If only the main company would listen to and use the results of their Research department.
That would require ditching Windows, and replacing it with Linux, as Microsoft's research department has determined that to be the best way to use a computer.
Naturally, Microsoft's Accounting department disagrees.
Therefore, [Catholicism believes that] if there is an apparent conflict between science and scriptural interpretation, the fault is with the interpreter.
So, by definition, Catholicism is hostile to science. There can be no other conclusion, as each scientific discovery erodes religion. The Bible is chock full of self-contradictory nonsense, and nonsense that is firmly discredited by proven science, but that doesn't stop Christianity (of all denominations) from trying to violently and/or politically protect it. The same is true of most other religions, as well.
Religion and science are at opposite ends of the same continuum. And the religious are trying to the utmost of their abilities to oppose progressing along that continuum, and are even fighting to regress backward along that continuum to a world driven by magical fairies with magic wands.
Along those lines: I'm far more worried about being targeted by our own Government than by the Russians. The U.S. Federal government has shown itself time and again to be, at best, no better than the Russians where our rights and freedoms are concerned:
1) Continual erosion of the Constitution. 2) Ignoring the Constitution when following the law becomes inconvenient. 3) Spying on American citizens. 4) Systematic molestation by Federal officials at airports. 5) Lying to the American public as a matter of standard policy (though that is implied in the other four).
The Russians are WAY down on the list of things we Americans have to worry about at home.
So what's the official excuse for dumping Linux? If that were to happen, I would have to give Google a big, "Fuck You, NVidia!" and stop developing for Android. It would be years, and many thousands of development hours wasted.
...the nasty (and interesting) stuff would be the binaries and other bits they drop into the machine(s) after a successful penetration.
I disagree. Windows compromises are about as newsworthy as, "man flushes toilet. News at 11." If you're running Windows on a network, you're probably compromised. End of story.
The only interesting part of all of this is: how are the systems being compromised? If it's Windows-only, then big frigging deal. If you're running Windows, you MUST always behave as if you have been comprised. Because you probably have been. Mac OS to a lesser extent, but Apple likes to disable or bypass the effective parts of BSD security in the misguided attempt at ease of use.
But if these attacks are successfully penetrating Linux or standard BSD systems, then THAT'S news.
Nobody should ever use it. Just use AWS, Google, or Azure instead, they've actually got mature cloud models, unlike Oracle.
Or you could activate at least one brain cell, and understand that storing your business data on someone else's server, one you don't control, is horrendously stupid.
If a brand is good and has earned your trust then it's worth supporting it during a slump.
That isn't brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is continuing to use a brand because you are familiar with it, even (perhaps especially) when it is a terrible choice, just because of the brand name. Political parties are one example of a particularly brain damaged and extraordinarily harmful form of brand loyalty.
...I think a desktop is somewhat broken if video acceleration is required to make it smooth and fluid.
Video acceleration has always been required to make graphical displays smooth and fluid. When we moved away from 80x25 text screens to graphical displays, hardware video acceleration was required if you didn't want to watch your screen perform a slurping motion while scrolling the screen. There is no getting around this on any graphical system.
I think you were referring to 3D acceleration, though, which is also a necessity for nice visual effects. KDE has a very rich set of desktop effects that are not possible to do smoothly without 3D acceleration (because 2D graphics cards are not capable of providing those effects). With the proprietary NVidia cards, several of those core effects behave badly. Two ready examples are bringing up the Kickoff menu, and bringing up the run command. They are slow to respond, and slow and jerky to render. With the AMD cards and the Open Source driver, they respond immediately and smoothly.
Enlightenment, by the way, requires hardware acceleration for its shiny effects.
Alternate version - nVidia stuff has been outperforming AMD for decades.
Yep, and for the longest time, my advice had always been, "just buy NVidia, and be done with it. ATI Linux support sucks, while NVidia's is much b" But I am not brand loyal (brand loyalty is such a bizarre behavior). I support whichever company best addresses my needs. In the past, that was NVidia; that was because ATI was just as abusive as NVidia, but their Linux integration was atrocious.
