But my bigger pet peeve is when a summary contains five different links and you have to play "link roulette" to try to guess the one that takes you to the relevant article
Admit it, you're lucky one of those links wasn't a 15-redirect goatse or a rickroll.
This is slashdot. Slashdot editing is slashdot editing, even if TFA is about slashdot.
"defacto" is not a word. Although if people repeat that glaring blunder often enough, it probably will become one. And then dictionaries will have to add an etymology pointing to the correct phrase, and explaining how it's derived from the exact same phrase in a dead language, and at that point all the cool kids' eyes will glaze over and they'll turn back to updating their Facebook walls with their latest drinking binge escapades.
So, yeah, sadly, in practice, you're right. At least in linguistic evolution, popularity drives repetition and repetition drives mutation. And with the advent of "any moron can publish" (Thank you, Web 2.0), it'll be a power-dive for the muddy bottom. "Lowest common denominator" has become the way of all the world, although most of the dolts involved in the process probably don't even understand what that originally meant.
The masses are irrelevant. They always were. Originally, they were excluded because they were irrelevant.
Unfortunately, their irrelevance is being overriden by their marketability now... the bleating sheep have no individual value, but their fleece and their flesh are quite valuable on the commodity market. And there are so damn many of them. So the range is fenced, and roads laid, and pens built, and soon the whole damn Internet is a boring endless feedlot.
since this is Slashdot... and I'm not about to start doing it now... but the juxtaposition of "pay phone" and "wi-fi hotspot" made me think they were going to do a wi-fi hotspot with an out-dialing POTS modem spliced into the pay phone... you get internet at 33.6 kbps just like we did 15 years ago, and you drop quarters into the phone to keep your connection...
Yeah, I'm sure that's not what they're going to do. Even by the standards of NYC, what I imagined is pretty ghetto.
The threat statement comes down to "A program you download, install, and execute may secretly do bad things to your computer with the privileges and permissions of the user who is executing the program."
In the words of the Prophet, "Well, DUH!"
There is nothing distinctive to desktop gadgets in this. So the stated rationale has the whiff of bullshit that usually emanates from acts of Security Theatre.
And that always make me wonder about ulterior motives and what kind of bad faith that powerful aroma is intended to cover up. Your theory, as sketchy as it seems to be (to me), may be plausible (at least in the Byzantine thought processes of Microsoft Marketing... they're so used to FUD-kneecapping their market competitors that even when the competition is themselves, they can't help it.)
Put your phone in a zip-lock bag and pour a load of rice in with it.
And, as always, wise and well-intentioned advice leaves out critical information.
Uncooked rice. Not steamed rice, not boiled rice, not parboiled rice, not fried rice, not Spanish rice, not risotto,not Rice-o-Roni (which isn't entirely rice anyway), not Jerry Rice or Donna Rice or Rice, Kansas.
Seriously. Packing your slightly-moistened phone into a baggie of steaming hot cooked rice WILL NOT HELP.
and passion for learning and doing the Right Thing.
Now I urge you to be cautious, not of hatred and backstabbing from those less brilliant and energized than you... but of becoming arrogant. Arrogance blinds.
I am more than twice your age. I was like you, at your age... and other than age, I still am.
If I had been in your crowd of co-workers, would you have assumed I would have opposed your "unorthodox" answer because I'm old and decrepit?
Of course, I wouldn't have been "badmouthing" the idea; I would have been over in the corner poking with the system's boot options and eventually would have uncovered the same thing. Maybe before you.
"[Age] matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my [age], do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not."
--Yoda, or at least he should have. After all, he was 900 years old!
Anyway, arrogance. It leads you to underestimate, and makes you enemies, some of which you really can't afford to underestimate. And it's completely unnecessary. Humble self-assured competence is enough. Arrogance detracts.
So. Not all of us old crusties are beyond seeing the wonder and potential of modern technology, so don't assume all of are. Furthermore, look around at your age peers. A lot of them aren't interested in the deep magic of technology; they just want an appliance to check Facebook. Preferably one with the logo of a piece of fruit with a bit taken out, because that's what the herd likes nowadays.
It's not age. It's the nerd spark; some have it, some don't and actions are the only real proof.
