You can't boot Windows without loading IEHTML. You can boot Linux (or OS X) without loading Gecko, KHTML, Webkit, or whatever.
Glibc != IEHTML. There's no reason that a particular Web Browser's toolkit should be required to start an operating system, and, indeed, when you use Windows Embedded, its not.
It's not about numbers of shared libraries used by each component. It's about the _fact_ that IE's rendering engine is a required part of Windows, regardless of whether or not you ever choose to use IE.
First, making a company give competitors trade secrets in immoral.
You're insane.
IP (Intellectual Property) is not a god given right. IP is government assigned monopoly to promote the arts and sciences. IP is a government subsidy!
Furthermore, corporations exist at the behist of a government. Corporate charters, or the right to do business, and hold assets, are not god given, either; you get the from your local powers-that-be.
We don't live in a corporate state. We live in populous states, where corporations are allowed to exist in order to forward the aims of the people. When the aims of the people conflict with the aims of corporations, and it involves Government Subsidy, not god-given rights, than the aims of the people should (and will, in a proper democracy) prevail.
Microsoft has a monopoly. Therefore, it's a pretty good assumption that they've done their market research and have already set the price of their products for maximum revenue generation: the point at which the sales you'd lose from increasing the price overwhelm the additional income. (There's probably an economics term for this point, but it's been a while...)
The term is "monopoly profits".
Any involuntary price increase at this point can't be a good thing for them, because (assuming rational behavior) they've already set their prices for optimum profit. Increasing them further might not make people immediately switch from Windows, but it could change purchasing patterns in other ways: slowing the upgrade cycle, making piracy or theft more attractive, etc. Yes, it does, basically, work like this. The point of charging "monopoly" profits is to get the consumers to buy an optimal number of products, X, at a high price, Y. The X sold under a system of monopoly profits is significantly lower than X2 that would have been sold under a free market, but the Y is increased at such a level (compared to the Y2 of a free market) that it doesn't matter.
The sole limiting factor of monopoly profits is the market's ability to bear these prices. At a certain point, consumers run out of dollars to spend on Operating Systems; that's the max price.
Simple. The EC declares Microsoft in contempt, leevies a larger fine. Files a complaint with the WTO, files a complaint with the U.S. FTC and SEC. The fine continues to accrue interest.
Microsoft still doesn't pay. The WTO complaint fails. FTC/SEC blow off the EC.
Fine grows larger. EC confiscates Microsoft Europe's assets. Most likely, some nations (like perhaps China/Russia) confiscate some Microsoft assets as well, paying a portion to the EC.
Microsoft still doesn't pay.
EC prohibits Microsoft from doing business in Europe. EC strips Microsoft's European copyright, permitting free distribution of MS products. As you may or may not know, ISPs in Europe are closed related to the government. What would happen next would be nothing other than a full-off declaration of War on Microsoft by the EU, with ISPs blackholing WindowsUpdate in favor of a EuropeanUpdate site (with WGA removed), massive investment of capital by the EU into developing alternative systems, and million upons millions of Linux and/or OS X systems brought online within a year, all bearing the EU's seal of approval.
Don't believe me? Europe's already done something similar with GSM. While that wasn't quite as antagonistic, Europe isn't afraid to build its own analog, at considerable expense (see the Galileo global satellite system). The EU will protect it self, economically, and in terms of security. They'll "steal" Windows if need be, and Europe will happily develop its own OS, most likely, in my estimation, a heavily sponsored version of Linux (SuSE or Mandriva).
I don't think it is FUD, but I do get the impression that they are trying to invent a benchmark that really doesn't make any sense. Different PHP projects can have vastly different performance; and I'm not sure that Plone compares to Sharepoint server. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't use Sharepoint, and I have little/no idea what they did in the test.
My aunt and uncle just immigrated from Iran. He's a surgeon (this means he's quite intelligent), and she is a well-to-do housewife (with a highschool education).
Both are fairly intelligent.
Neither one speaks English (yet; they're learning.) Until recently, neither one knew how a mouse worked, or even what it was!
Both have started their computing careers with SuSE. Both currently read the BBC in Persian, both listen to internet radio, watch Iranian TV online, and both use KTouch in order to learn how to touch type. Both use KDE Translator for contextual translation and speech. My uncle browses the web, uses Google, checks his Gmail; the whole nine yards. My aunt is a little behind, but she only started last week (my Uncle started a month ago).
