Hmmm, often when a non-computer savvy person switches to firefox it is like "But I lose all my bookmarks ! And I don't have my weather bar! And what about this macromedia install ? Firefox really suck !" I think it may be easier to explain all the reasons to your aunt than to your boss. Using firefox is a piece of cake, switching to it requires a bit of time and patience when you don't even know what a file is.
Well the most intelligent use of a mass driver I have seen in SF (and envisioned real space projects) is to use a mass driver to send the product of moon or asteroid mining back to the earth. IIRC, it requires more than 100 times less energy to send something out of moon's gravity well than to send it out of earth's, so a shot of 100 tons of titanium a day could well make a moon mining facility profitable.
That means you have to formulate your request differently when addressing to Slashdot or to Google :
Don't say "What features of Sun OS can not be found in linux distributions ?" but say "Solaris is just a toy! Linux is far more superior!" and you may get a full detailed list of the said features
Full GUI configurability, excellent package installation, stupendous plug and play hardware support. Why in the world would anyone leave that behind? Maybe dtrace is amazing, but there isn't even a GUI for it.
Funny that it sounds like a windows vs linux argument of a few years ago.
It is abstract and is used by a part of the scientific community for the political goal of preventing nuclear war. I, for one, approve their use of arbitrary and symbolic measurement. The target being politicians, to base it on an equation wouldn't add any significant value from their point of view
Mozart was paid in advance to realize most of his works.
Some poets wrote works for money.
Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, like most of their colleagues painted on command.
The sale of a physical support containing music to a very large public is very recent, less than 100 years. Great artists and great masterworks have been produced before that. Can we make the general public enter in a patronage mentality ? You would think that with Internet such a thing would become possible, but you have to have a bit of imagination and to understand that a deep change HAS to be made.
So you don't like the current model where 1,000 creative people try to create something that's a hit (ie popular, respected and genuinely what people want), in the knowledge that it will make them good money
What I personally think or like is not the subject, it just cannot work anymore at the information age.
It seems you would prefer a method where we pay all 1,000 people for the mere act of production, and we remove the assignment of cash reward based on product quality (generally tied to its popularity).
There is a system that does just this! you are in luck!
It's called communism.
Well I, for one, am paid considering the numbers of day I spent at my workplace, with someone vaguely overwatching my work. I am not paid for the completion of the project (and am happy about that fact, sometimes something fails without me making mistakes). I think most slashdotters have such a job. In fact artist's model is somehow unique. And, surprisingly, my company works fairly well. I'll tell my boss on monday that he is a communist, he will surely be surprised !
"I will make this song, pay money to record it, pay money to make a disc out of my recording, pay money to distribute it, but as I will have X thousands people listening to my song, I will sell X thousand discs and be able to pay my fees and have a living." was a valid thinking but is not anymore. I would not call it stupidity because changing old thinking habits is a feat few people achieve but now this is it :
Stop thinking you can force someone to buy a physical support for information (this is hard for a lot of people)
Stop thinking you can get money for transmission of information (this is hard for most people I know)
The only solution I see is that people should be able to be paid at the production step, not at the distribution step.
Also I am getting tired of the "respect my artist lifestyle, I expect to get money when I distribute music" tirade because it is not an argument, I could easily tell "respect my computer scientist lifestyle, I expect to be able to share, upload and download informations without constraints" that is true and that is not an argument either.
weren't episodes 1-3 written before 4-6?
Probably not written. He may have had a vague idea of the general story, but he wouldn't have made such incoherences : Obi'wan doesn't know C3PO or R2D2 in 'New Hope', he doesn't know that Luke has a sister before Yoda tells him. Also, the six episodes just "don't work" together. The "I am your father", which is quite a dramatic climax in the original serie doesn't work anymore if you watch Starwars in the correct order.
To the UK it is just a bunch of local squatters in an abandoned sea platform,
Well, still, when the 'King' of Sealand fired warning shots to an approaching boat (he is a retired navy officier), and this boat complained to an english tribunal, the tribunal said this was out of England's juridiction. This is so far their only recognition.
Notice also that there was a bigger island made in the same way in the international waters near Italia. It was more or less recognized until the Mafia was suspected to use it. It didn't took long before you could see hundreds of italian policemen on it.
