The wheel and writing weren't needed to support those 10 million. They were needed to support millions that didn't make it, the millions that died in a primative, underdeveloped culture.
The development of a culture is not a simple factor of having a specific machine or a specific concept. Millions of people in Europe "didn't make it" even with the wheel and written languages.
The wheel helps grow food.
Good agriculture practices help people to grow food. Tools and machines are useful, but the wheel is not the only machine of possible agricultural importance.
Private property helps grow food.
Highly debatable. It can just as easily encourage the growing of nutritionally poor "cash crops".
Writing helps people transmit knowledge that keeps them alive.
Language helps people transmit knowlage. Writing is a way to record language, but it is certainly not the only way.
They didn't need either to support a population of 10 million humans on this continent. But then again, what would I expect a European to understand that?
It's very arrogent to claim that there is only one way to build a civilised society. Unfortunatly this kind of attitude is still commonplace.
There's no reason for the airwaves to be publicly owned. "Public ownership" of a resource means that all decisions about a resouce have to occur in the context of politics.
Private corporations are no less political than governments. Indeed it may be a worst situation, since the political positions of corporations may be rather less obvious than those of political parties...
If the group that wants censorship has more votes than the group that doesn't want censorship, then there'll be censorship.
It would probably be fairer to decide issues such as censorship by ballot than by bribary. That would be a change from the status quo anyway, where a minority appear to have great power to censor things regardless of what the majority might think.
Why would I want anyone making a profit off of that when the government could do it without paying for someones yacht? Why would a private company be able to do any better? if the government is doing a crap job its because they have crap people managing the system: fire them and get someone who has a clue.
The actual problem here is poor management, with possible embezzelment. Which is something which can happen with either public or private ownership. Possibly the worst situation would be privatisation whilst keeping the same incompetent (even criminal) management...
I can't stand all these free market fans "it is proven that it works better and will give the most efficient solution".
There are plenty of examples of "privatisation" working badly, e.g. British Rail. Also cases where it has resulted in nothing like a "free market".
The free market is a damn, often a damn good *tool*, but not more than that.
It can be a good tool, in some circumstances.
Of course, to have a government that provides good services, it needs oversight by the citizens but that's, well, the purpose of a democracy/republic...
Some things are better in private ownership, others are better in public ownership. Having the former in public ownership or the latter in private ownership tends to work badly.
Plus, if the batteries were, in fact, as light as air, they'd have to put some lead weights into the car. Without the weight of an engine, or batteries, your car would be in real danger of getting blown off the road in high winds, or even stolen by just being picked up and caried away by a couple guys:-) Would you feel safe driving 80MPH down the freeway, in a car that only weighs 400 pounds?
At that speed it is prefectly possible to generate sufficent aerodynamic downforce to keep the car on the road. Problems would come at lower speeds.
We still haven't even come close to rolling out SP2 at work, because it caused one out of three systems to blow their digital brains out.
You can probably consider it good luck that 2 out of 3 systems still work. My favourate SP2 ooops is that it can send control panel fubar, so you have to search for appwiz.cpl to even attempt to uninstall it. The problem with Microsoft Service packs is that they don't just contain bug fixes.
But the real problem with national ID cards is that they have negative security value. They will be trusted more than ID cards and social security numbers, and they will be only one piece of information to forge or steal.
Which makes them a high value target for criminals. Including criminals within the organisation doing the issuing.
The government databases connected with the ID cards will be vulnerable and unreliable
Such a system will most likely have a mechanism for creating bogus identities, e.g. for undercover cops.
I hope that Mr. Blunkett has noticed that loyalty cards get borrowed all the time. I've actually had store clerks ask me if I would care to lend my card to the person in front of me at checkout, so that customer could get the advertised price on something.
Also there is nothing stopping you registering variants of your name/address with such cards, thus enabling you to track who might be selling your details to snailmail spam companies.
By the way, most of the problems, according to the article, result from incorrect maps, and short of approaching the job like archaeologists, it's just too hard to miss something that's not supposed to be there.
Archaeologists would typically use "geophys", i.e. metal detectors, ground radar, resistivity, magnetic response, etc. in order to work out where to dig. Such techniques generally show up modern pipes and cables very well.
Don't overreact just because someone wants legislation to fix something with technology involved
The problem is a) many countries already have an excess of legislation. To the point where even lawyers don't actually understand it. b) these idiots want more legislation.
