Anyone want to explain to me why uTorrent is considered better than Azureus?
On my machine, Azureus uses ~80MB of memory; uTorrent uses about 20MB. That's memory I want to use for other things. Azureus has very slow UI updates. Sometimes I wait for several seconds to get control back after doing something. This is a problem I've never had with uTorrent. Azureus uses about 30-40% of my CPU time when its maxing out my connection. uTorrent less than 10%. Azureus doesn't have a single feature that I want that isn't in uTorrent as well.
Alternatively, you could use a modern Mini-ITX machine or laptop as your only machine. It would consume about the same power as the 486 while being much more powerful as a computer.
I admit it's pretty cool that you can make use of a 486, but it's not the best solution for saving energy.
I don't think your idea would actually improve his energy consumption. I don't have a 486 to test with, but some of my older Pentium systems use only ~40W fully running and loaded. My laptop uses about 80W in this state. I don't have a Mini-ITX system to test with, but suspect that the processor alone would consume than his entire 486 PC.
Remember that 486's were passively cooled. There's a reason they could get away with that.
How about continuing to use the current version of uTorrent? It works well, doesn't seem to have any major bugs, is likely to continue working adequately for the foreseeable future (as BT is a much less fast-changing protocol than some of the other systems, like Gnutella which regularly introduces network-changing new features, and ED2K where many servers will kick you off if you're using a client they deem to be "too old") and has all the features most of us actually want.
If BitTorrent is just a more-decentralized version of Kazaa or Napster, how come I get substantially faster transfer rates with BT than I ever did with either of those applications?
Face it, the reason BT is so popular is because it is incredibly well engineered. The use of torrent files rather than simple searches with small hash sets (necessary in order to allow search results to be transferred effectively) allows small partial blocks to be shared more effectively and robustly than any other P2P file transfer system has ever allowed. Decoupling search from file transfer has allowed different people to concentrate on different aspects of the problem and evolve their systems with no interdependency on network updates. The use of a centralised tracker rather than the currently-in-vogue decentralised alternatives (DHT, network search) to find sources results in substantially better transfer rates, with only a small reliability sacrifice. And with a DHT as a fallback, not even that.
Yes, none of these ideas were originally Cohen's. But as the first to combine them in a single application, I have nothing but respect for his work.
As far as I can tell, you can get a way harsher sentence in my country for being found in posession of a knock off CD or DVD that you purchased thinking it was legit than for going into a store and really stealing the genuine article. Somehow that seems backward to me.
Then you live in a crazy country. In Britain, you could be sued for the price of the CD or DVD. If you didn't settle with the copyright owner before trial, you could also be ordered to pay their legal costs. If enacted, the proposals in this legislation would change it somewhat: the trial would take place in a "fast track" court where any costs award given would be capped at £350.
In order for copyright infringement to be a criminal offence, you must be profitting from it, in the knowledge that that is what you are doing.
I find it intriguing, therefore, that they have completely failed to address other reasonable personal uses mentioned in several of the submissions, such as backing up
Backing up is already covered by the Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations, 1992, which amended the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to include the following text:
Back up copies.
50A.--(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use.
recording broadcasts
Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
70. The making for private and domestic use of a recording of a broadcast or cable programme solely for the purpose of enabling it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time does not infringe any copyright in the broadcast or cable programme or in any work included in it.
Only allowed for the purposes of time-shifting, but that's probably all that should be allowable, I think.
and making compilations.
Yes, it is disappointing that this isn't covered. However, with the advent of MP3 players with programmable playlists, I find it is becoming less relevant. And you can always make your compilation on a different format (e.g. Audio DVD) and be within the letter of the law, as proposed.
Why should the author (and heirs) of copyrighted song benefit for 70 years after his death (and in perpetuity through renewals), while the author (and heirs) of a patent for a fusion reactor containment system only be allowed to profit for a total of 20 years after the filing of the patent???
