Ok... but Linux is a monolithic kernel system as well. The security and (now outdated) stability concerns in Windows had to do with things going on in user space, more than inside the kernel itself. Are there ANY widely used microkernel systems today? I can't think of any... and from what Linus was saying in the article, there's a damn good reason for that fact.
The mouthpiece's analogy is flawed. What they're asking for is more like: A consumer bought a Volkswagon. Now, it's not really "fair" that just any oil company should be able to fill the gas tank on that car, right? So they start making all their cars detect the brand of gas the consumer uses, and their cars will only go over 25 mph if that gas company pays Volkswagon a monthly fee based on how much of their gas is used in VW cars.
Ok, but the idea that any monopoly will instantly generate competitors only applies in low cost-to-entry markets. In situations like this, where a single company literally owns all the last-mile connections in a city, how is competition ever going to happen? Random Startup can't just go to everyone's house and say "hey, I know you've already got service, but we'd like to string some extra wires into your house on the off chance that you'd like to change sometime down the road". Same thing goes for water, sewers, roads, etc. There's some things where it's economically and physically impractical to have two competing companies, and in those cases the government has to force them to share those non-replicable resources or the market has no chance of avoiding monopolies.
Would you rather the machine dropped a system driver, or rebooted? Which is faster to recover from?
Also, I thought (though I could be wrong) that a lot of this was an implementation benefit as well... the system is rock solid and stable, now you go to add another service in the kernel. No matter how badly you screw it up, you can't destabilize the other components, whereas with a macrokernel that remains a distinct possibility.
To be fair, the nude skin is included in the product they sell you. On the other hand, nobody's going to go postal just from seeing some pixelated boobies.
That's very true, I'd been ignoring the effects patents would have on the whole thing. Assuming it was a unique discovery, and not just getting some method previously thought a dud to work right, that would allow them to control things and prevent the economic upheaval.
Assuming a changeover could be accomplished overnight, you would be right. However, it can't be. It would take months, if not years, to implement a new form of energy onto the world, and even then, it wouldn't remove the need for petroleum or its distillates. The infrastructure would still be needed for quite some time as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels couldn't be replaced overnight.
A couple problems with this: first, about 3/5 of our oil consumption is due to transportation. With how much of our nation's economy is based on petroleum, do you honestly think that cutting 3/5 of that use in as long as a decade, much less 3-4 years, would have any effect other than a gigantic depression? Not to mention the havok it would play with the stock markets the instant the news came out.
Secondly, assuming the two technologies were released at once, it would be quite foolhardy to wait longer than a year or two to switch over. If your competitors can make a one-time investment and free themselves of all fuel costs from that point forward, the only real question is when the technology becomes wide-spread enough for that one-time cost to be reasonable, and odds are that wouldn't take that long with so many people jumping on the fresh market.
While both technologies would cause disruptions for current industries, it would also present new opportunities for those industries. Air travel would remain, just in a different form. Cars, trucks, and rail wouldn't disappear, just change, and nautical shipping would probably remain because it would be far more efficient than any anti-grav device.
The same goes for free energy. Sure, the coal mining and petroleum industries would be disrupted, but they wouldn't end. Demand would fall, but there would be new opportunities in the Energy industry. Its just that the old players (big oil, utilities) wouldn't be able to make money hand-over-fist like they're used to doing now.
Air travel would remain, but suddenly you don't need to book space at airports, because takeoff and landing just went vertical. When you can run a cross-country transit system out of a decent-sized parking lot, paying $500 a ticket doesn't really work anymore. Nautical shipping would be gone as well. If you've got free energy, why would you bother pushing through all that water and bad weather when you could just pop up above the storm layer and coast over to your destination?
As for "there are still opportunities in the energy industry"... where?? The hypothetical situation is free energy. Not just cheap, but free. How long before about fifty competing companies spring up in any given area? Hell, how long before some charitable individual or company sets up a grant with a spare billion or so to power the western seaboard for the forseeable future, just to be a nice guy? There's noplace left for the power industry to go. Industrial manufacturing is their only shot, and as I pointed out above that's less than half the national consumption, and is barely growing at all.
Economies don't falter when a core industry goes belly-up; economies falter when a core industry drops 25%, and this would be well more than is required to have a massive detrimental effect.
How do you make an anonymous, incoherent troll post, sign it from Microsoft, and NOT expect to get flamed? If you really do work for Microsoft, they should be ashamed. Yes, there are a lot of inexperienced OSS advocates on this site, but they're not the ones who are actually writing the software. Linux is nearly as old as Windows, and keeping pace quite well. If nothing else, you might want to refrain from making fun of a business model that's over 15 years old and shows no signs of disappearing.
By the way, you DON'T work for Microsoft, at least not if that's your real name. Why would you make that post and pretend to work for them when you don't?
Those two things, though, would essentially trash the economy as we know it. Think about it: free energy means the oil industries and the rest of the infrastructure built around them are suddenly obsolete. Antigravity means free transportation. Suddenly the airlines, rail industry, (nautical) shipping, and even the automobile industry to some extent, are irrelevant. These are the major lynchpins of our economy... you can't just destroy them with a single announcement and expect the economy to calmly correct itself. It would be chaos.
Now, I'm not saying that this guy isn't a fruitcake, because he probably is. But if ever there were two technologies that the government would block from commercial adoption, these would be them.
I know you're joking, but some car company pulled all their fingerprint-activated models from circulation after thieves in asia started cutting off hands in order to steal the cars. it's a very real problem.
I'm with you on that. I buy stuff that I actually like. Anything I download, they wouldn't get money for anyway (or else I buy it soon after and actually spend more money because I can trust that what I'm getting will be good).
A lot of people are not willing to put in the time and effort to become knowledgeable computer users. They WANT to be "point and click automatons" as you put it. Lots of these people work for businesses. They and their employers are willing to pay money for a program that gives them what they want. Like it or not, businesses are not mechanisms for social change in our culture.
In some ways this isn't even a bad thing. Society functions at the level it does because we have specialization. I don't have to know how to change the crankshaft on my car, because someone else knows how to, and will trade me that service in exchange for my own specialized services. Yeah, it would be nice if we could rely on users a bit more to use software intelligently, but sometimes simplifying a UI can help direct the development of an application and lead to something better in the long run as well.
Amen, sir. This bothers me to no end as well. Most objects in the everyday world are so simple because they have a very small set of tasks to perform. A car has one pedal that makes it go accelerate, another that makes it slow down, and a wheel that directs its motion. The concept of a clutch and shifter is too complex for most people today.
Computers, on the other hand, allow the user to run multiple applications, enter text, perform searches, communicate with a global network, burn writable media, etc. A web browser alone has about twenty times more options than a car. They are not simple machines, and the people who have been selling them as such have been lying through their teeth.
You can either have a simple interface, or a full feature set. You can't have both. Google's Search, for example, is so simple because you can take one operation. That's all. I give them some words, it gives me back what it thinks I mean. Anything more complex (searching within a certain site, searching page titles) uses cryptic search keys that most users are unaware of. Even more advanced operations like searching by change date, are not provided at all. Desktop software provides many, many more options, and it has to because the software provides that much functionality. But it also requires people to learn for a change. I'm all for simplifying interfaces as much as possible, but there's a certain amount of complexity inherent in a task.
Right. So "The New Outer Limits" ran for 7 seasons, and I liked what Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner did with it during that time, but I don't feel they got quite as interesting results out of SG-1.
I think it's "diluted" by poor writing, direction, and acting. If anything, it's picked up since Ben Browder came on; at least he offsets "Daniel Jackson"'s piss-poor emoting, although the dialogue they're giving him is a sham compared to what he had to work with on Farscape.
No offense to the guys who created it, I loved what they did with the new Outer Limits, and the story of SG-1 is pretty cool, especially the scope they've managed to cover. But they can't write dialog, it's as simple as that.
Your plan completely fails to account for ISPs which either can't or won't screen properly. Want to make some money? Set up an ISP that implements the cert structure, and allows spammers. Want to run a free webmail service (hotmail/yahoomail/gmail)? You damn sure better make sure your users can send as non-spam... except of course, these get used to generate spam addresses, and Google doesn't have time to check out every new account for validity.
The one thing your plan does do is prevent spoofing, but that only works if the public keys are kept secret, in which case they don't work. Within days, these public keys will be circulating along with email addresses on spam lists, and the entire thing is useless.
I've seen Ebert give reviews that boiled down to, "I went to this movie expecting to see things blow up, and that was exactly what I got. If you're looking for great dialog, don't go, but it delivered what it promised, and I like it."
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Ok... but Linux is a monolithic kernel system as well. The security and (now outdated) stability concerns in Windows had to do with things going on in user space, more than inside the kernel itself. Are there ANY widely used microkernel systems today? I can't think of any... and from what Linus was saying in the article, there's a damn good reason for that fact.
Yeah yeah, whatever. I've never owned or even driven their cars, it was just an example :-P
The mouthpiece's analogy is flawed. What they're asking for is more like: A consumer bought a Volkswagon. Now, it's not really "fair" that just any oil company should be able to fill the gas tank on that car, right? So they start making all their cars detect the brand of gas the consumer uses, and their cars will only go over 25 mph if that gas company pays Volkswagon a monthly fee based on how much of their gas is used in VW cars.
Ok, but the idea that any monopoly will instantly generate competitors only applies in low cost-to-entry markets. In situations like this, where a single company literally owns all the last-mile connections in a city, how is competition ever going to happen? Random Startup can't just go to everyone's house and say "hey, I know you've already got service, but we'd like to string some extra wires into your house on the off chance that you'd like to change sometime down the road". Same thing goes for water, sewers, roads, etc. There's some things where it's economically and physically impractical to have two competing companies, and in those cases the government has to force them to share those non-replicable resources or the market has no chance of avoiding monopolies.
Would you rather the machine dropped a system driver, or rebooted? Which is faster to recover from?
Also, I thought (though I could be wrong) that a lot of this was an implementation benefit as well... the system is rock solid and stable, now you go to add another service in the kernel. No matter how badly you screw it up, you can't destabilize the other components, whereas with a macrokernel that remains a distinct possibility.
Uh... electric cars with individual wheel motors can out-accelerate traditional cars by about 2x...
To be fair, the nude skin is included in the product they sell you. On the other hand, nobody's going to go postal just from seeing some pixelated boobies.
That's very true, I'd been ignoring the effects patents would have on the whole thing. Assuming it was a unique discovery, and not just getting some method previously thought a dud to work right, that would allow them to control things and prevent the economic upheaval.
Assuming a changeover could be accomplished overnight, you would be right. However, it can't be. It would take months, if not years, to implement a new form of energy onto the world, and even then, it wouldn't remove the need for petroleum or its distillates. The infrastructure would still be needed for quite some time as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels couldn't be replaced overnight.
A couple problems with this: first, about 3/5 of our oil consumption is due to transportation. With how much of our nation's economy is based on petroleum, do you honestly think that cutting 3/5 of that use in as long as a decade, much less 3-4 years, would have any effect other than a gigantic depression? Not to mention the havok it would play with the stock markets the instant the news came out.
Secondly, assuming the two technologies were released at once, it would be quite foolhardy to wait longer than a year or two to switch over. If your competitors can make a one-time investment and free themselves of all fuel costs from that point forward, the only real question is when the technology becomes wide-spread enough for that one-time cost to be reasonable, and odds are that wouldn't take that long with so many people jumping on the fresh market.
While both technologies would cause disruptions for current industries, it would also present new opportunities for those industries. Air travel would remain, just in a different form. Cars, trucks, and rail wouldn't disappear, just change, and nautical shipping would probably remain because it would be far more efficient than any anti-grav device.
The same goes for free energy. Sure, the coal mining and petroleum industries would be disrupted, but they wouldn't end. Demand would fall, but there would be new opportunities in the Energy industry. Its just that the old players (big oil, utilities) wouldn't be able to make money hand-over-fist like they're used to doing now.
Air travel would remain, but suddenly you don't need to book space at airports, because takeoff and landing just went vertical. When you can run a cross-country transit system out of a decent-sized parking lot, paying $500 a ticket doesn't really work anymore. Nautical shipping would be gone as well. If you've got free energy, why would you bother pushing through all that water and bad weather when you could just pop up above the storm layer and coast over to your destination?
As for "there are still opportunities in the energy industry"... where?? The hypothetical situation is free energy. Not just cheap, but free. How long before about fifty competing companies spring up in any given area? Hell, how long before some charitable individual or company sets up a grant with a spare billion or so to power the western seaboard for the forseeable future, just to be a nice guy? There's noplace left for the power industry to go. Industrial manufacturing is their only shot, and as I pointed out above that's less than half the national consumption, and is barely growing at all.
Economies don't falter when a core industry goes belly-up; economies falter when a core industry drops 25%, and this would be well more than is required to have a massive detrimental effect.
Ah, touche. My brain hasn't adjusted to the new math just yet.
How do you make an anonymous, incoherent troll post, sign it from Microsoft, and NOT expect to get flamed? If you really do work for Microsoft, they should be ashamed. Yes, there are a lot of inexperienced OSS advocates on this site, but they're not the ones who are actually writing the software. Linux is nearly as old as Windows, and keeping pace quite well. If nothing else, you might want to refrain from making fun of a business model that's over 15 years old and shows no signs of disappearing.
By the way, you DON'T work for Microsoft, at least not if that's your real name. Why would you make that post and pretend to work for them when you don't?
Fucking trolls.
Yes, but those people aren't contributing to the linux kernel in the first place...
Those two things, though, would essentially trash the economy as we know it. Think about it: free energy means the oil industries and the rest of the infrastructure built around them are suddenly obsolete. Antigravity means free transportation. Suddenly the airlines, rail industry, (nautical) shipping, and even the automobile industry to some extent, are irrelevant. These are the major lynchpins of our economy... you can't just destroy them with a single announcement and expect the economy to calmly correct itself. It would be chaos.
Now, I'm not saying that this guy isn't a fruitcake, because he probably is. But if ever there were two technologies that the government would block from commercial adoption, these would be them.
While most of those examples are indeed utter BS, "can you please step out of the vehicle?" is a pretty straightforward request.
I know you're joking, but some car company pulled all their fingerprint-activated models from circulation after thieves in asia started cutting off hands in order to steal the cars. it's a very real problem.
I'm with you on that. I buy stuff that I actually like. Anything I download, they wouldn't get money for anyway (or else I buy it soon after and actually spend more money because I can trust that what I'm getting will be good).
A lot of people are not willing to put in the time and effort to become knowledgeable computer users. They WANT to be "point and click automatons" as you put it. Lots of these people work for businesses. They and their employers are willing to pay money for a program that gives them what they want. Like it or not, businesses are not mechanisms for social change in our culture.
In some ways this isn't even a bad thing. Society functions at the level it does because we have specialization. I don't have to know how to change the crankshaft on my car, because someone else knows how to, and will trade me that service in exchange for my own specialized services. Yeah, it would be nice if we could rely on users a bit more to use software intelligently, but sometimes simplifying a UI can help direct the development of an application and lead to something better in the long run as well.
Amen, sir. This bothers me to no end as well. Most objects in the everyday world are so simple because they have a very small set of tasks to perform. A car has one pedal that makes it go accelerate, another that makes it slow down, and a wheel that directs its motion. The concept of a clutch and shifter is too complex for most people today.
Computers, on the other hand, allow the user to run multiple applications, enter text, perform searches, communicate with a global network, burn writable media, etc. A web browser alone has about twenty times more options than a car. They are not simple machines, and the people who have been selling them as such have been lying through their teeth.
You can either have a simple interface, or a full feature set. You can't have both. Google's Search, for example, is so simple because you can take one operation. That's all. I give them some words, it gives me back what it thinks I mean. Anything more complex (searching within a certain site, searching page titles) uses cryptic search keys that most users are unaware of. Even more advanced operations like searching by change date, are not provided at all. Desktop software provides many, many more options, and it has to because the software provides that much functionality. But it also requires people to learn for a change. I'm all for simplifying interfaces as much as possible, but there's a certain amount of complexity inherent in a task.
Yeah, but wouldn't you be nervous doing that act ten feet from Bush? I thought he came across as quite cool and collected, given the situation.
please x1000 tell me that page is a joke. oh sweet jesus, that's scary.
Right. So "The New Outer Limits" ran for 7 seasons, and I liked what Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner did with it during that time, but I don't feel they got quite as interesting results out of SG-1.
How is this confusing?
uh... it ran for 7 seasons, and although it did have its share of bad episodes, it also had some damn good stuff as well
d e_listings.html
http://www.tv.com/the-outer-limits/show/172/episo
I think it's "diluted" by poor writing, direction, and acting. If anything, it's picked up since Ben Browder came on; at least he offsets "Daniel Jackson"'s piss-poor emoting, although the dialogue they're giving him is a sham compared to what he had to work with on Farscape.
No offense to the guys who created it, I loved what they did with the new Outer Limits, and the story of SG-1 is pretty cool, especially the scope they've managed to cover. But they can't write dialog, it's as simple as that.
Your plan completely fails to account for ISPs which either can't or won't screen properly. Want to make some money? Set up an ISP that implements the cert structure, and allows spammers. Want to run a free webmail service (hotmail/yahoomail/gmail)? You damn sure better make sure your users can send as non-spam... except of course, these get used to generate spam addresses, and Google doesn't have time to check out every new account for validity.
The one thing your plan does do is prevent spoofing, but that only works if the public keys are kept secret, in which case they don't work. Within days, these public keys will be circulating along with email addresses on spam lists, and the entire thing is useless.
I've seen Ebert give reviews that boiled down to, "I went to this movie expecting to see things blow up, and that was exactly what I got. If you're looking for great dialog, don't go, but it delivered what it promised, and I like it."