohol tolerance, etc...), but you must be very carefulkl in WHAT difference your attempting to assert as evidence... becuase most that seem to be the "obvious" or "accepted" ones... tend to be the worst and most inaccurate ones.... the ones that end up labeling you as a racist, and worse still... lead to the kind of bad science that turns into genocide.
some of you might remember that trixbox started out as asterisk@home.
Ive run A@H 1 and 2 and even trixbox... and i must say... ever since KerryG and fonality took full control and essentially "killed" the A@H branding/identity/ethic/attitude the projec has gone seriously downhill.
Ive had run-ins with kerry before... and all ill say in this public forum is that the guy really isnt a positive influence.
The forking of the porject into CE and Commercial versions was only exacerbating the underlying shift towards an essentially exploitive distro. Requiring a internet connection to trixbox in order to configure your own box? requiring a user account on their site to configure what is obstensibly supposed to be open source based projects? Maybe these actions arent WRONG per say... but cetainly the ethics are questionable.
The truth is, ever since it went this way, ive actually decided NOT to upgrade my A@H 1.3 version. The bells and whistles arent really worth it.
Im hoping some other distro, or fork will come along that remains true to the principals they started with.
Its really sad to see, consdiering how excelent the work that went into A@H / trixbox is. These guys have done a wonderfull job packaging several complicated and time-consuming products together into an easy and accesable distro. However... somewhere along the way someone *cough* kerry *cough* fonality *cough* decided to push those efforts into LOCK-IN style profitability.
(theres nothing wrong with getting commercial support pacakges... but forcing people to sign up to your organization and forking a far less than active sub-version on your comomunity is an insult)
One sentance reply : "First they came for the jews, and i did not speak out, for i was not a jew."
If that doesnt stop them in their tracks you have a lot of deconstructing to do before you can really address the core issues. The problem here is that people are not afraid of their government anymore, this US was founded on the idea that the government is NOT to be trusted... its a strange concept to most peolpe, but it works in that fundementally it requires the "people" and the "government" to watch over each other... not a one way street as it is increasingly becoming.
When germany made the transition from being a government of the people to being a government that controls the people... the jews and various "others" began to dissapear.
How much do we have to give up to our governing powers before people start to dissapear?
"then they came for the -teachers-, and i did not mind, for i was not a -teacher-"
"Then they came for me, but there was no one left to speak out for me"
Should arabs hold you responsible for Bush's bullshit?
yes. And they do. This is why its important for those of us against him and his regime work to oust his administration, and even impeach if appropriate.
Should you be held to task for the civilian deaths in Iraq? yes, see above.
Peaceful Japanese were burned by nuclear fire for no reason at all. How about if this was your family? Peacefull? While certainly civilians, peacefull they were not. You cannot in any way look at japan at that time (and the previous THIRTY+ YEARS) and call their society and structuring there-of peacefull at all. Simply put, japan was THE MOST expansionist authoritarian regime on the planet for nearly the entire first 40 years of the century. Hitler didnt conquer a third of the land or a tenth of the people japan did, japans atrocities during this time are un-comparable... only the russian purges could come close.
I appreciate the opportunities I have in America... But sometimes this is too much. Seriously. I am going to need to stop posting. This touched a too sensitive nerve.
these topics are never easy, but one should never loose site of context when judging previous decisions and times. The nuclear bomb will always be controvserial... however 250k dead (total) comparative to contemporary atrocities and compounded with the likely death-toll were the bomb not dropped given a russian entry into the eastern theater of war, or starvation of the jpanaese populace by blockade, or even the continued existance of a power regime in japan that had ruled out-right and unquestioned for decades and was unquestionably ruthless... is a small number indeed.
Were the blockade to continue and japan surrender without loosing "face", its almost as certain the same amount of japanese would likely have died from A:the blockade, B: war with their formerly conquered lands, and C: the almost inevitable internal purges that follow a authoritarian regime loosing tremendous political face (expecially post-war), where everyone is accusing their neighbors of being a spy or a sabateur, and countless thousands or millions (russia, cambodia, china, germany...) die as the scapegoating runs rampant.
While no-one likes the thought of a nuke, or being the people who actually used one (twice)... we should all gain a little perspective and (ironicly, sadly, remorsefully) be thankfull that the bomb WAS used THEN in its infancy .
There is a reason those messages are so laborious with unnecesary pauses and bad order of menu options etc...
... another 10-20c... so one excahnge = 4 minutes of talk time. 4 minutes on the phone could accomplish a lot more... and uses way more bandwidth, but once again the tel-co's have it setup so that the more laborious the process, the more it costs you.
The time you spend with your answering machine is money to the Tel-Co. If you have Pay-As-You-Go it DEFINTLY counts as 10c/minute. Considering that they bill you for two minutes even if you hang up at 61 seconds, its a very easy way for them to make millions.
No joke, the more time you spend on the phone going through the various menu's the more time gets racked up, even if your on a plan your still burning minutes just trying to leave a message on someone elses phone.
