I don't give a shit. I rather like Linus' using-the-right-tool-for-the-job attitude. If there is an open source alternative to closed software, that's fine and dandy. If there is no feasible open source alternative, using proprietary software is just fine.
I merely pointed out the hypocricy of calling MPlayer an open source revolution that stomps closed source into oblivion when its core performance is enabled by closed source (unlicensed) binaries?
All the problems you list are due to human stupidity. Even SARS. The patient zero was somewhere in China and the local politicians failed to take action in fear of falling into disfavour. More concentrated stupidity can be found in the form of Kim Jong Il, GWB, Chirac and other politicians worldwide.
Now, there is an excellent record of 6000 years of human stupidity that we call history. In fact, human stupidity most likely extends even beyond the written records and if we go really far back in time we arrive at the point when "human race" was just a little more advanced kind of an ape. And we definitely can agree that by human standards apes are pretty dim, aren't they?
So, in conclusion, most of the recent events can be blamed on stupidity and since the massive human stupidity in the past has not brought on the end of the world ago it won't do so this time either. So, don't worry.
I see no benefits but only complications in the institution of marriage. Legally, it makes it harder to break up and discourages people to do so even when kids and their own mental health would actually benefit from it. Psychologically it is even more offensive: a sort of proof of ownership.
Originally marriage meant that the wife became husband's property (instead of her father's, that is), but I guess these days it stipulates that the husband is wife's property too.
I find this really offensive. I don't want my significant one to stick around just because there is a band of metal around one of her fingers. She's not my property and I'm not hers. She's free to do whatever she wants. If she decides to walk out on me, I have nothing to say about it and vice versa.
What if the playback of music is controlled instead?
Commercial operating systems that won't play unsigned, unencrypted media? Soundcards and speakers that have to be unlocked and refuse to play music that does not have DRM waterstamps (which won't be reproduced by the speakers) in it?
So, even if you manage to make a copy of the protected media by recording it straight out of the speakers, you won't be able to play it back again.
Why would a corporation hire more people when it can now afford to give even better benefits to the CEO and the other corporate elite? They're not going to hire more of those ungrateful proles who are always complaining about something. If the production needs to be ramped up, they'll invest in technology.
Meanwhile cutting taxes deprives the needy from basic healthcare and housing. Great work, capitalist. Really smart.
I would say that task switching in human context just means the ability of being able to compartmentalize your thoughts. Freeze the status of a project in your head when you stop working on it, put it aside while you work on something else and then unfreeze it when you get back. That helps you to quickly move from one task to another without first having to sit down for ten minutes to figure out what happened last time and what you're supposed to do now.
You don't need pointy haired bosses who work you to death. Unless you're driving a forklift or shoveling sand you really can benefit from being able to do that. I couldn't manage my lab, the students, teaching and research without compartmentalization. Hell, I don't even need a calendar anymore.
Therein you will find out that the US SAC supereme commanders were pretty much like the imaginary Gen. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. Even in the 70s one of them was adamant that the USA and NATO should provoke USSR into a full-blown nuclear conflict before they get too powerful. He called it the sunday punch.
Re:This has to be tough for familes to hear...
on
Latest Columbia News
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· Score: 1
Physics ppl have said that the low G fire experiments are useless. Nothing learnt which they didn't already know.
Sounds a lot like your "physics ppl" are a bunch of theorists with a serious case of we-can-calculate-it-no-need-for-experiments'itis.
Yeah, these days we can pretty much calculate all the properties of materials (real or yet-to-be-synthesized) quantum mechanically. That doesn't mean that the predictions should not be experimentally verified.
there is only a small chance and a big prayer then that the shuttle will survive the re-entry.
Kind of reminds me the re-entry of Friendship 7 (John Glenn's flight) when the heatshield had apparently became loose in the orbit. The retro-rocket package that was strapped to the bottom of the capsule was not jettisoned until the last possible moment in the hope that it would hold the heatshield in place. A small chance and a big prayer indeed.
