The short version of your linked article, for those who don't want to read: 1. Not peer-reviewed => generally not credible science 2. Peer-reviewed => not necessarily credible science
Of course, any scientist already knows this. It's the mainstream press that loves to take crackpot claims at face value, because it's sensational.
Young man: Oh well we sometimes feel we're to blame in some way for what our gran's become. I mean she used to be happy here until she, she started on the crochet. Reporter: Crochet? Young man: Yeah. Now she can't do without it. Twenty balls of wool a day, sometimes. If she can't get the wool she gets violent. What can we do about it?
Diaspora looks like it's trying to be the next round in the Social Networking Site Cycle, which goes like this: 1. A social networking site starts up, allowing friends to stay in touch and contact one another, with good privacy rules to prevent bad guys from seeing that info, with maybe a few ads to pay for things but no other payments involved. 2. The social networking site (which is good at what it does) is successful in attracting new members. Network effects make the member base swell massively, while any competitors become passe. 3. The founders of the site want to profit from their hard work, so they go public or get VC funding. 4. The investors attempt to "monetize" the network via advertising, bloatware that people can pay to add on, reducing privacy rules, and so forth. 5. The social network becomes a slow bloated totally non-private piece of crap. 6. A couple of developers think "Hey, the dominant social network is a bloated totally non-private piece of crap. We should create something that does this better." And the cycle begins again.
This has happened at least once already with MySpace, and it's fair to say that Facebook is sitting somewhere around step 5.
Although CP/IP has been implemented several times, amazingly nobody thought to improve bandwidth through the use of memory cards. I assume a new standard will be put out to take advantage of this innovation.
I'm not much of a network admin, but Samba is a well-supported suite for including Linux boxes on AD domains, and I think has also gotten to the point where Linux boxes can act as domain controllers. So you can in fact start pulling in a few Linux boxen into your network without disrupting everything.
In addition, you may find that Linux gives you other tools that allow you to handle the stuff you currently use AD for.
The real kicker about this is that Microsoft identified this exact issue about a decade ago, when they realized that web applications would eventually make their dominance of the desktop less useful than it once was. So far, they haven't been able to do anything about it, for several reasons:
- Firefox largely put an end to the IE-only websites that were popular back in the day. This stunted Microsoft's attempts to control HTML and Javascript and add incompatible extensions to it.
- Linux+Apache provided all the software for anybody anywhere to set up a cheap webserver or even Java application server. That solved the problem of Microsoft trying to control Internet protocols by controlling the server side.
- The rise of broadband and AJAX meant that desktop apps aren't that much faster than web apps.
- Apple's desktops and laptops have been rising in popularity.
- And of course, the efforts of Google to make darn good web apps.
- Gnome / KDE providing progressively more viable and easy-to-use alternatives to Windows.
So that leaves Microsoft Windows often as a tool to access your awesome webapps, which can be relatively easily replaced by OS X or Ubuntu. Totally anecdotal evidence, I've had friends over who wanted to borrow my machine, and I happened to have Linux w/Gnome up and running, which they had no trouble using at all.
A huge percentage of PCs aren't sold to homes, but to businesses. While Ubuntu may not be attractive to businesses tied to Windows-specific software, it could be extremely attractive to businesses mostly run off of web applications. Corporate IT departments who are considering making the switch for some of their users would be able to make use of studies like this to help convince upper management that there's little downside and a significant cost savings.
Except if you go to a gun show. The feds have done numerous busts at shows where they buy guns that they shouldn't have been able to buy, and documented the techniques used to allow the purchase.
And of course with both video games and guns, there's nothing preventing private under-the-table sales.
If I'm reading that correctly, that means that there are more de facto restrictions on minors purchasing virtual guns than there are on minors purchasing real guns.
Actually, IMHO they should simply rename this sort of program "COINTELPRO", because this is exactly the kind of thing J Edgar was up to back in the day. Completely unconstitutional, and completely ingrained in FBI culture as being the right thing to do.
Even if they don't fix prices, they don't have an incentive to get into a bidding war.
Well, yes and no.
