No, it isn't. Look at the main article, we are talking here about entire buildings for long term storage. It is about, as I said, mainstream vs niche.
"Making a good interface between the motor and the spindle which will function at 7200+ RPM is extremely nontrivial"
Of course it isn't. And you need it that way why...? Maybe because you want mean seek times in the miliseconds league? And why hard disks are about A5 size or less? Maybe because we are talking about all-purpose hot storage?
Remember the old days? hard disks were open-air and about size of a fridge. Why there're no hard disks the size of a fridge and about seconds' seek-time anymore? Maybe because, just like tapes, then you would be talking about niche and then rising accordingly per-unit costs due to sunk investments?
"Also I sure as hell wouldn't want to rely on a HDD spinning up for the first time after sitting on a shelf for 10 years, let alone 20 or 30 years. Sure it might, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."
That's again, a matter of costs. Tapes have a low marginal cost, which is their "natural" advantage. Hard disks are cheap because sheer volume, but their marginal costs must be higher, so they are cheap... as long as you can use off-the-shelve disks for your own purposes.
What I mean is, in this case, that nowhere says a hard disk must come with its own spinning engine. It's not that hard to think about a "hard disk" to be mounted on an spinning machine (that's basically what you do with tapes) so, on one hand, you cut per-unit costs (only one "spinning machine" for thousands of "disks") and increase reliability (having one engine per thousands of disks allows for building it sturdy and you use it daily instead of once in ten years). Problem? the same than tapes: unless you manage to make this "spinless hard disk" the industry standard, it becomes a niche application, which increases costs.
By the way, there isn't already a standard industry for spinless hard disks? solid state, or something like that?
"Psychologists can actually help people, though I suspect it's the thin end of the bell curve of that crowd."
There's probably a problem in the capitalist way future graduates are allowed to sign in instead of their intellectual requirements: you are too idiot for an engineering? you still can enroll on Psychology or History, so no wonder the average Psychologist or Historian ends up being too stupid... for anything of real value.
In fact, while what they try to say can be more or less understood, is basically flawed: "how much of this difference comes down to the random drift of DNA being passed on around the globe, and how much is due to natural selection giving those with Neanderthal genes an advantage"
Well, exactly the same. Unless they provide a new theory of directed evolution, *all* this change comes from random drift.
But then, a real real wizard uses sed, sort unique.
I'm not joking you: I was in the strange position at my last job of being considered a kind of an "excel guru". Me! I haven't even used Windows for almost two decades.
Of course, I was not the kind of guru that teaches others how to solve this or that problem on Excel but more the kind of "I've been stomping my head for a full week trying to convince Excel to give me this or that result without success. Can you do something about that?" My neatest trick? CVS export.
That's the known workaround and highlights another problem that impacts our profession in full: our inability to stand on the shoulders of giants. With each generation, so it seems, we invent a whole lot of new things at the expense of forgetting a lot of things we already knew: two steps forward, one step (and sometimes even two, three or a whole mile) backwards.
"But fairly satisfying when you ultimately find the bug."
It is not the kind of problem Raymond is talking about, then.
He is talking about the kind of problem you *know* the solution should be obvious to you from second one and yet, it hides a whole lot of time in which you know, every single second, the problem is laughing at you. When, Bam! you finally find the answer, you know you were right all the time: the solution was obvious, it has been laughing at you at plain sight, and you only feel damn stupid.
While I won't say Eric's name is not suitable, I feel this should be called an "Akerue problem". As to the why, I leave it as an exercise to the reader (and I hope Eric gets to read this).
"By this definition, any law requires 'violence' to enforce it"
Not by that definition, it's simply a stated fact. Goverment retains the privilege of violence monopoly for a reason.
But, even then, here I'm not talking about the State violence to restore a legit state of affairs, i.e.: the implied violence required to put you in jail after you commit a felony, but violence to avoid the fact itself. A simple example: you own a rubber duck and I ask you to give me your rubber duck. You don't want to. Then, the only means I have to get the rubber duck is exerting violence against you one way or the other. This is what makes obvious that you are the practical owner of the rubber duck. Now, you tell me a joke and, after the fact, you ask me not to tell that joke to anyone, but I tell you I don't want the joke to stay secret. Now it is *you* the one that needs to exert violence against me in order to avoid me spreading that joke. Just like in the case of the rubber duck, the direction of violence makes factual that it is *me* the owner of my "mental copy" of that joke, so it is only natural for me to do whatever I want with my ownership. That you and I, by means of copyright laws, agree on telling the joke only under your restrictions, makes obvious that this is not a right but a privilege I grant you against the natural state of things.
