"..and computer programmers are perfectly happy to do anything they can to write code..."
Does that sound as bad with YOUR profession in it?
Yes, it *does* sound as bad with my profession in it. I do believe that programmers who will do "anything they can to write code" are dishonourable. Honourable programmers should refuse to write viruses, spyware, trojans or pr0n-diallers for their employers; likewise, CEOs, CTOs and other executives should refuse to do unethical/illegal things, even if they would improve short-term stock value.
I think the original poster was trying to say that "fiduciary responsibility" is not a valid ethical defense. Someone telling you it's your job to make money at all costs does not magically make any money-making action, on your part, ethical.
I admit, I didn't check the specs on this particular new model. If they support high-rate without any restrictions, that's great. Problem is, they *promised* the same functionality with UMS firmware for the model I already bought (iFP-595T), and they've never delivered. My point still stands -- if you're happy with the features they have *at the time you buy*, then fine. Just don't expect good upgrades or bugfixes.
then I might be interested in any of iRiver's new models.
A warning to everyone: their flash players are decent, but intentionally cripple their UMS firmware to limit MP3 recording to lower bitrate (well below 128kbps/44.1kHz -- I don't have my player here right now).
The regular firmware requires their special iRiver Manager program, which tries to prevent MP3 and WAV files being copied back off the device. (Hint: rename your files to.REC before copying them into the MP3/ directory on their flash players -- they play fine, but you can also copy them back out if need be).
iRiver has always given a totally lame-ass explanation that UMS functionality somehow prevents high-bitrate encoding. Tell me how the USB interface code has *anything* to do with the audio signal path or the A/D convertors used for recording.
And, as others have said, they promise to ugrade their firmware but it always gets pushed back. Nice players if you like the features they offer at time of purchase -- but don't buy one if you are waiting for one of their 'real soon now' promises.
Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.
Are you trolling, or are you prepared to give some evidence and references for this "irreducibly complex" argument? I wouldn't call intelligent design 'new' or 'challenging'. It's the whole 'how did the eyeball originate' argument all over again. It hasn't managed to topple evolutionary theory before, I fail to see why it would this time.
In fact, I don't think 'intelligent design' deserves the designation of theory, either. It essentially states that things could not have evolved without an intelligent hand's intervention. Notice that could not is a negative. One can almost never prove a negative with certainty. That's one of the fundamentals of the scientific method and logical thought.
If you weren't there, personally, when the first flagellum was created by The Almighty, then you can't prove it did not arrive by other means (such as some kind of natural selection).
However, you can, by a metric tonne of evidence, painstakingly accumulated over years and years of scientific research, present a solid argument that it did possibly arrive via a series of modifications to existing structures (or even some happy accidents that benefitted the organism so much that it was passed on to offspring).
I read a good sci-fi book entitled "Operation Overlord" that addressed just this idea. Nazi-dominated 1970s-US sends covert force back in time (which, due to quantum mechanics puts them in a parallel universe -- one way trip) to help out the Allies. It's a really good WWII novel with a sci-fi twist, and has cameos by Isaac Asimov and Einstein:-).
It doesn't really matter what the salute does or doesn't mean in the context of history. What DOES matter is that here we see a bunch of young impressionable kids being taught to unquestioningly salute a flag, and not to think for themselves.
Do you still think there's nothing wrong with that image?
The internet ain't free, bub. You pay for your connection.
With respect, I highly resent the above quip. I do pay for my connection -- up to 10MBps, no bandwidth limit. That was what I signed up for and I pay my bill faithfully.
While I am running a mail server, I can guarantee you I use *far* less bandwidth than any of my neighbours who download pr0n and have their PCs infected with the worm-de-jour. We serve mostly static web pages, some MP3s of a few local indie bands and email for 5-6 accounts, each of which sends less than 10 messages per day. Surely that isn't more than I've paid for.
Yes, it is in the newer contracts that you aren't supposed to run servers, but I was in fact never presented with a contract and have never been asked to sign one subsequently. One party cannot unilaterally change the terms of a contract. They are free to disconnect me if they have been, at any time, unhappy with what servers I run. No complaints from them so far (four years and running).
I have considered using a colo provider, and it will definitely be the next step if our traffic increases or I decide to actually charge money for the service, but for now I actually enjoy the hobby of keeping the system maintained physically in my home. Plus I can upgrade the drives/net card/whatever, whenever I want that way.
As far as uptime goes, I must say Shaw cable has been incredibly good for the last two years or so (as in, less than a day total down per year). It's good enough for a 'hobby' server.
I suppose I will take the suggestions mentioned here and use the ISP's server for outgoing mail. I did already know about smarthost configuration; I just thought it might be a good discussion if I brought the issue up. Lots of good comments.
I think it was Hans Moravec (?) who gave a theoretical operation that would allow you to move into a new mind (biological or artificial, doesn't matter) while maintaining your sense of personal history/continuity and never experiencing the sensation of 'dying' on either side, original or copy:
Imagine two operating tables with you and new-you. A super-advanced slicing scanner thingie scans each layer of your brain, duplicating its exact state in the new-you's brain as it progresses, and removing each layer from your original brain, while preserving a real-time data link between the just-relocated layer and its old location in your brain.
The process would be slow and continuous enough that your consciousness would probably move imperceptibly from you to new-you... eventually you find yourself perceiving things completely from new-you's body and start to see the old body as the inanimate thing.
That's not quite accurate... severing the corpus callosum doesn't turn one half of the brain 'off' -- each side is still doing *very* important functions, they just can't communicate directly with one another.
The moment you removed one half, the person would most certainly die. Assuming you could put them on some kind of comprehensive life-support for long enough to let a new half re-integrate, then *perhaps* it would be possible... perhaps.
Althought I suspect memories and personality are quite distributed in the brain, I doubt they are *that* distributed, that losing a complete hemisphere all at once would not result in permanent memory loss.
Nice units overall -- I bought an iFP-595T while in Japan this past January. Good clean audio output, and it does line-in recording with realtime encoding to MP3, at KHz/bitrate of your choosing (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).
However, some caveats:
You need to use their dumb iRiverManager front-end app to get files in/out of the player. They have alternate USB mass-storage firmware that lets the unit just show up as a removable drive, but "curiously" the MP3 recording rate is crippled in that firmware... hmmm. If I were paranoid I'd think they were trying to 'discourage' the unit's use as a USB mass-storage device, as it would let you copy MP3 files in/out without restriction. They have a lame DRM-check in the manager software so you can't copy files with a.MP3,.WAV (who knows what else) extension back off of the unit -- unless you gave them a bogus extension before putting them *on* the unit, hint hint).
I just made a perl script that renames all.MP3 files in a directory to.MP3.REC -- then the iRiverManager software lets you copy the files on/off with no problems.
They apparently have beta OGG support but I'm not upgrading until they un-cripple the USB mass-storage version of the firmware.
iFP 595-T has an FM tuner. Also line-in recording, encoded in real-time to MP3! At sampling frequency/bitrate you choose too! (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).
Actually, one almost certainly *could* write a "customized HTTP server" with awk (and you wouldn't even need sed and grep). It's a Turing-complete langauge.
"Permanent land-living animals took another 30 million years to develop into reptiles, birds and mammals, but what happened during that transition is unclear."
Birds didn't evolve, to our knowledge, for a LOT more than 30 million years after the Devonian. Late Cretaceous, 65 million years or so.
(IANAPaleontologist, but I wanted to be one when I was a kid, heh)
Ah, a fine troll if I ever saw one. I'll bite. It's Monday and I don't feel like working quite yet:-)
Bill Gates does have incredible business acumen but he shouldn't be looked up to as you imply. The best way to become rich is to have parents who already are -- see
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
And while what to him is pocket change does benefit those who receive it, don't make any mistake -- it's pocket change to him. If he were really such a Mother Theresa wannabe, why doesn't he contribute HALF of his net worth to some great cause? It's the thought that counts, right? If he did that, I'd be more inclined see him as a 'great philanthropist' -- that actually implies a great sacrifice.
Wish I had mod points right now. Most corporatism- and globalization-related problems would go away if companies couldn't hide behind the argument that shareholder dividends are priority #1. I think it would be better if it were enshrined that every company's priorities were:
1) To better the living conditions and well-being of society and mankind as a whole; 2) To ensure that current and future employees cannot be 'let go' unless there is *no* other way to reduce costs for the company (ie., senior execs ' pay is based upon company performance -- they lose first, then employees). 3) Maximize shareholder value.
Of course no one will ever let this happen, as it means the end of the golden parachute/handshake/Enron behaviour/etc.
Thank god. Who ever thought Zippy the Pinhead was ever, ever funny, in the slightest, deserves a firm thwack to the head. What a stupid-ass lame excuse for a comic. Grr. Even less funny than User Friendly. Yeah flame me if you want, I don't care.
