1. This scientist (of whom I shamefully have no previous knowlege) has come up with a paper that meets the strict criteria of the JAP. Here is the rub: why not let him publish before condemnation?
2. This Poster (sorry, didn't notice the name) has come up with a provocative and insightful (if not wholly accurate) concept that raises important fundamental questions that *WE* only know because of those who worked before us.
3. Many things in science have no *clear* answer. Like, for instance, the fact that the octet rule can be broken and a valence shell can have *more* than eight electrons (go figure) like that fact that there is no *definite* molecular conformation (and probably many others that we cannot perceive) because the truth is that quantum theory works except in those cases where it *doesn't_work*, the idea that our math does not fit.0000001 percent of the time makes it either A. Incorrect B. Primitive. Or simply that the Universe exists in by it's own rules and conforms to simply *what works*.
These are all well known facts. They are fundamental questions that need intelligent answers for those who are prepared, and encouragement for those who are still grasping simple concepts.
Too often we forget our own humble beginnings and seek to blast the intelligence of others in order to make ourselves look important. The truth is, you become less important the more you quash those who inquire for the sake of discovery
I don't think that it is such a bad idea. I was laid off from a job (I don't blame the employer, i know I was dead wood and not the best.) I decided to move away from tech altogether. A better question is "How many people realized that there are unlimited opportunities to use you skills besides coding/admining/project managing/hardware devel. Serious. I had a very good friend, who had the brain the size of a small satelite who was laid off from hp. He designed high end micropocessors for hp/s multi processor iron boxes. He's going back to school now to get his masters in EE ( he was recruited in his sophomore year) While I decided to go the way of the anti-geek. Go figure. Anyway, how many decided to get out of tech altogether (be honest) because you didn't cut it, or you found something more fulfilling?
1. Open Source has bound itself (willingly or not I cannot say) with Free Software. I see a fundamental difference between the two as OpenSource is more of the Scientific approach of having a peer reviewed research and development platform, where as (self admittedly) Free Software focuses on making *all* software free as a public domain/service
2. Many open source applications have been developed with the purpose of allowing those who would not normally have the skills to circumvent "IP protection measures". That is, P2P, an adopted open source initiative has Free Software ties because the "information" that P2P networks choose to distribute are for the most part Close Sourced or Copyrighted material.
3. Closed source companies (like Microsoft) and Copy righted companies (like Vivendi) Have both used the arguement that *OPEN SOURCE* software is the cause of the loss of revenue and piracy and have implemented protection schemes that *must be* protected by proprietary closed source mechanisms in order to protect the revenue stream of those coutries
4. Companies will continue to deny legitimate opensource companies access to their API because they incorrectly bind open-source develpers with Free-Software developers (while one may be the other, both may legitimately exist independently of other that is, not all oss devs are freesoftware devs and not all freesoftware devs are oss devs).
5. Legislation looms that would prohibit Open Source to be developed on any commercial level and even make it illegal to own and distribute open source based hardware *because of those who would use propietary software without paying for it* who feel they have a right to another's work without compensating the creator.
6. Those legislators (rightly or wrongly) see open source as a breeding ground for hackers and information pirates, and do not seperate law breakers from the rest of the group. eg. You never hear a *rogue* OSS developer getting arrested on DMCA charges, the same way you hear of *rogue* ceos or *rogue* scientists acting in a way that disgraces the community.
So really, is this a question of those who have steered open source away from its roots to be a campaign for free software? And how will traditionally open source companies (or) individual developers access the blueprints if MS can conveniently label them as software pirates or illegitimate institutions undeserving of access to its API?
Personally I am surprised the Canal still operates You've just summed up ten years of US ingorance in one statement. The canal has been under shared control since late eighties when US engineers, began training Panamanians in canal operations. Since 1995, the canal has been run by Panamanians in about 95% of the operations barring a little US oversight. The canal has run well without a hitch for over 6 yrs and there are still people who say "oh boy, i can't wait until panama sic 'those stupid uneducated panamanians' screw it up." What a joke! Panamanians are some of the most technologically adept people I know. It is not uncommon to walk out into the middle of the backwoods country and see someone with a P3 with a gig of ram running off of several car batteries. That's in a hut about 4x the size of your standard construction port-a-potty and the bathroom in a hole on the outside and a spigot for a kitchen. One reason for this is that panama has a DUTY FREE canal zone. That's right, no tarrifs, no taxes, no nada, if you know the right people to talk to. One of the shameless moves is that this is a false arguement there. Panama has about 3.5 million people, and about 2.5 of those live *outside* the city in provinces and out in the country. Most of those in the city are so poor that they don't have clean water, and those on the outside fare little better for living in the country. The one thing that they do have is semi reliable POTS because of the heavy investment of the US govt during it's military stint there. You have *maybe* 300,000 panamanians who have access to computers and out of those on a good estimate one third that can afford to purchase the equipment nessecary for a computer (say 250-300) for a 2-3 yr old computer and another 25-50 for the voip technology. so either the lines are very nastily set up, and C&W does not want to invest in more pipe, or there is an inordinate amount of businesses in Panama City using VOIP for the majority of the phone transactions. The problem is that *businesses are their major customers* and they do *not* want to alienate them--so they took a US approach to business--namely "we don't want to alienate our customers, so we must legislate and put the burden on the govt to enforce non-compliance of controversial company policies" this is *not* an instance of Junta govt in a far off jungle-land as most would like to believe, but simple politics as usual from a country that has learned a bit too much from the US govt. Don't believe me, take a look at the RIAA, that has criminalized the *facilitation* of recording music and not the recording of music itself or the software company that can sue you out of business because even though you paid for the right to use the software as you see fit with no implied warranty or use for any specific purpose, you don't have the right to sell a computer with that software on it without compensating said company. anyway, end rant. there are always more sides to an argument than most are willing to admit, but that kind of ignorance about the state of affairs in other countries just gets my goat
Sorry that you think this is sensationalism, but this planet is sort of like what we've been looking for in the matters of even basic live existing in other locations of the universe. A large gas giant creating a debris-sink is exactly what jupiter and saturn do for our planet. They are the saftey net so to speak. Let me explain. There are thousands of roaming celestial bodies in our solar vicinity. Many of these are destined for the largest gravity well in the system, namely the sun. Well, there are planets in direct linear obstruction of these bodies and they usually just fall into the nearest gravity well they can find, usually eachother or another planet. The ONLY REASON that we haven't been wiped out is because most of these bodies tend to fall into jupiter or saturn and not reach little old earth at all. Without thos e two planets acting as graitivistic scape-goats, we'd be bombarded by every roaming rock in the heading toward Sol. (Excuse the hyperbole)
What the scientists are stating is that if a planet, surrounded by debris far a way from the Folmahouth system exists, it will act as a buffer to those planets that we cannot detect. If it exists in two systems, Sol, and Folmahouth, then the "odds" are that it exists in many, (as you know, the universe is either infinite, or close enough to infinite, that only Marvin the Paranoid Android can count all the suns in it.):)
So I don't think this is too sensationalist- for these reasons. 1. this wasn't printed on the front page of NYT 2. slashdot isn't much of a sensation 3. this is on the science section from the science department. If jerry springer was reporting on it, i'd buy the sensation part 4. Finding a gas giant *far_from* the sun with lots of debris around it means that there are likely smaller planets closer to the sun made up of heavy elements (like our planet) and life is likely to be present in many parts of the universe/galaxy.
