"He has some valid points but also much of what he expresses is personal preference. Things that bug him others really prefer. Who can say which is right / how things should change? *shrug*"
More or less my impression.
* On one hand, quite a lot of good ideas that come from his obvious knowledge of the innards of the project. * Then, he seems to be good at what he does, he's ten years older (and more expert) and has his ideas, so there's also quite a bit of what he finds others to be guilty of (my way or the highway -only on subprojects he's not the owner, so it ends up being the highway for him) * Older and with less free time also means less patience with the petty ways of others. * Then there are deep, infrastructure problems -or, maybe, circumstances of this very project: it is a mainly decentralized, so he misses the streamlining abilities of more centralized ones: when change is needed, someone in the highs spells the "make it happen", appoints a group with the authority to make it happen and, provided they are good enough for their trade and have the required backing, voila, things happen. It's only Debian is not and probably wouldn't want to be managed that way, which comes with its pros and cons. Think of it: would you want *others* to tell you it's this way or the highway, when not having it your way is what put you out to start with?
Yes, Debian would probably benefit of finding a way to be able to make big internal shifts, but they would not be without their own set of problems, though... OK: here you have the ability you asked for. Now, what's the big shift *you* want to happen? Oh, by the way, the selection mechanism ended up deciding it was not *your* big shift or not in *your* chose direction. Now what?
Thank you for your links... while the first ones didn't offer light to the issue (back to 2018), this one is quite clear: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/d...
On those grounds, the Court (Full Court) hereby rules:
Article 50 TEU must be interpreted as meaning that, where a Member State has notified the European Council, in accordance with that article, of its intention to withdraw from the European Union, that article allows that Member State â" for as long as a withdrawal agreement concluded between that Member State and the European Union has not entered into force or, if no such agreement has been concluded, for as long as the two-year period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU, possibly extended in accordance with that paragraph, has not expired â" to revoke that notification unilaterally, in an unequivocal and unconditional manner, by a notice addressed to the European Council in writing, after the Member State concerned has taken the revocation decision in accordance with its constitutional requirements. The purpose of that revocation is to confirm the EU membership of the Member State concerned under terms that are unchanged as regards its status as a Member State, and that revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end.
"a few days before the UK has to decide if they stay or leave. The UK is quite likely to stay in EU (rather than face a hard brexit)."
How it will be (honest question: I'm not that versed on the petty details of this issue).
For all that I know, UK already "filled the paperwork", so to say, to leave the EU, so there's nothing else to be done: doing nothing means UK leaves the EU by the end of the month.
And I don't see UK doing anything, so that's what will happen. For all that I know, phoning Brussels a few minutes before midnight last day with an "Oh, it all was a joke!" won't serve any purpose either.
(All these previous months were to be expended not to see if UK left or not but to reach an agreement about UK "just leaving" -default position, or "leaving with some compromises" -and, to all practical effects, this chance has already been lost).
"Because with fossil cars refuelling takes 5 minutes. All pumps are pretty much the same."
Even then, you don't get "kilometers per second at the pump". Why? Maybe because it makes no sense? Maybe because there's no constant relationship between liters and kilometers just like there's no constant relationship between watts at "the pump" and distance?
"MPH for charging speed is a very useful metric, because it tells you how long you will have to charge to go a certain distance."
If it's so useful, how is it that it haven't been used in the previous century of automotive industry? a) It's not as useful as you thought. b) It's a lie c) Elon Musk is a genius who things become obvious to, which others can't even fathom.
"If, net net, more bandwidth is used than it otherwise would be, then there's a added cost to NetFlix."
There isn't. That bandwidth was already payed for by a contract.
"Since most people don't watch 2 or more streams 24/7, there's plenty of room for abuse."
From the vendor? Yes, of course.
What a great business plan! That's the contract, I'll be fine unless, of course, you dare hold your side of it.
I have a business plan too: I'll sell 10000sqf Van Nuys macmansions for just 100K US$ each... as long as you don't really get the mansion, of course... if you really insist I'll give you a 350sqf hut at Middle of Nowhere, NE for you money. Clever plan, isn't it?
