Hydrogen, Bio-Fuel, etc. are all a waste of time, money, energy, and a blind alley. We have the solution to our energy crisis. It's called Solar Power. Solar panels continue to get more efficient and fall in price. This is a process that would accelerate if we bought more of them. This coupled with cars modeled on the Tesla design would be the fastest and easiest way to upend are oil based economy, and then eventually driving would drop much nearer to the price of free as well.
Of course automakers, oil companies, and other large corporations stand to lose, but that's no barrier to adoption. Oh wait, they own the media companies, too?!? Damn.....
The real holy grail of nanotech is the molecular assembler. But this is damned cool, and yet another step in that direction. Wake me up when my computer can print me an apple out the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen it pulls out of the air, and a few other trace elements it already has on hand.
There were some great comments to my initial reply, so I'm going to respond here:
I was NOT trying to start a mac os x vs linux war. They obviously have very different strengths and weaknesses. For the record though, I've had some pretty bad apple based experiences (vendor lock in, crashing, device drm, high price, slow speed, incompatibility). My favorite example is quicktime. That whole system makes me want to kill people, and then myself. Another great example of Apple Evil would be iTunes. It's the ultimate in everything that is wrong with corporate America (and the rest of the world): DRM, artists being ripped off, difficult and poor and closed implementation, vendor lock-in, outright criminality, inferior codec choice.... I could go on all day.
That being said, Mac does some stuff very right. There is no better video editing application anywhere on any system. There is no better video chat. The Operating System as a whole ergonomically is/was probably light years ahead of most distros and Windows. But I agree 100% with the guy who said the most important 5% of the OS sucks. I would use a higher percentage, because I'm a FOSS snob, and if you haven't jumped on the FOSS band wagon, you're really just fooling yourself at this point. Firefox is the tip of the ice berg, but in 20 years anything not FOSS will be not worth mentioning (maybe longer for games). That's my prediction.
Any body trying to put their relatives on meds should reconsider. I realize that was probably humorously meant (and I appreciate that!), but just in case let me put my rant about health right here:
Prescription meds do far more harm than good in today's society. Our bodies are designed solely for meat, fruit, and vegetables, and plenty of exercise. Instead everybody sits on their ass, and pounds breads and grain (and soda, and hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup), and this leads to a plethora of physical health problems, and (often consequently) mental health problems. Prescription meds seem like A. A money making scam, and B. A crappy white wash job. I myself have not seen even 1% as many people benefit from prescription meds or surgery as I have from simple and basic lifestyle changes. Pound at least a pound of fruit, a pound of vegetables, and a pound of meat a day, and then swim at least 1000 yards. If anybody here can reasonably tell me that doesn't improve your health (over 3-4 months) a million times over any prescription and medical sham, I'll literally give you one of my toes. Not to mention what other side benefits arise from leading a healthy lifestyle. Sex is SO much better when both people look and feel good.
Linspire/Lindows looks interesting, but "It's the implementation, stupid." It doesn't really look or act like Windows (enough), and also is not Free (as in beer), and further suffers from other ugliness and lack of homogeneity, hegemonic software emulation, and honestly bling. I think Ubuntu is probably closer, actually. It's numbers would also seem to support that. If only Ubuntu wasn't ugly shit brown and came with thunderbird instead of evolution, the milk drop plugin (project M), Urban Terror, TVtime, Avant Window Navigator, and an option to just install and run as root. Linux Mint solves one or two of these issues, but still not all of them, and also doesn't have the momentum that Ubuntu already has. Also, there is a real lack of good console emulation on Linux. The Windows derivatives are much farther along. And most of the emulators are open source!
In my opinion, despite what Linus and others say, I don't think developers are REALLY that interested in converting the world to Linux. I think they are devoted to converting to the world to their ultra secure non-pretty, non-fun, and draconian vision of what computing "should be". While I admire their skill and dedication, I'd be more impressed if they were more effective, by actually attempting to be compelling to John Q. Enduser.
Linus makes cogent and valid points. However, despite the fact that this will start a holy flame war, I would go one further:
The main problem most early adopters have (that I see) IS in the difference to Windows or OS X. And that first difference is a feature: Security.
If there was a distro that was identical to XP, and booted straight to the desktop with root privileges, incorporating wine automatically, and having gimpshop, firefox, open office, urban terror, an identical winamp clone, et al configured as near as possible to the hegemonic forces of today's markets, it would gain a lot of traction very quickly.
Ditto for an OS X clone.
