Well, to show how both sides can be wrong, let me extend your analogy a bit...
What about children born with deformities? Why don't we euthanize (sp, this means kill) them as soon as we find out about their abnormality? What about early childhood injury? Babies that become burn victims, and will suffer through life terribly scarred? What about teenagers that take LSD, and have awkward flashbacks? What about left-handed people? Where do we draw the line and say terminating a possibly good possibly bad life is wrong?
There is no "right" or "wrong" truth in the debate over when life begins. If there was, it would be simple to pass useful laws. This is about morality, and where our rights (or the mother) end and where another's rights (the fetus, child, single celled organism, or whatever) begin.
The only thing that is certain is that if you think you are right and others are wrong, you are wrong!
Your post sums up the question of stem cells (and it's relative, abortion) quite well. Neither side can be made to see the other position, because neither side can really PROVE what they believe. There simply are too many unknowns, what constitutes a human, what constitutes child, what constitues baby?
The question is, what do we do when there are two groups of people who believe fundamentally different things. In our society, we tend to say majority rules - except when the majority tries to circumvent the rights of the minority. This is the quandry - the majority of people seem to believe that stem cell research is wrong. But this is seen to take away the rights (to better health care, or whatever) of those who believe differently.
There is no perfect answer. However it is chosen, there is no "right" or "wrong". History says it will be decided by chance (as in something else like the war in Iraq getting Bush elected will decide this unrelated issue).
Actually, if you are not in a "swing state", your vote doesn't really matter so you CAN vote third party. A Democrat (or Republican, for that matter) in Utah can vote any way they want, it won't effect the outcome. And at least that way a message will be sent!
This kind of sums up how I feel about security. Closed source - not secure. Open source - not secure for different reasons. Can you leave either type unpatched? However open source makes it more likely that you can keep up with patches, because they will be more available.
For example, I need to secure IE, but my enterprise-wide ap breaks in Windows Media Player 8. With Microsoft, there is no choice but to uprade everything at once (why would a server need Media Player?) with an all-encompassing service pack. With open source, that option exists (apply whatever the "vendor" thought would be best), but you can also use a different vendor (who's idea of "best" may be closer to your own), or if you are truely paranoid you can apply minimal changes yourself.
This is in fact, based on a fallacy. Lesbians and gays do not "choose" their sexual orientation. I have developed a simple proof of this, and I'm a little surprised no one else has seen this obvious truth.
The fact is, I am amazingly good looking. Not just, hey he looks good, but like "WOW, how can I get with HIM!" kind of looks. Obviously, if sexual orientation was transitory, all other men would be gay, and any lesbians near me would revert to heterosexuality immediately. As this doesn't happen, obviously they have no choice in the matter.
BTW, for the gay men out there, I know you want me, but I'm afraid I'm happily married (and devoted to my wife). Same thing for all the single ladies, too. Sorry, these things happen...
The only lasted 2 months for me
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
I got caught by this one myself - my wife nearly killed me when all the "expensive" light bulbs I bought died after 2 months... I live in downtown Chicago, so I can't imagine it's power fluctuations.
The space shuttle goes up to about 1500 C as I recall. Designs like this rely on rapid decelleration at high altitude, so they do not get as hot. It basically depends on your exposed surface area to mass ratio. An inflatable object gets a very large surface with very low mass, so it works well.
As an extreme example of this, back in the Apollo days there was a design for an inflatible parachute to allow one person to return to earth wearing nothing more than a Mercury-class space suit!
Actually, the scary thing about LOX is that it turns many common substances into high explosives. The scariest is pavement. Pour LOX on a street, and you have just created a large sheet of something very similar to dynamite - except even more touchy! (The oxygen saturates the substance, so when it burns it burns FAST).
standard radiator: 100% effifcient (all energy lost by the radiator heats the house)
computer radiator: 100% efficient (all energy lost by the computer heats the house)
Of course, a heat pump taking thermal energy from the outside and pulling it inside will be more efficient (maybe 200% efficiency if you try to match things), but those cost a lot so not many people have them.
An easy one to remember is about 1 cubic meter per kilogram. So, approximaetly 125 cubic meters (or cubic yards, if you prefer). That's the problem, you'd have to make the average car weigh nothing and be 30 feet (or 10 meters) tall.
I got modded down last time I said this, but it really is true. If we took the ouput of the nuclear reactors and burned it, and then released the miniscule amount of radioactive substances throughout the US, the overall radiation level would DECREASE!
