"And it's very noticable that bombing gradually crippled the german war economy despite the targetting being wrong. When you read about the development of V2s for example, it's quite clear that the German economy at the end of the war was chronically short of everything, mainly because of bombed out factories and railways. Same with all of the Nazi weapons work near the end of the war."
Thank god the Americans took over the V2 plans then. Imagine what would have happened if the Germans had won the race to space!
Space suits with Lederhosen! Man in the moon with a mustache!
That's a very narrow view you have of the world.
Basically, you're saying the world has to adapt to the sad fact that most Americans only speak English, with little to no knowledge of another language. Meanwhile, India gets your appraisal, because they teach English in schools.
I'm not a Mexican, but if I was, I could just say this: Americans should quickly start learning another world language, Spanish for example, in order to be able to compete better in our south american market, boosting their exports and therefore reducing their huge trade deficit they have had for centuries.
You see, you're American and native English speaker (I assume, at least). Your view is that the world revolves around the English tongue.
A born Mexican is probably going to think the same about Spanish. It's not like it's a minority language.
Too me, this looks more like if someone in Nigeria doesn't WANT its people to get access to XO laptops/better education.
Keep 'em stupid and they will obey, right?
Google video will do very little for commercial P2P providers, such as Blizzard for their WoW updates.
This Cuban guy apparently thinks P2P is only for illegal piracy downloads. Tough luck, Sir, it isn't.
Basing security on assumptions of human behavior, from people that you don't know at all sounds really stupid to me.
That's like going into a south-african brothel and ask everyone if they have AIDS and only pick those who answer Yes, because you assume they would also say Yes when asked for using a condom.
What a laughably stupid idea.
It's just another Linux freak gloating at Apple patching their products in large waves. Unlike Linux security holes, which are just a numerous, but get patched continuously all the time, making for considerably less interesting headlines.
You could fill slashdot with Linux related security updates every day, but that just isn't interesting enough.
When Windows or OS X are patched for several bugs at once, that sounds THAT much more insecure and thus is newsworthy.
Nuclear power is no solution. Uranium isn't infinitely available. In fact, if all the power we need was suddenly nuclear power, we'd run out of Uranium within a few decades.
Organic sources such as corn for biodoesel or biogas from compostation aren't a solution either, because we can't produce enough of that without cutting into the food supplies. Corn price has already increased by a factor of 2.5 in Mexico, due to the US and the EU buying crops for bio-energy production. People are starving every day, rain forest and other forests are being chopped down daily and water is getting scarce in many regions, crops for energy is a dead-end road.
What we need is stuff that's going to last. Wind, solar and geothermal energy come to mind.
Once the resources for those are gone, we don't have to care about producing energy anymore anyway.
Hydro power is fine, but it's very limited. It's not a solution for everyone. And I'm saying that as a Swiss citizen, with more than 70% hydro power in our country. Tell that to the guy in Mali who walks 2 miles to get a gallon of water for himself.
Nuclear power is only postponing a problem, not solving it.
Instead of wasting billions for new, but shortlived nuclear plants, we'd rather spend those billions on solar-thermic, photovoltaic or wind-powerplants.
So, Rowling has like $900 Million, yet she still cares about others making money?
Why, because she would want to make it otherwise? Like she gives a damn.
This is ridiculous.
BTW: What's that "imaginary property" in the article? Is that property that you only think you possess?
Oh come-on, when have you last seen some nearly starving african farmer carry an expensive mobile phone?
Let alone actually use it in the middle of nowhere.
They're going to readily sell their gagdets in exchange for something that will actually feed them.
They only need to find someone who is interested in buying it.
Given a suitable middleman between those getting their laptops and the ones wanting to buy one, a black market might very well develop.
Really poor people usually prefer a sparrow in their hands, instead of a pidgeon on the roof.
I wonder how long it will take until a black market around these things evolves.
I'm sure the parents' kids in Africa wouldn't mind having 100$ instead of an OLPC laptop.
Re:Compare the costs (and formatting!)
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
Don't forget the millions of megawatts that are being spent (or wasted) on personal computers working on SETI units, instead of being shut-down over night. Not only does that add to the cost, it also adds to the downside of SETI.
