Oracle in Java
on
Sun Buys MySQL
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This means that now more people may prefer to use MySQL rather than Oracle with Java, as they will see it as the most "compatible" database to be used within Java.
Read the paper instead, it's linked from the TFA (here).
I don't like their proposed models. I wouldn't buy crippled hardware.
I instead propose another model.
In my model the customer would buy non-crippled hardware and use all of its cores. But at the time of the purchase seller and purchaser would sign a contract indicating that the seller would have to buy the hardware back from the buyer at a pre-agreed price if the buyer so wished after two or three years, as long as the hardware is within acceptable working condition. Then the original seller would make further money by reselling the hardware to other consumers, perhaps in developing countries, perhaps without a buy-back contract.
Or, the contract could indicate that instead of reselling the hardware the buyer could swap it for new hardware.
In fact right now that's what is happening. People in developed countries buy shiny new hardware. They sell it on eBay after a year or two. Others buy it and do the same, until the hardware reaches developing countries.
There is however much administrative overhead in managing sales through eBay etc. If the original seller (the shop or the manufacturer) could assume these overheads, I as a customer would be willing to pay some more. In that way I would retain ownership of my hardware, with all its cores, and the option to keep it forever, but if I wanted I would have the right to exercise the contract's provision and sell it back to the original seller for a preagreed price within certain time limits and acceptable hardware conditions (or I could sell it for a market price depending on the contract).
So, instead of me assuming all the administrative overhead of selling my old hardware away, the original seller where I purchased it from would do it.
Try 2030, it has its own PgUp/PgDown/Home/End keys. It also has a third Shift key besides the spacebar. I have both 2020 and 2030 and I find 2030 better. I also use an external numpad with it as well, as 2030 is so small that it allows me to have multiple input devices on my desk instead of just a huge keyboard. In my current setup on the PC I am at the moment, I have a keypad and a little mouse on the left side, 2030 on the centre, and a trackball on the right. Only thing I want from 2030 is a centre Tab key (on OS level you can remap the centre Caps Lock to be a Tab, though). The matrix layout as opposed to the staggered columns layout is really one of the best selling points of TypeMatrix keyboards. Now if someone could put a 2030 into a ThinkPad laptop, that would be great...
Years after years many people surely took photos of their cars and the manufacturer said nothing. Now out of the blue the manufacturer has a problem when someone thought of making some money with their pictures. So, all the manufacturer cares for is money. But since they never sought to protect their imaginary property before, they cannot claim it now.
No matter the current legal framework, it is not their property from an ethical point of view. When I buy a product, I own it. And I can open it and study it inside if I want, and I actually do this with all new gadgets and laptops I buy. Guess what I saw one time in a laptop from a major manufacturer? A notice like that you can't open or study this laptop as it contains proprietary copyrighted stuff. Ridiculous, I paid for it, so I own it, and I have the right to know how my machine works and check for myself whether the manufacturer built the machine in the right way. And how else am I going to change my CPU and RAM if I am not allowed to open it? Service sucks anyway, so who cares about warranties, I have really never used any techsupport or warranty and I'm not afraid to lose my warranty anyway. Interestingly in that laptop I also saw a hidden USB port which wasn't documented anywhere (all docs said it had 3 ports, but in reality it had a fourth in the internals, and when I found it I used it for a permanent flash drive internally in the laptop!). If I couldn't open my device, I wouldn't know it was there, and I wouldn't be able to make that my permanent boot drive (less noisy than the hdd).
Of course due to the current copyright dictatorship one may not be able to use the knowledge gained in any way or transmit it. But nobody should prevent users from studying their stuff. They bought it, they can study it. And since they bought it, they can also take and sell pictures of their stuff. The stuff you pay for is your property after you pay. So, I would advice manufacturers and *AAs to quit whining about their imaginary property and get to do business ethically.
Folks who are depressed are not every productive. In a deep recession there will be a lot of fear, anxiety, and depression.
Folks who are depressed because of the economy may feel more need for fun. Free software can provide this. I am told that during the WW2 people had no food to eat but nevertheless they were keen to sing, pass jokes, and attend cinema or theatre where available.
Most home users are vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Until this vulnerability is fixed somehow, it doesn't really matter much whether they run secure routers or not. All crackers need to do is to pick up a phone and ask for the password. The most secure router in the world isn't going to protect users from their own stupidity, so perhaps we should educate users to be security-conscious rather than just download the latest patches without understanding what security is.
I use TypeMatrix keyboards with Dvorak skins and I love them! I also have Plum keyboards but I don't really like them much. I also have laser projection virtual keyboards (their error rate isn't low though). From the article I liked the wearable keyboard, though. I will probably buy it, because I think it will be useful for as I use laptops while standing or walking. I have also seen AlphaGrip at shops and they are also interesting. Another company with interesting products is Maltron. Data hands look nice too. However, I have found my TypeMatrix a very good choice and I like it for its small size and a design which is comfortable while maintaining compatibility with Qwerty. This is important for me as I know to type fast in Dvorak only in English. For other languages I am still stuck with Qwerty for fast typing as I didn't bother to learn Dvorak for non-English languages. TypeMatrix has built-in Qwerty and Dvorak modes so I don't need any changes in software to make it switch between the two depending on which language I type.
If something was totally unthinkable in the past and now approaches reality, this can mean only two things: either people don't have imagination or the technological advancement is increasing a lot, perhaps even exponentially. If you can predict clearly where the state of the art will be 50 or 100 years from now then the advancement is probably linear, but if you cannot predict anything then the advancement is probably nonlinear.
My idea is based on my belief that people do not belong to their societies, that people stand as free individuals. Participation in a society happens as a necessity of birth (until people grow) and as a privilege (after people become adults). So I see society as a set of individuals who have all agreed to stay in the same place and adhere to some common rules of behaviour. Now if some individual violates the social customs or laws, they should be made to attend some custom educational programmes and given an opportunity to restructure themselves. If they don't cooperate, I see it as natural to revoke their privilege of staying within the society they offended. Of course exile should not mean penal labour or anything else. Exile for me means being made to get out of a society and keeping away from it. If another state is willing to take criminals that's ok (for example, being gay in Iran is a crime but it's not in EU, so Iranian gays who are otherwise lawful people of good morals could very well be sent to live here instead of being tortured or killed by Iranian authorities if they allowed them to go into self-exile). If no state wants them, then unfortunately for them they should stay in some uninhabited place. Anyway, that's my idea. It could very well be wrong. And there is a high probability that it can be wrong because I haven't studied social topics a lot (I have read many books, but not really studied... and in fact in my daily life I think in terms of computer science and mathematics so naturally social topics is not the area where I can excel, at least not yet). Unfortunately social matters is not an exact science so you can't take a few equations and prove that an idea is right or wrong. I will read the book, though, thanks for recommending it, from the reviews it looks good.
Australia was used for penal labour. I didn't suggest to have criminals work for free. I suggested to attempt to educate them, and if they don't change, then to let them *alone* in a designated uninhabited place, completely free, but out of the community they offended.
When I say free software I mean as defined by rms (Richard Stallman). Software costing 1 billion euros can still be free if it's under the GPL. When I say open source I mean as defined by esr (Eric Raymond). Open source, for example, is BSD. Gratis software, ie software given for free, may not be free software.
No software is ever going to make you money, closed-source, open-source, or free. What makes you money is your *contribution* to the economy, ie the value you create, and your *reputation*, *popularity*, or *fame*. So the recipe for success is: Build something people want (value) and gain popularity and reputation for your contribution. If you have some popularity and reputation it's then not that hard to make some money by selling services, minor products associated with your contribution, etc. Focus on popularity and getting as famous as you can. And the best way to do that is to build something people want and give it away for free. Afterwards, when people start using it, it's easy to start offering other associated services and products for a fee.
Why is there such a high prison population? Are all of these people behind bars dangerous persons who would damage society if left free? I don't think so. Perhaps only a few of them are really dangerous. Most of them would probably do no further damage if released, so I see no point in spending tax money in feeding people who would do no further damage to society. Punishment? Does anybody still believes that punishment is the right approach to crime? We should focus on changing people, not punishing them. In most of the cases people shouldn't be punished. Locking people behind bars only costs taxpayers more money, there is no point in doing it. For non-dangerous guys, helping them become respectful citizens again would be a better approach.
Locking someone behind bars for punishment or revenge has no logic. If somebody comes and does something bad to me, I gain nothing by doing something bad to them, except in cases of self-defense (in which cases it is ok to use a gun, if someone is in a country allowing guns, to deal with physically threatening criminals). Let's say for example that someone comes and steals my property. I have the option of suing them and get them into prison. Why should I do this? What I seek is to get my property back, inform all fellow citizens of the potentially dangerous thief, and ensure that the thief does not re-offend, and of course I should also take into account that the criminal is also a human being and should be treated as such. The best way to make thiefs citizens again would be to require them attend some educational courses. If they get locked behind bars, they *will* reoffend after release, and even if they get locked up for life, society gains nothing. Quite the contrary, the whole society pays for their nutrition etc (even if it's of low quality, the fact is that society still pays for it). It really is ridiculous. It really seems counterproductive to me to collect taxes from citizens and use them to pay for criminals.
For me the perfect scheme would be to attempt to change the criminal's life outlook through compulsory education. If they cannot change themselves, then they should go in exile. So, if a member of a community offends the community's customs, they will have to leave that community. This way they cannot re-offend, and nobody pays for them. We could even have internationally designated places to send criminals from every country there, and let them alone out of our societies. Of course this should be done only for criminals who cannot become lawful citizens again.
So, my recommendation is: Stop paying for prisons. Give criminals a chance of becoming lawful citizens by attending educational courses and changing themselves. If they fail to change themselves, get them out of the society that they offended. There are so many uninhabited places on the planet, and it really makes no sense to pay tax money for prison populations and destroying people who have done no real damage. Those of criminals who have done excessive damage and are likely to reoffend should be dropped in an uninhabited place, together with a few survival books and a few days of food resources. Then let them there do as they think best. And I am sure that if an exile system was in place, there would be very few people who would offend a society's laws.
People who don't care about free software may do so because they don't know what freedom is. So we need to link software freedom with other broader freedoms and educate people on general freedom issues as well. If a person doesn't care about their freedom of speech, for example, there is no chance they will care about free software either.
How do they know the students were not the victims of identity theft? A fellow student who hated them could very well set up fake Facebook accounts, fill them up with nasty photos, with the purpose of letting them to be discovered by the campus security. Even if a profile is owned by the students themselves, there is again no reason that a photo is not some kind of fake used for fun or just incorrect information as an inside joke between participants.
I meant that hey take funding decisions and set the pace ("go to the Moon before the Soviets!" or "go to Mars!"), and that they shouldn't even do this.
note: X60/X61 is good but actually it is a smaller one which is greatly needed, and the problem with X60/X61 is that its trackpoint is located at the centre of the keyboard rather than at the top right or top left position which is the position that the pointing device needs to be for effective use while walking (that's how Flybook has it).
Good for aeroplanes I suppose, but still not small enough.
Small is good. For me, I prefer carrying 3.5-5" PDAs and 9-12" subnotebooks. And even 12" is already too big. What I realy want is a robust ThinkPad with modern technology at or below 12".
What can you do on a small screen? Well, lots of things. What you lose in screen size you gain it three times in productivity thanks to flexibility in using your machine anywhere you want. I use my PDA (HTC Universal) and my 8.9" Flybook while walking, for example. This means that I am productive at times that other people aren't, which increases my earning power. Many showstopping software bugs were fixed and important emails have been written while I was walking down the street. It also helps me stay fit (and also increase my knowledge, I even read books while walking).
What can you do with a laptop that you can use only on a desk? Not much. And while you use it your spine suffers unless you have a very good ergonomic office. Now imagine being able to work while hiking in nature or while standing in line at the bank. You have no desk in these situations (except by luck, for example I have found a nice place where I go hiking and it has some rocks at the right configuration that they behave just like a desk! but this is rare), and yet with a subnotebook you can work just as well. The associated time savings add up over time and you can soon find that your typical day has not 24 but 32 or 48 hours in it.
Doing this with 15.4" laptops isn't easy (I have tried it, with a ThinkPad!). What mobile nomad technology professionals and other very busy persons need is a small subnotebook, smaller than 12" (a perfect size I think is between 7" and 9"), equipped with the right pointing device controls and other features to allow use while walking or standing (Flybook for example has a nice trackpoint at the correct location and a cord to secure your subnotebook to your arm in case it is about to fall down). PDAs are good for short emails, viewing documents, quickly testing something in Python or quickly SSHing to your server, but they aren't good for serious work (this may change with HTC Shift, however). So what we really need is subnotebooks at the right size to keep them with our hands in front of us while walking. And they should be GNU/Linux-compatible (who wants to work with Windows? Debian lenny with some tweaking is great for me) and have USB ports so that we can connect 3G Internet modems (or incorporated GSM/HSDPA modules like Flybook, but I have found USB ports a bit easier for setting them up in GNU/Linux). That's what technomads want.
The current subnotebook offerings by other manufacturers are not really very robust, and many have various problems with GNU/Linux. A robust GNU/Linux-compatible ThinkPad at small dimensions would be great. How could Lenovo ignore this important market?
Basic research is almost always done with government funding, mainly because the purpose is to gain knowledge, not to make money.
Governments are inefficient in providing funds for research.
The governments award grant to whoever is friends with a member of parliament etc... even if the research is bogus.
Research funding should come from rich nerds and gentleman scientists who actually care about science and have the funds to pursue their dreams. The public can also donate funds to not-for-profit associations to support scientific research. Governments could just encourage people to donate funds and time towards a cause. But collecting taxes and then giving the money away to family members who pose as researchers for publishing bogus research is not what I consider right.
doesn't provide even the most basic support for his contention
You don't expect me to write essays on Slashdot, do you? Raising an opinion you don't like is not trolling.
no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any exploration
Private spaceflight isn't only about business companies, it's also about not-for profit associations of citizens. I am a member of the British Interplanetary Society and the Planetary Society. Who launched Cosmos-1? Planetary Society did! Who studied nuclear pulse propulsion? British Interplanetary Society did! And now Planetary Society is going to launch Cosmos-2. So, we can go to space without governments.
Sometime in the future freedom-loving people will go to live in independent space colonies and let people who still believe in inefficient big bureaucratic tax-collecting governments to stay in their polluted home planet.
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This means that now more people may prefer to use MySQL rather than Oracle with Java, as they will see it as the most "compatible" database to be used within Java.
Read the paper instead, it's linked from the TFA (here).
I don't like their proposed models. I wouldn't buy crippled hardware.
I instead propose another model.
In my model the customer would buy non-crippled hardware and use all of its cores. But at the time of the purchase seller and purchaser would sign a contract indicating that the seller would have to buy the hardware back from the buyer at a pre-agreed price if the buyer so wished after two or three years, as long as the hardware is within acceptable working condition. Then the original seller would make further money by reselling the hardware to other consumers, perhaps in developing countries, perhaps without a buy-back contract.
Or, the contract could indicate that instead of reselling the hardware the buyer could swap it for new hardware.
In fact right now that's what is happening. People in developed countries buy shiny new hardware. They sell it on eBay after a year or two. Others buy it and do the same, until the hardware reaches developing countries.
There is however much administrative overhead in managing sales through eBay etc. If the original seller (the shop or the manufacturer) could assume these overheads, I as a customer would be willing to pay some more. In that way I would retain ownership of my hardware, with all its cores, and the option to keep it forever, but if I wanted I would have the right to exercise the contract's provision and sell it back to the original seller for a preagreed price within certain time limits and acceptable hardware conditions (or I could sell it for a market price depending on the contract).
So, instead of me assuming all the administrative overhead of selling my old hardware away, the original seller where I purchased it from would do it.
Try 2030, it has its own PgUp/PgDown/Home/End keys. It also has a third Shift key besides the spacebar. I have both 2020 and 2030 and I find 2030 better. I also use an external numpad with it as well, as 2030 is so small that it allows me to have multiple input devices on my desk instead of just a huge keyboard. In my current setup on the PC I am at the moment, I have a keypad and a little mouse on the left side, 2030 on the centre, and a trackball on the right. Only thing I want from 2030 is a centre Tab key (on OS level you can remap the centre Caps Lock to be a Tab, though). The matrix layout as opposed to the staggered columns layout is really one of the best selling points of TypeMatrix keyboards. Now if someone could put a 2030 into a ThinkPad laptop, that would be great...
