Basically, the Zune was a "me too" product. The Courier, however, had the potential to be unique and cool, but it was too bold for MS, so they missed a chance, and now the Fire is filling one of the gaps left by the iPad. (mine is on order).
Luck favors the bold. If MS doesn't seem to be getting any new luck, it is because their marketing strategy is cowardly and not willing to take risks.
To be fair, CentOs is pushing out all the 6.1 security releases to 6.0 users (like myself), so it isn't quite as bad as you state. Granted, it isn't great, but the systems are still fairly secure.
That said, I would be lying if I didn't admit I have been looking at Scientific Linux, only because I cut my teeth on RH back in the 90s and used to the layout, and Scientific may have a better product when it comes to updates.
To me, nuclear should be part of the mid-term solution, to reduce coal to 10% (we have lots of coal, and will always have some coal plants), reduce natural gas to "on demand systems" only (nothing beats it except hydro), and while we are both developing wind and solar, AND finding more ways to reduce consumption. We are already expected to use less per person over the next decade, as more CFLs and energy efficient appliances and HVAC systems are being purchased. The key is a balanced approach that lets nuclear provide the bulk of the power for the next 50 years or so, while these new technologies are being developed.
Obviously, the other advantage of nuclear is that we have our own fuel and the capacity to produce it, just as we do with coal, some oil and some natural gas. There is no reason why being environmentally smart can't be good for our economy and security as well.
The problem with the article, however, is talking about how dirty electricity is in North Carolina, and citing coal (yes it is, and yes we have them) and nuclear (which is not exactly dirty), but just a couple hours away are major hydro-dams, on High Rock, Tuckertown, Badin (Narrows) and Falls. Most of these were created up to 100 years ago for creating aluminum, which is no longer being manufactured here, so the power goes to the main grid. And hydro is as clean and 'on demand' as you can get. These aren't the only hydro-dams around here even. NC isn't the worst when it comes to pollution from power generation.
Good point, actually, just as they are doing NOW, in order to create more "demand" than "supply", and now doing it with long term bonds, pushing long term rates down.
Yeah, the banks are really loving this...with rates so low, its no wonder the banks won't loan any money, no profit unless the risk is absolute zero, so in the end, the govt IS keeping rates low, but making sure no one can actually borrow any money.
This makes a lot of assumptions. First, if we really had paid off all the debt and had a surplus, Congress would have found plenty of ways to spend the excess cash, in particular, infrastructure. Or they could have rebated back the difference to tax payers. More importantly, once the debt level got low, Congress has shown repeatedly that they are willing to increase spending on everything under the sun, good and stupid alike, so the actual chance of paying off the debt completely and running into problems with no treasury bonds being issued, is highly unlikely.
The govt. can still issue bonds even if they have no debt, to assist the global market, the question being what they do with the cash that is raised.
The problem with the free market is it's driven by money. The problem with government officials is they're driven by money.
The bigger problem with government is that they can just print more money. In the free market, you have to beg, borrow and steal for money. In government, you only have to do that to win an election.
Only reason I went to windows 7 was because Xp won't recognize more than 4Gb or memory.
XP comes in a 64 bit flavor as well, although it never was supported very well by other vendors, which should have supported more RAM, assuming the mother board did (another problem altogether).
The real issue with XP vs 7 isn't 4+ GB of RAM so much as having better support for multiple processors. XP wasn't written for 6 or more CPUs/cores, and while it will run, it was never optimized for it. Originally, vanilla 2K only was "licensed" for two CPUs, not sure about XP before SP1.
Interestingly enough, in 75 years time there may be the reverse problem - population *shrinkage*.
That can be cured with a generous dose of poverty. I am not sure how the economics work out in the long run. Obviously, we can create a world where everyone has enough to eat (we already produce enough food, just not in the right places) but we can't exactly create a world where everyone is rich, at least I don't know you can. So there will always be one or more groups who are less well off, if because of war, civil strife, environment, or just being the least developed in a world of heavy developed. Or put another way, there will always be countries that are producing more offspring than are dying off, and other countries that are dying off faster than they are producing offsprings. Right now, there are just few of the latter.
Good point, for sure, but the real question is, does it require 6 miles, could it be cloned above water (we are talking single cell, and we have done sheep, dogs, etc.). The main thing that makes my ears perk up is the fact that it is such a simple organism, the odds of us being able to figure it out is much higher.
