Why do people still pay money for software performing most basic tasks like Word 365? Nowadays, they have millions of alternatives.
Well, a free Office suite is only free to your business if your employees are as well trained in that suite as they are in Microsoft Office.
I think a lot of people are switching to OpenOffice and LibreOffice on their home machines, but they don't use their Office apps as intensively in the home as they do at work so they don't learn everything they need to do at work.
Of course, in any realistic WW3 scenario all that this would accomplish in the end is a slightly larger food riot once the food runs out.
Now in this day and age with slimmed down just in time delivery, the food would run out in less than 72 hours in all major metropolitan areas. The food you see on the shelves in your local food store is pretty much what's in store, plus whatever is in any trucks that manage to make it to the store.
Come to think of it, I bet it would take less than a hundred nukes aimed at a carefully selected list of choke points in the transport infrastructure to doom everyone in North America to starvation. The same thing goes for Europe and (to some extent) Russia. Even a very limited nuclear war could probably be incredibly lethal if both sides were aiming to kill/incapacitate the other side's population.
The paper is freely available online and you can see distance and speed estimates on the bottom row of charts at page 13: http://www.as.utexas.edu/~ivan...
This star is thought to have been following a fairly predictable orbit over the last 4 billion years, which is one of the reasons why they're able to point to it as a potential sibling of the Sun. That is the researchers think that there is a decent probability that it has based on a simulation.
..and it quickly gets modded down, since it breaks the echo chamber here.
Seriously people, think about it, giving your services away for free makes no sense. No one else does and, contrary to say, volunteer doctors who help poor people (doctors without borders) free software benefits mostly corporations.
The thing is that there is an argument that it is fundamentally unethical to not give away your source code. If you want to argue with that it's not enough to just say "but it's nice to not give away the code". Lot's of unethical things can be said to be nice. That does not make them ethical. Saying that you can't make money if you give away the code does not actually do anything to address the argument that the free software fundamentalists pose, so they're not likely to be swayed by that sort of reasoning.
If you want to argue with the free software fundamentalists you either have to say that they're wrong and that there is no ethical imperative to give away code, or say that there is a conflicting ethical imperative, for example you might argue along the line that it is unethical to do work for someone else without the expectation of market-rate income for that work. After all, what would happen to the economy if it became the norm that people should deliver services without getting money in exchange? The whole monetary system would grind to a halt. Of course, some might say that that would be a nice consequence.
From what I've heard, actual construction engineering is typically not that far removed from the description in the article.
Sure, the designs in construction engineering are way better proven and tested than the designs in software engineering, but the building process is in many ways still a trial and error affair where things can and usually will go wrong. Then the post mortems sometimes come with literal post mortems attached to them. How well do you think those engineers sleep at night?
One nice thing about computers is that they usually have nowhere near enough mass to crush a person to death.
Well, a lot of the US us within the geographic and climatic sweet spot for solar PV, but Germany really isn't.
Remember that the amount of power needed to heat or cool a building is roughly proportional to the difference between outside temperature and room temperature. That difference is usually small in Germany during summer, except maybe for July, but the negative difference in winter can be large.
I guess they are watching what is happening in Germany with horror and realizing that is their future too.
You mean Germany's record high lignite consumption? Yeah, that is truly horrible. Lignite is actually considerably worse than coal in terms of CO2 emitted per kWh produced.
Using locally produced solar energy in a northern area that sees peak energy usage in the middle of winter is not really a good idea, unless you have a storage system that can store solar energy for 6+ months so that you can use the summer sun to heat you in winter.
It's a lot easier to "win" if someone else has spent money and effort pruning the search tree of possible ideas before you so that you can focus on executing the ideas that have been proven to work.
When you consider the energy cost of launching the equipment into space (0.5*mass*speed^2) you also find that the system is possibly an energy sink depending on how heavy the equipment is and how efficient your space launch system is. You'd basically need a really good and optimized space elevator to even have a chance at having an energy source.
