> I can tell you, from my own observations that the single greatest factor that influences whether
> a student gets a good education or not is the parents.
Mod the parent (parent poster, that is) up. dculp is correct.
I'd add that dculp seems to be pretty special though too. Teaching is very tough. Discipline and behaviour problems are numerous and hard to deal with -- especially for tech folks who may not be as skilled at dealing with kids. Extra hard when there's no (or negative) parental support. Even harder if your principal doesn't support you.
Anyway, as said, the major part of the solution is to figure out how to get parents involved. *That's* the first domino. Convincing parents that it's vitally important to be involved with their kid's education is a tough cycle to break though.
> They aren't being "pumped cash". That's why teachers are underpaid, and we don't have enough of them, [snip]
Teachers are indeed being underpaid, but we actually *do* seem to have enough of them. The jobs are being filled, mostly by folks who were laid off and got certified to teach. Also, going into teaching is a pretty straight path, and many college students looking for a career like straight paths (i.e., take classes, take cert exams, do your student teaching, get a job).
The problem with American schools is that the majority of American parents don't take education or discipline seriously. Teaching is an *awful* job. Almost every kid wants to "take it easy" and be on a perpetual break where, instead of studying, their goal is to see how much they can annoy the teacher. It's incredibly frustrating -- teachers have all the responsibility, but very little authority. When they send the kid to the principal's office, they get their boss (the principal) asking them why they're unable to handle their kids. When they call the parents, often they get hassled by the parent and asked why they are "picking on my kid".
Actually, calling the parent is usually an exercise in frustration because the kid gets home first and often deletes the message from the answering machine before the parent gets it.
And then there's the frustration of seeing the few good kids flounder around not getting the environment or attention you know they need.
And I'm only talking about regular suburban schools. This doesn't even scratch the surface of how bad it is in inner city schools, where the teens act like the school is their own personal gang territory.
What exacerbates the problem is that anyone who has any awareness at all about this, and who can afford it, gets their kid(s) out of public school ASAP. Now you've got even fewer of the good and/or smart ones left to make a positive influence on the rest.
In the final analysis, since the goal is to have an educated citizenry, I think the best thing for the country is to fix the public schools. Get tough on and serious about the kids and parents who are ruining it for the rest of us. I don't know how to fix the real trouble-makers though. These are kids who've probably had it the worst growing up (abusive drug-addicted parents, poor nutrition, gang involvement, etc.), and we don't want to abandon them, but we also don't want to allow them to wreck it for everyone else.
> It would theoretically be possible to replace gas stations with battery-swap stations that will > stick a freshly charged pack in for a fee, but even that is a little tough.
I think the reason it would be difficult is simple: battery lifetime is dependent on how deep you discharge them. You'd have folks pulling into the swap-station who've discharged the pack all the way down to the bottom, thus wrecking it for everyone else.
Battery packs take a lot of maintenance if you want them to last.
> > First that electicity has to be generated - usually by boiling water which > > involves some lost energy > > Not necessarily - it could be free energy from reflected solar.
Well, dbIII has a point though. Through each step of the way, you lose energy. Even if you get it via solar cells, you need to run that through the charging circuitry (so there's some loss), then charging the battery is not 100% efficient, so you lose some there (this isn't even considering when your cells get out of sync and you need to overcharge the pack to get them all to the same state of charge -- outgassing is electrolysis, and that takes lots of energy to do). Then while the batteries sit unused during the day they lose some more (self discharge). Then when you use them, the power goes through the power controller, so there's some loss. *Then* finally you deal with that last loss at the motor itself.
Now, I could probably live with all that (note, battery packs require significant maintenance to last a reasonable amount of time), and I could probably even deal with the fact that if you habitually discharge your battery below 50% or so you kill your pack (so don't do it). And I might even be able to deal with the temperature sensitivity of rechargable cells (though it would require heating them in the winter where I currently live). I've posted here in favor of EV's in the past, but now I think maybe I was incorrect. dbIII points out the straw that breaks the camel's back: lugging these heavy battery packs around -- it's just wasteful to carry all that weight around wherever I go.
Battery technology is pretty old and well-understood. You mix and match elements on the periodic table and work the thermodynamics to see if you'll get a good voltage, favorable reactivity, no bad environmental problems, etc. There's no magic anymore -- all the combinations have been tried. Maybe novel manufacturing practices and materials science can give you a few percent better performance, but there's good reasons why people still use lead-acid. And regarding these lithium batteries that can "vent with flame" -- no thank you. Also, re. NiMH, they have their own host if ideosyncratic issues.
