Building towers on the continental ice is very simple thing - you take a heating element from electric teapot, put it on ice, power it on. Few minutes later you have a hole in the ice, filled by water
You extract heating element, and quickly insert a steel rod instead. Few minutes later water would freeze and hold your steel rod much stronger than any concrete.
And you may be reasonably sure that this ice wouldn't melt few centures more.
It is windy there. So, there are enough energy to power the station, even part of energy will be used to keep accumulators warm.
Even worse - we live in town-centralized world
on
Man Conquers Space
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Re-read Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" to get the answer why space exploration stopped.
What we (I mean the world economy) need from space technologies - GPS, InMarSat, Satellite TV. It is almost all. For town-centric civilisation it is cheaper to build cellular phone base-station in every town and connect every TVset with broadcast-station via cable, than launch projects like Iridium, which uses satellite technology.
If world population would spread more evenly (and welfare would spread more evenly among it) various space-based communication systems like Iridium would be more viable.
Then they would bring hundreds of launches per year just for maintainance, and these hundreds of launches would become cheap enough to make orbital production of certain materials (say semiconductor cristalls) commercially viable.
Then and only then space technologies would become cheap enough to allow individuals or private companies to think about interplatnetary flight.
Communication sattelittes are already part of world economy. I don't know how it is in America, but in Russia, where space technology is one of few high-technologies we can trade out, various sattelite projects are often mentioned on the first pages of financial newspapers.
>Having your freedoms is one thing, but destroying somebody's livelihood is another.
Are you a Communist?
I remember living in Soviet Union where we was told every day that we should give up our freedom and propriety (if anybody in Soviet union had any) to help starving children somewhere in the Third World, tortured by evil Americans, or to build bright future for our own grandchildren or to something else.
In 1991 we said "enough' and throw communist goverment away.
Now, evil American capitalists, which do not need assistance of their own people to fight Cold War with us anymore, begin to borrow communist ways of propaganda, which are aimed to get more money from the people without giving any real goods back.
And they was able to brainwash innocent slashdoter enough to make him feel that he is obliged to pay people, who brainwash him, otherwise these poor people would starve.
I suspect that some our most competent brainwashers emmigrate into US and were hired by advertising industry. Patterns are too recognizable.
Could you please cite a bit more up-to-date documentation? We've considered PostgreSQL only since 7.1 release. 6.5 was definitely quite robust. But current is 7.2, and there is a BIG difference between current one and one you've cited.
There is interesting trend in modern IT when people use software full of features they don't need and don't ever bother to learn.
To type one-page letter they use Word or OpenOffice.org, which have all the features of destkop publishing system. To keep couple of hundreds records they demand fullblown RDBMS.
Popularity of mySQL means that people become more realistic. If they don't need RDBMS, they use mySQL. Even if it is not faster, it is simplier to understand.
This have been tried in Russia, and still is tried in China but it doesn't help a country's economy.
America grew rich and powerful just becouse it has 1st and 5th ammendments. If Americans would voluntary give up them, America would quickly loose.
Imagine B-1s brought down by exploiting some security hole in their cryptographic software, just becouse this hole was forbidden to be openly discussed and wasn't fixed in time.
I think RIAA is not so mad to apply to the powers that be there. They realize pretty well that not every country in the world is Iraque or Afganistan.
China got five times more population than US. quite a few nuclear missles and so, and some national honour too.
I think RIAA and US goverment would be afraid of creating another sort of precedent - some powerful country saying "Go away with your stupid laws, you are not an only force in this world"
It is far safer to them to treat American companies which they have much more ways to press on.
Really, there is a ways to perform routine administrative tasks (such as adding new users) without being root. For instance on Solaris there are bunch of GUI tools, which require user only to be memeber of certain group to operate them (and they provide some idiot-proof).
So, you can disable root password by default, and write defauit/etc/sudoers which would allow user, who perform installation to do almost everything as root. Including changing password. So when user come learns concept of root user, he just can say sudo passwd root and gain access.
Or change root password in some GUIsh usertool or linuxconf.
Note that you should never do normal work in kind of single-user. For instance I have a sister (who was total disaster in the time I run DOS on home machine and father. Both of them use my machine (from separate X terminals, but this doesn't matter). While they are working under their own names I can be sure that they wouldn't accidentely erase my files. But there was a case when I've accidentely erased 200Kb of fathers files (debugging Makefile for typesetting a book), so since that I have to teach them to use CVS if they want me to help with their projects.
Becouse they are alredy too large
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
Idea of different distribution is good, becouse on one side, office user doesn't need number of www servers, search engines and such and on other hand, guy who setting up headless www server to put on T1 line doesn't need KDE or Gnome, or even gimp.
