A recent study in Ireland indicated that wind turbines could provide 19 times our current electricity needs. That involves covering all the windy, undeveloped parts of the country with turbines, so we're obviously not going to do that. However it means that by covering 1% of the windy areas of the country we could produce 19% of our electricity this way. There are also plans for a huge offshore windfarm on Irelands East coast. Its going to be the biggest in the world when its finished and IIRC the building has already started on this.
Most of the responses here are very USA-centric. Remember that you make up about 5% of the worlds population and different cultures would have different views on a 1 way trip. Centuries ago explorers set off to explore the seas and more often than not they didn't come home. Emigrants left their homes in impoverished regions and set off for a better life with no intention of coming home. It was common to have a wake (funeral) for these people before they left because everyone knew they would not see their families again. Like it or not, someday someone will make a 1 way trip to Mars. Its built into the whole premise of colonising the place. Do you think all humans should die on Earth? It doesn't have to be suicide though, There could be a bunch of resupply missions every 26 months. With sufficient tools and equipment a person or small crew could survive there for 10s of years building the first colony which would serve as a base for future manned missions.
rfc2549 should use parrots instead of pigeons. There would be numerous advantages since parrots can be trained to memorise additional data, perform simple tasks, and of course you could implement parrot-y checking on all your packets.
Gates on Linux USA TODAY:There seems to be some worry at Microsoft about Linux and some of these Web-based things like Sim Desk that have popped up. Houston, Munich, and Beijing have all been considering using Linux-based products rather than going through Microsoft. How much of this is a concern?
Bill Gates: Well those are our current competitors. I mean, it's no different than in the past people used [IBM's operating system] OS/2.
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size. Name a bank that didn't use OS/2. OS/2 was IBM's product, and the IBM army marched behind that product. People always think today's competition is somehow different and unique in some way. Let's be serious. I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface. We bet on the NT technology base. Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called.Net; Longhorn Web services go along with that. You always have to do something very dramatic to move things up to the next level. Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface? Who else is going to push that forward? Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface? We've chosen to do that. If we didn't believe in those things we wouldn't be increasing the R&D budget the way that we are.
USA TODAY: There has been some criticism of the way in which you're been competing against Linux, and in The New York Times, assuming it was accurate, reporting that the e-mails in Europe talked about undercutting Linux at any cost, per se. How do you react to that, and where do you cross the line of that going back to some of the behaviors that surfaced in the Justice Department case?
BG: Well I'm not sure what you mean by undercutting. We will never have a price lower than Linux, in terms of just what you charge for the software. We compete on the basis of, if you look at the value you get out of the system and the overall cost that the system has that apply in our software. For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project. And so the question is can that 3% [compensate], in terms of how quickly you get the system set up? How much value you get out of that system, can it justify itself in that way? And that's the business that we're in every day.
USA TODAY: On May 14th, Orlando Ayala [Microsoft's senior VP for the Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partner Group, which aims to introduce Microsoft products to smaller companies and purchasers] in his e-mails authorizing him to draw from a special fund to offer the software set discounts or even free if necessary, under no circumstances lose against Linux. Has Microsoft changed its behavior patterns?
BG: The idea is that we're in a competitive situation, that we're willing to provide a better price. This is not a general problem. This is about education situations, and educational bids are very, very price sensitive, and we've always provided super low pricing for education. We're actually providing even lower pricing now for education then we ever have, but it's been unique pricing for us, literally since the company was founded. And yeah, we, on educational bids, we will meet competition. That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Despite what other posters have said, Wind_Walker is right. Libranet have the right to charge a billion dollars for the CD if they want to. Whether you want to buy it or not is another question. Give these dudes a break. Linux distro companies hire people to work full-time on Free Software and they have to make money from somewhere. They are not trying to un-GPL the code on the CD just because there is money involved. If you want to use Libranet and screw the company that puts your distro together, buy 1 CD and give away hundreds of copies. Of course that will cost you hundreds of dollars and you'll have to switch distros in a year or so.:)
On its website the FSF encourages users to pay for the software they get from the FSF.
The FSF has a stated policy on charging for GPL'ed work, which you can read here.
Similarly, if I fix a bug in a piece of GPL'ed code I have to right to charge for the patch. Most people just don't bother because they don't rely on it for their living. I think a lot of the people complaining on this thread probably write proprietry software for a living. IMHO you are doing more damage to the Free Software Community than Libranet could ever do.
To answer someones question re donating to Debian, I haven't heard of any monetary donations to Debian/SPI from Libranet, but I believe they have provided some help with the core parts of Debian because its in their best interest to do so. BTW have you ever donated anything to Debian?
johno
ps: if you're going to flame me, at least read my links first so you know what you're talking about
I really don't see why they're so surprised. We have an example of planets in syncronised orbits right here. Neptune and Pluto are locked into a 2/3 ratio. Neptune takes 164.8 years and Pluto takes 247.2 years to orbit the sun. If it wasn't for this relationship, they would pass very close to each other at some stage and Pluto would get knocked out of its orbit.
The article says that 25% of simulated solar system formations result in syncronised orbits. I'll go out on a limb here, my intuition tells me that about 50% of real solar systems have this feature.
There are iso images for Debian GNU/Hurd available. The US version is here and the non-US version is here .
If you don't have a CD-R you can try downloading the packages from your nearest Debian Mirror.
