..."Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft: An overview of historical and future trends", which falsely claims declining fuel efficiency in airline turbine aircraft engines.
Wow. I just read the study. You, obviously, did not. Because that is not what the study says. In fact, it's not even close to what the study says.
Can you cite something to back that up or did you just make it up? Because this is what I took out of it (in reference to "turbine engine" efficiency gains):
Between 1965 and 2004 the efficiency gain is higher, at 53%, but still short of the 70% found in the IPCC graph.
(directly from the paper)
It sounds to me more like the IPCC was taking extreme outliers when finding efficiency gains, rather than adopting the normalized curve, which represents the wider industry trend.
I actually think the OP was duped by piss poor scientific meandering around, and is proceeding to make an idiot out of himself by claiming that he's so superior to everyone because HE can parrot this book.:-)
I think they send them OUT to sea with the intent of going outside the expected hurricane track.
I've spoken someone who rode out a north pacific tropical storm (around a Category 1 hurricane-strength) on a small sailboat (42 feet) in the open ocean. He was extremely lucky to survive (and very well equipped with a sea drogue and a really solid boat).
Still, it's something best avoided.
Of course, there are huge portions of the ocean that never see hurricanes or serious tropical storms. If it is mobile, it can move to various areas to avoid seasonal storms almost entirely.
tsunami is a non-issue in the middle of the ocean. The Thailand tsunami wasn't even noticed by boats as long as they were more than a mile offshore.
If they placed the barge in the ITCZ, they could almost completely rule out weather. It's an area in the ocean where equatorial currents basically keep it warm and calm all the time.
Of course, the wave power in that area might be marginal, but there is plenty of solar power. Then again, it's a pretty warm area and cooling the servers may be an issue there...
There is something legit to his case for doing a thorough investigation on compromised servers.
I'm watching a malicious Russian hacker twittering with glee. He'll break in, steal your credit card info and then write you a bogus report on how easy it was so that you don't think he did anything bad.
He might get a free beer out of it.:-)
On premise, what you say is accurate, but a network without strong IDS/IPS is really a piss-poor implementation. And your IDS really should pick up on *most* intrusions, especially those that dump or modify data.
If he contacted me and said "I would like to break into your server then I'll tell you how", I'd pay him to do it under controlled circumstances.
No you wouldn't!!!
Haha!!!
You would tell him to go pound sand.
Which, of course, leaves him in the position of KNOWING about visible external vulnerabilities and recognizing the security threat, but having no recourse with which to fix it, or even voice his concern.
Maybe he could go to the newspaper with it, but without a spectacular story of penetrating servers, they'll tel him to "go pound sand".
After that happens a few dozen times, he'll probably go do it anyway. That's a bit of human nature for you.
our elected officials decided that it was in our interests to outlaw breaking into computer systems without express permission from the rightful owners
These laws were made at a time (and I remember several of the discussions), when 60% of "our elected officials" had never used a computer network in any capacity. EVER.
What we *can* hope for is that the judge/jury sees this in perspective and that they are given a fair trial and a fair punishment. This is one of the cases where a slap on the wrist is probably appropriate in my opinion.
Again, I agree. However, this exposes a hole in our system. See, if the District Attorney, or the Judge are up for re-election soon, and if they feel like they have a friendly party in the media willing to spin with them, they will throw the book at him, lock him up for 20 years and call themselves "tough on cybercrime", because they think it will be good for their political career.
It is a documented fact that nearing a re-election cycle, sentences almost double for "hot button" crimes like those involving the internet and drugs and children.
So while your universe of "our elected officials" "sees this in perspective" where you find a "fair trial" resulting in a "slap on the wrist".... (all direct quotes).... That sounds like a fairy tale world of rainbows and lollipops, frankly.
I'm in Skype right now on my Fedora/KFCE laptop, talking with a friend in the Ukraine who is using Kubuntu and I just got off a conference with a few people in our office in California who use MacOSX and Windows Vista.
What am I missing about Skype that makes it unusable?
if there was evidence of them getting together with DVD manufacturers to ensure artificial scarcity drove up prices that they could then turn around and collect a portion of....
that's what i refer to.
The fact of there being a single medium isn't the problem. It's the act of using a single medium for the PURPOSE of collecting a percentage of the over-charges for DVD players.
