Assume that the equivalent of this energy is dissipated as heat.
Sunlight on the Earth surface is on average 164W/m^2, though at polar circle this drops to 80-100W/m^2. Snow at best reflects 90%, absorbing 10%.
70,000,000/(80*0.1)=8,750,000m^2=8.75km^2
So one power plant is an equivalent of sunlight collected over 8.76km^2 area. Arctic ocean is 14,056,000km^2. Power plant increases the amount of heat absorbed in the area by.00006%
Alternatively the same amount of power would have to be produced by the same Gazprom using -- guess what? -- things that Gazprom happens to produce, namely fuel.
If you can't remember variable type, you definitely can't remember all details of its use and purpose in your program -- what means that you shouldn't be writing that program in the first place.
Name mangling is supposed to be performed by compilers, to enforce types when object files are linked into executable, and to distinguish between namespaces. Users aren't supposed to see it unless accidentally when linker reports errors that compiler did not catch (compilers helpfully demangle names in error messages).
As a person who actually did proprietary BIOS development, I can tell you that:
1. It's possible to make BIOS boot without VGA. 2. It's usually a massive pain in the neck.
One of my projects involved making one of the popular proprietary BIOSes boot on custom x86 hardware that lacked VGA. On the development board (where I could attach and remove PCI VGA card) all it took was setting console redirection in CMOS setup, turning the computer off, removing VGA and booting it again. On production board (with no built-in graphics adapter and no PCI slots) I also had to modify BIOS so console redirection was on by default.
Then I had to spend weeks rewriting console redirection code to make it work properly -- I had to rely on console messages when debugging custom hardware support, and existing implementation was way too crude to actually display all messages those. Existing implementations merely allocate "VGA" buffer in memory, occasionally check it for changes and send the updates to the serial port using VT100 escape sequences. "Occasionally" is a key word here.
First of all, most actual practices mentioned are well alive today -- it's just most programmers don't have to care about them because someone else already did it. And some (systems and libraries developers) actually specialize on doing just those things. Just recently I had a project that almost entirely consisted of x86 assembly (though at least 80% of it was in assembly because it was based on very old code -- similar projects started now would be mostly in C).
Second, things like spaghetti code and Hungarian notation are not "old", they were just as stupid 20 years ago as they are now. There never was a shortage of stupidity, and I don't expect it any soon.
The problem is, all those models are self-defeating because they describe behavior of people WHO ARE TRYING TO BEAT THOSE VERY MODELS. So basically the less we pretend to "know" about each other, the less damage players cause to each other while long-term growth is almost completely unaffected by it (wealth has to be somehow PRODUCED).
It's similar to algorithmic rock-paper-scissors game -- a very sophisticated model may hope to guess the outcome of another very sophisticated model that tries to guess it, however random moves are still guaranteed to achieve parity over long term with any of those models -- "sophisticated" or not.
Using a random decision within a mutually accepted "safe" range, and allocating smaller amounts of resources to "unsafe" ranges so it will be impossible to end up being overextended can be seen as an equivalent of "co-operation" in prisoner dilemma. On the other hand, trying to over-allocate resources that player (or other players) believe to be "unsafe" while trying to reduce risk with things that may or may not be reliable can be seen as an equivalent of "defection" in the same terms.
So yes, a conscious effort to choose random decisions to increase the amount of co-operation can be a better strategy as long as it does not suck resources completely away from more risky but vital for development parts of the market. You still have to evaluate risk, the difference is that it's OK to make decisions collectively instead of trying to find less risky moves that others are not aware of (and subject yourself to unpredictable and therefore usually underestimated risk of being wrong).
It's from slavery, one of the original American Values. You express and prove your success by controlling and hurting other people.
For the same reason relative popularity of S&M (among all forms of porn) in so high in US (compared to the same relative popularity in the rest of the world). Except Japan, where society built on strict hierarchy makes it even worse.
Could it be because Ubuntu is actually a highly successful project (based, of course, on a number of other highly successful projects such as Debian, GNOME, Linux kernel, etc.)? While Vista is a massive failure caused by a combination of intellectually bankrupt design and awful implementation -- and I mean, even more intellectually bankrupt and more awful than Microsoft usually is?
Or did you expect every opinion, no matter how idiotic or detached from reality, to be treated equally?
Seriously, if all the major Linux distro groups would just quit their bitching and work together, it could be amazing. But there is just way too much fragmentation right now. I really wish Red Hat would have absorbed Suse instead of Novell.
Ubuntu did that years ago. If you knew anything about Linux other than something you got a single Google search, you would know that.
Most people who buy computers in a store bring them home, then use those computers about as often as they use a treadmill or bread maker they bought before.
That said, I'd like to know this: where is the OSS alternative to Silverlight/Flash?
For video streaming?
1. mplayer 2. xine 3. vlc 4. totem
The idea that you need an interactive environment like Flash for something as trivial as video streaming is the result of one single accident -- that Windows Media Player comes with unusable set of codecs. Adobe merely bundled a set of usable codecs (the codecs that, BTW, everyone but Microsoft already provides) with their stupid scriptable GUI engine, the engine that causes more problems for end-user than it solves. Microsoft, geniuses as they are, instead of fixing their mistake and pushing Windows Media player with good DRM-less codecs as a superior video streaming client (that it actually would be if its default configuration was not total crap -- ex: MPC with any modern codec pack), started pushing another scriptable GUI engine, and lost due to its excessive crappiness.
Think of it -- they lost to Adobe, and not even to one of the better Adobe products but to stupid interactive vector graphics thing, re-purposed as a streaming video client. How pathetic is that?
(oh great, Slashdot's "text" mode chokes on '<'...)
They want something they can use to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations (which for most people means Microsoft Office).
1. OpenOffice.org is just fine for those purposes. Reading Microsoft Office documents, especially ones written by "power users" may be a problem, however small screen and <1G of RAM would likely cause worse limitations even when running Microsoft Office. 2. Why would anyone use a microscopic netbook screen for a PRESENTATION???? Are you out of your mind, or are you a Microsoft marketdroid, inventing your "arguments" just to fill the bandwidth with this drivel?
They want something to connect to their email (which often means they need Outlook).
No, it does not. Outlook is only usable for accessing email from inside the company network. If email is available from outside, and should be seen from multiple client computers, companies have to enable IMAP, what automatically means Thunderbird.
Also the calendar functionality is absolutely useless if you aren't at your desk, ready to rush to the meeting.
They want something they can use to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations (which for most people means Microsoft Office).
1. OpenOffice.org is just fine for those purposes. Reading Microsoft Office documents, especially ones written by "power users" may be a problem, however small screen and They want something to connect to their email (which often means they need Outlook).
No, it does not. Outlook is only usable for accessing email from inside the company network. If email is available from outside, and should be seen from multiple client computers, companies have to enable IMAP, what automatically means Thunderbird.
Also the calendar functionality is absolutely useless if you aren't at your desk, ready to rush to the meeting.
For the MythTV people (and it seems for everyone else who works on matters that remotely touch an ati card) it seems to be a hobbyist issue. Cool!
Of course, MythTV installation on a home PC is a hobbyist issue -- if it was not, I would get a job watching my DVR at home (that happens to be MythTV).
If you mean that MythTV can't be used in professionally installed DVR systems then you, of course, contradict the facts -- professionals simply choose hardware that works.
Because applications are not allowed to decide what they can and can not do -- operating system does that. Application has to have WAY TOO MUCH access to low-level functionality to safely read BIOS, so it has to run with higher privileges. You can make executable setuid root or add it to sudo list, so system will always run it with elevated privileges, however that will also elevate the required quality expected from application, or it would become useful for those who will try to get this "elevated access" to your computer by sending it malformed data. Since most application developers are not expected to write secure applications, very few of those applications run setuid or will automatically start with sudo.
Windows, on the other hand, has applications that either run way above the level of privileges they should have, or use idiotic "user access control" that can elevate access of absolutely anything unless you look really, really close. And this is why Windows will never be nearly as secure as Linux.
Re:Let me be the first critic
on
Linux Needs Critics
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
If you not only had to use Windows for "practical" reasons, and especially if you felt compelled to post that diatribe, it means that you never had any kind of motivation to seriously use *BSD. If you are not outright liar you are a poser, what is hardly an improvement.
Much could be done to make Linux a better desktop, but because it would make it a poorer server and appliance OS, those things are not likely to happen.
This is false. Nothing that makes a "better desktop" affects anything used by a server. Linux doesn't have "better desktop" because it already has the best "desktop" environments that were created for any OS. If someone made them "better" you wouldn't notice it and would contiunue bitching because your real problem has absolutely nothing to do with desktop design or infrastructure, it's presence of proprietary soeftware that you are accustomed to. No, I will not write Photoshop for Linux just because you promise to use Linux if I will do that -- it'smuch easier to tell you to fuck yourself and find a way to make Photoshop less popular -- in ten years that would produce a far superior outcome.
Re:Let me be the first critic
on
Linux Needs Critics
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
When working in the confines of my home, I happen to be a FreeBSD user
Slashdot Mirror
oh wait what?
The power plant produces 70MW.
Assume that the equivalent of this energy is dissipated as heat.
Sunlight on the Earth surface is on average 164W/m^2, though at polar circle this drops to 80-100W/m^2. Snow at best reflects 90%, absorbing 10%.
70,000,000/(80*0.1)=8,750,000m^2=8.75km^2
So one power plant is an equivalent of sunlight collected over 8.76km^2 area. Arctic ocean is 14,056,000km^2. Power plant increases the amount of heat absorbed in the area by .00006%
Alternatively the same amount of power would have to be produced by the same Gazprom using -- guess what? -- things that Gazprom happens to produce, namely fuel.
Facebook is in Palo Alto. For $50K/y you can barely pay for apartment, car, and maybe some kind of food.
in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... now!
If you can't remember variable type, you definitely can't remember all details of its use and purpose in your program -- what means that you shouldn't be writing that program in the first place.
Name mangling is supposed to be performed by compilers, to enforce types when object files are linked into executable, and to distinguish between namespaces. Users aren't supposed to see it unless accidentally when linker reports errors that compiler did not catch (compilers helpfully demangle names in error messages).
Any other use is pure idiocy.
As a person who actually did proprietary BIOS development, I can tell you that:
1. It's possible to make BIOS boot without VGA.
2. It's usually a massive pain in the neck.
One of my projects involved making one of the popular proprietary BIOSes boot on custom x86 hardware that lacked VGA. On the development board (where I could attach and remove PCI VGA card) all it took was setting console redirection in CMOS setup, turning the computer off, removing VGA and booting it again. On production board (with no built-in graphics adapter and no PCI slots) I also had to modify BIOS so console redirection was on by default.
Then I had to spend weeks rewriting console redirection code to make it work properly -- I had to rely on console messages when debugging custom hardware support, and existing implementation was way too crude to actually display all messages those. Existing implementations merely allocate "VGA" buffer in memory, occasionally check it for changes and send the updates to the serial port using VT100 escape sequences. "Occasionally" is a key word here.
First of all, most actual practices mentioned are well alive today -- it's just most programmers don't have to care about them because someone else already did it. And some (systems and libraries developers) actually specialize on doing just those things. Just recently I had a project that almost entirely consisted of x86 assembly (though at least 80% of it was in assembly because it was based on very old code -- similar projects started now would be mostly in C).
Second, things like spaghetti code and Hungarian notation are not "old", they were just as stupid 20 years ago as they are now. There never was a shortage of stupidity, and I don't expect it any soon.
The problem is, all those models are self-defeating because they describe behavior of people WHO ARE TRYING TO BEAT THOSE VERY MODELS. So basically the less we pretend to "know" about each other, the less damage players cause to each other while long-term growth is almost completely unaffected by it (wealth has to be somehow PRODUCED).
It's similar to algorithmic rock-paper-scissors game -- a very sophisticated model may hope to guess the outcome of another very sophisticated model that tries to guess it, however random moves are still guaranteed to achieve parity over long term with any of those models -- "sophisticated" or not.
Using a random decision within a mutually accepted "safe" range, and allocating smaller amounts of resources to "unsafe" ranges so it will be impossible to end up being overextended can be seen as an equivalent of "co-operation" in prisoner dilemma. On the other hand, trying to over-allocate resources that player (or other players) believe to be "unsafe" while trying to reduce risk with things that may or may not be reliable can be seen as an equivalent of "defection" in the same terms.
So yes, a conscious effort to choose random decisions to increase the amount of co-operation can be a better strategy as long as it does not suck resources completely away from more risky but vital for development parts of the market. You still have to evaluate risk, the difference is that it's OK to make decisions collectively instead of trying to find less risky moves that others are not aware of (and subject yourself to unpredictable and therefore usually underestimated risk of being wrong).
True, and I wonder where that urge comes from.
It's from slavery, one of the original American Values. You express and prove your success by controlling and hurting other people.
For the same reason relative popularity of S&M (among all forms of porn) in so high in US (compared to the same relative popularity in the rest of the world). Except Japan, where society built on strict hierarchy makes it even worse.
Could it be because Ubuntu is actually a highly successful project (based, of course, on a number of other highly successful projects such as Debian, GNOME, Linux kernel, etc.)? While Vista is a massive failure caused by a combination of intellectually bankrupt design and awful implementation -- and I mean, even more intellectually bankrupt and more awful than Microsoft usually is?
Or did you expect every opinion, no matter how idiotic or detached from reality, to be treated equally?
Another Microsoft marketdroid.
Seriously, if all the major Linux distro groups would just quit their bitching and work together, it could be amazing. But there is just way too much fragmentation right now. I really wish Red Hat would have absorbed Suse instead of Novell.
Ubuntu did that years ago. If you knew anything about Linux other than something you got a single Google search, you would know that.
Most people who buy computers in a store bring them home, then use those computers about as often as they use a treadmill or bread maker they bought before.
WalMart has tried to make a go of every OEM Linux distribution known to man.
Except Ubuntu, the one that they would use if they actually wanted to sell something with it.
Oracle: Computer Associates of the 21st century.
(buying troubled software companies and running them into the ground).
That said, I'd like to know this: where is the OSS alternative to Silverlight/Flash?
For video streaming?
1. mplayer
2. xine
3. vlc
4. totem
The idea that you need an interactive environment like Flash for something as trivial as video streaming is the result of one single accident -- that Windows Media Player comes with unusable set of codecs. Adobe merely bundled a set of usable codecs (the codecs that, BTW, everyone but Microsoft already provides) with their stupid scriptable GUI engine, the engine that causes more problems for end-user than it solves. Microsoft, geniuses as they are, instead of fixing their mistake and pushing Windows Media player with good DRM-less codecs as a superior video streaming client (that it actually would be if its default configuration was not total crap -- ex: MPC with any modern codec pack), started pushing another scriptable GUI engine, and lost due to its excessive crappiness.
Think of it -- they lost to Adobe, and not even to one of the better Adobe products but to stupid interactive vector graphics thing, re-purposed as a streaming video client. How pathetic is that?
(oh great, Slashdot's "text" mode chokes on '<'...)
They want something they can use to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations (which for most people means Microsoft Office).
1. OpenOffice.org is just fine for those purposes. Reading Microsoft Office documents, especially ones written by "power users" may be a problem, however small screen and <1G of RAM would likely cause worse limitations even when running Microsoft Office.
2. Why would anyone use a microscopic netbook screen for a PRESENTATION???? Are you out of your mind, or are you a Microsoft marketdroid, inventing your "arguments" just to fill the bandwidth with this drivel?
They want something to connect to their email (which often means they need Outlook).
No, it does not. Outlook is only usable for accessing email from inside the company network. If email is available from outside, and should be seen from multiple client computers, companies have to enable IMAP, what automatically means Thunderbird.
Also the calendar functionality is absolutely useless if you aren't at your desk, ready to rush to the meeting.
They want something they can use to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations (which for most people means Microsoft Office).
1. OpenOffice.org is just fine for those purposes. Reading Microsoft Office documents, especially ones written by "power users" may be a problem, however small screen and They want something to connect to their email (which often means they need Outlook).
No, it does not. Outlook is only usable for accessing email from inside the company network. If email is available from outside, and should be seen from multiple client computers, companies have to enable IMAP, what automatically means Thunderbird.
Also the calendar functionality is absolutely useless if you aren't at your desk, ready to rush to the meeting.
For the MythTV people (and it seems for everyone else who works on matters that remotely touch an ati card) it seems to be a hobbyist issue. Cool!
Of course, MythTV installation on a home PC is a hobbyist issue -- if it was not, I would get a job watching my DVR at home (that happens to be MythTV).
If you mean that MythTV can't be used in professionally installed DVR systems then you, of course, contradict the facts -- professionals simply choose hardware that works.
You do realize that most open source programs have been ported, right?
Actually no, I don't.
As far as media players are concerned, VLC is the second worst player on Linux after Totem.
Because applications are not allowed to decide what they can and can not do -- operating system does that. Application has to have WAY TOO MUCH access to low-level functionality to safely read BIOS, so it has to run with higher privileges. You can make executable setuid root or add it to sudo list, so system will always run it with elevated privileges, however that will also elevate the required quality expected from application, or it would become useful for those who will try to get this "elevated access" to your computer by sending it malformed data. Since most application developers are not expected to write secure applications, very few of those applications run setuid or will automatically start with sudo.
Windows, on the other hand, has applications that either run way above the level of privileges they should have, or use idiotic "user access control" that can elevate access of absolutely anything unless you look really, really close. And this is why Windows will never be nearly as secure as Linux.
If you not only had to use Windows for "practical" reasons, and especially if you felt compelled to post that diatribe, it means that you never had any kind of motivation to seriously use *BSD. If you are not outright liar you are a poser, what is hardly an improvement.
Much could be done to make Linux a better desktop, but because it would make it a poorer server and appliance OS, those things are not likely to happen.
This is false. Nothing that makes a "better desktop" affects anything used by a server. Linux doesn't have "better desktop" because it already has the best "desktop" environments that were created for any OS. If someone made them "better" you wouldn't notice it and would contiunue bitching because your real problem has absolutely nothing to do with desktop design or infrastructure, it's presence of proprietary soeftware that you are accustomed to. No, I will not write Photoshop for Linux just because you promise to use Linux if I will do that -- it'smuch easier to tell you to fuck yourself and find a way to make Photoshop less popular -- in ten years that would produce a far superior outcome.
When working in the confines of my home, I happen to be a FreeBSD user
No, you are not.
(pear goes here)