What is everyone so concerned about? The Cold War is finally back! We've got something out there to stimulate the economy, Putin will scare the Islamists into sending us Hannukah cards. Is there anybody out there who still thinks we did ourselves a failure by eliminating the safe, reliable two faction Western dominated world?
Yes, one is a unit of volume (fluid ounce). Specifically, the volume occupied by one ounce of water at STP. That's why fluid ounces are used to measure liquid volumes in commerce, it's easy to figure shipping weight. Hence my quandary at hearing that British pints are larger than US pints. Unless gravity or chemistry are different over there, I'm not following how this works.
Errr.. huh? I could have sworn a pint's a pound (16 fl oz) the whole world round. Is this just the standard beer serving size, or do we actually use different volumetric measurements?
Unless they can drastically increase the amount of data that goes into the signal to begin with, it'll just be filler data anyways (ie you can pull it out without damaging the compressed quality). And unless we drastically improve our video hardware, that's not going to happen. Next to nobody can afford high quality video hardware as it is, so it's just not realistic. If the TVs keep the same resolution and refresh rate, you can't increase the amount of real data.
As far as music goes, there's just not enough padding you'll be able to do. The files are WAY too small as it is to prevent piracy, and it's already hard to tell the difference between those small rips and the original.
So, how far will Congress go, using this as an excuse to void fair use? I'm guessing they'll "Stamp out file-sharing thieves" by declaring all IP to be bought on a license basis, with the copyright owner able to change the license at any time. But the RIAA is pretty creative with the laws they write for Mr. Hatch, so anyone else have any thoughts on what the next step is to further the cause of plutocracy?
Without the need to take the thing apart to get the film and with fewer moving parts, these should actually get a many more re-use cycles than the film versions. So I'm betting the profit margins they're looking at are a lot better even with a higher camera cost. The big problem will be if the things are hackable, which means they'll be pulling the DMCA out like mad.
Of course, at 2 Mp I'm thinking you'd get better pictures off the cheaper film version anyways.
Re:That'll lower the productivity index
on
Vive La Loafing!
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· Score: 1
If and when I get the savings up to go back to school, I'm considering an MBA program. I did take some business courses back in my undergrad days, but the technical programs leave so little room for electives, and I didn't feel like sticking around for the extra time back then.
I think the main problem with MBAs is that they gained such demand, especially in the 80s, that now every school has an MBA program, and all of them could count on a thriving student base. So there's a lot of suboptimal MBAs out there to smear the degree.
Then again, there's a point where perception meets reality. When you have a lot of suboptimal MBAs floating around, there is a reason to be wary of people with MBAs.
Re:That'll lower the productivity index
on
Vive La Loafing!
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"If your manager doesn't want to pay you more, and you think you are worth more, GO FIND ANOTHER JOB. If you really are good, you'll find one."
No you won't. Have you picked up a business paper in the last ten years? Even at the height of the dot com "boom" people were working two or three jobs just to break even. That's why all us good worker bees keep showing up for the low wages and the crappy benefits, because the alternative is living in a cardboard box.
"If you can't find another job, you're probably not worth what you think you are."
You misunderstand the concept of worth. In capitalism, a good or service is worth what the buyer is willing to spend for it. This price depends on market conditions and on the perceived value. In this case, the buyer (management) percieves the value as virtually nothing, because they don't care about making product, only increasing stock value. And the market is offering them a cheaper alternative due to illegal currency fixing in the Asian market, combined with hideously low standards of living. On top of this, management makes no value distinction within the engineering profession, because they don't understand engineering.
I understand my value very well. That's why I'm sitting at this desk, taking what I can get.
"Think about it from management's standpoint. You are willing to take low pay and still work."
Because my alternative is to take no pay and not work. Fairly easy decision matrix there.
"What economic benefit is there for the company to voluntarily raise your salary, given that you are already working for the salary you have agreed to -- agreed to through your own inaction."
They would be able to get a real work day out of their employees. They would be able to hire better employees. They would increase their customer base. They would increase the perceived value of their product in the market.
