Except precious metals are no longer acknowledged as currency. As of 2012, only a small fraction of currency has gold backing. In the US and UK, the amount of currency that is backed by gold is roughly 5% (according to that article, not sure about 2016 values).
Can I download the source for android modify it and flash it to my device with the full support for doing so provided by the manufacturer (although obviously they'll no longer support the operating system I install). On some devices from some manufacturers: yes, you can. With Apple, on any device -- no. The software cannot be downloaded and modified, and no they do not support allowing you load any customizations you might make at all, period, ever.
To say they are the same even "in spirit" is simply... lying.
You're comparing "freedom" with "openness", and there is a difference.
Yes, you are free to install whatever you'd like from wherever you'd like on Android. I wouldn't go so far as to say "re-flashing the phone with a different Android" is supported. In fact, doing so voids any warranties with the manufacturer and as you mentioned I couldn't bring it into a T-Mobile store for a fix. In many cases there's a bunch of hoops to jump through to even get to the point of installing Cyanogenmod. So sure, there's some freedom there.
Openness, however, is really lacking. Google has a stranglehold on the market with their Google Apps (Play, gmail, movies, music, etc...). I've rooted my phone and attempted to remove those google apps I don't use, such as calendar and gmail, and each time my phone checks for an update those apps are reinstalled. I vaguely remember some being uninstalled remotely somehow on another phone, too. I'd also argue that when most people see the "Install from a non-trusted source?" dialog, they'll cancel out of whatever they were trying to do. Have you seen the source for any of the Google Apps? No? then they aren't 'open' are they?
While this is certainly an interesting idea, i fail to see how this is "news for nerds". I'd combine this thought of "breaking on slashdot" with the idea mentioned above about scientific coverage not being thoughtful.
Instead of regurgitating a press release, have someone reach out to those scientists and ask thoughtful questions. I've always liked the "Ask Slashdot" posts, these could be precursors to that. The flow would be something like:
Slashdot user posts (or you guys find it yourself)
Slashdot interviews researcher(s) about topic
Ask Slashdot
More knowledge sharing
Make Slashdot a go-to place to learn about interesting things and share ideas with other smart people. Don't worry about dumbing things down, I'm sure the crowd can put things in Lay-mens terms (or worse).
On a related note, maybe update the comment editor. It's cumbersome to type html when I need to format something. Maybe some wiki-like editing? or a small-scale WYSIWYG editor?
It would be nice to be able to type as though I'm in a word processor, then can highlight and make something bold, block quote, italic, etc...
Finally, remember this is news for nerds. Keep the BS articles (I'm looking at you Forbes) to a minimum.
Extending this idea a little bit. It should be clear where the links go (kind of already done in the title line), and the nature of that site. Some things that I have to scan comments for would make life easier:
If the site is a paid site, like NYT
If the linked site is multi-page click-fest. One paragraph per page and 30 pages? no thanks
If the site is riddled with ads and difficult to find the actual content.
This involves a bit more editor interaction... But when one of these shows up in the comments, there's usually dozens/hundreds of complaints and it really drives the noise from the comments up. Alerting up-front may not fix the problem entirely, but at least then the herd can mod down something that's obvious from the start.
Oh no! people care about our content enough that they are willing to pay Netflix (and use a proxy) to watch it!
Why, we can't have that many fans of our products! BAN THEM!
I was gonna mention I have a lot of classic game consoles, the oldest of which is an SNES. I still have a gameboy color that works, as well as a saturn, playstation, n64, and many others. To top it off, my Super Metroid saves are still there, as are my Super Mario World, Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, etc...
Sure, it's awesome to have a server that lives a long time in a closet with minimal kicking. I think it's awesome to have hardware that has survived 20+ years of kids beating and throwing controllers (okay, sometimes it was me).
I have a similar story. A few years ago there was a call from the chief financial guy in one of the military branches for ways to cut cost for the 120k desktop computers they supply to all the worker bees. Of course, I suggested LibreOffice as a replacement for MS Office, saving some $90 per desktop. I even provided the rationale that LibreOffice at the time was really a stand-in for MS Office 2k3 (no ribbon nonsense) and said that the training provided to migrate to 2k7 would have been more expensive than to just switch to LibreOffice.
