The other problem is that if you do get through to them, every singlr North Korean is going to want out of there fast, and you will have 60 million refugees flooding into S Korea and China, or anywhere they can get a boat to.
No: you'd have about 23 million, although the crux of what you're arguing is true. Both South Korea and China would have to essentially fence the North Koreans in, at least until the people and infrastructure achieve some measure of stability and normality. That might be 20 years or more.
On a tangential note, North Korea is a good example to hold up to the people who ask how the Holocaust happened: countries are more interested in their own self-interest than they are in any abstract ideas about justice or fairness or even treating people humanely.
"It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger."
This only demonstrates that the Internet is merely a conduit human behavior; all the things, whether condoned by society or not, that have been going on for thousands if not millions of years, simply move online.
have a PC with XP on it running two 20" wide-screen LCD panels, and across the room, I have a new Mac Pro with a Dell 24" LCD display. (Ok, granted, not quite a 30" like they use in this study... but should be close enough for the purpose.)
Better question is: Why do you have a Dell and Mac Pro when you could just install Linux or Windows on the Mac Pro and skip the Dell altogether?
It's a laptop that has to last at least three and possibly more years. That means OS and application bloat -- which occurs whether one uses Windows or OS X. The prices probably include support, software, and infrastructure. They also don't want to buy the $500 specials that are going to fall apart the day after the one-year warranty expires.
The problem with articles like this is that they're filled with highfalutin and banal platitudes but low on nitty-gritty details about how one could actually construct the OS of the future. Look, I'd like "an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around," but what the hell does that mean, exactly? And, once you've decided how it means, how are you going to implement it?
If those questions had answers, someone would already be writing the "OS of the future." Sadly, at least in present and near-future technological terms, those questions don't have answers, and so they'll remain in the world of hand waving prognostications about some techno-utopia.
Who gives a shit whether you own a "tech" device -- and what the hell does that mean anyway? Does a cell phone count? Does a mortar and pestle? How about an iPod?
What's more interesting is whether a) you can explain how a "tech" device works on a deep level and b) Whether you can alter it to make it more useful to you, whether through prgoramming or hardware mods. That's what they should be thinking about, not whether you have sufficient extra income to buy such devices.
The world is becoming more like Brave New World than 1984. Most people are either on drugs or act like they might as well be; high culture fades into oblivion; and the silent masses mewl in approval at the behest of leaders who they don't understand.
If I leave my bike outside unlocked for 10 minutes, am I giving explicit permission to anyone who sees it that they can take it?
Repeat after me: physical goods that imply exclusive use (i.e. you using something prevents me from using something) is not the same as those goods that don't imply exclusive use (i.e. your use of something doesn't diminish my use of it).
I've seen a million bad analogies to physical things in the real world in this thread.
His idea isn't necessarily a bad one -- if he's got subsidized loans, the government pays the interest while he's in school. If he saves 10K over a couple years at a 5% CD rate or something like that, he can come out with a reasonable profit at virtually no cost (save time) or risk to himself.
I can't believe how stupid most people become once they enter the self-checkout lanes. It's scan-scan-swipe, people; in-and-out in about 45 seconds or less; how frickin' hard is that to understand?!?
Apparently I'm one of the stupid people, because I've come to avoid these self-checkout lanes at the grocer. It takes a long time of digging through menus to find the proper fruit; the loyalty cards (I use a phone number I found in the phone book, BTW) don't always specify whether they want the leading digit 1 or not, and I've never had a problem at the regular cashiers' stands; when I try to put an item I've just scanned into my bag or backpack, the machine instructs me not to; when I'm ready to pay, it frequently won't accept my cash. Using credit cards -- which I don't do with loyalty cards, BTW -- is also sometimes a pain in the ass if the machine won't accept a swipe or the location of the credit card slot isn't obvoius. At QFC's it isn't.
For me, the efficiency of these systems is often questionable, particularly because of fruits. So I guess I am one of the people you describe. Personally, I think the designers of the systems are morons -- shouldn't they be making it easier for me, rather than me make it easier for them?
My first two years of school were at 18,000 a year, at what was called a good bang-for-buck school.
Where the hell did you go to school? At the University of Washington--which is probably ranked around 10 for large public schools in the US--undergrad tuition is about $5,600 a year. Some lesser-known Washington cost less, and WA is not known for inexpensive public education.
Online horror stories feature every major vendor, whether Dell, HP, eMachines/Gateway, Apple, Sony, or Toshiba. If you avoided every large vendor based on online stories, you'd only be building your own machines.
My not-so-wild-ass guess is that Dell will still be alive and more or less in its present form in five years.
If you think about, very few 3rd world countries have ever made it out of the 3rd world.
This is utterly bollocks: Singapore and South Korea are two obvious counter-examples; Israel is another, though whether is was truly "third-world" in 1948 is debateable.
In addition, some countries like Zimbabwe (sp?) appeared to moving toward the first world, only to slide backwards due to political, rather than economic or social, problems.
I doubt Mac users are any better with computers. The more likely scenario is that it's just too hard to get a Mac virus going. If I wanted to, I could write a small program to completely overwrite a user's directory. But to get it from user to user, I'd have to use social engineering methods via e-mail or IM, and the majority of people in both mediums won't be using Macs. So even if five other people try to open Britney_Spears_naked.dmg, which will e-mail itself to everyone in their address book and then wipe their home directory, if none of those people use OS X the virus stops spreading.
Obviously it helps that there haven't been any worms on OS X, but in principle writing OS X viruses isn't technically difficult. Spreading them is.
In addition, Microsoft finally appears to be concerned about security, as demonstrated with XP2 and as will probably be demonstrated in Vista. So the security advantage of OS X is, I suspect, likely to dissipate over time. Still, I plan on using OS X for the foreseeable future.
A minority of college students have unusual tastes in music; most IME listen to the same radio stations everyone else does. The problem is that the mainstream types are already very well-served by Direct Connect or MyTunes/OurTunes and the eclectic or unusual types, who would probably be more inclined to use something like Napster, can't find what they want. Not only that, but a lot of people like to listen to music on their iPods, so why would they use a music service that's free if it's also a hassle? They wouldn't, of course, which makes me think that most of these efforts come at the behest of clueless administrators rather than the students themselves.
Failing to support Macs and iPods are a quick way for music services to fail regardless of price, which is something Apple and no one else seems to get. Plus, mainstream music is pathetically easy to pirate on most campuses - MyTunes/OurTunes or Direct Connect are enough for most people.
The real reason colleges are so expensive is because so many more students attend. When your Dad went in the 50's, relatively few other people did, even with the GI Bill. Today, something like a third of people under 30 get degrees. Every other factor is just noise compared to that one.
Slashdot Mirror
Long story short is that the guy says the noise isn't a problem -- it sounds nearly silent -- and he doesn't have any comparisons heat-wise.
You've addressed none of the substantive criticisms from the grandparent. What he's arguing and what you're arguing are not necessarily incompatible.
No: you'd have about 23 million, although the crux of what you're arguing is true. Both South Korea and China would have to essentially fence the North Koreans in, at least until the people and infrastructure achieve some measure of stability and normality. That might be 20 years or more.
On a tangential note, North Korea is a good example to hold up to the people who ask how the Holocaust happened: countries are more interested in their own self-interest than they are in any abstract ideas about justice or fairness or even treating people humanely.
This only demonstrates that the Internet is merely a conduit human behavior; all the things, whether condoned by society or not, that have been going on for thousands if not millions of years, simply move online.
Better question is: Why do you have a Dell and Mac Pro when you could just install Linux or Windows on the Mac Pro and skip the Dell altogether?
It's a laptop that has to last at least three and possibly more years. That means OS and application bloat -- which occurs whether one uses Windows or OS X. The prices probably include support, software, and infrastructure. They also don't want to buy the $500 specials that are going to fall apart the day after the one-year warranty expires.
Or, alternately: "I don't know how to use virtual desktops."
If those questions had answers, someone would already be writing the "OS of the future." Sadly, at least in present and near-future technological terms, those questions don't have answers, and so they'll remain in the world of hand waving prognostications about some techno-utopia.
Different rules sometimes apply to organizations of different sizes.
