that's pretty much how i feel about the PSP. i mean, there really aren't too many (good) products designed specifically for tinkerers because it's pretty much a niche market.
besides, if you're the tinkering type you're going to hack/modify everyday products you use regardless of whether that's what it was designed for. some of the best hacks & mods out there are made for closed systems like the Xbox, PSP, Wii, etc. so it's pretty dumb to say, "X isn't made for tinkerers. so you shouldn't have bought it."
why wouldn't the Chinese knockoff manufacturers just sell their phones with Android installed on them in the first place? they have no real attachment to a shittier OS (unlike carrier-rebranded phones), and they'd save on both development costs and also move more product.
so it'll likely only be people using AT&T/Cingular-branded phones, or perhaps even the iPhone, who actually have to install Android on their own.
since the review is titled "The IDA Pro Book," i typed "IDA Pro" into Wikipedia, and was immediately redirected to this page.
yes, it would have been more convenient if they'd said that IDA was a disassembler in the summary, but Wikipedia gave me a much better description of the application than the summary could have. and it isn't exactly hard to look something up on Wikipedia (if you type in the correct name).
that's the one where they find bits and pieces of code hidden in the DNA of various lifeforms on different planets, right?
does that mean that humans didn't actually evolve naturally, but instead were the result of genetic engineering (intelligent design)? if so, that was a dumb plot line. i mean, don't various humanoid civilizations in the Star Trek universe have vastly different ages? i know humanity isn't 851 million years old, not even by the 24th century. besides, there was also that episode where the Enterprise crew started to de-evolve, showing that all the different species evolved from more primitive non-humanoid lifeforms.
personally, i think that it's very likely that the humanoid body plan could evolve multiple times independently on different planets. even though evolution is driven by chance mutations, the evolutionary paths that life takes are not completely random. there are still certain physical attributes and biological designs that life inevitably evolves into. these are dictated by natural laws such as physics & chemistry.
for instance, the eye has evolves independently multiple times on earth. and it's no coincidence that most walking animals are quadrupeds, or that most species have an even number of limbs. having eyes near the top an organism provides an optimal field of vision. having fully articulated digits and an opposable thumb allows an organism to interact with its environment and manipulate objects and develop/use tools. vocal chords allow for verbal communication and more complex social interaction, therefore may also facilitate the development of advanced cultures. these rules hold true for life on any planet.
and although sexual selection may create arbitrary biological characteristics, the general humanoid body design probably isn't completely arbitrary. so even though there may be alien lifeforms that are drastically different from us, it's also possible that there humanoid species out there that evolved independently from us.
perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.
gone are the days when logistical obstacles prevented the public from directly participating in the legislative process. there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
Re:Is XML a data format for documents?
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The First E-President
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· Score: 4, Informative
XML can be used for documents. just because it has broader uses doesn't mean it can't be used as a document format.
besides, OOXML, ODF, and XHTML are all based on XML--meaning they all validate as XML documents.
also, wouldn't this type of search be pretty useless for identifying kiddy porn images?
md5 hashes are useful for verifying a binary package is in fact what it is supposed to be because it's hard to create a fake or altered program that produces the same md5 hash number as the authentic copy. so it's useful for verifying a "good" file, because presumably a good file won't try to deceive you, and a bad file can't reproduce the same md5 hash.
however, with something like a digital photo, all a user has to do is make a few very minor alterations (like a small watermark) to the image and it would produce a different md5 hash--essentially exploiting the inherent design of the md5 hash algorithm--and be missed by the md5 scan. these small changes could be as simple as flipping a single bit in the file, but with a standard 24-bit RGB bitmap image, each pixel is stored as three 8 bit values representing the red, green, and blue color channels. by flipping the least significant bit in each channel, you can alter up to 1/8th (12.5%) of the file without creating any perceptible changes (to human eyes at least) to the displayed image.
another method would be to employ lossy compression schemes like JPEG image compression. convert all your images to JPEG (or if they are already JPG, just compress it again at minimal compression strength) and the MD5 hashes will be completely altered. yet another method is to resize the image by a small amount--say reduce both width and height by just 1 pixel--using bicubic interpolation to scale the image up or down would preserve the image quality while completely changing the md5 signature of the file.
all of these methods would be simple to automate and allow you to easily hide known child porn images from detection using md5 comparisons.
you can layer the e-paper over glass. or, you may not even have to since it's made of carbon nanotubes, which have a higher tensile strength than steel.
um, all you did was say how HUDs are currently made. you gave no reason why this wouldn't be a good alternative method of implementing a HUD.
