or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Granted that a technical element failed us here, but it's not fair to condemn the whole program because of one slip up.
These days, this exact same couple would be able to pay $40 to $80 a month to get a cell phone. The tower will be a couple of hills over, with a microwave feed back to the home network and a small diesel generator on-site. For the cost of one phone line, an entire area can get phone and internet service.
This assumes that the couple can convince a cellular carrier to put up that tower to provide service. Currently cellular carriers make economic decisions on where to put towers; they are not required to service everyone. I don't know if we need to keep the USF providing copper connections, but I think we need to ensure that everyone can get some from of reliable telephone communication. Maybe this means requiring cellular coverage and subsidizing it with USF dollars in areas with population densities below a level that would be otherwise economically unsupportable by private companies.
The actual hierarchical start menu? Worthless legacy cruft that has been more or less replaced by search anyway.
Not worthless. Search assumes you know what you want to search for and have some idea about what it is called. If I know I want to use one of the administrative tools but I can't remember what it is called, a hierarchical system makes sense. I can choose "administrative tools" as a starting point for self discovery. If I have no idea, I can start at the top and work my way through the options that have been categorized in some meaningful way. If I am in a branch of the hierarchy that is unrelated to what I am looking for, I can move on quickly -- I don't have to scan an unorganized list of all the possible options.
My biggest complaint (and others share this view) about Metro is that the interface is not self discoverable - you can't just look at the interface and get visual clues as to what you need to do (or even can do). Lack of a hierarchical menu system that contains all the options is a big part of this.
When I was 12, I also got really into airplanes, and studied hard to get my pilot's license asap. Would you expect any non-pilot teachers to have more knowledge about FAA regulations than a budding hobbyist?
No but I would expect teachers to have basic operational skills for equipment used for teaching. In the past a 16mm projector was a pretty standard piece of classroom equipment (yes I am old) - teachers were expected to understand how to plug the thing in, load the film, and overall use the tool to project a movie. Now computers are part of a basic classroom - teachers need to have basic operational knowledge of them. They need to understand how to use the educational or presentation software being used. I argue that basic operational knowledge also includes a security component - not complex security, but basic things like "use a password" and "lock the screen". Things like learning how to lock a screen are no more complex then learning how to only use erasable markers on a whiteboard (when in the past with blackboards you only had a chalk option).
... and mixing known explosive chemicals together on purpose is a felony.
Is driving your car a felony? Gasoline (a chemical) is mixed with air (a chemical), creating an explosive substance that is exploded (on purpose) in order to make the engine operate. Does this mean that a typical six cylinder engine idling at 700 RPM is generating 70 felonies per second?
So if I think the company may be leaking my personal information or doing something improper do I get the password to the HR and Financial systems, so I (or my lawyer) can investigate my claim?
I use a file server that uses RAID-Z2 to cover disk failures and daily backups to another partition to cover user failures. I snapshot the ZFS file systems and copy the snapshots to removable hard drives which are stored in a safe-deposit box at my bank to cover a site failure. I only offsite quarterly, but it is good enough for a home system. If my house burns down I will have more to worry about than 3 months of lost data.
My physical and virtual machines use the file server for storage of important user data. Local directories are also backed up to the file server (in case I forget to consider something "important"). Windows machines get system state backups to the file server and Linux machines have important paths backed up as well.
Backups are done with Bacula and the Windows system state backups are scheduled tasks so other then the manual process of taking the snapshots and delivering the hard drives the bank, it is all automated.
[...] The US seems to quickly be turning into a third world hell hole. Only in those do you need to live in a gated community to avoid robbery.
Have you ever been in a third world hell hole? Have you ever been in the third world for that matter? If not, I would suggest visiting the third world some time before you make such statements. While I would agree that things are deteriorating, we have a long way to go before "third world hellhole".
Bottom line, the fact that it's ILLEGAL for businesses to even inform customers of this, but to keep everyone IGNORANT of the true cost baked in is UTTERLY STUPID AND WRONG. Who the hell paid for the original legislation? The only ones it benefits are the credit card companies.
Is it actually illegal or is it in violation of the contract with the credit card company? There is a significant difference.
Piloting a ship with that kind of propulsion would require very precise calculations about the passing of local time inside the warp field, and the time frames of both site of departure, and site of destination. It would be impossible to measure spacial distance, so the unpredictable unit of variable time is all you would have to work with. Long distance navigation would be an almost absurd proposition due to this fact. This could be the fly in the ointment against this form of travel in fact.
