I would be working on research projects that I found interesting. I've got a degree in astrophysics, but there are many other interesting things to do as well, in any science. Then I would work on scientific publishing, there are huge potentials there.
Also, I would be spending more time travelling around the world, and spending more time doing expeditions in strange places.
A global network of Liquid Mirror Telescopes. A 2048x4096 12-bit image is produced every 90 seconds, by each of, say, 180 telescopes around the world.
In fact, when talking about turntables, get an old turntable, and a biggish pizza pan. Fill it up with mercury (or engine oil, if mercury is hard to find), set the turntable to turn. Above the turntable at some distance, depending on the radial velocity, but as CCD (or your webcam, if you haven't got a CCD). This will give you a quite nice and big telescope, and if you've got a good CCD, you can go quite deep.
Fujitsu-Siemens' Lifebook E has had it as an option for a while. I think that one is pretty neat, and AFAIK it's certified by the manufacturer to work with Red Hat and SuSE. An off the record, they also say getting Debian on it is unproblematic.
I wouldn't say incredibly small, as it is on the order of meters. Also, you could put up an access point, like Axis 9010 which has a quite reasonable range. Actually, I think this is a good idea.
That sounds really nice! One good thing is if we could plug this into SpamAssassin. A message flagged by the Bayesian approach would be given a score of 4, for example. I'm afraid I haven't got the time to write it, so I'm not volunteering...:-)
Actually, there are tons of internet-connected machines there. I just visited Peru, some friends were in Bolivia, and our primary means of communication was e-mail.
Yeah, I know, but that's really a workaround. When this bug is marked as resolved and the code is in (I guess) 1.2 or 1.0.2 or something, then things would be great.
This is an interesting point, but it is possible that free software can fail in Venezuela without the aid of MS.
The problem is that you need a lot of hackers and support people who knows Linux well to make a successful transition. At least if you do it in a short time frame. So the question is: Do you have that brainpower? I don't think my country (Norway) has, and I don't know if Venezuela or any other country has that right now.
I think you are right in that MS can't afford to loose any of these countries, and that is why Bill stepped in and gave Peru some change shortly after their legislation was presented (actually, I was in Peru when this happened. A trip to Peru is highly recommended, especially the Cusco region is awesome).
OTOH, if any of these countries succeed, then MS will be in problems, not only because a lot of poorer countries will go too, but because some richer countries probably will follow suit.
So, for the adoption of free software, one of the most important things we could do now is to support these efforts. There are many hackers who are unhappy with legislation attacking freedoms in our own countries. Seriously, would you consider moving to Peru or Venezuela if they introduced other hacker-friendly legislation? I would. I think they would need a hand, especially, if you are an experienced programmer who can act as a mentor in a company or a governmental organization, hacking on things that make the transition to free software easy, then I think you could play an extremely important role.
I don't care about free as in beer. All I care about is free as in speech. And I'll pay very good money for good technology that is free as in speech. But they can forget about trying to sell my stuff that is free as in beer. Free as in beer is usually just a cheap marketing trick, something very shortsighted.
Yeah, that's why I say that the right kind of software liability would be good for free software business.
Of course, individual developers can't be made responsible for bugs in their software, but as long as liability follows the money, it could be a good thing.
Because what companies like RH would be selling is really a warranty. Then, if you purchase free software from a vendor, you have your ass covered, because you can sue the vendor if something goes wrong.
Also, it means that vendors selling free software would have to be even more careful examining the software that they sell, thus contributing even more bug reports to the community.
Free software would win more than propritary software as a whole, because free software is generally better, right?
I'm running Opera, Mozilla and Konqi every day on my box now, and I really can't decide between them. Opera is a bit unstable and unfree, Konqi doesn't have tabbed browsing (will soon), and lacks a few other nice features too.
Mozilla lacks something very important: It doesn't work smoothly with KMail which is my mail program of choice right now.
Mozilla really needs to integrate well with other applications. Most importantly, it really needs a way to launch an application when users click on a mailto-link. This is bug 11459.
Also quite important is that you can launch Mozilla and have it open a new tab (not window) from other applications. This is Bug 104204.
I would encourage everybody to join in to get this working!:-)
Well, the right tool for the job, simple cost-benefit analysis is inadequate for government purposes, simply because there are other concerns in government than in any other businesses, and that's tranceparancy. People have the right to know. It's not a matter of if anybody's interested in what the stuff in a clerks computer does. People have the right to find out if they want to.
This doesn't imply that the software needs to be free in the FSF sense, but it implies that the code can be examined by any interested party. It doesn't mean that you should be allowed to modify it, though it is certainly an advantage to society.
It is this right that makes free software so important in public policy. It doesn't matter if a tool is better from a strict cost-benifit viewpoint, if it violates my right to know what goes on with the data I give to the government about me. I need to know for sure that MS doesn't have a backdoor that pass it off to their marketing department, or to any other entity I wouldn't want it to be passed to. If I can't be sure about this, then the tool has no place in public office.
So, I disagree with Tim on this, I think the simple "right tool for the job"-mindset is too short-sighted, but I think Michael's response was childish, and that he owes Tim an apology.
I agree. I agreed with pretty much everything Micheal said up to that final paragraph. Nowadays, I think the depolitizing OSI did was a bad idea, and that there is a lot of politics in free software that is good for society.
However, it is a crucial point that all matters are discussed openly. The worst thing that can happen is to a have a group where no opposing views are presented. While I disagree with Tim O'Reilly, his contribution is very important, and Michael's accusations are very, very bad, as it has only one purpose: To silence opposing views. That opposing views are silenced is the worst thing that can happen to any group.
Michael, I suggest you remove that final paragraph, and that you post an apology to Tim.
It is an interesting perspective you provide, but the harsh reality is:
Ads are not a long-term sustainable business model
And, it is a Good Thing. The ad market is going to burst like a bubble, and the sooner the better.
OK, so for every pop-up I see, you get your 0.01 (whatever currency:-) ). And, the products I need anyway get 0.01 more expensive. And because they make so little revenue from each ad, quite a lot of that money will be wasted, so the products I buy get more expensive than it would have been if it hadn't been for those ads.
Can I pay you those 0.01 directly, please? Every time I look on your page, instead of seeing those ads that take my attention and waste my bandwidth, I pay you 0.01 directly, OK? I would really like to do that.
Death to banner ads, long live micropayments!
As for the products I buy, I'd rather pay somebody to do independent reviews of the products, and go to a database with reviews and objective information, than have models with sleazy smiles trying to push whatever. Really.
If pop-up-blocking is combined with a micropayments framework in Mozilla, those of us who provide content will certainly not have lost anything, on the contrary, we would have gained a lot.
You have to have quite a lot of traffic to attract sponsors, but with micropayments, anyone could in principle make a some small money from their content, if it is good enough to make someone want to pay. That's a big win.
Let's make a micropayments framework in our free software browsers, and see what happens.
The last time my bank changed certificates, I called them up and had them read the fingerprint to me. Seems like a good thing to do, I figured. It was the first time anybody had called about that, but they did find it after half an hour on the phone, and the guy in the other end did understand the value of it. Really, I would like all their offices to have those fingerprints on paper, so I can go there and check.
Only the copyright holders can do that , so whoever mentioned in the copyright string. They may not have the resources, which is why FSF suggests you assign copyright to them, so that they can take up the fight.
Well, I think people had better realize it as soon as possible. Ad sponsored pages is going to go away. The whole ad market is going to burst, and browsers thtat have the ability to control pop-ups and similar stuff is going to be one major reason it happens.
What we need is good end-user to creator payment options, and we need them fast. For many things, voluntary micropayments would work great, IMHO, for other things, other models must be empployed.
