I agree. I lost cable internet once in the past year that I can recall, but lost power much more often. I've never encountered a lost e-mail that wasn't clearly user error. Particular services/programs/games that use the internet may go down from time to time, but I'm not quite sure what this "less than 99.9%" uptime argument is about. 99.9% uptime is roughly equal to a maximum of 9 hours of downtime per year. For me at least, none of the technology or services I pay for suffer from more downtime per year (aside from electricity, which is subject to environmental issues). Now, the half-baked VPN that my company uses on the other hand really needs to have 5-nines, yet is closer to 99% than 99.9%.
Which way does the sat orbit? If it goes East->West, then we are shooting it down during reentry as it would otherwise crash somewhere in China or Russia. We cannot risk either country recovering any of that technology. This is what I understood the reasoning to be all along. The chance to test our missile defense system is interesting and all, but this is so publicized that it can't be the only reason, as a failure would pretty much terminate future funding of the system.
Either way, I still find it pretty damn amazing that we have the sort of technology to do something like this.
That is yet to be seen, but the OP was specifically talking about corn ethanol, which is currently produced by the truckload, heavily subsidized by the government, and heavily promoted by the auto manufacturers as a "green" fuel, despite the fact that we know that we don't gain anything from it. Aside from the economic gain of money being spent here in the US instead of the Middle East, you mean?
1) None of the corn used for ethanol production is edible. 2) Food prices have gone up because the cost of the fuel used to transport them has gone up. 3) The future of ethanol isn't corn anyway, it'll almost certainly be bio-engineered plants.
Oh, I so want to believe Obama can implement the kind of sweeping change necessary to restore civil liberties, but I don't think he'll be able to fully undo the damage that has been done. Not without help from congress. And that help will not come unless we see constant pressure from the people in the form of letters, e-mails, and phone calls.
1984 was 23 years ago. That has nothing to do with the mind of the modern consumer. You're pretty naive to think that a typical PC shopper has the slightest clue what the Apple ][ is. Five years ago, if you mentioned Apple, I'd wager that the majority of consumers thought of iPod first, and probably would have to be reminded that they made computers as well.
And I will gladly take your dollars and your donuts. Why anyone would buy a low UID on Slashdot is beyond me (though I'm sure some have). I, sir, do not make nearly enough money to waste on something as pointless as that.
To the poster saying that distros don't confuse the consumer, and that it's all about choice...you don't seem to understand what I meant. Toyota and Ford are OEMs, just as Dell and HP are OEMs. Asking a typical PC shopper if they want Red Hat or Ubuntu etc is like asking a typical car shopper if they want an OHV or OHC engine. They'll look at you funny and then shrug. While a car nut will debate the value of the two types of engine configurations, most customers won't know the difference as long as both do the job in a quiet, reasonably efficient manor.
If you want to make the market-growth challenge about Linux gaining on Windows, then make it Linux vs. Windows. I'm not saying you have to eliminate different distributions - not at all. Just that the marketing efforts need to focus on the brand Linux, as opposed to individual distro brands, because most people don't know what Linux is. Only way to change it is to get that name out there. The semantic differences between the distros isn't going to matter significantly to most end users.
Consider that a well-coordinated cyberattack on certain intelligence assets could bring down our satellite monitoring services long enough to blind us to ASAT launches. Yes, we'd eventually trace back what happened and who did it, but by then it might be too late. Our #1 way of knowing a nuclear attack is happening is satellite technology. If the aforementioned happened, we'd be completely blind with no immediate evidence of who was responsible. If we knew it was China or Russia, we'd be able to respond immediately. But not knowing until the land-based radar systems pick up missile tracks means we almost certainly lose any hope of intercepting any of these missiles (obviously, we can't take them all out, but stopping even just a couple would help).
By pursuing this technology, we remove the effectiveness of ASAT weapons. And if it becomes understood that ASAT won't protect you at all, smaller nations that are currently developing or thinking about developing nuclear weapons in order to "defend" themselves will not bother with ASAT. Blowing up satellites puts a lot of debris into orbit, and most such nations would need to test one of their weapons as they'd lack the ability to properly simulate it. The less this happens, the better.
Hypersonic weapons might not be immediately needed right now. But we didn't become the dominant military power by reacting to technical developments. We got that way by leading them.
Really? You don't think that Linux would've done substantially better than it has with a $100 million marketing campaign? Because i sure as hell do. Yes, it's done alright, but outside of very technically-inclined computer users, there is effectively 0% market penetration, and it will remain so without vastly increased marketing efforts and better manufacturer support. Look at Apple - if not for the PC vs Mac ads, they'd still be known pretty much only for the iPod/iPhone.
