"There are technical solutions for everything thing you mentioned"
Yeah. But are they in place? How much time/money would take to provide with them? Do you think those having to take money from their pockets to provide the backups will willingly do it?
"I'm not sure what in the grid would require synchronizing based on GPS. It's not like the stations and control centers ever move."
Time. GPS provides not only positioning but accurate time too. And bastardly cheap, for that matter, so it's seen as horridly cost-uneffective to provide a backup, which is exactly the point of the article.
Of course there are known methods to substitute GPS signals but the problem is that they are not in place. Imagine a strong Sun flare brings down the satellites for a week without previous notice. Probably the power grid, wireless communications, international navigation and a lot of others would take quite a strong hiccup with no fast backup in place.
"GPS: The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that..."
Well, to be true, GPS is obviously *not* a global navigation system or else it would have been GNS; GPS is a global *positioning* system. Of course, being GPS both global and fast makes the transition from positioning to navigation a triviality but it's still not the same.
" It doesn't take much to ruin someones career given that a lot of kids have more than 1k "friends"."
No doubt. But where the problem is? In boys callling names to an adult, or a society so ill that it will make this adult life's a living hell without a skeptical research on those childs assertions?
This society where *just* calling someone "turrist" or "child molester", can ruin one's life, where Interpol calling on Assange is of higher level than the one over Gadaffi, remembers me of other times: "she's a witch, a whitch I say!". Surely a significant part of this society miss those old sweet days.
"It seems to me that you're taking the current situation, removing copyright from it, then recreating the current situation using different tools. I don't really see the point if everything works the same way it does now."
Even if that was the case, it would be the same situation with one tool less. Occam's razor anyone?
"GNOME or KDE don't suit me for handling lots of windows"
No, this isn't the point. Your problems with Gnome/KDE are that, as it usually happens in other usability realms, you being a kind of "power user", have invested a lot of time doing things in some particular way that fits proper in some particular environment, then you try to export your way of doing things to a different environment -and fail.
"they order task buttons vertically first then horizontally"
No, they don't. They do that, maybe *by default*, but you can bet they don't work that way, i.e. on my own desktop.
"I find it funny that friends I know who use unix/linux as their primary desktop tend to use "screen" to manage their tasks/"windows" quickly. To me that shows how crappy the GNOME and KDE GUIs are. They can't even beat "screen" after so many years."
They show another quite common usability pattern: once you have invested heavily in one tool/behaviour, you tend to use it in as many scenarios as possible (for a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail). Screen is such a powerful tool and pales to such a big extent anything you can find on Microsoft-world, it isn't even fun. No wonder a user confindent on screen uses it even on less than perfect scenarios.
With regards of using a lot of apps open with i.e. KDE, I can tell that the ability to have multiple desktops (I usually configure KDE to use six of them), bind given applications to some of them (i.e.: mail/calendar/tasks to #1, shell to #2, web browser to #3...), saving either current sesion or a predefined one state so it automatically goes that way when starting your session (I use the latter, so mail, shell, web browser -with different tabs pointing to specific URLs, and some others automatically are there, in my predefined virtual desktops, in the desired state, when I start a session) and preconfigured key-bindings makes me envvy your productivity on Windows not the slightest.
Of course, trying that approach on Windows may force me to conclude how crappy the Windows environment is that lacks such obvious productivity enhancers.
"Isn't it even simpler than that: The GPL only requires you to make source code available to people you give the binaries to"
The GPL doesn't "only" requires that. It explicitly requires you don't add any other limits appart from those of the GPL itself to those you distribute your source too.
Even if it's not literally against the GPL (I don't know) it is certainly against its spirit if Red Hat disallow further redistribution of the sources.
"We, along with Russia, simply do not have the money for such a frivolous project"
Still you had some 1,2 to 2,4 trillions to spend in wars since 2001. Obviously Iraq and Afghanistan are not so frivolous projects.
"Where's the payback for the billions of dollars this will require? A new flavor of Tang? Another cool pen that writes upside down? Seriously, where is the cost-benefit analysis, who can possibly show that the price is justifiable to the taxpayer?"
There was a time when a US citizen could have a sense of pride of being American and other countries would have a sense of sane envy of them. This came from the fact that USA was able to achieve things no others could, that USA was able to pursue memorable goals and get at them.
