1) 99% plus people here in the US do not know how to drive. We take tests that test the absolute basics of driving skill and call people proficient if they pass. Trust me, your not...
Granted, that's better than the third world, where "knowing how to drive" is equated with "I bought a scooter yesterday and puttered around the local roads for five minutes."
It isn't as if the any of the aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum, for example, is ever taken out and flown by the museum guests.
Maybe none of the aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum are flown by the guests, but at every air show you'll see a large number of historical aircraft that can and do fly by the attendees. There's always value in having a "fully operational" version.
Its not in the manufacturer's interest for you to be able to play your old games. They would much rather sell you the same game over and over again (e.g. Virtual Console).
Well, that gets back to the issues highlighted in the article. Your 1929 Model A comes from an era where cars were still relatively new and finicky. Owners were expected to have the requisite skill to repair their machines. That, combined with the relative lack of faith in the reliability of the system meant that manufacturers made the engine and drivetrain easy to service, and also manufactured lots of spare parts. In short, the Model A is like a PC - a relatively open system where third parties can make parts that fit just as well as those made by the OEM.
Your '06 Taurus, on the other hand, is more like a console. These days, cars are expected to be reliable, and most owners are not mechanically proficient enough to service their own automobiles. That, combined with the increasing prevalence of electronic controls means that systems in modern automobiles are packaged up as black boxes with proprietary interfaces. This makes it very difficult for third parties to build replacements, while the lack of mechanical proficiency amongst the owners simultaneously reduces the demand for those parts. With all that in mind, its no surprise that its more difficult to find parts for your Taurus. Open systems will have larger ecosystems than closed systems, whether its a mechanical system (Model A vs. Taurus) or an electronic system (PC vs. console).
There's a difference between an automobile and an integrated circuit. An IC is a black box in both the literal and figurative sense. With an automobile, if a part is missing, you can usually figure out what the missing piece is. If an IC is missing of faulty, it can be very difficult to reverse engineer its functionality.
As I indicate in a response to a sibling, the deciding factor in me quitting Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg's statements characterizing a desire for privacy as disingenuous and socially unacceptable. He can think what he chooses to, and I can choose not to do business with him.
The games were a factor, but not the deciding factor. The deciding factor was Mark Zuckerberg's statement saying that people who chose to have different personas for different spheres of activity were somehow disingenuous or lacking integrity. I value my privacy and choose not to do business with those who disparage or devalue my right to have privacy.
The grandparent isn't talking about replacing passwords with USB sticks. He's talking about two factor authentication. The user has a USB stick and a password. They need to plug in their USB stick in order to even bring up the login screen. Once their USB stick is authenticated, they need to type in the password to get access to their account.
It'd solve both problems. You wouldn't have to deal with the risk of former employees snooping, since you could drop the permissions for their USB stick. The users wouldn't mind because the need for a strong password would be lessened. Its not even a mental leap for most users, since they seem to do just fine with ATMs, which employ the same system (card + pin).
As far as I can tell, the software they've released allows you to start, stop and configure large numbers of virtual machines in a fully automatic fashion. In other words, you can set up your own cluster more quickly than if you had to set up all the VMs manually.
Ask a Windows admin about a given service, and he'll probably know its name, but how it works, how its implemented and how its configured will result in a blank stare.
The push for "enterprise technology" to have "control panels" and "configuration wizards" is related both in cause and effect to the aforementioned Windows admin. The admin is dumb, so there's pressure on the vendor to make the software idiot proof. They attempt to do by wrapping all the "dangerous" configuration details in bubble wrap^W^W control panels. This only makes the aforementioned admins dumber, since they become reliant on the wizards and control panels and no longer know how to configure the application without those crutches.
Lots of little boxes with AMD and Intel chips. No more big iron. That is the dream.
As I understand it, Rackspace Cloud simply allows one to automatically provision virtual machines for applications in a simple and automatic manner. It is still up to the application to maintain synchronization between multiple instances and plan for failovers in case one of the servers goes down. So, unless the application has been specifically written for a "cloud" environment, the cloud is no more reliable than a single server. Deploying to the cloud won't make your application magically more scalable or fault tolerant.
Many "big iron" applications assume hardware that's very reliable. As such, they'd require significant changes to allow them to run in a cloud environment, where there are no such guarantees. For this reason alone, many corporations will stick with their mainframes.
My position is that it doesn't matter whether the global warming is anthropogenic or not. The Earth's climate is changing. Even if this change was started by humans, at this point humanity can do very little to stop it. So, we can either sit around and deny reality, or we can start adapting now, so that we'll be better positioned to deal with a drastically altered climate when it gets here.
In other words, I'm saying we use the same large brains that allowed us to adapt to the last drastic global climatic change (the end of the Ice Age) to start preparing for the next one.
At least those will be equal opportunity changes since Mother Nature and the Universe don't discriminate when it comes time to bring the pain to those unworthy to survive.
Except they won't be. The vast majority of the negative impacts will be in areas like India and Africa, where the people are least well equipped to deal with climatic changes. Global Warming (anthropogenic or not) will affect polar and tropical areas the most - the temperate climes of the rich world will be affected last.
