Technical and budgetary considerations aside, and in the spirit of democracy, I think any free (as in speech) open source solution would be a more correct choice for our governments to adopt, rather than be beholden to any one corporation, especially a proven monopoly.There are plenty of reasons for this, not limited to:
Avoiding huge conflicts of interest
Security and Trust Not putting all the eggs in one basket, Moral and philosophical ideals of the People owning their own systems. Not turning Redmond into a military target. Not sending millions of tax dollars to a monopoly. Creating demand, increased competition, and insentive to innovate in a severely depressed technology market. I'm sure there are more.
I think where possible technical considerations and getting the cheapest solution should be at the bottom of the list of reasons the government should choose its systems. Let's not be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
There is an age-old argument that most littering is actually better for the environment than contributing to land fills. The logic behind it is that most litter biodegrades relatively quickly, whereas we have 80 year old meat being dug out of landfills that still show marbling and what kind of cut they were. So if you want that milk carton to biodegrade this decade, litter it. (Yes I know we have better landfill tech now, but the same logic still holds true to a lesser degree.)
So should we all start littering? No because the litter will just pile up, we make it much faster than it would decompose. In the same light I think several hundred million people's piles of trash being perpetually burned would have the Global Warming people throwing fits. We make it faster than the atmosphere can reasonably take it in. That's a heck of a lot of CO2. A volcanic eruption of extremely fine particulate matter that never ceases. El Nino Grande anyone? Don't mess with the weather.
Their argument seems logical, but so can littering seem logical. In the end it really is a Zero-Sum game. There are only so many atoms on the planet (don't pick the metiorite type nits). In the long run, reducing, reusing and recycling are the only weapons that can work in this game.
I agree that article is for people who can't read, can't write, and don't know how to turn off the pop-up reminder.
>"I am far, far too stupid to respond to this in writing. My writing skills suck, and I don't communicate well...
[Rant]
Bravo to that. But please let's not leave out Reading Comprehension. Try this for an experiment, send out an email to all your end-users, clients, whoever, just get a longish list in the To: field. In this email discuss whatever may be appropriate. In the body of your email include 3 easy questions. Don't make them stand out in bold or anything. See how many people actually answer 1, 2 or all 3 questions?
In my experience NO ONE will answer all 3 questions. 1 in a thousand maybe. Nor will they realize there were 3 questions to answer. If I want to get 3 questions answered in an email I have to blockquote and bulletpoint each one and be sure to make them short. Making them a different color helps as well. Even then it doesn't always work. It's like writing childrens' books.
People can't frickin READ!!
Even then, people who can sort of read are so SLOW. No wonder the TV Guide channel scrolls at 3 channels per minute.
Even so it's still far better than the drivel you get over voicemail... "Hi how are you?, I'm just calling because,... but if that won't work maybe....[10 seconds of thinking out loud into the recording]. AAhaackkkk! STOP IT. Don't ask a recording how I am! Don't ramble for 45 seconds and then speed-mumble your phone number at the end.
>He is not "milking us" with DVDs now, just to hit us up for better ones later
#1, Sure he is. You bought them NOW didn't you? So who is stupid? You will buy the ones that come out later I'm sure. But first he's still got to re-release the first 3 movies in the theater again once or twice. Then comes the boxed set, the director's cut boxed set, and the silver anniversary 12 DVD Special Edition of all the movies nestled inside a plastic Millenium Falcon, including a 7 hour George Lucas Life Story and an interview where he interviews himself. What do you want to bet on it?
#2 IMAX
#3 Doh, Ask me how many different copies of Empire Strikes Back I own.
Go ahead and disagree with my but don't do it like 15 year old.
> Rumor is that it was cancelled by the Wachowski brothers in hopes of coming out with a Super Collectors Special Edition later."
rather than trying to milk us for both the Special Edition and then (surprise!) the Super Collectors Special Edition. The theater release schedule is terrific as well.
The Wachowski brothers are going to have a huge and satisfied fan base simply by doing the opposite of whatever
this guy has done.
I think my point is that it doesn't matter how routers handle packets if every interface is MS, every IP packet is stamped with.NET, etc. MS is outside the scope of the whole analogy simply because they are MS. They don't need to change the internet, they can just co-opt the whole thing
I dunno though, it's Friday and the sun is out for the first time in a LONG time. Spring fever! Been nice chatting.
Re:Theorem
on
World of Ends
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Your're right. Guess I should have said; "Destined to fail in an ideally realized internet such as this article supports." Sorry.
However, please further support this statement ".NET is an application at the edge of the cloud, not in the center of it, and thus falls under section 8c "Anyone can improve it", rather than section 4 "Adding value lowers value".
.NET requires IIS,.NET will interact with the worlds most popular browser, operating system, and applications suite..Net will require subscriptions..NET comes along with the MS version of "Trusted Computing..NET will control content by its ubiquitous nature. If.NET really takes off I can't see how it'll be at the edge of the cloud. The cloud will gradually transmogrify into MSInternet with some renegade fringes.
then every single subscriber should get 5 "future mod" points every day.
If posting is allowed "in the future", I for one want it heavily moderated.
Also, if I pay for a subscription, I'd be nice to have more moderation input for "future posts" only.
This would work fine because once the story hits "real time" I, as a subscriber, lose my "future mod" points for that story and the hoards are now free to mod anything to oblivion. But at least the signal to noise ratio _starts out_ pretty good.
Which hunting and gathering tribes are you thinking of, here? The "rich pantheon[s] of gods" that I can think of all came from agricultural societies. Examples: the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and so forth.
That's because the agrarian societies were the first to use writing, create artifacts, and basically leave a legacy behind. That's why you can think of them.
By contrast hunter-gatherer societies didn't own anything they couldn't carry on their backs, didn't use writing, and left almost no records but their bones. From what we can tell though, much of it from H-G tribes who survived in isolation until we could study them, they did have a rich tapestry of gods. We call their religion animism, IIRC because everything was animated. Even rocks had spirits. Of course their were no Harvest Gods, War Gods, and Wine Gods, they came with agriculture and cities.
From all the H-G tribes that have been studied, we've learned that they do much LESS work on average than any other type of society, especially our current one. If you've ever been to a place that is truly wild and free from modern man, the first thing you'll notice (unless it's winter) is food literally hanging off the trees! Meat roaming everywhere available to anyone who can catch it. Especially convenient was simpy following the herds.
From the beginning of human evolution, with each "advancement" we have continually sacrificed free time and imagination for the facts and hard work that brings comfort, safety, and longevity.
Topic Digression: Incidentally monotheism didn't arise in agrarian cities. It arose with the nomadic shepherds. That's why it still survives today. Plague, war, famine, drought, and big alluvial floods could wipe out entire religions in a single blow, this happened surprisingly often. Meanwhile, the nomadic shepherds just walked to the hills outside the next town (which they needed for trade), in this way they carried their Shepherd God everywhere they went, down to Egypt, up to Israel, over to Rome, these nomads went all over the place. As religions go, they stayed strong and unified until they settled down with the Romans and learned about money.
Wow, I apologize for my "condescending" reply. For some reason I can't fathom I thought you were sending me to Mathworld here. Which would've been a bit smart assed. Still no excuse really. Sorry. Also I should have inserted "no calculus required" from the start.
This damn nicotine patch is way too small.
Not to mention it tastes terrible and is hard to light.
If you were looking at real circles and lines in practical applications, you would truncate after a few dozen decimal places at most. Given that we have computed billions of decimal places, the distinction between the abstract and practical is important to remember.
So if we are looking at practical real world implementations of Pi vs. the abstract mathematical concept, and space is in fact grainy and we know the grain size, then wouldn't we know exactly at what decimal place Pi stops being real and becomes abstract only? I think that would be fairly cool to draw a concrete line between the concrete and the abstract with respect to Pi. Math could certainly use more well defined boundaries between the abstract and Reality. That was my point, I had no illusions about changing the abstract mathematical definition.
[Zeno's paradox] was resolved when analysis (calculus) was formalized. Read more about it at MathWorld.
My oh my you are condescending. I know all about integrals and derivatives thanks. Just insert "no calculus required" into my comment. That was the whole point. You wouldn't need calculus if you could just count the grains of space. My mistake leaving it up to the reader to think outside the curve.
If they do prove that space is grainy and can measure the size of the grain, will we finally be able to truncate Pi at some point and actually point to its last digit?
Will Zeno's Paradox no longer be a paradox since it would no longer be about traveling an infinite series of infinitely small distances but rather traveling a large finite number of miniscule 'space grains'?
Could the relativity of time be more about different sizes of 'time grains' and a little less about where an observer might be standing? The rate of passage of 'time grains' being universally constant but the size of the grains dependant on local conditions?
Our minds are in a maze full of dark and twisty passages. (At least mine is.)
I can't see why they care so much about his ruling. Local land lines really seem to be going the way of the old telegraph network. Will be a niche market soon enough. Unless you live far from a population center, what do you need a land line for?
In fact, most people I know who keep a land line keep it for dial-up internet access because broadband is too darn expensive. So the FCC eliminates competition in the emerging market and enforces it in the dying one? Lost me on that one.
First of all, why do the Baby Bells care so much about the land lines? It cannot possibly be a growth market, or even a nice stable cash cow.
Second of all, why the stagnating upside-down ruling on competition?
That is not correct. Iraq during the best of times only exports a fraction of what it is capable of exporting. They keep production down and maintain vast reserves in order to keep oil prices from getting too low. They also have older less efficient technology and a shoddy infrastructure. Replacing Saddam with a US Puppet would enable a MUCH higher export rate and thus drive prices way down.
I read that in the New York Times and WSJ months ago, but I'm not googling for it right now.
Please note this is a factual/economical correction and says nothing about my beliefs and opinions about war.
No I haven't done my homework, though I usually do, but on the other hand if biodiesel producers and advocates want to sell the idea, then sell the idea, don't make us do homework.
Here's my real reason for replying: How much energy and resources does it take to do the conversion? Has that been factored in?
You do make good points if the facts are right and stand up in real world usage. The conversion IS probably not as bad as crude oil conversion. Still, if it's an excuse to keep going up the same path with industrialized meat then that in itself is pretty darn harmful.
It doesn't mention the by-products of burning biodiesel, but I would think more sources of diesel-like fuel is one of the LAST things we need.
Environmental damage and pollution from livestock is a very serious problem and probably the main reason I'm "pescatarian". But I'm far from convinced that this process of converting the waste into fuel and burning it like diesel isn't just an equal-but-different evil, or worse. A far better option would be to treat industrialized meat as the sister-evil to SUV's. AKA Ridiculous Consumption in the vast majority of cases.
> I feel bad for those certain people can't tell the difference between Franzia and a first growth Bordeaux.
Not saying you're not a supertaster, but the wine bit would actually be your sense of smell.
"As much as 80 percent of what we perceive as taste is actually smell. Humans can discern about 20,000 different odours and 10 or more intensities of each."
Whereas your sense of taste only recognizes 5 things: Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and fat/protein.
My ultra-senstive nose is a also blessing when it comes to food and drink, but it's also quite revolting sometimes, public transportation comes to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for the record ^that wasn't me.
But I liked it.
Technical and budgetary considerations aside, and in the spirit of democracy, I think any free (as in speech) open source solution would be a more correct choice for our governments to adopt, rather than be beholden to any one corporation, especially a proven monopoly.There are plenty of reasons for this, not limited to:I think where possible technical considerations and getting the cheapest solution should be at the bottom of the list of reasons the government should choose its systems. Let's not be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
There is an age-old argument that most littering is actually better for the environment than contributing to land fills. The logic behind it is that most litter biodegrades relatively quickly, whereas we have 80 year old meat being dug out of landfills that still show marbling and what kind of cut they were. So if you want that milk carton to biodegrade this decade, litter it. (Yes I know we have better landfill tech now, but the same logic still holds true to a lesser degree.)
So should we all start littering? No because the litter will just pile up, we make it much faster than it would decompose. In the same light I think several hundred million people's piles of trash being perpetually burned would have the Global Warming people throwing fits. We make it faster than the atmosphere can reasonably take it in. That's a heck of a lot of CO2. A volcanic eruption of extremely fine particulate matter that never ceases. El Nino Grande anyone? Don't mess with the weather.
Their argument seems logical, but so can littering seem logical. In the end it really is a Zero-Sum game. There are only so many atoms on the planet (don't pick the metiorite type nits). In the long run, reducing, reusing and recycling are the only weapons that can work in this game.
I agree that article is for people who can't read, can't write, and don't know how to turn off the pop-up reminder.
>"I am far, far too stupid to respond to this in writing. My writing skills suck, and I don't communicate well...
[Rant]
Bravo to that. But please let's not leave out Reading Comprehension. Try this for an experiment, send out an email to all your end-users, clients, whoever, just get a longish list in the To: field. In this email discuss whatever may be appropriate. In the body of your email include 3 easy questions. Don't make them stand out in bold or anything. See how many people actually answer 1, 2 or all 3 questions?
In my experience NO ONE will answer all 3 questions. 1 in a thousand maybe. Nor will they realize there were 3 questions to answer. If I want to get 3 questions answered in an email I have to blockquote and bulletpoint each one and be sure to make them short. Making them a different color helps as well. Even then it doesn't always work. It's like writing childrens' books.
People can't frickin READ!!
Even then, people who can sort of read are so SLOW. No wonder the TV Guide channel scrolls at 3 channels per minute.
Even so it's still far better than the drivel you get over voicemail... "Hi how are you?, I'm just calling because,... but if that won't work maybe....[10 seconds of thinking out loud into the recording]. AAhaackkkk! STOP IT. Don't ask a recording how I am! Don't ramble for 45 seconds and then speed-mumble your phone number at the end.
Send me an email instead.
[/RANT]
>He is not "milking us" with DVDs now, just to hit us up for better ones later
#1, Sure he is. You bought them NOW didn't you? So who is stupid? You will buy the ones that come out later I'm sure. But first he's still got to re-release the first 3 movies in the theater again once or twice. Then comes the boxed set, the director's cut boxed set, and the silver anniversary 12 DVD Special Edition of all the movies nestled inside a plastic Millenium Falcon, including a 7 hour George Lucas Life Story and an interview where he interviews himself. What do you want to bet on it?
#2 IMAX
#3 Doh, Ask me how many different copies of Empire Strikes Back I own.
Go ahead and disagree with my but don't do it like 15 year old.
> Rumor is that it was cancelled by the Wachowski brothers in hopes of coming out with a Super Collectors Special Edition later."
rather than trying to milk us for both the Special Edition and then (surprise!) the Super Collectors Special Edition.
The theater release schedule is terrific as well.
The Wachowski brothers are going to have a huge and satisfied fan base simply by doing the opposite of whatever this guy has done.
So that goofy Mission to Mars movie could turn out to be right? Underground liquid water warmed by the hot core that can support life?
Of of all the SF movies to get it right. Geesh.
I think my point is that it doesn't matter how routers handle packets if every interface is MS, every IP packet is stamped with .NET, etc. MS is outside the scope of the whole analogy simply because they are MS. They don't need to change the internet, they can just co-opt the whole thing
I dunno though, it's Friday and the sun is out for the first time in a LONG time. Spring fever! Been nice chatting.
Your're right. Guess I should have said; "Destined to fail in an ideally realized internet such as this article supports." Sorry.
.NET will interact with the worlds most popular browser, operating system, and applications suite. .Net will require subscriptions. .NET comes along with the MS version of "Trusted Computing. .NET will control content by its ubiquitous nature. If .NET really takes off I can't see how it'll be at the edge of the cloud. The cloud will gradually transmogrify into MSInternet with some renegade fringes.
However, please further support this statement
".NET is an application at the edge of the cloud, not in the center of it, and thus falls under section 8c "Anyone can improve it", rather than section 4 "Adding value lowers value".
.NET requires IIS,
So MS
That does seem to tie in pretty nicely with this.
Just buy a 64Mb version of the 8500 (fairly cheap and falling fast) and one of these things here. And off you go to HDTV PC viewing.
That's not a bad investment next to a $4000 TV.
then every single subscriber should get 5 "future mod" points every day.
If posting is allowed "in the future", I for one want it heavily moderated.
Also, if I pay for a subscription, I'd be nice to have more moderation input for "future posts" only.
This would work fine because once the story hits "real time" I, as a subscriber, lose my "future mod" points for that story and the hoards are now free to mod anything to oblivion. But at least the signal to noise ratio _starts out_ pretty good.
Which hunting and gathering tribes are you thinking of, here? The "rich pantheon[s] of gods" that I can think of all came from agricultural societies. Examples: the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and so forth.
That's because the agrarian societies were the first to use writing, create artifacts, and basically leave a legacy behind. That's why you can think of them.
By contrast hunter-gatherer societies didn't own anything they couldn't carry on their backs, didn't use writing, and left almost no records but their bones. From what we can tell though, much of it from H-G tribes who survived in isolation until we could study them, they did have a rich tapestry of gods. We call their religion animism, IIRC because everything was animated. Even rocks had spirits. Of course their were no Harvest Gods, War Gods, and Wine Gods, they came with agriculture and cities.
From all the H-G tribes that have been studied, we've learned that they do much LESS work on average than any other type of society, especially our current one. If you've ever been to a place that is truly wild and free from modern man, the first thing you'll notice (unless it's winter) is food literally hanging off the trees! Meat roaming everywhere available to anyone who can catch it. Especially convenient was simpy following the herds.
From the beginning of human evolution, with each "advancement" we have continually sacrificed free time and imagination for the facts and hard work that brings comfort, safety, and longevity.
Topic Digression:
Incidentally monotheism didn't arise in agrarian cities. It arose with the nomadic shepherds. That's why it still survives today. Plague, war, famine, drought, and big alluvial floods could wipe out entire religions in a single blow, this happened surprisingly often. Meanwhile, the nomadic shepherds just walked to the hills outside the next town (which they needed for trade), in this way they carried their Shepherd God everywhere they went, down to Egypt, up to Israel, over to Rome, these nomads went all over the place. As religions go, they stayed strong and unified until they settled down with the Romans and learned about money.
