There is. It's called WEB, and, while it was originally written for Pascal code, has been extended to a variety of languages. Derivatives exist in several more languages, and more general systems for any language you like.
Incidentally, guess who's the author. A hint, you just read an interview with the guy.
There are a lot of very smart people doing very impressive stuff with TeX and LaTeX, and generally working out large parts of the arcana. Take, for instance, pgfplots. A simple system for plotting data, so that you say, for instance:
Very simple and easy. Underneath that there's a hell of a lot of clever pgfplots stuff to turn it into TikZ commands, then a hell of a lot of clever stuff in TikZ to produce the appropriate graphics.
Similar packages exist for doing most stuff, including various packages for redesigning templates and the like (geometry does everything you need to with margins, for a start). And then you have projects like XeTeX (unicode, system fonts, some other stuff) and LuaTeX (unicode, hooks into the TeX engine for your own Lua code to modify it as you need).
There are a lot of people working quite hard on making it easier to do more advanced stuff with TeX. It's not just "if you aren't doing exactly $x, you're screwed" any more. And hasn't been for quite a while.
No he doesn't. He says they're unnecessary in most cases, and that he only uses them when he's ``feeling my way in a totally unknown environment''. Otherwise he simply doesn't need to.
Functional languages are one of the oldest families, not in their infancy. See Lisp. And the current king of concurrent programming is Erlang, which is a functional language designed to do such things with, and do it well.
There's a wonderful firefox plugin called Stylish for overriding CSS on a per-site basis. Or on a global basis. And whatever you haven't overriden is kept as originally written.
Which isn't quite what you're looking for, but it's a good start, I think.
No it isn't. The first choice and removal gives you a better chance of winning.
If you're right first time, which is a chance of 1/3, then changing for your second choice will make you lose. That's 1/3rd chance of losing if you switch.
If you're wrong first time, which has a chance of 2/3, then changing for your second choice will make you win. That's a 2/3rd chance of winning if you switch.
The reverse applies if you stay with your original choice.
The important thing is that the first selection was picked from 3 doors, and restricts the possibilities for the next door to be opened.
No, as there is a crucial extra piece of information. After our first selection, we know that the chance of the prize being behind the other two doors is 2/3rds, and after the host opens an empty one, we/know that it cannot be one of these/.
Look at it like this. Let P(1) denote the chance of it being behind door 1. P(2v3) is the chance of it being behind door 2 or 3.
Presume we select door 1 to start.
P(1)=1/3 (3 doors, pick one) P(2v3)=2/3 (if not behind 1, must be behind one of others. P(1v2v3)=1 (must be behind one door) Note that the chance of it being behind door 2 or 3 is 2/3. Now, presume that the host shows us it is not behind door 2. Our original selection cannot suddenly get more likely, as we selected from three doors. P(1)=1/3 P(2)=0 (not behind door 2) But wait! P(2v3)=2/3. Therefore, P(3)=2/3
Basically, the first choice does matter. Obviously if we were to select from a hundred doors, our chance of being right at first is 1/100. This will not suddenly rise if 98 others are eliminated, so the chance of it being behind the unselected door becomes 99/100.
Yes, you always know that one of the remaining doors will be eliminated, but until it is, you/do not know which one/. That's the crucial extra bit of information.
Possibly. But I've had four tries on it on this story, posted responses to half a dozen comments on NYT story linked, and written up a webpage including the full tree diagram.
Assume that your first choice is random. Then your chance of picking the first door is 1/3rd, right?
However, your table shows it as being 1/2. So you need to weight it. One of these days I will draw up and post the tree diagram for the problem, and show people how it works.
See the guy who posted below me for someone who made this mistake and saw where they had gone wrong.
No, it doesn't. Here's an attempt at a graphical demonstration:
A B C 1/3 1/3 1/3
Presume we select A
[A] |B C| 1/3 \ 2/3 /
One of B or C/must/ be wrong, so let's randomly eliminate B
[A] |* C| 1/3 \ 2/3 /
Now, it's obvious that if we stay at A, our chance is 1/3rd. If we switch to C however, our chance must then be 2/3rds. It's not 1/2 because we have more information than that. We aren't randomly picking.
Unfortunately false. Note that there is guaranteed to be an empty door that you didn't select. As your chance of getting it right first time was obviously 1/3rd, then the chance that it is behind the other two doors must be 2/3rds. We already know that it is not behind at least one of them, and so opening one of them gives us a 2/3rds chance it is behind the other.
For a more extreme example, try thinking about it with a pack of cards.
We begin with three doors, one of which has a car behind it:
1 2 3 G C G
Let's presume that the initial selection of doors is random. Then you obviously have a 1/3rd chance of getting the correct door, yes? Three possibilities, one of which is correct. Importantly, this means that there is a 2/3rds chance that the car is behind one of the other doors.
Now, one/incorrect/ door is opened. The chance that you were correct initially cannot have changed, so P(S) (stay) is still 1/3rd. Therefore the chance that the other door is correct must be 2/3rds.
You can see this more extremely if you think about a deck of cards. Get someone to lay out the whole deck, and assume that the goal is to pick the Ace of Spaces. Obviously, your chance is 1/52nd, so the probability that it is behind one of the other cards is 51/52nds. Now, if 50 incorrect cards are turned up, the situation changes. The chance that the initial card you picked was correct is still 1/52, so the chance that the other card is correct must be 51/52.
The important thing is that you have additional information about which options it/isn't/, and that it is probably/not/ the one you initially picked.
Terrorist groups? Try high-school students. The basic theory of fission weapons is so simple I could teach it to my classmates in twenty minutes. Of course, the problem with actually constructing one remains acquiring the necessary fissile materials.
Well, it's just another floating WM with shiny graphics, really. No better than Gnome in that respect. If I wanted anything that, I'd be running Enlightenment, which has also managed to produce similar shininess on shoestring hardware. Seriously, have the KDE guys even seen E17? It's been about as shiny as any of the KDE4 screenshots I've seen for ages.
As it is, I run Quark or LWM, not some bloated floating window manager.
So given your description of Bioconservatism, the parent poster's point still stands. A free market* is unlikely to combine well with a philosophy that opposes technological innovation.
And as for countries with weak militaries, I didn't quite buy that, so I went and looked it up. We have Costa Rica, who abolished their military in 1949, and haven't exactly collapsed since then. Liechtenstein, who abolished theirs in 1848. Solomon Islands, with no standing army. Of course, this isn't all of them.
Yes, these tend not to be major countries. But Costa Rica, for instance, has proved to be one of the most stable nations in Central America, mostly because they've put money into more useful places --- education, etc. So it does seem to be quite possible to survive without a military. Unfortunate for that point of yours then.
The most literal meaning of anarchy is no/rulers/. That's slightly different from no rules. No rulers means that no-one can order another. However, the concept of a self policing community, of some restrictions on one's actions, is accepted by most anarchists*. Of course, such a community can't force others to accept punishment, but can only move to reform them through other methods (compassion and withholding resources, mostly).
The key concept is really that of doing it without enforcement. You have people voluntarily regulating their behaviour out of human compassion. See Kropotkin's writings.
The important thing to note about what Chomsky was saying is that basically your system is voluntary. This is an important distinction from democratic socialism, because there isn't a central authority dictating what to do.
*not all. Stirner, for an extreme example, wouldn't tolerate such a thing, only restricting your own behaviour voluntarily.
Re:Must be doing someting right...
on
WikiLeaks Under Fire
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Sorry, accidentally modded this redundant. Posting to clear it
It's fairly easy to think of reasons youths might be in the vicinity of a shop without doing any damage. A friend and I have a habit of going out, buying a pizza, and eating it somewhere. Private space to talk, etc.
If some shop has one of these things around, yes, we would be able to hear it, and no, we wouldn't have been doing any damage. Unless you count a couple of guys eating pizza peacefully as doing damage.
And I know for a fact I won't be shopping at any stores which try to use these things. Which is unfortunate for the shop, because I tend to be willing to spend a fair bit.
Still have that text File archive around? If so, I'd be interested in having a look if you could lob it online somewhere.