Because the copyright only prevents other people from directly copying the work of the song, whereas the patent on the fusion reactor containment system prevents anyone producing a similar fusion reactor containment system whether they are copying the original design or merely working with the same laws of physics and principles of engineering that the original designer used to come up with a similar result.
There's a substantially broader range of possibilities in the arena that's covered by copyright than there is in that covered by patents. Inventions are constrained by the limits of physics and engineering process; artistic works are only constrained by human imagination.
Put another way, patents stifle innovation by making it difficult to invent new things. Copyright doesn't. Therefore the balance between promoting development and the public interest has to be put in a different place for each of them, because the public interest is affected differently.
No matter how you cut it, downloading copyrighted music without paying for it is a crime.
No, it isn't. It's a civil offence which gives the copyright holder (or their appointed agents) a cause of action against you in a civil court. I.e., they can sue you for it.
Copyright infringment is only a criminal offence in the UK if it is:
* for the purpose of "sale or hire" * imported, but not for personal use * "in the course of business"
I.e., only if you're intending to profit from it.
My understanding is that in the US, in order to be a criminal matter, copyright infringement must involve more than some threshold value of copies ($10,000 sticks out in my memory, but I may be wrong).
Not intending to dissuade from your argument, but please don't use legal terms when they don't actually apply.
As a US follower of BBC I have to heartily agree. I can't believe the lenient sentences handed down to serious criminals. If you want to kill someone take them to the UK so if you get caught you will at least get off easy.
OK, so what we have here is somebody who punched another man forcefully, in the head, being punished for doing so. 2 and a half years is quite a strong sentence for that crime.
It happens that the man he punched died. But the convicted man didn't intend him to, and couldn't reasonably have expected his actions to have that result, so the more serious crimes of murder and manslaughter were not committed. There was a serious affray, during the course of which one man was accidentally killed. The man who did it was convicted for his part in the affray.
I don't see the problem here -- other than the fact that people are complaining about how lenient the sentence is, as if it were a murder or manslaughter case that had a ridiculously light sentence passed down.
Maybe because it sounds like murder, I'm not quite sure what makes in manslaughter. The court said: You could have left the scene. But you delivered a forceful blow to a man who was no threat to you at all.
I think you're confusing manslaughter with "justifiable homicide", which is where there is no choice but to kill (E.g. to save your own life or somebody else's). That clearly is not the case here.
Its manslaughter if there was no intent to kill, which seems like the case here. From the description in the article of the convicted man's actions, it seems clear that he didn't expect what he did to kill the man, so there's no reason to infer that he intended to do so.
In fact, it's one step further than this -- it's only manslaughter if it is reasonable to assume that the actions you take may cause death. Punching somebody in the head once is so unlikely to kill them that I completely understand why this guy didn't even get manslaughter (which he'd have done about 5 years for, not the 2 and a half he did get), but merely a serious assault charge.
With the current situation in Britain and our Fifty Or So Strikes approach to law enforcement it's more likely to be an ASBO preventing offenders from "committing anymore piracy, please".
Right, because of course the number of criminal prosecutions brought in this country (which doesn't include issuing ASBOs, which are a civil matter) hasn't increased from 1.3 million in 2003-2004 to 1.5 million in 2005-2006, over a timescale during which the number of reported crimes actually fell.
The notion that Britain is getting "soft on crime" is perpetuated by tabloid journalism, but the figures don't hold it up.
Absolute worst case scenario is probably "10 years" becoming 1 year, out in 6 months on good behaviour.
Few crimes have had their maximum sentences reduced in the recent past; in fact, the current government seems bent on increasing maximum sentences wherever possible, e.g. for unlawful sex with a child between 13 and 16, where it has been extended from 2 years to 14, or posession of an offensive weapon (2 years to 4), etc.
Britain has (and has had for a long time now) a very successful system where people imprisoned are usually permitted out of prison for the second half of their sentence, but if they reoffend during it, the second half is automatically added on to their next sentence. What you refer to as "out in 6 months on good behaviour" is actually an extremely good system for deterring reoffending that has shown good results.
Or they could always get out whenever they please if they invoke the Human Rights Act and point out that being imprisoned violates their basic human right to "do whatever the fuck they want".
Funnily enough, that isn't a right enumerated by the Human Rights Act. The rights are:
* The right to life * The right not to be tortured * The rigth not to be enslaved * The right to a fair trial * The right not to be punished without law * The right to respect for private life (e.g. no unwarranted searches, tapping of communications, etc. except where necessary for law and order) * The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion * The right to freedom of speech * The right to freedom of assembly and association * The right to marry * The right to remedy for violation of rights * The right not to be discriminated against in application of rights * The right to hold property * The right not to be executed for a criminal offence
Tell me which of these rights you object to? Unfortunately, I can't discriminate in how I feel the rights should be applied, so I can't suggest that you should live without it, but still...
In other words, nullity is just your "crazy elite math speek" for NaN.
Not quite. NaN * 0 == NaN, but nullity * 0 == 0.
If integrated into a language (and preferably a processor architecture) it would be a useful shortcut for many cases where a divide by zero has to be trapped before it executes and avoided by replacing it with something that will produce a zero at a later stage of the calculation. Other than that, I see little application.
The inventor, BTW, is a computer scientist, not a mathematician.
Because i can be processed using rules that are somewhat similar to the rules you'd use for processing normal numbers. i + i = 2i. The only odd thing is that i * i = -1.
But nullity + nullity = nullity, AFAICT, which render's the entire thing pointless. The only operation that would be defined is nullity * 0 = 0 (as a converse of the definition).
That's not to say the notion's useless, and it's an interesting extension to current arithmetic, but I doubt it has major applications.
However, the study cited in your link uses an expected lifetime of 30 years of operation. I'm certainly not a solar cell expert, but that seems a little optimistic. If I remember correctly the industry people were using 15 years as the expected useful lifetime. If 30 years is realistic then the factor of 4-17 isn't that bad.
15 years has been used as a lifetime in papers intended to make solar cells sound bad. Apparently most panels manufactured even as long ago as 40 years are still functioning almost perfectly, barring physical damage. Useful lifetimes (with production of up to 50% of the power output when the panel was new) have been predicted for as long as 100 years.
All in all, the average output even in the summer will only be 5% of peak (because of night time, and cloudy days). Winter time is even worse.
It sounds like something's wrong. Depending on where in Britain you live, you should be seeing around 100-150 W of raw solar energy per square metre, and your panel should be converting between 15 and 20% of it. Most 80W panels are in the 0.6 to 0.7 square metre range, so you should be seeing an average output over a year of somewhere between 10 and 30W. Not 4W in summer and less in winter.
Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England).
I think that hearsay is bullshit. Here in the UK we get approximately 150W of solar energy per square metre, averaged over an an entire year. Including cloud, winter, haze and night. 80W solar panels are typically around 0.7 square metres and 18% efficient, which means that averaged over the year they should produce nearly a quarter of their rated output.
The problem with solar panels is PRICE. That is the nut that needs to be cracked. If a panel is only 10% efficient, but not much more expensive than a similar sized roofing slate, it suddenly becomes economical to re-roof the house the next time the roof needs attention. However, it's not even near that price. An 80 watt panel currently costs around GBP£250 which is fantastically expensive. There is no way I could even remotely afford solar roofing at those prices, however much I'd like it. The price per peak watt needs to be about a tenth of what it is now.
Some quick top-of-the-head maths:
80 watt peak output probably means an average of about 30 watts over an entire year = 262.8KWh per annum. Figure you lose 25% to storage inefficiency and DC-AC conversion losses, that's 197.1KWh useful power per annum. Current daytime electricity price is approximately 10p/KWh, so that's £19.71 per year that panel could be saving you.
