Microsoft may very well be stomping on their dicks, in much the same way that Ubuntu is. Time will tell whether Microsoft has anything "sewn up". No one can really "challenge" a giant like Microsoft, but what if the giant just suicides?
"I guess the day will come (I suspect that it'll be long after Musk has assumed room temp) when SpaceX is a giant, ossified fossil that can't adapt to changing markets. It seems to be inevitable."
No guessing involved. In fact, several Sci-Fi authors predicted as much, decades ago. When we mud-dwellers finally get our fingers out of our asses, and build a colony, that will be almost the end of our innovation and contribution to space exploration. We'll see migration to the colony, just as fast and massive as the colony can possibly support, then all future innovation will spring from the colony itself.
Microsoft made their money on Windows and Office. When they lose that base, they are on the way down. When the fall starts, it will accelerate rapidly.
On second thought, no, I don't want any of what you're smoking.
The last person to burgle my home was caught on video surveillance. Not state owned video, but my own. That person should have known that my home is on camera, but criminals just aren't very bright. In broad daylight, he and a friend drove up, went into the house, took what they wanted, and drove away. They must have thought they were very lucky - the neighbors weren't home to witness anything. Phht - the car was visible on video as soon as it got past the neighbor's house, and they parked right in front of the camera. Of course, the camera was camoflaged, but the idiot KNEW that we were recording events at the house, because of problems with ANOTHER neighbor! Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .
Whatever - not everyone in my home works the same shifts. Good luck trying to find a "good time" to burgle my home.
I'm a father. I had young dumb teens. Today, they are young dumb twenty-somethings. One of my young dumb teens was held at gunpoint, in just such a circumstance. Had he been shot, the guy doing the shooting would have had no explaining to do. I UNDERSTOOD! When you wake up in the middle of the night to find an intruder on your property, THERE IS LITTLE TO EXPLAIN!
Biggest and oldest? Please, you give me to much credit. Of course, I can understand how it might look that way to a twelve year old whose mother won't allow him to cross the street alone.
You miss the point. Weapons shouldn't be registered to start with. The state shouldn't have any idea who owns what. It's none of their business. The only people whose business it is, is mine, the wife's the children's, and whoever the hell tries to break into my home. That's it.
No problem here - there is no public record of my gun ownership, but no one doubts that my house has weapons in it. Want to put me on a map? That's cool. The local criminals aren't going to target me, they'll skip my next door neighbor, and hit the people out on the highway. Criminals don't want to risk getting shot. The random criminal from out of town won't know that I'm armed. Publicize that fact, it's cool. Let them know up front that they'll be shot snooping around my property, and I won't have to clean the mess up after the fact.
Actually, quality artistic renderings are in short supply. The MPAA certainly isn't supplying any. The RIAA affiliates supply very little. Quality art comes from independents and little-know or unknown artists. These are people who tend to agree with my feelings. They don't expect to live fat off the hog for the rest of their lives, after doing a few dozen performances. They stay hungry, just like John and Jane Doe, so they keep working to improve.
I ride a 30 year old motorcycle, which was not designed with either unleaded gasoline or ethanol in mind. That old Honda fires up, first time, every time. The old 'Twisted Twin' just keeps going, and going, and going.
Nauseated? Glad to hear it. Hey - did you ever notice that the average working stiff has to get up, go to work every morning, bust his ass for hours, then on payday, he gets a little less than he really needs to make ends meet?
Content creators. You make something once, and you expect to be paid for it for the rest of your lives? You expect that your children, your grand children, even your great grand children should get royalties derived from your genius?
You sniveling twats - go get a real job. And, stop feeding the copyright trolls who belong to RIAA and the like. You're not the fucking geniuses that you think you are. You need a good de-worming, like any stray dog. You're infested with parasitic lawyers, agents, and other undesirable creatures.
Maybe - just maybe - without these infestations, you would be worth something. Here's a fiddle - see if you can play some music and dance for my amusement, little "content creator". If not, get out of my face. Don't forget to leave the fiddle when you leave - you didn't earn it.
