SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.
Regardless of the success or failure of the shuttle, that work helped pave the way for the current situation. NASA pioneered a huge amount of research, both successful and less so. You can't take any credit away from them just because the shuttle was less than spectacular. NASA's contributions to knowledge and technology in general over the years have been staggering. Some of that knowledge is relevant, even if it's not a direct copy-and-paste situation for SpaceX.
Oh dear god don't give them anymore ideas. The last thing we need is for some sympathetic government entity to start checking peoples' collections. (I realize it's unlikely, but we've been surprised and burned too many times in the past...)
Agreed, but most people in technical fields just use PC software to do the same things. Our tools are now much more powerful AND more configurable (depending on what tools you use). For the most part, graphing/programmable calculators really don't do anything but help with tests these days.
Agreed. People should vote with their money. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works these days. Everybody wants the new shiny iWhatever and they're willing to sign away their privacy for it. Hell, a lot of them don't even know what privacy is when it comes to technology. This is only going to get worse with Facebook, et al.
The people saying we should do nothing are doing so mostly out of an ideological mistrust of government doing anything, but they are going to be very regretful when they realize the markets failed to see and prepare for a future that experts and government DID predict, and could have prevented or at least vastly reduced the severity of.
We are in for a bleak future, because a small section of society has a vested interest in doing nothing and they have fully convinced roughly half of us that doing anything about it is an affront to their liberty. They'll pay in the end, we all will.
Agree with everything you typed, except the part about regret. They won't regret anything. They'll just blame the government again.
They're afraid of the government doing anything, but if the government doesn't (or can't) do anything, it's their fault for not predicting and preventing. These people are ignorant, paranoid, and have no ability to see the big picture. It will take generations and probably a major disaster before they start to see. By then, there will be some other big problem looming for them to be ignorant about.
I'm an engineer who stopped at a BS and jumped into the work force. I don't know how many other engineers I've come across with PhDs and Masters degrees who are next to useless. Hell, I had a professor in college who had several of each. He was a brilliant guy, but was one of the worst teachers we'd ever had. I don't know enough about his research to comment, but looking back, I'm pretty sure he couldn't have made it in industry if his life depended on it. He couldn't even carry a normal conversation with anyone. I don't know how in the hell he was married...
Anyway, my point is: a fancy title and pieces of paper may show that he worked hard and (probably) has a brain, but they do not prove that he is qualified for anything.
It boils down to common sense and practical application of skills. Knowing things is great, but it takes hands-on experience to be truly qualified/competent, in any field.
It is a small company, though not tiny (maybe 50ish, only 15 or so desk folks). He is the only IT guy and he doesn't have direct control over his budget (though he does work with the big wigs when it's set). As far as bitching... I did talk to my boss back when I had that machine and there really wasn't anything either of them could do about it at the time (we're going through some growing pains...).
Now, the problem in this case is not his budget, it's his priorities. He managed to get a special addition to his budget this year to build new machine for most of our office personnel. While I understand that people want newer computers, he really needs to figure out what everyone's needs are and repurpose some of our older, but still usable machines for the people who only use Word/Outlook, rather than buying them new machines that are marginally faster.
Also, I've been hearing about a plan to get iPads for the engineering department to use on the production floor while we're working on machines and such. For the things we'd use them for (primarily inputting data, maybe checking specs and such), cheap netbooks would be more effective and much cheaper. We could then put those extra hundreds of dollars toward upgrading our machines to actually run the software we need. Even just another gig of RAM would be a godsend.
I'm an engineer who uses Solidworks on a fairly regular basis. Our IT guy either doesn't understand or doesn't care that CAD programs require more horsepower than Word. Ever tried running full-featured CAD software on a 500 MHz with 256 MB RAM? I did that for a good while, and it wasn't more than a few years ago.
Even our 'new' computers are barely adequate Celerons with 1 GB RAM. Yeah, I can get by, but it's an exercise in pain/anger management any time I have to do anything more than a basic drawing. Even those can be frustrating...
If I tried to conveniently spill coffee in it or broke something, I'd get a computer that's even older, and might even end up paying for it or worse. Honestly, I can't imagine doing that, even if the machine were old, useless crap. Maybe I just have too much respect for things.
So the minute it takes a person to sign up for Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/whatever is somehow as time consuming as setting up his own system? Regardless of how easy or difficult it is, it's a non-trivial investment of time and resources. No amount of ego from you can change that. Even if I accepted your position, the problem still exists for non-geeks.
