we're really referring to SBC, not AT&T. The AT&T of old was, if nothing else, highly competent at running a phone system. SBC, on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything well except suction wallets dry. And SBC is the new AT&T.
Well, the CPU manufacturers would beg to differ with you, and actually while CPU and PC sales have been on the wane, peripheral sales have been increasing. Intel has been diversifying these past few years because, let's face it... there's no particular incentive for people to upgrade their processors anymore. They're simply fast enough now (oh, well, okay... if you were talking about Vista users I'd have to take your point but that will level out soon enough.) But you're right, many users (particularly Windows users) could certainly use more RAM. But we weren't discussing RAM.
Most people (and I wasn't talking about people like you and me that play 3D games or write simulations, and truly need more horsepower) need nothing that an 800 Mhz. Pentium II couldn't deliver. That or less, as a matter of fact. I know many people that still using the Windows 98 box they bought ten years ago because it does what they want. Now, since were going with anecdotal evidence (I mean, there's nothing like invoking your family and friends to support your claims) I can say that my mother (who is an artist, and a sculptor and photographer) has little use for a more powerful Mac at this point, but is always complaining that her hard drive is full. DVD burner wasn't convenient enough, so she bought another hard drive.
There are hundreds of millions of CPUS in homes and businesses worldwide that do NOTHING but run a few common applications, programs that would just as well be served by a 386, and in fact were at one time. Do you honestly, in your heart of hearts, believe that Joe User, who surfs the Web, gets his email, plays a few DVDs and a couple of iTunes now and then is craving for something FASTER than his 2 gig Athlon? Give me a break. He very well may want a new scanner, camera, printer or hard disk, particularly if a computer-literate friend installed Azureus on his box and pointed him to a good Torrent site (where do you think all those downloaded TV shows go, anyway?.)
Let us not forget the millions of 100+ Gb personal MP3 collections out there. People need space, and their need for it is only going to expand. So while you may believe that processor cycles are in short supply, but the reality is that, as a society, we're awash in CPU power. That realization is where projects such as SETI@Home got their start.
More to the point, storage is something that businesses want more than they want CPU. That's particularly in this day and age, where the goal seems to be to record everything about everybody, and laws like Sarbanes-Oxley pretty much force them to do just that.
Either don't do it at all or do the job correctly and put the thieves out of their misery. (yes, it's a joke)
Well, apparently you thought I was being serious about putting bombs in cell phones to begin with, so I guess I can take your post seriously too if I want, so there.
I don't know why you think 1.6 TB makes a particularly dense storage medium. It doesn't, and I hope that they're working on a serious contender because our civilization's needs for information storage are increasing at a decidedly non-linear rate. Most of the PC-using population doesn't have much use for more processing power right now, but we can all use a bigger hard drive. Hell, the various up-and-coming surveillance societies alone are going to drive the need for more bits as time goes on, and if digital content delivery really takes off 1.6 TB is going to seem puny.
In any event, there have been many promising technologies in the past few decades that have fallen by the wayside. These guys are saying we'll see their ideas commercialized within ten years? YEARS? That means they have, at best, a proof of concept and have a whole lot of research and engineering ahead of them before any products actually ship. Odds are, their approach won't prove commercially viable for one reason or another, and this will just be another scientific footnote.
As it happens, I was referring to the so-called "holostore", which was being billed as the next great thing in optical storage in the early 80's. Well, that was when I first read about it anyway (Scientific American, as I recall) and it was supposed to store data in a three-dimensional crystalline format that would be read and written by multiple laser beams. They were promising that several Libraries of Congress could fit on an inch-high cube and that it would be available "in a few years." Well, it's been over a quarter of a century now. I understand that it's a work in progress... but I still can't buy one.
So, like I said, I'm still waiting. I want to see cheap desktop storage that's a couple orders of magnitude more than we have now. Then I'll say they've fulfilled their promise. Avery Brooks is waiting for his flying cars... he can have them. I'm still waiting for some real storage. I have a lot of videos I want to keep.
Security by obscurity still seems to be the mantra.
Security by ignorance is the mantra.
If someone points out a flaw in your security (whether it be a computer, or a bank, or a firebase) logic dictates that you should hear them out at the very least. If indeed you have problem, thank them and then FIX IT, because they are doing you a favor. What seems to be happening nowadays is the exact opposite. Those who are exposing security issues are intimidated into self-censorship and their knowledge ignored. This is an example of willful ignorance, and there's a price to pay for that level of stupidity. The people pushing this crap on us won't be paying that price: we will.