Needless to say, SHOULD SETI find intelligent life, we'd probably have killed ourselves before they even arrive. Why? Because every second major religion on earth is based around the idea of us being the only ones. Finding intelligent life is like finding proof against christian and islam ideologies that have been around for thousands of years. That might very well result in a wave of religious wars all over the world.
I'm aware of this. What you seem to forget is that the real surgeon will not be able to perform the programming surgery in a nanosecond.
So, assuming data travels 20 minute to earth, where a surgery team is ready to diagnose the problem and perform a dummy surgery, and then data travels back for another 20 minutes. you have 40 minutes for data travel alone, plus any amount of time it takes to diagnose and operate the ailment. Minor surgery might take only 15 minutes to operate, but the more complicated stuff can easily take several hours, in which case any help would come too late.
In fact I wonder if there is any medical condition that couldn't be cared for faster on site. The only medical conditions that would allow for several hours of response time would be non critical issues such as cancers etc. Then again, I somehow doubt NASA would send anybody on a Mars mission before making sure they are 120% healthy.
I restate my opinion: The proposed method for rapid response surgery is by no means rapid. Rabid, rather.
Did I get that right, that they want a robot to perform rapid response surgery in space by having it CAT scan the patient, send the data back and wait for a real surgeon to program the actual surgery and then send it back?
By the time the CAT scan results arrive on earth, the patient will already be dead.
Then again, that makes the robot's work much easier, because he will have a stable, non-moving target to work on, when the surgery data arrives back on mars 4 hours later.
Rapid response surgery is something that has to take place within minutes, not hours.
The data delay alone makes rapid response on mars impossible this way, let alone the fact that the real surgeon has to perform the operation first.
Actually solving the problem altogether is much easier though: Send a physician up to mars along with the other astronauts/cosmonauts, Mars problem solved. Stop going to war with every second oil producing country, Iraq problem solved too.
Being a gamers myself, or at least having been one and seen a lot of other gamers, I will conclude that gamers, like everybody else are also just people. Some smart, some thick as a brick. I don't think games are in any way breeding a new generation of superb leaders or anything.
I've certainly never seen any serious, Windows based business consider a switch to OS X "if only we could keep the hardware, let's hack it onto our PCs".
If the need for OS X is strong enough (ie not just playing around with it because you have nothing better to do), they will buy OS X AND the Macs to go with it. So maybe it's not he linux-people, but the nerd community for sure. And Apple simply isn't going to make any money selling OS X to a bunch of nerds, thus they have no reason to open it up.
As for my understanding of computer history: My understanding is that Apple Computer, unlike many, many other companies in the industry has survived more than 30 years of ever changing markets, meanwhile influencing the rest of the industry like no single other computer manufacturer and developing one of the most refined OS today. And all that with a whole array of closed architecture products.
And Microsoft, on the other hand, has been ruling the OS market for years, with their very much closed source operating system.
Like it or not, opensource maybe an interesting concept, but obviously not a very lucrative one.
If you don't see the benefits of having a closed, controllable architecture, then it's you who fails to have "some basic understand of computing history".
How people argue that a hacked OS X on a cheat Windows computer will be so much better value for the buck for playing WoW.
You could just play WoW on Windows too, with even better performance and even less hassle setting it up, because you don't need to hack Windows to run on your cheap rig.
Really, what a stupid argument.
If people started putting a hacked OS X on a really highend machine, in order to get more work done, then that would be something to think about.
Instead people are buying Macs because they have a hard time getting 8-core 3GHz machines with 16GB of RAM anywhere else.
Face it, Linux-people, Apple isn't going to open up the platform, defying all the benefits of a closed architecture, for the sake of letting you play with OS X on your 5 year old leftovers box. Not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
"And it's very noticable that bombing gradually crippled the german war economy despite the targetting being wrong. When you read about the development of V2s for example, it's quite clear that the German economy at the end of the war was chronically short of everything, mainly because of bombed out factories and railways. Same with all of the Nazi weapons work near the end of the war." Thank god the Americans took over the V2 plans then. Imagine what would have happened if the Germans had won the race to space! Space suits with Lederhosen! Man in the moon with a mustache!
...the internet kills you.
Now all we need to find is a proper use for all the shit that's being produced on the internet every day.
That's a very narrow view you have of the world. Basically, you're saying the world has to adapt to the sad fact that most Americans only speak English, with little to no knowledge of another language. Meanwhile, India gets your appraisal, because they teach English in schools. I'm not a Mexican, but if I was, I could just say this: Americans should quickly start learning another world language, Spanish for example, in order to be able to compete better in our south american market, boosting their exports and therefore reducing their huge trade deficit they have had for centuries. You see, you're American and native English speaker (I assume, at least). Your view is that the world revolves around the English tongue. A born Mexican is probably going to think the same about Spanish. It's not like it's a minority language.
Instead maybe your girlfriend is going to give you a BJ, when you get home. Cinema sounds that much better!
999$ for a scare is quite steep. I can go to the movies and be scared for less than 10$.
"Blizzard will invest $2bn worth of monthly WoW fees in the new company" fixed that for you
Too me, this looks more like if someone in Nigeria doesn't WANT its people to get access to XO laptops/better education. Keep 'em stupid and they will obey, right?
Where's the plan for a Chrysalis Highwayman? I've got some spare Fusion Cells lying around.
Google video will do very little for commercial P2P providers, such as Blizzard for their WoW updates. This Cuban guy apparently thinks P2P is only for illegal piracy downloads. Tough luck, Sir, it isn't.
Basing security on assumptions of human behavior, from people that you don't know at all sounds really stupid to me. That's like going into a south-african brothel and ask everyone if they have AIDS and only pick those who answer Yes, because you assume they would also say Yes when asked for using a condom. What a laughably stupid idea.
So, if I spray some pheromones onto my servers, will they work together much better?
And that hardware box you're talking about is most likely running some sort of firewall software, so it doesn't really make that much of a difference.
It's just another Linux freak gloating at Apple patching their products in large waves. Unlike Linux security holes, which are just a numerous, but get patched continuously all the time, making for considerably less interesting headlines. You could fill slashdot with Linux related security updates every day, but that just isn't interesting enough. When Windows or OS X are patched for several bugs at once, that sounds THAT much more insecure and thus is newsworthy.
Nuclear power is no solution. Uranium isn't infinitely available. In fact, if all the power we need was suddenly nuclear power, we'd run out of Uranium within a few decades. Organic sources such as corn for biodoesel or biogas from compostation aren't a solution either, because we can't produce enough of that without cutting into the food supplies. Corn price has already increased by a factor of 2.5 in Mexico, due to the US and the EU buying crops for bio-energy production. People are starving every day, rain forest and other forests are being chopped down daily and water is getting scarce in many regions, crops for energy is a dead-end road. What we need is stuff that's going to last. Wind, solar and geothermal energy come to mind. Once the resources for those are gone, we don't have to care about producing energy anymore anyway. Hydro power is fine, but it's very limited. It's not a solution for everyone. And I'm saying that as a Swiss citizen, with more than 70% hydro power in our country. Tell that to the guy in Mali who walks 2 miles to get a gallon of water for himself. Nuclear power is only postponing a problem, not solving it. Instead of wasting billions for new, but shortlived nuclear plants, we'd rather spend those billions on solar-thermic, photovoltaic or wind-powerplants.
So, Rowling has like $900 Million, yet she still cares about others making money? Why, because she would want to make it otherwise? Like she gives a damn. This is ridiculous. BTW: What's that "imaginary property" in the article? Is that property that you only think you possess?
Oh come-on, when have you last seen some nearly starving african farmer carry an expensive mobile phone? Let alone actually use it in the middle of nowhere. They're going to readily sell their gagdets in exchange for something that will actually feed them. They only need to find someone who is interested in buying it. Given a suitable middleman between those getting their laptops and the ones wanting to buy one, a black market might very well develop. Really poor people usually prefer a sparrow in their hands, instead of a pidgeon on the roof.
I wonder how long it will take until a black market around these things evolves. I'm sure the parents' kids in Africa wouldn't mind having 100$ instead of an OLPC laptop.
Don't forget the millions of megawatts that are being spent (or wasted) on personal computers working on SETI units, instead of being shut-down over night. Not only does that add to the cost, it also adds to the downside of SETI. Needless to say, SHOULD SETI find intelligent life, we'd probably have killed ourselves before they even arrive. Why? Because every second major religion on earth is based around the idea of us being the only ones. Finding intelligent life is like finding proof against christian and islam ideologies that have been around for thousands of years. That might very well result in a wave of religious wars all over the world.
Even better if they're the later kind, then they won't be able to see our ugly mugs, when they're about to get it on.
I'm aware of this. What you seem to forget is that the real surgeon will not be able to perform the programming surgery in a nanosecond. So, assuming data travels 20 minute to earth, where a surgery team is ready to diagnose the problem and perform a dummy surgery, and then data travels back for another 20 minutes. you have 40 minutes for data travel alone, plus any amount of time it takes to diagnose and operate the ailment. Minor surgery might take only 15 minutes to operate, but the more complicated stuff can easily take several hours, in which case any help would come too late. In fact I wonder if there is any medical condition that couldn't be cared for faster on site. The only medical conditions that would allow for several hours of response time would be non critical issues such as cancers etc. Then again, I somehow doubt NASA would send anybody on a Mars mission before making sure they are 120% healthy. I restate my opinion: The proposed method for rapid response surgery is by no means rapid. Rabid, rather.
Did I get that right, that they want a robot to perform rapid response surgery in space by having it CAT scan the patient, send the data back and wait for a real surgeon to program the actual surgery and then send it back? By the time the CAT scan results arrive on earth, the patient will already be dead. Then again, that makes the robot's work much easier, because he will have a stable, non-moving target to work on, when the surgery data arrives back on mars 4 hours later. Rapid response surgery is something that has to take place within minutes, not hours. The data delay alone makes rapid response on mars impossible this way, let alone the fact that the real surgeon has to perform the operation first. Actually solving the problem altogether is much easier though: Send a physician up to mars along with the other astronauts/cosmonauts, Mars problem solved. Stop going to war with every second oil producing country, Iraq problem solved too.
Being a gamers myself, or at least having been one and seen a lot of other gamers, I will conclude that gamers, like everybody else are also just people. Some smart, some thick as a brick. I don't think games are in any way breeding a new generation of superb leaders or anything.
I've certainly never seen any serious, Windows based business consider a switch to OS X "if only we could keep the hardware, let's hack it onto our PCs". If the need for OS X is strong enough (ie not just playing around with it because you have nothing better to do), they will buy OS X AND the Macs to go with it. So maybe it's not he linux-people, but the nerd community for sure. And Apple simply isn't going to make any money selling OS X to a bunch of nerds, thus they have no reason to open it up. As for my understanding of computer history: My understanding is that Apple Computer, unlike many, many other companies in the industry has survived more than 30 years of ever changing markets, meanwhile influencing the rest of the industry like no single other computer manufacturer and developing one of the most refined OS today. And all that with a whole array of closed architecture products. And Microsoft, on the other hand, has been ruling the OS market for years, with their very much closed source operating system. Like it or not, opensource maybe an interesting concept, but obviously not a very lucrative one. If you don't see the benefits of having a closed, controllable architecture, then it's you who fails to have "some basic understand of computing history".
How people argue that a hacked OS X on a cheat Windows computer will be so much better value for the buck for playing WoW. You could just play WoW on Windows too, with even better performance and even less hassle setting it up, because you don't need to hack Windows to run on your cheap rig. Really, what a stupid argument. If people started putting a hacked OS X on a really highend machine, in order to get more work done, then that would be something to think about. Instead people are buying Macs because they have a hard time getting 8-core 3GHz machines with 16GB of RAM anywhere else. Face it, Linux-people, Apple isn't going to open up the platform, defying all the benefits of a closed architecture, for the sake of letting you play with OS X on your 5 year old leftovers box. Not going to happen.