As someone pointed out recently, our brightest minds in computer science are laboring at ways to get more people to click on links. Similarly, the commercial space industry will develop quickly, but it will be focused on putting enormous ads in the sky, or something equally useless.
I don't like the first suggestion. I am not about to go to the post office and stand in line for a hour just to get a lot of junk mail, and maybe one letter that matters. If the number of delivery days were cut down to only a couple, and the routes staggered, we could eliminate about half the carriers and other postal staff. This would be a better way to rein in costs and still have mail delivered to your door.
We still need a postal system, because we still sometimes need to send physical documents, packages, etc. What we DON'T need is mail delivery six days a week. Mail delivery could be cut down to only four days a week. Carriers could have larger routes, but two or more days in which to run them. The changes which need to be made are not complicated, but the bottom line is that we need fewer postal employees, and that's where it's going to get tough.
I disagree with the premise. I think people have always had this problem. The thing about these "gadgets", as he calls them, is that they spread information faster and farther than was ever possible before. I just encountered this today with a forwarded email I received, from a very conservative friend, which stated that Sears is now selling X-rated DVDs. Without even looking into the situation, he just forwarded it on to all his friends adding the note, "Kinda sad because they sell great tools." It only took a few minutes for me to go to the Sears site and see that the email is a fabrication. It took only a few minutes more to discover that this is from an American Family Association (who?) alert sent out last year about "pornographic" art being sold at Sears -- which turned out to actually be pretty tasteful wall decor featuring nude bodies (not exactly my cup of tea, but to each his own). Even though it only took a few minutes to discover the hoax, it was easier for my friend to simply accept the news as the truth, and then angrily forward the information along to everyone he knows. However, if this were 1911 instead of 2011 and my friend had heard this rumor via word-of-mouth, he would have done the same thing -- that is, pass the rumor along without checking facts. People have always been stupid. Now they are stupid at the speed of light.
We recently went through a PCI audit. The auditor wanted to make sure that we had antivirus software for our IBM System i. At first we thought he was crazy, but we discovered that such software DOES exist. However, it does not work quite the same way as on a Windows machine. The idea is that infected files, transferred from Windows PCs, can still reside on the System i, even though they cannot do any harm to that system. So they still need to be scanned. The same holds true for Linux and OS X machines. Those systems may not be subject to infection from viruses, but they can still store infected files, and these need to be scanned.
The FBI likes to investigate child porn because that usually means they get to dress up in their G.I. Joe costumes and play soldier, kicking in doors, etc. National security intrusion is just boring.
In 1971 Ben Bova wrote a sci-fi novel called "Exiled From Earth". It described a future not too different from our current society. I was always intrigued by a part in the book where some of the characters, using a credit-card-like device could get access to a 24-hour store and buy stuff without any human interaction at all. When I read the first couple of sentences of this article, I thought they might be talking about stores like this that exist now, instead of some sort of mistake. Such a store is not entirely out of the question. I am encouraged by the fact that half the customers just got their items and paid for it in the regular way.
Why must everything be politicized? Now owning a Mac becomes a litmus test for conservative purity? People are becoming so polarized in the most ridiculous ways. "I don't know if I can associate with you. You use a(n) computer." It's like a person I was talking to this weekend, who seriously asked, "Should I be offended by that?" Listen, if you're not immediately offended by something, then why worry about it? Why go out of your way to MAKE yourself offended? That is just madness.
How can the balkanization of the web be avoided, when every commercial interest is trying to more precisely target the users? For example: If you don't stay signed out of Google and clear your cookies, Google news will only show you news items that their algorithms think you'll be interested in. After a while, learning about some current issue that you haven't heard about before becomes almost impossible. The same holds true with ever more targeted searches. I don't mean to just pick on Google either. Everyone is doing it.
On the other hand, meeting new people is not what it used to be either. Pretty much anyone who wants to "meet" you on the internet wants to mug you.
It's a good argument for turning the damn network off, and getting out in the world more.
..."Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?"...
You mean not owned and managed by them right now. However, someday down the road, when you are gone, IT will have to manage the damn thing. The company I work for made a mistake many years ago by allowing every user to have Microsoft Access installed on their machines. A lot of power users went wild creating Access databases for their own purposes. Naturally, over time, two things happened: 1) The databases grew in size and complexity. 2) The company began to depend on them and link the information in them to each other. Very quickly, all these databases became IT's responsibility to manage, especially when the pinheads who designed them got promoted to their particular level of incompetence, or left the company. It has been very tedious getting the data away from these god-awful Access databases, and re-designed and normalized into proper SQL Server or DB2 databases.
Yes, IT should have access to your server. They'll have to manage it eventually anyway.
"...Having to refer to a paragraph and a sentence in an e-mail is just so barbaric when you could just strike it out and make the connection between sentences..."
WTF does this mean?
Next he'll be telling us he invented the question mark.
The word space is redundant. All telescopes of this size are for looking at things in space. The Hubble Space Telescope is called as such because it is floating in space.
No kidding. This article was written with sociopaths in mind. At my office they are talking about moving our department across town. "You can work from anywhere", declared the director. "Really?" I said, "Then we can work from home." The director was not amused. I think he realizes that if we're all de-centralized, working on projects directed by project managers, there really is no need for a pointy-haired "director".
I disagree to some extent. Meetings which used to require a day's travel to attend, can now be conducted without leaving the office. We've not decelerated. We have greatly accelerated -- nearly to the speed of light. We are, virtually, in multiple "places" at once.
Actually I should have RTFA'd first. Apparently it is a ground based telescope. I foolishly assumed that a device named the Space Surveillance Telescope would be based in, you know, space.
I have a serious (and perhaps stupid) question related to the topic. Given the interest in alternative energy, the size of the Yellowstone caldera, and its proximity to the surface, is it a completely silly idea to exploit it as an energy source? Are there already geothermal power plants in the Yellowstone area?
Slashdot Mirror
All it needs is a guy in a Godzilla costume to make it complete.
As someone pointed out recently, our brightest minds in computer science are laboring at ways to get more people to click on links. Similarly, the commercial space industry will develop quickly, but it will be focused on putting enormous ads in the sky, or something equally useless.
I don't like the first suggestion. I am not about to go to the post office and stand in line for a hour just to get a lot of junk mail, and maybe one letter that matters. If the number of delivery days were cut down to only a couple, and the routes staggered, we could eliminate about half the carriers and other postal staff. This would be a better way to rein in costs and still have mail delivered to your door.
We still need a postal system, because we still sometimes need to send physical documents, packages, etc. What we DON'T need is mail delivery six days a week. Mail delivery could be cut down to only four days a week. Carriers could have larger routes, but two or more days in which to run them. The changes which need to be made are not complicated, but the bottom line is that we need fewer postal employees, and that's where it's going to get tough.
I disagree with the premise. I think people have always had this problem. The thing about these "gadgets", as he calls them, is that they spread information faster and farther than was ever possible before. I just encountered this today with a forwarded email I received, from a very conservative friend, which stated that Sears is now selling X-rated DVDs. Without even looking into the situation, he just forwarded it on to all his friends adding the note, "Kinda sad because they sell great tools." It only took a few minutes for me to go to the Sears site and see that the email is a fabrication. It took only a few minutes more to discover that this is from an American Family Association (who?) alert sent out last year about "pornographic" art being sold at Sears -- which turned out to actually be pretty tasteful wall decor featuring nude bodies (not exactly my cup of tea, but to each his own). Even though it only took a few minutes to discover the hoax, it was easier for my friend to simply accept the news as the truth, and then angrily forward the information along to everyone he knows. However, if this were 1911 instead of 2011 and my friend had heard this rumor via word-of-mouth, he would have done the same thing -- that is, pass the rumor along without checking facts. People have always been stupid. Now they are stupid at the speed of light.
Me too. The inventor will eventually be sued by thousands of cross-eyed consumers.
We recently went through a PCI audit. The auditor wanted to make sure that we had antivirus software for our IBM System i. At first we thought he was crazy, but we discovered that such software DOES exist. However, it does not work quite the same way as on a Windows machine. The idea is that infected files, transferred from Windows PCs, can still reside on the System i, even though they cannot do any harm to that system. So they still need to be scanned. The same holds true for Linux and OS X machines. Those systems may not be subject to infection from viruses, but they can still store infected files, and these need to be scanned.
The FBI likes to investigate child porn because that usually means they get to dress up in their G.I. Joe costumes and play soldier, kicking in doors, etc. National security intrusion is just boring.
Not only is privacy an issue, there is the fact that the app may be nonexistent when you go to use it.
Take your blinkers off.
Blinkers?
In 1971 Ben Bova wrote a sci-fi novel called "Exiled From Earth". It described a future not too different from our current society. I was always intrigued by a part in the book where some of the characters, using a credit-card-like device could get access to a 24-hour store and buy stuff without any human interaction at all. When I read the first couple of sentences of this article, I thought they might be talking about stores like this that exist now, instead of some sort of mistake. Such a store is not entirely out of the question. I am encouraged by the fact that half the customers just got their items and paid for it in the regular way.
"I was just following orders." -- Countless SS officers responsible for genocide.
No, they use assault rifles because they like to pretend their soldiers at war, but are really cowards.
That's true. Even traffic cops are starting to dress like soldiers, with their fatigues and bloused trousers over combat boots.
Why must everything be politicized? Now owning a Mac becomes a litmus test for conservative purity? People are becoming so polarized in the most ridiculous ways. "I don't know if I can associate with you. You use a(n) computer." It's like a person I was talking to this weekend, who seriously asked, "Should I be offended by that?" Listen, if you're not immediately offended by something, then why worry about it? Why go out of your way to MAKE yourself offended? That is just madness.
How can the balkanization of the web be avoided, when every commercial interest is trying to more precisely target the users? For example: If you don't stay signed out of Google and clear your cookies, Google news will only show you news items that their algorithms think you'll be interested in. After a while, learning about some current issue that you haven't heard about before becomes almost impossible. The same holds true with ever more targeted searches. I don't mean to just pick on Google either. Everyone is doing it.
On the other hand, meeting new people is not what it used to be either. Pretty much anyone who wants to "meet" you on the internet wants to mug you.
It's a good argument for turning the damn network off, and getting out in the world more.
What are these machines going to run on?
..."Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?"...
You mean not owned and managed by them right now. However, someday down the road, when you are gone, IT will have to manage the damn thing. The company I work for made a mistake many years ago by allowing every user to have Microsoft Access installed on their machines. A lot of power users went wild creating Access databases for their own purposes. Naturally, over time, two things happened: 1) The databases grew in size and complexity. 2) The company began to depend on them and link the information in them to each other. Very quickly, all these databases became IT's responsibility to manage, especially when the pinheads who designed them got promoted to their particular level of incompetence, or left the company. It has been very tedious getting the data away from these god-awful Access databases, and re-designed and normalized into proper SQL Server or DB2 databases.
Yes, IT should have access to your server. They'll have to manage it eventually anyway.
"...Having to refer to a paragraph and a sentence in an e-mail is just so barbaric when you could just strike it out and make the connection between sentences..."
WTF does this mean?
Next he'll be telling us he invented the question mark.
The word space is redundant. All telescopes of this size are for looking at things in space. The Hubble Space Telescope is called as such because it is floating in space.
No kidding. This article was written with sociopaths in mind. At my office they are talking about moving our department across town. "You can work from anywhere", declared the director. "Really?" I said, "Then we can work from home." The director was not amused. I think he realizes that if we're all de-centralized, working on projects directed by project managers, there really is no need for a pointy-haired "director".
I disagree to some extent. Meetings which used to require a day's travel to attend, can now be conducted without leaving the office. We've not decelerated. We have greatly accelerated -- nearly to the speed of light. We are, virtually, in multiple "places" at once.
Actually I should have RTFA'd first. Apparently it is a ground based telescope. I foolishly assumed that a device named the Space Surveillance Telescope would be based in, you know, space.
You can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars...
You're joking, right? That telescope is going to be pointed at little humans of all colors running around on Earth.
I have a serious (and perhaps stupid) question related to the topic. Given the interest in alternative energy, the size of the Yellowstone caldera, and its proximity to the surface, is it a completely silly idea to exploit it as an energy source? Are there already geothermal power plants in the Yellowstone area?