From a privacy perspective, this is no different that a current police helicopter. And it's not the drone they showed over and over it the video. It's this guy, http://www.thawkmav.com/index.php almost a toy.
The story here is that they under estimated the FAA's concern over UAVs in the National Airspace. Much bigger players than the Miami-Dade police force want permission for this, but so far it has not happened. They have an expensive toy, which can't be legally flown anywhere except military managed restricted airspace.
Lots of people feel there is a gap in the server market between RHEL-ES at $350/year/box and the $0 Fedora with it's 9 month lifetime. Filling this will be new distributions built from RHEL source code that pride themselves on being nothing but RHEL minus the logos. Such efforts would be easy for Redhat to derail, with oddball build environments, java dependent installers, dependency changes in security patches, etc. while still staying true to the GPL.
Are you worried about the knock-off distro's and would redhat ever change its policies to make them less attractive?
Yes, it is good science to keep from forward contaminating Europa,
spoiling future investigations. But is this really good policy?
If all goes well, in fifty or a hundred years maybe we will be able to
write down a believable story on the evolution of life, not just on
earth, but throughout our solar system.
Big deal. In 10,000 or 100,000 years things will have changed so
dramatically on this planet that no one will be able to read, or
appreciate, this book of life.
Rather than just gather knowledge for our own self gratification, we
should give the most precious thing we have - we should give life. The
complex self-replicating organic compounds of earth are our real
treasure. To call that pollution and keep it bottled up just so we
don't spoil some researcher's future experimental playground is
selfish and shortsighted.
Our technical society is very very fragile. We can now easily put
hundreds of pounds of material on other planets. This ability may not
last even for 100s of years, much less for thousands. The window of opportunity
is short, so let's do something that makes a real long-term
difference. Let's spread the seeds of life in the universe. It's not
pollution - it's good, its selfless, it's noble.
Indeed, if all goes well and science continues to provide us answers
we may one day learn that we are only here today because some other
society, blessed with their brief period of technology, had the
foresight and humility to spread some seeds.
A story that repeats itself, but never gets told, is better than a
story that ends.
Trying to figure out if life "arrived" on earth is going to be difficult, and it really isn't the interesting question. The interesting question is can we get life off of this planet, and surviving somewhere else. If mankind is to have any long term legacy (think geological time scales...) it will be the spread of life through the solar system and onto passing comets. This research will help select candidate microbes for such a mission.
Isn't it sort of depressing to see the spread of life considered "contamination". The justification is that it could screw up future experiments for the discover of existing (or past) life forms. I'll grant that, but it seems awful selfish to put the creation of knowledge above the creation of life.
I think we should be sending little microbes to Europa by the million, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, one could mutate into a viable life form. In the big picture, the odds of mankind maintaining a space bearing capacity for tens of thousands (or millions) of years is quite small. In 10,000 years we may not even have a written language. Then what would be more important, the lost knowledge of past life on Europa, or the thriving existence of life there from our casting of a seed.
Look around, life spreads. Thats so much of what it does it could almost be considered a definition of life. Sending microbes to Europa isn't pollution, it's as natural as it gets. We should feel obligated spread the magic of life, while we still can.
Cowpland has many personal issues, and this is just one of them. Point is this won't have a long term effect on the company. Corel's products have a following, and with debian+kde as a base its hard to imagine them coming out with a screwed up linux distribution. Their potential profits are huge, much larger than RedHat's, but their valuation is a fraction of RedHat.
Nevertheless, the stock is going to get killed tomorrow morning. Sounds like a buy opportunity, particularly if the RedHat IPO left you with that empty feeling in your wallet and an unused etrade account...
Slashdot Mirror
From a privacy perspective, this is no different that a current police helicopter. And it's not the drone they showed over and over it the video. It's this guy,
http://www.thawkmav.com/index.php
almost a toy.
The story here is that they under estimated the FAA's concern over UAVs in the National Airspace. Much bigger players than the Miami-Dade police force want permission for this, but so far it has not happened. They have an expensive toy, which can't be legally flown anywhere except military managed restricted airspace.
Lots of people feel there is a gap in the server market between RHEL-ES at $350/year/box and the $0 Fedora with it's 9 month lifetime. Filling this will be new distributions built from RHEL source code that pride themselves on being nothing but RHEL minus the logos. Such efforts would be easy for Redhat to derail, with oddball build environments, java dependent installers, dependency changes in security patches, etc. while still staying true to the GPL.
Are you worried about the knock-off distro's and would redhat ever change its policies to make them less attractive?
Yes, it is good science to keep from forward contaminating Europa,
spoiling future investigations. But is this really good policy?
If all goes well, in fifty or a hundred years maybe we will be able to
write down a believable story on the evolution of life, not just on
earth, but throughout our solar system.
Big deal. In 10,000 or 100,000 years things will have changed so
dramatically on this planet that no one will be able to read, or
appreciate, this book of life.
Rather than just gather knowledge for our own self gratification, we
should give the most precious thing we have - we should give life. The
complex self-replicating organic compounds of earth are our real
treasure. To call that pollution and keep it bottled up just so we
don't spoil some researcher's future experimental playground is
selfish and shortsighted.
Our technical society is very very fragile. We can now easily put
hundreds of pounds of material on other planets. This ability may not
last even for 100s of years, much less for thousands. The window of opportunity
is short, so let's do something that makes a real long-term
difference. Let's spread the seeds of life in the universe. It's not
pollution - it's good, its selfless, it's noble.
Indeed, if all goes well and science continues to provide us answers
we may one day learn that we are only here today because some other
society, blessed with their brief period of technology, had the
foresight and humility to spread some seeds.
A story that repeats itself, but never gets told, is better than a
story that ends.
dave
d.e.cox@larc.nasa.gov
Trying to figure out if life "arrived" on earth is going to be
difficult, and it really isn't the interesting question. The
interesting question is can we get life off of this planet,
and surviving somewhere else. If mankind is to have any long term
legacy (think geological time scales...) it will be the spread of life
through the solar system and onto passing comets. This research will
help select candidate microbes for such a mission.
Isn't it sort of depressing to see the spread of life considered
"contamination". The justification is that it could screw up future
experiments for the discover of existing (or past) life forms. I'll
grant that, but it seems awful selfish to put the creation of
knowledge above the creation of life.
I think we should be sending little microbes to Europa by the million,
in hopes that maybe, just maybe, one could mutate into a viable life
form. In the big picture, the odds of mankind maintaining a space
bearing capacity for tens of thousands (or millions) of years is quite
small. In 10,000 years we may not even have a written language. Then
what would be more important, the lost knowledge of past life on
Europa, or the thriving existence of life there from our casting of a
seed.
Look around, life spreads. Thats so much of what it does it could
almost be considered a definition of life. Sending microbes to Europa
isn't pollution, it's as natural as it gets. We should feel obligated
spread the magic of life, while we still can.
Cowpland has many personal issues, and this is just one of them.
Point is this won't have a long term effect on the company. Corel's
products have a following, and with debian+kde as a base its hard to
imagine them coming out with a screwed up linux distribution. Their
potential profits are huge, much larger than RedHat's, but their
valuation is a fraction of RedHat.
Nevertheless, the stock is going to get killed tomorrow morning.
Sounds like a buy opportunity, particularly if the RedHat IPO left you
with that empty feeling in your wallet and an unused etrade account...