"I could only see it as piracy if one of those streams was not authorized by the subscriber, but instead was actual cracking of NetFlix infrastructure. Sure, call that piracy."
Without the brig and the skull and crossbones flag? without peglegs and Arrrs! ? No sir, you shouldn't dare call that "piracy".
But even then, how exactly they lose that money? Which increased costs to Netflix result from that "piracy"?
So, in the end, it's neither piracy nor loses, as it's usually the case.
"While San Francisco is a big city, that just feels like a big number to me. I imagine the assessor's office has a huge database to deal with, but there's still a finite number of employee users and whatever outward facing public interface. And while every city wants to think they are unique, it's also hard to imagine their ultimate needs are radically different than Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix or any other random big city. "
Sum that up with the "surprised no one said 'open source'" from another comment and you nailed it.
There are 35 cities in the USA with half a million people or more, a number good enough for some big scale gains but quite comfortable for a collaboration agreement. Heck, even just the ten of them with more than a million make for an interesting enough group.
Imagine -gasp! they worked together for such kind of infrastructure systems instead of reinventing each their own wheel to the great satisfaction of consultants from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, et al.
"Now you'll hear some idiots saying "ain't broke don't fix it" which is is a poor argument for technology that clearly so far behind the state of the art."
The point here is that the "state of the art" is so lame that the big expenditure (36M!!! Do they want to buy one laptop per building they register!?) at a high risk (it seems that, once you dig beyond corpocrap, there are more failed projects than successful) for a very limited benefit even if the project goes OK, strongly calls for a "if ain't broken don't fix it".
"It does cost a lot of money to patent something, so it's not something one does on a whim."
Except when: 1. You already have a "corporate patenting engine". This heavily reduce the per-patent cost, and even may incentivise patenting "whatever you come with". 2. Money doesn't come from your own pocket, i.e.: comes from public funds.
"as opposed to "does not check if anything works" which the GP claimed... You may think they are obvious or not - but they at least work."
Given that there have been patents granted to perpetual motion devices, the speculation that not all patent applications are properly grounded seems quite plausible.
I think you chose the wrong verb. Patents *shouldn't* violate the laws of physics. There, corrected for you.
"you'll get it denied"
Another wrong verb choice. It should read "you *may* get it denied".
"Additionally, patents last for 17 years"
Or are they 20?
"You cannot extend them beyond that"
Or you can make them bullshit enough so it precludes other similar but still relevant patents to hit your covered field -except from you. It is the patent variant of website development: "I like that, but can you color it in blue?"
"Until we have a 100% post-scarcity system that can maintain itself indefinitely without a human twitching a finger, labor does not mean shit"
Because one evening we'll go to bed on XIX century industrial revolution England and the next morning we'll awake on Star Trek.
"Heading towards" has indeed a value because things are neither black or white and we'd better cope also with the greyish palette or we'll have big troubles.
"and the state itself needs to have slightly less power than a dead cockroach."
It's curious then, that the most flourishing years in EU were postwar ones when state and state-owned corporations had a strong saying on overall economy and even in USA Federal owned money had a stronger saying than today. It's also curious that this state of affairs started to dismatle as soon as -starting on Reagan/Tatcher days, these state-owned corps were forced to go to private hands and, at the same time, inequality indicators started to grow. It's also curiuous that, on those productive fields were the privatization process in Europe hasn't totally finished (transport infrastructure, health and education, mainly), the more we go for the privatization route, the more the related wellness indicators fall.
"The fact that he was able too build those is very good evidence that he is indeed self-sufficient without them. [...] The fact that he uses them only occasionally is interesting."
Well, we are quite self-sufficient without airliners (as demonstrated by the fact that we can build them without using them), but still we find them useful (that's why we build them). And we use them only occasionally too!
"The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in."
That's make sense on a society where labour makes a difference, but we are heading to a society were labour means shit and what really meets ends is ownership of increasingly labour-less means of production. A totally different scenario.
"The real test I would like to see is this: Everybody above 18 years included (A), minimal (B), long or permanent (C) duration. (B) could be as low as $1 a month, but increasing/changing with time."
Near the mark, but still not a bulleye.
It is called UBI fo a reason: if it's not Universal, then it's not UBI; if it isn't large enough to cover a person's Basic expenses, then it's not UBI; if it isn't Income you can choose how to expend, then it's not UBI.
For an experiment to test what UBI is, it *has* to be Universal, large enough to cover Basic needs and be a real Income, because it comes as a whole lot and it *has* to be expansive enough as to really affect global economy because that's exactly what their detractors (me included) focus on. Less than that, it proves shit.
"...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs"
I'd say that, in order to bash UBI programs... you need to focus on UBI program!
"2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. "
This looks like stupid politicians doing their stupid things at their best (because, frankly, it works).
So, in order to study how "unconditional basic income works" you experiment focus on a very conditionally chosen target? WTF!!!???
"And yet, in the past year or so I've noticed that almost everyone I work with, in 2 completely unrelated industries, wear one, as does almost everyone I interact with socially."
That has a name: "confirmation bias" Did you know about it?
Yes, your environment is keen about smartwatches. In other places you can't "live" without a Montblanc pen or a Rolex watch.
Yes, there are a lot of places which exhibit "cliche totems".
Slashdot Mirror
"He has some valid points but also much of what he expresses is personal preference. Things that bug him others really prefer. Who can say which is right / how things should change? *shrug*"
More or less my impression.
* On one hand, quite a lot of good ideas that come from his obvious knowledge of the innards of the project.
* Then, he seems to be good at what he does, he's ten years older (and more expert) and has his ideas, so there's also quite a bit of what he finds others to be guilty of (my way or the highway -only on subprojects he's not the owner, so it ends up being the highway for him)
* Older and with less free time also means less patience with the petty ways of others.
* Then there are deep, infrastructure problems -or, maybe, circumstances of this very project: it is a mainly decentralized, so he misses the streamlining abilities of more centralized ones: when change is needed, someone in the highs spells the "make it happen", appoints a group with the authority to make it happen and, provided they are good enough for their trade and have the required backing, voila, things happen. It's only Debian is not and probably wouldn't want to be managed that way, which comes with its pros and cons. Think of it: would you want *others* to tell you it's this way or the highway, when not having it your way is what put you out to start with?
Yes, Debian would probably benefit of finding a way to be able to make big internal shifts, but they would not be without their own set of problems, though... OK: here you have the ability you asked for. Now, what's the big shift *you* want to happen? Oh, by the way, the selection mechanism ended up deciding it was not *your* big shift or not in *your* chose direction. Now what?
You were a fruitful Debian Maintainer for a decade long so, with the best of my wishes, Michael...
"You don't know much, then"
That's exactly what I said, didn't you notice?
Thank you for your links... while the first ones didn't offer light to the issue (back to 2018), this one is quite clear: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/d...
On those grounds, the Court (Full Court) hereby rules:
Article 50 TEU must be interpreted as meaning that, where a Member State has notified the European Council, in accordance with that article, of its intention to withdraw from the European Union, that article allows that Member State â" for as long as a withdrawal agreement concluded between that Member State and the European Union has not entered into force or, if no such agreement has been concluded, for as long as the two-year period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU, possibly extended in accordance with that paragraph, has not expired â" to revoke that notification unilaterally, in an unequivocal and unconditional manner, by a notice addressed to the European Council in writing, after the Member State concerned has taken the revocation decision in accordance with its constitutional requirements. The purpose of that revocation is to confirm the EU membership of the Member State concerned under terms that are unchanged as regards its status as a Member State, and that revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end.
"a few days before the UK has to decide if they stay or leave. The UK is quite likely to stay in EU (rather than face a hard brexit)."
How it will be (honest question: I'm not that versed on the petty details of this issue).
For all that I know, UK already "filled the paperwork", so to say, to leave the EU, so there's nothing else to be done: doing nothing means UK leaves the EU by the end of the month.
