Well you could format your rant so it's easier to read, but it's an ok rant so you can be forgiven!!;-)
The Gartner guy actually describes the motives of IBM for supporting Linux. (Can he back this up with research? Does he have quotes from IBM management proving that his ascribed motive is correct?
Unlikely, the more realistic motive is simply money. By replacing their file and print servers alone with linux they've slashed a significant amount of revenue going to M$. OSS fits their service based business model and increases their profits, the exec's see what it does for the bottom line, and in turn, support the process further. More OSS adoption, greater potential for revenue generation, I doubt M$ even factor into the equation.
The difference is IBM has an Open Source Policy and M$ is dragged kicking and screaming to develop one.
Even so what is being discussed here is basic I.T infrastructure planning and should realistically be a non-issue. ANY CIO worth the money being paid should be asking technology staff "What ways can you identify open source can save us on our operating costs?" and improve their credibility. The bottom line is understanding the ramifications of the licence agreements (GPL) which are benign in most cases. The legal department (if there is a legal department) signs off on contracts but is rarely presented with the/a GPL. They don't understand their obligations under the GPL because they haven't read it AND no-one presents it to the legal department so it can be reviewed. This is as much a problem for technologist's who are not presenting the management with the GPL as management who buries their head in the sand and say's "I know it's there I just don't know how to deal with it". If the GPL's are presented regularly to legal teams they should be saying "Oh, this is just another GPL" and respond accordingly so that the obligations wrt that business are understood. The application of the license is as important to the business as the benefit that comes from using it. (known risk vs reward)
What is the definition of using open source, anyway, here? A Perl script in a unit test? Firefox and Apache? An XML parser? The quality of news reporting is getting pretty grim.
From working within IBM the process of creating and using GPL software AND the process that you had to go through to implement it was made very clear (which is why I always thought SCO's claims were bogus). I doubt it is much different with other market leaders like HP or Sun. In any commercial organisation implementing OSS into their IT Policy, the direction must be clear so executive, management and shareholders will understand it, not technologists. This is why Gartner is paid to say obvious stuff like this, rather than making predictions about specific technologies, so that a board can point to it and say "This is another reason why we made this decision".
This is very much a "For management" type of article, an enabler for management to allow innovation to occur. It's a technologist job to innovate, it's managements job to ensure complience with the business rules, an executives job to define rules that increase revenue and a boards job to provide direction to executives and returns to shareholders.
It's a good thing because innovations like OSS have always ushered in cycles of growth into the I.T industry, anyone still around in 2011 should be rewarded accordingly.
So, we knew that they knew that we cracked the aircraft codes. But did they know that we knew that they knew? It also begs for the question that if they did, did we know that they knew that we knew that they knew?
There are known knowns, there are also known unknowns and unknown unknowns. There are also known unknowns known, unknown knowns known, unknown knowns unknown and unknown unknowns unknown. The real question is was this unknown known to those who knew, known or was this known unknown, unknown to those who knew it was unknown, It may have been unknown to those who knew it was a unknown unknown. One thing is for certain it's unknown.
Thanks for the links Xtifr, that does clear things up. I didn't realise that The SCO Group and the Santa Cruz Operation were now seperate entities. I worked with The Santa Cruz Operation.
Games are not the most important thing in the world to me but I would buy more games if they ran under linux because linux does all the other stuff I need it to do, I'm not going back to windows anymore just for games. I'm satisfied to get the games going under Wine, but I won't buy it unless they work there first.
Would it be much of a stretch for game developers to work with the wine community and make sure their games work?
What other stuff, source code? How could they even make a case without an original source code tree for this product
As a division of Sun, I believe they're still doing fine.
Which division of Sun? Doesn't sun already have an intel offering of Solaris? Where is the website? Why would Sun buy that market if they didn't buy the branding that went with it, the only reason they would do it is to convert customers, specifically SCO developers, to Solaris. I remember Caldera getting into SCO but I don't remember anything about Sun purchasing any SCO assets, can you show me where this information is because I couldn't find any when I googled for it?
I remember SCO's original purchase of the Unix Source code and the subsequent sale to Novell, I'm not saying I'm an expert of Unix Source code ownership but I did work with this companies offerings for a long time.
I think SCO were assholes for not working with the Open source community because I think they had alot to offer, for all of SCO's fault's you cannot deny them the success they had in the marketplace. Instead of capitalising on this success they decided to be M$'s Bitch.
It's sad because SCO had the same fragmented mindset that the UNIX community of old had, it's sad because the loss of SCO as an ally to the open source community means that fragmentation has persisted.
I totally agree with you about the M$ comment though, I've seen the same thing so many times.
hmmm, there is some interesting points that you have got there. Wrt murder videos I was thinking of snuff videos where they have intent to display the contents of the videos for some sort of weird thrill, but your point in fact is still valid, a crime has been commited.
