But the original submission also points out that while the patch came in fast, "the 'Many eyes' took seven years to 'make the bug shallow'."
How many years would the bug persist if only a few eyes were looking at the code?
When I started watching TV there were two dials with fine-tuning rings and an on/off/volume knob. Today I have 56 buttons on just one of my remote controls, not to mention that some buttons have multiple functions depending on the history of button presses.
I think the Google remote is a reasonably good design; it's one of the features I like.
I have the book and I initially bought the electronic copy through Amazon to read using Kindle software on my PC and Droid X.
Even on a 1920x1080 21" display, I found some of the diagrams to be illegible. In particular, figure 15-14 was completely unusable.
As a result, I returned the electronic version and bought the paper version from my local Barnes & Noble. I then bought a PDF copy from Apress.com for $10 more since I registered my copy with them.
I have found the book to be pretty good but landing more in the reference camp than the tutorial camp. I need the reference so I'm glad to have the book but I need a good tutorial on creating themes for Drupal 7 and I'm still looking.
Good ol' Polaroid! Did anyone at the time think that was ever going to be said so soon about such a leading edge company? I still have my Swinger in the original (tattered) box.
I don't think anyone will be as influential in the computer world. It was a much smaller community back then and it was easier to stand out. That's not to say there won't be people who do things that are as meaningful but they will now be one of dozens of projects.
If a person is going to be that sort of stand out today, he will have to be in another field - perhaps nanotechnology or bio-engineering - where the foundations are still being laid.
I was running Coherent at the time and looking for something better. I'd looked at Minix but I was looking for something open. I started playing with Linux as soon as code first became available for download and also played with 386BSD which had the lead over Linux for some time. Soon after that, the AT&T lawsuit began to cast a pall over the BSD community and Linux got TCP/IP going. Not wanting to depend on something potentially embroiled in a lawsuit (who might get sued wasn't clear then), I went with Linux as my base OS. Since then, I have continued to dabble with the various BSDs and use OpenBSD when security is a strong concern but Linux has been my first choice. It's interesting to wonder how things might have turned out if the lawsuit hadn't happened.
When you buy into a subdivision with a HOA, you are told that fact up front -- no one makes you move into an area with a HOA. People choose to live with a HOA after they've experienced the Neighbor From Hell a time or two. The HOA is the lesser of the two evils.
If HFT were to be legislatively controlled, it seems to me the most obvious way to do it would be by modifying the long and short term capital gains taxes to create a progressive system: the longer you hold the asset before taking the capital gain, the less tax you pay. If you had to pay 99% tax on a gain resulting from possessing an asset for less than 1 minute things would be a lot different.
This is not to say that I favor that solution, it's just one that occurs to me. I think there's a solution that doesn't require the use of force. If I were the CEO of a publicly company, I would not want to be listed on an exchange that allows HFT. If I were an amateur investor in stocks, I would not want to invest in companies listed on an exchange that allows HFT. As a result, there's clearly a market for a 'natural' exchange as opposed to one that is 'on steroids'.
Thanks for the link! I found a style there that appeals to me that I've not tried before which they say could be called "Lisp style" (with my slight mods here):
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) { if (0 == (i % 2)) { doSomething(i); } else { doSomethingElse(i); }}
Thanks for a reason for the second style which I find the most awful of the common ones (the first is the best). The second style makes my skin crawl and I never could see a reason that anyone who isn't flat insane would use it.
I think, for most people, the reason styles which put braces at the start of lines are popular is because their editor doesn't support bouncing back and forth between braces (I don't mean matching highlighting, I mean a vi-style bounce).
Another reason is that people aren't using enough width in their indentation and are using too many levels of indentation just because since they can.
Finally, I think if you have several screens code inside braces that is a hint that maybe it ought to be a encapsulated as a function. Of course, I'm from the old school where individual files of code ought not to have more than a few screens of lines anyway....
