SCO may have 326 lines of code IF the judge in the Novell case say that the rights to the code were transferred to SCO via the Amended Purchase Agreement.
One, new drugs come out ALL of the time. It is impossible for a doctor to know every new drug out there, even with continuing education. These commercials, along with the "pharmaceutical companies bribes" and "pharm babes"(cute drug reps), serve a purpose in educating doctors as well as consumers.
Two, doctors don't know all of the existing drugs before they graduated from medical school, did their residency, etc. They don't have full knowledge of the thousands of drugs that were out there, they were too busy studying where things are in the body, and accepted ways to fix them.
Three, NEVER count on a M.D. for drug information. They have VERY little pharmacology training, and almost no knowledge on drug interactions. That is what pharmacists are for. Doctors prescribe drugs to keep you alive, pharmacists stop them from killing you.
Re:With the introduction of AppleTV...
on
The Home Server Cometh
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Media Center may be "winning the war", but it's more like the first volley. The real battle hasn't begun, because no one is REALLY serious about it.
AppleTV is a still-born idea. For $300 more, you can get a fully functional mini that can do everything the AppleTV can do(ok...it can't do component video out, but it has a DVI port...you add the DVI-HDMI cable), and is still a functional computer. Add a an Eyetv 250, and it's a DVR. Granted, this all costs money, but about the same as a "comparable" Windows Media box.
The products, so far, a little more than attempts to enter the market. Most home users don't want things that connect to other things, wirelessly or otherwise, they just want one thing they can sit down in front of, plug in their video camera/digital camera, have it suck out the content, and put it one the screen. Also, they can put in a DVD/CD, have it rip the media, and be able to watch the movie. Finally, they want something that they don't need to pay for TV content they can get free(or have already paid for from the cable/satellite company), and record on their DVR. They want it in HD(if that was the original resolution), not "near" the resolution.
DirecTv's version of the TiVO OS(version depends on hardware)doesn't include an FTP server, like the "real" TiVO OS does(vs. 7). Secondly, DirecTv also disables the network port in software. So, there's no easy way to get content off.
That's for official support. There are hacks available that allow you to enable the network port(if you have one, otherwise you need to buy a USB ethernet adapter), start a telnet/ftp server, so you can transfer things off via command line. AFAIK, it won't support Tivo2Go. Also, you'll need a tool to crack the encryption(which are available) to be able to view the media file.
All that said, I have used a Firewire capture device, and iMovie, to transfer content off of my DirecTv TiVO. There are a number of decent devices available for under $200(which is probably what you'll spend for the hacks...not including your time spent). I used a Canopus ADVC55, or you can use the Elgato Eye250. I got pretty good results, though it's not "original" content quality.
Vendor Lock: Why would Apple want to make it easy for you to use their product on another device? Apple isn't selling iPods to sell songs/tv shows/movies, they're selling songs/tv shows/movies to sell iPods. Other than/.ers sitting in their ivory towers expounding on "DRM is wrong", most iPod users either don't know that Apple really has control of their music, or, they're willing to put up with it to have the convenience of "owning" music they download.
Pricing scheme: the failure of Napster 2.0 and the lacking business of Rhapsody show, subscription services are not the preferred method of getting music online. Using your Ramones example, you buy the whole catalog from iTMS for $150, you have it, theoretically if you use good backup practices, forever(or until Apple turns off the authentication server for the iTMS, and you reformat your computer to lose the "authorization"). If you belong to a subscription service, you pay $15 a month. If you have it a year, when that year is up, $180 is gone and you are left with nothing.
"The Long Tail": First of all, this is true of any brick and mortar store as well. They can only carry so much, even the second hand stores. However, what I like about iTMS, is the breadth of their catalog. I can hear a song I haven't heard in a long time, download it from iTMS, and have it in a minute. Usually, I can't go to your normal "big box" store, where CDs are cheapest, and find what I'm looking for. Most small music stores won't even have it. Plus, that's a 30 minute trip. It's more convenient to download from the comfort of my couch.
Why not make it until death of the artist(or all group members)? Or, in case of sale of rights, a fixed period(like 10 years). If they were desperate enough to sell them, or stupid enough as in the case of Sir Paul, the buyer would have a fixed time in which to benefit. Why would you buy a catalog, unless to profit from it in the short term(except buying the Beatles catalog)?