Now you have your economy mortaged to China, the "terror theater" and "but will it increase our next quarter profits?" No wonder you ask for the ROI instead of trying to go to Mars "just because it's there".
"That's a variation of the broken window fallacy. If we didn't have those people working on the Shuttle, they'd be working on something productive instead. End result is that US society misses out on the value of their labor."
Given current world economics is quite arguable that the best way for the USA to expend money is in high tech research, being the effort of going to Mars probably a very good example.
"where is the cost-benefit analysis, who can possibly show that the price is justifiable to the taxpayer?"
Not everything must be thought in terms of ROI. VOI is even more useful for strategic planning. And the strategic value for Humankind of being able to reach one planet apart from Earth is immense.
"My point was that if I asked you if you to bet your house on you winning the lottery tomorrow, you wouldn't. And yet the odds of earth's existence being due to a process beginning with nothing and with no outside influence by something more intelligent, are much, much worse."
Again, not. And you should retake your statistics 101, really.
Earth is here exactly as it is so its probablity of being here is 1. My bets of winning tomorrow the lotto are much, much less than 1 (they are exactly 0, in fact, since I don't have a ticket for tomorrow's lotto).
But even doing an understandment of what you try to say, instead of what you say, the argument is still old. You should read Carl Sagan's on that respect.
"People dont spend a lot of their time thinking about these things"
Quite on the contrary, a lot of people has spent plenty of time thinking about these things.
"and in fact if you ask person A for a proof of evolution the answer is typically that person B has proved it. And if you ask person B they will point to person C who has proved it this other way"
OK, let's stop that chain then. *I*, as an I myself, can and did proved evolution by means of random mutations and selection of the most fitted while in the University. Next?
"Life didn't have millions of years to evolve. It only had as much time..."
Do you know who you remember me? Huygens reasoning that there must be a lot of hemp in Jupiter (an apocryphal story). You can waste all day on your pub arguments or you can go, study the matter and learn what science has to say about life origins and evolution instead of what you think it says.
"As a user, don't get me started on admins & devs dropping the ball, making decisions about things they do not understand."
" had 15 sets of credentials to update [...] There is no excuse for these systems to not work with a single directory that lets me access them all with a single pair of user name and password."
Do you *really* think you have 15 different credentials because devs and admins? Really?
"Management needs to stop accepting solutions which do not work with the company directory"
Stop accepting!!!??? They are not accepting but *mandating* them each and every time they say "I want *this*, I want it *now* and I want it for peanuts". You can bet devs and specially sysadmins would be more than glad if managers would listen to them about minimal functionality, integration and maintenance.
"If this were true, then you would expect corporations to ignore labor laws, tax laws and pretty much every other rule and regulation from how many toilets per employee to what goes in the First Aid kits."
Which is exactly what corporations do as much as they can. Why do you think outsourcing and fiscal paradises are so fashionable?
"As long as we continue to view this industry as being one that changes so rapidly that everything learned last week is obsolete, we will continue to make the same mistakes and reinvent the same flawed wheels."
Ask any "seasoned tech professional" what does he think about seasoned tech professionals being old timers and newbies being cutting edge fresh talent. The day they stop saying "bullshit" is the day you will be right.
No, the problem is not "we viewing industry this or that". There will be problems as long as tech unsavvy PHBs get to decide about complex tech things instead of those tech savvy "old timers".
"amazing how evolution can go billions of years without making one fatal mistake, and yet most of us will never win the lottery even once (which, probabilistically speaking is many million times more likely to happen)."
Given that we already have life, its probability is 1. So no, probabilistically speaking, me winning the lotto is many million times *less* likely to happen than life.
Slashdot Mirror
"There are technical solutions for everything thing you mentioned"
Yeah. But are they in place? How much time/money would take to provide with them? Do you think those having to take money from their pockets to provide the backups will willingly do it?
Now, you see the problem, don't you?
"I'm not sure what in the grid would require synchronizing based on GPS. It's not like the stations and control centers ever move."
Time. GPS provides not only positioning but accurate time too. And bastardly cheap, for that matter, so it's seen as horridly cost-uneffective to provide a backup, which is exactly the point of the article.
Of course there are known methods to substitute GPS signals but the problem is that they are not in place. Imagine a strong Sun flare brings down the satellites for a week without previous notice. Probably the power grid, wireless communications, international navigation and a lot of others would take quite a strong hiccup with no fast backup in place.
"GPS: The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that ..."
Well, to be true, GPS is obviously *not* a global navigation system or else it would have been GNS; GPS is a global *positioning* system. Of course, being GPS both global and fast makes the transition from positioning to navigation a triviality but it's still not the same.
"Compass? we used a magnetized pin pushed into a cork floating on water to navigate!"
And a pendulum clock, don't forget the pendulum clock.
"It might work for general navigation, but it's not good enough to correctly identify the address of the building you're in, for example."
You might try to look at the number on the front door for that.
"People old enough to have read and enjoyed Heinlein stories"
Uh!? Has English changed so much back from the sixties/seventies that books that old are readeable no more?
" It doesn't take much to ruin someones career given that a lot of kids have more than 1k "friends"."
No doubt. But where the problem is? In boys callling names to an adult, or a society so ill that it will make this adult life's a living hell without a skeptical research on those childs assertions?
This society where *just* calling someone "turrist" or "child molester", can ruin one's life, where Interpol calling on Assange is of higher level than the one over Gadaffi, remembers me of other times: "she's a witch, a whitch I say!". Surely a significant part of this society miss those old sweet days.
"It seems to me that you're taking the current situation, removing copyright from it, then recreating the current situation using different tools. I don't really see the point if everything works the same way it does now."
Even if that was the case, it would be the same situation with one tool less. Occam's razor anyone?
"Because the mason didn't work for free for months or even years building a building with the promise of being paid later."
So exactly the same way as the writer. Or did someone promised something to the writer?
"A mason, on the other hand, is compensated every week or every month."
Nope. The mason is compensated *only* when working upon an agreed wage. Maybe the writer should find a similar agreement.
"GNOME or KDE don't suit me for handling lots of windows"
No, this isn't the point. Your problems with Gnome/KDE are that, as it usually happens in other usability realms, you being a kind of "power user", have invested a lot of time doing things in some particular way that fits proper in some particular environment, then you try to export your way of doing things to a different environment -and fail.
"they order task buttons vertically first then horizontally"
No, they don't. They do that, maybe *by default*, but you can bet they don't work that way, i.e. on my own desktop.
"I find it funny that friends I know who use unix/linux as their primary desktop tend to use "screen" to manage their tasks/"windows" quickly. To me that shows how crappy the GNOME and KDE GUIs are. They can't even beat "screen" after so many years."
They show another quite common usability pattern: once you have invested heavily in one tool/behaviour, you tend to use it in as many scenarios as possible (for a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail). Screen is such a powerful tool and pales to such a big extent anything you can find on Microsoft-world, it isn't even fun. No wonder a user confindent on screen uses it even on less than perfect scenarios.
With regards of using a lot of apps open with i.e. KDE, I can tell that the ability to have multiple desktops (I usually configure KDE to use six of them), bind given applications to some of them (i.e.: mail/calendar/tasks to #1, shell to #2, web browser to #3...), saving either current sesion or a predefined one state so it automatically goes that way when starting your session (I use the latter, so mail, shell, web browser -with different tabs pointing to specific URLs, and some others automatically are there, in my predefined virtual desktops, in the desired state, when I start a session) and preconfigured key-bindings makes me envvy your productivity on Windows not the slightest.
Of course, trying that approach on Windows may force me to conclude how crappy the Windows environment is that lacks such obvious productivity enhancers.
"They have to release the code but they do not have to make it easy for people to use it."
Well, in fact they *do* have to make it as easy for other people as it's for them (remember the "preferred form" GPL clause?).
"Isn't it even simpler than that: The GPL only requires you to make source code available to people you give the binaries to"
The GPL doesn't "only" requires that. It explicitly requires you don't add any other limits appart from those of the GPL itself to those you distribute your source too.
Even if it's not literally against the GPL (I don't know) it is certainly against its spirit if Red Hat disallow further redistribution of the sources.
Hummm... difficult post to mod:
+1 insightful?
+1 funny?
+1 get-off-my-lawn?
"No, they sell an "experience." A "walled-garden" if you will."
What d'you mean? Won't it be an i-Walled i-Garden?
"We, along with Russia, simply do not have the money for such a frivolous project"
Still you had some 1,2 to 2,4 trillions to spend in wars since 2001. Obviously Iraq and Afghanistan are not so frivolous projects.
