There isn't a lot of information provided in the article or the project home page, but from what I can see, these experiments appear to be highly unethical. Introducing a non-native species into a pristine ecosystem just to see what happens? That is a recipe for disaster, and could very well end up destroying the ecosystem of the islands that these researchers are manipulating. I would be curious to find out if this research had to go through an ethics review like most other animal experiments or if they took advantage of local laws and simply bypassed any concerns about the long term effects of what they are doing.
Are you stoned? If the Stallman and the GPL is to blame for OpenBSD's demise, why hasn't Linux gone belly up?
Seems to me that if you want to point fingers, you should be pointing at the people who run the OpenBSD project. They are the ones who chose the BSD license, they are the ones who failed to secure any funding.
Using their failure to blame Stallman just makes you sound like an idiot with an ideological axe to grind.
This myth has been addressed extensively by the electric car community:
The Efficiency Advantage of EVs and Power Plants
EVs recharging from fossil-fueled power plants such as coal and oil have unique efficiency advantages over ICE vehicles. As a system, EVs and power plants are twice as efficient as ICE vehicles and the system that refines gasoline. See Table 4. Although there are losses associated with generating electricity from fossil-based fuels, EVs are significantly more efficient in converting their energy into mechanical power.
[ table showing 28% for EV's, 14 for ICE]
Since EVs operate more efficiently then their ICE-powered counterparts, overall fuel economy is higher. However, making a direct comparison between the fuel efficiencies of both vehicles is difficult. By applying a common unit of energy, such as British Thermal Units (Btus) we can get a fair comparison between the two.
Reference please. I have had a subscription to SCIAM for years and never once seen this mentioned. Most transit systems reduce the number of vehicles in off-peak times, so what you are saying doesn't make any sense.
Because if it were, some dumbass religious zealots from a backwards country would be using their influence to stifle things they don't like... oh wait, never mind.
Surely it is easier to stand on Apple's shoulders than to turn Red Hat into a workable general-purpose desktop OS?
Red Hat is already a workable general purpose operating system, but that is besides the point. MIT is not looking for a general purpose operating system, they are looking for a specialized, device specific OS that is open source. Despite all the Mac fanboy protestations, going with OS X would have been a step backwards.
Of course, these trains would be slow. It might take weeks for cargo to get from one end of australia or the US to another. It would also only work where the rail system is pretty flat, unless the aformentioned recovery of inertia can be done with high efficieny and capacity.... I guess the largest problem with this idea is that it would require a separate rail system, to keep the fast trains from being stuck behind these slow movers. Building such a rail system is expensive.
None of the problems you listed are really true. Diesel locomotives are already hybrid vehicles, only using the gas engines to generate electricity to drive the motors that push the train. One could add the solar panelled cars on top of the existing system to boost the fuel economy, just as hobbyists have done with those solar powered prius'. So you get the benefits of "free" electricity from the sun as well as the speed and capacity of the diesel generators when needed.
I found MythTV slow on my machine (p4 1.4Ghz) until I realized that it was still paging through all the channels I dont get on my satellite dish. So I went through and deleted all the unsubscribed channels and now when I bring up the listings, they come up immediately and page through quickly. With only 300 or so channels it is a LOT faster than the original 900-something channels.
Metcalfe predicted in 1999 that Linux would disappear when Windows 2000 came out and referred to open source as "open sores". I see no more reason to take anything he says seriously now than I did back then.
I'm not sure how Sony comes into play, but IBM made a deal with a company called Mercury for them to use the Cell. According to their press release, they will be using it to build stuff in "medical imaging, industrial inspection, aerospace and defense, seismic processing, and telecommunications".
On a related note, IBM has, contrary to your claim of "jumping off", just posted an article detailing the changes they will be contributing to Linux to take full advantage of the astonishing horsepower of the Cell chip.
Getting $2 billion dollars from Microsoft is helping to keep them afloat. I doubt it is any co-incidence that they basically dropped further development of JDS after they made that deal.
Running on "open hardware" means supporting a myriad devices, from thousands of vendors, of varying quality and who only care about Windows drivers. OS X "just works" primarily because of the limited amount of hardware that it is required to support. Move it to an open platform and you will quickly run into the same hardware support problems that Linux has only worse because unlike OS X, Linux has had over 10 years to work on it. That is not a winning position to be in for Apple.
I would rather have seen them benchmark Linux running on a real POWER system. The POWER5 CPU's that these systems from IBM use would benchmark significantly faster than the older generation CPUs used in Apple products.
Slashdot Mirror
Add "unless I am black or a native indian" to each of those and you have EXACTLY what the framers were thinking.
There isn't a lot of information provided in the article or the project home page, but from what I can see, these experiments appear to be highly unethical. Introducing a non-native species into a pristine ecosystem just to see what happens? That is a recipe for disaster, and could very well end up destroying the ecosystem of the islands that these researchers are manipulating. I would be curious to find out if this research had to go through an ethics review like most other animal experiments or if they took advantage of local laws and simply bypassed any concerns about the long term effects of what they are doing.