This is one of the advantages of authoritarianism. If you have a good idea, you don't need to waste your time on democratic debate and procedures. You just impose it by decree on 1.2 billion people. Nice.
Another advantage with having one standardized information pipe to everyone's house is that is is much easier to standardize the monitoring and control as well.
No, it is why we have a representative system which is balanced two ways (House - weighted by population / Senate - balanced by state). The Electoral College system can go.
We really need to move beyond 24fps though. Take any single frame of that scene and just try to make out what is in the house. Is that a lamp? Or a table? Or wait, maybe it's a vase with a funny flower coming out of it. You can't tell. It's a blurry mess. All you can tell is that is was a sweep of the inside of a house. No detail. [...]
That of course assumes that viewing all the detail is important. In many cases "viewing all the detail" is not what you want. It can be distracting from the message that the writer and director is trying to convey. At times the blur in the background can help support the in focus stuff in the foreground and the elements that are actually important to the story.
As much as I hate EULAs and think they shouldn't exist, your reasoning is specious. Lets assume for a minute that a EULA is a valid contract. If so, they're offering you the software in exchange for agreeing to the contract. They have no legal obligation to allow you to negotiate on the contract. So you don't get to red line the contract and still use the software without their approval.
But if you do red line the contract and then click "ok" and subsequently the software operates, the vendor has agreed to your changes. The vendor is using the licensing screen as a legal proxy - they delegate authority to the software to sign and validate the contract. If you sign (click ok) the software works, if you don't sign the software doesn't. If the delegated legal proxy doesn't take into account that you red lined the contract it isn't a very good proxy, but it why would it make it any less legal? I would argue that if the proxy isn't strong enough to withstand changes, it isn't strong enough to enforce the agreement.
easy fix make them save the encryption key to a text file on a key server at NASA when they forget simply ask the IT guy to go get they key. this computer should have NO network connection and all of the input ports (not counting the 1 for the keyboard) filled filled with epoxy. it should have its drive encrypted with several people who know they decryption key so there is no one person that can forget it and screw everyone.
Easy fix for a small deployment, but if you are talking about enterprise level deployments (tens of thousands of desktops) you would have to have several "IT guys" whose job is maintaining this database - both keeping it up to date and retrieving lost keys on a 24/7 basis. It is very hard to "make" tens of thousands of employees do anything, so unless your key escrow system is automated, it won't be reliable at that scale. Sure you could develop programs or scripts to manage all of this, but doing so has a cost and at enterprise scale you are going to want something that is tested and supported by a vendor.
Note that most enterprises running at this scale would be on a Microsoft Windows based infrastructure with Active Directory. These enterprises have already paid for BitLocker - it is included in your enterprise agreement with Microsoft. It amazes me how many companies who have already paid for disk level encryption (with managed key escrow) aren't using it.
For the lazy it does the job well. No need spend budget on it.
There is a reason to spend budget if you are an enterprise or have a need for centralized key recovery. While you don't want to leak data if your laptop falls in the wrong hands, you also don't want to lose data if your employee forgets their decryption key (either by accident or as a malicious action.)
had a technique where he would pipe the audio from the recording studio down to a basement where loudspeakers played the audio and picked it back up on microphones and back to the control room.
In college I worked at a mufti-purpose coliseum. The building could be a basketball arena or by dropping in curtains at one end a large theater. Behind the curtains were big speakers. An analog audio processing system was used to make the walls sound "solid" - this was before digital processing was popular. Part of the analog audio processing was this oddly shaped room with a speaker at one end, a microphone at the other, and zig-zag baffles in between. The room acted as a delay and echo chamber. It worked great with one exception. The architects put the bathrooms right over the echo chamber...
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or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Granted that a technical element failed us here, but it's not fair to condemn the whole program because of one slip up.
These days, this exact same couple would be able to pay $40 to $80 a month to get a cell phone. The tower will be a couple of hills over, with a microwave feed back to the home network and a small diesel generator on-site. For the cost of one phone line, an entire area can get phone and internet service.