Everyone, our illustrious Kenneth Waltz included, seems to be forgetting one critical thing: The Cold War wasn't a peace. Millions died in regional conflicts fueled by the opposing ideologies of the major Cold War combatants. Many of these were purely proxy fights (client nation A fights client nation B), but a couple of the biggest (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan) involved actual forces of one of the "Big Three".
So, maybe Waltz has a point: rational nuclear-armed opponents have ample reason to avoid directly confronting each other. But they still do skirmish, sometimes; and no one the post-World-War-II era the "Cold Peace", because it never was peaceful.
Don't underestimate, fine, but you probably should account for the time to transfer the data from disk to tape
WTF are you talking about? The majority of the systems in question in the 1970s read records from tape, processed them, and wrote them to tape. The data never touched disk. The disk was reserved for the program image and perhaps scratchpad or virtual memory (if you had a fancy VM-capable system).
You're not backing up data for transfer, you're transferring the only copy! Put that in your "copyright violation isn't theft" pipe and smoke it!
load all of the tapes into the SUV,
That's a consideration, I suppose. I like to think the image intended in the original joke is simply instantaneous throughput ("wire speed", if you will) of a 4000-pound vehicle full of ones and zeros hurtling down the freeway at (or over) the highway speed limit.
Yup. A dumptruck full of data on the highway is definitely a very large packet. Humongous MTU. Of course, if the packet is lost, your retransmit time will be epically horrible.
And this kind of automation can't help. In a squishy slippery-slope kind of way, it might exacerbate the problem.
If you're cruising along on mental autopilot, there's a real chance you'll be somewhere in lala land when the unexpected happens, and your ability to cope will depend on how quickly you can yank yourself back into here-and-now and deal with the situation.
If you're the kind of very trusting person who believes a real AI autopilot is reliable enough to trust with very little supervision, you may not even be conscious when reality jumps around the corner yelling "Surprise!", let alone paying the minuscule amount of attention to drive a car in mental-autopilot-trance mode.
The context switch will be catastrophically more time-consuming than in the current mode. The only real way to avoid it is that the driver pay at least as much situational attention in AI autopilot mode as in biological autopilot mode, but with less second-to-second incentive.
So I'm not very sanguine on that happening. Expect huge multi-car pile-ups caused by dozens of people texting or applying makeup or reading the Wall Street Journal, safe in the knowledge their AI driver will handle everything except for that suddenly jackknifed tractor-trailor 40 yards ahead that they'll never see coming.
Nokia claiming that "their" wifi patent is being infringed? It's already been decided that Australia's CSIRO invented Wifi and that and manufacturers using the technology would need to licence it from them
And in related news, SCO continues to claim that THEY, not Novell, owns the copyrights to Unix and therefore, to all Unix derivatives (like Linux).
The precedent makes me mildly skeptical of Nokia's claim. A Microsoft business partner (and investee) claims that a competing product infringes on a numbered but unnamed pool of patents? Where have I seen that "numbered but not enumerated patents" thing before... Oh, yeah
More to the point, what patents on Wi-Fi would be in play that aren't automatically licensed when you buy the appropriate hardware? Maybe I'm naive, but I thought all of the important IP was implemented in silicon, and the license was satisfied by the chip manufacturer.
Seriously. Microsoft proxy FUD, until demonstrated otherwise in an actual court of law.
Ah. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. And we all know that the right man for the search for the God particle is someone who's acquainted with the role.
This is the kind of planning planning that can really only be done at a pre-planning agenda working group. We need a standing... semi-weekly, I think... pre-planning agenda working group. Probably, need to charter it through the Processes and Moderation SIG. And buy-in from Quality and Timekeeping.
Make it happen. Schedule a kick-off meeting for formulating the Pre-Planning Agenda Working Group Working Group planning group.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most people that are reading Slashdot already know the URL.
Sure, it's http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot
But my bigger pet peeve is when a summary contains five different links and you have to play "link roulette" to try to guess the one that takes you to the relevant article
Admit it, you're lucky one of those links wasn't a 15-redirect goatse or a rickroll.
This is slashdot. Slashdot editing is slashdot editing, even if TFA is about slashdot.
"defacto" is not a word. Although if people repeat that glaring blunder often enough, it probably will become one. And then dictionaries will have to add an etymology pointing to the correct phrase, and explaining how it's derived from the exact same phrase in a dead language, and at that point all the cool kids' eyes will glaze over and they'll turn back to updating their Facebook walls with their latest drinking binge escapades.
