The problem with heat is totally nude I get pretty uncomfortable above 80 degrees... so once I've taken everything off, what next?
1) Dump a bucket of water over your head. This will DRASTICALLY and almost instantly reduce your temperature considerably. Your head has more blood flow closer to the surface than any other body part, your hair will hold the water quite well improving evaporative effects, and your incoming water pipe maintains a much more steady and comfortable temperature than the air, thanks to the buried pipes (so this works without refrigeration). If people took this advice, there would probably never be another heat-related death, power-outage or not.
2) Reduce your physical activity level, and take much more frequent breaks if you must work. Core body temperature is ~99F degrees, so you shouldn't be uncomfortable at 80F degrees, unless doing a lot of work.
3) Drink plenty of cold water, and include an occasional sports drink, or modest amounts of salt and potassium. People are accustomed to living their lives being dehydrated most of time time, so they don't recognize that they're killing themselves when hot weather comes along, and that it becomes dangerous. Keep cold drinks with you at all times, and use them.
4) Toss your blankets out, so your body is cooler at night, while you sleep. 100% cotton bedsheets are recommended. You'll feel a little cold when going to sleep, but you'll find you'll be vastly more comfortable and able to tolerate high temperatures the next day. This also goes along with making sure you're getting enough sleep... In hot weather especially, failure to do so can become dangerous.
5) Wear the thinnest, lightest, loosest and most breathable cotton clothing you can. Your body is an evaporative cooler, so good clothing can keep you cooler than no clothes at all. Thin, white cotton T-Stirt and loose shorts are recommended. A light, breathable hat can help a lot, but a tight, suffocating hat can be a serious problem, so choose carefully, you may be better off without a hat, sunburn not withstanding.
6) Get as much airflow as you can... It won't help pets or animals that don't sweat (unless you dump some water over them first). but for humans, a ceiling fan or box fan can lower your body temperature by 10-20F degrees. Combine this with dumping lots of water over your head for a huge double-whammy improvement.
7) Make a conscious effort to stay in the shade. Trees are great, as are covered open-air porches. If you must work where there isn't any existing shade, portable canopies are available.
This can only work if you have a DB of precise locations of wireless signals. Even assuming that is viable, it cannot replace GPS as is.
Whenever a program is looking-up the location of a smartphone, that phone is very probably also beaming back a list of all the Wifi APs in-range, their signal strength, and approximate location. Everyone who makes navigation software for smartphones is guaranteed to have such a database, and is continually keeping it up-to-date.
Not only is it practical to do this, and it has been for years and years, it's done because you're likely to get much better accuracy, and a much quicker location fix. You can prove this out by running a navigation app on a tablet that has wifi but lacks a GPS chip. You'll find that Google Maps or anything else has no problem at all pinpointing your location.
And BTW, moving one AP won't cause a problem... Triangulation requires several APs in range, and it'll try to use everything in-range to get a more precise fix so... Short of conspiring to have everyone in an area to move their APs in unison for a significant distance, you're not going to significantly fool the algorithm that handles all of this.
What's more... Before wifi was widespread, the previous fallback was a database with the GPS coordinates, altitudes, power levels, etc., of all of a telco's cell towers. It works, but not as well as the horde of prolific wifi APs these days. And for the record, I am speaking from first-hand knowledge.
How does this filter work on bacteria and viruses? The standard of living in the 3rd world would go up dramatically with free access to clean water.
Sand is "free" and widely available, and does an excellent job filtering biological contaminants and suspended solids from any water sources. No expensive and exotic materials are required. It requires minimal knowledge, and can be trivially constructed by any local labor available. Any 2 meter tall container will do. Just fill it with available sand, let the water drain through it, and it'll come out clean on the bottom.
What's this? The one-paragraph summary didn't completely explain the situation, and you're left with questions you'd like answered? Gee, I wish there was some way/. summaries could include some sort of LINK so that people knew where to go to find MORE INFORMATION.
Much of the southern United States will be uninhabitable within our lifetimes if they do not secure another source of fresh water.
