There is a big difference between getting to 100km with a payload of three people and building something that can make it to the ISS and higher orbits with a significant payload. And the reason that the shuttle is several technology generations behind, is because it's thirty years old.
NASA has no clear mission that the average tax payer can understand. Bush's plan of going to the Moon and Mars is another huge blunder, because again, we'll do one-off missions rather than build any real capability to do things in space.
What we really need is an overall plan to identify and develop resources in space that can be exploited economically. The space elevator could easily be completed with the kind of money that was spent on the shuttle and ISS, and it would eventually give us very economical access to space.
We need to work on technology to divert asteroids, not just to protect the Earth from possible collisions, but to capture asteroids that have valuable resources that we can mine.
The New World didn't get settled by explorers, but by people who moved there to stay. We won't really conquer space until we establish and populate colonies in orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars. But even those goals should be put on hold until we have some kind of strategy for making them pay off. Considering the enormous wealth available in a single nickel-iron asteroid, it shouldn't be hard to develop such a plan.
While I don't particularly fear for Google, we should all be concerned about the fact that Microsoft, which has twice been convicted of anti-competitive practices, and barely flinched at it's 'punishment', is now gleefully declaring that it's going to destroy another competitor.
This latest goal of Balmer's shows that the company still isn't interested in competing through innovation, as they keep claiming, but through destroying any company that gets in their way.
Somehow, this smells like monopolistic behavior to me, though somehow, I doubt we'll see our government do anything about it.
Yes, it is copyright infringement, and whether you approve of it or not, it is up to the copyright holder, not an arbitrary library, whether or not a work may be copied. Just because it's a neat idea, doesn't make it legal.
I'm writing a book myself, so I can understand the concerns these authors have. Whereas Google's usage might ultimately prove beneficial, the authors were never even asked about it. They have been treated as if their rights are meaningless.
If Google is allowed to proceed unchallenged, it will set a precedent, which will pretty much eliminate copyright as a way for work to be protected.
Obviously, those works whose copyrights have expired are fair game. But if Google wants to copy works that are still under copyright, it has a legal obligation to contact the copyright holders.
You also have to look at how quickly the exploits discovered in Firefox are fixed, as opposed to how long it takes to get the IE exploits fixed.
By the time I read about a FF exploit, I can often download the fixed version. MS sometimes takes months to issue fixes.
It's not about religion, it's about numbers. Thousands of programmers hacking on FF are going to fix things faster than whatever number MS has on the project. Don't forget, that MS actually abandoned development of IE, until Firefox started cutting out slices of market share.
What we really need are several good secure, standards complient, browsers to choose from, including IE, FireFox, Opera, and others. Competition is a good thing.
The real problem is that software patents are bad for everyone, except for large corporations that can agree to cross-license patent portfolios. This allows the large corporations to block small companies from even entering the software business and provides a weapon with which to attack OSS projects the corporations don't like.
It doesn't matter how many 'good guys' contribute patents to a patents common, as long as there are companies that are going to use patents as weapons in the marketplace.
Even more importantly, this doesn't address the fundemental problems with using patents on software in the first place. In a world with software patents, it will eventually become almost impossible to write code w/o having a staff of patent lawyers to make sure it isn't infringing. Eventually, the cost just to make sure code isn't infringing will become another barrier to entry for software companies. Patents and software aren't like oil and water, they are like Hydrogen and Oxygen. Sooner or later, they'll blow up in all our faces.
There is no problem with noble metal catalysts for fuel cells if they use internal combustion rather than fuel cells. Internal combustion seems to be the current track, how else would we have big loud cars?
The real issue is still global warming and environmental effects. H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. H2O also has more immediate effects on local weather. If we switch over to hydrogen powered autos, we can count on more foggy roadways in the future.
OTOH, there could be some interesting benefits. Imagine the whole stretch of desert along U.S. Highways turning green because of the new abundance of water... (Not really a realistic scenerio, though.)
Finally, as others have pointed out, Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.
Katrina should have been a wake-up call for all of us. While it's unknown and probably unknowable if Katrina was the result of global warming, it's pretty certain that as the oceans heat up, we'll get more Katrina-sized storms. We've got to take action to stop the greenhouse warming now.
You can take action by conserving energy and pushing your legislative representatives towards greener policies. You can plant trees to soak up CO2. (Just don't burn them for firewood later!)
As for the claims about colon cancer...
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Coffee A Health Drink?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I strongly suspect that the reason that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower incidence of colon cancer has more to do with the less desirable effects of coffee. People who have diseases that predispose them to have colon cancer, such as ulcerative colitis, can't tolerate coffee as well as healthy individuals do. I suspect the same is true of many other conditions, such as irritable bowel disease.
It makes one wonder if many of these other claims can't be disregarded as well. Perhaps the fact that you can drink lots of coffee simply means you have a robust constitution that can tolerate more abuse. It doesn't mean you should go ahead and abuse it.
It is very easy to show statistical correlation, but not nearly so easy to show causation. They aren't one in the same.