A vote for the Democrats is a vote for baby eating! (*)
(*) This message brought to you by the Republican Never-Ate-A-Baby Committee.
Good list, a couple of addendums and a comment.
First, Neko Case is actually American, although she seems (to my ears) to be quite heavily influenced by her Canadian connections.
My additions to your list:
Violet Archers
Final Fantasy (aka: Owen Pallett)
Egger
Tamara Williamson
As an added bonus, I'd like to point out (again, and again) that most of this great music can be bought in FLAC or MP3 format from Zunior!
I use MythTV with my satellite tuner. I just have an IR blaster to change the channels and a USB video capture device to save the video. Works great.
Are you stoned? If the Stallman and the GPL is to blame for OpenBSD's demise, why hasn't Linux gone belly up?
Seems to me that if you want to point fingers, you should be pointing at the people who run the OpenBSD project. They are the ones who chose the BSD license, they are the ones who failed to secure any funding.
Using their failure to blame Stallman just makes you sound like an idiot with an ideological axe to grind.
The Efficiency Advantage of EVs and Power Plants
EVs recharging from fossil-fueled power plants such as coal and oil have unique
efficiency advantages over ICE vehicles. As a system, EVs and power plants are twice as
efficient as ICE vehicles and the system that refines gasoline. See Table 4. Although there
are losses associated with generating electricity from fossil-based fuels, EVs are
significantly more efficient in converting their energy into mechanical power.
[ table showing 28% for EV's, 14 for ICE]
Since EVs operate more efficiently then their ICE-powered counterparts, overall fuel
economy is higher. However, making a direct comparison between the fuel efficiencies of
both vehicles is difficult. By applying a common unit of energy, such as British Thermal
Units (Btus) we can get a fair comparison between the two.
Read the rest. It is VERY eye opening.
http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf
Reference please. I have had a subscription to SCIAM for years and never once seen this mentioned. Most transit systems reduce the number of vehicles in off-peak times, so what you are saying doesn't make any sense.
Because if it were, some dumbass religious zealots from a backwards country would be using their influence to stifle things they don't like... oh wait, never mind.
Give these kids a steak and they will eat well for a day. Give them the knowledge to grow their own livestock and they will eat well for life.
If they want to, they will be able to. I still do not understand why giving them the freedom to do so is such a bad thing.
Red Hat is already a workable general purpose operating system, but that is besides the point. MIT is not looking for a general purpose operating system, they are looking for a specialized, device specific OS that is open source. Despite all the Mac fanboy protestations, going with OS X would have been a step backwards.
None of the problems you listed are really true. Diesel locomotives are already hybrid vehicles, only using the gas engines to generate electricity to drive the motors that push the train. One could add the solar panelled cars on top of the existing system to boost the fuel economy, just as hobbyists have done with those solar powered prius'. So you get the benefits of "free" electricity from the sun as well as the speed and capacity of the diesel generators when needed.
I found MythTV slow on my machine (p4 1.4Ghz) until I realized that it was still paging through all the channels I dont get on my satellite dish. So I went through and deleted all the unsubscribed channels and now when I bring up the listings, they come up immediately and page through quickly. With only 300 or so channels it is a LOT faster than the original 900-something channels.
Metcalfe predicted in 1999 that Linux would disappear when Windows 2000 came out and referred to open source as "open sores". I see no more reason to take anything he says seriously now than I did back then.
I'm not sure how Sony comes into play, but IBM made a deal with a company called Mercury for them to use the Cell. According to their press release, they will be using it to build stuff in "medical imaging, industrial inspection, aerospace and defense, seismic processing, and telecommunications".
On a related note, IBM has, contrary to your claim of "jumping off", just posted an article detailing the changes they will be contributing to Linux to take full advantage of the astonishing horsepower of the Cell chip.
Getting $2 billion dollars from Microsoft is helping to keep them afloat. I doubt it is any co-incidence that they basically dropped further development of JDS after they made that deal.
I'm taking bets on how long OpenSolaris is going to last before Sun sees clones popping up, eating into their sales, and kills it.
Running on "open hardware" means supporting a myriad devices, from thousands of vendors, of varying quality and who only care about Windows drivers. OS X "just works" primarily because of the limited amount of hardware that it is required to support. Move it to an open platform and you will quickly run into the same hardware support problems that Linux has only worse because unlike OS X, Linux has had over 10 years to work on it. That is not a winning position to be in for Apple.
The code behind the CBC "zed" site has been open sourced as well, under the Apache license no less!
I would rather have seen them benchmark Linux running on a real POWER system. The POWER5 CPU's that these systems from IBM use would benchmark significantly faster than the older generation CPUs used in Apple products.
You realize of course that your truck was not moving because of the gas engine, but because of the electric starter motor, right?
Yes it is.
Apple is already as arrogant and obnoxious as Microsoft. For example, despite the fact that OS X in its current form would not exist without the efforts of the Open Source community, Apple is still actively working behind the scenes in Europe to destroy the ability of the open source community to work with their proprietary formats.