If their figures are believable, Linux use has close to doubled in the past nine months. I would take such figures with a grain of salt since there seem to be divided opinions about the market share of the various OS'es.
These guys put OS X at 7.48% while W3C puts it at 4.91%. Linux gets 0.61% from Net Applications while W3C gives it 2.02%........ That's one helluva difference for two surveys that were both done in March 2008!
Solar cannot replace Coal. It's completely unsuitable for supplying base-load power because it only works half the time (at best).
Right now, nuclear is the only viable alternative to coal that we have. Based upon the proposals for new plants to be constructed, it looks like Nuclear is quickly becoming the preferred source for new construction. It won't happen overnight, but I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction. No it can't... and it won't ever be the one and only magic bullet to solve the climate crisis but it can be a part of the solution if you use it sensibly. For example, in Florida during the boiling hot summer a huge proportion of the power consumption is due to air conditioning systems. So how about this: Instead of powering your air conditioning system with energy from a coal fired power plant, power it in stead (completely or partially) with the solar cells on the roof of your house and better yet, make it possible to write the costs of installation off as a tax deduction to encourage adoption. I have seen the same solution employed successfully in Germany (except perhaps for the tax breaks) where the inhabitants of whole apartment buildings have banded together, upgraded the insulation on their building and used the ample roof space for solar cells to reduce their reliance on grid electricity for heating.
If you really are serious about decreasing your nation's carbon footprint it is going to require a multi faceted solution that includes promoting energy efficiency. It also involves using wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric power-plants or generally any renewable energy source you can think of and failing that nuclear energy, before resorting to coal or oil. It would also help a lot to get the masses of commuters to buy more energy efficient electric or pluggable hybrids cars and most of all to motivate industry to make them available to the consumer. And keep in mind that this list has hardly scratched the surface..... The problem is a lot more complex than just doing a 1:1 swap of coal fired power-plants for ones that have a small carbon footprint.
Name the applications, version of the OS and the hardware you're using. First a few annoying bugs Apple has taken way to long to fix: OS X 10.5.2, Mail.app, when accessing some IMAP4 accounts the "Get Mail" button fails to retrieve mail for some accounts. It's a know issue and it has been since the 10.5.2 update. I am not the only one to run into it, I checked the Apple forums and tested Mail from several different networks and two different Macs. I 'fixed' this bug in Mail.app by switching to Thunderbird.
OS X 10.5.2, When printing to a printer connected to an Airport Express the OS fails to connect to the printer. It's a know issue and it has been since the 10.5.2 update. If anybody has this problem see this thread, there is a fix available here.
OS X 10.5.2,Sometimes when putting the computer to sleep the screen stays black after it wakes again. The OS is up and running but the display does not light up. It looks as if this can be temporarily fixed by resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) but the problem will resurface.
OS X Various versions, Windows networking, i.e. Samba functionality is regularly broken by point updates of OS X. Of course this is usually solvable if you are a bit of a nerd. All you have to do is plow through sites like macwindows.com and hit the command line but it's still bloody annoying. And don't try to tell me this issue is all Microsoft's fault because I know this is Apple screwing up with Samba.
Now I know these aren't crashes but they are glaring examples of bugs in applications and system components that Apple is taking forever to fix and for me, as an Apple user, this is pretty galling. I need patches for bugs like this more often than every 2-3 months.
If you want crashes: Try installing iLife 06 apps: iMove, iDVD or iPhoto that shipped with the 10.4.x version of OS X that your mac shipped with on 10.5.x. On my MacBook Pro they all crash without warning, on a fresh install of Leopard even after upgrade to 10.5.2. The iMovie help still crashes on me 10.5.2 every time I try to access the instructions on how to hook up a camcorder. Of course one could argue that a user should not install iLife 06 on Leopard but I fail to see why I should shell out money for iLife 08 when 06 serves my purposes just fine.
I am a Mac user and have been for years. I am more satisfied with the Mac than I was either as a Windows or Linux user but I wish that Apple would stop swamping me with new cool features and spend a few months concentrating simply on making the OS and especially the iApps more stable. I like new features but I like stability more.
here are many US troops in Afghanistan who are also riding on horses. When they get into trouble they call in airstrikes and helicopter gunships. A little before 9/11, back when the Taliban were still in charge in Afghanistan, I saw a news report on one the networks. The reporter was describing an engagement between a small unit of Taliban T-55 tanks and Northern Alliance cavalry and to his amazement the cavalry successfully engaged the tanks. Afterwards they interviewed the N-Alliance commander and asked him if he didn't think it was an uneven fight. He replied that it was certainly very dangerous but if you pick your ground, separate the tanks from their infantry and then move in really fast, horsemen can knock out tanks. Not that I'd recommend cavalry as a fantastic new anti-armor weapon, these were special circumstances, but the value of horses for operations in places like Afghanistan has definitely been underestimated by western armies. The German army for one reluctantly concluded in the post WWII period after testing numerous types of air and ground vehicles that nothing can quite replace mules for operations in rough and mountainous terrain.
