to me "half-caste" has a horribly imperialistic/colonialistic connotation
I can see now how it could convey that. A friend explained to me that the use of the word "half" was in some way diminishing/demeaning to the described person. That was not the way I had looked on it, I saw it as a simple and unimportant statement of fact that the colour (the "caste") was "half and half", but I learned to accept that others might not see things the same.
And as a USian, "colored people" has a direct connotation with Jim Crow and segregation.
Well thanks for the pointer - I had never heard of Jim Crow, but I've googled, and now I'm considerably wiser about the stupidities of my fellow humans. Well sort of - it's not clear whether "Jim Crow" was an actual person, or a caricature rhyming word for "negro". Doesn't matter really - the point is that I see how "coloured people" was used in an oppressive way on segregation paraphernalia.
Jesus, what a mess of racial prejudice you folks have gone through in the US. In terms of the US history of prejudice I'd seen "Mississippi Burning" and that was about all; the epicentre of apartheid while I was growing up had been white South Africa, which we saw off when Nelson Mandela was released. Racial prejudice / racism always seems to me so old-fashioned and deluded that I don't even consider it... "Surely we were over and done with that crap 100 years ago? Can we move on and get on with the future please?". Yes, white privilege. But every now and again I get a rude awakening to the reality that the crap still infests our planet. Sigh.
I used that term ["mulatto"] with a friend of mine who is mixed-race. He told me it was offensive
I've been told (in a friendly way) that in the UK I shouldn't call people "mixed race" any more cos that's offensive - instead I should use "people of colour" (but woe betide me if I say "coloured people", cos that's offensive too). There was a time when I used "half-caste", but apparently that's really really really wrong, and it was after then that I started using mixed-race.
I'm a honky... you can call me that all you like, I really don't mind:-)
Yes, greybeard here. The systems analysts asked the users what they wanted, then wrote a spec that delivered it, and the programmers implemented it. There was none of this Agile "release early, release often" crap back in the day... you released when it was ready, and not until. And another thing: there was none of the modern trend of "Sorry, the computer's down" in the middle of the day - that was simply not allowed (sacking offence if it did)... you took the system down for hardware maintenance (on-site engineers...) and/or system software upgrades *out of hours*. Of course there were hardware failures, but the systems were resilient and *failed over* without service interruption. Yes these were the kind of machines that cost squillions, spinning tapes behind slidey perspex panels, as much as a gigabyte of disc per row of wardrobes, occupying entire rooms per computer.
Home users overwhelmingly sitting behind their router NATs and firewalls have no exposed SMB port access for worm to propagate over
... although.. after we've all finally moved onto IPv6 networking, and all our home systems (not just well-run geek systems but also all Joe Public's PCs running Windows 17) are sitting on publically routable real addresses and *not* behind NATs, the situation won't be as comfortable any more.
the whole concept of IPv6 is to be able to have IPv6 devices globally routable so that in the future, you want to have your IPv6 systems talk to other IPv6 systems directly without having to translate addresses
So no NAT any more, and we have to hope that everybody's ISP-supplied "router" will contain an adequate firewall as a perimeter defence. People with home networks of Mom, Dad, Granny, Billy & Sue's PCs will be depending on their individual PCs' host firewalls having the SMB ports open in order to "share" their, er, "family vacation photos", or whatever the hell it is they share.
... while still at school (i.e. aged ~15). Algol 60 was clearly elegant and 'well-designed'. We learned it in an after-school club run my one of the maths teachers (thanks "Jake"). It was followed by Fortran IV for the comparison with a language that while very useful was about as horrible to use as a language could be. We wrote on coding sheets which the teacher posted to a nearby university, and we received the corresponding punched card deck and lineprinter output showing our syntax errors "in as little as a week".
NB: I freely acknowledge that there are worse-looking languages than Fortran these days: Perl, APL, Mumps, IBM mainframe JCL for starters:)
Our first teaching language at university was BASIC, which I'm not ashamed about.... soooo easy to write in (at terminals which were teletypes with scrolling paper and paper-tape readers)... it's kind of limiting, but we had a lot of fun that first year. Then came the second year, in which we were introduced to The One True Language - Algol68. If it were still commonly used I'd look for jobs requiring it even now.
To paraphrase a well-worn metaphor: C... meh... shoot yourself in the foot......... C++.. meh... blow the whole of your damn leg off.
