You have a point, but this isn't the right way to think about it either. It's all about assessing the treats and liabilities that you're dealing with, and making good risk/benefit decisions. Yes, everything you type into Google goes somewhere, but what are you likely to be searching about? What is the likelihood of someone going through your search history to find those things? I would guess that if someone went through each of my search queries individually, they wouldn't find anything remotely interesting. If they went through my entire search history and tied it to me specifically, it could be embarrassing, but not terrible.
On the other hand, I know people using dropbox to store *all* of their documents. Of the documents on my hard drive, there are documents that contain some very sensitive information, much worse than anything in my search history. Just to give a few examples, I have a personal journal (i.e. a diary) with a lot of personal thoughts. I have my tax returns, and other documents which contain my name, SSN, date of birth, mother's maiden name, and a bunch of other stuff. If someone got ahold of all of that in an unencrypted form, it could be really bad.
Now I'm not saying you can't trust dropbox, but security is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It's not "either things are secure or they're not." It's about balancing the need to prevent unauthorized access with the need to make authorized access easy and robust.
Or they wanted the user base more than they wanted the app itself.
By buying Instagram, they can now choose to port the stuff they like about their own app over to Instagram, or port the stuff they like about Instagram over to their own app. But the bigger win is probably that now everyone using Instagram will be moved over to keeping all of that information in their Facebook profile instead. I still don't know whether that's worth it, since I have a hard time imagining how Facebook makes enough money to be able to buy Instagram for $1 billion.
Not me. My upload speed has actually gone down in recent years, and I have no choice in ISPs. Oh, and it's not like I live out in the middle of the country.
True, but that's not even the real problem. The idea of creating an "initial seed" is a good one, but it's only dealing with one sign of a larger problem: our internet connections are often not good enough to deal with the volume of data we're pushing, and so cloud storage solutions can only serve certain cases.
Storing files on a remote system with limited bandwidth is only good when you're dealing with generally small files. A limited number of large files can be fine so long as you're primarily syncing one-way and aren't changing the large files very frequently. Sending the files in a disk overcomes one single problem, which is the initial upload, but that's only the main problem when you're doing a one-way sync of a lot of data that isn't changing very often. If all the data is changing all the time, then the initial upload isn't going to be much smaller than the subsequent syncs. If you're planning on accessing the data, then you either need a syncing solution, or you'll be dealing with a lot of downloads. If you sync data, then there are a lot of additional problems, including conflict resolution. If you're changing moderately large files that take a while to transfer, then conflict resolution is going to get much messier.
Also, the reality of these services is it's not too unusual for them to fall out of sync, or for one of the copies to become corrupted. To make matters worse, they're usually not very good about rebuilding, which means you're back to sending disks back and forth to get things sorted out.
The unfortunate truth is, for a lot of people, cloud storage just isn't there yet. The biggest hurdle is that too many people are stuck on crappy Internet connections with slow upload rates. IMHO, I'll wait until transfer rates are around where internal networks were a decade ago, which means 100 Mbps symmetrical connections. Of course, that's not happening anytime soon, especially since the ISPs and media companies that they're partnered with have no interest in giving people decent upload rates.
Even when people have decent upload rates, there still aren't sufficiently good/open syncing protocols. Ideally you want something similar to rsync, but with robust 2-way syncing, including bullet-proof conflict resolution, and automatically and seamlessly encrypts the remote copy. Good luck with that. Given that tons of people are still using unencrypted FTP, CAs for HTTPs, and IPv4, I don't have a lot of faith in the adoption of new standards/protocols.
What I wouldn't give for some good programmers and industry clout.
Yeah, I don't think it's really that dumb of a question. A lot of people don't understand computers and don't understand security, so of course they're going to ask about things that aren't possible or feasible. It's like asking a physicist, "I understand that you can't go faster than light, but what if I were running on a train that was going 2mph under the speed of light, and then I started running 5mph in the same direction? Wouldn't I then be going 3mph over the speed of light?"
It's actually a good question, even though it's a question that demonstrates that you're ignorant about how things work.
When it comes to computer security, My rule-of-thumb is: It's not whether your paranoid or not, it whether you're paranoid enough.
I disagree. I think it's important to keep in mind that there's no such thing as "perfect security", but only "appropriate security". Trying to over-do security can actually make things less secure, either because it inspires overconfidence or because it forces people to open other avenues of access, which in turn open new security holes.
So for example, if you wanted to secure your computer completely, you could cut the network access, fill the computer with concrete, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. But then there are two problems: (a) someone could still go deep-sea diving; and (b) if you need access to the data on that computer, you're screwed.
Properly executed, computer security policies balance the need for authorized access as well as the need to block unauthorized access. To use an analog example, I used to work in a place that had stringent requirements for accessing one of the heavily trafficked offices-- you needed both a keycard and a combination for the lock. More often than not, people would get annoyed with the process of unlocking and opening the door, and so they'd just prop the door open. In that case, paranoid security actions turned into decreased security.
This seems like a big overarching project that isn't going to be possible. It reminds me of a request that I got from my client: He wanted to be able to block his employees from wasting time on Facebook. I told him that I could block sites easily enough, but it's not foolproof and a savvy enough user may be able to get around the blocks. The client then explained that he *didn't* want Facebook blocked, because his employees were involved with social networking campaigns and they needed to be on Facebook. He just wanted them blocked from *wasting time* on Facebook.
Networking monitoring, filtering, and blocking are not that smart. You theoretically *can* capture every bit going through a router, but it's going to be such an unruly amount of data that it'll be functionally worthless. For the amount of time you'd spend sorting through all of the data for a single user, it would be less time consuming to stand over your employee's shoulder all day and watch what he's doing. You can filter based on various things, but you will never block every scammer, every virus, every porn site, or every waste of time. Or no... that's not right, you can block all of those things, but it means effectively cutting the network cable and denying all access to the Internet.
This is one of those things where, as the expert, it's not your job to fulfill your client's request. It's your job to explain to him why his request is misguided, and offer some solutions that might help him. You can block access to particular sites, for example. If he doesn't want his kids on Facebook, that's not hard to accomplish. If he doesn't like his kids using Words with Friends, you can turn on parental controls and deny the kids the rights to install applications on their phones. You can provide advice and educational resources to avoid scammers.
If he's dead-set on monitoring, then try to narrow the field a bit-- what exactly is he looking for? You could probably set up a system that gives him a list of all web sites visited from his home, for example, but giving him the content of all interactions is a bit more difficult. It also doesn't prevent his children from using the Internet at a friend's house or at school. He can set up email accounts for his children where he has access and can monitor their email, but he can't prevent them from creating/using other email accounts.
So the take away message here is that what he's asking for is unreasonable and paranoid. He can't collect or block everything that he wants to, and even if he did, there are ways that his children could probably circumvent his blocking/monitoring. And anyway, it's kind of... well... crazy and creepy. Focus on giving him a few tools to prevent the worst: install antivirus software and educate everyone on safe internet practices. You can also try blocking stuff, but if you remember being a kid at all, you should realize that they're just going to get around the blocks.
make a great service first, and only then focus on profiting.
The only problem is that the initial "great service" needs to be something that leads to a sensible and sustainable business model. If not, then either the business will fail, or it will need to change its "great service" to be something that has a business model.
So assuming Facebook sticks around and they want to make tons of money, it should be leading us all to ask, "How are they going to use our data to make money?" How they use our data today is kind of creepy, and apparently even that's not profitable enough.
Management's problem is that it sees everything through a veil of pie charts and graphs
Specifically, they fall into the trap of thinking that they can trust their numbers and their metrics. You might estimate in your head, "If people do X work per hour, and you let someone spend 15 minutes per hour on a break, then you only get 75% of X work done in that hour. Therefore, if I don't allow breaks, I'll increase the amount of work my company is doing by 33%!"
Of course, it's not that simple. People don't scale that cleanly. When you don't allow breaks, your employees get burnt out and stop being productive. When your employees don't have any breaks, they get annoyed with their work and it kills their motivation. When you disallow breaks, your good employees will eventually get fed up and find a better job.
It's good to make sure your metrics actually capture the data you need, and that you're applying math correctly. People and "performance" and "productivity" are not simply numbers that you can manipulate with normal algebraic formula you'd like. A woman makes a baby in 9 months, but 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month. A single person working twice as many hours frequently does not result in twice as much work being accomplished. Doubling the salary for a position will not attract someone twice as good, nor will doubling a person's salary induce him to work twice as hard. Bonuses and other incentives don't necessary cause people to work harder or to create better work. Cutting your budget doesn't necessary save you money.
Many managers simply don't understand how to manage, and a lot of books/classes on the subject are about as helpful as self-help books generally are.
The quality of the product itself is not in doubt with the retail model
No? When I bought SuperGame 3, I thought it was going to be great. I loved SuperGame 2, and the reviews for SuperGame 3 were very positive. Turns out it was terrible and I hated it.
Also, if cars become driverless, you have the potential of doing away with the model of everyone owning a "family car". A lot of the benefits of owning a family car instead of a personal transport car are related to needing people to drive. Parents need to drive their children around because the children can't drive. On a long trip, it's useful to have multiple people in the same vehicle so they can take turns driving.
Now if cars drove themselves, and you needed to get your son over to little Billy's house, then you can call Billie's parents and say, "I'm sending him over" and then put him in a car, and have it take Billie where he needs to go. If you were on a road trip with an automated car, then there's no need to take turns driving.
The potential benefits for the environment are huge. Right now, everyone with a family has a big old SUV that seats 8 people, but that car also gets driven around quite a lot with 1 or 2 people in it. If you could change the expectation to "everyone has a lightweight self-driving personal transport vehicle that can carry one person plug some belongings," then we would use far less energy moving people around. You would never even have to drive out of your way to pick someone up. And if you did need a larger car, it would be trivially easy to rent one. Schedule it to come to your house at a particular time of day, ride it where you need to go, and then it returns itself.
Relatedly, any municipality that has bars without sufficient public transportation is endorsing driverless cars. How do you think people get home after visiting a bar?
The reason you had so many people responding to you is that you were wrong. An article said that your sleep patterns may contribute to weight gain, to which you replied, "This is crap. Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out. Nothing else."
This is incorrect. Now you're revising it and saying, to paraphrase, "Your weight gain is the result of calories in and a wide variety of other factors which I'll name. And more things." And then you go on to again miss the point.
The point is, science is still figuring out all the factors which contribute to weight gain, and in the near future we may have better treatments. For now, assuming you don't have a treatable medical condition, there is a good general guideline, but it isn't to continually lower your caloric intake.
It's better to eat healthy food in a balanced diet with moderate portions while getting a moderate amount of exercise. Learn to listen to your body and eat things that make you feel good (in a healthy way), and when in doubt, err on the side of eating raw vegetables. Also, take a good look at your general lifestyle because stress, depression, and sleep deprivation can all contribute. If you're managing your stress level, doing psychologically healthy behaviors, and getting a good night sleep, that may also help you lose weight. There are many complex factors that you can alter, but starving yourself probably isn't the best idea.
No, see, the issue is that people don't know they're not supposed to pirate DVDs. If pirates knew that movie studios didn't want them to do that, they'd immediately stop.
It's similar to the way that people didn't know that they were allowed to say "no" to drugs, but when Nancy Reagan told them that they could say "no", suddenly everyone stopped doing drugs.
Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out.
Nothing else.
I really think you should study the topic more, because a doctor or nutritionist would probably tell you that you're very wrong. There are lots of things that have been shown to contribute to weight gain and weight loss. It's true that eating fewer calories than you expend will cause you to lose weight, but it's neither the only way to lose weight, nor is it necessarily the healthiest guide to losing weight.
For one thing, the same number of calories can be digested differently depending on the food. IIRC, foods with more fiber may be more difficult to digest. There have been recent studies suggesting that raw food is harder to digest than cooked food, and so even eating the same exact food, you absorb more calories after it's cooked. It's been suggested that fat storage is effected by stress levels, and by some of the hormones that impact angiogenesis. It's been found that the kinds of bacterial flora in your gut can have an effect on weight gain.
The truth is we don't fully understand all of the various factors that impact weight gain, but a healthy body is theoretically capable of shedding excess calories rather than storing them as fat. Though for any given person, eating a small enough number of calories will result in weight loss, "calories in vs. calories out" doesn't explain why two people, eating the same number of calories, can have drastically different weights. Or even one person-- for example, I'm about the same weight as I was 10 years ago, even though I eat a lot less food and exercise much more.
I might argue that it's a self-reenforcing vicious cycle. You don't take care of yourself, which means you don't have energy. You don't have energy, and so you don't take care of yourself. This can happen in a few different ways. If you stay up late, maybe you're more likely to have late-night snacks. Maybe the reason you stay up late is because you're out living a lifestyle that's not physically healthy. Maybe the fact that you're unhealthy means you're more likely to have trouble sleeping.
In any case, I don't think it's surprising that there's a correlation between not sleeping well and being overweight. Over-eating and bad sleeping habits are both examples of failing to take care of yourself, and both can be symptoms resulting from failing to take care of yourself.
Sure, but the real problem here is that we can't even know what would be success in this kind of experiment and what would be failure. Like maybe we already have evidence that this world is false and simulated. Maybe the upper limit on the speed of light (and therefore special relativity) are artifacts of the simulation. Maybe the real universe is a cartesian grid, and whoever created the simulation determined that the physical laws we have were a good enough approximation.
The concept of devising an experiment to set reality is inherently flawed for a number of reasons. As I've mentioned, one of the large problems is that, if we assume that we're ignorant about the nature of reality, then we have no way of knowing whether the results of our experiments match up with reality. Also, you're assuming that we're all inside a giant computer simulation of the entire universe, when it may be that it's just you, being fed sensory information. If your experiment is measuring some tiny electrical change under exotic circumstances, maybe the simulation doesn't need to model the behavior of the electromagnetic field. Maybe the simulation just has the equipment report the correct result. Or maybe it doesn't even do that, but the simulation just makes your mind *think* it's seeing the equipment provide the correct response.
It's really a well examined philosophical problem, and not a scientific one.
Well, the fundamental issue is that kickstarter depends on trust, and buying retail does not.
Buying retail requires trust, it's just that the trust has been established. When you go to the grocery store and buy some pork, you're trusting that it's pork and not some other meat. You're trusting that it's relatively fresh and not otherwise contaminated. When you buy a new TV, you trust that the box they give you actually has a TV in it, and not just some bricks to simulate the weight. You trust that the TV has all the features it's advertised to have. When you buy medicine from the pharmacy, you trust-- sometimes wrongly-- that the medicine has the beneficial health properties that you're buying it for.
We have other times when we're trusting people. Generally when you hire people, you're trusting (to some extent) that they're going to do the job you ask them to. When you're investing, you're trusting that the company is operating in good faith and not defrauding you. You mention that if you're the sole investor in a $700k project, you can drop in at any time and see how things are going. However, if I buy 2 shares in Microsoft, they don't give me free access to the Redmond campus.
Now, if you want to say that this funding model still has some issues to work on, that seems reasonable. Whether the changes are legal or conventional, I imagine that in the next several years, you'll see some attempts made to improve accountability. I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see contractual additions to these deals. Maybe contributors will be given some ability to monitor how their money can be spent. Maybe things can be structured so that additional funding is released at certain milestones-- like you get $200k for the first stage, and when that's complete you get an additional $300k for the next stage, and when that's complete a final $200k. Maybe the contributors can even withdraw whatever remains of their contribution if certain milestones or requirements aren't met.
I think it's worth considering a lot of different ways to improve the setup. I don't think it's reasonable, though, to talk about the concept as a passing fad.
Also, most of the other important developer friendly things would be in the hardware, not the software. Many developers are likely to wipe the thing and start over from scratch anyway.
Still, I think the idea of having the computer ship with Linux is important. Even if you want to wipe the computer and start over, the fact that it shipped with Linux means that Dell is truly supporting Linux. That means that they're going to have to choose Linux-friendly hardware, and have stable/optimized drivers for all the hardware they're using.
There are also probably sensible choices that they can make for packages for developers, depending on what kind of developers they're targeting. For example, if you're a serious developer, there's a good chance you're going to want some kind of compiler. Picking a particular set of packages may not make all developers happy, but you could possibly start with a normal set of "lowest common denominator" packages and save the user a little bit of setup time.
Aside from that, the summary mentions that this is targeted for developers for "web companies". If you're talking about "web developers", I could definitely see them selecting a set of packages that an HTML/PHP monkey would be happy with and not want to wipe and start from scratch.
I am not convinced that the particles regarded as fundamental actually are.
This is in fact an older problem than people expect. Ancient Greeks talked about problems with the continuity of space, which lead them to note spacial paradoxes like "Achilles and the tortoise". One of the proposed solutions to deal with issues of the infinitesimal was to assume that objects are all made of very small particles called "atoms", which were not able to be split any further. Scientists later adopted the word when they discovered that there were indivisible pieces of chemical elements which could not be split down further.
But the idea of having a "smallest unit of matter" raises a question, which is "what happens when you split that particle?" It turns out there are three options:
1) You can't split it.
2) You can split it into smaller pieces of matter, which means that you were wrong-- the "indivisible unit of matter" is not indivisible.
3) You can split it, but the resulting pieces that you get are not "matter".
It may be counter-intuitive, but answer #3 is actually a very good possibility. If #1 is true, then it raises other problems. What does it mean for there to really be an indivisible unit of matter? What is that unit "made of" that makes it indestructible?
If #2 is true, then really you haven't solved anything, but instead you've just pushed the issue back a level. It turns out the "atom" you thought was indivisible was not, and there are smaller pieces of matter. This means that if you keep dividing until you reach the real "atom" that is indivisible, you end up with all the same problems you started with.
So #3 would suggest that there is some downward limit at which you take a piece of matter and break it apart, the resulting "material" is not properly material. It's kind of like how you could start with a bucket of water balloons, and divide the contents over and over until you're left with only 1 water balloon. However, if you divide that last water balloon, you don't get two smaller water balloons. Instead you end up with a stretchy piece of plastic and a puddle of water, neither of which resemble a water balloon.
The only thing we can reasonably assume, is that thought exists.
And this was the basis for Descartes famous "cogito ergo sum". The first thing he could say is that, even if he doubted his own existence, the act of doubting meant that his thoughts existed, which meant (as best as he could figure) the thoughts must have a source, and so therefore he existed in some form, thinking thoughts.
This simulated you is placed in a simulated room in which all the known laws of physics are simulated to a high degree of precision.
How high a degree of precision? Do you know the "correct" laws of physics ahead of time, such that you could perform tests which required a greater degree of precision than the computer is capable of, and then when the results don't match, know which results are "wrong"?
Essentially if the computer could replicate reality to a degree great enough that no measurements could demonstrate whether you were in "reality", then no experiments could prove which of the two of you are "real". Also in this example, you posit that there are only two of you, and you know that one is real and one is not. You also know the nature of the not-real one: he's a simulation in a computer, and you understand the nature of that computer and that simulation.
I'd want to point out that in our current circumstance, we don't have that kind of knowledge. If I am not "real", then I don't have the luxury of knowing what kind of "unreal" thing that I am. It may be that the underlying "reality" is something which I am completely incapable of understanding.
The reason people are dogmatically sure about the existence of objective reality is that they misunderstand the options. They think their options are either:
A) You have an "objective reality" that is knowable by people, and I can (more or less) trust my senses and experiences. When I see a rock, the rock is really there.
B) You only have "subjective reality", which means that everything is as true as I believe it to be. We all might be in the Matrix, and if you see a rock, it might not be there. If you believe in creationism and I believe in evolution, both are equally true. If I think that Albert Einstein formulated the theory of Special Relativity and you think it was Isaac Newton, neither one of us is more correct than the other. If nobody believes that E=mc^2, then the universe shouldn't be expected to act consistently according to that rule.
I'd hope you can see why people recoil from option B. Not only is it frustrating to think that way, but it's not terribly helpful. If I can trust that the laws of physics behave in a consistent way, whether I am aware of them or not, then I can build cars and space ships and video games and velcro. If I can't trust that things to behave according to consistent rules, I can't really create a plan of action.
Of course, those aren't necessarily all of the options. If you study much philosophy, you'll find that there are more than a couple ways of thinking about this problem, and splitting the everything into either "objective fact" and "subjective judgment" isn't even a few sensible one.
Yeah, this premise seems biased and kind of... leading. I've seen lots of posting in the past 6 months that seems to be rooting for people to be disappointed by Kickstarter projects and for the whole Kickstarter system to fall apart. What's the deal here? Is it just someone setting themselves up to say "I told you so!" later, so that they can seem smart? Is it some kind of astroturfing?
We've had investment firms and real-estate agents and game publishers and everyone else scamming our money for years. We keep giving them money. Game publishers put out bad games, and we waste money buying them, but that doesn't make us question whether the retail model "bubble" is going to burst. We don't say, "There are a lot of investors losing money in the stock market, and a lot of investors are getting angry. When is the stock market fad going to end?" The big difference with Kickstarter is that it's not all about giving money and control to people who are already rich and powerful.
There isn't *that much* of a difference if I buy the latest Tim Schafer game from a major publisher and it turns out to stink, or if I fund Tim Schafer's Kickstarter campaign and get the game "for free" and the game turns out to stink. Really, there are 2 differences: (a) if the publisher makes the game first, I can read the review before I buy; and (b) in the kickstarter model, Tim Schafer probably has more creative control. Therefore, the whole thing comes down to the question, "Do I generally trust Tim Schafer to make a good game?"
Slashdot Mirror
You have a point, but this isn't the right way to think about it either. It's all about assessing the treats and liabilities that you're dealing with, and making good risk/benefit decisions. Yes, everything you type into Google goes somewhere, but what are you likely to be searching about? What is the likelihood of someone going through your search history to find those things? I would guess that if someone went through each of my search queries individually, they wouldn't find anything remotely interesting. If they went through my entire search history and tied it to me specifically, it could be embarrassing, but not terrible.
On the other hand, I know people using dropbox to store *all* of their documents. Of the documents on my hard drive, there are documents that contain some very sensitive information, much worse than anything in my search history. Just to give a few examples, I have a personal journal (i.e. a diary) with a lot of personal thoughts. I have my tax returns, and other documents which contain my name, SSN, date of birth, mother's maiden name, and a bunch of other stuff. If someone got ahold of all of that in an unencrypted form, it could be really bad.
Now I'm not saying you can't trust dropbox, but security is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It's not "either things are secure or they're not." It's about balancing the need to prevent unauthorized access with the need to make authorized access easy and robust.
Or they wanted the user base more than they wanted the app itself.
By buying Instagram, they can now choose to port the stuff they like about their own app over to Instagram, or port the stuff they like about Instagram over to their own app. But the bigger win is probably that now everyone using Instagram will be moved over to keeping all of that information in their Facebook profile instead. I still don't know whether that's worth it, since I have a hard time imagining how Facebook makes enough money to be able to buy Instagram for $1 billion.
Not me. My upload speed has actually gone down in recent years, and I have no choice in ISPs. Oh, and it's not like I live out in the middle of the country.
True, but that's not even the real problem. The idea of creating an "initial seed" is a good one, but it's only dealing with one sign of a larger problem: our internet connections are often not good enough to deal with the volume of data we're pushing, and so cloud storage solutions can only serve certain cases.
Storing files on a remote system with limited bandwidth is only good when you're dealing with generally small files. A limited number of large files can be fine so long as you're primarily syncing one-way and aren't changing the large files very frequently. Sending the files in a disk overcomes one single problem, which is the initial upload, but that's only the main problem when you're doing a one-way sync of a lot of data that isn't changing very often. If all the data is changing all the time, then the initial upload isn't going to be much smaller than the subsequent syncs. If you're planning on accessing the data, then you either need a syncing solution, or you'll be dealing with a lot of downloads. If you sync data, then there are a lot of additional problems, including conflict resolution. If you're changing moderately large files that take a while to transfer, then conflict resolution is going to get much messier.
Also, the reality of these services is it's not too unusual for them to fall out of sync, or for one of the copies to become corrupted. To make matters worse, they're usually not very good about rebuilding, which means you're back to sending disks back and forth to get things sorted out.
The unfortunate truth is, for a lot of people, cloud storage just isn't there yet. The biggest hurdle is that too many people are stuck on crappy Internet connections with slow upload rates. IMHO, I'll wait until transfer rates are around where internal networks were a decade ago, which means 100 Mbps symmetrical connections. Of course, that's not happening anytime soon, especially since the ISPs and media companies that they're partnered with have no interest in giving people decent upload rates.
Even when people have decent upload rates, there still aren't sufficiently good/open syncing protocols. Ideally you want something similar to rsync, but with robust 2-way syncing, including bullet-proof conflict resolution, and automatically and seamlessly encrypts the remote copy. Good luck with that. Given that tons of people are still using unencrypted FTP, CAs for HTTPs, and IPv4, I don't have a lot of faith in the adoption of new standards/protocols.
What I wouldn't give for some good programmers and industry clout.
Yeah, I don't think it's really that dumb of a question. A lot of people don't understand computers and don't understand security, so of course they're going to ask about things that aren't possible or feasible. It's like asking a physicist, "I understand that you can't go faster than light, but what if I were running on a train that was going 2mph under the speed of light, and then I started running 5mph in the same direction? Wouldn't I then be going 3mph over the speed of light?"
It's actually a good question, even though it's a question that demonstrates that you're ignorant about how things work.
When it comes to computer security, My rule-of-thumb is: It's not whether your paranoid or not, it whether you're paranoid enough.
I disagree. I think it's important to keep in mind that there's no such thing as "perfect security", but only "appropriate security". Trying to over-do security can actually make things less secure, either because it inspires overconfidence or because it forces people to open other avenues of access, which in turn open new security holes.
So for example, if you wanted to secure your computer completely, you could cut the network access, fill the computer with concrete, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. But then there are two problems: (a) someone could still go deep-sea diving; and (b) if you need access to the data on that computer, you're screwed.
Properly executed, computer security policies balance the need for authorized access as well as the need to block unauthorized access. To use an analog example, I used to work in a place that had stringent requirements for accessing one of the heavily trafficked offices-- you needed both a keycard and a combination for the lock. More often than not, people would get annoyed with the process of unlocking and opening the door, and so they'd just prop the door open. In that case, paranoid security actions turned into decreased security.
This seems like a big overarching project that isn't going to be possible. It reminds me of a request that I got from my client: He wanted to be able to block his employees from wasting time on Facebook. I told him that I could block sites easily enough, but it's not foolproof and a savvy enough user may be able to get around the blocks. The client then explained that he *didn't* want Facebook blocked, because his employees were involved with social networking campaigns and they needed to be on Facebook. He just wanted them blocked from *wasting time* on Facebook.
Networking monitoring, filtering, and blocking are not that smart. You theoretically *can* capture every bit going through a router, but it's going to be such an unruly amount of data that it'll be functionally worthless. For the amount of time you'd spend sorting through all of the data for a single user, it would be less time consuming to stand over your employee's shoulder all day and watch what he's doing. You can filter based on various things, but you will never block every scammer, every virus, every porn site, or every waste of time. Or no... that's not right, you can block all of those things, but it means effectively cutting the network cable and denying all access to the Internet.
This is one of those things where, as the expert, it's not your job to fulfill your client's request. It's your job to explain to him why his request is misguided, and offer some solutions that might help him. You can block access to particular sites, for example. If he doesn't want his kids on Facebook, that's not hard to accomplish. If he doesn't like his kids using Words with Friends, you can turn on parental controls and deny the kids the rights to install applications on their phones. You can provide advice and educational resources to avoid scammers.
If he's dead-set on monitoring, then try to narrow the field a bit-- what exactly is he looking for? You could probably set up a system that gives him a list of all web sites visited from his home, for example, but giving him the content of all interactions is a bit more difficult. It also doesn't prevent his children from using the Internet at a friend's house or at school. He can set up email accounts for his children where he has access and can monitor their email, but he can't prevent them from creating/using other email accounts.
So the take away message here is that what he's asking for is unreasonable and paranoid. He can't collect or block everything that he wants to, and even if he did, there are ways that his children could probably circumvent his blocking/monitoring. And anyway, it's kind of... well... crazy and creepy. Focus on giving him a few tools to prevent the worst: install antivirus software and educate everyone on safe internet practices. You can also try blocking stuff, but if you remember being a kid at all, you should realize that they're just going to get around the blocks.
make a great service first, and only then focus on profiting.
The only problem is that the initial "great service" needs to be something that leads to a sensible and sustainable business model. If not, then either the business will fail, or it will need to change its "great service" to be something that has a business model.
So assuming Facebook sticks around and they want to make tons of money, it should be leading us all to ask, "How are they going to use our data to make money?" How they use our data today is kind of creepy, and apparently even that's not profitable enough.
Management's problem is that it sees everything through a veil of pie charts and graphs
Specifically, they fall into the trap of thinking that they can trust their numbers and their metrics. You might estimate in your head, "If people do X work per hour, and you let someone spend 15 minutes per hour on a break, then you only get 75% of X work done in that hour. Therefore, if I don't allow breaks, I'll increase the amount of work my company is doing by 33%!"
Of course, it's not that simple. People don't scale that cleanly. When you don't allow breaks, your employees get burnt out and stop being productive. When your employees don't have any breaks, they get annoyed with their work and it kills their motivation. When you disallow breaks, your good employees will eventually get fed up and find a better job.
It's good to make sure your metrics actually capture the data you need, and that you're applying math correctly. People and "performance" and "productivity" are not simply numbers that you can manipulate with normal algebraic formula you'd like. A woman makes a baby in 9 months, but 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month. A single person working twice as many hours frequently does not result in twice as much work being accomplished. Doubling the salary for a position will not attract someone twice as good, nor will doubling a person's salary induce him to work twice as hard. Bonuses and other incentives don't necessary cause people to work harder or to create better work. Cutting your budget doesn't necessary save you money.
Many managers simply don't understand how to manage, and a lot of books/classes on the subject are about as helpful as self-help books generally are.
You know what else would allow you to wear an iPod like a watch? A watchband.
The quality of the product itself is not in doubt with the retail model
No? When I bought SuperGame 3, I thought it was going to be great. I loved SuperGame 2, and the reviews for SuperGame 3 were very positive. Turns out it was terrible and I hated it.
Also, if cars become driverless, you have the potential of doing away with the model of everyone owning a "family car". A lot of the benefits of owning a family car instead of a personal transport car are related to needing people to drive. Parents need to drive their children around because the children can't drive. On a long trip, it's useful to have multiple people in the same vehicle so they can take turns driving.
Now if cars drove themselves, and you needed to get your son over to little Billy's house, then you can call Billie's parents and say, "I'm sending him over" and then put him in a car, and have it take Billie where he needs to go. If you were on a road trip with an automated car, then there's no need to take turns driving.
The potential benefits for the environment are huge. Right now, everyone with a family has a big old SUV that seats 8 people, but that car also gets driven around quite a lot with 1 or 2 people in it. If you could change the expectation to "everyone has a lightweight self-driving personal transport vehicle that can carry one person plug some belongings," then we would use far less energy moving people around. You would never even have to drive out of your way to pick someone up. And if you did need a larger car, it would be trivially easy to rent one. Schedule it to come to your house at a particular time of day, ride it where you need to go, and then it returns itself.
Relatedly, any municipality that has bars without sufficient public transportation is endorsing driverless cars. How do you think people get home after visiting a bar?
The reason you had so many people responding to you is that you were wrong. An article said that your sleep patterns may contribute to weight gain, to which you replied, "This is crap. Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out. Nothing else."
This is incorrect. Now you're revising it and saying, to paraphrase, "Your weight gain is the result of calories in and a wide variety of other factors which I'll name. And more things." And then you go on to again miss the point.
The point is, science is still figuring out all the factors which contribute to weight gain, and in the near future we may have better treatments. For now, assuming you don't have a treatable medical condition, there is a good general guideline, but it isn't to continually lower your caloric intake.
It's better to eat healthy food in a balanced diet with moderate portions while getting a moderate amount of exercise. Learn to listen to your body and eat things that make you feel good (in a healthy way), and when in doubt, err on the side of eating raw vegetables. Also, take a good look at your general lifestyle because stress, depression, and sleep deprivation can all contribute. If you're managing your stress level, doing psychologically healthy behaviors, and getting a good night sleep, that may also help you lose weight. There are many complex factors that you can alter, but starving yourself probably isn't the best idea.
No, see, the issue is that people don't know they're not supposed to pirate DVDs. If pirates knew that movie studios didn't want them to do that, they'd immediately stop.
It's similar to the way that people didn't know that they were allowed to say "no" to drugs, but when Nancy Reagan told them that they could say "no", suddenly everyone stopped doing drugs.
Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out.
Nothing else.
I really think you should study the topic more, because a doctor or nutritionist would probably tell you that you're very wrong. There are lots of things that have been shown to contribute to weight gain and weight loss. It's true that eating fewer calories than you expend will cause you to lose weight, but it's neither the only way to lose weight, nor is it necessarily the healthiest guide to losing weight.
For one thing, the same number of calories can be digested differently depending on the food. IIRC, foods with more fiber may be more difficult to digest. There have been recent studies suggesting that raw food is harder to digest than cooked food, and so even eating the same exact food, you absorb more calories after it's cooked. It's been suggested that fat storage is effected by stress levels, and by some of the hormones that impact angiogenesis. It's been found that the kinds of bacterial flora in your gut can have an effect on weight gain.
The truth is we don't fully understand all of the various factors that impact weight gain, but a healthy body is theoretically capable of shedding excess calories rather than storing them as fat. Though for any given person, eating a small enough number of calories will result in weight loss, "calories in vs. calories out" doesn't explain why two people, eating the same number of calories, can have drastically different weights. Or even one person-- for example, I'm about the same weight as I was 10 years ago, even though I eat a lot less food and exercise much more.
I might argue that it's a self-reenforcing vicious cycle. You don't take care of yourself, which means you don't have energy. You don't have energy, and so you don't take care of yourself. This can happen in a few different ways. If you stay up late, maybe you're more likely to have late-night snacks. Maybe the reason you stay up late is because you're out living a lifestyle that's not physically healthy. Maybe the fact that you're unhealthy means you're more likely to have trouble sleeping.
In any case, I don't think it's surprising that there's a correlation between not sleeping well and being overweight. Over-eating and bad sleeping habits are both examples of failing to take care of yourself, and both can be symptoms resulting from failing to take care of yourself.
Sure, but the real problem here is that we can't even know what would be success in this kind of experiment and what would be failure. Like maybe we already have evidence that this world is false and simulated. Maybe the upper limit on the speed of light (and therefore special relativity) are artifacts of the simulation. Maybe the real universe is a cartesian grid, and whoever created the simulation determined that the physical laws we have were a good enough approximation.
The concept of devising an experiment to set reality is inherently flawed for a number of reasons. As I've mentioned, one of the large problems is that, if we assume that we're ignorant about the nature of reality, then we have no way of knowing whether the results of our experiments match up with reality. Also, you're assuming that we're all inside a giant computer simulation of the entire universe, when it may be that it's just you, being fed sensory information. If your experiment is measuring some tiny electrical change under exotic circumstances, maybe the simulation doesn't need to model the behavior of the electromagnetic field. Maybe the simulation just has the equipment report the correct result. Or maybe it doesn't even do that, but the simulation just makes your mind *think* it's seeing the equipment provide the correct response.
It's really a well examined philosophical problem, and not a scientific one.
Well, the fundamental issue is that kickstarter depends on trust, and buying retail does not.
Buying retail requires trust, it's just that the trust has been established. When you go to the grocery store and buy some pork, you're trusting that it's pork and not some other meat. You're trusting that it's relatively fresh and not otherwise contaminated. When you buy a new TV, you trust that the box they give you actually has a TV in it, and not just some bricks to simulate the weight. You trust that the TV has all the features it's advertised to have. When you buy medicine from the pharmacy, you trust-- sometimes wrongly-- that the medicine has the beneficial health properties that you're buying it for.
We have other times when we're trusting people. Generally when you hire people, you're trusting (to some extent) that they're going to do the job you ask them to. When you're investing, you're trusting that the company is operating in good faith and not defrauding you. You mention that if you're the sole investor in a $700k project, you can drop in at any time and see how things are going. However, if I buy 2 shares in Microsoft, they don't give me free access to the Redmond campus.
Now, if you want to say that this funding model still has some issues to work on, that seems reasonable. Whether the changes are legal or conventional, I imagine that in the next several years, you'll see some attempts made to improve accountability. I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see contractual additions to these deals. Maybe contributors will be given some ability to monitor how their money can be spent. Maybe things can be structured so that additional funding is released at certain milestones-- like you get $200k for the first stage, and when that's complete you get an additional $300k for the next stage, and when that's complete a final $200k. Maybe the contributors can even withdraw whatever remains of their contribution if certain milestones or requirements aren't met.
I think it's worth considering a lot of different ways to improve the setup. I don't think it's reasonable, though, to talk about the concept as a passing fad.
Also, most of the other important developer friendly things would be in the hardware, not the software. Many developers are likely to wipe the thing and start over from scratch anyway.
Still, I think the idea of having the computer ship with Linux is important. Even if you want to wipe the computer and start over, the fact that it shipped with Linux means that Dell is truly supporting Linux. That means that they're going to have to choose Linux-friendly hardware, and have stable/optimized drivers for all the hardware they're using.
There are also probably sensible choices that they can make for packages for developers, depending on what kind of developers they're targeting. For example, if you're a serious developer, there's a good chance you're going to want some kind of compiler. Picking a particular set of packages may not make all developers happy, but you could possibly start with a normal set of "lowest common denominator" packages and save the user a little bit of setup time.