What this tells me is that the people involved in "Trusted Computing" and all the rest of that balderdash are less interested in providing better security to their customers, as they are in providing the appearance of better security so that people will buy into their program to the tune of billions of dollars. Consequently, when anyone comes out with information that says, "Hey, this isn't as secure as you're claiming!" the immediate reaction is to try and shut them up.
Rather than subjecting our systems and our data to the tender mercies of law enforcement and corporate America, it would be far more effective if we simply learned how to secure them using the tools we already have. "Trusted Computing" is a non-solution in search of a problem to make it marketable, or at least palatable.
Well, that really doesn't sound like a very good ratio. I mean, 300,000,000 to 1 sounds just awful. Heck, I'm an American and honestly I don't know what you have against me, personally. Still, if you consider that a significant and still-growing percentage of that three hundred million are not Americans it's doesn't sound so terrible.
Most people don't know this, but the Gallifreyans have been interfering, or should I say, intervening, in Earth history for centuries. Usually, it's when we're about to screw up bigtime, or the Master does something he shouldn't be doing and screws us up bigtime. They've never bothered to maintain an ongoing presence here, so far as I'm aware, so I don't think Moglen is an actual Time Lord.
On the the other hand, they may have given him a few hints.
A small remote-controlled explosive charge would do the trick, just enough to remove the skin from the offender's hand and maybe break a few fingers. And, if he happens to have the thing in his pocket at the time, if nothing else he'll have trouble reproducing, which will help keep the population of phone thieves down.
Adams was prophetic in more ways than one, not to mention damned funny, even to an American like myself. Of course, a good science-fiction author must have the ability to perceive trends and carry them forward to a logical conclusion. Too bad he died so young: I was looking forward to more of his extrapolations.
Personally, I'm still waiting for the Infinite Improbability Drive to appear, so that I can go to the stars and arrive in comfort as a sofa.
Personally, I'd say that they aren't so much underfunded as they are badly managed. The problem is that it can be very difficult to distinguish between the two, since both cases result in serious functional issues.
Yes. Precisely. I must complement you on a very succinct summary of my post. Really, couldn't have put it better m'self. Now, just to be clear, that's no different than what most other countries (at least, those that care about themselves) do also. Tell you what: pick any country at random. Any one, your choice. Now hop a plane there. Don't bother telling the people or government of that country that you've decided to move in, just find somewhere nice and stay. Sooner or later there'll be a knock on your door, and you'll either end up shot, in jail, or if you're in a civilized place, on a plane back to where you came from. That's how it's supposed to work. I don't recommend Japan, Russia or China for your first attempt at illegal immigration though. Try America... hell, we'll take anybody.
Governments determine who does, and does not, have the right to live within their borders. Otherwise, why bother to have immigration laws? Why bother to keep track of who comes and goes and who stays? Why care about your own culture? Who the hell needs a passport, anyways? Give me a break.
More to the point, why is it that people who come illegally to America feel that they should somehow be considered exempt from the same controls all nations place on their alien populations? ALL of them? Why do people from other countries (usually the most screwed up ones) feel entitled to bag their share of our goodies? We've traditionally been a generous nation, more so than most others. So let them take the trillions in foreign aid that America has given over the past decades and lift themselves up, fix their own societies, make their own lives tolerable. We've more than done our share for the international community.
In the meantime, just leave us the hell out of it, we have enough problems at home. We really don't need your poor, your tired, your huddled masses any longer... we're full up, thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
we're really referring to SBC, not AT&T. The AT&T of old was, if nothing else, highly competent at running a phone system. SBC, on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything well except suction wallets dry. And SBC is the new AT&T.
Well, the CPU manufacturers would beg to differ with you, and actually while CPU and PC sales have been on the wane, peripheral sales have been increasing. Intel has been diversifying these past few years because, let's face it ... there's no particular incentive for people to upgrade their processors anymore. They're simply fast enough now (oh, well, okay ... if you were talking about Vista users I'd have to take your point but that will level out soon enough.) But you're right, many users (particularly Windows users) could certainly use more RAM. But we weren't discussing RAM.
