Or more users than all of the other Unix systems put together if you're talking about the desktop.
I seriously doubt that. Ever heard of linux?
Apple sell more Unix than any other vendor in the world at the moment, so they are on top in at least one respect.
Yeah, on top in commercial desktop unices. That's really a big market, almost like being on top in mountain-exploration scuba-gear (Not that there isn't a market for that, it just isn't that big, or that purposeful).
Apple used to hold an important niche in the DTP market. Maybe they still do. At least, it's a more important market then commercial desktop unices...
Thank god it was suggested by an anonymous coward.
Now I can rest in peace knowing it was a poor attempt at trolling the front-page (something that doesn't even take skill these days, as slashdot editors are never reading entries anyway).
It is a natural thing that people try to find flaws in my proof???
A proof is a proof. It may have no flaws, otherwise it is not a proof.
While technically true, this has very little to do with how mathematics work. I'm sure you've seen "funny proofs", that try to convince the reader that 2+2=1 or a right angle is acute, etc... The reason we are fooled by these "proofs", are that it's very easy to overlook one small flaw in a mathematical proof.
While "funny proofs" are deliberate, it should come as no surprise that errors sneak into serious mathematics too. Let's face it, math is hard, and it's easy to do mistakes. There are steps you can take to minimize the errors, such as looking for counterexamples, peer-reviewing the proof, and checking the proof by an automated proof checker.
None of these are guaranteed to work. First, you may not be able to come up with counterexamples for something that's wrong. Second, it is possible for thousands of people to not catch an error, just as it is possible for one person to do so. And third, the proof-checker itself may not work correctly, and it is also a hassle to write proofs in the amount of detail needed for automated checking to work.
Finally, this was never even claimed to be a proof, it was more like a "proof-sketch", which means, if she was right, it should be possible to develop a complete proof from the ideas she presented.
a mathematical proof promotes one's reputation in the math world... getting it wrong may not be all bad if you had some good ideas along the way which can be worked though (historical proofs are very tough, just getting near is great credibility). denying responsibility makes the author sound petty, childish, headline grabbing and ultimately incompetant.
To completely decrypt it, you would have to be able to set the R,G, and B values to the correct ones, then de-steg it to get the message, then unencrypt it.
This is usually not completely reversible. You'd better experiment on the file before doing that, or you'll lose data.
Simply rename its extension to.dll. It will fit right in to the gigs of OS files.
And how is this different from any other OS?. Take a look in/usr/lib/ and tell me that you know what every library there does.
Call it/usr/lib/libsxprtVnp12.0c.49.so. If you want to avoid accidental deletion of unused libraries by an overenthusiastic sysadmin, make it using gcc, export a few symbols as wrappers of libc functions, and relink some gnome applications (which uses hordes of libraries anyway) to use it.
Which brings me to wonder: what prevents people from putting messages hidden in the KDE or Gnome icons and such?
What prevents people from putting messages hidden in anything else, whether it is a physical object or a file?
Nothing! Maybe the corn-flakes you eat has small messages written on it that are too small to see with the naked eye, and using an alphabet that looks like natural ridges...
That would depend on the product developed. If it was for internal use, using the sysadmin might be sane. For most everything else, it should be either one of the developers, or one of the support people.
So, my advice is: Have your coders with their playboxes, but name a sysadmin as a "deployment mananger". This person will choose where each file goes, the permissions, the ports and these things. This not only saves a lot of problems in the future, but also guarantees that certain resources are used in a consistent way, like printers, mount points, etc.
Absolutely. But unless you are microsoft, this person should probably have other roles as well, or he would probably spend most of the time twiddling his thumbs...
b) Development environments should NOT be a playground. It leads to sloppiness. What happens then is that something that works in test then doesn't work in prod. And who gets blamed? The sysadmin.
Nope. That would be test-environment. Developers need a playground. And sysadmins need a test environment. Those two are not the same. It's possible that your team can get by with this, as no two development projects are the same, but developing on the same type of environment as you do testing is usually not productive.
I have been working on what was essentially a "test" environment myself for a long time. It wasn't productive at all. While I would love to keep their (support's) testing environment stable, there was just no way to do that while still doing development work at all. Support and development had a pretty good understanding, and used separate partitions to boot from to minimize this problem, but conflicts nevertheless occured, and it was hard for everyone to be productive at the same time.
