We're not done by a long shot, but new requirements for environmental friendliness have to be phased in, not dictated like some would have.
I think my opposition to the Kyoto Protocols is the fact the accord does not provide a transition period to implement the changes mentioned in the accord. It would have caused horrible stagflation, as the price of gasoline would have zoomed past US$3.50/US gallon and also would have devastated our domestic tourism industry as no one could afford to travel long distance by car.
Anyway, like I said earlier, the biggest determinant of our planet's climate is this nuclear fireball 93 million miles away called the Sun.
I think people obviously haven't been to the major Chinese cities lately, either.
The air pollution problems in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou are REALLY bad--they make Los Angeles look clean in comparison. Heck, even the spare the air days in Santa Clara County in California during the summer is considered very clean air by Chinese standards.
I think too many environmentalists ignore the fact that human activity is nothing compared to what Nature can do. Do you know that a single hurricane can cause destruction on a scale that makes even our biggest nuclear bombs look puny? Look at what hurricane Camille did in 1969--destruction on an unimaginable scale. Or the fact that a single major volcanic eruption can cause climate changes, as witnessed by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, which actually cooled the atmosphere for over a year? We know that the eruption of Mt. Tambora in what is now Indonesia in 1815 (which sent 15 cubic miles of volcanic ash into the atmosphere) caused much of the Northern Hemisphere to cool quite rapidly--indeed, there are records of blizzards in the upper Hudson River Valley in early July 1816!
I'm surprised that nobody has seriously considered this as the remedy for the entire case in the first place!
That way, everyone will know up front how much each operating system costs and choose accordingly.
However, given the current state of Linux I doubt many people will choose it over Windows, given that Windows has 85% of the market for desktop operating systems. I don't think things will improve until Linux gets Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support, which will allow hardware additions and driver updates to go much more smoothly than it is now.
Also, I hate to say this (and I know I'll get modded way down for this:-/ ) but Linux has to eventually converge on a single GUI interface, which will save a lot of hassles for both end users and IT managers.
Mind you, the Cinerama is almost a one-of-a-kind experience, to say the least. Having THX certification helps, especially now the music, sound effects and vocal tracks no longer sound muddy and unclear, which was a major bane of older theaters.
Given Paul Allen's money he should install a digital projector at the first opportunity; after all, the US$150,000 cost is pocket change for this guy.:-)
Let's cite for example a small airliner powered by propellers, in this case the ATR72 built by a French-Italian consortium. Originally, the plane's two turboprop engines used two four-bladed propellers; however, later production planes used two six-bladed propellers. Going to six-bladed propellers offered two advantages: 1) propeller speed can be reduced, which cuts down on noise generation and 2) since the propeller doesn't need to spin so fast it also reduces the fuel consumption of the turboprop engine.
That's why my suggestion of a cooling fan motor with a small center spindle and carefully-engineered fan blades (10 to 12 blades) makes sense. This means the motor speed of the cooling fan can be lowered compared to regular fans, which 1) extends the life of the fan motor and 2) lowers the power requirements for the cooling fan. Alas, most of the more exotic CPU cooling fans such as the Golden Orb hasn't really used modern fan blade design; in fact, much of the benefit of these exotic coolers come from the larger heatsink properties of these units.
I am somewhat surprised that cooling fan designers haven't studied how airplane and submarine propeller blades work and recent design improvements that allow for slower turn speeds without sacrificing the amount of movement of air (or water in the case of submarine propellers).
By putting in a 10-12 blade fan with a relatively narrow center with advanced fan blade designs, a CPU or system cooling fan could easily run a lower speeds while maintaining the same CFM as airflow as regular cooling fans. Lower speeds means not only less noisy fans, but also lower power consumption, too.
I think what will happen with the AOL 8.0 client due later this year is that when you install the client, it should give you the option of keeping Internet Explorer or installing the Mozilla-based browser for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP users.
Having two big web browsers installed and trying to have the system decide which is the default may cause some compatibility problems, and I don't think end users--especially the AOL crowd--wants to deal with THAT! (I think people forget that AOL users are often not as computer-savvy as the normal readers of Slashdot.)
Do these "hippies" know about physics and engineering design involved in fission power plants? Maybe ask them have they gone through the US Navy nuclear propulsion training program, where you learn everything involved in fission power plant design, including all the pluses and minuses of various reactor designs.
If you want to blame the problems of nuclear power blame it on the former Soviet Union. Between poor reactor designs, insufficient safety factors (besides the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet Navy lost several submarines due to reactor accidents), and nuclear waste storage in open pits, they should be faulted for doing all the wrong things about nuclear power in general.