And I don't see UK doing anything, so that's what will happen. For all that I know, phoning Brussels a few minutes before midnight last day with an "Oh, it all was a joke!" won't serve any purpose either.
(All these previous months were to be expended not to see if UK left or not but to reach an agreement about UK "just leaving" -default position, or "leaving with some compromises" -and, to all practical effects, this chance has already been lost).
"Because with fossil cars refuelling takes 5 minutes. All pumps are pretty much the same."
Even then, you don't get "kilometers per second at the pump". Why? Maybe because it makes no sense? Maybe because there's no constant relationship between liters and kilometers just like there's no constant relationship between watts at "the pump" and distance?
"MPH for charging speed is a very useful metric, because it tells you how long you will have to charge to go a certain distance."
If it's so useful, how is it that it haven't been used in the previous century of automotive industry?
a) It's not as useful as you thought.
b) It's a lie
c) Elon Musk is a genius who things become obvious to, which others can't even fathom.
"If, net net, more bandwidth is used than it otherwise would be, then there's a added cost to NetFlix."
There isn't. That bandwidth was already payed for by a contract.
"Since most people don't watch 2 or more streams 24/7, there's plenty of room for abuse."
From the vendor? Yes, of course.
What a great business plan! That's the contract, I'll be fine unless, of course, you dare hold your side of it.
I have a business plan too: I'll sell 10000sqf Van Nuys macmansions for just 100K US$ each... as long as you don't really get the mansion, of course... if you really insist I'll give you a 350sqf hut at Middle of Nowhere, NE for you money. Clever plan, isn't it?
"I could only see it as piracy if one of those streams was not authorized by the subscriber, but instead was actual cracking of NetFlix infrastructure. Sure, call that piracy."
Without the brig and the skull and crossbones flag? without peglegs and Arrrs! ? No sir, you shouldn't dare call that "piracy".
But even then, how exactly they lose that money? Which increased costs to Netflix result from that "piracy"?
So, in the end, it's neither piracy nor loses, as it's usually the case.
"While San Francisco is a big city, that just feels like a big number to me. I imagine the assessor's office has a huge database to deal with, but there's still a finite number of employee users and whatever outward facing public interface. And while every city wants to think they are unique, it's also hard to imagine their ultimate needs are radically different than Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix or any other random big city. "
Sum that up with the "surprised no one said 'open source'" from another comment and you nailed it.
There are 35 cities in the USA with half a million people or more, a number good enough for some big scale gains but quite comfortable for a collaboration agreement. Heck, even just the ten of them with more than a million make for an interesting enough group.
Imagine -gasp! they worked together for such kind of infrastructure systems instead of reinventing each their own wheel to the great satisfaction of consultants from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, et al.
But that would be communist, or something.
"The videos captured by the drones operated by the tax assessors take up a lot more than 1 MB."
And you just put a reference in the DB for the location of them on a bulk storage subsystem if you have any clue.
"Now you'll hear some idiots saying "ain't broke don't fix it" which is is a poor argument for technology that clearly so far behind the state of the art."
The point here is that the "state of the art" is so lame that the big expenditure (36M!!! Do they want to buy one laptop per building they register!?) at a high risk (it seems that, once you dig beyond corpocrap, there are more failed projects than successful) for a very limited benefit even if the project goes OK, strongly calls for a "if ain't broken don't fix it".
"It does cost a lot of money to patent something, so it's not something one does on a whim."
Except when:
1. You already have a "corporate patenting engine". This heavily reduce the per-patent cost, and even may incentivise patenting "whatever you come with".
2. Money doesn't come from your own pocket, i.e.: comes from public funds.
"as opposed to "does not check if anything works" which the GP claimed... You may think they are obvious or not - but they at least work."
Given that there have been patents granted to perpetual motion devices, the speculation that not all patent applications are properly grounded seems quite plausible.
"Patents cannot violate the laws of physics"
I think you chose the wrong verb. Patents *shouldn't* violate the laws of physics. There, corrected for you.
"you'll get it denied"
Another wrong verb choice. It should read "you *may* get it denied".
"Additionally, patents last for 17 years"
Or are they 20?
"You cannot extend them beyond that"
Or you can make them bullshit enough so it precludes other similar but still relevant patents to hit your covered field -except from you. It is the patent variant of website development: "I like that, but can you color it in blue?"
"The safety features that work in racing are cages, seats, harnesses & helmets. Internal airbags haven't found their way into racing cars."
So what? Might it be racing cars and transport cars have different requirements?
"Key phrase here is "heading towards.""
Yes, you are right on this.
"Until we have a 100% post-scarcity system that can maintain itself indefinitely without a human twitching a finger, labor does not mean shit"
Because one evening we'll go to bed on XIX century industrial revolution England and the next morning we'll awake on Star Trek.
"Heading towards" has indeed a value because things are neither black or white and we'd better cope also with the greyish palette or we'll have big troubles.
"and the state itself needs to have slightly less power than a dead cockroach."
It's curious then, that the most flourishing years in EU were postwar ones when state and state-owned corporations had a strong saying on overall economy and even in USA Federal owned money had a stronger saying than today. It's also curious that this state of affairs started to dismatle as soon as -starting on Reagan/Tatcher days, these state-owned corps were forced to go to private hands and, at the same time, inequality indicators started to grow. It's also curiuous that, on those productive fields were the privatization process in Europe hasn't totally finished (transport infrastructure, health and education, mainly), the more we go for the privatization route, the more the related wellness indicators fall.
"The fact that he was able too build those is very good evidence that he is indeed self-sufficient without them. [...] The fact that he uses them only occasionally is interesting."
Well, we are quite self-sufficient without airliners (as demonstrated by the fact that we can build them without using them), but still we find them useful (that's why we build them). And we use them only occasionally too!
"The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in."
That's make sense on a society where labour makes a difference, but we are heading to a society were labour means shit and what really meets ends is ownership of increasingly labour-less means of production. A totally different scenario.
"The real test I would like to see is this:
Everybody above 18 years included (A), minimal (B), long or permanent (C) duration. (B) could be as low as $1 a month, but increasing/changing with time."
Near the mark, but still not a bulleye.
It is called UBI fo a reason: if it's not Universal, then it's not UBI; if it isn't large enough to cover a person's Basic expenses, then it's not UBI; if it isn't Income you can choose how to expend, then it's not UBI.
For an experiment to test what UBI is, it *has* to be Universal, large enough to cover Basic needs and be a real Income, because it comes as a whole lot and it *has* to be expansive enough as to really affect global economy because that's exactly what their detractors (me included) focus on. Less than that, it proves shit.
In other words, if you really want to test UBI, deploy an UBI set instead of something which doesn't resemble it in the slightest.
"...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs"
I'd say that, in order to bash UBI programs... you need to focus on UBI program!
"2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. "
This looks like stupid politicians doing their stupid things at their best (because, frankly, it works).
So, in order to study how "unconditional basic income works" you experiment focus on a very conditionally chosen target? WTF!!!???
"And yet, in the past year or so I've noticed that almost everyone I work with, in 2 completely unrelated industries, wear one, as does almost everyone I interact with socially."
That has a name: "confirmation bias" Did you know about it?
Yes, your environment is keen about smartwatches. In other places you can't "live" without a Montblanc pen or a Rolex watch.
Yes, there are a lot of places which exhibit "cliche totems".
Even worse than the Great Mobile Drought from 1536!?
"At least half the people that apply for a job don't show up their first day"
Quite aligned with the fact that you don't answer to at least half of the resumes you get.
How is it that when "they" do it is "damn lazies" but when you do it is "bussiness as usual"?
"It can be done, there are PLENTY of people that have succeeded despite starting at the back"
Define PLENTY. How much is "PLENTY"? 50%? 10%? 1%? 0.001%?
"I still believe the US gives some of the best opportunities in the world"
Keyword "believe".