Total amount of coal*Radioactivity of Coal >> Total amount of uranium*Radioactivity of Uranium
I would say that your usage fits my definition of non-strategic. Giving it to your competition will not enable them to copy your product, it will merely make them more efficient. But if their efficiency increase is matched by your efficiency increase (as in the changes they give you are as valuable as the changes you give them) everyone wins. The everbody wins is the definition of Capitalism working. I believe most open source projects fit into this model.
Where it doesn't work is when you are building a web service, say for a bank. If you open source your web service, the bank can simply take your work and has no reason to use your product anymore. That is what I would call strategic. I'm probably wrong, so go ahead and correct me. (Hey, after 8 startups, 4-5 successful I'm finally going to get my MBA from Kellogg next year - I'm still learning)
Well, I prefer to use Slashdot in a psuedo-anonymous way so I'm not naming names. Let's just say that if I told you, you would have heard of one of them (and might cry for me...) although technically we are still showing a profit. Another company is in the process of being sold - when we took over operations is was on the verge of backruptcy, and now is profitable. I am starting a third company from the ground up - you'll probably be hearing about it very soon. It will be our biggest yet, and should reach 10% or so of the US households.
I like being involved in startups, and I've gotten pretty good at it. I lost everything in my first company (ended up in debt even). My second company broke even, though some investors lost money. My third company was killed by 9/11 (it was flight related, and chose a bad year to launch). Every company after that has shown a profit (4 so far). So I can't be doing that much wrong.
By the way, I strongly recommend that people try starting a business. It will help you to understand what motivates those over you in an organization, and help you to advance yourself. Besides, the American dream still exists in startups - I am technical a "Disabled" person, and I'm doing pretty well!
Note that I did not say that programming language choice was enough by itself, only that the choice of a programming language should be in line with making a project easily maintainable down the line. It would be nice if everyone had code review. However, there are times that it is not feasible, and people tend to revert to minimal documentation and poor style when the crunch comes. Yes, it can be documented and fixed later during code review, but choice of an appropriate language can raise the minimum level of documentation possible. As a manager, it is my duty to do that. As a shareholder, it will result in my income increasing!
By the way, code review (and ego, as you put it) is a strength of open source, but it is not the primary one. Open source is a way to get other entities (companies, individuals, whatever) to share the cost of your NON-STRATEGIC IT functions. It is very valuable, if you know how to use it. Most CxOs do not seem to have this knowlege, which allows the companies I work with to outperform them.
Well, that would be great, except that as CIO I'm not really getting promoted anymore, and I am a shareholder in any company I get involved in. (I like working with smaller companies, where you can actually do something).
Also, I tend to stay with companies for a while. I've been with my current company for 8 years (that has to be some kind of record for CIOs). It probably has a lot to do with the fact that they don't mind "sharing" me with other companies for a piece of the action. I'm currently working 3 jobs, and still get home for dinner each day!
As someone who makes such decisions, let me tell you why (I believe) Perl is not as widely used.
Perl can be done right, as you say. But it does not enforce readability, and there are many programmers that will write illegible code in it. There is no one watching these programmers on a daily basis, so at the end of my million dollar project I may end up with something no one can support, which would then eventually have to be replaced. On the other hand, other languages force the programmer to follow certain rules that lead to more legible programs. I will always choose something that I have control over, since I am going to be fired if my million dollar project fails...
What this really boils down to is: should the current generation get screwed for the political failures of the past 20 years, or should previous generations? It's a tough question, because there simply will not be enough money when I retire - and I am currently paying for the prior generation's retirees.
Personally, I think the current generation will be stuck with the bag. That is the status quo, and honestly younger people will probably deal better anyway. I know I'm not planning on getting any social security checks during retirement.
At some point, this becomes a silly attitude. There are no "minimum standards" for being an American. At least when I was in school, the schools taught geography to every student. If the students can't be bothered to learn was is taught, I don't think that reflects too much on me. I learned it, they could have learned it, and because they didn't and I did I have one more advantage in life. Their loss, they should have taken school seriously...
I have built many different systems for many different uses - there are many that I feel Windows was better for (Office assistant that needs to access documents created by the "outside world"), there have been some that Linux was better for (Of course the servers, but also dev boxes, etc), some mac (CEO), ect.
I've only been limited by available hardware once - that was for a HP scanner. I HAD to use Linux - anything running a scanner under Windows was not scriptable!
So the only hardware lockin I ever had was being forced to use Linux - weird, huh?
I have never learned to "touch type." Back on my Commodore 64 I could type faster than the keyboard interrupt handler, however. (Type "run" 16 quadrillion times without requiring your hands to be on the propper keys, and see how fast you end up typing...) In my job (developer/management/etc), I am constantly typing in things, but never transcribing. Touch typing helps you when transcribing, because you can't easily look at the keyboard while transcribing. In modern jobs, transcription just isn't important. So I believe that my needing to look at the keyboard when typing does not hurt me at all. SPEED matters, but even more than that it is what you enter that matters!
I agree with most of your reccomendations, and would add another - patents and copyrights that become commercially unavailable are immediately released into the public domain. This would prevent a lot of "bad practices," such as submarine patents, books becoming unavailable after publishers go bankrupt, etc.
Interestingly enough, the way that collisions in space happen is this:
1. Object A reaches Object B
2. Object A and approximately Object A's mass of object B are vaporized
3. The kinetic energy is absorbed in subsequent collisions
The way space amour is designed now is to have a first thin layer to handle step 1+2, and then have a second layer (placed as far away as possible from the first layer), to handle step 3. By spacing it out, the inner layer allows the metal vapor to expand, so when it hits it doesn't hit as hard (and therefore doesn't puncture the inner layer).
An inflatable space station (or something like that) would actually have inherently better amour per mass lifted than a normal design, because A) the gap could be larger, and B) the gap is filled with a substance that would help spread the impact further. Of course, you will need to patch things up after a hit, and have redundant paths for handling the load, but all in all it does work better then alluminum shielding, and was seriously considered for the current space station design.
The simplest explanation (though incorrect, like any other simple explanation) is that you specify the answer, the steps taken to get the answer, and it tells you the inputs to the question. For example, you say: the two numbers that when multiplied together equal 42. The computer takes the qbits, multiplies them together, and throws out everything that doesn't return 42. That leaves you with the answer (or the question, however you look at it) of 6 and 7.
I agree with most of what you said, except for the first part about funding.
The people that developed the internet made no money off of it (or very little). The goverment (DARPA) funded the initial development until businesses could use it.
We're close, but not quite there in the space program.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, to show how both sides can be wrong, let me extend your analogy a bit...
What about children born with deformities? Why don't we euthanize (sp, this means kill) them as soon as we find out about their abnormality? What about early childhood injury? Babies that become burn victims, and will suffer through life terribly scarred? What about teenagers that take LSD, and have awkward flashbacks? What about left-handed people? Where do we draw the line and say terminating a possibly good possibly bad life is wrong?
There is no "right" or "wrong" truth in the debate over when life begins. If there was, it would be simple to pass useful laws. This is about morality, and where our rights (or the mother) end and where another's rights (the fetus, child, single celled organism, or whatever) begin.
The only thing that is certain is that if you think you are right and others are wrong, you are wrong!
Your post sums up the question of stem cells (and it's relative, abortion) quite well. Neither side can be made to see the other position, because neither side can really PROVE what they believe. There simply are too many unknowns, what constitutes a human, what constitutes child, what constitues baby?
The question is, what do we do when there are two groups of people who believe fundamentally different things. In our society, we tend to say majority rules - except when the majority tries to circumvent the rights of the minority. This is the quandry - the majority of people seem to believe that stem cell research is wrong. But this is seen to take away the rights (to better health care, or whatever) of those who believe differently.
There is no perfect answer. However it is chosen, there is no "right" or "wrong". History says it will be decided by chance (as in something else like the war in Iraq getting Bush elected will decide this unrelated issue).
Actually, if you are not in a "swing state", your vote doesn't really matter so you CAN vote third party. A Democrat (or Republican, for that matter) in Utah can vote any way they want, it won't effect the outcome. And at least that way a message will be sent!
This kind of sums up how I feel about security. Closed source - not secure. Open source - not secure for different reasons. Can you leave either type unpatched? However open source makes it more likely that you can keep up with patches, because they will be more available.
For example, I need to secure IE, but my enterprise-wide ap breaks in Windows Media Player 8. With Microsoft, there is no choice but to uprade everything at once (why would a server need Media Player?) with an all-encompassing service pack. With open source, that option exists (apply whatever the "vendor" thought would be best), but you can also use a different vendor (who's idea of "best" may be closer to your own), or if you are truely paranoid you can apply minimal changes yourself.
