This is a classic short term profit / long term loss strategy. Fire the local workers. Depress the local economy. Fewer locals can buy your product. Your sales go down. Your competitors sales go down. THey fire people. Economy continues to decline, more people are fired, and sales continue to plummet.
Long term companies thrive when the local consumers are well paid. No one can go for a long term strategy though because shareholder value is only measured in next quarters dividend / share price and not the expected value in 5 years.
My understanding is that The Thing is required viewing at the start of each Winter Season at the South Pole research station - if you think about who actually would spend a winter at the south pole I think you can see why they would be all over this kind of thing.
I guess a telescope isn't a telescope, it's a light detector. It detects light that hits it mirrors...
These neutrino telescopes work by detecting Cherenkov Radiation created by the collision by-products and then determining the track of the particle that is emmiting the Cherenkov Radiation. The momentum of the original Neutrino is conserved so the track of the by-product is very close to the original trajectory.
You filter out downward tracks because they are generally caused by atmospheric cosmic radiation - the earth is basically your filter here, only neutrino's will be coming up through the earth. It's called a telescope because they hope to be able to correlate neutrino tracks with actual stellar objects - once the detector is large enough (hence the cubic kilometer size) there should be a sufficient cross section of matter to have a regular set of interactions from persistent neutrino sources.
This is an extension of the AMANDA research project, they drilled the original series of test holes in the 90's to prove the process would work - I helped build some of the detector equipment back in Wisconsin while I was an undergrad there.
The rich guy earned the money, and he'll invest it in whatever brings him the best return, since he knows that if it's wasted it won't be easy to replace. The money tends to go to companies that are managed well, and are successful.
The rich guy might have earned it, or he might have inherited it. Or he might have been given it through the good ol boy network. And he might invest it in good deals or he might invest it in politics to cut the tax rate on his income. Capital gains, the rich mans income, is taxed less then the poor mans income, his paycheck. In a perfect meritocracy your position might make sense, but in the real world this argument ignores that the top 1% of americans probably didn't actualy earn their money through good business sense, they inherited it.
The government didn't earn the money, and when it's spent there's more where that came from, so they don't care nearly as much. The person deciding what to spend it on decides based on politics, not whether the money will be put to good use. The money tends to go to companies who've given large campaign contributions and spent the most money on lobbyists.
I don't see how the social security, food stamps, and welfare checks go to campaign contributers. I don't see how spending on emergency services like the coast guard, health clinics, the CDC, or FEMA goes to campaign contributers. But your point is the standard frothing anarchist / libertaian arguement that government shouldn't be trusted to tie their own shoes, let alone hold a gun. Considering that government is just people in power, like rich people are just people with money, I believe you are actually arguing against yourself.
That's a simple utilitarian argument about why it's better, but there's also a moral argument to be made that the people who best know how to spend the money are the ones who the money belongs to, as in the people who earned it. Remember, a tax cut doesn't mean giving money to the rich, it means taking less money from the rich. There's a difference, if you're not a frothing at the mouth slashdot leftist.
There is also a moral argument about not letting citizens in the most advanced civilization on the planet go to bed hungry or die because they cannot afford simple health care. There is a moral argument about saving citizens from natural disasters. But, we are not talking about morals here, are we? We're talking economics. And vodoo economics or trickle down economics were tried... and failed. Progressive taxes, regulation on monopoly businesses, government investment on infrastructure, and a tight watch for corruption (helped by a free and uncensored press) have also been tried.. and those policies work.
The same holds for the services that most of us already pay for. I live in a community where the garbage is picked up by people paid for by a private condo association. I pay a fee for this. However, I still pay taxes to the city, some of which are used to fund trash removal from residents outside of my community.
So, if you don't have kids you shouldn't pay for the schools? If you don't have legs you shouldn't pay for the sidewalks? If you don't drive you shouldn't pay for roads? If you're blind, you shouldn't pay for streetlights?
Maybe the town garbage collection service pays for the dump. Does your private garbage collection service use the town dump? So maybe your taxes are paying for a service you do use. Maybe your food is delivered to town by the roads you don't drive. Maybe your mail is delivered by mailmen walking on the sidewalks you don't walk on.
If 51% of the voters in a town want to do a thing, then most likely that thing will be done. It's called democracy....
And, concerning competition, how many people drink bottled water or have bottled water delivered to their homes or offices, even though the municipality provides water?
6 years ago huh? 8 years back I helped a company do a mail migration. That's migrate from MS Mail to MS OUtlooks. Yeah yeah.. MS, Outlook, hey, it was 1997 and who knew what a virus was?
Anyways, the point is that I had to walk to each users desk, log in as THEM, and set up the application as THEM and get it working. That required their username and pwd. I was contractor IT boy and no one was going to give me access to admin rights so I could change the users creds for myself.
It's 8 years later, I'm a sys admin now, and if I had to do it again I can't think of any way to do an upgrade like this without loggin in as each user and making sure the account settings migrated properly in their email client.
