Two words: Source. Forge. As in Sourceforge.net, the birthplace of countless OSS projects.
End of story. Go there, find something that's interesting, and if it's no longer in development, take it over or fork it, and if it's in development, see if you can join the team (if they need help, there is usually a "help wanted" link on the main project page). Most groups need help, and if you're competent, they'll be glad to have you.
If you're moving into a big team, be polite. You're a young programmer, and lots of young programmers have a lot of hubris. If you can't work with the people there (and this happens a lot; I once took a Java project, and simply updated it as it stood to get rid of depricated functions, almost no other changes, and I got flamed like you can't even imagine by the lone devloper who hadn't even released an update for 2 years) move on and do something else. There are so many projects, there is bound to be something awesome out there that you want to be a part of.
Those air defenses could have been stomped flat by an intelligent application of the same jet technology that got its funding pulled to produce the V-2. The 262 was hellishly effective against allied bombers, and the damn things didn't even go into production until 44, though the design was floated in 39, and finalized in 42. Can you imagine if they'd take the tech seriously, and then applied it to jet bombers?
The huge glaring problem with the V-2 is that it never did much damage. If they'd had 100 times as many of them, maybe they could have done something, but the few that they launched, though scary, didn't do all that much damage.
Like a lot of things in WWII, the V-2 was pushed because Hitler thought it was cool. Loved the idea of bombing london to bits. But like a lot of his strategic ideas, it didn't work out very well...One of the reasons the 262 wasn't pushed was because Hitler wanted it to be able to drop bombs, something its design was woefully unsuited to.
...there are some who believe the whole intent of the V2 was the terror it created.
And I am one of those people. World War II was, above all other things, the first test of WMDs on civilian populations, whether it was the V-2, incendiary bombs, nukes, or just conventional drop-a-ton-of-TNT-on-yer-house. Looking at Tokyo after the firebombing, a nuke would have been redundant. Then there is London, Dresden, Warsaw...They bombed a lot of cities, and while the stated goal was often strategic (e.g. destroying factories), the reality is, you don't drop incendiaries in the middle of town if all you're after is a factory.
The truth of it is though, that, in most cases, burning up a town just stiffened the resolve of the people to resist. The conventional wisdom was that the civilians would panic and force the government to surrender, and not once did that happen. Quite the opposite. You drop a bomb on someone's house and kill half their family, and they're likely to strap a bomb to their body, and try and give you a hug. Look at England during the Blitz; that's pretty much the opposite of giving up.
Japan is the obvious counter-example, though I'd argue it is a bad one. By the time we used nukes, the war was well over...This is not to say that the Japanese weren't ready to fight to the death (they were absolutely willing to do so), but rather that everyone involved knew how it was going to end, and that there was no possibility for it to end any other way. The only question was, how many people were going to die on each side?
We're not talking ICBMs, we're talking the V-2, which was BM sure, but IC? No way! They're bombing London, not New York. Between Tanks and V-2 rockets, which one did more damage in WW2? The V-2 was basically just a really really expensive way to take a bomb that could have been dropped from a plane, and put it on the ground less accurately.
Hell, between tanks and ICBMs, which one has done more damage in the entire history of warfare? Hell, the ICBM and the fricking bow and arrow! ICBMs are such a powerful weapon that they're never actually used; in other words, so powerful that they're useless.
There is nothing that says that consoles can't license AO games, but historically they have chosen not to. It seems way unlikely that Nintendo will ever cave on that one, but I think Sony very well might in the long run, depending on how the ratings trend in the future.
Nah, the V-2 was crap. He's right about that. Strategic bombing was much more damaging and accurate; the V-2 was primarily a terror weapon--just an explosion out of nowhere on a clear day, and then after it blew up, the sound of it's passage would catch up and you could hear it coming in.
