You obviously don't have kids, or you've long since forgotten how much more than just the kid(s) comes with them when you're in the car.
Depends on how many we're your talking about, but I know 2 kids fit in an average sized 4-door. A hatchback or miniwagon helps. But average trunk fits most things fine. Maybe you prefer your X-Terra. That is fine. I'm just sayin' it isn't as necessary as you might think.
Not to mention anything that YOU might need to bring on the way to school/work (laptop, workout bag, overcoat, briefcase, etc).
Sorry, I don't carry much with me, generally. I'm not a "lug arond a laptop/overcoat/workout bag" kind of guy, if you know what I mean.
My Nissan X-Terra has much more space in it. The back seats are a great size and the "trunk" area is huge. I take issue with the fact that you think that SUV's are exclusively a "status symbol". My Nissan is neither expensive nor fancy. It is also surprisingly good on gas compared with your "oh-so-much-better" minivan.
Minivans are more for when you need to carry around more than 4 people on a regular basis. I admit, it is beyond even most SUVs are far as carrying capacity.
I take issue with the fact that you think that SUV's are exclusively a "status symbol".
I never said "exclusively." As a matter of fact, I believe I specifically stated that some people can utilize them, but nearly everyone I know who owns one is single and is almost always the only one in it and almost never carries much. Then there are also SUVs that do get decent gas mileage and are more or less just cars. Dont' take it so personally.
No, again, I never said that. But, when people like you jump on this "let's bash SUV's" bandwagon, you all like to make weird assumptions. And while we're on it, why don't people like you bash people that own things like this or this or this or this.
Don't worry, I do! My criticism of excess knows no bounds! Heck, I even criticize myself. Imagine that. Being critical of ones own choices, preferences, and supposed needs.
All of those cars get worse gas mileage than my SUV **GASP** how can that be???
What gave you the impression that I spend all my time and energy criticizing SUVs... because I made one post on slashdot about it? I'm sorry that you hear about it a lot. Maybe you don't deserve it personally, but I still think there is something to the argument. The fact is that people use automobiles as status symbols. It just so happens that SUVs (and yes, the glorious oversized pickup too) happens to be the fad at the moment.. one of the main symbols of excess in America.
Basically people, shut up about SUV's causing all the problems that you're seeing with our dependence on foreign oil and global warming. It's not as simple as eliminating 1 type of vehicle and we don't really care that you prefer to buy a minivan. Some of us don't like them and can't afford the BIG $$$$ for a good one anyway. I'm not saying everyone should own a Hummer, but geez, lay off if an X-Terra is a better fit for me huh?
Now you are not even talking to me and are taking it way too personally. I specifically said that getting rid of SUVs isn't a solution. Making people recognize and care about their excess is, perhaps.
Second, the problem isn't in owning SUV's or other gas guzzling cars, it's the fact that those cars (and car makers, oil companies, and government decision makers) are forcing us to power those vehicles with petroleum. The idea of getting rid of these vehicles is a crude attempt to treat the symptom and not the disease. Don't make it a bad thing for the family with 4 kids to drive an SUV because they need the space,
This argument always bothered me. First of all, I've never found SUV's to be particularly spacious. I mean, they have front seats and back seats like any other car. How much space to kids in a backseat need, anyway? The extra space is hauling capcity, really. And in my experience, such space almost never gets used. So what you end up with is a jacked up car with 4 wheel drive and an appetite for fuel. If a family really needs space, minivans are the way to go. But guess what? Minivans aren't cool. SUV's are. SUVs are status symbols.
make it bad that no one seems interested in solutions to powering these vehicles differently.
But that's just it, the fact that so many people put themselves into large debt just to own a gas guzzling SUV is the sign that nobody seems interested. While outlawing SUV's won't solve the problem, SUV's are still part of it... or at least a symbol of it.
In short, just keep in mind that your particular circumstance (i.e. being able to walk to the store and carry your groceries home) isn't necessarily everyone else's (like the mother of 4 with the SUV...imagine her carrying those groceries when the nearest store is 7 miles away)
So an SUV is required to get groceries if the store is 7 miles away?
I'll grant you that some people need to own a car... but very few actually utilize an SUV.
