From the submission: Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes Linux powerful also makes it vulnerable to the same type of fragmentation that helped to doom Unix - the open source licenses under which Linux distributions are created and made available.
I believe fragmentation has very little to do with the issue concerning the doom of UNIX. My three top reasons are:
1) Price of purchase 2) Expensive/hard to administer 3) Stagnation in development
Users want the cheapest, easiest and most feature-filled solution. It's pretty straightforward actually, and a Personal Computer with Windows was the first to fill the niche, if you leave out Apple.
Apple lost because they wanted monopoly on _both_ hardware and software, while Microsoft only wanted to control the OS (in the beginning). More importantly, Microsoft was better at hyping/marketing their next generation, something that Apple has learned to do better in the recent years.
UNIX and IBM lost because they failed to scale down to personal PCs, which is where the commodization of computing happened in the 90's. IBM and other mainframe dealers refused to understand the Personal Computer (too much vested in big contracts), thus the clones took over along with Microsoft Windows while the dinosaurs waited it out.
Without the IBM PC Clone, the computing world would probably look very different today. In those days it was very attractive to be able to upgrade the PC, exchange parts and use commodized hardware for the whole rig. Many tasks which rented expensive CPU-time on UNIX mainframes, were moved over to PCs during the 90's.
Fragmentation, no doubt, can be very bad for development, but it is also a boon since it leaves developers free to explore different avenues regardless of politics and limitations. I think once a system becomes popular enough like "Linux", the demand for standardization will pull it together. Hey, even the BSDs keeps compatibility with "Linux".
What killed UNIX was lack of creativity, focus, commodization, too much control and maybe most importantly: arbitrary high prices just to milk customers.
Linux may have killed off UNIX (oh what irony), but NT have been beating the crap out of it for many years. Linux and UNIX never actually competed on even terms, because UNIX has already been pretty much abandonded for a long time - it's owners only keeping it for milking the last drops.
My pet peevee with bash and the GNU utilities is the lack of standards, and lack of further development of the command-line. In that regard, I hope "Linux" can progress without having to be beat by Microsoft releasing a better command-line.
POSIX is really an antique joke compared to what could be possible via the command-line. So the trap "Linux" might fall into, is the same as for UNIX: stagnation, because most users drool at eye-candy and not the actual implementation in the back-end. However, maybe the cost of switching command-line is not worth the gain, time will tell.
So while I'm all for gathering info and making it available to your readers, I'm also very much against the "Readers Digest" approach: Snipping out what I deem valuable, copying it to my page and giving half-hearted credit to the real author. Linking is cool. Copy-paste-blogging is just lame.
While on the surface, I can sentiment this argument and nod my head, I have one example which really shows the value of snipping tidbits from different sources and really put it into one page: Silver Jubilee in Jakkur Airport February 2006
Now if you read the tidbits, you're left with an awesome impression about the event that happened. But if you try to read each of the articles, you're left with some tiny bits of facts and uninteresting details, and the rest fluffy and partly information about the event. The problem is describing something so multi-faceted and huge.
Now, this might not be blogging, but nothing of value has been added here, and no copyright breached, since the tidbits are so short. But together they make an impressive picture about the biggest cultural event in 2006. It couldn't be written better than using the journalists' own words really..
A few years back we would have laughed that someone is calling this terrorism, and just saying it's just a few scriptkiddies having fun with DDOS and whatnot. Computers are just a fun box, nothing serious about it. Relax. Nothing of value is lost, and if you don't have a backup, you deserve it. Darwinism at work.
It's also interesting how questions change. We question: Is the internet really that fragile?
What happened to the baser question: Do we really depend so much on the internet?
Of course, now that we do, maybe we should look into making the internet even more resilient than the original creators envisioned. After all, it was made to endure nuclear war, but a few scriptkiddies can still take down any site with a little DDOSing and DNS-tweaks..
I'm a Type I (insulin dependent/juvenile) diabetic. Yes, I need healthcare.
Note my remark of not abolishing anything..
Maybe we really should find out why diabetes and allergy are rising in the Western world though. That is what is interesting, and moving in the right direction. However, moving in the right direction will be an economic disaster for the current "health-care" system...
I'm no doctor or can give any advice about diabetes (what is type 1 and 2 etc you know much better than me), but have good experiences with yoga and ayurveda. Ayurvedic treatment of diabetes.
What I find interesting about Ayurveda is that it has been used for thousands of years. It is also the source of Chinese medicine, which later developed on its own, or you might say they share the same source.
Ayurveda states that all people belong to different types of bodies, or is composed of three types of build (doshas). Some are big (kapha - a bit chubbier than most), some have more fire (pitta - medium built, often red hair or skin), while others are more lean and taller (vata - a bit more "airy" people). A mix of kapha and vata, might make for a tall and a bit chubby build. It goes far beyond mere superficial layers though.
It's a very beautiful and composed system, like chess, simple rules in the bottom, making for very complex possibilities when you put it all together.
Since we're all a bit different types in bodies, the treatments should be tailored to each person. It's very beautiful.
What I really miss is seeing some really basic questions? Like:
Do we really need healthcare?