Mi I'm afraid the wet fish doesn't care, but you can take solice in the fact that you can at least eat the fish. Get a friend to hit you with the fish as a pennace for not checking and then use some lemon and terriaki on the fish cook for 15-20 mins per side and serve with chips - mmmmmmmmmm.
Who cares, Benjamin Franklin say's he didn't say it in the first place, I could say
Those who would give up sex to purchase a fish dinner deserve neither sex or fish dinner - and I still wouldn't be misquoting BF, just the quote.
Your quote says 'Those who give up' whereas the quote says 'Those who would give up' implying the pre-meditated act of choosing to give up. Your quote says 'an ESSENTIAL LIBERTY' whereas the quote say's 'ESSENTIAL LIBERTY', implying all liberty is essential as opposed to the liberty to choose which wet fish you are going to get hit with and 'to purchase' implying that the permanent state has been traded for a temporary state. Pedantic, to be sure but the little words are important to the considered meaning.
Don't sweat it mi, I'm not really sure this mis-attributed quote is entirely appropriate here anyway, because one would presume the German Geeks didn't turn around and say 'oh, this will make us safer if you make these tools illegal - please crush our ability to counteract organised crime with this ill thought out peice of legislation', I'm more inclined to bet they went kicking and screeming with this retarded peice of legislature, fought it all they could and then lost. i.e, they were not part of the crowd that 'would' give up essential liberty because they knew it would make them less secure. They saw no benefit giving up the liberty, were unwilling to, their choice to give up the liberty was taken from them, they gave it up - but given the choice they would not give it up.
Beside's my Ben Franklin quote is more appropriate -"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."- and BF actually said it.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a big fish to fry.
But don't get me wrong - I'm not sure what it is - because it's a grey area, and the sheer volume of Human fuckedupedness is immense.
So what about "The Torture manual's", or "how to blow-up your local nuclear reactor" instructional dvd's? What about videos of people being murdered? Laws are a response to community you can't say "censor whatever is illegal or immoral" because it is subjective.
I value freedom of speech most highly but I recognise that there are abuses of freedom of speech. At the same time I don't mind being offended because it opens my eyes to new forms of fuckedupedness, fucktards and fuckerisation. Maybe we need to completely open up everything and see how fuked we are, but that draws the wrath of the 'think of the children' crowd. Maybe only under 18's should be subject to censorship, but I also think that if you work, you should vote.
I think what you say is completely rational and balanced and very well considered and I agree with you, but the reality is this thinking is sadly in the minority, therefore the capability for our society to be rational and balanced is knobbled by the fact that the fucktard:rational ratio is, well, fucked. Thinking is hard work and most people hate hard work, whereas, thinking is actually cool and people who think should have sex more often. I also think that traffic lights should automatically adjust to your IQ points and allow you to pass, cause your smarter, thus giving smart people more time for more sex, but I don't think it is going to happen anytime soon.
The battle is very much against ignorance, today the cry of a freeman very much is "SALE". Things like this show that even a country like Germany, who has once survived despotism can go there again and even America is begining it's slide into despotism, which I beleive was another Benjamin Franklin opinion where he said words to the effect 'The constitution won't save America from despotism forever' - but don't slap me with a wet fish because that's only from memory.
and this site has a scan of the ORIGINAL section of the document.
Except that in a letter to David Hume Franklin denies he wrote that and researchers now think it was a fellow diplomat named Richard Jackson who said that.
So you could say "Those who are pedantic with pseudo-quotes deserve a slap in the head with a wet fish - including me"
In Australia. A great many letter were written and sent to federal legislators, the problem was also explained to many civil liberties organisations to get thier assistance. Eventually the legislation was rejected, but more because I think the right *language* was used.
At least in the letter I wrote, I pointed out that making security tools illegal would only stop the legitimate use of these tools and cause economic damage to the country by not allowing the good guys to mount an effective defense. Nefarious use of the tools wouldn't be stopped because they were conducting illegal activities anyway evectivley making the legislation counterproductive. I think it's because these terms were used, the magic "economic" word, and many other pragmatic arguments that legislators responded by rejecting the legislation.
I think Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said;
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
The reason for a lack of long-term storage of nuclear
waste is due to NIMBYism and NIMBYism alone. Nobody wants a
repository in their backyard.
So why not lobby for a waste dump in your local area? NIMBYism
alone hasn't stopped nuclear facilities, mines, chemical
dumps or military bases being built so why not a waste dump?
Why? Because a *safe* waste repository that can guarantee safe
long term storage has never been achieved, only the Swiss have come
close. Because within the scope of bureaucratic wrangling a long
term waste repository will be a compromise. Because transporting
70,000 tons of plutonium and over 91 million gallons of liquid waste
around America would present logistical safety problems as yet
undetermined and take up to thirty years to complete.
