The only issue is whether the capacity will be taken advantage of effectively. While most flights now are booked solid, will the number of passengers be high enough to make the construction of these behemoths profitable?
Well, the president of Emirates Airline already complained, it were too small...
We're not getting anywhere by incrementally improving our existing technology.
The contrary is true: you get nowhere without incrementally improving existing technology. If you look closely at any technological or scientific achievements of the past, you will nearly always see, that there had been numerous forerunners, which gradually approached the new point. In popular presentations it is very often boiled down to one event, to one person. But this is in the vast majority of so called breakthroughs simply not true.
We should really push aggressively for something new like cold fusion, zero-point energy or antigravity.
That's science fiction. And you can not "push aggresively" to something unknown. And in Rumsfeld parleance it is most likely the unkwnown unkwown.
There is a growing underground scientific community that believes that these are real and achievable within our lifetime
Most of them are simply crackpots and therefore "underground". They are just living in their phantasy world disconnected from reality. And there it is alway possible to come up with phantastic achievements. And it's not even new. People inventing perpetuum mobiles and other gadgets like this are around for hundreds of years. And up to now there was only one Leonardo da Vinci.
The Register article "Torvalds knifes Tridgell" points to a posting in the forum at Real Word Technologies. My question is: is it sure, that this really was Linus Torvalds? I mean, in this discussion later on Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Sam Palmisano and Darl McBride post some comments.
Using some fake name in a discussion forum is the easyest thing. So, where do we know, that the posting, where Tridgell is attacked, was really written by Torvalds?
Advertising generally is ineffective for small companies
Maybe the main media (TV, general newspapers and journals with exobitant prices) are too expensive for what you can expect in return, but with Google Ads you can reach very efficently the potential customers for a small amount of money. And especially as a small company you need some kind of advertising, as you might get overseen completetly otherwise.
But the reason they're evil is that they give biased information and they destandardize things (leading to monopolistic competition).
Why this? Of course the information is biased, but what has this to do with monoplositic competition? Monopoles are the exception, but everybody makes ads, so where is the connection?
Traditional advertising also promotes depression and lowers the savings rate (two serious problems in the US), among other ills.
An overdose of advertisment might be a problem, but not necessarly advertisemnet itself. And that people tend to fall into the Buy! Buy! Buy! trap definitely has deeper reasons in our western civilisation, the advertisments are only a symptom.
What should be promoted is widespread knowledge of availability, quality, and price of goods.
This is a very idealistic point of view. I am afraid with the way people acutally are, this would not work.
Anyhow. currently our system only works with advertisements. You might question the whole system and its values, but this is another discussion. But looking at they way things are - not as somebody might dream of, ads, and especially Google ads are not "evil"
Which is a quite strange view. How will companies sell their products and services without advertising? Advertising is evil, if it is annoying and intruding (phone calls, spam mail, pop ups, etc.). But as long as they are as decent as the Google ads, I can't see anything evil in them. For many especially small companies it is a very good way to reach more precisely potential customers.
Actually yes. One of my grade school teachers dropped two weights for us in class one day.
Ok, but don't you think, there are a lot of experiments you don't have seen, and are still valid? There are for instance a lot of experiments about quantum mechanical effects, every student of physics makes, but rarely are done in school - and which are much weirder than time diletation.
Time dilation on the other hand...if you wave your arms around, your hands age a tiny bit slower than your torso...does that make sense?
To me, yes. For me it is as evident as falling feathers and iron in vacuum. And there is no question about "does it make sense". It has been shown in experiments. Period. People at FermiLab or CERN experience it every and every day. In the 70ies rockets were shot up with atomic clocks on board proving time diletation caused by gravity, atomic clocks have been sent around the world in planes proving it. There is so much evidence, it is beyond any doubt for a physicist of our times. That a lay person may find it strange, ok. But this is knowledge which is around for 100 years now. Time to get used to it, I'd say.
