The point is, that the unconsciesness is very powerful, probably more powerful than the consciesness. If one denies it, he will run into troubles.
The point is, that people are actually right. When they feel ill, this is very, very real for them, thus it is meaningless to deny it, even worse, this denial will stimulate them to fight things.
Another solution would be to tell them, that there's no know rational explanation, however, we accept that they find their salvation in their "Orgone Generator", thus we encourage them to set one up or even help/sponsor them to do so.
I know quite some families where a wireless lan is set up and one or more family members get afraid of its radiation, so, if the industry produces wireless lan devices with "Orgone Generators" included, things may get more easily accepted.
I think, those fears have to be taken for real. People who suffer from that, are really affected by it, I have heard of many cases, where people get really ill, although this may be not much more than the well-known placebo effect.
Fears from the unconsciousness can very often not be calmed by logic. However, another irrational belief that culminates in some device called "Orgone Generator", seems to relieve people from that fear, thus the unconsciousness found it's own solution.
Well, my personal suggestion in this case would be to sponsor these Orgon-Generators, maybe, even implement them in the Wifi-Device. If marketed the right way, those Wifi-Hotspots may be seen as something positive, something that people like to set up as they produce "positive energy".
The whole story is very embarassing, true.
My recommendation is to overwork the plugin structure of the web browsers, so that a plugin crash does not necessarily crash the browser.
And when such a plugin crash happens, simply outline it in a browser page, e.g. "The Plugin 'Adobe Flash Player' has crashed" or something the like. This would outline, what actually happened, and who is to blame.
The reason for that is that we are able to perform automatisms, which may be quite complex and run parallel to our consciesness. Therefore it's possible to walk and speak. When we ride the bicycle, we will have to fully concentrate on it when learning how to do it but later on, we will also be able to for instance chat with someone else while bicycling.
However, we can not split our consciousness into two: We can not, for instance, add numbers and understand the meaning of a text. We may perhaps be able to read a book while thinking about something else, but we will not be able to understand the book. (I realize this sometimes when I read a book to my children, and, as the book is often boring to me, my mind is distracted to other things, although I continue reading. I'm then still able to emphasize the text in the correct way, for instance letting speak characters in other voices, but I don't remember anything about the book afterwards.)
And for you chewing gum example: Try to read a book and chew a gum, try to understand the book and try to taste and consciously feel the gum in your mouth at the same time. If you closely monitor yourself, you will recognize the task-switching and if you do even harder, you'll recognize that the switch requires quite some effort.
- Coda is quite unstable and complicated to install - AFS 2 is the successor of Coda - AFS is successfully used in various universities all over the world, so it is stable - AFS may not have offline-capabilities - AFS may be quite difficult to install/maintain
AFAIK, rsync is only one-way, meaning that it overwrites and eventually deletes files. Have a try:
mkdir d1 d2 # Create two directories (e.g. one on server, one on laptop) touch d1/foo.txt # Create an empty file rsync -r d1/ d2/ # Sync the directories echo "123" > d2/foo.txt # Now modify the file on d2 (e.g. laptop) rsync -r d1/ d2/ # Sync again cat d2/foo.txt # Ooops - foo.txt is empty!
One possible way I experimented with is the following:
- Integrate a rsync server -> laptop in the startup procedure of the laptop - Never modify a file on the server while working with the laptop - Integrate a rsync laptop -> server in the shutdown procedure of the laptop
In theory this works, but practically there are cases where you miss the shutdown/startup sync, e.g. when you have no network at startup (e.g. you took your laptop away from home and forgot to sync it), in case you laptop crashes, the network fails during shutdown and numerous other problems. These lead to dangerous situations, e.g. if the rsync laptop->server fails during shutdown, a startup-rsync may overwrite modified files.
After loosing some of my work, I decided to switch to unison, which is a 2-way sync and lets me decide how to resolve syncing problems.
Nevertheless I'm not entirely happy with the situation - if I forget to sync, I have to resolve things manually, moreover the sync takes quite some time.
