The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to supply the 48 continuous states with electricity... continuous states or continuous electricity???
Have you even heard of two very simple concepts: base load, and intermittency?
Wind does not supply base load power at all. From hour to hour, or day to day, it's not predictable, and cannot be relied on to power the 48 continuous states with continuous electricity.
Taken from the wikipedia entry on wind power intermittency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Intermittency_and_penetration_limits: The 2006 Energy in Scotland Inquiry report [8] expresses concern about some aspects of wind power.
"The inherent intermittency of wind power means that it cannot be relied on to deliver rm output at any given time. However, its input when available has to be accepted into the grid. A diversity of supply is essential to achieve maximum security and exibility in the supply of electricity."
Now, can anybody at all explain why the/. mods raised this poster to a +4 interesting?
Too many people -- especially on/. -- jump on the pure, standards, anti-table css bandwagon while completely ignoring the mass of limitations with css sites.
They all seem very afraid of thinking outside of the ("standards") box.
Sure, but did you know that Japan had two independent and advanced atomic weapons programs underway? One, in Japan, was destroyed before the U.S arrived, and the other was located in what is now North Korea, and likely gutted by Russia after the war.
An idea floated was to blow a boat/sub in San Fran harbour, but the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki beat them to it.
I've always found this to be common -- older guys know they're in demand, and won't put up with being pushed more than they want to be.
Then again, the kids actually want to work those extra hours a lot of the time. I wonder if many programmers aren't more proud of the crazy hours they worked/work at the beginning of their careers than sad that they worked overtime.
As an older guy, I'm now fed up with overtime, but several years ago, those crazy nights programming were in part where I honed my skills, and why I now have the cred to demand my own hours -- and a decent wage.
He appreciated Ruby, brought back some programming concepts to PHP, and used them. The concepts and clear flow of programming in Ruby are great, emphasizing MVC and separation of code, and can be used in PHP too (which is something most people for some reason think isn't possible).
This article is interesting (and more than just fanboi talk) because it dispels some key myths about both Ruby and PHP -- all 7 points fall into two categories: a) PHP can do it just as well or better. b) PHP doesn't force the programmer into one way of programming -- rather, he can do things his own way (use SQL statements, program the way he likes).
I find his point 5 is the key here, and why many of us love our PHP:
I don't need to adapt my ways to Rails. I tell PHP exactly what I want to do, the way I want to do it, and it doesn't complain. PHP exposes more of the guts of the language to the programmer. It's easier to make messy code, to leave security vulnerabilities, to have duplication, and to be inefficient in coding. But while this is true, it's also the kind of FUD that this article tackles. The author even wrote that he believed PHP was a bad language for years before returning to it, employing good programming concepts and realizing that it was the most powerful option available.
With the amount of PHP FUD we see on/., it's nice to see a counterpoint
I Completely disagree. RMS was nattering on like on old hag, espousing why Linux should be called Gnu/Linux instead of just Linux, and why he's right and everyone should follow him.
Linus had no interest, and neither did the camera, or likely a good number of people in the audience.
I certainly thought that Linus's kids were more interesting than RMS and ego.
When Adblock finally takes real market share away from advertisers, advertising will evolve and adjust to deal with it.
I have no issue at all with Adblock, and wish that advertisers and those poor bloggers would stop complaining and start taking some action to deal with blocking apps!
When spammers started getting blocked out by spam filters, was there a massive outpour of angry "woe is me" letters from the spammer communitiy? No, they just dealt with the problem and tried to get around the new filters.
Adblock is also a filter system, and isn't perfect. So what could we (developers) do to get around it?
host ads on the same domain as the content. Not perfect, and would take some work, but toss the ads into a nondescript directory that also contains the main images for the site... this way, the directory can't be filtered out.
have a javascript check that will disable the rest of the site if it can't find an ad in its proper div
I'm sure there's many ways of getting around the filters, but enough complaining already!!! If you've got a problem with Adblock, then do something about it (other than insanely cutting off all firefox users).
Meantime, can we finally end this crybaby attitude that a perfectly legal system that takes an annoyance out of our lives is morally improper?!
The iPhone wasn't "ON" either -- it was supposed to be asleep.