I'm not saying there aren't more efficient methods of waging a resistance. I am saying the 2nd Amendment is sufficient due to the overwhelming numbers of gun owners, the general unwillingness of troops to fire on their fellow citizens, the inability to tell friend from foe in your own country, the large number of trained ex-military in our society, and other factors.
Certainly, IEDs and other such weapons would be useful but firearms would be sufficient. Far more devastating than any of those weapons to those who want to wage and win such a war (think about what the objective would be for those instigating the war) would be a simple failure of the majority to show up for work. That would destroy the economy and would effectively be a scorched earth defense against those who would oppress.
You may recall a guy named "Eric Rudolph" who was very wanted in a well populated area of America. Still, after a massive manhunt and being the most wanted man in America, they were unable to locate him for several years and caught him almost by mistake. He was only one man and not part of a general resistance movement.
Also, the people who are arguing that the military could put down a resistance in America need to remember there are only ~480,000 troops of whom nowhere near 100% would agree to wage war here. There are also tens of millions of private gun owners who own over 100 million guns (i.e., enough to share). As a result, the ratio is around 400:1 in favor of the resistance. Only one person from the resistance in 400 would have to kill an oppressing soldier and the enemy would have been completly obliterated.
Finally, it needs to be pointed out that, if soldiers have had a tough time telling the good guys from the bad in places like Vietnam and Iraq, just think how hard it would be in a situation when those people are literally just like you ("you" being the troops).
As much as I respect our military, and I while I agree it would be a very bloody conflict, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that any army in the world could win against the civilian population of America (short of nuking the majority of the country) and the primary weapon on the side of the resistance would likely be.30-06 rifles.
Since we are handing out hints, let me give you one: in one of those countries there is a strong tradition of democracy and thinking for yourself while in the other there has been 6,000 years of top-down rule. Guess which one is more like America and therefore a more valid comparison?
You should use Google to watch the videos of insurgent snipers using rifles against US troops. The fact those videos exist pretty much guts your entire argument.
Also, do you think the group you are referring to as "gun nuts" is entirely devoid of military experience? Don't you think it is possible that "gun nuts" have a higher than average likelihood of having military experience?
You should probably read at least "Blackhawk Down" before you post any more foolishness.
Generally speaking the answer is "no". The correct answer is "these people would be my father / brother / son / neighbor". People with no experience whatsoever of the military seem to picture soldiers as mindless killing machines. The reality is they are people just like you and me.
You gotta be a fucking idiot to claim you can outgun a U.S. army these days, is what I am saying.
Someone should tell this to the insurgents in Iraq, the warlords in Mogadishu, and a bunch of other people!
So yeah, the moment the army knows who the bad guy is, that bad guy is dead.
There's this guy named bin Laden... You may have heard of him? We know exactly who he is and we are even pretty certain where he is a lot of the time... Last I heard, he is still alive after several years of being America's enemy #1 and yet he is still loose and sending taunting videos.
In America, before things got to the point you have described, the situation would be resolved with national strikes (note how a handful of people have recently stopped the French government in its tracks - a government not noted for its gentleness when dealing with uprisings) and general civil disobedience.
Even assuming it somehow got to a shooting war in America, you are assuming that no one would oppose the government by "accidentally" screwing up various logistical issues such as sending military supplies to the wrong destination. Also, workers would "go slow" and the economy would grind to a halt. Subtle sabotage would be everywhere.
To summarize: you have made the mistake of thinking people would go entirely toe-to-toe against the military. No one in their right mind would do that (although there would clearly be skirmishes). The Federal government's efforts would die the death of a thousand cuts coming from within as much as from without.
There are several countries with "United States" in their name. For example, Mexico is officially "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" but is known as "Mexico". Similarly, the "United States of America" is known as "America".
As a result, most English speaking people understand "American" to mean a citizen of the "United States of America" the same way they understand "Mexican" to mean a citizen of "Estados Unidos Mexicanos".
I don't disagree that life on Mars would be very tough. Where I do disagree is in the assessment of whether it is so tough as to make it impractical. Some people would have said there just isn't a spare scrubber on Apollo XIII while others would have said I can make something that will work from what I have on hand because I have to. The difference in attitude made the difference in the outcome of the mission.
