Grow up, get a real job and see what the real world is like.
You'll find that you no longer have the time to check SANS and packetstorm every day
You make your living as a sysadmin, with security and stability of your machines as a responsibility. You don't have the time to glance daily at a title, and choose to read a relevant , short blurb on a significant security issue, but you have time to goof off on Slashdot!?!?!
I really like how they use genetic analysis to determine groups of organisms they originally thought were unrelated, actually were related.
Wouldn't it be wild if they came across an organism, but couldn't make it fit into any other group, and ended up concluding that it wasn't a lifeform that originated on Earth?:D
Who decided Pluto was large enough to be "round" under its own gravitational force???
The most important criteria for a planet is that it was formed by the physics of planet formation that formed our solar system.
Originally, Pluto was thought to be a planet because it shined so bright, scientists thought it must have megatons of mass, and therefore a planet sized heavenly body. Later on, with spectrographic analysis, scientists figured out that "no, its actually tiny, it was putting out all that reflected light because it was made of shiny frozen water (a big snowball). Throw in the fact that it is way off the accepted planetary ecliptic, and that its not even the center of mass for its orbit. (Pluto and Charon circle an empty point in space, not Charon rotates around Pluto.) It becomes pretty obvious that it probably wasn't formed by the same physics that formed the other eight planets, and that it much better matches a kuiper belt body, of which, two of them are even bigger than Pluto.
Its pretty obvious at this point that Pluto is a not a planet, but a poser. I'm happy scientists chose to make classifications based on scientific theory, not historical error. Everyone else bitching about it are just rigid, memorization dorks who are afraid of change or what they thought was "fact" was in error. F**k them, they're useless to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Also, one should realize that many pyramids were constructed over a period of a thousand years, so who's to say that in every period that pyramids were constructed with societal labor. We don't know ancient Egyptian culture that well, even with pictographs.
Presuming that the acceptability of Gerstmann's work is the issue that got him fired, its apparent that there was a standard being drawn by his boss. How can a "tone" in one video review be grounds for dismissal? Lets presume Gerstmann believed his journalistic integrity required him to not comply with his boss's directives. Lets presume there was a personalized pissing match. You don't fire a guy on a "tone" of a review, you fire a guy because you don't have confidence he can acceptably carry out the requirements of the job. Either they're nuts, or they fired Gerstmann over the body of his work. The only conclusion to make from the firing is that management needed to establish a new standard.
If management is in love with Gerstmann's ex-boss enough not to fire him over the incident, employees inside and consumers outside will conclude that the magazine compels its reviewers to misrepresent an advertiser's product. So, not firing Gerstmann's ex-boss does send a message. If the firing issue is not about unacceptable levels of candor, they're going to have to do one hell of an internal mea culpa.
1) Google counts on the same psychological effect that the entire advertising industry counts on to keep people consuming its product: branding. The average human beings' tendency is to stick with what is familiar. They were able to provide a search engine service (at the time) markedly superior to what was available (Yahoo, Altavista, & Hotbot), so now people go to them for searches, rather than some place else. Its the same with McDonald's, Charmin, and Starbucks. They count on human nature for "lock-in". If they get complacent, like GM, Hoover, or Wang, someone new will come along, that will offer something better, and new guy will become the next Google.
2) While I think Google have magnitudes of technological opportunity to improve its search product, the company, in its own way, is looking to "win". Google doesn't need to plow tons of resources and attention into its search/advertising engine (to stay alive). They prioritize looking for the next undiscovered thing that will knock them a industry home run.
Take the SEO biz. There are guys that will (relatively) openly talk about what they do, or how they approach ways to increase their link count. Besides it making money for them (in page hits), they don't try to be proprietary with their techniques, because they know "winning" means coming up with some new way of getting ahead. They believe in their talent (to think of new ways of getting ahead). Its like A-Rod giving away batting tips. He can afford to do so, because it doesn't matter that competitors have the information; its still not going to help them outperform A-Rod. (In the case of SEO guys, it helps them to reveal stuff; it increases their page traffic.)
That's what makes Google so scary to companies like Microsoft. Neither of them even care about maintaining their dominance in their niches, they're looking for the next great thing that will make them billions. And Google has an advantage in talent, and can leave Microsoft in the rear view.
Being the ubermonopoly, having the marketing highground, means you can ensure your continued prosperity, even with egregious gaffes. Being ahead means being to dictate the rules to the game. If you're in the rear view, you're reduced to reacting. Any chess player should understand this concept.
3) In the case of opensocial, as sloppy pointed out, its a means of improving its search and advertising product. So Google invested into it. If Google get to define the popularly accepted API, they can control how the next technology gets implemented (and monetized). Google thinks it can put out a superior product to what is currently available, so it is now making the attempt. If they're right, then developers and users will go to it, because it offers them something Google's competitors don't.
I hope you can see now that "lock-in" is an outdated concept in the technology business world. The game is about creating/defining the next moneymaker.
"If the instant access didn't exist, would I be comfortable with a job that required me to spend hours beyond the 40 work week, onsite, working?".
If you wouldn't, then you are volunteering to work for free, after office hours.
This is not such a terrible thing, if you're getting some other benefit from this arrangement (telecommuting, flexible hours, financial compensation).
As a system administrator, I didn't really have a problem with it either. As long as I had full control of the management of my servers, I could ensure their reliability would make it unlikely I would get a call off hours. Also, I actually looked forward at times to doing work on a saturday. Its less stressful than negotiating downtime with departments and managers, AS LONG AS IT WAS AN OCCASIONAL necessity.
The problem is that any understanding/arrangement can be abused by stupid people, so its a good thing that both employer and employee audibly establish that understanding beforehand (such services can be made up with comp time, and paged only on specific emergencies.) If not, you have to decide whether you are willing to continue to work there.
Yeah, I forgot the C64 actually used a 6510 "CPU". And that chip had the ability to do I/O onchip. Ah, its been 20 years since I last messed around with assembler on either chip.
Irrelevant. Z80 had sophisticated instructions the 6502 did not have. They did take more than one clock cycle. Big whoop.
The question should be, what CPU did more work, or could complete more work in a set interval of time. It was obviously the Z80. The 6502 had an 8 bit accumulator, and 2 more 8 bit storage registers which could be combined as a 16 bit value, for some operations (don't recall). The Z80 had an 8 bit accumulator, but 3 16 bit registers, and at least one could do some arithmetic operations. Also, the other registers could be used as indexes to traverse memory tables.
The killer feature of the Z80, as far as I'm concerned, was the modifiable stack pointer. The 6502 only had a fixed address 8 bit stack pointer. You could only push & pop 255 8 bit values. If you did stack operations on a 6502, you pretty much had to emulate the stack in code. Z80, you could push/pop to your hearts content, change the location of the stack pointer when confronted with an overflow situation. Also, it even had built in I/O instructions with an 8 bit addressable port. Translation: it could even do I/O without support chips.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my C64. But the 6502 was really supposed to be a floppy drive controller chip, not a full blown CPU. 6502 SUCKED as a CPU. The Z80 had to be the best 8 bit CPU on the market. (I luurrrved the Z80.) The only problem was that Zilog were a bunch of shortsighted, greedy bastards, and overpriced the Z80 to the point that Motorola and Intel were able to blow Zilog away with crappier chips that were significantly cheaper. That's why you didn't see Z80's in consumer computers, not because 6502's were preferable as CPUs.
To be fair, the villagers were impressed at what a good light source it was. And I'm sure they're going to be even more interested when they realize its value as a remote communications device. And just think what a $200 USD device is worth out in Cambodia. I'd be whipping my kid to attend.
The insurgents do not control Iraq's resources; stripping Iraq of resources does not improve the situation, or hurt the insurgents. Your strawman argument is lame.
In a region that needs infrastructure (water & electricity) and security, giving families OLPCs do not help them where needed, while it would help terrorists that make use of the tools they have at hand.
I'll close with the following: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
You want to give an OLPC to every Iraqi, including every Al-Queda member, Sunni and Shiite insurgent, and give them the ability to set off bombs remotely, have cells communicate by texting, and swamp specific network sites with garbage traffic from zombie PCs?
I'd say you're at least thinking, but Paul Bremer was a user with great ideas. They included turning Iraq into a Libertarian paradise, disenfranchise competent Sunnis from the gov't, and disband the Iraqi military. Frankly, I'm kinda sick of great ideas without thinking them out.
Its easily fixed by federal funding a program to put bullet trains at heavily travelled air routes. It doesn't even need to be comprehensive, like our national highways. More passenger rail transportation, less domestic flights needed.
The role of SAM or Flak (AA) batteries is to destroy other aircraft. By YOUR definition, that would make them offensive weapons. F-22's primary purpose is to kill other airplanes. No competent military planner would send a USD $360 million plane to be lost in a bombing mission. Its ability to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft is magnitudes better than SAMs or other AA systems. In fact, fighter aircraft is the only credible means to ensure air-defense.
