He's not asking you or your grandmother to invest your life savings into these things. He's asking you to keep an open mind that there MAY be unexpected phenomena out there.
Thermodynamics is a law you cannot prove. Instead we prove everything else around it. It's our insistance that you can't get something from nothing that drives it, and it works for us. No one is asking you to stop believing in this, only to believe that we may not have identified every fuel source or type of energy. If we discover a system that APPEARS to violate the laws of thermodynamics by looking at all known energy sources, that's a good thing, it means we've discovered a new branch of science. Radation was one such find...materials that produce energy from...nothing. 100 years later, we know where the energy comes from and look at what it did for us.
TFA is probably bullshit. It should be reviewed with a critical eye without feeding potential trolls. It'll turn out the system is receiving power from something we understand (like the sun cooking the water, or something silly), and probably isn't very exciting. But you shouldn't just close your mind to it instantly and assume we know everything, or science is dead.
Playing devil's advocate, let's look at it from the other side. Every system, no matter how noble or ideal, needs a backdoor for emergencies. Do you want to see cash replaced with electronic transactions? What's your problem with wiretapping if you aren't a criminal? Why can't we automate traffic policing, if everyone is an obedient citizen? We have many laws and rules which are necessarily overreaching and broad to prevent rampant abuse and social ills, but which any of us would break given we know the spirit of the law. If we all had to pay for every crime we commit, society would be very constrained, perhaps stagnant in some cases.
I think the government may have a similar need with respect to terrorism and foreign enemies. Yes, it's wrong. But perhaps it's a necessary evil from time to time. Perhaps if you KNOW Muhammad Blow is a terrorist, because your deep cover agents have infiltrated his group, and you believe you can safely remove him from circulation without revealing your agent...you should do so. If we all were able to see the real Truth of all these detainments, I suspect that we would not object to every single one.
I think the real atrocity committed, is that we have so many and there is so much of a circus created, that the Supreme Court really couldn't allow it to continue. The crime was forcing the decision to be made, because you exaggerate the problem so far out of hand and become incredible. The government is clearly abusing its loophole and making it easier for it to continue, it had to be closed.
But what about consequences? Detaining someone in a prison is relatively high profile, you cannot keep it secret for too long, particularly in the US. But we do have enemies from time to time, real, tangible, dangerous enemies that don't always make the news. They must be dealt with, and due process may make the government too slow to protect civilians. The alternative may be an increase in government sponsored assassinations and "disappearances". People die every day, it's a shame. If you ask me, that is a greater evil. Innocent people can be released from prison, but dead innocent people are dead. Regardless of what you and I personally think about the terrorist/foriegn threats, it is the job of people who take national security terribly seriously to make those decisions. I suspect rather than being a last resort, it will be the only option. Used less frequently than detainment in gitmo, but maybe more frequently than it is now.
So to counteract your meta-fear of the next 30 years, they DID make the right choice for the US constitution and upholding the values we hold dear. You have to feel good about that. That their decision magically also reflects the reality that there will be dire consequences for having made it gives me faith that smart people are looking out for us.
We shouldn't care because this is the political equivalent of shouting "hook'em horns". If this was anything but grandstanding it would have been done years ago. Now, it's just a feel good editorial of "this president in review".
Further, we should make it a point not to care, because while we're busy following impeachment babble, our candidates will be redefining their positions as they transition their campaign from party nominations to election. Such distractions serve to allow them to change their platforms while we get caught up in the emotion of the day. This is particularly important for Obama since he's the popular vote, but not totally in line with his party.
Ignoring this bullshit and telling this guy to shut his hole, will actually serve more good for keeping the upcoming election about the will of the people rather than chosing the lesser evil between two parties who don't actually give a rip about us. This whole "lesser evil" nonsense really isn't working out for us, at some point we the public need to be smart about ignoring non-issues.
The past is a non-issue, it's done. Dubya is a non-issue, he's done. Love him or hate him, it's all over but the pardons. Moving on...
