Whether China has "killed tens of millions of people" in the past is not relevant to a discussion about Linux being adopted there today. You must be new here if you haven't realised that Slashdot is a site for technology and IT news; if you want to discuss politics or history there are plenty of other sites for that. It is off-topic here.
As for ranting about the evils of MS, the ethics of MS are entirely relevant to a discussion like this because we are talking about business deals between Chinese entities and MS. The alleged evils of MS *are* in its business dealings. OTOH alleged human rights abuses by China have no bearing on its adoption of Linux because no-one in the west, no blockade, could prevent that adoption - all China needs is one DVD copy or one phone connection to the rest of the world to download it and start distributing it anyway.
If you have an issue with China, why not approach MS youself to persuade them not to do business there? The very fact that you and others might succeed is one of the good reasons why China wants to adopt Linux.
A bit OT, but isn't it about time? That mugshot looks like taken in his student days. The man is 50 on Oct 28th! Let Slashdot give him a treat - an up-to-date shot and many happy returns!
In fact Windows is the younger brother (Unix has been around much longer), even if Windows has grown up looking like Tyson.
I am not interested in "recognition", whatever that means, nor comparisons. MS and their customers (pointy haired office managers and Joe Sixpack home users) are welcome to go their own way. Linux has by now established a viable user base.
I just want to see MS pressurised or forced to use open file standards.
You are missing the point. The "Get the Facts" campaign is aimed at corporates, not Mom & Pop. In a company like the one I work for (15,000+ desks) all installation is done by a contractor and maintenance by the IT Dept. The PCs (Windows) are absolutely locked down. The 15,000 users don't need to be taught RPM or APT.
800 hours to learn Linux "to be equally skilled as... in Windows"? LOL! The people working around me know no more about Windows than how to switch on, type a memo or e-mail and then click the "Save" "Print" or "Send" button. Most would not know how to begin installing software, hardware or setting up a network. They would barely notice if they were in Word or Open Office.
As for Mom & Pop, they would be just as fine with pre-installed Linspire. But most will stick with Windows because they (incredibly maybe) think it's cuddly, and they love that nice Mr Gates who has given so much to charity - isn't he a self made man who we would all like to be? Anyway, won't Linux break their PC? - there is a sticker on it that says it's desinged for Windows XP. Windows will always have a place at the bottom end of the OS market.
"... we'd have had 100X worse on japanese mainland. we expected 1 million allied casualties..."
It never seems to have occurred to anyone in the west, then or now, that Japan did not need to be invaded. They had already lost the war by July 1945. Japan has no natural resources (except fish). Its external communications were closed. its navy sunk, its aircraft all destroyed. Only its armies abroad were still active, but they could have easily been defeated after letting them stew for a bit, as they ran out of supplies.
There was no need to set foot on the Japanese homeland, which could have been isolated and monitored for any military rebuilding - any of which could have been nipped in the bud by targeted bombing of factories and shipyards as necessary. Peaceful trade could have been allowed, to prevent starvation.
Unfortunately the US attitude (then and now) of wanting to draw a line under an episode, to bring home the boys, and the myth of a golden future, made this politically impossible in the US. The US could not resist the chance to end it all with a big bang. They wanted and got a surrender ceremony.
The US also wanted an ally, or at least a trading partner, in the Far East to counterbalance those of the European Great Powers. Japan had always been in US sights for this. The politicians also knew that the average person in a victim nation soon forgets even the most fearsome atrocities. Within months of the bombs Japanese girls were marrying GIs.
In contrast, the British have an acceptance of the need for open ended policing of the world. British people are not fazed by the idea of their sons being stationed the opposite side of the world for months on end, even if being shot at. This is a well trodden path and based on hard-won experience in the British Empire for 300+ years. It was (and still is) more realistic and effective, and leads to fewer casualties all round.
There are too many articles like this - they should be consolidated. People like me are confused by so many articles. Think of the beginners! It is no wonder that people turn away from them when these article writers cannot co-operate with eachother.
People buy new PCs not necessarily because they have spyware or spam bots - many would not realise it. They just find their PC is slow so they think they need a new, faster one.
Even if they knew they had spyware, they would not have a clue how to remove it anyway. They might "rationalise" a new PC with arguments about the cost of their time, but that is just a comfort factor thrown in. Maybe they fancied a new PC and this is an excuse to the wife.