Your position is retarded anyway. You would mandate Japan to only procure ground based air defenses so they would get wiped out by a potential aggressor (ask any Middle East nation), leaving its trillions of dollar of infrastructure to be destroyed along with its civilian population. On behalf of Japan, I suggest you "go fuck yourself".
Japan's peace constitution is eventually going to be amended to allow full military capability anyway. This is because they won't be able to count on the US to defend it, or protect its assets or interests outside of Japan. The only question is whether China will "beat it to the punch", or a North Korean incursion will motivate the change.
The role of SAM or Flak (AA) batteries is to destroy other aircraft. By YOUR definition, that would make them offensive weapons.
Your position is retarded anyway. F-22's primary purpose is to kill other airplanes. No competent military planner would send a USD $360 million plane to be lost in a bombing mission. Its ability to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft is magnitudes better than SAMs or other AA systems. In fact, fighter aircraft is the only credible means to ensure air-defense. You would mandate Japan to only procure ground based air defenses so they would get wiped out by a potential aggressor (ask any Middle East nation), leaving its trillions of dollar of infrastructure to be destroyed along with its civilian population. On behalf of Japan, I suggest you "go fuck yourself".
Japan's peace constitution is eventually going to be amended to allow full military capability anyway. This is because they won't be able to count on the US to defend it, or protect its assets or interests outside of Japan. The only question is whether China will "beat it to the punch", or a North Korean incursion will motivate the change.
Actually, I liked what you wrote, and tend to agree with it. But all of you are not taking a step back and looking at the big (cultural) picture.
Serenity will not remain more popular or better remembered than Star Wars, because science fiction has MUCH less relevance to the US & world culture TODAY than it did back in the '70s. Less people watched Serenity than Star Wars, but it had to do with the trend that the population doesn't appreciate Sci-Fi today compared to the way they did back in the '70s. Less viewers = less zealots for the future.
Frankly, I was bored and disliked Star Wars. It wasn't a science fiction story, where future technology or ideas get reflected in the culture of the future or affect the story. Star Wars was merely a nostalgia trip to the action/adventure serials that Lucas saw as a kid. In Lucas's time, its was "western in space". Political conflict in Star Wars had nothing to do with technological influences. Laser blasters kill just like projectile firearms. A light saber functioned no differently than a sword. And the bomber run against the Death Star was no different than a WWII attack on an aircraft carrier. The robots did not affect the way the culture was constructed or reacted. Star Wars was not science fiction, it was a kiddie film. And thus, it made it readily accessible to the general public. Star Wars was popular because it entertained a dumbass public, and did not challenge perceptions about their world or how to live in it.
Serenity, on the other hand, was chock full of science fiction themes. The idea that gov't testing technology on its citizens had consequences (Miranda, reavers). How communication was critical to effecting change in society. The dehumanization of humanity by autocratic, technological gov't (the experimentation on River). It even had Mal conducting strategic thought (going to Miranda to get to the bottom of his troubles, bringing the Reavers for a showdown against the Alliance.) How often do you see THAT in a movie? (Not Star Bores). But the viewing public today would rather see kiddie pirate movies, or gay cowboys. They only watch sci-fi when it entertains them. That's why NBC never commandeered Battlestar Galactica from the Sci-Fi Channel. Sci-Fi is passe; it only attracts a niche audience.
I loved Farscape, (more than Firefly) but you have to realize what made it popular. It was just an amalgamation of cultural myths reflecting the '90's.
Star Trek TOS was wildly popular because, besides presenting the idea there was a future in the apocalyptic age of the '60's, it produced all those consumable myths popular to American culture. It was white USA males calling the shots, with its badass warships, going from exotic port to port, boinking the native females. It was a culture that valued science and intellectual endeavor. It was popular world-wide because it showed a United Earth, where all races had a place. Back then, the world thought of the USA more as crusaders for democracy that rescued the world from the Fascist boot, so they didn't find it incongruous that a good looking, white USA male was calling the shots.