Aside from that, the summary mentions that this is targeted for developers for "web companies". If you're talking about "web developers", I could definitely see them selecting a set of packages that an HTML/PHP monkey would be happy with and not want to wipe and start from scratch.
I am not convinced that the particles regarded as fundamental actually are.
This is in fact an older problem than people expect. Ancient Greeks talked about problems with the continuity of space, which lead them to note spacial paradoxes like "Achilles and the tortoise". One of the proposed solutions to deal with issues of the infinitesimal was to assume that objects are all made of very small particles called "atoms", which were not able to be split any further. Scientists later adopted the word when they discovered that there were indivisible pieces of chemical elements which could not be split down further.
But the idea of having a "smallest unit of matter" raises a question, which is "what happens when you split that particle?" It turns out there are three options:
1) You can't split it.
2) You can split it into smaller pieces of matter, which means that you were wrong-- the "indivisible unit of matter" is not indivisible.
3) You can split it, but the resulting pieces that you get are not "matter".
It may be counter-intuitive, but answer #3 is actually a very good possibility. If #1 is true, then it raises other problems. What does it mean for there to really be an indivisible unit of matter? What is that unit "made of" that makes it indestructible?
If #2 is true, then really you haven't solved anything, but instead you've just pushed the issue back a level. It turns out the "atom" you thought was indivisible was not, and there are smaller pieces of matter. This means that if you keep dividing until you reach the real "atom" that is indivisible, you end up with all the same problems you started with.
So #3 would suggest that there is some downward limit at which you take a piece of matter and break it apart, the resulting "material" is not properly material. It's kind of like how you could start with a bucket of water balloons, and divide the contents over and over until you're left with only 1 water balloon. However, if you divide that last water balloon, you don't get two smaller water balloons. Instead you end up with a stretchy piece of plastic and a puddle of water, neither of which resemble a water balloon.
The only thing we can reasonably assume, is that thought exists.
And this was the basis for Descartes famous "cogito ergo sum". The first thing he could say is that, even if he doubted his own existence, the act of doubting meant that his thoughts existed, which meant (as best as he could figure) the thoughts must have a source, and so therefore he existed in some form, thinking thoughts.
This simulated you is placed in a simulated room in which all the known laws of physics are simulated to a high degree of precision.
How high a degree of precision? Do you know the "correct" laws of physics ahead of time, such that you could perform tests which required a greater degree of precision than the computer is capable of, and then when the results don't match, know which results are "wrong"?
Essentially if the computer could replicate reality to a degree great enough that no measurements could demonstrate whether you were in "reality", then no experiments could prove which of the two of you are "real". Also in this example, you posit that there are only two of you, and you know that one is real and one is not. You also know the nature of the not-real one: he's a simulation in a computer, and you understand the nature of that computer and that simulation.
I'd want to point out that in our current circumstance, we don't have that kind of knowledge. If I am not "real", then I don't have the luxury of knowing what kind of "unreal" thing that I am. It may be that the underlying "reality" is something which I am completely incapable of understanding.
The reason people are dogmatically sure about the existence of objective reality is that they misunderstand the options. They think their options are either:
A) You have an "objective reality" that is knowable by people, and I can (more or less) trust my senses and experiences. When I see a rock, the rock is really there.
B) You only have "subjective reality", which means that everything is as true as I believe it to be. We all might be in the Matrix, and if you see a rock, it might not be there. If you believe in creationism and I believe in evolution, both are equally true. If I think that Albert Einstein formulated the theory of Special Relativity and you think it was Isaac Newton, neither one of us is more correct than the other. If nobody believes that E=mc^2, then the universe shouldn't be expected to act consistently according to that rule.
I'd hope you can see why people recoil from option B. Not only is it frustrating to think that way, but it's not terribly helpful. If I can trust that the laws of physics behave in a consistent way, whether I am aware of them or not, then I can build cars and space ships and video games and velcro. If I can't trust that things to behave according to consistent rules, I can't really create a plan of action.
Of course, those aren't necessarily all of the options. If you study much philosophy, you'll find that there are more than a couple ways of thinking about this problem, and splitting the everything into either "objective fact" and "subjective judgment" isn't even a few sensible one.
Yeah, this premise seems biased and kind of... leading. I've seen lots of posting in the past 6 months that seems to be rooting for people to be disappointed by Kickstarter projects and for the whole Kickstarter system to fall apart. What's the deal here? Is it just someone setting themselves up to say "I told you so!" later, so that they can seem smart? Is it some kind of astroturfing?
We've had investment firms and real-estate agents and game publishers and everyone else scamming our money for years. We keep giving them money. Game publishers put out bad games, and we waste money buying them, but that doesn't make us question whether the retail model "bubble" is going to burst. We don't say, "There are a lot of investors losing money in the stock market, and a lot of investors are getting angry. When is the stock market fad going to end?" The big difference with Kickstarter is that it's not all about giving money and control to people who are already rich and powerful.
There isn't *that much* of a difference if I buy the latest Tim Schafer game from a major publisher and it turns out to stink, or if I fund Tim Schafer's Kickstarter campaign and get the game "for free" and the game turns out to stink. Really, there are 2 differences: (a) if the publisher makes the game first, I can read the review before I buy; and (b) in the kickstarter model, Tim Schafer probably has more creative control. Therefore, the whole thing comes down to the question, "Do I generally trust Tim Schafer to make a good game?"