"I've tripled my salary in 5 years by advocating for myself, so I speak from experience."
No you haven't. Jesus, do people honestly think this type of transparent garbage convinces people? Let me guess, you're also the head of a Fortune 500 company, hold seven degrees, are married to a lingerie model, and just discovered cold fusion.
"Show your value."
Meaningless phrase in a capitalist system. The market sets your value, not you. Your value is set by a consumer, in this case a wantonly uninformed consumer who happens to be stuffing several items into their pocket while the cashier isn't looking.
"Show your value. Be dependable. Be consistent. Demonstrate integrity."
I am. I have. I do. That's why I'm locked into my job. If I weren't, I would be fired. But the same competence and professionalism that gives me job security eliminates the prospect of advancement, because I'm too valuable in my current position. And the lack of advancement insures wage stagnation.
Re:That'll lower the productivity index
on
Vive La Loafing!
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What good would that do? I'm still a competent engineer, no matter how much butt I kiss. That means I can't be promoted, or they'd have to find soemone else to fill my slot. It also means I'm ineligible for pay commensurate with my abilities, because management doesn't consider anyone a "real employee" unless they're involved in hyping stock.
Trying for middling promotions is just polishing the brass on the Titanic. We're not going into economic collapse in the US because of slacking. We're collapsing because management is viciously incompetent, and Wall Street insists on keeping them that way.
It's the constant mindless yammering about impending doom that let's these scum get away with this crap. You are safer from road accidents, safer from crime, safer from disease, safer from war than in most of the history of the world. But as long as they show a big, flashy panic story every few minutes on the news all we hear is that we're all going to die any minute.
There is no justification for the added measures. There is no reason to give up your freedom and privacy. It's all just a sham to get you to sign away your liberty without a fight.
I don't know, there's just something about people researching the best way to automate the process of fining, firing, or arresting large numbers of people that doesn't seem to sit right with me.
The IPod is hardware. I own it. It's not a licensed product, even if you accepted that notion in relation to songs. Once they sell me the unit, Apple has absolutely no rights to determine how I will use it, legally or morally.
Jesus, you'd probably be telling people it's illegal to put aftermarket rims on their car because they didn't have written permission from the OEM. Buying the merchandise entails a transfer of all rights to use. If I want to use my IPod as a hammer, it doesn't matter how much of a snit it puts Apple in.
This is an unfortunate downside to anonymous voting. The upside is that it's the only thing standing in the way of complete corruption of the process, because name-recorded voting would eventually lead to employers forcing their workers to vote their ballot, armed thugs harassing or blackmailing political opponents, and all the joys one normally associates with elections in the Third World.
A permanent, unalterable record solves the problem without needing to be tied to the individual. You check the name off on a piece of paper, you drop it into a secured box (or better yet a glass container that can only be opened by breaking it). At the end of the session the ballots are taken out and counted, with mutliple observers of opposing political factions. You set in place a challenge system beforehand so if there's an issue you're not ad-libbing. At the end of the count, the ballots are placed into another sealed container for storage at a secured site in the event of a future recount.
Yes, because in the advent of a catastrophe that wipes out the Earth, the space program could (with adequate funding and research) maintain a non-viable breeding stock of a dozen or so people alive on Mars for a couple months until their supplies run out. Hooray!
Without a survivable ecosystem to go to, space travel is meaningless for survival. That means either terraforming a planet, or developing interstellar travel capacity. Neither one of those is going to be helped along by sending up a shuttle flight every couple years to observe the effect of zero gravity on lab rats. That's where academic research comes in. The space program money is better spent on gathering data.
I've got as much scientific curiosity as anyone, but SETI is one area where my cynical side wins out. First off, I don't buy the idea that we'll recognize an alien signal. I see no reason aliens are more likely to beam out a stream of identifiable data (eg prime numbers) than we are, and we're sure as heck not going to take our chances letting everyone know where the buffet is. General radio signals are not truly identifiable unless you know the transfer function between that signal and the end data, which we woudn't. All we're doing is guessing about narrow-band signal spikes.
