Microsoft wins, they have effectively destroyed the committee that stood in their way. Now they can claim it's ineffective, since it has become so, and find someone else to rubber-stamp their standard. Not a bad strategy, if you're an Evil Empire.
I wouldn't be surprised if what this poster is asking for doesn't become a model for starting a lot of Open Source projects. I'd think it would be in the interest of groups like retailers associations to fund open source projects that would develop software they all could use. That would spread the cost out over lots of companies, and would provide enough money for a professional manager and a few core programmers. You can see an example of that in Open Office, which was originally a proprietary system, if I recall correctly. Now, Sun uses Open Office as the core of Star Office, and has paid programmers on staff that contribute.
I think this is also a good model for governments and educational institutions. Basically, any time you have a lot of organizations with nearly identical data processing needs, it would be in their best interests to fund an open source project to develop the software they need.
It would be really great if this kind of model caught on and created a substantial market for open source programmers.
I think we need a University of the Internet, that would provide free education K-Bachelor for anyone who is willing to do the necessary work. One Laptop Per Child is one step towards that, Free Wi-Fi in communities is another, this step by Berkly is one, as well. But it would be good to have some open organization pulling everything together.
Think about it. If every university donated content and some small amount of instructor time, this would be doable. It would give professionals a chance to donate time as an instructor or tutor, as well.
The best way to deal with the host of problems facing us is to make sure that we educate everyone we can as well as we can. It's not military might that's going to help us solve the problems ahead, it will be brain power. We need to cultivate that throughout the world.
Having the technology to keep our troops better informed, make sure they hit the right targets, and allow them to get back out safely, is all good. However, call my cynical, I strongly suspect that a lot of the backing for the war came from companies that wanted those lucrative DoD contracts that have been drying up since the Cold War ended. What better way to reinvigorate flagging weapon systems contracts than an active war? Before you call me a leftist commie, look at the makeup of the original Bush team. Rumsfeld and Cheney both have intimate ties to the companies that are making a mint off of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are people who seriously believe that it is in our best interest to always have an active military campaign. The argument goes that is the only way we can have blooded troops and battlefield tested equipment ready for when we REALLY need it.
Of course, you could argue that it's immoral to start wars simply to train troops and test equipment. You have to have a better excuse... like... hmmm... weapons of mass destruction! That's just the ticket! How can anyone object to going to war over that? And hey, by the time they realize we were full of shit, it will all be over.
This is the kind of stuff that makes people hate the U.S., the cynical attitude that the only life that matters is an American life, and for that matter, only the lives of the rich fat cats sitting at home pulling the strings. Thousands of Americans have dies. Tens of thousands of Americans have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families have paid for this war with losses of their own. (How often do you see Fox News talk about that?)
Is all the companies that think they should be able to control hardware they SELL you. Sorry, but if I bought it, I should be able to do whatever I damn please with it. It is astonishing to me that our legislatures can't figure out this simple bit of elementary logic. The only explanation is that they're brains are befuddled by the bribes they are taking from companies like Apple and the various telecoms.
It's too bad people have become so complacent that most won't fight this trend. Think what would happen if a substantial portion of the public agreed simply not to purchase any items that lock out features? We'd see an almost instantaneous change in corporate attitudes.
I'm tired of purchasing cell phones where the telecom company turns off features and then tries to charge me to get those features back. I won't do it anymore. The next phone I get, will be one that is unlocked, or I will do without.
I also find it amazing that people slavishly run out to purchase ipods when there are better MP3 players out there for far less. The main effect the ipod has had is to increase cost of all the players, since Apple showed it need not compete on cost.
The kind of exclusive marketing agreements that allow Apple to thrive, at the expense of all the companies who established the market for mp3 players in the first place, is another example of how our country is broken. It's another way that companies establish monopolies, which are illegal. Unfortunately, we have an executive branch that is more concerned with the political loyalty of U.S. Attorneys rather than whether or not they are doing their jobs by prosecuting corporations that engage in illegal monopolistic and unfair trade practices.
We need better. Our children deserve better. Vote with your pocket book against companies that behave this way and turn out to vote against the politicians who make it possible for companies to do this without fear of government sanction.
Without scientific advances, engineers don't have much to do.
If there aren't enough jobs in science, it's because basic research has been all but abandoned in this country. Universities are patenting inventions instead of sharing them, so they apply pressure to scientists to work in stuff that will make money. Most companies that used to do basic research, have abandoned it in order to cut costs. Mergers have made things worse. Research is one of the first 'costs' to go when the new owners start stripping down the company in order to pay off the debt incurred in the buyout.
If you want a healthy economy you need a few basic ingredients:
- A healthy scientific community engaged in vigorous basic research
- Well-trained engineers to turn the scientific inventions into goods and services.
- A well educated population to produce the scientists and engineers we need and to elect competent political representatives.
- A government that isn't on anyone's payroll but the taxpayer and knows that the taxpayer is paying attention.
Providing free tuition in these areas is a good interim solution, but our whole educational system needs an overhaul. We've got to figure out what our kids really need and design an educational system that delivers it. What we don't need is to continue to allow politicians to play musical chairs with the curriculum.
When I was a teenager, Kentucky had a program where they paid off student loans if you taught in a Kentucky high-school for three years. My best teachers were young men and women taking advantage of that program.
I think we need to consider implementing a program like that across the nation. It shouldn't be confined to just engineering and science. It could be used to help bolster our teaching ranks in all subjects.
Let's face it. I know there are great teachers still out there, but it used to be that if you were an intelligent woman, your choices in career were greatly limited. As a result of that sexism, intelligent women got drafted into the role of school teachers and we had a good educational system at an artificially low cost. (I'm not saying I approve of the way it was. I'm just pointing out what I think should be obvious.)
