3 or 4 GB of RAM on new systems? Seriously, why would you create a new system without being fully 64 bit and a minimum of 8mb of RAM, preferably in two slots with two more open? Not knocking your logic, just your implementation. History has shown this old man that RAM requirements go up faster than Moore's Law. 4GB of RAM is too low with Win7 aggressive caching, which is one of the very few advantages of it. Even the file servers (Linux) are using 24GB of ram so they can cache everything, and they were installed two years ago. 4GB just isn't enough for anything other than an email/web only laptop.
If you are running Linux, you probably know something about computers, and you probably have a computer related or supported job, hence you are likely not renting to own a laptop for twice the regular price.
and it was virtually free thanks to the government (state and federal).
They pay taxes, right? Sorry, but that is one of those things that grinds on me. When the government gives someone something, it isn't "free", it is paid for by everyone. That leads to waste and items being expensive (if you aren't paying, you don't care about the price...).
Other than that, that is a good thing. Australia is a more sunny place than most of the US, however. Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, for instance, have many more homes with solar power than in New Jersey or Delaware.
That is a good point that I think most European's don't realize: In Europe, the weather is much more constant than the US. We have hail, tornadoes, wild swings in temperature from winter to summer. The Pilgrims had balls moving here, the weather would suck in the US if not for a good roof and central heat and air.
In much of Europe, there is no need for air conditioning. All you have to do is look at Minnesota today, heat index of 117, to realize they wouldn't like it here without A/C.
A black roof doesn't help you heat a house if it is covered with white snow. And even the south, we spend more on heating than cooling (winter is much farther from 75 degrees than summer is). Still, heating is more a function of insulation, which isn't as effective for cooling. Also, the angle of the sun means it is much less effective an warming in the winter.
All Clinton jokes aside, painting a black tar roof white or using a light colored shingle for a home IS a good idea, and I have recommended it for years, because the net gain in the summer is much better than the net loss in the winter.
Granted, you lose the ability to sell your games, but you get a lot in return. Install on many machines, including at work, laptop, desktop, etc. You can only play one at a time, but thats ok, and fair within the idea of buying "a" game.
You can forget about losing the disk, or scratching it. Installing is pretty painless and reasonably quick. They have great sale prices if you shop a bit. You can still play games many years after you buy them (I'm playing games I bought in 99, ie: HL1, TFC, which was even before Steam).
One of the biggest plus is updates. Updating games used to be a fucking nightmare. Going to Planetwhatever.com and putting up with their endlessly stupid registration and begging you to get a paid subscription so you can "download now!", when the game makers should have been making it easier to download fixes to their own games. With Steam, it is automatic and you never have to think about it, they just stay updated. Steam auto defrags games, too. Steam has a GREAT interface to buy games, simple shopping, a few clicks and you are downloading and installing.
So Steam isn't perfect, but it is how I buy most of my games because I never sold them anyway, and Gabe really seems to care about gamers. They balance profitability and usability quite well to make a very good product that helps all game content creators make a profit, while not stomping all over end users. Seriously, it is by far the lesser of all available evils, and the real cost is the loss of selling your games, after you likely paid less for them on Steam than you would have in the store to begin with.
Because the "contents" of the website aren't physical things, and the law covers physical presence only. If you delete your "store", the server weighs the same as it did before. As it is, sales tax laws in most states are about the physical presence only.
When we were in NC, but did significant work in VA, we had to charge VA tax on those visits because we physically went to VA to do the work and charge the customer, in VA. Now we don't do work in VA (unrelated reasons) and don't charge tax for just shipping equipment there. This is per their own tax authority.
If you could be considered physically not in a state by just moving your server, every company would have their servers in the Bahamas, where taxes are ridiculously low, just to avoid taxes even in the home state.
This is the most relevant part. Copyright's intention is to encourage works by providing the author with certain privileges.
You forgot the most important part: Copyright exists to give the creator exclusiverights to profit from the creation in exchange for the public gaining ownership after a fixed period of time. We protect you now, you give it to us later.
