Fifteen years ago it was a proud achievement to run Linux, a true 32-bit, dependable system when alternatives were worse (Win98, or slug-like Windows NT.) It was magic when I could run Netscape and have access to the Web; a non-broken, well written TCP stack allowed me to understand things. A good chunk of time went into building and rebuilding such a system, and more than one too. Putting together a usable computer was a task in itself. Using it - not so much.
But over the years certain issues, like "work that needs to be done," cropped up. Linux was great for playing around, but it wasn't as good when you simply needed to write a Word document so that your company gets paid, or to open a mysterious WINMAIL.DAT that the customer sent you. What could be there, in that attachment, I wondered? Eventually two things happened: Windows got better, and the needs of Real Work (tm) became very strong.
At this point I have one Linux server in this house (Ubuntu LTS,) and at least four Windows boxes. I don't send money to Apple; however the MS tax is now bearable simply because Win7 is damn good. Usability-wise, it's far better than Linux because all the tools of trade run on it. Even Win8 had been sufficiently hacked now to get rid of all the Metro|Modern stupidities and revert back to the desktop as the only GUI.
I have Linux Mint in a VM. As far as I can tell, it is exceptionally nice. But it won't become my primary desktop OS. There is simply no need; it won't make my life and work more productive. Hard to do that if it doesn't run the software that I need. Some software (Xilinx tools) come as Linux binaries, but I haven't played with those for a long time (again, no practical need to do so.) Lots of other tools, starting with free LTSpice and going up, cost-wise, are not available for Linux (or Mac, actually.)
I will gladly use Mint if I need to build a PC from parts and use it for some lazy Web browsing. It would be ideal there. But if you buy a premade PC, the MS tax makes it not worth it to bother with Linux. If you need the computer for a specific purpose, then the software that implements that purpose ought to be in agreement with the OS. The OS is cheap compared to most engineering and industrial software. Even QuickBooks costs more than Windows. There is no need to tilt at these particular windmills; just use whatever OS is right for the job. If the day comes when Windows is not a good choice, have another look and make another decision.
The example is from the court. You don't become the defendant until you are indicted.
And, if you are accused of a crime and are brought to trial, your lawyer should be cross-examining the witnesses and attacking their credibility
In my example the witness is unimpeachable. It could be ten strangers all seeing the defendant kneeling over the body. They would be all correct. The trick is in interpreting what they saw.
If I said, "hello officer", or "I like ice cream". I do not see how they can guarantee that they will use that against me.
They will, if an ice cream vendor was just robbed three blocks down the road and some of his ice cream stolen.
Mathematically speaking, any response $x can be known to the police (but not to you!) to be the favorite first words of a wanted cop killer. Say those words and be tasered in the next second, cuffed in next five and dropped off at the jail in the next ten minutes. Then you will have plenty of time to explain that you are not a killer. Cops will walk because you said the magic words; they just acted as an informational broadcast told them to act. You cannot know what those words are today, or how would anyone have to look, or what car would be dangerous to drive today (a gray or blue truck, perhaps?) and so on.
It is in human nature to cooperate. That's why innocent people try to help cops - and that's why they pay the price. Street gangs know better - they confess to nothing, they say nothing, and they lawyer up. But you, an innocent geek, can be easily arrested and convicted for some remnants of a light drug that you may have brought into your car on a sole of your shoe. Can you honestly say that if your car is vaccum-cleaned and the dust is analyzed for drugs there won't be any drugs detected, down to one molecule per pound of dust?
ou can always take the 5th Amendment. Also, IIRC if you are a defendant you do not have to take the stand under any circumstance.
One problem with that approach is that the prosecution can bring a witness or two who will claim they saw you doing it, and you - being silent - cannot challenge their words and explain your actions as being lawful and innocent.
Witness: "I saw the defendant kneeling over the body."
Defendant: ""
Jury: "Guilty."
Witness: "I saw the defendant kneeling over the body."
Defendant: "I was trying to revive him, I am a trained lifeguard and here is my CPR certificate."
Jury: "Not guilty."
What kind of a journalist doesn't know that a prosecutor can make the grand jury indict a ham sandwich if he wants to? It doesn't require deep knowledge of the legal system; it only requires watching a few episodes of Law and Order.
The legal system may be crooked. It may be hard to not talk when the judge can put you in jail for remaining silent. The 5th protects only you, not someone else - you have no right to remain silent if you are not witnessing against yourself. Prosecution is always happy to give you a worthless immunity, since they never wanted you indicted in the first place. You cannot lie either, because you don't know if your answers are cross-checked with someone else's - and they usually are. The best way to deal with law is to avoid it altogether.
It's pretty easy to find out firsthand what politicians, bankers and lawyers do to you. You learn that when you pay your taxes, when you visit the bank, and when you are sued by RIAA. For some it's when the policians try to take your guns away; for other it's when other politicians refuse to acknowledge their approach to marriage. For yet another it's when you buy GM Volt and get a tax credit; for others it's when their neighbor buys a Volt and they pay for his tax credit. We know pretty well what this crowd does, along our wishes and against them.
From the Devil's advocate position, the politician has reasons to say what he says. I don't know if the numbers work out. But here is the story.
A car is big and heavy. It needs a lot of energy to move. But it runs on a simple fuel, and losses on delivery of that fuel to your local gas station are relatively low. A car is also a simple mechanism; if it breaks you fix it or get a new one.
A bicyclist is smaller and lighter than a car (at least most bicyclists are like that:-) However a bicyclist runs on very expensive fuel. It has to be grown with use of oil; then it has to be delivered by many supply trucks to processing facilities; then it has to be delivered by other trucks to stores; then the bicyclist drives to those stores (or has himself driven) and buys that food. Then it has to be prepared at home (or at least reheated) which takes more energy. Overall, human food is very expensive, compared to gasoline.
A bicyclist is also subject to wear. Some say they get healthier and stronger. However is not a recommended activity to breathe car exhausts for an hour or two per day . In case of an accident your bones cannot be welded or replaced as easily as a steel part of a car. The hospital bill can exceed all your savings ten times over. White bicycles along the road are not that rare either. But even when you survive the trial by the road, you take a shower after every trip, which adds to your energy needs - and somewhere else, at a power plant that you do not know, another entirely innocent dinosaur flies up the chimney.
