Well, apparently the sins were not as bad as one would have thought. After all, he just needed three days to pay them off for all humans! Therefore I conclude all those stories about eternal hell must be exaggerated. Even the worst sinners can get no more than a few seconds.
More importantly: As scientist, you expect to be able to change the code at any time if needed. Therefore if some branch of your code isn't entered by your problem at hand, it's absolutely acceptable to not put any effort into it, and just make sure that you don't run it unknowingly (e.g. by adding a message and an abort). Then, if a future problem happens to get into that code path, you still can work on that part of the code. But in the mean time, you have produced useful results which you might not have produced if you had spent your time on that not yet used code. And not being able to publish those results timely might in the end render your whole work useless because someone else was faster, published the results you would have gotten, and for lack of genuine results your grant wasn't renewed.
The point is: For the scientist, the program is a tool. It's not the end product. The difference is similar to the one between doing an analytic calculation to get a result, and writing down the same calculation for a text book. The calculation you do for a result has just enough written down to get at the result and convince yourself that you didn't calculate wrong. It's almost certainly not ready to be published in a text book.
Moreover, this can be easily solved by having national and international destinations start from different terminals. So if you arrive at T5 from an international flight, you can get to other international flights from T5, but have to go e.g. to T3 in order to get a follow-up flight to Manchester. And of course to get from T5 to T3, you have to go through passport control.
Actually, we've had facial recognition cameras in Heathrow for about five years - I was tangentially involved with the group setting them up. Possibly this is an upgrade - the previous ones could be defeated if you smiled. Fortunately, Heathrow is designed in such a way that smiling is unlikely for anyone unfortunate enough to be there.
I guess smiling at the airport gets you automatically declared suspicious, then?
Except that they don't involve the system. They only involve the desktop environment. "Gnome settings" and "KDE settings" would have been perfectly applicable names.
Actually "system settings" is wrong to begin with. System settings are the things you set as system administrator, and they generally live in/etc. Just name those Gnome/KDE things "Gnome settings" and "KDE settings" and call it a day.
Did they also mention that a 21" TV (which was mostly bezel...) in the 50s cost closer to two month's salary? Compare that to the two days salary for a 21" viewable screen you'd pay today...
Because of the 16:9 form factor of modern widescreen TVs and the fact that a TV's size is measured on the diagonal, a modern 21" TV is only the same height as a 17.1" old-style 4:3 ratio CRT TV.
Yeah, as a rule of thumb, if you want a 16:9 with the same height as a 4:3, add 20% to the diagonal.
But of course that doesn't make for a factor of 30 (two months/two days).
For the love of god, don't let one of those machines find its way into the southern United States. Can you imagine what damage it would do to the family trees if they had ironclad proof of how many hillbillies didn't understand that even if they got divorced, they're still brother and sister?
I don't. I've got AdBlock Plus, NoScript and RequestPolicy. But the problem is that it's not the behaviour the browser has out of the box. And moreover it means that browsing can get quite tedious, trying to find out what to allow to make the site work.
And no, I didn't tell the browser to download third-party(!) JavaScript and execute it. I told it to load a web page and display it. It is the web page which directs the browser to the ad network and tells it to run JavaScript.
It's like going to a bank to open an account, and when the bank additionally sells your data, you get told: "Well, it was you who trusted that bank. Who are you to complain?"
They noted that while solid-state storage can cost 10 times as much as traditional disks, they can offer 100 percent performance boost.
So you get 2 times the performance for 10 times the price? I'd say that's still 5 times as expensive. What would be the performance boost with a RAID of 5 disks?
Last.fm and Facebook know what music I like, whereas these cloud services actually have a copy of the music I have. There's a significant difference.
Yes, but unless you are a musician storing unpublished music, all the music you upload is already public anyway. It's exactly the information about what you like which is the sensitive information.
But in order to scan you well enough to put you into the database they have to line you up against a wall and have you hold your eye open, etc
Or a little device on a building roof / policeman's helmet will quickly scan your irises before you even notice (like the devices in public areas in Minority Report). The policeman's helmet could even project an AR display over the world, showing the prior arrest records, warrants and suspect status of everyone who walks by. It would also turn all police officers, police vehicles (manned and unmanned) and public surveillance cameras into one big hive mind that can work together to locate anyone.
Iris-obscuring implants might look good, but what would look worse on an iris scan than UNSCANNABLE?
Actually, the problem is not that it runs some JavaScript, the problem is that it sends back information to the ad network. I definitely don't agree to send data to a third person when I visit a web page, neither expressed nor implied.
Well, if you read my original post again, I've said that I'd put the data partition on a HD, and the system partition on SSD. Of course it doesn't matter to the wear out of the SSD how much or how little I write to a partition on another drive.
That increases the time until wear out, but it still wears out the drive. The less you write, the less it wears out, no matter how much wear leveling the drive applies.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, apparently the sins were not as bad as one would have thought. After all, he just needed three days to pay them off for all humans! Therefore I conclude all those stories about eternal hell must be exaggerated. Even the worst sinners can get no more than a few seconds.
More importantly: As scientist, you expect to be able to change the code at any time if needed. Therefore if some branch of your code isn't entered by your problem at hand, it's absolutely acceptable to not put any effort into it, and just make sure that you don't run it unknowingly (e.g. by adding a message and an abort). Then, if a future problem happens to get into that code path, you still can work on that part of the code. But in the mean time, you have produced useful results which you might not have produced if you had spent your time on that not yet used code. And not being able to publish those results timely might in the end render your whole work useless because someone else was faster, published the results you would have gotten, and for lack of genuine results your grant wasn't renewed.
