I can say that it is good that a convention where the focus on gaming is valued more than the focus on the "market for gaming".
Hell... Penny Arcade was pushing the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons table game not too long ago. I would guess that this is a fairly small market, but they don't care because they enjoy the game.
I've worked on embedded systems projects that have used fiber internally as a communications buffer. If a short piece is bent, it breaks and needs to be replaced. And fiber costs more than the normal stuff used for passing messages back and forth... so the bend-and-break (or stretch-and-break) factor is real.
I don't disagree that the majority of driving in SD sucks, but I was through that area last week and can assure you that there's more to see than tumbleweeds. It isn't just a matter of getting off the main roads. You need to get off, and also know which side roads to take. And it's doubtful that your GPS will guide you through the right ones because the best ones have speed limits set to 15 MPH.
With all the things to do in South Dakota... the fact that you'd single out Mount Rushmore as "the best" shows that you aren't aware of the beauty of the area surrounding it. Next time you are out that way, skip the stop at Rushmore and drive along the nearby section of Route 16-A that traces curves around the Black Hills. Then head into Custer Park and see over a thousand buffalo on the Wildlife Loop. After a few hours of driving on this path, you'll take back what you said about turning around in SD after you've seen Rushmore. Turns out, that's only the beginning.
I am shocked that the summary lists the music industry as the reason that CDs have endured as long as they have. The music industry enjoyed record CD sales during the 1990s. Those days are long gone. Online distribution is the medium of choice for that.
CDs have been relegated to the ranks of $0.50 disposal media storage for 650 MBs at a time. When this disc space is used so ~200 Mp3s can be "backed up" in case of Mp3 device or harddrive failure... then you can argue that the "music industry" is being supported by the continued usage of CDs. But don't be fooled... the only reason to keep CDs around is because of the need to cheap, disposal media distribution. Neither e-mail, online storage, or UBS memory sticks quite fit the same niche as the standard CD.
Even if we're talking about actually-free channels (do any still exist?)
Yes, I watch fuzzy broadcast TV on my flat screen HDTV for free. When the images ghost on the screen, it brings back old memories of watching football on Sunday afternoons at my grandfathers house (may he rest in peace).
What you pay for is Cable TV so you can watch ESPN and MTV and the Discovery Channel or the "other" 6 channels that (in America) NBC/GE is using to cover the non-showcase events.
I got 7 of these in my Google Spam folder on August 5th. None of them look remotely like spam. You can VERY EASILY see that the links don't point to cnn.com by OnMouseOvering the links when reading them in Google's client.
That being said, I am not sure if legit CNN.com e-mails are going to start getting flagged (not that I think many people would let CNN.com deliver them "news" in the first place) but CNN.com itself is a disaster-pot of obnoxious Flash ads with Dancing Mortgage rates and Spinning Whirlwinds.
If they really want goodwill, they should make it possible for their site to load reliably with No-Script turned on. As it stands, I only use them for a very limited amount of content that they provide (sports stories and the politic stories not picked up on Slashdot).
The new rules are "heavy on math". [...] The two numbers are then combined for the final score.
Sounds like they are adding "addition" and "subtraction" to the repertoire of the Olympics judges. 6.5 + (10 - 3.2) = confused audience!
And here I was thinking that the players would be scored based on the maximum rate of change of velocity they achieve at peak twirl using differential calculus.
I have serious problems with the idea of my medical history being "made available" (whether for sale or free), but I cannot articulate a good argument that would mean that the simple existence of a national health treatment database is a bad thing.
I mean, my house could burn and I would lose the paper copies of all that stuff. I don't have it all committed to memory. I have not had "my own doctor" for anything since college (I am 25). I could see a "medical database" working *if* it gives me absolute control over where the information is sold.
Tell you what... here is what I would support. Let them create the database, but require that I am the *only* person who can request information out of it. Then, when an employer or insurer wants my medical history, they can request that I provide a copy of it, much like I am required to provide a copy of my academic transcript to an employer or potential graduate school application.
So, let the insurance company "request" a copy of my information from me. Then let me forward the request to the "medical database". That authorizes the "medical database" to send a bill to the insurance company, who will send a copy of the records when the payment is received.
Benefits of specialization. As the bottom level of the "Cloud Infrastructure" Red Hat can service customers who actually own the clouds better (i.e. cheaper) than they can service themselves.