PS: non type-safe languages..... what ????!??!
(Javascript... ugh, puke)
Languages in which white-space is significant..... what ?!???!!!!!? (I'm looking at *you*, Python)
My Nokia 2323 is still working just fine for my simple needs, thanks - it is superb at making phone calls, fits easily in my pocket, lasts 2 weeks between recharges, and new batteries are readily available when needed. I live in the UK so of course now that we've left Europe our culture only has Third World sophistication and I know nothing of your life-enhancing appy ride-sharing hangout-checkin-powered nearby-fastfood-outlet-synchronised brain-obsoleting glamorous lifestyle.
I wonder why so many inarticulate angry/.ers seem to have such a thing for this word "butthurt"... If they want to convey that someone might be feeling displeased about something, but can't be bothered to articulate properly, the word they instinctively reach for seems designed to refer to unwanted anal attention, as if that's the most likely cause of disgruntlement.... and since the immediately preceding event is that the sneerer believes they made a good point and that the sneered-at-one was devastated by it, the inference is that the sneerer is the one inserting their dick into an ass.... "homosexual panic", perchance ? I *do* get it... it's like saying "faggot", only without having to sound familiar with the idea.
Please oh please yes please please please..... specifically, a phone that lasts 30 days between battery charges, and which isn't a fear-inducing mess of security holes needing constant updates (i.e. small attack surface please). Also, just a phone please. Don't need a camera built in - already have better cameras, that are just cameras.
You can give it a flashlight function if you must - I might have very occasional use for that. But I will never want to surf the web on a goddam phone, okay ?
Free Upgrade To Windows 10 Ends Today: What's Your Thought On This?
I'm very pleased for my friends and relatives that the continual harassment from Microsoft to do "something that sounds scary and sinister" will now end.
As for me, I couldn't care less.... I use only Linux for my day-to-day needs (the only gaming I do these days is Tetris and Mahjongg), though I keep a copy of XP in a VM for those rare occasions I need to run a Win32 app. I have Doom 3 installed on a real metal WinXP somewhere here.... never finished it..... got bored by all the dim lighting..... maybe I'll finish that one day. At least it didn't "require a Steam connection", and therefore Internet connectivity.
I thought about buying a copy of Win7 Pro while you still could (well it is quite a nice product if you can get it at a reasonable price), but in the end just couldn't face the continual struggle with Microsoft's dirty tricks department over whose PC it is. They made it perfectly clear they would bolt on telemetry to Win7 & 8.x, and would try ever tricksier ways to force download the Win10 files over my link onto my hard drive, and fool me into starting the upgrade, which were only circumventable by switching off all security updates and maintaining constant hyper-vigilence. I have enough stress in my life, without that nonsense. F*ck that. Out here, we are free, and the air smells good.
So I say hooray for the end of free Win10 upgrades:)
"And tap into America !".... (sorry - wrong link, I know, but it'll do)
Pfh!.... The kids these days... everything's gotta happen so fast for them... they speak before they've finished thinking, and before they've finished speaking they've moved on to the next thing because apps.
Back when we were on dialup everything was so slow we really made sure that 120 byte file was right before starting the zmodem upload cos it all took so long and phone bills were so high^G5S2%^^^&%NO CARRIER
I still have a Debian Squeeze system that can run perfectly happily using Debian's 2.6.32 kernel. As it happens, I did experience one (and only one) problem with this system & kernel, which is that USB3 didn't work properly (onboard Etron controller), so I installed Debian's 3.2 backport Sarge kernel and all has been well ever since. I don't suppose lack of USB3 is really going to worry the average production server operator (the target market for RedHat/CentOS).
It was not pocket knives but "carpet knives". No idea what the correct english term is
If I recall correctly they were "craft knives", often known in England as "Stanley" (a popular brand) knives, but the key thing is they were made entirely of plastic, and so undetectable by the metal detectors of the time. I've seen them on sale here... they're "disposable", meant for short-term use (but good for long enough to threaten a stewardess). I think (hope) the scanners these days can detect a hard blade by the acuteness of its edge, no matter what it's made of.
"The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world"
Regina, this is not news. Any software engineer worth their salt (i.e. with a natural aptitude for computer and software engineering and science) knows this. The whole problem with our industry is that management has seen fit to offer jobs to just about anyone who wants to "work with computers". Worse, they employ the ones who *don't* even like the work... they just want the money (they've heard there's good money in IT), but actually detest the work... you'll never get inspirational work out of them.
