What's stopping you from getting a portable TV or DVD player? That's no different at all, and available now.
Anyway, you want to know why you won't see these in US cars? Given our legal system, if you wrecked while watching a movie on your own portable DVD player, you're at fault. However, if you wrecked while watching it on a vendor-supplied device, this could possibly be litigated into liability for the automaker, besides the fact that the commuter is no less stupid for not paying attention to the road. There is precedent for this type of ridiculous judgement with the McDonald's coffee lawsuits, and corporations are rightfully scared of the possibility of such outcomes.
However, this still does not make watching TV in your car a good idea.
Yeah, regardless of the safeguards they talk about (auto-shutoff after 3mph, etc), this is a bad idea, whether in Europe, AsiaPac, or America. Driving is a skill that requires dedicated attention and quick responses to visual stimuli. Providing a mechanism to divert that necessary attention is bad, even when stopped.
Even the heads-down navi systems that are in cars nowadays can lead to bad driving, and they're supposed to be driving aides -- providing web/email access while driving is a "Very Bad Idea".
There's a reason why Walmart is popular in sparsely populated areas -- time. In rural areas, a consumer may have to drive to several different stores separated by great distances to get everything they need for the household. This takes an enormous amount of effort and time. Walmart brings all of these disparate "stores" under one roof, making it much more convenient for rural shoppers to go to Walmart. The tradeoff is that the stores may not be the cleanest or have the greatest variety of products, especially at the high end.
By contrast, in the larger cities, the necessary goods are in closer proximity to one another so that going from one store to another is much less cumbersome. This also creates greater competition for shoppers' dollars, and the stores (on the whole) have a greater variety in order to distinguish one from another. In addition, bigger cities are actively trying to fight back against suburban sprawl and make better use of nearby land. The sheer size of Walmart runs counter to those goals. Therefore, Walmart is disdained in the big cities because it takes up an enormous amount of valuable space and does not stock the high end products that are locally available.
Maybe because that's the point? This is a book about system programming on Solaris, not on Linux, or HP-UX, or even Windoze. If you're looking at this as a generic guide for systems programming, then you have a faulty assumption to start with.
Dude, seriously. Go meet some more people. There are a LOT of people in your age group watching TV, even if you define it as network programming, or cable, or whatever comes through the airwaves or a cable connection.
I would venture to say that more than half the people in your age group worldwide watch TV to some degree, and in "high-tech" countries like the US, Britain, Germany, and Japan, that number is probably upwards of 80-90%. Just because you and your friends don't watch TV doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that to the general population. Your sample set is non-representative and far too small.
I thought this excerpt from the article was more indicative of the Linux/Gaming situation:
Unfortunately, the decision to buy new hardware constantly goes hand in hand with the decision to play some new game - and if it's a gaming machine you want, then Linux isn't the operating system that you need.
IOW, new hardware (especially graphics cards) is purchased in order to run software that can not adequately run on yesterday's gear. Even though the graphics card manufacturers do release Linux drivers, it's the game companies that drive their adoption, and overwhelmingly, this pushes gamers towards Windows.
Of course, you really can't blame the game companies for doing this -- 99% (if not more) of their revenues will come from Windows users. It's a bad risk to put money into developing a Linux offering until you know (1) that the Windows offering is going to succeed, and (2), that there is a critical mass of willing Linux buyers to offset the cost. Otherwise, it doesn't make business sense to do so.
Well, I'm not a vulcanologist, and I didn't even sleep in a Holiday Inn last night, but I do follow vulcanology as something of a hobby, and know a little bit about the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption.
First off, it's not the lava that people should be worried about. Lava flows are for the most part slow. Movies like Volcano and LotR:RotK would have you believe that lava flows are fast, huge, and unavoidable, but for the most part, surface flows are generally localized at any given point in time and move on the average less than 1mph. Steep inclines and subterranean channels can get it to move faster, but it's surface lava that is life-threatening. However, due to its slow progress, it's usually possible to get out of the way of a lava flow (assuming the terrain allows it -- I've been on the lava delta of Kilauea and I wouldn't want to be caught outrunning lava out there -- rocky, glassy hell).
Instead, it's the pyroclastic flows, lahars, tephra, and in the case of the May 1980 eruption, the massive landslide and the lateral blast that are far more destructive than a lava flow. A slow moving lahar (mudflow) can still travel at about 10mph and that's past the ability of most people to sustain at a jog for any length of time. Even getting to higher ground is not a guarantee of being able to escape a lahar. Pyroclastic flows can get up to about 100mph of very hot ash and gas and are for the most part unavoidable. But it was the lateral blast from the 1980 eruption that caused the devastation, sending large chunks of the mountain travelling at over 300mph more than 15 miles away. The blast itself was measured to be roughly equivalent to a 7 megaton explosion. That's almost certain doom within the blast radius. Check here for more info on volcano hazards.
However, it's highly unlikely for MSH to have another eruption during our lifetimes with devastation on the scale of the 1980 blast. I don't think that there's enough earth left between the mountain and the magma chamber to produce a landslide of that proportion again on MSH. Also, from what I've seen so far, it is more likely that a phreatic eruption will occur than a plinian eruption. It is still capable of pyroclastic flows and lahars, but I'm hesitant to believe that a blast and landslide capable of the destruction of the 1980 eruption can occur there again any time soon. Some more good information about the 1980 eruption can be found here.
Anyway, as I said before, I'm an amateur on the subject, so for better or possibly more correct info, I'd suggest contacting the USGS. All things considered though, let's just hope none of us ever have to witness an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. It would likely be one of the last things most people on the planet would ever see.
Seismologists are expecting anywhere from nothing at all (not uncommon following an earthquake swarm, happens at Kilaeua from time to time), to a moderate event.
By comparison, the 1980 blast was a catastrophic event. A medium strength earthquake caused the entire north face of the mountain to crumble in a massive rockslide, which also uncorked the pressure on the magma underneath, resulting in a huge lateral explosion through the rock slide. Imagine a wall of rocks coming at you at 300mph. It's doubtful that something like that will happen again in our lifetimes.
OpenFirmware may help in some ways, but it will not automatically allow you to hotswap memory, hard drives and even CPUs the way Sun servers can. These features will probably NEVER be included on any x86 type box because if you need those features, then x86 is the wrong architecture for the job. Instead, multiple PPC or Sparc would be the right tool.
Which then begs the question, "Is Sun's recent adoption of the AMD Opteron platform for servers beneficial for enterprise customers who require 7x24 uptime?"
I'm a longtime Solaris proponent on SPARC hardware, and I can vouch for the serviceability features of Solaris on Sun's own hardware, but I don't know if that capability extends to the "borrowed" framework (not saying I disbelieve it, saying I don't have the knowledge of Solaris x86 to comment, but my experience with x86 hardware gives me cause for concern).
If he has a family and they are living comfortably while Darl makes money by making false claims, then then it is possible, if unlikely, that there is a cause for complicity here. It's like being married to the mob -- you know what you're getting into when you get in, and that automatically makes you an accomplice.
I will say though that if he has kids under the age of 18, then they should not be held accountable, but if they are 18+ and still benefitting from daddy's frivolities, then they are complicitous as well.
Ok, you're possibly correct on many counts. But the things I'm seeing so far from the Washington spindoctors look suspicious to say the least. One report on CNN said that an American official believes it was a large forest fire. Could you imagine the diplomatic exchange here (apologies to Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and the rest of the loonies):
North Korean official: We've tested a nuke near the China border. US official: No you haven't. NK: Yes we have, and we have the seismographs and radiation signatures to prove it. US: 'Tis but a scratch. It was probably an earthquake. NK: There's a big stinking radioactive hole in the ground! US: We've seen worse. NK: You liar!
