Even if we manage not to destroy ourselves in the next hundred thousand years, we still have to deal with some "soft" and "hard limits".
First we have comets/asteroids impacts. I guess we might have the technology to deflect them in the next 5000 years or so, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Gamma ray burst, close super nova explosions and glacial periods would severely damage half of Earth, but, again, as long as this doesn't happen in the next 5000 years or so, I think we will develop the technology to recover from that also.
Let's fast forward to 600 million years where things start to get interesting: the level of carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain photosynthesis... So no more plants. But if we are still around here by then, I guess this should also not be a problem as we will be able to synthesize whatever chemical we need.
In 1000 million years the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. Hmmm... 1000 million years is enough for us to come with a solution for this, but who knows?
In 2500 million years Earth will lose its magnetosphere.
In 4000 million years the surface of Earth will melt from heat.
In 7500 million years the Sun will absorb Earth.
So... if we want to preserve man kind I would say that, in order to "play it safe" before things get more complicated, we have around 500 million years to escape Earth and ten times that to escape the solar system.
I'm quite convinced that we will manage to do both. I'm also pretty sure we will be there to witness it: we just have to hang on for ~50 years or so until we get functional cryogenic chambers; from there it is just a matter to tell the operators to wake us up in 5000 years once immortality is achieved.
"C" is glorified assembly and learning assembly is *fundamental* to understand how computers work. "C" *should* be the first language programmers learn when they get serious (ex: first year computer science classes).
When I write "C" I know exactly what is going on with each of my CPU cycles and where my variables are being allocated. The compiler is a dead simple translator who doesn't play funny tricks behind my back.
"C" is the perfect language to learn and have fun with the underlying architecture.
"C" is very easy to learn and not that hard to master. It is fast to compile, fast to run and available everywhere.
I don't like "C++". All code bases maintained by more than one single developer (no matter the language it is written in) become rotten with time but, from my experience, the larger the amount of features a language has, the worst this becomes. All big "C++" projects I have worked on (except for one) were horrendous. This also happens in "C", but in "C" I can just "grep" the keyword and immediately know where it comes from.
I don't like "Rust". I've tried to learn it twice and failed. There are too many places where I lose track what the compiler is doing, the (formal?) specification is big and complex and keeps growing (approaching "C++" absurdity levels). There is never an "obvious" way to do one thing. I get "Rust" is a test bench for language designers, but they are creating an over-engineered monster that is not easy to use (think "low gravity ink injection pen" vs "pencil")
So... "C" is perfect for me (and many others). It's simple, fast and as powerful as it gets, which means it is also fun. As others have mentioned on this thread, together with "cppcheck", "valgrind", "electric-fence" and friends it is also as secure as any other.
After re-reading this whole thread I think I now know *why* we disagree: our level of "pragmatism" (or maybe "time scale") is different :)
You favor limiting the spread of misinformation today to prevent major issues *now* (because, as you pointed out, it has been demonstrated that people can be manipulated).
I favor open access to all type of information (even factually incorrect one) to prevent censorship and make it impossible for any particular government or group to control what citizens have access to (who decides what is good? Maybe, in 500 years, the "world government" decides that people with green eyes must be exterminated and that any opposing voice must be silenced).
You want results "now" and I aim for results in the "next hundred years".
But I can perfectly understand your point of view as other popular questions can also be reduced to a similar disjunctive (ex: "should our generation give up some commodities to leave a better world to our grand-children?").
It's a difficult question... and I think it is safe to say that it's OK for us to agree that we disagree :)
Thinking that "people are easy to manipulate, thus we must prevent lies from spreading to protect society" is too paternalist and (in my limited experience) does not reflect reality.
You are right in that propaganda is a very powerful weapon (I openly admitted that on my previous comment) but, then again, we are all adults that should be able to navigate the ocean of misinformation to find out what is true in order to form our own opinions.
Having all the Nazi propaganda available today is an invaluable tool to prevent it from happening in the future... while not having allowed it in the first place would probably not have prevented WW2 (or maybe it would, we don't know for sure).
As you say (and this might be a bit far fetched, but bear with me) in this instance, voicing their hatred was beneficial *for them*, *at that time*, but not for "genocides in general", as now (thanks to how public their whole ideology became) we have data to fight it, were something similar to happen in the future.
Saying (as I do) that everyone should be able to express their ideas (no matter how atrocious) publicly without facing administrative punishment does *not* mean that other actions (such as keeping a close eye on them) should not be taken.
I doubt that preventing the Nazis from discussing their ideas would have stopped them. Having their ideas not suppressed from public forums at least gave the chance to others to understand what was going on in order to try to stop it (which, in this case, failed miserably).
When "explaining doesn't work" it's time to take action. But not while the only proof you have against someone is what he said (instead of what he did).
The "brain washing" power that continuous propaganda has is not under question, but still I like to hold accountable those who do, and not those who say (I know this is a very unpopular opinion, that's why I like to discuss about it!).
You are literally the first person I find who agrees with me. Hi there! :)
Just for the shake of discussion, let me put on the table some other extreme examples people bring up:
A) Apology of "something bad" (for example, "apology of terrorism"). Is it OK for someone to appear on TV and say that he is happy about all the people killed in 11-S and that others should repeat the attack?
B) Targeted attack. Back to the neighbor example: would it be OK if he not only published a newspaper ad against me every day but also appeared on TV shows, sent propaganda to other neighbors, hired a plane to draw my name on the sky, etc...?