I also mentioned switching to something like RHEL or Ubuntu for the OS. Each would significantly cut back on overall costs for a majority of the workers that only do email, office and web.
The response I got was from an O-4, on behalf of the O-7. "We have deemed these options to be more expensive". The wording in the email was obviously some generic crap, since there are plenty of articles of gov agencies (European or otherwise) that directly contradicted most statements in the email.
Personally, I think there is a stigma about open source for many decision makers. There's this lack of familarity, the lack of a single belly button to blame for something going wrong, and a misconception about how much control they could have over the workstations. Sure, Active Directory has a lot of easy buttons, but it's nothing all that special. As for the workers? If my mom, who can't work a VCR, can use Linux Mint... there's no excuse for anyone else that knows "the E icon is for the internet".
There was a mention of gangs, which have been described as a sort of "family". There is an allure to that sort of kinship and power. Now we have groups like ISIS, that are essentially the same thing, only with a (radicalized) religious backing. Now not only is there the draw of family, power, supremacy... there's also a religious interpretation of salvation for fighting for beliefs.
The sort of change being suggested through information flow won't make a dent unless that information is spread to the youth. Just look at the fights we still have regarding evolution in schools. Despite plenty of evidence supporting evolution, we still have leaders that don't believe it. And there are plenty of people that still follow them, otherwise they wouldn't have been in office for so long.
Good luck getting those kids that grew up in war zones to see any solution other than violence.
I was reading about the B-52 some time ago and came across this gem:
"The B-52 has the power of 8 locomotives, 10 miles of wire, and enough metal to make 10,000 trash cans. That's exactly how it flies, like 8 locomotives pulling 10,000 trash cans with 10 miles of wire."
6 days of testing per semester. Sure, amortized that is 48 hours out of 720 (90 * 8), and it seems like a pretty small number... Remember that because of the teachers/schools getting punished for poor grades, they teach to the test to ensure the kid in the corner eating glue can remember how to add.
That must be a typo. Not your math, the 20 hours number.
Here's the Albuquerque tests schedule for Elementary School. Notice here they have 6 different standardized tests for 4-5th grade. Even if each one only took 1 day (they don't... though I can't find hard numbers to support that), that's still 48 hours of tests. PARCC (Common Core, best I can tell) is 2-3 days by itself.
In Texas, they have no fewer than 6 days per semester. That 20 hour number is total B.S.
Out of a typical 180-day schedule, Texas students really only get 168 days of education. Many of which likely go to teaching to the test, instead of educating the students. So lets say it's a 1-for-1. We're trying to get 180 days of education into 154, that's over a month spent on testing and prep for the standardized test. Why? Because the teachers and schools are the ones that get funding cuts and reprimanded. Nevermind that not every kid will be an astronaut.
Thinking along the same lines, I've heard CS students referred to as "poor misguided applied mathematicians."
In some ways that's entirely true, since a good deal of my undergrad was focused on word problems, algorithms and complexity analysis. Granted learning to code is a bit different, but a majority of the knowledge comes from that understanding of Math. If we can teach people the applied portion, teach them how to think and reason about the problem, then we'd be most of the way there.
It's not a huge leap from breaking down a problem into a series of steps then coding those steps into a computer. I'd argue the former is much more valuable.
Yes, but the difference is this white dragon runs all your Windows applications*
*as long as they were previously compiled to run on the White Dragon architecture, developed using genuine Microsoft Development Environment 9000. All this can be licensed for the low low price of your first born.
I'll add this in too: Other foods that humans have modified... Though these are through selective breeding. Humans have been manipulating our food sources ever since we took to farming. Sure, they may not have done it with a chemistry set (or lab), but that corn sitting on your plate is not a "naturally occuring" plant.
Slashdot Mirror
Except precious metals are no longer acknowledged as currency. As of 2012, only a small fraction of currency has gold backing. In the US and UK, the amount of currency that is backed by gold is roughly 5% (according to that article, not sure about 2016 values).
