It is obviously true that the one that goes in front has 'first mover advantage'; even lesser minds have realized that before now. But linux is actually in front in many areas - it's just that opensource SW doesn't get advertised loudly everywhere.
UNIX (and now linux) has traditionally been the platform for technical creativity - just think of the 'everything-as-files' concept as one example. This is of course because most true creativity happens in the minds of people who aren't yet in a wellpaid job: students, young PhD researchers, the nerd who sits up late in his room every night, etc. When you don't have a large company budget in your back, you are not likely to want to invest a lot in Windows, Visual Studio and other expensive SW; certainly not when there are excellent tools that can had for free.
So Microsoft only have first mover advantage in narrowly focused areas: the ones that fall within their sphere of business interests; only MS Office, really. Which is why, to take another example, we had Firefox coming up with one good idea after another, like tabbed browsing and extensions, which MS are now trying to bring into IE.
No - the alcohol prohibition didn't work because it was blatantly obvious that is was an unreasonable law. Everybody (except perhaps puritans) drank alcohol and everybody knew that prohibition was not the way to limit the problems with alcohol abuse. Not so with gambling - yes, a lot of people gamble, at least if you count such things as betting on sports events, but it very far from everybody that get a kick out of it. On top of that, I think many people sympathize with hitting the ones who profit from more or less shady, organized gambling cartels, even if they bet on sports events every week. It's worth bearing in mind that gambling (especially online) has a huge potential for swindling a lot of people out of a lot of money, something that can't be done as easily with alcohol.
The modern day equivalent of the alcohol prohibition is more like the current drug laws. A very large segment of the population use recreational drugs and feel the laws are completely out of touch with reality. It would help a lot on people's respect for the law if it was changed to actually reflect how dangerous the individual drugs are; but that would mean either prohibiting alcohol and tobacco or legalising cannabis, ecstasy and a number of other drugs that are known to be less dangerous than those.
Virgin Galactic? Space tourism? Seems sombody have their heads too full of hot air. We are still barely able to get outside Earth's athmosphere; the galaxy and even interplanetary space are still decades away, at least as tourist resorts. Just think about it - have you ever been to one of those socalled 'luxury' resorts on this planet, where your room (which you are only going to sleep in) is equipped with a big kitchen, a bed that could sleep three people, a living room with two tvs etc etc; and everything is ridiculously expensive (it is a LUXURY resort, after all) - and you are far away from any kind of actual fun, so you're sort of cooped up in meaningless, useless luxury. That's when you realize what boredom can be. Now imagine how much fun it would be, being confined to what is basically a big sack of gas with absolutely nothing to do and REALLY nowhere to go.
I think this sort of 'research' is done with little insight into what they are researching. IMO what they have found may simply show that sitting in front of a computer/TV or such is something that appeals strongly to people with little interest in their local community - the typical 'nerd type'?
or maybe they interpret their results wrongly; I would say that using the internet is likely to widen your horizon. This will of course mean that on one hand you get to know about things that are far away geographically and culturally; on the other hand this will mean that you perspective is less narrowly focused on your local community. To me that seems like a good thing.
Very true, but pornography isn't really delivering to goods. The problem is that pornography is a fairly sterile and sexless thing that wouldn't excite people if they didn't feel that it somehow was a transgression - it has to feel 'naughty'. IOW, porn depends on society being prudish. Once we stop looking at sexual activity as something wrong or dirty, pornography becomes less interesting.
That is not to say that it not pleasing to look at naked bodies; but I wouldn't call nudity 'pornography' - perhaps a better term is 'eroticism'?
In my nearly 30 years of coding computers of all sizes and shapes, I have reached the conclusion that there is a lot to be said for simplicity in your setup, no matter how big the project. I have found again and again that the most important concern is portability; even though you work on Linux, you live in a world of UNIXes and even Windows. So the following are my suggestions:
1. Learn to use vi properly - not vim, but 'classic' vi. Or alternatively, use emacs. It is not that vim is bad, but it is not on all platforms. Being able to do my coding anywhere is something I have had enormous benefit from over the years. GUIs and syntax highlighting may be pleasing to the eye and look cool, but proper indentation is all you really need.
2. Learn to use make properly. GNU make is probably the de facto standard now; it is certainly the same on all platforms. Put subprojects in subdirectories; it is very simple and efficient.
3. Learn to use a source code control system properly. I prefer Perforce; it comes with a GUI interface if you must.
4. Learn to code properly. This is not so much about algorithms or fancy coding, but about legibility. I always imagine I'm writing my code as an example for somebody to see how the current problem should be solved. I include comments that actually explain what and why rather than stating the obvious. I indent according to a rigorous model and I avoid unnecessary whitespace. Code should be read as literature, so don't put things in columns - that's for accountants.
5. Learn to debug properly. I don't use debuggers at all - I used to, but stopped because I found the advantage was too small. Instead I rely on trace statements - yes, basically printf()'s. It is only in the very simplest cases that a debugger is effective. But whatever your preference, learn to do it properly; the UNIX debuggers are more or less equivalent, so I suppose there's no real need to stick with just one.
- So why not an IDE? Well, mostly because you don't need it. It binds you to just one way of doing things and it isolates you from what is actually going on. If you are used to eg. Visual Studio, do you actually know what happens underneath it all? You will need to know from time, especially if you are going to write portable code. A better way, I find, is to have several xterms open, one for each task, more or less: one for building (with make), one for testing the program, and one or more for editing code.
And before you start scoffing at my ideas, I can say that I'm far from being the slowest coder in my company.
Do you honestly believe that you have to comply with the law of every country with Internet access in the world if you post something online? Would Chinese law keep you from publishing a story critical of their goverment?
Yes, and yes.
What we are talking about here is not what people post in their blogs, but the pursuit of commercial activities on the internet. If you want to make money from people in a country, then IMO you're obliged to respect the laws and customs of that country. And in the case of a newspaper like NYT, I think it is not just prudent, but morally correct to make an effort to think through the consequences of what they do, even in other countries. They are read by many people in the world, so they have great influence, and it is right that they try not to tumble around blindly, possibly hurting somebody in the process.
As for your second question, yes, if I was the editor of a major newspaper, I would indeed think about the consequences of publishing articles critical of any government. I would ask myself questions like 'Is there a risk that this article will endanger somebody's life (eg. one of my own journalists)?' or 'Will this article hurt the diplomatic relations at a very bad moment in time?' etc etc.
Starting with the Xerox Alto and the Star, ACM Queue briefly covers the history of human-computer interaction from past to present. It doesn't stop there, however. Using a hypothetical situation involving context-awareness in cellphones, the author lays out his thoughts on the future of HCI, offering opinions, advice, and examples.
What I really hate about these musings about the future is the tendency to always make it a push for unwelcome, mind-bending crap, like adverts. Don't these people realize that adverts are probably the largest single obstacle for the internet becoming something we could actually enjoy? If even our mobiles are going to pester us with a barrage of nonsense, trying to take over our lives, I think I personally would prefer to do without one.
- not with the existing model, where huge entertainment factories produce muzak and movies on an assembly line. But that is the beauty of the internet and modern technology: as time progresses, we need them less and less. It is already possible for anybody who is moderately skilled with computers to record and distribute CDs - you can get the basic setup for less than what most musicians would be willing to pay for a good electrical guitar. A few more years, and people will be able to acquire what is needed for making good quality movies too; after that it is more a question of developing your talents, honing your skills and putting together a good team, all of which can be done for considerably less than the several 100s of million USD that are spent on ovepriced (but mostly mediocre) actors, instructors, etc etc.
And isn't an allegedly democractic nation complaining about what another nation's population has democratically elected, kinda.... hypocritical? Or is it only 'real democracy' when people choose American style, braindead capitalism, even if the population has to be bound, gagged and drugged before they make the 'right' choice?
Iran has, despite all the propaganda that has been emitted by the likes of Fox News and the US government, been a fairly reasonable power in the Middle East. They certainly were before their current president got elected, and I wonder if he didn't get elected because the Iranian people felt that the West were simply out to get them, no matter what. A lot of things in the world would much better if the US would put their ambitions on the backburner and instead start using the brains that my American friends keep assuring me you actually have.
So perhaps it would be better to let them have their nuclear facilities and try to open up the relations just a fraction. Not that I think there is much hope of that, seeing how the clowns in the White House keep roaring and posturing while on the other hand letting Israel get away with absolutely anything and everything.
It all comes down to what you define as violence, I suppose. Isn't the basic idea in Pac Man that you control a little 'circle with a mouth' and the purpose is to eat everything in your path while avoiding being killed by monsters? And isn't that a violent theme? The only question, as far as I can see, is how she calculated these percentages.
