Why would an organisation be involved in a worldwide monitoring network?
Because nihilists could not cooperate themselves out of a wet paper bag?
On a slightly more serious note, there is an effort underway for close earth observation, to cooperate to keep track on things like deforestation, atmospheric composition and so on. That could be what they are referring to.
I don't really get why some people get so upset over WIkipedia, and wants to defend ordinary encyclopedias as "more authoritative".
When it really matters, Wikipedia is of course not a primary source to go to. But then, neither are ordinary encyclopedias. When it _really_ matters, you go to the original research papers, subject-specific anthologies and conference proceedings. You will likely never see Encyclopedia Britannica referred to as an authority for an FDA application, for example, or for an envrionmental consequence analysis for some proposed industrial development.
What encyclopedias are good for, on the other hand, is to give a quick tour of and route into an area the reader isn't already familiar with. And since any deeper delving into the subject will require referencing a lot of other sources in any case, any smaller biases or omissions in this "portal text" isn't going to matter.
Besides which, "Today, November 16th" is still perfectly correct for those who are two hours earlier than you.
And as for the source, it is the submitter, williamw83, that states it as today, not the society. So by your logic, it should be posted when it turns into the 16th in the submitter's timezone and nowhere else.
I live outside Osaka. I agree that there are places with a decent selection if you take the trouble (and time) to really look, but I have seriously yet to find any place that is even close to what I am used to at home.
Since you live in Japan, try looking for a microbrew from Asahikawa, Hokkaido.
That's really a problem here, though; it's difficult to find unusual or imported beers. Most stores have only the most common brands, and even larger liquour stores have a pretty small selection.
This is actually what I miss most from Swedens alcohol monopoly - even a pretty small store out in the middle of nowhere has a selection that people elsewhere can only dream about. You can browse hundreds of beers from all over the world (not to speak of the wine selection), and if there's something, anywhere, you like that they don't have, you can have them import it for you with very little hassle.
Common brand beers in Tokyo actually taste better than anything in the U.S. such as Budweiser and Miller.
I'm not out to diss Japanese beer (I live in Japan as well), but being better than Budweiser or Miller is not a hugely difficult bar to climb over. Beer culture here is still nowhere near what you have in northern and central Europe.
Most beers here are acceptable though somewhat anonymous lagers. Lately, there's been an increase in decent darker brews, however - it used to be that Yebisu Black was the only non-lager worth mentioning, but now there's several interesting brews available.
Problem is, borrowing in this way is detrimental in the wrong run. As a worker at the company, you (meaning a generic "you", of course) can't affect the company fortunes in a strategic way - only the owners and leadership (often the same people) can do that. Having a good job in a company I like should be incentive enough (social reinforcers are the most powerful ones, after all). Adding stock potions is not likely to change that motivation substantially, but may change the direction that motivation takes, in a detrimental manner.
The risk is that as your future fortunes - or lack of it - rides so heavily on one single event, you get an interest in facilitating that event (a successful IPO and/or high stock evaluation at the time your options mature), to the detriment of other, more long-term, goals. Once you've got your pile of cash (assuming you do), whatever happens later doesn't relly feel important. Your horizon tends to end at that point.
If you can make a better investor or customer demo by ignoring or papering over serious problems, you tend to do so if it will bring you closer to that magical moment. The better long-term path may have been to really solve these problems, but that could mean taking a hit on stock price, or a delayed IPO, right?
As a company owner, which would you rather have: employees that really want to see the company still in business, being stable, doing well in ten years; or employees that want to see the company go through the roof on expectations in a year and don't really care afterwards?
You're depending on options for food and housing? Even I was not dumb enough to do that.
Nope. Never took a job where dangling options was part of the hiring process. I would much prefer taking a job with either higher salary (if the company is small, new and unproven), or with greater job security (ie. a larger, older, well established place that is unlikely to dissappear from one day to the next).
Of, course, right now I'm in academia, which means bad salary, no job security and no options... On the other hand, I work on whatever project interests me and I can come and go pretty much as I want to, so there are compensations as well.
I don't really see the great charm of stock options, specifically as part of your employment renumeration. Options are a crap shoot even at the best of times - a lottery if you wish. Since you're depending on it for stuff like food and housing, work compensation should be as predictable as you can make it. You want to reward me at an IPO - set me up for a hefty end-of-year bonus instead.
You want excitement - use a bit of your own salary to buy a lottery ticket (or some small-business shares). Or start a business of your own, and get all the pre-IPO excitement you can handle.
Off topic, but IBM gave Warp boxes to any CompSci student that wanted them at my university, and those 40-odd floppies was what I used to download my first version of Slakware.
Not really true. The reason engines are very polluting at startup is that they are cold, so combustion isn't happening at the right temperature, and the catalytic converter is cold and doesn't really work well.
If you shut off at a red light for a minute, however, the engine doesn't have time to cool appreciably, and so will be just as clean running as it was before you stopped.
But of course, if cooking isn't your speciality, then going to a real restaurant, which, while more expensive than cooking at home, will give you a dinner of a variety and quality in flavour and presentation you just wouldn't have been able to achieve by yourself.
Doing something like security badly may be far worse than letting someone else do it well.
Yes, I didn't get the price right - though the cost is different in other countries than the US (I'm from Sweden, where they add a pretty hefty media surcharge on the discs).
To make it clearer - I don't send data around, in general, and my original post wasn't about that use case, but rather about backing up and archiving stuff. I don't know why other posters veered off into that direction. When I have my laptop along, I have all work-related data with me, together with whatever music and perhaps a couple of movies I want to see, right on that HD. And when I am at home, I have all my stuff online, not away on a shelf.
As for adding a drive, I plug in the USB connector from the drive into the laptop, and Ubuntu recognizes it and mounts it, without me ever having had to do anything at all to recognize the drive. It just works.
The hard drive is about the size of a book. A package of 50 DVD:s will be as heavy and bulkier. The transfer rate is quite a bit higher for the disk, and increases further when you add in the time and hassle of having to swap media.
The cost, too, will be in the same neighbourhood, especialy if you avoid no-name bulk media (you don't need many burn failures to eat up what you thought you saved, and just having a few DVD:s fail 'live' will have you end up making double copies just to be safe).
I have a drive capable of writing DVD:s as well as CD:s. Thing is, I never do anymore. I have never actually tried to write a DVD (the media is pretty expensive), and the only time I've written a CD lately was for Fedora 2 when it appeared, and the Ubuntu install CD. Similarily, I hardly ever read CD:s or DVD:s anymore either.
For backup I have an external USB2 HDD, as well as mirroring essential work data between my available machines at work. For media, well, the external HD is 200Gb, which I have yet to fill after a year - and when I do I'll just get a second one. It's quite a bit cheaper than buying reliable CD blanks anyway.
A major reason people select different toolkits is because they have different preferences for the API and abilities. Defining a common API would fail for exactly the same reason standardizing on a common toolkit would.
The best way forward is the one we're already taking - let people use whatever current (or future) desktop, toolkit and so on that they want, and instead define common protocols for everything that needs to interoperate.
We have a lot of stuff that already just works transparently (and works so well most people probably don't even realize there was a real standardization effort behind it at all). With stuff like D-bus being adopted as a common standard, we're getting ever further in the direction of transparency.
The real beauty of this, as opposed to mandating a single API or piece of software, is that it's "future proof". People can experiment with new user interfaces and new directions for the desktop without sacrificing interoperability. Ten years from now, both Qt/KDE and GTK/Gnome might be just distant memories of the old, bad, way of creating a desktop, but whatever we run then would probably interoperate quite nicely with what we have today.
The point here is that Linux really needs a single, standard widget toolkit (a single standard desktop or WM is not as important, but that would be a good next step). Qt or GTK, pick one. Everything else should change to use the chosen one (ie, if Qt is chosen, write a light layer that provides the GTK programming interface backed by Qt widgets).
OK, I picked GTK. Now, would please all Qt users and programmers please form an orderly line and hand in their Qt-related stuff.
The point here is, you can't force people. Those different toolkits and desktops have their strenghts, and different people are going to prefer different solutions. If anybody would try to declare one technology by fiat, all you'd accomplish is piss off more than half of all users and create far worse interoperability problems instead (since nobody would want to cooperate with those overbearing a*holes anymore).
You can keep your song, and give it to your children, and their children for as many generations as you want. Just keep it for yourself. Of course, with nobody ever being able to hear it outside your family, not many people get any pleasure from it.
What copyright is intended to do is very similar to patents (since ideas tend to be in sort-of the same situation). They grant you a time-limited monopoly on the use of the song - and this is a benefit you did not have without copyright. You pay for that benefit by it being time limited and having your song become public domain after that time ends.
This way both parties win - the holder gets a limited time to make the most of their media/idea, and in return, the public (or society at large) gets full and free use of the media or idea to build on after that period ends.
Note that this deal is totally volontary - if you don't want your song to ever become public domain, then just never release it. But you can't reasonably expect to be granted the gift of a monopoly without ever paying anything back, do you?
Of course, that seems to be what media companies are striving for at the moment...
When I need a navigation system I will use GPS as there is no choice.
When I fly, I can select what plane I go on; again, little choice.
Cars: actually, most car companies are not in the business of weapon systems.
Office furniture and so on: again, they aren't creating weapon systems or weapon platforms.
When I have no choice, I have no choice. Often, however, I do - as in this case. At that point I take my right to use my money as I see fit. That would include not using it for products from companies that are active in developing weapon systems or platforms. I see that as a pretty big (though not all-encompassing) misfeature of their products and I act accordingly. It's called capitalism; you may have heard of it?
Slashdot Mirror
Why would an organisation be involved in a worldwide monitoring network?
Because nihilists could not cooperate themselves out of a wet paper bag?
On a slightly more serious note, there is an effort underway for close earth observation, to cooperate to keep track on things like deforestation, atmospheric composition and so on. That could be what they are referring to.
I don't really get why some people get so upset over WIkipedia, and wants to defend ordinary encyclopedias as "more authoritative".
When it really matters, Wikipedia is of course not a primary source to go to. But then, neither are ordinary encyclopedias. When it _really_ matters, you go to the original research papers, subject-specific anthologies and conference proceedings. You will likely never see Encyclopedia Britannica referred to as an authority for an FDA application, for example, or for an envrionmental consequence analysis for some proposed industrial development.
What encyclopedias are good for, on the other hand, is to give a quick tour of and route into an area the reader isn't already familiar with. And since any deeper delving into the subject will require referencing a lot of other sources in any case, any smaller biases or omissions in this "portal text" isn't going to matter.
Which timezone did you have in mind?
Besides which, "Today, November 16th" is still perfectly correct for those who are two hours earlier than you.
And as for the source, it is the submitter, williamw83, that states it as today, not the society. So by your logic, it should be posted when it turns into the 16th in the submitter's timezone and nowhere else.
That is your local time. In most of the world it is the 16th already.
Um, yeah. Obviously, two wrongs make a right!
You have a whole foreign based on that line of thought; how wrong can it be?
I live outside Osaka. I agree that there are places with a decent selection if you take the trouble (and time) to really look, but I have seriously yet to find any place that is even close to what I am used to at home.
Really off-topic...
Since you live in Japan, try looking for a microbrew from Asahikawa, Hokkaido.
That's really a problem here, though; it's difficult to find unusual or imported beers. Most stores have only the most common brands, and even larger liquour stores have a pretty small selection.
This is actually what I miss most from Swedens alcohol monopoly - even a pretty small store out in the middle of nowhere has a selection that people elsewhere can only dream about. You can browse hundreds of beers from all over the world (not to speak of the wine selection), and if there's something, anywhere, you like that they don't have, you can have them import it for you with very little hassle.
Common brand beers in Tokyo actually taste better than anything in the U.S. such as Budweiser and Miller.
