Because 1. Man is influencing the climate, 2. Most of this change is going to be bad, 3. There is no political or social will to change our current behavior, and 4. Once shit hits the ecological fan, those with resources will shield themselves from the effects and those without resources will be fucked.
1. Yep 2. People hate change, period. Even change for the better is uncomfortable. 3. Ever notice how well the conservatives do in politics? 4. As if those without resources are doing so well right now, or 100 years ago?
Of course, I am just a layman and certainly not a climatologist, so my initial, and admittedly superficial interpretation could be way off.
Oh, come on, didn't you see The Day After Tomorrow? Hollywood overdramatization at its most extreme, to the point of making a joke out of the subject. Still, there are lots of "white planet" simulation results that get to white quickly (how quickly depends on the models used) and either never recover, or recover very slowly.
No realistic climate models have the Earth long-term stable like Daisyworld
Think about Alaska, think about the size of Alaska, now, cover it in a layer of mossy stuff several feet thick. That mossy stuff is muskeg, and if you've ever stepped in a soft spot in the muskeg and sunk up to your hip in the muck, you can easily imagine the whole thing decomposing into methane when it gets warm.
It doesn't cover all of Alaska, but then, it's not only in Alaska, it's also all over Canada and Siberia.
Global Warming (whether caused by human activity or natural cycles or whatever) is by no means an existential threat to humanity.
Depends on how you define humanity. If you mean homo-sapiens continuing to exist in numbers of a few tens of millions or more, then, no, global warming won't wipe us out the way a massive asteroid or gamma ray burst would.
If, on the other hand, you take the Jim Morrison quote "I want to get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames," to talk about the end of humanity as the end of being able to live in a shelter without worry for your safety, the ability to easily secure food for the winter... global warming could do that a whole lot easier than the Vietnam war ever could.
I totally agree with you there, that's the main reason I've never done more than glance at Objective-C.
I doubt you've even glanced at it, else you'd realize it's not a proprietary language controlled and distributed by one company
I glanced at it as a possible development language for OS-X targeted software. For that purpose, I found Cocoa/Objective-C to be a huge proprietary API/library controlled and distributed by one company, accessed by a slightly odd variant of the C language. I had never used Qt before, but opted for Qt as the development environment for OS-X targeted software.
Less than 12 months later, the company was forced to port the OS-X targeted app to Windows platforms, 3 man-years of Qt development ported from OS-X to Windows in less than a man-week, and that time was only required for the direct to OpenGL code. I don't think the experience would have been the same in Objective-C/Cocoa.
I am now, 5 years later, officially a Qt proud fanboi. It just works, on OS-X, Windows and Linux.
The OWS 99% problem is a problem, but I don't think it's quite as much of one as the protestors make it out to be. That's why you have FAR fewer than 99% of the general population out there joining them in protesting.
I haven't really looked myself up on the income stats tables, but I know I'm not in the 1%, I probably fall into the 5-10% depending on how you rate our family income. I stepped outside to cheer the local occupy march when it came by, but if I want to keep my job and family together, I can't camp with them.
When people protest, there are generally MANY more people who feel the same way but can't, or for some reason won't, get out there and join the march. The 99% problem was a bad problem starting around 1980, and it has been snowballing worse in the U.S. ever since (not to mention the fact that it has been with humanity since before money was invented.) In a lot of South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and similar places, the problem is much worse, it can be described more like the 99.9 to 99.99% in those places. Just because the U.S. is "relatively better" doesn't mean we should let things slide - income equality is a big part of what made the U.S. strong in the 60s and 70s, and income inequality will be a big part of what brings the U.S. down if the current trend continues.
The ultimate in awesomeness would be to _headslap_ need a 3' HDMI cable at 7pm, put the order into Amazon at 7:05, and have it hit your doorstep by 9 in time to watch the movie, without having to drive to Best Buy and pay $50 for it.
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
You do the math. Is it better from anyone's point of view (including the construction workers') to have these construction workers hang out in the parking lot for the rest of eternity or move them on to other jobs "somewhere else"?
I guess my poorly made point is that the construction workers, if they even came from the region that was supposedly benefiting from the new data center, only benefited for a short time.
Doesn't the relative failure of LiveCode and SuperCard in the market show its a non-starter?
Not necessarily.
Also I have no interest in developing for a proprietary language. Having one company in control of the lang and its distribution is just obsolete. So bye bye.
I totally agree with you there, that's the main reason I've never done more than glance at Objective-C.
LabView, which I quickly discarded for a gcc-based environment.
The one killing blow that keeps me from really using these environments is that they are fundamentally incompatible with version control. This means that they cannot be large projects, or have much collaboration -- relegating them to trivial systems, which are all I remember Hypercard being.
I "invented" a flow based graphical programming system for my Master's Thesis decades ago, while I was writing it up, I tripped across HyperCard and LabView, which both did very similar things. These systems are excellent for certain applications, especially signal processing with LabView. There's nothing inherently incompatible about LabView and version control, you can build hierarchical systems and make changes at any level, just like subroutine calls. The source code itself checks into subversion just like any other. They may lack "automatic redline change" illumination, but that's not an impossible thing to add if anybody wanted it.
True that most LabView projects are single developer, and that's probably why change illumination and collaboration aren't well supported. The scope of most signal processing problems is such that a single person, working with a tool like LabView, can usually handle it on their own.
Take a look at MIT Scratch... Hypercard it is not, but it is an insanely simple parallel procedural programming system (aimed at 14 year olds). "Millions" of apps have been written and shared in Scratch. A lot of these "apps" are just kids drawing a picture with the included paint program. If that's what they want to do, more power to 'em. If they want to go further and make a flipping storyboard, or add music or sprite animation they can.
Computers should serve people as they want to be served - we should have more programming languages like Hypercard and Scratch, not less.
There is no shortage in investments right now, there is a crisis of debt and purchasing power.
I'd say that there's no shortage of high net worth potential investors right now, there is a shortage of decent low-risk investments, especially if you have less than $1K/month to invest.
Google Earth is a perfectly adequate route / coverage planning tool, if you are worried about accuracy to the foot, you can start with Google Earth and make your own high-res geo-tiff of the area.
I think crop-dusting by drone is already done in Europe, and swarms of small/cheap drones are better than hauling 200lbs of flesh and bone through the air any day.
Do what I did, get a job at a robotics development company. Or, learn to fix or install robots. There is a certain amount of conservation of effort involved in automation, the original jobs are lost while others are created.
Besides the chicken and egg problem, buying (non-IPO) stock does not create jobs. The job creating stocks are wildly speculative, long term investments.
who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs
Yup! Its amazing that the whole project was actually completed with only 50 local people... who now have posh jobs running the place. Actually, it would have taken far less people, but curious onlookers kept getting too close to the packed ACME Instant Data Center (tm), so Apple had to hire 49 more people to make sure the crowd stood back while a single drop of water was added to the ACME package and it expanded instantly into the glorious data center that stands there today.
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
Apple and HP both started in a garage in silicon valley.
and, how many silicon valley garage shops flopped since HP started? On balance, HP has probably made more money than all those flops lost, but I bet the balance is closer than you think.
I would rather live in a world where thousands (more) of smaller Apple/HPs can successfully launch from garages per decade, in exchange for reducing some of the outrageous success that the big companies enjoy today.
It's another form of the lottery, pro-sports, famous actor/actress syndrome. Everybody sees it, everybody wants it, reality is that only a very very few can actually get it - if everybody got it, it wouldn't be desirable anymore.
Thousands of small businesses, or small business units of larger corporations, toil away toward the brass ring while only a few ever even come close to reaching it.
Just like the OWS 99% problem, the brass rings need to be more numerous and less shiny. The serfs (working poor, small businesses, etc.) are going to stop trying for them when it becomes apparent that they'll die before they ever get there.
Slashdot Mirror
Because 1. Man is influencing the climate, 2. Most of this change is going to be bad, 3. There is no political or social will to change our current behavior, and 4. Once shit hits the ecological fan, those with resources will shield themselves from the effects and those without resources will be fucked.
1. Yep
2. People hate change, period. Even change for the better is uncomfortable.
3. Ever notice how well the conservatives do in politics?
4. As if those without resources are doing so well right now, or 100 years ago?
Of course, I am just a layman and certainly not a climatologist, so my initial, and admittedly superficial interpretation could be way off.
Oh, come on, didn't you see The Day After Tomorrow? Hollywood overdramatization at its most extreme, to the point of making a joke out of the subject. Still, there are lots of "white planet" simulation results that get to white quickly (how quickly depends on the models used) and either never recover, or recover very slowly.
No realistic climate models have the Earth long-term stable like Daisyworld
Yeah, so capture the methane, burn it and get CO2 and water. Oh, wait....
Think about Alaska, think about the size of Alaska, now, cover it in a layer of mossy stuff several feet thick. That mossy stuff is muskeg, and if you've ever stepped in a soft spot in the muskeg and sunk up to your hip in the muck, you can easily imagine the whole thing decomposing into methane when it gets warm.
It doesn't cover all of Alaska, but then, it's not only in Alaska, it's also all over Canada and Siberia.
Global Warming (whether caused by human activity or natural cycles or whatever) is by no means an existential threat to humanity.
Depends on how you define humanity. If you mean homo-sapiens continuing to exist in numbers of a few tens of millions or more, then, no, global warming won't wipe us out the way a massive asteroid or gamma ray burst would.
If, on the other hand, you take the Jim Morrison quote "I want to get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames," to talk about the end of humanity as the end of being able to live in a shelter without worry for your safety, the ability to easily secure food for the winter... global warming could do that a whole lot easier than the Vietnam war ever could.
And it didn't work in France....
The problem with France is that nobody works, or wants to.
I totally agree with you there, that's the main reason I've never done more than glance at Objective-C.
I doubt you've even glanced at it, else you'd realize it's not a proprietary language controlled and distributed by one company
I glanced at it as a possible development language for OS-X targeted software. For that purpose, I found Cocoa/Objective-C to be a huge proprietary API/library controlled and distributed by one company, accessed by a slightly odd variant of the C language. I had never used Qt before, but opted for Qt as the development environment for OS-X targeted software.
Less than 12 months later, the company was forced to port the OS-X targeted app to Windows platforms, 3 man-years of Qt development ported from OS-X to Windows in less than a man-week, and that time was only required for the direct to OpenGL code. I don't think the experience would have been the same in Objective-C/Cocoa.
I am now, 5 years later, officially a Qt proud fanboi. It just works, on OS-X, Windows and Linux.
The OWS 99% problem is a problem, but I don't think it's quite as much of one as the protestors make it out to be. That's why you have FAR fewer than 99% of the general population out there joining them in protesting.
I haven't really looked myself up on the income stats tables, but I know I'm not in the 1%, I probably fall into the 5-10% depending on how you rate our family income. I stepped outside to cheer the local occupy march when it came by, but if I want to keep my job and family together, I can't camp with them.
When people protest, there are generally MANY more people who feel the same way but can't, or for some reason won't, get out there and join the march. The 99% problem was a bad problem starting around 1980, and it has been snowballing worse in the U.S. ever since (not to mention the fact that it has been with humanity since before money was invented.) In a lot of South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and similar places, the problem is much worse, it can be described more like the 99.9 to 99.99% in those places. Just because the U.S. is "relatively better" doesn't mean we should let things slide - income equality is a big part of what made the U.S. strong in the 60s and 70s, and income inequality will be a big part of what brings the U.S. down if the current trend continues.
The ultimate in awesomeness would be to _headslap_ need a 3' HDMI cable at 7pm, put the order into Amazon at 7:05, and have it hit your doorstep by 9 in time to watch the movie, without having to drive to Best Buy and pay $50 for it.
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
You do the math. Is it better from anyone's point of view (including the construction workers') to have these construction workers hang out in the parking lot for the rest of eternity or move them on to other jobs "somewhere else"?
I guess my poorly made point is that the construction workers, if they even came from the region that was supposedly benefiting from the new data center, only benefited for a short time.
I posted elsewhere in this thread: Scratch isn't Hypercard, but it is very (young) student friendly.
Doesn't the relative failure of LiveCode and SuperCard in the market show its a non-starter?
Not necessarily.
Also I have no interest in developing for a proprietary language. Having one company in control of the lang and its distribution is just obsolete. So bye bye.
I totally agree with you there, that's the main reason I've never done more than glance at Objective-C.
LabView, which I quickly discarded for a gcc-based environment.
The one killing blow that keeps me from really using these environments is that they are fundamentally incompatible with version control. This means that they cannot be large projects, or have much collaboration -- relegating them to trivial systems, which are all I remember Hypercard being.
I "invented" a flow based graphical programming system for my Master's Thesis decades ago, while I was writing it up, I tripped across HyperCard and LabView, which both did very similar things. These systems are excellent for certain applications, especially signal processing with LabView. There's nothing inherently incompatible about LabView and version control, you can build hierarchical systems and make changes at any level, just like subroutine calls. The source code itself checks into subversion just like any other. They may lack "automatic redline change" illumination, but that's not an impossible thing to add if anybody wanted it.
True that most LabView projects are single developer, and that's probably why change illumination and collaboration aren't well supported. The scope of most signal processing problems is such that a single person, working with a tool like LabView, can usually handle it on their own.
Take a look at MIT Scratch... Hypercard it is not, but it is an insanely simple parallel procedural programming system (aimed at 14 year olds). "Millions" of apps have been written and shared in Scratch. A lot of these "apps" are just kids drawing a picture with the included paint program. If that's what they want to do, more power to 'em. If they want to go further and make a flipping storyboard, or add music or sprite animation they can.
Computers should serve people as they want to be served - we should have more programming languages like Hypercard and Scratch, not less.
There is no shortage in investments right now, there is a crisis of debt and purchasing power.
I'd say that there's no shortage of high net worth potential investors right now, there is a shortage of decent low-risk investments, especially if you have less than $1K/month to invest.
Google Earth is a perfectly adequate route / coverage planning tool, if you are worried about accuracy to the foot, you can start with Google Earth and make your own high-res geo-tiff of the area.
I think crop-dusting by drone is already done in Europe, and swarms of small/cheap drones are better than hauling 200lbs of flesh and bone through the air any day.
They need to emote?
It worked in Germany.
Do what I did, get a job at a robotics development company. Or, learn to fix or install robots. There is a certain amount of conservation of effort involved in automation, the original jobs are lost while others are created.
Besides the chicken and egg problem, buying (non-IPO) stock does not create jobs. The job creating stocks are wildly speculative, long term investments.
who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs
Yup! Its amazing that the whole project was actually completed with only 50 local people... who now have posh jobs running the place. Actually, it would have taken far less people, but curious onlookers kept getting too close to the packed ACME Instant Data Center (tm), so Apple had to hire 49 more people to make sure the crowd stood back while a single drop of water was added to the ACME package and it expanded instantly into the glorious data center that stands there today.
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
Apple and HP both started in a garage in silicon valley.
and, how many silicon valley garage shops flopped since HP started? On balance, HP has probably made more money than all those flops lost, but I bet the balance is closer than you think.
I would rather live in a world where thousands (more) of smaller Apple/HPs can successfully launch from garages per decade, in exchange for reducing some of the outrageous success that the big companies enjoy today.
It's another form of the lottery, pro-sports, famous actor/actress syndrome. Everybody sees it, everybody wants it, reality is that only a very very few can actually get it - if everybody got it, it wouldn't be desirable anymore.
Thousands of small businesses, or small business units of larger corporations, toil away toward the brass ring while only a few ever even come close to reaching it.
Just like the OWS 99% problem, the brass rings need to be more numerous and less shiny. The serfs (working poor, small businesses, etc.) are going to stop trying for them when it becomes apparent that they'll die before they ever get there.
I stand partly corrected, I was thinking of the MQ-9 with a wingspan of 66', as opposed to the 172 at 36', or the 707 at 130'.
If Amazon has a warehouse in your city, that should be 2 hour service, not 8.