Times and technology have changed. Our laws need to catch up before it's too late.
This is my thinking. I haven't used the Atrix, but what I've read makes me think that it'll be a flop. That's ok in my book, though, because it's one of the first attempts at the concept. As phone hardware gets more powerful and once the market asserts itself a bit, I can see that becoming the norm, where nearly all day-to-day computing is done on the phone, with just a kb/monitor dock on the desk for more intensive tasks. I'm definitely onboard if/when that happens, though I don't know how it'll affect my tinkering and computer games.
I'm just geeky enough that I could have my own mail server et al, but it's not worth the time to set up and maintain my entire online life on my home network. I have a real job, personal and family obligations, and all the other usual crap that people have to deal with. Even for a geek, there's a point where other people have to be involved.
As it turns out, I just don't do anything meaningful online, with the exception of occasionally buying things, but the way things are going, that's probably going to change in the future and there's not nearly enough protection for regular shmoes or geeks with insufficient free time to fully protect themselves. It needs to change.
My job, and any number of other aspects of my life, potentially encourage excessive consumption of alcohol. An app that I would have to go out of my way to download in no way affects my consumption. I can, however, see some people being more likely to drink and drive if they think they can get away with it.
Now, I'm not thrilled about what the apps will tend to be used for, but it's not my place or anyone else's to remove them simply because they COULD be used for something bad. I own a gun, knives, and any number of standard tools and other day-to-day objects that could be used to cause harm to someone. Any tool can be used for good or evil and it's not appropriate to try to control them, as long as they have a legitimate purpose. Even if they don't, I'm not convinced it's anyone's business until something bad is actually going to happen, which can't be accurately determined in 99.99% of cases.
The problems we have are societal, and no amount of this type of control will fix them.
Let me say that again: The problems we have are societal, and no amount of this type of control will fix them.
As FrootLoops said, perspectives vary wildly. The (often Christian) conservative groups are what generally make noise about these things, but they are not nearly as large in number as they appear. They're just far more vocal. The younger generations and more liberal folks tend to appreciate satire more and often take themselves far less seriously.
One thing that I think people often forget (or never knew) is just how varied the population of the US is. The country is much, much larger (both geographically and in population) than most other countries in the world, which leads to quite a bit of variation in culture from place to place. Add in the 'melting pot' factor and you start getting a giant, jumbled mess of different beliefs and ways of approaching things as you travel around the country. More densely populated and/or educated areas tend to be more liberal, while rural areas are generally conservative. Suburbs vary wildly.
It also seems to me like we get a good bit more attention about stupid things like this than other parts of the globe, though that depends on perspective and exactly what media you're exposed to.
As for myself, and the people I prefer to associate with, we don't typically go for this over-the-top entertainment (though I may buy Duke just because he's freakin' Duke), but we would never seek to control what other people like or do. It seems like the US is turning into a 'freedom and liberty for all, as long as you agree with the vocal minority' environment.
Microsoft is evil, blah blah blah, but if people really want open source alternatives to make any progress with regular people, they need to gain mindshare. While Android may help, phones and tablets are a far cry from a full desktop environment. The only way to break into (normal-people) desktop computing is to go where the users are. That means swallowing our pride and working with Microsoft for the foreseeable future. It doesn't mean we've sold out or have doomed open source to failure. It means we're temporarily doing something we don't like to become relevant in the rest of the world. Then we can be taken seriously and move on to some real progress.
It also might not hurt to print out the same info and send it to yourself through the paper mail. Leave the envelope sealed. The postmark will be your proof of the date. A lot of people tend not to trust electronic records (or may not understand well enough to know they should trust them).
I currently live in a rural-ish part of New York State. I hear similar things and it drives me crazy (well... crazier). I grew up less than an hour drive from here (less rural) and I never heard people talk like that. It appears to be strongly related to education level and/or intelligence, at least here.
Debian and debian derived projects are for people that are to lazy to use a real Linux system.
Or perhaps for people whose time valuable to them.
I also really don't care if my computer is 5% faster with my own distro vs. Debian. The time it would take me to get that running is not worth the miniscule amount of extra time it takes for my browser to open and my email to load.
The only way this will change is if people refuse to buy bad ports from console to PC, then the designers will have to actually do the hard yards and create the PC version with PC players in mind.