Women are no longer forced into such a small set of jobs. As a result, the smartest women can demand, and get, much better salaries than they ever could as teachers. While some, I'm sure, still teach out of love for the profession, most women who would have been teachers now pursue other challenging careers. This is a good thing, but it means that we'll have to find another way to get the same quality of teachers as we used to get as a byproduct of sexism.
Ultimately, I think we should allow anyone to get a free college education as long as they do the work. Upon graduation, the government pays off the student loans as long as the student spends 3-4 years teaching. For students who can't get loans, perhaps the government can work out an agreement ahead of time.
The problem is that many people are ill-prepared to interpret these agreements. How many high-schools actually teach kids anything about buying a car? How about getting a home loan? What about going over a cell-phone contract? What about filling out tax forms?
Our educational system no longer prepares our kids for real life. It prepares them to work in an agricultural society that vanished over fifty years ago.
If I want to get a cell phone, I have only a couple of companies that provide decent coverage in my area. (Due to the moronic auction of radio spectrum.) Why should they compete on contract items? It's in both of their interests not to compete very hard on price, contract clauses, or anything else that might seriously interfere with profits. It would take quite a few other companies entering the market, PLUS educated consumers, before you'd see any competition on that level.
It can be argued that a cell phone is a necessity for some people, like doctors, lawyers, and real estate people, who may have to be on call constantly. But my concern is more about the kinds of agreements we're forced into now in order to get homes, automobiles, and almost everything else.
Who has time to analyze all these agreements? The fifty to sixty hour week has become almost standard in many industries. (Despite extensive research that shows it actually hurts productivity.) Meaning less time for family and any other obligations. Therefore, I think our government has an obligation to protect us from contracts that have "hidden" traps in them, misleading language, or clauses that take away important consumer protections.
One of the important tasks of an educational system is to teach kids how to interact with each other. To that end, our schools might still be doing some good with the brighter students.
Like many others who have posted here, I'm not thrilled with the education I received in Elementary and High School. (I was paddled on the first day of First Grade for reading ahead.)
What bothers me is that our whole country seems to have adopted an anti-intellectual attitude, and I think our current problems are a direct result. The President we have in office is about as anti-intellectual as you can get. As long as we fail to educate our children by teaching them how to think critically and skeptically, we'll continue to see bad choices made by the electorate.
(Yes, I know people will say Bush stole the election, and I agree. But he couldn't have stolen it if the gap had been wide enough. It shouldn't have taken more than a cursory glance at Bush's record to rule him out as a viable Presidential candidate.)
The best and surest way to ensure a viable future for our country and the rest of the world is to provide everyone with as good and education as we possibly can. Refusing to fund education is moronically stupid. It's the children we are educating today that will be supporting us tomorrow.
Personally, I think there should be a world-wide effort to put a University of the World on the Internet. It should provide course material from grade-school through graduate school, so that anyone who is willing to put in the time, may educate him or herself to any degree he or she likes. Ideally, the school would be staffed by volunteer and paid teachers who would assist students and administer examinations to verify that students have met the requirements for advancement. It might not be regarded with the same respect as a degree from Harvard, but it would provide the chance for self-starters anywhere in the world, to get the education they need.
As the poster from India pointed out, the problems with education aren't confined to the U.S., the disabled, or gifted students. We need some fundamentally new ways of educating people and helping them continue learning throughout their lifetimes.
The real solution is to tell our government officials that the purpose of the government is NOT to establish and protect monopolies, and that it's really hard to claim you support free market capitalism while failing to prosecute companies that work in concert to shut out any potential competition.
This idea that we have to have behemoth companies to exist in the world is nonsense. We need a really free market with fair access to all. It is very rare to have a huge company do anything really innovative. The bigger and older they get, the more conservative they become. It's the startups and small agile companies that provide invigoration for the economy, that grow into the next generation of large companies providing long term stable employment. There is a place for large corporations, but when they have outlived their usefulness, we need to let them die. The way you minimize the impact to the employees is by having such a healthy economy that there are plenty of new opportunities for the workers who are displaced.
How do you get a government that will restore a free market? I don't have all the answers, but I think the first step is to make it clear to our representatives that as soon as we learn they are selling their votes, they get booted out of office. We need sweeping campaign finance reform that eliminates the huge debt that congressional representatives carry with them into office, practically forcing them to sell their souls to pay off the loans and raise money for the next election. The decision that equated money with free speech was on of the worst ones ever made. Essentially, we put our government up for sale and there have been plenty of buyers.
Finally, we have to insist that our government stop selling off our public resources. The airwaves should be owned by the citizens of the U.S., not some telecomm. If someone wants to use them, they should lease them from us, the citizens. It's not as if they can't afford it. By selling leases, rather than permanent ownership of bandwidth, we'd be able to better deal with companies that abuse the trust placed in them. If a telecomm refuses to provide access to competitors, we could pull their lease.
New technology is constantly changing the way we look at our world and resources. Frequency hopping technology holds the promise of giving us incredible bandwidth with little or no interference, but it works best when used over a vast range of frequencies, not confined to one small band. By dividing up the radio spectrum and selling it off, we've hobbled any future technologies like frequency hopping. If we leased the bandwidth, instead, it would be reasonably easy to restructure how the radio spectrum is divided up, when necessary.
So DARPA has developed the AQUEON, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1106609 .htm , which was actually developed by an Australian in the 70's? Got to make you wonder why no one in our government every checks to see if they are giving out grants for developing stuff that's already been patented. I wonder how much we paid to "develop" something that was probably taken from the original inventor's patent drawings. Sounds like there wasn't much actual development work done, to me. I wonder how big the grant was.
