It is completely logical what is happening here. What is valued most by many people in our society? Yes, it's money. So what these people do is simply apply what our culture teaches: go and earn lots of money.
In other societies (in the past , now , or in the future , or elsewhere on earth) other values were or could become the most principal ones : knowledge , education ,
honesty,... . Apparently we value knowledge , but maybe not enough. If knowledge gathering would be considered as the highest good then our society would have taken measures to associate a very high value with it , easily attracting the best of our minds.
"... GET BACK TO MAKE THINGS"... seems a good advice but is unrealistic. The days that USA had unlimited amounts of cheap oil & gas are gone. Without these huge volumes of cheap energy, it simply is impossible to make things on an industrial scale and stay an important economic power. The economic model that made USA big depended heavily on enormous amounts of cheap energy. Current high oil-prices mean the end of this economic model, so unless USA invent themselves with a totally new model (which I find highly unlikely) , I fear that USA as a world-leading superpower has reached the beginning of its end.
Mod parent up plse. He refers correctly to the type of brainwashing the way the Bush administration has pursuid the last 8 years. Off course there are still a number of elements present that continue this style up to today.
Of course 'they' will write Linux or Mac viruses if DoD switches to one of these! But because the much better build-in security of both OS's compared to Windows, it will be much more difficult to cause mayhem.
And there is more: Surely loss of human lives is terrible but war inevitably also brings huge damage to infrastructure and ecology. While nature is already pushed to its limits in peace-time conditions, events in Iraq show us that war also means enormous amounts of polution.
With all this new technology brought to production without much consideration (basicly only for profit of course) I honestly doubt that mankind will last any longer than an extra 100 years.
This is a scheme for losers. Real men go to Mars like this:
1) Test, build and launch a powerful ion-drive (no 1). Put it in Earth-orbit, let it pick up speed during a few months.
2) Build a second one (no 2), after a few months of speed-gathering around Earth send it unmanned to Mars, let it orbit there. On board it has a
rocket engine and some fuel that is to be used later on.
3) Test, build and launch a space-plane with big enough wings to allow horizontal take-off. Prior to launch, be sure to put the crew in it.
4) Dock the space-plane to the orbiting ion-drive no 1, do some manoeuvering and head to Mars. This trip should go fast enough (a few weeks) because by now the ion-drive has picked up considerable speed, however admitting the docking-manoeuver. If needed an on-board rocket can be used to add extra speed. Drop the rocket once enough speed is gained.
5) Upon arriving at Mars some deceleration is needed, therefore perform a docking manoeuver with ion-drive no 2. It's on-board rocket can help
the deceleration and assists also in landing the crew on solid bottom on Mars.
6) Plant the US flag and claim the whole planet just to annoy the rest of the world. Should be great fun.. Subsequently grab some dust & rocks to add a bit of scientific credibility.
7) While all this was goin on, another ion-drive no 3 (with or without a rocket & enough fuel) was also sent unmanned to Mars and put in orbit.
8) Let the crew leave Mars, again using the on-board rocket of ion-drive no 2. Just enough fuel to make the hop and dock to no 3 would do the trick.
9) Head to Earth.
10) Using the same procedure as described earlier, let them land on Earth.
This scheme certainly will appeal the public & some investors: it has some modern gizmo's, it is a tale of many exciting chapters & key-moments and it will certainly get the attention of the rest of the world, just like in old times!
The internet is not what it was 5 or 10 years ago. It has become a matter of many countries, so it is completely logical
that control should pass to a group of countries instead of one.
I suppose the US will refuse again to relinquish control, but it is only a matter of time until they have to succumb to the pressure.
It is also a matter of honesty and democracy to allow others a reasonable amount of control. Here in Europe, we learned that this
is the best way - the US, being a continent and a declining super-power, has to learn this lesson also.
I couldn't agree more. Every object, real or virtual, that was made using some human creativity can be considered a work of art.
Of course as always some people consider something as art whereas others will find nothing to it.
Some tend to think that art is only paintings, drawings, books, poems, theater, architecture, music and the likes.
But I have seen so many other, in my eyes, objects that 'touch' me: cars, planes, boats, glasses, etc... so that I am
really convinced that art exists everywhere so why not in video-games?
Of course some video-games are more artsy than others, tetris is not half-life. (However maybe someone some day comes up with
some strange or beautiful or otherwise awe-inspiring tetris-version?)
If you are prepared to buy a completely new set within 5 to 10 years , no problem finding replacement lamps. If you are like me and you prefer not to fill too many landfills with consumer goods, you will try to keep your gizmo as long as reasonably possible, preferably 15 years or more. However I doubt one will still find a replacement lamp after more than 10 years. So I don't think I would use your strategy.
Exactly my idea! I work in a bank with a big IT department (+/- 1400 people). Until a couple of years ago, the managers 'old style' were mostly ex -programmers/analysts who learned to manage while at the job. Some were better managers than others but generally things were going well most of the time.
But then they were replaced by people with no software-background whatsoever. Since then we are faced with super-mega-systems that are meant to do everything except make coffee. These systems are a disaster for our IT-departments and for our bank-customers: the custom-made systems of the past are replaced by generalized solutions: customization, fine-tuning for specific legislation, etc... forget about it! And they ask a good deal of support & maintenance too! I know of 1 such mega-system (PEREGRINE) that is especially meant to manage help-desk calls and asset management. Now they want to use it for completely other applications that in fact require a totally different approach. We already witnessed a couple of false starts (with loss of time & unknown quantities of finances) but management keeps persisting that we use it as base-platform!
I talked about this with my wife who works in a hospital: there too the non-tech managers have entered and she has the same type of Kafka-esque stories.
Personnally I think we have to wait and sweat it out: until enough stats & data appear that prove that things are not going too well, I fear we'll see no improvements.
I think the situation in Germany is perfectly logical: being a democracy it can accept as many parties as possible but *not* anti-democratic parties. Parties that deny or contort historical
facts , or that try to re-establish a dictatorial
regime have no place in democratic countries.
In Germany politicians decided to explicitly create a law for this , I understand they are extra sensible to this given their history.
One could argue that such a law would be superfluous given the set of rules for a democracy;however I wouldn't oppose one second if my country (Belgium)also would adopt a comparable legislation.
OK, a reasonable proposition: read some foreign newspapers , try to listen to foreign radio stations
, in short inform yourself of what the rest of the world thinks about USA. Try not to believe everything FOX , USA TODAY and the rest say. Try this during minimum a couple of years. Maybe then will you be able to see how many in the world hate
the BUSH Administration and the 51% who again voted for it...
OK, they mean well.
They want to 'translate' XP to the Linux-platform. Not an easy task. But: while translating they better try to copy also the 'illogicalities' and plain bizar things that float
around in the Windows-world : they will have to do this because the regular windows user expects these things to behave exactly like the real XP.
(E.g. push 'start' button if you want to stop etc...).
All this time , (money?) and resources
would be much better spend if they would work on
an open source project right-away. For instance contributing to KDE or Gnome to augment the 'eye-candy' factor , since this seems to attract people as is implicitly stated in the posters text.
I think it's an error to consider maglevs as trains.
Maglevs have many things in common with planes, so you should make comparisons between maglevs and planes. Why? Because of their sheer speed- and safety-potential.
They can , once it becomes a mature technology , replace planes on many occasions:
1) They are almost predestined to commute at distances
between 200 km and 1000 km (2000?3000?). You don't stop/start a thing of several 100tons every odd 10km; so by it's nature a maglev could stop/start every 1 to 3 hours,roughly every 200 to 800 km.
2) It is very difficult to derail,
3) It can't fall out of the sky,
4) It should be able to travel in weather conditions impossible for planes,
5) you don't need something as big , loud and expensive as an airport-infrastructure
In my opinion it's only a matter of time...
While there's still hope for Beagle2 until mothership Mars-Express starts listening from jan 4 on, let's not forget that Mars-Express itself is the main instrument here. As was stated before , Beagle2 was decided as an add-on late in the process of developing Mars-Express. Maybe (and if so sadly) Beagle2 is lost but Mars-Express seems to be very much alive and has the potential to send us loads of
surface and sub-surface pictures of Mars.
Scientists put 6 years in the development of Beagle2, but how many manyears were spend to Mars-Express? I bet much more than 6 years...
"Get's the job done". My employer chose MS many years ago as the standard platform & software to use. On my department we develop new applications and for nearly each project we loose an enormous amount of time (& thus also money) trying to solve problems that could otherwise be solved more quickly if we only could see the sources & how they work.
With MS the job gets surely done but I feel that with Open Source we could move ahead faster.
Most of us know that a changeover would be difficult , especially during the first year.
But we are gladly willing to pay this price knowing that maybe half of our problems can be solved more quickly or may dissapear altogether.
I read the article. It strikes me that not even once
the problem with radioactive waste after 30 years of
service is mentioned. By not mentioning one of the
main problems with nuclear , it won't go away.
The article states that the plant is a clean solution : certainly not! I don't consider a volume
of nearly 0,8 cube meters of uranium clean...
I don't agree. Esperanto is based (both vocabulary and grammar) on rules derived from important European languages (English , German , French , Spanish...). It's grammar is very logical and almost without exceptions. So if Americans or Europeans would learn it , it would definitely be x times more easy than studying Chinese.
The European Community spends millions of euros each
year on translations in every direction.Next year another 10 new states with at least 5 new languages
will join the EC. If European governments would support and encourage the teaching of Esperanto, maybe a good deal of these translations costs could be cut.
This time-line is worthless for us (non-SCO people I mean). It reflects _their_ view of the *nix universe. Or, better yet , it especially reflects the view they want to convey to potential stock-buyers on the affair. Let's forget this and move on to more interesting stuff...
100 + x years ago when telephone was invented , many
people thought it was useless because until then everybody had come along without it. Until somebody
saw an advantage of it compared with usual methods. Soon more people pick up his/her idea and this makes the ball rolling...
I think the same can happen to internet: wait until
10 , 20 , 50 years: maybe by that time there will be uses of it that will strike us: why haven't _I/we_ thought of that now!
I agree. Nowadays most people choose Windoze when it comes to gaming , because it is , at this moment , the better gaming environment.
When enough people use Linux , support for gaming
will increase automatically - so it's just a matter of
being patient AND using Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
It is completely logical what is happening here. What is valued most by many people in our society? Yes, it's money. So what these people do is simply apply what our culture teaches: go and earn lots of money. In other societies (in the past , now , or in the future , or elsewhere on earth) other values were or could become the most principal ones : knowledge , education , honesty, ... . Apparently we value knowledge , but maybe not enough. If knowledge gathering would be considered as the highest good then our society would have taken measures to associate a very high value with it , easily attracting the best of our minds.
"... GET BACK TO MAKE THINGS"... seems a good advice but is unrealistic. The days that USA had unlimited amounts of cheap oil & gas are gone. Without these huge volumes of cheap energy, it simply is impossible to make things on an industrial scale and stay an important economic power. The economic model that made USA big depended heavily on enormous amounts of cheap energy. Current high oil-prices mean the end of this economic model, so unless USA invent themselves with a totally new model (which I find highly unlikely) , I fear that USA as a world-leading superpower has reached the beginning of its end.
Mod parent up plse. He refers correctly to the type of brainwashing the way the Bush administration has pursuid the last 8 years. Off course there are still a number of elements present that continue this style up to today.
Of course 'they' will write Linux or Mac viruses if DoD switches to one of these!
But because the much better build-in security of both OS's compared to Windows, it will be much more difficult to cause mayhem.
And there is more: Surely loss of human lives is terrible but war inevitably also brings huge damage to infrastructure and ecology. While nature is already pushed to its limits in peace-time conditions, events in Iraq show us that war also means enormous amounts of polution.
With all this new technology brought to production without much consideration (basicly only for profit of course) I honestly doubt that mankind will last any longer than an extra 100 years.
This is a scheme for losers. Real men go to Mars like this:
1) Test, build and launch a powerful ion-drive (no 1). Put it in Earth-orbit, let it pick up speed during a few months.
2) Build a second one (no 2), after a few months of speed-gathering around Earth send it unmanned to Mars, let it orbit there. On board it has a rocket engine and some fuel that is to be used later on.
3) Test, build and launch a space-plane with big enough wings to allow horizontal take-off. Prior to launch, be sure to put the crew in it.
4) Dock the space-plane to the orbiting ion-drive no 1, do some manoeuvering and head to Mars. This trip should go fast enough (a few weeks) because by now the ion-drive has picked up considerable speed, however admitting the docking-manoeuver. If needed an on-board rocket can be used to add extra speed. Drop the rocket once enough speed is gained.
5) Upon arriving at Mars some deceleration is needed, therefore perform a docking manoeuver with ion-drive no 2. It's on-board rocket can help the deceleration and assists also in landing the crew on solid bottom on Mars.
6) Plant the US flag and claim the whole planet just to annoy the rest of the world. Should be great fun.. Subsequently grab some dust & rocks to add a bit of scientific credibility.
7) While all this was goin on, another ion-drive no 3 (with or without a rocket & enough fuel) was also sent unmanned to Mars and put in orbit.
8) Let the crew leave Mars, again using the on-board rocket of ion-drive no 2. Just enough fuel to make the hop and dock to no 3 would do the trick.
9) Head to Earth.
10) Using the same procedure as described earlier, let them land on Earth.
This scheme certainly will appeal the public & some investors: it has some modern gizmo's, it is a tale of many exciting chapters & key-moments and it will certainly get the attention of the rest of the world, just like in old times!
The internet is not what it was 5 or 10 years ago. It has become a matter of many countries, so it is completely logical that control should pass to a group of countries instead of one. I suppose the US will refuse again to relinquish control, but it is only a matter of time until they have to succumb to the pressure.
It is also a matter of honesty and democracy to allow others a reasonable amount of control. Here in Europe, we learned that this is the best way - the US, being a continent and a declining super-power, has to learn this lesson also.
I couldn't agree more. Every object, real or virtual, that was made using some human creativity can be considered a work of art. Of course as always some people consider something as art whereas others will find nothing to it. Some tend to think that art is only paintings, drawings, books, poems, theater, architecture, music and the likes. But I have seen so many other, in my eyes, objects that 'touch' me: cars, planes, boats, glasses, etc ... so that I am
really convinced that art exists everywhere so why not in video-games?
Of course some video-games are more artsy than others, tetris is not half-life. (However maybe someone some day comes up with some strange or beautiful or otherwise awe-inspiring tetris-version?)
If you are prepared to buy a completely new set within 5 to 10 years , no problem finding replacement lamps. If you are like me and you prefer not to fill too many landfills with consumer goods, you will try to keep your gizmo as long as reasonably possible, preferably 15 years or more. However I doubt one will still find a replacement lamp after more than 10 years. So I don't think I would use your strategy.
Exactly my idea! I work in a bank with a big IT department (+/- 1400 people). Until a couple of years ago, the managers 'old style' were mostly ex -programmers/analysts who learned to manage while at the job. Some were better managers than others but generally things were going well most of the time. But then they were replaced by people with no software-background whatsoever. Since then we are faced with super-mega-systems that are meant to do everything except make coffee. These systems are a disaster for our IT-departments and for our bank-customers: the custom-made systems of the past are replaced by generalized solutions: customization, fine-tuning for specific legislation, etc... forget about it! And they ask a good deal of support & maintenance too! I know of 1 such mega-system (PEREGRINE) that is especially meant to manage help-desk calls and asset management. Now they want to use it for completely other applications that in fact require a totally different approach. We already witnessed a couple of false starts (with loss of time & unknown quantities of finances) but management keeps persisting that we use it as base-platform!
I talked about this with my wife who works in a hospital: there too the non-tech managers have entered and she has the same type of Kafka-esque stories.
Personnally I think we have to wait and sweat it out: until enough stats & data appear that prove that things are not going too well, I fear we'll see no improvements.
I think the situation in Germany is perfectly logical: being a democracy it can accept as many parties as possible but *not* anti-democratic parties. Parties that deny or contort historical facts , or that try to re-establish a dictatorial regime have no place in democratic countries.
In Germany politicians decided to explicitly create a law for this , I understand they are extra sensible to this given their history.
One could argue that such a law would be superfluous given the set of rules for a democracy;however I wouldn't oppose one second if my country (Belgium)also would adopt a comparable legislation.
OK, a reasonable proposition: read some foreign newspapers , try to listen to foreign radio stations , in short inform yourself of what the rest of the world thinks about USA.
Try not to believe everything FOX , USA TODAY and the rest say. Try this during minimum a couple of years.
Maybe then will you be able to see how many in the world hate the BUSH Administration and the 51% who again voted for it...
OK, they mean well. They want to 'translate' XP to the Linux-platform. Not an easy task. But: while translating they better try to copy also the 'illogicalities' and plain bizar things that float around in the Windows-world : they will have to do this because the regular windows user expects these things to behave exactly like the real XP. (E.g. push 'start' button if you want to stop etc...). All this time , (money?) and resources would be much better spend if they would work on an open source project right-away. For instance contributing to KDE or Gnome to augment the 'eye-candy' factor , since this seems to attract people as is implicitly stated in the posters text.
I think it's an error to consider maglevs as trains. Maglevs have many things in common with planes, so you should make comparisons between maglevs and planes. Why? Because of their sheer speed- and safety-potential. They can , once it becomes a mature technology , replace planes on many occasions: 1) They are almost predestined to commute at distances between 200 km and 1000 km (2000?3000?). You don't stop/start a thing of several 100tons every odd 10km; so by it's nature a maglev could stop/start every 1 to 3 hours ,roughly every 200 to 800 km.
2) It is very difficult to derail,
3) It can't fall out of the sky,
4) It should be able to travel in weather conditions impossible for planes,
5) you don't need something as big , loud and expensive as an airport-infrastructure
In my opinion it's only a matter of time...
While there's still hope for Beagle2 until mothership Mars-Express starts listening from jan 4 on, let's not forget that Mars-Express itself is the main instrument here. As was stated before , Beagle2 was decided as an add-on late in the process of developing Mars-Express. Maybe (and if so sadly) Beagle2 is lost but Mars-Express seems to be very much alive and has the potential to send us loads of surface and sub-surface pictures of Mars. Scientists put 6 years in the development of Beagle2, but how many manyears were spend to Mars-Express? I bet much more than 6 years ...
"Get's the job done". My employer chose MS many years ago as the standard platform & software to use. On my department we develop new applications and for nearly each project we loose an enormous amount of time (& thus also money) trying to solve problems that could otherwise be solved more quickly if we only could see the sources & how they work. With MS the job gets surely done but I feel that with Open Source we could move ahead faster. Most of us know that a changeover would be difficult , especially during the first year. But we are gladly willing to pay this price knowing that maybe half of our problems can be solved more quickly or may dissapear altogether.
I read the article. It strikes me that not even once the problem with radioactive waste after 30 years of service is mentioned. By not mentioning one of the main problems with nuclear , it won't go away. The article states that the plant is a clean solution : certainly not! I don't consider a volume of nearly 0,8 cube meters of uranium clean ...
I don't agree. Esperanto is based (both vocabulary and grammar) on rules derived from important European languages (English , German , French , Spanish ...). It's grammar is very logical and almost without exceptions. So if Americans or Europeans would learn it , it would definitely be x times more easy than studying Chinese.
The European Community spends millions of euros each
year on translations in every direction.Next year another 10 new states with at least 5 new languages
will join the EC. If European governments would support and encourage the teaching of Esperanto, maybe a good deal of these translations costs could be cut.
This time-line is worthless for us (non-SCO people I mean). It reflects _their_ view of the *nix universe. Or, better yet , it especially reflects the view they want to convey to potential stock-buyers on the affair. Let's forget this and move on to more interesting stuff...
100 + x years ago when telephone was invented , many people thought it was useless because until then everybody had come along without it. Until somebody saw an advantage of it compared with usual methods. Soon more people pick up his/her idea and this makes the ball rolling... I think the same can happen to internet: wait until 10 , 20 , 50 years: maybe by that time there will be uses of it that will strike us: why haven't _I/we_ thought of that now!
I agree. Nowadays most people choose Windoze when it comes to gaming , because it is , at this moment , the better gaming environment. When enough people use Linux , support for gaming will increase automatically - so it's just a matter of being patient AND using Linux.