You have not seen VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams in your local subway station. I have. The TSA and Department of Homeland Security are about to metastasize throughout the country in every form of transportation, including your private car. Yes, they're planning to do random traffic stops.
You know, when I was a kid during the Cold War one of the reasons we were the good guys and the Russians weren't was because here you could travel whereever you wanted throughout the land without once being asked, "Show me your papers, Comrade."
There are a lot of Americans who remember those times, too. Many of them are heavily armed. The TSA and Department of Homeland Security had better consider very carefully that they are on the brink of provoking an armed citizen response to their overreach.
Work pretty well in place of British ones in fantasy and sci-fi settings (think Farscape). Same for Irish. The South African accents in District 9 weren't bad either. Any of them impart "otherness" to an American audience.
The bloat in the Windows universe is crazy. You need faster and faster hardware to stay even with system response times. And the paradigm shifts MS has undertaken to trail Apple in "hip, cool" have nullified the "standards" argument.
By contrast, I'm typing this on a 7-year old laptop running Ubuntu. Still as snappy as the day it came out of the box. Still does everything I need and then some.
And many's the time in my consulting career that I've revived old systems left for dead because they could not run the current version of Windows, by installing Linux on them and configuring them so regular users could function.
That's a major cost savings. If you can continue to function without constant re-purchase of hardware when older systems continue to perform, why wouldn't you?
I've been following the story of terra preta (Portuguese: "Black Earth") in the Amazonian basin since I saw a program on how it seems to have enabled a pre-contact civilization there that numbered in the millions, because its amazing fertility allowed the inhabitants to get up to 3-4 crops a year. They know that the soil was manufactured, not natural, and that it regenerates if left alone. In Brazil they mine it from known deposits and sell it as potting soil to the coastal cities.
If they can figure out how to recreate terra preta in Africa, they can more than feed themselves. They can grow diverse crops, not just nutrient-poor ones that thrive in marginal soils. And if they can learn to stop over-grazing sahel, they can stop and reverse desertification.
As other posters have pointed out, most of Africa's problems are political in nature. They cannot resist spoiling the eden they live in. And, no, it's not all the fault of the big, bad European colonizers. Africa was a basket case long before that era. It is a tribal continent and always has been. But if, and it's a big 'if,' they can move past the internecine conflict they'd quickly be one of the wealthiest regions in the world. I sincerely hope they do, because there is an underlying vibrancy to Africa that can change the world, if allowed to flourish.
We all know that when matter collapses in on itself, it forms a black hole. So, what happens when an ideology collapses in on itself? You get a bunch of assholes.
that is happening right now. Dunno if you've driven through the Midwest lately, but wind farms are sprouting up everywhere. I've read the same can be said for solar in the Southwest. And every major car company now has at least a hybrid vehicle in its line-up and a decent chunk of them have EVs.
All of those things represent major commitments in planning and resources. They are not whimsical undertakings begun by eco-hippies, but by engineers and accountants. And they indicate that the energy footing of the entire American economy is shifting away from fossil fuels right now whether you think it's efficient or not. (Actually, if you included the externalities of fossil fuels that their boosters never do, such as the cost of fighting wars to seize supplies in the Middle East and environmental damage, your efficiency calculation would probably net out much differently than you think it does.)
Energy efficiency and alternative energy is pervading all sectors and levels of the economy now as we speak, too. Taken together, it will take far less time than any one accepts now to wake up in a different energy future. If you chart the path of the growth of plug-in hybrid cars and EVs and overlay that on the chart oil prices, then the implosion of demand for oil could well be particularly brutal (for the oil companies); My brother is an engineer at Ford and said after the last spike in the price of gasoline that the company killed new pickup factories that had just been completed because they wanted to refocus on hybrids and EVs.
And that was last time. If gas does go to $6/gallon this summer, as some industry watchers are predicting, I think you might just see a lot of people jump ship on ICEs altogether. Since 2/3's of American oil consumption goes to run cars, that would be a panic moment for Texaco.
Seriously. I dream of doing what you've done, some day. Except with a large greenhouse for growing our own vegetables and a patch of land for cows, chickens, and fish for milk, eggs, and meat. Might I ask what part of the country you're in? Just wondering what your seasonal temperature variation might be and its impact on your energy footprint.
