Perhaps, but certainly not because of its artistic merits, of which there are none. Trust me, I actually have read about half of it; it is a rather badly written and boring book, boring enough to not to want to read rest of it (so why did I start reading it? just happened to find a free copy when I was 15 or so).
I can only imagine what his paintings look(ed) like.
There is a reason he was starving as an artist in Vienna. Too bad he figured out the alternative career path.
Thing is that cows are carbon neutral. And carbon methane only has a half-life in the atmosphere of about 7 years, so the whole "carbon methane is more damaging than CO2" stuff is just complete nonsense.
No, you are taking the silly buzzword (carbon neutral) too literally. It's not the carbon that matters, it's the heat-trapping aspect of gases (which are carbon-based, hence this ill-chosen term) that matters. 7 years (assuming that is the accepted definition) is plenty long time to act as heat-trapping agent, especially considering that current estimates suggest there is strong feedback component too (warming itself induces additional effects that amplify warming).
And in that role, yes, methane is more efficient than CO2 by multiple orders of magnitude.
But as to carbon neutrality: to be carbon-neutral, you would have to explain exactly how are cows supposedly reducing effective amount of greenhouse gases in equivalent (or exceeding) amounts compared to production. I have hard time figuring out what exactly you might be implying here -- only thing I can think of are actually producing more of various gases due to breathing, digestion and perspiration.
they're the ones who forced the Democratic Party to skip the part of their convention where they count delegates' votes,
Nice conspiracy theory, but a misguided one. DP itself wanted to skip it (except for mrs. Clinton), to "show unity". As in, grouping behind the most likely candidate that could win the general election.
Now, here's a pop quiz. If the RIAA and MPAA sued Microsoft and Oracle over breaching the copyright of their DRM, Richard Stallman testified on behalf of the RIAA and Theo de Raadt spoke in favour of Microsoft... Who would you cheer for?
Perhaps you are a person that chooses things solely based on their name. But many others actually consider other factors, such as image quality, support by viewers, cost (if any). In fact, I would think it rather foolish to pay much any attention to name of the thing.
In reality, the most important factor most users is actually "what is everyone else using".
Open Source should join the waterfall model and the "man month" on the scrap heap of failed faddy software development methodologies.
Besides all the other fundamental misconceptions presented here, the most blatant may be this one: OS is not a SDM of any kind, and has little in common with actual methodologies.
Regarding "better than closed-source" aspect, all I can say is that within Java server-side stuff, it is more common to have open source libraries/frameworks that are better than commercial alternatives (if there are any) than vice versa. And certainly open sourced options are more widely used (more popular); which often leads to them becoming better even if that was initially not the case. Same is true for many other platforms.
But you are not a developer so anything other than end user apps probably don't count for your purposes.
Basically, open source projects that weren't initiated by a commercial vendor suck.
Huh? This is an utterly ignorant claim, almost not worth replying to.
But if you look at good open source projects, I doubt you can find even a significant minority (much less majority) that were initiated by a commercial vendor. Anything from things like Linux to most libraries should in no uncertain terms confirm the idea that no, it's not commercial entities that seed most good open source products or projects. It is useful to also have companies starting OS projects, and sometimes taking ownership. But it's not much of a requirement. Just icing on the cake.
What is much more useful is the opposite: good open source projects resulting in new companies. That is much more common than the reverse.
If this were a big win for Amazon, it would show up in their numbers.
Perhaps you should consider concept called order of magnitude with your comparisons.
While growth for Kindle and e-books is impressive, percentage-wise, size of that segment is rather small compared to many other lines of merchandise Amazon sells, as well as revenue from their sales of services (hosting others like Target, Marks and Spencer, Sears Canada, AWS etc). For example, electronics is a big growth segment, far outnumbering e-books, although with obviously not nearly as high profit margin.
Not to mention that as you should know, Amazon has NOT provided any number breakdown to indicate exactly what part of revenue or earnings comes from Kindle. This is intentional (for whatever the reason is).
So, no, absence of evidence (of Kindle's effects on stock price) is not evidence of absence.
How exactly is this health care going to be paid for?
