My car (an '07 Caliber) was rated at "28 to 32 MPG". I consistently get 26 or less.:(
I have the same car (2L engine with CVT transaxle--no gears at all, just automatically adjusting variable-ratio). I assume you are American and that you are talking American gallons. I'm Canadian and we've never used US gallons (used to be Imperial/British Gallon, now it's all metric) so a little mathematics translates 26 miles per US gallon to 9.25 litres per 100 kilometres. Canada does not use EPA guidelines--the numbers we use come from EnerGuide and are based upon testing methods mandated by Transport Canada. The Canadian numbers are 9.0 l/100km for city and 7.3 for highway (because the units are flipped from mpg, smaller number means more fuel efficient--this is why they are not technically called "mileage" in Canada, but instead "fuel consumption" or "fuel economy").
I get similar fuel consumption to your 9.25 number--this is not that far off from the EnerGuide city estimate of 9.0. I normally drive almost exclusively in the city and it looks like you must do so to. I attribute my slightly-higher fuel consumption number to the nature of the daily commuter rush traffic where I live (average speed on my daily commute is 30 km/h--about 19 mph, and I believe the test methods assume a 50 km/h, or 32 mph, average speed). Perhaps you drive in a similar environment as I do. If that is the best you are getting then you may also be driving more aggressively than what is called for by Transport Canada (or the US equivalent, though historically Canadian fuel economy estimates have historically been closer to reality).
Here are some observations I've made about improving fuel consumption numbers in the Caliber (apples to most cars actually)
* Do not "punch the pedal" to the floor--gradually/smoothly press the accelerator down over a 1 to 2 second period. The CVT in the Caliber does not respond with a "kick-down" because it has no gears like a normal automatic (nor does the latest Nissan Sentra, which uses the same kind CVT as the Caliber, but tuned to be even more "elastic"), so all you're doing is revving your engine a bit faster and using a bit more gas--you get no extra acceleration out of it and merely a bit more noise.
* Similarly, don't depress the pedal right to the floor when on the highway merging or passing. You get very little extra acceleration by pushing the RPMS to near redline, only more noise. The best acceleration is to get to a constant engine speed around 4000 RPM and let the CVT ramp the ratio up to speed, then ease off the pedal until it adjusts the ratio to get about 2200 RPM at cruising speed. Best fuel economy is to accelerate in the 3000 to 3500 RPM range it seems so far.
* ALWAYS use cruise control on the highway (if you are getting a Caliber or a Sentra with the CVT I REALLY RECOMMEND the cruise control option) because it really improves fuel economy. I was amazed how far ont tank took me on a road trip compared to my daily commute--and it was even better than my first road trip when I forgot about the cruise because my old car didn't have it).
* Avoid driving at speeds over 50 km/h (32 mph) with windows rolled down; use A/C instead if you have it. The reverse is true at low speeds.
I think a lot of why people complain about poor fuel economy has to do with aggressive starts and stops--and this is even worse in a car with CVT. Driving a car with a CVT is like driving a motorboat--the engine revs up to a high RPM and sits there as the speed keeps increasing. Because the engine noise is not ramping up in speed between shifts as it does in a transaxle with gears it initially gives the impression that you are not accelerating very quickly, when in fact you are accelerating the quickest at the point the engine RPMs are steady or even slowly declining! I know that when I first car that the slowly climbing tachometer needle and lazily-accelerating engine RPMs made me want to floor the accelerator to try and get that "kickdown
If MS really had this big patent portfolio on which Linux was infringing, then Novell would have been in a very weak bargaining position.
Both parties are in awkward positions, if pro-Free-software legal experts are correct in their interpretation of the MS-Novell agreement and the GPL.
Increasingly it looks like the agreement will be in conflict with GPL3, and as software included in SLES migrates towards using GPL3 Novell will either have to freeze SLES at the last version of code relesed under GPL2 or somehow find their way out of the agreement to stay current.
MS is in an awkward position because in their end of the deal they are obligated to sell SLES certificates. Technically they are now a Linux distributor. To sell a distribution you MUST abide by the GPL--even under GPL2 when you distribute GPL software you MUST make the source code available without restriction. It does not matter if the code implements a patented invention, MS could not charge a royalty/licensing fee to restrict use of the application or its source code without violating GPL. If MS is serious about trying to enforce its patents it must immediately terminate its agreement with Novell. GPL3 would not make the above situation any different for these existing patents from what I understand--what GPL3 does is keep authors of GPLed code from creating NEW patents based on the functionality of that GPLed code (could a lawyer out there tell me if that is a valid interpretation?).
I'm not convinced MS will get very far with this latest cage-rattling. I suspect many of the involved patents are pretty dubious in nature--and some may be very old and could be close to expiration by the time litigation has finally reached a conclusion (another reason why they wouldn't pull a SCO and head into an embarrassing, protracted legal battle over IP). I also suspect that the Linux kernel itself violates few if any patents at all given how architecturally different it is from the Windows kernel. Microsoft would most likely go after the more outer layers of the OS onion--those involving interoperability with Windows. That is, after all, the stated focus of the MS-Novell deal.
I think we'd first see action against Samba for example. Mono would've been a target as well, but the Novell agreement took care of that. Frontpage interoperability with Apache is another likely Free software target (I realise not all of their targets are GPL, though that is their prime concern). ODBC drivers that let Linux talk to Microsoft databases might be in the crosshairs. This strategy could be part of the "if you can't beat them, join them" plan: If Vista and the corresponding to-be-released server OS prove to be disappointments over the long term the Windows platform as it exists today may be allowed to wither and die on the vine, to be replaced with something more Linux-like (or perhaps BSD-like).
If it does indeed "pull an Apple" and underpin its OS with such Free content it'll need a differentiator--and they intend that to be backwards compatibility with what will be "legacy Windows", which will also allow them to maintain their vendor lock-in. That key piece of the puzzle cannot be Free under the MSFT business model so the goal of more aggressively enforcing patents is likely to explore the feasibility of taking the "MSFT/Linux" or "BSD Windows" route whilst maintaining the leverage they enjoy as a monopoly.
Their investment in "open source research" as of late has provided them with some ammunition, however I think they are still too clumsy with the gun and will only be able to shoot themselves in the foot with such a clumsy strategy. MS is resilient though, so I hope defenders of Free software can keep them off balance before they recover.
Hey...I have a Theremin right here! Wait...what's this? "Made in Taiwan"....damn! That guy on EBay said he built it by hand! What a rip-off.
Well, maybe I can help with another one of the items in the scavenger hunt. I've knitted a parabola before and I'm sure that it would be easier to hyperbolic crochet...
Way to ignore the vast majority of solid information out there and try to put a rose on a pile of shit.
Way to dismiss all thoughts and opinions that don't agree with you.
I think it is pretty much an agreed-upon fact that earth temperatures are rising, and I think that it is naive to think that human activity can't have an effect on climate. However, this does not mean we all have to have are eyelids glued open and be forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth until we believe the polar ice caps will melt away, the sky will turn to water and fall on out heads and we'll all drown unless we all live like the Amish. Global climate modeling is mind-bogglingly complex and there most certainly is room for debate on the magnitude and nature of human-activity-induced climate change.
Global temperatures are probably slowly rising overall. If we do not adapt to the changes, it will probably be detrimental overall too, but overall does not mean universally. Some places will be cooler, some will be wetter, some will be drier too. It seems to me that where I live, winters have gotten warmer over the years but summers are actually COOLER and a bit wetter. This might improve yields for some types of crops. In other parts of the world, productive land may become deserts. There is NO WAY we can know with certainty HOW bad (or good) how changing climate will affect related issues like food production.
I think dialogue needs to be kept open and opinions of all types must be considered. As far as reducing our CO2 emissions to slow global warming goes, however, I think we've reached a point where even severe reductions will be akin to trying to stop a speeding, fully-loaded freight train using the mass and power of a Smart Car: it'll make a small, essentially meaningless impact immediately and unless we turn off the train engine (akin basically to voluntarily wiping out the human population) the train will just keep rolling along. Whatever good intentions the Kyoto accord was intended to address, it has done something quite dangerous I think--it has shifted the focus on environmental issues very heavily towards one single issue to the detriment of all others (especially as the deadline to meet targets looms). Projects to install scrubbers on smokestacks to remove pollution that endangers our health are being cancelled in order to purchase emissions credits or invest in CO2 capture, but in the meantime we still get smog, acid rain and asthma-inducing particulates belching into the air! Expansion of nuclear power is being seriously discussed as a solution to the Kyoto problem--what is the environmental impact of uranium mining, and what about safety and security around the handling of nuclear fuel and waste?
I am not sure of the motives behind the huge effort to control the nearly uncontrollable (global climate), but it is getting in the way of true environmentalism--an approach based around conservation and sustainability. Reducing oil consumption isn't just needed to keep global warming in check--it just makes common sense to make more judicious use of a resource that is expensive to extract and refine, is non renewable and of finite supply. Thankfully, much of what is done in the name of CO2 reduction does in fact help sustainability, but it is not the whole picture. What is important to keep in mind though is the TOTAL impact of what we do: What'll we do with all the mercury in spent CF bulbs once incandescents are banned? What is the environmental impact of creating the batteries (energy consumption, chemicals and metals used, etc) used in your Prius? What about loss of habitat and damage to wildlife caused by hydroelectric dams and wind power farms (both Kyoto-friendly but they have a large negative impact on the environment nonetheless)?
Anyway, it is always good to give opinions "on the fringe" the benefit of the doubt.
If by "durable" you mean that most of it rubs off after a couple of days in your pocket
As has been mentioned elsewhere, at least one run of these coins contained a lot of manufacturing defects. There have been cases of mis-registration of the image (shifted or on the wrong side) and improper application and/or curing of the layers of resin. If your coin does not have a rectangular patch that illuminates under UV light that completely covers the coloured image then this is probably the reason the red paint rubbed off. If early runs of the coin had a poppy covering the queens face then it is entirely possible that the final coat may have been misapplied to the wrong side.
I have encountered several of these coins and by no means have they suffered from what you describe. They've survived multiple trips through washer and dryer without any visible signs of wear whatsoever, much less spending time in your jeans or wallet throughout the day.
If the "market penetration" philosophy were true Unix would have been hacked to bits decades ago.
There is some credence to the "market penetration" argument, because Unix systems WERE "hacked to bits" decades ago, when they were the dominant networkable operating system. Of course, there are always other factors that come into play, and ultimately nothing trumps a robust design for security (which is why BSD and Linux servers running Apache are hacked far less often than Windows/IIS despite haveing a much larger market share).
The article is kind of pointless because it answers the wrong question: there is nothing interesting about what would be different if a corporation other than Microsoft held a monopoly position in mainstream computing software--we all know that nothing would be materially different. If Apple was the monopolist you KNOW it would sit on its laurels and we'd probably have been stuck with MacOS9-based OS until security and stability problems go so baf that they'd have to do something radical. MS' competition is better because it HAS offer something better to be able to survive against the 800 pound gorilla.
If one were to imagine life without a MONOPOLY rather than life without Microsoft the situation would be VASTLY different. Just like genetic variation in a species of wildlife population provides some insurance against extinction, having a diversity of inter-operable computing platforms would provide inherent security against system-wide compromise. Right now, global computing infrastructure is a sickly monoculture that is vulnerable to electronic pandemics.
I think that without Microsoft there is an equally plausible alternative outcome to the one presented in the article: If no one player were to achieve market domination in a timely fashion we'd see growth slowdown and perhaps shakeup, as we did in the home computer hardware market in the 1980s. In order to survive, the remaining players would have to cooperate in terms of observing protocols and standards. One way or another, the market must achieve interoperability, and it happens either by one vendor achieving monopoly or by several vendors cooperating at a certain level.
That is what happened on the hardware side in fact--there was a shakeout, a major player emerged (IBM) and before it achieved an assured monopoly the likes of Phoenix and Compaq reverse-engineered the design and inadvertently created a vendor-neutral open systems specification. Today there is no hardware monopoly in the PC market, and hardware is cheap, plentiful and quite reliable overall. Within the silicon and circuits the designs are radically different, but they all have standard internal bus slots, external peripheral connectors and generally are all able to run the same software.
I'll always wonder why software didn't follow the same path, especially given the culture under which much of it was developed. In the 1970s hobbyists and upstart competitors were inspired by the Altair design to create the S100-bus standard platform around it, even with resistance from MITS against the whole effort. At the same time software enthusiasts and entrepreneurs were sharing software and working towards interoperability (much to the chagrin of BillG at the time). I'm not sure why the software wouldn't follow the path of hardware in terms of this gravitation towards interoperability.