I believe artists are entitled to keep the rights to their works for their lifetime. They made it, so they should be able to benefit from it. However, they shouldn't be able to put their great-grandchildren through school 45 years after they die. That's what wills and trust funds are for.
CDs only have a few decent tracks on them(no more than 6...hence being worth $6). The only benefit they have is being an archival copy of the song, which I can rip from over and over again.
The other benefit to a CD is I can "discover" an artist's other music(the "whole CD is artwork argument), in addition to the popular stuff I hear on the radio/Sirius. However, with notable exceptions, the fluff that takes up the other 8 - 10 tracks on current CDs is not worth the extra $12 over the $2 for the two songs I bought online.
Don't fight the market. CDs will be dead soon. Online distribution is the way of the present and future. If artists want you to buy entire works, put a couple of the non-single songs on the net for free for a limited time. If you want people to discover your work, either get your stuff on the radio, or put it out there for free, just like the "indie"/struggling up-and comers do.
Metallics would be better than non in a razor blade. They could probably do titanium alloy(6/4?), which would stay sharp a lot longer than the steels they use now. The manufacturer would, unnecessarily, jack up the price though.
In defense of carbon fiber, they do cut F1 tires pretty well, so maybe they would work? However, carbon's biggest advantage, light weight, isn't really needed, unless they get to the 20+ blades.
It was Chrysler, who was responsible for the creation of the Diablo(Lee Iococca said the door sills on the Countach were too wide). You are correct that Chrysler raided some of the technology(ex. brakes on the Viper), however Chrysler sold off their interest in Lamborghini due to difficult financial circumstances(which lead to the Daimler "merger").
It's not that he became lazy or too old, the problem is George Lucas isn't that great of a director(from the actor's point of view), and even worse as a script writer.
Lucas' direction, as described by many of the actors he's worked with, is limited to "More". He can't help actors tap into feelings, the way that the "Great directors"(Spielberg, Scorcese, Ron Howard, etc.) can. That led to very flat acting, with little emotion, as exampled by New Hope, and the three prequels. Notice the "best films" of the Star Wars saga were directed by someone else(Irving Kerschner for Empire and Richard Marquand for Jedi).
Compounding the issue is Lucas' inablility to write a script that gives people decent lines to work with. New Hope was completely written by Lucas, and TPM was almost a George-only work as well, but, luckily, a script doctor was brought in to clean it up at the last minute. It is rumored that others helped with the scripts on AoTC and RotS. Again, the screenplays for Empire and Jedi were both written by someone else(Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan for Empire, and Kasdan for Jedi). The best way to sum up Lucas' scripts is to quote Sir Alec Guiness on why Obi-Wan should be killed off in ANH, "What I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines."
Don't bother. I had the same idea after I compared the DVDs(Special Edition cleaned up) to my copy of the THX widescreen.
If you want to do it, here's how. First of all, you need to defeat the Macrovision protection. It's illegal to sell such devices, or discuss how to do it(something called the DMCA). Funnily enough, LaserDiscs had no such copy protection*hint hint*, but I digress. Without doing that, the colors are going to be horribly off, and you're going to get a really dark image. Secondly, you're going to need an analog to dv converter. I used a Canopus external box, though I think ATI All-in-Wonder cards are capable. Since I had a Mac, I used the Canopus into iMovie, which worked, but the resulting image was bad since I didn't get past the Macrovision. Once I had the footage archived, I turned it into a DVD using iDVD, though there are lots of similar Windows applications.
You spend $200 for the Canopus analog converter(not to mention about $100 for a Macrovision decrypter), plus 3-4 hours per film capturing and editing, a few hours for rendering and burning to DVD.
The problem lies in the fact that they used a third party wireless adapter. People buy Macs for a number of reasons, one of which being integration(the "Everything just works" argument). No one buys a wireless adapter for a Mac laptop, because they all come with one. If the Airport Extreme card stops working, almost all Mac users will either send it to Apple or take it to an Apple Store/Authorized Apple Service Center to be replaced.
Is OS X 100% secure? If you use a undocumented hack, on a third party wireless adapter, that's known to EXACTLY TWO people, no.
Is OS X 100% secure to the average user? Yes(so far).
"Accidentally deleted" probably means "we had a hardware failure and we're too cheap to recover everything".
