Point most definitely *not* taken. There will always be things to fix on Earth, and by the reasoning you present that means we'll never do anything other than stay at home trying to fix things.
The time to explore the planets is as soon as we have the ability to do so. That doesn't mean we need to stop trying to improve the situation of our home planet.
In fact, learning about other planets is a good way to find out more about how our own behaves, and how to fix its problems.
I'm sure this convention is older than that. The original (i.e. funny and well animated, not the Hanna Barbera travesty) Tom & Jerry cartoons never showed the humans. You just got a pair of stockinged feet. They also used the trick of replacing voices with musical instruments - apart from the odd scream that is.
Just did a search, and the first Peanuts was 1950, whereas the original MGM Tom & Jerry was 1940. Maybe the convention is even older - anyone?
Besides, unlike the cloyingly twee Peanuts, T&J was *funny*:P
..they're minicomputers. That's not just a nit-pick - programming for a mainframe, at least at the lower levels, is much nastier than on the relatively uniform minicomputer architecture. A mainframe feels closer to a tightly integrated network of special purpose devices than a single CPU system.
From a programming perspective, a VAX is much more like a souped up microcomputer than a mainframe. One reason why virtual machines are popular on mainframes is that they hide the really ugly parts of the system; not just from application programmers but from kernel programmers.
I can believe a Linux port to VM, but I'm much more skeptical about a port to the bare metal.
Caveat - my mainframe penance was on Unisys machines, so correct me if I'm off base about IBM's big iron. No such doubts about the minicomputers though.
>perhaps you could come over and see how many times my lovely Netscape Navigator 4.7 has completely hung my XF/GNONE/E desktop with nothing more running than XMMS?
Nothing lovely about Nav 4.7. I have the a similar setup to you and I keep an Eterm with "rm ~/.netscape/lock" as the last command in its history ready at all times:\
I've never had it hang the desktop though. It's usually just spinning at 100% cpu - nothing kill -9 can't fix.
>btw: I would wager that 90% of slashdot readers are windows users,
I think you'd lose the wager, but it'd make an interesting poll.
BTW, lighten up - my other post was a joke, and I think the post it was in response to was too.
>Checks are still so common because consumers want them.
That's what I see too. People I've griped about this to say that they don't trust the banks/payees to debit the right amounts. Perhaps unsurprising, given that the only company with which I've managed to set up a direct debit doesn't send out an invoice, but relies on me checking my bank statement as the only confirmation that things worked. I figure that checking the statement is easier than writing a cheque, but others obviously disagree.
To wrench this back on topic: speaking as a visitor to the USA I think that this is the sort of thing that Linus means when he says that technologically, silicon valley is a third worlds country. All the tech is there, but it isn't being used effectively to make day-to-day life easier.
Remonds me of the cliche where the Brits invent something but can't seem to market it. Americans can bring the technology to market but often don't use it to its best advantage.
The bank isn't the problem; my bank does handle electronic transfer, but like you say it only works "for those payees who can accept it". In my experience they are few and far between.
Electric - no Rent - nope Insurance (all varieties) - nuh Telcos - no ISP - HAHAHAHA... of course not:-|
Maybe I'm just unlucky, and it's not really a big deal - I just find the contrast between hi-tech and low-down bureaucracy in the USA a bit odd, considering that so much else about the place is so advanced.
The bit I picked up on was when he called Silicon Valley a third world country when it comes to technology. He's right, and it's really strange considering the availability and low cost of technology in the US.
One of my pet peeves is that people over here *still* use cheques to pay all their bills instead of direct funds transfer. I'd almost forgotten how to write a cheque before I moved here, but hardly anyone does direct debit so I'm forever writing the things out and stuffing them in envelopes (not post-paid of course). Sometimes I think the cheapest commodity in the US is a customer's time:(
1. Buy lots of redhat cds from cheapbytes at $1.50 each. 2. Put up a website advertising the first 100 free, the rest at $9.95 a pop. 3. Make some outrageous claims to drum up publicity. 4. Wait for the money to roll in.
>[snip] the Nokia 9110 has a special operating system
It runs an incarnation of GEOS, from Geoworks. GEOS is/was one of the early contenders for the PC GUI back in the '80s. The 9110 is basically a tiny PC linked to a mobile phone in the same box.
Obligatory/. request : I wonder if anyone's ported Linux to the 9110?
I reckon that the Register is blatantly biased *and* that Microsoft is guilty as sin. There isn't a causal relationship between the two.
As for what to do with Microsoft, I favour splitting them up into smaller units. How many? I present this simple formula, which the DOJ is welcome to borrow :
#Baby Bill companies = #Current Microsoft Employees
I see where you're coming from and I agree that we should be looking at ways to prevent humans making species extinct.
Where I think we differ is that I also think that if we have a chance to bring back extinct species that we've carelessly wiped out then we should make the attempt.
In other words, fix up the mess we made and make sure we don't do it again.
>The warming of the planet is a process, whereas the extinction of a species is an event.
Once the planet is too warm the situation is analogous to the species being extinct. However, if you prefer a different example :
Activist : "That man's hand was chopped off. Let's see if we can reattach it."
Passivist : "No. He must live without it - there are things in which we Must Not Meddle."
Exploring the distinction between a hand cloned using cells taken from the original and the true original might be interesting. A hand cloned from a cell sample taken 10 years ago would be 10 years younger than the rest of you...
Slashdot Mirror
>...if we do establish a colony on Mars, it will be very dependent on Earth for resources for a very long, long time.
Good point. Best we get started as soon as possible then, hey?
Point most definitely *not* taken. There will always be things to fix on Earth, and by the reasoning you present that means we'll never do anything other than stay at home trying to fix things.
The time to explore the planets is as soon as we have the ability to do so. That doesn't mean we need to stop trying to improve the situation of our home planet.
In fact, learning about other planets is a good way to find out more about how our own behaves, and how to fix its problems.
We're stuck on one very fragile planet. If this one breaks we need a backup. A backup solar system would be nice too.
Humanity has all its eggs in one basket, and that's a guarantee of extinction in the long term.
Going to Mars is one of the very early steps in the process of improving our species' survival chances, and as such is incredibly important.
I'm sure this convention is older than that. The original (i.e. funny and well animated, not the Hanna Barbera travesty) Tom & Jerry cartoons never showed the humans. You just got a pair of stockinged feet. They also used the trick of replacing voices with musical instruments - apart from the odd scream that is.
:P
Just did a search, and the first Peanuts was 1950, whereas the original MGM Tom & Jerry was 1940. Maybe the convention is even older - anyone?
Besides, unlike the cloyingly twee Peanuts, T&J was *funny*
..they're minicomputers. That's not just a nit-pick - programming for a mainframe, at least at the lower levels, is much nastier than on the relatively uniform minicomputer architecture. A mainframe feels closer to a tightly integrated network of special purpose devices than a single CPU system.
From a programming perspective, a VAX is much more like a souped up microcomputer than a mainframe. One reason why virtual machines are popular on mainframes is that they hide the really ugly parts of the system; not just from application programmers but from kernel programmers.
I can believe a Linux port to VM, but I'm much more skeptical about a port to the bare metal.
Caveat - my mainframe penance was on Unisys machines, so correct me if I'm off base about IBM's big iron. No such doubts about the minicomputers though.
>perhaps you could come over and see how many times my lovely Netscape Navigator 4.7 has completely hung my XF/GNONE/E desktop with nothing more running than XMMS?
:\
Nothing lovely about Nav 4.7. I have the a similar setup to you and I keep an Eterm with "rm ~/.netscape/lock" as the last command in its history ready at all times
I've never had it hang the desktop though. It's usually just spinning at 100% cpu - nothing kill -9 can't fix.
>btw: I would wager that 90% of slashdot readers are windows users,
I think you'd lose the wager, but it'd make an interesting poll.
BTW, lighten up - my other post was a joke, and I think the post it was in response to was too.
Heh, and don't forget their greatest achievement yet : the Blue Screen Of Innovation (TM) (C).
I like the idea of buying separate monitor, decoder, etc. Bit like HiFi separates vs. a boom box.
Are any companies doing or planning this?
We're flaming Microsoft, not the Microsoft employees (who, BTW, are not generally very well paid).
> compete for...for what?
Cycles, bandwidth, disk space... important stuff like that.
Hmm. *ponder*
Going out with a geek girl as an excuse to upgrade the home network. Definite possibilities there 8-)
> I haven't seen The Matrix, so it may not belong on the list, either.
It doesn't, unless all you're looking at is the special effects. There's quite a good story hiding underneath them.
>Checks are still so common because consumers want them.
That's what I see too. People I've griped about this to say that they don't trust the banks/payees to debit the right amounts. Perhaps unsurprising, given that the only company with which I've managed to set up a direct debit doesn't send out an invoice, but relies on me checking my bank statement as the only confirmation that things worked. I figure that checking the statement is easier than writing a cheque, but others obviously disagree.
To wrench this back on topic: speaking as a visitor to the USA I think that this is the sort of thing that Linus means when he says that technologically, silicon valley is a third worlds country. All the tech is there, but it isn't being used effectively to make day-to-day life easier.
Remonds me of the cliche where the Brits invent something but can't seem to market it. Americans can bring the technology to market but often don't use it to its best advantage.
>Get a different bank!
:-|
:)
The bank isn't the problem; my bank does handle electronic transfer, but like you say it only works "for those payees who can accept it". In my experience they are few and far between.
Electric - no
Rent - nope
Insurance (all varieties) - nuh
Telcos - no
ISP - HAHAHAHA... of course not
Maybe I'm just unlucky, and it's not really a big deal - I just find the contrast between hi-tech and low-down bureaucracy in the USA a bit odd, considering that so much else about the place is so advanced.
The free local calls make up for it all though
The bit I picked up on was when he called Silicon Valley a third world country when it comes to technology. He's right, and it's really strange considering the availability and low cost of technology in the US.
:(
One of my pet peeves is that people over here *still* use cheques to pay all their bills instead of direct funds transfer. I'd almost forgotten how to write a cheque before I moved here, but hardly anyone does direct debit so I'm forever writing the things out and stuffing them in envelopes (not post-paid of course). Sometimes I think the cheapest commodity in the US is a customer's time
I think your friends' method is more ethical :-\
1. Buy lots of redhat cds from cheapbytes at $1.50 each.
2. Put up a website advertising the first 100 free, the rest at $9.95 a pop.
3. Make some outrageous claims to drum up publicity.
4. Wait for the money to roll in.
Nope, it was a Z80. You might be thinking of the Tandy CoCo, which used a 6809.
>[snip] the Nokia 9110 has a special operating system
/. request : I wonder if anyone's ported Linux to the 9110?
It runs an incarnation of GEOS, from Geoworks. GEOS is/was one of the early contenders for the PC GUI back in the '80s. The 9110 is basically a tiny PC linked to a mobile phone in the same box.
Obligatory
I reckon that the Register is blatantly biased *and* that Microsoft is guilty as sin. There isn't a causal relationship between the two.
As for what to do with Microsoft, I favour splitting them up into smaller units. How many? I present this simple formula, which the DOJ is welcome to borrow :
#Baby Bill companies = #Current Microsoft Employees
That should keep them out of mischief.
>Man, even coders can correctly spell "fear".
ITYM "ph3aR".
HTH. HAND.
Why not release the source in encrypted form. Then we can start another distributed computing project to decrypt it ;)
>The Comp Sci guys are usually the ones that sit in a closet and do bizarre stuff
We call it pro-gram-ming and it pays quite well thank-you.
>Then we shall agree to partially disagree.
:)
Agreed
I see where you're coming from and I agree that we should be looking at ways to prevent humans making species extinct.
Where I think we differ is that I also think that if we have a chance to bring back extinct species that we've carelessly wiped out then we should make the attempt.
In other words, fix up the mess we made and make sure we don't do it again.
>The warming of the planet is a process, whereas the extinction of a species is an event.
Once the planet is too warm the situation is analogous to the species being extinct. However, if you prefer a different example :
Activist : "That man's hand was chopped off. Let's see if we can reattach it."
Passivist : "No. He must live without it - there are things in which we Must Not Meddle."
Exploring the distinction between a hand cloned using cells taken from the original and the true original might be interesting. A hand cloned from a cell sample taken 10 years ago would be 10 years younger than the rest of you...