Don't expect me to swallow anything on blind faith. I know the earth is round because I can see the earth's shadow on the moon. I can see the bowling ball and feather drop.
But did you ever make the experiment yourself, which shows, that they both fall the same in vacuum? No? You trust in other people making this experiment? Fine. Time dilation has been proven millions of times in laboratories all over the world. It may sound absurd, but it has experimental evidence, as good as two bodies falling with the same acceleration in vacuum.
In my opinion, if a scientist comes up with a theory about a phenomenon and is unable to explain it in a simple manner that is intelligible to the average layperson, one can bet that said scientist is as clueless about the nature of the phenomenon as everyone else.
This is definetely not true. It is difficult, to say the least, to explain even the basic theories as Electrodynamics or Quantum Mechanics to a lay person without a proper mathematical background. There are some good writers, who have good skills to explain such things in popular science books, so that Joe Average at least has a chance to get an idea what is going on (properly understanding it is still a different thing), but not every scientist has such skills and could explain it to a lay person. You might blame the scientists for this, but this does not say anything about the theory in question.
So it still stands: just because things are far away from lay person doesn't make them vodoo or crackpot. Otherwise nearly all of modern science falls under this verdict.
Black holes, wormholes, time travel, parallel universes, quantum computers, string theory
Just because you don't understand things, doesn't make them "Crackpottery" or "vodoo". Quantum Computers for instance are real, they are not pure theoretical constructs. Black Holes are nearly as old as the General Theory of Relativity, i.e. nearly 100 years. They are just a consequence of a well proven theory. String Theory is a mathematically sound theory, whether it actually is able to describe reality in a sufficienct way, is still an open debate. Wormholes and time travel are indeed quite hypothetical, but definitely not "crackpottery" or "unexplainable". People just go to the edge of proven theories, but this has nothing to do with arbritrary fantasies or myths.
In Eclipse, I can use my mouse to drag a class from one package to another, and all of the references to it will be automatically updated. Can you show me how to do this in Emacs?
Or: you have two classes, C1 and C2, each with a method foo(). Now you want to rename C1.foo() to C1.bar(), How to do this in emacs - of course with changing all references of this method but leaving C2.foo() and its references untouched?
C#, like Java, was designed to solve problems we don't have in the Free Software world.
I don't get the point. It has nothing to do with "open" or "close". There are a lot of features in Java you don't have at your hand in C++. Plugging together applications for instance is much easier in Java than in C/C++.
I don't have a Java VM on my hosts, and I don't see any reason to saddle them with a Mono VM, or VMs, either.
Which means, Perl 6 and its Parrot will not be for you. Fine. But Perl is still deep in the Open Source world, and will stay there. If virtual machines only solve problems people in the Closed Source world have, then, why did these guys decide to use a VM for the newest Perl? It might be, that a VM solves problems, which are also there in the Free Software world.
We already have a powerful, mature, and efficient language, proven effective for myriad successful Free Software projects. It's called C++.
One language for all problems? Sorry, but I don't think, that it is right, and I strongly doubt that too many programmars in the Free Software world would sign such a statement.
Have a look at Sourceforge: There are about 15000 projects in C as well as C++ - and as well in Java. Java has been widely accepted by the Open Source community for a long time. Look at Apache/Jakarta, look at Eclipse - some of the most impressive and popular projects in the Open Source world have been written in Java.
What I mean is that the church considers itself tied to the broader society and the ethnic group.
This might be true, but I don't think, that the (current) connection to the state is the most important aspect. In general, I would say, the societies in Europe are more homogeneous than in the US. This also shows up in the dominance of a church. It definetely has historical reasons, as state and church have been very strongly connected in the past, in many European countries up until the beginning of the 20th century.
Anyhow, having the state provide money collection for churches counts as state funding.
Sort of, and even more, this takes only place for the two main confessions. Other religions don't get this "service". Actually there are some who ask, how this is in accordance with our constitution. But there have been decisions by the Supreme Court backing this practice, so it might be ok, somehow.
