That said, I'm typing this on my new powerbook with MacOSX. MacOSX is bsd, well more precisely NeXTSTEP. It's real unix. You have nothing to lose but your hardware incompatabilities and your teletubies developed software. ("Let's rewrite the entire software...AGAIN!" "Let's change the filechooser...AGAIN!")
No, that's not all you lose. You also lose your freedom. You become tied to a single vendor with their proprietary software. Sure, it's UNIX, but before Linux I ran another proprietary UNIX. It's not like I went from DOS to Linux. I went from UNIX to Linux. In fact, I'd used three proprietary UNIX before Linux (SCO, Microport, ISC). The freedom was what I enjoyed with Linux, not the fact that it was UNIX.
I have no desire to migrate to MacOS X because although it is UNIX, it is proprietary UNIX, and I've already been burnt by proprietary UNIX. Back in 1992 I was considered mad for choosing Linux, because the proprietary UNIX (eg, ISC) were clearly superior at the time. But I'm still using Linux and ISC doesn't exist anymore. Proprietary software ceases to exist and you have no power to stop that. The same thing will happen to MacOS X, one day.
Standards complience is what's more important because you're not locked in. It doesn't matter whether or not you can change the code on the router, since you're not going to do that anyway. What is important is that you can swap out your router and replace it with no ill effects.
Yup, my thoughts exactly. A router closely approaches the "tool" metaphor. You can just swap it with a similar router with very little impact.
Now, can you easily swap out MacOS X with another UNIX? Will all your apps continue to run? Will your desktop look the same? If any of those answers is no, then that's one of the freedoms you gave up when you migrated to MacOS X.
So, instead of being reliant on corporations (not all of which are big, mind you) or private individuals that don't want to share their source code, you're reliant on unaccountable masses of developers that may or may not have your interests in mind.
Yeah, what an alien concept. It's like relying on unaccountable masses of citizens to determine the leadership of a country. That idea will never take traction!
It is far easier to let the monarchy make all the decisions. Why should we spend all our time playing "catch up" to Britain? I'd rather get on with my life!
NB: Why is it that Americans seem to have the greatest difficulty in understanding the importance of Free Software?
They do not want, nor need nor even would like to try 'compiling' things or having to install some obscure libs just to get something running.
No modern Linux desktop requires the user to compile things. You are being dishonest.
And, frankly, while Linux came a long way, they are still not there. I myself, for instance, while I'd consider myself more tech-savvy then most joe doe users, am a newbie at linux, and the last week, I have tried to download firefox on my mandrake box. After a week, I still don't have it installed and ready to use. Sure, I've searched for help, and (linux)people are mostly willing to help me out, but I just don't seem to get it working. It's download a lib here and a lib there or it doesn't work, use apt-get or urpmi or something else, use the commandline and fill in commands I never heard before...but all to no avail, as yet. I just need a simple, clear klick-and-install thingy, goddamnit. Which would be an rpm, I heard, but somehow, my standard KDE browser doesn't want to d/l the only place I could find one, probably because it was ftp. And I could use another browser, if that weren't exactly what I was trying to d/l and install.
Well, don't take this the wrong way, but you might be retarded. Installing FireFox is as easy as following the instructions on the FireFox website. I can't even begin to comprehend how you managed to fail at this simple task despite trying for an entire week. I strongly recommend you seek professional help.
Compare that with surfing to the firefox-site, and klick on the exe on the site, and all is done automatically, with windows.
THAT is the sort of ease-of-use that Linux needs, before it ever is going to have a chance to break through on the desktop.
Nonsense. Microsoft achieved desktop dominance without any such ease of use. MS-DOS was so difficult to use that it single-handedly created the PC desktop support industry.
My strong belief is that price is the single greatest factor in winning the PC desktop. While there are many reasons why Windows beat GEM, GEOS, MacOS and OS/2, cost was the reason that mattered most.
Final point...
Most people (as in non-tech-savvy joe doe users) just use their puter as a tool; to chat, to work, to download, etc. Some basic tasks is all they need, and they need it in a clear and user-friendly way.
If that were true then they'd all be buying Macintoshes. Ease of use is clearly overrated; it is only ever trotted out as an argument against Linux, but the same argument applies back in spades against Windows.
No not really. Maybe to you but to most people software is a tool not a religion or a political statement.
Maybe to you software is just a tool but to many others it's a core component in their business.
Software is not really like a tool at all. No other tool integrates so tightly with your business processes, your other systems, your data, and your policies. Consider all the companies that have found themselves stuck with Exchange, or Notes, or Groupwise, and due to the lock-in nature of the software they are unable to migrate to anything else. This isn't a "tool". It's a system with hooks into almost every aspect of the enterprise. Tugging at even the slightest part of the system causes breakage elsewhere, often in non-obvious locations. Those hooks might be a tiny programming language that HR decided to use to implement their timesheet system (Notes), or it might be the calendaring system that has turned into a building meeting room manager (Exchange). Whatever the hook, it ties you to that product and becomes a core part of your business. Changing it isn't easy. Sometimes changing it is impossible.
The reality is that it's pragmatic to use and only use free software. Putting your business software in the hands of a proprietary software vendor is naive. You are hoping that the vendor doesn't screw you; either by deprecating the softare, or breaking it, or raising the price, or whatever. But to the very nature of capitalism, the vendors are constantly thinking of new ways to screw you!
Even now what percentage of Linux users will ever compile a program much less modify the source code to the kernel?
Irrelevant. How many people will run for local office? Very few, but that doesn't mean democracy is a failed concept. The benefit of free software isn't that I personally can modify the source, but that anybody is free to do so.
Software that is hard to use no matter how "free" is still bad software.
Yes, but like the grandfather poster, I often use "bad software" that is free in preference to "good software" that is not free, for certain values of "good", "bad", and "free". For example, I use Linux and GNOME instead of MacOS X as my desktop. As a counter-example, I use IOS instead of Linux for my routers.
It's a balancing act. For my desktop I'd been burnt so often by vendor lock-in and forced upgrades that I finally got sick of it and migrated to Linux (back in 1992). Now MacOS X is tempting, but not tempting enough that I'll give up the freedom I enjoy with Linux. However with routing the value of IOS so exceeds the potential value with Linux that I'm willing to compromise freedom, secure in the knowledge that IOS is at least standards compliant.
I'm not sure what "competitive means to you, but to me it means within 5% - 10% at the most. Not "costs 60% more in a best case scenario" and "166% more for 'average industrial cost'".
The average industrial cost is an average.
It is mathematically impossible for all plants to produce power at the average cost. By definition, a large number of plants produce power at costs that are above average. Usually these high costs are due to the cost of shipping fuel to and disposing of waste from inaccessible locations. It is in those situations that solar power is cost effective, because there is no fuel to ship and waste disposal is surprisingly easy.
simply put because you suggested using all the roofs in the USA for this.
No, I did not. You have jumped to conclusions.
What do you mean nuclear is more expensive?
Look up the figures. They are well publicised.
Solar panels are not cheap
I've already told you that industrial solar power plants do not use panels.
And I like my electricity in the cold snowing nights.
If you are so naive to think that solar power plant designers have not already addressed the need to store power for night, then you are more ignorant of this topic than I had imagined.
Whoa, solar's cheap. I mean, it's averaging only 2.67 times as expensive as the average US electricity costs. At 12c/KWh, it's only 60% more expensive.
They still have a ways to go. They only way they're operating at a "sustainable profit" is due to subsidies, whether they be 'research' or 'congratulations for being green'.
The reason solar power plants can be profitable is because average US electricity cost is an average. That means sometimes it costs more for power from a "traditional" plant than the average would suggest.
Now find out the total roof space in the USA. The figure should pleasantly surprise you. - this is your quote from the comment above mine. Well, if you take the total roof space in the USA into account (and I do not know what it is by the way)
Then perhaps you should look the figure up before blundering onwards.
I am sure a lot of that space would be located in the places with plenty of snowfall in the winters, cloudy climates in the summer, plenty of dust at other times. In such conditions the common sense thing would be not to encourage an infrastructure that depends on the power of Sun so heavily at all.
The common sense thing would be to produce solar power somewhere sunny, as I have already suggested. I don't understand why you insist on locating solar panels where they would obviously not work. Use your common sense.
The common sense thing to do would be building many nuclear power plants and yes, I want one in my back yard and I have one by the way - Pickering Nuclear Power Plant (I live in Toronto, Canada.)
Then you are foolish. Nuclear power is even more expensive than solar power, and solar power is more expensive than wind power. Every nuclear power plant ever built was heavily subsidised by the federal government. Without subsidisation it is not cost effective.
Then I want to see the KWH cost of solar when you are done. Average in the US is about $.075 KWH or so.
Solar power costs are closely tracked on Solar Buzz and the average industrial cost is 20c/kWh. Those plants are commercial enterprises operating at a sustainable profit.
New solar power plant designs from Australia (google for Big Dish ANU) have gotten the costs down as low as 12c/kWh, all inclusive. It's still not as cheap as coal but it's definitely competitive.
I just wanted to know, when you all switch to the solar panels, what are you all going to do in the winter? I am used to winters with plenty of snow, it is not like that everywhere of-course, but if there is snow (and dust by the way) aren't you going to lose most of your power?
You wouldn't build the solar power plant in a region that receives regular heavy snowfall. You build the plant wherever it's sunny and transmit power via power lines. Use some common sense.
Also it's silly to think that 100% of power would be direct solar. Electricity production in the US is already 1/4 nuclear, 3/4 fossil, plus negligible alternative. One reasonable balance is 1/2 wind, 1/4 solar, 1/4 nuclear.
Why would you build a solar power plant using photovoltaic cells. Mirrored surfaces focussed on a water pipe, generating steam to drive a turbine, is considerably cheaper and far more efficient.
If every person in the united states of America put up solar panels. We would have over 51 billion square meters of panel, that's close to 20,000 square miles of panel or the equivalent of covering most of over in panels.
Now find out the total roof space in the USA. The figure should pleasantly surprise you.
I've always been curious about this. I love Linux, but one of the areas where I think it is sorely lacking is in file system permissions flexibility. For example, if I had a folder and wanted the following in Linux, how could I do it?
MKTG group = rwx
DEV group = r
EXEC group = r
ADVERT group = rx
ADMINS group = rw
Is there a way to do this in Linux? I have no idea. It has always been my understanding that I'm stuck with UGO and sitcky bits for permissions. Is this entirely true or is there another way.
It can be done with UGO but it's not pretty. Basically you create permutations of every possible group/access combination. Requires a huge number of groups for any non-trivial case. UGO is not really workable in those situations.
If you're only worried about Linux then simply use POSIX ACLs. They've been standard in most Linux distros for many years.
The use of Occam's razor in scientific analysis is based on the completely unwarranted assumption that the universe should behave simply. And, partly, because it is simply more pragmatic to not have to deal with arbitrarily many redundant theories explaining the same thing.
Well, no. Occam's razor does not assume that the universe behaves simply.
Occam's razor states that you should not needlessly multiply entities. What does this mean? It means if you have a theory that "things move when you hit them", and you have another theory that needlessly states "things moves when you hit them and the moon is waning", and both theories are supported by experimental evidence, then you should throw away the needlessly complex version involving the moon. The extra complexity adds nothing to the value of the theory.
You cannot use Occam's razor to dismiss a complex theory. There is no assumption by Occam that complex theories are wrong, or that simpler theories are right. That's not what it means and anybody who attempts to use it that way is simply wrong.
Still, remember the ring of fire that surrounds our oceans. That is many many active volcanoes erupting every day in the world. So much volcanic activity every day, it can be seen from space and some would say, it looks like a "Ring of fire", hence the name... How much greenhouse gasses are released every day by volcanic activity? activity that man has no control of.
Bugger all.
B.4 Don't volcanoes naturally release far more CO2 into the atmosphere each year than humans?
Response: No. On a global scale, volcanoes release less than 1% of human emissions of carbon dioxide and hence are a minor contributor to changes in its atmospheric concentrations. Furthermore, emissions from volcanoes have always been part of the natural cycle, which has been in approximate balance for many millennia, until the industrial revolution. MSC Canada
As I said before, I've no idea where the myth came from that volcanoes are a primary contributor to greenhouse gasses. It simply isn't true. I'm sure certain people wish it were true, and that explains why they keep repeating the myth, but it is NOT TRUE.
LOM standard on every device, ethernet and serial varieties, remote poweron and off.
Binary compatibility from a single-CPU Netra all the way up to a 100+ CPU mainframe.
Automatic detection and disabling (without downtime) of faulty CPU, DIMM, etc.
Dynamic domains on the big iron, including partitioning of CPU and memory.
Extensive capacities for hardware expansion from even the cheapest chassis.
Enterprise management software; monitor 1000s of servers for hardware failures, capacity limits, etc.
Sure, none of that says desktop, but in big computing centres those Sun server features are pretty damn useful.
There are no official "Linux Engineers" in the company so our counter arguements are always brushed off like we dont know anything.
Well, maybe you're thinking about the problem in a different way. You're thinking about the software. They're thinking about the hardware. It isn't the case that you don't know anything, but rather that you're focussed on problems that they don't think are important.
For what it's worth, I don't work for Sun. I think Linux is superb. I've been running Linux exclusively as my desktop for 13 years now. I even run Linux on this Apple PowerBook; no dualboot, just Linux. But I'm not so blinded as to ignore Sun servers and Solaris. They're both good too. There are some situations where I would never recommend Linux.
Yes, and it's not because of Mt. St Helens which spewed more global warming gasses in a month then all of man kind did since the Industrial Revolution.
I don't know where that myth has come from but it's not true. St Helens spewed forth more CO2 than humanity makes in a single year, not since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Any other gasses you were thinking of?
And St Helens was an incredibly rare event. We get eruptions like that about once a millenia.
typical republican response:
it is happening, but clinton did it first.
If you really think it's only "Republicans" bending science, it's probably because the bending done by "Democrats" is invisible to you.
Hey jonpublic, looks like you were right.
When people say "remove politics from the system", what they are really saying, even if they don't realize it, is that the system should align with their politics, which are of course not politics, but merely and quite obviously the truth. Were it only so simple...
Actually what they're saying is that they expect the scientists to follow the scientific method because the method isn't affected by politics or personal bias.
Just like you would expect a racist policeman to enforce the law without bias against race, or like you would expect an anti-abortion judge to respect a woman's right to abortion, you should also expect a scientist to devise experiments and report their findings without bias.
Humans being humans, sometimes personal bias does intrude on the job and they don't do what they're supposed to do. The policeman unfairly treats a particular race, the judge prevents a legal abortion, and the scientist gives false results that satisfies their own personal bias. But that simply makes them bad policemen, bad judges, and bad scientists. These people do not last long. Their inability to do their job is eventually discovered.
So when the grandparent said "remove politics from the system" they weren't being naive, like you seem to think, but they were instead wisely recognising that politics has no place in science. The method was devised to keep our bias and the science separate. Good scientists produce results that disagree with their politics. Bad scientists hide or falsify results to appease their politics. That's what this article was about - scientists being told to falsify their results - because the politics was intruding on the science. Fortunately these were good scientists who blew the whistle on the politicians attempting to pervert science.
The answer isn't to throw your hands in the air and say "everybody is biased", as you have done, because that naively assumes that the scientists allow their bias to decide their findings. As you should now be aware, because I have explained it to you so clearly, that is precisely what the scientist avoids by following the method.
Dumping always happens on public land somewhere. It sounds counter productive to the environmental movement, but the best way to preserve land is to privatize it. Public maintainership doesn't work. When everyone's responsible, no one's responsible ultimately. We see it every day in every aspect of our lives, yet refuse to see it in the environment.
People trash other people's private property all the time. So I don't see how privatisation would help.
The other danger of privatisation is that the owner can damage their property with impunity.
There are several other reasons to dislike your recommendation, but those will do for starters.
1.25 Ghz Mac Mini - $799
Minitower PC case - $50
3,5 Inch HDD ~ $150 (depending on what capacity you want)
= $999 (Australian)
compared to a recycled PC;
2nd hand Pentium 233 - $50 (probably free but lets use a nominal figure anyway)
Large passive heatsink - $25
New PSU fan - $15 (the old one might be a bit worn)
Linux/FreeBSD OS - $0
= $90
Basically, this goose has wrecked an eight hundred dollar Mac to build a ninety dollar server.
If we're really going to compare those two systems then let's be serious about it.
CPU: 7 year old 233MHz Pentium vs 1.25GHz G4. Performance increase of 10-15x.
Memory: 64MB 66MHz vs 256MB 333MHz. Capacity increase of 4x and performance increase of 5x.
Network: 10Mbps Ethernet and no wireless vs 100Mbps Ethernet and 54Mbps wireless.
Disk: 7 year old 5GB HDD vs brand new 200GB disk. Capacity increase of 40x and performance increase of 10x.
Software: Gentoo x86 vs MacOS X. Your P233 simply wouldn't run MacOS X, and you can see from the screenshots that's what he's running.
So your $90 PC has 1/40th the disk capacity, runs about 1/10th the speed, and doesn't run the software the guy wants. And you were calling him a goose?
I really don't think your comparison was even close to fair. A comparable x86 system would have been a Celeron or Duron 1.1GHz. A system like that, with 256MB RAM, is still around $250AUD second hand. You should have also included the brand new $150AUD HDD on both sides of the equation. Add 54Mbps wireless and a decent 100Mbps Ethernet card for $100AUD. Add a DVD/CDRW for another $70AUD. The second-hand PC now costs $570AUD, doesn't have firewire, is a Frankenstein hodge-podge of bits, and still doesn't run MacOS X.
And frankly you missed the point anyway. This guy modded his Mac mini in an unusual way. If you didn't get the point then maybe you need to reconsider if Slashdot is really your cup of tea.
Amen. Anybody who questions why this guy did this needs to get a fucking clue. Slashdot is being overrun by bleating consumers, simply waiting to be told what to buy and how to use it. Anyone who does not get a kick out of this mod should go watch TVSN rather than ruining Slashdot for the rest of us.
OSX 10.3 (Panther) already utilizes 3D acceleration on video cards and treats all windows as textures. That's how the nifty "expose" feature works.
Expose also works on a plain-vanilla 2D framebuffer. I know this because Expose works in MOL, running on Linux, and MOL video is only 2D.
The real trick is that the windowing system for MacOS X stores each window in an offscreen buffer and then composites the onscreen display from these buffers. The compositing step can be optionally accelerated with 3D hardware. However the CPU can do the compositing if the system lacks the 3D hardware.
You might be pleased to hear that the same trick is now available on Linux. Simply install X.org and enable the Composite, Damage and Fixes extensions. Then run the xcompmgr program. It is only software compositing for now, but support for hardware acceleration is in the pipeline.
If you want a truly innovative free-software source-control-system, check out GNU Arch [gnuarch.org] or Darcs [scannedinavian.org].
I'm not quite sure why you think distributed version control is innovative - the idea has been reimplemented a half dozen times, including Larry's BitKeeper - but I'd add SVK to the list. SVK is also open source but doesn't suffer from the "hard to solve problems need hard to use tools" syndrome of Arch.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that's not all you lose. You also lose your freedom. You become tied to a single vendor with their proprietary software. Sure, it's UNIX, but before Linux I ran another proprietary UNIX. It's not like I went from DOS to Linux. I went from UNIX to Linux. In fact, I'd used three proprietary UNIX before Linux (SCO, Microport, ISC). The freedom was what I enjoyed with Linux, not the fact that it was UNIX.
I have no desire to migrate to MacOS X because although it is UNIX, it is proprietary UNIX, and I've already been burnt by proprietary UNIX. Back in 1992 I was considered mad for choosing Linux, because the proprietary UNIX (eg, ISC) were clearly superior at the time. But I'm still using Linux and ISC doesn't exist anymore. Proprietary software ceases to exist and you have no power to stop that. The same thing will happen to MacOS X, one day.
Yup, my thoughts exactly. A router closely approaches the "tool" metaphor. You can just swap it with a similar router with very little impact.
Now, can you easily swap out MacOS X with another UNIX? Will all your apps continue to run? Will your desktop look the same? If any of those answers is no, then that's one of the freedoms you gave up when you migrated to MacOS X.
Wow. I'm a software developer too and I say you are wrong.
Now that we've exhausted that brilliant line of reasoning and reached a stalemate, what else do you have to offer?
Yeah, what an alien concept. It's like relying on unaccountable masses of citizens to determine the leadership of a country. That idea will never take traction!
It is far easier to let the monarchy make all the decisions. Why should we spend all our time playing "catch up" to Britain? I'd rather get on with my life!
NB: Why is it that Americans seem to have the greatest difficulty in understanding the importance of Free Software?
No modern Linux desktop requires the user to compile things. You are being dishonest.
Well, don't take this the wrong way, but you might be retarded. Installing FireFox is as easy as following the instructions on the FireFox website. I can't even begin to comprehend how you managed to fail at this simple task despite trying for an entire week. I strongly recommend you seek professional help.
Nonsense. Microsoft achieved desktop dominance without any such ease of use. MS-DOS was so difficult to use that it single-handedly created the PC desktop support industry.
My strong belief is that price is the single greatest factor in winning the PC desktop. While there are many reasons why Windows beat GEM, GEOS, MacOS and OS/2, cost was the reason that mattered most.
Final point...
If that were true then they'd all be buying Macintoshes. Ease of use is clearly overrated; it is only ever trotted out as an argument against Linux, but the same argument applies back in spades against Windows.
Maybe to you software is just a tool but to many others it's a core component in their business.
Software is not really like a tool at all. No other tool integrates so tightly with your business processes, your other systems, your data, and your policies. Consider all the companies that have found themselves stuck with Exchange, or Notes, or Groupwise, and due to the lock-in nature of the software they are unable to migrate to anything else. This isn't a "tool". It's a system with hooks into almost every aspect of the enterprise. Tugging at even the slightest part of the system causes breakage elsewhere, often in non-obvious locations. Those hooks might be a tiny programming language that HR decided to use to implement their timesheet system (Notes), or it might be the calendaring system that has turned into a building meeting room manager (Exchange). Whatever the hook, it ties you to that product and becomes a core part of your business. Changing it isn't easy. Sometimes changing it is impossible.
The reality is that it's pragmatic to use and only use free software. Putting your business software in the hands of a proprietary software vendor is naive. You are hoping that the vendor doesn't screw you; either by deprecating the softare, or breaking it, or raising the price, or whatever. But to the very nature of capitalism, the vendors are constantly thinking of new ways to screw you!
Irrelevant. How many people will run for local office? Very few, but that doesn't mean democracy is a failed concept. The benefit of free software isn't that I personally can modify the source, but that anybody is free to do so.
Yes, but like the grandfather poster, I often use "bad software" that is free in preference to "good software" that is not free, for certain values of "good", "bad", and "free". For example, I use Linux and GNOME instead of MacOS X as my desktop. As a counter-example, I use IOS instead of Linux for my routers.
It's a balancing act. For my desktop I'd been burnt so often by vendor lock-in and forced upgrades that I finally got sick of it and migrated to Linux (back in 1992). Now MacOS X is tempting, but not tempting enough that I'll give up the freedom I enjoy with Linux. However with routing the value of IOS so exceeds the potential value with Linux that I'm willing to compromise freedom, secure in the knowledge that IOS is at least standards compliant.
