Every proposal I see creates a scenario with much much lower quality of life than denizens of Earth enjoy. Yes I can't wait to leave Earth so I can live underground on Mars. Talk about progress.
There is another alternative - rejuvinate the Earth by lowering pollution and waste. This planet is a custom fit for us - we already live on the best planet for us in the known cosmos. Why would we want to leave???
Consider the massive overhead involved in making a large business in the Valley work. $8 million is definitely what I would call a smallish return for the VCs, if they are even seeing anything yet after the cost of running and growing the business.
There has probably been $100-200 million (minimum) gone into starting up any moderate size firm in the Valley. Remember that you could pull down nearly $5 million a year alone on T-Bills for this investment with NO RISK. So for a VC, they are probably looking for 10%++ return, which they would definitely not be seeing here.
Automatons will initially create economic chaos
on
The Robots are Coming
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your point is valid - mechanization and automation always create huge economic imbalances as workers are dislocated and the wage/consumption cycle breaks temporarily. ITs been happening since the cotton ginny.
Yet you and I are not adversely affected by autoamtion of cotton production, so its clear that a flexible workforce can, over time, adapt. The key is education and a willingness to change. If you don't have those, you're screwed.
Rush right over and learn about automation reducing costs and demand for labor. What insights! As for nanotechnology, DeLong seems to offer nothing more useful than a shrug.
Lots of people spend beyond their means... and the US economy more than has the means to pay back any sort of debt interest and all.
BZZZZZT! Not according to the GAO and the House subcommittee that this summer basically determined the US was bankrupt. You see, the more debt you accumulate, the more interest you must pay (do you know why?). Its a vicious cycle that ends with default....and practically every fiat currency (do you even know what that is??) has defaulted.
Around the twenty trillion point on the debt the US will basically be on a irreversible course for default. Counting what we owe on Medicare and SS for people alive right now, we are in for FORTY TRILLION. Hence the GAO conclusion!
Not to mention, they will never default on it.
Quiz: how many times has the US repudiated the dollar? If you say zero, you are wrong! Read some history.
Its all speculation. How do you calculate the benefits? What specific technologies are we referring to? How do we know these technologies would not have appeared within a reasonable time frame in any case?
For example, the moon shot did nothing for computing that would not have appeared soon enough anyway.
You can throw in the social security and medicare we already know we will owe for those alive right now through to 2040. Estimates for this period range from $40 TRILLION and UP. Tese are the government's own numbers!!
I don't know how Bush can encourage that kind of effort, but I know that it can and must be done.
Why?
Why is cheap manned spaceflight a priority? Its already well known that manned spaceflight has no long term viability for our species - it is clearly understood we can only thrive on Earth.
There are a million causes more deserving of research money, from nanotech to proteinomics. Why bother with the space race the US already ran?
Prior to the Novell acquisition, Suse was viable but fading from the public perception of prominent open source firms. I would expect that to change quickly. First I would expect Novell to drop the Suse name - it has no brand or literal cachet to English speaking customers. Also expect Novell to ditch KDE. Their acquisition of Ximian is a clear indication of where they want to go on the desktop.
The Fedora product features newer code and is not encumbered by the copyright issues that caused odd divergences such as PinkTie to spring forth.
As to your assumption of RedHat living off of community work, note that much of this work (GNOME, etc) was funded (in)directly by RedHat. It is they who have often given to you, not the other way around.
You don't seem to understand what RHAS is and how it is marketed in any case. Since the emphasis has been placed on stability over freshness, the distro would likely not appeal to you, so I am not sure why you begrudge them.
RedHat has made continued support of many open source projects a key part of their business plan. I am grateful for this and more to the point I find Fedora to be a nice distro.
Mozilla is not "the" GNOME browser - it is a browser that has GTK2 hooks. Epiphany is integrated into GNOME, supports GNOME dialogs, complies with GNOME's HIG etc.
Sure, your bank account first
on
Real Security?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Sometimes security trunps useability. Tog is a useability guy, he wants things to be easy. Security is not supposed to be easy, thats the point. Its reality and I hope any information system I trust piles on as much as they can.
Also, something else that may be interesting to some of the Slashdot crowd: the vast majority of GNOME hackers do it because they get paid to do it. If their companies stopped paying them they would stop working on GNOME. On the flipside, the vast majority of KDE developers are volunteers who do not receive a paycheck.
The fact that at least some core GNOME coders do it for a living is a plus, not a minus. This means they won't be dropping the project when they get tired or hungry or have a kid. They are the pillar the transient set of volunteers can fall back on.
Lycoris ships KDE default. Xandros ships KDE default. Lindows ships KDE default.
...who collectively control about 0.5% of the linux market.
If you want minimal breakage, it just makes sense not to ship (and hence, support) code you don't intend to use. If people want it they can download it...but developers are not the target audience for this product.
They can't print documentation or provide meaningful support if they can't even pick a desktop environment to support. Basically JDS IS GNOME. How do you repackage GNOME yet leave KDE as an option? Sounds like that means not shipping a product at all. Sun wanted to package a (meaning "one") desktop environment, that pretty much implies picking one or the other. Since KDE is basically dead from the perspective of vendor distros, it seems they made the right choice.
With Novell grabbing Ximian, the last bastion of vendor-supported KDE distros is passing. Yes Novell may be offering lip-service for KDE but they are putting their money into GNOME. One side was destined to win backing from distro vendors, it was only a matter of time.
No vendor is going to try to offer a solution that doesn't extend all the way to the desktop. Telling buyers they can choose their desktop environment ultimately isn't what these vendors are looking for - their buyers want out-of-the-box, and to do that you have to pick a desktop.
The KDE jabs are nearly trolls at this point. If you are a KDE user you already know how to download packages for it and switch your.xinitrc. If you can't firgure this out, get used to GNOME.
Maybe this wouldn't be an issue if education, libraries, and other intellectual infrastructure was being funded at levels accepted as a minimum elsewhere in the industrialized world.
Walk up to a person in a crowded room and state you opinion on a technology issue you feel strongly about. Go into minute details and don't spare the personnal attacks. Make jokes about what you hate about the issue, don't forget to laugh at your own wittyness. Get it all out of your system. Then move on to another person in the room and repeat.
And what does this have to do with anything? From what I can surmise you are just saying "mean people suck". Okay...but, I don't think this has anything to do with underlying tech. Arrogance will be discounted as a reflection on the person.
In open source, the weaker attempts languish on, while the stronger attempts could sure use the extra effort to make them better.
Well, "stronger" is your opinion. It sounds like your pet project (let me guess, KDE user?) is not getting the attention you would like. Well neither is Wordstar, so the same starvation issues can happen in the Microsoft world.
Slashdot Mirror
GNOME takes the office apps crown for 2004 unless KDE pulls a miracle.
There is another alternative - rejuvinate the Earth by lowering pollution and waste. This planet is a custom fit for us - we already live on the best planet for us in the known cosmos. Why would we want to leave???
There has probably been $100-200 million (minimum) gone into starting up any moderate size firm in the Valley. Remember that you could pull down nearly $5 million a year alone on T-Bills for this investment with NO RISK. So for a VC, they are probably looking for 10%++ return, which they would definitely not be seeing here.
Yet you and I are not adversely affected by autoamtion of cotton production, so its clear that a flexible workforce can, over time, adapt. The key is education and a willingness to change. If you don't have those, you're screwed.
Maybe it doesn't run on an Apollo workstation running CDE (and Swing/JVM does), but who cares?
Rush right over and learn about automation reducing costs and demand for labor. What insights! As for nanotechnology, DeLong seems to offer nothing more useful than a shrug.
Distance to get to anywhere useful.
Time to get there at 80% of the speed of light.
Cosmic rays.
Effect of weightlessness on human bones and tissue.
If you need help, find a high school student.
BZZZZZT! Not according to the GAO and the House subcommittee that this summer basically determined the US was bankrupt. You see, the more debt you accumulate, the more interest you must pay (do you know why?). Its a vicious cycle that ends with default....and practically every fiat currency (do you even know what that is??) has defaulted.
Around the twenty trillion point on the debt the US will basically be on a irreversible course for default. Counting what we owe on Medicare and SS for people alive right now, we are in for FORTY TRILLION. Hence the GAO conclusion!
Not to mention, they will never default on it.
Quiz: how many times has the US repudiated the dollar? If you say zero, you are wrong! Read some history.
Name one specific technology that is profitably engaged in modern society that absolutely would not have appeared at all if not for the moon shot....
For example, the moon shot did nothing for computing that would not have appeared soon enough anyway.
You can throw in the social security and medicare we already know we will owe for those alive right now through to 2040. Estimates for this period range from $40 TRILLION and UP. Tese are the government's own numbers!!
???
Oh I get it, hating someone because of his (lack of) ideas is worse than hating someone because of the color of their skin.
You got modded up for this????
Why?
Why is cheap manned spaceflight a priority? Its already well known that manned spaceflight has no long term viability for our species - it is clearly understood we can only thrive on Earth.
There are a million causes more deserving of research money, from nanotech to proteinomics. Why bother with the space race the US already ran?
Prior to the Novell acquisition, Suse was viable but fading from the public perception of prominent open source firms. I would expect that to change quickly. First I would expect Novell to drop the Suse name - it has no brand or literal cachet to English speaking customers. Also expect Novell to ditch KDE. Their acquisition of Ximian is a clear indication of where they want to go on the desktop.
As to your assumption of RedHat living off of community work, note that much of this work (GNOME, etc) was funded (in)directly by RedHat. It is they who have often given to you, not the other way around.
You don't seem to understand what RHAS is and how it is marketed in any case. Since the emphasis has been placed on stability over freshness, the distro would likely not appeal to you, so I am not sure why you begrudge them.
RedHat has made continued support of many open source projects a key part of their business plan. I am grateful for this and more to the point I find Fedora to be a nice distro.
1.Get apt-rpm
http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/
2.This following will be the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fedora.list:
#--
# Apt sources.list from http://www.xades.com/proj/fedora_repos.html
# Fedora Core
rpm http://download.fedora.us/fedora fedora/1/i386 os updates
rpm http://download.fedora.us/fedora fedora/1/i386 stable unstable testing
# Livna 3rd party packages with questionable licenses -- use at your own risk
rpm http://rpm.livna.org/ fedora/1/i386 stable unstable testing
# Dag Apt Repository for Red Hat Fedora Core 1
rpm http://apt.sw.be redhat/fc1/en/i386 dag
#--
Now do apt-get dist-upgrade
And you will have Fedora Core 1 from Red Hat 9.
Mozilla is not "the" GNOME browser - it is a browser that has GTK2 hooks. Epiphany is integrated into GNOME, supports GNOME dialogs, complies with GNOME's HIG etc.
Sometimes security trunps useability. Tog is a useability guy, he wants things to be easy. Security is not supposed to be easy, thats the point. Its reality and I hope any information system I trust piles on as much as they can.
The fact that at least some core GNOME coders do it for a living is a plus, not a minus. This means they won't be dropping the project when they get tired or hungry or have a kid. They are the pillar the transient set of volunteers can fall back on.
Lycoris ships KDE default. Xandros ships KDE default. Lindows ships KDE default.
...who collectively control about 0.5% of the linux market.
If you want minimal breakage, it just makes sense not to ship (and hence, support) code you don't intend to use. If people want it they can download it...but developers are not the target audience for this product.
They can't print documentation or provide meaningful support if they can't even pick a desktop environment to support. Basically JDS IS GNOME. How do you repackage GNOME yet leave KDE as an option? Sounds like that means not shipping a product at all. Sun wanted to package a (meaning "one") desktop environment, that pretty much implies picking one or the other. Since KDE is basically dead from the perspective of vendor distros, it seems they made the right choice.
No vendor is going to try to offer a solution that doesn't extend all the way to the desktop. Telling buyers they can choose their desktop environment ultimately isn't what these vendors are looking for - their buyers want out-of-the-box, and to do that you have to pick a desktop.
The KDE jabs are nearly trolls at this point. If you are a KDE user you already know how to download packages for it and switch your .xinitrc. If you can't firgure this out, get used to GNOME.
Maybe this wouldn't be an issue if education, libraries, and other intellectual infrastructure was being funded at levels accepted as a minimum elsewhere in the industrialized world.
And what does this have to do with anything? From what I can surmise you are just saying "mean people suck". Okay...but, I don't think this has anything to do with underlying tech. Arrogance will be discounted as a reflection on the person.
Well, "stronger" is your opinion. It sounds like your pet project (let me guess, KDE user?) is not getting the attention you would like. Well neither is Wordstar, so the same starvation issues can happen in the Microsoft world.