In interface design, intuitiveness is one of the most important factors, and making your interface similar to the countless interfaces the user is already familiar with makes it more intuitive for him.
Thus what has been done in the past becomes a design consideration itself. Even a brilliant new interface that by all other measures is more intuitive and easy to use can be a bad design if it confuses the users by being too different from what they already know.
The prevalant design ideas from windows didn't become ubiquitous by being good -- but they are now good because they are ubiquitous.
Now you're just being pedantic. I didn't say that every person who comes out in support of a position that contradicts their own financial interests is lying about their motives. That is obviously not true. There is such a thing as altruism, and even if there weren't there would still be people who simply aren't smart enough to know what their own best interests are. Just look at the way people decide how to vote.
However, you claimed that because I doubt the honesty of a CEO's comments in an interview, I am committing the logical fallacy of circumstantial ad hominem, and I say again that you are misapplying the concept. I'm not evaluating the truth or fallacy an objective fact, or even the truth of fallacy of the claim that "DRM is bad." (It is, by the way). I'm measuring the credibility of Steve Jobs, specifically his claims about why he does something. And a person's self-interest does have a bearing on how credible they are.
That does not mean someone is automatically a liar when their position doesn't line up with their interests, and I never said it did. I was just disputing YOUR claim that considering a person's motives is illogical when the question under consideration is the truth or falsehood of that very person's claims about their motives.
Sometimes, people lie about their motives. It is not a logical fallacy to say so.
You are not applying the rules of logic in the proper context.
When the truth or falsehood in question is a statement about what an individual supports, that individuals own interests sure as hell do have a bearing on it. Jobs is making a statement in support of a position. The position he ostensibly supports would adversely impact his own interests. And you suggest that this shouldn't cast any shadow on his credibility, that I shouldn't doubt the sincerity of his statement?
I have some lovely land in Elbonia that I would like to sell to you.
Hey, I don't disagree with anything you just said. But that was my original point. It is in Apple's interests to stick with DRM, and that's why they stick with it. Any "I don't like DRM but the big bad music companies make me do it" crap is just spin to keep the apple looking polished for the consumer who doesn't want it.
Apple isn't going to license FairPlay because as you said, they want to sell iPods. They don't make money on the iTunes store itself, so it would be a bad deal for them if consumers in general (not just the tech-savvy ones) could buy music there and play it on a device other than the iPod. That's why they don't license it. The stuff about it making it more likely to be compromised is somewhat true, but hardly the compelling reason -- Fairplay is already compromised. If you want to unlock your iTunes purchases, 2 minutes of googling will give you the tools.
And that too is why they apply their DRM to every song sold, not just the ones where they are contractually obligated to do so. Apple wants DRM. Jobs wants DRM. Do the music companies also want it? Of course -- but Jobs trying to pin it on them and come off looking like he's on our side and is just another victim of their bullying ways. . . that smells like B.S. to me.
Use a material that goes rigid under solar UV so it doesn't matter if they get punctured after inflation. . . . Try to use a material (better yet, layers of material) that doesn't fragment under impact to compound the problem with secondary debris.
I hope this doesn't come off as if I'm picking on you personally, because it seems like everyone has an answer like this, but. . . If the "possible solution" is to just make a big balloon out of a material that goes rigid under solar UV and doesn't fragment under impact, would you mind telling us all what that material is?
Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we just launch a giant donut made out of a material that emits some kind of tractor rays that space junk is attacted to, and that generates an inverse tachyon field in the middle which makes space junk disappear into another dimension?
That still doesn't get you anything. Because HappyMonkeyPooFace on slashdot could have a hundred other logins on slashdot as well. Bottom line is that there is no one-to-one relationship between people and screen names. No matter how many screen names you register as belonging to John Q. Sexoffender, he can always get another one that isn't registered, and how are you gonna know?
In other words, this plan boils down to, "Hey everybody on the internet, if you are a predator, please let us know before you rape our children, K?"
The whole suggestion depends on the voluntary self-identification of sex offenders, and if we could count on that, we wouldn't NEED any system at all. The only thing such a policy could possibly do is provide additionaly criminal penalties that can be tacked on once an offender is caught, which is ridiculous because the penalties for their actual crime should be enough to keep them locked up forever.
Then you haven't considered the practical questions of how it could be implemented. Screen names are self-chosen, and typically numerous. There is no universal respository of screen names that is shared by the whole of the internet. HappyMonkeyPooFace on slashdot may be a totally different person than HappyMonkeyPooFace on MySpace.
Am I supposed to check some registry somewhere before I pick my screen name, just in case some rapist has already used it somewhere else? How will the authorities know who they are monitoring?
A screen name simply can't be used for identification purposes of this sort -- it is nothing more than a self-chosen highly context sensitive nickname.
Please, explain to me how you would implement such a proposal.
It's not about whether or not the scientist gets paid, or who pays them. Of course scientists get paid, and of course research needs funding.
It's about what you are paying them to do. In real science, you pay someone to conduct a study and report the result -- whatever that result may turn out to be. When you offer money to scientists to produce the specific result you want, that's propaganda, not science.
Is there propaganda on both sides? Probably. But the fact that everyone gets paid is not evidence of that. Whenever I see a story about an organization offering money up front for results that say a particular thing, it seems to be Exxon/Mobile making the offer.
There is nothing forcing any vendor to accept U.S. dollars as a form of payment. The key word there is "debt." If I already owe you money for some reason, like a lawsuit, and I am legally obligated to compensate you what I owe, then you can't refuse my U.S dollars so long as we are under the jurisdiction of us law.
But you can sure as hell choose not to accept them as a form of payment. If you are selling me something, you can set the terms regarding what you will sell it for. As someone else already pointed out, try buying gas with a 100 dollar bill sometime. There are plenty of places that won't take cash for security reasons. . . for example, buy anything from on online retailer and you're looking at credit card or money order. They don't give you the option of mailing a fistful of cash.
Doctors have to be licensed here too, of course, it just isn't done at a national level, so far as I know. I think they have to be licensed by the state medical board in the state(s) in which they practice, and those boards are run by the state's department of health, which complies with rule and guidelines made by the federal department of health.
But I am not a Doctor, so this is mostly just guessing.
My media center PC has 4 400GB drives in a RAID-5 array. It also has 2 other 200 GB drives in the machine. The RAID array is now full. As there is no room to add more drives, and I have no other machine capable of hosting the RAID (The drives are all SATA, my other machines are older and can only handle 2 SATA drives at most), my only option seems to be replacing the drives one by one with bigger ones, and rebuilding the RAID from the other 3 each time. This is undesireable, however, since I would just end up with 4 new drives that each have a 400 GB partition on them for the raid, and leftover space. I could then make a second raid 5 across the remaining space, but. . . that's not at all what I want.
So it seems like in order to have a new bigger RAID and the existing running at the same time (in order to migrate the data) I'd need two machines capable of hosting 4-drive RAID 5 arrays.
You are correct that the average distance that must be travelled is 25% of the radius. In BOTH cases. The density doesn't matter.
However, I only claimed half to be consistent with the scenario my parent poster presented, which appeared to assume the worst case -- starting from the rest position and seeking the sector furthest from it. . . which would be half the radius.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your example, that would make the seek time less, not more, as the poster I responded to was implying.
However, your example isn't quite right -- if you have two drives of the same physical dimensions (number of platters, size of platter, number of read heads, RPM) and one is twice the density of the other, and both are at 50 percent capacity with that data assumed to be on the "first half" of the drive, then the distance the arm needs to travel is the same in both cases. The arm travels half the radius of the disk.
It doesn't matter that it is passing over twice as many bits in that distance, the distance is the same. Similarly, the latency is the same. The average amount of time that the read head must wait for the data it is seeking to appear under the read head is still half a revolution. The fact that twice as many bits fly under it while it is waiting doesn't change that.
The fact that twice as many bits fly under it while it is reading the data means that the read time should be faster, but that is not seek time.
It's still a major issue for me. You're right, I'm not an average joe when it comes to storage needs, but does that mean that nobody should produce a product that fills my need? My 1.2 Terabyte RAID array is full, and I am currently wondering how the hell to add more storage and migrate the data without simply building a whole new machine.
The innovation in capacity and density is driven by the needs of enterprise users, and atypical users like me. The advances that come of it are then incorporated into lower-end drives as well. The reason that you start to see 100GB drives being the lowest capacity you can find is not because nobody could get by on less, it is because it would cost more to keep producing drives using the older technology -- each leap forward in drive technology has to be accompanied by retooling of manufacturing equipment and process, and it doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to keep producing lower capacity drives if they cost as much or more to make as a newer one with higher capacity.
How does the capacity of a drive have anything to do with its seek time? Seek time is a function of how quickly the read arm can cross the radius of the platter, and to a smaller degree how fast the platter spins. The article claims they will be increasing storage density using this HARM thing so that more bits can be stored on the same amount of surface area. Seek time should not change significantly unless they make the platters larger, or spin the drive at lower RPM.
Nope. That was the Declaration of Independence, which is not a document of law describing our system of government or our rights -- it is a big "f*ck you, we declare independence" letter to England. Further, the "self-evident" rights mentioned were merely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
You can't be tried for a law that doesn't exist. IANAL, but if it wasn't against the law when you did it, you can't be arrested for it. Ignorance of the law is one thing, but ignorance of a non-existant law is quite another.
The parent's point, as I read it, was not that you could be arrested for things that were legal when you did them. His point was that while you may be a law abiding citizen today, the law may change and become unreasonable. Do you want to commit now to being a law abiding citizen for all perpetuity, no matter how stupid or bizzare the government becomes?
Suppose that a curfew is enacted making it illegal for any person to be on the streets after 8 pm. Or to wear socks with sandals. Or to eat fatty foods. These are extreme examples, but they are just examples. Faced with such laws, I for one would choose to become a criminal.
But if you have already given the government near-perfect enforcement of whatever law it manages to enact, you have effectively taken civil disobedience out of the equation. You can obey the new law no matter how ridiculous, or you can disobey and be locked up. I prefer to have a third viable option, disobeying and getting away with it.
It is foolhardy to think that because we have a (debatably) good government today it will always be so, especially if you give that government the tools to tighten its grasp on power.
It's a shame that the parent posted AC and has a score of 0, because this is a good concrete example. And as if the fact that they will fine the car's owner regardless of who was driving isn't bad enough, the system has often fined people who didn't even run the light!
People have gotten traffic citations mailed to them, complete with an attached picture of their car driving through the intersection with the green light clearly visible in the photo, or of their car stopped at the intersection.
It is pretty easy to get out of these obviously erroneous fines (They send you the picture, so you more or less just have to take it to the courthouse and show them how obviously wrong it is), but that's still an inconvenience.
Of course. . . this problem has more to do with the automatic nature of the system than with the surveillance itself, but the problem of fining people who weren't driving the car would apply even if human beings were monitoring the camera.
And quickly back to the topic at hand: free will. You are a probabilistic information processor, just like a chess computer. During the time the computer ponders its decision, it is "free". You are free in exactly the same sense. And probabilistic information processors can be held responsible for their actions; the fact that they will be held responsible is just one more piece of information for them to consider.
I wish I had mod points for you, and I encourage anyone who does to mod you up. I've been reading through this discussion with growing frustration that nobody seems to get this, and wishing I could think of the right words to point it out. I tip my hat.
Even if it doesn't, I'm a little tired of this idea that free speech extends to pornography. Somehow I doubt that was original intent of the Founding Fathers.
Don't elevate "the intent of the founding fathers" to some kind of pedestal. I'm a little tired of the idea that the intent of the founding fathers defines the intractable limits of our rights. They were men, not gods. They didn't intend freedom of speech, or assembly, or the right to bear arms, or the right to due process to extend to black people, after all. They didn't intend voting rights to extend to females.
Slashdot Mirror
In interface design, intuitiveness is one of the most important factors, and making your interface similar to the countless interfaces the user is already familiar with makes it more intuitive for him.
Thus what has been done in the past becomes a design consideration itself. Even a brilliant new interface that by all other measures is more intuitive and easy to use can be a bad design if it confuses the users by being too different from what they already know.
The prevalant design ideas from windows didn't become ubiquitous by being good -- but they are now good because they are ubiquitous.
Now you're just being pedantic. I didn't say that every person who comes out in support of a position that contradicts their own financial interests is lying about their motives. That is obviously not true. There is such a thing as altruism, and even if there weren't there would still be people who simply aren't smart enough to know what their own best interests are. Just look at the way people decide how to vote.
However, you claimed that because I doubt the honesty of a CEO's comments in an interview, I am committing the logical fallacy of circumstantial ad hominem, and I say again that you are misapplying the concept. I'm not evaluating the truth or fallacy an objective fact, or even the truth of fallacy of the claim that "DRM is bad." (It is, by the way). I'm measuring the credibility of Steve Jobs, specifically his claims about why he does something. And a person's self-interest does have a bearing on how credible they are.
That does not mean someone is automatically a liar when their position doesn't line up with their interests, and I never said it did. I was just disputing YOUR claim that considering a person's motives is illogical when the question under consideration is the truth or falsehood of that very person's claims about their motives.
Sometimes, people lie about their motives. It is not a logical fallacy to say so.
You are not applying the rules of logic in the proper context.
When the truth or falsehood in question is a statement about what an individual supports, that individuals own interests sure as hell do have a bearing on it. Jobs is making a statement in support of a position. The position he ostensibly supports would adversely impact his own interests. And you suggest that this shouldn't cast any shadow on his credibility, that I shouldn't doubt the sincerity of his statement?
I have some lovely land in Elbonia that I would like to sell to you.
Hey, I don't disagree with anything you just said. But that was my original point. It is in Apple's interests to stick with DRM, and that's why they stick with it. Any "I don't like DRM but the big bad music companies make me do it" crap is just spin to keep the apple looking polished for the consumer who doesn't want it.
Apple isn't going to license FairPlay because as you said, they want to sell iPods. They don't make money on the iTunes store itself, so it would be a bad deal for them if consumers in general (not just the tech-savvy ones) could buy music there and play it on a device other than the iPod. That's why they don't license it. The stuff about it making it more likely to be compromised is somewhat true, but hardly the compelling reason -- Fairplay is already compromised. If you want to unlock your iTunes purchases, 2 minutes of googling will give you the tools.
And that too is why they apply their DRM to every song sold, not just the ones where they are contractually obligated to do so. Apple wants DRM. Jobs wants DRM. Do the music companies also want it? Of course -- but Jobs trying to pin it on them and come off looking like he's on our side and is just another victim of their bullying ways. . . that smells like B.S. to me.
Okay, poor choice of words. I just meant that they refuse to license it for use in other playback devices.
Use a material that goes rigid under solar UV so it doesn't matter if they get punctured after inflation. . . . Try to use a material (better yet, layers of material) that doesn't fragment under impact to compound the problem with secondary debris.
I hope this doesn't come off as if I'm picking on you personally, because it seems like everyone has an answer like this, but. . . If the "possible solution" is to just make a big balloon out of a material that goes rigid under solar UV and doesn't fragment under impact, would you mind telling us all what that material is?
Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we just launch a giant donut made out of a material that emits some kind of tractor rays that space junk is attacted to, and that generates an inverse tachyon field in the middle which makes space junk disappear into another dimension?
But this would be radiation from SPACE PROBES! Don't you know what happens when a radioactive space probe returns to earth?!?!
I'll give you a hint -- it starts with a B, and ends with RAIN-EATING ZOMBIES!
That still doesn't get you anything. Because HappyMonkeyPooFace on slashdot could have a hundred other logins on slashdot as well. Bottom line is that there is no one-to-one relationship between people and screen names. No matter how many screen names you register as belonging to John Q. Sexoffender, he can always get another one that isn't registered, and how are you gonna know?
In other words, this plan boils down to, "Hey everybody on the internet, if you are a predator, please let us know before you rape our children, K?"
The whole suggestion depends on the voluntary self-identification of sex offenders, and if we could count on that, we wouldn't NEED any system at all. The only thing such a policy could possibly do is provide additionaly criminal penalties that can be tacked on once an offender is caught, which is ridiculous because the penalties for their actual crime should be enough to keep them locked up forever.
Then you haven't considered the practical questions of how it could be implemented. Screen names are self-chosen, and typically numerous. There is no universal respository of screen names that is shared by the whole of the internet. HappyMonkeyPooFace on slashdot may be a totally different person than HappyMonkeyPooFace on MySpace.
Am I supposed to check some registry somewhere before I pick my screen name, just in case some rapist has already used it somewhere else? How will the authorities know who they are monitoring?
A screen name simply can't be used for identification purposes of this sort -- it is nothing more than a self-chosen highly context sensitive nickname.
Please, explain to me how you would implement such a proposal.
I know that Coca Cola spends something like a billion dollars a year just to keep the name visible...but that's a company, not a product!
Coca Cola isn't a product? What the hell have I been drinking?
It's not about whether or not the scientist gets paid, or who pays them. Of course scientists get paid, and of course research needs funding.
It's about what you are paying them to do. In real science, you pay someone to conduct a study and report the result -- whatever that result may turn out to be. When you offer money to scientists to produce the specific result you want, that's propaganda, not science.
Is there propaganda on both sides? Probably. But the fact that everyone gets paid is not evidence of that. Whenever I see a story about an organization offering money up front for results that say a particular thing, it seems to be Exxon/Mobile making the offer.
All these damn 0% pre-approved credit card applications I get every day (probably 2-3) is not only spam, but a huge waist.
You aren't supposed to be eating them, silly! Just throw them out!
There is nothing forcing any vendor to accept U.S. dollars as a form of payment. The key word there is "debt." If I already owe you money for some reason, like a lawsuit, and I am legally obligated to compensate you what I owe, then you can't refuse my U.S dollars so long as we are under the jurisdiction of us law.
But you can sure as hell choose not to accept them as a form of payment. If you are selling me something, you can set the terms regarding what you will sell it for. As someone else already pointed out, try buying gas with a 100 dollar bill sometime. There are plenty of places that won't take cash for security reasons. . . for example, buy anything from on online retailer and you're looking at credit card or money order. They don't give you the option of mailing a fistful of cash.
Doctors have to be licensed here too, of course, it just isn't done at a national level, so far as I know. I think they have to be licensed by the state medical board in the state(s) in which they practice, and those boards are run by the state's department of health, which complies with rule and guidelines made by the federal department of health.
But I am not a Doctor, so this is mostly just guessing.
I think. Therefore, I am not a stock broker.
My media center PC has 4 400GB drives in a RAID-5 array. It also has 2 other 200 GB drives in the machine. The RAID array is now full. As there is no room to add more drives, and I have no other machine capable of hosting the RAID (The drives are all SATA, my other machines are older and can only handle 2 SATA drives at most), my only option seems to be replacing the drives one by one with bigger ones, and rebuilding the RAID from the other 3 each time. This is undesireable, however, since I would just end up with 4 new drives that each have a 400 GB partition on them for the raid, and leftover space. I could then make a second raid 5 across the remaining space, but. . . that's not at all what I want.
So it seems like in order to have a new bigger RAID and the existing running at the same time (in order to migrate the data) I'd need two machines capable of hosting 4-drive RAID 5 arrays.
You are correct that the average distance that must be travelled is 25% of the radius. In BOTH cases. The density doesn't matter.
However, I only claimed half to be consistent with the scenario my parent poster presented, which appeared to assume the worst case -- starting from the rest position and seeking the sector furthest from it. . . which would be half the radius.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your example, that would make the seek time less, not more, as the poster I responded to was implying.
However, your example isn't quite right -- if you have two drives of the same physical dimensions (number of platters, size of platter, number of read heads, RPM) and one is twice the density of the other, and both are at 50 percent capacity with that data assumed to be on the "first half" of the drive, then the distance the arm needs to travel is the same in both cases. The arm travels half the radius of the disk.
It doesn't matter that it is passing over twice as many bits in that distance, the distance is the same. Similarly, the latency is the same. The average amount of time that the read head must wait for the data it is seeking to appear under the read head is still half a revolution. The fact that twice as many bits fly under it while it is waiting doesn't change that.
The fact that twice as many bits fly under it while it is reading the data means that the read time should be faster, but that is not seek time.
It's still a major issue for me. You're right, I'm not an average joe when it comes to storage needs, but does that mean that nobody should produce a product that fills my need? My 1.2 Terabyte RAID array is full, and I am currently wondering how the hell to add more storage and migrate the data without simply building a whole new machine.
The innovation in capacity and density is driven by the needs of enterprise users, and atypical users like me. The advances that come of it are then incorporated into lower-end drives as well. The reason that you start to see 100GB drives being the lowest capacity you can find is not because nobody could get by on less, it is because it would cost more to keep producing drives using the older technology -- each leap forward in drive technology has to be accompanied by retooling of manufacturing equipment and process, and it doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to keep producing lower capacity drives if they cost as much or more to make as a newer one with higher capacity.
How does the capacity of a drive have anything to do with its seek time? Seek time is a function of how quickly the read arm can cross the radius of the platter, and to a smaller degree how fast the platter spins. The article claims they will be increasing storage density using this HARM thing so that more bits can be stored on the same amount of surface area. Seek time should not change significantly unless they make the platters larger, or spin the drive at lower RPM.
Nope. That was the Declaration of Independence, which is not a document of law describing our system of government or our rights -- it is a big "f*ck you, we declare independence" letter to England. Further, the "self-evident" rights mentioned were merely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
You can't be tried for a law that doesn't exist. IANAL, but if it wasn't against the law when you did it, you can't be arrested for it. Ignorance of the law is one thing, but ignorance of a non-existant law is quite another.
The parent's point, as I read it, was not that you could be arrested for things that were legal when you did them. His point was that while you may be a law abiding citizen today, the law may change and become unreasonable. Do you want to commit now to being a law abiding citizen for all perpetuity, no matter how stupid or bizzare the government becomes?
Suppose that a curfew is enacted making it illegal for any person to be on the streets after 8 pm. Or to wear socks with sandals. Or to eat fatty foods. These are extreme examples, but they are just examples. Faced with such laws, I for one would choose to become a criminal.
But if you have already given the government near-perfect enforcement of whatever law it manages to enact, you have effectively taken civil disobedience out of the equation. You can obey the new law no matter how ridiculous, or you can disobey and be locked up. I prefer to have a third viable option, disobeying and getting away with it.
It is foolhardy to think that because we have a (debatably) good government today it will always be so, especially if you give that government the tools to tighten its grasp on power.
It's a shame that the parent posted AC and has a score of 0, because this is a good concrete example. And as if the fact that they will fine the car's owner regardless of who was driving isn't bad enough, the system has often fined people who didn't even run the light!
People have gotten traffic citations mailed to them, complete with an attached picture of their car driving through the intersection with the green light clearly visible in the photo, or of their car stopped at the intersection.
It is pretty easy to get out of these obviously erroneous fines (They send you the picture, so you more or less just have to take it to the courthouse and show them how obviously wrong it is), but that's still an inconvenience.
Of course. . . this problem has more to do with the automatic nature of the system than with the surveillance itself, but the problem of fining people who weren't driving the car would apply even if human beings were monitoring the camera.
And quickly back to the topic at hand: free will. You are a probabilistic information processor, just like a chess computer. During the time the computer ponders its decision, it is "free". You are free in exactly the same sense. And probabilistic information processors can be held responsible for their actions; the fact that they will be held responsible is just one more piece of information for them to consider.
I wish I had mod points for you, and I encourage anyone who does to mod you up. I've been reading through this discussion with growing frustration that nobody seems to get this, and wishing I could think of the right words to point it out. I tip my hat.
Even if it doesn't, I'm a little tired of this idea that free speech extends to pornography. Somehow I doubt that was original intent of the Founding Fathers.
Don't elevate "the intent of the founding fathers" to some kind of pedestal. I'm a little tired of the idea that the intent of the founding fathers defines the intractable limits of our rights. They were men, not gods. They didn't intend freedom of speech, or assembly, or the right to bear arms, or the right to due process to extend to black people, after all. They didn't intend voting rights to extend to females.