Ubuntu does not maintains Long Term releases that long.
Update from one LTS support to the 4 year later LTS version is generally painless. Ie. the support is there, you just have to click a few buttons to install it, and it'll most likely even run, just like that, click click. Upgrading Ubuntu (or other comparable Linux distro) is more like installing new service pack to a Windows OS, there's continuous upgrade path.
Now try upgrading a basic WinXP computer from just 2008 (to compare to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) to anything newer.
But I do think MS does not have any obligation to support XP any longer than they think it's smart business-wise, and I'm rather surprised about how long they've supported XP. Commercial OS costs money, and it's unreasonable to expect indefinitely long support for a one-time payment.
So, roughly, one day of a single hurricane equals one year of humanity, energy wise.
Seriously, this calls for a bad car analogy. Being worried about the amount of energy used by any conceivable number of Mars missions is like being worried that if you wax your car after washing it, that will make you run ouf of gas when you try to accelerate all that extra mass to normal driving speed.
1) Mankind decides we are special and better than all other creatures.
Any species is free to make the same decision. Then they can talk to us humans about it, then we'll have a little civilised war for dominance, winner species will exterminate the loser species, and debate is resolved.
They can talk about it all they want, but until they invent a transparent skull, I'm not sure I see many practical applications.
Skull is transparent enough, you just need a bright enough light. Alternatively you need to open the skull. Sharks with lasers mounted to their heads can do both.
What would you suggest as a better free replacement? It doesn't even have to be free, cheap is enough, as long as it does not involve me giving them my credit card details.
This is serious question. And no, I don't want to take personal responsibility of keeping my own personal web mail service secure and up to date, so any suggestion must not include continuous administration of a server connected to the Internet.
Just.. WTF? So much money spent, and now (about to be) flushed down the drain? So much things we would have learnt, and now will not.
Publicly available science output of NASA (and others) has been a big positive impact on the world, to offset all the bomb dropping, meddling and invasion stunts US has pulled since WW2. I hope they reconsider, because this aspect of positive global PR value is bigger than many USians think. Space is something which can really bring the peoples of Earth together, at least for now, because it's something unreachable and can't yield real resources - there's not much money at stake. At this rate, I'll soon be actually rooting for China to take the lead in science and technology.
Nah, we're only resources, and will become products only after Google starts to make us to be more monetizable, change us to be easier to sell. To do that, Google would have to change the way we read e-mail, search and browse the web, share videos and photos... Ok, fine, we're products.
They are only a problem for people who are unused to them
It's not just "getting used to". It's same thing as any "co-operative" thing in traffic, like joining a highway from a ramp at high speed. You have to trust that others are not going to collide with you, when you speed up and go between two cars driving same way. I think it goes against some basic instict of some people, and pressing the pedal to accelerate enough for things to go smoothly is just somehow... hard. It can be learned, but it's still not quite same thing, doing the right thing instinctively vs. going against one's instincts to do something learned.
I'm sure there's some minor evolutionary pressure in operation here, even, but I don't think it'll have time to make any difference before we have either no cars, or cars going by AI autopilot, and it doesn't matter any more.
Awww, how cute. Look everyone, he still has faith in humanity.
Oh, people can learn. It's just our wimpy society, which can't teach them properly. I mean, have you ever seen anybody not respect a zebra crossing which has a rotting corpse of a driver hanging next to it, or go against red light where the taffic lights are installed inside skulls? Me neither!
*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots.
Done with, not done by. I'm sure some day, possibly quite soon, robots will do real exploration, but for now, they're just remote instruments.
The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering.
Now now, let's leave "absolute garbage" for things which don't have a proven track record like the shuttle has. "Absolute garbage engineering" wouldn't have been able to do the stuff shuttle did. In my understanding, even the accidents were a case of garbage mission management decisions, done against engineering wisdom.
The shuttle was not a shining example of the US doing well.
Yet the shuttle has gotten shit done, shit that would not have gotten done otherwise. I'm sure things could have been done much much better, not only in hindsight but also in foresight. However, the problem is not the shuttle, the problem is political reality. And, well... if there wouldn't have been shuttle, it's uncertain if there would have been something else even nearly as good.