But also regarding this: I think, this is only the sympton, not the reason for the dominance of a few religions.
In European countries one church is usually given a monopoly of sorts; it is state funded and presumes to count all members of the dominant ethnic group as members.
Which European countries are you talking about? In Germany e.g. the two big christian confessions (Roman Catholic and Lutherian Protestants) are connected to the state in so far, as the money you pay as a member is collected together with your usual taxes. But this is about it. There is no monopoly, and especially if you leave the church you are definetely not counted as a member anymore - and the church gets less money.
In other countries some confessions may be predominant, but I am sure, all countries, like Germany, have it in their constitution, that church and state are separate.
Unfortunately we do not currently support Windows; the paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However recently announced hardware support from Intel and AMD will allow us to transparently support Windows XP & 2003 Server in the near future. We are working on this and intend to have support available by the time the new processors are available.
it's not just that the information content has become quite low, but that there is as much disinformation as actual positive content.
Well, this is even more true for the whole internet. So internet is dead!?
I think abuse of anonymity is probably the single largest killer.
In the german speaking usenet, people use to post under real names, only a small fraction uses alias names. Sure, it's no garantee, that names are faked, but they are very likely identified.
Actually, there are more group with interesting content (be it in english, german or french) than I am able to read on a regular basis. There, the SNR is very high. So, I won't agree with your generalization.
Similar wiht comp.lang.c++.moderated. Stroustrup is around from time to time and all the gurus hanging around, which you will usually see as speakers on conferences and which books you have (or should have) on the shelf.
As others have allready mentioned, this is just a CSS-Hack and has nothing to do with Micrsoft. And according the interview you cited: the "Dean" who happens to be there is obviously not the Dean Edwards, author of IE7, or do you really think, that a project leader from Microsoft would have the nerves to publish such an OpenSource site and even ASK FOR DONATIONS?
Steve Ballmer himself would go over to his office, saying "Just saw your Web page... You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?" and shoot him without waiting for an answer.
The point is not whether the JCP works well or not, But Schwartz said, Java were more truly Open Source than Linux. And to that ESR answered, especially as his created notion of cathedral and bazaar for describing different approaches for (open) software development were used.
"I think," he said, "we need to get off this planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it."
Destroying it using what? Antimatter for instance?
Let's recap this: bad news: scientists are developing just another source of energy which could blow up the whole planet good news: the same source can be used to drive a spacecraft to leave the mess behind.
I think that's what one calls "sustainable usage of energy".
Slashdot Mirror
Just a silly remark: If you read "ROTS" as a word, it sounds like the german "Rotz" = snot.
I knew this reference - but who cares about truth or lies if a joke can be made??
No, no, he will of course call it "Bonjour" - and he will point out the interesting fact, that the french have no word for "Bonjour".
Well, the president of Emirates Airline already complained, it were too small...
The contrary is true: you get nowhere without incrementally improving existing technology. If you look closely at any technological or scientific achievements of the past, you will nearly always see, that there had been numerous forerunners, which gradually approached the new point. In popular presentations it is very often boiled down to one event, to one person. But this is in the vast majority of so called breakthroughs simply not true.
That's science fiction. And you can not "push aggresively" to something unknown. And in Rumsfeld parleance it is most likely the unkwnown unkwown.
Most of them are simply crackpots and therefore "underground". They are just living in their phantasy world disconnected from reality. And there it is alway possible to come up with phantastic achievements. And it's not even new. People inventing perpetuum mobiles and other gadgets like this are around for hundreds of years. And up to now there was only one Leonardo da Vinci.
The Register article "Torvalds knifes Tridgell" points to a posting in the forum at Real Word Technologies. My question is: is it sure, that this really was Linus Torvalds? I mean, in this discussion later on Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Sam Palmisano and Darl McBride post some comments.
Using some fake name in a discussion forum is the easyest thing. So, where do we know, that the posting, where Tridgell is attacked, was really written by Torvalds?
