Norway is a *compact* country ? Pull the other one !
Norway has over 300.000 square kilometers, 20.000km of coast and over 2500km of land-borders, only around 4.5 million people giving a density of something like 14 people a square km.
USA, for comparison has sligthly over 9 million square kms for about 296 million people, giving a density of around 33 pro square km, more than double that of Norway.
I won't argue with the urban-sprawl: It is true that US cities are really hostile to anyone not using a car, but this ain't a fact of nature but rather a result of US politics, so it's something that cannot be used as a valid excuse for Americas ridicolous energy-consumption.
Hydropower helps Norway, true. On the other hand we have quite a lot of pollution from oil and gas plants, among others for supplying USA, so I think overall it evens out. Besides if you compare to Sweden or Germany instead (which don't have significant hydropower) the same picture crystalises.
I haven't "forgotten" that. If America spent a significant portion of its wealth on research to end or reduce pollution, this would indeed be likely to massively help.
In the real world however, the money is used for wars, SUVs and heating/cooling ridicolously underinsulated mansions. Neither of which really help. (nor would it help if the chinese started doing the same thing)
To anyone not living in the USA it's quite obvious that USA currently is more part of the problem than they are part of the solution -- more countries like USA (politically and economically) would hurt more than it would help.
Re:We can all breathe a bit easier
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
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· Score: 4, Insightful
That is true. But it's not reasonable, nor does it make sense, to assume that averag American should or would live like the average Chinese. That would mean a *massive* decrease in comforts.
But there's another measure: Dollars of worth / amount of pollution. In other words, if one country is producing $1000 of services and goods for every ton of CO2 released, they probably have modern industry and don't "waste" as much as another country that produces only $300 of value for every ton of CO2 released.
Measured on such a scale, the USA is actually better than China.
But I don't think Americans should be satisfied that they're better than china, instead they should try comparing themselves to say an average state in the EU, or if they want to aim even higher at say Iceland or Switzerland.
I don't see any obvious reason why an average American needs to pollute around twice as much as the average Norwegian. You *don't* have a higher standard of living, and there's also no reason you need to be less technically advanced. Nor is the reason climate.
It means that two countries can look worse on your statistic simply by entering a union and otherwise change nothing. They'll still pollute the same, but the amount of "other people" will decrease for both of them.
Americans love to play games like these, for the simple reason that measured pro capita, the USA is among the most polluting countries in the world, worse even than countries that have a *higher* standard of living and a colder climate like Canada, Norway or Iceland.
If every chinese started behaving like the average American already do behave, that would lead to a huge increase in pollution.
Do you honestly think that the majority of consumers care about where their products are made?
People are stupid. Advertising works.
We live in Germany, 30km from the Polish border. We recently bougth a new VW car. In Germany the car cost about 16000 euro, in Poland the same car costs around 12000.
Most people buy their cars in Germany all the same -- they wouldn't want any low quality polish crap.
Only, the thing is, the cars are identical, made in the same plant as part of the same series to the same standards.
It astounds me that people happily pay 4000 euros more for the exact same car to avoid getting one thats delivered by a company 30 km away.
The different sizes aren't only for making comparison easier, but also as adaption to travellers allowances in several countries.
For example, when you allowance for hard liquor is 1 liter, it's really inconvenient that "standard" bottles for such in Europe are generally 0.7l and 0.35l. The Tax-free bottles are instead 0.5l and 1.0l which makes more sense in this scenario.
Secondly, the comparison is still pretty easy as prices listed per dacadic unit are very common (in some countries even required by law.) For example, regardless of the bottle-size prices in Germany will generally be listed pro liter. If I go in the shop and look at a 0.7l bottle of Bayleys it migth list the price as: "11.50 (16.43/l)"
Thing is, the typical smoker directly inhales the smoke from a burning cigarette 10 to 30 times a day, if you where to be exposed to similar levels of incense I'd be surprised if your lungs wasn't harmed by it.
