As even mentioned in the article, the prices of the resources used in the construction of these renewable energy systems have dramatically increased due to unexpected increases in demand.
As prices go up and up, manufacturers aren't gonna be entering bidding wars for the last few grams of silicon. They're going to try and find cheaper materials that do the same job, switch to systems that don't use materials of such increasingly scarce supply, or decrease the amount of rare materials that each unit needs. Solar panels, windmills, etc. aren't going to become impossible to produce in a few decades.
UA sniffing isn't a bad idea in this situation, except that the user should be allowed to choose an alternative if the default isn't desirable. For example, it's useful that Adobe's Flash installation website follows this procedure.
Those who don't want to read more than "click here to install" are automatically served the correct version, and those who are smart enough to fake their UA string are also smart enough to choose the appropriate install file from a drop-down menu (or even go to ftp.adobe.com, if they'd like).
One issue with this is maintaining your user's privacy. I'm certain many tinfoiler hatters would think twice before letting Microsoft (or another OS developer) know that they're using certain apps (Tor, for example).
I don't see it working out for websites that don't provide content as it happens (I assume ESPN360 has live streams of sporting events). As long as the visitor is receiving your data, someone will just mirror it on their own website, or distribute it on P2P networks, without arbitrarily blocking off certain ISPs.
Also, how do they determine who your ISP is? If it's just by IP address, I imagine proxies, or things like Tor, can easily get around that. I hope they don't expect you do submit your billing info every time you log in.
Last time I checked, I'm pretty sure the Ubuntu installer defaults to "Use whole first hard disk" on the disk partioning menu, which would indeed wipe anything on there.
Whenever they last drafted a "rules of war" treaty, they deemed it against honor or something to shoot at someone attempting to save lives. Tactically, it'd also be better for your side to bandage up troops than let them bleed out in the field (at least, it would be for the morale of your soldiers), so you'd afford your enemy the same privaledge.
Under those rules, medics can only carry a sidearm (pistol, etc.) for self defence if fired upon. Medics being used offensivly get their "don't shoot at me" privaledges revoked and can be fired upon. You can still capture them and make them POWs; you don't have to sit around while he or she treats a buddy, then let the medic walk back home.
Of course, you're right, not all enemies respect silly treaties that they didn't even agree to in the first place in a battle of life and death.
Just as a counter point, Ubuntu (at least, while using Gnome) doesn't have "Configure Desktop" at all on the menu when you right-click the desktop. It does have "Change Desktop Background", but that only lets the user change the background image (and other visual preferences), but nothing dealing with the screen resolution.
That was kinda the point of his argument. In that hypothetical situation, Quicken tech support would have no idea how the user's system varries from an expected Linux install. Unless a standard was enforced across all distros, each user would be have to be treated as an individual, potentially different from the previous one, drastically increasing the time tacken to support him or her vs. if there was a unified standard.
If I remember correctly (from the first time this got coverage on/.), the kids got off after publicly apologizing. Really, some lawyer wants to make a name for him/herself for going after a big bad American business.
The main issue in that situation is that the prison can monitor all phone communications made by prisoners, except where prohibited by law, such as a layer speaking to his/her client. This helps prevent, for example, gang-related activities, or inmates communicating info to and from their cohorts on the outside.
With cell phones, prisons don't have the ability, or at least the legal right, to monitor calls that route to outside cell phone towers. As previously mentioned by other posters, deploying cell phone towers inside the prison would automatically catch all cell phone calls made from the grounds, and be less intrusive than a cell phone jammer (in case a guest or employee wants to make a call, for example). Also, if you don't specifically tell the prisoners that the calls they are making from forbidden cell phones are being monitored, in addition to their allowed land-line usage, you might gain access to some juicy info.
Did not the Canadian courts rule that the blank media tax legitimized P2P media downloads for Canadian citizens (uploading was still a copyright violation, if I remember correctly)?
Uploading a music collection onto a 16 Flash drive and downloading it at a friends house doesn't take very long, and transfers many thousands of tracks. I doubt the record industry is ever going to stop that.
Wait until Trusted Computing modules become mandatory, preventing those thousands of music files from being copied, or preventing non-Trusted Computing enabled flash drives from being accessed.
Last time I set up IMAP for Gmail in Opera, it automatically filled in the needed info (server, ports, authentication settings, and all that). It's here, I guess it depends on the email client.
You can't blame someone for not supporting a beta OS release. A component their program depends on can't be guaranteed to exist in the final form, and the users are (or should be) aware that beta software isn't gonna work with everything nicely.
You could go ahead and blame them for using DRM, but that's a different matter entirely.
