You'd think. But without a reasonable evaluation process, it's surprising who can squeak through.
'course, I suppose the exact same thing is true of any other discipline. But a failure to, say, engineer a bridge properly results in some pretty spectacular failures, which means the standards for performance are that much higher. Alas, software (and it's developers) isn't held to such lofty standards.
Re:I have resisted Facebook and will continue to
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I also look at it as a platform for teenagers yet I am well beyond those years.
Dude... FB originally became popular with the University crowd. It's since moved well beyond that. Jebus, my *mom* is on Facebook (yes, for the record, I find this mildly disturbing).
That's not to say you should sign up. It's definitely got it's problems, and it is fairly silly overall. But targeted at teenagers? Hardly.
The first time I heard 'facebook' I thought of type-A jocks and stuck-up 'faces' at college.
Bitter much?
Just FYI, my circle of predominantly CS-graduate friends is linked up on Facebook. Why? Simple: we've all grown up, moved away, and in a few cases, had families, and FB makes it easy for everyone to stay connected.
Remember, just because you're angry and convinced that <insert popular thing> is silly, doesn't mean it actually is.
Well, to be fair, at least with respect to the second point, the problem is that there's little barrier of entry to becoming a "software developer". All you need to do is hang out a shingle, and voila, you're good to go. Unfortunately, that means the industry is truly awash with clueless hacks...
Pretty standard stuff, and a question that was asked and answered a long time ago.
Yeah, the difference is, here on Slashdot, you get modded +1 Insightful for asking a painfully obvious question that scientists have already put to bed, presumably because it is assumed, here, that scientists are actually really fucking stupid.
Two private corporate bailouts, one FISA bill, and almost a trillion in new spending. This cannot be sustainable in the long term.
And the shutting down of Guantanamo, and the outlawing of torture in the military.
It's been a mixed bag, certainly, but it hasn't been all bad.
And for the record, no one believes this kind of deficit spending is sustainable in the long-term. But the point is to not have to do it for the long term...
your argument has no merit. the LHC could create something nasty at rest with respect to earth's reference frame, different than cosmic ray bombardment.
So, you're trying to tell me that, unbeknownst to us, there are countless black holes speeding through the earth, and therefore the universe, all the fucking time, and we've *never noticed them*? Really??
Sorry bub... I don't buy it.
And almost without exception cosmic rays are either protons, helium nuclei, or electrons.
And what has that to do with anything? The blackhole "concern" is due to the energies of the collisions, not the particles being smashed together.
If Apple didn't patent their work, Microsoft would and claim they invented it first [citing the patent] and screw everyone over.
Except, of course, that Apple could just publish their ideas in a well-known trade paper, and voila, the idea becomes unpatentable.
Patents aren't required to protect your use of an idea. They're only required if you want to prevent someone *else* from using them (or if you want to use your patents as a club so you can violate someone else's, which is, I suspect, the way the Palm/Apple negotiations will end up playing out).
I'm curious if a patent ever is a good thing for the public.
Given the alternative is keeping the idea a trade secret, I'd say the answer is a resounding yes. Which would you prefer? No one knowing how technology X is implemented, ever, or granting a limited time monopoly in exchange for the disclosure of said invention?
Of course, I want to qualify this by pointing out that not all inventions should be protected by patents... Apple's multitouch user interface seems like a classic example of something that should fail the obviousness test. OTOH, the technology to actually implement a multitouch display is certainly a patent-worthy invention, IMHO.
I never said it was identical, I was just pointing out that if you say to the average joe "Install linux!"
Then don't say that. Say "install Ubuntu", or "install Fedora". There, problem solved. I mean, why the hell would you even bother to point them at "50 different variants" when the vast majority of those are either poorly or completely unmaintained, have no long term support option, or aren't targeted at new users?
Oh, and for the record, there most certainly is *not* 50 different popular variants of Linux. I can count *maybe* five... Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and Debian. That's *it*. Of course, there are a couple other niche products out there, like Gentoo, but what idiot would recommend that to a newbie? Hell, even DistroWatch only lists 10 "major" distributions, and I would strongly suggest they're reaching after #5. I mean, who the hell has heard of Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS?
Only because of that fucking ending. If that damn kid just froze at the bottom of the ocean, followed by a fade to black, I think the movie would've been much better. As it stands, it leaves a sickly saccharine aftertaste that made me want to gag when I saw it...
According to the market... If people wanted them they would buy them, the show rooms would be full of them.
Hardly. The technology is only now reaching the point where a real EV is feasible. Furthermore, economic factors have meant that alternative fuel-based vehicles simply haven't been attractive options to the consumer. Fortunately, that has changed in the last couple years as gas skyrocketed.
People don't want to risk running low on charge and having no option of a quick fill-up
So buy a plug-in hybrid. All electric until it runs low, then switches to a small gas-powered motor. This is, I think the future of electric vehicles, as it marries the best of both worlds: all electric for short trips, which is the vast majority of commuting, and longer range on gasoline when it's needed.
The problem is almost nobody wants a car that takes 10 hours to charge.
According to whom? Hell, here in Canada, during the winter we regularly have to plug in our cars anyway, just to make sure they start the next day. Plugging it in to charge it overnight seems like an extremely minor issue. And you get the bonus of knowing your car is "fueled" up when you take it out the next day (ie, you don't have to worry about checking that gauge and hitting a station if you're running low).
The way I see it, you can flame Microsoft all you want, but how many Linux distros are there?
For each flavour? Let's see, RedHat has two versions (server and desktop, IIRC). Ubuntu has... server and desktop. Debian just has the one. I believe Gentoo is the same. So what was your point?
Of course, it would be disingenuous to claim that somehow Microsoft releasing 6 versions of Windows is identical to all those distros... those distros are completely separate products (granted they serve the same purpose, and contain many of the same components, but they are separate, distinct products). Now, if Ubuntu had 6 flavours, and charged you to upgrade from one to the next, then yeah, you'd have a point. Fortunately, that isn't the case.
I guess what would happen is the US would go cold turkey...
And China would retaliate by selling all their US dollar bonds. You think the economic crisis is bad _NOW_?
That is *highly* unlikely. The United States is one of China's primary trading partners. And given that China a) has an economy heavily driven by a massive trade surplus, and b) is already suffering a massive economic blow thanks to the global financial crisis, the last thing they'd want to do is further damage that trade relationship.
Sorry, no, China needs the US every bit as much as the US (in particular, the US consumer) needs China. Neither party is going to be interested in rocking that boat too hard.
I want a citation for that graph. The idea that cannabis is 5/6 as dependence-causing as alcohol, which, unlike pot, actually produces a real, physical addiction through the triggering of dopamine production, is truly laughable, IMHO. And the 2/3's as physically harmful number sounds like complete bullshit (about the only danger from marijuana is combustion products (eg, tar), and that can be mitigated with a bong or vaporizer).
A is true insofar as it's true for chips, soda, etc. ie, a user is free to abuse it all they want, but it has no physically addictive component, and so any such abuse is a consequence of psychology, and not the compound itself. Contrast this with heroin, morphine, or alcohol, and I think it's clear that marijuana does not have a "high potential for abuse", any more than Doritos do (okay, maybe not Doritos... I'm pretty sure those *are* addictive).
No, we are wasting much of our production capacity on stupid, tree-hugging, already-shown-to-be-a-wrong-solution "technology" like ethanol production from corn.
I'm sorry, tree hugging? What? Every environmentalist out there knows that a) ethanol from corn is a really fucking stupid "solution", and b) it's nothing but a shadow subsidy to the corn lobby.
Honestly, labeling this a "tree-hugging" problem is so stupid it's hard to fathom... it's a political problem, and a product of the US system of bribar... err... lobbying. Nothing less, and nothing more.
where most of our money has nothing of value behind it
Bullshit. Money in an FRB system is backed by debt. And debts are collateralized by assets. IOW, a large amount of US money is backed by things like homes, businesses, infrastructure, and so forth. You know, things that are *actually* worth something, as opposed to just, say, a shiny, malleable metal.
Of course, if those assets are over-valued, then you have a problem. Like, say, a massive banking crisis leading to a multi-year recession. But that's a separate topic.
And you don't have SCP available? TBH, I find that a little startling. I mean, yeah, I get it, vanilla Solaris... but what kind of environment are you coping with where you have both remote access to the box, but an inability to install an ssh daemon?
"Okay, now transfer this six-level-deep application directory tree to the new server using only the command-line ftp client found on a vanilla Solaris 8 server.:-) "
Umm... have you never heard of tar?
If the answer is "no", then, no offense, but you have *no business* administrating Solaris (or any Unix, for that matter).
Last I checked, the biggest barrier for me in setting up Asterisk (I built a PVR... why not a PBX?:) was the availability and cost of those Digium cards. At nearly $200 a pop (at least in the bit of searching I did), it's an *awfully* pricy investment just to avoid a few telemarketer calls ('course, Asterisk also provides a *ton* of other features, but for most home setups, they really aren't useful enough to justify the cost).
And yet, statistically speaking, the poor are having far more children than the rich. Somehow they're affording it.
No they're not. They're just not going to the doctor. Which means no prenatal care. Lucky! And when labour hits, they just go to the emergency room, since the hospitals can't turn them away. And once the child is born, they can't afford a doctor, so the child won't get proper preventative care, such that they'll only see a doctor when... yup, you guessed it, they have to go to the emergency room (and, BTW, that applies to their own healthcare as well)!
Yup. It's a great system you Americans have... at least double the cost of every other universal system out there, while excluding millions. Brilliant!
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You'd think. But without a reasonable evaluation process, it's surprising who can squeak through.
'course, I suppose the exact same thing is true of any other discipline. But a failure to, say, engineer a bridge properly results in some pretty spectacular failures, which means the standards for performance are that much higher. Alas, software (and it's developers) isn't held to such lofty standards.
I also look at it as a platform for teenagers yet I am well beyond those years.
Dude... FB originally became popular with the University crowd. It's since moved well beyond that. Jebus, my *mom* is on Facebook (yes, for the record, I find this mildly disturbing).
That's not to say you should sign up. It's definitely got it's problems, and it is fairly silly overall. But targeted at teenagers? Hardly.
The first time I heard 'facebook' I thought of type-A jocks and stuck-up 'faces' at college.
Bitter much?
Just FYI, my circle of predominantly CS-graduate friends is linked up on Facebook. Why? Simple: we've all grown up, moved away, and in a few cases, had families, and FB makes it easy for everyone to stay connected.
Remember, just because you're angry and convinced that <insert popular thing> is silly, doesn't mean it actually is.
Well, to be fair, at least with respect to the second point, the problem is that there's little barrier of entry to becoming a "software developer". All you need to do is hang out a shingle, and voila, you're good to go. Unfortunately, that means the industry is truly awash with clueless hacks...
Pretty standard stuff, and a question that was asked and answered a long time ago.
Yeah, the difference is, here on Slashdot, you get modded +1 Insightful for asking a painfully obvious question that scientists have already put to bed, presumably because it is assumed, here, that scientists are actually really fucking stupid.
Two private corporate bailouts, one FISA bill, and almost a trillion in new spending. This cannot be sustainable in the long term.
And the shutting down of Guantanamo, and the outlawing of torture in the military.
It's been a mixed bag, certainly, but it hasn't been all bad.
And for the record, no one believes this kind of deficit spending is sustainable in the long-term. But the point is to not have to do it for the long term...
your argument has no merit. the LHC could create something nasty at rest with respect to earth's reference frame, different than cosmic ray bombardment.
So, you're trying to tell me that, unbeknownst to us, there are countless black holes speeding through the earth, and therefore the universe, all the fucking time, and we've *never noticed them*? Really??
Sorry bub... I don't buy it.
And almost without exception cosmic rays are either protons, helium nuclei, or electrons.
And what has that to do with anything? The blackhole "concern" is due to the energies of the collisions, not the particles being smashed together.
If Apple didn't patent their work, Microsoft would and claim they invented it first [citing the patent] and screw everyone over.
Except, of course, that Apple could just publish their ideas in a well-known trade paper, and voila, the idea becomes unpatentable.
Patents aren't required to protect your use of an idea. They're only required if you want to prevent someone *else* from using them (or if you want to use your patents as a club so you can violate someone else's, which is, I suspect, the way the Palm/Apple negotiations will end up playing out).
I'm curious if a patent ever is a good thing for the public.
Given the alternative is keeping the idea a trade secret, I'd say the answer is a resounding yes. Which would you prefer? No one knowing how technology X is implemented, ever, or granting a limited time monopoly in exchange for the disclosure of said invention?
Of course, I want to qualify this by pointing out that not all inventions should be protected by patents... Apple's multitouch user interface seems like a classic example of something that should fail the obviousness test. OTOH, the technology to actually implement a multitouch display is certainly a patent-worthy invention, IMHO.
I never said it was identical, I was just pointing out that if you say to the average joe "Install linux!"
Then don't say that. Say "install Ubuntu", or "install Fedora". There, problem solved. I mean, why the hell would you even bother to point them at "50 different variants" when the vast majority of those are either poorly or completely unmaintained, have no long term support option, or aren't targeted at new users?
Oh, and for the record, there most certainly is *not* 50 different popular variants of Linux. I can count *maybe* five... Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and Debian. That's *it*. Of course, there are a couple other niche products out there, like Gentoo, but what idiot would recommend that to a newbie? Hell, even DistroWatch only lists 10 "major" distributions, and I would strongly suggest they're reaching after #5. I mean, who the hell has heard of Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS?
but A.I. did suck.
Only because of that fucking ending. If that damn kid just froze at the bottom of the ocean, followed by a fade to black, I think the movie would've been much better. As it stands, it leaves a sickly saccharine aftertaste that made me want to gag when I saw it...
According to the market... If people wanted them they would buy them, the show rooms would be full of them.
Hardly. The technology is only now reaching the point where a real EV is feasible. Furthermore, economic factors have meant that alternative fuel-based vehicles simply haven't been attractive options to the consumer. Fortunately, that has changed in the last couple years as gas skyrocketed.
People don't want to risk running low on charge and having no option of a quick fill-up
So buy a plug-in hybrid. All electric until it runs low, then switches to a small gas-powered motor. This is, I think the future of electric vehicles, as it marries the best of both worlds: all electric for short trips, which is the vast majority of commuting, and longer range on gasoline when it's needed.
The problem is almost nobody wants a car that takes 10 hours to charge.
According to whom? Hell, here in Canada, during the winter we regularly have to plug in our cars anyway, just to make sure they start the next day. Plugging it in to charge it overnight seems like an extremely minor issue. And you get the bonus of knowing your car is "fueled" up when you take it out the next day (ie, you don't have to worry about checking that gauge and hitting a station if you're running low).
The way I see it, you can flame Microsoft all you want, but how many Linux distros are there?
For each flavour? Let's see, RedHat has two versions (server and desktop, IIRC). Ubuntu has... server and desktop. Debian just has the one. I believe Gentoo is the same. So what was your point?
Of course, it would be disingenuous to claim that somehow Microsoft releasing 6 versions of Windows is identical to all those distros... those distros are completely separate products (granted they serve the same purpose, and contain many of the same components, but they are separate, distinct products). Now, if Ubuntu had 6 flavours, and charged you to upgrade from one to the next, then yeah, you'd have a point. Fortunately, that isn't the case.
I guess what would happen is the US would go cold turkey...
And China would retaliate by selling all their US dollar bonds. You think the economic crisis is bad _NOW_?
That is *highly* unlikely. The United States is one of China's primary trading partners. And given that China a) has an economy heavily driven by a massive trade surplus, and b) is already suffering a massive economic blow thanks to the global financial crisis, the last thing they'd want to do is further damage that trade relationship.
Sorry, no, China needs the US every bit as much as the US (in particular, the US consumer) needs China. Neither party is going to be interested in rocking that boat too hard.
I want a citation for that graph. The idea that cannabis is 5/6 as dependence-causing as alcohol, which, unlike pot, actually produces a real, physical addiction through the triggering of dopamine production, is truly laughable, IMHO. And the 2/3's as physically harmful number sounds like complete bullshit (about the only danger from marijuana is combustion products (eg, tar), and that can be mitigated with a bong or vaporizer).
A is true insofar as it's true for chips, soda, etc. ie, a user is free to abuse it all they want, but it has no physically addictive component, and so any such abuse is a consequence of psychology, and not the compound itself. Contrast this with heroin, morphine, or alcohol, and I think it's clear that marijuana does not have a "high potential for abuse", any more than Doritos do (okay, maybe not Doritos... I'm pretty sure those *are* addictive).
Which is why you don't burn it. You vaporize it.
Because we like to waste space and bandwidth?
Yeah. Thanks, but no thanks.
No, we are wasting much of our production capacity on stupid, tree-hugging, already-shown-to-be-a-wrong-solution "technology" like ethanol production from corn.
I'm sorry, tree hugging? What? Every environmentalist out there knows that a) ethanol from corn is a really fucking stupid "solution", and b) it's nothing but a shadow subsidy to the corn lobby.
Honestly, labeling this a "tree-hugging" problem is so stupid it's hard to fathom... it's a political problem, and a product of the US system of bribar... err... lobbying. Nothing less, and nothing more.
where most of our money has nothing of value behind it
Bullshit. Money in an FRB system is backed by debt. And debts are collateralized by assets. IOW, a large amount of US money is backed by things like homes, businesses, infrastructure, and so forth. You know, things that are *actually* worth something, as opposed to just, say, a shiny, malleable metal.
Of course, if those assets are over-valued, then you have a problem. Like, say, a massive banking crisis leading to a multi-year recession. But that's a separate topic.
And you don't have SCP available? TBH, I find that a little startling. I mean, yeah, I get it, vanilla Solaris... but what kind of environment are you coping with where you have both remote access to the box, but an inability to install an ssh daemon?
"Okay, now transfer this six-level-deep application directory tree to the new server using only the command-line ftp client found on a vanilla Solaris 8 server. :-) "
Umm... have you never heard of tar?
If the answer is "no", then, no offense, but you have *no business* administrating Solaris (or any Unix, for that matter).
Last I checked, the biggest barrier for me in setting up Asterisk (I built a PVR... why not a PBX? :) was the availability and cost of those Digium cards. At nearly $200 a pop (at least in the bit of searching I did), it's an *awfully* pricy investment just to avoid a few telemarketer calls ('course, Asterisk also provides a *ton* of other features, but for most home setups, they really aren't useful enough to justify the cost).
And yet, statistically speaking, the poor are having far more children than the rich. Somehow they're affording it.
No they're not. They're just not going to the doctor. Which means no prenatal care. Lucky! And when labour hits, they just go to the emergency room, since the hospitals can't turn them away. And once the child is born, they can't afford a doctor, so the child won't get proper preventative care, such that they'll only see a doctor when... yup, you guessed it, they have to go to the emergency room (and, BTW, that applies to their own healthcare as well)!
Yup. It's a great system you Americans have... at least double the cost of every other universal system out there, while excluding millions. Brilliant!