Sure, Amazon *could* retain an internal staff to manage the server bits, but it is easier from them to worry about their application software and share the cost of managing the clouds with Red Hat's other customers.
Of course, there eventually comes a point in time when it will be cheaper for Amazon to simply BUY Red Hat and then things will get real interesting.
The article claims that Red Hat's new CEO, Jim Whitehurst, is the former COO at Delta Airlines, so a sky-related term like "Cloud Computing" is appropriate.
Further down in the article they clarify the confusion in the article summary. Amazon pays big bucks to Red Hat for support so they don't have to worry about the massive infrastructure of servers (clouds) that run their online sales business. Similarly, Google uses Red Hat to deploy a percentage of their search business, but they don't pay for it because they maintain it all in-house.
Ubuntu isn't competition because that organization isn't selling support. Jim quite astutely points out that Red Hat is not a software company (because the bits are free). Red Hat is a support company who has the capability to manage, maintenance, fix, and upgrade mission critical software for its customers. Ergo, Ubunutu doesn't compete with them, but Suse/Novell does.
This shouldn't be anything new to the Slashdot audience, but since it made it to the mainpage I figure it is worth clarifying.
Pelosi was on the Daily Show the other day and she spoke specifically about the Iraq war. The Democratic majority in the House is not able to sway the will of the Congress because rules necessitate a 2/3rds majority when the President disagrees. Since there aren't 16 Republicans in the Senate who oppose the war, it doesn't matter what the Democrats think. Would you rather have Congress deadlocked in a debate about the war... or would you rather have them spending time working the troubles with the economy?
Bush just signed a bill that made its way through Congress today that does lots of good things for the economy. He did this despite saying that he DOESN'T approve of it. He signed it because he knew that not signing it wasn't an option given the circumstances.
Mind you... the political system is working. Things are not supposed to work quickly because the lives of 400 Million Americans are at stake. It is hard to balance all those issues... and since things had gone so horribly badly in the last five years it will take time before the ship rights itself. Just be patient... with a Democrat in the White House come January the changes that are needed will get done.
Ray - Not only do you do great things for "The People", but I believe your work is helping to fix the typical feeling of mistrust that most Americans have for lawyers.
I, for one, feel better knowing that not all lawyers are as portrayed in the movies.
And I am glad you can make jokes about yourself. I have long believed that this ability is one of the more noble qualities that a person can have... and somebody who can pull it off well is worthy of a great deal of respect.
What is it about LaTeX that makes it so special? Can't scientific documents be laid out correctly in a word processor? I ask out of ignorance, not rhetoric.
If you've ever been foolish enough volunteer to be the editor for a group project where everybody writes their own chapter, you'll understand that everybody formats their work differently. If you ever sought the more challenging task of making these independent submissions conform to an aesthetically pleasing palette, you'll be able to espouse how much it sucked because word processors aren't built to be able to intelligently mark the formatting of each word in the document. If you've ever be super-foolish and tried incorporating this hypothetical group project in a 2 column format that is preferable for formal publication in Microsoft Word, you probably ended up jumping out a second story window, and I commend your courageousness for surviving the fall.
Word processors simply aren't designed to provide a similar look and feel for all publications feeding into an academic journal... and the journals use the power of formalized LaTeX typesetting templates to take the burden of making the document look good off their shoulders (as they should).
I've taken a couple of stabs at LaTeX through the years. I have no real need for a proper type-setting platform like LaTeX because I am not in the world of academia that demands it, so I was never able to get past the learning curve imposed by LaTeX.
Now, let me say... I get it. I understand how invaluable it is to submit a paper in a format so less time can be wasted "making it pretty" and more can be spent on the meat of the work. That fact doesn't elude me.
What I never figured out was how to download a stinking template from IEEE and start writing a document. I never figured out how to compose my own document type so I could use it to empower the written arts that I am interested in. I never got past the hurdle, so to this day I still use OpenOffice Writer as my word processor and haven't been able to "transcend" to a proper type-setting program so make all the boring formatting tasks easy.
I even read the LaTeX Wikibook a number of months ago and this didn't even get me over the hump on my way to publication.
So, I echo the sentiments of the article submitter. LaTeX is hard, and either better documentation or a better alternative is needed to make it accessible to the rest of us.
My point is that we are all spammers to a certain degree.
Okay, I will bite once more to respond to this. I like your arguments and your logic. I agree that personal promotion often takes the form of unsolicited advertisements.
