Even if there is socialized health care you can still opt to use private health care. I don't see your problem.
If you're wealthy enough to pay for your own private health care you can surely afford a few dollars to public health care on the behalf of those who cannot afford it. It's not unfair at all. It's about caring about the weak which IS the society's fundamental function.
Do you honestly believe that the organized society is possible only because of a couple of hundred or thousand policemen are patrolling on our streets? Get real.
In practise, the people could do whatever they like but they choose not to do so because it's more benefical to them to leave their neighbours alone or even cooperate with them.
No criminal will go about his business thinking "what if I get caught". That's the major failure of the harsher penalties policy. It doesn't matter how harsh the penalties are, because "I'm not going to get caught" is the mindset of a criminal.
Make getting caught more probable and you have your reduction in crime rate.
"Glass does not flow. People who think that 'non-crystalline = liquid' need to re-read their physics or materials texts. There are telescope lenses and mirrors 150 years old. None of these have changed shape by as much as a nanometer. Any such change due to flow would be obvious, even ruinous."
These days I use Linux because it's fun but I still do most of my work using Windows applications. Why? Ok, with Linux it is fun to set up the system, code, explore source code someone else wrote and fix bugs; in other words I enjoy the freedom and the challenge. However, when it comes to working I (and many others) prefer to use software that doesn't require several hours just to set up.
When I'm working my time is valuable not only to myself but to my employer. I don't get paid for fixing bugs in the installation script or in the buggy application source code. I get paid for publishing my research in journals and the only way I can do that efficiently is that I have easy-to-install software that's reliable.
When Einstein developed and eventually published his theory of relativity around 1915 he was far away from being a hobbyist. In fact, he had already published his theory of the photoelectric effect, for which he was later on awarded the Nobel price, in 1905. Unlike what people like to believe, he was a hard-core scientist with a formal education in natural sciences.
Variety can be a strength indeed, and at the moment I am not too worried about the factionalism.
At present I'm more worried about the poison of cynicism and bitterness spreading at the grass root level with no apparent reason. The feeling I get when I read Debian and linux kernel mailing lists as well as Slashdot is that of the paradise lost; something's wrong but you can't quite say what it is. It's like on a beautiful summer day when you suddenly feel the coming storm in the air even before the clouds themselves appear in the horizon.
What I am afraid of is that like so many fine and noble movements in the history, this one too will fall victim to internal strife and bickering over money, power and prestige and eventually come to nothing -- destroyed from within like Camelot.
I agree that the year 2000 has been a watershed year for Linux and OS but in quite another manner.
In mechanics you can increase the momentum both either by going faster or by increasing the mass. In the context of this analogy, I'd say that the increased momentum of the Open Source Software has more to do with its increased mass than its innovation speed.
Furthermore, the ideological basis of the entire movement seems to be shaking. Just as it often happens with ideological movements, the Open Source community is fragmenting into more or less opposing cliques led by cults of personality such as RMS, Linus and ESR. With the implicit and sometimes explicit (Netscape) pressure from the corporate world as well as the growing discontent and disillusionment down at the grass root level, we've indeed reached the watershed. The community has got the visibility and recognition now. What to do with it? Where should it be heading? Back to the ideological roots or compromise and even try that suit on?
For instance in many European countries there is in fact a State Church you're made a member of at birth and which gets its funding by public taxation (usually less than 1% of your income).
Hmm... haven't tried that. I was just glad to see synchronized DVD video and audio on my screen.;-) I watched both Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now without problems.
Right now I'm watching Apocalypse Now with Xine. Audio and video sync perfectly and there have been no segfaults. It plays OK with my 650 MHz Pentium III and Matrox G200 (XFree 4.0) even while I'm doing other things at the same time (like reading Slashdot with Mozilla).
Oh, and before you ask: yes it's all GPLd, non RIAA-approved code. I don't understand why this fantastic project has not been discussed more here.
If you can afford it, get as high a degree as you can. Even if you won't work as a computer scientist in the future, having a more extensive degree gives you an advantage over people who have more of a narrow view on the subject. You can fit into more roles than someone who has merely learnt to code and doesn't know about the science behind it.
One: Why do you think you would not like being a low level manager? You get to learn how to run a team efficiently which -- if you do well -- is invaluable in your resume. When I was made a manager I was initially afraid that I wouldn't have a chance to get my hands "dirty" anymore in the trenches. Wrong. Once you get your team running well, there's plenty of time to do things you like and your team will appreciate you for still doing some "real work". Ok, you get more paperwork and you have to learn to get along with all kind of people (pointy haired ones too), but I wouldn't go back now. I'm as proud of what I have accomplished as a manager as I once was after finishing a challenging coding project. Being a manager has been mostly a pleasant experience to me, so my advice to you would be to try it.
Obviously you've forgotten that unless we explore space and set up permanent colonies all the Earth exploration won't do our species much good when the supervolcano erupts, the next big rock slams here or the Sun finally dies killing us all.
When I was a beginning scientist I had to carry out stupid tasks like scanning old plotter charts into a computer and use a program that translated the bitmap image into an X-Y data set. This NASA job sounds exactly like that: mechanical, boring as hell and won't teach you anything. You just sit in a cubicle, scanning and running some program.
This does not eliminate the need for junior scientists as the task is hardly a scientific one.
There's a lot of menial and boring work in the science that suits perfectly well to people with no training at all. Getting rid of that just gives more time for the junior scientists to get acquainted with more demanding parts of their work.
anyone ever notice how on/. everyone comments on things they have no base in
So?
Isn't that exactly why this kind of forums exist? To facilitate the free exchange of information and opinions where it's OK to be wrong. I don't know about you but I read Slashdot to relax and get a few laughs, not to follow serious job related discussions.
One of the most irritating personal characteristics in engineers (and other highly trained professionals) is the you-don't-know-shit-so-shut-the-fuck-up attitude. Not having a PhD or any other degree in subject X doesn't mean you can't talk about X on general level.
If you feel offended by the inaccurate postings of someone, just correct him/her politely -- if you like.
Actually plastic bottles are better than the glass ones as long as an efficient recycling system exists. In the Scandinavia approximately 90 % of the glass bottles and 80 % of plastic bottles are recycled. Germany might have even higher rates.
My antipathy towards biotech companies stems from the fact that this kind of corporatised science, from which people expect profits, is soon going to make it impossible to carry out meaningful fundamental research.
I'm personally frustrated because it's becoming increasingly difficult to apply any kind of funding (private and governmental alike) for any research that is not at least in some tangible way connected to potential applications in near (~1-5 years) future. In my mind this is extremely short sighted, since the fundamental research is what "feeds" the applied sciences decades ahead. If your greed-is-good attitude becomes even more prevalent, we'll see that the applied sciences will eventually run out of fundamental scientific basis.
You saying that "as long as the pieces are stable" is like saying "as long as people won't lie". An admirable goal but it won't happen.
Kernel should be small, clean and fast. That's the only way to make a stable system. Kernel should be only a very thin abstraction layer over the bare metal. All the rest of the OS (drivers, shells, GUI) should be in the user space.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're wealthy enough to pay for your own private health care you can surely afford a few dollars to public health care on the behalf of those who cannot afford it. It's not unfair at all. It's about caring about the weak which IS the society's fundamental function.
Do you honestly believe that the organized society is possible only because of a couple of hundred or thousand policemen are patrolling on our streets? Get real.
In practise, the people could do whatever they like but they choose not to do so because it's more benefical to them to leave their neighbours alone or even cooperate with them.
No criminal will go about his business thinking "what if I get caught". That's the major failure of the harsher penalties policy. It doesn't matter how harsh the penalties are, because "I'm not going to get caught" is the mindset of a criminal.
Make getting caught more probable and you have your reduction in crime rate.
"Glass does not flow. People who think that 'non-crystalline = liquid' need to re-read their physics or materials texts. There are telescope lenses and mirrors 150 years old. None of these have changed shape by as much as a nanometer. Any such change due to flow would be obvious, even ruinous."
Read more here.
These days I use Linux because it's fun but I still do most of my work using Windows applications. Why? Ok, with Linux it is fun to set up the system, code, explore source code someone else wrote and fix bugs; in other words I enjoy the freedom and the challenge. However, when it comes to working I (and many others) prefer to use software that doesn't require several hours just to set up.
When I'm working my time is valuable not only to myself but to my employer. I don't get paid for fixing bugs in the installation script or in the buggy application source code. I get paid for publishing my research in journals and the only way I can do that efficiently is that I have easy-to-install software that's reliable.
When Einstein developed and eventually published his theory of relativity around 1915 he was far away from being a hobbyist. In fact, he had already published his theory of the photoelectric effect, for which he was later on awarded the Nobel price, in 1905. Unlike what people like to believe, he was a hard-core scientist with a formal education in natural sciences.
At present I'm more worried about the poison of cynicism and bitterness spreading at the grass root level with no apparent reason. The feeling I get when I read Debian and linux kernel mailing lists as well as Slashdot is that of the paradise lost; something's wrong but you can't quite say what it is. It's like on a beautiful summer day when you suddenly feel the coming storm in the air even before the clouds themselves appear in the horizon.
What I am afraid of is that like so many fine and noble movements in the history, this one too will fall victim to internal strife and bickering over money, power and prestige and eventually come to nothing -- destroyed from within like Camelot.
In mechanics you can increase the momentum both either by going faster or by increasing the mass. In the context of this analogy, I'd say that the increased momentum of the Open Source Software has more to do with its increased mass than its innovation speed.
Furthermore, the ideological basis of the entire movement seems to be shaking. Just as it often happens with ideological movements, the Open Source community is fragmenting into more or less opposing cliques led by cults of personality such as RMS, Linus and ESR. With the implicit and sometimes explicit (Netscape) pressure from the corporate world as well as the growing discontent and disillusionment down at the grass root level, we've indeed reached the watershed. The community has got the visibility and recognition now. What to do with it? Where should it be heading? Back to the ideological roots or compromise and even try that suit on?
For instance in many European countries there is in fact a State Church you're made a member of at birth and which gets its funding by public taxation (usually less than 1% of your income).
tstdvd /dev/hdc
tstdvd /dev/hdc /dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB
and then pipe the movie to Xine:
css_cat -v1P /dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB | xine stdin://mpeg2
Hmm... haven't tried that. I was just glad to see synchronized DVD video and audio on my screen. ;-) I watched both Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now without problems.
You can find Xine here.
Oh, and before you ask: yes it's all GPLd, non RIAA-approved code. I don't understand why this fantastic project has not been discussed more here.
If you can afford it, get as high a degree as you can. Even if you won't work as a computer scientist in the future, having a more extensive degree gives you an advantage over people who have more of a narrow view on the subject. You can fit into more roles than someone who has merely learnt to code and doesn't know about the science behind it.
One: Why do you think you would not like being a low level manager? You get to learn how to run a team efficiently which -- if you do well -- is invaluable in your resume. When I was made a manager I was initially afraid that I wouldn't have a chance to get my hands "dirty" anymore in the trenches. Wrong. Once you get your team running well, there's plenty of time to do things you like and your team will appreciate you for still doing some "real work". Ok, you get more paperwork and you have to learn to get along with all kind of people (pointy haired ones too), but I wouldn't go back now. I'm as proud of what I have accomplished as a manager as I once was after finishing a challenging coding project. Being a manager has been mostly a pleasant experience to me, so my advice to you would be to try it.
Obviously you've forgotten that unless we explore space and set up permanent colonies all the Earth exploration won't do our species much good when the supervolcano erupts, the next big rock slams here or the Sun finally dies killing us all.
When I was a beginning scientist I had to carry out stupid tasks like scanning old plotter charts into a computer and use a program that translated the bitmap image into an X-Y data set. This NASA job sounds exactly like that: mechanical, boring as hell and won't teach you anything. You just sit in a cubicle, scanning and running some program.
There's a lot of menial and boring work in the science that suits perfectly well to people with no training at all. Getting rid of that just gives more time for the junior scientists to get acquainted with more demanding parts of their work.
According to the RIP legislation not remembering the key is the same as refusing to hand it over.
So?
Isn't that exactly why this kind of forums exist? To facilitate the free exchange of information and opinions where it's OK to be wrong. I don't know about you but I read Slashdot to relax and get a few laughs, not to follow serious job related discussions.
One of the most irritating personal characteristics in engineers (and other highly trained professionals) is the you-don't-know-shit-so-shut-the-fuck-up attitude. Not having a PhD or any other degree in subject X doesn't mean you can't talk about X on general level.
If you feel offended by the inaccurate postings of someone, just correct him/her politely -- if you like.
Actually plastic bottles are better than the glass ones as long as an efficient recycling system exists. In the Scandinavia approximately 90 % of the glass bottles and 80 % of plastic bottles are recycled. Germany might have even higher rates.
I'm personally frustrated because it's becoming increasingly difficult to apply any kind of funding (private and governmental alike) for any research that is not at least in some tangible way connected to potential applications in near (~1-5 years) future. In my mind this is extremely short sighted, since the fundamental research is what "feeds" the applied sciences decades ahead. If your greed-is-good attitude becomes even more prevalent, we'll see that the applied sciences will eventually run out of fundamental scientific basis.
You saying that "as long as the pieces are stable" is like saying "as long as people won't lie". An admirable goal but it won't happen.
Kernel should be small, clean and fast. That's the only way to make a stable system. Kernel should be only a very thin abstraction layer over the bare metal. All the rest of the OS (drivers, shells, GUI) should be in the user space.
You got me there. I totally forgot Conan the Barbarian.
Now that you mention it, I can't think of any good fantasy film.