Arthritis shouldn't keep you from playing; even quadriplegics can play games. Maybe a simple isometric joystick would do the trick for you. Experiment a little, or see a specialist.
It's pretty depressing when one of the primary worries of bringing the third world on-line is that it will drive the cost of breaking anti-spam measures to zero.
In fact, there is a lot of good, low-end on-line work low-skilled third-world labor can do once they are on-line. That's a good development: it gets work done that otherwise wouldn't get done, and it gets people jobs that beat the back-breaking, dangerous work they'd otherwise have to do (provided they aren't too old, weak or ill to do it in the first place).
Hey, maybe that third world labor can also do the spam classification, manually. I'd be willing to pay for that.
Macintosh is such a small blip that Microsoft isn't going to bother doing anything about it. In fact, I suspect that they're going to make a deal with Parallels. This is directed against virtualizing Windows in the enterprise, particularly using Linux servers; Microsoft sees their per-CPU licenses floating away.
Maybe voting on issues isn't a good way of voting in a democracy. But that's what we believe democracy is currently about and that's a good place to start from if we want to improve it.
A danger with voting guides, however, is that the question and terminology are vague. "Spending less on defense" can mean anything from a 1% reduction in the budget to getting rid of the military.
In any case, nobody is stopping people from using common sense together with these voting guides. If you find that your positions agree most with some disreputable party, you can use that as a starting point for re-evaluating your positions and for re-evaluating that party; you don't have to vote for them blindly.
The system encourages people to take their ideas and reduce them to practice.
Unfortunately, it doesn't: many patents these days are of the form "wouldn't it be nice if someone made... work".
Requiring a working prototype would do a great deal towards cleaning up the patent mess (in addition to doing a better job on prior art and obviousness).
Getting rid of traffic signs is a start (even though all those commuters whose driveways are now blocked by parking cars may disagree).
However, the truly free market approach to safer traffic is to get rid of air bags and safety belts and, instead, install a sharp metal spike in the center of every steering wheel.
I have no particular opinion on whether Bussard's work is reasonable or not. But the "history" you outline also roughly describes other fusion efforts: they all kind of sort of work, but not really.
Both use the toroidal design. JET is even older than I am, and has already achieved fusion.
Fusion by electrostatic confinement has very much been demonstrated, in fact before toroidal designs.
what matters is if he can produce a repeatable fusion experiment that actually pans out
He can. You can, for that matter: building a fusor isn't hard or expensive. The question is whether it can be scaled up to the break-even point. Some people say that that's impossible in principle, but you can make similar arguments for toroidal designs. In the end, we just need a lot more experience.
Your comments just about sum up all fusion research: inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, etc. No fusion research has demonstrated that it can result in any kind of break-even energy delivery in any real sense, and there are big theoretical gaps in all of them.
We know there exist multiple stable equillibria; we are in one right now, so the fact that we're moving towards another means that we sooner or later must cross into its basin of attraction.
Life has survived warmer. Humans are remarkably adaptable and migrate quickly.
Yes, and we also know what those kinds of global changes can produce: continental firestorms, extreme flooding, starvation and widespread death. These things have happened before, and they will happen again. You're right that humans are remarkably adaptive: after the dying is over and civilization has failed, the remaining humans will adapt quickly again to living in a pre-industrial society of hunters and gatherers, and may be able to rebuild in as short as a few thousand years.
I'm not concerned about the survival of a rock, I'm concerned about the survival of humanity and civilization.
With our inventories, it unlikely we could do more than double the increase we've already done. Oil is half gone.
Even if that were true, that is safe... why?
Chemical equilibria operate over very wide ranges. What presice tipping point do you see?
Nobody knows. We might be past it already. But mathematically, there has to be one.
and want people to listen, you'd better be able to show that cliff crystal-clear.
This is on what theory, exactly? That it's perfectly alright to endanger the survival of humanity because Americans like to drive big cars?
You are advocating continuing global-scale changes to our atmosphere and climate. The burden of proof that this is safe should be on people like you. And most of the world understands that.
Let's take your numbers. CO2 levels have only started to rise fairly recently, so your 800 kg/m2 of scrubbing must have been extremely well balanced by natural CO2 emissions.
