...according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC
Agility is not the first thing that comes to mind with these Levianthans. Don't these companies have an Orwellian tendency to use anti-language to describe themselves? I would call these companies the "Entrenched Alliance" or the "Legacy Alliance". That would be closer to reality for these rotting hulks.
This follows the triumphant Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn's moon Titan.
The Huygens probe was a technical success. But ESA's
handling of the landing event
left a lot to be desired. If there is another
big mission lets hope that the sharing of initial
results with the public is handled more openly.
PAt a guess, a ham-fisted science hating Bushy bureaucrat will strut in and close this and boost that, without any understanding of its scientific or fiscal effect
Do I need to remind you that President Clinton initiated the bizarre, pointless international lovefest that is the spacestation and US manned flight. Lets hope President Bush does indeed kill this program and drive a stake through its heart.
As for the rest of your rant, these are the
glory days for us Republicans. It is morning in America.
Lets face it. After the first polar flybys
interest wained in the project for everyone except
a few specialists. Many space missions prosper
by the amount of public interest and eye candy they
generate. Voyager and Pioneer certainly do not produce eye candy, but they are interesting in that they are the furthest flung objects humanity has ever produced and they still operate. You must admit
that Ulysses cannot compete with that. Both missions
are producing middling results at this point, compared to Cassini, or the Mars Rovers.
You said nothing to refute my point. What do you do from budget standpoint about and ever mounting number of legacy missions. It some point
you make hard choices.
So I turn to Slashdot to ask: Are there any projects equivalent to Turbo Tax or the other tax products out there for the OSS community?
I'd settle for writable PDF form versions that check the consistency of numeric input. That is not a big stretch from the non-editable PDF's the IRS already distributes.
Folks, I need to make this very, very clear: Research science is no longer a priority at NASA. It's all going to the manned program. We're trying to refocus where we can, support the effort with good science, but the only way we're going to continue to expand our understanding of the space environment as a whole is if you--all of you--get on the phone and convince your congressfolk that pure research is worth funding through NASA. Otherwise things are going to come to a pretty serious halt and space scientists are going to start leaving the US.
Baloney. Space science has been well funded in the past 15 years and continues to be so. Just look at the tremendous diversity and success of the current program - Mars rovers, orbiters, Messenger, Cassini, Great
Observatories. Space science in the US has never had it so good. The question is will NASA continue to fund deep space missions long after their initial budgeted lifetimes? I can see why NASA budgeteers have problems, the progession is geometric. But I think the Pioneer/Voyager missions are so cheap and unique that they should be kept alive. Ulysses is another matter. I don't think it is in the same historical class. I'm sure that in 20 years some solar scientist will come up with a 40 year cycle the Ulysses must be funded to observe.
Most people I talk to who use Linux have expressed a strong preference for KDE over GNOME.
I think that both efforts are producing bloated junk. They are so CPU sucking, hideously complex, and hard to customize I cannot understand why they are widely used. I laugh they the proponents of these think they are fit for grandma.
Use xfce, or better yet WindowMaker. At least some sanity remains with those.
One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it.
Being a GNU/Linux user with a light well-organised Gentoo system at home, I often wondered about statements like this. But in the
last few years I have had to use M$ Windoze
systems at work, so I begin to understand the search
requirement: it is because Windoze systems are
horrendously organized! The directory structure
resembles a junk yard. Writable system files,
sloppy application installations, bizarre
naming conventions, the scourge of
the Windoze registery. It is no wonder M$ feels
the need to add a search capability. Navigating a Windoze file system is next to impossible.
Totally agree. There is an element in Amerihis ca
that is completely self-loathing. It is
is well
represented on this forum. Yours is a most
insightful statement. Sad that it is moderated
to troll.
Let the New Scientist criticize from the cheap
seats. It is hard to argue that the rovers have
been anything other than a resounding success
for over 400 days. I would have hoped/. would
instead print the recent story of the Spirit Rover
discovering
salty soil.
They are written in C++ and have been released under the MIT License, an OSI-Approved Open Source License."
Like the FSF says, to call it the MIT license is
misleading because MIT uses many licenses.
The X11 license would be more accurate.
The FSF considers the X11 license to be GPL
compatable, and that opinion carries more weight than
OSI which is just a corporate relations firm. But beware of the X Windows Trap.
I live in the heart of midwest U.S. where a
"liberal" vote was not cast for 500 miles.
GDub is my dream candidate.
Most americans are clueless about both the actions and perceptions of the actions of their country on the world stage
'World Stage' is a term used by European
actors (particularly the French) who see international relations as
some kind of parlor game. In the US we are quite mindful
of how
we are percieved. We just don't feel that
negative perception is justified or that
it is worth trading security for.
Turns out no one I spoke to has even a basic grasp of the underlying ideas of communism. When I tell them that one way of overreducing communism and capitalism to better contrast them is to say "communism basically believes man is good, capitalism basically believes man is evil" they react with disbelief.
I have participated in many pointless debates
with Europeans (many on this forum). Although
I am tempted to make judgements on all Europeans
from the lack of rational thought exhibited
by them, I resist. Americans, you imply, retreat to right wing dogma when their arguments are challenged. I say Europeans do the same with elitism, and I puzzle about its source.
For sure, there is a danger in using clichés and stereotypes, but it is also true, that those clichés *DO* hold a lot of water. Actually, I can't say I know of any well-established cliché about the nature of a people, that didn't had some truth in it.
... which is why Europeans sport such excellent relations with their minority populations of
Muslims, Africans, Turks, Jews. I am sure they
all concur with your moronic statement.
From your bigoted attitude alone I can
tell you are a white Christian. I espect more
from an enlightened European. Here in
GDub's savage
America we reject your silly notions.
I do not wish to insult you, but many Americans seem terribly narrow-minded and uninformed in that respect, having been tought from childhood that everything related to communism is "bad" without ever going into detail
I am proud to call Stallman a fellow American.
Left leanings and all, through his push for the
freedom of ideas and cooperation, he exemplifies
the patriotic ideals of our founding fathers.
Richard Stallman is the Thomas Jefferson of
the computer age.
I think Europeans stereotype Americans and
their views too narrowly. It makes America
easier to understand for them maybe. Having said that, the
communism the world has witnessed for the past 100 years deserves all of the scorn that can be heaped upon it.
Keep up the good work Mono team, I love C#, and I love how you are brining it to *nix.
I can't think of anything the GNU system needs less than another bloated Windoze language port.
The list presented by the article was unimpressive
- mostly just sleezy C wrappers and ill conceived
"frameworks". Nothing with any legs. It is regretable that the good
effort that goes into Mono isn't channeled into
better C and C++ API's. Oh well, free software
means people are free to waste their time.
The handling of Titan results reminds me of the
dead sea scrolls, where the data were guarded by
a small number of scollars who were willing to
take forever to publish definitive results.
As for Mars results not being startling, how
many scientists before the mission believed they
would be landing on evaporite deposits complete
with concretions? None. Yet they were out there,
yes speculating, as soon as they had gathered
enough evidence for the definitive result.
With very slight additional effort these researchers could have released a terrain model
based on the paralax offset of features in
the image and saved us all from straining
our eyes.
The Titan imaging results are simply fantastic.
Huygens landed in an area that is analogous
to a terrestrial dry lake bed wetted by an upland
stream network fed by methane rain! How often
does it rain? Are there large weather systems
on titan? Convective storms? What about the black
stuff on the lake bed and at the bottom of the streams? What is it made of? Is is particulate
like terrestrial sediments?
I am a little disappointed that we haven't heard
more speculation from project scientists. I think
the Cassini/Huygens project has been
somewhat guarded about releasing preliminary
results than the Mars Rover project.
However, it seems those who think that burning fossil fuels and other activities of like nature should simply go on as it is are quite quick to latch on the minority view, declare the majority a bunch of scaremongers and go on their way.
That industrial societies generate CO2, that
CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising as a result,
and that CO2 tends to trap heat in the atmosphere
are facts not being debated by anyone. The question is
what are the present and future effects of the
CO2 for climate and how do they balance against
the desires of 6.4 billion souls to lead
better material lives. We should have the debate. Is wealth and development worth a few degrees
of warming? Do we want to allow a few scientists
and environmentists to dictate restrictions on development without demonstrable benefit?
There are people on this forum trying to have
the debate. But each time we suggest that development
may be worth the cost, we are modded to flamebait.
I am a geophysicist by training and a sceptic.
I would be reluctant to raise the "science" of
climate modelling to that of evolutionary biology.
It does a disservice to biologists.
I am an American who has spent time in many large
U.S. cities (New York, Chicago, LA, Denver), so
I feel I am qualified to make a judgement.
I had the good fortune to visit London on a few
occasions. In March the weather there is very
pleasant, the flowers coming up, people out in
the parks. The people are very friendly
to us yanks, and very courteous. The babes were hot as anywhere. London is a great town. The smack people talk about
Great Britain is just that.
What does an airship that cought fire have to do with an inflatable space module?
Hmm, Hindenburg was inflated, an inflatable
space module is inflated. What could I have
been thinking?
The Hindenburg burned. It did not explode. It's skin did not fail due to a puncture, it failed because it burned. It burned so intensely because the skin was waterproofed with a chemical later used for rocket fuel.
LOL! I wonder what you define as an explosion
to be? So the gazillion cubic feet of H2 burned did it? H2 is the most powerful
chemical rocket fuel known, numb nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
Agility is not the first thing that comes to mind with these Levianthans. Don't these companies have an Orwellian tendency to use anti-language to describe themselves? I would call these companies the "Entrenched Alliance" or the "Legacy Alliance". That would be closer to reality for these rotting hulks.
'a more limber release process' and ultimately a ('hopefully') shorter release cyle.
You mean like Gentoo? And they still support Sparc.
This follows the triumphant Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn's moon Titan.
The Huygens probe was a technical success. But ESA's handling of the landing event left a lot to be desired. If there is another big mission lets hope that the sharing of initial results with the public is handled more openly.
Isn't this a bit much to read into a minor budget cut? Stop frothing at the mouth and love the Good President.
PAt a guess, a ham-fisted science hating Bushy bureaucrat will strut in and close this and boost that, without any understanding of its scientific or fiscal effect
Do I need to remind you that President Clinton initiated the bizarre, pointless international lovefest that is the spacestation and US manned flight. Lets hope President Bush does indeed kill this program and drive a stake through its heart.
As for the rest of your rant, these are the glory days for us Republicans. It is morning in America.
Lets face it. After the first polar flybys interest wained in the project for everyone except a few specialists. Many space missions prosper by the amount of public interest and eye candy they generate. Voyager and Pioneer certainly do not produce eye candy, but they are interesting in that they are the furthest flung objects humanity has ever produced and they still operate. You must admit that Ulysses cannot compete with that. Both missions are producing middling results at this point, compared to Cassini, or the Mars Rovers.
You said nothing to refute my point. What do you do from budget standpoint about and ever mounting number of legacy missions. It some point you make hard choices.
So I turn to Slashdot to ask: Are there any projects equivalent to Turbo Tax or the other tax products out there for the OSS community?
I'd settle for writable PDF form versions that check the consistency of numeric input. That is not a big stretch from the non-editable PDF's the IRS already distributes.
Folks, I need to make this very, very clear: Research science is no longer a priority at NASA. It's all going to the manned program. We're trying to refocus where we can, support the effort with good science, but the only way we're going to continue to expand our understanding of the space environment as a whole is if you--all of you--get on the phone and convince your congressfolk that pure research is worth funding through NASA. Otherwise things are going to come to a pretty serious halt and space scientists are going to start leaving the US.
Baloney. Space science has been well funded in the past 15 years and continues to be so. Just look at the tremendous diversity and success of the current program - Mars rovers, orbiters, Messenger, Cassini, Great Observatories. Space science in the US has never had it so good. The question is will NASA continue to fund deep space missions long after their initial budgeted lifetimes? I can see why NASA budgeteers have problems, the progession is geometric. But I think the Pioneer/Voyager missions are so cheap and unique that they should be kept alive. Ulysses is another matter. I don't think it is in the same historical class. I'm sure that in 20 years some solar scientist will come up with a 40 year cycle the Ulysses must be funded to observe.
Most people I talk to who use Linux have expressed a strong preference for KDE over GNOME.
I think that both efforts are producing bloated junk. They are so CPU sucking, hideously complex, and hard to customize I cannot understand why they are widely used. I laugh they the proponents of these think they are fit for grandma. Use xfce, or better yet WindowMaker. At least some sanity remains with those.
One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it.
Being a GNU/Linux user with a light well-organised Gentoo system at home, I often wondered about statements like this. But in the last few years I have had to use M$ Windoze systems at work, so I begin to understand the search requirement: it is because Windoze systems are horrendously organized! The directory structure resembles a junk yard. Writable system files, sloppy application installations, bizarre naming conventions, the scourge of the Windoze registery. It is no wonder M$ feels the need to add a search capability. Navigating a Windoze file system is next to impossible.
Totally agree. There is an element in Amerihis ca that is completely self-loathing. It is is well represented on this forum. Yours is a most insightful statement. Sad that it is moderated to troll.
Let the New Scientist criticize from the cheap seats. It is hard to argue that the rovers have been anything other than a resounding success for over 400 days. I would have hoped /. would
instead print the recent story of the Spirit Rover
discovering
salty soil.
They are written in C++ and have been released under the MIT License, an OSI-Approved Open Source License."
Like the FSF says, to call it the MIT license is misleading because MIT uses many licenses. The X11 license would be more accurate. The FSF considers the X11 license to be GPL compatable, and that opinion carries more weight than OSI which is just a corporate relations firm. But beware of the X Windows Trap.
gotta love liberals....
I live in the heart of midwest U.S. where a "liberal" vote was not cast for 500 miles. GDub is my dream candidate.
Most americans are clueless about both the actions and perceptions of the actions of their country on the world stage
'World Stage' is a term used by European actors (particularly the French) who see international relations as some kind of parlor game. In the US we are quite mindful of how we are percieved. We just don't feel that negative perception is justified or that it is worth trading security for.
Turns out no one I spoke to has even a basic grasp of the underlying ideas of communism. When I tell them that one way of overreducing communism and capitalism to better contrast them is to say "communism basically believes man is good, capitalism basically believes man is evil" they react with disbelief.
I have participated in many pointless debates with Europeans (many on this forum). Although I am tempted to make judgements on all Europeans from the lack of rational thought exhibited by them, I resist. Americans, you imply, retreat to right wing dogma when their arguments are challenged. I say Europeans do the same with elitism, and I puzzle about its source.
For sure, there is a danger in using clichés and stereotypes, but it is also true, that those clichés *DO* hold a lot of water. Actually, I can't say I know of any well-established cliché about the nature of a people, that didn't had some truth in it.
... which is why Europeans sport such excellent relations with their minority populations of Muslims, Africans, Turks, Jews. I am sure they all concur with your moronic statement. From your bigoted attitude alone I can tell you are a white Christian. I espect more from an enlightened European. Here in GDub's savage America we reject your silly notions.
I do not wish to insult you, but many Americans seem terribly narrow-minded and uninformed in that respect, having been tought from childhood that everything related to communism is "bad" without ever going into detail
I am proud to call Stallman a fellow American. Left leanings and all, through his push for the freedom of ideas and cooperation, he exemplifies the patriotic ideals of our founding fathers. Richard Stallman is the Thomas Jefferson of the computer age.
I think Europeans stereotype Americans and their views too narrowly. It makes America easier to understand for them maybe. Having said that, the communism the world has witnessed for the past 100 years deserves all of the scorn that can be heaped upon it.
Keep up the good work Mono team, I love C#, and I love how you are brining it to *nix.
I can't think of anything the GNU system needs less than another bloated Windoze language port. The list presented by the article was unimpressive - mostly just sleezy C wrappers and ill conceived "frameworks". Nothing with any legs. It is regretable that the good effort that goes into Mono isn't channeled into better C and C++ API's. Oh well, free software means people are free to waste their time.
The Scheme language has an even more elegant solution than IsNot:
The equivalent of Microsoft's deap innovation is: (not (eq? obj1 obj2))
I cannot believe we are discussing this! Has there ever been a more loathsome organization than Micro$oft?
The handling of Titan results reminds me of the dead sea scrolls, where the data were guarded by a small number of scollars who were willing to take forever to publish definitive results.
As for Mars results not being startling, how many scientists before the mission believed they would be landing on evaporite deposits complete with concretions? None. Yet they were out there, yes speculating, as soon as they had gathered enough evidence for the definitive result.
You last statement is excessively foolish.
With very slight additional effort these researchers could have released a terrain model based on the paralax offset of features in the image and saved us all from straining our eyes.
The Titan imaging results are simply fantastic. Huygens landed in an area that is analogous to a terrestrial dry lake bed wetted by an upland stream network fed by methane rain! How often does it rain? Are there large weather systems on titan? Convective storms? What about the black stuff on the lake bed and at the bottom of the streams? What is it made of? Is is particulate like terrestrial sediments? I am a little disappointed that we haven't heard more speculation from project scientists. I think the Cassini/Huygens project has been somewhat guarded about releasing preliminary results than the Mars Rover project.
However, it seems those who think that burning fossil fuels and other activities of like nature should simply go on as it is are quite quick to latch on the minority view, declare the majority a bunch of scaremongers and go on their way.
That industrial societies generate CO2, that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising as a result, and that CO2 tends to trap heat in the atmosphere are facts not being debated by anyone. The question is what are the present and future effects of the CO2 for climate and how do they balance against the desires of 6.4 billion souls to lead better material lives. We should have the debate. Is wealth and development worth a few degrees of warming? Do we want to allow a few scientists and environmentists to dictate restrictions on development without demonstrable benefit?
There are people on this forum trying to have the debate. But each time we suggest that development may be worth the cost, we are modded to flamebait.
I am a geophysicist by training and a sceptic. I would be reluctant to raise the "science" of climate modelling to that of evolutionary biology. It does a disservice to biologists.
a wonderful climate and beautiful women.
I am an American who has spent time in many large U.S. cities (New York, Chicago, LA, Denver), so I feel I am qualified to make a judgement. I had the good fortune to visit London on a few occasions. In March the weather there is very pleasant, the flowers coming up, people out in the parks. The people are very friendly to us yanks, and very courteous. The babes were hot as anywhere. London is a great town. The smack people talk about Great Britain is just that.
What does an airship that cought fire have to do with an inflatable space module?
Hmm, Hindenburg was inflated, an inflatable space module is inflated. What could I have been thinking?
The Hindenburg burned. It did not explode. It's skin did not fail due to a puncture, it failed because it burned. It burned so intensely because the skin was waterproofed with a chemical later used for rocket fuel.
LOL! I wonder what you define as an explosion to be? So the gazillion cubic feet of H2 burned did it? H2 is the most powerful chemical rocket fuel known, numb nuts.
Can you say Hindenburg?