The point is: For the scientist, the program is a tool. It's not the end product. The difference is similar to the one between doing an analytic calculation to get a result, and writing down the same calculation for a text book. The calculation you do for a result has just enough written down to get at the result and convince yourself that you didn't calculate wrong. It's almost certainly not ready to be published in a text book.
Moreover, this can be easily solved by having national and international destinations start from different terminals. So if you arrive at T5 from an international flight, you can get to other international flights from T5, but have to go e.g. to T3 in order to get a follow-up flight to Manchester. And of course to get from T5 to T3, you have to go through passport control.
Actually, we've had facial recognition cameras in Heathrow for about five years - I was tangentially involved with the group setting them up. Possibly this is an upgrade - the previous ones could be defeated if you smiled. Fortunately, Heathrow is designed in such a way that smiling is unlikely for anyone unfortunate enough to be there.
I guess smiling at the airport gets you automatically declared suspicious, then?
Except that they don't involve the system. They only involve the desktop environment.
"Gnome settings" and "KDE settings" would have been perfectly applicable names.
Actually "system settings" is wrong to begin with. System settings are the things you set as system administrator, and they generally live in /etc. Just name those Gnome/KDE things "Gnome settings" and "KDE settings" and call it a day.
Did they also mention that a 21" TV (which was mostly bezel...) in the 50s cost closer to two month's salary? Compare that to the two days salary for a 21" viewable screen you'd pay today...
Because of the 16:9 form factor of modern widescreen TVs and the fact that a TV's size is measured on the diagonal, a modern 21" TV is only the same height as a 17.1" old-style 4:3 ratio CRT TV.
Yeah, as a rule of thumb, if you want a 16:9 with the same height as a 4:3, add 20% to the diagonal.
But of course that doesn't make for a factor of 30 (two months/two days).
Many cell phones these days have cameras built in, and you certainly want to have an idea what the photo you just took looks like.
For the love of god, don't let one of those machines find its way into the southern United States. Can you imagine what damage it would do to the family trees if they had ironclad proof of how many hillbillies didn't understand that even if they got divorced, they're still brother and sister?
After divorce, your wife becomes your sister?
I don't. I've got AdBlock Plus, NoScript and RequestPolicy.
But the problem is that it's not the behaviour the browser has out of the box. And moreover it means that browsing can get quite tedious, trying to find out what to allow to make the site work.
And no, I didn't tell the browser to download third-party(!) JavaScript and execute it. I told it to load a web page and display it. It is the web page which directs the browser to the ad network and tells it to run JavaScript.
It's like going to a bank to open an account, and when the bank additionally sells your data, you get told: "Well, it was you who trusted that bank. Who are you to complain?"
Oh, BURN!
Well, for burning I'd prefer ISO9660 with RockRidge extension to ext3. :-)
They noted that while solid-state storage can cost 10 times as much as traditional disks, they can offer 100 percent performance boost.
So you get 2 times the performance for 10 times the price? I'd say that's still 5 times as expensive. What would be the performance boost with a RAID of 5 disks?
Make 10 Billion files on your ext3 filesystem and see how long an ls takes you
Ext3 can store 10 billion files in 10 bytes? Must be the new Whoosh feature, which avoids reading metadata like the comment title.
Last.fm and Facebook know what music I like, whereas these cloud services actually have a copy of the music I have. There's a significant difference.
Yes, but unless you are a musician storing unpublished music, all the music you upload is already public anyway. It's exactly the information about what you like which is the sensitive information.
The only way Windows can be configured into a Fortress is keeping it in the shrink-wrap. :) It's funny... laugh.
Windows kept in the shrink-wrap is easily hacked. All you need is an ordinary axe.
The cloud is the new cyberspace.
Unless getting the job done would remove the source of their profit.
But in order to scan you well enough to put you into the database they have to line you up against a wall and have you hold your eye open, etc
Or a little device on a building roof / policeman's helmet will quickly scan your irises before you even notice (like the devices in public areas in Minority Report). The policeman's helmet could even project an AR display over the world, showing the prior arrest records, warrants and suspect status of everyone who walks by. It would also turn all police officers, police vehicles (manned and unmanned) and public surveillance cameras into one big hive mind that can work together to locate anyone.
Iris-obscuring implants might look good, but what would look worse on an iris scan than UNSCANNABLE?
What about sunglasses?
Actually, the problem is not that it runs some JavaScript, the problem is that it sends back information to the ad network.
I definitely don't agree to send data to a third person when I visit a web page, neither expressed nor implied.
Getting someone's browser history is spying, of course.
Well, if you read my original post again, I've said that I'd put the data partition on a HD, and the system partition on SSD. Of course it doesn't matter to the wear out of the SSD how much or how little I write to a partition on another drive.
That increases the time until wear out, but it still wears out the drive. The less you write, the less it wears out, no matter how much wear leveling the drive applies.
Yes, 640K disks with 640 Terabytes each ought to be enough for anybody. :-)
Well, of course Terra is the prefix for 10^42.You know, Terra is really big. :-)
only on a 72 ppi display, what if you were on an 96 or 120 ppi?
You are confusing points with dots or pixels. Points are a font metrics unit. Dots/pixels depend on the resolution.
On a 72ppi display (note that "ppi" means "pixels per inch"), you have one pixel per point. On a 96ppi display, you have 1.5 pixels per point.