So while the nuclear industry talks about it's flashy new
reactors, it can't even build a hole and it's completely
inappropriate to discuss commissioning ANY form of new nuclear
reactor until a permanent waste facility is established.
In normal operation, a nuclear reactor releases less
radioactivity, *including* releases from mining and processing, than
burning coal.
I've seen this laughable point brought up so many times like some
sort of card trick that *suddenly* coal power is more radioactive
that nuclear power. All it illustrates is how blaze ah the nuclear
industry is with radioactive isotopes that are cancerous to humans
depending on what element they analogue. Of course it's qualified
with the phrase "In normal operation" to distance the nuclear
industry from it's many 'incidents' where radioactive elements are
released into the environment. Windscale, Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl and a plethora of 'accidents' that, because it's "an
accident", doesn't get included in the radiation released by
nuclear power plants cause it's "not normal operations". Beside
older Nuclear power plants vent approximately 100 cubic feet of Noble gasses roughly every two weeks,
that decay into deadlier elements, and
thats NRC standard operating procedure.
It is irrelevant how much radioactive elements are released "in
normal operation" because the entire supporting cycle releases so
many radioactive elements and radioactivity and only exists to
support reactors "In normal operations". Incidents are a fact of
life for nuclear power, they happen because the nuclear industry
exists, so telling me that the entire coal industry worldwide
releases more radioactivity than Chernobyl released and will
continues to release just illustrates that nuclear industry and it's
supporters cannot take responsibility for it's failures and instead
tries to qualify it with "In normal operations" . Beside's, all
radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain.
What, you think they get fuel for free? Come on. You
better believe it's factored into operating costs.
Oh, sorry did I miss Mr Bush signing the Kyoto protocol and
implementing a carbon tax did I?
Thing is that you need so darn little of the stuff
But you have to process so much rock to get so little uranium that
it takes so much energy to get the ore in the first place. 2.4
gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard
hard ores. Your argument on energy efficiency does not factor that to
get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of ore
- and even that assumes an extremely
optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assumes you have
a high grade ore. Even then your argument still doesn't factor the
energetic remediation of the mine tailing.
Taking these factors into account we fast approach a point where
the nuclear fuel cycle becomes energetically non-productive and
pointless.
At least in Australia, and free speech here is a joke, you are free to agree, go visit 2clix it might be enough to make a point that folks on the internet don't like being bullied by excessively litigous companies.
Your source lists a set of theoretical problems, none of which has been realized in almost three decades of testing.....which led to a redesign of the reactor to fix the problem.
I notice you brush over the flaws in a pebble bed in a very casual way AND you speak of theoretical problems for a theoretical reactor design. PBMR were operated for a short time in the late '80's and the only operating prototype has been going for seven years. It's hard to see where three decades of testing came from.
And we are talking about a graphite moderated reactor here, you know, like Chernobyl! But because we are talking about lower core sizes and lower temperature the theory is the traditional solid American concrete and steel containment building, which makes up a large proportion of the capital costs, is eliminated, Yippee! So in reality a PBMR introduces the same structural design flaws that Chernobyl had. Even the NRC calls this a "Major Safety Tradeoff", so how is this safer?
But let's explore the Pebble bed fantasy more, in a production facility how do you make the millions to billions of fuel kernels without imperfections? What about when the reactor is ageing, how do you prevent air entering the system and igniting the kernels? What about radioactive helium, how do you prevent that from leaking from the system?
It is totally inappropriate to talk of the theoretical safety of a Generation 3 reactor when existing Gen 1 and 2 reactors have not been operated without incident, when no reactor has ever been succesfully disassembled and existing waste problems have not been dealt with, because the real killer of PBMR is they produce deadlier wastes than PWR's.
Renewables are not going to provide enough energy, ever.
Oh really? when we haven't even explored the efficiencies we can drive into our existing systems.
We have no choice but to make nuclear power work,
Yes we do, we have a choice. We can choose what makes economic sense - which Nuclear does not. By factoring in energy efficiency a report titled "Nuclear Power: Economics and Climate-Protection Potential" found - by using government data - that worldwide decentralised electricity provided three times the output and six times the capacity as Nuclear power. Renewables make economic sense, thats why they are projected to increase by 170 times by 2010, whilst ageing reactors are being shut down because they are energy intensive, extremely expensive and take years to plan and build.
And renewables do all that without the generous subsidies that the nuclear industry receive.
A) Building nuclear power plants is *very* expensive.
Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive
B) Running nuclear powerplants is, proportionally to other types of power plants, very cheap.
The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste, the decommisioning of exising plants or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure. Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel. Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride. When these factors are properly costed, there is nothing cheap about the Nuclear fuel cycle, open or closed, essentially making it pointless.