Freaked a lot of people out, but didn't do all that much damage. Couldn't be aimed accurately enough to take out a strategic target. There is some debate on how worthwhile strategic bombing was in general, but the V-2 especially was much less worthwhile as an innovation than the late planes and subs that the Germans were capable of producing; subs that could run underwater the whole way, and the first true jet aircraft.
Compared to that, the ability to toss a bomb across the Channel is small potatoes.
Wellllll, I agree and disagree. You're right about when they were introduced, but the tanks of WWI weren't the tanks of WWII. In WWI the role of the tank was basically to provide light fire support, and a slow moving wall for soldiers to walk behind while it crossed the land between the trenches.
Not that that wasn't absolutely huge, because it was, but it wasn't anywhere near as decisive as the role of the tank in WWII. Tanks and airplanes were the big winners as far as military tech in WWII; they'd both been introduced in WWI, but they really achieved their potential in WWII.
Basically that our society is shaped more by old tech than new tech, and that flashy new tech only has relevance based on how it will alter society 50 years down the line.
In other words: "You goddamn kids get off my lawn!"
I like the New Yorker...On occasion. Their movie reviews are almost perfect: if they love it, I'll hate it, and if they hate it, it's probably worth watching.
But they're about the last people I'd trust on a technological issue. The article reminded me of the "Luddite" column from Wired.
The consoles make all their money from licensing. So, in order to develop for a console you have to get a license to do so (and then split your profits with the console maker). They can refuse to license anything they want to, so there is effectively no legal way to release content for a console that the manufacturer doesn't want released.
Reading the effing article, his point seems to be that we overstate the impact of new technology, seeing as we still use mostly old technology, even after the new technology has supposedly "changed our lives forever".
He throws up a bunch of examples, like the fact that the army is still using horses in Afganistan, because they're efficient. And that "huge" innovations, like the V-2 rocket in WWII weren't as pivotal as people think they were (no mention of, you know, the tank).
Basically, he's saying that what people view as life-changing technology isn't always...That the real world changing technology isn't always something that is obvious at the time.
Basically, I think he's full of it. Sure, we often don't recognize the significance of certain innovations which end up shaping our whole world. And then there are things like the cell phone, the internal combustion engine, and the personal computer...Technologies which actually are as influential as we think they are.
Sure there are times where we jam high tech where it doesn't belong, and there are past innovations which are just as valuable today as they were decades ago. But that doesn't immediately invalidate our perception of technology as a driver of change. He talks about the pneumatic tube mail system they used to have in the big cities, and how people thought it was a great thing, and how it's now a non-thing...The thing is that system served a need, and was superceded by better technologies that allowed society to fulfill that need in a more meaningful way.
So society drives technological innovation, yes, but it absolutely depends on the right innovation coming along at the right time, and there is a certain amount of serendipity in that.
Wait...So console makers do the whole "morality police" thing regarding what games are released on their consoles? WTF? So much for catering to the only demographic that actually has the money to buy one of their consoles. I've got about as much desire to play Manhunt 2 as I do to attach electrodes to my nuts, but it still pisses me off that they would pull crap like this.
Well, no. Arcologies in Sim city made people happy, it reduced your street congestion, and they were great revenue producers. I generally started putting them up as soon as I got access to anything that wasn't the big ugly metal one.
I think in the long run, we definitely need to start looking in that direction. I don't mean a literal arcology, but more self-contained living areas for large cities, that have nice common areas, greenhouses, shopping, etc. The sprawl is a real issue, and it's not going to stop being one until living in a city doesn't automatically mean a sterile existence of glass and concrete with the occasional park, where you never know your neighbors.
Water is really more of an issue. At some point it will cease to be economical to farm large sections of the midwest, just because it will become so expensive to irrigate without a plentiful source of local water.
At that point, large, self-contained farms that use a comparatively miniscule amount of water will look like a MUCH better idea.
Any bonus CO2 or NO3- would be beneficial to the plants. Extra O3, CO, NO2- and SO2 would be harmful/toxic. Still, it's indoors, and all those things are at least as bad for people, so whatever systems we have in place to deal with environmental contaminants for people should be equally adequate for plants. As I recall, they mainly consist of closing the windows.
