Ah, while we're at it, let's not forget that the Russians disbanded the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or Committee for Homeland Security) in '95. It wasn't even a decade before we here in the U.S. got a Department of Homeland Security of our very own.
With the lack of atmosphere, the amount of solar energy that's available per square meter is incredible. Photovoltaics are one obvious option. Heat engines that would harvest the huge amounts of potential energy to be found in the vast temperature differentials available between lit and unlit lunar surfaces would be another.
With so much cheap energy available, the obvious next thing to do is to start refining things, e.g. extracting vast amounts of oxygen from all of that silica and hurl it into orbit via a rail gun. Other raw materials and purified minerals to follow. Lots of O2 and refined materials in orbit = a good start towards constructing orbital factories. Additional ores to come both from the moon and the asteroids; hydrocarbons to come from Titan.
Okay, so now we've got a factory system set up with effectively unlimited amounts of energy, oxygen, hydrogen, and refined ores of any sort imaginable available to us at the top of Earth's gravity well. Maybe we might get serious about building a space elevator at that point.
Another business competitor or regional spinoff (e.g. Fairpoint) in the marketplace is one thing.
But a modern regional community-owned fiber network in a low-population-density setting? That notion implicitly undermines the monopolistic 'last-mile' business model of the entire RBOC legacy. It's not about retaining the negligible profits from the specific area in question. It's the unacceptable precedent this effort would represent if it is successful (especially if it succeeds economically despite the geographical disadvantages). Why keep renting local network infrastructure from a vastly profitable MegaCorp telco when you could instead band together with neighbors in your community and save a lot of money over the years to come by just building your own brand-spanking-new one?
How about The Eastern Regional Autonomous Network?
(1) It's a play on Terra (i.e. of the Earth, appropriate for a buried cable) (2) I'd guess it's appropriate from a speed context (I don't know for sure, but Tbps speeds seem within reason for a light pipe) (3) When Verizon et al hear about this, they'll shit their pants because of the threat that other communities would join in and/or duplicate it. So they WILL come gunning for you on both the regulatory and legislative levels. They'll sow as much FUD as they can... and this way, their efforts will be known as 'The War on TERA'. Keeps things simple that way: freedom-loving people everywhere will already know which side of it they stand on, as will those who prefer to remain enslaved to our corporate masters.
The key to your statement is the word 'developed'. Take a good hard look at a map and realize just how insignificant the 'developed' world is in the grand scheme of things. True, as women become more educated, they have substantially fewer children. And yes, China did implement a very drastic birth control policy some years back that's kept the situation from being far, far, worse than it already is.
And when we talk about the population being on track to peak at somewhere under 10 billion people, where do you think that upper bound comes from? The people in the high-fertility cultures will have caught up to the developed world and just won't want to have so many kids? Um, by and large, no. That 'peak' of 10 billion is actually a carrying capacity. It reflects horrible economic conditions and high death rates from things like AIDS, starvation, genocide, and lack of access to potable water in underdeveloped countries. Yes, at some point in some cultures there will probably be noticeable declines in birth rates, where women choose to use birth control and abortion to avoid even more severe economic hardships for their families.
But in general, when we provide technological solutions to population problems without addressing high birth rates, we succeed only in increasing the carrying capacity sufficiently to allow more impoverished people to exist before a different aspect of Malthusian economics takes its toll.
Implementation of effective birth control is by far the #1 priority we need to implement to improve global societal well-being. Face it, people: The only obstacles that fundamentally prevent us all from living like Bill Gates in the long-term are social economic ones.
When it comes down to it, if we collectively wanted to prioritize clean water, clean transportation, adequate and healthy food, elimination of communicable diseases, cheap communication tech, adequate housing, renewable energy, yadda-yadda-yadda, we already have the engineering know-how to do so perfectly well for decades to come for some 'reasonable' number of people. Whether 'reasonable' is a number as small as 2 billion or as large as 20 billion is somewhat open to debate, but it's not relevant to the larger point. That point is that no matter what the carrying capacity of our planet (or solar system) ultimately is, there still will be only finite resources collectively available to us, even while many of our sub-populations have religious and/or cultural incentives to continue to multiply exponentially.
No matter how we may strive to fix any specific technological problem, all such a solution can gain us is to stave off the inevitable by (at best) increasing the planet's carrying capacity. The underlying economic problem (exponential population growth) will remain the same, and it will still have only two possible solutions: (1) decreased human birth rate, or (2) increased human death rate.
