Hear, hear! I've been using it for 11 years and remember what a joy it was to suddenly have such a stable system compared to the years of instability I had with Windows. In all this time, I've been using basically the same applications, the same browsers, have the same bookmarks, etc. There's nothing wrong with it! This is the kind of continuity that I always expected from an OS.
The only issue is that Redmond still seems to have a monopoly in this area, which is erroneously seen as some sort of a technical strength on their part, by which it is inferred that any Linux desktop is technically inferior. What complete and utter bullshit!
... and being willing to accept low pay for a while.
After seven years as a sysadmin involved with nothing but commercial software (Windows, NetWare, Lotus Notes) I was faced with the awful prospect of being a Windows sysadmin for the rest of my life, but it just wasn't possible for me to simply find work with Linux instead, because it didn't say that on my CV. It was chicken and egg problem that I had to solve myself.
So, I started by installing a few servers at friends houses that still maintain for nothing. Then I got the chance to install a bunch of machines at a luxury barber shop franchise. It didn't pay much and lasted for only three years before they got a new app and went back to Windows (which I refused to support), but it was good experience to start with and some actual Linux stuff that I could put on my CV.
Eventually, I decided that I needed to figure out how to set up a more complicated environment; one that would feel like a modern Open Source alternative to the NetWare/Windows systems that I used to work with. I figured the best solution was a combination of OpenLDAP, Kerberos and OpenAFS. It took me months to figure out how to do this properly (see my homepage), but eventually I knew that I had something really useful.
Then, not long after I finished that research project, I got lucky and was given the opportunity to install three servers and a bunch of workstations with nothing but Debian GNU/Linux at a three-location veterinary clinic. It's strictly volunteer work and I'm still busy with the project, but so far it has given me the opportunity to put everything I've learned over the years (and then some) into practice. And, finally, it's all on my CV.
The best explanation I've heard so far for why technical documentation in general (and in this case *nix documentation in particular) is often so poor is from a sci-fi TV series, called Eureka. In one episode, the characters search in vain for a manual to help shut down an antiquated launch system. When they figure there never was a manual, one character asks another why the builders did not bother to write one. The reply he receives is "Well, what do you want: progress or poetry?"
Unfortunately, once it becomes self-aware it will decide the fate of the human race in a millisecond, launching ICBMs to start a global nuclear war that will kill most people immediately, followed by HKs to mop up the survivors. Lucky for us, a resistance movement will be set up, yadda, yadda...
As I was saying, a robot maid is far more convenient than a flying car. It may take me longer to get home in a normal car, but once I get there my house will be clean, my clothes folded, my lawn will be cut, my trash will be out and there will be food on my table.
* a legal system that favors the rich and powerful
* a broken banking system
* a free press that no longer does its job
* a corrupt political system
In no particular order.
IMO, however, that last one is the root cause of all the others, including the ones on your list. Since basically all US politicians depend heavily on private campaign donations (i.e. legalized bribery) in order to get elected to major government offices, they can't help but put the the interests of their financial backers ahead of those of the electorate. The Republicans have consistently proven themselves to be a bit more reliable in this than the Democrats, which is why the rich and powerful always prefer to support them first.
Today, especially in the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, the situation is worse than ever. It's telling that our current president, a Democrat, is politically to the right of Ronald Reagan. But, what can we do when our two-party system of democracy virtually guarantees that the bastards in the opposition will be elected soon enough anyway, since all they have to do is wait around for the electorate to get tired of the incumbent? Can it even be described as a democracy anymore? It seems more like a corporatocracy to me.
If this downward spiral is not reversed, how can it not end in violence?
Once I had a client who's hard disk broke down when his last backup of it was several months old. It seemed dead, but there was a lot of expensive data on it, so I took it straight to a professional. His services cost me about $2.000 and did restore a lot of the data, but not in the way that I expected. He sent me a couple of DVDs ten days later with on the one hand long lists of the names of the files that had been restored, and on the other the files with the data. The only problem was that the data files all had random names, so we were still faced with the task of figuring out which files had which names. For about 10.000 files. My client was relieved to have (most of) his data back, but was obviously disappointed with the results.
Of course, the trick is to never allow yourself to get anywhere near this kind of situation. The worst of it could have been avoided if my client had stuck to making his regular backups or had simply used RAID (or preferably done both).
