Perhaps we should just dedicate a big chunk of land lets say Wyoming to all the idiots who think they are libertarian because they complain about taxes and let them run it there own way.
There's already the Free State Project, but I suspect most internet libertarians are content to just knock other people on internet fora and can't be bothered to really go somewhere and get involved in the civic process, which is admittedly hard work.
Although taxing fuel or road use is a popular means of paying for public transportation, it's not the only possibly way to cover losses. The funds could also come from e.g. property taxes.
Because the oil is going to last forever and gas prices will soon return to what they were in the 1990s, right?
As much as some might gripe that public transit systems have to be subsidized, at least they are laying the foundations of how people can get around once the middle class is eroded and fuel is too costly.
Meego is meant for hardware more powerful than the N900's, which was already rather antiquated at the time of its release. While Meego can be installed on an N900, it's only meant for developers to try out Meego handset software on. As a user, you're better off installing the Maemo Community SSU if you want to see further bug fixes and new functionality for your N900.
Meego is not meant only for mobile phones and several other companies are already committed to using Meego on tablets and in-vehicle devices. The claim "OMG Meego is dead because Microsoft controls Nokia!" is usually found in fora where people have no idea what Meego is.
Many traditions of slavery involve periodic payments from the master to the slave that the slave can spend as he wish or even save to buy his freedom one day. While the slave is ostensibly at the mercy of his master, in order to maintain face among his society, the master has to provide something to those under him. This is how it worked in ancient Rome, for instance.
It's not so much that intellectual property is a major export, rather that industries generating intellectual property are a major employer. Do to automation, manufacturing employers a considerably smaller proportion of the population than a century ago. What are the rest of the people going to do?
This is more about the creation of a community hash table than language. Language allows the expression of contradictory ideas and ambiguity, e.g. Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". These robots are just connecting locations to variables.
Elop has announced that Nokia is trying to hand Meego over to another company like LG and does not believe Meego has a place in its longterm strategy. Also, there's a big controversy that this new "N950" model will feature just Maemo with a few updates applied, and it does not meet the Meego standards. There's plenty of coverage of the controversy over at Maemo Weekly News.
In a recent interview with Elop (no longer have the link, sorry, maybe someone else does) he said that Nokia is looking to pass Meego to some other company, for example, LG. Nokia's commitment to Meego is finished.
What is the story to which you're alluding to? The only science-fiction work I know of where the people of a generational starship forget the mission and start infighting is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun. What other books have such a plot?
1% is indeed little. The article linked above notes that NASA's current budget approaches that ceiling, and the organization is unable to really further man's leap into space. For years now the longterm focus on been on unmanned missions and mere circling around in orbit.
No, no one is running on a platform of cutting NASA entirely, but no one is running on a platform to massively up its funding to a level where humanity would truly move out into the solar system. Government-run space exploration is thus in limbo, and the private sector is unlikely to launch initiatives that are massively unprofitable.
The public may want those things, but they also might feel that too much of their tax money is lost in wasteful spending. Keep the programs, cut the fat, they'd say. With NASA, the public is unwilling to fund NASA adequately for its goals -- people know that space exploration would require considerably more funding, but are unwilling to provide it (the study cited above gives a mere 1% of budget as a ceiling). No, that doesn't seem supportive, and as long as these attitudes persist, then I don't think it likely that deep space exploration will take off.
People can claim to favour space exploration all they want, but they aren't putting their money where their mouth is in voting.
The public is for space exploration only as long as a negligible amount of tax revenue is spent on it. Saying "Yeah, space is cool" but then complaining about NASA as if it is a Big Government monster instead of an underfunded wreck doesn't really seem supportive.
After the first couple of moon landings, public support for space exploration fell quickly. Any ample history of the Apollo program will note how the last missions drew very little attention from the public.
I disagree that humanity as a group wants space exploration. In a democracy, pubic support would mean real progress, but NASA has drawn less and less funding as time goes by, and polls regularly show that Americans would rather their tax dollars be spent on something else.
You personally may be all rah-rah about space, but it is not the only possible future of our species.
We live in a democracy. The purpose of leaders is not to "think intellectually" but to carry out the will of the people. If voters feel that space exploration is not an important issue, then government cannot pursue. Private industry cannot bring humanity into space yet -- or possibly ever -- so massive government subsidy is the only option, and society just doesn't want it.
