So if I'm an evil dictator, and I can build the worlds third fastest supercomputer for 5.2 million USD what can I do with it? Are all these cheap cycles going to mean I can break codes or do nuclear or biological weapons research faster? I'll be there are people in the US Defense Department, CIA, or NSA that might be concerned.
That's fine the net has enabled your life, but think about the impact of your newly enabled lifestyle.
You shop online so you're contributing to the bottom line of many vendors who are blazing new territory by providing a place for you to do that online. Slowly but surely your putting a bunch of those paper catalog guys out of business one click at a time.
Next you don't call your friends long distance anymore but you send email and post things on web sites. AT&T thanks you, NOT! Your helping to shift focus and dollars away from long distance carriers and the telephone as the primary personal communication medium to the web. (Actually I've been doing this for years already, but it's good to see others participating.:-))
Making things easier can be revolutionary, or do you still churn cream to get butter. Think about it.
I'm not pumping Weinberger's book or bashing Katz, but I am trying to say that the web has changed things it's impact while being over-hyped by some, and derided by others is still important and revolutionary.
Mars is absolutly within our grasp. We can get there with Apollo era rocketry and when we get there we can live off the land. Robert Zubrin has been writing about this for years and has built prototypes of the equipment we'll need to generate rocket fuel, oxygen, and water out of native materials.
The big issue is that we can't go for a month. For a Mars trip to be worthwhile, in scientific terms, we've got to stay for a year.
For anyone that needs convicing check out the The Mars Scociety. Mars awaits us. Its our next step.
There is nothing for us on the Moon. It's not a good lauch pad for future missions, or fuel depot. It might be a good place to put a telescope but we could do that with an unmanned mission. Save the moon for the tourist, at least not until we can build fusion reactors that depend on all the helium-3 up there.
The main problem I see with the Linux desktop is the simple fact that 98% of the rest of the world is using Windows/MSOffice. Like it or not StarOffice works and more importantly has decent compatibility with MSOffice. Which is key for those of us that have to communicate with the other 98%.
BTW, my laptop, which is my main machine, is currently dual-booting RH7.1 and win98. I think I've succeeded in making my life easier by running Ximian Gnome. They are doing a great job getting all of these disparate packages working together in a simple, net-installable package. I just wish they'd either get StarOffice folded in to their distribution or for the rest of the GNOME office working as well, or better than, StarOffice. Evolution is coming a long, but the other apps have a long way to go. And Mozilla makes a half-decent mail reader.
BTW the win98 partition is mainly used for playing games, and reading the occasional Visio file I get from clients.
I'm sorry, but I can't believe that a Netware server can be up that long without being rebooted.
This is just way too hard to swallow. At some point the power goes out. Even if these systems were on UPS power the UPS systems need to be maintained. That's assuming that the hardware never failed.
It's like being immortal. You may be able to live forever but at some point a big bus comes along and splat...
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So if I'm an evil dictator, and I can build the worlds third fastest supercomputer for 5.2 million USD what can I do with it? Are all these cheap cycles going to mean I can break codes or do nuclear or biological weapons research faster? I'll be there are people in the US Defense Department, CIA, or NSA that might be concerned.
Just what are the agent stats for /.? I'd be curious if the community is eating it's own dog food ?
That's fine the net has enabled your life, but think about the impact of your newly enabled lifestyle.
You shop online so you're contributing to the bottom line of many vendors who are blazing new territory by providing a place for you to do that online. Slowly but surely your putting a bunch of those paper catalog guys out of business one click at a time.
Next you don't call your friends long distance anymore but you send email and post things on web sites. AT&T thanks you, NOT! Your helping to shift focus and dollars away from long distance carriers and the telephone as the primary personal communication medium to the web. (Actually I've been doing this for years already, but it's good to see others participating.:-))
Making things easier can be revolutionary, or do you still churn cream to get butter. Think about it.
I'm not pumping Weinberger's book or bashing Katz, but I am trying to say that the web has changed things it's impact while being over-hyped by some, and derided by others is still important and revolutionary.
Mars is absolutly within our grasp. We can get there with Apollo era rocketry and when we get there we can live off the land. Robert Zubrin has been writing about this for years and has built prototypes of the equipment we'll need to generate rocket fuel, oxygen, and water out of native materials.
The big issue is that we can't go for a month. For a Mars trip to be worthwhile, in scientific terms, we've got to stay for a year.
For anyone that needs convicing check out the The Mars Scociety. Mars awaits us. Its our next step.
There is nothing for us on the Moon. It's not a good lauch pad for future missions, or fuel depot. It might be a good place to put a telescope but we could do that with an unmanned mission. Save the moon for the tourist, at least not until we can build fusion reactors that depend on all the helium-3 up there.
BTW, my laptop, which is my main machine, is currently dual-booting RH7.1 and win98. I think I've succeeded in making my life easier by running Ximian Gnome. They are doing a great job getting all of these disparate packages working together in a simple, net-installable package. I just wish they'd either get StarOffice folded in to their distribution or for the rest of the GNOME office working as well, or better than, StarOffice. Evolution is coming a long, but the other apps have a long way to go. And Mozilla makes a half-decent mail reader.
BTW the win98 partition is mainly used for playing games, and reading the occasional Visio file I get from clients.
gio
This is just way too hard to swallow. At some point the power goes out. Even if these systems were on UPS power the UPS systems need to be maintained. That's assuming that the hardware never failed.
It's like being immortal. You may be able to live forever but at some point a big bus comes along and splat...