The phones are getting bigger, because customers seem to be attracted to bigger screens. But once the screens become too big, the devices also get too big, at which point people start to want smaller phones again. After all, the main reason to carry it with you is because it's a portable communications device; all that computing power is great, but only if the devices remain small.
Therefore, the only solution is to not have such big screens on the phones and instead use external display devices. The possibility of using e.g mini HDMI connectors to couple them to larger monitors is one solution, but I think a much better one would be to connect them to head-mounted displays (HMDs). Then it would once again not be a problem for the phones themselves to have smaller displays, allowing them to be used primarily as input devices.
Making major changes for the sake of improving its aesthetic appeal is not going to attract more visitors or donors. Likely anything other than very minor changes will irritate more people than otherwise. WP is all about content, even though we may not always be happy about how its content gets there. When people consider visiting the site, only a mindless fashionista will also take the site's look into account.
Furthermore, Garber's remarks suggest that he doesn't have much of an idea about how WP works. Even if WP had to improve the way it looked to save its own skin, it would probably take years of discussion for them to achieve anything major.
MediaWiki is your friend. I set up one for a company a few years ago any later started using it to document my responsibilities there, which cover almost the entire ICT system.
My part of the wiki starts on an ICT page, which is divided into sections for Hardware, Software and Telecom. Each contains a number of links to articles with table overviews that contain links to further, more specific articles. The Hardware section has links to eight articles: Servers, Workstations, Monitors, Ethernet networks, Printers Scanners, Wi-Fi and Ethernet switches. The Software section has links to seven articles: Software packages, Scripts, Domain names, IP subnets, Websites, Cronjobs and AFS volumes. The Telecom section has links to six articles: Phone numbers, telecom subscriptions, Modems, Faxes, Telephones and PBXs. For each of the articles mentioned I also created index pages and every single article has various external and internal links for easy navigation. I even created a series of terminology articles to explain various concepts and how they are important to the site.
With several years of Wikipedia experience, the idea of using a wiki for this purpose seemed obvious to me. However, what was not easy was coming up with the structure outlined above. I had first tried out a deeper hierarchy based on the various geographical locations involved, but backed out of that idea when it was clear that it would be too much work.
Producing this kind of documentation in as much detail as I have represents a lot of work, but it has its advantages. For example, it not only means that critical knowledge about the system is now much harder to lose and easier to share, I've also learned many new things about the system (such as all the hardware specs) and it has also forced me to research areas that I wasn't completely sure about.
... Obviously people who quit drinking coffee are going to have negative opinions about it, otherwise they wouldn't have quit....
Personally, my feelings about coffee are mixed. When dining out, I still prefer a cup of coffee after dessert, but I don't drink it at home or at work because I don't want it to become a habit. It once was a habit -- 2-3 cups a day at work -- but then I always got this splitting headache on Saturday afternoon. As soon as I found out that the coffee was to blame, I switched to drinking tea, which contains a lot less caffeine, and the problem went away.
I have the same attitude towards alcohol. I love a good beer, but even though I've never been an alcoholic I certainly don't want to find out what that's like, so I limit my intake to just a few pints a week.
If unrestricted pursuit of pleasure is so important to you, why not just go for heroine? It's an extreme example, sure, but people who have done it say the high it gives you is better than sex. Yet, you will agree that heroine is also highly addictive, which is why many people (hopefully most) would still think twice about using it even if it was legal and affordable.
I'm sure there are plenty of heroine addicts out there who have nothing but good things to say about their favorite substance, but others tell stories about realizing what they've got themselves into and no longer being able to do anything about it.
So, whether it's coffee or heroine, you must realize that addiction is what it is: never a good thing. It clouds your thinking, leaving you with a blind spot regarding its use. Either it controls you, or you control it. It's your choice.
There's an entire industry built on micromanaging your health with dubious dietary guidelines based on the slimmest possible evidence....
The healthcare and pharmaceutical industry don't really care about your health: only your money. The same companies that develop amazing cancer killing drugs and back up their findings with top-notch scientific research papers, are also capable of selling you ridiculous vitamin supplements that allegedly do the same thing, which they then back up shamelessly with research papers full of terrible statistics.
