there are many things you can do as consumers: You can set up a community WiFi network and then agree with all fellow users to buy a dedicated fat pipe to the Internet and share it on your WiFi (and since you will buy business dedicated line, nobody can stop you from sharing it). Everything is possible if all people know exactly what they want and they are determined to stick to their principles.
Who wants MS software anyway? Even if it's free, when there are alternatives such as Debian, MS can't compete. Hell, MS software comes by force with most laptops and prebuilt PCs (and usually you can't ask for a no-software machine... it comes by force in the meaning of "you either buy it as it is or don't buy it at all"), MS software is full of annoyances (clipper!) and bugs and is the central target of all crackers worldwide. It's okay to get MS Windows on a laptop and leave it there as dual-boot with a GNU/Linux distro just in case you ever need to run something on real Windows. But wanting to buy something made by MS or even wanting MS software for free is pure psychopathology.
Nice study, I'll write about it on the news section of my wiki... but after reading the views of Steve Jones on BBC I really see no reason why the human genome should feel any urge to evolve at this point of history. I mean, we (at least here in the West) have food, have shelter, have political stability etc... Evolution usually happens for adapting to a dangerous environment, although mutation does occur at any time. It is a threatening environment that makes mutations become mainstream. The environment must actually cause people to die in order to make DNA mutations replicate on a massive scale. For example, in a global pandemic, only those with a "better" DNA would survive, causing the mutations that made the DNA "better" to become the new standard mainstream genome. While we currently may mutate at a faster rate (if we do), I see no motivation for a faster evolution. However, note that I haven't read the whole study yet, which I should do when I get some time.
...I can't stop thinking that we only look at the surface of Mars and that there are whole kilometres of soil underground that we have no freaking idea what may be in there. Planets are 3D objects, you know.
The media and professional journalists should stop sensationalising news and appealing to emotion over news on various issues, including terrorism and child safety. Journalists exist to bring us news, not to make us cry over missing white women syndromes and other issues.
I believe that in this case the murder may have been fuelled up by sensationalistic media representations of molesters. I mean, sometimes the way journalists speak about these criminals it makes them sound as if they are mediaeval bishops talking about dragons or the satan. Yea, molesters do something bad, but journalists represent this multiplied by a googol.
This results in people watching TV and then having emotional charges and anger against criminals. It is normal to feel angry with criminals, but television over-charges people to an unnatural point where the emotion charge becomes irresistible.
Think about this, and I am sure you will understand that a person who watches TV and reads sensationalistic journalistic articles will not really need a database to start seeing molesters everywhere around them... Media activelly fuels paranoia about everything, including terrorism (yea terrorism is bad, but media magnify it by a googol as well and pass emotional charge to the viewers).
Of course I know why journalists and media do this... They appeal to emotion and make people feel paranoid because IT SELLS. They profit by making people feel crazy about a coming apocalypse, be it terrorism or crime or whatever. Media love to create panic, because panic sels books and makes people watch TV endlessly, resulting in more ad revenue. Fear attracts attention, and media that utilise fear attract more viewers and therefore more money.
Journalists are supposed to be professionals and treat news like news and only state facts. If a journalist wants to make people feel emotional or paranoid, perhaps they should rethink their career and become novelists writing horror fiction.
I would really like to see KDE or a similar system becoming an official GNU project. It is really awkward to have GNOME in GNU while RMS is recommending them to make an announcement against Microsoft's OOXML. I mean... GNU projects are supposed to be the ones with utmost respect of freedom, openness, etc... what the hell do pseudostandards like OOXML have in free software and especially within GNU projects? Yea, I know it's a historial artefact resulting from the Qt licensing issue... but this is past, isn't it? I personally do have some issues with Qt other than licensing, but I think that GNU could accept KDE or a similar desktop project within its ranks. I think RMS should invite KDE to join the GNU project officially as an alternative to GNOME.
I organise my library as follows: Every book gets some tags that describe it, and books with the same tags are near to one another, while those with dissimilar tags end up away from one another. There are no categories in my library, only tags. I think that if my library had a robotic arm, it could very well be self-organising.
That's not a good test for AI. Research shows that men go crazy while talking with beautiful women. So, sexuality temporarily shuts down their intelligence. You can't test for AI while employing sexuality.
