Unfortunately, it isn't easy to store electrical energy on a large scale. The wind doesn't blow harder, the sun doesn't shine brighter as the load increases. You have to use it as it is generated, and what will we do on a cloudy, calm day?
Besides, this suffers from the NIMBY syndrome. Nobody wants it sitting in their back yard. Distributed small scale generation would improve reliability, but nobody wants an ugly, noisy diesel generator operating near their house. Small scale hydroelectric projects would be great, except it would face opposition from those who would oppose damming up local creeks and rivers.
Public or private is immaterial. Private generation can be regulated and/or licenced under a charter that guarantees they will operate in accordance with the public interest. I a relative who worked for the (former) publicly owned Ontario Hydro, who can tell many tales of waste, for which we are all still carrying the debt.
Mad Mel is a buffoon. Last year he even allowed himself to be photographed wearing a Hell's Angels T shirt, alongside two chapter members. Nobody takes him seriously. That remark actually came from the mayor of NYC, not governer Pataki. From reading his comments, I don't think the current NY mayor isn't any better than Lastman.
Anyway, this finger pointing and political hay-making over where it started is downright foolish. The real question to ask is how a single point of failure managed to take down the entire grid. And it doesn't look like the system was any better on either side of the border. They were supposed to have fixed this, the last time it happened in 1965. (You think they would have learned something in nearly 40 years?) An overload at any point should result in load shedding and brownouts or selective rotating blackouts. It shouldn't cascade through the whole backbone. It is as if a single PC crashed and took down the internet.
"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve"
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto December 7th, 1941
Anybody not see the parallels? SCO has launched an unprovoked sneak attach against the sleeping giant, (IBM) and the Linux community. And this war will end the same way, with the legal equivalent of an atomic bomb delivered to SCO.
Yes, but all of the 13.7 million outstanding shares were not held by the executives.
From further down the article: Bench (the CFO) has sold 17,151 shares in three separate sales since March 10, reducing his holdings to 228,043 shares, according to the Washington Service and regulatory filings. Vice President Michael Wilson sold his entire stake of 12,000 shares between July 14 and July 18, the Washington Service said...
Also: Before Bench's sale, SCO insiders had not sold shares in more than a year, according to the Washington Service, a firm that tracks insider transactions.
A suddent >5% sale gets noticed, but nobody can dispute that a 100% sale is significant to say the least. (Imagine if Billy-boy suddenly dumped 5% of his billion+ MS shares?)
Larry Niven's ringworld series addresses the effect of near immortality on society. Having a baby requires a government permit, which is only issued to exceptional individuals, or the very, very lucky.
Of course, we had better figure out a way of getting off this stupid rock en masse, once we develop immortality.
Microsoft gains market share in developing countries, simply by looking the other way when it comes to piracy, until they feel they have been lulled into dependency. Then they unleash the hounds.
If the manufacturers are playing that game, then you simply don't sell used hardware - you offer a 99 year lease on it to whoever wants to "buy" it. That way, the ownership never changes.
I always hated.rpm dependency hell. (You can't get there from here) I lived through it with Red Hat and now to a lesser extent SuSE, but am thinking very hard about Gentoo or the Zynaut fork of the same, (Assuming they crank out some code sometime soon, crossing my fingers.) because I like the approach.
Yes, I considered debian, (and may yet go that route if Gentoo doesn't pan out) and love the idea of the overnight apt-get, but I currently run SuSE because they have a lot more meat on the bones out of the box. In fact, when I installed SuSE, it took me two days just to go through the list of what apps I wanted to install.
Installation ease matters more to me than it used to, I have my home firewall and server nice and stable, and set up the way I like it. Part of me loathes the idea of upgrading, because I remember how long it took to get the partitioning and all the services such as Samba set up just right.
SCO's defense has been that it must actively and not inadvertently release proprietary code as open-source software. "It requires them to take the position they didn't know what they were selling, which, depending on your point of view, is a hard argument to make. You would tend to think you'd know what you're selling," Osterman said.
From the afforementioned link: ----- The embedded Linux licensing move "is extortion based on fraud. They are out to shake down people for what they can get," said Inder Singh, chairman of the Embedded Linux Consortium and chief executive of embedded Linux and real-time operating system maker LynuxWorks (San Jose). Neither the consortium nor his company has had any communications from SCO on the royalty demand, Singh said. -----
Time to take the gloves off, and make sure words like "fraud", "extortion" and "racketeering" appear prominently in commentaries, to be picked up in the mainstream press whenever SCO issues press releases like this. Don't worry anymore about being sued for libel by SCO - The way things look, they will have the courts tied up until the end of the century, assuming there is anything left of them.
SCO claims that enterprise class UNIX would not have been possible without their intellectual property. I had no idea that the TiVO OS was enterprise ready!
How much of a cut do they want for the Sony PS2 Linux kit. Are they going after Sony too? Hell, let's see SCO take on the entire fortune 500! All the more to crank up their legal burn rate.
Anybody who has contributed to the other 99.9% of the kernel should start a class action suit against SCO for attempting to hijack THEIR intellectual property, and sell a binary only kernel image containing GPL code, in clear violation of the GPL. Any sharp lawyers out there want to pick this one up?
Just tell the CEO how much it will cost to replace the linux machines. Be sure to include Windows 2003 licences, downtime, retraining, etc. And remind him that the chance of his firm being successfully sued by SCO are similar to those of being hit by a soviet satellite.
This could be a good thing - it gives open source developers a change to observe and plug any weaknesses. While MS examines and reports on the weaknesses of OS solutions, take note and don't get angry - get coding!
Is it not possible to directly sue the current SCO directors? Methinks they could be held liable just like the Enron execs if this turns out to be a pump and dump scam.
Until April 2005, as I recall. From my own limited experiences with the legal system, (My father involved in a complex dispute over the family farm, and a drawn out divorce) these things move at a speed akin to continental drift. The whole thing will unfold in slow motion, and like an aging wine cannot be hurried. No matter who wins the 2005 hearing, there are bound to be further rounds of settlement talks. (in the unlikely event SCO gains a partial victory) Legal action involving other Linux distributors and SCO will play out over an even longer timeframe, if there is anything left of the carcass, assuming IBM wins.
This will be both a cash drain and an unfortunate distraction for Red Hat, but it has the positive effect of casting a longer shadow over SCO, since they are now fighting a second front. If other Linux distributors follow suit, (or perhaps band together into a class action?) and sue SCO then it will put even greater pressure on them.
Is it not possible for an ISP to avoid this nonsense by automatically deleting logs every 90 minutes or so, and forcing the release of IP addresses every few hours? This way when they receive a supoena, they honestly won't have a clue who was using what IP address at the time. If they do this as a matter of policy, then I don't think they could be touched.
I read a few years ago about how street kids in S. America were disappearing and the few times the bodies were ever found, it was with parts missing. In many parts of the world, dying people have the means as well as an obvious motive to seek out replacement parts, no questions asked.
under Mussolini that police would carry out roadside executions, instead of writing tickets. I bet they had very polite drivers, but would you want to live there?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it isn't easy to store electrical energy on a large scale. The wind doesn't blow harder, the sun doesn't shine brighter as the load increases. You have to use it as it is generated, and what will we do on a cloudy, calm day?
Besides, this suffers from the NIMBY syndrome. Nobody wants it sitting in their back yard. Distributed small scale generation would improve reliability, but nobody wants an ugly, noisy diesel generator operating near their house. Small scale hydroelectric projects would be great, except it would face opposition from those who would oppose damming up local creeks and rivers.
Public or private is immaterial. Private generation can be regulated and/or licenced under a charter that guarantees they will operate in accordance with the public interest. I a relative who worked for the (former) publicly owned Ontario Hydro, who can tell many tales of waste, for which we are all still carrying the debt.
Mad Mel is a buffoon. Last year he even allowed himself to be photographed wearing a Hell's Angels T shirt, alongside two chapter members. Nobody takes him seriously. That remark actually came from the mayor of NYC, not governer Pataki. From reading his comments, I don't think the current NY mayor isn't any better than Lastman.
Anyway, this finger pointing and political hay-making over where it started is downright foolish. The real question to ask is how a single point of failure managed to take down the entire grid. And it doesn't look like the system was any better on either side of the border. They were supposed to have fixed this, the last time it happened in 1965. (You think they would have learned something in nearly 40 years?) An overload at any point should result in load shedding and brownouts or selective rotating blackouts. It shouldn't cascade through the whole backbone. It is as if a single PC crashed and took down the internet.
"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant
and filled him with a terrible resolve"
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
December 7th, 1941
Anybody not see the parallels? SCO has launched an unprovoked sneak attach against the sleeping giant, (IBM) and the Linux community. And this war will end the same way, with the legal equivalent of an atomic bomb delivered to SCO.
Yes, but all of the 13.7 million outstanding shares were not held by the executives.
From further down the article:
Bench (the CFO) has sold 17,151 shares in three separate sales since March 10, reducing his holdings to 228,043 shares, according to the Washington Service and regulatory filings. Vice President Michael Wilson sold his entire stake of 12,000 shares between July 14 and July 18, the Washington Service said...
Also:
Before Bench's sale, SCO insiders had not sold shares in more than a year, according to the Washington Service, a firm that tracks insider transactions.
A suddent >5% sale gets noticed, but nobody can dispute that a 100% sale is significant to say the least. (Imagine if Billy-boy suddenly dumped 5% of his billion+ MS shares?)
Larry Niven's ringworld series addresses the effect of near immortality on society. Having a baby requires a government permit, which is only issued to exceptional individuals, or the very, very lucky.
Of course, we had better figure out a way of getting off this stupid rock en masse, once we develop immortality.
Hmm, an undisclosed fortune 500 company with only a very small number of linux servers, with a vested interest in helping SCO win this one.
M*CR*S*FT
Anybody want to buy a vowel?
Microsoft gains market share in developing countries, simply by looking the other way when it comes to piracy, until they feel they have been lulled into dependency. Then they unleash the hounds.
The correct spelling is colour, not color.
If the manufacturers are playing that game, then you simply don't sell used hardware - you offer a 99 year lease on it to whoever wants to "buy" it. That way, the ownership never changes.
I always hated
Yes, I considered debian, (and may yet go that route if Gentoo doesn't pan out) and love the idea of the overnight apt-get, but I currently run SuSE because they have a lot more meat on the bones out of the box. In fact, when I installed SuSE, it took me two days just to go through the list of what apps I wanted to install.
Installation ease matters more to me than it used to, I have my home firewall and server nice and stable, and set up the way I like it. Part of me loathes the idea of upgrading, because I remember how long it took to get the partitioning and all the services such as Samba set up just right.
The stuff I am growing in the basement needs lots of sunshine.
From the CNET article:
SCO's defense has been that it must actively and not inadvertently release proprietary code as open-source software. "It requires them to take the position they didn't know what they were selling, which, depending on your point of view, is a hard argument to make. You would tend to think you'd know what you're selling," Osterman said.
- Duh!
Actually, they will be in chapter 11 when this is over. Their IP will be auctioned off to pay off the creditors.
From the afforementioned link:
-----
The embedded Linux licensing move "is extortion based on fraud. They are out to shake down people for what they can get," said Inder Singh, chairman of the Embedded Linux Consortium and chief executive of embedded Linux and real-time operating system maker LynuxWorks (San Jose). Neither the consortium nor his company has had any communications from SCO on the royalty demand, Singh said.
-----
Time to take the gloves off, and make sure words like "fraud", "extortion" and "racketeering" appear prominently in commentaries, to be picked up in the mainstream press whenever SCO issues press releases like this. Don't worry anymore about being sued for libel by SCO - The way things look, they will have the courts tied up until the end of the century, assuming there is anything left of them.
SCO claims that enterprise class UNIX would not have been possible without their intellectual property. I had no idea that the TiVO OS was enterprise ready!
How much of a cut do they want for the Sony PS2 Linux kit. Are they going after Sony too? Hell, let's see SCO take on the entire fortune 500! All the more to crank up their legal burn rate.
Anybody who has contributed to the other 99.9% of the kernel should start a class action suit against SCO for attempting to hijack THEIR intellectual property, and sell a binary only kernel image containing GPL code, in clear violation of the GPL. Any sharp lawyers out there want to pick this one up?
Just tell the CEO how much it will cost to replace the linux machines. Be sure to include Windows 2003 licences, downtime, retraining, etc. And remind him that the chance of his firm being successfully sued by SCO are similar to those of being hit by a soviet satellite.
Nobody where I work is the least fazed by SCO....
I am looking forward to seeing the Gentoo fork (Zynot) release some code.
This could be a good thing - it gives open source developers a change to observe and plug any weaknesses. While MS examines and reports on the weaknesses of OS solutions, take note and don't get angry - get coding!
Talk to your lawyer:
Is it not possible to directly sue the current SCO directors? Methinks they could be held liable just like the Enron execs if this turns out to be a pump and dump scam.
Until April 2005, as I recall. From my own limited experiences with the legal system, (My father involved in a complex dispute over the family farm, and a drawn out divorce) these things move at a speed akin to continental drift. The whole thing will unfold in slow motion, and like an aging wine cannot be hurried. No matter who wins the 2005 hearing, there are bound to be further rounds of settlement talks. (in the unlikely event SCO gains a partial victory) Legal action involving other Linux distributors and SCO will play out over an even longer timeframe, if there is anything left of the carcass, assuming IBM wins.
This will be both a cash drain and an unfortunate distraction for Red Hat, but it has the positive effect of casting a longer shadow over SCO, since they are now fighting a second front. If other Linux distributors follow suit, (or perhaps band together into a class action?) and sue SCO then it will put even greater pressure on them.
How they thought television was going to obliterate the movie industry.
Is it not possible for an ISP to avoid this nonsense by automatically deleting logs every 90 minutes or so, and forcing the release of IP addresses every few hours? This way when they receive a supoena, they honestly won't have a clue who was using what IP address at the time. If they do this as a matter of policy, then I don't think they could be touched.
I am sure they could create about 2 million jobs as well. Ditto for prostitution.
I read a few years ago about how street kids in S. America were disappearing and the few times the bodies were ever found, it was with parts missing. In many parts of the world, dying people have the means as well as an obvious motive to seek out replacement parts, no questions asked.
under Mussolini that police would carry out roadside executions, instead of writing tickets. I bet they had very polite drivers, but would you want to live there?