I see it systemic of the real problems. Until they get fixed things will not change appreciably. You can see the symptoms almost everywhere in the U.S. and it is a sharp contrast to even 20 years ago. Simply put people feel the U.S. is becoming less and less of a place where you work and reap the rewards of that work and they feel much less empowered to make a change. There are many reasons for this but the almost complete breakdown of the political system due to mass corruption to me is one of the largest factors. The prevalence of the new corporate monopoly/colluded oligopoly also contributes to this. Utiliies, internet, cell phones, insurance, oil there are too many example industries to mention. I think the numerous polls of low confidence in the government along with many other indicators. You can also just talk to people and get this sense. It has reached a point where it is actively demotivating a large portion of an entire generation. The only thing that is making this a slower transition is that the U.S. has exported the corporate colonialism model to many other countries making them less attractive. That said most people can already detect a shift away from the U.S. for lots of new development.
I suspect soon another country will rise as being "the place to get things done" and some of the most ambitious talent from the U.S. will migrate there to accomplish things. Then corruption will increase there and wash, rinse, repeat. In the end the people who really want to get things done and are clever enough will naturally migrate to the areas that grant more freedoms, less taxation (so they can realize their goals faster) and have better infrastructure (immovable tools). That seems just logical to me.
It's interesting to see that people and governments actually think implementing rules, laws or other such nonsense they can stop the natural reaction to these changes. There are so many examples where this hasn't worked (Soviet Union, North Korea, Czech Republic after WW2, etc, etc). Even when people stayed productivity suffered immensely because slaves produce at much lower levels than motivated workers. Seems the carrot is a better motivator than the stick.
This is how I see having lived and worked in a few different countries so far.
Here are some reasons from somebody that uses both GNOME 3 and Windows 7 on a daily basis:
This is not meant to be a slight in any way but I suspect you did not use GNOME 2 very much. Several of the things you mention are in G2 already. I note them below.
I should mention these were also present without being hostile to new or power users. To me G3 is just not good for either of those groups which begs the question who IS it targeted at?
New users don't know the "magic keys" and struggle to get basic tasks done. It is very unintuitive in this aspect. I support and have rolled out G 2.x to more than 20 users. Every single one of them could get up to speed within 10 - 20 minutes on their own. When I tested G3 with 4 "average" users none of them were using it on their own within 20 minutes. The fact that this page exists : https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet shows exactly what I am talking about.
Power users have simply been crippled in G3. For them the one app focus is the death knell of productivity and the an extra keystroke or 2 to launching apps, changing desktops, getting anywhere is just insult to injury.
I organize your comments into a couple categories.
New G3 functionality:
* In Windows, if I want to switch to an application that has multiple windows (like a chat application) and I used Alt+Tab, it only brings up one window and I have to use Alt+Tab multiple times in succession to get all of the windows up. In GNOME 3, application windows are grouped by default so if I switch to my chat window, it also brings up my buddy list. If I want to switch to a specific window only, it lets me do that too with minimal effort.
* It creates multiple desktops on-the-fly. I used to be the kind of person who had 4 desktops in a square formation, each for different programs, but with the new Alt+Tab functionality that has become rather outdated to me. In the event that I do need another desktop and I drag an application to another desktop, it makes a new, empty one right below it. My desktops dynamically adapt to my workflow instead of the other way around.
* I can click the application name in the top bar and close every single window owned by the application instead of hunting them all down.
G2 functionality that was already there:
* In Windows I feel like the Start menu is hard to navigate properly. Applications are sometimes grouped into folders and some aren't. There are no categories whatsoever. In GNOME 3 I not only get the same, handy "search" function that Windows 7 has, but I also get a much more intelligent application list which groups them by category and sorts them alphabetically without them being shoved into pointless folders.
* Chat integration! I used to be a Pidgin fan when it comes to IM, but I tried Empathy and, while it has less features than Pidgin, it has just enough for me and it makes up for the lost features by being extremely simplistic and easy to use. No matter what window I have brought to the forefront, I can quickly respond from the nice little pop-up at the bottom of the screen without switching windows. Changing my availability from the status menu in the upper-right corner is also very nice since I don't have to hunt for a program icon in the "notification tray" or whatever people call it.
Poor justification for removing features (i.e. they could be done in G2 with ease):
* In Windows I feel like my application launchers are a distraction from my work. GNOME 3 helps me stay focused (yes this is an actual problem for me) by keeping the icons on the Activity overview, which is just as easy to open as the Start menu (Windows key).
* The clock is in the center of the top bar instead of useless white space. This isn't huge but it feels like a much better place for a clock than being shoved in the corner with a tiny font. This way it's larger easier to read from a distance and, sin
I would be more than happy to see a new approach taken. I just would like to see that approach done from a perspective of increasing productivity rather than decreasing it. I know I'm an oddball but to me my PC is a tool to you know actually get things done. GNOME 3 is simply not designed with this in mind, in fact it's focus is the opposite. Yes there are a number of things they do that I like but I think this article http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-3.html and especially the section titled "Your computer is not a smartphone" sums up my experiences.
Someone wake me when a new desktop wants to make things MORE productive. And yes there are numerous ways to do it. A couple off the top of my head would be:
- A task centric design that quickly lets you spawn new desktops with layouts you predesign (like firing up a browser, terminal and gedit in a particular configuration)
- Screen space saving approaches like moving the title bar to a vertical tab like protrusion on the side with the min, max and close buttons or autohiding the title bar
- A search bar like in gnome 3 the allows you to choose the app to launch the results in (default web browser if searching the web, file manager if searching files, network browser if searching shares, etc)
All of these can look good AND increase productivity but there seems little interest in that. Instead lets make more smartphone interfaces for desktops, THAT will increase productivity for those of us still trying to do work.
The only way to stop this sort of thing is to punish the politicians that continue to foist this upon us. A clear statement "Vote for or support this kind of legislation and you will not be re-elected" is what is needed. Only then will the continual stream of rights erosion stop. The vested players have considerable resources so they will keep trying. It's only when the cost of taking their money is too great that they will stop or so I hope. I hope the Europeans are taking note of the people that brought and voted for this just as the Americans should be noting anyone that was supporting SOPA/PIPA. Next time you can interact with them you should remember their efforts. I think GoDaddy might have learned but who knows.
IMO this logic leads to things like the Northern Ireland conflict, the current 2 party system in the U.S. and many other messes around the globe. There is nothing wrong with compromise but sometimes quick fixes and compromises just lead to a problem that lingers and festers. History is strewn with examples of this. I consider almost all attempts to legislate and restrict the flow of knowledge and information to be worth making a stand against. IMO patents are the economic equivalent of censorship. You might see it differently.
This is true in Europe. I worked on a IP over satellite project there and our project had to fund the lawful interception for all countries in the footprint. I'm unsure of how it is done in the U.S. because even before the patriot act some of the things they were doing were very questionable as to being constitutionally legal (carnivore anyone). It's in the government and telcos best interest to just be quiet about things like this.
Are you also happy with them dumping millions into programs and then cancelling them mid-stream? I'm sorry but if the budgeting that tenuous you might want to have less major programs and more compartentalized research that can be stopped and started easier without impacting major programs (more base fundamental research in very specific areas). These could then be placed on hold for funding shortfalls while keeping the major programs working.
As for rewriting the constitution to let NASA determine it's own level of funding, you just might want to read the constitution. None of NASA's funding is authorised by the constitution. You can go here and read it for yourself: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Besides there is no anti-trust any more since the system is setup to create monopolies. Whether by IP, right of way, bandwidth auctions, laws forbidding municipal internet offerings or other actions if you look closely you will see the government creates far more monopolies that they limit or get rid of. It is the new model for business in America (buy congress and get a monopoly then bleed the potential customers). Might be why we pay more and get less for prescription drugs, health care, internet, mobile phones, etc, etc.
There is a considerably difference between capturing and storing the data and parsing it and operating logic on it in real time. As you point out the government stores the information. If it was so easy to process they would catch on to every (or at least a very high percentage 99+%) dangerous communication that hits the wire. The reason they don't get hit rates nearly this high is because they CAN'T process in real time that much information within their budgets. This is, however, exactly what the MPAA/RIAA expect the search engines to do and to do it on the search engines dime.
I should mention that storing all that data is really only useful if you know who you want to investigate. If you have a tip or a target you can most likely find something incriminating on them but picking out complex communication patterns automatically is much much harder to do with that much data. I know I sure don't feel any safer having these systems around.
Basically this is a way to give money to companies for really not much. If you want to fund research you should fund it and publish the results or at least share them with other prospective developers. Nasa is paying 5 different companies to develop different concepts for the same thing. After which these companies will own their work and it won't be shared which results in Nasa basically getting a fraction of what they paid for. This is a very inefficient way to operate and probably one of the primary reasons we see little results from the massive amounts of money Nasa spends. I'm all for space exploration but this kind of wasteful spending is why Nasa's budget gets cut and more and more people feel a government funded space agency is a waste of money. If you want more value make it so that all the results are freely published and then we can build off it. That way the next contractor Nasa pays won't have to reinvent the wheel. Private company - government partnerships are IMO a very bad thing.
Or just haul those things back to L1 and contain them in the start of a scrapyard. For $10k/lbs you'd think they want to keep everything up there they spent the money to get up there. If containing it safely at L1 is not feasible then depositing it on the moon would likely be better than sending it back to earth (lower gravity well). Even though we don't have the recycling capacity up there now that doesn't mean we won't have it there or on the moon later. It just might save some mission gone awry to have some spare material around to try and jerry-rig something up. Why waste all the fuel to get it up there only to throw it away.
Well, I see it this way: there are two basic kinds of people hunters and gatherers. This is a broad generalization as we all do some of both but it works as a rough behaviour categorisation.
