No way I'm going to use that. Stealing data and claiming it to be yours is pretty common in the scientific world. I won't publish my data anywhere in any form but an article in a peer reviewed journal thank you. I worked hard to get my data and work out all the difficulties and I want the credit for it. By "your data", you mean that all expenses of your research were covered by you? Including Salary/Stipend and Field/Lab work?
You see, if you have public funding, maybe the public should be aware that you are calling something payed with all our taxes as "yours".
Regards, A PhD student funded with public money PS - I know the this practice of appropriation of common goods is pervasive in science, I am not targeting you as an individual, but the majority science community which has the view of "my data, my property" and developed most of the work with public money.
I am not the type that needs to do big Excel Solver sheets or Matlab simulations while on the go. And if you are a matlab guy (computationally intensive, I mean) on the road, most probably you are toast anyway as the battery will run out before you can say "dynamic programming algorithm", even if you have a good battery/low consumption laptop
This is one of the most overwrought comments I've read in a long time. How exactly is the inability to get iPhone features in other products really impinging on the "collective good of society?" We're not talking about an overpriced patented drug here. We're talking about a frickin' phone! If Apple wants (and is allowed) to keep features to themselves, none of us who choose not to buy an iPhone are going to die or suffer great harm because of it....
Either way, though, regulators are not the solution here. Any government (Democratic or Republican) is just going to screw things up even more, because they'll have their own set of interests--namely self-perpetuation--at heart. You do note that you are contradicting yourself here aren't you? First you say that phones are not a "collective good" issue and as such Apple should be able to use pattents (which are, alas, govermnent/state intervention).
An then you end up saying that gov would only screw things even more...
So what should it be: no gov (therefore no regulation AND no patents/copyright and enforcement) or some gov?
You see, if gov intervenes to protect the big guy with patents and enforcement(Apple), it could also intervene to protect the small guy (through regulation). Why should gov only spend effort (tax money) in protecting the strong?
Shameless plug... I have a comparison mainly involving Scala and Groovy. The short story is that I would argue that Scala is not ready for prime time and that FP is not a small step for "Joe Java programmer" requiring hard retraining. Furthermore Groovy has most of the advantages of Scala (and in some cases is clearly more mature)
I would guess that you would obviously be modded troll/redundant or something.
But you are so right!
I was a Gnome user since the start, but, at least in Ubuntu it really sucks in user experience, and performance. It really seems like a heartless corporate desktop. I tried Xubuntu (not bad) and now I am at Kubuntu, which is more than fine.
Kubuntu should be the standard Ubuntu, really.
And yes, Evolution is bad, but to be honest I went back to pine, as Thunderbird is also a bit lacking. Kmail didn't caught me also.
Note that I am not a KDE troll, far from it, I was a Gnome user for most of my life, but at least in Ubuntu, KDE is a much better experience.
The same happens in some areas in... the United States. I remember a few months ago Richard Branson, the UK flamboyant tycoon, trying to start up a Virgin brand Airliner in the US and having problems because the "majority of capital has to be American"
That's weird. We have no problems letting Arab-owned companies own all our shipping ports, so why are we worried about some little airline? Actually its 25% of shares
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there). The same happens in some areas in... the United States. I remember a few months ago Richard Branson, the UK flamboyant tycoon, trying to start up a Virgin brand Airliner in the US and having problems because the "majority of capital has to be American"
There are alternatives to Hotmail. There are none to the iPhone (so far). Only if you consider the iphone as a good underachiever or are very tied to media spin. The review above linked is, well, brutal, but is quite on the spot. I have a Nokia E61a, and on most functionality and even leisure it compares very well against the iphone (not on trendiness, that I give you), and, mind you, the E61a is older than the iphone.
