All the proposed alternatives such as biofuel, or hydrogen either require a technical breakthrough (i.e. storing sufficient quantities of hydrogen in a vehicle) or are not available in sufficient quantity . Nuclear energy will not help here.
Nuclear power would provide a source of energy for producing hydrogen. Nuclear doesn't require us to burn up oil/coal/natural gas to produce hydrogen. Not using nuclear power to manufacture hydrogen would have us buring fossil fuels at a much faster rate than we currently do. This would have the effect on increasing our dependence on foreign fuel sources.
As I remember the review of the Pons & Fleischman results, the amount of "excess energy" released was about what would be expected by the complete oxidation (burning) of the Pd electrode. The energy was estimated by the distribution of pieces of the aparatus distrubted around the lab.
They only detected neutrons on Monday mornings, after the lab (in the basement) had had the door shut for a couple days. The neutrons were most likely from the the brick walls of the building and accumilated when people weren't going in and out of the lab.
I'm not sure if the current experiments have addressed these issues. They certainly aren't discussed in the popular press.
This "not cool to be smart" carries over into the jobs too. What jobs is somebody with a Ph.D. in Physics qualified to do? Teach at a course that nobody wants to take at a University?
The same goes for most engineering as well. Business management doesn't know how to use people with these skills and won't hire them. Why spend all your time studying for a useless degree?
When companies start hiring people with Science and Engineering degrees, then people will study for this in school.
So here's an anecdote about how we're affecting the weather (remember that the plural of anecdote isn't data). When my parent were growing up they hadn't heard of asthma. Today, in some places of the world almost every child suffers from asthma. I think about 20% of children suffer to various degrees in Toronto.
Isn't asthma caused by a reaction to dust mites? If, so the rise in asthma could be more easily attributed to central heating not pollution.
Haven't many of the recent patches applied to InternetExploiter as? In the past MS has said that a web browser is an essential part of the operation system. Do these count as kernal patches or not?
The State has the force of Law. The State can force you to do or not do whatever it wants. Don't pay your taxes and they take your home.
The last time I check. Standard Oil can't force you to purchase their product. This applies to all corporations. Without customers they are nothing!
The problem is when the State and Corporations collaborate to create monopolies and then force you to purchase their products and services. Auto insurance would be a good example.
If you are a Qwest local phone customer, you can find other ISP's to provide DSL service to your home or business. Just go to Qwest.com select DSL and as you go through the site you will find other ISP's who provide DSL to your area...
Sony and Philips own the patents for CD's. I don't think Sony will sue themselves, but they might make a CD-ROM drive that will play copy protected CDs on computers.
This is the same Best Buy that used the city of Richfield, Minnesota to confiscate an auto dealership's property and 12 other businesses and about 60 homes (affordable) to build their new world headquarters.
The potential advantages and ease of identity theft will be greatly enhanced... Hack a retiree's ID then have their SS checks deposited in your bank account instead! You don't even have to steal their s-mail to do it! Just a computer and Internet access.
The problem is that very few, including the court talk about who M$ customers really are. They are the hardware manufacturers, HP, Gateway, Dell, IBM, Compaq, etc. The browser isssue is a red herring. It is the contracts that force hardware manufacturers to give up any right to install competing OS's on the PC's they build.
There is a simple remedy that does prevent Microsoft from continuing to be a monopoly. Prevent the Government from purchasing Microsoft products directly or in-directly. This is about 25-30% of Microsoft Sales.
No court order is required to do this.
It helps establishes competition to Microsoft.
Should force PC manufactures from signing Exclusive contracts with Microsoft.
Re:If democratic and elected, not so sad after all
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Harm From The Hague
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Last time I checked, the government in every country is a monopoly. There is no competitor. You are compelled (sometimes at gunpoint) to obey the laws and pay taxes.
However, corporations, even multi-national corporations must have customers to exist. Unless a company colludes with the government to be awarded a monopoly, they can be boycotted out of existance. Nobody is forced to purchase their products or services.
Yes, I remember when MS got caught stealing doublespace from Stacker. MS countersued Stacker about using undocumented system calls. The use of these call violated trade secrets in MS's Open OS.
MS won the countersuit but it was only a token amount.
I imagine that you have never programmed a Z80 in assembler? Or used a mark-up word processor? You didn't use Visicalc either. I assume you've never taught somebody to use Lotus 1-2-3 when if first arrived on the market.
I did a lot of sysadmin and programming work for Xenix systems. Believe it or not this was a version of Unix that Micros~1 was selling. It ran on Motorola 68000's (a very nice CPU) and later 8086's. IBM hadn't made the PC yet when Radio Shack was selling their 68K/Z80 based MS-Xenix machines.
I purchased my first PC in 1984 with my own money I earned doing custom programming. That wasn't my first computer either, and it was as expensive then as the PII 400's are today. I currently use a PII 350, that I own and paid for, I own and use MS-Word and WordPerfect 8 for Linux and Windows. I recently started using WP 8 and like better than MS-Word. I have owned and used word processors for 1MHz Z80's with 64Kb of RAM and 360Kb floppies. I still own those computers and they cost more than your 486DX-2 50MHz laptop did.
However, my point was that WordPerfect 5.X ran very well on a 4MHz 8086 (or 8088) with DOS 3.0 with 640KB with a 10MB hard drive. I remember secretaries being more productive on those systems than they are today using much the faster equipment using WinXX and MS Word. By the way MS-Word didn't exist and the early versions stunk.
Over the years I've probably spent more on MS software than you did on your new Toshiba laptop PC.
I also build PC's for a living and know what the requirements for W2K are. Linux runs very nicely on the minimum specified equipment.
Your 486DX2/50 is a reasonable machine, and should be more than adiquate for word processing. However, that isn't the type of computer that people are buying today. Don't you feel like you really need that PIII-450 instead? If so, why?
I know these things because I owned and used the equipment extensively. These were not computers that my Aunt gave me.
Please don't let me interfere with your ignorance...
What about Stacker? Has Bill rebuilt the company he stole DoubleSpace from? (Microsoft lost the lawsuit.)
Are Corel, Lotus and everybody who purchases Micros~1 development tools given access and all the documentation and API's that the developers of MS Office are given?
I'm not interested in talk about "being nice" to ISV's. But seeing real meaningful actions taken by Micros~1 to allow ISV's to grow without purchasing them, crushing them or marketing against them when they become profitable. For some reason the name Netscape comes to mind.
I have seen ads for Win98 that claim that 3000+ bugs were fixed. I can only assume that these were in Win95 which was replaced by Win98. My brothers new computer with Win98 worked so poorly that he removed it and installed Win95. Clearly an improvement...
Why isn't Micros~1 supporting Java, without adding Windows only features? I think there is money to be made selling Java development tools. At least IBM and Sun, Parasoft and many other companies think so. Java is nearly an open standard.
If Micros~1 wasn't interested in using its OS as a tool to leverage applications sales, then perhaps they should market MS Office for Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, Digital Unix, Linux, BSD and BeOS. Or even allowing 2 different internet browsers to peacefully coexist on the same machine. However, I think the browser problem has a lot to do with the poorly thought out registry file. The same registry file the Freecell writes to every time you play it and corruption thereof can cause massive system failure.
I've seen too much Micros~1 marketing hype during 20+ years I've been working with computers to believe somebody who claims to work at Micros~1 that says "We've changed! We are good guys now. Honestly."
If Bill said it himself and included an appology to the companies he stole technology from over the years, then I might start to believe the attitude has changed. At first I would have to assume it was a marketing trick...
It shouldn't be too suprising that there are many professions working for Micros~1. Linux users have to thank Bill and his dilegent programmers for requiring everybody have a 500MHz PIII with 128MB RAM and 10+GB hard drives just to run a word processor. (I remember that WordPerfect 5.X ran fine on an 4MHz 8086 with 640KB RAM.)
I think it wouldn't take a huge change of attitude for Micros~1 to become a benevolent force in computing from its current selfish one.
The key changes would be:
Acknowledging that all ISV that write software that runs on WinXX as partners and should be treated with respect.
Work on improving the quality of their products instead of replacing defective products with newer defective products.
Treat standards with the respect they deserve not things to be destroyed on their march to domination.
The others are left as an exercise for the diligent slashdot reader...
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear power would provide a source of energy for producing hydrogen. Nuclear doesn't require us to burn up oil/coal/natural gas to produce hydrogen. Not using nuclear power to manufacture hydrogen would have us buring fossil fuels at a much faster rate than we currently do. This would have the effect on increasing our dependence on foreign fuel sources.
They only detected neutrons on Monday mornings, after the lab (in the basement) had had the door shut for a couple days. The neutrons were most likely from the the brick walls of the building and accumilated when people weren't going in and out of the lab.
I'm not sure if the current experiments have addressed these issues. They certainly aren't discussed in the popular press.
Does this mean that the more viruses attacking a particular OS is proportional to its popularity? What about the ease of creating a successful virus?
The same goes for most engineering as well. Business management doesn't know how to use people with these skills and won't hire them. Why spend all your time studying for a useless degree?
When companies start hiring people with Science and Engineering degrees, then people will study for this in school.
Isn't asthma caused by a reaction to dust mites? If, so the rise in asthma could be more easily attributed to central heating not pollution.
...but it does provide a clearly articulated dissection of SCO's crack-induced legal arguments.
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase crack legal team.
After seeing how well suing Al Franken worked to sell Franken's new book, Fox is attempting to generate the same attention for its shows.
Haven't many of the recent patches applied to InternetExploiter as? In the past MS has said that a web browser is an essential part of the operation system. Do these count as kernal patches or not?
The last time I check. Standard Oil can't force you to purchase their product. This applies to all corporations. Without customers they are nothing!
The problem is when the State and Corporations collaborate to create monopolies and then force you to purchase their products and services. Auto insurance would be a good example.
To me it appears that XP is shutting down programs and services in the wrong order.
If you are a Qwest local phone customer, you can find other ISP's to provide DSL service to your home or business. Just go to Qwest.com select DSL and as you go through the site you will find other ISP's who provide DSL to your area...
But isn't DDoS servers already patented?
Sony and Philips own the patents for CD's. I don't think Sony will sue themselves, but they might make a CD-ROM drive that will play copy protected CDs on computers.
http://www.ci.richfield.mn.us/officials/Commission s/hra_agendas/0618%20agenda/01hra046.htm
The potential advantages and ease of identity theft will be greatly enhanced... Hack a retiree's ID then have their SS checks deposited in your bank account instead! You don't even have to steal their s-mail to do it! Just a computer and Internet access.
This is where M$ has built their monopoly.
M$ Bob which evolved into the Paperclip...
However, corporations, even multi-national corporations must have customers to exist. Unless a company colludes with the government to be awarded a monopoly, they can be boycotted out of existance. Nobody is forced to purchase their products or services.
The X-Box.
Sorry, it hasn't been launched yet!
About 7 years ago he was living in Vienna Austria.
MS won the countersuit but it was only a token amount.
I did a lot of sysadmin and programming work for Xenix systems. Believe it or not this was a version of Unix that Micros~1 was selling. It ran on Motorola 68000's (a very nice CPU) and later 8086's. IBM hadn't made the PC yet when Radio Shack was selling their 68K/Z80 based MS-Xenix machines.
I purchased my first PC in 1984 with my own money I earned doing custom programming. That wasn't my first computer either, and it was as expensive then as the PII 400's are today. I currently use a PII 350, that I own and paid for, I own and use MS-Word and WordPerfect 8 for Linux and Windows. I recently started using WP 8 and like better than MS-Word. I have owned and used word processors for 1MHz Z80's with 64Kb of RAM and 360Kb floppies. I still own those computers and they cost more than your 486DX-2 50MHz laptop did.
However, my point was that WordPerfect 5.X ran very well on a 4MHz 8086 (or 8088) with DOS 3.0 with 640KB with a 10MB hard drive. I remember secretaries being more productive on those systems than they are today using much the faster equipment using WinXX and MS Word. By the way MS-Word didn't exist and the early versions stunk.
Over the years I've probably spent more on MS software than you did on your new Toshiba laptop PC.
I also build PC's for a living and know what the requirements for W2K are. Linux runs very nicely on the minimum specified equipment.
Your 486DX2/50 is a reasonable machine, and should be more than adiquate for word processing. However, that isn't the type of computer that people are buying today. Don't you feel like you really need that PIII-450 instead? If so, why?
I know these things because I owned and used the equipment extensively. These were not computers that my Aunt gave me.
Please don't let me interfere with your ignorance...
Are Corel, Lotus and everybody who purchases Micros~1 development tools given access and all the documentation and API's that the developers of MS Office are given?
I'm not interested in talk about "being nice" to ISV's. But seeing real meaningful actions taken by Micros~1 to allow ISV's to grow without purchasing them, crushing them or marketing against them when they become profitable. For some reason the name Netscape comes to mind.
I have seen ads for Win98 that claim that 3000+ bugs were fixed. I can only assume that these were in Win95 which was replaced by Win98. My brothers new computer with Win98 worked so poorly that he removed it and installed Win95. Clearly an improvement...
Why isn't Micros~1 supporting Java, without adding Windows only features? I think there is money to be made selling Java development tools. At least IBM and Sun, Parasoft and many other companies think so. Java is nearly an open standard.
If Micros~1 wasn't interested in using its OS as a tool to leverage applications sales, then perhaps they should market MS Office for Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, Digital Unix, Linux, BSD and BeOS.
Or even allowing 2 different internet browsers to peacefully coexist on the same machine. However, I think the browser problem has a lot to do with the poorly thought out registry file. The same registry file the Freecell writes to every time you play it and corruption thereof can cause massive system failure.
I've seen too much Micros~1 marketing hype during 20+ years I've been working with computers to believe somebody who claims to work at Micros~1 that says "We've changed! We are good guys now. Honestly."
If Bill said it himself and included an appology to the companies he stole technology from over the years, then I might start to believe the attitude has changed. At first I would have to assume it was a marketing trick...
I think it wouldn't take a huge change of attitude for Micros~1 to become a benevolent force in computing from its current selfish one.
The key changes would be: