Anyway, I'm a Buddhist, so I don't believe in a creator deity. But I do find the whole debate between science and religion upsetting and disheartening. It's simple: if your religion is true, then it cannot contradict any empirical observation. If it does contradict an empirical observation, then it is not true. So if you find your religion to be contradicting an empirical observation, then you have to decide: do you have faith, or not? If not, get over it and stop whining. If so, figure out where your understanding failed and stop whining. The third alternative, claiming that science is wrong without analysis, is the refuge of knaves and fools.
Jobs go through transitions until someone figures out a way to automate them. Then they go away. Right now the least threatened unskilled jobs are construction and farm work, both of which have a pretty low upper limit on what they can pay.
In the case of computers, if you need a full-time staff to keep your end users' machines working, that's a really obvious place for better automation. Rather than fighting this, we really ought to be figuring out how to maintain a society where extremely high individual productivity means that much work for which there is demand can't be funded by the source of the demand.
Well, no, the expensive payware stuff is often expressly designed to employ consultants from the company that designed it.
Nope. You're probably thinking of Oracle or something like that. You make better margins on software that requires minimal hands-on support. If your software requires a ton of hands on support, you might as well charge for the hands-on support, but your margins on that are never as good as your margins on straight software sales, because the marginal cost of each copy of software is zero. I say this not speaking theoretically, but because I work for a company that sells software. We do our damnedest to make sure the software Just Works for you without requiring our help.
But what I've noticed is that Linux itself is a much bigger management hassle than Windows is. Untrained people manage their own Windows installations fairly easily (i.e., it runs with less intervention, and can update 99% of its installed software without any intervention). Even trained people (even I) have trouble just getting the average Linux distro to a basic, usable state, then updating it with typical software on occasion.
Either you are using a really crappy distro, or you have a lot of legacy hardware. My maintenance effort on my Ubuntu servers is _way_ lower than the effort I go through keeping my Windows VM up to date. I realize that experiences vary, so what you are saying may be true for you, but it's definitely not universally true.
If the science is demonstrably true, and God exists, then there is no contradiction. The randomness is just how God operates. If the randomness really seems to contradict the existence of God, then the problem is in the disciple, not in the science or in God.
Why do they think that the "random" process is not the face of God, or something? If things work a certain way, that's the way they work. If it's God's will, it's God's will. If you think the two are contradictory, you have no faith. The problem is with you, not the science or the religion.
That's a bit of a naive analysis. The government is elected by the people. I suspect that the people of Alberta are more willing to put up with extractive industries than we would like, although I'm sure they are by no means unanimously in favor of the tar sands: the main winning things in Alberta that I'm aware of are agriculture and mountains. But there's no doubt quite a bit more short term money in tar sands than in growing wheat, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to us that the Alberta government isn't doing a very good job of controlling emissions in the tar sands project.
So you're saying a year ago they were testing it, and now they aren't doing it? What kind of crack are you smoking? I saw it with my own eyes—the woman directly in front of me in line got fingerprinted and scanned. Same routine as I had to go through on entry to Japan: two fingers, not ten. I think she was probably a resident alien on a green card; I was steeling myself to refuse to be fingerprinted when I got into line, because I had thought she was a citizen. I have to say, I was not looking forward to being arrested; when they didn't do it to me, I was really relieved. It sucks that they do it to anyone, but I don't know what we can do to stop it in the short term. We really need to stop electing authoritarian assholes.
The first time they did it to me, I figured it was turnabout for what the U.S. does to their citizens. AFAIK we started it—they didn't do this the first time I went to Japan. Unless you are actually an international man (or woman) of mystery, not going because they do this is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you don't want to live in a world where this kind of crap is commonplace, work to create a better world. But you live in this world: don't make yourself miserable to punish yourself for that.
Nope, sorry, they were doing that to alien visitors when I entered at Chicago last week on the way back from Japan. The Japanese government is doing it too. I got photographed at Heathrow a while back, but I'm not entirely sure what they were doing—it wasn't at immigration, so it seemed like some sort of airport security measure.
You are making the opposite of the point I think you intend to make. Improper storage of fuel at nuclear sites is the norm, not the exception, because nobody ever solved the storage problem. They built the plants before they had it solved. Because hey, why worry?
The mismanagement at Fukushima is the norm, not the exception. If you look at actual reports of what goes on in these plants, it becomes clear that the reason we don't have more meltdowns is that the plants _are_ fairly safe, but unfortunately they are not safe enough, because they are operated by people who are trying to make money and who are indemnified against loss by the government of whatever country they are in.