As for saying that those people are "unworthy to survive", who are you to make that decision? Genetically, biologically, those who are going to die from global warming are no different than you or I. If they are unworthy of survival, then so are you. Its only an accident of birth that ensures your survival.
In essence, the nitrogen pumped through the pores of the ceramic forms an "ablative" coating, as it absorbs and carries heat away from the surface of the craft. The nitrogen has to be refilled after every launch, but refilling a nitrogen tank is cheaper and easier than reapplying an ablative coating or repairing ceramic tiles.
The only "intrinsic" motivation BP has for capping the well is in the loss of potential revenue from a broken/leaking well. All other reasons for stopping the well are extrinsic.
Well, that's New York gas, though, which isn't the same as California gas. In the US, at least, it seems like each state has its own regulations on what additives are necessary. This also adds to the price, since you have to go to the trouble of setting the additive blend properly before shipping the gasoline to the filling stations.
Oil is a commodity and prices are set by supply and demand. The US govt has nothing to do with it being cheaper in the US than in Europe. The price difference is almost all tax.
You also have to distinguish between crude oil (which has a single global price) and gasoline (which does not). The supply of gasoline varies across locales because of variables like availability of pipelines, cost of refining, local regulations on additives, and, of course, taxes.
Oil is a commodity (like corn, or iron). Gasoline is not. There are significant differences between gasoline blends sold in different locations. California gasoline is not the same as Texas gasoline, and neither of those are the same as Dutch gasoline. The differences in gasoline composition across location also has a significant impact on price.
I'm happy to be proven wrong with a credible link that deals with the actual events...
How about this? In that story, a survivor of the disaster is interviewed. He talks about how several components of the blowout preventer were damaged by accidents in the weeks preceding the explosion. Rather than stopping to repair the blowout preventer, though, British Petroleum chose to continue drilling. They did so because the rig was already behind schedule and over budget. If this witness' allegations are substantiated, it'd be a damning indictment of British Petroleum. They deliberately chose to sacrifice safety in the pursuit of profit. They did so over the warnings and objections of their own employees.
Seriously, anyone using Windows for SCADA in this day and age has to get their head checked. With the wealth of proprietary and free embedded operating systems available today, the use of Windows in any sort of embedded device should have ended a long time ago.
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1) 99% plus people here in the US do not know how to drive. We take tests that test the absolute basics of driving skill and call people proficient if they pass. Trust me, your not...
Granted, that's better than the third world, where "knowing how to drive" is equated with "I bought a scooter yesterday and puttered around the local roads for five minutes."
It isn't as if the any of the aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum, for example, is ever taken out and flown by the museum guests.
Maybe none of the aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum are flown by the guests, but at every air show you'll see a large number of historical aircraft that can and do fly by the attendees. There's always value in having a "fully operational" version.
Its not in the manufacturer's interest for you to be able to play your old games. They would much rather sell you the same game over and over again (e.g. Virtual Console).
Well, that gets back to the issues highlighted in the article. Your 1929 Model A comes from an era where cars were still relatively new and finicky. Owners were expected to have the requisite skill to repair their machines. That, combined with the relative lack of faith in the reliability of the system meant that manufacturers made the engine and drivetrain easy to service, and also manufactured lots of spare parts. In short, the Model A is like a PC - a relatively open system where third parties can make parts that fit just as well as those made by the OEM.
Your '06 Taurus, on the other hand, is more like a console. These days, cars are expected to be reliable, and most owners are not mechanically proficient enough to service their own automobiles. That, combined with the increasing prevalence of electronic controls means that systems in modern automobiles are packaged up as black boxes with proprietary interfaces. This makes it very difficult for third parties to build replacements, while the lack of mechanical proficiency amongst the owners simultaneously reduces the demand for those parts. With all that in mind, its no surprise that its more difficult to find parts for your Taurus. Open systems will have larger ecosystems than closed systems, whether its a mechanical system (Model A vs. Taurus) or an electronic system (PC vs. console).
There's a difference between an automobile and an integrated circuit. An IC is a black box in both the literal and figurative sense. With an automobile, if a part is missing, you can usually figure out what the missing piece is. If an IC is missing of faulty, it can be very difficult to reverse engineer its functionality.
As I indicate in a response to a sibling, the deciding factor in me quitting Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg's statements characterizing a desire for privacy as disingenuous and socially unacceptable. He can think what he chooses to, and I can choose not to do business with him.
The games were a factor, but not the deciding factor. The deciding factor was Mark Zuckerberg's statement saying that people who chose to have different personas for different spheres of activity were somehow disingenuous or lacking integrity. I value my privacy and choose not to do business with those who disparage or devalue my right to have privacy.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Indeed. I've found that my personal productivity and satisfaction have increased tremendously since I canceled my Facebook account.
Agreed. Users aren't the customers. They're the product.
The grandparent isn't talking about replacing passwords with USB sticks. He's talking about two factor authentication. The user has a USB stick and a password. They need to plug in their USB stick in order to even bring up the login screen. Once their USB stick is authenticated, they need to type in the password to get access to their account.
