When you're talking about market share then Linux is unfortunately just a blip and BSD even smaller, particulary if market share is being measured in terms of revenue. When it comes to personal computers (!= servers and embedded systems), then many/most Linux PCs probably got sold as Windows units anyway.
A mobile device + Google Maps is going to open up all sorts of possibilities with location-based services & advertising etc. Opera is about the only mobile browser worth anything. Buying Opera and injecting money into is would be something that can make a lot of sense.
All teeth have nerves. Elephants use their tusks (==teeth) as feelers too. The narwal,s adaptation of a tooth into a sensor is just a elovutionary extension of that: add more nerves = make a better sensor.
As the parent says, humansd re these useless blobs for a long period of their lives (yes, even before they become/.ers). People come to the world "unprogrammed" and take a lot longer to get anywhere useful. That is a GoodThing as it makes a far more flexible organism that is capable of much broader learning and capable of unlearning obsolete information.
Cause and effect is a survival behaviour. It is learnt later by humans because humans are nurtured for far longer. Other organisms come to the world with pre-programmed instinctive behaviour and are less flexible. They might be better placed to understand and learn cause and effect sooner as part of this.
Watching sheep and children in the paddock out the back, I have noticed that a lamb a few days old has already learnt that an electric fence is not something worth scratch against and will probably not get zapped again in their next few years of life. The children, on the other hand, get zapped so often you'd think it was their primary power source. The lamb won't likely learn to ride a bike or read.
Those that have to ask are obviously doomed. Not everyone can change into the same new role. Here are a few ideas: Upskill and find a niche. Embedded, artifical intelligence or whatever. But, be real, all these niches will also dry up with time. Become a plumber or electrician. Nobody has figured out how to offshore a plumbing problem yet:-). Whatever.
The need to move with the times is nothing new and is not geek-specific. I think it is mainly because geeks got it so good that they don't like reality checks. A hundred years ago there was an occupation called "lamp lighter". This was the dude that walked around lighting street lamps. Then came electric lamps and the many lamp lighters got replaced by one switch flicker. There was an occupation called "computer". These people spent all their time cranking out calculations by hand. They got replaced by electronic calculators and computers of the electronic variety. There was an occupation called "telephpne operator". Got replaced by dial phones.
Same goes for checkout operators, typists, whatever. Why should geeks think they are different?
In a very interesting book called "Oxygen: The molecule that made the world", Nick Lane explains a lot of things, including why our atmospheric oxygen level is what it is. Even a small increase (a few %) can increase the likelihood of combustion of plant materials and other natural oxygen absorbing reactions. If oxygen gets too low, then carbon depositing reactions, amongst others, increase to release more.
If you mess with oxygen levels the chances of fire go up quite a bit, one of the reasons why people are paranoid about static electricity some high oxygen environments like operating theatres and decompression chambers.
Most engineering is not a per-capita exercise. It is for some civil engineering and structural design stuff where you need engineers on a per unit basis (ie. design of each road, bridge etc), but in typical Geeksville (electronics, software etc) the design effort is about the same for software selling to 1000 customers or 1000000.
Are US engineers underwaged? Perhaps, perhaps not. It all depends on your way of looking at things. Nothing lasts forever. Consider the age of the minicomputer/workstations. Not that long ago you could get a graphics workstation from Intergraph, DEC etc for the cost of a few cars. Slowly PCs became more powerful and undercut these monsters. The workstation companies could not sell any more workstations and had to redefine themselves to stay in business. Intergraph managed to do so, and DEC didn't. If Intergraph had just complaned that that PCs are too cheap then where would they be now?
The same will probably happen to many parts of engineering as things get globalised. Engineers will have to reinvent themselves to stay in the game. Those that can't won't make it.
Real coffee is a natural flavour that is hard to reproduce effectively on a Coke-size commercial scale and will be expensive to do right. It is very different to the current process of using water, sugar and various waste products (caffeine from decaffeination processing, C02 etc)
Anyone who wants to see how the caffeine gets from coffee into cola should read the National Geographic article.
Some bloggers have a large following and thus have powers to sway a lot of people.... a bit like Opra etc and their egos swell the same way. If you give them a bad time then you might get problems. Pamper them and you can get good PR.
The biggest problem is that the masses love being told what to do and blogging provides something for everyone.
I have approx ten patents (over the last 15 years or so) and it seems to me that it is easier to get a crappy patent through now than ever before. The USPTO have got to be like this because of various factors.
It's a system by the lawyers for the lawyers: Applying for a patent makes the patent lawyer some money. The amount of money he makes is inversely related to the quality of the patent. The more effort he has to put into filing a dodgy patent, the more he gets to charge. Then of course if it ever gets disputed you enter the big time.
The mighty buck: USPTO is a cash cow for Uncle Sam. Charge fees with no accounability. If you make it too hard for people to get patents then less will apply so you make less money. I bet those online colleges make more money than real universities and the same goes for USPTO.
Quotas: I expect (don't know), that the USPTO staff are not measured on the quality of the patents they issue but more on how many apps they can crank in a week. Come the end of the week and you are a bit behind quota then you just slide em through without even understanding them.
Every biological discovery "may lead to new breakthroughs in aging/cancer/AIDs/impotency treatment", yet so few do. Every space probe/Hubble/whatever "may tell us about the origins of life/the universe", but we've really got no closer to the answers. Even mars (now looking like a rover junkyard) "may have sub surface water".
C'mon scientists, stop hyping. Call us when you've got something real to show. Unfortunately I think the hyping is an inevitable part of trying to rake up funding. Headlines-->good PR-->funding.
Fear is a fantastic way to control people and get big dollars into big lobbiests pockets. It is also a good way to divert focus from real issues.
Unfortunately these measures only give a false sense of security. All the aircraft carriers can't stop a few punks with box cutters from hijacking a plane or whatever.
Huge security measures in the internat will be equivalent to airport security. Pain in the ass (in more ways than one), queues, loss of service etc for Joe Average and ineffective.
MS has killed so many third party extensions (networking, browsers, compilers, data bases...) that it is hard to make a business case for extending MS any more. It isn't that the MS things are better or anything, they just come free/low cost/easily integrated with the bundle. This essentially killed off the better comptetitors.
It's interesting how few add-on providers have been attracted into WinCE space. MS pleaded with compiler vendors etc to add value, no doubt to see what stuff worked then dup it. Nobody seems to have been suckered though.
I wonder whether the virus scanner will become "part of the OS" like IE? Surely integrity tools need to be free standing to have any hope of functioning properly. My prediction: vulnerability will increase and the virus scanner itself will get exploited.
Today I spoke with a guy using Cisco over a WAN. Very crap. Call got cut up by his email client sniffing the pop server etc. Been like this for months and there seems no cure.
Cisco might be fine in a single building with nice fat wire all around.
Slashdot Mirror
In the competitive movie world, statements like this create hype which turns into ticket sales.
When you're talking about market share then Linux is unfortunately just a blip and BSD even smaller, particulary if market share is being measured in terms of revenue. When it comes to personal computers (!= servers and embedded systems), then many/most Linux PCs probably got sold as Windows units anyway.
RDA 100%
A mobile device + Google Maps is going to open up all sorts of possibilities with location-based services & advertising etc. Opera is about the only mobile browser worth anything. Buying Opera and injecting money into is would be something that can make a lot of sense.
Just like in a CRT. But I guess Double Helix Plasma Thrustatron sounds a lot more sexy.
All teeth have nerves. Elephants use their tusks (==teeth) as feelers too. The narwal,s adaptation of a tooth into a sensor is just a elovutionary extension of that: add more nerves = make a better sensor.
Cause and effect is a survival behaviour. It is learnt later by humans because humans are nurtured for far longer. Other organisms come to the world with pre-programmed instinctive behaviour and are less flexible. They might be better placed to understand and learn cause and effect sooner as part of this.
Watching sheep and children in the paddock out the back, I have noticed that a lamb a few days old has already learnt that an electric fence is not something worth scratch against and will probably not get zapped again in their next few years of life. The children, on the other hand, get zapped so often you'd think it was their primary power source. The lamb won't likely learn to ride a bike or read.
Upskill and find a niche. Embedded, artifical intelligence or whatever. But, be real, all these niches will also dry up with time.
Become a plumber or electrician. Nobody has figured out how to offshore a plumbing problem yet
Whatever.
The need to move with the times is nothing new and is not geek-specific. I think it is mainly because geeks got it so good that they don't like reality checks.
A hundred years ago there was an occupation called "lamp lighter". This was the dude that walked around lighting street lamps. Then came electric lamps and the many lamp lighters got replaced by one switch flicker.
There was an occupation called "computer". These people spent all their time cranking out calculations by hand. They got replaced by electronic calculators and computers of the electronic variety.
There was an occupation called "telephpne operator". Got replaced by dial phones.
Same goes for checkout operators, typists, whatever. Why should geeks think they are different?
If you mess with oxygen levels the chances of fire go up quite a bit, one of the reasons why people are paranoid about static electricity some high oxygen environments like operating theatres and decompression chambers.
Most engineering is not a per-capita exercise. It is for some civil engineering and structural design stuff where you need engineers on a per unit basis (ie. design of each road, bridge etc), but in typical Geeksville (electronics, software etc) the design effort is about the same for software selling to 1000 customers or 1000000.
Are US engineers underwaged? Perhaps, perhaps not. It all depends on your way of looking at things. Nothing lasts forever. Consider the age of the minicomputer/workstations. Not that long ago you could get a graphics workstation from Intergraph, DEC etc for the cost of a few cars. Slowly PCs became more powerful and undercut these monsters. The workstation companies could not sell any more workstations and had to redefine themselves to stay in business. Intergraph managed to do so, and DEC didn't. If Intergraph had just complaned that that PCs are too cheap then where would they be now?
The same will probably happen to many parts of engineering as things get globalised. Engineers will have to reinvent themselves to stay in the game. Those that can't won't make it.
Up, up, up. The unit is also called a "Bush".
Anyone who wants to see how the caffeine gets from coffee into cola should read the National Geographic article.
Influential people with a following.
The biggest problem is that the masses love being told what to do and blogging provides something for everyone.
It's a system by the lawyers for the lawyers: Applying for a patent makes the patent lawyer some money. The amount of money he makes is inversely related to the quality of the patent. The more effort he has to put into filing a dodgy patent, the more he gets to charge. Then of course if it ever gets disputed you enter the big time.
The mighty buck: USPTO is a cash cow for Uncle Sam. Charge fees with no accounability. If you make it too hard for people to get patents then less will apply so you make less money. I bet those online colleges make more money than real universities and the same goes for USPTO.
Quotas: I expect (don't know), that the USPTO staff are not measured on the quality of the patents they issue but more on how many apps they can crank in a week. Come the end of the week and you are a bit behind quota then you just slide em through without even understanding them.
Every space probe/Hubble/whatever "may tell us about the origins of life/the universe", but we've really got no closer to the answers. Even mars (now looking like a rover junkyard) "may have sub surface water".
C'mon scientists, stop hyping. Call us when you've got something real to show. Unfortunately I think the hyping is an inevitable part of trying to rake up funding. Headlines-->good PR-->funding.
Fear is a fantastic way to control people and get big dollars into big lobbiests pockets. It is also a good way to divert focus from real issues.
Unfortunately these measures only give a false sense of security. All the aircraft carriers can't stop a few punks with box cutters from hijacking a plane or whatever.
Huge security measures in the internat will be equivalent to airport security. Pain in the ass (in more ways than one), queues, loss of service etc for Joe Average and ineffective.
Rats are randy little fsckers. Assuming breeding capability, there'd be enough rats by now to fly the whole United fleet.
In the original article I read last year some time, [I didn't RTFdupe] the rat brain managed to handle relatively complex things like wind shear etc.
Since the original posting the rat has got pretty old.
And if they want to exchange their gifts you can include a handy little sed file:
s/gift1/gift2/g
won't go sift through their country club buddy's garbage. What's the point of lobbying?
MS has killed so many third party extensions (networking, browsers, compilers, data bases...) that it is hard to make a business case for extending MS any more. It isn't that the MS things are better or anything, they just come free/low cost/easily integrated with the bundle. This essentially killed off the better comptetitors.
It's interesting how few add-on providers have been attracted into WinCE space. MS pleaded with compiler vendors etc to add value, no doubt to see what stuff worked then dup it. Nobody seems to have been suckered though.
I wonder whether the virus scanner will become "part of the OS" like IE? Surely integrity tools need to be free standing to have any hope of functioning properly. My prediction: vulnerability will increase and the virus scanner itself will get exploited.
Please submit as a patch.
Today I spoke with a guy using Cisco over a WAN. Very crap. Call got cut up by his email client sniffing the pop server etc. Been like this for months and there seems no cure.
Cisco might be fine in a single building with nice fat wire all around.