There are many alternatives to the iPhone, depending on the viewpoint, some of them are better and are around for long
Bananas and potatoes are hardly low in calories. Neither are oils, flour or butter. Precisely. Butter is a good example of a _very_ "bad food", flour and potatoes are just hidrocarbons, not much more (you can use it in a balanced diet, but in limited quantities). Most oils are actually not very good or at least subject to heated discussion (barring olive oil, which is, helas, expensive).
So, yes, a banana diet. Plus pasta/bread/rice (within limited quantities) and dried beans (the only cheap source of protein I can remember).
Milk, fruit, meat????
The point is: I can do 2500 kcal with less than 2 pounds/day (butter, pasta, chocolate, cookies). At least treble that for a varied, balanced diet (your "5 portion a day" of fruits and veggies will cost 2 pounds, especially if you buy by the piece - the acceptable comparison when compared with the convenient 45p chocolates available at the newsagent just around the block).
Taxing heavily chocolate (maybe using the money to cut tax on veggies)I'm pretty sure that the prices of apples and oranges are already similar to most chocolates/crisps, and bananas are cheaper than anything other than those 10p space raiders.
The main reasons people choose unhealthy food is because they're nicer and need less preparation. Think in terms of calories per unit of money and chocolate is WAY cheaper than apples in the UK (using that 10p, I suppose you are in the UK).
2x00 calories/day healthy food is expensive. It only becomes more tamable if you are vegetarian, but even so...
Looking at European governmental action, typically these governments act to protect the consumer. I do not immediately see how forcing a higher price on a commodity can be good for the consumer. I can: Say for instance, healthy food is, in some cases and some countries, more expensive than unhealthy food. Taxing heavily chocolate (maybe using the money to cut tax on veggies) would make the cost variable less important when buying food, letting the consumer choose on other criteria (they could still go the "chocolate way" if so desired, nobody is imposing a "healthy life style"). This would probably impact people with less money.
I would also consider making all things "free" illegal: there is no such thing as "free shipping". The cost is just integrated elsewhere in a less transparent way. It is like "free" credit card usage at a shop - the cost (credit card charge) is just spilled over to people who pay in money.
Also, taxing fuel (to a price that is more near its real value, considering resource depletion) makes the system on the overall more sustainable and leads to a design (city planning) more based on public transport patterns. I think we will see real benefit from this as oil prices surge more and more.
So, yes, I see lots of cases that state induced price hikes and state intervention disallowing "free" bullshit is a good thing.
It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
So, surgeon and sysadmin, did not exist 10 years ago? How did we manage before?
Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh?
I can imagine that. First, I was, long ago, a sysadmin. And I have enough health problems from time to time to need to call the doctor. So I can relate to both your scenarios very well. To both I have the same answer: good management and respect for one's leisure time: In the best NOC that I have worked with (a reference in Europe) nobody was ever on 24/7 call always. That job rotated. If you are overworked, though luck, that IS your problem, don't make society pay for your poor work arrangements (the same goes to your wife). Regarding health: If I have a really serious health problem I dial 112 (EU's 911). If I had the need to really contact somebody that knew my condition on the minute, I would have a backup: batteries go down, people enter planes, even doctors occasionally get drunk (or many other situations), I would never make my life dependent on a single person on the other side of the line.
All your scenarios can be solved by an arrangement that is better to you and your wife (unless you consider you too be excessively self-important) in the sense that you have the right to rest and to your costumers: I, as a patient want to be served by a doctor that is not stressed 24/7... that is the best way for a mistake that might kill me.
Less stress: you are not _that_ important (neither your surgeon wife) and can (and should) be replaced when you are taking your deserved rest time.
Going back to the original topic: More respect for the public space. Every case is a different case, but I would say: Restaurants, well it depends. Cinemas: If you can't shut down, than wait for the DVD release.
No, the entire movie theater revolves around the experience of 95% of the people who attend to have a screening reasonably undisturbed. The ones who are self-centered are the ones who make/take calls (I never saw a single case of an emergency: Which I would consider reasonable and acceptable).