Debian already spans over five CD's (including non-free/non-US). I suggest even further splitting:
Linux -server (without X at all, with serial console as installation option)
Linux - office
Linux for mathematicans (with bunch of things like Octave)
Linux for geographers (with GRASS bundled)
etc, etc
With such approach each of stripped-down versions would fit on one CD. Of course, there should be Linux complete which is mother of all problem-oriented distributions, and may be add-on CD-s which would allow to add missing packages to already installed system without getting whole thing (binaries can be ommited for this CD. If you have already running system with basic development tools, rebuilding package from source is only matter of time, but no need for purcashing separate cd for each type of processor can be winning)
You are right, mail is inherently insecure, unless encrypted with good cryptographic software, or unless you can trust every machine SMTP IP packets go through.
But it is not mail author concerned with. What happens when Sun would release StarPortal? Your spreadsheets (say financial info) and word-processing documents would be stored on the network servers and they would be vulnerable to the same attack as Hotmail.
If hotmail crack didn't exist and this document wasn't written, Microsoft should invent both theirselves (or did they?), just to show people that Sun offering (which is cheaper and more featureful) is wrong way to go, and user should still pay MS and hardware manufacters for more bloated software and more heavy notebooks to carry personal data around.
It seems that you misunderstand principles of communism, Probably you know it only from publications in western press. I should know better becouse I lived in Soviet Union 22 years (and then it falled).
Principle of communism is quite clear "get from anybody up to their abilities, and give anybody up to their needs". It is exactly what RMS proposes. All bad things you've cited are not inherent properties of communism, they are just design flaws of attempt to implement communism in scarce goods economy world.
In the "virtual" world where if something is once created it is available for anybody, communists just are less harmful than in real world.
Although, even in software world they can violate people's righs by putting restrictions on software, once they feel they have enough power to do so. Late RMS's idea about developing libraries under GPL, and not LGPL is perfect example, becouse it causes problems for people who just want to earn their living by writing good commercial software. It requires them not to use good free(?) libraries, so their customers suffer. Troll Tech behaves much better in this aspect, saying "If you want to develop non-free sofware, share profit with us". Stallman doesn't leave such option. If this isn't hardcore communism, I never passed "Scientific communism" course in University.
Slashdot Mirror
Building towers on the continental ice is very simple thing - you take a heating element from
electric teapot, put it on ice, power it on.
Few minutes later you have a hole in the ice,
filled by water
You extract heating element, and quickly insert
a steel rod instead. Few minutes later
water would freeze and hold your steel rod much stronger than any concrete.
And you may be reasonably sure that this ice wouldn't melt few centures more.
It is windy there. So, there are enough energy
to power the station, even part of energy will be
used to keep accumulators warm.
Re-read Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" to get the
answer why space exploration stopped.
What we (I mean the world economy) need from
space technologies - GPS, InMarSat, Satellite TV.
It is almost all. For town-centric civilisation
it is cheaper to build cellular phone base-station
in every town and connect every TVset with broadcast-station via cable, than launch projects
like Iridium, which uses satellite technology.
If world population would spread more evenly (and welfare would spread more evenly among it) various space-based communication systems like Iridium
would be more viable.
Then they would bring hundreds of launches per year just for maintainance, and these hundreds of
launches would become cheap enough to make orbital production of certain materials (say semiconductor cristalls) commercially viable.
Then and only then space technologies would become cheap enough to allow individuals or private companies to think about interplatnetary flight.
Communication sattelittes are already part of world economy. I don't know how it is in America, but in Russia, where space technology is one of few high-technologies we can trade out, various sattelite projects are often mentioned on the first pages of financial newspapers.
>Having your freedoms is one thing, but destroying somebody's livelihood is another.
Are you a Communist?
I remember living in Soviet Union where we was
told every day that we should give up our freedom
and propriety (if anybody in Soviet union had any)
to help starving children somewhere in the Third World, tortured by evil Americans, or to build
bright future for our own grandchildren or to something else.
In 1991 we said "enough' and throw communist goverment away.
Now, evil American capitalists, which do not need
assistance of their own people to fight Cold War
with us anymore, begin to borrow communist ways
of propaganda, which are aimed to get more money
from the people without giving any real goods
back.
And they was able to brainwash innocent slashdoter
enough to make him feel that he is obliged to
pay people, who brainwash him, otherwise
these poor people would starve.
I suspect that some our most competent brainwashers emmigrate into US and were hired
by advertising industry. Patterns are too recognizable.
You should also made it illegal to turn away
from TV and go to toilet when one began to watching
show.
