There are many situations in which it's possible to have surplus electrical energy and no practical way to store huge quantities of it, or electrical energy in the wrong place and long distance power cables lose a significant amount... For example...
Nuclear - not as easy to dial down as burning fuels, when there's less requirement for energy like at night there can be a surplus. Solar - the best places to harness solar energy are the deserts, which are a long way from the places that would like to use that energy, also solar produces power only during the day, nothing at night. Wind - inconsistent, sometimes the wind blows, sometimes it does not, if the wind is strong during a period of low demand you don't want to waste that energy.
All depends what they wanted to use the energy for... Solar energy is not very useful for a car, since the surface of the car cannot collect enough energy to drive the car... Electrical energy needs to be stored, and batteries are much heavier than tanks of fuel relative to the amount of energy stored within.
Well, if you could build these machines and make them largely self sustaining, you could use a lot of desert land that is otherwise worthless to house such machines... Transporting electrical energy from such remote areas may be impractical, but transporting a liquid fuel could be far more useful.
They really need to be split up into an OS company and an apps company, then the OS company can sell their basic featureless OS to OEMS to bundle together with third party apps to create a usable system.
Getting an OS that doesn't include basic tools like a pdf viewer is no good for anyone, but neither is being forced to take a half assed app that can't be removed because it comes by default with the os...
Linux offers a good compromise by having multiple distributions which make different choices, *AND* the fact that all of them let you easily remove and replace the bundled apps if you want.
Yeah, there's big warnings on most automatics about not towing them over a certain speed for fear of damaging the transmission... A manual in neutral should be fine tho? If it's OK to be dragged along by another vehicle, surely it's fine to coast... Also, does the water system that cools the engine even usually connect to the transmission?
It lets you save password protected pdf files... not tried opening one.. You need the plugin for pdf editing, i don't think it's part of the default install, but it really should be. Editing works quite well too, providing the pdf files were properly created in the first place (ie they arent just bitmap dumps as created by some very half assed pdf writing tools)
Don't use word to save word docs unless you can verify they look normal in the same version and configuration of word used by whoever you send the files to...
Version makes a big difference, as to arbitrary configuration options such as your default printer.
Yes... Using word also forces you to use windows (yes i am aware there is a very different and not fully compatible mac version)... So it takes away your freedom to choose your operating platform...
It also makes it much harder to write standalone scripts to parse the documents, and if you want to use macros (which require the entire runtime bloat of word running) you only have one language you can use, which is going to be deprecated soon (and the mac version has its own incompatible language for macros).
I can be far more productive in my job with a linux workstation and files in open easily manipulated formats.
Well, when it comes to cooling, your engine isnt running so it won't be generating heat, your still travelling so there will be some natural airflow, the only heat you could have would be any friction being generated.
What's amusing, is that devices like mobile phones encourage people to use weaker passwords, as typing a long complicated password into a cellphone is quite a hassle.
The thing with image editing tools, is that image formats are standard... It doesn't matter what app you used to edit an image, i can make changes to it with whatever app i choose and forward it on to someone else to do the same. This is how it should be, and people are free to choose the apps that suit their needs the best.
Personally i use GIMP because i very rarely need to edit an image, and when i do my needs are relatively simple and easily satisfied by gimp. Having looked at photoshop once or twice i find it rather difficult and alien, not that it's inherently difficult but because it's different to what I'm used to. Photoshop offers zero benefit for what i would use it for, but has several negatives (cost, inability to use it on linux, spending time learning it).
Your right, one size never fits all... Just as soon as the world starts using standard interoperable formats, people will gain the freedom to choose the size that fits them... Until then, proprietary formats will force people to use apps that don't suit their needs.
Large numbers of people "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me", walk around an office someday and listen to the complaints about msoffice apps...
They have maintained their position not by being any good, but by users not knowing there's any alternative, or users not having any choice (eg corporate settings or being forced to deal with proprietary formats), or users simply avoiding change regardless of any benefits that change may provide.
The only way to really make it easier to adapt to is to make it an exact clone... People are resistant to change, wether that change is for the better or not, and in this particular case most have never been taught properly either.
You will find that people who originally used wordperfect will adapt to openoffice much easier btw.
OpenOffice is trying to maintain a consistent interface across platforms, so that it's familiar... MSOfice on the other hand looks and behaves completely differently on the Mac... OpenOffice is the same app, MSOffice for Mac is a completely different app which pretty much only shares the same name as the windows counterpart.
It's like windows mobile vs osx on the iphone, windows mobile is a completely different os that has virtually nothing in common with desktop windows aside from the name, osx on the other hand is based around the same codebase and the biggest differences are related to the gui which has to be different for obvious reasons... it still has the same bsd-based backend as desktop osx.
A DVD player is a single purpose device, it reads data from the drive and may execute some sandboxed scripting, unless there are security holes in the player program it's unlikely to be an issue, and since dvd players are typically standalone its unlikely to be a problem.
A games console is also a single purpose device, it's purpose is for providing entertainment...