Android is about as open as iOS.
Can I download the source for android modify it and flash it to my device with the full support for doing so provided by the manufacturer (although obviously they'll no longer support the operating system I install). On some devices from some manufacturers: yes, you can. With Apple, on any device -- no. The software cannot be downloaded and modified, and no they do not support allowing you load any customizations you might make at all, period, ever.
To say they are the same even "in spirit" is simply... lying.
You're comparing "freedom" with "openness", and there is a difference.
Yes, you are free to install whatever you'd like from wherever you'd like on Android. I wouldn't go so far as to say "re-flashing the phone with a different Android" is supported. In fact, doing so voids any warranties with the manufacturer and as you mentioned I couldn't bring it into a T-Mobile store for a fix. In many cases there's a bunch of hoops to jump through to even get to the point of installing Cyanogenmod. So sure, there's some freedom there.
Openness, however, is really lacking. Google has a stranglehold on the market with their Google Apps (Play, gmail, movies, music, etc...). I've rooted my phone and attempted to remove those google apps I don't use, such as calendar and gmail, and each time my phone checks for an update those apps are reinstalled. I vaguely remember some being uninstalled remotely somehow on another phone, too. I'd also argue that when most people see the "Install from a non-trusted source?" dialog, they'll cancel out of whatever they were trying to do. Have you seen the source for any of the Google Apps? No? then they aren't 'open' are they?
There's a military term for this (at least, I learned it while working on base): "Bend Over, Here It Comes Again", Bohica for short.
I'll throw one in since this is a techie site: "Microsoft Works"
Instead of regurgitating a press release, have someone reach out to those scientists and ask thoughtful questions. I've always liked the "Ask Slashdot" posts, these could be precursors to that. The flow would be something like:
Make Slashdot a go-to place to learn about interesting things and share ideas with other smart people. Don't worry about dumbing things down, I'm sure the crowd can put things in Lay-mens terms (or worse).
On a related note, maybe update the comment editor. It's cumbersome to type html when I need to format something. Maybe some wiki-like editing? or a small-scale WYSIWYG editor? It would be nice to be able to type as though I'm in a word processor, then can highlight and make something bold, block quote, italic, etc...
Finally, remember this is news for nerds. Keep the BS articles (I'm looking at you Forbes) to a minimum.
Extending this idea a little bit. It should be clear where the links go (kind of already done in the title line), and the nature of that site. Some things that I have to scan comments for would make life easier:
This involves a bit more editor interaction... But when one of these shows up in the comments, there's usually dozens/hundreds of complaints and it really drives the noise from the comments up. Alerting up-front may not fix the problem entirely, but at least then the herd can mod down something that's obvious from the start.
We won't have to wait too long for some of them.
Oh no! people care about our content enough that they are willing to pay Netflix (and use a proxy) to watch it! Why, we can't have that many fans of our products! BAN THEM!
I was gonna mention I have a lot of classic game consoles, the oldest of which is an SNES. I still have a gameboy color that works, as well as a saturn, playstation, n64, and many others. To top it off, my Super Metroid saves are still there, as are my Super Mario World, Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, etc... Sure, it's awesome to have a server that lives a long time in a closet with minimal kicking. I think it's awesome to have hardware that has survived 20+ years of kids beating and throwing controllers (okay, sometimes it was me).
I have a similar story. A few years ago there was a call from the chief financial guy in one of the military branches for ways to cut cost for the 120k desktop computers they supply to all the worker bees. Of course, I suggested LibreOffice as a replacement for MS Office, saving some $90 per desktop. I even provided the rationale that LibreOffice at the time was really a stand-in for MS Office 2k3 (no ribbon nonsense) and said that the training provided to migrate to 2k7 would have been more expensive than to just switch to LibreOffice.
I also mentioned switching to something like RHEL or Ubuntu for the OS. Each would significantly cut back on overall costs for a majority of the workers that only do email, office and web.
The response I got was from an O-4, on behalf of the O-7. "We have deemed these options to be more expensive". The wording in the email was obviously some generic crap, since there are plenty of articles of gov agencies (European or otherwise) that directly contradicted most statements in the email.
