Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I want one of these things. I might see what the deal is with Australia before leaping into a purchase. Good advice.
It's going to be released under CDDL if anything. This in itself denies its use by most of the open source world. *sigh* why does Sun have to keep on trying to destroy Linux and the GPL?
So you can't use CDDL code in Linux. So what? You can't use GPL code in FreeBSD. I don't hear the FreeBSD folks claiming that Linus is out to destroy FreeBSD.
And what's this about "denies its use by most of the open source world"? What FUD! You can use it all you damn well like. You just can't mingle it with GPL code and distribute the result.
You can, however, mingle CDDL code with BSD code and distribute the result.
Get some perspective. It's free. It's open source. Yes, the license is intentionally incompatible with the GPL. You'll get over it. You're no worse off than you were before.
Couple of months? Are you the filthiest human alive? I vacuum a 15 square house once a week. It takes nearly an hour every Saturday. Reclaiming 50 hours a year is well worth the price of a Roomba if it works.
Who on earth needs a terabyte of storage? And more importantly, Why would we want it on a non-hard disk. The massive storage would be so much better on a hard disk. I can't imagine wanting to carry a terabyte with me on a disk!
Are you serious?
Give me the space and I'll find ways to use it.
You can never have enough storage space.
Even now, 1TB is barely enough. It's only 2-3x the larger hard drives. 100TB would be better.
I've been thinking about buying one of these automated vacuum robots. This article has prompted me to think about it again. Is the Roomba any good? Anything better? I don't have a PC nor wireless, so it must be completely autonomous, and from what I can tell the Roomba meets all requirements.
I've done some basic research via Google but I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions from/.ers who own Roombas.
I see the xbox as two things: A game box for people that have never seriously played FPSs
Pfft, I have seriously played FPSs but I just got sick of dicking around with drivers and upgrades and viruses and patches and busted buggy games.
The Xbox is a plug-in-and-play affair. No effort. It plugs into a big TV with a big sound system and I don't have to worry about it not working because it ALWAYS WORKS.
Sure the gamepad sucks compared to a mouse. But it's not 10x suckitude. It's about 80% as useful as a mouse. That's good enough, thankyouverymuch.
And yes, the FPSs on consoles aren't one-half as good as the FPSs on PC, but the PC costs about 10x as much as the console. I'll just wait for the next gen of consoles rather than piss my money away on another PC gaming rig. Been there, done that, no intention of ever doing it again.
You should be looking for ways to underclock it to extend battery life and reduce heat. I want a laptop that will run on one battery for the longest plane flight I'm going to take, not one that burns through a battery every 73 minutes and singes the hair off of my scrotum.
Hell yeah. Something that really annoys me about my PowerBook is that the G4 chip only has two valid speeds; 765MHz or 1GHz. Most of the time my CPU needs could be satisfied with 100MHz.
Pardon? A P4 with 96MB? My Pentium 100 from nearly a decade ago had 192MB. My current PC is a second generation Celeron and the video card alone has 128MB. What dumb bunny company is selling a P4 with a mere 96MB RAM?
Do your Dad a favour. Splash out and spend $100 on a 256MB upgrade.
That took a few minutes to find. It was by no means an exclusive list, just looking for some obvious people/organizations who were environmentalists and anti-nuclear.
Those quotes don't prove any of your claims. Let's recap:
Nuclear power plants stopped being built in the USA long before TMI or Chernobyl, because they were sued out of existane. By the Environmetalists of the time.
None of your quotes prove that Greenpeace or the Sierra club were largely or even partially responsible for nuclear power being sued out of "existane".
The regulatory laws passed by Congress enabled nuclear power opponents to intervene in court in licensing proceedings for construction permits and for operating licenses. These interventions were successful in delaying nearly all projects after 1975--thus increasing capital costs substantially.
None of your quotes link Greenpeace or the Sierra club to the "nuclear power opponents" you originally claimed were environmentalists. Nor have you proven these groups were powerful enough to cause the downfall of nuclear power. I'm more of the opinion that both groups are ineffective and powerless.
The anti-nuke movement of that time was filled to overflowing with those who called themselves "Environmentalists". Note Greenpeace's continuing anti-nuclear stance, as an example.
And none of your quotes prove that Greenpeace or the Sierra club represented the largest portion of the "anti-nuke movement". Certainly you've done nothing to prove that the "anti-nuke movement" was in any way representative of environmentalists. I believe the largest group opposing nuclear power would have been the families with children who didn't want nuclear power in their backyards. Fear is a far greater motivator than altruism.
You're still a very long way from proving any of your outlandish claims.
"In 2001, the average operating cost of the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants was 1.68 cents per kilowatt-hour, second only to hydroelectric power among baseload generation options."
That's an operating cost per kWh. It isn't the total cost. Hint: how much does it cost to build a nuclear power plant and how long does it last.
However, even Greenpeace only assigned a cost for nuclear power of 9 cents per KWh, and they're rather biased in the other direction. This was in 1990 dollars, for reference. It would be a bit more in 2004 dollars.
Yes, in 2004 dollars it would be between 11c/kWh and 14c/kWh, as in the figures I linked to.
The regulatory laws passed by Congress enabled nuclear power opponents to intervene in court in licensing proceedings for construction permits and for operating licenses. These interventions were successful in delaying nearly all projects after 1975--thus increasing capital costs substantially.
Where does it say "environmentalists"? You are failing to find supporting evidence for your ludicrous claims.
It seems odd that the Engineering Journals and Greenpeace set a lower cost ot nuclear power than you remember from ten years ago. Perhaps you should let them know that they're completely out to lunch on this issue.
Not at all. The figure I remember from 10 years ago was 8c/kWh. The figures I linked to were from 2004 and quoted between 11c/kWh and 14c/kWh, well in line with your 9c/kWh adjusted for inflation.
But at this point it's obvious you're grasping wildly at straws in your attempt to discredit me.
Nuclear power is quite cheap. Comparable to coal for capital outlays, cheaper in terms of running costs.
Bullshit. Nuclear power wasn't cheap 10 years ago when I was doing my Engineering degree and we were studying this very topic, and it still isn't cheap now.
Wind power ranges from 4 cents to 6 cents per kWh, compared to electricity from coal power at 4.8 cents to 5.5 cents per kWh, gas at 3.5 cents to 4.4 cents per kWh, hydro at 5.1 cents to 11.3 cents per kWh, biomass at 5.8 cents to 11.6 cents per kWh, and nuclear at 11.1 cents to 14.5 cents per kWh. -- http://www.lightparty.com/Light/ForcastForEnergy.h tml
The problem with nuclear power is that is simply isn't economical. Companies build windfarms because they make profit. Nuclear power plants are out of favour. You figure it out.
Nuclear power plants stopped being built in the USA long before TMI or Chernobyl, because they were sued out of existane. By the Environmetalists of the time.
Always blaming the environmentalists. No wonder the US is screwed. You guys always need somebody to blame. First the communists. Then the terrorists. Now the environmentalists. Milk turned sour? The environmentalists! Rained on your daughter's wedding day? The environmentalists! Burn down the observatory, before that gosh-darned "science" starts to spread.
Most studies I have read place the TCO of wind turbines at over 10p/kW compared to ~4p/kW for nuclear.
Provide a source, don't just pull figures out of the air.
Wind power ranges from 4 cents to 6 cents per kWh, compared to electricity from coal power at 4.8 cents to 5.5 cents per kWh, gas at 3.5 cents to 4.4 cents per kWh, hydro at 5.1 cents to 11.3 cents per kWh, biomass at 5.8 cents to 11.6 cents per kWh, and nuclear at 11.1 cents to 14.5 cents per kWh. -- http://www.lightparty.com/Light/ForcastForEnergy.h tml
Now you can dispute my source if you like, but I've provided one, so the ball is now in your court.
Also look at the practical data. Companies are building wind farms. That's because they are PROFITABLE.
Three Mile Island did nothing. People pulled death esimates out of their ass.
Hiroshima was a nuclear bomb. You should fear nuclear bombs, but nuclear power?
Fear isn't rational. People fear nuclear power because of nuclear bombs. Don't bother denying it because you know that's the truth.
So, after being hit by all that radioactivity from the most dirty nuke ever made, what happened to Hiroshima? Oh yeah, it's a tourist spot. Blooming with wildlife.
Yeah, I'm sure all the dead Japanese are fucking falling over themselves to praise the Americans for creating such a beautiful location.
Instead of treating it as an engineering problem, enviromentalists refuse to see nuclear as a solution.
As I said, it's not an engineering problem, it's an economic and political problem. Nuclear power is NOT cheap. The cost of handling the waste is horrendous, partially because the waste can be used to make weapons. Plus people are scared by the very prospect of nuclear power. Nobody likes it in their backyard. Give somebody a choice between coal and nuclear and people will choose coal. The nuclear boogeyman - helpfully enhanced by the idiotic cold war and the chickenhawk US govt - has ruined the potential for nuclear power.
If it wasn't the enviromentalists pushing this anti-nuclear adjenda, who was it? The Amish?
See, you think there is an agenda so you're looking for somebody who's pushing the agenda. Hint: there is no agenda. People just don't want nuclear power.
Enviromentalists used FUD to make voters scared shitless about the word "Nuclear"
Oh yeah, Chernobyl had nothing to do with the fear of nuclear power.
Nor Three Mile Island.
Nor Hiroshima.
Nah, it was all the environmentalists! Damn them dirty environmentalists! How dare they make up false stories like Chernobyl and Hiroshima and Three Mile Island to further their own devious anti-nuclear hippy agendas.
Sorry but unless the enviromentalists start pushing nuclear power, you're going to have to wait until the world runs out of coal and oil.
Stop blaming the environmentalists for the poverty of nuclear power. Since when has anybody listened to the environmentalists, anyway? It's pretty obvious that nuclear power is not steaming ahead (haha) for economic and political reasons. Basically nuclear is too expensive (coal is so much cheaper) and most voters are scared shitless by anything with "nuclear" in the name.
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "on the internets"
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "automagically"
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "in a browser"
And now we have
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "with a Firewall"
[blatantly non-patentable thing] + "a spell checker"
Apples and oranges. The largest coal plants are still relatively compact in terms of square footage compared to wind turbines.
How much space do you think a strip mine takes? Don't forget to include the tailings dam.
the thousands of wind turbines necesary to equal the power output of your theoretical coal fired plant would cover an enormous acreage and affect far more people.
You can (and people do) use the land under a wind turbine for grazing and farming.
As for noise, I think you may be just flat out wrong about that; my experience at powerhouses is that there is almost no noise outside the fence.
You have got to be kidding me? Those things are incredibly noisy.
Sure has. That's why I said that I hate it. Me, personally. How is telling you that I hate Microsoft's UI approach a "stupid statement"? I never said that it was the wrong approach, just that I hated it. That's also why I said that I'm obsessive about aesthetic layout. Surely you didn't miss that part. You took the time to jump to conclusions about my opinions on user interfaces as a result. Maybe you should learn to read what other people write before applying labels, asshole.
The silly statement I was talking about was:
"One Window To Rule Them All" approach to application design, which is what Linux open source developers are copying.
And I said silly, not stupid, you illiterate dickhead.
I know enough to know that putting a shut-down function under a "Start" menu is just non-sensical and stupid.
How about dragging a disk icon to the TRASH CAN to eject it?
A companies job is to make money. The governments job is to make laws to regulate companies for the common good.
The government's "job" is to represent the will of the people. Only in Corporate America can you "consumers" be so brainwashed into believing the government exists to regulate the companies.
Wind is noisy, ugly, and expensive.
Wind turbines are quieter and more beautiful than a coal fired power plant, and less expensive than nuclear. The only people complaining about wind power are those with a NIMBY complex. I say stick a coal fired power plant in their backyard and see what they think about wind turbines then.
And personally, I hate it. But I'm a Mac user, so I'm spoiled with regards to UI design.
/rolleyes
And I hate Microsoft's "One Window To Rule Them All" approach to application design, which is what Linux open source developers are copying.
I think that's a very silly statement. You seem to paint it as if the Macintosh way is Correct(tm) and the Microsoft way is Incorrect(tm). Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe each approach has both pros and cons? Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps some people don't LIKE the Macintosh way?
But again, this is just one Mac user's rant about Linux and Windows user interfaces. I openly admit that I'm obsessive about UI cleanliness.
Well, I'm going to be mean here, but my impression of Mac users is that they assume because they use a Mac that they know something about UI design. Similar to how people who buy expensive sports cars think they're suddenly transformed into professional racing car drivers.
Probably a few months ago. I just remember spending 15 minutes trying to figure out how to crop an image while maintaining a certain aspect ratio.
What the hell?
Click the Image menu, always on display.
Select Crop from the Image menu.
Start dragging the crop, the Crop Dialog appears.
Type the exact aspect ratio into the "Aspect Ratio" field of the Crop Dialog.
The Tool Options Dialog shows "Keep Aspect Ratio [shift]".
Continue dragging with the Shift key held, the aspect ratio is maintained.
I can't even begin to imagine why this took you 15 minutes to figure out. Even the keys used are defacto standards (eg, Shift to maintain aspect ratio).
but nothing as groundbreaking as a graphical user interface
You do realise the GUI wasn't groundbreaking? Apple took two attempts before they got a winner. They'd based several of their ideas on research papers written by Raskin, pioneering work by Engelbart in the 60s, ideas taken from Smalltalk, etc. It was all incremental improvement.
Xerox PARC is often credited as the "source" that inspired Apple (though Raskin denies even that much) but PARC didn't innovate either. They integrated a bunch of existing ideas into a technology demo. Windows, viewports, scrollbars, icons, menus; those ideas all predated PARC.
or the internet itself has come along in a long time.
The Internet took more than 2 decades to become an overnight success. Once again, very slow incremental improvements were the key.
My next thought was "when is the next instance of revolutionary technology going to hit?"
It will never "hit". That's a sensationalist point of view that Cringely likes to play upon because it makes for a more exciting story. The reality is that the revolutionary technology is probably already out there. You just don't know about it yet. Eventually it will reach a critical mass of users and "tip", at which point it takes over the industry and becomes the "revolution". But it's not really a revolution. It's just the slow incremental improvement of existing software.
My point is that it's the commercial software firms are making the innovations, albeit small, because they are being paid to.
I don't see the commercial software firms as being a good source of innovation. The innovative GUI came from university funded research centres. The innovative Internet came from government sponsored research centres working in cooperation with universities. UNIX might have been sparked from Bell, but the vast majority of the work that turned UNIX into something useful came from... say it with me... a university funded research centre.
Commercial software firms are famous for taking proven ideas and making money. Not for innovation.
Then again, being on the inside of a company that fulfills me intellectually with a dizzying variety of possible projects to work for, almost daily seminars on one topic or another, and the knowledge that my code will be run by millions of people, might make me a little more ready to have a good time and laugh.
Sure, but how does it feel to be on the inside of a company that is considered untrustworthy by IT experts the world over, that is reknowned for producing second-rate low quality software, that is famous for undermining competitors through illegal deals and threats rather than technical proficiency, and is without doubt the laughing stock of the industry?
You know, for all the brains and money that Microsoft has at its command, it amazes me that you guys continue to produce such crap.
/if the parent isn't flamebait, then neither am I, right?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I want one of these things. I might see what the deal is with Australia before leaping into a purchase. Good advice.
So you can't use CDDL code in Linux. So what? You can't use GPL code in FreeBSD. I don't hear the FreeBSD folks claiming that Linus is out to destroy FreeBSD.
And what's this about "denies its use by most of the open source world"? What FUD! You can use it all you damn well like. You just can't mingle it with GPL code and distribute the result.
You can, however, mingle CDDL code with BSD code and distribute the result.
Get some perspective. It's free. It's open source. Yes, the license is intentionally incompatible with the GPL. You'll get over it. You're no worse off than you were before.
Couple of months? Are you the filthiest human alive? I vacuum a 15 square house once a week. It takes nearly an hour every Saturday. Reclaiming 50 hours a year is well worth the price of a Roomba if it works.
Are you serious?
Give me the space and I'll find ways to use it. You can never have enough storage space.
Even now, 1TB is barely enough. It's only 2-3x the larger hard drives. 100TB would be better.
I've been thinking about buying one of these automated vacuum robots. This article has prompted me to think about it again. Is the Roomba any good? Anything better? I don't have a PC nor wireless, so it must be completely autonomous, and from what I can tell the Roomba meets all requirements.