Let's ask Google's "define:" for what "sleep" should mean in a computer sense:
# An application tells the operating system it doesn't want to be considered ready to be dispatched for a period of time.
www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/doc/prog_man/2003/glossary.html
# The name usually given to the lowest-power state of a device or system
www.candc.co.uk/se/glossary.htm
# A unit's state, in which it does nothing at all.
sources.redhat.com/xconq/manual/xcdesign_60.html
I've always known sleep to mean write-to-ram instead of write-to-disk, but regardless I know of no device other than the iPhone that does processing and networking when "asleep".
Let's face it: All software has dependencies. When I install software on Windows, it just works (95% of the time). You're right for Linux, all software has dependencies, while with Windows there aren't any. Maybe that's another place where Windows has a system that makes more sense to people.
Linux installs are a nightmare. Compare LAMP setup on Ubuntu to WAMP on windows, and WAMP wins in ease of setup. By a long shot!
Agreed. In fact, I'd say MP3s and cheap earbuds are a symptom more than a cause in the declining quality in music.
I'd be willing to bet that the labels invest about 10% what they used to put into production back in the 80's.
Engineers, quality producers, session musicians are all having a rough go at it these days. The money's in live music now, and most labels expect bands to fund their own albums instead of actually taking risks, which doesn't help with quality.
Then there's the hardware. Cheap earbuds are one thing, but the sound produced from 70's stereos was way better than the crap everyone buys from Best Buy, or whatever other outlet that sells junk that gives anything but quality sound (loudness is sooo cool!)
But then again, like the first poster mentioned, people have been listening to bad-sounding (AM radio, ghetto blasters, etc) music for years, so how is this suddenly breaking news?
Remember hearing about El Niño back when you were younger? It's a weather pattern that is accompanied by warmer-than-usual weather and lots of rain in the East. It's happened in past years (big one in 1997/98, the second warmest year of the century) and got plenty of media attention. It hit again in fall of 2006-early winter 2007, explaining what you experienced, and since it also affects different parts of the world differently, would explain why you felt something others didn't.
Now, this past year, the media focussed on global warming instead of El Niño as being a cause. But, while El Nino itself is natural, there's been an increase in their frequency, which at least some, like David Suzuki's group (no surprise), attribute to global warming: Detailed statistical analyses show that the increase in frequency of El Niños observed since the 1970s is very unlikely to be part of a natural cycle (e.g. Trenberth and Hoar, Geophysical Research Letters, Dec 1, 1997). It has been estimated that the observed pattern is 99.9% likely to be due to human induced climate change. (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Impacts /Extreme_Weather/El_Nino.asp)
If global warming is happening as most say it is (I ain't no scientist!), it's not like it'd exist because one year is suddenly warmer than another -- it'll be determined only by long-term scientific analysis of trends, you know, the kind of science that isn't undermined by a Y2K bug!
I must've forgotten this was/. and that most things are written with sarcasm... I assure you, however that none was intended. Like I wrote, the best way to success is admitting your failings/weaknesses, in order that they can be addressed. The Linux crowd, however, usually acts like they're gawd's gift to users, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I got your point, and couldn't agree more (on a different point in your blog post on GPLv3, however, I disagreed, and left a comment). Ironically, however, some Linux zealot read your words in fear and modded you redundant.
It's getting like many Linux-lovers are as bad as Mac fanbois
wow, complete honesty from the maintainer of GNUstep, which at least admits it's not currently successful (from which it may improve), unlike Gnome and KDE, which are definitely on a long road to failure. Thanks for that nugget of frankness!
Two more reasons for linux failing:
1) Naming. For example, at kde-apps.org, the top apps include Manslide, Yakuake, manencode, digikam, K3b, KMyMoney, Amarok, Traverso... Why on earth do the names of linux apps have to be so arcane, techie, and science fiction-like? Half the KDE apps start with K-something... It's like they were named in the 80's. Mac/Windows names just make sense, and don't scare users
2) Command line. I've been using linux for servers for 6 years, and love the command line (mostly because the guis are relatively inefficient), but for a desktop, I haven't touched a command line since 1995 -- until I installed Feisty Fawn, that is, and was forced to go command line for a buggy apt-get LAMP install. WAMP on windows : 5 minute install. LAMP took me hours to get the config right, which is downright embarassing given that it originated on Linux.
