Only runs three applications. Sells at a bargain basement price. Can't network worth crap.
So basically:
Russia is getting the unsold copies of Windows 95.
Kudos to MS for figuring out a way to recycle their backstock rather than dump it in a landfill.
I was reading "Don't Panic" (sort of a biography on Douglas Adams during the period when he wrote H2G2) and apparently he used to be one of the writers, and later a script editor for them. And it was during the Tom Baker years too... ahh, the good years...
"What about a socially engineered worm that claims to be doing good?"
That would be called a "Virus".
Bleh. To be honest though, I don't see a whole lot of difference between a "good" worm and "good" bacteria. Your hands, skin, blood, etc, already have millions of bacteria feeding off your system. They assist in choking out the "bad" organisms. Eh... poor analogy, but what do you want for 6am?
Heheheh. Oh, well, being a contractor does have one benefit. All I had to do was say "Oh, my previous contract ended, so now I'm looking for another one." Since I haven't been perm in...gods...upwards of 10 years or so, I can easily use that as an excuse whenever I part on less than pleasant terms with a previous employer. Which, admittedly, has only been twice, and only one of those was my fault. The rest were just honest "contract finished" reasons.
True story. I was working an assignment as a tester for Microsoft. I apologize for the use of variables, rather than names, but I don't want to get sued for breaking NDL. There was a deadline on the release, and if we missed it, there was a penalty of $1 per copy shipped. 20 million copies were due to be shipped on date X. The day of date "X", we realize there's a fatal bug that causes Product "Y" to crash after running any segment that lasts longer than "Z" minutes. Somehow, I'd completely missed this bug. I have no idea how, don't ask, but I completely missed it. We even checked back 3 months worth of revs...the bug was sill there in each one. Of course, the product was late, costing Microsoft a whopping $20 million. What did I do?
I was "allowed" to resigned gracefully, quietly, and have learned a valuable lesson about software testing: It's not whether you miss something, it's whether or not someone else will find it in time to cost you your job. (nods sagely)
Well, you can pirate broadcast frequencies over radio stations with IPods, you can now easily mash video streams together, remixing audio is already old-hat. Voice modulation software is now becoming available on the net. Give it another five-to-ten years, there will be an easy way to pirate broadcast into TV networks.
Imagine the havoc one could create by doing a real professional looking and sounding Audio-Video mix to, say the 5 O'Clock News in your local area, then pirate the station it broadcasts on right at the time the program normally begins. So what happens if they decide it would be a real funny joke to have a video-hack of the President announcing nuclear war, followed by the newscastors reacting in turn? What kind of damage from panic would result? Something tells me this isn't too far off, and frankly, I'm a bit concerned.
(nod) fair enough. I'm not saying this is something we have to deal with now, but rather something society will need to take into consideration in the future if we, as a species, decide to persue AI further. In creating new life, we must be prepared for the ecological, morale, psychological, and philosophical consequences of our actions, or disaster could result. That's really all I'm trying to say.
You are aware of what that the A in AI stands for, right? So, what part of artificial is unclear? It's artificial, fake, not real, a sham. It's not a person.
Artificial, to the best of my understanding does not mean "Fake" or "Sham" or "Not Real". It means "Man-Made". I fail to see how your point applies to my concern. Are you saying that just because humans create a life means that it doesn't have rights? Are not all of us man-made? Perhaps we are born of a biological process, but it was still the actions of our parents, our creators, that brought us into being. In any case, your interpretation of the word "artificial" is inaccurate at best, I'm afraid.
However, this does not mean the point of considering AI rights is any less valid. Even if the AI has no ability greater than humans, it is a very bad idea to start them off with a bad taste in the mouth where humanity is concerned.
I was not referring to robots. I was referring to "True AI". I know that's not the correct term, but effectively I'm referring to when we are able to develope machines that have free will, analytical thought processes, and opinions. I wasn't talking about the welding arm in a Ford factory, I'm referring to future "beings" that are composed of 1's and 0's rather than DNA. Does that clarify it any?
Ultimately it comes down to human responsibility
on
I, Robot Hits the Theaters
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· Score: 3, Interesting
To be sure, we'd all like to say "Look, we've got these laws that say AI can't do XXXXX, so it can't." But the fact is, we cannot possibly account for every possibility with a simple set of laws. We, as would-be creators of an entirely new and admittedly alien form of life must tread as cautiously as possible. An entire attitude change and review of the ethics and rights of computers will have to be decided upon before AI's ever enter mainstream (or indeed, are even taken off an isolated network).
A lot of people like to fantasize that true AI (as in, a living, thinking, emotional being with free will, or at least the capacity for free will) would have the same sort of thought processes, and develop the same emotions as their human counterparts. But let's be honest, the physical body largely determines human emotional state with glandular responses, or physical condition at the time. Eliminate glands, fatigue, and pain, and the emotions one might develop would be on an entirely alien level to us.
I cannot help but fear that humans, as a whole, will not realize this until far too late, which will hurt, diplomatically, any alliance between humans and AIs. The other thing I worry about is that people will walk into this with the assumption of "These are machines, they don't need rights, they shouldn't have rights, and it's not like they're real people."
I think society has seen how well that approach has worked with other humans in the past. Bloody revolutions and civil wars which tore nations apart, and left racial stinging still in the back of many people's minds today. Fortunately, the short memory of humans, and only somewhat longer-lived lifespan has allowed us to progressively become more and more integrated, as human beings, rather than various races.
Now take those same results, and apply it to a species that is not only will likely be more resiliant to attack, but have a memory that can last as long as the hardware and backups and redundant networks will allow. New generations that can inherit all the knowledge of their parents. Throw robots into the picture and you have a being that is physically tougher than humans, able to communicate at a MUCH faster rate, and you have an end result similar to that of Animatrix.
We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level.
Since 95% of all problems on a Windows OS are fixed with a reboot, and since I'm just going to hazard a guess that their OS will have to reboot every time the car is stopped and started, then if there's a problem, it really only lasts till they park and leave the vehicle...
...of course that would be the case regardless, I suppose, but one would hope when they come back that the issue is resolved. Since most people never bother to think of rebooting, despite having tech support tell them the last 10 FREAKING TIMES THEY CALLED that they should always reboot and see if that fixed the problem, before they call, most callers just assume that we didn't mean them, we meant the other, imaginary friend on the line with us...perhaps the call monitor...yes, them...ARGH!
Anyway. The very nature of a car losing power on a consistant basis will force a reboot and probably find MS Kars to be 95% less problematic than their moron-operated desktop counterparts. (Not that all MS OS's are operated by morons, just that the morons are the ones who usually don't think to reboot)...but not that I'm bitter.
Of the 5% of remaining problems, I'd say 4% are caused by the user downloading or installing something they really shouldn't have, or they went noodling around with files or registry entries they really didn't have any business playing with. Since I seriously doubt there will be that much in-depth computing by the user while someone is in their car, that should knock that percentage down a bit too.
So yeah, there's a potential for bugs, hacking, and MS deciding to rule the world with their SKYNET controlled automobiles, but as far as the MS Computers themselves, I think we'll see a marked improvement over their desktop counterparts.
Personally, I think they're trying too hard to cross-market. If they would just release a line of machines with actual LINUX/UNIX on it, rather than something vageuly LINUX powered but Windows-shaped, they might actually do a lot better.
My problem with Linspire is that it attempts to cater to people too stupid or lazy to learn how to use Linux, but want to show off how anti-Microsoft they are by not buying a Windows OS. Now, this may not be the case, it could just be my perception, but it seems that if someone is going to use an entirely GUI-based OS, they should stick with Mac or Windows and accept it.
Now, me personally, I'm a Windows user. Not because I'm too stupid to use Linux (in fact, I used to do tech support for it), but because my career depends on their support, and using it at home keeps me current in the field. But after years of supporting users who have inadvertantly screwed up their system by clicking the wrong things at the wrong times, I really respect Linux for the mere fact that you CAN'T screw it up unless you know what you're doing. It seems like Linspire is just going to add this problem to Linux when it doesn't need to be there.
I remember VAX quite fondly. I wasn't exposed to it until 1995, when I went to college, and haven't really bothered with it then. But now it begs the question: did we ever really -need- to advance?
Sure, now we've got amazing graphics capabilities, and games that can make real life seem dull and colourless by comparison. But you know, games were just as much fun back then too. Who here never played Zork? Who here never played on a MUD? Okay, okay, probably several of you, but still... Even with all the amazing graphics, it seems like games were more fun back then... so games aren't the reason...
Business? Businesses ran fine on the tools available at the time. It did just enough work to get the job done. Sure, people had to do some extra work here and there, but since there weren't a billion pre-packaged automated features, what work the computer saved them was considered a blessing, rather than a hinderence. So business isn't the reason.
Communication? Bah! We communicated just fine. Email worked, BBSes worked, phones worked, fax lines worked. If we needed to make a call away from home, businesses usually let you use the phone, or make change for the payphone. Unless you were a doctor, there wasn't a single phone call or message you just couldn't stand to go without for 10 whole minutes. So communications wasn't the reason.
Was it for the Entertainment Industry? Sure, computer graphics gave us amazing films like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but before that time, directors knew how to make us truly -believe- we were seeing a monster in lieu of some puppets and paper mache. Alien had very little in the way of computer graphics. I don't know that Star Wars (ep 4) had any... yet they remain icons of the Sci-Fi film industry to this day. Their CGI counterparts are often lame in comparison. So it wasn't for movies or TV...
Why then, did we really need to advance so far, so fast, in the realm of computers? And why take a good thing like VAX and cash it in, just because it's old?
I mean, most games didn't work right with Windows 2000, and some don't support Windows 98. Not to mention that most help desks are using Microsoft's Life Cycle in order to cut down on the calls they have to take. Just TRY getting support for a product running on Windows 95... It's fun!
But yeah, I see your point. MS really needs to do something to make itself more money. Maybe they could do an Age of Space or something, and give us the long-desired sequal to StarCraft.
And of course, tape backups require storage space --something that is often in short supply. So offsite storage, like Iron Mountain, etc. get to reap rewards off this as well.
However, that's also the biggest problem with tape backup. Here's an example:
For about a year I was system administrator at an investment firm. When they needed something restored from backup, they needed it restored immediately, because anywhere from $200k to $1mil was being lost each hour the file was gone. Most of the time, this was not a problem, because we kept a month's worth of backups at any given time, and then one backup at the end of each month, for one year, on-site. An average of about 40 tapes, counting the ones in the server at that time.
Well no matter how well-prepared one tries to be, someone always finds a way to 'eff it up. A particular file had to be restored from exactly a point in previous months that we did not have on-site. Which means we had to make an appointment with our offsite-storage to deliver the tapes from that particular month, and of course, they couldn't get it out there till the next day, and when they delivered the tapes, it was the wrong set. There's more trauma to the story, but eventually we ended up with a 3-day turnaround to get the file loaded, which cost the company just about what that account was worth. Fortunately there was enough of a paper trail to save my job, but no one was happy.
As more and more companies require instant gratification in order to remain profitable, there needs to be a faster method of data reclaimation than tapes and off-site storage. Perhaps backing up to a remote system that keeps solid archives on an array of multi-terabyte drive is the way to go...I honestly don't know. But while I have to agree tape drives are reliable and cost-effective for most, their lifespan for "minute-by-minute" companies is rather limited by their lack of speed.
It takes a moment of background story, but this does relate...During the 4th of July celebrations (which for some reason, came on the 3rd of July this year) my sweetie and I joined my best friend and his wife and kids in the park to watch the fireworks. Being the "Evil Uncle" of his son, Gabe, I managed to convince him the previous year that we celebrate July 4th each year to commemorate our fending off the aliens attack on Earth. This year, he and I spoke further on the issue...
GABE: "So, we fought off the Aliens with their own technology?
ME: "Why...ah, yes, as a matter of fact, we did."
GABE: "So aliens have laptops too?"
ME: "Yes, well, sort of. Actually, no..."
GABE: "Arrrgh!"
ME: "See, they captured an alien ship back in the 50's and reverse-engineered the operating system."
GABE: "Hmmm...And they used it to blow up the aliens?"
ME: "Not quite. See, it takes money to fund these sorts of top-secret government wossnames. So what they did was eventually market the operating system in the private sector, as a competing OS. However, since it was the government that gave out the OS in the first place, they decided to keep it close to home, in federally funded areas... like Schools."
GABE: "You mean..." his eyes went wide "Apple Computers are made by aliens? Oh no!"
ME: "No, Apple Computers are made by Apple. However, their OS was originally hacked from an alien spaceship. That's why they never managed to produce clones like the PCs."
GABE: "And we made the aliens blow up with an Apple computer?"
ME: "No, we just used their technology to remove their shields, so that our weapons could blow them up."
GABE: "Did we use alien weapons?"
ME: "Nope, just good old fashioned American-made missiles and stuff."
GABE: "Good," he nods sagely. "Cause next time, we might not be so lucky."
ME: "Indeed. And THAT'S why we celebrate the 4th of July, every year."
MY FIANCE: "Just for the record, Sweetie, our kids are never going to be home-schooled by you."
For you see, the poor movie industries only broke $1 Billion instead of $5 Billion. Obviously their profits were cut by 80% thanks to the evil Dr. Kazaa. Can't you see how they are now suffering? How our poor stars are only able to be afforded salaries in the lower nine digits? How the producers are barely able to make the payments on their own personal third-world countries, I will never know. This is an abomination that cannot be tolerated any longer.
Why, even when they offer us the ridiculously low subsidy rate of a mere $25 per DVD, do those villanous pirates continue to destroy this sacred and nearly-profitless art? Why, when the movies are so kind as to offer us amazingly low discount prices on drinks, snacks, and tickets, do they feel the need to steal the very food from the mouths of babies dependent on those ticket-sales. Babies who will never see their own space-shuttle for their 5th birthday, but will have to wait until they are 6!!! SIX, I say!!!!
The inhumanity of man towards man has indeed reached it's highest point, and I ask that we all bow our heads and weep for the loss of the Movie Industry, for it is they who suffer the most for our shortcomings as mere human beings.
Things You'll always see in a slashdot thread regarding Microsoft."
"Microsoft ripped off/ruined XXXXXXX!"
"Windows sUx0rZ! Use Linux instead."
"Blah, blah, Bill Gates ate my balls, blah."
"They must have used IE! LOL!"
"Blahblah, William Henry Gates, blah, hexidecimal, blah 666, blah."
Amusing, all of them, but couldn't we just bundle all the posts that do nothing but bash MS with some over-used catchphrase into a scripted category? Automatically, every time a story regarding Microsoft or Bill Gates comes out, a script will automatically generate the above comments in a seperate thread, and if someone can think of an original bash to say, they can just add it to the list. With time and effort, the script will grow to a good....10 or 20 insults.
How odd and fascinating... I would have thought that the thickest part would need to be somewhere between the two ends, but I guess not. I guess spider-silk wasn't a viable choice for this, as I'm lead to understand that an inch thick rope of spidersilk is stronger than one of the big giant steel cables on the Golden Gate Bridge. Eh... maybe I'll go get a degree in MEMS so I can work on this project. It sounds fascinating.
Forgive my ignorance, MEMS and Nanotech has fascinated me for a while, but I don't know enough of the math behind them to tell if this is true. My grandfather, rest his soul, once told me of something called the Sailor's Rope Rule, which effectively says that the weight a rope can support is diminished by its length. Thus, a 500 lb. rope might support 500 lbs when there's less than a foot or so in length between the pully and the weight, but might only support 250 lbs when there is a good 100 ft. or so... The actual support degradation of course depends upon the width of the rope and the material the rope is made of.
So what I'm wondering is, does the same apply to the weight supported by nanotubes and other molecular chains. I figure it has to be less of a degradation due to the ionic bonds involved, but it would seem to me that, unless some Quantum rule is involved dealing with extremely small-scale weight supporting chains, that they might never overcome this problem due to the sheer thinness of the tubes, chains, etc. It might be extremely strong material, but if it's width is only a few atoms wide, wouldn't this material be, at least in single lengths, more or less useless by the time it got to a respectable length? This is, of course, excluding bundles, which make the most sense, I'm really just curious if the same rule applies to nanotubes as applies to rope.
"So, how long before we're driving down the highway and suddenly all of our radio stations turn into debt consolidation or penis enlargement ads?"
Come visit the DFW, Texas area. That's exactly what's on the radio, all the time. You get about 2 songs an hour, the rest are adverts for enlargements, sex toys, cheap pills, and debt-dodging.
Slashdot Mirror
Only runs three applications. Sells at a bargain basement price. Can't network worth crap. So basically: Russia is getting the unsold copies of Windows 95. Kudos to MS for figuring out a way to recycle their backstock rather than dump it in a landfill.
On the BBC's budget, all they could afford was a threshold.
I was reading "Don't Panic" (sort of a biography on Douglas Adams during the period when he wrote H2G2) and apparently he used to be one of the writers, and later a script editor for them. And it was during the Tom Baker years too... ahh, the good years...
...anyone know what happened to good old Tom?
"What about a socially engineered worm that claims to be doing good?"
That would be called a "Virus".
Bleh. To be honest though, I don't see a whole lot of difference between a "good" worm and "good" bacteria. Your hands, skin, blood, etc, already have millions of bacteria feeding off your system. They assist in choking out the "bad" organisms. Eh... poor analogy, but what do you want for 6am?
Heheheh. Oh, well, being a contractor does have one benefit. All I had to do was say "Oh, my previous contract ended, so now I'm looking for another one." Since I haven't been perm in...gods...upwards of 10 years or so, I can easily use that as an excuse whenever I part on less than pleasant terms with a previous employer. Which, admittedly, has only been twice, and only one of those was my fault. The rest were just honest "contract finished" reasons.
True story. I was working an assignment as a tester for Microsoft. I apologize for the use of variables, rather than names, but I don't want to get sued for breaking NDL. There was a deadline on the release, and if we missed it, there was a penalty of $1 per copy shipped. 20 million copies were due to be shipped on date X. The day of date "X", we realize there's a fatal bug that causes Product "Y" to crash after running any segment that lasts longer than "Z" minutes. Somehow, I'd completely missed this bug. I have no idea how, don't ask, but I completely missed it. We even checked back 3 months worth of revs...the bug was sill there in each one. Of course, the product was late, costing Microsoft a whopping $20 million. What did I do?
I was "allowed" to resigned gracefully, quietly, and have learned a valuable lesson about software testing: It's not whether you miss something, it's whether or not someone else will find it in time to cost you your job. (nods sagely)
Well, you can pirate broadcast frequencies over radio stations with IPods, you can now easily mash video streams together, remixing audio is already old-hat. Voice modulation software is now becoming available on the net. Give it another five-to-ten years, there will be an easy way to pirate broadcast into TV networks.
Imagine the havoc one could create by doing a real professional looking and sounding Audio-Video mix to, say the 5 O'Clock News in your local area, then pirate the station it broadcasts on right at the time the program normally begins. So what happens if they decide it would be a real funny joke to have a video-hack of the President announcing nuclear war, followed by the newscastors reacting in turn? What kind of damage from panic would result? Something tells me this isn't too far off, and frankly, I'm a bit concerned.
(nod) fair enough. I'm not saying this is something we have to deal with now, but rather something society will need to take into consideration in the future if we, as a species, decide to persue AI further. In creating new life, we must be prepared for the ecological, morale, psychological, and philosophical consequences of our actions, or disaster could result. That's really all I'm trying to say.
You are aware of what that the A in AI stands for, right? So, what part of artificial is unclear? It's artificial, fake, not real, a sham. It's not a person.
Artificial, to the best of my understanding does not mean "Fake" or "Sham" or "Not Real". It means "Man-Made". I fail to see how your point applies to my concern. Are you saying that just because humans create a life means that it doesn't have rights? Are not all of us man-made? Perhaps we are born of a biological process, but it was still the actions of our parents, our creators, that brought us into being. In any case, your interpretation of the word "artificial" is inaccurate at best, I'm afraid.
However, this does not mean the point of considering AI rights is any less valid. Even if the AI has no ability greater than humans, it is a very bad idea to start them off with a bad taste in the mouth where humanity is concerned.
I was not referring to robots. I was referring to "True AI". I know that's not the correct term, but effectively I'm referring to when we are able to develope machines that have free will, analytical thought processes, and opinions. I wasn't talking about the welding arm in a Ford factory, I'm referring to future "beings" that are composed of 1's and 0's rather than DNA. Does that clarify it any?
To be sure, we'd all like to say "Look, we've got these laws that say AI can't do XXXXX, so it can't." But the fact is, we cannot possibly account for every possibility with a simple set of laws. We, as would-be creators of an entirely new and admittedly alien form of life must tread as cautiously as possible. An entire attitude change and review of the ethics and rights of computers will have to be decided upon before AI's ever enter mainstream (or indeed, are even taken off an isolated network).
A lot of people like to fantasize that true AI (as in, a living, thinking, emotional being with free will, or at least the capacity for free will) would have the same sort of thought processes, and develop the same emotions as their human counterparts. But let's be honest, the physical body largely determines human emotional state with glandular responses, or physical condition at the time. Eliminate glands, fatigue, and pain, and the emotions one might develop would be on an entirely alien level to us.
I cannot help but fear that humans, as a whole, will not realize this until far too late, which will hurt, diplomatically, any alliance between humans and AIs. The other thing I worry about is that people will walk into this with the assumption of "These are machines, they don't need rights, they shouldn't have rights, and it's not like they're real people."
I think society has seen how well that approach has worked with other humans in the past. Bloody revolutions and civil wars which tore nations apart, and left racial stinging still in the back of many people's minds today. Fortunately, the short memory of humans, and only somewhat longer-lived lifespan has allowed us to progressively become more and more integrated, as human beings, rather than various races.
Now take those same results, and apply it to a species that is not only will likely be more resiliant to attack, but have a memory that can last as long as the hardware and backups and redundant networks will allow. New generations that can inherit all the knowledge of their parents. Throw robots into the picture and you have a being that is physically tougher than humans, able to communicate at a MUCH faster rate, and you have an end result similar to that of Animatrix.
We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level.
Since 95% of all problems on a Windows OS are fixed with a reboot, and since I'm just going to hazard a guess that their OS will have to reboot every time the car is stopped and started, then if there's a problem, it really only lasts till they park and leave the vehicle...
...of course that would be the case regardless, I suppose, but one would hope when they come back that the issue is resolved. Since most people never bother to think of rebooting, despite having tech support tell them the last 10 FREAKING TIMES THEY CALLED that they should always reboot and see if that fixed the problem, before they call, most callers just assume that we didn't mean them, we meant the other, imaginary friend on the line with us...perhaps the call monitor...yes, them...ARGH!
Anyway. The very nature of a car losing power on a consistant basis will force a reboot and probably find MS Kars to be 95% less problematic than their moron-operated desktop counterparts. (Not that all MS OS's are operated by morons, just that the morons are the ones who usually don't think to reboot)...but not that I'm bitter.
Of the 5% of remaining problems, I'd say 4% are caused by the user downloading or installing something they really shouldn't have, or they went noodling around with files or registry entries they really didn't have any business playing with. Since I seriously doubt there will be that much in-depth computing by the user while someone is in their car, that should knock that percentage down a bit too.
So yeah, there's a potential for bugs, hacking, and MS deciding to rule the world with their SKYNET controlled automobiles, but as far as the MS Computers themselves, I think we'll see a marked improvement over their desktop counterparts.
Personally, I think they're trying too hard to cross-market. If they would just release a line of machines with actual LINUX/UNIX on it, rather than something vageuly LINUX powered but Windows-shaped, they might actually do a lot better.
My problem with Linspire is that it attempts to cater to people too stupid or lazy to learn how to use Linux, but want to show off how anti-Microsoft they are by not buying a Windows OS. Now, this may not be the case, it could just be my perception, but it seems that if someone is going to use an entirely GUI-based OS, they should stick with Mac or Windows and accept it.
Now, me personally, I'm a Windows user. Not because I'm too stupid to use Linux (in fact, I used to do tech support for it), but because my career depends on their support, and using it at home keeps me current in the field. But after years of supporting users who have inadvertantly screwed up their system by clicking the wrong things at the wrong times, I really respect Linux for the mere fact that you CAN'T screw it up unless you know what you're doing. It seems like Linspire is just going to add this problem to Linux when it doesn't need to be there.
I remember VAX quite fondly. I wasn't exposed to it until 1995, when I went to college, and haven't really bothered with it then. But now it begs the question: did we ever really -need- to advance?
Sure, now we've got amazing graphics capabilities, and games that can make real life seem dull and colourless by comparison. But you know, games were just as much fun back then too. Who here never played Zork? Who here never played on a MUD? Okay, okay, probably several of you, but still... Even with all the amazing graphics, it seems like games were more fun back then... so games aren't the reason...
Business? Businesses ran fine on the tools available at the time. It did just enough work to get the job done. Sure, people had to do some extra work here and there, but since there weren't a billion pre-packaged automated features, what work the computer saved them was considered a blessing, rather than a hinderence. So business isn't the reason.
Communication? Bah! We communicated just fine. Email worked, BBSes worked, phones worked, fax lines worked. If we needed to make a call away from home, businesses usually let you use the phone, or make change for the payphone. Unless you were a doctor, there wasn't a single phone call or message you just couldn't stand to go without for 10 whole minutes. So communications wasn't the reason.
Was it for the Entertainment Industry? Sure, computer graphics gave us amazing films like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but before that time, directors knew how to make us truly -believe- we were seeing a monster in lieu of some puppets and paper mache. Alien had very little in the way of computer graphics. I don't know that Star Wars (ep 4) had any... yet they remain icons of the Sci-Fi film industry to this day. Their CGI counterparts are often lame in comparison. So it wasn't for movies or TV...
Why then, did we really need to advance so far, so fast, in the realm of computers? And why take a good thing like VAX and cash it in, just because it's old?
I mean, most games didn't work right with Windows 2000, and some don't support Windows 98. Not to mention that most help desks are using Microsoft's Life Cycle in order to cut down on the calls they have to take. Just TRY getting support for a product running on Windows 95... It's fun!
But yeah, I see your point. MS really needs to do something to make itself more money. Maybe they could do an Age of Space or something, and give us the long-desired sequal to StarCraft.
And of course, tape backups require storage space --something that is often in short supply. So offsite storage, like Iron Mountain, etc. get to reap rewards off this as well.
However, that's also the biggest problem with tape backup. Here's an example:
For about a year I was system administrator at an investment firm. When they needed something restored from backup, they needed it restored immediately, because anywhere from $200k to $1mil was being lost each hour the file was gone. Most of the time, this was not a problem, because we kept a month's worth of backups at any given time, and then one backup at the end of each month, for one year, on-site. An average of about 40 tapes, counting the ones in the server at that time.
Well no matter how well-prepared one tries to be, someone always finds a way to 'eff it up. A particular file had to be restored from exactly a point in previous months that we did not have on-site. Which means we had to make an appointment with our offsite-storage to deliver the tapes from that particular month, and of course, they couldn't get it out there till the next day, and when they delivered the tapes, it was the wrong set. There's more trauma to the story, but eventually we ended up with a 3-day turnaround to get the file loaded, which cost the company just about what that account was worth. Fortunately there was enough of a paper trail to save my job, but no one was happy.
As more and more companies require instant gratification in order to remain profitable, there needs to be a faster method of data reclaimation than tapes and off-site storage. Perhaps backing up to a remote system that keeps solid archives on an array of multi-terabyte drive is the way to go...I honestly don't know. But while I have to agree tape drives are reliable and cost-effective for most, their lifespan for "minute-by-minute" companies is rather limited by their lack of speed.
It takes a moment of background story, but this does relate...During the 4th of July celebrations (which for some reason, came on the 3rd of July this year) my sweetie and I joined my best friend and his wife and kids in the park to watch the fireworks. Being the "Evil Uncle" of his son, Gabe, I managed to convince him the previous year that we celebrate July 4th each year to commemorate our fending off the aliens attack on Earth. This year, he and I spoke further on the issue...
GABE: "So, we fought off the Aliens with their own technology?
ME: "Why...ah, yes, as a matter of fact, we did."
GABE: "So aliens have laptops too?"
ME: "Yes, well, sort of. Actually, no..."
GABE: "Arrrgh!"
ME: "See, they captured an alien ship back in the 50's and reverse-engineered the operating system."
GABE: "Hmmm...And they used it to blow up the aliens?"
ME: "Not quite. See, it takes money to fund these sorts of top-secret government wossnames. So what they did was eventually market the operating system in the private sector, as a competing OS. However, since it was the government that gave out the OS in the first place, they decided to keep it close to home, in federally funded areas... like Schools."
GABE: "You mean..." his eyes went wide "Apple Computers are made by aliens? Oh no!"
ME: "No, Apple Computers are made by Apple. However, their OS was originally hacked from an alien spaceship. That's why they never managed to produce clones like the PCs."
GABE: "And we made the aliens blow up with an Apple computer?"
ME: "No, we just used their technology to remove their shields, so that our weapons could blow them up."
GABE: "Did we use alien weapons?"
ME: "Nope, just good old fashioned American-made missiles and stuff."
GABE: "Good," he nods sagely. "Cause next time, we might not be so lucky."
ME: "Indeed. And THAT'S why we celebrate the 4th of July, every year."
MY FIANCE: "Just for the record, Sweetie, our kids are never going to be home-schooled by you."
"..."Klassroom" following the "Kindergarten" Alpha, the goal is to make this child visit the "aKademy" KDE World Summit in August..."
Hmmm... Klassroom, Kindergarten, aKademy.... does this strike anyone else as a bit dubious?
For you see, the poor movie industries only broke $1 Billion instead of $5 Billion. Obviously their profits were cut by 80% thanks to the evil Dr. Kazaa. Can't you see how they are now suffering? How our poor stars are only able to be afforded salaries in the lower nine digits? How the producers are barely able to make the payments on their own personal third-world countries, I will never know. This is an abomination that cannot be tolerated any longer.
Why, even when they offer us the ridiculously low subsidy rate of a mere $25 per DVD, do those villanous pirates continue to destroy this sacred and nearly-profitless art? Why, when the movies are so kind as to offer us amazingly low discount prices on drinks, snacks, and tickets, do they feel the need to steal the very food from the mouths of babies dependent on those ticket-sales. Babies who will never see their own space-shuttle for their 5th birthday, but will have to wait until they are 6!!! SIX, I say!!!!
The inhumanity of man towards man has indeed reached it's highest point, and I ask that we all bow our heads and weep for the loss of the Movie Industry, for it is they who suffer the most for our shortcomings as mere human beings.
Amen.
The bold print was an accident of not closing my tags, not an attempt to get my post more attention or to be a troll.
- "Microsoft ripped off/ruined XXXXXXX!"
- "Windows sUx0rZ! Use Linux instead."
- "Blah, blah, Bill Gates ate my balls, blah."
- "They must have used IE! LOL!"
- "Blahblah, William Henry Gates, blah, hexidecimal, blah 666, blah."
Amusing, all of them, but couldn't we just bundle all the posts that do nothing but bash MS with some over-used catchphrase into a scripted category? Automatically, every time a story regarding Microsoft or Bill Gates comes out, a script will automatically generate the above comments in a seperate thread, and if someone can think of an original bash to say, they can just add it to the list. With time and effort, the script will grow to a good....10 or 20 insults.How odd and fascinating... I would have thought that the thickest part would need to be somewhere between the two ends, but I guess not. I guess spider-silk wasn't a viable choice for this, as I'm lead to understand that an inch thick rope of spidersilk is stronger than one of the big giant steel cables on the Golden Gate Bridge. Eh... maybe I'll go get a degree in MEMS so I can work on this project. It sounds fascinating.
Forgive my ignorance, MEMS and Nanotech has fascinated me for a while, but I don't know enough of the math behind them to tell if this is true. My grandfather, rest his soul, once told me of something called the Sailor's Rope Rule, which effectively says that the weight a rope can support is diminished by its length. Thus, a 500 lb. rope might support 500 lbs when there's less than a foot or so in length between the pully and the weight, but might only support 250 lbs when there is a good 100 ft. or so... The actual support degradation of course depends upon the width of the rope and the material the rope is made of.
So what I'm wondering is, does the same apply to the weight supported by nanotubes and other molecular chains. I figure it has to be less of a degradation due to the ionic bonds involved, but it would seem to me that, unless some Quantum rule is involved dealing with extremely small-scale weight supporting chains, that they might never overcome this problem due to the sheer thinness of the tubes, chains, etc. It might be extremely strong material, but if it's width is only a few atoms wide, wouldn't this material be, at least in single lengths, more or less useless by the time it got to a respectable length? This is, of course, excluding bundles, which make the most sense, I'm really just curious if the same rule applies to nanotubes as applies to rope.
"So, how long before we're driving down the highway and suddenly all of our radio stations turn into debt consolidation or penis enlargement ads?"
Come visit the DFW, Texas area. That's exactly what's on the radio, all the time. You get about 2 songs an hour, the rest are adverts for enlargements, sex toys, cheap pills, and debt-dodging.