A bicyclist also loses some of his personal time to ride the bicycle. It's not a loss if you enjoy riding; however I am unsure how many enjoy riding in rain, or at night, or in other adverse conditions.
All in all, a bicyclist's CO(2) contribution is not negligible, and that should be kept in mind. A horse, on the other hand, that feeds at your own, all-natural pasture, is as close to zero CO(2) as it ever gets for muscle-driven locomotion.
But the fact they can do it without my knowledge is enough for me. It is too much power to give blindly to a corporation.
I guess then you are using your own OS and your own browser. Or perhaps you did the code review of your current Linux system (with all the binary patches and like) and conclusively proved that the system is safe under your definition of "safe."
Most people, however, do not treat their computer as a trusted system. They know that their activity can be monitored, just as they themselves may be monitored when they walk in public. It is expensive and cumbersome to maintain a trusted system, and it is always one compromise away from spilling all your secrets. Better to not keep any secrets on it - or at least compartmentalize those.
The best way to build a trusted system is to cut the network cable that goes to that system. Then pretty much any OS can be used, and it would take one wickedly hacked OS to leak data through whatever USB Flash disk you stick into it from time to time.
Make sure that if the tether fails the remaining pieces of tape are cut into manageable chunks (10 or 100 miles long) by explosives. That is, if the tether is manufactured as a continuous tape. If it already comes as $n miles long chunks and you join them, then the joints would be the best place for those emergency disconnects.
IMO, the danger is not significant even if you do nothing. The fallen wires of the high tension power grid are more dangerous, and we have more of them. What would happen to a city if you throw a dozen of foot wide, 50 mil thick tapes of plastic onto it? They will be very light, but they wouldn't be infinitely strong to cut through Kilimanjaro. They'd be only strong enough to support themselves up to the geostationary orbit, plus to support the mass of the loaded climber.
If the space elevator is not built then we have to sit back and await the new physics, such as antigravity and teleportation and extradimensional travel. Without any of that we will never have enough resources to launch enough mass to the LEO. If we do, we will pollute the atmosphere to the point of extinction, doing a better job than any meteor from outer space. Rockets are very dirty, and not just when you launch them. Most of the poisons come when you are making them, starting with mining the ores. Most of the fuel (aside from LOX-H fuels) is derived from oil, so we will be short of that too.
Oh yes, mineshafts, I love that one, let's do that as well, sign me up. What's the required men to women ratio, again, doc?
Same on Earth and on Mars. And the same mineshafts. You wouldn't want to live on the surface of a planet that has very little atmosphere and very little magnetic field.
it would be (1) more boring than ISS, and (2) quite a bit more dangerous.
And (3) far less valuable. Heroes usually don't mind to die for a good cause, but there isn't much of a good cause in a mere trip there and back, without even landing.
But to use your own words: "It would take infinitely long if you never start."
It's the well known paradox of spaceflight. If your industry makes spaceships that are faster and faster with every year, a spaceship launched in the year 0 will be overtaken by a spaceship that is launched later. There was also an episode in ST:TNG where Enterprise picked up an ancient sublight transport that was loaded with the B Ark type personalities.
In this case it is pointless to make a 2-year trip if within 10, or 20 years you can make it in a far more reasonable time frame. The difference between your point and my own is that starting work NOW on nuclear propulsion will affect the end result either linearly (at worst) or as x^y. But if you start sending people on rickety spaceships, you will spend all your treasure on doing that, and there will be nothing left for research and construction. Then your end result will be affected as x^-y, or even as -x^y. Why to do that? Those 10 men on Mars will not be of any practical use to anyone. 100 men, or 1,000 will start making a difference - but you need real spaceships to deliver them and the supporting resources.
If I may put it differently, you need to climb to the roof. One way to do it is by making a huge slingshot and firing people at the roof, one at a time, with no guarantee of survival. Another way is to take your time and build a ladder. I am voting for the ladder. We aren't *that* desperate to land people on Mars. If we can judge the chance of being hit by a large meteor, one was in 1905, another was in 2013, and none would be extinction events. There was none since written history, and geology tells us there was none for quite a while. As a side effect, spaceships with nuclear propulsion can be used to avert the strike; a Martian colony cannot do that.
both problems can be tackled at the same time, without waiting.
The dependency is in the fact that we as a planet don't have enough treasure to send people to Mars, especially if they need to land there and to establish a colony. This is ONLY because our spaceflight technologies are too primitive. This is where you start working. We do not want to send people to a sure death if waiting 10, 20 or 50 years would be far more efficient. Besides, we just don't have the money. Ask Obama. Tito, with his mere Millions, is not even a player - you need Billions to mount an expedition that has a prayer.
I wasn't really commenting on Tito's plan, but rather on MichaelSmith's notion of a one-way trip, at the start of this thread (which, btw, has been proposed, seriously)
I remember seeing that, but that is even more ridiculous:-)
So I'm not quite sure, when you say "Humans cannot sit in a tin can for two years and retain sanity", what are you basing this opinion on?
Mir and ISS operators were always, at all times, 1 hour away from Earth. They could always jump into Soyuz, press a button and within an hour or two, depending on the rotation of Earth, they'd be on terra firma. Cosmonauts were trained to do basic medical procedures, but if any of them gets ill or injured they would leave the station and go to Earth. This is not going to happen during the Mars trip. If a spacefarer needs a complex surgery, his buddies are the best approximation of a surgeon. Their surgical experience? Maybe 30 minutes, trying to cut up a dog and then put it back together.
Yet another factor is boredom. Space station is naturally a busy place, with many experiments going on, with many observations to make, with many pieces of machinery needing alignment or repair. Guest expeditions would be coming and going; cargo ships would be arriving and making you unload tons of junk, and then to load the vacant space with tons of other junk that you are done with. Fresh food would be shipped to them at every opportunity; their families would be on the video and audio link every week or however often they wanted, and there is no communication delay. In other words, the station crew felt needed, and they were needed. They were worked hard by the Mission Control for their own good.
Most of that will not be available on a year-long trip to Mars. There will be no guests or ships coming or going. The communication will be delayed to the point of being hard to talk:
At the perihelion opposition, at 56 millions km from the Earth, a distance as short as 0.37 AU (1 AU = 149.56x108 km), it takes 3 minutes and 7 seconds for a signal emitted by the DSN to reach Mars. But when Earth and Mars are the farthest apart at 2.52 AU, it takes 20 minutes and 57 seconds to transmit the same radio signal.
I presume you won't fly when Earth and Mars are the farthest apart, but even 3 minutes will surely throw a monkey wrench into your chat. You'd be better off just sticking to email.
The travellers will not have much of science to do on the way. They cannot do better than automated scientific instruments; those do not get tired, they don't forget, and they have sharper eyes than any human. The humans themselves would be the only experiment, actually.
There will be a considerable fear of a failure of the life support system. Such things are possible, and accidents of that sort did happen on space stations in LEO. But there, as I said, you can always escape. There is no escape from the Mars spaceship. Apollo 13 got into a similar predicament, and they barely survived - even though the Moon is nearby. If a similar accident happens on a Mars trip, those guys and gals are just as good as dead. The accident can occur not just because the machinery fails but also because of a meteor damage, or of radiation damage, or just because something randomly failed. A motor burns up that pumps sewage, and the motor is not accessible from the inside, and the ship is too small to allow an airlock. What do you do now? You depend on that sewage for your water, and there is no other way to process it. This fear will wear people down. None of that fear was present in the ground simulation. How well will you sleep on an old, rusty World War II bomb that can go off at any time?
So I do see a point in those lab rats in a tin can, harsh as the whole notion is.
Very well. Get a few monkeys and send them up to Mars. See how your automated ship works, and how their life support system operates. Monkeys can't repair it? Excellent; the test is eve
I might buy the Glass, but only if the device connects only to my computers and does only what I want. In effect, it would be a convenient HUD, not a service. Not a bit would go outside of my LAN.
In most cases, though, I don't quite feel the need to have one on. Do I need to wear a monitor in front of me? Do I need to threaten everyone with recording of all their activities, public and semi-public? My life does not revolve around constant communication; there is specific time and place for that. The employer will probably also be not very happy that you can watch movies and read Slashdot all day long without anyone knowing it. The police will be joyful to learn that a Glass owner can see not just the road but also his email and chat - and there is no way to prove it one way or another.
Yes, I was referring to that experiment, and I was aware of the outcome. IMO it is "generally unsatisfactory" because you cannot have astronauts in such psychological condition anywhere. One angry or suicidal man can kill everyone. Even if he kills himself, what to do with his body? Stuff him into a spacesuit and hope that it is airtight for a year? What nerves of carbon nanotubes you must have to eat, live and relax a foot or two away from a decomposed body?
There were other experiments as well, also on Earth, that resulted in poor psychological compatibility. Generally, all astronauts go through these tests because life in the LEO is not particularly exciting either.
They had 6000 volunteers for the long mission - I suspect that an actual mission to mars will result in many more volunteers, despite the risks.
I think most of those volunteers are unfit for a spaceflight just because they have volunteered - and by doing that proved that they are not reasonable people:-)
Also you can find plenty of eager volunteers for anything in many mental hospitals. This doesn't make them competent. All children under 8 will gladly fly too; does it mean anything?
But the key point here is that the voyage is so long and so difficult and delivers so little, that any reasonable person would question its value. If you are really itching to launch a 10 ton craft to Mars, launch robots. They will actually land, and they will survey the planet. This is necessary anyway if you have serious plans on ever colonizing it. Don't even bother designing new robots, just make more of those that are already roaming the planet. That would be also a good use of money. Or hang tens of satellites over Mars, for survey and as repeaters for communication and positioning. Those robots will appreciate the gesture; future explorers will be very insistent on these facilities, since there isn't too many cell towers on Mars, and there is no other method of communication with away parties.
Though I don't think it's possible to truly simulate a mission to Mars here on Earth when the participants know that if things go very bad, they are just an escape hatch away from help. I think the only way to do a true simulation would be if the participants really thought that they were in a space capsule, which is pretty hard to do when gravity gives it away.
One Sci-Fi short story actually reverses your proposition. Martian exploration crew is repeatedly trained on Earth, in a chamber that simulates Mars as well as it can be; but the help is always a button press away. However during yet another training astronauts unexpectedly discover that they are on Mars, not on Earth, and that the help is not coming if they need it. One astronaut immediately goes bananas; another manages to put him and himself into hibernation before their automated ship returns them to Earth.
Yes, but if the whole point is to learn how to keep people alive up there
There is very little to learn. We already had ground simulations of the flight, and they were generally unsatisfactory. Humans cannot sit in a tin can for two years and retain sanity. That alone overwhelms all the other issues, of which there are many. The best solution for keeping humans alive during the flight to Mars is to make the flight short - say, a day, or two. Until that happens nobody in his right mind should spend years of his life being a lab rat.
A robot can do planting of the flag just fine, if that's the only reason to send a meatbag up there. There will be no public interest in this event anyway, even if your spacefarers survive the year of confinement and recycled water/food and don't kill each other. Man and a woman - strong emotions swing both ways; as they say, "Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned." But OK, let's say those travellers warily emerged from the lander and made a few shaky steps (even in the lower gravity of Mars.) What next? Do they just hammer a flag into the ground and leave? Do they, in the great numbers of two, start to study the whole planet? No, of course not. They aren't even going to land, per Tito's scenario, and there will be nothing to show, nothing to celebrate. The spam in the can may just as well never leave Earth.
I'm far from being against spaceflight. But you need to be always reasonable and sane. It just doesn't make any sense to send people for that long and that far. They are likely to die, and there is nothing to be gained from this flight. The money should be instead invested into making more efficient vehicles that can, as matter of fact, traverse the distance much faster and thus make access to Mars far more realistic. Nuclear power? Perhaps, if that works. New physics? Always welcome. But sending people on this voyage is just as practical as crossing the Atlantic on a reed raft. Is it possible? Yes, if the stars are in a favorable position (literally, in case of Mars.) But is a reed raft, or a torora boat like Ra II, a viable transport between the Old and the New worlds? Not in a thousand years. You need something that gives you a half-decent chance of getting there alive, and doesn't take forever. Trips of Thor Heyerdahl took about 3 months each, sometimes with stops at various ports. Those trips were done on Earth, where the air is free and the ocean full of fish is a foot away.
So, Mr. Tito, if your money burns through your pocket, take it and build a space elevator. That would be a worthy endeavor. Once that is in place we can start thinking about building larger ships, nuclear-powered, that take water as reaction mass and can travel to the Moon, to Mars, or to the Belt within reasonable time. That's the way to go.
How about instead of people, we send a few robots and some self-contained factories with which to build more.
Do that here, on Earth, first. It would be even easier, given that we know a lot about this planet. Make a robot that, once dropped off in, say, Himalayas, will do whatever is necessary to assemble another one. When that happens we will discuss flying such a robot to Mars.
IMO, it would be a challenge to even find one human - or one group of humans - who'd be able to pull that off. Many alternative history books were written where such scenarios are proposed, studied - and rejected as improbable. The threshold of building a factory that makes semiconductors is absurdly high. One robot, or one human, will not be able to do it. You have to bring up the whole technological civilization to just produce all the chemicals that go into manufacturing of semiconductors. A robot will need a few thousand years to spiral it up, starting with stone tools and likely having to invent unique technologies on the spot as it discovers new minerals and new environmental conditions.
if you're going to put people on a rocket and shoot them to Mars, in the understanding that, no matter what happens, they're going to die there, won't ever see Earth again
Then your best choice would be dead people. They don't need any life support, and they won't die again in the middle of the mission. They will do just as good as anyone else, after being confined to a small tin can for a year. A flyby? They are ideal for that, considering how much work they need to do on the way there and back.
The problem is no longer technical, rather it's that every bloody company with a web application (including Google) wants you to connect and sign in, so they can abuse your privacy, monetize your personal information, and sell ads.
If the application is cached then it is no different from the usual setup.exe routine where you download something once, install it, and it resides on your computer forever. As you said, there is no monetization here - the software has to be licensed to be profitable, and management of licenses is a big PITA. HTML buys you only one thing - platform independence; and even that is not a big deal. Java or C# CLR will compile and run your application just fine.
Chromium OS and Firefox OS. They don't somehow fail to boot when you have no network access, any more than a phone does.
The BIOS doesn't fail to boot either, but that doesn't make a box without HDD useful. The "booting" part is irrelevant because it is not the end goal. What is not irrelevant is "running my software." That may or may not happen with those OSes, depending on how the software is cached and ran. I would guess some companies would give you the software for free if they can exploit you in a way that doesn't require online presence. Most, though, will require a persistent connection - both to ensure that you still are licensed to run it, and to lay a hand on your data. (I hope you weren't under an illusion that your data in the cloud is yours.)
Doesn't even have to be that bad. Plenty of missions in the GTA games are timed so that you have to run 5-minute mission and at your best you can beat it only by one or two seconds. Want to buy a time dilation pill? Only $3, but this will save you a week of frustration when all of a sudden the mission impossible transforms into a very pleasant boat trip. (Naturally, the pill works only once.)
Or, if you are not playing GTA, try the first encounter with the swarm in the Resistance - when you have no effective weapons, no distance, no cover, and have to retreat while shooting behind your back (which isn't possible.) That swarm may be a boss, but the mission should have a navigable way, a strategy of winning - not just randomly running away and hoping that one of 50 attempts puts you into the elevator ten milliseconds ahead of the foe. To compare, the Cathedral, and the City Square all have effective strategies, and those locations have good replay value. The bad missions completely block your access to good missions until you spend another day, or a week, randomly flailing against the boss that is too strong for you.
A good game should always have a switch that allows you to skip some missions. Not everyone is equally capable - mentally or physically. Why should a one-armed player, or a player with some other disability, be prevented from playing those missions that he chooses to play? The money had been paid for the whole game, shouldn't it be your choice what missions to skip? There are no Nobel Peace Prizes given for beating the game anyway (not that they are worth anything now.)
Currently, Chrombooks' being limited to HTML isn't good enough for most people's needs. But if and when all the software most people need can be delivered efficiently over 'the web' (with NC expanding what that means), then the migration may well begin.
Portable use of notebooks is closely linked with their offline use. There are plenty of locations where you cannot, or do not dare to, use WiFi. Offline use of a notebook stops you from using web-based applications. Most notebook uses are comfortable with locally executed software and cannot imagine that they cannot work on an airplane, or in a moving car, bus, train... in many cases such work is required and expected.
Unlimited network access over wide areas is not going to be free for quite some time. It may be also not possible if the usable spectrum is congested. (You cannot just go to 60 GHz, that band has range measured in feet.) This means that universal net access from anywhere is not going to happen. At least not when the country, if not the world, is in recession.
People understand that this is a great solution in search of a problem. The always-on device does not have any advantage over a traditional setup. It only needs gigabytes to be sent to you and from you; a waste that is completely unnecessary. In majority of applications this device buys you nothing; there is nothing that you can say is possible now, whereas it was not possible before. Why would anyone adopt this method?
The only winners here are software manufacturers, who are itching to become software landlords and collect rent for every application started, for every photo processed, for every song played.
To me, Native Client seems more flexible. You have the option of running apps thin, and there's nothing to prevent you from using the NC toolkit to run locally-installed apps as well.
Java/Android and, to some extent, other technologies (C#) have solved this problem already. Why do we need yet another solution? Just to support SaaS? Google's Chromium was always questioned about its purpose, given that Android is already mature and very functional, and can run your software locally, or remotely, or anywhere in between.
You are getting language lessons for free and still complaining?
Note that those *are* the languages that are on the rise. You are already outnumbered. Tomorrow you will not have a job in the USA - but you would be welcome in those countries (India and China.) Take the opportunity and at least learn the basics.
First, demonstrate she has abused her position - using facts
Fact #0: The boat is in hands of customs.
Fact #1: There is no good reason for that to happen. At least neither the shipbuilder nor the purchaser did anything wrong. They even refused to do wrong when asked to.
What would you do in his place? Would you sign a knowingly false document? Hard to deny that it is false if you pointed out the error a moment ago. The guy didn't sign. He wanted the document corrected, but the DHS agent refused to do her job.
The owner may have an excellent *criminal* case against the agent for racketeering or something like that because she threatened him with harm unless he commits an illegal act. And when he refused to break the law she executed the threat.
Depending on circumstances, the boat can be sold at an auction for peanuts, and the agent can buy it. Here is the motive for the crime. Would you like to get a $1M boat for $50K?
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Fifteen years ago it was a proud achievement to run Linux, a true 32-bit, dependable system when alternatives were worse (Win98, or slug-like Windows NT.) It was magic when I could run Netscape and have access to the Web; a non-broken, well written TCP stack allowed me to understand things. A good chunk of time went into building and rebuilding such a system, and more than one too. Putting together a usable computer was a task in itself. Using it - not so much.
But over the years certain issues, like "work that needs to be done," cropped up. Linux was great for playing around, but it wasn't as good when you simply needed to write a Word document so that your company gets paid, or to open a mysterious WINMAIL.DAT that the customer sent you. What could be there, in that attachment, I wondered? Eventually two things happened: Windows got better, and the needs of Real Work (tm) became very strong.
At this point I have one Linux server in this house (Ubuntu LTS,) and at least four Windows boxes. I don't send money to Apple; however the MS tax is now bearable simply because Win7 is damn good. Usability-wise, it's far better than Linux because all the tools of trade run on it. Even Win8 had been sufficiently hacked now to get rid of all the Metro|Modern stupidities and revert back to the desktop as the only GUI.
I have Linux Mint in a VM. As far as I can tell, it is exceptionally nice. But it won't become my primary desktop OS. There is simply no need; it won't make my life and work more productive. Hard to do that if it doesn't run the software that I need. Some software (Xilinx tools) come as Linux binaries, but I haven't played with those for a long time (again, no practical need to do so.) Lots of other tools, starting with free LTSpice and going up, cost-wise, are not available for Linux (or Mac, actually.)
I will gladly use Mint if I need to build a PC from parts and use it for some lazy Web browsing. It would be ideal there. But if you buy a premade PC, the MS tax makes it not worth it to bother with Linux. If you need the computer for a specific purpose, then the software that implements that purpose ought to be in agreement with the OS. The OS is cheap compared to most engineering and industrial software. Even QuickBooks costs more than Windows. There is no need to tilt at these particular windmills; just use whatever OS is right for the job. If the day comes when Windows is not a good choice, have another look and make another decision.
If someone can provide proof that Apple has been killing unicorns, then I will become a true convert and switch to OSX.
Have you seen a unicorn anywhere in Cupertino recently? No? Here is your proof.
The example is from the court. You don't become the defendant until you are indicted.
And, if you are accused of a crime and are brought to trial, your lawyer should be cross-examining the witnesses and attacking their credibility
In my example the witness is unimpeachable. It could be ten strangers all seeing the defendant kneeling over the body. They would be all correct. The trick is in interpreting what they saw.
If I said, "hello officer", or "I like ice cream". I do not see how they can guarantee that they will use that against me.
They will, if an ice cream vendor was just robbed three blocks down the road and some of his ice cream stolen.
Mathematically speaking, any response $x can be known to the police (but not to you!) to be the favorite first words of a wanted cop killer. Say those words and be tasered in the next second, cuffed in next five and dropped off at the jail in the next ten minutes. Then you will have plenty of time to explain that you are not a killer. Cops will walk because you said the magic words; they just acted as an informational broadcast told them to act. You cannot know what those words are today, or how would anyone have to look, or what car would be dangerous to drive today (a gray or blue truck, perhaps?) and so on.
It is in human nature to cooperate. That's why innocent people try to help cops - and that's why they pay the price. Street gangs know better - they confess to nothing, they say nothing, and they lawyer up. But you, an innocent geek, can be easily arrested and convicted for some remnants of a light drug that you may have brought into your car on a sole of your shoe. Can you honestly say that if your car is vaccum-cleaned and the dust is analyzed for drugs there won't be any drugs detected, down to one molecule per pound of dust?
ou can always take the 5th Amendment. Also, IIRC if you are a defendant you do not have to take the stand under any circumstance.
One problem with that approach is that the prosecution can bring a witness or two who will claim they saw you doing it, and you - being silent - cannot challenge their words and explain your actions as being lawful and innocent.
Witness: "I saw the defendant kneeling over the body."
Defendant: ""
Jury: "Guilty."
Witness: "I saw the defendant kneeling over the body."
Defendant: "I was trying to revive him, I am a trained lifeguard and here is my CPR certificate."
Jury: "Not guilty."
What kind of a journalist doesn't know that a prosecutor can make the grand jury indict a ham sandwich if he wants to? It doesn't require deep knowledge of the legal system; it only requires watching a few episodes of Law and Order.
The legal system may be crooked. It may be hard to not talk when the judge can put you in jail for remaining silent. The 5th protects only you, not someone else - you have no right to remain silent if you are not witnessing against yourself. Prosecution is always happy to give you a worthless immunity, since they never wanted you indicted in the first place. You cannot lie either, because you don't know if your answers are cross-checked with someone else's - and they usually are. The best way to deal with law is to avoid it altogether.
It's pretty easy to find out firsthand what politicians, bankers and lawyers do to you. You learn that when you pay your taxes, when you visit the bank, and when you are sued by RIAA. For some it's when the policians try to take your guns away; for other it's when other politicians refuse to acknowledge their approach to marriage. For yet another it's when you buy GM Volt and get a tax credit; for others it's when their neighbor buys a Volt and they pay for his tax credit. We know pretty well what this crowd does, along our wishes and against them.
From the Devil's advocate position, the politician has reasons to say what he says. I don't know if the numbers work out. But here is the story.
A car is big and heavy. It needs a lot of energy to move. But it runs on a simple fuel, and losses on delivery of that fuel to your local gas station are relatively low. A car is also a simple mechanism; if it breaks you fix it or get a new one.
A bicyclist is smaller and lighter than a car (at least most bicyclists are like that :-) However a bicyclist runs on very expensive fuel. It has to be grown with use of oil; then it has to be delivered by many supply trucks to processing facilities; then it has to be delivered by other trucks to stores; then the bicyclist drives to those stores (or has himself driven) and buys that food. Then it has to be prepared at home (or at least reheated) which takes more energy. Overall, human food is very expensive, compared to gasoline.
A bicyclist is also subject to wear. Some say they get healthier and stronger. However is not a recommended activity to breathe car exhausts for an hour or two per day . In case of an accident your bones cannot be welded or replaced as easily as a steel part of a car. The hospital bill can exceed all your savings ten times over. White bicycles along the road are not that rare either. But even when you survive the trial by the road, you take a shower after every trip, which adds to your energy needs - and somewhere else, at a power plant that you do not know, another entirely innocent dinosaur flies up the chimney.
A bicyclist also loses some of his personal time to ride the bicycle. It's not a loss if you enjoy riding; however I am unsure how many enjoy riding in rain, or at night, or in other adverse conditions.
All in all, a bicyclist's CO(2) contribution is not negligible, and that should be kept in mind. A horse, on the other hand, that feeds at your own, all-natural pasture, is as close to zero CO(2) as it ever gets for muscle-driven locomotion.
s/say/do/
But the fact they can do it without my knowledge is enough for me. It is too much power to give blindly to a corporation.
I guess then you are using your own OS and your own browser. Or perhaps you did the code review of your current Linux system (with all the binary patches and like) and conclusively proved that the system is safe under your definition of "safe."
Most people, however, do not treat their computer as a trusted system. They know that their activity can be monitored, just as they themselves may be monitored when they walk in public. It is expensive and cumbersome to maintain a trusted system, and it is always one compromise away from spilling all your secrets. Better to not keep any secrets on it - or at least compartmentalize those.
The best way to build a trusted system is to cut the network cable that goes to that system. Then pretty much any OS can be used, and it would take one wickedly hacked OS to leak data through whatever USB Flash disk you stick into it from time to time.
Make sure that if the tether fails the remaining pieces of tape are cut into manageable chunks (10 or 100 miles long) by explosives. That is, if the tether is manufactured as a continuous tape. If it already comes as $n miles long chunks and you join them, then the joints would be the best place for those emergency disconnects.
IMO, the danger is not significant even if you do nothing. The fallen wires of the high tension power grid are more dangerous, and we have more of them. What would happen to a city if you throw a dozen of foot wide, 50 mil thick tapes of plastic onto it? They will be very light, but they wouldn't be infinitely strong to cut through Kilimanjaro. They'd be only strong enough to support themselves up to the geostationary orbit, plus to support the mass of the loaded climber.
If the space elevator is not built then we have to sit back and await the new physics, such as antigravity and teleportation and extradimensional travel. Without any of that we will never have enough resources to launch enough mass to the LEO. If we do, we will pollute the atmosphere to the point of extinction, doing a better job than any meteor from outer space. Rockets are very dirty, and not just when you launch them. Most of the poisons come when you are making them, starting with mining the ores. Most of the fuel (aside from LOX-H fuels) is derived from oil, so we will be short of that too.
does this mean that everybody's caught on to their predatory business model?
No, not everybody. Just those who haven't seen it from day zero.
Anyroad, gotta get to work.
Same here. But just a few comments:
Oh yes, mineshafts, I love that one, let's do that as well, sign me up. What's the required men to women ratio, again, doc?
Same on Earth and on Mars. And the same mineshafts. You wouldn't want to live on the surface of a planet that has very little atmosphere and very little magnetic field.
it would be (1) more boring than ISS, and (2) quite a bit more dangerous.
And (3) far less valuable. Heroes usually don't mind to die for a good cause, but there isn't much of a good cause in a mere trip there and back, without even landing.
But to use your own words: "It would take infinitely long if you never start."
It's the well known paradox of spaceflight. If your industry makes spaceships that are faster and faster with every year, a spaceship launched in the year 0 will be overtaken by a spaceship that is launched later. There was also an episode in ST:TNG where Enterprise picked up an ancient sublight transport that was loaded with the B Ark type personalities.
In this case it is pointless to make a 2-year trip if within 10, or 20 years you can make it in a far more reasonable time frame. The difference between your point and my own is that starting work NOW on nuclear propulsion will affect the end result either linearly (at worst) or as x^y. But if you start sending people on rickety spaceships, you will spend all your treasure on doing that, and there will be nothing left for research and construction. Then your end result will be affected as x^-y, or even as -x^y. Why to do that? Those 10 men on Mars will not be of any practical use to anyone. 100 men, or 1,000 will start making a difference - but you need real spaceships to deliver them and the supporting resources.
If I may put it differently, you need to climb to the roof. One way to do it is by making a huge slingshot and firing people at the roof, one at a time, with no guarantee of survival. Another way is to take your time and build a ladder. I am voting for the ladder. We aren't *that* desperate to land people on Mars. If we can judge the chance of being hit by a large meteor, one was in 1905, another was in 2013, and none would be extinction events. There was none since written history, and geology tells us there was none for quite a while. As a side effect, spaceships with nuclear propulsion can be used to avert the strike; a Martian colony cannot do that.
both problems can be tackled at the same time, without waiting.
The dependency is in the fact that we as a planet don't have enough treasure to send people to Mars, especially if they need to land there and to establish a colony. This is ONLY because our spaceflight technologies are too primitive. This is where you start working. We do not want to send people to a sure death if waiting 10, 20 or 50 years would be far more efficient. Besides, we just don't have the money. Ask Obama. Tito, with his mere Millions, is not even a player - you need Billions to mount an expedition that has a prayer.
I wasn't really commenting on Tito's plan, but rather on MichaelSmith's notion of a one-way trip, at the start of this thread (which, btw, has been proposed, seriously)
I remember seeing that, but that is even more ridiculous :-)
So I'm not quite sure, when you say "Humans cannot sit in a tin can for two years and retain sanity", what are you basing this opinion on?
Mir and ISS operators were always, at all times, 1 hour away from Earth. They could always jump into Soyuz, press a button and within an hour or two, depending on the rotation of Earth, they'd be on terra firma. Cosmonauts were trained to do basic medical procedures, but if any of them gets ill or injured they would leave the station and go to Earth. This is not going to happen during the Mars trip. If a spacefarer needs a complex surgery, his buddies are the best approximation of a surgeon. Their surgical experience? Maybe 30 minutes, trying to cut up a dog and then put it back together.
Yet another factor is boredom. Space station is naturally a busy place, with many experiments going on, with many observations to make, with many pieces of machinery needing alignment or repair. Guest expeditions would be coming and going; cargo ships would be arriving and making you unload tons of junk, and then to load the vacant space with tons of other junk that you are done with. Fresh food would be shipped to them at every opportunity; their families would be on the video and audio link every week or however often they wanted, and there is no communication delay. In other words, the station crew felt needed, and they were needed. They were worked hard by the Mission Control for their own good.
Most of that will not be available on a year-long trip to Mars. There will be no guests or ships coming or going. The communication will be delayed to the point of being hard to talk:
At the perihelion opposition, at 56 millions km from the Earth, a distance as short as 0.37 AU (1 AU = 149.56x108 km), it takes 3 minutes and 7 seconds for a signal emitted by the DSN to reach Mars. But when Earth and Mars are the farthest apart at 2.52 AU, it takes 20 minutes and 57 seconds to transmit the same radio signal.
I presume you won't fly when Earth and Mars are the farthest apart, but even 3 minutes will surely throw a monkey wrench into your chat. You'd be better off just sticking to email.
The travellers will not have much of science to do on the way. They cannot do better than automated scientific instruments; those do not get tired, they don't forget, and they have sharper eyes than any human. The humans themselves would be the only experiment, actually.
There will be a considerable fear of a failure of the life support system. Such things are possible, and accidents of that sort did happen on space stations in LEO. But there, as I said, you can always escape. There is no escape from the Mars spaceship. Apollo 13 got into a similar predicament, and they barely survived - even though the Moon is nearby. If a similar accident happens on a Mars trip, those guys and gals are just as good as dead. The accident can occur not just because the machinery fails but also because of a meteor damage, or of radiation damage, or just because something randomly failed. A motor burns up that pumps sewage, and the motor is not accessible from the inside, and the ship is too small to allow an airlock. What do you do now? You depend on that sewage for your water, and there is no other way to process it. This fear will wear people down. None of that fear was present in the ground simulation. How well will you sleep on an old, rusty World War II bomb that can go off at any time?
So I do see a point in those lab rats in a tin can, harsh as the whole notion is.
Very well. Get a few monkeys and send them up to Mars. See how your automated ship works, and how their life support system operates. Monkeys can't repair it? Excellent; the test is eve
I might buy the Glass, but only if the device connects only to my computers and does only what I want. In effect, it would be a convenient HUD, not a service. Not a bit would go outside of my LAN.
In most cases, though, I don't quite feel the need to have one on. Do I need to wear a monitor in front of me? Do I need to threaten everyone with recording of all their activities, public and semi-public? My life does not revolve around constant communication; there is specific time and place for that. The employer will probably also be not very happy that you can watch movies and read Slashdot all day long without anyone knowing it. The police will be joyful to learn that a Glass owner can see not just the road but also his email and chat - and there is no way to prove it one way or another.
Yes, I was referring to that experiment, and I was aware of the outcome. IMO it is "generally unsatisfactory" because you cannot have astronauts in such psychological condition anywhere. One angry or suicidal man can kill everyone. Even if he kills himself, what to do with his body? Stuff him into a spacesuit and hope that it is airtight for a year? What nerves of carbon nanotubes you must have to eat, live and relax a foot or two away from a decomposed body?
There were other experiments as well, also on Earth, that resulted in poor psychological compatibility. Generally, all astronauts go through these tests because life in the LEO is not particularly exciting either.
They had 6000 volunteers for the long mission - I suspect that an actual mission to mars will result in many more volunteers, despite the risks.
I think most of those volunteers are unfit for a spaceflight just because they have volunteered - and by doing that proved that they are not reasonable people :-)
Also you can find plenty of eager volunteers for anything in many mental hospitals. This doesn't make them competent. All children under 8 will gladly fly too; does it mean anything?
But the key point here is that the voyage is so long and so difficult and delivers so little, that any reasonable person would question its value. If you are really itching to launch a 10 ton craft to Mars, launch robots. They will actually land, and they will survey the planet. This is necessary anyway if you have serious plans on ever colonizing it. Don't even bother designing new robots, just make more of those that are already roaming the planet. That would be also a good use of money. Or hang tens of satellites over Mars, for survey and as repeaters for communication and positioning. Those robots will appreciate the gesture; future explorers will be very insistent on these facilities, since there isn't too many cell towers on Mars, and there is no other method of communication with away parties.
Though I don't think it's possible to truly simulate a mission to Mars here on Earth when the participants know that if things go very bad, they are just an escape hatch away from help. I think the only way to do a true simulation would be if the participants really thought that they were in a space capsule, which is pretty hard to do when gravity gives it away.
One Sci-Fi short story actually reverses your proposition. Martian exploration crew is repeatedly trained on Earth, in a chamber that simulates Mars as well as it can be; but the help is always a button press away. However during yet another training astronauts unexpectedly discover that they are on Mars, not on Earth, and that the help is not coming if they need it. One astronaut immediately goes bananas; another manages to put him and himself into hibernation before their automated ship returns them to Earth.
Yes, but if the whole point is to learn how to keep people alive up there
There is very little to learn. We already had ground simulations of the flight, and they were generally unsatisfactory. Humans cannot sit in a tin can for two years and retain sanity. That alone overwhelms all the other issues, of which there are many. The best solution for keeping humans alive during the flight to Mars is to make the flight short - say, a day, or two. Until that happens nobody in his right mind should spend years of his life being a lab rat.
A robot can do planting of the flag just fine, if that's the only reason to send a meatbag up there. There will be no public interest in this event anyway, even if your spacefarers survive the year of confinement and recycled water/food and don't kill each other. Man and a woman - strong emotions swing both ways; as they say, "Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned." But OK, let's say those travellers warily emerged from the lander and made a few shaky steps (even in the lower gravity of Mars.) What next? Do they just hammer a flag into the ground and leave? Do they, in the great numbers of two, start to study the whole planet? No, of course not. They aren't even going to land, per Tito's scenario, and there will be nothing to show, nothing to celebrate. The spam in the can may just as well never leave Earth.
I'm far from being against spaceflight. But you need to be always reasonable and sane. It just doesn't make any sense to send people for that long and that far. They are likely to die, and there is nothing to be gained from this flight. The money should be instead invested into making more efficient vehicles that can, as matter of fact, traverse the distance much faster and thus make access to Mars far more realistic. Nuclear power? Perhaps, if that works. New physics? Always welcome. But sending people on this voyage is just as practical as crossing the Atlantic on a reed raft. Is it possible? Yes, if the stars are in a favorable position (literally, in case of Mars.) But is a reed raft, or a torora boat like Ra II, a viable transport between the Old and the New worlds? Not in a thousand years. You need something that gives you a half-decent chance of getting there alive, and doesn't take forever. Trips of Thor Heyerdahl took about 3 months each, sometimes with stops at various ports. Those trips were done on Earth, where the air is free and the ocean full of fish is a foot away.
So, Mr. Tito, if your money burns through your pocket, take it and build a space elevator. That would be a worthy endeavor. Once that is in place we can start thinking about building larger ships, nuclear-powered, that take water as reaction mass and can travel to the Moon, to Mars, or to the Belt within reasonable time. That's the way to go.
How about instead of people, we send a few robots and some self-contained factories with which to build more.
Do that here, on Earth, first. It would be even easier, given that we know a lot about this planet. Make a robot that, once dropped off in, say, Himalayas, will do whatever is necessary to assemble another one. When that happens we will discuss flying such a robot to Mars.
IMO, it would be a challenge to even find one human - or one group of humans - who'd be able to pull that off. Many alternative history books were written where such scenarios are proposed, studied - and rejected as improbable. The threshold of building a factory that makes semiconductors is absurdly high. One robot, or one human, will not be able to do it. You have to bring up the whole technological civilization to just produce all the chemicals that go into manufacturing of semiconductors. A robot will need a few thousand years to spiral it up, starting with stone tools and likely having to invent unique technologies on the spot as it discovers new minerals and new environmental conditions.
if you're going to put people on a rocket and shoot them to Mars, in the understanding that, no matter what happens, they're going to die there, won't ever see Earth again
Then your best choice would be dead people. They don't need any life support, and they won't die again in the middle of the mission. They will do just as good as anyone else, after being confined to a small tin can for a year. A flyby? They are ideal for that, considering how much work they need to do on the way there and back.
The problem is no longer technical, rather it's that every bloody company with a web application (including Google) wants you to connect and sign in, so they can abuse your privacy, monetize your personal information, and sell ads.
If the application is cached then it is no different from the usual setup.exe routine where you download something once, install it, and it resides on your computer forever. As you said, there is no monetization here - the software has to be licensed to be profitable, and management of licenses is a big PITA. HTML buys you only one thing - platform independence; and even that is not a big deal. Java or C# CLR will compile and run your application just fine.
Chromium OS and Firefox OS. They don't somehow fail to boot when you have no network access, any more than a phone does.
The BIOS doesn't fail to boot either, but that doesn't make a box without HDD useful. The "booting" part is irrelevant because it is not the end goal. What is not irrelevant is "running my software." That may or may not happen with those OSes, depending on how the software is cached and ran. I would guess some companies would give you the software for free if they can exploit you in a way that doesn't require online presence. Most, though, will require a persistent connection - both to ensure that you still are licensed to run it, and to lay a hand on your data. (I hope you weren't under an illusion that your data in the cloud is yours.)
Doesn't even have to be that bad. Plenty of missions in the GTA games are timed so that you have to run 5-minute mission and at your best you can beat it only by one or two seconds. Want to buy a time dilation pill? Only $3, but this will save you a week of frustration when all of a sudden the mission impossible transforms into a very pleasant boat trip. (Naturally, the pill works only once.)
Or, if you are not playing GTA, try the first encounter with the swarm in the Resistance - when you have no effective weapons, no distance, no cover, and have to retreat while shooting behind your back (which isn't possible.) That swarm may be a boss, but the mission should have a navigable way, a strategy of winning - not just randomly running away and hoping that one of 50 attempts puts you into the elevator ten milliseconds ahead of the foe. To compare, the Cathedral, and the City Square all have effective strategies, and those locations have good replay value. The bad missions completely block your access to good missions until you spend another day, or a week, randomly flailing against the boss that is too strong for you.
A good game should always have a switch that allows you to skip some missions. Not everyone is equally capable - mentally or physically. Why should a one-armed player, or a player with some other disability, be prevented from playing those missions that he chooses to play? The money had been paid for the whole game, shouldn't it be your choice what missions to skip? There are no Nobel Peace Prizes given for beating the game anyway (not that they are worth anything now.)
Currently, Chrombooks' being limited to HTML isn't good enough for most people's needs. But if and when all the software most people need can be delivered efficiently over 'the web' (with NC expanding what that means), then the migration may well begin.
Portable use of notebooks is closely linked with their offline use. There are plenty of locations where you cannot, or do not dare to, use WiFi. Offline use of a notebook stops you from using web-based applications. Most notebook uses are comfortable with locally executed software and cannot imagine that they cannot work on an airplane, or in a moving car, bus, train... in many cases such work is required and expected.
Unlimited network access over wide areas is not going to be free for quite some time. It may be also not possible if the usable spectrum is congested. (You cannot just go to 60 GHz, that band has range measured in feet.) This means that universal net access from anywhere is not going to happen. At least not when the country, if not the world, is in recession.
People understand that this is a great solution in search of a problem. The always-on device does not have any advantage over a traditional setup. It only needs gigabytes to be sent to you and from you; a waste that is completely unnecessary. In majority of applications this device buys you nothing; there is nothing that you can say is possible now, whereas it was not possible before. Why would anyone adopt this method?
The only winners here are software manufacturers, who are itching to become software landlords and collect rent for every application started, for every photo processed, for every song played.
To me, Native Client seems more flexible. You have the option of running apps thin, and there's nothing to prevent you from using the NC toolkit to run locally-installed apps as well.
Java/Android and, to some extent, other technologies (C#) have solved this problem already. Why do we need yet another solution? Just to support SaaS? Google's Chromium was always questioned about its purpose, given that Android is already mature and very functional, and can run your software locally, or remotely, or anywhere in between.
It can be trivially optimized down to only one step:
3) insert money
Other steps are just to distract your attention.
what do folks think about that?
You are getting language lessons for free and still complaining?
Note that those *are* the languages that are on the rise. You are already outnumbered. Tomorrow you will not have a job in the USA - but you would be welcome in those countries (India and China.) Take the opportunity and at least learn the basics.
First, demonstrate she has abused her position - using facts
Fact #0: The boat is in hands of customs.
Fact #1: There is no good reason for that to happen. At least neither the shipbuilder nor the purchaser did anything wrong. They even refused to do wrong when asked to.
What would you do in his place? Would you sign a knowingly false document? Hard to deny that it is false if you pointed out the error a moment ago. The guy didn't sign. He wanted the document corrected, but the DHS agent refused to do her job.
The owner may have an excellent *criminal* case against the agent for racketeering or something like that because she threatened him with harm unless he commits an illegal act. And when he refused to break the law she executed the threat.
Depending on circumstances, the boat can be sold at an auction for peanuts, and the agent can buy it. Here is the motive for the crime. Would you like to get a $1M boat for $50K?