I used to be a supporter of SETI until I realised how much power it consumes.....nothing to do with money, it's all about the environment. It's ironic that we're burning huge amounts of power to look for something which doesn't really have a lot of meaning. Some people believe that finding aliens will totally change religion....maybe it won't, religion has a way of adapting quite well to change. But one thing is for sure....we're adding thousands or millions of tons of emissions to the atmosphere, choking ourselves to do this.
An idle PC (P4) consumes around 150Watts (mine does)....running SETI pushes this to 225Watts - so an extra light bulb really. It also encourages us to keep our PC's on for longer so that Johnny's score can be higher than Paul's. But assuming that the PC is on for 12 hours a day, that extra light bulb is a kwh.....in the US that is about 0.6 to 0.7kg of emissions, and in Australia it's much higher at 1kg.
OK, a Core2 PC might be idle at 90Watts, but at full bore on SETI it still goes up to around 160Watt, and this is without running the graphical screensaver part too, which will push the power up even more to draw some lines on the screen by the GPU.
It's pointless I think. If you want to do this, how about swinging over to one of the more more useful projects so at least it wont be useless.
Interesting to read all this. I've been using Debian for a long time, and about 6 months ago I had a crack at Gentoo on my laptop to see what all the interest was in Gentoo. I liked what I saw over the last couple of years before then, but I definately feel that there's been a lack of cohesion at Gentoo from an outsiders POV in recent times - although I can't put my finger as to why I feel like that.
OT - whats all the fuss & hype about Ubunto/Kubunto ? I've install it a couple of times and I can't see any compelling reason for those distros compared to anything else like debian (apart from an easy install) or SuSE ? They just feel like a cut-down debian for some weird reason. Debian is still my disto of choice despite recent perceived debian admin problems, including lots of X stuff going wrong after upgrades (but that's unstable branch to be honest!)
true enough, but it's not quite the same as your servicing car analogy. The major difference is that when you buy a car, the manual and more importantly the law tells you that you must keep it in road worthy condition. There is no such law for wireless security and very few manuals urging your to secure your AP. So I believe the onus would lie not with the owner.
One thing that has always remained unanswered to me is to what legal extent a person is responsible for security ? Let's suppose that you're not a network guru, have a wireless AP, and you don't secure it. Afterall, this is how almost ALL AP's come out of the box - unsecured. Let's suppose your AP is then used by others to download copyrighted content, and you get fingered for it. Is this your problem ?
Afterall, if you leave the keys in your car then you are responsible to a large extent for it's theft most people would say. But then, why aren't ultimately the ISP's responsible, passing it up the chain, since they didn't stop copyrighted material being transmitted on their service ? Taking this further, why aren't the music providers themselves responsible for not properly securing their music in the first place - afterall, they left the keys in their car....or on the DVD in the case of movies. Or how about the manufacturers of the AP ?
I'm not sticking up for copyright theft at all, but I find the legal consequences of responsibility and who it lies with very interesting. I wonder if this has been tested in any courts around the world ? On my short 12km ride from work to home, a casual sniff reveals that around 40% of home WANs are unsecured on my trip....so imagine how plausible this scenario must be.
Gee, I've got it all wrong since 1997. I've been stupidly replacing all my windows boxes with linux ones, and now I find out its costing my company a bomb. Its cost the company tons of dough to employ me, whereas I wouldn't be required if we'd stuck with the reliability of windows.
I'm sure there's tons of other funny things to find, but its bedtime for this linux criminal. Thankfully being a criminal is something Australia considers a proud heritage, so I'm OK!;)
Good point....we just need to outlast that little blue line and see it off the bottom of the graph.
I'm no lawyer, but I can't figure out how SCO can arbitrarily accuse people of things that are yet to be proven. Innocent until proven guilty, what happened to that little phrase ?