But things started to change with AMD released its full documentation. At that point, the scales starting tipping in AMD's favor. Then, when the Open Source driver stabilized and mature enough to be useful, NVidia's Linux integration showed its flaws. AMD cards integrate into the Linux desktop seamlessly, while NVidia's driver started to look painfully ugly.
Frame rates are great, but aesthetics are highly important as well. The AMDGPU driver looks much better than NVidia's driver, from bootup to shutdown.
Aesthetics aside, NVidia's drivers have big performance problems on Linux, which I didn't really notice until I started putting AMD cards into my machines. The KDE desktop is smooth and fluid with AMD cards, while it is jerky and annoying with NVidia cards. For business computer use, AMD is a far better choice.
...all modern videogames have just been rebranded "mmo" or "online or always online" it's still drm....
Stop playing them. Video games are luxuries, pure and simple. They are extremely elastic. Stop playing them, and game companies will stop abusing you.
Windows 10 basically wants to re-engineer the whole application environment so that people don't have access to their own files via encrypted file systems, etc.
Stop using Windows. It is also highly elastic. Locking yourself into Windows is a conscious choice, not a requirement. There isn't a single piece of software you can't replace, recreate, isolate, or live without.
Even those proprietary industrial control programs can either be replaced or isolated. There are always other ways, if you are sufficiently motivated. But the longer you allow yourself to be ass-raped by abusive companies, the more expensive and painful it will be to replace them. The easiest place to start is by running Free Software on your current operating system, then switching to a Free operating system once you're comfortable with the available software.
I made the switch in 1999 (after dabbling for a few years), and have never regretted it.
Only Nvidia decide to fuck up everything and go against everyone else and you see the end result.
This is why I stopped using or recommending NVidia, after the AMDGPU driver reached a level of usable maturity. While the AMDGPU driver still has some issues, it is a very good driver. I also suspect that the one screen issue I have is caused by a failing 7 year-old motherboard, as it doesn't happen on any of my other computers.
I whole-heartedly second the, "Fuck You, NVidia" sentiment. And I am sure to at least plant those same seeds of discontent in the minds of my customers, which frequently result in AMD puchases rather than NVidia -- CPU, motherboard, and video card.
When property owners can't get their stuff delivered, they'll make changes to their property, so the trucks have someplace to park that is not in the public right of way.
That's very unlikely. What is far more likely is that delivery companies will simply increase shipping charges to those cities to compensate. Then, when voting taxpayers find out that their costs are far higher than in more logically run cities, the officials that followed your advice lose their jobs at the next election.
The problem would be establishing trunks to carry enough traffic to make it worthwhile...
That's only one problem, and that's just within a single neighborhood. The much bigger problem is how a mesh network would traverse countries and continents (even the friendly ones) without massive funds from the very people and companies who would be actively fighting against such a network.
All of his counter-argument are readily, and obviously, felled by variations on the same theme.
1.) Artificial intelligence is already getting smarter than us, at an exponential rate.
This is entirely irrelevant. Artificial Intelligence (a misnomer, if ever there was one) doesn't even have to be a factor. All that matters is that machines are purposed and sufficiently well programmed to do a specific task usually performed by a human. This is the exact same thing that happened in the industrial revolution. The only difference is that our machines and their programming are more sophisticated than in the past, and are therefore able to perform more sophisticated tasks that are usually performed by humans. As such, activities that need human intervention are slowly (and in some cases, quickly) dwindling.
2.) We'll make AIs into a general purpose intelligence, like our own.
We don't have to. Computing hardware is so relatively cheap, and the software cost so low, that we can have relatively dumb machines intruding to more traditionally human-driven jobs. Again, this is a continuation of the industrial revolution, but with only more powerful machines.
3.) We can make human intelligence in silicon.
Again, we don't have to. We need only create algorithms smart enough to do a particular job better than a human. This is progressing rapidly enough to be a concern right now. We have algorithms sophisticated enough right now to perform some intellectually challenging jobs better than their human counterparts. Specific machines and software to perform specific jobs.
4.) Intelligence can be expanded without limit.
Again, it doesn't have to. So called, "intelligence" isn't even required. Just raw processing power for a single task, with an increasing number of single tasks being defined and solved. This expansion is effectively limitless over sufficient, finite time.
5.) Once we have exploding superintelligence it can solve most of our problems.
