"it's just that it's 2001, and we're still not out there!"
We're not out there yet because it's very, very difficult. There is still a lot to learn about human physiology (and psychology) in space, for starters. Never mind the techno-engineering required.
Selfishly speaking, I would love to see a manned expedition to Mars in my lifetime. But there's a lot of other things that need doing, and only so much time, talent, and $$$.
And frankly, what are the payoffs? Mostly "only" scientific. No, you're not going to alleviate the population pressure on Earth by shipping people into space - that's absurd. We can breed 'em much faster than you can launch 'em:-) And it's much cheaper and easier to optimize resource use and recycling than trying to implement such engineering wet-dreams as "mining the asteroids" and such. Mining the asteroids will be useful for those who build the space habitats, though. Just not right away.
Yes, it will happen... it's just a lot, lot tougher than most/.-ers seem to think.
"Why not more interstitial advertising that loads briefly (3 secs) while new content is freshly disseminated? Break up sections on a site with pointed, totally focused and focus-pulling advertising that is there and gone quickly?"
Because if I wanted TV, I'd watch TV. I would rather subscribe.
"Life isn't dependent on intelligence, a hamster or lemming is alive yet they don't have the intelligence necessary to decide that jumping off a cliff is a bad idea. Life is not intelligence."
And yet, there are still hamsters and lemmings. What is intelligence?
"That's precisely the point. Very often what you get for free is worth pretty much what you paid for it."
I strongly disagree. In my opinion, the best "content" (how I despise that term - it should all be "content") on the web is free, made available for "the love of it" by people who care about a given subject. In fact, to me, that's the point of the Web.
All the shock-crap and such is just a perversion of the medium by people who can't wait to turn the web into TV. Well, we've already got TV
Then there's "e-commerce" (barf!). Woo woo, now there's mail-order catalogs on the Web! How revolutionary and high tech can you get! NOT.
It costs very little to hire web hosting, and very little to put up a site without a bunch of crap on it. HTML is not exactly rocket science.
That tirade accomplished:-) there are a few (very few) sites I would be happy to support with micropayments. Ironically, I suspect they're all sites that are done "for the love of it", not some get-rich-quick-in-the-"new economy" scheme.
Y'know, the past few weeks have seen comments coming from Miller, Ballmer, and Gates himself that have ranged from the ridiculous to the, well, even more ridiculous. But this latest screed from Allchin is not at all funny. I'm afraid it is very serious, and it is dangerous.
Microsoft is entering extremely shaky ground with comments like this coming from so high up in the executive food chain. They have hereby given notice that they will literally stop at nothing to protect their obscene "business model". They will need very close watching, to see how they intend to "educate policy makers", and to counter when necessary.
So, the iron fist is coming out of the velvet glove, as we all knew it would sooner or later. It seems that Microsoft might be about to earn the "evil" label that people have been using for so long. It is really quite sad.
"Simply put: 'dominion' is actually somewhat the correct word for it. Humans are now capable of doing whatever we want to any living species on the planet. The same cannot be said about any other living species. In some respects, that makes us the most successful animal."
Your entire post betrayed such an incredible ignorance of biological and ecological reality that I'm almost speechless. Typical engineer-think applied to biology... i.e., utter blithering pollyannish nonsense.
Just one salient point among the dozens I could make in response to your off-the-wall commentary: without bacteria, the human race would be finished, very quickly. If you believe that human life lives in a vacuum, you are an idiot.
OK, one more point:-) The results are far from being in regarding how successful homo sapiens might or might not be.
"Actually, perma-frost doesn't melt, thus the "perma" prefix. The permaforst layer is about 6 feet down (perhaps more) and it never melts, unless you run a locomotive through it.:)"
And guess what? The permafrost line is moving northward rather quickly. Not sure if it will ever get that far north, but something to think about. I know that lots of railroad tracks and buildings are already being all messed up by the melting permafrost, though...
It's nice to have debs, but there's really no reason you can't have 4.01 - just go to xfree86.org and download the generic binaries. I've been running them ever since they came out, and it has been rock-solid (I'm just using the stock nvidia TNT driver).
"So? That means that the cost of something can be completely unrelated to either it's market value or it's actual production cost."
If millions of people are willing to pay $15+ for a CD, that -is- the market value. And the cost of something is usually at least somewhat decoupled from production costs - there's the time spent in creating, prototyping, developing, testing, marketing, etc. that gets amortized in.
Which isn't to say that the IP situation isn't wacky:-)
"It seems to me that a fundamental flaw of Mr. Stallman's open source philosophy is that it implies that adherance to his particular license is of more importance than the overal quality and value of a product."
That's not a flaw in the philosophy, it -is- the philosophy.
"When Linux led the start of this movement"
Linux did not lead the start of this movement.
"Let me tell you, the corporate world would rather have the quality product rather than the alternatives, even if they don't use the GPL."
Fine - they can use whatever they please! Surely you understand that for RMS (and many of us), the point of Free Software is not to earn corporate acceptance. The point is to have free software!
I believe you're confusing two issues: the RMS "it is always better to have free software" philosophy and the ESR "free software is always better" argument.
