I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure these materials can't 'bend' inertia and mass, making this talk about diverting tsunami waves sound pure nonsense.
"In this case, the "reason" was because they suspected the fella of importing "objectionable" material. So making a copy and then giving the device back wouldn't serve the purpose..."
Why wouldn't it serve the purpose? If they'd make a copy that could perfectly well used in any criminal case they'd raise against the guy afterwards, if ever.
My point is, at a lot of airports - US airports included - they can do with anyone what they did with this guy, and while I can (not easily, but still) accept their point, I'd much prefer giving them my data from the devices than the devices themselves. Especially regarding phones, which would be much easier and faster to backup, and it's probably the one device even the most privacy-fanatic people don't wipe before every travel...
OK, first I have to say I travel a lot and I know they can check your devices at a lot of airports, and I hate that as much as everyone. However, my question is why don't they just make a copy/backup/etc of all the devices you have and give them all back? Why do they have to take everything away? It's not that I'd have something sensitive or illegal on my devices: I never take sensitive information with me on travels, I always access them remotely on our servers, all the software I use is legit or free, and I buy all my music and videos. However, taking the devices away can cause a lot of problems, the most important being making you unreachable (and making you unable to reach people). Yes, you can buy a new tablet or a new laptop, and you can buy a new phone, but good luck trying to convince your phone company to forward your calls to a new number if you don't actually have the device and you're not even in your home country... and propagating your new number to all your important contacts could be a real PITA. Yes, some can use Google Voice, but others would be simply fscked. All in all, I don't see how one could come out OK from such an encounter.
My opinion is that every new printed book should have a free ebook 'companion' version available right on release, obtainable with some code/qr from the printed book, with let's say a 6 months expiration date. Then, the ones who have the printed version could purchase the electronic version for let's say 5% of the printed price, and for 20% if you don't have the printed version.
I'm sure I wasn't the first to think of such a scheme, but it seems they just don't want the ebook market to grow 100x faster than it is now, so they don't implement such a structure.
And that's exactly why I never bought any electronic book. The only electronic reading material I ever bought are scientific articles, and even that is very rare, since I find most of them for free somewhere, or get it directly from the authors.
Oh, most certainly you can do a postdoc. And you don't even have to be a postdoc for it:D
Anyway, on the serious side, postdoc jobs mean one thing: working for food. But, there are much worse places to do that than at some university's research lab, so at least you might be at a nice place to be exploited while you figure out a). where to go to actually make some money and then leave, or b). that you can't actually get a job where you could make money so you get stuck. Problem is when one gets to be a postdoc at 27-28 years of age - calculating with 5 years university and 3-5 years until the phd degree, which is pretty normal -, and realizing you're just starting to - eventually - earn some real money, with some friends having got to well-paying positions during those 3-5 years you've spent for that degree.
Especially since there are now companies who actually don't want to hire phd's based on some weird philosophies. Go figure.
So, 'Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing'. Maybe it can. Problem is, how we drive and how they think we drive will never mean the same.
Firstly, dangerous drivers who present the most risk are not those, who drive faster, make one or two sudden moves from time to time, or drive more than the average. Dangerous drivers are those who can't drive fast enough - ever been in a jam caused by some idots holding everyone back? -, those who can't drive safely according to environmental conditions - ever seen Californians drive in a rain? -, those who are not patient enough - remember those idiots jumping lanes like a kangoroo? -, those who aretoo inexperienced to judge any traffic situation and cause even more trouble, and so on and so forth.
Secondly, if they are not there, and can't judge the circumstances, than they are in no position to make decisions on how safely we drive. They can calculate your prices based on the speeds you drive at, the roads you drive on, the moves you make, and while they all might be safe and adhering to current traffic situations, you might still end up paying more.
This is all too short to speak about all relevant issues, but all things considered, I'll never opt for monitoring-based payments. If my fees will be higher because of this, I'll still be fine with that, since at least they won't lie to my face about how honestly and objectively and correctly they calculated those fees.
Quickoffice? How is ths news? Not long back they made it free, and we even got free extra Google Drive space for downloading and installing it. And it doesn't need to be KitKat, it works with earlier versions as well.
