Slashdot Mirror

That may be so. But check out Today's slashdot! http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html?tag=nefd.top

You know, if you don't even bother to reformat your article, it really does sound like a cut'n'paste troll. Let's check...

Well, here's one. Must be a fairly new cut'n'paste troll.

I'll have some fun with it anyway, and feel free to copy and paste my response anywhere you see this troll:

(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system)

That really dates this troll, or at least, the troll wants us to think it is that out of touch. Seriously, who uses TokenRing or ext2? (Oh, and you can defrag ext2, if you really, really want to.)

So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use.

Sucks to be you. Try reading the license.

It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License.

That's General Public License.

Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.

Indeed it does, but only to whoever you distribute binaries to.

Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.

If you're sending free binaries to your competitors, sure. But you'd have to be retarded to do that.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released.

Absolutely untrue.

We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution.

If you're rewriting it anyway, why not give away your hard work? Worked well for id software.

I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".

And of course, no mention of exactly how that's more fair, other than this comparison to such a strawman GPL.

Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.

Except, of course, a top online investment firm kind of proves you wrong there. I'll point to Amazon EC2 and consider the discussion closed.

Troll, FUD, Flamebait, wow guys get some original material or shut up already. I didn't find anything directly on update.microsoft.com but a very quick google search will show you just how "secure" Microsoft keeps their own shit.

http://www.news.com/2100-7349_3-6085589.html
http://www.zone-h.org/content/view/227/31/
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6085589.html
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/03/001103hnhacker.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/10/ms.taiwan.idg/index.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,2086058,00.htm

There are many more but I'm not really in the mood for doing other folks homework for them.

Chicken/egg.

~90% of users are going to go with whatever browser they're given. Chances are they don't know what a browser is, and won't even know there are other pieces of software that do the same thing. I've met plenty of people using FF who just think it's a different place for the "internet" to live.

Most apps/sites (read: most = retarded) require IE. Most tech support lines require you to use IE (i.e. they'll hang up on you if you say you don't have it, telling you that only IE can be used to solve any problems hovering around ports 80 and 443). Therefore, for an OEM to provide tech support to their customers (a legal requirement) without incurring fees in altering their "help" systems to cater for "user does not have IE" or "user consents to use a different browser than officially mandated one" branches, the people with the purse strings generally see it as their xmas bonuses going up in smoke.

End result? IE is so entrenched it's a practical neccessity, whether it's made optional or not.

And this brings us to the second point, where Opera are right on the money: why is IE so entrenched? Because, for a time, you practically couldn't use chunks of the web without it, and it's pretty much still mandatory on intranets (yay for ActiveX) - ref. browser wars - because MS deliberately subverted the standards. They even tried the same thing with Opera, feeding it malformed stylesheets on MSN in order to make opera appear defective, resulting in the semi-famous B0rk! edition.

By forcing MS to produce a browser that follows the open, published standard (as opposed to the limited subset they do currently), all of a sudden we have a level playing field not only for browsers but for web devs as well. MS certainly has the technical nouse to produce a world class browser, but their strategy since Netscape died has been to keep it usable enough that people didn't puke up their own pelvises whilst using it, but make it no better than that. Heck, you think IE7 would have happened without FF? I doubt it. They choose not to because they have a vested interest in keeping as much of the net, and the web, using protocols or applications that they control, either in whole or in part because that makes controlling you, the product, that much easier. If everyone was going around using opera, or flashblock, or google apps, or Macs, we'd have plagues, cats and gods living together, mass hysteria and, dog forbid, drops in MS's mindshare and marketshare which can only leave the fortress gates open for commie pinkos like Linyos Torovoltos, making the problem even worse.

Thankfully, such a proposition has a chance, albeit slim, of happening in Europe - a fully CSS W3C-compliant IE would be a colossal boon for web devs, and ultimately users, the world over, probably eventually to MS's decline, since they'd be forced to compete on features rather that support for the semi-crippled IE-only interwebosphere. Apart from corporates of course, where IE will still rule the roost due to Active Directory (Opera! PLEASE support SPNEGO so those of us in MS shops don't have to chuck our creds in every five minutes! Firefox, PLEASE add MSI support and a GPO snap-in and I can guarantee you five hundred users tomorrow). Not sure it'd fly in America, cos what's good for MS is good for the US is good for the world, right?