Secondly, even if we do intercept such data, meaningful communication is impossible by radio with years-long lag time. Actually, it's impossible by radio alone, period. The most we'd ever pass along would be a few simple mathematical expressions, then both planets would get bored. You can't transmit a video signal without knowing the particulars of whether and how the aliens see, you can't transmit language without context, you could possibly transmit an analog audio signal but that doesn't help with the language barrier (assuming aliens hear to begin with). Real data is not going to change hands unless we can meet and learn language through context.
Finally, I'm sufficiently confident in the laws of chance that I don't need SETI to think there's life out there, and lack of hits isn't going to change that frame of mind. The universe is unimaginably huge. Complex life is probably rare. That still means that there are likely to be a large number of civilizations out there, just that we'll probably never find, let alone visit them.
I'm all for analyzing the data we gather in the routine course of events. But I don't see a point in a seperate investment, and I definitely think the likelihood of finding anything of practical interest goes down as the search area (and the resulting data volume) goes up.
I think we're better off with the small slice for practical purposes. What if we did detect signals from a million light years out? Those signals have no current relevance, and there's no way we could hope to give a meaningful reply.
Dearest Congress,
I had a really good idea for how to make money back in the 90's, and was very successful as one of the first to exploit it. Unfortunately, I lack the skill and work ethic to continue my advantage with this business model in a competitive environment. Please outlaw the business model before other people can get rich off it and knock me out of my rank in Forbes' Filthy Rich Bastards list.
Sincerely, Ted Turner
P.S. Enclosed please find a huge "campaign contribution."
First off, 8.2 gigs is a LOT of simple data. We're talking about databases here, not mp3s. A few kbytes can give you everything you need to steal someone's identity and more. We're talking about hundreds of thousands or even a few million entries.
Second, what can you really do with 50 million social security/credit card/name/address matches that you can't do with 1 million? It's not likely this data was stolen just for spam, much larger databases are readily available for that purpose. Even the largest, most nefarious criminal organization would be set for years with a million verified identities to misuse. Even if you could only net a few hundred dollars from each identity theft, that's a LOT of money. And at a certain point the scale of the data overrides your ability to exploit it anyways.
The Sahara was once a lush tropical forest. Granted, this was a couple million years ago before we'd even come out of the trees, but it's perfectly possible that a similar process could have taken place on now dead worlds like Mars. Life is a fragile thing, and if there was a global climate shift at some point it's quite reasonable to think that a planet could self-sterilize.
No need to legislate. They can just have the Justice Department issue immunity for those who do so on a per case basis, without the need to get Congress on board and likely without any press coverage. Hopefully at some point the courts are going to decide that any evidence gathered illegally is inadmissable, rather than only in cases where the police broke the law themselves.
At least it's not as bad as "sports" like auto racing, in that the rider is still a determining factor. And tech like lightweight frames and wind tunnels is available to most serious national teams, so it's not too lopsided.
Still, I'd be a lot more impressed with these sports if the rules required standard equipment. In the Olympics, you don't get to use your technical know how to create a lighter shot put so you can throw it further. Equipment standardization should be the first chapter of any rule book.
Now all us computer nerds will lose our counter culture edge. Plus you'll no longer be able to detect a fellow geek merely by his browsing choice. I guess we'll have to go back to tossing off random Kevin Smith quotes and seeing who catches on.
Your ears have no money, it's the headphone makers they need to sue! Those guys are rolling in cash, and think how many pirated songs are listened to on their merchandise. Plus I hear they keep their money in banks, and terrorists keep their money in banks too, so they must be in league with the terrorists!
Oh, I agree absolutely. Spending has to be controlled in addition to covering your outlays. It's no different than personal finance.
Where I do disgree with you is blaming the politicians. They vote for massive spending increases coupled with massive tax reductions for one simple reason: the American public demands it. Anybody in Congress who either refused to buy their district an inland naval base, or insisted that said base be paid for out of tax receipts, would be tarred and feathered. Until Joe Sixpack figures out that money isn't magically falling out of the sky, we're screwed in this regard.
