It's not the better medical care that makes the difference - it's the differentiation between, "this baby was recorded as being born, but died shortly after birth" versus "this baby died before we recorded its birth."
I think the post you're responding to was trying to point out something about the carbon footprint of manufacturing the crystals.
That is, if the energy required to produce crystals produces X volume of carbon dioxide gas, the crystals would have to absorb X volume of carbon dioxide gas in order to simply break even on the carbon dioxide portion of the "environment in equilibrium" equation. Then you have to consider the by-products of that power generation (ash, thorium, uranium, other heavy metals that came from the coal/oil/etc).
The basic laws of thermodynamics are that you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't leave the game. So what's the story with these magical crystals? Even if they magically transported themselves from place of manufacture to a magical chimney that didn't reduce the efficiency of the power plant while still allowing the crystals 100% contact with the exhaust gasses from the power plant, would we break even with the cost of manufacture?
What are the by-products of manufacturing the crystals? How will we go about burying this stuff? Sequester it away in abandoned coal mines? What are the breakdown products? Will background radiation deteriorate the crystal into highly toxic compounds, while simultaneously releasing all the stored carbon dioxide?
The ultimate solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions is to stop using so much electricity, and drive more efficient vehicles. The technology is there, but apparently it's too expensive for the USA to do the same thing that the rest of the world has been doing for years.
To continue the analogy though, Comcast is opening the boxes, having a peek at what's inside, deciding that it does or doesn't look important, then dumping it in a field somewhere.
As opposed to, for example, reading the consignment note that says, "Express Delivery" and making sure the box gets where it's going, quickly. Or letting that box marked, "Surface Only" and putting it on the slow boat so that it eventually gets where it's going but to at the expense of Express boxes.
The Internet Protocol already provides the means to selectively prioritised packets. I don't know why we can't just be clever about this and use the quality of service mechanism that already exists.
Just to add another dimension to the hard-drives-don't-like-being-switched-off myth: all the hard drive failures I've ever experienced were in computers that had been left on for months, and only shut down for a hardware replacement.
All the computers I've been using day-to-day are shut down every night. After two years they're still running fine.
But the plural of anecdote is not data, so I'll just go hide in the corner again, endlessly rebooting my computers because I like the noise a disk drive makes when spinning up...
and I can't imagine how much crack their lawyers must have been smoking when they took on such a frivolous case.
The lawyers probably realise full well that the case has no technical merit, and they're just happy to have some fools whose money needs to be parted from them. Rack up a few dozen billable hours, tell the customers "sorry it didn't fly," and get on with business.
Virus protection software is required on any machine on which you might be sending attachments received from other people. For example, if you use Microsoft Office for Mac and receive a Word document for review, you could be a carrier for a macro virus if you were to forward the document on to someone else for them to rubberstamp it.
Twisted, bizarre example I know, but I'm sure there's someone in the world for whom this is not an alien workflow.
Perhaps the RIAA needs to change its business model, and focus on producing music that is appealing to the people with the money to buy it.
But no, they persist with music aimed at the people with no money of their own, then complain when the target market doesn't buy it.
I've bought four commercial albums in the last three years and they were all produced before 1990. There's just no commercial music that I find appealing. When I go to the pub on a Saturday night though, I will often end up taking home a $20 self-recorded, self-published CD from whichever live act is playing, simply because (a) they have talent and (b) I believe they deserve the support. The quality of the production is crap compared to commercial music, but the art is worth the investment.
You are already trusting Google to hold on to your mail for you anyway.
Is it really a breach of trust for them to use their knowledge of what mail they're holding for you to present you with ads for products or services that you might buy, and thus provide some more of the revenue stream that's keeping Gmail free?
If you don't like the idea of an ISP having access to your email, don't have your mail forwarded through that ISP. Even better, encrypt all the email you send and ask your friends to encrypt the mail they send you.
Let's say you live in a suburban home. You are in control of your yard, your neighbour is in control of theirs. For years you both enjoyed watching the same sunsets from your separate verandahs. Then someone builds an office block behind your houses and you can't see the sunsets anymore. That has impacted upon your environment hasn't it?
Now what if the face of the moon was to be changed drastically to be unrecognisable - doesn't that alter the environment of every living thing on the Earth?
I for one support the idea of mining the moon and asteroids for resources, but we need to be mindful of all our neighbours who may not necessarily like us carving open pit mines in the moon's surface to create the logo of a famous beverage.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that most of the commercially exploitable data was stored on Internet-connected Windows machines.
The people using Linux will usually be smart enough to store the data in a database, behind the firewall separating the "green" network from the DMZ. In fact, a large proportion of those will only have the HTTP concentrator/reverse proxy sitting on a world-visible address with the rest of the operation hidden on private networks or on the other side of data diodes.
By their technical nature, the Linux users will understand what is meant by, "security is like an onion." The Windows users will be the ones asking, "oh? it stinks?"
As opposed to Windows users who have experienced so much malware that reinstalling Windows from scratch is just another monthly chore?
It's like a country that has been at war for so long that people don't think twice about buying another dozen boxes of ammunition with their milk and bread.
I used to work for a small retail telecommunications provider, and the saddest case I can remember is some guy who racked up $650 in on phone call, because he simply opened up a web page for an "adult services" company. The web page included some VB Script or an ActiveX control which downloaded (and ran) a dialler application, which hung up the customer's existing connection and dialled a "premium rate" number (charged at $5.50/min). The user didn't even know this had happened.
No crime. You accepted a EULA that says they're perfectly allowed to do this.
Now all you need to do is prove that continuing to use Windows after being told that the EULA gives Microsoft the right to do this, doesn't make the EULA valid.
Never forgetting that if someone is running Windows XP, you have two options to support - XP Home or XP Professional. If someone's running Mac OS X, there is one option to support. If someone is running Linux... was it a home brew? Ubuntu (which release)? Debian (sid? sarge? etch?) are they using X windows or just text mode? Gnome, KDE, Athena?
So suddenly that 3% of the market turns out to be highly fragmented. How do you write a support script for your level 1 tech support people?
The best you can do is document the API and electrical interface, and let the community write their own UI.
To me, tracking down the thief is all about getting the chance to stick a gun in *his* face. But revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold. Ideally, cold enough that the desire to beat the living daylights out of the ass who stole my stuff has long since waned.
A missing laptop is simply another machine I have to replace. I've dropped them, had them fried by lightning, I've even had them stolen (by light fingered people taking advantage of a lapse in attention, not by muggers). So losing property isn't such an emotional thing to me anymore.
Still, if someone stuck a gun in my face and took my stuff, the desire to track them down would have nothing to do with recovery of property.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the better medical care that makes the difference - it's the differentiation between, "this baby was recorded as being born, but died shortly after birth" versus "this baby died before we recorded its birth."
To test the "people aren't lapping it up because it's free" hypothesis, just do this:
Advertise your PC with Linux preinstalled as being bundled with "over $2000 worth of software, for free!"
The Gimp - how much is Paintshop Pro or Photoshop worth? $1000?
Gnumeric - how much is Microsoft Excel worth? $200 bought separately?
GUI of choice - how much is Microsoft Windows worth? $1000 for a Professional Ultimate?
If it still doesn't sell, there's more to it than having no dollar value.
I think the post you're responding to was trying to point out something about the carbon footprint of manufacturing the crystals.
That is, if the energy required to produce crystals produces X volume of carbon dioxide gas, the crystals would have to absorb X volume of carbon dioxide gas in order to simply break even on the carbon dioxide portion of the "environment in equilibrium" equation. Then you have to consider the by-products of that power generation (ash, thorium, uranium, other heavy metals that came from the coal/oil/etc).
The basic laws of thermodynamics are that you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't leave the game. So what's the story with these magical crystals? Even if they magically transported themselves from place of manufacture to a magical chimney that didn't reduce the efficiency of the power plant while still allowing the crystals 100% contact with the exhaust gasses from the power plant, would we break even with the cost of manufacture?
What are the by-products of manufacturing the crystals? How will we go about burying this stuff? Sequester it away in abandoned coal mines? What are the breakdown products? Will background radiation deteriorate the crystal into highly toxic compounds, while simultaneously releasing all the stored carbon dioxide?
The ultimate solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions is to stop using so much electricity, and drive more efficient vehicles. The technology is there, but apparently it's too expensive for the USA to do the same thing that the rest of the world has been doing for years.
I thought the Soviets and the USA were still racing around the Solar system in hovertanks fighting over lumps of biometal?
To continue the analogy though, Comcast is opening the boxes, having a peek at what's inside, deciding that it does or doesn't look important, then dumping it in a field somewhere.
As opposed to, for example, reading the consignment note that says, "Express Delivery" and making sure the box gets where it's going, quickly. Or letting that box marked, "Surface Only" and putting it on the slow boat so that it eventually gets where it's going but to at the expense of Express boxes.
The Internet Protocol already provides the means to selectively prioritised packets. I don't know why we can't just be clever about this and use the quality of service mechanism that already exists.
Just to add another dimension to the hard-drives-don't-like-being-switched-off myth: all the hard drive failures I've ever experienced were in computers that had been left on for months, and only shut down for a hardware replacement.
All the computers I've been using day-to-day are shut down every night. After two years they're still running fine.
But the plural of anecdote is not data, so I'll just go hide in the corner again, endlessly rebooting my computers because I like the noise a disk drive makes when spinning up...
Award DKP for office attendance. It works for WoW, why can't it work for that other world?
The lawyers probably realise full well that the case has no technical merit, and they're just happy to have some fools whose money needs to be parted from them. Rack up a few dozen billable hours, tell the customers "sorry it didn't fly," and get on with business.
Virus protection software is required on any machine on which you might be sending attachments received from other people. For example, if you use Microsoft Office for Mac and receive a Word document for review, you could be a carrier for a macro virus if you were to forward the document on to someone else for them to rubberstamp it.
Twisted, bizarre example I know, but I'm sure there's someone in the world for whom this is not an alien workflow.
I would have thought that proofs come under the category of "original research" which means they are not to be included in Wikipedia?
And why is this being discussed on Slashdot?
Apple fanboys aren't issuing propaganda to cover up the fact that they're torturing innocent people or holding foreign nationals against their will.
To be honest, the first thing I thought of was "World of Battlezone", but that didn't have quite the right ring to it.
Night Elf Druid, meet Biometal Hovertank with Stab 3 upgrade...
My approach:
Subscribe to said forum. Make an effort to contact the author. Keep using the code until told not to.
Perhaps the RIAA needs to change its business model, and focus on producing music that is appealing to the people with the money to buy it.
But no, they persist with music aimed at the people with no money of their own, then complain when the target market doesn't buy it.
I've bought four commercial albums in the last three years and they were all produced before 1990. There's just no commercial music that I find appealing. When I go to the pub on a Saturday night though, I will often end up taking home a $20 self-recorded, self-published CD from whichever live act is playing, simply because (a) they have talent and (b) I believe they deserve the support. The quality of the production is crap compared to commercial music, but the art is worth the investment.
You are already trusting Google to hold on to your mail for you anyway.
Is it really a breach of trust for them to use their knowledge of what mail they're holding for you to present you with ads for products or services that you might buy, and thus provide some more of the revenue stream that's keeping Gmail free?
If you don't like the idea of an ISP having access to your email, don't have your mail forwarded through that ISP. Even better, encrypt all the email you send and ask your friends to encrypt the mail they send you.
Let's say you live in a suburban home. You are in control of your yard, your neighbour is in control of theirs. For years you both enjoyed watching the same sunsets from your separate verandahs. Then someone builds an office block behind your houses and you can't see the sunsets anymore. That has impacted upon your environment hasn't it?
Now what if the face of the moon was to be changed drastically to be unrecognisable - doesn't that alter the environment of every living thing on the Earth?
I for one support the idea of mining the moon and asteroids for resources, but we need to be mindful of all our neighbours who may not necessarily like us carving open pit mines in the moon's surface to create the logo of a famous beverage.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that most of the commercially exploitable data was stored on Internet-connected Windows machines.
The people using Linux will usually be smart enough to store the data in a database, behind the firewall separating the "green" network from the DMZ. In fact, a large proportion of those will only have the HTTP concentrator/reverse proxy sitting on a world-visible address with the rest of the operation hidden on private networks or on the other side of data diodes.
By their technical nature, the Linux users will understand what is meant by, "security is like an onion." The Windows users will be the ones asking, "oh? it stinks?"
As opposed to Windows users who have experienced so much malware that reinstalling Windows from scratch is just another monthly chore?
It's like a country that has been at war for so long that people don't think twice about buying another dozen boxes of ammunition with their milk and bread.
That would be funny if it wasn't true.
I used to work for a small retail telecommunications provider, and the saddest case I can remember is some guy who racked up $650 in on phone call, because he simply opened up a web page for an "adult services" company. The web page included some VB Script or an ActiveX control which downloaded (and ran) a dialler application, which hung up the customer's existing connection and dialled a "premium rate" number (charged at $5.50/min). The user didn't even know this had happened.
No crime. You accepted a EULA that says they're perfectly allowed to do this.
Now all you need to do is prove that continuing to use Windows after being told that the EULA gives Microsoft the right to do this, doesn't make the EULA valid.
I gave up on Debian after three upgrades in a row broke my X Windows installation to the point that I had to reinstall from scratch.
I just have bad luck it seems, and end up doing my updates when the repository is in a state of flux.
Never forgetting that if someone is running Windows XP, you have two options to support - XP Home or XP Professional. If someone's running Mac OS X, there is one option to support. If someone is running Linux... was it a home brew? Ubuntu (which release)? Debian (sid? sarge? etch?) are they using X windows or just text mode? Gnome, KDE, Athena?
So suddenly that 3% of the market turns out to be highly fragmented. How do you write a support script for your level 1 tech support people?
The best you can do is document the API and electrical interface, and let the community write their own UI.
I think we need to introduce an official ... tag to (X)HTML, to help people like you.
Yes, the order you 'fixed' it to is the correct one for the situation, but that's where the sarcasm comes in.
It's moments like this that one wishes one had taken the blue pill. This rabbit hole is far too deep and twisting.
To me, tracking down the thief is all about getting the chance to stick a gun in *his* face. But revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold. Ideally, cold enough that the desire to beat the living daylights out of the ass who stole my stuff has long since waned.
A missing laptop is simply another machine I have to replace. I've dropped them, had them fried by lightning, I've even had them stolen (by light fingered people taking advantage of a lapse in attention, not by muggers). So losing property isn't such an emotional thing to me anymore.
Still, if someone stuck a gun in my face and took my stuff, the desire to track them down would have nothing to do with recovery of property.