It's also rare to see a church as filled with incense-smoke as the typical bar can be with tobacco-smoke.
Still, I have nothing against a disclaimer in an evolution unit saying "this is called the Theory of Evolution. It is not a law because it has not been proven, and other theories exist."
But that's true for literally *every* piece of knowledge you give the kids.
"This book contains information on gravity. Gravity has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book contains information on the second world war. The second world war has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book assumes that individual human beings exist. This has never been proven, and other theories exist."
Singling out *one* theory among thousands and including a special "warning" about it gives the impression that this theory is less supported than any of the others. Doing so on the basis that some religion wants it so is just nuts.
Possably the most important of these is the ability to be tested and provenright or wrong.
Close, but not quite.
Actually, an idea can *never* not even in principle, be "proven" right. (unless you're talking maths, but that's not really an observational science)
You can prove a theory *wrong*, and if you after hundreds or thousands of experiments by lots of people haven't managed to prove it wrong, you confidence in the theory increases. However, the possibility always remains that someone will come tomorrow and show an experiment that proves the theory wrong.
For example, Newtonian mechanics where considered "correct" and supported by literally thousands of experiments over hundreds of years until Einstein came along and showed that actually, Newtonian mechanics are *wrong* it's just that for a special set of circumstances (namely low speed and low distances in relation to ligthspeed) they are a good approximation.
Biometrics will eventually be the solution; it will be very hard to fake retinas, fingerprints, even biomagnetic signatures.
Perhaps, some day biometrics can sensibly be *part* of the solution. Today biometrics plain and simple sucks. You need only search slashdot to learn that a German professor was able to outwit 12 of the around 15 comercially available fingerprint-scanners with a total investment of around $5. (most of them succumbed to the simple combination of graphite-dust and duct-tape)
Also, a large part of the tricky authenthication-problems are online or otherwise without physical closeness; a retina-scan brings you nothing if a trojan on the users machine can capture and play it back. Unlike several other security-measures biometrics are not easily changeable in the case of a compromise.
All authenthication is based on one or more of three factors:
Something you have (key, bank-card)
Something you know (pin, passphrase)
Something you are (biometrics, physical recognition by guard)
Good security is based on a combination of these, possibly all of them. To withdraw money from my account you need to steal (or copy) my physical bank-card (something I have) *and* you need to learn my pin somehow. (something I know)
If you want to visit my bank-box you will need to somehow get posession of my key (something I have), learn the pin (something I know) and you'll need to somehow convince the person in the Bank that you are me, even though you probably don't look anything like me. (there is pictures of me stored with my account in the bank, if you ask to visit the bank-box the cachier will compare you to the stored pictures)
A judgement against a person and a company are two different things. A judgement against a person with no net worth can be essentially worthless.
A judgement against a company means they either pay, or go bankrupt. There is no third option.
Okay, so this means a judgement against a company on the verge of bankruptcy anyway can be worthless. True.
But this doesn't sound like the case here.
I filed for bankruptcy against a company that I had an outstanding judgement against once. Was fun. Oh, I received the money -- by courier -- 3 *hours* after I delivered the bankruptcy-claim against the company.
Turns out creditors of a company gets *real* itchy when they learn there's non-payed judgements against a company, and the itch grows to roll-in-honey-and-sleep-in-ants-nest proportion when such are followed by bankruptcy-claims.
It's not about them being bad in the sense of the people working there trying their best to be evil -- they very obviously do not.
The prime "bad" thing about Microsoft is that they are too large and thus have too large an influence. Any other company in an equally dominant position would likely be just as bad, or worse. We've seen this through history time and time again.
Thus it's fairly uninteresting what MS do -- as long as they're as dominant as they are today, they are a problem. Regardless of if their individual actions are good or bad.
What reason do you have to keep Windows after all the apps you're using are Open Source and available on Linux aswell as Windows anyway ?
I propose that changing a person from using Windows with OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and gaim to using the very same programs under Linux will be a very simple and painless migration. Probably the user would hardly even notice.