I suppose that must look sort of bizarre in an anachronistic meets prochronistic sort of way. Yes, it is kind of weird to see mules carrying guided missiles.
Not only that, but the star is 8000 light years distant, and the danger-zone was cited as 6500 light years. Even allowing for a 10% error in both figures... ... and besides, who needs gamma ray bursts anyway? We humans already are already doing an excellent job of driving everything to extinction that gets in our way.
The summary is wrong. It defies common sense that someone would be flying a 907kg (2,000lb, for SI-impaired ones) anything on a kite. Actually, the camera had around 21kg (46lb), as stated by TFA. But the kite was flying around 610m (2,000ft) high, and this is where I think the figure came from. I also doubt the a kite can carry 2000lb, but kites can still carry quite a load. During the years leading up to WWI observation baskets lifted by a string of kites were used for artillery spotting. Kites were later abandoned in favor of kite-balloons and aircraft but a pure kite could still lift at least one observer, his equipment and even a passenger. Some of the systems used were pretty similar to the one seen in the drawing on that page linked to in TFA except of course the kites were much larger. These systems actually saw some use during WWI. The altitude is about right though, 2000-2500 feet with a 4000 foot cable.
Won't it work even better on those of us who don't have the Alzheimer's, yet? Yes but unfortunately it still comes to late to help President Bush and his advisers.
Vista also automatically drops reports of problems directly to Microsoft, and isn't dependant on users to supply bug reports or problems like OS X, so when problems occur, MS usually knows before the users or the makers of the software that is causing problmes. So what you are saying is that Vista sends reports of crashes back to Microsoft without seeking the users permission? In that case the only difference between the two is that OS X seeks my permission and gives me the opportunity to describe what I was doing when the incident happend, before dispatching the bug report, which is the way I like it.
And this is not any different than the people that purchased new Macs and had to have 10.4 installed because of the application compatibility problems with Leopard. (Which ironically has more compatibilty and application problems than Vista, and yet only supports 1/1000th the software or hardware.) (Geesh Again) Criticizing OS X for not supporting every expansion card known to man is pretty silly. Windows and OS X are fundamentally different that way. While OS X is meant to run on a limited set of hardware, the bread and butter of Windows is the ability to run on any computer irrespective of what hardware components that computer is made up of. I have used Macs for years. The only Mac users I know for whom the effects of a limited hardware selection on upgradability are an issue are the ones who use Power Macs and want to upgrade their Graphics card or some such and they are a minortiy these days, at least among the Mac users I know. Most Mac users I know own either an iMac or some form of MacBook laptop and for us the limited selection of expansion hardware isn't an issue except for USB and Firewire peripherals and so far I have had no problems in that department.
Place a breakpoint somewhere you think will get hit (e.g. main), and then start stepping over and into functions. I usually attack this problem as follows:
Place breakpoint. Use step-in functionality to drop down a ways into the program, looking at things as I go. What are they doing, how do they work, etc.
Once I feel like I understand how a section of code works, I step over that code on subsequent visits. If I feel like this isn't taking me fast enough, I let the program run for a bit, then randomly break the program and see where I am.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Also, this should go without saying, but you should ask someone who works with you for a high-level overview of what the code is doing. The two of these combined should get you up to speed as quickly as possible. I agree, setting out and trying to thoroughly 'understand' a large code tree you have just been handed and trying to become thoroughly familiar with every aspect of it in a short amount of time is pretty pointless. The trick is to gain a good high level oversight over what the tree looks like, a rough idea of what individual 'branches' of it do, and roughly how they do it, and then only familiarize your self thoroughly with the 'branch' of the code tree you are working with at the moment. Depending on what kind of code it is we are talking about my personal choice of tools will vary. For Java code I tend to use either IntelliJ or Eclipse making heavy use of built in Javadoc dislpay functionality along with the entire arsenal of IntelliJ/Eclipse editor's navigation features plus the search feature and of course the debugger and let's not forget a copy of 'Java in a Nutshell'. For C/C++ code I tend to use vi, Cscope and GDB along with a big fat Unix Programming book I keep on my desk and a copy of both the Kernighan/Ritchie and Stroustrup C and C++ bibles.
I'm not saying that this method suits everybody but it works for me. Basically, no matter what language I am dealing with the method is always the same. When debugging for example, I try get an overview of the code tree, find an entry point, and then limit myself to thoroughly understanding only as much of the code as I absolutely have to as I trace my way through it until I have found the bug or located the critical section of code. If I am expected to join a development team and continue development of a particular code tree the method is a bit different. I usually familiarize myself thoroughly only with the particular 'branch' or 'twig' on the tree I am working with and disregard the rest of the tree as much as possible expanding the area I am thoroughly familiar with as needed. Jumping into a code tree you have never seen before is IMHO harder than debugging and it is pretty much impossible to do if you have a PHBs on your back who expects you to reach full productivity in a totally unreasonable time frame which is all to often the case.
