Well the price of sex sinking is certainly a good thing, it means both men and women have more of it. Also while I find the "feminism = free sex" claim more than dubious (that's really not how it happened historically) - feminist would likely argue that women should not be valued as providers of sex, but for their skills and accomplishments. It's true though that this can be bad news for those women who have neither.
Women have more options today - they don't need to get married in order to have an income, they can pursue their own careers and their own goals in life. So while demand from men for marriage has dropped, the same applies for women, too.
Now neither men nor women are forced to have a relationship or enter marriage in order to have an income or to get sex. That changes many things and that's not necessarily easy. Overall it's good to have freedom to chose, though.
Because the culture of uploading pictures to Facebook makes the society fake and shallow,
Yeah, before uploading pictures to Facebook everything was deep and genuine.
Once you have children you'll get constantly pestered by your parents and assorted other family for updates, Facebook or Google+ are good ways to distribute them.
As for demonstrations: the *whole* point there is to be seen, to make as much of a media impact as possible.
Except that RMS is absolutely 100% spot on correct in his assessment.
I don't like Apple products for the same reasons RMS hates them. That said: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died." - is a ridiculous statement. The line sums up a whole person's life, focusing entirely on the bad things he did. Only an asshole (like RMS) would do that.
Furthermore, RMS knows the role Jobs played as one (of many) computing pioneers and knows his contributions to usability. To leave that out is again something only an asshole would do. On top of that he compares him to a criminal, which has no basis in fact.
So at the end he got me to defend Steve Jobs. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl15, I hate that makers of Android devices make you jump through hoops to get root on your own hardware, and I hate Apple's walled garden bullshit.
Some people (like you) just don't want to hear it.
Most people just don't like assholes. However I do respect this particular assholes leadership role in GNU and think the GPL is a wonderful gift to mankind.
those of us who want to move to Google+ can't convince enough of our less techy friends to move over
Google+ would also need to convince these techy folks that they should evangelize for the service. They lost me with the real name policy and the way they reacted to users' complaints about it.
Facebook has in principle the same policy, but they are relaxed about it, and if someone makes a page for their dog or uses their pen name, they aren't worried. Google should have learned that from them.
Well just before Jobs died, Palin announced she would not run for president. His death pushed her announcement of the front pages. How many people do you think know who Sarah Palin is? This is a mainstream event, alright.
Your daughter just happens to be the exception rather than the rule in this case. I think you need to try a larger sample size.
We can finally dump the multiple layers of caching, look-ahead and other OS complexity
That sounds unlikely. To replace multiple layers of caching you need to come up with a technology which is not just faster than Flash and faster than DRAM, but also than cache RAM. A tall order for a single new technology.
Even if that was the case, it would have to have a uniform speed independent of size and process. Otherwise you would surely have Memristor RAMs of different price and speed. So you would again use smaller (and more expensive) Memristor RAMs to cache the bigger (and cheaper) Memristor RAMs.
It will become practical to implement neural networks in hardware. This will completely change the way we design and program software and databases.
That's been possible for a long time, slightly faster replacements for RAM and Flash will do basically nothing for that. So I'd get the opposite conclusion: software and databases won't be affected by this in any meaningful way.
Persistent and portable user sessions will become the norm. (Look at Sun Ray for an idea of how this works. [...])
Suspend to RAM is already possible, I use it on my desktop Linux machine all the time. Not needing the minimal power required to keep the RAM alive is nice, nothing more. Desktops usually have a connection to power anyway, and portables can keep that mode alive for a very long time.
Portability of sessions is not affected by this at all. Sun Rays are just small boxes to run VNC clients on - sessions are portable between clients, but they stay on the very same server. Memristor technology doesn't help with that.
If you're talking about being the last one to the market instead of going with Windows Phone, maybe.
Wouldn't have mattered, I think. Android is established, but none of the existing Android vendors have a lock on it. Anyway, if e.g. HTC can sell Windows and Android phones, why couldn't Nokia have gone the same route? They don't have a lock on Windows phones either, they are just the only vendor totally depending on Windows.
I completely disagree with the idea that the first thing you should do in a patent dispute is to take someone to court.
I think his take is that it's a good thing if this goes to court, because then we (in the sense of "OSS community") will know which patents this is about, and can either do something about it or see the patents invalidated. Whether it's good for Samsung, HTC, Goggle etc is a different matter.
For this reason MS might well chose not to sue Google, as the mere threat "we have patents of some sort" is already useful to extort money. Suing Google would put that at risk.
Well ARM is gaining a lot of importance *now*, regardless of their history. Besides ARM is improving their product continuously - as you have to when you want to compete in such a fast-changing market. Anyway, Britain is still one of the leading industrial countries in the world. Whether it's living up to its potential is another matter.
Being German I also have my doubts about our supposedly "dominant economy". We don't train anywhere near enough engineers, we have a lot of unemployment etc... the grass always looks greener on the other side.
The Pirate Party made it into its first state parliament in Berlin though, so yay us.
I know private companies which do the same. One of them has outsourced IT to another company and (among many other ridiculous things) now pays $135 per month and mailing list on top of all the other expenditure. They actually went and replaced the working mailing list servers and substituted them with the supplier's crappy system, just so they could pay them that insane rate. They also hire contractors they don't even interview.
It's unavoidable - the bigger the organization the bigger the gap between the interests of individual employees from the interests of the organization. Madness, incompetence and bribery finds fertile ground there. Dilbert shows what's going on in private industry, and everybody new to the strip always thinks its creator must work in the same company.
My guess is that most people see this as Samsung fighting back, so they are more likely going to be given a free pass. Now if Apple would offer to drop this whole nonsense and Samsung would continue to pursue them, that would likely turn public opinion against them.
Also Apple is in a somewhat unfortunate position here, because it's easy to understand why their patents on a rather trivial shape are stupid. I've worked a long time in telecom, so I suspect Samsung's patents might be just as stupid - most patents are. However that's not as easy to see unless you are really deep in the technology, so people are more likely to believe that Samsung has something really significant there.
Remember when the next Ice Age was the big concern?
No I don't. Typically the claim is made that this happened in the 70s, that in the 70s "all the scientists believed in global cooling". Out of curiosity: do you personally really remember the 70? I suppose many Slashdotters don't, but I was alive then, and there was no big concern about the next ice age.
Well the CEO of Samsung has already indicated that he'd rather not have lawsuits. "Apple is Samsung's biggest customer. [...] From our perspective, we are not entirely happy (about the litigations)". Looks like Apple could end this if they wanted to.
Fact is, those plants were shoddily maintained, of old design, and sited very poorly.
Which is the reason nuclear energy advocates were constantly pushing for upgrades and replacements of the Japanese plants. Hang on, no they didn't.
Fact is: a high-tech country like Japan, which has a well-deserved reputation as a manufacturer of quality products still had nuclear power plants which were shoddily maintained, of old design, and sited very poorly. So the conclusion "well if the Japanese can't do nuclear safely, then nobody can" seems quite reasonable.
Apart from that: Japan is in the Pacific ring of fire. That's just not a good place for a nuclear power plant. So much for siting.
Can you support this claim somehow? I hear sometimes of people from Europe going to the US or to other European countries in order to get a speciality treatment only available there. Same as the other way round. I've never heard of anyone spending money on a treatment in the US which he could also receive in his home country, basically for free. Are you aware of a case?
BTW, for Americans going abroad in order to afford treatment: you might consider Taiwan as well. Their English language skills are typically not great, but they have a high quality medical system.
Slashdot Mirror
GP is talking about STDs specifically.
Well the price of sex sinking is certainly a good thing, it means both men and women have more of it. Also while I find the "feminism = free sex" claim more than dubious (that's really not how it happened historically) - feminist would likely argue that women should not be valued as providers of sex, but for their skills and accomplishments. It's true though that this can be bad news for those women who have neither.
Women have more options today - they don't need to get married in order to have an income, they can pursue their own careers and their own goals in life. So while demand from men for marriage has dropped, the same applies for women, too.