Again, it doesn't have to explode, or to be super-intelligence. All it needs is to have specific tasks solvable in a manner that well exceeds human abilities. These small tasks need only be grouped and managed to have a dramatic, jaw-dropping efficiency that no human collective can match. That is much easier, and has endless examples from the 50's onward.
Replacing humans is the whole reason computers exist. I've watched it happen over and over where I work. Computer exist to automate tasks performed by humans, and to perform tasks that humans can't do. So, none of his arguments are in any way convincing. He is arguing from a perspectively completely disjointed from reality. It's not the threat of a single, large artificial intelligence that is the problem. The real threat is that of many small pieces working together to outclass humans.
Not likely. We tried the Surface Pro at work. Its performance was so bad, its interoperability with Microsoft's own software so poor, its concept so poorly thought out that our management, largely pro-Microsoft since the beginning of time, threw the piece of shit in the trash.
Literally.
They didn't repurpose it, didn't give it way, didn't recycle it. They literally threw it in the trash and swore against ever using it again.
This plummeting revenue mirrors our experience with it. Shockingly, Microsoft's Surface revenue has dropped by only 285 million. They couldn't pay us to even pretend to use it.
There are several factors to consider, including, in no particular order:
1) Is he otherwise getting his job done? 2) Is there a conflict of interest? 3) Is company policy clear on the issue? 4) Can his side work benefit his employer?
There are many other factors, too. My company's policy is clearly spelled out: we are allowed to have side jobs and businesses, as long as there is no conflict of interest, no misuse of company property, and as long as they don't interfere with getting our work done.
We have found that side jobs and businesses tend to produce useful things that are then imported into company work. It's a win-win for everyone, under the right circumstances. The company benefits, and the employees benefit.
Now might not be the best time to alienate them/us further with "Moscow Donald" remarks and more demonization.
Do you actually think for a second that you and your party affiliation matters one bit for this discussion (don't panic, mine don't matter either). Pai and Trump have exactly one objective here: self-enrichment. Their constituents are rich businesses, and they make that abundantly clear every day.
All those who voted for either Hillary or Trump deserve to be demonized for their crass stupidity. The least qualified third party candidate was far and away better qualified as President than either Trump or Hillary.
I started with BASIC, then Assembly, then C. Coming from Assembly, C pointers were absolutely trivial. Once you understand why C pointers exist, which Assembly requires you to understand rather early on, then all levels of C pointer indirection are extremely easy to grasp.
The biggest Traitors to the United States are on the Supreme Court, in the White House, and in Congress. Everyone who has exposed their sabotage to the Constitution is a Patriot and an American hero.
There is one gripe, though, that I can sympathize with, and that's how systemd is expanding to encompass much more than is readily understandable. There may be perfectly good reasons for the expansion, but they're not readily apparent.
That said, I've been using systemd ever since Kubuntu switched to it, and I haven't had any problems with it. But then, I haven't tried a recursive rm recently.
"What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day"
Here's the funny part: you squeeze or press the (mostly liquid) contents through an opening that is small enough to fit in your mouth. If it's too messy to squeeze, you could very easily just suck it out through the package neck, or by inserting a 1 cent straw.
But I still wouldn't buy even the pouches, as they are 10 times the cost of buying and preparing fresh, Organic fruits and vegetables myself. And they don't even have much of a time saving factor, either, as preparing multiple servings of frozen slushy with a blender only takes a few minutes.
I don't know which is worse: that a company exists that thinks there are people stupid enough to pay ten times what this thing is worth, or that that there are enough stupid people in the country that will pay that outrageous price to support such a company.
With my $40 blender, I can make a frosty, 40-ounce Organic slushy by adding ice and about $3.00 worth of Organic fruits and vegetables. That's about sixty cents for an 8-ounce glass of a tasty, healthy snack in drink form.
After Blizzard attacked the bnetd developers, I swore I would never buy, or even play, another Blizzard game. At that point, Blizzard became an evil company.
That still stands.
I won't even entertain the notion of putting one byte of Blizzard code on my system.
Slashdot Mirror
If only the main company would listen to and use the results of their Research department.
That would require ditching Windows, and replacing it with Linux, as Microsoft's research department has determined that to be the best way to use a computer.
