Linux won't became a desktop standard for one simple, unavoidable reason:
Because we (as in the users) want to use our computers to get what we need to done with the software with which we are familiar/have been trained on/are given to use. We do not want to administer our system/workstation(s) and go searching for the appropriate application(s) to mimic what we already know to work under Windows or OSX.
Ubuntu and Mint were a move in the right direction, but even still... far too much of the Linux environment and software is designed by and for IT enthusiasts and hobbyists. Far too much of it assumes a fairly deep knowledge of how both a computer and an operating system work under the hood. Far too many things still require just a "little tweaking" to get to work smoothly. Too many of the applications are geared around system management and maintenance. The list goes on and on.
I use Linux running in a VM at home when I need it. Some of what I need, I can run on either side. Some I absolutely need windows (financial software, Reference/Citation manager, etc), because truly comparable software isn't available on Linux. Most of my stats and some GIS, I do on the Linux side, for the same (reversed) reason.
The simple reason is that, to almost everyone that is not directly involved in IT - a computer is a tool or an appliance to get a task done. Nothing more. It is, quite often, an unpleasant and frustrating tool that seems to always be inconveniently temperamental at that... and that is just with the heavily supported, thoroughly developed, heavily investment backed commercial software! Perpetually developed, volunteer-based, "good enough if you squint" software on Linux scares the bejeebus out of people who can barely stand the stuff that's supposed to be "off the shelf" ready.
Click to immediate link in the summary "Terms and Conditions", in the first paragraph:
"Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively."
You will find similar clauses in any service description for residential cable/dsl.
You are, to a great extent, correct.
However, one of the biggest problems US ISPs (Comcast, Time Warner) are getting hammered on and what is causing much of the public outcry is that the actual disparities are far outside any reasonable interpretations of the agreements.
For example, my current home ISP's service description is for up to 5mbps downstream, 256kbps upstream. Typical basic residential service, but should adequate for web browsing/email/online gaming/etc. I live in a rural area so housing density is low, but even still I don't expect to be getting max figures.
What I really didn't expect, however, was that my downstream would be closer to 1400kbps and upstream would consistently be in the range of 16-32kbps!!!
There is no reasonable argument there that my ISP is providing service at levels advertised and paid for even accounting for network congestion and throttling. The disparity is just too great, but still the company insists there is nothing wrong with the equipment or service and hides behind the "up to" clause. I am quite certain there is nothing wrong with my rig, router, or software... I'm just not getting what I'm paying for.
Whether the 13th Baktun is on the 21st or 23rd is pretty much irrelevant anyway as far as the "doomsday" nuts are concerned, though.
You are correct, however, that while the 13th baktun holds some minor significance it was not in any way associated with an "end of the world" scenario... and it's only referenced in one incomplete text that I can think of.
Best & simplest explanation of the "end" of the cycle that I've heard is simply to compare it to a numerical placeholder... i.e. why we don't write the current date as 26th October 02009 - does just saying 2009 mean we believe that the world will end in the year 9999?
I suspect they were imagining some sort of firmware lockout cap for the radiation dosage. Still technically software, but not something readily modified by the end-user to bypass safety tolerances.
Sounds like the doctors didn't anticipate the machine's implementation of the new scan's program, but a firmware safety more likely might have caught the production of overdose range radiation amounts?
Disclaimer: I have been using Vista for over a year. Despite it's flaws I do like like it. I would love to move to linux full time, but frankly the UI is still just not ready for primetime and I have to many needed apps that only run on Windows (and yes I know about and use wine, but there are still too many gaps).
For all it's faults, I have only one real killer complaint about windows - I want an operating system that defaults to not running as root WITHOUT having to jump through an enormous number of hoops and constant tweaking to get transparent usability!
Granted this is also partly the fault of lazy programmers who consistently refuse to use the file structure and permissions policies that MS has actually put in place. The problem is that it isn't the default config, MS enables these bad practices by not forcing the issue, and I should not have to be the one to tweak things around to get things properly secured.