This assumes that the couple can convince a cellular carrier to put up that tower to provide service. Currently cellular carriers make economic decisions on where to put towers; they are not required to service everyone. I don't know if we need to keep the USF providing copper connections, but I think we need to ensure that everyone can get some from of reliable telephone communication. Maybe this means requiring cellular coverage and subsidizing it with USF dollars in areas with population densities below a level that would be otherwise economically unsupportable by private companies.
I hope you would have to actually shoot someone for it to be fatal.
The actual hierarchical start menu? Worthless legacy cruft that has been more or less replaced by search anyway.
Not worthless. Search assumes you know what you want to search for and have some idea about what it is called. If I know I want to use one of the administrative tools but I can't remember what it is called, a hierarchical system makes sense. I can choose "administrative tools" as a starting point for self discovery. If I have no idea, I can start at the top and work my way through the options that have been categorized in some meaningful way. If I am in a branch of the hierarchy that is unrelated to what I am looking for, I can move on quickly -- I don't have to scan an unorganized list of all the possible options.
My biggest complaint (and others share this view) about Metro is that the interface is not self discoverable - you can't just look at the interface and get visual clues as to what you need to do (or even can do). Lack of a hierarchical menu system that contains all the options is a big part of this.
When I was 12, I also got really into airplanes, and studied hard to get my pilot's license asap. Would you expect any non-pilot teachers to have more knowledge about FAA regulations than a budding hobbyist?
No but I would expect teachers to have basic operational skills for equipment used for teaching. In the past a 16mm projector was a pretty standard piece of classroom equipment (yes I am old) - teachers were expected to understand how to plug the thing in, load the film, and overall use the tool to project a movie. Now computers are part of a basic classroom - teachers need to have basic operational knowledge of them. They need to understand how to use the educational or presentation software being used. I argue that basic operational knowledge also includes a security component - not complex security, but basic things like "use a password" and "lock the screen". Things like learning how to lock a screen are no more complex then learning how to only use erasable markers on a whiteboard (when in the past with blackboards you only had a chalk option).
... and mixing known explosive chemicals together on purpose is a felony.
Is driving your car a felony? Gasoline (a chemical) is mixed with air (a chemical), creating an explosive substance that is exploded (on purpose) in order to make the engine operate. Does this mean that a typical six cylinder engine idling at 700 RPM is generating 70 felonies per second?
So if I think the company may be leaking my personal information or doing something improper do I get the password to the HR and Financial systems, so I (or my lawyer) can investigate my claim?
I use a file server that uses RAID-Z2 to cover disk failures and daily backups to another partition to cover user failures. I snapshot the ZFS file systems and copy the snapshots to removable hard drives which are stored in a safe-deposit box at my bank to cover a site failure. I only offsite quarterly, but it is good enough for a home system. If my house burns down I will have more to worry about than 3 months of lost data.
My physical and virtual machines use the file server for storage of important user data. Local directories are also backed up to the file server (in case I forget to consider something "important"). Windows machines get system state backups to the file server and Linux machines have important paths backed up as well.
Backups are done with Bacula and the Windows system state backups are scheduled tasks so other then the manual process of taking the snapshots and delivering the hard drives the bank, it is all automated.
Can you name one thing VMWare does that HyperV with Server 2012 cannot do?
Access shared storage? (Do a live migration without moving or copying the underlying virtual disk images.)
And WTF does support by the ground mean?
The atmosphere is supported by the ground. Flying things are supported by the atmosphere. So what is the problem?
[...] The US seems to quickly be turning into a third world hell hole. Only in those do you need to live in a gated community to avoid robbery.
Have you ever been in a third world hell hole? Have you ever been in the third world for that matter? If not, I would suggest visiting the third world some time before you make such statements. While I would agree that things are deteriorating, we have a long way to go before "third world hellhole".
... fricking lasers? Would there be sharks?
Yes. Yes there would be: Sharks in Spaaaaaaaaace!
Bottom line, the fact that it's ILLEGAL for businesses to even inform customers of this, but to keep everyone IGNORANT of the true cost baked in is UTTERLY STUPID AND WRONG. Who the hell paid for the original legislation? The only ones it benefits are the credit card companies.
Is it actually illegal or is it in violation of the contract with the credit card company? There is a significant difference.
Piloting a ship with that kind of propulsion would require very precise calculations about the passing of local time inside the warp field, and the time frames of both site of departure, and site of destination. It would be impossible to measure spacial distance, so the unpredictable unit of variable time is all you would have to work with. Long distance navigation would be an almost absurd proposition due to this fact. This could be the fly in the ointment against this form of travel in fact.
In other words, it ain't like dusting crops.
This is one of the advantages of authoritarianism. If you have a good idea, you don't need to waste your time on democratic debate and procedures. You just impose it by decree on 1.2 billion people. Nice.
Another advantage with having one standardized information pipe to everyone's house is that is is much easier to standardize the monitoring and control as well.
If you don't fill someone full of lead, they don't fill someone else full of lead?
This seems like a 5th amendment issue and he may be able to get off or at least beat the DUI part.
I think the 5th is about the government compelling someone to incriminate themselves. In this case he did it voluntarily.
is why we have the Electoral College.
No, it is why we have a representative system which is balanced two ways (House - weighted by population / Senate - balanced by state). The Electoral College system can go.
We really need to move beyond 24fps though. Take any single frame of that scene and just try to make out what is in the house. Is that a lamp? Or a table? Or wait, maybe it's a vase with a funny flower coming out of it. You can't tell. It's a blurry mess. All you can tell is that is was a sweep of the inside of a house. No detail. [...]
That of course assumes that viewing all the detail is important. In many cases "viewing all the detail" is not what you want. It can be distracting from the message that the writer and director is trying to convey. At times the blur in the background can help support the in focus stuff in the foreground and the elements that are actually important to the story.
Winston University is always a cash positive option.
As much as I hate EULAs and think they shouldn't exist, your reasoning is specious. Lets assume for a minute that a EULA is a valid contract. If so, they're offering you the software in exchange for agreeing to the contract. They have no legal obligation to allow you to negotiate on the contract. So you don't get to red line the contract and still use the software without their approval.
But if you do red line the contract and then click "ok" and subsequently the software operates, the vendor has agreed to your changes. The vendor is using the licensing screen as a legal proxy - they delegate authority to the software to sign and validate the contract. If you sign (click ok) the software works, if you don't sign the software doesn't. If the delegated legal proxy doesn't take into account that you red lined the contract it isn't a very good proxy, but it why would it make it any less legal? I would argue that if the proxy isn't strong enough to withstand changes, it isn't strong enough to enforce the agreement.
easy fix make them save the encryption key to a text file on a key server at NASA when they forget simply ask the IT guy to go get they key. this computer should have NO network connection and all of the input ports (not counting the 1 for the keyboard) filled filled with epoxy. it should have its drive encrypted with several people who know they decryption key so there is no one person that can forget it and screw everyone.
Easy fix for a small deployment, but if you are talking about enterprise level deployments (tens of thousands of desktops) you would have to have several "IT guys" whose job is maintaining this database - both keeping it up to date and retrieving lost keys on a 24/7 basis. It is very hard to "make" tens of thousands of employees do anything, so unless your key escrow system is automated, it won't be reliable at that scale. Sure you could develop programs or scripts to manage all of this, but doing so has a cost and at enterprise scale you are going to want something that is tested and supported by a vendor.
Note that most enterprises running at this scale would be on a Microsoft Windows based infrastructure with Active Directory. These enterprises have already paid for BitLocker - it is included in your enterprise agreement with Microsoft. It amazes me how many companies who have already paid for disk level encryption (with managed key escrow) aren't using it.
For the lazy it does the job well. No need spend budget on it.
There is a reason to spend budget if you are an enterprise or have a need for centralized key recovery. While you don't want to leak data if your laptop falls in the wrong hands, you also don't want to lose data if your employee forgets their decryption key (either by accident or as a malicious action.)
In 06 you could get a 3 GHz computer. If Moore's law still impacted speed, we would be able to get a 24GHz chip right now.
i7-3960X is 6 cores at 3.3 - 3.9 GHz each. That isn't all that far from 24 GHz.
had a technique where he would pipe the audio from the recording studio down to a basement where loudspeakers played the audio and picked it back up on microphones and back to the control room.
In college I worked at a mufti-purpose coliseum. The building could be a basketball arena or by dropping in curtains at one end a large theater. Behind the curtains were big speakers. An analog audio processing system was used to make the walls sound "solid" - this was before digital processing was popular. Part of the analog audio processing was this oddly shaped room with a speaker at one end, a microphone at the other, and zig-zag baffles in between. The room acted as a delay and echo chamber. It worked great with one exception. The architects put the bathrooms right over the echo chamber...