Old story, it's easy with a personal sysadmin
on
A Babe in Tuxland
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Software is easy for you, me or any four year old if you have a personal sysadmin to setup, configure, and support your usage. (grin)...
Seriously though the issue is - how easy is Linux/Windows/MacOS/any other software if you don't have a handy guru to help you configure and then support you when it goes wrong?
The issue is not how easy a kid finds it when their dad is a software guru (though it's kinda cute, my Apple-crazy friend's 4 year old son is similar), but how Joe Public, who has no software engineer friends, finds setup and maintenance and patching.
speak for yourself, but I really wouldn't want to be underneath a 50kg lump of metal that has fallen 40,000 metres / feet from an exploding rocket, however it was powered... I think people would still die... there could be a fair spread of debris colliding with people if such an explosion meant the fallout path was across an urban area.
Can anybody help me and define the limits of the problem "the war against terrorism"?
It strikes much of the issue is defining the problem, hey we're geeks right, give us a spec to build to, yup? This seems to be the chief concern of slashdot posters so far, that the problem has not been bounded and there are varying interpretations being made on what the problem is. How can we define the problem? Or are we accepting that the term is a worthless media and political construct to sell newspapers and justify military/ intelligence spending? Can we frame this fuzzy problem in a more meaningful way?
Speaking of confusion, why are all people getting upset about the violence in Gibson's movie when the whole Hollywood cinema industry glorifies violence in so many other movies?
Is it the specific context in which the violence occurs? My recolllection is that this part of the Bible deals with a lot of violence, including horrific methods of killing people...
I notice it's the New York Times that call him the "expert" , not the academic himself. Plus he's a Doctor, not a Professor. Reputable universities (like University of Sussex) lay great store by peer approved nomenclature. Just some crap journalist trying to make a story look more sexy for dumb readers who might think he's a surgeon if they call him "Doctor".
I blame literacy!
on
Cyberchondria
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· Score: 2, Funny
Nicely said! I am sure back in the 15th century (BC) there were people wandering around tut-tutting "...this literacy thing will be no end of trouble, this new technology will have people reading things on those bits of clay tablet and imagining that they have all sorts of illnesses..."
hehhehe classic case of USians and Europeans with different perspectives here. USians seem to get very uptight about naked bodies and are very relaxed abut violence (teaching kids to shoot guns, rating films with extreme violence suitable for 12 year olds...). On the other hands most Europeans aren't too bothered about nudity, you'll see fashion magazines and billboards showing breasts in Europe, no big deal, but we think exposing kids to violence is not such a good idea - witness the shootings in a primary school in Scotland a couple of years ago, the outcome was to ban all hand guns of the type used in the country, including stopping the UK Olympic team practice in those events.
Any ideas why there's such a divulgence of opinion? I'm really interested! on most issues Europeans and USians are very similar in outlook, we have similar cultural identities, histories, why should the issues of violence and nudity provoke such different reactions?
The news over here has covered Janet Jackson showing her breast for two seconds, general opinion is "aren't the USians crazy - here's an entertainer who's done something a little bit naughty because it will get her lots of news coverage, and the US media is reacting like the world's about to end- what's all the fuss about?"
Anyvbody with some industry knowledge care to comment on the chances of the prices coming down? This material sounds like it would be phenomonal to help with insulation in industrial and domestic applications, do a world of good to sort out global warming. The byline about a candle heating a house seems a bit of hyperbole but if it's even in the same ballpark as this then imagine the savings people would make on heating / air conditioning.
Realistically, is it likely to become affordable? like teflon went from space product to saucepans? or is it like space travel (by the 1970s we'll all be travelling to the moon on our holidays for no more than the price of a holiday in Florida...)?
hmm yes but how much less than Earth is Mars (in terms of atmosphere, gravitational pull?). Can somebody provide info? I thought the Moon was a sixth or so of Earth, but Mars was getting quite close to Earth.
Simplisticly speaking, what percentage of energy is needed to lift one kilogramme out of Mars orbit compared to Earth orbit? Any slashdotters care to help?
Why do all of these so-called 'Net.Art' sites look like 'modern art'...Modern art is also crap
Move along folks, don't feed the troll. Poster Cecil thinks all "Modern Art" is crap so I don't think he's going to give us a useful posting. Maybe we should ask politicians who believe that the internet only exists for child porn and financial fraud to comment on aspects of open source software?
(BTW, does parent posting take "Modern Art" to mean everything created from the beginning of 20th Century, or something different, hmmm, I am sure the term "Modern Art was coined early 1900s, somebody want to help me with this ref?).
Azzy makes a good point and a good reference to the BBC article about Blur and Damian Hurst as well as having a bit of fun. So much of space is funded by the military, it's really refreshing that the Beagle team used a bit or ingenuity to sort out their funding *and* reach a wider audience by involving artists and pop musicians.