Hindsight doesn't show alternate histories. Without the shuttle, we (people of Earth, as I'm not a USian) could have moon bases and people on Mars now, but it's also possible we wouldn't have any manned space presence at all (whether that'd be a good thing or not, that's entirely different debate). So better be careful what to wish for, even in hindsight.
And I thought this referred to...
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
And I thought this referred to something else... 2pi? Booooring.
Re:Always show your work
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
Even the dimmest child can look at: 4 * X = 8 and KNOW X=2.
GMail is not in a position of market dominance, at least not according to TFS. So, it's a free service funded by ads, and it promotes them using built-in system of the service? Somehow I don't see an issue here. However, if somebody feels they're getting spam they did not opt in to and can't unsubscribe from, then I'm sure there's room for juicy lawsuit, based on spam laws. But that's not the case here, is it?
I also used to think that way but... At the moment I actually think that it's ok. I can live with a sleeker device in my pocket. The typical physical phone keyboard isn't that great either, so it kind of evens it out. I'm pretty sure you can use any bluetooth keyboard with N9 (if not out of the box, then with trivial tweaks), and there are plenty to choose from even in the "fits into a jacket pocket without being bulky" form factor, which still are far superior to any integrated physical keyboard.
Who cares? Finally a "real" Linux (meaning the OS, not the kernel) phone that isn't a brick (meaning the size and weight, not being "bricked") like N900.
"Real" Linux means: Nokia support not needed for it to be awesome. But looking at things, it'll have decent support for longer than any given model of iPhone (without upgrading to newer model).
Historically, statements like that tend to be false.
Anyway, all it takes is qbit count to hit the "~doubling every ~two years" phase typical of many technologies, and we'll be in kiloqbit range in no time (well, to decades, but anyway). Of course it could be that in our universe, this is impossible, but if it's merely very difficult, then there tend to be workarounds found for practical problems, after technlogy becomes commercially profitable and regular R&D cycle gets properly started.
Living species, including our own, need time to adapt.
Yeah, but the time needed for us to adapt to just about anything adaptable is measured in years, not in generations.
Of course adapting might not be nice. It could involve war and famine and death of most people and end of our current civilisation(s). But that'd be very temporary, because remaining people would have knowledge of what was, and what can be again, and technology would bounce back at least to 19th century level incredibly fast, and then continue towards pre-disaster level still at much accelerated rate.
No, people aren't going to stop using fossil fuels as long as it improves their quality of life. And it would be fucking stupid to stop for any other reason.
Yeah, it'd be fucking stupid to stop using fossil fuels in order to improve quality of children and grandchildren...
Oh I agree Linux has significantly bigger impact, especially today. But impact of git is just happening. And I think git will "win" over eg. Mercurial for a few reasons. First of all there's modularity vs. monolitic, which allows git to have much wider range of uses, and also allows more directions for open development, enabling innovation, inviting innovators, increasing developer base, speeding development. The impact doesn't have to be big to accumulate over the years. Then of course there's the... for lack of better word, brand: "Made by Linus". It influences choices some people make, again growing user and developer base. For these reasons I believe git has more enduring future than eg. Mercurial: it will be(come) the default choice for those who specifically don't want to use it for whatever reasons.
I'd hazard to say, git will be a choice much like Linux is now, even in companies. There are alternatives, but... why bother with them, "everybody" knows Linux/git, it's the safe choice for some things (much like the old saying "nobody ever got fired for selecting Oracle database").
Of course with version control systems, it's often trivial to switch from one to the other, "installed base" has less meaning than with operating systems, and new contenders have much better chance of being accepted to wider use. This evident from different version control hosting sites often allow a choice of VC to use, still even including plain old CVS.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu does not maintains Long Term releases that long.
Update from one LTS support to the 4 year later LTS version is generally painless. Ie. the support is there, you just have to click a few buttons to install it, and it'll most likely even run, just like that, click click. Upgrading Ubuntu (or other comparable Linux distro) is more like installing new service pack to a Windows OS, there's continuous upgrade path.
Now try upgrading a basic WinXP computer from just 2008 (to compare to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) to anything newer.