I'm not out to diss Japanese beer (I live in Japan as well), but being better than Budweiser or Miller is not a hugely difficult bar to climb over. Beer culture here is still nowhere near what you have in northern and central Europe.
Most beers here are acceptable though somewhat anonymous lagers. Lately, there's been an increase in decent darker brews, however - it used to be that Yebisu Black was the only non-lager worth mentioning, but now there's several interesting brews available.
Problem is, borrowing in this way is detrimental in the wrong run. As a worker at the company, you (meaning a generic "you", of course) can't affect the company fortunes in a strategic way - only the owners and leadership (often the same people) can do that. Having a good job in a company I like should be incentive enough (social reinforcers are the most powerful ones, after all). Adding stock potions is not likely to change that motivation substantially, but may change the direction that motivation takes, in a detrimental manner.
The risk is that as your future fortunes - or lack of it - rides so heavily on one single event, you get an interest in facilitating that event (a successful IPO and/or high stock evaluation at the time your options mature), to the detriment of other, more long-term, goals. Once you've got your pile of cash (assuming you do), whatever happens later doesn't relly feel important. Your horizon tends to end at that point.
If you can make a better investor or customer demo by ignoring or papering over serious problems, you tend to do so if it will bring you closer to that magical moment. The better long-term path may have been to really solve these problems, but that could mean taking a hit on stock price, or a delayed IPO, right?
As a company owner, which would you rather have: employees that really want to see the company still in business, being stable, doing well in ten years; or employees that want to see the company go through the roof on expectations in a year and don't really care afterwards?
...hence my comment about starting your own business above :)
You're depending on options for food and housing? Even I was not dumb enough to do that.
Nope. Never took a job where dangling options was part of the hiring process. I would much prefer taking a job with either higher salary (if the company is small, new and unproven), or with greater job security (ie. a larger, older, well established place that is unlikely to dissappear from one day to the next).
Of, course, right now I'm in academia, which means bad salary, no job security and no options... On the other hand, I work on whatever project interests me and I can come and go pretty much as I want to, so there are compensations as well.
I don't really see the great charm of stock options, specifically as part of your employment renumeration. Options are a crap shoot even at the best of times - a lottery if you wish. Since you're depending on it for stuff like food and housing, work compensation should be as predictable as you can make it. You want to reward me at an IPO - set me up for a hefty end-of-year bonus instead.
You want excitement - use a bit of your own salary to buy a lottery ticket (or some small-business shares). Or start a business of your own, and get all the pre-IPO excitement you can handle.
Off topic, but IBM gave Warp boxes to any CompSci student that wanted them at my university, and those 40-odd floppies was what I used to download my first version of Slakware.
Not really true. The reason engines are very polluting at startup is that they are cold, so combustion isn't happening at the right temperature, and the catalytic converter is cold and doesn't really work well.
If you shut off at a red light for a minute, however, the engine doesn't have time to cool appreciably, and so will be just as clean running as it was before you stopped.
But of course, if cooking isn't your speciality, then going to a real restaurant, which, while more expensive than cooking at home, will give you a dinner of a variety and quality in flavour and presentation you just wouldn't have been able to achieve by yourself.
Doing something like security badly may be far worse than letting someone else do it well.
Don't worry - any day now they'll pass an amendment forbidding any bodily penetration except between men and women.
Yes, I didn't get the price right - though the cost is different in other countries than the US (I'm from Sweden, where they add a pretty hefty media surcharge on the discs).
To make it clearer - I don't send data around, in general, and my original post wasn't about that use case, but rather about backing up and archiving stuff. I don't know why other posters veered off into that direction. When I have my laptop along, I have all work-related data with me, together with whatever music and perhaps a couple of movies I want to see, right on that HD. And when I am at home, I have all my stuff online, not away on a shelf.
As for adding a drive, I plug in the USB connector from the drive into the laptop, and Ubuntu recognizes it and mounts it, without me ever having had to do anything at all to recognize the drive. It just works.
