The most ironic part of the article is the continued push against nuclear power, which is currently the only technology which could produce a significant amount of Britain's power without CO2 emission.
This is so totally wrong. Britain has some of the most windy shorelines which could provide enough energy to power the whole country. I suggest you go read some technical studies and get some real facts before posting.
Forgive my vaugeness but didn't much of Bush's campain funds come from oil/gas/nuclear energy companies?
If so, it's not surprising that Bush's record so far in terms of energy production has been to shit on Kyoto, propose new oil exploration in previously out of bounds areas, reinvigorate nuclear power, and try and arm-wrestle the rest of the world into invading Iraq.
Do you understand that this isn't a realeased product? If you are a noob you should stay away from 9.1 beta versions and realease candidates and wait for the actual product in a month or so.
It's worth pointing out to anyone thinking of installing this as their main OS that this is an initial release candidate and is nowhere near prime time.. be warned unless you want to find and report bugs.
IMHO, I think that M$ will never be able to recover from these stigmata because M$ refuses to change.
Even if they did change, should everyone just forgive and forget? The damage done has been too severe for forgiveness. Things have gone too far. In my mind at least, regardless of what may happen in the future, microsoft will always be regarded as a company with which I will have no interest, both professionally and as a consumer.
11000 cars with say 10 metres of space each takes up 110km (68 miles) of lane space. Now, I'm not sure whether that is a lot or not in a place as big as london.
Actually, no loudspeaker is capable of reproducing sound at a distortion level of 0.01%. You are confusing the levels of distortion of good power amplifiers with the distortion levels that loudspeakers produce.
In fact, loudspeaker manufacturers avoid talking about distortion levels because people would be horrified (due to their impressions of what is good and bad being created by amplifier manufacturer marketing departments) if they really knew what the distortion levels of loudspeaker drivers were.
I've noticed that there are a million 'experts' here all ready to give their version of reality. Unfortunately, it is clear to someone who is an audio engineer that most of these experts are completely misinformed.
Normally you'd be correct, but here it does seem that the figures are real figures. RMS figures (as used in the review) give the real, average, *sustained* power output, whereas normally the marketing department massages the values up to incredible levels by taking the peak to peak 1ms burst power (which is of course a meaningless concept).
The previous post is also misleading. Professional audio speakers on average have SPL sensitivities of around 100dB for 1 watt at 1 metre. Here, you can extrapolate the overall sensitivity from the maximum output given of 114 dB. 500 watts at 114dB at 1 metre gives (assuming a 2dB coil heating compression) of about 89dB 1 watt 1 metre, which is a very typical sensitivity for hifi loudspeakers. Hence, 500 watts of hifi speaker output is equivalent to about 30-40 watts of professional audio speaker output.
I create things that interest me *and* are useful, whether tangible or intangible. To create something, (however interesting it may be to create) that is essentially useless (and lets face it, by the time this project releases something that would be of real use at this moment, the world will have moved on) is overall not of interest to me.
As for 'getting it' as you say, it depends what you're trying to get. If copying a piece of proprietary software (that is often cited as being structurally bad) whilst other superior projects already exist is 'getting it,' then I'm glad that I apparently 'don't get it'.
The best hackers are those who are interested in something in order to understand it and in order to persue a higher interest. It seems from your statements here that you are merely interested in idle play, and what comes from this playing is of little concern to you.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if these developers exercised their talents on a piece of software that was truely beneficial to the community?
Despite the quality and feature rich nature of many open-source projects, there are still loads of important projects waiting to be written. This project seems like a waste of good programmers to me.
One of my basses is a fender squier precision which was made in Japan in the 80's and the quality is definitely much better than the more recent squires from whereeverland..
One interesting thing I noticed is that my Japan made precision bass has the spelling "squier" whereas I believe the low quality ones from elsewhere are spelt "squire". So I guess that could be a way to tell them apart..
Or more likely we would heave a sigh of relief when the opressive behaviour of the US led multinationals stops for a while and allows us to exist with our own cultures.
What makes you think that more funding will improve the situation? The reason the percentage of foreign grad students pursuing PhDs is so high is because (this is the case in the uk and I assume also the us) the income from a PhD is so low. When faced with the choice of doing a PhD and earning $12k per year for 3-4 years or taking that job offer with company xyz for $30k per year rising to $60k after 4 years, it's easy to see why uk born graduates take the job.
More funding will simply increase the amount of new PhDs available, not increase the salaries of the people doing the PhDs.
Also, many of the PhD graduates I have known have the opinion that one's employability after completing the PhD is the same (and sometimes less) than before the PhD, unless the objective is to stay in academia.
Is this a troll or are you actually being serious?
If it's the latter, don't you think you're reading a little too deeply into the minds of corporate executives? Also you seem to be under the impression that they are creators of art..
The realty is that they haven't created anything; they instead manage the creations of others. All that matters to them is the shareprice and profit margin of the corporation and the law is merely another tool to use in the struggle to maximise revenue.
This Red Hat comparison is a very convinient argument which, I've noted, never mentions the circumstances of the rise of Red Hat.