So, yeah, sadly, in practice, you're right. At least in linguistic evolution, popularity drives repetition and repetition drives mutation. And with the advent of "any moron can publish" (Thank you, Web 2.0), it'll be a power-dive for the muddy bottom. "Lowest common denominator" has become the way of all the world, although most of the dolts involved in the process probably don't even understand what that originally meant.
The masses are irrelevant. They always were. Originally, they were excluded because they were irrelevant.
Unfortunately, their irrelevance is being overriden by their marketability now... the bleating sheep have no individual value, but their fleece and their flesh are quite valuable on the commodity market. And there are so damn many of them. So the range is fenced, and roads laid, and pens built, and soon the whole damn Internet is a boring endless feedlot.
"Correct" is not a popularity contest.
You know, I really did like the Internet a lot better before Eternal September.
Thoughtcrime. Big Brother is your only friend. Big Brother has always been your only friend.
an endoscopic camera capsule is probably easier to stomach than implanting a cannula.
obSlashdotMicrosoftHate: It's certainly better than having to have Windows installed.
since this is Slashdot... and I'm not about to start doing it now... but the juxtaposition of "pay phone" and "wi-fi hotspot" made me think they were going to do a wi-fi hotspot with an out-dialing POTS modem spliced into the pay phone... you get internet at 33.6 kbps just like we did 15 years ago, and you drop quarters into the phone to keep your connection...
Yeah, I'm sure that's not what they're going to do. Even by the standards of NYC, what I imagined is pretty ghetto.
That occurred to me too.
The threat statement comes down to "A program you download, install, and execute may secretly do bad things to your computer with the privileges and permissions of the user who is executing the program."
In the words of the Prophet, "Well, DUH!"
There is nothing distinctive to desktop gadgets in this. So the stated rationale has the whiff of bullshit that usually emanates from acts of Security Theatre.
And that always make me wonder about ulterior motives and what kind of bad faith that powerful aroma is intended to cover up. Your theory, as sketchy as it seems to be (to me), may be plausible (at least in the Byzantine thought processes of Microsoft Marketing... they're so used to FUD-kneecapping their market competitors that even when the competition is themselves, they can't help it.)
But that's ok, Apple products are environmentally superior in areas that matter... to Apple.
Problem solved.
Hence, it's frigid instead of burning-hot like Venus.
-- Sir Elton John, probably not FRS
Stop clubbing, baby seals: hey you baby seals! Stop going out dancing!
Citation
Put your phone in a zip-lock bag and pour a load of rice in with it.
And, as always, wise and well-intentioned advice leaves out critical information.
Uncooked rice. Not steamed rice, not boiled rice, not parboiled rice, not fried rice, not Spanish rice, not risotto ,not Rice-o-Roni (which isn't entirely rice anyway), not Jerry Rice or Donna Rice or Rice, Kansas.
Seriously. Packing your slightly-moistened phone into a baggie of steaming hot cooked rice WILL NOT HELP.
and passion for learning and doing the Right Thing.
Now I urge you to be cautious, not of hatred and backstabbing from those less brilliant and energized than you... but of becoming arrogant. Arrogance blinds.
I am more than twice your age. I was like you, at your age... and other than age, I still am.
If I had been in your crowd of co-workers, would you have assumed I would have opposed your "unorthodox" answer because I'm old and decrepit?
Of course, I wouldn't have been "badmouthing" the idea; I would have been over in the corner poking with the system's boot options and eventually would have uncovered the same thing. Maybe before you.
--Yoda, or at least he should have. After all, he was 900 years old!
Anyway, arrogance. It leads you to underestimate, and makes you enemies, some of which you really can't afford to underestimate. And it's completely unnecessary. Humble self-assured competence is enough. Arrogance detracts.
So. Not all of us old crusties are beyond seeing the wonder and potential of modern technology, so don't assume all of are. Furthermore, look around at your age peers. A lot of them aren't interested in the deep magic of technology; they just want an appliance to check Facebook. Preferably one with the logo of a piece of fruit with a bit taken out, because that's what the herd likes nowadays.
It's not age. It's the nerd spark; some have it, some don't and actions are the only real proof.
Arrested for Multiple Counts of Assault with a Deadly Weapon. PNGs at 11.