"Bush & Gore both suck. I just feel Gore==Clinton and cannot justify voting for someone that sucky again...
Which leaves me... Bush. Corporation loving, big oil loving, big (insert large financial interst) lover.
So what do I do? Don't think about it!"
Nader. No way could I vote for Bush - he as as you say. No way could I vote for Gore - he is a vicious, lying sack of shit in dullard's clothing. As my philosopher friend would accuse me... I'm "throwing away my vote" on Ralph Nader.
's/(\.\.\. (disco)/ like the Monkees/ and you'd be a bit more acurate. I was watching a show about 60's-70's bands with my parents, and it said the Monkees didn't even know how to play thier instruments. I asked my parents, "Was all of the music from your generation a lie?" And they both turned to me, stared for a second, and said in unison, "Yup."'
Good, I'm glad to know that all the music from the 60's and 70's was a lie. Your parents were either pulling your leg (which I strongly suspect), or incredibly lame assholes. Or maybe they were just Young Republicans. Who knows.
I'm just wondering how the fuck we survived without Napster back in the 60's and 70's. Some great music back then, and we never seemed to have a problem finding an opportunity to hear it. Whatever.
"High speed internet access is available to pretty much anyone"
No it's not. And it won't be for quite some time. Check out this page for the reason why, complete with actual numbers. Where I live (rural NH, USA), we won't have a high speed internet connection until/unless 2-way satellite systems come online at an affordable price. No way will I ever see cable or ADSL here, ever. Population density is simply too low.
Y'all might want to keep this article in mind while designing your web pages:-)
- sgage
Re:How do you know?... Re:You're full of FUD
on
Natural Capitalism
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· Score: 1
"Please explain to me how privitization does *not* resolve the tragedy of the commons. Given several property in a resource, each participant is incented to maximize the knowable social value of the use of that resource. This is *precisely* the problem of the commons."
1)"knowable": what does Bill Gates know about the value of an intact ecosystem (I use BG as the hypothetical winner in the bid for privitizing the commons simply as a convenience).
2)"social": surely there are other values than "social" - at least, true conservatism ought to realize this.
3)value: the capitalist economy can only place a value on things it can buy and sell. What is the "value" of species x or y? You don't know. There need to be places where things can play out without appeal to the valuation of our bean-counting economics.
One Very Important Fact You've All Overlooked
on
Natural Capitalism
·
· Score: 1
I just finished reading all the replies (whew!), and it seems to me that the one thing that everyone has neglected to notice is that, at least in the U.S., the government is owned by big business. The whole theoretical "pure capitalism" vs. "government intervention" is just that - a theoretical construct. In reality, government does just what their corporate masters tell them to.
"Don't you think the lumber and paper companies are smart enough to realize if they cut down all the trees they will be out of business?"
On lumber/paper company owned land, the natural forest is typically converted into a monoculture of fast-growing timber species. So instead of a healthy, diverse forested ecosystem capable of supporting an incredible complexity of life, you get a fucking corn field of trees.
Their business is fiber - environmental health be damned.
"Plus we would not have the extra wealth to worry about air pollution and water pollution."
Nor would we have the pollution.
"Serious environmentalism is primarily a concern of rich, developed nations (which right now are those that embrace the free market)."
You are seriously mis-informed if you believe this. You have areas all over the world being poisoned and desertified by people applying inappropriate agricultural practices foisted upon them in the name of "development".
Slashdot Mirror
We're not out there yet because it's very, very difficult. There is still a lot to learn about human physiology (and psychology) in space, for starters. Never mind the techno-engineering required.
Selfishly speaking, I would love to see a manned expedition to Mars in my lifetime. But there's a lot of other things that need doing, and only so much time, talent, and $$$.
And frankly, what are the payoffs? Mostly "only" scientific. No, you're not going to alleviate the population pressure on Earth by shipping people into space - that's absurd. We can breed 'em much faster than you can launch 'em :-) And it's much cheaper and easier to optimize resource use and recycling than trying to implement such engineering wet-dreams as "mining the asteroids" and such. Mining the asteroids will be useful for those who build the space habitats, though. Just not right away.
Yes, it will happen... it's just a lot, lot tougher than most /.-ers seem to think.
Because if I wanted TV, I'd watch TV. I would rather subscribe.
And yet, there are still hamsters and lemmings. What is intelligence?
I strongly disagree. In my opinion, the best "content" (how I despise that term - it should all be "content") on the web is free, made available for "the love of it" by people who care about a given subject. In fact, to me, that's the point of the Web.
All the shock-crap and such is just a perversion of the medium by people who can't wait to turn the web into TV. Well, we've already got TV
Then there's "e-commerce" (barf!). Woo woo, now there's mail-order catalogs on the Web! How revolutionary and high tech can you get! NOT.
It costs very little to hire web hosting, and very little to put up a site without a bunch of crap on it. HTML is not exactly rocket science.
That tirade accomplished :-) there are a few (very few) sites I would be happy to support with micropayments. Ironically, I suspect they're all sites that are done "for the love of it", not some get-rich-quick-in-the-"new economy" scheme.