Disclaimer: long time Opera fanboy, long time Brit with long time disdain for the US govs foreign and economical policies

On Wednesday 12 December 2007, QuantumG wrote:
> Maybe one day it won't be silly :)

Absolutely. I'm doing some research in the background. Try this:

Litho-history [PDF]
Simple Lithography [blog]
News story, semirelevant

query: lenses circuits wax Intel
result: MY OWN PAGE *argh* (re: analytical instrumentation)
I also get: "Bryan's page on semiconductor manufacturing" which is also,
alas, me. But the page contains just as far as I've been able to get so
far: how to take sand and extract silicon from it, into giant crystals
that you can pull. The next step is to use diamond saws or diamond wire
to cut the silicon crystals into the wafers that you start with. The
diamond wire is very costly: it apparently degrades after a few uses.
So I haven't been able to figure out how to make my own diamond wire
yet. Another option might be to use high-powered lasers to cut the
silicon. Not sure about that one. Then, the next step is to go back
over Wikibooks book re: photolithography and the chemical etching
process, which I also have on my /notes.html file on my website. I need
to flow chart the whole operation soon.

How can we achieve fabbing@home?
- distribute the components across a city, absorb cost
- ship each incremental stage to different members
-- costly packaging, but pricing absorbed by people able to afford each individual component of the stage.

- Bryan

That's the feeback program. You can get free Vista but to do so you need to sign up to the feedback program, and that uses some spyware, er, software that needs Vista or XP.

In makefile terms

freevista: pc_with_xp_or_vista

Let's hope that the terrorists are short of money and care about using legitimate software ;-)

Actually, that reminds me. A reporter in Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban bought a looted al Qaeda laptop -
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200409/cullison

From the sound of, they seem unlikely to grasp the fact that the export version of Windows uses 56 bit keys (which the NSA can presumably crack quickly) rather than 128 bit ones.

http://www.news.com/2100-1023-204556.html

The article itself mentions that it's a robot "suitor". Further, if you look at the screenshot, the column of victims is titled, "The nickname or name of the lured female".

I think the submitter just made some assumptions and stated them as fact....

On the nosey!

IBM could have any number of reasons for recommending Vista over XP.

Lenovo isn't IBM.

That being said, I have an antique T22 that runs Ubuntu nicely. What I'd like to see Lenovo offer some time in the future, when my T22 finally dies the Real Death, is an option for some flavor of Linux on a new Thinkpad out the door.

I may be missing something, but I read the Fine Article, and then I read the Fine Bill, and the two don't jibe.

From TFA:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.
That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

`(a) Duty To Report-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Whoever, while engaged in providing an electronic communication service or a remote computing service to the public through a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, obtains actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances described in paragraph (2) shall, as soon as reasonably possible--
`(A) complete and maintain with current information a registration with the CyberTipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by such center, by providing the mailing address, telephone number, facsimile number, electronic mail address of, and individual point of contact for, such electronic communication service provider or remote computing service provider; and
`(B) make a report of such facts or circumstances to the CyberTipline, or any successor to the CyberTipline operated by such center.

`(f) Protection of Privacy- Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote computing service provider to--
`(1) monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider;
`(2) monitor the content of any communication of any person described in paragraph (1); or
`(3) affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in subsection (a)(2).

The way I read it, if someone go to Joe Blow's coffee shop and Joe sees him looking at kiddie p*rn, Joe is obliged to report it, but he doesn't have to look over his patrons' shoulders. And AT&T is not obliged to set up some special wiretapping room or keep logfiles so they can rat people out.

IMHO, if you come across someone committing a serious crime, you have a moral duty to report it, and I think child pornography falls into that kind of crime. The vote (409-2) indicates that most people would agree.

I'm curious about the two congressmen/women who voted against it -- and Declan McCullagh.

