Yes, but capable does not mean the same as interested.
I'm a physicist. I would certainly be capable of learning let's say accounting and heading for a new career in business. However, I am not interested in business. On the other hand, I would be very like to paint or write fiction, but I don't have either skill.
What I am trying to say that we are all hardwired to be good at something. Some of this wiring comes from our genes and some of it comes out of the way we grew up. At the age when you are deciding if you want to become/are capable of becoming a good scientist, it's already too late. At my current age, I could learn to be a lousy painter instead of a good scentist but what's the point? The dice was rolled a long time ago and what I am now is the result.
Of course one should address blatant discrimination but sexual or minority quotas will only lead to a drop in the standards. Don't take me wrong. It's not because the minorities were inherently less skilled. It's a case of simple statistics: quotas encourage the less skilled people to apply in larger numbers while discouraging the more skilled ones. As a result, the standards will drop.
If you want to have high standards within a profession like science, you will have to run a ruthless meritocracy.
Firewire is good for external drives, whereas SATA is excellent inside the case.
More importantly, SATA does not need new drivers, Firewire does. As far as I know, you cannot use Firewire hard drives or practically any other devices in Linux.
The "advantages" you list just indicate that you do not understand why people find Linux difficult to learn and use: too much freedom.
You should only have one GUI for configuration, strictly limited freedom to customize the system and no access to configuration files. Anything else is damnably confusing to a newbie.
Sorry, my mistake. I read precipitation as precipitation formation.
Sure the gravity affects the terminal velocity as well as does the density of the atmosphere.
For a slow travelling particle, the terminal velocity is linearly proportional to the gravity and inversily proportional to a "friction" coefficient which, obviously, depends on the viscosity of the atmosphere. I do not know how exactly the viscosity/friction depends on the pressure (gas density) but I would expect the dependence to be rather weak (in a pressure range of 0 - 1 earth atm). Hence, the gravity would dominate the terminal velocity and, since the gravity on Mars is less than on Earth, the droplet terminal velocity would be less on Mars.
All this is, however, complicated by the final size of the raindrop as both the friction and the gravity pull depend on it.
The size of the raindrops is determined by the water vapor pressure inside the drop and outside it: How much energy would be gained/lost by creating a water surface and taking water molecules out through the surface, out of the droplet into the gas phase or vice versa. If you do the calculation, it turns out that under the ambient conditions in Earth's atmosphere, nucleation of pure water is highly unlikely. Evaporation of water molecules into the gas phase is energetically way too favourable in comparison with the forming of a water surface with surface tension. However, mix a nucleation center such as a dust particle, the coalescing of the molecules becomes much much easier.
If we don't make human-mouse hybrids that means we are back in the dark ages burning witches?
If we don't make human-mouse hybrids because of an untenable idea that no human cells can be used in research because they are somehow special then, yes, that's dark-age-witch-burning-earth-centric mentality.
But, but... if you're a fugitive on the run and you have to call your estranged wife for some money, clothes and food using the mobile phone you stole from the prison guard you wrestled to the ground during your daring escape, you DON'T want them to track that phone down!!
is dabbling a little beyond the realm of what we should be working on.
The real question is whether our methods are sound or unsound -- not whether we should be there or not.
There are no realms of human knowledge where we should not be working. Who can make such a determination in the first place? The ways to get there, on the other hand, should be considered carefully but on a strictly secular level.
It's unfortunate that in the zeal to categorically ban all human cloning George Bush's administration has been unable to make this distinction.
The quest for knowledge must not be hindered by emotional, baseless "forbidden realms of knowledge" kind of arguments. If we allow that, the renessaince and enlightenment have been in vain and we're back in the dark ages burning witches.
Good thinking. I just joined the EFF for $100 as well.
The trouble at least here in the (Northern?) Europe is that you don't really see or hear about the new proposed EU laws until it's too late. That is, unless the new laws would concern the farming subsidies or alcohol taxation/importing quotas.
I read Danish and Swedish mainstream papers daily as well as follow the German and UK press and I don't recall seeing any mention of, for instance, the EU's DMCA equivalent that to my understanding has already passed the European Parliament. Similarly, trying to find specific information from the EU's elephantine web site is a hopeless task.
The point is, if you want research done and are willing to put money into it, do it. If so many others are so willing to, let them pool the money with you.
Answer me this honestly: do you think that the general population is well informed, educated and rational enough to be trusted the voluntary funding of something that doesn't bring them salty snacks, beer, faster cars and entertainment with big exlosions and titties RIGHT NOW?
No. Same goes for public libraries, education and health care, probably for the police and rescue services as well. The moron majority doesn't want to fund them until the minute they need them and that means that, on average, they will never get funding.
Cynical, yes. Elitist, yes. Yet what I see every day confirms this. Mob rules.
