but your data, if you've participated, is permanently written in stone and available
Call me naive, but I have faith that this data will fade rather quickly. Not due to some hard hitting privacy laws combined with a major shift in the public's view towards privacy, but simply because the data probably isn't all that valuable after a relatively short period of time, maintaining usability of said data over the long term is probably a huge pain, and the companies that control the data will die. The data will sit on some companies file server unused for years until eventually it gets cleared out to make room for more relevant data.
When I was in school I saw this quite a bit (parents forcing their viewpoint to the detriment of their kids).
Trying to impart good values has to be balanced by reality. I too don't get a lot of this "phone culture" stuff. It drives me crazy to be at a restaurant with a bunch of people from _my_ generation all with their phones out instead of actually talking. That said, this is the reality we live in, it's becoming a necessary skill to fit in socially.
Robbing a kid of the ability to socialize in their generations preferred medium because the parents thinks it's rubbish is just asking for problems later in life.
I find I get almost a form of sea-sickness (which others have dubbed "VR Sickness"). Logically it makes sense as your eyes are seeing stuff that doesn't line up with what your bodies balance mechanisms are telling it, and for whatever reason the response to that is to make you feel like shit.
For me I find it hits me all of a sudden. Like I'm fine, then I get a weird kind of combo mild nausea and head pressure. The first time it got me I literally closed my eyes, took the thing off, and went to lay down for a bit.
Like seasickness (which surprisingly I don't suffer from, despite having been aboard ships at high sea-states), I imagine it effects people very differently and for varying degrees of time. Also I imagine like seasickness, enough exposure and you "get over it". I'm at a point now where I can comfortably use the thing for hours.. though occasionally some jittery/poor perspective game will bug me.
I see this as a major hurtle for mass adoption. Sure, us geeks are willing to tough it out.. but a toy that gives you a pounding headache and nausea after a half hour or so is gonna be a touch sell for the masses.
I have one, and it definitely messes with your head.
It's the same mechanism that causes sea sickness. Your eyes are out of whack with your sense of balance, and your body retaliates by making you feel like shit. After awhile you do get used to it, but I definitely see this as a major hurtle to overcome (how many non-geeks are willing to suffer what's been dubbed "VR sickness" for the month or so it takes to adjust).
Right, because a problem has never come up despite prior testing...
_Obviously_ you check/test before hand, but when problems happen anyway it's good to go back and see what has changed to narrow down the cause. Sometimes just knowing that they were playing with an area of code is helpful, even if the change has nothing to do with the functionality you are interested in.
Not only that, but when something goes wrong after upgrading something, it's useful to be able to say "ok, what's changed since the last version...".
Sounds to me like submitter needs to find a middle ground between basically publishing their internal bug tracking and not publishing anything. It can be as simple as having a co-op / intern go through the internal change log and create a sanitized generic-ified version for public consumption (you know, in leu of actual work experience..).
The "reset-ability" of older systems (I myself learned on a dragon32, which is basically a trs-80 knockoff) was very reassuring. You could crash the thing, but press the black button on the side and it's like it never happened.
Of course bringing this to modern computers would probably be hard and have all kinds of other consequences.
I've found the absolute keys to keeping everything organized are: - everything has a place - that place is labeled - that place is easy to get to (soon as you have boxes with other boxes on top, it becomes a hassle to put things back where they belong and the mess begins to grow).
I've practically got a whole wall covered in those little mini-drawer organizer dealies for all my odd bits and pieces. Keeps everything tidy.
An audit requires a large amount of time and effort on the part of the victim. It's an extremely time consuming and frustrating process if you have _simple_ finances. The NSA spying is largely transparent and non-intrusive.
If you spend a day studying tax law and reading your software's manual, you will save more money than you earn at your job in a month. It is time well spent.
