I've seen credible viewpoints that indicate that in the next decades we will either be swimming like "Water World" or freezing in a new ice age.
I'm sorry but this only means that your sources of informations are at best non-scientific and at worse ill-intentionned.
There is one unique source of official scientific information regarding global warming/climate change : it's the IPCC which is an intergovernmental scientific organization set up by all developed countries under the supervision of the WMO and the United Nations (and the USA have a huge number of scientists contributing to it).
This organization *sole* goal is to gather *all* (including weak theories such as sun activity increase) scientific evidence regarding climate change and come with the most up-to-date scientific conclusion available about it.
An extract from their web site: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is open to all Members of the UN and of WMO."
So, to be definitively informed of the latest evidence for or against climate change, head to their site and don't rely on propaganda issued by any of the protagonists here.
> They were able to observe the effects of its shape. They noticed the horizon, celestial activitiy, etc.
I'm nit picking but there would be an horizon even in a flat world, I guess that what you most probably wanted to say was "they noticed thinks such as ships "sinking" under the horizon past a certain distance.
This effectively lowers the usefulness of the article.
Plus, I'd add that this can probably be done without needing any special motherboard features. I guess that this is something that can (has been ?) done under Linux by a sufficiently motivated group of volunteers -> handle the 2nd video output of a dual output card as the 2nd user's exclusive display, add a usb keyboard + mouse and redirect their output to the 2nd user's display system (I guess X doesn't do that yet, but it surely can be done) and you have it.
That might also be a big plus for selling Linux to the masses.
Add that once you have extended X (and whatever more is involved) to handle this, you can add as many PCI video cards and USB keyboards/mouses as you want users to use the machine simultaneously. Which makes it possible to create a simple family internet/entertainment system at relatively low cost provided the software used don't need much constant horsepower.
Buying specific hardware to have this feature seems to me pointless. Does anyone know of existing open source projects similar to this ? Could be something I'll use if there were;)
That advertising you hate is what makes it possible for those shows to be made How else could you get a newspaper so cheap, or so many free websites
The choice is not between advertising or no shows/newspaper, the choice is between directly paying the shows via your monthly fees or paying it indirectly within products you buy at the supermarket. Those products have a higher price because the firms who sell them did spend a lot of money to advertise them and this is where the money comes from.
The problem is that we are so used to "cheap" cable TV fees that we have forgotten that somehow we have to pay the real fees they cost to produce. Moreover this system is particularly unfair because it hides the real cost of things and transfers it to all citizens even those who didn't subscribe to cable TV (or buy newspaper, surf websites...).
It would be very interesting to see how much we would be ready to pay for TV fees if we had to pay the real price for it and if we could on the other hand buy many more products because of an overall lower price.
I think we would spend our money on the things we really value as important if the costs of many products were not biased by advertising.
I can't believe the number of replies that think you are trolling and have never heard of SE-Linux.
From the URL that you provided: "This work is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux. Security-enhanced Linux is not an attempt to correct any flaws that may currently exist in Linux. Instead, it is simply an example of how mandatory access controls that can confine the actions of any process, including a superuser process, can be added into Linux. The focus of this work has not been on system assurance or other security features such as security auditing, although these elements are also important for a secure system."
So basically, they are not saying that linux is less secure than thought, but they use it to test a new security system that they are developing. They chose linux because it's open, would windows be open source they might have chosen it too. This obviously says nothing of linux intrisic security flaws.
luckily we are in the 21st century and some things have changed in our societies even if GWB is still not able to accept it, so I'd say that there are only three things that matters here:
- is she an interesting person ? - know her real intention : is she serious or playing the seduction game ? - make sure that if anything starts, you won't be influenced by your relationship with her as far as notation is concerned (if she's serious then she may wait a bit before anything really starts, so you might be able to jauge her a bit)
apart from that, well, that's life... it's short, live it with an open mind and just make sure you don't harm her or others. IMHO, there's not much more to say there.
Economics is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth is created NOT distributed.
Wealth is created, true, from physical resources, which as you may know are exhaustable and finite. Our means to recycle them are also limited.
Theoretical economics may not be a zero sum game, but when you add physics to this very nice (but unrealistic) model, it begins to be reality-compliant and ceases to be a useless mathematician utopia where wealth can be indefinitely multiplied.
The earth is finite, so is wealth. And even if it weren't, pollution growth being proportional to economic growth, we are going to see the limits of indefinite exponential economic growth very soon. Does the words "global warning" mean anything to you ? A reality check may be a good thing sometime;)
I believe we measure economic fairness in terms of access to opportunity, not by forced distribution of wealth. People want to acquire more goods and services, and by working to ensure access to opportunities to increase personal wealth, we ensure that everyone has the means to do that.
Contrary to what you are saying, I do fully agree with you. But the reality is that we are very far from this equal opportunities utopia.
The stats on black people's poverty and access to education & jobs in the states show that equal opportunity is more a myth than a reality. If you get access to economical stats you will also see that the economic inequalities have increased during the '90s (and still are) : is this trend a natural one ?
And there is plenty of scientific evidence that the social tissue you live in determines for the biggest part, the opportunities you will have later. This enough, as long as our education system fails to reduce the influence of initial equalities, qualifies our system as unfair.
