No thanks...the US government is too close to a police state as it is. Putting the Green Party in power will just encourage the productive to get the heck out of the US to go somewhere that work and ingenuity can be rewarded. I urge people to actually go read the Green Party platform and see what an oppressive socialist government they have in mind for the US.
A web search turns up a claim that the insolation constant is about 1.4 kw/m**2 per day (and that's at the top of the atmosphere). Say you leave your car out for eight hours; be generous and say that you have maybe three square meters exposed. Even if we ignore that you're near the bottom of the atmosphere, in an eight hour work day you have maybe 1.4 * 3 / 3 (since eight hours is a third of a day), or a big 1.4 kw gathered from your solar panel. It's been a while since I read about solar cell efficiency...back then they were happy to get 15% efficiency. Another web search turns up a statement that "high efficiency" solar cells are running at a big 23%. So, congratulations, you've sucked down maybe 300 watts in eight hours, or about enough to run a dinky light bulb--and remember, that would be if you were above the atmosphere. Doesn't sound too practical to me.
Let's see how that works in another field...
on
Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 1
Sure, in the old days, there were cars without power windows and locks, cruise control, and automatic transmissions...but nowadays drivers assume those as part of the driving experience, so a "car" that doesn't have those isn't really a car.
Well, let's see...the port could be intentionally broken, gratuitously slow or resource hogging, or always a version behind the Windoze version ("Oh, you don't have ventricles on your frammistan? You must be running the Linux version..." [apologies to Jerry Pournelle]). It may be written in a way that is insecure (gratuitously requiring excessive permisssion), with an eye to destabilizing Linux. It could be FUDware--announce or leak a port to undercut other developers.
Come to think of it, won't it necessarily be behind, unless they intend to do a Linux version of.NET?
Not popular. Widely used, or common. "Popular" implies that people like it, and IMHO the average person doesn't like Windows any more than fish like water--to them, it's just there.
Better still...many x86oid CPUs turn the obscenity that is the x86 instruction set into something reasonable to run internally. Why not hoist that out into software--doing the translation as part of compiling or assembly shouldn't be tough, and eventually the x86 architecture could go into the compost heap of history where it belongs (and has belonged for a LONG time), chip makers could use all that real estate for something else, and everybody would be happy.
The "liberal"-"conservative" dichotomy is a skewed way of looking at things, sort of like adopting "grue" and "bleen" in your color vocabulary. "Liberals" are economically anti-freedom, "conservatives" are socially anti-freedom. Libertarians are pro-freedom.
The things you enumerate could be at least as well, probably better, done by private organizations...in particular education (is that 90% percent literacy rate really correct for the US these days?). You may be right, though; it might be more accurate to call taxation a protection racket rather than theft.
Eh? Libertarianism doesn't require a utopia, and even a libertarian state won't be one. What is it about being a government official that renders one somehow ennobled and virtuous?
I couldn't tell you whether most libertarians are objectivists; I can say there was one objectivist who didn't think much of libertarians, namely Ayn Rand herself.
I for one am not an objectivist; if anyone can tell me what "existence exists" means, I'd love to hear about it. I do think that there's no such thing as a "positive right" (things that people uspposedly have a right to claim from others, e.g. the so-called "rights" to a job, education, or health care). Despite that, I'm a libertarian.
Congratulations on the fine strawman you've constructed. Too bad it has very little to do with libertarianism. I hope that people will go over to the Libertarian Party web site and see the real thing instead of the strawman.
Re:Katz writes about things without having 2 clues
on
Selfish Society
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· Score: 1
Read Salamander's post closely--this is the line that is going to be fed to people for the omega + 1th time by politicians wanting votes. "Vote for me and I will use the force of the government to take money from those nasty selfish [fill in the blank] to give to you." This time the blank will be filled in with "programmers"/"computer people"/"nerds".
My initial response is "Gee...too bad there's no 'Sheep' choice for moderation."
The FBI isn't necessarily interested in you, but the local police are more likely to be. How easily will data make its way from the federal to the state, county, or city level? For that matter, does the FBI need a warrant to do traffic analysis, which they can argue is analogous to just looking at the addresses on envelopes rather than reading mail?