Do we actually? I'm now talking in the way and amount that is taking place in the Western world, and not of abolishing anything. Instead of taking care of the body, people are wasting their flesh in front of a computer or TV-set and eating food that is making them sick. Then they become depressed and eat more unhealthy stuff, and pills that make them sleep. Now THAT'S insane!
The ONLY way to turn it is to become aware of it.
The knowledge for disease-free living is available. People only have to open up their eyes to spirituality. Do breathing-excercises, meditation, or sing and dance, whatever - what you need will come to you, just EXPERIENCE it with an open mind. It's mind-blowing stuff going on out there by VOLUNTEER groups that put up posters in YOUR local area..
The same with democracy: People argue back and forth, but ultimately don't really care except for themselves, and maybe their closest family. If you CARE then you DO something. A mother will run into the street for her child..
The human values are something we need to reestablish in society, only then can we have true democracy and safety again. That people actually care and develop a sense of community..
Sadly, it seems people in the West are having it too good. It's very sad that there seems that everything need to go down to the bottom, before people wake up..
It doesn't have to be that way though. Already, more and more people are discovering themselves and their lives over again. But it always start with ME, myself, ego in a good and innocent way. Open-minded adventure.. What can I do for the world? Why am I here?
How else to solve everything but to lift the spirit?
Certainly not by raising the tax-breaks by 0.7% while raising the interest 9 points. Lots of discussions amounts to nothing.
So instead we should reward ignorant behaviour and conclusions?
I prefer not to deal with people that can't see further than FUD. If they think likewise, makes it only more easier for me..
If you're gonna be scared of FUD and flashy headlines, you're not gonna stay in the game for long. Just look at MS, they've got more "bad PR" than any other company, yet they're litterally thriving on people's love-hate relationship with them.
Truth will always come forth one time or another. You need a thick skin to live, but when you really don't care what people think, you're free to really LIVE.
But when you're scared of FUD, you've already surrendered to FUD before the very beginning of the battle. People's opinions change all the time. So that's why any PR is good PR, if you only have deep enough skin not to be put off by it.
Crying about FUD only give more attention to the FUD...
Definatly clerifications need to be made. Little incedents like this shouldn't be poping up.
Why on earth do you think that? This is free PR, people are educated in the GPL again and again... This is the sign of a community and development that is alive and well.
If you don't want the "licensing crap", I'd recommend switching to BSD.
Not really. GPL was created because Stallman was hindered at his work to do what he wanted with the code he was working on because of proprietary sourcecode and NDAs. But as long as we depend on licensed code, we're going to have to put up with "licensing crap".
Head over to any BSD development mailinglist, and you'll find lots of licensing crap there too.. For code to go into the BSD, requires ownership just like any other license.
It's easy to crap on the floor of society, for a petty relief, but sadly harder to mop it all up..
We've had Ice Ages while humanity has populated this earth. There's even been discoveries that humans actually co-existed with dinosaurs. Landmasses that are now land has once been ocean and visa versa.. Some land millions of years ago, is now buried so deep none of us could have a hope of getting there..
Consider the scale you're talking about.. Earth is at least hundreds of million of years old, and over long periods the surface is really boiling when seen in "fast-film".
Something to destroy an advanced civilization, have to be HUGE. Eventually it will wipe out most traces of this civilization, except for the forklore, myths and occational artifacts.
That area, has been what is termed 'Positively Forbidden Territory' for the Western world since the year 1938, which now, in light of what Dr. Chow had to say, was probably not at all coincidental. At any rate, Professor Chi Pu Tei and his students discovered what was first described as a series of caves or caverns, but later admitted to be a complex system of artificial tunnels and underground storerooms. These tunnels are perfectly squared and the walls, ceilings, and floors are highly glazed, as if somehow the passages and rooms were carved by a device emitting heat of such intensity that it simply melted its way into the moun- tains.
Ancient texts, maybe more than 5000 years old in Sanskrit found all over Asia, and especially the areas around India speaks of:
"the holy Indian Sages, the Ramayana for one, tell of "Two storied celestial chariots with many windows" "They roar like off into the sky until they appear like comets." The Mahabharata and various Sanskrit books describe at length these chariots, "powered by winged lighting...it was a ship that soared into the air, flying to both the solar and stellar regions."
There are also references all over the Vedas to wars with missiles being fired on cities both from the land and air, destroying most of the cities, and anti-missile systems protecting said cities.
From A tribute to Hinduism (Mind you, the word Hinduism never existed before some scientists started tagging people that name. Before that, it was just the natural folklore and daily way of living in the areas in the Middle East, shared by people that now call themselves Muslims and others..)
There are many indications that humans knew how to fly, or have had experiences of flying in vehicles. One of the most famous examples being the Nasca Lines of Peru (Warning: This was the site with the best pictures I could find, but it's a bit New Ageish).
I wonder when the study about the relationship piracy and sales are actually studied. We know Microsoft allowed rampant piracy for home use for a very long time in the start, same with others like Mac-software and any underdog you can find.