Linux has always done this well. Apple finally managed to do it pretty well. All the right elements are in place somewhere in Windows, but they've left far too many loopholes available in the interest of "compatibility" for developers to simply be lazy.
Programs should not place user or config files in the Program Files directory... there is no good need.
ALL user and user config files should be in their proper user directory. The kludge of sticking them into a "virtualized" clone directory that is ridiculously buried in hidden folders is asinine.
The default should not be to an administrator account for new users... nor should you ever need such privileges just to run your software.
It's all there. Come on MS... get it together this time around.
I've noticed this pretty consistently for a while in Ubuntu (8.04 currently) running both Gnome and KDE... was thinking it was either an X or nvidia driver thing. Happens quite a bit, not just opening pictures like they're doing... happens starting up firefox sometimes, every time I run a game with a graphic startup screen, basically anytime something is loading and doing anything mildly graphics "intensive"...
Those are those little bits of "polish" that the linux community has never gotten quite right. May not be a technical issue or affect the performance, but it looks "broken" so people shy away.
Any time a non-specialist is writing in or about a highly specialized field there are going to be *cringe* moments. If the story is actually good you either don't notice, don't care, or get a chuckle.
I'm an archaeologist (yes, not everyone reading slashdot is an IT person). The "forensic anthropology" drivel of that show "Bones" drives me to distraction. The Indiana Jones movies were ridiculous but highly entertaining. Tomb Raider - utter drivel, but still entertaining. Apocalypto - excruciatingly painful drivel. Stargate - amusing drivel, but entertaining. Et cetera.
A good writer researches enough so that those gotchas don't drag you out of the story, but unless they happen to be an expert on the subject it's guaranteed that someone somewhere is going to be grinding their teeth about it.
A better analogy, IMHO, is the decline of the British empire...
Americans need to take a close look at what has happened to British influence and economy over the last 50-60 years, and decide if we really want to follow that path.
With the US system, we can either be an effective republic or an effective empire. It would be tough to do both under the election system we have, and I don't think we have the stomach anymore to do what it takes to be an effective empire. Not necessarily a bad thing...
Hasn't anyone noticed that within 20 years of breaking up Ma Bell, telecoms had for the most part simply re-consolidated into regional unregulated monopolies?
Completely agree. Folks tend to get the governemnt they ask for, and they get it good and hard.
One of the biggest impediments to most of these power issues have been the slew of regulations enacted in response to public concerns that make it nearly impossible for private industry to do anything. Most were put in place with the best of intentions, but poor forsight into all the consequences. The nuclear industry in particular has been in limbo for over 20 years becasue of it, and we've fallen way behind other countries in utilization.
That being said, part of the reason we got to that state was an equally reasonable lack of faith in private industry and the scientific community to hold the public interest and safety in the same regard as profits. The lousy response to 3-Mile Island only cemented that lack of faith further.
This country has rarely been good about finding the right balance between regulation and free market, though.
On the other hand, when we're talking about quickly re-building a national infrastructure on this scale it is kind of hard to imagine it being done purely through private, market-driven industries. Way too much risk in the sheer scale of the project.
I admit - I don't really have a good answer to that problem. Wish I did. Can we afford to wait a few generations to slowly get a new energy infra-structure online?
Part of the current schizophrenia of the US environmentalist movements, I'm afraid. They were so successful at anti-nuclear campaigning during the 70s & 80s (further fueled by public hysteria after the 3-Mile Island mishap, the noxiously nonsensical movie "China Syndrome" and its popular ilk, and the arrogant dismissals of public opinion by the scientific and industrial communities) that it hasn't been until the recent problems that it was even discussed seriously again. Just when hysteria started calming down, there was Chernobyl which scared the bejeezus out of the public again. It is a shame.
Nuclear isn't perfect, but the technologies for reprocessing & storage have vastly improved. The US public doesn't see any of it, though, and too much political capital was invested by the enviro-groups to keep it out of any energy discussion that there are a whole lot o' misconceptions to combat in far too short a time to get anything moving.