In my special case, I have a WLAN connection to my server most of the time, so changes could be written immediately. So I'd favour some kind of network file system that has offline capabilities and can handle two-side modifications in some way. I thought about Coda but it seems to be far too complicated and unreliable and I don't know better alternatives.
So I'm still stuck to my Unison solution, which is somehow cumbersome, but works...
Sorry, but to me these conspiracy theories are nonsense. Those file accesses prove the contrary to me: If I'd like to spy out a user, I'd for sure have a look at the browser bookmarks, the browser history, the cookies, the encrypted password file, maybe a search for installed software and more. Skype reads none of these files.
By the way, there are a lot of spyware tools out there, that exactly do this and we don't bother so much. For instance, Microsoft Office searches the harddisk for installed data and more; Various antivirus tools access nearly every file on the harddisk and also send arbitrary data, moreover there are a number of tools that are known to be spyware.
And don't forget: One of the reasons for Skype's success is exactly its encrypted and obscure protocol: It installs very easily, regardless if there's a firewall, a Telco that tries to block VoIP or a nasty system administrator. Skype is unproblematic, works well and does not need tech-knowhow.
SIP on the other hand is soooo complicated. And still, there's not a single SIP-based P2P VoIP application that is on-par with Skype from a usability viewpoint, especially on Linux.
Ebay knew that and recognized that Skype is developing to a quasi-standard in the VoIP sector, just like Adobe's PDF. And that's the reason why they bought it.
Well, 15.6 billion km are approx. 14.5 light hours.
Hmmm, well, the next star (Proxima Centauri) is 4.24 light years away, so Voyager travelled around.04 % of the distance. Well, 76000 years more to go, Voyager!
At first, many situations simply don't need a complex database schema. Think of a contact or email list in a simple web application. Such applications often need only one table. And therefore MySQL suffices. I would not call that bad design. Moreover, don't underestimate MySQL! Recent versions are not so much behind PostgreSQL and they perform reasonably well.
It's true that the SQL knowledge of many developers is quite limited. But for this reason, and, more important, due to the bad compatibility of SQL and OO design, ORM libraries such as Java Hibernate or Python's SQL Alchemy were developed that handle the SQL part. In this case we still need a decent database schema, but it may be described in the framework, which looks more familiar to developers. However, don't underestimate the generated SQL code! Complicated SQL statements may be generated and ORM libaries may make use of referential integrity, check constraints etc. and many other features a mature database has to offer. If designed right, a ORM-based design will have a decent database schema and will make use of many "database goodies".
ORM-generated SQL code may therefore stress the database in many ways - and therefore we still need good databases - regardless of the developer's SQL knowledge.
One pitfall we always seem to step into is that in case a good, new technology is invented, we think of it as a solution to all our problems. SQL is no different here, in the past we were so proud of designing normalized schemas that we forgot about the scalability. Such schemas - although perfect - are often today the reason for performance problems. Sadly, we often overreact and tend to throw away old technology and follow the new hype. And that's what we can see today, such as thoughtlessly vandalizing database schemas due to performance problems. Nevertheless, it is often appropriate to denormalize a database schema to improve the performance. If done right, I would not call this "vandalizing".
The really interesting thing about such virtual, anonymous worlds like Second Life is, that although we *could* be someone else, we decide not to. Newbies in these world often try to be a completely different character, however, over time they get very, very close to their real character.
I'd say, it's quite simple: In normal life, we chose who we are. Most people have fixed patterns which affect their behavior and therefore their daily life. Over time, these patterns get more and more restricting and make people lose their authenticity.
So, there's certainly a wish to break out, and that's what these virtual worlds promise us - but changing or breaking patterns can never be done by changing worlds. We see that every day, when people change their jobs, their partners or their homes - after all, most end up the same.
Even if there's a "Third Life" and a "Fourth Life", maybe hundreds of them, they will in the end be all the same, simply as we are who we are.
However, if we are shaken up so much, that we have to drop some patterns, or really decide to make a change, this and all other worlds will be different - instantly...
I can't see the reason why T1 should not be overbooked.
It may be that the marketing gurus brand T1 as "the product with the guaranteed bandwidth", but believe me, I have 512/512 SDSL here, also with a guaranteed bandwidth of > 90%.
