"Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint".... ummm no he didn't. Customer sent email to address that was supposedly The Steve's but some dude name Mark took care of the problem for him from that point on. No evidence of divine intervention by The Steve .
So it seems like every time I blink, Slashdot is posting some story about a revolution in photovoltaic technologies. But when are these revolutions going to trickle down to actual products that I can mount on the roof of my home?
Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I only ever see incremental improvements in PV technology at the retail level. Perhaps the Slashdot editors should hold back on some of these vaporware announcements and focus more on tangible products that can make a difference now.
Ron Paul is (hopefully) the face of the new GOP but only if we let it happen. The neocons hate him. His proposed legislation would cripple their power.
"but we have broadly the same rights as US citizens"
I'd love to see your assault rifle collection sometime. Mine is pretty sweet.
"Out of interest, how has the vaunted US system protected habeas corpus?"
The situation is still unfolding, but the system is working. The party responsible for degrading habeas corpus has lost most of its legislative power to the other party. Legislative oversight is now underway to roll back some of the more egregious losses of liberty ASAP. Simultaneously, cases are working their way through our judicial system to provide judicial oversight.
It's not a perfect system, it's not a fast system, but so far it's the best system in the world today.
Scientists should be skeptical. It is only under much scrutiny and skepticism that the truth can be truly known. Petty tactics against skeptics only serve to make the more popular global warming theories appear as dogma rather than real science.
Samba may have been met with trepidation like 8 years ago. The rest of the world has gotten with the program. It works. It works well. It works extremely well.
I've implemented it at a number of Fortune 100 companies. I cannot name names due to NDA but you would recognize the names. I am contracting at one of them right now.
For enterprise scale use, I would even contend that Samba makes a better file server to large numbers of Windows clients than running Windows on the server. Can you run Windows on an IBM pSeries 570 (16 POWER5+ processors, 128GB RAM) to serve files to ~20,000 users? I can tell you that RHEL 4 does that just fine.
"Frankly, I can't think of any place more boring, stifling, and backward than the suburban sprawl of North Carolina."
This sort of tripe usually comes from people who have either never lived in North Carolina, or never bothered to leave the confines of CARY. The Triangle is actually a pretty great place to live. We have lots of great things to do, a very diverse population, high concentration of tech geeks, and a rapidly building undergound art/music scene.
If you come here with preconceptions of what to expect and never bother looking, you're not going to find what you're looking for.
Open your mind and your eyes and enjoy everything North Carolina has to offer.
Keep your executives, your deal makers, your evangelists out in the Valley but put your engineers in hotspots like Austin or Research Triangle Park. Why the hell would you want to pay engineers to work in Silicon Valley when the cost of living expenses are so high that your HR dollars will go almost nowhere?
So I was very interested in seeing what the WikiLocal site was like and checked it out. The main portal page is there, but try clicking the links on the page. It's pretty much a 404 farm right now. The site should have been tested before it was announced for general use. How many people now will just walk away from it instead of contributing right away? And how long before they get around to checking it out again? This site could have had a strong pop from day 1 if it were actually ready to start handling visitors and contributors.
For most/. users, this is not going to work as a desktop replacement. But for most general office workers, this can and does work.
I don't have much experience using Windows as a terminal server. What I do have is experience using CentOS Linux as a terminal server, with HP thin clients on the desktop. It works phenomenally well.
The thin clients themselves cost about $350 a pop in small quantities, closer to $300 a pop if you do a mass migration. You put some of your funds into nice displays, but most of your funds into the back end server. Lots of cores, lots of RAM, very fast disk. Plan on replacing it every 2-3 years with newer faster hardware.
The vast majority of the users will be idling the processors most of the time, so long as you disable fancy screen savers and other CPU-wasters on the central terminal server. Depending on what kind of hardware you use on the back end, you could potentially have hundreds of office workers happily working with one back end server. Honestly, though, I think the ideal way to go would be with something like an IBM pSeries box with a bunch of department level LPARs so you don't have one department hogging resources and crapping all over everyone else.