Quoted from above: "We should expect bad code because we expect code that rolls out quickly and at a low budget. We should expect bad code because most coders don't want to spend their time testing and documenting, and because most companies don't want to spend money on dedicated testers or on implementing rigid development processes. And we should expect bad code because even bad code can work 'well enough' to keep most people happy most of the time."
Your premise here is that we should accept bad code. I'm sorry, I don't see why I should have to spend my good money on bad products. The main problem here is that the industry LEADER (M$) delivers bad code. They've set the bar low, and very few companies are challenging that bar. I guess, these days, my choices are either:
1) Be a GURU and use *nix, spending LOTS of time learning how the TOOL works so I can use stable applications. Poor trade for MANY instances, a good one if you happen to like computers.
2) Be a user with consumer level software that is deisgined with failure in mind.
Hopefully, option 3 is coming soon.. a consumer level software base that is stable and user friendly. I'm tempted to check out OSX but I'm still so anti-MAC..
And this is a huge problem. Until someone creates option 3 all the option 2 producers simply compete on the COST of their product for development and marketting. When there is an honest competition for QUALITY... well, that's when things get interesting. And.. maybe this is why we have laws against monopolies.
I still reject that we, as consumers, have to EXPECT shoddy software. I can expect lower frills, fewer functions, but not poorer quality.
Re:I have searched this entire thread...
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Baked Alaska
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WHy should we act to stop global warming? The first reason I can think of is New York. Then all the rest of the coastal cities on the planet. Um, how many humans currently live on elavations of under 5 feet? What would a sea level increase of 5 feet do to our economies, our homes, our lives? I don't know that a 5 foot seal level rise is in the cards, but it's a nice round number that I think illustrates a major problem with globabl warming.
We have some fairly clear evidence that: a) CO2 is a greenhouse gas b) Humans emit CO2 c) Humans do not absorb the CO2 they emit. d) The CO2 released by humans will increase the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the earth atmosphere.
Ergo, humanity, by increasing the net CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing the mean temperature of the planet.
And, since we are OBSERVING an actual increase of the mean temperature at the surface of the planet, and we have a plausible explanation for some of that warming, we can safely say that though there might be OTHER sources of heat pollution, we are the unbalanced party, we are taking direct actions with direct consequences, and we are responsible for these consequences.
In other words, we've lit a fire, the rooms is getting warmer, and we should either adjust ourselves(move our cities, stop knitting sweaters... ) or adjust the fire (place curbs on CO2 emiisions, mandate carbon sinks... ).
I honestly believe that it will be cheaper to mandate some more changes in CO2 emissions than it will be to move our cities away from the coast. But I have no numbers to back that up.
Thanks for that bit of sanity here. If only news media would provide point and counter point in their stories! A little more reality in the far fetched claims of the headlines would help everyone out.
Re:Pulsars v. Quark stars
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Quark Stars
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Very Interesting Times INDEED!
Our understanding of QUARKS alone is limited. Macroscopic quark objects.. it's a new state of matter fer gods sake! Who knows what this stuff can do! I wonder if this is a transitory state for the remnant.. maybe it undergoes a phase change into a black hole later in it's lifecycle. Anyone know how stable a Quark Plasma is?
Re:What's the physics behind this?
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Quark Stars
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Well the physics is an attempt to explain a fact.
FACT: Supernova Remnant exists FACT: It's to small to be a neutron star FACTS: Variuos other properties
Obviuosly SOMETHING is keeping the star from collapsing more. So this THEORY comes up to explain it. Of course it's just a theory, but it does SEEM to support the observations.
In other news, degenercy isn't a LAW. If it was, then black holes couldn't exist. It's more of an aproximation of other forces, kind of like how we define Normal forces. When you push your hand on a solid object, the resistance from the solid object is a Normal force. Really whats happening is that the EM and other forces in the atoms in your hand and the wall are interacting, but that's just to complicated to deal with all the time so it's simplified into a single force.
WHo's Us? If us is the/. crowd.. well, they've probably done nothing. If us.. on the other hand.. is the "standard dumb user" or an IT profesional trying to buy 30 new PC's for the office.. well, they've done alot! Let's talk about cheap prices, single vendor for repairs, onsite calls for some tech issues, reliable delivery (usually).. and all the other bullsh1t that corporate buyers and standard dumb users want.
These OEMS offer a service that people WANT! If they didn't want the service, they wouldn't ship millions of frickin PC'S a year! It's just YOU that doesn't want their service.. well, and me too.
I see this law as a blatant violation of WTO rules. See, american companies make these devices. These new "tarriffs" will hurt sales of the devices, thereby causing american companies to loose sales. This is an unfair law! Canada can't go changing it's laws to hinder free trade! SO.. all the companies that make the devices can now SUE canada for losses. And canada has to pay!
In case you weren't aware of this pesky little law, here in CA we are going to wind up paying some candaian compay that makes MTBE for gasoline. See, we found out that MTBE contaminates groundwater, kills people, so we are banning it's use here in the state. But WTO rules say that this is a violation of free trade and so CA taxpayers are going to wind up paying some settlement for excersising our INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT TO NOT DRINK POISON. I figure if the laws work on that absurd situation, it should certainly apply for silly tarrifs like these.
>problem discussed in the article is better >solved by the type of licensing model Microsoft >plans to adopt
Or how about better testing? Software does not have to break. Software does not have to have bugs.
After a few years testing software I've discovered the best way to for me to help get a bug free product out the door is not testing the product, but testing the design document. Where do developers make mistakes? Generally when they don't consider a user doing X or forgetting that they need to also work with module Y. I sit down with the design docs and look for implied relatiosnhips, lists of cases with cases mising, or holes where certain activities aren't considered. I add them in, and when the developer turns over the project he's already fixed most of the bugs I would have found.. just by telling him BEFORE he wrote the code what he needed to do.
Carpenters figured it out a few thousand years ago.. measure twice, cut once. Apply that to code.. document it first, and then check the documents.. then write some code.
Neil Stephonson's book snow crash had this great idea.. an online 'library of congress'. People all over the world submitted data into the system. THe data was analyzed, sorted and stored. Common information was free to the public. Sensitive or valuable information had a price tag on it. THere was a sliding scale, everything from free to wicked expensive. The system paid the contributors every time someone bought their data submissions. I thought it was a decent solution, pragmatic in that 'we control the information' big brother way.
Honestly I think the future is what we make of it. The Free (as in beer) Software idea is revolutionary. IF (or when!) free software expands to a user friendly plug and play kind of system then purchased or rented software will be obsolete. Thats markets at work. What is the trickle down effect of free software? Think free software of the caliber that ILM and Lucas use. Whats the production cost of media on free software? Hardware and labor. As we create tools that allow individuals to compete with the established media giants, the cost of media lowers. Once it drops below a certain level then DRM is almost pointless.. why protect valueless data? Currently the reason why entertainment data is so caught up with DRM is the strangle hold a few small companies have on the distribution of said media.
The other end of DRM of course is private data. Think medical records, tax records, finacnial information. Those tend not to be consumer level information.. in the way that entertainment digital media is a consumer product. Strict and fair privacy laws (thank god for the EU and their policy!) require excellent DRM. That is the where the juicy valuable data will be, and it really wont be a consumer issue but more a banker issue.. we'll choose to store our valuable private data with institutions with the strongest security if we are afraid of hackers, or we'll store it with the most user friendly, or we'll store it with the cheapest one. Markets again will force changes that consumers want.
I've never worked on an Open Source Project (sorry!).. All my work has been at variuos software houses. In any case, the lack of documentation seems to be endemic to programing. For some reason it's always the last thing on everyone's plate and the first thing to be ignored or skipped. Seriuos, forward thinking, well written documentation is the key to any good project. For maintanance, upgrades, even just shared development work.. documentation is essential. Then again, so is well documented code and code written in an easy to follow format.
Honestly.. it's not the "teenagers" who forgets to document.. it's everybody,
How exactly do you hide in this day and age? How exactly can you stop the satelites and echelon? They can not hide. The people who planned this attack are not dead. The people who trained the terrorists who did this attack are not dead. The people who gave money to support the training and execution of this attack are not dead. The people who guarded the training camps, who assisted in the execution of this attack, they are all still alive. They will all be caught. If they do not surrender themselves to the authorities when they come to the door they will die. Those who are caught will be tried. Those who are guilty will be punished. If they are punished in the states that means the death penalty. We did it to our own citizen for a far less heinous crime.
Any organization that would commit this atrociuos act has demonstrated it's lack of reason. The people behind this are insane. They blindly kill civilians, children. I will not trust a word they say. If they surrender they can live in a small concrete cell for the rest of their lives. If they don't surrender they will die. Any organization that supports them now has a choice. Denounce these criminals as the monsters they are and lend support in tracking them down. Otherwise they are just as guilty as these cowardly terrorists and they will die as well.
Some people don't want to talk. They choose to kill civilians instead of talking. They choose to hide and attack from the shadows. Now the have sown the wind. Soon they shall reap the whirlwind.
1) MS anti-trust
2) Inflated lending rates
3) Mass Hysteria
Spending outrageous amounts of money to buy half-baked companies that would never make a profit if they could print their own money, over-inflated share prices that had to gaurantee growth at exponential rates for a decade to make them worth it had nothing to do with it. That's the hysteria part. And that alone is enough to cause a crash. So I agree with item #3.
As for item #2, the dot-com phenomena was created by venture capitalists, not bankers. See bankers have laws that they must follow, lending practices hammered out in economies for a few centuries now. Bankers would be able to look at a flow chart and say "pet food don't make money you geek. Get out of here". And the Fed controls lending rates between BANKS. It's such a subtle effect that it doesn't touch credit card rates and rarely effects mortage rates. VC's don't get loans from banks, they wouldn't lend it to them for such shaky investments. VC's are gamblers and bankers don't gamble.
And for item #1, the Anti-trust case started in 97 and I daresay we will see the end of it in '05. Kind of hard to put cause and effect together there chum. Just to keep you honest.
Speaking of bundling IE into windows for free.. considering you had to pay for windows, how exactly is IE free? I mean, it only worked on an operating system you already paid hundreds of dollars for. Maybe MS decided to not charge us for SOLITARE and then we paid for IE instead. It's all semantics here.
The essence of the arguement is "leveraging". When you have a monopoly in an area, like OPERATING SYSTEMS, and you use that monopoly.. say by "bundling" your software with your monopoly operating system, you UNFAIRLY LEVERAGE YOUR MONOPOLY in operating systems into another area, like browsers.
See, the law doesn't make bundling illegal, it makes unfair business practices resulting from monopolies unfair.
And about your java thing.. does JAVA really do everything windows does? Can it? Can Java do directx? I didn't think so.
I think the analogy is actually perfect. You might be able to say that a bridge has only 1 function, to extend a road from point A to point B, a word processor's fucntion is to faciliate word processing.
And if a server crashes from a memory leak in a piece of code, isn't that %100 failure? And it takes out all the other code running on that server as well!
The reason bridges are build to such exacting standards are because bridge builders can be sued if their bridge brakes.. software developers can't.
The differance between A bridge and most software is that bridge's are extremely well defined before the bridge is built. A blue print is drawn to exacting specifications. A design document is created that specifies everything the construction worker needs to know. You never have to ask How High is this supposed to be? How long is this piece? Does a support go every length or every 2?
Software, on the other hand, rarely, if ever, has a blue print. Someone might wave their hands and say "It should do this and have a blue interface" and the construction worker is expected to figure out what kind of a bridge he should be building.. as he builds it.
I like to use the PowerQuest Boot Magic system. I haven't tried it with Linux (sorry!) so I don't know if it works there but I think I remember some docs saying it works. You can get it with Partition Magic (another great tool!!!) and I use it for testing software.. I make images with Boot Magic and you can have up to 4 on your system.
The trick I dug was setting up a DOS Network so I could boot all my boxes with boot disks. Then conenct them all to a DOS server running Boot Magic and distribute the images across the lab via the network!
Competition is inefficent.
WTF!
Read that again.
Competition is inefficient. How does forcing 2 people to compete make them inefficient. Well, let's see.. I guess by having competition and allowing consumers options.. well.. obviuosly the poorest service will be chosen by everyone.. the most expensive service as well.. so all the companies that inovate new and exciting and affordable technologies will just go under.
Free marker is what this is all about. The Baby Bells and At&T have MONOPOLIES on "the last mile" wiring. Baby Bells have the phones and AT&T has the cable. No they plug their networks into the internet backbone and BOOM.. all these wires become broadband pipes.
The MONOPLOIES that they have are anti-competitive and anti-free market. We, as end users, have no access to the free market of broadband service because the only people who we can buy from are these MONOPOLIES. Congress has mandated that these MONOPOLIES open their systems up to a free market system. Congress said "well.. listen. You have the wires.. but eminent domain says that you have to share" They wont share. Can you honestly tell me that all the advances to the long distance telecomunications industry after congress split up the phone company has been a bad thing? How far have prices dropped? How many more options do you have now.. like cell phones with nation wide coverage.. or calling cards.. get a clue dude.. the only way for a free market to work is to have it be a free market with NO barriers to trade.
AMANDA (the Antarctic Muon And Nuetrino Detection Array) is a project I worked on as a Senior when I was finishing up at UW - Madison. They had had enough of those silly salt mine neutrino detectors and decided to build a new one. Out of Ice. At the South Pole!
Here's how it works. You drill 2 km deep holes in the ice at the south pole. Yes that's 2 KM deep. You use hot water to do this. Then you drop these 2KM long cables with little spheres hanging off of it. The water freezes back up. Do this a bunch of times. Now each of the sphere's contains a PMT (photomultiplier tube) that faces DOWN. You paint the top of the sphere's black so light doesn't bounce in from above.
The plan is to use the EARTH as a radiation shield. You look for upwards traveling light streams.. cherenkov radiation from nuetrinos that come up through the Earth. Since the only thing that will fly through a planet (well, the only thing I know of) is a Neutrino if you see an upward travelling light stream BOOM! It's a neutrino.
Now the really cool thing about this detector is that it's designed to be a TELESCOPE. Thats right.. it's not a room filled with water that you're looking for flashes of light in but rather a detector that can see the trails of the muons as they travel through the ice (neutrinos breed a muon when they smack into things). When I left they were working on some software that could take all the bitty data points from the PMT's and meld them back together into an actual data track to track the particles path.
Check em out at http://alizarin.physics.wisc.edu/
But it isn't speech but the press. 2600 is an online news organization.. among other things. If the New York Times printed an article with the code to DeCSS then it would be protected speec under the 1st amendment. If I write an article online and provide a link to DeCSS then it should also be protected.. why is it that an online news organization is less protected than an paper an ink one? Rights are Rights, and they are inalienable. I've always been astounded that congress doesn't understand the words "Congress shall make no law..."
I dream of being in an environment where QA could say no. I do QA (obviusly) and the only dates that are stuck to in scheduling is the release date. All other development dates are allowed to be slipped, missed, or just plain ignored. And at the end of the day this cuts my barely workable testing time into a hellish frenzy of edge cases and prayer. I've had days where I only had a few HOURS to test a new feature or product... (grumble grumble)
But I would never demand the power to reject code because it didn't have a proper signature.. thats absurd to the extreme!
Slashdot Mirror
This is a classic short term profit / long term loss strategy. Fire the local workers. Depress the local economy. Fewer locals can buy your product. Your sales go down. Your competitors sales go down. THey fire people. Economy continues to decline, more people are fired, and sales continue to plummet.
Long term companies thrive when the local consumers are well paid. No one can go for a long term strategy though because shareholder value is only measured in next quarters dividend / share price and not the expected value in 5 years.
My understanding is that The Thing is required viewing at the start of each Winter Season at the South Pole research station - if you think about who actually would spend a winter at the south pole I think you can see why they would be all over this kind of thing.
I guess a telescope isn't a telescope, it's a light detector. It detects light that hits it mirrors...
These neutrino telescopes work by detecting Cherenkov Radiation created by the collision by-products and then determining the track of the particle that is emmiting the Cherenkov Radiation. The momentum of the original Neutrino is conserved so the track of the by-product is very close to the original trajectory.
You filter out downward tracks because they are generally caused by atmospheric cosmic radiation - the earth is basically your filter here, only neutrino's will be coming up through the earth. It's called a telescope because they hope to be able to correlate neutrino tracks with actual stellar objects - once the detector is large enough (hence the cubic kilometer size) there should be a sufficient cross section of matter to have a regular set of interactions from persistent neutrino sources.
This is an extension of the AMANDA research project, they drilled the original series of test holes in the 90's to prove the process would work - I helped build some of the detector equipment back in Wisconsin while I was an undergrad there.
Why not? Because I can't opt out.
The same holds for the services that most of us already pay for. I live in a community where the garbage is picked up by people paid for by a private condo association. I pay a fee for this. However, I still pay taxes to the city, some of which are used to fund trash removal from residents outside of my community.
So, if you don't have kids you shouldn't pay for the schools? If you don't have legs you shouldn't pay for the sidewalks? If you don't drive you shouldn't pay for roads? If you're blind, you shouldn't pay for streetlights?
Maybe the town garbage collection service pays for the dump. Does your private garbage collection service use the town dump? So maybe your taxes are paying for a service you do use. Maybe your food is delivered to town by the roads you don't drive. Maybe your mail is delivered by mailmen walking on the sidewalks you don't walk on.
If 51% of the voters in a town want to do a thing, then most likely that thing will be done. It's called democracy....
And, concerning competition, how many people drink bottled water or have bottled water delivered to their homes or offices, even though the municipality provides water?
6 years ago huh? 8 years back I helped a company do a mail migration. That's migrate from MS Mail to MS OUtlooks. Yeah yeah .. MS, Outlook, hey, it was 1997 and who knew what a virus was?
Anyways, the point is that I had to walk to each users desk, log in as THEM, and set up the application as THEM and get it working. That required their username and pwd. I was contractor IT boy and no one was going to give me access to admin rights so I could change the users creds for myself.
It's 8 years later, I'm a sys admin now, and if I had to do it again I can't think of any way to do an upgrade like this without loggin in as each user and making sure the account settings migrated properly in their email client.
Quoted from above:
"We should expect bad code because we expect code that rolls out quickly and at a low budget. We should expect bad code because most coders don't want to spend their time testing and documenting, and because most companies don't want to spend money on dedicated testers or on implementing rigid development processes. And we should expect bad code because even bad code can work 'well enough' to keep most people happy most of the time."
Your premise here is that we should accept bad code. I'm sorry, I don't see why I should have to spend my good money on bad products. The main problem here is that the industry LEADER (M$) delivers bad code. They've set the bar low, and very few companies are challenging that bar. I guess, these days, my choices are either:
1) Be a GURU and use *nix, spending LOTS of time learning how the TOOL works so I can use stable applications. Poor trade for MANY instances, a good one if you happen to like computers.
2) Be a user with consumer level software that is deisgined with failure in mind.