Now Firefox and KDE, the great majority of their users don't even know how to read a line of a program, nor they care.
That's exactly why I advocate adding a "view source" option in any free software app, including KDE, Firefox, gnome, etc... The users don't know how to read a line of a program, so we should teach them! And what's a better way to teach them than make the code more easily accessible to them?
No normal user is going to download a source package to have a look. But if they had a right-click option "view source" on every button in an app, they would feel curious to try it. They would click on it and see something they can't understand, but some of them may feel inclined to rsearch further and buy a programming book or read a tutorial. To some users, the understanding that what they see on their screen is the result of some cryptic commands may seem like a revelation.
If you say "they aren't the target group" etc you advocate to keep them in the dark. It's normal for people not to care about something that "only programmers do". I say: Make the source code as visible as possible and as prominently displayed as possible. This will make more people come in contact with code and develop an interest in it. It's won't be "something only programmers do" anymore, it will be "something that everyone can do, if they read the docs".
SAGE gives you easy access to documentation and source code. Type plot? for help on the plot command and plot?? to see the source code.
This should be used in all free software, from Firefox to KDE and from bc to cp. The user should be able to have a more direct access to source code to encourage more people study it and hack it. If Firefox users could move their mouse over a button and right-click and select "view source" to see the actual source code generating the button or the called methods, perhaps more people would feel more inclined to contribute to free software.
I gave up my paid Britannica online access, and I have found the wiki model to work better for encyclopedias or any other kind of work. I do cite wikis regularly, including Wikipedia, albeit I do have my own criticisms for it.
We are free today because thanks to GNU, Linux and other projects we can run our personal computers and our business machines on free software that we trust.
This was easy because the only thing that keeps you away from freedom when using closed-source software is a few hours work to write down your own code and share it...
But it was all possible because currently most hardware is still open and obeys the user. What will we do if X years from now hardware becomes predominantly filled with DRM? How will free people cope? Hardware is already closed-source and you cannot find technical documents, and this actually does limit our freedom (we want to run hardware on GNU/Linux or *BSD but manufacturers don't give technical documentation, so people rely on reverse engineering etc). Interestingly, in the past hardware was much more open, for example every home micro computer came with nice manuals explaining many technical details about your shiny new hardware baby or even books teaching you programming... Nowadays when people buy a PC or laptop they get a Windows-infected machine, with a manual explaining only how to connect the cables, and instead of compilers and programming languages (Even BASIC qualifies) they get games. To people who got used to computers from a young age, our era seems like a dark age of computing, as if the whole world became stupid within 2-3 decades.
So, to return to what I wanted to say, that's why we need open hardware (or free hardware). if the hardware is closed then it defeats the purpose of free software. We need more people to join efforts to design processors and other hardware under the GPL. At least this will solve the closed-source problem. We will still face the manufacturing problem (now, if someone could design a cheap 3D printer capable of fabbing chips). But hopefully if we design successful hardware using the GPL, more big manufacturers will notice it and start producing it. Otherwise, I suppose that free people will have to rely on homebrew computers or old hardware (by the way you will be surprised how long old computers can last... but the modern computers often break up after a few years, and this happens even with the modern HDDs that seem to break more often than older HDDs as well, as if they are engineered to make people buy new ones every few years).
Sadly when trusting technology development to a few big names (eg Intel etc), users end up being just that, users. They are denied the freedom to play and really own their machines. You can't be a truthful owner of our machine unless you understand every tiny detail about its operation, and this is only possible when you get up to start hacking it, breaking it, fixing it, and finally building your very own machine. This McDonaldisation of computers, both hardware and software, really makes me sick... I mean, where do people see the joy in using machines that do not express their own personality? Everyone runs the same software, the same OS, the same CPUs, the same beige boxes... Nobody feels any curiosity as to what is inside that beige box anymore. Nobody feels any urge to be true owners of their machines, to customise their machines, or to build their own machines. Yes, the free software movement is very good, but we need more than that. We need a more massive homebrew or free hardware movement. If you have kids, please teach them how to play with electronics and how to build stuff, and try to make them express their personality by building their stuff. Otherwise, if all kids learn is how to chat on MSN, then after the last amateur heroes die the whole society will be completely submerged in shit.
