The odds of winning the lottery are high. Lets assume that the odds if winning the jackpot if you play one set of numbers, is one in a million. That's pretty rare. Now, if one million people play the jackpot, then the odds that SOMEONE will win the jackpot are 1 in 1. Not very rare. The reason why the odds increase is because you've COMPLETELY CHANGED THE PROBLEM.
Are you following this? Odds of X happening for each element in set Y: 1 in a million. Cardinality of Y: 1 million. Odds of X happening once in the set of Y: One in one. They are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS.
I would draw you a Venn diagram, but I'm really pretty much done flaming you now. Sorry for the hostility, but I sort of needed to vent.:)
Main Entry: satire Pronunciation: 'sa-"tIr Function: noun Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin satura, satira, perhaps from (lanx) satura dish of mixed ingredients, from feminine of satur well-fed; akin to Latin satis enough -- more at SAD Date: 1501 1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn 2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly synonym see WIT
Google rocks. I can do a search and find all the articles I have ever posted on slashdot. (Archived, of course) The problem of slowness of distribution to search engines is a difficulty, but compared to historical ways of gaining information, what we have is incredible.
We should have some sort of a standard way of indexing these pages, and if they make it compatible with all the new technologies coming out, I will be very impressed. The best search engines will use the standard indexing in addition to current technologies, I would suppose, but it would still make life much easier to have this.
Also, if there were a central place to notify that you have posted/changed content. Something like the way domain names are registered in central places. Its in the users best interest to notify the central location that its content has been added/changed, and then the central point propigates its information to anyone who wants it, for a small fee, of course.:)
Why do I post these things on public forums, anyway?
Hmmm... Brought up story to make point. Didn't think anyone would be interested in my own pitiful experiences in the business world.:)
Actually, no, I spent a year at that company, at which point in time I realized I was being royally screwed, (I realized before that actually, but was hoping they would fix it) and went to the company I am working for now. 25% raises are nice.:)
First, I happen to be one of the people who believes Echelon doesn't exist. This actually helps my case. For instance, most of the "information" I have read on Echelon indicates that the system has been in place for a number of years. The information in the article referenced indicates that the US had an accuracy if 25% in 1998. For conversations that were already transcribed. Filtering through even a large portion of phone conversations is unlikely.
And Email? Take a look at that web site that shows the internet connections. Tell me where they're going to hook into the net to keep track of messages? And keep in mind that there are more connections than those graphs show. Not likely either.
On the other hand, the fact is that we don't really KNOW what these people are doing. If the Gov/NSA decides they want to know all about you, they can do so. This I do not argue. I think that we should definitely know what these people are doing, and we should definitely be putting limits on their power.
>But you're still in the wrong here. Instead why didn't you create the >best, most maintainable code possible and then show them. Prove you're >worth the extra bucks and you'll get it. On the other hand, prove that >you're a bitter script-kiddie and you'll get paid accordingly.
First, I'm not saying what he did was right.
But, the truth is that business types will walk all over you if you let them. I got out of college, and started into the industry. I went to work for a company for a VERY low salary. I figured I would show them how good a coder I was, and they would up my salary. According to the other people who worked there, and saw/used/maintained my code, I am a pretty good coder. I was there for nine months and (finally) got a SIX PERCENT raise. The average salary where I am was almost twice what I was making.
The business types don't really care how good you are, or how much you code, or how good your code is, they care how much you yell and scream your head off.
Heh... Usually when someone writes a big long acronym, I look at it for a second, then move on to the next post. I figured the cost of being such a smartass was to not have your posts read.:)
And its not like I'm stupid... Apparently, my brain doesn't work in proper fashion to decrypt these things.
(I can't do jumbles or pronounce french words, either... Coincidence? I think not.)
First, there is no reason why you have to hold a weapon to use it. Dogs make great weapons. ("A poodle may not look like much honey, but it can tear a man's sock right off his foot")
Second, there is also the possibility that a weapon can be used unintentionally. Example: Automobile accidents: Unintentional, (most of the time) but often deadly nonetheless.
This is the only reason I can see that technology could be viewed as tragic. The more tools we have, and the more energy they manipulate (I like that analogy) the more likely they are to be used as weapons, intentionally or otherwise.
