What are you talking about? Partitioning the power grid to put another generation source online? Since when?
Apologies, let me clarify here. I mean that you would have to section off a "piece" of the power grid that would be powered by this new reactor. Certainly you wouldn't have to divy up the entire grid, which is probably how I made it sound.
Last I had seen, about 15 years ago, you simply brought your altenator as close to phase as you can with the grid, connect into the grid, and let the feedback force you that last tiny bit into phase with it. [...]
I wasn't aware of that, but it seems like one would want his own private section if he was testing a new device. Otherwise, it would probably more difficult to gauge how well it was working. All the more reason to do it far away from everything else, rather than in a big city.
I wonder why they some small "village" in Alaska - perhaps this technology isn't as safe as they might like us to think?;)
There's actually some sound reasoning behind this. By putting such a nuclear reactor in a small village, they will be able to provide power to the entire surrounding area instead of just a fraction. If this was placed in a large city, you would have to somehow partition the power grid into small pieces. Not impossible, but not as easy as simply replacing the diesel generators at this small village.
They may also be trying to market this specifically as a solution for those small, remote sites. Imagine how much diesel fuel would be burned over the course of thirty years -- then realize that a small amount of nuclear fuel could do the same job. Yes, yes, I know that nuclear waste will last much longer than thirty years. The advantage, however, is that nuclear waste is much more manageable and, if taken care of properly, is not as damaging to the environment.
What I've experienced with Linux is thus.
It's for sure an inferior OS to UNIX and Windows because...
1)It's really hard to use
2)Not very stable
3)Has little real security
Considering how close it is to competing UNIX systems in usability, stability, and security, these points don't make any sense. The first depends on you, while the other two are known to be false.
It's for sure dangerous to businesses and business computing in general because...
[snip]
I smell FUD. You need to learn some more about open-source/free software and try this call again.
All I am saying is let's be realistic about what Linux is and is not.
Lovely idea! Let's do that... you first!
I bought RH 8 when it came out and the thing I noticed was I had to do about 6 weeks of almost constant tweeking and refining and reinstalling
I finaly had it about 15% as productive as Windows 98! Think about that!
It is also much much slower that Windows98.
Even though I only load the absolutley minimum processes.
It sounds like you may have some hardware issues to resolve. You also have some English issues to resolve, which is frightening considering that you apparently teach at a major college. It should never take you six weeks of constant tweaking to get RH 8.0 set up the way you like it. If this is the case, you need to be more productive in your tweaking -- consult a friendly geek.
1)It is not faster than Windows
2)Does not manage memory better than NT or XP.
3)The GUI is much less stable and crashes much more than winNT, XP or 98.
Speed is relative and somewhat inconsistent -- some things may be faster while others are not. I personally find that Linux with XFree86 and Sawfish are considerably faster than Windows when performing the same tasks as I would on the other OS.
I'm not sure that your point about stability is even worth gracing with a response. Anyone who has worked in a technical support department and dealt with Windows's B.S. for a few years can tell you that it becomes anything but stable after a while. Most of the window managers I've used on Linux (i.e., WindowMaker, Afterstep, fvwm, Enlightenment, Metacity, Sawfish) have been remarkably stable.
These are just facts.
Hardly. Around here we call them Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt -- so take your pile of mangled English, Mr. Teach, and go home.
This question has been posted and moderated off-topic all over the place lately. Check out CmdrTaco's journal for details on what the Slashdot crew knows so far.
At the moment it appears to be the result of Slashdot's new hardware setup, although even CmdrTaco isn't certain what is causing the trouble.
It really is sad. All that money, technology, and thinking time that could be spent for the advancement of our knowledge.
Without this turning into a "world peace" argument, I think that the only time we'll ever really get anywhere is when the nations begin to work together. The rough part is that that may require a world without religion, without major language barriers, and with more people who see the big picture of our civilization.
I hope so, too. I think that tolerance of ignorance is a very important quality in a support technician, since that type of ignorance is something he/she will deal with quite frequently. Sadly, it's also very difficult to find technicians who are tolerant.