Maybe the main media (TV, general newspapers and journals with exobitant prices) are too expensive for what you can expect in return, but with Google Ads you can reach very efficently the potential customers for a small amount of money. And especially as a small company you need some kind of advertising, as you might get overseen completetly otherwise.
But the reason they're evil is that they give biased information and they destandardize things (leading to monopolistic competition).
Why this? Of course the information is biased, but what has this to do with monoplositic competition? Monopoles are the exception, but everybody makes ads, so where is the connection?
Traditional advertising also promotes depression and lowers the savings rate (two serious problems in the US), among other ills.
An overdose of advertisment might be a problem, but not necessarly advertisemnet itself. And that people tend to fall into the Buy! Buy! Buy! trap definitely has deeper reasons in our western civilisation, the advertisments are only a symptom.
What should be promoted is widespread knowledge of availability, quality, and price of goods.This is a very idealistic point of view. I am afraid with the way people acutally are, this would not work.
Anyhow. currently our system only works with advertisements. You might question the whole system and its values, but this is another discussion. But looking at they way things are - not as somebody might dream of, ads, and especially Google ads are not "evil"Which is a quite strange view. How will companies sell their products and services without advertising? Advertising is evil, if it is annoying and intruding (phone calls, spam mail, pop ups, etc.). But as long as they are as decent as the Google ads, I can't see anything evil in them. For many especially small companies it is a very good way to reach more precisely potential customers.
Ok, but don't you think, there are a lot of experiments you don't have seen, and are still valid? There are for instance a lot of experiments about quantum mechanical effects, every student of physics makes, but rarely are done in school - and which are much weirder than time diletation.
Time dilation on the other hand...if you wave your arms around, your hands age a tiny bit slower than your torso...does that make sense?To me, yes. For me it is as evident as falling feathers and iron in vacuum. And there is no question about "does it make sense". It has been shown in experiments. Period. People at FermiLab or CERN experience it every and every day. In the 70ies rockets were shot up with atomic clocks on board proving time diletation caused by gravity, atomic clocks have been sent around the world in planes proving it. There is so much evidence, it is beyond any doubt for a physicist of our times. That a lay person may find it strange, ok. But this is knowledge which is around for 100 years now. Time to get used to it, I'd say.
But did you ever make the experiment yourself, which shows, that they both fall the same in vacuum? No? You trust in other people making this experiment? Fine. Time dilation has been proven millions of times in laboratories all over the world. It may sound absurd, but it has experimental evidence, as good as two bodies falling with the same acceleration in vacuum.
This is definetely not true. It is difficult, to say the least, to explain even the basic theories as Electrodynamics or Quantum Mechanics to a lay person without a proper mathematical background. There are some good writers, who have good skills to explain such things in popular science books, so that Joe Average at least has a chance to get an idea what is going on (properly understanding it is still a different thing), but not every scientist has such skills and could explain it to a lay person. You might blame the scientists for this, but this does not say anything about the theory in question.
So it still stands: just because things are far away from lay person doesn't make them vodoo or crackpot. Otherwise nearly all of modern science falls under this verdict.
Just because you don't understand things, doesn't make them "Crackpottery" or "vodoo". Quantum Computers for instance are real, they are not pure theoretical constructs. Black Holes are nearly as old as the General Theory of Relativity, i.e. nearly 100 years. They are just a consequence of a well proven theory. String Theory is a mathematically sound theory, whether it actually is able to describe reality in a sufficienct way, is still an open debate. Wormholes and time travel are indeed quite hypothetical, but definitely not "crackpottery" or "unexplainable". People just go to the edge of proven theories, but this has nothing to do with arbritrary fantasies or myths.
Or: you have two classes, C1 and C2, each with a method foo(). Now you want to rename C1.foo() to C1.bar(), How to do this in emacs - of course with changing all references of this method but leaving C2.foo() and its references untouched?
I don't get the point. It has nothing to do with "open" or "close". There are a lot of features in Java you don't have at your hand in C++. Plugging together applications for instance is much easier in Java than in C/C++.
