Actually, he's saving oxygen, the oxygen consumed by his lungs during a ride is vastly less than the oxygen consumed by an internal combustion engine over the same distance. It also does not produce carbon monoxide or any of the other toxic gasses that engines do.
Before you retort that TFA is about electric cars, please tell us all if *you* drive an electric car.
A single out of the ordinary anecdote does not prove a point. GP said 200mb may be enough for *some* elderly folk, not *all* elderly folk. I also agree, 200mb plans have a use case. I just think that charging the same for them as for a 2gb plan on another network is a bit steep.
25k miles is so far away that you can't really say that it's "above Kansas", so much as "above everything". 25k miles is ~3 times the diameter of the Earth.
Indeed! To the list of terrorists, child-abusers and food shortages, lets now add showers to the list of things we need to be terrified, TERRIFIED, about!
If your immune system is weakened by a few late nights and an approaching deadline, then you have bigger problems. Outside of the city, where people are still not pudgy little babies for life, rural townsfolk live in constant fear of water shortages, bad crops and snakes biting their kids all the while working hard day in day out (there is no week end for a farmer) without the absurd levels of "leisure" and "unwinding" options that city folk have.
Believe it or not, they aren't all dying by the droves in their shower cubicles.
I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.
It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.
This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.
The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.
You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.
Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.
If this is such an issue for your workplace, pick one of those and standardise on it. But instead your solution is to.. standardise on MS Office?
You're missing the point. My workplace has *already* standardized on MS Office. The incentive for moving away were the advantages of freedom from lock-in by a single vendor, and standardizing on a *format* rather than an *application*.
If ODF doesn't offer those advantages, what happens to the incentive to move away from MS Office? It's lost.
If the point of open source is to give me a choice of Abi, OO or KOffice, then why do I suffer the same lock-in effects when I use one? That's not a choice, that's Russian roulette, coz if I decide in two years that I don't like the one I chose, tough, because the decision is final.
And, as an aside, I doubt you can tell me with a straight face that you haven't seen MS Office break its own files.
I can say that with a straight face. I can also say that yes, I've had experience with OO breaking its own files between versions, but that's an example of the same problem from before; ODF not being a solid definition of an implementation and just declaring the semantics.
Stability isn't the only issue. GIMP and Cinelerra under Linux are heaps more stable than Photoshop and Premiere under Windows, but that doesn't draw me away towards the open source side. In that case, as mentioned in the summary, feature set is high on the priority list there.
I have done my best however to stick to FOSS as much as possible. I do prefer MS Office over OpenOffice, but I've stuck with the latter nonetheless, more because I *want* to like OO more than MSO. However, in the office, I've *had* to stick with MSO because while OO can read MSO originated files, doing a save/send in OO and then again in MSO and back again results in badly broken formatting. This isn't even MS's fault.
Try creating a file in AbiWord. Save it. Open it in OO. Edit and save it. Open again in AbiWord. Broken formatting. ODF is not the panacea of perfect cross compatibility that it could and *should* be, and you can blame the elitism in the ODF committee for sticking to a misconceived notion that they should only set the semantics of the file and leave the syntax up to the implementers. The result? ODF implementations that, while semantically compatible, break each others' formatting syntax.
Point? Oh yea, I have one. The reason that I moved my workplace away from open source software was because my illusion that ODF was the perfect answer to cross compatible documents was shattered when I accidentally opened an ODF file in AbiWord on another Ubuntu box, edited it, saved the changes, and found that it had made a mess when re-opened in OO. For me, the biggest draw away from MSO was destroyed, and my incentive to push upstream for ODF use was stymmied.
This is an example where a community effort concentrates on solving the *technical* problem and forgets that there's a real, on the ground problem that needs to be solved as well, that may or may not be totally technical in nature. It represents for me the largest endemic problem within the open source community, and it really needs to be addressed if we are to present the open source model as a serious alternative to the proprietary/patent/copyright system.
They won't do this, and they'll forward all the same arguments that MS uses to explain the reason that the Windows APIs require backwards compatibility and can't be broken.
I'm absolutely totally pro-Linux. I use it all the time, but what's good for the goose must also be good for the gander.
Is there a reason that we can't now back up this crashed truck and point it in the right direction? Obviously the current approach doesn't work, can't we go to Linus, say "hey, we tried it your way and got nowhere, can we do it right now?"
If doing sound mixing in the kernel is the "right way", then I hope Linus is man enough to admit his error...
Slashdot Mirror
But I thought Linus was Caucasian? Jeez, you learn something new every day.
Linux = security risk only if you use Windows and you piss a Linux user off.
To a Linux user who pisses a Windows user off, well, let's just say this particular relationship isn't reciprocating.
Not to mention t-rex sized jaws to consume all the delivery-junk food our society produces.
And it's status line will be "In a relationship with NigerianBride419"
Actually, he's saving oxygen, the oxygen consumed by his lungs during a ride is vastly less than the oxygen consumed by an internal combustion engine over the same distance. It also does not produce carbon monoxide or any of the other toxic gasses that engines do.