This only affects U.S. data, not all the other data from around the world which also supports global warming, so it doesn't mean we're off the hook. I would heave a great sigh of relief if it did.
This does underscore the need for transparency in all scientific methods, so that conclusions and methods can be properly tested.
There has been considerable science done since Al Gore's movie. Some of it continues to support the conclusion that we have made changes to our atmosphere which are causing temperatures to rise dramatically. Some data has become inconclusive. For instance, I saw one show where climbers of Mt. Kilamanjaro checked ground temperatures which revealed that increasing volcanic activity might account for some, if not all, of the ice melting that's been happening there.
But even with such corrections, there is still quite a lot of data from all over the world that indicates temperatures are rising and that it's caused by the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We can't ignore the rest of the data, unless someone can show that it, too is incorrect.
I, for one, believe that it is foolish to gamble that somehow things will turn out alright if we drag our feet or do nothing at all. There if far too much at stake. Even very small temperature changes in our past have had devastating effects on our civilization, and they occurred when our population was far smaller. Does anyone really believe that you can change the makeup of our atmosphere so drastically - increasing the CO2 by over 30% - and not have some detrimental effect? Even if you assumed that effect of changes in the atmosphere would be purely random, almost all possible changes would hurt us in some way.
I hope this latest report means we have more time to respond to the problem and will encourage a more open debate, but I don't think it means we should assume everything is going to be alright.
Beer was the first storable food. It's been found in every civilization and some archaeologists have proposed that beer may have started our switch from a nomadic hunting/gathering lifestyle to a settled farming one, so we could grow the grain needed to make beer.
It's likely that beer was discovered by accident many times. All you'd have to do is leave some grain out in a bowl where it got wet and fermented. You'd have a porridge-like mush protected by alcohol from spoiling.
The first beers didn't have that much alcohol and probably fermented off wild yeast. But the nice thing was, the beer didn't spoil, since the alcohol killed other pathogens. As many beer guts have demonstrated, beer is also an excellent source of calories.
I read a novel, I can't remember which, where the author made a great case for using enhanced radiation weapons against asteroids instead of conventional nuclear devices. His argument was that a non-impacting explosion using an enhanced radiation device might be able to divert even a fragile asteroid without necessarily breaking it up. The radiation from the weapon would transfer it's energy evenly to the surface of the asteroid. (Not exactly, but way better than a regular nuke) That would blow away the top layer of the asteroid on the side facing the blast, pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction. A series of such blasts might be able to divert the asteroid without causing it to break up.
I'm sure there are problems with the idea, but it seems logical to me.
What strikes me is the incredible hubris of the guy. He's abusing his position at the University for personal gain. He's drafting University employees to work for a venture that pays him money and pays them nothing. Must be nice. I wonder if the University gets anything at all in return?
I never claimed that it's impossible to get an education if you are poor, just much much harder. As these changes continue, the impact on the wealthy is negligible. Not only do they have the income to pay the tuition for their kids, but they can also get loans at great rates because they have good credit scores. (It's a lot easier to borrow money if you don't actually need it.)
How is it equitable to make it significantly harder for poor people to get an advanced education than for rich people to get one? How does this help our society? Wouldn't giving everyone access to an excellent education give us the best work force? What if educational opportunities were allocated strictly on performance and willingness to work hard? What if we spent the money being poured down the drain in Iraq on educating our kids instead of getting them blown up by IEDs set up by the people they're supposed to be protecting?
The best and surest way to provide for our future is in giving our kids as good an education as we can. That means all the kids. You never know where the next Einstein is going to come from, and we could use a few of them right about now. We've got plenty of hard problems that need to be solved.
A better educated electorate wouldn't simply throw up it's hands and say, "My vote doesn't matter," and walk away knowing that doing so insures that people who work against their interests stay in power. They might even insist that Congress take action when a sitting president breaks the law. They might object when they find out their votes have been thrown away in order to swing an election in the direction the party in power wants.
We are facing difficult times ahead. We have to deal with climate change, changes in the world economy, a huge HIV epidemic in Africa, and a tremendous loss in influence due to bad decisions made by those in power. I'm sure there are plenty more that we don't even know about yet. I believe we can meet almost any challenge, but only if we are prepared and the way you prepare for the future is by educating the young.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files
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Does ODF Have a Future?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm a writer and I've been gradually convincing some of the other writers I interact with to try out Open Office. Most who try it never go back to Word.
It's hard to sell a file format. What people buy into is the product that uses the file format. The best way to spread ODF is to continue to improve the products that use it, so people will choose them over the alternative.
I'm surprised they aren't at least going with something like the aerospike design rather than the same old nozzles. The aerospike, if it works correctly, compensates for the changes in air pressure so that the nozzle is in-effect, self-adjusting, if I recall correctly. This improves the overall efficiency of the rocket.
I also wonder why we don't use a system of fixed nozzles where we vary the thrust to steer the rocket rather than steering those huge nozzles. I'm sure there's some good reason, but it would seem to me that the fewer moving parts you have, the better off you are, and that having multiple rocket engines means you have a greater chance of maintaining some kind of control if one of them has a problem.
Of course, this discussion missed the whole point, that now it will be even harder for someone who is poor to get a degree in Engineering or Business. Of course, that's the whole point, right? Keep the good stuff for the rich and make sure the poor stay in their place.
If ever there was some area of our world that shouldn't be run as a business, it's Education. Providing a good education to our citizens is our best and surest way to insure that our country has a viable economic future.
People complain about the high cost of Health Care. Look at what it costs to become a doctor. The schools that train Doctors and Lawyers long ago realized they could cash in on the fact that these fields had more earning power, and they've been limiting who has access to that earning power through steep tuitions ever since.