I think there's a lot of unanswered questions and doubtful points in this. First of all, however, as far as I can see they are not talking about growing tissue in a laboratory, they are talking about clenes, like the cloned sheep 'Dolly' (or whatever tha name was). This means that they are simply producing a calf embryo and let it grow the usual way. So this is not the fabled end to all hunger and malnutrition; rather, it's just another exercise in meaningless luxury. Or perhaps they hope in the future to be able to produce a kind of cow that is always the same, and which possesses characteristics that make it easy to produce and process.
Another thing is, the quality of meat depends on a lot of things other than genetics, most of which we can only exert limited control over, even if we know what they are. The sort of feed the animal eats, its health, amount of exercise etc etc. Plus, the treatment of the meat after slaughter. And, of course, what one person thinks of as good meat may not be what another one likes.
On top of all that comes the fact that meat isn't actually all that good for you, particularly red meat. It clogs up your arteries, overloads the kidneys with things like uric acid, apparently gives you cancer as well etc etc. Don't believe me? Well, all I know is, I used to eat loads of meat all my life and ended up with a host of nice nice things like gout and kidney problems. Now I hardly touch meat - and all those problems are gone.
Why would you think he would care? I think that personally he doesn't a hoot about whether you kill embryos, just like he doesn't really care whether civilians are massacred in his war game in the Middle East. He will care if he is told to care by the guys with most money.
Anyway, I think this debate about not killing 'human life' is totally out of proportion with reality. We are talking about a tiny lump of cells, not unlike a drop of snot; in fact, you shed more human cells each time you blow your nose of go to the toilet. If 'human life' is that holy, should we fight against people cruelly killing off body cells? Or how about cancer cells? They are most definitely human - is it wrong to treat cancer?
Of course not - it would be silly to suggest this, but no sillier than being against harvesting stem cells from ammbryos.
New Zealand and Australia investing up to USD 200 per capita on IT, while India and China spend a dismal USD 1
The important thing here is not so much how much they invest in IT, but how they invest it. I mean, seeing how the public sector wasts billions of GBP here in UK on badly designed, badly executed mammoth projects that invariably miss all deadlines, go over budget by several orders of magnitude and then fail, I would rather have them not spend the money at all.
One big factor in why these projects always fail is that IT jobs in the public sector are underpaid, compared to the private sector, so they mostly get the people who couldn't cut in the private sector. And those people make one stupid decision after another. I'd rather see the public IT salaries top those of the private sector; that way at least there would be a chance that our tax money isn't just wasted by incompetents.
How can the system still be buggy? I mean, seariously? Haven't they had several years to complete it in now? A voting system seems to be such a simple application, even if you spiff it up with loads of extras, such as automatic reporting to a central database, security features etc etc. Have they had to invent the transistor and the binary computer all over? I know I'm a brilliant programmer (and sexy as hell too), but I would have thought that even lesser mortals would have big problems stretching the coding of a voting system out over several years, let alone leaving it full of bugs.
So how come they are able to stay in business? Is it the power of the free market?
This is not something 'the environmentalists' need to do - their job, inasmuch as they have any official role, is to do exactly what they do: point out the dangers, because that is what they are qualified to do, as opposed to eg. you. They don't have any power over what the politicians, businesses, farmers and consumers do.
And you are right, we will all end up in caves, the few that survive, if we don't all take this serious and START DOING OUR BIT. No of course I don't believe the bit about caves, but one way or the other, we are all going to have to face up to this problem. Not just the government or 'these environmentalists'; it is some thing we all must take part in, both by saving resources in our own households, but also by putting pressure on our governments, businesses and farmers.
And that, I think is the message from 'these environmentalists'.
How about in the West?
on
Tibet's Mesh
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· Score: 1
Is there anything fundmental stopping us from doing the same? Yes, yes, I know, we may not really need it, though the idea certainly has something going for it even though most of us can easily get online. What I mean is - how about the legal side of it? I can imagine that there may be laws controlling these things, which they seem to be happily free from in Tibet, evil communists though they be.
As I already replied in another posting, I was actually just making a joke - inspired by some Clint Eastwood film, I think.