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What is everyone so concerned about? The Cold War is finally back! We've got something out there to stimulate the economy, Putin will scare the Islamists into sending us Hannukah cards. Is there anybody out there who still thinks we did ourselves a failure by eliminating the safe, reliable two faction Western dominated world?
Yes, one is a unit of volume (fluid ounce). Specifically, the volume occupied by one ounce of water at STP. That's why fluid ounces are used to measure liquid volumes in commerce, it's easy to figure shipping weight. Hence my quandary at hearing that British pints are larger than US pints. Unless gravity or chemistry are different over there, I'm not following how this works.
Errr.. huh? I could have sworn a pint's a pound (16 fl oz) the whole world round. Is this just the standard beer serving size, or do we actually use different volumetric measurements?
Unless they can drastically increase the amount of data that goes into the signal to begin with, it'll just be filler data anyways (ie you can pull it out without damaging the compressed quality). And unless we drastically improve our video hardware, that's not going to happen. Next to nobody can afford high quality video hardware as it is, so it's just not realistic. If the TVs keep the same resolution and refresh rate, you can't increase the amount of real data.
As far as music goes, there's just not enough padding you'll be able to do. The files are WAY too small as it is to prevent piracy, and it's already hard to tell the difference between those small rips and the original.
So, how far will Congress go, using this as an excuse to void fair use? I'm guessing they'll "Stamp out file-sharing thieves" by declaring all IP to be bought on a license basis, with the copyright owner able to change the license at any time. But the RIAA is pretty creative with the laws they write for Mr. Hatch, so anyone else have any thoughts on what the next step is to further the cause of plutocracy?
Without the need to take the thing apart to get the film and with fewer moving parts, these should actually get a many more re-use cycles than the film versions. So I'm betting the profit margins they're looking at are a lot better even with a higher camera cost. The big problem will be if the things are hackable, which means they'll be pulling the DMCA out like mad.
Of course, at 2 Mp I'm thinking you'd get better pictures off the cheaper film version anyways.
If and when I get the savings up to go back to school, I'm considering an MBA program. I did take some business courses back in my undergrad days, but the technical programs leave so little room for electives, and I didn't feel like sticking around for the extra time back then.
I think the main problem with MBAs is that they gained such demand, especially in the 80s, that now every school has an MBA program, and all of them could count on a thriving student base. So there's a lot of suboptimal MBAs out there to smear the degree.
Then again, there's a point where perception meets reality. When you have a lot of suboptimal MBAs floating around, there is a reason to be wary of people with MBAs.
"If your manager doesn't want to pay you more, and you think you are worth more, GO FIND ANOTHER JOB. If you really are good, you'll find one."
No you won't. Have you picked up a business paper in the last ten years? Even at the height of the dot com "boom" people were working two or three jobs just to break even. That's why all us good worker bees keep showing up for the low wages and the crappy benefits, because the alternative is living in a cardboard box.
"If you can't find another job, you're probably not worth what you think you are."
You misunderstand the concept of worth. In capitalism, a good or service is worth what the buyer is willing to spend for it. This price depends on market conditions and on the perceived value. In this case, the buyer (management) percieves the value as virtually nothing, because they don't care about making product, only increasing stock value. And the market is offering them a cheaper alternative due to illegal currency fixing in the Asian market, combined with hideously low standards of living. On top of this, management makes no value distinction within the engineering profession, because they don't understand engineering.
I understand my value very well. That's why I'm sitting at this desk, taking what I can get.
"Think about it from management's standpoint. You are willing to take low pay and still work."
Because my alternative is to take no pay and not work. Fairly easy decision matrix there.
"What economic benefit is there for the company to voluntarily raise your salary, given that you are already working for the salary you have agreed to -- agreed to through your own inaction."
They would be able to get a real work day out of their employees. They would be able to hire better employees. They would increase their customer base. They would increase the perceived value of their product in the market.
"I've tripled my salary in 5 years by advocating for myself, so I speak from experience."
No you haven't. Jesus, do people honestly think this type of transparent garbage convinces people? Let me guess, you're also the head of a Fortune 500 company, hold seven degrees, are married to a lingerie model, and just discovered cold fusion.