How can we tell the difference? Use your brain. Trust science in general, but be wary of research making claims about the health benefits of wine, beer, green tea, coffee, chocolate... even tobacco! The scientific method is both used and abused by proprietary interests, and probably has been for as long as science has been around. But as long as people use their heads, science will also allow them to weed out the bad research from the good and so be left with the truth. For instance, was the research first published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or just some newspaper? You can always choose to believe it anyway because it's what you want to hear, but that's your choice.
That's good to hear, but the problem is all the legacy stuff. That's why so many people in the US are currently without power.
Some high-tension stuff, routes that are a thousand miles, are still strung up on towers, but these are not the ones that fall down in storms.
AFAIK, electrical pylons are used all over the world for the long-distance transmission of electricity using high-voltage. Although an eye-sore, this appears to be the most economical solution to the problem. These towers are so tall and strong that, aside from the odd collision with a balloon, or a small aircraft, nothing much seems to affect them.
Another exception would be if you build a house miles out in the middle of nowhere all by yourself - you're likely to get your power on poles.
To a degree these kind of long distance connections should be (and probably are) covered by the standard connection fee, but I imagine that there is always a limit, especially in such a big country.
Remember that these techniques "grew up" out of stringing telegraph lines across the continent. Doing it differently then would have been impossible, and hanging wires on poles just became the way these things were done out of habit and history.
Yes, I said better, but in the context of an alleged health benefit.
Doing things that I like is better for me than not doing those things. We're all going to die anyway, so the point is to fill the time you have with pleasure. Coffee is an excellent source of pleasure.
That is a common argument that drug addicts use to justify their destructive behavior. Yet when they eventually come face to face with the consequences of their old habits, they almost invariably have their regrets.
Coffee? Fine with me. I like it too, but am careful never to make it a habit. Like with so many things, moderation is they key. Pleasure? That's fine with me as well, but if you must overdo things and live the life of a sensualist, variation should be your goal.
Besides, the research claiming that coffee is unhealthy is at least as dubious as the research claiming that coffee is healthy.
How so? What powerful lobby would be sponsoring research into coffee being unhealthy? The tea industry? Coffee haters?
In the long run, this is definitely a strategy that is better for the coffee industry than it is for you.
Unless perhaps, you actually like coffee.
Simply liking coffee doesn't make it any more healthy for you, or any less profitable for the coffee industry, or that you should be any more trusting of this research.
Don't forget that the cost of wiring Holland, or even Europe, is a hell of a lot less than the cost of wiring the U.S.. That makes it a lot easier to plan ahead.:)
Of course it's more expensive in total to bury all the lines in a big country as opposed to a small one, but the problem is exactly the same (and the per capita costs about equal) when only individual grids, cities and miles of cable are considered.
Also, I can imagine that the issue might be raised of individual American cities tending to be more spread out over larger areas than European cities, which raises the cost per electrical/telecom connection. This is true, but it does not make any difference to my point, because the longer each individual connection becomes, the more likely it is to suffer from damage. So, if people want to live further apart, the cost of electrical/telecom connectivity will go up accordingly, but in the long term it still makes more economic sense to pay the up-front cost of burying the cables.
My grandfather, a Dutch electrical engineer who was responsible for setting up most of the electrical and gas infrastructure in North-Holland shortly before and after WWII, visited to the US in the 1950s and was astonished to see all of the electrical lines hanging from poles above ground. In his view, this was so crazy.
Sure, the up-front cost of burying all of the electrical lines in Europe from the get-go was expensive, but everybody realized that it would soon pay off. Not so in the United States: apparently, they just wanted their electrical infrastructure as fast and for as little money as possible. Consequently, Americans have been paying a high price for that mistake ever since. It's really a tax on stupidity, only they've been living with it for so long that they've come to believe that it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable.
On the other hand, if the government (incl. State and local ones) were to finally make the decision to bury all of their power and communications lines (except for long-distance high-voltage), then not only would their children and grand-children etc. be very grateful, it would also create lots of jobs now and therefore be a much needed boost for the economy.
At least, that sounds like it would be the case here. Three or more cups of coffee a day will definitely leave you hooked, while there's still a good chance that you'll end up developing basal cell carcinoma anyway. In the long run, this is definitely a strategy that is better for the coffee industry than it is for you.
IMO, a much healthier and much cheaper way to protect yourself against skin cancer is with lycopene, which is commonly found in tomatoes. Tomato paste is an excellent source of this particular form of carotene. I added a small tin of this stuff to my daily diet five years ago and eat it right out of the can. I go for the cheaper brands because they're less concentrated and therefore a lot less bitter in taste. Also, each tin costs less than a dime.
The results of eating all this tomato paste? Although I haven't yet tried pushing my luck with sunburn yet (I'm fair skinned and feel it's still wiser to avoid unnecessary exposure), I'm convinced that it made a big difference to my acne problem (very unscientific, but that's my impression).
Once we compare it to our modern DNA, this 7,000 year old sample will finally reveal to us the changes that the aliens have made to our DNA after thousands of years of genetic manipulation!
I would think that the Nouveau project would prefer to keep nVidia people/developers out of the source - they cannot risk there being any "polution" of intellectual property....
Not necessarily. We don't need their source code, just more information about their API. And as was recently ruled in the Oracle vs Google case regarding Java, API's can not be copyrighted.
Lawyers should first classify what the company can divulge (and their answer: Nothing), before anyone from nVidia even thinks about looking at the Nouveau source.
Not their source code -- just the API for their hardware! Not that I expect that Nvidia's management will allow their engineers to divulge any API information (even just a little), but for us that's what's most important.
Okay, so how about pointing him in the direction of the nouveau project? Even if his company refuses to share the full API, just a few hints here and there could make an enormous difference.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
Don't worry. We should not expect that our future robot helpers will immediately be perfect, i.e. better than us at the things that we do best, but at least they will not be burdened with our many weaknesses, including dogmatic behavior stemming from an irrational belief in the supernatural.
Equip the phone with two or more cameras so that the user's face can be verified in 3D, thus making it a lot harder to fool the system with one or more 2D pictures.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear! I've been using it for 11 years and remember what a joy it was to suddenly have such a stable system compared to the years of instability I had with Windows. In all this time, I've been using basically the same applications, the same browsers, have the same bookmarks, etc. There's nothing wrong with it! This is the kind of continuity that I always expected from an OS.
The only issue is that Redmond still seems to have a monopoly in this area, which is erroneously seen as some sort of a technical strength on their part, by which it is inferred that any Linux desktop is technically inferior. What complete and utter bullshit!
After seven years as a sysadmin involved with nothing but commercial software (Windows, NetWare, Lotus Notes) I was faced with the awful prospect of being a Windows sysadmin for the rest of my life, but it just wasn't possible for me to simply find work with Linux instead, because it didn't say that on my CV. It was chicken and egg problem that I had to solve myself.
So, I started by installing a few servers at friends houses that still maintain for nothing. Then I got the chance to install a bunch of machines at a luxury barber shop franchise. It didn't pay much and lasted for only three years before they got a new app and went back to Windows (which I refused to support), but it was good experience to start with and some actual Linux stuff that I could put on my CV.
Eventually, I decided that I needed to figure out how to set up a more complicated environment; one that would feel like a modern Open Source alternative to the NetWare/Windows systems that I used to work with. I figured the best solution was a combination of OpenLDAP, Kerberos and OpenAFS. It took me months to figure out how to do this properly (see my homepage), but eventually I knew that I had something really useful.
Then, not long after I finished that research project, I got lucky and was given the opportunity to install three servers and a bunch of workstations with nothing but Debian GNU/Linux at a three-location veterinary clinic. It's strictly volunteer work and I'm still busy with the project, but so far it has given me the opportunity to put everything I've learned over the years (and then some) into practice. And, finally, it's all on my CV.
The best explanation I've heard so far for why technical documentation in general (and in this case *nix documentation in particular) is often so poor is from a sci-fi TV series, called Eureka. In one episode, the characters search in vain for a manual to help shut down an antiquated launch system. When they figure there never was a manual, one character asks another why the builders did not bother to write one. The reply he receives is "Well, what do you want: progress or poetry?"
Unfortunately, once it becomes self-aware it will decide the fate of the human race in a millisecond, launching ICBMs to start a global nuclear war that will kill most people immediately, followed by HKs to mop up the survivors. Lucky for us, a resistance movement will be set up, yadda, yadda...
As I was saying, a robot maid is far more convenient than a flying car. It may take me longer to get home in a normal car, but once I get there my house will be clean, my clothes folded, my lawn will be cut, my trash will be out and there will be food on my table.
Indeed, but I think these are also important:
In no particular order.
IMO, however, that last one is the root cause of all the others, including the ones on your list. Since basically all US politicians depend heavily on private campaign donations (i.e. legalized bribery) in order to get elected to major government offices, they can't help but put the the interests of their financial backers ahead of those of the electorate. The Republicans have consistently proven themselves to be a bit more reliable in this than the Democrats, which is why the rich and powerful always prefer to support them first.
Today, especially in the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, the situation is worse than ever. It's telling that our current president, a Democrat, is politically to the right of Ronald Reagan. But, what can we do when our two-party system of democracy virtually guarantees that the bastards in the opposition will be elected soon enough anyway, since all they have to do is wait around for the electorate to get tired of the incumbent? Can it even be described as a democracy anymore? It seems more like a corporatocracy to me.
If this downward spiral is not reversed, how can it not end in violence?
Once I had a client who's hard disk broke down when his last backup of it was several months old. It seemed dead, but there was a lot of expensive data on it, so I took it straight to a professional. His services cost me about $2.000 and did restore a lot of the data, but not in the way that I expected. He sent me a couple of DVDs ten days later with on the one hand long lists of the names of the files that had been restored, and on the other the files with the data. The only problem was that the data files all had random names, so we were still faced with the task of figuring out which files had which names. For about 10.000 files. My client was relieved to have (most of) his data back, but was obviously disappointed with the results.
Of course, the trick is to never allow yourself to get anywhere near this kind of situation. The worst of it could have been avoided if my client had stuck to making his regular backups or had simply used RAID (or preferably done both).
The phones are getting bigger, because customers seem to be attracted to bigger screens. But once the screens become too big, the devices also get too big, at which point people start to want smaller phones again. After all, the main reason to carry it with you is because it's a portable communications device; all that computing power is great, but only if the devices remain small.
Therefore, the only solution is to not have such big screens on the phones and instead use external display devices. The possibility of using e.g mini HDMI connectors to couple them to larger monitors is one solution, but I think a much better one would be to connect them to head-mounted displays (HMDs). Then it would once again not be a problem for the phones themselves to have smaller displays, allowing them to be used primarily as input devices.
Making major changes for the sake of improving its aesthetic appeal is not going to attract more visitors or donors. Likely anything other than very minor changes will irritate more people than otherwise. WP is all about content, even though we may not always be happy about how its content gets there. When people consider visiting the site, only a mindless fashionista will also take the site's look into account.
Furthermore, Garber's remarks suggest that he doesn't have much of an idea about how WP works. Even if WP had to improve the way it looked to save its own skin, it would probably take years of discussion for them to achieve anything major.
MediaWiki is your friend. I set up one for a company a few years ago any later started using it to document my responsibilities there, which cover almost the entire ICT system.
My part of the wiki starts on an ICT page, which is divided into sections for Hardware, Software and Telecom. Each contains a number of links to articles with table overviews that contain links to further, more specific articles. The Hardware section has links to eight articles: Servers, Workstations, Monitors, Ethernet networks, Printers Scanners, Wi-Fi and Ethernet switches. The Software section has links to seven articles: Software packages, Scripts, Domain names, IP subnets, Websites, Cronjobs and AFS volumes. The Telecom section has links to six articles: Phone numbers, telecom subscriptions, Modems, Faxes, Telephones and PBXs. For each of the articles mentioned I also created index pages and every single article has various external and internal links for easy navigation. I even created a series of terminology articles to explain various concepts and how they are important to the site.
With several years of Wikipedia experience, the idea of using a wiki for this purpose seemed obvious to me. However, what was not easy was coming up with the structure outlined above. I had first tried out a deeper hierarchy based on the various geographical locations involved, but backed out of that idea when it was clear that it would be too much work.
Producing this kind of documentation in as much detail as I have represents a lot of work, but it has its advantages. For example, it not only means that critical knowledge about the system is now much harder to lose and easier to share, I've also learned many new things about the system (such as all the hardware specs) and it has also forced me to research areas that I wasn't completely sure about.
Nope. That would be the Oort cloud and it's way, way further out.
Let the ranting begin!
... Obviously people who quit drinking coffee are going to have negative opinions about it, otherwise they wouldn't have quit. ...
Personally, my feelings about coffee are mixed. When dining out, I still prefer a cup of coffee after dessert, but I don't drink it at home or at work because I don't want it to become a habit. It once was a habit -- 2-3 cups a day at work -- but then I always got this splitting headache on Saturday afternoon. As soon as I found out that the coffee was to blame, I switched to drinking tea, which contains a lot less caffeine, and the problem went away.
I have the same attitude towards alcohol. I love a good beer, but even though I've never been an alcoholic I certainly don't want to find out what that's like, so I limit my intake to just a few pints a week.
If unrestricted pursuit of pleasure is so important to you, why not just go for heroine? It's an extreme example, sure, but people who have done it say the high it gives you is better than sex. Yet, you will agree that heroine is also highly addictive, which is why many people (hopefully most) would still think twice about using it even if it was legal and affordable.
I'm sure there are plenty of heroine addicts out there who have nothing but good things to say about their favorite substance, but others tell stories about realizing what they've got themselves into and no longer being able to do anything about it.
So, whether it's coffee or heroine, you must realize that addiction is what it is: never a good thing. It clouds your thinking, leaving you with a blind spot regarding its use. Either it controls you, or you control it. It's your choice.
There's an entire industry built on micromanaging your health with dubious dietary guidelines based on the slimmest possible evidence. ...
The healthcare and pharmaceutical industry don't really care about your health: only your money. The same companies that develop amazing cancer killing drugs and back up their findings with top-notch scientific research papers, are also capable of selling you ridiculous vitamin supplements that allegedly do the same thing, which they then back up shamelessly with research papers full of terrible statistics.
How can we tell the difference? Use your brain. Trust science in general, but be wary of research making claims about the health benefits of wine, beer, green tea, coffee, chocolate... even tobacco! The scientific method is both used and abused by proprietary interests, and probably has been for as long as science has been around. But as long as people use their heads, science will also allow them to weed out the bad research from the good and so be left with the truth. For instance, was the research first published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or just some newspaper? You can always choose to believe it anyway because it's what you want to hear, but that's your choice.
... in general, new stuff is buried.
That's good to hear, but the problem is all the legacy stuff. That's why so many people in the US are currently without power.
Some high-tension stuff, routes that are a thousand miles, are still strung up on towers, but these are not the ones that fall down in storms.
AFAIK, electrical pylons are used all over the world for the long-distance transmission of electricity using high-voltage. Although an eye-sore, this appears to be the most economical solution to the problem. These towers are so tall and strong that, aside from the odd collision with a balloon, or a small aircraft, nothing much seems to affect them.
Another exception would be if you build a house miles out in the middle of nowhere all by yourself - you're likely to get your power on poles.
To a degree these kind of long distance connections should be (and probably are) covered by the standard connection fee, but I imagine that there is always a limit, especially in such a big country.
Remember that these techniques "grew up" out of stringing telegraph lines across the continent. Doing it differently then would have been impossible, and hanging wires on poles just became the way these things were done out of habit and history.
Interesting.
You didn't say healthier. You said better.
Yes, I said better, but in the context of an alleged health benefit.
Doing things that I like is better for me than not doing those things. We're all going to die anyway, so the point is to fill the time you have with pleasure. Coffee is an excellent source of pleasure.
That is a common argument that drug addicts use to justify their destructive behavior. Yet when they eventually come face to face with the consequences of their old habits, they almost invariably have their regrets.
Coffee? Fine with me. I like it too, but am careful never to make it a habit. Like with so many things, moderation is they key. Pleasure? That's fine with me as well, but if you must overdo things and live the life of a sensualist, variation should be your goal.
Besides, the research claiming that coffee is unhealthy is at least as dubious as the research claiming that coffee is healthy.
How so? What powerful lobby would be sponsoring research into coffee being unhealthy? The tea industry? Coffee haters?
In the long run, this is definitely a strategy that is better for the coffee industry than it is for you.
Unless perhaps, you actually like coffee.
Simply liking coffee doesn't make it any more healthy for you, or any less profitable for the coffee industry, or that you should be any more trusting of this research.
Don't forget that the cost of wiring Holland, or even Europe, is a hell of a lot less than the cost of wiring the U.S.. That makes it a lot easier to plan ahead. :)
Of course it's more expensive in total to bury all the lines in a big country as opposed to a small one, but the problem is exactly the same (and the per capita costs about equal) when only individual grids, cities and miles of cable are considered.
Also, I can imagine that the issue might be raised of individual American cities tending to be more spread out over larger areas than European cities, which raises the cost per electrical/telecom connection. This is true, but it does not make any difference to my point, because the longer each individual connection becomes, the more likely it is to suffer from damage. So, if people want to live further apart, the cost of electrical/telecom connectivity will go up accordingly, but in the long term it still makes more economic sense to pay the up-front cost of burying the cables.
My grandfather, a Dutch electrical engineer who was responsible for setting up most of the electrical and gas infrastructure in North-Holland shortly before and after WWII, visited to the US in the 1950s and was astonished to see all of the electrical lines hanging from poles above ground. In his view, this was so crazy.
Sure, the up-front cost of burying all of the electrical lines in Europe from the get-go was expensive, but everybody realized that it would soon pay off. Not so in the United States: apparently, they just wanted their electrical infrastructure as fast and for as little money as possible. Consequently, Americans have been paying a high price for that mistake ever since. It's really a tax on stupidity, only they've been living with it for so long that they've come to believe that it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable.
On the other hand, if the government (incl. State and local ones) were to finally make the decision to bury all of their power and communications lines (except for long-distance high-voltage), then not only would their children and grand-children etc. be very grateful, it would also create lots of jobs now and therefore be a much needed boost for the economy.
At least, that sounds like it would be the case here. Three or more cups of coffee a day will definitely leave you hooked, while there's still a good chance that you'll end up developing basal cell carcinoma anyway. In the long run, this is definitely a strategy that is better for the coffee industry than it is for you.
IMO, a much healthier and much cheaper way to protect yourself against skin cancer is with lycopene, which is commonly found in tomatoes. Tomato paste is an excellent source of this particular form of carotene. I added a small tin of this stuff to my daily diet five years ago and eat it right out of the can. I go for the cheaper brands because they're less concentrated and therefore a lot less bitter in taste. Also, each tin costs less than a dime.
The results of eating all this tomato paste? Although I haven't yet tried pushing my luck with sunburn yet (I'm fair skinned and feel it's still wiser to avoid unnecessary exposure), I'm convinced that it made a big difference to my acne problem (very unscientific, but that's my impression).
Once we compare it to our modern DNA, this 7,000 year old sample will finally reveal to us the changes that the aliens have made to our DNA after thousands of years of genetic manipulation!
loll Damn peoples only remember the "Fear is the mind-killer." line from Dune!
Doh!! It really should have rung a bell; I read the whole series at least twice. Even your alias was a clue.
BTW, it's "Lest we forget", which is what I did.
I would think that the Nouveau project would prefer to keep nVidia people/developers out of the source - they cannot risk there being any "polution" of intellectual property. ...
Not necessarily. We don't need their source code, just more information about their API. And as was recently ruled in the Oracle vs Google case regarding Java, API's can not be copyrighted.
Lawyers should first classify what the company can divulge (and their answer: Nothing), before anyone from nVidia even thinks about looking at the Nouveau source.
Not their source code -- just the API for their hardware! Not that I expect that Nvidia's management will allow their engineers to divulge any API information (even just a little), but for us that's what's most important.
... Some help is better than none.
Okay, so how about pointing him in the direction of the nouveau project? Even if his company refuses to share the full API, just a few hints here and there could make an enormous difference.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind.
Don't worry. We should not expect that our future robot helpers will immediately be perfect, i.e. better than us at the things that we do best, but at least they will not be burdened with our many weaknesses, including dogmatic behavior stemming from an irrational belief in the supernatural.
Equip the phone with two or more cameras so that the user's face can be verified in 3D, thus making it a lot harder to fool the system with one or more 2D pictures.