I've done some basic research via Google but I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions from /.ers who own Roombas.
Pfft, I have seriously played FPSs but I just got sick of dicking around with drivers and upgrades and viruses and patches and busted buggy games.
The Xbox is a plug-in-and-play affair. No effort. It plugs into a big TV with a big sound system and I don't have to worry about it not working because it ALWAYS WORKS.
Sure the gamepad sucks compared to a mouse. But it's not 10x suckitude. It's about 80% as useful as a mouse. That's good enough, thankyouverymuch.
And yes, the FPSs on consoles aren't one-half as good as the FPSs on PC, but the PC costs about 10x as much as the console. I'll just wait for the next gen of consoles rather than piss my money away on another PC gaming rig. Been there, done that, no intention of ever doing it again.
Hell yeah. Something that really annoys me about my PowerBook is that the G4 chip only has two valid speeds; 765MHz or 1GHz. Most of the time my CPU needs could be satisfied with 100MHz.
If wankers in fast cars would stop speeding then the police wouldn't have to waste their time enforcing the law with speed traps.
Pardon? A P4 with 96MB? My Pentium 100 from nearly a decade ago had 192MB. My current PC is a second generation Celeron and the video card alone has 128MB. What dumb bunny company is selling a P4 with a mere 96MB RAM?
Do your Dad a favour. Splash out and spend $100 on a 256MB upgrade.
Those quotes don't prove any of your claims. Let's recap:
None of your quotes prove that Greenpeace or the Sierra club were largely or even partially responsible for nuclear power being sued out of "existane".
None of your quotes link Greenpeace or the Sierra club to the "nuclear power opponents" you originally claimed were environmentalists. Nor have you proven these groups were powerful enough to cause the downfall of nuclear power. I'm more of the opinion that both groups are ineffective and powerless.
And none of your quotes prove that Greenpeace or the Sierra club represented the largest portion of the "anti-nuke movement". Certainly you've done nothing to prove that the "anti-nuke movement" was in any way representative of environmentalists. I believe the largest group opposing nuclear power would have been the families with children who didn't want nuclear power in their backyards. Fear is a far greater motivator than altruism.
You're still a very long way from proving any of your outlandish claims.
Then you should have no trouble finding a single quotable reference.
I await your brilliance with bated breath.
Agreed. I want more of these types of story. This one really made my day.
That's an operating cost per kWh. It isn't the total cost. Hint: how much does it cost to build a nuclear power plant and how long does it last.
Yes, in 2004 dollars it would be between 11c/kWh and 14c/kWh, as in the figures I linked to.
Where does it say "environmentalists"? You are failing to find supporting evidence for your ludicrous claims.
Not at all. The figure I remember from 10 years ago was 8c/kWh. The figures I linked to were from 2004 and quoted between 11c/kWh and 14c/kWh, well in line with your 9c/kWh adjusted for inflation.
But at this point it's obvious you're grasping wildly at straws in your attempt to discredit me.
Bullshit. Nuclear power wasn't cheap 10 years ago when I was doing my Engineering degree and we were studying this very topic, and it still isn't cheap now.
The problem with nuclear power is that is simply isn't economical. Companies build windfarms because they make profit. Nuclear power plants are out of favour. You figure it out.
Always blaming the environmentalists. No wonder the US is screwed. You guys always need somebody to blame. First the communists. Then the terrorists. Now the environmentalists. Milk turned sour? The environmentalists! Rained on your daughter's wedding day? The environmentalists! Burn down the observatory, before that gosh-darned "science" starts to spread.
Inbred hicks.
Provide a source, don't just pull figures out of the air.
Now you can dispute my source if you like, but I've provided one, so the ball is now in your court.
Also look at the practical data. Companies are building wind farms. That's because they are PROFITABLE.
Fear isn't rational. People fear nuclear power because of nuclear bombs. Don't bother denying it because you know that's the truth.
Yeah, I'm sure all the dead Japanese are fucking falling over themselves to praise the Americans for creating such a beautiful location.
