Theres Lindows which is based on Debian, theres also United Linux, why plain Debian?
UnitedLinux isn't Debian-based. It's based on SuSE which, while it is my personal distro of choice, is pretty much as un-Debian as you can get and still be Linux.
The processes to take a rock, extract the elements you need, and turn them into a solar cell are pretty well understood. It's the understanding of the process that's difficult, once that's out of the way automation is trivial.
The conceptual problem I think you're having is that you're picturing some sort of humanoid general purpose robot that walks around doing this in the same way a human would. That's a stupid way to design a robot. The proper way is to design a specialized single purpose machine, or perhaps a series of them that hook together. Basically, all we're talking about is a variation on a bread machine.
Microwave energy would be a great resource, but until we change our society, it won't be "free."
It's never going to be free. There's a large amount of infrastructure that has to be put into place in order to make it work at all, and there will always be maintenance, refinement of the technology, expansion to accomodate rising energy use, etc. There will also still be the distribution business, since I very much doubt everyone is going to have, or even want to have, their own setup, and of course there are plenty of costs associated with that.
Or how we're going to build robots sophisticated enough to figure out how to build solar cells and microwave transmitters out of moon rocks.
Having personally designed and built a few industrial robots, I can assure you that this is a trivial issue.
Slightly more complicated is the question of how do you get the equipment to the moon in the first place; do you build it on Earth and ship it there, at huge expense, or do you send only the most basic equipment, along with either a robot or human operator, and bootstrap the whole thing?
With many RPGs where you generate your own character (ie Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, etc.) the main character lacks any identity
Dude, that's the whole point!
Morrowind is an RPG in the truest pen-and-paper sense. The whole point is that the character's identity and future is entirely determined by you, the player.
IMHO, it's the games like Diablo that are a tragic misuse of the term RPG, since there isn't any actual Role Playing (you know, the "RP" in "RPG"). Contrast with Morrowind, where the Role Playing is only limited by the current state of conversational AI technology.
If you don't like Morrowind, that's fine, but I think your perception of what an RPG is has been sadly warped by the tripe that is most CRPGs.
My first thought was "Damn that's cool!" My Second was "So who are these MontaVista guys, anyway?" My third was "I have no idea how any of that stuff is going to be useful to me, since I don't own a laptop or build embedded devices."
Then of course I was reminded of the true beauty of Linux, which is that someone else will probably figure out how that stuff will be useful to me and incorporate it into the next kernel, and I'll probably never notice beyond the nebulous "Gee, Linux just keeps getting better" feeling I get everytime I update.
It's still damned cool, though, and what a great way for a company to get themselves some good press!
As I said before, I made no mistake. My sig says exactly what I mean.
I think the mistake you are making is that you are trying to place some greater significance on it. No matter what the economic system individuals are exploiting individuals. While in theory the two systems are opposed, in reality we can observe that the end results are the same. In both, man exploits man, with a select few gaining the bulk of the benefit. The only difference is in how those few are chosen.
To try and say that man exploits Man (or vice versa) is to vastly oversimplify the problem. Both systems result in a complex web of exploitation with a few who are simply more skilled at it than the rest. Thus it becomes not a comparison of economic systems, but rather a comentary on human nature.
Finally, I never said I wanted my sig to be a koan, I said you could think of it that way. However, I stand by my assessment of your understanding of koans in general. What is a koan but something that is stupid, nonsensical, or clearly a mistake until the moment you figure it out?
I've never understood that either. Having used Netware a bit, I think it absolutely blows the doors off any other admin interface I've ever seen. I found it much more usable than even YaST, which in turn leaves any version of Windows in the dust.
SuSE and Mandrake are tied for second place in the market, and have been for some time. The critical difference is that SuSE is perceived as an "enterprise" distro while Mandrake is perceived as a "home user" distro. Right or wrong that is the perception, and as we all know, in the business world perception is reality, therefore Mandrake unfortunately doesn't have a place in a discussion of distros one pitches to clients.
The second cool thing is that all of a sudden there is a viable alternative to the Red Hat evil empire. I would bet that Novell/Suse arent going to piss off all the developers like Red Hat has done.
As a loyal SuSE user for almost 4 years now, I'd have to say that it has been a viable alternative to Red Hat the whole time, it's just that SuSE hasn't enjoyed the same brand recognition in the US. SuSE has never-the-less remained a solid #2 as far as the enterprise market (I'd say Mandrake is #2 in the personal market). It's kind of ironic, really, since Red Hat gained a large part of it's marketshare by donning silly red fedoras to lob childish insults at Microsoft, while SuSE remained in the background acting like professionals.
Anyway, SuSE has certainly done it's share of things that piss people off. A few examples would be not offering isos for download and YaST not being GPLed. Certainly Novell has pissed off a few people as well in the past. I don't know much about Novell's history, but I have used Netware abit, and they must have done something wrong to have such a great product relegated to the "also-ran" status it has now.
Certainly, the thing that's kept me off Netware is the price, and there-in lies my big fear with regards to this announcement.
It all comes down to the parents, they're the ones who set up the paterns from the beginning. My daughter (3.5 years) asks for water when she's thirsty. More importantly, when she's thirsty it doesn't occur to her to ask for anything else even though she knows that there's milk, juice, and soda in the fridge. We didn't "get lucky", it's the direct result of a decision we made as parents.
I was home sick the other day and caught a bit of Dr Phil. A mom was complaining that all her kids ate was junk food. Dr Phil replied, "who keeps buying the junk food?" I think that about sums it up.
What my daughter does beg for, however, is Robotech. Consequently, I'm going to stop here.
I've had this discussion way to many times. It's my sig, and you're wrong. I'm very much aware of the gramatical details, and I said exactly what I meant.
Think of it as a political koan. Meditate upon it and you will be enlightened.
It is strictly a copyright case. If they are using GPLed software in a way that violates the GPL then their rights under the GPL are void and they are guilty of copyright infringement. It says so right in the GPL.
This, of course, is hell come to earth for companies that thrived on their locked-in customers for 10-20 years.
Go tell it on the mountain, brother!
I discovered just the other day that I have a bunch of Visio documents which were created in 1999, and which I think would help me accomplish my job more efficiently, but which are not supported by the current version of Visio Viewer. IT's solution? "Try and talk your department into buying you the full version of Visio, it will support those files." Chances of that happening? Zilch, and I would agree with the beancounters on that one. After all, it's only about 30 files, which I would likely just print out and stick in a binder and never open again.
Not to mention having the titles stocked in the same shelf as Super Mario Brothers, where parents may never see them or understand what they are?
I think this is likely the real reason. It's not like Leapfrog isn't already making plenty of their own custom hardware, what's one more product? Plus they already have dedicated shelfspace in many (most?) toy stores. It just wouldn't make sense for them to let themselves get lost among all the other Game Boy games.
Why not just feed the damn kids real fruit juice! It actually isn't that expensive!!! If you want to get the same effect of those "fruit drinks" pour about one ounze of OJ into a glass and fill the rest with tap water.
Don't forget the High Fructose Corn Syrup. It just won't taste right otherwise.
Seriously though, I don't think it's a good idea to give kids juice all the time. Sure, it's better than Pepsi, but it shouldn't be all they ever drink. I wonder how many cases of "ADD" or "hyperactivity" or whatever they're calling it this week would be cured by just making the kids drink water when they're thirsty.
People have been known to not work as hard when they feel like their employer is taking them for granted. It's shocking, I know, but true.
Re:Microshaft offers substantial discounts to NP's
on
Linux for Non-Profits?
·
· Score: 1
non-profits can get Microshaft software at a **substantial** discount.
That's true, but unfortunately it's often true in a "first one's free" sort of way.
Browse the slashdot archives, I think you'll find plenty of cases where free or heavily discounted MS solutions for schools and non-profits suddenly turned out to be not such a good deal.
Who's to say Apple wouldn't jump on that bandwagon along with everyone else? Who's to say Apple wouldn't subsequently go under?
The OSX core is BSD, you say? OK, what exactly in the BSD license prevents this from happening? Nothing. That's both the strength and the weakness of BSD; you can take it and do whatever you want with it, including locking it up with online activation!
Apple has played nice with the OSS comunity so far, but there's nothing forcing them to do so, and there's no guarantee that they will continue to do so.
I would say Linux is safe, because the GPL guarantees that you get the source code and the right to modify it. Thanks to the truely Free nature of the BSD license, the end user gets no such guarantee.
I don't have anything against Apple or BSD, I think they both are acheiving great things and contributing a great deal to computing in general, but you have to look at this critically. The GPL has it's problems too, but as an end user it's the license I prefer, and for this very reason.
The guy driving the smog-belching car is taking away MY right to breath non-toxic air, and my daughters right to normal brain developement uninhibited by carbon monoxide poisoning. You're god-damned right I support the taking away of his PRIVILEGE to drive that piece of crap.
Your right to swing your fist stops at my face. Never forget that.
My experience with msdn has been that it consistently fails to provide information that is actually useful to me. Yes, the interface is nicer than man's, certainly more "usable" for people who don't know what they're doing, but man consistently provides me with useful information.
A nice interface is useless if your content is crap.
If it were all about efficiency, we wouldn't have cars at all, but rather mass transport.
The issue, really, is striking a balance between polution and convenience. Efficiency is at best a secondary issue (tertiary really, since polution is secondary to convenience as far as the market is concerned). Hydrogen has the capability of having the same convenience as oil, but far less polution. That's all that really matters. I'll give you the efficiency arguement, too bad it's irrelevant.
I think it's interesting, though, that you point every single little cost associated with producing alternative fuels, but gloss over the costs associated with oil, coal, and nuclear, treating them as if they were free. What about the losses from drilling and pumping and refining and transporting crude oil into the various forms it's actually used in and the places it's used at? How about when you factor in the inefficiency of automobile engines, then where do you end up?
I think it's also interesting that you completely dismiss other methods of generating the energy needed to produce the hydrogen. That energy can be produced using hydro, tidal, geothermal, solar, wind, and probably a few more I haven't heard of yet. Hell, when they finally get around to building a space elevator it'll likely produce electricity from moving through the Earth's magnetic field that they'll have to dispose of somehow. When you start looking at the alternatives hydrogen looks less like an energy debt and more like a way to tap resource streams that haven't been previously explored, often because of difficulties in storage, which is really what hydrogen is anyway: a great storage method.
I think you make a very interesting point, but that it's only really valid if the market settles on fuel cells that use something like methanol. Certainly, as far as distribution goes, there would be no practical difference between methanol and gasoline.
However, if the market goes for "pure" fuel cells, meaning ones that just use hydrogen, I don't see anything stopping me from splitting water with electricity generated by a photovoltaic cell on my roof, a microhydro hooked up to my gutters, or even an excercise bike (though I shudder to think of the kind of mileage I'd have to put on it to get a useful amount).
When you start to think about it that way, a lot more possibilities open up, like maybe putting solar cells on the roof of the car to help "reclaim" some of the H2O exhaust, maybe in combination with regenerative breaking.
Something to really think about, though, is what kind of an effect is the exhaust going to have on the environment. Yeah, it's water, which at least isn't toxic, but think about replacing all the polution from car exhaust fumes in a place like LA with water vapor, that's bound to have some kind of effect. Some of the effects, like reduced visibility, will be indistinguishable from more traditional polution, and some might be a bit more subtle, like the entire population of LA actually having to learn how to drive on a wet road, or maybe not needing to water their lawns so much, or maybe more drastic like turning the desert green. One way or another, there's still going to be an environmental impact.
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Theres Lindows which is based on Debian, theres also United Linux, why plain Debian?
UnitedLinux isn't Debian-based. It's based on SuSE which, while it is my personal distro of choice, is pretty much as un-Debian as you can get and still be Linux.
The processes to take a rock, extract the elements you need, and turn them into a solar cell are pretty well understood. It's the understanding of the process that's difficult, once that's out of the way automation is trivial.
The conceptual problem I think you're having is that you're picturing some sort of humanoid general purpose robot that walks around doing this in the same way a human would. That's a stupid way to design a robot. The proper way is to design a specialized single purpose machine, or perhaps a series of them that hook together. Basically, all we're talking about is a variation on a bread machine.
Microwave energy would be a great resource, but until we change our society, it won't be "free."
It's never going to be free. There's a large amount of infrastructure that has to be put into place in order to make it work at all, and there will always be maintenance, refinement of the technology, expansion to accomodate rising energy use, etc. There will also still be the distribution business, since I very much doubt everyone is going to have, or even want to have, their own setup, and of course there are plenty of costs associated with that.
Or how we're going to build robots sophisticated enough to figure out how to build solar cells and microwave transmitters out of moon rocks.
Having personally designed and built a few industrial robots, I can assure you that this is a trivial issue.
Slightly more complicated is the question of how do you get the equipment to the moon in the first place; do you build it on Earth and ship it there, at huge expense, or do you send only the most basic equipment, along with either a robot or human operator, and bootstrap the whole thing?
A Stephen Hawking skin would be sweet! You'd have to have the full selection of audio taunts as well, of course.
With many RPGs where you generate your own character (ie Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, etc.) the main character lacks any identity
Dude, that's the whole point!
Morrowind is an RPG in the truest pen-and-paper sense. The whole point is that the character's identity and future is entirely determined by you, the player.
IMHO, it's the games like Diablo that are a tragic misuse of the term RPG, since there isn't any actual Role Playing (you know, the "RP" in "RPG"). Contrast with Morrowind, where the Role Playing is only limited by the current state of conversational AI technology.
If you don't like Morrowind, that's fine, but I think your perception of what an RPG is has been sadly warped by the tripe that is most CRPGs.
My first thought was "Damn that's cool!" My Second was "So who are these MontaVista guys, anyway?" My third was "I have no idea how any of that stuff is going to be useful to me, since I don't own a laptop or build embedded devices."
Then of course I was reminded of the true beauty of Linux, which is that someone else will probably figure out how that stuff will be useful to me and incorporate it into the next kernel, and I'll probably never notice beyond the nebulous "Gee, Linux just keeps getting better" feeling I get everytime I update.
It's still damned cool, though, and what a great way for a company to get themselves some good press!
As I said before, I made no mistake. My sig says exactly what I mean.
I think the mistake you are making is that you are trying to place some greater significance on it. No matter what the economic system individuals are exploiting individuals. While in theory the two systems are opposed, in reality we can observe that the end results are the same. In both, man exploits man, with a select few gaining the bulk of the benefit. The only difference is in how those few are chosen.
To try and say that man exploits Man (or vice versa) is to vastly oversimplify the problem. Both systems result in a complex web of exploitation with a few who are simply more skilled at it than the rest. Thus it becomes not a comparison of economic systems, but rather a comentary on human nature.
Finally, I never said I wanted my sig to be a koan, I said you could think of it that way. However, I stand by my assessment of your understanding of koans in general. What is a koan but something that is stupid, nonsensical, or clearly a mistake until the moment you figure it out?
This is an argument I never could understand.
"Have you seen how bad the Netware GUI is?".
I've never understood that either. Having used Netware a bit, I think it absolutely blows the doors off any other admin interface I've ever seen. I found it much more usable than even YaST, which in turn leaves any version of Windows in the dust.
SuSE and Mandrake are tied for second place in the market, and have been for some time. The critical difference is that SuSE is perceived as an "enterprise" distro while Mandrake is perceived as a "home user" distro. Right or wrong that is the perception, and as we all know, in the business world perception is reality, therefore Mandrake unfortunately doesn't have a place in a discussion of distros one pitches to clients.
The second cool thing is that all of a sudden there is a viable alternative to the Red Hat evil empire. I would bet that Novell/Suse arent going to piss off all the developers like Red Hat has done.
As a loyal SuSE user for almost 4 years now, I'd have to say that it has been a viable alternative to Red Hat the whole time, it's just that SuSE hasn't enjoyed the same brand recognition in the US. SuSE has never-the-less remained a solid #2 as far as the enterprise market (I'd say Mandrake is #2 in the personal market). It's kind of ironic, really, since Red Hat gained a large part of it's marketshare by donning silly red fedoras to lob childish insults at Microsoft, while SuSE remained in the background acting like professionals.
Anyway, SuSE has certainly done it's share of things that piss people off. A few examples would be not offering isos for download and YaST not being GPLed. Certainly Novell has pissed off a few people as well in the past. I don't know much about Novell's history, but I have used Netware abit, and they must have done something wrong to have such a great product relegated to the "also-ran" status it has now.
Certainly, the thing that's kept me off Netware is the price, and there-in lies my big fear with regards to this announcement.
Sorry, but it is you who are wrong. It's not my fault if you're too stuck in your little box to get it.
Also, you clearly don't understand what a koan is.
It all comes down to the parents, they're the ones who set up the paterns from the beginning. My daughter (3.5 years) asks for water when she's thirsty. More importantly, when she's thirsty it doesn't occur to her to ask for anything else even though she knows that there's milk, juice, and soda in the fridge. We didn't "get lucky", it's the direct result of a decision we made as parents.
I was home sick the other day and caught a bit of Dr Phil. A mom was complaining that all her kids ate was junk food. Dr Phil replied, "who keeps buying the junk food?" I think that about sums it up.
What my daughter does beg for, however, is Robotech. Consequently, I'm going to stop here.
I've had this discussion way to many times. It's my sig, and you're wrong. I'm very much aware of the gramatical details, and I said exactly what I meant.
Think of it as a political koan. Meditate upon it and you will be enlightened.
It is strictly a copyright case. If they are using GPLed software in a way that violates the GPL then their rights under the GPL are void and they are guilty of copyright infringement. It says so right in the GPL.
This, of course, is hell come to earth for companies that thrived on their locked-in customers for 10-20 years.
Go tell it on the mountain, brother!
I discovered just the other day that I have a bunch of Visio documents which were created in 1999, and which I think would help me accomplish my job more efficiently, but which are not supported by the current version of Visio Viewer. IT's solution? "Try and talk your department into buying you the full version of Visio, it will support those files." Chances of that happening? Zilch, and I would agree with the beancounters on that one. After all, it's only about 30 files, which I would likely just print out and stick in a binder and never open again.
Not to mention having the titles stocked in the same shelf as Super Mario Brothers, where parents may never see them or understand what they are?
I think this is likely the real reason. It's not like Leapfrog isn't already making plenty of their own custom hardware, what's one more product? Plus they already have dedicated shelfspace in many (most?) toy stores. It just wouldn't make sense for them to let themselves get lost among all the other Game Boy games.
Why not just feed the damn kids real fruit juice! It actually isn't that expensive!!! If you want to get the same effect of those "fruit drinks" pour about one ounze of OJ into a glass and fill the rest with tap water.
Don't forget the High Fructose Corn Syrup. It just won't taste right otherwise.
Seriously though, I don't think it's a good idea to give kids juice all the time. Sure, it's better than Pepsi, but it shouldn't be all they ever drink. I wonder how many cases of "ADD" or "hyperactivity" or whatever they're calling it this week would be cured by just making the kids drink water when they're thirsty.
People have been known to not work as hard when they feel like their employer is taking them for granted. It's shocking, I know, but true.
non-profits can get Microshaft software at a **substantial** discount.
That's true, but unfortunately it's often true in a "first one's free" sort of way.
Browse the slashdot archives, I think you'll find plenty of cases where free or heavily discounted MS solutions for schools and non-profits suddenly turned out to be not such a good deal.
So buy a Mac. Or install Linux, or BSD.
Who's to say Apple wouldn't jump on that bandwagon along with everyone else? Who's to say Apple wouldn't subsequently go under?
The OSX core is BSD, you say? OK, what exactly in the BSD license prevents this from happening? Nothing. That's both the strength and the weakness of BSD; you can take it and do whatever you want with it, including locking it up with online activation!
Apple has played nice with the OSS comunity so far, but there's nothing forcing them to do so, and there's no guarantee that they will continue to do so.
I would say Linux is safe, because the GPL guarantees that you get the source code and the right to modify it. Thanks to the truely Free nature of the BSD license, the end user gets no such guarantee.
I don't have anything against Apple or BSD, I think they both are acheiving great things and contributing a great deal to computing in general, but you have to look at this critically. The GPL has it's problems too, but as an end user it's the license I prefer, and for this very reason.
Travel is a FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT.
But travel by car is a PRIVILEGE!
The guy driving the smog-belching car is taking away MY right to breath non-toxic air, and my daughters right to normal brain developement uninhibited by carbon monoxide poisoning. You're god-damned right I support the taking away of his PRIVILEGE to drive that piece of crap.
Your right to swing your fist stops at my face. Never forget that.
My experience with msdn has been that it consistently fails to provide information that is actually useful to me. Yes, the interface is nicer than man's, certainly more "usable" for people who don't know what they're doing, but man consistently provides me with useful information.
A nice interface is useless if your content is crap.
If it were all about efficiency, we wouldn't have cars at all, but rather mass transport.
The issue, really, is striking a balance between polution and convenience. Efficiency is at best a secondary issue (tertiary really, since polution is secondary to convenience as far as the market is concerned). Hydrogen has the capability of having the same convenience as oil, but far less polution. That's all that really matters. I'll give you the efficiency arguement, too bad it's irrelevant.
I think it's interesting, though, that you point every single little cost associated with producing alternative fuels, but gloss over the costs associated with oil, coal, and nuclear, treating them as if they were free. What about the losses from drilling and pumping and refining and transporting crude oil into the various forms it's actually used in and the places it's used at? How about when you factor in the inefficiency of automobile engines, then where do you end up?
I think it's also interesting that you completely dismiss other methods of generating the energy needed to produce the hydrogen. That energy can be produced using hydro, tidal, geothermal, solar, wind, and probably a few more I haven't heard of yet. Hell, when they finally get around to building a space elevator it'll likely produce electricity from moving through the Earth's magnetic field that they'll have to dispose of somehow. When you start looking at the alternatives hydrogen looks less like an energy debt and more like a way to tap resource streams that haven't been previously explored, often because of difficulties in storage, which is really what hydrogen is anyway: a great storage method.
I think you make a very interesting point, but that it's only really valid if the market settles on fuel cells that use something like methanol. Certainly, as far as distribution goes, there would be no practical difference between methanol and gasoline.
However, if the market goes for "pure" fuel cells, meaning ones that just use hydrogen, I don't see anything stopping me from splitting water with electricity generated by a photovoltaic cell on my roof, a microhydro hooked up to my gutters, or even an excercise bike (though I shudder to think of the kind of mileage I'd have to put on it to get a useful amount).
When you start to think about it that way, a lot more possibilities open up, like maybe putting solar cells on the roof of the car to help "reclaim" some of the H2O exhaust, maybe in combination with regenerative breaking.
Something to really think about, though, is what kind of an effect is the exhaust going to have on the environment. Yeah, it's water, which at least isn't toxic, but think about replacing all the polution from car exhaust fumes in a place like LA with water vapor, that's bound to have some kind of effect. Some of the effects, like reduced visibility, will be indistinguishable from more traditional polution, and some might be a bit more subtle, like the entire population of LA actually having to learn how to drive on a wet road, or maybe not needing to water their lawns so much, or maybe more drastic like turning the desert green. One way or another, there's still going to be an environmental impact.