Also, I believe that in France the utilities are at least in part nationalized? The investment required for nuclear is way too risky for private industry here, and good luck trying to get nationalized utilities (or anything) to fly in the US. We just don't have that kind of faith in federal bureaucracy.
Cranial volume is a proxy measurement of intelligence... physical anthropologists have known for a long time that neanderthal cranial capacity was on average as large (and possibly larger) than sapiens. Of course with few exceptions any discussion of cranial capacities and differential human intelligences have been taboo in academia for quite some time, and since neanderthals are so close to sapiens in the "family tree" such discussion was considered just a little too close to the old discussions about modern human "races" to be comfortable.
What isn't known, and can't currently be known, is the proportions of the neurophysical structures that occupied the cranial cavity of the neanderthals.
Differences of that sort could play a big part in the nature of the comparative "intelligences".
That is, however, the extent that I can agree with your post. The rest is purest speculation about the morals and motives that speaks more of indoctrination in neo-marxist, post-modernist theory that has unfortunately overtaken the vast majority of the human behavioral "science" curricula in universities.
homosapiens were likely to have been more vengeful and fielded a larger group to pursue and Neanderthals
What possible evidence would or could you have to support such a hypothesis?
Neanderthals might have won and collected their prize of long pig
In case folks are wondering, "long pig" is the translation of a Trobriand Islander's term for human flesh used in cannibalistic rituals. Exactly what evidence do you have that neanderthals were cannibals?
(For that matter, cite any ethnographic evidence that cannibalism has been a broad societal practice for anything but within a highly ritualized and symbolic context? No conclusive evidence exists that any group historically or archaeologically used cannibalism as a food source except under the most extreme duress. It is invariably in a ritual context.)
The ratio between the greedy few and the more aware majority define the nature modern societies more so than the individual intelligence of it's members.
This is a contemporary moralistic and political evaluation that has little to do with innate intelligence of a species, sociological or anthropological theory, social behavioral sciences, neuropsychology, socio-biology,... or really anything to do with survivability of homo sapiens neanderthalis versus homo sapiens sapiens as species.
Please don't pass off your political views as science... it devalues both science and politics.
If 5% of desktop computers are Unix (OS X is Unix) or Linux , then 5% of the viruses should affect Unix or Linux.
The one doesn't follow from the other, and there is no reason for the proportion of OS market share to be reflected in the proportion of malware by system. Malware writers are looking to compromise as many machines as possible, and the largest number of machines are running an MS OS.
For the distribution of malware to be identical to the OS market share would mean that malware writers would be spending a disproportionate amount of time on compromising fewer machines... an inefficient effort for a small amount of return. If you want to compromise the most machines, you wouldn't waste your effort that way.
That has nothing to do with the relative security of the OS's, just a matter of maximizing the return on your efforts. If Unix (and variants) had 90% of the OS market, and MS only 10%... the vast majority of malware would be written against Unix, even though the MS machines were easier to crack.
That is a whole separate argument from which OS is relatively more or less secure.
Now it may well be that if the market shares were reversed, malware writers would be having a harder time of it and a smaller percentage of those 90% of machines compromised but the one has little to do with the other.
The underlying optimization models and algorithms were initially prototyped on a large unnamed US Government program, where the key problem was how to efficiently deploy a large number of critical resources to a range of disaster event scenarios.
Gee... I wonder what large, unnamed program deploying large numbers of critical assets under crisis scenarios might possibly be...hmm?
Folks are right that this is nothing completely new, but if they've found a way to speed the computation of it along ("within an hour"?) with less machine resources required... then that is a breakthrough, is it not?
Yes, there has been this sort of research going on in academic institutions and elsewhere, private and public sectors, internationally (and if you look at IBM's pages that are linked, there is a substantial list of citations, collaborating institutions, et cetera)... but just who do you think is putting up the funding in grants and prizes and such at those other institutions? Why... it's IBM and US Federal agencies! What a shock...
