Their government, and following with that military. Oh, and corporations.
In all honesty I find the ratio of Americans I dislike to those I like is probably about the same as locals here, but I find their corporate practices (esp RIAA/MPAA/Sony/etc), military machine, and government policies/corruption detestable. But then again, so do many of the more educated Americans.
I mean, the bastards are everywhere nowadays it seems. How hard is it to nail a child pornographer. Go hit some of the big newsgroups. It doesn't matter which one you hit, so long as it deals with porn. Any newgroup with volume, among the legitimate porn, will have assholes hawking their disgusting wares.
It's not hard for me to filter out the major ones (they tend to use repeat headers), which would lead me to believe that it's not hard for them to filter them "in" as it were. Setup a couple of their own newgroups somewhere, get a popular following of pr0n, and watch for some bastard to start emailing in the crap. Then your filter can bag it, check the IP on the connecting mailserver, and send it in for further inspection.
Unless the CP traders are like spammers, they're probably sending from some traceable IP's, so that that point you can start narrowing it down. You don't need to "log" everyone's data, just narrow it to an ISP, then have something that flags with that ISP next time the buggers send to the newgroup or whatever, and get a quick check on who's on at that time that place. It's targetted, it could probably get done with a warrant, and it doesn't allow other abuse like checking the logs of political dissidents under the guise of data retention for fighting illegal porn.
OK, well here's the thing. The internet is a dynamic medium. You can rate a book, it doesn't really change. You can rate a magazine, same thing. You can rate a photograph, or a painting....
You could possibly place an overall rating on a domain.
You cannot realistically rate individual pages. Forums, blogs, etc all have dynamic content. It can change every day, every hour, every minute. Given that, there's no overall tag saying if it's "appropriate" (and who decides what the definition of this is, anyhow) at any given moment.
Every brand has its weaknesses. Depends on what you want, but IBM if you don't need blazing speed (or bigger drives), Toshiba tends to be good overall, and so far recent HP's have a decent track record.
Laptops seem to be the hot market nowadays. For desktops Dells seem to be getting pretty cheap, but really I'd steer clear of most of those branded systems as the components in any seem to be a combination of weird, cheap, and incompatible with standard components.
However, my experience with HP/Compaq is that quite a few laptop models are actually pretty good... and compaq has come up in quality from what it was in the laptop market.
As a fairly well-known technician hereabouts, I'm often asked for advice about purchasing systems, particularly laptops, etc.
Back in the day, I might have recommended Dell. Their laptops were fairly well features, reliable, and competetively priced. Note that the AMD/Intel difference might place into the last factor nowadays...
Anyhow, my more recent experience with Dell has been just as indicated: they've ridden their previously decent reputation for awhile but now their crappy call-centres, incompatible parts, and not-so-great quality is starting to bite them. Dell computers are getting more and more cheap nowadays, and that's in quality as well as price.
Now let's look at some of the others:
- IBM systems (up until Lenovo, who I don't have too much experience with recently) are generally reliable but less-featured (esp with the small HDD sizes)... still I'd say they are or were good for the office types who wanted a system that would keep on ticking.
- I haven't had many problems with Toshiba laptops, other than the gazillion little tray icons that the have loading at startup to control the touchpad/wireless/burner/etc settings. I turn most of the unnecessary ones off though, and lots of laptops have 'em... so no biggy. The newer laptops seem a bit more thin/plasticy though so I'll be keeping an eye on them, but they've been good so far other than a few here at the office that have been shitkicked (big big scuffing marks).
- HP: Well, I'm using one now. I've got one at home. The home model (ZD7000) has a built-in defect wherein it doesn't like having two sticks of RAM in with high-memory graphics/etc applications (spontaneous reboots). Not great, but that's the only model where I've seen that issue and haggling with HP eventually scored me a free 1GB stick of RAM for that laptop. It works fine for me, and despite being lugged around regularly it's been durable. My office-style work compaq (NX8220) aside from giving me nightmares configuring the ATI graphics card, has been both reliable and durable as well. AMD64 processors in the newer compaqs (and me being a linux user) scores personal points and recommendations for other linux users (such as at work), but not recommendations for the windows users. Compaq laptops also were known to be not great in quality before, but that seems to have quite improved with HP making them.
- Acer: You get what you pay for. Acer's have quite a lot of features for your buck. I've also seen generations spanning three years that had consistant power unit/modulator issues, and quite a few with screen burnout. However, I might add that I do have a (non-laptop) Acer LCD at home, and it's holding up nicely, so maybe they're improving in that area... however the plasticy feel and the rumours I've heard about HDD burnout make me tend to say "whatever you get, try to avoid Acer" to most people who ask advice.
- Sony: When you buy Sony, you're buying a brandname. And proprietary parts. And a sinking brandname. Overpriced and underperforming are usually two good words
Now, back to desktops. I haven't seen too many Dells explode lately but when I do look in them I find relatively cheap parts (motherboard) and massive compatability issues with standard parts. Floppy drives won't fit properly behind the happy little Dell bezels, power supplies can be funk or custom, and sometimes even PCI/etc cards don't seem to go in right. Sure, you can buy a cheap Dell machine, but upgrading or adding/repairing any parts is oftimes a major pain.
I wouldn't actively recommend against Dell, but I'd still advise caution to potential Dell buyers, and that's a step down from the days when I happily promoted how my little Dell laptops kept on kickin' (hell, some of the older P-II era ones are outlasting the more current gens)
But how about redundancy or backup? Kinda like having RAID or perhaps a multiple-processor setup. Currently the brain already has multiple segments, but they tend to be specializing areas. Why not have, for example, a secondary lump 'o' grey matter in an alternate location. This one could deal more directly with the organs in that area, and/or also act as backup when #1 goes offline.
I wonder how this would work for sleep as well. Take a 1h nap, brain #1 dumps to brain #2 and then offlines. If you've enough physical rest then brain #2 boots up for awhile and you can continue until it needs to rest and let #1 take over again.
May that'll lend some true to when fathers say kissing boys will end up getting you pregnant. On the other hand, bad breath would be pretty nasty.
Seriously though, while there are disadvantages to the current location (as mentioned in the article)... the mouth isn't exactly a 'clean' place either and I doubt it would be much better suited to the job.
Yes, but this isn't just a syndrome that affects open-source. A lot of closed-source applications have absolute crapulance for documentation: it's there, it's big, and it's completely f*'ing unreadable to anyone who didn't write the damn thing.
Also, have you tried a "tech support" helpline recently? Some of them are good, but many have you spending 15-30 minutes speaking to automated voice agents, punching option numbers in your phone, and/or talking to some guy with a thick accent living in a foreign country reading a script telling you to uninstall and reinstall... just before he transfers you to another department where you get hung up on.
Jones is a very common name, not quite as comman as Smith, but very common. Even if you googled it, you'd still comes up with a little of different Steves.
However, still not very kinda/responsible of the article author, unless he got permission to write about Mr. Jones.
On how long until this is made into a weapon. Large-scale reverse-division on a complex organism would have some very unpleasant consequences, and on other scales one could probably use the concept to reverse/prevent healing.
I didn't say burn, I said overheat. As the machine that reached 100c (boiling for water) was still in use up to last week when I upgraded, I'd say that it's a pretty hardy little chip...
It *did* definately start flaking out before I rebooted and found it at such a high-temperatures... so I doubt that long-term use at such temperatures would be good for any CPU, even AMD
I've seen a lot more people that would sit around, get high, and then sit their lazy asses around and say something to the extent of
P1: What do you wanna do
P2: I dunno
P1: Wanna go out somewhere
P2: Nah, I'm comfortable
P1: Wanna watch some TV and play videogames
P2: Yeah sure, that's cool
So with their lazy asses is parked on the couch, smoking a roach, they play games. Note that the roach was there before the games, and the games are a by-product of their lack of willpower to move their sodden butts.
