No, it doesn't, it runs Win98 the first with NO patches (except the "device name in path" fix). My old Win95B box was never patched either, and didn't have the problem.
Last time this came up in a discussion, a bunch of people chimed in with similar remarks -- some boxes had the issue, some didn't, with identical OSs. And it's not uncommon for Windows to interact with something else's bug, in fact a great deal of what Windows does is work around someone else's bugs.
I'll gladly take it off your hands... I collect WP stuff:)
I don't suppose you've got a copy of PhotoPaint (v8 or 9) for Linux? I know it exists, but can't seem to find it. It's the one WinApp I absolutely can't live without, that has no reasonable replacement on linux.
Actually, WP8 was a complete rewrite from the ground up, because the WP7 code was deemed an unmaintainable unfixable mess, from having so much stuff pasted on top of the old DOS code (itself stable and almost bug-free, but definitely not a native Win32 App any way you rewrapped it).
I've said that over and over (love the Ford and cheap plastic wheels analogy, that's it exactly) -- BSOD is a crap hardware and/or driver thing, it's not typically Windows' fault directly. I have rather aged machines that have never experienced a BSOD, but mine are built from good hardware with stable drivers.
The only time this venerable Win98 box BSODs is when some app does something illegal to the network (ie. Firefox or one of its kin, or occasionally uTorrent). The one and only BSOD my Win95 box ever had in 7 years of heavy use was at the hands of Mozilla, which had done something nasty to the TCP/IP stack. Yeah, software isn't supposed to mess directly with the hardware anymore... then care to explain why when I start Firefox, it always flashes the keyboard LEDs??
I don't recall what it was called, but Earthlink and a few other early ISPs provided their own TCP/IP stack and it was absolutely stable on Win3.1x, even under rather severe abuse. (What, you're not supposed to have 20 browser windows open at once??)
That part is true, but it only affected some computers (anecdotally, about half). It appears to be at root a bug in the timer chip on the motherboard, which in turn tickled a bug in Win9x. Hardware that lacked the bug would NOT crash at the 49 day mark.
[My old Win98 box evidently lacks this bug, as it has many times run more than 7 weeks at a crack. But it has a server-class motherboard. It is now almost 14 years old and still stable.]
And a lot of the stability problem wasn't Win9x at all (at least once we got past the initial version of Win95) but rather was due to shit hardware and buggy drivers, or sometimes just plain poor design, like the 3-slot memory thing. (On boards with only 3 RAM slots, Win98 is limited to 512mb RAM. No such limit on boards with 4 RAM slots.)
Buying a cheapass system then complaining because Windows crashes is like buying a Yugo then complaining it can't last the first round of the demolition derby.
Yeah, there's always lots of hopefuls and wannabes and do-anything-to-make-it losers in any glamour industry, tho they bring that on themselves with a self-delusional reality distortion filter. The sensible ones regard it as just another job (I say, having done bits and extras for several years myself).
Of course in the big-money ads we only see the winners, but those winners can hardly claim to be exploited at the wages they make.
Oh, I wasn't disagreeing; just happened to have that paper to hand and threw it in as evidence.:)
I think there's something to cultural genetics too -- selection pressure toward genetic tendencies that support or at least integrate with that culture (which in turn arose from a certain range of genotypes which were successful in that particular environment). There've been studies that support this for what jobs one is good at or desires to do; culture is just that concept expanded.
While that's all true (tho the idea that there's limited biodiversity in the desert is open to dispute; a great deal of that concept is proving to be lack of data) the problem is that such projects tend to be NIMBYized, with no regard to what's destroyed so long as it doesn't bother those with the gold. By some estimates we've already lost as much as half of the most-productive farmland through urbanization, largely because rurals have no political or economic power compared to urbans. Point being, what doesn't look necessary from one POV may in fact be critical in the long haul, and I think it's folly to rush into wholesale changes.
I see two ways this algae project could be done:
-- In isolation from the environment. This would allow maximal control and output, and would minimize wasted water, but would destroy whatever was under it. (This is the problem with the local solar arrays; the ground under them is as completely taken over as if it were paved with concrete, and you can see the "hot spot" when a storm front comes through... like we need more heat. It hits 122F here as it is.)
-- Constructed to be part of the natural edge-of-desert "green invasion" that happens in wet years, or as a sort of oasis. I see this as allowing the neighbourhood to adapt, and providing a scarce resource (water). This wouldn't be much different from natural greening (which isn't going to transform desert into jungle, but might recover it to grassland, which is what most of the American deserts *were* not that long ago), but there'd be a great deal more natural water loss, too. Probably uneconomical (thus I'd be astonished if it went this route).
And there's another question -- where does the water come from? the western aquifers and watersheds are already stressed (largely because of the major portion being siphoned off to the big metros). You're not talking a small amount of water here. Water costs alone may wind up being the same sort of negative net as the ethanol debacle (which probably uses more diesel to produce the corn than the corn can produce in ethanol; I've seen a report that it takes 5 gallons of diesel to make 4 gallons of corn ethanol!) Uncovered water in the desert is lost to evaporation at an astonishing rate (the figures on the L.A. aqueduct put it at 80%).
[And I wonder if anyone has considered the side effects, like twin-engine mosquitos and a billion rabbits. The coyotes can't keep up as it is.]
Myself, I don't have any fantasy about the "sanctity of life" or keeping the planet static either; species come and go all the time and have since the dawn of life. Human pressure is just one more form of natural selection (we're no more "unnatural" than any other animal), and as to the CO2 thing... well, it's been a lot higher in the past, and if the idea is to grow more biofuel, the slightly higher CO2 and a degree or two warmer climate may not be a bad thing.
BTW most of the western desert is at 2000 to 5000 feet. Sea levels aren't going to reach that unless there's massive plate upheavals, and then we'd have bigger problems.
I think the only real long-term answer is space-based solar, but I doubt that will happen until it can be made more profitable than terrestrial energy sources... which isn't likely to happen unless there's a complete crash (and then how do you fuel your space launch?) That's the downside of not having a space program that doesn't have to show a profit.
Marsh, prairie, lake country, and mountains. And nowhere else do the scavengers come in such droves. About all we don't have on the swamps and lakes are their twin-engine mosquitoes. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I didn't live here.
That's most likely the case. NIMBY with an expanded definition of backyard, meaning anywhere they've never seen or don't think looks "pretty" enough.
An AC also replied to the effect that he didn't have a problem with remaking the Earth to suit mankind... there's something to that as well. Apex predators always remake their world, as best they can, for their own benefit.
Trouble is, right now the apex predators are the corps marketing carbon credits.:/
But the American desert is not lifeless (far from it; I live in the desert and I've never seen a place, outside of a swamp, so filled to overflowing with both plants and critters -- all of them spiney and hungry!) What you propose is destroying large swaths of that ecosystem -- which is already rather fragile. How do you justify that? How is this any different from destroying a more-conventionally "pretty" ecosystem, like a forest, for the same purpose?
This is precisely my own observation, speaking as a professional dog trainer -- it's just the same with dogs. If you have a fight between males, they beat each other up, settle their differences, then go have a beer together. But females fight to kill, and they never forget who it was they decided had to die... and they will go to great lengths to achieve that.
Not to sound like a sexist pig, but IMO a lot of the social problems we see today are because of female-style solutions (precisely as you describe, draconian and inflexible), rather than just having it out and getting it over with and getting on with life, male-style. I've watched the political change across my lifetime, and it hasn't been for the good.
Yeah, skim milk is an invention of the devil. And of course its popularity makes the dairy middleman industry happy (I won't say dairies or groceries, neither of whom sees much profit from any of it), because the milk still sells for nearly the same price, and it's that much more butterfat available for higher-priced items like butter.
Autoimmune disease is pretty well established as primarily hereditary, but of course we can't have that, it might smack of xenocide. But we've saved every weak baby for two generations now, what do you *expect* that to do to our gene pool??!
As to small fat molecules, your gut breaks them down into fatty acids regardless (otherwise you can't absorb them), so that's not truly a concern.
The main problems with low-fat diets for children are retarded development and excessive food cravings -- whereas with enough fat (and protein), when they're satisfied they stop eating.
As you say... stupid. Natural whole milk is high in fat and protein for the damn good reason that the nursing infant (of whatever species) NEEDS it.
Being a long-ago biochem major, I'm going "But we already knew all this stuff!" Funny thing, this here carnivore wears the same clothes I did in college.:)
But yeah, used to be the obese adult wasn't typical and the obese kid was an extreme rarity; now both are the norm. And the two biggest differences between then and now are the anti-red-meat/fat craze and being glued to the computer screen instead of making their own entertainment (which usually required effort, tho downtime "wastes of time" like watching clouds and playing in the mud are just as important).
My grandmother was an old-fashioned thrifty Norwegian farm-girl who could always make something out of nothing, and make it delicious. I do fling-together cooking myself, and it can get real minimal... egg, flour, grease (quite possibly from the previous day's bacon), and leavening. Knowing the price of flour and sugar and corn meal sure does put a damper on my desire to buy cereal, ha. And since I mostly shop at Costco, I think everything comes in 50 pound bags.;)
There used to be good quality, reasonably-priced freezer meals but they went away around 30 years ago. What's sold today doesn't quite qualify as food.
I have a huge collection (two pickup-loads worth) of books from the heyday of usedbook stores... mostly SF/F. But prices went up and it's back to the library... (...such as it is. L.A. County has a wretchedly limited system, and no interlibrary loan outside of the county.)
Yeah, when I was in school (and this started in grade school), I read the newspaper over breakfast every morning. Not just the comics, but pretty much any article that caught my eye, until I ran out of time and had to leave for school (which I walked to, or pedaled my own bike). The addiction got worse once I discovered SF/F, that's for sure.:D
And as you say, back then a library was a *library*, not a distraction-center.
Come to think of it... where do I see the most kids at the local public library?? At the computers and over in the DVD racks. Not so much in the rather large children's area, unless escorted by an adult. (Tho when I was a kid, there was no such thing. Kids browsed the same stacks as adults.)
As to the nominal topic, while in-vitro meat might be great for space stations, here on Earth we're already in danger of losing the skills of our ancestors (how many of you can raise and butcher and smoke your own meat, or grow and can your own veggies?) The day may come when we'll regret that... well, the population needed culling anyway.:P
And they've got to fix it themselves (Larry Elder, who is one smart dude, says the same thing -- no one can fix it for you).
But if that's what the inner-city black culture is doing to itself... well, regardless of what opportunities they had or didn't, no one else *imposed* that culture on 'em.
(I haven't seen this elsewhere; my own black friends are just regular folks.)
I sometimes wonder if even black folks don't like rap much but that playing it (usually loud) regardless is a statement of "We bad, you don't fuck with us", a figurative growling at the world. But yeah, if the message to the kids is "be a prick, don't connect" that's not doing them any favours.
Speaking as someone who WAS a kid 50 years ago... I'd say kids back then read 3 or 4 or more like 10 times as much as kids today (even with the little spike caused by Harry Potter). Every household had a subscription to Humpty Dumpty or Holliday or some other children's rag, and to one or more serial books, whether the Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew or biographies or Zane Grey reprints. Adventure pulps were everywhere. We didn't have computers or video games and TV was a limited resource (two channels tops), so if we wanted entertainment we didn't have to make for ourselves -- our only real option was to read. So -- we read.
My mom's generation (now in their 80s) was much the same, if not more so.
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No, it doesn't, it runs Win98 the first with NO patches (except the "device name in path" fix). My old Win95B box was never patched either, and didn't have the problem.
Last time this came up in a discussion, a bunch of people chimed in with similar remarks -- some boxes had the issue, some didn't, with identical OSs. And it's not uncommon for Windows to interact with something else's bug, in fact a great deal of what Windows does is work around someone else's bugs.