However, I think your reply deserves some response, so here goes. Some of the reasons you list seem valid enough; but I'm sure you realize that on the net you will never be truly anonyous. The IP packets need to know where to get from their server to your machine, so they'll know who and where you are. Also, since it is a commercial service, they will hold credit card info etc. Unless the service is hosted in a country where the US have no leverage at all (like China;-) you can, and will at some point, be found out if you express views that are sufficiently controversial.
I think in many ways this is a luxury problem - you want freedom (of speech) without consequences; but freedom has always cost something, and you have to be prepared to pay the price.
First let me say that my comment was ony meant as a humorous paraphrasing of some Clint Eastwood film where he says something like 'There must be a thousand reasons why I shouldn't blow you away, but right now I can't think of one'. To see it marked up as 'Insightful' is surprising, not to say a bit ridiculous. Apart from that I guarantee you that what I smoke doesn't tend to make me less imaginative.
Freedom of Speech? Yes, it did spring to mind, but when I had finished laughing, I thought it had only little to do with freedom of speech. Anonymity is simply hiding and while there are many good reasons why you would want to hide, there are even more bad ones. I'm not going to parrot the 'terrorist' nonsense, but spammers, virus producers and other criminals are probably the biggest group of users of this kind of service.
I don't know how it is in the US now, but I doubt that a generally law-abiding person would get into much trouble by airing controversial views; I could be wrong, of course.
I think it is good to see somebody actually stand up their opinions against the barrage of neo-fascist nonsense from the war-randy crowd. Being a pacifist does not have to be the same as never lifting your hands to defend yourself or your family - that's just a caricature the militants want you to believe. But there is a huge difference between defending yourself if you have no other options left, and the kind of hormone-pumped agressiveness that makes certain people use any excuse to jump up, grab their automatic gun with one hand and their dick with the other and start shooting while wanking wildly.
There are many very valid reasons why one would not want to support the military - not the least of which is the fact that the military is a institution of power that is not under democratic control and which is rarely if at all held accountable for its actions.
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It is obviously true that the one that goes in front has 'first mover advantage'; even lesser minds have realized that before now. But linux is actually in front in many areas - it's just that opensource SW doesn't get advertised loudly everywhere.
UNIX (and now linux) has traditionally been the platform for technical creativity - just think of the 'everything-as-files' concept as one example. This is of course because most true creativity happens in the minds of people who aren't yet in a wellpaid job: students, young PhD researchers, the nerd who sits up late in his room every night, etc. When you don't have a large company budget in your back, you are not likely to want to invest a lot in Windows, Visual Studio and other expensive SW; certainly not when there are excellent tools that can had for free.
So Microsoft only have first mover advantage in narrowly focused areas: the ones that fall within their sphere of business interests; only MS Office, really. Which is why, to take another example, we had Firefox coming up with one good idea after another, like tabbed browsing and extensions, which MS are now trying to bring into IE.
No - the alcohol prohibition didn't work because it was blatantly obvious that is was an unreasonable law. Everybody (except perhaps puritans) drank alcohol and everybody knew that prohibition was not the way to limit the problems with alcohol abuse. Not so with gambling - yes, a lot of people gamble, at least if you count such things as betting on sports events, but it very far from everybody that get a kick out of it. On top of that, I think many people sympathize with hitting the ones who profit from more or less shady, organized gambling cartels, even if they bet on sports events every week. It's worth bearing in mind that gambling (especially online) has a huge potential for swindling a lot of people out of a lot of money, something that can't be done as easily with alcohol.
The modern day equivalent of the alcohol prohibition is more like the current drug laws. A very large segment of the population use recreational drugs and feel the laws are completely out of touch with reality. It would help a lot on people's respect for the law if it was changed to actually reflect how dangerous the individual drugs are; but that would mean either prohibiting alcohol and tobacco or legalising cannabis, ecstasy and a number of other drugs that are known to be less dangerous than those.
Virgin Galactic? Space tourism? Seems sombody have their heads too full of hot air. We are still barely able to get outside Earth's athmosphere; the galaxy and even interplanetary space are still decades away, at least as tourist resorts. Just think about it - have you ever been to one of those socalled 'luxury' resorts on this planet, where your room (which you are only going to sleep in) is equipped with a big kitchen, a bed that could sleep three people, a living room with two tvs etc etc; and everything is ridiculously expensive (it is a LUXURY resort, after all) - and you are far away from any kind of actual fun, so you're sort of cooped up in meaningless, useless luxury. That's when you realize what boredom can be. Now imagine how much fun it would be, being confined to what is basically a big sack of gas with absolutely nothing to do and REALLY nowhere to go.