It'd solve both problems. You wouldn't have to deal with the risk of former employees snooping, since you could drop the permissions for their USB stick. The users wouldn't mind because the need for a strong password would be lessened. Its not even a mental leap for most users, since they seem to do just fine with ATMs, which employ the same system (card + pin).
That's assuming your average Afghan insurgent has rifle-launched EMP grenades.
As far as I can tell, the software they've released allows you to start, stop and configure large numbers of virtual machines in a fully automatic fashion. In other words, you can set up your own cluster more quickly than if you had to set up all the VMs manually.
Ask a Windows admin about a given service, and he'll probably know its name, but how it works, how its implemented and how its configured will result in a blank stare.
The push for "enterprise technology" to have "control panels" and "configuration wizards" is related both in cause and effect to the aforementioned Windows admin. The admin is dumb, so there's pressure on the vendor to make the software idiot proof. They attempt to do by wrapping all the "dangerous" configuration details in bubble wrap^W^W control panels. This only makes the aforementioned admins dumber, since they become reliant on the wizards and control panels and no longer know how to configure the application without those crutches.
Lots of little boxes with AMD and Intel chips. No more big iron. That is the dream.
As I understand it, Rackspace Cloud simply allows one to automatically provision virtual machines for applications in a simple and automatic manner. It is still up to the application to maintain synchronization between multiple instances and plan for failovers in case one of the servers goes down. So, unless the application has been specifically written for a "cloud" environment, the cloud is no more reliable than a single server. Deploying to the cloud won't make your application magically more scalable or fault tolerant.
Many "big iron" applications assume hardware that's very reliable. As such, they'd require significant changes to allow them to run in a cloud environment, where there are no such guarantees. For this reason alone, many corporations will stick with their mainframes.
My position is that it doesn't matter whether the global warming is anthropogenic or not. The Earth's climate is changing. Even if this change was started by humans, at this point humanity can do very little to stop it. So, we can either sit around and deny reality, or we can start adapting now, so that we'll be better positioned to deal with a drastically altered climate when it gets here.
In other words, I'm saying we use the same large brains that allowed us to adapt to the last drastic global climatic change (the end of the Ice Age) to start preparing for the next one.
At least those will be equal opportunity changes since Mother Nature and the Universe don't discriminate when it comes time to bring the pain to those unworthy to survive.
Except they won't be. The vast majority of the negative impacts will be in areas like India and Africa, where the people are least well equipped to deal with climatic changes. Global Warming (anthropogenic or not) will affect polar and tropical areas the most - the temperate climes of the rich world will be affected last.
As for saying that those people are "unworthy to survive", who are you to make that decision? Genetically, biologically, those who are going to die from global warming are no different than you or I. If they are unworthy of survival, then so are you. Its only an accident of birth that ensures your survival.
In essence, the nitrogen pumped through the pores of the ceramic forms an "ablative" coating, as it absorbs and carries heat away from the surface of the craft. The nitrogen has to be refilled after every launch, but refilling a nitrogen tank is cheaper and easier than reapplying an ablative coating or repairing ceramic tiles.
If they escape their strings, but don't use transactions, then only maim them.
Corporation's don't have empathy or remorse, but individuals do.
Not always. Sociopathic individuals do not show empathy or remorse. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it seems that succesful managers score higher on tests of sociopathy.
The only "intrinsic" motivation BP has for capping the well is in the loss of potential revenue from a broken/leaking well. All other reasons for stopping the well are extrinsic.
Well, that's New York gas, though, which isn't the same as California gas. In the US, at least, it seems like each state has its own regulations on what additives are necessary. This also adds to the price, since you have to go to the trouble of setting the additive blend properly before shipping the gasoline to the filling stations.
Oil is a commodity and prices are set by supply and demand. The US govt has nothing to do with it being cheaper in the US than in Europe. The price difference is almost all tax.
You also have to distinguish between crude oil (which has a single global price) and gasoline (which does not). The supply of gasoline varies across locales because of variables like availability of pipelines, cost of refining, local regulations on additives, and, of course, taxes.
Oil is a commodity (like corn, or iron). Gasoline is not. There are significant differences between gasoline blends sold in different locations. California gasoline is not the same as Texas gasoline, and neither of those are the same as Dutch gasoline. The differences in gasoline composition across location also has a significant impact on price.
I'm happy to be proven wrong with a credible link that deals with the actual events...
How about this? In that story, a survivor of the disaster is interviewed. He talks about how several components of the blowout preventer were damaged by accidents in the weeks preceding the explosion. Rather than stopping to repair the blowout preventer, though, British Petroleum chose to continue drilling. They did so because the rig was already behind schedule and over budget. If this witness' allegations are substantiated, it'd be a damning indictment of British Petroleum. They deliberately chose to sacrifice safety in the pursuit of profit. They did so over the warnings and objections of their own employees.
Seriously, anyone using Windows for SCADA in this day and age has to get their head checked. With the wealth of proprietary and free embedded operating systems available today, the use of Windows in any sort of embedded device should have ended a long time ago.
Well, true, but that overlooks the fact that porting a program to OpenCL is not exactly a trivial task.