Never done much overclocking and had reason to investigate the alternative cooling systems that requires, like oil or water cooling or piezoelectrics? Those present substantial maintentance and disaster possibilities that are enough to scare away all but the most determined. It's not when fun when your water-cooling system springs a leak and wrecks components (both from direct water damage and from heat damage from the loss of necessary cooling).
Having LIQUID NITROGEN in my desktop PC would seem to present maintenance and disaster potential an order of magnitude greater than that: what if the enclosure ruptures and explodes like a capacitor? What if it leaks nitrogen into the room and asphyxiates my cat sleeping on the floor?
I doubt liquid nitrogen will EVER have a safe and practical place in computers in private homes.
I guess it never occurred to those scrap yards to discriminate based on method of removal, and simply turn away the shady characters with converters that looked like they were removed hastily in the dark?
Ummm... no. There are a statistically significant number of humans who aren't notably good at anything. I have unhappily encountered too many of them, both in and out of tech work. This is akin to actually believing that "all men are created equal" merely because it would be really really neat and make you feel all warm-and-fuzzy inside if it were true.
Even if your pollyanna perspective was true, being competent at some task doesn't directly equate with an absence of dumbassery. There are numerous species of "dumb" creatures that can be trained to memorize some task and then mimic (repeat) it perfectly ad nauseum... including H. sapiens. An ability to memorize and mimic doesn't equate directly with intelligence. It's a precursor, a prerequisite, perhaps, but not the Real McCoy.
A shocking number of humans, including many regarded as "average" by testing standards, never actually reach a state of true intelligence. Too many of them are profoundly ignorant and quite determined to remain that way.
Re:Slashdot comments: censorship by glut
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
Heck, I didn't follow it that closely, either! I just *use* the stuff... I haven't done any serious coding since before the Windows API.:-(
Yep, that was my immediate first reaction, too. How could we not think that, though, considering the way the announcement was worded? Suppose they might have even plagiarized some of the old copy for Dallas when they sat down to write that?
What I really love are the jokers who cut or break the catalytic converters off of cars (most often SUVs or trucks, more clearance to work) in the hope of recovering the small amount of platinum they contain. Platinum is considerably more scarce than copper, and they keep finding new (ab)uses for it to make it even more scarce.
I guess you could call all this theft "pre-cycling"? *snicker*
Re:Slashdot comments: censorship by glut
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Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure it's financially viable now... does it support itself? Isn't it subordinate to OSDL, whose former exec just the other day declared that the FOSS business model is broken?
I fall into your latter category, BTW. My VMPC is fried, oxytocin got nuthin' on me and I couldn't give a damn about belonging to some mob. It's all about the information, baby.
Sorry, didn't mean hard link. I know there are other means to relocate such directories, but they offend my sensibilities. Truth be told it's really the fact that You-Know-Who took the heavy-handed this-is-for-your-own-good route in the first place. I could have created an automated setup file to force my own preferences, but I expect to be migrating back to Linux before that would become useful or necessary.
You'd think by now the moldy old news that blacklists do more harm than good would have percolated up to even these idiots in Aussie government? The allegations of corporate ulterior motives are almost certainly true; they're aware of the consequences and don't care because they have an IP agenda.
I'm using junctions in this Windows 2000 system right now this very moment, thanks to a third-party shell extension or two I found that makes using them practical. One of the things I use them for is to shift some of the "default" Windows file structure locations somewhere else, without having to tweak all that stuff in the Registry. Because junctions operate under the OS radar, Windows is none the wiser that C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents is really just a hard link to a directory in another volume entirely.
If you were really able to follow the logic behind your suggestion to its socio-psychological end, you'd realize that's a marvelously horrible idea for everyone but the wealthy manipulators. It's already been tried in some schools, BTW, with corporate ads and product "ties-ins" right on campus.
The end result is that it completely destroys the ability of those children to learn critical thinking, in particular where consumerism and economics are concerned. Academia is supposed to be an impartial place of learning; having corporate interests present IN the place of learning teaches the children to implicitly trust those corporate interests and not to question them.
Coincidentally, this is something those corporate interests have always wanted: an uncritical unquestioning populace.
I don't think you really grasp the true cause of a recession; it's not what you nor most economists seem to think... or at least are willing to admit publicly. Here's the dirty little Darwinian secret about the origin of recessions:
Recessions are caused by a reduction in the ability of the ruling economic class - the wealthy - to concentrate wealth at a rate that satisfies their greed.
When this happens they turn around and share the lack of wealth, by "trickling down" their displeasure in the form of job layoffs, etc., taking advantage of the dependencies they created in the process of becoming wealthy to make the rest of the general population suffer.