Moreover, the connection between your DSL-Modem (ADSL/SDSL whatever) and the DSLAM at the telco can never be overbooked, if the data rate is set to e.g. 2048/512 then this speed is fixed. From the DSLAM to the provider/Internet, the line may of course be overbooked, but this has not much to do with the connection type.
What happens often is that one product technologically outperforms another (as here with SDSL vs. T1). So the marketing people have the problem that the better, often cheaper product cannibalizes their old one. As they still want/have to sell the older product, they have to give some "advantages" of the old product - which are often "reliability", or - in this case a guaranteed bandwidth.
There are other connections, that really share bandwidth, such as radio based solutions (UMTS, WiFi) but also cable connections and the like. But 2-wire copper based connections are set up as a star topology and not as a bus.
So, T1 (or DS1 here in Europe) is an old technology that multiplexes 24 channels, with 64kbit/second each. In Europe this was implemented via a PRI, which consisted of 24 copper pairs, each transporting 64kbit/s. Having 24 lines from the telekom to your home was expensive and still is. However, it's obsoleted, as nowadays via DSL one can get much higher rates on a copper pair, e.g. SDSL (which is symmetric) has rates up to 2Mbit/second, therefore it's a lot cheaper than T1.
Some stated that bandwidth is guaranteed with T1: That's not true. If a line is overbooked or not is simply based on the contract you have with your provider. Theoretically, one can also build a cheap ASDL-line with guaranteed bandwidth, however in the consumer sector, this is seldom needed.
Simple: If you buy a Linux desktop, take care that it has a graphic card from NVidia. These drivers may not be open source, however they are easy to install, work and have a decent performance.
The reason for the lack of Linux on desktop systems is not a bad desktop environment. KDE does well, Gnome too.
To my mind the problem is threefold:
1) Installing desktop hardware (especially notebooks) can still be a nightmare, even for advanced Linux users: Webcams, modesm, scanners, soundcards, new motherboard chipsets, bluetooth, graphic cards, input devices (keyboard/mouse/joystick) - they all come in various fashions and nearly none of them have native Linux driver support. This is different with server hardware, where drivers most often exist for Linux - moreover people who install servers are seldom Linux newbies.
2) Missing applications: No MS-Office, no CorelDraw, no Adobe Writer, no xyz, no... - the list is sooo long. And people often _have_ to use these applications.
3) Various content can not / not easily be viewed from Linux. This can be blamed on missing applications as denoted above but also on DRM, such as encrypted DVD's and the like. And for sure, new multimedia content will emerge that can not be viewed on Linux due to DRM restrictions.
The above three points apply to all other operating systems, such as ReactOS, BSD - regardless if these operating systems have "better" concepts or not. If there are no drivers, no applications and no content, no one will use it and it's pretty useless to port KDE/Gnome...
Treating addictive behaviour is always problematic - simply due to the fact that the persons around the affected person tend to play some certain "role" in the addiction.
For instance, in alcohol addiction may build up some roles, such as
- The desparate wife, who is blaming his alcoholic husband over and over - The helpful friend, who is looking after the addicted person, tries to understand him and always has a good advice, which will probably never ever help - The (also alcoholic) friends, who lure the addicted person over and over into the same situations
None of these persons will really help the addictive to get out, instead they are part of his system and are cementing his behavior even more. You know, people are also getting "their part" or "energy" out of their role:
- The desperate wife needs something to complain about - The helpful friend needs the gratefulness of the addictive - The alcoholic friends need someone who they can look down at (he's more addictive than I am)
So the first question one should ask himself is: "What is my role in this system?", and: "What can I do to change my role which may lead to destabilization of the current system and possibly lead to a real change and therefore help for the addictive?"
I am not suggesting to abandon someone. Just closely take a look at yourself. Look if and what "energy" you are getting out of this for yourself.
These ideas are not mine, if you are interested, take a look at the book "Games People Play" from Eric Berne, which is to my mind highly recommendable.
I always wonder what will happen with all these bright shining frameworks in some years? If I rely on such a framework for my application and my application should last for - let's say - 5 years, it may well be that development and support for this framework has died out by this time.
And it may happen that you need to port your applications to a never hardware, a newer operating system and - maybe - to a newer version of the underlying programming language (such as Java). You may think that 5 years are a long time and there is probably no application that lasts longer - but you forget that applications are evolving and parts of your code may exist for many, many years.
For instance, there is still need for COBOL programmers that have to maintain/port old code for applications that are 15 years old. I wonder from where I'm going to get Java-Struts or JSP programmers in 15 years from now?
I would recommend to choose open-source frameworks/libraries, as you at least have the possibility to fix things by yourself if the support for the framework is gone.
I'm really curious if these frameworks are cost-effective in the long run.
You could easily do this in Python, too. For instance, Python already has fixed-point math, called "decimal". And fixed-length strings may probably be implemented by subclassing "string" and checking the length.
I assume such techniques will also work with other languages, such as Ruby.
Products we buy get complicated more and more. Some years back, someone just bought a CD or a LP, simply put it into his player and listened to the music. That was something even my grandparents could do.
Nowadays it's so complicated: There are "region-Codes" on the DVD, CD's cannot be played on various hardware (e.g. computers, car CD-players etc.). You see - one reason why people use P2P is simplicity: If you want a specific song, you simply search for it in Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and download it. Paid services are complicated: You have to register somewhere, do a complicated (and possibly insecure) mondy transaction and then you have a file which will will be playable on a limited set of devices.
It's not only that people are too lazy to handle things. I see people fiddling around with their hardware and not being able to use what they bought more and more.
Therefore I don't think that this fingerprint scenario will every be reality - simply because people won't be able to use it.
Some hundred years ago Christians burned witches, invaded foreign countries (Africa, America) killing native inhabitants and invaded Palestine in order to "free" holy christian land - all in the name of Jesus.
And would you really state that Christianity is the "religion of violence"? Today everyone knows that these cruelty has nothing to do with the message of Jesus.
So - why should that be different with the Islam? Just because many misinterpretate the religion?
It's not that easy: Energiy is very cheap and I don't expect it to rise a lot in the near future.
The thing is that the costs of consequences of long term pollution and greenhouse gases are not included in the energy price - and they will never be. How could they anyway? The "cost" of the damage done to the environment can simply not be calculated.
So the only option is to try to save energy wherever it's possible. This is done by supporting a better isolation on newly built houses, on funding "green" technology etc.
Does anyone know how this "slingshot technique" actually works?
I understand that the probe gets faster when approaching an object with high gravity, such as Jupiter, however I don't know why it keeps the speed when leaving the gravitational field again. Where and how is the additional energy taken from?
Moreover I wonder how it slows down again so that the probe can successfully photograph pluto and does not do a very fast flyby.
The simple reason for hotter water after flushing the toilet is the following:
When taking _cold_ water from your system, such as for your toilet, there is an overall lower water pressure in the system. Therefore less cold water flows through your heater. Less water can be heated to higher temperatures, therefore the hot water is hotter until the toilet is filled with water.
To my mind, one of the reasons for bad driving are rigid traffic rules. If people are confronted with rigid and dogmatic rules, they simply stop thinking and start loosing their personal responsibility. When there is a 50mph sign, people will go this speed, regardless if there is ice on the road or not.
One of the best drivers were (were, things change there too) found in Italy, which was a hell for everyone not used to the traffic. Although it was horrific to drive there, the accident statistics were far better than in the U.S. Having a good feeling and paying attention to the surrounding can never be replaced by dogmatic traffic rules.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, that the unconsciesness is very powerful, probably more powerful than the consciesness. If one denies it, he will run into troubles. The point is, that people are actually right. When they feel ill, this is very, very real for them, thus it is meaningless to deny it, even worse, this denial will stimulate them to fight things. Another solution would be to tell them, that there's no know rational explanation, however, we accept that they find their salvation in their "Orgone Generator", thus we encourage them to set one up or even help/sponsor them to do so. I know quite some families where a wireless lan is set up and one or more family members get afraid of its radiation, so, if the industry produces wireless lan devices with "Orgone Generators" included, things may get more easily accepted.