Everyone, our illustrious Kenneth Waltz included, seems to be forgetting one critical thing: The Cold War wasn't a peace. Millions died in regional conflicts fueled by the opposing ideologies of the major Cold War combatants. Many of these were purely proxy fights (client nation A fights client nation B), but a couple of the biggest (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan) involved actual forces of one of the "Big Three".
It's probable that the threat of escalation prevented direct opposition between, say the Soviets and NATO; even the brinkman-like diplomacy surrounding some proxy wars raised the specter of head-to-head confrontation and often served as a wake-up and cool-down call.
So, maybe Waltz has a point: rational nuclear-armed opponents have ample reason to avoid directly confronting each other. But they still do skirmish, sometimes; and no one the post-World-War-II era the "Cold Peace", because it never was peaceful.
Don't underestimate, fine, but you probably should account for the time to transfer the data from disk to tape
WTF are you talking about? The majority of the systems in question in the 1970s read records from tape, processed them, and wrote them to tape. The data never touched disk. The disk was reserved for the program image and perhaps scratchpad or virtual memory (if you had a fancy VM-capable system).
You're not backing up data for transfer, you're transferring the only copy! Put that in your "copyright violation isn't theft" pipe and smoke it!
load all of the tapes into the SUV,
That's a consideration, I suppose. I like to think the image intended in the original joke is simply instantaneous throughput ("wire speed", if you will) of a 4000-pound vehicle full of ones and zeros hurtling down the freeway at (or over) the highway speed limit.
Yup. A dumptruck full of data on the highway is definitely a very large packet. Humongous MTU. Of course, if the packet is lost, your retransmit time will be epically horrible.
-- Albert Einstein (1947)
Great. Now I'm hearing that announcement in Professor Farnsworth's voice. Thanks.
Well, there's "hopeful for future", and there's "blowing sunshine up the market's and shareholders' collective asses".
History will tell which is which in this case.
Lord of De Nile.
And this kind of automation can't help. In a squishy slippery-slope kind of way, it might exacerbate the problem.
If you're cruising along on mental autopilot, there's a real chance you'll be somewhere in lala land when the unexpected happens, and your ability to cope will depend on how quickly you can yank yourself back into here-and-now and deal with the situation.
If you're the kind of very trusting person who believes a real AI autopilot is reliable enough to trust with very little supervision, you may not even be conscious when reality jumps around the corner yelling "Surprise!", let alone paying the minuscule amount of attention to drive a car in mental-autopilot-trance mode.
The context switch will be catastrophically more time-consuming than in the current mode. The only real way to avoid it is that the driver pay at least as much situational attention in AI autopilot mode as in biological autopilot mode, but with less second-to-second incentive.
So I'm not very sanguine on that happening. Expect huge multi-car pile-ups caused by dozens of people texting or applying makeup or reading the Wall Street Journal, safe in the knowledge their AI driver will handle everything except for that suddenly jackknifed tractor-trailor 40 yards ahead that they'll never see coming.
You should have cut it off at "Why Mark Zuckerberg Is a Bad".
Brevity, Friend.
Nokia claiming that "their" wifi patent is being infringed? It's already been decided that Australia's CSIRO invented Wifi and that and manufacturers using the technology would need to licence it from them
And in related news, SCO continues to claim that THEY, not Novell, owns the copyrights to Unix and therefore, to all Unix derivatives (like Linux).
The precedent makes me mildly skeptical of Nokia's claim. A Microsoft business partner (and investee) claims that a competing product infringes on a numbered but unnamed pool of patents? Where have I seen that "numbered but not enumerated patents" thing before... Oh, yeah
More to the point, what patents on Wi-Fi would be in play that aren't automatically licensed when you buy the appropriate hardware? Maybe I'm naive, but I thought all of the important IP was implemented in silicon, and the license was satisfied by the chip manufacturer.
Seriously. Microsoft proxy FUD, until demonstrated otherwise in an actual court of law.
But his half brother Morgan can make it.
Ah. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. And we all know that the right man for the search for the God particle is someone who's acquainted with the role.
No, no, no no no... wait.
This is the kind of planning planning that can really only be done at a pre-planning agenda working group. We need a standing... semi-weekly, I think... pre-planning agenda working group. Probably, need to charter it through the Processes and Moderation SIG. And buy-in from Quality and Timekeeping.
Make it happen. Schedule a kick-off meeting for formulating the Pre-Planning Agenda Working Group Working Group planning group.