No robot or computer is any better than the programmer who programmed it. When you find a programmer(s) who can foresee and work around ALL possible problems, then come back and talk about a robot being a better driver than a human.
I think the problem there is, we use the metric system for money. Maybe if we switch to pence, shillings, and pounds, they'd get better at counting change./sarcasm
Fantasizing, you say? Whatever. The fact is, the wealth of the world is being redistributed, and the US and EU are coming up losers. China is gaining. The real catch to all this redistribution is, the world's central banks are reaping the lion's share of the profits. For each ten dollars we lose, China gains a dollar, and the banks steal nine dollars.
But, the situation with the central banks don't affect the fact that China is ascending, while we descend.
China may be dependent on us today, but what happens in fifty years, or a hundred? We're selling off our great grandchildren's future.
Today, almost everything is crap. Given another decade, they'll start getting things right. People are people, after all. A Chinese who does the same job for years and years is going to get better and better at his job, just as anyone else does.
Maybe what you're missing is, the government involvement. Government in China is pushing people to invest, learn, and improve. Our own government, in contrast, encourages welfare ghetto kids to sing rap music, sell drugs, and set up elaborate con schemes.
Uhh, how about both? They steal all the R&D possible, but at the same time, their economy is growing, while ours is shrinking. I clicked the link, just to ask, "This is news?" Of course China will overtake the US in genuine R&D sometime soon. We've lost what it takes to lead the world in much of anything.
Obviously, they were there to dig up the wells, take pictures, take measurements, etc. I think you meant to ask, "Were they then?" rather than "Where they there?" Or, maybe you meant, "Where they then?" Dang, your grammar has me wondering what you really did mean to ask!
AFTER I posted, I actually looked at the link you posted - so I'm not done with your foolishness.
The Netanya is more seaworthy than Job's boat by at least an order of magnitude. Netanya has more windows than I am comfortable with, but they are a small fraction the size of Job's windows. Each pane appears to be solidly anchored, top, bottom, and both sides. As I say, I'm not completely comfortable with them, but they are sensibly sized, and sensibly located.
Next, look at the bow. A flared bow parts the waves, riding up over the bulk of the wave. You get far fewer of those thousands of tons of water crashing down on you with a flared bow. Look at the overhanging ledges of steel, helping to protect those windows. If/when a few tons of water come down on the windows, those ledges will catch much of the force.
The Netanya is streamlined in a fashion that enhances the flared bow. The weather deck, and most of the windows are protected by the flaring, as well as the breaks, which extend to the waist.
I don't *like* those forward facing windows on the first deck, but I'd be willing to sail on the Netanya.
You ASSume that because you've read the same or similar objections elsewhere, that I copy pasted my post? First, re-read my post, and point out where I mentioned wind, at all, please.
Maybe you would care to take a closer look at the Adams class destroyers I served aboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Adams_class_destroyerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Charles_F_Adams_(DDG-2)_underway_c1973.jpg Look at the photo, top right side of the page. Just aft of mount 51 (the big gun) and below the flying bridge. solidly welded to the main weather deck, you can see what we call a "break". It's purpose is to break the waves coming over the bow, so that they don't sweep men off the weather decks further aft. That structure is a solid piece of aluminum. Quite solidly welded at the bottom, and all the way up the side. As I recall, that structure was 3/4 inch thick.
You mention windows withstanding wind stronger than a ship has to withstand at sea. Your ignorance is two fold. Winds at sea are every bit as strong as they are anywhere above land. But - the wind is not the big deal. IT'S THE WATER!!!
When tens of thousands of tons of water tower over top of you, then come slamming down on your ship, then you begin to understand the power of the sea.
Look at that break again. We had ours, on the port side, ripped off one night in the North Atlantic. It was late at night, we heard one tremendous "BOOM" when we were hit by an especially large wave, then a hellacious "SCREEEECH" as the metal tore away. Luckily, the superstructure was not breached, or we would have had flooded spaces to deal with quickly, or we would have died.
Now, go look at your skyscrapers again. Tell me how often the Empire State building has crashed into more tons of water than you can possibly measure.