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Ideas are cheap, and not all are implementable. The star trek style transporter idea, while an awesome idea, is not really all that practical. All the various magic that makes that idea work would be, and the assembly of those ideas into the new system that is the transporter, and the work behind that is what makes it valuable.
Deeper still each of those bits of magic are comprised both of ideas and some hard work to prove them out and discover their limitations/issues of note.
That's what the real value is, but you can't wrap a piece of legalese around it all and extract money so easily. Ideas are just the first step and NOT worth legal protection, the hows and whys behind it are closer to what needs some kind of protection.
It's a development platform with all the interfaces you'd need to make a graphics card out of it (or any number of other devices that need DVI out). I can think of many legit and illegit uses of this card, some assembly required.
Patently false. Spartan 3 is used in many shipping designs by professionals such as myself. Chances are there's one in some product you own or use at work. It's not necessarily any slower, depending on the speed grade chosen, the only "speed" advantage in the Virtex are the serial I/Os and having a full PowerPC 4xx core which may or may not be useful to a graphics device.
I suspect it is, however, the driving force behind why they're supporting PCI-X (very rare and essentially obsolete) rather than PCI-e (which almost all of us have). Last I checked Spartan does not support PCI-e, not that I've ever had cause to investigate.
I work as an internal designer in parallel to very many offshore groups. That said, I stay as far away from them as possible. Why? They're mismanaged, and have no real long term interest in our company.
The would be supervisors are often very young and have no actual design experience. They know textbook stuff (that is to say: they're rapidly forgetting it), but are pressured to deliver fast/cheap hardware. They choose offshore developers based on lowest bid, the offshore companies know that next year they'll again have to be the low bidder. There's very little incentive for them to worry about the quality of their platform. Further, during development, a lot of corners are cut, and the american supervisor usually doesn't do it intelligently (due to lack of experience, youthful exuberance and his own management demands). In the end, we get something that sorta works, as long as customers use it exactly the way we think they should.
Work ethic is notional, I have not seen any evidence that offshore workers work harder or smarter, just longer hours and are easier for us to badger around. Local workers will refuse to work weekends, or at least charge karma against management for doing it. Foreign workers not so much. That said, we haven't seen a greater amount of work get done.
Finally, because of a large time difference and because of language differences they have no real way to become better. They can't ask many questions (and get good answers), so they do what's on paper and only question the most egregious stupidity.
If they started their own companies, I have no doubt that they'd soon be competitive with US based companies in terms of product quality. But as long as they're contracted workers, I doubt it'll change.
The only way to get higher quality and more technically trained people is to do the work in the US (or your home country of choice). Otherwise students seeking careers will see a shady and unprofitable future and avoid the career. Smart engineers could also have been good doctors or lawyers, the careers aren't that far apart at least in the beginning.
There are a number of undergraduate courses in "management" that are part of most accredited Computer Science degrees.
But I agree, short sighted decision making is a hallmark of large corporations for exactly those reasons. "Fiduciary responsibility" is a delusion that's easiest to maintain in the short term.
It's easy to blame Dell or HP, but if either one of them refuses to ship, say, an nVidia graphics chip, consumers won't think twice about crossing them off the list.
The general public needs to feel the need before this can really change.
I never auto-update anything, if I have a choice, so as far as I'm concerned, it's fine.
I'd consider it successful if: 1) It's cheaper than an apple 2) It works as well as a PC 3) The only money apple is being paid, is for their OS (which is the only part of the system many of us have any interest in) 4) They don't get sued out of business, or forced via court action to violate #3.
The idea is successful if: 5) Many other people can do it too.
I agree to the part where services are separated from line ownership. I agree with your points about government ownership. But, wires is where the monopoly actually lies and monopolies don't self control. The services can and should be let to compete with one another on equal footing (i.e. no one has undo control over the natural resource in question).
Anyone can provide the services, and it should be up to market forces for us to pick and choose between what services offer us the most value for the dollar (rather than a monopoly owner, government or corporate making that decision).