Essentially, we needed 4 dev/test environments, one for development, one for testing the development stage, one for doing support work on the stable branch, and one for training new users. (And of course some actual production environments...). If we had had more developers, we would have needed more than one development machine. Eventually we got 3 instead of 2, but development was the ones to suffer with two partitions, one for development and one for staging.
Note that the company sysadmins were not at fault here, there was bureacracy involved of course, but the company sysadmins were luckily happy to leave us all alone, except for regularly screwing up network connectivity by using our separate network for testing new configurations (thus making about 30 developers and support people unable to do their work).
It's a simple thing for the app teams to do, and saves us from having them require root access.
and it makes the dev/test environment look just like production. Which is yet again, a Good Thing.
It's only a good thing if the developers are happy with it. Depending on what you do, it's not very productive to be without root access.
You seem to think restricting developers rights is a goal in itself. Let me tell you a little secret, it isn't. There is no way for you to predict what access developers might need to be productive. Give them what they want instead.
Now, I'm not saying you were wrong in this particular case, maybe your developers were really happy and productive, and worked on stuff that never needed root-access. But for other people, it's just madness.
But that's exactly the point. Developers should have their own little playground to play in, where security should not be the primary focus. If you are concerned about security, make the computers in the development lab join a private network that is separate from the company lan.
Then everybody will be happy. You won't get calls from developers who are more than happy to fix their own troubles. Developers won't have to deal with you. So, what's the problem?
Oh, you mean you do development work on production boxes? Well, shame on you. How much is a nice development box these days?
Do these experts conduct experiments, or are they just writing books about mars?
I've also mentioned that Mars is nothing like a closed Biosphere experiment-like system. But you don't want to hear that, either.
I reread all your posts, and couldn't find where you had said that, so it's not very strange that I wouldn't hear that.
On the other hand, the difficulties we face are pretty much the same. We don't have to bring our own dirt, as there's dirt on mars (although this only makes it harder), but we still have to control various kinds of plant-life, insects, microbes, etc, so they can contribute to our survival. And since mars doesn't have a human-friendly atmosphere, it will still be pretty much like a biosphere 2 experiment.
However, those experiments are not an impediment to starting our Mars infrastructure TODAY.
Ok, no problem with that. Problems are there to be solved.
However, I have studied this problem, and there simply aren't any reasons not to go NOW.
There are plenty of reasons not to go now. You may not agree with all of them, I certainly don't. But sticking your head in the sand and shouting louder doesn't make something true either.
So it's OK to attack the man, not the message, as long as you're not the man? Nice debating tactics, mate.
What do you mean? All your arguments have so far either been appeal to authority, or ad-hominem attacks, and you refuse to listen to mine.
If you want to be taken seriously, you should do as I told you last time, come up with one succesfull closed ecosystem experiment that could reasonably be adapted to space. By failing to ignore this challenge, and instead argue that experiments with closed ecosystems on earth is unnecessary, you have essentially proven yourself to be an idiot in these matters, rocket scientist or not.
It is not an ad-hominem attack to simply conclude that you are a raving lunatic when all your argumentation so far indicates just that.
saying that all new projects should be pumped into the new 2.6. This has upset some people who are not quite willing to move to so-called untested software.
Exactly what are they bitching about? If they don't want to run untested software, they should run 2.4. If they want new features, they should run 2.6.
So, if untested patches go into 2.4, does that make them anything more stable? The logics of this just escapes me...
What do you imagine we'll need to import from Earth?
Pretty much the same thing we need to transport to people in the space station. At the very least, pretty much the same thing we need to transport to people in Antarctica (and they get air and water for free).
There is no reason that the first "closed" eco-system experiment shouldn't be on Mars.
Hmm, you've finally convinced me. You are a raving lunatic. There is a very good reason the first closed artificial ecosystem experiment couldn't be on mars. It's already been done. It failed, or to be more precise, was a "moderate" success, meaning they needed minor adjustments, but could probably make it work the next time, but still, much too large to move into space.
Now, when you have something that doesn't work properly, the first thing you are not going to do with it, is to put it into space and see if it works any better. You put something into space when you have done everything you can to make sure the technology really works. Or do you propose we should move all AI researchers to mars too, since they don't seem to succeed here?