Apple does great with a gatherer since they show you something that is nice and pretty and the gatherer takes it. The hunter on the other hand has a very good idea of what they are looking for and for these people Apple usually is not a great fit. I see the same sort of thing when I go shopping (malls are made for gatherers, outside entrance stores are made for hunters). Mind you this is not to say gatherers are bad and hunters are good or the other way around just that they have different behaviour. If you know what you want Apple is not likely to be your choice since it has little flex to meet those criteria. If, however, you don't know what you want Apple presents a good set of functionality in a pretty package (this is not being derogative but appearance does matter more when gathering in general). This is a very simplified view but it does seem to hold up in general to what I have observed. Apple is fortunate as there seems to be a lot of gatherers out there. I also think that is why they are not so popular on/. This board has a much higher than average hunter population.
Whereas I agree the GP was overly broad in his characterization that all geeks are anti IP law I strongly suspect most are. Additionally, you make your own stated claims that while they are your opinion are stated in a factual manner. In particular:
Should IP be protected? Absolutely. I like that people get paid to be creative and provide me with entertainment. If we don't protect it and pay the people who created it (and yes, when necessary, distributed it), then we'll not have it anymore. To do that, the laws have to, and had to, change. And those laws must be enforced.
This claim has been proven false historically. There was no copyright for many years after the printing press yet published works boomed after the invention. The process of making prints of great paintings has not destroyed the industry in original works nor was music stunted before there was copyright to protect it. You must remember for the bulk of our history there was no copyright or patents. Both have been traditionally used by monarchs, governments, religion and now corporations as a means to control and monetize other's work. Before the printing press the church as the main source of scribes used to control and censor works extensively, already today we see governments, politicians and media using copyright in the exact same manner to quell dissenting viewpoints.
Piracy is out of hand today. As 'geeks', we've provided the public with the ability to break IP protection laws with impunity. It's not acceptable to the creators of such content, and it is not sustainable.
I would suggest that the concept of IP is out of control today. We can see the clear results of the laws as enforced today (stunted productivity, increased waste from legal wrangling, censorship and stifling of free speech, extreme corruption of political systems). Maybe we should just get rid of all IP law for 10 years and see what happens for a few years. Worse case you are correct and we bring them back. I somehow believe true artists will still create and maybe just maybe they will keep a larger share of their revenue.
Much like the printing press the internet changes the landscape. Maybe the biggest artists won't make millions as they do today but then again who said they have a right to do that? If they find a way to monetize their work fantastic but I don't see it as the legal responsibility of the government or the people to go out and make it so they can do this. Musicians may find that they will have to make more of their revenue from concerts and performances rather than CD sales OR they might find that people will buy music from them or donate and without a middle man they get to keep a much larger share. In the future people may find the idea of the MPAA and RIAA and possibly copyright and "IP" itself as ridiculous as most of us find the concept of the church deciding what books will be produced and distributed.
IMO it basically comes down to the question of which you value more high production cost hollywood movies or free speech. It's kind of sad but I suspect that for many people today it just might be the movies.
Alright, I accept your analogy as being more accurate. It still would be a shock when you go to sell the car to find out the AC unit (and heater, radio, etc depending on how much is in the download) has to be purchased and installed again. This still is raw greed and should lower the market value of the initial product. If they did not CLEARLY inform potential customers BEFORE purchase then that IMO is deceptive marketing.
Wow, I wonder if you would be as happy if that was your car. You can buy the car from us AND get replacement parts BUT if you sell it the new owner can't get any after market parts for it. Sorry but this is raw greed. They want money from each step of each sale just like a mafia, they have to get their cut. Anyone want to put money that this new reduced functionality is not clearly stated before purchase? I'd wager it's hidden in 4+ pages of EULA and the customer will find out when they go to sell it down the line.
You might want to read the article a bit more carefully. She states that there is a wealth of documents both in google and on the NRC (nuclear regulatory commission so it is rather unlikely this is a security issue or one of limited search for one document. She also lists several other search topics that provided similarly poor results. In particular presenting the information with no summary is not security it's poor implementation that will end up wasting the user's time, provider's bandwidth for little return. I would not ascribe to security what seems to clearly be incompetence. That argument should be left to the cable and telco companies when they transfer you to overseas support and ask you to provide all the information you just gave the last person "for security purposes".
I'm not a climatologist so take this with a grain of salt. First off the models are VERY complex and there are subtle interactions arising here and there that weren't predicted in any of them. Then again you don't need to know your skin will brown in the oven to figure out that staying in it just might be bad. The data is in and the consensus is rather clear from what I've read. Exactly how things will happen is still being debated but we can already see the effects: extreme famine in Africa, increase in severity of storms in the southern U.S. and Caribbean, high heat summers in Europe (that kill a fair number of people). Personally, I see it in a simple way:
1. Climate change will be as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing - basically we create our own nasty future and the next generations get our mess dropped in their lap and who knows we just might even wipe out our own species but hey at least we got that new ipad.