Comparing space exploration to humans leaving Africa is risible. Slowly following game through a succession of same or similar climates is trivial compared to getting out of Earth's orbit and surviving in a total vacuum.
You're assuming that the longterm survival of the species is a strong motivator for the average person. While an catastrophic asteroid is a possibility, the probability of it happening in our lifetime, our children's lifetime, or our great grandchildren's lifetime is small. Beyond the immediate next few generations, I don't think people care so much. What matters is our immediate happiness. So why is space so urgent?
Slashdotters often speak as if the conquest of space is inevitable, as does much of the science fiction canon. But I increasingly suspect that an intelligent race would more likely not go into space. Interesting possibilities I've heard speculated are that it would ultimately commit mass suicide, feeling existence is pointless, or withdraw into a virtual reality world on its own planet, which has its own opportunities for exploration and longer lifespans without the unprofitability and dangers of space.
A government-run postal service was set up by the same people who passed your beloved coinage law. It's hilarious when libertarians have so little knowledge of history that they suggest institutions argued for by the Founding Fathers are insidious Big Goverment.
Countries have a hard time holding on to large amounts of land if there's not some minimum level of habitation. Just look at what's happening to the Russian Far East: in 50 years time, that will probably all be lost to China, along with its water and mineral resources. Encouraging some level of rural habitation and land use is a longterm strategic interest.
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic. The founding fathers knew that the free market could do mail, but they didn't trust it and thus they gave the fledgling nation a public (now quasi-public) postal system. Private companies, concerned with profits, cannot guarantee that rural residents will receive mail with the same prices and service as people in the heart of downtown. The USPS can.
Even in countries where first class mail costs twice as much as in the US, postal systems have a hard time staying profitable only from mail. In Finland, where I live, post offices have to sell candy, kitsch gifts, and office supplies just to stay in business. In many communities, the post office is just a corner rented in another store (a change I understand has begun in the US too) instead of a separate location.
Depends where you are. For some places in Europe, OSM is vastly more complete than Google, showing post boxes and rubbish bins. I'm about to leave for Tajikistan, and I see that there's very little detail there, but for how many users is that a problem?
Slashdot Mirror
There's already the Free State Project, but I suspect most internet libertarians are content to just knock other people on internet fora and can't be bothered to really go somewhere and get involved in the civic process, which is admittedly hard work.
Although taxing fuel or road use is a popular means of paying for public transportation, it's not the only possibly way to cover losses. The funds could also come from e.g. property taxes.
Because the oil is going to last forever and gas prices will soon return to what they were in the 1990s, right?
As much as some might gripe that public transit systems have to be subsidized, at least they are laying the foundations of how people can get around once the middle class is eroded and fuel is too costly.
I was thinking mostly of the lack of RAM. As for the GPU, aren't those drivers closed to Meego?
Meego is meant for hardware more powerful than the N900's, which was already rather antiquated at the time of its release. While Meego can be installed on an N900, it's only meant for developers to try out Meego handset software on. As a user, you're better off installing the Maemo Community SSU if you want to see further bug fixes and new functionality for your N900.
Meego is not meant only for mobile phones and several other companies are already committed to using Meego on tablets and in-vehicle devices. The claim "OMG Meego is dead because Microsoft controls Nokia!" is usually found in fora where people have no idea what Meego is.
Sometimes people want to read something written more recently than 60-90 years ago.
Many traditions of slavery involve periodic payments from the master to the slave that the slave can spend as he wish or even save to buy his freedom one day. While the slave is ostensibly at the mercy of his master, in order to maintain face among his society, the master has to provide something to those under him. This is how it worked in ancient Rome, for instance.
It's not so much that intellectual property is a major export, rather that industries generating intellectual property are a major employer. Do to automation, manufacturing employers a considerably smaller proportion of the population than a century ago. What are the rest of the people going to do?
The industry does offer something in terms of value. Intellectual property is sadly a cornerstone of the US economy.
This is more about the creation of a community hash table than language. Language allows the expression of contradictory ideas and ambiguity, e.g. Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". These robots are just connecting locations to variables.
Elop has announced that Nokia is trying to hand Meego over to another company like LG and does not believe Meego has a place in its longterm strategy. Also, there's a big controversy that this new "N950" model will feature just Maemo with a few updates applied, and it does not meet the Meego standards. There's plenty of coverage of the controversy over at Maemo Weekly News.