The true monopoly is the physical wires, and market forces won't control it very well. When it suits them, telco/cable companies like to use "wireless" as their competitor, but it's a matter of physics that wireless will always be inferior. So, either the government needs to own it, or it needs to be some non-profit organization, but it must be somehow separated from services.
If there were any parallel possible, the more ideal choice is something like Linux for Wires. A group of people who care about our communications infrastructure and keep it up and running, and find ways of using private interests to keep it funded. But much like public transportation and police work, sometimes the government is the only body available. It's often corrupt, subject to spying, etc. which is why I woudln't nominate a federal government for this.
I read his statement as a metaphor for living life according to his own set of desires and goals, rather than through shared goals of other people. He's internally driven to accomplish various tasks (building a park/app/family) in life, and sees external communication as a bother and distraction. That sounds like a very full life.
Now if he said he spends 100% of his time building an app, maybe I can see your point.
Either way, you don't need to be victimized by the constant barrage of noise (IMs/media/etc.) to live a full life. If you have a family, you probably (hopefully) have more than sufficient noise and communication as it is, and they can't be shut off.
News at 11.
There's no shock here that if you let any corporation make decisions about the fate of technology, they'll make the wrong one. Here we have 2 that both made the wrong choice.
Another caution about putting all our faith in Apple.
As long as I'm a) being made aware that information is being collected and b) that I am being compensated in some way (say a free emailbox, or search engine) then I do not actually care.
Most of the time, I'm not being compensated and should not be participating against my knowledge or will.
All I can say about twitter is that my company spends a good amount of our morning propaganda talking about the great things people are saying about us on Twitter, and how many high profile people in my company are using Twitter. Since there is a sharp contrast between that and what other media say about us, I suspect this media is corrupt.
Of course, as you say, grand unification of two annoying technologies, glued by a name which suggests an annoying buzzing sound doesn't inspire me to go check and prove myself wrong.
What about having an opinion that you spew endlessly based on either fabricated or highly suspect data that comes from sources with no real credibility? You don't need to be a government agent to manipulate the media, you just need to have strong opinions.
I can make a blog about what a slut Sally is, and point to other bloggers who also think Sally is a slut, and even find references to sluts named Sally in various publications. I could even make my own "news" site publishing articles about Sally's exploits. Who, other than Sally, will complain (and would we even believe her after all that!)
My employer pays people to go around to various website (including this one), policing anti- posts, and posting propaganda. They reference "news" articles on sites which are compromised due to the ad revenue we provide. Additionally, bloggers are paid to produce positive spin press in high profile places. This has been going on for years, and won't surprise any slashdotter.
My point is not that two wrongs make a right, just that the military hopping on the bandwagon is not as insidious as our knee-jerk reactions might indicate. I'd just prefer it not be funded with my tax dollars. If anything it's a blatant warning about the credibility of our "new media".
In fact the Beijing accent of Mandarin puts "R" sounds at the end of many words even where there isn't one. Similar I guess to north-eastern american's who drop R sounds at the end of words.
Apple is not a loveable company. They're closed and proprietary. At times you had to pay money to develop for them. At times they've been very slow to respond to new technologies they did not invent (prior to OS X, their OS was a dinosaur only the dedicated could love). If we drop Microsoft and flock to Apple, we have stopped worshipping one devil just for another. Google's current direction is really a better answer.
Will we hate Google one day? Certainly, when they become obsolete and more trouble than they're worth. But for right now they're fixing broken telecom problems, they're providing OS/Hardware agnostic applications and providing very useful services for free...and are profitable to boot. All of which are so vastly more important to the industry and our economy that we're willing to overlook them spying on our email and hard drives to shove ads down our throat. Gradually, the industry will get a clue and compete with Google and they'll have to start pinching pennys and shove just a few more ads down our throat than we really want just to show enough profit to keep investors happy...but for now, they're an answer to our problems while Apple is just an alternative problem.
Slashdot Mirror
He's not asking you or your grandmother to invest your life savings into these things. He's asking you to keep an open mind that there MAY be unexpected phenomena out there.