Proper behaving at a theater has to do with respect for the public space, like not smoking or not parking your car on pedestrian sidewalks. Says a lot about your civility and general societal respect for what is public.
I am guessing that you either did business with IBM a long time ago or that you really don't know what you are talking about.
Currently, most IBM solutions are fairly open. This up to their mainframe offer where you can install a very standard Linux distro (mainly SuSE, but also Red Hat or Debian).
Most of their frameworks (like application servers) are standard based. Sometimes they suck from a technical point of view, but from an openness perspective they are more than OK.
Yes, 10 years ago IBM was really bad (TM) with regards to lock in. Not anymore from my experience.
My father (61 years, computer illiterate) works from home, on an old computer (Still with Windows Me). At the time of installation, Linux was not read for a user like him, but I decided to install OpenOffice and Firefox. You know what? 100% of work documents (and he receives several word documents a day) always worked. He has less than 5% problems with funny PPTs that friends send him, but that is all... He also does some light spreadsheet processing, never had a problem.
His biggest problems: Virus, Spam and undesired access from his stepson.
This year he is going to change computer. Obviously Kubuntu (or any other easy to use Linux) is the better choice, as it will solve 2/3 of his problems.
Games? The games he plays are all available on Linux (hint: He is not waiting for Duke Nukem Forever, but is a master at Tetris).
I could talk about my case, in my work there are 2 Linux users and gazillions of Windows users, and I never had a problem... On the other hand, my Windows colleagues had (an inspection from the police regarding pirated software).
I could talk of a lot of other cases that I know off, I personally don't know, on the business front, of a single case of failure for Linux users (granted, it is a sample based on my small universe).
The point is, for a reasonable part of business users Linux/Firefox/Openoffice is more than enough.
The only companies that I know off that Linux would make life problematic are those using Exchange calendaring system (which is quite nice, actually). But even that, maybe there is a nice plugin already (I don't use Exchange calendaring for more the 3 years)
Battlestar Galactica (new series), initial episodes on season 3 about the fight of a human refugee camp against the Cylons and its connection to the Iraqi insurgents versus the American occupier is getting disturbingly more and more similar.
I have just finished a MSc in bioinformatics (I looked at your page, and I am going in the "opposite" direction, from CS to Biology) and it seems to me that biologists are very closed with regards to, say, marker data. At least the ones that I know take it as a competitive advantage to lock data as much as possible.
From my MSc I have published only on closed journals (Bioinformatics and Molecular Ecology Notes) and people around mostly (like 90%+) publish on closed access pubs (Molecular Ecology, Genetics,...).
Note that I am fully for open data and open access (If i had the money I would have targeted BMC Bioinformatics before Bioinformatics even with the lower IF), and that I am very frustrated with how things are closed.
I would like it to be more as you say... But I see a different reality.
I don't mean to troll but they could try to spend some effort in better support word and excel. The majority of documents that I share work flawlessly in OpenOffice on Linux, but the majority doesn't work at all on Google. It would be a fantastic platform for migration from Office on shared environments, if it worked...
I know, probably some problems are AJAX structural limitations, but, even so, Google could, and should, do better.
We will only be completely protected from terrorists when the corrections are mandatory to be published with at least as much impact as the original terrorist version.
Better yet: Publishing news should only be allowed after screening from an anti-terrorist correction unit.
We have to protect our society from dangerous terrorists, who are attacking our way of life everyday and in every front.
Freedom of press is an hurdle that we can live without, it either that or the terrorists might succeed in attacking us! Fear the terrorists, Fear, Fear, Fear...
Re:It follows logically that drinkers would get mo
on
Socializing For The Win?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
just one last question - where would your job be without those deals and those sales?
Where would their job be if they had nothing to sell?
Although I see your point, I think the main issue is to strike a balance between how rewards are distributed.
And - my highly subjective view - generally sales makes more than their fare share of it.
