I'm thinking of the other half, the billions who have learned to write and are now able to write something useful. And how many of those billions got inspired to write something great? Likewise, I think it is worthwhile to expose more people to computer science and programming. It gets more people interested in the subject, and a sizable portion of students should be able to learn something useful from a beginners course, even if they never actually do any serious programming later. Programming teaches logic, expression of thought, and troubleshooting: all useful skills in many other fields. Just like I took biology in high school; I never did anything with it later in life (certainly not professionaly), but the knowledge still comes in handy every now and then. That's what a well rounded education is about. Vocational training is something else entirely.
With that said, I agree that not everyone is going to be able to learn. But it doesn't require any exceptional skills or traits either.
Don't confuse programming with software engineering. The latter does require a good deal of talent, education and experience. But programming? I agree with the author that many people can learn, given the opportunity and the right tools.
Case in point: my high school taught a (somewhat unusual) computer class; this was in the mid-80s in what you might call a good high school (the Dutch high school system is divided in levels, the highest being "pre-university education" which was the level of my high school). The class consisted of some basic computer science (what is a computer, CPU, I/O bus, etc) as well as hands on programming in BASIC. This was a mandatory class which meant that we had a mix of geeks and non-geeks sitting in, but pretty much everyone was able to grasp the basic concepts of computing, logic, and programming, to the point were students were able to translate simple problems into working programs. Does this produce useful programmers? No, but it helps getting more people interested in the field, and in my current line of work I can see a clear difference between people who have had such a basic education in computing, and those who haven't. For people in IT who aren't actual software engineers, it's still useful to know a little bit about computers and programming.
To achieve this, having the right tools is important. Complex tools may be necessary when writing complex software, and a software engineer refusing to master complex tools because they are complex is silly, but for a beginner, complexity distracts them from what they are actually learning: writing a program. That's why BASIC is still a good tool for teaching laymen about computers; it might not be a very elegant language with stuff like GOTO, but beginners can have a working program up and running in minutes, doing simple input and output. Contrast that with something like C, which requires you to set up and master a compiler first, which is no easy task for someone just starting to program.
Your example of writing is a good one. Like programming, this too is something worthwhile to teach to the masses, and many are able to gain a basic proficiency in it. But you woudln't give a calligraphy pen (or a complex programming tool) to an amateur, you give them a BIC pen (or something like BASIC) so they can master the basics of the art without having to learn advanced tools as well.
I got there because the dangers of lead have been known since BEFORE TEL was introduced into gasoline and those significant risks were pointedly overlooked.
Or perhaps the simpler explanation is that the specific risks and effects of TEL were unknown at the time. I might be convinced of a few countries overlooking the dangers or Big Evil Oil managing to make a few health & safety agencies look the other way, but pretty much every agency in every single country?
This study is interesting because it shows that the effects of TEL might have been much larger than we ever suspected. But it's idiotic to lay blame for that on oil companies or even society as a whole, in hindsight. The only uncomfortable thing about your statement is the phrasing "society poisoned those people" because it implies that society is liable, meaning endless unwarranted lawsuits by greedy people who think every misfortune entitles them to a big slice of the public pie.
You get paid to work, not deal with personal matters.
I hear this argument a lot when the topic of personal calls / errands during work hours comes up. And it’s true of course. the real question is how your employer establishes that you have fulfilled the day’s obligations. Have you done what was asked of you? Or have you kept your seat warm for 8 hours? The two are not the same.
There are some employers who are very clear on this: they expect you to work for 8 hours, no personal stuff allowed, and no work stuff after hours. And some employees enjoy such a clear separation. I however am not one of them, and I’d be reluctant to accept work in such an environment. One of my current clients took the opposite road and allows people to access their corporate email on personal smart phones. They also allow you to do some personal stuff in the workplace, within reason, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with your job. The idea is that this makes us happier and more effective workers (hey, works for me).