Because people are not machines and if you fail to understand how people really work, you will invariably be a bad manager. You really think that the guys at Enron did a good job? Billions of dollars were stolen from investors.
I've known a few of these people. I knew one manager who emotionally tortured a twenty-year old woman he was attracted to, as part of his plan to seduce her. This is the kind of guy you want to hand billions of dollars to?
Handling billions of dollars requires someone who has higher principles, not no principles. Enron is a perfect example. If you never feel remorse, why not steal? If you have no compassion for those you will hurt, there is no reason why you shouldn't operate in a purely selfish manner.
Corporate officers have to act on behalf of other people, the stock holders. They also have a responsibility to the people who work for the company, because, contrary to what seems to be taught at most business schools, in todays economy, the talent and dedication of your employees is worth as much or more as the capital you have to work with. If you hire people who are incapable of relating to other human beings and who are completely self-involved, they will invariably destroy the company.
It isn't being soft or wishy-washy to want sane and rational people working in top management, it's just good sense.
The problem has nothing to do with the size of the U.S. It has to do with policies that allow monopolies to persist. There is no real competition between carriers providing broadband access in most communities. I live in one of the few where there is some modest competition, the city's cable vs. Comcast. As a result, we pay 10% less than nearby communities that have not competition and out cable is up to 3x as fast.
In many communities, if there is a choice in broadband providers, it's between DSL and Cable. While DSL has made some great strides forward with regard to speed, I doubt those changes are available everywhere. Even with that situation, you'd only have 2 competitors. You need five or more to have real competition.
All this is just a symptom of the underlying problem. Our elected representatives no longer hesitate to sell their votes. They can always point to someone higher up the political ladder for justification. Hell, in a nation where the President openly lies to the country in order to start a war in the middle east, what's a vote selling?
If we want these situations to change, voters have to pay attention to what is going on and vote accordingly. Broadband access isn't about recreation or something cool for nerds, its about having a competitive business infrastructure so that our businesses have some kind of a chance against all their competitors.
It used to be that we could afford to see some jobs go overseas because we had the technological edge. We could outperform countries that had cheaper labor because of that technological edge. Now, instead of pushing hard to make sure those technologies are available to all American businesses, our leaders are protecting virtual monopolies to funnel money into the hands of their favorite giant corporations.
If this keeps up, we'll wind up in a situation where we are competing against countries that not only have cheaper labor, but also have much better technology to work with.
While more people may be playing games, I wouldn't say the industry is all that healthy. WoW has some serious problems that have many users unhappy. I expect many will leave as soon as there is a new MMORPG to play.
In the meantime, there are fewer and fewer new games that show any originality, and quality seems to be decreasing rather than increasing.
The last thing we need to add to the game industry is the same kind of myopic management that has created such horrible movies as we've seen this year.
Obviously, if Continental serves coffee or food in their club, that should also be banned, since it might potentially interfere with the retailers that are selling food and beverages. Hell, if we want to follow this line of logic, how can any business justify allowing coffee makers, or even water fountains?
Just because you pick a stupid way to make money, doesn't mean that I can't give away whatever you are selling. It's quickly becoming clear that offering free WiFi is becoming a stragegic decision being made by communities in order to attract and keep businesses. In the next few years, all major cities will have to offer free WiFi in their downtown areas if they want to keep businesses and attract new ones. I expect it will become a common feature of all airports as well, displacing the pay services now in place. Get over it.
This administration seems to be far more concerned with enriching it's supporters than with any real strategic, economic, or scientific goals. Even Bush's proposed return to the Moon and manned mission to Mars seems more like a cheap publicity stunt than any real expansion into space.
There is no point in going into space unless we have some concrete goals that will benefit humanity as a whole. Science is good enough to get us the ISS, but whate we really need is a way to exploit space properly. In short, we need to build an infrastructure that will allow us to mine near-earth asteroids for metals and other useful materials and the moon for helium-three, oxygen, and aluminum.
An average-sized Type-M asteroid has as much iron as is mined by the whole world in a year. The same asteroid will have substantial quantities of cobalt, gold, and platinum as well. Such an asteroid would provide ample building materials for constructing robust space-stations with plenty of room for expansion.
The Moon can also provide materials for building space structures as well as oxygen, and possibly water. Aluminum is plentiful in the Moon's crust, and the gravity is so mild that parts for space construction could be launched off the Moon's surface using a rail-gun powered by solar panels.
We need real plan, not a couple of grandiose speeches that are meant to distract us from the administrations inability to catch Osama bin Ladin and the ever increasing casualty count in Iraq.
I think that NASA needs to develop something like a large inflatable bag that can be put around the shuttle and a repair crew. Once the bag is sealed, the repair crew can strip off their suit gloves, giving them the manual dexterity needed for such repairs.
This would be a dangerous and resource expensive way to fix the shuttle, since you'd lose a great deal of air after you emptied the garage balloon. The repair crew would be at risk of decompression if a micro meteor hit the balloon during the repair period, but that risk is fairly small and the balloon could be positioned so it is partially sheltered by the station. Rescue balls should be kept close at hand in case of sudden depressurization, so the astronauts could crawl inside them and be towed inside the shuttle or space station.