The idea that you "own" what you create is an artificial construct, a mutually beneficial social contract, and a point that most corporations don't seem to care about anymore. Disney in particular, wants to buy or create "creative works" and own them forever, yet have society pay to secure that right. That is not a sustainable or justifiable system, and certainly is not what the original intent was.
We are migrating to 64 bit Windows 7 this month, and if you have to stay with MS, now is the time to do it. 32 bit XP support in some apps and games is starting to slip to "also will run". SP1 is out, Vista has been passed over, and 7 is much easier to maintain and runs on what is now the cheapest hardware, AND will run some Win32 apps better than Vista, from my experience. Might as well start now, since they still are not going to add any new features or compatibilities to XP (and haven't in a while), only providing some security fixes that tend to make the systems run even slower.
Supply and demand. Right now, the smaller plants are getting near capacity for producing the compost. My town, Lexington, NC (20k) is currently expanding their capacity to produce more. They will still have the space and capacity to produce more, and they can sell the stuff easily (great for golf courses, btw). What will they do?
They accept for free, the surplus solid waste from Greensboro (250k) or Winston-Salem (175k) both of which are 30 minutes away. Both cities are out of landfill area, no one wants one in their backyard, and it will be cheaper to sell it to the smaller cities in the burbs who have a market for it. It is only a matter of routing the trucks full of waste to here, instead of the landfill. The fuel they expend (minimal distance) will be less than the cost of dumping the waste in the landfill (fees are high).
I didn't mention this, but this is also taking the bags of leaves, chips and clippings that normally get put in the landfill, and putting them to work as well. They were already composting some of it, but now anything that can be composted, is. It is amazing how much landfill space can be saved with both "ingredients" being kept out. Even if the compost isn't used commercially, there is a lot of demand by landscapers, home gardeners, golf courses, etc. and the more people know about it, the higher the demand is going.
In short, capitalism will end up fixing the problem. It isn't always fast, but it does work, and it will in this case because the "product" is better than average and priced lower than average, yet still very profitable. Ironically, it is the lack of landfill space that started the composting, but it was the eventual consumer acceptance that is fueling the growth.
So how many greenhouse gases are released during this "cooking off" period? How many carbon credits did you buy? None, right?
What are you, an idiot? It would be cooking off forever in a landfill. Now it is actually nourishing plants that capture carbon, causing them to grow more (ie: capture MORE carbon), and create edible food that was created with NO pesticides, almost NO herbicides, and causes less pollution overall when compared to commercially grown food.
"Cooking off" simply means to allow to compost even longer, to break down more. (it creates a lot of steam and heat when you compost, hence the expression.) Does it create methane and CO2? A little, but less than if it was in a landfill forever, and lowers the need for landfills to boot. Composting is how nature turns garbage into plants and trees, usually without our assistance. How you can see that as bad for the environment is beyond me, it is a natural process of the environment.
And I'm an American. We don't buy or sell carbon credits, on purpose. They aren't the solution, proper recycling (like this) is. Consuming less is. Sitting on a throne and judging others isn't.
You might be surprised to know that we don't throw away all human waste.
We buy tandom truck loads (~10 cubic yards) of recycled waste from the waste treatment plant for $125 delivered, consisting of composted wood chips, leaves and sterilized human waste sludge. Many municipalities all over the US sell it. Cost varies from $10 to $15 a yard. This is only slightly cheaper than regular compost, at $15 to $20 a yard. We stack it up and let it "cook off" for another year before using in the garden, although it isn't actually required. This is deep, rich black compost that works perfectly to condition soil for lawns or gardens, and is far superior to standard "compost" you buy due to a higher manure content.
I have also seen people buy just the sterilized effluent for spray fertilizing fields for animal feed. Very powerful stuff. Many waste treatment plants are expanding their ability to produce, as it is a profitable venture, which is reflecting in the fact that the price has gone up as demand has, at least here in North Carolina.
So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage. We still aren't doing this with all human waste, but we are well on our way as it is rapidly gaining acceptance. If my little town of 20k people are doing it, then any city can. I would be shocked if 90% of human waste isn't done this way within 10 or so years, as it makes money, grows great plants, and costs less than landfilling the material.
