From the article, these are the five major disadvantages identified by the CDC:
* No long-term solutions for the storage of nuclear waste are yet available, says the SDC, and storage presents clear safety issues * The economics of nuclear new-build are highly uncertain, according to the report * Nuclear would lock the UK into a centralised energy distribution system for the next 50 years when more flexible distribution options are becoming available * The report claims that nuclear would undermine the drive for greater energy efficiency * If the UK brings forward a new nuclear programme, it becomes more difficult to deny other countries the same technology, the SDC claims (emphasis mine)
While the first four are significant, the last one is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. If going nuclear becomes the model for leading first world countries, second and third one countries are going to demand the technology in order to follow the dominant pattern. If they're refused it, they'll probably feel very littlle remorse in cranking up their fossil fuel plants and polluting like elephants with dysentary in order to set up a little environmental blackmail. If every tinpot dictator is given nuclear tech, the chances of someone turning Manhatten or heaven forfend, downtown Vancouver into a radioactive cloud go up dramatically. Just on that point alone, it seems like going nuclear would only buy a respite of a few decades before the energy squeeze moves further down the chain and gifts us with a whole new set of problems.
Excellent, excellent point. The smart version of this system would be quietly and efficiently analyzing these kind of transactions behind the scenes, and swiftly realized that a retired Texan schoolteacher was a false negative, and moved on to more promising prey. Blanket banning any transfers over a certain amount is a lumbering, dumb idea, particularly as now the story is out, the real bad guys will be careful enough to avoid doing this from now on.
It reminds me of exactly what the Allies *didn't* do in the second world war when they cracked the Germans' codes - they made very sure they didn't let the Germans learn what they were doing, and thus avoided them changing their system and losing their information source.
I own a PSP, and most of my usage of it isn't games - it's mobile video. Even if Origami (or as it more probably will be titled, the Microsoft VistaPad XP Professional) can't do games, I think it has definite potential. The direct advantage it would have over the PSP is that since it runs XP natively, it could play any kind of movie format that is available on the PC without conversion. Having to convert everything to PSP video formats is a pain. That's almost enough for me to buy one right there, although obviously the battery life, screen, weight, hard drive size, wireless options, system toughness and price will factor in pretty heavily, not to mention that this entire thing is still in the "concept" stage and may change radically if and when it ever arrrives on a sales floor.
It's interesting to note that since Vista has such beefy 3D hardware requirements to run Aero Glass, the Microsoft VistaPad XP Professional won't actually be able to run Vista without reverting to XP-style effects. I don't want it to run some horrible lobotomized version of Windows Mobile though.
The other, more interesting question is... will it run Linux?
You may be right... there's a WHOLE lot of hot air around the PS3 at the moment, so I don't really believe anything about launch dates. I think they'd really really like to launch before this holiday season though, after that and I think they're going to get hammered. You don't give Microsoft two holiday seasons' head start in this game.
Exactly. Sony have planned this all along, they wanted Blu-Ray and the PS3 to come out simultaneously so that both systems would support each other. PS3 owners instantly create an base of people who can watch and play Blu-Ray movies, and movie buffs buy PS3s so they can watch their shiny new Blu-Ray disks. While I cannot vouch for the eventual success of the PS3 or Blu-Ray, I do think Sony made a solid business move by knitting these two pieces of technology together.
I guess it would have to be party-sanctioned Chinese porn, where nubile young things praise the work of Mao Zedong while doing all kinds of naughty stuff to each other.
Daily Tech posted a preview of the AOpen MiniPC just today - it's their answer to the Mac Mini, and worth a quick look. Not sure I like the blue color, but like one of the comments says, there's always spray paint.
