It is very interesting to see how developing countries are looking at Linux and other open source software as a means to leap-frog over technological problems and to create their own home-grown technology industries.
But they aren't, tho'. Initial development of Linux was funded by the Finnish taxpayer, and it ran on hardware developed in the US, relying on a compiler also developed in the US. Sure there are bits and pieces developed outside of the "developed nations" (no pun intended). Brazil, for example, is an enthusiastic adopter of open source. But, where is the OS developed from the start in Brazil? Where's the processor designed and fabbed in Brazil? Where's the Brazilian compiler that has C keywords in Portuguese? They don't exist.
Maybe it'll change someday, but right now, there are no home-grown technology industries outside the developed world, and if they all rely on imported tech, there never will be.
And then we have the social anomaly with the Third Reich. Many people speculate that such totalitarian societies should not produce such brilliant scientific breakthroughs
Germany wasn't so homogeneous as you might think at the time. Their military successes were down to the leadership of the Prussian old guard, who had been training their junior officers by giving them tasks that could only be completed by disobeying orders, to teach them to think for themselves and take initiative. In battle, Prussian generals would specify an objective in the broadest possible terms and leave the people on the ground to figure out how to do it. That was the secret of Blitzkreig. The French were still thinking in rigid hierarchies in which headquarters would tell people what to do and how to do it in intricate detail. By the time official reports had filtered up the chain of command and detailed orders had come back down, the Germans were already raising hell behind French front lines, which promptly collapsed. The Frenchies surrendered as we all know, but they'd have lost anyway, they were hopelessly outclassed. No stomach for war, the French.
Yet those same near-anarchic Prussians were able to put on the parades that the Nazis loved, displays of perfect order and uniformity. People like to think - 'cos it's easy to do - that the Germans of the time were just order-obsessed fanatics, but in reality their culture was a multifaceted one. If Hitler had just let the Prussians get on with it, they'd have been unstoppable, their thinking was so far in advance of anyone elses, including the UK and US. So it was with the science, the old guard knew enough to let the scientists just get on with it. Fortunately for us, he was stupid enough to believe that his own genius was responsible, as soon as he started issuing detailed orders, the tide turned. When that happened, the German army was no more effective than the French, and UK and US generals who'd observed Blitzkreig in action regained the intellectual advantage. The rest is history.
Using the Star Trek ship as an icon will probably get/. sued - especially under the current IP law.
No, it'd count as "editorial use".
If you take a photo of person X and sell the rights to it without getting a model release as "a photo of person X" then you can be sued. If you take the same photo and attach it to a story "person X was at location Y yesterday" it becomes news and you're free and clear of legal entanglements, free press and all that. So long as Slashdot used the icon to denote "stories about Star Trek" they'd be fine.
It needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes. Put irony and humor into it in difficult situations. Make the leaders make difficult choices. Make it interesting again with good stories, not practically perfect people and a lot of references to Shakespeare.
thought Apple was a company founded on "principles"...
The negotiation went something like this:
Steve Jobs: No way dude! I'll never work with the military! You're harshing my mellow! Army: We'll tell everyone that Apple is insanely great, and that you personally are a genius. Steve Jobs: Well that's OK then. Hypersonic missiles are insanely great too!
While there may be many things to criticize about NASA, comparing SpaceShipOne to their efforts is definitely apples and oranges.
NASA's engineers are going to be as excited as anyone, but NASA's managers are most likely terrified. Every one of them is thinking "What if the gov't decides to spend my budget with a company like Scaled Composites next year?".
NASA is an obstacle to space exploration, has been for decades. The US gov't should take its budget and use it to start a foundation offering prizes: first orbit by a privately-developed vehicle the next one, eventually, first return trip to Mars. Then we'll see some action. NASA itself has outlived its usefulness and should be dismantled and its facilities and equipment auctioned off.
how the code in a particular part of our DNA builds a brain and how another part grows skin...
DNA doesn't work quite like that. DNA only encode proteins, proteins then combine to form everything else. So, there isn't a "brain gene" that can be modified without affecting anything else, or a "skin gene" - modifying a single gene in any non-trivial way is very likely to affect the system as a whole. Grafting new features on is going to be extremely tricky, and will require massive computation to simulate it so the emergent properties are understood. Right now it can take hours to fully model a microsecond's worth of protein folding.
Mars ended up the way it is because of its position in the solar system. It was not 'meant' to sustain life from Earth.
Kid, most of the Earth wasn't meant to sustain human life. But we have stuff - clothes, houses, central heating, plumbing, etc etc - that allows us to survive in otherwise hostile environments such as... anywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, where humanity is generally reckoned to have originated. Unless you could (if you so wished!) walk around naked outside all year without freezing to death, then you're a settler in an alien environment.
Mars is really no different; just a little more difficult than say Alaska, but certainly do-able.
Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.
Let's say person A is a doctor with some sensible ideas about how the human body can be adapted to survive better on Mars. Maybe he has a technique for making lungs more efficient at low pressure, just for an example.
Let's also say person B is an educated adult, in full possession of his or her mental faculties, who thinks this research is worthwhile, perhaps wants to be a Mars colonist someday, and volunteers for the programme.
Now person C, an "ethicist" says that A and B can't work together, and, having nothing better to than practice rhetoric since he doesn't actually do any science himself, persuades politicians to authorize use of force against A and B. By what right does C do what he does?
Eugenics has a taint about it these days, but like most things, it's neither good nor evil in itself. Back in the early 20th century, eugenics meant that maybe college professors should be encouraged to marry other college professors, top athletes should be encouraged to marry other athletes, etc. I can't see anything wrong with this, providing everyone involved in a volunteer of course, and the kid gets to choose what they actually want to be when they grow up. People make decisions of spouse all the time based at least partially on how they want their kids to turn out, why not do it in an organized way?
In my experience, "ethicists" are people who're no good at science and so instead, out of a twisted, bitter sense of jealousy of those who are, spend their time trying to tell scientists what they can and can't do, with no better reasoning than "because I say so".
I say, if no-one's getting hurt (or at least, no-one who isn't a volunteer is getting hurt) then it ain't no-one's business but those involved. And I think most sane humans would agree with me.
I saw an interview with him once where he said that whenever the camera stopped rolling, he would spontaneously burst into laughter or start crying. Maintaining Spock's emotionless facade took a lot of effort for him, he couldn't keep it up for long. Hell they had to write a "Data goes crazy" episode every now and again, I reckon that was just to keep Brent Spiner sane.
Not really, there're still hiring freezes on in many corporations. Most recruiters spend the say surfing the web and staring out the windows. The reason a CV has to be good is that it has to be good enough to snap them out of their daydreams, boring CVs are just too much effort for them to pass on. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
First real job, right out of university: Walked into the office of a nearby startup ISP, asked if they needed a good UNIX systems programmer, interviewed by the CTO that afternoon, started the next week. Now, the thing is, I'd also been down the traditional route, sending out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. Didn't hurt that I was friends-of-friends with a few of the other staff, tho' I didn't know it beforehand.
Second job: A friend called me, said he needed someone for a UNIX job, would I be interested? It was a cool company (at the time) so I interviewed with his manager, quit my first job and started a few weeks later. I'd outgrown the first job by then and had sent out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. I was there 3.5 years. Converted my specialty from UNIX to Oracle while I was there.
Third job: A friend interviewed for a UNIX job, which she later turned down. The interviewer asked her on the way out if she knew any Oracle DBAs, he was hiring one of those too. She gave him my name, I interviewed with him when he was in my city, started a few days later. I'd been laid off from my second job in the NASDAQ meltdown and had sent out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. I'm still there.
The moral of these 3 stories? It really is all about personal contacts. And I've done the same, a bunch of my friends have been hired through me too, either directly or through referrals. Skill in building networks of people is far more important than what most geeks think of when they think of networking.
I agree with everything except the above statement. Send it as an attachment and in the body of the email, referencing an enclosure of the cover letter.
So you want a resume, a cover letter, and a meta-cover-letter? How 'bout a meta-meta-cover-phonecall too, just to make sure it arrived?
But to say that there is a large enough group with the intent to force us all to Islam is absurd.
At the present time, there isn't. But you are woefully ignorant of history; haven't you heard of the Ottoman Empire? In the 16th and 17th Centuries, it was what we would now call a "superpower". In as also known as the "Khalifah" which means Islamic Empire.
So don't think that Moslems are just these people in funny clothes riding camels in the desert. At one time they were a force that posed a serious threat to the West. They conquered Hungary and invaded Austria. And, they could be again. Which is why Western policymakers are trying to preempt that happening.
For example, Osama bin Laden's main goal is to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.
It's funny you should mention that; did you actually listen to Osama's speech just after September 11th? What really upset him was the abolition of the Caliphate in Turkey in 1922 - this is the "80 years of humiliation". That was precipitated by the defeat by the West in WW1. Osama's agenda is far larger than just removing Americans from Saudi Arabia - he wants the Khalifah back again.
Now what would an interview with this guy be doing in Slashdot?
Negroponte's job is to produce mentions of MIT Media Lab in the popular press. That's it. He's halfway competent at doing it too. But it would be a grave mistake to think of him as a technologist in any way, shape or form. He's a PR flack, nothing more.
A little girl wearing a head scarf does not interfere with other people's ability to live free, happy lives. By preventing her from wearing it, you are not allowing her to observe an important part of her faith.
The problem is this: there is a clash between Western values and traditional Islamic values. For example, in most Moslem countries, girls don't receive a proper education, and in many, they aren't even allowed outside their family homes without a male relative to escort them. Do you count that as an important part of their faith? Here in the West we find that sort of discrimination repugnant. So we have laws that say, children must receive an education, the same education, in the same schools, regardless of what ideas their family might have about it. A line has been drawn: Western equality takes precendence over Islamic discrimination (for that's what it is). The religious-symbol ban helps to protect children from being forced into gender-roles by "traditional" parents. Now you might say it's the girl's choice, and maybe it is (or maybe her parents are just pressuring her to), but it's a slippery slope, once one does it now all parents can say "see, we get to do things the traditional way" and then those little girls you want to protect find themselves illiterate, unemployable and forced into an arranged marriage. And THAT is why headscarves are banned - to PROTECT the children.
If they want to revert to traditional subservient roles when they're 18 - fine, I've absolutely no problem with that. But they're too young to make that choice, and they need to be shielded from being forced to so something they might regret later.
Does this mean that the text of France's law preventing Muslim head scarves in school will be taken down from the Internet?
The law prohibits all religious symbols - including Christian crucifixes and Jewish yarmulkes. ONLY the Moslems have called it "racist". 'Cos they know, y'see, that it's easy to make Westerners feel guilty using that word. They're playing us for fools.
Slashdot Mirror
I give Rutan a lot of credit, but the X-15 remains one of the most amazing accomplishments in aerospace history
Any idea what it cost? I'd bet it's more than $20M - and back then, $20M was some serious money.
Repeat after me.
B. O. U. G. H. T.
Actually, in rap-language it should be "bizzled".
.g., take the idiocy of Swing being inherently non-thread-safe.
Yeah, I've run into that. Sheer laziness or incompetence on the part of Sun, no idea which. Either way, it's put me off Swing.
It is very interesting to see how developing countries are looking at Linux and other open source software as a means to leap-frog over technological problems and to create their own home-grown technology industries.
But they aren't, tho'. Initial development of Linux was funded by the Finnish taxpayer, and it ran on hardware developed in the US, relying on a compiler also developed in the US. Sure there are bits and pieces developed outside of the "developed nations" (no pun intended). Brazil, for example, is an enthusiastic adopter of open source. But, where is the OS developed from the start in Brazil? Where's the processor designed and fabbed in Brazil? Where's the Brazilian compiler that has C keywords in Portuguese? They don't exist.
Maybe it'll change someday, but right now, there are no home-grown technology industries outside the developed world, and if they all rely on imported tech, there never will be.
And then we have the social anomaly with the Third Reich. Many people speculate that such totalitarian societies should not produce such brilliant scientific breakthroughs
Germany wasn't so homogeneous as you might think at the time. Their military successes were down to the leadership of the Prussian old guard, who had been training their junior officers by giving them tasks that could only be completed by disobeying orders, to teach them to think for themselves and take initiative. In battle, Prussian generals would specify an objective in the broadest possible terms and leave the people on the ground to figure out how to do it. That was the secret of Blitzkreig. The French were still thinking in rigid hierarchies in which headquarters would tell people what to do and how to do it in intricate detail. By the time official reports had filtered up the chain of command and detailed orders had come back down, the Germans were already raising hell behind French front lines, which promptly collapsed. The Frenchies surrendered as we all know, but they'd have lost anyway, they were hopelessly outclassed. No stomach for war, the French.
Yet those same near-anarchic Prussians were able to put on the parades that the Nazis loved, displays of perfect order and uniformity. People like to think - 'cos it's easy to do - that the Germans of the time were just order-obsessed fanatics, but in reality their culture was a multifaceted one. If Hitler had just let the Prussians get on with it, they'd have been unstoppable, their thinking was so far in advance of anyone elses, including the UK and US. So it was with the science, the old guard knew enough to let the scientists just get on with it. Fortunately for us, he was stupid enough to believe that his own genius was responsible, as soon as he started issuing detailed orders, the tide turned. When that happened, the German army was no more effective than the French, and UK and US generals who'd observed Blitzkreig in action regained the intellectual advantage. The rest is history.
