Growing up in a mosquito infested area, I often thought that someday, an anti-mosquito laser system could be developed. Why don't you make one? Here's a starting point. You'd be in the perfect place to do some field tests!
By your statement any userland program that made use of Linux-only interfaces (e.g. hugetlbfs, most anything in/proc or/sys, video4linux devices, etc) would also be a derived work, which is obviously not the case. Even within the realm of kernel-internal interfaces, it is difficult to argue that a derived work is created by using interfaces whose function and calling requirements you understand without needing to know the specifics of the implementation (though this seems to be the thrust of the thinking behind EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL).
There's a bit at the end of the GPL that comes with the Linux kernel that clarifies that. You could concievably argue that such programs are derived works in the same way that programs that use GPL'd libraries are derived works.
Assuming this is laser is actually capable of blinding someone (which it rather looks like it is) then technically it's banned by the Geneva convention. And all with equipment that you can find in your own home... awesome!
This is definitely happening, at least in the UK anyway. It seems to be quite a recent thing, I suspect that power companies have been jacking up the prices for datacentres. As little as a couple of years ago, if you wanted to get some colocation, the cost was all about how much bandwidth you were using. I've been trying to get quotes for colocation recently and the message I've been getting from almost every company I've spoken to is that bandwidth and rack space is relatively abundant, but power consumption is what really determines the cost. The latest APC PDUs will tell you how much power you're using, possibly even on a per port basis - so it's not hard to work it out and bill for it.
As you said, market forces will start improving the power efficiency of equipment. This can only be a good thing IMHO.
Easy yes, obvious no. That's the key difference. You have to know how to do it already. Windows makes it easier for the novice. I'm not saying that's a good thing though, when you're setting up a server facing the internet and need to be aware of security and so on.
I didn't see the simplest improvement in konsole listed:
rm konsole && cp xterm konsole
Argh, we always have to hear from the elitist Unix purists whenever KDE or GNOME comes up. Name 3 things that are better about xterm than Konsole? Or even just one thing? Get with the times, Unix desktops have moved on.
.. is that they double as a homosexual nerd dating club. If you don't swing that way, there's no point. Shit, and all this time I've been going to LUG meetings to pick up girls. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Thanks!
According to your estimates, that means 2% of the population does murder women and molest dogs. That's a lot of people, in the U.S. alone that would be approximately six million dog-fondling lady-killers are roaming the streets with impunity.
If were a woman or a dog, I'd never set foot outdoors. I don't think that 2% is an unreasonable estimate to be honest. Maybe not murdering women and molesting dogs specifically, but there's plenty of really fucked up people that do stuff just as dark, or worse - think child abuse, various kinds of domestic violence, stuff that goes on all the time that you never hear about, and never suspect people of. For every high profile case that makes the news I'd bet that there's many others that nobody ever finds out about, especially out in remote areas and isolated communities.
Quite - harnessing energy from fluctuations in the magnetic field isn't perpetual motion. The machine will exert opposing forces back, and the more energy you draw, the bigger the opposing force. Of course it's probably just a fake anyway.
There's easily that many different APIs for doing it in Windows too. Which one of those is "the" standard? If it's look-and-feel consistency that bothers you, that's for the distributions to worry about. And they've got pretty good at it now.
I agree. It doesn't "just work" by any stretch of the imagination. When it does work, it's great, but there's a whole mess of shell scripts working in the background which don't handle error conditions very well and you often get presented with very cryptic and often quite misleading error messages ("Backend scripts not working" is one of my favorites).
Google are disclosing their activities and intentions on their blog, sure. It's a PR move. Do you really think the blog tells the whole story though? Obviously they are going to put stuff on there about what they are doing that makes them look good, but if they wanted to do a bit of their own RIAA-style legislation-buying that wouldn't make them look so great on their blog, they wouldn't post it. Just because they've got a blog and blogs are "in", doesn't mean you should trust them implicitly. I certainly don't, anyway.
I'm more intrigued by this "office wokspace" thing. I've always been a strong supporter of woks, and would love to see how they can be put to use in the office.
The phone isn't interfering with the speakers directly (it'd need to be putting out insane amounts of power to do that) - it's interfering with the signal before its amplified. Could be in the analog stage of your source (CD player, PC, whatever), or somewhere on the input side of the amp, or even a loose connection on the end of the cable between them. Something isn't fully grounded (bad solder joint somewhere?) Try a different cable, and if you can, a different source and amp. Even if you have to borrow one it'll at least let you isolate where the problem is.
I had a similar problem with an old car amp I found on ebay, it picked up interference from the car's electrics - you could hear when the wipers or lights were on through the sound system:/
Cable companies need to wise up to the fact that as higher general purpose (internet) bandwidth becomes available to homes, the traditional way of distributing TV that their business is based on won't be relevant any more. The thing is, they're the ones with the infrastructure, so they've got the opportunity to make it work for them - their roles are going to shift, from providing TV stations over a dedicated channel to just providing pure bandwidth. There is still plenty of business to be done and money to be made from providing people with TV, just in a different way. The same goes for VoIP and telcos (both cellular and fixed line). The cable companies that try to stop IPTV from happening are going to lose out, just as the telcos that are trying to stop VoIP will. The smart ones should already be accepting the inevitable and making plans to make it work to their advantage.
I like both, but usually have tea, mainly because it involves a lot less work and mess to make a decent cup of tea than for coffee.
The water has to be at boiling point when it meets the tea though, or the tannins don't get released and it tastes completely insipid. I'm slightly obsessive about this and usually turn down tea if it's offered to me because very few people get it quite right. Annoyingly our new office kettle somehow stops boiling the instant the element turns off, instead of bubbling away for a bit longer, which is presenting me with a bit of a challenge...
A huge number of problems in Windows can be attributed to its lack of package management. Every installer is pretty much allowed to do whatever it wants, put files where it wants, change registry keys, whatever.. and when was the last time you saw a Windows program with an uninstaller that worked? I mean really worked? They all leave crap lying around afterwards that they "couldn't" remove for some vague/unspecified reason. Sometimes you don't even get an uninstaller at all. There's no version tracking, and no management of dependencies. Everything just has to ship with all the libraries it needs and hope it doesn't break anything else, which it doesn't always manage. You end up with a total mess, even if you're careful. Your average Windows PC needs reinstalling once a year at least to stay usable, on almost all of the occasions that someone's asked me to check out a few problems on their computer, I've ended up reinstalling just because it would be quicker than to clear up the mess.
The "dependency hell" that you speak of has been a non-issue for years, even Red Hat makes a passable stab at it these days.. there's plenty of issues stopping Linux becoming a mainstream desktop OS but package management isn't one of them. Users don't want to have to run installers from CDs or whatever as you described, it's just what they're used to doing at the moment. If you showed a complete computer novice Synaptic or Click N Run, and then showed them the equivalent in Windows, which do you think they'd prefer?
Slashdot Mirror
Brilliant!
Put me down for a back-order, I'll buy one.
By your statement any userland program that made use of Linux-only interfaces (e.g. hugetlbfs, most anything in /proc or /sys, video4linux devices, etc) would also be a derived work, which is obviously not the case. Even within the realm of kernel-internal interfaces, it is difficult to argue that a derived work is created by using interfaces whose function and calling requirements you understand without needing to know the specifics of the implementation (though this seems to be the thrust of the thinking behind EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL).
There's a bit at the end of the GPL that comes with the Linux kernel that clarifies that. You could concievably argue that such programs are derived works in the same way that programs that use GPL'd libraries are derived works.Assuming this is laser is actually capable of blinding someone (which it rather looks like it is) then technically it's banned by the Geneva convention. And all with equipment that you can find in your own home... awesome!
This is definitely happening, at least in the UK anyway. It seems to be quite a recent thing, I suspect that power companies have been jacking up the prices for datacentres. As little as a couple of years ago, if you wanted to get some colocation, the cost was all about how much bandwidth you were using. I've been trying to get quotes for colocation recently and the message I've been getting from almost every company I've spoken to is that bandwidth and rack space is relatively abundant, but power consumption is what really determines the cost. The latest APC PDUs will tell you how much power you're using, possibly even on a per port basis - so it's not hard to work it out and bill for it.
As you said, market forces will start improving the power efficiency of equipment. This can only be a good thing IMHO.
Easy yes, obvious no. That's the key difference. You have to know how to do it already. Windows makes it easier for the novice. I'm not saying that's a good thing though, when you're setting up a server facing the internet and need to be aware of security and so on.
I didn't see the simplest improvement in konsole listed:
rm konsole && cp xterm konsole
Argh, we always have to hear from the elitist Unix purists whenever KDE or GNOME comes up. Name 3 things that are better about xterm than Konsole? Or even just one thing? Get with the times, Unix desktops have moved on.
.. is that they double as a homosexual nerd dating club. If you don't swing that way, there's no point. Shit, and all this time I've been going to LUG meetings to pick up girls. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Thanks!It's the shiznit for storing config data in small Linux appliances though
If were a woman or a dog, I'd never set foot outdoors. I don't think that 2% is an unreasonable estimate to be honest. Maybe not murdering women and molesting dogs specifically, but there's plenty of really fucked up people that do stuff just as dark, or worse - think child abuse, various kinds of domestic violence, stuff that goes on all the time that you never hear about, and never suspect people of. For every high profile case that makes the news I'd bet that there's many others that nobody ever finds out about, especially out in remote areas and isolated communities.
Quite - harnessing energy from fluctuations in the magnetic field isn't perpetual motion. The machine will exert opposing forces back, and the more energy you draw, the bigger the opposing force. Of course it's probably just a fake anyway.
LSD was also tried out as a weapon: http://youtube.com/watch?v=up0HdCkfqUI
There's easily that many different APIs for doing it in Windows too. Which one of those is "the" standard? If it's look-and-feel consistency that bothers you, that's for the distributions to worry about. And they've got pretty good at it now.
Me too. Can't be leaving that pile of other peoples' junk that I spent all week collecting round town just lying around out the front.
Yes, I'd give my life in defence of my supermarket.
I agree. It doesn't "just work" by any stretch of the imagination. When it does work, it's great, but there's a whole mess of shell scripts working in the background which don't handle error conditions very well and you often get presented with very cryptic and often quite misleading error messages ("Backend scripts not working" is one of my favorites).
Google are disclosing their activities and intentions on their blog, sure. It's a PR move. Do you really think the blog tells the whole story though? Obviously they are going to put stuff on there about what they are doing that makes them look good, but if they wanted to do a bit of their own RIAA-style legislation-buying that wouldn't make them look so great on their blog, they wouldn't post it. Just because they've got a blog and blogs are "in", doesn't mean you should trust them implicitly. I certainly don't, anyway.
I'm more intrigued by this "office wokspace" thing. I've always been a strong supporter of woks, and would love to see how they can be put to use in the office.
How rude
Eh, get with the times, "... challenged" is so 20th century. Nowadays they prefer the term "differently gravitated".
The phone isn't interfering with the speakers directly (it'd need to be putting out insane amounts of power to do that) - it's interfering with the signal before its amplified. Could be in the analog stage of your source (CD player, PC, whatever), or somewhere on the input side of the amp, or even a loose connection on the end of the cable between them. Something isn't fully grounded (bad solder joint somewhere?) Try a different cable, and if you can, a different source and amp. Even if you have to borrow one it'll at least let you isolate where the problem is.
:/
I had a similar problem with an old car amp I found on ebay, it picked up interference from the car's electrics - you could hear when the wipers or lights were on through the sound system
Cable companies need to wise up to the fact that as higher general purpose (internet) bandwidth becomes available to homes, the traditional way of distributing TV that their business is based on won't be relevant any more. The thing is, they're the ones with the infrastructure, so they've got the opportunity to make it work for them - their roles are going to shift, from providing TV stations over a dedicated channel to just providing pure bandwidth. There is still plenty of business to be done and money to be made from providing people with TV, just in a different way. The same goes for VoIP and telcos (both cellular and fixed line). The cable companies that try to stop IPTV from happening are going to lose out, just as the telcos that are trying to stop VoIP will. The smart ones should already be accepting the inevitable and making plans to make it work to their advantage.
Half of however old you are is always going to feel like a pretty long time.
I like both, but usually have tea, mainly because it involves a lot less work and mess to make a decent cup of tea than for coffee.
The water has to be at boiling point when it meets the tea though, or the tannins don't get released and it tastes completely insipid. I'm slightly obsessive about this and usually turn down tea if it's offered to me because very few people get it quite right. Annoyingly our new office kettle somehow stops boiling the instant the element turns off, instead of bubbling away for a bit longer, which is presenting me with a bit of a challenge...
A huge number of problems in Windows can be attributed to its lack of package management. Every installer is pretty much allowed to do whatever it wants, put files where it wants, change registry keys, whatever.. and when was the last time you saw a Windows program with an uninstaller that worked? I mean really worked? They all leave crap lying around afterwards that they "couldn't" remove for some vague/unspecified reason. Sometimes you don't even get an uninstaller at all. There's no version tracking, and no management of dependencies. Everything just has to ship with all the libraries it needs and hope it doesn't break anything else, which it doesn't always manage. You end up with a total mess, even if you're careful. Your average Windows PC needs reinstalling once a year at least to stay usable, on almost all of the occasions that someone's asked me to check out a few problems on their computer, I've ended up reinstalling just because it would be quicker than to clear up the mess.
The "dependency hell" that you speak of has been a non-issue for years, even Red Hat makes a passable stab at it these days.. there's plenty of issues stopping Linux becoming a mainstream desktop OS but package management isn't one of them. Users don't want to have to run installers from CDs or whatever as you described, it's just what they're used to doing at the moment. If you showed a complete computer novice Synaptic or Click N Run, and then showed them the equivalent in Windows, which do you think they'd prefer?