In other words, I'd say Linux has hit the ceiling for market penetration until such time as there is a concerted marketing effort to push the brand - Linux. Not Red Hat. Not Ubuntu. Not . Distributions confuse the hell out of consumers, and is something that Microsoft is finding resistance on with the various versions of Vista that exist.
Most OS sales come from OEM installs, but OEMs install what customers ask for. If that weren't the case, fewer of them would be so adamant about continuing to offer XP. Relatively few offer Linux.
While I agree with what you say, I have to point out that if this was a CIA op, it must never EVER come to light. The repercussions for all sorts of military and economic affairs are frightening. Not only would it open the door to other nations attempting internet sabotage against the US or other nations, but it would result in economic retaliation (in the least) by those parties that were damaged here. The companies that own those cables would have very substantial legal grounds to take to the UN (by way of their home countries) for economic reimbursement by the US. Not that the US would ever repay, but the damage to our standing in the world might just be irreparable at that point, as it already sucks.
I would like to believe someone in the chain of things would have the balls and intelligence to stand up and point out that unless we had absolute, incontrovertible evidence that this was the only way to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons in the next couple months, the downsides of such an action if it were ever exposed would be too severe to risk.
That and the fact that to have that sort of real time physical accuracy, you must also have enormous amounts of data going back and forth in real time, which would make the game laggier than it already is in high-pop areas.
And then Slashdotters will be able to say, "You kids with your integrated PPUs nowadays -- when I was your age, we had to calculate trajectories and drag coefficients by hand, and we liked it that way!" But I already say that...
Seems to me if we lose the fifth amendment argument, the second amendment becomes our new best friend.
It seems almost every day I become more and more angry with the crap that our "representatives" do on "our behalf". If the PDF linked in this article actually existed, I'd be typing up letters to my congressmen. Unfortunately the article fails to present itself as credible because of a lack of sources, so in the event that the allegations are true, we don't have enough information to do anything.
Not to mention that with demand so high, they have a great bargaining chip with retailers.. Oh, you're not selling enough of game X, so we're not going to ship more Wii's until you ramp up sales. Sure, retailers make almost nothing on a Wii sale, but people buying Wii's generally also buy games and controllers along with them, thus making a shipment of Wii's very important.
You seem to be confusing the general industry with EA. Also, if you want to do any job for the money, you're in the wrong business. You should do a job because you enjoy it. Is video game development easy? No, it's a lot of hard work and long hours, and if you're not willing to do that, why would you get into that kind of job?
Not everybody ends up working on derivative properties (though many certainly do), and not everybody ends up producing games that will be traded in after a couple months to buy the next year's iteration of the same game.
You want to argue that tasers are being used when they shouldn't be. Sure, many times they probably are. What about the times tasers are used instead of a gun, resulting in fewer deaths? 300 taser deaths vs how many non-deaths from the ability to subdue a suspect without using a gun? Where are the statistics for that? Certainly any method of subduing a person is going to have risks for all involved parties, but with proper oversight and training, tasers seem to be the best option available for the police.
You are totally correct, but there is a key difference between a government that represses free speech/press and corporations that simply refuse to publish/speak of certain topics. We can still fight back against DMCA takedown requests (eg. the Digg rebellion) and take it to court, whereas with government censorship there's really not much you can do.
But in the end, all of this censorship crap needs to go away. Not enough people are noticing it yet, but when the groundswell of anger against the government reaches critical mass, we'll see a whole new group of elected officials in Washington wiping the dirt of the last decade off the constitution.
I don't believe he meant to put down the experience of being robbed. Rather, I believe his point was that the morality of a person who commits of robbery is not quite as damaged and evil as someone who knowingly gains the trust of thousands just to deceive them. To the victim the difference may not be significant, but for the perpetrator of the act it is very different, and thus deserving of a more substantial punishment. Though I must say, he's not going to serve 60 years - that's the max, and I find it hard to believe any judge is going to sentence him to the full time, as it would be pretty much the rest of his life.
The domestic terrorism that would ensue from a fundamentalist Islamic government being instated here in the US would surpass anything that Bin Laden could ever dream of.
Hell, the domestic terrorism that might one day erupt here as a result of continued erosion of our freedoms could be just as bad or worse than what we've seen in Israel.
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance
on
Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 1
That should've said transmission "method", not message. Should've previewed!