Often times you must assign copyrights to the publisher in order to get published. So, not only do you pay IMHO outrageous page charges, you also lose copyright to the article.
Good point.
The other AC above also made a good comment about the subscription fees and ads (hint: moderators, moderate that AC up).
I don't recall anywhere the right to have any and all research which "could" have application in the next decade developed and paid for by the population as a whole.
That's not the case.
Applications for government funded research projects are evaluated by the scientists themselves. In general, no-hope and crackpot projects do not get through and get funding. If the government does not pay for general basic research, no-one will (except giants like IBM but that's only for their own narrow projects).
But then again, I gladly pay taxes for public health care, controlled welfare (=with an evaluation of whether you're really trying to get back on your feet made every 6 months for two years; if not, you're out), national infrastructure (roads, railroads, airways), public transportation as well as police and the rescue services.
Grudginly I also pay for the military which, in my opinion, should always be the first target when it comes to cutting government budget.
Especially when they use these funds to completely undermine competition by giving the goods or services away for free
I think this is yet another case of a black and white view on things: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, public vs. private. It's always all or nothing, but yet the world is gray.
Same services provided by public and private entities can very well exist together without unfair competition. Take public health care and private clinics in Northern European countries, for instance. You can get your ailment treated within days or a week in the public sector, but if you want immediate action you can pay and use the private services.
It's the publishers' responsibility to develop a service that people find worth paying for!
The government should be allowed to make the raw science, paid by the tax money, publicly available for all with no or a nominal cost. This could be done, for instance, in a form of a pre-print library where the manuscripts with figures are stored in the raw format the authors prepared.
Now if the publishers would typeset these manuscripts into a neat format, print them out and deliver them via net or on paper, I'm sure that some people would find that worth paying for. Perhaps the publisher could have a website where supplementary data regarding the article can be submitted by the authors and accessed by paying customers. Normally such data is obtained by e-mailing the authors and requesting for it, but sometime's it's a hassle and having the data always available on a commercial data base would certainly appeal to me.
How about people who want to know something do their own damned research and stop getting the government to steal money to do it for them?
You think the myopic vision of the venture capitalists would guarantee funding for basic research that could have applications within a decade or so, but which is the very lifeblood of new applied research? I don't think so.
Witness the current problem with the antibiotic resistant bacteria. The moment it became clear that you could reap better profits by developing fashionable drugs like Viagra and Prozac instead of boring, basic stuff like new antibiotics, the big money went away and now (or at least very soon) we're in a shitter because of that.
When it comes to scientific journals, publishers do not, in general, buy the rights to publish scientific articles.
In fact, it can be the other way around. The most prestigous journals like Science, Nature and Physical Review Letters charge the scientists who want to get their results published!
There are killer apps and then there are Killer Apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. No suitable replacement exists for these two. OpenOffice will not do since it does not import/export with 100% success and the fonts (at least in Linux) look like shit. I don't see either how Gimp could replace Photoshop (color calibration, for instance) in professional work environment in years.
For an average user there cannot be "better than Windows" because that's what he/she can use already. The path of least resistance means that something must really upset these people before they even try changing the OS. And most of those who do try a different OS/Office package would quickly return when they realise that they'd have to learn a new GUI or - god forbid - think about "mounting a floppy" before accessing it (or do the recent distributions have an automatic mount that works as in Windows?).
The problem with that program is that it plots data out using Gnuplot which quite frankly sucks in comparison to the plotting facilities in the real thing.
As hard as it may be to comprehend for some people (RMS in particular), sometimes it actually is worth paying for proprietary software. I have bought Intel C++ and Intel Fortran compilers, Matlab and Labview. Why? Because they completely outclass any open source alternatives. I have a job to do and I want to do it in the best possible way and I will buy whatever I have to to accomplish that goal.
There are problems such as shortage of nurses and doctors refusing to go and work in small communities in the rural areas.
The first one is a direct result from the necessary cuts in the public spending in the 1990s depression. Nurses get ridiculously small pay for the physically and mentally heavy work they do. Better pay could now be afforded but the conservative right wing section of the government would usually rather spend the available money on military hardware and law enforcement.
Second problem is a social one and in my mind cannot be addressed by economical means.
You wouldn't have to. Only protestant christians get inducted to the state church upon their birth if the parents so wish. Only the members of the church pay that tax.
I could avoid the tax just by leaving the church, but to save just 0.5% in my taxes isn't worth the effort of filling that form. I consider it as an advance payment for my place in the graveyard, so that my family (or whomever's left behind) doesn't have to pay for it.
I've got 28% income/social security tax, 0.5% state church tax and I pay a 5% - 28% sales tax depending on what I'm buying (books cheap, electronics expensive). If you're drinking a lot or drive a car a lot you end up paying a lot more as there's an outrageous tax on alcohol and gasoline. Property in general is not taxed unless you own several expensive apartments, stock worth of hunderds of thousands of Euros or luxury yachts.