Could it be that you're one of those managers who think they have a monopoly on intelligence and insight ? Some of us have known what you've just said for a decade or two, but management didn't want to listen, because "the numbers". Now that your numbers are looking good, some of you are stumbling on our prior art as if it's new and deep wisdom.
SCO (a nest of vile talentless MBAs) was basically the worst kind of patent troll, and the nub of their case was pretty much that *any* piece of source code was patentable - even such things as Hello World, or everybody's first "find all prime numbers between 1 and 100" program. This was dismal in the extreme, and threatened to be the final nail in the coffin of programming as any kind of joyous activity. Worse, the US legal system looked likely for a while to actually let SCO get away with this, because money.
At the darkest hour PJ marshalled the resistance, and provided quartermaster and general HQ facilities (with IBM supplying the heavy armour), and for this we are truly grateful. A toast to you PJ, wherever you are.
+1 for a Qt (non-XUL) clone of Thunderbird, for both performance and aesthetic reasons.
FWIW, current releases of Thunderbird *crawl* on an otherwise empty 2GHz Athlon XP (so single-core), 2GB RAM WinXP machine - and this just ain't right. On that machine (used to be my main workstation a couple of builds ago) early versions of TB ran like a charm, but as I say, with the latest versions every damn mouse click in the GUI results in an hourglass and a 15-second delay. I fear feature-bloat and framework-itis are to blame.
On the same old Athlon XP workstation, Forte Agent still runs beautifully - the GUI uses WxWidgets. Sorry - Windows only.
Why does anyone care what is the "biggest" or "most important" open-source project ? That's like treating software in the same way as all that "Strictly Pop Idol Celebrity Chef Globes" TV garbage.
It's either *good* software, or it isn't, and that's the only criterion worth talking about.
Some of the best and most useful open-source software is also thesmallest. Some of the most important and critical open-source software is also among the smallest and least 'recognised'. And some of the biggest open-source projects are also the biggest causes for concern.
Are we all hoping for prizes or something ?
Oh dear... how childish.
we are activating very slow bombs which will (virtually) never be deactivated (by the way, I guess that this is what your video is about. Unfortunately, the link does not work).
The film keeps being uploaded to Youtube, and then removed again by YT because of a copyright complaint. Many people feel strongly anough that the film should be seen that they keep re-uploading it, and so the silly battle goes on.
When you start a single nuclear power plan, you are triggering a set of consequences which the Earth and the future generations will be bearing no matter what during the next quite a few thousands of years.
Agreed.
The film is superb, and will likely leave you quiet and thoughtfuil for days afterwards (though perhaps you already know about it). The Onkalo project is ongoing, and won't be completed till most of us are dead - it consists of the construction in Finland of an underground repository for nuclear waste, designed to keep the waste safely away from unsuspecting individuals until decay renders it "safe". That is, for so long that all knowledge of the creation of the repository may have been lost, and all languages that might be used for creating notices about the repository have changed utterly. The challenges involved are sobering.
Thanks. I'll take your leaves if you take mine - so long, of course, as we're not required to burn down the forests to avoid inflation...... aah, modern capitalism eh ? Such a giggle.
The reply about breaking walls of text into paragraphs is worth noting, especially in these days of soundbite culture and bloody tablet devices:-)
But your basic point is sound IMO. We have a serious energy supply problem: we cannot continue burning fossil fuels. Quite apart from the putative impact on the global-warming problem, fossil fuels are a dead-end road - we don't have very much left. Coal takes 400 million years to form (IIRC), and oil even longer. It's not just boiling water - pretty much every activity in modern civilisation (and especially our beloved Internet) needs electricity.
We need a way forward into the long-term future, and unfortunately (again, IMO) nuclear technology seems likely to be necessary.
The second part of your point needs emphasizing: nuclear technology is highly dangerous, and utterly filthy (certainly for fission) - and this is not being properly brought home to the general public. As has been pointed out, Chernobyl and Fukushima are now dead zones, and we don't want any more of that. Furthermore, even without disasters, fission power stations are extremely difficult, verging on impossible, and hugely expensive, to decommission. And nobody knows what to do with the waste products. All we can do is bury the damn stuff somewhere.
And at this point, it's time to refer the reader once again to the excellent analysis in the film Onkalo - Into Eternity
"Onkalo must last 100,000 years. Nothing built by man has lasted even one tenth of that time"
Sorry - you are of course, quite right. I have indeed enjoyed having my telephone sanitized, by a specialist with the proper tools, on numerous occasions.
Send the most worthless and despicable members of society into deal with the problem
Politicians, lawyers, CEOs, Priests, Psychiatrists, priests, and the like
Excellent idea, no need to waste finely-engineered, highly valuable hi-tec robots - but your list forgot to include marketing morons, advertising "creatives", financial trader types, property speculators, environmental polluters, all other kinds of greedy, self-centered, planet-wrecking ignoramuses, and of course telephone sanitizers......
I hardly think Debian's inittab man page constitutes adequate documentation of the content, function and format of the damn thing. I've read it, and am not much the wiser.
I was trying to find out why the default runlevel in Squeeze is 2, and starts whatever GUI desktop you have installed, although runlevels 3, 4 and 5 are also available but do nothing different from 2. I'd have liked a clear description of how to tweak the file so the system starts multiuser but with just a dumb terminal console at first, only switching to GUI desktop if runlevel gets changed to, say, 3. Fat chance.
It's like doing 'man bash' in the hope of finding out what the bash syntax for a compound condition 'if' statement is:-)... round brackets or square ones ?.... one set, or two ?.... 'elsf' or 'else if' ?.... 'fi' or 'endif' ?...... These vaguely Algol-like languages just blur one into another after a while.... sh, csh, ksh, bash, dash, zsh, whatever that was on HPUX, etc., etc..... anyway, as any fule kno, you search the web for that, only resorting to the man page if you have a burning desire to learn about arcane line discipline handling of weird escape characters.
Slashdot Mirror
to me "half-caste" has a horribly imperialistic/colonialistic connotation
I can see now how it could convey that. A friend explained to me that the use of the word "half" was in some way diminishing/demeaning to the described person. That was not the way I had looked on it, I saw it as a simple and unimportant statement of fact that the colour (the "caste") was "half and half", but I learned to accept that others might not see things the same.
And as a USian, "colored people" has a direct connotation with Jim Crow and segregation.
Well thanks for the pointer - I had never heard of Jim Crow, but I've googled, and now I'm considerably wiser about the stupidities of my fellow humans. Well sort of - it's not clear whether "Jim Crow" was an actual person, or a caricature rhyming word for "negro". Doesn't matter really - the point is that I see how "coloured people" was used in an oppressive way on segregation paraphernalia.
Jesus, what a mess of racial prejudice you folks have gone through in the US. In terms of the US history of prejudice I'd seen "Mississippi Burning" and that was about all; the epicentre of apartheid while I was growing up had been white South Africa, which we saw off when Nelson Mandela was released. Racial prejudice / racism always seems to me so old-fashioned and deluded that I don't even consider it ... "Surely we were over and done with that crap 100 years ago? Can we move on and get on with the future please?". Yes, white privilege. But every now and again I get a rude awakening to the reality that the crap still infests our planet. Sigh.
I used that term ["mulatto"] with a friend of mine who is mixed-race. He told me it was offensive
I've been told (in a friendly way) that in the UK I shouldn't call people "mixed race" any more cos that's offensive - instead I should use "people of colour" (but woe betide me if I say "coloured people", cos that's offensive too). There was a time when I used "half-caste", but apparently that's really really really wrong, and it was after then that I started using mixed-race.
I'm a honky ... you can call me that all you like, I really don't mind :-)
This whole situation has become ridiculous.
Mod up +10
Yes, greybeard here. The systems analysts asked the users what they wanted, then wrote a spec that delivered it, and the programmers implemented it. There was none of this Agile "release early, release often" crap back in the day ... you released when it was ready, and not until. And another thing: there was none of the modern trend of "Sorry, the computer's down" in the middle of the day - that was simply not allowed (sacking offence if it did) ... you took the system down for hardware maintenance (on-site engineers ...) and/or system software upgrades *out of hours*. Of course there were hardware failures, but the systems were resilient and *failed over* without service interruption. Yes these were the kind of machines that cost squillions, spinning tapes behind slidey perspex panels, as much as a gigabyte of disc per row of wardrobes, occupying entire rooms per computer.
Anyone seen my lawn ?
Home users overwhelmingly sitting behind their router NATs and firewalls have no exposed SMB port access for worm to propagate over
... although .. after we've all finally moved onto IPv6 networking, and all our home systems (not just well-run geek systems but also all Joe Public's PCs running Windows 17) are sitting on publically routable real addresses and *not* behind NATs, the situation won't be as comfortable any more.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2228449/microsoft-subnet/ipv6-addressing--subnets--private-addresses.html:
So no NAT any more, and we have to hope that everybody's ISP-supplied "router" will contain an adequate firewall as a perimeter defence. People with home networks of Mom, Dad, Granny, Billy & Sue's PCs will be depending on their individual PCs' host firewalls having the SMB ports open in order to "share" their, er, "family vacation photos", or whatever the hell it is they share.
... while still at school (i.e. aged ~15). Algol 60 was clearly elegant and 'well-designed'. We learned it in an after-school club run my one of the maths teachers (thanks "Jake"). It was followed by Fortran IV for the comparison with a language that while very useful was about as horrible to use as a language could be. We wrote on coding sheets which the teacher posted to a nearby university, and we received the corresponding punched card deck and lineprinter output showing our syntax errors "in as little as a week".
NB: I freely acknowledge that there are worse-looking languages than Fortran these days: Perl, APL, Mumps, IBM mainframe JCL for starters :)
Our first teaching language at university was BASIC, which I'm not ashamed about .... soooo easy to write in (at terminals which were teletypes with scrolling paper and paper-tape readers) ... it's kind of limiting, but we had a lot of fun that first year. Then came the second year, in which we were introduced to The One True Language - Algol68. If it were still commonly used I'd look for jobs requiring it even now.
To paraphrase a well-worn metaphor: C ... meh ... shoot yourself in the foot ......... C++ .. meh ... blow the whole of your damn leg off.
FWIW: comparison of Algol68 with C++
PS: non type-safe languages ..... what ????!??!
(Javascript ... ugh, puke) ..... what ?!???!!!!!? (I'm looking at *you*, Python)
Languages in which white-space is significant
My Nokia 2323 is still working just fine for my simple needs, thanks - it is superb at making phone calls, fits easily in my pocket, lasts 2 weeks between recharges, and new batteries are readily available when needed. I live in the UK so of course now that we've left Europe our culture only has Third World sophistication and I know nothing of your life-enhancing appy ride-sharing hangout-checkin-powered nearby-fastfood-outlet-synchronised brain-obsoleting glamorous lifestyle.
I wonder why so many inarticulate angry /.ers seem to have such a thing for this word "butthurt" ... If they want to convey that someone might be feeling displeased about something, but can't be bothered to articulate properly, the word they instinctively reach for seems designed to refer to unwanted anal attention, as if that's the most likely cause of disgruntlement .... and since the immediately preceding event is that the sneerer believes they made a good point and that the sneered-at-one was devastated by it, the inference is that the sneerer is the one inserting their dick into an ass .... "homosexual panic", perchance ? I *do* get it ... it's like saying "faggot", only without having to sound familiar with the idea.
Does this herald the return of the dumb phone?
Please oh please yes please please please ..... specifically, a phone that lasts 30 days between battery charges, and which isn't a fear-inducing mess of security holes needing constant updates (i.e. small attack surface please). Also, just a phone please. Don't need a camera built in - already have better cameras, that are just cameras.
You can give it a flashlight function if you must - I might have very occasional use for that. But I will never want to surf the web on a goddam phone, okay ?
I think you meant 0118 999 881 999 119 7253. Here's a handy song to help you remember!
You forgot the handy song
You're welcome :)
Free Upgrade To Windows 10 Ends Today: What's Your Thought On This?
I'm very pleased for my friends and relatives that the continual harassment from Microsoft to do "something that sounds scary and sinister" will now end.
As for me, I couldn't care less .... I use only Linux for my day-to-day needs (the only gaming I do these days is Tetris and Mahjongg), though I keep a copy of XP in a VM for those rare occasions I need to run a Win32 app. I have Doom 3 installed on a real metal WinXP somewhere here .... never finished it ..... got bored by all the dim lighting ..... maybe I'll finish that one day. At least it didn't "require a Steam connection", and therefore Internet connectivity.
I thought about buying a copy of Win7 Pro while you still could (well it is quite a nice product if you can get it at a reasonable price), but in the end just couldn't face the continual struggle with Microsoft's dirty tricks department over whose PC it is. They made it perfectly clear they would bolt on telemetry to Win7 & 8.x, and would try ever tricksier ways to force download the Win10 files over my link onto my hard drive, and fool me into starting the upgrade, which were only circumventable by switching off all security updates and maintaining constant hyper-vigilence. I have enough stress in my life, without that nonsense. F*ck that. Out here, we are free, and the air smells good.
So I say hooray for the end of free Win10 upgrades :)
.... (sorry - wrong link, I know, but it'll do)
"And tap into America !"
get it right
Pfh! .... The kids these days ... everything's gotta happen so fast for them ... they speak before they've finished thinking, and before they've finished speaking they've moved on to the next thing because apps.
Back when we were on dialup everything was so slow we really made sure that 120 byte file was right before starting the zmodem upload cos it all took so long and phone bills were so high^G5S2%^^^&%NO CARRIER
busy busy busy, I think .....
I still have a Debian Squeeze system that can run perfectly happily using Debian's 2.6.32 kernel. As it happens, I did experience one (and only one) problem with this system & kernel, which is that USB3 didn't work properly (onboard Etron controller), so I installed Debian's 3.2 backport Sarge kernel and all has been well ever since. I don't suppose lack of USB3 is really going to worry the average production server operator (the target market for RedHat/CentOS).
Mod parent +11 Very Funny
It was not pocket knives but "carpet knives". No idea what the correct english term is
If I recall correctly they were "craft knives", often known in England as "Stanley" (a popular brand) knives, but the key thing is they were made entirely of plastic, and so undetectable by the metal detectors of the time. I've seen them on sale here ... they're "disposable", meant for short-term use (but good for long enough to threaten a stewardess). I think (hope) the scanners these days can detect a hard blade by the acuteness of its edge, no matter what it's made of.
"The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world"
Regina, this is not news. Any software engineer worth their salt (i.e. with a natural aptitude for computer and software engineering and science) knows this. The whole problem with our industry is that management has seen fit to offer jobs to just about anyone who wants to "work with computers". Worse, they employ the ones who *don't* even like the work ... they just want the money (they've heard there's good money in IT), but actually detest the work ... you'll never get inspirational work out of them.
Could it be that you're one of those managers who think they have a monopoly on intelligence and insight ? Some of us have known what you've just said for a decade or two, but management didn't want to listen, because "the numbers". Now that your numbers are looking good, some of you are stumbling on our prior art as if it's new and deep wisdom.
+1
SCO (a nest of vile talentless MBAs) was basically the worst kind of patent troll, and the nub of their case was pretty much that *any* piece of source code was patentable - even such things as Hello World, or everybody's first "find all prime numbers between 1 and 100" program. This was dismal in the extreme, and threatened to be the final nail in the coffin of programming as any kind of joyous activity. Worse, the US legal system looked likely for a while to actually let SCO get away with this, because money.
At the darkest hour PJ marshalled the resistance, and provided quartermaster and general HQ facilities (with IBM supplying the heavy armour), and for this we are truly grateful. A toast to you PJ, wherever you are.
+1 for a Qt (non-XUL) clone of Thunderbird, for both performance and aesthetic reasons.
FWIW, current releases of Thunderbird *crawl* on an otherwise empty 2GHz Athlon XP (so single-core), 2GB RAM WinXP machine - and this just ain't right. On that machine (used to be my main workstation a couple of builds ago) early versions of TB ran like a charm, but as I say, with the latest versions every damn mouse click in the GUI results in an hourglass and a 15-second delay. I fear feature-bloat and framework-itis are to blame.
On the same old Athlon XP workstation, Forte Agent still runs beautifully - the GUI uses WxWidgets. Sorry - Windows only.
Why does anyone care what is the "biggest" or "most important" open-source project ? That's like treating software in the same way as all that "Strictly Pop Idol Celebrity Chef Globes" TV garbage.
It's either *good* software, or it isn't, and that's the only criterion worth talking about.
Some of the best and most useful open-source software is also the smallest. Some of the most important and critical open-source software is also among the smallest and least 'recognised'. And some of the biggest open-source projects are also the biggest causes for concern.
Are we all hoping for prizes or something ? ... how childish.
Oh dear
we are activating very slow bombs which will (virtually) never be deactivated (by the way, I guess that this is what your video is about. Unfortunately, the link does not work).
The film keeps being uploaded to Youtube, and then removed again by YT because of a copyright complaint. Many people feel strongly anough that the film should be seen that they keep re-uploading it, and so the silly battle goes on.
When you start a single nuclear power plan, you are triggering a set of consequences which the Earth and the future generations will be bearing no matter what during the next quite a few thousands of years.
Agreed.
The film is superb, and will likely leave you quiet and thoughtfuil for days afterwards (though perhaps you already know about it). The Onkalo project is ongoing, and won't be completed till most of us are dead - it consists of the construction in Finland of an underground repository for nuclear waste, designed to keep the waste safely away from unsuspecting individuals until decay renders it "safe". That is, for so long that all knowledge of the creation of the repository may have been lost, and all languages that might be used for creating notices about the repository have changed utterly. The challenges involved are sobering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_%28film%29
Search at Youtube for "Onkalo", and you will find a variety of video clips, full and partial, at any given time.
Thanks. I'll take your leaves if you take mine - so long, of course, as we're not required to burn down the forests to avoid inflation ...... aah, modern capitalism eh ? Such a giggle.
The reply about breaking walls of text into paragraphs is worth noting, especially in these days of soundbite culture and bloody tablet devices :-)
But your basic point is sound IMO. We have a serious energy supply problem: we cannot continue burning fossil fuels. Quite apart from the putative impact on the global-warming problem, fossil fuels are a dead-end road - we don't have very much left. Coal takes 400 million years to form (IIRC), and oil even longer. It's not just boiling water - pretty much every activity in modern civilisation (and especially our beloved Internet) needs electricity.
We need a way forward into the long-term future, and unfortunately (again, IMO) nuclear technology seems likely to be necessary.
The second part of your point needs emphasizing: nuclear technology is highly dangerous, and utterly filthy (certainly for fission) - and this is not being properly brought home to the general public. As has been pointed out, Chernobyl and Fukushima are now dead zones, and we don't want any more of that. Furthermore, even without disasters, fission power stations are extremely difficult, verging on impossible, and hugely expensive, to decommission. And nobody knows what to do with the waste products. All we can do is bury the damn stuff somewhere.
And at this point, it's time to refer the reader once again to the excellent analysis in the film Onkalo - Into Eternity
"Onkalo must last 100,000 years. Nothing built by man has lasted even one tenth of that time"
telephone sanitizers
Those produce something useful.
Sorry - you are of course, quite right. I have indeed enjoyed having my telephone sanitized, by a specialist with the proper tools, on numerous occasions.
But their inclusion on the list was obligatory really - it's a B-Ark thing :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Send the most worthless and despicable members of society into deal with the problem
Politicians, lawyers, CEOs, Priests, Psychiatrists, priests, and the like
Excellent idea, no need to waste finely-engineered, highly valuable hi-tec robots - but your list forgot to include marketing morons, advertising "creatives", financial trader types, property speculators, environmental polluters, all other kinds of greedy, self-centered, planet-wrecking ignoramuses, and of course telephone sanitizers ......
On debian, you would use 'man inittab'
I hardly think Debian's inittab man page constitutes adequate documentation of the content, function and format of the damn thing. I've read it, and am not much the wiser.
I was trying to find out why the default runlevel in Squeeze is 2, and starts whatever GUI desktop you have installed, although runlevels 3, 4 and 5 are also available but do nothing different from 2. I'd have liked a clear description of how to tweak the file so the system starts multiuser but with just a dumb terminal console at first, only switching to GUI desktop if runlevel gets changed to, say, 3. Fat chance.
It's like doing 'man bash' in the hope of finding out what the bash syntax for a compound condition 'if' statement is :-) ... round brackets or square ones ? .... one set, or two ? .... 'elsf' or 'else if' ? .... 'fi' or 'endif' ? ...... These vaguely Algol-like languages just blur one into another after a while .... sh, csh, ksh, bash, dash, zsh, whatever that was on HPUX, etc., etc. .... anyway, as any fule kno, you search the web for that, only resorting to the man page if you have a burning desire to learn about arcane line discipline handling of weird escape characters.