Reading about this gave me an idea--MS is trying to push developers towards the so-called ".net", where apps and data live out on the network. This has the advantage for MS of making it possible to really rent software so that the captive audience pays so much per unit time forever, but it occurs to me also that one thing that makes WINE et al. even semi-possible is inertia; there are a LOT of apps sitting out there physically on CD-ROM that MS can't recall to introduce intentional incompatibilities into. With ".net" the apps aren't physically located in stores, they're on the net in one or a few locations, and easily updatable. Who's to say that somewhere people won't be running/studying WINE, Open Windows, FreeDOS, et al. and regularly updating Windows and.net apps to make sure that WINE et al. are endlessly playing a futile game of catch up?
I see...so all those pieces of Shaker furniture, or appliances from the Art Deco/streamlining era, in museums shouldn't be there, eh? They're just furniture, or toasters, or radios...
That's been tried before; see DR DOS and OS/2. Once you start down that road, MS can keep you in a perpetual game of catch up. Introducing intentional incompatibilities is what MS does best--if we confine the domain of discourse to software.
Ummm...Scheme and Lisp in general aren't pure functional languages, so they don't have the "limitations" I presume you're thinking of--you can do assignment in them. Haskell is pure, but has a "monad" facility that lets you safely isolate the imperative portion of your code from the applicative.
OTOH, the applicative subset of C isn't very pleasant; just try "currying" a C function. The rules that permit a simple stack to keep locals around in prevents one from doing it very nicely at all.
The problem is that, as I'm sure Microsoft intends, people not using IE will be increasingly isolated and find more and more web pages inaccessible to them, as web sites use IE-specific features. Try visiting the Disney Blast site with Netscape and see what happens. MS has in the past done things to encourage people to use IE-only features in their web pages, and I'm sure they'll continue to do so. This is "embrace and extend" once again.
Do they need the warrant to access any data from it, or do they just need the warrant to access data about a specific person? Seems to me that they could be getting a lot of data from traffic analysis without necessarily targeting a specific person.
Well...of course an OS is a tool, but I personally can't help but consider the source, and whether I want to implicitly approve of the actions of that source by giving them my money. (My particular criteria are, to be sure, very different from the "save the whales"/"socially responsible investing" folks.) Put simply: I refuse to help fund what I consider evil. [enormous sigh of relief at avoiding Godwin's Law despite temptation]
The problem is that if Quova can do it, the hax0rs can. For that matter, if you're a hax0r, or the US government, which wants to be able to read everyone's data (don't worry, though, it's "for the children"), what a cool scam it would be to set up a company so that you can get paid to crack everyone's system?</conspiracy>
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No thanks...the US government is too close to a police state as it is. Putting the Green Party in power will just encourage the productive to get the heck out of the US to go somewhere that work and ingenuity can be rewarded. I urge people to actually go read the Green Party platform and see what an oppressive socialist government they have in mind for the US.
A web search turns up a claim that the insolation constant is about 1.4 kw/m**2 per day (and that's at the top of the atmosphere). Say you leave your car out for eight hours; be generous and say that you have maybe three square meters exposed. Even if we ignore that you're near the bottom of the atmosphere, in an eight hour work day you have maybe 1.4 * 3 / 3 (since eight hours is a third of a day), or a big 1.4 kw gathered from your solar panel. It's been a while since I read about solar cell efficiency...back then they were happy to get 15% efficiency. Another web search turns up a statement that "high efficiency" solar cells are running at a big 23%. So, congratulations, you've sucked down maybe 300 watts in eight hours, or about enough to run a dinky light bulb--and remember, that would be if you were above the atmosphere. Doesn't sound too practical to me.
Sure, in the old days, there were cars without power windows and locks, cruise control, and automatic transmissions...but nowadays drivers assume those as part of the driving experience, so a "car" that doesn't have those isn't really a car.
Come to think of it, won't it necessarily be behind, unless they intend to do a Linux version of .NET?
Not popular. Widely used, or common. "Popular" implies that people like it, and IMHO the average person doesn't like Windows any more than fish like water--to them, it's just there.
Better still...many x86oid CPUs turn the obscenity that is the x86 instruction set into something reasonable to run internally. Why not hoist that out into software--doing the translation as part of compiling or assembly shouldn't be tough, and eventually the x86 architecture could go into the compost heap of history where it belongs (and has belonged for a LONG time), chip makers could use all that real estate for something else, and everybody would be happy.