The thin clients can boot off a local read-only flash drive, but better yet have them boot off a tftp server so you can more easily keep their software levels up to date.
X11 has been doing this stuff for ages. The technology is pretty mature.:) Though I am not thrilled with the security, nor am I thrilled with the state of remote audio in X11. Those are the two big caveats I would warn you of if you're considering something like this.
Other than those issues, I have been thrilled with the technology. It's an idea that was pushed out there before the technology was ready before. Now the hardware has caught up with the concept. It's worth another look now.
Parent poster is spreading FUD that hasn't been true for decades. Modern solar panels have a much longer life expectancy these days and enough bang for the buck to make the conversion worthwhile in expensive energy markets like New Jersey. I wonder if Elmer FUD here works for an energy company.
Incidentally, many homes across America have been "off the grid" for some time now. The solar array here is not news at all, nor is it even unusual among alternative energy enthusiasts. http://homepower.com/ has bee documenting this sort of thing for many years now.
Slashdot Mirror
"Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint" .... ummm no he didn't. Customer sent email to address that was supposedly The Steve's but some dude name Mark took care of the problem for him from that point on. No evidence of divine intervention by The Steve .
So it seems like every time I blink, Slashdot is posting some story about a revolution in photovoltaic technologies. But when are these revolutions going to trickle down to actual products that I can mount on the roof of my home?
Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I only ever see incremental improvements in PV technology at the retail level. Perhaps the Slashdot editors should hold back on some of these vaporware announcements and focus more on tangible products that can make a difference now.
Jennnny I got your number!
It reminds me of this story that needs to be dugg.
"He even wants to take away citizenship from people born in the U.S. That's a recipe for disaster."
Nice spin.
He wants to take away automatic citizenship granted to babies born to parents that are illegally in the US.
Bush is a neocon, not a conservative.
Ron Paul is (hopefully) the face of the new GOP but only if we let it happen. The neocons hate him. His proposed legislation would cripple their power.
Maybe they realize the inherent sexism of such a system and are dragging their feet intentionally.
"When does nature ever produce slow ungainly hunters?"
Dick Cheney
"but we have broadly the same rights as US citizens"
I'd love to see your assault rifle collection sometime. Mine is pretty sweet.
"Out of interest, how has the vaunted US system protected habeas corpus?"
The situation is still unfolding, but the system is working. The party responsible for degrading habeas corpus has lost most of its legislative power to the other party. Legislative oversight is now underway to roll back some of the more egregious losses of liberty ASAP. Simultaneously, cases are working their way through our judicial system to provide judicial oversight.
It's not a perfect system, it's not a fast system, but so far it's the best system in the world today.
Speaking from personal experience, Gentoo on an IBM pSeries 570 is no slouch.
"emerge samba"? Don't blink. It took 12 seconds.
Slashdot sets its wayback machine to six months ago to unearth lost news from the past.
a ndwidth_means_5GBs_or_less_or_we_cancel_your_accou nt
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Verizon_Unlimited_b
Linux is actually a supported OS on some Thinkpads.
Vote with your $$$. If HP is screwing you, screw them. Give someone else your money that values your business.
The Constitution guarantees us freedom of speech.
It does not guarantee us freedom from the consequences of our speech.
IBM pSeries 595, fully loaded.
Scientists should be skeptical. It is only under much scrutiny and skepticism that the truth can be truly known. Petty tactics against skeptics only serve to make the more popular global warming theories appear as dogma rather than real science.
Samba may have been met with trepidation like 8 years ago. The rest of the world has gotten with the program. It works. It works well. It works extremely well.
I've implemented it at a number of Fortune 100 companies. I cannot name names due to NDA but you would recognize the names. I am contracting at one of them right now.