Since adding extra CO2 would be beneficial to yields, etc, we could use this sort of cultivation as a way to dispose of extra CO2 captured by carbon sequestration projects.
Maybe if you do well, it's a shot at being on the eventual Mars mission?...Yea, pretty unlikely, unless it gets off the ground far sooner than it probably will.
If nothing else, it's an opportunity to sit around on your ass getting paid for 17 months of doing nothing. Just like being in the military, but without the periodic "oh my god I'm going to die" moments...What's the quote? "War is 95% boredom and 5% pure terror"? This is just like that, but with 5% more boredom!
They're already doing the "prolonged weightlessness" experiments on the ISS. I think the record is 438 days. Wonder what kind of shape you'd be in after 7 to 8 months of weightlessness, and whether you'd be able to function "well" on Mars?
Sure, windows is the default. Anyone who has ever bought from dell knows this. But you can always get a machine without an OS.
To be fair, they're a generic vendor, and Windows is the generic choice. That they offer better options is a good step, and that they offer support on them suggests to me that they are a lot more serious about Linux than they ever have been in the past. There is still room for improvement, but still.
It's more accurate to say that Dell's "Business class" laptops don't come with an Ubuntu option.
I can't find anything anywhere that ever suggested that they did so to have someone up in arms about the fact that they don't is disingenuous at best, and a flat out misrepresentation by my interpretation. Since dell has recently been allowing linux desktops to be sold, to have someone jump up and start claiming that they're not dealing fair is only fair to Dell if you're speaking about a product group that they claimed they'd offer Ubuntu on in the first place.
It's the same as if I started ranting about them not offering OS X, but in this case it's a rant targeted specifically toward a community that views these sorts of things very seriously.
So FUD. Fear that Dell is backing out on it's pledge to support linux, Uncertainty that Dell means what it's saying when it says it will support linux on it's equipment, and Doubt that Dell is a trustworthy company. Pretty clear.
I don't particularly like Dell...I'd never buy anything from them for my personal use, and I only buy it for business use when they can give me a better deal than another reputable dealer. But I've never had a problem with them regarding linux, or at least getting a machine with no OS, and it pisses me off to see an insta-lynch mob pop up on one guy's unsupported word.
The hard part will be getting there and back; they need to know the levels of cabin fever that are going to occur and they need to be able to test that in a simulated environment.
Locking people in a tank for 17 months and watching how they deal with each other is a valuable experiment. Spending 2 years running around the desert in a spacesuit to simulate martian experiments...Now that would be worthless.
No need. Business class machines have the "No OS" option right there with the other OS options. I use that more than I use the pre-installed linux options, frankly. I like being able to set it up myself, and choose what I want to be installed.
That would be why they offer redhat support and SuSE support as well.
The full list of supported linux can be found here. Just because one guy wants to buy one machine that doesn't come with Ubuntu, everyone is up in arms. Dell never claimed that they were going to offer it on every machine. They're damn careful what they offer for business machines in general, and you can always get a business class machine with no OS.
Buncha fricking sheep. Dell's making a good effort on linux.
It's not about that. Dell makes "Business computers" they have whole lines of "business" computers, very specific models; Optiplex, Precision, PowerEdge. They come with a limited number of OS choices...which includes Redhat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise.
You can't buy Ubuntu on one of those, and you can't buy windows xp either. Clearly Dell views Ubuntu as "not ready for the server" and is unwilling to put it on a server class machine. You can still buy the machine with no OS, and add Ubuntu yourself.
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Two words: Source. Forge. As in Sourceforge.net, the birthplace of countless OSS projects.
End of story. Go there, find something that's interesting, and if it's no longer in development, take it over or fork it, and if it's in development, see if you can join the team (if they need help, there is usually a "help wanted" link on the main project page). Most groups need help, and if you're competent, they'll be glad to have you.
If you're moving into a big team, be polite. You're a young programmer, and lots of young programmers have a lot of hubris. If you can't work with the people there (and this happens a lot; I once took a Java project, and simply updated it as it stood to get rid of depricated functions, almost no other changes, and I got flamed like you can't even imagine by the lone devloper who hadn't even released an update for 2 years) move on and do something else. There are so many projects, there is bound to be something awesome out there that you want to be a part of.
Those air defenses could have been stomped flat by an intelligent application of the same jet technology that got its funding pulled to produce the V-2. The 262 was hellishly effective against allied bombers, and the damn things didn't even go into production until 44, though the design was floated in 39, and finalized in 42. Can you imagine if they'd take the tech seriously, and then applied it to jet bombers?
The huge glaring problem with the V-2 is that it never did much damage. If they'd had 100 times as many of them, maybe they could have done something, but the few that they launched, though scary, didn't do all that much damage.
Like a lot of things in WWII, the V-2 was pushed because Hitler thought it was cool. Loved the idea of bombing london to bits. But like a lot of his strategic ideas, it didn't work out very well...One of the reasons the 262 wasn't pushed was because Hitler wanted it to be able to drop bombs, something its design was woefully unsuited to.
Both of them are shortsighted. Why waste the money to pull materials up out of our gravity well, just to drop them down another one?
Until the space program stops paying over and over again to orbit the same mass (space shuttle I'm looking at you), we're never going to get anywhere.
I'm comparing its accuracy vs the same amount of tnt dropped from a conventional bomber of the period. It was a flashy, not terribly useful weapon.
I don't know about pure charcoal, but I'll go with you if you add a little sulfur and phosphorous.
...there are some who believe the whole intent of the V2 was the terror it created.
And I am one of those people. World War II was, above all other things, the first test of WMDs on civilian populations, whether it was the V-2, incendiary bombs, nukes, or just conventional drop-a-ton-of-TNT-on-yer-house. Looking at Tokyo after the firebombing, a nuke would have been redundant. Then there is London, Dresden, Warsaw...They bombed a lot of cities, and while the stated goal was often strategic (e.g. destroying factories), the reality is, you don't drop incendiaries in the middle of town if all you're after is a factory.
The truth of it is though, that, in most cases, burning up a town just stiffened the resolve of the people to resist. The conventional wisdom was that the civilians would panic and force the government to surrender, and not once did that happen. Quite the opposite. You drop a bomb on someone's house and kill half their family, and they're likely to strap a bomb to their body, and try and give you a hug. Look at England during the Blitz; that's pretty much the opposite of giving up.
Japan is the obvious counter-example, though I'd argue it is a bad one. By the time we used nukes, the war was well over...This is not to say that the Japanese weren't ready to fight to the death (they were absolutely willing to do so), but rather that everyone involved knew how it was going to end, and that there was no possibility for it to end any other way. The only question was, how many people were going to die on each side?
We're not talking ICBMs, we're talking the V-2, which was BM sure, but IC? No way! They're bombing London, not New York. Between Tanks and V-2 rockets, which one did more damage in WW2? The V-2 was basically just a really really expensive way to take a bomb that could have been dropped from a plane, and put it on the ground less accurately.
Hell, between tanks and ICBMs, which one has done more damage in the entire history of warfare? Hell, the ICBM and the fricking bow and arrow! ICBMs are such a powerful weapon that they're never actually used; in other words, so powerful that they're useless.
There is nothing that says that consoles can't license AO games, but historically they have chosen not to. It seems way unlikely that Nintendo will ever cave on that one, but I think Sony very well might in the long run, depending on how the ratings trend in the future.
Nah, the V-2 was crap. He's right about that. Strategic bombing was much more damaging and accurate; the V-2 was primarily a terror weapon--just an explosion out of nowhere on a clear day, and then after it blew up, the sound of it's passage would catch up and you could hear it coming in.