Thus, on one hand you're rigth, on the other hand, swapping say MS-Office for OO can be a sensible first step in a Linux-migration strategy.
Sure. Problem is, many of us have been basically giving the *AA no money for years anyway, so they'd not even notice if we started "boycotting" them. The CD-market is basically dependent on 13 year old girls. They're unlikely to become a political force worth considering in the near future.
Meanwhile, I *do* care about my freedom to use my own electronics for purposes of my choosing, but a boycot would, for me, more or less mean doing what I'd do anyway.
Just because you know my name, doesn't prove you are me, neither should knowing my SSN
Bingo.
It's two different problems really. One is: How do you get a unique handle on a person ? As you say, name won't work, there's more than one "John Smith", adding in physical adress leads to duplication, because people move, so "John Smith, Bourbon Street" can very well be the same person as "John Smith, Pennsylvania Avenue".
Adding birthdate helps, but is still no guarantee, there could be two John Smiths both born on say 9.9.1979
For this problem the SSN is a decent solution. If we're talking of the person with SSN XXXXXXXX it's pretty likely we're talking of the same person, assuming every person has exactly one SSN (which ain't true, but it's atleast sorta close)
However SSN is a *lousy* way of verifying identity. Knowing it is no evidence at all that you are the person to which the number belongs.
Over the course of a life you hand out your SSN to several dozens or even several hundred different entities, you don't want all of those to later be able to pretend to be you. (or someone breaking into the computer of one of those)
I know. But the fact remains: for most of the people, most of the time, higher colourdepth is a negligible or even unnoticeable improvement.
Sure, for some people, some of the time, it would make sense. Just as there's some people that some of the time need sound-recordings with higher frequency-ranges and/or more sample-accuracy than standard CD.
I'm just saying there's no significant market for it. In the sense that there's not a large population of people who are willing to pay significantly more to get more colour-space. If there was, we'd have 48-bit graphics-cards already.
8 bit colour is pretty much "enough". I realize this may sound like the infamous 640K is enough for anybody, but really, in this case it pretty much is.
It's more like the situation with CDs -- they're sampled at "only" 44.1khz, and thus unable to capture frequencies higher than half of that. And they have "only" 16 bit resolution. There are newer formats with ridicolous sample-rates and resolutions.
Witness people yawn. It quite simply doesn't interest the overwhelming majority of the people. What interests is instead 128Kbps mp3s with significantly *less* fidelity than CD-audio. Portability, Flexibility, device-independence, easy backups, included metadata, lack of disc-swapping, convenience; matters. Fidelity does not matter (or matters very little) for most people after a certain "good enough" treshold is crossed.
A good quality digital photo displayed on a good quality monitor is for most applications "good enough", there's no large advantages to improving it further. Even if, colorspace isn't the first thing you'd want. More space (as in bigger monitor) and more resolution are both significantly more important.
I'd take a 25" monitor displaying at say 3200x2400 any day over a smaller, lower-resolution one with a larger color-space.
Now there's a large gap between the realism-level of a modern-day computer-game and the sort of images you see if you run lord of the rings from the DVD on your computer. Yet LOTR is *also* in this case displayed in 24-bit colour. This is a gap the games can work on closing -- without requiring more colour-bits.
It depends. But you're correct it should be included in the evaluation, especially for someone (like a business) with a lot of machines.
A typical desktop machine migth consume something like 150W (I'm not talking a tricked-out gamer-machine here, those guys don't care about cost anyway). It migth be used 3 years long, and perhaps 1000 hours a year (that's like 3 hours a day, obviously some machines are used a lot more or a lot less)
That's in the ballpark of 500 Kwh over the lifetime of the machine. If I got a more power-saving machine that got away with 100W, I'd be down to 350Kwh. I'd have saved like $20 at my current power-prices.
That probably ain't enough to make much difference.
If the machine is used for a larger part of the day, like in the extreme case a computer that is on 24/7, the numbers change. Saving $200 on power is more of an argument than saving $20.
Did it ever occur to you that selling oil at the price it takes to pump it up migth not be all that great an idea, given that it's essentially a one-time resource. I.e. you also need to account for the fact that land *with* oil looses value when you pump the oil up and transform it to land without oil.
Selling oil at, or sligthly above the cost of pumping it up would be a loosing proposition.
Doesn't matter. When you talk to a representative of a company, you need the name for one reason: as a handle on the person.
You potentially need to be able to say: "Could I talk to X ?", or "X suggested I should try Y, but that didn't work." or "X promised me last week that my billing-problems would be cleared up, but that doesn't seem to have happened."
Aslong as "X" is some label that stays constant, and is mapped to the rigth person internally in the company, it doesn't matter much what X is. An obvious fantasy-label is actually preferable to a fake name. Stating a fake name is lying, saying that you can be refered to as "CoolElf" makes it *obvious* that that's just a label for work-purposes and not related to your real name.
Because, fundamentally, a program is a sequence of commands for a computer to execute.
10 print "Hello"
20 print "World"
Is also a sequence of commands, for a computer (in this case an interpreter, but that's a detail) to execute.
The issue ain't textual versus graphical, the issue is the very fundamental idea that a computer follows a list of instructions, doing one after another (possibly looping and branching) until it's done.
CS-students learn about computer-science primarily, and only a distant second about licensing. In-depth studies over licensing is law, not CS. Sure, CS students should know the very basics, enough to avoid breaking the law themselves, or atleast enough to know when to consult a lawyer, but licenses are not central to a CS-curriculum.
You can only usefully learn from a program you can study. You can only reasonably study a program where you are allowed picking the program apart and look at the innards. That is a lot more practical for programs that come with source-code.
It's easy to pick say Linux apart and find examples where the kernel use semaphores, spinlocks, linked-lists, heaps, priority-queues, binary trees and a lot of other concepts a CS-student should know about.
It's an exersize in frustration to try the same with say Windows, unless you've got the sourcecode. Actually, doing so with a closed program would teach you more about decompilers etc than it would about the basic algorithms and datastructures. (this migth be a worthwhile thing to learn btw, but it's still something different)
Proprietary linked lists aren't conceptually different to OS linked lists. 99% of the stuff you learn in CS should be totally independent of the license the finished work will be published under.
Negatives can degrade a lot, or only very little, depending on lots of factors.
Digital pictures don't degrade at all, assuming care is taken with enough good backups etc.
I have negatives shot by my great-grandfather that seem to have lost very little quality (it's hard to tell, how would I know what they looked like 80 years ago ?) And I've got 30-40 year old negatives that are so degraded it's hard to even make out the motives.
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Norway has over 300.000 square kilometers, 20.000km of coast and over 2500km of land-borders, only around 4.5 million people giving a density of something like 14 people a square km.
USA, for comparison has sligthly over 9 million square kms for about 296 million people, giving a density of around 33 pro square km, more than double that of Norway.
I won't argue with the urban-sprawl: It is true that US cities are really hostile to anyone not using a car, but this ain't a fact of nature but rather a result of US politics, so it's something that cannot be used as a valid excuse for Americas ridicolous energy-consumption.
Hydropower helps Norway, true. On the other hand we have quite a lot of pollution from oil and gas plants, among others for supplying USA, so I think overall it evens out. Besides if you compare to Sweden or Germany instead (which don't have significant hydropower) the same picture crystalises.
In the real world however, the money is used for wars, SUVs and heating/cooling ridicolously underinsulated mansions. Neither of which really help. (nor would it help if the chinese started doing the same thing)
To anyone not living in the USA it's quite obvious that USA currently is more part of the problem than they are part of the solution -- more countries like USA (politically and economically) would hurt more than it would help.
But there's another measure: Dollars of worth / amount of pollution. In other words, if one country is producing $1000 of services and goods for every ton of CO2 released, they probably have modern industry and don't "waste" as much as another country that produces only $300 of value for every ton of CO2 released.
Measured on such a scale, the USA is actually better than China.
But I don't think Americans should be satisfied that they're better than china, instead they should try comparing themselves to say an average state in the EU, or if they want to aim even higher at say Iceland or Switzerland.
I don't see any obvious reason why an average American needs to pollute around twice as much as the average Norwegian. You *don't* have a higher standard of living, and there's also no reason you need to be less technically advanced. Nor is the reason climate.
It means that two countries can look worse on your statistic simply by entering a union and otherwise change nothing. They'll still pollute the same, but the amount of "other people" will decrease for both of them.
Americans love to play games like these, for the simple reason that measured pro capita, the USA is among the most polluting countries in the world, worse even than countries that have a *higher* standard of living and a colder climate like Canada, Norway or Iceland.
If every chinese started behaving like the average American already do behave, that would lead to a huge increase in pollution.
People are stupid. Advertising works.
We live in Germany, 30km from the Polish border. We recently bougth a new VW car. In Germany the car cost about 16000 euro, in Poland the same car costs around 12000.
Most people buy their cars in Germany all the same -- they wouldn't want any low quality polish crap.
Only, the thing is, the cars are identical, made in the same plant as part of the same series to the same standards.
It astounds me that people happily pay 4000 euros more for the exact same car to avoid getting one thats delivered by a company 30 km away.
For example, when you allowance for hard liquor is 1 liter, it's really inconvenient that "standard" bottles for such in Europe are generally 0.7l and 0.35l. The Tax-free bottles are instead 0.5l and 1.0l which makes more sense in this scenario.
Secondly, the comparison is still pretty easy as prices listed per dacadic unit are very common (in some countries even required by law.) For example, regardless of the bottle-size prices in Germany will generally be listed pro liter. If I go in the shop and look at a 0.7l bottle of Bayleys it migth list the price as: "11.50 (16.43/l)"
Thing is, the typical smoker directly inhales the smoke from a burning cigarette 10 to 30 times a day, if you where to be exposed to similar levels of incense I'd be surprised if your lungs wasn't harmed by it.
It's also rare to see a church as filled with incense-smoke as the typical bar can be with tobacco-smoke.
But that's true for literally *every* piece of knowledge you give the kids.
"This book contains information on gravity. Gravity has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book contains information on the second world war. The second world war has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book assumes that individual human beings exist. This has never been proven, and other theories exist."
Singling out *one* theory among thousands and including a special "warning" about it gives the impression that this theory is less supported than any of the others. Doing so on the basis that some religion wants it so is just nuts.
Close, but not quite.
Actually, an idea can *never* not even in principle, be "proven" right. (unless you're talking maths, but that's not really an observational science)
You can prove a theory *wrong*, and if you after hundreds or thousands of experiments by lots of people haven't managed to prove it wrong, you confidence in the theory increases. However, the possibility always remains that someone will come tomorrow and show an experiment that proves the theory wrong.
For example, Newtonian mechanics where considered "correct" and supported by literally thousands of experiments over hundreds of years until Einstein came along and showed that actually, Newtonian mechanics are *wrong* it's just that for a special set of circumstances (namely low speed and low distances in relation to ligthspeed) they are a good approximation.
In science there are just two kinds of theories:
Perhaps, some day biometrics can sensibly be *part* of the solution. Today biometrics plain and simple sucks. You need only search slashdot to learn that a German professor was able to outwit 12 of the around 15 comercially available fingerprint-scanners with a total investment of around $5. (most of them succumbed to the simple combination of graphite-dust and duct-tape)
Also, a large part of the tricky authenthication-problems are online or otherwise without physical closeness; a retina-scan brings you nothing if a trojan on the users machine can capture and play it back. Unlike several other security-measures biometrics are not easily changeable in the case of a compromise.
All authenthication is based on one or more of three factors:
- Something you have (key, bank-card)
- Something you know (pin, passphrase)
- Something you are (biometrics, physical recognition by guard)
Good security is based on a combination of these, possibly all of them. To withdraw money from my account you need to steal (or copy) my physical bank-card (something I have) *and* you need to learn my pin somehow. (something I know)If you want to visit my bank-box you will need to somehow get posession of my key (something I have), learn the pin (something I know) and you'll need to somehow convince the person in the Bank that you are me, even though you probably don't look anything like me. (there is pictures of me stored with my account in the bank, if you ask to visit the bank-box the cachier will compare you to the stored pictures)
A judgement against a company means they either pay, or go bankrupt. There is no third option.
Okay, so this means a judgement against a company on the verge of bankruptcy anyway can be worthless. True.
But this doesn't sound like the case here.
I filed for bankruptcy against a company that I had an outstanding judgement against once. Was fun. Oh, I received the money -- by courier -- 3 *hours* after I delivered the bankruptcy-claim against the company.
Turns out creditors of a company gets *real* itchy when they learn there's non-payed judgements against a company, and the itch grows to roll-in-honey-and-sleep-in-ants-nest proportion when such are followed by bankruptcy-claims.
The prime "bad" thing about Microsoft is that they are too large and thus have too large an influence. Any other company in an equally dominant position would likely be just as bad, or worse. We've seen this through history time and time again.
Thus it's fairly uninteresting what MS do -- as long as they're as dominant as they are today, they are a problem. Regardless of if their individual actions are good or bad.
What reason do you have to keep Windows after all the apps you're using are Open Source and available on Linux aswell as Windows anyway ?
I propose that changing a person from using Windows with OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and gaim to using the very same programs under Linux will be a very simple and painless migration. Probably the user would hardly even notice.
Thus, on one hand you're rigth, on the other hand, swapping say MS-Office for OO can be a sensible first step in a Linux-migration strategy.
Meanwhile, I *do* care about my freedom to use my own electronics for purposes of my choosing, but a boycot would, for me, more or less mean doing what I'd do anyway.
Bingo.
It's two different problems really. One is: How do you get a unique handle on a person ? As you say, name won't work, there's more than one "John Smith", adding in physical adress leads to duplication, because people move, so "John Smith, Bourbon Street" can very well be the same person as "John Smith, Pennsylvania Avenue".
Adding birthdate helps, but is still no guarantee, there could be two John Smiths both born on say 9.9.1979
For this problem the SSN is a decent solution. If we're talking of the person with SSN XXXXXXXX it's pretty likely we're talking of the same person, assuming every person has exactly one SSN (which ain't true, but it's atleast sorta close)
However SSN is a *lousy* way of verifying identity. Knowing it is no evidence at all that you are the person to which the number belongs.
Over the course of a life you hand out your SSN to several dozens or even several hundred different entities, you don't want all of those to later be able to pretend to be you. (or someone breaking into the computer of one of those)
Sure, for some people, some of the time, it would make sense. Just as there's some people that some of the time need sound-recordings with higher frequency-ranges and/or more sample-accuracy than standard CD.
I'm just saying there's no significant market for it. In the sense that there's not a large population of people who are willing to pay significantly more to get more colour-space. If there was, we'd have 48-bit graphics-cards already.
It's more like the situation with CDs -- they're sampled at "only" 44.1khz, and thus unable to capture frequencies higher than half of that. And they have "only" 16 bit resolution. There are newer formats with ridicolous sample-rates and resolutions.
Witness people yawn. It quite simply doesn't interest the overwhelming majority of the people. What interests is instead 128Kbps mp3s with significantly *less* fidelity than CD-audio. Portability, Flexibility, device-independence, easy backups, included metadata, lack of disc-swapping, convenience; matters. Fidelity does not matter (or matters very little) for most people after a certain "good enough" treshold is crossed. A good quality digital photo displayed on a good quality monitor is for most applications "good enough", there's no large advantages to improving it further. Even if, colorspace isn't the first thing you'd want. More space (as in bigger monitor) and more resolution are both significantly more important.
I'd take a 25" monitor displaying at say 3200x2400 any day over a smaller, lower-resolution one with a larger color-space.
Now there's a large gap between the realism-level of a modern-day computer-game and the sort of images you see if you run lord of the rings from the DVD on your computer. Yet LOTR is *also* in this case displayed in 24-bit colour. This is a gap the games can work on closing -- without requiring more colour-bits.
A typical desktop machine migth consume something like 150W (I'm not talking a tricked-out gamer-machine here, those guys don't care about cost anyway). It migth be used 3 years long, and perhaps 1000 hours a year (that's like 3 hours a day, obviously some machines are used a lot more or a lot less)
That's in the ballpark of 500 Kwh over the lifetime of the machine. If I got a more power-saving machine that got away with 100W, I'd be down to 350Kwh. I'd have saved like $20 at my current power-prices.
That probably ain't enough to make much difference.
If the machine is used for a larger part of the day, like in the extreme case a computer that is on 24/7, the numbers change. Saving $200 on power is more of an argument than saving $20.
Selling oil at, or sligthly above the cost of pumping it up would be a loosing proposition.
You potentially need to be able to say: "Could I talk to X ?", or "X suggested I should try Y, but that didn't work." or "X promised me last week that my billing-problems would be cleared up, but that doesn't seem to have happened."
Aslong as "X" is some label that stays constant, and is mapped to the rigth person internally in the company, it doesn't matter much what X is. An obvious fantasy-label is actually preferable to a fake name. Stating a fake name is lying, saying that you can be refered to as "CoolElf" makes it *obvious* that that's just a label for work-purposes and not related to your real name.
Umm, you're out of your mind. Or more precisely, you're trying to hard to guard your statements. "not that much faster" is rubbish.
Obviously, for "general purpose computing" a GPU would not only not be "that much faster" than a CPU, but indeed, it would be significantly slower
If this wheren't so, we'd offcourse be using our GPUs as CPUs (or more likely, construct CPUs the way GPUs are constructed)
The issue ain't textual versus graphical, the issue is the very fundamental idea that a computer follows a list of instructions, doing one after another (possibly looping and branching) until it's done.
Then follows a period with relatively few failures, the bad production ones have been rooted out, and wear and tear aren't yet starting to show up.
Then, later, the failure-rate climbs again as old age starts to be a problem.
Actually, babies follow a similar curve, A lot more babies die between age 0 and 5 years than do between 5 and 50 years of age.
CS-students learn about computer-science primarily, and only a distant second about licensing. In-depth studies over licensing is law, not CS. Sure, CS students should know the very basics, enough to avoid breaking the law themselves, or atleast enough to know when to consult a lawyer, but licenses are not central to a CS-curriculum.
You can only usefully learn from a program you can study. You can only reasonably study a program where you are allowed picking the program apart and look at the innards. That is a lot more practical for programs that come with source-code.
It's easy to pick say Linux apart and find examples where the kernel use semaphores, spinlocks, linked-lists, heaps, priority-queues, binary trees and a lot of other concepts a CS-student should know about.
It's an exersize in frustration to try the same with say Windows, unless you've got the sourcecode. Actually, doing so with a closed program would teach you more about decompilers etc than it would about the basic algorithms and datastructures. (this migth be a worthwhile thing to learn btw, but it's still something different)
Proprietary linked lists aren't conceptually different to OS linked lists. 99% of the stuff you learn in CS should be totally independent of the license the finished work will be published under.
Digital pictures don't degrade at all, assuming care is taken with enough good backups etc.
I have negatives shot by my great-grandfather that seem to have lost very little quality (it's hard to tell, how would I know what they looked like 80 years ago ?) And I've got 30-40 year old negatives that are so degraded it's hard to even make out the motives.