I agree, they are raising their prices based on a perceived crisis. But under our economic system, price for goods is not tied to cost of production or supply, but by what the greatest net income can be received. Capitalism assumes that everyone is fully informed regarding all issues, since people are limited in time and information, it's not quite a perfect system. The store owners are just using the news that hard drive manufacturing has been hurt to artificially raise their prices. We'll see how it works out. Since not all wholesalers are raising their prices, shopping around will still get a decent price and willing people to sell the stock they have on-hand. I can't imagine the floods have already reached the supply chain, especially for drive manufactures not located in the flooding so the raise in pricing is strictly artificial trying to capitalize on a perceived shortage rather than an actual one.
Is it good or bad that the dozen or so books I found, I've previously read? Strangely, none of my favorite science-fiction and fantasy books were the books I was presented with. The choices seem to be fairly limited and don't seem to be really selective. Perhaps it's time to work up an application that will help to better track books based on the old animals or twenty questions format. Shouldn't take too long to implement.
Where does it say that he is acting "butthurt?" So he took down his website/information... Not a big deal since the information was licensed so that others could put up their own copies of that information. As far as I know he isn't threatening anyone and frankly having a website requires a certain amount of maintenance even if it's just a static website. I've had several of them over the years and have taken them down just because I don't want to continue to monitor them weekly or monthly to insure someone hasn't defaced them, uploaded a trojan, etc, etc.
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and not assume that he got upset and took his toys home with him, but even if that were the case, since he provided the information under an open license in the first place he still is a huge leap ahead of the MAFIAA in my mind.
Regardless of whether the guy is in the right or wrong, half if not more of the reason super heroes wear masks is so that they can protect their identity so that they aren't liable for the things they do, ie cops as well as "bad guys." I mean in the comic books, don't heroes cause wholesale destruction of property? If everyone knew who they were they would be sued to the point that they couldn't afford any of their toys and what's a superhero without toys. The most important difference of course, is that with super powers they can get away from pesky police, lawyers, etc and don't have to stick around and be accountable, get arrested, respond to court summons.
Dealing with whether he is right or wrong is a different matter of course. Vigilante justice is seldom good as the punishment doesn't necessarily fit the crime and the potential for abuse is fairly high. I suppose the primary problem is having a police system that isn't accountable to the public who they are supposed to be serving. Unfortunately, the police respond to politicians who themselves are not accountable to the public and so there are problems with the system. One thing to keep in mind though, when we hear about people being jailed for video taping police and abuses of police power, they tend to be the exception rather than the rule and so are newsworthy. Most police departments are probably fairly run, but it's the bad apples that get press time. The bad part about that though is that a few bad apples can spoil the rest of the barrel, if abuses go unchecked and others see no response then they are more likely to start abusing authority as well.
All that deep packet inspection means is that you have to create another protocol to transfer information that they are either unfamiliar with or that they classify as something else.
Generally open source software are scratch projects, ie I have an itch so I scratch it. If something isn't maintained, it either works well enough as it is or isn't used. If you want to keep work going on it and are not a programmer you have 3 real solutions, ie pay to have it worked on, try to interest others in working on it by advertising via websites(slashdot / freshmeat / sourceforge / github/etc), personal emails to people that might want to work on it, or any other means of communication, eg attend a local Lug, etc, the last option of course is to learn how to program and scratch the itch yourself.
The biggest issue is the license the software is released under. If GPL, just fork the code and get to work. If under a more restrictive license your hands are pretty much tied. Proprietary software dies quite frequently, opensource might get mothballed for years and then get pulled back out when someone has an itch to scratch.
No reason to even look at this since there is absolutely no proof that this works because it's "Secret!!!!"
Why would you want to waste slashdot readers time by doing a question and answer with someone that has a magic spell to create energy, but of course no one can verify it.
Ummm, so does that mean they shut down their internet entirely? Port 80 is simple enough to use or even daresay a little perl script using email, yeah the latency sucks, but still works. Getting past port blocking is pretty simple.
Hmmm, sending traffic through stenography via email attachments would be interesting. Wonder how long it would take to code that up.
I don't really care about how and item looks as long as it does the job I need it to do. As far as the i(x), the equipment is too expensive for what it does. My netbook was cheaper, has far more memory. My phone can make phone calls, I really don't care beyond that. My electronic recorder has a 2GiB ssd drive in it, sure it's ancient, but it records and plays mp3's which is my primary purpose and cost $50 when the i(whatever) came out at $200+
Sure Apple may be at the forefront of designer designs, but really what new technical designs have they produced that would actually make me want to overpay for their products? I just don't see any advantage. I guess to me, I more closely associate myself with Woz than I ever did to Jobs or Gates. I'm an engineer Jim, not a marketing shrill.
I'm a nerd. Not a geek. What the heck do I know of popular culture? Furthermore, using words like all or every is certain to bring about people that point out your error. Don't tell me how to think, there is nothing wrong with the way I think. I'll miss him far less than Gary Gygax, Benjamin Franklin, etc, etc, etc. Frankly I don't care. People die life goes on, Apple is a cult culture and has little to do with most of the nerds here imho.
Frankly, the Raspberry PI looks like a decent system that after adding monitor, keyboard, and various other usb items would make a great computer system for under $200. I plan to pick up several of these when they come on the market and it doesn't appear that they are vapourware like many items from other companies in the past.
It appears to have come from TFA which is slightly misleading. I think the article should have been a little more clear in that It appears it will be the deepest current commercial vehicle in operation. The trieste was owned by the US government for governmental purposes and not for commercial purposes as this vehicle is, ie the search for mineral exploration. Still that being the case, the article itself seems to be very misleading.
And just to throw more wood on the fire, James Cameron is planning to go to the bottom of the see as well. Now, if it were just some random bloke, I might say yeah right, but seeing as he actually done things like going to the Titanic to look around, I'm a bit more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt than some random national propaganda piece with credentials as impeccable as having fantastic designs that worked but where never used.
Oh, yeah I believe everything he has done has been so fantastic in the past that the government had to hide it, oops my bad, mothballed it because it was research not production.
Hmmm,
As posted this service already exists as various pirate file sharing sites can attest to. Doing it legally is another matter entirely as companies depend on a force monopoly over works produced and demand premium payment for show that have already more than paid back their production costs, even if the accounting says they haven't, eg look up babylon 5 accounting practices and why babylon 5 still keeps racking up debt even though the show hasn't been in production for quite a while.
It comes down to simple greed in my opinion. I might be a little more lenient except for the fact that these same "businesses" got their "honest" politicians to rob my information, ie public domain, from me by extending copyright and also grandfathering all previous copyrighted material into a new monopoly that I will probably be dead before ever seeing another piece of copyrighted material fall into the public domain.
We all build from our past experience, but today's rules for copyright do not even allow you to use material you are bombarded with as a child. I suppose somebody out there agrees with the current copyright law, but if today's media companies are so enamored of it, why do they sing "He's a jolly good fellow" instead of "Happy Birthday" in movies and television shows?
Take out asinine copyright laws and a bit of greed and I'm sure you could actually set up a system where all information/entertainment was available at reasonable rates within a reasonable time frame.
That's the narrow-mindedness factor kicking in. Also include in that the loss of gullibility that the boss will actually reward you for all the extra hours you put in and requiring pay for work performed. Damn narrow-minded oldsters that don't think they owe the company for giving them a break.
Heh, seriously though, I now work on my terms not their terms. If I take a job or not depends on how it benefits me, not so that I can be noticed. I'm comfortable with my skills and knowledge thank you very much. I'm not about to be a whipping boy for the company's benefit in the hopes that a couple of years down the line some manager will remember me when it comes time to give out promotions/raises.
Then again, I'm a cantankerous ol' coot and am happy with it.
I'm kinda in the same boat here. It's hard to find something I actually want to watch on Netflix anymore. I used it vigorously for about one month, after that it was hard to find anything I wanted to watch past that point. Most of the shows I did watch during that first month were movies that I have on dvd and just found it more convenient to call up netflix and hit play with than actually new material. I don't think that it's really netflix's fault, it's just the entertainment that is produced generally tends to be crap. Preferably they would start offering subscriptions to specific shows. I know I would pay a couple of dollars for new issues of Firefly, but generally, I wouldn't be interested in buying any of this filler material that networks and studios call entertainment.
I just loaded up netflix today to see if there was anything new worth watching and basically found nada. It's nice to have netflix when my kids come over so that if they want to watch television I just pull up something that's suitable; however, for myself, I'd rather look at some of the MIT OCW videos, play a game or two, or work on a program rather than spend money on crap. When netflix split the pricing, I decided to go with streaming option rather than mail since I'm more into instant gratification; however if the price increases beyond about $10.00 a month, they will go the way of my cable bill... Thanks for the offer but no thanks.
I bought a few frames from that Australian film making company that was producing a movie a couple of years ago, wasn't very interested in the show, but liked the concept. Not sure if they ever produced anything. Cable is even worse than I remember it, having to pay to see shows and then having to sit through commercials as well is unacceptable. Hulu and crackle apart from having poor broadcasting technology, lost me within a couple of shows as they pumped commercials into my viewing time. Even CNN and other news reporting agencies requiring me to watch a 60 second advertisement before their 2 minute clips, piss me off. Theoretically, I have about $30.00 a month to spend on television/movie entertainment, but if they can't provide the convenience I was with no commercials, I really don't have the time to waste.
Anyway, we'll see what happens. As long as Comcast and other "entertainment" companies don't get the government to mandate me paying for their service, eg Canadian blank media tax, I'll be happy enough to disregard the crap they put out.
Might want to check out GOG.com Recently found the site while researching something else, but seems to have a lot of older games that have been set up to run under windows at a decent price.
Looking forward to checking out the class. Took another AI class years ago which used this book, so I won't have to buy new material. It should be pretty good, since the course is being taught by the person that wrote the book. We'll see how it turns out, I expect a lot of people will drop the course as it actually turns out to be work. It's hard to imagine 100k people that would be interested in this sort of stuff beyond just a passing interest.
Yeah, the whole issue seems to be a made up problem for which he points out that it cannot happen. It's trying to make sense of a discussion and focusing on just one paragraph in the center of it. Without a background as to what is being discussed, how can we tell whether he is making a valid point or not? Apparently, he's just pointing out the obvious, exponential growth is not limitless, which is pretty obvious. He seems to be pointing out the fact that some people are basing their future growth potential on an exponential growth cycle, the problem with that is that in the short term exponential growth can be expected in some areas. Take for instance a bacteria culture doubling in size every so many hours/days. That will work for a time period, at some point the rate of expansion slows perhaps stops and begins to decline but for a period of time exponential growth does occur. I think that without seeing the argument he is responding to, it's pretty hard to say whether or not his work shows any merit. If he's talking about energy in industry, isn't industry on the quarter cycle for the most part, so expecting exponential growth over the next dozen quarters might not be so far fetched and he may be throwing up a strawman saying that it's not sustainable.
I don't have any idea about this Spencer guy, but I know a lot of Doctors that do make a big deal about the Doctor in their name, PhDs, MDs, etc. For some reason they believe that working 8+ years to get that title, means that they are entitled to it. heh.
Seriously though, do you call a judge Mr? Or the president? Or a military officer, if you are in the military that is. Theoretically, getting a doctorate generally is regarded as an accomplishment, which really should receive a bit of respect. Labeling all people that make a big deal about the title "Dr." as negligible says more about you than others. I admit that some of them probably don't deserve the title, but some of them do, and by dismissing all of them it shows that you have little regard for the effort it takes to get a doctorate.
So they are spending 1200 dollars a man hour? Total machines seem to be about 6000, so each machine is costing a grand to encrypt? Seems pretty expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, they are raising their prices based on a perceived crisis. But under our economic system, price for goods is not tied to cost of production or supply, but by what the greatest net income can be received. Capitalism assumes that everyone is fully informed regarding all issues, since people are limited in time and information, it's not quite a perfect system. The store owners are just using the news that hard drive manufacturing has been hurt to artificially raise their prices. We'll see how it works out. Since not all wholesalers are raising their prices, shopping around will still get a decent price and willing people to sell the stock they have on-hand. I can't imagine the floods have already reached the supply chain, especially for drive manufactures not located in the flooding so the raise in pricing is strictly artificial trying to capitalize on a perceived shortage rather than an actual one.
Is it good or bad that the dozen or so books I found, I've previously read? Strangely, none of my favorite science-fiction and fantasy books were the books I was presented with. The choices seem to be fairly limited and don't seem to be really selective. Perhaps it's time to work up an application that will help to better track books based on the old animals or twenty questions format. Shouldn't take too long to implement.
Where does it say that he is acting "butthurt?" So he took down his website/information... Not a big deal since the information was licensed so that others could put up their own copies of that information. As far as I know he isn't threatening anyone and frankly having a website requires a certain amount of maintenance even if it's just a static website. I've had several of them over the years and have taken them down just because I don't want to continue to monitor them weekly or monthly to insure someone hasn't defaced them, uploaded a trojan, etc, etc.
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and not assume that he got upset and took his toys home with him, but even if that were the case, since he provided the information under an open license in the first place he still is a huge leap ahead of the MAFIAA in my mind.
Regardless of whether the guy is in the right or wrong, half if not more of the reason super heroes wear masks is so that they can protect their identity so that they aren't liable for the things they do, ie cops as well as "bad guys." I mean in the comic books, don't heroes cause wholesale destruction of property? If everyone knew who they were they would be sued to the point that they couldn't afford any of their toys and what's a superhero without toys. The most important difference of course, is that with super powers they can get away from pesky police, lawyers, etc and don't have to stick around and be accountable, get arrested, respond to court summons.
Dealing with whether he is right or wrong is a different matter of course. Vigilante justice is seldom good as the punishment doesn't necessarily fit the crime and the potential for abuse is fairly high. I suppose the primary problem is having a police system that isn't accountable to the public who they are supposed to be serving. Unfortunately, the police respond to politicians who themselves are not accountable to the public and so there are problems with the system. One thing to keep in mind though, when we hear about people being jailed for video taping police and abuses of police power, they tend to be the exception rather than the rule and so are newsworthy. Most police departments are probably fairly run, but it's the bad apples that get press time. The bad part about that though is that a few bad apples can spoil the rest of the barrel, if abuses go unchecked and others see no response then they are more likely to start abusing authority as well.
All that deep packet inspection means is that you have to create another protocol to transfer information that they are either unfamiliar with or that they classify as something else.
Generally open source software are scratch projects, ie I have an itch so I scratch it. If something isn't maintained, it either works well enough as it is or isn't used. If you want to keep work going on it and are not a programmer you have 3 real solutions, ie pay to have it worked on, try to interest others in working on it by advertising via websites(slashdot / freshmeat / sourceforge / github /etc), personal emails to people that might want to work on it, or any other means of communication, eg attend a local Lug, etc, the last option of course is to learn how to program and scratch the itch yourself.
The biggest issue is the license the software is released under. If GPL, just fork the code and get to work. If under a more restrictive license your hands are pretty much tied. Proprietary software dies quite frequently, opensource might get mothballed for years and then get pulled back out when someone has an itch to scratch.
No reason to even look at this since there is absolutely no proof that this works because it's "Secret!!!!"
Why would you want to waste slashdot readers time by doing a question and answer with someone that has a magic spell to create energy, but of course no one can verify it.
Ummm, so does that mean they shut down their internet entirely? Port 80 is simple enough to use or even daresay a little perl script using email, yeah the latency sucks, but still works. Getting past port blocking is pretty simple.
Hmmm, sending traffic through stenography via email attachments would be interesting. Wonder how long it would take to code that up.
I don't really care about how and item looks as long as it does the job I need it to do. As far as the i(x), the equipment is too expensive for what it does. My netbook was cheaper, has far more memory. My phone can make phone calls, I really don't care beyond that. My electronic recorder has a 2GiB ssd drive in it, sure it's ancient, but it records and plays mp3's which is my primary purpose and cost $50 when the i(whatever) came out at $200+
Sure Apple may be at the forefront of designer designs, but really what new technical designs have they produced that would actually make me want to overpay for their products? I just don't see any advantage. I guess to me, I more closely associate myself with Woz than I ever did to Jobs or Gates. I'm an engineer Jim, not a marketing shrill.
My 4 dollar tablet will be released soon!!!!!
* Retail version will sell for $5495.99, but as the first "Real" $4.00 tablet you should order a lot of them.
I'm a nerd. Not a geek. What the heck do I know of popular culture? Furthermore, using words like all or every is certain to bring about people that point out your error. Don't tell me how to think, there is nothing wrong with the way I think. I'll miss him far less than Gary Gygax, Benjamin Franklin, etc, etc, etc. Frankly I don't care. People die life goes on, Apple is a cult culture and has little to do with most of the nerds here imho.
Frankly, the Raspberry PI looks like a decent system that after adding monitor, keyboard, and various other usb items would make a great computer system for under $200. I plan to pick up several of these when they come on the market and it doesn't appear that they are vapourware like many items from other companies in the past.
Let's try ocean, perhaps I can't misspell that.
It appears to have come from TFA which is slightly misleading. I think the article should have been a little more clear in that It appears it will be the deepest current commercial vehicle in operation. The trieste was owned by the US government for governmental purposes and not for commercial purposes as this vehicle is, ie the search for mineral exploration. Still that being the case, the article itself seems to be very misleading.
And just to throw more wood on the fire, James Cameron is planning to go to the bottom of the see as well. Now, if it were just some random bloke, I might say yeah right, but seeing as he actually done things like going to the Titanic to look around, I'm a bit more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt than some random national propaganda piece with credentials as impeccable as having fantastic designs that worked but where never used.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312406/Into-deadly-deep-How-James-Cameron-plans-film-Avatar-sequel-7-miles-seas-surface.html
Oh, yeah I believe everything he has done has been so fantastic in the past that the government had to hide it, oops my bad, mothballed it because it was research not production.
World record set by Chinese government? http://geology.com/records/bathyscaphe-trieste.shtml
Hmmm,
As posted this service already exists as various pirate file sharing sites can attest to. Doing it legally is another matter entirely as companies depend on a force monopoly over works produced and demand premium payment for show that have already more than paid back their production costs, even if the accounting says they haven't, eg look up babylon 5 accounting practices and why babylon 5 still keeps racking up debt even though the show hasn't been in production for quite a while.
It comes down to simple greed in my opinion. I might be a little more lenient except for the fact that these same "businesses" got their "honest" politicians to rob my information, ie public domain, from me by extending copyright and also grandfathering all previous copyrighted material into a new monopoly that I will probably be dead before ever seeing another piece of copyrighted material fall into the public domain.
We all build from our past experience, but today's rules for copyright do not even allow you to use material you are bombarded with as a child. I suppose somebody out there agrees with the current copyright law, but if today's media companies are so enamored of it, why do they sing "He's a jolly good fellow" instead of "Happy Birthday" in movies and television shows?
Take out asinine copyright laws and a bit of greed and I'm sure you could actually set up a system where all information/entertainment was available at reasonable rates within a reasonable time frame.
That's the narrow-mindedness factor kicking in. Also include in that the loss of gullibility that the boss will actually reward you for all the extra hours you put in and requiring pay for work performed. Damn narrow-minded oldsters that don't think they owe the company for giving them a break.
Heh, seriously though, I now work on my terms not their terms. If I take a job or not depends on how it benefits me, not so that I can be noticed. I'm comfortable with my skills and knowledge thank you very much. I'm not about to be a whipping boy for the company's benefit in the hopes that a couple of years down the line some manager will remember me when it comes time to give out promotions/raises.
Then again, I'm a cantankerous ol' coot and am happy with it.
I'm kinda in the same boat here. It's hard to find something I actually want to watch on Netflix anymore. I used it vigorously for about one month, after that it was hard to find anything I wanted to watch past that point. Most of the shows I did watch during that first month were movies that I have on dvd and just found it more convenient to call up netflix and hit play with than actually new material. I don't think that it's really netflix's fault, it's just the entertainment that is produced generally tends to be crap. Preferably they would start offering subscriptions to specific shows. I know I would pay a couple of dollars for new issues of Firefly, but generally, I wouldn't be interested in buying any of this filler material that networks and studios call entertainment.
I just loaded up netflix today to see if there was anything new worth watching and basically found nada. It's nice to have netflix when my kids come over so that if they want to watch television I just pull up something that's suitable; however, for myself, I'd rather look at some of the MIT OCW videos, play a game or two, or work on a program rather than spend money on crap. When netflix split the pricing, I decided to go with streaming option rather than mail since I'm more into instant gratification; however if the price increases beyond about $10.00 a month, they will go the way of my cable bill... Thanks for the offer but no thanks.
I bought a few frames from that Australian film making company that was producing a movie a couple of years ago, wasn't very interested in the show, but liked the concept. Not sure if they ever produced anything. Cable is even worse than I remember it, having to pay to see shows and then having to sit through commercials as well is unacceptable. Hulu and crackle apart from having poor broadcasting technology, lost me within a couple of shows as they pumped commercials into my viewing time. Even CNN and other news reporting agencies requiring me to watch a 60 second advertisement before their 2 minute clips, piss me off. Theoretically, I have about $30.00 a month to spend on television/movie entertainment, but if they can't provide the convenience I was with no commercials, I really don't have the time to waste.
Anyway, we'll see what happens. As long as Comcast and other "entertainment" companies don't get the government to mandate me paying for their service, eg Canadian blank media tax, I'll be happy enough to disregard the crap they put out.
Might want to check out GOG.com Recently found the site while researching something else, but seems to have a lot of older games that have been set up to run under windows at a decent price.
Looking forward to checking out the class. Took another AI class years ago which used this book, so I won't have to buy new material. It should be pretty good, since the course is being taught by the person that wrote the book. We'll see how it turns out, I expect a lot of people will drop the course as it actually turns out to be work. It's hard to imagine 100k people that would be interested in this sort of stuff beyond just a passing interest.
Yeah, the whole issue seems to be a made up problem for which he points out that it cannot happen. It's trying to make sense of a discussion and focusing on just one paragraph in the center of it. Without a background as to what is being discussed, how can we tell whether he is making a valid point or not? Apparently, he's just pointing out the obvious, exponential growth is not limitless, which is pretty obvious. He seems to be pointing out the fact that some people are basing their future growth potential on an exponential growth cycle, the problem with that is that in the short term exponential growth can be expected in some areas. Take for instance a bacteria culture doubling in size every so many hours/days. That will work for a time period, at some point the rate of expansion slows perhaps stops and begins to decline but for a period of time exponential growth does occur. I think that without seeing the argument he is responding to, it's pretty hard to say whether or not his work shows any merit. If he's talking about energy in industry, isn't industry on the quarter cycle for the most part, so expecting exponential growth over the next dozen quarters might not be so far fetched and he may be throwing up a strawman saying that it's not sustainable.
I don't have any idea about this Spencer guy, but I know a lot of Doctors that do make a big deal about the Doctor in their name, PhDs, MDs, etc. For some reason they believe that working 8+ years to get that title, means that they are entitled to it. heh.
Seriously though, do you call a judge Mr? Or the president? Or a military officer, if you are in the military that is. Theoretically, getting a doctorate generally is regarded as an accomplishment, which really should receive a bit of respect. Labeling all people that make a big deal about the title "Dr." as negligible says more about you than others. I admit that some of them probably don't deserve the title, but some of them do, and by dismissing all of them it shows that you have little regard for the effort it takes to get a doctorate.
So they are spending 1200 dollars a man hour? Total machines seem to be about 6000, so each machine is costing a grand to encrypt? Seems pretty expensive.