While I admit that the Chinese have copied many things, they also have some incredibly bright and well educated individuals that certainly can compete with the best of "western" society. At best, this whole thing about the messing up of the photo is more a lack of experience than a criticism that they can't create these ideas and products in the first place.
Actually I do believe that the Chinese as people have the potential of matching or even overrunning the West economy. In fact, Chinese are very smart entrepreneurs. I think the problem lies in their current communist government (well, half-communist, but it still is primarily communist). Their administration simply does not seem to support a knowledge economy, allowing and using sweatshops, or copying already developed designs (Soyuz -> Shenshu). The Chinese people actually were first in many technologies (paper etc) when Europe was into its long dark age where theology was considered the highest academic field. In the field of philosophy China was (and is?) more advanced than the Christianity-dominated Europe (and even though now the West is free of religious limitations, it still seems unable to grasp certain advanced aspects of Chinese philosophy). But now they follow us, because their potential is limited by their inefficient government. And it's the same with Russians (very enterprising and smart people, but a very stupid government).
YouTube has everything, so saying "oh look YouTube has THIS" makes no sense, you can substitute the "this" with everything you want. YouTube is a reflection of people's interests and mind chatter.
So, since it has everything, why focus on the negative and not the positive stuff? YouTube has many stupid creationist videos, but it also has many very good pro-evolution and pro-Darwin videos that show the scientific evidence.
If academics are concerned about YouTube videos spreading misinformation they should eact the open-source way: Grab a camera and create their own scientific videos, posting them for all to open their eyes.
Not that I have any relation to YouTube, but I am fed up with every Web 2.0 site being criticised for stupid reasons, often by people who have little understanding of the social processed in said sites.
Even with the antispam laws, I get more spam than before... So the laws are useless. My antispam filters and smart tricks like fake mx do more than lawmakers putting some ink on dead tree papers.
I bet we would have more young ham radio ops if no licensing were required or if the licensing was more decentralised (why not have individual ham radio non-profits do the licensing?)
If I understand well, the Chinese did take real hi-res pics of the Moon but when they tried to combine them prior release they suck it up and a crater was duplicated in error.
For programmers, this is similar to combining two subroutines by copying and pasting the code but then forgetting or failing to properly merge the code of the two parts. Let's say you have, for example:
int add_seven_add_three (int num) { num += 7; num += 3; return (num); }
int cut_two_add_three (int num) { num -= 2; num += 3; return (num); }
int compute (int num) { num = add_seven_add_three (num); num = cut_two_add_three (num); return (num); }
Now the above at this state is the same as having two moon photos with a crater (number 3) being one time in the first photo, and a second time in the second photo. Essentially two photos that feature a small region in common. This happens all the time in space imagery.
Then you look at the code and you realise it's silly and carries a performance penalty, so you want to fix it. Seeing that the merge is easy, you give out this task to a junior programmer. But the junior is sloppy and drunk and when they copy-paste they produce this little beast:
int compute (int num) { num += 7; num += 3; num -= 2; num += 3; return (num); }
Now at this point the above is equivalent to having two moon photos badly merged with the same crater being visible twice in the same photo.
During the code review you find that stupidity and you fix it, while yelling at the junior before firing them:
int compute (int num) { return (num + 11); }
The above is like a properly processed moon photo with no duplicate craters.
(and the junior then sues for wrongful dismissal, oh my)
For me, the fact that the Chinese comminists built a spaceship and then failed to properly merge two photos shows that technology can be easily imitated across nations and the only thing that can keep a nation competitive is the knowledge and skills its people have in their brains. The Chinese successfully copied US and Russian technology, but then failed miserably when they needed to do some work involving knowledge and skills.
A nation investing solely in technology, as the current US administration does, will surely fail and get eaten by other countries that invest more. It can only take a huge hurricane or a superstrong earthquake in the wrong place to damage vital US economy centres and thus to slow down the US economy, allowing competitors to take the number 1 position internationally. Technology is easily copied (for example, the Russian spaceshuttle is a perfect clone of the US one, just look at it, this without saying that Russian engineers aren't good, they do know their stuff, but their until recently communist administration, which is still quite anti-democratic, seemed more inclined to copy rather than research).