2. Climate change is not as bad as we think and we over-react in moving to a more localized and carbon neutral economy - this MAY create a short to medium term financial constriction for the time we are doing it but when the change has been made it most likely will increase the productive capacity since there will be less waste and more efficient energy usage as a result.
I really have a hard time seeing terrible fallout from this in the long term unless of course you happen to be an oil company.
You mention that you are giving up your freedoms to the government to battle climate change. What freedom exactly are you giving up? To be honest I've seen a lot of freedoms in the U.S. given up to "keep us safe from terrorism" which seems a side effect of the U.S. middle east policy. It sure seems to me that if we didn't need oil from the middle east tensions would most likely decrease there and maybe, just maybe we can get some freedoms back (say like the freedom to go through an airport with dignity in tact and without your wife/mother/daughter getting molested or the freedom to not be arrested without warrant and tossed in some foreign prison, you know things like that). Climate change would most likely be battled through regulation on energy/transportation/other energy consuming industries. How exactly will that impinge your basic freedoms or do you have a right to cheap foreign goods?
The major problem of a moon base, or simply visiting the moon, is the problem of fuel expenditures for lift off. For all the Buck Rogers si-fi we've written, we still can't carry enough fuel to get out of sight. Any system we have for getting off of the surface amounts to a zero-backup, Hail Mary. There is no plan B.
I'm not following this argument. If you can send supplies (or return vehicles) to the moon you surely can send more than one which is one of the simplest forms of backup. This is assuming it is feasible to deposit these resources or at least put them in orbit around the moon unmanned. It will increase the cost but it certainly will not be a zero-backup solution. Additionally, should the base be established alternative launch methods that are not practical on earth due to the higher gravity might find use on the moon moving forward.
The major issue I see is will. It will take a determined effort to do this and I just don't see any political organization in any country right now displaying such fortitude in any areas that are not in the policing or commercial realms.
Did you read the article? They are not saying "This matter is settled and no future scientists may ever question it". What they are doing is stopping the teachers that teach there is climate change from being harassed and pressured into not teaching it or into also teaching the "there is no climate change" point of view much like teaching "creationism" if they teach evolution. Basically, what they are saying is that you can teach the prevalent scientific theories without teaching the opposite or alternate theories that have little scientific acceptance. This doesn't seem to be such a bad thing especially if you spend the time to cover the scientific method, how it works and really make sure they understand that. I see no where they even suggested saying the matter is settled.
After how many years they realized that having everyone run as root (administrator) was a bad thing? Next they realized having some command line tools really does add power (hence powershell). Now they've realized that maybe not having a GUI on every machine might also be a boon. Hmmmm, this all seems SO familiar. Now if they could just make it so it was modifiable and freely redistributable we'd really have something useful.
There's a number of problems with NAT even for the home user. Here's just a few limitations and problems NAT created:
1. VOIP problems - See STUN or go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN . It introduces latency and complicates configuration to the point where most people just use skype because it gets around firewalls. It has at least slowed if not completely stunted the VOIP field and forced it into proprietary methods of getting around it.
2. Home user server processes - Want to host that game and have your friends join? Best hope that your game has NAT traversal and works with port forwarding then go to your router and configure the port forwarding. Oh and multiple PCs behind the router might have problems since the port only gets forwarded to 1 PC.
3. VPN Clients - Ever wanted to access work from home? Try using a PPTP or IPsec client from behind a firewall and see how much trouble you have doing it. A lot of support and extra programming goes into fixing this because of NAT.
4. IM filesharing - Ever had problems sharing files over MSN, Jabber or other protocols? ALL the complication and server based rerouting of file xfers through public hosted servers are because of NAT. Almost all of these problems would not happen without NAT.
5. Bittorrent, emule and other P2P apps - most of these require port forwarding to allow the sharing to work well (at least the distributed ones) making it harder fcr the average user to properly participate.
6. The untold numerous apps that are not out there using open free protocols because of NAT. Whiteboarding, conference calling, personal media sharing, the list goes on and on. ALL of these will be slowed and more will have proprietary implementations on their initial release due to NAT. It adds an extra problem to almost ANY P2P application making distributed ANYTHING harder. Having the protocols proprietary locks the users in and decreases interoperability, just look at the IM landscape nightmare. Do you run MSN messenger, Yahoo, Gtalk or other jabber protocols or skype for IMing? The mere existence and popularity of clients such as pidgin, ichat, trillium, etc would not be necessary with a standardized IM client (such as jabber).
These were the ones just off the top of my head BTW.
NAT is just a bad cludged fix to a lack of IP address space. As the grandparent post stated things would be SO much better if it just went away and that is for the home user as well as the business users. I hope this has clarified just how NAT is a BAD thing.
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I see it systemic of the real problems. Until they get fixed things will not change appreciably. You can see the symptoms almost everywhere in the U.S. and it is a sharp contrast to even 20 years ago. Simply put people feel the U.S. is becoming less and less of a place where you work and reap the rewards of that work and they feel much less empowered to make a change. There are many reasons for this but the almost complete breakdown of the political system due to mass corruption to me is one of the largest factors. The prevalence of the new corporate monopoly/colluded oligopoly also contributes to this. Utiliies, internet, cell phones, insurance, oil there are too many example industries to mention. I think the numerous polls of low confidence in the government along with many other indicators. You can also just talk to people and get this sense. It has reached a point where it is actively demotivating a large portion of an entire generation. The only thing that is making this a slower transition is that the U.S. has exported the corporate colonialism model to many other countries making them less attractive. That said most people can already detect a shift away from the U.S. for lots of new development.
I suspect soon another country will rise as being "the place to get things done" and some of the most ambitious talent from the U.S. will migrate there to accomplish things. Then corruption will increase there and wash, rinse, repeat. In the end the people who really want to get things done and are clever enough will naturally migrate to the areas that grant more freedoms, less taxation (so they can realize their goals faster) and have better infrastructure (immovable tools). That seems just logical to me.
It's interesting to see that people and governments actually think implementing rules, laws or other such nonsense they can stop the natural reaction to these changes. There are so many examples where this hasn't worked (Soviet Union, North Korea, Czech Republic after WW2, etc, etc). Even when people stayed productivity suffered immensely because slaves produce at much lower levels than motivated workers. Seems the carrot is a better motivator than the stick.
This is how I see having lived and worked in a few different countries so far.
I think that's SAP's entire business model.
Here are some reasons from somebody that uses both GNOME 3 and Windows 7 on a daily basis:
This is not meant to be a slight in any way but I suspect you did not use GNOME 2 very much. Several of the things you mention are in G2 already. I note them below. I should mention these were also present without being hostile to new or power users. To me G3 is just not good for either of those groups which begs the question who IS it targeted at?
New users don't know the "magic keys" and struggle to get basic tasks done. It is very unintuitive in this aspect. I support and have rolled out G 2.x to more than 20 users. Every single one of them could get up to speed within 10 - 20 minutes on their own. When I tested G3 with 4 "average" users none of them were using it on their own within 20 minutes. The fact that this page exists : https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet shows exactly what I am talking about.
Power users have simply been crippled in G3. For them the one app focus is the death knell of productivity and the an extra keystroke or 2 to launching apps, changing desktops, getting anywhere is just insult to injury.
I organize your comments into a couple categories.
New G3 functionality:
* In Windows, if I want to switch to an application that has multiple windows (like a chat application) and I used Alt+Tab, it only brings up one window and I have to use Alt+Tab multiple times in succession to get all of the windows up. In GNOME 3, application windows are grouped by default so if I switch to my chat window, it also brings up my buddy list. If I want to switch to a specific window only, it lets me do that too with minimal effort.
* It creates multiple desktops on-the-fly. I used to be the kind of person who had 4 desktops in a square formation, each for different programs, but with the new Alt+Tab functionality that has become rather outdated to me. In the event that I do need another desktop and I drag an application to another desktop, it makes a new, empty one right below it. My desktops dynamically adapt to my workflow instead of the other way around.
* I can click the application name in the top bar and close every single window owned by the application instead of hunting them all down.
G2 functionality that was already there:
* In Windows I feel like the Start menu is hard to navigate properly. Applications are sometimes grouped into folders and some aren't. There are no categories whatsoever. In GNOME 3 I not only get the same, handy "search" function that Windows 7 has, but I also get a much more intelligent application list which groups them by category and sorts them alphabetically without them being shoved into pointless folders.
* Chat integration! I used to be a Pidgin fan when it comes to IM, but I tried Empathy and, while it has less features than Pidgin, it has just enough for me and it makes up for the lost features by being extremely simplistic and easy to use. No matter what window I have brought to the forefront, I can quickly respond from the nice little pop-up at the bottom of the screen without switching windows. Changing my availability from the status menu in the upper-right corner is also very nice since I don't have to hunt for a program icon in the "notification tray" or whatever people call it.
Poor justification for removing features (i.e. they could be done in G2 with ease):
* In Windows I feel like my application launchers are a distraction from my work. GNOME 3 helps me stay focused (yes this is an actual problem for me) by keeping the icons on the Activity overview, which is just as easy to open as the Start menu (Windows key).
* The clock is in the center of the top bar instead of useless white space. This isn't huge but it feels like a much better place for a clock than being shoved in the corner with a tiny font. This way it's larger easier to read from a distance and, sin
I would be more than happy to see a new approach taken. I just would like to see that approach done from a perspective of increasing productivity rather than decreasing it. I know I'm an oddball but to me my PC is a tool to you know actually get things done. GNOME 3 is simply not designed with this in mind, in fact it's focus is the opposite. Yes there are a number of things they do that I like but I think this article http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-3.html and especially the section titled "Your computer is not a smartphone" sums up my experiences.