If we keep on this course that seems to be guided by the principle that anything that can be sold should be sold to the highest bidder, we'll lose everything our ancestors fought to preserve in creating this nation.
Commerce has it's place, but this isn't it. Free market capitalism is good at distributing goods and services, but not at providing equitable education available to all citizens.
I have a different proposal, but I'm sure it has some problems I haven't thought of. How about you require all patent holders to license rights to their patents to anyone who pays a "fair and reasonable" royalty. (Determining that royalty is the sticky part.) This would insure that the patent holder got paid for their work developing the invention, and that there would be competition. It would end all these idiotic monopolies that distort our economy and allow free competition once more.
The problem with patents is that they create monopolies. That makes them incredibly valuable. If you were forced to license your patent to competitors, you might focus more efforts on actually satisfying customers rather than suing for huge settlements.
Of course, this might put a lot of lawyers out of work.
We got 12 million people without healthcare in this country and our Congress seems far more worried about protecting the RIAA than in solving problems that result in people dying.
We have some four thousand dead and who knows how many injured in a pointless war in Iraq, bu instead of dealing with an out-of-control President who thinks he's king, our Congress is protecting the RIAA by threatening college students.
I don't approve of illegal downloading. It's wrong, but it's not something that deserves this kind of attention from Congress. It's not something that should result in endangering the educational opportunities of a student the first time it happens. We've all done stupid things when we were in college.
Lets get our priorities straight here and tell the RIAA what they can do with themselves and tell our Congress to get to work on the real problems facing our country.
Not a bad idea. But I think your numbers are low. It costs about one year's salary to replace most professional IT workers, or so I've heard. That's the total cost including advertising, recruiting time, interview time, relocation, and the time it takes to learn the company's systems. So some programmer who's making 70k will cost about that much to hire. This is one reason contractors can be competitive. I suspect the price of H1Bs would have to be quite high to discourage companies like Microsoft and Google from using them to force down salaries.
Frankly, I'll believe that Google and others are having trouble hiring talented employees when it's not so hard for my friends to find decent jobs. We don't need to be importing workers if we have trained and talented people who are unemployed.
Um... StarTrek isn't real. It's a shock, I know, but true.:)
Humanity has, effectively, radically altered it's evolution. We are no longer selecting for the fittest in quite the same way as was done while we were evolving. Now it's more like survival of the richest and most prolific. It's hard to say what effect that will have over the long haul. Back in the first part of the last century, this was a huge worry that gave rise to the ideas that lead to Hitler's genocidal campaigns. Most people don't realize that many, if not most, of the great thinkers of that time were all for coming up with some way to insure that the "lesser" races wouldn't "out breed" their "betters." In the U.S., this lead to a widespread effort to sterilize anyone with a sub-standard I.Q., regardless of the cause of the problem.
We're not far from a time when people who are rich enough will be able to pick and choose traits that they want their children to have. The world of GATTACA might not be so far off. This kind of genetic tailoring makes the most sense when you talk about moving off planet.
People aren't designed to live in space. We have all sorts of problems from space sickness to muscles deterioration. People who spend a long time in space come back to Earth and need months to regain their full strength and health. I suspect we'll see similar problems on the Moon and Mars, where the lower gravity will have as yet unknown medical effects. At the very least, it will probably cause a loss of calcium in the bones, making it difficult for someone who spends a long time on the Moon or Mars to return to Earth.
If we really want to move off the planet, we'll wind up making changes to our bodies and genetic make up in order to better adapt ourselves to the new environment. Think about it, if we can design a human that can live in zero gravity without ill effects, the cost of building space habitats drops by orders of magnitude. Ultimately, if we survive the consequences of our stupidity, I suspect Humanity will split into a bunch of different genetically engineered species that are adapted for different environments, both in space and here on Earth. I can see people going back to the oceans. Perhaps they'll have gills and modified arms and legs. People who live full-time in zero gravity might adopt a more spherical body that is pushed along by much less robust arms and legs. Astronauts might be designed to withstand high gravity acceleration. Ultimately, all these things may become possible.
If we survive long enough, I think it's inevitable.
It started because of oil. Oil is a strategically and economically vital resource for the U.S. It has been since before Israel was set up, and probably has a lot to do with the creation of that country, since it gave the U.S. a friendly presence in an oil rich region.
Oil is what fuels the repressive governments in the Middle East. If they didn't have oil, the U.S. wouldn't care about them and wouldn't prop up governments that abuse their people. Those oppressive regimes create plenty of unhappy people, who turn to religion for answers as to why their life has to suck so much. They follow anyone who can give them hope for a better future.
Fundamentalism works the same over there as it does here, it preys mostly on the poor and disenfranchised, the people who feel they have no power of their own and want to belong to something greater than themselves. They join, feel a sense of belonging and community, and become willing to do whatever they are asked. Just like the cults here, those fundamentalist sects are run by charismatic individuals. These guys have no regard for the lives of their followers. They offer up the U.S. and the rest of the West as the reason for all the woes of these poor people, and why shouldn't these people believe them? They have very limited sources of information and often have very little education.
The ones who are educated see the U.S. as an interfering power that cares more about the oil than about the people who live on the land. Our actions, as a nation, just reinforce that notion.
If you want to end terrorism, end our dependence on oil. Push your representatives to support alternative energy, preferably the non-global warming kind. That is the only way to turn off the money supply to those governments. Do that, and those governments will eventually fall. What rises in their place will depend on how well we can repair the terrible damage Bush has done to our reputation.
Lets all hope we get wiser heads in our government soon.
Slashdot Mirror
>The hobbyist software creator didn't exist in large part thirty years ago
Damn, I just vanished in a puff of logic!