Except that companies might just drop the PC version altogether, because the sales levels they see are not large enough to justify the expense. I would hope that smarter companies would fill the gap, but I'm losing faith in the industry to do that nowadays. (Don't get me wrong; I think you're spot on, but it could backfire)
About the monitors... I ended up buying a refurbished Samsung 26" monitor/TV last year just for the 1920x1200 resolution. They are almost impossible to find now, and are generally very expensive to boot. Personally, I don't care for widescreen monitors for most normal desktop things. Widescreen is only a big deal for me when it comes to games and video.
While I'm not thrilled that they're jumping major version numbers like this, I still would like to think that it's purely a cosmetic thing. Average users may be swayed by version numbers and if this stunt helps them hold onto a few more 'Average Joe' users to keep the ball rolling forward, I'm all for it. This marketing stuff, as distasteful as it might be to those of us with more technical careers and skills, should not be ignored.
Personally, I still think Firefox is ahead of Chrome in most of the ways that really matter. I would much sooner blame Google and Chrome for diluting the usefulness of version numbers and distorting reality than I would blame Mozilla for being forced into these marketing games.
It depends on the job and the company. I'm an engineer for a manufacturing company and yes, I use a computer for all the usual stuff, but pretty much everything but my emails (and some of those too...) gets printed out. Audits, design and validation work, test results, and whatever other stuff generally needs to be signed and filed somewhere. Our engineers do a lot of hands-on work, so that also involves notebooks and stray papers. Even if they gave me a laptop or tablet for notes and such, I'm not sure it'd work that well. For hands-on work and documentation, paper's the way to go, and you need space in order to deal with it effectively.
Side note: I recently changed departments (from QA back to 'real' engineering). In QA, I shared a decent-sized office with one other person. That drove me NUTS. Now I'm in a cube that's much smaller, and in a noisy area. It sucks, but I think I'd rather be here than in the office. Now, I at least have some separation from the people that drive me nuts and they don't get as offended if I put on my headphones to block them out.
Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.
Regardless of the success or failure of the shuttle, that work helped pave the way for the current situation. NASA pioneered a huge amount of research, both successful and less so. You can't take any credit away from them just because the shuttle was less than spectacular. NASA's contributions to knowledge and technology in general over the years have been staggering. Some of that knowledge is relevant, even if it's not a direct copy-and-paste situation for SpaceX.
No... Clearly, the Borg have landed and have begun to assimilate us...
I, for one, welcome our blah blah blah...
Oh dear god don't give them anymore ideas. The last thing we need is for some sympathetic government entity to start checking peoples' collections. (I realize it's unlikely, but we've been surprised and burned too many times in the past...)
Agreed, but most people in technical fields just use PC software to do the same things. Our tools are now much more powerful AND more configurable (depending on what tools you use). For the most part, graphing/programmable calculators really don't do anything but help with tests these days.
Agreed. People should vote with their money. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works these days. Everybody wants the new shiny iWhatever and they're willing to sign away their privacy for it. Hell, a lot of them don't even know what privacy is when it comes to technology. This is only going to get worse with Facebook, et al.
The people saying we should do nothing are doing so mostly out of an ideological mistrust of government doing anything, but they are going to be very regretful when they realize the markets failed to see and prepare for a future that experts and government DID predict, and could have prevented or at least vastly reduced the severity of.
We are in for a bleak future, because a small section of society has a vested interest in doing nothing and they have fully convinced roughly half of us that doing anything about it is an affront to their liberty. They'll pay in the end, we all will.
Agree with everything you typed, except the part about regret. They won't regret anything. They'll just blame the government again.
They're afraid of the government doing anything, but if the government doesn't (or can't) do anything, it's their fault for not predicting and preventing. These people are ignorant, paranoid, and have no ability to see the big picture. It will take generations and probably a major disaster before they start to see. By then, there will be some other big problem looming for them to be ignorant about.
Oh yes +10
I'm an engineer who stopped at a BS and jumped into the work force. I don't know how many other engineers I've come across with PhDs and Masters degrees who are next to useless. Hell, I had a professor in college who had several of each. He was a brilliant guy, but was one of the worst teachers we'd ever had. I don't know enough about his research to comment, but looking back, I'm pretty sure he couldn't have made it in industry if his life depended on it. He couldn't even carry a normal conversation with anyone. I don't know how in the hell he was married...
Anyway, my point is: a fancy title and pieces of paper may show that he worked hard and (probably) has a brain, but they do not prove that he is qualified for anything.
It boils down to common sense and practical application of skills. Knowing things is great, but it takes hands-on experience to be truly qualified/competent, in any field.
It is a small company, though not tiny (maybe 50ish, only 15 or so desk folks). He is the only IT guy and he doesn't have direct control over his budget (though he does work with the big wigs when it's set). As far as bitching... I did talk to my boss back when I had that machine and there really wasn't anything either of them could do about it at the time (we're going through some growing pains...).
Now, the problem in this case is not his budget, it's his priorities. He managed to get a special addition to his budget this year to build new machine for most of our office personnel. While I understand that people want newer computers, he really needs to figure out what everyone's needs are and repurpose some of our older, but still usable machines for the people who only use Word/Outlook, rather than buying them new machines that are marginally faster.
Also, I've been hearing about a plan to get iPads for the engineering department to use on the production floor while we're working on machines and such. For the things we'd use them for (primarily inputting data, maybe checking specs and such), cheap netbooks would be more effective and much cheaper. We could then put those extra hundreds of dollars toward upgrading our machines to actually run the software we need. Even just another gig of RAM would be a godsend.
THIS
I'm an engineer who uses Solidworks on a fairly regular basis. Our IT guy either doesn't understand or doesn't care that CAD programs require more horsepower than Word. Ever tried running full-featured CAD software on a 500 MHz with 256 MB RAM? I did that for a good while, and it wasn't more than a few years ago.
Even our 'new' computers are barely adequate Celerons with 1 GB RAM. Yeah, I can get by, but it's an exercise in pain/anger management any time I have to do anything more than a basic drawing. Even those can be frustrating...
If I tried to conveniently spill coffee in it or broke something, I'd get a computer that's even older, and might even end up paying for it or worse. Honestly, I can't imagine doing that, even if the machine were old, useless crap. Maybe I just have too much respect for things.
So the minute it takes a person to sign up for Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/whatever is somehow as time consuming as setting up his own system? Regardless of how easy or difficult it is, it's a non-trivial investment of time and resources. No amount of ego from you can change that. Even if I accepted your position, the problem still exists for non-geeks.
Times and technology have changed. Our laws need to catch up before it's too late.
This is my thinking. I haven't used the Atrix, but what I've read makes me think that it'll be a flop. That's ok in my book, though, because it's one of the first attempts at the concept. As phone hardware gets more powerful and once the market asserts itself a bit, I can see that becoming the norm, where nearly all day-to-day computing is done on the phone, with just a kb/monitor dock on the desk for more intensive tasks. I'm definitely onboard if/when that happens, though I don't know how it'll affect my tinkering and computer games.
I'm just geeky enough that I could have my own mail server et al, but it's not worth the time to set up and maintain my entire online life on my home network. I have a real job, personal and family obligations, and all the other usual crap that people have to deal with. Even for a geek, there's a point where other people have to be involved.
As it turns out, I just don't do anything meaningful online, with the exception of occasionally buying things, but the way things are going, that's probably going to change in the future and there's not nearly enough protection for regular shmoes or geeks with insufficient free time to fully protect themselves. It needs to change.
As well as Slashdot supports browsers these days, lynx might be an improvement...
He might be referring to Google's creation of Chrome to put pressure on the browser market...
My job, and any number of other aspects of my life, potentially encourage excessive consumption of alcohol. An app that I would have to go out of my way to download in no way affects my consumption. I can, however, see some people being more likely to drink and drive if they think they can get away with it.
Now, I'm not thrilled about what the apps will tend to be used for, but it's not my place or anyone else's to remove them simply because they COULD be used for something bad. I own a gun, knives, and any number of standard tools and other day-to-day objects that could be used to cause harm to someone. Any tool can be used for good or evil and it's not appropriate to try to control them, as long as they have a legitimate purpose. Even if they don't, I'm not convinced it's anyone's business until something bad is actually going to happen, which can't be accurately determined in 99.99% of cases.
The problems we have are societal, and no amount of this type of control will fix them.
Let me say that again:
The problems we have are societal, and no amount of this type of control will fix them.
As FrootLoops said, perspectives vary wildly. The (often Christian) conservative groups are what generally make noise about these things, but they are not nearly as large in number as they appear. They're just far more vocal. The younger generations and more liberal folks tend to appreciate satire more and often take themselves far less seriously.
One thing that I think people often forget (or never knew) is just how varied the population of the US is. The country is much, much larger (both geographically and in population) than most other countries in the world, which leads to quite a bit of variation in culture from place to place. Add in the 'melting pot' factor and you start getting a giant, jumbled mess of different beliefs and ways of approaching things as you travel around the country. More densely populated and/or educated areas tend to be more liberal, while rural areas are generally conservative. Suburbs vary wildly.
It also seems to me like we get a good bit more attention about stupid things like this than other parts of the globe, though that depends on perspective and exactly what media you're exposed to.
As for myself, and the people I prefer to associate with, we don't typically go for this over-the-top entertainment (though I may buy Duke just because he's freakin' Duke), but we would never seek to control what other people like or do. It seems like the US is turning into a 'freedom and liberty for all, as long as you agree with the vocal minority' environment.
Relevance.
Microsoft is evil, blah blah blah, but if people really want open source alternatives to make any progress with regular people, they need to gain mindshare. While Android may help, phones and tablets are a far cry from a full desktop environment. The only way to break into (normal-people) desktop computing is to go where the users are. That means swallowing our pride and working with Microsoft for the foreseeable future. It doesn't mean we've sold out or have doomed open source to failure. It means we're temporarily doing something we don't like to become relevant in the rest of the world. Then we can be taken seriously and move on to some real progress.
It also might not hurt to print out the same info and send it to yourself through the paper mail. Leave the envelope sealed. The postmark will be your proof of the date. A lot of people tend not to trust electronic records (or may not understand well enough to know they should trust them).
There's a place better than New Jersey? Do you know what it's called?
It's called anywhere else.
I currently live in a rural-ish part of New York State. I hear similar things and it drives me crazy (well... crazier). I grew up less than an hour drive from here (less rural) and I never heard people talk like that. It appears to be strongly related to education level and/or intelligence, at least here.
Debian and debian derived projects are for people that are to lazy to use a real Linux system.
Or perhaps for people whose time valuable to them.
I also really don't care if my computer is 5% faster with my own distro vs. Debian. The time it would take me to get that running is not worth the miniscule amount of extra time it takes for my browser to open and my email to load.
The only way this will change is if people refuse to buy bad ports from console to PC, then the designers will have to actually do the hard yards and create the PC version with PC players in mind.
Except that companies might just drop the PC version altogether, because the sales levels they see are not large enough to justify the expense. I would hope that smarter companies would fill the gap, but I'm losing faith in the industry to do that nowadays. (Don't get me wrong; I think you're spot on, but it could backfire)
About the monitors... I ended up buying a refurbished Samsung 26" monitor/TV last year just for the 1920x1200 resolution. They are almost impossible to find now, and are generally very expensive to boot. Personally, I don't care for widescreen monitors for most normal desktop things. Widescreen is only a big deal for me when it comes to games and video.
This is exactly what is going on.
While I'm not thrilled that they're jumping major version numbers like this, I still would like to think that it's purely a cosmetic thing. Average users may be swayed by version numbers and if this stunt helps them hold onto a few more 'Average Joe' users to keep the ball rolling forward, I'm all for it. This marketing stuff, as distasteful as it might be to those of us with more technical careers and skills, should not be ignored.
Personally, I still think Firefox is ahead of Chrome in most of the ways that really matter. I would much sooner blame Google and Chrome for diluting the usefulness of version numbers and distorting reality than I would blame Mozilla for being forced into these marketing games.
Typically when such things explode everything in it's destruction radius gives a fuck.
Only for a very brief moment.
It depends on the job and the company. I'm an engineer for a manufacturing company and yes, I use a computer for all the usual stuff, but pretty much everything but my emails (and some of those too...) gets printed out. Audits, design and validation work, test results, and whatever other stuff generally needs to be signed and filed somewhere. Our engineers do a lot of hands-on work, so that also involves notebooks and stray papers. Even if they gave me a laptop or tablet for notes and such, I'm not sure it'd work that well. For hands-on work and documentation, paper's the way to go, and you need space in order to deal with it effectively.
Side note:
I recently changed departments (from QA back to 'real' engineering). In QA, I shared a decent-sized office with one other person. That drove me NUTS. Now I'm in a cube that's much smaller, and in a noisy area. It sucks, but I think I'd rather be here than in the office. Now, I at least have some separation from the people that drive me nuts and they don't get as offended if I put on my headphones to block them out.