Farscape is merely the Star Trek of the '90's, perpetrating its cultural myths. Its still a good looking, white American calling the shots, BUT now its a galaxy reflecting the globalized world culture of the '90's; full of aliens, and now the 'Murican has to fit into that environment. Of course, the 'Murican is still boinking the white chick who doesn't even have the same physiology or nationality as him. There's less libido in Farscape than ST:TOS. To be frank, I think it reflects that jumping every X chomosome in sight is less important in the 1990's than in the 1960's. There are more negative connotations about gov't in Farscape, but it reflects the world view. US/NASA is not the unquestioned good guy anymore. And its the scrappy startup that's the hero, not the gov't warship. The only ugly aspect of the show I found was how so much was focused on possessing
What a coincidence. I can't stand the suburbs. Its nothing more than a fake, materialistic, and selfish culture that is only sustainable for the sufficiently wealthy. You must selfishly employ inefficient, fossil-fuel burning, personal vehicles to exist there. The whole point of suburbia is isolate the hoi polloi from the masses using physical space.
I like seeing natural environments just like the next person, but not at the point where I support an economy which exploits the poor, and necessitates coerced birth control. The only benefit of the suburbs is that it keeps materialistic, crappy people like you out of the urban residential areas. I was raised in the 'burbs, and I pity your kids.
I know a lot of people in the OSS community think of De Icaza as some sort of god. But when we look at his actual contributions, I think they've set the OSS community back by years.
The reason why Icaza gets his respect, while you are looked upon as a cowardly twat, is that Icaza has actually produced a body of OSS work (Gnumeric, Evolution, Gnome, & Mono). You, on the other hand, are a cowardly dillhole, who by your criticism, pretty much demonstrates my point.
Take GNOME, for instance. When GNOME was first established, KDE was already the premiere OSS desktop environment.
There were some minor licensing issues, but with Trolltech's cooperation those were quite easily worked out.
Actually, back in my day, Enlightenment was the premiere desktop. At that time, CDE obviously had more eyeballs too. KDE could not have been considered a premiere OSS desktop at that time, because its core code library, Qt, was proprietary. Oh yeah, sure, you could get the source code, but that didn't make it OSS. Just because TrollTech was not Microsoft, did not mean proprietary licenses were okay for building a OSS platform; its more like building a castle on a sandbar. Those "minor" issues was the impetus to produce Gnome.
Regardless, a lot of effort was put into GNOME to duplicate what KDE already offered. Even today, we still see that GNOME has not yet caught up to KDE.
And Gnome has no desire to be a whiz-bang Rube Goldberg collection that is KDE. It will never try to match KDE feature for feature, because in the Gnome's eyes, that would be failure and a waste of time. They are focused on building a USER-FRIENDLY desktop. Its meant to take care of everything so civilians, not geeks, find it easy to use.
And with the upcoming release of KDE 4, it's unlikely that GNOME will ever be able to catch up to KDE, let alone overtake it.
Gnome is standard on every "commercial" distribution of Linux, from Redhat, to SuSE, to Solaris. Gnome "owns" the desktop, and even owns Ubuntu. KDE is only more popular among KDE fans.
And then we have Mono, the subject of this Slashdot topic. Again, so much valuable time and effort has been wasted on creating a product that really is of no benefit to the OSS community.
You can't see the benefit because you've never written a piece of code outside of a programming class. Icaza saw a threat that Microsoft's.Net platform posed, that the rest of the community were too prejudiced to perceive. The only alternative cross-platform language is java, and you are too stupid to have wrestled with coding in it to see the limitations of java, or how its PROPRIETARY license and management by Sun left it vulnerable to a Microsoft push into cross-platform development. If Microsoft had suceeded in making C#/.Net the industry standard, we would all be going to work on Win2003K and Vista platforms. That would be because all the application development would be quickly completed in.Net, rather than java, necessitating adoption of the Microsoft OS.
I am NOT going to defend whether MS could have actually succeeded in their goal, or if Mono helps the evil empire more, or if Mono will be a sucessful effort. BUT it should be OBVIOUS to a PROGRAMMER that Icaza was not an OSS traitor for perceiving a threat to the community that Microsoft posed with their.Net effort.
In fact, it blatantly stands against what OSS is all about.
As does Samba. You're going to punk them too, jackass?
And beyond that, we already have a common runtime: the POSIX interface shared by Linux, *BSD, and even commercial UNIX systems. And even on top of that we already have many language options: C, C++, Python, Perl, Tcl and Ruby, just to name a few.
...and are you going to pay for his paperwork costs to process a drive replacement? Particularly if its a tech salary processing the transaction, and not a clerk's salary? The poster already decided to eat the warrantee costs ($$$ new replacement drive + money factored into defective drive) to save on processing time (15+ mins paperwork + drive reinstallation & evaluation time).
Slashdot Mirror
You make your living as a sysadmin, with security and stability of your machines as a responsibility.