I've seen more people decide to play a game while stoned than suddenly interrupt the game for a few puffs of the bowl.
Personally, I have no problems with writing software that allows somebody into my machine... provided:
a) It ASKS me, at every instance, if it is OK. For example "User MS-BOB at 192.168.2.1 is requesting access to your machine, do you accept?"
b) It shows me when they are connected, and when not
c) Preferably, I can see what they're doing. VNC-like sessions would work well enough for this.
Really, this would be fine by me, so long as I can see what information they're getting from me, and when. On a windows machine anyhow:-)
On an AMD or Via, overheating is a major failure condition, probably caused by a heatsink falling off.
As a longtime AMD and VIA user, I would call bullshit on that. With VIA, certainly (my Epias are rather low power, lower heat), but most of my AMD's have run rather hot-ish
K6-2/400 - Same as P-II
"Thunderbird" 700Mhz - Not hot, but no cooler than the same-gen Pentiums.
Duron 1Ghz - Power-hungry and hot enough to raise the room temperature noticably when run in a server
Athon XP 2500+ - Holy-freakin' heatwave batman, this chip ran warm indeed. I stuck a "Volcano" fan on it to keep it happy during heavy operations, but then it sounded like well... a vaccuum cleaner. When I accidentally turned the fan down during some heavy operations it hit 100c between thermal throttling kicked it off (though it should have dumped a lot earlier).
While the liveCD concept of Ubuntu is somewhat knoppix-based, and of course Knoppix is Debian-based... I've often wondered what makes Ubuntu so great compared to Knoppix. Running a Knoppix 4.x (or even 3.9) LiveCD with it's KDE-enhanced beauty is a wonderful thing, and even linux newbies can find the web-browser and other commonly used software.
You know, this is where nano-technology could really shine. Make some simply little micro-machines that know how to disassable the various components of your everyday motherboard. Have then attack the board, seperating all the various materials into little piles, which could then be sorted into bigger piles. Suddenly, you've got a big stockpile of raw materials again, to be used in new products without the need to pit-mine anything, or to make/fix your nanobots.
Of course, then they'll get smart and try to build a huge 'bot to rule the world.... but it'll be good for awhile...
Seriously though, this could be a very good use for nanotech in the future. Micro-machinery which can disassemble old stuff for raw materials, which could then be resold at profit.
Well, that's for fairly well done. I suppose it depends on what you consider "tricked." Dual-Core CPU, Dual SLI Video, over a gig of RAM, and possibly dual monitors is going to run the bills high pretty quick... but that's only for the hardcore. Otherwise, it's easy enough to build an acceptable gaming maching for under $2000, yes:-)
I skimmed the article, and it didn't mention much about format. Since it's on iTunes I'll assume it to be apple-friendly, how about 'nix?
It would be nice if it were a consumer-friendly format that would allow me to watch it on my os-of-choice as well as allowing for it to be burned onto a regular DVD. After all, at a price ofUS$34.99 for a season's pass, you're getting pretty close to the cost of a boxed set (which, in addition to being fancier and a longer-term item, is also commercial-free).
Anyhow, whatever they plan it is a start. However, we're not giving them the finger here so much as indicating that some things should probably be given some deep thought (pricing/commercials model, timing, format). For most, though, it should satisfy... just as iTunes has done for many so far in the music arena.
Slashdot Mirror
Their government, and following with that military. Oh, and corporations.
In all honesty I find the ratio of Americans I dislike to those I like is probably about the same as locals here, but I find their corporate practices (esp RIAA/MPAA/Sony/etc), military machine, and government policies/corruption detestable. But then again, so do many of the more educated Americans.
I mean, the bastards are everywhere nowadays it seems. How hard is it to nail a child pornographer. Go hit some of the big newsgroups. It doesn't matter which one you hit, so long as it deals with porn. Any newgroup with volume, among the legitimate porn, will have assholes hawking their disgusting wares.