Granted, the wording of that patent application as it's presented does appear to be way too broad - I don't think IBM is really intending to suggest they hold a patent on disaster relief as a concept? If they have developed an algorithm and software (in-house and through work generated from their grant seed-monies)to facilitate said disaster relief, however, they should be able to expect some ownership and a return on investment shouldn't they?
On the other hand, I do somewhat suspect that had this software been available to FEMA before Katrina hit the response wouldn't have been a whole lot better. There is only so much you can optimize a crap system, and creating a huge centralized federal bureaucracy dedicated to "emergency management" was just asking for bad response times - this one just showed how bad that response time could get when the event wasn't localized. Sadly, that can't be blamed on Bush since it was done in 1979 (feel free to blame him for taking to long to feign interest if you want - but that never has been his strong suit, has it).
The unfortunate truth is that no matter how good such software is, no matter how advanced the algorithms, no matter how fast the supercomputers... if it's trying to optimize and implement the unworkable ideas created by politicians it's going to be GIGO.
Q: What do you call it when you create a sentient supercomputer that can actually think like a politician?
While I agree in part, the fact that it is a free-market economy does not mean that the consumers are entirely subject to the will and whims of the producers. There should be limits to what the market will tolerate in the quest for the profit margins desired, and it should not be necessary for someone to completely disconnect from the prevailing society in order to say they've had enough.
I have no qualms about advertising revenue in its appropriate venue. I do have qualms that the public is so willing to lay down for any new method some business exec comes up with for squeezing yet another dime out of their customers pockets that it has become not only expected but made an a priori that the price of being part of a technological society is to have your own property be considered on lease to you by the companies you have already paid. I do have qualms about the subscription model being overextended into every part of IT.
What I was saying is that further hiding this aggressive business model behind the rhetoric of OSS and that the adherence to it by such proponents is truly disturbing.
Google = free search service therefore advertising revenues are appropriate and I have no objection
My operating system = paid in full, therefore it is an affront to charge me again through advertising
My software = paid in full, therefore it is an affront to charge me again through advertising
What the Web2.0 sheeple seem to believe is that it is perfectly alright to extend double-dipping as a standard business practice even further than it already has become. When an OSS fellow such as this actually has internalized this assumption to the point that he is referring to "owning" a product's users, I do believe it is past time to say "enough is enough" and "shove it".
Icaza was, at one point, an innovator and strong proponent of open source. In this one statement he reveals himself absolutely no different than the supposed "boogeymen" of proprietary software makers and patent trolls... if anything it betrays a sentiment towards a business model that is insidiously more rapaciously greedy.
It is hard to make a reasonable case about OSS being about freedom when he is sitting there referring to owning those that OSS was ostensibly supposed to liberate, is it not?
There is a feature beyond selling corporate [software] and patents... it's going to be owning end users.
I find that statement, more than anything, to be truly disturbing...
While I find the premise of OSS that knowledge should be transparent rather than proprietary a nice ideal, Web2.0 seems like an incredibly Faustian deal. Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch... if you're getting free software, you pay by being an advertising target. More and more, though, I find that software that I have paid for (or donated to) asks me to pay again by being a marketing pawn. And then continue paying again and again... Online services I pay for shove an increasing amount of advertising at me. My OS shoves advertisement for "Upgrades" and "AddOns" at me. The software I have already paid for shoves adverts for additional services at me...
The whole Web2.0 business model appears to be an ad agency's wolf in an OSS sheep's clothing, does it not? At what point did we become the property of businesses we support by our patronage? At what point do we say enough is enough?
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Linux won't became a desktop standard for one simple, unavoidable reason:
Because we (as in the users) want to use our computers to get what we need to done with the software with which we are familiar/have been trained on/are given to use. We do not want to administer our system/workstation(s) and go searching for the appropriate application(s) to mimic what we already know to work under Windows or OSX.
Ubuntu and Mint were a move in the right direction, but even still... far too much of the Linux environment and software is designed by and for IT enthusiasts and hobbyists. Far too much of it assumes a fairly deep knowledge of how both a computer and an operating system work under the hood. Far too many things still require just a "little tweaking" to get to work smoothly. Too many of the applications are geared around system management and maintenance. The list goes on and on.
I use Linux running in a VM at home when I need it. Some of what I need, I can run on either side. Some I absolutely need windows (financial software, Reference/Citation manager, etc), because truly comparable software isn't available on Linux. Most of my stats and some GIS, I do on the Linux side, for the same (reversed) reason.
The simple reason is that, to almost everyone that is not directly involved in IT - a computer is a tool or an appliance to get a task done. Nothing more. It is, quite often, an unpleasant and frustrating tool that seems to always be inconveniently temperamental at that... and that is just with the heavily supported, thoroughly developed, heavily investment backed commercial software! Perpetually developed, volunteer-based, "good enough if you squint" software on Linux scares the bejeebus out of people who can barely stand the stuff that's supposed to be "off the shelf" ready.
Click to immediate link in the summary "Terms and Conditions", in the first paragraph: "Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively."
You will find similar clauses in any service description for residential cable/dsl.
You are, to a great extent, correct.
However, one of the biggest problems US ISPs (Comcast, Time Warner) are getting hammered on and what is causing much of the public outcry is that the actual disparities are far outside any reasonable interpretations of the agreements.
For example, my current home ISP's service description is for up to 5mbps downstream, 256kbps upstream. Typical basic residential service, but should adequate for web browsing/email/online gaming/etc. I live in a rural area so housing density is low, but even still I don't expect to be getting max figures.
What I really didn't expect, however, was that my downstream would be closer to 1400kbps and upstream would consistently be in the range of 16-32kbps!!!
There is no reasonable argument there that my ISP is providing service at levels advertised and paid for even accounting for network congestion and throttling. The disparity is just too great, but still the company insists there is nothing wrong with the equipment or service and hides behind the "up to" clause. I am quite certain there is nothing wrong with my rig, router, or software... I'm just not getting what I'm paying for.
Whether the 13th Baktun is on the 21st or 23rd is pretty much irrelevant anyway as far as the "doomsday" nuts are concerned, though.
You are correct, however, that while the 13th baktun holds some minor significance it was not in any way associated with an "end of the world" scenario... and it's only referenced in one incomplete text that I can think of.
Best & simplest explanation of the "end" of the cycle that I've heard is simply to compare it to a numerical placeholder... i.e. why we don't write the current date as 26th October 02009 - does just saying 2009 mean we believe that the world will end in the year 9999?
I suspect they were imagining some sort of firmware lockout cap for the radiation dosage. Still technically software, but not something readily modified by the end-user to bypass safety tolerances.
Sounds like the doctors didn't anticipate the machine's implementation of the new scan's program, but a firmware safety more likely might have caught the production of overdose range radiation amounts?
There are some girls I want them to meet.
They've likely had little experience with the female of the species. We are talking about a group of AI researchers at RPI, after all.
Disclaimer: I have been using Vista for over a year. Despite it's flaws I do like like it. I would love to move to linux full time, but frankly the UI is still just not ready for primetime and I have to many needed apps that only run on Windows (and yes I know about and use wine, but there are still too many gaps).
For all it's faults, I have only one real killer complaint about windows - I want an operating system that defaults to not running as root WITHOUT having to jump through an enormous number of hoops and constant tweaking to get transparent usability!
Granted this is also partly the fault of lazy programmers who consistently refuse to use the file structure and permissions policies that MS has actually put in place. The problem is that it isn't the default config, MS enables these bad practices by not forcing the issue, and I should not have to be the one to tweak things around to get things properly secured.
Linux has always done this well. Apple finally managed to do it pretty well. All the right elements are in place somewhere in Windows, but they've left far too many loopholes available in the interest of "compatibility" for developers to simply be lazy.
Programs should not place user or config files in the Program Files directory... there is no good need.