I find it very likely that we will succesfully master this technology in 50 years, but then again, in 50 years, computer and robotics technology may have catched up to the point where we can send some peoples uploaded brains instead. In any case, self-sufficient space-colonies is still a pipe dream, but that shouldn't retract us from trying to achieve it, or trying to get to mars.
I am not arguing that it shouldn't be done. I am just arguing that it isn't easy. Space projects have been remarkably good at producing new technology, in much the same way as wars has been, but in a much more moral way. I very much support spending some money on going to mars. But underestimating the difficulties won't help.
You seem to be thinking that establishing a self-sufficient colony on mars is a piece of cake. The reality is that we haven't got a clue how to do it, and the best we have to show for it is "moderate" success, which would surely translate to death if it was in space.
If you want to build self-sufficient colony it makes very much sense to experiment here on earth. If you want to go to mars, it makes sense to either plan it as one-shot mission, like the moon mission was, or to be prepared to keep sending supplies out there for as long as the mission is supposed to continue. Closed ecosystems is not a technology we master.
Attacking me for lacking credentials (which I certainly do) is attacking the man, not the message. Instead you should point to just one closed eco-system experiment of size small enough to be realistic to put into space, that has been in stable operation long enough for it to be reasonable to expect it to work for at least a decade, that we understand well enough to be able to adjust for parameters such as weaker sunlight and lower gravity.
Probably a bad choice of word anyway, as I'm not a native english speaker. But try to remove an f.
You have not educated yourself on this subject. Go read about sustainable development on Mars, and then we'll talk.
I have educated myself on sustainable development on earth. It is very hard. It has been tried with some degree of success, but hardly enough to expect it to survive when moved into space (not to mention that it is probably cheaper to move supplies for centuries than to move one of these mastodonts into space).
If you are speaking of terraforming mars, then please remember that that is also a fairly new and untested technology.
Just to be clear: We could, for a modest budget, with CURRENT technology, have a self-sustaining colony on Mars within 50 years.
I'm sure there are people claiming this. These people are mad. With CURRENT technology, we don't even know hot to build a self-sustaining colony on earth. We don't know how to get to mars. And so on... It is possible that you are partly right, and that we could do it within 50 years. But expecting it to be anything but a high-profile way of wasting money is naive. Not that I'm opposed to that in anyway...
Why? There are resources on Mars. [snip] A Mars base could be self-sufficient.
I always stiffle at this argument. How would it be self sufficient? Just because there is some rocks on mars, doesn't mean it can be used for any useful purpose. Here, I hand you a rock, now go ahead and turn it into something useful, preferably something you can eat, drink, breathe, use as fuel, or use as a useful tool you haven't already brought with you.
Self-sufficient means that you can actually survive there without supplies. This is not going to happen in the near future. Efficiently producing stuff without millions of people working in thousands of factories is still just a dream of the nanomachine future. Experiments with closed ecosystems (biospheres) on earth have largely failed, and even the ones that were moderately successful were much too large to bring into space.
The fact is, with current technology, we are completely unable to survive in space, without supplies from earth. Furthermore, there is nothing we can get from space that would be useful and expensive enough to be worth bringing back here. At the moment, there are only three things space can give us: fame, research, and communication satellites.
Just because I enjoy wasting my time, I'll explain how it's done. You run the OS X install CD, run the OS 9 CD, and then choose which system you want to boot from via the control panel. I know you'd love for it to be difficult, but it's actually not.
Fine. Now you have OS 9 and OS X. But then you hear about JavaOSX, and you want to install it on a free partition that is guaranteed not to interfere with anything on your already existing OS 9 and OS X partitions, or your primary bootloader. That was what he was doing, and that is what you should compare it to.
I dispute your theory that many people have inate desires for children. If that was the case then I doubt it would be the social misdemeanour it is today.
Ok. Let's start with a simple example. You have a huge boner, and you want to use it for something, either fucking someone, or masturbating. Does that mean you have to do it, or can you choose to do something else, such as thinking about baseball?