The sad thing is that a recession actually signals that the general citizenry has actually begun to learn how to limit the tactics of the rich; it's a win for the average consumer... or at least it would be if said average consumer didn't have a job that depended upon the wealthy, putting them in a position of dependence. (Think we don't still have a "barony" of the sort that American forefathers were supposedly trying to escape? Think again.)
The wealthy then retaliate against this victory by using that trickle-down effect that Reagan thought was so great to make the general population feel their pain, too.
A recession is in no way a loss of productivity or general faith in productivity and the "economy"; people don't actually stop being productive. That's bullshit fed to us by the wealthy, via mis-educated "economists" who don't actually have a clue (because they were very deliberately mis-educated to serve the interests of the wealthy).
The effect of a recession is to teach the general population a lesson, put a (temporary) end to their little economic victory and return control back to the grabby grubby greedy little hands of the wealthy. In effect a recession is the wealthy saying, "If we can't have our cake and eat it too, then by God none of the rest of you will, either!"
What do you think that "economic stimulus package" was all about? What is the real purpose of the "bailout"? That stimulus package was really intended to benefit the wealthy, not you nor I (I actually refused it), by encouraging people to once again spend-spend-spend and put profit back in the hands of the wealthy.
Since a recession is actually about loss of control by the wealthy, why the fuck would we want to give it back to them? Why don't we suck it up and finish the job we unknowingly started: kicking the money-changers out of the temple? Don't END the recession... DEEPEN it.
... but there's some vacuous humans I've met that don't seem to have one. I also wonder about the mental health of people who would fund and implement a "study" such as this.
Yes! Free Karma... right after Willie! I'm starting a grassroots movement to save the Karma from untimely demises.
Re:Slashdot comments: censorship by glut
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
Speaking of removing temptations to run with the lemming herd, when are we gonna ditch those nasty political parties and make people think independently about the individual issues each on their own merits?
Re:Slashdot comments: censorship by glut
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Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
Good thing you didn't.:-)
I've had the same experience often enough, but basic human psychology is still what it is, even if an exceptional minority is able to fight against or override it. I suspect it's also true that a greater than average percentage of Slashdot readers have AD(H|)D traits including impatience, impulsivity, and distractibility; that was undeniably true of the tech departments in which I've worked (and left-handedness and musical ability were well past the Bell Curve mean, too).
"Well, by suggesting that one shouldn't need to be eloquent sell a good idea, you are no less ridiculous than a guy thinking that a good idea does not have to provide technical details about its implementation."
Though you seem to be replying to me, I assume you must have mistakenly intended that particular criticism for someone else, since I never made any assertion that eloquence or articulation was unimportant or unnecessary. They most certainly are. That doesn't mean one has to be a master of prose or poetry, though perhaps that mastery wouldn't hurt one's chances of being noticed and modded-up, either.
Slashdot comments: censorship by glut
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The Slashdot comments system is a spot-on example of what Haselton describes: if one doesn't manage First Post or relatively close to it, the likelihood that your insightful/informative/funny comment will be widely read and modded-up decreases proportionately. People just don't have the time or stamina to read hundreds of comments, normally; they read just the first few dozen "visible" (highly rated) ones and then quit. If in fact that is the case, then being late to the party means that the quality of your comment is irrelevant because it will be drowned-out by the flood that preceded it. Really it's the people who are able to jump in and suck on the Firehose that get most of the attention here. I've been frustrated by this quantitative factor - what Haselton calls the "glut" - for a long time.
'For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,' Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.'
Dr. Malone can certainly rationalize with the best of them, can't he? He's attempting to equate two radically different states:
EVERYONE in a collective having access to full knowledge of the activities of everyone else; and
A SMALL GREEDY MINORITY having exclusive full knowledge of the activities of everyone.
The former sounds rather socialistic, while the latter screams "Big Brother".
Dr. Malone is a corporate Big Brother sell-out trying desperately to justify his sell-out-ishness for the sake of his own fame and fortune.
BTW, as an aside, have you heard about the now-ubiquitous cameras in the U.K. and the accusations that it creates a Big Brother environment, similar to the latter state above? I have a solution to morph that into the former: the U.K. should make the output of all the cameras available to EVERYONE via the 'Net, and take away law enforcement's exclusive privilege to them; law enforcement then takes action when a CITIZEN reports something they are observing. It would be like a local/regional/global Neighborhood Watch, Internet Age style.
It's not the technology that is bad: it's who employs it and how. I have no problem with an absence of "privacy", as long as it's not a lop-sided absence that benefits some at the expense of others. When corporate CEOs are willing to share all THEIR private activities with me and everyone else, then I'll consider allowing them insider knowledge of what I'm on about.