I think, those fears have to be taken for real. People who suffer from that, are really affected by it, I have heard of many cases, where people get really ill, although this may be not much more than the well-known placebo effect. Fears from the unconsciousness can very often not be calmed by logic. However, another irrational belief that culminates in some device called "Orgone Generator", seems to relieve people from that fear, thus the unconsciousness found it's own solution. Well, my personal suggestion in this case would be to sponsor these Orgon-Generators, maybe, even implement them in the Wifi-Device. If marketed the right way, those Wifi-Hotspots may be seen as something positive, something that people like to set up as they produce "positive energy".
The whole story is very embarassing, true. My recommendation is to overwork the plugin structure of the web browsers, so that a plugin crash does not necessarily crash the browser. And when such a plugin crash happens, simply outline it in a browser page, e.g. "The Plugin 'Adobe Flash Player' has crashed" or something the like. This would outline, what actually happened, and who is to blame.
The reason for that is that we are able to perform automatisms, which may be quite complex and run parallel to our consciesness. Therefore it's possible to walk and speak. When we ride the bicycle, we will have to fully concentrate on it when learning how to do it but later on, we will also be able to for instance chat with someone else while bicycling.
However, we can not split our consciousness into two: We can not, for instance, add numbers and understand the meaning of a text. We may perhaps be able to read a book while thinking about something else, but we will not be able to understand the book. (I realize this sometimes when I read a book to my children, and, as the book is often boring to me, my mind is distracted to other things, although I continue reading. I'm then still able to emphasize the text in the correct way, for instance letting speak characters in other voices, but I don't remember anything about the book afterwards.)
And for you chewing gum example: Try to read a book and chew a gum, try to understand the book and try to taste and consciously feel the gum in your mouth at the same time. If you closely monitor yourself, you will recognize the task-switching and if you do even harder, you'll recognize that the switch requires quite some effort.
As far as I know, the following applies:
- Coda is quite unstable and complicated to install
- AFS 2 is the successor of Coda
- AFS is successfully used in various universities all over the world, so it is stable
- AFS may not have offline-capabilities
- AFS may be quite difficult to install/maintain
I don't see how rsync solves this problem:
AFAIK, rsync is only one-way, meaning that it overwrites and eventually deletes files. Have a try:
mkdir d1 d2 # Create two directories (e.g. one on server, one on laptop)
touch d1/foo.txt # Create an empty file
rsync -r d1/ d2/ # Sync the directories
echo "123" > d2/foo.txt # Now modify the file on d2 (e.g. laptop)
rsync -r d1/ d2/ # Sync again
cat d2/foo.txt # Ooops - foo.txt is empty!
One possible way I experimented with is the following:
- Integrate a rsync server -> laptop in the startup procedure of the laptop
- Never modify a file on the server while working with the laptop
- Integrate a rsync laptop -> server in the shutdown procedure of the laptop
In theory this works, but practically there are cases where you miss the shutdown/startup sync, e.g. when you have no network at startup (e.g. you took your laptop away from home and forgot to sync it), in case you laptop crashes, the network fails during shutdown and numerous other problems. These lead to dangerous situations, e.g. if the rsync laptop->server fails during shutdown, a startup-rsync may overwrite modified files.
After loosing some of my work, I decided to switch to unison, which is a 2-way sync and lets me decide how to resolve syncing problems.
Nevertheless I'm not entirely happy with the situation - if I forget to sync, I have to resolve things manually, moreover the sync takes quite some time.
In my special case, I have a WLAN connection to my server most of the time, so changes could be written immediately. So I'd favour some kind of network file system that has offline capabilities and can handle two-side modifications in some way. I thought about Coda but it seems to be far too complicated and unreliable and I don't know better alternatives.
So I'm still stuck to my Unison solution, which is somehow cumbersome, but works...
Sorry, but to me these conspiracy theories are nonsense. Those file accesses prove the contrary to me: If I'd like to spy out a user, I'd for sure have a look at the browser bookmarks, the browser history, the cookies, the encrypted password file, maybe a search for installed software and more. Skype reads none of these files.