Years after years many people surely took photos of their cars and the manufacturer said nothing. Now out of the blue the manufacturer has a problem when someone thought of making some money with their pictures. So, all the manufacturer cares for is money. But since they never sought to protect their imaginary property before, they cannot claim it now.
No matter the current legal framework, it is not their property from an ethical point of view. When I buy a product, I own it. And I can open it and study it inside if I want, and I actually do this with all new gadgets and laptops I buy. Guess what I saw one time in a laptop from a major manufacturer? A notice like that you can't open or study this laptop as it contains proprietary copyrighted stuff. Ridiculous, I paid for it, so I own it, and I have the right to know how my machine works and check for myself whether the manufacturer built the machine in the right way. And how else am I going to change my CPU and RAM if I am not allowed to open it? Service sucks anyway, so who cares about warranties, I have really never used any techsupport or warranty and I'm not afraid to lose my warranty anyway. Interestingly in that laptop I also saw a hidden USB port which wasn't documented anywhere (all docs said it had 3 ports, but in reality it had a fourth in the internals, and when I found it I used it for a permanent flash drive internally in the laptop!). If I couldn't open my device, I wouldn't know it was there, and I wouldn't be able to make that my permanent boot drive (less noisy than the hdd).
Of course due to the current copyright dictatorship one may not be able to use the knowledge gained in any way or transmit it. But nobody should prevent users from studying their stuff. They bought it, they can study it. And since they bought it, they can also take and sell pictures of their stuff. The stuff you pay for is your property after you pay. So, I would advice manufacturers and *AAs to quit whining about their imaginary property and get to do business ethically.
Folks who are depressed because of the economy may feel more need for fun. Free software can provide this. I am told that during the WW2 people had no food to eat but nevertheless they were keen to sing, pass jokes, and attend cinema or theatre where available.
Most home users are vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Until this vulnerability is fixed somehow, it doesn't really matter much whether they run secure routers or not. All crackers need to do is to pick up a phone and ask for the password. The most secure router in the world isn't going to protect users from their own stupidity, so perhaps we should educate users to be security-conscious rather than just download the latest patches without understanding what security is.
I use TypeMatrix keyboards with Dvorak skins and I love them! I also have Plum keyboards but I don't really like them much. I also have laser projection virtual keyboards (their error rate isn't low though). From the article I liked the wearable keyboard, though. I will probably buy it, because I think it will be useful for as I use laptops while standing or walking. I have also seen AlphaGrip at shops and they are also interesting. Another company with interesting products is Maltron. Data hands look nice too. However, I have found my TypeMatrix a very good choice and I like it for its small size and a design which is comfortable while maintaining compatibility with Qwerty. This is important for me as I know to type fast in Dvorak only in English. For other languages I am still stuck with Qwerty for fast typing as I didn't bother to learn Dvorak for non-English languages. TypeMatrix has built-in Qwerty and Dvorak modes so I don't need any changes in software to make it switch between the two depending on which language I type.
If something was totally unthinkable in the past and now approaches reality, this can mean only two things: either people don't have imagination or the technological advancement is increasing a lot, perhaps even exponentially. If you can predict clearly where the state of the art will be 50 or 100 years from now then the advancement is probably linear, but if you cannot predict anything then the advancement is probably nonlinear.
My idea is based on my belief that people do not belong to their societies, that people stand as free individuals. Participation in a society happens as a necessity of birth (until people grow) and as a privilege (after people become adults). So I see society as a set of individuals who have all agreed to stay in the same place and adhere to some common rules of behaviour. Now if some individual violates the social customs or laws, they should be made to attend some custom educational programmes and given an opportunity to restructure themselves. If they don't cooperate, I see it as natural to revoke their privilege of staying within the society they offended. Of course exile should not mean penal labour or anything else. Exile for me means being made to get out of a society and keeping away from it. If another state is willing to take criminals that's ok (for example, being gay in Iran is a crime but it's not in EU, so Iranian gays who are otherwise lawful people of good morals could very well be sent to live here instead of being tortured or killed by Iranian authorities if they allowed them to go into self-exile). If no state wants them, then unfortunately for them they should stay in some uninhabited place. Anyway, that's my idea. It could very well be wrong. And there is a high probability that it can be wrong because I haven't studied social topics a lot (I have read many books, but not really studied... and in fact in my daily life I think in terms of computer science and mathematics so naturally social topics is not the area where I can excel, at least not yet). Unfortunately social matters is not an exact science so you can't take a few equations and prove that an idea is right or wrong. I will read the book, though, thanks for recommending it, from the reviews it looks good.
Australia was used for penal labour. I didn't suggest to have criminals work for free. I suggested to attempt to educate them, and if they don't change, then to let them *alone* in a designated uninhabited place, completely free, but out of the community they offended.
When I say free software I mean as defined by rms (Richard Stallman). Software costing 1 billion euros can still be free if it's under the GPL. When I say open source I mean as defined by esr (Eric Raymond). Open source, for example, is BSD. Gratis software, ie software given for free, may not be free software.
No software is ever going to make you money, closed-source, open-source, or free. What makes you money is your *contribution* to the economy, ie the value you create, and your *reputation*, *popularity*, or *fame*. So the recipe for success is: Build something people want (value) and gain popularity and reputation for your contribution. If you have some popularity and reputation it's then not that hard to make some money by selling services, minor products associated with your contribution, etc. Focus on popularity and getting as famous as you can. And the best way to do that is to build something people want and give it away for free. Afterwards, when people start using it, it's easy to start offering other associated services and products for a fee.
You talk about open source or free software?
now it's time for the hydrogen economy!
how long until secret service agents start putting nano RFID chips into the food or cars of political enemies and tracking their movements?
Oh yeah, that's why cellphones were invented.
Why is there such a high prison population? Are all of these people behind bars dangerous persons who would damage society if left free? I don't think so. Perhaps only a few of them are really dangerous. Most of them would probably do no further damage if released, so I see no point in spending tax money in feeding people who would do no further damage to society. Punishment? Does anybody still believes that punishment is the right approach to crime? We should focus on changing people, not punishing them. In most of the cases people shouldn't be punished. Locking people behind bars only costs taxpayers more money, there is no point in doing it. For non-dangerous guys, helping them become respectful citizens again would be a better approach.
Locking someone behind bars for punishment or revenge has no logic. If somebody comes and does something bad to me, I gain nothing by doing something bad to them, except in cases of self-defense (in which cases it is ok to use a gun, if someone is in a country allowing guns, to deal with physically threatening criminals). Let's say for example that someone comes and steals my property. I have the option of suing them and get them into prison. Why should I do this? What I seek is to get my property back, inform all fellow citizens of the potentially dangerous thief, and ensure that the thief does not re-offend, and of course I should also take into account that the criminal is also a human being and should be treated as such. The best way to make thiefs citizens again would be to require them attend some educational courses. If they get locked behind bars, they *will* reoffend after release, and even if they get locked up for life, society gains nothing. Quite the contrary, the whole society pays for their nutrition etc (even if it's of low quality, the fact is that society still pays for it). It really is ridiculous. It really seems counterproductive to me to collect taxes from citizens and use them to pay for criminals.
For me the perfect scheme would be to attempt to change the criminal's life outlook through compulsory education. If they cannot change themselves, then they should go in exile. So, if a member of a community offends the community's customs, they will have to leave that community. This way they cannot re-offend, and nobody pays for them. We could even have internationally designated places to send criminals from every country there, and let them alone out of our societies. Of course this should be done only for criminals who cannot become lawful citizens again.
So, my recommendation is: Stop paying for prisons. Give criminals a chance of becoming lawful citizens by attending educational courses and changing themselves. If they fail to change themselves, get them out of the society that they offended. There are so many uninhabited places on the planet, and it really makes no sense to pay tax money for prison populations and destroying people who have done no real damage. Those of criminals who have done excessive damage and are likely to reoffend should be dropped in an uninhabited place, together with a few survival books and a few days of food resources. Then let them there do as they think best. And I am sure that if an exile system was in place, there would be very few people who would offend a society's laws.
People who don't care about free software may do so because they don't know what freedom is. So we need to link software freedom with other broader freedoms and educate people on general freedom issues as well. If a person doesn't care about their freedom of speech, for example, there is no chance they will care about free software either.
How do they know the students were not the victims of identity theft? A fellow student who hated them could very well set up fake Facebook accounts, fill them up with nasty photos, with the purpose of letting them to be discovered by the campus security. Even if a profile is owned by the students themselves, there is again no reason that a photo is not some kind of fake used for fun or just incorrect information as an inside joke between participants.
I meant that hey take funding decisions and set the pace ("go to the Moon before the Soviets!" or "go to Mars!"), and that they shouldn't even do this.
note: X60/X61 is good but actually it is a smaller one which is greatly needed, and the problem with X60/X61 is that its trackpoint is located at the centre of the keyboard rather than at the top right or top left position which is the position that the pointing device needs to be for effective use while walking (that's how Flybook has it).
Good for aeroplanes I suppose, but still not small enough.
Small is good. For me, I prefer carrying 3.5-5" PDAs and 9-12" subnotebooks. And even 12" is already too big. What I realy want is a robust ThinkPad with modern technology at or below 12".
What can you do on a small screen? Well, lots of things. What you lose in screen size you gain it three times in productivity thanks to flexibility in using your machine anywhere you want. I use my PDA (HTC Universal) and my 8.9" Flybook while walking, for example. This means that I am productive at times that other people aren't, which increases my earning power. Many showstopping software bugs were fixed and important emails have been written while I was walking down the street. It also helps me stay fit (and also increase my knowledge, I even read books while walking).
What can you do with a laptop that you can use only on a desk? Not much. And while you use it your spine suffers unless you have a very good ergonomic office. Now imagine being able to work while hiking in nature or while standing in line at the bank. You have no desk in these situations (except by luck, for example I have found a nice place where I go hiking and it has some rocks at the right configuration that they behave just like a desk! but this is rare), and yet with a subnotebook you can work just as well. The associated time savings add up over time and you can soon find that your typical day has not 24 but 32 or 48 hours in it.
Doing this with 15.4" laptops isn't easy (I have tried it, with a ThinkPad!). What mobile nomad technology professionals and other very busy persons need is a small subnotebook, smaller than 12" (a perfect size I think is between 7" and 9"), equipped with the right pointing device controls and other features to allow use while walking or standing (Flybook for example has a nice trackpoint at the correct location and a cord to secure your subnotebook to your arm in case it is about to fall down). PDAs are good for short emails, viewing documents, quickly testing something in Python or quickly SSHing to your server, but they aren't good for serious work (this may change with HTC Shift, however). So what we really need is subnotebooks at the right size to keep them with our hands in front of us while walking. And they should be GNU/Linux-compatible (who wants to work with Windows? Debian lenny with some tweaking is great for me) and have USB ports so that we can connect 3G Internet modems (or incorporated GSM/HSDPA modules like Flybook, but I have found USB ports a bit easier for setting them up in GNU/Linux). That's what technomads want.
The current subnotebook offerings by other manufacturers are not really very robust, and many have various problems with GNU/Linux. A robust GNU/Linux-compatible ThinkPad at small dimensions would be great. How could Lenovo ignore this important market?
Governments are inefficient in providing funds for research.
The governments award grant to whoever is friends with a member of parliament etc... even if the research is bogus.
Research funding should come from rich nerds and gentleman scientists who actually care about science and have the funds to pursue their dreams. The public can also donate funds to not-for-profit associations to support scientific research. Governments could just encourage people to donate funds and time towards a cause. But collecting taxes and then giving the money away to family members who pose as researchers for publishing bogus research is not what I consider right.
Funnily, that's why I don't want to leave this task to politicians.
You don't expect me to write essays on Slashdot, do you? Raising an opinion you don't like is not trolling.
no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any explorationPrivate spaceflight isn't only about business companies, it's also about not-for profit associations of citizens. I am a member of the British Interplanetary Society and the Planetary Society. Who launched Cosmos-1? Planetary Society did! Who studied nuclear pulse propulsion? British Interplanetary Society did! And now Planetary Society is going to launch Cosmos-2. So, we can go to space without governments.
Sometime in the future freedom-loving people will go to live in independent space colonies and let people who still believe in inefficient big bureaucratic tax-collecting governments to stay in their polluted home planet.