Companies in oligopolies will engage in short-term bidding wars in an attempt to reshuffle market share in their favor. However, they all take advantage of people's reluctance to make the effort to switch vendors frequently, which is why you'll see lots of tactics like short-term introductory rates that are far below market price followed by raising you right back to the market price (or higher) as soon as the introductory period is over. So the effect is that the market price never changes (or even goes up), but companies still appear to bid against each other.
I'm not sure about weapons, but there's clear evidence that IBM supplied the Nazis with a sophisticated punch card system to keep track of their prisoners. Clear evidence as in: The punch card records say "International Business Machines" on them, and contracts with the signature of Thomas J Watson Sr.
Nobody expects the Canadian Inquisition! Our chief weapon is Tim Horton's, Tim Horton's and hockey. Our two chief weapons are Tim Horton's, hockey, and a whole lot of boreal forest... I'll come in again.
For one very simple reason: network outage. If the anesthesiologist is present, s/he can react if something goes wrong. If they aren't, the patient may well be SOL.
That society, like most societies, is only an improvement if you're on top of the social heap. Similar to how most Ren Faire fans aren't so excited of the prospect of the real life of the average Renaissance person, which was generally a combination of working on a farm, being conscripted into an army, dying of plague (or dysentery or a host of other diseases), and praying to avoid dying of plague. Ditto for Ayn Rand's views - I have yet to meet an Ayn Rand fan who thinks that they're part of the unwashed masses who never accomplish anything important. Similarly, most Trek fans imagine themselves as a bridge officer instead of Second Class Deck Cleaner, and more Star Wars fans imagine themselves as a Jedi of some sort than some no-name moisture farmer.
You'd prefer uncontrolled mass riots? Let me give you a clear example of what happens from one I recently experienced first hand in Thailand.
Let me give you a clear example of what happens from what a lot of people experienced in Chicago in 1968: People gather, everything is good, and they aren't annoying anybody really. The police decide to unlawfully break up the protest. It turns into a full blown police riot.
A fair number of police want protests to get violent, some because beating up protesters makes them feel powerful, some because they disagree with the protesters politically, and some because their bosses fall into one of the first two groups. The real kicker is that a lot of the protesters that get beaten up by cops are frequently charged with assaulting a police officer.
You might laugh, but I had a pal in college who found a couple of freshmen in the dorm kitchen holding a box of spaghetti and looking very confused at the instructions "boil 4 cups of water".
And for those geeks who've forked off new processes, remember that some basic cooking skills are extremely valuable for the little tykes. Someone who knows how to cook can eat for something like $3 a day, whereas if they can't they'll spend closer to $15 a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a pretty dramatic difference once you multiply by 365.25 days a year.
On the flip side, the multiple causes from multiple organizations frequently lead to each organization completely absolving itself by saying "well, if the other team's stuff had worked properly, there wouldn't have been a problem." While true, it also means that they will avoid fixing their piece of the problem (and do their best to avoid legal responsibility as well).
Even if there's no chance of being hit, you could always walk up to an eligible Person of the Appropriate Sex and say "Baby, let me help you enjoy yourself before you get hit by an asteroid."
If you're going to argue by anecdote, then I should point out that most of the unemployed folks I know are smart and capable, but are out of work because they were viewed as too old, too young, or were just plain unlucky. A lot of them got caught in layoffs, where the boss got the word from on high that he needed to fire 10 people, and because the boss had built up an effective team those 10 people were pretty good at what they did. And because all the local firms (including startups) that hire lots of developers, were in layoff mode rather than hiring mode, they were screwed.
Another way of looking at it: for every open position in the US, there are 6 unemployed workers trying to get it. Now, to give you the benefit of the doubt, we'll say 4 of those 6 are people you wouldn't hire. That means that a perfectly qualified and capable person has a 50% shot at best of getting a job. Which one gets it probably will be decided by nepotism, height (seriously, taller people do better), who's friends with who, race and gender, and what order people are interviewed in.
Slashdot Mirror
The short version of your linked article, for those who don't want to read:
1. Not peer-reviewed => generally not credible science
2. Peer-reviewed => not necessarily credible science
Of course, any scientist already knows this. It's the mainstream press that loves to take crackpot claims at face value, because it's sensational.
Even worse than the knitters are the crochet enthusiasts.
documentary vid
Young man: Oh well we sometimes feel we're to blame in some way for what our gran's become. I mean she used to be happy here until she, she started on the crochet.
Reporter: Crochet?
Young man: Yeah. Now she can't do without it. Twenty balls of wool a day, sometimes. If she can't get the wool she gets violent. What can we do about it?
Diaspora looks like it's trying to be the next round in the Social Networking Site Cycle, which goes like this:
1. A social networking site starts up, allowing friends to stay in touch and contact one another, with good privacy rules to prevent bad guys from seeing that info, with maybe a few ads to pay for things but no other payments involved.
2. The social networking site (which is good at what it does) is successful in attracting new members. Network effects make the member base swell massively, while any competitors become passe.
3. The founders of the site want to profit from their hard work, so they go public or get VC funding.
4. The investors attempt to "monetize" the network via advertising, bloatware that people can pay to add on, reducing privacy rules, and so forth.
5. The social network becomes a slow bloated totally non-private piece of crap.
6. A couple of developers think "Hey, the dominant social network is a bloated totally non-private piece of crap. We should create something that does this better." And the cycle begins again.
This has happened at least once already with MySpace, and it's fair to say that Facebook is sitting somewhere around step 5.
Although CP/IP has been implemented several times, amazingly nobody thought to improve bandwidth through the use of memory cards. I assume a new standard will be put out to take advantage of this innovation.
I'm not much of a network admin, but Samba is a well-supported suite for including Linux boxes on AD domains, and I think has also gotten to the point where Linux boxes can act as domain controllers. So you can in fact start pulling in a few Linux boxen into your network without disrupting everything.
In addition, you may find that Linux gives you other tools that allow you to handle the stuff you currently use AD for.
The real kicker about this is that Microsoft identified this exact issue about a decade ago, when they realized that web applications would eventually make their dominance of the desktop less useful than it once was. So far, they haven't been able to do anything about it, for several reasons:
- Firefox largely put an end to the IE-only websites that were popular back in the day. This stunted Microsoft's attempts to control HTML and Javascript and add incompatible extensions to it.
- Linux+Apache provided all the software for anybody anywhere to set up a cheap webserver or even Java application server. That solved the problem of Microsoft trying to control Internet protocols by controlling the server side.
- The rise of broadband and AJAX meant that desktop apps aren't that much faster than web apps.
- Apple's desktops and laptops have been rising in popularity.
- And of course, the efforts of Google to make darn good web apps.
- Gnome / KDE providing progressively more viable and easy-to-use alternatives to Windows.
So that leaves Microsoft Windows often as a tool to access your awesome webapps, which can be relatively easily replaced by OS X or Ubuntu. Totally anecdotal evidence, I've had friends over who wanted to borrow my machine, and I happened to have Linux w/Gnome up and running, which they had no trouble using at all.
Yes they do.
A huge percentage of PCs aren't sold to homes, but to businesses. While Ubuntu may not be attractive to businesses tied to Windows-specific software, it could be extremely attractive to businesses mostly run off of web applications. Corporate IT departments who are considering making the switch for some of their users would be able to make use of studies like this to help convince upper management that there's little downside and a significant cost savings.
Except if you go to a gun show. The feds have done numerous busts at shows where they buy guns that they shouldn't have been able to buy, and documented the techniques used to allow the purchase.
And of course with both video games and guns, there's nothing preventing private under-the-table sales.
If I'm reading that correctly, that means that there are more de facto restrictions on minors purchasing virtual guns than there are on minors purchasing real guns.
Something is out of whack here.
Actually, IMHO they should simply rename this sort of program "COINTELPRO", because this is exactly the kind of thing J Edgar was up to back in the day. Completely unconstitutional, and completely ingrained in FBI culture as being the right thing to do.
As of September of last year, it's back to being a separately traded company based in Ontario.
He needs the shuriken for his upcoming bout with Richard Stallman, who's ninja skills are well-known.
Is she also becoming a US citizen? And if so, will she have her Finnish karate title revoked?
But in any event, welcome to the US, Linus, but you've shown you can kick butt anywhere in the world.
Even if they don't fix prices, they don't have an incentive to get into a bidding war.
Well, yes and no.
Companies in oligopolies will engage in short-term bidding wars in an attempt to reshuffle market share in their favor. However, they all take advantage of people's reluctance to make the effort to switch vendors frequently, which is why you'll see lots of tactics like short-term introductory rates that are far below market price followed by raising you right back to the market price (or higher) as soon as the introductory period is over. So the effect is that the market price never changes (or even goes up), but companies still appear to bid against each other.
I'm not sure about weapons, but there's clear evidence that IBM supplied the Nazis with a sophisticated punch card system to keep track of their prisoners. Clear evidence as in: The punch card records say "International Business Machines" on them, and contracts with the signature of Thomas J Watson Sr.
Nobody expects the Canadian Inquisition! Our chief weapon is Tim Horton's, Tim Horton's and hockey. Our two chief weapons are Tim Horton's, hockey, and a whole lot of boreal forest ... I'll come in again.
For one very simple reason: network outage. If the anesthesiologist is present, s/he can react if something goes wrong. If they aren't, the patient may well be SOL.
No chairs were thrown during the exit interview.
That society, like most societies, is only an improvement if you're on top of the social heap. Similar to how most Ren Faire fans aren't so excited of the prospect of the real life of the average Renaissance person, which was generally a combination of working on a farm, being conscripted into an army, dying of plague (or dysentery or a host of other diseases), and praying to avoid dying of plague. Ditto for Ayn Rand's views - I have yet to meet an Ayn Rand fan who thinks that they're part of the unwashed masses who never accomplish anything important. Similarly, most Trek fans imagine themselves as a bridge officer instead of Second Class Deck Cleaner, and more Star Wars fans imagine themselves as a Jedi of some sort than some no-name moisture farmer.
It's all good fun, but hardly realistic.
You'd prefer uncontrolled mass riots? Let me give you a clear example of what happens from one I recently experienced first hand in Thailand.
Let me give you a clear example of what happens from what a lot of people experienced in Chicago in 1968:
People gather, everything is good, and they aren't annoying anybody really. The police decide to unlawfully break up the protest. It turns into a full blown police riot.
Or if that examples goes too far back, you can look at Los Angeles in 2007.
A fair number of police want protests to get violent, some because beating up protesters makes them feel powerful, some because they disagree with the protesters politically, and some because their bosses fall into one of the first two groups. The real kicker is that a lot of the protesters that get beaten up by cops are frequently charged with assaulting a police officer.
Get over yourself. If they want to build a mosque next to a titty bar, in an old outlet store building, why the hell should you care?
Because all those people going into the mosque will slow me down when I'm trying to get to the titty bar!
You might laugh, but I had a pal in college who found a couple of freshmen in the dorm kitchen holding a box of spaghetti and looking very confused at the instructions "boil 4 cups of water".
And for those geeks who've forked off new processes, remember that some basic cooking skills are extremely valuable for the little tykes. Someone who knows how to cook can eat for something like $3 a day, whereas if they can't they'll spend closer to $15 a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a pretty dramatic difference once you multiply by 365.25 days a year.
On the flip side, the multiple causes from multiple organizations frequently lead to each organization completely absolving itself by saying "well, if the other team's stuff had worked properly, there wouldn't have been a problem." While true, it also means that they will avoid fixing their piece of the problem (and do their best to avoid legal responsibility as well).
Even if there's no chance of being hit, you could always walk up to an eligible Person of the Appropriate Sex and say "Baby, let me help you enjoy yourself before you get hit by an asteroid."
If you're going to argue by anecdote, then I should point out that most of the unemployed folks I know are smart and capable, but are out of work because they were viewed as too old, too young, or were just plain unlucky. A lot of them got caught in layoffs, where the boss got the word from on high that he needed to fire 10 people, and because the boss had built up an effective team those 10 people were pretty good at what they did. And because all the local firms (including startups) that hire lots of developers, were in layoff mode rather than hiring mode, they were screwed.
Another way of looking at it: for every open position in the US, there are 6 unemployed workers trying to get it. Now, to give you the benefit of the doubt, we'll say 4 of those 6 are people you wouldn't hire. That means that a perfectly qualified and capable person has a 50% shot at best of getting a job. Which one gets it probably will be decided by nepotism, height (seriously, taller people do better), who's friends with who, race and gender, and what order people are interviewed in.