Someone wake me when a new desktop wants to make things MORE productive. And yes there are numerous ways to do it. A couple off the top of my head would be:
- A task centric design that quickly lets you spawn new desktops with layouts you predesign (like firing up a browser, terminal and gedit in a particular configuration)
- Screen space saving approaches like moving the title bar to a vertical tab like protrusion on the side with the min, max and close buttons or autohiding the title bar
- A search bar like in gnome 3 the allows you to choose the app to launch the results in (default web browser if searching the web, file manager if searching files, network browser if searching shares, etc)
All of these can look good AND increase productivity but there seems little interest in that. Instead lets make more smartphone interfaces for desktops, THAT will increase productivity for those of us still trying to do work.
Thanks for the link. Gotta love the onion.
The only way to stop this sort of thing is to punish the politicians that continue to foist this upon us. A clear statement "Vote for or support this kind of legislation and you will not be re-elected" is what is needed. Only then will the continual stream of rights erosion stop. The vested players have considerable resources so they will keep trying. It's only when the cost of taking their money is too great that they will stop or so I hope. I hope the Europeans are taking note of the people that brought and voted for this just as the Americans should be noting anyone that was supporting SOPA/PIPA. Next time you can interact with them you should remember their efforts. I think GoDaddy might have learned but who knows.
IMO this logic leads to things like the Northern Ireland conflict, the current 2 party system in the U.S. and many other messes around the globe. There is nothing wrong with compromise but sometimes quick fixes and compromises just lead to a problem that lingers and festers. History is strewn with examples of this. I consider almost all attempts to legislate and restrict the flow of knowledge and information to be worth making a stand against. IMO patents are the economic equivalent of censorship. You might see it differently.
This is true in Europe. I worked on a IP over satellite project there and our project had to fund the lawful interception for all countries in the footprint. I'm unsure of how it is done in the U.S. because even before the patriot act some of the things they were doing were very questionable as to being constitutionally legal (carnivore anyone). It's in the government and telcos best interest to just be quiet about things like this.
Are you also happy with them dumping millions into programs and then cancelling them mid-stream? I'm sorry but if the budgeting that tenuous you might want to have less major programs and more compartentalized research that can be stopped and started easier without impacting major programs (more base fundamental research in very specific areas). These could then be placed on hold for funding shortfalls while keeping the major programs working.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Rendezvous_Asteroid_Flyby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Telecommunications_Orbiter
As for rewriting the constitution to let NASA determine it's own level of funding, you just might want to read the constitution. None of NASA's funding is authorised by the constitution. You can go here and read it for yourself: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Sure but don't you think NASA should have made that decision back in 2009 BEFORE promising to deliver on the project?
Wow, just wow. Thanks for posting that link. Great to see Europeans mobilizing like this.
Besides there is no anti-trust any more since the system is setup to create monopolies. Whether by IP, right of way, bandwidth auctions, laws forbidding municipal internet offerings or other actions if you look closely you will see the government creates far more monopolies that they limit or get rid of. It is the new model for business in America (buy congress and get a monopoly then bleed the potential customers). Might be why we pay more and get less for prescription drugs, health care, internet, mobile phones, etc, etc.
There is a considerably difference between capturing and storing the data and parsing it and operating logic on it in real time. As you point out the government stores the information. If it was so easy to process they would catch on to every (or at least a very high percentage 99+%) dangerous communication that hits the wire. The reason they don't get hit rates nearly this high is because they CAN'T process in real time that much information within their budgets. This is, however, exactly what the MPAA/RIAA expect the search engines to do and to do it on the search engines dime.
I should mention that storing all that data is really only useful if you know who you want to investigate. If you have a tip or a target you can most likely find something incriminating on them but picking out complex communication patterns automatically is much much harder to do with that much data. I know I sure don't feel any safer having these systems around.
Basically this is a way to give money to companies for really not much. If you want to fund research you should fund it and publish the results or at least share them with other prospective developers. Nasa is paying 5 different companies to develop different concepts for the same thing. After which these companies will own their work and it won't be shared which results in Nasa basically getting a fraction of what they paid for. This is a very inefficient way to operate and probably one of the primary reasons we see little results from the massive amounts of money Nasa spends. I'm all for space exploration but this kind of wasteful spending is why Nasa's budget gets cut and more and more people feel a government funded space agency is a waste of money. If you want more value make it so that all the results are freely published and then we can build off it. That way the next contractor Nasa pays won't have to reinvent the wheel. Private company - government partnerships are IMO a very bad thing.
Or just haul those things back to L1 and contain them in the start of a scrapyard. For $10k/lbs you'd think they want to keep everything up there they spent the money to get up there. If containing it safely at L1 is not feasible then depositing it on the moon would likely be better than sending it back to earth (lower gravity well). Even though we don't have the recycling capacity up there now that doesn't mean we won't have it there or on the moon later. It just might save some mission gone awry to have some spare material around to try and jerry-rig something up. Why waste all the fuel to get it up there only to throw it away.
