Hey, engineers to spin up this board got to eat you know. Their hours don't come cheap these days. I'm guessing this *won't* have much impact on PI sales. There are a bunch of hobbyist cards out there, and many existed before the PI. PI's claim to fame is that it is CHEAP.... And it lives up to that goal..
I'll take that in the "spirit" intended. Automation is useful, but it does have its limits. Humans are useful in other ways, but they have their limits too. You simply need to use the right tool to the job.
Well.. Nasty as it is, we already have places where it has been done before. Just do it at one or more of those places and we won't be creating any new NASTY places... I sure hope that one of these places is NOT in your current backyard...
So basically they're saying: Automated is better than manual? Who would've thought!?
The pilots of Asiana Flight 214 apparently did... Right before they crashed...
It may take a human to mess things up, but you can do it much faster, easier and more completely with a computer. There is a *reason* for taking a human or two along when you are running highly complex systems with long communications delays in environments where you may not know all the variables in advance.
Problem solved.. Actually, multiple problems get solved with this one.
Reprocess existing spent fuel rods that are soaking away in cooling pools world wide. We literally have tons of this material if we would just go process the spent fuel we already have on hand.
As a bonus, we will get a lot of useable fuel out of the process PLUS drastically reduce the size of the high level radioactive waste we have to store...
Have you heard of Anecdotal evidence? You are talking about specific peiple when we need to be discussing the overall picture.
Look, I'm not saying that it is a perfect system, only that it is the most efficient one. Government run health care will be less efficient and effective as the local driver's license office. My daughter just got her license and between her written test, driving test and getting her picture taken we spent the better part of a working day in the office (and we HAD an appointment). Do driver's licenses get issued? Yep. But remember, that's ALL this place does and you have to follow their process or you don't get anywhere. Healthcare is not as simple as issuing driver's licenses.
Where I feel bad for your sister, do note that she did GET health care without regard to her ability to pay. If it happened again next week, the same thing would happen, she would get treated. So we really don't have a problem with *access* to healthcare in emergencies. Of course it is not a good thing that your sister now faces $150,000 debt, but it was her choice to take the risk and not carry insurance. She *could* have had catastrophic insurance for pretty cheap and not have been left with the huge debt.
It would be cheaper for the government to provide tax credits or subsidies for catastrophic health care insurance than to provide universal health care. Your sister could have carried insurance with a high deductible (say $10k) and pay 90% after that for nearly nothing (about 150/month less government supplied subsidies). She would have been wheeled out of the hospital owing $20K or so. Plus, she had the option of carrying insurance before her accident, and decided not too.
And before you start complaining about how $20K is impossible to pay too, let me share with you my situation. I DO have employer supplied coverage, but it would cost me nearly $10K out of my pocket if I fell off a horse and ended up with a $150,000 hospital stay. This doesn't include my premium payments which run a few hundred a month (just my part) or what my employer pays for my coverage. Obamacare will actually REDUCE my coverage and up my out of pocket expenses from there.
Finally, if you sister plays a bit of hardball with the hospital and her providers, they will likely knock off a hefty percentage of the $150K. Folk who are working on a cash basis with providers can usually get a sizable discount over the initial billed amount. Think about it this way.. If your sister just declares bankruptcy, they will get NOTHING (unless there is some assets to get their hands on). They would rather have something than nothing. I've heard stories of providers knocking 50% off and taking the rest over time, interest free. But you have to ask or they will happily collect the whole bill.
Oh yea, it's going to be LOTS more expensive.. Insurance companies are in business to make money, government is about spending money.
The beauty of capitalism and the profit motive is that if somebody starts making loads of cash in some specific business line, others will see that and rush in to "make their share too". So competition reigns, supply increases and prices go down. The business of health insurance was no different. Government has no such "profit" motive to keep it efficient.
At one time, long ago, I worked for the Department of Defense. I can tell you that they are not primarily concerned about "profit" or being efficient. In fact, the goal was to get all your budget spent and not leave any money on the table. If you didn't or couldn't get all your money spent, it was given that next year your budget would be reduced. So where is the motive to buy option "B" that was cheaper but more risky when "A" was budgeted?