By the way, there are a lot of spyware tools out there, that exactly do this and we don't bother so much. For instance, Microsoft Office searches the harddisk for installed data and more; Various antivirus tools access nearly every file on the harddisk and also send arbitrary data, moreover there are a number of tools that are known to be spyware.
And don't forget: One of the reasons for Skype's success is exactly its encrypted and obscure protocol: It installs very easily, regardless if there's a firewall, a Telco that tries to block VoIP or a nasty system administrator. Skype is unproblematic, works well and does not need tech-knowhow.
SIP on the other hand is soooo complicated. And still, there's not a single SIP-based P2P VoIP application that is on-par with Skype from a usability viewpoint, especially on Linux.
Ebay knew that and recognized that Skype is developing to a quasi-standard in the VoIP sector, just like Adobe's PDF. And that's the reason why they bought it.
Well, 15.6 billion km are approx. 14.5 light hours.
.04 % of the distance. Well, 76000 years more to go, Voyager!
Hmmm, well, the next star (Proxima Centauri) is 4.24 light years away, so Voyager travelled around
At first, many situations simply don't need a complex database schema. Think of a contact or email list in a simple web application. Such applications often need only one table. And therefore MySQL suffices. I would not call that bad design. Moreover, don't underestimate MySQL! Recent versions are not so much behind PostgreSQL and they perform reasonably well.
It's true that the SQL knowledge of many developers is quite limited. But for this reason, and, more important, due to the bad compatibility of SQL and OO design, ORM libraries such as Java Hibernate or Python's SQL Alchemy were developed that handle the SQL part. In this case we still need a decent database schema, but it may be described in the framework, which looks more familiar to developers. However, don't underestimate the generated SQL code! Complicated SQL statements may be generated and ORM libaries may make use of referential integrity, check constraints etc. and many other features a mature database has to offer. If designed right, a ORM-based design will have a decent database schema and will make use of many "database goodies".
ORM-generated SQL code may therefore stress the database in many ways - and therefore we still need good databases - regardless of the developer's SQL knowledge.
One pitfall we always seem to step into is that in case a good, new technology is invented, we think of it as a solution to all our problems. SQL is no different here, in the past we were so proud of designing normalized schemas that we forgot about the scalability. Such schemas - although perfect - are often today the reason for performance problems. Sadly, we often overreact and tend to throw away old technology and follow the new hype. And that's what we can see today, such as thoughtlessly vandalizing database schemas due to performance problems. Nevertheless, it is often appropriate to denormalize a database schema to improve the performance. If done right, I would not call this "vandalizing".
The really interesting thing about such virtual, anonymous worlds like Second Life is, that although we *could* be someone else, we decide not to. Newbies in these world often try to be a completely different character, however, over time they get very, very close to their real character.
I'd say, it's quite simple: In normal life, we chose who we are. Most people have fixed patterns which affect their behavior and therefore their daily life. Over time, these patterns get more and more restricting and make people lose their authenticity.
So, there's certainly a wish to break out, and that's what these virtual worlds promise us - but changing or breaking patterns can never be done by changing worlds. We see that every day, when people change their jobs, their partners or their homes - after all, most end up the same.
Even if there's a "Third Life" and a "Fourth Life", maybe hundreds of them, they will in the end be all the same, simply as we are who we are.
However, if we are shaken up so much, that we have to drop some patterns, or really decide to make a change, this and all other worlds will be different - instantly...
I can't see the reason why T1 should not be overbooked.
It may be that the marketing gurus brand T1 as "the product with the guaranteed bandwidth", but believe me, I have 512/512 SDSL here, also with a guaranteed bandwidth of > 90%.
Moreover, the connection between your DSL-Modem (ADSL/SDSL whatever) and the DSLAM at the telco can never be overbooked, if the data rate is set to e.g. 2048/512 then this speed is fixed. From the DSLAM to the provider/Internet, the line may of course be overbooked, but this has not much to do with the connection type.
What happens often is that one product technologically outperforms another (as here with SDSL vs. T1). So the marketing people have the problem that the better, often cheaper product cannibalizes their old one. As they still want/have to sell the older product, they have to give some "advantages" of the old product - which are often "reliability", or - in this case a guaranteed bandwidth.
There are other connections, that really share bandwidth, such as radio based solutions (UMTS, WiFi) but also cable connections and the like. But 2-wire copper based connections are set up as a star topology and not as a bus.
Just have a look here - that should explain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signal_1
So, T1 (or DS1 here in Europe) is an old technology that multiplexes 24 channels, with 64kbit/second each. In Europe this was implemented via a PRI, which consisted of 24 copper pairs, each transporting 64kbit/s. Having 24 lines from the telekom to your home was expensive and still is. However, it's obsoleted, as nowadays via DSL one can get much higher rates on a copper pair, e.g. SDSL (which is symmetric) has rates up to 2Mbit/second, therefore it's a lot cheaper than T1.
Some stated that bandwidth is guaranteed with T1: That's not true. If a line is overbooked or not is simply based on the contract you have with your provider. Theoretically, one can also build a cheap ASDL-line with guaranteed bandwidth, however in the consumer sector, this is seldom needed.
Simple: If you buy a Linux desktop, take care that it has a graphic card from NVidia. These drivers may not be open source, however they are easy to install, work and have a decent performance.
The reason for the lack of Linux on desktop systems is not a bad desktop environment. KDE does well, Gnome too.
To my mind the problem is threefold:
1) Installing desktop hardware (especially notebooks) can still be a nightmare, even for advanced Linux users: Webcams, modesm, scanners, soundcards, new motherboard chipsets, bluetooth, graphic cards, input devices (keyboard/mouse/joystick) - they all come in various fashions and nearly none of them have native Linux driver support. This is different with server hardware, where drivers most often exist for Linux - moreover people who install servers are seldom Linux newbies.
2) Missing applications: No MS-Office, no CorelDraw, no Adobe Writer, no xyz, no... - the list is sooo long. And people often _have_ to use these applications.
3) Various content can not / not easily be viewed from Linux. This can be blamed on missing applications as denoted above but also on DRM, such as encrypted DVD's and the like. And for sure, new multimedia content will emerge that can not be viewed on Linux due to DRM restrictions.
The above three points apply to all other operating systems, such as ReactOS, BSD - regardless if these operating systems have "better" concepts or not. If there are no drivers, no applications and no content, no one will use it and it's pretty useless to port KDE/Gnome...
Treating addictive behaviour is always problematic - simply due to the fact that the persons around the affected person tend to play some certain "role" in the addiction.
For instance, in alcohol addiction may build up some roles, such as
- The desparate wife, who is blaming his alcoholic husband over and over
- The helpful friend, who is looking after the addicted person, tries to understand him and always has a good advice, which will probably never ever help
- The (also alcoholic) friends, who lure the addicted person over and over into the same situations
None of these persons will really help the addictive to get out, instead they are part of his system and are cementing his behavior even more. You know, people are also getting "their part" or "energy" out of their role:
- The desperate wife needs something to complain about
- The helpful friend needs the gratefulness of the addictive
- The alcoholic friends need someone who they can look down at (he's more addictive than I am)
So the first question one should ask himself is: "What is my role in this system?", and: "What can I do to change my role which may lead to destabilization of the current system and possibly lead to a real change and therefore help for the addictive?"
I am not suggesting to abandon someone. Just closely take a look at yourself. Look if and what "energy" you are getting out of this for yourself.
These ideas are not mine, if you are interested, take a look at the book "Games People Play" from Eric Berne, which is to my mind highly recommendable.
I always wonder what will happen with all these bright shining frameworks in some years?
If I rely on such a framework for my application and my application should last for - let's say - 5 years, it may well be that development and support for this framework has died out by this time.
And it may happen that you need to port your applications to a never hardware, a newer operating system and - maybe - to a newer version of the underlying programming language (such as Java). You may think that 5 years are a long time and there is probably no application that lasts longer - but you forget that applications are evolving and parts of your code may exist for many, many years.
