In the past year, I've never seen a time when Mathworks wasn't hiring hundreds of people. They even run sponsorships (read: ads) on NPR all the time about how many jobs they have.
How does Octave or any other open source tool hold up against something with so many resources behind it?
I'm asking honestly. I know Apache and Firefox certainly do pretty well, but the former has a huge business community using it, and the latter has an enormous consumer user base. How do smaller projects compare to big software tools? For example, isn't it generally understood among graphic artists that Gimp doesn't measure up to Photoshop?
I never understand claims like that. Do you know how incredibly cheap storage is? Now what if you had government-sized money. How hard would it be to store all data forever?
Even if it is exabytes. Who cares? They don't sound like the kind of people to let stuff go just to save a few bucks. And to them, it really is just a few bucks.
AdBlock (or cat block) with EasyPrivacy DoNotTrack The no-tracking bit on web browsers Denying 3rd party cookies Denying traffic on ports other than 80/2083 Not using Google services (I mean c'mon people) Allegedly private search engines like ixquick Not using or logging out of social media Proxy servers (but how do you know if a proxy is run by the NSA?)
Yeah, I understand Economics 101. I also understand that Firefox, Linux, Wikipedia, Apache, PHP, etc. are not all about the money (thought money is tied to most of them extraneously; but not really at all to Wikipedia).
There are these things called non-profits. A non-profit social network seems like a no-brainer, and I'm not sure why it doesn't exist; let alone rule them all.
A non-profit social network could show ads... to people who felt like seeing them. Money gets made (enough to buy servers & connectivity), but the profit itself isn't the core motive. And the users are not product.
The FAQ mentions that they intend to open the source, but of course opened source doesn't really necessarily imply libre. And in the interview they talk of a paid version. So, are there ads or not?
So what's the point of a different Facebook if it's not libre? Just a different way to sell yourself to advertisers (reminder: for Facebook, you are not the customer, you are the product).
A truly free social network would have no ads, no profit motive, no logs, no intrusion; just a way for people to share as much or as little with only those they wish to share with.
Is there really no true libre social network, and if not, why not? Do I need to start one, or is it already in the works?
You are correct, and the original article is incredibly misleading.
The Common Core State Standards are, dontchya know, standards. They do not define tests. The states who participate in them can test to the standards. How they choose to do that is not a reflection on the standards themselves.
If anyone cares to learn more about what the standards are, a web search turns up the actual standards pretty easily: http://www.corestandards.org/
Here's the sort of language about testing that actually appears on that site:
"The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe ways in which developing student practitioners of the discipline of mathematics increasingly ought to engage with the subject matter as they grow in mathematical maturity and expertise throughout the elementary, middle and high school years. Designers of curricula, assessments, and professional development should all attend to the need to connect the mathematical practices to mathematical content in mathematics instruction."
Just makes me wonder what war is turning into. Instead of bombing cities, I can see nations targeting unprotected civilian computers in enemy nations. Massive destruction ensues, even though it's imprecise. In other words: bombing, but without all the mess.
Sure, people in hospitals need information, but surely something which is assisting in the physical process of a surgery (etc.) doesn't need to be in the cloud, does it?
The cloud can be cool, but be reasonable. Why not put the operations of the CIA into Salesforce.com while we're at it?
Photovoltaic conversion doesn't convert heat to energy, but instead converts light to energy
...instead of it being converted to heat. Heat and light are just two different forms of energy.
you said that solar panels would kill *all* life underneath it
Where did I say *that*?
That is simply not true (if it were, putting one on a house rooftop would be rather hazardous to the occupants underneath, now wouldn't it?) And unless you can cough up some sort of proof, your latest iteration of this charge isn't all that much better.
So. Try putting a rooftop over a garden and tell me how the plants fare.
As for proof, yes, deserts really are sensitive ecosystems. "The footprint of these solar projects is unprecedented, and obviously they can impact a range of species." Obviously.
Deserts do have life, but not that much plant life... at least not enough to worry about when designing or building a solar array.
Above link totally disagrees. And what makes you think deserts don't have many plants? Idaho doesn't have many people, so it's perfectly alright to nuke the entire state right?
More to the point: "Deserts have a reputation for supporting very little life, but in reality deserts often have high biodiversity.... protect the ground from erosion... Even small fungi and microscopic plant organisms found on the soil surface (so-called cryptobiotic soil) can be a vital link in preventing erosion and providing support for other living organisms... Deserts typically have a plant cover that is sparse but enormously diverse."
Re space-based power, the article you link to goes on and on and on about cost. My initial post: nothing is free. Maybe we'll get there some day. Maybe we'll get fusion too. Right now, no power comes without a high price.
