Reading the other comments has made me wonder: What is the purpose of insurance? How would the system work in the optimal scenario?
Is the optimum that a person's premimums are set so that over a lifetime of payment, they pay the cost of all their medical bills plus the overhead required to run the insurance companies overhead, make profit, etc? In this case, premimums that are strongly tied to risk factors (including genetic makeup) would be trend.
On the other extreme, is the goal that the cost of every customer's medical care over a lifetime equals the total paid premimums plus operating expenses, profit, etc? On this extreme, make a flat rate premimium would be possible (though not very probable when market forces are considered).
I'm sure economists debate this one. Which is it? (or better yet, where on the continuum is it?)
This bubble analogy they use in the article is confusing me. Blowing up a magnetic bubble with plasma? It makes for a good mental image, but from a physics standpoint is total crap.
Can someone who understands the actual physics of this propulsion explain it in terms that someone with some physics knowledge could understand? I'd like to know how they really get magnetic field amplification from plasma.
Sorry, bud. If you're going to explain why everyone has certain beliefs, you've got to include yourself. You think there should be no restriction on information because you've been fed biased information.
Everyone gets "fed" biased information. It's called subjective experience.
I wonder if people have noticed that if you wade through the zillions of "Damn the Arrogant Techno-Elite Slashdotters" posts, the only blatant example of "techno-elitism" is the the original story, and not among the Slashdotters in general.
Where does all of this pent-up resentment come from? It seems like half the stories are seen as an opportunity (or excuse) to bash on some group, often the Slashdot readership. Does the relative anonyminity of online forums (having an account doesn't mean that anyone actually knows who you are) free people from their usual inhibitions?
To the posters: Before you accuse a group of a particular attitude, please think about your source of information. Is it one poster who has identified themself with a group? Do you have a good reason to suspect that most of the group shares this attitude? Generalization isn't bad, but over-generalization is.
I think the censorware industry has already answered your question:
There is no good way to censor the Internet.
If someone here knew a good way to do it, they could make a pretty penny selling their solution themselves, or to one of the big name censorware companies. They haven't so far, and I think that tells you something.
The industry has tried URL lists, keywords, heck, even picture recognizition, and none of them have solved the problem to everyone's satisfaction (despited what their marketing departments will tell you).
My suggestion is to take a low-tech approach:
Don't allow anyone under the age of 18 on the computers. Period. This will make some people mad, but I suspect not very many of your customers fall into this category.
Put the computer in a very visible location. There is still enough of a social taboo against pornography that you can use the subtle threat of "getting caught" as a deterrent.
State your usage policy clearly on the wall. If an employee catches someone using the system inappropriately, kick them off, revoke their account, etc.
Scare people with a warning that "for the security of our customers" all internet usage is logged. Whether or not you actually do that is irrelevant. Again, the suspicion of being caught will work wonders.
I think this will be more successful in the long run than trying to do the impossible.
Bzzt! -1 to Anonymous Coward for being beligerent troll. -2 to volsung for biting the bait.
(With all of the valid things to complain about, claiming that Linux ripped all of its code from other sources is just silly. If you honestly believe that, you don't write code either.)
PuTTY is wonderful. I have it in my user directory on the campus network for when I'm at a Windows machine. It actually does VT100 reasonably well (still trying to get page down to work correctly), certainly better than Windows Telnet. The distro also comes with pscp, a windows command line implementation of Secure Copy, that lets you avoid ftp as well.
Exactly. People misunderstand physics as "invalidating itself" more often than it does. Usually physics refines its assumptions. Most physical statements once confirmed by several experiments don't turn out to be false later, just narrower in implication than expected.
Example: Newtonian kinetic energy is mv^2/2. Special relativity shows that, yes, mv^2/2 is correct if v is small. As v gets larger, a different expression (not going to look it up now) is more accurate. So the implicit assumption in the statement "kinetic energy is mv^2/2" is "if v is small."
Similarly, technological advancements often occur not because someone changed their answer to the question of "how fast can you go", but rather someone changed the question because they didn't like the answer.
Q: How much bandwidth can you cram through an analog phone line?
A: Well, 33.6kbps is about all we can do. . . . Q: Hmm.. How about if half of the exchange is digital? A: In that case, we can go 56kbps.
That's where the real genius is. Answering questions is one thing, but realizing that your are asking the wrong question to begin with is another.
They released older versions (called mSQL) under the GPL. Now they are going to release the current version under the GPL instead of their "free, unless you try to sell a product based on it" license.
I'm not the only one who did this?:) Back in the BBS days, I was able to get my scanning speed up to the speed that my 2400 baud modem would spit out text. No 100% comprehension, but good enough that I can now spot important information on a screen faster than most people I run into.
Actually, RMS points out over and over that there is a difference between the Free Software and Open Source "movements". Usually, that is what makes people annoyed, not the other way around.
I'd really like to find a book that gets into the theory of these compression algorithms. I want something more technical than "type bladeence blah.wav". Does anyone know of any good references on MP3 compression? I know that Vorbis uses discrete cosine transforms and I think MP3 does too. I'm trying to get a handle on how these things work and I'm not having much luck.
I'm not convinced either that telling your boss that the problem will be fixed in 30 days by Microsoft will be okay if he wants the job done in 10 days. You'll be screwed either way. I suppose if you really like your job, at least you can spend nights and weekends fixing free software instead of sweating over whether some programmer far away is going to deliver on time. His pay doesn't depend on you, so why should he rush?
Sigh. It's sad to think that someday I'll be in a job where I'll have to play games like this. So, basically, if your project goes to hell, you might keep your job if you can say "He did it!" and point your finger.
As a manager, I don't know if I would want to encourage that kind of mentality in my subordinates. But then again, I'm not in that position, so I don't know what other issues I'd be having to deal with.
I'd be curious to know what its costs to get the writers of a proprietary program to fix deficiencies in their product? If Joe Schmoe buys Borland C++ and finds a deficiency in the compiler, does he wait months and months for the problem to get fixed in the bug release? Does he annoy their tech support lines and get told to reinstall it six times or use some cheezy workaround?
I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster? I know you can pay a software house (i.e. Oracle and friends) to give you the kind of support that Meyer would have liked in the cases he refers to, but how much is that compared to paying a contract programmer to fix a problem? Borland or Microsoft aren't even going to blink if you just went to Best Buy, bought their compiler and found out it was broken 10 months down the road. Do you have to site license for 25 seats before they care? 100 seats? Pay $10,000 per year for a support contract?
Frankly, I'd like to know. If it costs as much to get personal programming attention from a big corp as I think it does, I see a big business in the future for programmer houses doing contract-based improvements to free software.
And, for the economic theorists in the audience, you could actually have competition for software improvement contracts. Sure, the people who wrote it would be better at fixing it, but if they decide to be jerky and charge too much, some one else can charge less. Competition == lower prices for everyone. Now the software houses can't treat you like garbage because you aren't enslaved to them for software support.
Perhaps I'm just dreaming, but I think I can get paid just fine in a system like that.
Do you drive an armored tank to work? Do you have a six gallon coffee maker? Some people need heavy duty equipment and some don't. In fact, sometimes the heavy-duty stuff is a hinderance to people who don't really need it. One size doesn't have to fit everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the optimum that a person's premimums are set so that over a lifetime of payment, they pay the cost of all their medical bills plus the overhead required to run the insurance companies overhead, make profit, etc? In this case, premimums that are strongly tied to risk factors (including genetic makeup) would be trend.
On the other extreme, is the goal that the cost of every customer's medical care over a lifetime equals the total paid premimums plus operating expenses, profit, etc? On this extreme, make a flat rate premimium would be possible (though not very probable when market forces are considered).
I'm sure economists debate this one. Which is it? (or better yet, where on the continuum is it?)
Can someone who understands the actual physics of this propulsion explain it in terms that someone with some physics knowledge could understand? I'd like to know how they really get magnetic field amplification from plasma.
Everyone gets "fed" biased information. It's called subjective experience.
Where does all of this pent-up resentment come from? It seems like half the stories are seen as an opportunity (or excuse) to bash on some group, often the Slashdot readership. Does the relative anonyminity of online forums (having an account doesn't mean that anyone actually knows who you are) free people from their usual inhibitions?
