The time-to-sleep is ridiculously awesome! It kinda seems like they pre-pended a "fade-out" screensaver to the real sleep mode. It does take almost a minute for my hard drive activity to stop.
>Adobe? Certainly not a friend, although they do benefit from open-source software. They seem like the penultimate holdover from pre-internet software companies: first-mover advantage -> de facto file and ui standard -> price bloat -> ever-tighter copy restrictions -> ?undermining open source alternatives?
Intuit? Not a friend, although they do offer software to "open source systems"http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/2007/06-13.jhtml. I agree with you though, these commercial enterprises are _supposed_ to do everything in their legal power to profit. Just seems to me, they'll never be able to beat FOSS alternatives in the long run.
Apple? Love-hate relationship. Opensource saved Apple's bacon. They do things like Darwin, Bonjour, and Webkit. Apple is more like the smooth-talking ex-boyfriend of opensource.
I agree. It has multiple definitions, but I prefer "the study of the effective use of language." While rhetoric is required for intelligent discussion, automated rhetoric might be deceptively effective because it is familiar.
The forms are cynical. Sure, they are a good way to approach the proposed solution. They could be a useful catalyst for conversation, but usually aren't. As soon as somebody overly-pessimistically asserts "(x) the police will not put up with it", even most people who notice this contradiction are still led to feel that a second internet could never happen.
But remember: crazy shit happens. I could see a lot of Americans getting behind a trusted internet, especially trusted DNS and email.
Ultimately, the forms are just rhetoric by multiple-choice.
Yeah, but this is a beautifully-summarized "plot point" on our way to the inevitable: SkyNet, or the Matrix, or whatever you want to call the rise of the machines.
Choice of codec may be orthogonal to HTML, but if not in the HTML spec, where can we specify it? The world needs a free (as in beer) way to share its audio and video on web pages, and even if it's not a perfect fit, it's an exceptionally important situation.
I agree, thread is originally about Uranium 235 supplies, and I think most people agree, nuclear could be a long-term solution, raw-material-wise.
But you were demonizing people who would push us back to coal... and most of those people are not basing that judgement on a perceived shortage of fissible material.
Who says demand has to continue to increase? If we level-out on population growth and increase efficiency, demand will go down. Assume that technology will continue to develop ever-better methods of generating power, and I would guess our unit cost of energy goes down in the mid- to long-term future.
Essentially, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo want to shut IP down because of the ecological and social consequences of, say, crashing a jet plane into the reactor. Even if we develop fast-breeder technology and start recycling our radioactive waste, we still have all this ecologically dangerous material deposited around the biosphere.
This is not a black and white issue. You and your PhD family might think you see the issues clearly, as scientists in a given field often imagine they do. With only intelligent engineering and management, we can solve the world's energy crisis using nuclear fusion! But who's to say the US won't be the next USSR, and the bumpkins in the republic of New Texicada won't be able to afford to run/manage/secure their fleet of power plants.
IMO, our energy solution should decay gracefully just in case civilization collapses. I consider myself semi-intelligent and semi-informed, but don't begrudge the misguided hippies who "feel" there's something inherently wrong with fusion.
I don't like iTunes either. I use Anapod Explorer (commercial). Some people like Rockbox (opensource, dual-boots to original firmware). I use Windows Explorer (Vista's Explorer has star ratings columns!) to manage my collection.
I think the new interface is overkill for a music player... the best mp3 player out there right now in terms of responsive interface and battery life is the classic or maybe a 5.5G. I'd definitely say the best budget buy out there right now is the refurbished 5.5G "previous generation" iPod. They've only got the 30GB models left, but $179.99 seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Agreed, this is a beautiful A.I. challenge. (and a weird sociological development.)
GP: Can you describe more what you mean by scarcely controllabe? Something's controlling the plane's movement, why couldn't it be receiving signals from an external controller (person or software)? Or do you mean those kind of maneuvers could only be done by a computer?
It's probably better off as remote control... i.e., server-based command and control. It probably won't take too long to outfit this with a WiMaX radio or whatever the military's high-speed data signal might be.
In Vista's new Explorer, I can search for those files in the same number of keystrokes: alt-d + tab + *.txt.0. No mouse movement required. Plus I can move backward and forward to cycle through previous-such searches without having to retype the search.