If it walks like a shill, writes like a shill, chances are it is a shill.

A picture of Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fuction? What, no Dr. Strangelove pics available?

Also, I have to wonder how wise it is for C|Net to post that picture in light of this article, especially since it bears the legend "(C) CNET Networks."

They can't even keep people from breaking in and stealing their expresso supplies! No wonder they have so much trouble with security...

=Smidge=

Such as the Talon?

Let's take a walk down memory lane shall we.

Just as we did not know there was competition for IBM until Microsoft's PC monopoly replaced IBM's mainframe monopoly.

"Fearing a breakup decree, IBM voluntarily "unbundled" its pricing of hardware, software and services. Still conscious of the antitrust specter, the company spun off a services division in the '80s called Integrated Solutions and Services Corp."

IBM made SURE there was visible competition so as not to give the "appearance" of being a monopoly after the government dropped its case against them. Microsoft has consistently thumbed its nose at the government basically telling them to mind their own business.

Microsoft did not create the PC, IBM did. Had Compaq not reverse engineered the BIOS and created a viable clone market IBM would have been a PC monopoly along with Microsoft. In fact I suspect if it hadn't been for government scrutiny at the time IBM would have just bought Microsoft outright.

The difference I see between the antitrust case against IBM and the monopoly case against Microsoft is that the government actively pursued IBM in court relentlessly whereas in the Microsoft case they had the big trial and won a guilty verdict and then just slapped them on the hand and scolded them. It's "spare the rod spoil the child" on a corporate scale. IBM got spanked and was afraid to be "bad" again and Microsoft was scolded and has not changed much at all because of it.

Not sure why the post linked to an appleinsider article... this is a general google maps mobile thing.

Here's a more detailed article from cnet

I can't wait to use it - it looks like they're using the beta to build up a database of towers around the world :)

No, they paid out a great deal more, but there was a lot of hand waving. The upfront payment was apparently 8 million, but it was followed with more money over the next 3 quarters. In addition, Sun had the right to buy more stock from SCO at $1.83, when the going price was somewhere around 10. Do you still think that this deal was about software? Not a chance. The drivers available from SCO has never been that good (which is why they tried to get the Linux/BSD drivers into their OS). Oh, yes, SUN sold the stock, ONCE they were caught with their hand in this, but not before. This was meant to hold back Linux until they could get their stuff opened and moving forward.

As I said earlier, I hope that ALL of these folks go to prison. It is the only way to stop future abuses.

Errrmmmm, has no one considered the idea that he did precisely the job he was paid to do? Linux was becoming very hot in IT when SCO launched the lawsuit. Linux-oriented business cooled off for a while, long enough for Microsoft to suspend vendor drift toward Linux (to some extent). They waved the promises of the glories the turd that is Vista, and the uncertainty of the legal standing of GNU/Linux in front of businesses.

Microsoft launched their FUD campaign around that time, pumping 2 million dollars into SCO by buying licenses. Then Microsoft does that bizarro-world lawsuit thing with Kodak and Sun. MS settles for 2 billion (!) dollars with Sun, Sun turns around and settles with Kodak for 92 million dollars. I believe PJ did some dot-connecting at one point showing that MS was behind a lot of this, in an effort to pump up the notion of "Intellectual Property," strengthening software patents, in particular, through precedent in the courts.

SCO was simply the the blunt instrument wielded by the Canopy Group to distract from the behind-closed-doors stuff. So, in theory, Scott did what he was paid to do.

Disclaimer: I enjoy conspiracy theories involving MS.

With microsft posting double digit increases in Q4 revenue from client(vista) and business(office) divisions compared to last year, I guess microsoft failed at failing.

If you don't have the money to pay for the software your business use, you shouldn't use the software in the first place.

What the heck, I'm on lunch anyway

http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

Ok...so the Ernie Ball thing is really only a footnote in the actual article as most of the article is actually current but damnit, Ernie Ball switched 4-5 YEARS ago. This is not news. Now if we all hop in our time machine then the summary will actually be relevant, but for fucks sake this news is over 4 years old. http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html Notice the published in 2003, and then notice further the part where it explains that this is 1 year after the fact interview.