I do get a kick out of the mother of 4 driving around in an H2. How much are those things, anyway? Aren't there better things a mother of 4 could be spending her money on? Maybe college? Maybe private/extra schooling?
Is it mostly from hydrogen? What is "mostly?" Consider the inefficiencies of the electricity generation. And then there is the energy required to make graphite bricks. And *then* add CO2 from transporting all that coal and graphite... After it is all said and done, I'm willing to bet that you have a net carbon gain in the atmosphere.
Even if you could eek out a net carbon sink, your scrubbers would have to work extremely hard. You'd get a LOT of graphite (whatever you took from the atmosphere + carbon from the coal you burned + carbon from whatever you burned in transportation). Might as well just replace teh coal plant with nuclear and call it a atmospheric CO2 sink.
Well, in some fantasy you can have hybrids which implies that they are the same species. But I think they are called "races" because you are meant to see them as different human races. Fantasy races are an exageration of certain real world racial stereotypes with some extras thrown in to make it not so obvious. "Humans" in fantasy being white Europeans, of course, because after all, most fantasy that we are familar with is made by ethnocentric white people.:)
Is that really true? I find myself more the opposite where I know how to solve a problem theoretically but I need to know the exact syntax (and sometimes even the libraries/classes already available) to allow me to do what I want. Is this because I'm only a recent (2 yrs) CS grad?
Yes.
Isn't this the normal way to approach the problem due to the myriad languages used out there? It seems to me this might be true only if you're very familiar with a particular language and are trying to use that for everything which may or may not be possible.
Sometimes it makes sense to try to solve a problem with a language you know well than to try to learn a whole new language because, in some theoretical way, it might be a little more suited. That isn't to say that you should program an ecommerce site in assembly just because yo happen to be a very good assembly programmer, of course. Just use your head. Know when to learn something knew and when to use what you know to get something done within whatever time/resource constraints you h ave.
Just because someone else picks it up doesn't mean they'll have the resources to keep it running with the current popularity. If the wikimedia foundation can't get enough donations to keep it running (assuming the claim in the article is true), then how will anyone else?
No, wikipedia won't "die," but it could certainly lose a significant amount of momentum.
Trees alone won't solve the problem for the same reason they aren't solving the problem now: people keep cutting them down.
Also, trees in nature burn and decay, giving off CO2. They aren't a very good carbon sink unless you take the wood and bury it or use it for something other than fuel. Tree farms are a net carbon sink, but probably not big enough to matter.
A carbon scrubbing solution that would actually be workable would have to take up much less space than trees would to produce the same result.
Except for the energy problem. Trees work because they have the sun's energy. A scrubber works because you feed it electricity. And as others have pointed out, you'd be better off replacing a CO2 producing power source with whatever you would have used to power teh scrubbers and cut out the middle man.
Either that or find a way to build large scale air scrubbers that simulate plant respiration (stripping the carbon atom off a CO2 molecule and releasing O2), then compress the pure carbon into bricks for use in industry. If it could be done cheaply enough it might not just be eco-friendly, but profitable as well, with the $25 million payment as a bonus.
Um, stripping carbon from CO2 could require energy.. as least as much as you got from combining them in the first place. So unless you got that energy from nuclear or some other non-fossil fuel source, you'd have a net gain in CO2 in the atmosphere.
My ISP offers webmail. If I use it instead of POP, I can read my mail anywhere, anytime. In exchange, I lose the privacy that comes with keeping my data local. I also lose the ability to read my mail when the ISP has a hiccup.
Try a service that has IMAP. Or have POP leave a copy on the server (though not as good as IMAP). One big problem with relying on webmail is that you can't easily integrate multiple accounts into one interface. Most webmail services are designed to access that service only (although some have the option, but then you're back to IMAP/POP).
It is a big pain to have to browse to different sites to get your mail. I have Apple Mail configured on several computers, all accessing the same IMAP accounts. Webmail is a nice *option* to have available in case I'm somewhere that doesn't have Apple Mail, but I'd hate to use webmail all the time. Gmail is "OK," but I still prefer local applications... particularly Apple Mail.
Google offers maps. In most cases Google Maps is a lot more convenient than firing up my local street-maps program. It's also "run anywhere."