Well if you can do that, then they can say that their computers run Microsoft, just as some1 else can say that their computers run Red Hat, Suse, Gentoo, or Debian.
The difference here is between education and ignorance. When two technicians speak to one another, they will often use the shorthand phrase "IP" instead of "IP address." When a user says "Microsoft," he or she may not know the difference between running Windows 98 and running Windows XP.
I think that your parent post was referring to the fact that many users just aren't versed enough in computing to know that there are different Microsoft products, and consequently may not be able to tell the difference between the similar names "Windows Messaging" and "MSN Messenger."
Wrong ! Every support tech will tell you users don't think. At all.
I disagree. I've been a support technician and network administrator for about six years now and have spoken with thousands of people about various things. A good portion of the user base tries to think and figure things out, but many times the users are simply not educated well enough to see the greater whole of what's happening. There are, of course, those users who just don't get it -- I'll never argue against that point.
We've been organizing community education classes for a long time to help solve the lack of computer education problem -- it helps the users to work successfully on their own, which in turn helps us by lightening our support workload.
The first thing that came to mind as I was browsing the gallery was the classic tune "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel -- all that history, crammed into one exceptional website. Absolutely fantastic.
You're being rather senseless. Something as small and combustible as a person would not survive re-entry but would instead burn up quite quickly.
In general, if you've been paying attention to what they do aboard the I.S.S., you would know that much (if not most) of their work is geared toward the advancement of our civilization's knowledge -- normally through experiments, but also through space exploration and so on.
You're an A.C., so I probably just wasted my breath -- but your somewhat common viewpoint, IMO, needs to be expelled.
Honestly, this initiative from Malaysia is good to see. Much of the spirit behind the international space station effort is international cooperation, which, so far, has included a relatively tight group of nations. There are very bright and promising individuals in Malaysia whom I hope can bring some fresh ideas into the works.
Yes, P.O.S. does mean Point of Sale. But this particular beast fits the other acronym as well.
As frightening as this may be, my employer (which will remain nameless) is still using a 486 SX 25MHz cash register that runs Windows 95 and has a 400MB hard disk. This is the machine that records all of the product sales and time cards for the business.
Even more frightening is that it has fully crashed three times (to the point of format+reinstall) and everyone has to exercise caution when using it -- don't bump it the wrong way, lest it dies and loses all of the employees' hours. But my boss insists that we keep using it.
I really hope we're the only ones who are in this shape.
I actually let it happen. After speaking with my boss, our conclusion was as follows:
People are still getting a "domain not found" error. They still know that the site they entered doesn't exist. While it may be very unfair business practice for Verisign to do this, we didn't see any reason to disable it. The bandwidth required is quite small and we had more pressing things to deal with.
I'm very glad to see it gone (for now), but SiteFinder was more hype than it was trouble.
for one side (Apple) or the other (Intel, et al.) to switch to an organic compound instead of silicon. If that really will allow a huge speed increase, then it seems to follow that whoever adopts this first will have a huge competitive edge.
That's assuming, of course, that the price is half-way reasonable. Anybody have news on that front?
As much as I don't care for adding anything to such a carving (er, writing) device, putting a soft foam gripper (available most anywhere) on a simple Bic pen usually works for me. They're cheap, ubiquitous, and write very smoothly.
The reason why they would pay is pretty simple, too.
When you pay for something, you're paying for both the product and the benefits it provides. For example, when you buy software, you get the peace of mind that nobody can haul you off to jail for having it, along with customer support to help you out when it doesn't work.
If all you're interested in is the product itself, then those benefits might not sound enticing enough. But for the rest of us -- we have enough to worry about. I sure sleep better at night knowing that I don't need a license for my software (except maybe from SCO). I also know that all of my music is paid for.
I hope ICANN sues them so i am not redirected anymore because its against the law.
I'm not sure that your comments are accurate.
While it may be unfair on a number of levels to redirect nonexistant domains, I'm not so sure that it's against the law. A company like Verisign is in control of something that affects a large number of people, which can potentially be used for profitable purposes. Verisign (AFIAK) is still one of the most expensive registrars and is probably looking for other sources of income. Since they control a good chunk of the internet's name resolution, I think this is still within their legal rights. Anyone else with more credibility is welcome to correct me here if I'm wrong.
