..t'would be to the left of the forrard motion of travel, matey!
I just thought the image was amusing in me mind, a wad of gum, zillion buck rolling robot..buncha guys in white coats standing around scratching their heads..heh heh heh. I think that's why we as society thought it might be a good idea to have BOTH scientists and engineers.
first wad of gum that thing rolls over might bring it to a stop, or make it list to port or something -> roll THUNK roll THUNK. And stairs? Or going outside?
I like old school, traditional sci fi robots, humanoid looking, bipedal walking type. If they need to get fancy, drop in the jackie chan mod chip or something.
If they had kept quiet about the missing tapes longer, they could have gone ahead and watched the auction, and see where the equipment got sold to, then followed that around. Chances might have been good they could have nailed the perps then, but now, much less of a chance.
No, they haven't for a long time now. They listened to the kvetching (it was a good point after all) and changed. My impression is they really do listen, really want an easy desktop "just works" type distro that most anyone could use or OEM hardware vendors can use, and have tried pretty hard to pull it off. They need to make a buck somehow to work fulltime on it obviously, but most of the other larger distros do that as well. You can go to their forums and frequently see the ceo answering questions. Maybe not perfect, but it shows they are trying.
That just sucks on the parking there it appears. Yep, the government's fault, fair and square. Them poor folks who got their cars trapped didn't know, and the people running the parking garage didn't know until they got "escorted" out. I'd say sue the city, but all that does is pass along any fine monies to be paid by innocent local tax payers.
Long term solution, vote the bums out!(fits just so many situations nowadays).
I lived metro Atlanta (inside perimeter) for 15 years, I finally had it with major urban living and just *moved*. Traffic jams, expensive parking, hot and cold running crackheads, bad crime, riots, nasty stinky, expensive, and etc. Moved, solved those problems more or less. Pay drop-check. Cheaper to live-check. Much less stress and BS-double check. Choices.
...was parking and unparking cars up until the point the city sent their hired goons in and escorted the techs off the premises. Well, gee golly gee, the crap stopped working! Whoulda thunk it? answer=anyone who spent two seconds pondering it realistically.
The city signed the contract, then obviously didn't want to pay for it anymore, or not as much or whatever. It's entirely their fault. They chose to use robotic parking, closed source software to run the parking, they signed a termed service contract, they decided they were gonna play hardball and bounce the admins because they didn't want to keep paying. This falls under the 'tough noogies' rule then.
No one said that city governments had to be comprised of masterminds,and they got exactly what they contracted for. FOSS, open standards and alternative for parking have existed for a long time, their hired "experts" deep in the bowels of city IT and law action just dropped the ball and thought they could bully and bluff their way into something cheap. It don't work that way, private business is just as mercenary and capitalistic as they can get away with, that's the way US business works.
The city has lawyers and IT people, it was up to them to realise the ramifications of their "escorted off the premises" deal. They choked in other words, they blew it. If you or I get canned at work, "escorted off the premises", we sure as hell aren't going to be working for that dude anymore,and any projects we are working on become their problem, and no, they don't get to automagically own your stuff just because it's in place there, and in this nation IP is considered "property". You get to go home with your property, in this case, their IP license. Tough noogies for Hoboken. Innocent car owners? They need to get mad at their city goofs, the parking company was still working moving their cars until ordered not to.
Don't like the license or terms of a contract, don't sign it, it's that easy. Can't look ahead and see where you might have some problems, get a different job where you are more capable. Don't want to continue with your contracted service, don't complain when it stops working and you got to figure it out yourself or think about breaking the law to continue. Don't like the laws, don't elect people who think closed source software and patents are a "good idea and good for business". And etc. They system worked as it is designed to work! Elected idiots hired stupid people to contract with people who are using the system where IP is considered very valuable property. And all that falls under voters who don't care, they elect people based on how they look in 30 second soundbites on TV and say the buzz words they want to hear. I got zero sympathy anymore when software decsiions backfire on people when they have shown they don't give much of a crap in the first place.
This is a side issue, but it's the same as anything else in government. I vote third party or independent, and have for a long long time now, the other 99% of the electorate (who keep voting in these D and R people naievely expecting things to change for the better) seems to think I am "wasting my vote", so they can go right ahead and assume complete and full responsibility for governmental screwups like this one and about anything else you read about daily, because I certainly didn't vote for their particular stupid goofball. ha! Double ha!
Frankly, I think this parking garage situation is funny and a prime example of how these closed source situations can bite people in the ass because they just utterly refuse to think ahead a little. I think with another 10,000 situations like this happening across the nation (how about that blackberry RIM job?) that maybe on the federal level they just might realise they might have made a mistake and maybe they might rethink software patents,what software under what license they contract for to run government services,what they pay for stuff, what they might want to pay for in the future, standards and formats, etc.