Where solution (1) is inadequately implemented, solution (2) MUST prevail, and it will often do so in a cataclysmic fashion.
Doping is doping. If you're altering your state of mind you are still doping. And yes, if you were in an academic competition then taking a drug to make you more clear-thinking is an advantage.
Yes, to all of that. Your point is....?
(I'm assuming you're trying to connect the concepts 'mind-doping' and 'bad'. I don't think you quite succeeded in that attempt.)
Maybe not, but there certainly is a low ground, and we (in the US) have been flirting with at least a partial occupation of it time and time again for the last several years. Kudos to some of our military intelligence folks that finally seem to be rising above and learning to sucessfully talk to/negotiate with many of our putative Iraqi 'enemies', but it seems like it's been a damned long time in coming.
I wonder why it is that nobody stops to think of what terrorism is: a tool of the powerless. If you've got a superior kick-ass military, there's generally no need to resort to terrorism: you do what you want, and if somebody resists, you can blow them away. If you don't have that kind of force at your disposal, you start to look for less direct options to express your opinions than an all-out military confrontation.
Another thing that breeds terrorism is a sense of being wronged by a powerful oppressor, particularly when you're desparate and helpless. If your life isn't worth living, you're probably a lot more willing to give it up in the cause of revenge.
Devices like robotanks that COMPLETELY remove US soldiers from danger will have the inevitable side-effect of making our enemies immediately think: Here we are watching our families and friends getting killed by machines from the USA, but there are no enemy soldiers to fight. Maybe they're too cowardly. So... who are our enemies, really? These machines? Of course not... they're only tools, being operated by CIA agents and military contractors and the like somewhere else, probably over in the US. Hmm... could it be.... US... civilians?
The payback exacted by people who lose everything they have worth living for and are left only with such thoughts may be many years in coming, but it *will* be both horrible and inevitable. And of course we'll react accordingly when it does. It's bad enough when armies go at it in the name of 'accomplishing national objectives'. But once entire civilian populations learn to truly hate each other, war is no longer enough. At that point, only genocide will suffice.
Um, Anonymous Coward? Are you a Microsoft shill? Maybe you missed a few acknowledgements from some of the fine people at Microsoft over the years about how they do business there. Here's a couple of interesting example quotes from "Dynamics of Software Development" (1995, Microsoft Press), by Jim McCarthy, one of the execs of the MS project that became Visual C++:
Rule #13: Ahead? Don't ever look back. "... Burn the boats. Continue to take big, ineradicable risks. Settle the new territory you've conquered. Demonstrate to everyone that you're committed to your course by burning the boats, precluding all thoughts of going back. This may mean not being handicapped by your installed base. Compatibility kills. Provide your market with sufficient incentive to move at your pace, and compromise on compatibility. Pull them forward, but don't let them go back."
He continues a related point in Rule #14:
Rule #14: Take the oxygen along. "When you buy into the idea of developing software for personal commputers, in particular for Microsoft operating systems, you need to understand that you're buying into a way of life. The pace of change is breathtaking, like the pace of the underlying social and technological change. Doing analysis, developing a system, deploying it, and then going into maintenance mode is no longer an operative model.
The unceasing change in software is driven by the global pulse of new operating system releases, which have become the central organizing element in this state of the information revolution. Hardware, peripheral, software, and mass communications organizations are all cycling with major releases of Windows. This rhythm is not something that will let up soon.... To solve the current problems with a product, the customer gets the next one. (emphasis mine.)... Don't neglect to consider the power of fashion. Don't dismiss it. Search your own feelings about car model years or clothes or music before you relegate the notion of fashion to the irrelevancy bin. Factor the powerful appeal to your customers of a new start, with all the latest conveniences(sic), into your plans."
Dude, like it or not, buggy releases are a way of life at Microsoft, not just an accident. Bill Gates biggest genius ever over the years was probably when the idea came to him to turn bugs into a profit center feature. It started with Microsoft Tech support, which from what I can remember from how incensed I was, was probably one of the first examples anywhere of having to pay a software company to report the bugs in their products and beg for a fix. This fine tradition eventually developed into the Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN) Library. I mean, what other company would have the chutzpah to release annual buglists and (sometimes) workarounds on CDs and sell new versions (Now with even more bugs!) every year for nearly 200 bucks? Yeah, I know that the MSDN Library has other stuff, too, but it's largely stuff that you only need because you bought into the nightmare of becoming a MS developer and you need as much handholding as you can get to survive.
