There is some truth to that, but a shitty attitude like that is the reason there are so many incompetent middle-managers and so few real achievers out there. Somebody has to actually do the work, and that means getting properly educated.
Let's take all measures to prevent cheaters from passing, and then only the truly gifted "creative" folks will succeed in cheating. If they're good enough to pull it off, their skills are probably genuinely worth something. Otherwise, I don't want to encourage a shitty system to be responsible for a shitty workforce full of shitty shysters.
Nominally, this proposal will have no detrimental impact on any current service. Put simply, ISPs are being given the option to offer a "premium" service to those data suppliers who wish for their content to be delivered at a "premium" rate, at a premium price, thereby improving their perceived web experience.
To the simple-minded, this is a perfectly straightforward case of adding value to a service and charging for that added value. Nobody has to pay anything extra if they don't want to. However, this doesn't address the brutal reality.
Firstly, ISPs already saturate their bandwidth as far as they're able in order to be competitive. The creation of an express-lane for premium content will, by default, require the degrading of non-premium content delivery. Certainly the increased revenue could be used to improve infrastructure and have a net benefit on all bandwidth, but ISPs are businesses and it's fundamentally naive to assume this will be the result.
Secondly - and more importantly - this move would change the culture of the web irrevocably. In the first instance, content providers will have to pick a camp, and we will be faced with a two-tier system. Two-tier will just be the beginning though, and companies will have to quickly start incorporating their "content deliver" streaming costs into their business strategy. Like any variable, contracted service, it will be open to competition, abuse and legal dicking-about. It will change the very nature of the web, and we will all suffer from the lack of an even field.
A more subtle problem would be the loss of impetus to improve the efficiency of data delivery. As things stand, it is in every single person's and organisation's interest to constantly strive to improve the bandwidth-efficiency of their sites, languages, algorithms and services. As soon as the big guns find themselves able to take a short-cut to improving their users' web-experience by paying for it, half the major driving force behind these innovations in efficiency will be gone.
I'm sure there are many other reasons to oppose this change, and I honestly can't think of any compelling reason to approve it - unless, as I said, one takes the short-sighted, uninformed (or plain greedy) stance that this would improve certain uses of the web, at least for now.
Not looking to start an argument, but why don't you like Steam? They're a bit Googlish in their ubiquity, which has the potential to be a problem if they start dicking around, but on a personal level I think it's great.
It saved me a lot of grief when my RAID array crapped-out (incautious youth) and I had to reinstall from scratch. I didn't have to hunt around for the individual media (half of which I'd lost) and then patch the old games up individually - just setup Steam and they were all there waiting for me. Absolute godsend.
Yes, but we're talking about nanoparticles. Asbestos is not chemically toxic, but its phsycial properties render it hazardous. Who knows what gold-dust might do? Just sayin'.
GP was talking about a totally different type of "splicing" that everyone in this thread knows more about than you. Also, they probably know more about genetic splicing than you, since you've conflated splicing with hybridising in your mind.
Cloud Computing is such a loosely-defined and heavily abused term that its "true meaning" is almost as open to interpretation as "Web 2.0," and virtualised resources are often included in the definition.
The ever-colloquial Wikipedia states that it "typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources" while Foldoc states that it is "A loosely defined term for any system providing access via the Internet to processing power, storage, software or other computing services."
I'm fine with people debating the issue of the term's definition and provenance, even with people saying that one meaning is correct and another isn't, but flatly denying the existence of controversy without bothering to cite your authority is not conducive to anyone's understanding. Please, explain your position rather than simply stating it.
The devious, insidious bastards. It's exactly the sort of thing your average armchair-spamming-fantasist would concoct before decrying that the world is full of idiots and they would make a much better criminal, if only they had the time to learn how to code. I mean, it's creative and ridiculous on a par with bad-scifi plot twists.
Wouldn't it be nice if people WERE encouraged to post their vote-receipts to prove that they've voted? Not if it shows who their chosen candidate was, of course, but just a token to demonstrate that they've taken part in the electoral process and thus bucked the trend of political apathy.