You do decide that inequalities are fair and natural, well , good for you, though I doubt you belong to the portion of people who suffer from them. I, for myself, have a much higher standard of living than most other people in my country (my salary is above the median one) but I do not consider such situation natural nor fair and would not mind paying more taxes for example. I know of other people who work better and more than me but will never get a salary close to mine just because they are part of a social class where they can't evolve because of initial bad conditions.
So much for equal opportunities.
Like you, I don't think that forced distribution of wealth would be a good thing. If we had to force an equal distribution of stuff, I'd rather made it education and health care than wealth. But even on this point we are far from providing it.
And I'm sorry if you took my remarks as insults : they were not. I just made a supposition about your point of view and did not think it would hurt your feelings. My apologies if I was rude.
Other posters have pointed out that an x-box which never goes purchased hurts Microsoft more than one that is. By buying the product, you reimburse Microsoft's cost by $110, or whatever their resellers pay.
And they are wrong.
Microsoft takes care not to produce much more consoles than they can sell. Just as every other clever hardware vendor does. They won't start producing a batch of say, one million consoles if they are not sure to sell at least 90% of them (based on the sales curves and market capacity studies). So, restraining from buying an xbox is not really going to hurt them at all -> they'll just build less on the next batch.
Buying one and not buying games is a sure way to make sure they lose money.
And regarding Microsoft cash, people should not use this as a strong evidence, it's not so clear that MS actually has so much money available. see Bill Paris on this point
To my knowledge, there is no restriction on the TV output format of the various models of Playstation2. We use US/Jap/Eu PS2 debug stations at work to run the games we develop and we do it in whatever format (PAL/NTSC) we need to.
So, yes you could use this hack to play imported games.
This makes this hack much more valuable than a modchip which will void your warranty.
But even more valuable is the fact that it allows you to use your PS2 as a real open computer. The fact that it stops it from being a closed hardware anymore is IMHO unvaluable. (just like for the xbox).
Isn't it about time a new "-1000 : read the article" moderation "comment" be added to the mod system ?
It takes longer time everyday just to skip questions & remarks written by hordes of people who did not even bother to read the article but stay at score 1 because they have an account.
This is quite different from comments from people who badly understood the article or do not agree with the content : it's just about respecting some kind of etiquette.
Of course moderators abusing this thing should have their buts kicked straight to the moon. But i might be worth a try IMHO.
Security is a cost-benefits analysis and if hiding some critical information about the sensitive spots in a difficult to secure physical system can provide an immediate benefit, then it's stupid to publish such information so that those who wish you harm can more easily commit it.
It's stupid only if you have been irresponsible enough to wreck havok in foreign countries in the name of fighting the evil Reds (which they were) using means that you would condamne here in your own country. There would not be any anti-US terrorism if the US had been fair to many countries in the past (and the present).
So the stupid ones are not those who claim obscurity is a bad thing but those who fail to see that their foreign actions have internal consequences in the long run.
Power distribution would not be a matter of security concern in the first place if those in power in the US had not made everything they could to seed terrorism nearly everwhere.
And if you want to live under perpetual osbscurity for the sake of security then do so, but be aware that you'll soon have to trade your freedom for security too. Oh, wait, it's already done.
I fully agree that space exploration is worth dying for.
Huh ? I can't think of anything else that is worth dying for than freedom.
When you're dead, you're dead and there is no more to enjoy : there's no way you can say "waow !! that was worth it !".
The only interesting things you can do are the ones when you have the most chances to survive and say *after* : "man, that was great ! i'll remember this my whole life long".
If you die, then you die. That's just plain stupid to think that it may be worth it when there is no way this will have an impact on your real life.
I'll go walking on the moon when it will be as safe as driving within my town. If it never becomes so, well no problem, I can enjoy many other things while I'm alive;)
Yes, feed the hungry, but if you stop there and don't create an economy that enables them to support themselves, all you've done is to create a permanent dependent underclass.
So, you seem to agree that in the US and EU, our economic system does not allow poor people to support themselves, since we *do* have a permanent dependent underclass here. (less in EU but it's been growing lately)
It seems that technology didn't help us reduce inequalities either. I doubt it will help India do better than us.
Technology is of no use if the economic system is unfair. That's where there is work, not in high tech fields. In economic fairness... But I doubt many people would be eager to invest in that field. You do not gain money to do so. And investors want money (preferably more than other investors or they'll become relatively poorer).
Because India's space programme launches communications satellites which, like TCP/IP over railway communications lines, bring literacy to remote villages. Yes the schools in the villages need satellite dishes and the railroad stations need network stations, but the government provides them!
Why the Indian government failed not provide standard telephony to those areas many decades before will then remain a complete mistery. I mean, why would they use the latest tech gear now, and not have done it before ? There's a problem here...
And I seriously doubt that it is cheaper to use satellites than a standard telephony wire system. If wire is cheaper for us in USA and EU then it's not going to be different for India.
Moreover, it's also dubious that bringing "knowledge" to uneducated masses without bringing material stuff that they can work on with such knowledge will help them raise their standard of living close to those living in big cities. Even people in big cities are really poor in India, so it's not like their problem is technology.
Funny how this myth about technology being the solution to all problems - especially poverty, seems to spread so easily.
The solution to poverty is not to send pigs in space or invest in high tech R&D, it is to give money to the poor ones. IE *share*.