I don't have a Java VM on my hosts, and I don't see any reason to saddle them with a Mono VM, or VMs, either.Which means, Perl 6 and its Parrot will not be for you. Fine. But Perl is still deep in the Open Source world, and will stay there. If virtual machines only solve problems people in the Closed Source world have, then, why did these guys decide to use a VM for the newest Perl? It might be, that a VM solves problems, which are also there in the Free Software world.
We already have a powerful, mature, and efficient language, proven effective for myriad successful Free Software projects. It's called C++.One language for all problems? Sorry, but I don't think, that it is right, and I strongly doubt that too many programmars in the Free Software world would sign such a statement.
Have a look at Sourceforge: There are about 15000 projects in C as well as C++ - and as well in Java. Java has been widely accepted by the Open Source community for a long time. Look at Apache/Jakarta, look at Eclipse - some of the most impressive and popular projects in the Open Source world have been written in Java.
Also have a look at the comic he has painted, when he was just 12 - it's amazing.
Indeed, I was wrong. Thanks for the correction.
This might be true, but I don't think, that the (current) connection to the state is the most important aspect. In general, I would say, the societies in Europe are more homogeneous than in the US. This also shows up in the dominance of a church. It definetely has historical reasons, as state and church have been very strongly connected in the past, in many European countries up until the beginning of the 20th century.
Anyhow, having the state provide money collection for churches counts as state funding.Sort of, and even more, this takes only place for the two main confessions. Other religions don't get this "service". Actually there are some who ask, how this is in accordance with our constitution. But there have been decisions by the Supreme Court backing this practice, so it might be ok, somehow.
But also regarding this: I think, this is only the sympton, not the reason for the dominance of a few religions.
Which European countries are you talking about? In Germany e.g. the two big christian confessions (Roman Catholic and Lutherian Protestants) are connected to the state in so far, as the money you pay as a member is collected together with your usual taxes. But this is about it. There is no monopoly, and especially if you leave the church you are definetely not counted as a member anymore - and the church gets less money.
In other countries some confessions may be predominant, but I am sure, all countries, like Germany, have it in their constitution, that church and state are separate.
It has only technical reasons, that windows is not supported. From the Xen FAQ ( http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/faq .html#a1.4):
Unfortunately we do not currently support Windows; the paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However recently announced hardware support from Intel and AMD will allow us to transparently support Windows XP & 2003 Server in the near future. We are working on this and intend to have support available by the time the new processors are available.
Well, this is even more true for the whole internet. So internet is dead!?
I think abuse of anonymity is probably the single largest killer.
In the german speaking usenet, people use to post under real names, only a small fraction uses alias names. Sure, it's no garantee, that names are faked, but they are very likely identified.
Actually, there are more group with interesting content (be it in english, german or french) than I am able to read on a regular basis. There, the SNR is very high. So, I won't agree with your generalization.
Similar wiht comp.lang.c++.moderated. Stroustrup is around from time to time and all the gurus hanging around, which you will usually see as speakers on conferences and which books you have (or should have) on the shelf.
And according the interview you cited: the "Dean" who happens to be there is obviously not the Dean Edwards, author of IE7, or do you really think, that a project leader from Microsoft would have the nerves to publish such an OpenSource site and even ASK FOR DONATIONS?
Steve Ballmer himself would go over to his office, saying "Just saw your Web page... You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?" and shoot him without waiting for an answer.
The point is not whether the JCP works well or not, But Schwartz said, Java were more truly Open Source than Linux. And to that ESR answered, especially as his created notion of cathedral and bazaar for describing different approaches for (open) software development were used.
"I think," he said, "we need to get off this planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it."
Destroying it using what? Antimatter for instance?
Let's recap this:
I think that's what one calls "sustainable usage of energy".bad news: scientists are developing just another source of energy which could blow up the whole planet
good news: the same source can be used to drive a spacecraft to leave the mess behind.
Only that some people will be running them armed.