In a recent interview with Elop (no longer have the link, sorry, maybe someone else does) he said that Nokia is looking to pass Meego to some other company, for example, LG. Nokia's commitment to Meego is finished.
What is the story to which you're alluding to? The only science-fiction work I know of where the people of a generational starship forget the mission and start infighting is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun . What other books have such a plot?
1% is indeed little. The article linked above notes that NASA's current budget approaches that ceiling, and the organization is unable to really further man's leap into space. For years now the longterm focus on been on unmanned missions and mere circling around in orbit.
No, no one is running on a platform of cutting NASA entirely, but no one is running on a platform to massively up its funding to a level where humanity would truly move out into the solar system. Government-run space exploration is thus in limbo, and the private sector is unlikely to launch initiatives that are massively unprofitable.
The public may want those things, but they also might feel that too much of their tax money is lost in wasteful spending. Keep the programs, cut the fat, they'd say. With NASA, the public is unwilling to fund NASA adequately for its goals -- people know that space exploration would require considerably more funding, but are unwilling to provide it (the study cited above gives a mere 1% of budget as a ceiling). No, that doesn't seem supportive, and as long as these attitudes persist, then I don't think it likely that deep space exploration will take off.
People can claim to favour space exploration all they want, but they aren't putting their money where their mouth is in voting.
The public is for space exploration only as long as a negligible amount of tax revenue is spent on it. Saying "Yeah, space is cool" but then complaining about NASA as if it is a Big Government monster instead of an underfunded wreck doesn't really seem supportive.
After the first couple of moon landings, public support for space exploration fell quickly. Any ample history of the Apollo program will note how the last missions drew very little attention from the public. I disagree that humanity as a group wants space exploration. In a democracy, pubic support would mean real progress, but NASA has drawn less and less funding as time goes by, and polls regularly show that Americans would rather their tax dollars be spent on something else. You personally may be all rah-rah about space, but it is not the only possible future of our species.
We live in a democracy. The purpose of leaders is not to "think intellectually" but to carry out the will of the people. If voters feel that space exploration is not an important issue, then government cannot pursue. Private industry cannot bring humanity into space yet -- or possibly ever -- so massive government subsidy is the only option, and society just doesn't want it. Comparing space exploration to humans leaving Africa is risible. Slowly following game through a succession of same or similar climates is trivial compared to getting out of Earth's orbit and surviving in a total vacuum.
You're assuming that the longterm survival of the species is a strong motivator for the average person. While an catastrophic asteroid is a possibility, the probability of it happening in our lifetime, our children's lifetime, or our great grandchildren's lifetime is small. Beyond the immediate next few generations, I don't think people care so much. What matters is our immediate happiness. So why is space so urgent? Slashdotters often speak as if the conquest of space is inevitable, as does much of the science fiction canon. But I increasingly suspect that an intelligent race would more likely not go into space. Interesting possibilities I've heard speculated are that it would ultimately commit mass suicide, feeling existence is pointless, or withdraw into a virtual reality world on its own planet, which has its own opportunities for exploration and longer lifespans without the unprofitability and dangers of space.
A government-run postal service was set up by the same people who passed your beloved coinage law. It's hilarious when libertarians have so little knowledge of history that they suggest institutions argued for by the Founding Fathers are insidious Big Goverment.
Countries have a hard time holding on to large amounts of land if there's not some minimum level of habitation. Just look at what's happening to the Russian Far East: in 50 years time, that will probably all be lost to China, along with its water and mineral resources. Encouraging some level of rural habitation and land use is a longterm strategic interest.
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic. The founding fathers knew that the free market could do mail, but they didn't trust it and thus they gave the fledgling nation a public (now quasi-public) postal system. Private companies, concerned with profits, cannot guarantee that rural residents will receive mail with the same prices and service as people in the heart of downtown. The USPS can.
Even in countries where first class mail costs twice as much as in the US, postal systems have a hard time staying profitable only from mail. In Finland, where I live, post offices have to sell candy, kitsch gifts, and office supplies just to stay in business. In many communities, the post office is just a corner rented in another store (a change I understand has begun in the US too) instead of a separate location.
Depends where you are. For some places in Europe, OSM is vastly more complete than Google, showing post boxes and rubbish bins. I'm about to leave for Tajikistan, and I see that there's very little detail there, but for how many users is that a problem?