I'm not saying there aren't Liberal Trolls too. There are -- they can be easily identified by their endless stream of bitching.
The sooner we all learn to love nuclear power, the better. Screw the waste -- that's what underwater subduction zones and Texas are for.
Hydroelectric is a little more iffy (salmon have to spawn SOMEWHERE), but we can certainly afford at least a few of them -- they produce assloads of power!
See kids? This is what we call a "Conservative Troll".
A great deal of the world's power comes from nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. So you can extract hydrogen from water without ever using oil. As wind and solar power become economical and lingering fears about nuclear power are dissolved, we'll see even more "green" power. Not that I expect a conservative troll to believe this -- being American means ignoring facts that you don't like.
Well, there's no doubt that the interests of the Open Source community and IBM are in alignment right now. And there's no reason not to enjoy the benefits of that alignment.
It's funny actually -- analysts used to predict that hardware would become a commodity, services would be rendered unnecessary, and that software development was the industry to bet on. But Gnu, Apache, Linux, et al have made software the commodity; hardware and services are the money industries now.
IBM is a public company. Anything they do, you can bet it's to increase profits (or drive down competitors' profits). I'll bet there's a really bright plan behind this -- no way it's just a "socialist attitude" or a "magnanimous move". Shareholders wouldn't stand for it.
My University had no part in creating this beast. They don't even handle the tech support. I know, because I had to deal with them a number of times about the fact that the system wouldn't work with any browser except Internet Explorer (and it didn't even work particularly well for IE).
Compare that to Microsoft, whose products often work fine in Wine, whose website is completely Gecko and KHTML compatible, and whose products actually WORK (albeit badly).
Microsoft's software actually possesses virtues -- like reasonably well-written help files and great ergonomics. PeopleSoft's software has NO virtues. It is absolute crap, shit of the worst kind.
Anything is better than PeopleSoft. My school rolled out a system developed by PeopleSoft to handle course registration and enrollment, and it's undoubtedly the WORST piece of shit I've every used -- and I've used Microsoft Works!
I hope PeopleSoft is wiped from the earth. I'd take Microsoft's unpleasant, buggy software over PeopleSoft's completely unusable atrocities any day.
Simulated annealing is just a particular WAY of approaching genetic algorithms -- the idea being that you start with an extremely high mutation rate, and gradually reduce it over time.
Mozilla certainly did start off on the wrong foot. But they got their act together in a big way -- Gecko is now an awesome rendering engine, with only a single peer in the form of KHTML.
Holy crap, what world do YOU live in? Netscape may have started off as the superior product, but it degenerated into one of the worst pieces of software into deployed. Until the Mozilla project got going, IE was far more usable than Netscape.
Th reason you hear so much about American "totalitarianism" is because most of the people posting on Slashdot are American. A small amount of repression in America is more relevant to the average Slashdot poster than a large amount of repression in some far away place like Iran.
The government supports Harvard? I thought US universities were all privately run. I live in Canada, so I'm not terribly familiar with the US education system.
20% is still a lot for a country that hosts so much rhetoric about the evils of communism, the failure of communism, etc. You'd think if communism was really so bad, the US government would stop subsidizing so many businesses, that it would shrink the government beauracracy and military.
Well, there's a big difference between the government completely managing something (like the military), and just providing it to some people who need it (like bus passes and computers for seniors). Still, your point is well made.
I'm not quite sure what your point is -- are you suggesting that police and fire deperatments and other "vital" services should be privatized, or are you suggesting that cellular networks should be managed by the government? Both arguments seem laughable.
My point is that it's NOT a small area of society. It's actually quite a large proportion of society. I heard from a sociology professor once that almost 20% of Americans are supported by the government, either directly or indirectly. That's not at all a small area of society.
I've always felt that communal societies (in the economic sense, not the hippy free-love commune sense) would work amazingly well if they existed side by side with a capitalist society. After all, that's kind of what we have in Canada and the US. Some people are supported by the state (like the disabled and employees of the government), and some people compete in a free market. Some services that are considered vital are provided communally, like the police force, fire department, and a surprising amount of our agriculture. Other things are provided by the free market, like computers and cell phones and clothes.
To me it seems that the extremes of capitalism and communism are BOTH dangerous. Combining them can provide a much more effective society.
Slashdot Mirror
The sooner we all learn to love nuclear power, the better. Screw the waste -- that's what underwater subduction zones and Texas are for.
Hydroelectric is a little more iffy (salmon have to spawn SOMEWHERE), but we can certainly afford at least a few of them -- they produce assloads of power!
A great deal of the world's power comes from nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. So you can extract hydrogen from water without ever using oil. As wind and solar power become economical and lingering fears about nuclear power are dissolved, we'll see even more "green" power. Not that I expect a conservative troll to believe this -- being American means ignoring facts that you don't like.
It's funny actually -- analysts used to predict that hardware would become a commodity, services would be rendered unnecessary, and that software development was the industry to bet on. But Gnu, Apache, Linux, et al have made software the commodity; hardware and services are the money industries now.
Sounds like a modern version of George Washington. Wasn't he made president too?
IBM is a public company. Anything they do, you can bet it's to increase profits (or drive down competitors' profits). I'll bet there's a really bright plan behind this -- no way it's just a "socialist attitude" or a "magnanimous move". Shareholders wouldn't stand for it.
Are you referring to someone in particular?
Compare that to Microsoft, whose products often work fine in Wine, whose website is completely Gecko and KHTML compatible, and whose products actually WORK (albeit badly).
Microsoft's software actually possesses virtues -- like reasonably well-written help files and great ergonomics. PeopleSoft's software has NO virtues. It is absolute crap, shit of the worst kind.
No, this would be GoSFU. It sounds like a number of universities have inflicted PeopleSoft atrocities on their students.
I hope PeopleSoft is wiped from the earth. I'd take Microsoft's unpleasant, buggy software over PeopleSoft's completely unusable atrocities any day.
Simulated annealing is just a particular WAY of approaching genetic algorithms -- the idea being that you start with an extremely high mutation rate, and gradually reduce it over time.
Wasn't the NT Kernel developed by one of the world's most preeminent security experts? I think it was the same guy who developed Vax.
Ooh, burn! OpenSSH is one of the greatest innovations in the entire software world. Way to tell it like it is. :)
Mozilla certainly did start off on the wrong foot. But they got their act together in a big way -- Gecko is now an awesome rendering engine, with only a single peer in the form of KHTML.
Let's just agree that's a very good thing that we've moved into an age of superior browser codebases like KHTML and Gecko.
Holy crap, what world do YOU live in? Netscape may have started off as the superior product, but it degenerated into one of the worst pieces of software into deployed. Until the Mozilla project got going, IE was far more usable than Netscape.
Only a moron would use Iran's severe shittiness to excuse America's moderate shittiness.
That's where 'Simulated Annealing' comes in. It can often avoid local maxima that aren't optimal.
Th reason you hear so much about American "totalitarianism" is because most of the people posting on Slashdot are American. A small amount of repression in America is more relevant to the average Slashdot poster than a large amount of repression in some far away place like Iran.
Please, don't do that again. :(
The government supports Harvard? I thought US universities were all privately run. I live in Canada, so I'm not terribly familiar with the US education system.
20% is still a lot for a country that hosts so much rhetoric about the evils of communism, the failure of communism, etc. You'd think if communism was really so bad, the US government would stop subsidizing so many businesses, that it would shrink the government beauracracy and military.
Well, there's a big difference between the government completely managing something (like the military), and just providing it to some people who need it (like bus passes and computers for seniors). Still, your point is well made.
I'm not quite sure what your point is -- are you suggesting that police and fire deperatments and other "vital" services should be privatized, or are you suggesting that cellular networks should be managed by the government? Both arguments seem laughable.
My point is that it's NOT a small area of society. It's actually quite a large proportion of society. I heard from a sociology professor once that almost 20% of Americans are supported by the government, either directly or indirectly. That's not at all a small area of society.
To me it seems that the extremes of capitalism and communism are BOTH dangerous. Combining them can provide a much more effective society.