Text messaging is almost worse in its cost vs value, a singel text message is generally 10-20c (sending party and recieving party), and generally requires at least one reply
Fantatsic idea, how about we get rid of all those useless lights on routers, access points, modems and ethernet jacks.
.... (you dont know!?) ....................
also lets get rid of the lights used in power indicators.
And while were at it, why not get rid of the lights in clocks too?
I mean who needs a caps or num lock key light right? you'll know when you start typing anyway.
Cause i personally LOVE having no idea if things are working or not with annoying visualfeedback, ill just wait until i try to use them., then ill know!
Dont get me wrong... there are plenty of useless lights that are super annoying and very bright (expecially when in your bedroom during sleepy time). And some of them are unnecesary... but advocating removal of activity lights, power lights? does the guy hate people? A grudge against tech support?
I can only imagine tech support calls.
User: "help, my computers not workin"
tech: "ok, is your computer on?"
User: "i dunno, how can i tell?"
tech: "go under your desk and feel your case, if its not hot its probably off, but if its just been turned on you may need to look in the back of your machine and feel for a small wind from the fan, if its a fanless PC then put your ear against the machine and see if you hear a slight whir of a harddrive"
user: "whats a harddrive sound like?"
tech:
user: "oh wait the screen is on now!, but i have no internet"
tech: "do you see your router?" (switch, hub, modem, linksys, wireless card, etc...)
user: "its the thing my ether cable is connected to right"
tech: "yea, now spin it on the table, if it keeps spinning like a hard boiled egg, its working"
user:
--VISION
Some have suggested drugging the astronaughts with anti-libido supplements.
Some have suggested sending swingers and/or "free love" astronaughts, under the impression that they would somehow be emotionally better suited to the long journey.
A very few have suggested single sex crews.
Some have suggested standard couples (non-swinging/Free-love)
Some suggested robots (sigh)
Of all these options, the standard couple arrangment is almost without question the one best suited to the mission. There is a better solution, being one where-in we send a LARGE ship with many people, and thus produce a situation where-in you develop a community larger than a few people. Communities (even small ones) deal much better with long-term isolation.
In any case, here's some of the reasons most of the above would be problematic.
A: Anti-Libido supplements would have side affects, in males testostrone is also responsible for a certain degree of drive, while an excessivly driven crew member is a recipe for disaster a host of docile crew members posses an equal risk to the crew, These people must have a lot of dedication and some degree of juice to go three years nearly solitary. I would suggest a very muted anti-sexual drug, to just slightly dullen their desires, as opposed to attemping to chemicly castrate them.
B: Swingers and "Free Love" would be a horribly bad idea, while i understand the SD fantasy of banging everyone hot space-chick in sight without any emotional attachements or reprecusions... it is only a fantasy. Swingers, Free-Lovers, and others of the same type are generally more sexually driven int he first place (a bad thing for space), and secondarily humans are not imune to love, covetous behavior, and lastly jaelousy... expecially so if in an environment where theyd be forced to see someone they've subconsciously (or consciously) become attached too F%^%ing someone else. Add to that the fact that NO-ONE is going to be 100% cool with being "available" to all members of a crew, even if they are free-love or swingers... its still a consentual act, and in situations where consent is a factor (unless you want the equivilent of date-rape in space) you will inevitably end up in a situation where certain crew members would be "left-out" because they are un-desirable or less-desirable. That causes conflict... unless of course you think an environment where one guy (alpha male?) is having sex with multiple women while the other males are not wont cause huge resentment.
Single sex crews have worked many times throughout human history, countless endevors of all-male parties have been used since nearly the begining of written history. As the initial missions would not be for colonization, this is actually a valid proposition. However, men have had coping methods for such situations which could be undesirable... the first being homo-sexual behavior (see spartans), the second being hyper-aggresiveness and competitiveness (see war/armies). Amongst women similar behavior also becomes apparent.. while women have a lesser degree of conflict with homo-sexual behavior, they are subject to even more stressfull competive social behavior.
Robots is just retarded. It doesnt address the issue, which is how to get HUMANS on these missions. We are already sending robots... we WILL send robots... that's inevitable.. the question is when we want to send people, how do we do it. Alternatively, two robot aided solutions come to mind. A: send sleeping (cryo, not fully-developed yet) ships crewed by robots.. waking crew upon arrival, or B: send robots first, then send massive colony ship (the large population allows normal sexual dynamics with less of the negative affects associated with small crews.
But of all of the above, the best option is going to be regular couples who have gone through earthside testing for extended
I know all our immediate reaction is to say "censorship!" and "oppression!", etc...
But the truth is, these guys have made a truly offensive game that is super deliberatly made to be offesnive/controversial... and/or heartless. Note that these descriptions are all my "feelings" / opinion... and therefor the government should have no place or right to ban such items... as that would be a transgression of free speech.
But that doesnt mean i have to listen to or play their game, and it doesnt mean slamdance has to admit their game or allow it in their contest.... and it also means slamdance can at their descretion change their minds on the admissibility or PR of a game.