Naturally, Microsoft's Accounting department disagrees.
Therefore, [Catholicism believes that] if there is an apparent conflict between science and scriptural interpretation, the fault is with the interpreter.
So, by definition, Catholicism is hostile to science. There can be no other conclusion, as each scientific discovery erodes religion. The Bible is chock full of self-contradictory nonsense, and nonsense that is firmly discredited by proven science, but that doesn't stop Christianity (of all denominations) from trying to violently and/or politically protect it. The same is true of most other religions, as well.
Religion and science are at opposite ends of the same continuum. And the religious are trying to the utmost of their abilities to oppose progressing along that continuum, and are even fighting to regress backward along that continuum to a world driven by magical fairies with magic wands.
...to thousands of greedy psychopaths....
Billions! Once again, the press underestimates me.
Along those lines: I'm far more worried about being targeted by our own Government than by the Russians. The U.S. Federal government has shown itself time and again to be, at best, no better than the Russians where our rights and freedoms are concerned:
1) Continual erosion of the Constitution.
2) Ignoring the Constitution when following the law becomes inconvenient.
3) Spying on American citizens.
4) Systematic molestation by Federal officials at airports.
5) Lying to the American public as a matter of standard policy (though that is implied in the other four).
The Russians are WAY down on the list of things we Americans have to worry about at home.
So what's the official excuse for dumping Linux? If that were to happen, I would have to give Google a big, "Fuck You, NVidia!" and stop developing for Android. It would be years, and many thousands of development hours wasted.
...the nasty (and interesting) stuff would be the binaries and other bits they drop into the machine(s) after a successful penetration.
I disagree. Windows compromises are about as newsworthy as, "man flushes toilet. News at 11." If you're running Windows on a network, you're probably compromised. End of story.
The only interesting part of all of this is: how are the systems being compromised? If it's Windows-only, then big frigging deal. If you're running Windows, you MUST always behave as if you have been comprised. Because you probably have been. Mac OS to a lesser extent, but Apple likes to disable or bypass the effective parts of BSD security in the misguided attempt at ease of use.
But if these attacks are successfully penetrating Linux or standard BSD systems, then THAT'S news.
Nobody should ever use it. Just use AWS, Google, or Azure instead, they've actually got mature cloud models, unlike Oracle.
Or you could activate at least one brain cell, and understand that storing your business data on someone else's server, one you don't control, is horrendously stupid.
If a brand is good and has earned your trust then it's worth supporting it during a slump.
That isn't brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is continuing to use a brand because you are familiar with it, even (perhaps especially) when it is a terrible choice, just because of the brand name. Political parties are one example of a particularly brain damaged and extraordinarily harmful form of brand loyalty.
...I think a desktop is somewhat broken if video acceleration is required to make it smooth and fluid.
Video acceleration has always been required to make graphical displays smooth and fluid. When we moved away from 80x25 text screens to graphical displays, hardware video acceleration was required if you didn't want to watch your screen perform a slurping motion while scrolling the screen. There is no getting around this on any graphical system.
I think you were referring to 3D acceleration, though, which is also a necessity for nice visual effects. KDE has a very rich set of desktop effects that are not possible to do smoothly without 3D acceleration (because 2D graphics cards are not capable of providing those effects). With the proprietary NVidia cards, several of those core effects behave badly. Two ready examples are bringing up the Kickoff menu, and bringing up the run command. They are slow to respond, and slow and jerky to render. With the AMD cards and the Open Source driver, they respond immediately and smoothly.
Enlightenment, by the way, requires hardware acceleration for its shiny effects.
Alternate version - nVidia stuff has been outperforming AMD for decades.
Yep, and for the longest time, my advice had always been, "just buy NVidia, and be done with it. ATI Linux support sucks, while NVidia's is much b" But I am not brand loyal (brand loyalty is such a bizarre behavior). I support whichever company best addresses my needs. In the past, that was NVidia; that was because ATI was just as abusive as NVidia, but their Linux integration was atrocious.
But things started to change with AMD released its full documentation. At that point, the scales starting tipping in AMD's favor. Then, when the Open Source driver stabilized and mature enough to be useful, NVidia's Linux integration showed its flaws. AMD cards integrate into the Linux desktop seamlessly, while NVidia's driver started to look painfully ugly.
