appears to be the motivation here. I don't know exactly what the radical right thinks they're going to do about the actual hurricanes, but I guess it's about what the radical right thought they were going to do about the actual Iraqis.
I really don't see the objection--there's plenty of unreliable stuff on the internet and, even, in high school libraries--why single out Wikipedia? Wikipedia, though rough and variable in its coverage, is at least as good as most student encyclopedias in many areas. Hunh?
The Secret Service is a very effective police agency, and they'll probably do a good job of it. On the other hand, the DHS runs the TSA and the immigration service and has an appalling civil rights record. I can only hope that the Secret Service prevails in the operations of the Institute.
Inspiron
consumer laptop Dimension
consumer desktop XPS
high-end consumer systems. Also good systems for serious artists. support is thin Latitude business notebooks
just what the name says OptiPlex business desktops
just what the name says
The survey falls under the Dell small business marketing category
Google can provide a more valuable service than Red Hat because there is much more money in mass advertising than there is in providing software support and consulting, even for critical OS components. Businesses make money using FOSS by providing the software as an adjunct to services; if the services are good enough, then the business makes money. It's a competitive market but, on the other hand, the customer relationships established are often durable; while Oracle may eventually take over Red Hat's service market, it's going to take a long time.
See, in particular, this account of his credentials. He's an emeritus prof. of geography, U Winnipeg, 1988-96; I haven't found his prior history, but he hasn't been an academic climatologist in the the last 20 years and most likely never was (if he were, why was his last professorship as an geographer?) He only published four peer-reviewed papers on climatology and the last was published at least 11 years ago. I can see no good reason for treating Ball as credible. The Independent article mentioned cites no sources beyond Ball; it is simply rumour, repackaged. Another version of this article appears in the Canada Free Press, a right-wing authoritarian rag which also published Ball's earlier claims; this appears to be the source.
1. A full-size screen that uses available light
2. A full-size keyboard
3. A wireless net connection
4. A USB connection
5. Flash memory--no hard disk
6. Linux or Plan 9
That would be a winner in my book; a light, portable, comfortable system. This thing manages to combine the disadvantages of a laptop and a PDA.
I wish I knew. The cell industry, overall, has a 40% customer dissatisfaction rate. Verizon is the best, I believe--they're only at 20% Think about that. It's not just geeks--it's nearly half of all cell users, and even for the company with the happiest customers, it's still 1 in 5.
And all the phones on that page are $350 and up--that's Apple's price for an 80 GB iPod. I suppose the cell carriers have deals with the manufacturers to keep the US prices high.
Things are not quite as bad as you imagine. For one thing, reductions in energy use by buildings are actually pretty easy. Other areas of the transportation system can be improved; for instance, there are places where passenger rail transport could easily be substituted for air transport. In the long term, yes, it does probably mean a gradual process of reshaping cities, but that can perhaps be done over two generations so as to lessen cost and effort.
You complain about "spend[ing] a crapload of cash and maybe make your money back". Well, yes, but you get your future back. You just want it free. Sorry, guy. That engineering can't accomplish. And nuclear power, safe or not, isn't cheap, not when all the costs of securing the nuclear fuel chain are accounted for--the best energy source, given our current practices, is conservation, the energy we don't waste.
The problem is, to deal with the reality of global warming, Republicans have to admit that their political opponents were right. This costs power. And besides, it's embarrassing. An earlier commentator wrote, "It's your bedroom piled knee deep in dirty clothes. Cleaning it up is (a) boring and (b) admitting mom was right, even if she was being an irritating nag." And that seems to about sum it up. A lot of the denialists, those who aren't completely crazy, don't like the day-to-day business that is governing--the day-in, day-out discipline of keeping on with the necessary work. But fixing this is going to take a lot of governing, it's going to take global governing, including dealing with governments who the denialists would much rather bomb, and it's going to take admitting that they were wrong. Really, I don't expect the denial to end for a generation--as with the new physics of the early 20th century, the opposition is going to have to die off.
Electronically-distributed reference and training materials are likely to be protected, as well as other material required by doctors, architects, artists, audio and video engineers, and so on. Every copy protection ever implemented has turned out to protect too much, so I think it's likely that this will interfere with medical imaging, audio chart notes, professional graphics, audio and video production, and so on--with actual work done on these computers. Some life-threatening results in the medical and building professions seem likely. I think Microsoft has probably made an honest effort here, and they believe this will work as claimed. But it doesn't seem likely that it will. As if this were not enough, it's probably going to make these systems unreliable for general consumers, and while I think the media companies will be happy that consumers end up not wishing to use computers to view their oh-so-precious content, I doubt that MS will be happy about it. Finally, it strikes me that the resources that went into these protection schemes could have been used to improve the Windows UI, develop applications, and, well, do useful things instead of waste everyone's time.
Slashdot Mirror
Write your congresspeople, folks. They're the only ones who can do anything about this.
It's one of the best distributed research OSs there is. We'll have to see, now, if it is as useful a research tool as hoped with so many processors.
Here. In Spanish, what else? Y'know, one doesn't have to pay the Microsoft tax on these; I wonder if we can buy them in the USA?
appears to be the motivation here. I don't know exactly what the radical right thinks they're going to do about the actual hurricanes, but I guess it's about what the radical right thought they were going to do about the actual Iraqis.
May this make all of us more suspicious of this deeply authoritarian radical-right organization.
I think the next step, here, will be a deal with Dell where MS gets to charge fees on Linux.
I'm sorry, it just popped out, honest...
Why should anyone put up with it?
Seems to me, if you want someone in on third shift, you pay them that shift time.
I really don't see the objection--there's plenty of unreliable stuff on the internet and, even, in high school libraries--why single out Wikipedia? Wikipedia, though rough and variable in its coverage, is at least as good as most student encyclopedias in many areas. Hunh?
These days, Dell will ship the Precision 490 with Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS). So some progress has been made.
The Secret Service is a very effective police agency, and they'll probably do a good job of it. On the other hand, the DHS runs the TSA and the immigration service and has an appalling civil rights record. I can only hope that the Secret Service prevails in the operations of the Institute.
Links
Secret Service press release (PDF)
DHS copy of press release (HTML)
Correction: medium & large business category.
Here's a summary of the computers they list:
Inspiron
consumer laptop
Dimension
consumer desktop
XPS
high-end consumer systems. Also good systems for serious artists.
support is thin
Latitude business notebooks
just what the name says
OptiPlex business desktops
just what the name says
The survey falls under the Dell small business marketing category
Google can provide a more valuable service than Red Hat because there is much more money in mass advertising than there is in providing software support and consulting, even for critical OS components. Businesses make money using FOSS by providing the software as an adjunct to services; if the services are good enough, then the business makes money. It's a competitive market but, on the other hand, the customer relationships established are often durable; while Oracle may eventually take over Red Hat's service market, it's going to take a long time.
Coal.
Sheesh.
See, in particular, this account of his credentials. He's an emeritus prof. of geography, U Winnipeg, 1988-96; I haven't found his prior history, but he hasn't been an academic climatologist in the the last 20 years and most likely never was (if he were, why was his last professorship as an geographer?) He only published four peer-reviewed papers on climatology and the last was published at least 11 years ago. I can see no good reason for treating Ball as credible. The Independent article mentioned cites no sources beyond Ball; it is simply rumour, repackaged. Another version of this article appears in the Canada Free Press, a right-wing authoritarian rag which also published Ball's earlier claims; this appears to be the source.
Why was this run at all?
Seriously, build me a laptop with:
1. A full-size screen that uses available light
2. A full-size keyboard
3. A wireless net connection
4. A USB connection
5. Flash memory--no hard disk
6. Linux or Plan 9
That would be a winner in my book; a light, portable, comfortable system. This thing manages to combine the disadvantages of a laptop and a PDA.
After all, one doesn't protect artists from income, or exposure. Bah!
I wish I knew. The cell industry, overall, has a 40% customer dissatisfaction rate. Verizon is the best, I believe--they're only at 20% Think about that. It's not just geeks--it's nearly half of all cell users, and even for the company with the happiest customers, it's still 1 in 5.
And all the phones on that page are $350 and up--that's Apple's price for an 80 GB iPod. I suppose the cell carriers have deals with the manufacturers to keep the US prices high.
You'd pay for each e-mail, and the web would have been blocked from the beginning.
Bah!
There is, of course, a solution to this garbage. It's called regulation.
I don't get it; the predictions are proving out. Surely this is an argument for listening to the people who made them?
Things are not quite as bad as you imagine. For one thing, reductions in energy use by buildings are actually pretty easy. Other areas of the transportation system can be improved; for instance, there are places where passenger rail transport could easily be substituted for air transport. In the long term, yes, it does probably mean a gradual process of reshaping cities, but that can perhaps be done over two generations so as to lessen cost and effort.
You complain about "spend[ing] a crapload of cash and maybe make your money back". Well, yes, but you get your future back. You just want it free. Sorry, guy. That engineering can't accomplish. And nuclear power, safe or not, isn't cheap, not when all the costs of securing the nuclear fuel chain are accounted for--the best energy source, given our current practices, is conservation, the energy we don't waste.
The problem is, to deal with the reality of global warming, Republicans have to admit that their political opponents were right. This costs power. And besides, it's embarrassing. An earlier commentator wrote, "It's your bedroom piled knee deep in dirty clothes. Cleaning it up is (a) boring and (b) admitting mom was right, even if she was being an irritating nag." And that seems to about sum it up. A lot of the denialists, those who aren't completely crazy, don't like the day-to-day business that is governing--the day-in, day-out discipline of keeping on with the necessary work. But fixing this is going to take a lot of governing, it's going to take global governing, including dealing with governments who the denialists would much rather bomb, and it's going to take admitting that they were wrong. Really, I don't expect the denial to end for a generation--as with the new physics of the early 20th century, the opposition is going to have to die off.
Electronically-distributed reference and training materials are likely to be protected, as well as other material required by doctors, architects, artists, audio and video engineers, and so on. Every copy protection ever implemented has turned out to protect too much, so I think it's likely that this will interfere with medical imaging, audio chart notes, professional graphics, audio and video production, and so on--with actual work done on these computers. Some life-threatening results in the medical and building professions seem likely. I think Microsoft has probably made an honest effort here, and they believe this will work as claimed. But it doesn't seem likely that it will. As if this were not enough, it's probably going to make these systems unreliable for general consumers, and while I think the media companies will be happy that consumers end up not wishing to use computers to view their oh-so-precious content, I doubt that MS will be happy about it. Finally, it strikes me that the resources that went into these protection schemes could have been used to improve the Windows UI, develop applications, and, well, do useful things instead of waste everyone's time.