"> Copying should not be a crime. Copying is a natural right, it does a great deal of good and the so-called harm it causes is a figment of delusional thinking
This is where you are wrong"
Not at all. He is, in fact, absolutely right. Copying is, in fact, a natural right: you need to exert violence to avoid it. Copy rights are in fact not rights but a privilege: you apply state violence against those that otherwise could freely copy/distribute what they know/they have, purportedly for the greater benefit of society (...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts).
"Copying is stealing someone's time and effort"
It is fuckingly obvious that's not the case. After such "stealing" the copyright holder is neither older, nor more tired, nor poorer than right before the act. Because of the government granted privileges, the producer has the *expectation* of recovering his *already* expended time/effort/money, but that's all: an expectation. Following your path of thought, simply *not* going to see your film should be a felony since that also goes against the copyright holder's expectation of recovering his investment to become true.
Now: it is obvious that things can't change overnight. One of the pillars of a mature society is stability and no one should change the legit expectations of those that have founded a career or an industry on top of them. But this doesn't mean things shouldn't change *at all*. Going back to origins, copy privileges are still privileges and are still there in order "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Any state-granted privilege must be reconsidered or even abolished (on proper time/pace) when either: * The purported goal is not considered valuable enough anymore. * The privilege fails to achieve the purported goal. * There are other means, not involving special privileges, to achieve the desired goal.
I would say the first point is still valid but the current means miserably fail for the other two, so it's time to reconsider the situation.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
You are comparing apples to oranges. Yes: today the government gets more per capita than back in the fifties... because it basically didn't collect money but from a minority.
Today it collects much more... and the bulk of it is from middle class earning. Both the top marginal tax -and the effective percentage for people earning more than 200.000 2018 US$ is at an historical minimum -and that's what we were talking about here.
"Here's the problem with that: if you ACTUALLY manage to tax those people at those levels they'll find a way to move away from the taxation, either by moving their business to somewhere with more reasonable taxation levels, fraud, or reducing their business to a tax level they're comfortable with."
Here's the problem with that: yours is a nice theory. What about hard facts? All along the 50's top tax stayed at 90%. Repeat with me: 90%. Did the rich guys fly to Germany, Australia, Japan, UK...? nope!
More: the year before Ronald Reagan reached White House, top rate still was 70% The news? no richmen rush out of USA.
"You should know that areas in IT, draw people who really have problems with social skills, understanding other people and so on. But, they're absolutely brilliant in thinking their way around a problem."
You see the contradiction in your words, don't you?
Problem: I'm managing a project bigger than what I could possibly achieve by myself. Solution: Make other valuable people share my goals and work aligned to my vision to make it happen.
Now: you either brilliantly find the way from problem to solution or you don't.
"How does the US army standing for the US's interests help me and my dollars stand for my interests?"
Isn't it obvious? By insuring (for their own interests) that US dollar stay "real money". That is, a store of value, a medium of exchange and, because of the previous two, a unit of account.
"Can I use my dollar to compel a single US soldier to serve my interests?"
Paraphrasing Microsoft, what do you want to buy today? Surely you'll want to eat, maybe pay the rent or a ticket for a show... not a single US soldier but its entire army and, in fact, the whole of USA society are *already* working on serving your interests... by serving their shared goals.
I consider capitalism far from being a panacea but the part that works, I know it works when it manages to align individuals' private interests and common ones. That's what makes USA dollar (and other sovereign currencies) work.
"Crypto was developed on the idea that a medium of exchange that was valued and controlled by the people who used it removed the possibility of catastrophic loss on the governments whim. Unfortunately for Bitcoin the whims of the marketplace may turn out to be more catastrophic."
And then, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. As you say, you put currency on the whims of people, and then people use the currency to their whims ("markets" is not a monster in a cave, it is me, and you, and you, and you... it's the people).
I don't know if you are American, but let's pretend you are for the sake of the argument: do not forget that Government *is* the people and instead of having that fixation that Government is good for nothing (which, in the end, is admitting people is good for nothing, so we better let an elite of "wiser ones", the big fortunes, that is, to direct the destiny of the country) work hard for the Government to be what it is meant to be and then, let it take control of the critical aspects of social well-being: education, healthcare, food and shelter at the very least because you can be sure that, otherwise, it will be the big fortunes what will dictate the outcomes and, if you think you have reasons to be worried about "governments' whim" (and you certainly have), then think of the alternative: what makes you think that Bezos, Ellison or Buffet have your own interests in higher regard than Government and, more importantly, what makes you think that you can change in your favour the collective interests of the Bezos, Ellisons and Buffets of this world than your government's?
"No matter how gifted you are, do yourself a gigantic favor, and resist the temptation to surround yourself with yes-men... everyone benefits from a critical viewpoint now and then."
Well, from a cynical point of view, I'm not so sure it benefits "everyone"...
On one hand, the other "yes-men": they are there usually because they lack other talents, so having someone different on board *and* having the leader listening to him, most probably would end the other ones' career in the company or, at least, their ability to stay with the "grown-ups". Yes, in the long term the company folds, so they go to the unemployment queue, but in the meantime...
On the other hand, the leader himself, he's usually the sociopathic and narcissitic kind that always land on his feet, so he takes pleasure from their current yes-men and will just take the hit and start again with a different idea and a different group of yes-men to support him.
I've been there... twice, specially one of them it was so exemplary it could make into an encyclopedia entry. Both times I was fired because not being "a team guy", both times I went out telling others when exactly the company would fold within a three months margin and both times I was right. The only advantage? Since I was fired relatively early in the going nowhere process, I took all my benefits; the others that stayed to the bitter end, not so much.
"Being technically able to share information doesn't guarantee that it will happen."
No, of course not, reality being my guest. Conversely, that it is not happening now doesn't mean it can't happen. Which turns back to the parent poster: there's no technical limitation so that having multiple "social network" providers forceully leads to fragmentation, which means he is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
"For any sort of tech, saving 50% of rent, but losing 10% of productivity is a huge loss."
Maybe. But, then, you are looking at it the wrong way.
How do you measure the 10% lost productivity, specially when your whole industry has made it the standard? I'll tell you: nobody will measure this.
Then, how do you measure the savings you get by packing your employees like cows? Again, I'll tell you: just look at the rent bills.
So, what do you think bean-counting minds will push forward? I'll tell you about that too: just look around.
"It's a cost and space issue."
No, it isn't. Look at the main article, we are talking here about entire buildings for long term storage. It is about, as I said, mainstream vs niche.
"Making a good interface between the motor and the spindle which will function at 7200+ RPM is extremely nontrivial"
Of course it isn't. And you need it that way why...? Maybe because you want mean seek times in the miliseconds league? And why hard disks are about A5 size or less? Maybe because we are talking about all-purpose hot storage?
Remember the old days? hard disks were open-air and about size of a fridge. Why there're no hard disks the size of a fridge and about seconds' seek-time anymore? Maybe because, just like tapes, then you would be talking about niche and then rising accordingly per-unit costs due to sunk investments?
"The "spinless hard disks" or SSD drives are much, much more expensive per Gigabyte than hard drives or tape."
Think about why there's such a big difference between SSD's and magnetic-anything and come back with your own answers.
By the way, for long-term/cold storage, won't you think a "drive" the size, say, of a shoe box could be a thing?
"Also I sure as hell wouldn't want to rely on a HDD spinning up for the first time after sitting on a shelf for 10 years, let alone 20 or 30 years. Sure it might, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."
That's again, a matter of costs. Tapes have a low marginal cost, which is their "natural" advantage. Hard disks are cheap because sheer volume, but their marginal costs must be higher, so they are cheap... as long as you can use off-the-shelve disks for your own purposes.
What I mean is, in this case, that nowhere says a hard disk must come with its own spinning engine. It's not that hard to think about a "hard disk" to be mounted on an spinning machine (that's basically what you do with tapes) so, on one hand, you cut per-unit costs (only one "spinning machine" for thousands of "disks") and increase reliability (having one engine per thousands of disks allows for building it sturdy and you use it daily instead of once in ten years). Problem? the same than tapes: unless you manage to make this "spinless hard disk" the industry standard, it becomes a niche application, which increases costs.
By the way, there isn't already a standard industry for spinless hard disks? solid state, or something like that?
3D? But you don't need it!
It's film, so it's 2D what we are talking here: a full 1D of net profit!
"Psychologists can actually help people, though I suspect it's the thin end of the bell curve of that crowd."
There's probably a problem in the capitalist way future graduates are allowed to sign in instead of their intellectual requirements: you are too idiot for an engineering? you still can enroll on Psychology or History, so no wonder the average Psychologist or Historian ends up being too stupid... for anything of real value.
"That they cannot breed is not because they are different species"
You are right. It is because they cannot breed that they are different species, not the other way around.
"The whole species classification system is fictional "
Then try to breed a walrus and a lioness and see what happens.
The fact that boundaries are blurred and more focused on synchronic than diachronic differenciation doesn't make the system fictional.
In fact, while what they try to say can be more or less understood, is basically flawed:
"how much of this difference comes down to the random drift of DNA being passed on around the globe, and how much is due to natural selection giving those with Neanderthal genes an advantage"
Well, exactly the same. Unless they provide a new theory of directed evolution, *all* this change comes from random drift.
But then, a real real wizard uses sed, sort unique.
I'm not joking you: I was in the strange position at my last job of being considered a kind of an "excel guru". Me! I haven't even used Windows for almost two decades.
Of course, I was not the kind of guru that teaches others how to solve this or that problem on Excel but more the kind of "I've been stomping my head for a full week trying to convince Excel to give me this or that result without success. Can you do something about that?" My neatest trick? CVS export.
It is sheer luck that Einstein's annus mirabilis was 1805 and not, what can I say... 1905.
That's the known workaround and highlights another problem that impacts our profession in full: our inability to stand on the shoulders of giants. With each generation, so it seems, we invent a whole lot of new things at the expense of forgetting a lot of things we already knew: two steps forward, one step (and sometimes even two, three or a whole mile) backwards.
"But fairly satisfying when you ultimately find the bug."
It is not the kind of problem Raymond is talking about, then.
He is talking about the kind of problem you *know* the solution should be obvious to you from second one and yet, it hides a whole lot of time in which you know, every single second, the problem is laughing at you. When, Bam! you finally find the answer, you know you were right all the time: the solution was obvious, it has been laughing at you at plain sight, and you only feel damn stupid.
While I won't say Eric's name is not suitable, I feel this should be called an "Akerue problem". As to the why, I leave it as an exercise to the reader (and I hope Eric gets to read this).
"I thought the MIT kids were smarter than that."
And they are. They've managed to find gullible enough investors as to live la vida loca for eigth years in a row.
*And* they'll probably will manage to paint their "failure" as an advantage because of "the lessons learnt" for their next gig.
"Found the libertarian."
I'm not.
"By this definition, any law requires 'violence' to enforce it"
Not by that definition, it's simply a stated fact. Goverment retains the privilege of violence monopoly for a reason.
But, even then, here I'm not talking about the State violence to restore a legit state of affairs, i.e.: the implied violence required to put you in jail after you commit a felony, but violence to avoid the fact itself. A simple example: you own a rubber duck and I ask you to give me your rubber duck. You don't want to. Then, the only means I have to get the rubber duck is exerting violence against you one way or the other. This is what makes obvious that you are the practical owner of the rubber duck. Now, you tell me a joke and, after the fact, you ask me not to tell that joke to anyone, but I tell you I don't want the joke to stay secret. Now it is *you* the one that needs to exert violence against me in order to avoid me spreading that joke. Just like in the case of the rubber duck, the direction of violence makes factual that it is *me* the owner of my "mental copy" of that joke, so it is only natural for me to do whatever I want with my ownership. That you and I, by means of copyright laws, agree on telling the joke only under your restrictions, makes obvious that this is not a right but a privilege I grant you against the natural state of things.
"You do realize Heinlein supported copyright and all his works are copyrighted, correct?"
So what? That his quote could be used even against him makes it more valuable if anything.
"> Copying should not be a crime. Copying is a natural right, it does a great deal of good and the so-called harm it causes is a figment of delusional thinking
This is where you are wrong"
Not at all. He is, in fact, absolutely right. Copying is, in fact, a natural right: you need to exert violence to avoid it. Copy rights are in fact not rights but a privilege: you apply state violence against those that otherwise could freely copy/distribute what they know/they have, purportedly for the greater benefit of society (...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts).
"Copying is stealing someone's time and effort"
It is fuckingly obvious that's not the case. After such "stealing" the copyright holder is neither older, nor more tired, nor poorer than right before the act. Because of the government granted privileges, the producer has the *expectation* of recovering his *already* expended time/effort/money, but that's all: an expectation. Following your path of thought, simply *not* going to see your film should be a felony since that also goes against the copyright holder's expectation of recovering his investment to become true.
Now: it is obvious that things can't change overnight. One of the pillars of a mature society is stability and no one should change the legit expectations of those that have founded a career or an industry on top of them. But this doesn't mean things shouldn't change *at all*. Going back to origins, copy privileges are still privileges and are still there in order "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Any state-granted privilege must be reconsidered or even abolished (on proper time/pace) when either:
* The purported goal is not considered valuable enough anymore.
* The privilege fails to achieve the purported goal.
* There are other means, not involving special privileges, to achieve the desired goal.
I would say the first point is still valid but the current means miserably fail for the other two, so it's time to reconsider the situation.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
You are comparing apples to oranges. Yes: today the government gets more per capita than back in the fifties... because it basically didn't collect money but from a minority.