I don't know who you're average user is, but I guarantee you they have a great deal more aptitude than my aunt & uncle. I think you're overestimating the difficulty of Linux GUIs, and your underestimating "the average user". I do know that I've changed over my office's desktops to Linux, and everyone is (more or less) happy with it.
Furthermore, while I have living, breathing proof of the usability of desktop Linux, I'm 100% sure that my Aunt & Uncle would be totally unable to respond to a Windows spyware catastrophe; and worse, they're exactly the type of noob to fall for the "Click on this link to FIX your computer" type of ad. Do we have that kind of problem with Linux? Nope. They're happily getting on "all of the internets", without my help, and with no more instruction than it would have taken to get them started on Windows.
Hell, my Uncle (this is a man who has _never_ used a computer) takes his Linux Laptop to the library, and browses the internet wirelessly, using NetworkManager. People should really stop denying that Desktop Linux is here; it is, I know; because myself and my immediate family/friends/coworkers all use it.
It's got a poor choice of name for home users, but look at the specs!
I quote: DSL is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution. Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things: Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD) Boot from a USB pen drive Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows) Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install" Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!) Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
Date is either creation date, last access date, or write date. I'm suggesting something that is better controlled by the user.
For example, I write a report, Acme Widget Sales.odt. While I could write the file name as Acme Widget Sales, 2006.06.22, Spanish-Language Widget Sales via Walmart.odt, I'd prefer to put that extra data in the metadata, so that it would be easily searchable. The date I put in is something arbitrary; this means that it may not be the same as creation date, and most likely won't be the same as last access or last modification. Although modern filesystems do store metadata like this, none of the GUIs surrounding modern filesystems have a very convenient technique to add this metadata. This includes OS X, which quite seriously brags about this kind of thing.
What I'd like is a keyboard shortcut that lets me enter metadata without doodling around with my mouse in several different context menus.
It's going to be hard to convert from abundant oil reserves into having to make do without, but we can do it. We will likely see a somewhat lower standard of living while technology is adapted, but it can be done. In the end, scarcity can actually work for our advantage, forcing us to innovate and adapt; after all, we don't lack energy, we just haven't bothered to master gathering it when oil has been so abundant.
It's hard to overstate how true this is.
Historically, gasoline has been cheaper than drinking water. In Tehran, Iran, where gasoline is heavily subsided (even today; around a few cents per galllon. And Iran has little domestic refining capacity; it buys most of its gasoline from overseas providers), people regularly spill gallons of gasoline on to the pavement when filling up their vehicles. Can you imagine someone spilling 3 gallons of gas onto the ground here in the US, with current gas prices (or, heaven forbid, European gas prices?)
I think Energy should be cheap; I think a significant portion of mankinds efforts should be directed at finding cheap energy, and ways to harness this energy in a sustainable fashion. However, the ridiculously cheap price of oil, historically, has really hurt the development of technology in the energy markets. This is all changing now, and I, for one, welcome our new, sustainable power overlords;-)
One barrel of oil is 42 gallons. At $80 a barrel, that's $1.91 per gallon.
This about what you can buy for $1.91. Not very much; and think about what fluids you can buy at $1.91 per gallon.
One of our subsidieries manufactures food products. I can tell you that just about every one of our "drink" products (admittedly more 'high-end' stuff) costs more than that in terms of production cost. And that doesn't include the can; I'm just referring to the juice.
But would I put our 'high-end' caffinated beverages into the same category of important as oil, in terms of usage? No way.
And at $80 a barrel, we're talking about prices that are 10x what they were 6 years ago.
That means $0.19 cents a gallon of oil. How much could you buy for 20 cents, 6 years ago?
The _only_ place where we don't have a 100% ready replacement for oil is the transportation sector. That's it. Replacements for oil, non-transport: 1. Solar 2. Nuclear (France already supplies 80% of its energy needs using nuclear power. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=5369610) 3. Ethanol 4. Natural gas 5. Wind Power (this is another name for solar). 6. Coal 7. Geothermal 8. Hydropower, both tidal and gravity based. (this is _also_ another name for solar).