Maybe not, but an interesting organism nonetheless, and at the least, there is something we can likely learn from it. I would bet some company somewhere is asking the same question. When the potential reward is that high, you have to ask the question.
I can't be the only one thinking that an organism that is simple and can absorb heavy metals sounds almost too good to be true. Sounds like something that *could* be easy (in relative terms) to genetically modify for cleaning up toxic areas.
Keep in mind that Abilene has 117k residents of all ages (2010 census). That sounds like a whole lot of connections for my former home town. Plus they are on the NE side of town, not near most of the shopping or traffic, which is on the south side, so incidental traffic can't the be cause. If you discount infants and old timers, you are left with a total possible universe of 60k-80k people that would be in the right ages to even USE the internet, half which likely don't, with 95% of the population never getting close enough to ACU to get a connect, and...well, you can see where this is going.
I can see 470,000 http requests, but 470k actual wifi connects (devices connected for X minutes) seems impossible for that location. If there really was 470k connects, even on an open network, something is very, very wrong. Time for someone to pour through the logs.
You can shoot home movies of your children in the park, which isn't for profit, and is perfectly fine and legal.
He is trying to do something closer to home movies, as he is posting on youtube, not requiring large equipment and space, and not requiring any part of the park to be off limits. If they want to require that he first notify them (so they know to not hunt for any reporting bigfeet) and require a small fee for dealing with it, ($10 range, since entry is only $4), then I wouldn't have an issue, as the fee would be in line with the cost to them, virtually nothing. Anything more is infringing on free speech, since it wouldn't be in proportion to the "disruption" itself.
Does anyone really believe that the final draft would include a total ban, even for vaccines? I didn't think so. Sounds like more hype than fact, and an article for the sake of having an article on the part of the Chicago Tribune.
The thing I noticed was that they called out organic searches only. Does this mean the paid links in search will still have access to the search terms used?
You can easily tell which search term was used by using a different address for each search term. (Google allows you to show only the domain name and not the full URL in ads) We have done this for years to a small extent. If you really want to get technical, you make the link for a search term (example: "soap") to be like "www.mydomain.com/myapp.cgi?soap" and have the cgi log and redirect to either the index page, or individual pages based on the term if you like. Just add each search term in the cgi, and a default if nothing matches. Now you automatically know the search term used, their IP and the fact that Google provided it, assuming you also log referring URLs. Simple Perl even for non-programmers like myself, a couple dozen lines of code, plus a line for each term.
The real work is changing your ads up, which is simple if you have 20 keywords, or a bit more difficult if you are like us and have around 300. I don't know if this includes the ads, but this would satisfy most needs.
Is the glass half empty or half full? Either expression would describe the event I suppose, most of us just choose to use "near, but missed" or "near miss", which is less confusing.
If this comet was so close, so much so that no other observatory on earth was able to see it due to "parallax", how come not one of the 450 or so pieces impacted the earth? (There are no reports of Tunguska sized impacts).
While I agree with your skepticism, considering this was pre-radio era, and that we might have had some impacts on water and just didn't know it. The earth is over 2/3rds water, after all, so odds are always that a meteorite will hit water, not land. There is also the possibility that we were hit with many, many smaller meteorites (smaller than a Hyundai) over mainly water. Or the fact that comets are often made of water ice, so most of what hit the atmosphere either evaporated on the way down or shortly thereafter. If a chunk of water ice had hit the planet anywhere over 100 years ago, odds were certainly in the favor of it hitting either water or uninhabited land.
Yes, we need more evidence, but it does seem worth the time and effort for someone more knowledgeable than you and I to research a bit more. As for the question "Will Earth experience near misses?", the answer is an obvious "yes", since we also get major hits every 130 million years or so, so the idea that this did happen is at least plausible.
How Slashdotters approach all scientific articles:
1. Abounding skepticism.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Being extraordinarily skeptical isn't a bad thing, and is part of the scientific method. It IS a good thing.
Extraordinary claims without skepticism isn't science, it is religion.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, the Zune was a "me too" product. The Courier, however, had the potential to be unique and cool, but it was too bold for MS, so they missed a chance, and now the Fire is filling one of the gaps left by the iPad. (mine is on order).
Luck favors the bold. If MS doesn't seem to be getting any new luck, it is because their marketing strategy is cowardly and not willing to take risks.
Problem with that is so many iDevices are jailbroken these days.....[blah blah blah]
You jailbreak your kid's iPhone?
To be fair, CentOs is pushing out all the 6.1 security releases to 6.0 users (like myself), so it isn't quite as bad as you state. Granted, it isn't great, but the systems are still fairly secure.
That said, I would be lying if I didn't admit I have been looking at Scientific Linux, only because I cut my teeth on RH back in the 90s and used to the layout, and Scientific may have a better product when it comes to updates.
To me, nuclear should be part of the mid-term solution, to reduce coal to 10% (we have lots of coal, and will always have some coal plants), reduce natural gas to "on demand systems" only (nothing beats it except hydro), and while we are both developing wind and solar, AND finding more ways to reduce consumption. We are already expected to use less per person over the next decade, as more CFLs and energy efficient appliances and HVAC systems are being purchased. The key is a balanced approach that lets nuclear provide the bulk of the power for the next 50 years or so, while these new technologies are being developed.
Obviously, the other advantage of nuclear is that we have our own fuel and the capacity to produce it, just as we do with coal, some oil and some natural gas. There is no reason why being environmentally smart can't be good for our economy and security as well.
The problem with the article, however, is talking about how dirty electricity is in North Carolina, and citing coal (yes it is, and yes we have them) and nuclear (which is not exactly dirty), but just a couple hours away are major hydro-dams, on High Rock, Tuckertown, Badin (Narrows) and Falls. Most of these were created up to 100 years ago for creating aluminum, which is no longer being manufactured here, so the power goes to the main grid. And hydro is as clean and 'on demand' as you can get. These aren't the only hydro-dams around here even. NC isn't the worst when it comes to pollution from power generation.
Good point, actually, just as they are doing NOW, in order to create more "demand" than "supply", and now doing it with long term bonds, pushing long term rates down.
Yeah, the banks are really loving this...with rates so low, its no wonder the banks won't loan any money, no profit unless the risk is absolute zero, so in the end, the govt IS keeping rates low, but making sure no one can actually borrow any money.
When they say "fix", does that mean it doesn't send the info, or their sending of info is harder to trace?
This makes a lot of assumptions. First, if we really had paid off all the debt and had a surplus, Congress would have found plenty of ways to spend the excess cash, in particular, infrastructure. Or they could have rebated back the difference to tax payers. More importantly, once the debt level got low, Congress has shown repeatedly that they are willing to increase spending on everything under the sun, good and stupid alike, so the actual chance of paying off the debt completely and running into problems with no treasury bonds being issued, is highly unlikely.
The govt. can still issue bonds even if they have no debt, to assist the global market, the question being what they do with the cash that is raised.
The problem with the free market is it's driven by money.
The problem with government officials is they're driven by money.
The bigger problem with government is that they can just print more money. In the free market, you have to beg, borrow and steal for money. In government, you only have to do that to win an election.
Only reason I went to windows 7 was because Xp won't recognize more than 4Gb or memory.
XP comes in a 64 bit flavor as well, although it never was supported very well by other vendors, which should have supported more RAM, assuming the mother board did (another problem altogether).
The real issue with XP vs 7 isn't 4+ GB of RAM so much as having better support for multiple processors. XP wasn't written for 6 or more CPUs/cores, and while it will run, it was never optimized for it. Originally, vanilla 2K only was "licensed" for two CPUs, not sure about XP before SP1.
Interestingly enough, in 75 years time there may be the reverse problem - population *shrinkage*.
That can be cured with a generous dose of poverty. I am not sure how the economics work out in the long run. Obviously, we can create a world where everyone has enough to eat (we already produce enough food, just not in the right places) but we can't exactly create a world where everyone is rich, at least I don't know you can. So there will always be one or more groups who are less well off, if because of war, civil strife, environment, or just being the least developed in a world of heavy developed. Or put another way, there will always be countries that are producing more offspring than are dying off, and other countries that are dying off faster than they are producing offsprings. Right now, there are just few of the latter.
Good point, for sure, but the real question is, does it require 6 miles, could it be cloned above water (we are talking single cell, and we have done sheep, dogs, etc.). The main thing that makes my ears perk up is the fact that it is such a simple organism, the odds of us being able to figure it out is much higher.
Maybe not, but an interesting organism nonetheless, and at the least, there is something we can likely learn from it. I would bet some company somewhere is asking the same question. When the potential reward is that high, you have to ask the question.
I can't be the only one thinking that an organism that is simple and can absorb heavy metals sounds almost too good to be true. Sounds like something that *could* be easy (in relative terms) to genetically modify for cleaning up toxic areas.
Yes, I know, what could possibly go wrong...
Keep in mind that Abilene has 117k residents of all ages (2010 census). That sounds like a whole lot of connections for my former home town. Plus they are on the NE side of town, not near most of the shopping or traffic, which is on the south side, so incidental traffic can't the be cause. If you discount infants and old timers, you are left with a total possible universe of 60k-80k people that would be in the right ages to even USE the internet, half which likely don't, with 95% of the population never getting close enough to ACU to get a connect, and...well, you can see where this is going.
I can see 470,000 http requests, but 470k actual wifi connects (devices connected for X minutes) seems impossible for that location. If there really was 470k connects, even on an open network, something is very, very wrong. Time for someone to pour through the logs.
Picket lines are allows to exist as long as they don't obstruct. Once they obstruct, they are a violation of law.
You have the right to protest. You don't have the right to infringe upon MY rights when doing so, ie: free access to public roads and such.
Big movies are for profit, a commercial venture.
You can shoot home movies of your children in the park, which isn't for profit, and is perfectly fine and legal.
He is trying to do something closer to home movies, as he is posting on youtube, not requiring large equipment and space, and not requiring any part of the park to be off limits. If they want to require that he first notify them (so they know to not hunt for any reporting bigfeet) and require a small fee for dealing with it, ($10 range, since entry is only $4), then I wouldn't have an issue, as the fee would be in line with the cost to them, virtually nothing. Anything more is infringing on free speech, since it wouldn't be in proportion to the "disruption" itself.
I'm just glad we haven't increased our usage of mercury in every day products that are likely to just get thrown in the trash, like CFLs. Oh wait...
it appears to be harmless at the levels used in vaccines but it also seems to be quite impressively toxic in humans in larger amounts.
Lots of things are fine in small quantities but deadly at large quantities. The most obvious being either salt or water.
Does anyone really believe that the final draft would include a total ban, even for vaccines? I didn't think so. Sounds like more hype than fact, and an article for the sake of having an article on the part of the Chicago Tribune.
Or you are selling a lot of different products with different brand names....
The thing I noticed was that they called out organic searches only. Does this mean the paid links in search will still have access to the search terms used?
You can easily tell which search term was used by using a different address for each search term. (Google allows you to show only the domain name and not the full URL in ads) We have done this for years to a small extent. If you really want to get technical, you make the link for a search term (example: "soap") to be like "www.mydomain.com/myapp.cgi?soap" and have the cgi log and redirect to either the index page, or individual pages based on the term if you like. Just add each search term in the cgi, and a default if nothing matches. Now you automatically know the search term used, their IP and the fact that Google provided it, assuming you also log referring URLs. Simple Perl even for non-programmers like myself, a couple dozen lines of code, plus a line for each term.
The real work is changing your ads up, which is simple if you have 20 keywords, or a bit more difficult if you are like us and have around 300. I don't know if this includes the ads, but this would satisfy most needs.
Is the glass half empty or half full? Either expression would describe the event I suppose, most of us just choose to use "near, but missed" or "near miss", which is less confusing.
If this comet was so close, so much so that no other observatory on earth was able to see it due to "parallax", how come not one of the 450 or so pieces impacted the earth? (There are no reports of Tunguska sized impacts).
While I agree with your skepticism, considering this was pre-radio era, and that we might have had some impacts on water and just didn't know it. The earth is over 2/3rds water, after all, so odds are always that a meteorite will hit water, not land. There is also the possibility that we were hit with many, many smaller meteorites (smaller than a Hyundai) over mainly water. Or the fact that comets are often made of water ice, so most of what hit the atmosphere either evaporated on the way down or shortly thereafter. If a chunk of water ice had hit the planet anywhere over 100 years ago, odds were certainly in the favor of it hitting either water or uninhabited land.
Yes, we need more evidence, but it does seem worth the time and effort for someone more knowledgeable than you and I to research a bit more. As for the question "Will Earth experience near misses?", the answer is an obvious "yes", since we also get major hits every 130 million years or so, so the idea that this did happen is at least plausible.
jiggawatts == gigawatts. It is just an alternate pronunciation, one more quirk of old Doc Brown.
cite
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Being extraordinarily skeptical isn't a bad thing, and is part of the scientific method. It IS a good thing.
Extraordinary claims without skepticism isn't science, it is religion.