If, say, a coder makes something that has a high impact on company productivity he might go - probably - unnoticed. If a sales guy/gal makes a big sale, (s)he normally is a hero. That is, at least, what I tend to see.
Disclaimer: I'm in the academics "business".
I am speculating here, but I think this might have big consequences inside... IBM.
AFAIK, Notes was the single big piece missing to allow desktop transition to Linux inside IBM. I would bet that the more geeky IBM employees that were stuck on Windows because of Notes will change.
And maybe in the future the company will encorage this.
If you consider the sheer size of IBM its no small deal for Linux deskop usage...
Just speculating though... Is there any IBMer wanting to comment?
At least in something we can say we have the best system in the world.
We can do things like:
Pay for almost anything like electricity, social security, taxes, mobile phones, tution fees, rent,...
Buy a train ticket
Buy a ticket to most of big shows.
See the last ~15 account changes.
Get a temporary credit card number to use on the Internet with a small amount of money (so if someone gets the number after usage, its useless as it has no money on it).
Do money transfers (not international).
And lots of other things I can't remember now.
The bad thing is that sometimes there are people that spend like 10 minutes in a machine paying all their bills.
The system is uniform across all banks (although most banks also offer their own ATM system in parallel)
There are no usage fees (altough they are trying to introduce fees if you use an ATM not from your bank)
Slashdot Mirror
Where are the mod points when you need them?
I would have love to have written this.
You see, if you have public funding, maybe the public should be aware that you are calling something payed with all our taxes as "yours".
Regards,
A PhD student funded with public money
PS - I know the this practice of appropriation of common goods is pervasive in science, I am not targeting you as an individual, but the majority science community which has the view of "my data, my property" and developed most of the work with public money.
Either way, though, regulators are not the solution here. Any government (Democratic or Republican) is just going to screw things up even more, because they'll have their own set of interests--namely self-perpetuation--at heart. You do note that you are contradicting yourself here aren't you? First you say that phones are not a "collective good" issue and as such Apple should be able to use pattents (which are, alas, govermnent/state intervention).
An then you end up saying that gov would only screw things even more...
So what should it be: no gov (therefore no regulation AND no patents/copyright and enforcement) or some gov?
You see, if gov intervenes to protect the big guy with patents and enforcement(Apple), it could also intervene to protect the small guy (through regulation). Why should gov only spend effort (tax money) in protecting the strong?
Shameless plug... I have a comparison mainly involving Scala and Groovy. The short story is that I would argue that Scala is not ready for prime time and that FP is not a small step for "Joe Java programmer" requiring hard retraining. Furthermore Groovy has most of the advantages of Scala (and in some cases is clearly more mature)
I would guess that you would obviously be modded troll/redundant or something.
But you are so right!
I was a Gnome user since the start, but, at least in Ubuntu it really sucks in user experience, and performance. It really seems like a heartless corporate desktop. I tried Xubuntu (not bad) and now I am at Kubuntu, which is more than fine.
Kubuntu should be the standard Ubuntu, really.
And yes, Evolution is bad, but to be honest I went back to pine, as Thunderbird is also a bit lacking. Kmail didn't caught me also.
Note that I am not a KDE troll, far from it, I was a Gnome user for most of my life, but at least in Ubuntu, KDE is a much better experience.
That's weird. We have no problems letting Arab-owned companies own all our shipping ports, so why are we worried about some little airline? Actually its 25% of shares
There are many alternatives to the iPhone, depending on the viewpoint, some of them are better and are around for long
I do I only have mod points when I don't need them?
This is factual and insightful.
So, yes, a banana diet. Plus pasta/bread/rice (within limited quantities) and dried beans (the only cheap source of protein I can remember).
Milk, fruit, meat????
The point is: I can do 2500 kcal with less than 2 pounds/day (butter, pasta, chocolate, cookies). At least treble that for a varied, balanced diet (your "5 portion a day" of fruits and veggies will cost 2 pounds, especially if you buy by the piece - the acceptable comparison when compared with the convenient 45p chocolates available at the newsagent just around the block).
The main reasons people choose unhealthy food is because they're nicer and need less preparation. Think in terms of calories per unit of money and chocolate is WAY cheaper than apples in the UK (using that 10p, I suppose you are in the UK).
2x00 calories/day healthy food is expensive. It only becomes more tamable if you are vegetarian, but even so...
I would also consider making all things "free" illegal: there is no such thing as "free shipping". The cost is just integrated elsewhere in a less transparent way. It is like "free" credit card usage at a shop - the cost (credit card charge) is just spilled over to people who pay in money.
Also, taxing fuel (to a price that is more near its real value, considering resource depletion) makes the system on the overall more sustainable and leads to a design (city planning) more based on public transport patterns. I think we will see real benefit from this as oil prices surge more and more.
So, yes, I see lots of cases that state induced price hikes and state intervention disallowing "free" bullshit is a good thing.
It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
So, surgeon and sysadmin, did not exist 10 years ago? How did we manage before?Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh?
I can imagine that. First, I was, long ago, a sysadmin. And I have enough health problems from time to time to need to call the doctor. So I can relate to both your scenarios very well.To both I have the same answer: good management and respect for one's leisure time:
In the best NOC that I have worked with (a reference in Europe) nobody was ever on 24/7 call always. That job rotated. If you are overworked, though luck, that IS your problem, don't make society pay for your poor work arrangements (the same goes to your wife).
Regarding health: If I have a really serious health problem I dial 112 (EU's 911). If I had the need to really contact somebody that knew my condition on the minute, I would have a backup: batteries go down, people enter planes, even doctors occasionally get drunk (or many other situations), I would never make my life dependent on a single person on the other side of the line.
All your scenarios can be solved by an arrangement that is better to you and your wife (unless you consider you too be excessively self-important) in the sense that you have the right to rest and to your costumers: I, as a patient want to be served by a doctor that is not stressed 24/7... that is the best way for a mistake that might kill me.
Less stress: you are not _that_ important (neither your surgeon wife) and can (and should) be replaced when you are taking your deserved rest time.
Going back to the original topic: More respect for the public space. Every case is a different case, but I would say: Restaurants, well it depends. Cinemas: If you can't shut down, than wait for the DVD release.
No, the entire movie theater revolves around the experience of 95% of the people who attend to have a screening reasonably undisturbed. The ones who are self-centered are the ones who make/take calls (I never saw a single case of an emergency: Which I would consider reasonable and acceptable).
Proper behaving at a theater has to do with respect for the public space, like not smoking or not parking your car on pedestrian sidewalks. Says a lot about your civility and general societal respect for what is public.
I am guessing that you either did business with IBM a long time ago or that you really don't know what you are talking about.
Currently, most IBM solutions are fairly open. This up to their mainframe offer where you can install a very standard Linux distro (mainly SuSE, but also Red Hat or Debian).
Most of their frameworks (like application servers) are standard based. Sometimes they suck from a technical point of view, but from an openness perspective they are more than OK.
Yes, 10 years ago IBM was really bad (TM) with regards to lock in. Not anymore from my experience.
My father (61 years, computer illiterate) works from home, on an old computer (Still with Windows Me). At the time of installation, Linux was not read for a user like him, but I decided to install OpenOffice and Firefox. You know what? 100% of work documents (and he receives several word documents a day) always worked. He has less than 5% problems with funny PPTs that friends send him, but that is all... He also does some light spreadsheet processing, never had a problem.
His biggest problems: Virus, Spam and undesired access from his stepson.
This year he is going to change computer. Obviously Kubuntu (or any other easy to use Linux) is the better choice, as it will solve 2/3 of his problems.
Games? The games he plays are all available on Linux (hint: He is not waiting for Duke Nukem Forever, but is a master at Tetris).
I could talk about my case, in my work there are 2 Linux users and gazillions of Windows users, and I never had a problem... On the other hand, my Windows colleagues had (an inspection from the police regarding pirated software).
I could talk of a lot of other cases that I know off, I personally don't know, on the business front, of a single case of failure for Linux users (granted, it is a sample based on my small universe).
The point is, for a reasonable part of business users Linux/Firefox/Openoffice is more than enough.
The only companies that I know off that Linux would make life problematic are those using Exchange calendaring system (which is quite nice, actually). But even that, maybe there is a nice plugin already (I don't use Exchange calendaring for more the 3 years)
Battlestar Galactica (new series), initial episodes on season 3 about the fight of a human refugee camp against the Cylons and its connection to the Iraqi insurgents versus the American occupier is getting disturbingly more and more similar.
By the way there is long discussion here about Galactica and Iraq....
I somewhat disagree with your vision of things.
...).
I have just finished a MSc in bioinformatics (I looked at your page, and I am going in the "opposite" direction, from CS to Biology) and it seems to me that biologists are very closed with regards to, say, marker data. At least the ones that I know take it as a competitive advantage to lock data as much as possible.
From my MSc I have published only on closed journals (Bioinformatics and Molecular Ecology Notes) and people around mostly (like 90%+) publish on closed access pubs (Molecular Ecology, Genetics,
Note that I am fully for open data and open access (If i had the money I would have targeted BMC Bioinformatics before Bioinformatics even with the lower IF), and that I am very frustrated with how things are closed.
I would like it to be more as you say... But I see a different reality.
I don't mean to troll but they could try to spend some effort in better support word and excel. The majority of documents that I share work flawlessly in OpenOffice on Linux, but the majority doesn't work at all on Google. It would be a fantastic platform for migration from Office on shared environments, if it worked...
I know, probably some problems are AJAX structural limitations, but, even so, Google could, and should, do better.
We will only be completely protected from terrorists when the corrections are mandatory to be published with at least as much impact as the original terrorist version.
Better yet: Publishing news should only be allowed after screening from an anti-terrorist correction unit.
We have to protect our society from dangerous terrorists, who are attacking our way of life everyday and in every front.
Freedom of press is an hurdle that we can live without, it either that or the terrorists might succeed in attacking us! Fear the terrorists, Fear, Fear, Fear...
just one last question - where would your job be without those deals and those sales?
Where would their job be if they had nothing to sell?
Although I see your point, I think the main issue is to strike a balance between how rewards are distributed.
And - my highly subjective view - generally sales makes more than their fare share of it.
If, say, a coder makes something that has a high impact on company productivity he might go - probably - unnoticed. If a sales guy/gal makes a big sale, (s)he normally is a hero. That is, at least, what I tend to see.
Disclaimer: I'm in the academics "business".
May I ask what you think about Peak Oil?
I am speculating here, but I think this might have big consequences inside ... IBM.
AFAIK, Notes was the single big piece missing to allow desktop transition to Linux inside IBM. I would bet that the more geeky IBM employees that were stuck on Windows because of Notes will change.
And maybe in the future the company will encorage this.
If you consider the sheer size of IBM its no small deal for Linux deskop usage...
Just speculating though... Is there any IBMer wanting to comment?
At least in something we can say we have the best system in the world.
...
We can do things like:
Pay for almost anything like electricity, social security, taxes, mobile phones, tution fees, rent,
Buy a train ticket
Buy a ticket to most of big shows.
See the last ~15 account changes.
Get a temporary credit card number to use on the Internet with a small amount of money (so if someone gets the number after usage, its useless as it has no money on it).
Do money transfers (not international).
And lots of other things I can't remember now.
The bad thing is that sometimes there are people that spend like 10 minutes in a machine paying all their bills.
The system is uniform across all banks (although most banks also offer their own ATM system in parallel)
There are no usage fees (altough they are trying to introduce fees if you use an ATM not from your bank)