If someone made a game called "nigger killer" that placed the gamer as a Klan leader... or Jew Burner where you follow the exciting role of a Nazi Furnace operator... guess what... chances are no matter how well developed that game was... 99% of people wouldnt want anything to do with them... and free/private gaming organizations would likely reflect those views by choosing not to entertain those games.
Its the devlopers free speech right to make the game, and thankfully its slamdances right to choose to axe it... and my right to choose to think slamdance did the right thing.
THAT is free speech and freedom.
The zune is a particularly clear exmaple of this.
However i suspect the ipod has simply hit that monopoly status like Windows in which even if the competitors were good (or better) their chances of making inroads against the market leader are severly limited.
i personaly think the ipod is best of breed, but even still one has to wonder.
Unlikely, as addressed by other posters, apple has had next gen OS operations running almost continuously throughout their entire existance, innovation is key to non monopoly players survival. And the mac while popular at times was never near the monopoly level MS has gained.
It's faster, cheaper and runs more software. Oh, and it's not a "knockoff".
Also not true, I read your secondary post, im not sure where you think XP can outperform a mac on 1/2 the hardware, i HAVE clean XP installs with performance tuned to minimum impact on PIII 800mhz w/512mb ram. That alongside a 3rd gen G3 imac with OSX 10.4. And the iMac is WAAAAAYYYY faster (still slow for me). Mac's have always performed better under cmparable hardware under their contemporary OS's. Also, a 5 year old mac is much more usable than a 5 year old PC. I understand you may not agree, but if you look in peoples houses and offices, you will find much more older macs still being actively used with much less complaints than any PC counterpart, this eventually address's the issue of cost. There is no question a PC at purchase is outright cheaper, but when you factor in maintence and lifespan, the equation balences out and begins to tilt towards the mac over time.
as to programs, there is no question at all that a MS has magnitudes more software than OSX, i used VPC, and now parallels and boot camp offer near full speed alternative, but i dont think those are admissible comparisons. MS simply has way more market, and with that way more programs. But of course if you want the best, cutting edge media programs that is about the only stronghold Apple has.
Are you Mac Zealots still talking about that TCO study that compared Windows 3.1 and System 7 ?
It never ceases to amaze me that some ... PC zealots? ... think its untrue. I myself am a deeply experienced windows & network admin from IOS to NT through 2k3. I tend to prefer windows for my day to day work, but that doesnt negate the advantages of OSX and apple's all in one hardware package. the TCO IS LOWER for 90% of purchasers, i myself am not a fan of the high initial cost, and thus buy macs only with explicit need, but that doesnt belie the fact that they simply hold their value longer and tend to break less often as well as remaining productive for a greater period of time.
sorry fella, most windows boxes are hard core thin margin commodity products of just passing grade quality to keep the razor/blade sales rolling through the largest manufacturers. I personally think this is a good thing, as economicaly the cost of PC's continues to drop for the average joe, but it does come with its own caveats.
You sir, are crazy
... lets call it... a matrix. And allow them to interact in a virtual world that resembles our own? Maybe a second life... nah .. i like matrix.
Maybe we should all live in a hive, possibly with a monarch as a king?
How about we sleep only in standing closets, or pull out rolling beds?
Maybe we could all live life in a gigantic bunk house with public showers?
Why not get rid of cars and bus's and airplanes and boats entirely? Heck, weve got internet now, everyone can telecommute right?
in fact, why not just jack everyone into a grid
And maybe we could tweak that virtual world to remain always near perfect, but not quite perfect.
Humanity like most life is designed to consume resources as much as it can, the gambit is wether or not we can find a way to maintain our growth through such consumption. Compression and self-lessness are only positive if they are natural or necesary. Compelling our current society to live in pods would be foolish, detremental, and likely a catastrophe. While condensed living is a requirment in most major population centers, youd be surprised at just how comfy people who live in rural or semi-rural europe/asia/America/Africa are in terms of space.
This planet is BIG... REALLY BIG... on a magnitude thats hard to describe. You could suggest we all go underground too, with equally disasterous results. But te key to our "evolution" is to be the first bit of life to succesfully get off this rock in a self sustainable manner.
Which is exactly why population density not being a preffered condition is a good thing, it forces us to open up new frontiers and search for more space... you know... doing that "life" thing.
We keep growing like this and we might die.... We stop growing, and we will die for sure.
by deleting or overtly damaging their accounts, you effectivly alert them to take more proactive actions in hiding their trails.
Instead, this data should be used to covertly keep an eye on their account and account use, indeed, once these predators have been identified anyone contacted by them or looking at their page should get an alert with a warning about who that person is. Or simply make it ipossible for that account to contact or be contacted by children et al.
A passive approach will keep more of the predators unaware that they have been compromised, which means better tracking and better protection of children in subtler ways.
If we outright remove their accounts, they will know theyve been found out, and they will compensate accordingly, making them that much harder to find.