Funny thing is I remember once reading an article about how the original Soviet vision of space (well for some of them anyway) was to send poets, writers, and artists into space as well as scientists and soldiers. It's funny that necessity and a bit of imagination and creativity has meant the British Mars shot is doing pretty well that. Go for it and the best of luck to little Beagle!
How can a comment on the lines of "ban all languages apart from English" be anything but a troll or flamebait? The poster complains in terms of sheer racism.
YOUNG TURKS - "insurgents; restive elements within a party seeking control or at least a voice; usually, not always, comparatively young.
The Young Turks were the reformers of the Ottoman Empire, a revolutionary group that seized power in 1908 from the aging sultans; in 1922 the House of Osman gave up and the Young Turks - middle-aged by then - set up a republic.
The name was used to describe a group of Republican senators in 1929 who broke with their leadership over tariff legislation. Wrote 'Time" magazine at the time: '...These new Republican warriors were called the Young Turks, a band of about 20 who had mutinied against the feeble leadership of the 'Old Guard.' For senators they were young men (average age 56). As legislative legionnaires they were mostly rookies serving their first Senate enlistment.'"
Today the phrase is used to describe any faction impatient with delay or defeat, seeking action. Party regulars use it patronizingly, but those so labeled do not resent it. The phrase was eclipsed for a time by 'angry young men.'
During the Bermuda Conference of 1953, Winston Churchill digressed from the agenda to discuss imperialism with Dwight Eisenhower, expressing his doubts about the wisdom of self-government for peoples not yet ready for it. When the American President disagreed with a portion of Prime Minister's argument, Churchill smiled and said, 'You're just like the Young Turks in my government.'"
From "Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).
Hmm... just some words ("design proposal" no less) and bad drawings... are you sure the Phoenix sub isn't as real as some of the more flaky proposals for the X-Prize? Surely any undergrad engineering student or even graphic designer could come up with this and put up a website....? I saw drawing like this for Disney's 20,000 leagues beneath the sea but I'm pretty sure Nemo didn't exist either...
Hasn't there been a big fuss in the USA about where to put all your waste, talk of digging a big hole in a big mountain in Nevada or somewhere out where people can't see it, maybe forget about it and leave it for the next generation to sort out?
Am I hearing "security through obscurity"?
Here in the UK there's been a bit of a scandal about a powerplant in the north of Scotland where they literally threw low level waste (sounds friendly but would you want your kids bringing it home from some field they found it in?) in to a hole behind the plant. Including shooting at some paint cans containing waste with air rifles when they refused to sink. Guess what, the hole in the ground is next to a cliff and the cliff is now eroding into the sea...
yup, I agree to a degree with your pragmatic view, is this money well spent? Haven't got any simple answers, I suppose "see also many slashdot discussions on is it appropriate to support IT in low income areas/ developing countries...". I think the first guess I'd have is that there is a pot of money allocated to cross digital divides in the UK (govt very keen to keep UK in the top league of knowledge economies) and the L.B. of Newham probably put in a good proposal and got some of that money....I'm sure the wider discussion of "should that pot of money be there when our hospitals/schools are so badly underfunded" is a much bigger macro question, what should the govt spend its money on generally (enter flamewar discussion about money spent on war with Iraq, etc). Newham seems to be a pretty innovative and forward thinking borough, I personally am excited that a place which is normally written off as another poor inner city area is trying to reposition itself as an exciting place to be. There have been a few studies of wired up communities where the presence of network infrastructure has actually made the properties more attractive, and created demand for housing, reversing the normal trend for people to get out of such estates.
Point a, I reckon a mix of photoshoots for publicity and people already having their own kit, you'd be suprised at the number of people who consider laptops a reasonable expenditure. Some studies show people spending on computers because they want to do the right thing for their kids, for example. But yeah, I'd think twice about pulling out a laptop in some parts of Newham:-)
Point b, probably separate grants/ funding stream
State of the wifi initiatives - early days yet, I'm actually doing a PhD looking partly at networked communities and wifi, so watch this space, I might have something interesting to say in a coupla years! Keep checking the hyperlinks I gave in the first place though, public funding is often tied into an obligation to report on what happens and publicly publish those findings.
I was interested to see one of the pilot projects will be with London Borough of Newham Council (area of East London, quite low income generally, inner city). This council has been getting involved in some really interesting wired community projects already.
I can see some useful embedded applications (excuse the pun, ho ho) in having portable computing power, but look at the photo - the weight of it all. I'll wait till they get it a bit more slimline. Reminds me of 80s "mobile" phones compared to today. Why's it all so cumbersome? ok, batteries I understand we still have to work on, but the rest?
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously though the issue is - how easy is Linux/Windows/MacOS/any other software if you don't have a handy guru to help you configure and then support you when it goes wrong?
The issue is not how easy a kid finds it when their dad is a software guru (though it's kinda cute, my Apple-crazy friend's 4 year old son is similar), but how Joe Public, who has no software engineer friends, finds setup and maintenance and patching.
speak for yourself, but I really wouldn't want to be underneath a 50kg lump of metal that has fallen 40,000 metres / feet from an exploding rocket, however it was powered... I think people would still die... there could be a fair spread of debris colliding with people if such an explosion meant the fallout path was across an urban area.
"I'd like to see some more precise GPS"
Us Olde Europeans are waiting for Galileo ;-P
Can anybody help me and define the limits of the problem "the war against terrorism"?
It strikes much of the issue is defining the problem, hey we're geeks right, give us a spec to build to, yup? This seems to be the chief concern of slashdot posters so far, that the problem has not been bounded and there are varying interpretations being made on what the problem is. How can we define the problem? Or are we accepting that the term is a worthless media and political construct to sell newspapers and justify military/ intelligence spending? Can we frame this fuzzy problem in a more meaningful way?
Speaking of confusion, why are all people getting upset about the violence in Gibson's movie when the whole Hollywood cinema industry glorifies violence in so many other movies?
Is it the specific context in which the violence occurs? My recolllection is that this part of the Bible deals with a lot of violence, including horrific methods of killing people...
I notice it's the New York Times that call him the "expert" , not the academic himself. Plus he's a Doctor, not a Professor. Reputable universities (like University of Sussex) lay great store by peer approved nomenclature. Just some crap journalist trying to make a story look more sexy for dumb readers who might think he's a surgeon if they call him "Doctor".
Nicely said! I am sure back in the 15th century (BC) there were people wandering around tut-tutting "...this literacy thing will be no end of trouble, this new technology will have people reading things on those bits of clay tablet and imagining that they have all sorts of illnesses..."
...as Asterix the Gaul might have said :-)
"the Super Bowl is a Family Event"
hehhehe classic case of USians and Europeans with different perspectives here. USians seem to get very uptight about naked bodies and are very relaxed abut violence (teaching kids to shoot guns, rating films with extreme violence suitable for 12 year olds...). On the other hands most Europeans aren't too bothered about nudity, you'll see fashion magazines and billboards showing breasts in Europe, no big deal, but we think exposing kids to violence is not such a good idea - witness the shootings in a primary school in Scotland a couple of years ago, the outcome was to ban all hand guns of the type used in the country, including stopping the UK Olympic team practice in those events.
Any ideas why there's such a divulgence of opinion? I'm really interested! on most issues Europeans and USians are very similar in outlook, we have similar cultural identities, histories, why should the issues of violence and nudity provoke such different reactions?
The news over here has covered Janet Jackson showing her breast for two seconds, general opinion is "aren't the USians crazy - here's an entertainer who's done something a little bit naughty because it will get her lots of news coverage, and the US media is reacting like the world's about to end- what's all the fuss about?"
Any thoughts on why the attitudes differ so much?
This Army guy seems to think so.
Can anybody tell me the etymology of the word?
Maybe if it's a rude word, and US soldiers are using it casually, that's why they are getting a lot of tension?
Anyvbody with some industry knowledge care to comment on the chances of the prices coming down? This material sounds like it would be phenomonal to help with insulation in industrial and domestic applications, do a world of good to sort out global warming. The byline about a candle heating a house seems a bit of hyperbole but if it's even in the same ballpark as this then imagine the savings people would make on heating / air conditioning.
Realistically, is it likely to become affordable? like teflon went from space product to saucepans? or is it like space travel (by the 1970s we'll all be travelling to the moon on our holidays for no more than the price of a holiday in Florida...)?
hmm yes but how much less than Earth is Mars (in terms of atmosphere, gravitational pull?). Can somebody provide info? I thought the Moon was a sixth or so of Earth, but Mars was getting quite close to Earth.
Simplisticly speaking, what percentage of energy is needed to lift one kilogramme out of Mars orbit compared to Earth orbit? Any slashdotters care to help?
Why do all of these so-called 'Net.Art' sites look like 'modern art'...Modern art is also crap
Move along folks, don't feed the troll. Poster Cecil thinks all "Modern Art" is crap so I don't think he's going to give us a useful posting. Maybe we should ask politicians who believe that the internet only exists for child porn and financial fraud to comment on aspects of open source software?
(BTW, does parent posting take "Modern Art" to mean everything created from the beginning of 20th Century, or something different, hmmm, I am sure the term "Modern Art was coined early 1900s, somebody want to help me with this ref?).
Funny thing is I remember once reading an article about how the original Soviet vision of space (well for some of them anyway) was to send poets, writers, and artists into space as well as scientists and soldiers. It's funny that necessity and a bit of imagination and creativity has meant the British Mars shot is doing pretty well that. Go for it and the best of luck to little Beagle!