According to a posting from NanoSolar on their Yahoo Groups page, their entire 2008 production run is already spoken for. They suggest general availability won't come until 2009.
Some people might choose to purposefully share their wi-fi. I'd do it if I could easily limit the bandwidth of unreckognized guests and guarantee theu were was isolated from my network. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone in the world could donate a little chunk of their internet pipe to the public? Isn't that what the OLPC is going to do?
Without resorting to virtual machines, you should be able to run fileserver, web/ssh/mail server and VoIP on the same box. The lab servers could be virtual machines. Why not save yourself $100/year and get rid of some of that clutter?
Congrats on your cool setup! You can buy a new 100 watt solar panel for less than $600. http://www.solarhome.org/solarpanelbrand_ge.html Add a couple more deep-cycle batteries and you can probably push through 99% of the cloudy periods.
For those of us within range of civilization, connect your solar setup to the grid and use electricity from somewhere sunny when it's too cloudy locally. Supplement the solar generation with a little hydro and wind, reduce energy consumption, and voila: sustainable energy independence. Plenty of people already generate more electricity than they use with solar, and sell the surplus back to the rest of us. As the technology improves, I can imagine a future where most rooftops are covered in resilient, high-effiency solar panels.
Just because we use x amount of energy doesn't mean we _need_ to use that much energy... as hydrocarbon prices rise, hopefully the market will encourage people to curtail their consumption. Or, maybe we'll put a nuclear plant in every town and pray that nothing bad ever happens.
I'm not saying we can support our current energy usage with solar... but that if we needed to, we could reduce our usage substantially enough that solar would be feasible.
Nice rebuttal, your point is well-taken, no need for cursing. (Dun Malg = flamebaiter?)
IMHO, we must admit: as a civilization, we can't guarantee that successive generations of humans will have the ability to take care of our bubbling nuclear legacy. Or is it too late to consider that possibility already?
Slashdot Mirror
Better bet for life, sure. But more mystery sounds like a better place for closer examination if we can only afford one.
Don't be such a nay-sayer. This could be pretty radical.
Does anyone know of another country that's done something like this?
The time-to-sleep is ridiculously awesome! It kinda seems like they pre-pended a "fade-out" screensaver to the real sleep mode. It does take almost a minute for my hard drive activity to stop.
You're crazy. I've been running it for a month already. It is great. There is a list of major incompatibilities: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935796
>Adobe?
Certainly not a friend, although they do benefit from open-source software. They seem like the penultimate holdover from pre-internet software companies: first-mover advantage -> de facto file and ui standard -> price bloat -> ever-tighter copy restrictions -> ?undermining open source alternatives?
Intuit?
Not a friend, although they do offer software to "open source systems"http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/2007/06-13.jhtml. I agree with you though, these commercial enterprises are _supposed_ to do everything in their legal power to profit. Just seems to me, they'll never be able to beat FOSS alternatives in the long run.
Apple?
Love-hate relationship. Opensource saved Apple's bacon. They do things like Darwin, Bonjour, and Webkit. Apple is more like the smooth-talking ex-boyfriend of opensource.
Not enemies? JBoss. MySQL. Countless others.
(Assuming you're not a troll)
I wonder if there's a fictional precedent (image or prose) for a ringed moon?
> Rhetoric isn't always a bad thing.
I agree. It has multiple definitions, but I prefer "the study of the effective use of language." While rhetoric is required for intelligent discussion, automated rhetoric might be deceptively effective because it is familiar.
The forms are cynical. Sure, they are a good way to approach the proposed solution. They could be a useful catalyst for conversation, but usually aren't. As soon as somebody overly-pessimistically asserts "(x) the police will not put up with it", even most people who notice this contradiction are still led to feel that a second internet could never happen.
But remember: crazy shit happens. I could see a lot of Americans getting behind a trusted internet, especially trusted DNS and email.
Ultimately, the forms are just rhetoric by multiple-choice.
Yeah, but this is a beautifully-summarized "plot point" on our way to the inevitable: SkyNet, or the Matrix, or whatever you want to call the rise of the machines.
Choice of codec may be orthogonal to HTML, but if not in the HTML spec, where can we specify it? The world needs a free (as in beer) way to share its audio and video on web pages, and even if it's not a perfect fit, it's an exceptionally important situation.
I agree, thread is originally about Uranium 235 supplies, and I think most people agree, nuclear could be a long-term solution, raw-material-wise.
But you were demonizing people who would push us back to coal... and most of those people are not basing that judgement on a perceived shortage of fissible material.
Who says demand has to continue to increase? If we level-out on population growth and increase efficiency, demand will go down. Assume that technology will continue to develop ever-better methods of generating power, and I would guess our unit cost of energy goes down in the mid- to long-term future.
There's a great article about New York's Indian Point nuclear plant in today's NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/09towns.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Essentially, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo want to shut IP down because of the ecological and social consequences of, say, crashing a jet plane into the reactor. Even if we develop fast-breeder technology and start recycling our radioactive waste, we still have all this ecologically dangerous material deposited around the biosphere.
This is not a black and white issue. You and your PhD family might think you see the issues clearly, as scientists in a given field often imagine they do. With only intelligent engineering and management, we can solve the world's energy crisis using nuclear fusion! But who's to say the US won't be the next USSR, and the bumpkins in the republic of New Texicada won't be able to afford to run/manage/secure their fleet of power plants.
IMO, our energy solution should decay gracefully just in case civilization collapses. I consider myself semi-intelligent and semi-informed, but don't begrudge the misguided hippies who "feel" there's something inherently wrong with fusion.
More likely they're just as paranoid about foreigners as we are.
I don't like iTunes either. I use Anapod Explorer (commercial). Some people like Rockbox (opensource, dual-boots to original firmware). I use Windows Explorer (Vista's Explorer has star ratings columns!) to manage my collection.
I think the new interface is overkill for a music player... the best mp3 player out there right now in terms of responsive interface and battery life is the classic or maybe a 5.5G. I'd definitely say the best budget buy out there right now is the refurbished 5.5G "previous generation" iPod. They've only got the 30GB models left, but $179.99 seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Agreed, this is a beautiful A.I. challenge. (and a weird sociological development.)
GP: Can you describe more what you mean by scarcely controllabe? Something's controlling the plane's movement, why couldn't it be receiving signals from an external controller (person or software)? Or do you mean those kind of maneuvers could only be done by a computer?
It's probably better off as remote control... i.e., server-based command and control. It probably won't take too long to outfit this with a WiMaX radio or whatever the military's high-speed data signal might be.
In Vista's new Explorer, I can search for those files in the same number of keystrokes: alt-d + tab + *.txt.0. No mouse movement required. Plus I can move backward and forward to cycle through previous-such searches without having to retype the search.
According to a posting from NanoSolar on their Yahoo Groups page, their entire 2008 production run is already spoken for. They suggest general availability won't come until 2009.
Some people might choose to purposefully share their wi-fi. I'd do it if I could easily limit the bandwidth of unreckognized guests and guarantee theu were was isolated from my network. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone in the world could donate a little chunk of their internet pipe to the public? Isn't that what the OLPC is going to do?
Without resorting to virtual machines, you should be able to run fileserver, web/ssh/mail server and VoIP on the same box. The lab servers could be virtual machines. Why not save yourself $100/year and get rid of some of that clutter?
Congrats on your cool setup! You can buy a new 100 watt solar panel for less than $600. http://www.solarhome.org/solarpanelbrand_ge.html Add a couple more deep-cycle batteries and you can probably push through 99% of the cloudy periods.
For those of us within range of civilization, connect your solar setup to the grid and use electricity from somewhere sunny when it's too cloudy locally. Supplement the solar generation with a little hydro and wind, reduce energy consumption, and voila: sustainable energy independence. Plenty of people already generate more electricity than they use with solar, and sell the surplus back to the rest of us. As the technology improves, I can imagine a future where most rooftops are covered in resilient, high-effiency solar panels.
Just because we use x amount of energy doesn't mean we _need_ to use that much energy... as hydrocarbon prices rise, hopefully the market will encourage people to curtail their consumption. Or, maybe we'll put a nuclear plant in every town and pray that nothing bad ever happens.
I'm not saying we can support our current energy usage with solar... but that if we needed to, we could reduce our usage substantially enough that solar would be feasible.
Nice rebuttal, your point is well-taken, no need for cursing. (Dun Malg = flamebaiter?)
IMHO, we must admit: as a civilization, we can't guarantee that successive generations of humans will have the ability to take care of our bubbling nuclear legacy. Or is it too late to consider that possibility already?