The Hurd is still under development and many features are brok^H^H^H^Himproving.
hehehe kewl, thats exactly how I install it too.. and I agree that dselect sucks. and before I get flamed for saying that, I spent a few weeks trying it out. the first install took over 2 days, admittedly on a slow computer.. I fell asleep in front of the machine about 4 times during the install..
Well there was a bloke died from a heart attack near me while trying to get W95 to install on a machine. It kept rebooting itself over and over and I suppose he couldn't take it anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
A recent study in Ireland indicated that wind turbines could provide 19 times our current electricity needs. That involves covering all the windy, undeveloped parts of the country with turbines, so we're obviously not going to do that. However it means that by covering 1% of the windy areas of the country we could produce 19% of our electricity this way. There are also plans for a huge offshore windfarm on Irelands East coast. Its going to be the biggest in the world when its finished and IIRC the building has already started on this.
the sig is also missing several ()'s. my maths teachers would shoot you.
Most of the responses here are very USA-centric. Remember that you make up about 5% of the worlds population and different cultures would have different views on a 1 way trip. Centuries ago explorers set off to explore the seas and more often than not they didn't come home. Emigrants left their homes in impoverished regions and set off for a better life with no intention of coming home. It was common to have a wake (funeral) for these people before they left because everyone knew they would not see their families again.
Like it or not, someday someone will make a 1 way trip to Mars. Its built into the whole premise of colonising the place. Do you think all humans should die on Earth? It doesn't have to be suicide though, There could be a bunch of resupply missions every 26 months. With sufficient tools and equipment a person or small crew could survive there for 10s of years building the first colony which would serve as a base for future manned missions.
rfc2549 should use parrots instead of pigeons. There would be numerous advantages since parrots can be trained to memorise additional data, perform simple tasks, and of course you could implement parrot-y checking on all your packets.
Gates on Linux
.Net; Longhorn Web services go along with that. You always have to do something very dramatic to move things up to the next level. Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface? Who else is going to push that forward? Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface? We've chosen to do that. If we didn't believe in those things we wouldn't be increasing the R&D budget the way that we are.
USA TODAY:There seems to be some worry at Microsoft about Linux and some of these Web-based things like Sim Desk that have popped up. Houston, Munich, and Beijing have all been considering using Linux-based products rather than going through Microsoft. How much of this is a concern?
Bill Gates: Well those are our current competitors. I mean, it's no different than in the past people used [IBM's operating system] OS/2.
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size. Name a bank that didn't use OS/2. OS/2 was IBM's product, and the IBM army marched behind that product. People always think today's competition is somehow different and unique in some way. Let's be serious. I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface. We bet on the NT technology base. Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called
USA TODAY: There has been some criticism of the way in which you're been competing against Linux, and in The New York Times, assuming it was accurate, reporting that the e-mails in Europe talked about undercutting Linux at any cost, per se. How do you react to that, and where do you cross the line of that going back to some of the behaviors that surfaced in the Justice Department case?
BG: Well I'm not sure what you mean by undercutting. We will never have a price lower than Linux, in terms of just what you charge for the software. We compete on the basis of, if you look at the value you get out of the system and the overall cost that the system has that apply in our software. For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project. And so the question is can that 3% [compensate], in terms of how quickly you get the system set up? How much value you get out of that system, can it justify itself in that way? And that's the business that we're in every day.
USA TODAY: On May 14th, Orlando Ayala [Microsoft's senior VP for the Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partner Group, which aims to introduce Microsoft products to smaller companies and purchasers] in his e-mails authorizing him to draw from a special fund to offer the software set discounts or even free if necessary, under no circumstances lose against Linux. Has Microsoft changed its behavior patterns?
BG: The idea is that we're in a competitive situation, that we're willing to provide a better price. This is not a general problem. This is about education situations, and educational bids are very, very price sensitive, and we've always provided super low pricing for education. We're actually providing even lower pricing now for education then we ever have, but it's been unique pricing for us, literally since the company was founded. And yeah, we, on educational bids, we will meet competition. That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
$ for i in `seq 1 999999999999999`
> do
> wget http://www.anti-leech.com/theft_example.html
> done
On its website the FSF encourages users to pay for the software they get from the FSF.
The FSF has a stated policy on charging for GPL'ed work, which you can read here.
Similarly, if I fix a bug in a piece of GPL'ed code I have to right to charge for the patch. Most people just don't bother because they don't rely on it for their living. I think a lot of the people complaining on this thread probably write proprietry software for a living. IMHO you are doing more damage to the Free Software Community than Libranet could ever do.
To answer someones question re donating to Debian, I haven't heard of any monetary donations to Debian/SPI from Libranet, but I believe they have provided some help with the core parts of Debian because its in their best interest to do so. BTW have you ever donated anything to Debian?
johno
ps: if you're going to flame me, at least read my links first so you know what you're talking about
The article says that 25% of simulated solar system formations result in syncronised orbits. I'll go out on a limb here, my intuition tells me that about 50% of real solar systems have this feature.
johno
The Hurd is still under development and many features are brok^H^H^H^Himproving.
johno
hehehe kewl, thats exactly how I install it too.. and I agree that dselect sucks. and before I get flamed for saying that, I spent a few weeks trying it out. the first install took over 2 days, admittedly on a slow computer.. I fell asleep in front of the machine about 4 times during the install..
johno