We need the maintainers and leads in Gnome and KDE to start talking about, and moving to rectify their failures, rather than blindly focussing on what they consider strengths.
Maybe you should read TFA again, and it'd all make more sense to you.
You write: "it is suggested that Vista growth is largely cannabalistic from XP"
TFA reports: "Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000"
[sounds very explicit, not suggested]
You write: "TFA states early on the rate of conversion to Apple's new format"
TFA reports: "the computer maker is not making new Mac converts"
But since you didn't understand TFA, let me put those mac growth numbers into a simple context:
In January: PowerPC: 4.34%; Intel Mac: 1.88%
In June: PowerPC:3.52%; Intel Mac: 2.48
Difference: PowerPC -0.82%; Intel Mac: +0.6%
The implication: The people that bought Intel macs did not make up for the number of people who either bought Microsoft, or threw out their PowerPCs. We would have expected that a drop in PowerPC numbers would make at least a corresponding rise in Intel Macs, but it didn't happen.
This is bad news for mac lovers, but news nonetheless
It's news because -all- the news in the past 6 months has been about how Vista is doing poorly, Vista isn't gaining the market share expected, Vista is being left aside by companies in favor of XP, and on and on.
Why is this news? From TFA:
Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30... Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June.
This implies (if the statistics can be trusted) that new computer buyers are not switching to Mac, and in the long run, Vista will easily deal with whatever Mac throws as it. This Is News!
It:
1) counteracts most news articles of the past while, especially that appear on/. which have been slaying MS and Vista
2) reports that people are not switching to Mac, again, which runs against most news articles that have appeared in the past 6 months and also counters the blind optimism of all those mac fanbois
That second bit of news should be BIG news to macaddicts, though like true fanatics the/. board is alive with people saying, "no news here", and denying that anything could possibly be wrong in the wonderful world of mac. Stevie would be proud of all of you for putting on such a brave face and trying to sweep this under the rug.
I have no doubt there'll be plenty of mods there to sweep this post under the rug as well!
Given the disagreement among slashdotters on what open source is, your average person is going to have a very hard time understanding just how open an "open source" project is -- especially since it takes a technically-able person or a lawyer to understand which licences are open-source in the view of most open-source advocates/the OSI.
It's like saying there's no need for "organic" labelling. An expert could determine whether it's organic or not, but most people can't -- and they're not idiots.
While the average person shouldn't be considered an idiot, you are most definitely an elitist.
It's a philosophy that's free to be interpreted by anyone. Including the user.
Wouldn't the term "closed-source" also be a philosophy that's free to be interpreted by anyone as well?
Why doesn't the OSI set up their own official list of known "closed-source" licences? The question is whether the OSI can become the de-facto holders of the open-source trademark, whether it exists or not.
Oh, and the user can't interpret the term "open-source" their own way if it's a closed-source (you can look but you can't touch) licence being imposed on them, can they?
Steve Jobs speaking at the Safari release:
"We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari"
I think Windows users are going to be impressed that the quality of Windows applications is so much higher than those with Mac -- I don't even believe this, but it sure as hell is what Mac is asking for!
And to all those Mac fanbois that have been posting the same idea ad nauseum: "oooh bugs in a beta, no surprise!", you need a serious reality check. Small bugs exist even in most production applications. These are basic security vulnerabilities that make Safari dangerous to use on windows, and the actual bug reports piling in lead one to believe that it's a barely usable application (display/font/screen/memory problems amongst others).
All I see here is something that is most definitely not beta quality
Nortel Strong-Armed a competitor via a company that they have a minority interest in, and so the title should be, "Nortel Strong-Arms competitor" instead of "Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor".
"Competitor" shows the relationship of Fonality to Nortel, while "open source" is just a blatant use of a popular term that does nothing for the article other than to misleadingly cry "look at me!!"
What's Open Source got to do with the story? The phrase appears twice to describe what kind of product Fonality sells, and then not again for the rest of the entire story. If it was a closed system, would it make any difference to the story? Or a bigger question, would the story have made/. at all?
