"Anyone and everyone on Slashdot probably knows that business-driven software development efforts all too often end up as a mess."
What the...? The raison d'etre of nearly all commercial software, barring games, is to meet some business need. Whether it is for external customers (in the case of software houses) or internal business users (for in-house IT depts.), we develop tools to solve business problems. All too often, software development results in something some backroom cowboy reckons is really 7337, but fails to adequately meet the actual business needs of the user, precisely because the development was not business driven. Sure, as developers, we facilitate and guide, and provide professional advice on, development of software, but come on!
How the hell is software supposed to solve business problems if it's driven by some haxor's wet dream rather than business? What a bizarre world view, even for an 'engineer'.
...if those who no longer find their PDA's useful actually use paper-based organisers. My hypothesis is that those who are organised (or anally retentive enough) to write To Do lists, put all appointments in a diary, and colour code their revision timetable, will actually use their PDA's for those functions.
As ever, technology must meet an actual need if it is to be used. Anything else is cool for the first month or so, then sits in the bottom of a drawer gathering dust.
If the government has identified a site with paedophelic material, then why would it not go straight to the source and get it taken down? How many countries don't have laws against child porn??
Sounds like political opportunism combined with laziness on the part of elected officials to me...
The WHO, cited here, "linked nearly 700 cases of thyroid cancer among children and adolescents to the Chernobyl accident". In the same source, UNSCEAR linked "some 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer" to the accident. Note that the cited source is an advocate of nuclear energy for electricity production.
Ok. These aren't birth defects, but the central point remains.
Point taken. However, that assumes that all of these systems work. Unless you can guarantee that all of the safety systems will work all of the time, then you are still faced with the following equation:
Risk = Probability(Something Going Wrong) * Cost(Something Going Wrong)
With chemical rockets, the first part of the equation may be larger than for nuclear rockets. However, the last half of the equation is much larger for nuclear than for chemical.
My point, if you care to think about it for a moment, is that the jet stream tends to carry airborne substances (like radiactive clouds) to places other than where they initiated. What goes up, tends to come down, so just because you launch at sea does not mean that a risk is not posed to some population of people somewhere else on earth.
Oh, you mean like Chernobyl? Not to make light of 100 or so deaths, but there are worse things in the world.
100 or so deaths at the time of the explosion. You are, of course, forgetting the disasterous impact the explosion had on farming across Western Europe, the thousands of birth defects, the thousands of people who now have cancer, the fact that no-one can live safely in the area for years and years. A potential Chernobyl sized-disaster not something worth worrying about? Good thinking, Sherlock.
As for your argument for exploiting the solar system, you leave a few things to be desired - like a cogent argument for example. Just because we can do something is no argument for in fact doing it. As for a geometric population explosion, not in the so called 'developed world', buddy. Birth rates are dropping to below the replacement rate.
Nuclear power is not a clean source of energy as alleged in this article. The mining, production and disposal of nuclear material makes it one of the more dangerous forms of energy production. The material used in reactors remains dangerous (ie. life threatening) for hundreds of thousands of years. How can anyone (apart from dubbya) define this as clean? Sure there are no smoke stacks, but come on!
As a uranium producing country, Australia has seen a number of 'mishaps' in relation to uranium mines. Admittedly, most of them have been relatively minor, but they demonstrate that no human activity is 100% failsafe, and the potential for massive disaster is huge when compared to other forms of energy production, fossil fuels included. Of course, this does not diminish the need to find alternatives to fossil fuel sources, they are dirty and finite (ie. unsustainable). Nuclear energy is not an appropriate response, though.
Also, beyond the production and disposal of nuclear material, what happens when something goes wrong with the rocket itself? Could you imagine a nuclear version of the Challenger disaster?
I'm as much of a technocratic utopian as any other/. reader, but even I realise that the use of technology, and its impact on society, is more important than any geek factor.
Whilst there are a few good rules that should generally be followed most of the time, there is no such thing as a perfect web design, or a hard and fast design rule for any user interface. Much of what makes a design work relates to individual things such as the way one perceives information, aesthetics and so on. It also largely depends on the nature of the information that you want to convey, both explicit and tacit. Given that you have no control over who will visit your site, and therefore their personal ideosyncrasies, all you can hope for is a good interface that works for most people most of the time. The only way to do this is to test, test, test and, oh yeah, do a bit more testing.