I think this sort of 'research' is done with little insight into what they are researching. IMO what they have found may simply show that sitting in front of a computer/TV or such is something that appeals strongly to people with little interest in their local community - the typical 'nerd type'?
or maybe they interpret their results wrongly; I would say that using the internet is likely to widen your horizon. This will of course mean that on one hand you get to know about things that are far away geographically and culturally; on the other hand this will mean that you perspective is less narrowly focused on your local community. To me that seems like a good thing.
Very true, but pornography isn't really delivering to goods. The problem is that pornography is a fairly sterile and sexless thing that wouldn't excite people if they didn't feel that it somehow was a transgression - it has to feel 'naughty'. IOW, porn depends on society being prudish. Once we stop looking at sexual activity as something wrong or dirty, pornography becomes less interesting.
That is not to say that it not pleasing to look at naked bodies; but I wouldn't call nudity 'pornography' - perhaps a better term is 'eroticism'?
In my nearly 30 years of coding computers of all sizes and shapes, I have reached the conclusion that there is a lot to be said for simplicity in your setup, no matter how big the project. I have found again and again that the most important concern is portability; even though you work on Linux, you live in a world of UNIXes and even Windows. So the following are my suggestions:
1. Learn to use vi properly - not vim, but 'classic' vi. Or alternatively, use emacs. It is not that vim is bad, but it is not on all platforms. Being able to do my coding anywhere is something I have had enormous benefit from over the years. GUIs and syntax highlighting may be pleasing to the eye and look cool, but proper indentation is all you really need.
2. Learn to use make properly. GNU make is probably the de facto standard now; it is certainly the same on all platforms. Put subprojects in subdirectories; it is very simple and efficient.
3. Learn to use a source code control system properly. I prefer Perforce; it comes with a GUI interface if you must.
4. Learn to code properly. This is not so much about algorithms or fancy coding, but about legibility. I always imagine I'm writing my code as an example for somebody to see how the current problem should be solved. I include comments that actually explain what and why rather than stating the obvious. I indent according to a rigorous model and I avoid unnecessary whitespace. Code should be read as literature, so don't put things in columns - that's for accountants.
5. Learn to debug properly. I don't use debuggers at all - I used to, but stopped because I found the advantage was too small. Instead I rely on trace statements - yes, basically printf()'s. It is only in the very simplest cases that a debugger is effective. But whatever your preference, learn to do it properly; the UNIX debuggers are more or less equivalent, so I suppose there's no real need to stick with just one.
- So why not an IDE? Well, mostly because you don't need it. It binds you to just one way of doing things and it isolates you from what is actually going on. If you are used to eg. Visual Studio, do you actually know what happens underneath it all? You will need to know from time, especially if you are going to write portable code. A better way, I find, is to have several xterms open, one for each task, more or less: one for building (with make), one for testing the program, and one or more for editing code.
And before you start scoffing at my ideas, I can say that I'm far from being the slowest coder in my company.
Do you honestly believe that you have to comply with the law of every country with Internet access in the world if you post something online? Would Chinese law keep you from publishing a story critical of their goverment?
Yes, and yes.
What we are talking about here is not what people post in their blogs, but the pursuit of commercial activities on the internet. If you want to make money from people in a country, then IMO you're obliged to respect the laws and customs of that country. And in the case of a newspaper like NYT, I think it is not just prudent, but morally correct to make an effort to think through the consequences of what they do, even in other countries. They are read by many people in the world, so they have great influence, and it is right that they try not to tumble around blindly, possibly hurting somebody in the process.
As for your second question, yes, if I was the editor of a major newspaper, I would indeed think about the consequences of publishing articles critical of any government. I would ask myself questions like 'Is there a risk that this article will endanger somebody's life (eg. one of my own journalists)?' or 'Will this article hurt the diplomatic relations at a very bad moment in time?' etc etc.
It's called being responsible.
Starting with the Xerox Alto and the Star, ACM Queue briefly covers the history of human-computer interaction from past to present. It doesn't stop there, however. Using a hypothetical situation involving context-awareness in cellphones, the author lays out his thoughts on the future of HCI, offering opinions, advice, and examples.
What I really hate about these musings about the future is the tendency to always make it a push for unwelcome, mind-bending crap, like adverts. Don't these people realize that adverts are probably the largest single obstacle for the internet becoming something we could actually enjoy? If even our mobiles are going to pester us with a barrage of nonsense, trying to take over our lives, I think I personally would prefer to do without one.
But always remember, virtual memory is only there to buy you time, so you can keep running until you can increase main storage.
And, of course, if at all possible, use several smaller swap partitions on SEPARATE disks to get better performance.
- not with the existing model, where huge entertainment factories produce muzak and movies on an assembly line. But that is the beauty of the internet and modern technology: as time progresses, we need them less and less. It is already possible for anybody who is moderately skilled with computers to record and distribute CDs - you can get the basic setup for less than what most musicians would be willing to pay for a good electrical guitar. A few more years, and people will be able to acquire what is needed for making good quality movies too; after that it is more a question of developing your talents, honing your skills and putting together a good team, all of which can be done for considerably less than the several 100s of million USD that are spent on ovepriced (but mostly mediocre) actors, instructors, etc etc.
Just go for it!
And isn't an allegedly democractic nation complaining about what another nation's population has democratically elected, kinda .... hypocritical? Or is it only 'real democracy' when people choose American style, braindead capitalism, even if the population has to be bound, gagged and drugged before they make the 'right' choice?
Iran has, despite all the propaganda that has been emitted by the likes of Fox News and the US government, been a fairly reasonable power in the Middle East. They certainly were before their current president got elected, and I wonder if he didn't get elected because the Iranian people felt that the West were simply out to get them, no matter what. A lot of things in the world would much better if the US would put their ambitions on the backburner and instead start using the brains that my American friends keep assuring me you actually have.
So perhaps it would be better to let them have their nuclear facilities and try to open up the relations just a fraction. Not that I think there is much hope of that, seeing how the clowns in the White House keep roaring and posturing while on the other hand letting Israel get away with absolutely anything and everything.
It all comes down to what you define as violence, I suppose. Isn't the basic idea in Pac Man that you control a little 'circle with a mouth' and the purpose is to eat everything in your path while avoiding being killed by monsters? And isn't that a violent theme? The only question, as far as I can see, is how she calculated these percentages.
Cloned beef? Only the best quality meat?
I think there's a lot of unanswered questions and doubtful points in this. First of all, however, as far as I can see they are not talking about growing tissue in a laboratory, they are talking about clenes, like the cloned sheep 'Dolly' (or whatever tha name was). This means that they are simply producing a calf embryo and let it grow the usual way. So this is not the fabled end to all hunger and malnutrition; rather, it's just another exercise in meaningless luxury. Or perhaps they hope in the future to be able to produce a kind of cow that is always the same, and which possesses characteristics that make it easy to produce and process.
Another thing is, the quality of meat depends on a lot of things other than genetics, most of which we can only exert limited control over, even if we know what they are. The sort of feed the animal eats, its health, amount of exercise etc etc. Plus, the treatment of the meat after slaughter. And, of course, what one person thinks of as good meat may not be what another one likes.
On top of all that comes the fact that meat isn't actually all that good for you, particularly red meat. It clogs up your arteries, overloads the kidneys with things like uric acid, apparently gives you cancer as well etc etc. Don't believe me? Well, all I know is, I used to eat loads of meat all my life and ended up with a host of nice nice things like gout and kidney problems. Now I hardly touch meat - and all those problems are gone.
Why would you think he would care? I think that personally he doesn't a hoot about whether you kill embryos, just like he doesn't really care whether civilians are massacred in his war game in the Middle East. He will care if he is told to care by the guys with most money.
Anyway, I think this debate about not killing 'human life' is totally out of proportion with reality. We are talking about a tiny lump of cells, not unlike a drop of snot; in fact, you shed more human cells each time you blow your nose of go to the toilet. If 'human life' is that holy, should we fight against people cruelly killing off body cells? Or how about cancer cells? They are most definitely human - is it wrong to treat cancer?
Of course not - it would be silly to suggest this, but no sillier than being against harvesting stem cells from ammbryos.
New Zealand and Australia investing up to USD 200 per capita on IT, while India and China spend a dismal USD 1
The important thing here is not so much how much they invest in IT, but how they invest it. I mean, seeing how the public sector wasts billions of GBP here in UK on badly designed, badly executed mammoth projects that invariably miss all deadlines, go over budget by several orders of magnitude and then fail, I would rather have them not spend the money at all.
One big factor in why these projects always fail is that IT jobs in the public sector are underpaid, compared to the private sector, so they mostly get the people who couldn't cut in the private sector. And those people make one stupid decision after another. I'd rather see the public IT salaries top those of the private sector; that way at least there would be a chance that our tax money isn't just wasted by incompetents.
Do we see 'the brown screen of death'?
- remember, the opposite of increment is excrement.
How can the system still be buggy? I mean, seariously? Haven't they had several years to complete it in now? A voting system seems to be such a simple application, even if you spiff it up with loads of extras, such as automatic reporting to a central database, security features etc etc. Have they had to invent the transistor and the binary computer all over? I know I'm a brilliant programmer (and sexy as hell too), but I would have thought that even lesser mortals would have big problems stretching the coding of a voting system out over several years, let alone leaving it full of bugs.
So how come they are able to stay in business? Is it the power of the free market?
This is not something 'the environmentalists' need to do - their job, inasmuch as they have any official role, is to do exactly what they do: point out the dangers, because that is what they are qualified to do, as opposed to eg. you. They don't have any power over what the politicians, businesses, farmers and consumers do.
And you are right, we will all end up in caves, the few that survive, if we don't all take this serious and START DOING OUR BIT. No of course I don't believe the bit about caves, but one way or the other, we are all going to have to face up to this problem. Not just the government or 'these environmentalists'; it is some thing we all must take part in, both by saving resources in our own households, but also by putting pressure on our governments, businesses and farmers.
And that, I think is the message from 'these environmentalists'.
Is there anything fundmental stopping us from doing the same? Yes, yes, I know, we may not really need it, though the idea certainly has something going for it even though most of us can easily get online. What I mean is - how about the legal side of it? I can imagine that there may be laws controlling these things, which they seem to be happily free from in Tibet, evil communists though they be.
Having looked at GW Bush, how can anyone doubt that we evolved from apes?
As I already replied in another posting, I was actually just making a joke - inspired by some Clint Eastwood film, I think.
;-) you can, and will at some point, be found out if you express views that are sufficiently controversial.
However, I think your reply deserves some response, so here goes. Some of the reasons you list seem valid enough; but I'm sure you realize that on the net you will never be truly anonyous. The IP packets need to know where to get from their server to your machine, so they'll know who and where you are. Also, since it is a commercial service, they will hold credit card info etc. Unless the service is hosted in a country where the US have no leverage at all (like China
I think in many ways this is a luxury problem - you want freedom (of speech) without consequences; but freedom has always cost something, and you have to be prepared to pay the price.
First let me say that my comment was ony meant as a humorous paraphrasing of some Clint Eastwood film where he says something like 'There must be a thousand reasons why I shouldn't blow you away, but right now I can't think of one'. To see it marked up as 'Insightful' is surprising, not to say a bit ridiculous. Apart from that I guarantee you that what I smoke doesn't tend to make me less imaginative.
Freedom of Speech? Yes, it did spring to mind, but when I had finished laughing, I thought it had only little to do with freedom of speech. Anonymity is simply hiding and while there are many good reasons why you would want to hide, there are even more bad ones. I'm not going to parrot the 'terrorist' nonsense, but spammers, virus producers and other criminals are probably the biggest group of users of this kind of service.
I don't know how it is in the US now, but I doubt that a generally law-abiding person would get into much trouble by airing controversial views; I could be wrong, of course.
Doesn't anybody realize how explosive this can be? My daughter once shat her nappy in two!! Talk about a pyroclastic flow..
I think it is good to see somebody actually stand up their opinions against the barrage of neo-fascist nonsense from the war-randy crowd. Being a pacifist does not have to be the same as never lifting your hands to defend yourself or your family - that's just a caricature the militants want you to believe. But there is a huge difference between defending yourself if you have no other options left, and the kind of hormone-pumped agressiveness that makes certain people use any excuse to jump up, grab their automatic gun with one hand and their dick with the other and start shooting while wanking wildly.
There are many very valid reasons why one would not want to support the military - not the least of which is the fact that the military is a institution of power that is not under democratic control and which is rarely if at all held accountable for its actions.