To head off a possible charge of ignorance leading to irrational exuberance: I am an engineer (albeit electrical) so I have some idea of what challenges can lie, unseen to a layman, in undertaking an effort. On the other hand, I also know good engineers solve extraordinarily difficult problems every day. That's our job and that's why we get into engineering - for the challenge.
Too often in the past, expert analysis has deemed a project infeasible (traveling faster than a horse (the air pressure was supposed to be too much for our lung power), heavier than air powered flight, the Panama canal, etc.), only to have the experts be proven wrong. The only real way to determine whether or not such a project can succeed is to try it. Often it is impossible at the beginning but inventions made during the effort make it possible. Without starting the "impossible" project, those inventions would never have been achieved.
My example from the recent past was intended to show how, when traditional techniques don't work, you have to get inventive. Obviously, the degree of challenge is different but the principle is the same: necessity is the mother of invention.
Sure, I'm a "the glass is half full" sort of guy but I think without that view we would still be living in cold and dark caves because "obviously" fire and lightning (electricity) can't be turned into anything useful.
I have always been inspired by a story I read many years ago where a group of engineers and scientists were shown a film smuggled out of Germany during WWII at the cost of the agent's life. The film showed how the Germans had developed a flying soldier using a jetpack.
While the quality of the film prevented the details of the jetpack from being clear, it was clear the solidiers were flying with them. After many months of exhausting work, the engineers and scientists on our side had produced a practical jetpack similar to what they had seen in the film.
Only then was it revealed that the film was a forgery, created at a Hollywood studio. Its purpose was to change the mindset of the scientists and engineers so that they would believe a jetpack was possible. Without that initial belief they were doomed to failure.
Finally, analyses of why things can't be done often remind me of those articles on why there's no time in life to get anything done. Out of 24 hours in a day you spend 8 hours asleep; you spend 2 hours shopping, cooking, eating, and washing up; you spend 1.5 hours driving; etc. At the end of the article you find that you have to spare time at all yet somehow we obviously do. Detailed analysis does not always produce a valid conclusion.
I think we're just going to have to accept that, given the time and resources available, we're just going to disagree on this today. I do admit sometimes the glass is half empty (for now, anyway) but I don't like to start out with that assumption.:-)
Then we had better get started right away and quit goofing off!
By the way, of course no one would use acrylic on Mars for a greenhouse for all the reasons you outlined. They would more likely use a material that worked well on Earth long before modern plastics were invented and which can be made much more easily on site than plastic: glass. The relative availability of materials will be far more important than transparancy, durability, or almost any other consideration.
Local conditions and availability of materials will govern development on Mars far more than purely technological concerns.
An example from the recent past would be sod houses on the plains of North America of the 1800s. People couldn't yet transport what they regarded as traditional building materials (wood and/or brick) to the construction site so they used what they had (sod) and only shipped the things they absolutely could not improvise around (e.g., iron/steel implements).
If you are going to be a Windows desktop shop then you might want to consider Groove http://www.groove.net/ for your groupware.
For our organization Groove has done what we needed and provided a nice side effect in that important files are automatically "backed up" if they are in a shared workspace. Since we work from laptops the off-line usage has also been an important feature.
Groove was already integrated with Office and Project. Now that they have been bought by Microsoft I expect that integration to deepen.
Nearly 100% of all progress from the beginning of time has been the result satisfying wants not needs. People need: air, water, food, and shelter (basic functional clothing is nothing more than portable shelter and not needed in many climates). Each of those requirements has a basic level at which they can be satisfied that is very low.
Everything else is a want.
Since civilization is built on meeting wants, discovering new wants is not intrinsically a bad thing. Before something can be invented a want has to be discovered. It's not so much that "Necessity is the mother of invention" as "Want is the mother of invention".
What isn't a good thing is confusing wants with needs. This is something that happens all too often (as in "I need a big screen digital TV system otherwise I am oppressed, downtrodden, and discriminated against!").