I think it's a very safe assumption that piracy is really free advertisement and a good karma-run (people will eventually realize nothing is totally free - and you can play on their bad conscience - which is why I stopped using unlicensed software).
Now, when they are on top of the world, they start a stranglehold squeeze, and wonder why their customers are fleeing all over the place..
1. Claim Great losses to the pirates on planet Xlurglafblappr. 2. Get Huge return on tax, paying 0 tax money back to society. 3. Collect good karma from people feeling sorry for you??? 4. Profit!
I totally agree such discussions suck, but here we go again;-)
My reasons for vegetarism is so many without looking back at the past. Here's some you can use:
- Why spend 10x the water and food to raise stock, when that food could feed the rest of the world?
- Why torture animals by putting them in cage and giving them a totally unnatural/undesirable life - one which if we see movies of something like this done to humans we call it "horror movie" and "bad aliens".
- Your food is what you become - both in body and mind. It is both healthier (if you have knowledge about it), gives you more energy and spiritual development. OTOH, eating meat gives you a share of bad karma and foul smell. Any foul smells;-) when you begin to eat vegetarian is actually cleansing of the body / adjustments to different metabolism.
- Animals are more similar to humans. We wouldn't want to eat humans, but we eat animals because we think less of them. Actually, by eating them you become more "animalistic", because their energy is going through your body. I know many here think this is a far stretch, but energy is always preserved, so it makes sense that some of the animalistic mind is still left in the meat while plant-food is more "tranquil".
- I don't want to participate in ignorance. Even though "everybody" does it, I prefer to do what I do based on knowledge and compassion.
To the argument about the canines, I dare people to eat raw meat. I believe our canines may have been developed as a result of humans starting to eat cooked meat, not the other way around.. but that's just a personal hunch, and a possibility to think about..
But just because I have canines doesn't restrict me from making my own decision where I want to go.
The truth is that the complex ethical decisions faced by Google don't fall easily into a black-and-white division of "good" versus "evil". Providing a powerful search service makes people better-informed and more productive. That's good! On the other hand, it gravely erodes privacy since anything you ever put on the web can be easily traced. That's bad! In this China business, they are only one part of a system engineering by the PRC govt. Either they partially submit to the Chinese demands and hope to do at least some good, or they bail out completely and leave the field to other companies who will censor even further. No decision they can make is completely non-evil.
I do not personally believe in evil, so this whole discssion is a bit bizarre.
The thing is, if you stand by your values, then you don't participate in such activities that go against it. Here, Google is making money on propaganda and filtering for the Chinese Government.
Justifying it with "others will do it if we do not", is just too cheap. Then you're not living by your values anymore.
However I do believe that our understanding of the laws is incomplete. I believe this, as the laws as we understand them do break down under extream circumstances (such as around a singularity). But this is a different thing.
You don't have to believe it. It is so, if you define the "laws" to be operations of reality per definition.
You can also state that there is nothing that is unnatural, since nothing is outside nature per definition.
On a more philosophical note, you can say the same about God.
All resonable logical arguments can be reduced to both parties correctly defining their terms.
This is the beginning of an intelligent discussion. It is not often to find someone who realizes that.
Careful! Science "knows" that gravity will hold me to my chair tomorrow the same as it does today. If it suddenly stopped doing that then science will adjust to account for this change.
How true. There are two important parts of science: hypothesis and theory. It seems people confuse these two as one "science", but in reality they are separate. Hypothesises are untested and unproven claims, while theory is the conclusion of hypothesises backed up by successful experiments. The underlying reason being that theory should be much harder to squash under the test of time than the hypothesises, which are largely open-ended claims.
One hypothesis might include gravity stopping because of synchronization across the galactic core, or whatever. This is no threat to science since it is an unproved claim. Yet it is still part of the scientific method to hold such positions open to discussion.
If they were not, we wouldn't have quantuum mechanics today, or string-theory. Somewhere somebody must have begun working on that with very little basis other than a "hunch". The more people who dismiss such claims out of hand, without further research, this might slow down the progress of science.
So while I'd agreet that our current understanding of physics/chemisty says that life is not possible in liquid methane, _if_ we found it, we'd have to accept that fact and try and figure out why we were wrong.
If you are clear enough in your positions and statements, you can be wrong less. Much of what great geniuses predicted and claimed has come true, even though it had to be proven experimentally many decades, maybe hundred years after their death. This is one difference between good scientists and great scientists - To still have an open mind and be clear about the differences between hypothesises and theory, not getting lost and caged in the theoretic maze.
I think they have to accept the good with the bad. All should mean "all". Freedom should mean "freedom".
Then I would recommend BSD-license for you. Nobody is forcing you to use either GPL v2, GPL v3 or BSD. You have the choice.
Here's a longer explanation: GPL is about freedom of the software. It is a response to the copyright-laws which seeks to divide users from the sourcecode of the programs they run. That is why GPL is popularly called CopyLeft.
GPL is seeking to guaranteeing a user to modify the sourcecode to any GPLed-program as they see fit, and be able to run the modified program without restrictions.