[NK tests a second time over the Sea of Japan -- blast seen from Pusan, South Korea and Fukuoka, Japan]
NK: There -- everyone has seen it. Victory is ours. US: Hah! NK: Look you stupid bastard! We've tested twice now, and your own radiation-monitoring satellites confirmed it! US: No they haven't. NK: Look! US: It's just a flesh wound. Could just as easily have been a forest fire. NK: In the Sea of Japan?!? US: Chicken....
Think about it politically. If it was a nuke and Emperor George II acknowledges that, then we're forced into playing ball with the North Koreans, which looks bad in an election year. OTOH, if the White House gets the media to keep it low-key, it sets up plausible deniability for them to make the public believe that they weren't aware of the blast.
Of course, the fact that we're discussing it here means it's no longer being squelched by anyone, so chances are we'll hear something in the morning. Keep an eye out on the morning talk shows -- bet it will be the hot topic tomorrow.
W3C -- bad wording
on
Ballmer on Linux
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The W3C didn't stick up for Microsoft -- they went after Eolas for applying for and obtaining a patent for a technology that has multitudes of prior art. Had the USPTO simply cared enough to research claims like this, there wouldn't have been the need to debunk this claim. The fact that Microsoft stands to benefit (or at least not lose anything) as a result of the W3C's actions is collateral.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, that's intuitive -- exactly what my first response would be as well. I always take my foot off the brake when I want the car to stop.
BTW, if this disengages the auto-park, how do you stop the vehicle from continuing to roll backwards? Hand brake? Seems flawed to me...
All of those features you mention were available on the 1999.5 VW New Jetta GLX (we had one for about 3 years, so it's first hand knowledge here).
Perhaps your friend just didn't get the right Jetta.
What's stopping you from getting a portable TV or DVD player? That's no different at all, and available now.
Anyway, you want to know why you won't see these in US cars? Given our legal system, if you wrecked while watching a movie on your own portable DVD player, you're at fault. However, if you wrecked while watching it on a vendor-supplied device, this could possibly be litigated into liability for the automaker, besides the fact that the commuter is no less stupid for not paying attention to the road. There is precedent for this type of ridiculous judgement with the McDonald's coffee lawsuits, and corporations are rightfully scared of the possibility of such outcomes.
However, this still does not make watching TV in your car a good idea.
Yeah, regardless of the safeguards they talk about (auto-shutoff after 3mph, etc), this is a bad idea, whether in Europe, AsiaPac, or America. Driving is a skill that requires dedicated attention and quick responses to visual stimuli. Providing a mechanism to divert that necessary attention is bad, even when stopped.
Even the heads-down navi systems that are in cars nowadays can lead to bad driving, and they're supposed to be driving aides -- providing web/email access while driving is a "Very Bad Idea".
There's a reason why Walmart is popular in sparsely populated areas -- time. In rural areas, a consumer may have to drive to several different stores separated by great distances to get everything they need for the household. This takes an enormous amount of effort and time. Walmart brings all of these disparate "stores" under one roof, making it much more convenient for rural shoppers to go to Walmart. The tradeoff is that the stores may not be the cleanest or have the greatest variety of products, especially at the high end.
By contrast, in the larger cities, the necessary goods are in closer proximity to one another so that going from one store to another is much less cumbersome. This also creates greater competition for shoppers' dollars, and the stores (on the whole) have a greater variety in order to distinguish one from another. In addition, bigger cities are actively trying to fight back against suburban sprawl and make better use of nearby land. The sheer size of Walmart runs counter to those goals. Therefore, Walmart is disdained in the big cities because it takes up an enormous amount of valuable space and does not stock the high end products that are locally available.
Maybe because that's the point? This is a book about system programming on Solaris, not on Linux, or HP-UX, or even Windoze. If you're looking at this as a generic guide for systems programming, then you have a faulty assumption to start with.
Dude, seriously. Go meet some more people. There are a LOT of people in your age group watching TV, even if you define it as network programming, or cable, or whatever comes through the airwaves or a cable connection.
I would venture to say that more than half the people in your age group worldwide watch TV to some degree, and in "high-tech" countries like the US, Britain, Germany, and Japan, that number is probably upwards of 80-90%. Just because you and your friends don't watch TV doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that to the general population. Your sample set is non-representative and far too small.
It's worked for President Bush so far....
Sounds just like Slashdot....
Or call it a Weapon Of Matter ANnihilation. After all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...
I thought this excerpt from the article was more indicative of the Linux/Gaming situation:
Unfortunately, the decision to buy new hardware constantly goes hand in hand with the decision to play some new game - and if it's a gaming machine you want, then Linux isn't the operating system that you need.
IOW, new hardware (especially graphics cards) is purchased in order to run software that can not adequately run on yesterday's gear. Even though the graphics card manufacturers do release Linux drivers, it's the game companies that drive their adoption, and overwhelmingly, this pushes gamers towards Windows.
Of course, you really can't blame the game companies for doing this -- 99% (if not more) of their revenues will come from Windows users. It's a bad risk to put money into developing a Linux offering until you know (1) that the Windows offering is going to succeed, and (2), that there is a critical mass of willing Linux buyers to offset the cost. Otherwise, it doesn't make business sense to do so.
"Mount St. Helens erupts, and the Apocalypse is upon us."
"News at 11...."
Well, I'm not a vulcanologist, and I didn't even sleep in a Holiday Inn last night, but I do follow vulcanology as something of a hobby, and know a little bit about the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption.
First off, it's not the lava that people should be worried about. Lava flows are for the most part slow. Movies like Volcano and LotR:RotK would have you believe that lava flows are fast, huge, and unavoidable, but for the most part, surface flows are generally localized at any given point in time and move on the average less than 1mph. Steep inclines and subterranean channels can get it to move faster, but it's surface lava that is life-threatening. However, due to its slow progress, it's usually possible to get out of the way of a lava flow (assuming the terrain allows it -- I've been on the lava delta of Kilauea and I wouldn't want to be caught outrunning lava out there -- rocky, glassy hell).
Instead, it's the pyroclastic flows, lahars, tephra, and in the case of the May 1980 eruption, the massive landslide and the lateral blast that are far more destructive than a lava flow. A slow moving lahar (mudflow) can still travel at about 10mph and that's past the ability of most people to sustain at a jog for any length of time. Even getting to higher ground is not a guarantee of being able to escape a lahar. Pyroclastic flows can get up to about 100mph of very hot ash and gas and are for the most part unavoidable. But it was the lateral blast from the 1980 eruption that caused the devastation, sending large chunks of the mountain travelling at over 300mph more than 15 miles away. The blast itself was measured to be roughly equivalent to a 7 megaton explosion. That's almost certain doom within the blast radius. Check here for more info on volcano hazards.
However, it's highly unlikely for MSH to have another eruption during our lifetimes with devastation on the scale of the 1980 blast. I don't think that there's enough earth left between the mountain and the magma chamber to produce a landslide of that proportion again on MSH. Also, from what I've seen so far, it is more likely that a phreatic eruption will occur than a plinian eruption. It is still capable of pyroclastic flows and lahars, but I'm hesitant to believe that a blast and landslide capable of the destruction of the 1980 eruption can occur there again any time soon. Some more good information about the 1980 eruption can be found here.
Anyway, as I said before, I'm an amateur on the subject, so for better or possibly more correct info, I'd suggest contacting the USGS. All things considered though, let's just hope none of us ever have to witness an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. It would likely be one of the last things most people on the planet would ever see.
Well, he does get to suffer through life once a week in color. Of course, considering he's usually shown working on Sundays too....poor guy....
Seismologists are expecting anywhere from nothing at all (not uncommon following an earthquake swarm, happens at Kilaeua from time to time), to a moderate event.
By comparison, the 1980 blast was a catastrophic event. A medium strength earthquake caused the entire north face of the mountain to crumble in a massive rockslide, which also uncorked the pressure on the magma underneath, resulting in a huge lateral explosion through the rock slide. Imagine a wall of rocks coming at you at 300mph. It's doubtful that something like that will happen again in our lifetimes.
Also, "whenever the littlest thing goes wrong, the whole world comes crashing down around her..."
Actually, it looks like Linux....
Netcraft output
---------------
Linux Apache 29-Feb-2004 69.5.25.92 FUTUREQUEST INC
OpenFirmware may help in some ways, but it will not automatically allow you to hotswap memory, hard drives and even CPUs the way Sun servers can. These features will probably NEVER be included on any x86 type box because if you need those features, then x86 is the wrong architecture for the job. Instead, multiple PPC or Sparc would be the right tool.
Which then begs the question, "Is Sun's recent adoption of the AMD Opteron platform for servers beneficial for enterprise customers who require 7x24 uptime?"
I'm a longtime Solaris proponent on SPARC hardware, and I can vouch for the serviceability features of Solaris on Sun's own hardware, but I don't know if that capability extends to the "borrowed" framework (not saying I disbelieve it, saying I don't have the knowledge of Solaris x86 to comment, but my experience with x86 hardware gives me cause for concern).
Last time I checked, Oracle still does this.
Computer is #705, immediately followed by security at #706....
"Yes, Alex, I'll take 'Curious Coincidences' for $200."
If he has a family and they are living comfortably while Darl makes money by making false claims, then then it is possible, if unlikely, that there is a cause for complicity here. It's like being married to the mob -- you know what you're getting into when you get in, and that automatically makes you an accomplice.
I will say though that if he has kids under the age of 18, then they should not be held accountable, but if they are 18+ and still benefitting from daddy's frivolities, then they are complicitous as well.
Hmmm...I wonder how much of the Net's resources are taken up by dupes.
Ok, you're possibly correct on many counts. But the things I'm seeing so far from the Washington spindoctors look suspicious to say the least. One report on CNN said that an American official believes it was a large forest fire. Could you imagine the diplomatic exchange here (apologies to Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and the rest of the loonies):
North Korean official: We've tested a nuke near the China border.
US official: No you haven't.
NK: Yes we have, and we have the seismographs and radiation signatures to prove it.
US: 'Tis but a scratch. It was probably an earthquake.
NK: There's a big stinking radioactive hole in the ground!
US: We've seen worse.
NK: You liar!
[NK tests a second time over the Sea of Japan -- blast seen from Pusan, South Korea and Fukuoka, Japan]
NK: There -- everyone has seen it. Victory is ours.
US: Hah!
NK: Look you stupid bastard! We've tested twice now, and your own radiation-monitoring satellites confirmed it!
US: No they haven't.
NK: Look!
US: It's just a flesh wound. Could just as easily have been a forest fire.
NK: In the Sea of Japan?!?
US: Chicken....
Think about it politically. If it was a nuke and Emperor George II acknowledges that, then we're forced into playing ball with the North Koreans, which looks bad in an election year. OTOH, if the White House gets the media to keep it low-key, it sets up plausible deniability for them to make the public believe that they weren't aware of the blast.
Of course, the fact that we're discussing it here means it's no longer being squelched by anyone, so chances are we'll hear something in the morning. Keep an eye out on the morning talk shows -- bet it will be the hot topic tomorrow.
The W3C didn't stick up for Microsoft -- they went after Eolas for applying for and obtaining a patent for a technology that has multitudes of prior art. Had the USPTO simply cared enough to research claims like this, there wouldn't have been the need to debunk this claim. The fact that Microsoft stands to benefit (or at least not lose anything) as a result of the W3C's actions is collateral.