The cliche doesn't PROVIDE the answers... it merely HINTS at them. The trick is that you're supposed to be OBSERVANT and ANALYTICAL enough to then figure out what is "moderate". I guess you failed? Thanks for sharing that glass of sour grapes.
Slashdot Mirror
Never done much overclocking and had reason to investigate the alternative cooling systems that requires, like oil or water cooling or piezoelectrics? Those present substantial maintentance and disaster possibilities that are enough to scare away all but the most determined. It's not when fun when your water-cooling system springs a leak and wrecks components (both from direct water damage and from heat damage from the loss of necessary cooling).
Having LIQUID NITROGEN in my desktop PC would seem to present maintenance and disaster potential an order of magnitude greater than that: what if the enclosure ruptures and explodes like a capacitor? What if it leaks nitrogen into the room and asphyxiates my cat sleeping on the floor?
I doubt liquid nitrogen will EVER have a safe and practical place in computers in private homes.
I guess it never occurred to those scrap yards to discriminate based on method of removal, and simply turn away the shady characters with converters that looked like they were removed hastily in the dark?
Ummm... no. There are a statistically significant number of humans who aren't notably good at anything. I have unhappily encountered too many of them, both in and out of tech work. This is akin to actually believing that "all men are created equal" merely because it would be really really neat and make you feel all warm-and-fuzzy inside if it were true.
Even if your pollyanna perspective was true, being competent at some task doesn't directly equate with an absence of dumbassery. There are numerous species of "dumb" creatures that can be trained to memorize some task and then mimic (repeat) it perfectly ad nauseum... including H. sapiens. An ability to memorize and mimic doesn't equate directly with intelligence. It's a precursor, a prerequisite, perhaps, but not the Real McCoy.
A shocking number of humans, including many regarded as "average" by testing standards, never actually reach a state of true intelligence. Too many of them are profoundly ignorant and quite determined to remain that way.
Heck, I didn't follow it that closely, either! I just *use* the stuff... I haven't done any serious coding since before the Windows API. :-(
Yep, that was my immediate first reaction, too. How could we not think that, though, considering the way the announcement was worded? Suppose they might have even plagiarized some of the old copy for Dallas when they sat down to write that?
What I really love are the jokers who cut or break the catalytic converters off of cars (most often SUVs or trucks, more clearance to work) in the hope of recovering the small amount of platinum they contain. Platinum is considerably more scarce than copper, and they keep finding new (ab)uses for it to make it even more scarce.
I guess you could call all this theft "pre-cycling"? *snicker*
I'm not sure it's financially viable now... does it support itself? Isn't it subordinate to OSDL, whose former exec just the other day declared that the FOSS business model is broken?
I fall into your latter category, BTW. My VMPC is fried, oxytocin got nuthin' on me and I couldn't give a damn about belonging to some mob. It's all about the information, baby.
That was one of the reasons why I chose this method; I have encountered some of that foolishly hard-coded software.
Sorry, didn't mean hard link. I know there are other means to relocate such directories, but they offend my sensibilities. Truth be told it's really the fact that You-Know-Who took the heavy-handed this-is-for-your-own-good route in the first place. I could have created an automated setup file to force my own preferences, but I expect to be migrating back to Linux before that would become useful or necessary.
Nope. What I'm using hooks in and handles those events.
Sometimes delusion masquerades as imagination.
You'd think by now the moldy old news that blacklists do more harm than good would have percolated up to even these idiots in Aussie government? The allegations of corporate ulterior motives are almost certainly true; they're aware of the consequences and don't care because they have an IP agenda.
I'm using junctions in this Windows 2000 system right now this very moment, thanks to a third-party shell extension or two I found that makes using them practical. One of the things I use them for is to shift some of the "default" Windows file structure locations somewhere else, without having to tweak all that stuff in the Registry. Because junctions operate under the OS radar, Windows is none the wiser that C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents is really just a hard link to a directory in another volume entirely.
If you were really able to follow the logic behind your suggestion to its socio-psychological end, you'd realize that's a marvelously horrible idea for everyone but the wealthy manipulators. It's already been tried in some schools, BTW, with corporate ads and product "ties-ins" right on campus.
The end result is that it completely destroys the ability of those children to learn critical thinking, in particular where consumerism and economics are concerned. Academia is supposed to be an impartial place of learning; having corporate interests present IN the place of learning teaches the children to implicitly trust those corporate interests and not to question them.
Coincidentally, this is something those corporate interests have always wanted: an uncritical unquestioning populace.
I don't think you really grasp the true cause of a recession; it's not what you nor most economists seem to think... or at least are willing to admit publicly. Here's the dirty little Darwinian secret about the origin of recessions:
Recessions are caused by a reduction in the ability of the ruling economic class - the wealthy - to concentrate wealth at a rate that satisfies their greed.