Sure, the changes could be circumvented, even if it was done with a piezo beep which would effectively catch attention and use a negligible amount of battery (at least compared to the cam).
This "solution" could easily be more annoying to members of the public than being covertly photographed.
The problem with camera phones is that they aren't suspicious like normal cameras, since you can pretend to do something else with the phone easily. Beeping negates this, but still allows you to take photos: what these measures would do would essentially mean giving camera phones the same status as cameras.
But takes away from the possibility of members of the public being able to photograph criminals (especially criminal police officers) without exposing themselves to undue risk.
There are cameras in every SF Bay Area (CA) subway car, with silly little flashing LEDs that I'm sure serve no purpose other than to make people aware that somewhere there is some overpaid BART droid who gets $90,000 per year to rewind the VCR cartridges in every train car.
If they need to save a bit of cash all they need fit is a box with a flashing LED... Even better have boxes with flashing LEDs which might or might not contain a camera.
For the past 20-30 years, there's been nothing but active encouragement for women to denounce their traditional gender roles and perform tasks normally associated with men. I'm not saying that isolated instances of discrimination don't exist, but there's no conspiracy to keep women out of science and technology.
Though there are plenty of people who'd have you believe that there is. One thing the "patriarchy" conspiracy theorists tend to ignore is any effect peer expectations and peer preasure can have. As well as examining if the methods of "encouragment" being applied are actually at worst neutral.
Yes, and all of these things count against Microsoft when you do your cost analysis.
Actually it counts against any migration. There is a basic engineering rule of thumb that you change something which is working.
I fail to see what the point is.
The point is that there is no single entity called "Windows". Even applying a Microsoft patch, let alone a "service pack", can effectivly be a "migration". Windows is especially problematic to patch, probably more so than any other OS. Because Microsoft have deliberatly avoided producing a well structures system.
If you consider all of these factors and it's still cheaper to maintain Windows systems, what does it matter?
The point is, as with so called "TCO studies", many of the relevent factors tend to be ignored. Remember you were the poster who effectivly claimed that Windows would always be a cheaper option.
If you have roaming profiles on a windows domain, it's a pain in the ass dragging around your entire browser cache with you (instead of having it set to a temp directory on the machine).
Maybe you'd be better off using "Folder Redirection". Problem is that Microsoft often havn't documented this very well.
I also have roaming profiles stored on a samba server which is backed up every night. It's really annoying working around trying not to backup something useless like the browser cache.
Is there a reason for not having the cron job which operates the backup delete the browser cache files for all users before it starts the backup?
I am a PHB, and I would like to run linux. However, it's my techies that don't. Only half of them enjoy running linux and the other half think everything that spews out of Microsoft is golden.
Obvious Windows Evangelicals are not just found in management. Possibly it's more common within management because there arn't that many managers who are cynical enough when it comes to software salesmen.
So, how do I convince the other half that Linux should be in our future? Firing them is not an option. No Linux migration would be practical without their complete support and "decreeing" that we will move to Linux will be a failure if my main tech folks don't support the move.
Are there any other differences between these two groups of people?
Upgrading from NT to XP, by comparison, results in far fewer problems because they share a common base.
In theory. Thing is that the theory dosn't matter much if the result is that some piece of "business critical" software won't work afterwards. The technical argument of "well NT and XP are similar" really dosn't matter. There are even businesses which have to test every single patch which comes out of Microsoft. As well as circumstances in which Linux can run Windows programs better than Windows.
Businesses aren't generally interested in throwing money down the toilet in the interest of their IT department's idealogical bents
They aren't interested throwing money "down the toilet" to support Microsofts idealogical bents either. By Microsoft has enough spare cash to persuade many people to do so and get the suckers to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The wheel and writing weren't needed to support those 10 million. They were needed to support millions that didn't make it, the millions that died in a primative, underdeveloped culture.
The development of a culture is not a simple factor of having a specific machine or a specific concept. Millions of people in Europe "didn't make it" even with the wheel and written languages.
The wheel helps grow food.
Good agriculture practices help people to grow food. Tools and machines are useful, but the wheel is not the only machine of possible agricultural importance.
Private property helps grow food.
Highly debatable. It can just as easily encourage the growing of nutritionally poor "cash crops".
Writing helps people transmit knowledge that keeps them alive.
Language helps people transmit knowlage. Writing is a way to record language, but it is certainly not the only way.
They didn't need either to support a population of 10 million humans on this continent. But then again, what would I expect a European to understand that?
It's very arrogent to claim that there is only one way to build a civilised society. Unfortunatly this kind of attitude is still commonplace.
There's no reason for the airwaves to be publicly owned. "Public ownership" of a resource means that all decisions about a resouce have to occur in the context of politics.
Private corporations are no less political than governments. Indeed it may be a worst situation, since the political positions of corporations may be rather less obvious than those of political parties...
If the group that wants censorship has more votes than the group that doesn't want censorship, then there'll be censorship.
It would probably be fairer to decide issues such as censorship by ballot than by bribary. That would be a change from the status quo anyway, where a minority appear to have great power to censor things regardless of what the majority might think.
Why would I want anyone making a profit off of that when the government could do it without paying for someones yacht? Why would a private company be able to do any better? if the government is doing a crap job its because they have crap people managing the system: fire them and get someone who has a clue.
The actual problem here is poor management, with possible embezzelment. Which is something which can happen with either public or private ownership.
Possibly the worst situation would be privatisation whilst keeping the same incompetent (even criminal) management...
I can't stand all these free market fans "it is proven that it works better and will give the most efficient solution".
There are plenty of examples of "privatisation" working badly, e.g. British Rail. Also cases where it has resulted in nothing like a "free market".
The free market is a damn, often a damn good *tool*, but not more than that.
It can be a good tool, in some circumstances.
Of course, to have a government that provides good services, it needs oversight by the citizens but that's, well, the purpose of a democracy/republic...
Some things are better in private ownership, others are better in public ownership. Having the former in public ownership or the latter in private ownership tends to work badly.
Plus, if the batteries were, in fact, as light as air, they'd have to put some lead weights into the car. Without the weight of an engine, or batteries, your car would be in real danger of getting blown off the road in high winds, or even stolen by just being picked up and caried away by a couple guys :-) Would you feel safe driving 80MPH down the freeway, in a car that only weighs 400 pounds?
At that speed it is prefectly possible to generate sufficent aerodynamic downforce to keep the car on the road. Problems would come at lower speeds.
You need to let these cars sit for a period of time between use to let the batteries top up. Without that, it's just a very expensive paperweight
Plenty of current car uses leave their vehicles parked up for hours at a time anyway...
We still haven't even come close to rolling out SP2 at work, because it caused one out of three systems to blow their digital brains out.
You can probably consider it good luck that 2 out of 3 systems still work. My favourate SP2 ooops is that it can send control panel fubar, so you have to search for appwiz.cpl to even attempt to uninstall it.
The problem with Microsoft Service packs is that they don't just contain bug fixes.
But the real problem with national ID cards is that they have negative security value. They will be trusted more than ID cards and social security numbers, and they will be only one piece of information to forge or steal.
Which makes them a high value target for criminals.
Including criminals within the organisation doing the issuing.
The government databases connected with the ID cards will be vulnerable and unreliable
Such a system will most likely have a mechanism for creating bogus identities, e.g. for undercover cops.
I hope that Mr. Blunkett has noticed that loyalty cards get borrowed all the time. I've actually had store clerks ask me if I would care to lend my card to the person in front of me at checkout, so that customer could get the advertised price on something.
Also there is nothing stopping you registering variants of your name/address with such cards, thus enabling you to track who might be selling your details to snailmail spam companies.
In Pennsylvania, every liquor store will swipe your driver's license card into their database if they don't recognize you.
Whereas the sensible option would be to refuse to serve anyone who produces such document. Alcohol and driving do not go well together!
Tornados and hurricanes are apples and oranges.
"Grapes and watermelons" might be a better comparison.
By the way, most of the problems, according to the article, result from incorrect maps, and short of approaching the job like archaeologists, it's just too hard to miss something that's not supposed to be there.
Archaeologists would typically use "geophys", i.e. metal detectors, ground radar, resistivity, magnetic response, etc. in order to work out where to dig. Such techniques generally show up modern pipes and cables very well.
Don't overreact just because someone wants legislation to fix something with technology involved
The problem is a) many countries already have an excess of legislation. To the point where even lawyers don't actually understand it. b) these idiots want more legislation.
Sure, the changes could be circumvented, even if it was done with a piezo beep which would effectively catch attention and use a negligible amount of battery (at least compared to the cam).
This "solution" could easily be more annoying to members of the public than being covertly photographed.
The problem with camera phones is that they aren't suspicious like normal cameras, since you can pretend to do something else with the phone easily. Beeping negates this, but still allows you to take photos: what these measures would do would essentially mean giving camera phones the same status as cameras.
But takes away from the possibility of members of the public being able to photograph criminals (especially criminal police officers) without exposing themselves to undue risk.
There are cameras in every SF Bay Area (CA) subway car, with silly little flashing LEDs that I'm sure serve no purpose other than to make people aware that somewhere there is some overpaid BART droid who gets $90,000 per year to rewind the VCR cartridges in every train car.
If they need to save a bit of cash all they need fit is a box with a flashing LED... Even better have boxes with flashing LEDs which might or might not contain a camera.
Are lawmakers really necessary anymore? At what point can you say the laws are "done"?
Probably never when it comes to various minority corporate interests.
Why don't we just kill all the politicians and allow the courts to decide how the existing laws should be interpreted.
Maybe the politicans should be offered life imprisonment if they first repeal enough laws such that none of the remainder "overlap".
When the company starts to gain financially at the expense of a competitor it will be sued by the competitor for breaching the GPL
No the competitor has no standing to sue. Only the copyright holder can sue the infringing party.
The first programmers were women who worked on the ENIAC during WWII.
Which was probably due to only men being conscripted...
For the past 20-30 years, there's been nothing but active encouragement for women to denounce their traditional gender roles and perform tasks normally associated with men. I'm not saying that isolated instances of discrimination don't exist, but there's no conspiracy to keep women out of science and technology.
Though there are plenty of people who'd have you believe that there is. One thing the "patriarchy" conspiracy theorists tend to ignore is any effect peer expectations and peer preasure can have. As well as examining if the methods of "encouragment" being applied are actually at worst neutral.
Yes, and all of these things count against Microsoft when you do your cost analysis.
Actually it counts against any migration. There is a basic engineering rule of thumb that you change something which is working.
I fail to see what the point is.
The point is that there is no single entity called "Windows". Even applying a Microsoft patch, let alone a "service pack", can effectivly be a "migration".
Windows is especially problematic to patch, probably more so than any other OS. Because Microsoft have deliberatly avoided producing a well structures system.
If you consider all of these factors and it's still cheaper to maintain Windows systems, what does it matter?
The point is, as with so called "TCO studies", many of the relevent factors tend to be ignored.
Remember you were the poster who effectivly claimed that Windows would always be a cheaper option.
Sure, but for those cases, those tools can be uninstalled or locked down. And SE-Linux is a great tool is it not?
But can they be easily uninstalled or locked down with Windows?
If you have roaming profiles on a windows domain, it's a pain in the ass dragging around your entire browser cache with you (instead of having it set to a temp directory on the machine).
Maybe you'd be better off using "Folder Redirection". Problem is that Microsoft often havn't documented this very well.
I also have roaming profiles stored on a samba server which is backed up every night. It's really annoying working around trying not to backup something useless like the browser cache.
Is there a reason for not having the cron job which operates the backup delete the browser cache files for all users before it starts the backup?
I am a PHB, and I would like to run linux. However, it's my techies that don't. Only half of them enjoy running linux and the other half think everything that spews out of Microsoft is golden.
Obvious Windows Evangelicals are not just found in management. Possibly it's more common within management because there arn't that many managers who are cynical enough when it comes to software salesmen.
So, how do I convince the other half that Linux should be in our future? Firing them is not an option. No Linux migration would be practical without their complete support and "decreeing" that we will move to Linux will be a failure if my main tech folks don't support the move.
Are there any other differences between these two groups of people?
Upgrading from NT to XP, by comparison, results in far fewer problems because they share a common base.
In theory. Thing is that the theory dosn't matter much if the result is that some piece of "business critical" software won't work afterwards. The technical argument of "well NT and XP are similar" really dosn't matter.
There are even businesses which have to test every single patch which comes out of Microsoft. As well as circumstances in which Linux can run Windows programs better than Windows.
Businesses aren't generally interested in throwing money down the toilet in the interest of their IT department's idealogical bents
They aren't interested throwing money "down the toilet" to support Microsofts idealogical bents either. By Microsoft has enough spare cash to persuade many people to do so and get the suckers to pay for it.