The panels themselves bear and handle the heat. It isn't as if you're instantly piping all the heat somewhere else, since the panels are bolted to the ground.
Whatever energy the collectors collect is energy that is not left there. Gigantic farms are going to move a lot of energy away from a place.
Shade does not automatically kill everything. You won't find plants under one which demand full sunlight, but anything else (especially animals) would probably appreciate and take advantage of the shade.
Well, first, plants are life too. Huge farms are going to kill lots of plants. And the things which eat those plants. And the things which live in/on/around them. Just because they're not visible or edible to you doesn't mean that they don't have wide-ranging impacts on their ecosystem.
Finally, if you park the panels in the desert (where nearly nothing grows anyway), it's not even a worry.
And I call bullshit on this one. Deserts are full of life and are fragile ecosystems. Filling a desert with panels would wreck havoc on them.
Energy transport from space to Earth is actually a solved problem.
The main criticism of nuclear is about risk of an accident. What happens if your microwave energy beam from space mis-fires?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. All power has its cost. Yes, even wind and solar.
Solar panels huge enough to collect loads of energy also cool the ground underneath them; changing climate patterns. And they kill what lives under them. (And if you put them in space, then you have the little problem of transporting the energy.)
Wind farms huge enough to create loads of energy may actually affect wind patterns and temperature dispersal. Plus they kill loads of migrating birds.
And both require many, many resources to build and maintain the collection devices.
Hydro; well, that's an eco-disaster because you have to dam a river to produce it.
Collecting energy from tides? If you did that on a huge scale, I'll bet it would have some major effects on marine life.
Just want to put it out there. I'm not saying nuclear is fantastic. Just want to point out that nothing is.
I've heard of ideas and even projects for ad hoc internetworking and/or phone networking. In these, there is no authoritative routing, but rather meshes of individual nodes (perhaps with uplinks to the "regular" internet/network).
Obviously there are enormous obstacles to developing such a thing. It's hard; it's fragile; it's messy; it's confusing to the user; and it's not profitable.
But when we read stories like this... shouldn't we give it some more thought?
Slashdot Mirror
In the past year, I've never seen a time when Mathworks wasn't hiring hundreds of people. They even run sponsorships (read: ads) on NPR all the time about how many jobs they have.
How does Octave or any other open source tool hold up against something with so many resources behind it?
I'm asking honestly. I know Apache and Firefox certainly do pretty well, but the former has a huge business community using it, and the latter has an enormous consumer user base. How do smaller projects compare to big software tools? For example, isn't it generally understood among graphic artists that Gimp doesn't measure up to Photoshop?
I shudder to think of what this tribe would look like, and how it would be characterized.
I never understand claims like that. Do you know how incredibly cheap storage is? Now what if you had government-sized money. How hard would it be to store all data forever?
Even if it is exabytes. Who cares? They don't sound like the kind of people to let stuff go just to save a few bucks. And to them, it really is just a few bucks.
I meant port 443, not 2083.
(Guess I use cPanel a lot.)
Opinions on each of these, slashdotters?
AdBlock (or cat block) with EasyPrivacy
DoNotTrack
The no-tracking bit on web browsers
Denying 3rd party cookies
Denying traffic on ports other than 80/2083
Not using Google services (I mean c'mon people)
Allegedly private search engines like ixquick
Not using or logging out of social media
Proxy servers (but how do you know if a proxy is run by the NSA?)
Well then, just self-censor. Isn't that the road we're heading down?
Interesting.
Whole episode about that...
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/2hlbyd/take-that-shit-off-speakerphone
Yeah, I understand Economics 101. I also understand that Firefox, Linux, Wikipedia, Apache, PHP, etc. are not all about the money (thought money is tied to most of them extraneously; but not really at all to Wikipedia).
There are these things called non-profits. A non-profit social network seems like a no-brainer, and I'm not sure why it doesn't exist; let alone rule them all.
A non-profit social network could show ads... to people who felt like seeing them. Money gets made (enough to buy servers & connectivity), but the profit itself isn't the core motive. And the users are not product.
The FAQ mentions that they intend to open the source, but of course opened source doesn't really necessarily imply libre. And in the interview they talk of a paid version. So, are there ads or not?
So what's the point of a different Facebook if it's not libre? Just a different way to sell yourself to advertisers (reminder: for Facebook, you are not the customer, you are the product).
A truly free social network would have no ads, no profit motive, no logs, no intrusion; just a way for people to share as much or as little with only those they wish to share with.
Is there really no true libre social network, and if not, why not? Do I need to start one, or is it already in the works?
You seriously got scared of that headline? Tinfoil hat much?
You seriously didn't? Read the news headlines much?
You are correct, and the original article is incredibly misleading.