I used to write software for PCs. After years of frustration and ever-rising anger at Microsoft, I left the field to go into medicine. Not that the human body is any less complex than a PC, mind you, but at least God doesn't seem to be intent on coming out with 'improvements' every couple of years that screw everything up and change all of the underlying rules to stay in business. (That job instead seemingly belongs instead to Congress and the insurance companies, but I digress....)
...is why SlashDot is even publishing this non-story FUD for our perusal. If Ballmer starts actually making threats, okay, it becomes a story. Until then, it's so much bloviation. Move along, move along. Nothing to see here.
How about upgrading the slower/older machines to Ubuntu, which is less resource-demanding than Windows? At the same time, you can upgrade a few of the better machines to XP Pro so they'll have maintain exposure with the Windows world, and be able to use all of the relevant software for that platform. Best of both worlds.
> That's completely false. You should be ashamed > of yourself. Wallace claims, correctly, that Gnu > is selling their product for less than what it > costs to produce it.
Hm. Let's see. Even if we go with your inane fantasy here, just how much do you suppose it costs the GNU project to allow someone to produce software for the world under the GNU license? Aside from the distribution costs (borne by major foundation grants as well as smaller donations from people like me) the costs incurred by the GNU project and the FSF come not from software production, but from from championing the open-source movement and hiring lawyers to fend off idiots (i.e. people like... *ahem*.)
> He also claims, also correctly, that the FSF > engages in price fixing by getting multiple > vendors to agree to give their products away > for free.
And here's where you're getting confused. Laws against price fixing exist not to allow other companies to compete, but to allow consumers to get the benefits of competition by prohibiting collusion of those already in the business. It's hard to argue that consumers are getting shafted by collusion on the parts of the donors when the consumers don't have to pay for their free software.
> The is anti-competitive, because it > prevents other vendors who don't want to give > their products away for free from entering the > market.
By this logic, we should also outlaw public schools, public libraries, national parks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, municipal police forces, non-toll roadways, and any other establishments for the public good that don't involve a direct fee-for-service model. After all, they're competing against somebody else's potential business. (Thanks for the idea, but no thanks-- I like *this* world better.)
"What happens if a shift gets left on the board with nobody willing to bid under the max posted?"
Um, the hospital administration takes note of that fact and raises the max available rate for those particular slots until enough workers are found, and/or outsources to an outside agency if really desperate, or even forces staff nurses to work overtime in unfilled critical slots (as they already do now)?
Really, I don't know what so many of you are so disgusted by; this is Capitalism 101 "supply and demand" in fairly benign form (given the relative shortage of nurses). Frankly, it seems like a pretty good win-win solution to fill chronically unfilled spots for everybody except the temp agencies (aww... poor middlemen.)
What? You say nurses deserve more stability, and should only work if they've got guaranteed full-time jobs? Fine. $37/hr (or whatever rate is negotiated by the local nursing union for that particular type of nursing) still gets them that full-time work. How? Why? Because none of this eliminates the power of the unions, and overall system stability is still in everybody's best interest, most definitely including that of the hospitals.
As to the idea that nursing quality will suffer any if the lowest bids determine who works, I've gotta say that you've either never worked in a hospital or never paid attention. If you had, you'll know that it's not like many not-so-great nurses are being weeded out by existing market forces; if you've got the necessary quals for a particular job (ER, critical care, scrub, floor, dialysis, whatever) and you do that job without doing anything egregiously stupid/dangerous, you remain employed. Nothing in this system of labor allocation gives nurses the power/right to work in positions they're not already fully qualified for.
I'll put in a "seconded" motion in support of iRiver's iHP-120. I bought my wife a 3rd gen 15GB iPod that might have been okay, if (a) the battery hadn't been s--t, and (b) the thing had been compatible with Win98SE. After struggling with both problems, I returned it to the store and got the 20GB iHP-120 (price was a complete wash after taking into account the ridiculously overpriced USB2.0 converter thingie for the iPod).
We couldn't be happier with the iRiver: not only is it 33% larger in disk storage capacity (maybe more when you take into account iPod's '15GB' is really 13.8 GB; not sure if iRiver fudges numbers the same way too), but the battery life is twice as long as what the iPod's was SUPPOSED to be (if it had worked properly, which it didn't). Add in OGG support, the voice recorder, a decent shock-protective-leather carrying case, ability to take the unit apart and replace the battery if need be, and the knowledge that I wasw no longer coping with a product that was deliberately sabotaged to NOT to work with Win98SE, and I am SO glad I made the switch _from_ Apple.:)
Sorry, Apple: when you spend more on marketing than on your engineering and QC, you might get customers but you won't keep them.
