I just read 20 posts all saying how great this was.
Mostly I find it interesting that the same group that doesn't trust Evil Corporate America to track their web viewing habits because of the possible misuse of the information will trust the Actual Evil Corporate America not to cut corners wherever possible with something that could physically destroy large chunks of the population if mismanaged to the same degree.
I don't really have anything against this actually, I'm kind of for it, but I'm just fascinated by the mutual love-fest from this particular group.
They actually did a fairly good job of slowly integrating technology. At first, each alien tech was extremely rare and hard to find, then they would either find more or find a way to duplicate one.
The ZPMs worked exactly this way. At first they would get one, it would go away and they might get another. They were old and rarely had a charge. Towards the end there were actually a handful in use.
Same with ships and most other tech.
I like that technology wasn't arbitrary like on Star Trek, where they might get their hands on a technology or idea that was world changing to solve a single intractable problem, but then that idea would just vanish instead of getting integrated into the rest of the system. (Being able to travel backwards in time would have solved a LOT of problems, and they had that technology for a LONG time without anything preventing them from using it--eventually they figured out that it was a problem and invented a time-police, but that was much later)
It's not a general purpose computer--it's severely restricted if you are comparing it to those standards.
It's more like a dedicated device--like a book reader, gaming platform, music player, GPS, DVD Player or a dedicated web browser--Just with the ability to switch modes.
If you look at it that way, it's pretty reasonable, it does many more functions than any of the other dedicated platforms.
It's really just a big iPod touch. I didn't hear anyone say that the iPod touch set computing back--but this device is because it has a larger screen?
Still--it's not a replacement for a laptop or computer. If anything, it should operate in conjunction with a computer--like the other iProducts do.
Has nothing to do with social--it's how links work. If you are interlinked to various parts of the web, you are part of a "Web". If you are cut off from connections coming in from the Web, you're just accessed through the internet.
Browser viewable does not define web. My company's internal web site is not part of "The web"
Good observations. When Salon was free I didn't use it much but it was part of the web community. When any site goes pay, it becomes something you access through the internet--in no way is it part of the web.
People have an interest in the web community. The want the sites to thrive and are willing to forgive some adds. Once a site like Salon goes private, they are no longer part of the community. Why would I tolerate a 30 second add to patronize something that isn't even willing to be a part of the community?
Location is definitely important. I moved to Spokane, WA and took a pretty serious pay-cut, but with selling my house in CA for twice what I paid for it and buying a new house on 10 acres for $100,000 I was actually taking home more money.
Two more job changes there and each time I took an additional cut.
Then I moved to Portland and almost doubled what I'd been making.
I guess if you bunch all the different aspects of "Computer Science"--HTML/web Monkey, Visual Basic hacker, Database manager, QA, IT,... in with Software Engineers you might start to see some pretty bad numbers...
But it sounded like the implication was that Software Engineering is paying much worse--I'm not seeing that, I'm just seeing the market fragment and people getting paid based on the relative difficulty of (and therefore the number of workers available) for each job.
DNA and family-learned patterns can have more to do with your life than you'd think.
Some parents responded by learning "New Math" and helping their children. This would be a pretty good response.
Some parents got tutors (other children) to help their children. Good response as well.
Some parents just said "Figure it out, and if you can't--ask your teacher". Meh, reasonable response if you really don't want to put in the effort.
The only BAD response would be avoiding your feelings of inadequacy by ranting about how horrible the schools are to your children, harming his learning experience and harming him for life. Ranting about the school to your child is about as self-centered and damaging as telling them how bad your X (Their mother or father) is--it only makes things harder on everyone and is utterly pointless.
School had very little to do with my learning math or reading. My mom made sure I could read before I entered kindergarten and math was just a matter of attacking it again and again. My mom helped when she could, and admitted when she couldn't, but didn't get all bent out of shape and blame the school's methods because she couldn't admit a lack of knowledge.
It doesn't really matter what you want if your ignorance is leading to these kinds of problems.
And bandwidth isn't a very good indicator since each individual bot doesn't have to actually send all that much info.