OpenOffice is freely downloadable, and does everything almost anyone needs in an office suite. As a worker in the finance industry I have to disagree with you there. OpenOffice does not do everything. There is nothing that beats Microsoft Excel in the market today. That is the only tool that is the most useful part of Office and hasn't been replicated successfully to be useful enough. Think complex Excel macros, VBA code, binary excel-add-ins etc. Agreed we all love freedom in software, but most of the times, even if in my small company I want to replace Microsoft Office, I cannot because of Excel. This is where Microsoft's biggest market is. I think he was talking abut regular users when he said "does everything almost anyone needs in an office suite". I don't think that you, being a power user, are covered by that statement. This being said it's precisely Excel macros, VBA code, binary Excel add-ins etc.. along with insanely complicated MS file formats and protocols that are the reason you have to pay $500+ for an office suite since the locked nature of these things has pretty much made the Office software market as fluid as molasses. Microsoft has managed to make MS Office a "standard tool" in your industry which is pretty unfortunate since it means they have no competition and can charge customers like you pretty much anything they think your budget can take. Somebody asked on this forum the other day why we can buy an insanely complicated piece of software like a 3D Shooter game, complete with highly detailed graphics 3D polygon models, state-of-the-art computer graphics effects, a built in physics engine and AI that has the military interested for $50 and we still have to pay $500+ for an office suite? I think that's a pretty fair question. If you run into something in Excel, say... a bug, that is literally stopping you dead in your tracks in terms of productivity can you switch to a competing product when Microsoft drags it's feet for a few weeks before coming up with a fix? Would you like to have that option? You don't have it at the moment. If there is anybody in the Software developing world who could really use some fierce competition of all fronts it's Microsoft.
I've never had a crash, all of my software has worked perfectly. Of course, I did do a fresh install and selectively moved my old programs back - rather than an Upgrade. 0 problems. I wouldn't touch Vista with a 16 foot pike so I can only comment on Leopard. I have made it a simple rule never to upgrade OS X. I always do a clean install when a new release of OS X comes along. I migrate nothing from the old machine except the files that I keep on the desktop, the stuff in the Documents, Movies, Pictures and Music folders and the command-line files such as.bashrc,.vimrc etc... and perhaps saved games. No applications get migrated. Perhaps this is a leftover superstition from the days when I was a Windows 98 user but it has resulted in me not having had any problems with any of the OS X releases so far apart from minor issues with Samba. The clean install also resulted in the fact that I gained several Gigs worth of disk space. I also make a point of being careful about using non-Apple kernel extensions and installing Unsanity software and the likes. If one is really paranoid one should wait to install a new OS X version until at least the 10.X.2 update rolls out. I imagine the same pretty much applies to Windows, i.e. wait for the first service pack.
I won't say that I have had 0 problems with Leopard, it has proven to be more troublesome than most previous OS X releases. The keyboard problem is really the first one where they crossed my pain threshold. This issue does go away for a while if you reset your PRAM and NVRAM but eventually it comes back which is totally unacceptable. Another gripe I have is that iMovie HD 6 crashes on me while doing simple stuff like viewing a help topic. Other than this, and the absence of Java 6, I have few complaints. I especially don't understand why some people complain about useless features being added. If people think they are useless nobody is forcing them to use these features. Personally I rather like Spaces and the Time Machine backup utility is IMHO one of the best features to be added to OS X...... ever. I know there have been a number of backup solutions around for OS X for a long time starting with rsync, I have tried all of the desktop backup solutions for OS X but none of them can quite match the ease of use of Time Machine. It won't satisfy a professional server admin but for my purposes it is just fine.
One rather wonders what would have happened if in 2003 we hadn't sent an Army but just airdropped a few million pacifists into Iraq to sing songs and cuddle with everybody. We should've sent the guys who said we were going to be greeted with candy and flowers. George Bush, Karl Rowe and Dick Cheney playing Elite Commando and parachuting into Iraq? I'd pay good money to watch the documentary recording that event... That's of course assuming the film crew would have survived the adventure which seems pretty unlikely considering Dick Cheney's record on operating firearms, George Bush's record on making decisions and the effect that Karl Rowe's evil aura has on normal people who haven't been hardened by years of exposure to the secrets of Neocon philosophy.