I know this wouldn't solve everybody's problems, but: it seems like what's really needed by most people is the ability to easily place critical apps and/or data files into a reserved area of working memory that never gets swapped or paged out. I think this would differ from a run-of-the-mill RAM drive in that (I think) RAM drives aren't really part of 'working' memory, so apps/data stored in them still need to be loaded/paged/swapped in to be active. This all seems like such a pathetically obvious idea that I'm really expecting somebody in the know to say, "Duh... to do this, you just _________". Any takers?
Am I the only/. reader who thinks that the BayStar pigs deserve to get burned along with all the rest of SCO's stockholders as the company's stock slides into the septic tank? It's not like they didn't know what Darl's business plan was when they invested Microsoft's money...
Last weekend a young woman politely knocked on my door and asked if I drove a red Saturn. Well, no, but my visiting brother does.... It turns out some friends of hers (who live across the street) had let her borrow *their* red Saturn. She not only was able to unlock my brother's car with their key, she was able to $#@%in' DRIVE AWAY with it. FWIW, apparently it wasn't completely trivial; after she managed to drive away with it, she was unable to get it started again when she tried to drive it back....
If you think you might be as happy debugging people as debugging machines or circuits, you could always do what I did: start with a CS or engineering degree, go back to school later for a solid grounding in molecular biology, then move on to medical school.
Better yet, just start with the biology or maybe a biochem degree and get a CS minor (or maybe a double major if you're really motivated).
Why bother? Well, ignoring the possibility of medical bioinformatics for the moment, programming (especially debugging) really teaches you how to think, plus its fun. The bio part not only gives your geek brain more fun/interesting things to think about, it gives you an edge getting into med school and prepares you to survive better once you get there. Finally, the medical degree gets you that lucrative job in a field that's not about to dry up or be outsourced anytime soon: the tidal wave of baby-boomers is nearing retirement age, and a WHOLE lot of money is going to be spent on keeping them well.
(And yes, you can do it... there's a relative shortage of qualified med-school applicants these days, and statistically speaking, somewhere around 50% of all doctor-wannabes are getting in somewhere.)
Agreed. In fact, I think this is a great time to start boycotting ALL AMI-based systems. (Maybe Intel, too... Big Brother really needs to be kept in place with a few good bitch-slaps now and then.)
The human eye is most sensitive to light in the
range of 500-550 nm or so, which is corresponds
to green light. Human color perception is
a result of three different types of light-absorbing pigments (opsins) in the cones of our
eyes. One type absorbs best at about 425 nm
(blue), another at about 530 nm (green) and the
third at either 530 or 560 nm, (green or yellow,
but nonetheless referred to as the 'red' cone
opsin, for reasons which will hopefully be made
clear.) The two different values for the
maximum 'red' opsin absorbances are given because
there is a very common genetic variant even in
people with "normal" color vision that allows
some people to be much better at distinguishing
lower light frequencies (i.e. reds).
Human color perception results from the RELATIVE
amount of activation of the different types of
cone cells; thus, even though 'red' cones are
most adept at absorbing yellow light, green
cones are very active in this range also; as the
frequency decreases (wavelength increases),
the red cones are activated in higher proportions
relative to the green cones. An additional
factor complicating all of this is that the
numbers of different cone cell types in our
eyes is not equal; I forget which is most
prevalent, but they vary by a significant
amount. Anyway, all this might not seem
directly related to your question, but the
take-home message is different "normal"
people have different color sensitivities,
but since our ability to distinguish different
colors derives from being able to distinguish
between different levels of activation of
our various cone cells, our vision is most
attuned to color differences in the regions
where our cone cells have reasonably strong
overlaps- i.e. specifically between about 470
nm and 630 nm. (i.e. there are lots of colors
on both edges of our perception--blues and reds--
that we don't perceive differences between
very well.)
It is a tragedy in our lifetime. But 'the future' isn't going to make everything all better by levelling the playing field. There will always be disparities in ability- but IQ enhancements will not be doled out evenly to the world's children; GE will exacerbate the situation, not ameliorate it. Besides, while genetic traits are certainly important, there remain those little variables like education, health, connections, money, random dumb luck, etc. which some of us are naive enough to believe contribute something to a person's ability to prosper in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, while we're at it, let's not forget that the Russians disbanded the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or Committee for Homeland Security) in '95. It wasn't even a decade before we here in the U.S. got a Department of Homeland Security of our very own.