So I'm disposed to treat this as a hoax. Any NY kid who's too sensitive to read about religion or wealth or any of the above mentioned topics in a test question is going to spontaneously combust the second he looks up from his test and looks around at the classmates sitting next to him. Even when you live in a neighborhood strongly associated with a particular group, say the hasidic part of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you're still gonna encounter at least 50 other ethnicities and religions before the day is done. It's New York.
Saying any kid is going to be more tramautized by a test than that daily reality is absurd, and no New York official would be so daft as to take that policy position.
Canada is an awesome country and the people are fantastic. It is not a significantly multi-cultural country in the same way that Switzerland is not. The Swiss speak French, German, Italian, and Romansh, and there are minorities like Tamils who live there, but no one would seriously claim it's a multi-ethnic state.
Canada is like northern Wisconsin, or northern Maine, or northern Minnesota, or northern Washington. Or, if you prefer, northen Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington are like southern Canada. Their climates are identical, geographies similar, and historically there has been a lot of cross-border cross-pollination. Of course they're similar.
I get that some Canadians resent being lumped in with the U.S. They should. But exaggerating the differences above to salve wounded patriotic pride is gratuitous.
Yes, Slashdot has its memes. There are the inside jokes. Those things can be annoyances, but they're also part of what makes this a community with an identity.
But there are many insightful comments here that I rely on to stay abreast of technologies and developments that aren't in my critical path. Whenever something comes out I haven't heard of before, I turn to the discussion on Slashdot to get informed opinions on the relative merits and demerits. I have never found that anywhere else.
I don't have time to be a karma whore. I don't have the energy to be terribly clever at humor. I am too self-conscious to mimic memes for mods. But when I do get a 5 mod (a rare thing) on Slashdot, it makes me feel good because I respect the quality of my peers here.
Seriously, Rob, break a leg! If anyone can bring a dinosaur like WaPo into the modern age, it's you. You built a vibrant community here on Slashdot, no matter what the naysayers and nitpickers might say, and a large part of that is because you get what a community needs and how to build a system architecture to deliver it.
The moderation system we enjoy here is still unsurpassed online. It has allowed the best, funniest, and most insightful comments to rise to the top in such a way that I always know more about our world and feel better about it, too, for having read the posts of our excellent fellow Slashdotters. And I therefore value being part of the community and rue to this day the 4-digit userID I lost when I exchanged living on the West coast for the East back in the day.
There was a time, perhaps, when only the government had the shiny, new. Super secret facilities in Nevada or Los Alamos chock full of stolen nazi scientists with equipment only defense budgets could afford.
But now I'm seeing massive computing power at the fingertips of most Americans, and amazing technologies like additive manufacturing on the brink of hitting the mainstream, and I wonder how long it will be before the people, getting hit with LRADs and vortex cannons for voicing their opinions, will turn all of it on the police and the elites they serve, whom they outnumber 10,000 to one.
These "non-violent" weapons are not based on some crypto science Uncle Sam learned from aliens from the Kla'arg galaxy. They are not made out of solid platinum or unobtainium. The software needed to run them? Crap, there are probably open source packages out there to do so already (soon, also on BSD!).
Why do they think that people, highly incensed at the injuries to their freedom, won't put all that together and employ it?
I suspect someone among the elites is clear-eyed enough to see it, but clueless how to prevent it, and they're scared shitless and panicking.
Look, computers are all about productivity, right? You get everything in your system configured just the way you like it so you can be as productive as possible with the things that lie in your critical path. The less time you spend re-learning an interface (MS ribbon interface, anyone?) or fixing things that previously worked but broke when you upgraded something (face it, the first 5-6 years of linux were sketchy that way), the better.
And "upgrades" are not always better or more desirable. *Unity* cough, cough. Heck, I still prefer the classic interface to Slashdot because the new one looks and works like a pack of flying javascript monkeys got to it. Also, older does not equal less secure. Throw a bunch of hapless H1-B's at a rock solid code base built back in the day by guys of the caliber of ESR and you're almost guaranteed to render your latest iteration less secure.
Last, but not least, as much as the groupthink might equate "upgrades" with progress, so very often it's just marketing BS designed to get you to buy the same shit over, and over, and over.
What you're saying is true, but the example of Thingiverse rather points the way to solving the 3D artist problem: 3D scanners. One of the bottle necks in additive manufacturing is the need to design something in a CAD system before feeding it to the printer. And that's the same bottleneck you've pointed out for 3D websites. If you have a 3D scanner to generate a CAD file for an existing object, then no 3D artist time is required. Of course, in the case of a 3D printer you need to scan with X-rays to pick up internal structure, but for a website a surface scan is entirely, or at least mostly, sufficient.
Crowd-sourcing/funding this is an interesting idea, but lawsuits would work better as part of a larger strategy that employs many tactics. One part of that strategy is 'disintermediation.'
P2P filesharing as an example of oblique disintermediation. That is, P2P has been designed to share files which has the externality of putting pressure on the RIAA's business model, but not the express purpose of putting them out of business. As part of a strategy to specifically do that while employing your lawsuits on a parallel track it might have shut the music industry down completely by now, instead of permitting them to linger (and malinger).
"Exposure" is another big part of the strategy. Wikileaks's exposure of the diplomatic cables was a very big step in that right direction. But it was not followed up with enough other big revelations or augmented by Disintermediation and your lawsuits running on a parallel track.
We have to push from all angles at once to reach the tipping point beyond which the corrupt status quo is unable to regain equilibrium and adapt.
Are the principles behind this only known to the incredibly advanced race of Aliens from Planet Xorg? No. Are the components of this device only available to government agencies with their massive budgets? No. Are the physics behind its function an alchemical secret, wrapped in allusion and allegory, plain to only a select few Initiates? No.
Like the LRAD cannon, drones, tasers, and other means governments have recently employed to silence opposition to their policies, there is nearly equal access to the same means among the disgruntled. It will not be long, months if not days, for the disgruntled to turn the weapons of the enemy against itself. And there are so many more of the disgruntled, with greater resolve, than there are among the government's forces.
Imagine an array of targeted audience members with smart phones, w/ speakers, running the same app timed precisely such that they can warp the effect back upon the smart ass gov shill pointing this gun at them. Imagine the shill running from the stage with his/her/its hands over its ears, ears bleeding.
That app doesn't exist, yet, but it's technically possible and achievable with current hardware and tech.
The governments' days of silencing discord are over. Their days of steamrolling the people are over. Their information-control and physical means to compel compliance are running down to zero rapidly.
There are so many factors in the state of the education system, it's hard to pick any one of them as the keystone. A bajillion dollars is not enough to substitute for parents who don't participate in their kids' education. A bajillion dollars is not enough to correct a society who tells kids it's more important to be a football star than learn math. A bajillion dollars won't make a dent in a stodgy, horribly outdated pedagogical culture that is protected and perpetuated by entrenched interests (teacher's unions, colleges offering degrees in education, textbook publishers, testing companies, etc etc). A bajillion dollars won't improve the performance of obese kids too whacked out on high-fructose corn syrup, junk food, and ritalin to pay attention.
It is true that it is hard to teach a computer class without computers. It is not true that you cannot teach a computer class with old computers. It is not true that you cannot teach a computer class without expensive computers.
In the end putting outsized requests like this in sounds like the timeless bureaucratic game of, grow your budget with ridiculous requests to SAVE THE CHILDREN, then point out how big the budget is that you're now managing, and cry about how much more work it is to manage that large budget and how you can't possibly handle it without a 25% increase in the size of your staff and a 25% bump in your pay.
If/.'s minds can come up with an effective way to unwind that dynamic (and, no, crying 'small government' doesn't and hasn't worked because they just grow different parts of the government, not shrink the total), then it will have performed a greater boon for mankind and done more for its advancement than nearly any other achievement in human history.
Everyone seems to be approaching this perennial debate the way they have for the last 40 years at least. The burly manly man argument that we need to drill, baby, drill! and kick some more a-rab butt, and the (implied) simpering eco fag take replete with squirrels and butterflies.
But this time other trends set in motion by the last oil shock that sent gas above $4/gallon may trump all that. If you've been paying attention the last 4 years, nearly every major car company has been working on and rolling out production model hybrids and EVs. Tesla, despite the scoffing ICE fans, has not only survived but is about to release its 3rd generation of vehicles. And what's more, EV delivery vehicles are starting to hit the scene; Ford is rolling out its own. Another smaller one called Mia has another.
The delivery vehicles are a significant one because if you could spend $1.34/60 miles to make your deliveries vs. $20/60 miles paying for gas at $4/gallon, 12mpg, you'd be insane as a business owner to not be all over that. Trucking is an extremely competitive business where fuel costs and the means to shave them are a major concern. And that's the thing, if delivery vans break the ice with commercial use of EVs, then you can bet the long-haul guys won't be far behind clamoring for semi-versions of EVs.
So, on the consumer and commercial fronts the options have developed to give everyone a real window to jump from the ICE ship. 2/3rds of American oil consumption goes to transportation, so if the price spike last time was enough to get people to abandon SUVs, then this time, if the spike is severe enough, especially in a down economy, we might all wake up in 2013 in an America where the oil industry is 1/3 its former size. That is the definition of a sea change.
The populace is turning on them now. They've been divided by the tried-and-true panis et circenses, but the Tea Party and Occupy forces are beginning to realize that they have common cause against those who control both sides of the fence (at least in America).
Soldiers do not, by and large, originate from the 1%. They come from the strata that are least privileged in our society. And as well trained/brainwashed as they are, they cannot fully divorce themselves from the economic realities of their families.
It's only a matter of time until the populace and the soldiers collectively wake up, look at each other, and realize that the most dire threat to their liberty and well-being exists internally in the form of the 1% and their hired help in the US govt.
I look forward with delightful anticipation to the day when night on the Eastern Seaboard is lit by the bonfires of the mansions of the 1%. I have been stockpiling hot dogs and marshmallows for that day.
When the American government pulls moves like this, it proves it is the greatest threat to liberty in the world. The bland malevolence of the sociopathic gangsters running the United States right now puts the acute and minor threat of 3rd world terrorists shooting guns to shame. The latter kills scores, the former kills millions. And the former's threat is all the more intractable because of all the sheeple who shut up and do as they're told in the commission of the crimes.
I know that Cable is in its death throes because statistics recorded recently that TV viewership has begun to decline sharply, for the first time since it was invented; and because the average age of the TV viewer is strongly skewed toward the Baby Boomer cohort; and because my friend, who is an insider at Starz, says that on-demand is killing everybody right now.
The TV used to deliver Cable, too, is on its way out. If you can watch what you want, when you want, with minimal or no commercials, wherever you want, on whatever device you want, then why in the heck would you choose a single-use device that sucks power like it's going out of style, occupies valuable real estate (counter top or wall), and chains you to exorbitant recurring monthly fees while treating you, your eyeballs, and your mind as a giant dumping ground for assinine advertisement while blasting out your eardrums?
Live sports, you say? This year I watched the Super Bowl on my smartphone. Yes, it's a small screen. But it was live sports on a non-TV device.
The more that reality hits home with the average Joe, which it is, the more radically marketers, content producers, hardware makers, software companies, and all the machinery between and around them that make that pipeline work, will have to rethink the nature of information and entertainment consumption. And that's not even factoring in the "new" social aspect popularized by Facebook and its ilk.
Through last summer I hemmed and hawed about whether to hold or sell; my Apple shares had gone up 500% and were hovering around that point. Then Jobs passed, and I kicked myself for not having pulled the trigger before then. The share price dipped, of course, and the temptation to join those heading for the exits was strong.
But it was reading Slashdot that kept me on board. I had not been aware that Tim Cook had already been running the company for quite a while, that he had been thoroughly groomed by Jobs, and that Jobs had left a roadmap for several years of products.
Flash forward to February 2012 and the share price is up 700% from where I bought it, and they're mulling a dividend. Thanks, Slashdot!
I love Australia. It's a great country. Sydney, Melbourne, the Blue Mountains, the Outback, Perth, Brisbane. The people are terrific.
In terms of population and influence, though, it is not able to rekindle any kind of debate on technology standards on its own. Not even close. The United States? Yes. The EU as a body? Yes. China? Perhaps. Australia? No.
The Australian Relativity Theorem is the inverse of the Chinese Relativity Theorem, which states, "Whatever the rest of the world thinks is a good idea, 1 Billion Chinese couldn't give a damn." In Australia, it's "Whatever 22 million Australians think is a good idea, the rest of the world couldn't give a damn."
It's not a value judgement, guys, because Australia as a country exceeds most others. But as a place with enough gravity to influence standards? No, no it isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
You have not seen VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams in your local subway station. I have. The TSA and Department of Homeland Security are about to metastasize throughout the country in every form of transportation, including your private car. Yes, they're planning to do random traffic stops.
You know, when I was a kid during the Cold War one of the reasons we were the good guys and the Russians weren't was because here you could travel whereever you wanted throughout the land without once being asked, "Show me your papers, Comrade."
There are a lot of Americans who remember those times, too. Many of them are heavily armed. The TSA and Department of Homeland Security had better consider very carefully that they are on the brink of provoking an armed citizen response to their overreach.
Work pretty well in place of British ones in fantasy and sci-fi settings (think Farscape). Same for Irish. The South African accents in District 9 weren't bad either. Any of them impart "otherness" to an American audience.
The bloat in the Windows universe is crazy. You need faster and faster hardware to stay even with system response times. And the paradigm shifts MS has undertaken to trail Apple in "hip, cool" have nullified the "standards" argument.
By contrast, I'm typing this on a 7-year old laptop running Ubuntu. Still as snappy as the day it came out of the box. Still does everything I need and then some.
And many's the time in my consulting career that I've revived old systems left for dead because they could not run the current version of Windows, by installing Linux on them and configuring them so regular users could function.
That's a major cost savings. If you can continue to function without constant re-purchase of hardware when older systems continue to perform, why wouldn't you?
I love to see echos of the old religious wars. Bless you for raising them.
I've been following the story of terra preta (Portuguese: "Black Earth") in the Amazonian basin since I saw a program on how it seems to have enabled a pre-contact civilization there that numbered in the millions, because its amazing fertility allowed the inhabitants to get up to 3-4 crops a year. They know that the soil was manufactured, not natural, and that it regenerates if left alone. In Brazil they mine it from known deposits and sell it as potting soil to the coastal cities.
If they can figure out how to recreate terra preta in Africa, they can more than feed themselves. They can grow diverse crops, not just nutrient-poor ones that thrive in marginal soils. And if they can learn to stop over-grazing sahel, they can stop and reverse desertification.
As other posters have pointed out, most of Africa's problems are political in nature. They cannot resist spoiling the eden they live in. And, no, it's not all the fault of the big, bad European colonizers. Africa was a basket case long before that era. It is a tribal continent and always has been. But if, and it's a big 'if,' they can move past the internecine conflict they'd quickly be one of the wealthiest regions in the world. I sincerely hope they do, because there is an underlying vibrancy to Africa that can change the world, if allowed to flourish.
We all know that when matter collapses in on itself, it forms a black hole. So, what happens when an ideology collapses in on itself? You get a bunch of assholes.
that is happening right now. Dunno if you've driven through the Midwest lately, but wind farms are sprouting up everywhere. I've read the same can be said for solar in the Southwest. And every major car company now has at least a hybrid vehicle in its line-up and a decent chunk of them have EVs.
All of those things represent major commitments in planning and resources. They are not whimsical undertakings begun by eco-hippies, but by engineers and accountants. And they indicate that the energy footing of the entire American economy is shifting away from fossil fuels right now whether you think it's efficient or not. (Actually, if you included the externalities of fossil fuels that their boosters never do, such as the cost of fighting wars to seize supplies in the Middle East and environmental damage, your efficiency calculation would probably net out much differently than you think it does.)
Energy efficiency and alternative energy is pervading all sectors and levels of the economy now as we speak, too. Taken together, it will take far less time than any one accepts now to wake up in a different energy future. If you chart the path of the growth of plug-in hybrid cars and EVs and overlay that on the chart oil prices, then the implosion of demand for oil could well be particularly brutal (for the oil companies); My brother is an engineer at Ford and said after the last spike in the price of gasoline that the company killed new pickup factories that had just been completed because they wanted to refocus on hybrids and EVs.
And that was last time. If gas does go to $6/gallon this summer, as some industry watchers are predicting, I think you might just see a lot of people jump ship on ICEs altogether. Since 2/3's of American oil consumption goes to run cars, that would be a panic moment for Texaco.
Seriously. I dream of doing what you've done, some day. Except with a large greenhouse for growing our own vegetables and a patch of land for cows, chickens, and fish for milk, eggs, and meat. Might I ask what part of the country you're in? Just wondering what your seasonal temperature variation might be and its impact on your energy footprint.