I would have thought the obvious point was not to replace the traditional power sources when they're available (unless you really want to get fit, or are particularly environmentally conscious ), but rather to provide an alternative source of energy when a power point is not available.
Imagine - the ability to watch dvd's for the entirety of your long haul flight *and* avoid deep vein thrombosis at the same time!
Changi Airport (Singapore) has had free wireless (for laptops) and IR (PDA) internet access (as described here) for some time now. Great for that 2 hour stopover en route to Europe...
Where do Wired get their figures from?? According to this article in The Age, and the actual proposal document at ICANN (see Section II.2.2 for the proposed revenue model and the pricing structure), the fee charged for the.biz TLD will be approximately $US5.00.
Bit of a difference to $US2000. What's going on?? Were they looking at the wrong bid?
Because it is actually fairly important. The research aims to find out if there is any truth to the claim that penguins topple over when low flying aircraft pass overhead. As other posters have pointed out, this directly impacts the safety of penguin eggs and therefore the survival of various penguin species.
So why is that such a big deal? Who cares if a couple of penguins fall over due to the odd passing plane? They live in such remote locations, the small amount of air traffic surely has minimal ecological impact. The problem is, places where penguins congregate are rapidly becoming commercially viable tourism destinations. There are a number of commercial airlines operating regular flights over the antarctic for example. The increase in air traffic may well pose an ecological threat, even if they don't land. The research is directly trying to ascertain whether or not we should place limits on such commercial activity.
All we have to go on at the moment is rumour, labelled by some here as urban myth. The tourism industry certainly won't take any notice of that sort of thing. What they might pay attention to is rigorous scientific evidence which points to the ecological impact of tourist activities in these fairly fragile environments. God knows they probably won't even take notice of that (eg tobacco industry's relationship with the scientific community), but it at least provides grounds for governments to put in place regulations. The situation we have at the moment, of conjecture and rumour, does not allow for any of that to happen. Who knows? We might even find out that there are no grounds to the speculation at all - I wouldn't mind taking a holiday to Antarctica...
Why spend money to connect? Most public libraries in Australia and NZ have free internet access. I would assume Europe would be similar. South America might be a different story, but then you could fork over the dosh for a machine in a cafe. Whilst you have to book ahead, there is usually a fairly low demand. In fact I've used a machine on a number of occasions when there has been no booking at all. The way I would do it is to use the laptop to update the site, save it to floppy, visit the local library and upload away. No need to rig up RJ-45 connections, etc. etc. Telnet/FTP is a wonderful thing...
Slashdot Mirror
What the...? The raison d'etre of nearly all commercial software, barring games, is to meet some business need. Whether it is for external customers (in the case of software houses) or internal business users (for in-house IT depts.), we develop tools to solve business problems. All too often, software development results in something some backroom cowboy reckons is really 7337, but fails to adequately meet the actual business needs of the user, precisely because the development was not business driven. Sure, as developers, we facilitate and guide, and provide professional advice on, development of software, but come on!
How the hell is software supposed to solve business problems if it's driven by some haxor's wet dream rather than business? What a bizarre world view, even for an 'engineer'.
...if those who no longer find their PDA's useful actually use paper-based organisers. My hypothesis is that those who are organised (or anally retentive enough) to write To Do lists, put all appointments in a diary, and colour code their revision timetable, will actually use their PDA's for those functions.
As ever, technology must meet an actual need if it is to be used. Anything else is cool for the first month or so, then sits in the bottom of a drawer gathering dust.
Good riddance to 'em.
If the government has identified a site with paedophelic material, then why would it not go straight to the source and get it taken down? How many countries don't have laws against child porn??
Sounds like political opportunism combined with laziness on the part of elected officials to me...
Ok. These aren't birth defects, but the central point remains.
Point taken. However, that assumes that all of these systems work. Unless you can guarantee that all of the safety systems will work all of the time, then you are still faced with the following equation: Risk = Probability(Something Going Wrong) * Cost(Something Going Wrong) With chemical rockets, the first part of the equation may be larger than for nuclear rockets. However, the last half of the equation is much larger for nuclear than for chemical.
My point, if you care to think about it for a moment, is that the jet stream tends to carry airborne substances (like radiactive clouds) to places other than where they initiated. What goes up, tends to come down, so just because you launch at sea does not mean that a risk is not posed to some population of people somewhere else on earth.
100 or so deaths at the time of the explosion. You are, of course, forgetting the disasterous impact the explosion had on farming across Western Europe, the thousands of birth defects, the thousands of people who now have cancer, the fact that no-one can live safely in the area for years and years. A potential Chernobyl sized-disaster not something worth worrying about? Good thinking, Sherlock.
As for your argument for exploiting the solar system, you leave a few things to be desired - like a cogent argument for example. Just because we can do something is no argument for in fact doing it. As for a geometric population explosion, not in the so called 'developed world', buddy. Birth rates are dropping to below the replacement rate.
Right. Chernobyl style disaster, six miles up in the jet stream, and it's just the sharks who have to worry. Good one.
As a uranium producing country, Australia has seen a number of 'mishaps' in relation to uranium mines. Admittedly, most of them have been relatively minor, but they demonstrate that no human activity is 100% failsafe, and the potential for massive disaster is huge when compared to other forms of energy production, fossil fuels included. Of course, this does not diminish the need to find alternatives to fossil fuel sources, they are dirty and finite (ie. unsustainable). Nuclear energy is not an appropriate response, though.
Also, beyond the production and disposal of nuclear material, what happens when something goes wrong with the rocket itself? Could you imagine a nuclear version of the Challenger disaster?
I'm as much of a technocratic utopian as any other /. reader, but even I realise that the use of technology, and its impact on society, is more important than any geek factor.
Whilst there are a few good rules that should generally be followed most of the time, there is no such thing as a perfect web design, or a hard and fast design rule for any user interface. Much of what makes a design work relates to individual things such as the way one perceives information, aesthetics and so on. It also largely depends on the nature of the information that you want to convey, both explicit and tacit. Given that you have no control over who will visit your site, and therefore their personal ideosyncrasies, all you can hope for is a good interface that works for most people most of the time. The only way to do this is to test, test, test and, oh yeah, do a bit more testing.
I would have thought the obvious point was not to replace the traditional power sources when they're available (unless you really want to get fit, or are particularly environmentally conscious ), but rather to provide an alternative source of energy when a power point is not available. Imagine - the ability to watch dvd's for the entirety of your long haul flight *and* avoid deep vein thrombosis at the same time!
...and thighs of steel.
Changi Airport (Singapore) has had free wireless (for laptops) and IR (PDA) internet access (as described here) for some time now. Great for that 2 hour stopover en route to Europe...
Where do Wired get their figures from?? According to this article in The Age , and the actual proposal document at ICANN (see Section II.2.2 for the proposed revenue model and the pricing structure), the fee charged for the .biz TLD will be approximately $US5.00.
Bit of a difference to $US2000. What's going on?? Were they looking at the wrong bid?
So why is that such a big deal? Who cares if a couple of penguins fall over due to the odd passing plane? They live in such remote locations, the small amount of air traffic surely has minimal ecological impact. The problem is, places where penguins congregate are rapidly becoming commercially viable tourism destinations. There are a number of commercial airlines operating regular flights over the antarctic for example. The increase in air traffic may well pose an ecological threat, even if they don't land. The research is directly trying to ascertain whether or not we should place limits on such commercial activity.
All we have to go on at the moment is rumour, labelled by some here as urban myth. The tourism industry certainly won't take any notice of that sort of thing. What they might pay attention to is rigorous scientific evidence which points to the ecological impact of tourist activities in these fairly fragile environments. God knows they probably won't even take notice of that (eg tobacco industry's relationship with the scientific community), but it at least provides grounds for governments to put in place regulations. The situation we have at the moment, of conjecture and rumour, does not allow for any of that to happen. Who knows? We might even find out that there are no grounds to the speculation at all - I wouldn't mind taking a holiday to Antarctica...
Why spend money to connect? Most public libraries in Australia and NZ have free internet access. I would assume Europe would be similar. South America might be a different story, but then you could fork over the dosh for a machine in a cafe. Whilst you have to book ahead, there is usually a fairly low demand. In fact I've used a machine on a number of occasions when there has been no booking at all. The way I would do it is to use the laptop to update the site, save it to floppy, visit the local library and upload away. No need to rig up RJ-45 connections, etc. etc. Telnet/FTP is a wonderful thing...