Today it collects much more... and the bulk of it is from middle class earning. Both the top marginal tax -and the effective percentage for people earning more than 200.000 2018 US$ is at an historical minimum -and that's what we were talking about here.
"Here's the problem with that: if you ACTUALLY manage to tax those people at those levels they'll find a way to move away from the taxation, either by moving their business to somewhere with more reasonable taxation levels, fraud, or reducing their business to a tax level they're comfortable with."
Here's the problem with that: yours is a nice theory. What about hard facts? All along the 50's top tax stayed at 90%. Repeat with me: 90%. Did the rich guys fly to Germany, Australia, Japan, UK...? nope!
More: the year before Ronald Reagan reached White House, top rate still was 70% The news? no richmen rush out of USA.
That's not *if*. These are hard facts.
"You should know that areas in IT, draw people who really have problems with social skills, understanding other people and so on. But, they're absolutely brilliant in thinking their way around a problem."
You see the contradiction in your words, don't you?
Problem: I'm managing a project bigger than what I could possibly achieve by myself.
Solution: Make other valuable people share my goals and work aligned to my vision to make it happen.
Now: you either brilliantly find the way from problem to solution or you don't.
"How does the US army standing for the US's interests help me and my dollars stand for my interests?"
Isn't it obvious? By insuring (for their own interests) that US dollar stay "real money". That is, a store of value, a medium of exchange and, because of the previous two, a unit of account.
"Can I use my dollar to compel a single US soldier to serve my interests?"
Paraphrasing Microsoft, what do you want to buy today? Surely you'll want to eat, maybe pay the rent or a ticket for a show... not a single US soldier but its entire army and, in fact, the whole of USA society are *already* working on serving your interests... by serving their shared goals.
I consider capitalism far from being a panacea but the part that works, I know it works when it manages to align individuals' private interests and common ones. That's what makes USA dollar (and other sovereign currencies) work.
"Crypto was developed on the idea that a medium of exchange that was valued and controlled by the people who used it removed the possibility of catastrophic loss on the governments whim. Unfortunately for Bitcoin the whims of the marketplace may turn out to be more catastrophic."
And then, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. As you say, you put currency on the whims of people, and then people use the currency to their whims ("markets" is not a monster in a cave, it is me, and you, and you, and you... it's the people).
I don't know if you are American, but let's pretend you are for the sake of the argument: do not forget that Government *is* the people and instead of having that fixation that Government is good for nothing (which, in the end, is admitting people is good for nothing, so we better let an elite of "wiser ones", the big fortunes, that is, to direct the destiny of the country) work hard for the Government to be what it is meant to be and then, let it take control of the critical aspects of social well-being: education, healthcare, food and shelter at the very least because you can be sure that, otherwise, it will be the big fortunes what will dictate the outcomes and, if you think you have reasons to be worried about "governments' whim" (and you certainly have), then think of the alternative: what makes you think that Bezos, Ellison or Buffet have your own interests in higher regard than Government and, more importantly, what makes you think that you can change in your favour the collective interests of the Bezos, Ellisons and Buffets of this world than your government's?
"The U.S. paper dollar is not backed by anything of value"
So you don't think the US government will collect taxes on US dollars or that the US standing army won' t stand for US's interests starting tomorrow?
US dollar is a fiat currency. US dollar is backed by something of value: USA itself.
"No matter how gifted you are, do yourself a gigantic favor, and resist the temptation to surround yourself with yes-men... everyone benefits from a critical viewpoint now and then."
Well, from a cynical point of view, I'm not so sure it benefits "everyone"...
On one hand, the other "yes-men": they are there usually because they lack other talents, so having someone different on board *and* having the leader listening to him, most probably would end the other ones' career in the company or, at least, their ability to stay with the "grown-ups". Yes, in the long term the company folds, so they go to the unemployment queue, but in the meantime...
On the other hand, the leader himself, he's usually the sociopathic and narcissitic kind that always land on his feet, so he takes pleasure from their current yes-men and will just take the hit and start again with a different idea and a different group of yes-men to support him.
I've been there... twice, specially one of them it was so exemplary it could make into an encyclopedia entry. Both times I was fired because not being "a team guy", both times I went out telling others when exactly the company would fold within a three months margin and both times I was right. The only advantage? Since I was fired relatively early in the going nowhere process, I took all my benefits; the others that stayed to the bitter end, not so much.
"Being technically able to share information doesn't guarantee that it will happen."
No, of course not, reality being my guest. Conversely, that it is not happening now doesn't mean it can't happen. Which turns back to the parent poster: there's no technical limitation so that having multiple "social network" providers forceully leads to fragmentation, which means he is wrong.