So I'm disposed to treat this as a hoax. Any NY kid who's too sensitive to read about religion or wealth or any of the above mentioned topics in a test question is going to spontaneously combust the second he looks up from his test and looks around at the classmates sitting next to him. Even when you live in a neighborhood strongly associated with a particular group, say the hasidic part of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you're still gonna encounter at least 50 other ethnicities and religions before the day is done. It's New York.
Saying any kid is going to be more tramautized by a test than that daily reality is absurd, and no New York official would be so daft as to take that policy position.
Canada is an awesome country and the people are fantastic. It is not a significantly multi-cultural country in the same way that Switzerland is not. The Swiss speak French, German, Italian, and Romansh, and there are minorities like Tamils who live there, but no one would seriously claim it's a multi-ethnic state.
Canada is like northern Wisconsin, or northern Maine, or northern Minnesota, or northern Washington. Or, if you prefer, northen Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington are like southern Canada. Their climates are identical, geographies similar, and historically there has been a lot of cross-border cross-pollination. Of course they're similar.
I get that some Canadians resent being lumped in with the U.S. They should. But exaggerating the differences above to salve wounded patriotic pride is gratuitous.
South korea's climate is quite cool and dry. Think a cooler version of SoCal's chapparal.
Yes, Slashdot has its memes. There are the inside jokes. Those things can be annoyances, but they're also part of what makes this a community with an identity.
But there are many insightful comments here that I rely on to stay abreast of technologies and developments that aren't in my critical path. Whenever something comes out I haven't heard of before, I turn to the discussion on Slashdot to get informed opinions on the relative merits and demerits. I have never found that anywhere else.
I don't have time to be a karma whore. I don't have the energy to be terribly clever at humor. I am too self-conscious to mimic memes for mods. But when I do get a 5 mod (a rare thing) on Slashdot, it makes me feel good because I respect the quality of my peers here.
Seriously, Rob, break a leg! If anyone can bring a dinosaur like WaPo into the modern age, it's you. You built a vibrant community here on Slashdot, no matter what the naysayers and nitpickers might say, and a large part of that is because you get what a community needs and how to build a system architecture to deliver it.
The moderation system we enjoy here is still unsurpassed online. It has allowed the best, funniest, and most insightful comments to rise to the top in such a way that I always know more about our world and feel better about it, too, for having read the posts of our excellent fellow Slashdotters. And I therefore value being part of the community and rue to this day the 4-digit userID I lost when I exchanged living on the West coast for the East back in the day.
There was a time, perhaps, when only the government had the shiny, new. Super secret facilities in Nevada or Los Alamos chock full of stolen nazi scientists with equipment only defense budgets could afford.
But now I'm seeing massive computing power at the fingertips of most Americans, and amazing technologies like additive manufacturing on the brink of hitting the mainstream, and I wonder how long it will be before the people, getting hit with LRADs and vortex cannons for voicing their opinions, will turn all of it on the police and the elites they serve, whom they outnumber 10,000 to one.
These "non-violent" weapons are not based on some crypto science Uncle Sam learned from aliens from the Kla'arg galaxy. They are not made out of solid platinum or unobtainium. The software needed to run them? Crap, there are probably open source packages out there to do so already (soon, also on BSD!).
Why do they think that people, highly incensed at the injuries to their freedom, won't put all that together and employ it?
I suspect someone among the elites is clear-eyed enough to see it, but clueless how to prevent it, and they're scared shitless and panicking.
Them's some pretty strong words there, pard.
Look, computers are all about productivity, right? You get everything in your system configured just the way you like it so you can be as productive as possible with the things that lie in your critical path. The less time you spend re-learning an interface (MS ribbon interface, anyone?) or fixing things that previously worked but broke when you upgraded something (face it, the first 5-6 years of linux were sketchy that way), the better.
And "upgrades" are not always better or more desirable. *Unity* cough, cough. Heck, I still prefer the classic interface to Slashdot because the new one looks and works like a pack of flying javascript monkeys got to it. Also, older does not equal less secure. Throw a bunch of hapless H1-B's at a rock solid code base built back in the day by guys of the caliber of ESR and you're almost guaranteed to render your latest iteration less secure.
