Yes, how history does repeat. The downside is that until there was a significant drop population, that bubonic plague thing, there was no positive change for the commoner. Once there were not enough serfs to till the fields or serve as Men at Arms, conditions leveled out for all.
The article mentions the drop in prices since the project was started. They requested funds of $2500 in the Summer of 2006 and began assembly in January 2007.
So by the summer of 2006 when the price of hardware materials needed to build Microwulf had gone down, Adams asked his academic department to provide $2500 for the project. He also asked Brom, then beginning his last year at Calvin, to help him build the supercomputer. In January of 2007, they began to piece together their system and by March, they were running tests to see just what Microwulf could do. In the end, the project came in under budget with Microwulf donning a price-tag of just $2470. With current hardware prices, another system like Microwulf would cost half of what it cost Adams and Brom to build earlier this year.
While this is not a new concept, it is still cool, and still good to see in the news. To use the overly used car analogy, I view this as sort of like figuring out how to get 500 BHP out of a 2.0L, but for $1000 less than before.
The true concern, I think, is about control/ownership at the country level.
Is manufacturing ownership or if the magic of IP law is ownership. Some would argue that those who physically create items have ownership of them. In very simple times years and years ago, this would have been true, but then societies dreamed up ownership and the concept of property law.
Consider a serf or sharecropper tenant; while they may actually perform the physical labor, the owner of the land actually owns the harvest. The smarter owners kept their serfs happy enough to prevent revolt and kept as much of the harvest remainder for themselves. The few truly noble ones were more like good managers, always looking to keep everyone as happy and taken care of as possible.
With a "global economy", in quotes since I mean one truly global economy instead of the current global economy that is the sum of the local economies, substitute the factory for the land and IP holders for the owners. The serfs are replaced by the current value of $Humans_That_Are_Cheapest. Production is then outsourced when higher profits and EPS result. The U.S.A and China trade debt for products (as an aside, anyone else notice P.R.C showing up as the country of manufacture on more items?).
But, control of the IP remains with the owner who may move production at anytime. A country may nearly instantly impact the production of a company headquartered on their soil, but may have legal problems impacting production of a company headquartered overseas. And what is ownership in the end but control?
Bollock defined: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks Not the most polite method of expressing disagreement and possibly a Troll, but I will assume that you meant that I wrote nonsense.
I have no knowledge of your 25-30 year old B&W DM5's aside from viewing a few queries posted to audiophile webpages, or newer speakers sold in the UK/EU. In the U.S.A, SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) has been listed in the technical specifications for loudspeakers for at least 15 years. The exception to this is the manufacturers whose product is so shoddy that they would prefer for their specifications to not be listed at all. In general, a higher SNR, speakers and amplifiers, results in clearer sound, the difference between hearing the drumstick hit the drum and then the percussion versus hearing just the somewhat muted percussion.
With regard to wattage, I too have speakers that can be overdriven. I like a balanced system. There is something nice a sound system that is both loud and clear.
This is how it has been since at least the 1970's, and how American society in general feels it should be.
To speak directly to the question, if no child is left behind, then the fastest are either waiting for the slowest or helping them along. While this slows down the fastest, everyone gets to the figurative destination about the same time, as a group. More time and money is spent getting the slow up to speed that is spent getting the fast to more faster. And above all else, "good enough" is the goal, not "the best".
Remember, schools are not there just to teach subjects, but how to be good Subjects.
I am sure that many here have been the odd kid, the one held up to allow the others to catch up, the one quickest to answer correctly yet overlooked when raising their hand to answer. One person always being first intellectually does not create harmony (why do you think there are derogative terms for the intelligent?), yet this is what we do with organized physical sports, celebrate the one that is always first/highest score.
Until there is a much public interest in intellectual sports (let's say chess matches as an example) as any physical sport, the brightest intellectually will never receive more resources to learn than the slowest will to catch up at the low end of the curve
If looking for good sound, start with good speakers. I'm not talking about $1000 US per unit speakers, just a nice high (for their price range) SNR, with their RMS and max Watt rating matching your amplifier. To me at least, this makes the most difference, IF there is one to be found. Depending on the style of music, and the original mastering, there may not be a difference between the CD and a 128 bitrate, or lower, MP3
Dude, Slackware is not a POS. It is for those who really want control over their system, and knowledge. If you want a quick, easy to install and configure system, Slackware may not be for you, at least until you write your own GUI tools
Using video surveillance is similar to placing a law enforcement officer 24/7/365 at each location. The difference with respect to privacy is that the officers are also viewed. The public is viewed by the watchers, who are also watched by the public. This balances the equation between the people and their law enforcement.