Seems to me that harnessing that peer-pressure to encourage people to take an active interest would be very beneficial to the democratic process.
I'm no apologist - I think climate change is a very serious issue that is being dangerously ignored - but you've just raised a classic straw-man and it's very annoying.
Almost nobody denies the existence, to a greater or lesser extent, of "global warming." The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.
It's very important before weighing-in to an argument that you understand what the argument actually is, from both sides.
He has a middle-of-the-road name - not exactly common, but not wildly inventive.
Just so happens that a man convicted of indecent assault against a minor has the same name and comes from the same county.
The worst thing to happen (so far) was that my friend's FB account was deleted, and he had to create a new one and fire a "WTF?" email at FB. It was all rather amusing and it didn't cause any lasting damage, but I haven't had the heart to take him to one side and say, "Dude, seriously, you were *lucky* that's all that happened..."
People are dumb, and computers are dumb, yet the two sets seem to trust each other far more than is warranted. *That's* where the problem lies.
Absolutely - people will always need to do [stuff], and will always need devices that support [stuff] applications, ie personal computers.
Christ, I'm so sick of hearing the GP's argument (maybe I should get off/.) It only ever makes sense to people who think of these things in terms of "devices" and their inherent capabilities, rather than "functions" and their supporting devices.
...which pretty much defines most console fanatics.
I don't know if it's the story or the report that's full of holes, but this makes no causal sense whatsoever.
Notwithstanding the basic "correlation does not equal causality" tenet, where is the connection between the forcible shutting-down of botnet-controlling domains, and the botnets themselves? A p2p-vectored botnet's growth has nothing to do with the purposes for which that botnet is employed.
Furthermore, stating that "the company cleaned fewer machines" is not equivalent to stating "their are fewer machines infected." Frankly I'm not going to trawl through MS's Biannual Security Report or whatever (and thanks for not linking it, pcworld), but either the report or the story is woefully lacking in certain key details. It might all be true, but merely saying as much isn't going to garner much karma.
I think you've missed the point. With the exception of Concrete, these inventions were massively predated as you say, but they didn't prevail. There wasn't much application for such advanced technology, given that less-advanced alternatives were good enough and easier to produce - horse-before-the-cart and all that. To put it simply: Their Time Had Not Come.
Concrete is an interesting counter-example though. As a building material it's remarkable, and there were some things the Romans could (apparently) do with it that we still can't reproduce - real Wisdom-of-the-ancients stuff. The best explanation I can offer is that concrete requires a society to have not only some empirical knowledge of chemistry, but also a decent infrastructure and therefore a decent size and advancement of other technologies in order for the required components to be sufficiently available. The Romans had it for a while, but it was a long time after their civilization fell before the opportunity to rediscover concrete arose again. I suppose it's another example of "Steam Engine Time" in effect, but with the other examples it's due to the lack of pressing need while with concrete it's due to lack of supporting factors.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but its father is the Tech Tree.
I'll tell you what else is worse than living in East Germany under the Stazi: queue-jumpers. If you've ever been buggered by an elephant, you'll know just how bad queue-jumping is. Man, I would rebuild the Wall *myself*, hand the gate-keys to Mugabe and go live on the other side if I knew for sure that the queue-jumpers would be kept out.
Of course, they'll probably be there before me. Motherfucking queue-jumpers.
I really hope you're right - I love the concept and would love to see widespread, affordable implementation.
If it does make it out of the performance/concept arena, the first place we're likely to see this technology is in Land Rovers (same company) especially given the simplicity & robustness of the design, and that it can essentially use any fuel - perfect for wilderness vehicles.
Slashdot Mirror
5 year old laptop? If you can get one to run for that long before cocking-up, NASA's money is being well-spent...
There is some truth to that, but a shitty attitude like that is the reason there are so many incompetent middle-managers and so few real achievers out there. Somebody has to actually do the work, and that means getting properly educated.
Let's take all measures to prevent cheaters from passing, and then only the truly gifted "creative" folks will succeed in cheating. If they're good enough to pull it off, their skills are probably genuinely worth something. Otherwise, I don't want to encourage a shitty system to be responsible for a shitty workforce full of shitty shysters.
Nominally, this proposal will have no detrimental impact on any current service. Put simply, ISPs are being given the option to offer a "premium" service to those data suppliers who wish for their content to be delivered at a "premium" rate, at a premium price, thereby improving their perceived web experience.
To the simple-minded, this is a perfectly straightforward case of adding value to a service and charging for that added value. Nobody has to pay anything extra if they don't want to. However, this doesn't address the brutal reality.
Firstly, ISPs already saturate their bandwidth as far as they're able in order to be competitive. The creation of an express-lane for premium content will, by default, require the degrading of non-premium content delivery. Certainly the increased revenue could be used to improve infrastructure and have a net benefit on all bandwidth, but ISPs are businesses and it's fundamentally naive to assume this will be the result.
Secondly - and more importantly - this move would change the culture of the web irrevocably. In the first instance, content providers will have to pick a camp, and we will be faced with a two-tier system. Two-tier will just be the beginning though, and companies will have to quickly start incorporating their "content deliver" streaming costs into their business strategy. Like any variable, contracted service, it will be open to competition, abuse and legal dicking-about. It will change the very nature of the web, and we will all suffer from the lack of an even field.
A more subtle problem would be the loss of impetus to improve the efficiency of data delivery. As things stand, it is in every single person's and organisation's interest to constantly strive to improve the bandwidth-efficiency of their sites, languages, algorithms and services. As soon as the big guns find themselves able to take a short-cut to improving their users' web-experience by paying for it, half the major driving force behind these innovations in efficiency will be gone.
I'm sure there are many other reasons to oppose this change, and I honestly can't think of any compelling reason to approve it - unless, as I said, one takes the short-sighted, uninformed (or plain greedy) stance that this would improve certain uses of the web, at least for now.
Not looking to start an argument, but why don't you like Steam? They're a bit Googlish in their ubiquity, which has the potential to be a problem if they start dicking around, but on a personal level I think it's great.
It saved me a lot of grief when my RAID array crapped-out (incautious youth) and I had to reinstall from scratch. I didn't have to hunt around for the individual media (half of which I'd lost) and then patch the old games up individually - just setup Steam and they were all there waiting for me. Absolute godsend.
Not unless it was Tuesday, and she was carrying a hamburger patty.
Avatar Parks! :-D
Yes, but we're talking about nanoparticles. Asbestos is not chemically toxic, but its phsycial properties render it hazardous. Who knows what gold-dust might do? Just sayin'.
GP was talking about a totally different type of "splicing" that everyone in this thread knows more about than you. Also, they probably know more about genetic splicing than you, since you've conflated splicing with hybridising in your mind.
Now go play and let the grown-ups talk.
Cloud Computing is such a loosely-defined and heavily abused term that its "true meaning" is almost as open to interpretation as "Web 2.0," and virtualised resources are often included in the definition.
The ever-colloquial Wikipedia states that it "typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources" while Foldoc states that it is "A loosely defined term for any system providing access via the Internet to processing power, storage, software or other computing services."
I'm fine with people debating the issue of the term's definition and provenance, even with people saying that one meaning is correct and another isn't, but flatly denying the existence of controversy without bothering to cite your authority is not conducive to anyone's understanding. Please, explain your position rather than simply stating it.
The devious, insidious bastards. It's exactly the sort of thing your average armchair-spamming-fantasist would concoct before decrying that the world is full of idiots and they would make a much better criminal, if only they had the time to learn how to code. I mean, it's creative and ridiculous on a par with bad-scifi plot twists.
A bit scary but, well, I'm impressed.
Wouldn't it be nice if people WERE encouraged to post their vote-receipts to prove that they've voted? Not if it shows who their chosen candidate was, of course, but just a token to demonstrate that they've taken part in the electoral process and thus bucked the trend of political apathy.