It's both impossible and impractical to censor information. Those who wish to get it, always will, and those who wish not to, can always avoid it. Forcing information and discussion underground simply has the undesirable effect of making it harder to have a reasoned discussion, beyond "OMG Ebil!". Let it come out into the light, and then discuss it in a sensible fashion, and there won't be any major problems.
Well, it depends how far back you go. Around the 1900s it was far more common --- indeed, it was unusual not to be armed. There was an incident around then where the police borrowed four pistols from passers by to pursue a thief.
It's interesting, really, how much our culture has changed since then. Ah well, time to build that airship and take to the skies.
"This is where we fundamentally disagree. The government doesn't have any money. They take our money by taxing us. Thus, what you are saying is that you think that your ideas are good enough to take my money, against my will to spend on what you believe to be good ideas. In reality, they are nothing more than pet projects. And since you admit you don't have enough money, you must not have a very good track record at picking winning projects. The government isn't very good at picking winning projects either."
Or, you know, I could be a fairly young guy who simply hasn't had the chance. Do you have enough money to fund a space program?
What I'm saying is that I think there are ideas good enough and noble enough that they should be developed and explored without worrying about whether they are going to turn a profit next quarter, but for the good of humanity as a whole. Private enterprise isn't very good at that.
"All of your examples are myths. The research done to bring these things to market at a cost that is economically sustainable was done by private companies. Plus, if this is where the value is, why not just have an organization that, say, develops a cordless drill?"
Because the space program created the original need for a cordless drill. The technology used in scratch resistant sunglasses was originally developed by the space program. Once the research work has been done, the foundations laid, then private enterprise tends to be good at getting a product to market. But before that, they had no need to look at how to engineer a cordless drill. Again, look at something like aerogels. Before they were invented and developed, other, less effective, materials were used for insulation. The invention was purely a scientific curiousity, and the development was done by NASA because they could use them, and needed a material like this. Private enterprise now can commercialise it, but you yourself have argued that companies shouldn't spend money on risky long term ideas. Aerogels took nearly 70 years from invention to being commercialised, your arguments would have them not existing at all, as nothing should be speculated on if the market can't use it quickly.
I'm not in favour of huge public spending, but I feel there are areas where non-profits and government funding are the most effective, and this is generally the scientific and mathematical. These are areas where our current concept of corporations are fundamentally flawed, and do not lead to long term advances, only short term profits.
"How do you know it has a long term payoff? You are just going on a hunch. Use your own money to go after your hunches. If you are right, you will be rewarded with more money."
I don't have enough money by myself to fund a space project. I'd probably get limited returns on it. A government has a hell of a lot more money, and will be around for long enough to get most or all of the return
"That's exactly where the focus of a corporation should be. Putting investors money into long term hunches isn't."
So where is pure scientific research going to come from then? Sure, once the groundwork is laid you can get cash in fairly fast from commercialising parts of it. But first you have to lay the theoretical groundwork, do the research, etc. This takes time and money, and if a corporation isn't going to fund it, the government is going to have to. Space research is one example of such a field.
"More hunches."
There was an error there. Cryptography is a perfect example of the sort of field I'm talking about. PGP, for instance, was commercialised for a fair bit of money. But the theoretical work behind it, the number theory that provided foundations of the work, was not all done by the same company. Some was hundreds of years old, and very little of that would have returned a profit in the timeframe of a typical corporate investment. Does that mean no-one should have worked on it?
"Like what?"
Well, from two minutes with google, cordless drills and smoke alarms were both originally developed for the space program. Scratch resistant and/or polarised sunglasses, lighting protection, and numerous other technologies and products, all of them a side effect of the space program. Very few corporations are in a position to do the long term research to lead to things like this, so it just wouldn't happen otherwise.
Or how about aerogels. First developed by a scientist for the hell of it, and the first major uses were in the space program, which also lead to many of the major developments. Now they're being commercialised for insulation purposes.
Certainly, you cannot guarantee that space exploration will lead to long term payoffs. But all the evidence from our work so far has shown this, and there were very few private corporations ready to sink in that much money for that long to reap the eventual rewards.
Because very few private corporations see the benefit of investing in something with a long term payoff. When the focus of a corporation and it's shareholders is on getting a good value on the next balance sheet, putting large amounts of money into long term projects is not going to be an attractive proposition.
This applies to lots of scientific research. Quantum physics, for instance, isn't worth anything directly, but in 20 years or so it should be paying off big time. Or cryptography. Now there's big money in it, but first there were hundreds of years of work in number theory to establish the foundations needed. Paying for that would have had no quick return on investment, but it is now worth a lot.
Space exploration is one of the areas where government funding makes sense, because the long term effects are overwhelmingly good.
Well, this isn't quite a thinkgeek scale business, from what I understand.
Try posting in the site issues forum and asking, maybe.
Incidentally, good call on Machinae Supremacy. Discovered them a bit ago, wonderful stuff. Have you heard of Abney Park?
Re:The virtues of knowing what you are talking abo
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
No, Lunix, as you term it, is a kernel. While it can be used in all of the applications you name, you aren't expected to use the same damn one everywhere. I wouldn't want to run a stripped down text mode distribution for my main media machine, but nor would I run a full featured, shiny OpenGL system on my server.
As for Word, I would never like to use it for documents thousands of pages long. I use LaTeX, and trying to go back to Word is just frustrating. No, I don't want to indent this, realign that, and have such stupid text layout engines. I want to write my document, tag markup as it's needed, and then care about how it looks. I don't want to have to go through by hand and tweak italics, I don't want to have to worry about fiddling text sizes, or anything of the sort. When I'm writing, I want a text interface that gets the hell out of my way, and a simple, sensible way of indicating markup, that doesn't slow me down, doesn't break too much, and actually knows a thing or two about layout.
Hence, I use LaTeX. I write the text, adding \emph{} and so on as I go, and then just hit a key and it formats it for me. If there's something I don't really like, I tweak it a little. Word makes me draw my document while I write it, as opposed to writing it before I format it.
If you want something simple, TextEdit or WordPad, or MS Works. Once you think you can step up to a real program, then go for Word. And finally when you want a truly professional program, you go and work in LaTeX.
Slashdot Mirror
There is. It's called WEB, and, while it was originally written for Pascal code, has been extended to a variety of languages. Derivatives exist in several more languages, and more general systems for any language you like.
Incidentally, guess who's the author. A hint, you just read an interview with the guy.
How do you think the templates were produced?
There are a lot of very smart people doing very impressive stuff with TeX and LaTeX, and generally working out large parts of the arcana. Take, for instance, pgfplots. A simple system for plotting data, so that you say, for instance:
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
xlabel=$x$,
ylabel=$y$]
\addplot[smooth,mark=*,blue] plot coordinates {
(0,2)
(2,3)
(3,1)
};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
Very simple and easy. Underneath that there's a hell of a lot of clever pgfplots stuff to turn it into TikZ commands, then a hell of a lot of clever stuff in TikZ to produce the appropriate graphics.
Similar packages exist for doing most stuff, including various packages for redesigning templates and the like (geometry does everything you need to with margins, for a start). And then you have projects like XeTeX (unicode, system fonts, some other stuff) and LuaTeX (unicode, hooks into the TeX engine for your own Lua code to modify it as you need).
There are a lot of people working quite hard on making it easier to do more advanced stuff with TeX. It's not just "if you aren't doing exactly $x, you're screwed" any more. And hasn't been for quite a while.
No he doesn't. He says they're unnecessary in most cases, and that he only uses them when he's ``feeling my way in a totally unknown environment''. Otherwise he simply doesn't need to.
The ALGOL on punch cards story is quite separate.
Functional languages are one of the oldest families, not in their infancy. See Lisp. And the current king of concurrent programming is Erlang, which is a functional language designed to do such things with, and do it well.
There's a wonderful firefox plugin called Stylish for overriding CSS on a per-site basis. Or on a global basis. And whatever you haven't overriden is kept as originally written.
Which isn't quite what you're looking for, but it's a good start, I think.
No it isn't. The first choice and removal gives you a better chance of winning.
If you're right first time, which is a chance of 1/3, then changing for your second choice will make you lose. That's 1/3rd chance of losing if you switch.
If you're wrong first time, which has a chance of 2/3, then changing for your second choice will make you win. That's a 2/3rd chance of winning if you switch.
The reverse applies if you stay with your original choice.
The important thing is that the first selection was picked from 3 doors, and restricts the possibilities for the next door to be opened.
No, as there is a crucial extra piece of information. After our first selection, we know that the chance of the prize being behind the other two doors is 2/3rds, and after the host opens an empty one, we /know that it cannot be one of these/.
/do not know which one/. That's the crucial extra bit of information.
Look at it like this. Let P(1) denote the chance of it being behind door 1. P(2v3) is the chance of it being behind door 2 or 3.
Presume we select door 1 to start.
P(1)=1/3 (3 doors, pick one)
P(2v3)=2/3 (if not behind 1, must be behind one of others.
P(1v2v3)=1 (must be behind one door)
Note that the chance of it being behind door 2 or 3 is 2/3.
Now, presume that the host shows us it is not behind door 2. Our original selection cannot suddenly get more likely, as we selected from three doors.
P(1)=1/3
P(2)=0 (not behind door 2)
But wait! P(2v3)=2/3. Therefore,
P(3)=2/3
Basically, the first choice does matter. Obviously if we were to select from a hundred doors, our chance of being right at first is 1/100. This will not suddenly rise if 98 others are eliminated, so the chance of it being behind the unselected door becomes 99/100.
Yes, you always know that one of the remaining doors will be eliminated, but until it is, you
Possibly. But I've had four tries on it on this story, posted responses to half a dozen comments on NYT story linked, and written up a webpage including the full tree diagram.
They *will* see the light, damnit.
Assume that your first choice is random. Then your chance of picking the first door is 1/3rd, right?
However, your table shows it as being 1/2. So you need to weight it. One of these days I will draw up and post the tree diagram for the problem, and show people how it works.
See the guy who posted below me for someone who made this mistake and saw where they had gone wrong.
No, it doesn't. Here's an attempt at a graphical demonstration:
/
/must/ be wrong, so let's randomly eliminate B
/
A B C
1/3 1/3 1/3
Presume we select A
[A] |B C|
1/3 \ 2/3
One of B or C
[A] |* C|
1/3 \ 2/3
Now, it's obvious that if we stay at A, our chance is 1/3rd. If we switch to C however, our chance must then be 2/3rds. It's not 1/2 because we have more information than that. We aren't randomly picking.
Unfortunately false. Note that there is guaranteed to be an empty door that you didn't select. As your chance of getting it right first time was obviously 1/3rd, then the chance that it is behind the other two doors must be 2/3rds. We already know that it is not behind at least one of them, and so opening one of them gives us a 2/3rds chance it is behind the other.
For a more extreme example, try thinking about it with a pack of cards.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. Please observe.
/incorrect/ door is opened. The chance that you were correct initially cannot have changed, so P(S) (stay) is still 1/3rd. Therefore the chance that the other door is correct must be 2/3rds.
/isn't/, and that it is probably /not/ the one you initially picked.
We begin with three doors, one of which has a car behind it:
1 2 3
G C G
Let's presume that the initial selection of doors is random. Then you obviously have a 1/3rd chance of getting the correct door, yes? Three possibilities, one of which is correct. Importantly, this means that there is a 2/3rds chance that the car is behind one of the other doors.
Now, one
You can see this more extremely if you think about a deck of cards. Get someone to lay out the whole deck, and assume that the goal is to pick the Ace of Spaces. Obviously, your chance is 1/52nd, so the probability that it is behind one of the other cards is 51/52nds. Now, if 50 incorrect cards are turned up, the situation changes. The chance that the initial card you picked was correct is still 1/52, so the chance that the other card is correct must be 51/52.
The important thing is that you have additional information about which options it
Terrorist groups? Try high-school students. The basic theory of fission weapons is so simple I could teach it to my classmates in twenty minutes. Of course, the problem with actually constructing one remains acquiring the necessary fissile materials.
Well, it's just another floating WM with shiny graphics, really. No better than Gnome in that respect. If I wanted anything that, I'd be running Enlightenment, which has also managed to produce similar shininess on shoestring hardware. Seriously, have the KDE guys even seen E17? It's been about as shiny as any of the KDE4 screenshots I've seen for ages.
As it is, I run Quark or LWM, not some bloated floating window manager.
So given your description of Bioconservatism, the parent poster's point still stands. A free market* is unlikely to combine well with a philosophy that opposes technological innovation.
And as for countries with weak militaries, I didn't quite buy that, so I went and looked it up. We have Costa Rica, who abolished their military in 1949, and haven't exactly collapsed since then. Liechtenstein, who abolished theirs in 1848. Solomon Islands, with no standing army. Of course, this isn't all of them.
Yes, these tend not to be major countries. But Costa Rica, for instance, has proved to be one of the most stable nations in Central America, mostly because they've put money into more useful places --- education, etc. So it does seem to be quite possible to survive without a military. Unfortunate for that point of yours then.
*The typical ideal of one, that is.
The most literal meaning of anarchy is no /rulers/. That's slightly different from no rules. No rulers means that no-one can order another. However, the concept of a self policing community, of some restrictions on one's actions, is accepted by most anarchists*. Of course, such a community can't force others to accept punishment, but can only move to reform them through other methods (compassion and withholding resources, mostly).
The key concept is really that of doing it without enforcement. You have people voluntarily regulating their behaviour out of human compassion. See Kropotkin's writings.
The important thing to note about what Chomsky was saying is that basically your system is voluntary. This is an important distinction from democratic socialism, because there isn't a central authority dictating what to do.
*not all. Stirner, for an extreme example, wouldn't tolerate such a thing, only restricting your own behaviour voluntarily.
Sorry, accidentally modded this redundant. Posting to clear it
It's fairly easy to think of reasons youths might be in the vicinity of a shop without doing any damage. A friend and I have a habit of going out, buying a pizza, and eating it somewhere. Private space to talk, etc.
If some shop has one of these things around, yes, we would be able to hear it, and no, we wouldn't have been doing any damage. Unless you count a couple of guys eating pizza peacefully as doing damage.
And I know for a fact I won't be shopping at any stores which try to use these things. Which is unfortunate for the shop, because I tend to be willing to spend a fair bit.
Still have that text File archive around? If so, I'd be interested in having a look if you could lob it online somewhere.
It's both impossible and impractical to censor information. Those who wish to get it, always will, and those who wish not to, can always avoid it. Forcing information and discussion underground simply has the undesirable effect of making it harder to have a reasoned discussion, beyond "OMG Ebil!". Let it come out into the light, and then discuss it in a sensible fashion, and there won't be any major problems.
Well, it depends how far back you go. Around the 1900s it was far more common --- indeed, it was unusual not to be armed. There was an incident around then where the police borrowed four pistols from passers by to pursue a thief.
It's interesting, really, how much our culture has changed since then. Ah well, time to build that airship and take to the skies.
"This is where we fundamentally disagree. The government doesn't have any money. They take our money by taxing us. Thus, what you are saying is that you think that your ideas are good enough to take my money, against my will to spend on what you believe to be good ideas. In reality, they are nothing more than pet projects. And since you admit you don't have enough money, you must not have a very good track record at picking winning projects. The government isn't very good at picking winning projects either."
Or, you know, I could be a fairly young guy who simply hasn't had the chance. Do you have enough money to fund a space program?
What I'm saying is that I think there are ideas good enough and noble enough that they should be developed and explored without worrying about whether they are going to turn a profit next quarter, but for the good of humanity as a whole. Private enterprise isn't very good at that.
"All of your examples are myths. The research done to bring these things to market at a cost that is economically sustainable was done by private companies. Plus, if this is where the value is, why not just have an organization that, say, develops a cordless drill?"
Because the space program created the original need for a cordless drill. The technology used in scratch resistant sunglasses was originally developed by the space program. Once the research work has been done, the foundations laid, then private enterprise tends to be good at getting a product to market. But before that, they had no need to look at how to engineer a cordless drill. Again, look at something like aerogels. Before they were invented and developed, other, less effective, materials were used for insulation. The invention was purely a scientific curiousity, and the development was done by NASA because they could use them, and needed a material like this. Private enterprise now can commercialise it, but you yourself have argued that companies shouldn't spend money on risky long term ideas. Aerogels took nearly 70 years from invention to being commercialised, your arguments would have them not existing at all, as nothing should be speculated on if the market can't use it quickly.
I'm not in favour of huge public spending, but I feel there are areas where non-profits and government funding are the most effective, and this is generally the scientific and mathematical. These are areas where our current concept of corporations are fundamentally flawed, and do not lead to long term advances, only short term profits.
"How do you know it has a long term payoff? You are just going on a hunch. Use your own money to go after your hunches. If you are right, you will be rewarded with more money."
I don't have enough money by myself to fund a space project. I'd probably get limited returns on it. A government has a hell of a lot more money, and will be around for long enough to get most or all of the return
"That's exactly where the focus of a corporation should be. Putting investors money into long term hunches isn't."
So where is pure scientific research going to come from then? Sure, once the groundwork is laid you can get cash in fairly fast from commercialising parts of it. But first you have to lay the theoretical groundwork, do the research, etc. This takes time and money, and if a corporation isn't going to fund it, the government is going to have to. Space research is one example of such a field.
"More hunches."
There was an error there. Cryptography is a perfect example of the sort of field I'm talking about. PGP, for instance, was commercialised for a fair bit of money. But the theoretical work behind it, the number theory that provided foundations of the work, was not all done by the same company. Some was hundreds of years old, and very little of that would have returned a profit in the timeframe of a typical corporate investment. Does that mean no-one should have worked on it?
"Like what?"
Well, from two minutes with google, cordless drills and smoke alarms were both originally developed for the space program. Scratch resistant and/or polarised sunglasses, lighting protection, and numerous other technologies and products, all of them a side effect of the space program. Very few corporations are in a position to do the long term research to lead to things like this, so it just wouldn't happen otherwise.
Or how about aerogels. First developed by a scientist for the hell of it, and the first major uses were in the space program, which also lead to many of the major developments. Now they're being commercialised for insulation purposes.
Certainly, you cannot guarantee that space exploration will lead to long term payoffs. But all the evidence from our work so far has shown this, and there were very few private corporations ready to sink in that much money for that long to reap the eventual rewards.
Because very few private corporations see the benefit of investing in something with a long term payoff. When the focus of a corporation and it's shareholders is on getting a good value on the next balance sheet, putting large amounts of money into long term projects is not going to be an attractive proposition.
This applies to lots of scientific research. Quantum physics, for instance, isn't worth anything directly, but in 20 years or so it should be paying off big time. Or cryptography. Now there's big money in it, but first there were hundreds of years of work in number theory to establish the foundations needed. Paying for that would have had no quick return on investment, but it is now worth a lot.
Space exploration is one of the areas where government funding makes sense, because the long term effects are overwhelmingly good.
Well, this isn't quite a thinkgeek scale business, from what I understand.
Try posting in the site issues forum and asking, maybe.
Incidentally, good call on Machinae Supremacy. Discovered them a bit ago, wonderful stuff. Have you heard of Abney Park?
No, Lunix, as you term it, is a kernel. While it can be used in all of the applications you name, you aren't expected to use the same damn one everywhere. I wouldn't want to run a stripped down text mode distribution for my main media machine, but nor would I run a full featured, shiny OpenGL system on my server.
As for Word, I would never like to use it for documents thousands of pages long. I use LaTeX, and trying to go back to Word is just frustrating. No, I don't want to indent this, realign that, and have such stupid text layout engines. I want to write my document, tag markup as it's needed, and then care about how it looks. I don't want to have to go through by hand and tweak italics, I don't want to have to worry about fiddling text sizes, or anything of the sort. When I'm writing, I want a text interface that gets the hell out of my way, and a simple, sensible way of indicating markup, that doesn't slow me down, doesn't break too much, and actually knows a thing or two about layout.
Hence, I use LaTeX. I write the text, adding \emph{} and so on as I go, and then just hit a key and it formats it for me. If there's something I don't really like, I tweak it a little. Word makes me draw my document while I write it, as opposed to writing it before I format it.
If you want something simple, TextEdit or WordPad, or MS Works. Once you think you can step up to a real program, then go for Word. And finally when you want a truly professional program, you go and work in LaTeX.