It's not hard for me to filter out the major ones (they tend to use repeat headers), which would lead me to believe that it's not hard for them to filter them "in" as it were. Setup a couple of their own newgroups somewhere, get a popular following of pr0n, and watch for some bastard to start emailing in the crap. Then your filter can bag it, check the IP on the connecting mailserver, and send it in for further inspection.
Unless the CP traders are like spammers, they're probably sending from some traceable IP's, so that that point you can start narrowing it down. You don't need to "log" everyone's data, just narrow it to an ISP, then have something that flags with that ISP next time the buggers send to the newgroup or whatever, and get a quick check on who's on at that time that place. It's targetted, it could probably get done with a warrant, and it doesn't allow other abuse like checking the logs of political dissidents under the guise of data retention for fighting illegal porn.
OK, well here's the thing. The internet is a dynamic medium. You can rate a book, it doesn't really change. You can rate a magazine, same thing. You can rate a photograph, or a painting....
You could possibly place an overall rating on a domain.
You cannot realistically rate individual pages. Forums, blogs, etc all have dynamic content. It can change every day, every hour, every minute. Given that, there's no overall tag saying if it's "appropriate" (and who decides what the definition of this is, anyhow) at any given moment.
Question: What's the distribution on the other 70%
Also, I know the basics on how fossil fuels were formed over time, how about Uranium/Plutonium and/or other radioactive or fissionable materials?
I would not believe the animals are enjoying their radiation poisoning however until I was able to ask them.
The plus side is, perhaps after a few more generations of mutation, you might be able to.
I wonder if their first words will be "pizza?"
(my apologies to Eastman and Laird)
Every brand has its weaknesses. Depends on what you want, but IBM if you don't need blazing speed (or bigger drives), Toshiba tends to be good overall, and so far recent HP's have a decent track record.
Laptops seem to be the hot market nowadays. For desktops Dells seem to be getting pretty cheap, but really I'd steer clear of most of those branded systems as the components in any seem to be a combination of weird, cheap, and incompatible with standard components.
However, my experience with HP/Compaq is that quite a few laptop models are actually pretty good... and compaq has come up in quality from what it was in the laptop market.
As a fairly well-known technician hereabouts, I'm often asked for advice about purchasing systems, particularly laptops, etc.
Back in the day, I might have recommended Dell. Their laptops were fairly well features, reliable, and competetively priced. Note that the AMD/Intel difference might place into the last factor nowadays...
Anyhow, my more recent experience with Dell has been just as indicated: they've ridden their previously decent reputation for awhile but now their crappy call-centres, incompatible parts, and not-so-great quality is starting to bite them. Dell computers are getting more and more cheap nowadays, and that's in quality as well as price.
Now let's look at some of the others:
- IBM systems (up until Lenovo, who I don't have too much experience with recently) are generally reliable but less-featured (esp with the small HDD sizes)... still I'd say they are or were good for the office types who wanted a system that would keep on ticking.
- I haven't had many problems with Toshiba laptops, other than the gazillion little tray icons that the have loading at startup to control the touchpad/wireless/burner/etc settings. I turn most of the unnecessary ones off though, and lots of laptops have 'em... so no biggy. The newer laptops seem a bit more thin/plasticy though so I'll be keeping an eye on them, but they've been good so far other than a few here at the office that have been shitkicked (big big scuffing marks).
- HP: Well, I'm using one now. I've got one at home. The home model (ZD7000) has a built-in defect wherein it doesn't like having two sticks of RAM in with high-memory graphics/etc applications (spontaneous reboots). Not great, but that's the only model where I've seen that issue and haggling with HP eventually scored me a free 1GB stick of RAM for that laptop. It works fine for me, and despite being lugged around regularly it's been durable. My office-style work compaq (NX8220) aside from giving me nightmares configuring the ATI graphics card, has been both reliable and durable as well. AMD64 processors in the newer compaqs (and me being a linux user) scores personal points and recommendations for other linux users (such as at work), but not recommendations for the windows users. Compaq laptops also were known to be not great in quality before, but that seems to have quite improved with HP making them.
- Acer: You get what you pay for. Acer's have quite a lot of features for your buck. I've also seen generations spanning three years that had consistant power unit/modulator issues, and quite a few with screen burnout. However, I might add that I do have a (non-laptop) Acer LCD at home, and it's holding up nicely, so maybe they're improving in that area... however the plasticy feel and the rumours I've heard about HDD burnout make me tend to say "whatever you get, try to avoid Acer" to most people who ask advice.
- Sony: When you buy Sony, you're buying a brandname. And proprietary parts. And a sinking brandname. Overpriced and underperforming are usually two good words
Now, back to desktops. I haven't seen too many Dells explode lately but when I do look in them I find relatively cheap parts (motherboard) and massive compatability issues with standard parts. Floppy drives won't fit properly behind the happy little Dell bezels, power supplies can be funk or custom, and sometimes even PCI/etc cards don't seem to go in right. Sure, you can buy a cheap Dell machine, but upgrading or adding/repairing any parts is oftimes a major pain.
I wouldn't actively recommend against Dell, but I'd still advise caution to potential Dell buyers, and that's a step down from the days when I happily promoted how my little Dell laptops kept on kickin' (hell, some of the older P-II era ones are outlasting the more current gens)
You can on
But how about redundancy or backup? Kinda like having RAID or perhaps a multiple-processor setup. Currently the brain already has multiple segments, but they tend to be specializing areas. Why not have, for example, a secondary lump 'o' grey matter in an alternate location. This one could deal more directly with the organs in that area, and/or also act as backup when #1 goes offline.
I wonder how this would work for sleep as well. Take a 1h nap, brain #1 dumps to brain #2 and then offlines. If you've enough physical rest then brain #2 boots up for awhile and you can continue until it needs to rest and let #1 take over again.
and reproductive organs in its mouth
May that'll lend some true to when fathers say kissing boys will end up getting you pregnant. On the other hand, bad breath would be pretty nasty.
Seriously though, while there are disadvantages to the current location (as mentioned in the article)... the mouth isn't exactly a 'clean' place either and I doubt it would be much better suited to the job.
Yes, but this isn't just a syndrome that affects open-source. A lot of closed-source applications have absolute crapulance for documentation: it's there, it's big, and it's completely f*'ing unreadable to anyone who didn't write the damn thing.
Also, have you tried a "tech support" helpline recently? Some of them are good, but many have you spending 15-30 minutes speaking to automated voice agents, punching option numbers in your phone, and/or talking to some guy with a thick accent living in a foreign country reading a script telling you to uninstall and reinstall... just before he transfers you to another department where you get hung up on.
Jones is a very common name, not quite as comman as Smith, but very common. Even if you googled it, you'd still comes up with a little of different Steves.
However, still not very kinda/responsible of the article author, unless he got permission to write about Mr. Jones.
On how long until this is made into a weapon. Large-scale reverse-division on a complex organism would have some very unpleasant consequences, and on other scales one could probably use the concept to reverse/prevent healing.
I didn't say burn, I said overheat. As the machine that reached 100c (boiling for water) was still in use up to last week when I upgraded, I'd say that it's a pretty hardy little chip...
It *did* definately start flaking out before I rebooted and found it at such a high-temperatures... so I doubt that long-term use at such temperatures would be good for any CPU, even AMD
Changes are, given the brightness it would be at 5MW, even with minimal dissipation... you might only ever be able to see it "just once"
I've seen a lot more people that would sit around, get high, and then sit their lazy asses around and say something to the extent of
P1: What do you wanna do
P2: I dunno
P1: Wanna go out somewhere
P2: Nah, I'm comfortable
P1: Wanna watch some TV and play videogames
P2: Yeah sure, that's cool
So with their lazy asses is parked on the couch, smoking a roach, they play games. Note that the roach was there before the games, and the games are a by-product of their lack of willpower to move their sodden butts.
I've seen more people decide to play a game while stoned than suddenly interrupt the game for a few puffs of the bowl.
There were a lot of games that they had indicated *would* be around about now... but they've been put off until later.
To name a few:
- Half Life 2 expansion
- Final Fantasy XII (that's 12, not X-2)
- Zelda Twilight Princess
At least those are the ones I might have bought. Haven't seen much else out to keep my interest.
Personally, I have no problems with writing software that allows somebody into my machine... provided:
:-)
a) It ASKS me, at every instance, if it is OK. For example "User MS-BOB at 192.168.2.1 is requesting access to your machine, do you accept?"
b) It shows me when they are connected, and when not
c) Preferably, I can see what they're doing. VNC-like sessions would work well enough for this.
Really, this would be fine by me, so long as I can see what information they're getting from me, and when. On a windows machine anyhow
On an AMD or Via, overheating is a major failure condition, probably caused by a heatsink falling off.
As a longtime AMD and VIA user, I would call bullshit on that. With VIA, certainly (my Epias are rather low power, lower heat), but most of my AMD's have run rather hot-ish
K6-2/400 - Same as P-II
"Thunderbird" 700Mhz - Not hot, but no cooler than the same-gen Pentiums.
Duron 1Ghz - Power-hungry and hot enough to raise the room temperature noticably when run in a server
Athon XP 2500+ - Holy-freakin' heatwave batman, this chip ran warm indeed. I stuck a "Volcano" fan on it to keep it happy during heavy operations, but then it sounded like well... a vaccuum cleaner. When I accidentally turned the fan down during some heavy operations it hit 100c between thermal throttling kicked it off (though it should have dumped a lot earlier).
While the liveCD concept of Ubuntu is somewhat knoppix-based, and of course Knoppix is Debian-based... I've often wondered what makes Ubuntu so great compared to Knoppix. Running a Knoppix 4.x (or even 3.9) LiveCD with it's KDE-enhanced beauty is a wonderful thing, and even linux newbies can find the web-browser and other commonly used software.
Why is Ubuntu such a big thing in comparison?
You know, this is where nano-technology could really shine. Make some simply little micro-machines that know how to disassable the various components of your everyday motherboard. Have then attack the board, seperating all the various materials into little piles, which could then be sorted into bigger piles. Suddenly, you've got a big stockpile of raw materials again, to be used in new products without the need to pit-mine anything, or to make/fix your nanobots.
Of course, then they'll get smart and try to build a huge 'bot to rule the world.... but it'll be good for awhile...
Seriously though, this could be a very good use for nanotech in the future. Micro-machinery which can disassemble old stuff for raw materials, which could then be resold at profit.
I'm still alive, and so are all the people that did their best to drive me over the edge.
Trust me, if it weren't for being able to laugh at it/ourselves, a lot of us wouldn't still be here.
Well, that's for fairly well done. I suppose it depends on what you consider "tricked." Dual-Core CPU, Dual SLI Video, over a gig of RAM, and possibly dual monitors is going to run the bills high pretty quick... but that's only for the hardcore. Otherwise, it's easy enough to build an acceptable gaming maching for under $2000, yes :-)
I skimmed the article, and it didn't mention much about format. Since it's on iTunes I'll assume it to be apple-friendly, how about 'nix?
It would be nice if it were a consumer-friendly format that would allow me to watch it on my os-of-choice as well as allowing for it to be burned onto a regular DVD. After all, at a price ofUS$34.99 for a season's pass, you're getting pretty close to the cost of a boxed set (which, in addition to being fancier and a longer-term item, is also commercial-free).
Anyhow, whatever they plan it is a start. However, we're not giving them the finger here so much as indicating that some things should probably be given some deep thought (pricing/commercials model, timing, format). For most, though, it should satisfy... just as iTunes has done for many so far in the music arena.
Cost of gas: up
Cost of housing: up
Cost of utilities: up
Minimum wages up with living costs: nope
Cost of a tricked out gaming machine $2000+
Cost of the newest consoles: $300-700
Cost of games, addons, etc... well, you get the idea.
Could it be that modern teens just can't afford to cost of gaming given that it is expensive and the cost of everything else has jumped too?