You don't have the time to glance daily at a title, and choose to read a relevant , short blurb on a significant security issue, but you have time to goof off on Slashdot!?!?!
I really like how they use genetic analysis to determine groups of organisms they originally thought were unrelated, actually were related.
:D
Wouldn't it be wild if they came across an organism, but couldn't make it fit into any other group, and ended up concluding that it wasn't a lifeform that originated on Earth?
Who decided Pluto was large enough to be "round" under its own gravitational force??? The most important criteria for a planet is that it was formed by the physics of planet formation that formed our solar system. Originally, Pluto was thought to be a planet because it shined so bright, scientists thought it must have megatons of mass, and therefore a planet sized heavenly body. Later on, with spectrographic analysis, scientists figured out that "no, its actually tiny, it was putting out all that reflected light because it was made of shiny frozen water (a big snowball). Throw in the fact that it is way off the accepted planetary ecliptic, and that its not even the center of mass for its orbit. (Pluto and Charon circle an empty point in space, not Charon rotates around Pluto.) It becomes pretty obvious that it probably wasn't formed by the same physics that formed the other eight planets, and that it much better matches a kuiper belt body, of which, two of them are even bigger than Pluto. Its pretty obvious at this point that Pluto is a not a planet, but a poser. I'm happy scientists chose to make classifications based on scientific theory, not historical error. Everyone else bitching about it are just rigid, memorization dorks who are afraid of change or what they thought was "fact" was in error. F**k them, they're useless to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
More like 20 years out of date, not 50.
Also, one should realize that many pyramids were constructed over a period of a thousand years, so who's to say that in every period that pyramids were constructed with societal labor. We don't know ancient Egyptian culture that well, even with pictographs.
http://www.oft.state.ny.us/News/erecords-study.htm
Presuming that the acceptability of Gerstmann's work is the issue that got him fired, its apparent that there was a standard being drawn by his boss. How can a "tone" in one video review be grounds for dismissal? Lets presume Gerstmann believed his journalistic integrity required him to not comply with his boss's directives. Lets presume there was a personalized pissing match. You don't fire a guy on a "tone" of a review, you fire a guy because you don't have confidence he can acceptably carry out the requirements of the job. Either they're nuts, or they fired Gerstmann over the body of his work. The only conclusion to make from the firing is that management needed to establish a new standard.
If management is in love with Gerstmann's ex-boss enough not to fire him over the incident, employees inside and consumers outside will conclude that the magazine compels its reviewers to misrepresent an advertiser's product. So, not firing Gerstmann's ex-boss does send a message. If the firing issue is not about unacceptable levels of candor, they're going to have to do one hell of an internal mea culpa.
In addition to sloppy's excellent points,
1) Google counts on the same psychological effect that the entire advertising industry counts on to keep people consuming its product: branding. The average human beings' tendency is to stick with what is familiar. They were able to provide a search engine service (at the time) markedly superior to what was available (Yahoo, Altavista, & Hotbot), so now people go to them for searches, rather than some place else. Its the same with McDonald's, Charmin, and Starbucks. They count on human nature for "lock-in". If they get complacent, like GM, Hoover, or Wang, someone new will come along, that will offer something better, and new guy will become the next Google.
2) While I think Google have magnitudes of technological opportunity to improve its search product, the company, in its own way, is looking to "win". Google doesn't need to plow tons of resources and attention into its search/advertising engine (to stay alive). They prioritize looking for the next undiscovered thing that will knock them a industry home run.
Take the SEO biz. There are guys that will (relatively) openly talk about what they do, or how they approach ways to increase their link count. Besides it making money for them (in page hits), they don't try to be proprietary with their techniques, because they know "winning" means coming up with some new way of getting ahead. They believe in their talent (to think of new ways of getting ahead). Its like A-Rod giving away batting tips. He can afford to do so, because it doesn't matter that competitors have the information; its still not going to help them outperform A-Rod. (In the case of SEO guys, it helps them to reveal stuff; it increases their page traffic.)
That's what makes Google so scary to companies like Microsoft. Neither of them even care about maintaining their dominance in their niches, they're looking for the next great thing that will make them billions. And Google has an advantage in talent, and can leave Microsoft in the rear view.
Being the ubermonopoly, having the marketing highground, means you can ensure your continued prosperity, even with egregious gaffes. Being ahead means being to dictate the rules to the game. If you're in the rear view, you're reduced to reacting. Any chess player should understand this concept.