Well, I see it this way: there are two basic kinds of people hunters and gatherers. This is a broad generalization as we all do some of both but it works as a rough behaviour categorisation.
/. This board has a much higher than average hunter population.
Apple does great with a gatherer since they show you something that is nice and pretty and the gatherer takes it. The hunter on the other hand has a very good idea of what they are looking for and for these people Apple usually is not a great fit. I see the same sort of thing when I go shopping (malls are made for gatherers, outside entrance stores are made for hunters). Mind you this is not to say gatherers are bad and hunters are good or the other way around just that they have different behaviour. If you know what you want Apple is not likely to be your choice since it has little flex to meet those criteria. If, however, you don't know what you want Apple presents a good set of functionality in a pretty package (this is not being derogative but appearance does matter more when gathering in general). This is a very simplified view but it does seem to hold up in general to what I have observed. Apple is fortunate as there seems to be a lot of gatherers out there. I also think that is why they are not so popular on
Just my observation
Should IP be protected? Absolutely. I like that people get paid to be creative and provide me with entertainment. If we don't protect it and pay the people who created it (and yes, when necessary, distributed it), then we'll not have it anymore. To do that, the laws have to, and had to, change. And those laws must be enforced.
This claim has been proven false historically. There was no copyright for many years after the printing press yet published works boomed after the invention. The process of making prints of great paintings has not destroyed the industry in original works nor was music stunted before there was copyright to protect it. You must remember for the bulk of our history there was no copyright or patents. Both have been traditionally used by monarchs, governments, religion and now corporations as a means to control and monetize other's work. Before the printing press the church as the main source of scribes used to control and censor works extensively, already today we see governments, politicians and media using copyright in the exact same manner to quell dissenting viewpoints.
Piracy is out of hand today. As 'geeks', we've provided the public with the ability to break IP protection laws with impunity. It's not acceptable to the creators of such content, and it is not sustainable.
I would suggest that the concept of IP is out of control today. We can see the clear results of the laws as enforced today (stunted productivity, increased waste from legal wrangling, censorship and stifling of free speech, extreme corruption of political systems). Maybe we should just get rid of all IP law for 10 years and see what happens for a few years. Worse case you are correct and we bring them back. I somehow believe true artists will still create and maybe just maybe they will keep a larger share of their revenue.
Much like the printing press the internet changes the landscape. Maybe the biggest artists won't make millions as they do today but then again who said they have a right to do that? If they find a way to monetize their work fantastic but I don't see it as the legal responsibility of the government or the people to go out and make it so they can do this. Musicians may find that they will have to make more of their revenue from concerts and performances rather than CD sales OR they might find that people will buy music from them or donate and without a middle man they get to keep a much larger share. In the future people may find the idea of the MPAA and RIAA and possibly copyright and "IP" itself as ridiculous as most of us find the concept of the church deciding what books will be produced and distributed.
IMO it basically comes down to the question of which you value more high production cost hollywood movies or free speech. It's kind of sad but I suspect that for many people today it just might be the movies.
Alright, I accept your analogy as being more accurate. It still would be a shock when you go to sell the car to find out the AC unit (and heater, radio, etc depending on how much is in the download) has to be purchased and installed again. This still is raw greed and should lower the market value of the initial product. If they did not CLEARLY inform potential customers BEFORE purchase then that IMO is deceptive marketing.
Wow, I wonder if you would be as happy if that was your car. You can buy the car from us AND get replacement parts BUT if you sell it the new owner can't get any after market parts for it. Sorry but this is raw greed. They want money from each step of each sale just like a mafia, they have to get their cut. Anyone want to put money that this new reduced functionality is not clearly stated before purchase? I'd wager it's hidden in 4+ pages of EULA and the customer will find out when they go to sell it down the line.
You might want to read the article a bit more carefully. She states that there is a wealth of documents both in google and on the NRC (nuclear regulatory commission so it is rather unlikely this is a security issue or one of limited search for one document. She also lists several other search topics that provided similarly poor results. In particular presenting the information with no summary is not security it's poor implementation that will end up wasting the user's time, provider's bandwidth for little return. I would not ascribe to security what seems to clearly be incompetence. That argument should be left to the cable and telco companies when they transfer you to overseas support and ask you to provide all the information you just gave the last person "for security purposes".
I'm not a climatologist so take this with a grain of salt. First off the models are VERY complex and there are subtle interactions arising here and there that weren't predicted in any of them. Then again you don't need to know your skin will brown in the oven to figure out that staying in it just might be bad. The data is in and the consensus is rather clear from what I've read. Exactly how things will happen is still being debated but we can already see the effects: extreme famine in Africa, increase in severity of storms in the southern U.S. and Caribbean, high heat summers in Europe (that kill a fair number of people). Personally, I see it in a simple way:
1. Climate change will be as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing - basically we create our own nasty future and the next generations get our mess dropped in their lap and who knows we just might even wipe out our own species but hey at least we got that new ipad.
2. Climate change is not as bad as we think and we over-react in moving to a more localized and carbon neutral economy - this MAY create a short to medium term financial constriction for the time we are doing it but when the change has been made it most likely will increase the productive capacity since there will be less waste and more efficient energy usage as a result.
I really have a hard time seeing terrible fallout from this in the long term unless of course you happen to be an oil company.
You mention that you are giving up your freedoms to the government to battle climate change. What freedom exactly are you giving up? To be honest I've seen a lot of freedoms in the U.S. given up to "keep us safe from terrorism" which seems a side effect of the U.S. middle east policy. It sure seems to me that if we didn't need oil from the middle east tensions would most likely decrease there and maybe, just maybe we can get some freedoms back (say like the freedom to go through an airport with dignity in tact and without your wife/mother/daughter getting molested or the freedom to not be arrested without warrant and tossed in some foreign prison, you know things like that). Climate change would most likely be battled through regulation on energy/transportation/other energy consuming industries. How exactly will that impinge your basic freedoms or do you have a right to cheap foreign goods?
The major problem of a moon base, or simply visiting the moon, is the problem of fuel expenditures for lift off. For all the Buck Rogers si-fi we've written, we still can't carry enough fuel to get out of sight. Any system we have for getting off of the surface amounts to a zero-backup, Hail Mary. There is no plan B.
I'm not following this argument. If you can send supplies (or return vehicles) to the moon you surely can send more than one which is one of the simplest forms of backup. This is assuming it is feasible to deposit these resources or at least put them in orbit around the moon unmanned. It will increase the cost but it certainly will not be a zero-backup solution. Additionally, should the base be established alternative launch methods that are not practical on earth due to the higher gravity might find use on the moon moving forward.
The major issue I see is will. It will take a determined effort to do this and I just don't see any political organization in any country right now displaying such fortitude in any areas that are not in the policing or commercial realms.
Did you read the article? They are not saying "This matter is settled and no future scientists may ever question it". What they are doing is stopping the teachers that teach there is climate change from being harassed and pressured into not teaching it or into also teaching the "there is no climate change" point of view much like teaching "creationism" if they teach evolution. Basically, what they are saying is that you can teach the prevalent scientific theories without teaching the opposite or alternate theories that have little scientific acceptance. This doesn't seem to be such a bad thing especially if you spend the time to cover the scientific method, how it works and really make sure they understand that. I see no where they even suggested saying the matter is settled.
After how many years they realized that having everyone run as root (administrator) was a bad thing? Next they realized having some command line tools really does add power (hence powershell). Now they've realized that maybe not having a GUI on every machine might also be a boon. Hmmmm, this all seems SO familiar. Now if they could just make it so it was modifiable and freely redistributable we'd really have something useful.
There's a number of problems with NAT even for the home user. Here's just a few limitations and problems NAT created:
1. VOIP problems - See STUN or go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN . It introduces latency and complicates configuration to the point where most people just use skype because it gets around firewalls. It has at least slowed if not completely stunted the VOIP field and forced it into proprietary methods of getting around it.
2. Home user server processes - Want to host that game and have your friends join? Best hope that your game has NAT traversal and works with port forwarding then go to your router and configure the port forwarding. Oh and multiple PCs behind the router might have problems since the port only gets forwarded to 1 PC.
3. VPN Clients - Ever wanted to access work from home? Try using a PPTP or IPsec client from behind a firewall and see how much trouble you have doing it. A lot of support and extra programming goes into fixing this because of NAT.
4. IM filesharing - Ever had problems sharing files over MSN, Jabber or other protocols? ALL the complication and server based rerouting of file xfers through public hosted servers are because of NAT. Almost all of these problems would not happen without NAT.
5. Bittorrent, emule and other P2P apps - most of these require port forwarding to allow the sharing to work well (at least the distributed ones) making it harder fcr the average user to properly participate.
6. The untold numerous apps that are not out there using open free protocols because of NAT. Whiteboarding, conference calling, personal media sharing, the list goes on and on. ALL of these will be slowed and more will have proprietary implementations on their initial release due to NAT. It adds an extra problem to almost ANY P2P application making distributed ANYTHING harder. Having the protocols proprietary locks the users in and decreases interoperability, just look at the IM landscape nightmare. Do you run MSN messenger, Yahoo, Gtalk or other jabber protocols or skype for IMing? The mere existence and popularity of clients such as pidgin, ichat, trillium, etc would not be necessary with a standardized IM client (such as jabber).
These were the ones just off the top of my head BTW.
NAT is just a bad cludged fix to a lack of IP address space. As the grandparent post stated things would be SO much better if it just went away and that is for the home user as well as the business users. I hope this has clarified just how NAT is a BAD thing.