Nonsense. Less than 1/4th of all fresh water goes to domestic use. First, other southern states will start adopting some of California's water conservation methods, like low-flow fixtures (toilets, shower-heads, large-drip sprinklers, leech lines), and then it'll escalate to cutting off of ornamental fountains, and disappearing lawns. In the longer-term, grey water systems will be put in-place, and municipalities will be more inclined to supplement groundwater with recycled (sewer) water.
We will all be '3rd world' if the trend continues. And then no world... because almost all life on land depends on it.
That's just mind-numbing... This is just a method to make desalination CHEAPER. And desalination is just one method of water filtration and reprocessing. My $10/mo water bill going up, even drastically, will have practically no effect on me, while it will make gathering other water sources, and more aggressive processing methods become economical for municipalities... It's good old supply and demand.
Some people pay more per-gallon for water than they do for gasoline, thanks to "bottled water", so we can obviously afford a higher price here in the first-world.
Can't help but think that RIM's current situation is a lot like what Apple faced with Copland back in the mid-90s. After several years of trying to build their own next-gen system they gave up and purchased NeXT, which we now know as OS X. After numerous OS delays and corporate near-death experiences they finally launched OS X Public Beta in 2000.
What saved Apple from bankruptcy was the iMac. It ran classic mac os, and yet made Apple huge amounts of money, which it needed to continue operating long enough to put anything else out there. Copland / NeXT had nothing to do with it (except that the NeXT acquisition also happened to bring in a competent CEO).
Did OS X actually bring-in a lot of new users? Or were they brought-in by the hardware, apps, or advertising, and just happen to use OS X, and would just as easily have used OS9 without complaint? Being an early adopter of a all-new OS is anything but fun.
Images, sound and video are part of the modern day web browsing experience for the vast majority of users.
Sure... That's why millions of users install browser ad-ons which do nothing else but to BLOCK those images, sound, and video.
Browser plug-ins like Quicktime were infinitely better than the current crop of Flash or HTML5 browsers. You just gave it a URL or a file, and a LOCAL, NATIVE player would handle it however it wanted to. Instead we have everyone reinventing the video player, writing a new Flash app to handle it, poorly. And the performance? We had "hardware acceleration" (overlay), full-screen video, zero tearing, etc., back in the early '90s, but now every website designer out there thinks he can invent a better video player app in Flash (with the buttons slightly moved around) than what we've had for decades, and we're all paying for it.
Ultimately, though, plug-ins present their own privacy and security concerns (think Flash).
Flash is the big exception, NOT the rule. When you're just embedding images, sound, or video, there's no privacy concerns, and the only security issues are basic buffer overflows that we'd have to handle wherever the player is. But with Flash, it's a whole language in there, which doesn't inherently operate within the confines of the browser. Plugins for images, audio, and video would have no such problems.
We are on the verge of a purely HTML/JavaScript client world.
No, no we aren't. We are on the verge of WEB SITES being restricted to using WEB TECHNOLOGIES.
It was an idiotic idea back in the '90s to believe that people WANTED to open a browser, and visit a web page, to launch their client-side apps. A local app on a fat client is still the be-all, end-all of computing.
People may tolerate web apps, but they usually don't WANT them... They're just given no other choice by the developer, usually for reasons of ad placement. Companies like Pandora have their web app, but then have a desktop Adobe AIR version of their web app, but ONLY for PAYING customers.
Hulu was smart enough to release Hulu Desktop to let people get away from their clumsy web interface, but they sure haven't advertised it's existence, and I'd have to call it "quite buggy" even being generous.
Fat clients remain dominant. Smartphones aren't anything special... They just happen to be a huge new money-making opportunity, so developers aren't going to cut-corners (depending on web apps) to capture that market.
I agree. LILO has a simplicity that GRUB lack, and LILO beat-out GRUB for GPT partition table support for a long, long, long, long time... ie. GRUB v1 doesn't officially have GPT support (it's always 3rd party patches) and GRUB2 is just NOW becoming stable!
Besides getting active development, it's also about as flexible as grub, and completely syntax-compatible with syslinux / isolinux / pxelinux, and all the other bootloaders any pros are going to need to figure out how to configure at some point in their careers... Replacing GRUB with extlinux gets all our bootloaders the same config syntax, without sacrificing anything but GRUB's eccentricities.