I use my iPad regularly for work, for extended periods of time sometimes. As an extremely portable platform, it isn't all that bad for typing larger amounts of text, though it is not ideal. I've tried using it as a mini laptop by standing it upright and using a Bluetooth keyboard. That's the setup that Microsoft envision, apparently. And you know what? Turns out the thing that I've been missing most on my iPad when using it standalone for typing/drawing isn't a keyboard. It's a mouse, or at least a trackpad. A mouse offers precision and speed; no click and hold necessary since a mouse has buttons. A touchscreen is more useful on other cases perhaps, but or a lot of common tasks it can't beat a mouse.
Are these real friends or Facebook "friends"? If a close friend admits to driving drunk, I'd keep quiet about it (after trying to convince him not to do it again). If a vague Facebook acquaintance brags about driving drunk and a hit-and-run, then yes, I'd be on the phone with the police too. In the long run, this probably benefits everyone, including the drunk idiot.
Radically different? Personally I'd like to see the return of "sandbox" style MMOs like UO or SWG. Mythic did ok but I'd be more hopeful for TESO if they had gotten Raph Koster on board (he was involved in both UO and SWG, having designed most of the crafting system in the latter amongst other stuff). A good sandbox game is a "complete" game that caters to a wide variety of play styles: grinding, exploring, building, inventing, or just plain messing about. Besides interesting combat and questing, such a game has a strong crafting system but also things like player housing (and the ability to decorate them, a popular pastime in past sandbox games), a viable player-run economy (in SWG pretty much everything was player-made) and elements that make the game conducive to role-playing. Most players will want to engage in one of any of these play styles depending on their mood, and catering to all of them means your MMO becomes a place to hang out rather than just log on to for the next raid.
Good point about mods, though. Any game will go stale even to the most hardy fan, but you can prolongue their business (or get some fans to return) by adding new content. The problem is: it is rather expensive to develop such content. The company that manages to drive down the cost of developing new content while maintaining quality has the potential to create a winner, and player-generated content / mods could be part of that.
Google owns a "stack" of various software, services and soon various hardware too. This particular product is an information goldmine for both Google (and clients using their data), and consumers. If Google does not integrate this into their stack (locking out others) or use it to break into other stacks (Apple), the shareholders will rush in and defenestrate Google's board.
I agree that the civilised world ought to do something. Lets start with the USA, where the constitution of 7 or so states deny atheists the right to hold public office. Yes, I was surprised too but it's true...
On the flip side, it was the USA that came up with something as profound as "the right to... the pursuit of happiness". Sounds like a trivial thing, but in a way that little phrase states that each person is a goal unto him/herself. Few nations (or none at all) ever explicitly expressed a similar notion of individuality. Which I think should be included in the universal human rights, and extended to include not only the freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion. Or rather: freefom from religious laws and prosecution. (Having a Christmas tree in front of city hall is fine)
I agree that 3D is never going to add a great deal to many of the movies out there. And indeed, 3D is expensive and very hard to do well. Cameron knows how to use 3D, he made it work in Sanctum, and used it to turn Avatar into a breathtaking visual experience (and it still is, it wasn't just the novelty at the time). But I can't say I have seen any other movie where 3D has been used to good effect to enhance the experience, except a few animated features perhaps. I had high hopes for the Hobbit to offer an experience similar to Avatar, but the 3D, while decent, didn't add anything to an otherwise nice movie. Go see that one in 2D.
But as for the home market, I'd say 3D is poised to make a lasting impact. A large amount of TVs sold today are "3D ready", and the technology is advancing from already cheap shutter glasses to passive glasses to 3D without glasses. People do not have to pay much to get this capability, and soon it will be essentially free. Now all we need is the content, of course. Watching sports in 3D does enhance the experience, and these days it's relatively cheap to broadcast these in 3D, it makes sense to do it and I expect it to be more common in the near future. Watch ESPN or Eurosport launch a 3D channel at some point. And while people are growing wary and tired of the crappy 3D-ized re-releases that have flooded the market, Blurays of blockbusters sell reasonably well in that format.
I think 3D is here to stay. Some directors will "get it" and continue to use the format to best effect, refining the technology and its use. The rest will either (hopefully) stop bothering when the novelty wears off, or it'll become the default when the technology becomes cheap and ubiquitous.
You'd be surprised. Apple's MobileMe email uses it, for one. Recently I had an email to my brother's address at me.com blocked because my hosts SMTP server was blacklisted. And only yesterday I exchanged a few emails with an online retailer to get some product info; my 3rd mail suddenly got blocked (by a different blacklist service, who state that dynamic IP addresses are auto-blocked).
I can see why this is a problem for ISPs and hosts. Some people have been claiming the demise of email for years what with Facebook and such, but email is important enough for me to consider switching host, even though it is probably not their fault.
So it provides a first opinion on first posts, sort of. Neat, but I do wonder how accurate this is going to be to vet individual tweets. Twitter trolls may get wise to this and game the system to get their stuff past this filter. A bit like phishers learning how to spell. In the end, the best check is still independent verification, for example by other people tweeting the same thing (not just retweeting of course). If this system could automatically group and cross-verify tweets from multiple sources on the same subject, that would be a step in the right direction.
OT, but Galt didn't leave the US, did he? I remember Galt objected to paying income tax (and refunded Rearden's income tax as well), but not whether he was morally opposed to income tax in itself, or merely opposed to paying it to an oppressive government. I agree with the latter reason; I'm OK with paying income tax if the government handles that money wisely and spends it frugally. Where I live, that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination though. So I dodge taxes (by legal means, mind).
The same can be said for a lot of other innovators. But as they say: innovation is about execution, not about ideas. Ideas are cheap; the real trick is to recognize a good one and then follow through on it. Most of us have good ideas from time to time, but many are poor at assessing them, and even worse at putting our money where our hunch is and building a solid business.
And in this case I'd say the idea was less obvious than is the case for many other inventions, and more about insight (or foresight) than simple fortuitous timing.
Even worse: people have driven their cars into ditches, barriers or other obstacles because their GPS told them to "turn left here", showing a road that wasn't really there. Bad enough to blindly accept the GPS route, but driving blind?
On the other hand, on several occasions my GPS has suggested alternative routes that I didn't know about but turned out to be more efficient. And in Apple's defence, the route between my parents' place and my own is a bit strange and no nav software nor people reading maps and signs follow the best route, except Apple's app.
"Social and economic justice" is a hollow phrase that can mean anything. Does economic justice mean protecting consumer rights, or does it mean doing 9 years for copying a couple of songs? Does social justice mean freedom from censorship, or does it mean censorship in the name of protecting us from child porn and hate speech?
Don't look at the statement, look at the people uttering it. None of these guys have one iota of interest in safeguarding our current freedoms on the internet. One might want to more tightly control what is being said, the other may want to do away with anonymity, while a third may want the right to shut down sites without having to deal with troublesome crap like "due process". But all of them are after power... or perhaps they genuinely care about us. Which doesn't make it better: there is one kind of man I fear more than the tyrant, and that is the tyrant who oppresses us "for our own good".
Or in the case of a private company setting up a colony, there will be a government in the form of a ruthless, heartless administrator squeezing the locals for extra pennies of profit. Haven't you seen Total Recall (the good one), Outland, or read "The moon is a harsh mistress"? (I can recommend reading the latter). A private company going through the expense of setting up a colony cannot afford anarchy... unless of course their profit model is running a reality show based on what happens in the colony, in which case death, drama and lawlessness will make for some excellent television.
Calling banks "Too big to fail" doesn't mean that they can't fail, it means that we cannot afford to let them fail, hence the massive bailouts. Humanity as a whole is of course similarly too big to fail.
Read the linked older/. article: it's not really a suicide mission. It's one-way and high-risk (probably why they call it a suicide mission), but if all goes according to plan, these colonists will get to live out their natural lives, more or less (probably less due to a harsh environment and limited medical care). There will be regular followup missions with more colonists and equipment arriving. I don't know how realistic that plan is, but that's the plan.
Of course Made in China has pushed out some of the quality tools out of some shops. I'm not in the US though so things might be different here. Larger hardware stores usually carry various levels of quality, and smaller shops will favour the cheap brands, while certain other hardware stores only have top tier brands. One just has to know where to go.
Take tools for an example: in the old days, all tools sold were pretty good, and pretty expensive. If I visit the hardware store today, I see a lot of inexpensive crap on the shelves but the good stuff is still there, so I now have a choice that I didn't have before. If I expect to be building a couple of houses, it makes sense to buy expensive power tools that are dependable and will last forever. However, if I will only have occasional use for a tool, the cheaper version makes better economic sense. My electric screwdriver is top of the line as it sees a lot of use, however my drill press is a cheap Chinese one that only sees occasional use. It's still going strong after 10 years; the point is that in the old days, I probably couldn't have afforded it, or justified the cost.
My washing machine? Over a decade old without any servicing whatsoever; this brand still has an expected useful service life of 20 years
TV? I got rid of my old glass tube dog kennel model to get a flatscreen, but that old TV found a new home and still works... 10 years old.
Cell phone? People throw them out because technology moves fast these days; the difference between a 2 year old phone and a new one is significant. But my old iPhone still works perfectly after nearly 5 years, and it's getting a new lease on life as a home automation control panel.
To be honest, how closely should the functions offered by Sharepoint be tied together anyway? Integration is nice, but in my experience the drawback of not having it isn't that bad. The one exception would be the advantage of an overarching corporate search engine, but plugging in your open source platforms into such a search engine isn't all that hard (we've done it with Microsoft FAST). Similarly, open source software often has modules or plugins to integrate with other software.
Anyway, it's only after the purchase has been made and the consultants are gone that people realize just how much SharePoint sucks.
The consultants leave at some point? When does that ever happen? That's another problem with Sharepoint: the cost to implement is high, but the cost to roll it out across the business and maintain it functionally as well as operationally, is unbelievable. This is a consultant's dream if you want your contract renewed for the forseeable future. (yes, I'm living the nightmare). Not to mention all the crap you have to deal with when you find, as a large organisation, that SP scales very poorly.
But at some point the extra cost will get noticed, and even the PHB might concede that we're indeed better off with Drupal, Confluence, Mediawiki and a good document management system.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking of the other half, the billions who have learned to write and are now able to write something useful. And how many of those billions got inspired to write something great? Likewise, I think it is worthwhile to expose more people to computer science and programming. It gets more people interested in the subject, and a sizable portion of students should be able to learn something useful from a beginners course, even if they never actually do any serious programming later. Programming teaches logic, expression of thought, and troubleshooting: all useful skills in many other fields. Just like I took biology in high school; I never did anything with it later in life (certainly not professionaly), but the knowledge still comes in handy every now and then. That's what a well rounded education is about. Vocational training is something else entirely.
With that said, I agree that not everyone is going to be able to learn. But it doesn't require any exceptional skills or traits either.
Don't confuse programming with software engineering. The latter does require a good deal of talent, education and experience. But programming? I agree with the author that many people can learn, given the opportunity and the right tools.
Case in point: my high school taught a (somewhat unusual) computer class; this was in the mid-80s in what you might call a good high school (the Dutch high school system is divided in levels, the highest being "pre-university education" which was the level of my high school). The class consisted of some basic computer science (what is a computer, CPU, I/O bus, etc) as well as hands on programming in BASIC. This was a mandatory class which meant that we had a mix of geeks and non-geeks sitting in, but pretty much everyone was able to grasp the basic concepts of computing, logic, and programming, to the point were students were able to translate simple problems into working programs. Does this produce useful programmers? No, but it helps getting more people interested in the field, and in my current line of work I can see a clear difference between people who have had such a basic education in computing, and those who haven't. For people in IT who aren't actual software engineers, it's still useful to know a little bit about computers and programming.
To achieve this, having the right tools is important. Complex tools may be necessary when writing complex software, and a software engineer refusing to master complex tools because they are complex is silly, but for a beginner, complexity distracts them from what they are actually learning: writing a program. That's why BASIC is still a good tool for teaching laymen about computers; it might not be a very elegant language with stuff like GOTO, but beginners can have a working program up and running in minutes, doing simple input and output. Contrast that with something like C, which requires you to set up and master a compiler first, which is no easy task for someone just starting to program.