Using nuclear alone, there's no reason we couldn't sustain 100% of our needs, including all uses of electricity. Using currently avaliable, ethanol-powered vehicles, we could sustain our entire farm economy. Of course, there isn't enough ethanol to drive the _entire_ transport sector; we'd have to limp along with ethanol for light truck agricultural/farm usage, more sophisticated biodiesel for heavy industrial usage, and extremely expensive synthetical gasoline for individual usage. But in the intermediate term, assuming a huge spike in gasoline prices, there's no reason we could shift entirely to a biodiesel (non-corn based) transport economy. My company is involved in some next-gen biodiesel research, and assuming we can land some investment capital, we'll be moving along to the "development" phase. Our existing research has demonstrated that although corn simply isn't efficent enough to cover all of our fuel needs, there are most definitely high cellulose crops (I'm not going to disclose these here, but you can look them up; hint: look on Google scholar) out there that could easily sustain worldwide fuel usage several times over with a minimal amount of land/sea usage.
Assuming a radical shift in fuel prices, I'd also suggest that we'd see alteration in vehicle usage patterns, in the intermediate term. We'd see electric (and therefore nuclear) powered cars in urban areas, with minimal range and capacity. We'd see intracity "cruiser" style vehicles, using biodiesel or other forms of fuel. Perhaps we'll see the development of high-capcity fuel cells (fuel cells, in terms of fuel cycle, are functionally no different that high-capacity batteries. Conventional battery technology is kind of a dead-end, but fuel cells give us a different way to store and use electricity).
I can't discuss this matter in a Slashdot comment, really. There's just too much information, and too many possibilities, all depending upon the price of a gallon of gasoline. In the past, where gasoline was significantly cheaper than drinking water, it really didn't make much sense to look at alternatives. Now, with high prices, and higher prices on the horizon, alternatives are really taking off. The fundamentals of the problem come down to energy; whether you are talking about heating homes, running agricultural equipment, driving your kids to school, or moving tanks around; and ultimately, we're surrounded by vast resevoirs of energy ripe for the taking. We're far more apt to run into political conflicts than to run out of space and/or energy; the former is a social problem requiring social solutions, while the latter is a technical problems requiring a combination of technical solutions and social willpower.
Fortunately, in a free market, the latter (social willpower) is provided by high prices on pre-existing technical solutions.
It's unfortunate that there isn't a concise, easy to use pop-up menu allowing you to add this kind of meta data to file easily (even OpenApple-I is too complex).
Things like dates, comments, etc. . . should be in the searchable metadata for a file, but its really too much trouble to add spotlight (or beagle, or reiserfs, or whatever) metadata. It's _much_ easier just to rename a file.
Arguably, the biggest factor in completing a successful installation comes in the form of driver support. That turned out to be a challenge with Vista. Test Center engineers encountered hardware compatibility difficulties with every machine tested, forcing Windows XP drivers to be used in some cases or, at worst, ignoring the nonfunctioning components. Test Center engineers had the best success with a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T42. (See related story.)
With SUSE Linux, most drivers were included on the installation CD or readily available during the install. The install process includes the ability to automatically retrieve the latest updates, patches and drivers, as long as you have a valid Internet connection during the process. Vista offers a similar capability, but the simple truth is that most drivers are just not available yet. Microsoft has promised that the driver issues will be resolved by the time Vista is released to manufacturing.
How many current devices won't have Vista hardware support? I wager; lots. Linux drivers (at least for hardware in any sort of usage) don't tend to go out of style; it doesn't matter if the companies go broke or not. And with the triumph of ATI and NVIDIA in the 3d market, we should have comprehensive (if not opensource) support for OpenGL Linux now.
Although Linux may not _ever_ acheive significant desktop marketshare, Linux's day in the sun, on the desktop, is today. Linux is a powerful, secure solution that can fill 99% of people's desktop computing needs. I don't give a rats ass (well, that's not totally true, I'd love to see Linux unseat Microsoft, but its not going to happen) about marketshare, but I do care that Linux acheives the necessairy technical sophistication to fullfil my needs, my companies needs, my familys needs, and my customers needs.
Go SuSE! Here's a Rah-Rah-Rah, from a local fanboi.
(flamebait) . . . . that rising ocean levels will wipe out the majority of Louisiana. Hopefully, the majority of these politicos & bible bangers will remain on the coast to pray against the next category 5 hurricane. To bad we have to lose Nawlins (great town), but after all, gotta break a few eggs (free speech? free market? freedom of expression? sane lawmaking?) to make an omlet (bans on harsh video games, ridiculous abortion laws that are unconstitutional before they are signed into law, an apalling tax structure, and the most evil police force in the 50 states.)
Good fucking riddance. You're not welcome any where else, either, because on the whole (and I'm guessing the people responsible for the idiotic law making are the following demographic) you are lazy, stupid, and abuse your children, financially and developmentally. (/flamebait) I understand I'm generalizing, but, statistically, I've found that good old Louisiana's "stupid motherfucker quotient" is higher than just about anywhere else in the world.
No, the grandparent poster is suffering from a common myth.
EULA's are, indeed, enforceable throughout the U.S. There maybe a provision here or there that a judge might have a quibble with, but on the whole there's no reason to think that the EULA would be found invalid.
Ever run a Python or Perl script without Python or Perl? What about the massive number of libraries that you average semi-complicated Linux command line tool requires?
Ever tried to do conversions involving postscript on your system without Ghostscript+variety of other graphics libraries installed?
My question is whether or not this tool will ever work on Mono. My guess is yes, that it will, given the tool is BSD licensed. This is a big step for Microsoft, I hope it works out well for them, and I hope it encourages MS to be more cooperative with open source.
I have a feeling that ODF developed it with MS, under the condition that MS involvement would not be revealed unless the various governments agreed that it would allow Office 2006 to meet purchasing requirements.
That's fucking brilliant, considering that the Teleco's have killed net neutrality.
What, you think they'd give community TV the same priority as their IPTV? Not to meniton you won't be able to get the damn webcast on their set-top boxes.
I dunno. Doesn't work like that on my system. Just tested it with quick time player.
Screenshot is kind of useless, but I took one anyways. This is a on a recent install of a MacBook pro. Have you done anything weird with your system? IIRC, my Girlfriends PowerBook does the same thing, as does my G5 Dual.
Here's the screenie IIRC, if I try to delete anything as a non-admin user, I don't even get a password prompt; it just says "Could not be moved because Applications cannot be modified" with an authenticate button.
This is the only (and primary) account on this system, as is, indeed, an Admin account.
The fine is currently at the 10% level. The fine can be escalated as needed.
The fine is a "non-compliance" fine. This is not a speeding ticket. Microsoft isn't suddenly free-and-clear after paying the fine.
This fine is a "we will continue to punch you in the face until you come into compliance." The next level of "fine" is 50%. Followed by 100%. Followed by whatever escalation is necessary to bring Microsoft into compliance.
Even then, a $25.1 million dollar per day fine is quite significant. I suspected that the cost of producing adequate documentation will occur before the fine reached the 100% level.
Because Honda and VW aren't monopolists. It's really that simple.
Monopolists don't play by the same rules as everyone else. Monopolists have to play by much stricter rules. Especially Monopolists that acheived their status through government regulations and government subsidies.
What's that? You want me to point at the government grants that allowed Microsoft to become a monopoly?
Let me remind you what copyright is. Copyright is a government grant on the monopoly distribution of an intellectual work. The Constitution established the Congress's ability to issue copyright in order to promote the Arts and Sciences. Copyright is an economic tool; not an inalienable right.
Are VW parts, or Honda parts copyright by their creator companies? Last I checked you could go to an autoparts store and by replacements parts from a variety of vendors. The interfaces and connections between various vehicular parts are well documented, if not standard.
The government granted MS a copyright. MS took this copyright, and established a monopoly in the OS market. They then used this monopoly to harm the market, and as such, are subjected to government regulation that their competitors are not. That's the long and the short of the matter.
Irrelevant comparisons to other companies has nothing to do with this.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I think they're gonna pay ;-)
I was just responsing to a commenter who was wondering what would happen if MS didn't pay (just flat out refused).
I don't think MS could stand against the E.U.
That link doesn't work....
You really don't know what you are talking about.
You can't boot Windows without loading IEHTML. You can boot Linux (or OS X) without loading Gecko, KHTML, Webkit, or whatever.
Glibc != IEHTML. There's no reason that a particular Web Browser's toolkit should be required to start an operating system, and, indeed, when you use Windows Embedded, its not.