The "liberal"-"conservative" dichotomy is a skewed way of looking at things, sort of like adopting "grue" and "bleen" in your color vocabulary. "Liberals" are economically anti-freedom, "conservatives" are socially anti-freedom. Libertarians are pro-freedom.
The things you enumerate could be at least as well, probably better, done by private organizations...in particular education (is that 90% percent literacy rate really correct for the US these days?). You may be right, though; it might be more accurate to call taxation a protection racket rather than theft.
I disagree; the wants or needs of others gives them no right to steal or use the government to steal on their behalf.
Eh? Libertarianism doesn't require a utopia, and even a libertarian state won't be one. What is it about being a government official that renders one somehow ennobled and virtuous?
I for one am not an objectivist; if anyone can tell me what "existence exists" means, I'd love to hear about it. I do think that there's no such thing as a "positive right" (things that people uspposedly have a right to claim from others, e.g. the so-called "rights" to a job, education, or health care). Despite that, I'm a libertarian.
Congratulations on the fine strawman you've constructed. Too bad it has very little to do with libertarianism. I hope that people will go over to the Libertarian Party web site and see the real thing instead of the strawman.
Read Salamander's post closely--this is the line that is going to be fed to people for the omega + 1th time by politicians wanting votes. "Vote for me and I will use the force of the government to take money from those nasty selfish [fill in the blank] to give to you." This time the blank will be filled in with "programmers"/"computer people"/"nerds".
The level of government snooping you appear to want makes me very insecure. I do not trust any entity with that much power.
The FBI isn't necessarily interested in you, but the local police are more likely to be. How easily will data make its way from the federal to the state, county, or city level? For that matter, does the FBI need a warrant to do traffic analysis, which they can argue is analogous to just looking at the addresses on envelopes rather than reading mail?
You know, that little red light is sort of reminiscent of HAL--do you suppose Apple will do another HAL commercial about the new mouse?
Reading about this gave me an idea--MS is trying to push developers towards the so-called ".net", where apps and data live out on the network. This has the advantage for MS of making it possible to really rent software so that the captive audience pays so much per unit time forever, but it occurs to me also that one thing that makes WINE et al. even semi-possible is inertia; there are a LOT of apps sitting out there physically on CD-ROM that MS can't recall to introduce intentional incompatibilities into. With ".net" the apps aren't physically located in stores, they're on the net in one or a few locations, and easily updatable. Who's to say that somewhere people won't be running/studying WINE, Open Windows, FreeDOS, et al. and regularly updating Windows and .net apps to make sure that WINE et al. are endlessly playing a futile game of catch up?
I see...so all those pieces of Shaker furniture, or appliances from the Art Deco/streamlining era, in museums shouldn't be there, eh? They're just furniture, or toasters, or radios...
That's been tried before; see DR DOS and OS/2. Once you start down that road, MS can keep you in a perpetual game of catch up. Introducing intentional incompatibilities is what MS does best--if we confine the domain of discourse to software.
OTOH, the applicative subset of C isn't very pleasant; just try "currying" a C function. The rules that permit a simple stack to keep locals around in prevents one from doing it very nicely at all.
The problem is that, as I'm sure Microsoft intends, people not using IE will be increasingly isolated and find more and more web pages inaccessible to them, as web sites use IE-specific features. Try visiting the Disney Blast site with Netscape and see what happens. MS has in the past done things to encourage people to use IE-only features in their web pages, and I'm sure they'll continue to do so. This is "embrace and extend" once again.
Hmmmm. FBI raw data from interviews for security clearance are supposed to be private, too, but that didn't stop the Clinton administration.
Do they need the warrant to access any data from it, or do they just need the warrant to access data about a specific person? Seems to me that they could be getting a lot of data from traffic analysis without necessarily targeting a specific person.
Well...of course an OS is a tool, but I personally can't help but consider the source, and whether I want to implicitly approve of the actions of that source by giving them my money. (My particular criteria are, to be sure, very different from the "save the whales"/"socially responsible investing" folks.) Put simply: I refuse to help fund what I consider evil. [enormous sigh of relief at avoiding Godwin's Law despite temptation]
The problem is that if Quova can do it, the hax0rs can. For that matter, if you're a hax0r, or the US government, which wants to be able to read everyone's data (don't worry, though, it's "for the children"), what a cool scam it would be to set up a company so that you can get paid to crack everyone's system?</conspiracy>