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance
on
Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I keep hearing that argument, but why do we always assume alien life must be either micro-organisms or far beyond our understanding? Given that a decade ago, we didn't know of too many (any?) extrasolar planets, yet now we're realizing how common they are, isn't it likely that life is pretty common too? And thus, it's highly possible that other planets with evolved, sentient life may well be along similar technological paths as us, and at some prior time (or even now) used radio transmission. Sure the message will take a long time to get here, but if we're not listening it'll take even longer for another transmission message to be receivable.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I lost cable internet once in the past year that I can recall, but lost power much more often. I've never encountered a lost e-mail that wasn't clearly user error. Particular services/programs/games that use the internet may go down from time to time, but I'm not quite sure what this "less than 99.9%" uptime argument is about. 99.9% uptime is roughly equal to a maximum of 9 hours of downtime per year. For me at least, none of the technology or services I pay for suffer from more downtime per year (aside from electricity, which is subject to environmental issues). Now, the half-baked VPN that my company uses on the other hand really needs to have 5-nines, yet is closer to 99% than 99.9%.
Which way does the sat orbit? If it goes East->West, then we are shooting it down during reentry as it would otherwise crash somewhere in China or Russia. We cannot risk either country recovering any of that technology. This is what I understood the reasoning to be all along. The chance to test our missile defense system is interesting and all, but this is so publicized that it can't be the only reason, as a failure would pretty much terminate future funding of the system.
Either way, I still find it pretty damn amazing that we have the sort of technology to do something like this.
Please stop buying into and spreading the FUD.
1) None of the corn used for ethanol production is edible.
2) Food prices have gone up because the cost of the fuel used to transport them has gone up.
3) The future of ethanol isn't corn anyway, it'll almost certainly be bio-engineered plants.
Oh, I so want to believe Obama can implement the kind of sweeping change necessary to restore civil liberties, but I don't think he'll be able to fully undo the damage that has been done. Not without help from congress. And that help will not come unless we see constant pressure from the people in the form of letters, e-mails, and phone calls.
1984 was 23 years ago. That has nothing to do with the mind of the modern consumer. You're pretty naive to think that a typical PC shopper has the slightest clue what the Apple ][ is. Five years ago, if you mentioned Apple, I'd wager that the majority of consumers thought of iPod first, and probably would have to be reminded that they made computers as well.
And I will gladly take your dollars and your donuts. Why anyone would buy a low UID on Slashdot is beyond me (though I'm sure some have). I, sir, do not make nearly enough money to waste on something as pointless as that.
To the poster saying that distros don't confuse the consumer, and that it's all about choice...you don't seem to understand what I meant. Toyota and Ford are OEMs, just as Dell and HP are OEMs. Asking a typical PC shopper if they want Red Hat or Ubuntu etc is like asking a typical car shopper if they want an OHV or OHC engine. They'll look at you funny and then shrug. While a car nut will debate the value of the two types of engine configurations, most customers won't know the difference as long as both do the job in a quiet, reasonably efficient manor.
If you want to make the market-growth challenge about Linux gaining on Windows, then make it Linux vs. Windows. I'm not saying you have to eliminate different distributions - not at all. Just that the marketing efforts need to focus on the brand Linux, as opposed to individual distro brands, because most people don't know what Linux is. Only way to change it is to get that name out there. The semantic differences between the distros isn't going to matter significantly to most end users.
Consider that a well-coordinated cyberattack on certain intelligence assets could bring down our satellite monitoring services long enough to blind us to ASAT launches. Yes, we'd eventually trace back what happened and who did it, but by then it might be too late. Our #1 way of knowing a nuclear attack is happening is satellite technology. If the aforementioned happened, we'd be completely blind with no immediate evidence of who was responsible. If we knew it was China or Russia, we'd be able to respond immediately. But not knowing until the land-based radar systems pick up missile tracks means we almost certainly lose any hope of intercepting any of these missiles (obviously, we can't take them all out, but stopping even just a couple would help).
By pursuing this technology, we remove the effectiveness of ASAT weapons. And if it becomes understood that ASAT won't protect you at all, smaller nations that are currently developing or thinking about developing nuclear weapons in order to "defend" themselves will not bother with ASAT. Blowing up satellites puts a lot of debris into orbit, and most such nations would need to test one of their weapons as they'd lack the ability to properly simulate it. The less this happens, the better.
Hypersonic weapons might not be immediately needed right now. But we didn't become the dominant military power by reacting to technical developments. We got that way by leading them.
I for one welcome our new beowulf clusters of Soviet children thinking about old Korean you overlords.
*duck*
Really? You don't think that Linux would've done substantially better than it has with a $100 million marketing campaign? Because i sure as hell do. Yes, it's done alright, but outside of very technically-inclined computer users, there is effectively 0% market penetration, and it will remain so without vastly increased marketing efforts and better manufacturer support. Look at Apple - if not for the PC vs Mac ads, they'd still be known pretty much only for the iPod/iPhone.
In other words, I'd say Linux has hit the ceiling for market penetration until such time as there is a concerted marketing effort to push the brand - Linux. Not Red Hat. Not Ubuntu. Not . Distributions confuse the hell out of consumers, and is something that Microsoft is finding resistance on with the various versions of Vista that exist.