Hell, I got the idea of linking to my book after seeing others do it. To a larger extent, I've seen obscure novelists on Slashdot in the last year get Mainpage articles linking back to their websites. This type of self-promotion is (almost) necessary for anybody to gain any significant amount of fame.
Though, I think there are two things that demonstratively differentiate the types of harmless self-promotion spamming that we all do from the deplorable spamming of the Spam King and the Russian Mafia (though I don't specifically know any details, I take your word that they are "bad spammers").
The first difference is money. No dollars change hands as the result of my harmless spamming. There is no requirement on the clicker of my "spam link" to pay a cent in order to access the content on the other side of the link. There is only a beggarly, "If you enjoy this, please donate." link once you get into that other page. Suffice it to say, advertisements for content that is provided free-of-charge is much different then the ads for Viagra or Pennystocks that you get in your Inbox everyday.
The second difference is tact. For my link on Slashdot to have any effect at all, I need to get modded up. If you look at my posting history, I take unconventional positions and make very little attempt to "game the system" by posting stuff just to see it modded up. So, knowing that I am not simply trying to whore-karma (because I have better things to do with my time), then you can rest easy knowing that you'll never see my link unless I actually make a positive contribution to a conversation in a different context.
And a third, indirect, reason that the link to the novel webpage isn't harmless is because it doesn't represent my core business. I am a software engineer. If I were promoting a Contracting Business, then the link would be unethical. Writing is a hobby for me. Certainly, I have a right to promote this labor of love that I have undertaken? If the dynamic ever switched and I got to the point where a significant percentage of my annual income was being generated through my writing, I would certainly take my Slashdot signature link down.
The Government should rather focus on implementing strategies to block spam.
Here is where I will take an uncharacteristic view and say I think the government should back off and let businesses handle it. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have a vested interest to fight spam. As long as the government ensures that no individual or corporation becomes strong enough to use Spam as their core business model, I think we'll be all right. This small bit of regulation would be a better use of my tax dollars than the Millions that could be poured into a government funding sieve in a misguided effort to "Save the Interwebs". The government need only prevent the business model from taking root.
Perhaps China has decided to become capitalist after all. Since the reporters need the Internet, why not charge them (and thereby their evil capitalist pig networks) ridiculous amounts of money for it?
Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, the government regulates the industry in a way that basically ensures affordable usage for everybody. What's it called when the community gets to share utilization of a resource? It isn't a perfect analogy because the internet in America isn't state-run, but the small fee that is charged helps keep the system honest.
Plus, we all know how things get abused by human greed when they are free.
===
On the other hand, the Olympics are a major world event and this is the first one during an era where mobile computing is so widespread that Tom & Dick Smith could theoretically show up and try to monetize the games by "covering" the Olympics on their blogs. If China sees the sheer volume of independent journalists as a threat to the stability of the network, then they are correct to shut it down by inflating the prices. However, I have a hard time believing that a city as large as Beijing isn't equipped to handle double or triple the internet load on a particular week.
I'm speechless. I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or if you are genuinely annoyed?
Given the context of the conversation, I have to hope that it is the former. But you raise a valid point... I've had the link up for a good year and haven't made any strides to publish a better edited version of the story.
There is a lot to be said of the value of human life. It is priceless. It is a gift.
But a man who would earn his fortune in the despicable business of Spam? That is not a gift.
And the woman would would choose such a man as her partner? Unless she had no idea what his business was, she isn't innocent either.
Women (and men) need to learn to identify certain undesirable traits in the partners they choose. It is a choice to be with a criminal (yes, Spam is a crime), and there should be less sympathy for somebody who took that risk.
I am not saying the wife deserved it. I am just saying she knew what kind of relationship she was getting into when she started it.
Everything has to come from Earth and _land_ successfully - the hospital, the living quarters, the supplies, the mining factory, last but not least - the stuff that looks for spots to mine. Otherwise you cannot live long enough to build and fix stuff. What happens if there's nothing to mine where you landed?