So yes, sure, the plants are very safe. But since they are not operated safely, it doesn't matter. Any UI design that assumes infallibility on the part of the operator will produce accidents. And here the UI is a very big target: the entire operational structure of the plant and the entire financial infrastructure of the organization that runs it. These UIs are not designed to fail safe, and history shows us that they do not. Until we figure out a way to solve that problem, every nuclear power plant is just a mind-bogglingly big accident waiting to happen.
I'm sorry, but this is just naive. The problem we have is that we do not punish politicians for doing evil. This is true both of the Republicans and the Democrats. I won't argue that the Democrats will save us from overspending, because unfortunately they waste nearly as much money as the Republicans. But if you want to see a change, stop painting this as Republican versus Democrat. It's not. It's competent governance versus graft. Show up at the primaries. Pay attention to what the candidate did in office last time. If they voted for graft, and against competence, fire them by voting for their opponent in the primary. If neither candidate is an incumbent, look at what they did in their previous job. Think about it critically. Don't listen to their ads: pay attention to what they did in the past. Try your best to figure out if they really want to govern, or if they just want a ride on the gravy train. Vote accordingly.
It's absolutely sickening how few voters show up for primary elections these days. And it's absolutely sickening how little thought and effort they seem to put into their votes (if what you said above is anything to judge by). Stop being a sheep. Be a citizen.
Lack of access to the reverse DNS tree, or else running multiple domains on the same server. Reverse DNS is not guaranteed to be correct, and is not useful for filtering spam; its highest use is in troubleshooting, because a human being is using it, and can evaluate how meaningful the data there is.
Yup, I tried this for a while years ago and lost a lot of good mail. Recently when my server on a rack in California died and I couldn't get to it for a couple of weeks, I set up a backup server on my home connection (which is Comcast Business, so they don't filter port 25, but I don't have an rDNS set up). Not a single message I sent was bounced. So I conclude that not only is it the case that this isn't an effective tactic, it's also not a technique that anybody uses, for some reasonable value of "anybody."
You are never going to get to vote for a POTUS you like. It's just impossible, because such a person could never get enough votes. So get over it. The place to fight the primaries is Senate and Congressional elections. These elections really matter. The fact that people get all obsessed with the presidential election, which can't possibly ever have a satisfactory outcome, is the reason why our politics are so broken. What matters is our representatives; the executive just has to not be an incompetent asshole.
Well, actually, if you look at what a lot of mainstream Bible Belt churches teach, it's actually Satanism. It's not just using Satan as a threat: it's genuinely worship not of the God described in the New Testament, but of a God who plays favorites (Satan, not the Christian God, who causes it to rain on the just and unjust alike). Who rewards his followers here on earth, not in Heaven. Who encourages us not to turn the other cheek but to answer any injury with a far harsher injury, likely delivered randomly rather than actually to the one who causes the initial injury. Who loves those who sing his praises in public, but who turns his back on those who have a more personal relationship with him.
I don't personally have a problem with people following the religion of their choice, but really, we ought to be clear about just whom it is that they are worshiping. It sure as Hell isn't the God Jesus spoke of.
Or, really, "praise God, the doctor saved him from the deadly disease that God gave him." Whether you believe in God or not, this is a completely nonsensical statement. And as you say, as far as I can tell it's not really the message that the Christian church was supposed to be teaching anyway. Sigh.
Of course, once your phone has been unlocked in this way, you probably don't want to type any passwords into it. Better to arrive with a phone that wasn't locked to begin with. Or buy an iPhone at the Apple Store (they sell them unlocked).
Well, on the plus side, even if the guy had somehow managed to get the C4, it would never have worked. How the hell does an RC aircraft "filled" with C4 even get off the ground, and if it gets off the ground, how do you avoid having it stall and blow you up instead of your target. Really, really dumb idea. It's good that our federal propagandists at least aren't putting people up to plots that could actually *work*...
At present, you can't go to jail, or be compelled, to not run those extensions. This is actually a pretty big deal, even though I tend to agree with the sentiment of some here who think things are pretty bad WRT free speech in the U.S. We have a serious structural free speech problem, but we don't have government control of speech in the sense that it exists in a lot of countries.
We also don't have control over the Internet, something that TFA sort of glosses over. Control over the root zone of the DNS is not the same thing as control of the Internet.
Your question was answered adequately in the comments. RS232C is not cheap. This really sucks, because it *is* simple from our perspective as users. But, c'est la vie.
I'm a bit sorry that they are thinking of WiFi and Ethernet as an either-or proposition, and I agree that at least in principle it would be nice to have an SATA jack, but wow, that's a pretty substantial change from the current form factor. SATA is really problematic, too: do you do ESATA? Powered or non? Or plain SATA, and assume the drive will be in a box with the device?
Slashdot Mirror
Why does the randomness have to be delusion?
Anyway, I'm a Buddhist, so I don't believe in a creator deity. But I do find the whole debate between science and religion upsetting and disheartening. It's simple: if your religion is true, then it cannot contradict any empirical observation. If it does contradict an empirical observation, then it is not true. So if you find your religion to be contradicting an empirical observation, then you have to decide: do you have faith, or not? If not, get over it and stop whining. If so, figure out where your understanding failed and stop whining. The third alternative, claiming that science is wrong without analysis, is the refuge of knaves and fools.
This would make sense except that the people walking out of their classes are individuals, not churches.
Jobs go through transitions until someone figures out a way to automate them. Then they go away. Right now the least threatened unskilled jobs are construction and farm work, both of which have a pretty low upper limit on what they can pay.
In the case of computers, if you need a full-time staff to keep your end users' machines working, that's a really obvious place for better automation. Rather than fighting this, we really ought to be figuring out how to maintain a society where extremely high individual productivity means that much work for which there is demand can't be funded by the source of the demand.
Nope. You're probably thinking of Oracle or something like that. You make better margins on software that requires minimal hands-on support. If your software requires a ton of hands on support, you might as well charge for the hands-on support, but your margins on that are never as good as your margins on straight software sales, because the marginal cost of each copy of software is zero. I say this not speaking theoretically, but because I work for a company that sells software. We do our damnedest to make sure the software Just Works for you without requiring our help.
Either you are using a really crappy distro, or you have a lot of legacy hardware. My maintenance effort on my Ubuntu servers is _way_ lower than the effort I go through keeping my Windows VM up to date. I realize that experiences vary, so what you are saying may be true for you, but it's definitely not universally true.
If the science is demonstrably true, and God exists, then there is no contradiction. The randomness is just how God operates. If the randomness really seems to contradict the existence of God, then the problem is in the disciple, not in the science or in God.
Why do they think that the "random" process is not the face of God, or something? If things work a certain way, that's the way they work. If it's God's will, it's God's will. If you think the two are contradictory, you have no faith. The problem is with you, not the science or the religion.
That's a bit of a naive analysis. The government is elected by the people. I suspect that the people of Alberta are more willing to put up with extractive industries than we would like, although I'm sure they are by no means unanimously in favor of the tar sands: the main winning things in Alberta that I'm aware of are agriculture and mountains. But there's no doubt quite a bit more short term money in tar sands than in growing wheat, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to us that the Alberta government isn't doing a very good job of controlling emissions in the tar sands project.
So you're saying a year ago they were testing it, and now they aren't doing it? What kind of crack are you smoking? I saw it with my own eyes—the woman directly in front of me in line got fingerprinted and scanned. Same routine as I had to go through on entry to Japan: two fingers, not ten. I think she was probably a resident alien on a green card; I was steeling myself to refuse to be fingerprinted when I got into line, because I had thought she was a citizen. I have to say, I was not looking forward to being arrested; when they didn't do it to me, I was really relieved. It sucks that they do it to anyone, but I don't know what we can do to stop it in the short term. We really need to stop electing authoritarian assholes.
The first time they did it to me, I figured it was turnabout for what the U.S. does to their citizens. AFAIK we started it—they didn't do this the first time I went to Japan. Unless you are actually an international man (or woman) of mystery, not going because they do this is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you don't want to live in a world where this kind of crap is commonplace, work to create a better world. But you live in this world: don't make yourself miserable to punish yourself for that.
Nope, sorry, they were doing that to alien visitors when I entered at Chicago last week on the way back from Japan. The Japanese government is doing it too. I got photographed at Heathrow a while back, but I'm not entirely sure what they were doing—it wasn't at immigration, so it seemed like some sort of airport security measure.
You are making the opposite of the point I think you intend to make. Improper storage of fuel at nuclear sites is the norm, not the exception, because nobody ever solved the storage problem. They built the plants before they had it solved. Because hey, why worry?
The mismanagement at Fukushima is the norm, not the exception. If you look at actual reports of what goes on in these plants, it becomes clear that the reason we don't have more meltdowns is that the plants _are_ fairly safe, but unfortunately they are not safe enough, because they are operated by people who are trying to make money and who are indemnified against loss by the government of whatever country they are in.
So yes, sure, the plants are very safe. But since they are not operated safely, it doesn't matter. Any UI design that assumes infallibility on the part of the operator will produce accidents. And here the UI is a very big target: the entire operational structure of the plant and the entire financial infrastructure of the organization that runs it. These UIs are not designed to fail safe, and history shows us that they do not. Until we figure out a way to solve that problem, every nuclear power plant is just a mind-bogglingly big accident waiting to happen.
You missed the part about how you were supposed to select candidates *intelligently*, not hire stupid extremist ideologues.
I'm sorry, but this is just naive. The problem we have is that we do not punish politicians for doing evil. This is true both of the Republicans and the Democrats. I won't argue that the Democrats will save us from overspending, because unfortunately they waste nearly as much money as the Republicans. But if you want to see a change, stop painting this as Republican versus Democrat. It's not. It's competent governance versus graft. Show up at the primaries. Pay attention to what the candidate did in office last time. If they voted for graft, and against competence, fire them by voting for their opponent in the primary. If neither candidate is an incumbent, look at what they did in their previous job. Think about it critically. Don't listen to their ads: pay attention to what they did in the past. Try your best to figure out if they really want to govern, or if they just want a ride on the gravy train. Vote accordingly.
It's absolutely sickening how few voters show up for primary elections these days. And it's absolutely sickening how little thought and effort they seem to put into their votes (if what you said above is anything to judge by). Stop being a sheep. Be a citizen.
Lack of access to the reverse DNS tree, or else running multiple domains on the same server. Reverse DNS is not guaranteed to be correct, and is not useful for filtering spam; its highest use is in troubleshooting, because a human being is using it, and can evaluate how meaningful the data there is.
Yup, I tried this for a while years ago and lost a lot of good mail. Recently when my server on a rack in California died and I couldn't get to it for a couple of weeks, I set up a backup server on my home connection (which is Comcast Business, so they don't filter port 25, but I don't have an rDNS set up). Not a single message I sent was bounced. So I conclude that not only is it the case that this isn't an effective tactic, it's also not a technique that anybody uses, for some reasonable value of "anybody."
You are never going to get to vote for a POTUS you like. It's just impossible, because such a person could never get enough votes. So get over it. The place to fight the primaries is Senate and Congressional elections. These elections really matter. The fact that people get all obsessed with the presidential election, which can't possibly ever have a satisfactory outcome, is the reason why our politics are so broken. What matters is our representatives; the executive just has to not be an incompetent asshole.
Well, actually, if you look at what a lot of mainstream Bible Belt churches teach, it's actually Satanism. It's not just using Satan as a threat: it's genuinely worship not of the God described in the New Testament, but of a God who plays favorites (Satan, not the Christian God, who causes it to rain on the just and unjust alike). Who rewards his followers here on earth, not in Heaven. Who encourages us not to turn the other cheek but to answer any injury with a far harsher injury, likely delivered randomly rather than actually to the one who causes the initial injury. Who loves those who sing his praises in public, but who turns his back on those who have a more personal relationship with him.
I don't personally have a problem with people following the religion of their choice, but really, we ought to be clear about just whom it is that they are worshiping. It sure as Hell isn't the God Jesus spoke of.
Or, really, "praise God, the doctor saved him from the deadly disease that God gave him." Whether you believe in God or not, this is a completely nonsensical statement. And as you say, as far as I can tell it's not really the message that the Christian church was supposed to be teaching anyway. Sigh.
Nobody runs it. There is nothing to see here. These are not the droids you are looking for.
http://xkcd.com/297/
Of course, once your phone has been unlocked in this way, you probably don't want to type any passwords into it. Better to arrive with a phone that wasn't locked to begin with. Or buy an iPhone at the Apple Store (they sell them unlocked).
That's a great link, thanks for sharing it.
Well, on the plus side, even if the guy had somehow managed to get the C4, it would never have worked. How the hell does an RC aircraft "filled" with C4 even get off the ground, and if it gets off the ground, how do you avoid having it stall and blow you up instead of your target. Really, really dumb idea. It's good that our federal propagandists at least aren't putting people up to plots that could actually *work*...
At present, you can't go to jail, or be compelled, to not run those extensions. This is actually a pretty big deal, even though I tend to agree with the sentiment of some here who think things are pretty bad WRT free speech in the U.S. We have a serious structural free speech problem, but we don't have government control of speech in the sense that it exists in a lot of countries.
We also don't have control over the Internet, something that TFA sort of glosses over. Control over the root zone of the DNS is not the same thing as control of the Internet.
I think "funny" does not mean what you think it means.
Your question was answered adequately in the comments. RS232C is not cheap. This really sucks, because it *is* simple from our perspective as users. But, c'est la vie.
I'm a bit sorry that they are thinking of WiFi and Ethernet as an either-or proposition, and I agree that at least in principle it would be nice to have an SATA jack, but wow, that's a pretty substantial change from the current form factor. SATA is really problematic, too: do you do ESATA? Powered or non? Or plain SATA, and assume the drive will be in a box with the device?