For personal finances I don't feel this way. I suspect it would take the equivalent or more of the time spent working during that theoretical month to gain/maintain that knowledge, and (for me at least) would be an extremely boring and unpleasant chore. I'd rather take the hit and spend that time doing something I enjoy. Money isn't everything, or we'd all probably be lawyers;p
If you worried about compromised downloads, just about every project that does this publishes the hashes on their official site. Easy to verify someone hasn't slipped something in there...
I'm donating either way. Even though I don't use the service very often, I like that it's there and think it provides an important service.
That said I do agree this is a question that should be answered if they are asking for money. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming insurance would be expensive due to the nature of their work (storing lots of old books) or payout would be low (technology depreciates really fast..) or hard to insure custom built equipment.
Somewhat off topic, but unfortunately the fact that a current domain owner can use robots.txt to prevent the display of information from previous owners of the domain is a frustrating hindrance to it's use by fan/community sites.
The classic go to example is jumptheshark.com. TV guide bought it, destroyed it, and put up a robots.txt that prevents using archive.org to view the old (and interesting) community provided content.
It was one of those things that made a lot more sense before the internet could do what it does today.
See also: going to a library. Seriously, do you remember when finding out about something was actually hard.
Also maybe it was just a local thing, but the blockbuster here offered 2 week rentals on older movies at a reasonable price. I used to go and rent like 4 or 5 movies at a time. Same was true of games.
We got a place that specializes in chicken burgers.
The burgers arn't bad, but the problem is everything else they have sucks. So it's fine if you want _just_ a chicken burger.. but don't bother with their fries, coleslaw, etc..
Also I saw the nutritional facts on their "website", and my god.. we're talking like KFC levels of bad. Like I don't eat like a saint or anything, but that's like a weeks worth of bad stuff.
That's kinda how all consumer (and even most non-consumer) stuff works.
You have the enthusiasts who for whatever reason have a stronger interest in the technology and are willing to spend significantly more for slightly better. They fund the R&D until it makes it down to the cheaper mass consumer pricing.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with this. I for one was an early adopter of SSDs. I bought one (then another) when 30G was still a big deal. I knew in a few years you'd get way more capacity for way cheaper.. but I didn't care, it was something I wanted to play around with.
If someone has the money to spend and is going to get enjoyment out of paying $1000 for a card where a $200 or so card would probably do, so what... their money, their hobby.
As someone who invested a ridiculous amount of time trying to get x10 running, I would strongly argue against it being usable;p
It's been around for a while, and sucked even when it was new. It can't cope with all the transformers and other "signal sinks" found plugged in all over the place in any home build in the last few decades. You end up with a whole hodgepodge of bridges and filters and custom run "neutral" wires.
When you do manage to get signals moving around your house, you then hit up against the second big problem. The x10 protocol is insanely primitive, and random noise will often also be a valid command. Nothing like the UPS plugged in upstairs turning your bedroom lights on every few hours..
I invested a fair bit of time and money into this (had an ocelot controller and I estimate about 20 billion dollars in filters and different varieties of inline switches and appliance modules that all sucked in their own unique way) before throwing it all in a box and moving forward with my life.
I still drag out my x10 gear around Christmas time, but that's about it.
The big thing with x10, more so now, is it can't handle all the various transformers and other so called "signal sinks". A very common standard at the time I was into this stuff was to send all commands 3 times.
Even if you do manage to get x10 traffic moving reliably around your house (I at least got this far), the next problem you face is interference. The x10 protocol is very primitive, and it is quite common for a chunk of noise on the line (provided by any number of devices) to produce a valid command. I had a UPS that when plugged in, would turn my bedroom light on once every few hours. Luckily though, they've got filters for that!
After awhile you come to your senses and realize just how much effort (and money) you've invested in bridges, filters, cleaning up wiring, running special "neutral" lines, etc.. and you throw all the stuff in a box and move on with your life!
I was really interested in home automation at one point. Had an x10 setup using an ocelot controller (x10 is a horrible, horrible system by the way and I wouldn't recommend it to an enemy).