Possibly by making the system as efficient as healthcare systems of other industrial countries. As you may know, US uses 2x as much money for health care as other industrial countries, while getting lower coverage: and yes, the two issues are related. This is an issue well studied, and most healthcare professionals are familiar with the data (talk to any doctor).
So how do others do it? By having this invention called "universal health care" (aka single-payer system -- does not necessarily mean society-owned or operated hospitals etc)
"Downside" is that there is somewhat less profit going to private enterprises that "manage" health care; and also less money for medical hardware manufacturers (US medical providers heavily overuse lab/diagnostics tools because those are easier to get paid than actual work by doctors etc), possibly less for pharmaceuticals ("govt healthcare" can use its buying muscle to get better prices on medications).
This is assuming US actually would use common sense and see how other countries like, say, Sweden do it.
There is little doubt America's actions hastened their decline by decades.
Based on what? Who knows -- maybe Americans prolonged it, not shorten it? Without Cold War, communist regime might not have been able to postpone inevitable reorg as long as it did.
Now, if russians hadn't foolishly gone to Afganistan and stayed there, the politburo might still be in power. Or more generally, living life of empire is costly; Civilization may be just a game, but it does give one some insights into costs and benefits of various approaches.
Maybe if LSB hadn't mandated rpms they'd be getting some grass-roots support from distributions like Gentoo, and Debian and its derivitives.
Right. But a linux base standard would be next to useless if:
It did not specify package standard(s)
It mandated too many or incompatible standards (which, alas, means just more than one... as they are not close enough to be compatible).
In the end RPM is the prime choice. Apt may be technically as good, but is bit less widely used, and hardly significantly better to warrant alienating RH and Novell. And finally, tarballs... well, 70s just called and wants his state-of-the-art tools back. Only a software luddite would want to take that approach, anyway; it's not a package management, it's bare-bones anarchic approach.
So while package format choice is divisive, there's no way around choosing one, and then it's only the choice of who to alienate (commercials or Debian).
AFAIC, it's for nothing unless you use secure tunnels and proxies to keep them from snooping on you.
Like with any other hot spot provider?
Same applies to your friendly big corporation ISPs, or anyone who other than yourself that is providing the infrastructure. What exactly makes this worse than the alternatives?
Or is this just one more libertarian rant against big bad governments, raised at slightest hint of society doing things instead of for-profit corporations?
Interesting. Still, more often that not the problems with autism (which some speculate has lots to with high degree of cacophony between different senses -- there was quite an interesting article in SciAm a while ago) make it hard for the individuals affected to even lead normal life, much less to benefit in certain field like mathematics.
I definitely agree that "different wiring" may have other positive aspects... but as is, autism is poorly understood, and big part is that it makes communication hard... so it's hard to learn more from the individuals who know the effects best (autists).
Anyhow, I mentioned Asperger's because it is best understood specific sub-type of autism, and while maybe over-generalizing, still better as an example as even broader general term just as autism.
Asperger (sp?) syndrom, aka "high-performing autism"? (think of Rain man).
I _think_ that is somewhat more common for bous (like is autism), but it's still rare enough that it probably doesn't matter... it's not like majority (or even significant minority) of mathematicians have Asperger.
That aside, a degree is a waste of time. Go spend that time in an entry-level position and build yourself up that way.
It all depends on what exactly you want to do. If you are mostly after career, you may be right. To climb the ladder, you don't really need to be an expert in the domain you start at (and it may be beneficial not to be, or even perceived as one). And couple of years you "save" by skipping higher education do allow you to climb farther.
However, by doing that, you chose not to become the domain expert. When you get that job, you do learn things, but only what exactly you need right now; after all, you have a job to do. As a student, studying the field more broadly is your work. Some people (many geeks, I would assume) do want to be best in their fields; others want to get the titles, money, or to get into positions with bigger responsibilities (managers, executives etc).
So I do disagree with the blanket statement of getting education (via degree earning curriculum) being waste of time; it may be, it might not be. And most often it's not complete waste of time -- it just might not be the most optimal way.
