Speaking of double standards, I think it's rather unfair to jump to the conclusion that the DA charged her because she's black. You'd need to show a history of bias to make an insinuation like that less than libelous. The Huffington Post op-ed makes loud protestations that it's not accusing anyone of anything, which might be enough to avert a libel charge. It does fall far short of decency, though. Mr. Lava makes no attempt to consider other possible differences between the cases of the white boy and the black girl, like the age difference between the kids or the fact that the BB gun accident happened at home and the chemistry accident happened at school.
I think you will run out of money before you run out of people to pay off. First it's a Belgian company demanding a tax. Next it will be a French company demanding a tax on Belgian ISPs, because hey, Belgians read French books too. And some Dutch trolls will want their cut for what the other half of Belgium reads. Then some Americans will want a piece of the action and all hell will break loose.
Hydroelectric (They don't talk about this much, I am not sure why),
I think it's because in the US, most of the natural hydroelectric capacity is already developed. Certainly in New England, every little river seems to have its own little dam or three. Yet those meet only a small fraction of our energy demand. So, increasing hydroelectric capacity seems unlikely to be a major factor in solving our energy problems.
I did, or rather, I started to. Every time an author resorts to abuse instead of argument, his credibility gets cut in half. About four sentences in, I realized that that article wasn't worth the time I'd already spent reading it.
When you're desperately holding onto democracy in the conviction that it will lead you to an ideal society
I think you're misinterpreting my position. I never claimed democracy would lead to an ideal society. My position is that, in a democratic system (including a republic whose officials are elected democratically), you win some and you lose some. Just because you lose does not make the winner evil or wrong.
I am sure you would be pleased if your idea of "sensible interests" always prevailed. I am not sure I would be. (No offense intended toward you, I'm just willing to bet we disagree on something major). I'll take democracy, thanks.
That's also a legitimate discussion.:-) I am not such an idealist to think that realpolitik doesn't matter, but neither am I such a cynic to think that arguments about the public's interests and priorities carry no weight whatsoever.
I would point out that arguing "if we cut funding for X, the money won't actually benefit Y" is not a strong argument for continuing to fund X. Perhaps the money is better wasted on Y.:-)
I can share the road with a human-powered vehicle (that's easier on the rare occasion a cyclist deigns to obey traffic signals), but to be sneered at because I choose not to triple my commute time just irritates me.
Whether to fund paleontology with tax dollars is a legitimate question. I happen to think dinosaurs rock and I can afford to pay my share of Jack Horner's salary, but a reasonable person might feel that the money could be better spent maintaining bridges or something.
I would welcome that kind of discussion. What I don't welcome is political maneuvering to hijack a federal agency to serve a minority interest.
The only other option is to become the exploiter and make a profit off of the labor of others.
That's requires capital. For those who have the capital, it's not really a choice; it's more like an imperative. For example, most of my surplus income goes into buying shares of companies that do exactly that. One day I will have enough shares that I can live entirely off the productivity of others and won't have to produce anything myself.
The question of economic fairness is not only related to the class tension between capitalist and labor, but also to how capital is distributed/concentrated. I believe you can have social justice and a reasonable standard of living for everyone in a capitalist society, as long as the capital isn't concentrated in the hands of a small elite.
The single-minded pursuit of the best and the brightest candidates is a fool's errand. There are only a few of "the best" by definition, and they can work wherever they want. If you are not getting enough good applicants, it's because you are failing to attract them in the competitive marketplace. That may not (just) be because of salary, but also factors like where you're located and whether the work is interesting at all.
H1-B visas broaden the candidate pool but they won't change a company's competitive standing relative to others. "The best" are still going to go to the most attractive employers, and if that's not you, then I see two alternatives: either make your jobs more attractive somehow, or admit that what you really want are not "the best," but "the good enough."
No one who uses the internet wants any legislation PERIOD.
Speak for yourself. If you want your email and VOIP conversations handed over to the Feds without a warrant, if you feel you shouldn't need to be notified of a server breach that compromises your financial data, if you feel that ISPs should be able to give preferential quality of service to their own partners and degrade the connection speed of their competitors, and if you want to be under constant surveillance and tracking by corporate overlords so they can extract the maximum amount of money from you and constantly harass you with advertising, then by all means you're entitled to advocate for no regulation. Let's just be clear that reasonable people might disagree with your position.
When the GPL was new, it was by no means clear that free software would catch on. Indeed, in mobile devices, it hasn't. (Some might argue that Android is free, but most apps are not.)
It turns out the threat the GPL is designed to counter -- "embrace and extend" -- is not as serious in practice as it once seemed it would be. It is now hard to make a proprietary application that's based on Apache/BSD code and competes with the free alternative. Successful free-software projects produce good code, and adding enough value to get people to relinquish the free version in favor of a locked-down one is not easy.
To be clear, I have no interest in forcing anyone to buy any proprietary anything. The way we actually make money is by developing custom code for specific customers to solve their specific problems. But really, my employer wouldn't want to sell the modified library anyway -- they'd want to sell the executable into which that library is linked. My employer has delusions that maybe some day that would be a good business decision. If the library was licensed under the full GPL, you can't do that.
The irony of it all is that I've never in my career modified an Apache licensed library. I did patch a GPL library once and sent the patch to the maintainer, but he didn't accept it because he was working on adding that feature in a different way. So if I'd wanted to release my version (without waiting for his fixes, which never got released as far as I know), I'd have had to effectively fork the project anyway. The GPL wouldn't have prevented that.
Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.
Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.
So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.
The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.
Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.
I took a somewhat different approach. I keep all my passwords in an encrypted database (I like Password Gorilla). I wrote the password to this database, and the login password to my home PC, on a slip of paper and put it in a safe deposit box at my bank.
The safe deposit box uses two-factor authentication: you have to possess the key, and you need a photo ID identifying you as an authorized user of the box.
I prefer this approach because it is not reliant on human memory. I am not carrying a list of passwords around with me to be found by a stranger if I ever lose my keychain. It is also robust in the event I forget my "master" password, which could happen if I were disabled and went without using it for a few months. I can change who has access to the passwords through my will: currently my wife has access, but it could just as easily be the executor of my estate.
NASA has that covered: the James Web Space Telescope will be at the Earth-Sun L2 point. It is much smaller than 30 meters though: its mirror is 6.5 meters.
You'll also notice that the Webb telescope costs a lot more than the 30-meter telescope, which is another part of the answer to your question. There is enough going on in astronomy today that we need more than one really good telescope. It makes sense to build the multiple telescopes with different properties so they're specialized for different science.
No, it's totally normal for a PM to leave after three years. DARPA program managers usually only stay on the job for 2-4 years. The organization likes a high turnover to keep fresh ideas coming in.
I had no idea there were plans for a thirty-meter telescope. Hell, I had no idea such a thing was feasible. Thirty. Meters. I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel. Hopefully there will be a lot more press about this once construction gets underway.
Given that the largest optical telescope today has an effective aperture a little over 10 meters, this instrument will be a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that, like the Hubble Space telescope, we have an idea what it can show us but there will also be lots of findings we *didn't* expect.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe me, if I were in charge of the case, it wouldn't be.
Speaking of double standards, I think it's rather unfair to jump to the conclusion that the DA charged her because she's black. You'd need to show a history of bias to make an insinuation like that less than libelous. The Huffington Post op-ed makes loud protestations that it's not accusing anyone of anything, which might be enough to avert a libel charge. It does fall far short of decency, though. Mr. Lava makes no attempt to consider other possible differences between the cases of the white boy and the black girl, like the age difference between the kids or the fact that the BB gun accident happened at home and the chemistry accident happened at school.
I think you will run out of money before you run out of people to pay off. First it's a Belgian company demanding a tax. Next it will be a French company demanding a tax on Belgian ISPs, because hey, Belgians read French books too. And some Dutch trolls will want their cut for what the other half of Belgium reads. Then some Americans will want a piece of the action and all hell will break loose.
I think it's because in the US, most of the natural hydroelectric capacity is already developed. Certainly in New England, every little river seems to have its own little dam or three. Yet those meet only a small fraction of our energy demand. So, increasing hydroelectric capacity seems unlikely to be a major factor in solving our energy problems.
I did, or rather, I started to. Every time an author resorts to abuse instead of argument, his credibility gets cut in half. About four sentences in, I realized that that article wasn't worth the time I'd already spent reading it.
Dude, "electric" is an adjective.
I think you're misinterpreting my position. I never claimed democracy would lead to an ideal society. My position is that, in a democratic system (including a republic whose officials are elected democratically), you win some and you lose some. Just because you lose does not make the winner evil or wrong.
I am sure you would be pleased if your idea of "sensible interests" always prevailed. I am not sure I would be. (No offense intended toward you, I'm just willing to bet we disagree on something major). I'll take democracy, thanks.
That's also a legitimate discussion. :-) I am not such an idealist to think that realpolitik doesn't matter, but neither am I such a cynic to think that arguments about the public's interests and priorities carry no weight whatsoever.
I would point out that arguing "if we cut funding for X, the money won't actually benefit Y" is not a strong argument for continuing to fund X. Perhaps the money is better wasted on Y. :-)
I can share the road with a human-powered vehicle (that's easier on the rare occasion a cyclist deigns to obey traffic signals), but to be sneered at because I choose not to triple my commute time just irritates me.
Whether to fund paleontology with tax dollars is a legitimate question. I happen to think dinosaurs rock and I can afford to pay my share of Jack Horner's salary, but a reasonable person might feel that the money could be better spent maintaining bridges or something.
I would welcome that kind of discussion. What I don't welcome is political maneuvering to hijack a federal agency to serve a minority interest.
That's requires capital. For those who have the capital, it's not really a choice; it's more like an imperative. For example, most of my surplus income goes into buying shares of companies that do exactly that. One day I will have enough shares that I can live entirely off the productivity of others and won't have to produce anything myself.
The question of economic fairness is not only related to the class tension between capitalist and labor, but also to how capital is distributed/concentrated. I believe you can have social justice and a reasonable standard of living for everyone in a capitalist society, as long as the capital isn't concentrated in the hands of a small elite.
Oh, wait. Something seems to be wrong here...
did you not understand? ;-)
I am sure the typical patent examiner can say the same thing about more than one patent lawyer.
The single-minded pursuit of the best and the brightest candidates is a fool's errand. There are only a few of "the best" by definition, and they can work wherever they want. If you are not getting enough good applicants, it's because you are failing to attract them in the competitive marketplace. That may not (just) be because of salary, but also factors like where you're located and whether the work is interesting at all.
H1-B visas broaden the candidate pool but they won't change a company's competitive standing relative to others. "The best" are still going to go to the most attractive employers, and if that's not you, then I see two alternatives: either make your jobs more attractive somehow, or admit that what you really want are not "the best," but "the good enough."
Speak for yourself. If you want your email and VOIP conversations handed over to the Feds without a warrant, if you feel you shouldn't need to be notified of a server breach that compromises your financial data, if you feel that ISPs should be able to give preferential quality of service to their own partners and degrade the connection speed of their competitors, and if you want to be under constant surveillance and tracking by corporate overlords so they can extract the maximum amount of money from you and constantly harass you with advertising, then by all means you're entitled to advocate for no regulation. Let's just be clear that reasonable people might disagree with your position.
When the GPL was new, it was by no means clear that free software would catch on. Indeed, in mobile devices, it hasn't. (Some might argue that Android is free, but most apps are not.)
It turns out the threat the GPL is designed to counter -- "embrace and extend" -- is not as serious in practice as it once seemed it would be. It is now hard to make a proprietary application that's based on Apache/BSD code and competes with the free alternative. Successful free-software projects produce good code, and adding enough value to get people to relinquish the free version in favor of a locked-down one is not easy.
Yeah, but it does prevent me from adopting your library to use in commercial code.
To be clear, I have no interest in forcing anyone to buy any proprietary anything. The way we actually make money is by developing custom code for specific customers to solve their specific problems. But really, my employer wouldn't want to sell the modified library anyway -- they'd want to sell the executable into which that library is linked. My employer has delusions that maybe some day that would be a good business decision. If the library was licensed under the full GPL, you can't do that.
The irony of it all is that I've never in my career modified an Apache licensed library. I did patch a GPL library once and sent the patch to the maintainer, but he didn't accept it because he was working on adding that feature in a different way. So if I'd wanted to release my version (without waiting for his fixes, which never got released as far as I know), I'd have had to effectively fork the project anyway. The GPL wouldn't have prevented that.
Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.
Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.
So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.
The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.
Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.
I took a somewhat different approach. I keep all my passwords in an encrypted database (I like Password Gorilla). I wrote the password to this database, and the login password to my home PC, on a slip of paper and put it in a safe deposit box at my bank.
The safe deposit box uses two-factor authentication: you have to possess the key, and you need a photo ID identifying you as an authorized user of the box.
I prefer this approach because it is not reliant on human memory. I am not carrying a list of passwords around with me to be found by a stranger if I ever lose my keychain. It is also robust in the event I forget my "master" password, which could happen if I were disabled and went without using it for a few months. I can change who has access to the passwords through my will: currently my wife has access, but it could just as easily be the executor of my estate.
NASA has that covered: the James Web Space Telescope will be at the Earth-Sun L2 point. It is much smaller than 30 meters though: its mirror is 6.5 meters.
You'll also notice that the Webb telescope costs a lot more than the 30-meter telescope, which is another part of the answer to your question. There is enough going on in astronomy today that we need more than one really good telescope. It makes sense to build the multiple telescopes with different properties so they're specialized for different science.
No, it's totally normal for a PM to leave after three years. DARPA program managers usually only stay on the job for 2-4 years. The organization likes a high turnover to keep fresh ideas coming in.
I had no idea there were plans for a thirty-meter telescope. Hell, I had no idea such a thing was feasible. Thirty. Meters. I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel. Hopefully there will be a lot more press about this once construction gets underway.
Given that the largest optical telescope today has an effective aperture a little over 10 meters, this instrument will be a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that, like the Hubble Space telescope, we have an idea what it can show us but there will also be lots of findings we *didn't* expect.
Why would I trade goods or services for bitcoins when I could trade them for a currency that is more stable and more liquid?