Imagine if there was only a few manufacturers of DVD players. The industry gets together with all of them and says "listen, we want a cut of DVD player sales. We will make our media ONLY available on DVD and you triple the price as a result and give us half."
That's unconscionable in "meat space", but in the electronic realm, that's very similar to some of the fees they impose on stores and how they are negotiated.
In our DVD example, imagine a store saying "we won't sell your DVDs at that high a price, we are going to charge a fair price." and the recording industry then says "ok, well we will make our media not functional on your devices."
That's something else that the *IAA does...
All of that stuff is evil and wrong and shouldn't be tolerated.
However, the RIAA represents something like 90% of the music sales in the country.
The RIAA members engage in collusion to set pricing that is detrimental to their consumers.
Since music is not a necessity like fuel or food, this won't come to light in quite the same way, but imagine all of the gasoline companies with half-decent quality gasoline, all making a cartel through which they collude to set prices at their whim?
Price collusion is one of those practices which IS highly illegal when the consumer is offered little other choice.
Possibly if a record label required you to purchase some specific device from a specific manufacturer in order to listen to their music they'd be doing something illegal
Actually, no, that's not illegal. A company can could have chosen to only release their music on Mini-Disc, for example (which would have required purchase of a Sony Mini-Disc player). That's not illegal.
What would be illegal is for 90% of the record companies to collude in making the mini-disc the only outlet for music, and then collecting a premium from vastly overpriced MD players that are now required to listen to all music in the world.
Of course, this is almost exactly what TFA describes the RIAA trying to do, but in digital medium, rather than physical.
Any label is not a monopoly. The collective bargaining put together by the RIAA cartel may be, however.
I would regard it akin to... All 4 of the airlines that service my city getting together and deciding collectively to triple the price of tickets out of my city.
Yes, there are other, less desirable means of transport. The bus still runs.
Yes, it is possible to start a new airline (or a new major record label), but the barrier to entry is astoundingly high (so much as to make it almost impossible).
If all 4 carriers at my local airport were colluding to set prices artificially high, they would be slapped down HARD.
Because the RIAA labels deal in slightly more nebulous items with slightly less cohesive boundaries, they're allowed to collude all they want and nobody bats and eye.
This is a stellar piece of propaganda. Even the part about the kids wearing shabby clothing. Priceless.
Of course, if it's true, you need to get out of that business immediately.
I don't give a flying rats ass about piracy. The entire concept of purchasing information that is tied to a small piece of plastic is silly in the digital age, prima facie.
Your grandchildren will look at you funny when you suggest that one day, music could only be purchased on round pieces of plastic. They simply won't understand why something so trivial as "data" had to be purchased by means of a physical medium.
If you want to blame the decline of your business on digital music distribution, you would be accurate, but blaming it on piracy falls somewhere between a straw man and a red herring.
Lets look at reality.
Physical CD sales declined by 88 million from 2006 to 2007. (from 588 million to 500 million)
At the same time (2007), the iTunes music store sold about 1.8 billion tracks. They were thought to have about 60% of the market, indicating that there are about 3 billion tracks sold LEGALLY online.
So, a decline in 88 million plastic thingies sold... however, 3 billion tracks legally sold (for cash-money) online during the same period.
No, it is not really a piracy issue, it's merely a change in the distribution method of music.
But getting back to the point, I wonder if anyone here can get back to the point and enlighten us as to why (or whether) Firefox should embrace webkit?
Just because I'm allowed by law to charge someone whatever I wish for the fruits of my business, this doesn't mean I would, or that I should. I would go out of business very rapidly.
However, if I ran a cartel, controlling a monopoly share of a highly desirable resource... then I guess I understand where they're coming from.
But... wait... aren't monopolies illegal for this very reason?
Given infinite resources to code and debug applications, that may be the case.
On the other hand, given realistic design specifications, given the current level of compilers and code verification, the advantage to spawning new threads all the time for processes that aren't super I/O intensive is quite often far overshadowed by the complexity introduced by doing that.
Obviously, it's a design decision, but threaded tabs simply put more onus on the developers to sit around troubleshooting race conditions and inter-thread communications, rather than actually focusing on user-oriented features and performance enhancements.
6 in one, half dozen in the other.
But you don't do yourself any service by dogmatically insisting on it, like it's a magic bullet.
You sig is funny btw
But I want to eat cookies all the time! I want to do it!!.
I don't think your getting the big picture. If someone is playing god by manipulating something, what does that say about life being created? Nothing... If it happened naturally, then that's a little different.
Well, to be fair, our ability to manipulate genetic and cellular-level features and structures is close to zero.
Genetic manipulation basically comes down to educated guessing.
Almost anything we could do in a lab today, could probably also happen by random chance, given a few quadrillion random iterations.
We just aren't at all good at that sort of nano-scale technology yet.
There are a bunch of people who argue that the King James version is the "correct, God-inspired translation", whereas there was no god-inspring going on for the newer translations such as the NIV and New World or the Darby, or any of the other 40 or 50 that are out there as linguistic exercises from various linguists and historians...
But, to me, it seems they're more stuck on their childhood fondness for bible verses full of "thou" and "doth" and "shalt".
Well, I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but there ARE NO PGA tour players who don't speak English well enough to do interviews. There may have been one or two at any given time in the past. For exammple, KJ Choi from South Korea didn't speak great English, but he aggressively pursued English classes and he has been speaking it at home as a result.
However, fully a quarter of the field in many LPGA events doesn't speak English and that made it basically impossible to have enough translators on hand to handle interviews, let alone handle sponsors and pro-am participants.
If the Asian tour decided to mandate a language, they might have issues, considering they cover countries with at least 15 different languages. The Asian tour generally handles interviews and press books in both the local language and in English as well, as it is good common ground for all participants.
So, no I don't expect Asian tour events to mandate any local language. I think they would sooner mandate English, ironically.
Most professional sports leagues require participants to participate in events, like speaking engagements and community service events... often things like reading to children, etc
While there aren't any other sports with this mandate, I think it would be more frequent if any given sport had 1/4 of its participants unable to be a part of these events.
Everything you said is accurate, but i wanted to point something out.
The LPGA didn't mandate English, but is "strongly encouraging" and offering English assistance to non English speakers.
The LPGA is a business that doesn't get the bulk of its money from advertising like the NFL (or mens golf) does, but rather gets a great deal of its income from community outreach, where players participate in clinics and speak at events and play in pro-am events.
The LPGA would not be viable as a business if it was not able to send its members out to these events and know that they would be able to participate and since it is a north-american institution, the only languages that are of any use are english, spanish and french. However, a substantial portion of the field these days is Korean and few speak any english.
In today's pro-Am events, everyone fights to play with english speaking professionals so they can talk. The non-english speakers make for very boring events for participants in the pro-am.... which they paid A LOT (LOT) of money to participate in. I imagine it came from complaints of high-paying corporate sponsors playing golf with a Korean who didnt speak a word of English and feeling cheated that they basically had to pay a ton of money to watch her play... which they could have done from behind the ropes.
Some people forget that professional sports leagues are a business. And unfortunately, womens golf doesn't have enough draw to make money on a purely advertising basis like the mens tour does, which requires them to do certain thing0 (like this) s to remain financially viable.
I disagree. Dell has a drive-image process where they pull out any one of like 500 images (for different hardware, drivers, etc) for different machines.
It can't exactly be rocket science for them to pull the "Ubuntu for mini9" instead of "Windows for mini9".
I think the price difference is that the crapware they load from Google and others almost totally offsets the cost of the Windows license AND they probably tack on an additional $20 for the required support staff for Linux. Those two things combined probably brings the cost of Linux higher than Windows.
I would be willing to bet that Dell pre-loads Windows XP for under $30 per copy FYI.
Slashdot Mirror
..."Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft: An overview of historical and future trends", which falsely claims declining fuel efficiency in airline turbine aircraft engines.
Wow. I just read the study. You, obviously, did not. Because that is not what the study says. In fact, it's not even close to what the study says.
Can you cite something to back that up or did you just make it up? Because this is what I took out of it (in reference to "turbine engine" efficiency gains):
Between 1965 and 2004 the efficiency gain is higher, at 53%, but still short of the 70% found in the IPCC graph.
(directly from the paper)
It sounds to me more like the IPCC was taking extreme outliers when finding efficiency gains, rather than adopting the normalized curve, which represents the wider industry trend.
I actually think the OP was duped by piss poor scientific meandering around, and is proceeding to make an idiot out of himself by claiming that he's so superior to everyone because HE can parrot this book. :-)
I think they send them OUT to sea with the intent of going outside the expected hurricane track.
I've spoken someone who rode out a north pacific tropical storm (around a Category 1 hurricane-strength) on a small sailboat (42 feet) in the open ocean. He was extremely lucky to survive (and very well equipped with a sea drogue and a really solid boat).
Still, it's something best avoided.
Of course, there are huge portions of the ocean that never see hurricanes or serious tropical storms. If it is mobile, it can move to various areas to avoid seasonal storms almost entirely.
tsunami is a non-issue in the middle of the ocean. The Thailand tsunami wasn't even noticed by boats as long as they were more than a mile offshore.
If they placed the barge in the ITCZ, they could almost completely rule out weather. It's an area in the ocean where equatorial currents basically keep it warm and calm all the time.
Of course, the wave power in that area might be marginal, but there is plenty of solar power. Then again, it's a pretty warm area and cooling the servers may be an issue there...
It's an interesting thought anyway.
Yeah, like major US investment banks or multinational energy companies?
How about a $100 billion telecom company.
Maybe the Insurance industry has some stocks that don't have volatility? :-)
Just a friendly reminder that your statement is a tad absurd.
yes, and what if each and every package that was installed by default suddenly wanted a EULA?
would an hour of clicking through boilerplate make the Ubuntu experience better?
Or is FireFox just so special that they get to do it and nobody else does?
Just curious...
There is something legit to his case for doing a thorough investigation on compromised servers.
I'm watching a malicious Russian hacker twittering with glee. He'll break in, steal your credit card info and then write you a bogus report on how easy it was so that you don't think he did anything bad.
He might get a free beer out of it. :-)
On premise, what you say is accurate, but a network without strong IDS/IPS is really a piss-poor implementation. And your IDS really should pick up on *most* intrusions, especially those that dump or modify data.
If he contacted me and said "I would like to break into your server then I'll tell you how", I'd pay him to do it under controlled circumstances.
No you wouldn't!!!
Haha!!!
You would tell him to go pound sand.
Which, of course, leaves him in the position of KNOWING about visible external vulnerabilities and recognizing the security threat, but having no recourse with which to fix it, or even voice his concern.
Maybe he could go to the newspaper with it, but without a spectacular story of penetrating servers, they'll tel him to "go pound sand".
After that happens a few dozen times, he'll probably go do it anyway. That's a bit of human nature for you.
our elected officials decided that it was in our interests to outlaw breaking into computer systems without express permission from the rightful owners
These laws were made at a time (and I remember several of the discussions), when 60% of "our elected officials" had never used a computer network in any capacity. EVER.
What we *can* hope for is that the judge/jury sees this in perspective and that they are given a fair trial and a fair punishment. This is one of the cases where a slap on the wrist is probably appropriate in my opinion.
Again, I agree. However, this exposes a hole in our system. See, if the District Attorney, or the Judge are up for re-election soon, and if they feel like they have a friendly party in the media willing to spin with them, they will throw the book at him, lock him up for 20 years and call themselves "tough on cybercrime", because they think it will be good for their political career.
It is a documented fact that nearing a re-election cycle, sentences almost double for "hot button" crimes like those involving the internet and drugs and children.
So while your universe of "our elected officials" "sees this in perspective" where you find a "fair trial" resulting in a "slap on the wrist".... (all direct quotes).... That sounds like a fairy tale world of rainbows and lollipops, frankly.
This is a little more akin to your friend calling you up and saying:
FREE BEER AT THE PUB... sure it's crappy beer, but it's free.
And then you go drink it anyway.
That's the better analogy to poor FOSS.
None of the software is "snuck" up on you and you're always free to remove it.
That's VERY different for commercial software, where, often once you have paid, you can't un-pay.
And that sucks.
Skype works fine in Linux, with Video.
I use it all the time (with video) on my Acer Aspire One (similar to the Asus EEE) with Linpus Linux (which is a Fedora deriverative running XFCE).
I have also used it in Ubuntu and Kubuntu with video, without problems.
I'm still not sure the OP's gripe with Skype.
I don't understand.
I'm in Skype right now on my Fedora/KFCE laptop, talking with a friend in the Ukraine who is using Kubuntu and I just got off a conference with a few people in our office in California who use MacOSX and Windows Vista.
What am I missing about Skype that makes it unusable?
if there was evidence of them getting together with DVD manufacturers to ensure artificial scarcity drove up prices that they could then turn around and collect a portion of....
that's what i refer to.
The fact of there being a single medium isn't the problem. It's the act of using a single medium for the PURPOSE of collecting a percentage of the over-charges for DVD players.
Imagine if there was only a few manufacturers of DVD players. The industry gets together with all of them and says "listen, we want a cut of DVD player sales. We will make our media ONLY available on DVD and you triple the price as a result and give us half."
That's unconscionable in "meat space", but in the electronic realm, that's very similar to some of the fees they impose on stores and how they are negotiated.
In our DVD example, imagine a store saying "we won't sell your DVDs at that high a price, we are going to charge a fair price." and the recording industry then says "ok, well we will make our media not functional on your devices."
That's something else that the *IAA does...
All of that stuff is evil and wrong and shouldn't be tolerated.
But we do because people are lemmings. :-)
However, the RIAA represents something like 90% of the music sales in the country.
The RIAA members engage in collusion to set pricing that is detrimental to their consumers.
Since music is not a necessity like fuel or food, this won't come to light in quite the same way, but imagine all of the gasoline companies with half-decent quality gasoline, all making a cartel through which they collude to set prices at their whim?
Price collusion is one of those practices which IS highly illegal when the consumer is offered little other choice.
Possibly if a record label required you to purchase some specific device from a specific manufacturer in order to listen to their music they'd be doing something illegal
Actually, no, that's not illegal. A company can could have chosen to only release their music on Mini-Disc, for example (which would have required purchase of a Sony Mini-Disc player). That's not illegal.
What would be illegal is for 90% of the record companies to collude in making the mini-disc the only outlet for music, and then collecting a premium from vastly overpriced MD players that are now required to listen to all music in the world.
Of course, this is almost exactly what TFA describes the RIAA trying to do, but in digital medium, rather than physical.
Any label is not a monopoly. The collective bargaining put together by the RIAA cartel may be, however.
I would regard it akin to... All 4 of the airlines that service my city getting together and deciding collectively to triple the price of tickets out of my city.
Yes, there are other, less desirable means of transport. The bus still runs.
Yes, it is possible to start a new airline (or a new major record label), but the barrier to entry is astoundingly high (so much as to make it almost impossible).
If all 4 carriers at my local airport were colluding to set prices artificially high, they would be slapped down HARD.
Because the RIAA labels deal in slightly more nebulous items with slightly less cohesive boundaries, they're allowed to collude all they want and nobody bats and eye.
Are you... joking?
Or are you a RIAA marketing consultant?
This is a stellar piece of propaganda. Even the part about the kids wearing shabby clothing. Priceless.
Of course, if it's true, you need to get out of that business immediately.
I don't give a flying rats ass about piracy. The entire concept of purchasing information that is tied to a small piece of plastic is silly in the digital age, prima facie.
Your grandchildren will look at you funny when you suggest that one day, music could only be purchased on round pieces of plastic. They simply won't understand why something so trivial as "data" had to be purchased by means of a physical medium.
If you want to blame the decline of your business on digital music distribution, you would be accurate, but blaming it on piracy falls somewhere between a straw man and a red herring.
Lets look at reality.
Physical CD sales declined by 88 million from 2006 to 2007. (from 588 million to 500 million)
At the same time (2007), the iTunes music store sold about 1.8 billion tracks. They were thought to have about 60% of the market, indicating that there are about 3 billion tracks sold LEGALLY online.
So, a decline in 88 million plastic thingies sold... however, 3 billion tracks legally sold (for cash-money) online during the same period.
No, it is not really a piracy issue, it's merely a change in the distribution method of music.
You're on the wrong end of it.
Get out now.
But getting back to the point, I wonder if anyone here can get back to the point and enlighten us as to why (or whether) Firefox should embrace webkit?
It shouldn't.
There, done. :-)
Just because I'm allowed by law to charge someone whatever I wish for the fruits of my business, this doesn't mean I would, or that I should. I would go out of business very rapidly.
However, if I ran a cartel, controlling a monopoly share of a highly desirable resource... then I guess I understand where they're coming from.
But... wait... aren't monopolies illegal for this very reason?
Is that you Mr Balmer?
Given infinite resources to code and debug applications, that may be the case.
On the other hand, given realistic design specifications, given the current level of compilers and code verification, the advantage to spawning new threads all the time for processes that aren't super I/O intensive is quite often far overshadowed by the complexity introduced by doing that.
Obviously, it's a design decision, but threaded tabs simply put more onus on the developers to sit around troubleshooting race conditions and inter-thread communications, rather than actually focusing on user-oriented features and performance enhancements.
6 in one, half dozen in the other.
But you don't do yourself any service by dogmatically insisting on it, like it's a magic bullet.
You sig is funny btw
But I want to eat cookies all the time! I want to do it!!.
Yes... and threads too. :-)
I don't think your getting the big picture. If someone is playing god by manipulating something, what does that say about life being created? Nothing... If it happened naturally, then that's a little different.
Well, to be fair, our ability to manipulate genetic and cellular-level features and structures is close to zero.
Genetic manipulation basically comes down to educated guessing.
Almost anything we could do in a lab today, could probably also happen by random chance, given a few quadrillion random iterations.
We just aren't at all good at that sort of nano-scale technology yet.
Until about 100 years ago, most people ALSO believed that matter existed of a combination of earth, smoke and water.
See, when you burn a solid, it releases the smoke and all that is left is the earth.
And when you dry it, you release the water, so all that is left is earth and smoke.
When you add smoke to it, it clearly also changes its properties.
Obviously wikipedia's entry on the periodic table is wrong, since we're just so full of ourselves to believe in science.
I'm with ya man.
There are a bunch of people who argue that the King James version is the "correct, God-inspired translation", whereas there was no god-inspring going on for the newer translations such as the NIV and New World or the Darby, or any of the other 40 or 50 that are out there as linguistic exercises from various linguists and historians...
But, to me, it seems they're more stuck on their childhood fondness for bible verses full of "thou" and "doth" and "shalt".
Well, I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but there ARE NO PGA tour players who don't speak English well enough to do interviews. There may have been one or two at any given time in the past. For exammple, KJ Choi from South Korea didn't speak great English, but he aggressively pursued English classes and he has been speaking it at home as a result.
However, fully a quarter of the field in many LPGA events doesn't speak English and that made it basically impossible to have enough translators on hand to handle interviews, let alone handle sponsors and pro-am participants.
If the Asian tour decided to mandate a language, they might have issues, considering they cover countries with at least 15 different languages. The Asian tour generally handles interviews and press books in both the local language and in English as well, as it is good common ground for all participants.
So, no I don't expect Asian tour events to mandate any local language. I think they would sooner mandate English, ironically.
Most professional sports leagues require participants to participate in events, like speaking engagements and community service events... often things like reading to children, etc
While there aren't any other sports with this mandate, I think it would be more frequent if any given sport had 1/4 of its participants unable to be a part of these events.
Everything you said is accurate, but i wanted to point something out.
The LPGA didn't mandate English, but is "strongly encouraging" and offering English assistance to non English speakers.
The LPGA is a business that doesn't get the bulk of its money from advertising like the NFL (or mens golf) does, but rather gets a great deal of its income from community outreach, where players participate in clinics and speak at events and play in pro-am events.
The LPGA would not be viable as a business if it was not able to send its members out to these events and know that they would be able to participate and since it is a north-american institution, the only languages that are of any use are english, spanish and french. However, a substantial portion of the field these days is Korean and few speak any english.
In today's pro-Am events, everyone fights to play with english speaking professionals so they can talk. The non-english speakers make for very boring events for participants in the pro-am.... which they paid A LOT (LOT) of money to participate in. I imagine it came from complaints of high-paying corporate sponsors playing golf with a Korean who didnt speak a word of English and feeling cheated that they basically had to pay a ton of money to watch her play... which they could have done from behind the ropes.
Some people forget that professional sports leagues are a business. And unfortunately, womens golf doesn't have enough draw to make money on a purely advertising basis like the mens tour does, which requires them to do certain thing0 (like this) s to remain financially viable.
I disagree. Dell has a drive-image process where they pull out any one of like 500 images (for different hardware, drivers, etc) for different machines.
It can't exactly be rocket science for them to pull the "Ubuntu for mini9" instead of "Windows for mini9".
I think the price difference is that the crapware they load from Google and others almost totally offsets the cost of the Windows license AND they probably tack on an additional $20 for the required support staff for Linux. Those two things combined probably brings the cost of Linux higher than Windows.
I would be willing to bet that Dell pre-loads Windows XP for under $30 per copy FYI.