How can a comment on the lines of "ban all languages apart from English" be anything but a troll or flamebait? The poster complains in terms of sheer racism.
Historical ref:h tm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWyturks.
YOUNG TURKS - "insurgents; restive elements within a party seeking control or at least a voice; usually, not always, comparatively young.
The Young Turks were the reformers of the Ottoman Empire, a revolutionary group that seized power in 1908 from the aging sultans; in 1922 the House of Osman gave up and the Young Turks - middle-aged by then - set up a republic.
The name was used to describe a group of Republican senators in 1929 who broke with their leadership over tariff legislation. Wrote 'Time" magazine at the time: '...These new Republican warriors were called the Young Turks, a band of about 20 who had mutinied against the feeble leadership of the 'Old Guard.' For senators they were young men (average age 56). As legislative legionnaires they were mostly rookies serving their first Senate enlistment.'"
Today the phrase is used to describe any faction impatient with delay or defeat, seeking action. Party regulars use it patronizingly, but those so labeled do not resent it. The phrase was eclipsed for a time by 'angry young men.'
During the Bermuda Conference of 1953, Winston Churchill digressed from the agenda to discuss imperialism with Dwight Eisenhower, expressing his doubts about the wisdom of self-government for peoples not yet ready for it. When the American President disagreed with a portion of Prime Minister's argument, Churchill smiled and said, 'You're just like the Young Turks in my government.'"
From "Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).
http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/15/mess
Hmm... just some words ("design proposal" no less) and bad drawings... are you sure the Phoenix sub isn't as real as some of the more flaky proposals for the X-Prize? Surely any undergrad engineering student or even graphic designer could come up with this and put up a website....? I saw drawing like this for Disney's 20,000 leagues beneath the sea but I'm pretty sure Nemo didn't exist either...
They didn't mention biscuits as being excluded. Chew carefully on any "chocolate chips" or "hazelnuts".
Surely the same can be true in a car?
Am I hearing "security through obscurity"?
Here in the UK there's been a bit of a scandal about a powerplant in the north of Scotland where they literally threw low level waste (sounds friendly but would you want your kids bringing it home from some field they found it in?) in to a hole behind the plant. Including shooting at some paint cans containing waste with air rifles when they refused to sink. Guess what, the hole in the ground is next to a cliff and the cliff is now eroding into the sea...
hey Linker3000
...I'm sure the wider discussion of "should that pot of money be there when our hospitals/schools are so badly underfunded" is a much bigger macro question, what should the govt spend its money on generally (enter flamewar discussion about money spent on war with Iraq, etc). Newham seems to be a pretty innovative and forward thinking borough, I personally am excited that a place which is normally written off as another poor inner city area is trying to reposition itself as an exciting place to be. There have been a few studies of wired up communities where the presence of network infrastructure has actually made the properties more attractive, and created demand for housing, reversing the normal trend for people to get out of such estates.
yup, I agree to a degree with your pragmatic view, is this money well spent? Haven't got any simple answers, I suppose "see also many slashdot discussions on is it appropriate to support IT in low income areas/ developing countries...". I think the first guess I'd have is that there is a pot of money allocated to cross digital divides in the UK (govt very keen to keep UK in the top league of knowledge economies) and the L.B. of Newham probably put in a good proposal and got some of that money.
Point a, I reckon a mix of photoshoots for publicity and people already having their own kit, you'd be suprised at the number of people who consider laptops a reasonable expenditure. Some studies show people spending on computers because they want to do the right thing for their kids, for example. But yeah, I'd think twice about pulling out a laptop in some parts of Newham
Point b, probably separate grants/ funding stream
State of the wifi initiatives - early days yet, I'm actually doing a PhD looking partly at networked communities and wifi, so watch this space, I might have something interesting to say in a coupla years! Keep checking the hyperlinks I gave in the first place though, public funding is often tied into an obligation to report on what happens and publicly publish those findings.
I was interested to see one of the pilot projects will be with London Borough of Newham Council (area of East London, quite low income generally, inner city). This council has been getting involved in some really interesting wired community projects already.
Wireless connectivity on the Winslade Estate
Carpenter's Estate online - Carpenter Connect
How about:
"Any thread that goes on long enough will eventually end up talking about the rights and wrongs of gun control in the USA"
I can see some useful embedded applications (excuse the pun, ho ho) in having portable computing power, but look at the photo - the weight of it all. I'll wait till they get it a bit more slimline. Reminds me of 80s "mobile" phones compared to today. Why's it all so cumbersome? ok, batteries I understand we still have to work on, but the rest?
no idea, maybe you got lucky or are looking at big houses? :-)
I used to live at E8 3PR (Hackney, east London) and that gives all the even numbered houses in the street (London Lane)
Sir, Europeans have sex, the English have hot-water bottles.