Frame rates are great, but aesthetics are highly important as well. The AMDGPU driver looks much better than NVidia's driver, from bootup to shutdown.
Aesthetics aside, NVidia's drivers have big performance problems on Linux, which I didn't really notice until I started putting AMD cards into my machines. The KDE desktop is smooth and fluid with AMD cards, while it is jerky and annoying with NVidia cards. For business computer use, AMD is a far better choice.
...all modern videogames have just been rebranded "mmo" or "online or always online" it's still drm....
Stop playing them. Video games are luxuries, pure and simple. They are extremely elastic. Stop playing them, and game companies will stop abusing you.
Windows 10 basically wants to re-engineer the whole application environment so that people don't have access to their own files via encrypted file systems, etc.
Stop using Windows. It is also highly elastic. Locking yourself into Windows is a conscious choice, not a requirement. There isn't a single piece of software you can't replace, recreate, isolate, or live without.
Even those proprietary industrial control programs can either be replaced or isolated. There are always other ways, if you are sufficiently motivated. But the longer you allow yourself to be ass-raped by abusive companies, the more expensive and painful it will be to replace them. The easiest place to start is by running Free Software on your current operating system, then switching to a Free operating system once you're comfortable with the available software.
I made the switch in 1999 (after dabbling for a few years), and have never regretted it.
Only Nvidia decide to fuck up everything and go against everyone else and you see the end result.
This is why I stopped using or recommending NVidia, after the AMDGPU driver reached a level of usable maturity. While the AMDGPU driver still has some issues, it is a very good driver. I also suspect that the one screen issue I have is caused by a failing 7 year-old motherboard, as it doesn't happen on any of my other computers.
I whole-heartedly second the, "Fuck You, NVidia" sentiment. And I am sure to at least plant those same seeds of discontent in the minds of my customers, which frequently result in AMD puchases rather than NVidia -- CPU, motherboard, and video card.
When property owners can't get their stuff delivered, they'll make changes to their property, so the trucks have someplace to park that is not in the public right of way.
That's very unlikely. What is far more likely is that delivery companies will simply increase shipping charges to those cities to compensate. Then, when voting taxpayers find out that their costs are far higher than in more logically run cities, the officials that followed your advice lose their jobs at the next election.
The problem would be establishing trunks to carry enough traffic to make it worthwhile...
That's only one problem, and that's just within a single neighborhood. The much bigger problem is how a mesh network would traverse countries and continents (even the friendly ones) without massive funds from the very people and companies who would be actively fighting against such a network.
All of his counter-argument are readily, and obviously, felled by variations on the same theme.
1.) Artificial intelligence is already getting smarter than us, at an exponential rate.
This is entirely irrelevant. Artificial Intelligence (a misnomer, if ever there was one) doesn't even have to be a factor. All that matters is that machines are purposed and sufficiently well programmed to do a specific task usually performed by a human. This is the exact same thing that happened in the industrial revolution. The only difference is that our machines and their programming are more sophisticated than in the past, and are therefore able to perform more sophisticated tasks that are usually performed by humans. As such, activities that need human intervention are slowly (and in some cases, quickly) dwindling.
2.) We'll make AIs into a general purpose intelligence, like our own.
We don't have to. Computing hardware is so relatively cheap, and the software cost so low, that we can have relatively dumb machines intruding to more traditionally human-driven jobs. Again, this is a continuation of the industrial revolution, but with only more powerful machines.
3.) We can make human intelligence in silicon.
Again, we don't have to. We need only create algorithms smart enough to do a particular job better than a human. This is progressing rapidly enough to be a concern right now. We have algorithms sophisticated enough right now to perform some intellectually challenging jobs better than their human counterparts. Specific machines and software to perform specific jobs.
4.) Intelligence can be expanded without limit.
Again, it doesn't have to. So called, "intelligence" isn't even required. Just raw processing power for a single task, with an increasing number of single tasks being defined and solved. This expansion is effectively limitless over sufficient, finite time.
5.) Once we have exploding superintelligence it can solve most of our problems.