Why? I mean help me understand how it simply farming the request to an external app, where the external app has the security problem, is a firefox problem? Because Internet browsers are one of the commonest entry-points for malware. While one could argue that this strictly speaking isn't a Firefox problem, I for one would still expect a modern web browser to place as many barriers as possible between itself and my OS. The fact that it is standard practice in IE 6/7 to sandbox apps like this as an internal plugin should be enough of a motivation for the Firefox team to go the same way. Being upstaged in security features by a Microsoft product is pretty embarrassing.
It's good to know that in Sweden cops have options beyond boxes of donuts.;P Sweden cops prefer prune danishes, apparently they are easier on the hemorrhoids...:P
Why not just start running installs you find from "somewhere? You would be surprised how many Windows admins (and some *NIX admins as well) will think nothing of running scripts and apps from very dubious sources on highly valuable mission critical servers. I have witnessed any number of messes caused by somebody running scripts they got from a link in some forum thread without bothering to get an idea of exactly what it was the thing did or even simply checking if the thing was compatible with the system version they were running them selves. David Hannum was right.... there is a sucker born every minute.
I won't belabor the point of American production, because the Americans had population and other advantages over Germany. Instead, let's look at the British, whom had less population, less natural resources, and still managed to produce more aircraft and more warships than the Germans, ultimately cutting Germany off from the sea and then taking Germany out of the air.
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages... The British hardly out produced the Germans in terms of aircraft, at least not by means their domestic industrial ablility alone. If they did If it hadn't been for massive American injections of both Aircraft and aviation materiel they would have come up significantly short. Exactly why people insist on ignoring the American Pre-Pearl Harbor contributions to the British war efforts mystifies me but the American contribution was significant. As for the British taking the Germans out of the air, this is pretty much a myth. It was the Americans and their 8th Air Force that did most of the work in this regard, at least over the Reich it self and in the west. Another forgotten major contributor to the task of destroying the Luftwaffe is the Soviet VVS Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily) or Red Air Force. Soviet Air Force contribution and Soviet army efforts in general are almost universally ignored by western observers or at best their contribution to the destruction of the Third Reich are relegated to a footnote. The British night bomber offensive over Germany was much less damaging to Germany's industry than the American one. And hitting industry, communications and most of all synthetic fuel production was what mattered. The RAF certainly did a lot of pure damage but this was mostly concentrated on massacring Axis Civilians. The single minded determination with which Sir Arthur 'Butcher' Harris pursued this goal (rather than hitting German industry where it hurt like the American tried to do)long after the RAF had gained the technology to perform precision night attacks hurt the Allied war effort. Even in 1945 the man was orchestrating large scale anti civilian raids like the one on Dresten rather than hitting militarily important targets and this to the disgust of many of his RAF bomber unit commanders in the field. To make matters worse some of his obsession with anti civilian operations even rubbed off on the US 8th air force leadership. In 1942 anti civilian raid made sense in a macabre kind of way but in 1945 they were plain stupid and even Churchill (who at one time contemplated allowing Harris to use chemical weapons in his anti civilian raids and was only talked out of it with great difficulty by Sir Alan Brooke Chief of the Imperial General Staff) finally acknowledged this.
As I'm sure you're already aware, OEM pricing is very different from full retail, plus it's not like he's going to need Office Professional (the one that would cost $460) just to get Powerpoint. Looking at MS's product matrix, he could get away with "Home & Student" and still get Powerpoint - that can be had from Newegg for $129, and includes Word, Office, Powerpoint, and OneNote. Compare to StarOffice, which is $70 - yes, you get most of the same functionality, but it's still not quite the same; the point, however, is that this is less than a third of the price you quoted.
Windows licensing, meanwhile, is not $210 for OEM licensing. A NewEgg search reveals that you can get OEM licensing in packs of three for roughly $410; that works out to under $140 per license. Obviously, mass-manufacturers of PCs get much more favorable licensing pricing than that, but, for the sake of argument, we'll say that the customer is paying $140. This is still $70 less than the number you pulled out.
So, at this point, we've spent no more than $270 in software. Is this $270 you don't have to spend if you get the WalMart Linux PC? Of course, but if the WalMart Linux PC doesn't fit your needs, $270 is a reasonable number, and certainly much more reasonable than the hyperbole-screaming $2500 you came up with on a whim. While I agree with what you said about the original price estimate being exaggerated I'm pretty sure most average user will simply download Windows, MS Office and other software off Bittorrent rather thay buy it (or more likely get somebody to do it for them since most average home user are not savvy enough to do so them selves). Keep in mind that this type of user is quite happy if he/she has a browser, e-mail client, Office Suite that can open basic MS Office documents and a few simple games (and when I say simple games I don't mean Warcraft I mean Tetris, Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc...). I have seen enough average home users (and long time Windows users) adapt to Mac OS X with little enough difficulty so why not a WalMart Linux PC? One of the biggest reasons why one of these WalMart Linux PCs might be switched to Windows would be the iPod/iTunes issue, failure to get a Digital Camera working with Linux or some similar small (but annoying) gadget related problem. While I'm sure many of these WalMart PCs will get a RAM 'upgrade' followed by a quick Windows XP, MS Office 'upgrade' some of them might actually end up running Linux for good. I'd actually be interested in finding out what the retention rate is for the original OS and software on these things.
In both cases I can see the point of the employer - they do not want you to have advance internal knowledge of their product, quit, and go "sell" yourself to their main competitor (and that could very well happen given how much some software is worth, how much money several companies have, and that those companies aren't the most honest places on the planet). I can also see why a software company would feel they own your software if you are a software engineer, they are paying you to do that and there is no way you can totally separate yourself from the company. The way I see it, if you work for somebody and do coding in your spare time it is only reasonable that you don't contribute to products that compete with your employers product with your spare time activities and that your spare time activities don't get in the way of what you are doing at work. Other than that I feel that the company I work for has no business telling me what I can and cannot do in my spare time. Draconian broadly worded contracts are something I will refuse to sign unless I absolutely cannot find another job and even then I will bail on the company in question at the first possible opportunity. It is simply a matter what the law says and a matter of you deciding how much abuse you are willing to put up with.
I was once asked to sign a new contract to replace my old one. This new contract contained very broadly worded IP ownership clauses that stated among other things:
The company owned any and all software I developed during the time they employed me.
The company forbad me to work on software projects for anybody else during the time they employed me.
If I quit my job company forbad me to go to work for a competitor for 6 months after I left them to protect them from "competition".
I felt the first two demands were way to broadly worded. The first one seemed to extend to anything I coded in my spare time even if it didn't compete with my employer's products in any way shape or form. The second point was so broadly worded it forbad me to contribute to any Open Source projects at all even though the company it self was only to happy to use open source software. This is a brand of hypocrisy that really pisses me off. The last point was simply outrageous since seemed to clash with freedom of employment laws in my country, an EU Nation. At the time they presented me with the contract this hadn't been tested in court. I refused to sign the contact along with several other developers. Eventually the PHBs and their legal weasels came back with a revised contract. After much arguing and several revisions it stated something along the lines of the following:
The company owned any and all software I developed during the time they employed me but only If I developed it during working hours. What I did in my spare time was my own business as long as I didn't create or contribute to a competing product. Basically, since they were in the database business, I could develop anything I wanted in my spare time except database software.
The company forbad me to work on software projects for anybody else during the time they employed me but this was now mostly restricted to working for competitors. As long as I didn't contribute to competing products, Open Source or Proprietary, I could do what I wanted to. Contributing to Open Source projects was OK as long as it wasn't a competing product. If I wanted to take a second job for pay I had to get permission and of course it could not be a competing product.
If I quit my job the company forbad me to go to work for a competitor for 6 months after I left them. They didn't want to drop this so we let them keep it since this clause had been successfully challenged in court by the time we were done arguing and thus it had become basically meaningless.
Given that the only popular Java application on Mac OS X, Azureus, is universally regarded as being slow, bloated, and ugly, I'd say the GP's impression is not at all outdated. I will admit that large Java GUI apps in particular can be slow and buggy and I can't say I can remember a whole slew of Java powered consumer applications that are popular among normal OS X users. I do however use quite a lot of Java apps at work. A few applications I can remember off the top of my head are development apps like Eclipse, Intellij, NetBeans, I have also on occasion used a of Java powered LDAP navigator, a whole collection of SAP utilities, Oracle utilities of various kinds... the list goes on. If I recall correctly I read somewhere that the new Lotus Notes 8 will be Java powered. There are probably a few more Java apps that I use but haven't noticed that they are Java apps since when are properly written and packaged, Java GUI apps can be quite hard to tell apart from regular OS X apps. It would certainly be a lot harder to use the Mac in a corporate environment without Java apps. I can certainly see why Java would be a good choice for quickly bolting together Java GUI Apps on Mobile OS'es and from a business point of view the 'write once run everywhere' cross platform aspect of Java has the same obvious appeal on mobiles as it has on desktop computers. I have seen anything from small programs like expense tracking software to things like fully fledged 3G streaming media players implemented in Java on Mobile Phones.
Sadly that's not really possible anymore, as each of the three desktop offerings is made less versatile than a standard desktop PC by design decisions. The Mini uses low-end laptop components, sacrificing performance in the quest for small and quiet. That's kind of the point with the Mac Mini. For most people the Mini is a cheap option for getting ahold of a Mac, either for them selves, their kids or for use as a media center and it does that reasonably well. If you need to be able to run the latest 3D Shooters at maximum resolution with the insanely expensive graphics or audio card of your choice buy a PC.