Not true! First off, it's 12ft OVER THE TOP OF YOUR ROOF LINE (if mounted on the ground, a 30+ft mast would still be okay). And second, that's just the cutoff where local authorities (like HOAs) can require some form pre-approval that would delay installation. If you NEED an antenna more tham 12ft above the top of your roof to receive local channels, then they still have to approve your request after a minimal delay UNLESS there's some serious safety issue (eg. low-hanging overhead power lines, or similar).
I have even seen some standalone homes that the exterior was considered a "shared usage" space (mostly in senior communities where the exterior upkeep is completely taken care of by the HOA).
They can NEVER stop you from installing an antenna or dish ON YOUR ROOF.
You can still install antenna indoors, but that may not be sufficient depending on your region.
The only time an antenna indoors is insufficient would be if you don't have a window facing the direction of the towers, and you're in a fringe area (30+ miles away), or if you DO have a window, but you're more than 50+ miles away. Otherwise, I'd always expect a strong enough signal with a big damn antenna.
Cable TV is almost entirely repeats of OTA broadcast TV shows, and a flood of low-quality "reality" shows. And with the proliferation of cable channels over the years, the content is continually spread ever-thinner. So you have 5 "discovery" channels, and 4 "history" channels, great!...except that all the content which was formerly on ONE channel is now spread across 4 or 5, and to fill time each channel just has the same 3 hours (of repeats) on each day, playing in a loop. Really, it's incredibly sad.
Honestly, OTA broadcast networks had the formula figured out, many decades ago, and it works just as well today as it did back then. Whatever you like to watch on cable, you can find hours of it on the broadcast networks, every week. That's where all the halfway-decent original shows are developed and air, that's where the most-watched sporting events air, that's where all the best science, history and nature shows air, that's where the best news programs are produced, etc.
Ever since OTA TV went digital (and HD) the "free" option is now the highest quality, all-around. It's also them most convenient option, by far, since you don't have to wait for the cable guy when you move, you can hook-up an unlimited number of TVs and other devices, and there are no restrictions on recording or time-shifting the content. If you're paying for cable, you're really paying $60+/month for the priviledge of lower picture quality and massive inconvenience, and only getting an extra 20% of content out of it that you wouldn't get OTA.
My recomendation... Get a good antenna, and buy or put together a DVR. DVI or HDMI to the TV, and all you need is a $50 ATSC tuner from Hauppauge (IR remote incuded) to make your Myth/Freevo/whatever -box complete. The picture quality will be perfect, and the flexibility is just amazing, as you can add as many tuner cards as your DVR box can physically accomodate, you can watch pre-recorded or live TV from one of the tuners on ANY internet-connected device (eg., my phone), as well as any DVD/Blu-rays you rip to the device, etc.
Now, OTA TV can certainly fill your viewing/entertainment needs, but this can be complimented with the also-free Hulu Desktop to get some cable TV shows, old shows, and junk movies, as well as a (cheap) subscription to Netflix for your movie viewing, and possibly their streaming video selection if you have a compatible device (Linux isn't supported).
This has been my setup for the past 5+ years, and I couldn't be happier. My only concern is moving to an area where I'm too far from the broadcast towers. For anyone in that situation, I see Dish Network's $15/month "Welcome Package" seems perfect, you just need to find a receiver that can be controlled via USB ala Directv, or similar, since depending on IR blasters sucks royally, and I suppose one of those component video capture boxes.
2003 just called. They want their Gentoo Ricers back.
When dealing with something that's performance-critical, recompiling from source is a perfectly valid suggestion. Packages like MPlayer recomend the same thing, for instance. And with Zabbix, we're talking about monitoring hundreds of data points on hundreds of thousands of servers, so the load is right at the edge of what the very fastest servers can handle, and a few percent increase is an important one. Hell, anyone who deals with massive, transaction-intensive databases would tell you this... The database is the bottleneck, and every bit more performance you can pull out of it is a huge win.
When I think of fast databases to compare to, the first thing I think of is MySQL.