"Where's the payback for the billions of dollars this will require? A new flavor of Tang? Another cool pen that writes upside down? Seriously, where is the cost-benefit analysis, who can possibly show that the price is justifiable to the taxpayer?"
There was a time when a US citizen could have a sense of pride of being American and other countries would have a sense of sane envy of them. This came from the fact that USA was able to achieve things no others could, that USA was able to pursue memorable goals and get at them.
Now you have your economy mortaged to China, the "terror theater" and "but will it increase our next quarter profits?" No wonder you ask for the ROI instead of trying to go to Mars "just because it's there".
"That's a variation of the broken window fallacy. If we didn't have those people working on the Shuttle, they'd be working on something productive instead. End result is that US society misses out on the value of their labor."
Given current world economics is quite arguable that the best way for the USA to expend money is in high tech research, being the effort of going to Mars probably a very good example.
"where is the cost-benefit analysis, who can possibly show that the price is justifiable to the taxpayer?"
Not everything must be thought in terms of ROI. VOI is even more useful for strategic planning. And the strategic value for Humankind of being able to reach one planet apart from Earth is immense.
"Congratulations, you just re-invented Apollo!"
It's not as if that idea didn't work.
"My point was that if I asked you if you to bet your house on you winning the lottery tomorrow, you wouldn't. And yet the odds of earth's existence being due to a process beginning with nothing and with no outside influence by something more intelligent, are much, much worse."
Again, not. And you should retake your statistics 101, really.
Earth is here exactly as it is so its probablity of being here is 1. My bets of winning tomorrow the lotto are much, much less than 1 (they are exactly 0, in fact, since I don't have a ticket for tomorrow's lotto).
But even doing an understandment of what you try to say, instead of what you say, the argument is still old. You should read Carl Sagan's on that respect.
"People dont spend a lot of their time thinking about these things"
Quite on the contrary, a lot of people has spent plenty of time thinking about these things.
"and in fact if you ask person A for a proof of evolution the answer is typically that person B has proved it. And if you ask person B they will point to person C who has proved it this other way"
OK, let's stop that chain then. *I*, as an I myself, can and did proved evolution by means of random mutations and selection of the most fitted while in the University. Next?
"Life didn't have millions of years to evolve. It only had as much time..."
Do you know who you remember me? Huygens reasoning that there must be a lot of hemp in Jupiter (an apocryphal story). You can waste all day on your pub arguments or you can go, study the matter and learn what science has to say about life origins and evolution instead of what you think it says.
"As a user, don't get me started on admins & devs dropping the ball, making decisions about things they do not understand."
" had 15 sets of credentials to update [...] There is no excuse for these systems to not work with a single directory that lets me access them all with a single pair of user name and password."
Do you *really* think you have 15 different credentials because devs and admins? Really?
"Management needs to stop accepting solutions which do not work with the company directory"
Stop accepting!!!??? They are not accepting but *mandating* them each and every time they say "I want *this*, I want it *now* and I want it for peanuts". You can bet devs and specially sysadmins would be more than glad if managers would listen to them about minimal functionality, integration and maintenance.
"If this were true, then you would expect corporations to ignore labor laws, tax laws and pretty much every other rule and regulation from how many toilets per employee to what goes in the First Aid kits."
Which is exactly what corporations do as much as they can. Why do you think outsourcing and fiscal paradises are so fashionable?
"As long as we continue to view this industry as being one that changes so rapidly that everything learned last week is obsolete, we will continue to make the same mistakes and reinvent the same flawed wheels."
Ask any "seasoned tech professional" what does he think about seasoned tech professionals being old timers and newbies being cutting edge fresh talent. The day they stop saying "bullshit" is the day you will be right.
No, the problem is not "we viewing industry this or that". There will be problems as long as tech unsavvy PHBs get to decide about complex tech things instead of those tech savvy "old timers".
"Point. But an electric generator is useful for powering things besides shields, like a spinal railgun for world domination."
But I already own head-mounted lasers on sharks for that!
"amazing how evolution can go billions of years without making one fatal mistake, and yet most of us will never win the lottery even once (which, probabilistically speaking is many million times more likely to happen)."
Given that we already have life, its probability is 1. So no, probabilistically speaking, me winning the lotto is many million times *less* likely to happen than life.
"When one drives 20.3 miles and the trip actually takes 20.6, does that usually end in running out of fuel?"
Tell that to 1991's Ayrton Senna.