Microsoft wins, they have effectively destroyed the committee that stood in their way. Now they can claim it's ineffective, since it has become so, and find someone else to rubber-stamp their standard. Not a bad strategy, if you're an Evil Empire.
I wouldn't be surprised if what this poster is asking for doesn't become a model for starting a lot of Open Source projects. I'd think it would be in the interest of groups like retailers associations to fund open source projects that would develop software they all could use. That would spread the cost out over lots of companies, and would provide enough money for a professional manager and a few core programmers. You can see an example of that in Open Office, which was originally a proprietary system, if I recall correctly. Now, Sun uses Open Office as the core of Star Office, and has paid programmers on staff that contribute.
I think this is also a good model for governments and educational institutions. Basically, any time you have a lot of organizations with nearly identical data processing needs, it would be in their best interests to fund an open source project to develop the software they need.
It would be really great if this kind of model caught on and created a substantial market for open source programmers.
I think we need a University of the Internet, that would provide free education K-Bachelor for anyone who is willing to do the necessary work. One Laptop Per Child is one step towards that, Free Wi-Fi in communities is another, this step by Berkly is one, as well. But it would be good to have some open organization pulling everything together.
Think about it. If every university donated content and some small amount of instructor time, this would be doable. It would give professionals a chance to donate time as an instructor or tutor, as well.
The best way to deal with the host of problems facing us is to make sure that we educate everyone we can as well as we can. It's not military might that's going to help us solve the problems ahead, it will be brain power. We need to cultivate that throughout the world.
Having the technology to keep our troops better informed, make sure they hit the right targets, and allow them to get back out safely, is all good. However, call my cynical, I strongly suspect that a lot of the backing for the war came from companies that wanted those lucrative DoD contracts that have been drying up since the Cold War ended. What better way to reinvigorate flagging weapon systems contracts than an active war? Before you call me a leftist commie, look at the makeup of the original Bush team. Rumsfeld and Cheney both have intimate ties to the companies that are making a mint off of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
... hmmm... weapons of mass destruction! That's just the ticket! How can anyone object to going to war over that? And hey, by the time they realize we were full of shit, it will all be over.
There are people who seriously believe that it is in our best interest to always have an active military campaign. The argument goes that is the only way we can have blooded troops and battlefield tested equipment ready for when we REALLY need it.
Of course, you could argue that it's immoral to start wars simply to train troops and test equipment. You have to have a better excuse... like
This is the kind of stuff that makes people hate the U.S., the cynical attitude that the only life that matters is an American life, and for that matter, only the lives of the rich fat cats sitting at home pulling the strings. Thousands of Americans have dies. Tens of thousands of Americans have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families have paid for this war with losses of their own. (How often do you see Fox News talk about that?)
Is all the companies that think they should be able to control hardware they SELL you. Sorry, but if I bought it, I should be able to do whatever I damn please with it. It is astonishing to me that our legislatures can't figure out this simple bit of elementary logic. The only explanation is that they're brains are befuddled by the bribes they are taking from companies like Apple and the various telecoms.
It's too bad people have become so complacent that most won't fight this trend. Think what would happen if a substantial portion of the public agreed simply not to purchase any items that lock out features? We'd see an almost instantaneous change in corporate attitudes.
I'm tired of purchasing cell phones where the telecom company turns off features and then tries to charge me to get those features back. I won't do it anymore. The next phone I get, will be one that is unlocked, or I will do without.
I also find it amazing that people slavishly run out to purchase ipods when there are better MP3 players out there for far less. The main effect the ipod has had is to increase cost of all the players, since Apple showed it need not compete on cost.
The kind of exclusive marketing agreements that allow Apple to thrive, at the expense of all the companies who established the market for mp3 players in the first place, is another example of how our country is broken. It's another way that companies establish monopolies, which are illegal. Unfortunately, we have an executive branch that is more concerned with the political loyalty of U.S. Attorneys rather than whether or not they are doing their jobs by prosecuting corporations that engage in illegal monopolistic and unfair trade practices.
We need better. Our children deserve better. Vote with your pocket book against companies that behave this way and turn out to vote against the politicians who make it possible for companies to do this without fear of government sanction.
Without scientific advances, engineers don't have much to do.
If there aren't enough jobs in science, it's because basic research has been all but abandoned in this country. Universities are patenting inventions instead of sharing them, so they apply pressure to scientists to work in stuff that will make money. Most companies that used to do basic research, have abandoned it in order to cut costs. Mergers have made things worse. Research is one of the first 'costs' to go when the new owners start stripping down the company in order to pay off the debt incurred in the buyout.
If you want a healthy economy you need a few basic ingredients:
- A healthy scientific community engaged in vigorous basic research
- Well-trained engineers to turn the scientific inventions into goods and services.
- A well educated population to produce the scientists and engineers we need and to elect competent political representatives.
- A government that isn't on anyone's payroll but the taxpayer and knows that the taxpayer is paying attention.
Providing free tuition in these areas is a good interim solution, but our whole educational system needs an overhaul. We've got to figure out what our kids really need and design an educational system that delivers it. What we don't need is to continue to allow politicians to play musical chairs with the curriculum.
When I was a teenager, Kentucky had a program where they paid off student loans if you taught in a Kentucky high-school for three years. My best teachers were young men and women taking advantage of that program.
I think we need to consider implementing a program like that across the nation. It shouldn't be confined to just engineering and science. It could be used to help bolster our teaching ranks in all subjects.
Let's face it. I know there are great teachers still out there, but it used to be that if you were an intelligent woman, your choices in career were greatly limited. As a result of that sexism, intelligent women got drafted into the role of school teachers and we had a good educational system at an artificially low cost. (I'm not saying I approve of the way it was. I'm just pointing out what I think should be obvious.)