Every penny of space research that isn't spent towards making space launch cheaper and more efficient should be looked at with some suspicion.
This looks like a "messaging" app. It seems like the only point is to get around the few remaining billing plans on the planet that don't have unlimited text messaging. Am I insane thinking that this market niche will only exist for another year, at most? I personally don't know anybody who has to pay for messaging, but I understand that some people in other countries still have to (for now)...
So tell me, how do I start an SMS conversation on my laptop, continue it on my phone and then later continue it on my tablet? Please tell me a user-friendly and obvious way to do it, because I want to be able to teach it to my mom...
This is fairly typical use case in this day and age. This is why SMS has peaked and is being replaced by other forms of texting.
Really high end welders are few and far between and can only be trained by other high end welders. Those welders probably make way more money welding than training students, so that's not going to happen unless someone else steps in and pays for it.
And to help ensure that he ducation happens, there should be a logical meetings place controlled by a central authority. Since travel is difficult, everyone should live close together to make the education easier. Since everyone lives close together, there should be a police force controlled by the central authority...
Yes, there would be city states with governments, but a lot of people would have countryside houses that they could travel to by sea or by air. The city state governments could easily come and tax your countryside home if they wanted to, but they would probably not consider it worth the effort since most economic activity would take place in and around the cities. (They certainly wouldn't care if some guy wants to make a clunky plastic gun that fires one shot.)
If someone managed to build a large factory out in the middle of nowhere and get it to be profitable then I'm sure that person could strike a favorable deal directly with one or several of the faraway city states.
Anyway, this is all fantasies on a planet that is on a trajectory towards ten billion people.
Many of my current beliefs are based on an incredibly small amount of information, all things considered, so it would be foolish to hold on too them as if they were infallible.
There are a few beliefs that one must hold on to, because letting go of them would lead to insanity. For example the belief that you are no different from others that look like you humans, that you are not special in any fundamental way. Another example would be the belief that change in the macroscopic world is a continuous and somewhat predictable process. If you let go of either of those beliefs you will clearly lose your mind.
He's one of those loons that thinks an anarchy with no government control would be some kind of utopia instead of what it actually is, a place like Somalia run by warlords.
The warlords and their bands of warriors can and should be thought of as small, primitive and extremely violent governments.
The idea of no government is essentially impossible. Imagine two villages close to one another: one that has no government and one that has a government. Before too long the village without government will have a government, either its own government that it has created in order to command a police/militia to defend itself against the government of the other village, or the government of the other village after being conquered by that village's militia. Assuming a population density high enough that all (or most) human settlements can be reached by people from other settlements it follows that everyone (or most everyone) will eventually be under government.
SpaceX is an awesome company, but the only chance of them beginning to colonize Mars within six years is if aliens land on Earth and hand over the keys to their spacecraft to Elon Musk.
The bet would be much more interesting if the deadline was 2034 (or even 2024, although that would be an incredibly long shot).
Somewhat related: the youngest flying B52:s are now more than half a century old. By the time the last one is taken out of service it will probably be pushing 90.
The one application that I've heard about that sounds semi-plausible is sandwiching something like this between a solar cell and a liquid cooler. The difference in temperature between the PV cell and the cooler might be enough to yield meaningful amounts power and the waste heat that the cooling system captures could be used for heating.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people still pay money for software performing most basic tasks like Word 365? Nowadays, they have millions of alternatives.
Well, a free Office suite is only free to your business if your employees are as well trained in that suite as they are in Microsoft Office.
I think a lot of people are switching to OpenOffice and LibreOffice on their home machines, but they don't use their Office apps as intensively in the home as they do at work so they don't learn everything they need to do at work.
Of course, in any realistic WW3 scenario all that this would accomplish in the end is a slightly larger food riot once the food runs out.
Now in this day and age with slimmed down just in time delivery, the food would run out in less than 72 hours in all major metropolitan areas. The food you see on the shelves in your local food store is pretty much what's in store, plus whatever is in any trucks that manage to make it to the store.
