Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They could conceivably keep running such a system until the hardware is no longer available on the used market.
Sure, until someone decides to change DST or maybe ATF or the state taxing authority starts requiring a new reporting format etc. Updates are more common than you think, even on very old/stable systems.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but the reason that extension cord you bought had 4 different warning labels on it was because of morons that do something completely stupid, and then blame the manufacturer for not having a warning label telling you not to do it.
So then the solution is to start suing for having too many warnings. I'll bet a sleezy enough lawyer could make the case that having too many warnings caused one important one to be missed.
You're 100% correct about the current situation but I don't think it's hopeless. For one thing, many of these types of businesses only have one or two pieces of software that they really care about. For example, a typical auto mechanic isn't tied to Outlook/Exchange or even MS Office so it only takes one vender in any given market to make a Non-MS version of their software and suddenly everything else falls into place. A lot of these small software makers currently use some sort of (often ancient) propriatary DB plus a propriatary GUI toolkit or even just VB for the front end. It can't have passed their notice that moving to a free DB and GUI would allow them to keep more of the profits for themselves so I think that's where changes will start showing up first. Once the underlying software being used is portable it shouldn't be a huge step to produce Linux versions of their apps. There are actually some interesting opportunities in some markets where they could start distributing their software as bootable CDs/DVDs/flash drives rather than as an application running on Windows. Maintence would be reduced since sending the customer a replacement DVD is much less expensive than sending out a tech. to re-image a system from a Ghost cd or whatever.
A big part of the problem is that schools, for the most part, encourage and reward recitation of facts and rarely bother to ask students of think about what they've learned or apply it to something new. When I was in high school one of our teachers used to give homework that amounted to copying sentences out of an encyclopedia or two and whiteing out various names and dates which we then had to fill in. About all we learned from that class was how to effeciently divide the work up and share our answers. As long as all you ask for are facts, all you'll get are Google searches.
Obama is relatively inexperienced, but Hillary has held political office for fewer years than Obama. He was elected to the Illinois senate in 1996, whereas Hillary began her political career with her election to the US Senate in 2000.
For better or worse I think most people view her time during Bill's administration as experience.
this has the same problems as a non gasoline/diesel fuel source: lack of infrastructure. Who's going to pay for antennas every quarter mile for our trazillion mile highway network?
I don't think we would need so much in the way of NEW infrastructure as much better maintence. Following pavement markers and reading street signs isn't beyond our curent tech. and minor adjustments such as mixing metal into the paint or adding RFID tags to the signs could make it even easier. The problem is that none of that stuff is 100% perfect or consistant. Some roads arn't striped, some signs are wrong/outdated/down, maps are wrong etc.
On the other hand, if they ever did this it might actually make the streets safer for everybody.
think the cars can't just rely on map data - they need to "see" as well. That means people, detour signs, construction work, "road closed" etc.
Agreed although I don't think that initial systems would need to actually "handle" those things themselves they would at least need to see well enough to recognize when they are in over their head and aleart the dri... errr. co-pilot.
Of course, security on all this stuff needs to be tight - imagine if some guy hacks his car to spit out messages like "I'm an ambulance, get out of the way!"
Many cities already have traffic lights that can be changed by ambulances etc. and they are already sometimes abused by civilians. At least maybe this would force road crews to take their signs down when they are done with them.
Until, like the GP suggested, you want to run a network stack and encrypt the traffic. Or compile fftw or some other common open source numerical package for filtering out noise or doing other useful things.
And cramming all of this onto the stethoscope rather than on a PC is better because???
The system I've been investigating doesn't remove you from the grid. You are a power company producer during the day and a user at night.
I live in AZ as well and this is the first I've heard of AZ having a net metering progra, that makes a big difference. Looking at the APS site it looks like it was just approved this past Summer. Just a quick off the top of my head calc. makes it look like you could have a system pay for it'self in 2-5 years depending on exactly how close your system is sized to your needs. It still isn't entirely clear to me how this program would interact with the peak/off-peak pricing you describe (we don't have that in my part of AZ) so you still might end up shifting loads around but maybe not.
I'm not a greeny either, I just don't like the cost. I long for the day when I don't have to worry about this anymore and I can run whatever appliances I want, whenever I want. As it is now I try to run my vacuum cleaner and laundry on weekend only when the power rate is lower. I would very much like to do things on my schedule and not the power company schedule.
If that's your goal then you can pretty much scratch solar off you list. One of the first things people learn when they start to look into solar is that it's much cheaper to reduce your consumption (effecient appliances, better insulation, reduction in phantom loads, cfls etc.) and then buy a smallar solar system then it is to try to buy a system that will meet their current usage. If you don't like doing laundry on weekends when power is cheaper you're really going to hate coming home to do laundry during lunch because that's when the sun is the strongest or putting it off a day or two because it's cloudy. At least weekends are 100% predictable.
Then why did it gain 10% market share in a year? If it actually sucked so much it wouldn't have gotten half that because everyone would be downgrading to XP or moving to OS X or Linux.
Considering that if you go into just about any physical computer/electronics store it's just about impossible to buy a PC without Vista then I'd say 10% is pretty pathetic.
Sounds like maybe they have it backward then. Maybe they should be analizing the actual routes taken by experienced drivers tuning the recomended routes based on that.
Last i checked, the entire point ofa wiretap is that the person being tapped doesn't know about it.
There's a difference between keeping a wiretap secret during an investigation and keeping it secret forever. Lack of transparency encourages abuse and replaces respect for the government with fear and mistrust.
THis can be used to show Linus had willful intent to steal the ideas of Microsoft and of course their lawyers will say the fact that he said this after SCO sued for patent infringement showed foreseeable harm since they were all aware they could be sued again.
First of all, SCO never sued for patent infringement. They sued mainly for breach of contract, and made lots of noise in public about copyright infringement but patents were never part of it.
Second, SCO sued IBM, not Linus.
Third, it makes no sense that saying "don't look at their ideas" could somehow really mean "please go steal their ideas".
How is different from AV products prompting to update, to Azureus prompting to update, to KNotifier (or whatever the KDE update checker is called) asking me to install updates in Linux?
I just tried out Azureus today for the first time and that's a feature I'll be turning off if I continue to use it. Maybe my KDE is out of date (I run Debian) but I've never had it do that and I can't think of any other Linux program that does either. Normally all of my updates are handled by a single update tool so keeping up with security updates is easy. In Windows it seems like every program feels like it just has to run continuously in the background and bug you regularly for some sort of maintenance or other. It's a cumulative effect, when people are constantly being bombarded with messages that, half the time they don't even understand, they just give up and start blindly clicking OK on everything they're presented with. That's a big part of why so many people fall for those fake windows error messages some web sites use to get them to install spyware etc. Clicking OK has just become a reflex action and they don't even think about it anymore.
Finally, for "Run As" and people running as administrators, if software is written to be run only by administrators, then it's the software maker's fault not the OS, it's shitty software.
I don't know who's fault it is I just know that if you give Joe user a computer with a non-admin account they are guaranteed to find some random program that won't easily run as a regular user. Usually there is a workaround or alternative program they can use but then later they come up with another..... In practice that means that less technical users almost always give up and go back to running as admin.
Windows XP SP2 and beyond has a very nice security framework. That may be, too bad that it's all turned off either explicitly by running as admin or implicitly by training users to reflexively click OK like a lab rat at feeding time.
For one thing, between XP, AV, Anti-Spyware, and the million and one things that are constantly poping up warnings and wanting to update themselves, the users quickly become desensitised to what's going on on their computer. Take OE as just one example. It gives the user a dire sounding warning every time they open any kind of attachment reguardless of wheather it's something really dangerous or not. Of course they can turn that off but then they don't even get warned when running an exe attachment. Don't forget, OE is pretty much single handedly responsible for getting users used to html email, you know the most common phishing method. IE is even worse, they've spent years training users to accept ActiveX content even though they knew full well that it was dangerous. Sure they have 101 different security options as well several different "Security Zones" but in practice if the user actually changes ANY of it they end up having to click OK fifteen times just to view a simple web page so instead they all just put things back to the default "bent over" position and call it a day.
Just because the users are stupid and run Windows as administrator, doesn't mean the OS itself is insecure.
It's not stupidity that keeps people running as admin, it's the fact that doing so is almost impossible for the sorts of users that most need the protection. Not only do many common programs require admin privs. but when they do require these privs. they don't just tell you so, instead they just fail in pretty much any random way they feel like, you know, the way Win apps have been failing for decades so the user usually doesn't know that it's a permissions issue. All they know is that when they run as a non admin their $50 win-printer doesn't work. If they actually manage to work out what's going on they may try using Run As but that only works about half the time because the elivated permissions arn't inherited by other programs that the initial program may spawn. Eventually, even users who are aware of the dangers end up going back to running as admin because anything else is just too hard.
I'm in a similar boat wanting to replace an A series and looking at Dell as an alternative due in part to official Linux support on a wider variety of machines. One thing I've always liked about Thinkpads is that you can download maintenance manuals and purchace replacement parts easily and at reasonable prices (ok, that's two things but they're related). How does Dell stack up in the ease of maintenance area?
Forget spacecraft, what UPS etc. need is a really big cannon or rail gun to shoot packages to their destinations. Just cram a package into some sort of a shell with a gps guidence system and pop out fins (tech. borrowed from military smart weapons) and you're all set.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They could conceivably keep running such a system until the hardware is no longer available on the used market.
Sure, until someone decides to change DST or maybe ATF or the state taxing authority starts requiring a new reporting format etc. Updates are more common than you think, even on very old/stable systems.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but the reason that extension cord you bought had 4 different warning labels on it was because of morons that do something completely stupid, and then blame the manufacturer for not having a warning label telling you not to do it.
So then the solution is to start suing for having too many warnings. I'll bet a sleezy enough lawyer could make the case that having too many warnings caused one important one to be missed.
You're 100% correct about the current situation but I don't think it's hopeless. For one thing, many of these types of businesses only have one or two pieces of software that they really care about. For example, a typical auto mechanic isn't tied to Outlook/Exchange or even MS Office so it only takes one vender in any given market to make a Non-MS version of their software and suddenly everything else falls into place. A lot of these small software makers currently use some sort of (often ancient) propriatary DB plus a propriatary GUI toolkit or even just VB for the front end. It can't have passed their notice that moving to a free DB and GUI would allow them to keep more of the profits for themselves so I think that's where changes will start showing up first. Once the underlying software being used is portable it shouldn't be a huge step to produce Linux versions of their apps. There are actually some interesting opportunities in some markets where they could start distributing their software as bootable CDs/DVDs/flash drives rather than as an application running on Windows. Maintence would be reduced since sending the customer a replacement DVD is much less expensive than sending out a tech. to re-image a system from a Ghost cd or whatever.
A big part of the problem is that schools, for the most part, encourage and reward recitation of facts and rarely bother to ask students of think about what they've learned or apply it to something new. When I was in high school one of our teachers used to give homework that amounted to copying sentences out of an encyclopedia or two and whiteing out various names and dates which we then had to fill in. About all we learned from that class was how to effeciently divide the work up and share our answers. As long as all you ask for are facts, all you'll get are Google searches.
What is stopping them from downloading it, and printing it themselves?
Why would they? It's not like they read it anyway.
Obama is relatively inexperienced, but Hillary has held political office for fewer years than Obama. He was elected to the Illinois senate in 1996, whereas Hillary began her political career with her election to the US Senate in 2000.
For better or worse I think most people view her time during Bill's administration as experience.
this has the same problems as a non gasoline/diesel fuel source: lack of infrastructure. Who's going to pay for antennas every quarter mile for our trazillion mile highway network?
I don't think we would need so much in the way of NEW infrastructure as much better maintence. Following pavement markers and reading street signs isn't beyond our curent tech. and minor adjustments such as mixing metal into the paint or adding RFID tags to the signs could make it even easier. The problem is that none of that stuff is 100% perfect or consistant. Some roads arn't striped, some signs are wrong/outdated/down, maps are wrong etc.
On the other hand, if they ever did this it might actually make the streets safer for everybody.
Arizona is not America.
Tell that to the IRS.
BMW's are quite popular throughout America, and VW as well.
I see plenty of BMW's and VW's but the vast majority are gasoline powered. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a diesel BMW.
Among the undoables:
:)
* Getting a computer to recognize the difference between a toddler crawling on the road, versus a doll on the road.
Don't need to. It's either small enough to straddle or it isn't.
* Seeing well in the rain.
Some sensors such as radar actually do better in rain than human eyes.
* Telling the difference between a dishwasher carton (which might not have to be braked for, versus a fallen cubic meter of rock.
A dish washer might be a bit softer than a cubic meter of rock but not by enough to matter.
* Telling the difference between a solid object and just a splash of water.
Sonar?
Then why do the diesel VW and diesel BMW sell so well here?
Have any numbers? Around here (AZ) they seem quite rare even though they would probably be a good choice for our driving conditions.
think the cars can't just rely on map data - they need to "see" as well. That means people, detour signs, construction work, "road closed" etc.
Agreed although I don't think that initial systems would need to actually "handle" those things themselves they would at least need to see well enough to recognize when they are in over their head and aleart the dri... errr. co-pilot.
Of course, security on all this stuff needs to be tight - imagine if some guy hacks his car to spit out messages like "I'm an ambulance, get out of the way!"
Many cities already have traffic lights that can be changed by ambulances etc. and they are already sometimes abused by civilians. At least maybe this would force road crews to take their signs down when they are done with them.
I'm sick and tired of Slashdot stories slashvertising gadgets that ARE NOT EVEN AVAILABLE YET
So, what you want is "Slashdot, EX-News For Nerds. Stuff That Already Happened."
bonus for whoever comes up with a handy wearable cursor control device
I would think some sort of eye tracking would be ideal.
Until, like the GP suggested, you want to run a network stack and encrypt the traffic. Or compile fftw or some other common open source numerical package for filtering out noise or doing other useful things.
And cramming all of this onto the stethoscope rather than on a PC is better because???
The system I've been investigating doesn't remove you from the grid. You are a power company producer during the day and a user at night.
I live in AZ as well and this is the first I've heard of AZ having a net metering progra, that makes a big difference. Looking at the APS site it looks like it was just approved this past Summer. Just a quick off the top of my head calc. makes it look like you could have a system pay for it'self in 2-5 years depending on exactly how close your system is sized to your needs. It still isn't entirely clear to me how this program would interact with the peak/off-peak pricing you describe (we don't have that in my part of AZ) so you still might end up shifting loads around but maybe not.
I'm not a greeny either, I just don't like the cost. I long for the day when I don't have to worry about this anymore and I can run whatever appliances I want, whenever I want. As it is now I try to run my vacuum cleaner and laundry on weekend only when the power rate is lower. I would very much like to do things on my schedule and not the power company schedule.
If that's your goal then you can pretty much scratch solar off you list. One of the first things people learn when they start to look into solar is that it's much cheaper to reduce your consumption (effecient appliances, better insulation, reduction in phantom loads, cfls etc.) and then buy a smallar solar system then it is to try to buy a system that will meet their current usage. If you don't like doing laundry on weekends when power is cheaper you're really going to hate coming home to do laundry during lunch because that's when the sun is the strongest or putting it off a day or two because it's cloudy. At least weekends are 100% predictable.
Then why did it gain 10% market share in a year? If it actually sucked so much it wouldn't have gotten half that because everyone would be downgrading to XP or moving to OS X or Linux.
Considering that if you go into just about any physical computer/electronics store it's just about impossible to buy a PC without Vista then I'd say 10% is pretty pathetic.
Sounds like maybe they have it backward then. Maybe they should be analizing the actual routes taken by experienced drivers tuning the recomended routes based on that.
One thing a university has going for it is that it owns most/all of the property that requires coverage.
Last i checked, the entire point ofa wiretap is that the person being tapped doesn't know about it.
There's a difference between keeping a wiretap secret during an investigation and keeping it secret forever. Lack of transparency encourages abuse and replaces respect for the government with fear and mistrust.
THis can be used to show Linus had willful intent to steal the ideas of Microsoft and of course their lawyers will say the fact that he said this after SCO sued for patent infringement showed foreseeable harm since they were all aware they could be sued again.
First of all, SCO never sued for patent infringement. They sued mainly for breach of contract, and made lots of noise in public about copyright infringement but patents were never part of it.
Second, SCO sued IBM, not Linus.
Third, it makes no sense that saying "don't look at their ideas" could somehow really mean "please go steal their ideas".
How is different from AV products prompting to update, to Azureus prompting to update, to KNotifier (or whatever the KDE update checker is called) asking me to install updates in Linux?
I just tried out Azureus today for the first time and that's a feature I'll be turning off if I continue to use it. Maybe my KDE is out of date (I run Debian) but I've never had it do that and I can't think of any other Linux program that does either. Normally all of my updates are handled by a single update tool so keeping up with security updates is easy. In Windows it seems like every program feels like it just has to run continuously in the background and bug you regularly for some sort of maintenance or other. It's a cumulative effect, when people are constantly being bombarded with messages that, half the time they don't even understand, they just give up and start blindly clicking OK on everything they're presented with. That's a big part of why so many people fall for those fake windows error messages some web sites use to get them to install spyware etc. Clicking OK has just become a reflex action and they don't even think about it anymore.
Finally, for "Run As" and people running as administrators, if software is written to be run only by administrators, then it's the software maker's fault not the OS, it's shitty software.
I don't know who's fault it is I just know that if you give Joe user a computer with a non-admin account they are guaranteed to find some random program that won't easily run as a regular user. Usually there is a workaround or alternative program they can use but then later they come up with another..... In practice that means that less technical users almost always give up and go back to running as admin.
Windows XP SP2 and beyond has a very nice security framework.
That may be, too bad that it's all turned off either explicitly by running as admin or implicitly by training users to reflexively click OK like a lab rat at feeding time.
What's wrong with XP SP2 security wise?
For one thing, between XP, AV, Anti-Spyware, and the million and one things that are constantly poping up warnings and wanting to update themselves, the users quickly become desensitised to what's going on on their computer. Take OE as just one example. It gives the user a dire sounding warning every time they open any kind of attachment reguardless of wheather it's something really dangerous or not. Of course they can turn that off but then they don't even get warned when running an exe attachment. Don't forget, OE is pretty much single handedly responsible for getting users used to html email, you know the most common phishing method. IE is even worse, they've spent years training users to accept ActiveX content even though they knew full well that it was dangerous. Sure they have 101 different security options as well several different "Security Zones" but in practice if the user actually changes ANY of it they end up having to click OK fifteen times just to view a simple web page so instead they all just put things back to the default "bent over" position and call it a day.
Just because the users are stupid and run Windows as administrator, doesn't mean the OS itself is insecure.
It's not stupidity that keeps people running as admin, it's the fact that doing so is almost impossible for the sorts of users that most need the protection. Not only do many common programs require admin privs. but when they do require these privs. they don't just tell you so, instead they just fail in pretty much any random way they feel like, you know, the way Win apps have been failing for decades so the user usually doesn't know that it's a permissions issue. All they know is that when they run as a non admin their $50 win-printer doesn't work. If they actually manage to work out what's going on they may try using Run As but that only works about half the time because the elivated permissions arn't inherited by other programs that the initial program may spawn. Eventually, even users who are aware of the dangers end up going back to running as admin because anything else is just too hard.
I'm in a similar boat wanting to replace an A series and looking at Dell as an alternative due in part to official Linux support on a wider variety of machines. One thing I've always liked about Thinkpads is that you can download maintenance manuals and purchace replacement parts easily and at reasonable prices (ok, that's two things but they're related). How does Dell stack up in the ease of maintenance area?
Forget spacecraft, what UPS etc. need is a really big cannon or rail gun to shoot packages to their destinations. Just cram a package into some sort of a shell with a gps guidence system and pop out fins (tech. borrowed from military smart weapons) and you're all set.