For instance, there is still need for COBOL programmers that have to maintain/port old code for applications that are 15 years old. I wonder from where I'm going to get Java-Struts or JSP programmers in 15 years from now?
I would recommend to choose open-source frameworks/libraries, as you at least have the possibility to fix things by yourself if the support for the framework is gone.
I'm really curious if these frameworks are cost-effective in the long run.
You could easily do this in Python, too.
For instance, Python already has fixed-point math, called "decimal". And fixed-length strings may probably be implemented by subclassing "string" and checking the length.
I assume such techniques will also work with other languages, such as Ruby.
Products we buy get complicated more and more. Some years back, someone just bought a CD or a LP, simply put it into his player and listened to the music. That was something even my grandparents could do. Nowadays it's so complicated: There are "region-Codes" on the DVD, CD's cannot be played on various hardware (e.g. computers, car CD-players etc.). You see - one reason why people use P2P is simplicity: If you want a specific song, you simply search for it in Kazaa/eDonkey/whatever and download it. Paid services are complicated: You have to register somewhere, do a complicated (and possibly insecure) mondy transaction and then you have a file which will will be playable on a limited set of devices. It's not only that people are too lazy to handle things. I see people fiddling around with their hardware and not being able to use what they bought more and more. Therefore I don't think that this fingerprint scenario will every be reality - simply because people won't be able to use it.
Some hundred years ago Christians burned witches, invaded foreign countries (Africa, America) killing native inhabitants and invaded Palestine in order to "free" holy christian land - all in the name of Jesus.
And would you really state that Christianity is the "religion of violence"? Today everyone knows that these cruelty has nothing to do with the message of Jesus.
So - why should that be different with the Islam? Just because many misinterpretate the religion?
It's not that easy: Energiy is very cheap and I don't expect it to rise a lot in the near future.
The thing is that the costs of consequences of long term pollution and greenhouse gases are not included in the energy price - and they will never be. How could they anyway? The "cost" of the damage done to the environment can simply not be calculated.
So the only option is to try to save energy wherever it's possible. This is done by supporting a better isolation on newly built houses, on funding "green" technology etc.
One aspect among others is this standby issue.
Does anyone know how this "slingshot technique" actually works?
I understand that the probe gets faster when approaching an object with high gravity, such as Jupiter, however I don't know why it keeps the speed when leaving the gravitational field again. Where and how is the additional energy taken from?
Moreover I wonder how it slows down again so that the probe can successfully photograph pluto and does not do a very fast flyby.
The simple reason for hotter water after flushing the toilet is the following:
When taking _cold_ water from your system, such as for your toilet, there is an overall lower water pressure in the system. Therefore less cold water flows through your heater. Less water can be heated to higher temperatures, therefore the hot water is hotter until the toilet is filled with water.
That's also my opinion.
To my mind, one of the reasons for bad driving are rigid traffic rules. If people are confronted with rigid and dogmatic rules, they simply stop thinking and start loosing their personal responsibility. When there is a 50mph sign, people will go this speed, regardless if there is ice on the road or not.
One of the best drivers were (were, things change there too) found in Italy, which was a hell for everyone not used to the traffic. Although it was horrific to drive there, the accident statistics were far better than in the U.S. Having a good feeling and paying attention to the surrounding can never be replaced by dogmatic traffic rules.
To me, video games suffer from the same aspect as porn does: It's cheap, unbelievable, smudgy and dull.
Don't get me wrong: There's nothing bad about porn and video games, it's just that they never reach the quality of good books or interesting films.
Just like there's no porn flick with good actors you'll never see a shooter with a good storyline.
I don't know the reasons for this but we somehow have to accept that the majority of consumers just want it this way.
I think the really first one was "Wolfenstein 3D", not to mix with "Wolfenstein" which came out recently.
Then there was something called "Spears of Destiny", which was quite similar to Wolfenstein.
At around the same time, something very different, but also in 3D came out, called "Ultima Underworld".
I think it was around one to two years after that when Doom came out. Then there was Doom II I think, after that there was Quake I.