I have absolutely no problems with the idea of dropping state subsidies from the likes of telcos, shipbuilding docks, steel industries and airplane manufacturers.
I do, however, consider it a fundamental function of a state to provide reliable and affordable health care, education, transportation and welfare to all. Those who have plenty, should give to those who are in need; thus progressive taxation. These strategic functions should not be privatized. Competition would perhaps drive the costs down, but the lowest bidder isn't always the best option for critical services.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a physicist. I would certainly be capable of learning let's say accounting and heading for a new career in business. However, I am not interested in business. On the other hand, I would be very like to paint or write fiction, but I don't have either skill.
What I am trying to say that we are all hardwired to be good at something. Some of this wiring comes from our genes and some of it comes out of the way we grew up. At the age when you are deciding if you want to become/are capable of becoming a good scientist, it's already too late. At my current age, I could learn to be a lousy painter instead of a good scentist but what's the point? The dice was rolled a long time ago and what I am now is the result.
Of course one should address blatant discrimination but sexual or minority quotas will only lead to a drop in the standards. Don't take me wrong. It's not because the minorities were inherently less skilled. It's a case of simple statistics: quotas encourage the less skilled people to apply in larger numbers while discouraging the more skilled ones. As a result, the standards will drop.
If you want to have high standards within a profession like science, you will have to run a ruthless meritocracy.
Why?
I've never quite understood the assumption that something must be wrong if there isn't a 50/50 distribution of men and women in a profession.
There should be no fans, no hard drives or any other moving parts making noise.
More importantly, SATA does not need new drivers, Firewire does. As far as I know, you cannot use Firewire hard drives or practically any other devices in Linux.
The "advantages" you list just indicate that you do not understand why people find Linux difficult to learn and use: too much freedom. You should only have one GUI for configuration, strictly limited freedom to customize the system and no access to configuration files. Anything else is damnably confusing to a newbie.
Sure the gravity affects the terminal velocity as well as does the density of the atmosphere.
For a slow travelling particle, the terminal velocity is linearly proportional to the gravity and inversily proportional to a "friction" coefficient which, obviously, depends on the viscosity of the atmosphere. I do not know how exactly the viscosity/friction depends on the pressure (gas density) but I would expect the dependence to be rather weak (in a pressure range of 0 - 1 earth atm). Hence, the gravity would dominate the terminal velocity and, since the gravity on Mars is less than on Earth, the droplet terminal velocity would be less on Mars.
All this is, however, complicated by the final size of the raindrop as both the friction and the gravity pull depend on it.
The size of the raindrops is determined by the water vapor pressure inside the drop and outside it: How much energy would be gained/lost by creating a water surface and taking water molecules out through the surface, out of the droplet into the gas phase or vice versa. If you do the calculation, it turns out that under the ambient conditions in Earth's atmosphere, nucleation of pure water is highly unlikely. Evaporation of water molecules into the gas phase is energetically way too favourable in comparison with the forming of a water surface with surface tension. However, mix a nucleation center such as a dust particle, the coalescing of the molecules becomes much much easier.
Gravity per se has nothing to do with precipitation. However, if it affects the small dust particles then it can also affect the precipitation.
For instance on Earth the formation of water droplets would be practically impossible without small dust and ice particles in the atmosphere.
If we don't make human-mouse hybrids because of an untenable idea that no human cells can be used in research because they are somehow special then, yes, that's dark-age-witch-burning-earth-centric mentality.
But, but... if you're a fugitive on the run and you have to call your estranged wife for some money, clothes and food using the mobile phone you stole from the prison guard you wrestled to the ground during your daring escape, you DON'T want them to track that phone down!!
The real question is whether our methods are sound or unsound -- not whether we should be there or not.
There are no realms of human knowledge where we should not be working. Who can make such a determination in the first place? The ways to get there, on the other hand, should be considered carefully but on a strictly secular level.
It's unfortunate that in the zeal to categorically ban all human cloning George Bush's administration has been unable to make this distinction.
The quest for knowledge must not be hindered by emotional, baseless "forbidden realms of knowledge" kind of arguments. If we allow that, the renessaince and enlightenment have been in vain and we're back in the dark ages burning witches.
This site works just fine.
It seems to work only on IE.
The trouble at least here in the (Northern?) Europe is that you don't really see or hear about the new proposed EU laws until it's too late. That is, unless the new laws would concern the farming subsidies or alcohol taxation/importing quotas.
I read Danish and Swedish mainstream papers daily as well as follow the German and UK press and I don't recall seeing any mention of, for instance, the EU's DMCA equivalent that to my understanding has already passed the European Parliament. Similarly, trying to find specific information from the EU's elephantine web site is a hopeless task.