If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.
Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.
EU versus USA is written by Dr Fredrik Bergström, President of the Swedish Research Institute of Trade, and Mr Robert Gidehag, until recently Chief Economist of the same institute and now President of the Swedish Taxpayer's Association.
No doubt many will disagree with the study (such is the nature of economics) but it is still an interesting read.
Sports stars are of higher value to society precisely because of the "economics of scale on their side" you mentioned.
That is exactly what I meant by making certain a lot of people are aware of you. Most of the wealthy have figured out it is better to get $1 from each of a million people than to get $10,000 from one person.
How much you earn is a direct measure of how much society values your contribution to the world.
Most people's time is only immediately valued by a small group of people and what most people can accomplish is pretty much the same (on average one person is much the same as another). Hence, there's not much value put on the average individual's personal time and he isn't paid a lot.
On the other hand (to use a common example), a sports star has an unusual talent (not many people can do what he does) and many people put some value on it. Hence, the sports star makes a lot of money.
In all cases (short of theft), what a person is paid is a reflection of the value society puts on that person's contribution to the world. Drug lords make a lot of money because many people put a high value on the product they supply to at great personal risk. School teachers are not paid a lot because only the parents of the students really care and teachers are easily replaced (comparatively speaking).
Sometimes someone produces something of high value to the world but the world doesn't find out about it so that person doesn't make much money (or any). Van Gogh would be an example.
Suppose a person invented clean free energy. That process/machine would have incredible value to the world but only if the world finds out about it. If that invention is constrained to a community the inventor may be rich in his community but he will not be rich in the world.
At the end of the day, no matter how much we not like to admit it, the people who earn more than we do (including successful stock speculators who are effectively lending money at high interest rates paid by unsuccessful speculators) are more highly valued by society than we are.
To make more, do something society as a whole values highly, that few other people could have done, and make sure society find out about you.
Slashdot Mirror
But the original submission also points out that while the patch came in fast, "the 'Many eyes' took seven years to 'make the bug shallow'." How many years would the bug persist if only a few eyes were looking at the code?
When I started watching TV there were two dials with fine-tuning rings and an on/off/volume knob. Today I have 56 buttons on just one of my remote controls, not to mention that some buttons have multiple functions depending on the history of button presses.
I think the Google remote is a reasonably good design; it's one of the features I like.
I have the book and I initially bought the electronic copy through Amazon to read using Kindle software on my PC and Droid X.
Even on a 1920x1080 21" display, I found some of the diagrams to be illegible. In particular, figure 15-14 was completely unusable.
As a result, I returned the electronic version and bought the paper version from my local Barnes & Noble. I then bought a PDF copy from Apress.com for $10 more since I registered my copy with them.
I have found the book to be pretty good but landing more in the reference camp than the tutorial camp. I need the reference so I'm glad to have the book but I need a good tutorial on creating themes for Drupal 7 and I'm still looking.
Good ol' Polaroid! Did anyone at the time think that was ever going to be said so soon about such a leading edge company? I still have my Swinger in the original (tattered) box.
I don't think anyone will be as influential in the computer world. It was a much smaller community back then and it was easier to stand out. That's not to say there won't be people who do things that are as meaningful but they will now be one of dozens of projects.
If a person is going to be that sort of stand out today, he will have to be in another field - perhaps nanotechnology or bio-engineering - where the foundations are still being laid.
I was running Coherent at the time and looking for something better. I'd looked at Minix but I was looking for something open. I started playing with Linux as soon as code first became available for download and also played with 386BSD which had the lead over Linux for some time. Soon after that, the AT&T lawsuit began to cast a pall over the BSD community and Linux got TCP/IP going. Not wanting to depend on something potentially embroiled in a lawsuit (who might get sued wasn't clear then), I went with Linux as my base OS. Since then, I have continued to dabble with the various BSDs and use OpenBSD when security is a strong concern but Linux has been my first choice. It's interesting to wonder how things might have turned out if the lawsuit hadn't happened.