From the Mozilla/Firefox website? Never. I get all my firefox updates through Debian.
The average industrial cost is an average. It is mathematically impossible for all plants to produce power at the average cost. By definition, a large number of plants produce power at costs that are above average. Usually these high costs are due to the cost of shipping fuel to and disposing of waste from inaccessible locations. It is in those situations that solar power is cost effective, because there is no fuel to ship and waste disposal is surprisingly easy.
No, I did not. You have jumped to conclusions.
Look up the figures. They are well publicised.
I've already told you that industrial solar power plants do not use panels.
If you are so naive to think that solar power plant designers have not already addressed the need to store power for night, then you are more ignorant of this topic than I had imagined.
The reason solar power plants can be profitable is because average US electricity cost is an average. That means sometimes it costs more for power from a "traditional" plant than the average would suggest.
Then perhaps you should look the figure up before blundering onwards.
The common sense thing would be to produce solar power somewhere sunny, as I have already suggested. I don't understand why you insist on locating solar panels where they would obviously not work. Use your common sense.
Then you are foolish. Nuclear power is even more expensive than solar power, and solar power is more expensive than wind power. Every nuclear power plant ever built was heavily subsidised by the federal government. Without subsidisation it is not cost effective.
Solar power costs are closely tracked on Solar Buzz and the average industrial cost is 20c/kWh. Those plants are commercial enterprises operating at a sustainable profit.
New solar power plant designs from Australia (google for Big Dish ANU) have gotten the costs down as low as 12c/kWh, all inclusive. It's still not as cheap as coal but it's definitely competitive.
You wouldn't build the solar power plant in a region that receives regular heavy snowfall. You build the plant wherever it's sunny and transmit power via power lines. Use some common sense.
Also it's silly to think that 100% of power would be direct solar. Electricity production in the US is already 1/4 nuclear, 3/4 fossil, plus negligible alternative. One reasonable balance is 1/2 wind, 1/4 solar, 1/4 nuclear.
Once again, use some common sense.
Why would you build a solar power plant using photovoltaic cells. Mirrored surfaces focussed on a water pipe, generating steam to drive a turbine, is considerably cheaper and far more efficient.
Now find out the total roof space in the USA. The figure should pleasantly surprise you.
It can be done with UGO but it's not pretty. Basically you create permutations of every possible group/access combination. Requires a huge number of groups for any non-trivial case. UGO is not really workable in those situations.
If you're only worried about Linux then simply use POSIX ACLs. They've been standard in most Linux distros for many years.
And the USA is a theocratic fascist republic. So what? Demeaning descriptions, even if they are true, don't add any value to the discussion.
Well, no. Occam's razor does not assume that the universe behaves simply.
Occam's razor states that you should not needlessly multiply entities. What does this mean? It means if you have a theory that "things move when you hit them", and you have another theory that needlessly states "things moves when you hit them and the moon is waning", and both theories are supported by experimental evidence, then you should throw away the needlessly complex version involving the moon. The extra complexity adds nothing to the value of the theory.
You cannot use Occam's razor to dismiss a complex theory. There is no assumption by Occam that complex theories are wrong, or that simpler theories are right. That's not what it means and anybody who attempts to use it that way is simply wrong.
Bugger all.
As I said before, I've no idea where the myth came from that volcanoes are a primary contributor to greenhouse gasses. It simply isn't true. I'm sure certain people wish it were true, and that explains why they keep repeating the myth, but it is NOT TRUE.
The Sun servers are pretty good.
Sure, none of that says desktop, but in big computing centres those Sun server features are pretty damn useful.
Well, maybe you're thinking about the problem in a different way. You're thinking about the software. They're thinking about the hardware. It isn't the case that you don't know anything, but rather that you're focussed on problems that they don't think are important.