Furthermore, you're arguing that humans, so far, have not contributed much. Now, human are adding 0.07 kg/m2 (your numbers) per year. Even if that rate doesn't increase, that means that in merely 77 years we'd be doubling the amount of CO2 that's been the steady state for as long as there have been humans. And, on top of those human emissions, you also postulate that warming will release further CO2 naturally, meaning that atmospheric CO2 could double in a fraction of the time. Basically, what your numbers and analysis implies is that there will be a devastating runaway greenhouse effect within our lifetimes.
In fact, the reason why the atmosphere has been stable despite such a large amount of scrubbing is strong evidence that there must be some kind of negative feedback mechanism; otherwise, you'd expect natural fluctuations to lead to much higher changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Right now, we're still somewhere around the equilibrium of that feedback mechanism, but we are moving away more and more. If we keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere, eventually, the current feedback mechanism will break and a new feedback mechanism will pull us rapidly towards another equilibrium at much higher CO2 concentrations and probably much higher temperatures. That's not a question of "if", it's only a question of "when".
Automatic downloading of audio to mobile devices is important enough that it should have a name that's independent of any particular manufacturer or product.
So, I think it's a good thing if Apple goes on a legal campaign making sure that anything "pod"-related only is used in conjunction with their proprietary products. The rest of the world can and will find non-proprietary language and terms to refer to portable audio and video, and Apple's dominance of this market will become a dim memory.
That's because nobody in the world knows how to put together a high-tech school?
But, yes, building a $63 million prototype with unproven technology, ignoring existing standards, and reinventing everything themselves is indeed characteristic of Microsoft management.
But dammage control is easier on 1 school than when the government takes whatever country-wise measure based on phylosophical/religious/political belief.
You sound as if you think there has never been an alternative tried to public education. In fact, there are a huge number of private high schools and other educational options, catering to every clientele, need, interest, and income level. This schools seems distinguished only be being new and by being somewhat less well thought out than the others.
It's a lot of money, but the building will probably be used for the next 50 years or so.
Yes, students will be so happy to use 50 year old technology in a 50 year old building. That would be like using radio tubes in a WWII-era shack today.
People should get over this stupid notion that Apple and Microsoft are at war. Apple is not big enough to be a threat to Microsoft, but they provide an excuse for Microsoft to say that they aren't quite a monopoly. Furthermore, whatever business Apple may take away from Microsoft, they get back with Office for Mac.
Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace
OMG, they're reading and writing, and they're having fun doing it...
Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to 'dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.... this nonsense must be stopped immedidately!
If it's "developer only", it's an alpha release. If it's a "beta release" of an end user application, the term implies that it's for end users.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
on
A New Kind of OS
·
· Score: 1
While it may seem novel to "morph" to what's currently needed, it's not really so revolutionary an idea. It once was that operating systems cleared out unused libraries from memory (rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session) and dynamically adjust the amount of processor priority and time (Priority and Run Burst) each task is assigned as needed depending upon system load, etc.
UNIX still does that.
Some things appear to have gone backward as we've got more dependent on ooh, shiny! features, whistles and bells.
No, they have gone backwards because Microsoft and Apple started dominating the market with 1960's operating systems in the 1980's and have been spending the last 20 years catching up to 1980's technology (they're both finally almost there, whew). And because most of the market has been buying their stuff, that's where the market is. Meanwhile, Linux and UNIX have largely stood still, and all the other operating systems have largely disappeared.
They have the OSI certification and mark program, a 'non-proliferation treaty' (joke), and an awards program. Essentially, other than straight advocacy on the website, that is all the scope they claim to cover.
I don't see your point. Not-for-profits do certifications for third parties all the time. Why should OSI refuse to do what other such organizations regularly do?
For what it's worth, a cursory reading of the license leads me to believe that this microsoft community license is an open source licence.
I think an OSI stamp of approval would be a bit more useful, both because they have a lot more experience, and because people have experience with what OSI is looking for in a license.
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Arthritis shouldn't keep you from playing; even quadriplegics can play games. Maybe a simple isometric joystick would do the trick for you. Experiment a little, or see a specialist.
It's pretty depressing when one of the primary worries of bringing the third world on-line is that it will drive the cost of breaking anti-spam measures to zero.
In fact, there is a lot of good, low-end on-line work low-skilled third-world labor can do once they are on-line. That's a good development: it gets work done that otherwise wouldn't get done, and it gets people jobs that beat the back-breaking, dangerous work they'd otherwise have to do (provided they aren't too old, weak or ill to do it in the first place).
Hey, maybe that third world labor can also do the spam classification, manually. I'd be willing to pay for that.
Macintosh is such a small blip that Microsoft isn't going to bother doing anything about it. In fact, I suspect that they're going to make a deal with Parallels. This is directed against virtualizing Windows in the enterprise, particularly using Linux servers; Microsoft sees their per-CPU licenses floating away.
Maybe voting on issues isn't a good way of voting in a democracy. But that's what we believe democracy is currently about and that's a good place to start from if we want to improve it.
A danger with voting guides, however, is that the question and terminology are vague. "Spending less on defense" can mean anything from a 1% reduction in the budget to getting rid of the military.
In any case, nobody is stopping people from using common sense together with these voting guides. If you find that your positions agree most with some disreputable party, you can use that as a starting point for re-evaluating your positions and for re-evaluating that party; you don't have to vote for them blindly.
The system encourages people to take their ideas and reduce them to practice.
... work".
Unfortunately, it doesn't: many patents these days are of the form "wouldn't it be nice if someone made
Requiring a working prototype would do a great deal towards cleaning up the patent mess (in addition to doing a better job on prior art and obviousness).
This is in spite of Sun's radical proposal for proximity communication."
More likely, that was because Sun's radical proposal for proximity communication.
Getting rid of traffic signs is a start (even though all those commuters whose driveways are now blocked by parking cars may disagree).
However, the truly free market approach to safer traffic is to get rid of air bags and safety belts and, instead, install a sharp metal spike in the center of every steering wheel.
I have no particular opinion on whether Bussard's work is reasonable or not. But the "history" you outline also roughly describes other fusion efforts: they all kind of sort of work, but not really.
Both use the toroidal design. JET is even older than I am, and has already achieved fusion.
Fusion by electrostatic confinement has very much been demonstrated, in fact before toroidal designs.
what matters is if he can produce a repeatable fusion experiment that actually pans out
He can. You can, for that matter: building a fusor isn't hard or expensive. The question is whether it can be scaled up to the break-even point. Some people say that that's impossible in principle, but you can make similar arguments for toroidal designs. In the end, we just need a lot more experience.
Your comments just about sum up all fusion research: inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, etc. No fusion research has demonstrated that it can result in any kind of break-even energy delivery in any real sense, and there are big theoretical gaps in all of them.
What math shows a tipping point?
We know there exist multiple stable equillibria; we are in one right now, so the fact that we're moving towards another means that we sooner or later must cross into its basin of attraction.
Life has survived warmer. Humans are remarkably adaptable and migrate quickly.
Yes, and we also know what those kinds of global changes can produce: continental firestorms, extreme flooding, starvation and widespread death. These things have happened before, and they will happen again. You're right that humans are remarkably adaptive: after the dying is over and civilization has failed, the remaining humans will adapt quickly again to living in a pre-industrial society of hunters and gatherers, and may be able to rebuild in as short as a few thousand years.
To do what? It's a onetime 'password' it's useless to store no matter where.
It's not a one-time password. If it were a one-time password, they wouldn't need to keep it secret.
The reason people aren't using this more widely even though it's obvious is that it's also not a very good solution, for many reasons.
If you want something secure, use one time passwords or an authentication token.
And if you think you might have spyware on your computer, reinstall, preferably an operating system that is less susceptible.
But the earth has been warmer, and survived.
I'm not concerned about the survival of a rock, I'm concerned about the survival of humanity and civilization.
With our inventories, it unlikely we could do more than double the increase we've already done. Oil is half gone.
Even if that were true, that is safe... why?
Chemical equilibria operate over very wide ranges. What presice tipping point do you see?
Nobody knows. We might be past it already. But mathematically, there has to be one.
and want people to listen, you'd better be able to show that cliff crystal-clear.
This is on what theory, exactly? That it's perfectly alright to endanger the survival of humanity because Americans like to drive big cars?
You are advocating continuing global-scale changes to our atmosphere and climate. The burden of proof that this is safe should be on people like you. And most of the world understands that.
Let's take your numbers. CO2 levels have only started to rise fairly recently, so your 800 kg/m2 of scrubbing must have been extremely well balanced by natural CO2 emissions.
Furthermore, you're arguing that humans, so far, have not contributed much. Now, human are adding 0.07 kg/m2 (your numbers) per year. Even if that rate doesn't increase, that means that in merely 77 years we'd be doubling the amount of CO2 that's been the steady state for as long as there have been humans. And, on top of those human emissions, you also postulate that warming will release further CO2 naturally, meaning that atmospheric CO2 could double in a fraction of the time. Basically, what your numbers and analysis implies is that there will be a devastating runaway greenhouse effect within our lifetimes.
In fact, the reason why the atmosphere has been stable despite such a large amount of scrubbing is strong evidence that there must be some kind of negative feedback mechanism; otherwise, you'd expect natural fluctuations to lead to much higher changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Right now, we're still somewhere around the equilibrium of that feedback mechanism, but we are moving away more and more. If we keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere, eventually, the current feedback mechanism will break and a new feedback mechanism will pull us rapidly towards another equilibrium at much higher CO2 concentrations and probably much higher temperatures. That's not a question of "if", it's only a question of "when".
People like you produce a lot of hot air, but please be specific for once:
* Which patents is Mono suppose to be violating?
* What reasons does anybody have to believe that those patents actually are worth the paper they're written on?
* Given Microsoft's royalty-free licensing terms, what argument could they possibly make to a judge about damages?
* Why do you believe that those patents are hard to work around should Microsoft be insane enough to assert them?
* Which modern platform is guaranteed to be free from potential patent claims (from Microsoft or anybody else), and where is the evidence?
If people like you can't provide clear, convincing answers to these questions, then we might as well stick with Mono for the time being.
Even if the deal is GPL-compatible, if Microsoft actually asserted any patent, Novell still couldn't distribute the software in question anymore.
In any case, it's good to see that GPLv3 will just make such deals completely impossible.
Automatic downloading of audio to mobile devices is important enough that it should have a name that's independent of any particular manufacturer or product.
So, I think it's a good thing if Apple goes on a legal campaign making sure that anything "pod"-related only is used in conjunction with their proprietary products. The rest of the world can and will find non-proprietary language and terms to refer to portable audio and video, and Apple's dominance of this market will become a dim memory.
I guess also this school is a prototype
That's because nobody in the world knows how to put together a high-tech school?
But, yes, building a $63 million prototype with unproven technology, ignoring existing standards, and reinventing everything themselves is indeed characteristic of Microsoft management.
But dammage control is easier on 1 school than when the government takes whatever country-wise measure based on phylosophical/religious/political belief.
You sound as if you think there has never been an alternative tried to public education. In fact, there are a huge number of private high schools and other educational options, catering to every clientele, need, interest, and income level. This schools seems distinguished only be being new and by being somewhat less well thought out than the others.
It's a lot of money, but the building will probably be used for the next 50 years or so.
Yes, students will be so happy to use 50 year old technology in a 50 year old building. That would be like using radio tubes in a WWII-era shack today.
People should get over this stupid notion that Apple and Microsoft are at war. Apple is not big enough to be a threat to Microsoft, but they provide an excuse for Microsoft to say that they aren't quite a monopoly. Furthermore, whatever business Apple may take away from Microsoft, they get back with Office for Mac.
Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace
... this nonsense must be stopped immedidately!
OMG, they're reading and writing, and they're having fun doing it...
Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to 'dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.
If it's "developer only", it's an alpha release. If it's a "beta release" of an end user application, the term implies that it's for end users.
While it may seem novel to "morph" to what's currently needed, it's not really so revolutionary an idea. It once was that operating systems cleared out unused libraries from memory (rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session) and dynamically adjust the amount of processor priority and time (Priority and Run Burst) each task is assigned as needed depending upon system load, etc.
UNIX still does that.
Some things appear to have gone backward as we've got more dependent on ooh, shiny! features, whistles and bells.
No, they have gone backwards because Microsoft and Apple started dominating the market with 1960's operating systems in the 1980's and have been spending the last 20 years catching up to 1980's technology (they're both finally almost there, whew). And because most of the market has been buying their stuff, that's where the market is. Meanwhile, Linux and UNIX have largely stood still, and all the other operating systems have largely disappeared.
They have the OSI certification and mark program, a 'non-proliferation treaty' (joke), and an awards program. Essentially, other than straight advocacy on the website, that is all the scope they claim to cover.
I don't see your point. Not-for-profits do certifications for third parties all the time. Why should OSI refuse to do what other such organizations regularly do?
For what it's worth, a cursory reading of the license leads me to believe that this microsoft community license is an open source licence.
I think an OSI stamp of approval would be a bit more useful, both because they have a lot more experience, and because people have experience with what OSI is looking for in a license.