Before you retort that TFA is about electric cars, please tell us all if *you* drive an electric car.
I want the Jaws theme music.
s/this afternoon//
Well this may be the first time not being able to RTFA reveals something from TFA: Obviously they don't spend their money on high quality web hosting.
The answer can be calculated using the corollary to the Drake Equation as expressed here.
A single out of the ordinary anecdote does not prove a point. GP said 200mb may be enough for *some* elderly folk, not *all* elderly folk. I also agree, 200mb plans have a use case. I just think that charging the same for them as for a 2gb plan on another network is a bit steep.
25k miles is so far away that you can't really say that it's "above Kansas", so much as "above everything". 25k miles is ~3 times the diameter of the Earth.
Fatal deaths are a worry. I'm not too concerned about the other types though.
Indeed! To the list of terrorists, child-abusers and food shortages, lets now add showers to the list of things we need to be terrified, TERRIFIED, about!
If your immune system is weakened by a few late nights and an approaching deadline, then you have bigger problems. Outside of the city, where people are still not pudgy little babies for life, rural townsfolk live in constant fear of water shortages, bad crops and snakes biting their kids all the while working hard day in day out (there is no week end for a farmer) without the absurd levels of "leisure" and "unwinding" options that city folk have.
Believe it or not, they aren't all dying by the droves in their shower cubicles.
This is Slashdot. Not only do readers need to be spoon-fed, they also need to be told which side of the spoon is up.
It's the fact that people consider what should be fascinating topics boring that is the problem
Thankyou for proving my point so perfectly. You did it so well that I think I may be lining myself up for a whoosh...
And wow, I completely didn't address the post I originally intended to reply to. Talk about rushing headlong...
I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.
It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.
This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.
The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.
You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.
Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.
You got the first post
And started a Haiku fad
I hope you're happy
MS astroturfer? Have you seen my posting record?
You're missing the point. My workplace has *already* standardized on MS Office. The incentive for moving away were the advantages of freedom from lock-in by a single vendor, and standardizing on a *format* rather than an *application*.
If ODF doesn't offer those advantages, what happens to the incentive to move away from MS Office? It's lost.
If the point of open source is to give me a choice of Abi, OO or KOffice, then why do I suffer the same lock-in effects when I use one? That's not a choice, that's Russian roulette, coz if I decide in two years that I don't like the one I chose, tough, because the decision is final.
I can say that with a straight face. I can also say that yes, I've had experience with OO breaking its own files between versions, but that's an example of the same problem from before; ODF not being a solid definition of an implementation and just declaring the semantics.
Did you miss the part where I referred to technical solutions that totally ignored the real human part of the problem?
Coz, well, you just proved it like a bowling ball falling on your toe proves gravity.
Stability isn't the only issue. GIMP and Cinelerra under Linux are heaps more stable than Photoshop and Premiere under Windows, but that doesn't draw me away towards the open source side. In that case, as mentioned in the summary, feature set is high on the priority list there.
I have done my best however to stick to FOSS as much as possible. I do prefer MS Office over OpenOffice, but I've stuck with the latter nonetheless, more because I *want* to like OO more than MSO. However, in the office, I've *had* to stick with MSO because while OO can read MSO originated files, doing a save/send in OO and then again in MSO and back again results in badly broken formatting. This isn't even MS's fault.
Try creating a file in AbiWord. Save it. Open it in OO. Edit and save it. Open again in AbiWord. Broken formatting. ODF is not the panacea of perfect cross compatibility that it could and *should* be, and you can blame the elitism in the ODF committee for sticking to a misconceived notion that they should only set the semantics of the file and leave the syntax up to the implementers. The result? ODF implementations that, while semantically compatible, break each others' formatting syntax.
Point? Oh yea, I have one. The reason that I moved my workplace away from open source software was because my illusion that ODF was the perfect answer to cross compatible documents was shattered when I accidentally opened an ODF file in AbiWord on another Ubuntu box, edited it, saved the changes, and found that it had made a mess when re-opened in OO. For me, the biggest draw away from MSO was destroyed, and my incentive to push upstream for ODF use was stymmied.
This is an example where a community effort concentrates on solving the *technical* problem and forgets that there's a real, on the ground problem that needs to be solved as well, that may or may not be totally technical in nature. It represents for me the largest endemic problem within the open source community, and it really needs to be addressed if we are to present the open source model as a serious alternative to the proprietary/patent/copyright system.
How about getting Linux to simply recognize the extensions and honour them on FAT32/NTFS drives where the permission info is lost?
They won't do this, and they'll forward all the same arguments that MS uses to explain the reason that the Windows APIs require backwards compatibility and can't be broken.
I'm absolutely totally pro-Linux. I use it all the time, but what's good for the goose must also be good for the gander.
Is there a reason that we can't now back up this crashed truck and point it in the right direction? Obviously the current approach doesn't work, can't we go to Linus, say "hey, we tried it your way and got nowhere, can we do it right now?"
If doing sound mixing in the kernel is the "right way", then I hope Linus is man enough to admit his error...