Seconding AC's comments, it appears to be a javascript thing. I'm running Opera with a javascript blocking javascript, and checking what's trying to run on this page, I see "ad.doubleclick.net/adj/ostg.slashdot/mainpage_p1-leader;....tpc=google;tpc=government;..." continuing with plenty more "tpc=x". I'm guessing "tpc=x" is what displays each tag.
Mind you, I didn't do this consciously; it defaults to blocking all by default, and lets you enable javascripts as you see fit.
I've had tags disabled for a while, so I wouldn't know, but I'm guessing things like interviews, reviews, and other things that don't directly discuss an event aren't tagged as stories.
All three of those regions are rather close to the arctic circle. Although the population density of the country may be similar, I'd venture a guess and say that most of the people are rather concentrated in major cities (or, in Canada, along the southern border).
In the US, the population is more widely dispersed than in these three areas. In other words, we have more people living in "the middle of nowhere" than they do, and our major cities are more separated as well.
Even Linux computers file-system browsers (e.g., konqueror) are sometimes browsers.
Exactly. It could be, but it need not be an intrinsic part of the system. Nothing prevented KDE from developing Dolphin for file browsing, and focusing Konqueror on web browsing. In this situation, you could use Konqueror for both web and file system browsing, or totally remove it and use Dolphin and Firefox, or any other combination of file browser and web browser.
I strongly doubt that Microsoft would somehow be unable to conjure up an independent file browsing program when it's been done by plenty of open source teams before.
As the MPAA often cites as one of their primary enemies, many movies get posted to P2P networks a noticeable amount of time before the official theater release. Then again, I wouldn't expect to that large an overlapping of frequent movie pirates and heavy Netflix users.
I'm pretty sure he was using those examples as fallacies of the "first to market" argument. He brings up DOS later to explain the shift from DOS to Windows instead of to Mac. Same with "VHS vs. Beta." The fallacy is that Beta was technically superior, but VHS won because it came out first and got an early lead in market share. In reality, Beta came out first, but lost in the consumer market for a variety of reasons, mainly less recording time per cassette.
ftp.opera.com No, I don't expect the common user to know what ftp even is, let alone know how to interface with it outside of IE.
Look at how Windows 7 handles its extrenuous programs. It asks the user if you want to download and install Windows Mail and whatnot during setup.
It would be very easy for them to do the same thing with web browsers. "Click here if you want to install Internet Explorer, or any of the other browsers on the (generously inclusive) list below."
The last I checked, movie ratings are voluntary, at least in the US. Many businesses won't carry unrated movies, mainly to discourage independents who can't afford to submit their production to the rating board. However, it's still not legal enforced that you need to get your movie rated before distribution.
TV is different, because the FCC claims that as their dominion. Nowadays, though you can do a weekly video podcast in the same style as a TV show and distribute it without a rating.
I don't know if it's a certification program, but I've seen exactly that. For example, the last Sandisk flash drive I bought had the Windows logo, the Mac logo, and a picture of Tux on it (I'd call it a logo, but I'm not sure that's exactly what it is).
The problem is, you know what's in, or comes by default, in a typical Windows or Mac install. While Sandisk was willing to bet that most Linux users can read from and write to a USB mounted hard drive, are these companies certain that the user's distro has support for advanced graphics from their video card, or supports the exact Bluetooth profile that a new device needs?
Of course, it'd be no harder to fix this situation than to provide the equivalents of "Setup.exe", on the install CD, or even better, include source code. Many companies, however, don't see enough profit in putting in the extra effort for such a small percentage of potential customers.
The difference is that James Bond and Batman adventures are mostly self-contained, usually not being sequels of each other. You can try new stories and actors, or redo an old plotline with new actors, and have fandom ignore it if it turns out to be crap.
Star Wars, as mentioned above, has the problem that eps 1-3 and 4-6 were canonically all sequels to each other, all part of the same storyline. It forces you to give equal weight to the good and bad parts. You can't just pretend Jar Jar, Amadalla, etc. didn't do what they did or you'd have plot holes.
On the other hand, there are plenty of expanded and side stories to the Star Wars universe. Most of them take place different era or location than the events of the movies, or fill in details that weren't really that important. The Rogue Squadron games, for example, mostly follow the exploits of the fighter squadron aside from the events portrayed in the movies, when Luke wasn't fighting with them. You can disregard these events if you never played the games, or simply disliked them. They still canonically happened, but you aren't gonna be scratching your head if episode 7 comes out.
The problem with this is that live CDs copy a lot of themselves to RAM while running. This doesn't touch your hard drive, and is faster than simply running everything off of the CD.
This just reproduces the same problem, having all variables the same except for the OS and the availible RAM. Really, the simple solution here is to install both on the same machine and use a dual-boot setup, so you're sure the only variable is the OS.
Slashdot Mirror
As even mentioned in the article, the prices of the resources used in the construction of these renewable energy systems have dramatically increased due to unexpected increases in demand.
As prices go up and up, manufacturers aren't gonna be entering bidding wars for the last few grams of silicon. They're going to try and find cheaper materials that do the same job, switch to systems that don't use materials of such increasingly scarce supply, or decrease the amount of rare materials that each unit needs. Solar panels, windmills, etc. aren't going to become impossible to produce in a few decades.
UA sniffing isn't a bad idea in this situation, except that the user should be allowed to choose an alternative if the default isn't desirable. For example, it's useful that Adobe's Flash installation website follows this procedure.
Those who don't want to read more than "click here to install" are automatically served the correct version, and those who are smart enough to fake their UA string are also smart enough to choose the appropriate install file from a drop-down menu (or even go to ftp.adobe.com, if they'd like).
One issue with this is maintaining your user's privacy. I'm certain many tinfoiler hatters would think twice before letting Microsoft (or another OS developer) know that they're using certain apps (Tor, for example).
I don't see it working out for websites that don't provide content as it happens (I assume ESPN360 has live streams of sporting events). As long as the visitor is receiving your data, someone will just mirror it on their own website, or distribute it on P2P networks, without arbitrarily blocking off certain ISPs.
Also, how do they determine who your ISP is? If it's just by IP address, I imagine proxies, or things like Tor, can easily get around that. I hope they don't expect you do submit your billing info every time you log in.
Last time I checked, I'm pretty sure the Ubuntu installer defaults to "Use whole first hard disk" on the disk partioning menu, which would indeed wipe anything on there.
Whenever they last drafted a "rules of war" treaty, they deemed it against honor or something to shoot at someone attempting to save lives. Tactically, it'd also be better for your side to bandage up troops than let them bleed out in the field (at least, it would be for the morale of your soldiers), so you'd afford your enemy the same privaledge.
Under those rules, medics can only carry a sidearm (pistol, etc.) for self defence if fired upon. Medics being used offensivly get their "don't shoot at me" privaledges revoked and can be fired upon. You can still capture them and make them POWs; you don't have to sit around while he or she treats a buddy, then let the medic walk back home.
Of course, you're right, not all enemies respect silly treaties that they didn't even agree to in the first place in a battle of life and death.
Just as a counter point, Ubuntu (at least, while using Gnome) doesn't have "Configure Desktop" at all on the menu when you right-click the desktop. It does have "Change Desktop Background", but that only lets the user change the background image (and other visual preferences), but nothing dealing with the screen resolution.
That was kinda the point of his argument. In that hypothetical situation, Quicken tech support would have no idea how the user's system varries from an expected Linux install. Unless a standard was enforced across all distros, each user would be have to be treated as an individual, potentially different from the previous one, drastically increasing the time tacken to support him or her vs. if there was a unified standard.
If I remember correctly (from the first time this got coverage on /.), the kids got off after publicly apologizing. Really, some lawyer wants to make a name for him/herself for going after a big bad American business.
The main issue in that situation is that the prison can monitor all phone communications made by prisoners, except where prohibited by law, such as a layer speaking to his/her client. This helps prevent, for example, gang-related activities, or inmates communicating info to and from their cohorts on the outside.
With cell phones, prisons don't have the ability, or at least the legal right, to monitor calls that route to outside cell phone towers. As previously mentioned by other posters, deploying cell phone towers inside the prison would automatically catch all cell phone calls made from the grounds, and be less intrusive than a cell phone jammer (in case a guest or employee wants to make a call, for example). Also, if you don't specifically tell the prisoners that the calls they are making from forbidden cell phones are being monitored, in addition to their allowed land-line usage, you might gain access to some juicy info.
Did not the Canadian courts rule that the blank media tax legitimized P2P media downloads for Canadian citizens (uploading was still a copyright violation, if I remember correctly)?
Uploading a music collection onto a 16 Flash drive and downloading it at a friends house doesn't take very long, and transfers many thousands of tracks. I doubt the record industry is ever going to stop that.
Wait until Trusted Computing modules become mandatory, preventing those thousands of music files from being copied, or preventing non-Trusted Computing enabled flash drives from being accessed.
Last time I set up IMAP for Gmail in Opera, it automatically filled in the needed info (server, ports, authentication settings, and all that). It's here, I guess it depends on the email client.
You can't blame someone for not supporting a beta OS release. A component their program depends on can't be guaranteed to exist in the final form, and the users are (or should be) aware that beta software isn't gonna work with everything nicely.
You could go ahead and blame them for using DRM, but that's a different matter entirely.
Seconding AC's comments, it appears to be a javascript thing. I'm running Opera with a javascript blocking javascript, and checking what's trying to run on this page, I see "ad.doubleclick.net/adj/ostg.slashdot/mainpage_p1-leader;....tpc=google;tpc=government;..." continuing with plenty more "tpc=x". I'm guessing "tpc=x" is what displays each tag.
Mind you, I didn't do this consciously; it defaults to blocking all by default, and lets you enable javascripts as you see fit.
I've had tags disabled for a while, so I wouldn't know, but I'm guessing things like interviews, reviews, and other things that don't directly discuss an event aren't tagged as stories.
If you're lucky enough to have the DVDs published in the appropriate region code.
All three of those regions are rather close to the arctic circle. Although the population density of the country may be similar, I'd venture a guess and say that most of the people are rather concentrated in major cities (or, in Canada, along the southern border).
In the US, the population is more widely dispersed than in these three areas. In other words, we have more people living in "the middle of nowhere" than they do, and our major cities are more separated as well.
Even Linux computers file-system browsers (e.g., konqueror) are sometimes browsers.
Exactly. It could be, but it need not be an intrinsic part of the system. Nothing prevented KDE from developing Dolphin for file browsing, and focusing Konqueror on web browsing. In this situation, you could use Konqueror for both web and file system browsing, or totally remove it and use Dolphin and Firefox, or any other combination of file browser and web browser.
I strongly doubt that Microsoft would somehow be unable to conjure up an independent file browsing program when it's been done by plenty of open source teams before.
As the MPAA often cites as one of their primary enemies, many movies get posted to P2P networks a noticeable amount of time before the official theater release. Then again, I wouldn't expect to that large an overlapping of frequent movie pirates and heavy Netflix users.
I'm pretty sure he was using those examples as fallacies of the "first to market" argument. He brings up DOS later to explain the shift from DOS to Windows instead of to Mac. Same with "VHS vs. Beta." The fallacy is that Beta was technically superior, but VHS won because it came out first and got an early lead in market share. In reality, Beta came out first, but lost in the consumer market for a variety of reasons, mainly less recording time per cassette.
ftp.opera.com
No, I don't expect the common user to know what ftp even is, let alone know how to interface with it outside of IE.
Look at how Windows 7 handles its extrenuous programs. It asks the user if you want to download and install Windows Mail and whatnot during setup.
It would be very easy for them to do the same thing with web browsers. "Click here if you want to install Internet Explorer, or any of the other browsers on the (generously inclusive) list below."
The last I checked, movie ratings are voluntary, at least in the US. Many businesses won't carry unrated movies, mainly to discourage independents who can't afford to submit their production to the rating board. However, it's still not legal enforced that you need to get your movie rated before distribution.
TV is different, because the FCC claims that as their dominion. Nowadays, though you can do a weekly video podcast in the same style as a TV show and distribute it without a rating.
I don't know if it's a certification program, but I've seen exactly that. For example, the last Sandisk flash drive I bought had the Windows logo, the Mac logo, and a picture of Tux on it (I'd call it a logo, but I'm not sure that's exactly what it is).
The problem is, you know what's in, or comes by default, in a typical Windows or Mac install. While Sandisk was willing to bet that most Linux users can read from and write to a USB mounted hard drive, are these companies certain that the user's distro has support for advanced graphics from their video card, or supports the exact Bluetooth profile that a new device needs?
Of course, it'd be no harder to fix this situation than to provide the equivalents of "Setup.exe", on the install CD, or even better, include source code. Many companies, however, don't see enough profit in putting in the extra effort for such a small percentage of potential customers.
The difference is that James Bond and Batman adventures are mostly self-contained, usually not being sequels of each other. You can try new stories and actors, or redo an old plotline with new actors, and have fandom ignore it if it turns out to be crap.
Star Wars, as mentioned above, has the problem that eps 1-3 and 4-6 were canonically all sequels to each other, all part of the same storyline. It forces you to give equal weight to the good and bad parts. You can't just pretend Jar Jar, Amadalla, etc. didn't do what they did or you'd have plot holes.
On the other hand, there are plenty of expanded and side stories to the Star Wars universe. Most of them take place different era or location than the events of the movies, or fill in details that weren't really that important. The Rogue Squadron games, for example, mostly follow the exploits of the fighter squadron aside from the events portrayed in the movies, when Luke wasn't fighting with them. You can disregard these events if you never played the games, or simply disliked them. They still canonically happened, but you aren't gonna be scratching your head if episode 7 comes out.
The problem with this is that live CDs copy a lot of themselves to RAM while running. This doesn't touch your hard drive, and is faster than simply running everything off of the CD.
This just reproduces the same problem, having all variables the same except for the OS and the availible RAM. Really, the simple solution here is to install both on the same machine and use a dual-boot setup, so you're sure the only variable is the OS.