What a smart nation must do is to invest in its people... or more specifically in their brains. A nation composed of knowledgeable skilled people will never fail, even if its economy is damaged by hurricanes. Knowledge and skills cannot be imitated by competing nations. While technology can just be copied or surpassed by paying higher grants, basic science and skills take decades to be developed and therefore cannot be copied. The Chinese copied Soyuz (which is also a copy of US crafts) very easily, but they did sloppy scientific work while merging moon photos. Interestingly, TFA says that the first Soviet moon photos also had scientific errors. This means that nations spending
That's a bad idea because it would encourage people to think of roadsigns in terms of money or punishment. Roadsigns are there to keep you safe, so people should link them with safety not punishment. Of course, I do know that in many places there are roadsigns that are unreasonable or have no real tangible relation to safety, but that's a problem of the people who decide and install the roadsigns. In essence, the basic premise of roadsigns, that of helping drivers keep themselves and others safe, is still true even if there are misplaced roadsigns.
So, instead of putting a dollar or euro amount on the roadsigns, they should show in big colour photographs the results of accidents happened to drivers who chose to disobey that particular roadsign. If drivers were seeing pictures of dismembered drunk drivers and displaced internal organs on the roadsigns, they would pay more attention while driving.
No self-motivated person who works mainly with computers needs to be at a badly-lit noisy office every day, no matter whether it's a cubicle farm or open space. Computers have a network cable (or wireless antenna) for a good reason.
Given that most companies don't understand this, the only practical way to freedom today seems to be to resign and become a freelancer or start a business.
Been there, done that: While hordes of commuters burn up the whole planet with their CO2 emissions to go to work every morning, I happily go to nearby islands or hills with a laptop and 3G Internet and hack code or VPN/SSH to servers while listening to Mozart in the clean air. In fact only when the weather is bad or when I work on special projects I stay in my home office. The joy of actually making money while in the middle of the sea or at sunny beaches should make every competent programmer chained to an office to look themselves at the mirror in the morning and say "What contribution can I make to the economy? What are my greatest skills?" and then start hacking the next Web 2.0 hit, or get into consulting, or both.
Perhaps humans have more interesting things to think and feel boring when seeing flashing numbers on a screen, causing them to score slower than chimps?
I can predict an era where 3D printers will be popular and inexpensive and people will be sharing definition files on the Internet for building their own 3D toys, and then at some point a Nigerian will come out seeking copyright infringement damages for the most popular 3D toys.
Slashdot Mirror
there are many things you can do as consumers: You can set up a community WiFi network and then agree with all fellow users to buy a dedicated fat pipe to the Internet and share it on your WiFi (and since you will buy business dedicated line, nobody can stop you from sharing it). Everything is possible if all people know exactly what they want and they are determined to stick to their principles.
users pay to see webpages, not the ISP's logo.
Companies request your email address (and phone) for a reason, you know.
Who wants MS software anyway? Even if it's free, when there are alternatives such as Debian, MS can't compete. Hell, MS software comes by force with most laptops and prebuilt PCs (and usually you can't ask for a no-software machine... it comes by force in the meaning of "you either buy it as it is or don't buy it at all"), MS software is full of annoyances (clipper!) and bugs and is the central target of all crackers worldwide. It's okay to get MS Windows on a laptop and leave it there as dual-boot with a GNU/Linux distro just in case you ever need to run something on real Windows. But wanting to buy something made by MS or even wanting MS software for free is pure psychopathology.
Nice study, I'll write about it on the news section of my wiki... but after reading the views of Steve Jones on BBC I really see no reason why the human genome should feel any urge to evolve at this point of history. I mean, we (at least here in the West) have food, have shelter, have political stability etc... Evolution usually happens for adapting to a dangerous environment, although mutation does occur at any time. It is a threatening environment that makes mutations become mainstream. The environment must actually cause people to die in order to make DNA mutations replicate on a massive scale. For example, in a global pandemic, only those with a "better" DNA would survive, causing the mutations that made the DNA "better" to become the new standard mainstream genome. While we currently may mutate at a faster rate (if we do), I see no motivation for a faster evolution. However, note that I haven't read the whole study yet, which I should do when I get some time.
...I can't stop thinking that we only look at the surface of Mars and that there are whole kilometres of soil underground that we have no freaking idea what may be in there. Planets are 3D objects, you know.
The media and professional journalists should stop sensationalising news and appealing to emotion over news on various issues, including terrorism and child safety. Journalists exist to bring us news, not to make us cry over missing white women syndromes and other issues.
I believe that in this case the murder may have been fuelled up by sensationalistic media representations of molesters. I mean, sometimes the way journalists speak about these criminals it makes them sound as if they are mediaeval bishops talking about dragons or the satan. Yea, molesters do something bad, but journalists represent this multiplied by a googol.
This results in people watching TV and then having emotional charges and anger against criminals. It is normal to feel angry with criminals, but television over-charges people to an unnatural point where the emotion charge becomes irresistible.
Think about this, and I am sure you will understand that a person who watches TV and reads sensationalistic journalistic articles will not really need a database to start seeing molesters everywhere around them... Media activelly fuels paranoia about everything, including terrorism (yea terrorism is bad, but media magnify it by a googol as well and pass emotional charge to the viewers).
Of course I know why journalists and media do this... They appeal to emotion and make people feel paranoid because IT SELLS. They profit by making people feel crazy about a coming apocalypse, be it terrorism or crime or whatever. Media love to create panic, because panic sels books and makes people watch TV endlessly, resulting in more ad revenue. Fear attracts attention, and media that utilise fear attract more viewers and therefore more money.
Journalists are supposed to be professionals and treat news like news and only state facts. If a journalist wants to make people feel emotional or paranoid, perhaps they should rethink their career and become novelists writing horror fiction.
I would really like to see KDE or a similar system becoming an official GNU project. It is really awkward to have GNOME in GNU while RMS is recommending them to make an announcement against Microsoft's OOXML. I mean... GNU projects are supposed to be the ones with utmost respect of freedom, openness, etc... what the hell do pseudostandards like OOXML have in free software and especially within GNU projects? Yea, I know it's a historial artefact resulting from the Qt licensing issue... but this is past, isn't it? I personally do have some issues with Qt other than licensing, but I think that GNU could accept KDE or a similar desktop project within its ranks. I think RMS should invite KDE to join the GNU project officially as an alternative to GNOME.
I organise my library as follows: Every book gets some tags that describe it, and books with the same tags are near to one another, while those with dissimilar tags end up away from one another. There are no categories in my library, only tags. I think that if my library had a robotic arm, it could very well be self-organising.
That's not a good test for AI. Research shows that men go crazy while talking with beautiful women. So, sexuality temporarily shuts down their intelligence. You can't test for AI while employing sexuality.
That's exactly why I advocate adding a "view source" option in any free software app, including KDE, Firefox, gnome, etc... The users don't know how to read a line of a program, so we should teach them! And what's a better way to teach them than make the code more easily accessible to them?
No normal user is going to download a source package to have a look. But if they had a right-click option "view source" on every button in an app, they would feel curious to try it. They would click on it and see something they can't understand, but some of them may feel inclined to rsearch further and buy a programming book or read a tutorial. To some users, the understanding that what they see on their screen is the result of some cryptic commands may seem like a revelation.
If you say "they aren't the target group" etc you advocate to keep them in the dark. It's normal for people not to care about something that "only programmers do". I say: Make the source code as visible as possible and as prominently displayed as possible. This will make more people come in contact with code and develop an interest in it. It's won't be "something only programmers do" anymore, it will be "something that everyone can do, if they read the docs".
This should be used in all free software, from Firefox to KDE and from bc to cp. The user should be able to have a more direct access to source code to encourage more people study it and hack it. If Firefox users could move their mouse over a button and right-click and select "view source" to see the actual source code generating the button or the called methods, perhaps more people would feel more inclined to contribute to free software.
I gave up my paid Britannica online access, and I have found the wiki model to work better for encyclopedias or any other kind of work. I do cite wikis regularly, including Wikipedia, albeit I do have my own criticisms for it.
We are free today because thanks to GNU, Linux and other projects we can run our personal computers and our business machines on free software that we trust.
This was easy because the only thing that keeps you away from freedom when using closed-source software is a few hours work to write down your own code and share it...
But it was all possible because currently most hardware is still open and obeys the user. What will we do if X years from now hardware becomes predominantly filled with DRM? How will free people cope? Hardware is already closed-source and you cannot find technical documents, and this actually does limit our freedom (we want to run hardware on GNU/Linux or *BSD but manufacturers don't give technical documentation, so people rely on reverse engineering etc). Interestingly, in the past hardware was much more open, for example every home micro computer came with nice manuals explaining many technical details about your shiny new hardware baby or even books teaching you programming... Nowadays when people buy a PC or laptop they get a Windows-infected machine, with a manual explaining only how to connect the cables, and instead of compilers and programming languages (Even BASIC qualifies) they get games. To people who got used to computers from a young age, our era seems like a dark age of computing, as if the whole world became stupid within 2-3 decades.
So, to return to what I wanted to say, that's why we need open hardware (or free hardware). if the hardware is closed then it defeats the purpose of free software. We need more people to join efforts to design processors and other hardware under the GPL. At least this will solve the closed-source problem. We will still face the manufacturing problem (now, if someone could design a cheap 3D printer capable of fabbing chips). But hopefully if we design successful hardware using the GPL, more big manufacturers will notice it and start producing it. Otherwise, I suppose that free people will have to rely on homebrew computers or old hardware (by the way you will be surprised how long old computers can last... but the modern computers often break up after a few years, and this happens even with the modern HDDs that seem to break more often than older HDDs as well, as if they are engineered to make people buy new ones every few years).
Sadly when trusting technology development to a few big names (eg Intel etc), users end up being just that, users. They are denied the freedom to play and really own their machines. You can't be a truthful owner of our machine unless you understand every tiny detail about its operation, and this is only possible when you get up to start hacking it, breaking it, fixing it, and finally building your very own machine. This McDonaldisation of computers, both hardware and software, really makes me sick... I mean, where do people see the joy in using machines that do not express their own personality? Everyone runs the same software, the same OS, the same CPUs, the same beige boxes... Nobody feels any curiosity as to what is inside that beige box anymore. Nobody feels any urge to be true owners of their machines, to customise their machines, or to build their own machines. Yes, the free software movement is very good, but we need more than that. We need a more massive homebrew or free hardware movement. If you have kids, please teach them how to play with electronics and how to build stuff, and try to make them express their personality by building their stuff. Otherwise, if all kids learn is how to chat on MSN, then after the last amateur heroes die the whole society will be completely submerged in shit.
ed can open it! :p
I wonder how a n00b's face would look like while trying to get around in a 700MB file with no visual feedback... Must see that.
Welcome to the world of Treacherous Computing.
Actually I do believe that the Chinese as people have the potential of matching or even overrunning the West economy. In fact, Chinese are very smart entrepreneurs. I think the problem lies in their current communist government (well, half-communist, but it still is primarily communist). Their administration simply does not seem to support a knowledge economy, allowing and using sweatshops, or copying already developed designs (Soyuz -> Shenshu). The Chinese people actually were first in many technologies (paper etc) when Europe was into its long dark age where theology was considered the highest academic field. In the field of philosophy China was (and is?) more advanced than the Christianity-dominated Europe (and even though now the West is free of religious limitations, it still seems unable to grasp certain advanced aspects of Chinese philosophy). But now they follow us, because their potential is limited by their inefficient government. And it's the same with Russians (very enterprising and smart people, but a very stupid government).
YouTube has everything, so saying "oh look YouTube has THIS" makes no sense, you can substitute the "this" with everything you want. YouTube is a reflection of people's interests and mind chatter.
So, since it has everything, why focus on the negative and not the positive stuff? YouTube has many stupid creationist videos, but it also has many very good pro-evolution and pro-Darwin videos that show the scientific evidence.
If academics are concerned about YouTube videos spreading misinformation they should eact the open-source way: Grab a camera and create their own scientific videos, posting them for all to open their eyes.
Not that I have any relation to YouTube, but I am fed up with every Web 2.0 site being criticised for stupid reasons, often by people who have little understanding of the social processed in said sites.
Even with the antispam laws, I get more spam than before... So the laws are useless. My antispam filters and smart tricks like fake mx do more than lawmakers putting some ink on dead tree papers.
I bet we would have more young ham radio ops if no licensing were required or if the licensing was more decentralised (why not have individual ham radio non-profits do the licensing?)
If I understand well, the Chinese did take real hi-res pics of the Moon but when they tried to combine them prior release they suck it up and a crater was duplicated in error.
For programmers, this is similar to combining two subroutines by copying and pasting the code but then forgetting or failing to properly merge the code of the two parts. Let's say you have, for example:
Now the above at this state is the same as having two moon photos with a crater (number 3) being one time in the first photo, and a second time in the second photo. Essentially two photos that feature a small region in common. This happens all the time in space imagery.
Then you look at the code and you realise it's silly and carries a performance penalty, so you want to fix it. Seeing that the merge is easy, you give out this task to a junior programmer. But the junior is sloppy and drunk and when they copy-paste they produce this little beast:
Now at this point the above is equivalent to having two moon photos badly merged with the same crater being visible twice in the same photo.
During the code review you find that stupidity and you fix it, while yelling at the junior before firing them:
The above is like a properly processed moon photo with no duplicate craters.
(and the junior then sues for wrongful dismissal, oh my)
For me, the fact that the Chinese comminists built a spaceship and then failed to properly merge two photos shows that technology can be easily imitated across nations and the only thing that can keep a nation competitive is the knowledge and skills its people have in their brains. The Chinese successfully copied US and Russian technology, but then failed miserably when they needed to do some work involving knowledge and skills.
A nation investing solely in technology, as the current US administration does, will surely fail and get eaten by other countries that invest more. It can only take a huge hurricane or a superstrong earthquake in the wrong place to damage vital US economy centres and thus to slow down the US economy, allowing competitors to take the number 1 position internationally. Technology is easily copied (for example, the Russian spaceshuttle is a perfect clone of the US one, just look at it, this without saying that Russian engineers aren't good, they do know their stuff, but their until recently communist administration, which is still quite anti-democratic, seemed more inclined to copy rather than research).
What a smart nation must do is to invest in its people... or more specifically in their brains. A nation composed of knowledgeable skilled people will never fail, even if its economy is damaged by hurricanes. Knowledge and skills cannot be imitated by competing nations. While technology can just be copied or surpassed by paying higher grants, basic science and skills take decades to be developed and therefore cannot be copied. The Chinese copied Soyuz (which is also a copy of US crafts) very easily, but they did sloppy scientific work while merging moon photos. Interestingly, TFA says that the first Soviet moon photos also had scientific errors. This means that nations spending
That's a bad idea because it would encourage people to think of roadsigns in terms of money or punishment. Roadsigns are there to keep you safe, so people should link them with safety not punishment. Of course, I do know that in many places there are roadsigns that are unreasonable or have no real tangible relation to safety, but that's a problem of the people who decide and install the roadsigns. In essence, the basic premise of roadsigns, that of helping drivers keep themselves and others safe, is still true even if there are misplaced roadsigns.
So, instead of putting a dollar or euro amount on the roadsigns, they should show in big colour photographs the results of accidents happened to drivers who chose to disobey that particular roadsign. If drivers were seeing pictures of dismembered drunk drivers and displaced internal organs on the roadsigns, they would pay more attention while driving.
No self-motivated person who works mainly with computers needs to be at a badly-lit noisy office every day, no matter whether it's a cubicle farm or open space. Computers have a network cable (or wireless antenna) for a good reason.
Given that most companies don't understand this, the only practical way to freedom today seems to be to resign and become a freelancer or start a business.
Been there, done that: While hordes of commuters burn up the whole planet with their CO2 emissions to go to work every morning, I happily go to nearby islands or hills with a laptop and 3G Internet and hack code or VPN/SSH to servers while listening to Mozart in the clean air. In fact only when the weather is bad or when I work on special projects I stay in my home office. The joy of actually making money while in the middle of the sea or at sunny beaches should make every competent programmer chained to an office to look themselves at the mirror in the morning and say "What contribution can I make to the economy? What are my greatest skills?" and then start hacking the next Web 2.0 hit, or get into consulting, or both.
Perhaps humans have more interesting things to think and feel boring when seeing flashing numbers on a screen, causing them to score slower than chimps?
I can predict an era where 3D printers will be popular and inexpensive and people will be sharing definition files on the Internet for building their own 3D toys, and then at some point a Nigerian will come out seeking copyright infringement damages for the most popular 3D toys.