Last, but not least, as much as the groupthink might equate "upgrades" with progress, so very often it's just marketing BS designed to get you to buy the same shit over, and over, and over.
What you're saying is true, but the example of Thingiverse rather points the way to solving the 3D artist problem: 3D scanners. One of the bottle necks in additive manufacturing is the need to design something in a CAD system before feeding it to the printer. And that's the same bottleneck you've pointed out for 3D websites. If you have a 3D scanner to generate a CAD file for an existing object, then no 3D artist time is required. Of course, in the case of a 3D printer you need to scan with X-rays to pick up internal structure, but for a website a surface scan is entirely, or at least mostly, sufficient.
Crowd-sourcing/funding this is an interesting idea, but lawsuits would work better as part of a larger strategy that employs many tactics. One part of that strategy is 'disintermediation.'
P2P filesharing as an example of oblique disintermediation. That is, P2P has been designed to share files which has the externality of putting pressure on the RIAA's business model, but not the express purpose of putting them out of business. As part of a strategy to specifically do that while employing your lawsuits on a parallel track it might have shut the music industry down completely by now, instead of permitting them to linger (and malinger).
"Exposure" is another big part of the strategy. Wikileaks's exposure of the diplomatic cables was a very big step in that right direction. But it was not followed up with enough other big revelations or augmented by Disintermediation and your lawsuits running on a parallel track.
We have to push from all angles at once to reach the tipping point beyond which the corrupt status quo is unable to regain equilibrium and adapt.
Are the principles behind this only known to the incredibly advanced race of Aliens from Planet Xorg? No. Are the components of this device only available to government agencies with their massive budgets? No. Are the physics behind its function an alchemical secret, wrapped in allusion and allegory, plain to only a select few Initiates? No.
Like the LRAD cannon, drones, tasers, and other means governments have recently employed to silence opposition to their policies, there is nearly equal access to the same means among the disgruntled. It will not be long, months if not days, for the disgruntled to turn the weapons of the enemy against itself. And there are so many more of the disgruntled, with greater resolve, than there are among the government's forces.
Imagine an array of targeted audience members with smart phones, w/ speakers, running the same app timed precisely such that they can warp the effect back upon the smart ass gov shill pointing this gun at them. Imagine the shill running from the stage with his/her/its hands over its ears, ears bleeding.
That app doesn't exist, yet, but it's technically possible and achievable with current hardware and tech.
The governments' days of silencing discord are over. Their days of steamrolling the people are over. Their information-control and physical means to compel compliance are running down to zero rapidly.
There are so many factors in the state of the education system, it's hard to pick any one of them as the keystone. A bajillion dollars is not enough to substitute for parents who don't participate in their kids' education. A bajillion dollars is not enough to correct a society who tells kids it's more important to be a football star than learn math. A bajillion dollars won't make a dent in a stodgy, horribly outdated pedagogical culture that is protected and perpetuated by entrenched interests (teacher's unions, colleges offering degrees in education, textbook publishers, testing companies, etc etc). A bajillion dollars won't improve the performance of obese kids too whacked out on high-fructose corn syrup, junk food, and ritalin to pay attention.
It is true that it is hard to teach a computer class without computers. It is not true that you cannot teach a computer class with old computers. It is not true that you cannot teach a computer class without expensive computers.
In the end putting outsized requests like this in sounds like the timeless bureaucratic game of, grow your budget with ridiculous requests to SAVE THE CHILDREN, then point out how big the budget is that you're now managing, and cry about how much more work it is to manage that large budget and how you can't possibly handle it without a 25% increase in the size of your staff and a 25% bump in your pay.
If /.'s minds can come up with an effective way to unwind that dynamic (and, no, crying 'small government' doesn't and hasn't worked because they just grow different parts of the government, not shrink the total), then it will have performed a greater boon for mankind and done more for its advancement than nearly any other achievement in human history.
But this time other trends set in motion by the last oil shock that sent gas above $4/gallon may trump all that. If you've been paying attention the last 4 years, nearly every major car company has been working on and rolling out production model hybrids and EVs. Tesla, despite the scoffing ICE fans, has not only survived but is about to release its 3rd generation of vehicles. And what's more, EV delivery vehicles are starting to hit the scene; Ford is rolling out its own. Another smaller one called Mia has another.
The delivery vehicles are a significant one because if you could spend $1.34/60 miles to make your deliveries vs. $20/60 miles paying for gas at $4/gallon, 12mpg, you'd be insane as a business owner to not be all over that. Trucking is an extremely competitive business where fuel costs and the means to shave them are a major concern. And that's the thing, if delivery vans break the ice with commercial use of EVs, then you can bet the long-haul guys won't be far behind clamoring for semi-versions of EVs.
So, on the consumer and commercial fronts the options have developed to give everyone a real window to jump from the ICE ship. 2/3rds of American oil consumption goes to transportation, so if the price spike last time was enough to get people to abandon SUVs, then this time, if the spike is severe enough, especially in a down economy, we might all wake up in 2013 in an America where the oil industry is 1/3 its former size. That is the definition of a sea change.
The populace is turning on them now. They've been divided by the tried-and-true panis et circenses, but the Tea Party and Occupy forces are beginning to realize that they have common cause against those who control both sides of the fence (at least in America).
Soldiers do not, by and large, originate from the 1%. They come from the strata that are least privileged in our society. And as well trained/brainwashed as they are, they cannot fully divorce themselves from the economic realities of their families.
It's only a matter of time until the populace and the soldiers collectively wake up, look at each other, and realize that the most dire threat to their liberty and well-being exists internally in the form of the 1% and their hired help in the US govt.
I look forward with delightful anticipation to the day when night on the Eastern Seaboard is lit by the bonfires of the mansions of the 1%. I have been stockpiling hot dogs and marshmallows for that day.
When the American government pulls moves like this, it proves it is the greatest threat to liberty in the world. The bland malevolence of the sociopathic gangsters running the United States right now puts the acute and minor threat of 3rd world terrorists shooting guns to shame. The latter kills scores, the former kills millions. And the former's threat is all the more intractable because of all the sheeple who shut up and do as they're told in the commission of the crimes.
I know that Cable is in its death throes because statistics recorded recently that TV viewership has begun to decline sharply, for the first time since it was invented; and because the average age of the TV viewer is strongly skewed toward the Baby Boomer cohort; and because my friend, who is an insider at Starz, says that on-demand is killing everybody right now.
The TV used to deliver Cable, too, is on its way out. If you can watch what you want, when you want, with minimal or no commercials, wherever you want, on whatever device you want, then why in the heck would you choose a single-use device that sucks power like it's going out of style, occupies valuable real estate (counter top or wall), and chains you to exorbitant recurring monthly fees while treating you, your eyeballs, and your mind as a giant dumping ground for assinine advertisement while blasting out your eardrums?
Live sports, you say? This year I watched the Super Bowl on my smartphone. Yes, it's a small screen. But it was live sports on a non-TV device.
The more that reality hits home with the average Joe, which it is, the more radically marketers, content producers, hardware makers, software companies, and all the machinery between and around them that make that pipeline work, will have to rethink the nature of information and entertainment consumption. And that's not even factoring in the "new" social aspect popularized by Facebook and its ilk.
Through last summer I hemmed and hawed about whether to hold or sell; my Apple shares had gone up 500% and were hovering around that point. Then Jobs passed, and I kicked myself for not having pulled the trigger before then. The share price dipped, of course, and the temptation to join those heading for the exits was strong.
But it was reading Slashdot that kept me on board. I had not been aware that Tim Cook had already been running the company for quite a while, that he had been thoroughly groomed by Jobs, and that Jobs had left a roadmap for several years of products.
Flash forward to February 2012 and the share price is up 700% from where I bought it, and they're mulling a dividend. Thanks, Slashdot!
I love Australia. It's a great country. Sydney, Melbourne, the Blue Mountains, the Outback, Perth, Brisbane. The people are terrific.
In terms of population and influence, though, it is not able to rekindle any kind of debate on technology standards on its own. Not even close. The United States? Yes. The EU as a body? Yes. China? Perhaps. Australia? No.
The Australian Relativity Theorem is the inverse of the Chinese Relativity Theorem, which states, "Whatever the rest of the world thinks is a good idea, 1 Billion Chinese couldn't give a damn." In Australia, it's "Whatever 22 million Australians think is a good idea, the rest of the world couldn't give a damn."
It's not a value judgement, guys, because Australia as a country exceeds most others. But as a place with enough gravity to influence standards? No, no it isn't.