The problem is that the rest of the group hates Linux and wants to use Windows for everything...but I'm happy with my choice. Others should be as honest.
Hum... I could almost read your post "I'm happy with my choice. Others should be happy with Linux too."
I find it appalling that you would like to convince people to switch to Linux by provoking a BSA audit.
I am an academic and our lab is also a 100% Microsoft shop. I use Linux at home, but I fully endorse our Microsoft-only policy at work. Why? Compatibility and familiarity. People come in and go. Most of them don't know how to use Linux and are only familiar with the Office tools. We want them to get their PhDs as fast as possible and at present even teaching some of them to use Matlab (and yes, Octave's useless because it uses Gnuplot for plotting) takes too long. They are here to do experimental research, not to learn how to use OS ("why do I have to mount/unmount floppies? why doesn't the CD eject when I press the button on the CD-ROM?...") or how to import/export Office documents in and out of the Open Office. Manuscripts are prepared in MS Word because it would be goddamn waste of time to teach people a programming language (LaTeX). I've never gotten the point in using it anyway. It's the publisher's job to prepare the layout and if you just want to type in text, why would you want to learn an arcane language like LaTeX?
Microsoft Campus license allows us to install and copy as many MS Office and WinXP installations as we wish. We bought the Matlab 6 licenses. Downloading Adobe Acrobat's free versions for every machine is also quick and painless. As long as everybody is using Word, collaborating is easy.
Ok, I should have mentioned that chemical rockets are not really that elegant either. I'd rather see them replaced by scramjets than space elevators.
Ok, scramjets aren't exactly the kind of old, reliable technology I was looking for either but still their development is farther and operating principles simpler than that of the nanotube cables. Keep using chemical rockets and replace them eventually with scramjet shuttles that can take off and land like a plane. That's elegant.
But certainly space elevators are worth thinking about. I just read the history of the development of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes and I particularly liked the way how the Manhattan project was managed. You had two competing alternatives: one technology that was extremely simple but ineffective (the "gun" bomb) and another that was more complex and less promising but at the same time more efficient (the implosion device). Instead of choosing just one, they chose to pursue both avenues in case problems became insurmountable in one project.
Re:Mothball the ISS and the Shuttle.
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Columbia Coverage
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I mostly agree with you, but I would like to point out that as great a fiasco as the ISS has been, it is still the first truly multinational space endeavour.
Space exploration and permanent colonization is such an expensive project that it must be an international effort. The lessons learnt from the mismanagement of the ISS project should not be used to trash future manned space flight/colonization projects but to avoid such mistakes in the future.
It's about someone special going out in a blaze of glory.
To be blunt about it, 24 people dying in a commuter plane crash does not get attention you think they deserve because the people on the plane weren't "special". So few people get to go to space that astronauts are still revered to some extent, although less so than during the Mercury, Gemini and the early Apollo program.
I don't know about you, but as illogical it sounds, I'd rather go out in a split-second fireball at an altitude of 40 miles travelling at Mach 18 than in a car accident or bomb explosion.
For me the shuttle disaster was initially a "not again" kind of a shock. At first my thoughts were with the people who perished and their families, but soon after came the realization what this will mean to the future of the manned space program. Then I despaired. It was, of course, a human tragedy but the history will show that this was also a tragedy for human science and exploration.
I don't know why, but I've never found space elevators appealing. I find them to be rather a boring, inelegant and somewhat questionable way to orbit.
First of all, there are technical problems. Exotic, untested and novel materials would have be used. Nanotubes are still not well understood under laboratory conditions. How to weave them into filaments and eventually cables is completely unknown at this time. How these filaments will react to the extreme environmental conditions in the upper atmosphere and low orbit is also unknown. I am not saying that these problems cannot be overcome. Not at all. What I am saying, however, is that using radically new technology for getting to orbit is not a good idea when reliability and safety are an issue. Take the Russian Soyuz, for instance. It's a real workhorse with great safety record in spite of its age. Keeping it simple and evolving from existing, well established solutions is the way to go.