Most people (and I wasn't talking about people like you and me that play 3D games or write simulations, and truly need more horsepower) need nothing that an 800 Mhz. Pentium II couldn't deliver. That or less, as a matter of fact. I know many people that still using the Windows 98 box they bought ten years ago because it does what they want. Now, since were going with anecdotal evidence (I mean, there's nothing like invoking your family and friends to support your claims) I can say that my mother (who is an artist, and a sculptor and photographer) has little use for a more powerful Mac at this point, but is always complaining that her hard drive is full. DVD burner wasn't convenient enough, so she bought another hard drive.
There are hundreds of millions of CPUS in homes and businesses worldwide that do NOTHING but run a few common applications, programs that would just as well be served by a 386, and in fact were at one time. Do you honestly, in your heart of hearts, believe that Joe User, who surfs the Web, gets his email, plays a few DVDs and a couple of iTunes now and then is craving for something FASTER than his 2 gig Athlon? Give me a break. He very well may want a new scanner, camera, printer or hard disk, particularly if a computer-literate friend installed Azureus on his box and pointed him to a good Torrent site (where do you think all those downloaded TV shows go, anyway?.)
Let us not forget the millions of 100+ Gb personal MP3 collections out there. People need space, and their need for it is only going to expand. So while you may believe that processor cycles are in short supply, but the reality is that, as a society, we're awash in CPU power. That realization is where projects such as SETI@Home got their start.
More to the point, storage is something that businesses want more than they want CPU. That's particularly in this day and age, where the goal seems to be to record everything about everybody, and laws like Sarbanes-Oxley pretty much force them to do just that.
Either don't do it at all or do the job correctly and put the thieves out of their misery. (yes, it's a joke)
Well, apparently you thought I was being serious about putting bombs in cell phones to begin with, so I guess I can take your post seriously too if I want, so there.
I don't know why you think 1.6 TB makes a particularly dense storage medium. It doesn't, and I hope that they're working on a serious contender because our civilization's needs for information storage are increasing at a decidedly non-linear rate. Most of the PC-using population doesn't have much use for more processing power right now, but we can all use a bigger hard drive. Hell, the various up-and-coming surveillance societies alone are going to drive the need for more bits as time goes on, and if digital content delivery really takes off 1.6 TB is going to seem puny.
... but I still can't buy one.
... he can have them. I'm still waiting for some real storage. I have a lot of videos I want to keep.
In any event, there have been many promising technologies in the past few decades that have fallen by the wayside. These guys are saying we'll see their ideas commercialized within ten years? YEARS? That means they have, at best, a proof of concept and have a whole lot of research and engineering ahead of them before any products actually ship. Odds are, their approach won't prove commercially viable for one reason or another, and this will just be another scientific footnote.
As it happens, I was referring to the so-called "holostore", which was being billed as the next great thing in optical storage in the early 80's. Well, that was when I first read about it anyway (Scientific American, as I recall) and it was supposed to store data in a three-dimensional crystalline format that would be read and written by multiple laser beams. They were promising that several Libraries of Congress could fit on an inch-high cube and that it would be available "in a few years." Well, it's been over a quarter of a century now. I understand that it's a work in progress
So, like I said, I'm still waiting. I want to see cheap desktop storage that's a couple orders of magnitude more than we have now. Then I'll say they've fulfilled their promise. Avery Brooks is waiting for his flying cars
Working prototype drives should be available within a decade.
Spare me. I've been hearing about incredibly dense optical storage for thirty years now. I have yet to see it.
Security by obscurity still seems to be the mantra.
Security by ignorance is the mantra.
If someone points out a flaw in your security (whether it be a computer, or a bank, or a firebase) logic dictates that you should hear them out at the very least. If indeed you have problem, thank them and then FIX IT, because they are doing you a favor. What seems to be happening nowadays is the exact opposite. Those who are exposing security issues are intimidated into self-censorship and their knowledge ignored. This is an example of willful ignorance, and there's a price to pay for that level of stupidity. The people pushing this crap on us won't be paying that price: we will.
What this tells me is that the people involved in "Trusted Computing" and all the rest of that balderdash are less interested in providing better security to their customers, as they are in providing the appearance of better security so that people will buy into their program to the tune of billions of dollars. Consequently, when anyone comes out with information that says, "Hey, this isn't as secure as you're claiming!" the immediate reaction is to try and shut them up.