Freaked a lot of people out, but didn't do all that much damage. Couldn't be aimed accurately enough to take out a strategic target. There is some debate on how worthwhile strategic bombing was in general, but the V-2 especially was much less worthwhile as an innovation than the late planes and subs that the Germans were capable of producing; subs that could run underwater the whole way, and the first true jet aircraft.
Compared to that, the ability to toss a bomb across the Channel is small potatoes.
Wellllll, I agree and disagree. You're right about when they were introduced, but the tanks of WWI weren't the tanks of WWII. In WWI the role of the tank was basically to provide light fire support, and a slow moving wall for soldiers to walk behind while it crossed the land between the trenches.
Not that that wasn't absolutely huge, because it was, but it wasn't anywhere near as decisive as the role of the tank in WWII. Tanks and airplanes were the big winners as far as military tech in WWII; they'd both been introduced in WWI, but they really achieved their potential in WWII.
Basically that our society is shaped more by old tech than new tech, and that flashy new tech only has relevance based on how it will alter society 50 years down the line.
In other words: "You goddamn kids get off my lawn!"
I like the New Yorker...On occasion. Their movie reviews are almost perfect: if they love it, I'll hate it, and if they hate it, it's probably worth watching.
But they're about the last people I'd trust on a technological issue. The article reminded me of the "Luddite" column from Wired.
The consoles make all their money from licensing. So, in order to develop for a console you have to get a license to do so (and then split your profits with the console maker). They can refuse to license anything they want to, so there is effectively no legal way to release content for a console that the manufacturer doesn't want released.
Reading the effing article, his point seems to be that we overstate the impact of new technology, seeing as we still use mostly old technology, even after the new technology has supposedly "changed our lives forever".
He throws up a bunch of examples, like the fact that the army is still using horses in Afganistan, because they're efficient. And that "huge" innovations, like the V-2 rocket in WWII weren't as pivotal as people think they were (no mention of, you know, the tank).
Basically, he's saying that what people view as life-changing technology isn't always...That the real world changing technology isn't always something that is obvious at the time.
Basically, I think he's full of it. Sure, we often don't recognize the significance of certain innovations which end up shaping our whole world. And then there are things like the cell phone, the internal combustion engine, and the personal computer...Technologies which actually are as influential as we think they are.
Sure there are times where we jam high tech where it doesn't belong, and there are past innovations which are just as valuable today as they were decades ago. But that doesn't immediately invalidate our perception of technology as a driver of change. He talks about the pneumatic tube mail system they used to have in the big cities, and how people thought it was a great thing, and how it's now a non-thing...The thing is that system served a need, and was superceded by better technologies that allowed society to fulfill that need in a more meaningful way.
So society drives technological innovation, yes, but it absolutely depends on the right innovation coming along at the right time, and there is a certain amount of serendipity in that.
Wait...So console makers do the whole "morality police" thing regarding what games are released on their consoles? WTF? So much for catering to the only demographic that actually has the money to buy one of their consoles. I've got about as much desire to play Manhunt 2 as I do to attach electrodes to my nuts, but it still pisses me off that they would pull crap like this.
Chalk up another one for PC gaming.
Well, no. Arcologies in Sim city made people happy, it reduced your street congestion, and they were great revenue producers. I generally started putting them up as soon as I got access to anything that wasn't the big ugly metal one.
I think in the long run, we definitely need to start looking in that direction. I don't mean a literal arcology, but more self-contained living areas for large cities, that have nice common areas, greenhouses, shopping, etc. The sprawl is a real issue, and it's not going to stop being one until living in a city doesn't automatically mean a sterile existence of glass and concrete with the occasional park, where you never know your neighbors.
Water is really more of an issue. At some point it will cease to be economical to farm large sections of the midwest, just because it will become so expensive to irrigate without a plentiful source of local water.
At that point, large, self-contained farms that use a comparatively miniscule amount of water will look like a MUCH better idea.
Any bonus CO2 or NO3- would be beneficial to the plants. Extra O3, CO, NO2- and SO2 would be harmful/toxic. Still, it's indoors, and all those things are at least as bad for people, so whatever systems we have in place to deal with environmental contaminants for people should be equally adequate for plants. As I recall, they mainly consist of closing the windows.
Since adding extra CO2 would be beneficial to yields, etc, we could use this sort of cultivation as a way to dispose of extra CO2 captured by carbon sequestration projects.
Maybe if you do well, it's a shot at being on the eventual Mars mission? ...Yea, pretty unlikely, unless it gets off the ground far sooner than it probably will.
If nothing else, it's an opportunity to sit around on your ass getting paid for 17 months of doing nothing. Just like being in the military, but without the periodic "oh my god I'm going to die" moments...What's the quote? "War is 95% boredom and 5% pure terror"? This is just like that, but with 5% more boredom!
They're already doing the "prolonged weightlessness" experiments on the ISS. I think the record is 438 days. Wonder what kind of shape you'd be in after 7 to 8 months of weightlessness, and whether you'd be able to function "well" on Mars?
Sure, windows is the default. Anyone who has ever bought from dell knows this. But you can always get a machine without an OS.
To be fair, they're a generic vendor, and Windows is the generic choice. That they offer better options is a good step, and that they offer support on them suggests to me that they are a lot more serious about Linux than they ever have been in the past. There is still room for improvement, but still.
It's more accurate to say that Dell's "Business class" laptops don't come with an Ubuntu option.
I can't find anything anywhere that ever suggested that they did so to have someone up in arms about the fact that they don't is disingenuous at best, and a flat out misrepresentation by my interpretation. Since dell has recently been allowing linux desktops to be sold, to have someone jump up and start claiming that they're not dealing fair is only fair to Dell if you're speaking about a product group that they claimed they'd offer Ubuntu on in the first place.
It's the same as if I started ranting about them not offering OS X, but in this case it's a rant targeted specifically toward a community that views these sorts of things very seriously.
So FUD. Fear that Dell is backing out on it's pledge to support linux, Uncertainty that Dell means what it's saying when it says it will support linux on it's equipment, and Doubt that Dell is a trustworthy company. Pretty clear.
I don't particularly like Dell...I'd never buy anything from them for my personal use, and I only buy it for business use when they can give me a better deal than another reputable dealer. But I've never had a problem with them regarding linux, or at least getting a machine with no OS, and it pisses me off to see an insta-lynch mob pop up on one guy's unsupported word.
The hard part will be getting there and back; they need to know the levels of cabin fever that are going to occur and they need to be able to test that in a simulated environment.
Locking people in a tank for 17 months and watching how they deal with each other is a valuable experiment. Spending 2 years running around the desert in a spacesuit to simulate martian experiments...Now that would be worthless.
No need. Business class machines have the "No OS" option right there with the other OS options. I use that more than I use the pre-installed linux options, frankly. I like being able to set it up myself, and choose what I want to be installed.
That would be why they offer redhat support and SuSE support as well.
The full list of supported linux can be found here. Just because one guy wants to buy one machine that doesn't come with Ubuntu, everyone is up in arms. Dell never claimed that they were going to offer it on every machine. They're damn careful what they offer for business machines in general, and you can always get a business class machine with no OS.
Buncha fricking sheep. Dell's making a good effort on linux.
This is absolutely the case. If you want business support for linux, you can get SUSE support and RedHat support, and that's it.
It's not about that. Dell makes "Business computers" they have whole lines of "business" computers, very specific models; Optiplex, Precision, PowerEdge. They come with a limited number of OS choices...which includes Redhat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise.
You can't buy Ubuntu on one of those, and you can't buy windows xp either. Clearly Dell views Ubuntu as "not ready for the server" and is unwilling to put it on a server class machine. You can still buy the machine with no OS, and add Ubuntu yourself.