As if we needed any more proof of the power that the blogosphere holds... The only thing Tom Keating has shown about the blogosphere is that it has the power to distort.
It used to be that an art director would build the design for websites, but with dynamic and active websites (Web2.0 if, we need to use that word), a web architect is the new boss needed to run the show.
That is, someone who understands template-based programming and information workflow enough to develop a solid basis for the designers to take over and make things look pretty. Oh yeah, and this person should also be able to direct the programmers to organize things in a useful manner for the designers as well.
Until companies catch on and begin hiring website directors with these qualifications, they'll just continue to roll out that static, oh so pretty and dumb sites that they always have been.
WAMP setup on Vista: 5 minutes, working perfectly, and took my old mysql database and started running right away.
LAMP on ubuntu? 4 hours, and a lot of googling. Now, I should add that I deleted the/etc/apache2 directory with the intent to start over, with default configurations. What happened? apt-get install/remove/whatever in all its configurations must have had a history, because it wouldn't reinstall any config files, even if they didn't exist! I had the worst time getting the defaults back (having to download individual.deb files among other frustrations).
On windows, I've never had this kind of problem. A setup.exe file just plain makes sense, and seems to work better than my short apt-get experience.
Linux has ugly colors by default (making it look plain ugly), and is no where near as smooth as vista, let alone all the terrible names that techies name their open source software. The startup screen has a ton of ugly verbose code, and x has crashed several times already, necessitating reboot. Sudo sucks even worse than Vista's "run as administrator", and is painfully intrusive. Pretty much no user can escape a need to use the terminal window in linux at some point in time -- something that regular people won't accept.
I'm running a Vista/Ubuntu 7.04 dual boot laptop, and while Vista's definitely had its share of frustrations, ubuntu is as beta as an os can possibly be. All this slashdot pro-desktop linux talk got me excited, but I've been overwhelmingly disappointed.
--
I should note that I've been running linux servers (debian, redhat, and slackware) for 7 years. For servers, I'll never touch Windows, but for a decent desktop experience, I'm extremely disappointed that it's all I've got.
Maybe in a year or five, linux will be alright, but why the hell is ubuntu 7.04 considered production-ready?? Vista's problems are with drivers and legacy support. Ubuntu has serious bugs and issues that affect a smooth desktop experience!
You have just layed out the key difference between vinyl lovers and the more common digital variety:
"As for amps, it has always amazed me that people *love* the ones that introduce distortion and claim the accurate ones are "cold" and "technical." It's not the amp's job to be warm and emotional; it's the musician's. I run away from any component that advertises "warm" or "musical" sound; those are code words for distortion."
The vinyl sound is warmed, no doubt about it. To me, it just plain sounds better; now, whether it actually is "better", as in more accurate to every perfect sample caught on the timeline of a digital track... I could really care less.
Then there's the record selection. With so many people having given up their vinyl in the past 20 years, there's lots of great albums, complete with full cover work to be had for a few bucks at the local flea market. The search for great new records helps keep a continual interest in discovering new music.
Since I ditched the CD player for a couple of turntables, I've been listening to far more music than I ever did before. That, for me makes a better format.
Wrong. It's a buzzword used by the media to represent interactive web applications, whether they understand technology or not. It's useful because it's painfully simple, and non-techie people get the basic idea.
Given that the article was not aimed directly at web developers, but at people interested in computing in general, it's appropriate for them to use buzzwords to convey their message.
If I'm talking with another web developer, I'll get upset if he/she uses "web 2.0" in a sentence -- when it comes to my profession, I hate the word. When dealing with non-web tech savvy people, it's a helpful tool to refer to dynamic websites of the type that may have this vulnerability.
Very few news articles are ever written for the/. audience, so don't take it personally when they disregard us. And don't get upset at them for using certain words when they weren't talking to us in the first place. We may make a lot of things work, but the world doesn't revolve around./!
Actually, there are two types of "conventional" reactors: fast and thermal reactors.