Ernie Ball - Model For Open-Source Transition?, from August 21, 2003. Is there a record for longest time between a dupe and the original story? Also, please note that the date of the above story is four years old, and TFA states that Ernie was very happy "since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three years ago". The Ernie Ball's story, while very interesting, happened seven years ago.

Actually, Ernie Ball uses RedHat.

And why link to an intermediate site instead of the real article?

http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

Or You could use this. http://www.thorshield.com/prod01.htm

According to them works on all non-lethal weaponry.

Cnet Wtiteuphttp://www.news.com/Polyester-fabric-neutralizes-stun-gun-jolt/2100-1008_3-6057801.html?tag=nefd.lede

That the Intel Clasmate PC run Linux, not windows?

In many of the responses to this article, people talk about the "Wintel". No guys.

Microsoft actually is working very hard, and with the blessing of Mr. Negroponte, no less, toport windows to the OLPC:
http://www.news.com/Negroponte-Windows-key-to-OLPC-philosophy/2100-1016_3-6215837.html

And Intel is now on board the OLPC project:
http://www.news.com/2100-1005_3-6196629.html

I guess that Mr. Negroponte's anger comes from the fact that things are not turning out as he envisioned, and he rather put the blame on someone else, whithout admiting ANY PERCENTAGE WHATSOEVER of errors in the foundation's strategy.

That the Intel Clasmate PC run Linux, not windows?

In many of the responses to this article, people talk about the "Wintel". No guys.

Microsoft actually is working very hard, and with the blessing of Mr. Negroponte, no less, toport windows to the OLPC:
http://www.news.com/Negroponte-Windows-key-to-OLPC-philosophy/2100-1016_3-6215837.html

And Intel is now on board the OLPC project:
http://www.news.com/2100-1005_3-6196629.html

I guess that Mr. Negroponte's anger comes from the fact that things are not turning out as he envisioned, and he rather put the blame on someone else, whithout admiting ANY PERCENTAGE WHATSOEVER of errors in the foundation's strategy.

It said in the article that the the lawsuit admits that the band knows that Activision has a license to make the cover song.

By the wording in this article, it sounds like the band does control the copyright. In researching I've found out that they've sued about licensing of their music before.

Next a small upstart company will be telling us how they have a image manipulation program you uses through the web which will replace photoshop.

Adobe is already planning on taking Photoshop online.

Whilst, in fairness, the article doesn't mention it, the Aptera Typ-1 actually has a third half-seat that can be used for a baby seat. Alternately, it can be removed to make cargo space. "The vehicle seats two in the front, with one seat in the back big enough to fit an infant car seat, according to company specs. With that seat removed and used as a cargo area, it can fit up to 15 bags of groceries or two full-size golf club bags." - So as long as you're not taking your kid golfing with you, you should be fine.

Also, the vast majority of trips made every day are with only one person in the car, which is the reason why transit lanes exist. Furthermore, as a person of over 6' height, the back seats of most two-door cars are useless for me anyway, and exceedingly uncomfortable for most people I know - so I should buy a sedan because I might need 5 seats on some rare occasion? If you have a family, maybe you'll need a sedan as well, but most families have two cars, and considering that the majority of the driving that people do is to and from work by themselves, this car makes a lot of sense for the average commuter, and as the average daily commute in the US is 20 miles, a 120 mile range seems pretty reasonable. So yeah, you won't be taking the 4 kids on a road trip to the grand canyon in it, but you won't be getting 300MPG with a Canyonaro, either... I would hardly call it "extremely limited" - it's just as specialised as any other car on the market.

Plus, it is pretty damn cool looking.

I mean, is SSL not good enough for you? You don't trust SSL?

Microsoft warns of hijacked certificates

I *always* trust SSL, especially certificate authority VeriSign. And it'd be stupid of me to download and install on a Windows machine Microsoft's security update.

Apple partnered with Audible

Audible was around before Apple, and had what passed then for a market-lock on DRM'd spoken audio... multiple platforms and huge back catalogue of content. It's simply too big a competitor to go against. Apple also partnered with Creative to use MusicMatch (now with Yahoo) when the Windows ipod launched. But then it dropped MusicMatch when it had its own solution. As regards DRM "NIH", it's not about where it was made, it's about control. You really think Apple wants anyone deploying DRM within "its" market? Apple wasn't content to just licence FairPlay for itunes, it bought it, brought it in-house, and prevented it from being licenced to any other companies. Apple even blocked Real from selling its own reverse-engineered FairPlay tracks that were higher quality than what was available from ITMS at that time. Or look at it another way - for years the ipod shipped with PortalPlayer chipsets which came with a Windows Media SDK. Implementing PlaysForSure would have been trivial, if Apple had not deleted those drivers from the firmware. There was simply no way Apple was going to allow a bunch of companies to deploy DRM files within its hardware channel without going through ITMS.

nice, i will try it once its out, i still believe Mozilla are a bunch of nice people

tho i believe ALOT of money corrupts even the best of intentions, at 50million+ i hope they hired the best and the brightest to fix issues that (it hurts to say this) even lesser browsers like IE7 don't suffer from

Despite frequent attempts (often by Bob Metcalfe) to proclaim The Death Of The Internet, somehow the damn thing just keeps on surviving and expanding:

  * ARPANet Co-Founder Predicts An Internet Crisis October 25th 2007
  * Death of the Internet greatly exaggerated August 25 2004
  * The Death Of The Internet November 4 2002
  * Predicting the Death of the Internet May 18 2001
  * Internet still collapsing, Metcalfe says July 7 1997

I'd like to suggest a new anti-Internet-death-meme: the Internet is a giant collection of cockroaches. You can step on as many as you want with your HD video torrents, it just keeps on multiplying and scurrying around anyway.

It seemed very promising to me as well. However, on further research, it seems that nanosolar may not be as rock solid as I first thought.

In June, nanosolar lost one of its chief scientist.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9727336-7.html
What do other slashdotter think of this?

That's cause you didn't RTFA. It is not single purpose, it has wireless connection and also audio so conceivably it's a competitor for other devices, such as music players. From TFA:

Details are skimpy. The device, reports say, will have Wi-Fi, Sprint's EV-DO wireless service to make book purchases on the go,

The Kindle is equipped with a Wi-Fi connection that taps into an Amazon e-book store, which users can access to purchase new electronic books--and Amazon has reportedly signed onto a deal with Sprint for EVDO access. Additionally, the device comes with a headphone jack for audiobooks, as well as an e-mail address.

But the source said the Kindle apparently won't bear many other BlackBerry-like features such as a calendar or address book. The Kindle may also lack a backlight. Instead, it comes with a small reading light attached to an adjustable arm.

Chill, dude, just because there's historical fact doesn't mean you can't laugh about how "antiquated" that all seems now.

OK.. From the post I couldn't tell if it was modded funny by someone who never heard of fidonet and thought it was a land based twin to RFC 1149.

http://www.news.com/2100-1001-257064.html

Feel free to laugh at RFC 1149. I did.

For postarity sake, I still have my genuine Hayes Smartmodem. It's a keepsake I'll pass down to my son who will probably trash it or sell it to a collector online.

Maybe because Microsoft has posted record profits due in major part to the uptake of Vista? Slashdot constistently paints Vista as some major failure, but the numbers say otherwise. Why sould shareholders complain about a 25% increase in revenue?

Citation needed.

Open your eyes and look. My dad bought a Mac Laptop and has migrated to Linux. I'm typing this right now on an ex-Windows machine. Do you know anyone talking about the release of Gutsy? Pay attention.

Anyway if you want ones in the news.. here;

http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/ Open the links for the list of businesses in each sector using Linux.
And ones that we know about from the SCO debacle are Auto Zone and Daimler Chrystler.

Hell, I'm still on Windows 2000, works fine for me! I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.

And that doesn't translate to throwing out their entire machine and spending loads on a Mac.