How can this be seen as anything *but* an act of aggression (NOT self-defense) by the rest of the world?
And how does making the rest of the world even *more* afraid and distrustful of the world's most heavily-armed and interventionist country make the world "a safer place"? Why does the US need to protect itself from space? No one else has huge frickin' laser beams up there. Not to mention that this totally violates the international treaties on the militarization of space.
One of the biggest reasons the US and its citizens are targets of terrorism is because the US government has, for the last 50 years at least, blatantly disregarded the sovereignty of other nations, killed innocent civilians, toppled democratically-elected governments because they didn't do whatever the current administration wanted, etc..
I'm not excusing or condoning what terrorists do, but a lot less people would choose to resort to terrorism if their wives, daughters, cousins, and children hadn't been killed by selfish "foreign policy" actions by the US. Same goes for *any* country that resorts to force for its own selfish reasons.
I'm at it right now, as I type, in Chiba Japan (outside of Tokyo). Everyone here is furiously testing IPv6 and IPsec interoperability. IPv6 seems to be getting quite mature as a technology (I don't profess to know a lot about it; I can configure interfaces and routes, that's it). IPsec, however (the IKE protocol in particular) is still experiencing real growing pains.
Anyway, back to slaving away in a hot room with people who speak a language I don't understand:-).
Unfortunately, they'll drag down Canada and lots of other countries with them (though our CEOs are pretty good at being fat cats themselves, as they run companies into the ground).:-(
As much as I like the old analog gear (still have a Roland JX-8P I got with PG-800 programmer), the newest generation of analog-modelling DSP-based synths are really so good that it's not as important now to have a real 'antique'. I'm certainly not the greatest patch programmer but the newer instruments are so much easier to use and in most respects, more capable -- I have managed to make nearly all the sounds on my Virus KB that the JX-8P could do. I would collect more old gear if it wasn't so overpriced and if my basement wasn't already half-full:-).
The big thing is to demand quality -- there was an article in Sound on Sound recently talking about buggy firmware in some of the new keyboards. Don't put up with a synth that crashes more than once a year! If I wanted crashy musical instruments I'd use soft-synths on Windows:-)
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"..and computer programmers are perfectly happy to do anything they can to write code..."
Does that sound as bad with YOUR profession in it?
Yes, it *does* sound as bad with my profession in it. I do believe that programmers who will do "anything they can to write code" are dishonourable. Honourable programmers should refuse to write viruses, spyware, trojans or pr0n-diallers for their employers; likewise, CEOs, CTOs and other executives should refuse to do unethical/illegal things, even if they would improve short-term stock value.
I think the original poster was trying to say that "fiduciary responsibility" is not a valid ethical defense. Someone telling you it's your job to make money at all costs does not magically make any money-making action, on your part, ethical.
I admit, I didn't check the specs on this particular new model. If they support high-rate without any restrictions, that's great. Problem is, they *promised* the same functionality with UMS firmware for the model I already bought (iFP-595T), and they've never delivered. My point still stands -- if you're happy with the features they have *at the time you buy*, then fine. Just don't expect good upgrades or bugfixes.
then I might be interested in any of iRiver's new models.
.REC before copying them into the MP3/ directory on their flash players -- they play fine, but you can also copy them back out if need be).
A warning to everyone: their flash players are decent, but intentionally cripple their UMS firmware to limit MP3 recording to lower bitrate (well below 128kbps/44.1kHz -- I don't have my player here right now).
The regular firmware requires their special iRiver Manager program, which tries to prevent MP3 and WAV files being copied back off the device. (Hint: rename your files to
iRiver has always given a totally lame-ass explanation that UMS functionality somehow prevents high-bitrate encoding. Tell me how the USB interface code has *anything* to do with the audio signal path or the A/D convertors used for recording.
And, as others have said, they promise to ugrade their firmware but it always gets pushed back. Nice players if you like the features they offer at time of purchase -- but don't buy one if you are waiting for one of their 'real soon now' promises.
Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.
Are you trolling, or are you prepared to give some evidence and references for this "irreducibly complex" argument? I wouldn't call intelligent design 'new' or 'challenging'. It's the whole 'how did the eyeball originate' argument all over again. It hasn't managed to topple evolutionary theory before, I fail to see why it would this time.
In fact, I don't think 'intelligent design' deserves the designation of theory, either. It essentially states that things could not have evolved without an intelligent hand's intervention. Notice that could not is a negative. One can almost never prove a negative with certainty. That's one of the fundamentals of the scientific method and logical thought.
