The second law of thermodynamics has nothing to do with a discussion on future energy sources for the Earth. You could have just as easily mentioned that the sun is eventually going to kill off all life on the planet. Neither fact is relevant.
Honestly, if you hadn't quoted my post, I'd question whether you were actually replying to it, and not some other post. This is not a physics problem, it's a question of resources. If you have some evidence that our readily available nuclear fuel will not be exhausted in a relatively short (i.e. centuries) amount of time, please post it here.
In other words, prove me wrong before acting like a supercilious douchebag.
And then what happens when we run out of nuclear fuel? If we're going to pick new energy sources, why can't we pick the ones that are clean and inexhaustible?
I'm all for nuclear power, as long as it comes from the fusion plant conveniently located 149 598 000 km away.
Everything not specifically released into the public domain that is indexed by Google is copyrighted.
That would probably be more than 99.99% of the internet.
What on Earth would make you think that a legal case in Sweden would have that effect? What do you imagine Google would pay for? To whom? Why Google, and not the downloader?
I don't think what you're saying is remotely realistic.
I think that linux is probably more suited to advanced uses, depending on what exactly you mean by that.
My definition (not original) of a good OS is one where the common tasks are simple, and the advanced tasks are possible. It's very pleasing to hear that you think that common tasks are simple on linux; combined with the fact that the top uses for linux are supercomputers, routers/embedded devices, and servers, I think that means that linux is a good OS.
Installing a driver is generally like installing any other piece of software: check the appropriate box in the package manager. More rarely, it can involve compiling from source, via the command line. I also am not a programmer, but I don't find that to be too onerous.
One of the things that makes that much more acceptable to me is that I don't have to worry about whether the manufacturer has provided a 64-bit driver, or an ARM driver: if there's an open source driver, I can compile it for whatever I want.
"...with linux you have to have different versions of all those different libs." That should not be the case, although some package managers can handle such things fairly easily. Having bugs like that sort of defeats the purpose of using shared libraries. It sounds like, though, you're talking about being able to take a binary from one system and run it, sans modification, on another system. I would say that doing that probably works exactly the same as on Windows, for the same reasons. As long as the.net framework is installed on that system, or a compatible version of directx, you should be good. If not, on Windows, you're screwed. On linux, you can usually install from source. If you really need x different versions of library y, you can have them all resident on the system in different places, and specify at compile time where to look for them.
Linux is flexible and can be hacked. In Windows, if anything goes wrong, you can only fix things up to a point, and then you hit a brick wall.
I'm sorry you don't like the filename case thing. Most people do not use capitalization to distinguish between files; as far as I know the reasons for it are rooted in the 70s, or some similarly Dark Age period of computing. It does let you use a wider range of characters for a file name, possibly resulting in shorter file names. I've never had a related issue, I think.
As for ease of configuring a linux system versus configuring a windows one, I can't say I have much of an opinion. I know how to do both, to some degree. I do like being able to customize my kernel, though. my Eee is the next step up from an embedded system; it's nice to be able to hack out the parts I don't need.
Hypocrite. Your post is absolutely devoid of information.
No incompatibilities, no annoying things. What a stunning review. Did you test more than one piece of software? How did you test it?
"Things that annoy you" is pretty unquantifiable. How about you give us some statistics on how the various features of vista affect productivity, as compared to an XP SP3 or Ubuntu 8.10 install. This would be with an eye to how much time various security features take up during normal use, or some actual benchmarking.
It would also be acceptable to link to some review containing similar information. However, if you're not willing to provide some sort of useful information, don't bitch about other people doing similarly.
The validation can be fixed with this hack. The security flaw can be fixed with this unofficial patch. That driver can be used after editing the inf file. That feature can be enabled with that version of the driver, and a series of registry edits, and a copy of this system file from another machine.
So much effort goes into making Windows usable. I got so sick of depending on random hacks (almost always binary executables) from the internet to make my computer work right.
One can only hope that Mac and Linux will increase in marketshare to the point where these casual hackers will start improving open source software instead.
I've tried KDE, Gnome, the netbook remix UI (which has a name, but I can't recall it at the moment), Xfce, and Enlightenment on my Eee. I really like having all of those options, and switching between each is extremely easy.
So far I'm liking Xfce, but Enlightenment struck me as being a pretty viable option. I do not recommend a tiling window manager. The netbook remix UI is extremely well put together, though, and should not be discounted.
Actually, since this is a netbook, the best possible GUI is...
There are assuredly many talented people working on many different OSS projects. Most of the heavy lifting in OSS is done by paid developers, though.
Also, for games, the goalposts move very quickly. To be reasonably current, you need to either do what major studios do, which is to throw lots of money and man-hours at a deadline several years in advance, (that is, build next year's technology yourself) or you need to have a very short development period.
I think a reasonable analogy might be trying to do Inkscape as a Summer of Code project. And then people will apparently bitch at you for not duplicating the graphics level of big-budget game X, if this thread is any indication. Small wonder the mod scene outstrips the OSS gaming scene.
The reason is that doing a complete set of artwork for a game is hard, and extremely time consuming. Most people, if they have the time, skills, and interest, will join a mod project, rather than develop something completely new from the ground up. Most of those mod projects subsequently amount to nothing due to poor interpersonal communications, inability to meet deadlines, real life getting in the way, etc.
So for a FOSS game artist, you're asking that a person be talented, dedicated, able to meet deadlines, not interested in the mod scene, technically adept (probably), good at working with others, and willing to work for free.
Then you have to find the same thing in a half dozen other people, some on sound, some on levels, environment, character models, etc.
Making a video game is a tremendous undertaking these days. Anyone capable of making a good game for free probably shouldn't sell themselves for that little.
2) is correct. Or perhaps you think that the air gets warm during the daytime due to the moon setting?
Your response to 3) is totally uninformed. We're not measuring sunspots, we're measuring solar irradiance and the amount of heat reflected into space, and no, there aren't a whole lot of things outside the Earth that affect that---unless you're arguing that asteroid impacts are a larger factor than e.g. carbon dioxide in the long-term climate cycle.
The rest of your post is similar nonsense, argument from flawed premises. The only other thing worth commenting on would be that nuclear power is finite, i.e. it can be exhausted relatively quickly, far sooner than other energy sources. If we're going to use nuclear power, it should be in the form of solar or hydrothermal energy.
We don't worry about water vapor because it's not really something that we can fuck up. Y'see, there's these huge deposits of water vapor pretty much all over the place, and we don't really have the ability to introduce much more of that stuff into the environment than would be there normally. The amount of C02 in the atmosphere is possible to change by human processes. All other things being equal, water is not.
Labelling C02 as a trace gas is completely irrelevant to its effects on our climate. Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon do not absorb radiation in the infrared range. That leaves us with the aforementioned water vapor as the most impactful greenhouse gas, and second in line---gee, Carbon Dioxide.
You're sort of missing the point with your talk about oceans acting as heat sinks. What determines temperature on this rock is really pretty simple. There's energy input from the sun, which is the biggest factor, and energy radiating from decay processes in the core at a fairly constant rate. The Earth outputs energy by radiating it to space. So, in order to change the temperature on a large scale, you need to either a) change the energy we receive from the sun, or b) change how the rate we radiate heat into space.
We have data on how much energy we receive from the sun. It does not match the observed climate changes very well. On the other hand, we're noticing some big changes in the composition of the atmosphere that seem to line up with the observed climate data pretty well.
The details of this whole system are debatable, the basic concept is pretty solidly grounded.
The way you talk about the oceans' heat capacity is odd. Like you think that people are factoring that out of the equation somehow. Perhaps you should explain yourself further, or reexamine what exactly it is you believe.
As an aside, the reason we measure temperatures at the earth's surface is because temperature is a fairly meaningless concept in the upper atmosphere. It is still measured, but it's entirely irrelevant to global warming discussions. The action is going on downstairs, as it were.
Great stuff. That reminds me of what you were saying the other week about your Electric Universe theories. Do you have biblical citations for that, too?
Security would be a big one. UAC does somewhat more than annoy people, being able to set security settings via public and private networks is also very important. There are a number of otherfeatures that are useful, but security should be a driving force.
I'd like to rephrase your argument to illustrate my point.
"IE 6 does pretty much everything anybody wants. I can only think of one thing IE7 offers that IE6 doesn't: tabs. But then I don't use them."
What an ironic two-edged sword the success of Windows XP has turned out to be. Wintel has been all about the upgrade cycle, keeping on the forefront of Moore's Law (and of course Gates' Corollary). Now, I'm almost a little scared.
Now, don't get me wrong, I go to great lengths to avoid supporting Microsoft. But it's time for XP to die---it's way past its expiration date. I can't think of any truly useful purpose for it: anything needing a stripped-down version of windows should do fine with Win2k, and anything else should use something more recent. Vista isn't that much of a dog, and Win7 promises to either make good on Microsoft's promises or doom the entire company to irrelevance.
XP is old, and insecure, and linux beats the pants off of it, especially on netbooks (like the one I'm typing on). I'm terribly worried that there is still such a demand for it. Enough is enough! XP was brilliant during its time, and I can understand being emotionally attached to it because of that, but it's not the solution to any problem any more. And if you're not part of the solution...
Human greed and other assorted motivations towards corruption have not changed, and they're unlikely to. The results will not change, and it's extremely unlikely that the method of dealing with them will change.
The only innovation in the field, I suppose, has been the work of M. Gandhi. Something tells me that throwing off a foreign oppressor in the current political landscape of Australia will be tough.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" - Pogo
Re:Structural engineering welcomes this.
on
Larrabee ISA Revealed
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· Score: 0, Troll
Your post is saccharine, condescending, vapid, and irrelevant to the subject at hand.
If you have an opinion on anything I was actually discussing, please share it. As an example, you could explore the visual differences between the two contrasted films, the science behind the 'uncanny valley, or perhaps discuss the merits of rotoscoping in general.
"I liked the movie. Some of my friends liked the movie."
Slashdot Mirror
No, it checked for the 'genuineintel' tag, not the cpuid. If you didn't read the slashdot comments then, do it now.
Hypocrite.
The second law of thermodynamics has nothing to do with a discussion on future energy sources for the Earth. You could have just as easily mentioned that the sun is eventually going to kill off all life on the planet. Neither fact is relevant.
Honestly, if you hadn't quoted my post, I'd question whether you were actually replying to it, and not some other post. This is not a physics problem, it's a question of resources. If you have some evidence that our readily available nuclear fuel will not be exhausted in a relatively short (i.e. centuries) amount of time, please post it here.
In other words, prove me wrong before acting like a supercilious douchebag.
Oh, wonderful! All of our problems are solved, at least until a couple centuries from now. Peak uranium chart, anyone?
Let's not bank on solving the fusion puzzle. Yeah, it could happen and that would be great. I'd rather do a renewable energy source, thanks.
And then what happens when we run out of nuclear fuel? If we're going to pick new energy sources, why can't we pick the ones that are clean and inexhaustible?
I'm all for nuclear power, as long as it comes from the fusion plant conveniently located 149 598 000 km away.
Everything not specifically released into the public domain that is indexed by Google is copyrighted.
That would probably be more than 99.99% of the internet.
What on Earth would make you think that a legal case in Sweden would have that effect? What do you imagine Google would pay for? To whom? Why Google, and not the downloader?
I don't think what you're saying is remotely realistic.
Non sequitur.
It may be true, but please provide a more meaningful argument.
No problem! Just use bittorrent!
So, this is a neat twist on an older idea.
I can't really imagine a practical use for this (a lightning rod seems like a much cheaper solution) but it's pretty nifty science.
I would sue you for copyright infringement. The GFDL specifies that relicensed content must use the CC-BY-SA license. Any other questions?
I think that linux is probably more suited to advanced uses, depending on what exactly you mean by that.
My definition (not original) of a good OS is one where the common tasks are simple, and the advanced tasks are possible. It's very pleasing to hear that you think that common tasks are simple on linux; combined with the fact that the top uses for linux are supercomputers, routers/embedded devices, and servers, I think that means that linux is a good OS.
Installing a driver is generally like installing any other piece of software: check the appropriate box in the package manager. More rarely, it can involve compiling from source, via the command line. I also am not a programmer, but I don't find that to be too onerous.
One of the things that makes that much more acceptable to me is that I don't have to worry about whether the manufacturer has provided a 64-bit driver, or an ARM driver: if there's an open source driver, I can compile it for whatever I want.
"...with linux you have to have different versions of all those different libs." That should not be the case, although some package managers can handle such things fairly easily. Having bugs like that sort of defeats the purpose of using shared libraries. It sounds like, though, you're talking about being able to take a binary from one system and run it, sans modification, on another system. I would say that doing that probably works exactly the same as on Windows, for the same reasons. As long as the .net framework is installed on that system, or a compatible version of directx, you should be good. If not, on Windows, you're screwed. On linux, you can usually install from source. If you really need x different versions of library y, you can have them all resident on the system in different places, and specify at compile time where to look for them.
Linux is flexible and can be hacked. In Windows, if anything goes wrong, you can only fix things up to a point, and then you hit a brick wall.
I'm sorry you don't like the filename case thing. Most people do not use capitalization to distinguish between files; as far as I know the reasons for it are rooted in the 70s, or some similarly Dark Age period of computing. It does let you use a wider range of characters for a file name, possibly resulting in shorter file names. I've never had a related issue, I think.
As for ease of configuring a linux system versus configuring a windows one, I can't say I have much of an opinion. I know how to do both, to some degree. I do like being able to customize my kernel, though. my Eee is the next step up from an embedded system; it's nice to be able to hack out the parts I don't need.
Hypocrite. Your post is absolutely devoid of information.
No incompatibilities, no annoying things. What a stunning review. Did you test more than one piece of software? How did you test it?
"Things that annoy you" is pretty unquantifiable. How about you give us some statistics on how the various features of vista affect productivity, as compared to an XP SP3 or Ubuntu 8.10 install. This would be with an eye to how much time various security features take up during normal use, or some actual benchmarking.
It would also be acceptable to link to some review containing similar information. However, if you're not willing to provide some sort of useful information, don't bitch about other people doing similarly.
You're exactly right. What he should have said was, "Why pay to upgrade when the current software provides everything you need?"
Define "Open Source Zealotry"
Something tells me you have some really weird ideas about linux, the GPL, and/or the linux community.
The validation can be fixed with this hack. The security flaw can be fixed with this unofficial patch. That driver can be used after editing the inf file. That feature can be enabled with that version of the driver, and a series of registry edits, and a copy of this system file from another machine.
So much effort goes into making Windows usable. I got so sick of depending on random hacks (almost always binary executables) from the internet to make my computer work right.
One can only hope that Mac and Linux will increase in marketshare to the point where these casual hackers will start improving open source software instead.
I've tried KDE, Gnome, the netbook remix UI (which has a name, but I can't recall it at the moment), Xfce, and Enlightenment on my Eee. I really like having all of those options, and switching between each is extremely easy.
So far I'm liking Xfce, but Enlightenment struck me as being a pretty viable option. I do not recommend a tiling window manager. The netbook remix UI is extremely well put together, though, and should not be discounted.
Actually, since this is a netbook, the best possible GUI is...
Full-screen mode in Firefox.
I find that for any game that the hardware is capable of running, there is no performance difference between XP and Linux+Wine.
What sort of third-party applications were you planning on installing on your netbook? What exactly does "third-party" mean on a linux system, anyway?
The whole point of the netbook is an internet appliance. The only game support necessary should be flash, if that.
There are assuredly many talented people working on many different OSS projects. Most of the heavy lifting in OSS is done by paid developers, though.
Also, for games, the goalposts move very quickly. To be reasonably current, you need to either do what major studios do, which is to throw lots of money and man-hours at a deadline several years in advance, (that is, build next year's technology yourself) or you need to have a very short development period.
I think a reasonable analogy might be trying to do Inkscape as a Summer of Code project. And then people will apparently bitch at you for not duplicating the graphics level of big-budget game X, if this thread is any indication. Small wonder the mod scene outstrips the OSS gaming scene.
The reason is that doing a complete set of artwork for a game is hard, and extremely time consuming. Most people, if they have the time, skills, and interest, will join a mod project, rather than develop something completely new from the ground up. Most of those mod projects subsequently amount to nothing due to poor interpersonal communications, inability to meet deadlines, real life getting in the way, etc.
So for a FOSS game artist, you're asking that a person be talented, dedicated, able to meet deadlines, not interested in the mod scene, technically adept (probably), good at working with others, and willing to work for free.
Then you have to find the same thing in a half dozen other people, some on sound, some on levels, environment, character models, etc.
Making a video game is a tremendous undertaking these days. Anyone capable of making a good game for free probably shouldn't sell themselves for that little.
2) is correct. Or perhaps you think that the air gets warm during the daytime due to the moon setting?
Your response to 3) is totally uninformed. We're not measuring sunspots, we're measuring solar irradiance and the amount of heat reflected into space, and no, there aren't a whole lot of things outside the Earth that affect that---unless you're arguing that asteroid impacts are a larger factor than e.g. carbon dioxide in the long-term climate cycle.
The rest of your post is similar nonsense, argument from flawed premises. The only other thing worth commenting on would be that nuclear power is finite, i.e. it can be exhausted relatively quickly, far sooner than other energy sources. If we're going to use nuclear power, it should be in the form of solar or hydrothermal energy.
We don't worry about water vapor because it's not really something that we can fuck up. Y'see, there's these huge deposits of water vapor pretty much all over the place, and we don't really have the ability to introduce much more of that stuff into the environment than would be there normally. The amount of C02 in the atmosphere is possible to change by human processes. All other things being equal, water is not.
Labelling C02 as a trace gas is completely irrelevant to its effects on our climate. Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon do not absorb radiation in the infrared range. That leaves us with the aforementioned water vapor as the most impactful greenhouse gas, and second in line---gee, Carbon Dioxide.
You're sort of missing the point with your talk about oceans acting as heat sinks. What determines temperature on this rock is really pretty simple. There's energy input from the sun, which is the biggest factor, and energy radiating from decay processes in the core at a fairly constant rate. The Earth outputs energy by radiating it to space. So, in order to change the temperature on a large scale, you need to either a) change the energy we receive from the sun, or b) change how the rate we radiate heat into space.
We have data on how much energy we receive from the sun. It does not match the observed climate changes very well. On the other hand, we're noticing some big changes in the composition of the atmosphere that seem to line up with the observed climate data pretty well.
The details of this whole system are debatable, the basic concept is pretty solidly grounded.
The way you talk about the oceans' heat capacity is odd. Like you think that people are factoring that out of the equation somehow. Perhaps you should explain yourself further, or reexamine what exactly it is you believe.
As an aside, the reason we measure temperatures at the earth's surface is because temperature is a fairly meaningless concept in the upper atmosphere. It is still measured, but it's entirely irrelevant to global warming discussions. The action is going on downstairs, as it were.
Great stuff. That reminds me of what you were saying the other week about your Electric Universe theories. Do you have biblical citations for that, too?
Security would be a big one. UAC does somewhat more than annoy people, being able to set security settings via public and private networks is also very important. There are a number of other features that are useful, but security should be a driving force.
I'd like to rephrase your argument to illustrate my point.
"IE 6 does pretty much everything anybody wants. I can only think of one thing IE7 offers that IE6 doesn't: tabs. But then I don't use them."
What an ironic two-edged sword the success of Windows XP has turned out to be. Wintel has been all about the upgrade cycle, keeping on the forefront of Moore's Law (and of course Gates' Corollary). Now, I'm almost a little scared.
Now, don't get me wrong, I go to great lengths to avoid supporting Microsoft. But it's time for XP to die---it's way past its expiration date. I can't think of any truly useful purpose for it: anything needing a stripped-down version of windows should do fine with Win2k, and anything else should use something more recent. Vista isn't that much of a dog, and Win7 promises to either make good on Microsoft's promises or doom the entire company to irrelevance.
XP is old, and insecure, and linux beats the pants off of it, especially on netbooks (like the one I'm typing on). I'm terribly worried that there is still such a demand for it. Enough is enough! XP was brilliant during its time, and I can understand being emotionally attached to it because of that, but it's not the solution to any problem any more. And if you're not part of the solution...
Human greed and other assorted motivations towards corruption have not changed, and they're unlikely to. The results will not change, and it's extremely unlikely that the method of dealing with them will change.
The only innovation in the field, I suppose, has been the work of M. Gandhi. Something tells me that throwing off a foreign oppressor in the current political landscape of Australia will be tough.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" - Pogo
Your post is saccharine, condescending, vapid, and irrelevant to the subject at hand.
If you have an opinion on anything I was actually discussing, please share it. As an example, you could explore the visual differences between the two contrasted films, the science behind the 'uncanny valley, or perhaps discuss the merits of rotoscoping in general.
"I liked the movie. Some of my friends liked the movie."
The inanity is stupefying.