Personally I think there are certain patterns that could be gleaned from the traffic to help determine if there is a problem. Hundreds of failed connections or invalid packets per second, for instance.
Do I want to give the power of choice to the ISP? Not really, but who else is able to do it?
Although I'm not completely certain, I get the feeling that the international community actually has quite a few commonly recognized symbols and our lack of exposure is what makes them difficult to interpret. I'm seeing new icons where there used to be words, but I seem to see the same set of icons repeatedly.
I have a cup heater/cooler in the new car, and I can never remember if the wavy lines are a cool breeze or heat rising off the ground, and if the star-looking thing is a sun or a snowflake, but I think that's my lack of exposure and not really a fault of the icons. (The colors--red and blue--really help though)
I love how a lack of imagination these days = impossible. I've decided to try responding to posts that claim "I can't imagine it, so since it's not possible..."
So, how about placing them together side-by-side so the cold side points down at the CPU and the hot side points up to the heat sink. This keeps the CPU cooler and the heat sink hotter (allowing it to dissipate more heat).
How about a tube made of the stuff--outside is hot, inside cool, through which you blow air? The tube itself can sit outside the case, the air blows over the CPU.
I dunno, it seems like any way you want to look at it, it could be used to enhance cooling by moving heat away from a source (which is what ALL cooling does). How could you not see that?
Having it "Easy" is not healthy for human beings. It causes--well--the issues listed in this research. Everyone knows the concept of a spoiled child--this doesn't just apply to rich and pampered. Humans need increasing challenges and the ability to overcome them.
Being able to meet challenges that really matter--like putting food in your families cupboards--is especially rewarding. I think that's why depression children seemed to have so much more character than the spoiled, unchallenged children of today.
It's happened before (Rome burned, right?)
It'll happen again--people will become increasingly incompetent until we cause some kind of major disaster, then we'll get another few generations of people who are actually competent.
I wonder how much of this type of work is being regulated? I know quite a few people who cut their own lots and don't seem to have trouble with it, but I'm sure that's dependent on where you are (Local laws, etc).
My biggest issue would be with clear cutting government lands--I'm not sure how this is ever acceptable. If reforestation works, why would one ever need government lands at all? There are a bunch of scarred landscapes in Washing that I'd be happy to see them replant and re-harvest at will.
Another interesting point, a vast majority of loggers have been removed by the logging industry itself by optimizing them out through automation. While the price of wood keeps going up, they keep trimming work practices to improve their margins.
If anyone really cared about putting loggers to work, they would found a company that used selective logging as opposed to creating the giant swaths of clear-cutting you see throughout Washington just outside the shallow strip of trees they leave beside the road. (just look at a satellite photo for evidence).
Forests don't remove as much as you might think--although it is significant for above the surface, most of the work is actually done by sea life as I understand it.
Just to be argumentative, there is a really good chance that the guy who ran his company into the ground learned a lot more than the one who ran some static company and did nothing if import.
Of course, this just supports your point--history is important. I'm just saying that interpreting it is hard:)
it must be INTERNATIONAL SECURITY then. Which obviously means that we have to coöperate to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Intergalactic pirates trying to steal our music. Must be.
All your bass are belong to us?
I, for one, welcome our new pirate-friendly overlords. SERIOUSLY.
There are multiple different approaches to solving a problem and the choice to do one, the other or both is left up to individual entities in the marketplace and can be based on ease of use and revenue.
This is a pretty awesome concept.
I hope both continue so we can evolve the best of both.
Guess it's just the choice of "Do you want to be involved at all" or not.
I run Ubuntu, but I wouldn't just give it to someone and expect to never hear from them.
I personally still have some trouble with printer drivers, running a print server, occasionally a drive comes up read-only and I have to run some script to fix it (something I figured out once and would take me hours to figure out again if I hadn't written the script!).
Nobody else in my family could add a hard-drive (At least they could take a MAC or PC to the store and have a reasonable expectation of walking out with more storage), etc.
I love Linux, don't get me wrong, but since my whole premise was getting out of the tech support biz, putting my family on it would not be an answer--even you admitted you had to support it at times (admittedly it's easier! I access my Ubuntu server from my phone.)
Yep, understood. I felt the same way before I got one.
Easy for me to forget that there are a lot of people who are still where I was a few years ago... Sorry if I sounded like I was trying to start an argument or something--it's just that these days I pretty much assume that most people have had enough of an exposure to actually understand the differences.
I work as a programmer and we have this conversation a lot.
In the last few years I've noticed a serious trend. We're now mostly 35-40 and we are tired of working on home computers.
The solution? Get a mac.
EVERYONE who has one agrees (Don't believe me, ask around). If you want to know, go ask a PC user how he supports his family's computers--the story will generally be like yours, then go ask a mac user how he supports his family's computers--If he's been using one long enough it's going to be by getting them to buy macs, then not having to mess with them any more.
It really is THAT easy. Many mac users that I work with just tell their families that they don't understand the new-fangled windows even though they work with it every day (few programmers are lucky enough to be able to use macs at work).
For yourself--get a mac and install a windows partition for gaming, or if you are into high-performance gaming buy two computers... It's worth it.
By the way, this is from someone who occasionally tried macs before intel and couldn't stand them (and still would not use a pre-intel mac). The dual-core and OSX are essential for usability because the Mac UI tends to be pretty chunky with just one CPU.
I've owned a computer since 1978. I run a Linux server at home, and have 2 windows computers I NEVER turn on at home. I use windows all the time at work. I've built almost every computer I've owned except my 2 macs. I'll probably never buy another non-mac (Might convert the mac mini to a linux server eventually.
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Google tends not to play like that. They actively encourage competition and feel it's good for the marketplace.
--I got pegged as a microsoft marketing droid once by an AC, Now I just need my Google, linux and Apple "fanboy" creds...
I just read 20 posts all saying how great this was.
Mostly I find it interesting that the same group that doesn't trust Evil Corporate America to track their web viewing habits because of the possible misuse of the information will trust the Actual Evil Corporate America not to cut corners wherever possible with something that could physically destroy large chunks of the population if mismanaged to the same degree.
I don't really have anything against this actually, I'm kind of for it, but I'm just fascinated by the mutual love-fest from this particular group.
They actually did a fairly good job of slowly integrating technology. At first, each alien tech was extremely rare and hard to find, then they would either find more or find a way to duplicate one.
The ZPMs worked exactly this way. At first they would get one, it would go away and they might get another. They were old and rarely had a charge. Towards the end there were actually a handful in use.
Same with ships and most other tech.
I like that technology wasn't arbitrary like on Star Trek, where they might get their hands on a technology or idea that was world changing to solve a single intractable problem, but then that idea would just vanish instead of getting integrated into the rest of the system. (Being able to travel backwards in time would have solved a LOT of problems, and they had that technology for a LONG time without anything preventing them from using it--eventually they figured out that it was a problem and invented a time-police, but that was much later)
It's not a general purpose computer--it's severely restricted if you are comparing it to those standards.
It's more like a dedicated device--like a book reader, gaming platform, music player, GPS, DVD Player or a dedicated web browser--Just with the ability to switch modes.
If you look at it that way, it's pretty reasonable, it does many more functions than any of the other dedicated platforms.
It's really just a big iPod touch. I didn't hear anyone say that the iPod touch set computing back--but this device is because it has a larger screen?
Still--it's not a replacement for a laptop or computer. If anything, it should operate in conjunction with a computer--like the other iProducts do.
Has nothing to do with social--it's how links work. If you are interlinked to various parts of the web, you are part of a "Web". If you are cut off from connections coming in from the Web, you're just accessed through the internet.
Browser viewable does not define web. My company's internal web site is not part of "The web"
Good observations. When Salon was free I didn't use it much but it was part of the web community. When any site goes pay, it becomes something you access through the internet--in no way is it part of the web.
People have an interest in the web community. The want the sites to thrive and are willing to forgive some adds. Once a site like Salon goes private, they are no longer part of the community. Why would I tolerate a 30 second add to patronize something that isn't even willing to be a part of the community?
Location is definitely important. I moved to Spokane, WA and took a pretty serious pay-cut, but with selling my house in CA for twice what I paid for it and buying a new house on 10 acres for $100,000 I was actually taking home more money.
Two more job changes there and each time I took an additional cut.
Then I moved to Portland and almost doubled what I'd been making.
I guess if you bunch all the different aspects of "Computer Science"--HTML/web Monkey, Visual Basic hacker, Database manager, QA, IT, ... in with Software Engineers you might start to see some pretty bad numbers...
But it sounded like the implication was that Software Engineering is paying much worse--I'm not seeing that, I'm just seeing the market fragment and people getting paid based on the relative difficulty of (and therefore the number of workers available) for each job.
DNA and family-learned patterns can have more to do with your life than you'd think.
Some parents responded by learning "New Math" and helping their children. This would be a pretty good response.
Some parents got tutors (other children) to help their children. Good response as well.
Some parents just said "Figure it out, and if you can't--ask your teacher". Meh, reasonable response if you really don't want to put in the effort.
The only BAD response would be avoiding your feelings of inadequacy by ranting about how horrible the schools are to your children, harming his learning experience and harming him for life. Ranting about the school to your child is about as self-centered and damaging as telling them how bad your X (Their mother or father) is--it only makes things harder on everyone and is utterly pointless.
School had very little to do with my learning math or reading. My mom made sure I could read before I entered kindergarten and math was just a matter of attacking it again and again. My mom helped when she could, and admitted when she couldn't, but didn't get all bent out of shape and blame the school's methods because she couldn't admit a lack of knowledge.
Actually, "There's a final solution" is the first thing that popped into my head too, although I'd probably stop short of murder.
I'm thinking just identify the source of spam and disconnect the computers ability to send email until it has been proven to be resolved.
If any given ISP won't implement that, do they same for them.
If Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail are used to send spam, shut them down.
After a few months of EXTREME discomfort, things will smooth out and mostly be fine.
It doesn't really matter what you want if your ignorance is leading to these kinds of problems.
And bandwidth isn't a very good indicator since each individual bot doesn't have to actually send all that much info.
Personally I think there are certain patterns that could be gleaned from the traffic to help determine if there is a problem. Hundreds of failed connections or invalid packets per second, for instance.
Do I want to give the power of choice to the ISP? Not really, but who else is able to do it?
Although I'm not completely certain, I get the feeling that the international community actually has quite a few commonly recognized symbols and our lack of exposure is what makes them difficult to interpret. I'm seeing new icons where there used to be words, but I seem to see the same set of icons repeatedly.
I have a cup heater/cooler in the new car, and I can never remember if the wavy lines are a cool breeze or heat rising off the ground, and if the star-looking thing is a sun or a snowflake, but I think that's my lack of exposure and not really a fault of the icons. (The colors--red and blue--really help though)
I love how a lack of imagination these days = impossible. I've decided to try responding to posts that claim "I can't imagine it, so since it's not possible..."
So, how about placing them together side-by-side so the cold side points down at the CPU and the hot side points up to the heat sink. This keeps the CPU cooler and the heat sink hotter (allowing it to dissipate more heat).
How about a tube made of the stuff--outside is hot, inside cool, through which you blow air? The tube itself can sit outside the case, the air blows over the CPU.
I dunno, it seems like any way you want to look at it, it could be used to enhance cooling by moving heat away from a source (which is what ALL cooling does). How could you not see that?
Having it "Easy" is not healthy for human beings. It causes--well--the issues listed in this research. Everyone knows the concept of a spoiled child--this doesn't just apply to rich and pampered. Humans need increasing challenges and the ability to overcome them.
Being able to meet challenges that really matter--like putting food in your families cupboards--is especially rewarding. I think that's why depression children seemed to have so much more character than the spoiled, unchallenged children of today.
It's happened before (Rome burned, right?)
It'll happen again--people will become increasingly incompetent until we cause some kind of major disaster, then we'll get another few generations of people who are actually competent.
I wonder how much of this type of work is being regulated? I know quite a few people who cut their own lots and don't seem to have trouble with it, but I'm sure that's dependent on where you are (Local laws, etc).