Women are no longer forced into such a small set of jobs. As a result, the smartest women can demand, and get, much better salaries than they ever could as teachers. While some, I'm sure, still teach out of love for the profession, most women who would have been teachers now pursue other challenging careers. This is a good thing, but it means that we'll have to find another way to get the same quality of teachers as we used to get as a byproduct of sexism.
Ultimately, I think we should allow anyone to get a free college education as long as they do the work. Upon graduation, the government pays off the student loans as long as the student spends 3-4 years teaching. For students who can't get loans, perhaps the government can work out an agreement ahead of time.
The problem is that many people are ill-prepared to interpret these agreements. How many high-schools actually teach kids anything about buying a car? How about getting a home loan? What about going over a cell-phone contract? What about filling out tax forms?
Our educational system no longer prepares our kids for real life. It prepares them to work in an agricultural society that vanished over fifty years ago.
If I want to get a cell phone, I have only a couple of companies that provide decent coverage in my area. (Due to the moronic auction of radio spectrum.) Why should they compete on contract items? It's in both of their interests not to compete very hard on price, contract clauses, or anything else that might seriously interfere with profits. It would take quite a few other companies entering the market, PLUS educated consumers, before you'd see any competition on that level.
It can be argued that a cell phone is a necessity for some people, like doctors, lawyers, and real estate people, who may have to be on call constantly. But my concern is more about the kinds of agreements we're forced into now in order to get homes, automobiles, and almost everything else.
Who has time to analyze all these agreements? The fifty to sixty hour week has become almost standard in many industries. (Despite extensive research that shows it actually hurts productivity.) Meaning less time for family and any other obligations. Therefore, I think our government has an obligation to protect us from contracts that have "hidden" traps in them, misleading language, or clauses that take away important consumer protections.
One of the important tasks of an educational system is to teach kids how to interact with each other. To that end, our schools might still be doing some good with the brighter students.
Like many others who have posted here, I'm not thrilled with the education I received in Elementary and High School. (I was paddled on the first day of First Grade for reading ahead.)
What bothers me is that our whole country seems to have adopted an anti-intellectual attitude, and I think our current problems are a direct result. The President we have in office is about as anti-intellectual as you can get. As long as we fail to educate our children by teaching them how to think critically and skeptically, we'll continue to see bad choices made by the electorate.
(Yes, I know people will say Bush stole the election, and I agree. But he couldn't have stolen it if the gap had been wide enough. It shouldn't have taken more than a cursory glance at Bush's record to rule him out as a viable Presidential candidate.)
The best and surest way to ensure a viable future for our country and the rest of the world is to provide everyone with as good and education as we possibly can. Refusing to fund education is moronically stupid. It's the children we are educating today that will be supporting us tomorrow.
Personally, I think there should be a world-wide effort to put a University of the World on the Internet. It should provide course material from grade-school through graduate school, so that anyone who is willing to put in the time, may educate him or herself to any degree he or she likes. Ideally, the school would be staffed by volunteer and paid teachers who would assist students and administer examinations to verify that students have met the requirements for advancement. It might not be regarded with the same respect as a degree from Harvard, but it would provide the chance for self-starters anywhere in the world, to get the education they need.
As the poster from India pointed out, the problems with education aren't confined to the U.S., the disabled, or gifted students. We need some fundamentally new ways of educating people and helping them continue learning throughout their lifetimes.
The real solution is to tell our government officials that the purpose of the government is NOT to establish and protect monopolies, and that it's really hard to claim you support free market capitalism while failing to prosecute companies that work in concert to shut out any potential competition.
This idea that we have to have behemoth companies to exist in the world is nonsense. We need a really free market with fair access to all. It is very rare to have a huge company do anything really innovative. The bigger and older they get, the more conservative they become. It's the startups and small agile companies that provide invigoration for the economy, that grow into the next generation of large companies providing long term stable employment. There is a place for large corporations, but when they have outlived their usefulness, we need to let them die. The way you minimize the impact to the employees is by having such a healthy economy that there are plenty of new opportunities for the workers who are displaced.
How do you get a government that will restore a free market? I don't have all the answers, but I think the first step is to make it clear to our representatives that as soon as we learn they are selling their votes, they get booted out of office. We need sweeping campaign finance reform that eliminates the huge debt that congressional representatives carry with them into office, practically forcing them to sell their souls to pay off the loans and raise money for the next election. The decision that equated money with free speech was on of the worst ones ever made. Essentially, we put our government up for sale and there have been plenty of buyers.
Finally, we have to insist that our government stop selling off our public resources. The airwaves should be owned by the citizens of the U.S., not some telecomm. If someone wants to use them, they should lease them from us, the citizens. It's not as if they can't afford it. By selling leases, rather than permanent ownership of bandwidth, we'd be able to better deal with companies that abuse the trust placed in them. If a telecomm refuses to provide access to competitors, we could pull their lease.
New technology is constantly changing the way we look at our world and resources. Frequency hopping technology holds the promise of giving us incredible bandwidth with little or no interference, but it works best when used over a vast range of frequencies, not confined to one small band. By dividing up the radio spectrum and selling it off, we've hobbled any future technologies like frequency hopping. If we leased the bandwidth, instead, it would be reasonably easy to restructure how the radio spectrum is divided up, when necessary.
So DARPA has developed the AQUEON, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1106609 .htm , which was actually developed by an Australian in the 70's? Got to make you wonder why no one in our government every checks to see if they are giving out grants for developing stuff that's already been patented. I wonder how much we paid to "develop" something that was probably taken from the original inventor's patent drawings. Sounds like there wasn't much actual development work done, to me. I wonder how big the grant was.
... sometimes in fits and starts.
This only affects U.S. data, not all the other data from around the world which also supports global warming, so it doesn't mean we're off the hook. I would heave a great sigh of relief if it did.
This does underscore the need for transparency in all scientific methods, so that conclusions and methods can be properly tested.
There has been considerable science done since Al Gore's movie. Some of it continues to support the conclusion that we have made changes to our atmosphere which are causing temperatures to rise dramatically. Some data has become inconclusive. For instance, I saw one show where climbers of Mt. Kilamanjaro checked ground temperatures which revealed that increasing volcanic activity might account for some, if not all, of the ice melting that's been happening there.
But even with such corrections, there is still quite a lot of data from all over the world that indicates temperatures are rising and that it's caused by the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We can't ignore the rest of the data, unless someone can show that it, too is incorrect.
I, for one, believe that it is foolish to gamble that somehow things will turn out alright if we drag our feet or do nothing at all. There if far too much at stake. Even very small temperature changes in our past have had devastating effects on our civilization, and they occurred when our population was far smaller. Does anyone really believe that you can change the makeup of our atmosphere so drastically - increasing the CO2 by over 30% - and not have some detrimental effect? Even if you assumed that effect of changes in the atmosphere would be purely random, almost all possible changes would hurt us in some way.
I hope this latest report means we have more time to respond to the problem and will encourage a more open debate, but I don't think it means we should assume everything is going to be alright.
Beer was the first storable food. It's been found in every civilization and some archaeologists have proposed that beer may have started our switch from a nomadic hunting/gathering lifestyle to a settled farming one, so we could grow the grain needed to make beer.
It's likely that beer was discovered by accident many times. All you'd have to do is leave some grain out in a bowl where it got wet and fermented. You'd have a porridge-like mush protected by alcohol from spoiling.
The first beers didn't have that much alcohol and probably fermented off wild yeast. But the nice thing was, the beer didn't spoil, since the alcohol killed other pathogens. As many beer guts have demonstrated, beer is also an excellent source of calories.
I read a novel, I can't remember which, where the author made a great case for using enhanced radiation weapons against asteroids instead of conventional nuclear devices. His argument was that a non-impacting explosion using an enhanced radiation device might be able to divert even a fragile asteroid without necessarily breaking it up. The radiation from the weapon would transfer it's energy evenly to the surface of the asteroid. (Not exactly, but way better than a regular nuke) That would blow away the top layer of the asteroid on the side facing the blast, pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction. A series of such blasts might be able to divert the asteroid without causing it to break up.
I'm sure there are problems with the idea, but it seems logical to me.
What strikes me is the incredible hubris of the guy. He's abusing his position at the University for personal gain. He's drafting University employees to work for a venture that pays him money and pays them nothing. Must be nice. I wonder if the University gets anything at all in return?
I never claimed that it's impossible to get an education if you are poor, just much much harder. As these changes continue, the impact on the wealthy is negligible. Not only do they have the income to pay the tuition for their kids, but they can also get loans at great rates because they have good credit scores. (It's a lot easier to borrow money if you don't actually need it.)
How is it equitable to make it significantly harder for poor people to get an advanced education than for rich people to get one? How does this help our society? Wouldn't giving everyone access to an excellent education give us the best work force? What if educational opportunities were allocated strictly on performance and willingness to work hard? What if we spent the money being poured down the drain in Iraq on educating our kids instead of getting them blown up by IEDs set up by the people they're supposed to be protecting?
The best and surest way to provide for our future is in giving our kids as good an education as we can. That means all the kids. You never know where the next Einstein is going to come from, and we could use a few of them right about now. We've got plenty of hard problems that need to be solved.
A better educated electorate wouldn't simply throw up it's hands and say, "My vote doesn't matter," and walk away knowing that doing so insures that people who work against their interests stay in power. They might even insist that Congress take action when a sitting president breaks the law. They might object when they find out their votes have been thrown away in order to swing an election in the direction the party in power wants.
We are facing difficult times ahead. We have to deal with climate change, changes in the world economy, a huge HIV epidemic in Africa, and a tremendous loss in influence due to bad decisions made by those in power. I'm sure there are plenty more that we don't even know about yet. I believe we can meet almost any challenge, but only if we are prepared and the way you prepare for the future is by educating the young.
I'm a writer and I've been gradually convincing some of the other writers I interact with to try out Open Office. Most who try it never go back to Word.
It's hard to sell a file format. What people buy into is the product that uses the file format. The best way to spread ODF is to continue to improve the products that use it, so people will choose them over the alternative.
I'm surprised they aren't at least going with something like the aerospike design rather than the same old nozzles. The aerospike, if it works correctly, compensates for the changes in air pressure so that the nozzle is in-effect, self-adjusting, if I recall correctly. This improves the overall efficiency of the rocket.
I also wonder why we don't use a system of fixed nozzles where we vary the thrust to steer the rocket rather than steering those huge nozzles. I'm sure there's some good reason, but it would seem to me that the fewer moving parts you have, the better off you are, and that having multiple rocket engines means you have a greater chance of maintaining some kind of control if one of them has a problem.
Can anyone enlighten me?
Of course, this discussion missed the whole point, that now it will be even harder for someone who is poor to get a degree in Engineering or Business. Of course, that's the whole point, right? Keep the good stuff for the rich and make sure the poor stay in their place.
If ever there was some area of our world that shouldn't be run as a business, it's Education. Providing a good education to our citizens is our best and surest way to insure that our country has a viable economic future.
People complain about the high cost of Health Care. Look at what it costs to become a doctor. The schools that train Doctors and Lawyers long ago realized they could cash in on the fact that these fields had more earning power, and they've been limiting who has access to that earning power through steep tuitions ever since.
If we keep on this course that seems to be guided by the principle that anything that can be sold should be sold to the highest bidder, we'll lose everything our ancestors fought to preserve in creating this nation.
Commerce has it's place, but this isn't it. Free market capitalism is good at distributing goods and services, but not at providing equitable education available to all citizens.
I have a different proposal, but I'm sure it has some problems I haven't thought of. How about you require all patent holders to license rights to their patents to anyone who pays a "fair and reasonable" royalty. (Determining that royalty is the sticky part.) This would insure that the patent holder got paid for their work developing the invention, and that there would be competition. It would end all these idiotic monopolies that distort our economy and allow free competition once more.
The problem with patents is that they create monopolies. That makes them incredibly valuable. If you were forced to license your patent to competitors, you might focus more efforts on actually satisfying customers rather than suing for huge settlements.
Of course, this might put a lot of lawyers out of work.
We got 12 million people without healthcare in this country and our Congress seems far more worried about protecting the RIAA than in solving problems that result in people dying.
We have some four thousand dead and who knows how many injured in a pointless war in Iraq, bu instead of dealing with an out-of-control President who thinks he's king, our Congress is protecting the RIAA by threatening college students.
I don't approve of illegal downloading. It's wrong, but it's not something that deserves this kind of attention from Congress. It's not something that should result in endangering the educational opportunities of a student the first time it happens. We've all done stupid things when we were in college.
Lets get our priorities straight here and tell the RIAA what they can do with themselves and tell our Congress to get to work on the real problems facing our country.
Not a bad idea. But I think your numbers are low. It costs about one year's salary to replace most professional IT workers, or so I've heard. That's the total cost including advertising, recruiting time, interview time, relocation, and the time it takes to learn the company's systems. So some programmer who's making 70k will cost about that much to hire. This is one reason contractors can be competitive. I suspect the price of H1Bs would have to be quite high to discourage companies like Microsoft and Google from using them to force down salaries.
Frankly, I'll believe that Google and others are having trouble hiring talented employees when it's not so hard for my friends to find decent jobs. We don't need to be importing workers if we have trained and talented people who are unemployed.
Um... StarTrek isn't real. It's a shock, I know, but true. :)
Humanity has, effectively, radically altered it's evolution. We are no longer selecting for the fittest in quite the same way as was done while we were evolving. Now it's more like survival of the richest and most prolific. It's hard to say what effect that will have over the long haul. Back in the first part of the last century, this was a huge worry that gave rise to the ideas that lead to Hitler's genocidal campaigns. Most people don't realize that many, if not most, of the great thinkers of that time were all for coming up with some way to insure that the "lesser" races wouldn't "out breed" their "betters." In the U.S., this lead to a widespread effort to sterilize anyone with a sub-standard I.Q., regardless of the cause of the problem.
We're not far from a time when people who are rich enough will be able to pick and choose traits that they want their children to have. The world of GATTACA might not be so far off. This kind of genetic tailoring makes the most sense when you talk about moving off planet.
People aren't designed to live in space. We have all sorts of problems from space sickness to muscles deterioration. People who spend a long time in space come back to Earth and need months to regain their full strength and health. I suspect we'll see similar problems on the Moon and Mars, where the lower gravity will have as yet unknown medical effects. At the very least, it will probably cause a loss of calcium in the bones, making it difficult for someone who spends a long time on the Moon or Mars to return to Earth.
If we really want to move off the planet, we'll wind up making changes to our bodies and genetic make up in order to better adapt ourselves to the new environment. Think about it, if we can design a human that can live in zero gravity without ill effects, the cost of building space habitats drops by orders of magnitude. Ultimately, if we survive the consequences of our stupidity, I suspect Humanity will split into a bunch of different genetically engineered species that are adapted for different environments, both in space and here on Earth. I can see people going back to the oceans. Perhaps they'll have gills and modified arms and legs. People who live full-time in zero gravity might adopt a more spherical body that is pushed along by much less robust arms and legs. Astronauts might be designed to withstand high gravity acceleration. Ultimately, all these things may become possible.
If we survive long enough, I think it's inevitable.
It started because of oil. Oil is a strategically and economically vital resource for the U.S. It has been since before Israel was set up, and probably has a lot to do with the creation of that country, since it gave the U.S. a friendly presence in an oil rich region.
Oil is what fuels the repressive governments in the Middle East. If they didn't have oil, the U.S. wouldn't care about them and wouldn't prop up governments that abuse their people. Those oppressive regimes create plenty of unhappy people, who turn to religion for answers as to why their life has to suck so much. They follow anyone who can give them hope for a better future.
Fundamentalism works the same over there as it does here, it preys mostly on the poor and disenfranchised, the people who feel they have no power of their own and want to belong to something greater than themselves. They join, feel a sense of belonging and community, and become willing to do whatever they are asked. Just like the cults here, those fundamentalist sects are run by charismatic individuals. These guys have no regard for the lives of their followers. They offer up the U.S. and the rest of the West as the reason for all the woes of these poor people, and why shouldn't these people believe them? They have very limited sources of information and often have very little education.
The ones who are educated see the U.S. as an interfering power that cares more about the oil than about the people who live on the land. Our actions, as a nation, just reinforce that notion.
If you want to end terrorism, end our dependence on oil. Push your representatives to support alternative energy, preferably the non-global warming kind. That is the only way to turn off the money supply to those governments. Do that, and those governments will eventually fall. What rises in their place will depend on how well we can repair the terrible damage Bush has done to our reputation.
Lets all hope we get wiser heads in our government soon.
A well trained soldier will always be able to defeat a horde of fanatics.
Rome thought so, too.