With video surveillance, who oversees law enforcement? How is it archived, how securely, and for what length of time?
Rather than spending $90M on surveillance equipment, and many more dollars on continued support and future upgrades, I would rather that the true cause of the crimes they intend to prosecute were investigated, and then prevented from ever occurring.
To me, the biggest problem is the destruction of my ability to remain largely anonymous while in a public place. Currently, if I go about my normal day, unless someone knows me, meaning that I have met them before and over years shared experiences with them, who I am and what I do are unknown. Only what I am doing right then and what I look like is known. With REALID, there is one database that will have every event recorded that involves the need for the card. I'm including queries against the database, already done by credit agencies with your SSN. Add a little face recognition to the video surveillance done to reduce crime , and every time you leave your home, you may be logged to that database (there is a digital photograph on file). It would probably be worse if the card was readable remotely, skipping that whole need for a video camera and clear view of the face problem. Throw in some crackers, both of the card and the database, and the single system that everyone in corporations and government will be relying upon becomes a huge area of concern.
I much prefer the existing, though already privacy violating and cracked, separate databases to one which will attract every cracker in the world.
If anything needs to be changed, we need to remove intrusion into our lives by corporations and government, not enable them to be more certain that they identify and track the citizens more accurately.
YES, the third Slashdotter who understands why gas prices are three times higher today compared to 7 years ago, commodities investors banking on Peak Oil happening soon, not supply and demand. I also have no idea why people continue to hold wholesale taxed prices in Europe as a comparison against wholesale taxed U.S.A. prices. The tax on gasoline/petrol being far higher in Europe versus the U.S.A. has been known for several decades.
And yes, there really are too many people not thinking before they act in the world
This would only handle the more amateur thieves. A tow truck will bypass the immobilizer problem, and also look just like a bank's repossession to anyone who witnesses it in progress
I once was heavily in agreement with your thoughts on corporal punishment. I even thought that public execution would be preferable to the current hidden executions. If you watched a murderer hang, with piss and shit running down his legs while he swung, wouldn't you think several times and cool off before committing the crime?
Then I saw how the world, people, and the "justice" system actually work. Until money is removed from the justice/legal system, until the extremely wealthy have the same representation as the homeless, it will never be just, and people will be wrongly convicted. Television shows like COPS turn criminal justice into entertainment, much like some reports of public executions in the days of olde.
IF the justice system were 100% accurate, I would agree with ever increasing penalties for crimes until they were no more. But the justice system is still a for profit endeavor, and you need money to have a chance at proving your innocence. That, or a lot of good luck. In civil court, the balance is even more in favor of the well moneyed. Just look at the RIAA cases and how many settle, simply because they can afford the settlement, not the lengthy legal battle. What would you do if a large corporation, say IBM or Microsoft, chose to sue you? If the case is criminal, how are you to pay for the experts to investigate the state's experts? Competent attorneys are not common or free. You need money to defend yourself in court, whether criminal or civil.
Then again, some crimes, like those reported against Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom, if the allegations are true and the defendants have appropriate legal counsel during the trial, deserve public hanging.
Just my view, take it for what you think its worth.
Temperature is a measurement of atomic/molecular energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature/ (Wikipedia link, there are hundreds of others, including basic chemistry and physics books). We humans have a lot of machines, which use energy, mostly from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain energy stored from millions of years ago. Our machines return this energy into the current world as sonic or thermal energy. Since we are adding molecular energy/motion into the world, the temperature increases. If you build a small fire, it heats up the nearby area. If you build a lot of big fires, you heat up a larger area.
Carbon dioxide gets into the picture as being a "greenhouse" gas. A "greenhouse gas" being one that retains energy here on Earth, instead of letting it reflect out to space. Not the only one, just the most commonly emitted one. Methane, Nitrous Oxide, and Ozone are some of the other considerations.