Many people do not want a password, do not want security, and do not want variety or choice. They want what has always worked for them, and they want it for free. I've seen more spam, viruses, trojans, rootkits, and other problems in the Windows world than anywhere else (obviously), but people keep going back there, because (sort of) IT JUST WORKS, and they are used to it. I've seen computers with virii and Mcafee that took 20 minutes to boot, but the user didn't care! Once it was up it had the stuff they were used to: Photoshop, Windows, Microsoft Office, and Outlook. There are pretty seamless replacements for all these, but they are generally not bundled by default in any distro, and are not 100% compatible across the board with the hegemonic software competitors.
*i* like the enhanced security of not logging in automagically as root, but grandma doesn't. Grandma says "fuck it" and goes and drops $500 on a dell, or maybe a mac.
Just give the people what they want (right or wrong!) and the masses will come. Now is the chance, since vista sucks balls, and sp1 doesn't fix it at all!
It all falls under the category of "Keep it simple, stupid", really. I'm still waiting for a distro that during install gives you two choices:
Super Secure Just Like Windows
That will be the distro that finally takes huge chunks out of the windows market. Ubuntu is close, but still pretty far away.
I would like to give points to the most disastrous use of the word "downgrade" ever. Going from Vista to XP is the same kind of downgrade as going from a Geo to a Lexus.
I'd like to go ahead and downgrade my house into a mansion please.
Why are all these people so interested in new fuels? It's abundantly clear that we could solve all of our energy and transportation problems cheaply, and more efficiently with solar and electricity. Photovoltaics have improved ten fold, and come way down in price, and there are operating solar power plants based on the Sterling model that have been reliable and efficient for some time already. I'd also like to mention the Tesla car. There is no reason we couldn't have cheap clones all over the roads at this point.
The whole Biofuel/Ethanol push is just a ploy for corporations to continue to control the energy and transportation sectors. It's stupid, inefficient, does not come down in price significantly nearly as quickly as solar electric at economies of scale, and is going to waste huge tracts of land, in addition. Land that would do much better converting sunlight to electricity directly.
How many of your friends and family are running a Windows VM though... I can appreciate extra horse power.... But Grandma doesn't need it, doesn't know what it is, and wouldn't care to begin to understand the concepts even if she did. I was just speaking for the 99% of the world out there that might not be a/.er:).
Firefox Watch Movies Skype Urban Terror Audacity Thunderbird Abiword Civilization 2 Burn CDs Play mp3s
That system is overkill. Don't get me wrong, extra horse power is always a good thing, but aside from burning a cd, a EEE will do everything I want and (I'm sure) is much cheaper and smaller, and easy to carry. I'd like to see more competition in the ultra cheap department, once I can get something of EEE functionality for $150, I'll be considering lots of extra fun little projects.
I mean, other than running Vista (why would you do that to yourself, anyway?), is there a point to spending more for that much horse power? Ubuntu runs well on a pentium 3 and does 99% of what most people need!!!
Having played in bands for the last two decades, I have had plenty of drug experience.
I can attest to the benefits of psychedelics for certain people. However, that recommendation should come with a strong warning:
IF YOU ATTEMPT TO USE ANY PSYCHEDELIC, HAVE A CHAPERON, BE IN GOOD PHYSICAL HEALTH, AND MAKE SURE YOUR STOMACH AND MIND ARE CLEAR AND READY.
It helps if your chaperon continually reminds you, "It's OK! You're tripping on drugs! Just try to relax and enjoy it!"
Further, for most people I recommend "Shrooms" over LSD. Shrooms seem to provide a similar experience, but not as jarring and physically draining. Plus they are found in nature, so I feel they are less dangerous. With any psychedelic, the dosing is very important, and it can be hard to figure out just what is right for each person. It is not as simple as alcohol, where a weight to consumption ratio is generally straightforward.
Also be warned, that consuming illegal substances can be VERY dangerous, because you might not be getting what you think you are getting. It would suck to die because you got "shrooms" that were actually a poisonous mushroom of a different kind.
In addition, I think that our public education (and legal system) regarding substance abuse need to be completely rewritten.
Any opiate is highly addictive and can lead very quickly to malaise, crime, poverty and death. The same is also true for methamphetamine, however that seems to be a little less of a sure decline, compared with heroin, or the other opiates.
Cocaine can also be dangerous to a person who lacks confidence.
Alcohol's dangers should be well understood and documented at this point.
Weed could potentially make you fat and lazy. That's also true with beer.
Caffeine is a glorious gift from god.
That's all the advice I have. I'm not going to lie to you like they did at school and say, "Weed leads to heroin, which leads to death!" I know tons of people who are regular Marijuana smokers and have no interest in doing hard or dangerous drugs like heroin or speed.
Remember also, that right now a Core 2 duo has 291 transistors. Eventually, with the advent of nanotechnology and other heat efficient technologies that make our current stuff like tinker toys, we may have 291 cores on a cpu. At that point, if there is an advantage to ray tracing (which I believe there are many), we'll be doing it. I'm interested to see physics advancing more in games for the next few years. I think there is a lot more improvement to be done in physics than in graphics, also hugely benefiting by multicore.