True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine. The XP machine is still there and doesn't get tossed right away. It collects dust sitting there just in case it is needed for something until it is just in the way and gets tossed (donated).

And the only reason Vista nags so much, is because people (presumably Mac users) slagged off XP so much for not asking you,

In anything I have used that isn't Windows, updates and such being avaliable, don't stop the machine when a dialog shows up. A toolbar item gently brightning and dimming to get your attention for an application needing user input is one thing. Shutting off the movie that is playing to ask permission to do a Java update check (while there is no network connection) is just plain bad design regardless of how much it is a good idea to ask permission. It should not stop the show.

OS X was better because you had to enter your password to do such things

Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?

Many businesses (MacDonalds and Starbucks, for example) operate open and free access points

Lies!

Starbucks has a deal with T-Mobile to charge. According to this, a day pass is $6.

I haven't been to a McDonald's in over 10 years, but this says they have "several convenient connection options: on-line credit card payment, subscriptions, prepaid cards, or (sometimes) promotional coupons".

My experience has been that the bigger or more "corporate" the business, the less likely they are to have free Wifi. Starbucks can count on a million people a day through their stores simply because they have the green mermaid out front. The place on the corner has better coffee and all us locals go there, but since they don't have the green mermaid trump card to suck in out-of-towners, they actually have to compete with other local businesses, and that means free Wifi for us.

Here are the emails for the county officials and city council for the largest cities in George Miller's district. Make sure to send Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) so they might actually read it.

Subject: George Miller hides language in H.R.4137 that would remove federal funding from colleges unable to stop file-sharing

BCC: LDare@cao.cccounty.us, pburk@contracostatv.org, cwamp@contracostatv.org, bkondylis@solanocounty.com, ceward@solanocounty.com, jfsilva@solanocounty.com, mpalmaffy@solanocounty.com, JPSpering@solanocounty.com, sgoerkeshrode@solanocounty.com, cmcook@solanocounty.com, jmvasquez@solanocounty.com, pknelson@solanocounty.com, mjreagan@solanocounty.com, FCZaragoza@SolanoCounty.com, cao-clerk@solanocounty.com, bwagenknecht@co.napa.ca.us, mluce@co.napa.ca.us, ddillon@co.napa.ca.us, bdodd@co.napa.ca.us, hmoskowite@co.napa.ca.us, Diane_Holmes@ci.richmond.ca.us, natbates@comcast.net, tom.butt@intres.com, Lopez.Ludmyrna@comcast.net, johnemarquez@aol.com, elirapty@aol.com, harpreet.sandhu@comcast.net, tony_thurmond@ci.richmond.ca.us, Maria_Viramontes@ci.richmond.ca.us, aevenson@ci.pittsburg.ca.us, mayor@ci.vallejo.ca.us, jdavis@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tpearsall0285@aol.com, sgomes@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tbartee@ci.vallejo.ca.us, hsunga@ci.vallejo.ca.us, garycloutier@sbcglobal.net, citycouncil@ci.concord.ca.us



Dear Sir or Madam,

News source: http://www.news.com/2102-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=st.util.print

Bill source: http://edlabor.house.gov/bills/HEAReauthorizationText.pdf

This is unbelievably unconscionable and corrupt on the part of your elected representative. The MPAA is applauding Rep. George Miller for introducing an anti-piracy bill that threatens the nation's colleges with the loss of $100 Billion a year in federal financial aid, should they fail to have a technology plan to stop illegal file sharing.

The proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page bill, has alarmed university officials. "Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid -- including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," said university officials in a letter to Congress. "Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."

I've installed Leopard on three Apple machine (Mac Pro, G5 Power Mac, G5 iMac) so far with zero problems. I still have a G4 iMac and a G4 Mac mini to go, just been to lazy.

My general opinion is that Leopard is by far and away the best OS from Apple so far. The only installation problems I've read about had to do with people who were using APE. http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9806005-37.html Just out of habit I always do a fresh install so I typically never get bit by these types of issues.

