+1 to this.
We'd all like to see our Favourite Thing rolled out and used by everyone else - because it's the best right??
But the simple fact is -- linux as a whole does not have the infrastructure, governance structures, commercial critical mass behind it to ever take over the desktop. Now - divide whatever infrastructure/governance/commercial potential there is by 8000000 to account for all the vested interests in this API, or that toolkit, or this package manager. And you have basically zero.
It is a fantastic product I love using on a daily basis; I'm passionate about its open source basis. But for the reasons posted above many times, it will never take over the desktop until One Version exists and everybody invests effort in that. The fact that linux's selling point to most nerds (in many cases, the people who give their time contributing code and maintaining packages) is precisely that there ISN'T one version - and they can install and tweak whatever DM they like - means this will never happen.
I know this is a US story but I'd like to pretend to be an outraged southern neighbour and point out the northern hemisphere bias here.
how dare you!
seriously though - things work differently here in NZ. Don't know if things work better but I can say there is certainly no debate here of this kind.
The school year generally starts in early February, and runs through to mid-December. In between there's a 2 week holiday for easter, another 2 week break in early July and another 2 week break in early October. Pretty rough eh. But because our summer coincides with christmas, almost everyone takes leave from work over christmas and for pretty much the whole of January. So you have the kids and the adults having a summer/christmas holiday together for about 6 weeks. Seems to work pretty well - NZ education standards are pretty good, and (I have no data to back this up) there seems to be a reasonable quota of high profile expats doing good stuff. Just don't try and get any help, service, accommodation or actually anything in January.
'Database of RUIN'?? Sounds like Paul Ohm is desperate to call first dibs on buzzwording the 'big data' phenomenon.
In any case, the potential nefarious uses of 'big data' are pretty clear. Since this is one of the greatest profit-making devices large corporations have discovered in recent years, it's hugely unlikely that ordinary people can 'stop' it via normal means.
Seems to me like personal cash purchases are the way to go wherever possible. But also (and I know, wrong place to say this) - is there not an argument to increase awareness amongst IT professionals about the impact of their undoubtedly excellent technical work in making all this happen?
I say we teach kids science as we understand it, with enough underpinnings as to the methods involved to at least give some understanding as to how to biologists have arrived at that point.
Yes, and this should include the perpetual caveat that there is shit loads we don't yet know anything about. I would have been far more interested in science at school if the text books hadn't presented the current state of scientific knowledge as unassailable fact. I know that outside of school textbooks scientists are very conscious and humble about this, but if I had read even once something like "well that's what we think but, you know, we haven't found the higgs boson yet so...." I think it would have been quite inspiring to my inquisitive mind.
Our planet is still a place full of mystery and unanswered questions, and I think the presentation of science in classrooms could go a long way to leveraging children's natural inquisitiveness and get them thinking there are still huge contributions they can make in future to human knowledge.
just here to say - for me, arch is what turned linux into a curiosity I tinkered with occasionally into the foundation of my home network and daily productivity.
Being short on time for the last 6 months, I've kept 4 machines right up to date with the latest packages through some fairly major changes (filesystem and udev, off the top of my head) by doing little more than invoking pacman every now and then.
When I get some time, I know I can get my hands dirty using abs if I so choose. Arch is beautiful.
I know what you mean - it seems counter-intuitive.
Gary Taubes has an interesting article here on dietary changes over time and the politics of advertising.
What really caught my eye was this:
...we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic that started around the early 1980's, and that this was coincident with the rise of the low-fat dogma. (Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, also rose significantly through this period.) They say that low-fat weight-loss diets have proved in clinical trials and real life to be dismal failures, and that on top of it all, the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for two decades. Our cholesterol levels have been declining, and we have been smoking less, and yet the incidence of heart disease has not declined as would be expected.
I concur - obesity is almost totally diet-related. There is a fair amount of research showing the crucial interaction between fat AND carbs. When you eat carbs and fat together (ie. a hamburger), the body preferentially uses the carbs as an energy source, then the fat just sits there and tends not to get metabolised. Yes, the principle is similar to the Atkins diet - although that focused on getting your body into ketosis temporarily to burn fat off.
I'm actually a type 1 diabetic with a BMI of around 21 - I don't need to lose weight. But eating low carbs for the last 6 month has brought my HbA1C to a normal level for the first time ever. On top of that, my cholesterol, triglycerides and lipid lab results are all in the ideal range.
Typical meal for me is 4 chicken thighs, 5 eggs fried in butter, then half a tub of cream cheese. Seriously.
not even that - so long as people have their widescreen tv and brawndo they basically don't care.
the frustrating part is this perpetuates the very problem: the evil corporations lurking behind abominable acts such as the TPP are wholly vulnerable to something as simple as people not buying their products...
The real modern problem is people having disposable income and choosing to spend it on shit which makes evil corporations rich and powerful and keen to strip our rights away to make more money.
If people could simply refrain from not going to the cinema, not buying a dvd, not buying a new TV, not paying for a sports game - even just for a SHORT while - the balance of power will change. The power still remains with individual people, if we can just better understand the consequences of our behaviour.
actually there are many tools like this already in existence... modern probation work has been scientificalised and statisticalised to the extent that you can't do anything with an offender until you know what their various scores are.
In the UK the risk of general reconviction is calculated statistically in the OGRS programme based on age, conviction, prison sentences etc. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/probation1.html) . This also produces a level of risk that that person will commit a violent offence. There are other specialist tools for domestic violence - the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment which is a 20 item checklist. Also, for sex offenders their risk of reconviction is assessed by using the Thornton Risk Matrix 2000. Every offender who comes into the probation system also has an OASys assessment completed on them - which asks the assessor to score factors from 14 different areas such as accommodation, lifestyle, substance misuse etc. (http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/ Info%20for%20sentencers%203.pdf).