For what it's worth, I don't work for Sun. I think Linux is superb. I've been running Linux exclusively as my desktop for 13 years now. I even run Linux on this Apple PowerBook; no dualboot, just Linux. But I'm not so blinded as to ignore Sun servers and Solaris. They're both good too. There are some situations where I would never recommend Linux.
I don't know where that myth has come from but it's not true. St Helens spewed forth more CO2 than humanity makes in a single year, not since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Any other gasses you were thinking of?
And St Helens was an incredibly rare event. We get eruptions like that about once a millenia.
Hey jonpublic, looks like you were right.
Actually what they're saying is that they expect the scientists to follow the scientific method because the method isn't affected by politics or personal bias.
Just like you would expect a racist policeman to enforce the law without bias against race, or like you would expect an anti-abortion judge to respect a woman's right to abortion, you should also expect a scientist to devise experiments and report their findings without bias.
Humans being humans, sometimes personal bias does intrude on the job and they don't do what they're supposed to do. The policeman unfairly treats a particular race, the judge prevents a legal abortion, and the scientist gives false results that satisfies their own personal bias. But that simply makes them bad policemen, bad judges, and bad scientists. These people do not last long. Their inability to do their job is eventually discovered.
So when the grandparent said "remove politics from the system" they weren't being naive, like you seem to think, but they were instead wisely recognising that politics has no place in science. The method was devised to keep our bias and the science separate. Good scientists produce results that disagree with their politics. Bad scientists hide or falsify results to appease their politics. That's what this article was about - scientists being told to falsify their results - because the politics was intruding on the science. Fortunately these were good scientists who blew the whistle on the politicians attempting to pervert science.
The answer isn't to throw your hands in the air and say "everybody is biased", as you have done, because that naively assumes that the scientists allow their bias to decide their findings. As you should now be aware, because I have explained it to you so clearly, that is precisely what the scientist avoids by following the method.
People trash other people's private property all the time. So I don't see how privatisation would help.
The other danger of privatisation is that the owner can damage their property with impunity.
There are several other reasons to dislike your recommendation, but those will do for starters.
If we're really going to compare those two systems then let's be serious about it.
So your $90 PC has 1/40th the disk capacity, runs about 1/10th the speed, and doesn't run the software the guy wants. And you were calling him a goose?
I really don't think your comparison was even close to fair. A comparable x86 system would have been a Celeron or Duron 1.1GHz. A system like that, with 256MB RAM, is still around $250AUD second hand. You should have also included the brand new $150AUD HDD on both sides of the equation. Add 54Mbps wireless and a decent 100Mbps Ethernet card for $100AUD. Add a DVD/CDRW for another $70AUD. The second-hand PC now costs $570AUD, doesn't have firewire, is a Frankenstein hodge-podge of bits, and still doesn't run MacOS X.
And frankly you missed the point anyway. This guy modded his Mac mini in an unusual way. If you didn't get the point then maybe you need to reconsider if Slashdot is really your cup of tea.
Amen. Anybody who questions why this guy did this needs to get a fucking clue. Slashdot is being overrun by bleating consumers, simply waiting to be told what to buy and how to use it. Anyone who does not get a kick out of this mod should go watch TVSN rather than ruining Slashdot for the rest of us.
Expose also works on a plain-vanilla 2D framebuffer. I know this because Expose works in MOL, running on Linux, and MOL video is only 2D.
The real trick is that the windowing system for MacOS X stores each window in an offscreen buffer and then composites the onscreen display from these buffers. The compositing step can be optionally accelerated with 3D hardware. However the CPU can do the compositing if the system lacks the 3D hardware.
You might be pleased to hear that the same trick is now available on Linux. Simply install X.org and enable the Composite, Damage and Fixes extensions. Then run the xcompmgr program. It is only software compositing for now, but support for hardware acceleration is in the pipeline.
I'm not quite sure why you think distributed version control is innovative - the idea has been reimplemented a half dozen times, including Larry's BitKeeper - but I'd add SVK to the list. SVK is also open source but doesn't suffer from the "hard to solve problems need hard to use tools" syndrome of Arch.