I totally agree with you about the open standards, it's what has made the whole thing work. The problem with this pay-for-play podcast from Ricky Gervais is that it's iTunes only and DRMed so that it only works on iPods. Personally I listen to podcasts on my nifty little iRiver player, so I can't listen to this paid podcast without buying an iPod. Suddenly this thing seems a whole lot less cool, attractive, easy and open. Good on them and all, but I think their popularity is about to take a major dive, particularly when they have to compete with thousands of free shows that are already out there.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head. Remember that? Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
I gotta concur with this... when I was in the grips of WoW, my games-buying dropped to zero. My friends got into it, their friends got into it, and then the guys at work... it's got to be making some kind of impact on the industry. I cancelled my subscription (only until the expansion, I swear) and have started buying games again. Simple equation.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is an excellent game that I enjoyed very much, but the in-game advertising in it was horrible. Most of it was for Brothers in Arms, a game that I was considering playing until I was bombarded by advertising in Chaos Theory. Practically every computer screen showed it as a screensaver, there were posters in rooms throughout the game, and two guards even chatted about what a cool game it was. Result? I will *never* (1) play Brothers in Arms ever, which seems like the direct opposite of what they were trying to achieve.
(1) Well, maybe not never. If someone paid me $1000 to play it, I'd probably play it. If the Swedish Bikini Team offered their bodies to me to play the game, I'd probably do it too. If someone gave it to me as a present though, I'd probably smile and trade it in for store credit somewhere.
I dig this analogy. It works when imaginging switching your sports car's body to a SUV for one weekend, to take a bunch of friends and their luggage to the lake for a swim. Mac users might like to say that you can tranform your sports car into a utility vehicle to haul a load of rubbish to the dump, but both examples are valid.:-)
I agree, those cases are large. I was expecting 1U-sized cases at least... those cases look nice, but they're about the size of a large black obelisk unearthed on the moon.
I agree, this concept doesn't really fill my trousers with steam. Accurate portrayal of an IT shop sounds like really terrible television, and the way they are marketing it ("geeky losers") sounds about as compelling as watching paint dry. The BOFH had it right - I want to see beautiful, arrogant, clueless managers come downstairs and treat the IT people like crap, and the IT people to destroy their lives utterly. I want to see forged emails, lost project files, kiddie porn, corrupt backups, missing laptops, exploding power supplies, changing flights, recut keys, burst pipes, planted drugs, reprogrammed phones, obscene ringtones, ruined drycleaning, dangerous airconditioning, revoked security cards, hacked drug test results, changed resumes and crazed GPS units. Revenge is a great generator of humour, particularly when it's the little guy getting his own back.
Actually I hadn't heard of either (thanks for the info) but I was thinking more about using the laptop as a complete dev environment, with SQL server running on it as well. That way I could do SQL Server /.NET / ASP work without having to cart around a mini sized server box. If it's a greenfields project, I will choose MySQL / PHP hands down, but a good percentage of my work is maintenance or modifications of Microsoft stuff, which means having Windows somewhere along the line.
I had considered a Mac last time I was shopping for a laptop, but I couldn't get past the facts that:
a) I can't work on Microsoft products like SQL Server on a Mac b) The Mac only has a few games, compared to the PC
If these Intel Mac laptops arrive, and they really can be dual booted into XP, these two problems go away. I could easily see myself getting a Powerbook and using OSX for all my daily fiddling, and then booting into Windows when I needed to./me crosses fingers...
There's this weird bulb thing where the cable connects, and then a stalk that turns sideways and then the actual main bulb thing that goes inside your ear. I tried to get them to sit properly and the back bulbs got in the way. I tried twisting them around and just messing back and forth with them, and never really getting them to sit properly.
This is very true, and there's bugger all chance he'll be offered the floor at a shareholder meeting. This is just a weak attempt at trying to stay in the headlines, and squeeze any remaining publicity out of his connection to Take Two. Ignore him, in six months the only Jack Thompson anyone will remember will be the blokey Australian actor: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860233/
I totally agree... getting websites to work with the increasingly cruddy and updated IE5.2 was the most annoying part of my job. I had already started talking to work people about officially not supporting it anymore, since they could always use Safari or Firefox on Mac, so this event pretty much seals it.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article, these are the five major disadvantages identified by the CDC:
* No long-term solutions for the storage of nuclear waste are yet available, says the SDC, and storage presents clear safety issues
* The economics of nuclear new-build are highly uncertain, according to the report
* Nuclear would lock the UK into a centralised energy distribution system for the next 50 years when more flexible distribution options are becoming available
* The report claims that nuclear would undermine the drive for greater energy efficiency
* If the UK brings forward a new nuclear programme, it becomes more difficult to deny other countries the same technology, the SDC claims (emphasis mine)
While the first four are significant, the last one is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. If going nuclear becomes the model for leading first world countries, second and third one countries are going to demand the technology in order to follow the dominant pattern. If they're refused it, they'll probably feel very littlle remorse in cranking up their fossil fuel plants and polluting like elephants with dysentary in order to set up a little environmental blackmail. If every tinpot dictator is given nuclear tech, the chances of someone turning Manhatten or heaven forfend, downtown Vancouver into a radioactive cloud go up dramatically. Just on that point alone, it seems like going nuclear would only buy a respite of a few decades before the energy squeeze moves further down the chain and gifts us with a whole new set of problems.
Excellent, excellent point. The smart version of this system would be quietly and efficiently analyzing these kind of transactions behind the scenes, and swiftly realized that a retired Texan schoolteacher was a false negative, and moved on to more promising prey. Blanket banning any transfers over a certain amount is a lumbering, dumb idea, particularly as now the story is out, the real bad guys will be careful enough to avoid doing this from now on.
It reminds me of exactly what the Allies *didn't* do in the second world war when they cracked the Germans' codes - they made very sure they didn't let the Germans learn what they were doing, and thus avoided them changing their system and losing their information source.
I own a PSP, and most of my usage of it isn't games - it's mobile video. Even if Origami (or as it more probably will be titled, the Microsoft VistaPad XP Professional) can't do games, I think it has definite potential. The direct advantage it would have over the PSP is that since it runs XP natively, it could play any kind of movie format that is available on the PC without conversion. Having to convert everything to PSP video formats is a pain. That's almost enough for me to buy one right there, although obviously the battery life, screen, weight, hard drive size, wireless options, system toughness and price will factor in pretty heavily, not to mention that this entire thing is still in the "concept" stage and may change radically if and when it ever arrrives on a sales floor.
It's interesting to note that since Vista has such beefy 3D hardware requirements to run Aero Glass, the Microsoft VistaPad XP Professional won't actually be able to run Vista without reverting to XP-style effects. I don't want it to run some horrible lobotomized version of Windows Mobile though.
The other, more interesting question is... will it run Linux?
You may be right... there's a WHOLE lot of hot air around the PS3 at the moment, so I don't really believe anything about launch dates. I think they'd really really like to launch before this holiday season though, after that and I think they're going to get hammered. You don't give Microsoft two holiday seasons' head start in this game.
Exactly. Sony have planned this all along, they wanted Blu-Ray and the PS3 to come out simultaneously so that both systems would support each other. PS3 owners instantly create an base of people who can watch and play Blu-Ray movies, and movie buffs buy PS3s so they can watch their shiny new Blu-Ray disks. While I cannot vouch for the eventual success of the PS3 or Blu-Ray, I do think Sony made a solid business move by knitting these two pieces of technology together.
I guess it would have to be party-sanctioned Chinese porn, where nubile young things praise the work of Mao Zedong while doing all kinds of naughty stuff to each other.
Daily Tech posted a preview of the AOpen MiniPC just today - it's their answer to the Mac Mini, and worth a quick look. Not sure I like the blue color, but like one of the comments says, there's always spray paint.
Indeed, and sometimes fast food companies get busted there *, as well.
* link grabbed from an excellent post by thesubtlesnake on Shacknews about this topic.
I totally agree with you about the open standards, it's what has made the whole thing work. The problem with this pay-for-play podcast from Ricky Gervais is that it's iTunes only and DRMed so that it only works on iPods. Personally I listen to podcasts on my nifty little iRiver player, so I can't listen to this paid podcast without buying an iPod. Suddenly this thing seems a whole lot less cool, attractive, easy and open. Good on them and all, but I think their popularity is about to take a major dive, particularly when they have to compete with thousands of free shows that are already out there.
So... downloading a copy of a movie you already own on DVD is okay, because you're not actually bypassing the copy protection yourself?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head. Remember that?