and reading the Wikipedia article you linked to, it says nothing about using lasers to draw onto the sheet of glass. instead, it states that most HUDs use reflected CRT/LED/LCD-projected monochrome light. using this type of transparent e-paper display would allow full-color HUDs, and would simplify the system by using the e-paper in place of the combiner+projection unit.
i'm guess you didn't bother to read the article or even the summary. this type of e-paper is translucent:
The e-paper device jointly completed by Samsung and Unidym uses a carbon nanotube (CNT) transparent electrode developed by Unidym. CNT is a novel material that has extraordinary electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties.[emphasis mine]
and since it has lower power consumption, better bright light readability, is stronger and also more compact than LCD & LED technology, it would make sense that when the technology matures and lowers in price it could be used in HUDs.
but cloud storage done right would provide more redundancy/reliability/uptime than most small businesses could manage on their own. that's because multitenancy and centralization of data storage allows small businesses to share a large resource pool that none of them could afford on their own. this includes:
higher level of reliability through multiple redundant sites
higher peak load capacity
massive scalability
increased efficiency & better utilization of resources (like distributed computing)
having your data stored locally doesn't guarantee reliability or prevent things from going wrong. why do you think most small businesses go with shared hosting rather than running their own web server? if you're a large corporation and can afford to pour money into server/network maintenance then maybe it'd be better to have direct control over your data. but Google, Amazon, and perhaps even Microsoft can guaranty better uptime and reliability than the average small to medium sized business.
after all, how often have you needed to access your Gmail or Yahoo! mail account and couldn't because their server was down? and how many times were you unable to access your webmail account because of a local network/computer problem? at least with cloud computing if you have business partners or affiliates that need shared access to your data and your office network goes down, or your internet connection craps out, they would still have access to the data and be able to continue operations.
local data storage isn't a magic bullet against natural disasters, human error, or hardware failure. at least cloud architecture is designed to account for these contingencies.
that might cover cloud storage, but that ignores all the non-storage applications of cloud computing, not to mention all enterprise cloud applications like Google App Engine and Amazon's EC2.
also, what you propose eliminates the security and reliability/redundancy benefits of cloud storage. additionally, your solution doesn't provide true device/location independence because it wouldn't work if more than one person needs access to the data. and even if it's just private data that only one individual needs access to, he'd have to physically carry his data on him at all times or otherwise risk not having access to his data in unanticipated circumstances.
for instance, with current cloud computing, if go to the record store and just by chance bump into a local musician who happens to play the same genre of music as my label, one of us could pull out a mobile device and he could show me his band's demo off of the internet/cloud. likewise, i can play him some of the stuff by our bands to see if he likes them. i could even add his personal contact info to my gmail contacts, add him as a friend on myspace, or have a copy of his demo sent to my boss.
but if everyone had to carry a flash drive with them and anticipate every occasion when they might need access to their cloud data, then it eliminates much of the convenience of having your data in cloud storage. the internet is pretty ubiquitous these days, and it's becoming more and more so each and every day. i imagine within the next 10 years we'll have ubiquitous wireless internet access anywhere we go. when that is the case, why would anyone carry their data on a them physically?
yea, what bunch of sensationalized garbage. i'd expect this from FOX news, but not from the BBC.
teenagers have always been mischievous, and all hackers start as teenagers. most hackers grow out of malicious/immature behavior by adulthood, so naturally most phishers/crackers/virus writers/script kiddies/etc. are going to be teenagers.
heck, it's our teenage rebelliousness that motivates us to try new things. even though teenagers can be mischievous, it's usually pretty harmless stuff. when i was a in elementary school and junior high i used to write trojans, progs/punters/scrollers, mail bombers, etc. that's what motivated me to learn how to program. and i'm sure there are many others out there who were the same way.
it's the script kiddies that grow up to become spammers that we need to worry about. they cause the most damage and are a much bigger nuisance and societal problem than mischievous teenage hacker-wannabes. greed-driven malice is much more dangerous than curiosity-driven mischief.
no, don't mod parent up, because he clearly didn't RTFA, which is quite informative and provides a lot of insight into this issue, actually:
To be fair, the iPhone isn't the first phone that's been reported to have interference issues. [...] Rodman: We've seen it, well heard it really, quite a bit with GSM and TDMA phones. The source of this is the phone's transmitter, and what it's doing is sending its digital data broken up into very brief packets. Even when it's live, it's only transmitting about 10% of the time. But it's about 200 times a second. So what we're hearing is not so much the data itself, but the envelope, the shape of the packets as they turn on and off. And because we hear the higher frequencies much more clearly and they can interfere more easily than that basic frequency, while we wouldn't hear a 200 cycle tone, that's pretty low, when you interrupt something at that rate, it's kind of like putting a card into a bicycle wheel, you turn it from a gentle waving into a buzz, and it's the edges of that buzz we're so sensitive to. [...] Rodman believes that the iPhone may be getting singled out because it has such visibility in the marketplace right now.
so TFA isn't picking on the iPhone here, and in fact the article even defends the iPhone, putting the blame of this phenomenon on other devices:
At the end of the day, however, Rodman believes that the problem may lie, not in your iPhone dear Brutus, but in your clock radio.
Rodman: There is confusion about what is responsible for this. Is it that there's one really bad model of cell phone out there that's causing the problems? Or is it that things are receiving it that shouldn't? I'm strongly of the believe that things are receiving it that shouldn't. Devices should be designed in a way that they're more resilient to stray transmitters that come along.
TFA then goes on to explain that the reason we get these noises in so many electronic devices is because of "Part 15" of the FCC rules, which was put in place to produce cheap consumer electronics, with the trade-off being that consumers have to live with any interference that comes into their electronic devices.
lastly, it should be pointed out that advanced smartphones like the iPhone put out much more of this noise than a regular cellphone (which usually does this only when a call is received) because of the smartphone's regular high bandwidth data transfers. so that is part of the reason the issue is being brought up in conjunction with the iPhone.
actually, my data comes through lines owned by my ISP/telecom. and, no, Google's privacy policy prohibits their selling personal user info to 3rd parties. they may pass aggregate non-personally-identifiable data (i.e. how many users searched for a particular term) to 3rd parties for processing, but any personal information cannot be shared with 3rd parties without opt-in consent.
i don't remember the exact name of the course, but i think it was a two part (Digital?) Media Production class. it definitely wouldn't be in the CS department, since he's more of an art/design major. i would give you a link to his homepage so you could see the types of projects he's done for his classes, but i don't feel too comfortable doing that without his permission.
i will tell you this, he spent an entire semester learning bits and pieces of html/javascript (no CSS) that i could have taught him in a week. it was like he was being spoon-fed how to become a bad web designer.
well they're already trying that concept with the Lunar Lander challenge.
but space research has already been commercialized. all of NASA's technology is developed by private contractors. that's why it costs so much to build and launch the shuttle. on top of the actual development costs (materials, salaries for engineer/scientist/researchers, etc.) a large portion of their budget spending is needed to feed commercial profits--companies like Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. as well as smaller private contractors that also need to make a profit on each contracted component.
cut out the CEO salaries, corporate profits, and replace business politics with a scientific meritocracy, then you'll see a much more efficient space agency. a lot of other national space agencies seem to be able to do more with less (as with NASA in the past), so there's no inherent problem with public space research.
i don't have anything against the commercialization of space per se. if private corporations want to invest in cutting-edge technology like space travel, they should do it. but the commercial sector prefers to wait for the pure research to be done by someone else and then come in only after the technology is stable enough to develop commercial applications that they can profit from.
so it's usually up to the government to fund pure research. and that works great when it's truly public research. but when you mix public research with commercial industries, that's when you get the problem we're faced with today, where the government is basically subsidizing a commercial space industry that has gradually replaced public space research. and this just shouldn't be happening. if private corporations want to commercialize space, they can do it on their own dime.
besides, no one is stopping commercial industries from doing space research. just look at Virgin Galactic and Space X. national space programs has pioneered space technology and done much of the hard work for private industries. we shouldn't have to pay private corporations to commercialize space. commercial research doesn't benefit the public. it's like subsidizing the telecom industry and then letting the private telecoms charge us to use the infrastructure we paid for in the first place.
exactly. a faster, overpowered processor and ridiculous surplus of memory just means they can fill their computer with more spyware/malware/viruses and assorted cruft, like auto-updaters and unnecessary startup applications, before their computer grinds to a complete halt, forcing them to take it in for maintenance. so instead of seeing people with 7-8 tray icons, you see people's computers with 15-20 programs in their system tray.
theoretically this means more time in between computer checkups/repairs. in reality, users are just more careless and indiscriminate about installing useless programs. and add to that the increase in malware/viruses floating on the internet (and increased infection rate), the average computer ends up needing maintenance just as often as before--perhaps even sooner.
sadly, that's what many American universities have degraded into--trade schools.
i have a friend attending UCSB who's trying to get into web design/development. but most all of the classes he's taken are more akin software training courses taught at junior colleges or technical colleges like Devry, ITT Tech, etc. skills like basic flash animation, HTML coding, and JavaScript are things that a web developer needs to teach himself. a University education should be focused on more academic knowledge that broaden a student's horizons, not giving vocational training that can be gleaned from a book or the web in just a few weeks.
personally, i majored in CS in college and i never even took a single class on web design/development, but i've already established a career for myself having built up a portfolio doing freelance work while in college and also as an in-house developer/designer. the vocational skills that i've developed cannot, and should not, be taught in a university classroom. they're skills you pick up and teach yourself either working on personal projects or doing an internship.
university courses need to teach students more abstract concepts that are more difficult to teach oneself or that students are more likely to miss in their self-study because they don't appear to have any obvious practical applications--things like programming theory & conceptual knowledge. my friend doesn't have any of that, and worse yet, he has picked up bad programming/design habits from his classes like using frames, mixing content and presentation, and sloppy/unorganized code.
but i guess we live in a capitalist society and education has become just another commercialized commodity. people treat colleges merely as a hoop to jump through in order to land a high paying job. they don't actually care about learning or intellectual pursuit. a well-rounded college education just isn't in as much demand, therefore the free market has driven our universities to become more like technical colleges and focus more on vocational training.
but i guess that's why a bachelor's degree is no longer enough for selective employers. now you need a graduate degree to truly be competitive. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
what kind of propaganda has Google put out? controlling the media is the way to put out propaganda. advertising is mainly used for branding and manipulating consumer purchase decisions. perhaps they're promoting consumerism in Russia, but it's still the media conglomerates who control TV/radio/newspaper/etc. that write the propaganda and influence societal perception & cultural attitudes.
although in a consumerist society advertising dominates our culture, it's still the media that are the gatekeepers of information and our window into the world. the internet has actually democratized the media by allowing the public to bypass traditional channels of media distribution which are largely been consolidated and tightly controlled by a handful of media corporations.
by supporting net neutrality, public internet access, open wireless networks, and generally promoting a free & open internet, Google is actually helping to decentralize media control and content distribution. YouTube lets anyone create video content and distribute it to millions of viewers. Google search also helps people browse the sea of information on the web on their own terms--compared to TV networks that restrict what you watch and decide for you what information you want to access.
i'm not the one making specious equivocations here. PC != casual computing. i was playing Prince of Persia and Cosmo's Comsic Adventure on my dad's 386 when was just 7 years old. but that was not casual computing by any stretch of the imagination. not as it exists today, not in any meaningful definition of the word.
sure consumer/home PCs existed. i never denied this (if you'd bothered to actually read my original post). but they were not used by the average person. they were a niche product for a niche market. early computer users usually needed to know how to program, or at least have a strong grasp of DOS/Unix commands. therefore, they weren't basic appliance that everyone owned.
but since we've entered the information age, casual computing has become an integral part of mainstream culture. at least 75% of the population now owns a computer and uses it on a regular basis. the internet has also become a vital resource, therefore internet devices are increasingly considered basic accessories to the digital lifestyle.
however, compared to power users like IT professionals, hardcore gamers, computer hobbyist, and skilled professionals that require high-end workstations for processor-intensive applications (ie. CAD, scientific modeling, media production, etc.), casual computer users use a relative small and fixed set of applications that are not inherently processor intensive by today's standards.
the average person really only uses the computer for the internet(web & e-mail mostly), word processing, and basic data entry. and even though processor speed doubles approximately every 2 years, the applications that casual computer users user, like the web browser, e-mail client, word processor, spreadsheet apps, etc. pretty much matured and reached their present form since the advent of Windows 95. they are still continually improving, but not in step with concurrent increases in processor speeds.
it's probably more helpful to just actually do some game development.
if you really want to program games for a living, then you should be doing it in your free time. someone who enjoys coding doesn't need to be working at a software development firm to sit down and write some code. if it's really what you want to do then you should enjoy doing it whether you're being paid to do it or not.
if you go through college without ever writing a single game on your own or collaborating with a friend, then you're probably not cut out for a career in game develop. the real future professional game developers are already amateur game developers by the time they reach college. i knew i wanted to be a programmer not because of some dream or fantasy in my mind, but because i spent day and night coding my own personal projects for fun--and i enjoyed doing it.
if you're not motivated enough to write a game on your own, then what makes you think you're going to be a good game developer just because someone is paying you? game development is just like any other field. if you enjoy doing it you will succeed. if you go through college without ever trying to write a game on your own then it's your own fault, not the school's, that you can't get a job in game development.
higher education is what you make of it. for those privileged enough to have access to it, their future is in their own hands. either you immerse yourself in academic pursuit and achieve personal growth both in and out of the classroom, or you throw your tuition away treating college as a trade school, waiting to be given step-by-step instructions on how to get into a high-paying job while doing the bare minimum to graduate.