A fully fledged computer is not a single purpose device, whereas some are used like games consoles solely for entertainment, some people actually try to get important work done on them and deal with confidential data using them. If something is a toy then fair enough, but for a critical tool that could hold the keys to your business and finances there is no way it should do something so stupid as to execute unknown binaries as soon as media is inserted.
The sooner people separate their devices, and stop trying to conduct business or deal with their finances on the same machine they use as a general toy the better.
I have several systems like that too, for instance if i connect a computer to my TV it thinks it can only do 1080i, but you can force it to do 1080p with the xorg.conf file, i cant get windows or osx to do 1080p on that screen.
Years ago, universities would offer a for-life email account to their graduating students... Which was very useful, somewhere you could always be reached regardless of which isp you were using or where you worked. And for simple text-only emails it worked out nicely for the students and didn't cost the university a whole lot to provide. But if you go with a mail system that has a per-user licensing cost then it's simply impossible to provide that kind of service, so a lot of places don't do it anymore.
Other things to consider...
Every time you get a new set of students you will be adding hundreds of accounts and potentially removing hundreds of old ones, so you need something easily scriptable.
How is the mail and account details stored, is it stored on your site or is it kept at a third party? What guarantees do you have that it will be possible to access your data at all times and be able to migrate to another service in the future.... A lot of places don't consider that they might want to change suppliers in the future, and let themselves get locked in.
Is there a GPG plugin for the iphone yet? The only one i saw for the blackberry was commercial and rather expensive... I don't think mobile email has much in the way of security just yet.
BT wholesale provide the underlying infrastructure, and then third party ISPs, or other divisions within BT, provide the IP level connectivity...
It's possible to get native IPv6 connectivity today through several ISPs in the UK, tho it's not really an advertised service because very few people are looking for it...
This won't cripple china's economy, china is big enough that companies cannot afford to boycott them... Sure it would cripple a smaller and less significant country, thats why companies can afford to push some countries around, they cant do that to china. Cutting ties with china on the other hand, would significantly hurt other countries, so they will fight tooth and nail to have this law changed, and failing that be forced to go along with it.
Service agreements and warranties very rarely apply to software... A piece of hardware will usually be guaranteed to work and perform its advertised function for a specified period of time, but software typically comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTEE... In which case, you really need the ability to fix it yourself if necessary.
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There are many situations in which it's possible to have surplus electrical energy and no practical way to store huge quantities of it, or electrical energy in the wrong place and long distance power cables lose a significant amount... For example...
Nuclear - not as easy to dial down as burning fuels, when there's less requirement for energy like at night there can be a surplus.
Solar - the best places to harness solar energy are the deserts, which are a long way from the places that would like to use that energy, also solar produces power only during the day, nothing at night.
Wind - inconsistent, sometimes the wind blows, sometimes it does not, if the wind is strong during a period of low demand you don't want to waste that energy.
All depends what they wanted to use the energy for...
Solar energy is not very useful for a car, since the surface of the car cannot collect enough energy to drive the car...
Electrical energy needs to be stored, and batteries are much heavier than tanks of fuel relative to the amount of energy stored within.
Well, if you could build these machines and make them largely self sustaining, you could use a lot of desert land that is otherwise worthless to house such machines...
Transporting electrical energy from such remote areas may be impractical, but transporting a liquid fuel could be far more useful.
They really need to be split up into an OS company and an apps company, then the OS company can sell their basic featureless OS to OEMS to bundle together with third party apps to create a usable system.
Getting an OS that doesn't include basic tools like a pdf viewer is no good for anyone, but neither is being forced to take a half assed app that can't be removed because it comes by default with the os...
Linux offers a good compromise by having multiple distributions which make different choices, *AND* the fact that all of them let you easily remove and replace the bundled apps if you want.
The visual basic editor didn't work last time i tried crossover...
Yeah, there's big warnings on most automatics about not towing them over a certain speed for fear of damaging the transmission... A manual in neutral should be fine tho? If it's OK to be dragged along by another vehicle, surely it's fine to coast...
Also, does the water system that cools the engine even usually connect to the transmission?
It lets you save password protected pdf files... not tried opening one..
You need the plugin for pdf editing, i don't think it's part of the default install, but it really should be. Editing works quite well too, providing the pdf files were properly created in the first place (ie they arent just bitmap dumps as created by some very half assed pdf writing tools)
Don't use word to save word docs unless you can verify they look normal in the same version and configuration of word used by whoever you send the files to...
Version makes a big difference, as to arbitrary configuration options such as your default printer.
You'd be surprised, windows is about the only os that doesn't have a pdf viewer by default these days.
Yes...
Using word also forces you to use windows (yes i am aware there is a very different and not fully compatible mac version)... So it takes away your freedom to choose your operating platform...
It also makes it much harder to write standalone scripts to parse the documents, and if you want to use macros (which require the entire runtime bloat of word running) you only have one language you can use, which is going to be deprecated soon (and the mac version has its own incompatible language for macros).
I can be far more productive in my job with a linux workstation and files in open easily manipulated formats.
Well, when it comes to cooling, your engine isnt running so it won't be generating heat, your still travelling so there will be some natural airflow, the only heat you could have would be any friction being generated.
What's amusing, is that devices like mobile phones encourage people to use weaker passwords, as typing a long complicated password into a cellphone is quite a hassle.
I saw those bugs in older versions of msoffice (2000, 2003) on certain documents, could never work out what was causing it...
It's here:
http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/3.0.0rc4/OOo_3.0.0rc4_MacOSXPowerPC_install.dmg
And there are different language versions in the same directory:
http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/3.0.0rc4/
The thing with image editing tools, is that image formats are standard...
It doesn't matter what app you used to edit an image, i can make changes to it with whatever app i choose and forward it on to someone else to do the same. This is how it should be, and people are free to choose the apps that suit their needs the best.
Personally i use GIMP because i very rarely need to edit an image, and when i do my needs are relatively simple and easily satisfied by gimp. Having looked at photoshop once or twice i find it rather difficult and alien, not that it's inherently difficult but because it's different to what I'm used to. Photoshop offers zero benefit for what i would use it for, but has several negatives (cost, inability to use it on linux, spending time learning it).
Your right, one size never fits all...
Just as soon as the world starts using standard interoperable formats, people will gain the freedom to choose the size that fits them... Until then, proprietary formats will force people to use apps that don't suit their needs.
Large numbers of people "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me", walk around an office someday and listen to the complaints about msoffice apps...
They have maintained their position not by being any good, but by users not knowing there's any alternative, or users not having any choice (eg corporate settings or being forced to deal with proprietary formats), or users simply avoiding change regardless of any benefits that change may provide.
The only way to really make it easier to adapt to is to make it an exact clone...
People are resistant to change, wether that change is for the better or not, and in this particular case most have never been taught properly either.
You will find that people who originally used wordperfect will adapt to openoffice much easier btw.
OpenOffice is trying to maintain a consistent interface across platforms, so that it's familiar... MSOfice on the other hand looks and behaves completely differently on the Mac...
OpenOffice is the same app, MSOffice for Mac is a completely different app which pretty much only shares the same name as the windows counterpart.
It's like windows mobile vs osx on the iphone, windows mobile is a completely different os that has virtually nothing in common with desktop windows aside from the name, osx on the other hand is based around the same codebase and the biggest differences are related to the gui which has to be different for obvious reasons... it still has the same bsd-based backend as desktop osx.
A DVD player is a single purpose device, it reads data from the drive and may execute some sandboxed scripting, unless there are security holes in the player program it's unlikely to be an issue, and since dvd players are typically standalone its unlikely to be a problem.
A games console is also a single purpose device, it's purpose is for providing entertainment...
A fully fledged computer is not a single purpose device, whereas some are used like games consoles solely for entertainment, some people actually try to get important work done on them and deal with confidential data using them. If something is a toy then fair enough, but for a critical tool that could hold the keys to your business and finances there is no way it should do something so stupid as to execute unknown binaries as soon as media is inserted.
The sooner people separate their devices, and stop trying to conduct business or deal with their finances on the same machine they use as a general toy the better.
I have several systems like that too, for instance if i connect a computer to my TV it thinks it can only do 1080i, but you can force it to do 1080p with the xorg.conf file, i cant get windows or osx to do 1080p on that screen.
Years ago, universities would offer a for-life email account to their graduating students... Which was very useful, somewhere you could always be reached regardless of which isp you were using or where you worked. And for simple text-only emails it worked out nicely for the students and didn't cost the university a whole lot to provide.
But if you go with a mail system that has a per-user licensing cost then it's simply impossible to provide that kind of service, so a lot of places don't do it anymore.
Other things to consider...
Every time you get a new set of students you will be adding hundreds of accounts and potentially removing hundreds of old ones, so you need something easily scriptable.
How is the mail and account details stored, is it stored on your site or is it kept at a third party? What guarantees do you have that it will be possible to access your data at all times and be able to migrate to another service in the future.... A lot of places don't consider that they might want to change suppliers in the future, and let themselves get locked in.
Is there a GPG plugin for the iphone yet?
The only one i saw for the blackberry was commercial and rather expensive... I don't think mobile email has much in the way of security just yet.
BT wholesale provide the underlying infrastructure, and then third party ISPs, or other divisions within BT, provide the IP level connectivity...
It's possible to get native IPv6 connectivity today through several ISPs in the UK, tho it's not really an advertised service because very few people are looking for it...
http://www.goscomb.net/
http://www.nitrex.net/
Incidentally, BT themselves used to offer an ipv6 tunnel broker service, so they clearly have some ipv6 capability.
This won't cripple china's economy, china is big enough that companies cannot afford to boycott them...
Sure it would cripple a smaller and less significant country, thats why companies can afford to push some countries around, they cant do that to china. Cutting ties with china on the other hand, would significantly hurt other countries, so they will fight tooth and nail to have this law changed, and failing that be forced to go along with it.
Service agreements and warranties very rarely apply to software... A piece of hardware will usually be guaranteed to work and perform its advertised function for a specified period of time, but software typically comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTEE... In which case, you really need the ability to fix it yourself if necessary.