And this time, name one true problem that science has truly solved.
Just to completely telegraph my hand: my reply, BTW, is going to be "and exactly how is that a problem?". If you can come up with a good answer, I'm going to then ask "and you say that science has solved it? Exactly how?" So think before you answer. I seem to remember that GTE used to publish a bunch of ads in National Geographic pointing out that science *can't* solve problems. It can simply give us more alternative ways to deal with them.
***sigh*** people should think before they post. I'll have to write myself a memo to that effect...
If your limb is correct, then they won't ever get it.
I would argue that gravitons exist specifically as a quark-gluon plasma. In other words, gravitons are relativistic individual quarks. [which would unify two forces to the gravo-strong force.]
Test: If *my* prediction is correct, they should be able to detect a gravitational spike when they collide these gold ions things together.
Reasoning: Gravity can be explained as a warping of the space structure. If you think about what the space structure for light particles is, you will conclude that it is the atoms: that is, that the light experiences its time only during the interactions with other particles, which is largely electron shells. Extending that reasoning to massed particles, we might surmise that massed particles' spatial structure is similarly defined by its interactions with other particles.
But after looking at the structure of atoms, nucleii, and such, one must conclude that any such energetic particles must be extremely massive, and extremely short-lived.
Such a structure could be formed by a quark-gluon plasma, especially where you have the three colors interacting with each other while moving in perpendicular directions. You would then result in a huge number of "virtual" relativisitic nuclei forming momentarily into real nuclei for a very short time. However, you would then also have the basis for interactions with our own non-relativistic quarks. In other words, you would get a basis for our space-time structure.
Therefore, I conclude that they will get it, if my out-on-a-limb is correct.
That said, it would seem that they are close enough to the trunk that they got funding. So I still predict they'll get it.
To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star.
I don't have a lot other than my (very faulty) memory to back this up, but I seem to remember a Scientific American article that most of our heavy elements were formed in the shock waves of supernovas of the first round of stars. Not only that, but the progress of the supernova shock wave creates large clumps of specific types of elements.
But most of us was not inside a star at one type, hydrogen possibly excepted. Most of us was most likely formed in a shock wave.
But your point still stands: you feel immensely richer for thinking you know what you do. [Sorry for that small withdrawal from your bank account, but the interest that will accrue from your *knew* imagined knowledge will accrue at a much faster rate.]
All joking aside, we don't *know* anything, but we have our theories, and those theories do help us feel at home within our universe [much like my fish in his tank feels very uneasy when I drop a ping pong ball in the water, but later feels at home with it], and that makes us more comfortable.
Sounds like a market for triplicate cross-checked hard drives.
Unfortunately, what do you do when the FS itself corrupts the data structure? MS Word is also famous for doing that, too. We've been burned by that one, and still haven't recovered.
At that point, backups don't do you a lot of good.
Just in case you don't know, if you check a Mac Powerbook as baggage, you will shatter the screen as the baggage compartment depressurizes, midflight.
This was my experience. My brother was coming, and bringing a laptop I had purchased with him. I asked him "please take it with you, don't check it." He decided it would be safer checked, and...... also concluded that the Germans, in checking for possible avian flu at the time, and broken the laptop and also sprayed his clothing with some fluid, probably disinfectant.
No.
That was LCD fluid, which leaked out because the screen shattered in midflight. The baggage compartment depressurizes.
Now, I don't know about other computers, but it may be the same. Indeed, it probably will be the same.
In the same line of thought, don't check your grandma's little poodle as baggage. It Would Not Be A Good Idea (TM).
Answer to #1: Bob knew that this was a risk, and deliberately put the patients at risk. Therefore Bob is a terrorist, as we all know IP pirates are.
Answer to #2: It's called "collateral damage", and simply underscores why we need to eradicate all such terrorists [see Answer 1].
Answer to #3: No, if RIAA destruction is authorized by law, then Norton and McAfee would be in violation of the DMCA. So, sorry, you'll have to get rid of your antivirus software. That's just one of the costs of the war against copying-terror.
Also, in response to a parent post question, no, IMHO this isn't Dell, this is the RIAA. But wouldn't it be neat if it was? Dude, you're getting Delled!
