If TFA (which I haven't read) suggested that there's no post-grad physics or math department in Africa, it's wrong. I have personally visited several physics departments in various African countries that had Ph.D programs. For example, here's a math program and here's a physics one.
It didn't sound to me like the article was making it out to be a problem. It didn't say it was a bad thing that these ultra-portables run Linux. It just simply stated that most people haven't heard of Linux. In addition, it complimented Linux by saying that smart people like it. That's almost as good as saying "Try Linux, you'll like it unless you're stupid".
Yes, that's exactly what I was expecting/hoping. But with mesh networking we don't need the infrastructure connecting that T1 to the rest of the city that we now depend on the ISPs to provide. And that also means no employees and all that other stuff you mentioned. Just the first connection and the mesh repeaters, which the users themselves buy and setup.
But if subscribers start providing free internet to their neighbors, and especially if that network gets expanded as per suggestion, ISPs will probably start disconnecting users that abuse their policies.
And sure, people could figure out ways to spoof it, but if the technology is simple enough and the use gets widespread, ISPs will figure out how to detect these networks and get compensation for the misuse.
I've been wondering about this. If and when mesh networks take off, what do we need the ISPs for? They don't make the net, they still have to get their connections from somewhere, just like we do.
Isn't just about every government in possession and in charge of maintaining part of one of those fat underwater cables that brings and sends the data to other countries? Why should they only let ISPs, universities and other government organizations feed off the teet? Right now we need the ISPs to get that signal and feed it to our homes. But if it doesn't cost the government anything to just let it's citizens get access directly by setting up their own hardware, then why not? And since we wouldn't be using their equipment anymore, what could the ISPs do about it? Sure, they'd bitch and moan about the government eating their "right" to gouge customers, but hopefully we'd ignore them.
In the original, you basically had to wander around until you found stuff.
:) I had to cheat and go to the net to find one of the dungeons. And even after I got the location I still can't imagine how I found it when I was a kid. Just wandered around playing the flute at every location on the map, I guess.
Nostalgia can be fun, but this is too far. If I'm still playing PS2 games 30 years from now instead of whatever awesome stuff will be out then, I hope my kid shoots me.
Shit. I just remembered that I played through the original Zelda last week. Oh well, at least that didn't cost me money or take up an enormous amount of room in my apartment like a pinball machine would.
I'm not trying to take any credit from Clarke or anything, but many sci-fi writers who seem to "predict" what technology will come to pass are really just up on current blue-sky research. So it's not as if they came up with the idea, they often just found out about some cool research while it was in it's very early stages, decades before anything comes to fruition, and wrote about it.
They use polarization separation instead. Two images, each with opposite polarization and with a slightly different viewing angle get to the viewer. Each lens of the glasses only lets in one polarization. For Beowulf they used right and left circular polarization. Which was surprising to me as I thought that circular polarizers cost too much to just be given away to moviegoers, but I guess those things are cheap now.
There may already be microscopic (more like picoscopic) black holes all around us. The thing with black holes is they are only dangerous if you get close to them. If they are small they can whiz right through us without hitting anything, much like many other particles that pass through us all the time. I'm not saying that creating one would be a good idea, but if, on the off-chance, one were created by the LHC it will probably be innocuous. I wish I could make those sound less like famous last words.
Yeah, a lot of people will talk about the 'net as if it's this great thing that gets all kinds of different people together for dialogue and understanding, but in reality it just makes it easier for people with fucked up ideas and values to find each other and convince each other that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It just leads to even more polarization. This MS thing is just a symptom of that.
And I don't try to pretend that I'm not affected by this phenomena either. The only forums I frequent are technocrat, gentoo otw and here. So it becomes too easy to believe that my views are mainstream and 100% correct. But sometimes I have a moment of clarity and realize that it is only because I'm mostly talking to people with the same views (except for those KDE fuckers) and that they are just reinforcing my predispositions. A good place to go for a reality check is one of those hardcore Christian forums, where the kind of people that we call nutcases hang out, and then realize that we are just as nutty to them as they are to us.
Slashdot users don't already know about the gimp. If this was an article discussing Photoshop alternatives for Linux, maybe it would be nice to mention the gimp; it's not. These comments wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't show up every single time there is an article about Adobe. The "use Linux!" comments on every Windows article can be funny (sometimes) because at least everyone knows they're more or less joking.
It goes the other way too; every time there's an article about the GIMP, some jackass has to derail the thread by saying how much it sucks compared to Photoshop. I wish both ways would cease.
The interesting thing here is that we are seeing two things that we haven't really saw before. One and probably the most significant, is that taliban tactics are being traded and treated like open information like the US government's terrorist spy program. This tells me that people aren't as afraid of the taliban as they used to be. The other is that we are hitting them so hard that they are scrambling for a way to mitigate it.