I've got a very large bookshelf full of worn texts I've read back to front a dozen times and numerous large, successful projects under my belt.
And your reading skills are seriously lacking. You didn't even bother trying to grasp what I said. I specifically said that ALTHOUGH IT IS POSSIBLE TO LEARN THESE THINGS, FEW DO. You apparently did.
Does not contradict my point at the slightest.
Each to his own. I got my CS degree without paying a penny (not in USA, mind you); have had a nice career so far, and have no regrets about learning computer science in a school. You chose the other path, fine, great, whatever (I probably agree, though, that going for a 8-month diploma factory wasn't worth the money you paid for -- surprise surprise)
Only an idiot would think that the DEGREE itself greatly matters; it's the things you learn (or do not learn) while earning it that do. Stop fighting straw-men, mr. self-made consultant man.
Education is what employers settle for when they can't get their hands on someone with experience.
Actually, while experience is very valuable, I'd rather not hire a programmer that has no college education. Although it is possible to learn everything CS degrees teach without attending actual school, very few people do that.
It's just more efficient to learn that as part of a degree -- although you have to learn quite a bit more than what you will eventually need, you never know which parts are things you do NOT need.
Without knowing at least something about compiler theory, relational model, discrete maths, data structure basics, algorithms etc., you aren't much of a software developer; no matter how much experience you have doing more trivial programming.
At least in CS it's simple: like they say, simple problems were all solved in 60s (if not 50s). If you do not learn what the great minds learnt/invented/solved (but rather go and solve them by trial and error... or worse, never learn them!), you are just colossaly wasting your time.
Either you are ignorant of useful techniques, or you have used awfully lots of time reinventing the wheel.
However, after learning enough (B.Sc, or maybe M.Sc... depends on kinds of things you are working on), I certainly agree one has to go out and use the knowledge. Going for higher degrees without intervening real-world experience is as silly as ignoring 'formal' CS theory altogether.
Heh. Did you actually think _I_ believe in bullshit like divine origins of the world literally as described by the Bible?:-o
I'd be more inclined to believe that world was created literally as descibed by, say, Kalevala, but even that would be silly.:-D
Nah, I was just pointing out that for some it's much more reassuring to believe in fairy tales; and that it's pretty naive to think everyone shares same ideas as scientifically oriented individuals do.
In the U.S., "prior art" is defined by 35 USC 102. While seemingly simple language, many of the terms in section 102 have very specific meaning under patent law. So all is not so simple.
Hmmh. I might be missing something, since I do not see that text defining term "prior art". It does obviously define what many people MISTAKENLY think "prior art" means...:-)
And as to disclosure... isn't that basically what I was saying? That it's actually good to disclose anything even remotely relevant, instead of risking it being found out about by the reviewer, and possibly being harmful.
Amen to that. And until fairly recently, Microsoft was fairly good with regards to patents; they also did NOT play the patent hoarding game (that seems to have changed recently, though).
"The company had suggested the existence of "prior art" - the technical term used when there is evidence that someone else came up with an application of the patented idea first."
Geez. Not only are most Slashdotters ignorant, but so are journalists (yeah yeah, big news?).
Although doing the exact thing(s) patent covers is (part of) prior art, the reverse is not necessarily true: prior art is a loose term referring to things done in same domain, related things; past inventions, well-known techniques and so on. Prior art means anything relevant to the patent that has already been done; not just things patent itself if covers.
Patent applications usually list tons of prior art, and for a good reason: it gives the impression that the applicant (applicant's lawyers) have done some research regarding novelty of the patented invention, and where it stands with respect to the current state of the art in the field (ok ok; or that's the idea, probably not the reality though).
Unfortunate, the US patent system has the idea right but it's been misused into oblivion
This is the good old "guns don't kill people, people do". It's neither here nor there -- the system is being systemically abused, so much so that the original idea(l)s don't really matter a lot. I'm also not quite sure where you got the idea that EU system was designed to stifle innovation -- I seriously doubt that was the expressed intent. Rather, there was lots of talk about harmonization, and levelling the playin gfield. not that I care much about the official reasonings, but since you imply they differ between US and European systems (which I don't think is the case).
What you are basically saying that EU patent system extension would be just ok, if the
rhetorics being used were more noble.
I think talk is cheap, and the end result would be the same no matter how eloquently the background ideals were expressed.
Further, I think that there is plenty wrong with patents, as far as they extend to software and business methods. For one they are useless (copyrights are enough); and for another they are dangerous (abuse by companies specializing in enforcing patents instead of building anything based on designs being patented).
I can accept time-limited patents for mechanical inventions, and (grudgingly) for chemical compounds (or, preferably, only for methods for creating specific compounds); but that's because they already exist, and there are some reasonably arguments for them. For software, I'd much rather not have any patentability whatsoever. And I'm confident that this would be to my best interest, even as the "small guy", coming up with innovative software algorithms and designs. I don't need abuse-ridden system to ostensibly "protect" me.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, but certainly not because of its artistic merits, of which there are none. Trust me, I actually have read about half of it; it is a rather badly written and boring book, boring enough to not to want to read rest of it (so why did I start reading it? just happened to find a free copy when I was 15 or so).
I can only imagine what his paintings look(ed) like.
There is a reason he was starving as an artist in Vienna. Too bad he figured out the alternative career path.
No, you are taking the silly buzzword (carbon neutral) too literally. It's not the carbon that matters, it's the heat-trapping aspect of gases (which are carbon-based, hence this ill-chosen term) that matters. 7 years (assuming that is the accepted definition) is plenty long time to act as heat-trapping agent, especially considering that current estimates suggest there is strong feedback component too (warming itself induces additional effects that amplify warming). And in that role, yes, methane is more efficient than CO2 by multiple orders of magnitude.
But as to carbon neutrality: to be carbon-neutral, you would have to explain exactly how are cows supposedly reducing effective amount of greenhouse gases in equivalent (or exceeding) amounts compared to production. I have hard time figuring out what exactly you might be implying here -- only thing I can think of are actually producing more of various gases due to breathing, digestion and perspiration.
Nice conspiracy theory, but a misguided one. DP itself wanted to skip it (except for mrs. Clinton), to "show unity". As in, grouping behind the most likely candidate that could win the general election.
This must be person known as "Tehran Ted", cousin-twice-removed of the one and only "Baghdad Bob"....
Yes.
Next question?
Perhaps you are a person that chooses things solely based on their name. But many others actually consider other factors, such as image quality, support by viewers, cost (if any). In fact, I would think it rather foolish to pay much any attention to name of the thing.
In reality, the most important factor most users is actually "what is everyone else using".
Open Source should join the waterfall model and the "man month" on the scrap heap of failed faddy software development methodologies.
Besides all the other fundamental misconceptions presented here, the most blatant may be this one: OS is not a SDM of any kind, and has little in common with actual methodologies.
Regarding "better than closed-source" aspect, all I can say is that within Java server-side stuff, it is more common to have open source libraries/frameworks that are better than commercial alternatives (if there are any) than vice versa. And certainly open sourced options are more widely used (more popular); which often leads to them becoming better even if that was initially not the case. Same is true for many other platforms.
But you are not a developer so anything other than end user apps probably don't count for your purposes.
Basically, open source projects that weren't initiated by a commercial vendor suck.
Huh? This is an utterly ignorant claim, almost not worth replying to.
But if you look at good open source projects, I doubt you can find even a significant minority (much less majority) that were initiated by a commercial vendor.
Anything from things like Linux to most libraries should in no uncertain terms confirm the idea that no, it's not commercial entities that seed most good open source products or projects. It is useful to also have companies starting OS projects, and sometimes taking ownership. But it's not much of a requirement. Just icing on the cake.
What is much more useful is the opposite: good open source projects resulting in new companies. That is much more common than the reverse.
Not that all that many recognize it, but Hanoi Rocks was another band that did call it quits after drummer (Razzle) died.
If this were a big win for Amazon, it would show up in their numbers.
Perhaps you should consider concept called order of magnitude with your comparisons.
While growth for Kindle and e-books is impressive, percentage-wise, size of that segment is rather small compared to many other lines of merchandise Amazon sells, as well as revenue from their sales of services (hosting others like Target, Marks and Spencer, Sears Canada, AWS etc). For example, electronics is a big growth segment, far outnumbering e-books, although with obviously not nearly as high profit margin.
Not to mention that as you should know, Amazon has NOT provided any number breakdown to indicate exactly what part of revenue or earnings comes from Kindle. This is intentional (for whatever the reason is).
So, no, absence of evidence (of Kindle's effects on stock price) is not evidence of absence.
How exactly is this health care going to be paid for?
Possibly by making the system as efficient as healthcare systems of other industrial countries. As you may know, US uses 2x as much money for health care as other industrial countries, while getting lower coverage: and yes, the two issues are related. This is an issue well studied, and most healthcare professionals are familiar with the data (talk to any doctor).
So how do others do it? By having this invention called "universal health care" (aka single-payer system -- does not necessarily mean society-owned or operated hospitals etc)
"Downside" is that there is somewhat less profit going to private enterprises that "manage" health care; and also less money for medical hardware manufacturers (US medical providers heavily overuse lab/diagnostics tools because those are easier to get paid than actual work by doctors etc), possibly less for pharmaceuticals ("govt healthcare" can use its buying muscle to get better prices on medications).
This is assuming US actually would use common sense and see how other countries like, say, Sweden do it.
There is little doubt America's actions hastened their decline by decades.
Based on what? Who knows -- maybe Americans prolonged it, not shorten it? Without Cold War, communist regime might not have been able to postpone inevitable reorg as long as it did.
Now, if russians hadn't foolishly gone to Afganistan and stayed there, the politburo might still be in power. Or more generally, living life of empire is costly; Civilization may be just a game, but it does give one some insights into costs and benefits of various approaches.
Right. But a linux base standard would be next to useless if:
In the end RPM is the prime choice. Apt may be technically as good, but is bit less widely used, and hardly significantly better to warrant alienating RH and Novell. And finally, tarballs... well, 70s just called and wants his state-of-the-art tools back. Only a software luddite would want to take that approach, anyway; it's not a package management, it's bare-bones anarchic approach.
So while package format choice is divisive, there's no way around choosing one, and then it's only the choice of who to alienate (commercials or Debian).
Like with any other hot spot provider? Same applies to your friendly big corporation ISPs, or anyone who other than yourself that is providing the infrastructure. What exactly makes this worse than the alternatives? Or is this just one more libertarian rant against big bad governments, raised at slightest hint of society doing things instead of for-profit corporations?
I definitely agree that "different wiring" may have other positive aspects... but as is, autism is poorly understood, and big part is that it makes communication hard... so it's hard to learn more from the individuals who know the effects best (autists).
Anyhow, I mentioned Asperger's because it is best understood specific sub-type of autism, and while maybe over-generalizing, still better as an example as even broader general term just as autism.
I _think_ that is somewhat more common for bous (like is autism), but it's still rare enough that it probably doesn't matter... it's not like majority (or even significant minority) of mathematicians have Asperger.
It all depends on what exactly you want to do. If you are mostly after career, you may be right. To climb the ladder, you don't really need to be an expert in the domain you start at (and it may be beneficial not to be, or even perceived as one). And couple of years you "save" by skipping higher education do allow you to climb farther.
However, by doing that, you chose not to become the domain expert. When you get that job, you do learn things, but only what exactly you need right now; after all, you have a job to do. As a student, studying the field more broadly is your work. Some people (many geeks, I would assume) do want to be best in their fields; others want to get the titles, money, or to get into positions with bigger responsibilities (managers, executives etc).
So I do disagree with the blanket statement of getting education (via degree earning curriculum) being waste of time; it may be, it might not be. And most often it's not complete waste of time -- it just might not be the most optimal way.
Just my 2 cents. :-)
And your reading skills are seriously lacking. You didn't even bother trying to grasp what I said. I specifically said that ALTHOUGH IT IS POSSIBLE TO LEARN THESE THINGS, FEW DO. You apparently did. Does not contradict my point at the slightest.
Each to his own. I got my CS degree without paying a penny (not in USA, mind you); have had a nice career so far, and have no regrets about learning computer science in a school. You chose the other path, fine, great, whatever (I probably agree, though, that going for a 8-month diploma factory wasn't worth the money you paid for -- surprise surprise)
Only an idiot would think that the DEGREE itself greatly matters; it's the things you learn (or do not learn) while earning it that do. Stop fighting straw-men, mr. self-made consultant man.
Actually, while experience is very valuable, I'd rather not hire a programmer that has no college education. Although it is possible to learn everything CS degrees teach without attending actual school, very few people do that. It's just more efficient to learn that as part of a degree -- although you have to learn quite a bit more than what you will eventually need, you never know which parts are things you do NOT need. Without knowing at least something about compiler theory, relational model, discrete maths, data structure basics, algorithms etc., you aren't much of a software developer; no matter how much experience you have doing more trivial programming.
At least in CS it's simple: like they say, simple problems were all solved in 60s (if not 50s). If you do not learn what the great minds learnt/invented/solved (but rather go and solve them by trial and error... or worse, never learn them!), you are just colossaly wasting your time. Either you are ignorant of useful techniques, or you have used awfully lots of time reinventing the wheel.
However, after learning enough (B.Sc, or maybe M.Sc... depends on kinds of things you are working on), I certainly agree one has to go out and use the knowledge. Going for higher degrees without intervening real-world experience is as silly as ignoring 'formal' CS theory altogether.
I'd be more inclined to believe that world was created literally as descibed by, say, Kalevala, but even that would be silly. :-D
Nah, I was just pointing out that for some it's much more reassuring to believe in fairy tales; and that it's pretty naive to think everyone shares same ideas as scientifically oriented individuals do.
Hmmh. I might be missing something, since I do not see that text defining term "prior art". It does obviously define what many people MISTAKENLY think "prior art" means... :-)
And as to disclosure... isn't that basically what I was saying? That it's actually good to disclose anything even remotely relevant, instead of risking it being found out about by the reviewer, and possibly being harmful.
Amen to that. And until fairly recently, Microsoft was fairly good with regards to patents; they also did NOT play the patent hoarding game (that seems to have changed recently, though).
Geez. Not only are most Slashdotters ignorant, but so are journalists (yeah yeah, big news?). Although doing the exact thing(s) patent covers is (part of) prior art, the reverse is not necessarily true: prior art is a loose term referring to things done in same domain, related things; past inventions, well-known techniques and so on. Prior art means anything relevant to the patent that has already been done; not just things patent itself if covers.
Patent applications usually list tons of prior art, and for a good reason: it gives the impression that the applicant (applicant's lawyers) have done some research regarding novelty of the patented invention, and where it stands with respect to the current state of the art in the field (ok ok; or that's the idea, probably not the reality though).
This is the good old "guns don't kill people, people do". It's neither here nor there -- the system is being systemically abused, so much so that the original idea(l)s don't really matter a lot. I'm also not quite sure where you got the idea that EU system was designed to stifle innovation -- I seriously doubt that was the expressed intent. Rather, there was lots of talk about harmonization, and levelling the playin gfield. not that I care much about the official reasonings, but since you imply they differ between US and European systems (which I don't think is the case).
What you are basically saying that EU patent system extension would be just ok, if the rhetorics being used were more noble. I think talk is cheap, and the end result would be the same no matter how eloquently the background ideals were expressed.
Further, I think that there is plenty wrong with patents, as far as they extend to software and business methods. For one they are useless (copyrights are enough); and for another they are dangerous (abuse by companies specializing in enforcing patents instead of building anything based on designs being patented).
I can accept time-limited patents for mechanical inventions, and (grudgingly) for chemical compounds (or, preferably, only for methods for creating specific compounds); but that's because they already exist, and there are some reasonably arguments for them. For software, I'd much rather not have any patentability whatsoever. And I'm confident that this would be to my best interest, even as the "small guy", coming up with innovative software algorithms and designs. I don't need abuse-ridden system to ostensibly "protect" me.