We're actually setting the stage today for another opportunity to establish true interoperability--standards such as POSIX,SUS,LSB are well established (though still too often ignored) and Linux, MacOS and BSD share enough similarities that the idea is becoming feasible. The oft-criticised nature of open source to "re-invent the wheel" is key to making this a success--of course the other half of that success is to make sure all these new wheels will roll on the same set of tracks. I think it is looking promising that more and more Free software developers are starting to take that into consideration.
t's a known fact that Starbucks is on a quest for domination of the US, and will not rest until there is a Starbucks on every street corner and every American is hooked.
Starbucks is a Tim Horton's wannabe--it isn't anywhere close to achieving domination of its home country the way Tim Horton's is. Let me give you an idea of just how far along Tim Horton's is in its quest to take over Canada:
* Tim Hortons is the LARGEST fast-food/cafe chain in Canada. It is MORE THAN DOUBLE the size of McDonalds in Canada in terms of number of stores AND makes significantly more money than Mcdonalds does in Canada as well.
* For every cup of coffee Starbucks sells in Canada, Tim Horton's sells TEN.
* One of every four dollars spent on fast food in Canada is spent at Tim Horton's
* Even though it has a relatively small presence in the US, it is large enough that it TOOK OVER a major US fast food chain (it merged with Wendy's, and the resulting merged entity was majority owned by former Tim Horton's ownership). It also took over other regional fast food businesses in the US (Hardee's, Rax, etc).
So, it is an honest mistake to believe the special-issue coins might have been issued by Tim Horton's, given how thoroughly they have taken over the nation. However, it is not the case--legal tender is made exclusively by the Royal Mint despite the appearance that being a Tim Horton's franchisee is a license to print money.
It was a Remembrance Day (ww2) coin.. why would this strike anyone as suspicious?
Actually, the coin was NOT a WW2 coin. It was issued in 2004 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the start of the FIRST world war in 1914. Remembrance Day started at the end of WWI (11th hour, eleventh day, eleventh month in 1918).
It is the first general-circulation coin in the world to have ever been issued in colour. IIRC, Canada is still the only country to issue coloured coins in general circulation (the mint later issued one with a pink ribbon as part of a breast cancer fund-raising campaign). The images are "painted" (printed actually) by computer using some kind of epoxy on a small mesh substrate, which is then cured (not sure if this required heat or not, but it becomes quite a durable finish).
It is quite an elabourate process for a simple little image, but it was designed so that it could withstand years of use in general circulation without wearing off or fading. They worked on the assumption that these coins would see the same kind of abuse as normal coins, but given that people tend to save them for awhile when they get then in their change, I suspect that the mint went a bit overboard in the design. However, the Canadian Mint is internationally known for quality so they have a rep to live up to.
Given the unusual nature of the coin to someone outside of Canada, I'm not surprised that it caught the attention of US security. Also, given the paranoia of security-types in both the US AND Canada, I am not the least surprised that they would over-react to a benign situation (and, in the process, likely miss a REAL threat). I have, in my travels through many airports in Canada and US, witnessed some of these "bright lights" confiscate an old lady's plastic crochet hooks and "take down" an 80 year old man (forcing him to the floor, arms restrained at his back), who lost sight of his wheelchair-bound wife when an attendant took her down the elevator while his back was turned. That last incident really drove home the message that you MUST take seriously the signs that read "do not stop in this area" as you leave the departure gate. If Canadian security are like that, I can only imagine what DC or New York would be like (Philadelphia and Chicago are bad enough thank you).
"Hey, he's got a turban! And a beard! It's ONE OF THEM!"
Don't put him in charge of security in Canada's largest airports (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary). Imagine his alarm when the guy with the turban and beard on whom he's drawn his gun happens to be his boss.
Don't take this as a racist remark--it is merely an observation about life here; for years, those of middle-eastern decent have traditionally seemed to gravitate towards certain businesses, security services being among them.
Canada has continually taken steps to try to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.
Canada has done nothing of the sort! Canada has done a great deal to reduce dependency on FOREIGN oil. We've been quite successful in that respect..now we're completely dependent on oil from ALBERTA, but at least that is within our own country. If Alberta were to secede from Canada, then Canada would be completely screwed (Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have fairly fast reserves but they are much less developed).
The truth is that the US has done significantly more than Canada to increase efficiency and reduce fossil fuel consumption, even with GW Bush and his oil buddies in power! Canada's consumption--and corresponding CO2 emissions--have increased by all measures (both absolute numbers and based on "intensity" figures such as per-capita or as a proportion of GDP). OTOH, while US consumption has gone up, it has not gone up as fast as Canada's and "intensity" emissions figures have gone down. It is Canada's own "inconvenient truth".
Canada's government is only NOW making any meaningful efforts towards reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. In 13 years, the "caring, sharing Kyoto-loving" Liberals instituted no regulations, no major technology development programmes, no NOTHING. Instead, they hosted conferences, made funny TV ads urging people to save energy and drive less. Now, we have a "cold-hearted" PM from oil-rich Alberta presiding over a gov't instituting regulations that might actually be effective (effective enough? Many would say not. Motivation? Probably a cynical ploy to stay in power in the next election...Gore came up here and scared us all I guess..the "principle" involved is questionable).
Seting up solar power in Sarnia is pretty ironic but maybe appropriate--the area is notorious for being the home of a couple of the continents dirtiest refineries (worse than any single facility in Alberta in fact). Hope enough sun can get through the smog. However I think too much is being made of this, perhaps because of the novelty of having solar power in Canada.
A far more successful programme involving renewable power involves a large wind-power complex in southern Alberta. The City of Calgary purchases enough power from this facility to run the electric light-rail mass transit system as well as contribute to the energy needs of its municipal buildings. The company also supplies wind-power to the largest shopping centre in the city as well. Calgary--"Houston of the North" of all places--is the first (and I believe only) city government in Canada that has actually met Kyoto emissions reductions targets, largely because of its wind power programme (as well as benefiting from increased use of natural gas over coal for its power needs as well).
Solar just seems like the wrong approach to me--wind and water has been more effective in terms of cost. Geothermal energy could be tapped more. There is also a compelling argument for creating a "distributed generation" system using fuel-cell technology. Hydrogen from natural gas, already pumped into most houses here for heating, can be used in fuel cellsto generate more than enough power required to run a house, and the waste heat can be used for heating water and homes themselves. Essentially, you could get your heat AND power for almost no more gas consumption as it would take for heat alone.
Bullshit. If you raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, they become less attractive compared to other means.
It raises the cost of burning fossil fuels *FOR US*. It LOWERS the cost for Russians and others who SELL the credits and ENCOURAGES them to continue burning fossil fuels as their economy recovers. As it stands, the emissions credit system used internationally is a scam--it doesn't do enough (nearly NOTHING in fact) to compel those SELLING the credits to use that revenue to clean up their OWN acts. All it is is robbing Peter to pay Paul so Paul can buy more Vodka to drink and keep driving his soot-belching Lada. I don't think that's fair nor is it effective--it just makes different people the problem, like tearing down inner-city slums to make high-rise condos just chases the hookers into the next neighbourhood.
Double the price of gasoline, and charge industry for their emissions. Economics are the only thing that will change us.
Such changes would cause widespread poverty. Doubling petroleum prices has a similar impact on the cost of pretty much everything else we buy. Food costs will go up (What do farmers use to power their tractors huh? No hybrid John Deeres out there yet. How about locomotives and trucks for trnsporting such food?). Housing costs will go up even faster than they are now (Again, I don't see any electric bulldozers and cement trucks and such out there). Today, if you did that, it would mess up your life even IF you only rode the bus (which would cost more too) and walked to the corner store to buy your $3 loaf of bread and $8 jug of milk.
You can't just go in with a big economic club and properly solve the problem--better to use a scalpel to do such surgery, and perhaps a few tasty economic carrots to provide incentive to people to live healthier lifestyles.
I still maintain that with all this focus on one single "inconvenient truth" that far too many other such truths are being ignored--everything from endangered species, disappearing habitats, he sorry state of much of Kyoto-exempt China's environment...and no, climate change isn't the root of all those problems either--there are thingsto be done on those other fronts that will have an immediate positive effect on the environment, whereas no matter WHAT we do now, reducing CO2 today will have little to no climactic effect within most of our lifetimes. Again, what is the point of taking flawed measures to fix what our climate will be like 100 years from now if, in 100 years, there are no rain forests, no edible fish in the sea, and our grandchildren will only be able to look at pictures of tigers because no real ones will be left alive?
It is great that Gore et. al and the Kyoto accord has rought the environment to the forefront, but it has done so at the expense of other important environmental issues.
A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it.
Some of "us" old-timers developed software for CP/M systems...or Apple II or Commodores...and made a good living on it too. Those platforms were all market leaders in the PC realm at one point in time and they all faded away in obsolescence. CP/M was not a Microsoft product and was what powered the vast majority of "open architecture" PCs for most of the first decade of the markets existence. It doesn't matter how big a leader one platform is over another, it does NOT make sense to jump on one wagon and dismiss the others. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of a leading market position, however far too many people doing that neglect the alternatives. People need to broaden their horizons.
Can I program on Linux? Sure, I do so all the time at home, programming embedded devices and robots and I've released open source software under GPL license. Maybe one day I'll be able to work on them full time.
Glad to hear that--especially that you make contributions towards the vast library of Free software out there. That way, you aren't limiting yourself should other opportunities arise in your career. There are already many people making a good living with Free software, and perhaps if (when?) you get bored and/or frustrated with Windows you can seek employment with a company such as IBM or Red Hat or Novell, where thousands of people make a living at computers without windows.
But right now I work on the "Ford" of the industry. It's not unwise and it's not unethical. It's just reality. We deal with the reality of the industry, and that reality is that Windows dominates the market so it makes economic sense to use it.
Sometimes it IS unwise, or even unethical, to stick with "the Ford of the industry". Ford USED to be King, and along came this upstart Japanese company Toyota, at a time when "made in Japan" still meant "cheap junk" to many in America. Fast forward to last year, when Ford LOST over a MILLION dollars PER HOUR and Toyota passed them in market share. This would've never happened if people stuck with Ford because it was the market leader. However, people noticed some superior attributes of Toyota products (fuel efficiency, price, reliability) and Toyota improved quickly in area where it was weak (acceleration, corrosion resistance, etc). In the meantime, Ford rode on its established presence and conentrated on sweeoing its problems under the rug instead of actually fixing them (Hello there Pinto!).
So, in the late 1970s, would've you considered it unwise to buy one of those new Honda Civics instead of a Ford Pinto because Honda was new to the US car market and had a much smaller market share? I'd consider that foolish. I'd rather have bought the Civic and saved on fuel, plus the Civic was somewhat less flammable. Market share be damned...the Civic made more economic sense than a Pinto by far.
Microsoft really IS like Ford and Windows sure drives like a Pinto, and I've seen it crash...and burn...far too often not to look at alternatives. Apple could enjoy a Toyota like renaissance...or perhaps Red Hat or Novell or some company yet to emerge.
To hell with Microsoft "Ford Pinto" Windows. I'm looking at "Toyota Corolla" Fedora, "Honda Civic" SuSE and "Subaru" Ubuntu to see what they have to offer.
The average Walmart shopper doesn't care about 1080P DVDs.
The average Walmart shopper is still too preoccupied struggling with the concept of aspect ratios and scaling on their new-fangled TV to have seriously considered HD disc players yet. Once they figure out why the anchor on the local news looks so fat and how to fix it is when they'll slowly realise that their DVD movies don't look as crisp as Monday-night football. No advantage to either HD disc format yet...
The average Walmart shoppers that decide to try and do something about it will quickly become aware that there are two in incompatible, fledgling formats--one is cheaper and one has more storage capacity, but to date there are no blu-ray releases that have either superior picture OR extra features over HD-DVD, if the movie exists in both formats at all. If this very Beta-vs-VHS-like situation doesn't scare them off purchasing entirely, the price-conscious Walmart shopper is going to opt for HD-DVD--a much cheaper option (these will be cheaper than PS3s)
Walmart shoppers are mostly NOT hardcore gamers and would NOT see the appeal in the PS3 (I only want to watch moves--I don't want to spend extra to get a video game machine when I never play such games). XBox360 has more market share, more games, lower price. It also has an HD-DVD add-on available. Still not over for HD-DVD.
Blu-ray may be miles ahead of hd-dvd...but what is the significance of being 5 miles ahead when you're only 6 miles into a 100 mile race? The current situation is too confusing for Joe Walmart, even blu-ray's library is way too limited compared to what DVD buyers are accustomed to and hd-dvd is worse, the players are either expensive or not widely available or unreliable or a combination of all.
I think that up-converting DVD players with HDMI output will be the market leaders for quite awhile--I've noticed that PVRs with integrated DVDs that do upconverting are very popular purchases where I'm at.
Long term, despite studios innitially backing blu-ray more strongly that HD-DVD has advantages:
* blu-ray is relatively over-engineered: more complex technology and discs have to be stamped using more expensive, dvd-incompatible equipment, potential DRM maze nightmare, harder to develop content for in terms of navigation (Java development hell)...HD-DVD is a more incremental approach--complex enough but still not as bad as blu-ray.
* blu-ray is expensive: yes we seeing the release of $400 to $600 players but HD-DVD is maintaining its %50 price advantage with $200 players on deck.
* blu-ray has a less-effective brand image: HD-DVD implies continuity and compatibility with DVD (never mind if blu-ray players could play DVDs too--"techno-peasants" won't get that first impression)
* blu-ray stalwarts like Disney, even at this early stage in the market, are prepared to release in hd-dvd: their current offerings are encoded in such a way that they'd fit on HD-DVD. Cheap players==more demand for content==pressure to release in desired format.
Anybody remember why Beta failed? It wasn't just because VHS tapes could make twice as long recordings (Beta allowed for 4 hours max in the end anyways--with picture quality slightly better than VHS at its own 4 hour speed). It wasn't because of studio backing either--studios were fairly agnostic back then, and initially both formats had enough offerings that neither was much ahead of the other. It was ultimately because of the overly-selective/greedy licensing policy of Sony, which kept Beta deck prices higher than they should have been for too long. Furthermore the decks were mechanically more complex than VHS decks and markedly less reliable than VHS as well (this is from personal experience).
We are seeing the blu-ray camp repeat these mistakes--they are resisting any move that would put downward pressure on player prices by being too-selective in licensing to low-cost manufacturers. The often-touted PS3, the most popular HD player by far right now, was l
So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?
Not exactly like spent nuclear fuel and toxic garbage--CO2 is non-toxic, more stable and non-radioactive. Because CO2 is relatively benign (notwithstanding its effects on the climate) it need not be encased in barrels, lead shielding, concrete, etc. It can be pumped into pre-existing underground voids. Not so far fetched then right?
I think it might be a tiny bit shortsighted to think we can continue pumping this crap into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, then capture it and stick it underground
Even Kyoto's most ardent supporters already argue that there is literally, absolutely ZERO chance Canada can meet Kyoto targets by actually reducing its own physical CO2 emissions alone. Therefore it is unavoidable to look at other ways to move towards those targets:
* We can participate in "emissions credits" that are in surplus in Russia and other former communist-bloc countries who have credits to spare, since the USSR collapsed right around the conveniently-assigned 1990 base reference date and those economies imploded on their own. This is cheating in my opinion--it does nothing at all to curb emissions. * We can also invest in upgrades to carbon-spewing outdated facilities in the developing world and take credit for THOSE emission reductions * We can burn more wood, peat-moss, fermented grains, etc (renewable sources containing carbon that hasn't been trapped for millenia--ie. "carbon neutral") in place of oil and gas (non-renewable, releases carbon into the ecosystem that wasn't part of the carbon cycle before) * We can capture and sequester the CO2 released by non-carbon-neutral activities
All Kyoto signatories have looked at all these options in varying degrees because, realistically, NOBODY would be willing to accept the sacrifices involved in the kind of reductions that are REALLY required to meet such targets. As for the last option (subject of the article), the captures CO2 would be sequestered in already-empty voids left behind by oil and gas operations, so in essence we are only putting something back where we found it.
Now, I'm waiting for all this Kyoto business to get all figured out so we can get back to focusing on REAL pollution (CO2 is NOT a pollutant, regardless of its effects on climate). I see no point in breathing cool air if it burns my throat and makes my eyes water (hear that McGuinty? Put scrubbers on those smokestacks, it's NOT a "dumb idea"--it is shameful that your province runs the most-polluting power plants on the continent!)
Where I tell people that if they give me money, I won't sue them. What a concept!
There is something familiar with these "cross-licensing" contracts MS has been aggressively pursuing recently. To me, it signals a move by MS towards a business model conceived in Sicily and perfected some years later in Chicago.
Hmmm...what was the code name for the project at MS to develop Win95 again? I sense that such a move has been in the cards at MS for quite some time now...
Unfortunately I won't get that life of luxury from the social structures, as the money is being wasted on unprepared parents and their spawn.
I actually kind of feel sorry for you if this is truly your outlook on life. It seems rather selfish and it unfortunately reinforces the stereotype that those who choose to not have children are selfish. The selfish, resentful tone in your posts really is a bit depressing. You are working hard so that you can live a "retired life of luxury" and seem bitter that your hard-gotten earnings must be spent to support freeloading "unprepared parents and their spawn". You don't seem to have any respect for the fact that parents of today are building the society of tomorrow. We can't ALL live childless "retired lives of luxury" or the human race would head towards a miserable extinction.
I haven't seen anything at all in your posts that gives insight into what kind of legacy you would like to leave behind once your earthly existence ends. What kind of lasting contributions, memories, achievements would you like to leave this world that could out-survive you? Do you really think of life's purpose is merely to acquire the most "stuff" and live a life of luxury, and that supporting child-rearing people is some kind of inconvenient challenge against that goal? I know a lot of childless adults that don't think that way and accept without any problems at all that parents have to get their kids to school in the morning or get away from work early to do parent-teacher interviews or telecommute if they have to stay home to care for a kid home sick from school.
The childfree have got to pay for the childed's ongoing existence.
Of course you have to. It is kind of a moral obligation don't you think? SOMEONE has to raise the kids that'll eventually grow into the young adults that will build your mansion, tend to your yard and pool, cook your food, provide your security, change your depends when you get REALLY old...as you live your "retired life in luxury" right? Do you not feel that you should maybe help those "childed people" do that? Or perhaps you feel that robots will be invented that can do it all for you with out the messy inconvenience of having to make these disease-ridden flesh-loaves and grow them into annoying people that have to talk to you and eat and live somewhere and maybe even make more of those ghastly babies?
Just who's freeloading and who's pulling the cart? Simple answer : You were factually incorrect in your post.
I'm still not convinced of who is freeloading here--it certainly isn't simple for me and I know far too little about you or the parents you seem to resent. Even if someone works 80 hours a week to fill in for those parents who dare to avoid overtime so they can see their kids grow up, and pull in an impressive wage and make their employer's shareholders rich too...I can't help but think there has to be some degree of freeloading there in many cases. Prepared or not, parents are doing an important job--they are creating more people...and ultimately there is little more important than that for ensuring the continuity of society. What are YOU doing towards that end, besides grudgingly making mandatory financial and professional contributions? Do you help produce our food? Do you help build houses for people to live in? Do you help sick and injured people heal? Do you help educate young people? If you do, that's great! Just remember to keep into perspective that it all starts with *people*, and all people do start off as children you know.
Don't feel too bad though--society at large has lost perspective...those who care for children are in the same company as teachers, farmers, nurses, and many others that are far too under-appreciated and underpaid considering the importance of their contribution to society.
What we REALLY need is updated versions of BROWSERS (especially IE--even v7 is out of date in terms of compliance). We don't need CSS4 or HTML5 or XHTML2...browsers still have a hard time with CSS2, HTML4.x/XHTML1.x!
do things like reference other elements attributes so that you can create tables and line up things across/down the page.
Does not CSS3--a current standard with which nobody yet complies--provide means for columnar layouts? Also, last time I checked the latest HTML/XHTML specs supported table, tr, th, td etc...and none of it is deprecated...and even CSS2 has tabular layout stuff. It drives me up the wall when I see something like a calendar or other tabular information marked up with silly CSS an div and span tags all over the place. The thing is, if it is "semantically" a table, you should USE an (x)html table! Not only is the CSS simpler, the actual content (in terms of (x)html source) makes more sense to parsers and humans.
OTOH, is you want columnar layout for non-tabular data (news sites, discussion forums) then stop using tables already! It isn't all web developers' faults...the biggest problem is that the lack of support for CSS3 and the difficulty in doing such layouts in older versions of CSS is reinforcing bad behaviour (however, there is NO excuse for marking up lists with divs and spans--another annoyance to me. The ol, ul and li tags are there and CSS supports formatting these elements quite well).
HTML is more or less fine, give me a better version of CSS anyday.
I mostly agree if you mean strict XHTML, though CSS3 is a big improvement as well and what we need is better CSS SUPPORT. A few things I'd more like to see to make the WWW a better place:
* better native support for SVG in browsers...if you want rounded corners and other spiffy presentational elements THAT is probably the most appropriate place for it to be done.
* if (x)html is to be messed with lets look at how forms are handled...we could do with something that is more "evolutionary" than what W3C has been mulling perhaps.
* the standard that needs the most work is Javascript/ECMAscript...the xmlhttprequest object is not implemented as a standard and there is no standard proposed for it. Instead we have a proposed standard for similar functionality by the W3C (DOM level 3 "load and save") that is more cumbersome and nothing like the "de-facto standard". This "real" standard (DOM3LS) thus far is only supported in Opera IIRC, and the Mozilla team really pushes back when asked to work on such support. People, pick something and get it working the same in all browsers..this is what holds back "web 2.0" the most IMO!
I could care less about Cat-5 and coax, if you just put in a conduit. That builder has already created a situation where the wiring is out dated. Gigabit wants Cat-6.
My house is wired for Cat-5e--that was the very latest thing out when I had it done. I upgraded my home LAN to gigabit merely by replacing the switch and the NIC in the older PC that was still 100BT. As the speed attests to (better than wireless-N in ideal conditions in actual tests), you most certainly CAN use gigabit without Cat6. Not bad for six-year-old wiring, and there is still a lot of life left for Gigabit.
If he had put in conduit, every one of his houses could be rewired by the homeowner with very little fuss.
Conduit is certainly a good way to do things, though in reality it can still be a monumental task to pull cable through conduits embedded into walls, floors and ceilings, especially if it has to make many bends...and in residential construction is WILL have to make s few bends. For example, you have to route it around HVAC ducts, water supply and DWV pipes and electrical wiring. Furthermore you might find you cannot run conduit of usable size through studs of load-bearing walls or in floor joists (and you cannot drill holes of any kind through any part of an engineered truss) as this will violate building codes and cause structural weakness.
So, unless you can snake cable through a 1" O.D. conduit full of bends with any sort of ease then you are looking at not only the cost of the conduit itself and its installation, you are looking at doubling up load-bearing studs and joists, or widening walls by a couple of inches. This is very expensive and houses are expensive enough as it is. It's akin to butting in a built-in vacuum system--it'll cost in the thousands and you only have a small number of strategically placed outlets (not in every room, etc). Builders do not use conduit except in commercial or very high-end residential because it adds a substantial amount to the cost, is not as flexible during construction and is a hidden feature that doesn't add to resale value for a typical buyer.
Part of the problem though is that the buyers ooohhh and ahhhh about the cat-5, and don't even think about what they are going to do in a few years.
If you have an unfinished basement or crawlspace or attic area--and I'd say most houses have one of those, then you can use a fishtape (like a measuring tape but stiffer) and drill a hole into the inside of a wall and fish the cable into the wall with a comparable effort to pulling through a convoluted conduit (maybe less). You then clamp cables to the floor joists, ceiling joists, etc. and route back to your panel. This was done in my house to six rooms in one weekend (not working on it full days either). The basement was easier yet becasue it was not finished at the time. If you wire with the latest cable now, by the time you MUST get something else you'll be renovating anyways. And, unless you are a pro and have very high-end needs, a gigabit-ethernet network over Cat5e still has a very long shelf life--it provides more than enough bandwidth for residential HDTV, IP telephony and other media.
Quite correct, especially if you define "centrist" as a polite term for "unprincipled". The Liberal party in Canada historically has had no fixed "ideology" or shared values beyond what is dictated by popular opinion. This makes them nominally "populist" in ideology, though that seems to only be the case when they are in opposition or during elections. When Liberals are in government they generally end up standing for what benefits themselves the most. Most accurately, they are better termed the "un-Conservative party". Since they largely shape their policy and platform based on the opposite of what the Conservatives believe or do they naturally lean more leftward (that is, they lean left out of convenience rather than out of principle)
"liberal" = The standard definition of a political Liberal. Generally represented by the NDP [...]
The NDP most definitely do NOT represent "classical" or "small-l" liberal ideology. The NDP, most Greens, Canadian Communists and Marxists represent classical SOCIALISM, which occupies an opposite corner of the political arena from liberalism. They believe in the "common good" and are the strongest supporters of such things as government ownership of essential institutions, regulation, protectionist economic policies, the welfare state and so on. Government intervention in the name of society or community as a whole takes precedence over individual freedoms and rights.
The classical liberal viewpoint is in support of individual rights, limitation of the scope of government, "laissez-faire" economic policy, property rights and so on. In Canada, the now-defunct "Reform" party is the closest to a "classical liberal" stance that Canada has ever had in parliament (it had social conservatism aspects mixed in its policy though--Reform re-adjusted its organisation and policy to become the C"Canadian Alliance" and subsequently merged with the old "Progressive Conservatives" to create the current governing Conservative party).
Technically, the "big L Liberals" are supposed to be "social liberals" which is what most political wonks would mean when they say "small-l liberal I suppose--they are supposed to value the use of economic and social interventions by the state to protect individual rights and freedoms (versus the socialist emphasis on "the common good"). Pierre Trudeau's vision he called "just society" is the most purely "social liberal" stance that the Liberal party has ever taken, though Trudeau was, to put it politely, a "pragmatist" and as Prime Minister he took some actions that directly countered that vision (most notably by invoking the War Measures Act nation wide as a response to the FLQ crisis in Quebec).
Conservatism--the "small c" variety, is all about preservation of "traditional values". Small-c conservatism is hard to pin down because globally the "traditional values" they seek to preserve will vary. In North America GW Bush is probably truest to this ideology--preservation of old-line Christian values and so forth (not necessarily "defenders of individual rights", make note). There is no "small C conservative" party in Canada outside of fringe parties. The last true conservative party in Canada were the "Social Credit" (or in Quebec the "Creditistes"). Those parties essentially went extinct by the 1980s.
In any case, federal political nomenclature in Canada is quite backwards, especially in terms of how the US sees politics. The Conservative party is home to most of the "classical liberals". The Liberal party is a mixture of "social liberals" and moderate socialists, as are the Greens (with an emphasis on environmental issues). The NDP is a stridently socialist party (NDP supporters are called "New Democrats", suggesting to Americans that they are "classical liberals" with a bit of "social liberalism" thrown in such as was the case with Bill Clinton. Our current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is ideologically much closer to Clinton than GW Bush--if H
The batteries at least are easily recycled and, should production ramp up, closed loop recycling is a real likelihood.
Except that the batteries in your hybrid car are in fact NOT easily recycled--it is the single most expensive component of the entire car to recycle, and the process is less established than that for more conventional lead-acid or NiCd batteries. Closed-loop recycling is not possible with current technology for Li-Ion and NiMH batteries and will not be for some years to come (though it has been possible for lead-acid batteries and to get all the Cd out of NiCd as well).
There is still a notable amount of toxic waste produced by the recycling processes of these batteries as well. Of course, recycling the materials in these batteries is significantly better for the environment than mining for more minerals, drilling for more petroleum for the plastics, etc. The biggest consideration is that you still use a LOT of energy to recycle this newer battery technology in comparison to what is required to recycle traditional auto parts (500 to 1000 percent more energy in fact). That is why I said that it might be best to look at mushing auto companies to implement more incremental advancements more often--for example by making vehicles with conventional engines that are modified with starters like the hybrids have, so that the engine does not need to idle (an "idle-less ICE" rather than a full hybrid). This would be much more cost effective and the "battery problem" wouldn't be as apparent.
To counter some of your examples, urban driving really plays to the Prius' strengths (which is where a lot of people live anyway), and cab drivers must absolutely love the things.
Just as many people are SUBurban dwellers as well (such as myself). Suburban dwellers often drive a good portion of their commute on expressways (two-thirds of my daily commute by distance is "highway" driving). Furthermore, professional drivers (taxi operators, intra-city delivery drivers, etc) are exceptional cases of very high mileage AND mostly urban driving (typical drivers are almost never both). I don't believe hybrids are the best solution for everyone so I don't advocate they be treated as such. My biggest concern is that both automakers and consumers are looking right past some simple but high-impact technology improvements when they focus on flashy-but-complicated "revolutionary" new things.
And I'm a supporter of hybrids of that reason. I don't own one (my old car works fine) but I do think they are a technology that will be good for efficiency increases eventually.
I'm not yet convinced that hybrids are the final solution. They still leave a big environmental footprint in terms of manufacturing and operation. The batteries contain toxic materials and require a great deal of energy to produce. They still rely on gasoline--a non-renewable resource.
Also, the things still have a gas engine in them, and if you live in, say, Saskatchewan, where half the population is rural and they drive more highway miles, then the fuel consumption is actually worse than some gas-only or diesel-only vehicles (I know this first hand, from a Prius owner that drives mostly highway miles and gets mileage worse than a VW Golf diesel). No matter how many they make this will still be a problem.
Perhaps as the inventory of spent batteries increases then recycling will reduce the environmental footprint of hybrids as the need for nickel mined out of the (still) single dirtiest facility in North America is reduced. However, the energy required to manufacture these cells, as well as the need to deal with toxic chemicals in the process, will never be reduced significantly.
Electric motors produce nearly 100% torque from the word go, whereas ICEs need to operate at a higher speed for maximum torque.
ICEs can be used much more efficiently than they are now though. CVT transaxles vary the gearing ratio whilst keeping the engine RPMS constantly at a peak torque or efficiency point (My car has a CVT, and during moderate acceleration to highway speed the RPMs stay right around 3500 but my car accelerates smoothly to cruising speed, at which point the RPMS gradually ramp down to the low 2000s). This alone increases efficiency of an ICE by nearly 10 percent. Also, ICEs don't NEED to idle, and there is technology to have an electric starter that brings the engine to life only when the car needs to move.
I think that such incremental, lower cost and/or simpler solutions might be of more value than a bug, complicated and potentially false solution like hybrids with complicated drivetrains and big, expensive, toxic batteries. Given that, I probably WOULDN'T by a hybrid merely to "support the development" of the technology.
Well, since Commodore and Amiga have been separate companies for quite some time now, my guess is that it would be more likely that you'd go to Amiga for the Amiga emulation rather than Commodore.
Many companies use patents defensively (or counter offensively).
If the patent systems of the world weren't as flawed as they are then such a strategy would not be required. Furthermore, it is the exactly the opposite intention of the whole process--patents are supposed to be granted to foster innovation, not prevent innovation by others.
Or they may simply make the strategic decision that the effort and resources expended in pursuing profit in the patent are better spent pursuing something else.
This begs the question of "why keep the patent at all?". If there is no economic benefit to obtaining patent protection for an invention then why waste time and money on the involved and expensive application process to begin with? Perhaps the patent holder has decided to change strategies, but that would be a good reason for them to sell ot give away the patent. The ONLY reason a patent holder wouldn't release a patent with limited potential to that holder would be to prevent a competitor from innovating--and again that is exactly counter to the original intention of patent protection.
1. It helps deter competitors from launching patent infringement lawsuits against them, because they have patents that can be used in a counter suit.
There would be record of the patents existence even if it was invalidated, sold or given away. The inactive patent would be evidence of prior art and would provide protection from lawsuits by competitors regardless of a patent's present ownership or status.
2. It prevents competitors from utilizing the technology that they developed.
The point of limitations on competition is to allow and encourage the patent holder to bring the invention to market. If the patent holder makes no effort to do so then they are PREVENTING innovation and abusing the patent system--this is amoral and should also be illegal (ie. the patent should be revoked).
3. It gives them business options that they would not otherwise have if they didn't have the rights to the patent.
Abusing patent protection to create artificial barriers to entry in a new market shouldn't be a "business option". Purposely sitting on an invention for the sole reason of keeping competitors from entering a market you *might* want to establish *some day* (or might not)--for decades--might give some person or corporation a possible edge, but it does so at the expense of everyone else. Legal instruments like patents, trademarks and copyrights were safeguards to limit the possibility of a free market being dominated/hijacked by unethical players in the market. When they are used to deliberately create a perpetually-protected market for a few established participants it becomes evident that they are flawed.
Besides, if the patents were valuable, the company would already have pursued licensing the technology to another person/company who can develop it into something viable.
Conversely, if the patents were of limited value then there should be no problem if we changed patent law to provide early revocation of patent protection for inventions that are "unused" for too long, so that other entrepreneurs can decide for themselves if the invention is economically viable. If the patent holder is having trouble getting developers to license then it would be better to encourage them to re-examine the licensing costs rather than encourage them to sit on their ideas.
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them
EXACTLY. How terribly naive to think that those companies that own many "stale patents" would donate their "valuable IP". Those who are truly interested in innovation rather than exploitation will make the effort to get the invention to market (either themselves or through actively pursuing licensing agreements with those that have the capital to do so). Those companies that are NOT interested in bringing the patented idea to market and are not evil parasites are already donating such patents to others (IBM for example).
All that are left are evil, parasitic submarine-patent holding companies. Such companies exist solely to make money without making an effort by holding innovation hostage. Such companies will not donate their IP simply by asking them politely. As you have suggested and I've advocated for quite some time, this illegitimate business model has to be outlawed in some way, and the best way to do this is to introduce the obligation to provide not only the description of the invention itself but an execution/delivery plan as well that describes the intended plan to bring the patented invention to market. The patent holder would be held to that plan, up to a maximum-allowable period of time (whichever is shorter). If the patent holder fails to deliver the patent would be permanently invalidated and the idea would be public domain.
Though much more patent reform is required, this single change would be a big step forward. Amazon may have been evil to file their stupid "one-click-online-purchase" patent but at least they actually brought the idea to reality. Submarine patents run completely counter to the spirit and purpose of patent law, are potentially damaging to the economy and global competitiveness of a nation and must be eliminated.
it concerns me that you think this is open source.
But it IS an open system--just not a COMPLETELY open source/Free one. Google's infrastructure is all Linux based, the applications are platform independent (ie...an OPEN platform) and will run on client OSes like Linux and *BSD (OPEN source and Free). Firefox may be used as a browser even if Windows clients are retained (open source).
It concerns ME that people like YOU confuse "open architecture" and "open source", and as a knee-jerk reaction condemn, or at least severely criticise, any system architecture that is not totally and completely Free. In my original post I said "open and Free" in meaning two different things, because they are NOT the same thing, though they are nearly equally important, and achieving at least one of the two is a great step forward. There are examples of "open" (even "open source") that are not Free--Many commercial Unices are examples (they may comply with the openly available POSIX standard, the source code is even available, they are very well documented). MacOS X is very open compared to MS Vista for example, however MacOS X is even less Free than MS Vista (as the latter at least is not locked in to one hardware vendor). MS has a lot of open software under a "shared source" license, which is not Free (you cannot alter and distribute it freely, nor is the license "viral" to use Microsoft parlance)
Similarly there are Free software projects that aren't particularly open (it is subtle, but notice that I say capital-F-Free software to mean what the French might call "logiciel libre" whereas small-f-free is "gratis"). Often such a project is the vehicle that carries a business that uses support as a means of revenue generation--which is a valid way to try to make money. Such a Free project might even be licensed under the GPL and fully functional versions easily downloadable in source and binary form. However Free they may be they are not truly OPEN. It might be basically impossible to be as closed as a completely closed-source system like MS Vista but it is pretty easy to introduce elements that "close up" a Free system from an architectural standpoint. For example (a minor one anyways) MySQL is not standards compliant in terms of both behaviour or syntax, so many applications designed around MySQL become "locked in" (just to avoid totally offending MySQL people, PostgreSQL is MUCH more compliant with standards but has its own nonstandard extensions and behaviours too, which when used can lead to lock-in). Of course, if care is taken in application design this lock-in can be mitigated. Another way of "closing" a Free application is to withhold some or all documentation or create non-free support forums (SQL Ledger and Mandrake are past examples where these practices have limited interoperability and "openness" of a system).
Yes, Google's office suite is definitely not free OR Free but Google is VERY good at making "open" systems (unrestricted access to APIs, majority of offerings are not single-platform, etc), and furthermore these apps will run on a Free platform. Still a great deal better than non-Free AND non-Open a la Microsoft if you ask me. The next step could be to move to Free applications on a Free system some day...but hey, we are talking about a US government department here...baby steps...
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My car (an '07 Caliber) was rated at "28 to 32 MPG". I consistently get 26 or less. :(
I have the same car (2L engine with CVT transaxle--no gears at all, just automatically adjusting variable-ratio). I assume you are American and that you are talking American gallons. I'm Canadian and we've never used US gallons (used to be Imperial/British Gallon, now it's all metric) so a little mathematics translates 26 miles per US gallon to 9.25 litres per 100 kilometres. Canada does not use EPA guidelines--the numbers we use come from EnerGuide and are based upon testing methods mandated by Transport Canada. The Canadian numbers are 9.0 l/100km for city and 7.3 for highway (because the units are flipped from mpg, smaller number means more fuel efficient--this is why they are not technically called "mileage" in Canada, but instead "fuel consumption" or "fuel economy").
I get similar fuel consumption to your 9.25 number--this is not that far off from the EnerGuide city estimate of 9.0. I normally drive almost exclusively in the city and it looks like you must do so to. I attribute my slightly-higher fuel consumption number to the nature of the daily commuter rush traffic where I live (average speed on my daily commute is 30 km/h--about 19 mph, and I believe the test methods assume a 50 km/h, or 32 mph, average speed). Perhaps you drive in a similar environment as I do. If that is the best you are getting then you may also be driving more aggressively than what is called for by Transport Canada (or the US equivalent, though historically Canadian fuel economy estimates have historically been closer to reality).
Here are some observations I've made about improving fuel consumption numbers in the Caliber (apples to most cars actually)
* Do not "punch the pedal" to the floor--gradually/smoothly press the accelerator down over a 1 to 2 second period. The CVT in the Caliber does not respond with a "kick-down" because it has no gears like a normal automatic (nor does the latest Nissan Sentra, which uses the same kind CVT as the Caliber, but tuned to be even more "elastic"), so all you're doing is revving your engine a bit faster and using a bit more gas--you get no extra acceleration out of it and merely a bit more noise.
* Similarly, don't depress the pedal right to the floor when on the highway merging or passing. You get very little extra acceleration by pushing the RPMS to near redline, only more noise. The best acceleration is to get to a constant engine speed around 4000 RPM and let the CVT ramp the ratio up to speed, then ease off the pedal until it adjusts the ratio to get about 2200 RPM at cruising speed. Best fuel economy is to accelerate in the 3000 to 3500 RPM range it seems so far.
* ALWAYS use cruise control on the highway (if you are getting a Caliber or a Sentra with the CVT I REALLY RECOMMEND the cruise control option) because it really improves fuel economy. I was amazed how far ont tank took me on a road trip compared to my daily commute--and it was even better than my first road trip when I forgot about the cruise because my old car didn't have it).
* Avoid driving at speeds over 50 km/h (32 mph) with windows rolled down; use A/C instead if you have it. The reverse is true at low speeds.
I think a lot of why people complain about poor fuel economy has to do with aggressive starts and stops--and this is even worse in a car with CVT. Driving a car with a CVT is like driving a motorboat--the engine revs up to a high RPM and sits there as the speed keeps increasing. Because the engine noise is not ramping up in speed between shifts as it does in a transaxle with gears it initially gives the impression that you are not accelerating very quickly, when in fact you are accelerating the quickest at the point the engine RPMs are steady or even slowly declining! I know that when I first car that the slowly climbing tachometer needle and lazily-accelerating engine RPMs made me want to floor the accelerator to try and get that "kickdown
If MS really had this big patent portfolio on which Linux was infringing, then Novell would have been in a very weak bargaining position.
Both parties are in awkward positions, if pro-Free-software legal experts are correct in their interpretation of the MS-Novell agreement and the GPL.
Increasingly it looks like the agreement will be in conflict with GPL3, and as software included in SLES migrates towards using GPL3 Novell will either have to freeze SLES at the last version of code relesed under GPL2 or somehow find their way out of the agreement to stay current.
MS is in an awkward position because in their end of the deal they are obligated to sell SLES certificates. Technically they are now a Linux distributor. To sell a distribution you MUST abide by the GPL--even under GPL2 when you distribute GPL software you MUST make the source code available without restriction. It does not matter if the code implements a patented invention, MS could not charge a royalty/licensing fee to restrict use of the application or its source code without violating GPL. If MS is serious about trying to enforce its patents it must immediately terminate its agreement with Novell. GPL3 would not make the above situation any different for these existing patents from what I understand--what GPL3 does is keep authors of GPLed code from creating NEW patents based on the functionality of that GPLed code (could a lawyer out there tell me if that is a valid interpretation?).
I'm not convinced MS will get very far with this latest cage-rattling. I suspect many of the involved patents are pretty dubious in nature--and some may be very old and could be close to expiration by the time litigation has finally reached a conclusion (another reason why they wouldn't pull a SCO and head into an embarrassing, protracted legal battle over IP). I also suspect that the Linux kernel itself violates few if any patents at all given how architecturally different it is from the Windows kernel. Microsoft would most likely go after the more outer layers of the OS onion--those involving interoperability with Windows. That is, after all, the stated focus of the MS-Novell deal.
I think we'd first see action against Samba for example. Mono would've been a target as well, but the Novell agreement took care of that. Frontpage interoperability with Apache is another likely Free software target (I realise not all of their targets are GPL, though that is their prime concern). ODBC drivers that let Linux talk to Microsoft databases might be in the crosshairs. This strategy could be part of the "if you can't beat them, join them" plan: If Vista and the corresponding to-be-released server OS prove to be disappointments over the long term the Windows platform as it exists today may be allowed to wither and die on the vine, to be replaced with something more Linux-like (or perhaps BSD-like).
If it does indeed "pull an Apple" and underpin its OS with such Free content it'll need a differentiator--and they intend that to be backwards compatibility with what will be "legacy Windows", which will also allow them to maintain their vendor lock-in. That key piece of the puzzle cannot be Free under the MSFT business model so the goal of more aggressively enforcing patents is likely to explore the feasibility of taking the "MSFT/Linux" or "BSD Windows" route whilst maintaining the leverage they enjoy as a monopoly.
Their investment in "open source research" as of late has provided them with some ammunition, however I think they are still too clumsy with the gun and will only be able to shoot themselves in the foot with such a clumsy strategy. MS is resilient though, so I hope defenders of Free software can keep them off balance before they recover.
Hey...I have a Theremin right here! Wait...what's this? "Made in Taiwan"....damn! That guy on EBay said he built it by hand! What a rip-off.
Well, maybe I can help with another one of the items in the scavenger hunt. I've knitted a parabola before and I'm sure that it would be easier to hyperbolic crochet...
Way to ignore the vast majority of solid information out there and try to put a rose on a pile of shit.
Way to dismiss all thoughts and opinions that don't agree with you.
I think it is pretty much an agreed-upon fact that earth temperatures are rising, and I think that it is naive to think that human activity can't have an effect on climate. However, this does not mean we all have to have are eyelids glued open and be forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth until we believe the polar ice caps will melt away, the sky will turn to water and fall on out heads and we'll all drown unless we all live like the Amish. Global climate modeling is mind-bogglingly complex and there most certainly is room for debate on the magnitude and nature of human-activity-induced climate change.
Global temperatures are probably slowly rising overall. If we do not adapt to the changes, it will probably be detrimental overall too, but overall does not mean universally. Some places will be cooler, some will be wetter, some will be drier too. It seems to me that where I live, winters have gotten warmer over the years but summers are actually COOLER and a bit wetter. This might improve yields for some types of crops. In other parts of the world, productive land may become deserts. There is NO WAY we can know with certainty HOW bad (or good) how changing climate will affect related issues like food production.
I think dialogue needs to be kept open and opinions of all types must be considered. As far as reducing our CO2 emissions to slow global warming goes, however, I think we've reached a point where even severe reductions will be akin to trying to stop a speeding, fully-loaded freight train using the mass and power of a Smart Car: it'll make a small, essentially meaningless impact immediately and unless we turn off the train engine (akin basically to voluntarily wiping out the human population) the train will just keep rolling along. Whatever good intentions the Kyoto accord was intended to address, it has done something quite dangerous I think--it has shifted the focus on environmental issues very heavily towards one single issue to the detriment of all others (especially as the deadline to meet targets looms). Projects to install scrubbers on smokestacks to remove pollution that endangers our health are being cancelled in order to purchase emissions credits or invest in CO2 capture, but in the meantime we still get smog, acid rain and asthma-inducing particulates belching into the air! Expansion of nuclear power is being seriously discussed as a solution to the Kyoto problem--what is the environmental impact of uranium mining, and what about safety and security around the handling of nuclear fuel and waste?
I am not sure of the motives behind the huge effort to control the nearly uncontrollable (global climate), but it is getting in the way of true environmentalism--an approach based around conservation and sustainability. Reducing oil consumption isn't just needed to keep global warming in check--it just makes common sense to make more judicious use of a resource that is expensive to extract and refine, is non renewable and of finite supply. Thankfully, much of what is done in the name of CO2 reduction does in fact help sustainability, but it is not the whole picture. What is important to keep in mind though is the TOTAL impact of what we do: What'll we do with all the mercury in spent CF bulbs once incandescents are banned? What is the environmental impact of creating the batteries (energy consumption, chemicals and metals used, etc) used in your Prius? What about loss of habitat and damage to wildlife caused by hydroelectric dams and wind power farms (both Kyoto-friendly but they have a large negative impact on the environment nonetheless)?
Anyway, it is always good to give opinions "on the fringe" the benefit of the doubt.
If by "durable" you mean that most of it rubs off after a couple of days in your pocket
As has been mentioned elsewhere, at least one run of these coins contained a lot of manufacturing defects. There have been cases of mis-registration of the image (shifted or on the wrong side) and improper application and/or curing of the layers of resin. If your coin does not have a rectangular patch that illuminates under UV light that completely covers the coloured image then this is probably the reason the red paint rubbed off. If early runs of the coin had a poppy covering the queens face then it is entirely possible that the final coat may have been misapplied to the wrong side.
I have encountered several of these coins and by no means have they suffered from what you describe. They've survived multiple trips through washer and dryer without any visible signs of wear whatsoever, much less spending time in your jeans or wallet throughout the day.
If the "market penetration" philosophy were true Unix would have been hacked to bits decades ago.
There is some credence to the "market penetration" argument, because Unix systems WERE "hacked to bits" decades ago, when they were the dominant networkable operating system. Of course, there are always other factors that come into play, and ultimately nothing trumps a robust design for security (which is why BSD and Linux servers running Apache are hacked far less often than Windows/IIS despite haveing a much larger market share).
The article is kind of pointless because it answers the wrong question: there is nothing interesting about what would be different if a corporation other than Microsoft held a monopoly position in mainstream computing software--we all know that nothing would be materially different. If Apple was the monopolist you KNOW it would sit on its laurels and we'd probably have been stuck with MacOS9-based OS until security and stability problems go so baf that they'd have to do something radical. MS' competition is better because it HAS offer something better to be able to survive against the 800 pound gorilla.
If one were to imagine life without a MONOPOLY rather than life without Microsoft the situation would be VASTLY different. Just like genetic variation in a species of wildlife population provides some insurance against extinction, having a diversity of inter-operable computing platforms would provide inherent security against system-wide compromise. Right now, global computing infrastructure is a sickly monoculture that is vulnerable to electronic pandemics.
I think that without Microsoft there is an equally plausible alternative outcome to the one presented in the article: If no one player were to achieve market domination in a timely fashion we'd see growth slowdown and perhaps shakeup, as we did in the home computer hardware market in the 1980s. In order to survive, the remaining players would have to cooperate in terms of observing protocols and standards. One way or another, the market must achieve interoperability, and it happens either by one vendor achieving monopoly or by several vendors cooperating at a certain level.
That is what happened on the hardware side in fact--there was a shakeout, a major player emerged (IBM) and before it achieved an assured monopoly the likes of Phoenix and Compaq reverse-engineered the design and inadvertently created a vendor-neutral open systems specification. Today there is no hardware monopoly in the PC market, and hardware is cheap, plentiful and quite reliable overall. Within the silicon and circuits the designs are radically different, but they all have standard internal bus slots, external peripheral connectors and generally are all able to run the same software.
I'll always wonder why software didn't follow the same path, especially given the culture under which much of it was developed. In the 1970s hobbyists and upstart competitors were inspired by the Altair design to create the S100-bus standard platform around it, even with resistance from MITS against the whole effort. At the same time software enthusiasts and entrepreneurs were sharing software and working towards interoperability (much to the chagrin of BillG at the time). I'm not sure why the software wouldn't follow the path of hardware in terms of this gravitation towards interoperability.
We're actually setting the stage today for another opportunity to establish true interoperability--standards such as POSIX,SUS,LSB are well established (though still too often ignored) and Linux, MacOS and BSD share enough similarities that the idea is becoming feasible. The oft-criticised nature of open source to "re-invent the wheel" is key to making this a success--of course the other half of that success is to make sure all these new wheels will roll on the same set of tracks. I think it is looking promising that more and more Free software developers are starting to take that into consideration.
t's a known fact that Starbucks is on a quest for domination of the US, and will not rest until there is a Starbucks on every street corner and every American is hooked.
Starbucks is a Tim Horton's wannabe--it isn't anywhere close to achieving domination of its home country the way Tim Horton's is. Let me give you an idea of just how far along Tim Horton's is in its quest to take over Canada:
* Tim Hortons is the LARGEST fast-food/cafe chain in Canada. It is MORE THAN DOUBLE the size of McDonalds in Canada in terms of number of stores AND makes significantly more money than Mcdonalds does in Canada as well.
* For every cup of coffee Starbucks sells in Canada, Tim Horton's sells TEN.
* One of every four dollars spent on fast food in Canada is spent at Tim Horton's
* Even though it has a relatively small presence in the US, it is large enough that it TOOK OVER a major US fast food chain (it merged with Wendy's, and the resulting merged entity was majority owned by former Tim Horton's ownership). It also took over other regional fast food businesses in the US (Hardee's, Rax, etc).
So, it is an honest mistake to believe the special-issue coins might have been issued by Tim Horton's, given how thoroughly they have taken over the nation. However, it is not the case--legal tender is made exclusively by the Royal Mint despite the appearance that being a Tim Horton's franchisee is a license to print money.
It was a Remembrance Day (ww2) coin.. why would this strike anyone as suspicious?
Actually, the coin was NOT a WW2 coin. It was issued in 2004 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the start of the FIRST world war in 1914. Remembrance Day started at the end of WWI (11th hour, eleventh day, eleventh month in 1918).
It is the first general-circulation coin in the world to have ever been issued in colour. IIRC, Canada is still the only country to issue coloured coins in general circulation (the mint later issued one with a pink ribbon as part of a breast cancer fund-raising campaign). The images are "painted" (printed actually) by computer using some kind of epoxy on a small mesh substrate, which is then cured (not sure if this required heat or not, but it becomes quite a durable finish).
It is quite an elabourate process for a simple little image, but it was designed so that it could withstand years of use in general circulation without wearing off or fading. They worked on the assumption that these coins would see the same kind of abuse as normal coins, but given that people tend to save them for awhile when they get then in their change, I suspect that the mint went a bit overboard in the design. However, the Canadian Mint is internationally known for quality so they have a rep to live up to.
Given the unusual nature of the coin to someone outside of Canada, I'm not surprised that it caught the attention of US security. Also, given the paranoia of security-types in both the US AND Canada, I am not the least surprised that they would over-react to a benign situation (and, in the process, likely miss a REAL threat). I have, in my travels through many airports in Canada and US, witnessed some of these "bright lights" confiscate an old lady's plastic crochet hooks and "take down" an 80 year old man (forcing him to the floor, arms restrained at his back), who lost sight of his wheelchair-bound wife when an attendant took her down the elevator while his back was turned. That last incident really drove home the message that you MUST take seriously the signs that read "do not stop in this area" as you leave the departure gate. If Canadian security are like that, I can only imagine what DC or New York would be like (Philadelphia and Chicago are bad enough thank you).
"Hey, he's got a turban! And a beard! It's ONE OF THEM!"
Don't put him in charge of security in Canada's largest airports (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary). Imagine his alarm when the guy with the turban and beard on whom he's drawn his gun happens to be his boss.
Don't take this as a racist remark--it is merely an observation about life here; for years, those of middle-eastern decent have traditionally seemed to gravitate towards certain businesses, security services being among them.
Canada has continually taken steps to try to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.
Canada has done nothing of the sort! Canada has done a great deal to reduce dependency on FOREIGN oil. We've been quite successful in that respect..now we're completely dependent on oil from ALBERTA, but at least that is within our own country. If Alberta were to secede from Canada, then Canada would be completely screwed (Saskatchewan and Newfoundland have fairly fast reserves but they are much less developed).
The truth is that the US has done significantly more than Canada to increase efficiency and reduce fossil fuel consumption, even with GW Bush and his oil buddies in power! Canada's consumption--and corresponding CO2 emissions--have increased by all measures (both absolute numbers and based on "intensity" figures such as per-capita or as a proportion of GDP). OTOH, while US consumption has gone up, it has not gone up as fast as Canada's and "intensity" emissions figures have gone down. It is Canada's own "inconvenient truth".
Canada's government is only NOW making any meaningful efforts towards reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. In 13 years, the "caring, sharing Kyoto-loving" Liberals instituted no regulations, no major technology development programmes, no NOTHING. Instead, they hosted conferences, made funny TV ads urging people to save energy and drive less. Now, we have a "cold-hearted" PM from oil-rich Alberta presiding over a gov't instituting regulations that might actually be effective (effective enough? Many would say not. Motivation? Probably a cynical ploy to stay in power in the next election...Gore came up here and scared us all I guess..the "principle" involved is questionable).
Seting up solar power in Sarnia is pretty ironic but maybe appropriate--the area is notorious for being the home of a couple of the continents dirtiest refineries (worse than any single facility in Alberta in fact). Hope enough sun can get through the smog. However I think too much is being made of this, perhaps because of the novelty of having solar power in Canada.
A far more successful programme involving renewable power involves a large wind-power complex in southern Alberta. The City of Calgary purchases enough power from this facility to run the electric light-rail mass transit system as well as contribute to the energy needs of its municipal buildings. The company also supplies wind-power to the largest shopping centre in the city as well. Calgary--"Houston of the North" of all places--is the first (and I believe only) city government in Canada that has actually met Kyoto emissions reductions targets, largely because of its wind power programme (as well as benefiting from increased use of natural gas over coal for its power needs as well).
Solar just seems like the wrong approach to me--wind and water has been more effective in terms of cost. Geothermal energy could be tapped more. There is also a compelling argument for creating a "distributed generation" system using fuel-cell technology. Hydrogen from natural gas, already pumped into most houses here for heating, can be used in fuel cellsto generate more than enough power required to run a house, and the waste heat can be used for heating water and homes themselves. Essentially, you could get your heat AND power for almost no more gas consumption as it would take for heat alone.
Bullshit. If you raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, they become less attractive compared to other means.
It raises the cost of burning fossil fuels *FOR US*. It LOWERS the cost for Russians and others who SELL the credits and ENCOURAGES them to continue burning fossil fuels as their economy recovers. As it stands, the emissions credit system used internationally is a scam--it doesn't do enough (nearly NOTHING in fact) to compel those SELLING the credits to use that revenue to clean up their OWN acts. All it is is robbing Peter to pay Paul so Paul can buy more Vodka to drink and keep driving his soot-belching Lada. I don't think that's fair nor is it effective--it just makes different people the problem, like tearing down inner-city slums to make high-rise condos just chases the hookers into the next neighbourhood.
Double the price of gasoline, and charge industry for their emissions. Economics are the only thing that will change us.
Such changes would cause widespread poverty. Doubling petroleum prices has a similar impact on the cost of pretty much everything else we buy. Food costs will go up (What do farmers use to power their tractors huh? No hybrid John Deeres out there yet. How about locomotives and trucks for trnsporting such food?). Housing costs will go up even faster than they are now (Again, I don't see any electric bulldozers and cement trucks and such out there). Today, if you did that, it would mess up your life even IF you only rode the bus (which would cost more too) and walked to the corner store to buy your $3 loaf of bread and $8 jug of milk.
You can't just go in with a big economic club and properly solve the problem--better to use a scalpel to do such surgery, and perhaps a few tasty economic carrots to provide incentive to people to live healthier lifestyles.
I still maintain that with all this focus on one single "inconvenient truth" that far too many other such truths are being ignored--everything from endangered species, disappearing habitats, he sorry state of much of Kyoto-exempt China's environment...and no, climate change isn't the root of all those problems either--there are thingsto be done on those other fronts that will have an immediate positive effect on the environment, whereas no matter WHAT we do now, reducing CO2 today will have little to no climactic effect within most of our lifetimes. Again, what is the point of taking flawed measures to fix what our climate will be like 100 years from now if, in 100 years, there are no rain forests, no edible fish in the sea, and our grandchildren will only be able to look at pictures of tigers because no real ones will be left alive?
It is great that Gore et. al and the Kyoto accord has rought the environment to the forefront, but it has done so at the expense of other important environmental issues.
A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it.
Some of "us" old-timers developed software for CP/M systems...or Apple II or Commodores...and made a good living on it too. Those platforms were all market leaders in the PC realm at one point in time and they all faded away in obsolescence. CP/M was not a Microsoft product and was what powered the vast majority of "open architecture" PCs for most of the first decade of the markets existence. It doesn't matter how big a leader one platform is over another, it does NOT make sense to jump on one wagon and dismiss the others. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of a leading market position, however far too many people doing that neglect the alternatives. People need to broaden their horizons.
Can I program on Linux? Sure, I do so all the time at home, programming embedded devices and robots and I've released open source software under GPL license. Maybe one day I'll be able to work on them full time.
Glad to hear that--especially that you make contributions towards the vast library of Free software out there. That way, you aren't limiting yourself should other opportunities arise in your career. There are already many people making a good living with Free software, and perhaps if (when?) you get bored and/or frustrated with Windows you can seek employment with a company such as IBM or Red Hat or Novell, where thousands of people make a living at computers without windows.
But right now I work on the "Ford" of the industry. It's not unwise and it's not unethical. It's just reality. We deal with the reality of the industry, and that reality is that Windows dominates the market so it makes economic sense to use it.
Sometimes it IS unwise, or even unethical, to stick with "the Ford of the industry". Ford USED to be King, and along came this upstart Japanese company Toyota, at a time when "made in Japan" still meant "cheap junk" to many in America. Fast forward to last year, when Ford LOST over a MILLION dollars PER HOUR and Toyota passed them in market share. This would've never happened if people stuck with Ford because it was the market leader. However, people noticed some superior attributes of Toyota products (fuel efficiency, price, reliability) and Toyota improved quickly in area where it was weak (acceleration, corrosion resistance, etc). In the meantime, Ford rode on its established presence and conentrated on sweeoing its problems under the rug instead of actually fixing them (Hello there Pinto!).
So, in the late 1970s, would've you considered it unwise to buy one of those new Honda Civics instead of a Ford Pinto because Honda was new to the US car market and had a much smaller market share? I'd consider that foolish. I'd rather have bought the Civic and saved on fuel, plus the Civic was somewhat less flammable. Market share be damned...the Civic made more economic sense than a Pinto by far.
Microsoft really IS like Ford and Windows sure drives like a Pinto, and I've seen it crash...and burn...far too often not to look at alternatives. Apple could enjoy a Toyota like renaissance...or perhaps Red Hat or Novell or some company yet to emerge.
To hell with Microsoft "Ford Pinto" Windows. I'm looking at "Toyota Corolla" Fedora, "Honda Civic" SuSE and "Subaru" Ubuntu to see what they have to offer.
The average Walmart shopper doesn't care about 1080P DVDs.
The average Walmart shopper is still too preoccupied struggling with the concept of aspect ratios and scaling on their new-fangled TV to have seriously considered HD disc players yet. Once they figure out why the anchor on the local news looks so fat and how to fix it is when they'll slowly realise that their DVD movies don't look as crisp as Monday-night football. No advantage to either HD disc format yet...
The average Walmart shoppers that decide to try and do something about it will quickly become aware that there are two in incompatible, fledgling formats--one is cheaper and one has more storage capacity, but to date there are no blu-ray releases that have either superior picture OR extra features over HD-DVD, if the movie exists in both formats at all. If this very Beta-vs-VHS-like situation doesn't scare them off purchasing entirely, the price-conscious Walmart shopper is going to opt for HD-DVD--a much cheaper option (these will be cheaper than PS3s)
Walmart shoppers are mostly NOT hardcore gamers and would NOT see the appeal in the PS3 (I only want to watch moves--I don't want to spend extra to get a video game machine when I never play such games). XBox360 has more market share, more games, lower price. It also has an HD-DVD add-on available. Still not over for HD-DVD.
Blu-ray may be miles ahead of hd-dvd...but what is the significance of being 5 miles ahead when you're only 6 miles into a 100 mile race? The current situation is too confusing for Joe Walmart, even blu-ray's library is way too limited compared to what DVD buyers are accustomed to and hd-dvd is worse, the players are either expensive or not widely available or unreliable or a combination of all.
I think that up-converting DVD players with HDMI output will be the market leaders for quite awhile--I've noticed that PVRs with integrated DVDs that do upconverting are very popular purchases where I'm at.
Long term, despite studios innitially backing blu-ray more strongly that HD-DVD has advantages:
* blu-ray is relatively over-engineered: more complex technology and discs have to be stamped using more expensive, dvd-incompatible equipment, potential DRM maze nightmare, harder to develop content for in terms of navigation (Java development hell)...HD-DVD is a more incremental approach--complex enough but still not as bad as blu-ray.
* blu-ray is expensive: yes we seeing the release of $400 to $600 players but HD-DVD is maintaining its %50 price advantage with $200 players on deck.
* blu-ray has a less-effective brand image: HD-DVD implies continuity and compatibility with DVD (never mind if blu-ray players could play DVDs too--"techno-peasants" won't get that first impression)
* blu-ray stalwarts like Disney, even at this early stage in the market, are prepared to release in hd-dvd: their current offerings are encoded in such a way that they'd fit on HD-DVD. Cheap players==more demand for content==pressure to release in desired format.
Anybody remember why Beta failed? It wasn't just because VHS tapes could make twice as long recordings (Beta allowed for 4 hours max in the end anyways--with picture quality slightly better than VHS at its own 4 hour speed). It wasn't because of studio backing either--studios were fairly agnostic back then, and initially both formats had enough offerings that neither was much ahead of the other. It was ultimately because of the overly-selective/greedy licensing policy of Sony, which kept Beta deck prices higher than they should have been for too long. Furthermore the decks were mechanically more complex than VHS decks and markedly less reliable than VHS as well (this is from personal experience).
We are seeing the blu-ray camp repeat these mistakes--they are resisting any move that would put downward pressure on player prices by being too-selective in licensing to low-cost manufacturers. The often-touted PS3, the most popular HD player by far right now, was l
So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?
Not exactly like spent nuclear fuel and toxic garbage--CO2 is non-toxic, more stable and non-radioactive. Because CO2 is relatively benign (notwithstanding its effects on the climate) it need not be encased in barrels, lead shielding, concrete, etc. It can be pumped into pre-existing underground voids. Not so far fetched then right?
I think it might be a tiny bit shortsighted to think we can continue pumping this crap into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, then capture it and stick it underground
Even Kyoto's most ardent supporters already argue that there is literally, absolutely ZERO chance Canada can meet Kyoto targets by actually reducing its own physical CO2 emissions alone. Therefore it is unavoidable to look at other ways to move towards those targets:
* We can participate in "emissions credits" that are in surplus in Russia and other former communist-bloc countries who have credits to spare, since the USSR collapsed right around the conveniently-assigned 1990 base reference date and those economies imploded on their own. This is cheating in my opinion--it does nothing at all to curb emissions.
* We can also invest in upgrades to carbon-spewing outdated facilities in the developing world and take credit for THOSE emission reductions
* We can burn more wood, peat-moss, fermented grains, etc (renewable sources containing carbon that hasn't been trapped for millenia--ie. "carbon neutral") in place of oil and gas (non-renewable, releases carbon into the ecosystem that wasn't part of the carbon cycle before)
* We can capture and sequester the CO2 released by non-carbon-neutral activities
All Kyoto signatories have looked at all these options in varying degrees because, realistically, NOBODY would be willing to accept the sacrifices involved in the kind of reductions that are REALLY required to meet such targets. As for the last option (subject of the article), the captures CO2 would be sequestered in already-empty voids left behind by oil and gas operations, so in essence we are only putting something back where we found it.
Now, I'm waiting for all this Kyoto business to get all figured out so we can get back to focusing on REAL pollution (CO2 is NOT a pollutant, regardless of its effects on climate). I see no point in breathing cool air if it burns my throat and makes my eyes water (hear that McGuinty? Put scrubbers on those smokestacks, it's NOT a "dumb idea"--it is shameful that your province runs the most-polluting power plants on the continent!)
Where I tell people that if they give me money, I won't sue them. What a concept!
There is something familiar with these "cross-licensing" contracts MS has been aggressively pursuing recently. To me, it signals a move by MS towards a business model conceived in Sicily and perfected some years later in Chicago.
Hmmm...what was the code name for the project at MS to develop Win95 again? I sense that such a move has been in the cards at MS for quite some time now...
Unfortunately I won't get that life of luxury from the social structures, as the money is being wasted on unprepared parents and their spawn.
I actually kind of feel sorry for you if this is truly your outlook on life. It seems rather selfish and it unfortunately reinforces the stereotype that those who choose to not have children are selfish. The selfish, resentful tone in your posts really is a bit depressing. You are working hard so that you can live a "retired life of luxury" and seem bitter that your hard-gotten earnings must be spent to support freeloading "unprepared parents and their spawn". You don't seem to have any respect for the fact that parents of today are building the society of tomorrow. We can't ALL live childless "retired lives of luxury" or the human race would head towards a miserable extinction.
I haven't seen anything at all in your posts that gives insight into what kind of legacy you would like to leave behind once your earthly existence ends. What kind of lasting contributions, memories, achievements would you like to leave this world that could out-survive you? Do you really think of life's purpose is merely to acquire the most "stuff" and live a life of luxury, and that supporting child-rearing people is some kind of inconvenient challenge against that goal? I know a lot of childless adults that don't think that way and accept without any problems at all that parents have to get their kids to school in the morning or get away from work early to do parent-teacher interviews or telecommute if they have to stay home to care for a kid home sick from school.
The childfree have got to pay for the childed's ongoing existence.
Of course you have to. It is kind of a moral obligation don't you think? SOMEONE has to raise the kids that'll eventually grow into the young adults that will build your mansion, tend to your yard and pool, cook your food, provide your security, change your depends when you get REALLY old...as you live your "retired life in luxury" right? Do you not feel that you should maybe help those "childed people" do that? Or perhaps you feel that robots will be invented that can do it all for you with out the messy inconvenience of having to make these disease-ridden flesh-loaves and grow them into annoying people that have to talk to you and eat and live somewhere and maybe even make more of those ghastly babies?
Just who's freeloading and who's pulling the cart? Simple answer : You were factually incorrect in your post.
I'm still not convinced of who is freeloading here--it certainly isn't simple for me and I know far too little about you or the parents you seem to resent. Even if someone works 80 hours a week to fill in for those parents who dare to avoid overtime so they can see their kids grow up, and pull in an impressive wage and make their employer's shareholders rich too...I can't help but think there has to be some degree of freeloading there in many cases. Prepared or not, parents are doing an important job--they are creating more people...and ultimately there is little more important than that for ensuring the continuity of society. What are YOU doing towards that end, besides grudgingly making mandatory financial and professional contributions? Do you help produce our food? Do you help build houses for people to live in? Do you help sick and injured people heal? Do you help educate young people? If you do, that's great! Just remember to keep into perspective that it all starts with *people*, and all people do start off as children you know.
Don't feel too bad though--society at large has lost perspective...those who care for children are in the same company as teachers, farmers, nurses, and many others that are far too under-appreciated and underpaid considering the importance of their contribution to society.
What we need is an updated version of CSS
What we REALLY need is updated versions of BROWSERS (especially IE--even v7 is out of date in terms of compliance). We don't need CSS4 or HTML5 or XHTML2...browsers still have a hard time with CSS2, HTML4.x/XHTML1.x!
do things like reference other elements attributes so that you can create tables and line up things across/down the page.
Does not CSS3--a current standard with which nobody yet complies--provide means for columnar layouts? Also, last time I checked the latest HTML/XHTML specs supported table, tr, th, td etc...and none of it is deprecated...and even CSS2 has tabular layout stuff. It drives me up the wall when I see something like a calendar or other tabular information marked up with silly CSS an div and span tags all over the place. The thing is, if it is "semantically" a table, you should USE an (x)html table! Not only is the CSS simpler, the actual content (in terms of (x)html source) makes more sense to parsers and humans.
OTOH, is you want columnar layout for non-tabular data (news sites, discussion forums) then stop using tables already! It isn't all web developers' faults...the biggest problem is that the lack of support for CSS3 and the difficulty in doing such layouts in older versions of CSS is reinforcing bad behaviour (however, there is NO excuse for marking up lists with divs and spans--another annoyance to me. The ol, ul and li tags are there and CSS supports formatting these elements quite well).
HTML is more or less fine, give me a better version of CSS anyday.
I mostly agree if you mean strict XHTML, though CSS3 is a big improvement as well and what we need is better CSS SUPPORT. A few things I'd more like to see to make the WWW a better place:
* better native support for SVG in browsers...if you want rounded corners and other spiffy presentational elements THAT is probably the most appropriate place for it to be done.
* if (x)html is to be messed with lets look at how forms are handled...we could do with something that is more "evolutionary" than what W3C has been mulling perhaps.
* the standard that needs the most work is Javascript/ECMAscript...the xmlhttprequest object is not implemented as a standard and there is no standard proposed for it. Instead we have a proposed standard for similar functionality by the W3C (DOM level 3 "load and save") that is more cumbersome and nothing like the "de-facto standard". This "real" standard (DOM3LS) thus far is only supported in Opera IIRC, and the Mozilla team really pushes back when asked to work on such support. People, pick something and get it working the same in all browsers..this is what holds back "web 2.0" the most IMO!
I could care less about Cat-5 and coax, if you just put in a conduit. That builder has already created a situation where the wiring is out dated. Gigabit wants Cat-6.
My house is wired for Cat-5e--that was the very latest thing out when I had it done. I upgraded my home LAN to gigabit merely by replacing the switch and the NIC in the older PC that was still 100BT. As the speed attests to (better than wireless-N in ideal conditions in actual tests), you most certainly CAN use gigabit without Cat6. Not bad for six-year-old wiring, and there is still a lot of life left for Gigabit.
If he had put in conduit, every one of his houses could be rewired by the homeowner with very little fuss.
Conduit is certainly a good way to do things, though in reality it can still be a monumental task to pull cable through conduits embedded into walls, floors and ceilings, especially if it has to make many bends...and in residential construction is WILL have to make s few bends. For example, you have to route it around HVAC ducts, water supply and DWV pipes and electrical wiring. Furthermore you might find you cannot run conduit of usable size through studs of load-bearing walls or in floor joists (and you cannot drill holes of any kind through any part of an engineered truss) as this will violate building codes and cause structural weakness.
So, unless you can snake cable through a 1" O.D. conduit full of bends with any sort of ease then you are looking at not only the cost of the conduit itself and its installation, you are looking at doubling up load-bearing studs and joists, or widening walls by a couple of inches. This is very expensive and houses are expensive enough as it is. It's akin to butting in a built-in vacuum system--it'll cost in the thousands and you only have a small number of strategically placed outlets (not in every room, etc). Builders do not use conduit except in commercial or very high-end residential because it adds a substantial amount to the cost, is not as flexible during construction and is a hidden feature that doesn't add to resale value for a typical buyer.
Part of the problem though is that the buyers ooohhh and ahhhh about the cat-5, and don't even think about what they are going to do in a few years.
If you have an unfinished basement or crawlspace or attic area--and I'd say most houses have one of those, then you can use a fishtape (like a measuring tape but stiffer) and drill a hole into the inside of a wall and fish the cable into the wall with a comparable effort to pulling through a convoluted conduit (maybe less). You then clamp cables to the floor joists, ceiling joists, etc. and route back to your panel. This was done in my house to six rooms in one weekend (not working on it full days either). The basement was easier yet becasue it was not finished at the time. If you wire with the latest cable now, by the time you MUST get something else you'll be renovating anyways. And, unless you are a pro and have very high-end needs, a gigabit-ethernet network over Cat5e still has a very long shelf life--it provides more than enough bandwidth for residential HDTV, IP telephony and other media.
"Liberal" = Centrist political party.
Quite correct, especially if you define "centrist" as a polite term for "unprincipled". The Liberal party in Canada historically has had no fixed "ideology" or shared values beyond what is dictated by popular opinion. This makes them nominally "populist" in ideology, though that seems to only be the case when they are in opposition or during elections. When Liberals are in government they generally end up standing for what benefits themselves the most. Most accurately, they are better termed the "un-Conservative party". Since they largely shape their policy and platform based on the opposite of what the Conservatives believe or do they naturally lean more leftward (that is, they lean left out of convenience rather than out of principle)
"liberal" = The standard definition of a political Liberal. Generally represented by the NDP [...]
The NDP most definitely do NOT represent "classical" or "small-l" liberal ideology. The NDP, most Greens, Canadian Communists and Marxists represent classical SOCIALISM, which occupies an opposite corner of the political arena from liberalism. They believe in the "common good" and are the strongest supporters of such things as government ownership of essential institutions, regulation, protectionist economic policies, the welfare state and so on. Government intervention in the name of society or community as a whole takes precedence over individual freedoms and rights.
The classical liberal viewpoint is in support of individual rights, limitation of the scope of government, "laissez-faire" economic policy, property rights and so on. In Canada, the now-defunct "Reform" party is the closest to a "classical liberal" stance that Canada has ever had in parliament (it had social conservatism aspects mixed in its policy though--Reform re-adjusted its organisation and policy to become the C"Canadian Alliance" and subsequently merged with the old "Progressive Conservatives" to create the current governing Conservative party).
Technically, the "big L Liberals" are supposed to be "social liberals" which is what most political wonks would mean when they say "small-l liberal I suppose--they are supposed to value the use of economic and social interventions by the state to protect individual rights and freedoms (versus the socialist emphasis on "the common good"). Pierre Trudeau's vision he called "just society" is the most purely "social liberal" stance that the Liberal party has ever taken, though Trudeau was, to put it politely, a "pragmatist" and as Prime Minister he took some actions that directly countered that vision (most notably by invoking the War Measures Act nation wide as a response to the FLQ crisis in Quebec).
Conservatism--the "small c" variety, is all about preservation of "traditional values". Small-c conservatism is hard to pin down because globally the "traditional values" they seek to preserve will vary. In North America GW Bush is probably truest to this ideology--preservation of old-line Christian values and so forth (not necessarily "defenders of individual rights", make note). There is no "small C conservative" party in Canada outside of fringe parties. The last true conservative party in Canada were the "Social Credit" (or in Quebec the "Creditistes"). Those parties essentially went extinct by the 1980s.
In any case, federal political nomenclature in Canada is quite backwards, especially in terms of how the US sees politics. The Conservative party is home to most of the "classical liberals". The Liberal party is a mixture of "social liberals" and moderate socialists, as are the Greens (with an emphasis on environmental issues). The NDP is a stridently socialist party (NDP supporters are called "New Democrats", suggesting to Americans that they are "classical liberals" with a bit of "social liberalism" thrown in such as was the case with Bill Clinton. Our current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is ideologically much closer to Clinton than GW Bush--if H
The batteries at least are easily recycled and, should production ramp up, closed loop recycling is a real likelihood.
Except that the batteries in your hybrid car are in fact NOT easily recycled--it is the single most expensive component of the entire car to recycle, and the process is less established than that for more conventional lead-acid or NiCd batteries. Closed-loop recycling is not possible with current technology for Li-Ion and NiMH batteries and will not be for some years to come (though it has been possible for lead-acid batteries and to get all the Cd out of NiCd as well).
There is still a notable amount of toxic waste produced by the recycling processes of these batteries as well. Of course, recycling the materials in these batteries is significantly better for the environment than mining for more minerals, drilling for more petroleum for the plastics, etc. The biggest consideration is that you still use a LOT of energy to recycle this newer battery technology in comparison to what is required to recycle traditional auto parts (500 to 1000 percent more energy in fact). That is why I said that it might be best to look at mushing auto companies to implement more incremental advancements more often--for example by making vehicles with conventional engines that are modified with starters like the hybrids have, so that the engine does not need to idle (an "idle-less ICE" rather than a full hybrid). This would be much more cost effective and the "battery problem" wouldn't be as apparent.
To counter some of your examples, urban driving really plays to the Prius' strengths (which is where a lot of people live anyway), and cab drivers must absolutely love the things.
Just as many people are SUBurban dwellers as well (such as myself). Suburban dwellers often drive a good portion of their commute on expressways (two-thirds of my daily commute by distance is "highway" driving). Furthermore, professional drivers (taxi operators, intra-city delivery drivers, etc) are exceptional cases of very high mileage AND mostly urban driving (typical drivers are almost never both). I don't believe hybrids are the best solution for everyone so I don't advocate they be treated as such. My biggest concern is that both automakers and consumers are looking right past some simple but high-impact technology improvements when they focus on flashy-but-complicated "revolutionary" new things.
And I'm a supporter of hybrids of that reason. I don't own one (my old car works fine) but I do think they are a technology that will be good for efficiency increases eventually.
I'm not yet convinced that hybrids are the final solution. They still leave a big environmental footprint in terms of manufacturing and operation. The batteries contain toxic materials and require a great deal of energy to produce. They still rely on gasoline--a non-renewable resource.
Also, the things still have a gas engine in them, and if you live in, say, Saskatchewan, where half the population is rural and they drive more highway miles, then the fuel consumption is actually worse than some gas-only or diesel-only vehicles (I know this first hand, from a Prius owner that drives mostly highway miles and gets mileage worse than a VW Golf diesel). No matter how many they make this will still be a problem.
Perhaps as the inventory of spent batteries increases then recycling will reduce the environmental footprint of hybrids as the need for nickel mined out of the (still) single dirtiest facility in North America is reduced. However, the energy required to manufacture these cells, as well as the need to deal with toxic chemicals in the process, will never be reduced significantly.
Electric motors produce nearly 100% torque from the word go, whereas ICEs need to operate at a higher speed for maximum torque.
ICEs can be used much more efficiently than they are now though. CVT transaxles vary the gearing ratio whilst keeping the engine RPMS constantly at a peak torque or efficiency point (My car has a CVT, and during moderate acceleration to highway speed the RPMs stay right around 3500 but my car accelerates smoothly to cruising speed, at which point the RPMS gradually ramp down to the low 2000s). This alone increases efficiency of an ICE by nearly 10 percent. Also, ICEs don't NEED to idle, and there is technology to have an electric starter that brings the engine to life only when the car needs to move.
I think that such incremental, lower cost and/or simpler solutions might be of more value than a bug, complicated and potentially false solution like hybrids with complicated drivetrains and big, expensive, toxic batteries. Given that, I probably WOULDN'T by a hybrid merely to "support the development" of the technology.
Well, since Commodore and Amiga have been separate companies for quite some time now, my guess is that it would be more likely that you'd go to Amiga for the Amiga emulation rather than Commodore.
Many companies use patents defensively (or counter offensively).
If the patent systems of the world weren't as flawed as they are then such a strategy would not be required. Furthermore, it is the exactly the opposite intention of the whole process--patents are supposed to be granted to foster innovation, not prevent innovation by others.
Or they may simply make the strategic decision that the effort and resources expended in pursuing profit in the patent are better spent pursuing something else.
This begs the question of "why keep the patent at all?". If there is no economic benefit to obtaining patent protection for an invention then why waste time and money on the involved and expensive application process to begin with? Perhaps the patent holder has decided to change strategies, but that would be a good reason for them to sell ot give away the patent. The ONLY reason a patent holder wouldn't release a patent with limited potential to that holder would be to prevent a competitor from innovating--and again that is exactly counter to the original intention of patent protection.
1. It helps deter competitors from launching patent infringement lawsuits against them, because they have patents that can be used in a counter suit.
There would be record of the patents existence even if it was invalidated, sold or given away. The inactive patent would be evidence of prior art and would provide protection from lawsuits by competitors regardless of a patent's present ownership or status.
2. It prevents competitors from utilizing the technology that they developed.
The point of limitations on competition is to allow and encourage the patent holder to bring the invention to market. If the patent holder makes no effort to do so then they are PREVENTING innovation and abusing the patent system--this is amoral and should also be illegal (ie. the patent should be revoked).
3. It gives them business options that they would not otherwise have if they didn't have the rights to the patent.
Abusing patent protection to create artificial barriers to entry in a new market shouldn't be a "business option". Purposely sitting on an invention for the sole reason of keeping competitors from entering a market you *might* want to establish *some day* (or might not)--for decades--might give some person or corporation a possible edge, but it does so at the expense of everyone else. Legal instruments like patents, trademarks and copyrights were safeguards to limit the possibility of a free market being dominated/hijacked by unethical players in the market. When they are used to deliberately create a perpetually-protected market for a few established participants it becomes evident that they are flawed.
Besides, if the patents were valuable, the company would already have pursued licensing the technology to another person/company who can develop it into something viable.
Conversely, if the patents were of limited value then there should be no problem if we changed patent law to provide early revocation of patent protection for inventions that are "unused" for too long, so that other entrepreneurs can decide for themselves if the invention is economically viable. If the patent holder is having trouble getting developers to license then it would be better to encourage them to re-examine the licensing costs rather than encourage them to sit on their ideas.
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them
EXACTLY. How terribly naive to think that those companies that own many "stale patents" would donate their "valuable IP". Those who are truly interested in innovation rather than exploitation will make the effort to get the invention to market (either themselves or through actively pursuing licensing agreements with those that have the capital to do so). Those companies that are NOT interested in bringing the patented idea to market and are not evil parasites are already donating such patents to others (IBM for example).
All that are left are evil, parasitic submarine-patent holding companies. Such companies exist solely to make money without making an effort by holding innovation hostage. Such companies will not donate their IP simply by asking them politely. As you have suggested and I've advocated for quite some time, this illegitimate business model has to be outlawed in some way, and the best way to do this is to introduce the obligation to provide not only the description of the invention itself but an execution/delivery plan as well that describes the intended plan to bring the patented invention to market. The patent holder would be held to that plan, up to a maximum-allowable period of time (whichever is shorter). If the patent holder fails to deliver the patent would be permanently invalidated and the idea would be public domain.
Though much more patent reform is required, this single change would be a big step forward. Amazon may have been evil to file their stupid "one-click-online-purchase" patent but at least they actually brought the idea to reality. Submarine patents run completely counter to the spirit and purpose of patent law, are potentially damaging to the economy and global competitiveness of a nation and must be eliminated.
it concerns me that you think this is open source.
But it IS an open system--just not a COMPLETELY open source/Free one. Google's infrastructure is all Linux based, the applications are platform independent (ie...an OPEN platform) and will run on client OSes like Linux and *BSD (OPEN source and Free). Firefox may be used as a browser even if Windows clients are retained (open source).
It concerns ME that people like YOU confuse "open architecture" and "open source", and as a knee-jerk reaction condemn, or at least severely criticise, any system architecture that is not totally and completely Free. In my original post I said "open and Free" in meaning two different things, because they are NOT the same thing, though they are nearly equally important, and achieving at least one of the two is a great step forward. There are examples of "open" (even "open source") that are not Free--Many commercial Unices are examples (they may comply with the openly available POSIX standard, the source code is even available, they are very well documented). MacOS X is very open compared to MS Vista for example, however MacOS X is even less Free than MS Vista (as the latter at least is not locked in to one hardware vendor). MS has a lot of open software under a "shared source" license, which is not Free (you cannot alter and distribute it freely, nor is the license "viral" to use Microsoft parlance)
Similarly there are Free software projects that aren't particularly open (it is subtle, but notice that I say capital-F-Free software to mean what the French might call "logiciel libre" whereas small-f-free is "gratis"). Often such a project is the vehicle that carries a business that uses support as a means of revenue generation--which is a valid way to try to make money. Such a Free project might even be licensed under the GPL and fully functional versions easily downloadable in source and binary form. However Free they may be they are not truly OPEN. It might be basically impossible to be as closed as a completely closed-source system like MS Vista but it is pretty easy to introduce elements that "close up" a Free system from an architectural standpoint. For example (a minor one anyways) MySQL is not standards compliant in terms of both behaviour or syntax, so many applications designed around MySQL become "locked in" (just to avoid totally offending MySQL people, PostgreSQL is MUCH more compliant with standards but has its own nonstandard extensions and behaviours too, which when used can lead to lock-in). Of course, if care is taken in application design this lock-in can be mitigated. Another way of "closing" a Free application is to withhold some or all documentation or create non-free support forums (SQL Ledger and Mandrake are past examples where these practices have limited interoperability and "openness" of a system).
Yes, Google's office suite is definitely not free OR Free but Google is VERY good at making "open" systems (unrestricted access to APIs, majority of offerings are not single-platform, etc), and furthermore these apps will run on a Free platform. Still a great deal better than non-Free AND non-Open a la Microsoft if you ask me. The next step could be to move to Free applications on a Free system some day...but hey, we are talking about a US government department here...baby steps...