For enterprise scale use, I would even contend that Samba makes a better file server to large numbers of Windows clients than running Windows on the server. Can you run Windows on an IBM pSeries 570 (16 POWER5+ processors, 128GB RAM) to serve files to ~20,000 users? I can tell you that RHEL 4 does that just fine.
That leaves the Scotty role open for Ewan McGregor, who would fit into this cast nicely. Best of all, he doesn't have to fake the accent.
Does ESR have some kind of cult of people who actually care about his software preferences? How is this news? Or is it just a slow day?
"Frankly, I can't think of any place more boring, stifling, and backward than the suburban sprawl of North Carolina."
This sort of tripe usually comes from people who have either never lived in North Carolina, or never bothered to leave the confines of CARY. The Triangle is actually a pretty great place to live. We have lots of great things to do, a very diverse population, high concentration of tech geeks, and a rapidly building undergound art/music scene.
If you come here with preconceptions of what to expect and never bother looking, you're not going to find what you're looking for.
Open your mind and your eyes and enjoy everything North Carolina has to offer.
Keep your executives, your deal makers, your evangelists out in the Valley but put your engineers in hotspots like Austin or Research Triangle Park. Why the hell would you want to pay engineers to work in Silicon Valley when the cost of living expenses are so high that your HR dollars will go almost nowhere?
So I was very interested in seeing what the WikiLocal site was like and checked it out. The main portal page is there, but try clicking the links on the page. It's pretty much a 404 farm right now. The site should have been tested before it was announced for general use. How many people now will just walk away from it instead of contributing right away? And how long before they get around to checking it out again? This site could have had a strong pop from day 1 if it were actually ready to start handling visitors and contributors.
I've tried this with Knoppix's terminal-server on the main machine, and PXE an old Fujitsu laptop. Didn't get all the way.
Can't comment. Don't know where you got stuck. I don't believe I did get stuck. It worked.
Also even with the tftp server, the process of creating a bootable image is a lengthy pain.
No, it's not. It's not much more than an apt-get install away in Ubuntu, as well.
For most /. users, this is not going to work as a desktop replacement. But for most general office workers, this can and does work.
:) Though I am not thrilled with the security, nor am I thrilled with the state of remote audio in X11. Those are the two big caveats I would warn you of if you're considering something like this.
I don't have much experience using Windows as a terminal server. What I do have is experience using CentOS Linux as a terminal server, with HP thin clients on the desktop. It works phenomenally well.
The thin clients themselves cost about $350 a pop in small quantities, closer to $300 a pop if you do a mass migration. You put some of your funds into nice displays, but most of your funds into the back end server. Lots of cores, lots of RAM, very fast disk. Plan on replacing it every 2-3 years with newer faster hardware.
The vast majority of the users will be idling the processors most of the time, so long as you disable fancy screen savers and other CPU-wasters on the central terminal server. Depending on what kind of hardware you use on the back end, you could potentially have hundreds of office workers happily working with one back end server. Honestly, though, I think the ideal way to go would be with something like an IBM pSeries box with a bunch of department level LPARs so you don't have one department hogging resources and crapping all over everyone else.
The thin clients can boot off a local read-only flash drive, but better yet have them boot off a tftp server so you can more easily keep their software levels up to date.
X11 has been doing this stuff for ages. The technology is pretty mature.
Other than those issues, I have been thrilled with the technology. It's an idea that was pushed out there before the technology was ready before. Now the hardware has caught up with the concept. It's worth another look now.
http://www.ronpaul.org/
This is the libertarian that actually has a chance... because he's running as a Republican!
Parent poster is spreading FUD that hasn't been true for decades. Modern solar panels have a much longer life expectancy these days and enough bang for the buck to make the conversion worthwhile in expensive energy markets like New Jersey. I wonder if Elmer FUD here works for an energy company.
Incidentally, many homes across America have been "off the grid" for some time now. The solar array here is not news at all, nor is it even unusual among alternative energy enthusiasts. http://homepower.com/ has bee documenting this sort of thing for many years now.