MySQL is actually very fast under light loads / one-off queries, and if you choose to leave it at the non-ACID compliant default settings, and similar. eg. "innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit"
That's probably the only reason why it got popular... There weren't any open source NoSQL DBs at the time, and MySQL seems fast when tested with a basic, shallow benchmark. Of course others like PostgreSQL completely leave it in the dust once there's some real load, or complex queries, or you WANT to be absolutely sure transactions were committed to disk before returning.
As a single point of evidence, I give you Zabbix... It supports the use of all the major databases (Postgresql, DB2, Oracle, SQLite, etc.) as backends, yet MySQL is recommended as it performs the fastest. http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/performance_tuning
/Actually, I'd rather see a comparison to Pick or other lightning fast MV dbs
Level-2 overflow! Resize analysis! Change the modulo! Ahhhh!
I've done the PICK-OS thing for a few years, and I'm not a big fan. I'm infinitely happier administering PostgreSQL DBs.
Besides, you don't have to go to something as exotic as PICK to get away from SQL. Try ages-old Berkley DB (db4), or any of the newer NoSQL options.
Clouds don't just make things warmer (at night), they're equally good at keeping temperatures down (during the day). And that's all irrelevant, since I'm not talking about average temperatures... It can cool down to freezing at night, and still potentially set record high temps during the day...
I personally believe that the only way for RIM to survive is to pull a Sega, exit the hardware business, and become a software company.
BB10 is going to be a big change, as is Android app compatibility, so I'd reserve judgment. Additionally, many in-car computer systems have the same base OS and the interoperability could be a big thing.
that the area around L.A. will experience more (and more extreme) hot spells
Why do they get to have all the fun? I was looking forward to seeing global warming hit Death Valley hard, and setting a new high, and breaking it's own record for hottest recorded temperature, ever.
Instead, the deserts have been having pretty mild summers for the past few years, as well as unusually large amounts of snow. And instead, a spot like L.A., which is 72F degrees year-round and only gets out of that long-sleve weather temps for a couple weeks, is going to get all the warming instead? Wha??
People keep spouting these things without actually taking into account that NVIDIA most likely has all sorts of contracts and license agreements they just can't break.
That was a fairly good excuse, say, 10 years ago... If they licensed this stuff on lousy terms, it doesn't stop it from being their own fault. If they haven't solved these licensing problems in over a decade of people shouting about it, they're either incompetent, or just not trying.
They had one hell of a lead back then. Now Intel and AMD are vying to be the king of Linux GPUs, and doing it with open source drivers, and soon nvidia's blob will go from being a necessary evil, to an inferior option for a host of reasons. If they don't get the hint before then, they could well forever lose the entire server and embedded systems markets, and any others where Linux becomes a dominant player.
Is also isn't fair comparing a 2002 iGPU to a 2007 iGPU.
I compared them because it was a direct replacement. The same things are true of every other NVidia card I've got... My 8400, Geforce 4, etc., all similarly "just work" like they should, and always have. Intel is the one releasing hardware with all kinds of issues.
I still suggest avoiding Intel GPUs. The hardware isn't reliable, performance is very poor, and Linux driver support is quite iffy...
My old i845 (P4 era) was a minor nightmare... The (analog) VGA output looked absolutely horrible on my Dell LCD. The DVI output was stable, except it simply crashed and burned when trying to do 1600x1200 over DVI (it could do the same res over VGA no problem) at least under RHEL5.x.
Under RHEL6.x, it was a non-starter... 30 minutes of use or so, and the screen stops redrawing. You've got a mess on your screen, and (thanks to KVM) restarting X11 doesn't fix it... you have to completely reboot.
I've since replaced that system with an GeForce 7025, and everything is working nicely... The (analog) VGA output looks perfect on this same LCD monitor that couldn't handle the i845 output. DVI works perfectly at every supported resolution. And it works perfectly under RHEL6.x with no weird issues thanks to Nouveau.
Add to that the simple fact that AMD systems are usually a better value, and I just have to recommend avoiding Intel's GPUs, no matter how well they're doing supporting open source driver development. They're simply far inferior in every single other way...
