They may well try that, but I doubt it'll work so well. Unlike the 80s, computers and phones are always on, always networked. To patch WordPerfect to run on the latest bastardization of MS-DOS required manufacturing and distributing disks; to patch the iPhone and Android requires an over-the net update that could be ready in less than a week. An inconvenience, perhaps. A show stopper? Not so sure. They also run the risk of tainting Windows as being the source for the problem ("It still works with my iPad!", "No problems with Ubuntu"...).
I agree with up until the point where you said that business owners should be responsible. I think this would not only seriously harm businesses, but is also unnecessary. There are a number of ways a corporation could be punished. Instead of prison, a corporation 'does time' as a state owned business; Instead of a death sentence, the corporation is shutdown and all assets sold off with proceeds to government and the victims of the crime. In the former case, shares would be suspended for the duration of the sentence. In the later case, the company would be de-listed and the shares would be worthless.
In my opinion this would provide the benefits of limited companies, while also allowing the state the right to punish corporations when they break the law. It still leaves the small issue that companies are, in effect, immortal. That alone gives them immense power...
No, really, all the spinning fans and disks in modern PCs give me a headache. If SSDs go some way to getting rid of that noise, I for one, will be happy.
I may be misreading the events here but as I understand it when this goes through there will be no more Novell. Its just a question of who buys which bits.
Bear in mind that when a hard disk fails you typically loose at least some of your written data, and in worst case scenarios all of it. You won't be able to write to certain areas when an SSD fails, but you can often still read the data. So, yes, SSDs might fail a bit sooner, but its usually not critical like a hard disk fail.
There are many reasons to buy (or not to buy) an SSD. For me, it was simple: Noise. When my laptop hard disk failed a few months back I replaced it with an equivalent sized SSD (64 Gb HD -> 64Gb SSD) and boy am I happy - it runs absolutely silently now. Not. A. Whisper. I can't say I've noticed any difference in performance or battery life, but that could be because the laptop is old and running fedora + OSS radeon drivers. Speed certainly wasn't an objective (it was ample fast enough before for my needs), though longer battery life would be nice. I expect that with the forthcoming radeon power manager advances things will improve even more:-)
Precisely - the article doesn't consider that you don't have to store everything on a single chip - just like most hard disks consist of several platters. Sure, we might need some technology in the drive to map to the correct chip, but that doesn't sound that hard to me. It might need some new standards or protocols, but nothing *hard*.
It's worse than that - corporations are to all intents and purposes immortal and above the law. I've seen a few people propose a few simple remedies for this:
If a company commits a criminal act is imprisoned : The directors are replaced (without any golden parachutes!) and all profits for x years goes to the state and not the shareholders. Share transactions would be suspended from the time the companies is charged with an offense to the end of its sentence or until the company is cleared.
If a company commits a *serious* crime (on the scale of mass murder for example) : The company is liquidated, assets are sold and profit goes to the state. The shares are deemed worthless.
We would still suffer from the problem that companies are more or less immortal though...
Belgium is interesting - it has not had a government *at all* for about two years as far as I can tell. The country is a union of Flemish and French and that union has failed, big time leading to current situation. I was there last week, however, and despite this things seems to be OK there - dustbins emptied, waffles eaten, mussels cooked, that sort of thing...
The smaller coalition partner does not hold 'the balance of power' - it's a coalition, and the two parties would agree a set of common objectives. That would involve compromise, but far more compromise from the smaller party than the larger. More contentious policies (such as repeal of the fox hunting bill) become impossible, but more broadly popular policies get implemented.
Strong governments rarely make good governments (think 'power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'). Note that Greece has a strong majority government, yet right now is the basket case of Europe. Germany has had a coalition government for 60 years and seems to do OK. Of course, Spain and Portugal aren't doing so well, either, so the best one can say is that whether or not a government has a strong majority has little or no effect on that country's economic well being.
Yes, they waffle about in indecision. But this is a *good* thing. A government think more and do less is a good thing in every way possible.
It wasn't Thatcher's fantastic economic skills (or Reagan's, for that matter) that saved the country, it was North Sea oil. It is not entirely by accident, in my opinion, that our current economic decline is mirrored by the decline in North Sea oil productivity. Both Labour and Tory governments have squandered what was quite possibly our most valuable resource. We will live to rue this in the coming decades.
I don't think Europe is that big a deal, in fact. The Tories themselves are fairly split on the matter of Europe, as are the Labour party - though they've done a better job at containing it. They could come to an agreement that any European legislature would be a free vote, for example.
The important things are
1) Electoral reform.
2) The economy.
I think there is enough common ground on 2 that it's most likely only 1 they are talking about.
Two words: "Java" and "Qt"*. Writing a cross platform tool kit is hard. Fortunately, someone has already done that. Several times, in fact. If you are trying to write cross platform code and you are not writing a tool kit, then you are probably using the wrong tool for the job.
Corporations are already taxed, and at a higher rate than individuals. What we need is a way to properly punish badly behaved companies and their share holders. For less serious cases this could involve state imprisonment: the board is replaced with government officials, profits go to the state, shares are suspended. For more serious cases, corporate execution may be called for: the company is dissolved, assets are sold off (proceeds go to the state), shareholders get nothing.
I may be wrong here, but I think the current discussions regarding GMO are an 'all or nothing' approach - in other words, you can grow any GMO crop or GMO crops are all banned. This doesn't make sense to me - some GMO crops may be fine, others not so. In particular, I think some GMO should be banned, full stop:
broad-spectrum herbicide tolerant species should be allowed ever: this is giving the farmer instructions to completely soak the countryside with lethal chemicals (and who is to say the rats were sick because of the GMO or the herbicide?)
Genes that produce sterile crops: This is putting our food security at risk, if your business model can't cope with this - tough, find another model or another business - food security comes first.
Let me guess...this comes laden with DRM and associated technologies. So, thank, but no thanks - I'm quite happy with a few feet of (well shielded analogue) cable.
There is one big difference though - the Dr (and nurses) are professionals that have been through many years of education, including ethics. The security guard at an airport is there because he failed to get a single qualification.
Communism refers to an economic model, not a political one. A better term would be Capitalist Dictatorship. Its worth pointing out how smooth China's transition from Communist Dictatorship to Capitalist Dictatorship was - state owned industries were sold for a dollar or so to the people that already ran them! There have been other Capitalist Dictatorships - notably in South America during the late 70s and 80s. They are only just recovering, but if they managed to turn the tide, maybe we can too. I live in hope.
But isn't that effectively patenting a mathematical technique? Where would we be if Taylor had patented his infamous infinite series, for example? I don't really see the difference between this and a Taylor expansion in fact, but maybe I'm missing something?
I think the original post was positing that the Jesus theory was better than the theory of evolution, or the big bang theory for example, not whether or not a character by the name of Jesus was born in Bethlehem some 2000 odd years ago!
Given that Jesus was a fairly common name at the time, I'd say the chance of such a birth is quite high. It may even have happened in a stable. None of this says anything about the presence of a deity or deities.
In any case there is evidence for history, and we can make predictions of a sort - heck, historians could go around claiming our good queen Elizabeth I conquered China if not! For example, we have archaeological artefacts from 1776 and we can make predictions about where we might find more of such artefacts (e.g. battlefields), or what kind of artefacts we might find - even what text we might expect to find in any books or letters that are found. Of course, we can't predict into the future - that would require magic. Or God.:D
People are going to think I'm miserable old git* as all my posts are what *not* to see...
...but the Globe is a total rip off. Its only 10 years old, has no roof (not good in winter!) and is in a location unlikely to have had a Shakespearean theatre. Go see some proper theatre instead - the nearby Southbank Centre or Barbican Centre often have good plays, including Shakespeare - but don't waste your money at the Globe!
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They may well try that, but I doubt it'll work so well. Unlike the 80s, computers and phones are always on, always networked. To patch WordPerfect to run on the latest bastardization of MS-DOS required manufacturing and distributing disks; to patch the iPhone and Android requires an over-the net update that could be ready in less than a week. An inconvenience, perhaps. A show stopper? Not so sure. They also run the risk of tainting Windows as being the source for the problem ("It still works with my iPad!", "No problems with Ubuntu"...).
I agree with up until the point where you said that business owners should be responsible. I think this would not only seriously harm businesses, but is also unnecessary. There are a number of ways a corporation could be punished. Instead of prison, a corporation 'does time' as a state owned business; Instead of a death sentence, the corporation is shutdown and all assets sold off with proceeds to government and the victims of the crime. In the former case, shares would be suspended for the duration of the sentence. In the later case, the company would be de-listed and the shares would be worthless. In my opinion this would provide the benefits of limited companies, while also allowing the state the right to punish corporations when they break the law. It still leaves the small issue that companies are, in effect, immortal. That alone gives them immense power...
No, really, all the spinning fans and disks in modern PCs give me a headache. If SSDs go some way to getting rid of that noise, I for one, will be happy.
I may be misreading the events here but as I understand it when this goes through there will be no more Novell. Its just a question of who buys which bits.
Bear in mind that when a hard disk fails you typically loose at least some of your written data, and in worst case scenarios all of it. You won't be able to write to certain areas when an SSD fails, but you can often still read the data. So, yes, SSDs might fail a bit sooner, but its usually not critical like a hard disk fail.
There are many reasons to buy (or not to buy) an SSD. For me, it was simple: Noise. When my laptop hard disk failed a few months back I replaced it with an equivalent sized SSD (64 Gb HD -> 64Gb SSD) and boy am I happy - it runs absolutely silently now. Not. A. Whisper. I can't say I've noticed any difference in performance or battery life, but that could be because the laptop is old and running fedora + OSS radeon drivers. Speed certainly wasn't an objective (it was ample fast enough before for my needs), though longer battery life would be nice. I expect that with the forthcoming radeon power manager advances things will improve even more :-)
Precisely - the article doesn't consider that you don't have to store everything on a single chip - just like most hard disks consist of several platters. Sure, we might need some technology in the drive to map to the correct chip, but that doesn't sound that hard to me. It might need some new standards or protocols, but nothing *hard*.
How is this insightful? Its a tautology! Of course it wouldn't have been a failure if Microsoft hadn't screwed up! *rolls eyes*
We would still suffer from the problem that companies are more or less immortal though...
Erlang is probably a good start.
Belgium is interesting - it has not had a government *at all* for about two years as far as I can tell. The country is a union of Flemish and French and that union has failed, big time leading to current situation. I was there last week, however, and despite this things seems to be OK there - dustbins emptied, waffles eaten, mussels cooked, that sort of thing...
Yes, they waffle about in indecision. But this is a *good* thing. A government think more and do less is a good thing in every way possible.
I don't think Europe is that big a deal, in fact. The Tories themselves are fairly split on the matter of Europe, as are the Labour party - though they've done a better job at containing it. They could come to an agreement that any European legislature would be a free vote, for example. The important things are 1) Electoral reform. 2) The economy. I think there is enough common ground on 2 that it's most likely only 1 they are talking about.
Isn't the corollary of this that businesses are sticking with XP too?
* Yes, I know there are others...
Corporations are already taxed, and at a higher rate than individuals. What we need is a way to properly punish badly behaved companies and their share holders. For less serious cases this could involve state imprisonment: the board is replaced with government officials, profits go to the state, shares are suspended. For more serious cases, corporate execution may be called for: the company is dissolved, assets are sold off (proceeds go to the state), shareholders get nothing.
There may be others, but those spring to mind...
Of course! :D
Let me guess...this comes laden with DRM and associated technologies. So, thank, but no thanks - I'm quite happy with a few feet of (well shielded analogue) cable.
Holy shit, I *absolutely* *do* *NOT* want to see Ann Widdecombe in the buff. Ever. So lets scrap that idea right now.
There is one big difference though - the Dr (and nurses) are professionals that have been through many years of education, including ethics. The security guard at an airport is there because he failed to get a single qualification.
Communism refers to an economic model, not a political one. A better term would be Capitalist Dictatorship. Its worth pointing out how smooth China's transition from Communist Dictatorship to Capitalist Dictatorship was - state owned industries were sold for a dollar or so to the people that already ran them! There have been other Capitalist Dictatorships - notably in South America during the late 70s and 80s. They are only just recovering, but if they managed to turn the tide, maybe we can too. I live in hope.
But isn't that effectively patenting a mathematical technique? Where would we be if Taylor had patented his infamous infinite series, for example? I don't really see the difference between this and a Taylor expansion in fact, but maybe I'm missing something?
Given that Jesus was a fairly common name at the time, I'd say the chance of such a birth is quite high. It may even have happened in a stable. None of this says anything about the presence of a deity or deities.
In any case there is evidence for history, and we can make predictions of a sort - heck, historians could go around claiming our good queen Elizabeth I conquered China if not! For example, we have archaeological artefacts from 1776 and we can make predictions about where we might find more of such artefacts (e.g. battlefields), or what kind of artefacts we might find - even what text we might expect to find in any books or letters that are found. Of course, we can't predict into the future - that would require magic. Or God. :D
* I am NOT a goth! *pouts*