In a stable environment a large greedy specialist often does better then a lean thrifty generalist. In a more dynamic environment a lean thrifty generalist does better then a larger greedy specialist.
The problem is our methods of food production: Specialized, concentrated and resource hungry. We might have to become more generalized, distributed and efficient.
[Note: Currently "efficiency" is often mistake to mean "externalizing the cost", "doing less", etc. Here it means "more productive with less resources" and "working smarter not harder"]
Our food lacks any real bio-diversity, it all requires nearly the same conditions to grow. For every joule of food we are currently using more then 10 joule of energy, basically we are turning oil into food. And it's not very mobile.
FREEMAN DYSON wrote a very good article about the need for heretics in science
A quote: "I would like to ask two questions. First, if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? Second, if we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today? My second heresy answers yes to the first question and no to the second. It says that the warm climate of six thousand years ago with the wet Sahara is to be preferred, and that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help to bring it back. I am not saying that this heresy is true. I am only saying that it will not do us any harm to think about it."
This was (?) the way the USSR used to handle conscientious objectors:
They would send you a letter to go serve in the military,
You would go to where you where assigned,
You objected because of your conscience,
They would then send you to a force labor camp or mental institution for a few years,
The hard work, unhealthy food and living conditions,
lacking health care, medical experiments, and violence among convicts
would often destroy your physical and mental health,
Then when you where released,
They would send you a letter to serve in the military.
…
Unless, naturally, your conscience would no longer object to serving in the military…
It reminded me of something Knuth once wrote: "Judge an artist not by the quality of what is hanging on the walls, but by the quality of what's in the wastebasket"
In most of Europe it's called "informatics" or "informatica" which at least to me makes a lot more sense: It's the study of information: data, languages, semantics, knowledge, knowledge representation, and intelligence. It has as much to do with computers as that astronomy has to do with telescopes, optics and radios. So it can/could be a science, it could also be mathematics or a philosophy of understanding.
Personally I think that the physical reality can't be described in a finite Theory of Everything (ToE) for the same reason as that there is no ToE for mathematics? See http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/omega/index.html
How does that cover in anyway the case where I run my own SMTP/IMAP server for me and my minions, and we are encrypting all email with GNU Privacy Guard using the GPGMail plugin to Apple's Mail.app?
This isn't all that surprising if we don't look at the market share in terms of "number of units" but rather in "amount of US$"?
While Apple might be selling less units, each unit she sells represents a much greater US$ value. Therefor from an economic point of view it completely reasonable that Apple gets more attention in the economic section.
For tech news it's all about innovation, again an area where Apple dominates. Naturally then that Apple gets much more attention from the tech news.
What is impossible is this: You can't have secure communication which is inherently insecure by design.
The "backdoor" (a intentional bug) will have to be part of the communication protocols and therefor present in every data stream which makes this protocol less secure. Any such backdoor WILL BE in time be open to any hacker, cracker, foreign spy, and anyone who can run a simple script?
Apple's AirPort works fine for me at the moment. I just wish that its support of IPv6 included DHCPv6…
What I don't understand is that most ADSL-modems include a router? I usually set it up in bridge-mode, like I did with the ancient Zyxel 650.
Funny development: I will now have to replace the modem because it has become the limiting factor: The maximum throughput of the modem is about 60% of what my current ADSL connection could handle.
The idea of being powerless (unless you're dead) is also an illusion.
We tend to have more power then we think, but its seldom the kind of power we think we need or the kind of power we really want. Often we need to learn how to use the power we have.
The problem for most people is that they never discovered the optimal niche that is fitting to their own unique combination of fitness and variation of abilities. This niche might not even exist yet, which is more or less what startups are all about.
Besides, what is actual power? Consider this: Which "power" is the most powerful? The power to annihilate whole cities or the power to build, rebuild, innovate, and maintain cities regardless of whatever may come?
I don't know about the current systems, have been wireless for more then 4 years now, but the original iMac had non-standard USB usage because Apple wanted the "power" button in the keyboard, while the USB protocol did not support this usage, at least it didn't at the time; I don't know if this has changed since then.