The novelty factor wore off eventually (and my frustration with x10 grew) and I gave up on it. Beyond automated lighting (which while cool, isn't really all that useful.. a light switch really is "good enough"), temperature (already handled quite well by smart thermostats), and appliances which handle their own automation (coffee pot), what else is there that provides any real benefit beyond geek appeal.
And with that limited set of actual useful use cases, how much benefit is there in centralizing it, or adding voice control.
I suspect all this is why despite having the tech to do it for quite some time, home automation hasn't really taken off.
I think we're approaching a point where it's within the right price range for the most practical consumer use: gaming.
VR was hyped heavily because people thought a 3D world would naturally be more intuitive than a 2D world. Evidently this is no longer a big deal, and VR for the office environment (aside from a few niche areas) probably doesn't really add much at this point.
But the novelty factor and immersion capabilities combined with the decreasing price point (both the head gear and the PC to actually drive it) would seem to make it a big potential for gaming.
Somewhat on-topic: there is an awesome BBC miniseries called "The Machine That Changed The World" from 1992. The first 3 parts are timeless and provide a pretty damn good overview of the history of computers. The last 2 parts aged less well, however they provide a very interesting view into what some very smart people thought the future would be like with regards to AI and user interfaces.
If the oculus rift is any indication, not even close yet.
I've found text that isn't directly in the center of my field of view very hard or impossible to read.
That said, the rift is a fun toy, and maybe the consumer version will be better in this regard.
Re:It would be safer if cyclists followed traffic
on
How Safe Is Cycling?
·
· Score: 1
This highlights my primary argument, cars and bikes are incompatible and having them share the same space is absurd.
They travel at different speeds, have different levels of maneuverability, and if someone runs into you with their car, even if it kills you, they'll probably walk away with a ticket and maybe a broken windshield.
Slashdot Mirror
but your data, if you've participated, is permanently written in stone and available
Call me naive, but I have faith that this data will fade rather quickly. Not due to some hard hitting privacy laws combined with a major shift in the public's view towards privacy, but simply because the data probably isn't all that valuable after a relatively short period of time, maintaining usability of said data over the long term is probably a huge pain, and the companies that control the data will die. The data will sit on some companies file server unused for years until eventually it gets cleared out to make room for more relevant data.
Totally agree.
When I was in school I saw this quite a bit (parents forcing their viewpoint to the detriment of their kids).
Trying to impart good values has to be balanced by reality. I too don't get a lot of this "phone culture" stuff. It drives me crazy to be at a restaurant with a bunch of people from _my_ generation all with their phones out instead of actually talking. That said, this is the reality we live in, it's becoming a necessary skill to fit in socially.
Robbing a kid of the ability to socialize in their generations preferred medium because the parents thinks it's rubbish is just asking for problems later in life.
Well, assuming they don't have other gas powered equipment (lawn mower, snow blower, etc).
Actually I imagine those probably result in more minor gas/oil spills and oil/gas soaked rags than a car.
Being able to drop $300 on impulse on a toy you will probably screw with for a few months then never touch again is imo a big part of being an adult.
I find I get almost a form of sea-sickness (which others have dubbed "VR Sickness"). Logically it makes sense as your eyes are seeing stuff that doesn't line up with what your bodies balance mechanisms are telling it, and for whatever reason the response to that is to make you feel like shit.
For me I find it hits me all of a sudden. Like I'm fine, then I get a weird kind of combo mild nausea and head pressure. The first time it got me I literally closed my eyes, took the thing off, and went to lay down for a bit.
Like seasickness (which surprisingly I don't suffer from, despite having been aboard ships at high sea-states), I imagine it effects people very differently and for varying degrees of time. Also I imagine like seasickness, enough exposure and you "get over it". I'm at a point now where I can comfortably use the thing for hours.. though occasionally some jittery/poor perspective game will bug me.
I see this as a major hurtle for mass adoption. Sure, us geeks are willing to tough it out.. but a toy that gives you a pounding headache and nausea after a half hour or so is gonna be a touch sell for the masses.
I have one, and it definitely messes with your head.
It's the same mechanism that causes sea sickness. Your eyes are out of whack with your sense of balance, and your body retaliates by making you feel like shit. After awhile you do get used to it, but I definitely see this as a major hurtle to overcome (how many non-geeks are willing to suffer what's been dubbed "VR sickness" for the month or so it takes to adjust).
Right, because a problem has never come up despite prior testing...
_Obviously_ you check/test before hand, but when problems happen anyway it's good to go back and see what has changed to narrow down the cause. Sometimes just knowing that they were playing with an area of code is helpful, even if the change has nothing to do with the functionality you are interested in.
Not only that, but when something goes wrong after upgrading something, it's useful to be able to say "ok, what's changed since the last version...".
Sounds to me like submitter needs to find a middle ground between basically publishing their internal bug tracking and not publishing anything. It can be as simple as having a co-op / intern go through the internal change log and create a sanitized generic-ified version for public consumption (you know, in leu of actual work experience..).
Indeed.
The "reset-ability" of older systems (I myself learned on a dragon32, which is basically a trs-80 knockoff) was very reassuring. You could crash the thing, but press the black button on the side and it's like it never happened.
Of course bringing this to modern computers would probably be hard and have all kinds of other consequences.
Yup!
I've found the absolute keys to keeping everything organized are:
- everything has a place
- that place is labeled
- that place is easy to get to (soon as you have boxes with other boxes on top, it becomes a hassle to put things back where they belong and the mess begins to grow).
I've practically got a whole wall covered in those little mini-drawer organizer dealies for all my odd bits and pieces. Keeps everything tidy.
Yes!
An audit requires a large amount of time and effort on the part of the victim. It's an extremely time consuming and frustrating process if you have _simple_ finances. The NSA spying is largely transparent and non-intrusive.
If you spend a day studying tax law and reading your software's manual, you will save more money than you earn at your job in a month. It is time well spent.
For personal finances I don't feel this way. I suspect it would take the equivalent or more of the time spent working during that theoretical month to gain/maintain that knowledge, and (for me at least) would be an extremely boring and unpleasant chore. I'd rather take the hit and spend that time doing something I enjoy. Money isn't everything, or we'd all probably be lawyers ;p
Suspect trolling, but I'll take the bait..
What?
If you worried about compromised downloads, just about every project that does this publishes the hashes on their official site. Easy to verify someone hasn't slipped something in there...
I'm donating either way. Even though I don't use the service very often, I like that it's there and think it provides an important service.
That said I do agree this is a question that should be answered if they are asking for money. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming insurance would be expensive due to the nature of their work (storing lots of old books) or payout would be low (technology depreciates really fast..) or hard to insure custom built equipment.
Somewhat off topic, but unfortunately the fact that a current domain owner can use robots.txt to prevent the display of information from previous owners of the domain is a frustrating hindrance to it's use by fan/community sites.
The classic go to example is jumptheshark.com. TV guide bought it, destroyed it, and put up a robots.txt that prevents using archive.org to view the old (and interesting) community provided content.
It was one of those things that made a lot more sense before the internet could do what it does today.
See also: going to a library. Seriously, do you remember when finding out about something was actually hard.
Also maybe it was just a local thing, but the blockbuster here offered 2 week rentals on older movies at a reasonable price. I used to go and rent like 4 or 5 movies at a time. Same was true of games.
We got a place that specializes in chicken burgers.
The burgers arn't bad, but the problem is everything else they have sucks. So it's fine if you want _just_ a chicken burger.. but don't bother with their fries, coleslaw, etc..
Also I saw the nutritional facts on their "website", and my god.. we're talking like KFC levels of bad. Like I don't eat like a saint or anything, but that's like a weeks worth of bad stuff.
That's kinda how all consumer (and even most non-consumer) stuff works.
You have the enthusiasts who for whatever reason have a stronger interest in the technology and are willing to spend significantly more for slightly better. They fund the R&D until it makes it down to the cheaper mass consumer pricing.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with this. I for one was an early adopter of SSDs. I bought one (then another) when 30G was still a big deal. I knew in a few years you'd get way more capacity for way cheaper.. but I didn't care, it was something I wanted to play around with.
If someone has the money to spend and is going to get enjoyment out of paying $1000 for a card where a $200 or so card would probably do, so what... their money, their hobby.
It's one of those great mysteries.
I've yet to meet anyone that didn't despise SAP. It's a terrible user experience, it's a terrible admin experience, and it costs a metric-fucktonne.
Trying to implement SAP has literally bankrupted companies!
And yet, it persists. It must provide some value to someone, somewhere..
As someone who invested a ridiculous amount of time trying to get x10 running, I would strongly argue against it being usable ;p
It's been around for a while, and sucked even when it was new. It can't cope with all the transformers and other "signal sinks" found plugged in all over the place in any home build in the last few decades. You end up with a whole hodgepodge of bridges and filters and custom run "neutral" wires.
When you do manage to get signals moving around your house, you then hit up against the second big problem. The x10 protocol is insanely primitive, and random noise will often also be a valid command. Nothing like the UPS plugged in upstairs turning your bedroom lights on every few hours..
I invested a fair bit of time and money into this (had an ocelot controller and I estimate about 20 billion dollars in filters and different varieties of inline switches and appliance modules that all sucked in their own unique way) before throwing it all in a box and moving forward with my life.
I still drag out my x10 gear around Christmas time, but that's about it.
The big thing with x10, more so now, is it can't handle all the various transformers and other so called "signal sinks". A very common standard at the time I was into this stuff was to send all commands 3 times.
Even if you do manage to get x10 traffic moving reliably around your house (I at least got this far), the next problem you face is interference. The x10 protocol is very primitive, and it is quite common for a chunk of noise on the line (provided by any number of devices) to produce a valid command. I had a UPS that when plugged in, would turn my bedroom light on once every few hours. Luckily though, they've got filters for that!
After awhile you come to your senses and realize just how much effort (and money) you've invested in bridges, filters, cleaning up wiring, running special "neutral" lines, etc.. and you throw all the stuff in a box and move on with your life!
I was really interested in home automation at one point. Had an x10 setup using an ocelot controller (x10 is a horrible, horrible system by the way and I wouldn't recommend it to an enemy).
The novelty factor wore off eventually (and my frustration with x10 grew) and I gave up on it. Beyond automated lighting (which while cool, isn't really all that useful.. a light switch really is "good enough"), temperature (already handled quite well by smart thermostats), and appliances which handle their own automation (coffee pot), what else is there that provides any real benefit beyond geek appeal.
And with that limited set of actual useful use cases, how much benefit is there in centralizing it, or adding voice control.
I suspect all this is why despite having the tech to do it for quite some time, home automation hasn't really taken off.
I think we're approaching a point where it's within the right price range for the most practical consumer use: gaming.
VR was hyped heavily because people thought a 3D world would naturally be more intuitive than a 2D world. Evidently this is no longer a big deal, and VR for the office environment (aside from a few niche areas) probably doesn't really add much at this point.
But the novelty factor and immersion capabilities combined with the decreasing price point (both the head gear and the PC to actually drive it) would seem to make it a big potential for gaming.
Somewhat on-topic: there is an awesome BBC miniseries called "The Machine That Changed The World" from 1992. The first 3 parts are timeless and provide a pretty damn good overview of the history of computers. The last 2 parts aged less well, however they provide a very interesting view into what some very smart people thought the future would be like with regards to AI and user interfaces.
If the oculus rift is any indication, not even close yet.
I've found text that isn't directly in the center of my field of view very hard or impossible to read.
That said, the rift is a fun toy, and maybe the consumer version will be better in this regard.
This highlights my primary argument, cars and bikes are incompatible and having them share the same space is absurd.
They travel at different speeds, have different levels of maneuverability, and if someone runs into you with their car, even if it kills you, they'll probably walk away with a ticket and maybe a broken windshield.