Maybe it's like alcoholism, the alky has to hit rock bottom before he even sees there's a problem and decides to do anything about it.
We got wireless wimax a la motorola canopy service and it's quite good-as long as it isn't heavy storming out, then it drops to dismal, so I have kept my landline and dialup connection as a backup. But seeing as how it has taken me since the mid 90s to now to get ANY broadband, I love it! It's a cinch that in areas not currently served by conventional broadband,(roughly still half or more the geographical area of the US) you are going to be waiting between a LONG time until never to have any of the big companies run you good copper or coax or fiber, so, wireless broadband is where it's at. So maybe sometime soon we'll have even more competition and prices will drop and speeds go up! I think a good rule of thumb is look to where satellite Tv is common-those are the areas probably not served by any broadband yet. It's a huge potential market out there, and wireless appears to be the only cost effective market solution. Satellite internet for the extreme boonies, small scale boonies wimax, every place else ya'all already got some choices most likely with wires or fiber or shortrange 802.11 stuff.
that's my guess, a variation of the honeypot. They don't care about the vast bulk of the public seeing the maps, but they need a little winnowing action. They are interested in just a few people who REALLY want/need to see some critical features using the maps. the government there considers those folks "persons of interest". They are trolling for those guys to take the bait and try to circumvent their way to those maps.
Granted, still lame, ways around it, etc, but it is still my guess. Governments/regimes feeling threatened (or even think they are threatened) tend to throw various crap at the walls to see what sticks, even if 99% doesn't. This is a fishing expedition, not a censorship move..
Lockin, monopoly action, chronic serial greedsters. Top to bottom and sideways, their goal has always been total control. Having the default browser is part of that, browsers are an incredible part of most people's computing experiences and as such are a critical component of the "lock in stack". IE is very important for that lockin. They need people to stay brainwashed, they need them to honestly believe that IE means "the internet" and that "windows" equals "computer".
They aren't content making a really good living, nope, and never have been either, they have to make a *killing* in perpetutity. Anything less than that is failure in their eyes. Remember, from their point of view, and paraphrased from one of their goons recent tirades(about google and desktop search actually), if anyone else is eating, they must have taken the food off of MS' plate. That's their mindset and their obvious business model. And they will do anything to keep it that way.
They make enron shenanigans look like a lemonade stand stick up.
for the first several years of their existence I didn't think that, I just thought "another computer company", but since then, all that has come out has convinced me, it has been obvious that is where they are at, total greed, their way or the highway, and etc. Can't put the damn fork down and push away from the plate for two seconds. As to IE being free, not really, it's part of their OS,and that OS costs money.
Really! If Google did that it would be most excellent! It is logical, fair, practical and do-able, and it does follow the precedent they just set themselves.
Could we please have a *single* CD base install? Then folks can add on whatever they wish after that point. That was the whole point of "extras", wasn't it? Downloading 5 CD Isos or a DVD makes it rather difficult for those on slower connections or who live where they get charged per minute fees for telco connections, etc. Not everyone has a multi megabyte speed/ no caps limit for their net connection. And it is more than possible to have a robust decent full install on one CD, many other distros have proven that.
Second (compound) question if allowed. Don't you think multiple releases per year are excessive due to the nature of the huge amount of packages that need to be tweaked along with many kernels? Wouldn't it be better and lead to somewhat more stability and acceptance to have one release per year instead of hurrying and trying to force two or three releases? Seems like as soon as a full point release is out, then soon thereafter-too soon- the next version in "beta" is out. Uhh.. can this be explained? Which one exactly are folks supposed to be using/testing and sending in bug reports on again with that sort of policy? Perpetual alpha/betaware has a place, but so many folks got shut out of a paid/supported version when the big RH/Fedora split happened (RH lost my cash injections when that happened), that there's no middle ground and reasonable alternative - you have the choice of "free as in beer never finished to the point of stablility for more than a few weeks brand" or "very expensive long term supported RH workstation" releases. Something in the middle between those two extremes just might be worthwhile and also be well received by the community.
...are a possible big threat. The fact of nanoparticles becoming a very common substance in our day to day environment could turn out to be a huge problem later on. I'm not saying it will, but I am not convinced on their "safe" claims either. These tiny particles are easily inhaled in some situations and so far they are shown to be easily absorbed, even into the brain. Look at the past track record of industry and small particles in general, all that stuff that was "perfectly" safe then later on they (industry academic shills with various letters next to their names "they") get to say "whoops, maybe we were wrong". Asbestos, silica, coal dust, fabric dust in mills, etc, a decent list.