So.. Give me the evil capitalist insurance company over government run health care. A company will be more efficient than the government can ever be. And even if they mistreat me, at least I can sue the insurance company when they do something wrong...
I cannot fathom any software system costing that much.
Haven't worked on any government programs I see.
Start with lots of money, fuzzy requirements and add general stupidity in the contracts office and you can get a LOT of money wasted. Who's got more money to waste than the government?
I've worked on government programs that I firmly believe where managed to get as much money out of the customer as possible (not to actually *deliver* something they wanted). One such program had taken more than 3x the initial cost estimate, taken 3 times as long and was nowhere near half done (by my estimate) before it got cancelled. Mission accomplished... (I made the mistake of actually voicing this theory in the midst of the program too.. I don't work there anymore...)
And here in the US we are rushing head long into government run health care... Yikes.. It's going to be way more expensive than you can imagine.
This republican doesn't care that this idea comes from the Obama administration. In the rare case where they do the right thing, I'll agree with them.
I think that while the carrier has a claim on your device, they can lock it. Once you have fulfilled the terms of your contract and *paid* for the device, it should automatically be unlocked *without* having to ask. So this would at least be a step in the right direction. I guess having to ask is not that huge of an issue, as long as the carriers have to unlock your phone.
What we really need is a world wide "BAD ESN" registry that takes time limited entries. A carrier would simply list the ESN of their "locked" devices with a date limit. They could then provide service to that ESN, but any other carrier would not. Once the contract term was over, the "Bad ESN" record would disappear. If the contract ends early, the record is deleted. If a device is stolen, the registry would then have a non-expiring ESN record created. In this way, there would be no reason to lock cell devices.
Of course, making a world wide ESN registry would be extremely difficult so I guess this is a viable solution.
If this all applies to XP OEM licenses, then I *might* be able to copy the install to a VM, run sysprep and then reactivate... Assuming Microsoft's activation process will still be supported and allowed on an already active OEM license...
Again, I'm not holding my breath that this will be allowed. My guess is that Microsoft will shutdown their activation servers and refuse to do phone activations for XP unless you want to pay for support which will make it pretty hard to do any of this. I'm hoping that they simply do away with the activation thing and let valid key holders install and run as many XP instances as they want to install, but I seriously doubt they will want to do that.
For long term, this may work but the problem is that the laptop is currently an OEM license of XP that will not easily move. Hopefully Micro$oft will open XP up to be free of license restrictions come April, but I'm not going to be holding my breath lest the Blue Screen (face) of Death make a visit.
Before anybody gets sideways with me.. Yes I know that XP licenses have been cracked years ago and there are a multitude of ways to run it without a license.. I choose to honor the terms of software licenses I've agreed too whenever possible. After April, a hardware failure may make that impossible, but until then, the laptop will be able to boot XP, even if I'm normally using some other OS.
But how efficient is it to get rid of a working machine?
Not very.
Let's say you managed to get 200 Watts of power savings, at $300 replacement cost and $0.12 per KW/Hour electricity cost. It's going to take 15 or so years of continuous operation to get your upgrade investment costs back. It is usually not wise to make investments that require more than a few years to break even. In this case, 15 years greatly exceeds the expected lifespan of the equipment so I'm very sure it is NOT worth it.
Not exactly true. There are a *few* things that my XP machine is uniquely qualified to do. I have some old managed Cisco/Linksys switches in my network that require a really old Internet Explorer version to configure. Apparently there are some old Java Script bugs in the version of IE that the switches depend on, and no other browser works.
So, at least for me, I'll be running XP for a long time to come..
Also, the machine may be inefficient compared to newer models, but I submit that the costs of scrapping my old machine and building a replacement would make up the difference in operating costs for a LONG time. Replacing the old laptop with a *cheap* new one, would cost $300 or so. Assuming my new laptop burns 100 Watts less power and power costs $0.12 per KW/Hour that works out to 250,000 hours of operation for me to break even. There are only 8,760 hours in a year, so it's going to take nearly 30 years of constant operating to "break even". (BTW I don't think the power savings would be even close to 100W because my old laptop only uses 65W total..)
The only real arguments for upgrade is performance, reliability or space. Need to do more in less space? You might need to upgrade. Things starting to fail more often than you like? Replace it. Trying to save power? It's unlikely to actually be cost effective.
You do have a valid point... Although I think Alang is likely not as sensitive environmental area than where the Costa Concordia currently sits.
Even if you argue there is no difference to the environment no mater where it gets scrapped, there IS a large difference in the financial liability for the environmental damage, which is why they are spending millions more than the ship is worth to haul it off in one piece. I would argue though that the environment at Alang is much better suited to scraping operations and less sensitive to the dumping of toxic substances into the environment. But, like in every other thing, follow the money....
Somebody needs to read The Mythical Man Month. Adding more hackers to a late hacking project just makes it later. If they can stay organized and succeed in a larger group in a limited time frame then they have truly accomplished something even most software engineers cannot do.
I really hate it when someone takes that book to be an absolute when there are no such things.
In my 20+ years of doing engineering at varying places, I can tell you that the concepts presented in The Mythical Man Month (by Frederick P. Brooks) were always right in every situation I've seen so far. Designers, Engineers, software developers and those who manage them should be required to read this book every few years. There is no silver bullet, adding manpower to a late project usually makes it later, and all the rest need to be understood by all involved or you will be reading "Death March" by Edward Yourdon.
Two things say it's better to right the ship, partially re-float it and haul it off.
First, there are likely many gallons of oils, fuels and hazardous materials aboard this ship that would be released when you chop up a ship like this. Yes, they have removed as much of this stuff as they can, but there is no way to get it all with the ship underwater.
Second, the ship sits on the very edge of a trench that is a few hundred feet deep. If you start chopping up the ship and things start down into that channel, it would be a *really* expensive problem to deal with. Diving in water less than 100' deep is dangerous, but when you go above 100' things get much more expensive and technically challenging. Best just move the whole thing to someplace where it's a less dangerous.
Where I think they are likely being way too cautious with this effort and should likely have been done last year, I cannot fault them for the plan of partially re-floating the ship and towing it off. The environmental concerns may be a bit over stated, but I'm sure the risk of not doing this right is a serious concern both legally and financially.
Seriously? Have you not been reading the new stories on this over the last 2 years?
The issue is the environmental impact of both the fuel (largely removed) and other things like engine oil, coolant and sewage which may still be aboard. The ship came to rest in what is said to be a sensitive environmental area. I suspect that the insurance company would be on the hook for any damage caused by leaking oil, sewage or anything else that might still be in the ship. Also, the ship sits in about 40 feet of water on the very edge of a 200 Foot trench. If slips off, it will be MUCH harder to clean up the mess. Diving in 20-40 feet is much less difficult and time consuming than when you go over 100 feet and have to start thinking about using helium breathing mixes and such.
They are doing the least risky thing they can come up with. Right the ship, partially re-float it and haul it off to be scrapped some place else where it will be easier, safer and/or less likely to be a problem for the environment.
Your suggestion to just chop it up and haul it off in bite sized chunks might indeed be cheaper, but there are a number of issues with that approach.
You may be right that we would eventually settle down to a single version as unsupported branches die off, but I think it would likely end up being the same situation we have with Linux Distributions. We have two or three leading distributions with groups of advocates for each. In fact, I'd wager that the current Linux distributions would simply assume control over their kernel branch as time moved on and then arranged for kernel innovation to suit their unique focus.
Personally, I'm inclined to think that would be a good thing for Linux for a number of reasons. The chief reason is the personality foibles of the current kernel manager. I think that having such a temperamental guy controlling the Linux Kernel has held it back on some fronts. It certainly has limited acceptance and development of otherwise worthy features, just because he decided it was not what he wanted. (To be fair, he has also squashed things we really are better off not having. I just think that it would be better if we had more than one authority making such decisions.)
In my book a "Rock Star" is somebody who *thinks* he is good and has actually convinced some group of people that he IS good. It's all about appearance and has little to do with performance. Many of the "rock stars" I've met and worked with (Some of whom where REAL live Rock stars (Van Halen, Amy Grant)) where so full of themselves it was hard to take them seriously. I've worked with developers who where the same. Some are all about the showmanship, not about the art; all about taking credit but care less about all the work it takes to set up the stage, lights and sound.
None of the best programmers I've known where rock star types. To a person, they didn't strive for the limelight, but would work behind the scenes if necessary to *make it work* and most where always ready to teach others what they could. These folks are the *real* stars, but like the stage hand I used to be are content to work in the wings and improve the work of others when necessary.
So, my advice is to not worry about making yourself into a "rock star" programmer with all the flash. Make yourself into the best programmer *you* can be. Master as many tools of the trade (languages, Operating Systems, development tools) as you can and be ready to train others when necessary. Be as useful as you can, work on as many different projects as you can. Learn as many things as you can. Be willing to take on tasks and be faithful to finish them the best you can. Don't be afraid of asking for help when you need it.
I'd rather have a programmer who can *figure it out* and make it work over the flashy, temperamental, "I'm better than you will ever be" programmer who refuses to work well with others and insists on it being his way or it's wrong and he won't touch it.
Who needs that? You can always take the last source release and start your own build.
This guy only controls the Linux Kernel by convention (and because it is convenient). Anytime he is unable or unwilling to keep the kernel development going, any number of others can step up and take over.
It will be interesting to watch when it happens though. I suspect that unless Torvalds appoints a successor and willingly hands over the keys the Linux Kernel will fracture into 3 or 4 major branches. Even if he does appoint someone or some organization to take over there is a risk of the kernel fracturing into multiple efforts.
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Hey, engineers to spin up this board got to eat you know. Their hours don't come cheap these days. I'm guessing this *won't* have much impact on PI sales. There are a bunch of hobbyist cards out there, and many existed before the PI. PI's claim to fame is that it is CHEAP.... And it lives up to that goal..
I'll take that in the "spirit" intended. Automation is useful, but it does have its limits. Humans are useful in other ways, but they have their limits too. You simply need to use the right tool to the job.
Well.. Nasty as it is, we already have places where it has been done before. Just do it at one or more of those places and we won't be creating any new NASTY places... I sure hope that one of these places is NOT in your current backyard...
So basically they're saying: Automated is better than manual? Who would've thought!?
The pilots of Asiana Flight 214 apparently did... Right before they crashed...
It may take a human to mess things up, but you can do it much faster, easier and more completely with a computer. There is a *reason* for taking a human or two along when you are running highly complex systems with long communications delays in environments where you may not know all the variables in advance.
eventually one will turn sentient.
Been watching SiFi shows lately eh?
Not going to happen. Don't think I'm right? Prove it.. ;)
Well it is *now*.. On that we agree. Enjoy yours too..
Problem solved.. Actually, multiple problems get solved with this one.
Reprocess existing spent fuel rods that are soaking away in cooling pools world wide. We literally have tons of this material if we would just go process the spent fuel we already have on hand.
As a bonus, we will get a lot of useable fuel out of the process PLUS drastically reduce the size of the high level radioactive waste we have to store...
Have you heard of Anecdotal evidence? You are talking about specific peiple when we need to be discussing the overall picture.
Look, I'm not saying that it is a perfect system, only that it is the most efficient one. Government run health care will be less efficient and effective as the local driver's license office. My daughter just got her license and between her written test, driving test and getting her picture taken we spent the better part of a working day in the office (and we HAD an appointment). Do driver's licenses get issued? Yep. But remember, that's ALL this place does and you have to follow their process or you don't get anywhere. Healthcare is not as simple as issuing driver's licenses.
Where I feel bad for your sister, do note that she did GET health care without regard to her ability to pay. If it happened again next week, the same thing would happen, she would get treated. So we really don't have a problem with *access* to healthcare in emergencies. Of course it is not a good thing that your sister now faces $150,000 debt, but it was her choice to take the risk and not carry insurance. She *could* have had catastrophic insurance for pretty cheap and not have been left with the huge debt.
It would be cheaper for the government to provide tax credits or subsidies for catastrophic health care insurance than to provide universal health care. Your sister could have carried insurance with a high deductible (say $10k) and pay 90% after that for nearly nothing (about 150/month less government supplied subsidies). She would have been wheeled out of the hospital owing $20K or so. Plus, she had the option of carrying insurance before her accident, and decided not too.
And before you start complaining about how $20K is impossible to pay too, let me share with you my situation. I DO have employer supplied coverage, but it would cost me nearly $10K out of my pocket if I fell off a horse and ended up with a $150,000 hospital stay. This doesn't include my premium payments which run a few hundred a month (just my part) or what my employer pays for my coverage. Obamacare will actually REDUCE my coverage and up my out of pocket expenses from there.
Finally, if you sister plays a bit of hardball with the hospital and her providers, they will likely knock off a hefty percentage of the $150K. Folk who are working on a cash basis with providers can usually get a sizable discount over the initial billed amount. Think about it this way.. If your sister just declares bankruptcy, they will get NOTHING (unless there is some assets to get their hands on). They would rather have something than nothing. I've heard stories of providers knocking 50% off and taking the rest over time, interest free. But you have to ask or they will happily collect the whole bill.
Oh yea, it's going to be LOTS more expensive.. Insurance companies are in business to make money, government is about spending money.
The beauty of capitalism and the profit motive is that if somebody starts making loads of cash in some specific business line, others will see that and rush in to "make their share too". So competition reigns, supply increases and prices go down. The business of health insurance was no different. Government has no such "profit" motive to keep it efficient.
At one time, long ago, I worked for the Department of Defense. I can tell you that they are not primarily concerned about "profit" or being efficient. In fact, the goal was to get all your budget spent and not leave any money on the table. If you didn't or couldn't get all your money spent, it was given that next year your budget would be reduced. So where is the motive to buy option "B" that was cheaper but more risky when "A" was budgeted?
So.. Give me the evil capitalist insurance company over government run health care. A company will be more efficient than the government can ever be. And even if they mistreat me, at least I can sue the insurance company when they do something wrong...
I cannot fathom any software system costing that much.
Haven't worked on any government programs I see.
Start with lots of money, fuzzy requirements and add general stupidity in the contracts office and you can get a LOT of money wasted. Who's got more money to waste than the government?
I've worked on government programs that I firmly believe where managed to get as much money out of the customer as possible (not to actually *deliver* something they wanted). One such program had taken more than 3x the initial cost estimate, taken 3 times as long and was nowhere near half done (by my estimate) before it got cancelled. Mission accomplished... (I made the mistake of actually voicing this theory in the midst of the program too.. I don't work there anymore...)
And here in the US we are rushing head long into government run health care... Yikes.. It's going to be way more expensive than you can imagine.
This republican doesn't care that this idea comes from the Obama administration. In the rare case where they do the right thing, I'll agree with them.
I think that while the carrier has a claim on your device, they can lock it. Once you have fulfilled the terms of your contract and *paid* for the device, it should automatically be unlocked *without* having to ask. So this would at least be a step in the right direction. I guess having to ask is not that huge of an issue, as long as the carriers have to unlock your phone.
What we really need is a world wide "BAD ESN" registry that takes time limited entries. A carrier would simply list the ESN of their "locked" devices with a date limit. They could then provide service to that ESN, but any other carrier would not. Once the contract term was over, the "Bad ESN" record would disappear. If the contract ends early, the record is deleted. If a device is stolen, the registry would then have a non-expiring ESN record created. In this way, there would be no reason to lock cell devices.
Of course, making a world wide ESN registry would be extremely difficult so I guess this is a viable solution.
If this all applies to XP OEM licenses, then I *might* be able to copy the install to a VM, run sysprep and then reactivate... Assuming Microsoft's activation process will still be supported and allowed on an already active OEM license...
Again, I'm not holding my breath that this will be allowed. My guess is that Microsoft will shutdown their activation servers and refuse to do phone activations for XP unless you want to pay for support which will make it pretty hard to do any of this. I'm hoping that they simply do away with the activation thing and let valid key holders install and run as many XP instances as they want to install, but I seriously doubt they will want to do that.
I was being generous...
For long term, this may work but the problem is that the laptop is currently an OEM license of XP that will not easily move. Hopefully Micro$oft will open XP up to be free of license restrictions come April, but I'm not going to be holding my breath lest the Blue Screen (face) of Death make a visit.
Before anybody gets sideways with me.. Yes I know that XP licenses have been cracked years ago and there are a multitude of ways to run it without a license.. I choose to honor the terms of software licenses I've agreed too whenever possible. After April, a hardware failure may make that impossible, but until then, the laptop will be able to boot XP, even if I'm normally using some other OS.
But how efficient is it to get rid of a working machine?
Not very.
Let's say you managed to get 200 Watts of power savings, at $300 replacement cost and $0.12 per KW/Hour electricity cost. It's going to take 15 or so years of continuous operation to get your upgrade investment costs back. It is usually not wise to make investments that require more than a few years to break even. In this case, 15 years greatly exceeds the expected lifespan of the equipment so I'm very sure it is NOT worth it.
Not exactly true. There are a *few* things that my XP machine is uniquely qualified to do. I have some old managed Cisco/Linksys switches in my network that require a really old Internet Explorer version to configure. Apparently there are some old Java Script bugs in the version of IE that the switches depend on, and no other browser works.
So, at least for me, I'll be running XP for a long time to come..
Also, the machine may be inefficient compared to newer models, but I submit that the costs of scrapping my old machine and building a replacement would make up the difference in operating costs for a LONG time. Replacing the old laptop with a *cheap* new one, would cost $300 or so. Assuming my new laptop burns 100 Watts less power and power costs $0.12 per KW/Hour that works out to 250,000 hours of operation for me to break even. There are only 8,760 hours in a year, so it's going to take nearly 30 years of constant operating to "break even". (BTW I don't think the power savings would be even close to 100W because my old laptop only uses 65W total..)
The only real arguments for upgrade is performance, reliability or space. Need to do more in less space? You might need to upgrade. Things starting to fail more often than you like? Replace it. Trying to save power? It's unlikely to actually be cost effective.
You do have a valid point... Although I think Alang is likely not as sensitive environmental area than where the Costa Concordia currently sits.
Even if you argue there is no difference to the environment no mater where it gets scrapped, there IS a large difference in the financial liability for the environmental damage, which is why they are spending millions more than the ship is worth to haul it off in one piece. I would argue though that the environment at Alang is much better suited to scraping operations and less sensitive to the dumping of toxic substances into the environment. But, like in every other thing, follow the money....
Only when it has the benefit of not yet been tried before... Remember.
Somebody needs to read The Mythical Man Month. Adding more hackers to a late hacking project just makes it later. If they can stay organized and succeed in a larger group in a limited time frame then they have truly accomplished something even most software engineers cannot do.
I really hate it when someone takes that book to be an absolute when there are no such things.
In my 20+ years of doing engineering at varying places, I can tell you that the concepts presented in The Mythical Man Month (by Frederick P. Brooks) were always right in every situation I've seen so far. Designers, Engineers, software developers and those who manage them should be required to read this book every few years. There is no silver bullet, adding manpower to a late project usually makes it later, and all the rest need to be understood by all involved or you will be reading "Death March" by Edward Yourdon.
Two things say it's better to right the ship, partially re-float it and haul it off.
First, there are likely many gallons of oils, fuels and hazardous materials aboard this ship that would be released when you chop up a ship like this. Yes, they have removed as much of this stuff as they can, but there is no way to get it all with the ship underwater.
Second, the ship sits on the very edge of a trench that is a few hundred feet deep. If you start chopping up the ship and things start down into that channel, it would be a *really* expensive problem to deal with. Diving in water less than 100' deep is dangerous, but when you go above 100' things get much more expensive and technically challenging. Best just move the whole thing to someplace where it's a less dangerous.
Where I think they are likely being way too cautious with this effort and should likely have been done last year, I cannot fault them for the plan of partially re-floating the ship and towing it off. The environmental concerns may be a bit over stated, but I'm sure the risk of not doing this right is a serious concern both legally and financially.
Seriously? Have you not been reading the new stories on this over the last 2 years?
The issue is the environmental impact of both the fuel (largely removed) and other things like engine oil, coolant and sewage which may still be aboard. The ship came to rest in what is said to be a sensitive environmental area. I suspect that the insurance company would be on the hook for any damage caused by leaking oil, sewage or anything else that might still be in the ship. Also, the ship sits in about 40 feet of water on the very edge of a 200 Foot trench. If slips off, it will be MUCH harder to clean up the mess. Diving in 20-40 feet is much less difficult and time consuming than when you go over 100 feet and have to start thinking about using helium breathing mixes and such.
They are doing the least risky thing they can come up with. Right the ship, partially re-float it and haul it off to be scrapped some place else where it will be easier, safer and/or less likely to be a problem for the environment.
Your suggestion to just chop it up and haul it off in bite sized chunks might indeed be cheaper, but there are a number of issues with that approach.
The Mythbusters perhaps? Didn't they do that using just a water pump and some hoses?
You may be right that we would eventually settle down to a single version as unsupported branches die off, but I think it would likely end up being the same situation we have with Linux Distributions. We have two or three leading distributions with groups of advocates for each. In fact, I'd wager that the current Linux distributions would simply assume control over their kernel branch as time moved on and then arranged for kernel innovation to suit their unique focus.
Personally, I'm inclined to think that would be a good thing for Linux for a number of reasons. The chief reason is the personality foibles of the current kernel manager. I think that having such a temperamental guy controlling the Linux Kernel has held it back on some fronts. It certainly has limited acceptance and development of otherwise worthy features, just because he decided it was not what he wanted. (To be fair, he has also squashed things we really are better off not having. I just think that it would be better if we had more than one authority making such decisions.)
In my book a "Rock Star" is somebody who *thinks* he is good and has actually convinced some group of people that he IS good. It's all about appearance and has little to do with performance. Many of the "rock stars" I've met and worked with (Some of whom where REAL live Rock stars (Van Halen, Amy Grant)) where so full of themselves it was hard to take them seriously. I've worked with developers who where the same. Some are all about the showmanship, not about the art; all about taking credit but care less about all the work it takes to set up the stage, lights and sound.
None of the best programmers I've known where rock star types. To a person, they didn't strive for the limelight, but would work behind the scenes if necessary to *make it work* and most where always ready to teach others what they could. These folks are the *real* stars, but like the stage hand I used to be are content to work in the wings and improve the work of others when necessary.
So, my advice is to not worry about making yourself into a "rock star" programmer with all the flash. Make yourself into the best programmer *you* can be. Master as many tools of the trade (languages, Operating Systems, development tools) as you can and be ready to train others when necessary. Be as useful as you can, work on as many different projects as you can. Learn as many things as you can. Be willing to take on tasks and be faithful to finish them the best you can. Don't be afraid of asking for help when you need it.
I'd rather have a programmer who can *figure it out* and make it work over the flashy, temperamental, "I'm better than you will ever be" programmer who refuses to work well with others and insists on it being his way or it's wrong and he won't touch it.
Who needs that? You can always take the last source release and start your own build.
This guy only controls the Linux Kernel by convention (and because it is convenient). Anytime he is unable or unwilling to keep the kernel development going, any number of others can step up and take over.
It will be interesting to watch when it happens though. I suspect that unless Torvalds appoints a successor and willingly hands over the keys the Linux Kernel will fracture into 3 or 4 major branches. Even if he does appoint someone or some organization to take over there is a risk of the kernel fracturing into multiple efforts.