Answer me this honestly: do you think that the general population is well informed, educated and rational enough to be trusted the voluntary funding of something that doesn't bring them salty snacks, beer, faster cars and entertainment with big exlosions and titties RIGHT NOW?
No. Same goes for public libraries, education and health care, probably for the police and rescue services as well. The moron majority doesn't want to fund them until the minute they need them and that means that, on average, they will never get funding.
Cynical, yes. Elitist, yes. Yet what I see every day confirms this. Mob rules.
Good point.
The other AC above also made a good comment about the subscription fees and ads (hint: moderators, moderate that AC up).
That's not the case.
Applications for government funded research projects are evaluated by the scientists themselves. In general, no-hope and crackpot projects do not get through and get funding. If the government does not pay for general basic research, no-one will (except giants like IBM but that's only for their own narrow projects).
But then again, I gladly pay taxes for public health care, controlled welfare (=with an evaluation of whether you're really trying to get back on your feet made every 6 months for two years; if not, you're out), national infrastructure (roads, railroads, airways), public transportation as well as police and the rescue services.
Grudginly I also pay for the military which, in my opinion, should always be the first target when it comes to cutting government budget.
I think this is yet another case of a black and white view on things: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, public vs. private. It's always all or nothing, but yet the world is gray.
Same services provided by public and private entities can very well exist together without unfair competition. Take public health care and private clinics in Northern European countries, for instance. You can get your ailment treated within days or a week in the public sector, but if you want immediate action you can pay and use the private services.
It's the publishers' responsibility to develop a service that people find worth paying for!
The government should be allowed to make the raw science, paid by the tax money, publicly available for all with no or a nominal cost. This could be done, for instance, in a form of a pre-print library where the manuscripts with figures are stored in the raw format the authors prepared.
Now if the publishers would typeset these manuscripts into a neat format, print them out and deliver them via net or on paper, I'm sure that some people would find that worth paying for. Perhaps the publisher could have a website where supplementary data regarding the article can be submitted by the authors and accessed by paying customers. Normally such data is obtained by e-mailing the authors and requesting for it, but sometime's it's a hassle and having the data always available on a commercial data base would certainly appeal to me.
You think the myopic vision of the venture capitalists would guarantee funding for basic research that could have applications within a decade or so, but which is the very lifeblood of new applied research? I don't think so.
Witness the current problem with the antibiotic resistant bacteria. The moment it became clear that you could reap better profits by developing fashionable drugs like Viagra and Prozac instead of boring, basic stuff like new antibiotics, the big money went away and now (or at least very soon) we're in a shitter because of that.
In fact, it can be the other way around. The most prestigous journals like Science, Nature and Physical Review Letters charge the scientists who want to get their results published!
There are killer apps and then there are Killer Apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. No suitable replacement exists for these two. OpenOffice will not do since it does not import/export with 100% success and the fonts (at least in Linux) look like shit. I don't see either how Gimp could replace Photoshop (color calibration, for instance) in professional work environment in years.
For an average user there cannot be "better than Windows" because that's what he/she can use already. The path of least resistance means that something must really upset these people before they even try changing the OS. And most of those who do try a different OS/Office package would quickly return when they realise that they'd have to learn a new GUI or - god forbid - think about "mounting a floppy" before accessing it (or do the recent distributions have an automatic mount that works as in Windows?).
As hard as it may be to comprehend for some people (RMS in particular), sometimes it actually is worth paying for proprietary software. I have bought Intel C++ and Intel Fortran compilers, Matlab and Labview. Why? Because they completely outclass any open source alternatives. I have a job to do and I want to do it in the best possible way and I will buy whatever I have to to accomplish that goal.
The first one is a direct result from the necessary cuts in the public spending in the 1990s depression. Nurses get ridiculously small pay for the physically and mentally heavy work they do. Better pay could now be afforded but the conservative right wing section of the government would usually rather spend the available money on military hardware and law enforcement.
Second problem is a social one and in my mind cannot be addressed by economical means.
I could avoid the tax just by leaving the church, but to save just 0.5% in my taxes isn't worth the effort of filling that form. I consider it as an advance payment for my place in the graveyard, so that my family (or whomever's left behind) doesn't have to pay for it.
I've got 28% income/social security tax, 0.5% state church tax and I pay a 5% - 28% sales tax depending on what I'm buying (books cheap, electronics expensive). If you're drinking a lot or drive a car a lot you end up paying a lot more as there's an outrageous tax on alcohol and gasoline. Property in general is not taxed unless you own several expensive apartments, stock worth of hunderds of thousands of Euros or luxury yachts.
I do, however, consider it a fundamental function of a state to provide reliable and affordable health care, education, transportation and welfare to all. Those who have plenty, should give to those who are in need; thus progressive taxation. These strategic functions should not be privatized. Competition would perhaps drive the costs down, but the lowest bidder isn't always the best option for critical services.