I don't get it - how can companies take people to court on unsubstantiated claims ? eg. I cannot sue you for driving a Ford if I arbitrarily claim that I invented the Ford car and it uses my design IP - I would be thrown out of court for vexatious behaviour. If you're being sued by sco, surely a court would need to defer to the case in the US ?
Its only coming from the SCO PR people in Sydney, so I bet they really don't know whats going on at all. Its probably 2 guys and a tea lady running SCO here I'd say. Probably got at least 5 guys & 2 tea ladies in the US running the show..
I recall reading somewhere where SCO said they had $10M stashed away as a fighting fund for this action. I can't believe they said that - $10M isn't going to get them very far, surely ?
I'd bet you'd need a f%^# load more than that. Imagine SCO trying to sue 10 million linux users - just see their dollar and raise another 50 cents and they're toast!
Let's assume that SCO is right, and that there IS copied code in linux from sysV. It seems to me that 1 or more of the following will happen:
(i) linux developers will clean room re-develop the offending code, thereby fixing the breach. SCO loses.
(ii) if (i) doesn't happen for some reasons I can't fathom, then SCO stops all use of linux kernel 2.4 upwards. Linux drops back to 2.2 (losing years of work) and restarts from there. SCO loses, linux loses some time.
(iii) if (i) & (ii) can't happen, then SCO wins the battle, linux is killed. Will millions of linux users spend $699 or $1299 on SCO linux ? NO! Most would shift over to freebsd/openbsd, and a few might go to MS & Apple. SCO loses the war. FreeBSD/OpenBSD wins.
It really seems like a well planned short term survival strategy but a really poor long term survival strategy by SCO. Are they doing drugs or what ?
I think SCO started off being serious, but they noticed that the more trash they said, the higher their stock went up. A bit like a naughty 2 year old who is constantly probing how much his parents will endure before he gets punished, SCO is testing how many people they can scare before the music stops.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be a supporter of SETI until I realised how much power it consumes.....nothing to do with money, it's all about the environment. It's ironic that we're burning huge amounts of power to look for something which doesn't really have a lot of meaning. Some people believe that finding aliens will totally change religion....maybe it won't, religion has a way of adapting quite well to change. But one thing is for sure....we're adding thousands or millions of tons of emissions to the atmosphere, choking ourselves to do this. An idle PC (P4) consumes around 150Watts (mine does)....running SETI pushes this to 225Watts - so an extra light bulb really. It also encourages us to keep our PC's on for longer so that Johnny's score can be higher than Paul's. But assuming that the PC is on for 12 hours a day, that extra light bulb is a kwh.....in the US that is about 0.6 to 0.7kg of emissions, and in Australia it's much higher at 1kg. OK, a Core2 PC might be idle at 90Watts, but at full bore on SETI it still goes up to around 160Watt, and this is without running the graphical screensaver part too, which will push the power up even more to draw some lines on the screen by the GPU. It's pointless I think. If you want to do this, how about swinging over to one of the more more useful projects so at least it wont be useless.
Interesting to read all this. I've been using Debian for a long time, and about 6 months ago I had a crack at Gentoo on my laptop to see what all the interest was in Gentoo. I liked what I saw over the last couple of years before then, but I definately feel that there's been a lack of cohesion at Gentoo from an outsiders POV in recent times - although I can't put my finger as to why I feel like that. OT - whats all the fuss & hype about Ubunto/Kubunto ? I've install it a couple of times and I can't see any compelling reason for those distros compared to anything else like debian (apart from an easy install) or SuSE ? They just feel like a cut-down debian for some weird reason. Debian is still my disto of choice despite recent perceived debian admin problems, including lots of X stuff going wrong after upgrades (but that's unstable branch to be honest!)
true enough, but it's not quite the same as your servicing car analogy. The major difference is that when you buy a car, the manual and more importantly the law tells you that you must keep it in road worthy condition. There is no such law for wireless security and very few manuals urging your to secure your AP. So I believe the onus would lie not with the owner.