Your example of writing is a good one. Like programming, this too is something worthwhile to teach to the masses, and many are able to gain a basic proficiency in it. But you woudln't give a calligraphy pen (or a complex programming tool) to an amateur, you give them a BIC pen (or something like BASIC) so they can master the basics of the art without having to learn advanced tools as well.
I got there because the dangers of lead have been known since BEFORE TEL was introduced into gasoline and those significant risks were pointedly overlooked.
Or perhaps the simpler explanation is that the specific risks and effects of TEL were unknown at the time. I might be convinced of a few countries overlooking the dangers or Big Evil Oil managing to make a few health & safety agencies look the other way, but pretty much every agency in every single country?
This study is interesting because it shows that the effects of TEL might have been much larger than we ever suspected. But it's idiotic to lay blame for that on oil companies or even society as a whole, in hindsight. The only uncomfortable thing about your statement is the phrasing "society poisoned those people" because it implies that society is liable, meaning endless unwarranted lawsuits by greedy people who think every misfortune entitles them to a big slice of the public pie.
I hear this argument a lot when the topic of personal calls / errands during work hours comes up. And it’s true of course. the real question is how your employer establishes that you have fulfilled the day’s obligations. Have you done what was asked of you? Or have you kept your seat warm for 8 hours? The two are not the same.
There are some employers who are very clear on this: they expect you to work for 8 hours, no personal stuff allowed, and no work stuff after hours. And some employees enjoy such a clear separation. I however am not one of them, and I’d be reluctant to accept work in such an environment. One of my current clients took the opposite road and allows people to access their corporate email on personal smart phones. They also allow you to do some personal stuff in the workplace, within reason, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with your job. The idea is that this makes us happier and more effective workers (hey, works for me).
I use my iPad regularly for work, for extended periods of time sometimes. As an extremely portable platform, it isn't all that bad for typing larger amounts of text, though it is not ideal. I've tried using it as a mini laptop by standing it upright and using a Bluetooth keyboard. That's the setup that Microsoft envision, apparently. And you know what? Turns out the thing that I've been missing most on my iPad when using it standalone for typing/drawing isn't a keyboard. It's a mouse, or at least a trackpad. A mouse offers precision and speed; no click and hold necessary since a mouse has buttons. A touchscreen is more useful on other cases perhaps, but or a lot of common tasks it can't beat a mouse.
Are these real friends or Facebook "friends"? If a close friend admits to driving drunk, I'd keep quiet about it (after trying to convince him not to do it again). If a vague Facebook acquaintance brags about driving drunk and a hit-and-run, then yes, I'd be on the phone with the police too. In the long run, this probably benefits everyone, including the drunk idiot.
Radically different? Personally I'd like to see the return of "sandbox" style MMOs like UO or SWG. Mythic did ok but I'd be more hopeful for TESO if they had gotten Raph Koster on board (he was involved in both UO and SWG, having designed most of the crafting system in the latter amongst other stuff). A good sandbox game is a "complete" game that caters to a wide variety of play styles: grinding, exploring, building, inventing, or just plain messing about. Besides interesting combat and questing, such a game has a strong crafting system but also things like player housing (and the ability to decorate them, a popular pastime in past sandbox games), a viable player-run economy (in SWG pretty much everything was player-made) and elements that make the game conducive to role-playing. Most players will want to engage in one of any of these play styles depending on their mood, and catering to all of them means your MMO becomes a place to hang out rather than just log on to for the next raid.
Good point about mods, though. Any game will go stale even to the most hardy fan, but you can prolongue their business (or get some fans to return) by adding new content. The problem is: it is rather expensive to develop such content. The company that manages to drive down the cost of developing new content while maintaining quality has the potential to create a winner, and player-generated content / mods could be part of that.
Which would be metric (SI) anyway.
Google owns a "stack" of various software, services and soon various hardware too. This particular product is an information goldmine for both Google (and clients using their data), and consumers. If Google does not integrate this into their stack (locking out others) or use it to break into other stacks (Apple), the shareholders will rush in and defenestrate Google's board.
I agree that the civilised world ought to do something. Lets start with the USA, where the constitution of 7 or so states deny atheists the right to hold public office. Yes, I was surprised too but it's true...
... the pursuit of happiness". Sounds like a trivial thing, but in a way that little phrase states that each person is a goal unto him/herself. Few nations (or none at all) ever explicitly expressed a similar notion of individuality. Which I think should be included in the universal human rights, and extended to include not only the freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion. Or rather: freefom from religious laws and prosecution. (Having a Christmas tree in front of city hall is fine)
On the flip side, it was the USA that came up with something as profound as "the right to
I agree that 3D is never going to add a great deal to many of the movies out there. And indeed, 3D is expensive and very hard to do well. Cameron knows how to use 3D, he made it work in Sanctum, and used it to turn Avatar into a breathtaking visual experience (and it still is, it wasn't just the novelty at the time). But I can't say I have seen any other movie where 3D has been used to good effect to enhance the experience, except a few animated features perhaps. I had high hopes for the Hobbit to offer an experience similar to Avatar, but the 3D, while decent, didn't add anything to an otherwise nice movie. Go see that one in 2D.
But as for the home market, I'd say 3D is poised to make a lasting impact. A large amount of TVs sold today are "3D ready", and the technology is advancing from already cheap shutter glasses to passive glasses to 3D without glasses. People do not have to pay much to get this capability, and soon it will be essentially free. Now all we need is the content, of course. Watching sports in 3D does enhance the experience, and these days it's relatively cheap to broadcast these in 3D, it makes sense to do it and I expect it to be more common in the near future. Watch ESPN or Eurosport launch a 3D channel at some point. And while people are growing wary and tired of the crappy 3D-ized re-releases that have flooded the market, Blurays of blockbusters sell reasonably well in that format.
I think 3D is here to stay. Some directors will "get it" and continue to use the format to best effect, refining the technology and its use. The rest will either (hopefully) stop bothering when the novelty wears off, or it'll become the default when the technology becomes cheap and ubiquitous.
You'd be surprised. Apple's MobileMe email uses it, for one. Recently I had an email to my brother's address at me.com blocked because my hosts SMTP server was blacklisted. And only yesterday I exchanged a few emails with an online retailer to get some product info; my 3rd mail suddenly got blocked (by a different blacklist service, who state that dynamic IP addresses are auto-blocked).
I can see why this is a problem for ISPs and hosts. Some people have been claiming the demise of email for years what with Facebook and such, but email is important enough for me to consider switching host, even though it is probably not their fault.
So it provides a first opinion on first posts, sort of. Neat, but I do wonder how accurate this is going to be to vet individual tweets. Twitter trolls may get wise to this and game the system to get their stuff past this filter. A bit like phishers learning how to spell. In the end, the best check is still independent verification, for example by other people tweeting the same thing (not just retweeting of course). If this system could automatically group and cross-verify tweets from multiple sources on the same subject, that would be a step in the right direction.
So: tinfoil underwear in addition to the hat, got it.
OT, but Galt didn't leave the US, did he? I remember Galt objected to paying income tax (and refunded Rearden's income tax as well), but not whether he was morally opposed to income tax in itself, or merely opposed to paying it to an oppressive government. I agree with the latter reason; I'm OK with paying income tax if the government handles that money wisely and spends it frugally. Where I live, that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination though. So I dodge taxes (by legal means, mind).
The same can be said for a lot of other innovators. But as they say: innovation is about execution, not about ideas. Ideas are cheap; the real trick is to recognize a good one and then follow through on it. Most of us have good ideas from time to time, but many are poor at assessing them, and even worse at putting our money where our hunch is and building a solid business.
And in this case I'd say the idea was less obvious than is the case for many other inventions, and more about insight (or foresight) than simple fortuitous timing.
Even worse: people have driven their cars into ditches, barriers or other obstacles because their GPS told them to "turn left here", showing a road that wasn't really there. Bad enough to blindly accept the GPS route, but driving blind?
On the other hand, on several occasions my GPS has suggested alternative routes that I didn't know about but turned out to be more efficient. And in Apple's defence, the route between my parents' place and my own is a bit strange and no nav software nor people reading maps and signs follow the best route, except Apple's app.
"Social and economic justice" is a hollow phrase that can mean anything. Does economic justice mean protecting consumer rights, or does it mean doing 9 years for copying a couple of songs? Does social justice mean freedom from censorship, or does it mean censorship in the name of protecting us from child porn and hate speech?
Don't look at the statement, look at the people uttering it. None of these guys have one iota of interest in safeguarding our current freedoms on the internet. One might want to more tightly control what is being said, the other may want to do away with anonymity, while a third may want the right to shut down sites without having to deal with troublesome crap like "due process". But all of them are after power... or perhaps they genuinely care about us. Which doesn't make it better: there is one kind of man I fear more than the tyrant, and that is the tyrant who oppresses us "for our own good".
Or in the case of a private company setting up a colony, there will be a government in the form of a ruthless, heartless administrator squeezing the locals for extra pennies of profit. Haven't you seen Total Recall (the good one), Outland, or read "The moon is a harsh mistress"? (I can recommend reading the latter). A private company going through the expense of setting up a colony cannot afford anarchy... unless of course their profit model is running a reality show based on what happens in the colony, in which case death, drama and lawlessness will make for some excellent television.
Calling banks "Too big to fail" doesn't mean that they can't fail, it means that we cannot afford to let them fail, hence the massive bailouts. Humanity as a whole is of course similarly too big to fail.
Read the linked older /. article: it's not really a suicide mission. It's one-way and high-risk (probably why they call it a suicide mission), but if all goes according to plan, these colonists will get to live out their natural lives, more or less (probably less due to a harsh environment and limited medical care). There will be regular followup missions with more colonists and equipment arriving. I don't know how realistic that plan is, but that's the plan.
Of course Made in China has pushed out some of the quality tools out of some shops. I'm not in the US though so things might be different here. Larger hardware stores usually carry various levels of quality, and smaller shops will favour the cheap brands, while certain other hardware stores only have top tier brands. One just has to know where to go.
Quality is still there... if you pay for it.
Take tools for an example: in the old days, all tools sold were pretty good, and pretty expensive. If I visit the hardware store today, I see a lot of inexpensive crap on the shelves but the good stuff is still there, so I now have a choice that I didn't have before. If I expect to be building a couple of houses, it makes sense to buy expensive power tools that are dependable and will last forever. However, if I will only have occasional use for a tool, the cheaper version makes better economic sense. My electric screwdriver is top of the line as it sees a lot of use, however my drill press is a cheap Chinese one that only sees occasional use. It's still going strong after 10 years; the point is that in the old days, I probably couldn't have afforded it, or justified the cost.
My washing machine? Over a decade old without any servicing whatsoever; this brand still has an expected useful service life of 20 years
TV? I got rid of my old glass tube dog kennel model to get a flatscreen, but that old TV found a new home and still works... 10 years old.
Cell phone? People throw them out because technology moves fast these days; the difference between a 2 year old phone and a new one is significant. But my old iPhone still works perfectly after nearly 5 years, and it's getting a new lease on life as a home automation control panel.
To be honest, how closely should the functions offered by Sharepoint be tied together anyway? Integration is nice, but in my experience the drawback of not having it isn't that bad. The one exception would be the advantage of an overarching corporate search engine, but plugging in your open source platforms into such a search engine isn't all that hard (we've done it with Microsoft FAST). Similarly, open source software often has modules or plugins to integrate with other software.
Anyway, it's only after the purchase has been made and the consultants are gone that people realize just how much SharePoint sucks.
The consultants leave at some point? When does that ever happen? That's another problem with Sharepoint: the cost to implement is high, but the cost to roll it out across the business and maintain it functionally as well as operationally, is unbelievable. This is a consultant's dream if you want your contract renewed for the forseeable future. (yes, I'm living the nightmare). Not to mention all the crap you have to deal with when you find, as a large organisation, that SP scales very poorly.
But at some point the extra cost will get noticed, and even the PHB might concede that we're indeed better off with Drupal, Confluence, Mediawiki and a good document management system.