What's more interesting is whether a) you can explain how a "tech" device works on a deep level and b) Whether you can alter it to make it more useful to you, whether through prgoramming or hardware mods. That's what they should be thinking about, not whether you have sufficient extra income to buy such devices.
http://www.apple.com/
For once Microsoft isn't being overly verbose and gradiose.
The world is becoming more like Brave New World than 1984. Most people are either on drugs or act like they might as well be; high culture fades into oblivion; and the silent masses mewl in approval at the behest of leaders who they don't understand.
Oh, and O'Reily's Safari Bookshelf is pretty nice.
Repeat after me: physical goods that imply exclusive use (i.e. you using something prevents me from using something) is not the same as those goods that don't imply exclusive use (i.e. your use of something doesn't diminish my use of it).
I've seen a million bad analogies to physical things in the real world in this thread.
His idea isn't necessarily a bad one -- if he's got subsidized loans, the government pays the interest while he's in school. If he saves 10K over a couple years at a 5% CD rate or something like that, he can come out with a reasonable profit at virtually no cost (save time) or risk to himself.
Apparently I'm one of the stupid people, because I've come to avoid these self-checkout lanes at the grocer. It takes a long time of digging through menus to find the proper fruit; the loyalty cards (I use a phone number I found in the phone book, BTW) don't always specify whether they want the leading digit 1 or not, and I've never had a problem at the regular cashiers' stands; when I try to put an item I've just scanned into my bag or backpack, the machine instructs me not to; when I'm ready to pay, it frequently won't accept my cash. Using credit cards -- which I don't do with loyalty cards, BTW -- is also sometimes a pain in the ass if the machine won't accept a swipe or the location of the credit card slot isn't obvoius. At QFC's it isn't.
For me, the efficiency of these systems is often questionable, particularly because of fruits. So I guess I am one of the people you describe. Personally, I think the designers of the systems are morons -- shouldn't they be making it easier for me, rather than me make it easier for them?
Exactly what do you want Bush to do? His choices are:
a) Do nothing. In the case of North Korea, a synonym for this option is "diplomacy."
b) introduce UN sanctions, which Japan may do anyway, and which China will probably veto.
c) bomb North Korea, thus probably inciting another war in Southeast Asia.
d) invade North Korea. I can't imagine South Korea letting us, and North Korea also has a million-man army.
So what would you do?
That's all very interesting, but how many VW Bugs is that? And can you convert it to my preferred metric of football fields?
Where the hell did you go to school? At the University of Washington--which is probably ranked around 10 for large public schools in the US--undergrad tuition is about $5,600 a year. Some lesser-known Washington cost less, and WA is not known for inexpensive public education.
My not-so-wild-ass guess is that Dell will still be alive and more or less in its present form in five years.
This is utterly bollocks: Singapore and South Korea are two obvious counter-examples; Israel is another, though whether is was truly "third-world" in 1948 is debateable.
In addition, some countries like Zimbabwe (sp?) appeared to moving toward the first world, only to slide backwards due to political, rather than economic or social, problems.
Obviously it helps that there haven't been any worms on OS X, but in principle writing OS X viruses isn't technically difficult. Spreading them is.
In addition, Microsoft finally appears to be concerned about security, as demonstrated with XP2 and as will probably be demonstrated in Vista. So the security advantage of OS X is, I suspect, likely to dissipate over time. Still, I plan on using OS X for the foreseeable future.
A minority of college students have unusual tastes in music; most IME listen to the same radio stations everyone else does. The problem is that the mainstream types are already very well-served by Direct Connect or MyTunes/OurTunes and the eclectic or unusual types, who would probably be more inclined to use something like Napster, can't find what they want. Not only that, but a lot of people like to listen to music on their iPods, so why would they use a music service that's free if it's also a hassle? They wouldn't, of course, which makes me think that most of these efforts come at the behest of clueless administrators rather than the students themselves.
Failing to support Macs and iPods are a quick way for music services to fail regardless of price, which is something Apple and no one else seems to get. Plus, mainstream music is pathetically easy to pirate on most campuses - MyTunes/OurTunes or Direct Connect are enough for most people.
The real reason colleges are so expensive is because so many more students attend. When your Dad went in the 50's, relatively few other people did, even with the GI Bill. Today, something like a third of people under 30 get degrees. Every other factor is just noise compared to that one.