If you weren't there, personally, when the first flagellum was created by The Almighty, then you can't prove it did not arrive by other means (such as some kind of natural selection).
However, you can, by a metric tonne of evidence, painstakingly accumulated over years and years of scientific research, present a solid argument that it did possibly arrive via a series of modifications to existing structures (or even some happy accidents that benefitted the organism so much that it was passed on to offspring).
I read a good sci-fi book entitled "Operation Overlord" that addressed just this idea. Nazi-dominated 1970s-US sends covert force back in time (which, due to quantum mechanics puts them in a parallel universe -- one way trip) to help out the Allies. It's a really good WWII novel with a sci-fi twist, and has cameos by Isaac Asimov and Einstein :-).
It doesn't really matter what the salute does or doesn't mean in the context of history. What DOES matter is that here we see a bunch of young impressionable kids being taught to unquestioningly salute a flag, and not to think for themselves.
Do you still think there's nothing wrong with that image?
With respect, I highly resent the above quip. I do pay for my connection -- up to 10MBps, no bandwidth limit. That was what I signed up for and I pay my bill faithfully.
While I am running a mail server, I can guarantee you I use *far* less bandwidth than any of my neighbours who download pr0n and have their PCs infected with the worm-de-jour. We serve mostly static web pages, some MP3s of a few local indie bands and email for 5-6 accounts, each of which sends less than 10 messages per day. Surely that isn't more than I've paid for.
Yes, it is in the newer contracts that you aren't supposed to run servers, but I was in fact never presented with a contract and have never been asked to sign one subsequently. One party cannot unilaterally change the terms of a contract. They are free to disconnect me if they have been, at any time, unhappy with what servers I run. No complaints from them so far (four years and running).
I have considered using a colo provider, and it will definitely be the next step if our traffic increases or I decide to actually charge money for the service, but for now I actually enjoy the hobby of keeping the system maintained physically in my home. Plus I can upgrade the drives/net card/whatever, whenever I want that way.
As far as uptime goes, I must say Shaw cable has been incredibly good for the last two years or so (as in, less than a day total down per year). It's good enough for a 'hobby' server.
I suppose I will take the suggestions mentioned here and use the ISP's server for outgoing mail. I did already know about smarthost configuration; I just thought it might be a good discussion if I brought the issue up. Lots of good comments.
Thanks for a good discussion everyone!
Did it run under Level I or Level II? Oh wait, you mean D&D module, not OS-9 module.
Heh.
I think it was Hans Moravec (?) who gave a theoretical operation that would allow you to move into a new mind (biological or artificial, doesn't matter) while maintaining your sense of personal history/continuity and never experiencing the sensation of 'dying' on either side, original or copy:
Imagine two operating tables with you and new-you. A super-advanced slicing scanner thingie scans each layer of your brain, duplicating its exact state in the new-you's brain as it progresses, and removing each layer from your original brain, while preserving a real-time data link between the just-relocated layer and its old location in your brain.
The process would be slow and continuous enough that your consciousness would probably move imperceptibly from you to new-you... eventually you find yourself perceiving things completely from new-you's body and start to see the old body as the inanimate thing.
That's not quite accurate... severing the corpus callosum doesn't turn one half of the brain 'off' -- each side is still doing *very* important functions, they just can't communicate directly with one another.
The moment you removed one half, the person would most certainly die. Assuming you could put them on some kind of comprehensive life-support for long enough to let a new half re-integrate, then *perhaps* it would be possible... perhaps.
Althought I suspect memories and personality are quite distributed in the brain, I doubt they are *that* distributed, that losing a complete hemisphere all at once would not result in permanent memory loss.
Nice units overall -- I bought an iFP-595T while in Japan this past January. Good clean audio output, and it does line-in recording with realtime encoding to MP3, at KHz/bitrate of your choosing (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).
.MP3,.WAV (who knows what else) extension back off of the unit -- unless you gave them a bogus extension before putting them *on* the unit, hint hint).
.MP3 files in a directory to .MP3.REC -- then the iRiverManager software lets you copy the files on/off with no problems.
However, some caveats:
You need to use their dumb iRiverManager front-end app to get files in/out of the player. They have alternate USB mass-storage firmware that lets the unit just show up as a removable drive, but "curiously" the MP3 recording rate is crippled in that firmware... hmmm. If I were paranoid I'd think they were trying to 'discourage' the unit's use as a USB mass-storage device, as it would let you copy MP3 files in/out without restriction. They have a lame DRM-check in the manager software so you can't copy files with a
I just made a perl script that renames all
They apparently have beta OGG support but I'm not upgrading until they un-cripple the USB mass-storage version of the firmware.
iFP 595-T has an FM tuner. Also line-in recording, encoded in real-time to MP3! At sampling frequency/bitrate you choose too! (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).
Actually, one almost certainly *could* write a "customized HTTP server" with awk (and you wouldn't even need sed and grep). It's a Turing-complete langauge.
Just thought you might want to know.
"Permanent land-living animals took another 30 million years to develop into reptiles, birds and mammals, but what happened during that transition is unclear."
Birds didn't evolve, to our knowledge, for a LOT more than 30 million years after the Devonian. Late Cretaceous, 65 million years or so.
(IANAPaleontologist, but I wanted to be one when I was a kid, heh)
Ah, a fine troll if I ever saw one. I'll bite. It's Monday and I don't feel like working quite yet :-)
Bill Gates does have incredible business acumen but he shouldn't be looked up to as you imply. The best way to become rich is to have parents who already are -- see
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
And while what to him is pocket change does benefit those who receive it, don't make any mistake -- it's pocket change to him. If he were really such a Mother Theresa wannabe, why doesn't he contribute HALF of his net worth to some great cause? It's the thought that counts, right? If he did that, I'd be more inclined see him as a 'great philanthropist' -- that actually implies a great sacrifice.
Wish I had mod points right now. Most corporatism- and globalization-related problems would go away if companies couldn't hide behind the argument that shareholder dividends are priority #1. I think it would be better if it were enshrined that every company's priorities were:
1) To better the living conditions and well-being of society and mankind as a whole;
2) To ensure that current and future employees cannot be 'let go' unless there is *no* other way to reduce costs for the company (ie., senior execs ' pay is based upon company performance -- they lose first, then employees).
3) Maximize shareholder value.
Of course no one will ever let this happen, as it means the end of the golden parachute/handshake/Enron behaviour/etc.
Oh, if I only had mod points today.. :-)
Thank god. Who ever thought Zippy the Pinhead was ever, ever funny, in the slightest, deserves a firm thwack to the head. What a stupid-ass lame excuse for a comic. Grr. Even less funny than User Friendly. Yeah flame me if you want, I don't care.
How can this be seen as anything *but* an act of aggression (NOT self-defense) by the rest of the world?
And how does making the rest of the world even *more* afraid and distrustful of the world's most heavily-armed and interventionist country make the world "a safer place"? Why does the US need to protect itself from space? No one else has huge frickin' laser beams up there. Not to mention that this totally violates the international treaties on the militarization of space.
One of the biggest reasons the US and its citizens are targets of terrorism is because the US government has, for the last 50 years at least, blatantly disregarded the sovereignty of other nations, killed innocent civilians, toppled democratically-elected governments because they didn't do whatever the current administration wanted, etc..
I'm not excusing or condoning what terrorists do, but a lot less people would choose to resort to terrorism if their wives, daughters, cousins, and children hadn't been killed by selfish "foreign policy" actions by the US. Same goes for *any* country that resorts to force for its own selfish reasons.
I'm at it right now, as I type, in Chiba Japan (outside of Tokyo). Everyone here is furiously testing IPv6 and IPsec interoperability. IPv6 seems to be getting quite mature as a technology (I don't profess to know a lot about it; I can configure interfaces and routes, that's it). IPsec, however (the IKE protocol in particular) is still experiencing real growing pains.
:-).
Anyway, back to slaving away in a hot room with people who speak a language I don't understand
What, you mean the ability to use cool electronic music gear properly? I thought that's what Midichlorians were for... :-p
Romper Stomper Bomper Boom!
Unfortunately, they'll drag down Canada and lots of other countries with them (though our CEOs are pretty good at being fat cats themselves, as they run companies into the ground). :-(
As much as I like the old analog gear (still have a Roland JX-8P I got with PG-800 programmer), the newest generation of analog-modelling DSP-based synths are really so good that it's not as important now to have a real 'antique'. I'm certainly not the greatest patch programmer but the newer instruments are so much easier to use and in most respects, more capable -- I have managed to make nearly all the sounds on my Virus KB that the JX-8P could do. I would collect more old gear if it wasn't so overpriced and if my basement wasn't already half-full :-).
:-)
The big thing is to demand quality -- there was an article in Sound on Sound recently talking about buggy firmware in some of the new keyboards. Don't put up with a synth that crashes more than once a year! If I wanted crashy musical instruments I'd use soft-synths on Windows