A lot of planning and thought would have gone into creating this page. It might not be directly useful as others point out. But, this is a lesson for any web developer on how to use available tools to create a webpage, the way one wants.
I salute Mr. Grothkopp and agree with the poster that it is the coolest thing I have seen recently.
In major states there are caste based political parties gaining strength year by year. example BSP , PMK
Having said that there are major initiatives to help the suppressed castes to come up in life. Reservations for the most backward castes (classified as scheduled castes) and tribal populations (scheduled tribes) are in vogue for decades in all central and state government employment and higher education institutions.
Many states have gone further and implemented reservations for other categories of backward castes too. There is a raging debate about this issue. There are proposals to extend the reservation concept to the private sector too.
In short, yes, the caste system is still alive as thousands of years of practices are hard to kick in decades. But, there are definite efforts to get rid of the stigma attached to the so called lower castes and help everyone to have a decent life.
Those who live on the pavements are not necessarily of lower caste. They could be migrant farmers from the villages. The caste system operates with all its tragedies in villages, not in big cities.
You are right. It is not invented in India. But India can do is to marry the community based living to modern technology/market economy and synthesize a new way. I understand that in many parts of the world many communities are leading such a life and that makes my belief stronger that it is possible for the whole world to adapt a more sustainable growth model.
1. High corruption is highest to lowest levels of politics alike 2. 100,000 farmers committing suicide every x years (x = 2 or 3 or whatever) 3. All the brilliant and smart people migrating to US as soon as they get a degree in IITs and IIMs 4. 60% illiteracy 5. etc etc
Is it what you want ? "
None of the above:-). I want an India which solves all the above problems and follows a path whereby consumption is not everything.
If 1 billion plus of India and 1.3 billion plus of China are to be raised to the standards of USA as defined by per capita consumption, think about the cost to the environment and burden on the natural resources. It is just not possible. Having more and more and more is not the solution. There is a better way, that is what India has to strive for.
Is it communism as defined by USSR and China? No. Is it a commune life style, probably yes. Each one working on something which he/she enjoys and gives his/her best to. Each one receiving things which he/she needs. There will be no compulsion, as everyone does what he/she enjoys and no forcing to share as everyone is happy enough to help out the neighbour.
Sounds too fantastic. But it works in limited communities. Have you been to small Indian villages?
American century was made not by the people of USA imitating any other country but defining their own principles and working on it. Every other nation wants to become what USA is today - rich, powerful and dictating to the world.
If that is the way New India is going to emerge, it is not going to be. We have a saying, a cat should not brand itself to become a leoperd. India can not mindlessly follow the American success story and carry all the Indians along. We need a unique Indian way which is not capitalist, not communist, not socialist but Indian.
We have a rich tradition and had tall leaders leading us. We try to substitute everything with western values as in China. There is a better way. India can show to the world how to solve the problems of consumption driven economies of the west. We can evolve systems, practices to build a new type of economic development and social order. That would be the contribution of India to the world, not trying to be another China or USA.
We need to learn from the evolution of human civilization.
1. The early human life was driven by animal passion, groups of people hunting and living in jungles. 2. By thinking and experimenting some of them settled down along rivers and agreed to follow certain rules. 3. These rules are meant to curb the animal nature and channel human energy into synergy with fellow human beings. 4. That evolved several stages to reach today's nation states and global economy based on market forces
But, we are beset with the problems arising out of market forces' shortcomings. Drawing a parallel to the above:
1. Market forces are based on human greed and selfishness. Each one is trying to maximize his gains and spend the earnings as he/she wills. 2. Some governments, societies work on curbing this greed setting up massive welfare states. Most of them are in an experimental stage, not widely adopted. 3. We need to have rules to curb the consumption pattern by individual choice. There need not be governmental or societabl controls, but individuals should be educated to treat the resources accruing with themselves as social resources. Each one should spend their resources as a government would spend its income, maximizing the returns to the society, not on ever increasing individual consumption. 4. Evolving in this form, we will reach a post information technology civilization, where everyone works on his favourite occupation, no one starves and there is no unnecessary consumption.
Man kind can survive next 100 or even 1000 years by making a jump out of the current consumption driven growth.
Even though the beauty of open source model is reason enough for me, the primary reason why I avoid Windows is the licensing cost I believe.
In our place many people use pirated copis of Windows. I do not want to have the guilty feelings associated with a pirated software. In addition in our business we have to distribute the OS etc to our clients and using open source software keeps the total cost of our service low for our customers.
Linus says that on the technical side, Linux is ready. Only the commercial space has to be created. That might happen sooner than what he predicts.
If you look outside the English speaking world Linux has a greater chance of reaching the desktops within next couple of years.
I am involved in a project to bring out a Tamil desktop for tamil speakers (Zhakanini. Only less than 5% of the population has access to computers now. One of the main reasons the majority do not use computer is the lack of tamil interface. Microsoft is not going to support Tamil interface anytime soon (for an unknown market demand) and the open source applications provide great support for localisation.
Combining these two factors this project aims to bring out a desktop for firts time computer users. they are not bothered about existing applications and we will be selling them pre-installed systems. Once we make the usage rate to say 20% of population with zhakanini, Linux desktop will be the default for tamil speakers (about 80 million).
I am sure there are many more communities like this in the world.
The athmosphere in PostgreSQL community reminds me the one of BSD (read: very unfriendly).
In my experience the PostgreSQL user mailing list pgsql-general@postgresql.org is one of the most friendly mailing lists I subscribe to.
You get answers to trivial questions as well as very complex ones. I have not seen anyone flamed for asking something. People are very helpful. I have seen a couple of cases where problems affective live databases were sorted in the mailing list threads within hours.
I do not understand what do you mean by "very unfriendly")
Have you tried a recent release of a major distribution? I have tried Red Hat 9.0 and Suse 8.2, both have such options. You get a nice GUI interface and get to click one button and get everything decided for you by the installer.
Applications are appropriately named and grouped in the menu. For example, Mozilla is named Web Browser and Office sub menu contains Open Office applications.
Stop repeating the same complaint which might have been valid a year back. Try it out yourself.
I as born in January 1972. I remember the morning my younger sister was born (when I was 2 years old), and I with my brothers and sister going to see the new born baby. Some one commented about the baby and someone else replied. There was this neighbour lady visiting us.
For a long time I was under the impression that the new baby was brought in by the neighbour lady and given to my mother, untill one day my elder brother corrected me:-)
Remember, the Linux PDAs are being targetted at the rural population, who are not comfortable with English. Moreover, even though many people can understand English, most of them are not comfortable with the interface.
Take for example, my mother a retired high school teacher and my father a retired government employee, both are educated (post graduate/graduate), but are not willing to start using the computer because of the language barrier. Once there is a popular, tamil interface conveniently available, they and many more will start using computers.
That is right. Take for instance the localisation of KDE and Gnome. The translation for Tamil (a south Indian language) is mostly done by software engineers living overseas (in US etc), usually maintained by a handful of persons. As a result the translation is only partially complete any given time.
If the awareness about such projects spread in colleges and schools, the students can be organized to keep the translation of these two and mamy other open source application complete and current.
The status of other Indian languages are still worse.
True. Exposure is the key. I am not a programmer, but having exposed to open source through slashdot for a year or so, when I set up my business recently decided to use Linux etc.
All the companies I talked for assistance in development work only with Microsoft solutions and were not willing to consider my project. Finally I decided to hire two fresh graduates, they are bright guys fresh out of college (no prior Linux exposure) with a little Unix usage.
They saw my system, there were immediately hooked and installed Linux in their home computers also to play around. Initially they could not write html by hand. After a couple of days they were comfortable
The government promoting open source will have broader implications, since the middle class in India puts a great faith in everything Government. If the government says it will be good. When a boy/girl wants to do a course on Linux, the parents will be more willing to spare the cash, if there is a government label on it.
he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it
Wow! You can't see it. Unfortunately I am not able to read the second part of the interview, but going by what is commented, here is my take.
For the past several years, personal computer systems are reorganizing themselves around internet. Most of the people I know use their computers for internet applications only. Then why you can not see that internet applications are going to be big with customers?
There is a big film industry in Tamil Nadu (southern India). The same shouts and whines are going on here about piracy here.
The movie industry guys get together and decide that no actor should give interview to the satellite TV channels (people prefer to watch their actors in the TV rather coming ot the movie halls !!).
In Radio talk shows, directors call those who watch movies in VCD as doing prostitution at home !!!. The whole thing of not understanding and going along with the technology but resist till they are dragged along kicking screaming is painful
These guys copy so many techniques from Hollywood. But do not look at how the industry there went through the same process and learnt to bring the fans to the movie hall inspite of all the VCDs.
Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos responded to the criticism by calling for patent reform and by sponsoring an organization that investigated dubious patent claims.
Does this mean that Amazon really does not want to patent this process? They had to do it only because, if they don't someone else will do and Amazon have to battle them in court?
It is sad indeed that the system has to encourage such wasteful actions
Re:My favourite Taco comment....
on
Slashdot IRC Forum
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Amazing... Slashdot is composed of two things, the front page, with all the spelling errors and factual mistakes, and the comments pages, with all the user submitted corrections. Now, if you take away the comments pages, you are left with the front page alone, and to me, slashdot becomes almost worthless. With the current levels of fact checking, I could never believe anything posted.
I agree with this 100%. The uniqueness of Slashdot is that for any topic, there are dozens of insightful view points. These are from people living in different geographical zones and having varying backgrounds
No other medium has achieved this so far and that is the glory of Slashdot. Slashdot editors can never compete with their much more professional commercial counterparts in sites like cnn, zdnet, cnet etc.
Cmdr Taco's way of measuring the economic value of story submission and insighful commets is like the way the bankers control the business. Without the comments the story's are worth nothing. It is just a collection of links.
It is surprising that a man who has done all this does not realise what is the real value of his creation. If you are going to rate users on bandwidth costs and page views, god help the community.
My premise..? Numbers don't lie. A giant market is a giant period.
That is not strictly true. I am from India, and I have worked in China and in UK. Based on my experience, numbers are not everything. While I also see a lot of potential in the huge population of India and China, there are major hurdles to overcome.
Education:
The education system in India is still the same system which aimed to churn out clerks to serve under the colonial British masters. The bright Indian professionals you meet in the western world are bright inspite of all the negatives of the education system
Personal Responsibility:
As a direct result of the poor education system, you can see laws being flouted at all levels (right from the traffic system to awarding government contracts). When you have a big mass of people who are not following the rules, (unless watched over by the police,) most of the energy is drained in watching out rathern than performing
Corruption
Again, following the above two, the system is corrupt through and through. NOTHING gets down without palms being greased and even after greasing, in many places nothing gets down EVER
To mask their inefficiency, the political class resort to religeous fundamentalism, casteism and war mongering.
I also hope that we can wish away all these. But these are the sad realities. The silver lining is the functioning democracy and the remarkable shrewdness of the ordinary man in seeing through all this.
Thus, we are slowly inching towards progress, but as we say, sometimes you climb an inch and slip a foot, so it is tough
What if the GNOME and KDE projects could take back all the programmer hours that went into consumer desktop applications and instead focus that brain power on developing kick-ass development platforms? What if all the effort that's gone into writing desktop drivers that peripheral outfits don't care to support were redirected toward drivers for corporate environments? What if all the mental energy, the rage on the Slashdot message boards, had been concentrated on building solid business models? What if the Linux community put an end to all the desktop nonsense right now and built on its strengths in global enterprise computing - just how big could Linux get?
I see this type argument in desktop wars too. Isn't the open source development model all about individual needs and preferences. What is the guarantee that if Project X was not undertaken all the developers would have worked on Project Y.
This movement is a mass movement. I was reading Mark Twain's "Life on Mississippi". The river makes its path, all efforts to guide it and control had only limited success. This river is also making its own path. If the path leads to a popular desk top, so be it. It looks like it is doing so.
This morning (Beijing time) US Attorney General was talking to Larry King on CNN.
AG was describing how Congress is working on new legislation and how the justice department is actively seeking new measures. Larry King asked, "Do you mean to say if these measures have been available say one year earlier, you could have prevented these attacks?"
I found this a good yard stick. If some one proposes a new law, ask him/her whether this would have stopped these attacks
(The AG's response to the above questions was just off the topic)
In the last 10 years we have used interent to extend the traditional media (newspapers, Television, magazine and games). And the media giants will dominate this kind of world wide web
If you think about it, why email is the most powerful application using internet? Because it broke away from the contemporary standards and placed a powerful tool in the hands of users
Look at the open source movement and at Project Gutenberg type of activities. They are using the power of internet, people from around the world get together, work together and interact for a common cause
Imagine such projects emerging for each group of people dispersed all over the world. Ethinic groups, professionals, hobbyists, consumers all are going to build networks using a common glue. These groups are going to exploit the world wide web and other tools of the internet.
Then not only technologically, but content wise a network of networks will emerge and we will have tru INTERNET.
Recycling of metals is not only for reuse purposes. Metals in their native form may be hazardous to the soil and water in which they are present. (This point is still debated hotly among the concerned groups.)
Fot instance, biologists can work out what makes the fungii like Aluminium and devise ways to make it digest other metals also (Chromium, lead for example). After the digestion the metals can be released to the environment in a friendly compound forms.
This would be a great help for recycling metals in industrial waste
So it is all about rendering these metals harmless to the environment than reusing them. Anyway, aluminium is not prohibitively expensive today!
This is one of the grand old debates of Economics and gold standard is the darling of many armchair experts. In reality it is no more than one way controlling the amount of currency in circulation
A currency is a lubrication for the economic activity of capitalist system. If there is not enough currency in ciculation to support the level of economic activity, the society will suffer due to reduced level of investment, production etc. On the other hand if there is too much of currency, it will lead to inflation affecting the most vulnerable sections of the society.
A gold standard ensures that the amount of currency in circulation is tied to the amount of gold available with the government. This is the reason for the flurry of economic activity witnessed whenever there was a new 'God Rush' during the gold standard days.
In today's floating currency systems the amount of currency in circulation is determined by the governments. In many countries this is managed by largely autonomous central banks who look at the economic activity and take necessary policy and physical steps. If the central bank does a good job, the economy benefits otherwise it suffers (Mexico!!)
Going back to gold standard will not ensure prosperity. At best it will make certain that the governments act responsibly. At worst it will stiffle economic progress by tying the amount of available currency to the skills of miners than to the knowledge of central bank governers!!
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of planning and thought would have gone into creating this page. It might not be directly useful as others point out. But, this is a lesson for any web developer on how to use available tools to create a webpage, the way one wants.
I salute Mr. Grothkopp and agree with the poster that it is the coolest thing I have seen recently.
Caste is still alive and kicking in India.
Having said that there are major initiatives to help the suppressed castes to come up in life. Reservations for the most backward castes (classified as scheduled castes) and tribal populations (scheduled tribes) are in vogue for decades in all central and state government employment and higher education institutions.
Many states have gone further and implemented reservations for other categories of backward castes too. There is a raging debate about this issue. There are proposals to extend the reservation concept to the private sector too.
In short, yes, the caste system is still alive as thousands of years of practices are hard to kick in decades. But, there are definite efforts to get rid of the stigma attached to the so called lower castes and help everyone to have a decent life.
Those who live on the pavements are not necessarily of lower caste. They could be migrant farmers from the villages. The caste system operates with all its tragedies in villages, not in big cities.
You are right. It is not invented in India. But India can do is to marry the community based living to modern technology/market economy and synthesize a new way. I understand that in many parts of the world many communities are leading such a life and that makes my belief stronger that it is possible for the whole world to adapt a more sustainable growth model.
"OK then according to you "Indian way" is:
:-). I want an India which solves all the above problems and follows a path whereby consumption is not everything.
1. High corruption is highest to lowest levels of politics alike
2. 100,000 farmers committing suicide every x years (x = 2 or 3 or whatever)
3. All the brilliant and smart people migrating to US as soon as they get a degree in IITs and IIMs
4. 60% illiteracy
5. etc etc
Is it what you want ? "
None of the above
If 1 billion plus of India and 1.3 billion plus of China are to be raised to the standards of USA as defined by per capita consumption, think about the cost to the environment and burden on the natural resources. It is just not possible. Having more and more and more is not the solution. There is a better way, that is what India has to strive for.
Is it communism as defined by USSR and China? No. Is it a commune life style, probably yes. Each one working on something which he/she enjoys and gives his/her best to. Each one receiving things which he/she needs. There will be no compulsion, as everyone does what he/she enjoys and no forcing to share as everyone is happy enough to help out the neighbour.
Sounds too fantastic. But it works in limited communities. Have you been to small Indian villages?
American century was made not by the people of USA imitating any other country but defining their own principles and working on it. Every other nation wants to become what USA is today - rich, powerful and dictating to the world.
If that is the way New India is going to emerge, it is not going to be. We have a saying, a cat should not brand itself to become a leoperd. India can not mindlessly follow the American success story and carry all the Indians along. We need a unique Indian way which is not capitalist, not communist, not socialist but Indian.
We have a rich tradition and had tall leaders leading us. We try to substitute everything with western values as in China. There is a better way. India can show to the world how to solve the problems of consumption driven economies of the west. We can evolve systems, practices to build a new type of economic development and social order. That would be the contribution of India to the world, not trying to be another China or USA.
We need to learn from the evolution of human civilization.
1. The early human life was driven by animal passion, groups of people hunting and living in jungles.
2. By thinking and experimenting some of them settled down along rivers and agreed to follow certain rules.
3. These rules are meant to curb the animal nature and channel human energy into synergy with fellow human beings.
4. That evolved several stages to reach today's nation states and global economy based on market forces
But, we are beset with the problems arising out of market forces' shortcomings. Drawing a parallel to the above:
1. Market forces are based on human greed and selfishness. Each one is trying to maximize his gains and spend the earnings as he/she wills.
2. Some governments, societies work on curbing this greed setting up massive welfare states. Most of them are in an experimental stage, not widely adopted.
3. We need to have rules to curb the consumption pattern by individual choice. There need not be governmental or societabl controls, but individuals should be educated to treat the resources accruing with themselves as social resources. Each one should spend their resources as a government would spend its income, maximizing the returns to the society, not on ever increasing individual consumption.
4. Evolving in this form, we will reach a post information technology civilization, where everyone works on his favourite occupation, no one starves and there is no unnecessary consumption.
Man kind can survive next 100 or even 1000 years by making a jump out of the current consumption driven growth.
Even though the beauty of open source model is reason enough for me, the primary reason why I avoid Windows is the licensing cost I believe.
In our place many people use pirated copis of Windows. I do not want to have the guilty feelings associated with a pirated software. In addition in our business we have to distribute the OS etc to our clients and using open source software keeps the total cost of our service low for our customers.
Linus says that on the technical side, Linux is ready. Only the commercial space has to be created. That might happen sooner than what he predicts.
If you look outside the English speaking world Linux has a greater chance of reaching the desktops within next couple of years.
I am involved in a project to bring out a Tamil desktop for tamil speakers (Zhakanini. Only less than 5% of the population has access to computers now. One of the main reasons the majority do not use computer is the lack of tamil interface. Microsoft is not going to support Tamil interface anytime soon (for an unknown market demand) and the open source applications provide great support for localisation.
Combining these two factors this project aims to bring out a desktop for firts time computer users. they are not bothered about existing applications and we will be selling them pre-installed systems. Once we make the usage rate to say 20% of population with zhakanini, Linux desktop will be the default for tamil speakers (about 80 million).
I am sure there are many more communities like this in the world.
In my experience the PostgreSQL user mailing list pgsql-general@postgresql.org is one of the most friendly mailing lists I subscribe to.
You get answers to trivial questions as well as very complex ones. I have not seen anyone flamed for asking something. People are very helpful. I have seen a couple of cases where problems affective live databases were sorted in the mailing list threads within hours.
I do not understand what do you mean by "very unfriendly")
(I use postgresql for our application)
Have you tried a recent release of a major distribution? I have tried Red Hat 9.0 and Suse 8.2, both have such options. You get a nice GUI interface and get to click one button and get everything decided for you by the installer.
Applications are appropriately named and grouped in the menu. For example, Mozilla is named Web Browser and Office sub menu contains Open Office applications.
Stop repeating the same complaint which might have been valid a year back. Try it out yourself.
I as born in January 1972. I remember the morning my younger sister was born (when I was 2 years old), and I with my brothers and sister going to see the new born baby. Some one commented about the baby and someone else replied. There was this neighbour lady visiting us.
:-)
For a long time I was under the impression that the new baby was brought in by the neighbour lady and given to my mother, untill one day my elder brother corrected me
Remember, the Linux PDAs are being targetted at the rural population, who are not comfortable with English. Moreover, even though many people can understand English, most of them are not comfortable with the interface.
Take for example, my mother a retired high school teacher and my father a retired government employee, both are educated (post graduate/graduate), but are not willing to start using the computer because of the language barrier. Once there is a popular, tamil interface conveniently available, they and many more will start using computers.
That is right. Take for instance the localisation of KDE and Gnome. The translation for Tamil (a south Indian language) is mostly done by software engineers living overseas (in US etc), usually maintained by a handful of persons. As a result the translation is only partially complete any given time.
If the awareness about such projects spread in colleges and schools, the students can be organized to keep the translation of these two and mamy other open source application complete and current.
The status of other Indian languages are still worse.
True. Exposure is the key. I am not a programmer, but having exposed to open source through slashdot for a year or so, when I set up my business recently decided to use Linux etc.
All the companies I talked for assistance in development work only with Microsoft solutions and were not willing to consider my project. Finally I decided to hire two fresh graduates, they are bright guys fresh out of college (no prior Linux exposure) with a little Unix usage.
They saw my system, there were immediately hooked and installed Linux in their home computers also to play around. Initially they could not write html by hand. After a couple of days they were comfortable
The government promoting open source will have broader implications, since the middle class in India puts a great faith in everything Government. If the government says it will be good. When a boy/girl wants to do a course on Linux, the parents will be more willing to spare the cash, if there is a government label on it.
he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it
Wow! You can't see it. Unfortunately I am not able to read the second part of the interview, but going by what is commented, here is my take.
For the past several years, personal computer systems are reorganizing themselves around internet. Most of the people I know use their computers for internet applications only. Then why you can not see that internet applications are going to be big with customers?
There is a big film industry in Tamil Nadu (southern India). The same shouts and whines are going on here about piracy here.
The movie industry guys get together and decide that no actor should give interview to the satellite TV channels (people prefer to watch their actors in the TV rather coming ot the movie halls !!).
In Radio talk shows, directors call those who watch movies in VCD as doing prostitution at home !!!. The whole thing of not understanding and going along with the technology but resist till they are dragged along kicking screaming is painful
These guys copy so many techniques from Hollywood. But do not look at how the industry there went through the same process and learnt to bring the fans to the movie hall inspite of all the VCDs.
Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos responded to the criticism by calling for patent reform and by sponsoring an organization that investigated dubious patent claims.
Does this mean that Amazon really does not want to patent this process? They had to do it only because, if they don't someone else will do and Amazon have to battle them in court?
It is sad indeed that the system has to encourage such wasteful actions
Amazing... Slashdot is composed of two things, the front page, with all the spelling errors and factual mistakes, and the comments pages, with all the user submitted corrections. Now, if you take away the comments pages, you are left with the front page alone, and to me, slashdot becomes almost worthless. With the current levels of fact checking, I could never believe anything posted.
I agree with this 100%. The uniqueness of Slashdot is that for any topic, there are dozens of insightful view points. These are from people living in different geographical zones and having varying backgrounds
No other medium has achieved this so far and that is the glory of Slashdot. Slashdot editors can never compete with their much more professional commercial counterparts in sites like cnn, zdnet, cnet etc.
Cmdr Taco's way of measuring the economic value of story submission and insighful commets is like the way the bankers control the business. Without the comments the story's are worth nothing.
It is just a collection of links.
It is surprising that a man who has done all this does not realise what is the real value of his creation. If you are going to rate users on bandwidth costs and page views, god help the community.
That is not strictly true. I am from India, and I have worked in China and in UK. Based on my experience, numbers are not everything. While I also see a lot of potential in the huge population of India and China, there are major hurdles to overcome.
The education system in India is still the same system which aimed to churn out clerks to serve under the colonial British masters. The bright Indian professionals you meet in the western world are bright inspite of all the negatives of the education system
As a direct result of the poor education system, you can see laws being flouted at all levels (right from the traffic system to awarding government contracts). When you have a big mass of people who are not following the rules, (unless watched over by the police,) most of the energy is drained in watching out rathern than performing
Again, following the above two, the system is corrupt through and through. NOTHING gets down without palms being greased and even after greasing, in many places nothing gets down EVER
To mask their inefficiency, the political class resort to religeous fundamentalism, casteism and war mongering.
I also hope that we can wish away all these. But these are the sad realities. The silver lining is the functioning democracy and the remarkable shrewdness of the ordinary man in seeing through all this.
Thus, we are slowly inching towards progress, but as we say, sometimes you climb an inch and slip a foot, so it is tough
I see this type argument in desktop wars too. Isn't the open source development model all about individual needs and preferences. What is the guarantee that if Project X was not undertaken all the developers would have worked on Project Y.
This movement is a mass movement. I was reading Mark Twain's "Life on Mississippi". The river makes its path, all efforts to guide it and control had only limited success. This river is also making its own path. If the path leads to a popular desk top, so be it. It looks like it is doing so.
This morning (Beijing time) US Attorney General was talking to Larry King on CNN.
AG was describing how Congress is working on new legislation and how the justice department is actively seeking new measures. Larry King asked, "Do you mean to say if these measures have been available say one year earlier, you could have prevented these attacks?"
I found this a good yard stick. If some one proposes a new law, ask him/her whether this would have stopped these attacks
(The AG's response to the above questions was just off the topic)
I have not read the article.
In the last 10 years we have used interent to extend the traditional media (newspapers, Television, magazine and games). And the media giants will dominate this kind of world wide web
If you think about it, why email is the most powerful application using internet? Because it broke away from the contemporary standards and placed a powerful tool in the hands of users
Look at the open source movement and at Project Gutenberg type of activities. They are using the power of internet, people from around the world get together, work together and interact for a common cause
Imagine such projects emerging for each group of people dispersed all over the world. Ethinic groups, professionals, hobbyists, consumers all are going to build networks using a common glue. These groups are going to exploit the world wide web and other tools of the internet.
Then not only technologically, but content wise a network of networks will emerge and we will have tru INTERNET.
Do not understimate this technology!
The court can still order them to release all relevant information about the specifications of the proprietary
'standards' established by MS.
In case of the browser, they can be ordered to release the source code for IE and let the competition use it for making improvements.
Just a thought!
Recycling of metals is not only for reuse purposes. Metals in their native form may be hazardous to the soil and water in which they are present. (This point is still debated hotly among the concerned groups.)
Fot instance, biologists can work out what makes the fungii like Aluminium and devise ways to make it digest other metals also (Chromium, lead for example). After the digestion the metals can be released to the environment in a friendly compound forms.
This would be a great help for recycling metals in industrial waste
So it is all about rendering these metals harmless to the environment than reusing them. Anyway, aluminium is not prohibitively expensive today!
This is one of the grand old debates of Economics and gold standard is the darling of many armchair experts. In reality it is no more than one way controlling the amount of currency in circulation
A currency is a lubrication for the economic activity of capitalist system. If there is not enough currency in ciculation to support the level of economic activity, the society will suffer due to reduced level of investment, production etc. On the other hand if there is too much of currency, it will lead to inflation affecting the most vulnerable sections of the society.
A gold standard ensures that the amount of currency in circulation is tied to the amount of gold available with the government. This is the reason for the flurry of economic activity witnessed whenever there was a new 'God Rush' during the gold standard days.
In today's floating currency systems the amount of currency in circulation is determined by the governments. In many countries this is managed by largely autonomous central banks who look at the economic activity and take necessary policy and physical steps. If the central bank does a good job, the economy benefits otherwise it suffers (Mexico!!)
Going back to gold standard will not ensure prosperity. At best it will make certain that the governments act responsibly. At worst it will stiffle economic progress by tying the amount of available currency to the skills of miners than to the knowledge of central bank governers!!