The Common Core State Standards are, dontchya know, standards. They do not define tests. The states who participate in them can test to the standards. How they choose to do that is not a reflection on the standards themselves.
If anyone cares to learn more about what the standards are, a web search turns up the actual standards pretty easily: http://www.corestandards.org/
Here's the sort of language about testing that actually appears on that site:
Too many brain cells, and the brain doesn't know how to use them yet?
I don't understand this article. Couldn't sleep last night.
Just makes me wonder what war is turning into. Instead of bombing cities, I can see nations targeting unprotected civilian computers in enemy nations. Massive destruction ensues, even though it's imprecise. In other words: bombing, but without all the mess.
Technology in hospitals? Good.
Internet-connected technology in hospitals? Why?
Sure, people in hospitals need information, but surely something which is assisting in the physical process of a surgery (etc.) doesn't need to be in the cloud, does it?
The cloud can be cool, but be reasonable. Why not put the operations of the CIA into Salesforce.com while we're at it?
Photovoltaic conversion doesn't convert heat to energy, but instead converts light to energy
...instead of it being converted to heat. Heat and light are just two different forms of energy.
you said that solar panels would kill *all* life underneath it
Where did I say *that*?
That is simply not true (if it were, putting one on a house rooftop would be rather hazardous to the occupants underneath, now wouldn't it?) And unless you can cough up some sort of proof, your latest iteration of this charge isn't all that much better.
So. Try putting a rooftop over a garden and tell me how the plants fare.
As for proof, yes, deserts really are sensitive ecosystems. "The footprint of these solar projects is unprecedented, and obviously they can impact a range of species." Obviously.
Deserts do have life, but not that much plant life... at least not enough to worry about when designing or building a solar array.
Above link totally disagrees. And what makes you think deserts don't have many plants? Idaho doesn't have many people, so it's perfectly alright to nuke the entire state right?
More to the point:
"Deserts have a reputation for supporting very little life, but in reality deserts often have high biodiversity.... protect the ground from erosion... Even small fungi and microscopic plant organisms found on the soil surface (so-called cryptobiotic soil) can be a vital link in preventing erosion and providing support for other living organisms... Deserts typically have a plant cover that is sparse but enormously diverse."
Re space-based power, the article you link to goes on and on and on about cost. My initial post: nothing is free. Maybe we'll get there some day. Maybe we'll get fusion too. Right now, no power comes without a high price.
The panels themselves bear and handle the heat. It isn't as if you're instantly piping all the heat somewhere else, since the panels are bolted to the ground.
Whatever energy the collectors collect is energy that is not left there. Gigantic farms are going to move a lot of energy away from a place.
Shade does not automatically kill everything. You won't find plants under one which demand full sunlight, but anything else (especially animals) would probably appreciate and take advantage of the shade.
Well, first, plants are life too. Huge farms are going to kill lots of plants. And the things which eat those plants. And the things which live in/on/around them. Just because they're not visible or edible to you doesn't mean that they don't have wide-ranging impacts on their ecosystem.
Finally, if you park the panels in the desert (where nearly nothing grows anyway), it's not even a worry.
And I call bullshit on this one. Deserts are full of life and are fragile ecosystems. Filling a desert with panels would wreck havoc on them.
Energy transport from space to Earth is actually a solved problem.
The main criticism of nuclear is about risk of an accident. What happens if your microwave energy beam from space mis-fires?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. All power has its cost. Yes, even wind and solar.
Solar panels huge enough to collect loads of energy also cool the ground underneath them; changing climate patterns. And they kill what lives under them. (And if you put them in space, then you have the little problem of transporting the energy.)
Wind farms huge enough to create loads of energy may actually affect wind patterns and temperature dispersal. Plus they kill loads of migrating birds.
And both require many, many resources to build and maintain the collection devices.
Hydro; well, that's an eco-disaster because you have to dam a river to produce it.
Collecting energy from tides? If you did that on a huge scale, I'll bet it would have some major effects on marine life.
Just want to put it out there. I'm not saying nuclear is fantastic. Just want to point out that nothing is.
I just printed out a better phone.
(Or is that still a ways off? Ahem.)
I've heard of ideas and even projects for ad hoc internetworking and/or phone networking. In these, there is no authoritative routing, but rather meshes of individual nodes (perhaps with uplinks to the "regular" internet/network).
Obviously there are enormous obstacles to developing such a thing. It's hard; it's fragile; it's messy; it's confusing to the user; and it's not profitable.
But when we read stories like this... shouldn't we give it some more thought?
...oh, wait. I thought it said mice on Mercury. My bad.
Who knew that could ever come back and bite them in the ass?
OK, well, fwiw it appears in Project Gutenberg.
by jdigriz (676802)
Seriously, jdigriz gets first post? How appropriate is that?