Microsoft is entering extremely shaky ground with comments like this coming from so high up in the executive food chain. They have hereby given notice that they will literally stop at nothing to protect their obscene "business model". They will need very close watching, to see how they intend to "educate policy makers", and to counter when necessary.
So, the iron fist is coming out of the velvet glove, as we all knew it would sooner or later. It seems that Microsoft might be about to earn the "evil" label that people have been using for so long. It is really quite sad.
No, I don't ask. And I don't care. Who fucking cares about corporate uptake of Debian? Go away.
Your entire post betrayed such an incredible ignorance of biological and ecological reality that I'm almost speechless. Typical engineer-think applied to biology... i.e., utter blithering pollyannish nonsense.
Just one salient point among the dozens I could make in response to your off-the-wall commentary: without bacteria, the human race would be finished, very quickly. If you believe that human life lives in a vacuum, you are an idiot.
OK, one more point :-) The results are far from being in regarding how successful homo sapiens might or might not be.
ROTFLMAO!
And guess what? The permafrost line is moving northward rather quickly. Not sure if it will ever get that far north, but something to think about. I know that lots of railroad tracks and buildings are already being all messed up by the melting permafrost, though...
The oil drilling in Russia is vastly more destructive to the environment than any Alaska operation would be.
But, it's out of sight..."
Anybody who thinks that it's OK to rape Siberia because it might spare Alaska is certainly not an environmentalist, whatever they may call themselves.
Bullshit. It is a perfectly good word. You are illiterate, that's all.
It's nice to have debs, but there's really no reason you can't have 4.01 - just go to xfree86.org and download the generic binaries. I've been running them ever since they came out, and it has been rock-solid (I'm just using the stock nvidia TNT driver).
If millions of people are willing to pay $15+ for a CD, that -is- the market value. And the cost of something is usually at least somewhat decoupled from production costs - there's the time spent in creating, prototyping, developing, testing, marketing, etc. that gets amortized in.
Which isn't to say that the IP situation isn't wacky :-)
That's not a flaw in the philosophy, it -is- the philosophy.
"When Linux led the start of this movement"
Linux did not lead the start of this movement.
"Let me tell you, the corporate world would rather have the quality product rather than the alternatives, even if they don't use the GPL."
Fine - they can use whatever they please! Surely you understand that for RMS (and many of us), the point of Free Software is not to earn corporate acceptance. The point is to have free software!
I believe you're confusing two issues: the RMS "it is always better to have free software" philosophy and the ESR "free software is always better" argument.
Which leaves me... Bush. Corporation loving, big oil loving, big (insert large financial interst) lover.
So what do I do? Don't think about it!"
Nader. No way could I vote for Bush - he as as you say. No way could I vote for Gore - he is a vicious, lying sack of shit in dullard's clothing. As my philosopher friend would accuse me... I'm "throwing away my vote" on Ralph Nader.
Aieee! Good point! But we were happy ;-)
Good, I'm glad to know that all the music from the 60's and 70's was a lie. Your parents were either pulling your leg (which I strongly suspect), or incredibly lame assholes. Or maybe they were just Young Republicans. Who knows.
I'm just wondering how the fuck we survived without Napster back in the 60's and 70's. Some great music back then, and we never seemed to have a problem finding an opportunity to hear it. Whatever.
I found myself agreeing with your post 100% until I encountered this statement. Surely you meant something different?
Unless, of course, you have a real life.
No it's not. And it won't be for quite some time. Check out this page for the reason why, complete with actual numbers. Where I live (rural NH, USA), we won't have a high speed internet connection until/unless 2-way satellite systems come online at an affordable price. No way will I ever see cable or ADSL here, ever. Population density is simply too low.
Y'all might want to keep this article in mind while designing your web pages :-)
- sgage
1)"knowable": what does Bill Gates know about the value of an intact ecosystem (I use BG as the hypothetical winner in the bid for privitizing the commons simply as a convenience).
2)"social": surely there are other values than "social" - at least, true conservatism ought to realize this.
3)value: the capitalist economy can only place a value on things it can buy and sell. What is the "value" of species x or y? You don't know. There need to be places where things can play out without appeal to the valuation of our bean-counting economics.
I just finished reading all the replies (whew!), and it seems to me that the one thing that everyone has neglected to notice is that, at least in the U.S., the government is owned by big business. The whole theoretical "pure capitalism" vs. "government intervention" is just that - a theoretical construct. In reality, government does just what their corporate masters tell them to.
On lumber/paper company owned land, the natural forest is typically converted into a monoculture of fast-growing timber species. So instead of a healthy, diverse forested ecosystem capable of supporting an incredible complexity of life, you get a fucking corn field of trees.
Their business is fiber - environmental health be damned.
Nor would we have the pollution.
"Serious environmentalism is primarily a concern of rich, developed nations (which right now are those that embrace the free market)."
You are seriously mis-informed if you believe this. You have areas all over the world being poisoned and desertified by people applying inappropriate agricultural practices foisted upon them in the name of "development".