When this happens they turn around and share the lack of wealth, by "trickling down" their displeasure in the form of job layoffs, etc., taking advantage of the dependencies they created in the process of becoming wealthy to make the rest of the general population suffer.
The sad thing is that a recession actually signals that the general citizenry has actually begun to learn how to limit the tactics of the rich; it's a win for the average consumer... or at least it would be if said average consumer didn't have a job that depended upon the wealthy, putting them in a position of dependence. (Think we don't still have a "barony" of the sort that American forefathers were supposedly trying to escape? Think again.)
The wealthy then retaliate against this victory by using that trickle-down effect that Reagan thought was so great to make the general population feel their pain, too.
A recession is in no way a loss of productivity or general faith in productivity and the "economy"; people don't actually stop being productive. That's bullshit fed to us by the wealthy, via mis-educated "economists" who don't actually have a clue (because they were very deliberately mis-educated to serve the interests of the wealthy).
The effect of a recession is to teach the general population a lesson, put a (temporary) end to their little economic victory and return control back to the grabby grubby greedy little hands of the wealthy. In effect a recession is the wealthy saying, "If we can't have our cake and eat it too, then by God none of the rest of you will, either!"
What do you think that "economic stimulus package" was all about? What is the real purpose of the "bailout"? That stimulus package was really intended to benefit the wealthy, not you nor I (I actually refused it), by encouraging people to once again spend-spend-spend and put profit back in the hands of the wealthy.
Since a recession is actually about loss of control by the wealthy, why the fuck would we want to give it back to them? Why don't we suck it up and finish the job we unknowingly started: kicking the money-changers out of the temple? Don't END the recession... DEEPEN it.
... but there's some vacuous humans I've met that don't seem to have one. I also wonder about the mental health of people who would fund and implement a "study" such as this.
Yes! Free Karma... right after Willie! I'm starting a grassroots movement to save the Karma from untimely demises.
Speaking of removing temptations to run with the lemming herd, when are we gonna ditch those nasty political parties and make people think independently about the individual issues each on their own merits?
Good thing you didn't. :-)
I've had the same experience often enough, but basic human psychology is still what it is, even if an exceptional minority is able to fight against or override it. I suspect it's also true that a greater than average percentage of Slashdot readers have AD(H|)D traits including impatience, impulsivity, and distractibility; that was undeniably true of the tech departments in which I've worked (and left-handedness and musical ability were well past the Bell Curve mean, too).
Though you seem to be replying to me, I assume you must have mistakenly intended that particular criticism for someone else, since I never made any assertion that eloquence or articulation was unimportant or unnecessary. They most certainly are. That doesn't mean one has to be a master of prose or poetry, though perhaps that mastery wouldn't hurt one's chances of being noticed and modded-up, either.
The Slashdot comments system is a spot-on example of what Haselton describes: if one doesn't manage First Post or relatively close to it, the likelihood that your insightful/informative/funny comment will be widely read and modded-up decreases proportionately. People just don't have the time or stamina to read hundreds of comments, normally; they read just the first few dozen "visible" (highly rated) ones and then quit. If in fact that is the case, then being late to the party means that the quality of your comment is irrelevant because it will be drowned-out by the flood that preceded it. Really it's the people who are able to jump in and suck on the Firehose that get most of the attention here. I've been frustrated by this quantitative factor - what Haselton calls the "glut" - for a long time.
Literalist much? Sheesh.
Dr. Malone can certainly rationalize with the best of them, can't he? He's attempting to equate two radically different states:
The former sounds rather socialistic, while the latter screams "Big Brother".
Dr. Malone is a corporate Big Brother sell-out trying desperately to justify his sell-out-ishness for the sake of his own fame and fortune.
BTW, as an aside, have you heard about the now-ubiquitous cameras in the U.K. and the accusations that it creates a Big Brother environment, similar to the latter state above? I have a solution to morph that into the former: the U.K. should make the output of all the cameras available to EVERYONE via the 'Net, and take away law enforcement's exclusive privilege to them; law enforcement then takes action when a CITIZEN reports something they are observing. It would be like a local/regional/global Neighborhood Watch, Internet Age style.
It's not the technology that is bad: it's who employs it and how. I have no problem with an absence of "privacy", as long as it's not a lop-sided absence that benefits some at the expense of others. When corporate CEOs are willing to share all THEIR private activities with me and everyone else, then I'll consider allowing them insider knowledge of what I'm on about.
The cliche doesn't PROVIDE the answers... it merely HINTS at them. The trick is that you're supposed to be OBSERVANT and ANALYTICAL enough to then figure out what is "moderate". I guess you failed? Thanks for sharing that glass of sour grapes.
Troll, indeed.
Eh, get that Libertarian urge much? ;-)