This is one of the most idiotic and brainwashed responses I've ever seen in the history of the internet. The sad thing is you probably believe what you wrote.
well, there's a difference between an outdated computer and a modern low-power PC. see the poster's comment directly below, or TrekkieTechie's list of NetTops, which are all running Intel Atom, AMD Geode, or VIA C7 processors which are examples of modern low-power x86 processors.
but as a slashdotter, you're likely a power user who needs the extra processing power of a standard CPU. however, i'm sure even you appreciate the benefits of running more efficient software such as CentOS versus Windows Vista. and for non-power-users, being able to go from "off" to "internet" in 7 seconds is a much greater convenience than being able to run 10 programs simultaneously or being able to run multithreaded applications faster using 4 different cores.
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that's pretty much how i feel about the PSP. i mean, there really aren't too many (good) products designed specifically for tinkerers because it's pretty much a niche market.
besides, if you're the tinkering type you're going to hack/modify everyday products you use regardless of whether that's what it was designed for. some of the best hacks & mods out there are made for closed systems like the Xbox, PSP, Wii, etc. so it's pretty dumb to say, "X isn't made for tinkerers. so you shouldn't have bought it."
why wouldn't the Chinese knockoff manufacturers just sell their phones with Android installed on them in the first place? they have no real attachment to a shittier OS (unlike carrier-rebranded phones), and they'd save on both development costs and also move more product.
so it'll likely only be people using AT&T/Cingular-branded phones, or perhaps even the iPhone, who actually have to install Android on their own.
since the review is titled "The IDA Pro Book," i typed "IDA Pro" into Wikipedia, and was immediately redirected to this page.
yes, it would have been more convenient if they'd said that IDA was a disassembler in the summary, but Wikipedia gave me a much better description of the application than the summary could have. and it isn't exactly hard to look something up on Wikipedia (if you type in the correct name).
that's the one where they find bits and pieces of code hidden in the DNA of various lifeforms on different planets, right?
does that mean that humans didn't actually evolve naturally, but instead were the result of genetic engineering (intelligent design)? if so, that was a dumb plot line. i mean, don't various humanoid civilizations in the Star Trek universe have vastly different ages? i know humanity isn't 851 million years old, not even by the 24th century. besides, there was also that episode where the Enterprise crew started to de-evolve, showing that all the different species evolved from more primitive non-humanoid lifeforms.
personally, i think that it's very likely that the humanoid body plan could evolve multiple times independently on different planets. even though evolution is driven by chance mutations, the evolutionary paths that life takes are not completely random. there are still certain physical attributes and biological designs that life inevitably evolves into. these are dictated by natural laws such as physics & chemistry.
for instance, the eye has evolves independently multiple times on earth. and it's no coincidence that most walking animals are quadrupeds, or that most species have an even number of limbs. having eyes near the top an organism provides an optimal field of vision. having fully articulated digits and an opposable thumb allows an organism to interact with its environment and manipulate objects and develop/use tools. vocal chords allow for verbal communication and more complex social interaction, therefore may also facilitate the development of advanced cultures. these rules hold true for life on any planet.
and although sexual selection may create arbitrary biological characteristics, the general humanoid body design probably isn't completely arbitrary. so even though there may be alien lifeforms that are drastically different from us, it's also possible that there humanoid species out there that evolved independently from us.
perhaps one of the greatest benefits of IT is the possibility of establishing a direct democracy on a national scale through online referendums.
gone are the days when logistical obstacles prevented the public from directly participating in the legislative process. there's really no excuse to not involve the public in public policy decisions and create a participatory democracy at the federal level.
a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not just a catchy phrase from the Gettysburg Address. if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy, then we need to actually employ a democratic system of government that carries out the will of the people.
XML can be used for documents. just because it has broader uses doesn't mean it can't be used as a document format.
besides, OOXML, ODF, and XHTML are all based on XML--meaning they all validate as XML documents.
um, why "coder"? why not "lesbian cyborg" or "zombie jesus"?
i mean, if we're going to ignore the GP's point and play mad libs instead, then at least be a little more creative about it.
also, wouldn't this type of search be pretty useless for identifying kiddy porn images?
md5 hashes are useful for verifying a binary package is in fact what it is supposed to be because it's hard to create a fake or altered program that produces the same md5 hash number as the authentic copy. so it's useful for verifying a "good" file, because presumably a good file won't try to deceive you, and a bad file can't reproduce the same md5 hash.
however, with something like a digital photo, all a user has to do is make a few very minor alterations (like a small watermark) to the image and it would produce a different md5 hash--essentially exploiting the inherent design of the md5 hash algorithm--and be missed by the md5 scan. these small changes could be as simple as flipping a single bit in the file, but with a standard 24-bit RGB bitmap image, each pixel is stored as three 8 bit values representing the red, green, and blue color channels. by flipping the least significant bit in each channel, you can alter up to 1/8th (12.5%) of the file without creating any perceptible changes (to human eyes at least) to the displayed image.
another method would be to employ lossy compression schemes like JPEG image compression. convert all your images to JPEG (or if they are already JPG, just compress it again at minimal compression strength) and the MD5 hashes will be completely altered. yet another method is to resize the image by a small amount--say reduce both width and height by just 1 pixel--using bicubic interpolation to scale the image up or down would preserve the image quality while completely changing the md5 signature of the file.
all of these methods would be simple to automate and allow you to easily hide known child porn images from detection using md5 comparisons.
you can layer the e-paper over glass. or, you may not even have to since it's made of carbon nanotubes, which have a higher tensile strength than steel.
um, all you did was say how HUDs are currently made. you gave no reason why this wouldn't be a good alternative method of implementing a HUD.
and reading the Wikipedia article you linked to, it says nothing about using lasers to draw onto the sheet of glass. instead, it states that most HUDs use reflected CRT/LED/LCD-projected monochrome light. using this type of transparent e-paper display would allow full-color HUDs, and would simplify the system by using the e-paper in place of the combiner+projection unit.
i'm guess you didn't bother to read the article or even the summary. this type of e-paper is translucent:
and since it has lower power consumption, better bright light readability, is stronger and also more compact than LCD & LED technology, it would make sense that when the technology matures and lowers in price it could be used in HUDs.
but cloud storage done right would provide more redundancy/reliability/uptime than most small businesses could manage on their own. that's because multitenancy and centralization of data storage allows small businesses to share a large resource pool that none of them could afford on their own. this includes:
having your data stored locally doesn't guarantee reliability or prevent things from going wrong. why do you think most small businesses go with shared hosting rather than running their own web server? if you're a large corporation and can afford to pour money into server/network maintenance then maybe it'd be better to have direct control over your data. but Google, Amazon, and perhaps even Microsoft can guaranty better uptime and reliability than the average small to medium sized business.
after all, how often have you needed to access your Gmail or Yahoo! mail account and couldn't because their server was down? and how many times were you unable to access your webmail account because of a local network/computer problem? at least with cloud computing if you have business partners or affiliates that need shared access to your data and your office network goes down, or your internet connection craps out, they would still have access to the data and be able to continue operations.
local data storage isn't a magic bullet against natural disasters, human error, or hardware failure. at least cloud architecture is designed to account for these contingencies.
that might cover cloud storage, but that ignores all the non-storage applications of cloud computing, not to mention all enterprise cloud applications like Google App Engine and Amazon's EC2.
also, what you propose eliminates the security and reliability/redundancy benefits of cloud storage. additionally, your solution doesn't provide true device/location independence because it wouldn't work if more than one person needs access to the data. and even if it's just private data that only one individual needs access to, he'd have to physically carry his data on him at all times or otherwise risk not having access to his data in unanticipated circumstances.
for instance, with current cloud computing, if go to the record store and just by chance bump into a local musician who happens to play the same genre of music as my label, one of us could pull out a mobile device and he could show me his band's demo off of the internet/cloud. likewise, i can play him some of the stuff by our bands to see if he likes them. i could even add his personal contact info to my gmail contacts, add him as a friend on myspace, or have a copy of his demo sent to my boss.
but if everyone had to carry a flash drive with them and anticipate every occasion when they might need access to their cloud data, then it eliminates much of the convenience of having your data in cloud storage. the internet is pretty ubiquitous these days, and it's becoming more and more so each and every day. i imagine within the next 10 years we'll have ubiquitous wireless internet access anywhere we go. when that is the case, why would anyone carry their data on a them physically?
did that old man happen to be Magneto?
yea, what bunch of sensationalized garbage. i'd expect this from FOX news, but not from the BBC.
teenagers have always been mischievous, and all hackers start as teenagers. most hackers grow out of malicious/immature behavior by adulthood, so naturally most phishers/crackers/virus writers/script kiddies/etc. are going to be teenagers.
heck, it's our teenage rebelliousness that motivates us to try new things. even though teenagers can be mischievous, it's usually pretty harmless stuff. when i was a in elementary school and junior high i used to write trojans, progs/punters/scrollers, mail bombers, etc. that's what motivated me to learn how to program. and i'm sure there are many others out there who were the same way.
it's the script kiddies that grow up to become spammers that we need to worry about. they cause the most damage and are a much bigger nuisance and societal problem than mischievous teenage hacker-wannabes. greed-driven malice is much more dangerous than curiosity-driven mischief.
no, don't mod parent up, because he clearly didn't RTFA, which is quite informative and provides a lot of insight into this issue, actually:
so TFA isn't picking on the iPhone here, and in fact the article even defends the iPhone, putting the blame of this phenomenon on other devices:
TFA then goes on to explain that the reason we get these noises in so many electronic devices is because of "Part 15" of the FCC rules, which was put in place to produce cheap consumer electronics, with the trade-off being that consumers have to live with any interference that comes into their electronic devices.
lastly, it should be pointed out that advanced smartphones like the iPhone put out much more of this noise than a regular cellphone (which usually does this only when a call is received) because of the smartphone's regular high bandwidth data transfers. so that is part of the reason the issue is being brought up in conjunction with the iPhone.
actually, my data comes through lines owned by my ISP/telecom. and, no, Google's privacy policy prohibits their selling personal user info to 3rd parties. they may pass aggregate non-personally-identifiable data (i.e. how many users searched for a particular term) to 3rd parties for processing, but any personal information cannot be shared with 3rd parties without opt-in consent.
i apologize for ruining your paranoid delusions.
i don't remember the exact name of the course, but i think it was a two part (Digital?) Media Production class. it definitely wouldn't be in the CS department, since he's more of an art/design major. i would give you a link to his homepage so you could see the types of projects he's done for his classes, but i don't feel too comfortable doing that without his permission.
i will tell you this, he spent an entire semester learning bits and pieces of html/javascript (no CSS) that i could have taught him in a week. it was like he was being spoon-fed how to become a bad web designer.
well they're already trying that concept with the Lunar Lander challenge.
but space research has already been commercialized. all of NASA's technology is developed by private contractors. that's why it costs so much to build and launch the shuttle. on top of the actual development costs (materials, salaries for engineer/scientist/researchers, etc.) a large portion of their budget spending is needed to feed commercial profits--companies like Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. as well as smaller private contractors that also need to make a profit on each contracted component.
cut out the CEO salaries, corporate profits, and replace business politics with a scientific meritocracy, then you'll see a much more efficient space agency. a lot of other national space agencies seem to be able to do more with less (as with NASA in the past), so there's no inherent problem with public space research.
i don't have anything against the commercialization of space per se. if private corporations want to invest in cutting-edge technology like space travel, they should do it. but the commercial sector prefers to wait for the pure research to be done by someone else and then come in only after the technology is stable enough to develop commercial applications that they can profit from.
so it's usually up to the government to fund pure research. and that works great when it's truly public research. but when you mix public research with commercial industries, that's when you get the problem we're faced with today, where the government is basically subsidizing a commercial space industry that has gradually replaced public space research. and this just shouldn't be happening. if private corporations want to commercialize space, they can do it on their own dime.
besides, no one is stopping commercial industries from doing space research. just look at Virgin Galactic and Space X. national space programs has pioneered space technology and done much of the hard work for private industries. we shouldn't have to pay private corporations to commercialize space. commercial research doesn't benefit the public. it's like subsidizing the telecom industry and then letting the private telecoms charge us to use the infrastructure we paid for in the first place.
exactly. a faster, overpowered processor and ridiculous surplus of memory just means they can fill their computer with more spyware/malware/viruses and assorted cruft, like auto-updaters and unnecessary startup applications, before their computer grinds to a complete halt, forcing them to take it in for maintenance. so instead of seeing people with 7-8 tray icons, you see people's computers with 15-20 programs in their system tray.
theoretically this means more time in between computer checkups/repairs. in reality, users are just more careless and indiscriminate about installing useless programs. and add to that the increase in malware/viruses floating on the internet (and increased infection rate), the average computer ends up needing maintenance just as often as before--perhaps even sooner.
sadly, that's what many American universities have degraded into--trade schools.
i have a friend attending UCSB who's trying to get into web design/development. but most all of the classes he's taken are more akin software training courses taught at junior colleges or technical colleges like Devry, ITT Tech, etc. skills like basic flash animation, HTML coding, and JavaScript are things that a web developer needs to teach himself. a University education should be focused on more academic knowledge that broaden a student's horizons, not giving vocational training that can be gleaned from a book or the web in just a few weeks.
personally, i majored in CS in college and i never even took a single class on web design/development, but i've already established a career for myself having built up a portfolio doing freelance work while in college and also as an in-house developer/designer. the vocational skills that i've developed cannot, and should not, be taught in a university classroom. they're skills you pick up and teach yourself either working on personal projects or doing an internship.
university courses need to teach students more abstract concepts that are more difficult to teach oneself or that students are more likely to miss in their self-study because they don't appear to have any obvious practical applications--things like programming theory & conceptual knowledge. my friend doesn't have any of that, and worse yet, he has picked up bad programming/design habits from his classes like using frames, mixing content and presentation, and sloppy/unorganized code.
but i guess we live in a capitalist society and education has become just another commercialized commodity. people treat colleges merely as a hoop to jump through in order to land a high paying job. they don't actually care about learning or intellectual pursuit. a well-rounded college education just isn't in as much demand, therefore the free market has driven our universities to become more like technical colleges and focus more on vocational training.
but i guess that's why a bachelor's degree is no longer enough for selective employers. now you need a graduate degree to truly be competitive. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
what kind of propaganda has Google put out? controlling the media is the way to put out propaganda. advertising is mainly used for branding and manipulating consumer purchase decisions. perhaps they're promoting consumerism in Russia, but it's still the media conglomerates who control TV/radio/newspaper/etc. that write the propaganda and influence societal perception & cultural attitudes.
although in a consumerist society advertising dominates our culture, it's still the media that are the gatekeepers of information and our window into the world. the internet has actually democratized the media by allowing the public to bypass traditional channels of media distribution which are largely been consolidated and tightly controlled by a handful of media corporations.
by supporting net neutrality, public internet access, open wireless networks, and generally promoting a free & open internet, Google is actually helping to decentralize media control and content distribution. YouTube lets anyone create video content and distribute it to millions of viewers. Google search also helps people browse the sea of information on the web on their own terms--compared to TV networks that restrict what you watch and decide for you what information you want to access.
i'm not the one making specious equivocations here. PC != casual computing. i was playing Prince of Persia and Cosmo's Comsic Adventure on my dad's 386 when was just 7 years old. but that was not casual computing by any stretch of the imagination. not as it exists today, not in any meaningful definition of the word.
sure consumer/home PCs existed. i never denied this (if you'd bothered to actually read my original post). but they were not used by the average person. they were a niche product for a niche market. early computer users usually needed to know how to program, or at least have a strong grasp of DOS/Unix commands. therefore, they weren't basic appliance that everyone owned.
but since we've entered the information age, casual computing has become an integral part of mainstream culture. at least 75% of the population now owns a computer and uses it on a regular basis. the internet has also become a vital resource, therefore internet devices are increasingly considered basic accessories to the digital lifestyle.
however, compared to power users like IT professionals, hardcore gamers, computer hobbyist, and skilled professionals that require high-end workstations for processor-intensive applications (ie. CAD, scientific modeling, media production, etc.), casual computer users use a relative small and fixed set of applications that are not inherently processor intensive by today's standards.
the average person really only uses the computer for the internet(web & e-mail mostly), word processing, and basic data entry. and even though processor speed doubles approximately every 2 years, the applications that casual computer users user, like the web browser, e-mail client, word processor, spreadsheet apps, etc. pretty much matured and reached their present form since the advent of Windows 95. they are still continually improving, but not in step with concurrent increases in processor speeds.
it's probably more helpful to just actually do some game development.
if you really want to program games for a living, then you should be doing it in your free time. someone who enjoys coding doesn't need to be working at a software development firm to sit down and write some code. if it's really what you want to do then you should enjoy doing it whether you're being paid to do it or not.
if you go through college without ever writing a single game on your own or collaborating with a friend, then you're probably not cut out for a career in game develop. the real future professional game developers are already amateur game developers by the time they reach college. i knew i wanted to be a programmer not because of some dream or fantasy in my mind, but because i spent day and night coding my own personal projects for fun--and i enjoyed doing it.
if you're not motivated enough to write a game on your own, then what makes you think you're going to be a good game developer just because someone is paying you? game development is just like any other field. if you enjoy doing it you will succeed. if you go through college without ever trying to write a game on your own then it's your own fault, not the school's, that you can't get a job in game development.
higher education is what you make of it. for those privileged enough to have access to it, their future is in their own hands. either you immerse yourself in academic pursuit and achieve personal growth both in and out of the classroom, or you throw your tuition away treating college as a trade school, waiting to be given step-by-step instructions on how to get into a high-paying job while doing the bare minimum to graduate.
well, there's a difference between an outdated computer and a modern low-power PC. see the poster's comment directly below, or TrekkieTechie's list of NetTops, which are all running Intel Atom, AMD Geode, or VIA C7 processors which are examples of modern low-power x86 processors.
but as a slashdotter, you're likely a power user who needs the extra processing power of a standard CPU. however, i'm sure even you appreciate the benefits of running more efficient software such as CentOS versus Windows Vista. and for non-power-users, being able to go from "off" to "internet" in 7 seconds is a much greater convenience than being able to run 10 programs simultaneously or being able to run multithreaded applications faster using 4 different cores.