This probably isn't the best solution, but I think that NASA needs to start working on ways to better support the shuttle for it's remaining missions. Perhaps we need to consider constructing an enclosed hanger attached to the spacestation that would serve the same purpose. It need not be fancy, just a structure in which the shuttle can be moored safely that can be pressurized to provide a shirt-sleeves environment for astronauts.
Before you tell me how stupid I am and that the cost of such a hanger would be prohibative, I'd like to point out that losing a shuttle is not exactly inexpensive. Building a proper maintenance facility into the space station should have been a priority. That would actually make the ISS useful for continued expansion into space.
Yep, I will, and the debate over Global Warming is one of the reasons.
Scientists didn't suddenly all decide that the Earth was heating up. The first ones to do so were roundly criticized. It took years and many more studies to confirm their initial findings and still there were far more skeptics than supporters.
The idea that the world has been heating up has been around for almost 20 years now, maybe longer. It wasn't until the last ten years that the majority of scientists started to say they believed that the Earth really is warming up and that the warming we're seeing is caused by human activities.
The scientists who opposed the Global Warming theory were far more qualified to do so than Senator Barton from Texas. Many of them fought with every weapon at their disposal to disprove the theory. Now most of them support it.
Very few new radical ideas get accepted by the scientific community without being thoroughly tested. Look at what happened with cold fusion. There is always some scientist whose work is going to be called into question by any new theory or revision of an old theory. Like any other person, those that are threatened are going to fight back and challenge the upstarts. That's the reason the scientific method works so well.
The scientific method is not the fastest way to learn about the universe, but it is the one that is capable of convincing even the most skeptical of the conclusions that are reached.
The kids will click on the button whenever they see a new toy advertised and the smartass babysitter will send your personal information to all the adult diaper commercials on late night television.
I'll stick with MythTV, thanks, and have all my commercials clipped out.
Hydrogen is not necessarily any better than gasoline as a fuel, if you want to avoid global warming. Water vapor, good old H2O is also a powerful greenhouse gas.
Before we convert over into a Hydrogen economy, we should study how it's going to affect the environment. If we started such studies now, we could have some answers before we've committed ourselves.
I suspect that we're going to have to face some hard truths, and one is that the kind of energy spendthrift lifestyle that we've enjoyed in the first world isn't going to be possible without destroying our environment.
That doesn't mean we have to give up our computers and home appliences, but it does mean that we need to force our politicians to plan cities better, push for wind, solar, and wave power solutions. We all need to think about ways to reduce our transportation energy costs.
Given the environmental costs of transportation, it might make sense to build smaller factories distributed throughout the country rather than importing products from overseas. (This would have the added benefit of creating jobs.)
No matter what your politicians tell you, we face hard times ahead. We need to work quickly to insure that our children will have a world worth living in.
Not all of us here on/. are uninformed bottom-feeders. Some have legitimate philosophical objections to aspects of patents and how they are used.
I believe that the chief problem with patents is that they can be used to create a monopoly. In the past, I think that made sense. Today, I think it would be better to adjust patent laws to make sure that the inventor gets just compensation from anyone using his idea, but prevent him from establishing an absolute monopoly. That way innovation is encouraged because of profits from licensing fees, the public is protected against rapacious greed, and competition to make the best new widget is encouraged.
For this to work, though, I believe that a patent must contain enough information to duplicate the invention. That isn't always the case now.
I don't believe that this works for software, though. Software simply advances too quickly. It has to. If we slow the advance of software, it will hurt our economy and slow all our other industries. I think even short term software patents are a terrible idea. It's just going to make people waste time finding ways around them rather than building new capabilities.
It's almost impossible to effectively regulate software patents. The knowledge needed just to understand what is obvious in a particular area is far too broad. The only way to properly check for obviousness would be to provide an open review process. Unforutnately, as a software engineer, I wouldn't help in that process, because I would be afraid of the triple damages clause if I inadvertently copied a patent sometime later in my career. It's just a field of landmines.
Lastly, it is ridiculously easy to infringe on a software patent. They are landmines. What is worse is that companies are trying hard to lay more of those mines by getting patents on technology standards. How is that going to advance technology? It's a landgrab.
Finally, no one has ever presented an argument to me that convinces me that people would suddenly stop innovating if patents and copyright disappeared. I don't advocate that course; I believe that people should be justly rewarded for their work; but I don't believe that our economy and the future of our technology are completely dependent upon patents and copyrights. If you want to convince me, give me an argument, not an assertion.
I think you could build a disk at the Earth/Sun L1 LaGrange point that would block the amount of light needed and might be far less expensive than a ring surrounding the planet. You might be able redirect the light you are blocking and use it to power solar sail craft.
If such a disk, probably outfitted with a number of vanes to allow it to redirect the light, can be used to help propel spacecraft around the inner solar system, it could well pay for itself.