In terms of general fairness, you're absolutely correct -- benefiting from others' misfortune, be it a mistyped URL or something more serious, is hardly fair. Good luck, ICANN.
While it's not for everybody, the open source solution really seems to make sense if a group or company can get started with it. I work for a small (~2500 customer) ISP in central Michigan and we use a combination of Linux and Windows 2000. When I started at the ISP, it was a Microsoft-only shop. I introduced the first UNIX server -- a FreeBSD machine -- after about six months. It had a much better uptime, could seemingly handle more tasks, and was easily maintained.
But the main reason that it worked, I think, is that I was there to take care of the new FreeBSD server and answer any questions. If a company does not have a knowledgeable *NIX person on staff, then the chances of that company making an open source solution work are probably greatly reduced.
There is still, I think, a good deal to overcome to really get Linux and open source software into businesses for good. It doesn't help to have a free or even much-less-expensive solution if nobody knows how to use it or fix it. Maybe we just need to breed more *NIX-loving types.:)
Quite right. I wish that it were possible to choose which professors to "fast-forward" -- I have a couple in my computer science classes who need to pick up the pace a bit. Honestly, if it can be well-understood at the higher speed, then that's a much more efficient use of time.
The radio industry picked up on this idea a while back, too, as I recall. They would remove the "dead space" between spoken words to get more time in for advertising. Somebody was thinking.
Simple: I'm talking about the kind of emotional and intellectual fulfillment that goes along with doing something good for a large number of people. Designing a nice, useful app is a perfect example of this. The author knows that his/her work is being used and (at some level) appreciated for simply existing.
You may be right about the money, but I whole-heartedly disagree about there not being any glory. I bet that without the glory/satisfaction that accompanies such creation, many open source developers would be spending their free time elsewhere.
I probably should have separated the two a little more clearly. I've known for a long time that spam was about making money. There's clearly no question about that. Sometimes I wonder if we can attribute the spam problems to the increasing laziness of people when searching for jobs. I, for one, could not sleep well at night knowing that was pissing off millions of people by cluttering their mailboxen. Thankfully, I'm at the other end -- working for an ISP and in charge of fighting spam.
But with regard to the destruction caused by virii, where is the reverie in creating something whose only purpose is to destroy and cause all sorts of failures? If people are looking for cognitive reverie, there are plenty of very interesting problems that need to be solved. After all, Riemann Hypothesis is still unproven.:)
Like I said before, I may never understand the virus-making or spamming mentality. But I can live happily and free of guilt that way.
First off, Colbert doesn't think about spam the way I do (or, most probably, the way you do). He likes to call it ''bulk e-mailing,'' for starters. And he considers it just one of the many exciting new markets available on the Internet.
I tend to rank these people just as low on the societal ladder as those who write virii. I understand the thrill and excitement of knowing that your work (albeit destructive) is affecting millions, but why can't these brilliant folks put that energy to use solving problems instead of creating more?
This is an honest question -- why do so many people choose to create destructive and malicious programs instead of harvesting the glory that can be had when a really good app is written? That's simply a mentality that I don't understand and perhaps never will.
Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them?
Good point. I think that as IM users, we often forget that the "communicative" spirit behind instant messaging (unfortunately) isn't what keeps the services working. Someone has to foot the bill for bandwidth, equipment, equipment breakdown, and everything else. We the users tend to feel that if it interferes with our ability to communicate, then it is bad -- and we should call out the wolves, as you said.
See the big picture, people. Anything sponsored or operated by a company (a capitalistic entity) will have profit as its bottom line. That's not our fault, and it's not the company's fault. It's just The Way That They Are(TM).
Slashdot Mirror
Apologies, let me clarify here. I mean that you would have to section off a "piece" of the power grid that would be powered by this new reactor. Certainly you wouldn't have to divy up the entire grid, which is probably how I made it sound.
Last I had seen, about 15 years ago, you simply brought your altenator as close to phase as you can with the grid, connect into the grid, and let the feedback force you that last tiny bit into phase with it. [...]
I wasn't aware of that, but it seems like one would want his own private section if he was testing a new device. Otherwise, it would probably more difficult to gauge how well it was working. All the more reason to do it far away from everything else, rather than in a big city.
-a
There's actually some sound reasoning behind this. By putting such a nuclear reactor in a small village, they will be able to provide power to the entire surrounding area instead of just a fraction. If this was placed in a large city, you would have to somehow partition the power grid into small pieces. Not impossible, but not as easy as simply replacing the diesel generators at this small village.
They may also be trying to market this specifically as a solution for those small, remote sites. Imagine how much diesel fuel would be burned over the course of thirty years -- then realize that a small amount of nuclear fuel could do the same job. Yes, yes, I know that nuclear waste will last much longer than thirty years. The advantage, however, is that nuclear waste is much more manageable and, if taken care of properly, is not as damaging to the environment.
Cheers,
-a
I hope you're joking.
Considering how close it is to competing UNIX systems in usability, stability, and security, these points don't make any sense. The first depends on you, while the other two are known to be false.
[snip]
I smell FUD. You need to learn some more about open-source/free software and try this call again.
Lovely idea! Let's do that... you first!
It sounds like you may have some hardware issues to resolve. You also have some English issues to resolve, which is frightening considering that you apparently teach at a major college. It should never take you six weeks of constant tweaking to get RH 8.0 set up the way you like it. If this is the case, you need to be more productive in your tweaking -- consult a friendly geek.
Speed is relative and somewhat inconsistent -- some things may be faster while others are not. I personally find that Linux with XFree86 and Sawfish are considerably faster than Windows when performing the same tasks as I would on the other OS.
I'm not sure that your point about stability is even worth gracing with a response. Anyone who has worked in a technical support department and dealt with Windows's B.S. for a few years can tell you that it becomes anything but stable after a while. Most of the window managers I've used on Linux (i.e., WindowMaker, Afterstep, fvwm, Enlightenment, Metacity, Sawfish) have been remarkably stable.
Hardly. Around here we call them Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt -- so take your pile of mangled English, Mr. Teach, and go home.
-a
But at least the attempt was made -- and it gave you something to whine or laugh about.
-a
Oh wait, maybe that should have been weaseliest company...
-a
At the moment it appears to be the result of Slashdot's new hardware setup, although even CmdrTaco isn't certain what is causing the trouble.
Cheers,
-a
Without this turning into a "world peace" argument, I think that the only time we'll ever really get anywhere is when the nations begin to work together. The rough part is that that may require a world without religion, without major language barriers, and with more people who see the big picture of our civilization.
God speed, my fine lad..... God speed.
-a
Cheers,
-a
The difference here is between education and ignorance. When two technicians speak to one another, they will often use the shorthand phrase "IP" instead of "IP address." When a user says "Microsoft," he or she may not know the difference between running Windows 98 and running Windows XP.
I think that your parent post was referring to the fact that many users just aren't versed enough in computing to know that there are different Microsoft products, and consequently may not be able to tell the difference between the similar names "Windows Messaging" and "MSN Messenger."
-a
I disagree. I've been a support technician and network administrator for about six years now and have spoken with thousands of people about various things. A good portion of the user base tries to think and figure things out, but many times the users are simply not educated well enough to see the greater whole of what's happening. There are, of course, those users who just don't get it -- I'll never argue against that point.
We've been organizing community education classes for a long time to help solve the lack of computer education problem -- it helps the users to work successfully on their own, which in turn helps us by lightening our support workload.
-a
Bravo!
-a
In general, if you've been paying attention to what they do aboard the I.S.S., you would know that much (if not most) of their work is geared toward the advancement of our civilization's knowledge -- normally through experiments, but also through space exploration and so on.
You're an A.C., so I probably just wasted my breath -- but your somewhat common viewpoint, IMO, needs to be expelled.
-a
-a
As frightening as this may be, my employer (which will remain nameless) is still using a 486 SX 25MHz cash register that runs Windows 95 and has a 400MB hard disk. This is the machine that records all of the product sales and time cards for the business.
Even more frightening is that it has fully crashed three times (to the point of format+reinstall) and everyone has to exercise caution when using it -- don't bump it the wrong way, lest it dies and loses all of the employees' hours. But my boss insists that we keep using it.
I really hope we're the only ones who are in this shape.
-a
People are still getting a "domain not found" error. They still know that the site they entered doesn't exist. While it may be very unfair business practice for Verisign to do this, we didn't see any reason to disable it. The bandwidth required is quite small and we had more pressing things to deal with.
I'm very glad to see it gone (for now), but SiteFinder was more hype than it was trouble.
-a
That's assuming, of course, that the price is half-way reasonable. Anybody have news on that front?
-a
-a
When you pay for something, you're paying for both the product and the benefits it provides. For example, when you buy software, you get the peace of mind that nobody can haul you off to jail for having it, along with customer support to help you out when it doesn't work.
If all you're interested in is the product itself, then those benefits might not sound enticing enough. But for the rest of us -- we have enough to worry about. I sure sleep better at night knowing that I don't need a license for my software (except maybe from SCO). I also know that all of my music is paid for.
-a
I'm not sure that your comments are accurate.
While it may be unfair on a number of levels to redirect nonexistant domains, I'm not so sure that it's against the law. A company like Verisign is in control of something that affects a large number of people, which can potentially be used for profitable purposes. Verisign (AFIAK) is still one of the most expensive registrars and is probably looking for other sources of income. Since they control a good chunk of the internet's name resolution, I think this is still within their legal rights. Anyone else with more credibility is welcome to correct me here if I'm wrong.
In terms of general fairness, you're absolutely correct -- benefiting from others' misfortune, be it a mistyped URL or something more serious, is hardly fair. Good luck, ICANN.
While it's not for everybody, the open source solution really seems to make sense if a group or company can get started with it. I work for a small (~2500 customer) ISP in central Michigan and we use a combination of Linux and Windows 2000. When I started at the ISP, it was a Microsoft-only shop. I introduced the first UNIX server -- a FreeBSD machine -- after about six months. It had a much better uptime, could seemingly handle more tasks, and was easily maintained.
But the main reason that it worked, I think, is that I was there to take care of the new FreeBSD server and answer any questions. If a company does not have a knowledgeable *NIX person on staff, then the chances of that company making an open source solution work are probably greatly reduced.
There is still, I think, a good deal to overcome to really get Linux and open source software into businesses for good. It doesn't help to have a free or even much-less-expensive solution if nobody knows how to use it or fix it. Maybe we just need to breed more *NIX-loving types. :)
The radio industry picked up on this idea a while back, too, as I recall. They would remove the "dead space" between spoken words to get more time in for advertising. Somebody was thinking.
You may be right about the money, but I whole-heartedly disagree about there not being any glory. I bet that without the glory/satisfaction that accompanies such creation, many open source developers would be spending their free time elsewhere.
But with regard to the destruction caused by virii, where is the reverie in creating something whose only purpose is to destroy and cause all sorts of failures? If people are looking for cognitive reverie, there are plenty of very interesting problems that need to be solved. After all, Riemann Hypothesis is still unproven. :)
Like I said before, I may never understand the virus-making or spamming mentality. But I can live happily and free of guilt that way.
I tend to rank these people just as low on the societal ladder as those who write virii. I understand the thrill and excitement of knowing that your work (albeit destructive) is affecting millions, but why can't these brilliant folks put that energy to use solving problems instead of creating more?
This is an honest question -- why do so many people choose to create destructive and malicious programs instead of harvesting the glory that can be had when a really good app is written? That's simply a mentality that I don't understand and perhaps never will.
Good grief.
Good point. I think that as IM users, we often forget that the "communicative" spirit behind instant messaging (unfortunately) isn't what keeps the services working. Someone has to foot the bill for bandwidth, equipment, equipment breakdown, and everything else. We the users tend to feel that if it interferes with our ability to communicate, then it is bad -- and we should call out the wolves, as you said.
See the big picture, people. Anything sponsored or operated by a company (a capitalistic entity) will have profit as its bottom line. That's not our fault, and it's not the company's fault. It's just The Way That They Are(TM).