In 1946 Eniac had approximately 175,000 transistors. In 2007 a core 2 duo had 291 million. So that's a ratio of:
175,000:291,000,000 or
7:12,000 (I'm ball parking in my head, leave me alone).
That happened in 60 years. So let's extrapolate 60 years.... I'm sure that there will be some derivative chips being sold THIS YEAR that have 8 cores, which is even more than 7 (if there aren't already, I'm not a chip fab engineer, obviously), so in 60 years I predict we will have 12,000 core chips.
Now, imagine a beowulf cluster of those!!!
I'll call it O'Drinnan's law: The increase of cores popularly used in silicon chips will be similar to the expansion of transistors in the previous age. Probably even 10 to 20 times faster. Let's wait and see about nanotech....
It's criminal not to include Urban Terror on these kinds of lists. Urban Terror is easily more fun than counterstrike, or any other commercial FPS I can come up with. And it's free. And it uses an open source quake 3 based engine: ioquake3. And it runs in Linux.
1. Have a camera and public feed of me at all times, as a true servant of the people. 2. Remove all surveillance cameras and traffic cameras. 3. Fiber to every home and free national internet. 4. No more war unless we are directly under attack. 5. Solar Power. 6. Break up the corporate monopolies. 7. Free the radio and television spectrums for public use. 8. Give the public the truth about JFK and Roswell and 9/11 (I'm not saying I know what it is, but as president, I would, right?). 9. Completely restore the constitution. 10. Go back to the Gold standard. 11. Eliminate the current credit card system. 12. National Health Care 13. Make copyright last no longer than 5 years, for any design or art. 14. Fix our defunct education system (something along the lines of OLPC/wikipedia). 15. Invest more in NASA. 16. Move from airplanes to a slower, cheaper, safer, more environmentally friendly zeppelin system. 17. Expand the peace corp. 18. Give every American a free cellular video phone. 19. Lock up all the criminals currently in power. 20. Repair our international relations with every country not actively involved in a genocide. 21. Give incentives for electric vehicles, like the Tesla Motor Car.
I have a few other goals, and I think they are actually realistic. Some will be harder than others, obviously. A lot of money will be saved over the current system as we are eliminating much of the corporate profiteering (health insurance, cellular companies, internet providers, cable companies), and by implementing a superior video phone infrastructure, there will be less need to travel or commute. Plus, once the solar infrastructure is all in place, it will be much cheaper to maintain than our current oil based infrastructure. After all the ground work is done I'd like to focus on safer and healthier food, quality of life, and mental health issues, as well as an improved food pyramid that reflects more of the true benefits of eating higher quantities of hormone free meat, and chemical free vegetables and fruit. There is plenty of evidence showing that the current food pyramid is dead wrong.
I'd also like it if as an aptitude test for graduating high school, kids could build a simple radio, fix a car, perform CPR, write a basic software application, and read music on at least one instrument. I also think reading, writing, and arithmetic are important, but we should be farther along by now.
Another area of research we should invest more in is automated vehicles. The traffic and mortality rates here in southern California are pretty atrocious. My carbon-fiber solar powered zeppelin designs could go a long way to assisting in this endeavor as well.
It is an amusing comment (funny moderation), but this is completely true. I switched 10 people over to Ubuntu with beryl (now compiz/fusion). I switched 1 by telling him it did everything he needed, faster, and for free, and then by making him use it for a week. He adjusted and has never called me again for tech support.... And he is still happily using Ubuntu.
The thing that is missing is a few necessary apps and easy to do things that commercial apps do.
It is very difficult to rip mp3s automagically in most distros. It is nigh on impossible to find a FOSS way to burn a dvd for a regular dvd player in Windows. Actually, all the FOSS cd/dvd burning software is horribly lacking on windows (which is sadly the territory where we need to win this battle). Once I switch a client to Firefox, Open Office, Gimp, and Pidgin (with MySpace IM!), it is easy to make the case for Ubuntu, because they are already used to all the apps. Sadly, I've had to switch a few back to windows for something as trivial and stupid as itunes, winamp (with milkdrop plugin), an n64 emulator, some random driver, or nero.
If you want to help FOSS, make a FOSS alternative to Nero that "JUST WORKS" win burning avi to dvd, etc.....
...I won't carry one. I won't carry any blauscheim no matter what this generation of Nazis wants to call my driver's license. If they don't like my driving they can talk to my.44. They certainly aren't getting my ID. Because I never leave home with it. If everyone in the country stopped carrying their license and started wearing a gun, we could go a long way towards wresting control of our government and laws away from the fascists and back to the people where it belongs.
It's all you license toting cowards that are fucking up the whole democracy thing. You should go ahead and re-read the constitution and then remember how right I am.
...How about we quit wasting time and energy on "bio-fuel" which is inefficient, wasteful, and expensive, and focus a little more time/energy/money on solar, which could easily supplant our current oil economy? All this ethanol and hydrogen talk is a total diversion. And a waste of time. And money. We pave Arizona with Silicon and we're done. We all drive a Tesla, everything else remains the same, and we stop relying on dangerous Arabic fascism and destroying the atmosphere and climate.
Or we could keep wasting everybody's time with the ethanol crap and further centralize our power industry control.
Most of societies problems would probably be solved by mass production of Zeppelin houses. This may not seem realistic or reasonable to non-visionaries or cynics, but I really believe it, and have plenty of rational observation to back up this claim. Since the entire skin of the zeppelin would be cheap solar panels, the electricity used in the zeppelin (including lighting, heating, transportation, television) would mostly be environmentally friendly (and free!), and since the very nature of a vehicle by design is to be mobile, everyone would be effectively living "off the grid" which would translate into other environmental benefits, and better and more reliable power in the case of emergencies. Speaking of emergencies, Zeppelins are pretty much earth quake proof, tsunami proof, and brush fire proof, and with a reasonably good weather report, you could probably avoid most tornadoes and hurricanes by simply flying somewhere else for a while. In addition, zeppelins are slow, and, do not carry much momentum, so "traffic" accidents would probably be very rarely fatal for anyone involved, and with the wifi/gps/radar navigation system I have in mind would probably be extremely uncommon anyway. By removing cars and housing and the entire electrical grid out of the equation we have essentially solved global warming, traffic fatalities, homelessness, and maybe eventually even poverty altogether.
Now the biggest benefit though of living in a TRULY mobile home (and a home that was FREE to move, and could move over water, land, ice, and mountains!), is that in the event of a war, you could easily just fly somewhere else. In fact, at some point this evolutionary step from living in huts on land to yachts in the sky could prove to be the end of war completely. What's the use in fighting over land, when you live in the sky? The only thing to bother with of value on the land is going to be fruit, meat, vegetables, and water, and I think that those can be had fairly cheaply still, and will probably become even cheaper if our society chooses to make this transcendental step forward.
Myself personally I've been a fan of many places on the planet, and would love to be able to flit hither and thither with the comfort of my own bed, computer, closet, shower, and toilet immediately with me. I'd most especially like to do so while not paying rent, paying for hotels, and while having my own kitchen and fresh produce. I also would like to surf the internet, lounge in the hot tub, take a nap, play violin, or play mario kart while my home travels between Hawaii, Oregon, New York, Alaska, San Diego, and Ireland on the free power of natural sun light, and automatically by GPS auto pilot, and radar and wifi collision avoidance. Further, I'd like to enjoy the sunset and sunrise at all of these locations from a spot in the air, and maybe even on the top of my zeppelin on the sun deck that I have planned there, amongst the clouds and fresh perfect air free from the pollutants that rule our current carbon based economy.
The most frustrating part about this whole zeppelin utopia that I've created and have already been living in in my own mind, is that it's entirely feasible. Not just feasible, but almost childishly simple. It's a simple matter of running some numbers, running some computer simulations, and building/buying a factory and changing everybody's world, for the better. No more commutes, no more traffic, no more pollution, no more housing bubbles, no more traffic accidents, no more corporate slavery, no more censorship, no more war, no more poverty, no more stress, and probably eventually no more misery or suicide or prescription drugs like oxycontin (sp?). Just 6 billion happy people living with their families in luxury liners in the sky, with free electricity, internet, and water, drifting along in the sunshine from organic fruit stand to organic steak house to Irish pub for a night of
Ubuntu IS the greatest thing ever. What other easy to use hegemonic Linux distro is going to force a hideous brown on your desktop insuring that Microsoft will never lose their hegemony?
... is Urban Terror. But as others have pointed out, did you mean free as in beer or open source? Free by itself is pretty misleading. At any rate Urban Terror pwns those other ones damn hard. Especially the new version with all the great new maps.
I'd buy the cheaper one and then install Ubuntu. Problem solved. Hell, I might even install Linux MCE and turn the lights on and off with my cell phone.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't know The Carlyle Group was related to Microsoft in any way. Although there is PLENTY of documentation on all their other evils...
Hydrogen, Bio-Fuel, etc. are all a waste of time, money, energy, and a blind alley. We have the solution to our energy crisis. It's called Solar Power. Solar panels continue to get more efficient and fall in price. This is a process that would accelerate if we bought more of them. This coupled with cars modeled on the Tesla design would be the fastest and easiest way to upend are oil based economy, and then eventually driving would drop much nearer to the price of free as well.
Of course automakers, oil companies, and other large corporations stand to lose, but that's no barrier to adoption. Oh wait, they own the media companies, too?!? Damn.....
The real holy grail of nanotech is the molecular assembler. But this is damned cool, and yet another step in that direction. Wake me up when my computer can print me an apple out the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen it pulls out of the air, and a few other trace elements it already has on hand.
There were some great comments to my initial reply, so I'm going to respond here:
I was NOT trying to start a mac os x vs linux war. They obviously have very different strengths and weaknesses. For the record though, I've had some pretty bad apple based experiences (vendor lock in, crashing, device drm, high price, slow speed, incompatibility). My favorite example is quicktime. That whole system makes me want to kill people, and then myself. Another great example of Apple Evil would be iTunes. It's the ultimate in everything that is wrong with corporate America (and the rest of the world): DRM, artists being ripped off, difficult and poor and closed implementation, vendor lock-in, outright criminality, inferior codec choice.... I could go on all day.
That being said, Mac does some stuff very right. There is no better video editing application anywhere on any system. There is no better video chat. The Operating System as a whole ergonomically is/was probably light years ahead of most distros and Windows. But I agree 100% with the guy who said the most important 5% of the OS sucks. I would use a higher percentage, because I'm a FOSS snob, and if you haven't jumped on the FOSS band wagon, you're really just fooling yourself at this point. Firefox is the tip of the ice berg, but in 20 years anything not FOSS will be not worth mentioning (maybe longer for games). That's my prediction.
Any body trying to put their relatives on meds should reconsider. I realize that was probably humorously meant (and I appreciate that!), but just in case let me put my rant about health right here:
Prescription meds do far more harm than good in today's society. Our bodies are designed solely for meat, fruit, and vegetables, and plenty of exercise. Instead everybody sits on their ass, and pounds breads and grain (and soda, and hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup), and this leads to a plethora of physical health problems, and (often consequently) mental health problems. Prescription meds seem like A. A money making scam, and B. A crappy white wash job. I myself have not seen even 1% as many people benefit from prescription meds or surgery as I have from simple and basic lifestyle changes. Pound at least a pound of fruit, a pound of vegetables, and a pound of meat a day, and then swim at least 1000 yards. If anybody here can reasonably tell me that doesn't improve your health (over 3-4 months) a million times over any prescription and medical sham, I'll literally give you one of my toes. Not to mention what other side benefits arise from leading a healthy lifestyle. Sex is SO much better when both people look and feel good.
Linspire/Lindows looks interesting, but "It's the implementation, stupid." It doesn't really look or act like Windows (enough), and also is not Free (as in beer), and further suffers from other ugliness and lack of homogeneity, hegemonic software emulation, and honestly bling. I think Ubuntu is probably closer, actually. It's numbers would also seem to support that. If only Ubuntu wasn't ugly shit brown and came with thunderbird instead of evolution, the milk drop plugin (project M), Urban Terror, TVtime, Avant Window Navigator, and an option to just install and run as root. Linux Mint solves one or two of these issues, but still not all of them, and also doesn't have the momentum that Ubuntu already has. Also, there is a real lack of good console emulation on Linux. The Windows derivatives are much farther along. And most of the emulators are open source!
In my opinion, despite what Linus and others say, I don't think developers are REALLY that interested in converting the world to Linux. I think they are devoted to converting to the world to their ultra secure non-pretty, non-fun, and draconian vision of what computing "should be". While I admire their skill and dedication, I'd be more impressed if they were more effective, by actually attempting to be compelling to John Q. Enduser.
Imagine an OS where you showed up instantly on
Linus makes cogent and valid points. However, despite the fact that this will start a holy flame war, I would go one further:
The main problem most early adopters have (that I see) IS in the difference to Windows or OS X. And that first difference is a feature: Security.
If there was a distro that was identical to XP, and booted straight to the desktop with root privileges, incorporating wine automatically, and having gimpshop, firefox, open office, urban terror, an identical winamp clone, et al configured as near as possible to the hegemonic forces of today's markets, it would gain a lot of traction very quickly.
Ditto for an OS X clone.
Many people do not want a password, do not want security, and do not want variety or choice. They want what has always worked for them, and they want it for free. I've seen more spam, viruses, trojans, rootkits, and other problems in the Windows world than anywhere else (obviously), but people keep going back there, because (sort of) IT JUST WORKS, and they are used to it. I've seen computers with virii and Mcafee that took 20 minutes to boot, but the user didn't care! Once it was up it had the stuff they were used to: Photoshop, Windows, Microsoft Office, and Outlook. There are pretty seamless replacements for all these, but they are generally not bundled by default in any distro, and are not 100% compatible across the board with the hegemonic software competitors.
*i* like the enhanced security of not logging in automagically as root, but grandma doesn't. Grandma says "fuck it" and goes and drops $500 on a dell, or maybe a mac.
Just give the people what they want (right or wrong!) and the masses will come. Now is the chance, since vista sucks balls, and sp1 doesn't fix it at all!
It all falls under the category of "Keep it simple, stupid", really. I'm still waiting for a distro that during install gives you two choices:
Super Secure
Just Like Windows
That will be the distro that finally takes huge chunks out of the windows market. Ubuntu is close, but still pretty far away.
I would like to give points to the most disastrous use of the word "downgrade" ever. Going from Vista to XP is the same kind of downgrade as going from a Geo to a Lexus.
I'd like to go ahead and downgrade my house into a mansion please.
Have you been to Arizona? No loss!
Why are all these people so interested in new fuels? It's abundantly clear that we could solve all of our energy and transportation problems cheaply, and more efficiently with solar and electricity. Photovoltaics have improved ten fold, and come way down in price, and there are operating solar power plants based on the Sterling model that have been reliable and efficient for some time already. I'd also like to mention the Tesla car. There is no reason we couldn't have cheap clones all over the roads at this point.
The whole Biofuel/Ethanol push is just a ploy for corporations to continue to control the energy and transportation sectors. It's stupid, inefficient, does not come down in price significantly nearly as quickly as solar electric at economies of scale, and is going to waste huge tracts of land, in addition. Land that would do much better converting sunlight to electricity directly.
Can somebody point out in any broad way any type of new alternative fuel is better than:
http://www.miasole.com/
and
http://www.teslamotors.com/
Thanks in advance.
Ha, I'm experienced in the field, and tried to give my most earnest advice, and got a -1 Offtopic. *sigh*
How many of your friends and family are running a Windows VM though... I can appreciate extra horse power.... But Grandma doesn't need it, doesn't know what it is, and wouldn't care to begin to understand the concepts even if she did. I was just speaking for the 99% of the world out there that might not be a /.er :).
For everything I want to do:\
Firefox
Watch Movies
Skype
Urban Terror
Audacity
Thunderbird
Abiword
Civilization 2
Burn CDs
Play mp3s
That system is overkill. Don't get me wrong, extra horse power is always a good thing, but aside from burning a cd, a EEE will do everything I want and (I'm sure) is much cheaper and smaller, and easy to carry. I'd like to see more competition in the ultra cheap department, once I can get something of EEE functionality for $150, I'll be considering lots of extra fun little projects.
I mean, other than running Vista (why would you do that to yourself, anyway?), is there a point to spending more for that much horse power? Ubuntu runs well on a pentium 3 and does 99% of what most people need!!!
Having played in bands for the last two decades, I have had plenty of drug experience.
I can attest to the benefits of psychedelics for certain people. However, that recommendation should come with a strong warning:
IF YOU ATTEMPT TO USE ANY PSYCHEDELIC, HAVE A CHAPERON, BE IN GOOD PHYSICAL HEALTH, AND MAKE SURE YOUR STOMACH AND MIND ARE CLEAR AND READY.
It helps if your chaperon continually reminds you, "It's OK! You're tripping on drugs! Just try to relax and enjoy it!"
Further, for most people I recommend "Shrooms" over LSD. Shrooms seem to provide a similar experience, but not as jarring and physically draining. Plus they are found in nature, so I feel they are less dangerous. With any psychedelic, the dosing is very important, and it can be hard to figure out just what is right for each person. It is not as simple as alcohol, where a weight to consumption ratio is generally straightforward.
Also be warned, that consuming illegal substances can be VERY dangerous, because you might not be getting what you think you are getting. It would suck to die because you got "shrooms" that were actually a poisonous mushroom of a different kind.
In addition, I think that our public education (and legal system) regarding substance abuse need to be completely rewritten.
Any opiate is highly addictive and can lead very quickly to malaise, crime, poverty and death. The same is also true for methamphetamine, however that seems to be a little less of a sure decline, compared with heroin, or the other opiates.
Cocaine can also be dangerous to a person who lacks confidence.
Alcohol's dangers should be well understood and documented at this point.
Weed could potentially make you fat and lazy. That's also true with beer.
Caffeine is a glorious gift from god.
That's all the advice I have. I'm not going to lie to you like they did at school and say, "Weed leads to heroin, which leads to death!" I know tons of people who are regular Marijuana smokers and have no interest in doing hard or dangerous drugs like heroin or speed.
Yes!
I left out the word million several times in my initial statement. DAMN YOU NO EDITING!
rhY
Remember also, that right now a Core 2 duo has 291 transistors. Eventually, with the advent of nanotechnology and other heat efficient technologies that make our current stuff like tinker toys, we may have 291 cores on a cpu. At that point, if there is an advantage to ray tracing (which I believe there are many), we'll be doing it. I'm interested to see physics advancing more in games for the next few years. I think there is a lot more improvement to be done in physics than in graphics, also hugely benefiting by multicore.
In 1946 Eniac had approximately 175,000 transistors. In 2007 a core 2 duo had 291 million. So that's a ratio of:
175,000:291,000,000 or
7:12,000
(I'm ball parking in my head, leave me alone).
That happened in 60 years. So let's extrapolate 60 years.... I'm sure that there will be some derivative chips being sold THIS YEAR that have 8 cores, which is even more than 7 (if there aren't already, I'm not a chip fab engineer, obviously), so in 60 years I predict we will have 12,000 core chips.
Now, imagine a beowulf cluster of those!!!
I'll call it O'Drinnan's law:
The increase of cores popularly used in silicon chips will be similar to the expansion of transistors in the previous age. Probably even 10 to 20 times faster. Let's wait and see about nanotech....
This is /. I'm pretty sure we all pay the most ultimately careful attention to the DMCA and all that legal clap-trap.
It's criminal not to include Urban Terror on these kinds of lists. Urban Terror is easily more fun than counterstrike, or any other commercial FPS I can come up with. And it's free. And it uses an open source quake 3 based engine: ioquake3. And it runs in Linux.
...when I'm eligible in 2012:
1. Have a camera and public feed of me at all times, as a true servant of the people.
2. Remove all surveillance cameras and traffic cameras.
3. Fiber to every home and free national internet.
4. No more war unless we are directly under attack.
5. Solar Power.
6. Break up the corporate monopolies.
7. Free the radio and television spectrums for public use.
8. Give the public the truth about JFK and Roswell and 9/11 (I'm not saying I know what it is, but as president, I would, right?).
9. Completely restore the constitution.
10. Go back to the Gold standard.
11. Eliminate the current credit card system.
12. National Health Care
13. Make copyright last no longer than 5 years, for any design or art.
14. Fix our defunct education system (something along the lines of OLPC/wikipedia).
15. Invest more in NASA.
16. Move from airplanes to a slower, cheaper, safer, more environmentally friendly zeppelin system.
17. Expand the peace corp.
18. Give every American a free cellular video phone.
19. Lock up all the criminals currently in power.
20. Repair our international relations with every country not actively involved in a genocide.
21. Give incentives for electric vehicles, like the Tesla Motor Car.
I have a few other goals, and I think they are actually realistic. Some will be harder than others, obviously. A lot of money will be saved over the current system as we are eliminating much of the corporate profiteering (health insurance, cellular companies, internet providers, cable companies), and by implementing a superior video phone infrastructure, there will be less need to travel or commute. Plus, once the solar infrastructure is all in place, it will be much cheaper to maintain than our current oil based infrastructure. After all the ground work is done I'd like to focus on safer and healthier food, quality of life, and mental health issues, as well as an improved food pyramid that reflects more of the true benefits of eating higher quantities of hormone free meat, and chemical free vegetables and fruit. There is plenty of evidence showing that the current food pyramid is dead wrong.
I'd also like it if as an aptitude test for graduating high school, kids could build a simple radio, fix a car, perform CPR, write a basic software application, and read music on at least one instrument. I also think reading, writing, and arithmetic are important, but we should be farther along by now.
Another area of research we should invest more in is automated vehicles. The traffic and mortality rates here in southern California are pretty atrocious. My carbon-fiber solar powered zeppelin designs could go a long way to assisting in this endeavor as well.
It is an amusing comment (funny moderation), but this is completely true. I switched 10 people over to Ubuntu with beryl (now compiz/fusion). I switched 1 by telling him it did everything he needed, faster, and for free, and then by making him use it for a week. He adjusted and has never called me again for tech support.... And he is still happily using Ubuntu.
The thing that is missing is a few necessary apps and easy to do things that commercial apps do.
It is very difficult to rip mp3s automagically in most distros. It is nigh on impossible to find a FOSS way to burn a dvd for a regular dvd player in Windows. Actually, all the FOSS cd/dvd burning software is horribly lacking on windows (which is sadly the territory where we need to win this battle). Once I switch a client to Firefox, Open Office, Gimp, and Pidgin (with MySpace IM!), it is easy to make the case for Ubuntu, because they are already used to all the apps. Sadly, I've had to switch a few back to windows for something as trivial and stupid as itunes, winamp (with milkdrop plugin), an n64 emulator, some random driver, or nero.
If you want to help FOSS, make a FOSS alternative to Nero that "JUST WORKS" win burning avi to dvd, etc.....
...I won't carry one. I won't carry any blauscheim no matter what this generation of Nazis wants to call my driver's license. If they don't like my driving they can talk to my .44. They certainly aren't getting my ID. Because I never leave home with it. If everyone in the country stopped carrying their license and started wearing a gun, we could go a long way towards wresting control of our government and laws away from the fascists and back to the people where it belongs.
It's all you license toting cowards that are fucking up the whole democracy thing. You should go ahead and re-read the constitution and then remember how right I am.
...How about we quit wasting time and energy on "bio-fuel" which is inefficient, wasteful, and expensive, and focus a little more time/energy/money on solar, which could easily supplant our current oil economy? All this ethanol and hydrogen talk is a total diversion. And a waste of time. And money. We pave Arizona with Silicon and we're done. We all drive a Tesla, everything else remains the same, and we stop relying on dangerous Arabic fascism and destroying the atmosphere and climate.
Or we could keep wasting everybody's time with the ethanol crap and further centralize our power industry control.
Is written about in detail on my blog:
http://blog.myspace.com/khanz
Most of societies problems would probably be solved by mass production of Zeppelin houses. This may not seem realistic or reasonable to non-visionaries or cynics, but I really believe it, and have plenty of rational observation to back up this claim. Since the entire skin of the zeppelin would be cheap solar panels, the electricity used in the zeppelin (including lighting, heating, transportation, television) would mostly be environmentally friendly (and free!), and since the very nature of a vehicle by design is to be mobile, everyone would be effectively living "off the grid" which would translate into other environmental benefits, and better and more reliable power in the case of emergencies. Speaking of emergencies, Zeppelins are pretty much earth quake proof, tsunami proof, and brush fire proof, and with a reasonably good weather report, you could probably avoid most tornadoes and hurricanes by simply flying somewhere else for a while. In addition, zeppelins are slow, and, do not carry much momentum, so "traffic" accidents would probably be very rarely fatal for anyone involved, and with the wifi/gps/radar navigation system I have in mind would probably be extremely uncommon anyway. By removing cars and housing and the entire electrical grid out of the equation we have essentially solved global warming, traffic fatalities, homelessness, and maybe eventually even poverty altogether.
Now the biggest benefit though of living in a TRULY mobile home (and a home that was FREE to move, and could move over water, land, ice, and mountains!), is that in the event of a war, you could easily just fly somewhere else. In fact, at some point this evolutionary step from living in huts on land to yachts in the sky could prove to be the end of war completely. What's the use in fighting over land, when you live in the sky? The only thing to bother with of value on the land is going to be fruit, meat, vegetables, and water, and I think that those can be had fairly cheaply still, and will probably become even cheaper if our society chooses to make this transcendental step forward.
Myself personally I've been a fan of many places on the planet, and would love to be able to flit hither and thither with the comfort of my own bed, computer, closet, shower, and toilet immediately with me. I'd most especially like to do so while not paying rent, paying for hotels, and while having my own kitchen and fresh produce. I also would like to surf the internet, lounge in the hot tub, take a nap, play violin, or play mario kart while my home travels between Hawaii, Oregon, New York, Alaska, San Diego, and Ireland on the free power of natural sun light, and automatically by GPS auto pilot, and radar and wifi collision avoidance. Further, I'd like to enjoy the sunset and sunrise at all of these locations from a spot in the air, and maybe even on the top of my zeppelin on the sun deck that I have planned there, amongst the clouds and fresh perfect air free from the pollutants that rule our current carbon based economy.
The most frustrating part about this whole zeppelin utopia that I've created and have already been living in in my own mind, is that it's entirely feasible. Not just feasible, but almost childishly simple. It's a simple matter of running some numbers, running some computer simulations, and building/buying a factory and changing everybody's world, for the better. No more commutes, no more traffic, no more pollution, no more housing bubbles, no more traffic accidents, no more corporate slavery, no more censorship, no more war, no more poverty, no more stress, and probably eventually no more misery or suicide or prescription drugs like oxycontin (sp?). Just 6 billion happy people living with their families in luxury liners in the sky, with free electricity, internet, and water, drifting along in the sunshine from organic fruit stand to organic steak house to Irish pub for a night of
Ubuntu IS the greatest thing ever. What other easy to use hegemonic Linux distro is going to force a hideous brown on your desktop insuring that Microsoft will never lose their hegemony?
Steve Ballmer
... is Urban Terror. But as others have pointed out, did you mean free as in beer or open source? Free by itself is pretty misleading. At any rate Urban Terror pwns those other ones damn hard. Especially the new version with all the great new maps.
Much Love,
rhY
I'd buy the cheaper one and then install Ubuntu. Problem solved. Hell, I might even install Linux MCE and turn the lights on and off with my cell phone.
rhY