Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
Protip: The USB emblem goes "up". The logo is trademarked, and without it the cables are too frustrating to use. An interesting feat of human engineering indeed.
Now, let us travel through time far enough into the future that we come to appreciate the greatest connector design possible:
First, consider the connector with zero lines of symmetry, such as USB, or a polarized pronged plug. There is a 2D plane that the connector travels orthogonal to and which it must breech in order to complete a connection docking sequence. Consider this plane slicing through your connector and receptacle's contacts. Note that there is one receptacle surface for one connector pin passing through the docking plane.
To the Future! Copy and rotate your receptor 180 degrees in place along the docking plane. Eliminate any conflicting isolation surfaces, and move the pins such that they do not interact with each the other's connection surfaces. Now you have a reversible connector with one line of symmetry in the receptacle. The connector pins can occupy both sets of receptacle contact surfaces, but need only occupy one position to complete the electrical circuits.
Advance! Now we will perform the same step again, but with a 90 degree increment. Behold! A square connector!
60 degrees? Hexagonal connectors! Note that just imagining it we can nearly taste the hex filled future!
Onward, to 45 degrees, and to victory! Octagonal connections even mirror our futurist desire to slice the corners from our square UI windows, and tabs.
Oh integration, you foul beast. Clearly to see furthest into the future we must have infinite lines of symmetry in our docking plane -- BUT HOW?! With all pins occupying all positions across the USB connector, the left side interacts with the right side. Since connector pins need only exist in one position we need only make the connector pins have zero lines of symmetry -- move all the connector pins to one side. Simultaneously we have a perfectly round receptacle -- Ah, but all intersecting isolation surfaces are removed, this leaves us with only a flat ring of contacts and several pins.
So, now we will enter a new Dimension! We can stretch the docking plane in the 3rd dimension along the orthogonal connection axis! BEHOLD! We have discovered the most futuristic connector of all time! The Head Phone Jack!
Now, what's old can finally be new again. Story time is over, now get off my lawn.
Reminds me of the notebook's keyboard position, then the trackpad, then the clean designs etc etc...
I want you to do something. I want you to look at the head phone jack on a 1970's era stereo system. Next, I want you to contemplate how it is, exactly, that a left right and ground wire makes it up to the headphones through a single wire. Finally, I want you to convince yourself that Apple invented this technology too. The reality distortion field must not be denied.
groups should be put in jail or in a mental institution, but which music depend on each person and culture.
Ah that's easy: If they're country bumpkins, then folk music should land them in the klink. If they're teenage girls, then boy bands should do the trick. If they're of party-going age then we just throw 'em away for listening to electro / dubstep.
See? It's essentially all music that should implicate you in having a desire to not be ruled by laws like these. Well, you could listen to music that we're sure you don't like, but you'll have to be registered via FMRI to prove it first. Paper's Please.
That book throws around statistics, but it offers self selected anecdotal evidence to cite reasons of injustice. If you start out thinking you're up against an entrenched "all boys club" and bring your own venom to the table then cause hostility through over-sensitivity, you're going to have a bad time, mkay? Did you know men and boys pick on each other as a form of bonding? Did you know little girls are even worse at the verbal bullying via hurtful spite filled comments and gossip? Visit any all-girl school and see for yourself. Given the facts about how women treat each other, I find it incredibly disingenuous to present spaces less than mostly male occupied as giving females quicker deaths by thousands of cuts -- Especially given the goddess like preferential treatment the women I know of in tech receive.
I've seen it time and again. A social justice warrior or feminist will arrive with teeth bared expecting a hostile environment of the mostly male gamedevs -- ignoring that gamedevs and players are different -- ready to strike at any perceived injustice: "Only 20% of the award winners are female?! That's sexist." Uh, yeah, 20% of the submissions were by females. Odd thing, that algebraic equality... 1 = 1; 20 == 20. However, now that accusations have been made, folks aren't going to be reacting very nicely -- least of all the females among us who see such shit stirrers as exactly that: Drama queens, deserving of the same sort of poisonous treatment they dish out.
"We need more women game devs!" [Specifically reach out to women and get more female game devs show up for the gamejam] "Oh it's so awesome you're a girl who gamedevs!" -- ARGH! It sucks that men are treating women differently than themselves. Uh, yeah, because that's what we did to decrease the rarity and the boys see girls as different than themselves. You really can't win for losing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now we just say: Fuck 'em. Doesn't change the fact that with equal m/f ratio among new attendees most girls quit our dev groups AFTER being welcomed and accepted into the group because the risk / reward for game making is shit -- Lots of work, little to no chance of making a popular game. The guys just happen to care less about the lack of social status or massive effort required to sate their love for developing intricate novelties than gals do. Those women that do are cherished for their different perspectives, and sought out for advice on character design realism... Because most men are best at "writing what they know" and don't have female brains. Like gamedev, IT and CS are largely thankless shite work too.
"Unlocking the Clubhouse" -- Interesting selection of careers. Why not try "Unlocking the Clubhouse" when it comes to the other thankless risky male dominated jobs, like Janitors or Coal Miners -- Oh, those are clubhouses no one wants to be in? Gee. Go fucking figure.
Remember when you could key your CB radio and watch those newfangled electronic injection cars down-throttle? I do. It was funny. This RF Pulse technology has no effect on cars with carburetors.
That's rubbish. People simply do not care about other OSes. The reality is no one other than gamers has a desire for a faster machine. Browsing the web and ripping the odd disk does not make someone want a new machine.
Bullshit. Having a slow web browsing experience does cause folks to buy new Desktops and portable PCs (I write cross platform code in a meta language with various target languages as an evolutionary strategy to survive any vast platform changes, so to me a notebook, tablet or phone is just a Personal Computer with a very capital P).
As HTML, CSS and JS have become more feature rich and heavily in use folks I've personally helped folks buy new hardware. When I worked in retail computer sales long ago "Slow Web Browsing" was the #1 reason to buy a new desktop computer. That same factor has been a prime driver of sales in mobile computing as well. Since the computing demands browsers doesn't follow Moore's Law, the larger devices like PCs and Notebooks are now fast enough that web advances take longer to push progress. Before the Internet it was bigger and more featurefull OSs and Office software (and games) which drove PC sales. Nowadays even a dinky phone can do stylized graphical text.
Now that portable PCs have become fairly widespread the websites are making decisions that don't exclude the lower power devices. This means also less pressure on upgrading your PC.
I look to advances in hardware accelerated GPUs and heterogeneous computing tech to bring 3D to the web, if not through webGL, then through one of the scene graph markup languages -- Or via extending the box model in a 3rd dimension. This will be a boon to augmented reality tech which is the next big thing -- Looking through your PC's display as a lens to see sales and markings virtually -- Having your display shift with your body to extend your display as through a window. My head/eye tracking uses a webcam. I can tilt my head to see surrounding workspaces, and press ctrl+space while looking at it to switch.
The trend in computing has always been for smaller and more general purpose devices. Nowhere is this more evident than in the most computationally expensive mass market software: Games. Initially we had mechanical games (1 machine : 1 game). Arcade cabinets (1 machine : many games, but only 1 installed); As RAM got cheaper and hardware smaller cabinets with multiple games on one machine, switching between them. Hardware got smaller still we got home consoles that could play hundreds of different games, one at a time -- Note that consoles killed the Arcades despite their lower power; It was the size and accessibility that trumps speed after a certain capability is reached (16bit era). Gaming has flirted with PCs vs Consoles for a while until the Consoles became neutered PCs (both have multiple simultaneous applications [eg: dash] and many games per box). Unsurprisingly, PCs are now winning over consoles -- As predicted it's the smaller, lower power, more accessible portable, general purpose PCs (w/ integrated phones/wireless coms) which will end the dedicated gaming device console era.
This is mirrored in computing history, special purpose adding machine, dedicated computer for a problem space, general purpose computing switching between application (DOS-era), then multiple concurrent applications, and now distributed / synchronized applications. Many don't realize this is where we're going -- a Desktop PC to be the hub for all your distributed (synchronized) personal cloud -- streaming your data to you in a Trust No One manner. The reasons are many, one pressure is invasive government spying, another is being able to buy a new device, put in your PC node address, and not having to "migrate" software; Another is that families share their media (games, music, movies, medical records, etc). That's why Google's pushing NaCl, and browsers are becoming the application deployment target -- Not that they're
They don't need to vote. They just buy whatever side wins. Some just keep both sides on the books at all times. Corporations have more influence over politics than you. Also: Gerrymandering is a thing; Ergo: Your vote means less than squat.
Not what it says. It says when it gets THAT quiet, and you start hearing your own bodily functions,
Correct. And THOSE sounds are what cause people to hallucinate. The this is an evolutionary defensive mechanism: Fixating on the subconscious thoughts that only those like me with Sleep Paralysis normally see while awake prevents humans from realizing that some truly heinous shit is brewing deep inside of everyone.
So RMS wants the same thing as everyone else in the Crypto-Currency community. Good for him (If only he would contribute something other than a desire...). ... Reminds me of how RMS wants Emacs to become WYSIWG [gnu.org], but seems opposed to using existing solutions, or implementing it himself, or actually making a feature list or design for it himself.
Maybe you missed that whole GNU project thing. He contributed so much he can barely type without a special low pressure keyboard anymore because his hands are ruined from all the contributing ungrateful fucks like you ignore. Now he contributes the best way he can via public awareness, speeches, etc. When he's dead I bet you'll be bitching about how his corpse doesn't even advocate for free software anymore.
When I was a teen I only new a little ASM and some BASIC. I wanted to make games with smooth scrolling graphics, but BASIC was too slow. I complained on local a BBS's BASIC board about the predicament and the sarcastic response was, "If BASIC is too slow, make your own damn language." So, with only a rudimentary knowledge of x86 assembly, and not a single programming lesson, I did just that. I had wasted months of fighting to increase performance of my BASIC program: It only took a couple of weeks to make an interpretor and then a simple compiler for my language and it faster than BASIC (didn't need a runtime.exe either). It had just never occurred to me that I could make my own programming language -- or anything wholly in ASM for that matter. My sarcastic friend was impressed and surprised that I had heeded his bad advice, and we both sold software on Compuserve built with my language for years afterwards, no expensive C compiler / license required. The point is that making a suggestion, or getting the idea out there is sometimes all it takes to cause something to spring into existence.
RMS is good at taking positions on issues, and does a good job representing his particular viewpoint, but I wouldn't expect much more out of him.
So, he's good at what he does, and though he doesn't claim to do the grunt work of implementing or designing stuff anymore, we shouldn't expect him to? Gotcha. Additionally: You're essentially in agreement with RMS if you think that we need a workable anonymous crypto currency -- You essentially said so yourself by mentioning that Zerocoin has performance problems. Hey, maybe a protocol that was built for anonymity from the ground up wouldn't suffer such performance problems? His advice when re-implementing a UNIX tool is to aim for different goals. If theirs is fast, aim for less memory consumption instead; If theirs is processor intensive, aim for stability instead; or vise versa -- This way the implementations will be very different even if they serve the same ends. In other words, what RMS and I know is that just because Zerocoin or BASIC exists doesn't mean there's only one way to skin the cat.
India's Mars probe finally leaves Earth-bound orbits on the 1st of December 2013.
On the very same day, China is set to launch its first lunar lander.
Both India and China are from Asia.
Where are the Europeans ?
Where are the Americans ?
What the heck happened to the usually technologically more advanced societies of the Western countries ?
Asia is playing catch up very very fast, and before long, they might even get ahead of you guys !
Apparently they're in Houston, and Florida. I regularly see the European, Japanese, Russian, Canadian, Russian, etc. Astronauts at the Johnson Space Center.
The USA has sent astronauts to successfully walk around on the moon, and driven manned rovers there. We've got some satelites orbiting Mars already, and several successful mars rovers, the latest Mars Science Lab is the size of a SUV, and was deployed by unique very complex manoeuvre involving a hovering platform.
NASA partners with space agencies around the world, from Europe's ESA, to Japan's JAXA, to Russian Roscosmos, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think we should give all the NSA and war budgets to NASA and have self sustaining colonies of humans out there (reduce our current 100% chance of extinction). However, I'm not scared about Asia "catching up" to our decades old achievements. In fact, Space is a resource all the world's countries should share.
See also: Planetes -- an anime which briefly explored the concept of poor nations inability to access space widening the poverty gap, and spurning space terrorism.
Some governments fear each other and cause war, but even among the adversarial countries the vast majority of ordinary people of on Earth aren't enemies of each other. Gazing at our small vulnerable blue world from space there are no national borders. May cooperation in space exploration continue to unite Earth's people. I'm cheering India on! The people of Asia deserve to have the cultural catalyst of the cosmic perspective too.
You may also enjoy Space Brothers - Anime about international cooperation in space exploration, brotherly love, sibling rivalry, and putting the first Japanese astronaut on the moon. IMO, we should have inspiring animated shows like this on prime-time TV in place of yet another sarcastic Simpson's clone. Maybe then statements such as yours would be encouraging courage and cooperation rather than scaremongering.
TL;DR: Some men just want to watch the world grow.
"Welcome to the U.S. nuclear arsenal hotline. Please listen carefully as some menu items have changed. Para continuar en Espanol marque numero dos. ... Main menu opti--"
Oh damn it. I fucking hate theses things. Billions blown and I can't get a real human operator on the line?!
"--mutually assured destruction press 4 For scheduling nuclear launches press 3 For prior launch status updates press 2 To change a nuclear launch code press 1 To launch all mis--"
Aargh! Screw it. I know a trick... :: repeatedly presses 0 until the end of the world::
I agree. However, I could agree to dismantling of POTS if they FIRST also lessen regulations on a swath of HAM for use by the public, and also legalize packet radio over CB, Family band, and other public use frequencies. We have the technology to radio for help in times of emergency -- Indeed HAM operators are sometimes on the scene in disasters before paramedics arrive. They already play a role in Earthquakes and other times when infrastructure is threatened. Lower the barrier for the common man to have greater ability to communicate first then I'll reconsider my stance on our keeping wired POTS going.
We have the technology for radios to negotiate to noise free channels automatically -- hell, my cheap wifi router does this. The cellular system exists, but we need a similar mesh network for the common people. The EM spectrum belongs to We the People, give us back some damn air waves instead of charging us for all of them. It's the information age, yet outdated packet radio laws remain repressive to progress. Problem is that the government can't just throw a kill switch on public powered wireless devices -- Like they can on the Internet (and probably telephone too).
It would be foolish to ignore that the government has an Internet Kill Switch, vast spying infrastructures, and a pro-censorship anti-discourse agenda whereby government agents actually plan to expose porn habits to silence dissent, while considering migrating any communication medium to IP based services. Furthermore -- The price of bits does not reflect the cost to distribute them. Cellular plans make a mockery of POTS long distance fees, and though it's never been cheeper to move bits the prices aren't going down nearly as fast as in foreign markets with actual competition. We need less regulation of the public sector and more regulation of the private sector's price fixed oligopoly before I'd ever advocate for tossing POTS out. Additionally: Unwarranted metadata collection is too powerful a tool already -- If Snoden can infiltrate PRISM, so can spies from enemy states.