It's not about numbers of shared libraries used by each component. It's about the _fact_ that IE's rendering engine is a required part of Windows, regardless of whether or not you ever choose to use IE.
First, making a company give competitors trade secrets in immoral.
You're insane.
IP (Intellectual Property) is not a god given right. IP is government assigned monopoly to promote the arts and sciences. IP is a government subsidy!
Furthermore, corporations exist at the behist of a government. Corporate charters, or the right to do business, and hold assets, are not god given, either; you get the from your local powers-that-be.
We don't live in a corporate state. We live in populous states, where corporations are allowed to exist in order to forward the aims of the people. When the aims of the people conflict with the aims of corporations, and it involves Government Subsidy, not god-given rights, than the aims of the people should (and will, in a proper democracy) prevail.
Wake up, and pull your head out of your ass.
Ah, but myself, and my company, are those beatniks.
Much like Novell, IBM, Apple, Sun, Oracle.......
Forgive me for running with such a hippie crowd.
Microsoft has a monopoly. Therefore, it's a pretty good assumption that they've done their market research and have already set the price of their products for maximum revenue generation: the point at which the sales you'd lose from increasing the price overwhelm the additional income. (There's probably an economics term for this point, but it's been a while...)
The term is "monopoly profits".
Any involuntary price increase at this point can't be a good thing for them, because (assuming rational behavior) they've already set their prices for optimum profit. Increasing them further might not make people immediately switch from Windows, but it could change purchasing patterns in other ways: slowing the upgrade cycle, making piracy or theft more attractive, etc.
Yes, it does, basically, work like this. The point of charging "monopoly" profits is to get the consumers to buy an optimal number of products, X, at a high price, Y. The X sold under a system of monopoly profits is significantly lower than X2 that would have been sold under a free market, but the Y is increased at such a level (compared to the Y2 of a free market) that it doesn't matter.
The sole limiting factor of monopoly profits is the market's ability to bear these prices. At a certain point, consumers run out of dollars to spend on Operating Systems; that's the max price.
I know, isn't it great???
We save them from Nazis, they save us from Microsoft!
Simple. The EC declares Microsoft in contempt, leevies a larger fine. Files a complaint with the WTO, files a complaint with the U.S. FTC and SEC. The fine continues to accrue interest.
Microsoft still doesn't pay. The WTO complaint fails. FTC/SEC blow off the EC.
Fine grows larger. EC confiscates Microsoft Europe's assets. Most likely, some nations (like perhaps China/Russia) confiscate some Microsoft assets as well, paying a portion to the EC.
Microsoft still doesn't pay.
EC prohibits Microsoft from doing business in Europe. EC strips Microsoft's European copyright, permitting free distribution of MS products. As you may or may not know, ISPs in Europe are closed related to the government. What would happen next would be nothing other than a full-off declaration of War on Microsoft by the EU, with ISPs blackholing WindowsUpdate in favor of a EuropeanUpdate site (with WGA removed), massive investment of capital by the EU into developing alternative systems, and million upons millions of Linux and/or OS X systems brought online within a year, all bearing the EU's seal of approval.
Don't believe me? Europe's already done something similar with GSM. While that wasn't quite as antagonistic, Europe isn't afraid to build its own analog, at considerable expense (see the Galileo global satellite system). The EU will protect it self, economically, and in terms of security. They'll "steal" Windows if need be, and Europe will happily develop its own OS, most likely, in my estimation, a heavily sponsored version of Linux (SuSE or Mandriva).
Can someone explain it to me?
I don't think it is FUD, but I do get the impression that they are trying to invent a benchmark that really doesn't make any sense. Different PHP projects can have vastly different performance; and I'm not sure that Plone compares to Sharepoint server. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't use Sharepoint, and I have little/no idea what they did in the test.
Anyone have a closer hunch?
My aunt and uncle just immigrated from Iran. He's a surgeon (this means he's quite intelligent), and she is a well-to-do housewife (with a highschool education).
Both are fairly intelligent.
Neither one speaks English (yet; they're learning.) Until recently, neither one knew how a mouse worked, or even what it was!
Both have started their computing careers with SuSE. Both currently read the BBC in Persian, both listen to internet radio, watch Iranian TV online, and both use KTouch in order to learn how to touch type. Both use KDE Translator for contextual translation and speech. My uncle browses the web, uses Google, checks his Gmail; the whole nine yards. My aunt is a little behind, but she only started last week (my Uncle started a month ago).
I don't know who you're average user is, but I guarantee you they have a great deal more aptitude than my aunt & uncle. I think you're overestimating the difficulty of Linux GUIs, and your underestimating "the average user". I do know that I've changed over my office's desktops to Linux, and everyone is (more or less) happy with it.
Furthermore, while I have living, breathing proof of the usability of desktop Linux, I'm 100% sure that my Aunt & Uncle would be totally unable to respond to a Windows spyware catastrophe; and worse, they're exactly the type of noob to fall for the "Click on this link to FIX your computer" type of ad. Do we have that kind of problem with Linux? Nope. They're happily getting on "all of the internets", without my help, and with no more instruction than it would have taken to get them started on Windows.
Hell, my Uncle (this is a man who has _never_ used a computer) takes his Linux Laptop to the library, and browses the internet wirelessly, using NetworkManager. People should really stop denying that Desktop Linux is here; it is, I know; because myself and my immediate family/friends/coworkers all use it.
Try Damn Small Linux?
It's got a poor choice of name for home users, but look at the specs!
I quote:
DSL is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.
Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
Boot from a USB pen drive
Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize
Yes, and no :)
Date is either creation date, last access date, or write date. I'm suggesting something that is better controlled by the user.
For example, I write a report, Acme Widget Sales.odt. While I could write the file name as Acme Widget Sales, 2006.06.22, Spanish-Language Widget Sales via Walmart.odt, I'd prefer to put that extra data in the metadata, so that it would be easily searchable. The date I put in is something arbitrary; this means that it may not be the same as creation date, and most likely won't be the same as last access or last modification. Although modern filesystems do store metadata like this, none of the GUIs surrounding modern filesystems have a very convenient technique to add this metadata. This includes OS X, which quite seriously brags about this kind of thing.
What I'd like is a keyboard shortcut that lets me enter metadata without doodling around with my mouse in several different context menus.
It's going to be hard to convert from abundant oil reserves into having to make do without, but we can do it. We will likely see a somewhat lower standard of living while technology is adapted, but it can be done. In the end, scarcity can actually work for our advantage, forcing us to innovate and adapt; after all, we don't lack energy, we just haven't bothered to master gathering it when oil has been so abundant.
;-)
It's hard to overstate how true this is.
Historically, gasoline has been cheaper than drinking water. In Tehran, Iran, where gasoline is heavily subsided (even today; around a few cents per galllon. And Iran has little domestic refining capacity; it buys most of its gasoline from overseas providers), people regularly spill gallons of gasoline on to the pavement when filling up their vehicles. Can you imagine someone spilling 3 gallons of gas onto the ground here in the US, with current gas prices (or, heaven forbid, European gas prices?)
I think Energy should be cheap; I think a significant portion of mankinds efforts should be directed at finding cheap energy, and ways to harness this energy in a sustainable fashion. However, the ridiculously cheap price of oil, historically, has really hurt the development of technology in the energy markets. This is all changing now, and I, for one, welcome our new, sustainable power overlords
One barrel of oil is 42 gallons. At $80 a barrel, that's $1.91 per gallon.
This about what you can buy for $1.91. Not very much; and think about what fluids you can buy at $1.91 per gallon.
One of our subsidieries manufactures food products. I can tell you that just about every one of our "drink" products (admittedly more 'high-end' stuff) costs more than that in terms of production cost. And that doesn't include the can; I'm just referring to the juice.
But would I put our 'high-end' caffinated beverages into the same category of important as oil, in terms of usage? No way.
And at $80 a barrel, we're talking about prices that are 10x what they were 6 years ago.
That means $0.19 cents a gallon of oil. How much could you buy for 20 cents, 6 years ago?
Nothing.
Huh? Are you crazy?
y Id=5369610)
The _only_ place where we don't have a 100% ready replacement for oil is the transportation sector. That's it.
Replacements for oil, non-transport:
1. Solar
2. Nuclear (France already supplies 80% of its energy needs using nuclear power. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
3. Ethanol
4. Natural gas
5. Wind Power (this is another name for solar).
6. Coal
7. Geothermal
8. Hydropower, both tidal and gravity based. (this is _also_ another name for solar).
Using nuclear alone, there's no reason we couldn't sustain 100% of our needs, including all uses of electricity. Using currently avaliable, ethanol-powered vehicles, we could sustain our entire farm economy. Of course, there isn't enough ethanol to drive the _entire_ transport sector; we'd have to limp along with ethanol for light truck agricultural/farm usage, more sophisticated biodiesel for heavy industrial usage, and extremely expensive synthetical gasoline for individual usage. But in the intermediate term, assuming a huge spike in gasoline prices, there's no reason we could shift entirely to a biodiesel (non-corn based) transport economy. My company is involved in some next-gen biodiesel research, and assuming we can land some investment capital, we'll be moving along to the "development" phase. Our existing research has demonstrated that although corn simply isn't efficent enough to cover all of our fuel needs, there are most definitely high cellulose crops (I'm not going to disclose these here, but you can look them up; hint: look on Google scholar) out there that could easily sustain worldwide fuel usage several times over with a minimal amount of land/sea usage.
Assuming a radical shift in fuel prices, I'd also suggest that we'd see alteration in vehicle usage patterns, in the intermediate term. We'd see electric (and therefore nuclear) powered cars in urban areas, with minimal range and capacity. We'd see intracity "cruiser" style vehicles, using biodiesel or other forms of fuel. Perhaps we'll see the development of high-capcity fuel cells (fuel cells, in terms of fuel cycle, are functionally no different that high-capacity batteries. Conventional battery technology is kind of a dead-end, but fuel cells give us a different way to store and use electricity).
I can't discuss this matter in a Slashdot comment, really. There's just too much information, and too many possibilities, all depending upon the price of a gallon of gasoline. In the past, where gasoline was significantly cheaper than drinking water, it really didn't make much sense to look at alternatives. Now, with high prices, and higher prices on the horizon, alternatives are really taking off. The fundamentals of the problem come down to energy; whether you are talking about heating homes, running agricultural equipment, driving your kids to school, or moving tanks around; and ultimately, we're surrounded by vast resevoirs of energy ripe for the taking. We're far more apt to run into political conflicts than to run out of space and/or energy; the former is a social problem requiring social solutions, while the latter is a technical problems requiring a combination of technical solutions and social willpower.
Fortunately, in a free market, the latter (social willpower) is provided by high prices on pre-existing technical solutions.
Can't you eliminate stuff like that using "" ?
It's unfortunate that there isn't a concise, easy to use pop-up menu allowing you to add this kind of meta data to file easily (even OpenApple-I is too complex).
Things like dates, comments, etc. . . should be in the searchable metadata for a file, but its really too much trouble to add spotlight (or beagle, or reiserfs, or whatever) metadata. It's _much_ easier just to rename a file.
From the article. This is b-e-a-utiful:
Arguably, the biggest factor in completing a successful installation comes in the form of driver support. That turned out to be a challenge with Vista. Test Center engineers encountered hardware compatibility difficulties with every machine tested, forcing Windows XP drivers to be used in some cases or, at worst, ignoring the nonfunctioning components. Test Center engineers had the best success with a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T42. (See related story.)
With SUSE Linux, most drivers were included on the installation CD or readily available during the install. The install process includes the ability to automatically retrieve the latest updates, patches and drivers, as long as you have a valid Internet connection during the process. Vista offers a similar capability, but the simple truth is that most drivers are just not available yet. Microsoft has promised that the driver issues will be resolved by the time Vista is released to manufacturing.
How many current devices won't have Vista hardware support? I wager; lots. Linux drivers (at least for hardware in any sort of usage) don't tend to go out of style; it doesn't matter if the companies go broke or not. And with the triumph of ATI and NVIDIA in the 3d market, we should have comprehensive (if not opensource) support for OpenGL Linux now.
Although Linux may not _ever_ acheive significant desktop marketshare, Linux's day in the sun, on the desktop, is today. Linux is a powerful, secure solution that can fill 99% of people's desktop computing needs. I don't give a rats ass (well, that's not totally true, I'd love to see Linux unseat Microsoft, but its not going to happen) about marketshare, but I do care that Linux acheives the necessairy technical sophistication to fullfil my needs, my companies needs, my familys needs, and my customers needs.
