You have to first say "Uh oh, these are encrypted files, guys. This could take a few minutes." Three minutes later, while your buddies are shooting bad guys off your back, you've somehow managed to break the encryption.
Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater?
No, but if you wear a sweater wrong (or buy a crappy one, or look stupid in it, etc), it affects only you. No one else. Wear whatever you like.
Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car?
No, but you do need to learn an awful lot, including fundamentals of safety, because now you're getting on a public road where you can affect other people. How to accelerate, brake, shift gears, take in a lot of visual information while travelling 70mph, about what everyone else around you is doing simultaneously, the millions of traffic laws and semi-unofficial rules about merging and passing, navigation, how to steer out of skids, avoid collisions, etc. And that's just to drive! To maintain the car you have to remember to get the oil changed every so often, check tire pressure, put gas in it, change the air filter now and again, etc.
You weren't born with this information. You had to learn it. Somehow, people got the idea that it's normal to have to learn a little about cars and safety of the road to use them, but to use computers, it's okay to know absolutely nothing and have zero responsibilty to learn anything. Ever.
Your example of "advance and retard" is inane; we're not asking these people to do the digital equivalent of knowing how to adjust the timing chains. We're asking them to know how to step on the brakes if they're about to hit something.
It is *totally* reasonable to expect people to have basic fundamentals of security before they're allowed to use a public network. If some moron downloads spyware, it affects all of us. Suddenly the spammers have his email contacts, or are using him as a relay, or as a waypoint for other hapless twits to download even more crap. Plus it's encouraging the malware makers by providing them with revenue, which means they can harrass other people (like, you and I) even more.
Most www users are not geeks and cannot tell the boundary between their computer and the internet, let alone know how to drive a hosts file etc.
Yeah, well, I bet most drivers aren't "car people" either, but they somehow manage to get their oil changed, even if they don't really know what it does.
Coincidentally, just before seeing this story, I was looking for some advice on a wireless problem I was having with Ubuntu. I found this thread on the Ubuntu forums.
Give it a quick glance and you'll see that the user is a complete newbie, but he's asking nicely. The responses are polite, encouraging, informative. When the user asks for clarification he is provided with it (and not in the form of "here's some links, go read" -- they're making a genuine effort to explain it to him on his level; even if they get carried away sometimes it looked like the guy was learning). It's a bunch of people who, for no gain of their own, are doing their best to help this guy out,
I didn't go out of my way to find this example to disprove the article. I found it when I was looking for help (though that particular article had nothing to do with my problem).
Maybe it is distro wars in a sense. Someone a few posts back was griping about arrogant Gentoo users. Gentoo is largely populated by those types who want to compile every little thing for "maximum optimization" and performance and squeezing every bit of use out of every spare cycle. Ubuntu is largely populated by those types who want a user-friendly GUI on top of an OS that Just Works right out of the box, and nevermind if it's precompiled binaries or optimally compiled for your machine.
I know which group I'd rather go to with questions.
How do you measure power?
on
Google's DNA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
First, Exxon's operating costs are surely many times what Google's are. Servers and bandwidth are cheap compared to moving oil tankers around.
But second, and much more importantly, you're measuring power ("the most powerful company in the US") in terms of dollars. When you consider the number of people that use Google for information, suddenly it becomes much more powerful than a simplistic numbers game reveals. A slight tweak here improves this company's visibility immeasurably; a slight tweak there shoves a webpage into obscurity. Censorship, control of who sees what, determination of market visibility.. I'm not saying Google does or would do any of these things, but they could, and that makes them immensely powerful.
Whether they ever become "the most powerful country in America" is almost irrelevent -- and that's probably not even their goal. But don't make the mistake of using raw revenue as a useful metric. Plenty of companies rake in billions of dollars annually, but ultimately don't do much other than act as useless middlemen.
13 billion. You say that as though it's an astronomical sum. To you and I, who measure things in hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, it is. To the federal government, whose budget is in the trillions, and who can run deficits with near impunity, it's less than pocket change.
13 billion is less than 0.7 of the total federal budget. It's practically nothing. And it's one of the few government agencies that can actually produce real, tangible, ROI in terms of technology developed, not to mention the advances in our understanding of the universe, which can't be measured in dollars and cents.
Contrast your precious 13 billion to what else the government blows money on -- 553 billion on military expenditures (not counting veteran's benefits which account for another 76 billion). We've dropped 250 billion in just a few years on this Iraq war. Nearly 80% of the national debt is military related, and the interest alone nears 353 billion dollars. Per year.
And you're saying NASA is overbudgeted?
Yes, they could do a lot more if they funneled money into R&D for mass production, modular probes, fast cheap and out of control. But 13 billion is not really a lot to play with for a program that is, by its very nature, expensive. With mass production, you could possibly lower the manufacture costs per probe, but what about the not-cheap task of actually launching them, designing new ones, administration overhead, on and on?
When you think about all the stuff we have today that is a direct result of the space race, 13 billion is not asking a lot, and is far from being the most bloated of government spending.
A couple seconds here and there, lets say 2 seconds in sixty.
Now cut that to one second in sixty with a faster machine, ignoring multiple cores for now.
Gain a day of work for every sixty.
Six days of work a year.
Yeah, that's true -- if we're all 100% productive every second of every day, from punch-in to clock-out. Right.
Here's a startling revelation for "productivity" freaks who obsess over how this or that will shave precious microseconds off their busy schedule -- we all waste more time reading slashdot, IMing people, and otherwise screwing around, than we ever have lost to slow desktop machines.
And that's us, part of the so-called technical aristocracy. The article itself was about "average business users", most of whom are not coming anywhere close to using their computer to the maximum. The computer is usually sitting around idle while the user stares in utter confusion at the "File" menu, trying to figure out how to open a new spreadsheet, or wondering which one of their fifty-seven currently open IE windows they were supposed to be looking at. Do they really need dual-core processors to handle the daunting task of experimenting with fonts for their Powerpoint presentation?
Most "business users" would be better advised to stop running stupid crap in the background, stop downloading every idiotic Free Screensaver they come across, and other basic fundamentals of computer use, than worrying about how many megahertz their shiny new computer has. For the average schmuck that runs Outlook, Excel, Word, and IE, the only excuse for having a slow machine is the sheer amount of nonsense they're running in the background because they refuse to excercise any common sense whatsoever.
As for me, I am sitting near a guy who rolled in around 10am, had a brief meeting with our boss, and hasn't done shit since then other than read some websites (not that I'm the paragon of productivity right now either, but...). And you're actually suggesting that he would "save time" measured in seconds per week with bigger, better, faster machines. Save time doing what, exactly?
Surely you must realize that calculus is a skill needed only by a very small percentage of the population, and of personal interest to a few more. It simply does not have practical application to the overwhelming majority of people. Being able to express one's self clearly and coherently is of enormous value to every person in society, every day. (Eloquence would be a bonus.) Like it or not, you are judged, at least in part, by how you present yourself and your ideas, and if you speak like a mouth breather, no one with an appreciation for intelligence is going to want to deal with you. So far as I'm aware, no one has ever been judged on how well they can comprehend multivariable calculus -- at least, outside of a classroom or job interview.
If someone can't be bothered to understand the most basic aspects of the physical world with which they interact on a daily basis
And yet we're not asking them to understand English on that nuanced level. A better analogy would involve basic arithmetic -- a useful, everyday skill that everyone needs. Comparing basic spelling and grammar to multivariable calculus is idiotic. We're not asking them to be know and be able to discuss the linguistic evolution of the English language or write breathtaking sonnets, okay? We're asking them to speak to other humans without sounding like complete knuckle-walkers. This is not a task comparable to understanding higher mathematics which they have absolutely no use for.
Fortunately, there are now tools available which allow poor spellers to communicate effectively even with those too narrow minded to overlook poor spelling.
Yeah, well, your spellchecker won't recognize the difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off the horse" and "I helped my uncle jack off the horse", but I will.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to first say "Uh oh, these are encrypted files, guys. This could take a few minutes." Three minutes later, while your buddies are shooting bad guys off your back, you've somehow managed to break the encryption.
Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater?
No, but if you wear a sweater wrong (or buy a crappy one, or look stupid in it, etc), it affects only you. No one else. Wear whatever you like.
Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car?
No, but you do need to learn an awful lot, including fundamentals of safety, because now you're getting on a public road where you can affect other people. How to accelerate, brake, shift gears, take in a lot of visual information while travelling 70mph, about what everyone else around you is doing simultaneously, the millions of traffic laws and semi-unofficial rules about merging and passing, navigation, how to steer out of skids, avoid collisions, etc. And that's just to drive! To maintain the car you have to remember to get the oil changed every so often, check tire pressure, put gas in it, change the air filter now and again, etc.
You weren't born with this information. You had to learn it. Somehow, people got the idea that it's normal to have to learn a little about cars and safety of the road to use them, but to use computers, it's okay to know absolutely nothing and have zero responsibilty to learn anything. Ever.
Your example of "advance and retard" is inane; we're not asking these people to do the digital equivalent of knowing how to adjust the timing chains. We're asking them to know how to step on the brakes if they're about to hit something.
It is *totally* reasonable to expect people to have basic fundamentals of security before they're allowed to use a public network. If some moron downloads spyware, it affects all of us. Suddenly the spammers have his email contacts, or are using him as a relay, or as a waypoint for other hapless twits to download even more crap. Plus it's encouraging the malware makers by providing them with revenue, which means they can harrass other people (like, you and I) even more.
Most www users are not geeks and cannot tell the boundary between their computer and the internet, let alone know how to drive a hosts file etc.
Yeah, well, I bet most drivers aren't "car people" either, but they somehow manage to get their oil changed, even if they don't really know what it does.
Coincidentally, just before seeing this story, I was looking for some advice on a wireless problem I was having with Ubuntu. I found this thread on the Ubuntu forums.
Give it a quick glance and you'll see that the user is a complete newbie, but he's asking nicely. The responses are polite, encouraging, informative. When the user asks for clarification he is provided with it (and not in the form of "here's some links, go read" -- they're making a genuine effort to explain it to him on his level; even if they get carried away sometimes it looked like the guy was learning). It's a bunch of people who, for no gain of their own, are doing their best to help this guy out,
I didn't go out of my way to find this example to disprove the article. I found it when I was looking for help (though that particular article had nothing to do with my problem).
Maybe it is distro wars in a sense. Someone a few posts back was griping about arrogant Gentoo users. Gentoo is largely populated by those types who want to compile every little thing for "maximum optimization" and performance and squeezing every bit of use out of every spare cycle. Ubuntu is largely populated by those types who want a user-friendly GUI on top of an OS that Just Works right out of the box, and nevermind if it's precompiled binaries or optimally compiled for your machine.
I know which group I'd rather go to with questions.
First, Exxon's operating costs are surely many times what Google's are. Servers and bandwidth are cheap compared to moving oil tankers around.
But second, and much more importantly, you're measuring power ("the most powerful company in the US") in terms of dollars. When you consider the number of people that use Google for information, suddenly it becomes much more powerful than a simplistic numbers game reveals. A slight tweak here improves this company's visibility immeasurably; a slight tweak there shoves a webpage into obscurity. Censorship, control of who sees what, determination of market visibility.. I'm not saying Google does or would do any of these things, but they could, and that makes them immensely powerful.
Whether they ever become "the most powerful country in America" is almost irrelevent -- and that's probably not even their goal. But don't make the mistake of using raw revenue as a useful metric. Plenty of companies rake in billions of dollars annually, but ultimately don't do much other than act as useless middlemen.
Mac gamer? What games would those be, gentle sir? The Apple logo puzzle thinger? Photoshop? Warcraft III?
13 billion. You say that as though it's an astronomical sum. To you and I, who measure things in hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, it is. To the federal government, whose budget is in the trillions, and who can run deficits with near impunity, it's less than pocket change.
13 billion is less than 0.7 of the total federal budget. It's practically nothing. And it's one of the few government agencies that can actually produce real, tangible, ROI in terms of technology developed, not to mention the advances in our understanding of the universe, which can't be measured in dollars and cents.
Contrast your precious 13 billion to what else the government blows money on -- 553 billion on military expenditures (not counting veteran's benefits which account for another 76 billion). We've dropped 250 billion in just a few years on this Iraq war. Nearly 80% of the national debt is military related, and the interest alone nears 353 billion dollars. Per year.
And you're saying NASA is overbudgeted?
Yes, they could do a lot more if they funneled money into R&D for mass production, modular probes, fast cheap and out of control. But 13 billion is not really a lot to play with for a program that is, by its very nature, expensive. With mass production, you could possibly lower the manufacture costs per probe, but what about the not-cheap task of actually launching them, designing new ones, administration overhead, on and on?
When you think about all the stuff we have today that is a direct result of the space race, 13 billion is not asking a lot, and is far from being the most bloated of government spending.
A couple seconds here and there, lets say 2 seconds in sixty. Now cut that to one second in sixty with a faster machine, ignoring multiple cores for now. Gain a day of work for every sixty. Six days of work a year.
Yeah, that's true -- if we're all 100% productive every second of every day, from punch-in to clock-out. Right.
Here's a startling revelation for "productivity" freaks who obsess over how this or that will shave precious microseconds off their busy schedule -- we all waste more time reading slashdot, IMing people, and otherwise screwing around, than we ever have lost to slow desktop machines.
And that's us, part of the so-called technical aristocracy. The article itself was about "average business users", most of whom are not coming anywhere close to using their computer to the maximum. The computer is usually sitting around idle while the user stares in utter confusion at the "File" menu, trying to figure out how to open a new spreadsheet, or wondering which one of their fifty-seven currently open IE windows they were supposed to be looking at. Do they really need dual-core processors to handle the daunting task of experimenting with fonts for their Powerpoint presentation?
Most "business users" would be better advised to stop running stupid crap in the background, stop downloading every idiotic Free Screensaver they come across, and other basic fundamentals of computer use, than worrying about how many megahertz their shiny new computer has. For the average schmuck that runs Outlook, Excel, Word, and IE, the only excuse for having a slow machine is the sheer amount of nonsense they're running in the background because they refuse to excercise any common sense whatsoever.
As for me, I am sitting near a guy who rolled in around 10am, had a brief meeting with our boss, and hasn't done shit since then other than read some websites (not that I'm the paragon of productivity right now either, but...). And you're actually suggesting that he would "save time" measured in seconds per week with bigger, better, faster machines. Save time doing what, exactly?
Surely you must realize that calculus is a skill needed only by a very small percentage of the population, and of personal interest to a few more. It simply does not have practical application to the overwhelming majority of people. Being able to express one's self clearly and coherently is of enormous value to every person in society, every day. (Eloquence would be a bonus.) Like it or not, you are judged, at least in part, by how you present yourself and your ideas, and if you speak like a mouth breather, no one with an appreciation for intelligence is going to want to deal with you. So far as I'm aware, no one has ever been judged on how well they can comprehend multivariable calculus -- at least, outside of a classroom or job interview.
If someone can't be bothered to understand the most basic aspects of the physical world with which they interact on a daily basis
And yet we're not asking them to understand English on that nuanced level. A better analogy would involve basic arithmetic -- a useful, everyday skill that everyone needs. Comparing basic spelling and grammar to multivariable calculus is idiotic. We're not asking them to be know and be able to discuss the linguistic evolution of the English language or write breathtaking sonnets, okay? We're asking them to speak to other humans without sounding like complete knuckle-walkers. This is not a task comparable to understanding higher mathematics which they have absolutely no use for.
Fortunately, there are now tools available which allow poor spellers to communicate effectively even with those too narrow minded to overlook poor spelling.
Yeah, well, your spellchecker won't recognize the difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off the horse" and "I helped my uncle jack off the horse", but I will.