Basically I am a default skeptic, and I don't take as a given their tinfoil hat pronouncements of stuff being "safe" just because they say so. Fool me once and etc. One thing we have learned with industry over the years, if there's a buck to be made, and especially billions of bucks, anything and everything they do is "safe" from their POV and they have shown they have zero problems getting "learned" folks to back them up anytime they choose. I like tech, think it's great, but am no longer the young naieve guy who used to trust them implicitly.
A tangible could be patented, an intangible not. That would certainly bring it back into focus and intent more. They had intangible "intellectual property" back in the olden days and specifically DIDN'T include it under something that could be patented. Copyright for that stuff works just fine.
The reason they want patents on intangibles is because they have delibarately gone about destroying the tangibles manufacturing base inside the US. so they need something else to replace it to sell. They aren't finished yet with the eradication of domestic manufacturing, but I could easily see a time where not much beyond military hardware is manufactured here. And maybe not even a lot of that. The big (mostly international now) arms companies don't care, they just want their expensive stuff used up as fast as possible so it can be replaced. Ka-ching! ka-ching! Rake in the dough! There's too much financial incentive to keep a slew of smaller and medium sized wars going for it *not* to happen.
Maybe if eventually all we can get is huge quantities of jellyfish we can recycle it to our favor. Some we could use to make biodiesel fuel, the rest of it use for land based agricultural fertiliser.
As to the algae, chlorella is said to be a decent food and somewhat good tasting(I read that someplace but never tried it myself).
Let's look at history in some industries without regulation, say, meat industry circa 1800s. MMMm boy howdy! That's some tasty maggots there! Chow down, make my rare! Chemical industry pre EPA, YUMMY! Mom, I want some more [insert string of unpronounceable chemical names] in my glass of tapwater! It does a body good! How about telcos during good ole ma bell days? Mom, let's call grammaw! OK dear, remember, only talk for ten seconds on the rented phone that has been exactly the same for the last 25 years, else we'll need a third mortgage!
no regs=bad news, radioactive enhanced asbestos brand corn flakes and stuff like that
too many regs=eek! despotism, bureaucracy run past amok, entrenched monopolies or powerful cartels
some sane middle ground=best hoomannz have come up with, see also "compromise", and I wish we had more of the third option
Niche markets are usually very profitable. Very. Insted of being a small or medium fish in a big pond, with just tons of competition, you can be a big fish in a little pond, and dominate there. That's the theory anyway. Macs may only have a small over all market share, but they cost a lot, have a fanatical owner base,(marketing just loves fanaticsm, it's called mindshare and is usually sought after) and the same owner base is used-to and accepts paying a premium for various "stuff".
Just something to consider.
I got no dog in this fight, neither a new mac owner nor much of a gamer at all, maybe 2-3 times a year play mah jongg or however you spell that. Really, I don't give a crap about games and wouldn't drop 50 cents on the best one out there, but that's just me. I know a billion people or more are serious gamers. I've worked E3 several times and know it is big business. I don't care about games EXCEPT I know it drives advanced video research, which is cool. I drop my "spare" loot on meatspace tools and outdoor sporting goods. I like that better. Computers to me are surfing internet access machines. Which means I can get by quite cheaply on the hardware side.
What I don't like about games is it is (primarily) keeping people using windows, which I think is a very bad precedent given their long standing anti competetive beahvior and the effect it has had on computing in general. I would try to not work for or encourage "the mafia", and yes, I consider MS as a company to be....well, I ain't shy so I'll say it.. crooked is the word that fits. IMO, no diff from enron or worldcom or haliburton, just raking it in with sleazy tactics over the years. I think that sucks and wouldn't even try to make a penny off of supporting it. Replacing it, sure, supporting it..no. I'd be..ashamed and embarrassed...to promote them in any way, directly or even indirectly. Again, that's just me and not forcing that view on any other person at all. Everyone gets to make choices. History judges what was good or bad after a long time period passes. So be it and stuff. Have fun.
I don't know, some huge billions? Wonder how many electric scooters you could have gotten for the same amount of cash...tell people, agree to use these to commute, state taxes waived, free parking, and the scooter is free as in beer.
It's a tradeoff on the family station wagon concept on whether or not you need the 4wd or not. You may only need it a dozen times a year, but when ya need it, you usually really *need* it. Most SUVs have at least a dealer option for 4wd so you can choose it, but few full size vans do (do any now?? I don't know...) Anyway, by next year, there will be a plethora of either electric and gasoline hybrids or straight diesel SUVs out there that get "good enough" mileage (for what they do). The market is reacting, just slowly. Me, I'd like a plug in hybrid, diesel for the fuel engine part, normal 4wd pickup, one ton size, with the ability to act as a stationary stand alone emergency generator. That isn't on the market yet, but when it gets there...I'll wait for the rich guys to buy them new then get one several years old, about the same as I do with any vehicle.
rats, I just realised it will be at least another decade before I get my practical ride:( Fuel'll be 20 clams a gallon with a ration card and RFID/GPS tracker chips charging you dollars per mile on taxes... double:(:(
good news is, I should have my horse by then;). I should start building my conestoga RV wagon now I guess...