Most OS sales come from OEM installs, but OEMs install what customers ask for. If that weren't the case, fewer of them would be so adamant about continuing to offer XP. Relatively few offer Linux.
Yes, I believe they call it politics.
While I agree with what you say, I have to point out that if this was a CIA op, it must never EVER come to light. The repercussions for all sorts of military and economic affairs are frightening. Not only would it open the door to other nations attempting internet sabotage against the US or other nations, but it would result in economic retaliation (in the least) by those parties that were damaged here. The companies that own those cables would have very substantial legal grounds to take to the UN (by way of their home countries) for economic reimbursement by the US. Not that the US would ever repay, but the damage to our standing in the world might just be irreparable at that point, as it already sucks.
I would like to believe someone in the chain of things would have the balls and intelligence to stand up and point out that unless we had absolute, incontrovertible evidence that this was the only way to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons in the next couple months, the downsides of such an action if it were ever exposed would be too severe to risk.
Uh, a car that refuses to die is a bad thing? I'd have gladly had such a thing in high school/college.
That and the fact that to have that sort of real time physical accuracy, you must also have enormous amounts of data going back and forth in real time, which would make the game laggier than it already is in high-pop areas.
Seems to me if we lose the fifth amendment argument, the second amendment becomes our new best friend.
It seems almost every day I become more and more angry with the crap that our "representatives" do on "our behalf". If the PDF linked in this article actually existed, I'd be typing up letters to my congressmen. Unfortunately the article fails to present itself as credible because of a lack of sources, so in the event that the allegations are true, we don't have enough information to do anything.
The burden of proof is on the accuser, not me.
Sorry, when did Obama pledge to keep the troops in Iraq until 2013? Do you have a source for that, or are you talking out of your ass?
Not to mention that with demand so high, they have a great bargaining chip with retailers.. Oh, you're not selling enough of game X, so we're not going to ship more Wii's until you ramp up sales. Sure, retailers make almost nothing on a Wii sale, but people buying Wii's generally also buy games and controllers along with them, thus making a shipment of Wii's very important.
You seem to be confusing the general industry with EA. Also, if you want to do any job for the money, you're in the wrong business. You should do a job because you enjoy it. Is video game development easy? No, it's a lot of hard work and long hours, and if you're not willing to do that, why would you get into that kind of job?
Not everybody ends up working on derivative properties (though many certainly do), and not everybody ends up producing games that will be traded in after a couple months to buy the next year's iteration of the same game.
You want to argue that tasers are being used when they shouldn't be. Sure, many times they probably are. What about the times tasers are used instead of a gun, resulting in fewer deaths? 300 taser deaths vs how many non-deaths from the ability to subdue a suspect without using a gun? Where are the statistics for that? Certainly any method of subduing a person is going to have risks for all involved parties, but with proper oversight and training, tasers seem to be the best option available for the police.
You are totally correct, but there is a key difference between a government that represses free speech/press and corporations that simply refuse to publish/speak of certain topics. We can still fight back against DMCA takedown requests (eg. the Digg rebellion) and take it to court, whereas with government censorship there's really not much you can do.
But in the end, all of this censorship crap needs to go away. Not enough people are noticing it yet, but when the groundswell of anger against the government reaches critical mass, we'll see a whole new group of elected officials in Washington wiping the dirt of the last decade off the constitution.
I don't believe he meant to put down the experience of being robbed. Rather, I believe his point was that the morality of a person who commits of robbery is not quite as damaged and evil as someone who knowingly gains the trust of thousands just to deceive them. To the victim the difference may not be significant, but for the perpetrator of the act it is very different, and thus deserving of a more substantial punishment. Though I must say, he's not going to serve 60 years - that's the max, and I find it hard to believe any judge is going to sentence him to the full time, as it would be pretty much the rest of his life.
The domestic terrorism that would ensue from a fundamentalist Islamic government being instated here in the US would surpass anything that Bin Laden could ever dream of.
Hell, the domestic terrorism that might one day erupt here as a result of continued erosion of our freedoms could be just as bad or worse than what we've seen in Israel.
That should've said transmission "method", not message. Should've previewed!
I keep hearing that argument, but why do we always assume alien life must be either micro-organisms or far beyond our understanding? Given that a decade ago, we didn't know of too many (any?) extrasolar planets, yet now we're realizing how common they are, isn't it likely that life is pretty common too? And thus, it's highly possible that other planets with evolved, sentient life may well be along similar technological paths as us, and at some prior time (or even now) used radio transmission. Sure the message will take a long time to get here, but if we're not listening it'll take even longer for another transmission message to be receivable.