Come to think of it, I bet it would take less than a hundred nukes aimed at a carefully selected list of choke points in the transport infrastructure to doom everyone in North America to starvation. The same thing goes for Europe and (to some extent) Russia. Even a very limited nuclear war could probably be incredibly lethal if both sides were aiming to kill/incapacitate the other side's population.
The paper is freely available online and you can see distance and speed estimates on the bottom row of charts at page 13: http://www.as.utexas.edu/~ivan...
This star is thought to have been following a fairly predictable orbit over the last 4 billion years, which is one of the reasons why they're able to point to it as a potential sibling of the Sun. That is the researchers think that there is a decent probability that it has based on a simulation.
You're doing it wrong. It's suppose to be something like Hj1pAab5!z21i0lO&sa8q0, on a sticky note attached to the machine.
..and it quickly gets modded down, since it breaks the echo chamber here.
Seriously people, think about it, giving your services away for free makes no sense. No one else does and, contrary to say, volunteer doctors who help poor people (doctors without borders) free software benefits mostly corporations.
The thing is that there is an argument that it is fundamentally unethical to not give away your source code. If you want to argue with that it's not enough to just say "but it's nice to not give away the code". Lot's of unethical things can be said to be nice. That does not make them ethical. Saying that you can't make money if you give away the code does not actually do anything to address the argument that the free software fundamentalists pose, so they're not likely to be swayed by that sort of reasoning.
If you want to argue with the free software fundamentalists you either have to say that they're wrong and that there is no ethical imperative to give away code, or say that there is a conflicting ethical imperative, for example you might argue along the line that it is unethical to do work for someone else without the expectation of market-rate income for that work. After all, what would happen to the economy if it became the norm that people should deliver services without getting money in exchange? The whole monetary system would grind to a halt. Of course, some might say that that would be a nice consequence.
Let's just use OpenStreetMap. What could possibly go wrong?
From what I've heard, actual construction engineering is typically not that far removed from the description in the article.
Sure, the designs in construction engineering are way better proven and tested than the designs in software engineering, but the building process is in many ways still a trial and error affair where things can and usually will go wrong. Then the post mortems sometimes come with literal post mortems attached to them. How well do you think those engineers sleep at night?
One nice thing about computers is that they usually have nowhere near enough mass to crush a person to death.
All,... I,.... want,.... is,.... an,.... expletive,.... web,.... browser!
Seriously, I just want to access web pages, I want to think about the browser itself as little as possible.
Try surf. It meets and exceeds your requirements by also being able to follow links!
http://surf.suckless.org/
Well, a lot of the US us within the geographic and climatic sweet spot for solar PV, but Germany really isn't.
Remember that the amount of power needed to heat or cool a building is roughly proportional to the difference between outside temperature and room temperature. That difference is usually small in Germany during summer, except maybe for July, but the negative difference in winter can be large.
I guess they are watching what is happening in Germany with horror and realizing that is their future too.
You mean Germany's record high lignite consumption? Yeah, that is truly horrible. Lignite is actually considerably worse than coal in terms of CO2 emitted per kWh produced.
Using locally produced solar energy in a northern area that sees peak energy usage in the middle of winter is not really a good idea, unless you have a storage system that can store solar energy for 6+ months so that you can use the summer sun to heat you in winter.
Facebook, iPod, Ford Model T...
It's a lot easier to "win" if someone else has spent money and effort pruning the search tree of possible ideas before you so that you can focus on executing the ideas that have been proven to work.
When you consider the energy cost of launching the equipment into space (0.5*mass*speed^2) you also find that the system is possibly an energy sink depending on how heavy the equipment is and how efficient your space launch system is. You'd basically need a really good and optimized space elevator to even have a chance at having an energy source.
Every penny of space research that isn't spent towards making space launch cheaper and more efficient should be looked at with some suspicion.
Meh, I know an easier way. Saw it on television. You find one of these pale coldish people and have them bite you.
There is a major side effect, but if you're a true /. person you'll hardly ever notice...
This looks like a "messaging" app. It seems like the only point is to get around the few remaining billing plans on the planet that don't have unlimited text messaging. Am I insane thinking that this market niche will only exist for another year, at most? I personally don't know anybody who has to pay for messaging, but I understand that some people in other countries still have to (for now)...
So tell me, how do I start an SMS conversation on my laptop, continue it on my phone and then later continue it on my tablet? Please tell me a user-friendly and obvious way to do it, because I want to be able to teach it to my mom...
This is fairly typical use case in this day and age. This is why SMS has peaked and is being replaced by other forms of texting.
Really high end welders are few and far between and can only be trained by other high end welders. Those welders probably make way more money welding than training students, so that's not going to happen unless someone else steps in and pays for it.
if it were applied to actually useful things? We'd have the green leisure society figured out for the entire planet.
First you need to define the concept of "actually useful things" in a way that will evaluate the same for all people. Good luck with that.
And to help ensure that he ducation happens, there should be a logical meetings place controlled by a central authority. Since travel is difficult, everyone should live close together to make the education easier. Since everyone lives close together, there should be a police force controlled by the central authority...
Yes, there would be city states with governments, but a lot of people would have countryside houses that they could travel to by sea or by air. The city state governments could easily come and tax your countryside home if they wanted to, but they would probably not consider it worth the effort since most economic activity would take place in and around the cities. (They certainly wouldn't care if some guy wants to make a clunky plastic gun that fires one shot.)
If someone managed to build a large factory out in the middle of nowhere and get it to be profitable then I'm sure that person could strike a favorable deal directly with one or several of the faraway city states.
Anyway, this is all fantasies on a planet that is on a trajectory towards ten billion people.
Ha. That should read "...from others that look like you (humans)...".
Many of my current beliefs are based on an incredibly small amount of information, all things considered, so it would be foolish to hold on too them as if they were infallible.
There are a few beliefs that one must hold on to, because letting go of them would lead to insanity. For example the belief that you are no different from others that look like you humans, that you are not special in any fundamental way. Another example would be the belief that change in the macroscopic world is a continuous and somewhat predictable process. If you let go of either of those beliefs you will clearly lose your mind.
He's one of those loons that thinks an anarchy with no government control would be some kind of utopia instead of what it actually is, a place like Somalia run by warlords.
The warlords and their bands of warriors can and should be thought of as small, primitive and extremely violent governments.
The idea of no government is essentially impossible. Imagine two villages close to one another: one that has no government and one that has a government. Before too long the village without government will have a government, either its own government that it has created in order to command a police/militia to defend itself against the government of the other village, or the government of the other village after being conquered by that village's militia. Assuming a population density high enough that all (or most) human settlements can be reached by people from other settlements it follows that everyone (or most everyone) will eventually be under government.
Someone needs to activate Godwin's Law.
Do you know who else drove cars on coal-derived fuel, during the holocaust? That's right. The Nazis. Because Hitler told them to.
(True story, google "Bergius process".)
SpaceX is an awesome company, but the only chance of them beginning to colonize Mars within six years is if aliens land on Earth and hand over the keys to their spacecraft to Elon Musk.
The bet would be much more interesting if the deadline was 2034 (or even 2024, although that would be an incredibly long shot).
Somewhat related: the youngest flying B52:s are now more than half a century old. By the time the last one is taken out of service it will probably be pushing 90.
Cheap noname LED spotlights, cheap noname LED flashlights...
I'm sure pricey brand name LED lights don't break very often either.
The one application that I've heard about that sounds semi-plausible is sandwiching something like this between a solar cell and a liquid cooler. The difference in temperature between the PV cell and the cooler might be enough to yield meaningful amounts power and the waste heat that the cooling system captures could be used for heating.