Now neither men nor women are forced to have a relationship or enter marriage in order to have an income or to get sex. That changes many things and that's not necessarily easy. Overall it's good to have freedom to chose, though.
Don't they have jammers on fighter planes? It seems to have worked well in actual combat, so I'd guess it would behave well in an exercise, too.
Freeloading in which sense? Who pays for the military stuff?
[...]the ocean is big.
So one option should be to have GPS-jamming exercises somewhere else, someplace where you don't have lots of civilian fishermen around.
I think that's available on CyanogenMod: permissions management.
Because the culture of uploading pictures to Facebook makes the society fake and shallow,
Yeah, before uploading pictures to Facebook everything was deep and genuine.
Once you have children you'll get constantly pestered by your parents and assorted other family for updates, Facebook or Google+ are good ways to distribute them.
As for demonstrations: the *whole* point there is to be seen, to make as much of a media impact as possible.
Isn't that what I pointed out, two posts up?
Except that RMS is absolutely 100% spot on correct in his assessment.
I don't like Apple products for the same reasons RMS hates them. That said: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died." - is a ridiculous statement. The line sums up a whole person's life, focusing entirely on the bad things he did. Only an asshole (like RMS) would do that.
Furthermore, RMS knows the role Jobs played as one (of many) computing pioneers and knows his contributions to usability. To leave that out is again something only an asshole would do. On top of that he compares him to a criminal, which has no basis in fact.
So at the end he got me to defend Steve Jobs. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl15, I hate that makers of Android devices make you jump through hoops to get root on your own hardware, and I hate Apple's walled garden bullshit.
Some people (like you) just don't want to hear it.
Most people just don't like assholes. However I do respect this particular assholes leadership role in GNU and think the GPL is a wonderful gift to mankind.
those of us who want to move to Google+ can't convince enough of our less techy friends to move over
Google+ would also need to convince these techy folks that they should evangelize for the service. They lost me with the real name policy and the way they reacted to users' complaints about it.
Facebook has in principle the same policy, but they are relaxed about it, and if someone makes a page for their dog or uses their pen name, they aren't worried. Google should have learned that from them.
Well just before Jobs died, Palin announced she would not run for president. His death pushed her announcement of the front pages. How many people do you think know who Sarah Palin is? This is a mainstream event, alright.
Your daughter just happens to be the exception rather than the rule in this case. I think you need to try a larger sample size.
We can finally dump the multiple layers of caching, look-ahead and other OS complexity
That sounds unlikely. To replace multiple layers of caching you need to come up with a technology which is not just faster than Flash and faster than DRAM, but also than cache RAM. A tall order for a single new technology.
Even if that was the case, it would have to have a uniform speed independent of size and process. Otherwise you would surely have Memristor RAMs of different price and speed. So you would again use smaller (and more expensive) Memristor RAMs to cache the bigger (and cheaper) Memristor RAMs.
It will become practical to implement neural networks in hardware. This will completely change the way we design and program software and databases.
That's been possible for a long time, slightly faster replacements for RAM and Flash will do basically nothing for that. So I'd get the opposite conclusion: software and databases won't be affected by this in any meaningful way.
Persistent and portable user sessions will become the norm. (Look at Sun Ray for an idea of how this works. [...])
Suspend to RAM is already possible, I use it on my desktop Linux machine all the time. Not needing the minimal power required to keep the RAM alive is nice, nothing more. Desktops usually have a connection to power anyway, and portables can keep that mode alive for a very long time. Portability of sessions is not affected by this at all. Sun Rays are just small boxes to run VNC clients on - sessions are portable between clients, but they stay on the very same server. Memristor technology doesn't help with that.
If you're talking about being the last one to the market instead of going with Windows Phone, maybe.
Wouldn't have mattered, I think. Android is established, but none of the existing Android vendors have a lock on it. Anyway, if e.g. HTC can sell Windows and Android phones, why couldn't Nokia have gone the same route? They don't have a lock on Windows phones either, they are just the only vendor totally depending on Windows.
I completely disagree with the idea that the first thing you should do in a patent dispute is to take someone to court.
I think his take is that it's a good thing if this goes to court, because then we (in the sense of "OSS community") will know which patents this is about, and can either do something about it or see the patents invalidated. Whether it's good for Samsung, HTC, Goggle etc is a different matter.
For this reason MS might well chose not to sue Google, as the mere threat "we have patents of some sort" is already useful to extort money. Suing Google would put that at risk.
I can't wait to see the whole patent system destroy itself. Then we can do IT.
Sounds nice, but it looks like more like the patent system destroying IT, right now. The lawyers are winning.
Well ARM is gaining a lot of importance *now*, regardless of their history. Besides ARM is improving their product continuously - as you have to when you want to compete in such a fast-changing market. Anyway, Britain is still one of the leading industrial countries in the world. Whether it's living up to its potential is another matter.
Being German I also have my doubts about our supposedly "dominant economy". We don't train anywhere near enough engineers, we have a lot of unemployment etc ... the grass always looks greener on the other side.
The Pirate Party made it into its first state parliament in Berlin though, so yay us.
I don't recall dreaming of another corporation taking over from Microsoft. I want OSS because I care about my freedom online.
I know private companies which do the same. One of them has outsourced IT to another company and (among many other ridiculous things) now pays $135 per month and mailing list on top of all the other expenditure. They actually went and replaced the working mailing list servers and substituted them with the supplier's crappy system, just so they could pay them that insane rate. They also hire contractors they don't even interview.
It's unavoidable - the bigger the organization the bigger the gap between the interests of individual employees from the interests of the organization. Madness, incompetence and bribery finds fertile ground there. Dilbert shows what's going on in private industry, and everybody new to the strip always thinks its creator must work in the same company.
My guess is that most people see this as Samsung fighting back, so they are more likely going to be given a free pass. Now if Apple would offer to drop this whole nonsense and Samsung would continue to pursue them, that would likely turn public opinion against them.
Also Apple is in a somewhat unfortunate position here, because it's easy to understand why their patents on a rather trivial shape are stupid. I've worked a long time in telecom, so I suspect Samsung's patents might be just as stupid - most patents are. However that's not as easy to see unless you are really deep in the technology, so people are more likely to believe that Samsung has something really significant there.
I'm not sure what you are asking. Could they end it on their own? Obviously not.
Would you be okay with your mother, wife, or daughter performing in a porn flick?
I would not be ok with them being PETA members. However I would just have to accept that they live their own lives, wouldn't I?
Remember when the next Ice Age was the big concern?
No I don't. Typically the claim is made that this happened in the 70s, that in the 70s "all the scientists believed in global cooling". Out of curiosity: do you personally really remember the 70? I suppose many Slashdotters don't, but I was alive then, and there was no big concern about the next ice age.
Well the CEO of Samsung has already indicated that he'd rather not have lawsuits. "Apple is Samsung's biggest customer. [...] From our perspective, we are not entirely happy (about the litigations)". Looks like Apple could end this if they wanted to.
Fact is, those plants were shoddily maintained, of old design, and sited very poorly.
Which is the reason nuclear energy advocates were constantly pushing for upgrades and replacements of the Japanese plants. Hang on, no they didn't.
Fact is: a high-tech country like Japan, which has a well-deserved reputation as a manufacturer of quality products still had nuclear power plants which were shoddily maintained, of old design, and sited very poorly. So the conclusion "well if the Japanese can't do nuclear safely, then nobody can" seems quite reasonable.
Apart from that: Japan is in the Pacific ring of fire. That's just not a good place for a nuclear power plant. So much for siting.
Can you support this claim somehow? I hear sometimes of people from Europe going to the US or to other European countries in order to get a speciality treatment only available there. Same as the other way round. I've never heard of anyone spending money on a treatment in the US which he could also receive in his home country, basically for free. Are you aware of a case?
BTW, for Americans going abroad in order to afford treatment: you might consider Taiwan as well. Their English language skills are typically not great, but they have a high quality medical system.