Red Hat were luckily able to take advantage of the temporary stock market insanity which saw their share price rocket. Selling overvalued stock and reinvesting in other more realistically valued companies provided a stability that most new companies do not have the luxury of having.
I posted the previous message in order to discuss the value of Mandrakesoft, not in order to claim that they were somehow 'better' than all the other distributions including Red Hat. The masses of people that continue to download the mandrake distribution are clearly happy with it. The problem is that they give no financial support for the continuation of development of linux-mandrake.
I know many people who use linux-mandrake as their distribution of choice, but I know only one person (me) who has actually paid for it.
That's a very fine idea.. until you discover that the current french government only interested in spending money on more police and defence. The recent budget cut research and development significantly.
Well, I am a member of the club, but I can't really tell you much about it to be honest. I rarely go to the website and any new packages (and associated dependences) I need can be accessed easily with 'uprpmi'.
"Why do you bother" you may ask.
Well, some people buy boxsets of distributions. Some people donate a great deal of their time developing opensource software and do not pay anything. As for me, I pay $60 per year to mandrakesoft because: 1/ they produce the distribution updates that I download free of charge twice a year, and 2/ they financially support open source development projects such as KDE.
To be honest, I would be happy with their donation page, but it is clear that it is apparently not a socially acceptable method of payment.
I've read quite a few opinions here moaning about how mandrake is merely a company and that they don't really do anything positive for the community.
Actually they do a hell of a lot for the community and it is clear that most of the negativity here is coming from people that know nothing of mandrakesoft.
1. Mandrake pays supports many full time developers who work on open source software such as KDE, PHP-nuke; the linux kernel, CUPS.
2. New mandrake distributions are always available for download immediately (usually before the box sets).
3. The mandrake-linux distribution is all free and opensource software.
The real problem is perhaps that they should only offer iso images to club members. I've been using the mandrake distribution since I started using free & opensource software several years ago and I never bought a copy. I was never interested in a box set. The mandrake club has given me and others like me the opportunity to pay for the work done providing us with a distribution we like.
Unfortunately, it seems that amongst all the people who happily use the mandrake distribution iso downloads, there aren't enough that feel a moral obligation to support mandrake by joining the club. This is unfortunate - dispite all the heckling here, their distribution is the most popular of the desktop orientated ones, and in my opinion, rightly so.
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This is so totally wrong. Britain has some of the most windy shorelines which could provide enough energy to power the whole country. I suggest you go read some technical studies and get some real facts before posting.
Actually, Britain has the capability of producing *all* its energy from off-shore wind power, which takes up no space.
Forgive my vaugeness but didn't much of Bush's campain funds come from oil/gas/nuclear energy companies?
If so, it's not surprising that Bush's record so far in terms of energy production has been to shit on Kyoto, propose new oil exploration in previously out of bounds areas, reinvigorate nuclear power, and try and arm-wrestle the rest of the world into invading Iraq.
Do you understand that this isn't a realeased product? If you are a noob you should stay away from 9.1 beta versions and realease candidates and wait for the actual product in a month or so.
It's worth pointing out to anyone thinking of installing this as their main OS that this is an initial release candidate and is nowhere near prime time.. be warned unless you want to find and report bugs.
Even if they did change, should everyone just forgive and forget? The damage done has been too severe for forgiveness. Things have gone too far. In my mind at least, regardless of what may happen in the future, microsoft will always be regarded as a company with which I will have no interest, both professionally and as a consumer.
hey who cares? It's funny because it's microsoft.
11000 cars with say 10 metres of space each takes up 110km (68 miles) of lane space. Now, I'm not sure whether that is a lot or not in a place as big as london.
That figure is probably true if you consider that most of the cars only have one person inside them.
yes indeed, lord help us with people like this in the world.
well I suggest you learn your trade properly.
Actually, no loudspeaker is capable of reproducing sound at a distortion level of 0.01%. You are confusing the levels of distortion of good power amplifiers with the distortion levels that loudspeakers produce.
In fact, loudspeaker manufacturers avoid talking about distortion levels because people would be horrified (due to their impressions of what is good and bad being created by amplifier manufacturer marketing departments) if they really knew what the distortion levels of loudspeaker drivers were.
I've noticed that there are a million 'experts' here all ready to give their version of reality. Unfortunately, it is clear to someone who is an audio engineer that most of these experts are completely misinformed.
Normally you'd be correct, but here it does seem that the figures are real figures. RMS figures (as used in the review) give the real, average, *sustained* power output, whereas normally the marketing department massages the values up to incredible levels by taking the peak to peak 1ms burst power (which is of course a meaningless concept).
The previous post is also misleading. Professional audio speakers on average have SPL sensitivities of around 100dB for 1 watt at 1 metre. Here, you can extrapolate the overall sensitivity from the maximum output given of 114 dB. 500 watts at 114dB at 1 metre gives (assuming a 2dB coil heating compression) of about 89dB 1 watt 1 metre, which is a very typical sensitivity for hifi loudspeakers. Hence, 500 watts of hifi speaker output is equivalent to about 30-40 watts of professional audio speaker output.