The impactor will hit the comet with a force equivalent to five tons of tnt. It will probably produce a crater anywhere from a few yards across to the size of a football stadium.
Actually, it isn't ironic at all. I'm one of those Americans who protests human rights abuses of other countries. I also protest the ones committed by my own government. I didn't vote for this administration and I have done what I could to make my voice heard through letters and email to my legislative representatives.
What is ironic, is when President Bush or Ms. Rice makes accusations about human rights abuses, not when U.S. citizens who honestly deplore what our own government has been doing do so.
... that the dollar is more important than freedom or principles.
I guess it shouldn't be any surprise the Microsoft and other companies are anxious to help China maintain and strengthen it's totalitarian government, since it's the government that controls the purse strings.
It should give all of us in this country pause. Microsoft obviously has no issues with a government that has it's army fire upon students demonstrating for democracy. It's a short step from there to helping an American administration (of whichever party) do the same thing in this country. Considering how much money Microsoft was saved by the hand slap it got from Justice after being convicted of monopolistic practices, I would assume Bill Gates feels deeply indebted to the present administration.
Apparently, even Google, a company that claims it's unofficial motto is "Dont' Be Evil", doesn't feel like it has a responsibility to behave ethically.
It wasn't defense spending in the U.S. that caused the fall of Communisim in the USSR, it was blue jeans and walkmans -- simple economics. It became glaringly obvious to everyone in communist states that they were being deprived the advances that were cheap to citizens of democratic countries.
The Chinese have never been stupid or foolish. They learned from the lesson of the USSR and they are modernizing their economy in order to prevent a similar revolution. It is unfortunate that companies like Microsoft, Google, and Walmart are so quick to help them.
China is still a totalitarian government. China allows the use of slave and prison labor to produce goods which show up on American store shelves. Ever wonder why goods made in China are so inexpensive?
The American government and businesses are not just hurting the Chinese people by helping such a government; they are hurting American citizens. We are losing jobs. We are becoming a nation that produces nothing but Reality TV shows. Worse the lesson to our children is that freedom only counts until someone offers you more money.
These companies argue that by doing business with China, they are improving the lives of ordinary Chinese. How can we trust them? There have been numerous stories about the use of prison labor and child labor to produce goods bound for America. Can they really know that they are helping the average Chinese when China does not have a free press that can report how things actually are? I sincerely doubt that the workers in China are getting the same wages and benefits that American workers would get. I wonder if they are even getting enough more to substantially change their lives.
If you are going to stand for freedom, you have to do it all the time, not just when it's financially attractive.
While lower prices for desktop machines is great, we need to find a way to get laptops down to a price point where they can be used to replace textbooks for highschool students.
This textbook replacement laptop doesn't necessarily have to have every possible feature, but I think it does need networking, USB, a harddrive, and a display that is fast enough for word processing and simple animations. The ability to play music might insure that the kids don't lose it. The kids can play FPS games at home on their $300 PCs; this machine is meant for study.
Obviously, Linux will be part of that solution, since Windows simply costs too much money.
The educational software for such machines should all be Open Source. This will make it easier for governments and school systems to adapt the software to their particular needs. Each school district can employ a couple of Open Source programmers. Think of what the combined capabilities of so many programmers will be when it comes to developing educational software.
It's sad that we don't hear about wonderful educational software. The people who work on such software aren't held in the same regard as those who work on business enterprise applications or on games, yet educational software could potentially have much farther reaching impacts.
I use Open Office exclusively and have for the past couple of years. Reading the files in certainly isn't a problem for me. The only files that are slow to load are the master document files, and that's because they link to dozens of other files.
The XML specification is being expanded (it might already be done) to allow binary formats. There are good reasons, though, why it's best to keep data files in straight XML text format. It eliminates the need to worry about machine architecture. Little endian or big endian, it maks no difference to you. The files are perfectly portable across platforms, which is increasingly important these days. XML files zip very nicely, making them almost as small as a corresponding binary file.
It is far easier to provide backwards compatability to earlier file formats when you are using XML than if you are using binary file formats. With XML, if it sees a tag it doesn't understand, the parser ignores it. If a binary file format loader sees stuff it doesn't understand, it bails out with an illegal file format error.
When you move to a new expanded file format with XML, you don't have to write a conversion utility. Since you are merely adding new tags, your program can read any of your old data just fine, then add the appropriate tags and new data. This saves a great deal of trouble for programers.
Machines are fast and cheap. People are slow and expensive. It is far better to have our computers do a little extra work on loading a text file and eliminate conversion utilities and complicated loading routines that a prone to bugs.
I hope you are right, but I'll believe it when I see it. I still think our best chance for a solid space program will be provided by forwared thinkers like Rutan. I don't have much faith in a government space program since the projects that really looked like they would change the face of space travel got canceled.
I Think the Delta Clipper was an excellent idea. It had payload capacity problems, but that's a solvable engineering problem. We seem to create stronger and lighter materials every day. I don't think it's practical to keep using throw away rockets.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a big difference between getting to 100km with a payload of three people and building something that can make it to the ISS and higher orbits with a significant payload. And the reason that the shuttle is several technology generations behind, is because it's thirty years old.
NASA has no clear mission that the average tax payer can understand. Bush's plan of going to the Moon and Mars is another huge blunder, because again, we'll do one-off missions rather than build any real capability to do things in space.
What we really need is an overall plan to identify and develop resources in space that can be exploited economically. The space elevator could easily be completed with the kind of money that was spent on the shuttle and ISS, and it would eventually give us very economical access to space.
We need to work on technology to divert asteroids, not just to protect the Earth from possible collisions, but to capture asteroids that have valuable resources that we can mine.
The New World didn't get settled by explorers, but by people who moved there to stay. We won't really conquer space until we establish and populate colonies in orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars. But even those goals should be put on hold until we have some kind of strategy for making them pay off. Considering the enormous wealth available in a single nickel-iron asteroid, it shouldn't be hard to develop such a plan.
While I don't particularly fear for Google, we should all be concerned about the fact that Microsoft, which has twice been convicted of anti-competitive practices, and barely flinched at it's 'punishment', is now gleefully declaring that it's going to destroy another competitor.
This latest goal of Balmer's shows that the company still isn't interested in competing through innovation, as they keep claiming, but through destroying any company that gets in their way.
Somehow, this smells like monopolistic behavior to me, though somehow, I doubt we'll see our government do anything about it.
Yes, it is copyright infringement, and whether you approve of it or not, it is up to the copyright holder, not an arbitrary library, whether or not a work may be copied. Just because it's a neat idea, doesn't make it legal.
I'm writing a book myself, so I can understand the concerns these authors have. Whereas Google's usage might ultimately prove beneficial, the authors were never even asked about it. They have been treated as if their rights are meaningless.
If Google is allowed to proceed unchallenged, it will set a precedent, which will pretty much eliminate copyright as a way for work to be protected.
Obviously, those works whose copyrights have expired are fair game. But if Google wants to copy works that are still under copyright, it has a legal obligation to contact the copyright holders.
You also have to look at how quickly the exploits discovered in Firefox are fixed, as opposed to how long it takes to get the IE exploits fixed.
By the time I read about a FF exploit, I can often download the fixed version. MS sometimes takes months to issue fixes.
It's not about religion, it's about numbers. Thousands of programmers hacking on FF are going to fix things faster than whatever number MS has on the project. Don't forget, that MS actually abandoned development of IE, until Firefox started cutting out slices of market share.
What we really need are several good secure, standards complient, browsers to choose from, including IE, FireFox, Opera, and others. Competition is a good thing.
The real problem is that software patents are bad for everyone, except for large corporations that can agree to cross-license patent portfolios. This allows the large corporations to block small companies from even entering the software business and provides a weapon with which to attack OSS projects the corporations don't like.
It doesn't matter how many 'good guys' contribute patents to a patents common, as long as there are companies that are going to use patents as weapons in the marketplace.
Even more importantly, this doesn't address the fundemental problems with using patents on software in the first place. In a world with software patents, it will eventually become almost impossible to write code w/o having a staff of patent lawyers to make sure it isn't infringing. Eventually, the cost just to make sure code isn't infringing will become another barrier to entry for software companies. Patents and software aren't like oil and water, they are like Hydrogen and Oxygen. Sooner or later, they'll blow up in all our faces.
There is no problem with noble metal catalysts for fuel cells if they use internal combustion rather than fuel cells. Internal combustion seems to be the current track, how else would we have big loud cars?
The real issue is still global warming and environmental effects. H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. H2O also has more immediate effects on local weather. If we switch over to hydrogen powered autos, we can count on more foggy roadways in the future.
OTOH, there could be some interesting benefits. Imagine the whole stretch of desert along U.S. Highways turning green because of the new abundance of water... (Not really a realistic scenerio, though.)
Finally, as others have pointed out, Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.
Katrina should have been a wake-up call for all of us. While it's unknown and probably unknowable if Katrina was the result of global warming, it's pretty certain that as the oceans heat up, we'll get more Katrina-sized storms. We've got to take action to stop the greenhouse warming now.
You can take action by conserving energy and pushing your legislative representatives towards greener policies. You can plant trees to soak up CO2. (Just don't burn them for firewood later!)
I strongly suspect that the reason that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower incidence of colon cancer has more to do with the less desirable effects of coffee. People who have diseases that predispose them to have colon cancer, such as ulcerative colitis, can't tolerate coffee as well as healthy individuals do. I suspect the same is true of many other conditions, such as irritable bowel disease.
It makes one wonder if many of these other claims can't be disregarded as well. Perhaps the fact that you can drink lots of coffee simply means you have a robust constitution that can tolerate more abuse. It doesn't mean you should go ahead and abuse it.
It is very easy to show statistical correlation, but not nearly so easy to show causation. They aren't one in the same.