With the lack of atmosphere, the amount of solar energy that's available per square meter is incredible. Photovoltaics are one obvious option. Heat engines that would harvest the huge amounts of potential energy to be found in the vast temperature differentials available between lit and unlit lunar surfaces would be another.
With so much cheap energy available, the obvious next thing to do is to start refining things, e.g. extracting vast amounts of oxygen from all of that silica and hurl it into orbit via a rail gun. Other raw materials and purified minerals to follow. Lots of O2 and refined materials in orbit = a good start towards constructing orbital factories. Additional ores to come both from the moon and the asteroids; hydrocarbons to come from Titan.
Okay, so now we've got a factory system set up with effectively unlimited amounts of energy, oxygen, hydrogen, and refined ores of any sort imaginable available to us at the top of Earth's gravity well. Maybe we might get serious about building a space elevator at that point.
What should we build next after that?
Whatever anyone damn well pleases.
Apples and oranges, my friend.
Another business competitor or regional spinoff (e.g. Fairpoint) in the marketplace is one thing.
But a modern regional community-owned fiber network in a low-population-density setting? That notion implicitly undermines the monopolistic 'last-mile' business model of the entire RBOC legacy. It's not about retaining the negligible profits from the specific area in question. It's the unacceptable precedent this effort would represent if it is successful (especially if it succeeds economically despite the geographical disadvantages). Why keep renting local network infrastructure from a vastly profitable MegaCorp telco when you could instead band together with neighbors in your community and save a lot of money over the years to come by just building your own brand-spanking-new one?
How about The Eastern Regional Autonomous Network?
(1) It's a play on Terra (i.e. of the Earth, appropriate for a buried cable)
(2) I'd guess it's appropriate from a speed context (I don't know for sure, but Tbps speeds seem within reason for a light pipe)
(3) When Verizon et al hear about this, they'll shit their pants because of the threat that other communities would join in and/or duplicate it. So they WILL come gunning for you on both the regulatory and legislative levels. They'll sow as much FUD as they can... and this way, their efforts will be known as 'The War on TERA'. Keeps things simple that way: freedom-loving people everywhere will already know which side of it they stand on, as will those who prefer to remain enslaved to our corporate masters.
The key to your statement is the word 'developed'. Take a good hard look at a map and realize just how insignificant the 'developed' world is in the grand scheme of things. True, as women become more educated, they have substantially fewer children. And yes, China did implement a very drastic birth control policy some years back that's kept the situation from being far, far, worse than it already is.
And when we talk about the population being on track to peak at somewhere under 10 billion people, where do you think that upper bound comes from? The people in the high-fertility cultures will have caught up to the developed world and just won't want to have so many kids? Um, by and large, no. That 'peak' of 10 billion is actually a carrying capacity. It reflects horrible economic conditions and high death rates from things like AIDS, starvation, genocide, and lack of access to potable water in underdeveloped countries. Yes, at some point in some cultures there will probably be noticeable declines in birth rates, where women choose to use birth control and abortion to avoid even more severe economic hardships for their families.
But in general, when we provide technological solutions to population problems without addressing high birth rates, we succeed only in increasing the carrying capacity sufficiently to allow more impoverished people to exist before a different aspect of Malthusian economics takes its toll.
Implementation of effective birth control is by far the #1 priority we need to implement to improve global societal well-being. Face it, people: The only obstacles that fundamentally prevent us all from living like Bill Gates in the long-term are social economic ones.
When it comes down to it, if we collectively wanted to prioritize clean water, clean transportation, adequate and healthy food, elimination of communicable diseases, cheap communication tech, adequate housing, renewable energy, yadda-yadda-yadda, we already have the engineering know-how to do so perfectly well for decades to come for some 'reasonable' number of people. Whether 'reasonable' is a number as small as 2 billion or as large as 20 billion is somewhat open to debate, but it's not relevant to the larger point. That point is that no matter what the carrying capacity of our planet (or solar system) ultimately is, there still will be only finite resources collectively available to us, even while many of our sub-populations have religious and/or cultural incentives to continue to multiply exponentially.
No matter how we may strive to fix any specific technological problem, all such a solution can gain us is to stave off the inevitable by (at best) increasing the planet's carrying capacity. The underlying economic problem (exponential population growth) will remain the same, and it will still have only two possible solutions: (1) decreased human birth rate, or (2) increased human death rate.
Where solution (1) is inadequately implemented, solution (2) MUST prevail, and it will often do so in a cataclysmic fashion.