Fast reactors use U-235 (the first reactors, and still commonly used in the U.S), while thermal reactors (overall more commonly used, as in the CANDU Canadian reactors ) use natural (~1%U-235, mostly U-238) uranium
"The other 99% is discarded as "depleted" uranium and used as high density slugs in weapons." should read about 80% for fast reactors, and much smaller to no waste for thermal reactors.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you even heard of two very simple concepts: base load, and intermittency?
Wind does not supply base load power at all. From hour to hour, or day to day, it's not predictable, and cannot be relied on to power the 48 continuous states with continuous electricity.
Taken from the wikipedia entry on wind power intermittency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Intermittency_and_penetration_limits:
The 2006 Energy in Scotland Inquiry report [8] expresses concern about some aspects of wind power.
"The inherent intermittency of wind power means that it cannot be relied on to deliver rm output at any given time. However, its input when available has to be accepted into the grid. A diversity of supply is essential to achieve maximum security and exibility in the supply of electricity."
Now, can anybody at all explain why the
Your post deserved to be modded +5 insightful.
/. -- jump on the pure, standards, anti-table css bandwagon while completely ignoring the mass of limitations with css sites.
Too many people -- especially on
They all seem very afraid of thinking outside of the ("standards") box.
Sure, but did you know that Japan had two independent and advanced atomic weapons programs underway? One, in Japan, was destroyed before the U.S arrived, and the other was located in what is now North Korea, and likely gutted by Russia after the war.
An idea floated was to blow a boat/sub in San Fran harbour, but the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki beat them to it.
Check out the documentary:
http://tv-links.co.uk/listings/9/7830
I've always found this to be common -- older guys know they're in demand, and won't put up with being pushed more than they want to be.
Then again, the kids actually want to work those extra hours a lot of the time. I wonder if many programmers aren't more proud of the crazy hours they worked/work at the beginning of their careers than sad that they worked overtime.
As an older guy, I'm now fed up with overtime, but several years ago, those crazy nights programming were in part where I honed my skills, and why I now have the cred to demand my own hours -- and a decent wage.
This article is interesting (and more than just fanboi talk) because it dispels some key myths about both Ruby and PHP -- all 7 points fall into two categories:
a) PHP can do it just as well or better.
b) PHP doesn't force the programmer into one way of programming -- rather, he can do things his own way (use SQL statements, program the way he likes).
I find his point 5 is the key here, and why many of us love our PHP: I don't need to adapt my ways to Rails. I tell PHP exactly what I want to do, the way I want to do it, and it doesn't complain. PHP exposes more of the guts of the language to the programmer. It's easier to make messy code, to leave security vulnerabilities, to have duplication, and to be inefficient in coding. But while this is true, it's also the kind of FUD that this article tackles. The author even wrote that he believed PHP was a bad language for years before returning to it, employing good programming concepts and realizing that it was the most powerful option available.
With the amount of PHP FUD we see on
I Completely disagree. RMS was nattering on like on old hag, espousing why Linux should be called Gnu/Linux instead of just Linux, and why he's right and everyone should follow him.
Linus had no interest, and neither did the camera, or likely a good number of people in the audience.
I certainly thought that Linus's kids were more interesting than RMS and ego.
I have no issue at all with Adblock, and wish that advertisers and those poor bloggers would stop complaining and start taking some action to deal with blocking apps! When spammers started getting blocked out by spam filters, was there a massive outpour of angry "woe is me" letters from the spammer communitiy? No, they just dealt with the problem and tried to get around the new filters.
Adblock is also a filter system, and isn't perfect. So what could we (developers) do to get around it?
- host ads on the same domain as the content. Not perfect, and would take some work, but toss the ads into a nondescript directory that also contains the main images for the site... this way, the directory can't be filtered out.
- have a javascript check that will disable the rest of the site if it can't find an ad in its proper div
I'm sure there's many ways of getting around the filters, but enough complaining already!!! If you've got a problem with Adblock, then do something about it (other than insanely cutting off all firefox users).Meantime, can we finally end this crybaby attitude that a perfectly legal system that takes an annoyance out of our lives is morally improper?!
The iPhone wasn't "ON" either -- it was supposed to be asleep.