Seems there was just an article a few weeks ago or so about how there was a breakthrough and now titanium is or will be much more affordable. That might have something to do with it.
I'd trust a kid "off the farm" to be able to do construction work before about anyone else the same age. You grow up building and repairing big structures, welding, operating equipment that costs as much as most folks houses, etc you appreciate how to do things properly. Any random 20 year old kid off a farm might easily have ten years experience in what would be considered adult professional work in most of the trades. He's grown up wiring at high voltages, working on very large and complex plumbing installations, doing all sorts of carpentry, cement work, equipment maintenance, etc. It's a pretty thorough and complex process to keep a large farm operating. And today's farm kids are using automated and computerized devices, all the way to GPS enabled equipment that uses robotic steering. maybe it is past time to put that "country bumpkin" meme to rest, it no longer applies.
With that said,back on subject, that entire big dig project has a long history of controversy and accusations of weirdness around it. I am (somewhat) surprised it has taken this long to start to fall apart.
As to the illegals versus legals and so on, it's a crapshoot. I have worked on jobs with illegals that were a menace,totally incompetent and dangerous to be around, hired merely because it was a body to throw at a job for cheap pay obviously. A few have been quite good from recollection, most are pretty common, some skills, but a lot of enthusiasm. They come from a culture of lower resources, recycling old junk more, cob jobbing as normal, etc. I think it is just too large a variable to really be able to quantify it adequately. What can't be denied though, is that hiring illegals in a general sense is a cost cutting measure so the boss class can skim a few more bucks off the project, and when that becomes the primary focus on a job, the job suffers. Jobs should cost what they cost, not the lowest crap possible then cut corners from that point. You get your "problems" then. When you have something as important as a big dig styled project, you shouldn't screw up. If it is deemed to be unaffordable to do correctly, don't do it.
If your new garage roof sags and leaks after a few years because you hired the local cut rate guy with his "crew" of casual pickups from the home depot parking lot..well, it's no big deal to anyone but you and not a major threat. Something like the big dig is a totally different situation.
...could be accomplished by abolishing the federal department of education. It isn't needed at all, it's a huge money pit (along with several other federal agencies)that uses a ton of the cash just to run their own bureaucracy, then engages in social engineering to dole out part of the money back to the states. It is a relatively historically recent invention, and we could just call it a flawed experiment and move on.
As to unions and management, etc, union workers only do what management tells them to do. Look at Detroit-is it the unions fault that GM and Ford were so slow out of the blocks to get decent built affordable high mileage per gallon vehicles out there? Nope. Why didn't they come out with hybrids first? And etc. Folks bash unions for management/stock holders decisions all the time. Now I have been in a couple of unions and will be the first to say there are a lot of problems, but designing and trying to market products that are over priced, under built, and always 5 years behind the trends with a fixation on bling and curb feelers and fins is not the unions fault-ever. Yet-they get the blame all the time. Doesn't compute. Of course unions want the best possible deal they can get vis a vis pay, etc, that' the job of the union, project a united front for negotiations. Management in industry does this as well, they just aren't called unions, they are called country club golf courses with the good ole boy skull and bones networking, and industry associations.
In the local schools, a lot of problems could be avoided if parents just took a more pro active role in the local school board and in local politics with property taxes, etc.. Snooze ya lose there. People need to prioritize better. That's why I see home schooling taking off so much, some people realise quite readily there isn't much to do with bucking the entire system from the feds on down, so they just suck it up and homeschool if they really care. I know if I was in that situation now, trying to put small children through school, they would be home schooled for the most part.
Just like a lot of people are making their own biodiesel from used restaurant grease, this too ripe fruit seems like a good source of feedstock for some ethanol production.
Of course, the stores could solve the problem by just dropping prices right off the bat so they sell the stuff before it goes bad.
..to think the word "books"? Really, this isn't rocket surgery here. This is one of the primary uses of these proposed laptops, cheap e books easily shared and duplicated, to go to areas where a SINGLE dead trees book is an expensive luxury. It's right in their proposals! I'd call that a "pedagogical use".
interestingly, enron came up with those huge commercial sized wind power generators. At the firesale, GE bought that division and those are some of the ones going in all over for commercial electrical generation.
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..t'would be to the left of the forrard motion of travel, matey!