No, seriously, http://www.oovoo.com./ While the name is idiotic, been using it - along with skype - for a few years now on windows and android, and it's quite alright.
While I could definitely see the benefits of eliminating unnecessary risks from the road, my problem with approximations is that they seldomly come true. While the number of accidents might decrease, that doesn't mean the number of incidents will. E.g. autonomous vehicles can also brake down, algorithms can go haywire, situations can occur when prompt human intervention would be important (and won't happen since they are not paying attention), etc. etc.
One situation where I'd really welcome more self-driving vehicles is in southern CA during rains. Yes, they are rare, however, most people drive like idiots during rainfall, and accidents become much more frequent. Probably because they have so little experience in driving in rainy conditions, so they drive too close to each other, or drive too fast, or drive to slow, and one more thing: they make me lose my temper:) which I really don't like. So yeah, bring self-driving cars on.
Just please, pretty please, make'm so that the autonomous driving mode can be disabled for the times when you actually want to enjoy a nice driving-around from time to time.
Well, I'd be interested to hear him actually pronounce that: 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#'. He knows it, we know it, everyone knows it, so why the hell can't we write the proper word. Ehh.
"good for consumers" of course, and I'd also add 'Think of the children!'.
Back in the days U.S. broadband was a dream for most, higher speeds and lower costs than almost anywhere else. Then times have changed, first by gradually increasing prices to a point where broadband in the U.S. can't be considered cheap anymore (some prices are simply hilarious), and now they come and tell us that going back in the early broadband days when because of the developing infrastructure and a large number of users we had datacaps almost everywhere. And they even tell us that it'll be good for us. Come on! I'd take a slower (by not much, however) uncapped connection over a faster capped one any day. Data caps are only good for the provider, plain and simple (i.e. they can slow down development, and increase profits over the existing infrastructure for a longer time period, who wouldn't want that?). Trying to argue that it's the other way around is a lie, yet they will easily get away with it and we all will suffer the consequences - the most important of which will be increased prices (again).
For average users, quite true. Non-average users, or ones that really want to keep their communications secret, also know that, and they don't use those services. That's why it makes so many people angry that the communications of masses of people are watched, probably 99.999% of the time totally unnecessarily. of course, there's the good old catch-22 as well, since if they wouldn't watch the common channels, criminals wouldn't need to find better ways to communicate. So, as always, the majority of innocent people get hassled for the hope that the lives of the few criminals become harder. Well, a false hope (you all know Newton's 3rd law, right?), but still a hope.
"About a third come to IT with degrees in business, social sciences or other nontechnical fields, while more than 40% of computer support specialists and a third of computer systems administrators don't have a college degree at all!"
Unfortunately this is probably similar in a lot of other countries as well. A lot of people get degrees that they can't build upon later (either because the market is full, or because demand was not there in the first place) so they fill jobs which could've been taken by people who actually got the proper degrees. Also, they are cheaper for hire at the beginning, since they need to accumulate experience, but after a while there'll be no difference, and companies will prefer experience over qualifications in a lot of cases. Universities should really need to have a reality check when accepting people for certain degrees, since there are always fluctuations in every society and every economy in the need for certain qualifications.
I'd start by saying that I'm bigger than the average. Still, having sat in the slim seats for several travels, I have to say they are more comfortable than the old ones, even in a 3-4-3 row setting. I actually feel like having more leg space (especially for my knees) even if the seat in front of me is reclined. If they all will be like the slim seats on transatlantic LH flights, then I'd take them anytime over the old style seats.
"Many programmers have to re-orient themselves from orthodox object-oriented development, and shift to a world in which data structures are transparent but the behavior â" the transformation â" is not."
No, they most absolutely do not. Ideas come and go, and if programmers would 're-orient' themselves each time, they would be spinning endlessly and not get any work done.
As always, choose the proper approach, the proper tools, the proper environment, the proper language, and do the job. Let the idiots 're-orient' themselves however often they want to.