Could you please cite a bit more up-to-date
documentation? We've considered PostgreSQL
only since 7.1 release. 6.5 was definitely quite
robust. But current is 7.2, and there is a BIG
difference between current one and one you've cited.
There is interesting trend in modern IT when people
use software full of features they don't need
and don't ever bother to learn.
To type one-page letter they use Word or OpenOffice.org, which have all the features of
destkop publishing system. To keep couple of hundreds records they demand fullblown RDBMS.
Popularity of mySQL means that people become more
realistic. If they don't need RDBMS, they use mySQL. Even if it is not faster, it is simplier
to understand.
This have been tried in Russia, and still is tried
in China but it doesn't help a country's economy.
America grew rich and powerful just becouse it has
1st and 5th ammendments. If Americans would voluntary give up them, America would quickly loose.
Imagine B-1s brought down by exploiting some security hole in their cryptographic software, just
becouse this hole was forbidden to be openly discussed and wasn't fixed in time.
I think RIAA is not so mad to apply to the powers
that be there. They realize pretty well that not
every country in the world is Iraque or Afganistan.
China got five times more population than US.
quite a few nuclear missles and so, and some national honour too.
I think RIAA and US goverment would be afraid
of creating another sort of precedent - some powerful country saying "Go away with your stupid
laws, you are not an only force in this world"
It is far safer to them to treat American companies which they have much more ways to press on.
Really, there is a ways to perform routine administrative tasks (such as adding new users)
/etc/sudoers which would allow
without being root. For instance on Solaris
there are bunch of GUI tools, which require
user only to be memeber of certain group to operate them (and they provide some idiot-proof).
So, you can disable root password by default,
and write defauit
user, who perform installation to do almost everything as root. Including changing password.
So when user come learns concept of root user,
he just can say sudo passwd root and gain access.
Or change root password in some GUIsh usertool or
linuxconf.
Note that you should never do normal work in kind
of single-user. For instance I have a sister
(who was total disaster in the time I run DOS on
home machine and father. Both of them use my
machine (from separate X terminals, but this doesn't matter). While they are working under
their own names I can be sure that they wouldn't
accidentely erase my files. But there was a case
when I've accidentely erased 200Kb of fathers files (debugging Makefile for typesetting a book), so since that I have to teach them to use
CVS if they want me to help with their projects.
becouse on one side, office user doesn't need
number of www servers, search engines and such
and on other hand, guy who setting up headless
www server to put on T1 line doesn't need KDE or
Gnome, or even gimp.
Debian already spans over five CD's (including
non-free/non-US). I suggest even further splitting:
console as installation option)
With such approach each of stripped-down versions
would fit on one CD. Of course, there should
be Linux complete which is mother of all problem-oriented distributions, and may be add-on
CD-s which would allow to add missing packages
to already installed system without getting
whole thing (binaries can be ommited for this CD.
If you have already running system with basic
development tools, rebuilding package from source
is only matter of time, but no need for purcashing
separate cd for each type of processor can be
winning)
Couple of years ago I wrote simular thing which is essencially a curses-based frontend to lpq Try it
But it is not mail author concerned with. What happens when Sun would release StarPortal? Your spreadsheets (say financial info) and word-processing documents would be stored on the network servers and they would be vulnerable to the same attack as Hotmail.
If hotmail crack didn't exist and this document wasn't written, Microsoft should invent both theirselves (or did they?), just to show people that Sun offering (which is cheaper and more featureful) is wrong way to go, and user should still pay MS and hardware manufacters for more bloated software and more heavy notebooks to carry personal data around.
It seems that you misunderstand principles of
communism, Probably you know it only from
publications in western press. I should know
better becouse I lived in Soviet Union 22 years
(and then it falled).
Principle of communism is quite clear "get from
anybody up to their abilities, and give anybody
up to their needs". It is exactly what RMS proposes. All bad things you've cited are not
inherent properties of communism, they are just
design flaws of attempt to implement communism
in scarce goods economy world.
In the "virtual" world where if something is
once created it is available for anybody, communists just are less harmful than in real world.
Although, even in software world they can violate
people's righs by putting restrictions on software, once they feel they have enough power
to do so. Late RMS's idea about developing libraries under GPL, and not LGPL is perfect example, becouse it causes problems for people
who just want to earn their living by writing
good commercial software. It requires them not
to use good free(?) libraries, so their customers
suffer. Troll Tech behaves much better in this
aspect, saying "If you want to develop non-free
sofware, share profit with us". Stallman doesn't
leave such option. If this isn't hardcore communism, I never passed "Scientific communism"
course in University.