You can brainstorm the problem for centuries, you won't find another solution. As long as there are inequalities, no tech will help poors to become riches or at least less-poors. Economics is a zero sum game, what the riches have, the poors have not. No amount of tech toys is going to change that. (though I'd love it to be true)
The consequent frenzy of Apple bashing completely ignores the fact that they are one of the major player in the biz who is making great strides in adopting the methods pioneered the free/open source software movement.
I understand your point, but the FSF surely is not the one bashing Apple. Some/.ers surely are bashing them, but as well as most FSF attackers, they didn't bother to read the article in the first place.
I have to agree with you that this generates a lot of noise here.
Slashdot would have a much better noise/signal ratio if most/.ers would take time to: - actually read the article - take time to understand it, making sure they did not wrongly interpret its wording and meaning - carefully phrased their posts to make sure they are not ambiguously interpreted of somewhat aggressive
...there are people in the hippie free software movement who will never, ever accept or approve of anything less than total compliance with their GPL license
Please concentrate on facts, calling people you disapprove "hippies" is not helping anyone having a clear argument on the current subject.
You should better concentrate on the reasons why some people think the GPL is a higher standard than most other licenses instead of bashing them for being unconditionnals. I would never accept to give away my freedom of speech, does that make me hippie freedom zealot ? Let's be reasonnable here...
they're even more evil because they're just trying to appear like they aren't evil.
Then read again, that's not what the FSF is saying. It says that the license is quite ok but that it gives Apple full rights to use your code. This is a one way license : you get access to the code, but you can't do anything else with it than increasing the functionality of the original software, OTOH, Apple can do whatever they want with your additions. Quite dysymetric. Where's the zealotry in explaining this ?
It's not quite like they are enforcing this upon us.
Civillian power is out for a few days, who cares? Emergency power came on in hospitals and other critical places
What about the economic cost ? If a single DDOS attack shutting down a server for a few hours can cause millions of dollars of loss, then I certainly think that shutting down all electric equipments in one huge town such as NewYork is very likely to cause much more losses. Some companies will have generators, but I guess most won't.
Human greenhouse gases emissions do not arise solely from electricity production. CO2 makes up "only" for 55% of human contribution to the greenhouse effect Methane (CH4) makes up for 15% (4 times higher gh effect than CO2), and is mostly produced by agriculture and also by leaks from petroleum extraction points. HaloCarbons (CxHyHalz) also make up for 15%. NO2 makes up for 5% and is mostly produced by the use of fertilizers in agriculture and some chemical treatments. Atmospheric ozone is also 15%, it is a byproduct of air pollution in cities and of aerial traffic. (the rest is really not interesting)
Even the 55% corresponding to CO2 emissions do not all originate from electricity production. 7.5 Gigatons of CO2 were produced in the world in 2000, of these, 1.5 Gt come from changes in soils usage. Agriculture is also a major producer of greenhouses gases.
And let's not forget aerial traffic, which produces ozone and is constantly growing (yes, even after 9/11). I doubt we will see nuclear or hydrogen powered planes anytime soon...
So, even if you build all your nuclear plants, you will still have to face growing greenhouse gases emissions from other sectors than electricity production.
The problems remains the same : exponential growth is simply not sustainable in a finite world, and not only regarding greenhouse gases emissions.
I'd suggest we work on making our economic development more sustainable first, instead of rushing towards illusory technological solutions.
The earth is finite. So must be our growth. And the sooner, the better.
-- sorry for the syntax/grammar/spelling, too tired to do better and i've the excuse that english is not my native language;)
Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming.
I'm afraid your sources are not trustworthy. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the official scientific commitee responsible for studying the reality of climate change. It does so by examining all scientific papers and facts regarding the subject, including all episodes you mention (ice ages, cycles, etc.).
Oh, btw, the IPCC includes the major international scientists (including US of course) in all fields touching the subject. Not quite an environmentalist lobby...
What about avoiding wasting energy in the first place ?
read this : CO2 emissions per capita and see that there is lot of potential for improvement. The USA emit as much as 25% of all CO2 emissions, and while they do not have a higher standard of life than Canadians and Germans they emit respectively twice and 2.7 more CO2 per capita than those countries.
And it's also estimated that regarding house and water heating, using the best technologies available today, energy consumption could be reduced by as much as 50% in Europe. And it's not the only point where it's possible.
There's obviously lot of room for improvement. Instead of rushing towards the wall, we should probably take care not wasting the resources we deal with.
No non-renewable energy source can resist to an exponentially increasing energy consumption : whatever we do, we will exhaust our resources if we continue. So, the best solution is probably to learn to use energy efficiently and stop wasting it. We will have to do it someday, so the sooner we start, the easier it will be.
I highly doubt that the Marshall plan would work in Afghanistan and Iraq
Irak was one of most advanced countries of middle east politically as well as well as socially speaking when it became an autoritarian regime. It could have been the first Arab democracy if its regime was not overthrown by the military. Even now, it is more socially advanced than most of its neighbours, having universities and school of a much better level than the rest. Saddam Hussein was certainly a mad despote but he was(is?) an atheist, socially advanced person otherwise, Iraki women had the same rights than men under its regime. So it would not take that much effort to make Irak a real democracy if some money was bombed over its educational system by the US or the UN.
As for Afghanistan, it benefited from the USSR as far as education was concerned and also had relatively good schools and universities before it became a complete mess in recent decades. Women also had a quite advanced status relatively to other neighbouring states. There again, history has shown that education is not something so foreign to this country. But then the US should face their responsabilities and ensure that the police forces have the means to uphold the law, which they can't for the moment given the mess that the country is in. Most people there claim it is more chaotic than under the Talibans. You can expect terrorist groups to spawn like hell in such an environment. So much for the bombings efficiency...
A Marshall plan for those countries would be the best thing to do and would cost *much* less than the bombings. This would not be stupid generousity but plain pragmatism : bringing education to the people does more harm to terrorism than violent retaliation, and it also has the nice advantage to be a bit more moral;)
"every bomb, whether dropped or not, has collaterol damage: the citizens of the nation that decided to spend tax dollars on weapons of mass destruction rather than on meaningful social programs."
That's only true if you believe it's not possible to have a justified war. Your "meaningful social programs" wouldn't be so meaningful if the world had allowed Hitler to take over...
Well, just don't forget that if France, US and other europeans countries of that time had given some money to meaningful social programs in Germany after WWI there wouldn't have been such thing as Adolf Hitler and WWII.
US people were clever enough after WWII not to repeat that mistake and spent *lot* of money to make sure Europe would have a viable social basis.
Too bad, GWB is not that bright regarding third world and terrorist countries nowadays. It's exactly the same problem if you look at it closely. -> no money for social initiatives, lots for weapons and economic = social disaster = autoritarian regimes = terrorism.
If the US spent a tenth of the money they litteraly bombed over Afghanistan and Irak to build schools and train teachers, we'd probably get rid of terrorisms in not much more time than it took for Europe to rebuild after WWII. You just have to see what Talibans and BinLaden supporters do : they attack universities and oppress students, this is where the US and other rich countries should """strike""".
But, with the current Bush foreign policy we are most probably currently heading for many more of disasters.
The same is true for France and African countries such as Congo, Soudan, Cote d'Ivoire and a lot of thers as well, of course. It's not like the US are the sole responsible of the mess our planet is : we all - the rich ones - are. (I'm french btw)
Why, the relationships I've formed right here on Slashdot are as vibrant and fulfilling as any "real-world" relationship I've ever had!
I think you have a point here. Some introverted computer freaks (count myself in) may use computers for the shielding it provides them against people who they usually don't want to be familiar with in their everyday life. While this may reveal an initial lack of social skills, ie shyness, this does not mean that technology drives those people towards social isolation. If they are not yet thinking that people are bad and tech is good for them, they might very well use tech to find people more similar to them with whom they might have important fulfilling social interaction, be it via email, instant messaging or web forums in a first time, and physically in a second one if by chance they are not living too far away.
I had the occasion to meet a guy on IRC which I found quite brillant, humanly speaking, but was probably as a-social as I was at that time. For various reasons, I do not see him anymore but we had deep interesting conversations that we could not have with most people around us, some about technology, some philosophical, about our respective crushes of the moment, etc. Clearly, we had nobody around available that we might have "used" as readily as we did to talk the "important" (to us at least) matters that we had in mind. We were not wasting our time chatting about the weather or useless concernes, (I think) we were having a rather deep friendly relationship. Tech actually helped us find a friend soul at that time.
I had other physical friends around, even in my cs classes, but though I think we estimated each other quite well and I still see them on a regular basis, we did not develop such kind of relation. I even noticed that we talked about more intimate subjects easily when we used IRC rather than oral communication. This probably has to do with shyness : not seing the person you interact with, and more importantly not being seen by this person, helps a lot to overcome it. Perhaps we felt more equal and less being judged by others when facing a keyboard and screen.
I now regret to have lost contact with him and I should probably try to contact him again but this story shows indeed that tech can help meeting interesting people, though we met physically once only.
Overall, I think that tech does not encourage or limit our ability to communicate. Introverted people in need for social interaction can find it using computers. Even blogs can help find persons with interests approaching yours if you manage to make friends with their authors. They might be considered as the display of a narcissic and exhibitionist mind but perhaps do they instead say "hey, you, I am here, this I like, this I do, don't you too ? let's meet !".
All would be better of course if we all had the ability to (physically) communicate intimately even with people we are not familiar with, but I guess that this is something which requires training to acquire. Tech is a neutral tool and can help both for such training or to reinforce insolation. I guess that how it's used depends mostly on each person state of mind and global school/working conditions : if one gets to work in a stressful environment in front of a computer, then it seems logical to me that he will be (and thus feel) lonely and depressed. Someone whose job consists of talking to other brillant people will obviously not be depressed, if he gets to speak only with frustrated angry dumbasses, well, he most surely will too.
I sometimes think that the problem is that we do not get enough time outside work, if we had more, it might be easier to physically meet far-located internet buddies and thus get to have this social training that some of us lack.
But given how things work in a highly competitive environment I guess that we are not going this way. Every productivity gained is not used to diminish the amount of work each people do, but to produce more : we a
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen credible viewpoints that indicate that in the next decades we will either be swimming like "Water World" or freezing in a new ice age.
:
I'm sorry but this only means that your sources of informations are at best non-scientific and at worse ill-intentionned.
There is one unique source of official scientific information regarding global warming/climate change : it's the IPCC which is an intergovernmental scientific organization set up by all developed countries under the supervision of the WMO and the United Nations (and the USA have a huge number of scientists contributing to it).
This organization *sole* goal is to gather *all* (including weak theories such as sun activity increase) scientific evidence regarding climate change and come with the most up-to-date scientific conclusion available about it.
IPCC
An extract from their web site
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is open to all Members of the UN and of WMO."
So, to be definitively informed of the latest evidence for or against climate change, head to their site and don't rely on propaganda issued by any of the protagonists here.
> They were able to observe the effects of its shape.
They noticed the horizon, celestial activitiy, etc.
I'm nit picking but there would be an horizon even in a flat world, I guess that what you most probably wanted to say was "they noticed thinks such as ships "sinking" under the horizon past a certain distance.
> not a single thing was said about how it works
;)
This effectively lowers the usefulness of the article.
Plus, I'd add that this can probably be done without needing any special motherboard features. I guess that this is something that can (has been ?) done under Linux by a sufficiently motivated group of volunteers -> handle the 2nd video output of a dual output card as the 2nd user's exclusive display, add a usb keyboard + mouse and redirect their output to the 2nd user's display system (I guess X doesn't do that yet, but it surely can be done) and you have it.
That might also be a big plus for selling Linux to the masses.
Add that once you have extended X (and whatever more is involved) to handle this, you can add as many PCI video cards and USB keyboards/mouses as you want users to use the machine simultaneously.
Which makes it possible to create a simple family internet/entertainment system at relatively low cost provided the software used don't need much constant horsepower.
Buying specific hardware to have this feature seems to me pointless.
Does anyone know of existing open source projects similar to this ? Could be something I'll use if there were
That advertising you hate is what makes it possible for those shows to be made
How else could you get a newspaper so cheap, or so many free websites
The choice is not between advertising or no shows/newspaper, the choice is between directly paying the shows via your monthly fees or paying it indirectly within products you buy at the supermarket. Those products have a higher price because the firms who sell them did spend a lot of money to advertise them and this is where the money comes from.
The problem is that we are so used to "cheap" cable TV fees that we have forgotten that somehow we have to pay the real fees they cost to produce. Moreover this system is particularly unfair because it hides the real cost of things and transfers it to all citizens even those who didn't subscribe to cable TV (or buy newspaper, surf websites...).
It would be very interesting to see how much we would be ready to pay for TV fees if we had to pay the real price for it and if we could on the other hand buy many more products because of an overall lower price.
I think we would spend our money on the things we really value as important if the costs of many products were not biased by advertising.
I can't believe the number of replies that think you are trolling and have never heard of SE-Linux.
:
;)
From the URL that you provided
"This work is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux. Security-enhanced Linux is not an attempt to correct any flaws that may currently exist in Linux. Instead, it is simply an example of how mandatory access controls that can confine the actions of any process, including a superuser process, can be added into Linux. The focus of this work has not been on system assurance or other security features such as security auditing, although these elements are also important for a secure system."
So basically, they are not saying that linux is less secure than thought, but they use it to test a new security system that they are developing. They chose linux because it's open, would windows be open source they might have chosen it too. This obviously says nothing of linux intrisic security flaws.
Very interesting project though
Oh, shit.
:)
:)
I'm responding to an entirely offtopic post, dumbass me.
Well, it shows it's probably time for a new slashdot "geek social problems" section I guess
Now mod me down please, and while you're at it, give me brain cells too, I need them to read the whole page before replying next time
Hey,
:
:)
luckily we are in the 21st century and some things have changed in our societies even if GWB is still not able to accept it, so I'd say that there are only three things that matters here
- is she an interesting person ?
- know her real intention : is she serious or playing the seduction game ?
- make sure that if anything starts, you won't be influenced by your relationship with her as far as notation is concerned (if she's serious then she may wait a bit before anything really starts, so you might be able to jauge her a bit)
apart from that, well, that's life... it's short, live it with an open mind and just make sure you don't harm her or others.
IMHO, there's not much more to say there.
Oh, and good luck
Economics is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth is created NOT distributed.
;)
Wealth is created, true, from physical resources, which as you may know are exhaustable and finite. Our means to recycle them are also limited.
Theoretical economics may not be a zero sum game, but when you add physics to this very nice (but unrealistic) model, it begins to be reality-compliant and ceases to be a useless mathematician utopia where wealth can be indefinitely multiplied.
The earth is finite, so is wealth. And even if it weren't, pollution growth being proportional to economic growth, we are going to see the limits of indefinite exponential economic growth very soon.
Does the words "global warning" mean anything to you ? A reality check may be a good thing sometime
I believe we measure economic fairness in terms of access to opportunity, not by forced distribution of wealth. People want to acquire more goods and services, and by working to ensure access to opportunities to increase personal wealth, we ensure that everyone has the means to do that.
Contrary to what you are saying, I do fully agree with you. But the reality is that we are very far from this equal opportunities utopia.
The stats on black people's poverty and access to education & jobs in the states show that equal opportunity is more a myth than a reality.
If you get access to economical stats you will also see that the economic inequalities have increased during the '90s (and still are) : is this trend a natural one ?
And there is plenty of scientific evidence that the social tissue you live in determines for the biggest part, the opportunities you will have later.
This enough, as long as our education system fails to reduce the influence of initial equalities, qualifies our system as unfair.
You do decide that inequalities are fair and natural, well , good for you, though I doubt you belong to the portion of people who suffer from them. I, for myself, have a much higher standard of living than most other people in my country (my salary is above the median one) but I do not consider such situation natural nor fair and would not mind paying more taxes for example.
I know of other people who work better and more than me but will never get a salary close to mine just because they are part of a social class where they can't evolve because of initial bad conditions.
So much for equal opportunities.
Like you, I don't think that forced distribution of wealth would be a good thing.
If we had to force an equal distribution of stuff, I'd rather made it education and health care than wealth. But even on this point we are far from providing it.
And I'm sorry if you took my remarks as insults : they were not. I just made a supposition about your point of view and did not think it would hurt your feelings. My apologies if I was rude.
Other posters have pointed out that an x-box which never goes purchased hurts Microsoft more than one that is. By buying the product, you reimburse Microsoft's cost by $110, or whatever their resellers pay.
And they are wrong.
Microsoft takes care not to produce much more consoles than they can sell. Just as every other clever hardware vendor does.
They won't start producing a batch of say, one million consoles if they are not sure to sell at least 90% of them (based on the sales curves and market capacity studies). So, restraining from buying an xbox is not really going to hurt them at all -> they'll just build less on the next batch.
Buying one and not buying games is a sure way to make sure they lose money.
And regarding Microsoft cash, people should not use this as a strong evidence, it's not so clear that MS actually has so much money available.
see Bill Paris on this point
Are US playstations able to output PAL?
To my knowledge, there is no restriction on the TV output format of the various models of Playstation2.
We use US/Jap/Eu PS2 debug stations at work to run the games we develop and we do it in whatever format (PAL/NTSC) we need to.
So, yes you could use this hack to play imported games.
This makes this hack much more valuable than a modchip which will void your warranty.
But even more valuable is the fact that it allows you to use your PS2 as a real open computer.
The fact that it stops it from being a closed hardware anymore is IMHO unvaluable. (just like for the xbox).
Since when do books have trailers?
;)
Nothing personal here, just practical
Isn't it about time a new "-1000 : read the article" moderation "comment" be added to the mod system ?
It takes longer time everyday just to skip questions & remarks written by hordes of people who did not even bother to read the article but stay at score 1 because they have an account.
This is quite different from comments from people who badly understood the article or do not agree with the content : it's just about respecting some kind of etiquette.
Of course moderators abusing this thing should have their buts kicked straight to the moon.
But i might be worth a try IMHO.
Security is a cost-benefits analysis and if hiding some critical information about the sensitive spots in a difficult to secure physical system can provide an immediate benefit, then it's stupid to publish such information so that those who wish you harm can more easily commit it.
It's stupid only if you have been irresponsible enough to wreck havok in foreign countries in the name of fighting the evil Reds (which they were) using means that you would condamne here in your own country.
There would not be any anti-US terrorism if the US had been fair to many countries in the past (and the present).
So the stupid ones are not those who claim obscurity is a bad thing but those who fail to see that their foreign actions have internal consequences in the long run.
Power distribution would not be a matter of security concern in the first place if those in power in the US had not made everything they could to seed terrorism nearly everwhere.
And if you want to live under perpetual osbscurity for the sake of security then do so, but be aware that you'll soon have to trade your freedom for security too.
Oh, wait, it's already done.
I fully agree that space exploration is worth dying for.
;)
Huh ?
I can't think of anything else that is worth dying for than freedom.
When you're dead, you're dead and there is no more to enjoy : there's no way you can say "waow !! that was worth it !".
The only interesting things you can do are the ones when you have the most chances to survive and say *after* : "man, that was great ! i'll remember this my whole life long".
If you die, then you die. That's just plain stupid to think that it may be worth it when there is no way this will have an impact on your real life.
I'll go walking on the moon when it will be as safe as driving within my town. If it never becomes so, well no problem, I can enjoy many other things while I'm alive
Yes, feed the hungry, but if you stop there and don't create an economy that enables them to support themselves, all you've done is to create a permanent dependent underclass.
So, you seem to agree that in the US and EU, our economic system does not allow poor people to support themselves, since we *do* have a permanent dependent underclass here. (less in EU but it's been growing lately)
It seems that technology didn't help us reduce inequalities either. I doubt it will help India do better than us.
Technology is of no use if the economic system is unfair. That's where there is work, not in high tech fields. In economic fairness...
But I doubt many people would be eager to invest in that field. You do not gain money to do so. And investors want money (preferably more than other investors or they'll become relatively poorer).
Oh, wait, perhaps that's *the* problem ?
Because India's space programme launches communications satellites which, like TCP/IP over railway communications lines, bring literacy to remote villages. Yes the schools in the villages need satellite dishes and the railroad stations need network stations, but the government provides them!
Why the Indian government failed not provide standard telephony to those areas many decades before will then remain a complete mistery.
I mean, why would they use the latest tech gear now, and not have done it before ?
There's a problem here...
And I seriously doubt that it is cheaper to use satellites than a standard telephony wire system. If wire is cheaper for us in USA and EU then it's not going to be different for India.
Moreover, it's also dubious that bringing "knowledge" to uneducated masses without bringing material stuff that they can work on with such knowledge will help them raise their standard of living close to those living in big cities.
Even people in big cities are really poor in India, so it's not like their problem is technology.
Funny how this myth about technology being the solution to all problems - especially poverty, seems to spread so easily.
The solution to poverty is not to send pigs in space or invest in high tech R&D, it is to give money to the poor ones.
IE *share*.
You can brainstorm the problem for centuries, you won't find another solution. As long as there are inequalities, no tech will help poors to become riches or at least less-poors.
Economics is a zero sum game, what the riches have, the poors have not. No amount of tech toys is going to change that.
(though I'd love it to be true)
The consequent frenzy of Apple bashing completely ignores the fact that they are one of the major player in the biz who is making great strides in adopting the methods pioneered the free/open source software movement.
/.ers surely are bashing them, but as well as most FSF attackers, they didn't bother to read the article in the first place.
/.ers would take time to :
;)
I understand your point, but the FSF surely is not the one bashing Apple.
Some
I have to agree with you that this generates a lot of noise here.
Slashdot would have a much better noise/signal ratio if most
- actually read the article
- take time to understand it, making sure they did not wrongly interpret its wording and meaning
- carefully phrased their posts to make sure they are not ambiguously interpreted of somewhat aggressive
It would be also become much easier to read
...there are people in the hippie free software movement who will never, ever accept or approve of anything less than total compliance with their GPL license
Please concentrate on facts, calling people you disapprove "hippies" is not helping anyone having a clear argument on the current subject.
You should better concentrate on the reasons why some people think the GPL is a higher standard than most other licenses instead of bashing them for being unconditionnals.
I would never accept to give away my freedom of speech, does that make me hippie freedom zealot ?
Let's be reasonnable here...
they're even more evil because they're just trying to appear like they aren't evil.
Then read again, that's not what the FSF is saying. It says that the license is quite ok but that it gives Apple full rights to use your code. This is a one way license : you get access to the code, but you can't do anything else with it than increasing the functionality of the original software, OTOH, Apple can do whatever they want with your additions. Quite dysymetric.
Where's the zealotry in explaining this ?
It's not quite like they are enforcing this upon us.
Civillian power is out for a few days, who cares? Emergency power came on in hospitals and other critical places
What about the economic cost ?
If a single DDOS attack shutting down a server for a few hours can cause millions of dollars of loss, then I certainly think that shutting down all electric equipments in one huge town such as NewYork is very likely to cause much more losses.
Some companies will have generators, but I guess most won't.
Solution: Build more nuclear plants.
;)
Human greenhouse gases emissions do not arise solely from electricity production.
CO2 makes up "only" for 55% of human contribution to the greenhouse effect
Methane (CH4) makes up for 15% (4 times higher gh effect than CO2), and is mostly produced by agriculture and also by leaks from petroleum extraction points.
HaloCarbons (CxHyHalz) also make up for 15%.
NO2 makes up for 5% and is mostly produced by the use of fertilizers in agriculture and some chemical treatments.
Atmospheric ozone is also 15%, it is a byproduct of air pollution in cities and of aerial traffic.
(the rest is really not interesting)
Even the 55% corresponding to CO2 emissions do not all originate from electricity production.
7.5 Gigatons of CO2 were produced in the world in 2000, of these, 1.5 Gt come from changes in soils usage.
Agriculture is also a major producer of greenhouses gases.
And let's not forget aerial traffic, which produces ozone and is constantly growing (yes, even after 9/11).
I doubt we will see nuclear or hydrogen powered planes anytime soon...
So, even if you build all your nuclear plants, you will still have to face growing greenhouse gases emissions from other sectors than electricity production.
The problems remains the same : exponential growth is simply not sustainable in a finite world, and not only regarding greenhouse gases emissions.
I'd suggest we work on making our economic development more sustainable first, instead of rushing towards illusory technological solutions.
The earth is finite. So must be our growth.
And the sooner, the better.
--
sorry for the syntax/grammar/spelling, too tired to do better and i've the excuse that english is not my native language
Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming.
:
I'm afraid your sources are not trustworthy.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the official scientific commitee responsible for studying the reality of climate change. It does so by examining all scientific papers and facts regarding the subject, including all episodes you mention (ice ages, cycles, etc.).
Its conclusion is not exactly yours... though.
Perhaps you should have a look at its report
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (pdf)
And there's lot more stuff on the subject on the IPCC web site
Oh, btw, the IPCC includes the major international scientists (including US of course) in all fields touching the subject. Not quite an environmentalist lobby...
Solution: Build more nuclear plants.
What about avoiding wasting energy in the first place ?
read this : CO2 emissions per capita
and see that there is lot of potential for improvement.
The USA emit as much as 25% of all CO2 emissions, and while they do not have a higher standard of life than Canadians and Germans they emit respectively twice and 2.7 more CO2 per capita than those countries.
And it's also estimated that regarding house and water heating, using the best technologies available today, energy consumption could be reduced by as much as 50% in Europe. And it's not the only point where it's possible.
There's obviously lot of room for improvement.
Instead of rushing towards the wall, we should probably take care not wasting the resources we deal with.
No non-renewable energy source can resist to an exponentially increasing energy consumption : whatever we do, we will exhaust our resources if we continue.
So, the best solution is probably to learn to use energy efficiently and stop wasting it. We will have to do it someday, so the sooner we start, the easier it will be.
I highly doubt that the Marshall plan would work in Afghanistan and Iraq
;)
Irak was one of most advanced countries of middle east politically as well as well as socially speaking when it became an autoritarian regime. It could have been the first Arab democracy if its regime was not overthrown by the military. Even now, it is more socially advanced than most of its neighbours, having universities and school of a much better level than the rest.
Saddam Hussein was certainly a mad despote but he was(is?) an atheist, socially advanced person otherwise, Iraki women had the same rights than men under its regime.
So it would not take that much effort to make Irak a real democracy if some money was bombed over its educational system by the US or the UN.
As for Afghanistan, it benefited from the USSR as far as education was concerned and also had relatively good schools and universities before it became a complete mess in recent decades. Women also had a quite advanced status relatively to other neighbouring states.
There again, history has shown that education is not something so foreign to this country.
But then the US should face their responsabilities and ensure that the police forces have the means to uphold the law, which they can't for the moment given the mess that the country is in. Most people there claim it is more chaotic than under the Talibans. You can expect terrorist groups to spawn like hell in such an environment.
So much for the bombings efficiency...
A Marshall plan for those countries would be the best thing to do and would cost *much* less than the bombings. This would not be stupid generousity but plain pragmatism : bringing education to the people does more harm to terrorism than violent retaliation, and it also has the nice advantage to be a bit more moral
--
Laurent
"every bomb, whether dropped or not, has collaterol damage: the citizens of the nation that decided to spend tax dollars on weapons of mass destruction rather than on meaningful social programs."
That's only true if you believe it's not possible to have a justified war. Your "meaningful social programs" wouldn't be so meaningful if the world had allowed Hitler to take over...
Well, just don't forget that if France, US and other europeans countries of that time had given some money to meaningful social programs in Germany after WWI there wouldn't have been such thing as Adolf Hitler and WWII.
US people were clever enough after WWII not to repeat that mistake and spent *lot* of money to make sure Europe would have a viable social basis.
Too bad, GWB is not that bright regarding third world and terrorist countries nowadays. It's exactly the same problem if you look at it closely.
-> no money for social initiatives, lots for weapons and economic = social disaster = autoritarian regimes = terrorism.
If the US spent a tenth of the money they litteraly bombed over Afghanistan and Irak to build schools and train teachers, we'd probably get rid of terrorisms in not much more time than it took for Europe to rebuild after WWII.
You just have to see what Talibans and BinLaden supporters do : they attack universities and oppress students, this is where the US and other rich countries should """strike""".
But, with the current Bush foreign policy we are most probably currently heading for many more of disasters.
The same is true for France and African countries such as Congo, Soudan, Cote d'Ivoire and a lot of thers as well, of course.
It's not like the US are the sole responsible of the mess our planet is : we all - the rich ones - are.
(I'm french btw)
Why, the relationships I've formed right here on Slashdot are as vibrant and fulfilling as any "real-world" relationship I've ever had!
I think you have a point here.
Some introverted computer freaks (count myself in) may use computers for the shielding it provides them against people who they usually don't want to be familiar with in their everyday life.
While this may reveal an initial lack of social skills, ie shyness, this does not mean that technology drives those people towards social isolation. If they are not yet thinking that people are bad and tech is good for them, they might very well use tech to find people more similar to them with whom they might have important fulfilling social interaction, be it via email, instant messaging or web forums in a first time, and physically in a second one if by chance they are not living too far away.
I had the occasion to meet a guy on IRC which I found quite brillant, humanly speaking, but was probably as a-social as I was at that time. For various reasons, I do not see him anymore but we had deep interesting conversations that we could not have with most people around us, some about technology, some philosophical, about our respective crushes of the moment, etc.
Clearly, we had nobody around available that we might have "used" as readily as we did to talk the "important" (to us at least) matters that we had in mind.
We were not wasting our time chatting about the weather or useless concernes, (I think) we were having a rather deep friendly relationship.
Tech actually helped us find a friend soul at that time.
I had other physical friends around, even in my cs classes, but though I think we estimated each other quite well and I still see them on a regular basis, we did not develop such kind of relation. I even noticed that we talked about more intimate subjects easily when we used IRC rather than oral communication.
This probably has to do with shyness : not seing the person you interact with, and more importantly not being seen by this person, helps a lot to overcome it. Perhaps we felt more equal and less being judged by others when facing a keyboard and screen.
I now regret to have lost contact with him and I should probably try to contact him again but this story shows indeed that tech can help meeting interesting people, though we met physically once only.
Overall, I think that tech does not encourage or limit our ability to communicate. Introverted people in need for social interaction can find it using computers. Even blogs can help find persons with interests approaching yours if you manage to make friends with their authors. They might be considered as the display of a narcissic and exhibitionist mind but perhaps do they instead say "hey, you, I am here, this I like, this I do, don't you too ? let's meet !".
All would be better of course if we all had the ability to (physically) communicate intimately even with people we are not familiar with, but I guess that this is something which requires training to acquire. Tech is a neutral tool and can help both for such training or to reinforce insolation. I guess that how it's used depends mostly on each person state of mind and global school/working conditions : if one gets to work in a stressful environment in front of a computer, then it seems logical to me that he will be (and thus feel) lonely and depressed. Someone whose job consists of talking to other brillant people will obviously not be depressed, if he gets to speak only with frustrated angry dumbasses, well, he most surely will too.
I sometimes think that the problem is that we do not get enough time outside work, if we had more, it might be easier to physically meet far-located internet buddies and thus get to have this social training that some of us lack.
But given how things work in a highly competitive environment I guess that we are not going this way. Every productivity gained is not used to diminish the amount of work each people do, but to produce more : we a