...what is the normal (historical) rate of data center power failures, and how does the recent spate compare? Five in a week sounds severe, but what's the normal worldwide average? I can imagine that with thousands of data centers around the globe, there's likely a serious failure occurring somewhere in the world once every couple of days.
...and we're planning to build him an Ubuntu box for his birthday. He doesn't really read yet, he just likes playing Flash games. But you can be damn sure we're going to strongly supervise web browsing early on, not to prevent him from seeing bad things (oh noes, boobies will turn your kids into murderers!!), but to prevent him from making naive mistakes about trust and security.
There's a simpler explanation, which Abcd1234 linked to below (survivorship bias), but in a nutshell, for those who don't want to wade through the Wikipedia entry:
The reason that it seems that they don't make 'em like they used to, is that you're only seeing the ones made 100 years ago that survived. A huge percentage of what was made 100 years ago fell apart, or was thrown away or recycled, some time in the past, but because you don't see those (...because they're gone), you ignore them.
It's the exactly same fallacy every time someone complains that movies/TV/books/comics/music aren't as good as they used to be; those people always forget that there were thousands of shitty movies released in the 1970s, alongside all those great classics, but the shitty movies have mostly been forgotten (because they were shitty, so nobody talks about them). (This is not to claim that there is no variability in overall quality of cultural output; I would contend that overall there were, numerically (but possibly not proportionally), more excellent films released in the 1970s than in the 1950s, but the point is usually taken to the extreme).
Who was the first US President to dedicate Federal funds to embryonic stem cell research?
That would be George W. Bush... the very first president to be in office when embryonic stem cell research became something you could fund. Clinton's administration started looking into whether funding human embryonic stem cell research was feasible (ethically, legally), in 1998. It took a couple of years before the issues were worked out... but by then, Bush was president. Of course, the funding he approved was limited to existing stem cell lines, which was of minimal utility.
Are you sure your math is right? 128 Kb ISDN is 128 kilobits per second, or 16 kiloBYTES per second. At 128 Kb/sec (16 KB/sec), it would take 33 days to download 44 GB (gigaBYTES).
Just wanting to make sure we're all on the same page here.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
Translation: If human nature was completely different, things would be completely different.
...that we may already be able to see where, in general, the future will lead with regard to copyright enforcement. The music industry has more or less given up on DRM; there were enough places that started selling DRM-free music, and made a mint at it, that the big dogs finally gave up. Why?
Among the population of those who pirate (set P), the subset Q who pirate because it's easy, but would pay if they couldn't pirate, is very small. The big dogs were spending more on creating and implementing DRM schemes than they could ever hope to earn from Q, and they finally figured this out.
The movie industry hasn't quite got this yet, or at least not in the same way; because a piece of music is much smaller and easier to distribute than a piece of video, the RIAA's battle with Internet piracy really began around 1996. The MPAA didn't start having to deal with it to the same degree for five or six years later. Giant corporations are not quick learners, and it'll probably be another two or three years before they really get it (although to some degree they've learned from the RIAA's mistakes).
In practice, there will be a lot of lip service put toward stopping the Evil Pirates, and occasional high-profile incidents such as the Pirate Bay verdict, but in the main, 99% of pirates will never be affected. There's just way too many of them compared to the studios; giant though those corporations may be, they're nothing compared to the tens of thousands of people who are dedicated, for whatever reason, to defeating any conceivable DRM scheme.
There'll still be efforts made against commercial pirates, but as for noncommercial piracy, unless they make a big splash or get noticed for some reason, they're going to be ignored by the studios forever, because it will always cost the studios more to do something about them than they could ever hope to earn from doing so.
Biden and Obama and their successors will, as has been noted, probably sing the same tune forever -- the entertainment industry is a huge political donor. More to the point, the only politicians who get elected are going to be the ones who at least pay lip service to helping Hollywood against the Evil Pirates (tm). But there's really never going to be much they can do about it.
It's kind of sad to see that despite all the progressive politics that Obama and Biden embody, that they're following Hollywood's line to the letter. I'd like to see some specific language from them on exactly what they think about the proper length of copyright terms -- the current terms lasting a century or more are absurd.
Lessig took the wrong approach in arguing Eldred v. Ashcroft before the Supreme Court. While the frequent extensions to copyright obviously violate the spirit of the Constitution, they don't violate the letter, since century-plus durations are still technically "limited." What does violate the letter of the Constitution is that these extensions do not "promote the Progress" of science and arts, but rather retard them. Past a certain length, copyright terms don't create any additional encouragement to create; they just make it easier for huge corporations to monopolize our common culture.
Not to disagree with your main point, but I really don't see SP:BLU as propaganda. Many of the propaganda cartoons from the WW2 era were made at the behest of the government; I really doubt you can make that claim about BLU. Also, it's fairly obvious that the point of the movie was to satirize American hypocrisy about "family values," specifically the idea that exposure to "bad" things can turn children into monsters. "Blame Canada" is the movie's message in a nutshell.
I voted for Obama, and I disagree with him on this, and I just sent feedback at whitehouse.gov making my dismay known. I don't expect that alone will change his mind, but I'm also going to write and mail a paper letter to the President as well as to my congressman and senators, encouraging them to take Obama to task for this.
Those of us who voted for him need to be as vociferous, if not more, in holding Obama responsible for what he does. To paraphrase myself:
The "grave harm" that could come from compromising our national security by revealing details about the wiretapping is nothing compared to the destruction of our principles required to keep those actions secret.
I'd bet that all of the Hollywood movies you've ever seen to this point don't contain 45 minutes of exposed penis combined. And yet they probably contained hours and hours of naked women. What exactly is your problem with seeing a penis?
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either
on
Watchmen Watched
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· Score: 1
As you point out, the written word (or the graphic novel) and film are different media, with different strengths and weaknesses. And one difference -- to me, the most critical one -- is the difference in the kinds of emotional responses they can evoke.
I love reading as much as anyone, and I love the way my mind stretches when I'm using my imagination to visualize the scene described. It's sort of a portal onto your own mind; they say that limits inspire creativity, and within the limits of the story described, your mind can inspire wondrous things.
Movies, on the other hand, provide you with extreme sensation -- sound that surrounds you, images that fill your whole vision. And if ur doin it rite, you watch a movie without interruption, in a darkened room -- which means that a good director can set the tempo of the film to build up an inexorable emotional crescendo.
To me, that's why I like seeing film adaptations of paperbound works; to get a different perspective on the story, using a different medium. There are many works which don't translate well to the big screen, but a book's excellence does not and should not inherently prohibit it from being adapted to film.
You didn't answer the question. The facts have already been established that in the current system, some people's votes for President are literally meaningless -- they have no effect on the outcome. (Democrats in Utah, for example.) Going to a popular vote for the President would make everyone's vote equally important. To me, that's an improvement and will likely increase turnout.
Slashdot Mirror
Pfft, I can easily remember of a petabyte of data, as long as they're all ones or zeroes.
Right, because as we all know, there are no instances in history of crazy people doing crazy things.
...what is the normal (historical) rate of data center power failures, and how does the recent spate compare? Five in a week sounds severe, but what's the normal worldwide average? I can imagine that with thousands of data centers around the globe, there's likely a serious failure occurring somewhere in the world once every couple of days.
So is moon-rabbits the new metric standard unit for measuring instrument sensitivity?
You're totally right, mutilating criminals is the way to go. That's not remotely cruel or unusual.
...and we're planning to build him an Ubuntu box for his birthday. He doesn't really read yet, he just likes playing Flash games. But you can be damn sure we're going to strongly supervise web browsing early on, not to prevent him from seeing bad things (oh noes, boobies will turn your kids into murderers!!), but to prevent him from making naive mistakes about trust and security.
RTFS:
Ha ha, yeah right! You must be new here.
It's an unnatural thing that must be taught.
I wonder who first learned to share, then?
There's a simpler explanation, which Abcd1234 linked to below (survivorship bias), but in a nutshell, for those who don't want to wade through the Wikipedia entry:
The reason that it seems that they don't make 'em like they used to, is that you're only seeing the ones made 100 years ago that survived. A huge percentage of what was made 100 years ago fell apart, or was thrown away or recycled, some time in the past, but because you don't see those (...because they're gone), you ignore them.
It's the exactly same fallacy every time someone complains that movies/TV/books/comics/music aren't as good as they used to be; those people always forget that there were thousands of shitty movies released in the 1970s, alongside all those great classics, but the shitty movies have mostly been forgotten (because they were shitty, so nobody talks about them). (This is not to claim that there is no variability in overall quality of cultural output; I would contend that overall there were, numerically (but possibly not proportionally), more excellent films released in the 1970s than in the 1950s, but the point is usually taken to the extreme).
Who was the first US President to dedicate Federal funds to embryonic stem cell research?
That would be George W. Bush... the very first president to be in office when embryonic stem cell research became something you could fund. Clinton's administration started looking into whether funding human embryonic stem cell research was feasible (ethically, legally), in 1998. It took a couple of years before the issues were worked out... but by then, Bush was president. Of course, the funding he approved was limited to existing stem cell lines, which was of minimal utility.
Are you sure your math is right? 128 Kb ISDN is 128 kilobits per second, or 16 kiloBYTES per second. At 128 Kb/sec (16 KB/sec), it would take 33 days to download 44 GB (gigaBYTES).
Just wanting to make sure we're all on the same page here.
I don't see how anyone who wasn't already a fan could have possibly enjoyed it.
And yet there exist numerous such people, so all this proves is that you lack the capacity to see things from someone else's point of view.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
Translation: If human nature was completely different, things would be completely different.
...that we may already be able to see where, in general, the future will lead with regard to copyright enforcement. The music industry has more or less given up on DRM; there were enough places that started selling DRM-free music, and made a mint at it, that the big dogs finally gave up. Why?
Among the population of those who pirate (set P), the subset Q who pirate because it's easy, but would pay if they couldn't pirate, is very small. The big dogs were spending more on creating and implementing DRM schemes than they could ever hope to earn from Q, and they finally figured this out.
The movie industry hasn't quite got this yet, or at least not in the same way; because a piece of music is much smaller and easier to distribute than a piece of video, the RIAA's battle with Internet piracy really began around 1996. The MPAA didn't start having to deal with it to the same degree for five or six years later. Giant corporations are not quick learners, and it'll probably be another two or three years before they really get it (although to some degree they've learned from the RIAA's mistakes).
In practice, there will be a lot of lip service put toward stopping the Evil Pirates, and occasional high-profile incidents such as the Pirate Bay verdict, but in the main, 99% of pirates will never be affected. There's just way too many of them compared to the studios; giant though those corporations may be, they're nothing compared to the tens of thousands of people who are dedicated, for whatever reason, to defeating any conceivable DRM scheme.
There'll still be efforts made against commercial pirates, but as for noncommercial piracy, unless they make a big splash or get noticed for some reason, they're going to be ignored by the studios forever, because it will always cost the studios more to do something about them than they could ever hope to earn from doing so.
Biden and Obama and their successors will, as has been noted, probably sing the same tune forever -- the entertainment industry is a huge political donor. More to the point, the only politicians who get elected are going to be the ones who at least pay lip service to helping Hollywood against the Evil Pirates (tm). But there's really never going to be much they can do about it.
It's kind of sad to see that despite all the progressive politics that Obama and Biden embody, that they're following Hollywood's line to the letter. I'd like to see some specific language from them on exactly what they think about the proper length of copyright terms -- the current terms lasting a century or more are absurd.
Lessig took the wrong approach in arguing Eldred v. Ashcroft before the Supreme Court. While the frequent extensions to copyright obviously violate the spirit of the Constitution, they don't violate the letter, since century-plus durations are still technically "limited." What does violate the letter of the Constitution is that these extensions do not "promote the Progress" of science and arts, but rather retard them. Past a certain length, copyright terms don't create any additional encouragement to create; they just make it easier for huge corporations to monopolize our common culture.
Not to disagree with your main point, but I really don't see SP:BLU as propaganda. Many of the propaganda cartoons from the WW2 era were made at the behest of the government; I really doubt you can make that claim about BLU. Also, it's fairly obvious that the point of the movie was to satirize American hypocrisy about "family values," specifically the idea that exposure to "bad" things can turn children into monsters. "Blame Canada" is the movie's message in a nutshell.
I voted for Obama, and I disagree with him on this, and I just sent feedback at whitehouse.gov making my dismay known. I don't expect that alone will change his mind, but I'm also going to write and mail a paper letter to the President as well as to my congressman and senators, encouraging them to take Obama to task for this.
Those of us who voted for him need to be as vociferous, if not more, in holding Obama responsible for what he does. To paraphrase myself:
The "grave harm" that could come from compromising our national security by revealing details about the wiretapping is nothing compared to the destruction of our principles required to keep those actions secret.
it's a lot easier to put the remote's abilities in the smartphone than vice versa.
Yeah... let me know when I can get a smartphone for $12.
I'd bet that all of the Hollywood movies you've ever seen to this point don't contain 45 minutes of exposed penis combined. And yet they probably contained hours and hours of naked women. What exactly is your problem with seeing a penis?
As you point out, the written word (or the graphic novel) and film are different media, with different strengths and weaknesses. And one difference -- to me, the most critical one -- is the difference in the kinds of emotional responses they can evoke.
I love reading as much as anyone, and I love the way my mind stretches when I'm using my imagination to visualize the scene described. It's sort of a portal onto your own mind; they say that limits inspire creativity, and within the limits of the story described, your mind can inspire wondrous things.
Movies, on the other hand, provide you with extreme sensation -- sound that surrounds you, images that fill your whole vision. And if ur doin it rite, you watch a movie without interruption, in a darkened room -- which means that a good director can set the tempo of the film to build up an inexorable emotional crescendo.
To me, that's why I like seeing film adaptations of paperbound works; to get a different perspective on the story, using a different medium. There are many works which don't translate well to the big screen, but a book's excellence does not and should not inherently prohibit it from being adapted to film.
Since you're already at +5, I'll just concur with your post. I've met Shiflett, and he knows what the hell he's talking about.
Also, his book is about 1/3 the length of this one, and from what I can tell, contains more or less all the same info ;)
Why do I keep reading that as Wall-Mart?
Because they got to you.
Just be glad you can't see the fnord between "Wall" and "Wart."
Now I know how the people over in Egyptology feel when someone says the aliens helped build the Pyramids.
Wait a minute... what do you mean, "the aliens"? ;)
Yes, the truly enlightened know it was a veiled reference to R'Lyeh.
O R'Lyeh?
You didn't answer the question. The facts have already been established that in the current system, some people's votes for President are literally meaningless -- they have no effect on the outcome. (Democrats in Utah, for example.) Going to a popular vote for the President would make everyone's vote equally important. To me, that's an improvement and will likely increase turnout.
What advantages does the Electoral College offer?