It tells me quite the opposite. It tells me that the Taliban is back to being powerful enough to make demands of companies and think it has a chance of being listened to. Over 6 years after they were almost bombed out of existence they are now almost back to running some things.
If things go the way I expect/hope then, in your analogy, Douglas Adams would have been paid to write the book in the first place, instead of writing the book and then selling copies in order to receive payment. By the time he is done with the original work of art, he has been paid enough to make all the time and effort worth it. The valueless copies are freely distributable.
Imagine your favourite author stating that they are not going to start writing another book until they get x dollars to do it, but once they are done, the book is available for all in electronic form. Sure, there will be lots of freeloaders, but as long as the artist gets what they want, who cares?
Just an anecdote using myself as an example. When I am in a situation where I'm pretty poor, living from check to check, I find myself not even trying to save money as much. It's like a downward spiral, possibly brought on by a feeling of hopelessness about my economic situation. As if I figure: "why bother pinching pennies when the end result is still poverty?".
On the other hand, when I'm doing better economically I find myself becoming thrifty. As soon as I see that money piling up in the bank I want to see how much more I can save.
Thankfully, I'm in the latter state right now, and I find myself cooking a lot more (as opposed to eating out) and buying less unnecessary items like beer and snacks.
Funny, but also a bit scary, as just this morning I read about this:
Tech giants Microsoft, IBM, Google and Yahoo have joined the board of the Open ID Foundation which aims to streamline login systems across the web.
The Foundation wants to bring about a system that could mean one ID acts as a guarantor of a person's identity across all the sites they have signed up for.
Oh good, so I only have to have one online identity compromised in order for them all to be compromised. I hope it's not just us slashdotters who think this is a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I just use a text console and bash for my servers, and just remote into them...
And how would you like it if someone took away that method and made you use a GUI in the name of consolidating options?
If TFA (which I haven't read) suggested that there's no post-grad physics or math department in Africa, it's wrong. I have personally visited several physics departments in various African countries that had Ph.D programs. For example, here's a math program and here's a physics one.
It didn't sound to me like the article was making it out to be a problem. It didn't say it was a bad thing that these ultra-portables run Linux. It just simply stated that most people haven't heard of Linux. In addition, it complimented Linux by saying that smart people like it. That's almost as good as saying "Try Linux, you'll like it unless you're stupid".
Yes, that's exactly what I was expecting/hoping. But with mesh networking we don't need the infrastructure connecting that T1 to the rest of the city that we now depend on the ISPs to provide. And that also means no employees and all that other stuff you mentioned. Just the first connection and the mesh repeaters, which the users themselves buy and setup.
But if subscribers start providing free internet to their neighbors, and especially if that network gets expanded as per suggestion, ISPs will probably start disconnecting users that abuse their policies.
And sure, people could figure out ways to spoof it, but if the technology is simple enough and the use gets widespread, ISPs will figure out how to detect these networks and get compensation for the misuse.
I've been wondering about this. If and when mesh networks take off, what do we need the ISPs for? They don't make the net, they still have to get their connections from somewhere, just like we do.
Isn't just about every government in possession and in charge of maintaining part of one of those fat underwater cables that brings and sends the data to other countries? Why should they only let ISPs, universities and other government organizations feed off the teet? Right now we need the ISPs to get that signal and feed it to our homes. But if it doesn't cost the government anything to just let it's citizens get access directly by setting up their own hardware, then why not? And since we wouldn't be using their equipment anymore, what could the ISPs do about it? Sure, they'd bitch and moan about the government eating their "right" to gouge customers, but hopefully we'd ignore them.
Would I be called a grammar nazi if it's my correction that contains improper english?
It's "whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis". And, if possible, there should be some indication that the phrase is spoken in a comically low tone.
In the original, you basically had to wander around until you found stuff.
:) I had to cheat and go to the net to find one of the dungeons. And even after I got the location I still can't imagine how I found it when I was a kid. Just wandered around playing the flute at every location on the map, I guess.
Nostalgia can be fun, but this is too far. If I'm still playing PS2 games 30 years from now instead of whatever awesome stuff will be out then, I hope my kid shoots me.
Shit. I just remembered that I played through the original Zelda last week. Oh well, at least that didn't cost me money or take up an enormous amount of room in my apartment like a pinball machine would.
There are no bushmen in Nairobi. Bushmen are hunter-gatherers in southern Africa. Nairobi is a modern metropolis in east Africa.
I'm not trying to take any credit from Clarke or anything, but many sci-fi writers who seem to "predict" what technology will come to pass are really just up on current blue-sky research. So it's not as if they came up with the idea, they often just found out about some cool research while it was in it's very early stages, decades before anything comes to fruition, and wrote about it.
The technical expression I prefer is "If it's not duct, it's fucked"
They use polarization separation instead. Two images, each with opposite polarization and with a slightly different viewing angle get to the viewer. Each lens of the glasses only lets in one polarization. For Beowulf they used right and left circular polarization. Which was surprising to me as I thought that circular polarizers cost too much to just be given away to moviegoers, but I guess those things are cheap now.
Obligatory Wiki article
You shouldn't have to ask. Anything is possible at zombocom.
There may already be microscopic (more like picoscopic) black holes all around us. The thing with black holes is they are only dangerous if you get close to them. If they are small they can whiz right through us without hitting anything, much like many other particles that pass through us all the time. I'm not saying that creating one would be a good idea, but if, on the off-chance, one were created by the LHC it will probably be innocuous. I wish I could make those sound less like famous last words.
Involve baseball. There, fixed.
Also, go Jays.
Yeah, a lot of people will talk about the 'net as if it's this great thing that gets all kinds of different people together for dialogue and understanding, but in reality it just makes it easier for people with fucked up ideas and values to find each other and convince each other that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It just leads to even more polarization. This MS thing is just a symptom of that.
And I don't try to pretend that I'm not affected by this phenomena either. The only forums I frequent are technocrat, gentoo otw and here. So it becomes too easy to believe that my views are mainstream and 100% correct. But sometimes I have a moment of clarity and realize that it is only because I'm mostly talking to people with the same views (except for those KDE fuckers) and that they are just reinforcing my predispositions. A good place to go for a reality check is one of those hardcore Christian forums, where the kind of people that we call nutcases hang out, and then realize that we are just as nutty to them as they are to us.
Unfortunately, plots of books and movies are also being patented by people like this.
In the eyes of the lord, 400 years is a blink of an eye, my son.
:)
Slashdot users don't already know about the gimp. If this was an article discussing Photoshop alternatives for Linux, maybe it would be nice to mention the gimp; it's not. These comments wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't show up every single time there is an article about Adobe. The "use Linux!" comments on every Windows article can be funny (sometimes) because at least everyone knows they're more or less joking.
It goes the other way too; every time there's an article about the GIMP, some jackass has to derail the thread by saying how much it sucks compared to Photoshop. I wish both ways would cease.
What's that line?
:)
Something like "Those who forget Unix are doomed to recode it". So the last big OS vendor is finally coming around. Good.
As for involving GNU as part of their plans, of course it's a trap
The interesting thing here is that we are seeing two things that we haven't really saw before. One and probably the most significant, is that taliban tactics are being traded and treated like open information like the US government's terrorist spy program. This tells me that people aren't as afraid of the taliban as they used to be. The other is that we are hitting them so hard that they are scrambling for a way to mitigate it.
It tells me quite the opposite. It tells me that the Taliban is back to being powerful enough to make demands of companies and think it has a chance of being listened to. Over 6 years after they were almost bombed out of existence they are now almost back to running some things.
If things go the way I expect/hope then, in your analogy, Douglas Adams would have been paid to write the book in the first place, instead of writing the book and then selling copies in order to receive payment. By the time he is done with the original work of art, he has been paid enough to make all the time and effort worth it. The valueless copies are freely distributable.
Imagine your favourite author stating that they are not going to start writing another book until they get x dollars to do it, but once they are done, the book is available for all in electronic form. Sure, there will be lots of freeloaders, but as long as the artist gets what they want, who cares?
Just an anecdote using myself as an example. When I am in a situation where I'm pretty poor, living from check to check, I find myself not even trying to save money as much. It's like a downward spiral, possibly brought on by a feeling of hopelessness about my economic situation. As if I figure: "why bother pinching pennies when the end result is still poverty?".
On the other hand, when I'm doing better economically I find myself becoming thrifty. As soon as I see that money piling up in the bank I want to see how much more I can save.
Thankfully, I'm in the latter state right now, and I find myself cooking a lot more (as opposed to eating out) and buying less unnecessary items like beer and snacks.
But maybe I'm just weird.
Good point.
Funny, but also a bit scary, as just this morning I read about this:
Tech giants Microsoft, IBM, Google and Yahoo have joined the board of the Open ID Foundation which aims to streamline login systems across the web.
The Foundation wants to bring about a system that could mean one ID acts as a guarantor of a person's identity across all the sites they have signed up for.
Oh good, so I only have to have one online identity compromised in order for them all to be compromised. I hope it's not just us slashdotters who think this is a bad idea.