Hopefully, option 3 is coming soon.. a consumer level software base that is stable and user friendly. I'm tempted to check out OSX but I'm still so anti-MAC..
And this is a huge problem. Until someone creates option 3 all the option 2 producers simply compete on the COST of their product for development and marketting. When there is an honest competition for QUALITY... well, that's when things get interesting. And.. maybe this is why we have laws against monopolies.
I still reject that we, as consumers, have to EXPECT shoddy software. I can expect lower frills, fewer functions, but not poorer quality.
WHy should we act to stop global warming? The first reason I can think of is New York. Then all the rest of the coastal cities on the planet. Um, how many humans currently live on elavations of under 5 feet? What would a sea level increase of 5 feet do to our economies, our homes, our lives? I don't know that a 5 foot seal level rise is in the cards, but it's a nice round number that I think illustrates a major problem with globabl warming.
We have some fairly clear evidence that:
a) CO2 is a greenhouse gas
b) Humans emit CO2
c) Humans do not absorb the CO2 they emit.
d) The CO2 released by humans will increase the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the earth atmosphere.
Ergo, humanity, by increasing the net CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing the mean temperature of the planet.
And, since we are OBSERVING an actual increase of the mean temperature at the surface of the planet, and we have a plausible explanation for some of that warming, we can safely say that though there might be OTHER sources of heat pollution, we are the unbalanced party, we are taking direct actions with direct consequences, and we are responsible for these consequences.
In other words, we've lit a fire, the rooms is getting warmer, and we should either adjust ourselves(move our cities, stop knitting sweaters... ) or adjust the fire (place curbs on CO2 emiisions, mandate carbon sinks... ).
I honestly believe that it will be cheaper to mandate some more changes in CO2 emissions than it will be to move our cities away from the coast. But I have no numbers to back that up.
Thanks for that bit of sanity here. If only news media would provide point and counter point in their stories! A little more reality in the far fetched claims of the headlines would help everyone out.
Very Interesting Times INDEED!
Our understanding of QUARKS alone is limited. Macroscopic quark objects.. it's a new state of matter fer gods sake! Who knows what this stuff can do! I wonder if this is a transitory state for the remnant.. maybe it undergoes a phase change into a black hole later in it's lifecycle. Anyone know how stable a Quark Plasma is?
Well the physics is an attempt to explain a fact.
FACT: Supernova Remnant exists
FACT: It's to small to be a neutron star
FACTS: Variuos other properties
Obviuosly SOMETHING is keeping the star from collapsing more. So this THEORY comes up to explain it. Of course it's just a theory, but it does SEEM to support the observations.
In other news, degenercy isn't a LAW. If it was, then black holes couldn't exist. It's more of an aproximation of other forces, kind of like how we define Normal forces. When you push your hand on a solid object, the resistance from the solid object is a Normal force. Really whats happening is that the EM and other forces in the atoms in your hand and the wall are interacting, but that's just to complicated to deal with all the time so it's simplified into a single force.
What Has the OEM ever done for us?
/. crowd.. well, they've probably done nothing. If us .. on the other hand.. is the "standard dumb user" or an IT profesional trying to buy 30 new PC's for the office.. well, they've done alot! Let's talk about cheap prices, single vendor for repairs, onsite calls for some tech issues, reliable delivery (usually).. and all the other bullsh1t that corporate buyers and standard dumb users want.
WHo's Us? If us is the
These OEMS offer a service that people WANT! If they didn't want the service, they wouldn't ship millions of frickin PC'S a year! It's just YOU that doesn't want their service.. well, and me too.
I see this law as a blatant violation of WTO rules. See, american companies make these devices. These new "tarriffs" will hurt sales of the devices, thereby causing american companies to loose sales. This is an unfair law! Canada can't go changing it's laws to hinder free trade! SO.. all the companies that make the devices can now SUE canada for losses. And canada has to pay!
In case you weren't aware of this pesky little law, here in CA we are going to wind up paying some candaian compay that makes MTBE for gasoline. See, we found out that MTBE contaminates groundwater, kills people, so we are banning it's use here in the state. But WTO rules say that this is a violation of free trade and so CA taxpayers are going to wind up paying some settlement for excersising our INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT TO NOT DRINK POISON. I figure if the laws work on that absurd situation, it should certainly apply for silly tarrifs like these.
>problem discussed in the article is better >solved by the type of licensing model Microsoft >plans to adopt
Or how about better testing? Software does not have to break. Software does not have to have bugs.
After a few years testing software I've discovered the best way to for me to help get a bug free product out the door is not testing the product, but testing the design document. Where do developers make mistakes? Generally when they don't consider a user doing X or forgetting that they need to also work with module Y. I sit down with the design docs and look for implied relatiosnhips, lists of cases with cases mising, or holes where certain activities aren't considered. I add them in, and when the developer turns over the project he's already fixed most of the bugs I would have found.. just by telling him BEFORE he wrote the code what he needed to do.
Carpenters figured it out a few thousand years ago.. measure twice, cut once. Apply that to code.. document it first, and then check the documents.. then write some code.
Neil Stephonson's book snow crash had this great idea.. an online 'library of congress'. People all over the world submitted data into the system. THe data was analyzed, sorted and stored. Common information was free to the public. Sensitive or valuable information had a price tag on it. THere was a sliding scale, everything from free to wicked expensive. The system paid the contributors every time someone bought their data submissions. I thought it was a decent solution, pragmatic in that 'we control the information' big brother way.
Honestly I think the future is what we make of it. The Free (as in beer) Software idea is revolutionary. IF (or when!) free software expands to a user friendly plug and play kind of system then purchased or rented software will be obsolete. Thats markets at work. What is the trickle down effect of free software? Think free software of the caliber that ILM and Lucas use. Whats the production cost of media on free software? Hardware and labor. As we create tools that allow individuals to compete with the established media giants, the cost of media lowers. Once it drops below a certain level then DRM is almost pointless.. why protect valueless data? Currently the reason why entertainment data is so caught up with DRM is the strangle hold a few small companies have on the distribution of said media.
The other end of DRM of course is private data. Think medical records, tax records, finacnial information. Those tend not to be consumer level information.. in the way that entertainment digital media is a consumer product. Strict and fair privacy laws (thank god for the EU and their policy!) require excellent DRM. That is the where the juicy valuable data will be, and it really wont be a consumer issue but more a banker issue.. we'll choose to store our valuable private data with institutions with the strongest security if we are afraid of hackers, or we'll store it with the most user friendly, or we'll store it with the cheapest one. Markets again will force changes that consumers want.
I've never worked on an Open Source Project (sorry!).. All my work has been at variuos software houses. In any case, the lack of documentation seems to be endemic to programing. For some reason it's always the last thing on everyone's plate and the first thing to be ignored or skipped. Seriuos, forward thinking, well written documentation is the key to any good project. For maintanance, upgrades, even just shared development work.. documentation is essential. Then again, so is well documented code and code written in an easy to follow format.
Honestly.. it's not the "teenagers" who forgets to document.. it's everybody,
How exactly do you hide in this day and age? How exactly can you stop the satelites and echelon? They can not hide. The people who planned this attack are not dead. The people who trained the terrorists who did this attack are not dead. The people who gave money to support the training and execution of this attack are not dead. The people who guarded the training camps, who assisted in the execution of this attack, they are all still alive. They will all be caught. If they do not surrender themselves to the authorities when they come to the door they will die. Those who are caught will be tried. Those who are guilty will be punished. If they are punished in the states that means the death penalty. We did it to our own citizen for a far less heinous crime.
Any organization that would commit this atrociuos act has demonstrated it's lack of reason. The people behind this are insane. They blindly kill civilians, children. I will not trust a word they say. If they surrender they can live in a small concrete cell for the rest of their lives. If they don't surrender they will die. Any organization that supports them now has a choice. Denounce these criminals as the monsters they are and lend support in tracking them down. Otherwise they are just as guilty as these cowardly terrorists and they will die as well.
Some people don't want to talk. They choose to kill civilians instead of talking. They choose to hide and attack from the shadows. Now the have sown the wind. Soon they shall reap the whirlwind.
You had three "causes" for the dot-com crash.
1) MS anti-trust
2) Inflated lending rates
3) Mass Hysteria
Spending outrageous amounts of money to buy half-baked companies that would never make a profit if they could print their own money, over-inflated share prices that had to gaurantee growth at exponential rates for a decade to make them worth it had nothing to do with it. That's the hysteria part. And that alone is enough to cause a crash. So I agree with item #3.
As for item #2, the dot-com phenomena was created by venture capitalists, not bankers. See bankers have laws that they must follow, lending practices hammered out in economies for a few centuries now. Bankers would be able to look at a flow chart and say "pet food don't make money you geek. Get out of here". And the Fed controls lending rates between BANKS. It's such a subtle effect that it doesn't touch credit card rates and rarely effects mortage rates. VC's don't get loans from banks, they wouldn't lend it to them for such shaky investments. VC's are gamblers and bankers don't gamble.
And for item #1, the Anti-trust case started in 97 and I daresay we will see the end of it in '05. Kind of hard to put cause and effect together there chum. Just to keep you honest.
Speaking of bundling IE into windows for free.. considering you had to pay for windows, how exactly is IE free? I mean, it only worked on an operating system you already paid hundreds of dollars for. Maybe MS decided to not charge us for SOLITARE and then we paid for IE instead. It's all semantics here.
The essence of the arguement is "leveraging". When you have a monopoly in an area, like OPERATING SYSTEMS, and you use that monopoly.. say by "bundling" your software with your monopoly operating system, you UNFAIRLY LEVERAGE YOUR MONOPOLY in operating systems into another area, like browsers.