Beware: When those in power advocate change, the changes suggested never give those they have power over more freedom.
I just said that in the political context of the early 1950:s, fear of communism was not considered irrational.
You are a fool, and here's why: Communism is an idea. That's like being scared of the economic principal of freely giving gifts. You believe in Santa Claus?! It's the CONCENTRATION CAMP for you! That's the level of retarded thinking you're exhibiting when confusing Communist Enemy Countries, and Communism. ENEMY is the operative word there, not Communist; For fuck's sake how daft do you have to be to not get this? It is irrational to round up folks for believing in a different economic ideal. Internment camps? What if we did concentration camps for "free love" supporters? How about for anti-war sympathizers? You're aware that bathtubs kill more Americans every year than 9/11 did, right? The flu kills 6 times more Americans every year than a 9/11. Cheeseburgers and Cars Kill 400 times a 9/11 scale terrorist attack every year. Are you scared to drive an evil Deathmobile or grab McDeath Happy Meal? No? Fuck you, it's irrational now and the fear was irrational then.
nobody is forcing them to do anything. it seems the more rational response is the fix the problem instead of treating the symptom. if someone wants to hack your server, do you think something like removing wifi access will stop them?
(6) It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving
the problem to a different part of the overall network
architecture) than it is to solve it.
(6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of
indirection.
Ooookay, then explain EXACTLY how I'm supposed to make money when somebody can give away my work for free and there ain't a damned thing I can do about it?
Just like a mechanic does: You want to make money. You do a bid for a prospective customer. You agree on a price. You do the work ONCE. You get paid for the work you did ONCE. The difference is that a mechanic's work benefits one car, and one driver; The whole world can benefit from your efforts if you create free software. Note that there is no coin slot on your ignition switch so that the mechanic can extract a fee for each time you benefit from their work...
Copyright creates artificial scarcity. The GPL would not be needed without copyright. GPL essentially make copyright embrace the simple nature of information: Bits are in near infinite supply. Econ:101 states that which is in infinite supply has zero price, regardless of cost to create. Selling ice to Eskimos is a laughable business plan, yet you are of the opinion that selling bits to folks with computers isn't laughable as well? You have an infinite monopoly over your work BEFORE you do it; Leverage this, not the artificial scarcity that allows "piracy" to exist.
You can't sell ice to Eskimos, but you can charge the work to build an igloo.
Compare and contrast the comments herein with the comments of this other thread. Note the framing words used in each headline -- One says "Extremist" the other one "Radical". This allows us to compare the interchangeable terms in big O notation: Whereby O( 1 ) is clear and unbiased news, and higher big Orwellian factors indicate additional obfuscation and framing complexity to add connotative bias where none is required.
Many of the comments here seem to insinuate you have to be delusional to enjoy and desire 100% free software. I'd like anything on that gift giving guide. I'm not a paranoid delusional. My paranoia is based on plenty of evidence, and is tempered by practicality. However, that's the tiniest of concern compared to the other benefits offered.
I wouldn't necessarily gift that stuff to folks who wouldn't appreciate it, but I'd recommend the guide to folks looking to allocate resources on my behalf. I also know several young folks that would appreciate the gifts. My niece really loves tinkering with technology, and is always "pestering" me to play with our toy languages, toy OSs and electronics and robotics projects. She wouldn't have known where to begin if it wasn't for the gift of free software.
Having an OS and supporting software that's fully free and open source has been a huge benefit in our learning and teaching endeavors, especially as references to how stuff works. Doesn't anyone remember the joys of discovering how to code? While some kids took apart dad's drill, I took apart my boot sector and had no one to look to for help. I wasn't lucky enough to have a mentor or access to an open source OS -- or even a free & open compiler -- when I was trying to learn how the CS wheels were invented. I was amazed when I discovered I could just use the DTR pin of a serial port (instead of the then incomprehensible to me RS232) to control switch on a model train set. I'd have been ecstatic to have working source code for something like LIRC or blown away by a 3D printer, and I know my niece will love them too. I know for a fact she's get plenty of enjoyment demonstrating to her friends her creations via her own portable OS shaped like a key.
What's best is knowing that unlike on proprietary systems, when I'm asked, "but how does it do that?", I can always say, "Hmm, I don't know. Let's see!"
Slashdot Mirror
Is the fact that the standard USB connection (rectangle) is not really 180 degrees symmetric (despite a shape that indicates it should be), usually takes 3+ attempts to get it in. Damn it, Jim, a spin-1/2 connector!
Protip: The USB emblem goes "up". The logo is trademarked, and without it the cables are too frustrating to use. An interesting feat of human engineering indeed.
Now, let us travel through time far enough into the future that we come to appreciate the greatest connector design possible:
First, consider the connector with zero lines of symmetry, such as USB, or a polarized pronged plug. There is a 2D plane that the connector travels orthogonal to and which it must breech in order to complete a connection docking sequence. Consider this plane slicing through your connector and receptacle's contacts. Note that there is one receptacle surface for one connector pin passing through the docking plane.
To the Future! Copy and rotate your receptor 180 degrees in place along the docking plane. Eliminate any conflicting isolation surfaces, and move the pins such that they do not interact with each the other's connection surfaces. Now you have a reversible connector with one line of symmetry in the receptacle. The connector pins can occupy both sets of receptacle contact surfaces, but need only occupy one position to complete the electrical circuits.
Advance! Now we will perform the same step again, but with a 90 degree increment. Behold! A square connector!
60 degrees? Hexagonal connectors! Note that just imagining it we can nearly taste the hex filled future!
Onward, to 45 degrees, and to victory! Octagonal connections even mirror our futurist desire to slice the corners from our square UI windows, and tabs.
Oh integration, you foul beast. Clearly to see furthest into the future we must have infinite lines of symmetry in our docking plane -- BUT HOW?! With all pins occupying all positions across the USB connector, the left side interacts with the right side. Since connector pins need only exist in one position we need only make the connector pins have zero lines of symmetry -- move all the connector pins to one side. Simultaneously we have a perfectly round receptacle -- Ah, but all intersecting isolation surfaces are removed, this leaves us with only a flat ring of contacts and several pins.
So, now we will enter a new Dimension! We can stretch the docking plane in the 3rd dimension along the orthogonal connection axis! BEHOLD! We have discovered the most futuristic connector of all time! The Head Phone Jack!
Now, what's old can finally be new again. Story time is over, now get off my lawn.
Reminds me of the notebook's keyboard position, then the trackpad, then the clean designs etc etc...
I want you to do something. I want you to look at the head phone jack on a 1970's era stereo system. Next, I want you to contemplate how it is, exactly, that a left right and ground wire makes it up to the headphones through a single wire. Finally, I want you to convince yourself that Apple invented this technology too. The reality distortion field must not be denied.
groups should be put in jail or in a mental institution, but which music depend on each person and culture.
Ah that's easy: If they're country bumpkins, then folk music should land them in the klink. If they're teenage girls, then boy bands should do the trick. If they're of party-going age then we just throw 'em away for listening to electro / dubstep.
See? It's essentially all music that should implicate you in having a desire to not be ruled by laws like these. Well, you could listen to music that we're sure you don't like, but you'll have to be registered via FMRI to prove it first. Paper's Please.
That book throws around statistics, but it offers self selected anecdotal evidence to cite reasons of injustice. If you start out thinking you're up against an entrenched "all boys club" and bring your own venom to the table then cause hostility through over-sensitivity, you're going to have a bad time, mkay? Did you know men and boys pick on each other as a form of bonding? Did you know little girls are even worse at the verbal bullying via hurtful spite filled comments and gossip? Visit any all-girl school and see for yourself. Given the facts about how women treat each other, I find it incredibly disingenuous to present spaces less than mostly male occupied as giving females quicker deaths by thousands of cuts -- Especially given the goddess like preferential treatment the women I know of in tech receive.
I've seen it time and again. A social justice warrior or feminist will arrive with teeth bared expecting a hostile environment of the mostly male gamedevs -- ignoring that gamedevs and players are different -- ready to strike at any perceived injustice: "Only 20% of the award winners are female?! That's sexist." Uh, yeah, 20% of the submissions were by females. Odd thing, that algebraic equality... 1 = 1; 20 == 20. However, now that accusations have been made, folks aren't going to be reacting very nicely -- least of all the females among us who see such shit stirrers as exactly that: Drama queens, deserving of the same sort of poisonous treatment they dish out.
"We need more women game devs!" [Specifically reach out to women and get more female game devs show up for the gamejam] "Oh it's so awesome you're a girl who gamedevs!" -- ARGH! It sucks that men are treating women differently than themselves. Uh, yeah, because that's what we did to decrease the rarity and the boys see girls as different than themselves. You really can't win for losing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now we just say: Fuck 'em. Doesn't change the fact that with equal m/f ratio among new attendees most girls quit our dev groups AFTER being welcomed and accepted into the group because the risk / reward for game making is shit -- Lots of work, little to no chance of making a popular game. The guys just happen to care less about the lack of social status or massive effort required to sate their love for developing intricate novelties than gals do. Those women that do are cherished for their different perspectives, and sought out for advice on character design realism... Because most men are best at "writing what they know" and don't have female brains. Like gamedev, IT and CS are largely thankless shite work too.
"Unlocking the Clubhouse" -- Interesting selection of careers. Why not try "Unlocking the Clubhouse" when it comes to the other thankless risky male dominated jobs, like Janitors or Coal Miners -- Oh, those are clubhouses no one wants to be in? Gee. Go fucking figure.
Remember when you could key your CB radio and watch those newfangled electronic injection cars down-throttle? I do. It was funny. This RF Pulse technology has no effect on cars with carburetors.
Sick boanz?
Zab no sick,
I nok scabz --
Za sock bin...
O, ick, nasz B!
K, I can sobz?
No, sick baz.
Zis no cab, K?
Ban sick-O'z.
K. C siz o bank?
OK, C. Biznas!
That's rubbish. People simply do not care about other OSes. The reality is no one other than gamers has a desire for a faster machine. Browsing the web and ripping the odd disk does not make someone want a new machine.
Bullshit. Having a slow web browsing experience does cause folks to buy new Desktops and portable PCs (I write cross platform code in a meta language with various target languages as an evolutionary strategy to survive any vast platform changes, so to me a notebook, tablet or phone is just a Personal Computer with a very capital P).
As HTML, CSS and JS have become more feature rich and heavily in use folks I've personally helped folks buy new hardware. When I worked in retail computer sales long ago "Slow Web Browsing" was the #1 reason to buy a new desktop computer. That same factor has been a prime driver of sales in mobile computing as well. Since the computing demands browsers doesn't follow Moore's Law, the larger devices like PCs and Notebooks are now fast enough that web advances take longer to push progress. Before the Internet it was bigger and more featurefull OSs and Office software (and games) which drove PC sales. Nowadays even a dinky phone can do stylized graphical text.
Now that portable PCs have become fairly widespread the websites are making decisions that don't exclude the lower power devices. This means also less pressure on upgrading your PC.
I look to advances in hardware accelerated GPUs and heterogeneous computing tech to bring 3D to the web, if not through webGL, then through one of the scene graph markup languages -- Or via extending the box model in a 3rd dimension. This will be a boon to augmented reality tech which is the next big thing -- Looking through your PC's display as a lens to see sales and markings virtually -- Having your display shift with your body to extend your display as through a window. My head/eye tracking uses a webcam. I can tilt my head to see surrounding workspaces, and press ctrl+space while looking at it to switch.
The trend in computing has always been for smaller and more general purpose devices. Nowhere is this more evident than in the most computationally expensive mass market software: Games. Initially we had mechanical games (1 machine : 1 game). Arcade cabinets (1 machine : many games, but only 1 installed); As RAM got cheaper and hardware smaller cabinets with multiple games on one machine, switching between them. Hardware got smaller still we got home consoles that could play hundreds of different games, one at a time -- Note that consoles killed the Arcades despite their lower power; It was the size and accessibility that trumps speed after a certain capability is reached (16bit era). Gaming has flirted with PCs vs Consoles for a while until the Consoles became neutered PCs (both have multiple simultaneous applications [eg: dash] and many games per box). Unsurprisingly, PCs are now winning over consoles -- As predicted it's the smaller, lower power, more accessible portable, general purpose PCs (w/ integrated phones/wireless coms) which will end the dedicated gaming device console era.
This is mirrored in computing history, special purpose adding machine, dedicated computer for a problem space, general purpose computing switching between application (DOS-era), then multiple concurrent applications, and now distributed / synchronized applications. Many don't realize this is where we're going -- a Desktop PC to be the hub for all your distributed (synchronized) personal cloud -- streaming your data to you in a Trust No One manner. The reasons are many, one pressure is invasive government spying, another is being able to buy a new device, put in your PC node address, and not having to "migrate" software; Another is that families share their media (games, music, movies, medical records, etc). That's why Google's pushing NaCl, and browsers are becoming the application deployment target -- Not that they're
Venereal disease? Oh good. I had feared a plutonian Uranus was the butt of the joke.
They don't need to vote. They just buy whatever side wins. Some just keep both sides on the books at all times. Corporations have more influence over politics than you. Also: Gerrymandering is a thing; Ergo: Your vote means less than squat.
Hmm. What the heck do you call a monkey in Hyderabad?
Tech Support.
Not what it says. It says when it gets THAT quiet, and you start hearing your own bodily functions,
Correct. And THOSE sounds are what cause people to hallucinate. The this is an evolutionary defensive mechanism: Fixating on the subconscious thoughts that only those like me with Sleep Paralysis normally see while awake prevents humans from realizing that some truly heinous shit is brewing deep inside of everyone.
If a tree falls in a vacuum chamber in the woods, the sound is carried by the container to the surrounding air...
So RMS wants the same thing as everyone else in the Crypto-Currency community. Good for him (If only he would contribute something other than a desire...).
...
Reminds me of how RMS wants Emacs to become WYSIWG [gnu.org], but seems opposed to using existing solutions, or implementing it himself, or actually making a feature list or design for it himself.
Maybe you missed that whole GNU project thing. He contributed so much he can barely type without a special low pressure keyboard anymore because his hands are ruined from all the contributing ungrateful fucks like you ignore. Now he contributes the best way he can via public awareness, speeches, etc. When he's dead I bet you'll be bitching about how his corpse doesn't even advocate for free software anymore.
When I was a teen I only new a little ASM and some BASIC. I wanted to make games with smooth scrolling graphics, but BASIC was too slow. I complained on local a BBS's BASIC board about the predicament and the sarcastic response was, "If BASIC is too slow, make your own damn language." So, with only a rudimentary knowledge of x86 assembly, and not a single programming lesson, I did just that. I had wasted months of fighting to increase performance of my BASIC program: It only took a couple of weeks to make an interpretor and then a simple compiler for my language and it faster than BASIC (didn't need a runtime.exe either). It had just never occurred to me that I could make my own programming language -- or anything wholly in ASM for that matter. My sarcastic friend was impressed and surprised that I had heeded his bad advice, and we both sold software on Compuserve built with my language for years afterwards, no expensive C compiler / license required. The point is that making a suggestion, or getting the idea out there is sometimes all it takes to cause something to spring into existence.
RMS is good at taking positions on issues, and does a good job representing his particular viewpoint, but I wouldn't expect much more out of him.
So, he's good at what he does, and though he doesn't claim to do the grunt work of implementing or designing stuff anymore, we shouldn't expect him to? Gotcha. Additionally: You're essentially in agreement with RMS if you think that we need a workable anonymous crypto currency -- You essentially said so yourself by mentioning that Zerocoin has performance problems. Hey, maybe a protocol that was built for anonymity from the ground up wouldn't suffer such performance problems? His advice when re-implementing a UNIX tool is to aim for different goals. If theirs is fast, aim for less memory consumption instead; If theirs is processor intensive, aim for stability instead; or vise versa -- This way the implementations will be very different even if they serve the same ends. In other words, what RMS and I know is that just because Zerocoin or BASIC exists doesn't mean there's only one way to skin the cat.
What apathy! I got into genetic programming the moment I was conceived!
India's Mars probe finally leaves Earth-bound orbits on the 1st of December 2013.
On the very same day, China is set to launch its first lunar lander.
Both India and China are from Asia.
Where are the Europeans ?
Where are the Americans ?
What the heck happened to the usually technologically more advanced societies of the Western countries ?
Asia is playing catch up very very fast, and before long, they might even get ahead of you guys !
Apparently they're in Houston, and Florida. I regularly see the European, Japanese, Russian, Canadian, Russian, etc. Astronauts at the Johnson Space Center.
The USA has sent astronauts to successfully walk around on the moon, and driven manned rovers there. We've got some satelites orbiting Mars already, and several successful mars rovers, the latest Mars Science Lab is the size of a SUV, and was deployed by unique very complex manoeuvre involving a hovering platform.
NASA partners with space agencies around the world, from Europe's ESA, to Japan's JAXA, to Russian Roscosmos, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think we should give all the NSA and war budgets to NASA and have self sustaining colonies of humans out there (reduce our current 100% chance of extinction). However, I'm not scared about Asia "catching up" to our decades old achievements. In fact, Space is a resource all the world's countries should share.
See also: Planetes -- an anime which briefly explored the concept of poor nations inability to access space widening the poverty gap, and spurning space terrorism.
Some governments fear each other and cause war, but even among the adversarial countries the vast majority of ordinary people of on Earth aren't enemies of each other. Gazing at our small vulnerable blue world from space there are no national borders. May cooperation in space exploration continue to unite Earth's people. I'm cheering India on! The people of Asia deserve to have the cultural catalyst of the cosmic perspective too.
You may also enjoy Space Brothers - Anime about international cooperation in space exploration, brotherly love, sibling rivalry, and putting the first Japanese astronaut on the moon. IMO, we should have inspiring animated shows like this on prime-time TV in place of yet another sarcastic Simpson's clone. Maybe then statements such as yours would be encouraging courage and cooperation rather than scaremongering.
TL;DR: Some men just want to watch the world grow.
"Welcome to the U.S. nuclear arsenal hotline.
Please listen carefully as some menu items have changed.
Para continuar en Espanol marque numero dos.
Main menu opti--"
Oh damn it. I fucking hate theses things.
Billions blown and I can't get a real human operator on the line?!
"--mutually assured destruction press 4
For scheduling nuclear launches press 3
For prior launch status updates press 2
To change a nuclear launch code press 1
To launch all mis--"
Aargh! Screw it. I know a trick...
:: repeatedly presses 0 until the end of the world ::
Just wait till I get my bionic eyes.
Enough men just like an ordinary woman and enough women just want an ordinary man.
But, that's wrong you twit.
I agree. However, I could agree to dismantling of POTS if they FIRST also lessen regulations on a swath of HAM for use by the public, and also legalize packet radio over CB, Family band, and other public use frequencies. We have the technology to radio for help in times of emergency -- Indeed HAM operators are sometimes on the scene in disasters before paramedics arrive. They already play a role in Earthquakes and other times when infrastructure is threatened. Lower the barrier for the common man to have greater ability to communicate first then I'll reconsider my stance on our keeping wired POTS going.
We have the technology for radios to negotiate to noise free channels automatically -- hell, my cheap wifi router does this. The cellular system exists, but we need a similar mesh network for the common people. The EM spectrum belongs to We the People, give us back some damn air waves instead of charging us for all of them. It's the information age, yet outdated packet radio laws remain repressive to progress. Problem is that the government can't just throw a kill switch on public powered wireless devices -- Like they can on the Internet (and probably telephone too).
It would be foolish to ignore that the government has an Internet Kill Switch, vast spying infrastructures, and a pro-censorship anti-discourse agenda whereby government agents actually plan to expose porn habits to silence dissent, while considering migrating any communication medium to IP based services. Furthermore -- The price of bits does not reflect the cost to distribute them. Cellular plans make a mockery of POTS long distance fees, and though it's never been cheeper to move bits the prices aren't going down nearly as fast as in foreign markets with actual competition. We need less regulation of the public sector and more regulation of the private sector's price fixed oligopoly before I'd ever advocate for tossing POTS out. Additionally: Unwarranted metadata collection is too powerful a tool already -- If Snoden can infiltrate PRISM, so can spies from enemy states.
Beware: When those in power advocate change, the changes suggested never give those they have power over more freedom.
I just said that in the political context of the early 1950:s, fear of communism was not considered irrational.
You are a fool, and here's why: Communism is an idea. That's like being scared of the economic principal of freely giving gifts. You believe in Santa Claus?! It's the CONCENTRATION CAMP for you! That's the level of retarded thinking you're exhibiting when confusing Communist Enemy Countries, and Communism. ENEMY is the operative word there, not Communist; For fuck's sake how daft do you have to be to not get this? It is irrational to round up folks for believing in a different economic ideal. Internment camps? What if we did concentration camps for "free love" supporters? How about for anti-war sympathizers? You're aware that bathtubs kill more Americans every year than 9/11 did, right? The flu kills 6 times more Americans every year than a 9/11. Cheeseburgers and Cars Kill 400 times a 9/11 scale terrorist attack every year. Are you scared to drive an evil Deathmobile or grab McDeath Happy Meal? No? Fuck you, it's irrational now and the fear was irrational then.
Same irrational fear of Marxism + Concentration Camp out again in the 70's in Chile. Educate yourself, or end yourself. Your retarded statements are hindering the herd.
That is why Nobody is highly regarded as an expert witness in copyright cases.
nobody is forcing them to do anything. it seems the more rational response is the fix the problem instead of treating the symptom. if someone wants to hack your server, do you think something like removing wifi access will stop them?
They're simply following RFC 1925:
Ooookay, then explain EXACTLY how I'm supposed to make money when somebody can give away my work for free and there ain't a damned thing I can do about it?
Just like a mechanic does: You want to make money. You do a bid for a prospective customer. You agree on a price. You do the work ONCE. You get paid for the work you did ONCE. The difference is that a mechanic's work benefits one car, and one driver; The whole world can benefit from your efforts if you create free software. Note that there is no coin slot on your ignition switch so that the mechanic can extract a fee for each time you benefit from their work...
Copyright creates artificial scarcity. The GPL would not be needed without copyright. GPL essentially make copyright embrace the simple nature of information: Bits are in near infinite supply. Econ:101 states that which is in infinite supply has zero price, regardless of cost to create. Selling ice to Eskimos is a laughable business plan, yet you are of the opinion that selling bits to folks with computers isn't laughable as well? You have an infinite monopoly over your work BEFORE you do it; Leverage this, not the artificial scarcity that allows "piracy" to exist.
You can't sell ice to Eskimos, but you can charge the work to build an igloo.
Compare and contrast the comments herein with the comments of this other thread. Note the framing words used in each headline -- One says "Extremist" the other one "Radical". This allows us to compare the interchangeable terms in big O notation: Whereby O( 1 ) is clear and unbiased news, and higher big Orwellian factors indicate additional obfuscation and framing complexity to add connotative bias where none is required.
Many of the comments here seem to insinuate you have to be delusional to enjoy and desire 100% free software. I'd like anything on that gift giving guide. I'm not a paranoid delusional. My paranoia is based on plenty of evidence, and is tempered by practicality. However, that's the tiniest of concern compared to the other benefits offered.
I wouldn't necessarily gift that stuff to folks who wouldn't appreciate it, but I'd recommend the guide to folks looking to allocate resources on my behalf. I also know several young folks that would appreciate the gifts. My niece really loves tinkering with technology, and is always "pestering" me to play with our toy languages, toy OSs and electronics and robotics projects. She wouldn't have known where to begin if it wasn't for the gift of free software.
Having an OS and supporting software that's fully free and open source has been a huge benefit in our learning and teaching endeavors, especially as references to how stuff works. Doesn't anyone remember the joys of discovering how to code? While some kids took apart dad's drill, I took apart my boot sector and had no one to look to for help. I wasn't lucky enough to have a mentor or access to an open source OS -- or even a free & open compiler -- when I was trying to learn how the CS wheels were invented. I was amazed when I discovered I could just use the DTR pin of a serial port (instead of the then incomprehensible to me RS232) to control switch on a model train set. I'd have been ecstatic to have working source code for something like LIRC or blown away by a 3D printer, and I know my niece will love them too. I know for a fact she's get plenty of enjoyment demonstrating to her friends her creations via her own portable OS shaped like a key.
What's best is knowing that unlike on proprietary systems, when I'm asked, "but how does it do that?", I can always say, "Hmm, I don't know. Let's see!"