Maybe you'd like to revisit some of the tsunami damage done in the Pacific ocean a couple of years ago. How many skyscrapers withstood a 40 foot wall of water crashing into it at 30 knots or more?
Minor forces, you say? You are a complete and utter fool, who had better never go to sea. A minor force is what you are working with, mentally.
I did mention horses. Horses have life expectancies roughly 1/3 to 1/2 that of humans. You might want to throw that into you "not equal to" calculations, then see how it all compares to selective breeding for human beings. it might also be interesting to trace life expectancies for humans versus horses throughout history. What was a human's life expectancy 1000 years ago, compared to a highly valued war horse?
Slaves might be massacred for little if any reason, whereas a valuable war horse would be pampered and babied, and the best physicians called in if it appeared to be ill.
And, BTW - you expose your cultural upbringing when you assume humans only begin breeding at age fifteen. For much of history, and probably all of prehistory, common wisdom said, "If it's old enough to bleed, it's old enough to breed." We still see that today, both in the US among "fundamental" Mormon groups, as well as overseas in Islamic parts of the world. If a girl reaches puberty at age 10, some of bastard is waiting around to stick it to her.
So, you're right that evolutionary changes in humans probably take 100 times longer than in dogs. But, it probably only takes three times as long as for horses.
Slashdot Mirror
Sewn up, huh?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/12/26/021222/google-challenging-microsoft-for-business-software?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Microsoft may very well be stomping on their dicks, in much the same way that Ubuntu is. Time will tell whether Microsoft has anything "sewn up". No one can really "challenge" a giant like Microsoft, but what if the giant just suicides?
"I guess the day will come (I suspect that it'll be long after Musk has assumed room temp) when SpaceX is a giant, ossified fossil that can't adapt to changing markets. It seems to be inevitable."
No guessing involved. In fact, several Sci-Fi authors predicted as much, decades ago. When we mud-dwellers finally get our fingers out of our asses, and build a colony, that will be almost the end of our innovation and contribution to space exploration. We'll see migration to the colony, just as fast and massive as the colony can possibly support, then all future innovation will spring from the colony itself.
I might want some of what you're smoking.
Microsoft made their money on Windows and Office. When they lose that base, they are on the way down. When the fall starts, it will accelerate rapidly.
On second thought, no, I don't want any of what you're smoking.
The last person to burgle my home was caught on video surveillance. Not state owned video, but my own. That person should have known that my home is on camera, but criminals just aren't very bright. In broad daylight, he and a friend drove up, went into the house, took what they wanted, and drove away. They must have thought they were very lucky - the neighbors weren't home to witness anything. Phht - the car was visible on video as soon as it got past the neighbor's house, and they parked right in front of the camera. Of course, the camera was camoflaged, but the idiot KNEW that we were recording events at the house, because of problems with ANOTHER neighbor! Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .
Whatever - not everyone in my home works the same shifts. Good luck trying to find a "good time" to burgle my home.
I'm a father. I had young dumb teens. Today, they are young dumb twenty-somethings. One of my young dumb teens was held at gunpoint, in just such a circumstance. Had he been shot, the guy doing the shooting would have had no explaining to do. I UNDERSTOOD! When you wake up in the middle of the night to find an intruder on your property, THERE IS LITTLE TO EXPLAIN!
Biggest and oldest? Please, you give me to much credit. Of course, I can understand how it might look that way to a twelve year old whose mother won't allow him to cross the street alone.
Citations. You're pulling that out of your ass, and everyone reading it knows it.
Well, if the neighbor isn't smart enough to get out of the way while my kids are learning to use an M2 and a mortar, well - Darwin Award time!
This is where people on both sides of the issue mod me down, LMAO!!
Oh yeah, if you don't like my driving, stay off the sidewalk!
" dangerous gun-owners"
How about you just make some attempt to identify DANGEROUS PEOPLE, then stop defending their rights to be dangerous?
That sumbitch that ambushed four firefighters yesterday? He had murdered his own grandmother with a hammer. Served 18 years, and was paroled.