In the US, building new nuclear power plants, by the 1970s, had become so uneconomical due to those initial capital costs that nobody wanted to build them. And it wasn't simply due to the technology that the capital costs were high; there were a lot of poorly designed regulations that were causing problems.
Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies, why won't insurance companies insure them and why is governement (aka:taxpayer) forced to underwrite them? Are the regulations you refer to safety regulations? You only regulate these plants to increase public safety with advise from engineers and scientists, and the regulation only happens in reaction to an incident. The AP-600 and AP-1000 Gen III reactors reduce capital costs by eliminating equipment subject to regulation, active safety devices and the amount of structural concrete and steel. So todays nuclear power plant have decreased margines of safety and less scope to do the types of modifications typical now-a-days to extend their lifespans.
The hope is that with improved modern technology, and with the improved regulations, soon there won't be any need for nuclear subsidies.
If we *must* have a reactor produce one that lasts 1000 years - better yet 2000, stop uranium mining and run it of existing waste. Centralise it where the current 70000 tons of plutonium waste will be stored (not Yucca) and use that as fuel. The bottom line is our material science is not enough today for us to build a nuclear powerplant that can be operated without releasing radition and radioactive elements that accumulate in the food chain and be cost effective without slowly killing us.
Furthermore we have a limited supply of Uranium, perhaps another 50 years give or take a decade, so the risk vs return makes it unviable to what, boil water. All this just to boil water, it's a dumb, high risk investment, worth trillions of dollars and the return is questionable at best. Sure, study reactor design, make better reactors for when we have the material's to but the only place we should use this stuff is in space outside of our gravity well.
Get the students to examine the science and mathematics of a kick to the groin. I know this study is tough so it should start at the beginning of the school term so the student have plenty of time to absorb the material.
Explain to the students that after an examination of a really good nutchruncher the highest graded students will get to kick the lowest graded students fair in the jugglies, fun for boys and girls. The video will be posted on YouTube.
The reality behind it is our economic system. What financial incentive is there for capital investment in space? If there is a return it will happen - it's that simple. Of course for private investment that would mean multi-decade waits for a return, beyond even what mining companies wait. Such high risk on substantial investments for a return implies a stability of government that can underwrite success. The last time any real progress in manned space exploration happened was a nation vs nation race. That may happen again, perhaps a three or four way race, but the last forty years has been a pork barreling extravaganza.
The most unlikely event to happen is nations actually co-operating to build a space faring race, but this is also the most likely to succeed where resources and expertise can be combined. Of course that could imply a World government, beyond our federal systems of government. I think people might be afraid of that for the same reason we are afraid of the multi national corporation's capability to behave as a law unto itself.
The irony is with the resources of space our wasteful economic systems, that do not consider the externalities that have been trashing our planet so far, may even start to make sense. More likely though our economic systems will have evolve to deal with, as simple as it seems, waste to resource processing here on earth. I mean can you imagine any large scale space station, or long term space flight, that cannot reprocess resources? Isn't this what "Life Support Systems" would be?
Of course there is one other incentive - survival - a true galvanising force. If the survival instinct soaks into our mass consciousness it may happen, because the human race deserves to survive, deserves a space faring future.
I don't know how the future of space exploration, well any future, will be like in 50 years, I only know how it will start...
By seeking to avoid annihilation, ten years of frenetic activity turned human beings into a space faring culture...
Maybe it has more to do with the average nerds capability to read/write and process ideas faster than economic status.
Right wingers usually have problems informing themselves whereas I find the left often emotionally attached to their arguments.
I think that once you can process a lot of information you develop a worldview that is more pragmatic and analytical than political, it only becomes political when you have to present your ideas to others.
The space race provided a promise for the future that was so exciting, I grew up with it, I was excited. Frankly though, in the almost forty years since America landed on the moon a whole lot of nothing has happened, it's not hard to imagine why people are totally uninspired by the prospect of more of a whole lot of nothing. 2020 for a moon landing, 2025 for a moon base, wow, s.u.c.h...b..l..i..n..d..i..n..g....p...r...o...g. ..r...e...s...s.
Russia (reportedly) got so close to getting thier N series launchers operational only to throw the whole program away for Energia, which whilst successful, has done a big fat nothing and thanks to all of the pork barreling the American space program has been subject to, I'm starting to understand why so many people are getting cynical about space programs.
If we can get International co-operation for a crappy space station, maybe we can get co-operation for an International Space Elevator (hey there has been no obligitory mention of it in this thread) or is it that every spacefaring nation wants to control space for themselves so they can lob nukes onto each other's cities.
All I see is a litany of political failure marring the potential accomplishments of space programs everywhere, it's so frustrating. Lets put it into perspective, it took 9 years from concept to an actual landing on the moon. Today with existing technology, test data, expertise, control systems and better testing procedures and experience it will take at least another 12 years to get back what we had in the early 70's.
The reality is that the last 30 years has made little or no contribution to manned space flight past L.E.O otherwise we would be able to go to the moon tommorrow or next week instead of in 12 years time.
Am I the only one getting sick of all the talk and pretty concept drawings. Rockets and a space race to mars - we could have done that in the 70's, big deal. Give me a race to build a real, operational space infrastructure, after that everything else becomes easy.
I know this is a bit old school, but Sony ps2's are linux friendly and cheap. Has anyone tried to use one as a mythfrontend with the network adapter and the linux kit.
Science does a good job of describing and gathering an understanding of nature, Darwin does a good job of describing god's creature's journey through time and the pope dosen't have a problem with it http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17162341-1376 2,00.html either. Why not approach the I.D debate from this angle by asking this question...
The concept of Intelligent Design places limitations on describing of the rich detail of God's works, therefore Intelligent Design is blasphemous because it imposes mankinds limitations on the glory of God. Will you be supporting this blasphemy by imposing it on our schools?
I won't be asking the question, so feel free to use it. Personally I find I.D arrogant, because Darwin's theories can be adapted to better understanding through the scientific process that allows for revision and change. I.D throws up its hands when the complexity becomes difficult to explain.
I'm not into forcing religion down peoples throats, it defeats the purpose, and I.D also does this. Science already does a great job of gaining an understanding of creation, and Darwin lays a good foundation for describing the mechanisms of life I see no reason to undermine his work with Pseudo-Science like I.D. Spirituality is seperate from science, one should have no bearing on the other.
Well at least your more polite this time, but still a little narky, you don't need it, LSD. I'm a musician too, that's how I got into producing, so I could record the projects I was doing. But now you're talking about the instruments instead of the delivery medium. I wouldn't insult any performer I know by recording them with anything less than the best technology available (or affordable), that differs alot from the choice of an instrument. Instruments gain character, if the technology is applied properly then the character of the message ( and maybe it's heart and soul) will be imprinted into the recordings, if not that character is destroyed.
By extension, the listener should listen on whatever works for them, not get wrapped up in what is technically best (by whatever definition you choose).
Isn't this what I was saying all along, my OP
that's the choice the listener has to make
Mp3 works for you, I'm happy for you. I works for you because, with respect to the artists you refer too, recording techniques were simpler then, technology was less advanced. It does not follow that what works for LeadBelly will work for The Mars Volta, it does not follow that what works for the listener will work for the producer. This generation's musicians are demanding and knowledgeable about what technology can produce and explore it's limitations, and with respect to you and LeadBelly those limitations have changed. This generations technology has changed, and franky I think mp3 is dead because the heart you talk about is lost from the music this generation's musicians can produce because of the losses the psycho-acoustic model imposes.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is IBM has an Open Source Policy and M$ is dragged kicking and screaming to develop one.
Even so what is being discussed here is basic I.T infrastructure planning and should realistically be a non-issue. ANY CIO worth the money being paid should be asking technology staff "What ways can you identify open source can save us on our operating costs?" and improve their credibility. The bottom line is understanding the ramifications of the licence agreements (GPL) which are benign in most cases. The legal department (if there is a legal department) signs off on contracts but is rarely presented with the/a GPL. They don't understand their obligations under the GPL because they haven't read it AND no-one presents it to the legal department so it can be reviewed. This is as much a problem for technologist's who are not presenting the management with the GPL as management who buries their head in the sand and say's "I know it's there I just don't know how to deal with it". If the GPL's are presented regularly to legal teams they should be saying "Oh, this is just another GPL" and respond accordingly so that the obligations wrt that business are understood. The application of the license is as important to the business as the benefit that comes from using it. (known risk vs reward)
From working within IBM the process of creating and using GPL software AND the process that you had to go through to implement it was made very clear (which is why I always thought SCO's claims were bogus). I doubt it is much different with other market leaders like HP or Sun. In any commercial organisation implementing OSS into their IT Policy, the direction must be clear so executive, management and shareholders will understand it, not technologists. This is why Gartner is paid to say obvious stuff like this, rather than making predictions about specific technologies, so that a board can point to it and say "This is another reason why we made this decision".
This is very much a "For management" type of article, an enabler for management to allow innovation to occur. It's a technologist job to innovate, it's managements job to ensure complience with the business rules, an executives job to define rules that increase revenue and a boards job to provide direction to executives and returns to shareholders.
It's a good thing because innovations like OSS have always ushered in cycles of growth into the I.T industry, anyone still around in 2011 should be rewarded accordingly.
There are known knowns, there are also known unknowns and unknown unknowns. There are also known unknowns known, unknown knowns known, unknown knowns unknown and unknown unknowns unknown. The real question is was this unknown known to those who knew, known or was this known unknown, unknown to those who knew it was unknown, It may have been unknown to those who knew it was a unknown unknown. One thing is for certain it's unknown.
please, know one pull the detonator in my head.
Appreciate the advice.
Would it be much of a stretch for game developers to work with the wine community and make sure their games work?
What other stuff, source code? How could they even make a case without an original source code tree for this product
Which division of Sun? Doesn't sun already have an intel offering of Solaris? Where is the website? Why would Sun buy that market if they didn't buy the branding that went with it, the only reason they would do it is to convert customers, specifically SCO developers, to Solaris. I remember Caldera getting into SCO but I don't remember anything about Sun purchasing any SCO assets, can you show me where this information is because I couldn't find any when I googled for it?I remember SCO's original purchase of the Unix Source code and the subsequent sale to Novell, I'm not saying I'm an expert of Unix Source code ownership but I did work with this companies offerings for a long time.
I think SCO were assholes for not working with the Open source community because I think they had alot to offer, for all of SCO's fault's you cannot deny them the success they had in the marketplace. Instead of capitalising on this success they decided to be M$'s Bitch.
I totally agree with you about the M$ comment though, I've seen the same thing so many times.
The Pawn has been sacrificed, time for the King to die!!!!!! muuuuuuuhahaha
Thanks for a well considered discussion.
Who cares, Benjamin Franklin say's he didn't say it in the first place, I could say
Those who would give up sex to purchase a fish dinner deserve neither sex or fish dinner - and I still wouldn't be misquoting BF, just the quote.
Your quote says 'Those who give up' whereas the quote says 'Those who would give up' implying the pre-meditated act of choosing to give up. Your quote says 'an ESSENTIAL LIBERTY' whereas the quote say's 'ESSENTIAL LIBERTY', implying all liberty is essential as opposed to the liberty to choose which wet fish you are going to get hit with and 'to purchase' implying that the permanent state has been traded for a temporary state. Pedantic, to be sure but the little words are important to the considered meaning.
Don't sweat it mi, I'm not really sure this mis-attributed quote is entirely appropriate here anyway, because one would presume the German Geeks didn't turn around and say 'oh, this will make us safer if you make these tools illegal - please crush our ability to counteract organised crime with this ill thought out peice of legislation', I'm more inclined to bet they went kicking and screeming with this retarded peice of legislature, fought it all they could and then lost. i.e, they were not part of the crowd that 'would' give up essential liberty because they knew it would make them less secure. They saw no benefit giving up the liberty, were unwilling to, their choice to give up the liberty was taken from them, they gave it up - but given the choice they would not give it up.
Beside's my Ben Franklin quote is more appropriate -"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."- and BF actually said it.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a big fish to fry.
So what about "The Torture manual's", or "how to blow-up your local nuclear reactor" instructional dvd's? What about videos of people being murdered? Laws are a response to community you can't say "censor whatever is illegal or immoral" because it is subjective.
I value freedom of speech most highly but I recognise that there are abuses of freedom of speech. At the same time I don't mind being offended because it opens my eyes to new forms of fuckedupedness, fucktards and fuckerisation. Maybe we need to completely open up everything and see how fuked we are, but that draws the wrath of the 'think of the children' crowd. Maybe only under 18's should be subject to censorship, but I also think that if you work, you should vote.
I think what you say is completely rational and balanced and very well considered and I agree with you, but the reality is this thinking is sadly in the minority, therefore the capability for our society to be rational and balanced is knobbled by the fact that the fucktard:rational ratio is, well, fucked. Thinking is hard work and most people hate hard work, whereas, thinking is actually cool and people who think should have sex more often. I also think that traffic lights should automatically adjust to your IQ points and allow you to pass, cause your smarter, thus giving smart people more time for more sex, but I don't think it is going to happen anytime soon.
The battle is very much against ignorance, today the cry of a freeman very much is "SALE". Things like this show that even a country like Germany, who has once survived despotism can go there again and even America is begining it's slide into despotism, which I beleive was another Benjamin Franklin opinion where he said words to the effect 'The constitution won't save America from despotism forever' - but don't slap me with a wet fish because that's only from memory.
"Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY."
and the strange form of 's' that was being used that slashdots forum can't display. Franklin had something far more appropriate to say on matters such as these.
and this site has a scan of the ORIGINAL section of the document.
Except that in a letter to David Hume Franklin denies he wrote that and researchers now think it was a fellow diplomat named Richard Jackson who said that.
So you could say "Those who are pedantic with pseudo-quotes deserve a slap in the head with a wet fish - including me"
So mod me - "+1 - slap with wet fish"
At least in the letter I wrote, I pointed out that making security tools illegal would only stop the legitimate use of these tools and cause economic damage to the country by not allowing the good guys to mount an effective defense. Nefarious use of the tools wouldn't be stopped because they were conducting illegal activities anyway evectivley making the legislation counterproductive. I think it's because these terms were used, the magic "economic" word, and many other pragmatic arguments that legislators responded by rejecting the legislation.
I think Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said;
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
So why not lobby for a waste dump in your local area? NIMBYism alone hasn't stopped nuclear facilities, mines, chemical dumps or military bases being built so why not a waste dump?
Why? Because a *safe* waste repository that can guarantee safe long term storage has never been achieved, only the Swiss have come close. Because within the scope of bureaucratic wrangling a long term waste repository will be a compromise. Because transporting 70,000 tons of plutonium and over 91 million gallons of liquid waste around America would present logistical safety problems as yet undetermined and take up to thirty years to complete.
So while the nuclear industry talks about it's flashy new reactors, it can't even build a hole and it's completely inappropriate to discuss commissioning ANY form of new nuclear reactor until a permanent waste facility is established.
I've seen this laughable point brought up so many times like some sort of card trick that *suddenly* coal power is more radioactive that nuclear power. All it illustrates is how blaze ah the nuclear industry is with radioactive isotopes that are cancerous to humans depending on what element they analogue. Of course it's qualified with the phrase "In normal operation" to distance the nuclear industry from it's many 'incidents' where radioactive elements are released into the environment. Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and a plethora of 'accidents' that, because it's "an accident", doesn't get included in the radiation released by nuclear power plants cause it's "not normal operations". Beside older Nuclear power plants vent approximately 100 cubic feet of Noble gasses roughly every two weeks, that decay into deadlier elements, and thats NRC standard operating procedure.
It is irrelevant how much radioactive elements are released "in normal operation" because the entire supporting cycle releases so many radioactive elements and radioactivity and only exists to support reactors "In normal operations". Incidents are a fact of life for nuclear power, they happen because the nuclear industry exists, so telling me that the entire coal industry worldwide releases more radioactivity than Chernobyl released and will continues to release just illustrates that nuclear industry and it's supporters cannot take responsibility for it's failures and instead tries to qualify it with "In normal operations" . Beside's, all radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain.
Oh, sorry did I miss Mr Bush signing the Kyoto protocol and implementing a carbon tax did I?
But you have to process so much rock to get so little uranium that it takes so much energy to get the ore in the first place. 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. Your argument on energy efficiency does not factor that to get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of ore - and even that assumes an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assumes you have a high grade ore. Even then your argument still doesn't factor the energetic remediation of the mine tailing.
Taking these factors into account we fast approach a point where the nuclear fuel cycle becomes energetically non-productive and pointless.
The entire fuel cycle is dirty.
And we are talking about a graphite moderated reactor here, you know, like Chernobyl! But because we are talking about lower core sizes and lower temperature the theory is the traditional solid American concrete and steel containment building, which makes up a large proportion of the capital costs, is eliminated, Yippee! So in reality a PBMR introduces the same structural design flaws that Chernobyl had. Even the NRC calls this a "Major Safety Tradeoff", so how is this safer?
But let's explore the Pebble bed fantasy more, in a production facility how do you make the millions to billions of fuel kernels without imperfections? What about when the reactor is ageing, how do you prevent air entering the system and igniting the kernels? What about radioactive helium, how do you prevent that from leaking from the system?
It is totally inappropriate to talk of the theoretical safety of a Generation 3 reactor when existing Gen 1 and 2 reactors have not been operated without incident, when no reactor has ever been succesfully disassembled and existing waste problems have not been dealt with, because the real killer of PBMR is they produce deadlier wastes than PWR's.
Oh really? when we haven't even explored the efficiencies we can drive into our existing systems. Yes we do, we have a choice. We can choose what makes economic sense - which Nuclear does not. By factoring in energy efficiency a report titled "Nuclear Power: Economics and Climate-Protection Potential" found - by using government data - that worldwide decentralised electricity provided three times the output and six times the capacity as Nuclear power. Renewables make economic sense, thats why they are projected to increase by 170 times by 2010, whilst ageing reactors are being shut down because they are energy intensive, extremely expensive and take years to plan and build.And renewables do all that without the generous subsidies that the nuclear industry receive.
Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive
The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste, the decommisioning of exising plants or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure. Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel. Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride. When these factors are properly costed, there is nothing cheap about the Nuclear fuel cycle, open or closed, essentially making it pointless.
Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies, why won't insurance companies insure them and why is governement (aka:taxpayer) forced to underwrite them? Are the regulations you refer to safety regulations? You only regulate these plants to increase public safety with advise from engineers and scientists, and the regulation only happens in reaction to an incident. The AP-600 and AP-1000 Gen III reactors reduce capital costs by eliminating equipment subject to regulation, active safety devices and the amount of structural concrete and steel. So todays nuclear power plant have decreased margines of safety and less scope to do the types of modifications typical now-a-days to extend their lifespans.The hope is that with improved modern technology, and with the improved regulations, soon there won't be any need for nuclear subsidies.
If we *must* have a reactor produce one that lasts 1000 years - better yet 2000, stop uranium mining and run it of existing waste. Centralise it where the current 70000 tons of plutonium waste will be stored (not Yucca) and use that as fuel. The bottom line is our material science is not enough today for us to build a nuclear powerplant that can be operated without releasing radition and radioactive elements that accumulate in the food chain and be cost effective without slowly killing us.
Furthermore we have a limited supply of Uranium, perhaps another 50 years give or take a decade, so the risk vs return makes it unviable to what, boil water. All this just to boil water, it's a dumb, high risk investment, worth trillions of dollars and the return is questionable at best. Sure, study reactor design, make better reactors for when we have the material's to but the only place we should use this stuff is in space outside of our gravity well.
Explain to the students that after an examination of a really good nutchruncher the highest graded students will get to kick the lowest graded students fair in the jugglies, fun for boys and girls. The video will be posted on YouTube.
Let me know where to view the video.
The most unlikely event to happen is nations actually co-operating to build a space faring race, but this is also the most likely to succeed where resources and expertise can be combined. Of course that could imply a World government, beyond our federal systems of government. I think people might be afraid of that for the same reason we are afraid of the multi national corporation's capability to behave as a law unto itself.
The irony is with the resources of space our wasteful economic systems, that do not consider the externalities that have been trashing our planet so far, may even start to make sense. More likely though our economic systems will have evolve to deal with, as simple as it seems, waste to resource processing here on earth. I mean can you imagine any large scale space station, or long term space flight, that cannot reprocess resources? Isn't this what "Life Support Systems" would be?
Of course there is one other incentive - survival - a true galvanising force. If the survival instinct soaks into our mass consciousness it may happen, because the human race deserves to survive, deserves a space faring future.
I don't know how the future of space exploration, well any future, will be like in 50 years, I only know how it will start...
By seeking to avoid annihilation, ten years of frenetic activity turned human beings into a space faring culture...
Get of this rock or die!
Right wingers usually have problems informing themselves whereas I find the left often emotionally attached to their arguments.
I think that once you can process a lot of information you develop a worldview that is more pragmatic and analytical than political, it only becomes political when you have to present your ideas to others.
Russia (reportedly) got so close to getting thier N series launchers operational only to throw the whole program away for Energia, which whilst successful, has done a big fat nothing and thanks to all of the pork barreling the American space program has been subject to, I'm starting to understand why so many people are getting cynical about space programs.
If we can get International co-operation for a crappy space station, maybe we can get co-operation for an International Space Elevator (hey there has been no obligitory mention of it in this thread) or is it that every spacefaring nation wants to control space for themselves so they can lob nukes onto each other's cities.
All I see is a litany of political failure marring the potential accomplishments of space programs everywhere, it's so frustrating. Lets put it into perspective, it took 9 years from concept to an actual landing on the moon. Today with existing technology, test data, expertise, control systems and better testing procedures and experience it will take at least another 12 years to get back what we had in the early 70's.
The reality is that the last 30 years has made little or no contribution to manned space flight past L.E.O otherwise we would be able to go to the moon tommorrow or next week instead of in 12 years time.
Am I the only one getting sick of all the talk and pretty concept drawings. Rockets and a space race to mars - we could have done that in the 70's, big deal. Give me a race to build a real, operational space infrastructure, after that everything else becomes easy.
This could help with the uptake of ODF (and possibly odf compatibility in MS products), if enough people do their work in transit on these machines.
The concept of Intelligent Design places limitations on describing of the rich detail of God's works, therefore Intelligent Design is blasphemous because it imposes mankinds limitations on the glory of God. Will you be supporting this blasphemy by imposing it on our schools?
I won't be asking the question, so feel free to use it. Personally I find I.D arrogant, because Darwin's theories can be adapted to better understanding through the scientific process that allows for revision and change. I.D throws up its hands when the complexity becomes difficult to explain.
I'm not into forcing religion down peoples throats, it defeats the purpose, and I.D also does this. Science already does a great job of gaining an understanding of creation, and Darwin lays a good foundation for describing the mechanisms of life I see no reason to undermine his work with Pseudo-Science like I.D. Spirituality is seperate from science, one should have no bearing on the other.
that's the choice the listener has to make
Mp3 works for you, I'm happy for you. I works for you because, with respect to the artists you refer too, recording techniques were simpler then, technology was less advanced. It does not follow that what works for LeadBelly will work for The Mars Volta, it does not follow that what works for the listener will work for the producer. This generation's musicians are demanding and knowledgeable about what technology can produce and explore it's limitations, and with respect to you and LeadBelly those limitations have changed. This generations technology has changed, and franky I think mp3 is dead because the heart you talk about is lost from the music this generation's musicians can produce because of the losses the psycho-acoustic model imposes.