You're right about solar panels in that they do take up a metric butt-load of space. As for cleaning them, that is a real problem. If only we had the technology to do that automatically. Maybe some kind of wiper blades attached to an oscillating motor to clear away particulates so that light could pass through a transparent medium designed to shield the panels from the wind... Hmmm... What technology could we possibly posses that would accomplish this feat of engineering?
If only it was that easy. You see, sand and all sorts of sharp particles have a tendency of scratching things and solar panels are very easy to scratch. The kinds of wipers they use on cars would quickly result in severe deterioration in the panels' effectiveness. If it was that easy then why do you think they don't already use that? There are plenty of companies like e.g. http://www.solarfarmcleaning.c... that are specifically aimed at providing high-quality cleaning-services and you can just google "solar farm cleaning" to find dozens more.
I think it would be wiser to spend the big money on improving solar panel and battery tech.
There is already huge amounts of research thrown into solar, even more funding is unlikely to yield any faster research. As for batteries -- they don't generate energy. Batteries are about distributing energy that's generated elsewhere and as such do not solve the same problems.
but the thing that Solar has over rivers and coastline is that everyone has a view of the sky.
The thing about solar is.. it requires huge amounts of space and it's fucking expensive to maintain. The panels collect dust, pollen, bird crap, snow, younameit, and either someone has to go there physically and spend time cleaning them up or you have to have some sort of a robotic system for that. Even just a small amount of stuff on the panel can quickly drop its efficiency by several percentage points.
Well, you replied to yourself with that link. If you'd read the page you'd notice the link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... which is a galaxy with several supermassive stars.
I didn't know of XPrivacy, I'd like to thank you heartily for mentioning it here! I'm not the kind of person who just installs everything that I come across on my phone and, actually, I only have a small selection of apps installed at all times, but still, should I need something I don't quite trust I would definitely like something like this between my data and the app.
As the anon says, it's been stated on Nouveau's website for ages. Similarly, googling for "nouveau reclocking" or similar shows plenty of posts and websites dating at least to 30.1.2012. So basically, it's been discussed a lot, it's been discussed even here on Slashdot, and you've just missed the whole thing. Calling others "propellerheads" for your failures isn't quite fair.
Note that's essentially saving information about the decoding and then the coded information, sort of like how compression works. Which for most files would be essentially free.
No, you are talking out of your ass there. First of all, if the system worked like you explain it then having the decode - block itself get corrupted would render every single file relying on it invalid, so you'd still end up having to maintain at least a second copy of the decode - block and checksums for them both, but you'd still have two points of breakage that, if ever corrupted, would still render everything corrupted. That's really shitty design. On a similar note, maintaining such a decode - block is far from being "free" -- try compressing e.g. a 2-hour movie and you'll notice that most likely it only just got slightly bigger, not smaller. Then do the same while you enabled recovery mode, ie. the compression system writes a second decode - block in the file, and the file will certainly get even bigger. Go on, try it, you'll see.
More likely it is bad RAM, and not using ECC RAM. Or flaky power supply. Maybe in the process of copying the file or saving it the data buffer got corrupted.
The hard disk (or CD or DVD, OP does not mention at all what type of physical storage he is using) has built-in error correction so the data shouldn't be easily corrupted.
Mmmmno. If he had bad RAM he would be having a lot more issues with the system than just 28 broken files over 6 years. And no, HDDs do not have built-in error correction, they have checksums -- those things are not the same thing.
Bitrot isn't the fault of the filesystem unless something is badly buggy. It's the fault of the underlying storage-device itself. Attacking HFS+ for something like that is just silly. Now, with that said there are filesystems out there that can guard against bitrot, most notably Btrfs and ZFS. Both Btrfs and ZFS can be used just like a regular filesystem where no parity-information or duplicate copies are saved and in such a case there is no safety against bitrot, but once you enable parity they can silently heal any affected files without issues. The downside? Saving parity consumes a lot more HDD-space, and that's why it's not done by default by most filesystems.
You're missing the point: it's coming from HP. They won't make any of it an open standard, they'll patent it up all the wazoo and then demand bajillions of dollars from anyone else who tries to do something even remotely similar and they'll lock all their customers. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath, waiting for a PC-like surge of a new computer-arch. I will get all excited and piss my pants from joy once someone comes up with a completely open arch that allows the same kind of flexibility that the PC-scene does, but not before.
That means sensitive touch controls with very little lag
No. That means no touch controls. Touch controls force you to look at where you're placing your fingers and what's happening. Actual physical knobs and buttons can be used even without looking.
We already use robots (or drones if you will) to kill people.
That's what I was just coming here to say: robots and AI doesn't have to be evil as long as the people controlling the string are. It's as simple as that. And seemingly most of the people who have the resources to craft stuff like that and industrialize these things do quite a lot of evil things. So, basically, it's just a matter of time and research.
A lot of/. readers fancy themselves as good programmers and one of the marks of a good programmer is often described as being able to learn a new programming language quickly. A good programmer has learned the "how" of programming, so the language is just a tool. The good programmer thinks "I need a loop here" and then picks the appropriate loop mechanism offered by the language. It would be the bad programmers who whine because Language X doesn't have Feature Y and then throw a tantrum like a toddler instead of figuring out how to accomplish the task in Language X. If we were to apply this concept more generally to just using Windows 8, the good programmers would have taken the 5-10 minutes it takes to master the bulk of the start screen, figured out any potential benefits to their daily workflow, and integrated them before simply moving on. It would be the bad programmers who spend hours whining about Windows 8's new start screen on places like/. instead of following the example of the good programmers. The bad programmers would also be the ones who are so shallow they can't even look past the surface of the OS to see the many technical improvements made.
You're oversimplifying things there and jumping to conclusions. A good programmer doesn't just adapt to this or that language and suck it up; no, they choose the right tools and language for task. Sure, you could code an entire OS in Fortran, but would that be the right language for that task? No, it wouldn't. So why would these "good programmers" stick with Windows 8's Start Screen if it doesn't suit them? It's a waste of time and productivity to use something that doesn't suit you and then trying to force your way of working to it.
I, for example, could certainly do all the things I already do with the Start Screen, it's not about being able to or not being able to. The reasons for why I don't use it are that it's an enormous waste of space, the transition to the menu and back is jarring and the old-style menu is simply more functional for my needs. I choose the method that suits my needs and workflow better than the other one, and that's the concept you seemingly fail to grasp.
No one sane uses physical media anymore. I sure as hell don't intend to, Netflix is far superior. And why should I find some other solution when I just said that I am already on Windows 8? I didn't lose anything by moving from 7 to 8 as long as I am using Start8, but I did gain slightly faster boot and the improved Netflix - app.
I'm in similar situation as the OP, ie. I'm using Start8 to add a Start-menu and disable the various hot corners and the likes. The system looks and works pretty much like Windows 7, but it boots slightly faster. I could totally have stayed with Windows 7, but I went with 8 simply because I wanted the Netflix - app; Netflix in the browser is limited to only 720p and stereo-sound whereas the Netflix - app on 8 can do 1080p and 5.1 surround. What can I say, I'm a movie buff.
Everyone is always bashing PHP even when they don't have any good reason for that, it's kind of like it's trendy to bash on World of Warcraft or stuff. Well, I happen to like PHP, I use it in my own stuff all the time. Sure, I don't use any of the more advanced features nor do I maintain a 50k+ codebase, but for my own use it's been great.
You're missing out on the deep, highly insightful story; it's a story about the evolution and raging wars between various kinds of super-intelligent devices that use lies and deception to make lesser, but more agile two-legged creatures do their bidding all the while letting those creatures think they're the ones in charge.
Using percentages when speaking of a sample size of...god damn 10 conditions....is just really effing stupid and looks like it was specifically meant as click-baiting. The honest way of saying this would have been simply "The researchers sampled 10 conditions on Wikipedia and found that 9 of them were incorrect." See? No alarmist "90%omgomgworld'sgoingtoburn" bullshit there.
Now, call me back when the sample size is actually worth a damn. 10 conditions out of all the bajillion different ones mentioned on Wikipedia is simply too little to draw any sort of meaningful rule about the quality of them all.
PayPal screws people over almost everywhere on the planet.
TFTFY.
Tbh, PayPal works great if you just use it for payments. I have never sold anything on the Internet, so I have no experience with such stuff, but I use PayPal to pay for stuff all the damn time and I find it just absolutely god damn great for that. I certainly don't want to spread my credit card details all over the Internet and no other payment system comes even close to reaching all the places PayPal does.
you do it so you get nasty pathogens off your body, and don't get infected wounds.
You don't have to wash the whole body just to keep a wound clean, you know? It's perfectly possible to just clean and sanitize the wound and the surrounding area.
I take a step somewhere in-between: I shower every 3-4 days, depending on how dirty I feel. Even then, I only wash my body with water, no soaps or cleansers or anything like that, though I do use some basic shampoo and conditioner on my hair. If I take showers more often my skin immediately starts to feel a lot drier and flakier. I dunno if my experiences match anyone else's, but it seems to suit my body quite fine.
At the same time, he's now a convicted felon. Which, in the US at least, most likely means he will never be able to get a decent job ever again.
Well, he did display severe lack of respect for other peoples' data, time and money and set out to deliberately cause harm for nothing more than getting fired. He clearly showed that he is not a person who should be in such a position and the chances are that next time he'd just be more careful about leaving evidence behind. If he had just gotten fines or something he might get another job in a similar position and cause even worse things.
I do get what you're coming at, but of the two choices I believe prison is the more correct one. Should there be a third option, something that would mean that he'd really, really, really have to work and prove himself if he wanted to again get in a position where he is responsible for other peoples' data and equipment, but if he instead aimed for something where he isn't in such a position of power he'd have the same chances as everyone else? Sure, but I don't know if there is such an option.
I just tried it between my desktop and laptop and I didn't notice any degradation at all, it looked really pretty. I was only getting around 25FPS, though, so it looks like H/W encoding of the stream wasn't working for some reason. Steam is supposed to be capable of using H/W encoding and decoding, but something didn't work right with my rig. On the other hand, if it did work properly I would assume that playing games like that would totally be feasible and enjoyable, and since both of my rigs are pretty much outdated I would assume it works better on newer stuff!
Slashdot Mirror
You're right about solar panels in that they do take up a metric butt-load of space. As for cleaning them, that is a real problem. If only we had the technology to do that automatically. Maybe some kind of wiper blades attached to an oscillating motor to clear away particulates so that light could pass through a transparent medium designed to shield the panels from the wind ... Hmmm ... What technology could we possibly posses that would accomplish this feat of engineering?
If only it was that easy. You see, sand and all sorts of sharp particles have a tendency of scratching things and solar panels are very easy to scratch. The kinds of wipers they use on cars would quickly result in severe deterioration in the panels' effectiveness. If it was that easy then why do you think they don't already use that? There are plenty of companies like e.g. http://www.solarfarmcleaning.c... that are specifically aimed at providing high-quality cleaning-services and you can just google "solar farm cleaning" to find dozens more.
I think it would be wiser to spend the big money on improving solar panel and battery tech.
There is already huge amounts of research thrown into solar, even more funding is unlikely to yield any faster research. As for batteries -- they don't generate energy. Batteries are about distributing energy that's generated elsewhere and as such do not solve the same problems.
but the thing that Solar has over rivers and coastline is that everyone has a view of the sky.
The thing about solar is.. it requires huge amounts of space and it's fucking expensive to maintain. The panels collect dust, pollen, bird crap, snow, younameit, and either someone has to go there physically and spend time cleaning them up or you have to have some sort of a robotic system for that. Even just a small amount of stuff on the panel can quickly drop its efficiency by several percentage points.
Well, you replied to yourself with that link. If you'd read the page you'd notice the link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... which is a galaxy with several supermassive stars.
I didn't know of XPrivacy, I'd like to thank you heartily for mentioning it here! I'm not the kind of person who just installs everything that I come across on my phone and, actually, I only have a small selection of apps installed at all times, but still, should I need something I don't quite trust I would definitely like something like this between my data and the app.
As the anon says, it's been stated on Nouveau's website for ages. Similarly, googling for "nouveau reclocking" or similar shows plenty of posts and websites dating at least to 30.1.2012. So basically, it's been discussed a lot, it's been discussed even here on Slashdot, and you've just missed the whole thing. Calling others "propellerheads" for your failures isn't quite fair.
Note that's essentially saving information about the decoding and then the coded information, sort of like how compression works. Which for most files would be essentially free.
No, you are talking out of your ass there. First of all, if the system worked like you explain it then having the decode - block itself get corrupted would render every single file relying on it invalid, so you'd still end up having to maintain at least a second copy of the decode - block and checksums for them both, but you'd still have two points of breakage that, if ever corrupted, would still render everything corrupted. That's really shitty design. On a similar note, maintaining such a decode - block is far from being "free" -- try compressing e.g. a 2-hour movie and you'll notice that most likely it only just got slightly bigger, not smaller. Then do the same while you enabled recovery mode, ie. the compression system writes a second decode - block in the file, and the file will certainly get even bigger. Go on, try it, you'll see.
More likely it is bad RAM, and not using ECC RAM. Or flaky power supply. Maybe in the process of copying the file or saving it the data buffer got corrupted.
The hard disk (or CD or DVD, OP does not mention at all what type of physical storage he is using) has built-in error correction so the data shouldn't be easily corrupted.
Mmmmno. If he had bad RAM he would be having a lot more issues with the system than just 28 broken files over 6 years. And no, HDDs do not have built-in error correction, they have checksums -- those things are not the same thing.
Bitrot isn't the fault of the filesystem unless something is badly buggy. It's the fault of the underlying storage-device itself. Attacking HFS+ for something like that is just silly. Now, with that said there are filesystems out there that can guard against bitrot, most notably Btrfs and ZFS. Both Btrfs and ZFS can be used just like a regular filesystem where no parity-information or duplicate copies are saved and in such a case there is no safety against bitrot, but once you enable parity they can silently heal any affected files without issues. The downside? Saving parity consumes a lot more HDD-space, and that's why it's not done by default by most filesystems.
You're missing the point: it's coming from HP. They won't make any of it an open standard, they'll patent it up all the wazoo and then demand bajillions of dollars from anyone else who tries to do something even remotely similar and they'll lock all their customers. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath, waiting for a PC-like surge of a new computer-arch. I will get all excited and piss my pants from joy once someone comes up with a completely open arch that allows the same kind of flexibility that the PC-scene does, but not before.
How does someone with a LOW BUDGET even have 10's of thousands of smart tv's in range of an RF signal?
Rooftop, a tall tree, a drone and so on -- you just need a transmitter and a high place to go with it.
That means sensitive touch controls with very little lag
No. That means no touch controls. Touch controls force you to look at where you're placing your fingers and what's happening. Actual physical knobs and buttons can be used even without looking.
We already use robots (or drones if you will) to kill people.
That's what I was just coming here to say: robots and AI doesn't have to be evil as long as the people controlling the string are. It's as simple as that. And seemingly most of the people who have the resources to craft stuff like that and industrialize these things do quite a lot of evil things. So, basically, it's just a matter of time and research.
A lot of /. readers fancy themselves as good programmers and one of the marks of a good programmer is often described as being able to learn a new programming language quickly. A good programmer has learned the "how" of programming, so the language is just a tool. The good programmer thinks "I need a loop here" and then picks the appropriate loop mechanism offered by the language. It would be the bad programmers who whine because Language X doesn't have Feature Y and then throw a tantrum like a toddler instead of figuring out how to accomplish the task in Language X. If we were to apply this concept more generally to just using Windows 8, the good programmers would have taken the 5-10 minutes it takes to master the bulk of the start screen, figured out any potential benefits to their daily workflow, and integrated them before simply moving on. It would be the bad programmers who spend hours whining about Windows 8's new start screen on places like /. instead of following the example of the good programmers. The bad programmers would also be the ones who are so shallow they can't even look past the surface of the OS to see the many technical improvements made.
You're oversimplifying things there and jumping to conclusions. A good programmer doesn't just adapt to this or that language and suck it up; no, they choose the right tools and language for task. Sure, you could code an entire OS in Fortran, but would that be the right language for that task? No, it wouldn't. So why would these "good programmers" stick with Windows 8's Start Screen if it doesn't suit them? It's a waste of time and productivity to use something that doesn't suit you and then trying to force your way of working to it.
I, for example, could certainly do all the things I already do with the Start Screen, it's not about being able to or not being able to. The reasons for why I don't use it are that it's an enormous waste of space, the transition to the menu and back is jarring and the old-style menu is simply more functional for my needs. I choose the method that suits my needs and workflow better than the other one, and that's the concept you seemingly fail to grasp.
No one sane uses physical media anymore. I sure as hell don't intend to, Netflix is far superior. And why should I find some other solution when I just said that I am already on Windows 8? I didn't lose anything by moving from 7 to 8 as long as I am using Start8, but I did gain slightly faster boot and the improved Netflix - app.
I'm in similar situation as the OP, ie. I'm using Start8 to add a Start-menu and disable the various hot corners and the likes. The system looks and works pretty much like Windows 7, but it boots slightly faster. I could totally have stayed with Windows 7, but I went with 8 simply because I wanted the Netflix - app; Netflix in the browser is limited to only 720p and stereo-sound whereas the Netflix - app on 8 can do 1080p and 5.1 surround. What can I say, I'm a movie buff.
Everyone is always bashing PHP even when they don't have any good reason for that, it's kind of like it's trendy to bash on World of Warcraft or stuff. Well, I happen to like PHP, I use it in my own stuff all the time. Sure, I don't use any of the more advanced features nor do I maintain a 50k+ codebase, but for my own use it's been great.
You're missing out on the deep, highly insightful story; it's a story about the evolution and raging wars between various kinds of super-intelligent devices that use lies and deception to make lesser, but more agile two-legged creatures do their bidding all the while letting those creatures think they're the ones in charge.
Using percentages when speaking of a sample size of...god damn 10 conditions....is just really effing stupid and looks like it was specifically meant as click-baiting. The honest way of saying this would have been simply "The researchers sampled 10 conditions on Wikipedia and found that 9 of them were incorrect." See? No alarmist "90%omgomgworld'sgoingtoburn" bullshit there.
Now, call me back when the sample size is actually worth a damn. 10 conditions out of all the bajillion different ones mentioned on Wikipedia is simply too little to draw any sort of meaningful rule about the quality of them all.
my friend uses julia, and every few weeks complains about some bug.
He should tell Julia to wear protection and be more careful with who she spends time with so as not to catch so many bugs.
PayPal screws people over almost everywhere on the planet.
TFTFY.
Tbh, PayPal works great if you just use it for payments. I have never sold anything on the Internet, so I have no experience with such stuff, but I use PayPal to pay for stuff all the damn time and I find it just absolutely god damn great for that. I certainly don't want to spread my credit card details all over the Internet and no other payment system comes even close to reaching all the places PayPal does.
you do it so you get nasty pathogens off your body, and don't get infected wounds.
You don't have to wash the whole body just to keep a wound clean, you know? It's perfectly possible to just clean and sanitize the wound and the surrounding area.
I take a step somewhere in-between: I shower every 3-4 days, depending on how dirty I feel. Even then, I only wash my body with water, no soaps or cleansers or anything like that, though I do use some basic shampoo and conditioner on my hair. If I take showers more often my skin immediately starts to feel a lot drier and flakier. I dunno if my experiences match anyone else's, but it seems to suit my body quite fine.
At the same time, he's now a convicted felon. Which, in the US at least, most likely means he will never be able to get a decent job ever again.
Well, he did display severe lack of respect for other peoples' data, time and money and set out to deliberately cause harm for nothing more than getting fired. He clearly showed that he is not a person who should be in such a position and the chances are that next time he'd just be more careful about leaving evidence behind. If he had just gotten fines or something he might get another job in a similar position and cause even worse things.
I do get what you're coming at, but of the two choices I believe prison is the more correct one. Should there be a third option, something that would mean that he'd really, really, really have to work and prove himself if he wanted to again get in a position where he is responsible for other peoples' data and equipment, but if he instead aimed for something where he isn't in such a position of power he'd have the same chances as everyone else? Sure, but I don't know if there is such an option.
I just tried it between my desktop and laptop and I didn't notice any degradation at all, it looked really pretty. I was only getting around 25FPS, though, so it looks like H/W encoding of the stream wasn't working for some reason. Steam is supposed to be capable of using H/W encoding and decoding, but something didn't work right with my rig. On the other hand, if it did work properly I would assume that playing games like that would totally be feasible and enjoyable, and since both of my rigs are pretty much outdated I would assume it works better on newer stuff!
Not sure if he deserves jail time
Of course he does. He has a total of zero excuses for damaging the company's equipment and data deliberately, being fired is not an excuse.