But, this has become a political issue, so it must be stripped down to something understandable in 60 seconds or less, and understandable to someone with no analytical skills or scientific knowledge. Carbon Dioxide emissions then get all of the attention, though they are a small part of "global warming", and not the true cause.
I was wondering if such things happened over there. Depending on the area in the U.S., surveillance cameras do seem to suffer occasional damage, commonly when used for target practice.
Finally someone who understands that this is not simply a "supply and demand" equation like the 60 second "news" stories tell us. Oil and gasoline are publicly traded commodities, and their prices are subject to those who buy and sell them long before retail. I was not able to find an online transcript, but during this discussion on C-SPAN, http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=965, Forbes and Pickens agreed that the speculative trading in oil and gasoline was responsible for the current increase in increase in the price of crude oil and gasoline, not supply and demand. In short, if it were not for traders running up the price, like stock at an IPO of a new "hot" tech company, oil would be around $40-$50 per barrel.
Whether the discussion is about the price of gas and telecommuters or global warming, there are always posts about how we should use mass transit, walk, or bicycle, instead of a using a personal motor vehicle. Now, I absolutely believe that we humans do affect the climate with our machines. The fact that the temperature variation was 2 degrees Fahrenheit greater in the days after Sept. 11 2001, when all civilian and commercial air traffic was grounded, http://www.physorg.com/news8899.html, I think absolutely proves that we do affect the climate.
The price of gasoline, and the voiced changes planned to prevent global warming both impact the same function in our lives, transportation. Whether we move food stuffs, goods, or people, we pay at the pump and with the climate. Would you like to take a bus on vacation, with your schedule dictated by consensus of the other groups on the bus? Have you gone grocery shopping on a bus or train, and if so, with children? Public mass transit places serious limitations on your ability to move from place to place.
I have no idea of the math/efficiency, but how cleanly would we generate electricity, enough to power all of our transportation needs? Would all electric vehicles, even just in the urban areas, be enough of an improvement to offset their inconvenience? Remember, we're thinking globally, not just in the immediate area. Whether coal, oil shale, natural gas, or hydroelectric is used to generate the electricity, it all impacts the environment. The transmission of electricity to the charging stations for each vehicle also has an impact (installation, maintenance, inspection, transmission).
The solution is a source of energy for our machines that is more efficient than electricity. Once again, it will be an egotistical nerd who will come up with the answer.
About 6 billion distributions would be nice, one for each person on Earth. Change the kernel, change the desktop environment, customize (not just the GUI or settings) your applications as you see fit, and add or remove whatever you wish from the stock distribution. That is why I truly enjoy using Linux. I know that there is some nit picking to be made about what is a "distribution", but I am sure everyone understands what I mean.
To illustrate what I mean:
I wish Mandriva well, and hope that they no longer make the same decisions that led to me formatting that partition. When JRE became a for cost plugin, I left. I have no problem paying for software, but don't charge me to use what someone else is providing for free. There were workarounds, but they left the browser and plugins outside the standard update path. Ubuntu is a nice distribution, along with Kbuntu and friends, but the lack of a root account felt very odd. Maybe I did not give it enough time. I know that, again, there are workarounds. But if I have to work around my OS, why am I using it? At work, its all about Windows. Workarounds make some sense there, since I am being paid. Speaking generally of all OS's, why would I pay for an OS for private use, then work to make it do what I wish, how I wish? Suse and Slackware are my current distributions, with Slackware taking me back to where I started with Linux, ZIPSlack. Knoppix, DSL, and Slax have all played a role with my bootable CD distribution needs. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses. Being able to choose is a strength of OSS and Linux, and why I promote them. If something doesn't work the way that you wish, change it or change your distribution.
Each change was mine to make. I controlled what happened on my PC's and how. If I felt a workaround was either too much work or would break something later, I moved to another that met my needs more closely. Limiting distributions would limit choice.
How many distributions? However many we decide to make!
"Add Open Season" and "Running with Scissors" to Sony's "so safe against copying its no longer a real DVD" list (the attempt at copy protection is in the file system). Both failed to load on a 3 year old Toshiba DVD player, which otherwise plays DVD, CD, VCD, and MP3 formats without problem. On the PC side, MPlayer and Kaffiene both tried to play the disks, but had serious display problems.
This leaves me as an (1) honest consumer locked out purchasing or renting Sony distributed movies. That is not really my loss as most of my rentals are movies that were not nearly good enough to see in a theater. Its just an additional step I rent movies. Now I have to also look for the distributor.
Their junk "copy protection" prevents the disk from being played on a legitimate DVD player, and only mildly inconveniences someone making a copy. Someone using a disk copier would not be slowed down at all.
When I took "Running with Scissors" went back to the store, with a complaint and for a refund, the manager was not surprised, and knew of many other titles that would have the same problem.
Sony was once a cool company, when they were mainly hardware I guess. It seems like since their merger with BMG that they really started to suck.
(1) Unless it is a DVD that I have purchased, I will not copy it. If it is a DVD that I have purchased, a copy is made for general usage with the original being the safe copy.
No, you're not ignorant. You've just not worked in a field that appreciates the difference between an HP, and a TI or Casio. The TI's and Casio's are fine in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, and where a computational error (hardware/software, not human) doesn't cost a fortune.
The HP's with their gold PCB's, characters molded through the entire key so it would never wear off, and solid cases were far above the TI/Casio bunch. They also cost more. Think of this as being somewhat analogous to comparing a E Machines PC to a Solaris server, except in this case the Solaris machine is designed to be used outdoors, in bad weather, dropped repeatedly over years, and still give accurate data.
How many have broadcast radio in your area that would start a show like Loveline? For those who do not know, Loveline http://www.adamdrew.com/ started on KROQ (Pasadena CA) in the mid 1980's with Rodney on the ROQ and Dr Drew. Rodney had a 2 hour weekly show that was exclusively unsigned local talent, heavily Punk. KLOS still has "The 7th Day" where an album is played in its entirety. This is the style of radio that I miss, and that gave me the desire to purchase LP's and cassettes, then CDs, back when the album equaled 2-3 hours wages.
Excellent point. The changes in radio play over the last couple decades have an impact here. I miss the days when there were several radio stations that had DJ's that actually created their own playlists. With nearly every station being a "Top 40 of $genre", the art, which is risky and might not be profitable, gets lost in the science of making money. This makes discovering new albums by artists (those who create music versus only singing lyrics) difficult than in the past
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, how history does repeat. The downside is that until there was a significant drop population, that bubonic plague thing, there was no positive change for the commoner. Once there were not enough serfs to till the fields or serve as Men at Arms, conditions leveled out for all.
The article mentions the drop in prices since the project was started. They requested funds of $2500 in the Summer of 2006 and began assembly in January 2007.
While this is not a new concept, it is still cool, and still good to see in the news. To use the overly used car analogy, I view this as sort of like figuring out how to get 500 BHP out of a 2.0L, but for $1000 less than before.
The true concern, I think, is about control/ownership at the country level.
Is manufacturing ownership or if the magic of IP law is ownership. Some would argue that those who physically create items have ownership of them. In very simple times years and years ago, this would have been true, but then societies dreamed up ownership and the concept of property law.
Consider a serf or sharecropper tenant; while they may actually perform the physical labor, the owner of the land actually owns the harvest. The smarter owners kept their serfs happy enough to prevent revolt and kept as much of the harvest remainder for themselves. The few truly noble ones were more like good managers, always looking to keep everyone as happy and taken care of as possible.
With a "global economy", in quotes since I mean one truly global economy instead of the current global economy that is the sum of the local economies, substitute the factory for the land and IP holders for the owners. The serfs are replaced by the current value of $Humans_That_Are_Cheapest. Production is then outsourced when higher profits and EPS result. The U.S.A and China trade debt for products (as an aside, anyone else notice P.R.C showing up as the country of manufacture on more items?).
But, control of the IP remains with the owner who may move production at anytime. A country may nearly instantly impact the production of a company headquartered on their soil, but may have legal problems impacting production of a company headquartered overseas. And what is ownership in the end but control?
Age discrimination would be one reason. Your primary occupation suffering a lack of available work would be another reason.
With either, the only choice is to work in the service industry while returning to college/vocational school/opening your own shop.
I think you may have figured the true reason for the GPS. Its not primarily for tracking the cabbies, but their customers.
I have no knowledge of your 25-30 year old B&W DM5's aside from viewing a few queries posted to audiophile webpages, or newer speakers sold in the UK/EU. In the U.S.A, SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) has been listed in the technical specifications for loudspeakers for at least 15 years. The exception to this is the manufacturers whose product is so shoddy that they would prefer for their specifications to not be listed at all. In general, a higher SNR, speakers and amplifiers, results in clearer sound, the difference between hearing the drumstick hit the drum and then the percussion versus hearing just the somewhat muted percussion.
With regard to wattage, I too have speakers that can be overdriven. I like a balanced system. There is something nice a sound system that is both loud and clear.
Cheers
This is how it has been since at least the 1970's, and how American society in general feels it should be.
To speak directly to the question, if no child is left behind, then the fastest are either waiting for the slowest or helping them along. While this slows down the fastest, everyone gets to the figurative destination about the same time, as a group. More time and money is spent getting the slow up to speed that is spent getting the fast to more faster. And above all else, "good enough" is the goal, not "the best".
Remember, schools are not there just to teach subjects, but how to be good Subjects.
I am sure that many here have been the odd kid, the one held up to allow the others to catch up, the one quickest to answer correctly yet overlooked when raising their hand to answer. One person always being first intellectually does not create harmony (why do you think there are derogative terms for the intelligent?), yet this is what we do with organized physical sports, celebrate the one that is always first/highest score.
Until there is a much public interest in intellectual sports (let's say chess matches as an example) as any physical sport, the brightest intellectually will never receive more resources to learn than the slowest will to catch up at the low end of the curve
If looking for good sound, start with good speakers. I'm not talking about $1000 US per unit speakers, just a nice high (for their price range) SNR, with their RMS and max Watt rating matching your amplifier. To me at least, this makes the most difference, IF there is one to be found. Depending on the style of music, and the original mastering, there may not be a difference between the CD and a 128 bitrate, or lower, MP3
Dude, Slackware is not a POS. It is for those who really want control over their system, and knowledge. If you want a quick, easy to install and configure system, Slackware may not be for you, at least until you write your own GUI tools
Using video surveillance is similar to placing a law enforcement officer 24/7/365 at each location. The difference with respect to privacy is that the officers are also viewed. The public is viewed by the watchers, who are also watched by the public. This balances the equation between the people and their law enforcement.
With video surveillance, who oversees law enforcement? How is it archived, how securely, and for what length of time?
Rather than spending $90M on surveillance equipment, and many more dollars on continued support and future upgrades, I would rather that the true cause of the crimes they intend to prosecute were investigated, and then prevented from ever occurring.
To me, the biggest problem is the destruction of my ability to remain largely anonymous while in a public place. Currently, if I go about my normal day, unless someone knows me, meaning that I have met them before and over years shared experiences with them, who I am and what I do are unknown. Only what I am doing right then and what I look like is known. With REALID, there is one database that will have every event recorded that involves the need for the card. I'm including queries against the database, already done by credit agencies with your SSN. Add a little face recognition to the video surveillance done to reduce crime , and every time you leave your home, you may be logged to that database (there is a digital photograph on file). It would probably be worse if the card was readable remotely, skipping that whole need for a video camera and clear view of the face problem. Throw in some crackers, both of the card and the database, and the single system that everyone in corporations and government will be relying upon becomes a huge area of concern.
I much prefer the existing, though already privacy violating and cracked, separate databases to one which will attract every cracker in the world.
If anything needs to be changed, we need to remove intrusion into our lives by corporations and government, not enable them to be more certain that they identify and track the citizens more accurately.YES, the third Slashdotter who understands why gas prices are three times higher today compared to 7 years ago, commodities investors banking on Peak Oil happening soon, not supply and demand. I also have no idea why people continue to hold wholesale taxed prices in Europe as a comparison against wholesale taxed U.S.A. prices. The tax on gasoline/petrol being far higher in Europe versus the U.S.A. has been known for several decades.
And yes, there really are too many people not thinking before they act in the world
This would only handle the more amateur thieves. A tow truck will bypass the immobilizer problem, and also look just like a bank's repossession to anyone who witnesses it in progress
I once was heavily in agreement with your thoughts on corporal punishment. I even thought that public execution would be preferable to the current hidden executions. If you watched a murderer hang, with piss and shit running down his legs while he swung, wouldn't you think several times and cool off before committing the crime?
Then I saw how the world, people, and the "justice" system actually work. Until money is removed from the justice/legal system, until the extremely wealthy have the same representation as the homeless, it will never be just, and people will be wrongly convicted. Television shows like COPS turn criminal justice into entertainment, much like some reports of public executions in the days of olde.
IF the justice system were 100% accurate, I would agree with ever increasing penalties for crimes until they were no more. But the justice system is still a for profit endeavor, and you need money to have a chance at proving your innocence. That, or a lot of good luck. In civil court, the balance is even more in favor of the well moneyed. Just look at the RIAA cases and how many settle, simply because they can afford the settlement, not the lengthy legal battle. What would you do if a large corporation, say IBM or Microsoft, chose to sue you? If the case is criminal, how are you to pay for the experts to investigate the state's experts? Competent attorneys are not common or free. You need money to defend yourself in court, whether criminal or civil.
Then again, some crimes, like those reported against Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom, if the allegations are true and the defendants have appropriate legal counsel during the trial, deserve public hanging.
Just my view, take it for what you think its worth.
Temperature is a measurement of atomic/molecular energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature/ (Wikipedia link, there are hundreds of others, including basic chemistry and physics books). We humans have a lot of machines, which use energy, mostly from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain energy stored from millions of years ago. Our machines return this energy into the current world as sonic or thermal energy. Since we are adding molecular energy/motion into the world, the temperature increases. If you build a small fire, it heats up the nearby area. If you build a lot of big fires, you heat up a larger area.
Carbon dioxide gets into the picture as being a "greenhouse" gas. A "greenhouse gas" being one that retains energy here on Earth, instead of letting it reflect out to space. Not the only one, just the most commonly emitted one. Methane, Nitrous Oxide, and Ozone are some of the other considerations.
But, this has become a political issue, so it must be stripped down to something understandable in 60 seconds or less, and understandable to someone with no analytical skills or scientific knowledge. Carbon Dioxide emissions then get all of the attention, though they are a small part of "global warming", and not the true cause.
I was wondering if such things happened over there. Depending on the area in the U.S., surveillance cameras do seem to suffer occasional damage, commonly when used for target practice.
Finally someone who understands that this is not simply a "supply and demand" equation like the 60 second "news" stories tell us. Oil and gasoline are publicly traded commodities, and their prices are subject to those who buy and sell them long before retail. I was not able to find an online transcript, but during this discussion on C-SPAN, http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=965, Forbes and Pickens agreed that the speculative trading in oil and gasoline was responsible for the current increase in increase in the price of crude oil and gasoline, not supply and demand. In short, if it were not for traders running up the price, like stock at an IPO of a new "hot" tech company, oil would be around $40-$50 per barrel.
Whether the discussion is about the price of gas and telecommuters or global warming, there are always posts about how we should use mass transit, walk, or bicycle, instead of a using a personal motor vehicle. Now, I absolutely believe that we humans do affect the climate with our machines. The fact that the temperature variation was 2 degrees Fahrenheit greater in the days after Sept. 11 2001, when all civilian and commercial air traffic was grounded, http://www.physorg.com/news8899.html, I think absolutely proves that we do affect the climate.
The price of gasoline, and the voiced changes planned to prevent global warming both impact the same function in our lives, transportation. Whether we move food stuffs, goods, or people, we pay at the pump and with the climate. Would you like to take a bus on vacation, with your schedule dictated by consensus of the other groups on the bus? Have you gone grocery shopping on a bus or train, and if so, with children? Public mass transit places serious limitations on your ability to move from place to place.
I have no idea of the math/efficiency, but how cleanly would we generate electricity, enough to power all of our transportation needs? Would all electric vehicles, even just in the urban areas, be enough of an improvement to offset their inconvenience? Remember, we're thinking globally, not just in the immediate area. Whether coal, oil shale, natural gas, or hydroelectric is used to generate the electricity, it all impacts the environment. The transmission of electricity to the charging stations for each vehicle also has an impact (installation, maintenance, inspection, transmission).
The solution is a source of energy for our machines that is more efficient than electricity. Once again, it will be an egotistical nerd who will come up with the answer.
I also thought along these lines. A company files a patent and is approved. If they do not market a device using that patent, they lose it.
About 6 billion distributions would be nice, one for each person on Earth. Change the kernel, change the desktop environment, customize (not just the GUI or settings) your applications as you see fit, and add or remove whatever you wish from the stock distribution. That is why I truly enjoy using Linux. I know that there is some nit picking to be made about what is a "distribution", but I am sure everyone understands what I mean.
To illustrate what I mean:
I wish Mandriva well, and hope that they no longer make the same decisions that led to me formatting that partition. When JRE became a for cost plugin, I left. I have no problem paying for software, but don't charge me to use what someone else is providing for free. There were workarounds, but they left the browser and plugins outside the standard update path. Ubuntu is a nice distribution, along with Kbuntu and friends, but the lack of a root account felt very odd. Maybe I did not give it enough time. I know that, again, there are workarounds. But if I have to work around my OS, why am I using it? At work, its all about Windows. Workarounds make some sense there, since I am being paid. Speaking generally of all OS's, why would I pay for an OS for private use, then work to make it do what I wish, how I wish? Suse and Slackware are my current distributions, with Slackware taking me back to where I started with Linux, ZIPSlack. Knoppix, DSL, and Slax have all played a role with my bootable CD distribution needs. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses. Being able to choose is a strength of OSS and Linux, and why I promote them. If something doesn't work the way that you wish, change it or change your distribution.
Each change was mine to make. I controlled what happened on my PC's and how. If I felt a workaround was either too much work or would break something later, I moved to another that met my needs more closely. Limiting distributions would limit choice.
How many distributions? However many we decide to make!
"Add Open Season" and "Running with Scissors" to Sony's "so safe against copying its no longer a real DVD" list (the attempt at copy protection is in the file system). Both failed to load on a 3 year old Toshiba DVD player, which otherwise plays DVD, CD, VCD, and MP3 formats without problem. On the PC side, MPlayer and Kaffiene both tried to play the disks, but had serious display problems.
This leaves me as an (1) honest consumer locked out purchasing or renting Sony distributed movies. That is not really my loss as most of my rentals are movies that were not nearly good enough to see in a theater. Its just an additional step I rent movies. Now I have to also look for the distributor.
Their junk "copy protection" prevents the disk from being played on a legitimate DVD player, and only mildly inconveniences someone making a copy. Someone using a disk copier would not be slowed down at all.
When I took "Running with Scissors" went back to the store, with a complaint and for a refund, the manager was not surprised, and knew of many other titles that would have the same problem.
Sony was once a cool company, when they were mainly hardware I guess. It seems like since their merger with BMG that they really started to suck.
(1) Unless it is a DVD that I have purchased, I will not copy it. If it is a DVD that I have purchased, a copy is made for general usage with the original being the safe copy.
No, you're not ignorant. You've just not worked in a field that appreciates the difference between an HP, and a TI or Casio. The TI's and Casio's are fine in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, and where a computational error (hardware/software, not human) doesn't cost a fortune.
The HP's with their gold PCB's, characters molded through the entire key so it would never wear off, and solid cases were far above the TI/Casio bunch. They also cost more. Think of this as being somewhat analogous to comparing a E Machines PC to a Solaris server, except in this case the Solaris machine is designed to be used outdoors, in bad weather, dropped repeatedly over years, and still give accurate data.
A more simple comparison of intelligence and wisdom is found in crossing a street.
Intelligence is knowing how to cross the street, wisdom is knowing when to cross it, or if it should be crossed.
Just a rambling addendum to my post
How many have broadcast radio in your area that would start a show like Loveline? For those who do not know, Loveline http://www.adamdrew.com/ started on KROQ (Pasadena CA) in the mid 1980's with Rodney on the ROQ and Dr Drew. Rodney had a 2 hour weekly show that was exclusively unsigned local talent, heavily Punk. KLOS still has "The 7th Day" where an album is played in its entirety. This is the style of radio that I miss, and that gave me the desire to purchase LP's and cassettes, then CDs, back when the album equaled 2-3 hours wages.
Excellent point. The changes in radio play over the last couple decades have an impact here. I miss the days when there were several radio stations that had DJ's that actually created their own playlists. With nearly every station being a "Top 40 of $genre", the art, which is risky and might not be profitable, gets lost in the science of making money. This makes discovering new albums by artists (those who create music versus only singing lyrics) difficult than in the past
How did the DigDug reference not get recognized?