For quick queries, yeah, the online stuff is good enough. But if you want to do anything more advanced like complex trip planning, firing up a local app usually best.
Personally, I dont' see local apps disappearing for quite some time. I think online apps tend to work IN ADDITION TO local apps. Not as a replacement.
Oh, virtualized machines AND and online OS? Now what would be the point of that? I mean, if all your important data and apps were online, why wouldn't you just run a single "base OS" directly on the hardware?
Besides, "all male" is more likely to both fail to meet the "no sex" and to be unfamiliar with long sexless periods than "all female" astronaut overachievers. I volunteer to provide the balance for that crew - enough to colonize Mars with a race of supermen.
Supermen... and wonder women.
Then again, if it turns out there really are Leather Godesses of Phobos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_Goddesses_of _Phobos), we might not be need to bring the women with us!
Apples decision to limit their OS to their hardware is what is killing their adoption rate.
But releasing OS X for generic PCs would kill OS X. Apple has neither the resources nor the experience to get OS X to run reliably on just any random combination of PC hardware. Microsoft can barely do it and Microsoft has broad vendor support! Even if Apple wanted to, they simply wouldn't be able to officially release OS X for white box PCs. People would stop buying Apple hardware. They'd pick up some cheap ass Dell, and then complain that it won't run OSX. Apple's reputation would be shot.
If I could buy OSX for my PC...i probably would, just so I could have both. But I don't want to have to spend twice as much on my computer just to run an OS that TECHNICALLY doesn't do as much as Windows does...
Well, Macs can be more expensive, but I wouldn't go so far as to say twice as expensive. A $1400 iMac, for example, is a pretty nice machine. Small (all built into the display unit), sleek, bright 20" LCD display, Core2 Duo, Firewire, WiFi built in, etc. Can you even get that in the PC world? Certainly not for $700. The only thing on Dell's site that I can find which is close is Dimension E521: http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx /dimen_advanced?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs By the time you give it a 20" display, wireless, firewire and some other little bells and whistles, it is breaking $1000. Note that isn't a nice all in one unit. Its just another bulky tower PC. The $1400 for the iMac really isn't bad at all for what you get.
It's apples own fault that more people don't pick it up.
Apple seems to be doing quite well for themselves these days if you ask me. The only real "fault" I can find is that they don't offer a wide enough range of base system options. I'd like something between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro that doesn't have a built in display. I already have a nice 22" flat screen ($400 right there). The Mini is just too wimpy and the Mac Pro is way too much.
As far as linux distros go, I try and keep it below 128 megs of memory usage, and runnable on Sub 500 mhz systems with minimal lag, which is becoming excessively hard to pull off without simply running off the console.
Linux developers just can't win, can they? Don't put enough code/features in there, and they are considered to be lagging behind. Get enough features to be considered a modern operating system competing directly with Windows and OS X, and you piss off the people still trying to run Linux on systems from 1997.
Anyway, what alternatives are you considering? Because all the other unix alternatives that I am aware of run almost exactly the same software: X, window manager, xterm, Firefox, bash, etc. Does gcc somehow work differently on the alternatives, producing smaller binaries that are more memory efficient? Or are you talkign about going REALLY alternative like ReactOS or AmigaOS or something like that? I hear AmigaOS is pretty efficient. Of course, it doesn't have things you might take for granted in LInux such as proper memory management or multiuser capbilities, but hey, no bloat...
But according to that, only 1 year of hardware-only support is included. I wonder where the 3-year hardware AND software support that the GP was talking about came from. That is what made me suspect that he paid $1k for the support.
I'm typing this on an Ultra20 Opteron workstation that I bought last year under one of their offers. 3 year service and support (Hardware and software including the dev tools) for $1k, and they bill my credit card for 3 payments over that time, no interest, no BS.
You paid for $1k of support for a *workstation*? Why? Ok, maybe the hardware might break and you need a replacement, but is an extended warrantee really worth $1k? What kind of "support" do you think you'll possibly need? Maybe I'm just overconfident about my mad IT skillz, but I simply can't remember the last time I've actually had to call the vendor for support besides to report a genuine bug (which they shouldn't charge you for at all). You say no "BS" but the whole deal sounds like BS to me. If I were you, I wouldn't be proud of getting billed over 3 years.
So does that mean logging into my bank's website is illegal in Minnesota? While there has certainly been some stupid legislation running around, I'm not going to believe that until I see a more detailed summary of the legislation from a semi-reputable source.
I'm sure it is considered in conjunction with other activities. Like if you're otherwise suspected of dealing drugs, use of encryption is "evidence" that you were up to something. Not that it is any more solid, but at least it isn't saying that encrytion, in and of itself, is illegal.
So thats why all the games these days are just rehashes of old games with one or two new features.
What do you mean "these days." Was there a time when every game was truely original? How many side scrollers did you play on your old NES? Was space invaders really a huge leap from Pong? Almost everything works incrementally.. building on the past. Culture, film, music, games, etc. Sure, you get revolutions now and then, but for the majority of stuff is just incremental... evolutionary. But is it really that bad though? I mean, just because a game is a rehash of an older game with new features, doesn't mean that new game can't be much better. Those new features can make all the difference. Especially if you never played the older versions. Of course it isn't guaranteed that it will be better, but it can be.
When you look at the past it is going to seem like there was more originality innovation because you're just seeing the highlights. Nobody remembers all the crap between the interestign stuff so it just SEEMS like the past was better. Also keep in mind that you were younger then and to you the whole idea of video games was probably pretty new so even the evolutionary changes kept you entertained. Personally, I can barely play video games anymore. Not because I dont' want to. And not because I don't have time, but just because the novelty has worn off. As a kid I could play the same damn game (with a new title) over and over again and stay interested. But now it just bores me.
Well, consider that sometimes one programmer is better than two. The idea being that you can't just throw thousands of programmers at something and expect it to get done 1000 times faster. I think perhaps Microsoft is seeing dimishing returns on man-hours. Maybe they just assumed they could get Vista out on time if they just put enough resources into it....
I seem to recall Linux running pretty well on SPARC systems (particularly the models you mentioned). Are you saying that support has actually gotten WORSE?
And where is the declining quality on x86 systems? 2.6 kernel is great.
As far as balooning base system requirements... who runs just a base system? What difference does it make whether the base system is 200MB or 50MB? Why in the world would you consider migrating just because the base install is getting bigger?
I've recently started running FreeBSD systems for servers, and it isn't any different there. Maybe the BASE is a little smaller, but by the time you build all your utilities and apps, it is pretty much like any Linux distribution. I mean, it is all the same programs. GCC, X, apache, postfix, etc, etc etc. FreeBSD might as well be just another Linux distribution as far as I am concerned. Though Haven't played much with Open- or NetBSD. How different could they possibly be?
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Depends on how many we're your talking about, but I know 2 kids fit in an average sized 4-door. A hatchback or miniwagon helps. But average trunk fits most things fine. Maybe you prefer your X-Terra. That is fine. I'm just sayin' it isn't as necessary as you might think.
Sorry, I don't carry much with me, generally. I'm not a "lug arond a laptop/overcoat/workout bag" kind of guy, if you know what I mean.
Minivans are more for when you need to carry around more than 4 people on a regular basis. I admit, it is beyond even most SUVs are far as carrying capacity.
I never said "exclusively." As a matter of fact, I believe I specifically stated that some people can utilize them, but nearly everyone I know who owns one is single and is almost always the only one in it and almost never carries much. Then there are also SUVs that do get decent gas mileage and are more or less just cars. Dont' take it so personally.
Don't worry, I do! My criticism of excess knows no bounds! Heck, I even criticize myself. Imagine that. Being critical of ones own choices, preferences, and supposed needs.
What gave you the impression that I spend all my time and energy criticizing SUVs... because I made one post on slashdot about it? I'm sorry that you hear about it a lot. Maybe you don't deserve it personally, but I still think there is something to the argument. The fact is that people use automobiles as status symbols. It just so happens that SUVs (and yes, the glorious oversized pickup too) happens to be the fad at the moment.. one of the main symbols of excess in America.
Now you are not even talking to me and are taking it way too personally. I specifically said that getting rid of SUVs isn't a solution. Making people recognize and care about their excess is, perhaps.
-matthew
This argument always bothered me. First of all, I've never found SUV's to be particularly spacious. I mean, they have front seats and back seats like any other car. How much space to kids in a backseat need, anyway? The extra space is hauling capcity, really. And in my experience, such space almost never gets used. So what you end up with is a jacked up car with 4 wheel drive and an appetite for fuel. If a family really needs space, minivans are the way to go. But guess what? Minivans aren't cool. SUV's are. SUVs are status symbols.
But that's just it, the fact that so many people put themselves into large debt just to own a gas guzzling SUV is the sign that nobody seems interested. While outlawing SUV's won't solve the problem, SUV's are still part of it... or at least a symbol of it.
So an SUV is required to get groceries if the store is 7 miles away?
I'll grant you that some people need to own a car... but very few actually utilize an SUV.
I do get a kick out of the mother of 4 driving around in an H2. How much are those things, anyway? Aren't there better things a mother of 4 could be spending her money on? Maybe college? Maybe private/extra schooling?
-matthew
Is it mostly from hydrogen? What is "mostly?" Consider the inefficiencies of the electricity generation. And then there is the energy required to make graphite bricks. And *then* add CO2 from transporting all that coal and graphite... After it is all said and done, I'm willing to bet that you have a net carbon gain in the atmosphere.
Even if you could eek out a net carbon sink, your scrubbers would have to work extremely hard. You'd get a LOT of graphite (whatever you took from the atmosphere + carbon from the coal you burned + carbon from whatever you burned in transportation). Might as well just replace teh coal plant with nuclear and call it a atmospheric CO2 sink.
-matthew
Well, in some fantasy you can have hybrids which implies that they are the same species. But I think they are called "races" because you are meant to see them as different human races. Fantasy races are an exageration of certain real world racial stereotypes with some extras thrown in to make it not so obvious. "Humans" in fantasy being white Europeans, of course, because after all, most fantasy that we are familar with is made by ethnocentric white people. :)
-matthew
Yes.
Sometimes it makes sense to try to solve a problem with a language you know well than to try to learn a whole new language because, in some theoretical way, it might be a little more suited. That isn't to say that you should program an ecommerce site in assembly just because yo happen to be a very good assembly programmer, of course. Just use your head. Know when to learn something knew and when to use what you know to get something done within whatever time/resource constraints you h ave.
-matthew
Whoa! Is that possible? Can I actually BECOME South Korea? Can change back to myself if I don't like it?
-matthew
Just because someone else picks it up doesn't mean they'll have the resources to keep it running with the current popularity. If the wikimedia foundation can't get enough donations to keep it running (assuming the claim in the article is true), then how will anyone else?
No, wikipedia won't "die," but it could certainly lose a significant amount of momentum.
-matthew
"She's gone from 'suck' to 'blow!'" -Spaceballs
We'll all be breathing oxygen from a can.
-matthew
Also, trees in nature burn and decay, giving off CO2. They aren't a very good carbon sink unless you take the wood and bury it or use it for something other than fuel. Tree farms are a net carbon sink, but probably not big enough to matter.
Except for the energy problem. Trees work because they have the sun's energy. A scrubber works because you feed it electricity. And as others have pointed out, you'd be better off replacing a CO2 producing power source with whatever you would have used to power teh scrubbers and cut out the middle man.
-matthew
Google built facilities right next to the hydro power. That's what happened to it.
-matthew
Um, stripping carbon from CO2 could require energy.. as least as much as you got from combining them in the first place. So unless you got that energy from nuclear or some other non-fossil fuel source, you'd have a net gain in CO2 in the atmosphere.
-matthew
Try a service that has IMAP. Or have POP leave a copy on the server (though not as good as IMAP). One big problem with relying on webmail is that you can't easily integrate multiple accounts into one interface. Most webmail services are designed to access that service only (although some have the option, but then you're back to IMAP/POP).
It is a big pain to have to browse to different sites to get your mail. I have Apple Mail configured on several computers, all accessing the same IMAP accounts. Webmail is a nice *option* to have available in case I'm somewhere that doesn't have Apple Mail, but I'd hate to use webmail all the time. Gmail is "OK," but I still prefer local applications... particularly Apple Mail.
For quick queries, yeah, the online stuff is good enough. But if you want to do anything more advanced like complex trip planning, firing up a local app usually best.
Personally, I dont' see local apps disappearing for quite some time. I think online apps tend to work IN ADDITION TO local apps. Not as a replacement.
-matthew
Oh, virtualized machines AND and online OS? Now what would be the point of that? I mean, if all your important data and apps were online, why wouldn't you just run a single "base OS" directly on the hardware?
Supermen... and wonder women.
Then again, if it turns out there really are Leather Godesses of Phobos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_Goddesses_o
-matthew
But releasing OS X for generic PCs would kill OS X. Apple has neither the resources nor the experience to get OS X to run reliably on just any random combination of PC hardware. Microsoft can barely do it and Microsoft has broad vendor support! Even if Apple wanted to, they simply wouldn't be able to officially release OS X for white box PCs. People would stop buying Apple hardware. They'd pick up some cheap ass Dell, and then complain that it won't run OSX. Apple's reputation would be shot.
Well, Macs can be more expensive, but I wouldn't go so far as to say twice as expensive. A $1400 iMac, for example, is a pretty nice machine. Small (all built into the display unit), sleek, bright 20" LCD display, Core2 Duo, Firewire, WiFi built in, etc. Can you even get that in the PC world? Certainly not for $700. The only thing on Dell's site that I can find which is close is Dimension E521: http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.asp
Apple seems to be doing quite well for themselves these days if you ask me. The only real "fault" I can find is that they don't offer a wide enough range of base system options. I'd like something between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro that doesn't have a built in display. I already have a nice 22" flat screen ($400 right there). The Mini is just too wimpy and the Mac Pro is way too much.
-matthew
Anyway, what alternatives are you considering? Because all the other unix alternatives that I am aware of run almost exactly the same software: X, window manager, xterm, Firefox, bash, etc. Does gcc somehow work differently on the alternatives, producing smaller binaries that are more memory efficient? Or are you talkign about going REALLY alternative like ReactOS or AmigaOS or something like that? I hear AmigaOS is pretty efficient. Of course, it doesn't have things you might take for granted in LInux such as proper memory management or multiuser capbilities, but hey, no bloat...
-matthew
But according to that, only 1 year of hardware-only support is included. I wonder where the 3-year hardware AND software support that the GP was talking about came from. That is what made me suspect that he paid $1k for the support.
-matthew
If that is true, then I admit that it is a good deal. But note that it was a special offer. Let's hear what everyone else would spend.
-matthew
-matthew
-matthew
Embedded systems are a whole different subject. I'm talking about base systems from common distributions for desktops/servers.
-matthew
When you look at the past it is going to seem like there was more originality innovation because you're just seeing the highlights. Nobody remembers all the crap between the interestign stuff so it just SEEMS like the past was better. Also keep in mind that you were younger then and to you the whole idea of video games was probably pretty new so even the evolutionary changes kept you entertained. Personally, I can barely play video games anymore. Not because I dont' want to. And not because I don't have time, but just because the novelty has worn off. As a kid I could play the same damn game (with a new title) over and over again and stay interested. But now it just bores me.
-matthew
Well, consider that sometimes one programmer is better than two. The idea being that you can't just throw thousands of programmers at something and expect it to get done 1000 times faster. I think perhaps Microsoft is seeing dimishing returns on man-hours. Maybe they just assumed they could get Vista out on time if they just put enough resources into it....
-matthew
I seem to recall Linux running pretty well on SPARC systems (particularly the models you mentioned). Are you saying that support has actually gotten WORSE?
And where is the declining quality on x86 systems? 2.6 kernel is great.
As far as balooning base system requirements... who runs just a base system? What difference does it make whether the base system is 200MB or 50MB? Why in the world would you consider migrating just because the base install is getting bigger?
I've recently started running FreeBSD systems for servers, and it isn't any different there. Maybe the BASE is a little smaller, but by the time you build all your utilities and apps, it is pretty much like any Linux distribution. I mean, it is all the same programs. GCC, X, apache, postfix, etc, etc etc. FreeBSD might as well be just another Linux distribution as far as I am concerned. Though Haven't played much with Open- or NetBSD. How different could they possibly be?
-matthew
Because there is no "moron" option.