Disclaimer: I like Apple. This does not mean that I am a Mac Zealot. I am excited about OS X. This does not mean I think it is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
Exactly. Consider the stranglehold Apple puts on MacOS software/hardware makers. Gotta do this, gotta do that, conform to this standard, use that API, blah blah blah. Compare that to the idea of using a Free/Open operating system as a base and you've got a (potential) radical change.
There are lots of things apple does that are less than intelligent. There are also lots of things that Apple does that are not Free (Beer or Speech). They are a corporation, and they exist to make money.
Now, having said that, what developer in their right mind would ever get angry at a company for being too standards oriented?
You want an example of entities that give a little leeway on standards? Look at Microsoft. Look at Netscape. Look at AOL. Look, also, at a great deal of community code. How many nights have you spent fixing some moron's code because he/she decided that his/her way of doing things was "better" than the standards already laid out? How often have you pulled your hair out trying to install Company WhizzBang's product and had it fight with your system because it didn't comply with the standards?
MS and Netscape went lax on standards when developing their web browsers. Because of this, the web is a complete mess of kludges, tricks, feature exploits and highly non-portable code. "The page isn't displaying correctly on my browser" is the single most annoying thing a web developer can hear. "It's gotta work with the AOL browser" is a close second.
Apple is hard-assed about standards. Yes, this makes it harder initially for developers, since they need to code more carefully than they would otherwise. It keeps one from being able to build your own machine out of UncleBob's 3133tSpeed components, since UncleBob's doesn't have the time or resources to design and test their components in accordance with Apple standards.
But Apple does what every geek wants to see in a computer system, whether or not you like it. They enforce standards.
There is plenty one can attack Apple for. Their current OS is laughable, their track record is spotty, and yes, their computers look all wussy froo-froo. But in the name of all things geek, don't attack Apple for insisting on standards compliance. That's something they're doing right.
I'm still hopeful about Apple. OS X, in spite of it's faults, still looks like it'll be a good OS--certainly a force to recon with in the desktop and portable computing arenas. It has good infrastructure, good UI, and a truly impressive learning curve. This is the first OS I've seen that has managed to do all of this, and it's not even to it's first full release version yet! (Despite it's being OS "ten", it's pretty much a 1.0 release. Ever seen a 1.0 OS quite like OS X?) I have good, if guarded, hopes for it, and am quite excited to see what happens once it goes final...
I can understand their standpoint. Parsec was developed by a closed team, and they raise some valid points about controlling the artistic aspects of the game. They also raise the point that there are a number of perfectly good open-source counterparts in existance today (namely CrystalSpace and WorldForge.) They also say that they'll probably end up opening at least some of the source, and that they haven't really decided on which license they want to use yet. So yes, today it's not OS; tomorrow, maybe. Sometimes, greater things can come out of a small, close-knit and closed development team than can come of the community at large.
If Free Speech and Free Beer are requisite criteria in your book (they're not in mine, but I wholeheartedly consider them vaild criteria) then Parsec doesn't measure up. It's a free program released by a private group of developers who want to keep their code their own. There do exist the Free BeerSpeech counterparts; support and contribute to them.
Bah. Don't trust the word of a man of whom God has surely passed judgement upon.
Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that the Christian God passed judgement on everybody--otherwise, how do you determine who gets into Heaven, The Ultimate Playground? Mind you, I learned all this from a pretty dated source, so there could be an updated version that I haven't read yet or something. Of course, if you want to go pointing fingers at organizations bent on shackling freedoms...
But to your point. I'll assume that you're a fairly religious type of person, and you firmly believe that you'll be getting into heaven in due time. Why, then, does it matter one bit to you what us hopelessly lost souls do with our earthly time and money? You're gonna get into HEAVEN, man! Who cares if we drop a few bucks on rocket ships? What does it matter how earthly governments run their affairs? You're still gonna win out over us all!
(I know, I know, I shouldn't have...but look at the poor thing--he looks so hungry!)
The Democrats are trying to 'poison pill' the bill by giving limited rights to Hispanics who have been in the country for decades.
Quoth the Washington Post Article:
But Republican leaders blocked a Democratic move to include provisions aimed at easing restrictions on Hispanic immigration, and Democrats responded by demanding that the provisions be included in a major spending bill.