Can anybody say "saw the writing on the wall" (even if he wasn't sure what the words meant, exactly)?
Yes, to all of that. Your point is....?
(I'm assuming you're trying to connect the concepts 'mind-doping' and 'bad'. I don't think you quite succeeded in that attempt.)
> There is no moral high ground in war.
Maybe not, but there certainly is a low ground, and we (in the US) have been flirting with at least a partial occupation of it time and time again for the last several years. Kudos to some of our military intelligence folks that finally seem to be rising above and learning to sucessfully talk to/negotiate with many of our putative Iraqi 'enemies', but it seems like it's been a damned long time in coming.
I wonder why it is that nobody stops to think of what terrorism is: a tool of the powerless. If you've got a superior kick-ass military, there's generally no need to resort to terrorism: you do what you want, and if somebody resists, you can blow them away. If you don't have that kind of force at your disposal, you start to look for less direct options to express your opinions than an all-out military confrontation.
Another thing that breeds terrorism is a sense of being wronged by a powerful oppressor, particularly when you're desparate and helpless. If your life isn't worth living, you're probably a lot more willing to give it up in the cause of revenge.
Devices like robotanks that COMPLETELY remove US soldiers from danger will have the inevitable side-effect of making our enemies immediately think: Here we are watching our families and friends getting killed by machines from the USA, but there are no enemy soldiers to fight. Maybe they're too cowardly. So... who are our enemies, really? These machines? Of course not... they're only tools, being operated by CIA agents and military contractors and the like somewhere else, probably over in the US. Hmm... could it be.... US... civilians?
The payback exacted by people who lose everything they have worth living for and are left only with such thoughts may be many years in coming, but it *will* be both horrible and inevitable. And of course we'll react accordingly when it does. It's bad enough when armies go at it in the name of 'accomplishing national objectives'. But once entire civilian populations learn to truly hate each other, war is no longer enough. At that point, only genocide will suffice.
Um, Anonymous Coward? Are you a Microsoft shill? Maybe you missed a few acknowledgements from some of the fine people at Microsoft over the years about how they do business there. Here's a couple of interesting example quotes from "Dynamics of Software Development" (1995, Microsoft Press), by Jim McCarthy, one of the execs of the MS project that became Visual C++:
... To solve the current problems with a product, the customer gets the next one. (emphasis mine.) ... Don't neglect to consider the power of fashion. Don't dismiss it. Search your own feelings about car model years or clothes or music before you relegate the notion of fashion to the irrelevancy bin. Factor the powerful appeal to your customers of a new start, with all the latest conveniences(sic), into your plans."
Rule #13: Ahead? Don't ever look back. "... Burn the boats. Continue to take big, ineradicable risks. Settle the new territory you've conquered. Demonstrate to everyone that you're committed to your course by burning the boats, precluding all thoughts of going back. This may mean not being handicapped by your installed base. Compatibility kills. Provide your market with sufficient incentive to move at your pace, and compromise on compatibility. Pull them forward, but don't let them go back."
He continues a related point in Rule #14:
Rule #14: Take the oxygen along. "When you buy into the idea of developing software for personal commputers, in particular for Microsoft operating systems, you need to understand that you're buying into a way of life. The pace of change is breathtaking, like the pace of the underlying social and technological change. Doing analysis, developing a system, deploying it, and then going into maintenance mode is no longer an operative model.
The unceasing change in software is driven by the global pulse of new operating system releases, which have become the central organizing element in this state of the information revolution. Hardware, peripheral, software, and mass communications organizations are all cycling with major releases of Windows. This rhythm is not something that will let up soon.
Dude, like it or not, buggy releases are a way of life at Microsoft, not just an accident. Bill Gates biggest genius ever over the years was probably when the idea came to him to turn bugs into a profit center feature. It started with Microsoft Tech support, which from what I can remember from how incensed I was, was probably one of the first examples anywhere of having to pay a software company to report the bugs in their products and beg for a fix. This fine tradition eventually developed into the Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN) Library. I mean, what other company would have the chutzpah to release annual buglists and (sometimes) workarounds on CDs and sell new versions (Now with even more bugs!) every year for nearly 200 bucks? Yeah, I know that the MSDN Library has other stuff, too, but it's largely stuff that you only need because you bought into the nightmare of becoming a MS developer and you need as much handholding as you can get to survive.
I used to write software for PCs. After years of frustration and ever-rising anger at Microsoft, I left the field to go into medicine. Not that the human body is any less complex than a PC, mind you, but at least God doesn't seem to be intent on coming out with 'improvements' every couple of years that screw everything up and change all of the underlying rules to stay in business. (That job instead seemingly belongs instead to Congress and the insurance companies, but I digress....)
...is why SlashDot is even publishing this non-story FUD for our perusal. If Ballmer starts actually making threats, okay, it becomes a story. Until then, it's so much bloviation. Move along, move along. Nothing to see here.
How about upgrading the slower/older machines to Ubuntu, which is less resource-demanding than Windows? At the same time, you can upgrade a few of the better machines to XP Pro so they'll have maintain exposure with the Windows world, and be able to use all of the relevant software for that platform. Best of both worlds.
Parent opines:
> That's completely false. You should be ashamed
> of yourself. Wallace claims, correctly, that Gnu
> is selling their product for less than what it
> costs to produce it.
Hm. Let's see. Even if we go with your inane fantasy here, just how much do you suppose it costs the GNU project to allow someone to produce software for the world under the GNU license? Aside from the distribution costs (borne by major foundation grants as well as smaller donations from people like me) the costs incurred by the GNU project and the FSF come not from software production, but from from championing the open-source movement and hiring lawyers to fend off idiots (i.e. people like... *ahem*.)
> He also claims, also correctly, that the FSF
> engages in price fixing by getting multiple
> vendors to agree to give their products away
> for free.
And here's where you're getting confused. Laws against price fixing exist not to allow other companies to compete, but to allow consumers to get the benefits of competition by prohibiting collusion of those already in the business.
It's hard to argue that consumers are getting shafted by collusion on the parts of the donors when the consumers don't have to pay for their free software.
> The is anti-competitive, because it
> prevents other vendors who don't want to give
> their products away for free from entering the
> market.
By this logic, we should also outlaw public schools, public libraries, national parks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, municipal police forces, non-toll roadways, and any other establishments for the public good that don't involve a direct fee-for-service model. After all, they're competing against somebody else's potential business. (Thanks for the idea, but no thanks-- I like *this* world better.)
"What happens if a shift gets left on the board with nobody willing to bid under the max posted?"
Um, the hospital administration takes note of that fact and raises the max available rate for those particular slots until enough workers are found, and/or outsources to an outside agency if really desperate, or even forces staff nurses to work overtime in unfilled critical slots (as they already do now)?
Really, I don't know what so many of you are so disgusted by; this is Capitalism 101 "supply and demand" in fairly benign form (given the relative shortage of nurses). Frankly, it seems like a pretty good win-win solution to fill chronically unfilled spots for everybody except the temp agencies (aww... poor middlemen.)
What? You say nurses deserve more stability, and should only work if they've got guaranteed full-time jobs? Fine. $37/hr (or whatever rate is negotiated by the local nursing union for that particular type of nursing) still gets them that full-time work. How? Why? Because none of this eliminates the power of the unions, and overall system stability is still in everybody's best interest, most definitely including that of the hospitals.
As to the idea that nursing quality will suffer any if the lowest bids determine who works, I've gotta say that you've either never worked in a hospital or never paid attention. If you had, you'll know that it's not like many not-so-great nurses are being weeded out by existing market forces; if you've got the necessary quals for a particular job (ER, critical care, scrub, floor, dialysis, whatever) and you do that job without doing anything egregiously stupid/dangerous, you remain employed. Nothing in this system of labor allocation gives nurses the power/right to work in positions they're not already fully qualified for.
I'll put in a "seconded" motion in support of iRiver's iHP-120. I bought my wife a 3rd gen 15GB iPod that might have been okay, if (a) the battery hadn't been s--t, and (b) the thing had been compatible with Win98SE. After struggling with both problems, I returned it to the store and got the 20GB iHP-120 (price was a complete wash after taking into account the ridiculously overpriced USB2.0 converter thingie for the iPod).
:)
We couldn't be happier with the iRiver: not only is it 33% larger in disk storage capacity (maybe more when you take into account iPod's '15GB' is really 13.8 GB; not sure if iRiver fudges numbers the same way too), but the battery life is twice as long as what the iPod's was SUPPOSED to be (if it had worked properly, which it didn't). Add in OGG support, the voice recorder, a decent shock-protective-leather carrying case, ability to take the unit apart and replace the battery if need be, and the knowledge that I wasw no longer coping with a product that was deliberately sabotaged to NOT to work with Win98SE, and I am SO glad I made the switch _from_ Apple.
Sorry, Apple: when you spend more on marketing than on your engineering and QC, you might get customers but you won't keep them.