Don't get whacked out. I just did a Google Search on "Der Spiegel German Army foreign office Denver Colorado", and it dropped out everything that I needed. Similar results can be had from "German Army operating system Denver". I got the 1st set of words from doing a search on the 2nd set. The trick here, for those in the know, is to use words that are important to the idea.
Regarding the NSA's distribution of Linux, I refer back to the original post, where I said I give this a low probability of being true. This is why I put all those question marks in the subject line, as well. I am as flummoxed as I can be, trying to figure this lawsuit out, and the general twisting, turning methods of the different players in the tech industry. A lot of times, it makes no sense [back to the statement: I don't have the big picture. Now it occurs to me, maybe there is no big picture.]
That said, I think the NSA has some real concerns to worry about, and they may well be immediate.
If the news report is true, I also find it interesting that the name Padilla pops up again. Shoot -- even if the news report is false, and they are manufacturing secondary news items to tarnish the name of Jose Padilla and help get a conviction, I find it interesting.
Okay, let me say that I have no idea what government groups monitor what types of information. There's NSA, CIA, DHL (newbies!), FCC, the FBI, and so on.
The FBI, CIA, and FCC seem well defined to me. The NSA does not. Also, I'm not quite sure what military monitoring goes on, or whether that's all CIA.
Yet there definitely is project Eschelon; and there definitely was something that was rerouting the German Army's email through Denver.
But I *don't* think the NSA is bent on world domination.
The only thing I'm sure of, regarding the DHL and the NSA, that I don't have the big picture.
I rather think that this administration is quite paranoid of terrorist attacks, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep it down. And if that means wiping out Linux, then so be it. After all, Linux is a rather small movement [at least in the eyes of the government], and relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Anyhow, I think that our government agencies want more information, and they want it now, and having open source presents a bit of an impediment to that. Not complete -- I rather think that they'd do better to bug the transmissions from the Linux download centers with their own changes, or hack the bad guys' systems. But they may have their own view on things.
Follow me here: Microsoft is sponsoring this lawsuit: we've already seen this with their licensing. But, if I remember correctly, the German Army dumped M$ as an OS, because they found all their emails being routed through Denver.
So it is clear that Microsoft has some kind of link to the NSA, possibly intentional, possibly inadvertent.
Suppose that it is intentional, though? In that case, suppose that the real push behind this is the NSA, trying to eliminate Linux so that its own preferred code will be used [*BSD folks, check your code, just in case!]
If that were the case, it might be that SCO has marching orders to bring up "axis of evil", so that the Pentagon can step in and shut down Linux. IBM may, in the process, be a minor casualty -- not being destroyed, but getting a wrist slap.
But if this is the case, then I still don't see how the US Government can wipe out Linux everywhere, any more than they could wipe out the shift to Euros for the payment of oil. The US *doesn't* have the capability to fight everyone, and the molassas morass of Iraq has only begun. So, I'm not going to give this one a high percentage of likelihood. Yet SCO's leadership seem absolutely insane, unless they have something up their sleeve [or unless they're buying IBM stock]. I can't believe that they are all insane, and the only card up their sleeve I could imagine is government injunction against Linux.
So I'm left with crazy conspiracy theories that only make about 1% sense to me.
... I have to say that *my* opinion has been changed by the slashdot news items, and I think other peoples' may be too.
Normally, I like to choose the best software for the best application. However, the idea of public data is important.
The argument that convinced me was the pro-business alternatives that should be required: open data format, with full perpetual license to read and convert to other formats, should be acceptable for most purposes [not voting: The US demonstrates the flaws of closed-source vote tallying].
That said, I feel that even this requirement should stand only for the case of items of public record on computer. That is, you don't need MS Word to be open source/data format, if your only documents of record are on paper.
Now, people have had this flamewar going for who knows how long. But even flamewars can convince people. They moved me from "no regulation" to "encourage OSS".
After all, it is one person who decides which software to buy. But he's deciding for the property of others. Closed and open formats are not equal, therefore.
This doesn't seem ironic to me for a different reason: the user-base for AS/400 did not exist the way the user-base for *nix did. Part of what makes you decide which to pick includes such things as *availability* [computer dedicated to your own use], *controlling the system* [you said root access], *thinking in that OS* [personal preference], and so on.
IBM was, by necessity, expensive. Therefore you didn't have geeks running around using it. Therefore Apple got started, and the rest just developed.
It brought a user-base into the fold, but that user-base is *nix. IBM apparently recognized this way back, and moved to stay ahead of the flow.
The point is, that the government -- perhaps at the behest of doctor and lawyer groups, perhaps not -- has said "we need more programmers", "we need more engineers", "we definitely need *fewer* lawyers", "we don't need so many doctors", for a good economy.
But they then go and pass all kinds of laws and programs and regulations that make it next to impossible for people in the "needed" groups to live, or even to work. Meanwhile, they go and make it easy to sue for overly large penalties, easy for patent mills to get stupid patents and keep others from working, and so on...
So in an economic sense, it's clear that we must need more patent attorneys, more lawyers, definitely more stupid management that can't keep contracts 9/5, has to push for 12/7.
Of course, this is the path to ruin.
The alternative would be for all these lawyers, politicians, and so on to give up their jobs and go and actually earn their bread. In which case we need more farmers.
So it's kindof one or the other. Either, we need more lawyers and pols -- or we need more farmers and real engineers. But no more of this nonsense of suckering people into being farmers so that we can rip them off and steal everything they have and have a good lifestyle, while their pay for earning our bread is that they get to starve and stress themselves to death.
I can keep one book, on the road, but at that I'm all over the road, so I only do it when it's a really good book.
I can't *ever* read two books at the same time, much less while driving. How do they do it?
Just out of wondering, who do you think has a guaranteed $70,000 job, that can't be shipped overseas?
Slashdot readers?
Well, some of them, I'm sure, do. But you get my point.
Put to just push it for a bit more interesting, I might mention that I have an aerospace engineering degree. Didn't make the conversion to a job in the field, because of the '92 NASA layoffs:. But anyhow, I'm off in Lithuania, and was at a relative's farm, and saw what was going on there.
While I was there, they replaced a blade on the tractor's motor. It didn't fit, so they identified the problem, pulled the old connector from the broken blade, used a grinder to grind the rivets off, pulled out a punch and pushed them the rest of the way out, pulled out some new rivets, and with their anvil attached the old connector to the new blade right there. Within 2 hours the tractor was running -- and that two hours included lunch [with country deworming medicine at the end: schnapps].
I came back, impressed that he was more of an engineer than I ever will be. He lives it. Spoke to my Dad about it, and he said "Yeah, farmers have to be engineers, or the work doesn't get done. As for your degree, well, people teach you to do what they do. You were taught how to be a university professor, not how to be an engineer."
As far as getting a good job and making a living, even when I was in my 1st year after college I was convinced that the Vo-Tech students were smarter. Now I'm beginning to be convinced that all of us 'techies' have been suckered...
We don't need more techies. We need more lawyer-vikings. We need more doctors. We need more politicians. We need more bosses, maybe, especially hospital directors. We need more patent attorneys.
Or maybe we just need more farmers, with their own working farms.
Say something like "the best complement I can come up with, for SCO, is that as lowdown, scum-sucking worms, they would be ideal for a deep-sea fishing trip. And this isn't criticism -- it really is a complement, and I do mean it from the bottom of my scumbucket.
Some people say that their lawsuit is a petty attempt to steal what was never theirs, but I really think that petty is too trivial for what they are doing: they are redefining the meaning of the term sludgehammer, and any coining of a new word is important, for it implies a new social status. "
If it isn't criticism, they don't have a right to reply.
For example, how about religion, where a person refuses to work a non-emergency-type-job [that is, programming, as opposed to police/fireman] on holy days [including one day a week: Sunday, Saturday, or Friday depending on religion]?
Because if so, then that definitely provides a good reason not to work 12/7. 12/6, maybe, okay. 12/7, no.
[Actually, I'd kindof assume, it being America, that religion is legally frowned upon, and so the answer will be "constitutionally, it should, but in practice, it's okay to fire over religion. It's just not okay to fire over no religion." But I'd really like to know what the answer is.]
Okay, I can come in on Saturday, but I can't work on Sunday. An Orthodox Jew can't work from Friday Evening until Sunday. A muslim can't work on Friday.
That is well within the demands of our religion. Get laid off? Ask why, in writing. If they say "could not work to meet the demands of our contract", that is enough to haul them into court: religious discrimination, and sue for company ownership.