I just thought the image was amusing in me mind, a wad of gum, zillion buck rolling robot..buncha guys in white coats standing around scratching their heads..heh heh heh. I think that's why we as society thought it might be a good idea to have BOTH scientists and engineers.
first wad of gum that thing rolls over might bring it to a stop, or make it list to port or something ->
roll THUNK roll THUNK. And stairs? Or going outside?
I like old school, traditional sci fi robots, humanoid looking, bipedal walking type. If they need to get fancy, drop in the jackie chan mod chip or something.
If they had kept quiet about the missing tapes longer, they could have gone ahead and watched the auction, and see where the equipment got sold to, then followed that around. Chances might have been good they could have nailed the perps then, but now, much less of a chance.
No, they haven't for a long time now. They listened to the kvetching (it was a good point after all) and changed. My impression is they really do listen, really want an easy desktop "just works" type distro that most anyone could use or OEM hardware vendors can use, and have tried pretty hard to pull it off. They need to make a buck somehow to work fulltime on it obviously, but most of the other larger distros do that as well. You can go to their forums and frequently see the ceo answering questions. Maybe not perfect, but it shows they are trying.
We're nerds, so we gots to know! If you have both robosapien and raptor, and they fight, who wins?
That just sucks on the parking there it appears. Yep, the government's fault, fair and square. Them poor folks who got their cars trapped didn't know, and the people running the parking garage didn't know until they got "escorted" out. I'd say sue the city, but all that does is pass along any fine monies to be paid by innocent local tax payers.
Long term solution, vote the bums out!(fits just so many situations nowadays).
I lived metro Atlanta (inside perimeter) for 15 years, I finally had it with major urban living and just *moved*. Traffic jams, expensive parking, hot and cold running crackheads, bad crime, riots, nasty stinky, expensive, and etc. Moved, solved those problems more or less. Pay drop-check. Cheaper to live-check. Much less stress and BS-double check. Choices.
...was parking and unparking cars up until the point the city sent their hired goons in and escorted the techs off the premises. Well, gee golly gee, the crap stopped working! Whoulda thunk it? answer=anyone who spent two seconds pondering it realistically.
The city signed the contract, then obviously didn't want to pay for it anymore, or not as much or whatever. It's entirely their fault. They chose to use robotic parking, closed source software to run the parking, they signed a termed service contract, they decided they were gonna play hardball and bounce the admins because they didn't want to keep paying. This falls under the 'tough noogies' rule then.
No one said that city governments had to be comprised of masterminds,and they got exactly what they contracted for. FOSS, open standards and alternative for parking have existed for a long time, their hired "experts" deep in the bowels of city IT and law action just dropped the ball and thought they could bully and bluff their way into something cheap. It don't work that way, private business is just as mercenary and capitalistic as they can get away with, that's the way US business works.
The city has lawyers and IT people, it was up to them to realise the ramifications of their "escorted off the premises" deal. They choked in other words, they blew it. If you or I get canned at work, "escorted off the premises", we sure as hell aren't going to be working for that dude anymore,and any projects we are working on become their problem, and no, they don't get to automagically own your stuff just because it's in place there, and in this nation IP is considered "property". You get to go home with your property, in this case, their IP license. Tough noogies for Hoboken. Innocent car owners? They need to get mad at their city goofs, the parking company was still working moving their cars until ordered not to.
Don't like the license or terms of a contract, don't sign it, it's that easy. Can't look ahead and see where you might have some problems, get a different job where you are more capable. Don't want to continue with your contracted service, don't complain when it stops working and you got to figure it out yourself or think about breaking the law to continue. Don't like the laws, don't elect people who think closed source software and patents are a "good idea and good for business". And etc. They system worked as it is designed to work! Elected idiots hired stupid people to contract with people who are using the system where IP is considered very valuable property. And all that falls under voters who don't care, they elect people based on how they look in 30 second soundbites on TV and say the buzz words they want to hear. I got zero sympathy anymore when software decsiions backfire on people when they have shown they don't give much of a crap in the first place.
This is a side issue, but it's the same as anything else in government. I vote third party or independent, and have for a long long time now, the other 99% of the electorate (who keep voting in these D and R people naievely expecting things to change for the better) seems to think I am "wasting my vote", so they can go right ahead and assume complete and full responsibility for governmental screwups like this one and about anything else you read about daily, because I certainly didn't vote for their particular stupid goofball. ha! Double ha!
Frankly, I think this parking garage situation is funny and a prime example of how these closed source situations can bite people in the ass because they just utterly refuse to think ahead a little. I think with another 10,000 situations like this happening across the nation (how about that blackberry RIM job?) that maybe on the federal level they just might realise they might have made a mistake and maybe they might rethink software patents,what software under what license they contract for to run government services,what they pay for stuff, what they might want to pay for in the future, standards and formats, etc.
Maybe it's like alcoholism, the alky has to hit rock bottom before he even sees there's a problem and decides to do anything about it.
We got wireless wimax a la motorola canopy service and it's quite good-as long as it isn't heavy storming out, then it drops to dismal, so I have kept my landline and dialup connection as a backup. But seeing as how it has taken me since the mid 90s to now to get ANY broadband, I love it! It's a cinch that in areas not currently served by conventional broadband,(roughly still half or more the geographical area of the US) you are going to be waiting between a LONG time until never to have any of the big companies run you good copper or coax or fiber, so, wireless broadband is where it's at. So maybe sometime soon we'll have even more competition and prices will drop and speeds go up! I think a good rule of thumb is look to where satellite Tv is common-those are the areas probably not served by any broadband yet. It's a huge potential market out there, and wireless appears to be the only cost effective market solution. Satellite internet for the extreme boonies, small scale boonies wimax, every place else ya'all already got some choices most likely with wires or fiber or shortrange 802.11 stuff.
that's my guess, a variation of the honeypot. They don't care about the vast bulk of the public seeing the maps, but they need a little winnowing action. They are interested in just a few people who REALLY want/need to see some critical features using the maps. the government there considers those folks "persons of interest". They are trolling for those guys to take the bait and try to circumvent their way to those maps.
Granted, still lame, ways around it, etc, but it is still my guess. Governments/regimes feeling threatened (or even think they are threatened) tend to throw various crap at the walls to see what sticks, even if 99% doesn't. This is a fishing expedition, not a censorship move..
Lockin, monopoly action, chronic serial greedsters. Top to bottom and sideways, their goal has always been total control. Having the default browser is part of that, browsers are an incredible part of most people's computing experiences and as such are a critical component of the "lock in stack". IE is very important for that lockin. They need people to stay brainwashed, they need them to honestly believe that IE means "the internet" and that "windows" equals "computer".
They aren't content making a really good living, nope, and never have been either, they have to make a *killing* in perpetutity. Anything less than that is failure in their eyes. Remember, from their point of view, and paraphrased from one of their goons recent tirades(about google and desktop search actually), if anyone else is eating, they must have taken the food off of MS' plate. That's their mindset and their obvious business model. And they will do anything to keep it that way.
They make enron shenanigans look like a lemonade stand stick up.
for the first several years of their existence I didn't think that, I just thought "another computer company", but since then, all that has come out has convinced me, it has been obvious that is where they are at, total greed, their way or the highway, and etc. Can't put the damn fork down and push away from the plate for two seconds. As to IE being free, not really, it's part of their OS,and that OS costs money.
Really! If Google did that it would be most excellent! It is logical, fair, practical and do-able, and it does follow the precedent they just set themselves.
Could we please have a *single* CD base install? Then folks can add on whatever they wish after that point. That was the whole point of "extras", wasn't it? Downloading 5 CD Isos or a DVD makes it rather difficult for those on slower connections or who live where they get charged per minute fees for telco connections, etc. Not everyone has a multi megabyte speed/ no caps limit for their net connection. And it is more than possible to have a robust decent full install on one CD, many other distros have proven that.
Second (compound) question if allowed. Don't you think multiple releases per year are excessive due to the nature of the huge amount of packages that need to be tweaked along with many kernels? Wouldn't it be better and lead to somewhat more stability and acceptance to have one release per year instead of hurrying and trying to force two or three releases? Seems like as soon as a full point release is out, then soon thereafter-too soon- the next version in "beta" is out. Uhh.. can this be explained? Which one exactly are folks supposed to be using/testing and sending in bug reports on again with that sort of policy? Perpetual alpha/betaware has a place, but so many folks got shut out of a paid/supported version when the big RH/Fedora split happened (RH lost my cash injections when that happened), that there's no middle ground and reasonable alternative - you have the choice of "free as in beer never finished to the point of stablility for more than a few weeks brand" or "very expensive long term supported RH workstation" releases. Something in the middle between those two extremes just might be worthwhile and also be well received by the community.
...are a possible big threat. The fact of nanoparticles becoming a very common substance in our day to day environment could turn out to be a huge problem later on. I'm not saying it will, but I am not convinced on their "safe" claims either. These tiny particles are easily inhaled in some situations and so far they are shown to be easily absorbed, even into the brain. Look at the past track record of industry and small particles in general, all that stuff that was "perfectly" safe then later on they (industry academic shills with various letters next to their names "they") get to say "whoops, maybe we were wrong". Asbestos, silica, coal dust, fabric dust in mills, etc, a decent list.
