And you know this how? Oh right, your "partner" who has no interest in making their former country seem less evil than it was...
Um. I know many former East Germans, what they tell me is that it just wasn't such a bad place to live. What about you? How many do you know?
It's not as if people aren't getting killed along the US/Mexican border:
Right there you have twice as many killed trying to cross the US/Mexican border in 4 years than the total estimated killed trying to cross the Berlin wall in the 20 years it stood. Or even the Israeli/Palestinian border. Then there's the thousands killed in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles". Or the tens of thousands dying in Iraq right now for American oil interests.
Get this THROUGH YOUR IDIOT HEAD, PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO LEAVE WERE EXECUTED. Revisionism is great till something like that shuts idiots like you up. You might want stop being a sanctimonious prick and take a look at the real world. There isn't a country in the world which doesn't have blood on it's hands.
I'm curious: what's your opinion on building a wall to prevent the economic migration of people from increasingly poor Mexico to the wealthier USA? Stupid. Ultimately futile. Economics always wins in the end. All building walls does is cause pain, suffering and temporarily a larger difference between the two economies which will require a larger correction when it comes down.
I have to say though that the US is becoming poorer by the month, the dollar is falling.
"Economic migration" does sound a lot more reasonable than "fleeing in terror" -- but it's still flight, it still indicates fear, and the people were still walled in. I'm not defending it. It was a dumb solution from dumb politicians. East Germany though wasn't the massive gulag it's often painted as.
That demand is being satisfied by MIPS, ARM, Transmeta, Intel etc. There's no competitive advantage there for Sun. No reason to buy their kit over anyone else's.
When I think about Intel, AMD with their multi-core CPU's, and Linux/Windows with its operating systems Sun/Solaris really does not stand a chance anymore. Well, if they find a CEO with a clue, they could still be. It'd take 5-10 years with someone who can see beyond the next 3 months though.
The Berlin wall ran *right* through the centre of Berlin. Through the middle of houses even. How else would you enforce a national border like that other than with a wall? Go see what's left of it some time.
The wall itself wasn't to prevent people fleeing in terror, not initially anyway, but to prevent economic migration of people from the increasingly poor east to the wealthier west. My partner, an East German, reckons the ignorance and hyperbole about East Germany is laughable.
Is selling us the *FASTEST* damned hardware in existence. I mean, really cool innovative stuff, orders of magnitude faster than the commodity stuff that Linux runs on. Their research teams should be working on stuff like reconfigurable computing and replacing disks with something faster.
But they are not there, so there's no particular reason to use Sun hardware or Solaris. People only make a choice about which Operating System to use when there are no other compelling reasons to choose product X over product Y. Actually by Opening Solaris up they've pretty much admitted that there's no real reason to choose it or any of their products over Linux. If there was, they'd be damned sure to keep the algorithms secret.
Yeah, I know Sun came up with that one a decade or so ago, and they were spot on, but it wasn't quite there.
The real winners will be the ones who can come up with transparent computing. By that, I mean if the machine is standalone it uses local resources, disk, cpu etc. If it's plugged into a network it automatically makes use of the best available hardware on the LAN.
We must solve these problems through technology because making other people change their lifestyle is just not practical. Sorry, this is bollocks. The solution is simple. Make energy expensive.
Human beings consume resources up to the limit of what is available unless they have to pay for it. Well we consume huge amounts of energy because it's cheaper than it has been ever before in history. If energy was expensive people would be very careful about how they used it, including buying more energy efficient devices.
We should be actively sending microbes/bacteria etc to the other planets in our system with every mission. Survivors will only make the terraforming process faster and easier.
Yeah, I'm working on a network in a box at the moment, Xen based though. Should be able to scale it from a single user on a single physical machine to thousands of users on tens of machines with almost zero downtime. Very nifty technology.
Don't bother with the electrical side, look at what you use the energy for. In general, it's
1: Air Conditioning in hot countries. 2: Space heating. 3: Water heating.
So instead, use the heat directly. Solar thermal panels are about 80% efficient, which is many times better than photovoltaic. You use a heat pump rather than conventional AC to provide space cooling. Move the heat around instead of generating it.
BTW, instead of pumping the heat used for generation out into the sea, they could supply it to a District Heating network and up the efficiency of the plant from 30% to around 85%.
Partially mirrored double/triple glazing, double walled roofs with an air gap, glass wool thermal insulation in the ceiling and between walls and cavity wall insulation on external walls.
Then of course they also usually expel the heat into the air rather than storing it underground. Think heat pump. You pump the heat out into the ground outside during the day and suck it back in for space/water heating in the evenings. A heat pump can be 400% efficient or so, so if you power it from the solar cells you can effectively quadruple the effective generating power of the cells.
Your networking gurus will find that an interesting one. In reality though, a couple of days is probably good enough in the event of something like an earthquake, you may find that people have other things on their minds when that amount of shit hits the fan.
Still, kudos on planning for it. Most IT depts are taken completely by surprise and the business goes down in flames. A decent global filesystem (like AFS) helps massively.
The simple truth is, both sides of the Atlantic have too much in common, culturally, intellectually, and even in political systemic functions, to find themselves enemies. Lol. Sorry, this is just naive.
Both Europe and North America have significant water resources, so I doubt that will be the issue that divides us. Potable water is an energy issue. The supply of sweet water for drinking and particularly irrigation is not unlimited, then it becomes an energy issue, expending energy for desalination. And with ready and cheap sources of energy becoming more scarce...
Hopefully, 50 years from now, we will have weaned ourselves off of oil enough that it too will not be an major problem. Yes... on to what? There isn't anything out there with the energy density and extraordinarily low cost. There will almost certainly be wars over the oil as it becomes more scarce. Hell, they've already started.
That's assuming the EU doesn't simply collapse, which is what my money is on. It began in 1957 and is now the single largest market in the world, any country which leaves the EU will find itself locked outside that free market, enduring huge financial hardship. Not going to happen.
The war in Iraq was justified by saying that we'll take down a dictator who was trying to commit genocide lol.
World War 1 and 2 were both about global resources, Iraq is no different. Pretty much all wars are about gaining advantage over other nations. They're dressed up in pretty clothes to make the people follow the politicians.
But the EU? Remember, they've got the French - I think I'll sleep comfortably against that threat!:) Hmmm, yes, but they'll also have the Germans and the British on the same side.
Huh? The EU started out as, and effectively remains, an economic organization. How did they "keep the peace". What on earth do you think wars are about? They're about getting hold of resources that other countries hold. The EEC created a large free trade area which allows the money and resources to flow freely. There has been no need for war.
Sooner or later, European countries will have to start footing their defense bill. Actually no, they won't.
They'll be able to do what the US is doing right now, as the Euro replaces the US Dollar as the world reserve currency they'll be able to print Euros without producing inflation within the EU. The inflation will be externalised. Essentially, the rest of the world will finance the EU defence budget.
Europe's been at peace for "a fucking long time", but 50 years isn't enouigh to change huma nature, and the nature of humans is to make war. But of course, the war will be against whoever holds the resources which are needed within the EU. Like the massive oil fields in Saudi and Iraq...
This is what happens when you dive into a program like this motivated by little more than spite. Frankly I expected better from someone with a 4 digit ID.
Anyway, it has fuck all to do with spite and everything to do with military independence. It's geopolitics. Whether you like it or not, the EU is gradually unifying into what will become a direct competitor to the US for world resources. Where there are trade rivalries today we will have wars tomorrow, and to conduct a war against a country who controls vital information systems like GPS would be stupidest folly.
Oh, you don't think the EU would ever go to war against the US? Just wait till the oil and water start running out.
Every now and then one of you antibank nuts crawls out of the woodwork. Coming from an Anonymous Coward.
Regardless, when is the last time a major bank failed? How many depositors lost money when that bank failed? Who said anything about failure? I'm talking about the normal operation, and how many depositors lose money? Every single one with an account returning less than the rate of inflation.
the main reason gold is valuable is because people think it is valuable. As well as the other features, gold has an inherently limited supply, hence the perception of value. Dollars or in fact, any of the existing currencies, do not. Particularly when banks have been allowed to loan out the same cash tens or hundreds of times and charge interest on each of the loans.
You try keeping 200 grand in cash Why would I do that? It's much better invested in emerging markets. I put 200 grand into the bank it sits there for a year and loses value. At the end of a year, it's only worth 190 thousand.
Which is what most bankers recommend: keep some cash on hand for liquidity to meet your short-term needs, and invest the rest in quality stocks & bonds. Eh, no. That'd be a financial advisor. Your bank advises you to spend all of your money and take out a huge loan, maybe a credit card or two as well.
You trust bankers at all? WTF? Bankers are the scum of the earth.
The banking system we have just now, the world over is the single largest scam ever created[1]. And it's backed and enforced by the various governments. Most people have no idea how our money and banking system works, they still think it's backed by gold or something. What bankers do, is take your money, invest it at a healthy rate of return and then give you marginally more than the rate of inflation, if they're feeling generous, less if they're not and they're usually not. Then they charge you for the use of your money!
Here's a hint. Avoid banks like the plague. Keep your value in some commodity other than money, have a small bank account or two with just enough cash to get by.
Most browsers don't bother at the moment because most domains domains like 99% of.com and.org generally don't have domain certificates. However it could easily be made compulsory for things like.bank so the browser and all other apps could rely on the certificate being there and could say with authority, this is a valid name and domain.
This is long overdue, the flat nature of.com is frankly, shite.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think we format code this way?
Nuff said.
It's not as if people aren't getting killed along the US/Mexican border:
e.g.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/rm99.html#Anchor-
Right there you have twice as many killed trying to cross the US/Mexican border in 4 years than the total estimated killed trying to cross the Berlin wall in the 20 years it stood. Or even the Israeli/Palestinian border. Then there's the thousands killed in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles". Or the tens of thousands dying in Iraq right now for American oil interests. Get this THROUGH YOUR IDIOT HEAD, PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO LEAVE WERE EXECUTED. Revisionism is great till something like that shuts idiots like you up. You might want stop being a sanctimonious prick and take a look at the real world. There isn't a country in the world which doesn't have blood on it's hands.
I have to say though that the US is becoming poorer by the month, the dollar is falling.
That demand is being satisfied by MIPS, ARM, Transmeta, Intel etc. There's no competitive advantage there for Sun. No reason to buy their kit over anyone else's.
The Berlin wall ran *right* through the centre of Berlin. Through the middle of houses even. How else would you enforce a national border like that other than with a wall? Go see what's left of it some time.
The wall itself wasn't to prevent people fleeing in terror, not initially anyway, but to prevent economic migration of people from the increasingly poor east to the wealthier west. My partner, an East German, reckons the ignorance and hyperbole about East Germany is laughable.
Is selling us the * FASTEST * damned hardware in existence. I mean, really cool innovative stuff, orders of magnitude faster than the commodity stuff that Linux runs on. Their research teams should be working on stuff like reconfigurable computing and replacing disks with something faster.
But they are not there, so there's no particular reason to use Sun hardware or Solaris. People only make a choice about which Operating System to use when there are no other compelling reasons to choose product X over product Y. Actually by Opening Solaris up they've pretty much admitted that there's no real reason to choose it or any of their products over Linux. If there was, they'd be damned sure to keep the algorithms secret.
Sounds like the same algorithm most drivers use.
The network is the machine.
Yeah, I know Sun came up with that one a decade or so ago, and they were spot on, but it wasn't quite there.
The real winners will be the ones who can come up with transparent computing. By that, I mean if the machine is standalone it uses local resources, disk, cpu etc. If it's plugged into a network it automatically makes use of the best available hardware on the LAN.
It's all so manual at the moment.
Human beings consume resources up to the limit of what is available unless they have to pay for it. Well we consume huge amounts of energy because it's cheaper than it has been ever before in history. If energy was expensive people would be very careful about how they used it, including buying more energy efficient devices.
We should be actively sending microbes/bacteria etc to the other planets in our system with every mission. Survivors will only make the terraforming process faster and easier.
Yeah, I'm working on a network in a box at the moment, Xen based though. Should be able to scale it from a single user on a single physical machine to thousands of users on tens of machines with almost zero downtime. Very nifty technology.
3-5 on average.
Don't bother with the electrical side, look at what you use the energy for. In general, it's
1: Air Conditioning in hot countries.
2: Space heating.
3: Water heating.
So instead, use the heat directly. Solar thermal panels are about 80% efficient, which is many times better than photovoltaic. You use a heat pump rather than conventional AC to provide space cooling. Move the heat around instead of generating it.
BTW, instead of pumping the heat used for generation out into the sea, they could supply it to a District Heating network and up the efficiency of the plant from 30% to around 85%.
In hot areas.
i.e.
Poor insulation.
Partially mirrored double/triple glazing, double walled roofs with an air gap, glass wool thermal insulation in the ceiling and between walls and cavity wall insulation on external walls.
Then of course they also usually expel the heat into the air rather than storing it underground. Think heat pump. You pump the heat out into the ground outside during the day and suck it back in for space/water heating in the evenings. A heat pump can be 400% efficient or so, so if you power it from the solar cells you can effectively quadruple the effective generating power of the cells.
Rather than the name.
Your networking gurus will find that an interesting one. In reality though, a couple of days is probably good enough in the event of something like an earthquake, you may find that people have other things on their minds when that amount of shit hits the fan.
Still, kudos on planning for it. Most IT depts are taken completely by surprise and the business goes down in flames. A decent global filesystem (like AFS) helps massively.
World War 1 and 2 were both about global resources, Iraq is no different. Pretty much all wars are about gaining advantage over other nations. They're dressed up in pretty clothes to make the people follow the politicians.
They'll be able to do what the US is doing right now, as the Euro replaces the US Dollar as the world reserve currency they'll be able to print Euros without producing inflation within the EU. The inflation will be externalised. Essentially, the rest of the world will finance the EU defence budget. Europe's been at peace for "a fucking long time", but 50 years isn't enouigh to change huma nature, and the nature of humans is to make war. But of course, the war will be against whoever holds the resources which are needed within the EU. Like the massive oil fields in Saudi and Iraq...
Anyway, it has fuck all to do with spite and everything to do with military independence. It's geopolitics. Whether you like it or not, the EU is gradually unifying into what will become a direct competitor to the US for world resources. Where there are trade rivalries today we will have wars tomorrow, and to conduct a war against a country who controls vital information systems like GPS would be stupidest folly.
Oh, you don't think the EU would ever go to war against the US? Just wait till the oil and water start running out.
You trust bankers at all? WTF? Bankers are the scum of the earth.
The banking system we have just now, the world over is the single largest scam ever created[1]. And it's backed and enforced by the various governments. Most people have no idea how our money and banking system works, they still think it's backed by gold or something. What bankers do, is take your money, invest it at a healthy rate of return and then give you marginally more than the rate of inflation, if they're feeling generous, less if they're not and they're usually not. Then they charge you for the use of your money!
Here's a hint. Avoid banks like the plague. Keep your value in some commodity other than money, have a small bank account or two with just enough cash to get by.
[1] Look up fractional reserve banking.
Certificate.
.com and .org generally don't have domain certificates. However it could easily be made compulsory for things like .bank so the browser and all other apps could rely on the certificate being there and could say with authority, this is a valid name and domain.
.com is frankly, shite.
Most browsers don't bother at the moment because most domains domains like 99% of
This is long overdue, the flat nature of