My biggest issue would be with clear cutting government lands--I'm not sure how this is ever acceptable. If reforestation works, why would one ever need government lands at all? There are a bunch of scarred landscapes in Washing that I'd be happy to see them replant and re-harvest at will.
Another interesting point, a vast majority of loggers have been removed by the logging industry itself by optimizing them out through automation. While the price of wood keeps going up, they keep trimming work practices to improve their margins.
If anyone really cared about putting loggers to work, they would found a company that used selective logging as opposed to creating the giant swaths of clear-cutting you see throughout Washington just outside the shallow strip of trees they leave beside the road. (just look at a satellite photo for evidence).
Forests don't remove as much as you might think--although it is significant for above the surface, most of the work is actually done by sea life as I understand it.
Just to be argumentative, there is a really good chance that the guy who ran his company into the ground learned a lot more than the one who ran some static company and did nothing if import.
Of course, this just supports your point--history is important. I'm just saying that interpreting it is hard :)
I agree. I hope Google gets all the add revenue it can gather, as well for good web sites. If it helps to track my normal browsing habits, feel free!
It's pretty rare that adds actually slow me down any more, when they do I either stop using the site or figure out some other way around it.
Slashdot has a little checkbox for me at the top of the page offering to disable adds since I'm such a good user--I still haven't needed to check it.
You can't see a pure tablet working? Check out the iPod touch...
it must be INTERNATIONAL SECURITY then. Which obviously means that we have to coöperate to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Intergalactic pirates trying to steal our music. Must be.
All your bass are belong to us?
I, for one, welcome our new pirate-friendly overlords. SERIOUSLY.
...microsoft admit that all their OSes are STILL extremely vulnerable to malware that can easily shut down the machine.
I'd much rather it was an update, this does not fill me with confidence and pride.
There are multiple different approaches to solving a problem and the choice to do one, the other or both is left up to individual entities in the marketplace and can be based on ease of use and revenue.
This is a pretty awesome concept.
I hope both continue so we can evolve the best of both.
Guess it's just the choice of "Do you want to be involved at all" or not.
I run Ubuntu, but I wouldn't just give it to someone and expect to never hear from them.
I personally still have some trouble with printer drivers, running a print server, occasionally a drive comes up read-only and I have to run some script to fix it (something I figured out once and would take me hours to figure out again if I hadn't written the script!).
Nobody else in my family could add a hard-drive (At least they could take a MAC or PC to the store and have a reasonable expectation of walking out with more storage), etc.
I love Linux, don't get me wrong, but since my whole premise was getting out of the tech support biz, putting my family on it would not be an answer--even you admitted you had to support it at times (admittedly it's easier! I access my Ubuntu server from my phone.)
Yep, understood. I felt the same way before I got one.
Easy for me to forget that there are a lot of people who are still where I was a few years ago... Sorry if I sounded like I was trying to start an argument or something--it's just that these days I pretty much assume that most people have had enough of an exposure to actually understand the differences.
I work as a programmer and we have this conversation a lot.
In the last few years I've noticed a serious trend. We're now mostly 35-40 and we are tired of working on home computers.
The solution? Get a mac.
EVERYONE who has one agrees (Don't believe me, ask around). If you want to know, go ask a PC user how he supports his family's computers--the story will generally be like yours, then go ask a mac user how he supports his family's computers--If he's been using one long enough it's going to be by getting them to buy macs, then not having to mess with them any more.
It really is THAT easy. Many mac users that I work with just tell their families that they don't understand the new-fangled windows even though they work with it every day (few programmers are lucky enough to be able to use macs at work).
For yourself--get a mac and install a windows partition for gaming, or if you are into high-performance gaming buy two computers... It's worth it.
By the way, this is from someone who occasionally tried macs before intel and couldn't stand them (and still would not use a pre-intel mac). The dual-core and OSX are essential for usability because the Mac UI tends to be pretty chunky with just one CPU.
I've owned a computer since 1978. I run a Linux server at home, and have 2 windows computers I NEVER turn on at home. I use windows all the time at work. I've built almost every computer I've owned except my 2 macs. I'll probably never buy another non-mac (Might convert the mac mini to a linux server eventually.