One thing that has always remained unanswered to me is to what legal extent a person is responsible for security ? Let's suppose that you're not a network guru, have a wireless AP, and you don't secure it. Afterall, this is how almost ALL AP's come out of the box - unsecured. Let's suppose your AP is then used by others to download copyrighted content, and you get fingered for it. Is this your problem ?
Afterall, if you leave the keys in your car then you are responsible to a large extent for it's theft most people would say. But then, why aren't ultimately the ISP's responsible, passing it up the chain, since they didn't stop copyrighted material being transmitted on their service ?
Taking this further, why aren't the music providers themselves responsible for not properly securing their music in the first place - afterall, they left the keys in their car....or on the DVD in the case of movies. Or how about the manufacturers of the AP ?
I'm not sticking up for copyright theft at all, but I find the legal consequences of responsibility and who it lies with very interesting. I wonder if this has been tested in any courts around the world ? On my short 12km ride from work to home, a casual sniff reveals that around 40% of home WANs are unsecured on my trip....so imagine how plausible this scenario must be.
Gee, I've got it all wrong since 1997. I've been stupidly replacing all my windows boxes with linux ones, and now I find out its costing my company a bomb. Its cost the company tons of dough to employ me, whereas I wouldn't be required if we'd stuck with the reliability of windows.
"Stuck".....synonymous with "Windows" since 1993
Here you go......11 April 2005 to pull a date out of my scox....
ilaw.com.au
Some fun stuff to be had over at netcraft.
;)
The ACCC runs linux
Also funny is that SCO lists McDonalds as a SCO licensee in their 5 reasons to use unix instead of linux ad, yet McDonalds.com.au chooses to use windows for its public site.
I'm sure there's tons of other funny things to find, but its bedtime for this linux criminal. Thankfully being a criminal is something Australia considers a proud heritage, so I'm OK!
Good point....we just need to outlast that little blue line and see it off the bottom of the graph. I'm no lawyer, but I can't figure out how SCO can arbitrarily accuse people of things that are yet to be proven. Innocent until proven guilty, what happened to that little phrase ?
I don't get it - how can companies take people to court on unsubstantiated claims ? eg. I cannot sue you for driving a Ford if I arbitrarily claim that I invented the Ford car and it uses my design IP - I would be thrown out of court for vexatious behaviour. If you're being sued by sco, surely a court would need to defer to the case in the US ?
Its only coming from the SCO PR people in Sydney, so I bet they really don't know whats going on at all. Its probably 2 guys and a tea lady running SCO here I'd say. Probably got at least 5 guys & 2 tea ladies in the US running the show..
I recall reading somewhere where SCO said they had $10M stashed away as a fighting fund for this action. I can't believe they said that - $10M isn't going to get them very far, surely ?
I'd bet you'd need a f%^# load more than that. Imagine SCO trying to sue 10 million linux users - just see their dollar and raise another 50 cents and they're toast!
Let's assume that SCO is right, and that there IS copied code in linux from sysV. It seems to me that 1 or more of the following will happen:
(i) linux developers will clean room re-develop the offending code, thereby fixing the breach. SCO loses.
(ii) if (i) doesn't happen for some reasons I can't fathom, then SCO stops all use of linux kernel 2.4 upwards. Linux drops back to 2.2 (losing years of work) and restarts from there. SCO loses, linux loses some time.
(iii) if (i) & (ii) can't happen, then SCO wins the battle, linux is killed. Will millions of linux users spend $699 or $1299 on SCO linux ? NO! Most would shift over to freebsd/openbsd, and a few might go to MS & Apple. SCO loses the war. FreeBSD/OpenBSD wins.
It really seems like a well planned short term survival strategy but a really poor long term survival strategy by SCO. Are they doing drugs or what ?
the outlook is bleak
I think SCO started off being serious, but they noticed that the more trash they said, the higher their stock went up.
A bit like a naughty 2 year old who is constantly probing how much his parents will endure before he gets punished, SCO is testing how many people they can scare before the music stops.