However it is not an advantage; it is a necessity which motorcycles (or cars) do not require. Imagine yourself sitting in a chair (or even try that.) Then imagine that the chair jerks forward so violently that you have to lean back... I wouldn't want that. In a car, or on a bike you don't have to move; on this Embrio you *must* move in order to brake or accelerate. Take a bottle of milk on a ride, and you will end up with some butter by the time you are there:-)
So, tell me..., you failed physics, right? In a car, you are thrown forwards when breaking, backwards when accelerating, and to the sides when turning. This is because the car is horizontal, instead of leaning forwards when accelerating, backwards when breaking, and into the swing when turning. (Actually, it's even worse, because the suspension cause the car to tilt in the wrong direction (for you to feel comfortable), luckily, it's also increasing traction since you put weight on the wheels that matter). If you look at the road next time you are driving (shouldn't you?), you will notice that good roads tilt slightly inwards in most turns, thus increasing comfort and traction.
On a (motor)cycle, acceleration and breaking are the same, but turning pushes you only downward (not towards the center of the earth, but towards what you would consider "down" if you were blindfolded). On a uni-cycle, you will feel being pushed downward for both acceleration, deceleration and turns. This is like being in a plane (except for landing and take-off, which is still unpleasant).
You must also have failed cooking, or otherwise you would have known that butter is not made of milk, but of cream. And the embryo would probably be the best way of avoiding that happening, unless the road is bumpy, and suspension would be what mattered.
Dealing with baggage is not a big problem. How do you deal with baggage on your bike? Ever used one of those bags attached on one of the sides of the rear wheel? Put some weight in it, it's not really hard is it? The only time this would be a problem would be if you transported a large, flat half-empty water tank. But that would be something you would even have trouble carrying.
If you want to be skeptical (which I certainly am, despite this post), think about what happens on slippery roads...
The mechanics of braking is none too gentle, and even if your bike has two wheels (and you on top, which is usually the case;-), it can easily fight the gravity. And if anyone thinks that the riders of this Embrio will never exceed 30 mph, and will never need deceleration more than 1g, for example, they haven't learned a thing about humans:-) Fact is, humans tend to go as fast as they can, and as result they need to stop equally fast too.
Also, humans tend to drive at roads that are less than perfect. I would have nothing against driving this thingy on clean, dry asphalt or concrete, but add a few bumps in the road, some sand, water, or oil, and I think I prefer to stick to more stable, predictable vehicles. The gyro stabilizers would have to be pretty damn good for me to trust them in less than ideal driving conditions. And the big flat wheel and low weight on this thing probably starts hydroplaning at very low speeds. Furthermore, the design seems very stupid, where do you hold on? Where do you put your feet?
This is nothing but a photoshop creation that looks cool. While one-wheeled motorbikes may serve some purpose, such as being more easily stuffable in the back of your car, this creating seems just ridiculous.
If it's barcoded, it's machine readable, like punched cards, paper tape, magnetic cards, and whatever other insane things you can come up with.
On the other hand, nobody is going to do that, because distributing something as barcode is much more expensive than distributing it in a more convenient format. By the time 1000000000 users have asked for the 10 kg barcode being sent to them, they will probably consider more reasonable means of distribution.
You have made some good points. I'm not entirely sure that this would have the same effect as the patent system. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that that would be desirable either. I'll have to sleep on it, but you have me more or less convinced that you are right...
For example, the pharmaceutical industry, because of its huge upfront costs, often will not develop a perfectly useful drug unless it can patent it. The reason is that without patent protection, other companies will free-ride on the FDA approval process and other startup costs.
And do you think they would continue this policy if the patent system was abandoned?
Slashdot Mirror
I seriously doubt that. Ever heard of linux?
Apple sell more Unix than any other vendor in the world at the moment, so they are on top in at least one respect.
Yeah, on top in commercial desktop unices. That's really a big market, almost like being on top in mountain-exploration scuba-gear (Not that there isn't a market for that, it just isn't that big, or that purposeful).
Apple used to hold an important niche in the DTP market. Maybe they still do. At least, it's a more important market then commercial desktop unices...
Now I can rest in peace knowing it was a poor attempt at trolling the front-page (something that doesn't even take skill these days, as slashdot editors are never reading entries anyway).
While technically true, this has very little to do with how mathematics work. I'm sure you've seen "funny proofs", that try to convince the reader that 2+2=1 or a right angle is acute, etc... The reason we are fooled by these "proofs", are that it's very easy to overlook one small flaw in a mathematical proof.