As I said, it's not an engineering problem, it's an economic and political problem. Nuclear power is NOT cheap. The cost of handling the waste is horrendous, partially because the waste can be used to make weapons. Plus people are scared by the very prospect of nuclear power. Nobody likes it in their backyard. Give somebody a choice between coal and nuclear and people will choose coal. The nuclear boogeyman - helpfully enhanced by the idiotic cold war and the chickenhawk US govt - has ruined the potential for nuclear power.
See, you think there is an agenda so you're looking for somebody who's pushing the agenda. Hint: there is no agenda. People just don't want nuclear power.
Oh yeah, Chernobyl had nothing to do with the fear of nuclear power.
Nor Three Mile Island.
Nor Hiroshima.
Nah, it was all the environmentalists! Damn them dirty environmentalists! How dare they make up false stories like Chernobyl and Hiroshima and Three Mile Island to further their own devious anti-nuclear hippy agendas.
Stop blaming the environmentalists for the poverty of nuclear power. Since when has anybody listened to the environmentalists, anyway? It's pretty obvious that nuclear power is not steaming ahead (haha) for economic and political reasons. Basically nuclear is too expensive (coal is so much cheaper) and most voters are scared shitless by anything with "nuclear" in the name.
[blatantly non-patentable thing] + "a spell checker"
Everybody should install Spellbound for Firefox.
How much space do you think a strip mine takes? Don't forget to include the tailings dam.
You can (and people do) use the land under a wind turbine for grazing and farming.
You have got to be kidding me? Those things are incredibly noisy.
The silly statement I was talking about was:
And I said silly, not stupid, you illiterate dickhead.
How about dragging a disk icon to the TRASH CAN to eject it?
The government's "job" is to represent the will of the people. Only in Corporate America can you "consumers" be so brainwashed into believing the government exists to regulate the companies.
Wind turbines are quieter and more beautiful than a coal fired power plant, and less expensive than nuclear. The only people complaining about wind power are those with a NIMBY complex. I say stick a coal fired power plant in their backyard and see what they think about wind turbines then.
/rolleyes
I think that's a very silly statement. You seem to paint it as if the Macintosh way is Correct(tm) and the Microsoft way is Incorrect(tm). Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe each approach has both pros and cons? Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps some people don't LIKE the Macintosh way?
Well, I'm going to be mean here, but my impression of Mac users is that they assume because they use a Mac that they know something about UI design. Similar to how people who buy expensive sports cars think they're suddenly transformed into professional racing car drivers.
What the hell?
I can't even begin to imagine why this took you 15 minutes to figure out. Even the keys used are defacto standards (eg, Shift to maintain aspect ratio).
You do realise the GUI wasn't groundbreaking? Apple took two attempts before they got a winner. They'd based several of their ideas on research papers written by Raskin, pioneering work by Engelbart in the 60s, ideas taken from Smalltalk, etc. It was all incremental improvement.
Xerox PARC is often credited as the "source" that inspired Apple (though Raskin denies even that much) but PARC didn't innovate either. They integrated a bunch of existing ideas into a technology demo. Windows, viewports, scrollbars, icons, menus; those ideas all predated PARC.
The Internet took more than 2 decades to become an overnight success. Once again, very slow incremental improvements were the key.
It will never "hit". That's a sensationalist point of view that Cringely likes to play upon because it makes for a more exciting story. The reality is that the revolutionary technology is probably already out there. You just don't know about it yet. Eventually it will reach a critical mass of users and "tip", at which point it takes over the industry and becomes the "revolution". But it's not really a revolution. It's just the slow incremental improvement of existing software.
I don't see the commercial software firms as being a good source of innovation. The innovative GUI came from university funded research centres. The innovative Internet came from government sponsored research centres working in cooperation with universities. UNIX might have been sparked from Bell, but the vast majority of the work that turned UNIX into something useful came from... say it with me... a university funded research centre.
Commercial software firms are famous for taking proven ideas and making money. Not for innovation.
Sure, but how does it feel to be on the inside of a company that is considered untrustworthy by IT experts the world over, that is reknowned for producing second-rate low quality software, that is famous for undermining competitors through illegal deals and threats rather than technical proficiency, and is without doubt the laughing stock of the industry?
You know, for all the brains and money that Microsoft has at its command, it amazes me that you guys continue to produce such crap.
Amateur.