Monitors back then were wide then and the Alto turned the screen on its side. The Mac somewhat similarly had a screen that wasn't wide. The Mac mouse is also copied from the Alto's if you look at the shape.
27 karma · joined June 15, 2016
In 30 seconds, we can go from fully intending to do something that we should do to better ourselves to reading HN submissions and commenting on them.
http://lowendmac.com/1984/macintosh-128k/
http://www.righto.com/2016/06/y-combinators-xerox-alto-resto...
Just imagine if you will if all members of the site created similar comments constantly. That would hide all of the discussion relevant to the topics being discussed.
But, I agree with what you said- I don't like it when people enjoy suffering either. I just think that possibly the best way to handle it would be to just ignore those posts, as you might elicit more response from them.
Here are some you might be unfamiliar with:
'When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."'
'Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.)'
Thanks.
Been here since 2007 off and on. Usually don't use same user because I quit HN periodically due to philosophical differences, and I don't care about HN user karma or the ability to downvote.
It's been my experience that people here have many interests, and debates of we should be exploring certain avenues and why we obsess over things are just as valid as any other.
It's bad enough that those with sufficient computing speed/power can already rip off the stock market; why does the world need another way for people to rip each other off?
Since we've determined over history that some people will take advantage of weakness for their own gain, no matter what system you create to transfer goods, resources, services or value representing those, it will be exploited. So- why even spend time on it?
If everyone who cares to maintains their own accounting data does so, regardless of what technologies we are using, we really could just trade in goods, services, and coin and completely get rid of all virtual currency. Investments could go back to literally to providing coins, goods, resources, or services to those that we'd like to support possibly in exchange for reciprocity.
Since that won't happen right away, if you really want to secure your financial future, major S&P 500 index tracking funds have been one of the smartest things over its history to invest in: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EGSPC+Interactive#symbo...
While some of you made money on bitcoin, many lost. Now the same game has been played again with people believing that someone can write code to replace our currency system and if they get in early enough, they'll be kings or queens. Well- again, it didn't happen. What really is to gain from this fantasy world of cryptocurrencies? It is harming more than it is helping, from what I see.
And if you downvote this, tell me why, otherwise I'll just assume you are with those that want to exploit me and others.
If anything, the thing we need to be concerned about is being ready for changes, which will happen. We might need to grow different sorts of foods, focus on better insulation for our homes or move underground or underwater. We may need new laws to avoid wasting resources. But, there is no reason to be depressed about it. Those things will happen with time.
First off, I really appreciate your contribution to the topic!
In response though, I'm curious why you think things should be left as they are. Laws around patents and copyrights allow these sorts of things, and those laws are different or non-existent, depending on where you are in the world. It would seem to be anything but something that needs to be unchanged. While I think that status quo can help avoid further problems in many cases with law, patent and copyright reform needs to be happen and is inevitable, and this is purely a case of people working within existing laws, whether or not we agree with their course of action.
Many of the things that cause data loss are just simple mistakes caused by a failure to review changes carefully, even when you have multiple levels of review- I would dare to say especially when you have high confidence that someone else is reviewing your changes.
"Manual" data changes, e.g. executing SQL statements or scripts that execute SQL that aren't a part of your application, in my experience are the most common cause of data loss.
After manual data changes the second most common in my experience is not understanding what you are doing. For example, you might take a chance on an upgrade that fails because you have to meet a deadline.
Changes to application code are next. Typically when making changes to an application, a little more thought may be put into it than a one-off data migration or change, but if you are under time pressure, don't know what you are doing, or are assuming someone else will catch your mistakes, you could easily screw everything.
Following this- mistakes that cause hardware or software failure. I worked at one large organization where storage arrays with various power backups were just "turned off" by a contractor that didn't understand the impact of what he or she was doing.
Finally, you might have configuration issues or the hardware might just fail.
Really, there is no substitute for having your data backed up frequently, and in a way you know how to easily restore and have tested, by building another machine from the ground up to replace it and documenting and practicing that well. Very few do this frequently. And even if you do- what if all of your hardware were destroyed? Can you easily go out and buy something off the shelf with instructions you have in your head or stored safely around the world and rebuild everything?