So Optimus Prime can take pictures during battle?
350 megapixels really is More Than Meets The Eye.
Wow, I apologize for my "condescending" reply. For some reason I can't fathom I thought you were sending me to Mathworld here. Which would've been a bit smart assed. Still no excuse really. Sorry. Also I should have inserted "no calculus required" from the start.
This damn nicotine patch is way too small.
Not to mention it tastes terrible and is hard to light.
If you were looking at real circles and lines in practical applications, you would truncate after a few dozen decimal places at most. Given that we have computed billions of decimal places, the distinction between the abstract and practical is important to remember.
So if we are looking at practical real world implementations of Pi vs. the abstract mathematical concept, and space is in fact grainy and we know the grain size, then wouldn't we know exactly at what decimal place Pi stops being real and becomes abstract only? I think that would be fairly cool to draw a concrete line between the concrete and the abstract with respect to Pi. Math could certainly use more well defined boundaries between the abstract and Reality. That was my point, I had no illusions about changing the abstract mathematical definition.
[Zeno's paradox] was resolved when analysis (calculus) was formalized. Read more about it at MathWorld.
My oh my you are condescending. I know all about integrals and derivatives thanks. Just insert "no calculus required" into my comment. That was the whole point. You wouldn't need calculus if you could just count the grains of space. My mistake leaving it up to the reader to think outside the curve.
If they do prove that space is grainy and can measure the size of the grain, will we finally be able to truncate Pi at some point and actually point to its last digit?
Will Zeno's Paradox no longer be a paradox since it would no longer be about traveling an infinite series of infinitely small distances but rather traveling a large finite number of miniscule 'space grains'?
Could the relativity of time be more about different sizes of 'time grains' and a little less about where an observer might be standing? The rate of passage of 'time grains' being universally constant but the size of the grains dependant on local conditions?
Our minds are in a maze full of dark and twisty passages. (At least mine is.)
barebone notebook features no display, no CPU, no RAM and no HDD,
And the damn thing STILL runs Linux. Wow!
Oh. nevermind..
Benford's article is titled "Beyond the Shuttle" and can be found.. here.
As usual, Benford is +5 Insightful.
I can't see why they care so much about his ruling. Local land lines really seem to be going the way of the old telegraph network. Will be a niche market soon enough. Unless you live far from a population center, what do you need a land line for?
In fact, most people I know who keep a land line keep it for dial-up internet access because broadband is too darn expensive. So the FCC eliminates competition in the emerging market and enforces it in the dying one? Lost me on that one.
First of all, why do the Baby Bells care so much about the land lines? It cannot possibly be a growth market, or even a nice stable cash cow.
Second of all, why the stagnating upside-down ruling on competition?
That is not correct. Iraq during the best of times only exports a fraction of what it is capable of exporting. They keep production down and maintain vast reserves in order to keep oil prices from getting too low. They also have older less efficient technology and a shoddy infrastructure. Replacing Saddam with a US Puppet would enable a MUCH higher export rate and thus drive prices way down.
I read that in the New York Times and WSJ months ago, but I'm not googling for it right now.
Please note this is a factual/economical correction and says nothing about my beliefs and opinions about war.
Being the only internationally shared landmass, and being a very nice distance away, I humbly suggest putting it in Antarctica.
OR they could spend the next 3 years dickering over who gets it.
No I haven't done my homework, though I usually do, but on the other hand if biodiesel producers and advocates want to sell the idea, then sell the idea, don't make us do homework.
Here's my real reason for replying:
How much energy and resources does it take to do the conversion? Has that been factored in?
You do make good points if the facts are right and stand up in real world usage. The conversion IS probably not as bad as crude oil conversion. Still, if it's an excuse to keep going up the same path with industrialized meat then that in itself is pretty darn harmful.
It doesn't mention the by-products of burning biodiesel, but I would think more sources of diesel-like fuel is one of the LAST things we need.
Environmental damage and pollution from livestock is a very serious problem and probably the main reason I'm "pescatarian".
But I'm far from convinced that this process of converting the waste into fuel and burning it like diesel isn't just an equal-but-different evil, or worse. A far better option would be to treat industrialized meat as the sister-evil to SUV's. AKA Ridiculous Consumption in the vast majority of cases.
Not saying you're not a supertaster, but the wine bit would actually be your sense of smell.
Whereas your sense of taste only recognizes 5 things: Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and fat/protein.
My ultra-senstive nose is a also blessing when it comes to food and drink, but it's also quite revolting sometimes, public transportation comes to mind.