DRM is about restrictions, and can not ultimately be modifiable by the user. Thus locking the user out of her own computer-system! Hence, GPL and DRM already doesn't fit together. So the GPL needs to address the loophole where the software may sign binaries and prevent modified programs from running, with no recourse for the user.
If the GPL does not close this loophole, users of proprietary OSes might not get the benefit of the GPL, since the OS might require signatures in the future. It is also a response to the rising threat of DRM at the hardware-level (TCPA) and other places.
There's nothing wrong with using a different license, or the GPL v2, if you do not agree with this. The Linux-kernel will probably never go beyond v2 for instance.
I think it's more that YOU don't know. But don't speak for the rest of science.
Come on! We have observed how many % of cosmos, to make wide-assumptions on the entire thing?
If you say "earth-like life" and "not likely", it will be more clear and everybody will probably agree.
Yeah, but don't forget the wise part, too. The wise man also knows stuff. Probably chemistry. Mysticism isn't wisdom; it's often just a fancy justification for ignorance.
Wisdom has nothing to do with facts. Any computer can reiterate facts. In fact, encyclopedias has lots of facts, but do not possess wisdom, not even within those facts.
The danger in extrapolating from facts and known physics, is missing what is actually there in reality.
The laws of physics are constraining a shitload more than our consciousness. I'm sick of people using the ignorance of people 2000 years ago as sole justification for suggesting everything we know now is just as suspect.
When you know, then there's no point in investigating, right? That's why it's better to "not know". It's a state of mind, nothing to do with quantity of knowledge. It's hard to not be misunderstood, maybe "open mind" is a better and more accepted term?
I think you need to be fair here, and complete your reasoning. 2000 years in the future, if humans are still living and breathing on this planet, what view do you think the people will have on our science (assuming progress is not halted too much)?
We know the laws of physics to the extent that we can make numerical predictions accurate to tens of decimal places. And the greatest thing about modern physics? We also know the exact decimal place where we stop knowing.
I think science is great! As long as people are objective, and not using it as a sleeping-couch for making assumptions on the world. None of the greatest discoverers are those who are sceptics, but those who think bigger, investigating all perspectives, to find a larger frame of model.
The only dogma I can see is yours.
I'm not the one saying what is possible or impossible based on 1 sample of an earth-like planet (earth itself), and using that as a basis to make statements about where there might be life and not in the entire cosmos! There are words called "likely" and "earth-like life" that may come in handy in such situations.
Handwave all you want, but the laws of physics and chemistry say that life is not possible in liquid lead or liquid methane.
There is really no evidence either for- or against it. The objective standpoint is that we just don't know. It may be scary to have nothing to hold on to, but we should grow more comfortable with it since it will benefit us in the longer run. The wise man knows he don't know.
There are indications that with our present knowledge, we can't model life to fit those conditions, but we also know scientists have been surprised before, to find life in the most harsh conditions on earth. However, we have nothing to conclude with. Since history has shown science to be wrong on all accounts, it's not likely to be all right now either. In all of science there is always room for progress of understanding and developing from our current crude models in all areas of science.
Likely, our very fundamental models will have to change, and this will broaden understanding even more. Just like the relativity model and quantuum mechanics have revolutionized hi-tech science and manufacturing in the last decades.
As everything else argued over, it depends of your definition of life. Are viruses life, or just self-replicating molecules?
The "laws of physics" are not some laws constraining our universe, it's a model used by humans as an attempt to understand what's going on. To use it to litterally mean "laws", then dogma is created. This will only serve to hinder our progress of knowledge and discovery since it is constraining our consciousness.
I would hope, for the sake of my fellow man, that we can form a society where being a trash collector can be part of "doing okay".
It's doing okay, isn't it? Never mind what other people think.
For myself, I want to do great, and that means not being a trash collector.
Depends on your definition of great really. See, if you have 1 million, are you satisfied with that? Or do you then want 2 million, a bit jaelous of those who have more?
In fact, we're already pretty rich. By living in countries with no war, no real poverty, lots of freedoms, education, ability to travel to anywhere in the world, etc, we're ahead of 99.9% of the world already. Even with lots of money and prestige, people are still not satisfied. Many moviestars are still hungry for more fame, still comparing with their peers and at the end of their career end up in depression and loneliness.
But with the right wisdom, it doesn't have to be that way. Contentment doesn't mean laziness or stopping your progress, you can have it both ways no matter where you are, what you have and what you do. It's a trick of the mind, not rules/dogma that you shouldn't do this, or should do that, need this or don't need that. With this simple trick, you can be happy in any situation, because real happiness is never coming from the external world anyways.
What I really want for this world, is for people to realize that there's more to life than amassing wealth for oneself and ones family though. There's no end to it, and it's sucking the joy out of life.
Slashdot Mirror
From the submission:
Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes Linux powerful also makes it vulnerable to the same type of fragmentation that helped to doom Unix - the open source licenses under which Linux distributions are created and made available.
I believe fragmentation has very little to do with the issue concerning the doom of UNIX. My three top reasons are:
1) Price of purchase
2) Expensive/hard to administer
3) Stagnation in development
Users want the cheapest, easiest and most feature-filled solution. It's pretty straightforward actually, and a Personal Computer with Windows was the first to fill the niche, if you leave out Apple.
Apple lost because they wanted monopoly on _both_ hardware and software, while Microsoft only wanted to control the OS (in the beginning). More importantly, Microsoft was better at hyping/marketing their next generation, something that Apple has learned to do better in the recent years.
UNIX and IBM lost because they failed to scale down to personal PCs, which is where the commodization of computing happened in the 90's. IBM and other mainframe dealers refused to understand the Personal Computer (too much vested in big contracts), thus the clones took over along with Microsoft Windows while the dinosaurs waited it out.
Without the IBM PC Clone, the computing world would probably look very different today. In those days it was very attractive to be able to upgrade the PC, exchange parts and use commodized hardware for the whole rig. Many tasks which rented expensive CPU-time on UNIX mainframes, were moved over to PCs during the 90's.
Fragmentation, no doubt, can be very bad for development, but it is also a boon since it leaves developers free to explore different avenues regardless of politics and limitations. I think once a system becomes popular enough like "Linux", the demand for standardization will pull it together. Hey, even the BSDs keeps compatibility with "Linux".
What killed UNIX was lack of creativity, focus, commodization, too much control and maybe most importantly: arbitrary high prices just to milk customers.
Linux may have killed off UNIX (oh what irony), but NT have been beating the crap out of it for many years. Linux and UNIX never actually competed on even terms, because UNIX has already been pretty much abandonded for a long time - it's owners only keeping it for milking the last drops.
My pet peevee with bash and the GNU utilities is the lack of standards, and lack of further development of the command-line. In that regard, I hope "Linux" can progress without having to be beat by Microsoft releasing a better command-line.
POSIX is really an antique joke compared to what could be possible via the command-line. So the trap "Linux" might fall into, is the same as for UNIX: stagnation, because most users drool at eye-candy and not the actual implementation in the back-end. However, maybe the cost of switching command-line is not worth the gain, time will tell.
So while I'm all for gathering info and making it available to your readers, I'm also very much against the "Readers Digest" approach: Snipping out what I deem valuable, copying it to my page and giving half-hearted credit to the real author. Linking is cool. Copy-paste-blogging is just lame.
While on the surface, I can sentiment this argument and nod my head, I have one example which really shows the value of snipping tidbits from different sources and really put it into one page: Silver Jubilee in Jakkur Airport February 2006
Now if you read the tidbits, you're left with an awesome impression about the event that happened. But if you try to read each of the articles, you're left with some tiny bits of facts and uninteresting details, and the rest fluffy and partly information about the event. The problem is describing something so multi-faceted and huge.
Now, this might not be blogging, but nothing of value has been added here, and no copyright breached, since the tidbits are so short. But together they make an impressive picture about the biggest cultural event in 2006. It couldn't be written better than using the journalists' own words really..
A few years back we would have laughed that someone is calling this terrorism, and just saying it's just a few scriptkiddies having fun with DDOS and whatnot. Computers are just a fun box, nothing serious about it. Relax. Nothing of value is lost, and if you don't have a backup, you deserve it. Darwinism at work.
It's also interesting how questions change. We question: Is the internet really that fragile?
What happened to the baser question: Do we really depend so much on the internet?
Of course, now that we do, maybe we should look into making the internet even more resilient than the original creators envisioned. After all, it was made to endure nuclear war, but a few scriptkiddies can still take down any site with a little DDOSing and DNS-tweaks..
Just always remember where we came from.
I'm a Type I (insulin dependent/juvenile) diabetic. Yes, I need healthcare.
Note my remark of not abolishing anything..
Maybe we really should find out why diabetes and allergy are rising in the Western world though. That is what is interesting, and moving in the right direction. However, moving in the right direction will be an economic disaster for the current "health-care" system...
I'm no doctor or can give any advice about diabetes (what is type 1 and 2 etc you know much better than me), but have good experiences with yoga and ayurveda. Ayurvedic treatment of diabetes.
What I find interesting about Ayurveda is that it has been used for thousands of years. It is also the source of Chinese medicine, which later developed on its own, or you might say they share the same source.
Ayurveda states that all people belong to different types of bodies, or is composed of three types of build (doshas). Some are big (kapha - a bit chubbier than most), some have more fire (pitta - medium built, often red hair or skin), while others are more lean and taller (vata - a bit more "airy" people). A mix of kapha and vata, might make for a tall and a bit chubby build. It goes far beyond mere superficial layers though.
It's a very beautiful and composed system, like chess, simple rules in the bottom, making for very complex possibilities when you put it all together.
Since we're all a bit different types in bodies, the treatments should be tailored to each person. It's very beautiful.
What I really miss is seeing some really basic questions? Like:
Do we really need healthcare?
Do we actually? I'm now talking in the way and amount that is taking place in the Western world, and not of abolishing anything. Instead of taking care of the body, people are wasting their flesh in front of a computer or TV-set and eating food that is making them sick. Then they become depressed and eat more unhealthy stuff, and pills that make them sleep. Now THAT'S insane!
The ONLY way to turn it is to become aware of it.
The knowledge for disease-free living is available. People only have to open up their eyes to spirituality. Do breathing-excercises, meditation, or sing and dance, whatever - what you need will come to you, just EXPERIENCE it with an open mind. It's mind-blowing stuff going on out there by VOLUNTEER groups that put up posters in YOUR local area..
The same with democracy: People argue back and forth, but ultimately don't really care except for themselves, and maybe their closest family. If you CARE then you DO something. A mother will run into the street for her child..
The human values are something we need to reestablish in society, only then can we have true democracy and safety again. That people actually care and develop a sense of community..
Sadly, it seems people in the West are having it too good. It's very sad that there seems that everything need to go down to the bottom, before people wake up..
It doesn't have to be that way though. Already, more and more people are discovering themselves and their lives over again. But it always start with ME, myself, ego in a good and innocent way. Open-minded adventure.. What can I do for the world? Why am I here?
How else to solve everything but to lift the spirit?
Certainly not by raising the tax-breaks by 0.7% while raising the interest 9 points. Lots of discussions amounts to nothing.
So instead we should reward ignorant behaviour and conclusions?
I prefer not to deal with people that can't see further than FUD. If they think likewise, makes it only more easier for me..
If you're gonna be scared of FUD and flashy headlines, you're not gonna stay in the game for long. Just look at MS, they've got more "bad PR" than any other company, yet they're litterally thriving on people's love-hate relationship with them.
Truth will always come forth one time or another. You need a thick skin to live, but when you really don't care what people think, you're free to really LIVE.
But when you're scared of FUD, you've already surrendered to FUD before the very beginning of the battle. People's opinions change all the time. So that's why any PR is good PR, if you only have deep enough skin not to be put off by it.
Crying about FUD only give more attention to the FUD...
Definatly clerifications need to be made. Little incedents like this shouldn't be poping up.
Why on earth do you think that? This is free PR, people are educated in the GPL again and again... This is the sign of a community and development that is alive and well.
If everyone agreed, how boring would that be??
If you don't want the "licensing crap", I'd recommend switching to BSD.
Not really. GPL was created because Stallman was hindered at his work to do what he wanted with the code he was working on because of proprietary sourcecode and NDAs. But as long as we depend on licensed code, we're going to have to put up with "licensing crap".
Head over to any BSD development mailinglist, and you'll find lots of licensing crap there too.. For code to go into the BSD, requires ownership just like any other license.
It's easy to crap on the floor of society, for a petty relief, but sadly harder to mop it all up..
We've had Ice Ages while humanity has populated this earth. There's even been discoveries that humans actually co-existed with dinosaurs. Landmasses that are now land has once been ocean and visa versa.. Some land millions of years ago, is now buried so deep none of us could have a hope of getting there..
Consider the scale you're talking about.. Earth is at least hundreds of million of years old, and over long periods the surface is really boiling when seen in "fast-film".
Something to destroy an advanced civilization, have to be HUGE. Eventually it will wipe out most traces of this civilization, except for the forklore, myths and occational artifacts.
That area, has been what is termed 'Positively Forbidden Territory' for the Western world since the year 1938, which now, in light of what Dr. Chow had to say, was probably not at all coincidental. At any rate, Professor Chi Pu Tei and his students discovered what was first described as a series of caves or caverns, but later admitted to be a complex system of artificial tunnels and underground storerooms. These tunnels are perfectly squared and the walls, ceilings, and floors are highly glazed, as if somehow the passages and rooms were carved by a device emitting heat of such intensity that it simply melted its way into the moun- tains.
Ancient texts, maybe more than 5000 years old in Sanskrit found all over Asia, and especially the areas around India speaks of:
"the holy Indian Sages, the Ramayana for one, tell of "Two storied celestial chariots with many windows" "They roar like off into the sky until they appear like comets." The Mahabharata and various Sanskrit books describe at length these chariots, "powered by winged lighting...it was a ship that soared into the air, flying to both the solar and stellar regions."
There are also references all over the Vedas to wars with missiles being fired on cities both from the land and air, destroying most of the cities, and anti-missile systems protecting said cities.
From A tribute to Hinduism (Mind you, the word Hinduism never existed before some scientists started tagging people that name. Before that, it was just the natural folklore and daily way of living in the areas in the Middle East, shared by people that now call themselves Muslims and others..)
There are many indications that humans knew how to fly, or have had experiences of flying in vehicles. One of the most famous examples being the Nasca Lines of Peru (Warning: This was the site with the best pictures I could find, but it's a bit New Ageish).
I wonder when the study about the relationship piracy and sales are actually studied. We know Microsoft allowed rampant piracy for home use for a very long time in the start, same with others like Mac-software and any underdog you can find.
I think it's a very safe assumption that piracy is really free advertisement and a good karma-run (people will eventually realize nothing is totally free - and you can play on their bad conscience - which is why I stopped using unlicensed software).
Now, when they are on top of the world, they start a stranglehold squeeze, and wonder why their customers are fleeing all over the place..
Easy:
1. Claim Great losses to the pirates on planet Xlurglafblappr.
2. Get Huge return on tax, paying 0 tax money back to society.
3. Collect good karma from people feeling sorry for you???
4. Profit!
I totally agree such discussions suck, but here we go again ;-)
;-) when you begin to eat vegetarian is actually cleansing of the body / adjustments to different metabolism.
My reasons for vegetarism is so many without looking back at the past. Here's some you can use:
- Why spend 10x the water and food to raise stock, when that food could feed the rest of the world?
- Why torture animals by putting them in cage and giving them a totally unnatural/undesirable life - one which if we see movies of something like this done to humans we call it "horror movie" and "bad aliens".
- Your food is what you become - both in body and mind. It is both healthier (if you have knowledge about it), gives you more energy and spiritual development. OTOH, eating meat gives you a share of bad karma and foul smell. Any foul smells
- Animals are more similar to humans. We wouldn't want to eat humans, but we eat animals because we think less of them. Actually, by eating them you become more "animalistic", because their energy is going through your body. I know many here think this is a far stretch, but energy is always preserved, so it makes sense that some of the animalistic mind is still left in the meat while plant-food is more "tranquil".
- I don't want to participate in ignorance. Even though "everybody" does it, I prefer to do what I do based on knowledge and compassion.
To the argument about the canines, I dare people to eat raw meat. I believe our canines may have been developed as a result of humans starting to eat cooked meat, not the other way around.. but that's just a personal hunch, and a possibility to think about..
But just because I have canines doesn't restrict me from making my own decision where I want to go.
The truth is that the complex ethical decisions faced by Google don't fall easily into a black-and-white division of "good" versus "evil". Providing a powerful search service makes people better-informed and more productive. That's good! On the other hand, it gravely erodes privacy since anything you ever put on the web can be easily traced. That's bad! In this China business, they are only one part of a system engineering by the PRC govt. Either they partially submit to the Chinese demands and hope to do at least some good, or they bail out completely and leave the field to other companies who will censor even further. No decision they can make is completely non-evil.
I do not personally believe in evil, so this whole discssion is a bit bizarre.
The thing is, if you stand by your values, then you don't participate in such activities that go against it. Here, Google is making money on propaganda and filtering for the Chinese Government.
Justifying it with "others will do it if we do not", is just too cheap. Then you're not living by your values anymore.
If Blackberry really violates the patents with its text-messaging service. Who's to say sms and email doesn't violate too?
I haven't gone into the details, but the claims looked pretty broad last time I read an article about it.
However I do believe that our understanding of the laws is incomplete. I believe this, as the laws as we understand them do break down under extream circumstances (such as around a singularity). But this is a different thing.
You don't have to believe it. It is so, if you define the "laws" to be operations of reality per definition.
You can also state that there is nothing that is unnatural, since nothing is outside nature per definition.
On a more philosophical note, you can say the same about God.
All resonable logical arguments can be reduced to both parties correctly defining their terms.
This is the beginning of an intelligent discussion. It is not often to find someone who realizes that.
Careful!
Science "knows" that gravity will hold me to my chair tomorrow the same as it does today.
If it suddenly stopped doing that then science will adjust to account for this change.
How true. There are two important parts of science: hypothesis and theory. It seems people confuse these two as one "science", but in reality they are separate. Hypothesises are untested and unproven claims, while theory is the conclusion of hypothesises backed up by successful experiments. The underlying reason being that theory should be much harder to squash under the test of time than the hypothesises, which are largely open-ended claims.
One hypothesis might include gravity stopping because of synchronization across the galactic core, or whatever. This is no threat to science since it is an unproved claim. Yet it is still part of the scientific method to hold such positions open to discussion.
If they were not, we wouldn't have quantuum mechanics today, or string-theory. Somewhere somebody must have begun working on that with very little basis other than a "hunch". The more people who dismiss such claims out of hand, without further research, this might slow down the progress of science.
So while I'd agreet that our current understanding of physics/chemisty says that life is not possible in liquid methane, _if_ we found it, we'd have to accept that fact and try and figure out why we were wrong.
If you are clear enough in your positions and statements, you can be wrong less. Much of what great geniuses predicted and claimed has come true, even though it had to be proven experimentally many decades, maybe hundred years after their death. This is one difference between good scientists and great scientists - To still have an open mind and be clear about the differences between hypothesises and theory, not getting lost and caged in the theoretic maze.
I think they have to accept the good with the bad. All should mean "all". Freedom should mean "freedom".
Then I would recommend BSD-license for you. Nobody is forcing you to use either GPL v2, GPL v3 or BSD. You have the choice.
Here's a longer explanation: GPL is about freedom of the software. It is a response to the copyright-laws which seeks to divide users from the sourcecode of the programs they run. That is why GPL is popularly called CopyLeft.
GPL is seeking to guaranteeing a user to modify the sourcecode to any GPLed-program as they see fit, and be able to run the modified program without restrictions.
DRM is about restrictions, and can not ultimately be modifiable by the user. Thus locking the user out of her own computer-system! Hence, GPL and DRM already doesn't fit together. So the GPL needs to address the loophole where the software may sign binaries and prevent modified programs from running, with no recourse for the user.
If the GPL does not close this loophole, users of proprietary OSes might not get the benefit of the GPL, since the OS might require signatures in the future. It is also a response to the rising threat of DRM at the hardware-level (TCPA) and other places.
There's nothing wrong with using a different license, or the GPL v2, if you do not agree with this. The Linux-kernel will probably never go beyond v2 for instance.
More info: http://www.againsttcpa.com
I think it's more that YOU don't know. But don't speak for the rest of science.
Come on! We have observed how many % of cosmos, to make wide-assumptions on the entire thing?
If you say "earth-like life" and "not likely", it will be more clear and everybody will probably agree.
Yeah, but don't forget the wise part, too. The wise man also knows stuff. Probably chemistry. Mysticism isn't wisdom; it's often just a fancy justification for ignorance.
Wisdom has nothing to do with facts. Any computer can reiterate facts. In fact, encyclopedias has lots of facts, but do not possess wisdom, not even within those facts.
The danger in extrapolating from facts and known physics, is missing what is actually there in reality.
The laws of physics are constraining a shitload more than our consciousness. I'm sick of people using the ignorance of people 2000 years ago as sole justification for suggesting everything we know now is just as suspect.
When you know, then there's no point in investigating, right? That's why it's better to "not know". It's a state of mind, nothing to do with quantity of knowledge. It's hard to not be misunderstood, maybe "open mind" is a better and more accepted term?
I think you need to be fair here, and complete your reasoning. 2000 years in the future, if humans are still living and breathing on this planet, what view do you think the people will have on our science (assuming progress is not halted too much)?
We know the laws of physics to the extent that we can make numerical predictions accurate to tens of decimal places. And the greatest thing about modern physics? We also know the exact decimal place where we stop knowing.
I think science is great! As long as people are objective, and not using it as a sleeping-couch for making assumptions on the world. None of the greatest discoverers are those who are sceptics, but those who think bigger, investigating all perspectives, to find a larger frame of model.
The only dogma I can see is yours.
I'm not the one saying what is possible or impossible based on 1 sample of an earth-like planet (earth itself), and using that as a basis to make statements about where there might be life and not in the entire cosmos! There are words called "likely" and "earth-like life" that may come in handy in such situations.
Handwave all you want, but the laws of physics and chemistry say that life is not possible in liquid lead or liquid methane.
There is really no evidence either for- or against it. The objective standpoint is that we just don't know. It may be scary to have nothing to hold on to, but we should grow more comfortable with it since it will benefit us in the longer run. The wise man knows he don't know.
There are indications that with our present knowledge, we can't model life to fit those conditions, but we also know scientists have been surprised before, to find life in the most harsh conditions on earth. However, we have nothing to conclude with. Since history has shown science to be wrong on all accounts, it's not likely to be all right now either. In all of science there is always room for progress of understanding and developing from our current crude models in all areas of science.
Likely, our very fundamental models will have to change, and this will broaden understanding even more. Just like the relativity model and quantuum mechanics have revolutionized hi-tech science and manufacturing in the last decades.
As everything else argued over, it depends of your definition of life. Are viruses life, or just self-replicating molecules?
The "laws of physics" are not some laws constraining our universe, it's a model used by humans as an attempt to understand what's going on. To use it to litterally mean "laws", then dogma is created. This will only serve to hinder our progress of knowledge and discovery since it is constraining our consciousness.
I would hope, for the sake of my fellow man, that we can form a society where being a trash collector can be part of "doing okay".
It's doing okay, isn't it? Never mind what other people think.
For myself, I want to do great, and that means not being a trash collector.
Depends on your definition of great really. See, if you have 1 million, are you satisfied with that? Or do you then want 2 million, a bit jaelous of those who have more?
In fact, we're already pretty rich. By living in countries with no war, no real poverty, lots of freedoms, education, ability to travel to anywhere in the world, etc, we're ahead of 99.9% of the world already. Even with lots of money and prestige, people are still not satisfied. Many moviestars are still hungry for more fame, still comparing with their peers and at the end of their career end up in depression and loneliness.
But with the right wisdom, it doesn't have to be that way. Contentment doesn't mean laziness or stopping your progress, you can have it both ways no matter where you are, what you have and what you do. It's a trick of the mind, not rules/dogma that you shouldn't do this, or should do that, need this or don't need that. With this simple trick, you can be happy in any situation, because real happiness is never coming from the external world anyways.
What I really want for this world, is for people to realize that there's more to life than amassing wealth for oneself and ones family though. There's no end to it, and it's sucking the joy out of life.
*giggle* Okies :-)
That's a good story!
:-)
See, everything can be done at the same time. So everybody can win.
Hope you get your +5 Interesting because that's one good story
The key is to doing what you love is to know yourself, know your needs, so you can translate them into something productive.
How about turning it around, to love what you're doing.
I reject the view that some have to be miserable for others to be happy, but this seems easy to answer:
This is a very noble goal, that everybody be happy.
Someone who loves the challenge of AI may design intelligent enough robots one day......
Why wait until someone builds an AI to solve problems for us?