Absolutely insightful. Too bad that most people don't understand probability and expectation very well. In fact, unlikely events occur every day -- for example, lottery winners are announced every day. The fact that somebody will win is certain; however, that any specific pre-designated person (including me, sadly) will win is highly unlikely.
The only people who *need* privacy are those who are a) doing something illegal or unethical and want to keep others from finding out or b) doing something competitive and want to keep their progress from their competition.
You are stating a common fallacy, and you are dead wrong. You make the false assertion that anyone who doesn't wish to share everything about himself has committed some heinous misdeed. I choose what personal information I care to reveal about my self or my doings -- and that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is illegal or unethical.
"The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man's home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man's spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect." -- Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, 1928
Of your proposed solutions, only half of #2 (insulation/thermal mass), and part of #3 (commuter electric vehicles) have any hope of making a real contribution. All the others have no chance of practical application on any measurable scale.
Remarkably insightful and well said. I marvel at how few people stop to consider that in fact, we are only a part of nature, and are just as likely to change our environment as any of the species who came before us. Maybe that's as it should be.
I enjoy the many science shows on cable that track the monumental changes that have been documented in the Earth's environment, over and over again. Recurring ice ages, tropical rain forests, migrating continents, reversing magnetic fields, myriad species evolution and extinction, mountains uplifted, oceans drained or dried up, volcanoes and meteors, oh my! And yet, after all these massive changes, here we are. We are the product of these same changes.
It is typical of newcomers to think that the neighborhood has to stay exactly as it was when they arrived even though they themselves changed it by moving in. Mankind is a relative newcomer to the 'hood, and we have certainly changed it by moving in. Many seem to think that the neighborhood must now cease changing, and that we have to preserve it exactly as we found it. I like it the way I found it too, but I recognize that it will change, in part due to the actions of man, but much more due to the inexorable forces of nature.
The biggest single thing we as a sentient species could to to improve the place is to quit reproducing so vigorously. Since that won't happen, we might as well enjoy the ride!
Wouldn't it be nice if people (such as the summary writer) understood that "may" inherently includes the uncertainty as to whether it actually "does", or perhaps "does not"? Then they wouldn't feel compelled to append the completely redundant "or may not" every time.
I've run across some very bright kids who were surprisingly modest, to the point being self-deprecating. These kids know they're very bright, but they need to respond to the never ending stream of (invariably less bright) adults who are constantly telling them "Oh, you're so intelligent!"
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want without the government penalizing you. It does not mean that you have "rights" to insert your speech into private forums, nor does it mean that non-governmental organizations must tolerate your rants.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
But the goal is NOT to move 3 tons of steel and plastic, it is to move one or more persons totaling a few hundred pounds. The 3 tons is only packaging and entertainment. It seems to me that more than 90% of non-commercial vehicles I pass on the road have only a single driver on board, and 5% or fewer have any significant "load" -- cargo, trailer, or soccer team. 2500 pound cars are perfect for 1 or 2 persons, and acceptable for 4. Such a package typically burns less than half the fuel compared to a massive SUV.
The problem is that you only see the benefits. Others point out the prospect for insecure systems and operators being breached, and your information getting loose -- that's a concern. But I worry much more about the the absolutely certain demand that will come from the insurance companies to get wholesale access to all patient data from any physician who 'participates' with the insurer. The financial incentives will make it impossible for doctors to refuse. The result will be major increases in insurance companies' ability to identify and correlate all sorts of pre-existing conditions, and selectively deny coverage on a scale that has never been seen before. Be careful what you wish for....
While the focus will be on preventing data from being accessed when the PC is stolen, this will come with the rather severe side effect that a significant number of users will irreversibly lock themselves out of all their data by losing/forgetting their pass phrase. Too bad you can't reduce the first problem without increasing the second.
You're unlikely to ever know what your references or prior supervisors say about you, either good or bad. If you get rejected, they won't say it's because a certain person gave you a bad reference -- you'll just get a non-specific "so sorry, but thanks for your interest". You'll have a difficult time establishing any libel or cause for legal action.
But since OP already has his next job, establishing a solid record of performance at the new job will be much more important than worrying about what his current PHB may say, because those references will be top of stack the next time he is in the job market.
A black hole isn't some mystical thing unrelated to the other cosmological objects. Black holes are just stars that have consumed most of their fuel through fusion over billions of years, then collapsed. But consumed doesn't mean the mass is all 'burned up' and gone, but converted from hydrogen and helium into heavier elements that are harder to participate in further fusion reactions, resulting in decreasing internal pressure from energy being released by the star. If the conditions are right, the compacting force of gravity from all the 'star stuff' that's left exceeds the declining expansive pressure provided by the fizzling nuclear reactions inside the star, and it ultimately collapses into an incredibly small size. If the size is less than the Schwarzschild radius, it will become a black hole.
But it's still just a lump of star stuff with mass like what the star had, but in a dramatically smaller package. It doesn't suddenly go on a cosmic rampage, marauding around and sucking up everything in sight. If something external has sufficient distance and velocity that it would have flown by or orbited the former star, then it will fly by or orbit the hole, as these parameters are solely determined by the masses of the star/hole and the external thing. If something would have fallen into the star, it will fall into the hole as well. Whether it falls into a black hole or a star, it's not coming back out.
Astronomers infer the properties of black holes from what they can observe about the objects that are influenced by them, and from what they observe about the progression of stars throughout their lifetimes. Just because we can't see into black holes doesn't mean they are totally mysterious.
This is the predictable, but despicable extension of the surveillance society. I, for one, do not want to live under the ever-widening stare of RoboCop. George Orwell is surely saying 'I told you so' from his grave. Fight this wherever you can.
Re:I disagree with what's written on the main page
on
DIY Hybrid Car Kit
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
AMEN. I had a 79 diesel Volkswagen Jetta (52 whole HP!) It got 45-48 mpg all the time, with my foot to the floor most of the time, but it couldn't maintain 50 mph when driving on the hilly Interstates in West Virginia and Tennessee. Just move to the far right and hope not to get run over.
So new hybrids must have enough battery storage capacity to get over those hills, more than just to get going after a stop light.
Here's the math, ignoring the overhead and using powers of 10 to keep it simple:
250GB = 250 x 10^9 * 8 = 2.00 x 10^12 bits
10Mb/sec = 10^7 bits/sec
1 day = 86400 sec = 8.64 x 10^4 sec
So at a constant 10Mb/sec, your 250GB will be all gone in (2.00 x 10^12 / 10^7) / (8.64 x 10^4) = 2.31 DAYS.
Not 416 days, not 133 days, not 17 days, not "toward the end of the month"...., but day after tomorrow. Doesn't sound so fat to me.
I have the exact same problem with Netgear routers that have SSL protection for their remote administration access. This is a good thing. But the certs Netgear used are self-signed and embedded in firmware, and all have the same serial number. I would have no problem with the Firefox default behavior if there were some documented configuration option (even a complex, well hidden from the masses, takes 10 arcane steps procedure) that I could do manually. Just let me do it once to create a saved exception for the several routers I administer remotely. But no. I know what the issues are, I know what I am doing, and I really want to use my preferred browser to do it... but no.
I have officiated swimming competitions for nearly 20 years, and LordKronos has it exactly right. Both USA-Swimming and FINA (international swimming governing body) rules require that races be decided by accurate electronic timing precise to 1/100 sec, and no more. Further precision to 1/1000 sec is neither desired nor permitted, and by rule, swimmers who have the same time to the nearest 1/100 sec are tied and share equally in the place. At the velocity of Olympic swimmers (Phelps' 100 fly averaged 1.98 meters/sec), the.01 sec time difference amounts to a 2cm margin of victory.
Sadly, you'll never know when it happens, or which party in the chain of custody of your records ratted you out. And if you have any sort of insurance, the claim form you signed and submitted almost certainly authorized the insurance company to get any information they feel they need about your care "to evaluate your claim". You're screwed.
Faxes only come with the phone number that's set on the sending fax -- and this can be blank, or any bogus number that pleases the fax sender. This number is set solely for the convenience of legitimate users of the fax machine. It is unauthenticated and unreliable -- there's nothing in the fax transmission protocol that detects and inserts the actual phone number of the line that the fax machine is connected to.
We don't allow any end-user accounts of any kind on our primary database servers for a number of reasons, but one of the important ones is that a significant number of vulnerabilities that have surfaced for Oracle involve privilege escalation. Many require that a user have the ability to log in to the database before they can exploit the vulnerability. Keeping the unwashed masses out of your database is a good idea, if you'd like it to remain your database.
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Absolutely insightful. Too bad that most people don't understand probability and expectation very well. In fact, unlikely events occur every day -- for example, lottery winners are announced every day. The fact that somebody will win is certain; however, that any specific pre-designated person (including me, sadly) will win is highly unlikely.
Amen to all your points. And to your sig as well!
You are stating a common fallacy, and you are dead wrong. You make the false assertion that anyone who doesn't wish to share everything about himself has committed some heinous misdeed. I choose what personal information I care to reveal about my self or my doings -- and that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is illegal or unethical.
"The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man's home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man's spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect." -- Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, 1928
Of your proposed solutions, only half of #2 (insulation/thermal mass), and part of #3 (commuter electric vehicles) have any hope of making a real contribution. All the others have no chance of practical application on any measurable scale.
Remarkably insightful and well said. I marvel at how few people stop to consider that in fact, we are only a part of nature, and are just as likely to change our environment as any of the species who came before us. Maybe that's as it should be.
I enjoy the many science shows on cable that track the monumental changes that have been documented in the Earth's environment, over and over again. Recurring ice ages, tropical rain forests, migrating continents, reversing magnetic fields, myriad species evolution and extinction, mountains uplifted, oceans drained or dried up, volcanoes and meteors, oh my! And yet, after all these massive changes, here we are. We are the product of these same changes.
It is typical of newcomers to think that the neighborhood has to stay exactly as it was when they arrived even though they themselves changed it by moving in. Mankind is a relative newcomer to the 'hood, and we have certainly changed it by moving in. Many seem to think that the neighborhood must now cease changing, and that we have to preserve it exactly as we found it. I like it the way I found it too, but I recognize that it will change, in part due to the actions of man, but much more due to the inexorable forces of nature.
The biggest single thing we as a sentient species could to to improve the place is to quit reproducing so vigorously. Since that won't happen, we might as well enjoy the ride!
For me, 3.0.11 defaults to the last printer I used, which could be my default printer, but often isn't. I find this convenient and I like it.
Wouldn't it be nice if people (such as the summary writer) understood that "may" inherently includes the uncertainty as to whether it actually "does", or perhaps "does not"? Then they wouldn't feel compelled to append the completely redundant "or may not" every time.
I've run across some very bright kids who were surprisingly modest, to the point being self-deprecating. These kids know they're very bright, but they need to respond to the never ending stream of (invariably less bright) adults who are constantly telling them "Oh, you're so intelligent!"
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want without the government penalizing you. It does not mean that you have "rights" to insert your speech into private forums, nor does it mean that non-governmental organizations must tolerate your rants.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
But the goal is NOT to move 3 tons of steel and plastic, it is to move one or more persons totaling a few hundred pounds. The 3 tons is only packaging and entertainment. It seems to me that more than 90% of non-commercial vehicles I pass on the road have only a single driver on board, and 5% or fewer have any significant "load" -- cargo, trailer, or soccer team. 2500 pound cars are perfect for 1 or 2 persons, and acceptable for 4. Such a package typically burns less than half the fuel compared to a massive SUV.
The problem is that you only see the benefits. Others point out the prospect for insecure systems and operators being breached, and your information getting loose -- that's a concern. But I worry much more about the the absolutely certain demand that will come from the insurance companies to get wholesale access to all patient data from any physician who 'participates' with the insurer. The financial incentives will make it impossible for doctors to refuse. The result will be major increases in insurance companies' ability to identify and correlate all sorts of pre-existing conditions, and selectively deny coverage on a scale that has never been seen before. Be careful what you wish for....
While the focus will be on preventing data from being accessed when the PC is stolen, this will come with the rather severe side effect that a significant number of users will irreversibly lock themselves out of all their data by losing/forgetting their pass phrase. Too bad you can't reduce the first problem without increasing the second.
Amen on the Billy Mays. I always change the channel as quick as I can the moment I hear that jerk.
You're unlikely to ever know what your references or prior supervisors say about you, either good or bad. If you get rejected, they won't say it's because a certain person gave you a bad reference -- you'll just get a non-specific "so sorry, but thanks for your interest". You'll have a difficult time establishing any libel or cause for legal action.
But since OP already has his next job, establishing a solid record of performance at the new job will be much more important than worrying about what his current PHB may say, because those references will be top of stack the next time he is in the job market.
That would be a metric shitload, of course....
As Fred Brooks noted in The Mythical Man-Month, you should "plan to throw one away - you will anyhow".
Remarkably well said.
A black hole isn't some mystical thing unrelated to the other cosmological objects. Black holes are just stars that have consumed most of their fuel through fusion over billions of years, then collapsed. But consumed doesn't mean the mass is all 'burned up' and gone, but converted from hydrogen and helium into heavier elements that are harder to participate in further fusion reactions, resulting in decreasing internal pressure from energy being released by the star. If the conditions are right, the compacting force of gravity from all the 'star stuff' that's left exceeds the declining expansive pressure provided by the fizzling nuclear reactions inside the star, and it ultimately collapses into an incredibly small size. If the size is less than the Schwarzschild radius, it will become a black hole.
But it's still just a lump of star stuff with mass like what the star had, but in a dramatically smaller package. It doesn't suddenly go on a cosmic rampage, marauding around and sucking up everything in sight. If something external has sufficient distance and velocity that it would have flown by or orbited the former star, then it will fly by or orbit the hole, as these parameters are solely determined by the masses of the star/hole and the external thing. If something would have fallen into the star, it will fall into the hole as well. Whether it falls into a black hole or a star, it's not coming back out.
Astronomers infer the properties of black holes from what they can observe about the objects that are influenced by them, and from what they observe about the progression of stars throughout their lifetimes. Just because we can't see into black holes doesn't mean they are totally mysterious.
This is the predictable, but despicable extension of the surveillance society. I, for one, do not want to live under the ever-widening stare of RoboCop. George Orwell is surely saying 'I told you so' from his grave. Fight this wherever you can.
AMEN. I had a 79 diesel Volkswagen Jetta (52 whole HP!) It got 45-48 mpg all the time, with my foot to the floor most of the time, but it couldn't maintain 50 mph when driving on the hilly Interstates in West Virginia and Tennessee. Just move to the far right and hope not to get run over.
So new hybrids must have enough battery storage capacity to get over those hills, more than just to get going after a stop light.
Here's the math, ignoring the overhead and using powers of 10 to keep it simple:
250GB = 250 x 10^9 * 8 = 2.00 x 10^12 bits
10Mb/sec = 10^7 bits/sec
1 day = 86400 sec = 8.64 x 10^4 sec
So at a constant 10Mb/sec, your 250GB will be all gone in (2.00 x 10^12 / 10^7) / (8.64 x 10^4) = 2.31 DAYS.
Not 416 days, not 133 days, not 17 days, not "toward the end of the month"...., but day after tomorrow. Doesn't sound so fat to me.
I have the exact same problem with Netgear routers that have SSL protection for their remote administration access. This is a good thing. But the certs Netgear used are self-signed and embedded in firmware, and all have the same serial number. I would have no problem with the Firefox default behavior if there were some documented configuration option (even a complex, well hidden from the masses, takes 10 arcane steps procedure) that I could do manually. Just let me do it once to create a saved exception for the several routers I administer remotely. But no. I know what the issues are, I know what I am doing, and I really want to use my preferred browser to do it... but no.
I have officiated swimming competitions for nearly 20 years, and LordKronos has it exactly right. Both USA-Swimming and FINA (international swimming governing body) rules require that races be decided by accurate electronic timing precise to 1/100 sec, and no more. Further precision to 1/1000 sec is neither desired nor permitted, and by rule, swimmers who have the same time to the nearest 1/100 sec are tied and share equally in the place. At the velocity of Olympic swimmers (Phelps' 100 fly averaged 1.98 meters/sec), the .01 sec time difference amounts to a 2cm margin of victory.
Sadly, you'll never know when it happens, or which party in the chain of custody of your records ratted you out. And if you have any sort of insurance, the claim form you signed and submitted almost certainly authorized the insurance company to get any information they feel they need about your care "to evaluate your claim". You're screwed.
Faxes only come with the phone number that's set on the sending fax -- and this can be blank, or any bogus number that pleases the fax sender. This number is set solely for the convenience of legitimate users of the fax machine. It is unauthenticated and unreliable -- there's nothing in the fax transmission protocol that detects and inserts the actual phone number of the line that the fax machine is connected to.
We don't allow any end-user accounts of any kind on our primary database servers for a number of reasons, but one of the important ones is that a significant number of vulnerabilities that have surfaced for Oracle involve privilege escalation. Many require that a user have the ability to log in to the database before they can exploit the vulnerability. Keeping the unwashed masses out of your database is a good idea, if you'd like it to remain your database.