Go SuSE! Here's a Rah-Rah-Rah, from a local fanboi.
(flamebait)
. . . . that rising ocean levels will wipe out the majority of Louisiana. Hopefully, the majority of these politicos & bible bangers will remain on the coast to pray against the next category 5 hurricane. To bad we have to lose Nawlins (great town), but after all, gotta break a few eggs (free speech? free market? freedom of expression? sane lawmaking?) to make an omlet (bans on harsh video games, ridiculous abortion laws that are unconstitutional before they are signed into law, an apalling tax structure, and the most evil police force in the 50 states.)
Good fucking riddance. You're not welcome any where else, either, because on the whole (and I'm guessing the people responsible for the idiotic law making are the following demographic) you are lazy, stupid, and abuse your children, financially and developmentally.
(/flamebait)
I understand I'm generalizing, but, statistically, I've found that good old Louisiana's "stupid motherfucker quotient" is higher than just about anywhere else in the world.
No, the grandparent poster is suffering from a common myth.
EULA's are, indeed, enforceable throughout the U.S. There maybe a provision here or there that a judge might have a quibble with, but on the whole there's no reason to think that the EULA would be found invalid.
Yet Another Reason to Avoid Microsoft Software.
It's really not too silly.
Ever run a Python or Perl script without Python or Perl? What about the massive number of libraries that you average semi-complicated Linux command line tool requires?
Ever tried to do conversions involving postscript on your system without Ghostscript+variety of other graphics libraries installed?
My question is whether or not this tool will ever work on Mono. My guess is yes, that it will, given the tool is BSD licensed. This is a big step for Microsoft, I hope it works out well for them, and I hope it encourages MS to be more cooperative with open source.
I have a feeling that ODF developed it with MS, under the condition that MS involvement would not be revealed unless the various governments agreed that it would allow Office 2006 to meet purchasing requirements.
That's fucking brilliant, considering that the Teleco's have killed net neutrality.
What, you think they'd give community TV the same priority as their IPTV? Not to meniton you won't be able to get the damn webcast on their set-top boxes.
You think all americans are computer literate?
I dunno. Doesn't work like that on my system. Just tested it with quick time player.
Screenshot is kind of useless, but I took one anyways. This is a on a recent install of a MacBook pro. Have you done anything weird with your system? IIRC, my Girlfriends PowerBook does the same thing, as does my G5 Dual.
Here's the screenie IIRC, if I try to delete anything as a non-admin user, I don't even get a password prompt; it just says "Could not be moved because Applications cannot be modified" with an authenticate button.
This is the only (and primary) account on this system, as is, indeed, an Admin account.
The fine is currently at the 10% level. The fine can be escalated as needed.
The fine is a "non-compliance" fine. This is not a speeding ticket. Microsoft isn't suddenly free-and-clear after paying the fine.
This fine is a "we will continue to punch you in the face until you come into compliance." The next level of "fine" is 50%. Followed by 100%. Followed by whatever escalation is necessary to bring Microsoft into compliance.
Even then, a $25.1 million dollar per day fine is quite significant. I suspected that the cost of producing adequate documentation will occur before the fine reached the 100% level.
Because Honda and VW aren't monopolists. It's really that simple.
Monopolists don't play by the same rules as everyone else. Monopolists have to play by much stricter rules. Especially Monopolists that acheived their status through government regulations and government subsidies.
What's that? You want me to point at the government grants that allowed Microsoft to become a monopoly?
No problem. Here you go.
Let me remind you what copyright is. Copyright is a government grant on the monopoly distribution of an intellectual work. The Constitution established the Congress's ability to issue copyright in order to promote the Arts and Sciences. Copyright is an economic tool; not an inalienable right.
Are VW parts, or Honda parts copyright by their creator companies? Last I checked you could go to an autoparts store and by replacements parts from a variety of vendors. The interfaces and connections between various vehicular parts are well documented, if not standard.
The government granted MS a copyright. MS took this copyright, and established a monopoly in the OS market. They then used this monopoly to harm the market, and as such, are subjected to government regulation that their competitors are not. That's the long and the short of the matter.
Irrelevant comparisons to other companies has nothing to do with this.