This is in fact, based on a fallacy. Lesbians and gays do not "choose" their sexual orientation. I have developed a simple proof of this, and I'm a little surprised no one else has seen this obvious truth.
The fact is, I am amazingly good looking. Not just, hey he looks good, but like "WOW, how can I get with HIM!" kind of looks. Obviously, if sexual orientation was transitory, all other men would be gay, and any lesbians near me would revert to heterosexuality immediately. As this doesn't happen, obviously they have no choice in the matter.
BTW, for the gay men out there, I know you want me, but I'm afraid I'm happily married (and devoted to my wife). Same thing for all the single ladies, too. Sorry, these things happen...
I got caught by this one myself - my wife nearly killed me when all the "expensive" light bulbs I bought died after 2 months... I live in downtown Chicago, so I can't imagine it's power fluctuations.
The space shuttle goes up to about 1500 C as I recall. Designs like this rely on rapid decelleration at high altitude, so they do not get as hot. It basically depends on your exposed surface area to mass ratio. An inflatable object gets a very large surface with very low mass, so it works well.
As an extreme example of this, back in the Apollo days there was a design for an inflatible parachute to allow one person to return to earth wearing nothing more than a Mercury-class space suit!
Actually, the scary thing about LOX is that it turns many common substances into high explosives. The scariest is pavement. Pour LOX on a street, and you have just created a large sheet of something very similar to dynamite - except even more touchy! (The oxygen saturates the substance, so when it burns it burns FAST).
We do NOT call names here, you MONKEY-BOY!
Um...
standard radiator: 100% effifcient (all energy lost by the radiator heats the house)
computer radiator: 100% efficient (all energy lost by the computer heats the house)
Of course, a heat pump taking thermal energy from the outside and pulling it inside will be more efficient (maybe 200% efficiency if you try to match things), but those cost a lot so not many people have them.
An easy one to remember is about 1 cubic meter per kilogram. So, approximaetly 125 cubic meters (or cubic yards, if you prefer). That's the problem, you'd have to make the average car weigh nothing and be 30 feet (or 10 meters) tall.
I got modded down last time I said this, but it really is true. If we took the ouput of the nuclear reactors and burned it, and then released the miniscule amount of radioactive substances throughout the US, the overall radiation level would DECREASE!
Total amount of coal*Radioactivity of Coal >> Total amount of uranium*Radioactivity of Uranium
I would say that your usage fits my definition of non-strategic. Giving it to your competition will not enable them to copy your product, it will merely make them more efficient. But if their efficiency increase is matched by your efficiency increase (as in the changes they give you are as valuable as the changes you give them) everyone wins. The everbody wins is the definition of Capitalism working. I believe most open source projects fit into this model.
Where it doesn't work is when you are building a web service, say for a bank. If you open source your web service, the bank can simply take your work and has no reason to use your product anymore. That is what I would call strategic. I'm probably wrong, so go ahead and correct me. (Hey, after 8 startups, 4-5 successful I'm finally going to get my MBA from Kellogg next year - I'm still learning)
Well, I prefer to use Slashdot in a psuedo-anonymous way so I'm not naming names. Let's just say that if I told you, you would have heard of one of them (and might cry for me...) although technically we are still showing a profit. Another company is in the process of being sold - when we took over operations is was on the verge of backruptcy, and now is profitable. I am starting a third company from the ground up - you'll probably be hearing about it very soon. It will be our biggest yet, and should reach 10% or so of the US households.
I like being involved in startups, and I've gotten pretty good at it. I lost everything in my first company (ended up in debt even). My second company broke even, though some investors lost money. My third company was killed by 9/11 (it was flight related, and chose a bad year to launch). Every company after that has shown a profit (4 so far). So I can't be doing that much wrong.
By the way, I strongly recommend that people try starting a business. It will help you to understand what motivates those over you in an organization, and help you to advance yourself. Besides, the American dream still exists in startups - I am technical a "Disabled" person, and I'm doing pretty well!
Very true, however who will watch the watchers ;-}
Note that I did not say that programming language choice was enough by itself, only that the choice of a programming language should be in line with making a project easily maintainable down the line. It would be nice if everyone had code review. However, there are times that it is not feasible, and people tend to revert to minimal documentation and poor style when the crunch comes. Yes, it can be documented and fixed later during code review, but choice of an appropriate language can raise the minimum level of documentation possible. As a manager, it is my duty to do that. As a shareholder, it will result in my income increasing!
By the way, code review (and ego, as you put it) is a strength of open source, but it is not the primary one. Open source is a way to get other entities (companies, individuals, whatever) to share the cost of your NON-STRATEGIC IT functions. It is very valuable, if you know how to use it. Most CxOs do not seem to have this knowlege, which allows the companies I work with to outperform them.
Well, that would be great, except that as CIO I'm not really getting promoted anymore, and I am a shareholder in any company I get involved in. (I like working with smaller companies, where you can actually do something).
Also, I tend to stay with companies for a while. I've been with my current company for 8 years (that has to be some kind of record for CIOs). It probably has a lot to do with the fact that they don't mind "sharing" me with other companies for a piece of the action. I'm currently working 3 jobs, and still get home for dinner each day!
As someone who makes such decisions, let me tell you why (I believe) Perl is not as widely used.
Perl can be done right, as you say. But it does not enforce readability, and there are many programmers that will write illegible code in it. There is no one watching these programmers on a daily basis, so at the end of my million dollar project I may end up with something no one can support, which would then eventually have to be replaced. On the other hand, other languages force the programmer to follow certain rules that lead to more legible programs. I will always choose something that I have control over, since I am going to be fired if my million dollar project fails...
What this really boils down to is: should the current generation get screwed for the political failures of the past 20 years, or should previous generations? It's a tough question, because there simply will not be enough money when I retire - and I am currently paying for the prior generation's retirees.
Personally, I think the current generation will be stuck with the bag. That is the status quo, and honestly younger people will probably deal better anyway. I know I'm not planning on getting any social security checks during retirement.
At some point, this becomes a silly attitude. There are no "minimum standards" for being an American. At least when I was in school, the schools taught geography to every student. If the students can't be bothered to learn was is taught, I don't think that reflects too much on me. I learned it, they could have learned it, and because they didn't and I did I have one more advantage in life. Their loss, they should have taken school seriously...
I have built many different systems for many different uses - there are many that I feel Windows was better for (Office assistant that needs to access documents created by the "outside world"), there have been some that Linux was better for (Of course the servers, but also dev boxes, etc), some mac (CEO), ect.
I've only been limited by available hardware once - that was for a HP scanner. I HAD to use Linux - anything running a scanner under Windows was not scriptable!
So the only hardware lockin I ever had was being forced to use Linux - weird, huh?
I have never learned to "touch type." Back on my Commodore 64 I could type faster than the keyboard interrupt handler, however. (Type "run" 16 quadrillion times without requiring your hands to be on the propper keys, and see how fast you end up typing...) In my job (developer/management/etc), I am constantly typing in things, but never transcribing. Touch typing helps you when transcribing, because you can't easily look at the keyboard while transcribing. In modern jobs, transcription just isn't important. So I believe that my needing to look at the keyboard when typing does not hurt me at all. SPEED matters, but even more than that it is what you enter that matters!
Just my 2 cents.
I agree with most of your reccomendations, and would add another - patents and copyrights that become commercially unavailable are immediately released into the public domain. This would prevent a lot of "bad practices," such as submarine patents, books becoming unavailable after publishers go bankrupt, etc.
Interestingly enough, the way that collisions in space happen is this:
1. Object A reaches Object B
2. Object A and approximately Object A's mass of object B are vaporized
3. The kinetic energy is absorbed in subsequent collisions
The way space amour is designed now is to have a first thin layer to handle step 1+2, and then have a second layer (placed as far away as possible from the first layer), to handle step 3. By spacing it out, the inner layer allows the metal vapor to expand, so when it hits it doesn't hit as hard (and therefore doesn't puncture the inner layer).
An inflatable space station (or something like that) would actually have inherently better amour per mass lifted than a normal design, because A) the gap could be larger, and B) the gap is filled with a substance that would help spread the impact further. Of course, you will need to patch things up after a hit, and have redundant paths for handling the load, but all in all it does work better then alluminum shielding, and was seriously considered for the current space station design.
The simplest explanation (though incorrect, like any other simple explanation) is that you specify the answer, the steps taken to get the answer, and it tells you the inputs to the question. For example, you say: the two numbers that when multiplied together equal 42. The computer takes the qbits, multiplies them together, and throws out everything that doesn't return 42. That leaves you with the answer (or the question, however you look at it) of 6 and 7.
I agree with most of what you said, except for the first part about funding.
The people that developed the internet made no money off of it (or very little). The goverment (DARPA) funded the initial development until businesses could use it.
We're close, but not quite there in the space program.