3) In the case of opensocial, as sloppy pointed out, its a means of improving its search and advertising product. So Google invested into it. If Google get to define the popularly accepted API, they can control how the next technology gets implemented (and monetized). Google thinks it can put out a superior product to what is currently available, so it is now making the attempt. If they're right, then developers and users will go to it, because it offers them something Google's competitors don't.
I hope you can see now that "lock-in" is an outdated concept in the technology business world. The game is about creating/defining the next moneymaker.
Is the dick supervisor still employed at gamespot? If so, then you know its management establishing operating guidelines on its employee reviewers.
The question you should be asking yourself is:
"If the instant access didn't exist, would I be comfortable with a job that required me to spend hours beyond the 40 work week, onsite, working?".
If you wouldn't, then you are volunteering to work for free, after office hours.
This is not such a terrible thing, if you're getting some other benefit from this arrangement (telecommuting, flexible hours, financial compensation).
As a system administrator, I didn't really have a problem with it either. As long as I had full control of the management of my servers, I could ensure their reliability would make it unlikely I would get a call off hours. Also, I actually looked forward at times to doing work on a saturday. Its less stressful than negotiating downtime with departments and managers, AS LONG AS IT WAS AN OCCASIONAL necessity.
The problem is that any understanding/arrangement can be abused by stupid people, so its a good thing that both employer and employee audibly establish that understanding beforehand (such services can be made up with comp time, and paged only on specific emergencies.) If not, you have to decide whether you are willing to continue to work there.
Yeah, I forgot the C64 actually used a 6510 "CPU". And that chip had the ability to do I/O onchip. Ah, its been 20 years since I last messed around with assembler on either chip.
Irrelevant. Z80 had sophisticated instructions the 6502 did not have. They did take more than one clock cycle. Big whoop.
The question should be, what CPU did more work, or could complete more work in a set interval of time. It was obviously the Z80. The 6502 had an 8 bit accumulator, and 2 more 8 bit storage registers which could be combined as a 16 bit value, for some operations (don't recall). The Z80 had an 8 bit accumulator, but 3 16 bit registers, and at least one could do some arithmetic operations. Also, the other registers could be used as indexes to traverse memory tables.
The killer feature of the Z80, as far as I'm concerned, was the modifiable stack pointer. The 6502 only had a fixed address 8 bit stack pointer. You could only push & pop 255 8 bit values. If you did stack operations on a 6502, you pretty much had to emulate the stack in code. Z80, you could push/pop to your hearts content, change the location of the stack pointer when confronted with an overflow situation. Also, it even had built in I/O instructions with an 8 bit addressable port. Translation: it could even do I/O without support chips.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my C64. But the 6502 was really supposed to be a floppy drive controller chip, not a full blown CPU. 6502 SUCKED as a CPU. The Z80 had to be the best 8 bit CPU on the market. (I luurrrved the Z80.) The only problem was that Zilog were a bunch of shortsighted, greedy bastards, and overpriced the Z80 to the point that Motorola and Intel were able to blow Zilog away with crappier chips that were significantly cheaper. That's why you didn't see Z80's in consumer computers, not because 6502's were preferable as CPUs.
Its sad someone modded you down for that statement.
What is the effect of not having shuttle launches for the next four years?
Will satellites not be able to go into space?
Nope, we have many rockets (foreign and US) which will throw them into space.
Will our military security be impaired?
Nope, shuttles will be flying from Vandenburg, when needed (extremely rare). They aren't part of NASA's budget.
Will space science be shutdown?
Nope.
Will the ISS be shutdown?
Nope, it will run for another six years with Russian/European rockets.
Will the Hubble be repaired, and have money for a more cost effective space launch system?
Yep.
Congratulations. Slashdot revived the 1950's Missle Gap story.
To be fair, the villagers were impressed at what a good light source it was. And I'm sure they're going to be even more interested when they realize its value as a remote communications device. And just think what a $200 USD device is worth out in Cambodia. I'd be whipping my kid to attend.
The insurgents do not control Iraq's resources; stripping Iraq of resources does not improve the situation, or hurt the insurgents. Your strawman argument is lame.
In a region that needs infrastructure (water & electricity) and security, giving families OLPCs do not help them where needed, while it would help terrorists that make use of the tools they have at hand.
I'll close with the following: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
So let me see if I got this straight...
You want to give an OLPC to every Iraqi, including every Al-Queda member, Sunni and Shiite insurgent, and give them the ability to set off bombs remotely, have cells communicate by texting, and swamp specific network sites with garbage traffic from zombie PCs?