I used to think it was just as simple as sticking cells in a car, replacing the engine with an electric motor and off-you-go, but now I see (and I hate to say it) that it's actually much more of a prickly problem than I thought.
My bet is now on biodiesel, I think. It's net zero CO2 producing, you can use it in furnaces, generators, cars, etc. You can make the stuff yourself in your backyard, farmers can make it,... there aren't any real minuses that I can see (except that you still are relying on small explosions under the hood to get you from P_A --> P_B, so your engine parts will still wear out much much faster than EV motor parts).
Of course, please continue using good old recyclable lead acid cells in your shed that store extra output from the wind gennie and the solar panels on the roof. Heavy is ok if you aren't lugging them all to and from work every day.:)
So, will most of the analysis be done by Information Retrieval or Information Dispersal?
Either way, Central Services will probably end up doing all the dirty work.
My only suggestion: make sure they've filled out a 27b/6 form before you let them lay a finger your server. But then, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork.
> About $4K for a set of conventional gel batteries [snip]
When you buy big batteries (as opposed to AA's), there's gotta be some recycling reimbursement going on. I mean, you give up your old batteries when can be refurbished and recycled... It sounds incorrect that you'd be paying full price for each new set...
> and personally I'm not sure I would have wanted a world of all > eletric cars when the time came to recycle the batteries...
The industry is very well prepared for recycling lead-acid batteries. The chemistry is very well known and the batteries themselves are pretty much all the same size. Should be about the same hassle as getting your tires rotated.
Electric vehicles are simple and inexpensive to design and build.
Way simpler than ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. ICE's have to have many many moving parts working in sync to even run at all. There's even fluid dynamics involved for air, fuel, and lubricant flow. It's insanely complicated compared to an electric car which happens to consist of only 4 major parts:
the electric motor,
the charge controller,
the power controller ("throttle"), and
the batteries
That's it. Any other fancy features (like regenerative braking) are just gravy, and you don't need them for a simple functional vehicle.
Car companies could make an electric "VW Bug" type car in their sleep. Hobbyists have been making them in their garages for decades.
The fact of the matter is not that car companies can't make money on them, the fact is that they wouldn't be able to make nearly as much money on them as they do with ICE vehicles. Here's some reasons why:
1. Energy efficiency. All the extras that car companies like to change extra for (power windows, power doorlocks, automatic transmissions, big stereos, heated seats, etc.) become much less viable with small economical energy efficient vehicles. Instead of "features" they become things that reduce how many miles you can go on a charge.
2. Size. EV's tend to be fairly small. Car companies like to charge big money for big vehicles.
3. Parts. EV's are very reliable. We're used to driving vehicles around which have explosions going on inside their engines. This wears ICE's out fast. Electric motors last an very very long time with minimal maintenance. This means car companies will not make much money selling parts. Batteries, OTOH, do wear out. But they're dimensions are currently pretty standardized, and so you wouldn't have to go to the dealership to recycle them.
4. Lifetime. As mentioned, EV's last a very long time. Car companies like their customers to drive disposable cars, so they can be sold another car in a few years.
5. Oil. You can't discount the relationship that car companies almost assuredly have with oil companies. It's symbiotic. Do you think maybe GM has heavy investments in several oil companies? I'm sure they certainly do. And widespread EV sales would hammer oil company profits. Do you think maybe oil companies have large investments in automobile companies? Let's listen in on a possible future phone call:
Oil company exec: Hi. Say, all these EV's you're producing - we're really getting hit hard over here. 'Little help?
Car company exec: Yeah, we're doing pretty good with 'em. Folks really love 'em. So, we don't plan on not selling them any time soon.
Oil: Yeah, well, see,.. we were thinking, maybe then it would be a good idea if rearranged our corporate stock ownership portfolio a little... to realign our core... [snip marketspeak].
Car: Whoa! Whoa there. Just a sec... you can't do that... If you did that, then [snip finance speak about lots of fire and brimstone showing up in the car company's checkbook]
Oil: Yes, actually. We can. [car company exec sweats profusely while oil company exec twirls phone cord on the other end and absently feeds fish in piranha tank]
Car: Say, look, um... we actually were just getting ready to discontinue our EV line anyway. Y
It's funny that the FSF seems to regard the LGPL as so less desirable as the GPL. They are careful to word the text of the LGPL such that it seems clumsy to use it for anything other than libraries. I'd really like to see a better worded LGPL which is friendlier for use with things that aren't exactly libraries per se.
> diplomacy is how to say "Nice Doggie" while you look for a really big stick
Agreed. And I think that really big stick is going to be patent-infringement- and DMCA-violation lawsuits. My guess is that MS will start (continue?) painting the picture that the big bad communist (terrorist?) free software community is damaging the good and pure Microsoft who's just trying to make an honest buck. After enough re-education, the FUD-inducing lawsuits will begin in earnest. Just my guess anyway.
From the article: > It's time for the Windows and Linux communities to drop the religious war and [snip]
There _is_ no "Windows community". It's just a giant company and a lot of customers.
> [snip] until the two communities put aside the whole "religion" issue, said Jeremy > Moskowitz, a consultant and authority on Windows 2000/2003 Server, Active Directory > and SMS [snip]
{sigh} There's no "religion issue". There's free software users who write a lot of code that they want to remain free. It's their work -- and they want it to stay free. If you don't like the terms, don't use the software. That's it. There's no religion there. Now, maybe the Microsoft corporation has a "religious issue" -- like, maybe it's their religion to dominate the software industry and they don't like there being anyone else supplying software to the world...
Anyhow, this article seems to be mostly shilling for MS. The author tries to trick the reader into believing the author's presuppositions and also relies pretty heavily on quotes from this Moskowitz "authority".
> "At the end of the day, both Windows and Linux bring things that are good, and we > can all get along and we should look at how we can leverage the strength of each > to the benefit of the other," he said.
Bleh. What garbage. The free software community wants to get along just fine -- they're _giving_ away their work for goodness' sake.
> > There's a riot in the bazaar! Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral! > > And there you will find the ass that tried to start a riot. I can do > without Java and all the bull shit that goes along with it, thanks.
Actually, if you like, you can have Java *without* the BS: just install GCJ.
> > It doesn't stop anybody from whistleblowing - but don't count on keeping your job > > if you do. > > Good job. Lets punish people for doing the right thing.
Mod that mutha up.
Not only that, but when you work for the government, your boss is *us*, "we the people". It should be *assumed* that, unlike many large US corporations, your bosses want you to do the right thing, always.
> I'm sorry but your claims don't jive with the evidence that I can see with my own eyes.
I don't think you're seeing the truth then. It seems that the truth is, folks who barely make it paycheck to paycheck don't like to go around telling everyone that they're barely getting by. They may *tell* you they're fine and everything is dandy, meanwhile they're putting off overdue doctor and dentist visits for themselves and their kids because their high-deductible plan doesn't cover those.
> Complexity, difficulty of use, difficulty of modification, and difficulty of > extension are promoted (thought not consciously) by the GPL [snip]
Interesting point. I think you are correct, however there are also other forces at work. The net result of what you get seems to also depend upon:
A. Whether or not there's a strong contributor community (not just a bunch of users) formed around the given project, and
B. What your ultimate goals are for your project (if world domination is on your agenda, you'd better make your stuff usable and has good docs -- case in point: most GNU software).
Now, open source software (as opposed to Free as-in-libre software) has a very different dynamic. With OSS, the devs usually really really want you to use their software -- they want more users; they want their software to be popular -- and so are motivated by that goal to write pretty good docs. Companies may be able to make money on OSS by adding proprietary extensions and then charging for it, so it's in their best interest to make *their* parts easy to use, and *their* docs better (which may or may not include improving the open-source components).
In my experience, free software projects tend to have stronger community involvement than OSS projects.
I've been to a GNU/Linux users group meeting where was gave a talk. There wasn't any "frothing". He came across as a genuine guy who gives his work away free (under the GPL) and suggests that you might do the same. He also points out why he thinks DRM, software patents, etc., are bad.
That's pretty much it. Well, that and the Saint Ignucius bit. It's probably time to drop that one, though it still gets a *few* chuckles from the crowd I suppose.
I'll tell you one last thing though -- RMS has got some high quality grey matter. When I saw him, he gave the whole talk (had to be over an hour) without any notes or anything. He seemed to stay on target the whole time (no "umm"'s either). It was like watching some lisp program recurse into subtopics and sub-subtopics, and then unwind itself to continue on whichever topic was next until the end of the talk. Pretty impressive.
I sincerely hope Open Source developers will never lower themselves to Microsoft's level and intentionally break interoperability.
It's not a matter of intentionally breaking compatibility, it's just a matter of stopping trying to get free software running on that other platform.
I think the answer is to provide some compatibility where appropriate, while at the same time creating software for GNU/Linux that's so darn good it's a heartache to do without.:)
If MS wants our software, then they can pay to have it ported to their platform, while complying with our licensing requirements.
There are actually people out there who consider that Windoze is more secure and stable... no kiddin'.
It's worse than that. There's people out there that think Microsoft is great American company. That Bill Gates is a role model. People in my own extended *family* believe this, even after I've explained at-length to them the real details. The world is full of sheeple who just metaphorically stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, say "nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa", and keep on believing what they want to believe.
As GNU/Linux gains marketshare, Microsoft will become more and more desperate, and the teeth will *really* come out.
This is related to why I like the way GNU handles their official projects: you assign copyright to the FSF when you contribute to GNU projects. This means that the buck stops with them. They own the copyright, and they are doing the distributing. If MS wants to sue them, my guess is that RMS (or another FSF rep) will go to bat and either the patent will get nullified (dunno the correct terminology there), or else unfortunately the "offending" code will be removed and be re-written.
If there's no one single copyright holder (but rather, a big bunch of copyright holders), do they all have to go to court in such a lawsuit? Hm.
Hopefully, lots of cases like this will go to the courts, and hopefully enough fair judges will see the frivolity of so-called "software patents" that we'll see some sanity come back to the patent system.
I guess it's just beyond most human beings intellectual capacity to just get a fucking clue. This ranks right up there with the rest of the dumb fucking things our military does with innocent animals.
It's not *just* that people are dumb. They are. But they also don't *want* to know what they do to animals (or causes others to do to animals on their behalf).
For example, offer to show someone a short video of what goes on in an abattoir. Almost guaranteed they will refuse. Tell them you don't think eating meat is wrong -- you just want them to see what goes on for them to be able to eat that McBurger. See if they'd be willing (not even "curious", just *willing*) to see how the fowl are slaughtered. They won't do it -- they will almost always prefer ignorance, and they'll probably also get mad at you for "trying to ruin their day".
Slashdot Mirror
> I can tell you, from my own observations that the single greatest factor that influences whether > a student gets a good education or not is the parents. Mod the parent (parent poster, that is) up. dculp is correct. I'd add that dculp seems to be pretty special though too. Teaching is very tough. Discipline and behaviour problems are numerous and hard to deal with -- especially for tech folks who may not be as skilled at dealing with kids. Extra hard when there's no (or negative) parental support. Even harder if your principal doesn't support you. Anyway, as said, the major part of the solution is to figure out how to get parents involved. *That's* the first domino. Convincing parents that it's vitally important to be involved with their kid's education is a tough cycle to break though.
> They aren't being "pumped cash". That's why teachers are underpaid, and we don't have enough of them, [snip]
Teachers are indeed being underpaid, but we actually *do* seem to have enough of them. The jobs are being filled, mostly by folks who were laid off and got certified to teach. Also, going into teaching is a pretty straight path, and many college students looking for a career like straight paths (i.e., take classes, take cert exams, do your student teaching, get a job).
The problem with American schools is that the majority of American parents don't take education or discipline seriously. Teaching is an *awful* job. Almost every kid wants to "take it easy" and be on a perpetual break where, instead of studying, their goal is to see how much they can annoy the teacher. It's incredibly frustrating -- teachers have all the responsibility, but very little authority. When they send the kid to the principal's office, they get their boss (the principal) asking them why they're unable to handle their kids. When they call the parents, often they get hassled by the parent and asked why they are "picking on my kid".
Actually, calling the parent is usually an exercise in frustration because the kid gets home first and often deletes the message from the answering machine before the parent gets it.
And then there's the frustration of seeing the few good kids flounder around not getting the environment or attention you know they need.
And I'm only talking about regular suburban schools. This doesn't even scratch the surface of how bad it is in inner city schools, where the teens act like the school is their own personal gang territory.
What exacerbates the problem is that anyone who has any awareness at all about this, and who can afford it, gets their kid(s) out of public school ASAP. Now you've got even fewer of the good and/or smart ones left to make a positive influence on the rest.
In the final analysis, since the goal is to have an educated citizenry, I think the best thing for the country is to fix the public schools. Get tough on and serious about the kids and parents who are ruining it for the rest of us. I don't know how to fix the real trouble-makers though. These are kids who've probably had it the worst growing up (abusive drug-addicted parents, poor nutrition, gang involvement, etc.), and we don't want to abandon them, but we also don't want to allow them to wreck it for everyone else.
> It would theoretically be possible to replace gas stations with battery-swap stations that will
> stick a freshly charged pack in for a fee, but even that is a little tough.
I think the reason it would be difficult is simple: battery lifetime is dependent on how deep you discharge them. You'd have folks pulling into the swap-station who've discharged the pack all the way down to the bottom, thus wrecking it for everyone else.
Battery packs take a lot of maintenance if you want them to last.
> > First that electicity has to be generated - usually by boiling water which
:)
> > involves some lost energy
>
> Not necessarily - it could be free energy from reflected solar.
Well, dbIII has a point though. Through each step of the way, you lose energy. Even if you get it via solar cells, you need to run that through the charging circuitry (so there's some loss), then charging the battery is not 100% efficient, so you lose some there (this isn't even considering when your cells get out of sync and you need to overcharge the pack to get them all to the same state of charge -- outgassing is electrolysis, and that takes lots of energy to do). Then while the batteries sit unused during the day they lose some more (self discharge). Then when you use them, the power goes through the power controller, so there's some loss. *Then* finally you deal with that last loss at the motor itself.
Now, I could probably live with all that (note, battery packs require significant maintenance to last a reasonable amount of time), and I could probably even deal with the fact that if you habitually discharge your battery below 50% or so you kill your pack (so don't do it). And I might even be able to deal with the temperature sensitivity of rechargable cells (though it would require heating them in the winter where I currently live). I've posted here in favor of EV's in the past, but now I think maybe I was incorrect. dbIII points out the straw that breaks the camel's back: lugging these heavy battery packs around -- it's just wasteful to carry all that weight around wherever I go.
Battery technology is pretty old and well-understood. You mix and match elements on the periodic table and work the thermodynamics to see if you'll get a good voltage, favorable reactivity, no bad environmental problems, etc. There's no magic anymore -- all the combinations have been tried. Maybe novel manufacturing practices and materials science can give you a few percent better performance, but there's good reasons why people still use lead-acid. And regarding these lithium batteries that can "vent with flame" -- no thank you. Also, re. NiMH, they have their own host if ideosyncratic issues.
I used to think it was just as simple as sticking cells in a car, replacing the engine with an electric motor and off-you-go, but now I see (and I hate to say it) that it's actually much more of a prickly problem than I thought.
My bet is now on biodiesel, I think. It's net zero CO2 producing, you can use it in furnaces, generators, cars, etc. You can make the stuff yourself in your backyard, farmers can make it,... there aren't any real minuses that I can see (except that you still are relying on small explosions under the hood to get you from P_A --> P_B, so your engine parts will still wear out much much faster than EV motor parts).
Of course, please continue using good old recyclable lead acid cells in your shed that store extra output from the wind gennie and the solar panels on the roof. Heavy is ok if you aren't lugging them all to and from work every day.
---John
So, will most of the analysis be done by Information Retrieval or Information Dispersal?
Either way, Central Services will probably end up doing all the dirty work.
My only suggestion: make sure they've filled out a 27b/6 form before you let them lay a finger your server. But then, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork.
> About $4K for a set of conventional gel batteries [snip]
When you buy big batteries (as opposed to AA's), there's gotta be some recycling reimbursement going on. I mean, you give up your old batteries when can be refurbished and recycled... It sounds incorrect that you'd be paying full price for each new set...
> and personally I'm not sure I would have wanted a world of all
> eletric cars when the time came to recycle the batteries...
The industry is very well prepared for recycling lead-acid batteries. The chemistry is very well known and the batteries themselves are pretty much all the same size. Should be about the same hassle as getting your tires rotated.
GM knew they could sell electric cars.
I think the point you're missing is this:
Way simpler than ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. ICE's have to have many many moving parts working in sync to even run at all. There's even fluid dynamics involved for air, fuel, and lubricant flow. It's insanely complicated compared to an electric car which happens to consist of only 4 major parts:
That's it. Any other fancy features (like regenerative braking) are just gravy, and you don't need them for a simple functional vehicle.
Car companies could make an electric "VW Bug" type car in their sleep. Hobbyists have been making them in their garages for decades.
The fact of the matter is not that car companies can't make money on them, the fact is that they wouldn't be able to make nearly as much money on them as they do with ICE vehicles. Here's some reasons why:
1. Energy efficiency. All the extras that car companies like to change extra for (power windows, power doorlocks, automatic transmissions, big stereos, heated seats, etc.) become much less viable with small economical energy efficient vehicles. Instead of "features" they become things that reduce how many miles you can go on a charge.
2. Size. EV's tend to be fairly small. Car companies like to charge big money for big vehicles.
3. Parts. EV's are very reliable. We're used to driving vehicles around which have explosions going on inside their engines. This wears ICE's out fast. Electric motors last an very very long time with minimal maintenance. This means car companies will not make much money selling parts. Batteries, OTOH, do wear out. But they're dimensions are currently pretty standardized, and so you wouldn't have to go to the dealership to recycle them.
4. Lifetime. As mentioned, EV's last a very long time. Car companies like their customers to drive disposable cars, so they can be sold another car in a few years.
5. Oil. You can't discount the relationship that car companies almost assuredly have with oil companies. It's symbiotic. Do you think maybe GM has heavy investments in several oil companies? I'm sure they certainly do. And widespread EV sales would hammer oil company profits. Do you think maybe oil companies have large investments in automobile companies? Let's listen in on a possible future phone call:
> This is why I'm a big fan of the LGPL.
Me too.
It's funny that the FSF seems to regard the LGPL as so less desirable as the GPL. They are careful to word the text of the LGPL such that it seems clumsy to use it for anything other than libraries. I'd really like to see a better worded LGPL which is friendlier for use with things that aren't exactly libraries per se.
> diplomacy is how to say "Nice Doggie" while you look for a really big stick
Agreed. And I think that really big stick is going to be patent-infringement- and DMCA-violation lawsuits. My guess is that MS will start (continue?) painting the picture that the big bad communist (terrorist?) free software community is damaging the good and pure Microsoft who's just trying to make an honest buck. After enough re-education, the FUD-inducing lawsuits will begin in earnest. Just my guess anyway.
From the article:
> It's time for the Windows and Linux communities to drop the religious war and [snip]
There _is_ no "Windows community". It's just a giant company and a lot of customers.
> [snip] until the two communities put aside the whole "religion" issue, said Jeremy
> Moskowitz, a consultant and authority on Windows 2000/2003 Server, Active Directory
> and SMS [snip]
{sigh} There's no "religion issue". There's free software users who write a lot of
code that they want to remain free. It's their work -- and they want it to stay free.
If you don't like the terms, don't use the software. That's it. There's no religion
there. Now, maybe the Microsoft corporation has a "religious issue" -- like, maybe
it's their religion to dominate the software industry and they don't like there
being anyone else supplying software to the world...
Anyhow, this article seems to be mostly shilling for MS. The author tries to trick
the reader into believing the author's presuppositions and also relies pretty heavily
on quotes from this Moskowitz "authority".
> "At the end of the day, both Windows and Linux bring things that are good, and we
> can all get along and we should look at how we can leverage the strength of each
> to the benefit of the other," he said.
Bleh. What garbage. The free software community wants to get along just fine --
they're _giving_ away their work for goodness' sake.
> > There's a riot in the bazaar! Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral!
>
> And there you will find the ass that tried to start a riot. I can do
> without Java and all the bull shit that goes along with it, thanks.
Actually, if you like, you can have Java *without* the BS: just install
GCJ.
> > It doesn't stop anybody from whistleblowing - but don't count on keeping your job
> > if you do.
>
> Good job. Lets punish people for doing the right thing.
Mod that mutha up.
Not only that, but when you work for the government, your boss is *us*, "we the people". It should be *assumed* that, unlike many large US corporations, your bosses want you to do the right thing, always.
I'd throw Brazil in there too for good measure.
> I'm sorry but your claims don't jive with the evidence that I can see with my own eyes.
I don't think you're seeing the truth then. It seems that the truth is, folks who barely make it paycheck to paycheck don't like to go around telling everyone that they're barely getting by. They may *tell* you they're fine and everything is dandy, meanwhile they're putting off overdue doctor and dentist visits for themselves and their kids because their high-deductible plan doesn't cover those.
> Complexity, difficulty of use, difficulty of modification, and difficulty of
> extension are promoted (thought not consciously) by the GPL [snip]
Interesting point. I think you are correct, however there are also other forces at work. The net result of what you get seems to also depend upon:
A. Whether or not there's a strong contributor community (not just a bunch of users) formed around the given project, and
B. What your ultimate goals are for your project (if world domination is on your agenda, you'd better make your stuff usable and has good docs -- case in point: most GNU software).
Now, open source software (as opposed to Free as-in-libre software) has a very different dynamic. With OSS, the devs usually really really want you to use their software -- they want more users; they want their software to be popular -- and so are motivated by that goal to write pretty good docs. Companies may be able to make money on OSS by adding proprietary extensions and then charging for it, so it's in their best interest to make *their* parts easy to use, and *their* docs better (which may or may not include improving the open-source components).
In my experience, free software projects tend to have stronger community involvement than OSS projects.
> A major technical problem of integrating field equations is [snip]
Actually, the real trick to getting the tensor calculus right is to not tense up.
{ba dum ching!}
> People see Richard out there frothing [snip]
I've been to a GNU/Linux users group meeting where was gave a talk. There wasn't any "frothing". He came across as a genuine guy who gives his work away free (under the GPL) and suggests that you might do the same. He also points out why he thinks DRM, software patents, etc., are bad.
That's pretty much it. Well, that and the Saint Ignucius bit. It's probably time to drop that one, though it still gets a *few* chuckles from the crowd I suppose.
I'll tell you one last thing though -- RMS has got some high quality grey matter. When I saw him, he gave the whole talk (had to be over an hour) without any notes or anything. He seemed to stay on target the whole time (no "umm"'s either). It was like watching some lisp program recurse into subtopics and sub-subtopics, and then unwind itself to continue on whichever topic was next until the end of the talk. Pretty impressive.
I sincerely hope Open Source developers will never lower themselves to Microsoft's level and intentionally break interoperability.
It's not a matter of intentionally breaking compatibility, it's just a matter of stopping trying to get free software running on that other platform.
I think the answer is to provide some compatibility where appropriate, while at the same time creating software for GNU/Linux that's so darn good it's a heartache to do without. :)
If MS wants our software, then they can pay to have it ported to their platform, while complying with our licensing requirements.
There are actually people out there who consider that Windoze is more secure and stable ... no kiddin'.
It's worse than that. There's people out there that think Microsoft is great American company. That Bill Gates is a role model. People in my own extended *family* believe this, even after I've explained at-length to them the real details. The world is full of sheeple who just metaphorically stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, say "nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa nyaa", and keep on believing what they want to believe.
This is related to why I like the way GNU handles their official projects: you assign copyright to the FSF when you contribute to GNU projects. This means that the buck stops with them. They own the copyright, and they are doing the distributing. If MS wants to sue them, my guess is that RMS (or another FSF rep) will go to bat and either the patent will get nullified (dunno the correct terminology there), or else unfortunately the "offending" code will be removed and be re-written.
If there's no one single copyright holder (but rather, a big bunch of copyright holders), do they all have to go to court in such a lawsuit? Hm.
Hopefully, lots of cases like this will go to the courts, and hopefully enough fair judges will see the frivolity of so-called "software patents" that we'll see some sanity come back to the patent system.
I guess it's just beyond most human beings intellectual capacity to just get a fucking clue. This ranks right up there with the rest of the dumb fucking things our military does with innocent animals.
It's not *just* that people are dumb. They are. But they also don't *want* to know what they do to animals (or causes others to do to animals on their behalf).
For example, offer to show someone a short video of what goes on in an abattoir. Almost guaranteed they will refuse. Tell them you don't think eating meat is wrong -- you just want them to see what goes on for them to be able to eat that McBurger. See if they'd be willing (not even "curious", just *willing*) to see how the fowl are slaughtered. They won't do it -- they will almost always prefer ignorance, and they'll probably also get mad at you for "trying to ruin their day".
This story begs the question of how often the phrase "begs the question" can be misused.
> Do NOT front any money for technical training like this.
*Now* you tell me. Any idea how much I spend on O'reilly books in a year?
How are you supposed to leave your work at work when only you and one other guy are soley responsible for the servers being up 24/7?