When you buy into a subdivision with a HOA, you are told that fact up front -- no one makes you move into an area with a HOA. People choose to live with a HOA after they've experienced the Neighbor From Hell a time or two. The HOA is the lesser of the two evils.
If HFT were to be legislatively controlled, it seems to me the most obvious way to do it would be by modifying the long and short term capital gains taxes to create a progressive system: the longer you hold the asset before taking the capital gain, the less tax you pay. If you had to pay 99% tax on a gain resulting from possessing an asset for less than 1 minute things would be a lot different.
This is not to say that I favor that solution, it's just one that occurs to me. I think there's a solution that doesn't require the use of force. If I were the CEO of a publicly company, I would not want to be listed on an exchange that allows HFT. If I were an amateur investor in stocks, I would not want to invest in companies listed on an exchange that allows HFT. As a result, there's clearly a market for a 'natural' exchange as opposed to one that is 'on steroids'.
Thanks for the link! I found a style there that appeals to me that I've not tried before which they say could be called "Lisp style" (with my slight mods here):
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
if (0 == (i % 2)) {
doSomething(i); }
else {
doSomethingElse(i); }}
Thanks for a reason for the second style which I find the most awful of the common ones (the first is the best). The second style makes my skin crawl and I never could see a reason that anyone who isn't flat insane would use it.
I think, for most people, the reason styles which put braces at the start of lines are popular is because their editor doesn't support bouncing back and forth between braces (I don't mean matching highlighting, I mean a vi-style bounce).
Another reason is that people aren't using enough width in their indentation and are using too many levels of indentation just because since they can.
Finally, I think if you have several screens code inside braces that is a hint that maybe it ought to be a encapsulated as a function. Of course, I'm from the old school where individual files of code ought not to have more than a few screens of lines anyway....
I'm not saying there aren't more efficient methods of waging a resistance. I am saying the 2nd Amendment is sufficient due to the overwhelming numbers of gun owners, the general unwillingness of troops to fire on their fellow citizens, the inability to tell friend from foe in your own country, the large number of trained ex-military in our society, and other factors.
Certainly, IEDs and other such weapons would be useful but firearms would be sufficient. Far more devastating than any of those weapons to those who want to wage and win such a war (think about what the objective would be for those instigating the war) would be a simple failure of the majority to show up for work. That would destroy the economy and would effectively be a scorched earth defense against those who would oppress.
You may recall a guy named "Eric Rudolph" who was very wanted in a well populated area of America. Still, after a massive manhunt and being the most wanted man in America, they were unable to locate him for several years and caught him almost by mistake. He was only one man and not part of a general resistance movement.
Also, the people who are arguing that the military could put down a resistance in America need to remember there are only ~480,000 troops of whom nowhere near 100% would agree to wage war here. There are also tens of millions of private gun owners who own over 100 million guns (i.e., enough to share). As a result, the ratio is around 400:1 in favor of the resistance. Only one person from the resistance in 400 would have to kill an oppressing soldier and the enemy would have been completly obliterated.
Finally, it needs to be pointed out that, if soldiers have had a tough time telling the good guys from the bad in places like Vietnam and Iraq, just think how hard it would be in a situation when those people are literally just like you ("you" being the troops).
As much as I respect our military, and I while I agree it would be a very bloody conflict, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that any army in the world could win against the civilian population of America (short of nuking the majority of the country) and the primary weapon on the side of the resistance would likely be .30-06 rifles.
Since we are handing out hints, let me give you one: in one of those countries there is a strong tradition of democracy and thinking for yourself while in the other there has been 6,000 years of top-down rule. Guess which one is more like America and therefore a more valid comparison?
You should use Google to watch the videos of insurgent snipers using rifles against US troops. The fact those videos exist pretty much guts your entire argument.
Also, do you think the group you are referring to as "gun nuts" is entirely devoid of military experience? Don't you think it is possible that "gun nuts" have a higher than average likelihood of having military experience?
You should probably read at least "Blackhawk Down" before you post any more foolishness.
Generally speaking the answer is "no". The correct answer is "these people would be my father / brother / son / neighbor". People with no experience whatsoever of the military seem to picture soldiers as mindless killing machines. The reality is they are people just like you and me.
Someone should tell this to the insurgents in Iraq, the warlords in Mogadishu, and a bunch of other people!
There's this guy named bin Laden... You may have heard of him? We know exactly who he is and we are even pretty certain where he is a lot of the time... Last I heard, he is still alive after several years of being America's enemy #1 and yet he is still loose and sending taunting videos.
In America, before things got to the point you have described, the situation would be resolved with national strikes (note how a handful of people have recently stopped the French government in its tracks - a government not noted for its gentleness when dealing with uprisings) and general civil disobedience.
Even assuming it somehow got to a shooting war in America, you are assuming that no one would oppose the government by "accidentally" screwing up various logistical issues such as sending military supplies to the wrong destination. Also, workers would "go slow" and the economy would grind to a halt. Subtle sabotage would be everywhere.
To summarize: you have made the mistake of thinking people would go entirely toe-to-toe against the military. No one in their right mind would do that (although there would clearly be skirmishes). The Federal government's efforts would die the death of a thousand cuts coming from within as much as from without.
By the way, your depiction of the British army of the late 1700s is completely wrong and really throws a lot of doubt on your general military knowledge (as does the rest of your post, actually). I refer you to the Wikipedia article which states "From around 1763 until at least 1914, the United Kingdom was the dominant military and economic power of the world".
There are several countries with "United States" in their name. For example, Mexico is officially "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" but is known as "Mexico". Similarly, the "United States of America" is known as "America".
As a result, most English speaking people understand "American" to mean a citizen of the "United States of America" the same way they understand "Mexican" to mean a citizen of "Estados Unidos Mexicanos".
I don't disagree that life on Mars would be very tough. Where I do disagree is in the assessment of whether it is so tough as to make it impractical. Some people would have said there just isn't a spare scrubber on Apollo XIII while others would have said I can make something that will work from what I have on hand because I have to. The difference in attitude made the difference in the outcome of the mission.
To head off a possible charge of ignorance leading to irrational exuberance: I am an engineer (albeit electrical) so I have some idea of what challenges can lie, unseen to a layman, in undertaking an effort. On the other hand, I also know good engineers solve extraordinarily difficult problems every day. That's our job and that's why we get into engineering - for the challenge.
Too often in the past, expert analysis has deemed a project infeasible (traveling faster than a horse (the air pressure was supposed to be too much for our lung power), heavier than air powered flight, the Panama canal, etc.), only to have the experts be proven wrong. The only real way to determine whether or not such a project can succeed is to try it. Often it is impossible at the beginning but inventions made during the effort make it possible. Without starting the "impossible" project, those inventions would never have been achieved.
My example from the recent past was intended to show how, when traditional techniques don't work, you have to get inventive. Obviously, the degree of challenge is different but the principle is the same: necessity is the mother of invention.
Sure, I'm a "the glass is half full" sort of guy but I think without that view we would still be living in cold and dark caves because "obviously" fire and lightning (electricity) can't be turned into anything useful.
I have always been inspired by a story I read many years ago where a group of engineers and scientists were shown a film smuggled out of Germany during WWII at the cost of the agent's life. The film showed how the Germans had developed a flying soldier using a jetpack.
While the quality of the film prevented the details of the jetpack from being clear, it was clear the solidiers were flying with them. After many months of exhausting work, the engineers and scientists on our side had produced a practical jetpack similar to what they had seen in the film.
Only then was it revealed that the film was a forgery, created at a Hollywood studio. Its purpose was to change the mindset of the scientists and engineers so that they would believe a jetpack was possible. Without that initial belief they were doomed to failure.
Finally, analyses of why things can't be done often remind me of those articles on why there's no time in life to get anything done. Out of 24 hours in a day you spend 8 hours asleep; you spend 2 hours shopping, cooking, eating, and washing up; you spend 1.5 hours driving; etc. At the end of the article you find that you have to spare time at all yet somehow we obviously do. Detailed analysis does not always produce a valid conclusion.
I think we're just going to have to accept that, given the time and resources available, we're just going to disagree on this today. I do admit sometimes the glass is half empty (for now, anyway) but I don't like to start out with that assumption. :-)
I am not suggesting the Orbiter was the right way to go but I think it could have had an escape system built into it similar to the F-111 http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/air_power/ap36.htm.
Then we had better get started right away and quit goofing off!
By the way, of course no one would use acrylic on Mars for a greenhouse for all the reasons you outlined. They would more likely use a material that worked well on Earth long before modern plastics were invented and which can be made much more easily on site than plastic: glass. The relative availability of materials will be far more important than transparancy, durability, or almost any other consideration.
Local conditions and availability of materials will govern development on Mars far more than purely technological concerns.
An example from the recent past would be sod houses on the plains of North America of the 1800s. People couldn't yet transport what they regarded as traditional building materials (wood and/or brick) to the construction site so they used what they had (sod) and only shipped the things they absolutely could not improvise around (e.g., iron/steel implements).
If you are going to be a Windows desktop shop then you might want to consider Groove http://www.groove.net/ for your groupware.
For our organization Groove has done what we needed and provided a nice side effect in that important files are automatically "backed up" if they are in a shared workspace. Since we work from laptops the off-line usage has also been an important feature.
Groove was already integrated with Office and Project. Now that they have been bought by Microsoft I expect that integration to deepen.
A quick list of features is available at http://groove.net/index.cfm/pagename/VO_Compare/
To ask my own question here: does anyone know of an OSS alternative to Groove? Anything like it at all?
As others have observed: need != want.
However...
Nearly 100% of all progress from the beginning of time has been the result satisfying wants not needs. People need: air, water, food, and shelter (basic functional clothing is nothing more than portable shelter and not needed in many climates). Each of those requirements has a basic level at which they can be satisfied that is very low.
Everything else is a want.
Since civilization is built on meeting wants, discovering new wants is not intrinsically a bad thing. Before something can be invented a want has to be discovered. It's not so much that "Necessity is the mother of invention" as "Want is the mother of invention".
What isn't a good thing is confusing wants with needs. This is something that happens all too often (as in "I need a big screen digital TV system otherwise I am oppressed, downtrodden, and discriminated against!").
There is an interesting study at http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/
No doubt many will disagree with the study (such is the nature of economics) but it is still an interesting read.
Sports stars are of higher value to society precisely because of the "economics of scale on their side" you mentioned.
That is exactly what I meant by making certain a lot of people are aware of you. Most of the wealthy have figured out it is better to get $1 from each of a million people than to get $10,000 from one person.
How much you earn is a direct measure of how much society values your contribution to the world.
Most people's time is only immediately valued by a small group of people and what most people can accomplish is pretty much the same (on average one person is much the same as another). Hence, there's not much value put on the average individual's personal time and he isn't paid a lot.
On the other hand (to use a common example), a sports star has an unusual talent (not many people can do what he does) and many people put some value on it. Hence, the sports star makes a lot of money.
In all cases (short of theft), what a person is paid is a reflection of the value society puts on that person's contribution to the world. Drug lords make a lot of money because many people put a high value on the product they supply to at great personal risk. School teachers are not paid a lot because only the parents of the students really care and teachers are easily replaced (comparatively speaking).
Sometimes someone produces something of high value to the world but the world doesn't find out about it so that person doesn't make much money (or any). Van Gogh would be an example.
Suppose a person invented clean free energy. That process/machine would have incredible value to the world but only if the world finds out about it. If that invention is constrained to a community the inventor may be rich in his community but he will not be rich in the world.
At the end of the day, no matter how much we not like to admit it, the people who earn more than we do (including successful stock speculators who are effectively lending money at high interest rates paid by unsuccessful speculators) are more highly valued by society than we are.
To make more, do something society as a whole values highly, that few other people could have done, and make sure society find out about you.