You think the invention of the airline ticket is evolution? Then you would also think the invention of mass media (starting with the printing press and ending (so far) with the internet) is evolution.
Actually, no one says that evolution *has* to be genetic. We used our *brains* to fly while birds and insects and bats use wings. We produced flight as readily and easily as other species. Unless you think you need wings to fly.:0 But all flight truly is is manupulating gravity and utilizing lift. IN space, you don't even need lift.
Why would we live on the equator? Won't it be warmest there?
We would move toward the equator because of the melting of the Polar Ice Caps. Hence the extreme latitudes of the earth would force all life (land-dwelling) to migrate to the equator.
At the moment, it's prohibitively expensive
Expensive is a clearly relative term. If this were forced evolution, the cost would be siginificantly less than *not* going to space. (the extinction of all things human)
We only need to colonize the moon for the first hundred years and make expeditions to earth to mine for nessecary minerals and components. (That always gives me a kick. No one ever thinks of going back to earth after ecological disaster). But living on the moon for 500 years should give us sufficient experience and know how to create a durable space vehicle. (Who is to say that this object is not a small planet? Or the moon itself?)
You'd be amazed at how much humans are capable of given the proper impetus (pyramids, moon shots etc.)
While the AC's post may not be scientifically accurate, it is true that humans are some of the few species on earth that have evolved into flight. We are in a smaller group of vertebrates, and one of only two (bats and humans) that have true flight capabilities among mammals.
It is not impossible that we could evolve further to overcome this overpopulation obstacle, although I am not sure what it would take for humans to "devolve" back into sea dwellers.
It is interesting. Human Flight was the only voluntary evolution in the existence of the earth. It was a fairly calm and smooth transition with very few fatalities. IF the overpopulation is a factor, then most likely the world will evolve again, but in a forced and random pattern, like true evolution does.
It would be interesting. With global warming, less food, less water, and less oxygen, humans might evolve to a darker skinned, narrow chested, extremely tall equator dwelling species.
Or we just might force ourselves into the stars. We have the resources and the know how to do it. A less dense, taller, paler, broad chested (thin atmosphere) creature might be our ultimate nature. It all just depends on what path we take when we are pressed with a challenge. We might simply go to war and kill off most of the inhabitants on earth. If that happens within the next 50 years, then I'm betting on Sub Sahara Africa, The Mid West and SOuth west of the US, Brazil, and the New Republic of ANtarctica, founded by the descendants of the survivors of the wasteland called Europe. But lets hope for colonization or evolution. War is a terrible and counter productive thing. It's planned selection at it's worse. We'd probably ruin a lot potentital by not letting people die off randomly.
Right, because saying you're a caver is really going to save you when you fall to your death because you decided to take a picutre standing on one leg on a "really scary precipice"
I agree that there a lot of areas in this world where there are new entrants into the field. However, I think it's counterproductive to oust them from the inner circle because of a word. This isn't high school.
It probably would help more to take one of these spelunkers on a caving adventure and educate them, than to make fun of them when they're lost and hysterical.
# What do you expect of a country where everyone votes for the same party, regardless whether they messed up, promise to mess up or promise not to mess up again then mess up?
As opposed to the last party that promised equality to everyone on a "separate but equal" basis fifty years a go and when they were forced out of power still had not provided basic needs like "Lights" "clean water" and "arable land"
I have'nt read the book. But I do know some things about Dot Coms. And I'll tell you something important. It's not a big deal to go out of business. Most ventures fail. Most enteprise businessmen have a business failure twice in their career. The most damning fault of all dot comm companies is that after failure, they all gave up. And we (yes, I too) spent time making fun of them instead of realizing that business failure is a fact of life.
If I had a chance to grab my boss, I'd tell him a couple of things: DO NOT separate the techs from the non techs. Techs are not gods or even the trump card. Techs will not one day rule the world. The world will be ruled as it has always been ruled , by the three Ps: Politicians, Priests and Poets.
Concentrate on your SALES FORCE. A lot of programmers, sys admins, some execs who got their job the easy way, don't think a sales force is nessecary, as if their product would sell itself. NO PRODUCT EVER SELLS ITSELF. Get able, hard-working people staffed in your sales force, and get a good sales manager. Make sure the sales force uses the product. They don't have to be technical. Most sales are not to technical entities, but to non-technical businesses.
Pay/train your customer service/tech support well. Don't skimp on tech support. You don't want your coders having to solve tech's problems, and you don't want your tech support handling angry clients. Use the right tool for the right jobs. Don't hire techs for customer support. Don't promote people to tech support who do not have good problem solving skills. If they are good customer service reps, give them a promotion, or a raise, but don't put customer service reps in your tech support division. Keep your programmers programming and not answering tech-support questions.
Reward consistently, expect more. Don't give 10,000 bonuses unless the people deserve it. If everyone owns Porches, how can you tell who's your hardest worker? Reward excellence with excellence, reward laziness with the boot. When someone screws up but works hard, help them, don't punish them, but don't give them financial incentive if they havent generated revenue. When they generate revenue, then reward financially.
Make do with less than high tech. Companies went out and bought cisco 8500 switches and 7200 routers. The bought service contracts for thousands for each. They had a total of fifty employees and no high bandwidth utilization. Spend what you have and make do otherwise. Don't buy your equipment outright. Go to a holding company and lease if from them. It's cheaper in the long run if you plan to expand within five years. Remember fixed costs are zero in the long run. Spend as little as possible and get as much as possible.
I'm not saying that the DOT COM period would have been as great as we thought, all I'm saying is that a lot of good companies went down with the bad because of poor planing or people like me on the side lines saying: "I knew they'd fail". It's okay to fail and even to be an inexperienced company. But for what it's worth, get experienced financial and legal advice at least and manage your company like a BUSINESS and not like a chess club.
I joined ICCA . They've got a pretty good organization. I didn't get insurance through them, mostly because the insurance liason never returned my calls. I went through a company called United states liability insurance group . I get a pretty good deal with them.
As for advertising, I've been doing a lot of self advertising. I did most by sending out flyers, then by using photoshop to design my brochure. A mac is great for that kind of stuff. looks real prof. I went to KINKOs and had them put it on high quality paper.
I expanded by simply my repeat customers. One of my first customers was an old man who I didn't even know. Little did I know that fixing his computer for 35 bucks an hour would introduce me to his son who was a contractor for houses in the range of 300,000 to 1.5 million. I got into the insurnace game by calling up small agents. One agent led to another. I got my first sys admin gig by a guy who knows my wife. He said "hey, I hear you're a network guy" I said yes, had a couple of appointments to "make his network run faster, and oh yeah, add this computer to my network" and I landed my first sys admin contrcact. Now most of my jobs come from this guy's reccommnedation and from small time insurance companies. I don't build much systems anymore and I've got experience.
Become a reseller. It's a hassle at first, but you get killer deals on multi paks. All you have to do is come up with some financial references and a business liscense and show the distributor a solid business plan with a revenue balance statement, and you are good to go. send to my email nibasm@hotmail.com. pls don't spam it. (it doesn't matter, it's my junkmail acct anyway, but i hate having to delete it just to get more messages ):}
To tell you the truth, you need to go out and market yourself. Listen to what I did. I worked for a company that Cisco Systems outsourced to making 10 bucks an hour. The waiting list was about 1 yr to get on a tech team. All I did was route calls for so-called IT professionals.
Most of the calls I took the pros on the other end were less knowledgable than me on many subjects. I was so sick of doing it that I started sending out resumes to those companies. NO LUCK. They didn't care if I knew more or had more certs. They didn't even want to see me.
I went out and started up a small business in my neighborhood about a year ago, just fixing computers and doing home networking. That got my foot in the door. I went on the street hawking my wares to small offices, law offices, insurance agents, real estate offices and so forth.
Word got around and I got a couple of support contracts with med-sized businesses doing sys admin on their boxes. Real simple stuff that anyone could do. It's called comparative advantage. Now I've got a couple of contracts, and I'm negotiating a contract with a local general contractor to pull cable for new construction at 2500 a house. I have a pager and a cell and I make my own hours.
By the way--I'm 25 with 2yrs of college education. Comp Sci is not my major, nor ever was. But this helps with school a lot, and I have a family to feed. The only certs I have are A+ and my CCNA. I don't plan on doing this beyond graduation, but it's always a handy thing to have on your resume.
One last warning and advice. Warning. Insure yourself for about 1,000,000 per claim: the more certs and education you have, the cheaper insurance is. I pay about 2000/yr on prof. liability. Advice, join a professional association. You can network a lot and land tons of gigs. It worked for me.
Re:D'ya think they can pull it off?
on
China Plans Moonbase
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
too bad you didn't learn how to spellsabotage from Star Trek.
MPAA : But, but you don't get it! Those who would have watched twice will only watch *once*! And those that would have watched ten times will only watch *nine*! That's lost revenue! We're going down the drain!
Bandwidth throttling. If I pay 600 bucks for equipment and install and another 70 bucks per month, I want *premium* service. No hassles, no throttling, no nothing. Pipe, Pure Pipe.
Latency Not just for gamers, if you want to video or voice conference, it's terrible. Not a chance. No voIP, no nothing.
The biggest caveat is that Skynet is supported by Bill Gates. You can look at this as a plus or a minus. The minus is that Microsoft has its finger in every pie. The plus is that Microsoft has a inherent interest in getting broadband to everyone, if only to stuff those bloated apps down the pipe.
And as the advertising companies pay less for the ads, the programming will get worse.
Why don't people realize that broadcast TV, and even superstations only have programming to sell advertisements, and only have programming because they do sell advertisments.
That is only half the truth. Most likely, what the broadcast stations really want is to maintain their monopoly position (yes, they do have a monopoly position for their specific market). In other words, they want to remain price makers and not be price takers.
In the worst nightmare for the broadcast stations, advertisers will move from paying broadcasters to paying pvr makers. You will just get your advertisements through your pvr, or you will have to record and view a certain amount each month in order to remain active with your pvr account and services.
The broadcast companies will no longer be able to name their price, and will most likely bid for space in the pvr arena. That is what the broadcast fears. There will be no reduction in programming or quality of programming, or people watching, the market will just shift its focust to greener pastures. So no the artist won't starve and you'll still get your good programing. Just instead of "Must See TV", there will be "Must Record TV" brought to you by TiVo, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds.
Getting so you can't tell the pigs from the humans. (paraphrasing from George Orwell's Animal Farm)
I might be out of the loop, but isn't Jim Henson Studios owned by Disney, or at least the intellectual rights to the muppets?
Isn't that a case of strange bedfellows -- Linux and Disney. Wonder what Hollings thinks about this anti drm OS handling such precious, marketable creations.
That may be true. However, if you're using DSL you pay for the bandwidth, and if you are secure enough, they have no right (or proof for that matter)to deny you service. You setup an authentication service ala VPN and you can charge your neighbors for the privledge of using your "NETWORK SERVICE" and the bandwidth is just incidental. This wouldn't work on a cable net too much, where you pay 5-10 dollars extra for the benefit of multiple ip address, but this would be an excellent service for a 1.5 dsl link.
I must qualify myself. I'm not readily speaking of *all* japanese culture, and no, I know a bit more than textbook reading. The anecdotal examples are not enought to refute years of research and self analysis.
You only have to be invited as a guest into a Japanese home and they will bend over backwards to prove that you are right in any occasion--employees will readily resign or immolate themselves publicly if their screwups have caused any degree of discomfort for the corporation. Many Japanese ideas of teamwork and "annihilation of self" have carried over to US work forces.
But I'm not here to get into an argument over east vs. west. You obviously had occasion to interact with different people than me. That's ok too. You cannot deny that my examples are part of eastern culture. BTW--I wasn't advocating US interests or putting US privacy concerns in the limelight. Only making observations on the *Japanese* culture (that was the topic in question, I think);). And the way that many will accept this as reality.
By the way---The very fact that instead of calling up the corporation and suing, or even send angry letters to the perpetrators and instead just changing numbers to *avoid any more confrontation* kind of proves my point, dontcha think?
More right than not. Why in the world would corp ISP want to give you a static IPv6 when that is a constant bandwidth tap?
Joe Public will never "own" ip addresses again. That was made evident after the "great subnet rush" of the ninties.
Having IPv6 addresses mean that anyone can have as many as they want if given away for free- until there is a way to consistently and legally charge for "per seat" usage for internet bandwidth, with crimial reprocussions (can you say DMCA) corporations will not adopt a standard which basically says, "a static and public IP address is worthless as a marketable commodity".
Unfortunately, were applying western thought to a very eatern culture. Japanese do not have the same feeling of privacy. Loudspeakers in public places "encourage" people to go to bed in some areas of Japan. The "annihilation of self" or the sacrifice of self for the good of the group is a prevalent ideology in Japan and other eastern cultures and I'm assuming that they would not be too put out by having their information transmitted to a potential supplier of wares, goods, or serivces.
My friend, capitalism is NOT where it is at. I'm not saying that capitalism is wrong. I wholly support it. However, I only support capitalism as long as I am perfectly informed. You see, the free market can only prosper when people are perfectly informed.
That means when a company is going down in the pots and bleeding money like a stuck pig, it can't dump those losses into offshore companies without telling ALL the public. That means when companies decide to go bankrupt, they have to tell the everyone at the same time and let the market make informed decisions.
Capitalism in it's pure form would require everyone to disclose everything and would result in the greatest loss of privacy since stalin cracked down on political dissidents in his country.
That's just a theory of course. And not known to be a fact. Discuss!
Zeus, Zeus, Mighty of the Mighty pantheon of Olympic Gods, surely you have studies from thy high precipice the difference between Political Liberalism and Economic Liberalism? Saying that Politcal Liberalism, (civil liberties,pro choice and so forth) and economic liberalism (labor unions, socialism and communism) are the same are incongrouous at best and more along the line of dishonest representation.
But I do speak respectfully, O mighty one of the smiting thunderbolts.
In my humble mortal opinion, one is liberal with one's own polices and conservative with another's. At least that is the way in America. We call "Liberal" Conservatives "Radicals" You ever see a conservative want to keep the "status quo" when the status quo wasn't his or her cup of tea? Ever see a liberal liberal with the opinions of pro lifers, or gun control?
Labeling people under one umbrella is dangerous because it allows people to make blanket assumptions about individuals that might not be true. For instance. Conservative senator mcain has come up with some very "liberal" views these past years (term limits, campaign finance reform, patients bill of rights) and is even seen as a betrayor of his own political conservatism because of his views. Some "conservatives" have even asked him to step down from his senate seat because they feel he has deceived him with his "liberal" views.
However, I don't think that Ted Kennedy is ready to invite him to the Kennedy complex just yet for Yahtzee. Anyway, Polytheistic deities should read more not just parrot what he/she hears mere mortals say.
I've never played one of these games before but imagine this.
CharmScalper: So, we meet at the specified location.
CharmBuyer: cut to the chase, Mack, you got the goods?
CharmScalper: You got the cash?
CharmBuyer: Yes, 500USD. It's already in the account.
CharmScalper: Alright here are the goods. [CharmScalper drops the goods on the ground, and points Spear/Sword/Gun/MagicMissles at CharmBuyer.
CharmBuyer: But, But, we had a deal!
CharmScalper: Hasta La Vista, Baby! [CharmScalper carves up CharmBuyer and steals Item (now, I have no idea if you keep the loot after a kill or not. just go with me here).:)
CharmBuyer: [Crying at his Desktop.] I'm calling the cops! I've been robbed! [dials police 911]
Officer, I'd like to report an armed robbery.[Explains that he was held at magicmissle point and his Cloak of Radiance was stolen
911/FederalBeeEye: OK, sir, you say the assailant was armed?
CharmBuyer:Yes
911/FBE: with magic missles?
CharmBuyer: Yes!!!!!!
911/FBE: What did the assailant look like.
CharmBuyer: Ok, he was 75 pixels tall, he had a Sword of Ultimate chaos, and a helmet of confusion, and a cloak of invisibility!
Slashdot Mirror
I find several things disturbing:
.0000001 percent of the time makes it either A. Incorrect B. Primitive. Or simply that the Universe exists in by it's own rules and conforms to simply *what works*.