Seems to me that harnessing that peer-pressure to encourage people to take an active interest would be very beneficial to the democratic process.
As long as we can trust it, of course...
It's true, Christmas Island is gaping hole of malware.
I'm no apologist - I think climate change is a very serious issue that is being dangerously ignored - but you've just raised a classic straw-man and it's very annoying.
Almost nobody denies the existence, to a greater or lesser extent, of "global warming." The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.
It's very important before weighing-in to an argument that you understand what the argument actually is, from both sides.
He has a middle-of-the-road name - not exactly common, but not wildly inventive.
Just so happens that a man convicted of indecent assault against a minor has the same name and comes from the same county.
The worst thing to happen (so far) was that my friend's FB account was deleted, and he had to create a new one and fire a "WTF?" email at FB. It was all rather amusing and it didn't cause any lasting damage, but I haven't had the heart to take him to one side and say, "Dude, seriously, you were *lucky* that's all that happened..."
People are dumb, and computers are dumb, yet the two sets seem to trust each other far more than is warranted. *That's* where the problem lies.
I wish that would fit in my sig.
Agreed. Graves are a good carbon-sink :-)
So rather than donate you body to science, you can donate it to de Beers :-)
Absolutely - people will always need to do [stuff], and will always need devices that support [stuff] applications, ie personal computers.
Christ, I'm so sick of hearing the GP's argument (maybe I should get off /.) It only ever makes sense to people who think of these things in terms of "devices" and their inherent capabilities, rather than "functions" and their supporting devices.
...which pretty much defines most console fanatics.
I don't know if it's the story or the report that's full of holes, but this makes no causal sense whatsoever.
Notwithstanding the basic "correlation does not equal causality" tenet, where is the connection between the forcible shutting-down of botnet-controlling domains, and the botnets themselves? A p2p-vectored botnet's growth has nothing to do with the purposes for which that botnet is employed.
Furthermore, stating that "the company cleaned fewer machines" is not equivalent to stating "their are fewer machines infected." Frankly I'm not going to trawl through MS's Biannual Security Report or whatever (and thanks for not linking it, pcworld), but either the report or the story is woefully lacking in certain key details. It might all be true, but merely saying as much isn't going to garner much karma.
No spoilers, god dammit! You've just ruined 5000hrs of gameplay for me.
Ever played Dreamfall...?
I'll weigh in on the debate when I finally finish FFVII
I think you've missed the point. With the exception of Concrete, these inventions were massively predated as you say, but they didn't prevail. There wasn't much application for such advanced technology, given that less-advanced alternatives were good enough and easier to produce - horse-before-the-cart and all that. To put it simply: Their Time Had Not Come.
Concrete is an interesting counter-example though. As a building material it's remarkable, and there were some things the Romans could (apparently) do with it that we still can't reproduce - real Wisdom-of-the-ancients stuff. The best explanation I can offer is that concrete requires a society to have not only some empirical knowledge of chemistry, but also a decent infrastructure and therefore a decent size and advancement of other technologies in order for the required components to be sufficiently available. The Romans had it for a while, but it was a long time after their civilization fell before the opportunity to rediscover concrete arose again. I suppose it's another example of "Steam Engine Time" in effect, but with the other examples it's due to the lack of pressing need while with concrete it's due to lack of supporting factors.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but its father is the Tech Tree.
I'll tell you what else is worse than living in East Germany under the Stazi: queue-jumpers. If you've ever been buggered by an elephant, you'll know just how bad queue-jumping is. Man, I would rebuild the Wall *myself*, hand the gate-keys to Mugabe and go live on the other side if I knew for sure that the queue-jumpers would be kept out.
Of course, they'll probably be there before me. Motherfucking queue-jumpers.
I really hope you're right - I love the concept and would love to see widespread, affordable implementation.
If it does make it out of the performance/concept arena, the first place we're likely to see this technology is in Land Rovers (same company) especially given the simplicity & robustness of the design, and that it can essentially use any fuel - perfect for wilderness vehicles.