But I do think MS does not have any obligation to support XP any longer than they think it's smart business-wise, and I'm rather surprised about how long they've supported XP. Commercial OS costs money, and it's unreasonable to expect indefinitely long support for a one-time payment.
Seriously, these things are in different orders of magnitude entirely.
Hurricane uses/releases about 5.2 x 10^19 Joules/day. OTOH, "In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×10^18 J=132,000 TWh)."
So, roughly, one day of a single hurricane equals one year of humanity, energy wise.
Seriously, this calls for a bad car analogy. Being worried about the amount of energy used by any conceivable number of Mars missions is like being worried that if you wax your car after washing it, that will make you run ouf of gas when you try to accelerate all that extra mass to normal driving speed.
1) Mankind decides we are special and better than all other creatures.
Any species is free to make the same decision. Then they can talk to us humans about it, then we'll have a little civilised war for dominance, winner species will exterminate the loser species, and debate is resolved.
It does matter. If you knew what Ofcom was, you'd not say such a ridiculous thing.
Their front page says "You can pay your Ofcom invoices online" "> Pay here".
And where there's a process with lots of money flowing through multiple hands, it always comes with free, pre-installed Greed&Corruption(tm) add-on.
It doesn't matter. It's always about money in the end.
I don't know what Ofcom is thinking.
I don't know either, but I'd hazard a guess: money.
It's a cute idea. It assumes a single point of contact with the ground, and thus requires a flat, hard floor. This is limiting.
Fortunately, there's a solution: one world, one people, one slab of asphalt!
They can talk about it all they want, but until they invent a transparent skull, I'm not sure I see many practical applications.
Skull is transparent enough, you just need a bright enough light. Alternatively you need to open the skull. Sharks with lasers mounted to their heads can do both.
What would you suggest as a better free replacement? It doesn't even have to be free, cheap is enough, as long as it does not involve me giving them my credit card details.
This is serious question. And no, I don't want to take personal responsibility of keeping my own personal web mail service secure and up to date, so any suggestion must not include continuous administration of a server connected to the Internet.
More like, they'll silently wiretap you and check out your history.
So, if you have something to hide, you shouldn't do geocaching. But, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about!
Just.. WTF? So much money spent, and now (about to be) flushed down the drain? So much things we would have learnt, and now will not.
Publicly available science output of NASA (and others) has been a big positive impact on the world, to offset all the bomb dropping, meddling and invasion stunts US has pulled since WW2. I hope they reconsider, because this aspect of positive global PR value is bigger than many USians think. Space is something which can really bring the peoples of Earth together, at least for now, because it's something unreachable and can't yield real resources - there's not much money at stake. At this rate, I'll soon be actually rooting for China to take the lead in science and technology.
You are not the customer -- you are the product.
Nah, we're only resources, and will become products only after Google starts to make us to be more monetizable, change us to be easier to sell. To do that, Google would have to change the way we read e-mail, search and browse the web, share videos and photos... Ok, fine, we're products.
They are only a problem for people who are unused to them
It's not just "getting used to". It's same thing as any "co-operative" thing in traffic, like joining a highway from a ramp at high speed. You have to trust that others are not going to collide with you, when you speed up and go between two cars driving same way. I think it goes against some basic instict of some people, and pressing the pedal to accelerate enough for things to go smoothly is just somehow... hard. It can be learned, but it's still not quite same thing, doing the right thing instinctively vs. going against one's instincts to do something learned.
I'm sure there's some minor evolutionary pressure in operation here, even, but I don't think it'll have time to make any difference before we have either no cars, or cars going by AI autopilot, and it doesn't matter any more.
Awww, how cute. Look everyone, he still has faith in humanity.
Oh, people can learn. It's just our wimpy society, which can't teach them properly. I mean, have you ever seen anybody not respect a zebra crossing which has a rotting corpse of a driver hanging next to it, or go against red light where the taffic lights are installed inside skulls? Me neither!
*Real* space exploration these days is performed by robots.
Done with, not done by. I'm sure some day, possibly quite soon, robots will do real exploration, but for now, they're just remote instruments.
The shuttle? Absolute garbage engineering.
Now now, let's leave "absolute garbage" for things which don't have a proven track record like the shuttle has. "Absolute garbage engineering" wouldn't have been able to do the stuff shuttle did. In my understanding, even the accidents were a case of garbage mission management decisions, done against engineering wisdom.
The shuttle was not a shining example of the US doing well.
Yet the shuttle has gotten shit done, shit that would not have gotten done otherwise. I'm sure things could have been done much much better, not only in hindsight but also in foresight. However, the problem is not the shuttle, the problem is political reality. And, well... if there wouldn't have been shuttle, it's uncertain if there would have been something else even nearly as good.
Hindsight doesn't show alternate histories. Without the shuttle, we (people of Earth, as I'm not a USian) could have moon bases and people on Mars now, but it's also possible we wouldn't have any manned space presence at all (whether that'd be a good thing or not, that's entirely different debate). So better be careful what to wish for, even in hindsight.
And I thought this referred to something else... 2pi? Booooring.
Even the dimmest child can look at: 4 * X = 8 and KNOW X=2.
This was sarcasm, right?
GMail is not in a position of market dominance, at least not according to TFS. So, it's a free service funded by ads, and it promotes them using built-in system of the service? Somehow I don't see an issue here. However, if somebody feels they're getting spam they did not opt in to and can't unsubscribe from, then I'm sure there's room for juicy lawsuit, based on spam laws. But that's not the case here, is it?
a lack of hardware keyboard a deal breaker.
I also used to think that way but... At the moment I actually think that it's ok. I can live with a sleeker device in my pocket. The typical physical phone keyboard isn't that great either, so it kind of evens it out. I'm pretty sure you can use any bluetooth keyboard with N9 (if not out of the box, then with trivial tweaks), and there are plenty to choose from even in the "fits into a jacket pocket without being bulky" form factor, which still are far superior to any integrated physical keyboard.
Now, no one cares, not even me.
Who cares? Finally a "real" Linux (meaning the OS, not the kernel) phone that isn't a brick (meaning the size and weight, not being "bricked") like N900.
"Real" Linux means: Nokia support not needed for it to be awesome. But looking at things, it'll have decent support for longer than any given model of iPhone (without upgrading to newer model).
Not ... will ever be ...
Historically, statements like that tend to be false.
Anyway, all it takes is qbit count to hit the "~doubling every ~two years" phase typical of many technologies, and we'll be in kiloqbit range in no time (well, to decades, but anyway). Of course it could be that in our universe, this is impossible, but if it's merely very difficult, then there tend to be workarounds found for practical problems, after technlogy becomes commercially profitable and regular R&D cycle gets properly started.
Living species, including our own, need time to adapt.
Yeah, but the time needed for us to adapt to just about anything adaptable is measured in years, not in generations.
Of course adapting might not be nice. It could involve war and famine and death of most people and end of our current civilisation(s). But that'd be very temporary, because remaining people would have knowledge of what was, and what can be again, and technology would bounce back at least to 19th century level incredibly fast, and then continue towards pre-disaster level still at much accelerated rate.
No, people aren't going to stop using fossil fuels as long as it improves their quality of life. And it would be fucking stupid to stop for any other reason.
Yeah, it'd be fucking stupid to stop using fossil fuels in order to improve quality of children and grandchildren...
Oh I agree Linux has significantly bigger impact, especially today. But impact of git is just happening. And I think git will "win" over eg. Mercurial for a few reasons. First of all there's modularity vs. monolitic, which allows git to have much wider range of uses, and also allows more directions for open development, enabling innovation, inviting innovators, increasing developer base, speeding development. The impact doesn't have to be big to accumulate over the years. Then of course there's the... for lack of better word, brand: "Made by Linus". It influences choices some people make, again growing user and developer base. For these reasons I believe git has more enduring future than eg. Mercurial: it will be(come) the default choice for those who specifically don't want to use it for whatever reasons.
I'd hazard to say, git will be a choice much like Linux is now, even in companies. There are alternatives, but... why bother with them, "everybody" knows Linux/git, it's the safe choice for some things (much like the old saying "nobody ever got fired for selecting Oracle database").
Of course with version control systems, it's often trivial to switch from one to the other, "installed base" has less meaning than with operating systems, and new contenders have much better chance of being accepted to wider use. This evident from different version control hosting sites often allow a choice of VC to use, still even including plain old CVS.