Otherwise, I think this whole technology discussion is bullcrap.:) (The smiley indicates that I mean that in the best possible way)
I can find no flaw in your logic, but I feel its not really applicable to the conversation.
If you give me a goal, something like: "I'm thinking of a number. What is it?" Then, given an infinite amount of time, I _should_ be able to figure out the number. If I followed a pattern of 2, 4, 6, 8,... and so on there is a 50% chance that I will never find the number. Its the same as saying if you continually guess "1238", assuming that that is not the number, you WILL never find the number. The attack of the problem does require a certain degree of intelligence.
Admittedly, my original statement was not the most mathematically logical of arguments, but it was not my intention to provide a formal proof of my argument.:)
The point is, if there exists a person who has access to a system, then there exists an attack, that if given an infinite time, will compromise any security put on that system.
Its really a personal belief, and I'm not sure if it can be proven (or disproven), but I only have a couple beliefs, so I think I'll keep this one.:)
First, I don't even know who this guy is, or really care. I reply to this only because I'm kept at the moment from doing anything useful.
Second, the questions asked of this guy were bogus. (More below)
Third, why would he be defensive: Because everyone on this site attacked him!
Fourth, why does anyone care? In the competitive business world, which this guy is (apparently) in, the rules are simple: If you suck, you will be poor.
There appear to be three posibilities: Either this guy has the skills, or he doesn't and this is just alot of BS. Either way, why are we attacking him?
Finally, a rundown of the questions: (This is the fun part) Question 1: Hostile question. Answerable, and John does so later on. His answer doesn't make much sense, though. Question 2: Slightly hostile. John explains. And, BTW, if what he says is true, I would have taken a sledgehammer to the PacketStorm server. Question 3: Hostile. See question 1. Question 4: Good question. Not answered. Question 5: Someone get that man some punctuation. Question 6: Answered by John. John is either lying through his teeth or question is unfounded. Question 7: Addressed by author of question in a post down further. Question 8: ??? Question 9: This looks like a personal argument. Question 10: And the guy's not making any sense. Question 11: Still not making any sense. Question 12: The second decent question. Answered by reading the forums, I think.
If you ask me, (And nobody did and I don't care) this guy sounds like most of my friends: I'm not taking your BS, if you don't like me or what I'm doing, look somewhere else.
This is the same as the USGov/Privacy issue. Any information you have can be accessed by anyone, if given enough time and resources. If someone wants to listen to every conversation you have, they CAN, given enough resources.
Its the same as the infinite monkeys writing works of Shakespeare; ANYTHING is possible in infinite time, or possible in finite time with infinite resources... (And much satisfaction was gained by comparing the NSA to a bunch of feces-throwing hairy tree-climbers)
You need to compare the difficulty needed to put this security scheme in place (years, apparently) to the benefit gained for the security. Is it going to stop someone dedicated to finding this information: No, in both cases. Is there anyone who would be able to gain access to the information with the pasword security scheme which would NOT be able to gain access with the two-factor scheme?
I think this might be able to stop someone randomly searching for saleable data, but how many such people are going to look at a medical database for that sort of information? There are easier ways to get more profitable information, I would say (not to mention the ease of physically getting access to the patient's files).
The biggest problem with going to the moon is that it is not financially profitable.
I'm not sure of the cost difference between building a resort on the moon versus building a resort on a beach somewhere, but I think its probably pretty significant. Not to mention the insurance costs.
These, combined with the cost of GETTING to the moon, would make a stay in a moon resort some factors higher than a stay in a carribean resort, I suspect.
And, personally, I would MUCH rather have a vacation on a nice warm beach than a cold moon base.
>2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect >in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world >country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, >childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted >meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, >most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation >is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open >sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, >I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our >lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. >Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us >any good.
Wonderful... The 10% of the people with the 90% of the worlds wealth are doing MUCH better than 400 years ago. I find myself wondering what percentage of the people have homes with electricity and hot water. Meanwhile, the average AMERICAN bleeds away his life sitting on the couch watching television.