My argument is more one of scalability. I think building a colony that can double its size would be easier of Mars than in the Asteroid Belt. I believe this because I think it is possible to design a system that will be able to provide life-support for several Mars colonists that can be mailed from Earth on rockets that presently exist (or are in development). I have not begun to think about what it would take for the colonists on Mars to expand these Earth-delivered systems so that they can expand their footprint on the Martian surface. In my mind, the systems would be manufactured Earth-side and then delivered. Each time another 4 astronauts make the Earth-Mars voyage, another set of modules would be delivered to expand their life support systems. After 3 or 4 successful missions, I think the limiting factor would become how fast NASA can fund/build rockets that are capable of making the flight to the Red Planet. I think that present technology can be made robust enough and integrated to overcome the inhospitable nature on the surface of Mars.
I will admit, having a Space Station that can reproduce itself would be much more desirable than having a small colony on Mars. But I think the immense size that such a vehicle would need to achieve would require at least 100 missions from Earth and at the pace the space program is moving that would take 20-30 years (on top of the 5-15 years it would take to design).
So having said all that, I think "ISS-sized Colony on Mars" is actually a stepping stone to your vision for Spacecraft that can replicate themselves from the rocks in the Asteroid Belt.
And because it is Open Source, the answer is "Yes".:)
Now if only you could carry around a portable Virtual Machine Running Ubuntu that you could use to perform some quick and easy Windows fixing.
"Oh, this tool? Well, it's an operating system that I use it to fix Windows, because it doesn't have any of the flaws of Windows. But it does everything else that Windows can do too, with the mildly disappointing exception of letting you play most newer video games."
This sounds like a project that Michael Bay could sufficiently butcher (much like he did to Transformers). I say hire him and ride on his coattails so that it has a $50 Million budget and releases to 2,000 screens nationwide in 2010.
Thank you for the response. I must say, I like your vision for a space station that is capable of mining asteroids so that it can build additional versions of itself. I think this would be a wonderful engineering goal for humanity. However, given the magnitude of a vessel and the specialized equipment necessary to build advanced aircrafts, I still hold to the opinion that it would be easier to settle on Mars. I think we can agree to disagree on this, and deep down I hope to see both accomplishments made within my lifetime.
Slashdot Mirror
I can say that it is good that a convention where the focus on gaming is valued more than the focus on the "market for gaming".
Hell... Penny Arcade was pushing the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons table game not too long ago. I would guess that this is a fairly small market, but they don't care because they enjoy the game.
I've worked on embedded systems projects that have used fiber internally as a communications buffer. If a short piece is bent, it breaks and needs to be replaced. And fiber costs more than the normal stuff used for passing messages back and forth... so the bend-and-break (or stretch-and-break) factor is real.
I don't disagree that the majority of driving in SD sucks, but I was through that area last week and can assure you that there's more to see than tumbleweeds. It isn't just a matter of getting off the main roads. You need to get off, and also know which side roads to take. And it's doubtful that your GPS will guide you through the right ones because the best ones have speed limits set to 15 MPH.
With all the things to do in South Dakota... the fact that you'd single out Mount Rushmore as "the best" shows that you aren't aware of the beauty of the area surrounding it. Next time you are out that way, skip the stop at Rushmore and drive along the nearby section of Route 16-A that traces curves around the Black Hills. Then head into Custer Park and see over a thousand buffalo on the Wildlife Loop. After a few hours of driving on this path, you'll take back what you said about turning around in SD after you've seen Rushmore. Turns out, that's only the beginning.
I am shocked that the summary lists the music industry as the reason that CDs have endured as long as they have. The music industry enjoyed record CD sales during the 1990s. Those days are long gone. Online distribution is the medium of choice for that.
CDs have been relegated to the ranks of $0.50 disposal media storage for 650 MBs at a time. When this disc space is used so ~200 Mp3s can be "backed up" in case of Mp3 device or harddrive failure... then you can argue that the "music industry" is being supported by the continued usage of CDs. But don't be fooled... the only reason to keep CDs around is because of the need to cheap, disposal media distribution. Neither e-mail, online storage, or UBS memory sticks quite fit the same niche as the standard CD.
I think that people who don't have permission to install the plugins just won't be able to do so, but they wouldn't be able to install FF anyway.
If you don't have permission to install Firefox, you could always run the Portable version.
More info here
Even if we're talking about actually-free channels (do any still exist?)
Yes, I watch fuzzy broadcast TV on my flat screen HDTV for free. When the images ghost on the screen, it brings back old memories of watching football on Sunday afternoons at my grandfathers house (may he rest in peace).
What you pay for is Cable TV so you can watch ESPN and MTV and the Discovery Channel or the "other" 6 channels that (in America) NBC/GE is using to cover the non-showcase events.