I know this wouldn't solve everybody's problems, but: it seems like what's really needed by most people is the ability to easily place critical apps and/or data files into a reserved area of working memory that never gets swapped or paged out. I think this would differ from a run-of-the-mill RAM drive in that (I think) RAM drives aren't really part of 'working' memory, so apps/data stored in them still need to be loaded/paged/swapped in to be active. This all seems like such a pathetically obvious idea that I'm really expecting somebody in the know to say, "Duh... to do this, you just _________". Any takers?
Am I the only /. reader who thinks that the BayStar pigs deserve to get burned along with all the rest of SCO's stockholders as the company's stock slides into the septic tank? It's not like they didn't know what Darl's business plan was when they invested Microsoft's money...
Er, brothers and Saturns, not moms and Yugos.
Last weekend a young woman politely knocked on my door and asked if I drove a red Saturn. Well, no, but my visiting brother does.... It turns out some friends of hers (who live across the street) had let her borrow *their* red Saturn. She not only was able to unlock my brother's car with their key, she was able to $#@%in' DRIVE AWAY with it. FWIW, apparently it wasn't completely trivial; after she managed to drive away with it, she was unable to get it started again when she tried to drive it back....
Alexander Shulgin's writeup of the "Infinitely Old Universe" idea (in place of the Big Bang) seems more poignant than ever....
If you think you might be as happy debugging people as debugging machines or circuits, you could always do what I did: start with a CS or engineering degree, go back to school later for a solid grounding in molecular biology, then move on to medical school.
Better yet, just start with the biology or maybe a biochem degree and get a CS minor (or maybe a double major if you're really motivated).
Why bother? Well, ignoring the possibility of medical bioinformatics for the moment, programming (especially debugging) really teaches you how to think, plus its fun. The bio part not only gives your geek brain more fun/interesting things to think about, it gives you an edge getting into med school and prepares you to survive better once you get there. Finally, the medical degree gets you that lucrative job in a field that's not about to dry up or be outsourced anytime soon: the tidal wave of baby-boomers is nearing retirement age, and a WHOLE lot of money is going to be spent on keeping them well.
(And yes, you can do it... there's a relative shortage of qualified med-school applicants these days, and statistically speaking, somewhere around 50% of all doctor-wannabes are getting in somewhere.)
Agreed. In fact, I think this is a great time to start boycotting ALL AMI-based systems. (Maybe Intel, too... Big Brother really needs to be kept in place with a few good bitch-slaps now and then.)
The human eye is most sensitive to light in the
range of 500-550 nm or so, which is corresponds
to green light. Human color perception is
a result of three different types of light-absorbing pigments (opsins) in the cones of our
eyes. One type absorbs best at about 425 nm
(blue), another at about 530 nm (green) and the
third at either 530 or 560 nm, (green or yellow,
but nonetheless referred to as the 'red' cone
opsin, for reasons which will hopefully be made
clear.) The two different values for the
maximum 'red' opsin absorbances are given because
there is a very common genetic variant even in
people with "normal" color vision that allows
some people to be much better at distinguishing
lower light frequencies (i.e. reds).
Human color perception results from the RELATIVE
amount of activation of the different types of
cone cells; thus, even though 'red' cones are
most adept at absorbing yellow light, green
cones are very active in this range also; as the
frequency decreases (wavelength increases),
the red cones are activated in higher proportions
relative to the green cones. An additional
factor complicating all of this is that the
numbers of different cone cell types in our
eyes is not equal; I forget which is most
prevalent, but they vary by a significant
amount. Anyway, all this might not seem
directly related to your question, but the
take-home message is different "normal"
people have different color sensitivities,
but since our ability to distinguish different
colors derives from being able to distinguish
between different levels of activation of
our various cone cells, our vision is most
attuned to color differences in the regions
where our cone cells have reasonably strong
overlaps- i.e. specifically between about 470
nm and 630 nm. (i.e. there are lots of colors
on both edges of our perception--blues and reds--
that we don't perceive differences between
very well.)
between very well.)
Sadly, you're half right.
It is a tragedy in our lifetime. But 'the future' isn't going to make everything all better by levelling the playing field. There will always be disparities in ability- but IQ enhancements will not be doled out evenly to the world's children; GE will exacerbate the situation, not ameliorate it. Besides, while genetic traits are certainly important, there remain those little variables like education, health, connections, money, random dumb luck, etc. which some of us are naive enough to believe contribute something to a person's ability to prosper in the world.