Thermodynamics is a law you cannot prove. Instead we prove everything else around it. It's our insistance that you can't get something from nothing that drives it, and it works for us. No one is asking you to stop believing in this, only to believe that we may not have identified every fuel source or type of energy. If we discover a system that APPEARS to violate the laws of thermodynamics by looking at all known energy sources, that's a good thing, it means we've discovered a new branch of science. Radation was one such find...materials that produce energy from...nothing. 100 years later, we know where the energy comes from and look at what it did for us.
TFA is probably bullshit. It should be reviewed with a critical eye without feeding potential trolls. It'll turn out the system is receiving power from something we understand (like the sun cooking the water, or something silly), and probably isn't very exciting. But you shouldn't just close your mind to it instantly and assume we know everything, or science is dead.
Playing devil's advocate, let's look at it from the other side. Every system, no matter how noble or ideal, needs a backdoor for emergencies. Do you want to see cash replaced with electronic transactions? What's your problem with wiretapping if you aren't a criminal? Why can't we automate traffic policing, if everyone is an obedient citizen? We have many laws and rules which are necessarily overreaching and broad to prevent rampant abuse and social ills, but which any of us would break given we know the spirit of the law. If we all had to pay for every crime we commit, society would be very constrained, perhaps stagnant in some cases.
I think the government may have a similar need with respect to terrorism and foreign enemies. Yes, it's wrong. But perhaps it's a necessary evil from time to time. Perhaps if you KNOW Muhammad Blow is a terrorist, because your deep cover agents have infiltrated his group, and you believe you can safely remove him from circulation without revealing your agent...you should do so. If we all were able to see the real Truth of all these detainments, I suspect that we would not object to every single one.
I think the real atrocity committed, is that we have so many and there is so much of a circus created, that the Supreme Court really couldn't allow it to continue. The crime was forcing the decision to be made, because you exaggerate the problem so far out of hand and become incredible. The government is clearly abusing its loophole and making it easier for it to continue, it had to be closed.
But what about consequences? Detaining someone in a prison is relatively high profile, you cannot keep it secret for too long, particularly in the US. But we do have enemies from time to time, real, tangible, dangerous enemies that don't always make the news. They must be dealt with, and due process may make the government too slow to protect civilians. The alternative may be an increase in government sponsored assassinations and "disappearances". People die every day, it's a shame. If you ask me, that is a greater evil. Innocent people can be released from prison, but dead innocent people are dead. Regardless of what you and I personally think about the terrorist/foriegn threats, it is the job of people who take national security terribly seriously to make those decisions. I suspect rather than being a last resort, it will be the only option. Used less frequently than detainment in gitmo, but maybe more frequently than it is now.
So to counteract your meta-fear of the next 30 years, they DID make the right choice for the US constitution and upholding the values we hold dear. You have to feel good about that. That their decision magically also reflects the reality that there will be dire consequences for having made it gives me faith that smart people are looking out for us.
We shouldn't care because this is the political equivalent of shouting "hook'em horns". If this was anything but grandstanding it would have been done years ago. Now, it's just a feel good editorial of "this president in review".
Further, we should make it a point not to care, because while we're busy following impeachment babble, our candidates will be redefining their positions as they transition their campaign from party nominations to election. Such distractions serve to allow them to change their platforms while we get caught up in the emotion of the day. This is particularly important for Obama since he's the popular vote, but not totally in line with his party.
Ignoring this bullshit and telling this guy to shut his hole, will actually serve more good for keeping the upcoming election about the will of the people rather than chosing the lesser evil between two parties who don't actually give a rip about us. This whole "lesser evil" nonsense really isn't working out for us, at some point we the public need to be smart about ignoring non-issues.
The past is a non-issue, it's done. Dubya is a non-issue, he's done. Love him or hate him, it's all over but the pardons. Moving on...
You would have been eaten by a fr0st p1st long before you whipped out your torch.
Some candidates may locate this on the map in the areas currently labelled "Iran" and/or "North Korea".
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Ideas are cheap, and not all are implementable. The star trek style transporter idea, while an awesome idea, is not really all that practical. All the various magic that makes that idea work would be, and the assembly of those ideas into the new system that is the transporter, and the work behind that is what makes it valuable.
Deeper still each of those bits of magic are comprised both of ideas and some hard work to prove them out and discover their limitations/issues of note.
That's what the real value is, but you can't wrap a piece of legalese around it all and extract money so easily. Ideas are just the first step and NOT worth legal protection, the hows and whys behind it are closer to what needs some kind of protection.
Theoretically, you can spend $1500 to buy this card, and use the rest on buying a $1500 cheaper fancy car.
It's a development platform with all the interfaces you'd need to make a graphics card out of it (or any number of other devices that need DVI out). I can think of many legit and illegit uses of this card, some assembly required.
Patently false. Spartan 3 is used in many shipping designs by professionals such as myself. Chances are there's one in some product you own or use at work. It's not necessarily any slower, depending on the speed grade chosen, the only "speed" advantage in the Virtex are the serial I/Os and having a full PowerPC 4xx core which may or may not be useful to a graphics device.
I suspect it is, however, the driving force behind why they're supporting PCI-X (very rare and essentially obsolete) rather than PCI-e (which almost all of us have). Last I checked Spartan does not support PCI-e, not that I've ever had cause to investigate.
I work as an internal designer in parallel to very many offshore groups. That said, I stay as far away from them as possible. Why? They're mismanaged, and have no real long term interest in our company.
The would be supervisors are often very young and have no actual design experience. They know textbook stuff (that is to say: they're rapidly forgetting it), but are pressured to deliver fast/cheap hardware. They choose offshore developers based on lowest bid, the offshore companies know that next year they'll again have to be the low bidder. There's very little incentive for them to worry about the quality of their platform. Further, during development, a lot of corners are cut, and the american supervisor usually doesn't do it intelligently (due to lack of experience, youthful exuberance and his own management demands). In the end, we get something that sorta works, as long as customers use it exactly the way we think they should.
Work ethic is notional, I have not seen any evidence that offshore workers work harder or smarter, just longer hours and are easier for us to badger around. Local workers will refuse to work weekends, or at least charge karma against management for doing it. Foreign workers not so much. That said, we haven't seen a greater amount of work get done.
Finally, because of a large time difference and because of language differences they have no real way to become better. They can't ask many questions (and get good answers), so they do what's on paper and only question the most egregious stupidity.
If they started their own companies, I have no doubt that they'd soon be competitive with US based companies in terms of product quality. But as long as they're contracted workers, I doubt it'll change.
The only way to get higher quality and more technically trained people is to do the work in the US (or your home country of choice). Otherwise students seeking careers will see a shady and unprofitable future and avoid the career. Smart engineers could also have been good doctors or lawyers, the careers aren't that far apart at least in the beginning.
There are a number of undergraduate courses in "management" that are part of most accredited Computer Science degrees.
But I agree, short sighted decision making is a hallmark of large corporations for exactly those reasons. "Fiduciary responsibility" is a delusion that's easiest to maintain in the short term.
It's easy to blame Dell or HP, but if either one of them refuses to ship, say, an nVidia graphics chip, consumers won't think twice about crossing them off the list.
The general public needs to feel the need before this can really change.
I never auto-update anything, if I have a choice, so as far as I'm concerned, it's fine.
I'd consider it successful if:
1) It's cheaper than an apple
2) It works as well as a PC
3) The only money apple is being paid, is for their OS (which is the only part of the system many of us have any interest in)
4) They don't get sued out of business, or forced via court action to violate #3.
The idea is successful if:
5) Many other people can do it too.
It's only a problem if your neighbor presses charges.
there are some lame criminal laws out there, which probably wouldn't stick.
I agree to the part where services are separated from line ownership. I agree with your points about government ownership. But, wires is where the monopoly actually lies and monopolies don't self control. The services can and should be let to compete with one another on equal footing (i.e. no one has undo control over the natural resource in question).
Anyone can provide the services, and it should be up to market forces for us to pick and choose between what services offer us the most value for the dollar (rather than a monopoly owner, government or corporate making that decision).
The true monopoly is the physical wires, and market forces won't control it very well. When it suits them, telco/cable companies like to use "wireless" as their competitor, but it's a matter of physics that wireless will always be inferior. So, either the government needs to own it, or it needs to be some non-profit organization, but it must be somehow separated from services.
If there were any parallel possible, the more ideal choice is something like Linux for Wires. A group of people who care about our communications infrastructure and keep it up and running, and find ways of using private interests to keep it funded. But much like public transportation and police work, sometimes the government is the only body available. It's often corrupt, subject to spying, etc. which is why I woudln't nominate a federal government for this.
A-f'ing-men.
Maybe they stopped lobotomizing the toasters.
I read his statement as a metaphor for living life according to his own set of desires and goals, rather than through shared goals of other people. He's internally driven to accomplish various tasks (building a park/app/family) in life, and sees external communication as a bother and distraction. That sounds like a very full life.
Now if he said he spends 100% of his time building an app, maybe I can see your point.
Either way, you don't need to be victimized by the constant barrage of noise (IMs/media/etc.) to live a full life. If you have a family, you probably (hopefully) have more than sufficient noise and communication as it is, and they can't be shut off.
News at 11. There's no shock here that if you let any corporation make decisions about the fate of technology, they'll make the wrong one. Here we have 2 that both made the wrong choice. Another caution about putting all our faith in Apple.
Have you ever watched porn close caption?
As long as I'm a) being made aware that information is being collected and b) that I am being compensated in some way (say a free emailbox, or search engine) then I do not actually care.
Most of the time, I'm not being compensated and should not be participating against my knowledge or will.
All I can say about twitter is that my company spends a good amount of our morning propaganda talking about the great things people are saying about us on Twitter, and how many high profile people in my company are using Twitter. Since there is a sharp contrast between that and what other media say about us, I suspect this media is corrupt.
Of course, as you say, grand unification of two annoying technologies, glued by a name which suggests an annoying buzzing sound doesn't inspire me to go check and prove myself wrong.
What about having an opinion that you spew endlessly based on either fabricated or highly suspect data that comes from sources with no real credibility? You don't need to be a government agent to manipulate the media, you just need to have strong opinions.
I can make a blog about what a slut Sally is, and point to other bloggers who also think Sally is a slut, and even find references to sluts named Sally in various publications. I could even make my own "news" site publishing articles about Sally's exploits. Who, other than Sally, will complain (and would we even believe her after all that!)
My employer pays people to go around to various website (including this one), policing anti- posts, and posting propaganda. They reference "news" articles on sites which are compromised due to the ad revenue we provide. Additionally, bloggers are paid to produce positive spin press in high profile places. This has been going on for years, and won't surprise any slashdotter.
My point is not that two wrongs make a right, just that the military hopping on the bandwagon is not as insidious as our knee-jerk reactions might indicate. I'd just prefer it not be funded with my tax dollars. If anything it's a blatant warning about the credibility of our "new media".
In fact the Beijing accent of Mandarin puts "R" sounds at the end of many words even where there isn't one. Similar I guess to north-eastern american's who drop R sounds at the end of words.
Apple is not a loveable company. They're closed and proprietary. At times you had to pay money to develop for them. At times they've been very slow to respond to new technologies they did not invent (prior to OS X, their OS was a dinosaur only the dedicated could love). If we drop Microsoft and flock to Apple, we have stopped worshipping one devil just for another. Google's current direction is really a better answer. Will we hate Google one day? Certainly, when they become obsolete and more trouble than they're worth. But for right now they're fixing broken telecom problems, they're providing OS/Hardware agnostic applications and providing very useful services for free...and are profitable to boot. All of which are so vastly more important to the industry and our economy that we're willing to overlook them spying on our email and hard drives to shove ads down our throat. Gradually, the industry will get a clue and compete with Google and they'll have to start pinching pennys and shove just a few more ads down our throat than we really want just to show enough profit to keep investors happy...but for now, they're an answer to our problems while Apple is just an alternative problem.