No kidding, that 1-day-off is God's minimum-benefits plan. It is also extremely important for a different reason: people who don't get 1 day off tend to start making very bad decisions. Ask my brother, who was working 7 days per week on his grad program. He got an ion trap working that had never worked before, then got data; it was given to a previous student for her PhD. He accepted it, and went to get more data... but long story short, destroyed the million dollar superconduncting magnet through a series of plausible, but erroneous mistakes.
His grad professor approved every one of the decisions, but was not overseeing the work, since he too was making bad decisions...
I really think 1 day off a week is quite important, and the 3 major religions of Jewish origin provide a good means for that 1 day a week.
But if you aren't religious, that's okay. Go ahead and put bugs in the customer's code [you can't help it... it'll happen.]
Or go back and argue this one out with your management, saying "this isn't acceptable -- you need to hire more workers or the work isn't going to get done right, and you need to charge the customer the extra."
Clearly, I don't accept it either -- but that is the typical goal of people who seek power.
And yes, I did mean Plato's
Republic. Quite honestly, I think that this newspaper article I linked to is too close to imply anything but.
The problem is that if you read The Republic as a serious work [as our leaders would have us do], the Plato learned absolutely nothing from his teacher. But if you read it as a satire, then Plato was trying to take Socrates' work and turn it around, and a Republic, though not necessarily to be avoided in some cases, is something to be viewed with deep suspicion.
Personally, with all the hype going on around the new constitution, I suspect that there are going to be deep flaws. If this is done with a good heart, I fully expect amendments to come in a major rewriting. If not, then I expect serfdom for a while, followed by disaster after disaster.
In the end, you can't get around reality -- but that doesn't always stop governments from trying.
We'll just see what happens. Hopefully things won't be too bad.
What can be owned and sold can be taxed. That means more feet on people's heads and hands, more power to the owners of the feet, and more credit to the owners as "great people" when something gets done.
Question is, when everything is known in heaven, how is this going to play out?
This isn't a question of how well Europe should do. This is a question of who should be on top, and it is clear that an MP is a much more valuable person than a software programmer, and should be on top.
It only stands to reason.
If you doubt me, read "The Republic", see how it is held up as an example to be followed, and understand.
I use Quark 4.10 in prepublishing; I decided against upgrading to Quark 5, since it didn't offer anything needed [Quark 4 is fine], and all my computers are slow [fastest is 400 Mhz, but I also have 333, and 240].
Now Quark 6 is coming out, and I'm looking at this and thinking "I can't afford all new computers. I'm going to have to stick with 4.10".
But then I saw your post. Maybe sticking with 4.10 *is* best.
But you know what I'd really like? I'd like a real, web-based, open-source EPS-based document processor.
I had moved to Lithuania, in order to take advantage in the difference in labor expenses, and I used to think that I'd get far enough ahead that I could develop this. However, after 1 year of problems with immigration, 2 years of slave-driving teaching schedules [I have to have *reason* to be here, and the reason was a teaching job for $250/month, but 40 hours became 80 hours. That's done, now that we've incorporated] followed by the deliberate devaluation of the American dollar, and I begin to think that we'll never get it produced.
I just don't have the assets.
Indeed, I begin to think that my greatest chances of going out of business aren't coming.
Oh, well. It could've been good -- that's life.
Anyhow, Quark's mismanagement seems to be mismatched by mismanagement the world over, from the bottom up, or the top on down. Fortunately we have the FSCOree Software Foundation and Linux. Maybe that'll survive.
You contact coke or pepsi. You get one of two answers:
(1) Not Invented Here
(2) Good idea. We'll take it / steal it / burglarize it, and if you fight us, we'll ruin you.
This is the Granfaloon syndrome, and patents have nothing to do with any of it. It happens with or without patents (but item #2 happens more often with patents. Item #1 happens more often without.)
Either way, you don't make money.
Possibility #3, as suggested by electronics guru Don Lancaster (who also wrote The CMOS Cookbook): You develop one, and take lots of photos while you do it. You *publish* your idea in a related journal, thus triggering Granfallon Reaction #1, and immediately getting *some* profit, and *some* advertising. Then you start selling "consultation", "instruction booklets", "kits", and whatnot.
They use the word plasma so many times in the last sentence of the first link, that for some strange reason (closely related to my sense of humor, I'm sure), I'm reminded of Monty Python and Spam:
A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "spam window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the spam valve is the latest example of novel uses of spam for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include spam acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a spam lens (Update 508), and spam deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).
Niiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Warning: Your anti-theft.sig was provided by Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
And this time, name one true problem that science has truly solved.
Just to completely telegraph my hand: my reply, BTW, is going to be "and exactly how is that a problem?". If you can come up with a good answer, I'm going to then ask "and you say that science has solved it? Exactly how?" So think before you answer. I seem to remember that GTE used to publish a bunch of ads in National Geographic pointing out that science *can't* solve problems. It can simply give us more alternative ways to deal with them.
***sigh*** people should think before they post. I'll have to write myself a memo to that effect...
If your limb is correct, then they won't ever get it.
I would argue that gravitons exist specifically as a quark-gluon plasma. In other words, gravitons are relativistic individual quarks. [which would unify two forces to the gravo-strong force.]
Test: If *my* prediction is correct, they should be able to detect a gravitational spike when they collide these gold ions things together.
Reasoning: Gravity can be explained as a warping of the space structure. If you think about what the space structure for light particles is, you will conclude that it is the atoms: that is, that the light experiences its time only during the interactions with other particles, which is largely electron shells. Extending that reasoning to massed particles, we might surmise that massed particles' spatial structure is similarly defined by its interactions with other particles.
But after looking at the structure of atoms, nucleii, and such, one must conclude that any such energetic particles must be extremely massive, and extremely short-lived.
Such a structure could be formed by a quark-gluon plasma, especially where you have the three colors interacting with each other while moving in perpendicular directions. You would then result in a huge number of "virtual" relativisitic nuclei forming momentarily into real nuclei for a very short time. However, you would then also have the basis for interactions with our own non-relativistic quarks. In other words, you would get a basis for our space-time structure.
Therefore, I conclude that they will get it, if my out-on-a-limb is correct.
That said, it would seem that they are close enough to the trunk that they got funding. So I still predict they'll get it.
To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star.
I don't have a lot other than my (very faulty) memory to back this up, but I seem to remember a Scientific American article that most of our heavy elements were formed in the shock waves of supernovas of the first round of stars. Not only that, but the progress of the supernova shock wave creates large clumps of specific types of elements.
But most of us was not inside a star at one type, hydrogen possibly excepted. Most of us was most likely formed in a shock wave.
But your point still stands: you feel immensely richer for thinking you know what you do. [Sorry for that small withdrawal from your bank account, but the interest that will accrue from your *knew* imagined knowledge will accrue at a much faster rate.]
All joking aside, we don't *know* anything, but we have our theories, and those theories do help us feel at home within our universe [much like my fish in his tank feels very uneasy when I drop a ping pong ball in the water, but later feels at home with it], and that makes us more comfortable.
Sounds like a market for triplicate cross-checked hard drives.
Unfortunately, what do you do when the FS itself corrupts the data structure? MS Word is also famous for doing that, too. We've been burned by that one, and still haven't recovered.
At that point, backups don't do you a lot of good.
Just in case you don't know, if you check a Mac Powerbook as baggage, you will shatter the screen as the baggage compartment depressurizes, midflight.
... also concluded that the Germans, in checking for possible avian flu at the time, and broken the laptop and also sprayed his clothing with some fluid, probably disinfectant.
This was my experience. My brother was coming, and bringing a laptop I had purchased with him. I asked him "please take it with you, don't check it." He decided it would be safer checked, and...
No.
That was LCD fluid, which leaked out because the screen shattered in midflight. The baggage compartment depressurizes.
Now, I don't know about other computers, but it may be the same. Indeed, it probably will be the same.
In the same line of thought, don't check your grandma's little poodle as baggage. It Would Not Be A Good Idea (TM).
Answer to #2: It's called "collateral damage", and simply underscores why we need to eradicate all such terrorists [see Answer 1].
Answer to #3: No, if RIAA destruction is authorized by law, then Norton and McAfee would be in violation of the DMCA. So, sorry, you'll have to get rid of your antivirus software. That's just one of the costs of the war against copying-terror.
Also, in response to a parent post question, no, IMHO this isn't Dell, this is the RIAA. But wouldn't it be neat if it was? Dude, you're getting Delled!
Here's one on "internet news". It was also on Drudge at the time,.
It definitely ran at The Register
Regarding the NSA's distribution of Linux, I refer back to the original post, where I said I give this a low probability of being true. This is why I put all those question marks in the subject line, as well. I am as flummoxed as I can be, trying to figure this lawsuit out, and the general twisting, turning methods of the different players in the tech industry. A lot of times, it makes no sense [back to the statement: I don't have the big picture. Now it occurs to me, maybe there is no big picture.]
That said, I think the NSA has some real concerns to worry about, and they may well be immediate.
If the news report is true, I also find it interesting that the name Padilla pops up again. Shoot -- even if the news report is false, and they are manufacturing secondary news items to tarnish the name of Jose Padilla and help get a conviction, I find it interesting.
Okay, let me say that I have no idea what government groups monitor what types of information. There's NSA, CIA, DHL (newbies!), FCC, the FBI, and so on.
The FBI, CIA, and FCC seem well defined to me. The NSA does not. Also, I'm not quite sure what military monitoring goes on, or whether that's all CIA.
Yet there definitely is project Eschelon; and there definitely was something that was rerouting the German Army's email through Denver.
But I *don't* think the NSA is bent on world domination.
The only thing I'm sure of, regarding the DHL and the NSA, that I don't have the big picture.
I rather think that this administration is quite paranoid of terrorist attacks, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep it down. And if that means wiping out Linux, then so be it. After all, Linux is a rather small movement [at least in the eyes of the government], and relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Anyhow, I think that our government agencies want more information, and they want it now, and having open source presents a bit of an impediment to that. Not complete -- I rather think that they'd do better to bug the transmissions from the Linux download centers with their own changes, or hack the bad guys' systems. But they may have their own view on things.
Follow me here: Microsoft is sponsoring this lawsuit: we've already seen this with their licensing. But, if I remember correctly, the German Army dumped M$ as an OS, because they found all their emails being routed through Denver.
So it is clear that Microsoft has some kind of link to the NSA, possibly intentional, possibly inadvertent.
Suppose that it is intentional, though? In that case, suppose that the real push behind this is the NSA, trying to eliminate Linux so that its own preferred code will be used [*BSD folks, check your code, just in case!]
If that were the case, it might be that SCO has marching orders to bring up "axis of evil", so that the Pentagon can step in and shut down Linux. IBM may, in the process, be a minor casualty -- not being destroyed, but getting a wrist slap.
But if this is the case, then I still don't see how the US Government can wipe out Linux everywhere, any more than they could wipe out the shift to Euros for the payment of oil. The US *doesn't* have the capability to fight everyone, and the molassas morass of Iraq has only begun. So, I'm not going to give this one a high percentage of likelihood. Yet SCO's leadership seem absolutely insane, unless they have something up their sleeve [or unless they're buying IBM stock]. I can't believe that they are all insane, and the only card up their sleeve I could imagine is government injunction against Linux.
So I'm left with crazy conspiracy theories that only make about 1% sense to me.
... I have to say that *my* opinion has been changed by the slashdot news items, and I think other peoples' may be too.
Normally, I like to choose the best software for the best application. However, the idea of public data is important.
The argument that convinced me was the pro-business alternatives that should be required: open data format, with full perpetual license to read and convert to other formats, should be acceptable for most purposes [not voting: The US demonstrates the flaws of closed-source vote tallying].
That said, I feel that even this requirement should stand only for the case of items of public record on computer. That is, you don't need MS Word to be open source/data format, if your only documents of record are on paper.
Now, people have had this flamewar going for who knows how long. But even flamewars can convince people. They moved me from "no regulation" to "encourage OSS".
After all, it is one person who decides which software to buy. But he's deciding for the property of others. Closed and open formats are not equal, therefore.
This doesn't seem ironic to me for a different reason: the user-base for AS/400 did not exist the way the user-base for *nix did. Part of what makes you decide which to pick includes such things as *availability* [computer dedicated to your own use], *controlling the system* [you said root access], *thinking in that OS* [personal preference], and so on.
IBM was, by necessity, expensive. Therefore you didn't have geeks running around using it. Therefore Apple got started, and the rest just developed.
It brought a user-base into the fold, but that user-base is *nix. IBM apparently recognized this way back, and moved to stay ahead of the flow.
Kudos, BLUE.
.... if I remember correctly, was "The tipping point." A good read as well.
The point is, that the government -- perhaps at the behest of doctor and lawyer groups, perhaps not -- has said "we need more programmers", "we need more engineers", "we definitely need *fewer* lawyers", "we don't need so many doctors", for a good economy.
But they then go and pass all kinds of laws and programs and regulations that make it next to impossible for people in the "needed" groups to live, or even to work. Meanwhile, they go and make it easy to sue for overly large penalties, easy for patent mills to get stupid patents and keep others from working, and so on...
So in an economic sense, it's clear that we must need more patent attorneys, more lawyers, definitely more stupid management that can't keep contracts 9/5, has to push for 12/7.
Of course, this is the path to ruin.
The alternative would be for all these lawyers, politicians, and so on to give up their jobs and go and actually earn their bread. In which case we need more farmers.
So it's kindof one or the other. Either, we need more lawyers and pols -- or we need more farmers and real engineers. But no more of this nonsense of suckering people into being farmers so that we can rip them off and steal everything they have and have a good lifestyle, while their pay for earning our bread is that they get to starve and stress themselves to death.
I can keep one book, on the road, but at that I'm all over the road, so I only do it when it's a really good book. I can't *ever* read two books at the same time, much less while driving. How do they do it?
Just out of wondering, who do you think has a guaranteed $70,000 job, that can't be shipped overseas?
:. But anyhow, I'm off in Lithuania, and was at a relative's farm, and saw what was going on there.
Slashdot readers?
Well, some of them, I'm sure, do. But you get my point.
Put to just push it for a bit more interesting, I might mention that I have an aerospace engineering degree. Didn't make the conversion to a job in the field, because of the '92 NASA layoffs
While I was there, they replaced a blade on the tractor's motor. It didn't fit, so they identified the problem, pulled the old connector from the broken blade, used a grinder to grind the rivets off, pulled out a punch and pushed them the rest of the way out, pulled out some new rivets, and with their anvil attached the old connector to the new blade right there. Within 2 hours the tractor was running -- and that two hours included lunch [with country deworming medicine at the end: schnapps].
I came back, impressed that he was more of an engineer than I ever will be. He lives it. Spoke to my Dad about it, and he said "Yeah, farmers have to be engineers, or the work doesn't get done. As for your degree, well, people teach you to do what they do. You were taught how to be a university professor, not how to be an engineer."
As far as getting a good job and making a living, even when I was in my 1st year after college I was convinced that the Vo-Tech students were smarter. Now I'm beginning to be convinced that all of us 'techies' have been suckered...
We don't need more techies. We need more lawyer-vikings. We need more doctors. We need more politicians. We need more bosses, maybe, especially hospital directors. We need more patent attorneys.
Or maybe we just need more farmers, with their own working farms.
Say something like "the best complement I can come up with, for SCO, is that as lowdown, scum-sucking worms, they would be ideal for a deep-sea fishing trip. And this isn't criticism -- it really is a complement, and I do mean it from the bottom of my scumbucket.
Some people say that their lawsuit is a petty attempt to steal what was never theirs, but I really think that petty is too trivial for what they are doing: they are redefining the meaning of the term sludgehammer, and any coining of a new word is important, for it implies a new social status. "
If it isn't criticism, they don't have a right to reply.
For example, how about religion, where a person refuses to work a non-emergency-type-job [that is, programming, as opposed to police/fireman] on holy days [including one day a week: Sunday, Saturday, or Friday depending on religion]?
Because if so, then that definitely provides a good reason not to work 12/7. 12/6, maybe, okay. 12/7, no.
[Actually, I'd kindof assume, it being America, that religion is legally frowned upon, and so the answer will be "constitutionally, it should, but in practice, it's okay to fire over religion. It's just not okay to fire over no religion." But I'd really like to know what the answer is.]
Okay, I can come in on Saturday, but I can't work on Sunday. An Orthodox Jew can't work from Friday Evening until Sunday. A muslim can't work on Friday.
That is well within the demands of our religion. Get laid off? Ask why, in writing. If they say "could not work to meet the demands of our contract", that is enough to haul them into court: religious discrimination, and sue for company ownership.
No kidding, that 1-day-off is God's minimum-benefits plan. It is also extremely important for a different reason: people who don't get 1 day off tend to start making very bad decisions. Ask my brother, who was working 7 days per week on his grad program. He got an ion trap working that had never worked before, then got data; it was given to a previous student for her PhD. He accepted it, and went to get more data... but long story short, destroyed the million dollar superconduncting magnet through a series of plausible, but erroneous mistakes.
His grad professor approved every one of the decisions, but was not overseeing the work, since he too was making bad decisions...
I really think 1 day off a week is quite important, and the 3 major religions of Jewish origin provide a good means for that 1 day a week.
But if you aren't religious, that's okay. Go ahead and put bugs in the customer's code [you can't help it... it'll happen.]
Or go back and argue this one out with your management, saying "this isn't acceptable -- you need to hire more workers or the work isn't going to get done right, and you need to charge the customer the extra."
Clearly, I don't accept it either -- but that is the typical goal of people who seek power.
And yes, I did mean Plato's
Republic. Quite honestly, I think that this newspaper article I linked to is too close to imply anything but.
The problem is that if you read The Republic as a serious work [as our leaders would have us do], the Plato learned absolutely nothing from his teacher. But if you read it as a satire, then Plato was trying to take Socrates' work and turn it around, and a Republic, though not necessarily to be avoided in some cases, is something to be viewed with deep suspicion.
Personally, with all the hype going on around the new constitution, I suspect that there are going to be deep flaws. If this is done with a good heart, I fully expect amendments to come in a major rewriting. If not, then I expect serfdom for a while, followed by disaster after disaster.
In the end, you can't get around reality -- but that doesn't always stop governments from trying.
We'll just see what happens. Hopefully things won't be too bad.
What can be owned and sold can be taxed. That means more feet on people's heads and hands, more power to the owners of the feet, and more credit to the owners as "great people" when something gets done.
Question is, when everything is known in heaven, how is this going to play out?
This isn't a question of how well Europe should do. This is a question of who should be on top, and it is clear that an MP is a much more valuable person than a software programmer, and should be on top.
It only stands to reason.
If you doubt me, read "The Republic", see how it is held up as an example to be followed, and understand.
I'd say that comes pretty close.
I just kindof think that pavlovian training might help educate people about the relative merits of requiring your documents in MS Office.
So, I'd like a special shocking keyboard/monitor combo, that will electrify its user whenever it sees MS Office open up.
I think that this could keep the education on a level that MS Office users would understand.
I use Quark 4.10 in prepublishing; I decided against upgrading to Quark 5, since it didn't offer anything needed [Quark 4 is fine], and all my computers are slow [fastest is 400 Mhz, but I also have 333, and 240].
Now Quark 6 is coming out, and I'm looking at this and thinking "I can't afford all new computers. I'm going to have to stick with 4.10".
But then I saw your post. Maybe sticking with 4.10 *is* best.
But you know what I'd really like? I'd like a real, web-based, open-source EPS-based document processor.
I had moved to Lithuania, in order to take advantage in the difference in labor expenses, and I used to think that I'd get far enough ahead that I could develop this. However, after 1 year of problems with immigration, 2 years of slave-driving teaching schedules [I have to have *reason* to be here, and the reason was a teaching job for $250/month, but 40 hours became 80 hours. That's done, now that we've incorporated] followed by the deliberate devaluation of the American dollar, and I begin to think that we'll never get it produced.
I just don't have the assets.
Indeed, I begin to think that my greatest chances of going out of business aren't coming.
Oh, well. It could've been good -- that's life.
Anyhow, Quark's mismanagement seems to be mismatched by mismanagement the world over, from the bottom up, or the top on down. Fortunately we have the FSCOree Software Foundation and Linux. Maybe that'll survive.
(1) Not Invented Here
(2) Good idea. We'll take it / steal it / burglarize it, and if you fight us, we'll ruin you.
This is the Granfaloon syndrome, and patents have nothing to do with any of it. It happens with or without patents (but item #2 happens more often with patents. Item #1 happens more often without.)
Either way, you don't make money.
Possibility #3, as suggested by electronics guru Don Lancaster (who also wrote The CMOS Cookbook): You develop one, and take lots of photos while you do it. You *publish* your idea in a related journal, thus triggering Granfallon Reaction #1, and immediately getting *some* profit, and *some* advertising. Then you start selling "consultation", "instruction booklets", "kits", and whatnot.
A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "spam window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the spam valve is the latest example of novel uses of spam for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include spam acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a spam lens (Update 508), and spam deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).
Niiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Warning: Your anti-theft .sig was provided by Microsoft.