Let's ask Google's "define:" for what "sleep" should mean in a computer sense:
# An application tells the operating system it doesn't want to be considered ready to be dispatched for a period of time.
www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/doc/prog_man/2003/glossary.html
# The name usually given to the lowest-power state of a device or system
www.candc.co.uk/se/glossary.htm
# A unit's state, in which it does nothing at all.
sources.redhat.com/xconq/manual/xcdesign_60.html
I've always known sleep to mean write-to-ram instead of write-to-disk, but regardless I know of no device other than the iPhone that does processing and networking when "asleep".
This is bad UI design, plain and simple.
Linux installs are a nightmare. Compare LAMP setup on Ubuntu to WAMP on windows, and WAMP wins in ease of setup. By a long shot!
Agreed. In fact, I'd say MP3s and cheap earbuds are a symptom more than a cause in the declining quality in music.
I'd be willing to bet that the labels invest about 10% what they used to put into production back in the 80's.
Engineers, quality producers, session musicians are all having a rough go at it these days. The money's in live music now, and most labels expect bands to fund their own albums instead of actually taking risks, which doesn't help with quality.
Then there's the hardware. Cheap earbuds are one thing, but the sound produced from 70's stereos was way better than the crap everyone buys from Best Buy, or whatever other outlet that sells junk that gives anything but quality sound (loudness is sooo cool!)
But then again, like the first poster mentioned, people have been listening to bad-sounding (AM radio, ghetto blasters, etc) music for years, so how is this suddenly breaking news?
Remember hearing about El Niño back when you were younger? It's a weather pattern that is accompanied by warmer-than-usual weather and lots of rain in the East. It's happened in past years (big one in 1997/98, the second warmest year of the century) and got plenty of media attention. It hit again in fall of 2006-early winter 2007, explaining what you experienced, and since it also affects different parts of the world differently, would explain why you felt something others didn't.
s /Extreme_Weather/El_Nino.asp)
. html
Now, this past year, the media focussed on global warming instead of El Niño as being a cause. But, while El Nino itself is natural, there's been an increase in their frequency, which at least some, like David Suzuki's group (no surprise), attribute to global warming:
Detailed statistical analyses show that the increase in frequency of El Niños observed since the 1970s is very unlikely to be part of a natural cycle (e.g. Trenberth and Hoar, Geophysical Research Letters, Dec 1, 1997). It has been estimated that the observed pattern is 99.9% likely to be due to human induced climate change. (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Impact
If global warming is happening as most say it is (I ain't no scientist!), it's not like it'd exist because one year is suddenly warmer than another -- it'll be determined only by long-term scientific analysis of trends, you know, the kind of science that isn't undermined by a Y2K bug!
El Niño US: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story
El Niño Canada: http://www.el-nino-news.info/El-Nino-Canada.php
I must've forgotten this was /. and that most things are written with sarcasm... I assure you, however that none was intended. Like I wrote, the best way to success is admitting your failings/weaknesses, in order that they can be addressed. The Linux crowd, however, usually acts like they're gawd's gift to users, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I got your point, and couldn't agree more (on a different point in your blog post on GPLv3, however, I disagreed, and left a comment). Ironically, however, some Linux zealot read your words in fear and modded you redundant.
It's getting like many Linux-lovers are as bad as Mac fanbois
wow, complete honesty from the maintainer of GNUstep, which at least admits it's not currently successful (from which it may improve), unlike Gnome and KDE, which are definitely on a long road to failure. Thanks for that nugget of frankness!
Two more reasons for linux failing:
1) Naming. For example, at kde-apps.org, the top apps include Manslide, Yakuake, manencode, digikam, K3b, KMyMoney, Amarok, Traverso...
Why on earth do the names of linux apps have to be so arcane, techie, and science fiction-like? Half the KDE apps start with K-something... It's like they were named in the 80's. Mac/Windows names just make sense, and don't scare users
2) Command line. I've been using linux for servers for 6 years, and love the command line (mostly because the guis are relatively inefficient), but for a desktop, I haven't touched a command line since 1995 -- until I installed Feisty Fawn, that is, and was forced to go command line for a buggy apt-get LAMP install. WAMP on windows : 5 minute install. LAMP took me hours to get the config right, which is downright embarassing given that it originated on Linux.
