The problems with coal (including dead miners, radiation - more than nuclear, soot, and of course CO2) can't even be called "risks," they're already everyday facts.
That's a very valid reason to avoid google and microsoft, but aren't some Canadian companies offering similar services? Actually I could imagine USians turning to Canadian / European services because they have more end-user/consumer-friendly laws.
I think this research may be unethical. If I argue persuasively that somebody could stalk somebody by following them around with binoculars and laser microphones, that's one thing; but if I prove my point by DOING that, it's different.
IMHO it took way too long and cost way too much, considering SCO never presented any evidence. It's the "Duke Lacrosse Rape Case" of the intellectual property world.
"Not as dangerous as previously thought" is a far cry from "safe". This is sort of like estimating the number killed in the holocaust or sentencing guidelines for pedophiles, who wants to be on the low side?
Is it true that OSX 10.4 is incompatible with bootcamp? I had considered getting a PowerBook instead of a Dell to experiment with OSX while retaining compatibility with Windows, but decided against it because I was afraid bootcamp wasn't offically supported and could go away. Now it sounds like that has happened?
Ok, I read your link: "With these mechanisms in place [wear leveling and bad block management], some industry analysts[1] have calculated that flash memory can be written to at full speed continuously for 51 years before exceeding its write endurance, even if such writes frequently cause the entire memory to be overwritten."
For starters, you're comparing 32 GB with 4 GB. That's a factor of 8. 8 x $350 = $2800, which is surprisingly close to the Sony price. The Eee PC is a very cute little product, but you can't touch-type on it, the screen is only 7", and (most importantly) it can't run all the standard business software most people use. They really aren't comparable.
Actually low-latency access is exactly what most desktop users really need: quick bootup and fast loading of apps. 0.3 ms is just fantastic. Heck, laptop users have been hailing the advantages of 7200 over 4200 RPM drives for years, compared to this, they're both slow as molasses.
As for servers, you're right... flash seems poised to blow away expensive 15K RPM drives, whose access time is an order of magnitude slower(!) But that doesn't mean all other computers won't benefit, too.
Okay, so tell me what isn't a form of torture. Raising your voice? Not being polite?
How do you feel about zapping somebody strapped to a mattress spring or jumpstarting somebody's nuts with a car battery? These things used to be the very definition of torture (in a Rambo movie IIRC - by the bad guys, of course). How different are tasers? They actually incapacitate the subject, which is more than what you'd do to "encourage participation."
Then I guess I don't see your point. I agree unnecessary tasering isn't the worst atrocity known to mankind, but the point is, we pay the cops' salaries and what rules should we set for their on-the-job conduct?
Sorry, you can't lower the bar that easily. Nope, I don't think outright punching a cop in the face for no reason should be punishable by death. In fact, I can't even think of why it would be.
A) How are you going to prove that another company delayed an order for that reason?
This could easily get hit with civil rights lawsuits for that reason. In the US most minorities are, on average, less wealthy. Now what if it turns out that poor people are on average not the best customers because they shop less often, return things after using them for a week, whatever. They could be disproportionately affected by this. This sort of lawsuit happens all the time in other industries such as insurance and housing.
Is this a "we're shipping you to a gulag in Syberia" arrest, or a "we arrested you as an unruly protestor, you'll be charged with a misdemeanor and released tomorrow" arrest? The latter is pretty common in most countries; many people including John Kerry and Al Sharpton have been arrested at protests.
I don't want to be guilty of downplaying what Putin is doing. But on the other hand, we have to realize that a cold war is a two-sided thing; our suspicion and rush to judgement of everything they do could get out too. I don't really know which is the case here.
Surely a story about the greatest chessplayer of all time, and a key campaigner for civil liberties in Soviet Russia counts as "news for nerds" without some Deep Blue window-dressing.
Actually I think being the last human to hold the absolute title of "chess champion" is pretty significant too. Not that they won't keep having contests to see who the currently best human is, but the fact that the very best chess players are computers has changed chess for me. Humans have never been the fastest runners on earth, or the strongest, or had the best vision. But we were the best chess players. No longer. Maybe we should hand the political reigns over to supercomputers after all:)
Whenever they can handle this problem in a systematic and rigorous way, (that is without ad-hoc quick fixes), i'd say that a milestone in control science will have been reached.
The opposite may be true; I think it most likely this was achieved by machine learning rather than control theory using programming by demonstration, reinforcement learning, etc. Classical linear control theory is nice and formal, but formalisms can limiting rather than empowering when you fail to think beyond the narrow limits of what you are able to prove. In other words, in practice you might get a whole lot further by giving up on guarantees (given assumptions which are almost certainly unrealistic anyways); and using more "ad-hoc" methods.
Has anyone here ever used the "I'm feeling lucky" button. I think I did once in 1999.
That presumption is probably why the first two sentences of the summary quantify the impact of the button, both in dollars and percent of users.
At least address the facts presented.
Buy a couple of 500 GB SATA HDDs. You can build a box with a SATA RAID controller for probably ~$200 or so and throw OpenFiler on it
I agree, except skip the RAID. It will open you to what is IME the #1 cause of data loss - accidental deletion. Plus you have the extra complexity and cost of the RAID setup. Just buy a pair of 750G drives. Use one for data, and one for backups.
But without *some* anti-trust enforcement, the consumers who would lose their freedom. Eventually there would just be one big company. Power leads to profits leads to more power.
Maybe the question isn't were the line should be drawn, but who should do the drawing?
That sounds good, though I'm trying to imagine quite how it would be done. One of the credos of security is "secure by default." In practice, this makes it very frustrating to get some things, like Cups remote printing, to work. Again and again, you find things intentionally "broken" and have to make an effort to get them to work. I'd rather allow somebody to run my printer out of paper than waste hours on it. (In practice it's always the bugginess of ghostscript and cups that cause the printer to pump out page after page of gibberish, not attackers, but I digress...)
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$200 is only 3 months of Comcast subscription fees.
Finally some dividends from WWI.
That's a very valid reason to avoid google and microsoft, but aren't some Canadian companies offering similar services? Actually I could imagine USians turning to Canadian / European services because they have more end-user/consumer-friendly laws.
Why would anybody pay extra for these wondrous 'extra' email services when gmail and everybody else already offers them for free?
I think this research may be unethical. If I argue persuasively that somebody could stalk somebody by following them around with binoculars and laser microphones, that's one thing; but if I prove my point by DOING that, it's different.
Meh, we have a word for that around here: "fork."
IMHO it took way too long and cost way too much, considering SCO never presented any evidence. It's the "Duke Lacrosse Rape Case" of the intellectual property world.
"Not as dangerous as previously thought" is a far cry from "safe". This is sort of like estimating the number killed in the holocaust or sentencing guidelines for pedophiles, who wants to be on the low side?
Is it true that OSX 10.4 is incompatible with bootcamp? I had considered getting a PowerBook instead of a Dell to experiment with OSX while retaining compatibility with Windows, but decided against it because I was afraid bootcamp wasn't offically supported and could go away. Now it sounds like that has happened?
Is that supposed to worry me?
For starters, you're comparing 32 GB with 4 GB. That's a factor of 8. 8 x $350 = $2800, which is surprisingly close to the Sony price. The Eee PC is a very cute little product, but you can't touch-type on it, the screen is only 7", and (most importantly) it can't run all the standard business software most people use. They really aren't comparable.
As for servers, you're right... flash seems poised to blow away expensive 15K RPM drives, whose access time is an order of magnitude slower(!) But that doesn't mean all other computers won't benefit, too.
Then I guess I don't see your point. I agree unnecessary tasering isn't the worst atrocity known to mankind, but the point is, we pay the cops' salaries and what rules should we set for their on-the-job conduct?
Sorry, you can't lower the bar that easily. Nope, I don't think outright punching a cop in the face for no reason should be punishable by death. In fact, I can't even think of why it would be.
I don't want to be guilty of downplaying what Putin is doing. But on the other hand, we have to realize that a cold war is a two-sided thing; our suspicion and rush to judgement of everything they do could get out too. I don't really know which is the case here.
But without *some* anti-trust enforcement, the consumers who would lose their freedom. Eventually there would just be one big company. Power leads to profits leads to more power.
Either way you still need computer security. Backups aren't going to save you when a keylogger sends your credit card # to Russia.