Rather than subjecting our systems and our data to the tender mercies of law enforcement and corporate America, it would be far more effective if we simply learned how to secure them using the tools we already have. "Trusted Computing" is a non-solution in search of a problem to make it marketable, or at least palatable.
I think there might be fewer problems with bad laws if more of us had tripods like this one.
I thought it said, "Teen Claims Synthetic Life Feast".
I need another beer.
Well, that really doesn't sound like a very good ratio. I mean, 300,000,000 to 1 sounds just awful. Heck, I'm an American and honestly I don't know what you have against me, personally. Still, if you consider that a significant and still-growing percentage of that three hundred million are not Americans it's doesn't sound so terrible.
Most people don't know this, but the Gallifreyans have been interfering, or should I say, intervening, in Earth history for centuries. Usually, it's when we're about to screw up bigtime, or the Master does something he shouldn't be doing and screws us up bigtime. They've never bothered to maintain an ongoing presence here, so far as I'm aware, so I don't think Moglen is an actual Time Lord.
On the the other hand, they may have given him a few hints.
A small remote-controlled explosive charge would do the trick, just enough to remove the skin from the offender's hand and maybe break a few fingers. And, if he happens to have the thing in his pocket at the time, if nothing else he'll have trouble reproducing, which will help keep the population of phone thieves down.
No, here in the U.S. you hire a lawyer because the person that you did hire to tie your shoelaces did it improperly, and then stole your shoes.
Go Ms. Lindor!
Adams was prophetic in more ways than one, not to mention damned funny, even to an American like myself. Of course, a good science-fiction author must have the ability to perceive trends and carry them forward to a logical conclusion. Too bad he died so young: I was looking forward to more of his extrapolations.
Personally, I'm still waiting for the Infinite Improbability Drive to appear, so that I can go to the stars and arrive in comfort as a sofa.
True enough, I suppose ... but given that most phone companies bundle services you often end up with Caller ID whether you want it or not.
Only if you have the Smokum Mirrorum add-on.
If you define "National ID" to mean "the dark side of the collective American psyche" then the headline might be reasonable.
... the sooner that people learn that their actions have consequences, the better.
... that also applies to the RIAA.
Of course
Not that lawyers of that stripe qualify as "people", exactly.
In the other incident, an employee took his lab laptop on vacation to Ireland, where it was stolen out of his hotel room.
... why?
Does that idiot still have a job? And if so
Well, I've certainly heard worse interpretations.
Personally, I'd say that they aren't so much underfunded as they are badly managed. The problem is that it can be very difficult to distinguish between the two, since both cases result in serious functional issues.
Sorry, I must have forgotten to include the tag. Which fact was also completely lost on the mods, apparently.
Just when I thought Europe was going to be the last bastion of freedom in the world.
... Germany is going to one-up you if you're not careful.
Congress, look out
Sure, if you can make the beam stop at about one meter.
Yes. Precisely. I must complement you on a very succinct summary of my post. Really, couldn't have put it better m'self. Now, just to be clear, that's no different than what most other countries (at least, those that care about themselves) do also. Tell you what: pick any country at random. Any one, your choice. Now hop a plane there. Don't bother telling the people or government of that country that you've decided to move in, just find somewhere nice and stay. Sooner or later there'll be a knock on your door, and you'll either end up shot, in jail, or if you're in a civilized place, on a plane back to where you came from. That's how it's supposed to work. I don't recommend Japan, Russia or China for your first attempt at illegal immigration though. Try America ... hell, we'll take anybody.
... we're full up, thanks.
Governments determine who does, and does not, have the right to live within their borders. Otherwise, why bother to have immigration laws? Why bother to keep track of who comes and goes and who stays? Why care about your own culture? Who the hell needs a passport, anyways? Give me a break.
More to the point, why is it that people who come illegally to America feel that they should somehow be considered exempt from the same controls all nations place on their alien populations? ALL of them? Why do people from other countries (usually the most screwed up ones) feel entitled to bag their share of our goodies? We've traditionally been a generous nation, more so than most others. So let them take the trillions in foreign aid that America has given over the past decades and lift themselves up, fix their own societies, make their own lives tolerable. We've more than done our share for the international community.
In the meantime, just leave us the hell out of it, we have enough problems at home. We really don't need your poor, your tired, your huddled masses any longer