The MIT Tech guy is the one that doesn't get it. If there is a software algorithm that is patented or secret,it isn't ever going to get released as GPL'd code and it's doubtful that there is much of a market for a binary-only executable that costs money so Linux users can watch DVDs on their computers.
Buy the darn DVD player and be happy that you can't watch Hollywood's awful tripe on Linux.
I'm fairly sure that the U.S. government assumes that Europe will collapse on it's own in the near future. It wouldn't look good to attack NATO (OTAN) members anyway.
"Teach your children Mandarin. They'll have a leg up when the Chinese become the next superpower."
Living on an environmentally hostile planet like the moon or Mars is just crazy at this point, never mind the technological feasibility, or the cost. When NASA can keep a group of people alive for 2 years in a TOTALLY self-contained environment on Earth then we might stand a chance.
The biggest obstacles, IMHO, are the psychological and physiological factors. There is no "going out for a breath of fresh air" on the moon or Mars. We take many things for granted on this earth and have no real substitute for the ocean, rivers, trees, bacteria, etc for renewing our environment. We would need to replicate big parts of Earth to make a distant planet habitable, in any real sense.
What needs to happen is the terraforming of Mars to see if it is feasible. If we have the patience to wait 100 years or so we could make parts of Mars much more hospitable, probably with the help of robotic factories to augment the environment. Of course in this "Short Attention Span" society of ours, 10 years seems like an eternity so what are the odds that anyone would consider a more long-term solution.
Give me a break!!!!! This CAN'T be a serious post! Most physicians I know are very sharp individuals and would certainly be aware of the precarious condition most IT/programmer types are in. Although physicians have there own issues, they have managed to keep out most of the poorly-paid foreign physicians and keep a decent salary.
Either that or the executives went to a mangement seminar that advocated multi-level meetings. If you're an employee then management assumes you don't know anything. If you're a high-paid consultant with smooth delivery then every word is golden and must be followed.
The biggest problem with business executives, and most of the rest of the world, is cognitive dissonance ("I paid the consultant beaucoup bucks so he must be good! My employees make less money then me so they must be idiots!"). They certainly can't admit that they made a mistake and move on!
In Southern California, Adelphia charges $59/mo for broadband cable (2Mbps down/256K up). If I ordered cable TV from them it would be a bit cheaper. It's way better than the DSL connection I had before. I was getting unicast traffic on my DSL, which irritated me since there was no good reason to send unicast traffic that wasn't meant for my home network to me. Especially when I'm paying for the bandwidth.
Even though the cable is a shared connection, I still get more bandwidth for my money. I only see a slow-down occasionally and I can't be sure it's Adelphia's fault.
India is hungry for U.S. dollars now but one day they'll want to call the shots. Even though India has nuclear weapons it's doubtful they have enough to overcome our newly developed, wiz-bang, handy-dandy, anti-ballistic missle defense system so we can bully them too when the time comes. I'm sure they have at least 3 or 4 terrorists living in India we could use as a pretext for invading them. That'll teach them not to mess with the Big Dog.
See our government is thinking ahead! We just don't give them enough credit sometimes.
Political Science
by Randy Newman
No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us
We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too
Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now
I have to agree that the biggest thing that the Ars Technica article missed was some very broken software from Apple. I personally lost a lot of files in my home directory, including the iTunes library, by turning on FileVault. Turning on FileVault locked up my eMac and forced me to power-cycle the computer.
What you said is true, to a point, but an overly simplistic view of business. Every business, and every person, for that matter, in this country, make use of resources that they didn't pay for. We all use roads, parks, airports, government buildings, etc., that are paid for out of the public coffers to which we only contribute a small part. One of the reasons people form a nation is so they can be part of something bigger than themselves and consolidate their resources.
A person that owns a business can ignore the bigger picture and just take what he can without any thought of giving anything back but he does so at great risk to himself. A business that only sees employees as something to exploit rather than as valuable assets that make the economy viable in the first place, will aid in the downfall of the country. Even people that don't take the bible as God's word can see the truth in the statement: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand".
This country will not last if businesses have no loyalty to it but only see it as a market that they have no part in supporting. The lack of loyalty to anyone or anything is allowing this country to unravel and, just like all the empires before it, will be weakened by the decay from within and vulnerable to destruction from the outside.
I'm guessing that they have a different strategy. A solar panel can produce power for over 25 years and requires virtually no maintenance (I'm counting washing the dust off as maintenance). This means that if the cost of solar power dropped to the level of using natural gas then the oil companies would lose control. Anybody with a few acres in a sunny area and proximity to the electrical grid could make money selling electrical power. This would quickly disembowel the oil companies.
No, I believe that they want to artifically make some other power generation method the next candidate. One that they can control, like fusion. Not everyone will be able to build and maintain a fusion generator (although at this point no one can build and maintain a working fusion reactor).
The whole situation is similar to the cost of bandwidth. If people could buy bandwidth on fiber optic cables for what it actually cost, the phone companies would lose enormous profits on voice calls because they would get bypassed even quicker than they are now.
I have a 2kw solar system on my roof so I'm certainly not anti-renewable energy. I just think people should realize that the problem has nothing to do with technology or people's desire maintain their lifestyle because it's not even allowed to come down to that. It's about greed and established infrastructure. I don't think it's any coincidence that the major solar panel manufacturers are all owned by oil companies. I can't prove it but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that they are controlling the price of solar panels to keep the usage at a level that is comfortable to them.
We have reached the level of corporate control in this world that is reminicent of the movie Rollerball (for those of you old enough to remember it). The U.S. courts and the EU and make a good show of protecting their citizens but corporations don't need to do anything illegal to get what they want. With enough money and lawyers you can blunt any reform that comes down the pike. Movies have to be more dramatic but the truth is much more banal.
I'm glad Mr. Piccard has the ability to put together these inspiring projects. I wish he'd invite me to be on his team. I just don't think for a minute that it's going to address the real problem.
"I tried solar power but it just made my skin peel. I'll stick with food, thank you."
That sounds about right to me. If power companies wont upgrade the electrical grid because there isn't any incentive then why would a mere bit-carrier be worried about some cable downtime. The crew that actually has to fix it gets overtime, right?
"Penny-wise and pound foolish. It's the American way!"
I don't think a person with root access to my computer would do as much harm as turning FileVault on in OS 10.3 did. It wiped out my old email messages and iTunes library, changed my dock setup, erased a registration file for some software I have so I have to re-enter the registration code, and who knows what else. I'm certainly not going to be on the bleeding edge of Apples OS X releases anymore.
"How was I supposed to know that my boss wasn't being literal when he said 'Cut out the middleman!'. Will I be going to jail now?"
The real problem is that PHB's aren't quite as stupid as we think they are. There are many programmers that wouldn't do a good job no matter how long they had because they don't use any sort of formal underpinnings. By the time they're halfway through the job they've lost the bubble and start depending on testing to figure out what they forgot or botched. The only chance they have is to throw something out there early and wait for defect reports.
The fact is that it's mighty convenient for a lot of programmers to be asked to do something
quick and dirty
since they can blame the horrendous bugs on that instead of the ridiculous coding practices that they have.
Slashdot Mirror
The MIT Tech guy is the one that doesn't get it. If there is a software algorithm that is patented or secret ,it isn't ever going to get released as GPL'd code and it's doubtful that there is much of a market for a binary-only executable that costs money so Linux users can watch DVDs on their computers.
Buy the darn DVD player and be happy that you can't watch Hollywood's awful tripe on Linux.
I'm fairly sure that the U.S. government assumes that Europe will collapse on it's own in the near future. It wouldn't look good to attack NATO (OTAN) members anyway.
"Teach your children Mandarin. They'll have a leg up when the Chinese become the next superpower."
Living on an environmentally hostile planet like the moon or Mars is just crazy at this point, never mind the technological feasibility, or the cost. When NASA can keep a group of people alive for 2 years in a TOTALLY self-contained environment on Earth then we might stand a chance.
The biggest obstacles, IMHO, are the psychological and physiological factors. There is no "going out for a breath of fresh air" on the moon or Mars. We take many things for granted on this earth and have no real substitute for the ocean, rivers, trees, bacteria, etc for renewing our environment. We would need to replicate big parts of Earth to make a distant planet habitable, in any real sense.
What needs to happen is the terraforming of Mars to see if it is feasible. If we have the patience to wait 100 years or so we could make parts of Mars much more hospitable, probably with the help of robotic factories to augment the environment. Of course in this "Short Attention Span" society of ours, 10 years seems like an eternity so what are the odds that anyone would consider a more long-term solution.
Give me a break!!!!! This CAN'T be a serious post! Most physicians I know are very sharp individuals and would certainly be aware of the precarious condition most IT/programmer types are in. Although physicians have there own issues, they have managed to keep out most of the poorly-paid foreign physicians and keep a decent salary.
I think someone is yanking our chain!
Either that or the executives went to a mangement seminar that advocated multi-level meetings. If you're an employee then management assumes you don't know anything. If you're a high-paid consultant with smooth delivery then every word is golden and must be followed.
The biggest problem with business executives, and most of the rest of the world, is cognitive dissonance ("I paid the consultant beaucoup bucks so he must be good! My employees make less money then me so they must be idiots!"). They certainly can't admit that they made a mistake and move on!
In Southern California, Adelphia charges $59/mo for broadband cable (2Mbps down/256K up). If I ordered cable TV from them it would be a bit cheaper. It's way better than the DSL connection I had before. I was getting unicast traffic on my DSL, which irritated me since there was no good reason to send unicast traffic that wasn't meant for my home network to me. Especially when I'm paying for the bandwidth.
Even though the cable is a shared connection, I still get more bandwidth for my money. I only see a slow-down occasionally and I can't be sure it's Adelphia's fault.
India is hungry for U.S. dollars now but one day they'll want to call the shots. Even though India has nuclear weapons it's doubtful they have enough to overcome our newly developed, wiz-bang, handy-dandy, anti-ballistic missle defense system so we can bully them too when the time comes. I'm sure they have at least 3 or 4 terrorists living in India we could use as a pretext for invading them. That'll teach them not to mess with the Big Dog.
See our government is thinking ahead! We just don't give them enough credit sometimes.
Political Science
by Randy Newman
No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us
We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too
Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now
I totally agree. I find that hiring people that have no technical knowledge make the help desk more efficient in a number of ways:
They cause people to quickly give up trying to get any useful information from your company.
You don't have to pay them very much.
They're too clueless to know that they're doing a terrible job so they last longer.
I have to agree that the biggest thing that the Ars Technica article missed was some very broken software from Apple. I personally lost a lot of files in my home directory, including the iTunes library, by turning on FileVault. Turning on FileVault locked up my eMac and forced me to power-cycle the computer.
What you said is true, to a point, but an overly simplistic view of business. Every business, and every person, for that matter, in this country, make use of resources that they didn't pay for. We all use roads, parks, airports, government buildings, etc., that are paid for out of the public coffers to which we only contribute a small part. One of the reasons people form a nation is so they can be part of something bigger than themselves and consolidate their resources.
A person that owns a business can ignore the bigger picture and just take what he can without any thought of giving anything back but he does so at great risk to himself. A business that only sees employees as something to exploit rather than as valuable assets that make the economy viable in the first place, will aid in the downfall of the country. Even people that don't take the bible as God's word can see the truth in the statement: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand".
This country will not last if businesses have no loyalty to it but only see it as a market that they have no part in supporting. The lack of loyalty to anyone or anything is allowing this country to unravel and, just like all the empires before it, will be weakened by the decay from within and vulnerable to destruction from the outside.
I'm guessing that they have a different strategy. A solar panel can produce power for over 25 years and requires virtually no maintenance (I'm counting washing the dust off as maintenance). This means that if the cost of solar power dropped to the level of using natural gas then the oil companies would lose control. Anybody with a few acres in a sunny area and proximity to the electrical grid could make money selling electrical power. This would quickly disembowel the oil companies.
No, I believe that they want to artifically make some other power generation method the next candidate. One that they can control, like fusion. Not everyone will be able to build and maintain a fusion generator (although at this point no one can build and maintain a working fusion reactor).
The whole situation is similar to the cost of bandwidth. If people could buy bandwidth on fiber optic cables for what it actually cost, the phone companies would lose enormous profits on voice calls because they would get bypassed even quicker than they are now.
The evil runs deep.
Just repeat after me:
"It's all about money."
"It's all about money."
I have a 2kw solar system on my roof so I'm certainly not anti-renewable energy. I just think people should realize that the problem has nothing to do with technology or people's desire maintain their lifestyle because it's not even allowed to come down to that. It's about greed and established infrastructure. I don't think it's any coincidence that the major solar panel manufacturers are all owned by oil companies. I can't prove it but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that they are controlling the price of solar panels to keep the usage at a level that is comfortable to them.
We have reached the level of corporate control in this world that is reminicent of the movie Rollerball (for those of you old enough to remember it). The U.S. courts and the EU and make a good show of protecting their citizens but corporations don't need to do anything illegal to get what they want. With enough money and lawyers you can blunt any reform that comes down the pike. Movies have to be more dramatic but the truth is much more banal.
I'm glad Mr. Piccard has the ability to put together these inspiring projects. I wish he'd invite me to be on his team. I just don't think for a minute that it's going to address the real problem.
"I tried solar power but it just made my skin peel. I'll stick with food, thank you."
That sounds about right to me. If power companies wont upgrade the electrical grid because there isn't any incentive then why would a mere bit-carrier be worried about some cable downtime. The crew that actually has to fix it gets overtime, right?
"Penny-wise and pound foolish. It's the American way!"
I don't think a person with root access to my computer would do as much harm as turning FileVault on in OS 10.3 did. It wiped out my old email messages and iTunes library, changed my dock setup, erased a registration file for some software I have so I have to re-enter the registration code, and who knows what else. I'm certainly not going to be on the bleeding edge of Apples OS X releases anymore. "How was I supposed to know that my boss wasn't being literal when he said 'Cut out the middleman!'. Will I be going to jail now?"