While "funny proofs" are deliberate, it should come as no surprise that errors sneak into serious mathematics too. Let's face it, math is hard, and it's easy to do mistakes. There are steps you can take to minimize the errors, such as looking for counterexamples, peer-reviewing the proof, and checking the proof by an automated proof checker.
None of these are guaranteed to work. First, you may not be able to come up with counterexamples for something that's wrong. Second, it is possible for thousands of people to not catch an error, just as it is possible for one person to do so. And third, the proof-checker itself may not work correctly, and it is also a hassle to write proofs in the amount of detail needed for automated checking to work.
Finally, this was never even claimed to be a proof, it was more like a "proof-sketch", which means, if she was right, it should be possible to develop a complete proof from the ideas she presented.
a mathematical proof promotes one's reputation in the math world... getting it wrong may not be all bad if you had some good ideas along the way which can be worked though (historical proofs are very tough, just getting near is great credibility). denying responsibility makes the author sound petty, childish, headline grabbing and ultimately incompetant.
Agreed.
This is usually not completely reversible. You'd better experiment on the file before doing that, or you'll lose data.
And how is this different from any other OS?. Take a look in /usr/lib/ and tell me that you know what every library there does.
Call it /usr/lib/libsxprtVnp12.0c.49.so. If you want to avoid accidental deletion of unused libraries by an overenthusiastic sysadmin, make it using gcc, export a few symbols as wrappers of libc functions, and relink some gnome applications (which uses hordes of libraries anyway) to use it.
What prevents people from putting messages hidden in anything else, whether it is a physical object or a file?
Nothing! Maybe the corn-flakes you eat has small messages written on it that are too small to see with the naked eye, and using an alphabet that looks like natural ridges...
Instead tell me why you should care about this?
That would depend on the product developed. If it was for internal use, using the sysadmin might be sane. For most everything else, it should be either one of the developers, or one of the support people.
Absolutely. But unless you are microsoft, this person should probably have other roles as well, or he would probably spend most of the time twiddling his thumbs...
Nope. That would be test-environment. Developers need a playground. And sysadmins need a test environment. Those two are not the same. It's possible that your team can get by with this, as no two development projects are the same, but developing on the same type of environment as you do testing is usually not productive.
I have been working on what was essentially a "test" environment myself for a long time. It wasn't productive at all. While I would love to keep their (support's) testing environment stable, there was just no way to do that while still doing development work at all. Support and development had a pretty good understanding, and used separate partitions to boot from to minimize this problem, but conflicts nevertheless occured, and it was hard for everyone to be productive at the same time.
Essentially, we needed 4 dev/test environments, one for development, one for testing the development stage, one for doing support work on the stable branch, and one for training new users. (And of course some actual production environments...). If we had had more developers, we would have needed more than one development machine. Eventually we got 3 instead of 2, but development was the ones to suffer with two partitions, one for development and one for staging.
Note that the company sysadmins were not at fault here, there was bureacracy involved of course, but the company sysadmins were luckily happy to leave us all alone, except for regularly screwing up network connectivity by using our separate network for testing new configurations (thus making about 30 developers and support people unable to do their work).
It's a simple thing for the app teams to do, and saves us from having them require root access.
and it makes the dev/test environment look just like production. Which is yet again, a Good Thing.
It's only a good thing if the developers are happy with it. Depending on what you do, it's not very productive to be without root access.
You seem to think restricting developers rights is a goal in itself. Let me tell you a little secret, it isn't. There is no way for you to predict what access developers might need to be productive. Give them what they want instead.
Now, I'm not saying you were wrong in this particular case, maybe your developers were really happy and productive, and worked on stuff that never needed root-access. But for other people, it's just madness.
Sorry. That would be nbvb. Nested debates can be confusing sometimes.
But that's exactly the point. Developers should have their own little playground to play in, where security should not be the primary focus. If you are concerned about security, make the computers in the development lab join a private network that is separate from the company lan.
Then everybody will be happy. You won't get calls from developers who are more than happy to fix their own troubles. Developers won't have to deal with you. So, what's the problem?
Oh, you mean you do development work on production boxes? Well, shame on you. How much is a nice development box these days?