I didn't get the impression that Facebook had done anything proactively, as you appear to have. Granted, not the clearest summary I have ever seen, but by/. standards, this is pretty clear.
Not completely related, but I used to fly to Atlanta. Now I drive. At 5 hours away, it takes less time, less money and less hassle to drive. Pretty much anything under 8 hours, I'm going to drive unless there is some overriding reason otherwise, and I have driven over 8 hours a few times as well. Flying simply sucks now. I went from flying several times a year to once or twice.
I have more sky miles than I will ever use at this point, but why use them if the experience is so bad? I would still rather drive to Atlanta than use sky miles and fly for "free".
I have a better idea: Only screen for explosives, and let passengers carry weapons on the plane. Then we don't need the TSA gropes and terrorists don't stand a chance.
Most of my games are on PC, not console. I don't expect the majority of customers to do anything about it, but I would expect a lot of/.ers to feel the same way I do, and they do. And I'm not worried about piracy claims on a platform I don't own.
Sony isn't the only company I won't buy from. I haven't owned an Apple product in over 10 years either. I don't have much of a choice with MS because of my work, but use Linux on every system I can, including our entire server infrastructure. (btw, thanks MS for making Win7 bork on Samba without a patch...asshats).
I don't *expect* anyone else to follow suit, but if people keep bitching about Sony...well, take the hint. They haven't done anything that has affected me personally in many, many years.....because I won't use their products, even if they were given to me.
"They" predicted that the internet would mean the end of books, yet sales are in record territory. "They" predicted that computers would foster the "paperless office"....yeah, how is that working for you? "They" predicted that the war on drugs would reduce usage and addiction. "They" is about the dumbest son of a bitch I have ever met.
Many, many, MANY people who make less than you and I will continue to carry a wallet for decades to come. In part because many people with less means (and many with more means, btw) do not trust "the system", and like the feel of cold hard cash in their hands.
Seriously, why do people buy Sony products anymore? I quit when the rootkit scandal broke, and all they have done since is prove that I made a good choice. While every corporation exists to make profit, it should be symbiotic, yet Sony has clearly demonstrated they don't care about their customers, only their profits, by their deeds and their words, many times over.
You can actually get by just fine without Sony products, many of us have for many years. We don't need Playstation (plenty of other choices), we skip buying music on their labels, we have none of their hardware, we don't buy blu-ray. It isn't that hard to go Sony-free. The only "vote" you have in the way Sony treats their customers is with your dollars. Vote for someone else.
Arial is radically different than Verdana in the horizontal space it consumes. And since they have shipped both fonts since forever (but not Helvetica), I think you have something confused.
What we need is at least one browser-alternative that aims at creating a bug-free browser instead of a perpetual usability experiment.
Well then....Chrome. Seriously, it is smaller, faster, easier, with upgrades that don't change the experience. I gave up on Firefox once I tried Chrome. Firefox is still ok, but like IE, just too bloated, too many features I don't use.
Yeah, and Oracle's database on top of that. In reality, most companies don't actually NEED to upgrade to Solaris 11 to begin with, so it is kinda moot to begin with. The only real issue to me is the policy itself, Oracle being ham-fisted with their customers and forcing them to upgrade more often. Might be a good time for companies to consider migration away from all Oracle products.
The US system is designed so that it is very accurate, with lots of failsafes and backups to make it accurate. It could simply be that the European systems (one, some or all) never tried to achieve that level of accuracy, so no one ever built many devices that uses the cycles as a method of timing.
I will say that we use European timers (15, 20 and 30 minutes that actually turn on a relay for a UV lighting system) that DO use the current as a timing mechanism, but that is too short of a period of time for the fluctuation to be meaningful. I've seen imported 50hz timers that work perfectly in the USA on 230vac (+/- 10vac) except they run faster. 20 minute timers will time out in around 17 minutes, which is enough of a difference to matter. This is also why many timers are either 50hz or 60hz ONLY, not dual cycle compatible.
But perhaps for clocks that run continuously, some areas in Europe simply never bothered to have the accuracy that US had, and is now getting rid of.
Slashdot Mirror
God® used Hebrew, and King James just translated it.
Assuming you believe all that tripe.