Well, it may be hard to imagine, but some people actually use animals as a substitute for genuine affection. If that succeeds, I don't see why a robotic thing should fail...
Well, in my experience, when they say it can read license plates, it means it has a 1 meter resolution. When they say they can identify a double of the chinese president from the original one from orbit, this is in order not to blow up their covert agent in the place, but well...
I also like to cosplay in tinfoil sometimes...
A Canadian meteorite, dating from the formation of the solar system, has been found in Canada. Like many other meteorites, it contains organic matters. The article doesn't state it, but it is probably something akin to amino acids. Apparently, it is the first time this organic matter is found in spherical bubbles, that the original article misleadingly calls "globules". As usual, the article is light on technical details but heavy on wild crazy sensationalist extrapolation. The journalist would like to make believe that cells could have existed on these meteorites but unfortunately has strictly no evidence of this.
"The structures are invisible to the naked eye and resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells. A chunk of meteorite no larger than a grape could contain a billion of the tiny globules.
Theoretically, their hollow-ball shape could have presented a homey environment of concentrated organic matter where early cellular life could develop.
Such theories boast little evidence but raise many intriguing questions. " (emphasis mine)
Because some ethic things to do have no way to return profits, because with 3.5 Billions one time, you may have enough funds to give away medicine to erradicate entirely a disease NOW with a good degree of certitude while trying to create a virtuous cycle or a very long term project is something we just don't manage to do.
Maybe Bill doesn't want to give an economy theory or model a chance, maybe he just want results that he knows will happen by just spending huge amounts of cash. So far, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has had good results.
How can one trace a quantity of polonium, presumably found in a dead body, back to a particular power plant in Russia. I am just curious to know how this is done...
Slashdot Mirror
It looks more like a moonwalk in the wrong direction...
mod parent up.
C'mon, editor dudes, spreading lies can be the fact of laziness, this is just dishonest summarization
I think 1:4 is kind of like shooting for the moon with a paper airplane.
That depends, how much megajoules is your mass driver ?
Hmmm, often when a non-computer savvy person switches to firefox it is like "But I lose all my bookmarks ! And I don't have my weather bar! And what about this macromedia install ? Firefox really suck !" I think it may be easier to explain all the reasons to your aunt than to your boss. Using firefox is a piece of cake, switching to it requires a bit of time and patience when you don't even know what a file is.
Well the most intelligent use of a mass driver I have seen in SF (and envisioned real space projects) is to use a mass driver to send the product of moon or asteroid mining back to the earth. IIRC, it requires more than 100 times less energy to send something out of moon's gravity well than to send it out of earth's, so a shot of 100 tons of titanium a day could well make a moon mining facility profitable.
That means you have to formulate your request differently when addressing to Slashdot or to Google : Don't say "What features of Sun OS can not be found in linux distributions ?" but say "Solaris is just a toy! Linux is far more superior!" and you may get a full detailed list of the said features
Full GUI configurability, excellent package installation, stupendous plug and play hardware support. Why in the world would anyone leave that behind? Maybe dtrace is amazing, but there isn't even a GUI for it.
Funny that it sounds like a windows vs linux argument of a few years ago.
It is abstract and is used by a part of the scientific community for the political goal of preventing nuclear war. I, for one, approve their use of arbitrary and symbolic measurement. The target being politicians, to base it on an equation wouldn't add any significant value from their point of view
Mozart was paid in advance to realize most of his works.
Some poets wrote works for money.
Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, like most of their colleagues painted on command.
The sale of a physical support containing music to a very large public is very recent, less than 100 years. Great artists and great masterworks have been produced before that. Can we make the general public enter in a patronage mentality ? You would think that with Internet such a thing would become possible, but you have to have a bit of imagination and to understand that a deep change HAS to be made.
So you don't like the current model where 1,000 creative people try to create something that's a hit (ie popular, respected and genuinely what people want), in the knowledge that it will make them good money
What I personally think or like is not the subject, it just cannot work anymore at the information age.
It seems you would prefer a method where we pay all 1,000 people for the mere act of production, and we remove the assignment of cash reward based on product quality (generally tied to its popularity).
There is a system that does just this! you are in luck!
It's called communism.
Well I, for one, am paid considering the numbers of day I spent at my workplace, with someone vaguely overwatching my work. I am not paid for the completion of the project (and am happy about that fact, sometimes something fails without me making mistakes). I think most slashdotters have such a job. In fact artist's model is somehow unique. And, surprisingly, my company works fairly well. I'll tell my boss on monday that he is a communist, he will surely be surprised !
Besides, a judge has already ruled that it is a soverign nation, so invading it truly WOULD be invasion of foreign soil.
A United Kingdom judge, IIRC. So this would be liable for a UK citizen before UK tribunals.
"I will make this song, pay money to record it, pay money to make a disc out of my recording, pay money to distribute it, but as I will have X thousands people listening to my song, I will sell X thousand discs and be able to pay my fees and have a living." was a valid thinking but is not anymore. I would not call it stupidity because changing old thinking habits is a feat few people achieve but now this is it :
Stop thinking you can force someone to buy a physical support for information (this is hard for a lot of people)
Stop thinking you can get money for transmission of information (this is hard for most people I know)
The only solution I see is that people should be able to be paid at the production step, not at the distribution step.
Also I am getting tired of the "respect my artist lifestyle, I expect to get money when I distribute music" tirade because it is not an argument, I could easily tell "respect my computer scientist lifestyle, I expect to be able to share, upload and download informations without constraints" that is true and that is not an argument either.
weren't episodes 1-3 written before 4-6?
Probably not written. He may have had a vague idea of the general story, but he wouldn't have made such incoherences : Obi'wan doesn't know C3PO or R2D2 in 'New Hope', he doesn't know that Luke has a sister before Yoda tells him. Also, the six episodes just "don't work" together. The "I am your father", which is quite a dramatic climax in the original serie doesn't work anymore if you watch Starwars in the correct order.
To the UK it is just a bunch of local squatters in an abandoned sea platform,
Well, still, when the 'King' of Sealand fired warning shots to an approaching boat (he is a retired navy officier), and this boat complained to an english tribunal, the tribunal said this was out of England's juridiction. This is so far their only recognition.
Notice also that there was a bigger island made in the same way in the international waters near Italia. It was more or less recognized until the Mafia was suspected to use it. It didn't took long before you could see hundreds of italian policemen on it.
I must say that I understand why he speaks about the possible future of the robotics business, which is what he apparently talks about.
Because they make cool, functionnal, well designed devices and don't care about things like software patents and DRMs.
Be careful, be very careful...
And maybe that's why the video cameras will be going down !
Well, it may be hard to imagine, but some people actually use animals as a substitute for genuine affection. If that succeeds, I don't see why a robotic thing should fail...
And maybe the right to move to another city than their hometown without requiring a visa ?
Well, in my experience, when they say it can read license plates, it means it has a 1 meter resolution. When they say they can identify a double of the chinese president from the original one from orbit, this is in order not to blow up their covert agent in the place, but well...
I also like to cosplay in tinfoil sometimes...
A Canadian meteorite, dating from the formation of the solar system, has been found in Canada. Like many other meteorites, it contains organic matters. The article doesn't state it, but it is probably something akin to amino acids. Apparently, it is the first time this organic matter is found in spherical bubbles, that the original article misleadingly calls "globules". As usual, the article is light on technical details but heavy on wild crazy sensationalist extrapolation. The journalist would like to make believe that cells could have existed on these meteorites but unfortunately has strictly no evidence of this.
"The structures are invisible to the naked eye and resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells. A chunk of meteorite no larger than a grape could contain a billion of the tiny globules.
Theoretically, their hollow-ball shape could have presented a homey environment of concentrated organic matter where early cellular life could develop.
Such theories boast little evidence but raise many intriguing questions. " (emphasis mine)
Ok, I understand now. Apparently they have found polonium in various places, they did not use the polonium found in the corpse.
Because some ethic things to do have no way to return profits, because with 3.5 Billions one time, you may have enough funds to give away medicine to erradicate entirely a disease NOW with a good degree of certitude while trying to create a virtuous cycle or a very long term project is something we just don't manage to do.
Maybe Bill doesn't want to give an economy theory or model a chance, maybe he just want results that he knows will happen by just spending huge amounts of cash. So far, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has had good results.
How can one trace a quantity of polonium, presumably found in a dead body, back to a particular power plant in Russia. I am just curious to know how this is done...
I warn you, if you keep making these nasty remarks, we'll have to send you in CowboyNeal's reeducation camp in Cuba...