Personally, I think there is a stigma about open source for many decision makers. There's this lack of familarity, the lack of a single belly button to blame for something going wrong, and a misconception about how much control they could have over the workstations. Sure, Active Directory has a lot of easy buttons, but it's nothing all that special. As for the workers? If my mom, who can't work a VCR, can use Linux Mint... there's no excuse for anyone else that knows "the E icon is for the internet".
Yes, but at least then our president could challenge other presidents to a cage match and finish them off with a suplex pin.
Interesting thoughts in this thread.
There was a mention of gangs, which have been described as a sort of "family". There is an allure to that sort of kinship and power. Now we have groups like ISIS, that are essentially the same thing, only with a (radicalized) religious backing. Now not only is there the draw of family, power, supremacy... there's also a religious interpretation of salvation for fighting for beliefs.
The sort of change being suggested through information flow won't make a dent unless that information is spread to the youth. Just look at the fights we still have regarding evolution in schools. Despite plenty of evidence supporting evolution, we still have leaders that don't believe it. And there are plenty of people that still follow them, otherwise they wouldn't have been in office for so long.
Good luck getting those kids that grew up in war zones to see any solution other than violence.
I was reading about the B-52 some time ago and came across this gem:
"The B-52 has the power of 8 locomotives, 10 miles of wire, and enough metal to make 10,000 trash cans. That's exactly how it flies, like 8 locomotives pulling 10,000 trash cans with 10 miles of wire."
I'm going to go ahead and share these again, since people can't be bothered to do any research.
Here's one example: Texas.
6 days of testing per semester. Sure, amortized that is 48 hours out of 720 (90 * 8), and it seems like a pretty small number... Remember that because of the teachers/schools getting punished for poor grades, they teach to the test to ensure the kid in the corner eating glue can remember how to add.
That must be a typo. Not your math, the 20 hours number.
Here's the Albuquerque tests schedule for Elementary School. Notice here they have 6 different standardized tests for 4-5th grade. Even if each one only took 1 day (they don't... though I can't find hard numbers to support that), that's still 48 hours of tests. PARCC (Common Core, best I can tell) is 2-3 days by itself.
In Texas, they have no fewer than 6 days per semester. That 20 hour number is total B.S.
Out of a typical 180-day schedule, Texas students really only get 168 days of education. Many of which likely go to teaching to the test, instead of educating the students. So lets say it's a 1-for-1. We're trying to get 180 days of education into 154, that's over a month spent on testing and prep for the standardized test. Why? Because the teachers and schools are the ones that get funding cuts and reprimanded. Nevermind that not every kid will be an astronaut.
Thinking along the same lines, I've heard CS students referred to as "poor misguided applied mathematicians." In some ways that's entirely true, since a good deal of my undergrad was focused on word problems, algorithms and complexity analysis. Granted learning to code is a bit different, but a majority of the knowledge comes from that understanding of Math. If we can teach people the applied portion, teach them how to think and reason about the problem, then we'd be most of the way there. It's not a huge leap from breaking down a problem into a series of steps then coding those steps into a computer. I'd argue the former is much more valuable.
...equivalent of a thousand angles dancing on the head of a pin.
I bet they're all acute too....
Please, won't somebody think of the poor dealership model? I mean, they need their insane markups and cuddle time with government officials too!
I'm curious how they'll "encourage" users to upgrade to the latest shiny if the slightly tarnished shiny is still up-to-date...
He's on AOL dial-up, you insensitive clod.
I'd love to have a dubstep gun. Those aliens will never see it coming.
Oblig: But can it run Crysis?
Yes, but the difference is this white dragon runs all your Windows applications* *as long as they were previously compiled to run on the White Dragon architecture, developed using genuine Microsoft Development Environment 9000. All this can be licensed for the low low price of your first born.
I'll add this in too: Other foods that humans have modified... Though these are through selective breeding. Humans have been manipulating our food sources ever since we took to farming. Sure, they may not have done it with a chemistry set (or lab), but that corn sitting on your plate is not a "naturally occuring" plant.