1. This scientist (of whom I shamefully have no previous knowlege) has come up with a paper that meets the strict criteria of the JAP. Here is the rub: why not let him publish before condemnation?
2. This Poster (sorry, didn't notice the name) has come up with a provocative and insightful (if not wholly accurate) concept that raises important fundamental questions that *WE* only know because of those who worked before us.
3. Many things in science have no *clear* answer. Like, for instance, the fact that the octet rule can be broken and a valence shell can have *more* than eight electrons (go figure) like that fact that there is no *definite* molecular conformation (and probably many others that we cannot perceive) because the truth is that quantum theory works except in those cases where it *doesn't_work*, the idea that our math does not fit
These are all well known facts. They are fundamental questions that need intelligent answers for those who are prepared, and encouragement for those who are still grasping simple concepts.
Too often we forget our own humble beginnings and seek to blast the intelligence of others in order to make ourselves look important. The truth is, you become less important the more you quash those who inquire for the sake of discovery
I don't think that it is such a bad idea. I was laid off from a job (I don't blame the employer, i know I was dead wood and not the best.) I decided to move away from tech altogether. A better question is "How many people realized that there are unlimited opportunities to use you skills besides coding/admining/project managing/hardware devel. Serious. I had a very good friend, who had the brain the size of a small satelite who was laid off from hp. He designed high end micropocessors for hp/s multi processor iron boxes. He's going back to school now to get his masters in EE ( he was recruited in his sophomore year) While I decided to go the way of the anti-geek. Go figure. Anyway, how many decided to get out of tech altogether (be honest) because you didn't cut it, or you found something more fulfilling?
What I mean by that is realizing that
1. Open Source has bound itself (willingly or not I cannot say) with Free Software. I see a fundamental difference between the two as OpenSource is more of the Scientific approach of having a peer reviewed research and development platform, where as (self admittedly) Free Software focuses on making *all* software free as a public domain/service
2. Many open source applications have been developed with the purpose of allowing those who would not normally have the skills to circumvent "IP protection measures". That is, P2P, an adopted open source initiative has Free Software ties because the "information" that P2P networks choose to distribute are for the most part Close Sourced or Copyrighted material.
3. Closed source companies (like Microsoft) and Copy righted companies (like Vivendi) Have both used the arguement that *OPEN SOURCE* software is the cause of the loss of revenue and piracy and have implemented protection schemes that *must be* protected by proprietary closed source mechanisms in order to protect the revenue stream of those coutries
4. Companies will continue to deny legitimate opensource companies access to their API because they incorrectly bind open-source develpers with Free-Software developers (while one may be the other, both may legitimately exist independently of other that is, not all oss devs are freesoftware devs and not all freesoftware devs are oss devs).
5. Legislation looms that would prohibit Open Source to be developed on any commercial level and even make it illegal to own and distribute open source based hardware *because of those who would use propietary software without paying for it* who feel they have a right to another's work without compensating the creator.
6. Those legislators (rightly or wrongly) see open source as a breeding ground for hackers and information pirates, and do not seperate law breakers from the rest of the group. eg. You never hear a *rogue* OSS developer getting arrested on DMCA charges, the same way you hear of *rogue* ceos or *rogue* scientists acting in a way that disgraces the community.
So really, is this a question of those who have steered open source away from its roots to be a campaign for free software? And how will traditionally open source companies (or) individual developers access the blueprints if MS can conveniently label them as software pirates or illegitimate institutions undeserving of access to its API?
Personally I am surprised the Canal still operates
You've just summed up ten years of US ingorance in one statement. The canal has been under shared control since late eighties when US engineers, began training Panamanians in canal operations. Since 1995, the canal has been run by Panamanians in about 95% of the operations barring a little US oversight. The canal has run well without a hitch for over 6 yrs and there are still people who say "oh boy, i can't wait until panama sic 'those stupid uneducated panamanians' screw it up." What a joke! Panamanians are some of the most technologically adept people I know. It is not uncommon to walk out into the middle of the backwoods country and see someone with a P3 with a gig of ram running off of several car batteries. That's in a hut about 4x the size of your standard construction port-a-potty and the bathroom in a hole on the outside and a spigot for a kitchen. One reason for this is that panama has a DUTY FREE canal zone. That's right, no tarrifs, no taxes, no nada, if you know the right people to talk to. One of the shameless moves is that this is a false arguement there. Panama has about 3.5 million people, and about 2.5 of those live *outside* the city in provinces and out in the country. Most of those in the city are so poor that they don't have clean water, and those on the outside fare little better for living in the country. The one thing that they do have is semi reliable POTS because of the heavy investment of the US govt during it's military stint there. You have *maybe* 300,000 panamanians who have access to computers and out of those on a good estimate one third that can afford to purchase the equipment nessecary for a computer (say 250-300) for a 2-3 yr old computer and another 25-50 for the voip technology. so either the lines are very nastily set up, and C&W does not want to invest in more pipe, or there is an inordinate amount of businesses in Panama City using VOIP for the majority of the phone transactions. The problem is that *businesses are their major customers* and they do *not* want to alienate them--so they took a US approach to business--namely "we don't want to alienate our customers, so we must legislate and put the burden on the govt to enforce non-compliance of controversial company policies" this is *not* an instance of Junta govt in a far off jungle-land as most would like to believe, but simple politics as usual from a country that has learned a bit too much from the US govt. Don't believe me, take a look at the RIAA, that has criminalized the *facilitation* of recording music and not the recording of music itself or the software company that can sue you out of business because even though you paid for the right to use the software as you see fit with no implied warranty or use for any specific purpose, you don't have the right to sell a computer with that software on it without compensating said company. anyway, end rant. there are always more sides to an argument than most are willing to admit, but that kind of ignorance about the state of affairs in other countries just gets my goat
Sorry that you think this is sensationalism, but this planet is sort of like what we've been looking for in the matters of even basic live existing in other locations of the universe. A large gas giant creating a debris-sink is exactly what jupiter and saturn do for our planet. They are the saftey net so to speak. Let me explain. There are thousands of roaming celestial bodies in our solar vicinity. Many of these are destined for the largest gravity well in the system, namely the sun. Well, there are planets in direct linear obstruction of these bodies and they usually just fall into the nearest gravity well they can find, usually eachother or another planet. The ONLY REASON that we haven't been wiped out is because most of these bodies tend to fall into jupiter or saturn and not reach little old earth at all. Without thos e two planets acting as graitivistic scape-goats, we'd be bombarded by every roaming rock in the heading toward Sol. (Excuse the hyperbole)
:)
What the scientists are stating is that if a planet, surrounded by debris far a way from the Folmahouth system exists, it will act as a buffer to those planets that we cannot detect. If it exists in two systems, Sol, and Folmahouth, then the "odds" are that it exists in many, (as you know, the universe is either infinite, or close enough to infinite, that only Marvin the Paranoid Android can count all the suns in it.)
So I don't think this is too sensationalist- for these reasons.
1. this wasn't printed on the front page of NYT
2. slashdot isn't much of a sensation
3. this is on the science section from the science department. If jerry springer was reporting on it, i'd buy the sensation part
4. Finding a gas giant *far_from* the sun with lots of debris around it means that there are likely smaller planets closer to the sun made up of heavy elements (like our planet) and life is likely to be present in many parts of the universe/galaxy.
You think the invention of the airline ticket is evolution? Then you would also think the invention of mass media (starting with the printing press and ending (so far) with the internet) is evolution.
:0
Actually, no one says that evolution *has* to be genetic. We used our *brains* to fly while birds and insects and bats use wings. We produced flight as readily and easily as other species.
Unless you think you need wings to fly.
But all flight truly is is manupulating gravity and utilizing lift. IN space, you don't even need lift.
Why would we live on the equator? Won't it be warmest there?
We would move toward the equator because of the melting of the Polar Ice Caps. Hence the extreme latitudes of the earth would force all life (land-dwelling) to migrate to the equator.
At the moment, it's prohibitively expensive
Expensive is a clearly relative term. If this were forced evolution, the cost would be siginificantly less than *not* going to space. (the extinction of all things human)
We only need to colonize the moon for the first hundred years and make expeditions to earth to mine for nessecary minerals and components. (That always gives me a kick. No one ever thinks of going back to earth after ecological disaster). But living on the moon for 500 years should give us sufficient experience and know how to create a durable space vehicle. (Who is to say that this object is not a small planet? Or the moon itself?)
You'd be amazed at how much humans are capable of given the proper impetus (pyramids, moon shots etc.)
While the AC's post may not be scientifically accurate, it is true that humans are some of the few species on earth that have evolved into flight. We are in a smaller group of vertebrates, and one of only two (bats and humans) that have true flight capabilities among mammals.
It is not impossible that we could evolve further to overcome this overpopulation obstacle, although I am not sure what it would take for humans to "devolve" back into sea dwellers.
It is interesting. Human Flight was the only voluntary evolution in the existence of the earth. It was a fairly calm and smooth transition with very few fatalities. IF the overpopulation is a factor, then most likely the world will evolve again, but in a forced and random pattern, like true evolution does.
It would be interesting. With global warming, less food, less water, and less oxygen, humans might evolve to a darker skinned, narrow chested, extremely tall equator dwelling species.
Or we just might force ourselves into the stars. We have the resources and the know how to do it. A less dense, taller, paler, broad chested (thin atmosphere) creature might be our ultimate nature. It all just depends on what path we take when we are pressed with a challenge. We might simply go to war and kill off most of the inhabitants on earth. If that happens within the next 50 years, then I'm betting on Sub Sahara Africa, The Mid West and SOuth west of the US, Brazil, and the New Republic of ANtarctica, founded by the descendants of the survivors of the wasteland called Europe. But lets hope for colonization or evolution. War is a terrible and counter productive thing. It's planned selection at it's worse. We'd probably ruin a lot potentital by not letting people die off randomly.
Right, because saying you're a caver is really going to save you when you fall to your death because you decided to take a picutre standing on one leg on a "really scary precipice"
I agree that there a lot of areas in this world where there are new entrants into the field. However, I think it's counterproductive to oust them from the inner circle because of a word. This isn't high school.
It probably would help more to take one of these spelunkers on a caving adventure and educate them, than to make fun of them when they're lost and hysterical.
# What do you expect of a country where everyone votes for the same party, regardless whether they messed up, promise to mess up or promise not to mess up again then mess up?
As opposed to the last party that promised equality to everyone on a "separate but equal" basis fifty years a go and when they were forced out of power still had not provided basic needs like "Lights" "clean water" and "arable land"
I have'nt read the book. But I do know some things about Dot Coms. And I'll tell you something important. It's not a big deal to go out of business. Most ventures fail. Most enteprise businessmen have a business failure twice in their career. The most damning fault of all dot comm companies is that after failure, they all gave up. And we (yes, I too) spent time making fun of them instead of realizing that business failure is a fact of life.
If I had a chance to grab my boss, I'd tell him a couple of things: DO NOT separate the techs from the non techs. Techs are not gods or even the trump card. Techs will not one day rule the world. The world will be ruled as it has always been ruled , by the three Ps: Politicians, Priests and Poets.
Concentrate on your SALES FORCE. A lot of programmers, sys admins, some execs who got their job the easy way, don't think a sales force is nessecary, as if their product would sell itself. NO PRODUCT EVER SELLS ITSELF. Get able, hard-working people staffed in your sales force, and get a good sales manager. Make sure the sales force uses the product. They don't have to be technical. Most sales are not to technical entities, but to non-technical businesses.
Pay/train your customer service/tech support well. Don't skimp on tech support. You don't want your coders having to solve tech's problems, and you don't want your tech support handling angry clients. Use the right tool for the right jobs. Don't hire techs for customer support. Don't promote people to tech support who do not have good problem solving skills. If they are good customer service reps, give them a promotion, or a raise, but don't put customer service reps in your tech support division. Keep your programmers programming and not answering tech-support questions.
Reward consistently, expect more. Don't give 10,000 bonuses unless the people deserve it. If everyone owns Porches, how can you tell who's your hardest worker? Reward excellence with excellence, reward laziness with the boot. When someone screws up but works hard, help them, don't punish them, but don't give them financial incentive if they havent generated revenue. When they generate revenue, then reward financially.
Make do with less than high tech. Companies went out and bought cisco 8500 switches and 7200 routers. The bought service contracts for thousands for each. They had a total of fifty employees and no high bandwidth utilization. Spend what you have and make do otherwise. Don't buy your equipment outright. Go to a holding company and lease if from them. It's cheaper in the long run if you plan to expand within five years. Remember fixed costs are zero in the long run. Spend as little as possible and get as much as possible.
I'm not saying that the DOT COM period would have been as great as we thought, all I'm saying is that a lot of good companies went down with the bad because of poor planing or people like me on the side lines saying: "I knew they'd fail". It's okay to fail and even to be an inexperienced company. But for what it's worth, get experienced financial and legal advice at least and manage your company like a BUSINESS and not like a chess club.
I joined ICCA . They've got a pretty good organization. I didn't get insurance through them, mostly because the insurance liason never returned my calls. I went through a company called United states liability insurance group . I get a pretty good deal with them.
As for advertising, I've been doing a lot of self advertising. I did most by sending out flyers, then by using photoshop to design my brochure. A mac is great for that kind of stuff. looks real prof. I went to KINKOs and had them put it on high quality paper.
I expanded by simply my repeat customers. One of my first customers was an old man who I didn't even know. Little did I know that fixing his computer for 35 bucks an hour would introduce me to his son who was a contractor for houses in the range of 300,000 to 1.5 million. I got into the insurnace game by calling up small agents. One agent led to another. I got my first sys admin gig by a guy who knows my wife. He said "hey, I hear you're a network guy" I said yes, had a couple of appointments to "make his network run faster, and oh yeah, add this computer to my network" and I landed my first sys admin contrcact. Now most of my jobs come from this guy's reccommnedation and from small time insurance companies. I don't build much systems anymore and I've got experience.
Become a reseller. It's a hassle at first, but you get killer deals on multi paks. All you have to do is come up with some financial references and a business liscense and show the distributor a solid business plan with a revenue balance statement, and you are good to go. send to my email nibasm@hotmail.com. pls don't spam it. (it doesn't matter, it's my junkmail acct anyway, but i hate having to delete it just to get more messages ):}
To tell you the truth, you need to go out and market yourself. Listen to what I did. I worked for a company that Cisco Systems outsourced to making 10 bucks an hour. The waiting list was about 1 yr to get on a tech team. All I did was route calls for so-called IT professionals.
Most of the calls I took the pros on the other end were less knowledgable than me on many subjects. I was so sick of doing it that I started sending out resumes to those companies. NO LUCK. They didn't care if I knew more or had more certs. They didn't even want to see me.
I went out and started up a small business in my neighborhood about a year ago, just fixing computers and doing home networking. That got my foot in the door. I went on the street hawking my wares to small offices, law offices, insurance agents, real estate offices and so forth.
Word got around and I got a couple of support contracts with med-sized businesses doing sys admin on their boxes. Real simple stuff that anyone could do. It's called comparative advantage. Now I've got a couple of contracts, and I'm negotiating a contract with a local general contractor to pull cable for new construction at 2500 a house. I have a pager and a cell and I make my own hours.
By the way--I'm 25 with 2yrs of college education. Comp Sci is not my major, nor ever was. But this helps with school a lot, and I have a family to feed. The only certs I have are A+ and my CCNA. I don't plan on doing this beyond graduation, but it's always a handy thing to have on your resume.
One last warning and advice. Warning. Insure yourself for about 1,000,000 per claim: the more certs and education you have, the cheaper insurance is. I pay about 2000/yr on prof. liability. Advice, join a professional association. You can network a lot and land tons of gigs. It worked for me.
too bad you didn't learn how to spell sabotage from Star Trek.
MPAA : But, but you don't get it! Those who would have watched twice will only watch *once*! And those that would have watched ten times will only watch *nine*! That's lost revenue! We're going down the drain!
The major problems with starband service:
Bandwidth throttling. If I pay 600 bucks for equipment and install and another 70 bucks per month, I want *premium* service. No hassles, no throttling, no nothing. Pipe, Pure Pipe.
Latency Not just for gamers, if you want to video or voice conference, it's terrible. Not a chance. No voIP, no nothing.
There is a company called Skynet that is on a LEO system. Low Earth Orbit. meaning less latency, and a truckload more of bandwidth. It's vapor so far, since the fiber on earth is not utilized much, but wait a couple years and it'll rock.
The biggest caveat is that Skynet is supported by Bill Gates. You can look at this as a plus or a minus. The minus is that Microsoft has its finger in every pie. The plus is that Microsoft has a inherent interest in getting broadband to everyone, if only to stuff those bloated apps down the pipe.
Starband stinks. Use ISDN
And as the advertising companies pay less for the ads, the programming will get worse.
Why don't people realize that broadcast TV, and even superstations only have programming to sell advertisements, and only have programming because they do sell advertisments.
That is only half the truth. Most likely, what the broadcast stations really want is to maintain their monopoly position (yes, they do have a monopoly position for their specific market). In other words, they want to remain price makers and not be price takers.
In the worst nightmare for the broadcast stations, advertisers will move from paying broadcasters to paying pvr makers. You will just get your advertisements through your pvr, or you will have to record and view a certain amount each month in order to remain active with your pvr account and services.
The broadcast companies will no longer be able to name their price, and will most likely bid for space in the pvr arena. That is what the broadcast fears. There will be no reduction in programming or quality of programming, or people watching, the market will just shift its focust to greener pastures. So no the artist won't starve and you'll still get your good programing. Just instead of "Must See TV", there will be "Must Record TV" brought to you by TiVo, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds.
Getting so you can't tell the pigs from the humans. (paraphrasing from George Orwell's Animal Farm)
I might be out of the loop, but isn't Jim Henson Studios owned by Disney, or at least the intellectual rights to the muppets?
Isn't that a case of strange bedfellows -- Linux and Disney. Wonder what Hollings thinks about this anti drm OS handling such precious, marketable creations.
That may be true. However, if you're using DSL you pay for the bandwidth, and if you are secure enough, they have no right (or proof for that matter)to deny you service. You setup an authentication service ala VPN and you can charge your neighbors for the privledge of using your "NETWORK SERVICE" and the bandwidth is just incidental. This wouldn't work on a cable net too much, where you pay 5-10 dollars extra for the benefit of multiple ip address, but this would be an excellent service for a 1.5 dsl link.
I must qualify myself. I'm not readily speaking of *all* japanese culture, and no, I know a bit more than textbook reading. The anecdotal examples are not enought to refute years of research and self analysis.
;). And the way that many will accept this as reality.
You only have to be invited as a guest into a Japanese home and they will bend over backwards to prove that you are right in any occasion--employees will readily resign or immolate themselves publicly if their screwups have caused any degree of discomfort for the corporation. Many Japanese ideas of teamwork and "annihilation of self" have carried over to US work forces.
But I'm not here to get into an argument over east vs. west. You obviously had occasion to interact with different people than me. That's ok too. You cannot deny that my examples are part of eastern culture. BTW--I wasn't advocating US interests or putting US privacy concerns in the limelight. Only making observations on the *Japanese* culture (that was the topic in question, I think)
By the way---The very fact that instead of calling up the corporation and suing, or even send angry letters to the perpetrators and instead just changing numbers to *avoid any more confrontation* kind of proves my point, dontcha think?
More right than not. Why in the world would corp ISP want to give you a static IPv6 when that is a constant bandwidth tap?
Joe Public will never "own" ip addresses again. That was made evident after the "great subnet rush" of the ninties.
Having IPv6 addresses mean that anyone can have as many as they want if given away for free-
until there is a way to consistently and legally charge for "per seat" usage for internet bandwidth, with crimial reprocussions (can you say DMCA) corporations will not adopt a standard which basically says, "a static and public IP address is worthless as a marketable commodity".
Unfortunately, were applying western thought to a very eatern culture. Japanese do not have the same feeling of privacy. Loudspeakers in public places "encourage" people to go to bed in some areas of Japan. The "annihilation of self" or the sacrifice of self for the good of the group is a prevalent ideology in Japan and other eastern cultures and I'm assuming that they would not be too put out by having their information transmitted to a potential supplier of wares, goods, or serivces.
The Preceeding message was brought to you by the PLA.
Bringing the thought police through your IO
My friend, capitalism is NOT where it is at. I'm not saying that capitalism is wrong. I wholly support it. However, I only support capitalism as long as I am perfectly informed. You see, the free market can only prosper when people are perfectly informed.
That means when a company is going down in the pots and bleeding money like a stuck pig, it can't dump those losses into offshore companies without telling ALL the public. That means when companies decide to go bankrupt, they have to tell the everyone at the same time and let the market make informed decisions.
Capitalism in it's pure form would require everyone to disclose everything and would result in the greatest loss of privacy since stalin cracked down on political dissidents in his country.
That's just a theory of course. And not known to be a fact. Discuss!
Zeus, Zeus, Mighty of the Mighty pantheon of Olympic Gods, surely you have studies from thy high precipice the difference between Political Liberalism and Economic Liberalism? Saying that Politcal Liberalism, (civil liberties,pro choice and so forth) and economic liberalism (labor unions, socialism and communism) are the same are incongrouous at best and more along the line of dishonest representation.
But I do speak respectfully, O mighty one of the smiting thunderbolts.
In my humble mortal opinion, one is liberal with one's own polices and conservative with another's. At least that is the way in America. We call "Liberal" Conservatives "Radicals" You ever see a conservative want to keep the "status quo" when the status quo wasn't his or her cup of tea? Ever see a liberal liberal with the opinions of pro lifers, or gun control?
Labeling people under one umbrella is dangerous because it allows people to make blanket assumptions about individuals that might not be true. For instance. Conservative senator mcain has come up with some very "liberal" views these past years (term limits, campaign finance reform, patients bill of rights) and is even seen as a betrayor of his own political conservatism because of his views. Some "conservatives" have even asked him to step down from his senate seat because they feel he has deceived him with his "liberal" views.
However, I don't think that Ted Kennedy is ready to invite him to the Kennedy complex just yet for Yahtzee. Anyway, Polytheistic deities should read more not just parrot what he/she hears mere mortals say.
I've never played one of these games before but imagine this.
:)
CharmScalper: So, we meet at the specified location.
CharmBuyer: cut to the chase, Mack, you got the goods?
CharmScalper: You got the cash?
CharmBuyer: Yes, 500USD. It's already in the account.
CharmScalper: Alright here are the goods. [CharmScalper drops the goods on the ground, and points Spear/Sword/Gun/MagicMissles at CharmBuyer.
CharmBuyer: But, But, we had a deal!
CharmScalper: Hasta La Vista, Baby! [CharmScalper carves up CharmBuyer and steals Item (now, I have no idea if you keep the loot after a kill or not. just go with me here).
CharmBuyer: [Crying at his Desktop.] I'm calling the cops! I've been robbed! [dials police 911]
Officer, I'd like to report an armed robbery.[Explains that he was held at magicmissle point and his Cloak of Radiance was stolen
911/FederalBeeEye: OK, sir, you say the assailant was armed?
CharmBuyer:Yes
911/FBE: with magic missles?
CharmBuyer: Yes!!!!!!
911/FBE: What did the assailant look like.
CharmBuyer: Ok, he was 75 pixels tall, he had a Sword of Ultimate chaos, and a helmet of confusion, and a cloak of invisibility!
911/FBE: CLICK