Admittedly, I don't agree with Mr. Katz about technology being tragic, but I AM beginning to wonder if massive technology collapse on 1/1/2000 might be a very good thing. /Rant off/
Its all a conspiracy by the shirt people! They plan on taking over the whole United States! They're in cahoots (I always wanted to use "cahoots" in a sentence) with the CIA, FBI, and the NSA! I'm not sure why they're starting with the theme parks, but its TRUE, I tell you!
(FYI: When in Disney, we noticed large groups of people wandering around all wearing the same coloured T-shirts. They were promptly dubbed "Shirt people". And no, I am actually NOT insane)
The truth is, very few pistols are made for hunting, and very few of the rifles made for the military have ever been used for hunting purposes...
I agree with your position, however. If we were to remove all guns from off the face of the earth (which is not possible) people would still find ways to kill each other. As a matter of fact, they would probably find nastier ways of killing each other.
Thinking and questioning are good things. I'm glad you do so, even if we disagree.
>I, however, fundementally trust my government to protect the interests >of the people of the United States. In the past, the US gov. has gone >to great lengths to do what it thinks is in our best interest.
The problem is that the government is run by people. Kvort's first theorem: "People suck." The government of the United States was created to be a huge balancing act. One portion of government balances another.
The major balancing act, however, is between the government and the people. The people run the government, and the government governs (for lack of a better term) the people. Should one side or the other get too much power, the system will get out of balance. On one side lies anarchy, on the other, a police state. For examples of a police state, look to Hitler's Germany, where disliked people were (for political reasons) blamed for the difficulties of the nation.
For another example of a police state, study the US' Red Scare, where people were destroyed, policially, socially, and economically, for being communists. Many of these people were not communists, but were accused unjustly. Communism is not even a bad thing, but simply an unattainable ideal. The biggest reason the US disliked the USSR was that it was a police state, which is what we almost became ourselves!
On the other hand lies anarchy, which I feel many people here would probably argue for (I disagree). I do feel that the balance has shifted over to the side of government, but I do not think that it is a huge imbalance, nor do I think we should tear down the government and replace it.
I DO think the government should not be allowed to restrict free speech in any way, which includes monitoring of communications, which COULD and HAS and WILL be used by those in power as a tool for political or economic gain, usually by destroying other people.
I will eagerly await your reply, for this is quite an interesting conversation.
First of all, I don't even know what a petabyte is.
Second of all, I don't feel like looking it up.
Assuming this is the next larger value than a terabyte, where, exactly, were they storing this information in 1989?
I think my father had a computer with an 80 megabyte HD that year. Assuming there was publicly available technology to store a gigabyte then, in a format they could get all the data off of in 30 seconds, is a stretch. Six orders of magnitude ABOVE that...?
I don't think it unlikely that they could store this much info, but to be able to get access to it in 30 seconds, no. I won't bother dealing with the bandwidth issues here. Its more probable that they invented teleport technology and just beamed the data across the US.:)
I was unclear. My application was not of the web, but just a kludge to so some specific things on a machine that has my company's software installed.
Admittedly, I know next to nothing about web server apps, other than writing some VB forms for a program that connected through a MTS Server to a MS-SQL DB. Phear that sh^Htuff. The clients REALLY liked MS. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy writing apps that sit on a user's machine and chug happily away by themselves.
So, yes, I was talking out of my arse. And despite many years of practice, I'm still not very good at it.:)
>This is more than anecdotal. This _is_ Echelon. I personally believe >that there is no economical way that the NSA could monitor all of conspiring people being involved. Plus hardware costs >would be enormous as well, and co-location would be issues also.
Exactly... If you were going to monitor internet traffic, the best place would be one or more of the Network Access Points (NAPs). There were four main NAPs, and now there are more (I didn't research how many) but much of the network traffic goes through these main access points. Notice, however, that not ALL network traffic goes through these. At MAE East, network traffic there is upwards of two gigabits per second during peak times.
So you're going to tell me that people who are sworn to complete secrecy search through two gigabits of info per second looking for keywords in email messages? And this only comprises a small portion of the data sent over the Internet every day.
I won't say its not possible, but its damned unlikely.
>What I do believe Echelon to be is a series of satelites that >listen to broadcasts like those of planes, cellphones, etc. >Voice recognitions IS involved, and this is even public knowledge. >Last year the NSA demonstrated their its capabilities to >Congress where they recorded a cellphone conversation of >Strom Thurmond talking to his secretary. The press passively >shit in their pants about the privacy issues, but never really >made too much of a deal about it. This is what I believe Echelon >can do.
Interesting theory. However, it requires alot of computing power to do voice recognition. I don't see why they can't tap into cell phones, etc, but then again, I'm not much of a hardware geek. If they could tap into conversations, it might be feasible to search certain conversations for certain words, but I would imagine that there would be a large error factor involved. And still a huge amount of computing power.
Don't get me wrong, the fact is that the government can spy on anyone they specifically want to, which is IHMO a very dangerous thing. I do not believe that they have the ability to spy on a large segment of the population all the time tho. Its just too unrealistic.
>As far as being a huge executable, take a look at the binaries produced by some of >the Microsoft Web solutions (ahem, VB, ahem) and we'll talk about huge executables. >The Tcl binary is about the same size as the Perl binary, and many complex C >programs end up being very large also, once you incorporate regex parsing routines, >CGI libraries, and image processing libraries.
First, VB sucks.
Second, I had to write a script in VB (Did I mention VB sucks?) and the execuable came out to be 32K, which I think is probably some sort of minimum size for a VB exe. I dunno how big the scripts you write come out to be, but as far as a MS proggie is concerned, that's pretty small.
Third, VB sucks.
I've considered learning perl, but until I actually have something to write, (preferably something I get paid for) there is actually little motivation to do so. I agree about the lack of string manipulation and parsing functions in C/C++, although I'm curious about the poster who claimed strcpy is a slow function. The implementations I have seen follow like this:
which does not seem like alot of overhead to me... This is actually quite similar to the implementation of at least one OS strcpy function that I looked at. Most of the other string manipulation functions are as similar. The biggest problem with them is that many people don't get the whole pointer thang. And for those that do, the code is still extremely prone to bugs.
As far as the general subject of the thread, I have to agree with many of the other posters, use whatever tool is appropriate at the time. And judgement of "appropriate" includes any time it takes you to learn the languages you're considering. It also includes time it takes you to reload the ENTIRE development enviroment because your bug caused you to parse past the end of a string and this caused the development enviroment to crash. (Did I mention VB sucks?)
> "Why is this bad news if they're good games? >Because they're religion based? Or for other >reasons?"
>I think the bad news he means in this sentence is >that this will spawn more hypocritical people >churning out games dictating a rule of morality >and ethics, but only looking for a buck in >doing so.
Heh... You mean like 99% of religious figures today?
That's actually quite pessimistic of me to say. More than likely, half of them are only looking for power, and only about 49% are looking for money.
I don't agree with Mr. Katz assesment that religion and freedom are enemies. Many people came to this country over the years seeking religious freedom. Many others came seeking alot of money. The problem, as I see it, is that the two groups merged somewhere along the line.
To bring this more to a slashdot topic, I feel that these people should release their game under a GPL, so I can laugh at their pitiful coding skills. (Sorry, I needed an ego trip; frequent flier miles, you know)
Final note: I would never admit to following a "religion", but I DO believe in life outside the three dimensions through which we view this universe, whatever such being(s) may be called.
Slashdot Mirror
*Sigh...*
:)
You're taking all the fun out of it.
To use your example: Winning the lottery.
The odds of winning the lottery are high. Lets assume that the odds if winning the jackpot if you play one set of numbers, is one in a million. That's pretty rare. Now, if one million people play the jackpot, then the odds that SOMEONE will win the jackpot are 1 in 1. Not very rare. The reason why the odds increase is because you've COMPLETELY CHANGED THE PROBLEM.
Are you following this? Odds of X happening for each element in set Y: 1 in a million. Cardinality of Y: 1 million. Odds of X happening once in the set of Y: One in one. They are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS.
I would draw you a Venn diagram, but I'm really pretty much done flaming you now. Sorry for the hostility, but I sort of needed to vent.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
He ignores the fact that rare events occur all the time.
Rare events are common?
*rotf*
Not only is that the funniest thing I have ever read, but its also very Zen.
I will remember this for the rest of my life, or at least until I fall asleep tonight.
>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Main Entry: satire
Pronunciation: 'sa-"tIr
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin satura, satira, perhaps from (lanx) satura dish of mixed ingredients, from feminine of satur well-fed; akin to Latin satis enough -- more at
SAD
Date: 1501
1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
synonym see WIT
Props to Merriam and Webster, whomever they were.
>>>>>>>> Kvort
Google rocks. I can do a search and find all the articles I have ever posted on slashdot. (Archived, of course) The problem of slowness of distribution to search engines is a difficulty, but compared to historical ways of gaining information, what we have is incredible.
:)
We should have some sort of a standard way of indexing these pages, and if they make it compatible with all the new technologies coming out, I will be very impressed. The best search engines will use the standard indexing in addition to current technologies, I would suppose, but it would still make life much easier to have this.
Also, if there were a central place to notify that you have posted/changed content. Something like the way domain names are registered in central places. Its in the users best interest to notify the central location that its content has been added/changed, and then the central point propigates its information to anyone who wants it, for a small fee, of course.
Why do I post these things on public forums, anyway?
>>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
I personally blame my well-roundedness on Wendy's and lack of activity.
.sig)
(Someone had to do it. And I'm trying out my new
>>>>>>>> Kvort
This sounds like something from Calvin and Hobbes.
"I hit you with the CalvinBall!"
"This is a reverse time zone. You haven't hit me yet."
"I hit the opposite pole, so this is actually a forward time zone..."
Heh... I miss that strip.
>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Hmmm... Brought up story to make point. Didn't think anyone would be interested in my own pitiful experiences in the business world. :)
:)
Actually, no, I spent a year at that company, at which point in time I realized I was being royally screwed, (I realized before that actually, but was hoping they would fix it) and went to the company I am working for now. 25% raises are nice.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Now this is an interesting discussion.
First, I happen to be one of the people who believes Echelon doesn't exist. This actually helps my case. For instance, most of the "information" I have read on Echelon indicates that the system has been in place for a number of years. The information in the article referenced indicates that the US had an accuracy if 25% in 1998. For conversations that were already transcribed. Filtering through even a large portion of phone conversations is unlikely.
And Email? Take a look at that web site that shows the internet connections. Tell me where they're going to hook into the net to keep track of messages? And keep in mind that there are more connections than those graphs show. Not likely either.
On the other hand, the fact is that we don't really KNOW what these people are doing. If the Gov/NSA decides they want to know all about you, they can do so. This I do not argue. I think that we should definitely know what these people are doing, and we should definitely be putting limits on their power.
>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
>But you're still in the wrong here. Instead why didn't you create the
>best, most maintainable code possible and then show them. Prove you're
>worth the extra bucks and you'll get it. On the other hand, prove that
>you're a bitter script-kiddie and you'll get paid accordingly.
First, I'm not saying what he did was right.
But, the truth is that business types will walk all over you if you let them. I got out of college, and started into the industry. I went to work for a company for a VERY low salary. I figured I would show them how good a coder I was, and they would up my salary. According to the other people who worked there, and saw/used/maintained my code, I am a pretty good coder. I was there for nine months and (finally) got a SIX PERCENT raise. The average salary where I am was almost twice what I was making.
The business types don't really care how good you are, or how much you code, or how good your code is, they care how much you yell and scream your head off.
>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Heh... Usually when someone writes a big long acronym, I look at it for a second, then move on to the next post. I figured the cost of being such a smartass was to not have your posts read. :)
And its not like I'm stupid... Apparently, my brain doesn't work in proper fashion to decrypt these things.
(I can't do jumbles or pronounce french words, either... Coincidence? I think not.)
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
First, there is no reason why you have to hold a weapon to use it. Dogs make great weapons. ("A poodle may not look like much honey, but it can tear a man's sock right off his foot")
:) (The smiley indicates that I mean that in the best possible way)
Second, there is also the possibility that a weapon can be used unintentionally. Example: Automobile accidents: Unintentional, (most of the time) but often deadly nonetheless.
This is the only reason I can see that technology could be viewed as tragic. The more tools we have, and the more energy they manipulate (I like that analogy) the more likely they are to be used as weapons, intentionally or otherwise.
Otherwise, I think this whole technology discussion is bullcrap.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
I still believe in the frozen head of Walt Disney.
(Oh, is it time for my pill? Why, thank you...)
>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Hmmm....
... and so on there is a 50% chance that I will never find the number. Its the same as saying if you continually guess "1238", assuming that that is not the number, you WILL never find the number. The attack of the problem does require a certain degree of intelligence.
:)
:)
I can find no flaw in your logic, but I feel its not really applicable to the conversation.
If you give me a goal, something like: "I'm thinking of a number. What is it?" Then, given an infinite amount of time, I _should_ be able to figure out the number. If I followed a pattern of 2, 4, 6, 8,
Admittedly, my original statement was not the most mathematically logical of arguments, but it was not my intention to provide a formal proof of my argument.
The point is, if there exists a person who has access to a system, then there exists an attack, that if given an infinite time, will compromise any security put on that system.
Its really a personal belief, and I'm not sure if it can be proven (or disproven), but I only have a couple beliefs, so I think I'll keep this one.
First, I don't even know who this guy is, or really care. I reply to this only because I'm kept at the moment from doing anything useful.
Second, the questions asked of this guy were bogus. (More below)
Third, why would he be defensive: Because everyone on this site attacked him!
Fourth, why does anyone care? In the competitive business world, which this guy is (apparently) in, the rules are simple: If you suck, you will be poor.
There appear to be three posibilities: Either this guy has the skills, or he doesn't and this is just alot of BS. Either way, why are we attacking him?
Finally, a rundown of the questions: (This is the fun part)
Question 1: Hostile question. Answerable, and John does so later on. His answer doesn't make much sense, though.
Question 2: Slightly hostile. John explains. And, BTW, if what he says is true, I would have taken a sledgehammer to the PacketStorm server.
Question 3: Hostile. See question 1.
Question 4: Good question. Not answered.
Question 5: Someone get that man some punctuation.
Question 6: Answered by John. John is either lying through his teeth or question is unfounded.
Question 7: Addressed by author of question in a post down further.
Question 8: ???
Question 9: This looks like a personal argument.
Question 10: And the guy's not making any sense.
Question 11: Still not making any sense.
Question 12: The second decent question. Answered by reading the forums, I think.
If you ask me, (And nobody did and I don't care) this guy sounds like most of my friends: I'm not taking your BS, if you don't like me or what I'm doing, look somewhere else.
>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
This is the same as the USGov/Privacy issue. Any information you have can be accessed by anyone, if given enough time and resources. If someone wants to listen to every conversation you have, they CAN, given enough resources.
Its the same as the infinite monkeys writing works of Shakespeare; ANYTHING is possible in infinite time, or possible in finite time with infinite resources... (And much satisfaction was gained by comparing the NSA to a bunch of feces-throwing hairy tree-climbers)
You need to compare the difficulty needed to put this security scheme in place (years, apparently) to the benefit gained for the security. Is it going to stop someone dedicated to finding this information: No, in both cases. Is there anyone who would be able to gain access to the information with the pasword security scheme which would NOT be able to gain access with the two-factor scheme?
I think this might be able to stop someone randomly searching for saleable data, but how many such people are going to look at a medical database for that sort of information? There are easier ways to get more profitable information, I would say (not to mention the ease of physically getting access to the patient's files).
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
The biggest problem with going to the moon is that it is not financially profitable.
I'm not sure of the cost difference between building a resort on the moon versus building a resort on a beach somewhere, but I think its probably pretty significant. Not to mention the insurance costs.
These, combined with the cost of GETTING to the moon, would make a stay in a moon resort some factors higher than a stay in a carribean resort, I suspect.
And, personally, I would MUCH rather have a vacation on a nice warm beach than a cold moon base.
>>>>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
>2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect
>in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world
>country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections,
>childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted
>meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio,
>most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation
>is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open
>sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago,
>I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our
>lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge.
>Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us
>any good.
Wonderful... The 10% of the people with the 90% of the worlds wealth are doing MUCH better than 400 years ago. I find myself wondering what percentage of the people have homes with electricity and hot water. Meanwhile, the average AMERICAN bleeds away his life sitting on the couch watching television.
Admittedly, I don't agree with Mr. Katz about technology being tragic, but I AM beginning to wonder if massive technology collapse on 1/1/2000 might be a very good thing.
/Rant off/
>>>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Its all a conspiracy by the shirt people! They plan on taking over the whole United States! They're in cahoots (I always wanted to use "cahoots" in a sentence) with the CIA, FBI, and the NSA! I'm not sure why they're starting with the theme parks, but its TRUE, I tell you!
(FYI: When in Disney, we noticed large groups of people wandering around all wearing the same coloured T-shirts. They were promptly dubbed "Shirt people". And no, I am actually NOT insane)
>>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
Depends on the gun, of course.
;)
Some guns are meant just to HURT people.
The truth is, very few pistols are made for hunting, and very few of the rifles made for the military have ever been used for hunting purposes...
I agree with your position, however. If we were to remove all guns from off the face of the earth (which is not possible) people would still find ways to kill each other. As a matter of fact, they would probably find nastier ways of killing each other.
I would be rambling now, wouldn't I?...
>>>>>>> Kvort
Thinking and questioning are good things. I'm glad you do so, even if we disagree.
>I, however, fundementally trust my government to protect the interests
>of the people of the United States. In the past, the US gov. has gone
>to great lengths to do what it thinks is in our best interest.
The problem is that the government is run by people. Kvort's first theorem: "People suck." The government of the United States was created to be a huge balancing act. One portion of government balances another.
The major balancing act, however, is between the government and the people. The people run the government, and the government governs (for lack of a better term) the people. Should one side or the other get too much power, the system will get out of balance. On one side lies anarchy, on the other, a police state. For examples of a police state, look to Hitler's Germany, where disliked people were (for political reasons) blamed for the difficulties of the nation.
For another example of a police state, study the US' Red Scare, where people were destroyed, policially, socially, and economically, for being communists. Many of these people were not communists, but were accused unjustly. Communism is not even a bad thing, but simply an unattainable ideal. The biggest reason the US disliked the USSR was that it was a police state, which is what we almost became ourselves!
On the other hand lies anarchy, which I feel many people here would probably argue for (I disagree). I do feel that the balance has shifted over to the side of government, but I do not think that it is a huge imbalance, nor do I think we should tear down the government and replace it.
I DO think the government should not be allowed to restrict free speech in any way, which includes monitoring of communications, which COULD and HAS and WILL be used by those in power as a tool for political or economic gain, usually by destroying other people.
I will eagerly await your reply, for this is quite an interesting conversation.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
First of all, I don't even know what a petabyte is.
:)
Second of all, I don't feel like looking it up.
Assuming this is the next larger value than a terabyte, where, exactly, were they storing this information in 1989?
I think my father had a computer with an 80 megabyte HD that year. Assuming there was publicly available technology to store a gigabyte then, in a format they could get all the data off of in 30 seconds, is a stretch. Six orders of magnitude ABOVE that...?
I don't think it unlikely that they could store this much info, but to be able to get access to it in 30 seconds, no. I won't bother dealing with the bandwidth issues here. Its more probable that they invented teleport technology and just beamed the data across the US.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
I was unclear. My application was not of the web, but just a kludge to so some specific things on a machine that has my company's software installed.
:)
Admittedly, I know next to nothing about web server apps, other than writing some VB forms for a program that connected through a MTS Server to a MS-SQL DB. Phear that sh^Htuff. The clients REALLY liked MS. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy writing apps that sit on a user's machine and chug happily away by themselves.
So, yes, I was talking out of my arse. And despite many years of practice, I'm still not very good at it.
>>>>>>>> Kvort
>This is more than anecdotal. This _is_ Echelon. I personally believe
>that there is no economical way that the NSA could monitor all
of conspiring people being involved. Plus hardware costs
>would be enormous as well, and co-location would be issues also.
Exactly... If you were going to monitor internet traffic, the best place would be one or more of the Network Access Points (NAPs). There were four main NAPs, and now there are more (I didn't research how many) but much of the network traffic goes through these main access points. Notice, however, that not ALL network traffic goes through these. At MAE East, network traffic there is upwards of two gigabits per second during peak times.
So you're going to tell me that people who are sworn to complete secrecy search through two gigabits of info per second looking for keywords in email messages? And this only comprises a small portion of the data sent over the Internet every day.
I won't say its not possible, but its damned unlikely.
>What I do believe Echelon to be is a series of satelites that
>listen to broadcasts like those of planes, cellphones, etc.
>Voice recognitions IS involved, and this is even public knowledge.
>Last year the NSA demonstrated their its capabilities to
>Congress where they recorded a cellphone conversation of
>Strom Thurmond talking to his secretary. The press passively
>shit in their pants about the privacy issues, but never really
>made too much of a deal about it. This is what I believe Echelon
>can do.
Interesting theory. However, it requires alot of computing power to do voice recognition. I don't see why they can't tap into cell phones, etc, but then again, I'm not much of a hardware geek. If they could tap into conversations, it might be feasible to search certain conversations for certain words, but I would imagine that there would be a large error factor involved. And still a huge amount of computing power.
Don't get me wrong, the fact is that the government can spy on anyone they specifically want to, which is IHMO a very dangerous thing. I do not believe that they have the ability to spy on a large segment of the population all the time tho. Its just too unrealistic.
>>>>>>>> Kvort
>As far as being a huge executable, take a look at the binaries produced by some of
>the Microsoft Web solutions (ahem, VB, ahem) and we'll talk about huge executables.
>The Tcl binary is about the same size as the Perl binary, and many complex C
>programs end up being very large also, once you incorporate regex parsing routines,
>CGI libraries, and image processing libraries.
First, VB sucks.
Second, I had to write a script in VB (Did I mention VB sucks?) and the execuable came out to be 32K, which I think is probably some sort of minimum size for a VB exe. I dunno how big the scripts you write come out to be, but as far as a MS proggie is concerned, that's pretty small.
Third, VB sucks.
I've considered learning perl, but until I actually have something to write, (preferably something I get paid for) there is actually little motivation to do so. I agree about the lack of string manipulation and parsing functions in C/C++, although I'm curious about the poster who claimed strcpy is a slow function. The implementations I have seen follow like this:
void strcpy(char* dst, const char* src)
{
while( *dst++ = *src++ )
;
}
which does not seem like alot of overhead to me... This is actually quite similar to the implementation of at least one OS strcpy function that I looked at. Most of the other string manipulation functions are as similar. The biggest problem with them is that many people don't get the whole pointer thang. And for those that do, the code is still extremely prone to bugs.
As far as the general subject of the thread, I have to agree with many of the other posters, use whatever tool is appropriate at the time. And judgement of "appropriate" includes any time it takes you to learn the languages you're considering. It also includes time it takes you to reload the ENTIRE development enviroment because your bug caused you to parse past the end of a string and this caused the development enviroment to crash. (Did I mention VB sucks?)
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
> "Why is this bad news if they're good games?
>Because they're religion based? Or for other
>reasons?"
>I think the bad news he means in this sentence is
>that this will spawn more hypocritical people
>churning out games dictating a rule of morality
>and ethics, but only looking for a buck in
>doing so.
Heh... You mean like 99% of religious figures today?
That's actually quite pessimistic of me to say. More than likely, half of them are only looking for power, and only about 49% are looking for money.
I don't agree with Mr. Katz assesment that religion and freedom are enemies. Many people came to this country over the years seeking religious freedom. Many others came seeking alot of money. The problem, as I see it, is that the two groups merged somewhere along the line.
To bring this more to a slashdot topic, I feel that these people should release their game under a GPL, so I can laugh at their pitiful coding skills. (Sorry, I needed an ego trip; frequent flier miles, you know)
Final note: I would never admit to following a "religion", but I DO believe in life outside the three dimensions through which we view this universe, whatever such being(s) may be called.
>>>>>>>> Kvort (Pickle!)