This is a major debate in Australia at the moment. The government ordered a study be undertaken into the future role of Nuclear Power for Australia. The greenpeace crew are all against Nuclear Power. It takes a lot to shift their view. Even when I confront them with Page 79 Figure 7.5 of the resultant report and explain to them that a Nuclear Power plant generates half as much greenhouse pollution as a Solar Power plant, 10 times less than gas power and 20 times less than coal... they are still against Nuclear power... go figure...
Please, read the report, especially page 79 figure 7.5 and see for yourself.
I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.
We just deal with slow outdated laptops untill they're too slow and outdated, then we bin them or give them away. What's changed?
Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
Intelligence, genius and foresight are not a boon to a person, but are a terrible curse. The feeling of helplessness and sorrow is overwhelming and crippling.
depression... when it happens to me, i call it depression.... unfortunately, i have found nothing which can fix it.
Eventually it was discovered That God Did not want us to be All the same
This was Bad News For the Governments of The World As it seemed contrary To the doctrine of Portion Controlled Servings
Mankind must be made more uniformly If The Future Was going to work
Various ways were sought To bind us all together But, alas Same-ness was unenforcable
It was about this time That someone Came up with the idea of Total Criminalization
Based on the principle that If we were All crooks We could at least be uniform To some degree In the eyes of The Law
Shrewdly our legislators calculated That most people were Too lazy to perform a Real Crime So new laws were manufactored Making it possible for anyone To violate them any time of the day or night, And Once we had all broken some kind of law We'd all be in the same big happy club Right up there with the President The most excalted industrialists, And the clerical big shots Of all your favorite religions
Total Criminalization Was the greatest idea of its time And was vastly popular Except with those people Who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws,
So, of course, they had to be Tricked Into It... Which is one of the reasons why Music Was eventually made Illegal.
--Frank Zappa (from the booklet of Joe's Garage, Acts II & III - 1979)
Make no mistake, the speed will keep creeping up over time, but the end of 18-month speed doubling ended a few years ago. Major new improvements will either involve radical new technologies (and no, spintronics and diamond substrates will only yield incremental improvements) such as quantum, or what we see now, the move toward massive parallelism.
Made me think... just perhaps... instead of square CPUs we will see doughnut shaped ones. Scaling out more than four processors on a square die may cause heat problems for the inner cores. A circular chip would have less of these problems.
You guys forget the massive small business segment. This will be one of the last adopters. There's very little usable small-business software that works on Linux (basic accounting package, anyone? how about point of sale?).
Now might be a good time to delete any copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook you once read for amusement and still have floating around on your hard drive.
Oh, wait, then MS forces you to upgrade your system if you want to maintain system security and stability... How??? Well, I shouldn't have to explain that to you. After all, your slashdot id is low enough to warrant me giving no explanation whatsoever, other wise all I'd be doing would be feeding a fat ugly troll.;)
Why is it bad? It's the same as any other commercial software like, say... microsoft windows... you start using it and then you are locked in and have to pay taxes to the software company for the rest of time. If you open up and GPL all your software (instead of locking it down) you can then sell support for your product, you never pay fees... I think its that people like you are scared of having to do some support work and would rather write once and live off profits for ever... nope, thats not how the economy works, eventually it crashes all down, just like the old soviet union.
I was going to hold back and use some mod point in this thread until I read that dribble...
Drug companies have no incentive to create cures. Plain and simple. If they were to create drugs that eliminated disease, then they would be putting themselves out of business.
I'm sure you find this post 'worthless' and 'flamebait' because it doesnt justify you illegally copying music. I guess it doesnt matter if we dont get new pharmaceutical research, as long as your ipod hard disk is full huh?
Yes, I do consider it flaimbait; and I am taking it, hook, line and sinker. IP only encourages pharmaceutical research to create long term revenue streams... no cure for AIDS (or any other terminal disease) The only thing created is a pill that the victim of disease must continue to take for the rest of their life... hence... long term revenue stream. This is not humane, it is inhumane.
They just happened to prepare for massive take-overs and the conglomeration of the market by co-incidence.
I think its got a bit to do with young James Packer selling off nine. James pulls a lot of strings within the government. He knows there is a major correction comming in the next year or so. I think he is trying to emulate his late father, same deal as when Kerry sold nine, only to buy it back again after the crash of '87. James has been lucky enough to find a sucker willing to take on nine after he intentionally wrecked it by allowing eddie loose at the helm for a while. I just wonder if we will see James try to buy it back in a couple of years for a quarter of the price for what he sold it. This wouldn't be the first time we have seen James try and emulate his late father... remember super league and how similar that attempt was to world series cricket????
The whitelist approach was my recommendation when I was consulted by my local government. I said that it would be unpopular, but I made mention of two fantastic benefits... an increase in potential productivity (there are still lots of opportunities to goof off) by taking away a costly (bandwidth/network) distraction; also, maintaining network security becomes far easier as dodgy sites can't be clicked on "by accident".
In my submission I also made the recommendation that slashdot be whitelisted...:)
The way to deal with this is to either organize like in the old union workshop days of the 20th century
Razor1911, fairlight, drink or die, core, Pirates With Attitude, rise, ucf, etc, etc, etc are the modern day union leaders...
But it starts with the deeply radical thought that 'we', the technological elite of the world, are 'immune' to the consequences of any laws concerning technology that 'we' don't agree with. Once enough of 'us', regardless of our nationality or political status, come to an unspoken agreement amongst ourselves that this is the way that it is going to be, then we can decide amongst ourselves what (if any) punishment should be allocated to our people by our people for enjoying the world's culture through file sharing and other technological means.
Many of us already take action. Many of us are educating the less intelligent about using p2p; and convincing them it is not wrong at the same time. +ORC and his HCU (while now getting a little dated) is an excellent way to educate the more intelligent end user.
As for punishment... if enough people dissent, then the laws will not be enforcable.
A hover car would no doubt have cogs, cams, door hinges, drive shafts and other such mechanical technologies. These would be patented as well, after all, they were obviously invented *after* the wheel. Royalty payments (taxes) for all of these technologies would also be required. The development process becomes so weighted down with taxes (royalty payments) that development of your hover car may very well grind to a halt... even if you hover car is a better system, ie more environmental/social/economicaly friendly, it may very well be unfeasible to develop as the taxation (royalty payments and paperwork) on development and production cause things to grind to a halt. This is a halt in human progress by monopolistic forces who wish to maintian their position. This is not a free market economy... Intellectual Property is effectively slavery of the mind.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a major debate in Australia at the moment. The government ordered a study be undertaken into the future role of Nuclear Power for Australia. The greenpeace crew are all against Nuclear Power. It takes a lot to shift their view. Even when I confront them with Page 79 Figure 7.5 of the resultant report and explain to them that a Nuclear Power plant generates half as much greenhouse pollution as a Solar Power plant, 10 times less than gas power and 20 times less than coal... they are still against Nuclear power... go figure...
Please, read the report, especially page 79 figure 7.5 and see for yourself.
report link
I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.
Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
depression... when it happens to me, i call it depression.... unfortunately, i have found nothing which can fix it.
isn't that a genetic algorithm?
This is why google bought youtube... they bought it for the power of its media distribution...
Eventually it was discovered
...
That God
Did not want us to be
All the same
This was
Bad News
For the Governments of The World
As it seemed contrary
To the doctrine of
Portion Controlled Servings
Mankind must be made more uniformly
If
The Future
Was going to work
Various ways were sought
To bind us all together
But, alas
Same-ness was unenforcable
It was about this time
That someone
Came up with the idea of
Total Criminalization
Based on the principle that
If we were All crooks
We could at least be uniform
To some degree
In the eyes of
The Law
Shrewdly our legislators calculated
That most people were
Too lazy to perform a
Real Crime
So new laws were manufactored
Making it possible for anyone
To violate them any time of the day or night,
And
Once we had all broken some kind of law
We'd all be in the same big happy club
Right up there with the President
The most excalted industrialists,
And the clerical big shots
Of all your favorite religions
Total Criminalization
Was the greatest idea of its time
And was vastly popular
Except with those people
Who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws,
So, of course, they had to be
Tricked Into It
Which is one of the reasons why
Music
Was eventually made
Illegal.
--Frank Zappa (from the booklet of Joe's Garage, Acts II & III - 1979)
Here is a translated version
I wonder how much is re-translated on the way though the firewall...
Why is this a slashdot story??? It's a complete load of marketing bullocks... I can already see my car from space... google-earth anyone???
The editors must smoking crack again...
Made me think... just perhaps... instead of square CPUs we will see doughnut shaped ones. Scaling out more than four processors on a square die may cause heat problems for the inner cores. A circular chip would have less of these problems.
http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/chapter14.html
Granted I haven't had a good look at that POS software... but still...
gnucash
openoffice
http://sourceforge.net/search/?forum_id=0&group_i
You didn't look very hard did you?
Whats next?
Bücherverbrennung
Oh, wait, then MS forces you to upgrade your system if you want to maintain system security and stability... How??? Well, I shouldn't have to explain that to you. After all, your slashdot id is low enough to warrant me giving no explanation whatsoever, other wise all I'd be doing would be feeding a fat ugly troll.
Why is it bad? It's the same as any other commercial software like, say... microsoft windows... you start using it and then you are locked in and have to pay taxes to the software company for the rest of time. If you open up and GPL all your software (instead of locking it down) you can then sell support for your product, you never pay fees... I think its that people like you are scared of having to do some support work and would rather write once and live off profits for ever... nope, thats not how the economy works, eventually it crashes all down, just like the old soviet union.
Drug companies have no incentive to create cures. Plain and simple. If they were to create drugs that eliminated disease, then they would be putting themselves out of business.
Yes, I do consider it flaimbait; and I am taking it, hook, line and sinker. IP only encourages pharmaceutical research to create long term revenue streams... no cure for AIDS (or any other terminal disease) The only thing created is a pill that the victim of disease must continue to take for the rest of their life... hence... long term revenue stream. This is not humane, it is inhumane.
I think its got a bit to do with young James Packer selling off nine. James pulls a lot of strings within the government. He knows there is a major correction comming in the next year or so. I think he is trying to emulate his late father, same deal as when Kerry sold nine, only to buy it back again after the crash of '87. James has been lucky enough to find a sucker willing to take on nine after he intentionally wrecked it by allowing eddie loose at the helm for a while. I just wonder if we will see James try to buy it back in a couple of years for a quarter of the price for what he sold it. This wouldn't be the first time we have seen James try and emulate his late father... remember super league and how similar that attempt was to world series cricket????
...but disney is still going to claim that mickey mouse is valuable.
Perhaps not. It depends on the layout. The inner cores may have trouble with cooling when you scale out the size.
The whitelist approach was my recommendation when I was consulted by my local government. I said that it would be unpopular, but I made mention of two fantastic benefits... an increase in potential productivity (there are still lots of opportunities to goof off) by taking away a costly (bandwidth/network) distraction; also, maintaining network security becomes far easier as dodgy sites can't be clicked on "by accident".
:)
In my submission I also made the recommendation that slashdot be whitelisted...
Many of us already take action. Many of us are educating the less intelligent about using p2p; and convincing them it is not wrong at the same time. +ORC and his HCU (while now getting a little dated) is an excellent way to educate the more intelligent end user.
As for punishment... if enough people dissent, then the laws will not be enforcable.
...or a revolution...
As an Australian, I have to point out: We have more U308... BOOM!!!
Yeah, it's called a free market economy.
Force all schools to use linux.
A hover car would no doubt have cogs, cams, door hinges, drive shafts and other such mechanical technologies. These would be patented as well, after all, they were obviously invented *after* the wheel. Royalty payments (taxes) for all of these technologies would also be required. The development process becomes so weighted down with taxes (royalty payments) that development of your hover car may very well grind to a halt... even if you hover car is a better system, ie more environmental/social/economicaly friendly, it may very well be unfeasible to develop as the taxation (royalty payments and paperwork) on development and production cause things to grind to a halt. This is a halt in human progress by monopolistic forces who wish to maintian their position. This is not a free market economy... Intellectual Property is effectively slavery of the mind.