I do not believe all information on the internet is supposed to be free (in terms of price). Wayyy back in the 90's before the internet was mainstream I had a paid subscription to NY Times, even though they were 2-3 times more expensive than my local paper, because I felt the quality was so much greater and was willing to pay for that quality. The newspaper still had ads from revenue back then, but I still had to pay for it and was willing to do so.
Fast forward to today and I still believe that - the news quality of a NY Times piece is still premium quality, but the difference now is that the news is 100% paid for by advertisers. My conscience is making me turn off my browser's adblocker plugin when I go to NY Times's website now.
As someone who once worked at Moffett Field, I'm also surprised no one else is saying "That's not fair," because it's not fair on so many levels. Where do I begin?
The airfield is underutilized, but so are a lot of other facilities at Ames. A lot of the facilities are used for physical simulations such as wind tunnels and such. As a taxpayer, I'd rather see underutilized govt property be given back to the public in a fair and open manner. The fact that only one company has such an arrangement is not fair to other companies who could use the convenience of the airstrip but don't have the "sex appeal" of Google. I mean c'mon, this is Silicon Valley - by default, every homeowner is a millionaire there. Money is not an issue.
Also, the fact that they are using their "party plane" is just plain wrong. While the commoners use public roads and airports, these privileged folks get to laugh at the rest of us while they use federal property for their own private use. I'm expecting a quote saying "Let them eat cake!"
Good point about recapturing energy that would normally be dissipated as heat/entropy. A lot of the dissipation will be with the air vortices caused by the moving cars. In one-way traffic, energy in those vortices will be difficult to recapture via turbines. However with opposing traffic, I can see how the vortices in that type of flow would actually help the turbines reduce the overall entropy.
This just further confirms the trend with software companies. Oracle has the 10g Application Server (which was once the Orion server slapped with the Oracle label). With JBoss, Oracle tried to get a completely new J2EE container under their umbrella. Why?
They were trying to "buy" JBoss customers, and the federal government is one of the biggest users of Open Source products such as JBoss. At least with the government, I see the amount of money spent on IT consultants compared to actual software licenses. Software was just an excuse to get Oracle consultants in the door.
Red Hat significantly upped their capabilities as a consulting company - might be a good idea to buy Red Hat stock.
Yes, "adding value" is what businesses do. They also help other business with "mission-critical" projects. You start to head down a slippery slope when you try to describe a business - a lot of common jargons get recycled, and whether they're overused or not depends on how many sales pitches you hear.
Pardon the "suit" pun in the subject, but I agree with some of the posts saying corporate speak is simply vocabulary that is suitable for the corporate domain. When discussing about software, one has to be very specific and technical due to the nature of writing codes. However, if you're talking about business functions, you're really talking about people and not lines of code.
Especially for us "geeks," we tend to forget that although people can be analytical, everyone has emotions and emotion is what ultimately drives us to action. That's why there are vacuous terms like "mission-critical" and "value-added," because before they were overused, they actually evoked strong emotions.
This is the classic dilemma regarding responsibilities with the impact on humanity from scientific advancements. Who has it now? Who should have it?
In the classic days of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man was the master of everything and was on top of many topics of interest. However, many modern achievements have been realized through specialists - science, engineering, agriculture, arts, etc... It would not be fair for a world-class scientist to be responsible for establishing the policy guidelines of a new technology. Their main concern is and should be to advance the frontiers of science - their opinions should carry weight regarding policy, but in general they are not adept with such responsibilities.
In the absence of an appropriate entity with this responsibility, the lack of oversight may lead to unwanted outcomes. Einstein's revelations made the atomic bomb feasible, yet afterwards Einstein was one of the biggest opponents of nuclear arms. As someone who is in biotechnology, I know that we may have social responsibility on the back of our minds, but in the forefront is finding that discovery before someone else in our field finds it first!
Slashdot Mirror
I do not believe all information on the internet is supposed to be free (in terms of price). Wayyy back in the 90's before the internet was mainstream I had a paid subscription to NY Times, even though they were 2-3 times more expensive than my local paper, because I felt the quality was so much greater and was willing to pay for that quality. The newspaper still had ads from revenue back then, but I still had to pay for it and was willing to do so.
Fast forward to today and I still believe that - the news quality of a NY Times piece is still premium quality, but the difference now is that the news is 100% paid for by advertisers. My conscience is making me turn off my browser's adblocker plugin when I go to NY Times's website now.
As someone who once worked at Moffett Field, I'm also surprised no one else is saying "That's not fair," because it's not fair on so many levels. Where do I begin?
The airfield is underutilized, but so are a lot of other facilities at Ames. A lot of the facilities are used for physical simulations such as wind tunnels and such. As a taxpayer, I'd rather see underutilized govt property be given back to the public in a fair and open manner. The fact that only one company has such an arrangement is not fair to other companies who could use the convenience of the airstrip but don't have the "sex appeal" of Google. I mean c'mon, this is Silicon Valley - by default, every homeowner is a millionaire there. Money is not an issue.
Also, the fact that they are using their "party plane" is just plain wrong. While the commoners use public roads and airports, these privileged folks get to laugh at the rest of us while they use federal property for their own private use. I'm expecting a quote saying "Let them eat cake!"
Good point about recapturing energy that would normally be dissipated as heat/entropy. A lot of the dissipation will be with the air vortices caused by the moving cars. In one-way traffic, energy in those vortices will be difficult to recapture via turbines. However with opposing traffic, I can see how the vortices in that type of flow would actually help the turbines reduce the overall entropy.
They were trying to "buy" JBoss customers, and the federal government is one of the biggest users of Open Source products such as JBoss. At least with the government, I see the amount of money spent on IT consultants compared to actual software licenses. Software was just an excuse to get Oracle consultants in the door.
Red Hat significantly upped their capabilities as a consulting company - might be a good idea to buy Red Hat stock.
Yes, "adding value" is what businesses do. They also help other business with "mission-critical" projects. You start to head down a slippery slope when you try to describe a business - a lot of common jargons get recycled, and whether they're overused or not depends on how many sales pitches you hear.
Especially for us "geeks," we tend to forget that although people can be analytical, everyone has emotions and emotion is what ultimately drives us to action. That's why there are vacuous terms like "mission-critical" and "value-added," because before they were overused, they actually evoked strong emotions.
In the classic days of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man was the master of everything and was on top of many topics of interest. However, many modern achievements have been realized through specialists - science, engineering, agriculture, arts, etc... It would not be fair for a world-class scientist to be responsible for establishing the policy guidelines of a new technology. Their main concern is and should be to advance the frontiers of science - their opinions should carry weight regarding policy, but in general they are not adept with such responsibilities.
In the absence of an appropriate entity with this responsibility, the lack of oversight may lead to unwanted outcomes. Einstein's revelations made the atomic bomb feasible, yet afterwards Einstein was one of the biggest opponents of nuclear arms. As someone who is in biotechnology, I know that we may have social responsibility on the back of our minds, but in the forefront is finding that discovery before someone else in our field finds it first!