Because people are not machines and if you fail to understand how people really work, you will invariably be a bad manager. You really think that the guys at Enron did a good job? Billions of dollars were stolen from investors.
I've known a few of these people. I knew one manager who emotionally tortured a twenty-year old woman he was attracted to, as part of his plan to seduce her. This is the kind of guy you want to hand billions of dollars to?
Handling billions of dollars requires someone who has higher principles, not no principles. Enron is a perfect example. If you never feel remorse, why not steal? If you have no compassion for those you will hurt, there is no reason why you shouldn't operate in a purely selfish manner.
Corporate officers have to act on behalf of other people, the stock holders. They also have a responsibility to the people who work for the company, because, contrary to what seems to be taught at most business schools, in todays economy, the talent and dedication of your employees is worth as much or more as the capital you have to work with. If you hire people who are incapable of relating to other human beings and who are completely self-involved, they will invariably destroy the company.
It isn't being soft or wishy-washy to want sane and rational people working in top management, it's just good sense.
The problem has nothing to do with the size of the U.S. It has to do with policies that allow monopolies to persist. There is no real competition between carriers providing broadband access in most communities. I live in one of the few where there is some modest competition, the city's cable vs. Comcast. As a result, we pay 10% less than nearby communities that have not competition and out cable is up to 3x as fast.
In many communities, if there is a choice in broadband providers, it's between DSL and Cable. While DSL has made some great strides forward with regard to speed, I doubt those changes are available everywhere. Even with that situation, you'd only have 2 competitors. You need five or more to have real competition.
All this is just a symptom of the underlying problem. Our elected representatives no longer hesitate to sell their votes. They can always point to someone higher up the political ladder for justification. Hell, in a nation where the President openly lies to the country in order to start a war in the middle east, what's a vote selling?
If we want these situations to change, voters have to pay attention to what is going on and vote accordingly. Broadband access isn't about recreation or something cool for nerds, its about having a competitive business infrastructure so that our businesses have some kind of a chance against all their competitors.
It used to be that we could afford to see some jobs go overseas because we had the technological edge. We could outperform countries that had cheaper labor because of that technological edge. Now, instead of pushing hard to make sure those technologies are available to all American businesses, our leaders are protecting virtual monopolies to funnel money into the hands of their favorite giant corporations.
If this keeps up, we'll wind up in a situation where we are competing against countries that not only have cheaper labor, but also have much better technology to work with.
While more people may be playing games, I wouldn't say the industry is all that healthy. WoW has some serious problems that have many users unhappy. I expect many will leave as soon as there is a new MMORPG to play.
In the meantime, there are fewer and fewer new games that show any originality, and quality seems to be decreasing rather than increasing.
The last thing we need to add to the game industry is the same kind of myopic management that has created such horrible movies as we've seen this year.
Obviously, if Continental serves coffee or food in their club, that should also be banned, since it might potentially interfere with the retailers that are selling food and beverages. Hell, if we want to follow this line of logic, how can any business justify allowing coffee makers, or even water fountains?
Just because you pick a stupid way to make money, doesn't mean that I can't give away whatever you are selling. It's quickly becoming clear that offering free WiFi is becoming a stragegic decision being made by communities in order to attract and keep businesses. In the next few years, all major cities will have to offer free WiFi in their downtown areas if they want to keep businesses and attract new ones. I expect it will become a common feature of all airports as well, displacing the pay services now in place. Get over it.
This administration seems to be far more concerned with enriching it's supporters than with any real strategic, economic, or scientific goals. Even Bush's proposed return to the Moon and manned mission to Mars seems more like a cheap publicity stunt than any real expansion into space.
There is no point in going into space unless we have some concrete goals that will benefit humanity as a whole. Science is good enough to get us the ISS, but whate we really need is a way to exploit space properly. In short, we need to build an infrastructure that will allow us to mine near-earth asteroids for metals and other useful materials and the moon for helium-three, oxygen, and aluminum.
An average-sized Type-M asteroid has as much iron as is mined by the whole world in a year. The same asteroid will have substantial quantities of cobalt, gold, and platinum as well. Such an asteroid would provide ample building materials for constructing robust space-stations with plenty of room for expansion.
The Moon can also provide materials for building space structures as well as oxygen, and possibly water. Aluminum is plentiful in the Moon's crust, and the gravity is so mild that parts for space construction could be launched off the Moon's surface using a rail-gun powered by solar panels.
We need real plan, not a couple of grandiose speeches that are meant to distract us from the administrations inability to catch Osama bin Ladin and the ever increasing casualty count in Iraq.
I think that NASA needs to develop something like a large inflatable bag that can be put around the shuttle and a repair crew. Once the bag is sealed, the repair crew can strip off their suit gloves, giving them the manual dexterity needed for such repairs.
This would be a dangerous and resource expensive way to fix the shuttle, since you'd lose a great deal of air after you emptied the garage balloon. The repair crew would be at risk of decompression if a micro meteor hit the balloon during the repair period, but that risk is fairly small and the balloon could be positioned so it is partially sheltered by the station. Rescue balls should be kept close at hand in case of sudden depressurization, so the astronauts could crawl inside them and be towed inside the shuttle or space station.
This probably isn't the best solution, but I think that NASA needs to start working on ways to better support the shuttle for it's remaining missions. Perhaps we need to consider constructing an enclosed hanger attached to the spacestation that would serve the same purpose. It need not be fancy, just a structure in which the shuttle can be moored safely that can be pressurized to provide a shirt-sleeves environment for astronauts.
Before you tell me how stupid I am and that the cost of such a hanger would be prohibative, I'd like to point out that losing a shuttle is not exactly inexpensive. Building a proper maintenance facility into the space station should have been a priority. That would actually make the ISS useful for continued expansion into space.
Yep, I will, and the debate over Global Warming is one of the reasons.
Scientists didn't suddenly all decide that the Earth was heating up. The first ones to do so were roundly criticized. It took years and many more studies to confirm their initial findings and still there were far more skeptics than supporters.
The idea that the world has been heating up has been around for almost 20 years now, maybe longer. It wasn't until the last ten years that the majority of scientists started to say they believed that the Earth really is warming up and that the warming we're seeing is caused by human activities.
The scientists who opposed the Global Warming theory were far more qualified to do so than Senator Barton from Texas. Many of them fought with every weapon at their disposal to disprove the theory. Now most of them support it.
Very few new radical ideas get accepted by the scientific community without being thoroughly tested. Look at what happened with cold fusion. There is always some scientist whose work is going to be called into question by any new theory or revision of an old theory. Like any other person, those that are threatened are going to fight back and challenge the upstarts. That's the reason the scientific method works so well.
The scientific method is not the fastest way to learn about the universe, but it is the one that is capable of convincing even the most skeptical of the conclusions that are reached.
The kids will click on the button whenever they see a new toy advertised and the smartass babysitter will send your personal information to all the adult diaper commercials on late night television.
I'll stick with MythTV, thanks, and have all my commercials clipped out.
Another brilliant bit of marketing!
Hydrogen is not necessarily any better than gasoline as a fuel, if you want to avoid global warming. Water vapor, good old H2O is also a powerful greenhouse gas.
Before we convert over into a Hydrogen economy, we should study how it's going to affect the environment. If we started such studies now, we could have some answers before we've committed ourselves.
I suspect that we're going to have to face some hard truths, and one is that the kind of energy spendthrift lifestyle that we've enjoyed in the first world isn't going to be possible without destroying our environment.
That doesn't mean we have to give up our computers and home appliences, but it does mean that we need to force our politicians to plan cities better, push for wind, solar, and wave power solutions. We all need to think about ways to reduce our transportation energy costs.
Given the environmental costs of transportation, it might make sense to build smaller factories distributed throughout the country rather than importing products from overseas. (This would have the added benefit of creating jobs.)
No matter what your politicians tell you, we face hard times ahead. We need to work quickly to insure that our children will have a world worth living in.
Not all of us here on /. are uninformed bottom-feeders. Some have legitimate philosophical objections to aspects of patents and how they are used.
I believe that the chief problem with patents is that they can be used to create a monopoly. In the past, I think that made sense. Today, I think it would be better to adjust patent laws to make sure that the inventor gets just compensation from anyone using his idea, but prevent him from establishing an absolute monopoly. That way innovation is encouraged because of profits from licensing fees, the public is protected against rapacious greed, and competition to make the best new widget is encouraged.
For this to work, though, I believe that a patent must contain enough information to duplicate the invention. That isn't always the case now.
I don't believe that this works for software, though. Software simply advances too quickly. It has to. If we slow the advance of software, it will hurt our economy and slow all our other industries. I think even short term software patents are a terrible idea. It's just going to make people waste time finding ways around them rather than building new capabilities.
It's almost impossible to effectively regulate software patents. The knowledge needed just to understand what is obvious in a particular area is far too broad. The only way to properly check for obviousness would be to provide an open review process. Unforutnately, as a software engineer, I wouldn't help in that process, because I would be afraid of the triple damages clause if I inadvertently copied a patent sometime later in my career. It's just a field of landmines.
Lastly, it is ridiculously easy to infringe on a software patent. They are landmines. What is worse is that companies are trying hard to lay more of those mines by getting patents on technology standards. How is that going to advance technology? It's a landgrab.
Finally, no one has ever presented an argument to me that convinces me that people would suddenly stop innovating if patents and copyright disappeared. I don't advocate that course; I believe that people should be justly rewarded for their work; but I don't believe that our economy and the future of our technology are completely dependent upon patents and copyrights. If you want to convince me, give me an argument, not an assertion.
I think you could build a disk at the Earth/Sun L1 LaGrange point that would block the amount of light needed and might be far less expensive than a ring surrounding the planet. You might be able redirect the light you are blocking and use it to power solar sail craft.
If such a disk, probably outfitted with a number of vanes to allow it to redirect the light, can be used to help propel spacecraft around the inner solar system, it could well pay for itself.
The impactor will hit the comet with a force equivalent to five tons of tnt. It will probably produce a crater anywhere from a few yards across to the size of a football stadium.
Actually, it isn't ironic at all. I'm one of those Americans who protests human rights abuses of other countries. I also protest the ones committed by my own government. I didn't vote for this administration and I have done what I could to make my voice heard through letters and email to my legislative representatives.
What is ironic, is when President Bush or Ms. Rice makes accusations about human rights abuses, not when U.S. citizens who honestly deplore what our own government has been doing do so.
... that the dollar is more important than freedom or principles.
I guess it shouldn't be any surprise the Microsoft and other companies are anxious to help China maintain and strengthen it's totalitarian government, since it's the government that controls the purse strings.
It should give all of us in this country pause. Microsoft obviously has no issues with a government that has it's army fire upon students demonstrating for democracy. It's a short step from there to helping an American administration (of whichever party) do the same thing in this country. Considering how much money Microsoft was saved by the hand slap it got from Justice after being convicted of monopolistic practices, I would assume Bill Gates feels deeply indebted to the present administration.
Apparently, even Google, a company that claims it's unofficial motto is "Dont' Be Evil", doesn't feel like it has a responsibility to behave ethically.
It wasn't defense spending in the U.S. that caused the fall of Communisim in the USSR, it was blue jeans and walkmans -- simple economics. It became glaringly obvious to everyone in communist states that they were being deprived the advances that were cheap to citizens of democratic countries.
The Chinese have never been stupid or foolish. They learned from the lesson of the USSR and they are modernizing their economy in order to prevent a similar revolution. It is unfortunate that companies like Microsoft, Google, and Walmart are so quick to help them.
China is still a totalitarian government. China allows the use of slave and prison labor to produce goods which show up on American store shelves. Ever wonder why goods made in China are so inexpensive?
The American government and businesses are not just hurting the Chinese people by helping such a government; they are hurting American citizens. We are losing jobs. We are becoming a nation that produces nothing but Reality TV shows. Worse the lesson to our children is that freedom only counts until someone offers you more money.
These companies argue that by doing business with China, they are improving the lives of ordinary Chinese. How can we trust them? There have been numerous stories about the use of prison labor and child labor to produce goods bound for America. Can they really know that they are helping the average Chinese when China does not have a free press that can report how things actually are? I sincerely doubt that the workers in China are getting the same wages and benefits that American workers would get. I wonder if they are even getting enough more to substantially change their lives.
If you are going to stand for freedom, you have to do it all the time, not just when it's financially attractive.
...is a laptop below $100.
While lower prices for desktop machines is great, we need to find a way to get laptops down to a price point where they can be used to replace textbooks for highschool students.
This textbook replacement laptop doesn't necessarily have to have every possible feature, but I think it does need networking, USB, a harddrive, and a display that is fast enough for word processing and simple animations. The ability to play music might insure that the kids don't lose it. The kids can play FPS games at home on their $300 PCs; this machine is meant for study.
Obviously, Linux will be part of that solution, since Windows simply costs too much money.
The educational software for such machines should all be Open Source. This will make it easier for governments and school systems to adapt the software to their particular needs. Each school district can employ a couple of Open Source programmers. Think of what the combined capabilities of so many programmers will be when it comes to developing educational software.
It's sad that we don't hear about wonderful educational software. The people who work on such software aren't held in the same regard as those who work on business enterprise applications or on games, yet educational software could potentially have much farther reaching impacts.
I use Open Office exclusively and have for the past couple of years. Reading the files in certainly isn't a problem for me. The only files that are slow to load are the master document files, and that's because they link to dozens of other files.
The XML specification is being expanded (it might already be done) to allow binary formats. There are good reasons, though, why it's best to keep data files in straight XML text format. It eliminates the need to worry about machine architecture. Little endian or big endian, it maks no difference to you. The files are perfectly portable across platforms, which is increasingly important these days. XML files zip very nicely, making them almost as small as a corresponding binary file.
It is far easier to provide backwards compatability to earlier file formats when you are using XML than if you are using binary file formats. With XML, if it sees a tag it doesn't understand, the parser ignores it. If a binary file format loader sees stuff it doesn't understand, it bails out with an illegal file format error.
When you move to a new expanded file format with XML, you don't have to write a conversion utility. Since you are merely adding new tags, your program can read any of your old data just fine, then add the appropriate tags and new data. This saves a great deal of trouble for programers.
Machines are fast and cheap. People are slow and expensive. It is far better to have our computers do a little extra work on loading a text file and eliminate conversion utilities and complicated loading routines that a prone to bugs.
I hope you are right, but I'll believe it when I see it. I still think our best chance for a solid space program will be provided by forwared thinkers like Rutan. I don't have much faith in a government space program since the projects that really looked like they would change the face of space travel got canceled.
I Think the Delta Clipper was an excellent idea. It had payload capacity problems, but that's a solvable engineering problem. We seem to create stronger and lighter materials every day. I don't think it's practical to keep using throw away rockets.