This is great but there is still a long way to go. Renewable capacity is not really comparable to fossil fuel power station capacity because the coal / gas ones can run 24/7...
To get a better picture of where we are check out http://grid.iamkate.com/ . Basically in the last year UK electricity was 19% from renewable sources with fossil fuels at 48%.
It didn't "confirm" it was caused by man, as it didn't set out to and doesn't claim to.
Nevertheless the collected data seem to indicate a steady increase in temperature. This has coincided with increased emissions of CO2 (while many other factors remained constant, or more precisely didn't vary enough to allow anyone to claim correlation). This of course does not mean that it's _caused_ by the increased emissions of CO2.
But if my belly starts aching I look at what I ate that others didn't. And if I ate something that others didn't (say a dodgy kebab) and I feel bad and they don't then of course I can't claim I feel bad because of the kebab. But I'm sure not going to have the same kebab next time. I don't wait for a double blind study done on a statistically significant sample to confirm to within some statistical error that the kebab is indeed bad.
You'd think that Italian MEPs would have better things to worry about right now, like not being able to borrow money if it wasn't for ECB and possibly not being able to pay their debts.
But no, that c.nt wants to have a way to let the government to spy on everyone.
Not content with lowering power usage and reducing energy loss, the University hopes to extend the environmental credentials of the new network by installing mini wind-turbines or solar panels, both of which output a DC current and therefore don’t require inefficient conversion from AC to DC.
My school physics may be a bit rusty but I would assume wind turbines produce either pulsating DC or AC and hence the current has to be converted before use by electronics.
I'm very happy that majority of users use IE. This makes it still the most attractive target for hackers. In turn that means that they have less time to work on exploits for the browser I'm using. "Security through obscurity" works in this case (though of course the phrase comes originally from open source vs. closed source).
I can see where your arguments are coming from and I think your opinion makes sense.
However anyone can download the code from their website and compile it on the iphone simulator (which, together with XCode is a free download from Apple). You could argue that you still need a non-free os to run it which won't make RMS happy, but then again on a PC you more often than not have a non free BIOS that's needed to run the OS. And pretty much any computer has a non-free hardware.
Because of this, and other reasons, in my opinion there's nothing wrong with selling a GPL program on the Itunes store as long as anyone who bought it can get the source code.
Think about what sort of programming you would like to do. Remember that writing software is only a way of solving some wider problem, so think what should that be? What would you love doing? To get anywhere as a programmer you have to undersand and enjoy working in the wider field. Very few people end up writing OS kernels or other "programming for the sake of computers". The rest of us make tools for other people (Word processors, painting programs, CAD, banking software, databases, you name it). Think which of these above would you enjoy working on.
Once you've decided on that, choose any language you like, and start working on some small relevant project. Once you have something put the link on your CV. At our company, once we get someone's CV and it looks good, we go to google and find what the guy has done. Publications, software projects etc. Then we decide whether to interview. During the interview we'll talk about that. We don't care whether the person can do Java or C++ if they're graduates. (even though we prefer C++).
Good point. At the moment, if you don't own a TV you don't pay. But the license fee will be extended in a few years time to cover PC ownership. So once that happens you'd expect that you won't be forced to use a computer with an OS from a particular vendor, to get the most out of your fee.
I don't quite believe the BBC is serious. If the Linux / Mac player has fewer features than the Windows player, then maybe BBC will let people with only Mac / Linux computers at home to pay a lower license fee? Unless the versions are equal in terms of quality I will consider refusing to pay the fee in full. A bit of civil disobedience might be in order.
(note to non-UK readers: every household with a TV has to pay BBC a compulsory license fee of about GBP 120 per year)
It's entirely realistic to imagine that they migrated some apps from UNIX (AIX, Solaris, who cares) to Linux. It's easier to port software from UNIX to Linux (if you're lucky you just recompile). Porting to Windows could have been a major hassle.
Re:If Ballmer thinks it's a bad idea
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At least he didn't say anything about "squrting" anything on pictures of your kids or whatever it was he was on about the time when he talked about Zune.
By default, you mean the way it's _supposed_ to work? I don't know a single Windows user who uses the sleep feature on a regular basis, because it's not 100% reliable. With this sort of thing even a 95% reliability is going to put you of. Of the few people I know who use a Mac laptop, I don't know a single one who doesn't just close the lid.
s soon as there's a discernable pattern, somebody's going to exploit that pattern in order to make more money, and as soon as that happens, the original pattern gets interrupted, thus stabilizing the marketplace. Perfect? No. But damned good.
People seem to forget that stock prices do, at least occasionally, reflect reality. So the "original pattern" might not get interrupted. Imagine the classical example of company that pretend to have found gold. At some point the truth comes out and the stock price of the company has nowhere to go but down.
Which reflects the wider problem with computers trading. They do not take reality into account. Maybe once you have an AI engine that can crawl the internet and other news sources faster then humans, then you might be onto something.
Dude, I did. The guy completely forgot about risk. In his theory goods cost something to produce, including what's paid in wages. Then they're sold for a price. The difference between the price for which it's sold and what it cost to produce is pocketed by the owner of the factory. Marx says that it's stolen from the workers. He does not realize that there's risk in deciding to produce anything. I.e. it might be also worthless by the time it's made. I'm sorry but that's a rather basic mistake.
We Europeans are so clever compared to the stupid redneck Bush voting Americans. Let's go and laugh at them. Bull....! Each culture cherishes notions that have no basis in reality. I wonder how many people in Europe would respond positively to the question: "Karl Marx's theory of class struggle and his economic theories of production were basically correct." I bet the answer would be "a lot". Perhaps more than the number of Americans believing in creationism. Just check who was voted as the most important philosopher ever by the BBC audience.
If you have a driver that's loaded as a kernel extension (or a module in Linux), then it executes with kernel privileges. If there is a flaw in the driver then you can "get root". No mainstream OS that I'm aware of provides the level of separation, between kernel space and drivers, that would prevent this kind of exploit from "getting root".
Yes my comment was a bit tongue in cheek. And I agree with you entirely (Surprised?). I don't believe that telling people to be energy efficient works. I think that taxing petrol in such a way that would promote energy efficiency is the way to go. Of course you can't whack a 50% tax on petrol straight away. But you can tell people that the tax will increase by 2% per year (until you reach the desired level) and you might achieve the desired effect. It still won't make you a popular politician.
I think that the American politicians need to wake up to the fact that freedom to drive cars that do 15mpg is not worth risk of climate change and the associated misery (read costs).
Maybe someone should try telling Americans the same thing about cars. To paraphrase the legislation "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of cars."
While I see your point I have two objections: First, PowerMacs are not PCs but workstations. They're designed with the assumption that the CPU will run at 100% for a whole year 24/7. Even if you said the same about a beige box PC it would not make my point less valid. You would have to say something like: we have a cluster of 1000 desktop PCs and we only had one fan failing in a year, so you're clearly underestimating modern PCs.
Actually I see the problem as being two-fold. All those free computer cycles are not that free. Modern CPUs consume more electricity to do more work and someone has to pay the electricity bills. Busy CPUs need more cooling and fans that run at full throttle for a year do wear out and fail (and you risk burning some important component, even if the PC is designed to shut down when it detects overheating). That's simply because desktop PCs are desktop PCs and not workstations and the assumption is that the fans will have to run at full throttle for maybe half an hour at a time. The real costs are not easy to work out, but it might, just might be more efficient to donate the money to charity.
The other problem is deciding which project deserves most attention. I think it's well beyond me to judge whether computer time is better spent running climate change simulations or protein folding for some medical research. Hence if someone wishes to donate computer time it will be useful if all one had to do is to download a BOINC like client that will then run whatever the server sends it. Of course you'd need a reputable institution with a sensible scientific board running the server...
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This is great but there is still a long way to go. Renewable capacity is not really comparable to fossil fuel power station capacity because the coal / gas ones can run 24/7...
To get a better picture of where we are check out http://grid.iamkate.com/ . Basically in the last year UK electricity was 19% from renewable sources with fossil fuels at 48%.
It didn't "confirm" it was caused by man, as it didn't set out to and doesn't claim to.
Nevertheless the collected data seem to indicate a steady increase in temperature. This has coincided with increased emissions of CO2 (while many other factors remained constant, or more precisely didn't vary enough to allow anyone to claim correlation). This of course does not mean that it's _caused_ by the increased emissions of CO2.
But if my belly starts aching I look at what I ate that others didn't. And if I ate something that others didn't (say a dodgy kebab) and I feel bad and they don't then of course I can't claim I feel bad because of the kebab. But I'm sure not going to have the same kebab next time. I don't wait for a double blind study done on a statistically significant sample to confirm to within some statistical error that the kebab is indeed bad.
Second that!
You'd think that Italian MEPs would have better things to worry about right now, like not being able to borrow money if it wasn't for ECB and possibly not being able to pay their debts.
But no, that c.nt wants to have a way to let the government to spy on everyone.
The whole article is full of strange statements.
Consider the following part:
Not content with lowering power usage and reducing energy loss, the University hopes to extend the environmental credentials of the new network by installing mini wind-turbines or solar panels, both of which output a DC current and therefore don’t require inefficient conversion from AC to DC.
My school physics may be a bit rusty but I would assume wind turbines produce either pulsating DC or AC and hence the current has to be converted before use by electronics.
They meant to say it's more reliable, because there are fewer parts inside the computer that could fail.
You could argue in the opposite direction: if the main ACDC converter fails, all the computers go down, not just one. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
I'm very happy that majority of users use IE. This makes it still the most attractive target for hackers. In turn that means that they have less time to work on exploits for the browser I'm using. "Security through obscurity" works in this case (though of course the phrase comes originally from open source vs. closed source).
I can see where your arguments are coming from and I think your opinion makes sense.
However anyone can download the code from their website and compile it on the iphone simulator (which, together with XCode is a free download from Apple). You could argue that you still need a non-free os to run it which won't make RMS happy, but then again on a PC you more often than not have a non free BIOS that's needed to run the OS. And pretty much any computer has a non-free hardware.
Because of this, and other reasons, in my opinion there's nothing wrong with selling a GPL program on the Itunes store as long as anyone who bought it can get the source code.
Think about what sort of programming you would like to do. Remember that writing software is only a way of solving some wider problem, so think what should that be? What would you love doing? To get anywhere as a programmer you have to undersand and enjoy working in the wider field. Very few people end up writing OS kernels or other "programming for the sake of computers". The rest of us make tools for other people (Word processors, painting programs, CAD, banking software, databases, you name it). Think which of these above would you enjoy working on.
Once you've decided on that, choose any language you like, and start working on some small relevant project. Once you have something put the link on your CV. At our company, once we get someone's CV and it looks good, we go to google and find what the guy has done. Publications, software projects etc. Then we decide whether to interview. During the interview we'll talk about that. We don't care whether the person can do Java or C++ if they're graduates. (even though we prefer C++).
Because for each tv owning household in the UK pays the BBC over 100 pounds a year.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Good point. At the moment, if you don't own a TV you don't pay. But the license fee will be extended in a few years time to cover PC ownership. So once that happens you'd expect that you won't be forced to use a computer with an OS from a particular vendor, to get the most out of your fee.
I don't quite believe the BBC is serious. If the Linux / Mac player has fewer features than the Windows player, then maybe BBC will let people with only Mac / Linux computers at home to pay a lower license fee? Unless the versions are equal in terms of quality I will consider refusing to pay the fee in full. A bit of civil disobedience might be in order.
(note to non-UK readers: every household with a TV has to pay BBC a compulsory license fee of about GBP 120 per year)
Finally a sensible comment from someone who knows what's going on. I'm Czech and I fell exactly the same.
It's entirely realistic to imagine that they migrated some apps from UNIX (AIX, Solaris, who cares) to Linux. It's easier to port software from UNIX to Linux (if you're lucky you just recompile). Porting to Windows could have been a major hassle.
At least he didn't say anything about "squrting" anything on pictures of your kids or whatever it was he was on about the time when he talked about Zune.
By default, you mean the way it's _supposed_ to work? I don't know a single Windows user who uses the sleep feature on a regular basis, because it's not 100% reliable. With this sort of thing even a 95% reliability is going to put you of. Of the few people I know who use a Mac laptop, I don't know a single one who doesn't just close the lid.
s soon as there's a discernable pattern, somebody's going to exploit that pattern in order to make more money, and as soon as that happens, the original pattern gets interrupted, thus stabilizing the marketplace. Perfect? No. But damned good.
People seem to forget that stock prices do, at least occasionally, reflect reality. So the "original pattern" might not get interrupted. Imagine the classical example of company that pretend to have found gold. At some point the truth comes out and the stock price of the company has nowhere to go but down.
Which reflects the wider problem with computers trading. They do not take reality into account. Maybe once you have an AI engine that can crawl the internet and other news sources faster then humans, then you might be onto something.
Dude, I did. The guy completely forgot about risk. In his theory goods cost something to produce, including what's paid in wages. Then they're sold for a price. The difference between the price for which it's sold and what it cost to produce is pocketed by the owner of the factory. Marx says that it's stolen from the workers. He does not realize that there's risk in deciding to produce anything. I.e. it might be also worthless by the time it's made. I'm sorry but that's a rather basic mistake.
We Europeans are so clever compared to the stupid redneck Bush voting Americans. Let's go and laugh at them. Bull....! Each culture cherishes notions that have no basis in reality. I wonder how many people in Europe would respond positively to the question: "Karl Marx's theory of class struggle and his economic theories of production were basically correct." I bet the answer would be "a lot". Perhaps more than the number of Americans believing in creationism. Just check who was voted as the most important philosopher ever by the BBC audience.
If you have a driver that's loaded as a kernel extension (or a module in Linux), then it executes with kernel privileges. If there is a flaw in the driver then you can "get root". No mainstream OS that I'm aware of provides the level of separation, between kernel space and drivers, that would prevent this kind of exploit from "getting root".
Yes my comment was a bit tongue in cheek. And I agree with you entirely (Surprised?). I don't believe that telling people to be energy efficient works. I think that taxing petrol in such a way that would promote energy efficiency is the way to go. Of course you can't whack a 50% tax on petrol straight away. But you can tell people that the tax will increase by 2% per year (until you reach the desired level) and you might achieve the desired effect. It still won't make you a popular politician.
I think that the American politicians need to wake up to the fact that freedom to drive cars that do 15mpg is not worth risk of climate change and the associated misery (read costs).
Maybe someone should try telling Americans the same thing about cars. To paraphrase the legislation "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of cars."
Yeah, but wouldn't you want to have a job with the title of "penetration engineer"?
While I see your point I have two objections: First, PowerMacs are not PCs but workstations. They're designed with the assumption that the CPU will run at 100% for a whole year 24/7. Even if you said the same about a beige box PC it would not make my point less valid. You would have to say something like: we have a cluster of 1000 desktop PCs and we only had one fan failing in a year, so you're clearly underestimating modern PCs.
Actually I see the problem as being two-fold. All those free computer cycles are not that free. Modern CPUs consume more electricity to do more work and someone has to pay the electricity bills. Busy CPUs need more cooling and fans that run at full throttle for a year do wear out and fail (and you risk burning some important component, even if the PC is designed to shut down when it detects overheating). That's simply because desktop PCs are desktop PCs and not workstations and the assumption is that the fans will have to run at full throttle for maybe half an hour at a time. The real costs are not easy to work out, but it might, just might be more efficient to donate the money to charity.
The other problem is deciding which project deserves most attention. I think it's well beyond me to judge whether computer time is better spent running climate change simulations or protein folding for some medical research. Hence if someone wishes to donate computer time it will be useful if all one had to do is to download a BOINC like client that will then run whatever the server sends it. Of course you'd need a reputable institution with a sensible scientific board running the server...