...
The Democratic-drafted Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act would expand amnesty for immigrants who live illegally in this country to cover those who have been here since 1986, including many who were excluded from an earlier amnesty law because of bureaucratic delays. It would also make it easier for some immigrants, including Central Americans and Haitians, to obtain permanent residency and allow holders of expired visas to apply for legal residency without returning to their countries of origin.
Call me daft, but the Slashdot blurb seems to have gotten the politics of this backwards. Completely backwards. I'd renew my plea for editorial responsibility, but something tells me it would fall on deaf ears...
I have avoided a flame such as this for as long as I reasonably can, because I'm well aware that you are all human beings, that geeks are stereotypically bad in the grammar department, and it's generally not that big of a deal anyhow. However, the headline:
XFree86 And Apache Or Mac OS X Beta
is so wildly different in meaning than the proper headline of:
XFree86 And Apache On Mac OS X Beta
that it merits a bit of a slap on the back of the wrist.
You, the/. Editors, run a much appreciated and much used online web service, and I am extremely glad that/. exists. I do not deny that you all have a whole lot of stuff that you need to tackle, and I do not think for one second that you are anything less than intelligent, inspired and driven individuals. However, the fact that single paragraph, front page articles regularly have the most basic of typographical and grammatical errors is cause for some embarassment, IMHO. Slashdot is recognized as one of, if not the premiere online geek news source. It's readership has grown to the point that only the strongest of web clusters can survive a fully-blown Slashdot Effect. Major international news sources (AP, Reuters) have begun referencing quotes and threads from Slashdot. Slashdot is now in the Big League(tm). Please, please put in that extra three miunutes of reading, re-reading and re-re-reading front page stories for typographical errors. Think of them as bugs in your code, and each front page post as a final version release.
I know that you're proud of Slashdot, and you should be. It's an amazing website. But please, take the next step and start making the content delivery a bit more professional. It's easy to do, and it'll help make Slashdot a better news source.
Trolls: If you must, go ahead and attack this post for typos and grammatical errors. I'm still in the process of learning this danged AZERTY keyboard, and there is in fact a difference between an editor-approved front page article and a comment in the attached thread.
This package was in violation of Title 39, Sec. 3009 of the United States Code and constitutes an unfair method of competition and an unfair trade practice in violation of section 45(a)(1) of title 15, as it was not a conspicuously marked free sample nor did it have "attached to it a clear and conspicuous statement informing the recipient that he may treat the merchandise as a gift to him and has the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender."
Wow.
I mean really, Wow.
All I can say is that if I were Digital Convergence, I'd be shaking in my boots. This guy really has 'em by the short hairs, I tell you what.
</sarcasm>
But really, folks. Anybody remember all the clever little form threats you could send off to spammers, the FBI, CIA, and your grandmother about how spam was illegal by some particular subsection of this particular code that stated that you can't spam a fax machine, so send me my $500 now or I'll sue you?
Yeah. This is exactly that. Only for CueCats that you didn't order.
This isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters. This is harebrained legal manuvering for the sake of being a pain in the ass. Funny how this level of legal nit-picking on the part of some big, mean corporation usually brings forth nasty boos and hisses from the/. Collective...
To quote directly from Privacilla's "How Privacilla Works" page:
The text of any page on this site (and the page source too, if you want it) is subject to a public license called the Privacilla Public License. Anyone may take material from this website and use it, modified or verbatim, with the single caveat that any material based on this work also must be subject to the Privacilla Public License. Anyone may post material from this site on their own sites, link to this site, copy the content into letters or e-mails, or direct policymakers to view this site.
The Privacilla Public License contains terms that differ from the Mozilla Public License and the Netscape Public License. Please use caution when taking material from the Privacilla site. It opens pages from other websites within its frames. These pages are not subject to the Privacilla Public License.
This seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. If something is included within the frames of the Privacilla website, especially if it has been linked by the Privacilla maintainers themselves, it should be in accordance with the Privacilla Public License. It shouldn't be left up to the user whether or not material linked within a site's frames is actually from that site, and thus subject to the PPL.
Of course, I may have mis-interpreted what the above paragraphs meant. I've had trouble muddling through licenses in the past...
This is the only significant feature I've found lacking in Mozilla.
...now all Mozilla needs is an actual full version release, and I'll be all over it.
As important a project as the Mozilla Project is, I honestly don't think that the press it's been getting in recent months has been helping the cause that much. Even though I know that it's a solid design and that when it does eventually come out, it'll be damn powerful, it's looking more and more like it's starting to catch the Daikatana Syndrome.
Remember way, way back when you first heard of Daikatana? Romero (and the community) was pimping that game well ahead of it's ready date. At first, there was general excitement; I even remember a friend telling me that "It'll demolish Quake 2!" (To Romero's credit, Daikatana does indeed put Quake 2 to shame.) Of course, after the initial wave of interest, people quickly began to see that Daikatana was not only a ways from going gold, it had pretty substantial work left to be done. When the game finally did come out, it was already the big in-joke; the fact that there were still some nasty bugs and that the gameplay was only average only served to heighten the humiliation. Romero's "Quake 2 killer" had the distinct dishonor of poking an already pulverized corpse with a pointy stick.
Now, I know that Mozilla isn't on a corporate schedule, and I know that getting it done right is more important than getting it out the door fast. But honestly, How will it reflect on the Open Source Movement as a whole if, by the time the first full version of Mozilla is released, it ends up being the version 4 browser killer in a world of version 7 browsers? What happens if, heaven forfend, Mozilla turns out to be inferior to the commercially available browsers of the day?
On that note, I think that a little less front-page coverage would be a good thing for Mozilla, even here on Slashdot. Expectations are running perhaps a bit too high for a product that still has a fair way to go before release; even some of us geeks are starting to feel the least bit worried that the trumpets have been blaring a bit too loudly for a bit too long now...
BNL is using a hot, high-volume, free and open forum to distribute promotional ads for their music.
Napster has no rule against what you can and can't distribute as an MP3; after all, it's just an indexing service, right?
What, then, warrants the "I've got no problem with this" qualifier? What problem is there in the first place? What aspect of BNL's actions even begins to enter the realm of problematic, or even unethical, for that matter?
BNL isn't battling Napster; they're actually using it to their advantage. It's free advertising to a decidedly interested market, and they have every right to take advantage of it as such.
Let me start by saying for three months out of the year I carry cylinders of propane on my back into a boat, across three miles of water, back on my back and up to the generator shed. I put about two hours of labor into each 80lb cylinder of propane. I care about efficiency.
In the name of efficiency, get yourself a nice heavy-duty hand cart and save your back the trouble!
I wonder how the cost stacks up? (Figure a $6000 generator set and $5000 for the battery system.)
The HomeGen survey asks how much I make, but doesn't hint at how much their unit costs. Thats probably a bad sign.
I agree that it's rarely a good thing when prices aren't advertised. Still, they wouldn't be going to the home market with this if they didn't think they'd be able to make at least reasonably good sales. I'd venture a guess that they're more expensive than the conventional alternatives, but not prohibitively so.
These fuel cell units are 38% efficient at 2kw and 27% efficient at 7kw. Internal combustion generator units of similar size run from 10% to 30%. Thats not much of a gain from a high end internal combustion generator. Its probably about even with a top notch generator on a battery bank.
Yes, you'll only reap modest efficiency gains over a top-of-the-line conventional generator, but there are other factors at play, most notably that of pollution. A fuel cell generator will produce next to zero emissions (pure hydrogen fuel cells generate only water as their by-product; hydrocarbon fuel converters, though they do generate some waste, are far better than a combustion engine about it). A battery bank requires the use (and eventual disposal) of some pretty nasty acids. Combustion generators generate a number of air born pollutants; the cleanest-burning combustion engine can't even start to hold a candle to fuel cells in this regard.
Cogeneration is interesting, I burn as much propane in the on-demand water heater as I do in
the electrical plant, so the numbers work out about right. Unfortunately, most people probably have a peak hot water demand in the morning after their evening electrical use has had plenty of time to cool off so you might have to restructure your schedule in order to reap a benefit.
I get the feeling that the "cogeneration" is more bug than feature--that is, due to space constraints, they couldn't manage to fully capitalize on the heat generated by the fuel cell for producing electricity; thus, they decided to list the overflow heat as an added bonus. Of course, it could turn out that it works pretty well overall, in which case, heck, what a bug for a product to have!
If I were you, though, I'd probably let these first few generations go by before investing in one. The technology is still untested at the consumer level (despite enjoying increasing application in the industrial and governmental sectors) and may not be terribly well suited for as remote a location as you've described. What's more, many fuel cells get far better than the mid 30% efficiency these suckers get; hold out for one in the 40% range. Do keep your eye on them, though, as in another three or four years, they could be saving you a substantial amount of transporting and lifting propane tanks!
Judging by the 300-foot long line for the OS X demo computers at the expo, something tells me that Apple will have no problem selling it's beta software. Apple is a corporation. Corporations exist to make money. If a corporation can potentially make money off a product, _even a buggy one_, they will. If this really, really yanks yer chain, then don't buy it. Better yet, contribute your time to one of several bazillion free, open-source programming efforts, and release something better than OS X for free.
If, for some reason, that doesn't work for you, don't piss and moan about how a commercial entity chooses to distribute their beta software. They're not cramming OS X down your throat, just like the MPAA doesn't force you to buy DVD's.
I really enjoyed the keynote address--at least, the 30 MINUTES I got to catch on the display screen at the expo hall. Thanks to the badly-botched registration process, a large throng of pre-registered attendees were denied access to the keynote address because the ampitheater was full. Several buses took us fairly irate attendees from the keynote hall to the expo hall ( a 15-20 minute ride), had us stand through another 25 minutes of registration lines, then let us in in time to catch the last half hour of the presentation. Really upsetting, seeing as I'd really been looking forward to seeing Jobs in person.
Despite this, though, the expo is pretty nice. Even the discarded attendees started perking up at the OS X demo; though I'd seen most of the features he showed us in other operating systems, this was the first time I I've seen them all together in the same OS. I'm really looking forward to seeing where OS X goes...
As somebody who has just gone through the immigration process in "the other direction"--I've just moved from the U.S. to begin working for our branch office in France--I have a bit of a bone to pick with the entire concept the "problem" of high immigration.
I work in an office that really needs my skills. However, because of a monumental array of "protective" immigration measures, it took me several months to secure the required papers, medical exams, and official approvals to even be able to work here; since she didn't already have a job with a French company, my wife isn't even allowed to do _any_ work by law (figure that Catch-22 out...) We are both well-educated and extremely capable individuals in our respective fields (I'm a computer scientist, she's a biochemist.) Yet, in the name of preserving jobs for French citizens, we're forced to either not work at all or constantly jump through administrative hoops until blue in the face. (My papers need to be renewed in one year, a process I do not look forward to.) Being an immigrant is a hard, often unrewarding process, and it takes some real guts to even think about it in the first place, much less do it.
I understand perfectly the logic behind such strict requirements for employment as a foreigner, and realize that we (Americans) use the exact same way of thinking. If a spot can be filled by a full citizen of a nation, then that citizen should have precedence to said job, right? The problem lies in the fact that the citizen isn't always the most qualified for the position; indeed, truly skilled and driven workers rarely complain about immigrants in the workplace (if anything, they thrive on the diversity it introduces.) It's the mediocre, the uninspired, the clock-puncher who worries about losing his or her job to somebody who actually wants to _work_. On that note, if there's anything they can tag to that potential replacement to discourage their hire, they'll do it. Immigrant. Woman. Kid. Dinosaur. Hispanic. This is FUD at it's purest, most base form. When faced with somebody who the weak worker _knows_ will be a better employee than themselves, the immediate reaction of that person is to find some way of discrediting or disqualifying that person. This results in bad hiring practices, discrimination, reduced productivity, and a less dynamic and exciting workplace overall.
Intelligent, capable individuals don't complain about immigrants and immigration. They understand that with immigrants come new ways of thinking, new talents and abilities, new cultural experiences, and the unique opportunity to learn a great deal about a place that they will very likely never visit in person. Weak, selfish people see immigrants as a threat to their cushy, do-nothing jobs, and as such, want nothing to do with them. It's as simple as that.
I'm only experiencing the smallest sliver of the discrimination that most immigrants go through, but it's already increased my respect for other immigrants tenfold. People who are strong enough to leave their native country, whether voluntarily or even more so as refugees, deserve a far higher degree of respect than they receive.
An American AC In Paris
Re:Pshaw! This one's easy!
on
Author Unknown
·
· Score: 2
The difficulty with this approximation of masking of somebody identity is that you lose the ability, an efficient, to form considerable argument. Words are weapons, only if the author knows to take off its or work to a razor-sharp edge; a text by the fish run to let is the rough equivalent of the weapon against rock several times violently to strike.
The difficulty with this approach of masking
one's identity is that you lose the ability to make a powerful, respectable argument. Words are weapons only when the author is able to hone his or her work to a razor-sharp edge; running a text through The Fish is the rough equivalent of bashing the weapon against a rock several times.
The first example was reverse-translated through Babelfish using English --> German --> English. The second is the original.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
"...our hopes for computer omnipotence are shattered. We now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers, even with unlimited access to resources like time and memory space."
Huh. That really flies in the face of what we thought about the power of computers back...when? Circa Fritz Lang's Metropolis?
Perhaps the above should read:
"My hopes for computer omnipotence are shattered. I now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers, now that I've read through decades' worth of essays written by some of the greatest computer scientists ever to live."
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Consider the stranglehold Apple puts on MacOS software/hardware makers. Gotta do this, gotta do that, conform to this standard, use that API, blah blah blah. Compare that to the idea of using a Free/Open operating system as a base and you've got a (potential) radical change.
There are lots of things apple does that are less than intelligent. There are also lots of things that Apple does that are not Free (Beer or Speech). They are a corporation, and they exist to make money.
Now, having said that, what developer in their right mind would ever get angry at a company for being too standards oriented?
You want an example of entities that give a little leeway on standards? Look at Microsoft. Look at Netscape. Look at AOL. Look, also, at a great deal of community code. How many nights have you spent fixing some moron's code because he/she decided that his/her way of doing things was "better" than the standards already laid out? How often have you pulled your hair out trying to install Company WhizzBang's product and had it fight with your system because it didn't comply with the standards?
MS and Netscape went lax on standards when developing their web browsers. Because of this, the web is a complete mess of kludges, tricks, feature exploits and highly non-portable code. "The page isn't displaying correctly on my browser" is the single most annoying thing a web developer can hear. "It's gotta work with the AOL browser" is a close second.
Apple is hard-assed about standards. Yes, this makes it harder initially for developers, since they need to code more carefully than they would otherwise. It keeps one from being able to build your own machine out of UncleBob's 3133tSpeed components, since UncleBob's doesn't have the time or resources to design and test their components in accordance with Apple standards.
But Apple does what every geek wants to see in a computer system, whether or not you like it. They enforce standards.
There is plenty one can attack Apple for. Their current OS is laughable, their track record is spotty, and yes, their computers look all wussy froo-froo. But in the name of all things geek, don't attack Apple for insisting on standards compliance. That's something they're doing right.
I'm still hopeful about Apple. OS X, in spite of it's faults, still looks like it'll be a good OS--certainly a force to recon with in the desktop and portable computing arenas. It has good infrastructure, good UI, and a truly impressive learning curve. This is the first OS I've seen that has managed to do all of this, and it's not even to it's first full release version yet! (Despite it's being OS "ten", it's pretty much a 1.0 release. Ever seen a 1.0 OS quite like OS X?) I have good, if guarded, hopes for it, and am quite excited to see what happens once it goes final...
If Free Speech and Free Beer are requisite criteria in your book (they're not in mine, but I wholeheartedly consider them vaild criteria) then Parsec doesn't measure up. It's a free program released by a private group of developers who want to keep their code their own. There do exist the Free BeerSpeech counterparts; support and contribute to them.
Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that the Christian God passed judgement on everybody--otherwise, how do you determine who gets into Heaven, The Ultimate Playground? Mind you, I learned all this from a pretty dated source, so there could be an updated version that I haven't read yet or something. Of course, if you want to go pointing fingers at organizations bent on shackling freedoms...
But to your point. I'll assume that you're a fairly religious type of person, and you firmly believe that you'll be getting into heaven in due time. Why, then, does it matter one bit to you what us hopelessly lost souls do with our earthly time and money? You're gonna get into HEAVEN, man! Who cares if we drop a few bucks on rocket ships? What does it matter how earthly governments run their affairs? You're still gonna win out over us all!
(I know, I know, I shouldn't have...but look at the poor thing--he looks so hungry!)
The Democrats are trying to 'poison pill' the bill by giving limited rights to Hispanics who have been in the country for decades.
Quoth the Washington Post Article:
But Republican leaders blocked a Democratic move to include provisions aimed at easing restrictions on Hispanic immigration, and Democrats responded by demanding that the provisions be included in a major spending bill.
...
The Democratic-drafted Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act would expand amnesty for immigrants who live illegally in this country to cover those who have been here since 1986, including many who were excluded from an earlier amnesty law because of bureaucratic delays. It would also make it easier for some immigrants, including Central Americans and Haitians, to obtain permanent residency and allow holders of expired visas to apply for legal residency without returning to their countries of origin.
Call me daft, but the Slashdot blurb seems to have gotten the politics of this backwards. Completely backwards. I'd renew my plea for editorial responsibility, but something tells me it would fall on deaf ears...
I have avoided a flame such as this for as long as I reasonably can, because I'm well aware that you are all human beings, that geeks are stereotypically bad in the grammar department, and it's generally not that big of a deal anyhow. However, the headline:
XFree86 And Apache Or Mac OS X Beta
is so wildly different in meaning than the proper headline of:
XFree86 And Apache On Mac OS X Beta
that it merits a bit of a slap on the back of the wrist.
You, the /. Editors, run a much appreciated and much used online web service, and I am extremely glad that /. exists. I do not deny that you all have a whole lot of stuff that you need to tackle, and I do not think for one second that you are anything less than intelligent, inspired and driven individuals. However, the fact that single paragraph, front page articles regularly have the most basic of typographical and grammatical errors is cause for some embarassment, IMHO. Slashdot is recognized as one of, if not the premiere online geek news source. It's readership has grown to the point that only the strongest of web clusters can survive a fully-blown Slashdot Effect. Major international news sources (AP, Reuters) have begun referencing quotes and threads from Slashdot. Slashdot is now in the Big League(tm). Please, please put in that extra three miunutes of reading, re-reading and re-re-reading front page stories for typographical errors. Think of them as bugs in your code, and each front page post as a final version release.
I know that you're proud of Slashdot, and you should be. It's an amazing website. But please, take the next step and start making the content delivery a bit more professional. It's easy to do, and it'll help make Slashdot a better news source.
Trolls: If you must, go ahead and attack this post for typos and grammatical errors. I'm still in the process of learning this danged AZERTY keyboard, and there is in fact a difference between an editor-approved front page article and a comment in the attached thread.
Wow.
I mean really, Wow.
All I can say is that if I were Digital Convergence, I'd be shaking in my boots. This guy really has 'em by the short hairs, I tell you what.
</sarcasm>
But really, folks. Anybody remember all the clever little form threats you could send off to spammers, the FBI, CIA, and your grandmother about how spam was illegal by some particular subsection of this particular code that stated that you can't spam a fax machine, so send me my $500 now or I'll sue you?
Yeah. This is exactly that. Only for CueCats that you didn't order.
This isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters. This is harebrained legal manuvering for the sake of being a pain in the ass. Funny how this level of legal nit-picking on the part of some big, mean corporation usually brings forth nasty boos and hisses from the /. Collective...
The text of any page on this site (and the page source too, if you want it) is subject to a public license called the Privacilla Public License. Anyone may take material from this website and use it, modified or verbatim, with the single caveat that any material based on this work also must be subject to the Privacilla Public License. Anyone may post material from this site on their own sites, link to this site, copy the content into letters or e-mails, or direct policymakers to view this site.
The Privacilla Public License contains terms that differ from the Mozilla Public License and the Netscape Public License. Please use caution when taking material from the Privacilla site. It opens pages from other websites within its frames. These pages are not subject to the Privacilla Public License.
This seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. If something is included within the frames of the Privacilla website, especially if it has been linked by the Privacilla maintainers themselves, it should be in accordance with the Privacilla Public License. It shouldn't be left up to the user whether or not material linked within a site's frames is actually from that site, and thus subject to the PPL.
Of course, I may have mis-interpreted what the above paragraphs meant. I've had trouble muddling through licenses in the past...
As important a project as the Mozilla Project is, I honestly don't think that the press it's been getting in recent months has been helping the cause that much. Even though I know that it's a solid design and that when it does eventually come out, it'll be damn powerful, it's looking more and more like it's starting to catch the Daikatana Syndrome.
Remember way, way back when you first heard of Daikatana? Romero (and the community) was pimping that game well ahead of it's ready date. At first, there was general excitement; I even remember a friend telling me that "It'll demolish Quake 2!" (To Romero's credit, Daikatana does indeed put Quake 2 to shame.) Of course, after the initial wave of interest, people quickly began to see that Daikatana was not only a ways from going gold, it had pretty substantial work left to be done. When the game finally did come out, it was already the big in-joke; the fact that there were still some nasty bugs and that the gameplay was only average only served to heighten the humiliation. Romero's "Quake 2 killer" had the distinct dishonor of poking an already pulverized corpse with a pointy stick.
Now, I know that Mozilla isn't on a corporate schedule, and I know that getting it done right is more important than getting it out the door fast. But honestly, How will it reflect on the Open Source Movement as a whole if, by the time the first full version of Mozilla is released, it ends up being the version 4 browser killer in a world of version 7 browsers? What happens if, heaven forfend, Mozilla turns out to be inferior to the commercially available browsers of the day?
On that note, I think that a little less front-page coverage would be a good thing for Mozilla, even here on Slashdot. Expectations are running perhaps a bit too high for a product that still has a fair way to go before release; even some of us geeks are starting to feel the least bit worried that the trumpets have been blaring a bit too loudly for a bit too long now...
Napster has no rule against what you can and can't distribute as an MP3; after all, it's just an indexing service, right?
What, then, warrants the "I've got no problem with this" qualifier? What problem is there in the first place? What aspect of BNL's actions even begins to enter the realm of problematic, or even unethical, for that matter?
BNL isn't battling Napster; they're actually using it to their advantage. It's free advertising to a decidedly interested market, and they have every right to take advantage of it as such.
In the name of efficiency, get yourself a nice heavy-duty hand cart and save your back the trouble!
I wonder how the cost stacks up? (Figure a $6000 generator set and $5000 for the battery system.) The HomeGen survey asks how much I make, but doesn't hint at how much their unit costs. Thats probably a bad sign.
I agree that it's rarely a good thing when prices aren't advertised. Still, they wouldn't be going to the home market with this if they didn't think they'd be able to make at least reasonably good sales. I'd venture a guess that they're more expensive than the conventional alternatives, but not prohibitively so.
These fuel cell units are 38% efficient at 2kw and 27% efficient at 7kw. Internal combustion generator units of similar size run from 10% to 30%. Thats not much of a gain from a high end internal combustion generator. Its probably about even with a top notch generator on a battery bank.
Yes, you'll only reap modest efficiency gains over a top-of-the-line conventional generator, but there are other factors at play, most notably that of pollution. A fuel cell generator will produce next to zero emissions (pure hydrogen fuel cells generate only water as their by-product; hydrocarbon fuel converters, though they do generate some waste, are far better than a combustion engine about it). A battery bank requires the use (and eventual disposal) of some pretty nasty acids. Combustion generators generate a number of air born pollutants; the cleanest-burning combustion engine can't even start to hold a candle to fuel cells in this regard.
Cogeneration is interesting, I burn as much propane in the on-demand water heater as I do in the electrical plant, so the numbers work out about right. Unfortunately, most people probably have a peak hot water demand in the morning after their evening electrical use has had plenty of time to cool off so you might have to restructure your schedule in order to reap a benefit.
I get the feeling that the "cogeneration" is more bug than feature--that is, due to space constraints, they couldn't manage to fully capitalize on the heat generated by the fuel cell for producing electricity; thus, they decided to list the overflow heat as an added bonus. Of course, it could turn out that it works pretty well overall, in which case, heck, what a bug for a product to have!
If I were you, though, I'd probably let these first few generations go by before investing in one. The technology is still untested at the consumer level (despite enjoying increasing application in the industrial and governmental sectors) and may not be terribly well suited for as remote a location as you've described. What's more, many fuel cells get far better than the mid 30% efficiency these suckers get; hold out for one in the 40% range. Do keep your eye on them, though, as in another three or four years, they could be saving you a substantial amount of transporting and lifting propane tanks!
Reeeally simple solution here.
Don't buy it.
Judging by the 300-foot long line for the OS X demo computers at the expo, something tells me that Apple will have no problem selling it's beta software. Apple is a corporation. Corporations exist to make money. If a corporation can potentially make money off a product, _even a buggy one_, they will. If this really, really yanks yer chain, then don't buy it. Better yet, contribute your time to one of several bazillion free, open-source programming efforts, and release something better than OS X for free.
If, for some reason, that doesn't work for you, don't piss and moan about how a commercial entity chooses to distribute their beta software. They're not cramming OS X down your throat, just like the MPAA doesn't force you to buy DVD's.
Despite this, though, the expo is pretty nice. Even the discarded attendees started perking up at the OS X demo; though I'd seen most of the features he showed us in other operating systems, this was the first time I I've seen them all together in the same OS. I'm really looking forward to seeing where OS X goes...
I work in an office that really needs my skills. However, because of a monumental array of "protective" immigration measures, it took me several months to secure the required papers, medical exams, and official approvals to even be able to work here; since she didn't already have a job with a French company, my wife isn't even allowed to do _any_ work by law (figure that Catch-22 out...) We are both well-educated and extremely capable individuals in our respective fields (I'm a computer scientist, she's a biochemist.) Yet, in the name of preserving jobs for French citizens, we're forced to either not work at all or constantly jump through administrative hoops until blue in the face. (My papers need to be renewed in one year, a process I do not look forward to.) Being an immigrant is a hard, often unrewarding process, and it takes some real guts to even think about it in the first place, much less do it.
I understand perfectly the logic behind such strict requirements for employment as a foreigner, and realize that we (Americans) use the exact same way of thinking. If a spot can be filled by a full citizen of a nation, then that citizen should have precedence to said job, right? The problem lies in the fact that the citizen isn't always the most qualified for the position; indeed, truly skilled and driven workers rarely complain about immigrants in the workplace (if anything, they thrive on the diversity it introduces.) It's the mediocre, the uninspired, the clock-puncher who worries about losing his or her job to somebody who actually wants to _work_. On that note, if there's anything they can tag to that potential replacement to discourage their hire, they'll do it. Immigrant. Woman. Kid. Dinosaur. Hispanic. This is FUD at it's purest, most base form. When faced with somebody who the weak worker _knows_ will be a better employee than themselves, the immediate reaction of that person is to find some way of discrediting or disqualifying that person. This results in bad hiring practices, discrimination, reduced productivity, and a less dynamic and exciting workplace overall.
Intelligent, capable individuals don't complain about immigrants and immigration. They understand that with immigrants come new ways of thinking, new talents and abilities, new cultural experiences, and the unique opportunity to learn a great deal about a place that they will very likely never visit in person. Weak, selfish people see immigrants as a threat to their cushy, do-nothing jobs, and as such, want nothing to do with them. It's as simple as that.
I'm only experiencing the smallest sliver of the discrimination that most immigrants go through, but it's already increased my respect for other immigrants tenfold. People who are strong enough to leave their native country, whether voluntarily or even more so as refugees, deserve a far higher degree of respect than they receive.
An American AC In Paris
The difficulty with this approach of masking one's identity is that you lose the ability to make a powerful, respectable argument. Words are weapons only when the author is able to hone his or her work to a razor-sharp edge; running a text through The Fish is the rough equivalent of bashing the weapon against a rock several times.
The first example was reverse-translated through Babelfish using English --> German --> English. The second is the original.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Huh. That really flies in the face of what we thought about the power of computers back...when? Circa Fritz Lang's Metropolis?
Perhaps the above should read:
"My hopes for computer omnipotence are shattered. I now know that not all algorithmic problems are solvable by computers, now that I've read through decades' worth of essays written by some of the greatest computer scientists ever to live."
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Watch your back, though. I've got a Fresnel lens.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Money in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Power in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Coke and Pop-Rocks in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Religion in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Fresnel lenses in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Computers in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
A nation in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Dude, that's seven more aritcles for you, right there.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.