I live in a city with a river through it. I really don't know why they aren't doing cooling via air-to-water heat pumps. It's really absurd to blow fans all day when the river could carry away 100X the heat without too many ill effects.
Closed-loop, ground-source heat-pumps are a bit more efficient than an open-loop water-source like you describe, and there's no concern about turning your cool and clear pristine rivers into a warm, stagnant swamp devoid of animal life.
As long as file sharing is illegal, we are expecting the government to enforce ethical behavior. The right thing to do is to pay for the things you value willingly. If you don't, they can and should go away.
Look at the US constitution. When they established copyright, ethics didn't enter into it at all.
What's more, your logic could just as well justify ending all laws, and all government spending. Your mistake is that you've forgotten that it's all one big Prisoner's Dilemma:
Slashdot Mirror
1) Dump a bucket of water over your head. This will DRASTICALLY and almost instantly reduce your temperature considerably. Your head has more blood flow closer to the surface than any other body part, your hair will hold the water quite well improving evaporative effects, and your incoming water pipe maintains a much more steady and comfortable temperature than the air, thanks to the buried pipes (so this works without refrigeration). If people took this advice, there would probably never be another heat-related death, power-outage or not.
2) Reduce your physical activity level, and take much more frequent breaks if you must work. Core body temperature is ~99F degrees, so you shouldn't be uncomfortable at 80F degrees, unless doing a lot of work.
3) Drink plenty of cold water, and include an occasional sports drink, or modest amounts of salt and potassium. People are accustomed to living their lives being dehydrated most of time time, so they don't recognize that they're killing themselves when hot weather comes along, and that it becomes dangerous. Keep cold drinks with you at all times, and use them.
4) Toss your blankets out, so your body is cooler at night, while you sleep. 100% cotton bedsheets are recommended. You'll feel a little cold when going to sleep, but you'll find you'll be vastly more comfortable and able to tolerate high temperatures the next day. This also goes along with making sure you're getting enough sleep... In hot weather especially, failure to do so can become dangerous.
5) Wear the thinnest, lightest, loosest and most breathable cotton clothing you can. Your body is an evaporative cooler, so good clothing can keep you cooler than no clothes at all. Thin, white cotton T-Stirt and loose shorts are recommended. A light, breathable hat can help a lot, but a tight, suffocating hat can be a serious problem, so choose carefully, you may be better off without a hat, sunburn not withstanding.
6) Get as much airflow as you can... It won't help pets or animals that don't sweat (unless you dump some water over them first). but for humans, a ceiling fan or box fan can lower your body temperature by 10-20F degrees. Combine this with dumping lots of water over your head for a huge double-whammy improvement.
7) Make a conscious effort to stay in the shade. Trees are great, as are covered open-air porches. If you must work where there isn't any existing shade, portable canopies are available.
You are completely wrong.
Whenever a program is looking-up the location of a smartphone, that phone is very probably also beaming back a list of all the Wifi APs in-range, their signal strength, and approximate location. Everyone who makes navigation software for smartphones is guaranteed to have such a database, and is continually keeping it up-to-date.
Not only is it practical to do this, and it has been for years and years, it's done because you're likely to get much better accuracy, and a much quicker location fix. You can prove this out by running a navigation app on a tablet that has wifi but lacks a GPS chip. You'll find that Google Maps or anything else has no problem at all pinpointing your location.
And BTW, moving one AP won't cause a problem... Triangulation requires several APs in range, and it'll try to use everything in-range to get a more precise fix so... Short of conspiring to have everyone in an area to move their APs in unison for a significant distance, you're not going to significantly fool the algorithm that handles all of this.
What's more... Before wifi was widespread, the previous fallback was a database with the GPS coordinates, altitudes, power levels, etc., of all of a telco's cell towers. It works, but not as well as the horde of prolific wifi APs these days. And for the record, I am speaking from first-hand knowledge.
Civil Defense is everybody's business. It's your business.
In case of air raid, tune your radio to AM 640 and 1240 kilocycles on your regular radio receiver for Civil Defense Instructions. CONELRAD
ALL broadcasting stations AM, FM, TV in USA/Canada must automatically immediately cease operation, by presidential order
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Cdb_prime_cvr.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxjkMtJA6E
http://conelrad.blogspot.com/
Sand is "free" and widely available, and does an excellent job filtering biological contaminants and suspended solids from any water sources. No expensive and exotic materials are required. It requires minimal knowledge, and can be trivially constructed by any local labor available. Any 2 meter tall container will do. Just fill it with available sand, let the water drain through it, and it'll come out clean on the bottom.
What's this? The one-paragraph summary didn't completely explain the situation, and you're left with questions you'd like answered? Gee, I wish there was some way /. summaries could include some sort of LINK so that people knew where to go to find MORE INFORMATION.
Nonsense. Less than 1/4th of all fresh water goes to domestic use. First, other southern states will start adopting some of California's water conservation methods, like low-flow fixtures (toilets, shower-heads, large-drip sprinklers, leech lines), and then it'll escalate to cutting off of ornamental fountains, and disappearing lawns. In the longer-term, grey water systems will be put in-place, and municipalities will be more inclined to supplement groundwater with recycled (sewer) water.
That's just mind-numbing... This is just a method to make desalination CHEAPER. And desalination is just one method of water filtration and reprocessing. My $10/mo water bill going up, even drastically, will have practically no effect on me, while it will make gathering other water sources, and more aggressive processing methods become economical for municipalities... It's good old supply and demand.
Some people pay more per-gallon for water than they do for gasoline, thanks to "bottled water", so we can obviously afford a higher price here in the first-world.
What saved Apple from bankruptcy was the iMac. It ran classic mac os, and yet made Apple huge amounts of money, which it needed to continue operating long enough to put anything else out there. Copland / NeXT had nothing to do with it (except that the NeXT acquisition also happened to bring in a competent CEO).
Did OS X actually bring-in a lot of new users? Or were they brought-in by the hardware, apps, or advertising, and just happen to use OS X, and would just as easily have used OS9 without complaint? Being an early adopter of a all-new OS is anything but fun.
Sure... That's why millions of users install browser ad-ons which do nothing else but to BLOCK those images, sound, and video.
Browser plug-ins like Quicktime were infinitely better than the current crop of Flash or HTML5 browsers. You just gave it a URL or a file, and a LOCAL, NATIVE player would handle it however it wanted to. Instead we have everyone reinventing the video player, writing a new Flash app to handle it, poorly. And the performance? We had "hardware acceleration" (overlay), full-screen video, zero tearing, etc., back in the early '90s, but now every website designer out there thinks he can invent a better video player app in Flash (with the buttons slightly moved around) than what we've had for decades, and we're all paying for it.
Flash is the big exception, NOT the rule. When you're just embedding images, sound, or video, there's no privacy concerns, and the only security issues are basic buffer overflows that we'd have to handle wherever the player is. But with Flash, it's a whole language in there, which doesn't inherently operate within the confines of the browser. Plugins for images, audio, and video would have no such problems.
Huh? Roku has Hulu... and Hulu has clips of NBC Nightly News. NBC Nightly News happens to be "news programming"
No, no we aren't. We are on the verge of WEB SITES being restricted to using WEB TECHNOLOGIES.
It was an idiotic idea back in the '90s to believe that people WANTED to open a browser, and visit a web page, to launch their client-side apps. A local app on a fat client is still the be-all, end-all of computing.
People may tolerate web apps, but they usually don't WANT them... They're just given no other choice by the developer, usually for reasons of ad placement. Companies like Pandora have their web app, but then have a desktop Adobe AIR version of their web app, but ONLY for PAYING customers.
Hulu was smart enough to release Hulu Desktop to let people get away from their clumsy web interface, but they sure haven't advertised it's existence, and I'd have to call it "quite buggy" even being generous.
Fat clients remain dominant. Smartphones aren't anything special... They just happen to be a huge new money-making opportunity, so developers aren't going to cut-corners (depending on web apps) to capture that market.
I agree. LILO has a simplicity that GRUB lack, and LILO beat-out GRUB for GPT partition table support for a long, long, long, long time... ie. GRUB v1 doesn't officially have GPT support (it's always 3rd party patches) and GRUB2 is just NOW becoming stable!