The iMac uses a laptop MB and processor (most notably limiting RAM expansion), can fit only one hard disk, and saddles the buyer with a non-reusable, non-upgradable monitor that will still be looking gorgeous when the iMac is obsolete. Again, the iMac is a compact computer that is not aimed at people doing insanely CPU intensive tasks that demand a top notch Graphics or Audio cards. Most people I know and who own one use it for surfing, e-mail, social networking word processing and other office-type work and their concept of 'Gaming' is a bit of Tetris, Solitaire or Chess. Oh, and according to the Apple store, the new iMac can now be upgraded with up to 4GB of RAM. Do you need 8GB?
You seem to have run into the usual disconnect between the needs of normal users and hobbyist computer builders. Macs are computers for people who don't have the time or the patience to build their own systems. This is exactly why I bought one, it does what I need it to, adequately, it works just fine out of the box and doesn't run Windows. If I was inclined to build my own system I would have done so and would I would probably be running Slackware on it just for that little bit of added tech-trouble for me to enjoy dealing with but I lost the patience for that sort of thing many years ago.
'The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores. That's funny, because I've heard the same thing about Dick Cheney. So if Dick Cheney is a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust of with a black hole at his center does that mean that George Bush is the black nothingness Cheney exists in?
But I think the more drastic changes that will help meet Kyoto targets are in the area of where power comes from. When the wealth redistribution costs to a country outweigh the cost of installing solar panels on every rooftop, then there will be change in that country. The same holds true for making more efficient cars or mass transit or wind farms, they will only ever be "the norm" when they cost less than just burning more fossil fuels. That Kyoto-carbon-tax is helping to push that day a little closer. Hmmmm.... define cost... what is meant by cost? Is it purely the monetary cost of using fossil fuels vs. building wind farms/putting solar cells on our roofs/building hybrid cars/using renewable energy sources wherever possible? Or are we allowed to count the extinction of entire species of animals and the environmental devastation caused by massive pollution and climate change as some of the costs of using fossil fuels? As far as I am concerned the cost of our fossil fuel addiction isn't just measured in money.
No, the attention is the means to the end. The end they seek is getting money they didn't earn. They have been doing this for decades, the only difference is that they have seem to have moved their focus from small (whale and seal hunting) nations to extorting high profile corporations with a vulnerable public image. I suppose there is no money to be made any more from pictures of cute seal pups splattered with fake blood and pictures of whales being butchered for food. I am generally sympathetic to the cause of environmentalism but I won't waste any time on listening to the likes of Greenpeace. I normally don't waste much time on fanatical fringe groups like Sea Shepherd either but they do deserve a bit of credit since they seem to share my low opinion of Greenpeace. I don't like Sea Shepherd's methods but at least the are actually doing something and not just caching in like Greenpeace.
Slashdot Mirror
A W3Counter survey (this is presumably the page where the 2% figure came from):
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
A Net Applications survey:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8
These guys put OS X at 7.48% while W3C puts it at 4.91%. Linux gets 0.61% from Net Applications while W3C gives it 2.02%........
That's one helluva difference for two surveys that were both done in March 2008!
Right now, nuclear is the only viable alternative to coal that we have. Based upon the proposals for new plants to be constructed, it looks like Nuclear is quickly becoming the preferred source for new construction. It won't happen overnight, but I'm confident that we're moving in the right direction. No it can't... and it won't ever be the one and only magic bullet to solve the climate crisis but it can be a part of the solution if you use it sensibly. For example, in Florida during the boiling hot summer a huge proportion of the power consumption is due to air conditioning systems. So how about this: Instead of powering your air conditioning system with energy from a coal fired power plant, power it in stead (completely or partially) with the solar cells on the roof of your house and better yet, make it possible to write the costs of installation off as a tax deduction to encourage adoption. I have seen the same solution employed successfully in Germany (except perhaps for the tax breaks) where the inhabitants of whole apartment buildings have banded together, upgraded the insulation on their building and used the ample roof space for solar cells to reduce their reliance on grid electricity for heating.
If you really are serious about decreasing your nation's carbon footprint it is going to require a multi faceted solution that includes promoting energy efficiency. It also involves using wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric power-plants or generally any renewable energy source you can think of and failing that nuclear energy, before resorting to coal or oil. It would also help a lot to get the masses of commuters to buy more energy efficient electric or pluggable hybrids cars and most of all to motivate industry to make them available to the consumer. And keep in mind that this list has hardly scratched the surface
OS X 10.5.2, Mail.app, when accessing some IMAP4 accounts the "Get Mail" button fails to retrieve mail for some accounts. It's a know issue and it has been since the 10.5.2 update. I am not the only one to run into it, I checked the Apple forums and tested Mail from several different networks and two different Macs. I 'fixed' this bug in Mail.app by switching to Thunderbird.