Using the Star Trek ship as an icon will probably get /. sued - especially under the current IP law.
No, it'd count as "editorial use".
If you take a photo of person X and sell the rights to it without getting a model release as "a photo of person X" then you can be sued. If you take the same photo and attach it to a story "person X was at location Y yesterday" it becomes news and you're free and clear of legal entanglements, free press and all that. So long as Slashdot used the icon to denote "stories about Star Trek" they'd be fine.
It needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes. Put irony and humor into it in difficult situations. Make the leaders make difficult choices. Make it interesting again with good stories, not practically perfect people and a lot of references to Shakespeare.
You mean... make it like Firefly?
thought Apple was a company founded on "principles"...
The negotiation went something like this:
Steve Jobs: No way dude! I'll never work with the military! You're harshing my mellow!
Army: We'll tell everyone that Apple is insanely great, and that you personally are a genius.
Steve Jobs: Well that's OK then. Hypersonic missiles are insanely great too!
series in the B5 universe
Who cares about B5? Bring back Firefly!!
While there may be many things to criticize about NASA, comparing SpaceShipOne to their efforts is definitely apples and oranges.
NASA's engineers are going to be as excited as anyone, but NASA's managers are most likely terrified. Every one of them is thinking "What if the gov't decides to spend my budget with a company like Scaled Composites next year?".
NASA is an obstacle to space exploration, has been for decades. The US gov't should take its budget and use it to start a foundation offering prizes: first orbit by a privately-developed vehicle the next one, eventually, first return trip to Mars. Then we'll see some action. NASA itself has outlived its usefulness and should be dismantled and its facilities and equipment auctioned off.
how the code in a particular part of our DNA builds a brain and how another part grows skin...
DNA doesn't work quite like that. DNA only encode proteins, proteins then combine to form everything else. So, there isn't a "brain gene" that can be modified without affecting anything else, or a "skin gene" - modifying a single gene in any non-trivial way is very likely to affect the system as a whole. Grafting new features on is going to be extremely tricky, and will require massive computation to simulate it so the emergent properties are understood. Right now it can take hours to fully model a microsecond's worth of protein folding.
Mars ended up the way it is because of its position in the solar system. It was not 'meant' to sustain life from Earth.
Kid, most of the Earth wasn't meant to sustain human life. But we have stuff - clothes, houses, central heating, plumbing, etc etc - that allows us to survive in otherwise hostile environments such as... anywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, where humanity is generally reckoned to have originated. Unless you could (if you so wished!) walk around naked outside all year without freezing to death, then you're a settler in an alien environment.
Mars is really no different; just a little more difficult than say Alaska, but certainly do-able.
Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.
Let's say person A is a doctor with some sensible ideas about how the human body can be adapted to survive better on Mars. Maybe he has a technique for making lungs more efficient at low pressure, just for an example.
Let's also say person B is an educated adult, in full possession of his or her mental faculties, who thinks this research is worthwhile, perhaps wants to be a Mars colonist someday, and volunteers for the programme.
Now person C, an "ethicist" says that A and B can't work together, and, having nothing better to than practice rhetoric since he doesn't actually do any science himself, persuades politicians to authorize use of force against A and B. By what right does C do what he does?
I believe the word is "Eugenics".
Eugenics has a taint about it these days, but like most things, it's neither good nor evil in itself. Back in the early 20th century, eugenics meant that maybe college professors should be encouraged to marry other college professors, top athletes should be encouraged to marry other athletes, etc. I can't see anything wrong with this, providing everyone involved in a volunteer of course, and the kid gets to choose what they actually want to be when they grow up. People make decisions of spouse all the time based at least partially on how they want their kids to turn out, why not do it in an organized way?
I would ask ethicists if we should
In my experience, "ethicists" are people who're no good at science and so instead, out of a twisted, bitter sense of jealousy of those who are, spend their time trying to tell scientists what they can and can't do, with no better reasoning than "because I say so".
I say, if no-one's getting hurt (or at least, no-one who isn't a volunteer is getting hurt) then it ain't no-one's business but those involved. And I think most sane humans would agree with me.
There is nothing wrong with Nimoy's acting
I saw an interview with him once where he said that whenever the camera stopped rolling, he would spontaneously burst into laughter or start crying. Maintaining Spock's emotionless facade took a lot of effort for him, he couldn't keep it up for long. Hell they had to write a "Data goes crazy" episode every now and again, I reckon that was just to keep Brent Spiner sane.
So you downloaded? make a .torrent i wil put you in my friends list :)
Wget'ing veerryyy slowwwly in the background...
WMV is a tool of the Devil.
Really? Why? Or rather, why moreso than Quicktime?
Remember, recruiters are busy people
Not really, there're still hiring freezes on in many corporations. Most recruiters spend the say surfing the web and staring out the windows. The reason a CV has to be good is that it has to be good enough to snap them out of their daydreams, boring CVs are just too much effort for them to pass on. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
First real job, right out of university: Walked into the office of a nearby startup ISP, asked if they needed a good UNIX systems programmer, interviewed by the CTO that afternoon, started the next week. Now, the thing is, I'd also been down the traditional route, sending out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. Didn't hurt that I was friends-of-friends with a few of the other staff, tho' I didn't know it beforehand.
Second job: A friend called me, said he needed someone for a UNIX job, would I be interested? It was a cool company (at the time) so I interviewed with his manager, quit my first job and started a few weeks later. I'd outgrown the first job by then and had sent out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. I was there 3.5 years. Converted my specialty from UNIX to Oracle while I was there.
Third job: A friend interviewed for a UNIX job, which she later turned down. The interviewer asked her on the way out if she knew any Oracle DBAs, he was hiring one of those too. She gave him my name, I interviewed with him when he was in my city, started a few days later. I'd been laid off from my second job in the NASDAQ meltdown and had sent out letters and CVs - but by the time any of them called, I'd already signed. I'm still there.
The moral of these 3 stories? It really is all about personal contacts. And I've done the same, a bunch of my friends have been hired through me too, either directly or through referrals. Skill in building networks of people is far more important than what most geeks think of when they think of networking.
I agree with everything except the above statement. Send it as an attachment and in the body of the email, referencing an enclosure of the cover letter.
So you want a resume, a cover letter, and a meta-cover-letter? How 'bout a meta-meta-cover-phonecall too, just to make sure it arrived?
But to say that there is a large enough group with the intent to force us all to Islam is absurd.
At the present time, there isn't. But you are woefully ignorant of history; haven't you heard of the Ottoman Empire? In the 16th and 17th Centuries, it was what we would now call a "superpower". In as also known as the "Khalifah" which means Islamic Empire.
So don't think that Moslems are just these people in funny clothes riding camels in the desert. At one time they were a force that posed a serious threat to the West. They conquered Hungary and invaded Austria. And, they could be again. Which is why Western policymakers are trying to preempt that happening.
For example, Osama bin Laden's main goal is to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.
It's funny you should mention that; did you actually listen to Osama's speech just after September 11th? What really upset him was the abolition of the Caliphate in Turkey in 1922 - this is the "80 years of humiliation". That was precipitated by the defeat by the West in WW1. Osama's agenda is far larger than just removing Americans from Saudi Arabia - he wants the Khalifah back again.
Now what would an interview with this guy be doing in Slashdot?
Negroponte's job is to produce mentions of MIT Media Lab in the popular press. That's it. He's halfway competent at doing it too. But it would be a grave mistake to think of him as a technologist in any way, shape or form. He's a PR flack, nothing more.
A little girl wearing a head scarf does not interfere with other people's ability to live free, happy lives. By preventing her from wearing it, you are not allowing her to observe an important part of her faith.
The problem is this: there is a clash between Western values and traditional Islamic values. For example, in most Moslem countries, girls don't receive a proper education, and in many, they aren't even allowed outside their family homes without a male relative to escort them. Do you count that as an important part of their faith? Here in the West we find that sort of discrimination repugnant. So we have laws that say, children must receive an education, the same education, in the same schools, regardless of what ideas their family might have about it. A line has been drawn: Western equality takes precendence over Islamic discrimination (for that's what it is). The religious-symbol ban helps to protect children from being forced into gender-roles by "traditional" parents. Now you might say it's the girl's choice, and maybe it is (or maybe her parents are just pressuring her to), but it's a slippery slope, once one does it now all parents can say "see, we get to do things the traditional way" and then those little girls you want to protect find themselves illiterate, unemployable and forced into an arranged marriage. And THAT is why headscarves are banned - to PROTECT the children.
If they want to revert to traditional subservient roles when they're 18 - fine, I've absolutely no problem with that. But they're too young to make that choice, and they need to be shielded from being forced to so something they might regret later.
Does this mean that the text of France's law preventing Muslim head scarves in school will be taken down from the Internet?
The law prohibits all religious symbols - including Christian crucifixes and Jewish yarmulkes. ONLY the Moslems have called it "racist". 'Cos they know, y'see, that it's easy to make Westerners feel guilty using that word. They're playing us for fools.