I'll gladly take it off your hands... I collect WP stuff :)
I don't suppose you've got a copy of PhotoPaint (v8 or 9) for Linux? I know it exists, but can't seem to find it. It's the one WinApp I absolutely can't live without, that has no reasonable replacement on linux.
Actually, WP8 was a complete rewrite from the ground up, because the WP7 code was deemed an unmaintainable unfixable mess, from having so much stuff pasted on top of the old DOS code (itself stable and almost bug-free, but definitely not a native Win32 App any way you rewrapped it).
What =is= the percentage running Firefox 3.6? I've tried 3 different browsers and it's still "loading" 10 minutes later. (Ironically, one was FF3.6)
I've said that over and over (love the Ford and cheap plastic wheels analogy, that's it exactly) -- BSOD is a crap hardware and/or driver thing, it's not typically Windows' fault directly. I have rather aged machines that have never experienced a BSOD, but mine are built from good hardware with stable drivers.
The only time this venerable Win98 box BSODs is when some app does something illegal to the network (ie. Firefox or one of its kin, or occasionally uTorrent). The one and only BSOD my Win95 box ever had in 7 years of heavy use was at the hands of Mozilla, which had done something nasty to the TCP/IP stack. Yeah, software isn't supposed to mess directly with the hardware anymore... then care to explain why when I start Firefox, it always flashes the keyboard LEDs??
I don't recall what it was called, but Earthlink and a few other early ISPs provided their own TCP/IP stack and it was absolutely stable on Win3.1x, even under rather severe abuse. (What, you're not supposed to have 20 browser windows open at once??)
That part is true, but it only affected some computers (anecdotally, about half). It appears to be at root a bug in the timer chip on the motherboard, which in turn tickled a bug in Win9x. Hardware that lacked the bug would NOT crash at the 49 day mark.
[My old Win98 box evidently lacks this bug, as it has many times run more than 7 weeks at a crack. But it has a server-class motherboard. It is now almost 14 years old and still stable.]
And a lot of the stability problem wasn't Win9x at all (at least once we got past the initial version of Win95) but rather was due to shit hardware and buggy drivers, or sometimes just plain poor design, like the 3-slot memory thing. (On boards with only 3 RAM slots, Win98 is limited to 512mb RAM. No such limit on boards with 4 RAM slots.)
Buying a cheapass system then complaining because Windows crashes is like buying a Yugo then complaining it can't last the first round of the demolition derby.
Yeah, there's always lots of hopefuls and wannabes and do-anything-to-make-it losers in any glamour industry, tho they bring that on themselves with a self-delusional reality distortion filter. The sensible ones regard it as just another job (I say, having done bits and extras for several years myself).
Of course in the big-money ads we only see the winners, but those winners can hardly claim to be exploited at the wages they make.
Considering what these chicks get paid, we should all be so terribly exploited!
Hint: I know some make four figures per hour.
Oh, I wasn't disagreeing; just happened to have that paper to hand and threw it in as evidence. :)
I think there's something to cultural genetics too -- selection pressure toward genetic tendencies that support or at least integrate with that culture (which in turn arose from a certain range of genotypes which were successful in that particular environment). There've been studies that support this for what jobs one is good at or desires to do; culture is just that concept expanded.
By coincidence, yesterday I read (well, skimmed) this paper, which is basically the same principle except the focus was on intelligence:
http://tinyurl.com/7azcpea
Genes make us what we are; what we *do* with that genetic potential is what makes "spirit".
While that's all true (tho the idea that there's limited biodiversity in the desert is open to dispute; a great deal of that concept is proving to be lack of data) the problem is that such projects tend to be NIMBYized, with no regard to what's destroyed so long as it doesn't bother those with the gold. By some estimates we've already lost as much as half of the most-productive farmland through urbanization, largely because rurals have no political or economic power compared to urbans. Point being, what doesn't look necessary from one POV may in fact be critical in the long haul, and I think it's folly to rush into wholesale changes.
I see two ways this algae project could be done:
-- In isolation from the environment. This would allow maximal control and output, and would minimize wasted water, but would destroy whatever was under it. (This is the problem with the local solar arrays; the ground under them is as completely taken over as if it were paved with concrete, and you can see the "hot spot" when a storm front comes through... like we need more heat. It hits 122F here as it is.)
-- Constructed to be part of the natural edge-of-desert "green invasion" that happens in wet years, or as a sort of oasis. I see this as allowing the neighbourhood to adapt, and providing a scarce resource (water). This wouldn't be much different from natural greening (which isn't going to transform desert into jungle, but might recover it to grassland, which is what most of the American deserts *were* not that long ago), but there'd be a great deal more natural water loss, too. Probably uneconomical (thus I'd be astonished if it went this route).
And there's another question -- where does the water come from? the western aquifers and watersheds are already stressed (largely because of the major portion being siphoned off to the big metros). You're not talking a small amount of water here. Water costs alone may wind up being the same sort of negative net as the ethanol debacle (which probably uses more diesel to produce the corn than the corn can produce in ethanol; I've seen a report that it takes 5 gallons of diesel to make 4 gallons of corn ethanol!) Uncovered water in the desert is lost to evaporation at an astonishing rate (the figures on the L.A. aqueduct put it at 80%).
[And I wonder if anyone has considered the side effects, like twin-engine mosquitos and a billion rabbits. The coyotes can't keep up as it is.]
Myself, I don't have any fantasy about the "sanctity of life" or keeping the planet static either; species come and go all the time and have since the dawn of life. Human pressure is just one more form of natural selection (we're no more "unnatural" than any other animal), and as to the CO2 thing ... well, it's been a lot higher in the past, and if the idea is to grow more biofuel, the slightly higher CO2 and a degree or two warmer climate may not be a bad thing.
BTW most of the western desert is at 2000 to 5000 feet. Sea levels aren't going to reach that unless there's massive plate upheavals, and then we'd have bigger problems.
I think the only real long-term answer is space-based solar, but I doubt that will happen until it can be made more profitable than terrestrial energy sources... which isn't likely to happen unless there's a complete crash (and then how do you fuel your space launch?) That's the downside of not having a space program that doesn't have to show a profit.
What was the question? :)
Marsh, prairie, lake country, and mountains. And nowhere else do the scavengers come in such droves. About all we don't have on the swamps and lakes are their twin-engine mosquitoes. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I didn't live here.
That's most likely the case. NIMBY with an expanded definition of backyard, meaning anywhere they've never seen or don't think looks "pretty" enough.
An AC also replied to the effect that he didn't have a problem with remaking the Earth to suit mankind... there's something to that as well. Apex predators always remake their world, as best they can, for their own benefit.
Trouble is, right now the apex predators are the corps marketing carbon credits. :/
Just as we've long suspected... IPCC really stands for Interworld Police Coordinating Company. ;)
http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/582-more-science-fiction-from-the-ipcc.html
But the American desert is not lifeless (far from it; I live in the desert and I've never seen a place, outside of a swamp, so filled to overflowing with both plants and critters -- all of them spiney and hungry!) What you propose is destroying large swaths of that ecosystem -- which is already rather fragile. How do you justify that? How is this any different from destroying a more-conventionally "pretty" ecosystem, like a forest, for the same purpose?
A wise AC reminds us of this excellent work by Kipling:
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw96.html
This is precisely my own observation, speaking as a professional dog trainer -- it's just the same with dogs. If you have a fight between males, they beat each other up, settle their differences, then go have a beer together. But females fight to kill, and they never forget who it was they decided had to die... and they will go to great lengths to achieve that.
Not to sound like a sexist pig, but IMO a lot of the social problems we see today are because of female-style solutions (precisely as you describe, draconian and inflexible), rather than just having it out and getting it over with and getting on with life, male-style. I've watched the political change across my lifetime, and it hasn't been for the good.
Yeah, skim milk is an invention of the devil. And of course its popularity makes the dairy middleman industry happy (I won't say dairies or groceries, neither of whom sees much profit from any of it), because the milk still sells for nearly the same price, and it's that much more butterfat available for higher-priced items like butter.
Autoimmune disease is pretty well established as primarily hereditary, but of course we can't have that, it might smack of xenocide. But we've saved every weak baby for two generations now, what do you *expect* that to do to our gene pool??!
As to small fat molecules, your gut breaks them down into fatty acids regardless (otherwise you can't absorb them), so that's not truly a concern.
The main problems with low-fat diets for children are retarded development and excessive food cravings -- whereas with enough fat (and protein), when they're satisfied they stop eating.
As you say... stupid. Natural whole milk is high in fat and protein for the damn good reason that the nursing infant (of whatever species) NEEDS it.
Meat and grease is good for your metabolism anyway. Best Q&D article on the subject...
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
or
http://tinyurl.com/3hk3a2r
Being a long-ago biochem major, I'm going "But we already knew all this stuff!" Funny thing, this here carnivore wears the same clothes I did in college. :)
But yeah, used to be the obese adult wasn't typical and the obese kid was an extreme rarity; now both are the norm. And the two biggest differences between then and now are the anti-red-meat/fat craze and being glued to the computer screen instead of making their own entertainment (which usually required effort, tho downtime "wastes of time" like watching clouds and playing in the mud are just as important).
LOL!! So I'm not the only weirdo who thought of that old movie after all :)
My grandmother was an old-fashioned thrifty Norwegian farm-girl who could always make something out of nothing, and make it delicious. I do fling-together cooking myself, and it can get real minimal... egg, flour, grease (quite possibly from the previous day's bacon), and leavening. Knowing the price of flour and sugar and corn meal sure does put a damper on my desire to buy cereal, ha. And since I mostly shop at Costco, I think everything comes in 50 pound bags. ;)
There used to be good quality, reasonably-priced freezer meals but they went away around 30 years ago. What's sold today doesn't quite qualify as food.
I have a huge collection (two pickup-loads worth) of books from the heyday of usedbook stores... mostly SF/F. But prices went up and it's back to the library... (...such as it is. L.A. County has a wretchedly limited system, and no interlibrary loan outside of the county.)
Yeah, when I was in school (and this started in grade school), I read the newspaper over breakfast every morning. Not just the comics, but pretty much any article that caught my eye, until I ran out of time and had to leave for school (which I walked to, or pedaled my own bike). The addiction got worse once I discovered SF/F, that's for sure. :D
And as you say, back then a library was a *library*, not a distraction-center.
Come to think of it... where do I see the most kids at the local public library?? At the computers and over in the DVD racks. Not so much in the rather large children's area, unless escorted by an adult. (Tho when I was a kid, there was no such thing. Kids browsed the same stacks as adults.)
As to the nominal topic, while in-vitro meat might be great for space stations, here on Earth we're already in danger of losing the skills of our ancestors (how many of you can raise and butcher and smoke your own meat, or grow and can your own veggies?) The day may come when we'll regret that... well, the population needed culling anyway. :P
And they've got to fix it themselves (Larry Elder, who is one smart dude, says the same thing -- no one can fix it for you).
But if that's what the inner-city black culture is doing to itself... well, regardless of what opportunities they had or didn't, no one else *imposed* that culture on 'em.
(I haven't seen this elsewhere; my own black friends are just regular folks.)
I sometimes wonder if even black folks don't like rap much but that playing it (usually loud) regardless is a statement of "We bad, you don't fuck with us", a figurative growling at the world. But yeah, if the message to the kids is "be a prick, don't connect" that's not doing them any favours.
[Remember, the "c" in rap is silent!]
Speaking as someone who WAS a kid 50 years ago... I'd say kids back then read 3 or 4 or more like 10 times as much as kids today (even with the little spike caused by Harry Potter). Every household had a subscription to Humpty Dumpty or Holliday or some other children's rag, and to one or more serial books, whether the Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew or biographies or Zane Grey reprints. Adventure pulps were everywhere. We didn't have computers or video games and TV was a limited resource (two channels tops), so if we wanted entertainment we didn't have to make for ourselves -- our only real option was to read. So -- we read.
My mom's generation (now in their 80s) was much the same, if not more so.