According to The Register, the new fins will allow a diver to swim at a sustained 2 knots.
According to the first link returned by Google for "How fast can a great white swim": A great white's can swim about 20 knots -- in bursts. But, they usually swim around 1 or 2 knots.
So, the question is, who's got a better burst, a diver or a hungry shark? And who do you think can sustain that for longer?
Not too long ago, the Cincinatti Bengal's wide receiver Chad Johnson raced a horse. If anyone ever wants to race a shark, please let me know. I'm putting money on the shark.
New Jersey gets a bad rap from a lot of people, but its shoreline is a very desirable vacation area. Beautiful beaches, nice weather, nice coastal towns (except for Atlantic City.) (And overall, there are some bad areas, but also lots of really nice areas.)
And New Jersey is the most densely populated state, plus two major metropolitan areas across its border. The summer gets very busy.
I've never been to Oregon, but I'm sure its very nice. What I've seen of the Pacific Northwest, I loved. Its just that the Jersey Shore is a unique set of beaches. The sand is not very coarse. Water about 68-70 in the summer. Good for swimming, nice waves but not super rough. The downside is, it can get crowded.
Sure, and what's the mean temperature of Oregon's bathing areas for the summer?
Ocean City, NJ has a year round population around 20,000. During the 4th of July weekend, there may be 250,000 people there.
And still, they keep the beaches clean. And you only have to buy a tag if its between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and you're on the beach between 10:00 and 17:00. Tags are reasonably priced. If you buy it before Memorial Day, a season long tag is $15. After that its $20, I think. Daily and weekly tags are available too.
That means that despite the population increasing by a factor of 10 on some days during the summer, they can keep the beaches safe and clean.
So no matter what Oregon does, I'll bet they don't have a quarter of a million New Yorkers or Philadelphians coming to hang out on the weekend along a 6 mile stretch of beach.
And not that people litter a lot, but at the end of each day, there are barrels of trash and recycling at the beach entrances filled all the way up. Its just a byproduct of lots of human beings.
And everybody pitches in a few bucks, and it works great. The alternative is to let a bigger bureaucracy handle it (e.g. the federal government.) I'll bet that would be just great.
A beach tag costs about $15 for the season, and are available for the week or day as well. The trash and recycling cans on the beach fill up each day, and the beach tag essentially pays for this, as well as lifeguards. There are about five swimming areas per mile, each with two lifeguards. And they also pay some kids to walk up and down the beach checking for / selling tags.
The beaches are kept safe and clean. People do complain about the cost of the beach tag, but when you consider that people often drop $3,000 to rent a beach house for a week, the beach tag seems pretty reasonable. You don't have to get it if you don't want to go to the beach.
Pittsburgh is not really a blue collar city. There are a ton of hospitals, doctors, and PhD's in the city because of the large institutions of higher learning. Also, its the host of the corporate headquarters for some large manufacturers, but the number of actual blue collar jobs in the city is low.
The reason its hard to get a job there is (in my opinion) because there is a high number of college students per capita. There are a lot of people going to school there, but its a deceptively small city. There are about 300,000 residents, and about 45,000 students.
So if the NIH is putting up 28%, who puts up the other 72%? The NIH is by and large the single biggest funder. So lets say Merc put up the other 50%? Who gives Merc the money?
Investors. People collectively say "I'll give you money because I expect you to make more money out of that. Your incentive is that then I'll have even more money to give you, and we can repeat it. My incentive is that my money isn't doing any good just sitting around, so I'll let you try."
Is it a good deal for Merc? The investors? Apparently. Either side could walk away, but they don't.
Is it a good deal for all of us? It is, and here's why. The 28% we're putting in (via the NIH) is getting used. We're getting drugs. Some of are affordable, some aren't. But, no one has figured out a better way to do it. You can talk about making them spend less, or cutting their budgets, or price controls, or having the government take everything over. But they're all flawed. They don't scale. They take incentives away from the ones who actually have to do the work. Maybe the guys at the top are overpaid, but it sure lights a fire under the ass of the middle managers who know they really have to bust it to get to the top. And at every stage of the game, you're facing long odds.
Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others." Capitalism too.
Let me explain why your idea doesn't work. I'm not going to dispute any of the points you have made -- commercially built houses are bad, Habitat's houses are good, Habitat is cheaper and more efficient. Fine, I believe you.
But obviously, Habitat can't meet demand and it doesn't scale well. If it did, I'd be able to buy a Habitat house. As it is, the availability isn't there. Commercial builders are doing record business because there is tremendous demand. Habitat, while I'm sure its great, can't keep up with that. If it could, the commercial builders would be changing their ways or going out of business.
And as soon as you start changing the rules or the governance of an organization like Habitat, you weaken its strengths. And so you think it would be good to apply that to health care? Already there isn't the capacity to meet the demand. That's why its so expensive.
I think you'd be surprised how much research, beyond the basic publicly funded research, there is that goes into a drug.
Its hard work, it takes a long time, and often there is no payoff. If you can be successful one time in ten for your career, you'll probably win a Nobel prize.
The linked article says that as many as 100 people die each day for not wearing their seat-belts.
Two things to keep in mind: 1) There are a lot more people on the road. 10 million people in Iraq? Well there are more than 30 times more people in the US. The article said only 14% of drivers use seat-belts. So, lets say there are 6 times as many people without seat belts. But the number killed daily is identical. So, its about 6 times more dangerous in Iraq.
2) Driving is useful, if not essential for many in American society. Sly and the Family Stone (I think said), "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Huh."
Note that the reason Eastern Europe fell from Soviet hands had absolutely nothing to do with Vietnam. (Hint: lack of food and necessities in the governed states)
Just because after Vietnam communism stopped spreading doesn't mean that Vietnam stopped the spread of communism.
Makes you wonder how mankind existed before the the invention of the phonograph.
Just a quick note. You say that cultural participation is so important. If your idea of participation is buying music, you might be selling yourself short.
Look, do I have to spell it out for you? It was the Pirate Party. Do you think pirates are above hijacking?
They orchestrated it back in 1913, when they started off making illegal broadcasts (mostly Arr's and Avast Ye's). They've been laying low ever since.
The simple fact is that the Pirate Party has an interesting name. They took a word which sounds bad. Apparently, many people may consider themselves to be pirates, in the intellectual property sense. There's a dichotomy between what an IP pirate is and does and what a seafaring pirate is and does. It makes for a catchy name.
Thats the point. They hijacked a term for a really bad crime and also used it for something else.
Its like if they started calling people who jaywalk "murderers", then in a few years "Someone who walks across the middle of the street" will be an alternate definition of the word "murderer." But it probably won't cut down on jaywalking, murders, or have any productive side effects.
Right, but piracy doesn't accurately refer to copyright infringement.
Piracy is robbery committed at sea. Copyright infringement is... copyright infringement.
See, one involves killing and stealing. The other involves copyright infringement.
One has the effect of immediate and tangible harm to the victim. The other has the effect of infringing on someone's copyrights.
They're both crimes, but they're different kinds of crimes.
If someone tries to rob you at sea, and you fight back and kill them, you're probably justified. If someone is tries to infringe on your copyrights, and you kill them, you're probably a psychopath.
It looks like most of the comments so far are about whether or not its sexist.
I think its more interesting to think about how things would be different if designed by women. I don't think they will be adopting the Slashdot April 1 theme, but to the other extreme, I'd imagine if that there was a 'Linux for Women' it would be different in many respects. So diversifying the gender of the developers might have a positive effect.
Also, I would think that this would attract some fairly talented women. So maybe the most beneficial aspect of this will be the quality of the people it attracts, regardless of their gender.
Well, it certainly generates publicity for OpenBSD. If Theo always replied with political, non-inflammatory statements to everything, it would be a different product. But I doubt it would be as talked about.
Figure either way, hifn was not going to open the docs and thus not be supported. At least this way they got a bit of attention on Slashdot, a little more mindshare, etc.
Sort of, "I don't care what people say about me behind my back, as long as they're talking about me."
Of course, OpenBSD is a much smaller market than the Linux market, which is probably part of why binary blobs just aren't availble for it at all -- the hardware developers just ignore OpenBSD entirely rather than throwing them a bone in the form of a binary blob.
OpenBSD doesn't have any blobs because the project's leaders will not consider using them. What's the point of having an open source, audited, secure operating system if you allow arbitrary blocks of binary code into the kernel?
The reason OpenBSD doesn't have blobs is not because of their size -- they could port FreeBSD blobs in easilly. The reason is that the project is focused on quality. Their view is that quality and openness go hand in hand. Can't have one without the other. See this interview with Damien Bergamini, who implemented a driver for the Intel 3945 802.11abg NIC without any of Intel's blobs. The OpenBSD driver is considerably fewer lines of code than Intel's. Because its simpler, its easier to audit, and easier to find bugs in. Of course, you can't find any bugs in Intel's driver because you can't see the source code. Not because the Intel driver is bug free.
Slashdot Mirror
According to The Register, the new fins will allow a diver to swim at a sustained 2 knots.
According to the first link returned by Google for "How fast can a great white swim": A great white's can swim about 20 knots -- in bursts. But, they usually swim around 1 or 2 knots.
So, the question is, who's got a better burst, a diver or a hungry shark? And who do you think can sustain that for longer?
Not too long ago, the Cincinatti Bengal's wide receiver Chad Johnson raced a horse. If anyone ever wants to race a shark, please let me know. I'm putting money on the shark.
New Jersey gets a bad rap from a lot of people, but its shoreline is a very desirable vacation area. Beautiful beaches, nice weather, nice coastal towns (except for Atlantic City.) (And overall, there are some bad areas, but also lots of really nice areas.)
And New Jersey is the most densely populated state, plus two major metropolitan areas across its border. The summer gets very busy.
I've never been to Oregon, but I'm sure its very nice. What I've seen of the Pacific Northwest, I loved. Its just that the Jersey Shore is a unique set of beaches. The sand is not very coarse. Water about 68-70 in the summer. Good for swimming, nice waves but not super rough. The downside is, it can get crowded.
Sure, and what's the mean temperature of Oregon's bathing areas for the summer?
Ocean City, NJ has a year round population around 20,000. During the 4th of July weekend, there may be 250,000 people there.
And still, they keep the beaches clean. And you only have to buy a tag if its between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and you're on the beach between 10:00 and 17:00. Tags are reasonably priced. If you buy it before Memorial Day, a season long tag is $15. After that its $20, I think. Daily and weekly tags are available too.
That means that despite the population increasing by a factor of 10 on some days during the summer, they can keep the beaches safe and clean.
So no matter what Oregon does, I'll bet they don't have a quarter of a million New Yorkers or Philadelphians coming to hang out on the weekend along a 6 mile stretch of beach.
And not that people litter a lot, but at the end of each day, there are barrels of trash and recycling at the beach entrances filled all the way up. Its just a byproduct of lots of human beings.
And everybody pitches in a few bucks, and it works great. The alternative is to let a bigger bureaucracy handle it (e.g. the federal government.) I'll bet that would be just great.
A beach tag costs about $15 for the season, and are available for the week or day as well. The trash and recycling cans on the beach fill up each day, and the beach tag essentially pays for this, as well as lifeguards. There are about five swimming areas per mile, each with two lifeguards. And they also pay some kids to walk up and down the beach checking for / selling tags.
The beaches are kept safe and clean. People do complain about the cost of the beach tag, but when you consider that people often drop $3,000 to rent a beach house for a week, the beach tag seems pretty reasonable. You don't have to get it if you don't want to go to the beach.
I don't see how this is the same kind of multitouch. I'm using gsynaptics, and the only cool thing it does is circular scrolling.
But there's no multitouch. Just try touching a synaptics pad with two fingers at once and wait for the unpredictable results.
Multitouch doesn't refer to double or tripple tapping / clicking. Its about using two fingers independently.
Or am I the one missing something? Is there an uber-foo tab on gsynaptics I missed?
Pittsburgh is not really a blue collar city. There are a ton of hospitals, doctors, and PhD's in the city because of the large institutions of higher learning. Also, its the host of the corporate headquarters for some large manufacturers, but the number of actual blue collar jobs in the city is low.
The reason its hard to get a job there is (in my opinion) because there is a high number of college students per capita. There are a lot of people going to school there, but its a deceptively small city. There are about 300,000 residents, and about 45,000 students.
So if the NIH is putting up 28%, who puts up the other 72%? The NIH is by and large the single biggest funder. So lets say Merc put up the other 50%? Who gives Merc the money?
Investors. People collectively say "I'll give you money because I expect you to make more money out of that. Your incentive is that then I'll have even more money to give you, and we can repeat it. My incentive is that my money isn't doing any good just sitting around, so I'll let you try."
Is it a good deal for Merc? The investors? Apparently. Either side could walk away, but they don't.
Is it a good deal for all of us? It is, and here's why. The 28% we're putting in (via the NIH) is getting used. We're getting drugs. Some of are affordable, some aren't. But, no one has figured out a better way to do it. You can talk about making them spend less, or cutting their budgets, or price controls, or having the government take everything over. But they're all flawed. They don't scale. They take incentives away from the ones who actually have to do the work. Maybe the guys at the top are overpaid, but it sure lights a fire under the ass of the middle managers who know they really have to bust it to get to the top. And at every stage of the game, you're facing long odds.
Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others." Capitalism too.
Let me explain why your idea doesn't work. I'm not going to dispute any of the points you have made -- commercially built houses are bad, Habitat's houses are good, Habitat is cheaper and more efficient. Fine, I believe you.
But obviously, Habitat can't meet demand and it doesn't scale well. If it did, I'd be able to buy a Habitat house. As it is, the availability isn't there. Commercial builders are doing record business because there is tremendous demand. Habitat, while I'm sure its great, can't keep up with that. If it could, the commercial builders would be changing their ways or going out of business.
And as soon as you start changing the rules or the governance of an organization like Habitat, you weaken its strengths. And so you think it would be good to apply that to health care? Already there isn't the capacity to meet the demand. That's why its so expensive.
I think you'd be surprised how much research, beyond the basic publicly funded research, there is that goes into a drug.
Its hard work, it takes a long time, and often there is no payoff. If you can be successful one time in ten for your career, you'll probably win a Nobel prize.
That's not a troll, that's funny as hell.
Also, please recycle your cans of Mountain Dew, and try to at least tuck in that T-Shirt.
Thanks for your response. This clashes a bit with some of the things I have heard, but that is to be expected. Eastern Europe is not a small area.
My original point was that the Soviet Union failed and the Iron Curtain fell of their own accord, not because the US held its ground in Vietnam.
The linked article says that as many as 100 people die each day for not wearing their seat-belts.
Two things to keep in mind:
1) There are a lot more people on the road. 10 million people in Iraq? Well there are more than 30 times more people in the US. The article said only 14% of drivers use seat-belts. So, lets say there are 6 times as many people without seat belts. But the number killed daily is identical. So, its about 6 times more dangerous in Iraq.
2) Driving is useful, if not essential for many in American society. Sly and the Family Stone (I think said), "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Huh."
Note that the reason Eastern Europe fell from Soviet hands had absolutely nothing to do with Vietnam. (Hint: lack of food and necessities in the governed states)
Just because after Vietnam communism stopped spreading doesn't mean that Vietnam stopped the spread of communism.
Correlation is not causation.
They're also the ones who represented Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, Florida edition.
How'd that one turn out?
Oh, and the Microsoft antitrust thing... That really stuck, didn't it?
If there was a +6 insightful, you'd get it. It makes a lot of sense.
However, the case was filed on December 13, 2004. The switch to Intel was announced in June 2005.
So, it was a couple of months, not a couple of weeks between their filing suit and the big switch announcement.
Also, its worth noting that it must have worked, because everyone was in the dark about Apple's intentions.
Had I mod points, I'd mod you up. There needs to be an anti-incumbent movement. Sort of like MoveOn.org, but not a shill for the Democratic Party.
I vote against incumbents at all levels. But, I do believe that a Libertarian vote at local level elections is a very positive thing.
Makes you wonder how mankind existed before the the invention of the phonograph.
Just a quick note. You say that cultural participation is so important. If your idea of participation is buying music, you might be selling yourself short.
Look, do I have to spell it out for you? It was the Pirate Party. Do you think pirates are above hijacking?
They orchestrated it back in 1913, when they started off making illegal broadcasts (mostly Arr's and Avast Ye's). They've been laying low ever since.
The simple fact is that the Pirate Party has an interesting name. They took a word which sounds bad. Apparently, many people may consider themselves to be pirates, in the intellectual property sense. There's a dichotomy between what an IP pirate is and does and what a seafaring pirate is and does. It makes for a catchy name.
I mean, can you believe that! They're hijackers! Those bastards!
Thats the point. They hijacked a term for a really bad crime and also used it for something else.
Its like if they started calling people who jaywalk "murderers", then in a few years "Someone who walks across the middle of the street" will be an alternate definition of the word "murderer." But it probably won't cut down on jaywalking, murders, or have any productive side effects.
Right, but piracy doesn't accurately refer to copyright infringement.
... copyright infringement.
Piracy is robbery committed at sea. Copyright infringement is
See, one involves killing and stealing. The other involves copyright infringement.
One has the effect of immediate and tangible harm to the victim. The other has the effect of infringing on someone's copyrights.
They're both crimes, but they're different kinds of crimes.
If someone tries to rob you at sea, and you fight back and kill them, you're probably justified. If someone is tries to infringe on your copyrights, and you kill them, you're probably a psychopath.
I guess it would have been more accurate to say "you can't fix any bugs in Intel's driver..."
It looks like most of the comments so far are about whether or not its sexist.
I think its more interesting to think about how things would be different if designed by women. I don't think they will be adopting the Slashdot April 1 theme, but to the other extreme, I'd imagine if that there was a 'Linux for Women' it would be different in many respects. So diversifying the gender of the developers might have a positive effect.
Also, I would think that this would attract some fairly talented women. So maybe the most beneficial aspect of this will be the quality of the people it attracts, regardless of their gender.
Well, it certainly generates publicity for OpenBSD. If Theo always replied with political, non-inflammatory statements to everything, it would be a different product. But I doubt it would be as talked about.
Figure either way, hifn was not going to open the docs and thus not be supported. At least this way they got a bit of attention on Slashdot, a little more mindshare, etc.
Sort of, "I don't care what people say about me behind my back, as long as they're talking about me."
OpenBSD doesn't have any blobs because the project's leaders will not consider using them. What's the point of having an open source, audited, secure operating system if you allow arbitrary blocks of binary code into the kernel?
The reason OpenBSD doesn't have blobs is not because of their size -- they could port FreeBSD blobs in easilly. The reason is that the project is focused on quality. Their view is that quality and openness go hand in hand. Can't have one without the other. See this interview with Damien Bergamini, who implemented a driver for the Intel 3945 802.11abg NIC without any of Intel's blobs. The OpenBSD driver is considerably fewer lines of code than Intel's. Because its simpler, its easier to audit, and easier to find bugs in. Of course, you can't find any bugs in Intel's driver because you can't see the source code. Not because the Intel driver is bug free.