As far as speed/performance is concerned, I found Leopard to *feel* considerably faster on all my machines so far. Whether or not it actually is faster or if Apple is just using tricks to alter my perception, I don't know... But I do know that my perception is that it feels quite a bit faster. When I first installed Leopard on my Mac Pro I was initially very concerned, every time I tried to do something (or doing nothing) my HD would grind away and the system was definitely a lot slower than Tiger. That turned out to just be Spotlight doing it's initial indexing. After an hour or so (I didn't pay attention) the initial index completed and all was well.

Is there room for improvement in Leopard, absolutely. But that whole notion is simply a understood reality, there's always room for improvement. IMHO Leopard is a bigtime improvement to Tiger, and it appears that you're relatively happy with Tiger.

One of the many improvements which is worth the price of admission for me (as dumb as it may be to begin with) connecting to different network devices now happens on a separate thread. Long story short If you're connected to another computer and that computer goes away your machine no longer hangs and becomes unusable while it tries to find it's missing connection.

I've read reviews, and tend to agree that people don't like the transparent menu system or the new 3D Dock. Neither of these things bother me much. In fact I really like the look of the new dock, but that's because I always have mine on the left side of the screen and it won't display in the 3d style with that configuration.

One of the things I both love and hate are Stacks. I really like how Stacks functions. Stacks basically does exactly what I used to do manually but makes it better and more automated. What I hate (and I can't stress this enough) about stacks is that the icon it uses to represent the folder is dynamic. This really lame when you have an applications folder and the icon for the applications folder is AddressBook since it's the first app in the folder (alphabetically.) With a wink and a nudge from a Apple authority I've been lead to believe that Apple is going to change this behavior with a update.

All in all I prefer Leopard to Tiger and I fully recommend the upgrade.

Big, highly centralised power stations are expensive to construct (about 2 billion/reactor)

They're currently looking at 1.5 Billion, but oh well.

expensive to maintain (average $126 million per reactor per year)

Looks about right. Nuclear cost report I eyeball the chart on page 11 at around $120 per kw, or $120 million for a gigawatt plant.

Expensive compared to what? At 90% capacity factor and .05 per kwh, it'll sell $394 million of electricity. Enough to, in the first year, pay the $200 million of interest(@10%) for the loans to build the plant, and pay down the loan $68M.

Using a handy dandy student loan calculator(principals the same, I just used 'k' instead of 'm'), the loan would be paid off in 13 years and 10 months. If it ends up costing only 1.5B, we're down to 8 years and 3 months. 5 years 7 months quicker isn't bad.

have long construction lead times (10-12 years) and are expensive in fuel, particularly when waste disposal costs are factored in.

People figure that they have the construction lead times mostly solved. New plants are expected to take 5-6 years.

Refueling, about $40million for a gigawatt plant every 18-24 months, or .46 cents per kwh. It also says O&M at 1.26 cents per kwh. Totals, 1.72 cents per kwh, or 168 million for the year. Raises payoff to 21 yrs, 8 months. Still less than most houses. 11 years even for 1.5billion construction cost.

In the USA at least, nuclear plants have been paying uncle sam for years to take care of the waste, have ended up taking care of it themselves so far, and are still profitable.

In fully economically deregulated environments, nuclear power simply can't compete with other clean technologies. It may be suitable for a limited set of circumstances, but it's not a final answer that deserves trillions of dollars of commitment. We need to keep looking.

In fully economically deregulated environments, solar and wind would be slaughtered by nuclear.

Solar, even the more cost effective thermal designs: 11-13 cents a kwh. Hint: I pay less retail for my electricity. Common figures per watt of capacity is $6.
Wind: Even if it's only $1/watt, it gets slaughtered by capacity factor - some farms are as low as 7%, most average 30% - meaning a gigawatt of wind turbines will only generate a third of the energy a nuclear plant of the same maximum capacity would. That raises capital construction costs for an equivalent generation of power to $3 Billion, a billion more than the nuclear plant - That's an extra $100 million in interest the first year. Just killed the fuel savings over a nuclear plant, didn't it? And wind farms aren't free from O&M costs either. Good locations are limited - a wind farm takes up more space than a nuclear plant, probably even if you only consider the footprint of the towers.