
Debian Developer Center Of Mass 75
Edward Betts writes: "Debian One is over, we are at LSM, and it is raining, what do we do? Try and decide the location of the next Debian conference of course, and we all know that the best place for a Debian conference is Debian's centre of mass." What an ideal location for a conference -- perhaps they can devise a mission to retrive the errant U.S. hydrogen bomb (more information too).
Europe con (Score:2)
Never realised xplanet was good for anything... (Score:1)
Seriously though...
Those maps really drive home how much of a world wide effort Debian is. The power of images I reckon...
Assumes developers all weigh the same. (Score:5)
I suspect that if this were taken into account, the conference would best be held a couple hundred miles northeast of Newfoundland.
Re:Assumes developers all weigh the same. (Score:1)
Assumes airlines travel in great circles (Score:1)
Re:Assumes developers all weigh the same. (Score:1)
Interesting Observation. (Score:1)
"center of mass" is? I mean, for a supposedly
"world-wide" effort, the result sure is biased.
There is a pervasive belief that somehow the
Internet is a "global" phenomenon, that it
somehow brings the world closer together, erases
national and ethnic boundaries. That belief is
simply ridiculous. I mean, look at that map!
If anything, that is a powerful testament to
the deep rift between the North and the South
hemispheres. Brazil, India and China have an
infinitesimal contribution (with populations in
the billions!) while the UK is deemed important
enough to have its own map. This should be a
wake-up call to anybody arrogant and chauvinistic
enough to claim that the Internet is "global",
or that it somehow creates a "global village";
the Internet is nothing but another tool to
fuel American (and European to a small degree)
cultural imperialism. This means that we can
expect in the future that as the rift between
North and South gets bigger, the tensions will
mount until we can expect a staggering conflict.
The Third World War will be between the
underpopulated, but staggeringly rich North and
the billions upon billions of the unwashed masses
of the South. (This is not my idea, BTW.)
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Better measure by travel time (Score:4)
Cost would be even better.
Besides, the real center of mass is somewhere way underground.
Traffic (Score:1)
Re:Assumes developers all weigh the same. (Score:1)
not welldefined (a mathematical note) (Score:4)
phew!, I hope this saves the debian community the hassle to swim around in freezing cold water during conference....
Right metric? (Score:1)
It seems to me that the right metric would really be a distance measure. Do the minimization problem that finds the point on the globe that minimizes the total distance travelled by all persons. This (at least in Euclidean space) is not the same as the average location.
Re:Right metric? (Score:1)
Re:Never realised xplanet was good for anything... (Score:1)
Re:Interesting Observation. (Score:2)
centre of mass? (Score:1)
Re:not welldefined (a mathematical note) (Score:5)
Just find the point (or points) which minimize the sum of the squares of distances to other points. Because the sphere isn't uniquely geodesic, you might get more than one point (if you had two points, one at the north, one at the south pole, then the points of minimum squared distance would be all the equator).
I don't believe that graph for a second . . . (Score:1)
I think the conference should just be held in New York.
Yes, this post was half-humorous and half serious. Seeing as how I live in New York, it would just make it a hell of a lot easier for me to attend, say if the conference were held in, oh, say, midtown. It's not a personal bias, it's clarity of thought. I swear.
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can't do that on the surface of a sphere (Score:1)
A physically meaningful calculation (i.e. independent of the choice of acoordinate system) would be in 3d, and would result in a CM somewhere below earths surface..
Not that I don't think that wouldn't be great place to meet.
Re:Never realised xplanet was good for anything... (Score:1)
Re:centre of mass? (Score:1)
Re:Interesting Observation. (Score:1)
isn't lacking at all in third-world countries.
I mean, even in the most backwater African
countries you will find an AK-47 in every village.
Western powers are content to sell weapons
even if they know that the weapons will be used
directly against them! For example, during
the wars in Chechnya, both sides used the exact
same weaponry.
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How to be Happy (Score:1)
Looks like the Rocky Mountain range folks are asleep at the switch. No activity there. Cuba is dead, dang that Fidel! But what are the folks at McMurdo doing? Eating Klondike bars?
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Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks
No No No (Score:2)
Um, No. (Score:4)
Um, sorry....
There isn't going to be a Third World War. And the Internet is the reason why. When the masses can--at trivial expense--discover what they choose from wherever they choose to find it, the power of governments (including those spouting the rhetoric of Lenin and Engels) is demonstrably weakened. The Internet really does bring "power to the people."
Power to the people. Right on!
But the deficiencies of Lenin and Engels are sort of off-topic, so let's rein in our political diatribes just a bit and look at a slightly different point: you're making a whopping great logical mistake. Just because 90% of the Debian developers live north of the equator doesn't prove that the "billions upon billions of...unwashed masses" don't have access to the Internet. Note that the concentrations of Debian developers are also heavily distributed toward parts of the world where most educated people speak English (with the notable exception of India). You're also assuming that Debian developers are evenly distributed across the Internet--but there's nothing to prove that's true.
Analogy: what results would we conclude by doing this same pseudo-analysis of the FetchMail developers? I'd bet we'd discover that they're disproportionately close to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and that lots of them own guns. Why? Because ESR lives in Chester County, Pa., and is something of a gun nut. Developer communities tend to be social communities--so if you're a pistol-packin' programmer, you're likely to be among friends on the FetchMail project. That does not mean that Internet programmers in general, Mail subsystem programmers in particular, or even American programmers are disproportionately armed. It's a self-selected cluster, and you can't draw valid conclusions from the traits of self-selected clusters.
Forget Greenland - What About Lost Nukes in U.S.? (Score:2)
Geography doesn't matter, airfare does... (Score:5)
Hi!
I'm a GIS developer, so I'm just as happy to geocode data points and map them as anybody. Party on, you geo-coding dudes! But the "center" you have defined assumes that you're traveling "as the crow flies"--and (pardon the old joke) that's only useful if you're a crow. If you're really serious about coming up with a logically-derived meeting location, central to as many people as possible, I'd suggest a slightly different method.
I'd bet that this wouldn't take that long to figure out. You've probably only got 20-25 airports to check, and using any of the travel sites you can shop for fares in very little time. You're not going to come up with a single solution: but you're going to narrow your list down rapidly to just a few choices--you can then consider other factors (how expensive hotel, food, and rental car expenses will be; costs for conference organizers to bring keynote speakers [since the conference pays for those], etc.; whether suitable space for the conference is available on your dates) and make your choice.
And, oh, yeah--where does everybody want to junket to next year? Even if Shannon, Ireland is the ideal location, you can't have the conference there every year....
Forget Greenland (Score:2)
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Re:Geography doesn't matter, airfare does... (Score:2)
Things like:
* Mass of the developer
* Cost of travel to airport
* ease of locating power supply adapters
* networking connectivity available at function HQ and also in nearby cheapo hotels
* Time taken to travel to airport
* Amount of time wasted hanging around waiting for connecting flights
* Whether said developer thinks yankee Budweiser is watered down, yankeeland sucks and Scotland is wonderful, etc etc.
Could be quite complicated - looks like an integration over the surface of the planet is called for, or something pretty perverse.
~Tim
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Re:This is way off-topic, but... (Score:1)
that it can be made by practically any country.
2. There have been at least 2 wars in Chechnya
in the second half of the 20th century.
3. The leftover weaponry from the Soviet empire
is long gone. Most of the weapons used were
manufactured in the last 10 years. (Weapons
manufacturing is always profitable.)
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uhhh.... no. (Score:1)
my 0.02 Euros (Score:1)
First of all, the map is eurocentric, and influences the generated result. Each possible central point will generate a different result.
Taking Greenwich as a central point, you'll end up much more towards the equator, somewhere in the Atlantic.
Debian forgot to paint a big red smear on Finland
Interesting how you left out China (Score:2)
Is it because it is not a third world nation with a mushrooming population like India? Is it because most of its population dosen't live in abject poverty like Africa?
Oh, no, it's because a linux distribution was [redflag-linux.com] developed in china so you had to omit the country to "prove" your point.
Since when has the development of a linux distribution been a mark of cultural autonomy anyhow? Last I checked, there were no Finnish Linux distributions.
US and European centers? (Score:1)
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Re:Interesting how you left out China (Score:1)
Re:And "center" is spelled with an ER not an RE! (Score:1)
Re:can't do that on the surface of a sphere (Score:1)
It doesn't depend on the choice of map, as indicated in the article. The easiest way to explain is by quoting the code mentioned in the "article:"
# Find the mean location of Debian developersx_av = x/NR; y_av = y/NR; z_av = z/NR;
# Project the point onto the surface
long_av = atan2(x_av, -y_av);
lat_av = atan2(z_av, sqrt(x_av*x_av + y_av*y_av));
# Convert back to degrees and print
printf "%+8.2f %+8.2f \"Average\"\n",
lat_av / 3.14159 * 180, long_av / 3.14159 * 180;
In other words, what they are doing is what you suggest. They're calculating the 3D centre of mass (in XYZ coordinates) and then projecting that point onto the surface of the sphere.
Now, as some other comment [slashdot.org] pointed out, this isn't technically valid. But they are doing what you suggested.
Re:US and European centers? (Score:1)
Re:How to be Happy (Score:1)
There's a few spots around the Great Salt Lake though.
Actually, it is well defined (Score:1)
If they were to meet at the actual centre of mass, I imagine it would be rather hot.
The only case where this is ill-defined is if the centre of mass happens to be at the earth's centre. If there centre of mass is very near the earth's centre, then small variations in the developer distribution will result in large variations of the projection.
Note that this method does not obviously guarantee the shortest "as the crow files" distance to the selected point, because curvature of travel paths is not taken into account.
It is however independant of the coordinate system used.
Re:not welldefined (a mathematical note) (Score:2)
H. G. Wells would have been proud ... (Score:1)
mathematical note (Score:1)
Re:Interesting Observation. (Score:1)
Get stuffed. Look at the map and you may notice that most of the land-mass is north of the equator. Ergo, barring any other information, one would expect that most humans live north of the equator, and since saltwater (unlike form Indy 500 driver Salt Walther) is evil to electronics, few programmers are floating in the oceans. Also, vast areas of land south of the equator is very hostile to human life, like the Australian outback, much of the African continent that is in the south, and the government of Argentina.
Really, if one is going to troll, one should at least get one's facts straight and not use an obviously false name like "Fr. Engels".
Yours sincerely,
Walt Zingmatilda (Mrs.)
P.S. - What idiot made the troller's post a "5 - informative"???? If the moderators are this pathetic, they should give up moderation and do something that is more suited to their intelligence, like voting in Miami-Dade or watching the Eurovision Song Contest.
Have the conference in Antarctica (Score:1)
Re:US and European centers? (Score:2)
Re:Um, No. (Score:1)
Re:Better measure by travel time (Score:2)
Yes, indeed - but it is not unreasonable to extend this point along a line from the centre of the Earth until it intersects with the surface.
However, in general terms this cannot be adopted as the main chooser of locations for Debian meets - remember the theoretical voting deadlock issue contained within the Debian constitution? This method has a theoretical deadlock too... a distribution such the the centre of mass is the centre of the Earth, which is expensive to get to however you travel. There would be no simple logical resolution of this....
:-)
Re:Forget Greenland (Score:1)
Re:This is way off-topic, but... (Score:1)
Sure it can be made but in reality 90% of it is made either by Russia or China.
Re:Look at this map (Score:2)
Re:No No No (Score:1)
You might have to settle for a slight deviation and go down to Belgium.
Re:US and European centers? (Score:1)
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Re:US and European centers? (Score:1)
Anyone wanna schedule a meeting for Sioux Falls? It's actually not hard to get to...
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A small comfort regarding that nuke (Score:1)
So three half-lives have passed since the bomb was lost, and only one-eighth of the original tritium remains. That nuke has only one-eighth its original yield, assuming it's even in one piece.
Alas, neither article gives the yield of the bomb.
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Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
I've got the best idea! (Score:1)
Here on Debian island...
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Re:Um, No. (Score:2)
Re:Forget Greenland (Score:2)
- unbelievably attractive women
- fast internet access
- clean environment
- a really wild clubbing scene
- lots of outdoor activities
- very modern capital (Reykjavik) with everyting a city dweller could need
- friendly, intelligent citizens
- great food, especially when it comes to fish
- did i mention beautiful women?
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Center of mass? (Score:1)
Re:US and European centers? (Score:2)
Two out of three ain't bad (Score:1)
Geo center versus Cost center (Score:2)
Re:not welldefined (a mathematical note) (Score:5)
Re:Interesting Observation(land mass distribution) (Score:1)
There's twice as much habitable landmass in the northern hemisphere as the southern. Wait a few tens of thousands of millenia, and you can have your happy carefree hemispherically evenly distributed landmasses.
choices, choices everywhere! (Score:2)
Worcester? (Score:1)
Re:Better measure by travel time (Score:1)
Re:Um, No. (Score:1)
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Re:Um, No. (Score:1)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Better average: Weighted by cost of travel (Score:1)
But If they are trying to achieve that for everybody it should be equally easy to go to the meeting, the distance measure should be weighted by the cost of travel divided by the travel budget of each of the developers... And where will the cruise boat stop to pickup people?
That should give them a project for a couple more rainy days
Re:my 0.02 Euros (Score:1)
In fact, I made no point at all. Just an observation: the choice of the projection of the Earth influences the way people perceive these results. Japan sits in a proverbial corner.
Re:How to be Happy (Score:1)
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Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks
Re:No No No (Score:2)
For some odd reason, he didn't get the joke...
(The bar keeper did though !)
Bring yer shovels... (Score:2)
Re:Assumes developers all weigh the same. (Score:1)
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