Ok, I may be answering a slight troll, but..
I create things that interest me *and* are useful, whether tangible or intangible. To create something, (however interesting it may be to create) that is essentially useless (and lets face it, by the time this project releases something that would be of real use at this moment, the world will have moved on) is overall not of interest to me.
As for 'getting it' as you say, it depends what you're trying to get. If copying a piece of proprietary software (that is often cited as being structurally bad) whilst other superior projects already exist is 'getting it,' then I'm glad that I apparently 'don't get it'.
The best hackers are those who are interested in something in order to understand it and in order to persue a higher interest. It seems from your statements here that you are merely interested in idle play, and what comes from this playing is of little concern to you.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if these developers exercised their talents on a piece of software that was truely beneficial to the community?
Despite the quality and feature rich nature of many open-source projects, there are still loads of important projects waiting to be written. This project seems like a waste of good programmers to me.
I took a random cd track and got the following with bz2 and gwip:
wav 26.2MB
gz 24.5MB
bz2 23.4MB
so it seems they are almost useless for lossless audio compression.
One of my basses is a fender squier precision which was made in Japan in the 80's and the quality is definitely much better than the more recent squires from whereeverland..
One interesting thing I noticed is that my Japan made precision bass has the spelling "squier" whereas I believe the low quality ones from elsewhere are spelt "squire". So I guess that could be a way to tell them apart..
Or more likely we would heave a sigh of relief when the opressive behaviour of the US led multinationals stops for a while and allows us to exist with our own cultures.
What makes you think that more funding will improve the situation? The reason the percentage of foreign grad students pursuing PhDs is so high is because (this is the case in the uk and I assume also the us) the income from a PhD is so low. When faced with the choice of doing a PhD and earning $12k per year for 3-4 years or taking that job offer with company xyz for $30k per year rising to $60k after 4 years, it's easy to see why uk born graduates take the job.
More funding will simply increase the amount of new PhDs available, not increase the salaries of the people doing the PhDs.
Also, many of the PhD graduates I have known have the opinion that one's employability after completing the PhD is the same (and sometimes less) than before the PhD, unless the objective is to stay in academia.
Is this a troll or are you actually being serious?
If it's the latter, don't you think you're reading a little too deeply into the minds of corporate executives? Also you seem to be under the impression that they are creators of art..
The realty is that they haven't created anything; they instead manage the creations of others. All that matters to them is the shareprice and profit margin of the corporation and the law is merely another tool to use in the struggle to maximise revenue.
Ok, cue the old man jokes about microsoft getting licked again..
This Red Hat comparison is a very convinient argument which, I've noted, never mentions the circumstances of the rise of Red Hat.
Red Hat were luckily able to take advantage of the temporary stock market insanity which saw their share price rocket. Selling overvalued stock and reinvesting in other more realistically valued companies provided a stability that most new companies do not have the luxury of having.
I posted the previous message in order to discuss the value of Mandrakesoft, not in order to claim that they were somehow 'better' than all the other distributions including Red Hat. The masses of people that continue to download the mandrake distribution are clearly happy with it. The problem is that they give no financial support for the continuation of development of linux-mandrake.
I know many people who use linux-mandrake as their distribution of choice, but I know only one person (me) who has actually paid for it.
That's a very fine idea.. until you discover that the current french government only interested in spending money on more police and defence. The recent budget cut research and development significantly.
Well, I am a member of the club, but I can't really tell you much about it to be honest. I rarely go to the website and any new packages (and associated dependences) I need can be accessed easily with 'uprpmi'.
"Why do you bother" you may ask.
Well, some people buy boxsets of distributions. Some people donate a great deal of their time developing opensource software and do not pay anything. As for me, I pay $60 per year to mandrakesoft because: 1/ they produce the distribution updates that I download free of charge twice a year, and 2/ they financially support open source development projects such as KDE.
To be honest, I would be happy with their donation page, but it is clear that it is apparently not a socially acceptable method of payment.
I've read quite a few opinions here moaning about how mandrake is merely a company and that they don't really do anything positive for the community.
Actually they do a hell of a lot for the community and it is clear that most of the negativity here is coming from people that know nothing of mandrakesoft.
1. Mandrake pays supports many full time developers who work on open source software such as KDE, PHP-nuke; the linux kernel, CUPS.
2. New mandrake distributions are always available for download immediately (usually before the box sets).
3. The mandrake-linux distribution is all free and opensource software.
The real problem is perhaps that they should only offer iso images to club members. I've been using the mandrake distribution since I started using free & opensource software several years ago and I never bought a copy. I was never interested in a box set. The mandrake club has given me and others like me the opportunity to pay for the work done providing us with a distribution we like.
Unfortunately, it seems that amongst all the people who happily use the mandrake distribution iso downloads, there aren't enough that feel a moral obligation to support mandrake by joining the club. This is unfortunate - dispite all the heckling here, their distribution is the most popular of the desktop orientated ones, and in my opinion, rightly so.