Hello, world!! You don't think that hammering Grandma to death was a danger flag? Why wasn't he left in prison to die?
Oh - some namby pamby bleeding heart sumbitch felt that he had "paid for his crimes" or some such?
Again, I repeat: HE MURDERED HIS OWN GRANDMOTHER WITH A FUCKING HAMMER!!!
You miss the point. Weapons shouldn't be registered to start with. The state shouldn't have any idea who owns what. It's none of their business. The only people whose business it is, is mine, the wife's the children's, and whoever the hell tries to break into my home. That's it.
No problem here - there is no public record of my gun ownership, but no one doubts that my house has weapons in it. Want to put me on a map? That's cool. The local criminals aren't going to target me, they'll skip my next door neighbor, and hit the people out on the highway. Criminals don't want to risk getting shot. The random criminal from out of town won't know that I'm armed. Publicize that fact, it's cool. Let them know up front that they'll be shot snooping around my property, and I won't have to clean the mess up after the fact.
Actually, quality artistic renderings are in short supply. The MPAA certainly isn't supplying any. The RIAA affiliates supply very little. Quality art comes from independents and little-know or unknown artists. These are people who tend to agree with my feelings. They don't expect to live fat off the hog for the rest of their lives, after doing a few dozen performances. They stay hungry, just like John and Jane Doe, so they keep working to improve.
Which vehicles and boats do you speak of?
I ride a 30 year old motorcycle, which was not designed with either unleaded gasoline or ethanol in mind. That old Honda fires up, first time, every time. The old 'Twisted Twin' just keeps going, and going, and going.
Nauseated? Glad to hear it. Hey - did you ever notice that the average working stiff has to get up, go to work every morning, bust his ass for hours, then on payday, he gets a little less than he really needs to make ends meet?
Content creators. You make something once, and you expect to be paid for it for the rest of your lives? You expect that your children, your grand children, even your great grand children should get royalties derived from your genius?
You sniveling twats - go get a real job. And, stop feeding the copyright trolls who belong to RIAA and the like. You're not the fucking geniuses that you think you are. You need a good de-worming, like any stray dog. You're infested with parasitic lawyers, agents, and other undesirable creatures.
Maybe - just maybe - without these infestations, you would be worth something. Here's a fiddle - see if you can play some music and dance for my amusement, little "content creator". If not, get out of my face. Don't forget to leave the fiddle when you leave - you didn't earn it.
It was an ugly baby anyway. http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/The_cde6eb_2496453.jpeg That bathtub should have been dumped long ago.
And, you'd better watch out, you better not pout, 'cause Grammar Nazi will soon point YOU out!
No robot or computer is any better than the programmer who programmed it. When you find a programmer(s) who can foresee and work around ALL possible problems, then come back and talk about a robot being a better driver than a human.
Meanwhile, read all the other responses.
I think the problem there is, we use the metric system for money. Maybe if we switch to pence, shillings, and pounds, they'd get better at counting change. /sarcasm
Fantasizing, you say? Whatever. The fact is, the wealth of the world is being redistributed, and the US and EU are coming up losers. China is gaining. The real catch to all this redistribution is, the world's central banks are reaping the lion's share of the profits. For each ten dollars we lose, China gains a dollar, and the banks steal nine dollars.
But, the situation with the central banks don't affect the fact that China is ascending, while we descend.
China may be dependent on us today, but what happens in fifty years, or a hundred? We're selling off our great grandchildren's future.
Today, almost everything is crap. Given another decade, they'll start getting things right. People are people, after all. A Chinese who does the same job for years and years is going to get better and better at his job, just as anyone else does.
Maybe what you're missing is, the government involvement. Government in China is pushing people to invest, learn, and improve. Our own government, in contrast, encourages welfare ghetto kids to sing rap music, sell drugs, and set up elaborate con schemes.
Uhh, how about both? They steal all the R&D possible, but at the same time, their economy is growing, while ours is shrinking. I clicked the link, just to ask, "This is news?" Of course China will overtake the US in genuine R&D sometime soon. We've lost what it takes to lead the world in much of anything.