I once worked in a research lab. One day someone building electronics dropped a resistor on the floor. Four of us, professional engineers, then spent the next hour debating whether or not it was cost effective for one of us to spend 5 seconds picking it up. I argued that it would take just almost as long to reach for a new one from the rack. I don't remember if it was picked up in the end.
Such debates are sterile - in the end you argue yourself into never doing anything.
Anyone else find his (? Fyodor's) cringingly self-conscious use of "she" and "her" for an unknown hacker merely distracts from the story. There is now going to be more discussion of this point than the matter at issue.
In the English language, "he/his" is a neutral term in the context of an unknown person. If Fyodor were really fussy he could have used "they/their". It is not as if there were anything more than an extremely small likelyhood of the hacker being female, for various cultural reasons, nor as if malicious hacking is anything to be proud of.
Last time I heard the nonsense use of "she" in the context of an unknown malicious hacker was in some Microsoft security advice. That also caused much derision at the time, on the lines of : "So from now on guys, don't forget to lift the toilet seat".
Ballmer does not seem to have said the word "hardware" as many posters seem to have taken him to mean. In fact I belive that by "the cost of a PC" he is talking about the total cost hard+soft. Don't forget that the M$ camp are trying to "sell" the idea that the software (M$ of course) and especially the OS are integral parts of the computer (just like IE is "part of the Operating System").
Most of the non-computer-literate people I know do not even realise there is an operating system in the PC any more than they realise there is one in their washing machine. They do see the Windows Logo come up, but they think that's because the PC manufacturer has got those clever M$ people somehow to help them manufacture the insides. They think that Dell or Gateway or whoever are really just for the plastic case! They think I am dangerously irresponsible for replacing Windows by Linux, same as they think I am dangerously irresponsible for giving my 4x4 truck 4" of suspension lift - departing from the maker's design (but that's another story).
To be fair therefore, I think Ballmer does envisage in his idea a reduction in the cost of Windows to the Third World. M$ is doing this already, as the article points out.
Look at it cynically : if he can get the Third World onto Palladium PCs with DRM sofware, he has got it over a barrel. To do that he needs a lot of new PCs that can be sold cheap, or the Third World will stick with pirated 95/98/ME on its 450Mz PCs.
It would be brilliant for M$. It would sell a lot more copies of their software. Simply because (clearly) more new PCs would be sold, and Ballmer is assuming that most of them would be pre-loaded with Windows.
At the moment the Third World is running millions of old machines which probably started with Win95, but which have typically been upgraded with pirated coies of 98 or ME. This is the thorn in M$'s side. Ballmer wants to get the Third World moved onto Palladium machines with newer versions Windows (probably tailored to the Third World). That would make future piracy more difficult, and M$ would then have got the Third World onto the same sort of upgrade escalator as the corporates of the West.
It's the only way I can get files between home and work. My employer is a large multi-national which is paranoid about security. It gives each of us a standard issue PC with standard issue locked-down hardware and software. Nothing more can be installed - drivers for dongles or zip drives etc are out of the question. The PC has a floppy and CD-ROM drive but no burner. Any request to change the configuration would be rejected out of hand.
We are on the Net, but not allowed to send any e-Mail attachment ouside our internal network (in case a hacker intercepts it), nor are we allowed to receive any attachment from outside.
So how do I get docs to and from home? By floppy.
I just hope the management don't read this article or they will probably send a technician round to remove all our floppy drives.
SCO employees like telemarketeers? Bad analogy. When someone takes a job as a telemarketeer they are deliberately setting out to do something they should know pisses people off. So to hell with telemarketeers.
OTOH the SCO technical employees who joined before McBride's began his scam just took up jobs in good faith as software engineers etc and were not to know that the company was going to be used as a tool for an extortion racket.
That does not mean however we should hope for SCO's survival. The world of Linux and open source is far bigger and more important than SCO and its unfortunate employees.
Typical that these people worry about the toxicity of something being shot to kill. Reminds me of the worry about the effect on the ozone layer of the refrigerants released from cruise missiles after they have nuked the world.
Depleted uranium (U) has very little radioctivity. That is what "depleted" means. Being in the nuclear industry I know guys who handle natural (non-depleted) U all day. It is much more radioactive, but still trivially so.
U is toxic like lead (also used for ammo) and most other heavy metals. Take my advice and refrain from picking it up and eating it if you see any while walking around the Arabian Deserts.
These people are clutching at straws trying to argue that the combination is worst than the sum of the two effects.
It is not cumulative indefinitely. If you get X today and Y tommorrow it is not much different from X+Y all at once : there is a certain consequential risk of cancer. But by a month later the risk will be reducing if the cancer has not triggered by then. The risk decays a bit like a radioactive isotope itself decays. If, by a couple of years after getting a dose, you have not got cancer as a result, you will almost certainly have "got away with it".
BTW, the dose levels Elena (the motorcycle chick) goes through are not too bad. I am a nuclear engineer and our guys work all day in such levels. She is not being a "heroine" as some people have made out; rather she is using her dosimeter sensibly to keep out of the worst locations. As her father says, she is much more likely to kill herself hitting a tree with that bike, so go easy Elena!
... and an engineer (professional) and I prefer the steel control arms. The alloy ones will fail first - from fatigue aggravated by salt corrosion. In fact the life of either will be determined by the life of the swivel joints at their ends, not the structure as you imply.
You also make the mistake of assuming price = quality. You talk of cheap American car parts. I dream of them - I am very unusual in UK in that I own (and work on) an American car (Jeep Cherokee). The price of its spares here is astronomical, I can tell you. The price of spares is all to do with what the market can stand, and in UK the Jeep is considered exotic, hence the prices. The quality is OK though, and it is the most reliable car I have ever known.
I also do repairs on other family cars - British Rover, German VW and French Renault. I am not impressed by the quality of the VW build, nor its reliablity despite the hype around this marque. Electrical wiring is nearly as thin as cotton thread, and a plastic chamber in the fuel line is so feeble that a stub pipe snapped off it while I was detaching the hoses to it. So little thought seems to have been given to the need to work on the car during its life, that I am suprised that they didn't weld up the bonnet (hood).
It is a hobby of the British to criticise Rovers (and most other things British), but I would say it has the best build quality of the bunch.
It does not take much to keep a car going for many years. I reckon I am a master at it. The wear of bearings etc that makes a car feel old, lose oil etc, is only a tiny % of its total mass, and these wearing parts (like those control arm swivels) are or could be made easily replacable. The other factor is rust, which makers could easily stop with galvanising or making certain parts replacable. For example the bodywork parts of the Land Rovers of the 1960's can be replaced by any competent small workshop (all flat plates rivetted to frames) and many of 40-50 years old can be seen in daily heavy use in the country areas of the UK.
A big reason for smaller companies to choose Windows is the lack of accounting software for Linux. My wife is a book keeper and I did a search for Linux stuff that she might use, but found only software by a Canadian company. Accounting and payroll software is nation specific, and here in the UK Sage dominate the market for small business, and last time I looked they don't do Linux.
A problem with Open Source development is that it is drowning in photo-album organisers and mp3 players, but lacks boring but essential stuff like company accounting. Commercial developers who might do it mostly look askance at the Linux scene because they don't "get" it.
Anyway, these are hard headed business men we are talking about here. They know efficiency when they see it. 300% efficiency. Those market forces always reveal the truth of these matters. So come on/.ers, show some respect for the judgement of these guy's!
The difference is the rise and collapse of the magnetic fields in an AC machine. This is only transient however - over a whole cycle of operation you could not get more out than in. It is like a man jumping on a spring can momentarily compress it more than his static weight would, but it is made up in the next half cycle by the spring going up again and being compressed less than the static weght would.
Anyway, the volts and amps at the input terminals of the motor will always equal the power input whether measured at an instant or averaged over a period. By definition!
I have sent the following e-Mail to the writer of the article which has caused the nonsensical notion that a PC contains up to 8lb of lead (see link in parent), also making the point that lead is safe in glass:-
that : "If you have ever tried picking up a 21-inch (53-cm) monitor or a 25-inch (or larger) TV, you know that all the glass in a large CRT can easily weigh more than 50 pounds (23 kg)....... It turns out that the glass in a CRT contains a lot of lead. A big CRT can contain up to 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) of lead."
Firstly, it is clear that what they mean by "a big CRT" is a "25" (or larger) TV" - it is this which will contain up to 5lb of lead. A typical PC monitor is much smaller at say 17" and therefore will contain far less glass and and hence less lead than 5lb. The other lead in computers is of course the solder joints, which will amount to no more than perhaps a hundred grammes.
Secondly the fact that the lead is in the glass means that it is safe. Lead is only dangerous if you eat it or otherwise absorb it into the body, maybe by it getting into the ground and entering the food chain. But glass is the about the most stable common substance and the lead will remain safely locked in it, unless someone melts it down and for some reason uses high tech to extract the lead at very high temperatures. Therefore, lead is not going to enter the environment from the back garden in your photos, no matter how ugly the place looks.
Thus, the statements, while well meant, are untrue, and the implications of lead poisoning hazard from this source are misleading. If you take a look at the discussion on Slashdot I think you will see others putting this in less diplomatic terms than I am using. Not all people are not fools, even if some are, so I suggest you modify your wording. I am all for recyling, but let's base discussions on facts.
Ist This is Intel, so we are talking only about the processor and other chips, not the whole machine? Vast majority of lead is soldering to the motherboard and other printed circuits - outside Intel's control.
2nd You won't stop 3rd world countries trying to kill themselves. A colleague of mine once worked for a crane company who sold to India, among other places. He went out there to check the new installation of a new crane once and found they had removed all the hand rails around ladders and platforms etc and sold them for scrap! You cannot impose western standards on these places.
3rd Not just 3rd world countries. I work as a safety engineer and anyone, even supposedly "sensible" workers within my own industry (they have to pass various aptitude tests here), have limitless imagination in devising new ways to try to kill themselves. Only constant monitoring and supervision stops them from doing so. We can only leave 3rd world countries to regulate themselves.
4th Sounds like a publicity gesture by Intel to me. "Lead" is one of those trigger words which switches people into self-righteous mode. These gestures always seem to work - even among people of above average knowledge and intelligence. Just watch the posters here for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether China has "killed tens of millions of people" in the past is not relevant to a discussion about Linux being adopted there today. You must be new here if you haven't realised that Slashdot is a site for technology and IT news; if you want to discuss politics or history there are plenty of other sites for that. It is off-topic here.
As for ranting about the evils of MS, the ethics of MS are entirely relevant to a discussion like this because we are talking about business deals between Chinese entities and MS. The alleged evils of MS *are* in its business dealings. OTOH alleged human rights abuses by China have no bearing on its adoption of Linux because no-one in the west, no blockade, could prevent that adoption - all China needs is one DVD copy or one phone connection to the rest of the world to download it and start distributing it anyway.
If you have an issue with China, why not approach MS youself to persuade them not to do business there? The very fact that you and others might succeed is one of the good reasons why China wants to adopt Linux.
A bit OT, but isn't it about time? That mugshot looks like taken in his student days. The man is 50 on Oct 28th! Let Slashdot give him a treat - an up-to-date shot and many happy returns!
In fact Windows is the younger brother (Unix has been around much longer), even if Windows has grown up looking like Tyson.
I am not interested in "recognition", whatever that means, nor comparisons. MS and their customers (pointy haired office managers and Joe Sixpack home users) are welcome to go their own way. Linux has by now established a viable user base.
I just want to see MS pressurised or forced to use open file standards.
You are missing the point. The "Get the Facts" campaign is aimed at corporates, not Mom & Pop. In a company like the one I work for (15,000+ desks) all installation is done by a contractor and maintenance by the IT Dept. The PCs (Windows) are absolutely locked down. The 15,000 users don't need to be taught RPM or APT.
... in Windows"? LOL! The people working around me know no more about Windows than how to switch on, type a memo or e-mail and then click the "Save" "Print" or "Send" button. Most would not know how to begin installing software, hardware or setting up a network. They would barely notice if they were in Word or Open Office.
800 hours to learn Linux "to be equally skilled as
As for Mom & Pop, they would be just as fine with pre-installed Linspire. But most will stick with Windows because they (incredibly maybe) think it's cuddly, and they love that nice Mr Gates who has given so much to charity - isn't he a self made man who we would all like to be? Anyway, won't Linux break their PC? - there is a sticker on it that says it's desinged for Windows XP. Windows will always have a place at the bottom end of the OS market.
"... we'd have had 100X worse on japanese mainland. we expected 1 million allied casualties ..."
It never seems to have occurred to anyone in the west, then or now, that Japan did not need to be invaded. They had already lost the war by July 1945. Japan has no natural resources (except fish). Its external communications were closed. its navy sunk, its aircraft all destroyed. Only its armies abroad were still active, but they could have easily been defeated after letting them stew for a bit, as they ran out of supplies.
There was no need to set foot on the Japanese homeland, which could have been isolated and monitored for any military rebuilding - any of which could have been nipped in the bud by targeted bombing of factories and shipyards as necessary. Peaceful trade could have been allowed, to prevent starvation.
Unfortunately the US attitude (then and now) of wanting to draw a line under an episode, to bring home the boys, and the myth of a golden future, made this politically impossible in the US. The US could not resist the chance to end it all with a big bang. They wanted and got a surrender ceremony.
The US also wanted an ally, or at least a trading partner, in the Far East to counterbalance those of the European Great Powers. Japan had always been in US sights for this. The politicians also knew that the average person in a victim nation soon forgets even the most fearsome atrocities. Within months of the bombs Japanese girls were marrying GIs.
In contrast, the British have an acceptance of the need for open ended policing of the world. British people are not fazed by the idea of their sons being stationed the opposite side of the world for months on end, even if being shot at. This is a well trodden path and based on hard-won experience in the British Empire for 300+ years. It was (and still is) more realistic and effective, and leads to fewer casualties all round.
There are too many articles like this - they should be consolidated. People like me are confused by so many articles. Think of the beginners! It is no wonder that people turn away from them when these article writers cannot co-operate with eachother.
People buy new PCs not necessarily because they have spyware or spam bots - many would not realise it. They just find their PC is slow so they think they need a new, faster one.
Even if they knew they had spyware, they would not have a clue how to remove it anyway. They might "rationalise" a new PC with arguments about the cost of their time, but that is just a comfort factor thrown in. Maybe they fancied a new PC and this is an excuse to the wife.
I once worked in a research lab. One day someone building electronics dropped a resistor on the floor. Four of us, professional engineers, then spent the next hour debating whether or not it was cost effective for one of us to spend 5 seconds picking it up. I argued that it would take just almost as long to reach for a new one from the rack. I don't remember if it was picked up in the end.
Such debates are sterile - in the end you argue yourself into never doing anything.
Anyone else find his (? Fyodor's) cringingly self-conscious use of "she" and "her" for an unknown hacker merely distracts from the story. There is now going to be more discussion of this point than the matter at issue.
In the English language, "he/his" is a neutral term in the context of an unknown person. If Fyodor were really fussy he could have used "they/their". It is not as if there were anything more than an extremely small likelyhood of the hacker being female, for various cultural reasons, nor as if malicious hacking is anything to be proud of.
Last time I heard the nonsense use of "she" in the context of an unknown malicious hacker was in some Microsoft security advice. That also caused much derision at the time, on the lines of : "So from now on guys, don't forget to lift the toilet seat".
Ballmer does not seem to have said the word "hardware" as many posters seem to have taken him to mean. In fact I belive that by "the cost of a PC" he is talking about the total cost hard+soft. Don't forget that the M$ camp are trying to "sell" the idea that the software (M$ of course) and especially the OS are integral parts of the computer (just like IE is "part of the Operating System").
Most of the non-computer-literate people I know do not even realise there is an operating system in the PC any more than they realise there is one in their washing machine. They do see the Windows Logo come up, but they think that's because the PC manufacturer has got those clever M$ people somehow to help them manufacture the insides. They think that Dell or Gateway or whoever are really just for the plastic case! They think I am dangerously irresponsible for replacing Windows by Linux, same as they think I am dangerously irresponsible for giving my 4x4 truck 4" of suspension lift - departing from the maker's design (but that's another story).
To be fair therefore, I think Ballmer does envisage in his idea a reduction in the cost of Windows to the Third World. M$ is doing this already, as the article points out.
Look at it cynically : if he can get the Third World onto Palladium PCs with DRM sofware, he has got it over a barrel. To do that he needs a lot of new PCs that can be sold cheap, or the Third World will stick with pirated 95/98/ME on its 450Mz PCs.
It would be brilliant for M$. It would sell a lot more copies of their software. Simply because (clearly) more new PCs would be sold, and Ballmer is assuming that most of them would be pre-loaded with Windows.
At the moment the Third World is running millions of old machines which probably started with Win95, but which have typically been upgraded with pirated coies of 98 or ME. This is the thorn in M$'s side. Ballmer wants to get the Third World moved onto Palladium machines with newer versions Windows (probably tailored to the Third World). That would make future piracy more difficult, and M$ would then have got the Third World onto the same sort of upgrade escalator as the corporates of the West.
It's the only way I can get files between home and work. My employer is a large multi-national which is paranoid about security. It gives each of us a standard issue PC with standard issue locked-down hardware and software. Nothing more can be installed - drivers for dongles or zip drives etc are out of the question. The PC has a floppy and CD-ROM drive but no burner. Any request to change the configuration would be rejected out of hand.
We are on the Net, but not allowed to send any e-Mail attachment ouside our internal network (in case a hacker intercepts it), nor are we allowed to receive any attachment from outside.
So how do I get docs to and from home? By floppy.
I just hope the management don't read this article or they will probably send a technician round to remove all our floppy drives.
SCO employees like telemarketeers? Bad analogy. When someone takes a job as a telemarketeer they are deliberately setting out to do something they should know pisses people off. So to hell with telemarketeers.
OTOH the SCO technical employees who joined before McBride's began his scam just took up jobs in good faith as software engineers etc and were not to know that the company was going to be used as a tool for an extortion racket.
That does not mean however we should hope for SCO's survival. The world of Linux and open source is far bigger and more important than SCO and its unfortunate employees.
Typical that these people worry about the toxicity of something being shot to kill. Reminds me of the worry about the effect on the ozone layer of the refrigerants released from cruise missiles after they have nuked the world.
Depleted uranium (U) has very little radioctivity. That is what "depleted" means. Being in the nuclear industry I know guys who handle natural (non-depleted) U all day. It is much more radioactive, but still trivially so.
U is toxic like lead (also used for ammo) and most other heavy metals. Take my advice and refrain from picking it up and eating it if you see any while walking around the Arabian Deserts.
These people are clutching at straws trying to argue that the combination is worst than the sum of the two effects.
It is not cumulative indefinitely. If you get X today and Y tommorrow it is not much different from X+Y all at once : there is a certain consequential risk of cancer. But by a month later the risk will be reducing if the cancer has not triggered by then. The risk decays a bit like a radioactive isotope itself decays. If, by a couple of years after getting a dose, you have not got cancer as a result, you will almost certainly have "got away with it".
BTW, the dose levels Elena (the motorcycle chick) goes through are not too bad. I am a nuclear engineer and our guys work all day in such levels. She is not being a "heroine" as some people have made out; rather she is using her dosimeter sensibly to keep out of the worst locations. As her father says, she is much more likely to kill herself hitting a tree with that bike, so go easy Elena!
You also make the mistake of assuming price = quality. You talk of cheap American car parts. I dream of them - I am very unusual in UK in that I own (and work on) an American car (Jeep Cherokee). The price of its spares here is astronomical, I can tell you. The price of spares is all to do with what the market can stand, and in UK the Jeep is considered exotic, hence the prices. The quality is OK though, and it is the most reliable car I have ever known.
I also do repairs on other family cars - British Rover, German VW and French Renault. I am not impressed by the quality of the VW build, nor its reliablity despite the hype around this marque. Electrical wiring is nearly as thin as cotton thread, and a plastic chamber in the fuel line is so feeble that a stub pipe snapped off it while I was detaching the hoses to it. So little thought seems to have been given to the need to work on the car during its life, that I am suprised that they didn't weld up the bonnet (hood).
It is a hobby of the British to criticise Rovers (and most other things British), but I would say it has the best build quality of the bunch.
It does not take much to keep a car going for many years. I reckon I am a master at it. The wear of bearings etc that makes a car feel old, lose oil etc, is only a tiny % of its total mass, and these wearing parts (like those control arm swivels) are or could be made easily replacable. The other factor is rust, which makers could easily stop with galvanising or making certain parts replacable. For example the bodywork parts of the Land Rovers of the 1960's can be replaced by any competent small workshop (all flat plates rivetted to frames) and many of 40-50 years old can be seen in daily heavy use in the country areas of the UK.
Try these :-
i on =projects&Go.x=11&Go.y=9
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=photo+album§
A big reason for smaller companies to choose Windows is the lack of accounting software for Linux. My wife is a book keeper and I did a search for Linux stuff that she might use, but found only software by a Canadian company. Accounting and payroll software is nation specific, and here in the UK Sage dominate the market for small business, and last time I looked they don't do Linux.
A problem with Open Source development is that it is drowning in photo-album organisers and mp3 players, but lacks boring but essential stuff like company accounting. Commercial developers who might do it mostly look askance at the Linux scene because they don't "get" it.
Sorry, it was convience, not convenience, stores.
/.ers, show some respect for the judgement of these guy's!
Anyway, these are hard headed business men we are talking about here. They know efficiency when they see it. 300% efficiency. Those market forces always reveal the truth of these matters. So come on
The difference is the rise and collapse of the magnetic fields in an AC machine. This is only transient however - over a whole cycle of operation you could not get more out than in. It is like a man jumping on a spring can momentarily compress it more than his static weight would, but it is made up in the next half cycle by the spring going up again and being compressed less than the static weght would.
Anyway, the volts and amps at the input terminals of the motor will always equal the power input whether measured at an instant or averaged over a period. By definition!
I have sent the following e-Mail to the writer of the article which has caused the nonsensical notion that a PC contains up to 8lb of lead (see link in parent), also making the point that lead is safe in glass :-
:-
e chnology.htm
:-
h tm
...... It turns out that the glass in a CRT contains a lot of lead. A big CRT can contain up to 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) of lead."
Carole,
Your Web site
http://www.state.me.us/newsletter/may2003/toxic_t
has been Slashdotted. ie. it has been referenced in Slashdot, a technology news and discussion site
You are referenced because of this statement on your site :
"A typical computer processor and monitor contain five to eight pounds of lead, and other heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic."
OK, I understand from
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question678.
that : "If you have ever tried picking up a 21-inch (53-cm) monitor or a 25-inch (or larger) TV, you know that all the glass in a large CRT can easily weigh more than 50 pounds (23 kg).
Firstly, it is clear that what they mean by "a big CRT" is a "25" (or larger) TV" - it is this which will contain up to 5lb of lead. A typical PC monitor is much smaller at say 17" and therefore will contain far less glass and and hence less lead than 5lb. The other lead in computers is of course the solder joints, which will amount to no more than perhaps a hundred grammes.
Secondly the fact that the lead is in the glass means that it is safe. Lead is only dangerous if you eat it or otherwise absorb it into the body, maybe by it getting into the ground and entering the food chain. But glass is the about the most stable common substance and the lead will remain safely locked in it, unless someone melts it down and for some reason uses high tech to extract the lead at very high temperatures. Therefore, lead is not going to enter the environment from the back garden in your photos, no matter how ugly the place looks.
Thus, the statements, while well meant, are untrue, and the implications of lead poisoning hazard from this source are misleading. If you take a look at the discussion on Slashdot I think you will see others putting this in less diplomatic terms than I am using. Not all people are not fools, even if some are, so I suggest you modify your wording. I am all for recyling, but let's base discussions on facts.
Ist This is Intel, so we are talking only about the processor and other chips, not the whole machine? Vast majority of lead is soldering to the motherboard and other printed circuits - outside Intel's control.
2nd You won't stop 3rd world countries trying to kill themselves. A colleague of mine once worked for a crane company who sold to India, among other places. He went out there to check the new installation of a new crane once and found they had removed all the hand rails around ladders and platforms etc and sold them for scrap! You cannot impose western standards on these places.
3rd Not just 3rd world countries. I work as a safety engineer and anyone, even supposedly "sensible" workers within my own industry (they have to pass various aptitude tests here), have limitless imagination in devising new ways to try to kill themselves. Only constant monitoring and supervision stops them from doing so. We can only leave 3rd world countries to regulate themselves.
4th Sounds like a publicity gesture by Intel to me. "Lead" is one of those trigger words which switches people into self-righteous mode. These gestures always seem to work - even among people of above average knowledge and intelligence. Just watch the posters here for example.
Now, where's that asbestos suit.
You put on an anorak, find somewhere you can watch trains going past, and write down their numbers.
Who said they think that non-geeks are dummies? In fact they think anyone who buys their books is a dummy, whether they are a geek or your mother.
I would not buy one either. They are confusing a dummy with a newby. I am not a dummy but I still might appreciate a book on Solaris for newbies.