Basically I am a default skeptic, and I don't take as a given their tinfoil hat pronouncements of stuff being "safe" just because they say so. Fool me once and etc. One thing we have learned with industry over the years, if there's a buck to be made, and especially billions of bucks, anything and everything they do is "safe" from their POV and they have shown they have zero problems getting "learned" folks to back them up anytime they choose. I like tech, think it's great, but am no longer the young naieve guy who used to trust them implicitly.
A tangible could be patented, an intangible not. That would certainly bring it back into focus and intent more. They had intangible "intellectual property" back in the olden days and specifically DIDN'T include it under something that could be patented. Copyright for that stuff works just fine.
The reason they want patents on intangibles is because they have delibarately gone about destroying the tangibles manufacturing base inside the US. so they need something else to replace it to sell. They aren't finished yet with the eradication of domestic manufacturing, but I could easily see a time where not much beyond military hardware is manufactured here. And maybe not even a lot of that. The big (mostly international now) arms companies don't care, they just want their expensive stuff used up as fast as possible so it can be replaced. Ka-ching! ka-ching! Rake in the dough! There's too much financial incentive to keep a slew of smaller and medium sized wars going for it *not* to happen.
Maybe if eventually all we can get is huge quantities of jellyfish we can recycle it to our favor. Some we could use to make biodiesel fuel, the rest of it use for land based agricultural fertiliser.
As to the algae, chlorella is said to be a decent food and somewhat good tasting(I read that someplace but never tried it myself).
Let's look at history in some industries without regulation, say, meat industry circa 1800s. MMMm boy howdy! That's some tasty maggots there! Chow down, make my rare! Chemical industry pre EPA, YUMMY! Mom, I want some more [insert string of unpronounceable chemical names] in my glass of tapwater! It does a body good! How about telcos during good ole ma bell days? Mom, let's call grammaw! OK dear, remember, only talk for ten seconds on the rented phone that has been exactly the same for the last 25 years, else we'll need a third mortgage!
no regs=bad news, radioactive enhanced asbestos brand corn flakes and stuff like that
too many regs=eek! despotism, bureaucracy run past amok, entrenched monopolies or powerful cartels
some sane middle ground=best hoomannz have come up with, see also "compromise", and I wish we had more of the third option
Niche markets are usually very profitable. Very. Insted of being a small or medium fish in a big pond, with just tons of competition, you can be a big fish in a little pond, and dominate there. That's the theory anyway. Macs may only have a small over all market share, but they cost a lot, have a fanatical owner base,(marketing just loves fanaticsm, it's called mindshare and is usually sought after) and the same owner base is used-to and accepts paying a premium for various "stuff".
....well, I ain't shy so I'll say it.. crooked is the word that fits. IMO, no diff from enron or worldcom or haliburton, just raking it in with sleazy tactics over the years. I think that sucks and wouldn't even try to make a penny off of supporting it. Replacing it, sure, supporting it..no. I'd be ..ashamed and embarrassed...to promote them in any way, directly or even indirectly. Again, that's just me and not forcing that view on any other person at all. Everyone gets to make choices. History judges what was good or bad after a long time period passes. So be it and stuff. Have fun.
Just something to consider.
I got no dog in this fight, neither a new mac owner nor much of a gamer at all, maybe 2-3 times a year play mah jongg or however you spell that. Really, I don't give a crap about games and wouldn't drop 50 cents on the best one out there, but that's just me. I know a billion people or more are serious gamers. I've worked E3 several times and know it is big business. I don't care about games EXCEPT I know it drives advanced video research, which is cool. I drop my "spare" loot on meatspace tools and outdoor sporting goods. I like that better. Computers to me are surfing internet access machines. Which means I can get by quite cheaply on the hardware side.
What I don't like about games is it is (primarily) keeping people using windows, which I think is a very bad precedent given their long standing anti competetive beahvior and the effect it has had on computing in general. I would try to not work for or encourage "the mafia", and yes, I consider MS as a company to be
I don't know, some huge billions? Wonder how many electric scooters you could have gotten for the same amount of cash...tell people, agree to use these to commute, state taxes waived, free parking, and the scooter is free as in beer.
might have worked just as well...
It's a tradeoff on the family station wagon concept on whether or not you need the 4wd or not. You may only need it a dozen times a year, but when ya need it, you usually really *need* it. Most SUVs have at least a dealer option for 4wd so you can choose it, but few full size vans do (do any now?? I don't know...) Anyway, by next year, there will be a plethora of either electric and gasoline hybrids or straight diesel SUVs out there that get "good enough" mileage (for what they do). The market is reacting, just slowly. Me, I'd like a plug in hybrid, diesel for the fuel engine part, normal 4wd pickup, one ton size, with the ability to act as a stationary stand alone emergency generator. That isn't on the market yet, but when it gets there...I'll wait for the rich guys to buy them new then get one several years old, about the same as I do with any vehicle.