Obviously, they were there to dig up the wells, take pictures, take measurements, etc. I think you meant to ask, "Were they then?" rather than "Where they there?" Or, maybe you meant, "Where they then?" Dang, your grammar has me wondering what you really did mean to ask!
AFTER I posted, I actually looked at the link you posted - so I'm not done with your foolishness.
The Netanya is more seaworthy than Job's boat by at least an order of magnitude. Netanya has more windows than I am comfortable with, but they are a small fraction the size of Job's windows. Each pane appears to be solidly anchored, top, bottom, and both sides. As I say, I'm not completely comfortable with them, but they are sensibly sized, and sensibly located.
Next, look at the bow. A flared bow parts the waves, riding up over the bulk of the wave. You get far fewer of those thousands of tons of water crashing down on you with a flared bow. Look at the overhanging ledges of steel, helping to protect those windows. If/when a few tons of water come down on the windows, those ledges will catch much of the force.
The Netanya is streamlined in a fashion that enhances the flared bow. The weather deck, and most of the windows are protected by the flaring, as well as the breaks, which extend to the waist.
I don't *like* those forward facing windows on the first deck, but I'd be willing to sail on the Netanya.
You can't pay me to sail on Job's boat.
You ASSume that because you've read the same or similar objections elsewhere, that I copy pasted my post? First, re-read my post, and point out where I mentioned wind, at all, please.
Maybe you would care to take a closer look at the Adams class destroyers I served aboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Adams_class_destroyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Charles_F_Adams_(DDG-2)_underway_c1973.jpg
Look at the photo, top right side of the page. Just aft of mount 51 (the big gun) and below the flying bridge. solidly welded to the main weather deck, you can see what we call a "break". It's purpose is to break the waves coming over the bow, so that they don't sweep men off the weather decks further aft. That structure is a solid piece of aluminum. Quite solidly welded at the bottom, and all the way up the side. As I recall, that structure was 3/4 inch thick.
You mention windows withstanding wind stronger than a ship has to withstand at sea. Your ignorance is two fold. Winds at sea are every bit as strong as they are anywhere above land. But - the wind is not the big deal. IT'S THE WATER!!!
When tens of thousands of tons of water tower over top of you, then come slamming down on your ship, then you begin to understand the power of the sea.
Look at that break again. We had ours, on the port side, ripped off one night in the North Atlantic. It was late at night, we heard one tremendous "BOOM" when we were hit by an especially large wave, then a hellacious "SCREEEECH" as the metal tore away. Luckily, the superstructure was not breached, or we would have had flooded spaces to deal with quickly, or we would have died.
Now, go look at your skyscrapers again. Tell me how often the Empire State building has crashed into more tons of water than you can possibly measure.
Maybe you'd like to revisit some of the tsunami damage done in the Pacific ocean a couple of years ago. How many skyscrapers withstood a 40 foot wall of water crashing into it at 30 knots or more?
Minor forces, you say? You are a complete and utter fool, who had better never go to sea. A minor force is what you are working with, mentally.
I did mention horses. Horses have life expectancies roughly 1/3 to 1/2 that of humans. You might want to throw that into you "not equal to" calculations, then see how it all compares to selective breeding for human beings. it might also be interesting to trace life expectancies for humans versus horses throughout history. What was a human's life expectancy 1000 years ago, compared to a highly valued war horse?
Slaves might be massacred for little if any reason, whereas a valuable war horse would be pampered and babied, and the best physicians called in if it appeared to be ill.
And, BTW - you expose your cultural upbringing when you assume humans only begin breeding at age fifteen. For much of history, and probably all of prehistory, common wisdom said, "If it's old enough to bleed, it's old enough to breed." We still see that today, both in the US among "fundamental" Mormon groups, as well as overseas in Islamic parts of the world. If a girl reaches puberty at age 10, some of bastard is waiting around to stick it to her.
So, you're right that evolutionary changes in humans probably take 100 times longer than in dogs. But, it probably only takes three times as long as for horses.