The panel will therefore have paid for itself in less than 13 years. The panel's lifetime is typically around 50 years, so you'll make a net profit on the deal.
Another way of looking at it: £250 invested in a high-interest savings account could be netting you about £10-£15 per annum in interest. So the solar panel is a better investment than a good savings account. And will only improve in performance if electricity prices increase, which looks like a safe bet to me. Plus, I'm informed that panels keep a lot of their original value if you decide to sell it on later.
In recent arguments over the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, both sides have argued over the efficiency of Internet blocking software.
You mean efficacy. I don't think anyone cares how many processor cycles or other resources are consumed by it. The ratio of false to true positives and negatives is much more relevant.
Ok, then please explain why Open Source projects are full of flaws just like commercial products.
There are a multitude of reasons. Some of them:
1. Most open source is written to fulfill the developer's requirements. It may not perform so well for other people's requirements, largely because that's not something the developer has bothered with. 2. Most commercial software is professionally tested. Most open source software is tested by amateurs. 3. Open source software is usually released before its ready in order to attract a wider range of developers. This is often fatal, because the new developers are more concerned about adding nifty new features than fixing the existing flaws. This is what has happened to Firefox, IMO.
Look at Firefox. That is a Quality application, but programmers I've spoken to said the code is a mess.
I'm looking at an application that uses somewhere over five times as much memory to achieve not a lot more than similar applications have done with the same constraints. I'm looking at an application that occasionally freezes after prolonged use. I'm looking at an application which a few weeks ago started refusing to die when I closed its windows, and popping up a message saying that a script wasn't responding after a couple of minute's delay, forcing me to reinstall to remove whatever error had caused the issue.
I'm looking at an application that has 5-year old bugs reported yet still unfixed in its bug tracking database.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone want to explain to me why uTorrent is considered better than Azureus?
On my machine, Azureus uses ~80MB of memory; uTorrent uses about 20MB. That's memory I want to use for other things.
Azureus has very slow UI updates. Sometimes I wait for several seconds to get control back after doing something. This is a problem I've never had with uTorrent.
Azureus uses about 30-40% of my CPU time when its maxing out my connection. uTorrent less than 10%.
Azureus doesn't have a single feature that I want that isn't in uTorrent as well.
The choice is a no-brainer.
Alternatively, you could use a modern Mini-ITX machine or laptop as your only machine. It would consume about the same power as the 486 while being much more powerful as a computer.
I admit it's pretty cool that you can make use of a 486, but it's not the best solution for saving energy.
I don't think your idea would actually improve his energy consumption. I don't have a 486 to test with, but some of my older Pentium systems use only ~40W fully running and loaded. My laptop uses about 80W in this state. I don't have a Mini-ITX system to test with, but suspect that the processor alone would consume than his entire 486 PC.
Remember that 486's were passively cooled. There's a reason they could get away with that.
Oh well, which client does one use next?
How about continuing to use the current version of uTorrent? It works well, doesn't seem to have any major bugs, is likely to continue working adequately for the foreseeable future (as BT is a much less fast-changing protocol than some of the other systems, like Gnutella which regularly introduces network-changing new features, and ED2K where many servers will kick you off if you're using a client they deem to be "too old") and has all the features most of us actually want.
If BitTorrent is just a more-decentralized version of Kazaa or Napster, how come I get substantially faster transfer rates with BT than I ever did with either of those applications?
Face it, the reason BT is so popular is because it is incredibly well engineered. The use of torrent files rather than simple searches with small hash sets (necessary in order to allow search results to be transferred effectively) allows small partial blocks to be shared more effectively and robustly than any other P2P file transfer system has ever allowed. Decoupling search from file transfer has allowed different people to concentrate on different aspects of the problem and evolve their systems with no interdependency on network updates. The use of a centralised tracker rather than the currently-in-vogue decentralised alternatives (DHT, network search) to find sources results in substantially better transfer rates, with only a small reliability sacrifice. And with a DHT as a fallback, not even that.
Yes, none of these ideas were originally Cohen's. But as the first to combine them in a single application, I have nothing but respect for his work.
But a custom version of uTorrent? A 1MB executable that you could throw on a CD that requires zero install?
Just to correct your apparent misapprehension -- uTorrent is substantially smaller than 1MB. The version I have installed is less than 200K.
SO the supposed £270 million lost suddenly disappeared from the British economy?
Well, of course it did. We all know that the proceeds of copyright infringement are used to fund terrorism, don't we?
As far as I can tell, you can get a way harsher sentence in my country for being found in posession of a knock off CD or DVD that you purchased thinking it was legit than for going into a store and really stealing the genuine article. Somehow that seems backward to me.
Then you live in a crazy country. In Britain, you could be sued for the price of the CD or DVD. If you didn't settle with the copyright owner before trial, you could also be ordered to pay their legal costs. If enacted, the proposals in this legislation would change it somewhat: the trial would take place in a "fast track" court where any costs award given would be capped at £350.
In order for copyright infringement to be a criminal offence, you must be profitting from it, in the knowledge that that is what you are doing.
Backing up is already covered by the Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations, 1992, which amended the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to include the following text:
recording broadcasts
Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
Only allowed for the purposes of time-shifting, but that's probably all that should be allowable, I think.
and making compilations.
Yes, it is disappointing that this isn't covered. However, with the advent of MP3 players with programmable playlists, I find it is becoming less relevant. And you can always make your compilation on a different format (e.g. Audio DVD) and be within the letter of the law, as proposed.
Why should the author (and heirs) of copyrighted song benefit for 70 years after his death (and in perpetuity through renewals), while the author (and heirs) of a patent for a fusion reactor containment system only be allowed to profit for a total of 20 years after the filing of the patent???
Because the copyright only prevents other people from directly copying the work of the song, whereas the patent on the fusion reactor containment system prevents anyone producing a similar fusion reactor containment system whether they are copying the original design or merely working with the same laws of physics and principles of engineering that the original designer used to come up with a similar result.
There's a substantially broader range of possibilities in the arena that's covered by copyright than there is in that covered by patents. Inventions are constrained by the limits of physics and engineering process; artistic works are only constrained by human imagination.
Put another way, patents stifle innovation by making it difficult to invent new things. Copyright doesn't. Therefore the balance between promoting development and the public interest has to be put in a different place for each of them, because the public interest is affected differently.
No matter how you cut it, downloading copyrighted music without paying for it is a crime.
No, it isn't. It's a civil offence which gives the copyright holder (or their appointed agents) a cause of action against you in a civil court. I.e., they can sue you for it.
Copyright infringment is only a criminal offence in the UK if it is:
* for the purpose of "sale or hire"
* imported, but not for personal use
* "in the course of business"
I.e., only if you're intending to profit from it.
My understanding is that in the US, in order to be a criminal matter, copyright infringement must involve more than some threshold value of copies ($10,000 sticks out in my memory, but I may be wrong).
Not intending to dissuade from your argument, but please don't use legal terms when they don't actually apply.
As a US follower of BBC I have to heartily agree. I can't believe the lenient sentences handed down to serious criminals. If you want to kill someone take them to the UK so if you get caught you will at least get off easy.
s tm (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6212684.
OK, so what we have here is somebody who punched another man forcefully, in the head, being punished for doing so. 2 and a half years is quite a strong sentence for that crime.
It happens that the man he punched died. But the convicted man didn't intend him to, and couldn't reasonably have expected his actions to have that result, so the more serious crimes of murder and manslaughter were not committed. There was a serious affray, during the course of which one man was accidentally killed. The man who did it was convicted for his part in the affray.
I don't see the problem here -- other than the fact that people are complaining about how lenient the sentence is, as if it were a murder or manslaughter case that had a ridiculously light sentence passed down.
Maybe because it sounds like murder, I'm not quite sure what makes in manslaughter. The court said:
You could have left the scene. But you delivered a forceful blow to a man who was no threat to you at all.
I think you're confusing manslaughter with "justifiable homicide", which is where there is no choice but to kill (E.g. to save your own life or somebody else's). That clearly is not the case here.
Its manslaughter if there was no intent to kill, which seems like the case here. From the description in the article of the convicted man's actions, it seems clear that he didn't expect what he did to kill the man, so there's no reason to infer that he intended to do so.
In fact, it's one step further than this -- it's only manslaughter if it is reasonable to assume that the actions you take may cause death. Punching somebody in the head once is so unlikely to kill them that I completely understand why this guy didn't even get manslaughter (which he'd have done about 5 years for, not the 2 and a half he did get), but merely a serious assault charge.
With the current situation in Britain and our Fifty Or So Strikes approach to law enforcement it's more likely to be an ASBO preventing offenders from "committing anymore piracy, please".
Right, because of course the number of criminal prosecutions brought in this country (which doesn't include issuing ASBOs, which are a civil matter) hasn't increased from 1.3 million in 2003-2004 to 1.5 million in 2005-2006, over a timescale during which the number of reported crimes actually fell.
The notion that Britain is getting "soft on crime" is perpetuated by tabloid journalism, but the figures don't hold it up.
Absolute worst case scenario is probably "10 years" becoming 1 year, out in 6 months on good behaviour.
Few crimes have had their maximum sentences reduced in the recent past; in fact, the current government seems bent on increasing maximum sentences wherever possible, e.g. for unlawful sex with a child between 13 and 16, where it has been extended from 2 years to 14, or posession of an offensive weapon (2 years to 4), etc.
Britain has (and has had for a long time now) a very successful system where people imprisoned are usually permitted out of prison for the second half of their sentence, but if they reoffend during it, the second half is automatically added on to their next sentence. What you refer to as "out in 6 months on good behaviour" is actually an extremely good system for deterring reoffending that has shown good results.
Or they could always get out whenever they please if they invoke the Human Rights Act and point out that being imprisoned violates their basic human right to "do whatever the fuck they want".
Funnily enough, that isn't a right enumerated by the Human Rights Act. The rights are:
* The right to life
* The right not to be tortured
* The rigth not to be enslaved
* The right to a fair trial
* The right not to be punished without law
* The right to respect for private life (e.g. no unwarranted searches, tapping of communications, etc. except where necessary for law and order)
* The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
* The right to freedom of speech
* The right to freedom of assembly and association
* The right to marry
* The right to remedy for violation of rights
* The right not to be discriminated against in application of rights
* The right to hold property
* The right not to be executed for a criminal offence
Tell me which of these rights you object to? Unfortunately, I can't discriminate in how I feel the rights should be applied, so I can't suggest that you should live without it, but still...
If there are no comments, there are also no posters, so the answer is clearly 0/0 = nullity. :)
In other words, nullity is just your "crazy elite math speek" for NaN.
Not quite. NaN * 0 == NaN, but nullity * 0 == 0.
If integrated into a language (and preferably a processor architecture) it would be a useful shortcut for many cases where a divide by zero has to be trapped before it executes and avoided by replacing it with something that will produce a zero at a later stage of the calculation. Other than that, I see little application.
The inventor, BTW, is a computer scientist, not a mathematician.
Because i can be processed using rules that are somewhat similar to the rules you'd use for processing normal numbers. i + i = 2i. The only odd thing is that i * i = -1.
But nullity + nullity = nullity, AFAICT, which render's the entire thing pointless. The only operation that would be defined is nullity * 0 = 0 (as a converse of the definition).
That's not to say the notion's useless, and it's an interesting extension to current arithmetic, but I doubt it has major applications.
You have a point... most of my work goes into writing that kind of library. :)
However, the study cited in your link uses an expected lifetime of 30 years of operation. I'm certainly not a solar cell expert, but that seems a little optimistic. If I remember correctly the industry people were using 15 years as the expected useful lifetime. If 30 years is realistic then the factor of 4-17 isn't that bad.
15 years has been used as a lifetime in papers intended to make solar cells sound bad. Apparently most panels manufactured even as long ago as 40 years are still functioning almost perfectly, barring physical damage. Useful lifetimes (with production of up to 50% of the power output when the panel was new) have been predicted for as long as 100 years.
All in all, the average output even in the summer will only be 5% of peak (because of night time, and cloudy days). Winter time is even worse.
It sounds like something's wrong. Depending on where in Britain you live, you should be seeing around 100-150 W of raw solar energy per square metre, and your panel should be converting between 15 and 20% of it. Most 80W panels are in the 0.6 to 0.7 square metre range, so you should be seeing an average output over a year of somewhere between 10 and 30W. Not 4W in summer and less in winter.
Speak for yourself. It hit 38 degrees where I was this summer. If that ain't aircon weather, I don't know what is.
Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England).
I think that hearsay is bullshit. Here in the UK we get approximately 150W of solar energy per square metre, averaged over an an entire year. Including cloud, winter, haze and night. 80W solar panels are typically around 0.7 square metres and 18% efficient, which means that averaged over the year they should produce nearly a quarter of their rated output.
The problem with solar panels is PRICE. That is the nut that needs to be cracked. If a panel is only 10% efficient, but not much more expensive than a similar sized roofing slate, it suddenly becomes economical to re-roof the house the next time the roof needs attention. However, it's not even near that price. An 80 watt panel currently costs around GBP£250 which is fantastically expensive. There is no way I could even remotely afford solar roofing at those prices, however much I'd like it. The price per peak watt needs to be about a tenth of what it is now.
Some quick top-of-the-head maths:
80 watt peak output probably means an average of about 30 watts over an entire year = 262.8KWh per annum.
Figure you lose 25% to storage inefficiency and DC-AC conversion losses, that's 197.1KWh useful power per annum.
Current daytime electricity price is approximately 10p/KWh, so that's £19.71 per year that panel could be saving you.
The panel will therefore have paid for itself in less than 13 years. The panel's lifetime is typically around 50 years, so you'll make a net profit on the deal.
Another way of looking at it: £250 invested in a high-interest savings account could be netting you about £10-£15 per annum in interest. So the solar panel is a better investment than a good savings account. And will only improve in performance if electricity prices increase, which looks like a safe bet to me. Plus, I'm informed that panels keep a lot of their original value if you decide to sell it on later.
So what's the issue?
In recent arguments over the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, both sides have argued over the efficiency of Internet blocking software.
You mean efficacy. I don't think anyone cares how many processor cycles or other resources are consumed by it. The ratio of false to true positives and negatives is much more relevant.
Ok, then please explain why Open Source projects are full of flaws just like commercial products.
There are a multitude of reasons. Some of them:
1. Most open source is written to fulfill the developer's requirements. It may not perform so well for other people's requirements, largely because that's not something the developer has bothered with.
2. Most commercial software is professionally tested. Most open source software is tested by amateurs.
3. Open source software is usually released before its ready in order to attract a wider range of developers. This is often fatal, because the new developers are more concerned about adding nifty new features than fixing the existing flaws. This is what has happened to Firefox, IMO.
Look at Firefox. That is a Quality application, but programmers I've spoken to said the code is a mess.
I'm looking at an application that uses somewhere over five times as much memory to achieve not a lot more than similar applications have done with the same constraints. I'm looking at an application that occasionally freezes after prolonged use. I'm looking at an application which a few weeks ago started refusing to die when I closed its windows, and popping up a message saying that a script wasn't responding after a couple of minute's delay, forcing me to reinstall to remove whatever error had caused the issue.
I'm looking at an application that has 5-year old bugs reported yet still unfixed in its bug tracking database.
And you call this quality software?