I'd say you're at least thinking, but Paul Bremer was a user with great ideas. They included turning Iraq into a Libertarian paradise, disenfranchise competent Sunnis from the gov't, and disband the Iraqi military. Frankly, I'm kinda sick of great ideas without thinking them out.
"awesome driver support"? "(far better than Windows)"???
Tell that to my dv2315nr laptop. The one with barely functioning broadcom wifi drivers and non-functioning audio (conexant 20459).
If you aren't knowledgeable enough to keep the fanboyism down, how about not adding another useless comment to the discussion?
Its easily fixed by federal funding a program to put bullet trains at heavily travelled air routes. It doesn't even need to be comprehensive, like our national highways. More passenger rail transportation, less domestic flights needed.
The role of SAM or Flak (AA) batteries is to destroy other aircraft. By YOUR definition, that would make them offensive weapons. F-22's primary purpose is to kill other airplanes. No competent military planner would send a USD $360 million plane to be lost in a bombing mission. Its ability to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft is magnitudes better than SAMs or other AA systems. In fact, fighter aircraft is the only credible means to ensure air-defense.
Your position is retarded anyway. You would mandate Japan to only procure ground based air defenses so they would get wiped out by a potential aggressor (ask any Middle East nation), leaving its trillions of dollar of infrastructure to be destroyed along with its civilian population. On behalf of Japan, I suggest you "go fuck yourself".
Japan's peace constitution is eventually going to be amended to allow full military capability anyway. This is because they won't be able to count on the US to defend it, or protect its assets or interests outside of Japan. The only question is whether China will "beat it to the punch", or a North Korean incursion will motivate the change.
The role of SAM or Flak (AA) batteries is to destroy other aircraft. By YOUR definition, that would make them offensive weapons. Your position is retarded anyway. F-22's primary purpose is to kill other airplanes. No competent military planner would send a USD $360 million plane to be lost in a bombing mission. Its ability to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft is magnitudes better than SAMs or other AA systems. In fact, fighter aircraft is the only credible means to ensure air-defense. You would mandate Japan to only procure ground based air defenses so they would get wiped out by a potential aggressor (ask any Middle East nation), leaving its trillions of dollar of infrastructure to be destroyed along with its civilian population. On behalf of Japan, I suggest you "go fuck yourself". Japan's peace constitution is eventually going to be amended to allow full military capability anyway. This is because they won't be able to count on the US to defend it, or protect its assets or interests outside of Japan. The only question is whether China will "beat it to the punch", or a North Korean incursion will motivate the change.
Ohm: Its the Law!
Its there if you run linux.
Actually, I liked what you wrote, and tend to agree with it. But all of you are not taking a step back and looking at the big (cultural) picture.
Serenity will not remain more popular or better remembered than Star Wars, because science fiction has MUCH less relevance to the US & world culture TODAY than it did back in the '70s. Less people watched Serenity than Star Wars, but it had to do with the trend that the population doesn't appreciate Sci-Fi today compared to the way they did back in the '70s. Less viewers = less zealots for the future.
Frankly, I was bored and disliked Star Wars. It wasn't a science fiction story, where future technology or ideas get reflected in the culture of the future or affect the story. Star Wars was merely a nostalgia trip to the action/adventure serials that Lucas saw as a kid. In Lucas's time, its was "western in space". Political conflict in Star Wars had nothing to do with technological influences. Laser blasters kill just like projectile firearms. A light saber functioned no differently than a sword. And the bomber run against the Death Star was no different than a WWII attack on an aircraft carrier. The robots did not affect the way the culture was constructed or reacted. Star Wars was not science fiction, it was a kiddie film. And thus, it made it readily accessible to the general public. Star Wars was popular because it entertained a dumbass public, and did not challenge perceptions about their world or how to live in it.
Serenity, on the other hand, was chock full of science fiction themes. The idea that gov't testing technology on its citizens had consequences (Miranda, reavers). How communication was critical to effecting change in society. The dehumanization of humanity by autocratic, technological gov't (the experimentation on River). It even had Mal conducting strategic thought (going to Miranda to get to the bottom of his troubles, bringing the Reavers for a showdown against the Alliance.) How often do you see THAT in a movie? (Not Star Bores). But the viewing public today would rather see kiddie pirate movies, or gay cowboys. They only watch sci-fi when it entertains them. That's why NBC never commandeered Battlestar Galactica from the Sci-Fi Channel. Sci-Fi is passe; it only attracts a niche audience.
I loved Farscape, (more than Firefly) but you have to realize what made it popular. It was just an amalgamation of cultural myths reflecting the '90's.
Star Trek TOS was wildly popular because, besides presenting the idea there was a future in the apocalyptic age of the '60's, it produced all those consumable myths popular to American culture. It was white USA males calling the shots, with its badass warships, going from exotic port to port, boinking the native females. It was a culture that valued science and intellectual endeavor. It was popular world-wide because it showed a United Earth, where all races had a place. Back then, the world thought of the USA more as crusaders for democracy that rescued the world from the Fascist boot, so they didn't find it incongruous that a good looking, white USA male was calling the shots.
Farscape is merely the Star Trek of the '90's, perpetrating its cultural myths. Its still a good looking, white American calling the shots, BUT now its a galaxy reflecting the globalized world culture of the '90's; full of aliens, and now the 'Murican has to fit into that environment. Of course, the 'Murican is still boinking the white chick who doesn't even have the same physiology or nationality as him. There's less libido in Farscape than ST:TOS. To be frank, I think it reflects that jumping every X chomosome in sight is less important in the 1990's than in the 1960's. There are more negative connotations about gov't in Farscape, but it reflects the world view. US/NASA is not the unquestioned good guy anymore. And its the scrappy startup that's the hero, not the gov't warship. The only ugly aspect of the show I found was how so much was focused on possessing
What a coincidence. I can't stand the suburbs. Its nothing more than a fake, materialistic, and selfish culture that is only sustainable for the sufficiently wealthy. You must selfishly employ inefficient, fossil-fuel burning, personal vehicles to exist there. The whole point of suburbia is isolate the hoi polloi from the masses using physical space. I like seeing natural environments just like the next person, but not at the point where I support an economy which exploits the poor, and necessitates coerced birth control. The only benefit of the suburbs is that it keeps materialistic, crappy people like you out of the urban residential areas. I was raised in the 'burbs, and I pity your kids.
The reason why Icaza gets his respect, while you are looked upon as a cowardly twat, is that Icaza has actually produced a body of OSS work (Gnumeric, Evolution, Gnome, & Mono). You, on the other hand, are a cowardly dillhole, who by your criticism, pretty much demonstrates my point.
Actually, back in my day, Enlightenment was the premiere desktop. At that time, CDE obviously had more eyeballs too. KDE could not have been considered a premiere OSS desktop at that time, because its core code library, Qt, was proprietary. Oh yeah, sure, you could get the source code, but that didn't make it OSS. Just because TrollTech was not Microsoft, did not mean proprietary licenses were okay for building a OSS platform; its more like building a castle on a sandbar. Those "minor" issues was the impetus to produce Gnome.
And Gnome has no desire to be a whiz-bang Rube Goldberg collection that is KDE. It will never try to match KDE feature for feature, because in the Gnome's eyes, that would be failure and a waste of time. They are focused on building a USER-FRIENDLY desktop. Its meant to take care of everything so civilians, not geeks, find it easy to use.
Gnome is standard on every "commercial" distribution of Linux, from Redhat, to SuSE, to Solaris. Gnome "owns" the desktop, and even owns Ubuntu. KDE is only more popular among KDE fans.
You can't see the benefit because you've never written a piece of code outside of a programming class. Icaza saw a threat that Microsoft's .Net platform posed, that the rest of the community were too prejudiced to perceive. The only alternative cross-platform language is java, and you are too stupid to have wrestled with coding in it to see the limitations of java, or how its PROPRIETARY license and management by Sun left it vulnerable to a Microsoft push into cross-platform development. If Microsoft had suceeded in making C#/.Net the industry standard, we would all be going to work on Win2003K and Vista platforms. That would be because all the application development would be quickly completed in .Net, rather than java, necessitating adoption of the Microsoft OS.
I am NOT going to defend whether MS could have actually succeeded in their goal, or if Mono helps the evil empire more, or if Mono will be a sucessful effort. BUT it should be OBVIOUS to a PROGRAMMER that Icaza was not an OSS traitor for perceiving a threat to the community that Microsoft posed with their .Net effort.
As does Samba. You're going to punk them too, jackass?
Again,
...and are you going to pay for his paperwork costs to process a drive replacement? Particularly if its a tech salary processing the transaction, and not a clerk's salary? The poster already decided to eat the warrantee costs ($$$ new replacement drive + money factored into defective drive) to save on processing time (15+ mins paperwork + drive reinstallation & evaluation time).