We need the maintainers and leads in Gnome and KDE to start talking about, and moving to rectify their failures, rather than blindly focussing on what they consider strengths.
Maybe you should read TFA again, and it'd all make more sense to you.
d =viewArticleBasic&articleId=297826 [MS doesn't really have many fans, they've got lots of users though]
You write: "it is suggested that Vista growth is largely cannabalistic from XP"
TFA reports: "Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000"
[sounds very explicit, not suggested]
You write: "TFA states early on the rate of conversion to Apple's new format"
TFA reports: "the computer maker is not making new Mac converts"
You write: "If this were reversed, and an apple fan site..."
TFA links to another article which is pro-switching to mac: http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?comman
But since you didn't understand TFA, let me put those mac growth numbers into a simple context:
In January: PowerPC: 4.34%; Intel Mac: 1.88%
In June: PowerPC:3.52%; Intel Mac: 2.48
Difference: PowerPC -0.82%; Intel Mac: +0.6%
The implication: The people that bought Intel macs did not make up for the number of people who either bought Microsoft, or threw out their PowerPCs. We would have expected that a drop in PowerPC numbers would make at least a corresponding rise in Intel Macs, but it didn't happen.
This is bad news for mac lovers, but news nonetheless
Why is this news? From TFA:
Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30... Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June.
This implies (if the statistics can be trusted) that new computer buyers are not switching to Mac, and in the long run, Vista will easily deal with whatever Mac throws as it. This Is News!
It:
1) counteracts most news articles of the past while, especially that appear on
2) reports that people are not switching to Mac, again, which runs against most news articles that have appeared in the past 6 months and also counters the blind optimism of all those mac fanbois
That second bit of news should be BIG news to macaddicts, though like true fanatics the
I have no doubt there'll be plenty of mods there to sweep this post under the rug as well!
So I take an old, rare 78 rpm record, transfer it to digital, then sell it online with a copyright notice saying nobody can copy it.
Only this is completely insane, and would be cashing in on something I put about 0.0001% of the creativity of the original author!
There's no way you should be able to copyright that book.
Given the disagreement among slashdotters on what open source is, your average person is going to have a very hard time understanding just how open an "open source" project is -- especially since it takes a technically-able person or a lawyer to understand which licences are open-source in the view of most open-source advocates/the OSI.
It's like saying there's no need for "organic" labelling. An expert could determine whether it's organic or not, but most people can't -- and they're not idiots.
While the average person shouldn't be considered an idiot, you are most definitely an elitist.
Wouldn't the term "closed-source" also be a philosophy that's free to be interpreted by anyone as well?
Why doesn't the OSI set up their own official list of known "closed-source" licences?
The question is whether the OSI can become the de-facto holders of the open-source trademark, whether it exists or not.
Oh, and the user can't interpret the term "open-source" their own way if it's a closed-source (you can look but you can't touch) licence being imposed on them, can they?
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Smells like a civil war a brewin'
Steve Jobs speaking at the Safari release:
"We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari"
I think Windows users are going to be impressed that the quality of Windows applications is so much higher than those with Mac -- I don't even believe this, but it sure as hell is what Mac is asking for!
And to all those Mac fanbois that have been posting the same idea ad nauseum: "oooh bugs in a beta, no surprise!", you need a serious reality check. Small bugs exist even in most production applications. These are basic security vulnerabilities that make Safari dangerous to use on windows, and the actual bug reports piling in lead one to believe that it's a barely usable application (display/font/screen/memory problems amongst others).
All I see here is something that is most definitely not beta quality
"Competitor" shows the relationship of Fonality to Nortel, while "open source" is just a blatant use of a popular term that does nothing for the article other than to misleadingly cry "look at me!!"
What's Open Source got to do with the story? The phrase appears twice to describe what kind of product Fonality sells, and then not again for the rest of the entire story. If it was a closed system, would it make any difference to the story? Or a bigger question, would the story have made
As if we needed any more proof of the power that the blogosphere holds... The only thing Tom Keating has shown about the blogosphere is that it has the power to distort.
It used to be that an art director would build the design for websites, but with dynamic and active websites (Web2.0 if, we need to use that word), a web architect is the new boss needed to run the show. That is, someone who understands template-based programming and information workflow enough to develop a solid basis for the designers to take over and make things look pretty. Oh yeah, and this person should also be able to direct the programmers to organize things in a useful manner for the designers as well. Until companies catch on and begin hiring website directors with these qualifications, they'll just continue to roll out that static, oh so pretty and dumb sites that they always have been.
WAMP setup on Vista: 5 minutes, working perfectly, and took my old mysql database and started running right away.
/etc/apache2 directory with the intent to start over, with default configurations. What happened? apt-get install/remove/whatever in all its configurations must have had a history, because it wouldn't reinstall any config files, even if they didn't exist! I had the worst time getting the defaults back (having to download individual .deb files among other frustrations).
LAMP on ubuntu? 4 hours, and a lot of googling. Now, I should add that I deleted the
On windows, I've never had this kind of problem. A setup.exe file just plain makes sense, and seems to work better than my short apt-get experience.
Linux has ugly colors by default (making it look plain ugly), and is no where near as smooth as vista, let alone all the terrible names that techies name their open source software. The startup screen has a ton of ugly verbose code, and x has crashed several times already, necessitating reboot. Sudo sucks even worse than Vista's "run as administrator", and is painfully intrusive. Pretty much no user can escape a need to use the terminal window in linux at some point in time -- something that regular people won't accept.
I'm running a Vista/Ubuntu 7.04 dual boot laptop, and while Vista's definitely had its share of frustrations, ubuntu is as beta as an os can possibly be. All this slashdot pro-desktop linux talk got me excited, but I've been overwhelmingly disappointed.
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I should note that I've been running linux servers (debian, redhat, and slackware) for 7 years. For servers, I'll never touch Windows, but for a decent desktop experience, I'm extremely disappointed that it's all I've got.
Maybe in a year or five, linux will be alright, but why the hell is ubuntu 7.04 considered production-ready?? Vista's problems are with drivers and legacy support. Ubuntu has serious bugs and issues that affect a smooth desktop experience!
You have just layed out the key difference between vinyl lovers and the more common digital variety:
"As for amps, it has always amazed me that people *love* the ones that introduce distortion and claim the accurate ones are "cold" and "technical." It's not the amp's job to be warm and emotional; it's the musician's. I run away from any component that advertises "warm" or "musical" sound; those are code words for distortion."
The vinyl sound is warmed, no doubt about it. To me, it just plain sounds better; now, whether it actually is "better", as in more accurate to every perfect sample caught on the timeline of a digital track... I could really care less.
Then there's the record selection. With so many people having given up their vinyl in the past 20 years, there's lots of great albums, complete with full cover work to be had for a few bucks at the local flea market. The search for great new records helps keep a continual interest in discovering new music.
Since I ditched the CD player for a couple of turntables, I've been listening to far more music than I ever did before. That, for me makes a better format.
Wrong. It's a buzzword used by the media to represent interactive web applications, whether they understand technology or not. It's useful because it's painfully simple, and non-techie people get the basic idea.
/. audience, so don't take it personally when they disregard us. And don't get upset at them for using certain words when they weren't talking to us in the first place. We may make a lot of things work, but the world doesn't revolve around ./!
Given that the article was not aimed directly at web developers, but at people interested in computing in general, it's appropriate for them to use buzzwords to convey their message.
If I'm talking with another web developer, I'll get upset if he/she uses "web 2.0" in a sentence -- when it comes to my profession, I hate the word. When dealing with non-web tech savvy people, it's a helpful tool to refer to dynamic websites of the type that may have this vulnerability.
Very few news articles are ever written for the
Actually, there are two types of "conventional" reactors: fast and thermal reactors.
Fast reactors use U-235 (the first reactors, and still commonly used in the U.S), while thermal reactors (overall more commonly used, as in the CANDU Canadian reactors ) use natural (~1%U-235, mostly U-238) uranium
"The other 99% is discarded as "depleted" uranium and used as high density slugs in weapons." should read about 80% for fast reactors, and much smaller to no waste for thermal reactors.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactors