No. Private enterprise did not want the internet. In large part they said "it's just a fad, no significant amount of commerce will be done over the internet."
Buggy-whip makers didn't want the automobile either, and said 'it's just a fad, no amount of travelling will be done in a horseless carriage'.
Meanwhile, private enterprise largely built the Internet after the very early phase, while government did its best to prevent commercial use. You know, companies like Sun, Cisco, etc, etc, etc, etc....
You'd be a lot more likely to have it if the government didn't impose vastly expensive regulations on anyone who tries to provide it. When dramatic life extension becomes possible you'll probably have to fly to Mexico or Thailand to get the treatment if you don't want to die before it becomes legal in America.
There is absolutely no doubt that pharmaceutical regulation has killed at least hundreds of thousands of people, and probably far more. One drug that saves 10,000 lives a year being delayed by a decade of testing is 100,000 dead by itself.
I'm under the impression elsewhere that tax forms are filled out by the government treasury and sent to the person who then can read it and modify and correct for things unreported.
Certainly not in Britain or Canada, I can't vouch for anywhere else.
I'm not sure why the parent post is tagged as insightful, because it's nonsense. Yes, some CPUs and GPUs are actually more powerful chips with defective components which were disabled, but the majority are not.
Nor does a fault in one part of the chip somehow make it less reliable than any other; faults are typically random due to imperfections in the die which affect only one small part of the silicon, and the rest of the chip will work without any problems.
The suggestion that that every CPU or GPU 'comes off one line' and is binned based on defects is pure monkey-talk.
I am also a professional software engineer/network engineer by trade since 1995
A young whippersnapper, then. When you have a bit more experience of the real world you might start to understand just how many critical systems already run on Linux.
BTW, I can make a safe bet that anyone writing avionics software is not running it on Windows either. Back when I was writing avionics software it all ran on custom hardware with no OS worth speaking of; and having a 'free' OS wasn't much of a benefit when our hardware was selling for the price of an expensive sports car.
I'm increasingly wary of BtrFS, due to claims that there are fundamental design flaws.
The only 'claims of fundamental design flaws' I'm aware of are that it has bad performance in some pathological cases. Which is true of every single filesystem ever produced and likely true of every filesystem you'll ever use in the future.
I'm certainly not aware of it having any flaws that ZFS doesn't; my main concern is that Oracle won't want to fund any more BTRFS development now they also own ZFS.
Meanwhile my TV, webcam and Blu-Ray players all appear to run Linux, as did the media players and cameras I used to work on. There are a ton of embedded Linux systems in all kinds of markets even when a real-time OS might make more sense.
Indeed. The only people I've seen driving a Prius around here are taxi drivers, and, uh, they need to travel more than 60 miles a day between refuelling.
If electric cars were capable of being used as taxis they probably would have taken off by now; but their tiny range and slow recharging ensures they can't work in that market.
There are huge externalities with fossil-fuel vehicles—air pollution, climate change,oil spills, etc. These are effectively subsidized by everyone, lowering their price far below what it should be.
Ah, like the 'environmental catastrophe' the Greenists were predicting in the Gulf?
They would make a lot more financial sense if the government would stop subsidizing the oil industry so heavily.
And exactly where does the government 'heavily subsidise' the EVIL OIL COMPANIES?
If anything its seems to be going out of its way to increase costs for the EVIL OIL COMPANIES by pushing stupid regulations and by stirring up wars in the Middle East which are probably the greatest threat to the world's oil supplies right now.
The Nissan Leaf is scheduled to debut with the price tag of around $32,000. I wouldn't call it cheap but I wouldn't call it a prohibitive luxury good. With federal and state tax subsidies, it makes it cheaper and a working incentive to go electric
Meanwhile a Civic will cost you around $20k and can drive more than 100 miles without waiting hours to refuel.
Even if you don't need to travel long distances, $12k will buy you a lot of gas.
If the government wants to encourage electric cars, why doesn't it buy them? Switch the entire damn postal service over to start with. Give grants for local comunity to switch their police cars and mass transit over.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, except that when Foobar Electric Cars Inc realised that the government was coming to buy a few million from them they'd rub their hands in glee and double the price.
They already did that with Ubuntu users despite all the proclamations that Loonix was immune to such things.
I don't know what Loonix is, but no-one ever said that Linux was immune to a virus, only that it's very hard to create one because of the restrictive user permissions.
The screensaver in question required you to download a.deb file from the web and then install it with root permission. When you're dumb enough to run random downloads as root it's game over on any operating system.
And, in any case, wasn't it just a trojan rather than a virus? I don't remember it actively spreading anywhere.
Curious statement. I've never had Eclipse crash on me during start up and almost never at any other times either. I use it almost every day -- sometimes for hours on end.
Perhaps the fact that you only use it for 'hours on end' is the reason why you don't see it crash. I'm guessing that many of the crashes are due to running out of memory after two or three days as windows stop repainting, etc, and then it completely falls over... by that point it's using a gigabyte or more of RAM.
I seem to remember that at least one of the startup crashes turned out to be a known bug where it corrupted something in the workspace and then you could never open it again.
Yet judging from this discussion, it has a reputation for being flaky...?
For me it usually crashes at least every couple of days or becomes so screwy that I have to exit and restart. And it's often refused to start up at all until I just deleted the old workspace and recreated it.
Certainly one of the most buggy programs I use on a regular basis.
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You don't need the government in order to have a monopoly or oligopoly that screws its customers.
How do you create a monopoly which screws its customers without government preventing competitors from entering your market?
No. Private enterprise did not want the internet. In large part they said "it's just a fad, no significant amount of commerce will be done over the internet."
Buggy-whip makers didn't want the automobile either, and said 'it's just a fad, no amount of travelling will be done in a horseless carriage'.
Meanwhile, private enterprise largely built the Internet after the very early phase, while government did its best to prevent commercial use. You know, companies like Sun, Cisco, etc, etc, etc, etc....
And my eternal youth?
You'd be a lot more likely to have it if the government didn't impose vastly expensive regulations on anyone who tries to provide it. When dramatic life extension becomes possible you'll probably have to fly to Mexico or Thailand to get the treatment if you don't want to die before it becomes legal in America.
There is absolutely no doubt that pharmaceutical regulation has killed at least hundreds of thousands of people, and probably far more. One drug that saves 10,000 lives a year being delayed by a decade of testing is 100,000 dead by itself.
Without government subsidies and other involvement, there would be no internet.
{Citation required}
I'm under the impression elsewhere that tax forms are filled out by the government treasury and sent to the person who then can read it and modify and correct for things unreported.
Certainly not in Britain or Canada, I can't vouch for anywhere else.
I'm not sure why the parent post is tagged as insightful, because it's nonsense. Yes, some CPUs and GPUs are actually more powerful chips with defective components which were disabled, but the majority are not.
Nor does a fault in one part of the chip somehow make it less reliable than any other; faults are typically random due to imperfections in the die which affect only one small part of the silicon, and the rest of the chip will work without any problems.
The suggestion that that every CPU or GPU 'comes off one line' and is binned based on defects is pure monkey-talk.
I am also a professional software engineer/network engineer by trade since 1995
A young whippersnapper, then. When you have a bit more experience of the real world you might start to understand just how many critical systems already run on Linux.
BTW, I can make a safe bet that anyone writing avionics software is not running it on Windows either. Back when I was writing avionics software it all ran on custom hardware with no OS worth speaking of; and having a 'free' OS wasn't much of a benefit when our hardware was selling for the price of an expensive sports car.
I'm increasingly wary of BtrFS, due to claims that there are fundamental design flaws.
The only 'claims of fundamental design flaws' I'm aware of are that it has bad performance in some pathological cases. Which is true of every single filesystem ever produced and likely true of every filesystem you'll ever use in the future.
I'm certainly not aware of it having any flaws that ZFS doesn't; my main concern is that Oracle won't want to fund any more BTRFS development now they also own ZFS.
Wow. Just wow. I'm speechless. I hope you are kidding.
Indeed. I pretty much switched over to Linux on the desktop in 2009.
Meanwhile my TV, webcam and Blu-Ray players all appear to run Linux, as did the media players and cameras I used to work on. There are a ton of embedded Linux systems in all kinds of markets even when a real-time OS might make more sense.
Why did you think that we pay less than $3/gallon for gas and Europeans pay $7-$8.
Because Europeans impose massive taxes on fuel. Presumably because they hate poor people.
Because you make trips greater than 60 miles.
Indeed. The only people I've seen driving a Prius around here are taxi drivers, and, uh, they need to travel more than 60 miles a day between refuelling.
If electric cars were capable of being used as taxis they probably would have taken off by now; but their tiny range and slow recharging ensures they can't work in that market.
There are huge externalities with fossil-fuel vehicles—air pollution, climate change,oil spills, etc. These are effectively subsidized by everyone, lowering their price far below what it should be.
Ah, like the 'environmental catastrophe' the Greenists were predicting in the Gulf?
They would make a lot more financial sense if the government would stop subsidizing the oil industry so heavily.
And exactly where does the government 'heavily subsidise' the EVIL OIL COMPANIES?
If anything its seems to be going out of its way to increase costs for the EVIL OIL COMPANIES by pushing stupid regulations and by stirring up wars in the Middle East which are probably the greatest threat to the world's oil supplies right now.
The Nissan Leaf is scheduled to debut with the price tag of around $32,000. I wouldn't call it cheap but I wouldn't call it a prohibitive luxury good. With federal and state tax subsidies, it makes it cheaper and a working incentive to go electric
Meanwhile a Civic will cost you around $20k and can drive more than 100 miles without waiting hours to refuel.
Even if you don't need to travel long distances, $12k will buy you a lot of gas.
Nobody will buy it for $70k.
But if you can sell a few thousand, the per-unit cost can get down to $35,000? Now people can afford it and the market takes off.
The Volt is supposed to be below $35k with subidies.
But if you're that concerned about gas prices, why would you buy a Volt for $35k rather than a Civic or Fiesta for $20k?
If the government wants to encourage electric cars, why doesn't it buy them? Switch the entire damn postal service over to start with. Give grants for local comunity to switch their police cars and mass transit over.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, except that when Foobar Electric Cars Inc realised that the government was coming to buy a few million from them they'd rub their hands in glee and double the price.
Did anyone in their right mind ever think this was anything else?
Electric cars make no economic sense at this time, which is why we don't drive them.
Well, that should be a good way to screen for politicians, then.
Most politicians are psychopaths, and hence you'd have to scan for someone who never feels guilty about anything.
He can go reboot it, right? I know it is the weekend, but it's obviously part of his job duties.
Don't worry, the rovers never went to Mars, this is all being faked at Area 51. They'll have it rebooted by Monday.
Were people actually downloading in the early days of MS-DOS?
Ever heard of a BBS? Ah, guess not.
They already did that with Ubuntu users despite all the proclamations that Loonix was immune to such things.
I don't know what Loonix is, but no-one ever said that Linux was immune to a virus, only that it's very hard to create one because of the restrictive user permissions.
The screensaver in question required you to download a .deb file from the web and then install it with root permission. When you're dumb enough to run random downloads as root it's game over on any operating system.
And, in any case, wasn't it just a trojan rather than a virus? I don't remember it actively spreading anywhere.
Apparently California can't afford to pay government employees, but can afford to give money to people who buy electric cars?
Curious statement. I've never had Eclipse crash on me during start up and almost never at any other times either. I use it almost every day -- sometimes for hours on end.
Perhaps the fact that you only use it for 'hours on end' is the reason why you don't see it crash. I'm guessing that many of the crashes are due to running out of memory after two or three days as windows stop repainting, etc, and then it completely falls over... by that point it's using a gigabyte or more of RAM.
I seem to remember that at least one of the startup crashes turned out to be a known bug where it corrupted something in the workspace and then you could never open it again.
Yet judging from this discussion, it has a reputation for being flaky...?
For me it usually crashes at least every couple of days or becomes so screwy that I have to exit and restart. And it's often refused to start up at all until I just deleted the old workspace and recreated it.
Certainly one of the most buggy programs I use on a regular basis.