C) Dangerous information. Example: someone discovers that by mixing two very easy to find (and accessible to everyone) chemicals, the whole atmosphere of the earth would be modified in hours in a way that all people from ethnicity X would immediately die. Is it OK for him to publish this information?
I still think all these cases are covered... but I would like to know how others reason about them :)
> Yes, you are accountable for the communications you make, whether via keybord, orally, or any other way.
Just for the purpose of debating let me bring up my (very unpopular) point of view.
I have always thought that anyone should be able to say anything and not have legal consequences (ex: go to prison, pay a fine).
Notice that this statement covers all scenarios as long as the person involved "only speaks" (or publishes). In other words, the moment he does something illegal, then he should (in my opinion) be judged according to the rules of the society he lives in.
Now... I have never in my live encountered one single person that agrees 100% with me in that regard. They always come up with exceptions, such as these ones:
1) An author writes a book about having sex with minors.
2) A general tells one of his soldiers to shoot a prisoner.
3) My neighbor starts publishing ads on the local newspaper falsely accusing me of being a drug dealer.
These are my responses:
1) As long as we don't catch him having sex with minors, that's ok with me. We should encourage all types of debates, even those (specially those!) we are not comfortable with. In the worst case, each one will walk home thinking the other side is wrong; in the best case, maybe we will learn something from each other (maybe we can better understand how the brain of that author works and how we can help him). Simply banning a taboo topic won't make it disappear from society... openly discussing the topic will (in my opinion) be a better long term solution for all.
2) In this case the general is not just "saying" something. Due to the chain of command, the soldier can end up imprisoned or dead if he doesn't comply. I would still defend the right for some random person to publicly state that "we should kill all xxx", not because I agree with him, but because we should be able to discuss the reasons and try to convince him to do otherwise.
3) This is the most tricky one. I still think my neighbor should be able to do that because I expect others who read the newspaper ad to fact check his claims instead of blindly believe them. No one I have ever met agrees with me on this one... and I think that is because people always consider others to be "dumber" than themselves and thus need to be protected from non curated news in case they end up believing them. I really think this is not the case: I never believe anything I read on the newspaper (or online) until I get confirmation from several places and I know most people do the same, no matter how others like to "look down" at "average Joe".
I enjoy discussing the limits of "freedom of speech/ideas". Let me know what you (or any other) think :)
They come close in number of ports and battery life *but* they still have an excessively big touchpad, don't have a 13 inch version and start at 1.7 kilos (which makes them less than ideal for carrying around).
But I agree they are the very nice machines and we keep a bunch of them in the lab.
You are completely right. The X61s is a better design (I happen to own one too!), I completely forgot about it as, due to its much slower CPU, I must have put it away somewhere in the attic many years ago :)
I own both the x230 and the x395 (which is, externally, almost the same as the x13) and I can definitely feel a difference when typing on the much more comfortable x230.
It's mainly due to two factors: 1) thanks to having a very small touchpad, the keyboard is closer to the edge and I feel much less strain on the lower part of the arm, near my wrists, which becomes more apparent after long coding sessions; and 2) the key travel is much longer and typing feels "better" (I make far less mistakes).
Also, because the x395 is almost half the thickness, they could not fit a bigger battery (which is definitely my main complaint on these newer machines).
Don't get me wrong, the "X" series is great and I will probably get the latest version when I need a replacement *but* I'm sad they make these sacrifices in the name of "design".
I'm on the same boat as you: my ideal laptop would be an x220/x230 on the outside with a 1440p display and a modern CPU on the inside.
I can't understand why Thinkpads are moving away from this absolutely perfect design in the name of... slickness?
Why are laptops with a minimal (or non-existing) touchpad so difficult to find? Once you start using the trackpoint your wrists feel incredibly relaxed at all times.
Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports? When in the lab, I find my self needing one almost daily.
Why this trend of including keyboards with shorter and shorter travel distance?
There was a campaign to bring attention to all these details a few years ago which (surprisingly!) resulted in Lenovo releasing the "Thinkpad 25 anniversary edition" [1] which ticked most (but not all) of my boxes and which is unfortunately no longer available.
Do people really prefer the new design trends? Am I out of touch with reality?
Even if we manage not to destroy ourselves in the next hundred thousand years, we still have to deal with some "soft" and "hard limits".
First we have comets/asteroids impacts. I guess we might have the technology to deflect them in the next 5000 years or so, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Gamma ray burst, close super nova explosions and glacial periods would severely damage half of Earth, but, again, as long as this doesn't happen in the next 5000 years or so, I think we will develop the technology to recover from that also.
Let's fast forward to 600 million years where things start to get interesting: the level of carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain photosynthesis... So no more plants. But if we are still around here by then, I guess this should also not be a problem as we will be able to synthesize whatever chemical we need.
In 1000 million years the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. Hmmm... 1000 million years is enough for us to come with a solution for this, but who knows?
In 2500 million years Earth will lose its magnetosphere.
In 4000 million years the surface of Earth will melt from heat.
In 7500 million years the Sun will absorb Earth.
So... if we want to preserve man kind I would say that, in order to "play it safe" before things get more complicated, we have around 500 million years to escape Earth and ten times that to escape the solar system.
I'm quite convinced that we will manage to do both. I'm also pretty sure we will be there to witness it: we just have to hang on for ~50 years or so until we get functional cryogenic chambers; from there it is just a matter to tell the operators to wake us up in 5000 years once immortality is achieved.
Who is with me? :)