Do these experts conduct experiments, or are they just writing books about mars?
I've also mentioned that Mars is nothing like a closed Biosphere experiment-like system. But you don't want to hear that, either.
I reread all your posts, and couldn't find where you had said that, so it's not very strange that I wouldn't hear that.
On the other hand, the difficulties we face are pretty much the same. We don't have to bring our own dirt, as there's dirt on mars (although this only makes it harder), but we still have to control various kinds of plant-life, insects, microbes, etc, so they can contribute to our survival. And since mars doesn't have a human-friendly atmosphere, it will still be pretty much like a biosphere 2 experiment.
However, those experiments are not an impediment to starting our Mars infrastructure TODAY.
Ok, no problem with that. Problems are there to be solved.
However, I have studied this problem, and there simply aren't any reasons not to go NOW.
There are plenty of reasons not to go now. You may not agree with all of them, I certainly don't. But sticking your head in the sand and shouting louder doesn't make something true either.
What do you mean? All your arguments have so far either been appeal to authority, or ad-hominem attacks, and you refuse to listen to mine.
If you want to be taken seriously, you should do as I told you last time, come up with one succesfull closed ecosystem experiment that could reasonably be adapted to space. By failing to ignore this challenge, and instead argue that experiments with closed ecosystems on earth is unnecessary, you have essentially proven yourself to be an idiot in these matters, rocket scientist or not.
It is not an ad-hominem attack to simply conclude that you are a raving lunatic when all your argumentation so far indicates just that.
Exactly what are they bitching about? If they don't want to run untested software, they should run 2.4. If they want new features, they should run 2.6.
So, if untested patches go into 2.4, does that make them anything more stable? The logics of this just escapes me...
Pretty much the same thing we need to transport to people in the space station. At the very least, pretty much the same thing we need to transport to people in Antarctica (and they get air and water for free).
There is no reason that the first "closed" eco-system experiment shouldn't be on Mars.
Hmm, you've finally convinced me. You are a raving lunatic. There is a very good reason the first closed artificial ecosystem experiment couldn't be on mars. It's already been done. It failed, or to be more precise, was a "moderate" success, meaning they needed minor adjustments, but could probably make it work the next time, but still, much too large to move into space.
Now, when you have something that doesn't work properly, the first thing you are not going to do with it, is to put it into space and see if it works any better. You put something into space when you have done everything you can to make sure the technology really works. Or do you propose we should move all AI researchers to mars too, since they don't seem to succeed here?
I find it very likely that we will succesfully master this technology in 50 years, but then again, in 50 years, computer and robotics technology may have catched up to the point where we can send some peoples uploaded brains instead. In any case, self-sufficient space-colonies is still a pipe dream, but that shouldn't retract us from trying to achieve it, or trying to get to mars.
You seem to be thinking that establishing a self-sufficient colony on mars is a piece of cake. The reality is that we haven't got a clue how to do it, and the best we have to show for it is "moderate" success, which would surely translate to death if it was in space.
If you want to build self-sufficient colony it makes very much sense to experiment here on earth. If you want to go to mars, it makes sense to either plan it as one-shot mission, like the moon mission was, or to be prepared to keep sending supplies out there for as long as the mission is supposed to continue. Closed ecosystems is not a technology we master.
Attacking me for lacking credentials (which I certainly do) is attacking the man, not the message. Instead you should point to just one closed eco-system experiment of size small enough to be realistic to put into space, that has been in stable operation long enough for it to be reasonable to expect it to work for at least a decade, that we understand well enough to be able to adjust for parameters such as weaker sunlight and lower gravity.
Probably a bad choice of word anyway, as I'm not a native english speaker. But try to remove an f.
You have not educated yourself on this subject. Go read about sustainable development on Mars, and then we'll talk.
I have educated myself on sustainable development on earth. It is very hard. It has been tried with some degree of success, but hardly enough to expect it to survive when moved into space (not to mention that it is probably cheaper to move supplies for centuries than to move one of these mastodonts into space).
If you are speaking of terraforming mars, then please remember that that is also a fairly new and untested technology.
Just to be clear: We could, for a modest budget, with CURRENT technology, have a self-sustaining colony on Mars within 50 years.
I'm sure there are people claiming this. These people are mad. With CURRENT technology, we don't even know hot to build a self-sustaining colony on earth. We don't know how to get to mars. And so on... It is possible that you are partly right, and that we could do it within 50 years. But expecting it to be anything but a high-profile way of wasting money is naive. Not that I'm opposed to that in anyway...
I always stiffle at this argument. How would it be self sufficient? Just because there is some rocks on mars, doesn't mean it can be used for any useful purpose. Here, I hand you a rock, now go ahead and turn it into something useful, preferably something you can eat, drink, breathe, use as fuel, or use as a useful tool you haven't already brought with you.
Self-sufficient means that you can actually survive there without supplies. This is not going to happen in the near future. Efficiently producing stuff without millions of people working in thousands of factories is still just a dream of the nanomachine future. Experiments with closed ecosystems (biospheres) on earth have largely failed, and even the ones that were moderately successful were much too large to bring into space.
The fact is, with current technology, we are completely unable to survive in space, without supplies from earth. Furthermore, there is nothing we can get from space that would be useful and expensive enough to be worth bringing back here. At the moment, there are only three things space can give us: fame, research, and communication satellites.
Fine. Now you have OS 9 and OS X. But then you hear about JavaOSX, and you want to install it on a free partition that is guaranteed not to interfere with anything on your already existing OS 9 and OS X partitions, or your primary bootloader. That was what he was doing, and that is what you should compare it to.
Ok. Let's start with a simple example. You have a huge boner, and you want to use it for something, either fucking someone, or masturbating. Does that mean you have to do it, or can you choose to do something else, such as thinking about baseball?
So, tell me..., you failed physics, right? In a car, you are thrown forwards when breaking, backwards when accelerating, and to the sides when turning. This is because the car is horizontal, instead of leaning forwards when accelerating, backwards when breaking, and into the swing when turning. (Actually, it's even worse, because the suspension cause the car to tilt in the wrong direction (for you to feel comfortable), luckily, it's also increasing traction since you put weight on the wheels that matter). If you look at the road next time you are driving (shouldn't you?), you will notice that good roads tilt slightly inwards in most turns, thus increasing comfort and traction.
On a (motor)cycle, acceleration and breaking are the same, but turning pushes you only downward (not towards the center of the earth, but towards what you would consider "down" if you were blindfolded). On a uni-cycle, you will feel being pushed downward for both acceleration, deceleration and turns. This is like being in a plane (except for landing and take-off, which is still unpleasant).
You must also have failed cooking, or otherwise you would have known that butter is not made of milk, but of cream. And the embryo would probably be the best way of avoiding that happening, unless the road is bumpy, and suspension would be what mattered.
Dealing with baggage is not a big problem. How do you deal with baggage on your bike? Ever used one of those bags attached on one of the sides of the rear wheel? Put some weight in it, it's not really hard is it? The only time this would be a problem would be if you transported a large, flat half-empty water tank. But that would be something you would even have trouble carrying.
If you want to be skeptical (which I certainly am, despite this post), think about what happens on slippery roads...
Also, humans tend to drive at roads that are less than perfect. I would have nothing against driving this thingy on clean, dry asphalt or concrete, but add a few bumps in the road, some sand, water, or oil, and I think I prefer to stick to more stable, predictable vehicles. The gyro stabilizers would have to be pretty damn good for me to trust them in less than ideal driving conditions. And the big flat wheel and low weight on this thing probably starts hydroplaning at very low speeds. Furthermore, the design seems very stupid, where do you hold on? Where do you put your feet?
This is nothing but a photoshop creation that looks cool. While one-wheeled motorbikes may serve some purpose, such as being more easily stuffable in the back of your car, this creating seems just ridiculous.
If it's barcoded, it's machine readable, like punched cards, paper tape, magnetic cards, and whatever other insane things you can come up with.
On the other hand, nobody is going to do that, because distributing something as barcode is much more expensive than distributing it in a more convenient format. By the time 1000000000 users have asked for the 10 kg barcode being sent to them, they will probably consider more reasonable means of distribution.
You have made some good points. I'm not entirely sure that this would have the same effect as the patent system. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that that would be desirable either. I'll have to sleep on it, but you have me more or less convinced that you are right...
And do you think they would continue this policy if the patent system was abandoned?