OS X 10.5.2, When printing to a printer connected to an Airport Express the OS fails to connect to the printer. It's a know issue and it has been since the 10.5.2 update. If anybody has this problem see this thread, there is a fix available here.
OS X 10.5.2,Sometimes when putting the computer to sleep the screen stays black after it wakes again. The OS is up and running but the display does not light up. It looks as if this can be temporarily fixed by resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) but the problem will resurface.
OS X Various versions, Windows networking, i.e. Samba functionality is regularly broken by point updates of OS X. Of course this is usually solvable if you are a bit of a nerd. All you have to do is plow through sites like macwindows.com and hit the command line but it's still bloody annoying. And don't try to tell me this issue is all Microsoft's fault because I know this is Apple screwing up with Samba.
Now I know these aren't crashes but they are glaring examples of bugs in applications and system components that Apple is taking forever to fix and for me, as an Apple user, this is pretty galling. I need patches for bugs like this more often than every 2-3 months.
If you want crashes:
Try installing iLife 06 apps: iMove, iDVD or iPhoto that shipped with the 10.4.x version of OS X that your mac shipped with on 10.5.x. On my MacBook Pro they all crash without warning, on a fresh install of Leopard even after upgrade to 10.5.2. The iMovie help still crashes on me 10.5.2 every time I try to access the instructions on how to hook up a camcorder. Of course one could argue that a user should not install iLife 06 on Leopard but I fail to see why I should shell out money for iLife 08 when 06 serves my purposes just fine.
I am a Mac user and have been for years. I am more satisfied with the Mac than I was either as a Windows or Linux user but I wish that Apple would stop swamping me with new cool features and spend a few months concentrating simply on making the OS and especially the iApps more stable. I like new features but I like stability more.
Place a breakpoint somewhere you think will get hit (e.g. main), and then start stepping over and into functions. I usually attack this problem as follows:
Place breakpoint. Use step-in functionality to drop down a ways into the program, looking at things as I go. What are they doing, how do they work, etc.
Once I feel like I understand how a section of code works, I step over that code on subsequent visits. If I feel like this isn't taking me fast enough, I let the program run for a bit, then randomly break the program and see where I am.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Also, this should go without saying, but you should ask someone who works with you for a high-level overview of what the code is doing. The two of these combined should get you up to speed as quickly as possible. I agree, setting out and trying to thoroughly 'understand' a large code tree you have just been handed and trying to become thoroughly familiar with every aspect of it in a short amount of time is pretty pointless. The trick is to gain a good high level oversight over what the tree looks like, a rough idea of what individual 'branches' of it do, and roughly how they do it, and then only familiarize your self thoroughly with the 'branch' of the code tree you are working with at the moment. Depending on what kind of code it is we are talking about my personal choice of tools will vary. For Java code I tend to use either IntelliJ or Eclipse making heavy use of built in Javadoc dislpay functionality along with the entire arsenal of IntelliJ/Eclipse editor's navigation features plus the search feature and of course the debugger and let's not forget a copy of 'Java in a Nutshell'. For C/C++ code I tend to use vi, Cscope and GDB along with a big fat Unix Programming book I keep on my desk and a copy of both the Kernighan/Ritchie and Stroustrup C and C++ bibles.
I'm not saying that this method suits everybody but it works for me. Basically, no matter what language I am dealing with the method is always the same. When debugging for example, I try get an overview of the code tree, find an entry point, and then limit myself to thoroughly understanding only as much of the code as I absolutely have to as I trace my way through it until I have found the bug or located the critical section of code. If I am expected to join a development team and continue development of a particular code tree the method is a bit different. I usually familiarize myself thoroughly only with the particular 'branch' or 'twig' on the tree I am working with and disregard the rest of the tree as much as possible expanding the area I am thoroughly familiar with as needed. Jumping into a code tree you have never seen before is IMHO harder than debugging and it is pretty much impossible to do if you have a PHBs on your back who expects you to reach full productivity in a totally unreasonable time frame which is all to often the case.
I won't say that I have had 0 problems with Leopard, it has proven to be more troublesome than most previous OS X releases. The keyboard problem is really the first one where they crossed my pain threshold. This issue does go away for a while if you reset your PRAM and NVRAM but eventually it comes back which is totally unacceptable. Another gripe I have is that iMovie HD 6 crashes on me while doing simple stuff like viewing a help topic. Other than this, and the absence of Java 6, I have few complaints. I especially don't understand why some people complain about useless features being added. If people think they are useless nobody is forcing them to use these features. Personally I rather like Spaces and the Time Machine backup utility is IMHO one of the best features to be added to OS X...... ever. I know there have been a number of backup solutions around for OS X for a long time starting with rsync, I have tried all of the desktop backup solutions for OS X but none of them can quite match the ease of use of Time Machine. It won't satisfy a professional server admin but for my purposes it is just fine.
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages... The British hardly out produced the Germans in terms of aircraft, at least not by means their domestic industrial ablility alone. If they did If it hadn't been for massive American injections of both Aircraft and aviation materiel they would have come up significantly short. Exactly why people insist on ignoring the American Pre-Pearl Harbor contributions to the British war efforts mystifies me but the American contribution was significant. As for the British taking the Germans out of the air, this is pretty much a myth. It was the Americans and their 8th Air Force that did most of the work in this regard, at least over the Reich it self and in the west. Another forgotten major contributor to the task of destroying the Luftwaffe is the Soviet VVS Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily) or Red Air Force. Soviet Air Force contribution and Soviet army efforts in general are almost universally ignored by western observers or at best their contribution to the destruction of the Third Reich are relegated to a footnote. The British night bomber offensive over Germany was much less damaging to Germany's industry than the American one. And hitting industry, communications and most of all synthetic fuel production was what mattered. The RAF certainly did a lot of pure damage but this was mostly concentrated on massacring Axis Civilians. The single minded determination with which Sir Arthur 'Butcher' Harris pursued this goal (rather than hitting German industry where it hurt like the American tried to do) long after the RAF had gained the technology to perform precision night attacks hurt the Allied war effort. Even in 1945 the man was orchestrating large scale anti civilian raids like the one on Dresten rather than hitting militarily important targets and this to the disgust of many of his RAF bomber unit commanders in the field. To make matters worse some of his obsession with anti civilian operations even rubbed off on the US 8th air force leadership. In 1942 anti civilian raid made sense in a macabre kind of way but in 1945 they were plain stupid and even Churchill (who at one time contemplated allowing Harris to use chemical weapons in his anti civilian raids and was only talked out of it with great difficulty by Sir Alan Brooke Chief of the Imperial General Staff) finally acknowledged this.
Windows licensing, meanwhile, is not $210 for OEM licensing. A NewEgg search reveals that you can get OEM licensing in packs of three for roughly $410; that works out to under $140 per license. Obviously, mass-manufacturers of PCs get much more favorable licensing pricing than that, but, for the sake of argument, we'll say that the customer is paying $140. This is still $70 less than the number you pulled out.
So, at this point, we've spent no more than $270 in software. Is this $270 you don't have to spend if you get the WalMart Linux PC? Of course, but if the WalMart Linux PC doesn't fit your needs, $270 is a reasonable number, and certainly much more reasonable than the hyperbole-screaming $2500 you came up with on a whim. While I agree with what you said about the original price estimate being exaggerated I'm pretty sure most average user will simply download Windows, MS Office and other software off Bittorrent rather thay buy it (or more likely get somebody to do it for them since most average home user are not savvy enough to do so them selves). Keep in mind that this type of user is quite happy if he/she has a browser, e-mail client, Office Suite that can open basic MS Office documents and a few simple games (and when I say simple games I don't mean Warcraft I mean Tetris, Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc...). I have seen enough average home users (and long time Windows users) adapt to Mac OS X with little enough difficulty so why not a WalMart Linux PC? One of the biggest reasons why one of these WalMart Linux PCs might be switched to Windows would be the iPod/iTunes issue, failure to get a Digital Camera working with Linux or some similar small (but annoying) gadget related problem. While I'm sure many of these WalMart PCs will get a RAM 'upgrade' followed by a quick Windows XP, MS Office 'upgrade' some of them might actually end up running Linux for good. I'd actually be interested in finding out what the retention rate is for the original OS and software on these things.
I was once asked to sign a new contract to replace my old one. This new contract contained very broadly worded IP ownership clauses that stated among other things:
I felt the first two demands were way to broadly worded. The first one seemed to extend to anything I coded in my spare time even if it didn't compete with my employer's products in any way shape or form. The second point was so broadly worded it forbad me to contribute to any Open Source projects at all even though the company it self was only to happy to use open source software. This is a brand of hypocrisy that really pisses me off. The last point was simply outrageous since seemed to clash with freedom of employment laws in my country, an EU Nation. At the time they presented me with the contract this hadn't been tested in court. I refused to sign the contact along with several other developers. Eventually the PHBs and their legal weasels came back with a revised contract. After much arguing and several revisions it stated something along the lines of the following:
You seem to have run into the usual disconnect between the needs of normal users and hobbyist computer builders. Macs are computers for people who don't have the time or the patience to build their own systems. This is exactly why I bought one, it does what I need it to, adequately, it works just fine out of the box and doesn't run Windows. If I was inclined to build my own system I would have done so and would I would probably be running Slackware on it just for that little bit of added tech-trouble for me to enjoy dealing with but I lost the patience for that sort of thing many years ago.
Just my 2c.
....because they're in the middle of a pissing match with Google. Are they competing for distance or accuracy?