"Show your value."
Meaningless phrase in a capitalist system. The market sets your value, not you. Your value is set by a consumer, in this case a wantonly uninformed consumer who happens to be stuffing several items into their pocket while the cashier isn't looking.
"Show your value. Be dependable. Be consistent. Demonstrate integrity."
I am. I have. I do. That's why I'm locked into my job. If I weren't, I would be fired. But the same competence and professionalism that gives me job security eliminates the prospect of advancement, because I'm too valuable in my current position. And the lack of advancement insures wage stagnation.
What good would that do? I'm still a competent engineer, no matter how much butt I kiss. That means I can't be promoted, or they'd have to find soemone else to fill my slot. It also means I'm ineligible for pay commensurate with my abilities, because management doesn't consider anyone a "real employee" unless they're involved in hyping stock.
Trying for middling promotions is just polishing the brass on the Titanic. We're not going into economic collapse in the US because of slacking. We're collapsing because management is viciously incompetent, and Wall Street insists on keeping them that way.
With so many people? What in the hell are you talking about? Highway safety issues are declining, and have been for years, per the NHTSA here:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/N CSA/PPT/2003AARelease.pdf
It's the constant mindless yammering about impending doom that let's these scum get away with this crap. You are safer from road accidents, safer from crime, safer from disease, safer from war than in most of the history of the world. But as long as they show a big, flashy panic story every few minutes on the news all we hear is that we're all going to die any minute.
There is no justification for the added measures. There is no reason to give up your freedom and privacy. It's all just a sham to get you to sign away your liberty without a fight.
How does one ... a clue? Give it a few drinks and take it to a movie?
I don't know, there's just something about people researching the best way to automate the process of fining, firing, or arresting large numbers of people that doesn't seem to sit right with me.
The IPod is hardware. I own it. It's not a licensed product, even if you accepted that notion in relation to songs. Once they sell me the unit, Apple has absolutely no rights to determine how I will use it, legally or morally.
Jesus, you'd probably be telling people it's illegal to put aftermarket rims on their car because they didn't have written permission from the OEM. Buying the merchandise entails a transfer of all rights to use. If I want to use my IPod as a hammer, it doesn't matter how much of a snit it puts Apple in.
This is an unfortunate downside to anonymous voting. The upside is that it's the only thing standing in the way of complete corruption of the process, because name-recorded voting would eventually lead to employers forcing their workers to vote their ballot, armed thugs harassing or blackmailing political opponents, and all the joys one normally associates with elections in the Third World.
A permanent, unalterable record solves the problem without needing to be tied to the individual. You check the name off on a piece of paper, you drop it into a secured box (or better yet a glass container that can only be opened by breaking it). At the end of the session the ballots are taken out and counted, with mutliple observers of opposing political factions. You set in place a challenge system beforehand so if there's an issue you're not ad-libbing. At the end of the count, the ballots are placed into another sealed container for storage at a secured site in the event of a future recount.
No shiny, expensive electronics needed.
Yes, because in the advent of a catastrophe that wipes out the Earth, the space program could (with adequate funding and research) maintain a non-viable breeding stock of a dozen or so people alive on Mars for a couple months until their supplies run out. Hooray!
Without a survivable ecosystem to go to, space travel is meaningless for survival. That means either terraforming a planet, or developing interstellar travel capacity. Neither one of those is going to be helped along by sending up a shuttle flight every couple years to observe the effect of zero gravity on lab rats. That's where academic research comes in. The space program money is better spent on gathering data.
I've got as much scientific curiosity as anyone, but SETI is one area where my cynical side wins out. First off, I don't buy the idea that we'll recognize an alien signal. I see no reason aliens are more likely to beam out a stream of identifiable data (eg prime numbers) than we are, and we're sure as heck not going to take our chances letting everyone know where the buffet is. General radio signals are not truly identifiable unless you know the transfer function between that signal and the end data, which we woudn't. All we're doing is guessing about narrow-band signal spikes.
Secondly, even if we do intercept such data, meaningful communication is impossible by radio with years-long lag time. Actually, it's impossible by radio alone, period. The most we'd ever pass along would be a few simple mathematical expressions, then both planets would get bored. You can't transmit a video signal without knowing the particulars of whether and how the aliens see, you can't transmit language without context, you could possibly transmit an analog audio signal but that doesn't help with the language barrier (assuming aliens hear to begin with). Real data is not going to change hands unless we can meet and learn language through context.
Finally, I'm sufficiently confident in the laws of chance that I don't need SETI to think there's life out there, and lack of hits isn't going to change that frame of mind. The universe is unimaginably huge. Complex life is probably rare. That still means that there are likely to be a large number of civilizations out there, just that we'll probably never find, let alone visit them.
I'm all for analyzing the data we gather in the routine course of events. But I don't see a point in a seperate investment, and I definitely think the likelihood of finding anything of practical interest goes down as the search area (and the resulting data volume) goes up.
I think we're better off with the small slice for practical purposes. What if we did detect signals from a million light years out? Those signals have no current relevance, and there's no way we could hope to give a meaningful reply.
Dearest Congress,
I had a really good idea for how to make money back in the 90's, and was very successful as one of the first to exploit it. Unfortunately, I lack the skill and work ethic to continue my advantage with this business model in a competitive environment. Please outlaw the business model before other people can get rich off it and knock me out of my rank in Forbes' Filthy Rich Bastards list.
Sincerely,
Ted Turner
P.S. Enclosed please find a huge "campaign contribution."
P.P.S. Wink wink, nudge nudge
First off, 8.2 gigs is a LOT of simple data. We're talking about databases here, not mp3s. A few kbytes can give you everything you need to steal someone's identity and more. We're talking about hundreds of thousands or even a few million entries.
Second, what can you really do with 50 million social security/credit card/name/address matches that you can't do with 1 million? It's not likely this data was stolen just for spam, much larger databases are readily available for that purpose. Even the largest, most nefarious criminal organization would be set for years with a million verified identities to misuse. Even if you could only net a few hundred dollars from each identity theft, that's a LOT of money. And at a certain point the scale of the data overrides your ability to exploit it anyways.
The Sahara was once a lush tropical forest. Granted, this was a couple million years ago before we'd even come out of the trees, but it's perfectly possible that a similar process could have taken place on now dead worlds like Mars. Life is a fragile thing, and if there was a global climate shift at some point it's quite reasonable to think that a planet could self-sterilize.
No need to legislate. They can just have the Justice Department issue immunity for those who do so on a per case basis, without the need to get Congress on board and likely without any press coverage. Hopefully at some point the courts are going to decide that any evidence gathered illegally is inadmissable, rather than only in cases where the police broke the law themselves.
At least it's not as bad as "sports" like auto racing, in that the rider is still a determining factor. And tech like lightweight frames and wind tunnels is available to most serious national teams, so it's not too lopsided.
Still, I'd be a lot more impressed with these sports if the rules required standard equipment. In the Olympics, you don't get to use your technical know how to create a lighter shot put so you can throw it further. Equipment standardization should be the first chapter of any rule book.
Now all us computer nerds will lose our counter culture edge. Plus you'll no longer be able to detect a fellow geek merely by his browsing choice. I guess we'll have to go back to tossing off random Kevin Smith quotes and seeing who catches on.
Oh please.
Your ears have no money, it's the headphone makers they need to sue! Those guys are rolling in cash, and think how many pirated songs are listened to on their merchandise. Plus I hear they keep their money in banks, and terrorists keep their money in banks too, so they must be in league with the terrorists!
Oh, I agree absolutely. Spending has to be controlled in addition to covering your outlays. It's no different than personal finance.
Where I do disgree with you is blaming the politicians. They vote for massive spending increases coupled with massive tax reductions for one simple reason: the American public demands it. Anybody in Congress who either refused to buy their district an inland naval base, or insisted that said base be paid for out of tax receipts, would be tarred and feathered. Until Joe Sixpack figures out that money isn't magically falling out of the sky, we're screwed in this regard.