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
I gotta concur with this... when I was in the grips of WoW, my games-buying dropped to zero. My friends got into it, their friends got into it, and then the guys at work... it's got to be making some kind of impact on the industry. I cancelled my subscription (only until the expansion, I swear) and have started buying games again. Simple equation.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is an excellent game that I enjoyed very much, but the in-game advertising in it was horrible. Most of it was for Brothers in Arms, a game that I was considering playing until I was bombarded by advertising in Chaos Theory. Practically every computer screen showed it as a screensaver, there were posters in rooms throughout the game, and two guards even chatted about what a cool game it was. Result? I will *never* (1) play Brothers in Arms ever, which seems like the direct opposite of what they were trying to achieve.
(1) Well, maybe not never. If someone paid me $1000 to play it, I'd probably play it. If the Swedish Bikini Team offered their bodies to me to play the game, I'd probably do it too. If someone gave it to me as a present though, I'd probably smile and trade it in for store credit somewhere.
Wow, you just zinged Simpsons quoting by using a Family Guy quote. I don't know whether I should mod you up, down or sideways. Maybe +1 Reflexive?
I dig this analogy. It works when imaginging switching your sports car's body to a SUV for one weekend, to take a bunch of friends and their luggage to the lake for a swim. Mac users might like to say that you can tranform your sports car into a utility vehicle to haul a load of rubbish to the dump, but both examples are valid. :-)
for (crap = 1; crap <= stupid_wanker; crap++) {
if (crap == i_hate_you) {
printf ("ERROR YOU BLOODY BASTARD");
log_error(boss_sucks);
}
}
I agree, those cases are large. I was expecting 1U-sized cases at least... those cases look nice, but they're about the size of a large black obelisk unearthed on the moon.
I agree, this concept doesn't really fill my trousers with steam. Accurate portrayal of an IT shop sounds like really terrible television, and the way they are marketing it ("geeky losers") sounds about as compelling as watching paint dry. The BOFH had it right - I want to see beautiful, arrogant, clueless managers come downstairs and treat the IT people like crap, and the IT people to destroy their lives utterly. I want to see forged emails, lost project files, kiddie porn, corrupt backups, missing laptops, exploding power supplies, changing flights, recut keys, burst pipes, planted drugs, reprogrammed phones, obscene ringtones, ruined drycleaning, dangerous airconditioning, revoked security cards, hacked drug test results, changed resumes and crazed GPS units. Revenge is a great generator of humour, particularly when it's the little guy getting his own back.
Actually I hadn't heard of either (thanks for the info) but I was thinking more about using the laptop as a complete dev environment, with SQL server running on it as well. That way I could do SQL Server / .NET / ASP work without having to cart around a mini sized server box. If it's a greenfields project, I will choose MySQL / PHP hands down, but a good percentage of my work is maintenance or modifications of Microsoft stuff, which means having Windows somewhere along the line.
I had considered a Mac last time I was shopping for a laptop, but I couldn't get past the facts that:
/me crosses fingers...
a) I can't work on Microsoft products like SQL Server on a Mac
b) The Mac only has a few games, compared to the PC
If these Intel Mac laptops arrive, and they really can be dual booted into XP, these two problems go away. I could easily see myself getting a Powerbook and using OSX for all my daily fiddling, and then booting into Windows when I needed to.
I totally agree - I've been looking at the Shure range recently and the E2Cs have a different design - check out the picture of them: http://www.shurecanada.com/images/e2c_large.jpg
There's this weird bulb thing where the cable connects, and then a stalk that turns sideways and then the actual main bulb thing that goes inside your ear. I tried to get them to sit properly and the back bulbs got in the way. I tried twisting them around and just messing back and forth with them, and never really getting them to sit properly.
The E3Cs though, felt a little weird for a second and then sat fine. http://www.shurecanada.com/images/e3c_large.jpg
How about we just let Mac IE die and keep gathering support for Firefox?
This is very true, and there's bugger all chance he'll be offered the floor at a shareholder meeting. This is just a weak attempt at trying to stay in the headlines, and squeeze any remaining publicity out of his connection to Take Two. Ignore him, in six months the only Jack Thompson anyone will remember will be the blokey Australian actor: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860233/
I totally agree... getting websites to work with the increasingly cruddy and updated IE5.2 was the most annoying part of my job. I had already started talking to work people about officially not supporting it anymore, since they could always use Safari or Firefox on Mac, so this event pretty much seals it.
It's conversion errors like that one that sent the Mars Climate Orbiter into oblivion... damn imperial units.