Yeah, I thought about this a couple of months ago. The use I thought about is this:
I create a presentation with KPresenter, Impress or something similar. I burn the presentation onto a CD together with a live Linux distro. Many good auditoria have a good projector, but connected to a windoze computer. So I pop the CD in the PC, boot it on Linux and give my talk.
I just instructed my parents to mount and umount usnig the icons on KDEs desktop. Told them it is more secure and lessens the risk of data corruption. They are perfectly happy about it, it took them less than 5 minutes to master. Just go ahead and teach her.
That the Internet is moving away from free as in beer as not in itself a Bad Thing. I've been saying for a long time that we must sacrifice free as in beer to get free as in speech. That is, we need payment options from end user to creator, with the fewest possible hops in between. That way, every small guy could in principle earn a few bucks by putting it on the net. It would be a great thing for cultural diversity, practical freedom of expression, etc.
We have to stop saying: The Internet should be free as in beer, and start designing, specing and implementing payment mechanisms. They should be implemented in "our" browsers, and who knows, perhaps it could be a "killer app" that breaks MS monopoly.
I think you missed his point entirely: That's only an example of a new type of UI for certain applications. The basic point is that the Desktop is dead, and I agree entirely. Linux should stop running after MS on the desktop, because that will always be a loosing battle. Instead, Linux should focus on something different, and focus on implementing teh research that is being done on UIs.
Don't worry, anti-spammers are used to this happening, it happens all the time, and people are getting good at knowing when it has happened. In fact, if somebody does it really bad against you, you should be honored, because it means that you really annoyed a spammer. It's a called a joe-job. It's happened to me too. Somebody sent a pr0n-spam in my name.
My subscription expired today; I'm not renewing
on
Salon in Dire Straits
·
· Score: 2
I would be really sorry if Salon went under, and I had a subscription, mainly to support independent journalism on the net.
I got the first notice that my subscription was about to expire three weeks ago, and I responded with a letter to the editor. This is pretty much the letter:
Dear David,
Thanks for the reminder.
I have been thinking about this for a while. I have enjoyed many good
articles in Salon magazine, but it wasn't really for my own enjoyment that
I signed up. It was to support independent journalism. I find the thought
of not having professional journalists and editors working on
non-mainstream material alarming.
There has been many interesting perspectives, presented in Salon.
Yet, I don't think I will renew my subscription. For one thing, I think
that online independent reporting can't survive with propriatary standards
taking over the web. With the uncertain status of Flash, I really think
you are shooting yourself in the foot by promoting it. If it had been for
a purpose, I could have understood priorities leading to the use of Flash,
but for *picture galleries*....? No way. The use of Flash in picture
galleries is likely to hurt in the long run. Yes, I've heard your
arguments. I know we have to agree to disagree. But you don't want to take
the chance that I'm right.
The quality of some articles has been low, but I guess one cannot expect
to agree with the editor all the time.
However, "Love Collision". I'm an astrophysicist. I would say,
consequently, I'm a skeptic. I'm also extremely anti-authoritorian. There
is little that upsets me more than unquestioned, old dogma.
English is not my native tongue, but I really tried very hard to find some
kind of irony or satire in Love Collision. At least a bit of humor. But
all I saw was that old astrological writing. The most surprising thing
about astrologers are their inability to ever surprise. Yeah, I know
mainstream media makes a buck on this, but Salon!?!?
There was a good article I once read, I have this weird feeling it was on
Salon too, it was about how there are no short-cuts to love. I can't see
any substantial difference between this coloumn and the rather big
self-help industry. There is very little value in either. The short-cuts
they sell, just aren't there. There is good reason to ask whether the
advices they sell really bring happiness. Astrology, with it's ancient
dogma, does not provide anybody with any good answers, and so, it is just
as likely to ruin a love-life as establishing one. It is immoral to make
money from selling something that unfounded. And my money will certainly
not fund it.
>As you know, Internet publications are ruled by the same economic
>realities as any other business. If we didn't charge for our premium
>content, we'd be forced to shut down.
Certainly, certainly. But I would much rather like to pay by
micropayments. One of my favorite lines nowadays is that "we have to give
up free beer to get free speech", meaning we really need a payment
mechanism between content producers and end users with the fewest possible
links in between, and we need that fast.
>Loyal subscribers like you are Salon's lifeblood. In return, we offer
>you something quite special: a truly independent source of
>journalism, beholden to no one, that never shies away from the truth
>and never insults your intelligence.
Well, either there isn't much intelligence in my brain after all, or my
command of English is a lot worse than I thought, or "Love Collision"
certainly does.
Well, my support for independent journalism continues. But in return, I
ask that you do not fall for the money-making tricks that mainstream media
does. Astrology is perhaps one of the examples where mainstream media is
the most corrupt, so I don't feel you have accomplished what I had hoped
for.
Re:kernel developers to Debian: put up or shut up
on
Kernel Summit Wrapup
·
· Score: 2
Well, freedom is still Linux number one selling point. Tru64 is better on number crunching and Solaris is still better for most server applications, and windoze is better on the desktop. If they don't realize this, I think they will become irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, I would be spending more time travelling around the world, and spending more time doing expeditions in strange places.
In fact, when talking about turntables, get an old turntable, and a biggish pizza pan. Fill it up with mercury (or engine oil, if mercury is hard to find), set the turntable to turn. Above the turntable at some distance, depending on the radial velocity, but as CCD (or your webcam, if you haven't got a CCD). This will give you a quite nice and big telescope, and if you've got a good CCD, you can go quite deep.
Let me know if you see something interesting! :-)
Fujitsu-Siemens' Lifebook E has had it as an option for a while. I think that one is pretty neat, and AFAIK it's certified by the manufacturer to work with Red Hat and SuSE. An off the record, they also say getting Debian on it is unproblematic.
I wouldn't say incredibly small, as it is on the order of meters. Also, you could put up an access point, like Axis 9010 which has a quite reasonable range. Actually, I think this is a good idea.
That sounds really nice! One good thing is if we could plug this into SpamAssassin. A message flagged by the Bayesian approach would be given a score of 4, for example. I'm afraid I haven't got the time to write it, so I'm not volunteering... :-)
Actually, there are tons of internet-connected machines there. I just visited Peru, some friends were in Bolivia, and our primary means of communication was e-mail.
Yeah, I know, but that's really a workaround. When this bug is marked as resolved and the code is in (I guess) 1.2 or 1.0.2 or something, then things would be great.
The problem is that you need a lot of hackers and support people who knows Linux well to make a successful transition. At least if you do it in a short time frame. So the question is: Do you have that brainpower? I don't think my country (Norway) has, and I don't know if Venezuela or any other country has that right now.
I think you are right in that MS can't afford to loose any of these countries, and that is why Bill stepped in and gave Peru some change shortly after their legislation was presented (actually, I was in Peru when this happened. A trip to Peru is highly recommended, especially the Cusco region is awesome).
OTOH, if any of these countries succeed, then MS will be in problems, not only because a lot of poorer countries will go too, but because some richer countries probably will follow suit.
So, for the adoption of free software, one of the most important things we could do now is to support these efforts. There are many hackers who are unhappy with legislation attacking freedoms in our own countries. Seriously, would you consider moving to Peru or Venezuela if they introduced other hacker-friendly legislation? I would. I think they would need a hand, especially, if you are an experienced programmer who can act as a mentor in a company or a governmental organization, hacking on things that make the transition to free software easy, then I think you could play an extremely important role.
I don't care about free as in beer. All I care about is free as in speech. And I'll pay very good money for good technology that is free as in speech. But they can forget about trying to sell my stuff that is free as in beer. Free as in beer is usually just a cheap marketing trick, something very shortsighted.
Of course, individual developers can't be made responsible for bugs in their software, but as long as liability follows the money, it could be a good thing.
Because what companies like RH would be selling is really a warranty. Then, if you purchase free software from a vendor, you have your ass covered, because you can sue the vendor if something goes wrong.
Also, it means that vendors selling free software would have to be even more careful examining the software that they sell, thus contributing even more bug reports to the community.
Free software would win more than propritary software as a whole, because free software is generally better, right?
Mozilla lacks something very important: It doesn't work smoothly with KMail which is my mail program of choice right now.
Mozilla really needs to integrate well with other applications. Most importantly, it really needs a way to launch an application when users click on a mailto-link. This is bug 11459.
Also quite important is that you can launch Mozilla and have it open a new tab (not window) from other applications. This is Bug 104204.
I would encourage everybody to join in to get this working! :-)
well, this was a long time ago...
This doesn't imply that the software needs to be free in the FSF sense, but it implies that the code can be examined by any interested party. It doesn't mean that you should be allowed to modify it, though it is certainly an advantage to society.
It is this right that makes free software so important in public policy. It doesn't matter if a tool is better from a strict cost-benifit viewpoint, if it violates my right to know what goes on with the data I give to the government about me. I need to know for sure that MS doesn't have a backdoor that pass it off to their marketing department, or to any other entity I wouldn't want it to be passed to. If I can't be sure about this, then the tool has no place in public office.
So, I disagree with Tim on this, I think the simple "right tool for the job"-mindset is too short-sighted, but I think Michael's response was childish, and that he owes Tim an apology.
However, it is a crucial point that all matters are discussed openly. The worst thing that can happen is to a have a group where no opposing views are presented. While I disagree with Tim O'Reilly, his contribution is very important, and Michael's accusations are very, very bad, as it has only one purpose: To silence opposing views. That opposing views are silenced is the worst thing that can happen to any group.
Michael, I suggest you remove that final paragraph, and that you post an apology to Tim.
Ads are not a long-term sustainable business model
And, it is a Good Thing. The ad market is going to burst like a bubble, and the sooner the better.
OK, so for every pop-up I see, you get your 0.01 (whatever currency :-) ). And, the products I need anyway get 0.01 more expensive. And because they make so little revenue from each ad, quite a lot of that money will be wasted, so the products I buy get more expensive than it would have been if it hadn't been for those ads.
Can I pay you those 0.01 directly, please? Every time I look on your page, instead of seeing those ads that take my attention and waste my bandwidth, I pay you 0.01 directly, OK? I would really like to do that.
Death to banner ads, long live micropayments!
As for the products I buy, I'd rather pay somebody to do independent reviews of the products, and go to a database with reviews and objective information, than have models with sleazy smiles trying to push whatever. Really.
If pop-up-blocking is combined with a micropayments framework in Mozilla, those of us who provide content will certainly not have lost anything, on the contrary, we would have gained a lot.
You have to have quite a lot of traffic to attract sponsors, but with micropayments, anyone could in principle make a some small money from their content, if it is good enough to make someone want to pay. That's a big win.
Let's make a micropayments framework in our free software browsers, and see what happens.
The last time my bank changed certificates, I called them up and had them read the fingerprint to me. Seems like a good thing to do, I figured. It was the first time anybody had called about that, but they did find it after half an hour on the phone, and the guy in the other end did understand the value of it. Really, I would like all their offices to have those fingerprints on paper, so I can go there and check.
Only the copyright holders can do that , so whoever mentioned in the copyright string. They may not have the resources, which is why FSF suggests you assign copyright to them, so that they can take up the fight.
What we need is good end-user to creator payment options, and we need them fast. For many things, voluntary micropayments would work great, IMHO, for other things, other models must be empployed.
Yeah, I thought about this a couple of months ago. The use I thought about is this:
I create a presentation with KPresenter, Impress or something similar. I burn the presentation onto a CD together with a live Linux distro. Many good auditoria have a good projector, but connected to a windoze computer. So I pop the CD in the PC, boot it on Linux and give my talk.
I just instructed my parents to mount and umount usnig the icons on KDEs desktop. Told them it is more secure and lessens the risk of data corruption. They are perfectly happy about it, it took them less than 5 minutes to master. Just go ahead and teach her.
We have to stop saying: The Internet should be free as in beer, and start designing, specing and implementing payment mechanisms. They should be implemented in "our" browsers, and who knows, perhaps it could be a "killer app" that breaks MS monopoly.
I think you missed his point entirely: That's only an example of a new type of UI for certain applications. The basic point is that the Desktop is dead, and I agree entirely. Linux should stop running after MS on the desktop, because that will always be a loosing battle. Instead, Linux should focus on something different, and focus on implementing teh research that is being done on UIs.
Don't worry, anti-spammers are used to this happening, it happens all the time, and people are getting good at knowing when it has happened. In fact, if somebody does it really bad against you, you should be honored, because it means that you really annoyed a spammer. It's a called a joe-job. It's happened to me too. Somebody sent a pr0n-spam in my name.
I got the first notice that my subscription was about to expire three weeks ago, and I responded with a letter to the editor. This is pretty much the letter:
Dear David,
Thanks for the reminder.
I have been thinking about this for a while. I have enjoyed many good articles in Salon magazine, but it wasn't really for my own enjoyment that I signed up. It was to support independent journalism. I find the thought of not having professional journalists and editors working on non-mainstream material alarming.
There has been many interesting perspectives, presented in Salon.
Yet, I don't think I will renew my subscription. For one thing, I think that online independent reporting can't survive with propriatary standards taking over the web. With the uncertain status of Flash, I really think you are shooting yourself in the foot by promoting it. If it had been for a purpose, I could have understood priorities leading to the use of Flash, but for *picture galleries*....? No way. The use of Flash in picture galleries is likely to hurt in the long run. Yes, I've heard your arguments. I know we have to agree to disagree. But you don't want to take the chance that I'm right.
The quality of some articles has been low, but I guess one cannot expect to agree with the editor all the time.
However, "Love Collision". I'm an astrophysicist. I would say, consequently, I'm a skeptic. I'm also extremely anti-authoritorian. There is little that upsets me more than unquestioned, old dogma.
English is not my native tongue, but I really tried very hard to find some kind of irony or satire in Love Collision. At least a bit of humor. But all I saw was that old astrological writing. The most surprising thing about astrologers are their inability to ever surprise. Yeah, I know mainstream media makes a buck on this, but Salon!?!?
There was a good article I once read, I have this weird feeling it was on Salon too, it was about how there are no short-cuts to love. I can't see any substantial difference between this coloumn and the rather big self-help industry. There is very little value in either. The short-cuts they sell, just aren't there. There is good reason to ask whether the advices they sell really bring happiness. Astrology, with it's ancient dogma, does not provide anybody with any good answers, and so, it is just as likely to ruin a love-life as establishing one. It is immoral to make money from selling something that unfounded. And my money will certainly not fund it.
>As you know, Internet publications are ruled by the same economic
>realities as any other business. If we didn't charge for our premium
>content, we'd be forced to shut down.
Certainly, certainly. But I would much rather like to pay by micropayments. One of my favorite lines nowadays is that "we have to give up free beer to get free speech", meaning we really need a payment mechanism between content producers and end users with the fewest possible links in between, and we need that fast.
>Loyal subscribers like you are Salon's lifeblood. In return, we offer
>you something quite special: a truly independent source of
>journalism, beholden to no one, that never shies away from the truth
>and never insults your intelligence.
Well, either there isn't much intelligence in my brain after all, or my command of English is a lot worse than I thought, or "Love Collision" certainly does.
Well, my support for independent journalism continues. But in return, I ask that you do not fall for the money-making tricks that mainstream media does. Astrology is perhaps one of the examples where mainstream media is the most corrupt, so I don't feel you have accomplished what I had hoped for.
Well, freedom is still Linux number one selling point. Tru64 is better on number crunching and Solaris is still better for most server applications, and windoze is better on the desktop. If they don't realize this, I think they will become irrelevant.