Again, it doesn't have to explode, or to be super-intelligence. All it needs is to have specific tasks solvable in a manner that well exceeds human abilities. These small tasks need only be grouped and managed to have a dramatic, jaw-dropping efficiency that no human collective can match. That is much easier, and has endless examples from the 50's onward.
Replacing humans is the whole reason computers exist. I've watched it happen over and over where I work. Computer exist to automate tasks performed by humans, and to perform tasks that humans can't do. So, none of his arguments are in any way convincing. He is arguing from a perspectively completely disjointed from reality. It's not the threat of a single, large artificial intelligence that is the problem. The real threat is that of many small pieces working together to outclass humans.
Someone is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Not likely. We tried the Surface Pro at work. Its performance was so bad, its interoperability with Microsoft's own software so poor, its concept so poorly thought out that our management, largely pro-Microsoft since the beginning of time, threw the piece of shit in the trash.
Literally.
They didn't repurpose it, didn't give it way, didn't recycle it. They literally threw it in the trash and swore against ever using it again.
This plummeting revenue mirrors our experience with it. Shockingly, Microsoft's Surface revenue has dropped by only 285 million. They couldn't pay us to even pretend to use it.
There are several factors to consider, including, in no particular order:
1) Is he otherwise getting his job done?
2) Is there a conflict of interest?
3) Is company policy clear on the issue?
4) Can his side work benefit his employer?
There are many other factors, too. My company's policy is clearly spelled out: we are allowed to have side jobs and businesses, as long as there is no conflict of interest, no misuse of company property, and as long as they don't interfere with getting our work done.
We have found that side jobs and businesses tend to produce useful things that are then imported into company work. It's a win-win for everyone, under the right circumstances. The company benefits, and the employees benefit.
Now might not be the best time to alienate them/us further with "Moscow Donald" remarks and more demonization.
Do you actually think for a second that you and your party affiliation matters one bit for this discussion (don't panic, mine don't matter either). Pai and Trump have exactly one objective here: self-enrichment. Their constituents are rich businesses, and they make that abundantly clear every day.
All those who voted for either Hillary or Trump deserve to be demonized for their crass stupidity. The least qualified third party candidate was far and away better qualified as President than either Trump or Hillary.
I started with BASIC, then Assembly, then C. Coming from Assembly, C pointers were absolutely trivial. Once you understand why C pointers exist, which Assembly requires you to understand rather early on, then all levels of C pointer indirection are extremely easy to grasp.
I went from BASIC to Assembly to C to Java to C++, etc. I know there are at least half a dozen languages I used and forgot from disuse.
The biggest Traitors to the United States are on the Supreme Court, in the White House, and in Congress. Everyone who has exposed their sabotage to the Constitution is a Patriot and an American hero.
I don't understand all this systemd bashing.
A lot of people don't like change.
There is one gripe, though, that I can sympathize with, and that's how systemd is expanding to encompass much more than is readily understandable. There may be perfectly good reasons for the expansion, but they're not readily apparent.
That said, I've been using systemd ever since Kubuntu switched to it, and I haven't had any problems with it. But then, I haven't tried a recursive rm recently.
I find his backpedaling to be funny.
"What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day"
Here's the funny part: you squeeze or press the (mostly liquid) contents through an opening that is small enough to fit in your mouth. If it's too messy to squeeze, you could very easily just suck it out through the package neck, or by inserting a 1 cent straw.
But I still wouldn't buy even the pouches, as they are 10 times the cost of buying and preparing fresh, Organic fruits and vegetables myself. And they don't even have much of a time saving factor, either, as preparing multiple servings of frozen slushy with a blender only takes a few minutes.
This whole product concept was badly conceived.
I don't know which is worse: that a company exists that thinks there are people stupid enough to pay ten times what this thing is worth, or that that there are enough stupid people in the country that will pay that outrageous price to support such a company.
With my $40 blender, I can make a frosty, 40-ounce Organic slushy by adding ice and about $3.00 worth of Organic fruits and vegetables. That's about sixty cents for an 8-ounce glass of a tasty, healthy snack in drink form.
After Blizzard attacked the bnetd developers, I swore I would never buy, or even play, another Blizzard game. At that point, Blizzard became an evil company.
That still stands.
I won't even entertain the notion of putting one byte of Blizzard code on my system.