But LILO hasn't seen much development or interest. If something is going to take over for GRUB, I'd expect it would be extlinux: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/EXTLINUX
Besides getting active development, it's also about as flexible as grub, and completely syntax-compatible with syslinux / isolinux / pxelinux, and all the other bootloaders any pros are going to need to figure out how to configure at some point in their careers... Replacing GRUB with extlinux gets all our bootloaders the same config syntax, without sacrificing anything but GRUB's eccentricities.
"Also HOAs can ban masts higher then 12 feet."
Not true! First off, it's 12ft OVER THE TOP OF YOUR ROOF LINE (if mounted on the ground, a 30+ft mast would still be okay). And second, that's just the cutoff where local authorities (like HOAs) can require some form pre-approval that would delay installation. If you NEED an antenna more tham 12ft above the top of your roof to receive local channels, then they still have to approve your request after a minimal delay UNLESS there's some serious safety issue (eg. low-hanging overhead power lines, or similar).
They can NEVER stop you from installing an antenna or dish ON YOUR ROOF.
The only time an antenna indoors is insufficient would be if you don't have a window facing the direction of the towers, and you're in a fringe area (30+ miles away), or if you DO have a window, but you're more than 50+ miles away. Otherwise, I'd always expect a strong enough signal with a big damn antenna.
Cable TV is almost entirely repeats of OTA broadcast TV shows, and a flood of low-quality "reality" shows. And with the proliferation of cable channels over the years, the content is continually spread ever-thinner. So you have 5 "discovery" channels, and 4 "history" channels, great! ...except that all the content which was formerly on ONE channel is now spread across 4 or 5, and to fill time each channel just has the same 3 hours (of repeats) on each day, playing in a loop. Really, it's incredibly sad.
Honestly, OTA broadcast networks had the formula figured out, many decades ago, and it works just as well today as it did back then. Whatever you like to watch on cable, you can find hours of it on the broadcast networks, every week. That's where all the halfway-decent original shows are developed and air, that's where the most-watched sporting events air, that's where all the best science, history and nature shows air, that's where the best news programs are produced, etc.
Ever since OTA TV went digital (and HD) the "free" option is now the highest quality, all-around. It's also them most convenient option, by far, since you don't have to wait for the cable guy when you move, you can hook-up an unlimited number of TVs and other devices, and there are no restrictions on recording or time-shifting the content. If you're paying for cable, you're really paying $60+/month for the priviledge of lower picture quality and massive inconvenience, and only getting an extra 20% of content out of it that you wouldn't get OTA.
My recomendation... Get a good antenna, and buy or put together a DVR. DVI or HDMI to the TV, and all you need is a $50 ATSC tuner from Hauppauge (IR remote incuded) to make your Myth/Freevo/whatever -box complete. The picture quality will be perfect, and the flexibility is just amazing, as you can add as many tuner cards as your DVR box can physically accomodate, you can watch pre-recorded or live TV from one of the tuners on ANY internet-connected device (eg., my phone), as well as any DVD/Blu-rays you rip to the device, etc.
Now, OTA TV can certainly fill your viewing/entertainment needs, but this can be complimented with the also-free Hulu Desktop to get some cable TV shows, old shows, and junk movies, as well as a (cheap) subscription to Netflix for your movie viewing, and possibly their streaming video selection if you have a compatible device (Linux isn't supported).
This has been my setup for the past 5+ years, and I couldn't be happier. My only concern is moving to an area where I'm too far from the broadcast towers. For anyone in that situation, I see Dish Network's $15/month "Welcome Package" seems perfect, you just need to find a receiver that can be controlled via USB ala Directv, or similar, since depending on IR blasters sucks royally, and I suppose one of those component video capture boxes.
When dealing with something that's performance-critical, recompiling from source is a perfectly valid suggestion. Packages like MPlayer recomend the same thing, for instance. And with Zabbix, we're talking about monitoring hundreds of data points on hundreds of thousands of servers, so the load is right at the edge of what the very fastest servers can handle, and a few percent increase is an important one. Hell, anyone who deals with massive, transaction-intensive databases would tell you this... The database is the bottleneck, and every bit more performance you can pull out of it is a huge win.
MySQL is actually very fast under light loads / one-off queries, and if you choose to leave it at the non-ACID compliant default settings, and similar. eg. "innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit"
That's probably the only reason why it got popular... There weren't any open source NoSQL DBs at the time, and MySQL seems fast when tested with a basic, shallow benchmark. Of course others like PostgreSQL completely leave it in the dust once there's some real load, or complex queries, or you WANT to be absolutely sure transactions were committed to disk before returning.
As a single point of evidence, I give you Zabbix... It supports the use of all the major databases (Postgresql, DB2, Oracle, SQLite, etc.) as backends, yet MySQL is recommended as it performs the fastest.
http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/performance_tuning
Level-2 overflow! Resize analysis! Change the modulo! Ahhhh!
I've done the PICK-OS thing for a few years, and I'm not a big fan. I'm infinitely happier administering PostgreSQL DBs.
Besides, you don't have to go to something as exotic as PICK to get away from SQL. Try ages-old Berkley DB (db4), or any of the newer NoSQL options.
Clouds don't just make things warmer (at night), they're equally good at keeping temperatures down (during the day). And that's all irrelevant, since I'm not talking about average temperatures... It can cool down to freezing at night, and still potentially set record high temps during the day...
BB10 is going to be a big change, as is Android app compatibility, so I'd reserve judgment. Additionally, many in-car computer systems have the same base OS and the interoperability could be a big thing.
Why do they get to have all the fun? I was looking forward to seeing global warming hit Death Valley hard, and setting a new high, and breaking it's own record for hottest recorded temperature, ever.
Instead, the deserts have been having pretty mild summers for the past few years, as well as unusually large amounts of snow. And instead, a spot like L.A., which is 72F degrees year-round and only gets out of that long-sleve weather temps for a couple weeks, is going to get all the warming instead? Wha??
That was a fairly good excuse, say, 10 years ago... If they licensed this stuff on lousy terms, it doesn't stop it from being their own fault. If they haven't solved these licensing problems in over a decade of people shouting about it, they're either incompetent, or just not trying.
They had one hell of a lead back then. Now Intel and AMD are vying to be the king of Linux GPUs, and doing it with open source drivers, and soon nvidia's blob will go from being a necessary evil, to an inferior option for a host of reasons. If they don't get the hint before then, they could well forever lose the entire server and embedded systems markets, and any others where Linux becomes a dominant player.
I compared them because it was a direct replacement. The same things are true of every other NVidia card I've got... My 8400, Geforce 4, etc., all similarly "just work" like they should, and always have. Intel is the one releasing hardware with all kinds of issues.
I still suggest avoiding Intel GPUs. The hardware isn't reliable, performance is very poor, and Linux driver support is quite iffy...
My old i845 (P4 era) was a minor nightmare... The (analog) VGA output looked absolutely horrible on my Dell LCD. The DVI output was stable, except it simply crashed and burned when trying to do 1600x1200 over DVI (it could do the same res over VGA no problem) at least under RHEL5.x.
Under RHEL6.x, it was a non-starter... 30 minutes of use or so, and the screen stops redrawing. You've got a mess on your screen, and (thanks to KVM) restarting X11 doesn't fix it... you have to completely reboot.
I've since replaced that system with an GeForce 7025, and everything is working nicely... The (analog) VGA output looks perfect on this same LCD monitor that couldn't handle the i845 output. DVI works perfectly at every supported resolution. And it works perfectly under RHEL6.x with no weird issues thanks to Nouveau.
Add to that the simple fact that AMD systems are usually a better value, and I just have to recommend avoiding Intel's GPUs, no matter how well they're doing supporting open source driver development. They're simply far inferior in every single other way...
Closed-loop, ground-source heat-pumps are a bit more efficient than an open-loop water-source like you describe, and there's no concern about turning your cool and clear pristine rivers into a warm, stagnant swamp devoid of animal life.
Look at the US constitution. When they established copyright, ethics didn't enter into it at all.
What's more, your logic could just as well justify ending all laws, and all government spending. Your mistake is that you've forgotten that it's all one big Prisoner's Dilemma:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma