You make excellent points and I believe you when you say they are based on experience. Nevertheless, the situation is a dynamic one. What MS does for the next few years will be critical to the picture. They must be willing to give up some margin they've historically had on some of their products, or risk the continuing advance of free and open alternatives eating ever more dramatically into their market share. A fine balancing act is required on their part. Speaking more specifically, be assured that the price of Vista needs to come down pretty significantly.
The cable industry is already a dinosaur and a nasty regulatory evironment could only relegate them even more rapidly to obsolescence. They've become telecom providers, but are highly dependent on interconnection with companies who are their direct competitors for those services. I happen to think too that IPTV is likely the best hope going forward for competition against the dish based providers. This story makes it seem like the FCC is stuck in another decade. Do they even have a clue?
The industry is going to go through some wrenching changes because new players are going to be more willing to open their networks (for real, not pretending to like Verizon). What new players? Clearwire and Google, or a combination thereof.
This will make it easier for phone/device manufacturers to provide genuinely innovative products. If AT&T wants to stick it to Apple, they're going to find their bargaining position weakening. Quickly, I hope.
And this is why why we need Internet connections that are more symmetrical, networks that are more open and a much more community centered, as opposed to a corporation centered approach to the next generation Internet. We have only scratched the surface of the possibilities.
I'm guessing you are posting from another country. Japan, perhaps? The point isn't the hardware. The point isn't even the software. The point is creating a different paradigm for phones and service in a country with an oligarchic mess, one that is open and free of extraordinarily ridiculous limitations. In this environment, it really only takes one hardware manufacturer with enough courage to step out of line to shake things up.
Centralization has its advantages, especially when dealing with coal or nuclear options. Nevertheless, when it comes to solar, wind and biofuels, distributed production will actually prove to be the superior approach. Hopefully, the reasons are obvious to all.
What you call faith, I call superstition. I see faith as something a little more defensible and and overlapping with "trust". Rules of evidence come into play, but there is still a bit of a leap involved. Human relationships present us with analogies for a relationship with the divine. On that note, I'll end my comment, because going further would be off-topic.
Yes, but that's winning the battle and losing the war. KISS is not always appropriate, and as a principle, it is why Evolution continues to flail at winning the majority of American minds. Understanding the underlying principles of science on this last front, and understanding the arguments for free and open networks on the front that is central to this story, are both prerequisite to "winning the war".
Yes, we are liberating carbon that was once free in the environment. That carbon was sequestered in the earth over a period of hundreds of millions of years only to be re-released in a matter of decades. What's hard to understand about there being some possible side effects of that?
Not sure why I'm replying to ACs but you do realize that the Ordovician Period was about 1/2 a billion years ago, don't you? That the climate was generally quite mild throughout? Also, the "Ice Age" you speak of was glaciation on Gondwana, which sat over the South Pole at the time.
There is little doubt that resistance to roundup is showing up in weeds. It is less likely that it is coming from any kind of gene transfer between crop and weed species than simply from evolved resistance within weed species themselves, due to heavy reliance on roundup. Roundup resistance crop species contribute to this by encouraging more use of Roundup.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=6820&title=Roundup%20Resistance%20Armors%20W eeds
The parent is like a lot of slashdotters who seem to have no grasp of economics or the history of the commercial Internet. Bandwidth has always been oversold/oversubscribed. It actually worked well in the dialup world, as it was mostly unnoticed. Now, with faster last mile connections, the situation is different. If I were an independent Internet service provider with a sufficient number of business connections to serve, I'd innovate with advanced services, unblocked ports and metered access that reflected the actual economics of the connection. I'd make the real money on the services and price the access as a commodity. Tiering/metering the service would make that work.
I would like to see a few tech-oriented companies, including Microsoft, involved in this. Almost anything/anyone who could break the stranglehold of current wireless service providers is good in my view.
Actually, putting areas of dense population on wireless broadband is in theory quite possible... with good bandwidth too. One possibility is a mesh network with intelligent AP/routers that update routes in real time. Though the theory is there, I don't presently know of any area where this has been successfully executed. I would tend to agree with you that it may not make sense where there is significant wired infrastructure.
Some Buddhist communities are a lot like a "church without God". Instead of "God" as the placeholder for the absolute, you get "nothingness". I would encourage you to read up on them, find and visit one in your area.
Personally, I am a Christian, a United Methodist Minister (not yet ordained) and hold to a Christian form of Humanism. I am friends with thinking, tolerant atheists, and religious folk of nearly every stripe. I take issue with folks who want to label everyone who believes in God as wacko, senile or necessarily superstitious. Superstition and scientism are both bad approaches to modern life. Regarding my role as a pastor, it is a deep and difficult struggle, for which a quote comes to mind:
"You cannot lead people to what is good; you can only lead them to some place or other. The good is outside the space of facts."--Ludwig Wittgenstein
"I'm not interested enough in the subject of religion to read a book about it, honestly."
Naturally, I'd like to see your interest piqued. Not in the superstitious varieties of religion that dominates, and that you are likely too quick to pin on anyone who says "God" or "Allah" or whatever. I think maybe you jump to conclusions due to an innate or acquired distaste for religion.
Asking for a nutshell version of the "state of the art" in theology may be a bit like the nutshell version of science/scientific method, but here goes: Modern theology contends that questions of value are inadequately answered by science alone. It's not that values aren't suggested by the scientific method, it's more that we bring value, human values, to every endeavor we choose, including science. The scientific method is actually made possible by the values presupposed by it. I would contend, as would other modern theologians more qualified than I, that those values evolve alongside our species. Their existence is part of our existence, but the linkage is not precisely like the linkages we see in physical nature. I would concede that for most people, science is not as well regarded a source of information/evaluation regarding human values as it should be. Nevertheless, all of human experience and thought, religious included, provides something of worth to the questions that we face as a species. This includes the question of who we are to become, which I view as being fundamentally as much a religious question as a scientific one (a leap of faith, a la Kierkegaard).
"Current state of the art in theology"? What does that even mean?"
Check the short reading list I ALREADY gave you. I can give you more selections if you have an honest interest. I think you'd rather make snap judgments, but then again, maybe THAT is a snap judgment.
"...what is the difference between a modern man in church and a cave-man 10,000 years ago dancing to the rain god in the special cave?"
Your mental picture may be largely accurate, but it is still a stereotype.
Do you think you are? When I see slashdotters slam anyone for belief in "God" I recognize once again that ignorance about the current state of the art in theology is as rampant as ignorance in the realm of science. You could start with scientists such as Polkinghorne, Davies, Einstein, and many others for a reading list on the topic. Then you could move on to a select, small group of theologians who have something of a grip on science.
Removing a virus AFTER an infection is often a tricky proposition. Another poster suggested safe mode. My modus operandi is to scan the hard disk from a known clean machine. A self-scanning, infected machine will quite often miss something. The best self-scan I've seen is the AVAST boot-time scan, which scans before Windows completely loads.
I think you are overstating things a bit. First, the only presumed "inequity" you can point at is that of using the electoral college to make the final call on electing a president. Every other election, local to national, is unaffected by this. Second, one could argue that many officeholders who depend not on an electoral-college-like mechanism, have incentive to disenfranchise rural voters in order to win elections. A concrete example in my home state of PA includes our current governer, Ed Rendell, wanting to turn I80 into a toll road, with proceeds benefitting mass transit in Philadelphia. I will grant you recent examples, the election/re-election of Bush as president, as cases in point for your side of the debate.
How is this insightful? If you live far from civilization, free speech and respect for individual liberty may indeed be more highly regarded, but they are also less meaningful. Their attached meaning corresponds to the size of the society that engenders them.
Given the size differential between the first and later stages, the earlier post is somewhat justified in calling LOX and kerosene the primary fuel for Saturn V.
Slashdot Mirror
You make excellent points and I believe you when you say they are based on experience. Nevertheless, the situation is a dynamic one. What MS does for the next few years will be critical to the picture. They must be willing to give up some margin they've historically had on some of their products, or risk the continuing advance of free and open alternatives eating ever more dramatically into their market share. A fine balancing act is required on their part. Speaking more specifically, be assured that the price of Vista needs to come down pretty significantly.
What a relief to know that someone else read it that way. Who wants to be the lone old guy reading slashdot.
Yeah, you should really be modded up. Apparently not many know about the multiple uses of ' and "
The cable industry is already a dinosaur and a nasty regulatory evironment could only relegate them even more rapidly to obsolescence. They've become telecom providers, but are highly dependent on interconnection with companies who are their direct competitors for those services. I happen to think too that IPTV is likely the best hope going forward for competition against the dish based providers. This story makes it seem like the FCC is stuck in another decade. Do they even have a clue?
The industry is going to go through some wrenching changes because new players are going to be more willing to open their networks (for real, not pretending to like Verizon). What new players? Clearwire and Google, or a combination thereof.
This will make it easier for phone/device manufacturers to provide genuinely innovative products. If AT&T wants to stick it to Apple, they're going to find their bargaining position weakening. Quickly, I hope.
And this is why why we need Internet connections that are more symmetrical, networks that are more open and a much more community centered, as opposed to a corporation centered approach to the next generation Internet. We have only scratched the surface of the possibilities.
I'm guessing you are posting from another country. Japan, perhaps? The point isn't the hardware. The point isn't even the software. The point is creating a different paradigm for phones and service in a country with an oligarchic mess, one that is open and free of extraordinarily ridiculous limitations. In this environment, it really only takes one hardware manufacturer with enough courage to step out of line to shake things up.
Centralization has its advantages, especially when dealing with coal or nuclear options. Nevertheless, when it comes to solar, wind and biofuels, distributed production will actually prove to be the superior approach. Hopefully, the reasons are obvious to all.
What you call faith, I call superstition. I see faith as something a little more defensible and and overlapping with "trust". Rules of evidence come into play, but there is still a bit of a leap involved. Human relationships present us with analogies for a relationship with the divine. On that note, I'll end my comment, because going further would be off-topic.
Yes, but that's winning the battle and losing the war. KISS is not always appropriate, and as a principle, it is why Evolution continues to flail at winning the majority of American minds. Understanding the underlying principles of science on this last front, and understanding the arguments for free and open networks on the front that is central to this story, are both prerequisite to "winning the war".
Yes, we are liberating carbon that was once free in the environment. That carbon was sequestered in the earth over a period of hundreds of millions of years only to be re-released in a matter of decades. What's hard to understand about there being some possible side effects of that?
Thanks, Slashdot, for deleting my reference
Not sure why I'm replying to ACs but you do realize that the Ordovician Period was about 1/2 a billion years ago, don't you? That the climate was generally quite mild throughout? Also, the "Ice Age" you speak of was glaciation on Gondwana, which sat over the South Pole at the time.
There is little doubt that resistance to roundup is showing up in weeds. It is less likely that it is coming from any kind of gene transfer between crop and weed species than simply from evolved resistance within weed species themselves, due to heavy reliance on roundup. Roundup resistance crop species contribute to this by encouraging more use of Roundup. http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=6820&title=Roundup%20Resistance%20Armors%20W eeds
The parent is like a lot of slashdotters who seem to have no grasp of economics or the history of the commercial Internet. Bandwidth has always been oversold/oversubscribed. It actually worked well in the dialup world, as it was mostly unnoticed. Now, with faster last mile connections, the situation is different. If I were an independent Internet service provider with a sufficient number of business connections to serve, I'd innovate with advanced services, unblocked ports and metered access that reflected the actual economics of the connection. I'd make the real money on the services and price the access as a commodity. Tiering/metering the service would make that work.
I would like to see a few tech-oriented companies, including Microsoft, involved in this. Almost anything/anyone who could break the stranglehold of current wireless service providers is good in my view.
Actually, putting areas of dense population on wireless broadband is in theory quite possible... with good bandwidth too. One possibility is a mesh network with intelligent AP/routers that update routes in real time. Though the theory is there, I don't presently know of any area where this has been successfully executed. I would tend to agree with you that it may not make sense where there is significant wired infrastructure.
Some Buddhist communities are a lot like a "church without God". Instead of "God" as the placeholder for the absolute, you get "nothingness". I would encourage you to read up on them, find and visit one in your area.
Personally, I am a Christian, a United Methodist Minister (not yet ordained) and hold to a Christian form of Humanism. I am friends with thinking, tolerant atheists, and religious folk of nearly every stripe. I take issue with folks who want to label everyone who believes in God as wacko, senile or necessarily superstitious. Superstition and scientism are both bad approaches to modern life. Regarding my role as a pastor, it is a deep and difficult struggle, for which a quote comes to mind:
Naturally, I'd like to see your interest piqued. Not in the superstitious varieties of religion that dominates, and that you are likely too quick to pin on anyone who says "God" or "Allah" or whatever. I think maybe you jump to conclusions due to an innate or acquired distaste for religion.
Asking for a nutshell version of the "state of the art" in theology may be a bit like the nutshell version of science/scientific method, but here goes: Modern theology contends that questions of value are inadequately answered by science alone. It's not that values aren't suggested by the scientific method, it's more that we bring value, human values, to every endeavor we choose, including science. The scientific method is actually made possible by the values presupposed by it. I would contend, as would other modern theologians more qualified than I, that those values evolve alongside our species. Their existence is part of our existence, but the linkage is not precisely like the linkages we see in physical nature. I would concede that for most people, science is not as well regarded a source of information/evaluation regarding human values as it should be. Nevertheless, all of human experience and thought, religious included, provides something of worth to the questions that we face as a species. This includes the question of who we are to become, which I view as being fundamentally as much a religious question as a scientific one (a leap of faith, a la Kierkegaard).
Check the short reading list I ALREADY gave you. I can give you more selections if you have an honest interest. I think you'd rather make snap judgments, but then again, maybe THAT is a snap judgment.
Your mental picture may be largely accurate, but it is still a stereotype.
Do you think you are? When I see slashdotters slam anyone for belief in "God" I recognize once again that ignorance about the current state of the art in theology is as rampant as ignorance in the realm of science. You could start with scientists such as Polkinghorne, Davies, Einstein, and many others for a reading list on the topic. Then you could move on to a select, small group of theologians who have something of a grip on science.
Removing a virus AFTER an infection is often a tricky proposition. Another poster suggested safe mode. My modus operandi is to scan the hard disk from a known clean machine. A self-scanning, infected machine will quite often miss something. The best self-scan I've seen is the AVAST boot-time scan, which scans before Windows completely loads.
I think you are overstating things a bit. First, the only presumed "inequity" you can point at is that of using the electoral college to make the final call on electing a president. Every other election, local to national, is unaffected by this. Second, one could argue that many officeholders who depend not on an electoral-college-like mechanism, have incentive to disenfranchise rural voters in order to win elections. A concrete example in my home state of PA includes our current governer, Ed Rendell, wanting to turn I80 into a toll road, with proceeds benefitting mass transit in Philadelphia. I will grant you recent examples, the election/re-election of Bush as president, as cases in point for your side of the debate.
How is this insightful? If you live far from civilization, free speech and respect for individual liberty may indeed be more highly regarded, but they are also less meaningful. Their attached meaning corresponds to the size of the society that engenders them.
Given the size differential between the first and later stages, the earlier post is somewhat justified in calling LOX and kerosene the primary fuel for Saturn V.