The hard drive is about the size of a book. A package of 50 DVD:s will be as heavy and bulkier. The transfer rate is quite a bit higher for the disk, and increases further when you add in the time and hassle of having to swap media.
The cost, too, will be in the same neighbourhood, especialy if you avoid no-name bulk media (you don't need many burn failures to eat up what you thought you saved, and just having a few DVD:s fail 'live' will have you end up making double copies just to be safe).
I have a drive capable of writing DVD:s as well as CD:s. Thing is, I never do anymore. I have never actually tried to write a DVD (the media is pretty expensive), and the only time I've written a CD lately was for Fedora 2 when it appeared, and the Ubuntu install CD. Similarily, I hardly ever read CD:s or DVD:s anymore either.
For backup I have an external USB2 HDD, as well as mirroring essential work data between my available machines at work. For media, well, the external HD is 200Gb, which I have yet to fill after a year - and when I do I'll just get a second one. It's quite a bit cheaper than buying reliable CD blanks anyway.
Have an entire Virtual Life.
Maybe you already have that, hm?
Then I'd like a refund, please.
A major reason people select different toolkits is because they have different preferences for the API and abilities. Defining a common API would fail for exactly the same reason standardizing on a common toolkit would.
The best way forward is the one we're already taking - let people use whatever current (or future) desktop, toolkit and so on that they want, and instead define common protocols for everything that needs to interoperate.
We have a lot of stuff that already just works transparently (and works so well most people probably don't even realize there was a real standardization effort behind it at all). With stuff like D-bus being adopted as a common standard, we're getting ever further in the direction of transparency.
The real beauty of this, as opposed to mandating a single API or piece of software, is that it's "future proof". People can experiment with new user interfaces and new directions for the desktop without sacrificing interoperability. Ten years from now, both Qt/KDE and GTK/Gnome might be just distant memories of the old, bad, way of creating a desktop, but whatever we run then would probably interoperate quite nicely with what we have today.
The point here is that Linux really needs a single, standard widget toolkit (a single standard desktop or WM is not as important, but that would be a good next step). Qt or GTK, pick one. Everything else should change to use the chosen one (ie, if Qt is chosen, write a light layer that provides the GTK programming interface backed by Qt widgets).
OK, I picked GTK. Now, would please all Qt users and programmers please form an orderly line and hand in their Qt-related stuff.
The point here is, you can't force people. Those different toolkits and desktops have their strenghts, and different people are going to prefer different solutions. If anybody would try to declare one technology by fiat, all you'd accomplish is piss off more than half of all users and create far worse interoperability problems instead (since nobody would want to cooperate with those overbearing a*holes anymore).
You can keep your song, and give it to your children, and their children for as many generations as you want. Just keep it for yourself. Of course, with nobody ever being able to hear it outside your family, not many people get any pleasure from it.
What copyright is intended to do is very similar to patents (since ideas tend to be in sort-of the same situation). They grant you a time-limited monopoly on the use of the song - and this is a benefit you did not have without copyright. You pay for that benefit by it being time limited and having your song become public domain after that time ends.
This way both parties win - the holder gets a limited time to make the most of their media/idea, and in return, the public (or society at large) gets full and free use of the media or idea to build on after that period ends.
Note that this deal is totally volontary - if you don't want your song to ever become public domain, then just never release it. But you can't reasonably expect to be granted the gift of a monopoly without ever paying anything back, do you?
Of course, that seems to be what media companies are striving for at the moment...
When I need a navigation system I will use GPS as there is no choice.
When I fly, I can select what plane I go on; again, little choice.
Cars: actually, most car companies are not in the business of weapon systems.
Office furniture and so on: again, they aren't creating weapon systems or weapon platforms.
When I have no choice, I have no choice. Often, however, I do - as in this case. At that point I take my right to use my money as I see fit. That would include not using it for products from companies that are active in developing weapon systems or platforms. I see that as a pretty big (though not all-encompassing) misfeature of their products and I act accordingly. It's called capitalism; you may have heard of it?
Great new market for them I'm sure. /me decides to wait for robotic appliances not produced by a company making military gear.