Just like humans have internal clocks, so do other mammals. This thread has many people posting on how changes in their routine of just one hour throws them off. Why wouldn't the same thing happen to cows?
It would but their internal clocks don't know anything about DST. Think about it, if a farmer set's his clock back in by an hour in the fall and keeps getting up at 5am then as far as the cows know the farmer is an hour late.
Which is the problem, since it's "not free enough", the zealots simply dismiss it, and lets face it, the zealots are the ones helping spread Linux usage. It's stupid and it needs to stop.
For some of us the freedom is the goal and Linux is just a tool to help get there. What's annoying is that people who come into this community to get away from the lock in, disrespectfull treatment by software vendors, restrictive licensing etc. and the first thing they want to do is convince everyone to submit to the same crap over here. It's a bit like someone who moves into the countryside to get away from the city and the first thing they want is to put up street lights and mini-malls.
Extreme Option B) Everyone does everything only at day, and goes to sleep when it gets dark out. This means hardly any lighting would be needed at all.
Except I can't remember the last time I walked into a business that didn't have their lights on at noon. Keeping people home during the day actually seems like it might be more effecient. It's probably moot anyway, eventually everything will be open 24/7 and it won't matter.
his is a savings of 1/20th of a percent. And I'm not able to make out if that savings ONLY exists for those 2 months or the year round. Not particuarly impressive either way.
Here's an idea. Let's start passing legislation and using incentives to promote recycling, efficiency, and alternate sources of energy.
Just sending congress home for an extra month in the summer would save more than that in AC costs alone.
Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.
I've heard this arguement before but I've never really understood it. It's not like the cows know what time it is. IMHO farmers will get up when there is enough light to get done whatever needs doing. This whole thing sounds a lot like "get the stereo that goes up to 11 caus it's louder".
I think your suggestion is a good one however I think a bigger part of the problem is that there are just too many dialog boxes and people are mostly just suffering from overload. I don't use Windows very oftem but when I do one of the things that really bugs me is just how often I have to stop and click on some dialog. During those rare periods where I'm using Win for an extended periods I find myself doing just what most Win users do, click first and ask questions later.
I don't see how this survey can be considered FUD. They aren't saying anything either is better or worse than the other. They simply relay feelings of their respondants.
Maybe and maybe not. From the article we really don't know who was surveyed. Given Didio's history I wouldn't put it past her to have selected the people/companies being questioned to give whatever results she's being paid to find this week.
Whether the MPEG2/4 decoding hardware drivers are open source or not is only relevent for people who insist upon compiling everything themselves.
Not true at all. It's also relevent to people who don't want a $50 purchase to dictate all the other hardware and software they are allowed to run. Allow closed source drivers and it's easy to end up in a situation where your video card needs kernel X but your sound card drivers only work with kernel Y and that bug that causes your system to crash once a week was only fixed in kernel Z.
As for the MythTV requirements:
The exact requirements varry mostly depending on what capture card you have. If your caputure card does encoding in hardware (and whatever it generates is compatable with MythTV and whatever else you might want to use) then almost anything will work. IMHO the biggest limitation of this board is that with just one PCI slot you're stuck with just one capture card.
If you tell me they fail less than Maxtor drives, I'll consider buying one.
I really wish I could say that I had drive failure stats. for all or even some of the major drive makers but I don't. I do know that if you ask pretty much any two geeks who's the best/worst you get two firm but opposing opinions. Personally I havn't seen any real long term pattern and I've been doing this stuff since '90 or so. That said the only Seagate I've had trouble with lately was a Baracuda 5 that just never performed as it should. On 3 different machines that drive gives me about half the transfer rate of another identical drive but shows no other signs of problems.
Why is this important to me? I can't stand those 7200RPM disks on the desktop. Too noisy
Many current drives use fluid berings and are actually much quieter than older 5400rpm drives, at least in terms of whine. If seek noise bothers you you should look at Seagate, some (maybe all) of their Baracuda(sp) drives have a layer of sound absobant material that quiets the seeks as well.
There are these groups called Governments and Companies. They often have the need for more storage. And with RAID Drives having ultra dependable disks is not as important then cheap disks that store a lot.
On what planet exactly? Traditionally Large businesses and governments have been the ONLY ones willing to pay more for more reliable hard drives. While it's true that RAID can improve the reliability of your storage solution it's not by any strech perfect.
1. You might not really want to use UPSs. Unless the grounding is good they really won't help much with spikes and surges. They will also cost an arm and a leg to ship. If you choose to use UPSs anyway, check to see if APC or one of the other decent UPS makers will sponsor you. I know APC likes to run success stories in their newsletter and this sounds like it might make for a good story. Also consider using 1 or 2 large high quality UPSs rather than a bunch of small/cheap ones.
2. Laptops. Someone else mentioned this option and it's a good one. Even though they cost more than desktops you'll save in shipping and you won't have to factor in the cost of UPSs. Most used laptops have something or other wrong with them (dead battery, flakey CD drive etc.) so factor in $100 or so per laptop for repairs/upgrades. Stick with IBM since spare parts and especially repair info is more easily available than others. I wonder if IBM might help you out with a good price on some off-lease laptops for a good cause?
3. CD based Distros. Seriously consider Knoppix or one of the other CD based Distros. If disk corruption was a major problem last time then this will avoid most of that problem.
The difference between auto mechanics and computer repairmen is that the mechanics have a union which forces licensing on its members to boost the price of labor
No, the difference is that it's actually HARDER to find a qualified and honest mechanic.
When I spoke with my bank (Norwest at the time) about the unauthorized drafts from my account that I mentioned in my other posting, they said there was nothing they could do about the drafts that had already taken place. I could pay $30 for a stop payment on the next draft attempt but there was nothing stopping them from turning right around and doing it again.
FWIW I had the exact same conversation with my bank (Bank One) a couple of years ago.
They are welcome to try to EFT funds from my bank account. It's kept delibretly empty for this reason.
I do that too but it isn't perfect. If your bank is anything like mine they'll just send the money and charge an overdraft fee. It's still better than having thousands of dollars locked up over a small dispute though.
If they try to take funds out without my authorization, then my bank gets involved.
When you sign up for PayPal you DO authorize them to take money out of your attached bank account pretty much whenever they feel like it.
If I were Bill Gates, I would simply pull all of my product out of Europe and laugh at them. Due to the market penetration of Windows, the EU would come crawling back, begging for Windows marketing to be reinstated.
That's EXACTLY why the EU needs to stick to their guns. Any company with that kind of power needs to be watched very carefully.
Strangely enough, there are actually people who appreciate long release cycles!
Agreed, but there is long and there is LONG. At some point Stable gets so old that just installing that one newer package you really need (maybe Exim or mgetty) means replacing half your system with non-debian versions due to dependancies. Then when it does come time to update to the next Stable you no longer have apt handling everything as seemlessly as it otherwise would.
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Just like humans have internal clocks, so do other mammals. This thread has many people posting on how changes in their routine of just one hour throws them off. Why wouldn't the same thing happen to cows?
It would but their internal clocks don't know anything about DST. Think about it, if a farmer set's his clock back in by an hour in the fall and keeps getting up at 5am then as far as the cows know the farmer is an hour late.
Which is the problem, since it's "not free enough", the zealots simply dismiss it, and lets face it, the zealots are the ones helping spread Linux usage. It's stupid and it needs to stop.
For some of us the freedom is the goal and Linux is just a tool to help get there. What's annoying is that people who come into this community to get away from the lock in, disrespectfull treatment by software vendors, restrictive licensing etc. and the first thing they want to do is convince everyone to submit to the same crap over here. It's a bit like someone who moves into the countryside to get away from the city and the first thing they want is to put up street lights and mini-malls.
Extreme Option B) Everyone does everything only at day, and goes to sleep when it gets dark out. This means hardly any lighting would be needed at all.
Except I can't remember the last time I walked into a business that didn't have their lights on at noon. Keeping people home during the day actually seems like it might be more effecient. It's probably moot anyway, eventually everything will be open 24/7 and it won't matter.
his is a savings of 1/20th of a percent. And I'm not able to make out if that savings ONLY exists for those 2 months or the year round. Not particuarly impressive either way.
Here's an idea. Let's start passing legislation and using incentives to promote recycling, efficiency, and alternate sources of energy.
Just sending congress home for an extra month in the summer would save more than that in AC costs alone.
If they can operate a modern tractor they can certainly operate an alarm clock.
Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.
I've heard this arguement before but I've never really understood it. It's not like the cows know what time it is. IMHO farmers will get up when there is enough light to get done whatever needs doing. This whole thing sounds a lot like "get the stereo that goes up to 11 caus it's louder".
I think your suggestion is a good one however I think a bigger part of the problem is that there are just too many dialog boxes and people are mostly just suffering from overload. I don't use Windows very oftem but when I do one of the things that really bugs me is just how often I have to stop and click on some dialog. During those rare periods where I'm using Win for an extended periods I find myself doing just what most Win users do, click first and ask questions later.
You mean even if the figures say that Windows is more secure you will never choose it? Or are you only referring to the current release?
Well, if THAT happens I'll be too busy getting my shotgun so I can get me one of them flyin pigs I've been hearin about.
I don't see how this survey can be considered FUD. They aren't saying anything either is better or worse than the other. They simply relay feelings of their respondants.
Maybe and maybe not. From the article we really don't know who was surveyed. Given Didio's history I wouldn't put it past her to have selected the people/companies being questioned to give whatever results she's being paid to find this week.
Whether the MPEG2/4 decoding hardware drivers are open source or not is only relevent for people who insist upon compiling everything themselves.
Not true at all. It's also relevent to people who don't want a $50 purchase to dictate all the other hardware and software they are allowed to run. Allow closed source drivers and it's easy to end up in a situation where your video card needs kernel X but your sound card drivers only work with kernel Y and that bug that causes your system to crash once a week was only fixed in kernel Z.
As for the MythTV requirements:
The exact requirements varry mostly depending on what capture card you have. If your caputure card does encoding in hardware (and whatever it generates is compatable with MythTV and whatever else you might want to use) then almost anything will work. IMHO the biggest limitation of this board is that with just one PCI slot you're stuck with just one capture card.
If you tell me they fail less than Maxtor drives, I'll consider buying one.
I really wish I could say that I had drive failure stats. for all or even some of the major drive makers but I don't. I do know that if you ask pretty much any two geeks who's the best/worst you get two firm but opposing opinions. Personally I havn't seen any real long term pattern and I've been doing this stuff since '90 or so. That said the only Seagate I've had trouble with lately was a Baracuda 5 that just never performed as it should. On 3 different machines that drive gives me about half the transfer rate of another identical drive but shows no other signs of problems.
Why is this important to me? I can't stand those 7200RPM disks on the desktop. Too noisy
Many current drives use fluid berings and are actually much quieter than older 5400rpm drives, at least in terms of whine. If seek noise bothers you you should look at Seagate, some (maybe all) of their Baracuda(sp) drives have a layer of sound absobant material that quiets the seeks as well.
There are these groups called Governments and Companies. They often have the need for more storage. And with RAID Drives having ultra dependable disks is not as important then cheap disks that store a lot.
On what planet exactly? Traditionally Large businesses and governments have been the ONLY ones willing to pay more for more reliable hard drives. While it's true that RAID can improve the reliability of your storage solution it's not by any strech perfect.
If he goes the solar route it might be better to skip the inverter and use PCs with 12V DC power supplies.
1. You might not really want to use UPSs. Unless the grounding is good they really won't help much with spikes and surges. They will also cost an arm and a leg to ship. If you choose to use UPSs anyway, check to see if APC or one of the other decent UPS makers will sponsor you. I know APC likes to run success stories in their newsletter and this sounds like it might make for a good story. Also consider using 1 or 2 large high quality UPSs rather than a bunch of small/cheap ones.
2. Laptops. Someone else mentioned this option and it's a good one. Even though they cost more than desktops you'll save in shipping and you won't have to factor in the cost of UPSs. Most used laptops have something or other wrong with them (dead battery, flakey CD drive etc.) so factor in $100 or so per laptop for repairs/upgrades. Stick with IBM since spare parts and especially repair info is more easily available than others. I wonder if IBM might help you out with a good price on some off-lease laptops for a good cause?
3. CD based Distros. Seriously consider Knoppix or one of the other CD based Distros. If disk corruption was a major problem last time then this will avoid most of that problem.
Good luck.
The difference between auto mechanics and computer repairmen is that the mechanics have a union which forces licensing on its members to boost the price of labor
No, the difference is that it's actually HARDER to find a qualified and honest mechanic.
In my experience when people try to fix their own computers my billable hours go UP!
Ack! Maybe the AU is on to something :)
FWIW I had the exact same conversation with my bank (Bank One) a couple of years ago.
They are welcome to try to EFT funds from my bank account. It's kept delibretly empty for this reason.
I do that too but it isn't perfect. If your bank is anything like mine they'll just send the money and charge an overdraft fee. It's still better than having thousands of dollars locked up over a small dispute though.
If they try to take funds out without my authorization, then my bank gets involved.
When you sign up for PayPal you DO authorize them to take money out of your attached bank account pretty much whenever they feel like it.
On the other hand restoring data from backup on a working system is a LOT easier than reinstalling your OS and Apps. from scratch.
You're not going to get anything close to 30 miles out of 2.4 GHz while still staying within FCC limits AND being mobile.
If I were Bill Gates, I would simply pull all of my product out of Europe and laugh at them. Due to the market penetration of Windows, the EU would come crawling back, begging for Windows marketing to be reinstated.
That's EXACTLY why the EU needs to stick to their guns. Any company with that kind of power needs to be watched very carefully.
I agree (and said so in another thread). So, does anyone know of any server oriented debian based distros?
Agreed, but there is long and there is LONG. At some point Stable gets so old that just installing that one newer package you really need (maybe Exim or mgetty) means replacing half your system with non-debian versions due to dependancies. Then when it does come time to update to the next Stable you no longer have apt handling everything as seemlessly as it otherwise would.