There's a very dirty (quite literally) secret about coal burning few people talk about: the fact it releases a substantial amount of radioactive material into the air. People forget that trace amounts of radioactive elements exist in many forms of coal.
I think people have WAY too many misconceptions about nuclear power.
For one thing, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was a disaster waiting to happen. Between the dangerous design of the reactor and the fact there was no containment dome, no wonder the disaster was so bad.
The Three Mile Island accident was proof that Western nuclear plant designs worked. Note that even though the fuel rods partially melted down the containment dome was nowhere close to being breached; the radioactive release was equivalent to the radiation dose you get on a single five hour trancontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York at 30,000 feet.
By the way, our nuclear waste problem is minor compared to the former Soviet Union, where they actually stored nuclear waste in open pits for many years. (eek!)
I'm surprised you haven't been modded down to Troll status and less for that remark.:-)
I think this case--especially now with the Bush Administration in charge--will be dumped out like yesterday's bath water because it violates the agreement signed back in early 2001 in regards to the settlement of the dispute in the first place. Sun is (IMHO) trying this because they know the US v. Microsoft case is about to come to an end, and Sun can't piggyback on that case.
I think the whole case is a silly one, considering that one of Microsoft's goals with.NET is that you can write.NET apps even with Java--and I mean the real Sun-certified Java.
Think about it: can you run Sun's own JDK's in Windows XP? Sure you can. Indeed, Sun's Java VM can be easily installed into Windows XP--and Sun even provides a web page to do so.
And the way that Sun tried to get ISO and ECMA certification for Java turned into a major joke, if I remember correctly. Javascript became popular because Netscape allowed it to become the open ECMA-262 standard.
Actually, your description of the Virginia Center Commons theatre is exactly what has changed in the theaters here in San Francisco Bay Area.
There is no such thing as a theater complex with just 5-6 large screens anymore for first-run showings; the prototype of the future of cinemas here is Syufy Enterprises' Century 25 Union Landing complex in Union City, CA, where you have 25 screens, with a number of screens of larger sizes for the blockbuster movies and smaller screens for movies intended for a niche audience or the tailing end of a first run. The important thing is that because the complex is built from the ground up, they can build every screen to sport full THX certification, which means above average picture quality and definitely top-notch sound quality. That means going to a movie is actually a good experience again.:-)
Syufy recently opened the Century 20 Great Mall complex (Milpitas, CA) based on this model; they plan several more complexes opening in the next three years built in the same manner. I remember the old days when people thought the Century Theaters were a joke; the new complexes with their THX-certified screens have ended that in short order.
The big problem with the RIAA is that they think they can act like an economic cartel and continue to do so.
Problem: the invisible hand of economics will put cartels out of business fairly quickly. By pricing CD's at US$18 per album-length disc, this results in a price point that encourages piracy, not discourage it. If the RIAA were smart and price their CD's at US$11 per album-length disc the incentive to pirate music drops to negligent levels.
Just as long as the dub is reasonably well-done, I think the movie will do well here in the USA. I thought the dub of Mononoke Hime actually quite good considering the translation from the original Japanese.
However, given the finicky demands of DVD owners, I expect the DVD version of Spirited Away to have both the English-dubbed version and the Japanese language original complete with literal English translation subtitles of the original Japanese. That's why I really liked the DVD version of Princess Mononoke.:-)
I think Richard Stallman has really gone off the deep end on this one.:-/
In my personal opinion, Stallman is not including factors such as that on new computers with Windows XP preinstalled, it's already preconfigured and ready to use its many features (CD burning, DVD playback, connection to the Internet by modem and broadband, hot-dock connecting to USB devices and increasingly IEEE-1394 devices). To have Linux in its current state support all these hardware is still a bit of an iffy proposition if you're a novice computer user.
I don't expect Linux to because relatively easy to use until the 2.6.x kernel is released with its native Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support.
The baby boomers built the music industry and if they actually started marketing to the baby boomers again they would see a renewed financial gain.
I can cite a great example of what you described: the success of the Beatles' One CD not long ago.
Why did that CD become a Number One seller according to the Billboard charts for over a month? Maybe because they marketed the CD to the massively huge Baby Boomer crowd?
I think you hit exactly at the gist of the problem the RIAA faces: they are trying to run the record industry as an economic cartel and finding out the very hard way that cartels are subject to the laws of microeconomics, namely their attempts to keep prices high will result in 1) customers less inclined to buy album-length audio CD's and 2) customers are more willing to bypass the RIAA cartel with file sharing sites like Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa, etc.
Once the RIAA gets a clue and figures out that lower prices (like US$11 or under per album-length disc) will actually result in more revenue to the RIAA member companies, it will have two beneficial effects: 1) disc sales will quickly climb and 2) the incentive to pirate music drops to a negligent level.
I think the reason why Intel may be supporting more DDR-SDRAM installations for desktop platforms is the fact that the latest DDR-SDRAM variants already equal the speed of RDRAM for large data blocks but substantially cost way less than RDRAM on a per 128 MB basis. I believe also that motherboard manufacturing costs are lower for DDR-SDRAM than RDRAM, too.
I think with the passing of Chuck Jones it is not a time for mourning, but a time for celebration. The fact he even lived to a ripe old age of 89 meant he lived a truly full life, to say the least.
It is time for a celebration of an output of animation that is arguably unmatched. From his work in the early Tom & Jerry cartoons at MGM to the amazing opera parodies he did in the 1950's to everything else he did, he was probably the best embodiment of the zenith of cartoon short subject films during their heyday.
I will say "Thank you, and Godspeed," to truly one of the true giants in the entertainment industry.
What's interesting is that the hotbed of aviation in the 1906-1912 period was NOT the USA. It was France, who made up for lost time very quickly by building a lot of very innovative designs, designs that served as the basis for today's airplanes in terms of aerodynamic and structural design.
In that period, French pioneers like Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot and the Duperdussin company were building monoplanes that used modern aerodynamic design. Indeed, the Duperdussin racer of 1912 had extremely sleek aerodynamics for its day thanks to the use of monocoque structural design.
In short, while the Wright brothers built the first successful heavier-than-air airplane, it was the French pioneers that laid the groundwork for designing the modern airplane.
One thing though: Wal-Mart has invested so much time and money on its own IT system that the cost of conversion to Linux (especially the retraining of IT staff) could end up being more than the cost of continuing to keep the licenses for their proprietary software setup.
Slashdot Mirror
We're not done by a long shot, but new requirements for environmental friendliness have to be phased in, not dictated like some would have.
I think my opposition to the Kyoto Protocols is the fact the accord does not provide a transition period to implement the changes mentioned in the accord. It would have caused horrible stagflation, as the price of gasoline would have zoomed past US$3.50/US gallon and also would have devastated our domestic tourism industry as no one could afford to travel long distance by car.
Anyway, like I said earlier, the biggest determinant of our planet's climate is this nuclear fireball 93 million miles away called the Sun.
I think people obviously haven't been to the major Chinese cities lately, either.
The air pollution problems in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou are REALLY bad--they make Los Angeles look clean in comparison. Heck, even the spare the air days in Santa Clara County in California during the summer is considered very clean air by Chinese standards.
BINGO!!
I think too many environmentalists ignore the fact that human activity is nothing compared to what Nature can do. Do you know that a single hurricane can cause destruction on a scale that makes even our biggest nuclear bombs look puny? Look at what hurricane Camille did in 1969--destruction on an unimaginable scale. Or the fact that a single major volcanic eruption can cause climate changes, as witnessed by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, which actually cooled the atmosphere for over a year? We know that the eruption of Mt. Tambora in what is now Indonesia in 1815 (which sent 15 cubic miles of volcanic ash into the atmosphere) caused much of the Northern Hemisphere to cool quite rapidly--indeed, there are records of blizzards in the upper Hudson River Valley in early July 1816!
I'm surprised that nobody has seriously considered this as the remedy for the entire case in the first place!
:-/ ) but Linux has to eventually converge on a single GUI interface, which will save a lot of hassles for both end users and IT managers.
That way, everyone will know up front how much each operating system costs and choose accordingly.
However, given the current state of Linux I doubt many people will choose it over Windows, given that Windows has 85% of the market for desktop operating systems. I don't think things will improve until Linux gets Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support, which will allow hardware additions and driver updates to go much more smoothly than it is now.
Also, I hate to say this (and I know I'll get modded way down for this
Mind you, the Cinerama is almost a one-of-a-kind experience, to say the least. Having THX certification helps, especially now the music, sound effects and vocal tracks no longer sound muddy and unclear, which was a major bane of older theaters.
:-)
Given Paul Allen's money he should install a digital projector at the first opportunity; after all, the US$150,000 cost is pocket change for this guy.
I think you're a bit confused. :-)
Let's cite for example a small airliner powered by propellers, in this case the ATR72 built by a French-Italian consortium. Originally, the plane's two turboprop engines used two four-bladed propellers; however, later production planes used two six-bladed propellers. Going to six-bladed propellers offered two advantages: 1) propeller speed can be reduced, which cuts down on noise generation and 2) since the propeller doesn't need to spin so fast it also reduces the fuel consumption of the turboprop engine.
That's why my suggestion of a cooling fan motor with a small center spindle and carefully-engineered fan blades (10 to 12 blades) makes sense. This means the motor speed of the cooling fan can be lowered compared to regular fans, which 1) extends the life of the fan motor and 2) lowers the power requirements for the cooling fan. Alas, most of the more exotic CPU cooling fans such as the Golden Orb hasn't really used modern fan blade design; in fact, much of the benefit of these exotic coolers come from the larger heatsink properties of these units.
I am somewhat surprised that cooling fan designers haven't studied how airplane and submarine propeller blades work and recent design improvements that allow for slower turn speeds without sacrificing the amount of movement of air (or water in the case of submarine propellers).
By putting in a 10-12 blade fan with a relatively narrow center with advanced fan blade designs, a CPU or system cooling fan could easily run a lower speeds while maintaining the same CFM as airflow as regular cooling fans. Lower speeds means not only less noisy fans, but also lower power consumption, too.
I think what will happen with the AOL 8.0 client due later this year is that when you install the client, it should give you the option of keeping Internet Explorer or installing the Mozilla-based browser for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP users.
Having two big web browsers installed and trying to have the system decide which is the default may cause some compatibility problems, and I don't think end users--especially the AOL crowd--wants to deal with THAT! (I think people forget that AOL users are often not as computer-savvy as the normal readers of Slashdot.)
Total ridiculous b.s.
Do these "hippies" know about physics and engineering design involved in fission power plants? Maybe ask them have they gone through the US Navy nuclear propulsion training program, where you learn everything involved in fission power plant design, including all the pluses and minuses of various reactor designs.
If you want to blame the problems of nuclear power blame it on the former Soviet Union. Between poor reactor designs, insufficient safety factors (besides the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet Navy lost several submarines due to reactor accidents), and nuclear waste storage in open pits, they should be faulted for doing all the wrong things about nuclear power in general.
There's a very dirty (quite literally) secret about coal burning few people talk about: the fact it releases a substantial amount of radioactive material into the air. People forget that trace amounts of radioactive elements exist in many forms of coal.
I think people have WAY too many misconceptions about nuclear power.
For one thing, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was a disaster waiting to happen. Between the dangerous design of the reactor and the fact there was no containment dome, no wonder the disaster was so bad.
The Three Mile Island accident was proof that Western nuclear plant designs worked. Note that even though the fuel rods partially melted down the containment dome was nowhere close to being breached; the radioactive release was equivalent to the radiation dose you get on a single five hour trancontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York at 30,000 feet.
By the way, our nuclear waste problem is minor compared to the former Soviet Union, where they actually stored nuclear waste in open pits for many years. (eek!)
I'm surprised you haven't been modded down to Troll status and less for that remark. :-)
I think this case--especially now with the Bush Administration in charge--will be dumped out like yesterday's bath water because it violates the agreement signed back in early 2001 in regards to the settlement of the dispute in the first place. Sun is (IMHO) trying this because they know the US v. Microsoft case is about to come to an end, and Sun can't piggyback on that case.
I think the whole case is a silly one, considering that one of Microsoft's goals with .NET is that you can write .NET apps even with Java--and I mean the real Sun-certified Java.
Think about it: can you run Sun's own JDK's in Windows XP? Sure you can. Indeed, Sun's Java VM can be easily installed into Windows XP--and Sun even provides a web page to do so.
And the way that Sun tried to get ISO and ECMA certification for Java turned into a major joke, if I remember correctly. Javascript became popular because Netscape allowed it to become the open ECMA-262 standard.
Actually, your description of the Virginia Center Commons theatre is exactly what has changed in the theaters here in San Francisco Bay Area.
:-)
There is no such thing as a theater complex with just 5-6 large screens anymore for first-run showings; the prototype of the future of cinemas here is Syufy Enterprises' Century 25 Union Landing complex in Union City, CA, where you have 25 screens, with a number of screens of larger sizes for the blockbuster movies and smaller screens for movies intended for a niche audience or the tailing end of a first run. The important thing is that because the complex is built from the ground up, they can build every screen to sport full THX certification, which means above average picture quality and definitely top-notch sound quality. That means going to a movie is actually a good experience again.
Syufy recently opened the Century 20 Great Mall complex (Milpitas, CA) based on this model; they plan several more complexes opening in the next three years built in the same manner. I remember the old days when people thought the Century Theaters were a joke; the new complexes with their THX-certified screens have ended that in short order.
The big problem with the RIAA is that they think they can act like an economic cartel and continue to do so.
Problem: the invisible hand of economics will put cartels out of business fairly quickly. By pricing CD's at US$18 per album-length disc, this results in a price point that encourages piracy, not discourage it. If the RIAA were smart and price their CD's at US$11 per album-length disc the incentive to pirate music drops to negligent levels.
Just as long as the dub is reasonably well-done, I think the movie will do well here in the USA. I thought the dub of Mononoke Hime actually quite good considering the translation from the original Japanese.
:-)
However, given the finicky demands of DVD owners, I expect the DVD version of Spirited Away to have both the English-dubbed version and the Japanese language original complete with literal English translation subtitles of the original Japanese. That's why I really liked the DVD version of Princess Mononoke.
I think Richard Stallman has really gone off the deep end on this one. :-/
In my personal opinion, Stallman is not including factors such as that on new computers with Windows XP preinstalled, it's already preconfigured and ready to use its many features (CD burning, DVD playback, connection to the Internet by modem and broadband, hot-dock connecting to USB devices and increasingly IEEE-1394 devices). To have Linux in its current state support all these hardware is still a bit of an iffy proposition if you're a novice computer user.
I don't expect Linux to because relatively easy to use until the 2.6.x kernel is released with its native Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support.
The baby boomers built the music industry and if they actually started marketing to the baby boomers again they would see a renewed financial gain.
I can cite a great example of what you described: the success of the Beatles' One CD not long ago.
Why did that CD become a Number One seller according to the Billboard charts for over a month? Maybe because they marketed the CD to the massively huge Baby Boomer crowd?
I think you hit exactly at the gist of the problem the RIAA faces: they are trying to run the record industry as an economic cartel and finding out the very hard way that cartels are subject to the laws of microeconomics, namely their attempts to keep prices high will result in 1) customers less inclined to buy album-length audio CD's and 2) customers are more willing to bypass the RIAA cartel with file sharing sites like Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa, etc.
Once the RIAA gets a clue and figures out that lower prices (like US$11 or under per album-length disc) will actually result in more revenue to the RIAA member companies, it will have two beneficial effects: 1) disc sales will quickly climb and 2) the incentive to pirate music drops to a negligent level.
I think the reason why Intel may be supporting more DDR-SDRAM installations for desktop platforms is the fact that the latest DDR-SDRAM variants already equal the speed of RDRAM for large data blocks but substantially cost way less than RDRAM on a per 128 MB basis. I believe also that motherboard manufacturing costs are lower for DDR-SDRAM than RDRAM, too.
Well, you can scratch Antarctica and Siberia as places you can't use this notebook, if the liquid coolant freezes in very low external temperatures.
Ah, what you suggest makes way more sense.
I think what Ridley Scott will do is an edition with maximum-quality images, and also might even include a lot a bonus materials along with it.
Let's call this the Definite Edition and end it at that.
Folks,
I think with the passing of Chuck Jones it is not a time for mourning, but a time for celebration. The fact he even lived to a ripe old age of 89 meant he lived a truly full life, to say the least.
It is time for a celebration of an output of animation that is arguably unmatched. From his work in the early Tom & Jerry cartoons at MGM to the amazing opera parodies he did in the 1950's to everything else he did, he was probably the best embodiment of the zenith of cartoon short subject films during their heyday.
I will say "Thank you, and Godspeed," to truly one of the true giants in the entertainment industry.
What's interesting is that the hotbed of aviation in the 1906-1912 period was NOT the USA. It was France, who made up for lost time very quickly by building a lot of very innovative designs, designs that served as the basis for today's airplanes in terms of aerodynamic and structural design.
In that period, French pioneers like Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot and the Duperdussin company were building monoplanes that used modern aerodynamic design. Indeed, the Duperdussin racer of 1912 had extremely sleek aerodynamics for its day thanks to the use of monocoque structural design.
In short, while the Wright brothers built the first successful heavier-than-air airplane, it was the French pioneers that laid the groundwork for designing the modern airplane.
One thing though: Wal-Mart has invested so much time and money on its own IT system that the cost of conversion to Linux (especially the retraining of IT staff) could end up being more than the cost of continuing to keep the licenses for their proprietary software setup.