I got 7 of these in my Google Spam folder on August 5th. None of them look remotely like spam. You can VERY EASILY see that the links don't point to cnn.com by OnMouseOvering the links when reading them in Google's client.
That being said, I am not sure if legit CNN.com e-mails are going to start getting flagged (not that I think many people would let CNN.com deliver them "news" in the first place) but CNN.com itself is a disaster-pot of obnoxious Flash ads with Dancing Mortgage rates and Spinning Whirlwinds.
If they really want goodwill, they should make it possible for their site to load reliably with No-Script turned on. As it stands, I only use them for a very limited amount of content that they provide (sports stories and the politic stories not picked up on Slashdot).
The new rules are "heavy on math". [...] The two numbers are then combined for the final score.
Sounds like they are adding "addition" and "subtraction" to the repertoire of the Olympics judges. 6.5 + (10 - 3.2) = confused audience!
And here I was thinking that the players would be scored based on the maximum rate of change of velocity they achieve at peak twirl using differential calculus.
I have serious problems with the idea of my medical history being "made available" (whether for sale or free), but I cannot articulate a good argument that would mean that the simple existence of a national health treatment database is a bad thing.
I mean, my house could burn and I would lose the paper copies of all that stuff. I don't have it all committed to memory. I have not had "my own doctor" for anything since college (I am 25). I could see a "medical database" working *if* it gives me absolute control over where the information is sold.
Tell you what... here is what I would support. Let them create the database, but require that I am the *only* person who can request information out of it. Then, when an employer or insurer wants my medical history, they can request that I provide a copy of it, much like I am required to provide a copy of my academic transcript to an employer or potential graduate school application.
So, let the insurance company "request" a copy of my information from me. Then let me forward the request to the "medical database". That authorizes the "medical database" to send a bill to the insurance company, who will send a copy of the records when the payment is received.
how do the expect to make revenue?
Benefits of specialization. As the bottom level of the "Cloud Infrastructure" Red Hat can service customers who actually own the clouds better (i.e. cheaper) than they can service themselves.
Sure, Amazon *could* retain an internal staff to manage the server bits, but it is easier from them to worry about their application software and share the cost of managing the clouds with Red Hat's other customers.
Of course, there eventually comes a point in time when it will be cheaper for Amazon to simply BUY Red Hat and then things will get real interesting.
The article claims that Red Hat's new CEO, Jim Whitehurst, is the former COO at Delta Airlines, so a sky-related term like "Cloud Computing" is appropriate.
Further down in the article they clarify the confusion in the article summary. Amazon pays big bucks to Red Hat for support so they don't have to worry about the massive infrastructure of servers (clouds) that run their online sales business. Similarly, Google uses Red Hat to deploy a percentage of their search business, but they don't pay for it because they maintain it all in-house.
Ubuntu isn't competition because that organization isn't selling support. Jim quite astutely points out that Red Hat is not a software company (because the bits are free). Red Hat is a support company who has the capability to manage, maintenance, fix, and upgrade mission critical software for its customers. Ergo, Ubunutu doesn't compete with them, but Suse/Novell does.
This shouldn't be anything new to the Slashdot audience, but since it made it to the mainpage I figure it is worth clarifying.
And for people whose minds think in a different temperature system:
-86.6 degree Celsius = -123.88 degree Fahrenheit
Luckily, with a spark and some oxygen the liquid ethane will burn gloriously to keep you warm.
Unluckily, you'll still eventually die.
GWB isn't any more evil than Pelosi and crew!
Pelosi was on the Daily Show the other day and she spoke specifically about the Iraq war. The Democratic majority in the House is not able to sway the will of the Congress because rules necessitate a 2/3rds majority when the President disagrees. Since there aren't 16 Republicans in the Senate who oppose the war, it doesn't matter what the Democrats think. Would you rather have Congress deadlocked in a debate about the war... or would you rather have them spending time working the troubles with the economy?
Bush just signed a bill that made its way through Congress today that does lots of good things for the economy. He did this despite saying that he DOESN'T approve of it. He signed it because he knew that not signing it wasn't an option given the circumstances.
Mind you... the political system is working. Things are not supposed to work quickly because the lives of 400 Million Americans are at stake. It is hard to balance all those issues... and since things had gone so horribly badly in the last five years it will take time before the ship rights itself. Just be patient... with a Democrat in the White House come January the changes that are needed will get done.
And a sense of humor, as well?
Ray - Not only do you do great things for "The People", but I believe your work is helping to fix the typical feeling of mistrust that most Americans have for lawyers.
I, for one, feel better knowing that not all lawyers are as portrayed in the movies.
And I am glad you can make jokes about yourself. I have long believed that this ability is one of the more noble qualities that a person can have... and somebody who can pull it off well is worthy of a great deal of respect.
Thank you.
What is it about LaTeX that makes it so special? Can't scientific documents be laid out correctly in a word processor? I ask out of ignorance, not rhetoric.
If you've ever been foolish enough volunteer to be the editor for a group project where everybody writes their own chapter, you'll understand that everybody formats their work differently. If you ever sought the more challenging task of making these independent submissions conform to an aesthetically pleasing palette, you'll be able to espouse how much it sucked because word processors aren't built to be able to intelligently mark the formatting of each word in the document. If you've ever be super-foolish and tried incorporating this hypothetical group project in a 2 column format that is preferable for formal publication in Microsoft Word, you probably ended up jumping out a second story window, and I commend your courageousness for surviving the fall.
Word processors simply aren't designed to provide a similar look and feel for all publications feeding into an academic journal... and the journals use the power of formalized LaTeX typesetting templates to take the burden of making the document look good off their shoulders (as they should).
I've taken a couple of stabs at LaTeX through the years. I have no real need for a proper type-setting platform like LaTeX because I am not in the world of academia that demands it, so I was never able to get past the learning curve imposed by LaTeX.
Now, let me say... I get it. I understand how invaluable it is to submit a paper in a format so less time can be wasted "making it pretty" and more can be spent on the meat of the work. That fact doesn't elude me.
What I never figured out was how to download a stinking template from IEEE and start writing a document. I never figured out how to compose my own document type so I could use it to empower the written arts that I am interested in. I never got past the hurdle, so to this day I still use OpenOffice Writer as my word processor and haven't been able to "transcend" to a proper type-setting program so make all the boring formatting tasks easy.
I even read the LaTeX Wikibook a number of months ago and this didn't even get me over the hump on my way to publication.
So, I echo the sentiments of the article submitter. LaTeX is hard, and either better documentation or a better alternative is needed to make it accessible to the rest of us.
My point is that we are all spammers to a certain degree.
Okay, I will bite once more to respond to this. I like your arguments and your logic. I agree that personal promotion often takes the form of unsolicited advertisements.
Hell, I got the idea of linking to my book after seeing others do it. To a larger extent, I've seen obscure novelists on Slashdot in the last year get Mainpage articles linking back to their websites. This type of self-promotion is (almost) necessary for anybody to gain any significant amount of fame.
Though, I think there are two things that demonstratively differentiate the types of harmless self-promotion spamming that we all do from the deplorable spamming of the Spam King and the Russian Mafia (though I don't specifically know any details, I take your word that they are "bad spammers").
The first difference is money. No dollars change hands as the result of my harmless spamming. There is no requirement on the clicker of my "spam link" to pay a cent in order to access the content on the other side of the link. There is only a beggarly, "If you enjoy this, please donate." link once you get into that other page. Suffice it to say, advertisements for content that is provided free-of-charge is much different then the ads for Viagra or Pennystocks that you get in your Inbox everyday.
The second difference is tact. For my link on Slashdot to have any effect at all, I need to get modded up. If you look at my posting history, I take unconventional positions and make very little attempt to "game the system" by posting stuff just to see it modded up. So, knowing that I am not simply trying to whore-karma (because I have better things to do with my time), then you can rest easy knowing that you'll never see my link unless I actually make a positive contribution to a conversation in a different context.
And a third, indirect, reason that the link to the novel webpage isn't harmless is because it doesn't represent my core business. I am a software engineer. If I were promoting a Contracting Business, then the link would be unethical. Writing is a hobby for me. Certainly, I have a right to promote this labor of love that I have undertaken? If the dynamic ever switched and I got to the point where a significant percentage of my annual income was being generated through my writing, I would certainly take my Slashdot signature link down.
The Government should rather focus on implementing strategies to block spam.
Here is where I will take an uncharacteristic view and say I think the government should back off and let businesses handle it. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have a vested interest to fight spam. As long as the government ensures that no individual or corporation becomes strong enough to use Spam as their core business model, I think we'll be all right. This small bit of regulation would be a better use of my tax dollars than the Millions that could be poured into a government funding sieve in a misguided effort to "Save the Interwebs". The government need only prevent the business model from taking root.
Perhaps China has decided to become capitalist after all. Since the reporters need the Internet, why not charge them (and thereby their evil capitalist pig networks) ridiculous amounts of money for it?
Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, the government regulates the industry in a way that basically ensures affordable usage for everybody. What's it called when the community gets to share utilization of a resource? It isn't a perfect analogy because the internet in America isn't state-run, but the small fee that is charged helps keep the system honest.
Plus, we all know how things get abused by human greed when they are free.
===
On the other hand, the Olympics are a major world event and this is the first one during an era where mobile computing is so widespread that Tom & Dick Smith could theoretically show up and try to monetize the games by "covering" the Olympics on their blogs. If China sees the sheer volume of independent journalists as a threat to the stability of the network, then they are correct to shut it down by inflating the prices. However, I have a hard time believing that a city as large as Beijing isn't equipped to handle double or triple the internet load on a particular week.
I'm speechless. I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or if you are genuinely annoyed?
Given the context of the conversation, I have to hope that it is the former. But you raise a valid point... I've had the link up for a good year and haven't made any strides to publish a better edited version of the story.
There is a lot to be said of the value of human life. It is priceless. It is a gift.
But a man who would earn his fortune in the despicable business of Spam? That is not a gift.
And the woman would would choose such a man as her partner? Unless she had no idea what his business was, she isn't innocent either.
Women (and men) need to learn to identify certain undesirable traits in the partners they choose. It is a choice to be with a criminal (yes, Spam is a crime), and there should be less sympathy for somebody who took that risk.
I am not saying the wife deserved it. I am just saying she knew what kind of relationship she was getting into when she started it.
Everything has to come from Earth and _land_ successfully - the hospital, the living quarters, the supplies, the mining factory, last but not least - the stuff that looks for spots to mine. Otherwise you cannot live long enough to build and fix stuff. What happens if there's nothing to mine where you landed?
My argument is more one of scalability. I think building a colony that can double its size would be easier of Mars than in the Asteroid Belt. I believe this because I think it is possible to design a system that will be able to provide life-support for several Mars colonists that can be mailed from Earth on rockets that presently exist (or are in development). I have not begun to think about what it would take for the colonists on Mars to expand these Earth-delivered systems so that they can expand their footprint on the Martian surface. In my mind, the systems would be manufactured Earth-side and then delivered. Each time another 4 astronauts make the Earth-Mars voyage, another set of modules would be delivered to expand their life support systems. After 3 or 4 successful missions, I think the limiting factor would become how fast NASA can fund/build rockets that are capable of making the flight to the Red Planet. I think that present technology can be made robust enough and integrated to overcome the inhospitable nature on the surface of Mars.
I will admit, having a Space Station that can reproduce itself would be much more desirable than having a small colony on Mars. But I think the immense size that such a vehicle would need to achieve would require at least 100 missions from Earth and at the pace the space program is moving that would take 20-30 years (on top of the 5-15 years it would take to design).
So having said all that, I think "ISS-sized Colony on Mars" is actually a stepping stone to your vision for Spacecraft that can replicate themselves from the rocks in the Asteroid Belt.
"Excuse me, but can I have that too?"
And because it is Open Source, the answer is "Yes". :)
Now if only you could carry around a portable Virtual Machine Running Ubuntu that you could use to perform some quick and easy Windows fixing.
"Oh, this tool? Well, it's an operating system that I use it to fix Windows, because it doesn't have any of the flaws of Windows. But it does everything else that Windows can do too, with the mildly disappointing exception of letting you play most newer video games."
This sounds like a project that Michael Bay could sufficiently butcher (much like he did to Transformers). I say hire him and ride on his coattails so that it has a $50 Million budget and releases to 2,000 screens nationwide in 2010.
Thank you for the response. I must say, I like your vision for a space station that is capable of mining asteroids so that it can build additional versions of itself. I think this would be a wonderful engineering goal for humanity. However, given the magnitude of a vessel and the specialized equipment necessary to build advanced aircrafts, I still hold to the opinion that it would be easier to settle on Mars. I think we can agree to disagree on this, and deep down I hope to see both accomplishments made within my lifetime.