Space flight should also be about flying - not about climbing some high tech bean stalk to orbit. Yes, this is an emotional argument, but still... So you climb to the orbit in the space elevator. What then? You'd still need to develop boosters and fuel to carry on from there. Space elevator helps, but it's obviously not the way to commoditize space travel.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed.
I merely pointed out the hypocricy of calling MPlayer an open source revolution that stomps closed source into oblivion when its core performance is enabled by closed source (unlicensed) binaries?
By using closed source binary codecs stolen from proprietary closed source programs?
You mean they are still in business? I can remember having an action replay cartridge for my C64...
All the problems you list are due to human stupidity. Even SARS. The patient zero was somewhere in China and the local politicians failed to take action in fear of falling into disfavour. More concentrated stupidity can be found in the form of Kim Jong Il, GWB, Chirac and other politicians worldwide.
Now, there is an excellent record of 6000 years of human stupidity that we call history. In fact, human stupidity most likely extends even beyond the written records and if we go really far back in time we arrive at the point when "human race" was just a little more advanced kind of an ape. And we definitely can agree that by human standards apes are pretty dim, aren't they?
So, in conclusion, most of the recent events can be blamed on stupidity and since the massive human stupidity in the past has not brought on the end of the world ago it won't do so this time either. So, don't worry.
I see no benefits but only complications in the institution of marriage. Legally, it makes it harder to break up and discourages people to do so even when kids and their own mental health would actually benefit from it. Psychologically it is even more offensive: a sort of proof of ownership.
Originally marriage meant that the wife became husband's property (instead of her father's, that is), but I guess these days it stipulates that the husband is wife's property too.
I find this really offensive. I don't want my significant one to stick around just because there is a band of metal around one of her fingers. She's not my property and I'm not hers. She's free to do whatever she wants. If she decides to walk out on me, I have nothing to say about it and vice versa.
Uh... I don't see the connection between geeks and nude women?
Physicists and mathematicians don't mix.
Commercial operating systems that won't play unsigned, unencrypted media? Soundcards and speakers that have to be unlocked and refuse to play music that does not have DRM waterstamps (which won't be reproduced by the speakers) in it?
So, even if you manage to make a copy of the protected media by recording it straight out of the speakers, you won't be able to play it back again.
Wouldn't funding and improving an existing system such as Glonass be less expensive?
"How can one insulated wire bring so much happiness?" -Homer Simpsons (when stealing cable in Lisa and the 8th Commandment)
Great!
I'm waiting for the day when I can get a cellphone that operates in the X-ray or, even better, gamma-radiation regime?
Let's assume that taxes on businesses are cut.
Why would a corporation hire more people when it can now afford to give even better benefits to the CEO and the other corporate elite? They're not going to hire more of those ungrateful proles who are always complaining about something. If the production needs to be ramped up, they'll invest in technology.
Meanwhile cutting taxes deprives the needy from basic healthcare and housing. Great work, capitalist. Really smart.
Prop Ten is about children.
Vote yes on Prop Ten or else you hate children.
You don't hate children, do you?
Remember, keep American business small or else.
You don't need pointy haired bosses who work you to death. Unless you're driving a forklift or shoveling sand you really can benefit from being able to do that. I couldn't manage my lab, the students, teaching and research without compartmentalization. Hell, I don't even need a calendar anymore.
You know you can choose not to install Clippy in the first place? Do a custom installation and deselect office assistant. No patch required.
Therein you will find out that the US SAC supereme commanders were pretty much like the imaginary Gen. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. Even in the 70s one of them was adamant that the USA and NATO should provoke USSR into a full-blown nuclear conflict before they get too powerful. He called it the sunday punch.
Sounds a lot like your "physics ppl" are a bunch of theorists with a serious case of we-can-calculate-it-no-need-for-experiments'itis.
Yeah, these days we can pretty much calculate all the properties of materials (real or yet-to-be-synthesized) quantum mechanically. That doesn't mean that the predictions should not be experimentally verified.
Kind of reminds me the re-entry of Friendship 7 (John Glenn's flight) when the heatshield had apparently became loose in the orbit. The retro-rocket package that was strapped to the bottom of the capsule was not jettisoned until the last possible moment in the hope that it would hold the heatshield in place. A small chance and a big prayer indeed.
It turned out to be an instrumentation failure
Hum... I could almost read your post "I'm happy with my choice. Others should be happy with Linux too."
I find it appalling that you would like to convince people to switch to Linux by provoking a BSA audit.
I am an academic and our lab is also a 100% Microsoft shop. I use Linux at home, but I fully endorse our Microsoft-only policy at work. Why? Compatibility and familiarity. People come in and go. Most of them don't know how to use Linux and are only familiar with the Office tools. We want them to get their PhDs as fast as possible and at present even teaching some of them to use Matlab (and yes, Octave's useless because it uses Gnuplot for plotting) takes too long. They are here to do experimental research, not to learn how to use OS ("why do I have to mount/unmount floppies? why doesn't the CD eject when I press the button on the CD-ROM?...") or how to import/export Office documents in and out of the Open Office. Manuscripts are prepared in MS Word because it would be goddamn waste of time to teach people a programming language (LaTeX). I've never gotten the point in using it anyway. It's the publisher's job to prepare the layout and if you just want to type in text, why would you want to learn an arcane language like LaTeX?
Microsoft Campus license allows us to install and copy as many MS Office and WinXP installations as we wish. We bought the Matlab 6 licenses. Downloading Adobe Acrobat's free versions for every machine is also quick and painless. As long as everybody is using Word, collaborating is easy.
Ok, scramjets aren't exactly the kind of old, reliable technology I was looking for either but still their development is farther and operating principles simpler than that of the nanotube cables. Keep using chemical rockets and replace them eventually with scramjet shuttles that can take off and land like a plane. That's elegant.
But certainly space elevators are worth thinking about. I just read the history of the development of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes and I particularly liked the way how the Manhattan project was managed. You had two competing alternatives: one technology that was extremely simple but ineffective (the "gun" bomb) and another that was more complex and less promising but at the same time more efficient (the implosion device). Instead of choosing just one, they chose to pursue both avenues in case problems became insurmountable in one project.
Space exploration and permanent colonization is such an expensive project that it must be an international effort. The lessons learnt from the mismanagement of the ISS project should not be used to trash future manned space flight/colonization projects but to avoid such mistakes in the future.
The future of the humankind lies in the space.
To be blunt about it, 24 people dying in a commuter plane crash does not get attention you think they deserve because the people on the plane weren't "special". So few people get to go to space that astronauts are still revered to some extent, although less so than during the Mercury, Gemini and the early Apollo program.
I don't know about you, but as illogical it sounds, I'd rather go out in a split-second fireball at an altitude of 40 miles travelling at Mach 18 than in a car accident or bomb explosion.
For me the shuttle disaster was initially a "not again" kind of a shock. At first my thoughts were with the people who perished and their families, but soon after came the realization what this will mean to the future of the manned space program. Then I despaired. It was, of course, a human tragedy but the history will show that this was also a tragedy for human science and exploration.
First of all, there are technical problems. Exotic, untested and novel materials would have be used. Nanotubes are still not well understood under laboratory conditions. How to weave them into filaments and eventually cables is completely unknown at this time. How these filaments will react to the extreme environmental conditions in the upper atmosphere and low orbit is also unknown. I am not saying that these problems cannot be overcome. Not at all. What I am saying, however, is that using radically new technology for getting to orbit is not a good idea when reliability and safety are an issue. Take the Russian Soyuz, for instance. It's a real workhorse with great safety record in spite of its age. Keeping it simple and evolving from existing, well established solutions is the way to go.
Space flight should also be about flying - not about climbing some high tech bean stalk to orbit. Yes, this is an emotional argument, but still... So you climb to the orbit in the space elevator. What then? You'd still need to develop boosters and fuel to carry on from there. Space elevator helps, but it's obviously not the way to commoditize space travel.
RMS is an obnoxious uncompromising twit with a good idea.