:( Fuel'll be 20 clams a gallon with a ration card and RFID/GPS tracker chips charging you dollars per mile on taxes... double :( :(
;). I should start building my conestoga RV wagon now I guess...
rats, I just realised it will be at least another decade before I get my practical ride
good news is, I should have my horse by then
Seems there was just an article a few weeks ago or so about how there was a breakthrough and now titanium is or will be much more affordable. That might have something to do with it.
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yes, here it is
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/
I'd trust a kid "off the farm" to be able to do construction work before about anyone else the same age. You grow up building and repairing big structures, welding, operating equipment that costs as much as most folks houses, etc you appreciate how to do things properly. Any random 20 year old kid off a farm might easily have ten years experience in what would be considered adult professional work in most of the trades. He's grown up wiring at high voltages, working on very large and complex plumbing installations, doing all sorts of carpentry, cement work, equipment maintenance, etc. It's a pretty thorough and complex process to keep a large farm operating. And today's farm kids are using automated and computerized devices, all the way to GPS enabled equipment that uses robotic steering. maybe it is past time to put that "country bumpkin" meme to rest, it no longer applies.
With that said,back on subject, that entire big dig project has a long history of controversy and accusations of weirdness around it. I am (somewhat) surprised it has taken this long to start to fall apart.
As to the illegals versus legals and so on, it's a crapshoot. I have worked on jobs with illegals that were a menace,totally incompetent and dangerous to be around, hired merely because it was a body to throw at a job for cheap pay obviously. A few have been quite good from recollection, most are pretty common, some skills, but a lot of enthusiasm. They come from a culture of lower resources, recycling old junk more, cob jobbing as normal, etc. I think it is just too large a variable to really be able to quantify it adequately. What can't be denied though, is that hiring illegals in a general sense is a cost cutting measure so the boss class can skim a few more bucks off the project, and when that becomes the primary focus on a job, the job suffers. Jobs should cost what they cost, not the lowest crap possible then cut corners from that point. You get your "problems" then. When you have something as important as a big dig styled project, you shouldn't screw up. If it is deemed to be unaffordable to do correctly, don't do it.
If your new garage roof sags and leaks after a few years because you hired the local cut rate guy with his "crew" of casual pickups from the home depot parking lot..well, it's no big deal to anyone but you and not a major threat. Something like the big dig is a totally different situation.
...could be accomplished by abolishing the federal department of education. It isn't needed at all, it's a huge money pit (along with several other federal agencies)that uses a ton of the cash just to run their own bureaucracy, then engages in social engineering to dole out part of the money back to the states. It is a relatively historically recent invention, and we could just call it a flawed experiment and move on.
As to unions and management, etc, union workers only do what management tells them to do. Look at Detroit-is it the unions fault that GM and Ford were so slow out of the blocks to get decent built affordable high mileage per gallon vehicles out there? Nope. Why didn't they come out with hybrids first? And etc. Folks bash unions for management/stock holders decisions all the time. Now I have been in a couple of unions and will be the first to say there are a lot of problems, but designing and trying to market products that are over priced, under built, and always 5 years behind the trends with a fixation on bling and curb feelers and fins is not the unions fault-ever. Yet-they get the blame all the time. Doesn't compute. Of course unions want the best possible deal they can get vis a vis pay, etc, that' the job of the union, project a united front for negotiations. Management in industry does this as well, they just aren't called unions, they are called country club golf courses with the good ole boy skull and bones networking, and industry associations.
In the local schools, a lot of problems could be avoided if parents just took a more pro active role in the local school board and in local politics with property taxes, etc.. Snooze ya lose there. People need to prioritize better. That's why I see home schooling taking off so much, some people realise quite readily there isn't much to do with bucking the entire system from the feds on down, so they just suck it up and homeschool if they really care. I know if I was in that situation now, trying to put small children through school, they would be home schooled for the most part.
Just like a lot of people are making their own biodiesel from used restaurant grease, this too ripe fruit seems like a good source of feedstock for some ethanol production.
Of course, the stores could solve the problem by just dropping prices right off the bat so they sell the stuff before it goes bad.
..to think the word "books"? Really, this isn't rocket surgery here. This is one of the primary uses of these proposed laptops, cheap e books easily shared and duplicated, to go to areas where a SINGLE dead trees book is an expensive luxury. It's right in their proposals! I'd call that a "pedagogical use".
interestingly, enron came up with those huge commercial sized wind power generators. At the firesale, GE bought that division and those are some of the ones going in all over for commercial electrical generation.
e n/index.htm
Here is what they have now
http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/