To the posters: Before you accuse a group of a particular attitude, please think about your source of information. Is it one poster who has identified themself with a group? Do you have a good reason to suspect that most of the group shares this attitude? Generalization isn't bad, but over-generalization is.
Please be careful.
If someone here knew a good way to do it, they could make a pretty penny selling their solution themselves, or to one of the big name censorware companies. They haven't so far, and I think that tells you something.
The industry has tried URL lists, keywords, heck, even picture recognizition, and none of them have solved the problem to everyone's satisfaction (despited what their marketing departments will tell you).
My suggestion is to take a low-tech approach:
- Don't allow anyone under the age of 18 on the computers. Period. This will make some people mad, but I suspect not very many of your customers fall into this category.
- Put the computer in a very visible location. There is still enough of a social taboo against pornography that you can use the subtle threat of "getting caught" as a deterrent.
- State your usage policy clearly on the wall. If an employee catches someone using the system inappropriately, kick them off, revoke their account, etc.
- Scare people with a warning that "for the security of our customers" all internet usage is logged. Whether or not you actually do that is irrelevant. Again, the suspicion of being caught will work wonders.
I think this will be more successful in the long run than trying to do the impossible.(With all of the valid things to complain about, claiming that Linux ripped all of its code from other sources is just silly. If you honestly believe that, you don't write code either.)
Sssh.. We don't want anyone else to know.. :)
Well, so far this Einstein kook has a lot going for him. :)
PuTTY is wonderful. I have it in my user directory on the campus network for when I'm at a Windows machine. It actually does VT100 reasonably well (still trying to get page down to work correctly), certainly better than Windows Telnet. The distro also comes with pscp, a windows command line implementation of Secure Copy, that lets you avoid ftp as well.
Example: Newtonian kinetic energy is mv^2/2. Special relativity shows that, yes, mv^2/2 is correct if v is small. As v gets larger, a different expression (not going to look it up now) is more accurate. So the implicit assumption in the statement "kinetic energy is mv^2/2" is "if v is small."
Similarly, technological advancements often occur not because someone changed their answer to the question of "how fast can you go", but rather someone changed the question because they didn't like the answer.
That's where the real genius is. Answering questions is one thing, but realizing that your are asking the wrong question to begin with is another.I'm curious to know what this entire thing cost you. (Including travel and hotel, etc) Is it only feasible if your employer pays for it?
I'm not convinced either that telling your boss that the problem will be fixed in 30 days by Microsoft will be okay if he wants the job done in 10 days. You'll be screwed either way. I suppose if you really like your job, at least you can spend nights and weekends fixing free software instead of sweating over whether some programmer far away is going to deliver on time. His pay doesn't depend on you, so why should he rush?
It sounds like a scary predicament to be in.
As a manager, I don't know if I would want to encourage that kind of mentality in my subordinates. But then again, I'm not in that position, so I don't know what other issues I'd be having to deal with.
I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster? I know you can pay a software house (i.e. Oracle and friends) to give you the kind of support that Meyer would have liked in the cases he refers to, but how much is that compared to paying a contract programmer to fix a problem? Borland or Microsoft aren't even going to blink if you just went to Best Buy, bought their compiler and found out it was broken 10 months down the road. Do you have to site license for 25 seats before they care? 100 seats? Pay $10,000 per year for a support contract?
Frankly, I'd like to know. If it costs as much to get personal programming attention from a big corp as I think it does, I see a big business in the future for programmer houses doing contract-based improvements to free software.
And, for the economic theorists in the audience, you could actually have competition for software improvement contracts. Sure, the people who wrote it would be better at fixing it, but if they decide to be jerky and charge too much, some one else can charge less. Competition == lower prices for everyone. Now the software houses can't treat you like garbage because you aren't enslaved to them for software support.
Perhaps I'm just dreaming, but I think I can get paid just fine in a system like that.
Do you drive an armored tank to work? Do you have a six gallon coffee maker? Some people need heavy duty equipment and some don't. In fact, sometimes the heavy-duty stuff is a hinderance to people who don't really need it.
One size doesn't have to fit everyone.