Slashdot Mirror
+1 to this.
We'd all like to see our Favourite Thing rolled out and used by everyone else - because it's the best right??
But the simple fact is -- linux as a whole does not have the infrastructure, governance structures, commercial critical mass behind it to ever take over the desktop. Now - divide whatever infrastructure/governance/commercial potential there is by 8000000 to account for all the vested interests in this API, or that toolkit, or this package manager. And you have basically zero.
It is a fantastic product I love using on a daily basis; I'm passionate about its open source basis. But for the reasons posted above many times, it will never take over the desktop until One Version exists and everybody invests effort in that. The fact that linux's selling point to most nerds (in many cases, the people who give their time contributing code and maintaining packages) is precisely that there ISN'T one version - and they can install and tweak whatever DM they like - means this will never happen.
I know this is a US story but I'd like to pretend to be an outraged southern neighbour and point out the northern hemisphere bias here.
how dare you!
seriously though - things work differently here in NZ. Don't know if things work better but I can say there is certainly no debate here of this kind.
The school year generally starts in early February, and runs through to mid-December. In between there's a 2 week holiday for easter, another 2 week break in early July and another 2 week break in early October. Pretty rough eh. But because our summer coincides with christmas, almost everyone takes leave from work over christmas and for pretty much the whole of January. So you have the kids and the adults having a summer/christmas holiday together for about 6 weeks. Seems to work pretty well - NZ education standards are pretty good, and (I have no data to back this up) there seems to be a reasonable quota of high profile expats doing good stuff. Just don't try and get any help, service, accommodation or actually anything in January.
'Database of RUIN'?? Sounds like Paul Ohm is desperate to call first dibs on buzzwording the 'big data' phenomenon.
In any case, the potential nefarious uses of 'big data' are pretty clear. Since this is one of the greatest profit-making devices large corporations have discovered in recent years, it's hugely unlikely that ordinary people can 'stop' it via normal means.
Seems to me like personal cash purchases are the way to go wherever possible. But also (and I know, wrong place to say this) - is there not an argument to increase awareness amongst IT professionals about the impact of their undoubtedly excellent technical work in making all this happen?
I say we teach kids science as we understand it, with enough underpinnings as to the methods involved to at least give some understanding as to how to biologists have arrived at that point.
Yes, and this should include the perpetual caveat that there is shit loads we don't yet know anything about. I would have been far more interested in science at school if the text books hadn't presented the current state of scientific knowledge as unassailable fact. I know that outside of school textbooks scientists are very conscious and humble about this, but if I had read even once something like "well that's what we think but, you know, we haven't found the higgs boson yet so...." I think it would have been quite inspiring to my inquisitive mind.
Our planet is still a place full of mystery and unanswered questions, and I think the presentation of science in classrooms could go a long way to leveraging children's natural inquisitiveness and get them thinking there are still huge contributions they can make in future to human knowledge.
just here to say - for me, arch is what turned linux into a curiosity I tinkered with occasionally into the foundation of my home network and daily productivity.
Being short on time for the last 6 months, I've kept 4 machines right up to date with the latest packages through some fairly major changes (filesystem and udev, off the top of my head) by doing little more than invoking pacman every now and then.
When I get some time, I know I can get my hands dirty using abs if I so choose. Arch is beautiful.
man I feel old all of a sudden
I just bought a new nokia C2-01 as my primary cellphone! and now THIS?!
Gary Taubes has an interesting article here on dietary changes over time and the politics of advertising.
What really caught my eye was this:
I concur - obesity is almost totally diet-related. There is a fair amount of research showing the crucial interaction between fat AND carbs. When you eat carbs and fat together (ie. a hamburger), the body preferentially uses the carbs as an energy source, then the fat just sits there and tends not to get metabolised. Yes, the principle is similar to the Atkins diet - although that focused on getting your body into ketosis temporarily to burn fat off.
I'm actually a type 1 diabetic with a BMI of around 21 - I don't need to lose weight. But eating low carbs for the last 6 month has brought my HbA1C to a normal level for the first time ever. On top of that, my cholesterol, triglycerides and lipid lab results are all in the ideal range. Typical meal for me is 4 chicken thighs, 5 eggs fried in butter, then half a tub of cream cheese. Seriously.
not even that - so long as people have their widescreen tv and brawndo they basically don't care. the frustrating part is this perpetuates the very problem: the evil corporations lurking behind abominable acts such as the TPP are wholly vulnerable to something as simple as people not buying their products... The real modern problem is people having disposable income and choosing to spend it on shit which makes evil corporations rich and powerful and keen to strip our rights away to make more money. If people could simply refrain from not going to the cinema, not buying a dvd, not buying a new TV, not paying for a sports game - even just for a SHORT while - the balance of power will change. The power still remains with individual people, if we can just better understand the consequences of our behaviour.
actually there are many tools like this already in existence... modern probation work has been scientificalised and statisticalised to the extent that you can't do anything with an offender until you know what their various scores are. In the UK the risk of general reconviction is calculated statistically in the OGRS programme based on age, conviction, prison sentences etc. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/probation1.html) . This also produces a level of risk that that person will commit a violent offence. There are other specialist tools for domestic violence - the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment which is a 20 item checklist. Also, for sex offenders their risk of reconviction is assessed by using the Thornton Risk Matrix 2000. Every offender who comes into the probation system also has an OASys assessment completed on them - which asks the assessor to score factors from 14 different areas such as accommodation, lifestyle, substance misuse etc. (http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/ Info%20for%20sentencers%203.pdf).