See, the law doesn't make bundling illegal, it makes unfair business practices resulting from monopolies unfair.
And about your java thing.. does JAVA really do everything windows does? Can it? Can Java do directx? I didn't think so.
I think the analogy is actually perfect. You might be able to say that a bridge has only 1 function, to extend a road from point A to point B, a word processor's fucntion is to faciliate word processing.
And if a server crashes from a memory leak in a piece of code, isn't that %100 failure? And it takes out all the other code running on that server as well!
The reason bridges are build to such exacting standards are because bridge builders can be sued if their bridge brakes.. software developers can't.
The differance between A bridge and most software is that bridge's are extremely well defined before the bridge is built. A blue print is drawn to exacting specifications. A design document is created that specifies everything the construction worker needs to know. You never have to ask How High is this supposed to be? How long is this piece? Does a support go every length or every 2?
Software, on the other hand, rarely, if ever, has a blue print. Someone might wave their hands and say "It should do this and have a blue interface" and the construction worker is expected to figure out what kind of a bridge he should be building.. as he builds it.
I like to use the PowerQuest Boot Magic system. I haven't tried it with Linux (sorry!) so I don't know if it works there but I think I remember some docs saying it works. You can get it with Partition Magic (another great tool!!!) and I use it for testing software.. I make images with Boot Magic and you can have up to 4 on your system.
The trick I dug was setting up a DOS Network so I could boot all my boxes with boot disks. Then conenct them all to a DOS server running Boot Magic and distribute the images across the lab via the network!
Competition is inefficent. WTF! Read that again. Competition is inefficient. How does forcing 2 people to compete make them inefficient. Well, let's see.. I guess by having competition and allowing consumers options.. well.. obviuosly the poorest service will be chosen by everyone.. the most expensive service as well.. so all the companies that inovate new and exciting and affordable technologies will just go under. Free marker is what this is all about. The Baby Bells and At&T have MONOPOLIES on "the last mile" wiring. Baby Bells have the phones and AT&T has the cable. No they plug their networks into the internet backbone and BOOM.. all these wires become broadband pipes. The MONOPLOIES that they have are anti-competitive and anti-free market. We, as end users, have no access to the free market of broadband service because the only people who we can buy from are these MONOPOLIES. Congress has mandated that these MONOPOLIES open their systems up to a free market system. Congress said "well.. listen. You have the wires.. but eminent domain says that you have to share" They wont share. Can you honestly tell me that all the advances to the long distance telecomunications industry after congress split up the phone company has been a bad thing? How far have prices dropped? How many more options do you have now.. like cell phones with nation wide coverage.. or calling cards.. get a clue dude.. the only way for a free market to work is to have it be a free market with NO barriers to trade.
AMANDA (the Antarctic Muon And Nuetrino Detection Array) is a project I worked on as a Senior when I was finishing up at UW - Madison. They had had enough of those silly salt mine neutrino detectors and decided to build a new one. Out of Ice. At the South Pole! Here's how it works. You drill 2 km deep holes in the ice at the south pole. Yes that's 2 KM deep. You use hot water to do this. Then you drop these 2KM long cables with little spheres hanging off of it. The water freezes back up. Do this a bunch of times. Now each of the sphere's contains a PMT (photomultiplier tube) that faces DOWN. You paint the top of the sphere's black so light doesn't bounce in from above. The plan is to use the EARTH as a radiation shield. You look for upwards traveling light streams.. cherenkov radiation from nuetrinos that come up through the Earth. Since the only thing that will fly through a planet (well, the only thing I know of) is a Neutrino if you see an upward travelling light stream BOOM! It's a neutrino. Now the really cool thing about this detector is that it's designed to be a TELESCOPE. Thats right.. it's not a room filled with water that you're looking for flashes of light in but rather a detector that can see the trails of the muons as they travel through the ice (neutrinos breed a muon when they smack into things). When I left they were working on some software that could take all the bitty data points from the PMT's and meld them back together into an actual data track to track the particles path. Check em out at http://alizarin.physics.wisc.edu/
But it isn't speech but the press. 2600 is an online news organization.. among other things. If the New York Times printed an article with the code to DeCSS then it would be protected speec under the 1st amendment. If I write an article online and provide a link to DeCSS then it should also be protected.. why is it that an online news organization is less protected than an paper an ink one? Rights are Rights, and they are inalienable. I've always been astounded that congress doesn't understand the words "Congress shall make no law..."
I dream of being in an environment where QA could say no. I do QA (obviusly) and the only dates that are stuck to in scheduling is the release date. All other development dates are allowed to be slipped, missed, or just plain ignored. And at the end of the day this cuts my barely workable testing time into a hellish frenzy of edge cases and prayer. I've had days where I only had a few HOURS to test a new feature or product... (grumble grumble) But I would never demand the power to reject code because it didn't have a proper signature.. thats absurd to the extreme!