ALL user and user config files should be in their proper user directory. The kludge of sticking them into a "virtualized" clone directory that is ridiculously buried in hidden folders is asinine.
The default should not be to an administrator account for new users... nor should you ever need such privileges just to run your software.
It's all there. Come on MS... get it together this time around.
They think that the year of Linux on the Desktop was^H^H^Hwill be 1972
Yes, but how would that properly be expressed in the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional form?
.
I've noticed this pretty consistently for a while in Ubuntu (8.04 currently) running both Gnome and KDE... was thinking it was either an X or nvidia driver thing. Happens quite a bit, not just opening pictures like they're doing... happens starting up firefox sometimes, every time I run a game with a graphic startup screen, basically anytime something is loading and doing anything mildly graphics "intensive"...
Those are those little bits of "polish" that the linux community has never gotten quite right. May not be a technical issue or affect the performance, but it looks "broken" so people shy away.
SO... what you are telling me is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen!
Someone had to say it :-)
Any time a non-specialist is writing in or about a highly specialized field there are going to be *cringe* moments. If the story is actually good you either don't notice, don't care, or get a chuckle.
I'm an archaeologist (yes, not everyone reading slashdot is an IT person). The "forensic anthropology" drivel of that show "Bones" drives me to distraction. The Indiana Jones movies were ridiculous but highly entertaining. Tomb Raider - utter drivel, but still entertaining. Apocalypto - excruciatingly painful drivel. Stargate - amusing drivel, but entertaining. Et cetera.
A good writer researches enough so that those gotchas don't drag you out of the story, but unless they happen to be an expert on the subject it's guaranteed that someone somewhere is going to be grinding their teeth about it.
A better analogy, IMHO, is the decline of the British empire...
Americans need to take a close look at what has happened to British influence and economy over the last 50-60 years, and decide if we really want to follow that path.
With the US system, we can either be an effective republic or an effective empire. It would be tough to do both under the election system we have, and I don't think we have the stomach anymore to do what it takes to be an effective empire. Not necessarily a bad thing...
Hasn't anyone noticed that within 20 years of breaking up Ma Bell, telecoms had for the most part simply re-consolidated into regional unregulated monopolies?
Was that an improvement?
Completely agree. Folks tend to get the governemnt they ask for, and they get it good and hard.
One of the biggest impediments to most of these power issues have been the slew of regulations enacted in response to public concerns that make it nearly impossible for private industry to do anything. Most were put in place with the best of intentions, but poor forsight into all the consequences. The nuclear industry in particular has been in limbo for over 20 years becasue of it, and we've fallen way behind other countries in utilization.
That being said, part of the reason we got to that state was an equally reasonable lack of faith in private industry and the scientific community to hold the public interest and safety in the same regard as profits. The lousy response to 3-Mile Island only cemented that lack of faith further.
This country has rarely been good about finding the right balance between regulation and free market, though.
On the other hand, when we're talking about quickly re-building a national infrastructure on this scale it is kind of hard to imagine it being done purely through private, market-driven industries. Way too much risk in the sheer scale of the project.
I admit - I don't really have a good answer to that problem. Wish I did. Can we afford to wait a few generations to slowly get a new energy infra-structure online?
Part of the current schizophrenia of the US environmentalist movements, I'm afraid. They were so successful at anti-nuclear campaigning during the 70s & 80s (further fueled by public hysteria after the 3-Mile Island mishap, the noxiously nonsensical movie "China Syndrome" and its popular ilk, and the arrogant dismissals of public opinion by the scientific and industrial communities) that it hasn't been until the recent problems that it was even discussed seriously again. Just when hysteria started calming down, there was Chernobyl which scared the bejeezus out of the public again. It is a shame.
Nuclear isn't perfect, but the technologies for reprocessing & storage have vastly improved. The US public doesn't see any of it, though, and too much political capital was invested by the enviro-groups to keep it out of any energy discussion that there are a whole lot o' misconceptions to combat in far too short a time to get anything moving.
Also, I believe that in France the utilities are at least in part nationalized? The investment required for nuclear is way too risky for private industry here, and good luck trying to get nationalized utilities (or anything) to fly in the US. We just don't have that kind of faith in federal bureaucracy.
Cranial volume is a proxy measurement of intelligence... physical anthropologists have known for a long time that neanderthal cranial capacity was on average as large (and possibly larger) than sapiens. Of course with few exceptions any discussion of cranial capacities and differential human intelligences have been taboo in academia for quite some time, and since neanderthals are so close to sapiens in the "family tree" such discussion was considered just a little too close to the old discussions about modern human "races" to be comfortable.
What isn't known, and can't currently be known, is the proportions of the neurophysical structures that occupied the cranial cavity of the neanderthals.
Differences of that sort could play a big part in the nature of the comparative "intelligences".
That is, however, the extent that I can agree with your post. The rest is purest speculation about the morals and motives that speaks more of indoctrination in neo-marxist, post-modernist theory that has unfortunately overtaken the vast majority of the human behavioral "science" curricula in universities.
homosapiens were likely to have been more vengeful and fielded a larger group to pursue and Neanderthals
What possible evidence would or could you have to support such a hypothesis?
Neanderthals might have won and collected their prize of long pig
In case folks are wondering, "long pig" is the translation of a Trobriand Islander's term for human flesh used in cannibalistic rituals. Exactly what evidence do you have that neanderthals were cannibals?
(For that matter, cite any ethnographic evidence that cannibalism has been a broad societal practice for anything but within a highly ritualized and symbolic context? No conclusive evidence exists that any group historically or archaeologically used cannibalism as a food source except under the most extreme duress. It is invariably in a ritual context.)
The ratio between the greedy few and the more aware majority define the nature modern societies more so than the individual intelligence of it's members.
This is a contemporary moralistic and political evaluation that has little to do with innate intelligence of a species, sociological or anthropological theory, social behavioral sciences, neuropsychology, socio-biology, ... or really anything to do with survivability of homo sapiens neanderthalis versus homo sapiens sapiens as species.
Please don't pass off your political views as science... it devalues both science and politics.
sorry, I guess I should have marked my post with a sarcasm alert
OTOH that may have been true for the first iMac... possibly makes sense for the iPhone, but...
...iCalc?
...iPod?
...iMean really!
Why do you want to pollute a perfectly good star? It's not as if we are in a binary system and thus have a "backup".
If we did, wouldn't the RIAA just sue us all for having a backup of "original work"?
At least the Gnome folks and the KDE folks use it to designate which environment an app best works with...
I have yet to figure out what the Apple fascination with the prefix i- on absolutely everything is supposed to signify?
I mean, it's not as if any gamers would know such obscure titles as Diablo II or Oblivion or Unreal Tournament or anything...
I can just hear the designers now...
"We'd have gotten away with it, too... if it weren't for those darn kids!"
The one doesn't follow from the other, and there is no reason for the proportion of OS market share to be reflected in the proportion of malware by system. Malware writers are looking to compromise as many machines as possible, and the largest number of machines are running an MS OS.
For the distribution of malware to be identical to the OS market share would mean that malware writers would be spending a disproportionate amount of time on compromising fewer machines... an inefficient effort for a small amount of return. If you want to compromise the most machines, you wouldn't waste your effort that way.
That has nothing to do with the relative security of the OS's, just a matter of maximizing the return on your efforts. If Unix (and variants) had 90% of the OS market, and MS only 10%... the vast majority of malware would be written against Unix, even though the MS machines were easier to crack.
That is a whole separate argument from which OS is relatively more or less secure.
Now it may well be that if the market shares were reversed, malware writers would be having a harder time of it and a smaller percentage of those 90% of machines compromised but the one has little to do with the other.
Gee... I wonder what large, unnamed program deploying large numbers of critical assets under crisis scenarios might possibly be...hmm?
Folks are right that this is nothing completely new, but if they've found a way to speed the computation of it along ("within an hour"?) with less machine resources required... then that is a breakthrough, is it not?
Yes, there has been this sort of research going on in academic institutions and elsewhere, private and public sectors, internationally (and if you look at IBM's pages that are linked, there is a substantial list of citations, collaborating institutions, et cetera)... but just who do you think is putting up the funding in grants and prizes and such at those other institutions? Why... it's IBM and US Federal agencies! What a shock...
Granted, the wording of that patent application as it's presented does appear to be way too broad - I don't think IBM is really intending to suggest they hold a patent on disaster relief as a concept? If they have developed an algorithm and software (in-house and through work generated from their grant seed-monies)to facilitate said disaster relief, however, they should be able to expect some ownership and a return on investment shouldn't they?
On the other hand, I do somewhat suspect that had this software been available to FEMA before Katrina hit the response wouldn't have been a whole lot better. There is only so much you can optimize a crap system, and creating a huge centralized federal bureaucracy dedicated to "emergency management" was just asking for bad response times - this one just showed how bad that response time could get when the event wasn't localized. Sadly, that can't be blamed on Bush since it was done in 1979 (feel free to blame him for taking to long to feign interest if you want - but that never has been his strong suit, has it).
The unfortunate truth is that no matter how good such software is, no matter how advanced the algorithms, no matter how fast the supercomputers... if it's trying to optimize and implement the unworkable ideas created by politicians it's going to be GIGO.
Q: What do you call it when you create a sentient supercomputer that can actually think like a politician?
A: "Artificial Stupidity"
While I agree in part, the fact that it is a free-market economy does not mean that the consumers are entirely subject to the will and whims of the producers. There should be limits to what the market will tolerate in the quest for the profit margins desired, and it should not be necessary for someone to completely disconnect from the prevailing society in order to say they've had enough.
I have no qualms about advertising revenue in its appropriate venue. I do have qualms that the public is so willing to lay down for any new method some business exec comes up with for squeezing yet another dime out of their customers pockets that it has become not only expected but made an a priori that the price of being part of a technological society is to have your own property be considered on lease to you by the companies you have already paid. I do have qualms about the subscription model being overextended into every part of IT.
What I was saying is that further hiding this aggressive business model behind the rhetoric of OSS and that the adherence to it by such proponents is truly disturbing.
Google = free search service therefore advertising revenues are appropriate and I have no objection
My operating system = paid in full, therefore it is an affront to charge me again through advertising
My software = paid in full, therefore it is an affront to charge me again through advertising
What the Web2.0 sheeple seem to believe is that it is perfectly alright to extend double-dipping as a standard business practice even further than it already has become. When an OSS fellow such as this actually has internalized this assumption to the point that he is referring to "owning" a product's users, I do believe it is past time to say "enough is enough" and "shove it".
Icaza was, at one point, an innovator and strong proponent of open source. In this one statement he reveals himself absolutely no different than the supposed "boogeymen" of proprietary software makers and patent trolls... if anything it betrays a sentiment towards a business model that is insidiously more rapaciously greedy.
It is hard to make a reasonable case about OSS being about freedom when he is sitting there referring to owning those that OSS was ostensibly supposed to liberate, is it not?
I find that statement, more than anything, to be truly disturbing...
While I find the premise of OSS that knowledge should be transparent rather than proprietary a nice ideal, Web2.0 seems like an incredibly Faustian deal. Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch... if you're getting free software, you pay by being an advertising target. More and more, though, I find that software that I have paid for (or donated to) asks me to pay again by being a marketing pawn. And then continue paying again and again... Online services I pay for shove an increasing amount of advertising at me. My OS shoves advertisement for "Upgrades" and "AddOns" at me. The software I have already paid for shoves adverts for additional services at me...
The whole Web2.0 business model appears to be an ad agency's wolf in an OSS sheep's clothing, does it not? At what point did we become the property of businesses we support by our patronage? At what point do we say enough is enough?