3 or 4 GB of RAM on new systems? Seriously, why would you create a new system without being fully 64 bit and a minimum of 8mb of RAM, preferably in two slots with two more open? Not knocking your logic, just your implementation. History has shown this old man that RAM requirements go up faster than Moore's Law. 4GB of RAM is too low with Win7 aggressive caching, which is one of the very few advantages of it. Even the file servers (Linux) are using 24GB of ram so they can cache everything, and they were installed two years ago. 4GB just isn't enough for anything other than an email/web only laptop.
If you are running Linux, you probably know something about computers, and you probably have a computer related or supported job, hence you are likely not renting to own a laptop for twice the regular price.
and it was virtually free thanks to the government (state and federal).
They pay taxes, right? Sorry, but that is one of those things that grinds on me. When the government gives someone something, it isn't "free", it is paid for by everyone. That leads to waste and items being expensive (if you aren't paying, you don't care about the price...).
Other than that, that is a good thing. Australia is a more sunny place than most of the US, however. Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, for instance, have many more homes with solar power than in New Jersey or Delaware.
That is a good point that I think most European's don't realize: In Europe, the weather is much more constant than the US. We have hail, tornadoes, wild swings in temperature from winter to summer. The Pilgrims had balls moving here, the weather would suck in the US if not for a good roof and central heat and air.
In much of Europe, there is no need for air conditioning. All you have to do is look at Minnesota today, heat index of 117, to realize they wouldn't like it here without A/C.
A black roof doesn't help you heat a house if it is covered with white snow. And even the south, we spend more on heating than cooling (winter is much farther from 75 degrees than summer is). Still, heating is more a function of insulation, which isn't as effective for cooling. Also, the angle of the sun means it is much less effective an warming in the winter.
All Clinton jokes aside, painting a black tar roof white or using a light colored shingle for a home IS a good idea, and I have recommended it for years, because the net gain in the summer is much better than the net loss in the winter.
Granted, you lose the ability to sell your games, but you get a lot in return. Install on many machines, including at work, laptop, desktop, etc. You can only play one at a time, but thats ok, and fair within the idea of buying "a" game.
You can forget about losing the disk, or scratching it. Installing is pretty painless and reasonably quick. They have great sale prices if you shop a bit. You can still play games many years after you buy them (I'm playing games I bought in 99, ie: HL1, TFC, which was even before Steam).
One of the biggest plus is updates. Updating games used to be a fucking nightmare. Going to Planetwhatever.com and putting up with their endlessly stupid registration and begging you to get a paid subscription so you can "download now!", when the game makers should have been making it easier to download fixes to their own games. With Steam, it is automatic and you never have to think about it, they just stay updated. Steam auto defrags games, too. Steam has a GREAT interface to buy games, simple shopping, a few clicks and you are downloading and installing.
So Steam isn't perfect, but it is how I buy most of my games because I never sold them anyway, and Gabe really seems to care about gamers. They balance profitability and usability quite well to make a very good product that helps all game content creators make a profit, while not stomping all over end users. Seriously, it is by far the lesser of all available evils, and the real cost is the loss of selling your games, after you likely paid less for them on Steam than you would have in the store to begin with.
Because the "contents" of the website aren't physical things, and the law covers physical presence only. If you delete your "store", the server weighs the same as it did before. As it is, sales tax laws in most states are about the physical presence only.
When we were in NC, but did significant work in VA, we had to charge VA tax on those visits because we physically went to VA to do the work and charge the customer, in VA. Now we don't do work in VA (unrelated reasons) and don't charge tax for just shipping equipment there. This is per their own tax authority.
If you could be considered physically not in a state by just moving your server, every company would have their servers in the Bahamas, where taxes are ridiculously low, just to avoid taxes even in the home state.
This is the most relevant part. Copyright's intention is to encourage works by providing the author with certain privileges.
You forgot the most important part: Copyright exists to give the creator exclusiverights to profit from the creation in exchange for the public gaining ownership after a fixed period of time. We protect you now, you give it to us later.
The idea that you "own" what you create is an artificial construct, a mutually beneficial social contract, and a point that most corporations don't seem to care about anymore. Disney in particular, wants to buy or create "creative works" and own them forever, yet have society pay to secure that right. That is not a sustainable or justifiable system, and certainly is not what the original intent was.
They make games that play on computers now.
We are migrating to 64 bit Windows 7 this month, and if you have to stay with MS, now is the time to do it. 32 bit XP support in some apps and games is starting to slip to "also will run". SP1 is out, Vista has been passed over, and 7 is much easier to maintain and runs on what is now the cheapest hardware, AND will run some Win32 apps better than Vista, from my experience. Might as well start now, since they still are not going to add any new features or compatibilities to XP (and haven't in a while), only providing some security fixes that tend to make the systems run even slower.
Supply and demand. Right now, the smaller plants are getting near capacity for producing the compost. My town, Lexington, NC (20k) is currently expanding their capacity to produce more. They will still have the space and capacity to produce more, and they can sell the stuff easily (great for golf courses, btw). What will they do?
They accept for free, the surplus solid waste from Greensboro (250k) or Winston-Salem (175k) both of which are 30 minutes away. Both cities are out of landfill area, no one wants one in their backyard, and it will be cheaper to sell it to the smaller cities in the burbs who have a market for it. It is only a matter of routing the trucks full of waste to here, instead of the landfill. The fuel they expend (minimal distance) will be less than the cost of dumping the waste in the landfill (fees are high).
I didn't mention this, but this is also taking the bags of leaves, chips and clippings that normally get put in the landfill, and putting them to work as well. They were already composting some of it, but now anything that can be composted, is. It is amazing how much landfill space can be saved with both "ingredients" being kept out. Even if the compost isn't used commercially, there is a lot of demand by landscapers, home gardeners, golf courses, etc. and the more people know about it, the higher the demand is going.
In short, capitalism will end up fixing the problem. It isn't always fast, but it does work, and it will in this case because the "product" is better than average and priced lower than average, yet still very profitable. Ironically, it is the lack of landfill space that started the composting, but it was the eventual consumer acceptance that is fueling the growth.
So how many greenhouse gases are released during this "cooking off" period? How many carbon credits did you buy? None, right?
What are you, an idiot? It would be cooking off forever in a landfill. Now it is actually nourishing plants that capture carbon, causing them to grow more (ie: capture MORE carbon), and create edible food that was created with NO pesticides, almost NO herbicides, and causes less pollution overall when compared to commercially grown food.
"Cooking off" simply means to allow to compost even longer, to break down more. (it creates a lot of steam and heat when you compost, hence the expression.) Does it create methane and CO2? A little, but less than if it was in a landfill forever, and lowers the need for landfills to boot. Composting is how nature turns garbage into plants and trees, usually without our assistance. How you can see that as bad for the environment is beyond me, it is a natural process of the environment.
And I'm an American. We don't buy or sell carbon credits, on purpose. They aren't the solution, proper recycling (like this) is. Consuming less is. Sitting on a throne and judging others isn't.
You might be surprised to know that we don't throw away all human waste.
We buy tandom truck loads (~10 cubic yards) of recycled waste from the waste treatment plant for $125 delivered, consisting of composted wood chips, leaves and sterilized human waste sludge. Many municipalities all over the US sell it. Cost varies from $10 to $15 a yard. This is only slightly cheaper than regular compost, at $15 to $20 a yard. We stack it up and let it "cook off" for another year before using in the garden, although it isn't actually required. This is deep, rich black compost that works perfectly to condition soil for lawns or gardens, and is far superior to standard "compost" you buy due to a higher manure content.
I have also seen people buy just the sterilized effluent for spray fertilizing fields for animal feed. Very powerful stuff. Many waste treatment plants are expanding their ability to produce, as it is a profitable venture, which is reflecting in the fact that the price has gone up as demand has, at least here in North Carolina.
So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage. We still aren't doing this with all human waste, but we are well on our way as it is rapidly gaining acceptance. If my little town of 20k people are doing it, then any city can. I would be shocked if 90% of human waste isn't done this way within 10 or so years, as it makes money, grows great plants, and costs less than landfilling the material.
I didn't get the impression that Facebook had done anything proactively, as you appear to have. Granted, not the clearest summary I have ever seen, but by /. standards, this is pretty clear.
Not completely related, but I used to fly to Atlanta. Now I drive. At 5 hours away, it takes less time, less money and less hassle to drive. Pretty much anything under 8 hours, I'm going to drive unless there is some overriding reason otherwise, and I have driven over 8 hours a few times as well. Flying simply sucks now. I went from flying several times a year to once or twice.
I have more sky miles than I will ever use at this point, but why use them if the experience is so bad? I would still rather drive to Atlanta than use sky miles and fly for "free".
I have a better idea: Only screen for explosives, and let passengers carry weapons on the plane. Then we don't need the TSA gropes and terrorists don't stand a chance.
Most of my games are on PC, not console. I don't expect the majority of customers to do anything about it, but I would expect a lot of /.ers to feel the same way I do, and they do. And I'm not worried about piracy claims on a platform I don't own.
Sony isn't the only company I won't buy from. I haven't owned an Apple product in over 10 years either. I don't have much of a choice with MS because of my work, but use Linux on every system I can, including our entire server infrastructure. (btw, thanks MS for making Win7 bork on Samba without a patch...asshats).
I don't *expect* anyone else to follow suit, but if people keep bitching about Sony...well, take the hint. They haven't done anything that has affected me personally in many, many years.....because I won't use their products, even if they were given to me.
My first reaction was 'haahahahaha!".
"They" predicted that the internet would mean the end of books, yet sales are in record territory. "They" predicted that computers would foster the "paperless office"....yeah, how is that working for you? "They" predicted that the war on drugs would reduce usage and addiction. "They" is about the dumbest son of a bitch I have ever met.
Many, many, MANY people who make less than you and I will continue to carry a wallet for decades to come. In part because many people with less means (and many with more means, btw) do not trust "the system", and like the feel of cold hard cash in their hands.
Thank god for the TSA. I feel safer already.
Seriously, why do people buy Sony products anymore? I quit when the rootkit scandal broke, and all they have done since is prove that I made a good choice. While every corporation exists to make profit, it should be symbiotic, yet Sony has clearly demonstrated they don't care about their customers, only their profits, by their deeds and their words, many times over.
You can actually get by just fine without Sony products, many of us have for many years. We don't need Playstation (plenty of other choices), we skip buying music on their labels, we have none of their hardware, we don't buy blu-ray. It isn't that hard to go Sony-free. The only "vote" you have in the way Sony treats their customers is with your dollars. Vote for someone else.
Arial is radically different than Verdana in the horizontal space it consumes. And since they have shipped both fonts since forever (but not Helvetica), I think you have something confused.
What we need is at least one browser-alternative that aims at creating a bug-free browser instead of a perpetual usability experiment.
Well then....Chrome. Seriously, it is smaller, faster, easier, with upgrades that don't change the experience. I gave up on Firefox once I tried Chrome. Firefox is still ok, but like IE, just too bloated, too many features I don't use.
Yeah, and Oracle's database on top of that. In reality, most companies don't actually NEED to upgrade to Solaris 11 to begin with, so it is kinda moot to begin with. The only real issue to me is the policy itself, Oracle being ham-fisted with their customers and forcing them to upgrade more often. Might be a good time for companies to consider migration away from all Oracle products.
The US system is designed so that it is very accurate, with lots of failsafes and backups to make it accurate. It could simply be that the European systems (one, some or all) never tried to achieve that level of accuracy, so no one ever built many devices that uses the cycles as a method of timing.
I will say that we use European timers (15, 20 and 30 minutes that actually turn on a relay for a UV lighting system) that DO use the current as a timing mechanism, but that is too short of a period of time for the fluctuation to be meaningful. I've seen imported 50hz timers that work perfectly in the USA on 230vac (+/- 10vac) except they run faster. 20 minute timers will time out in around 17 minutes, which is enough of a difference to matter. This is also why many timers are either 50hz or 60hz ONLY, not dual cycle compatible.
But perhaps for clocks that run continuously, some areas in Europe simply never bothered to have the accuracy that US had, and is now getting rid of.