"theyâ(TM)ve made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us"
I think we understand all too well the rest of you, who don't care about anything. The problem is: we don't care about you. There, you have it. We don't want a device that's dumbed, locked, tailored to noob-level, without a way to customize it. We have a lot of examples for such designs, and they are all too idiotically dumb. You want "simple"? Find one that is dumb enough for you, but do not try to ruin the one mobile OS that' actually usable for power users as well as average joes who are only a bit smarter than a shoelace.
In all seriousness, I - as a researcher myself - understand the need of easy access to publications. However, I never supported the open access models that came into existence and are being built and pursued today. Why? Because it's all about the money and a lot of such journals absolutely do not care about quality, or about having big name editors who'd perform very thorough revision of reviews and make proper decisions about paper acceptances. Big journals have good editorial and review staff, and they simply can't allow them to be bad and irresponsible, because they actually care about their reputation and credibility. New breed open access journals on the other hand only care about revenue.
The instititue I work at has mandated open access publication as well as others did, however, they did not provide funding for us to actually publish open access versions at big name journals, so we try to play the system whenever we can, and publish in traditional journals with traditional publication schemes. I do not care about some politician-flavored scientists' (most of them not even publishing) dreams about some utopistic open access world. I care about publications appearing in credible journals, reviewed by credible people, producing quality publications - even if they are only attainable for money.
"the damage that has become visible over the past few months means that we need to start planning for a computing world with minimal trust"
Oh, come on. I mean I don't know about most people, but there has been no day during my life around computers during which I would've ever thought that computers, the networks, the internet, and/or services were more secure or more trustworthy than that 'minimal' the poster talks about. And I'd expect everyone with enough experince and insight to feel the same. So this 'waking up' one day and being dumbstruck of evaporating trust and security just feels weird and even funny. They were actually never there, just the illusion of some, mostly for the average non-caring crowds, but that's really easy to lose. Also, current generation 'westerners' are the worst in such matters, since they have no more memories of times not-so-long-past when survaillance - covert or open - was the norm. Thinking you live in freedom and liberty can be blinding. Take care, people.
So, few things:
- the beta site looks like every mom&pop noob blog, the furthest away from anything professional;
- commenting is CRAP - the power of Slashdot is the comments, a standard blog-style commenting section will not do, it is stupid and useless, width is too low, fonts are too big, nobody will be able to handle even a few hundred comments in the current beta style layout;
- the site will not look more 'modern' or 'professional' by new headline styles with large space-eating images; on Slashdot, content is king; and most content that we care about is TEXT.
If you really want to copy a layout, then copy ArsTechnica's single column layout. That is nice. This new beta is not. It's childish and amateurish.
"Google's 'derisorily ineffective' efforts to battle online piracy"
It's an indexing&search engine for cryin' out loud, not a censoring body (thankfully). Censorship falls into government territory, they should censor and block sites if they can, not force the censorship tasks onto a company. I do not want to understand why these - and other similar - people can't fathom what they're dealing with. Derisorily ineffective my a**. They are pretty effective in what they do, which is provide results for your queries. They might want to actually regulate search engines though laws, but they wouldn't like the backlash from the people, so they seem to try to force the task onto the companies (especially Google, go figure).
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." The second, let's deal with all the idiot politicians.
"I can hack your server just by sending a email? Cool!
Seriously though, please find a single case of that occurring with any major mail program."
People, wake up, this is not some "cloud utopia". If it runs an email server, it can be hacked, it made lots of us learn our sh*t the hard way. And even it is the only thing running in the VM, it can still give someone usable data.
The only thing this whole shebang is good for is that it makes it virtually - hehh - impossible to get to one service by exploiting the weaknesses of another one running on the same server (which in this case shouldn't happen). That's it, nothing more. No silver bullet, just a different way of trying to solve the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure these materials can't 'bend' inertia and mass, making this talk about diverting tsunami waves sound pure nonsense.
"In this case, the "reason" was because they suspected the fella of importing "objectionable" material. So making a copy and then giving the device back wouldn't serve the purpose ..."
Why wouldn't it serve the purpose? If they'd make a copy that could perfectly well used in any criminal case they'd raise against the guy afterwards, if ever.
My point is, at a lot of airports - US airports included - they can do with anyone what they did with this guy, and while I can (not easily, but still) accept their point, I'd much prefer giving them my data from the devices than the devices themselves. Especially regarding phones, which would be much easier and faster to backup, and it's probably the one device even the most privacy-fanatic people don't wipe before every travel...
"making copies can take time. drives are pretty large today and it can take a while to zip up your media"
I don't much care, I'd still prefer to wait instead of the hassle that would be caused by taking all the devices away for god knows how long.
OK, first I have to say I travel a lot and I know they can check your devices at a lot of airports, and I hate that as much as everyone. However, my question is why don't they just make a copy/backup/etc of all the devices you have and give them all back? Why do they have to take everything away? It's not that I'd have something sensitive or illegal on my devices: I never take sensitive information with me on travels, I always access them remotely on our servers, all the software I use is legit or free, and I buy all my music and videos. However, taking the devices away can cause a lot of problems, the most important being making you unreachable (and making you unable to reach people). Yes, you can buy a new tablet or a new laptop, and you can buy a new phone, but good luck trying to convince your phone company to forward your calls to a new number if you don't actually have the device and you're not even in your home country... and propagating your new number to all your important contacts could be a real PITA. Yes, some can use Google Voice, but others would be simply fscked. All in all, I don't see how one could come out OK from such an encounter.
My opinion is that every new printed book should have a free ebook 'companion' version available right on release, obtainable with some code/qr from the printed book, with let's say a 6 months expiration date. Then, the ones who have the printed version could purchase the electronic version for let's say 5% of the printed price, and for 20% if you don't have the printed version.
I'm sure I wasn't the first to think of such a scheme, but it seems they just don't want the ebook market to grow 100x faster than it is now, so they don't implement such a structure.
And that's exactly why I never bought any electronic book. The only electronic reading material I ever bought are scientific articles, and even that is very rare, since I find most of them for free somewhere, or get it directly from the authors.
Oh, most certainly you can do a postdoc. And you don't even have to be a postdoc for it :D
Anyway, on the serious side, postdoc jobs mean one thing: working for food. But, there are much worse places to do that than at some university's research lab, so at least you might be at a nice place to be exploited while you figure out a). where to go to actually make some money and then leave, or b). that you can't actually get a job where you could make money so you get stuck. Problem is when one gets to be a postdoc at 27-28 years of age - calculating with 5 years university and 3-5 years until the phd degree, which is pretty normal -, and realizing you're just starting to - eventually - earn some real money, with some friends having got to well-paying positions during those 3-5 years you've spent for that degree.
Especially since there are now companies who actually don't want to hire phd's based on some weird philosophies. Go figure.
It sounds best with an Italian accent :)
So, 'Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing'. Maybe it can. Problem is, how we drive and how they think we drive will never mean the same.
Firstly, dangerous drivers who present the most risk are not those, who drive faster, make one or two sudden moves from time to time, or drive more than the average. Dangerous drivers are those who can't drive fast enough - ever been in a jam caused by some idots holding everyone back? -, those who can't drive safely according to environmental conditions - ever seen Californians drive in a rain? -, those who are not patient enough - remember those idiots jumping lanes like a kangoroo? -, those who aretoo inexperienced to judge any traffic situation and cause even more trouble, and so on and so forth.
Secondly, if they are not there, and can't judge the circumstances, than they are in no position to make decisions on how safely we drive. They can calculate your prices based on the speeds you drive at, the roads you drive on, the moves you make, and while they all might be safe and adhering to current traffic situations, you might still end up paying more.
This is all too short to speak about all relevant issues, but all things considered, I'll never opt for monitoring-based payments. If my fees will be higher because of this, I'll still be fine with that, since at least they won't lie to my face about how honestly and objectively and correctly they calculated those fees.
Quickoffice? How is ths news? Not long back they made it free, and we even got free extra Google Drive space for downloading and installing it. And it doesn't need to be KitKat, it works with earlier versions as well.
Again, how is this news?
Right.
"However, switch to what is the question?"
oovoo
No, seriously, http://www.oovoo.com./ While the name is idiotic, been using it - along with skype - for a few years now on windows and android, and it's quite alright.
While I could definitely see the benefits of eliminating unnecessary risks from the road, my problem with approximations is that they seldomly come true. While the number of accidents might decrease, that doesn't mean the number of incidents will. E.g. autonomous vehicles can also brake down, algorithms can go haywire, situations can occur when prompt human intervention would be important (and won't happen since they are not paying attention), etc. etc.
:) which I really don't like. So yeah, bring self-driving cars on.
One situation where I'd really welcome more self-driving vehicles is in southern CA during rains. Yes, they are rare, however, most people drive like idiots during rainfall, and accidents become much more frequent. Probably because they have so little experience in driving in rainy conditions, so they drive too close to each other, or drive too fast, or drive to slow, and one more thing: they make me lose my temper
Just please, pretty please, make'm so that the autonomous driving mode can be disabled for the times when you actually want to enjoy a nice driving-around from time to time.
Well, I'd be interested to hear him actually pronounce that: 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#'. He knows it, we know it, everyone knows it, so why the hell can't we write the proper word. Ehh.
"good for consumers" of course, and I'd also add 'Think of the children!'.
Back in the days U.S. broadband was a dream for most, higher speeds and lower costs than almost anywhere else. Then times have changed, first by gradually increasing prices to a point where broadband in the U.S. can't be considered cheap anymore (some prices are simply hilarious), and now they come and tell us that going back in the early broadband days when because of the developing infrastructure and a large number of users we had datacaps almost everywhere. And they even tell us that it'll be good for us. Come on! I'd take a slower (by not much, however) uncapped connection over a faster capped one any day. Data caps are only good for the provider, plain and simple (i.e. they can slow down development, and increase profits over the existing infrastructure for a longer time period, who wouldn't want that?). Trying to argue that it's the other way around is a lie, yet they will easily get away with it and we all will suffer the consequences - the most important of which will be increased prices (again).
"Functionality is more important than security."
For average users, quite true. Non-average users, or ones that really want to keep their communications secret, also know that, and they don't use those services. That's why it makes so many people angry that the communications of masses of people are watched, probably 99.999% of the time totally unnecessarily. of course, there's the good old catch-22 as well, since if they wouldn't watch the common channels, criminals wouldn't need to find better ways to communicate. So, as always, the majority of innocent people get hassled for the hope that the lives of the few criminals become harder. Well, a false hope (you all know Newton's 3rd law, right?), but still a hope.
"About a third come to IT with degrees in business, social sciences or other nontechnical fields, while more than 40% of computer support specialists and a third of computer systems administrators don't have a college degree at all!"
Unfortunately this is probably similar in a lot of other countries as well. A lot of people get degrees that they can't build upon later (either because the market is full, or because demand was not there in the first place) so they fill jobs which could've been taken by people who actually got the proper degrees. Also, they are cheaper for hire at the beginning, since they need to accumulate experience, but after a while there'll be no difference, and companies will prefer experience over qualifications in a lot of cases. Universities should really need to have a reality check when accepting people for certain degrees, since there are always fluctuations in every society and every economy in the need for certain qualifications.
I'd start by saying that I'm bigger than the average. Still, having sat in the slim seats for several travels, I have to say they are more comfortable than the old ones, even in a 3-4-3 row setting. I actually feel like having more leg space (especially for my knees) even if the seat in front of me is reclined. If they all will be like the slim seats on transatlantic LH flights, then I'd take them anytime over the old style seats.
"Many programmers have to re-orient themselves from orthodox object-oriented development, and shift to a world in which data structures are transparent but the behavior â" the transformation â" is not."
No, they most absolutely do not. Ideas come and go, and if programmers would 're-orient' themselves each time, they would be spinning endlessly and not get any work done.
As always, choose the proper approach, the proper tools, the proper environment, the proper language, and do the job. Let the idiots 're-orient' themselves however often they want to.
"theyâ(TM)ve made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us"
I think we understand all too well the rest of you, who don't care about anything. The problem is: we don't care about you. There, you have it. We don't want a device that's dumbed, locked, tailored to noob-level, without a way to customize it. We have a lot of examples for such designs, and they are all too idiotically dumb. You want "simple"? Find one that is dumb enough for you, but do not try to ruin the one mobile OS that' actually usable for power users as well as average joes who are only a bit smarter than a shoelace.
In all seriousness, I - as a researcher myself - understand the need of easy access to publications. However, I never supported the open access models that came into existence and are being built and pursued today. Why? Because it's all about the money and a lot of such journals absolutely do not care about quality, or about having big name editors who'd perform very thorough revision of reviews and make proper decisions about paper acceptances. Big journals have good editorial and review staff, and they simply can't allow them to be bad and irresponsible, because they actually care about their reputation and credibility. New breed open access journals on the other hand only care about revenue.
The instititue I work at has mandated open access publication as well as others did, however, they did not provide funding for us to actually publish open access versions at big name journals, so we try to play the system whenever we can, and publish in traditional journals with traditional publication schemes. I do not care about some politician-flavored scientists' (most of them not even publishing) dreams about some utopistic open access world. I care about publications appearing in credible journals, reviewed by credible people, producing quality publications - even if they are only attainable for money.
"the damage that has become visible over the past few months means that we need to start planning for a computing world with minimal trust"
Oh, come on. I mean I don't know about most people, but there has been no day during my life around computers during which I would've ever thought that computers, the networks, the internet, and/or services were more secure or more trustworthy than that 'minimal' the poster talks about. And I'd expect everyone with enough experince and insight to feel the same. So this 'waking up' one day and being dumbstruck of evaporating trust and security just feels weird and even funny. They were actually never there, just the illusion of some, mostly for the average non-caring crowds, but that's really easy to lose. Also, current generation 'westerners' are the worst in such matters, since they have no more memories of times not-so-long-past when survaillance - covert or open - was the norm. Thinking you live in freedom and liberty can be blinding. Take care, people.
So, few things:
- the beta site looks like every mom&pop noob blog, the furthest away from anything professional;
- commenting is CRAP - the power of Slashdot is the comments, a standard blog-style commenting section will not do, it is stupid and useless, width is too low, fonts are too big, nobody will be able to handle even a few hundred comments in the current beta style layout;
- the site will not look more 'modern' or 'professional' by new headline styles with large space-eating images; on Slashdot, content is king; and most content that we care about is TEXT.
If you really want to copy a layout, then copy ArsTechnica's single column layout. That is nice. This new beta is not. It's childish and amateurish.
"Google's 'derisorily ineffective' efforts to battle online piracy"
It's an indexing&search engine for cryin' out loud, not a censoring body (thankfully). Censorship falls into government territory, they should censor and block sites if they can, not force the censorship tasks onto a company. I do not want to understand why these - and other similar - people can't fathom what they're dealing with. Derisorily ineffective my a**. They are pretty effective in what they do, which is provide results for your queries. They might want to actually regulate search engines though laws, but they wouldn't like the backlash from the people, so they seem to try to force the task onto the companies (especially Google, go figure).
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." The second, let's deal with all the idiot politicians.
So, it was a good run where Elop managed to change the "embrace, extend, extinguish" mantra into "embrace, f*ck it up, s*ck it up".
Good job. Well done. Nokia shareholders are probably the most happy about it.
"I can hack your server just by sending a email? Cool!
Seriously though, please find a single case of that occurring with any major mail program."
People, wake up, this is not some "cloud utopia". If it runs an email server, it can be hacked, it made lots of us learn our sh*t the hard way. And even it is the only thing running in the VM, it can still give someone usable data.
The only thing this whole shebang is good for is that it makes it virtually - hehh - impossible to get to one service by exploiting the weaknesses of another one running on the same server (which in this case shouldn't happen). That's it, nothing more. No silver bullet, just a different way of trying to solve the issue.
"Why would you run all these on a single VM?"
Because you live in the real world?