700GB was definitely over a couple of disks, probably a RAID box. If you lose a RAID controller in SOME(not most or all) brands of RAID boxes, it's very difficult to rebuild the map. I saw an NStor RAID box lose a controller, and it was impossible to recover.
I wonder of how much was recovered was from tape? 12GB of unread email probably means "we didn't have a backup of the 12GB", though that's a LOT of email to be missing.
This is Slashdot, we live on righteous indignation.
If this account by the FBI is true, Rombom(Rambam, whatever)did a really horrible thing to the witness and his family. Was it worthy of the public arrest? Even Al Capone got to go quietly.
The sad thing is such shakedowns happen all of the time. When the FBI does it, it's called "gathering evidence". When a PI does, it's called "witness tampering". The difference? One has a REAL badge.
No, SCO is claiming that parts of System V AND Dynix/AIX were copied into Linux. Since Dynix and AIX are derivative works of Unix, which they own the rights to the source code, they own the rights to Dynix and AIX via the Project Monterrey contract.
First of all, SCO needs to prove that they IN FACT own the rights to the Unix source code(the Novell case), and then they need to prove the derivative works part of the contract with IBM. Finally, they need to prove that the only way the code ended up in Linux was by direct copying of Unix/Dynix/AIX. Since they can't point to where things have been copied, Judge Wells slapped them upside the head.
As for destroying evidence, claiming, "they didn't know better" is not a legal excuse. SCO, if correct, would have a leg to stand on if this can be proved that IBM deliberately destroyed evidence. However, as many have pointed out, cleaning up your desktops is something everyone does. Probably some manager got an email from some higher up that said, "Hey, we're getting sued for copying stuff into Linux, so have everybody delete all of their copies so it doesn't happen again." IBM would have access to these emails, IF THEY EXIST.
Apple's stock price seems to be more volatile than Dell, HP/Compaq, etc. Every five minutes there's some "expert" saying Apple is "dying", "going to be sold to ____(Sun, M$, Chucky Cheese, etc.)", "has a virus...no wait, we mean trojan(it doesn't work yet...and you need to enter your password when it does)" and traders freak. Right now, Apple's in limbo with the anticipated switch in the Pro machines to Woodcrest chips, as well as M$'s "ipod-killer", and Apple's supposed inability to get a Video iPod, which hasn't even been announced yet, on shelves by the "important Back-to-School season".
As we've seen with crude oil prices, there is a lot of "feeling" in stock prices that isn't directly tied to real company value/profits.
Token study proposals, in an election year, that in their wildest dreams will do nothing to improve rolling brown/blackouts, or lessen fossil fuel consumption(coal-burning power plants), are a waste of time and government money. This is nothing more than pandering to their constituency, trying to put "I'm Green" credibility in their election platform. It's no better than gay marriage ban and flag burning ban amendments(if you live in a red state) that fail to muster even a majority in the Senate.
Cutting energy consumption, at least of fossil-based fuels, is not going to be accomplished in a day. However, intelligent energy and natural resource policy has escaped the current administration and Congress, and they should not be patted on the back for a job well done when they have accomplished next to nothing.
"Section 1: Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, through the Energy Star program, shall transmit to the Congress the results of a study analyzing the rapid growth and energy consumption of computer data centers by the Federal Government and private enterprise."
In other words, the House wants a study done by the EPA to determine the "rapid growth" and energy consumption of data centers. There were no riders, nothing tacked on to the final, passed, version.
What's the point? Is it going to stop data center expansion? Is the federal government going to subsidize cooler, more efficient processors or servers? What about desktop machines, or is that a different bill? I can just imagine people in Congress saying, "Lord of the Rings was a good movie, but thank god WETA is in New Zealand, I feel cooler already."*note sarcasm*
For a country that is so anti-environment(I laughed when I saw the current issue of Newsweek's cover "The Greening of America"), we are wasting opportunities to get on the right track. Our government needs to stand up for the environment, not pass stupid bills authorizing the study of server room temperatures. The four who voted against this bill were right, this "study" is a waste of money.
I'm glad someone mentioned Deadliest Catch! I love that show!
As a country seemingly lacking in AVAILABLE natural resource(oil in Siberia under miles of permafrost in inhospitable conditions isn't available), this could be a boon for the Russian economy. Also, with the introduction of crab quotas, there are a lot of out of work crab boat captains and crew in Alaska. Since they run so close to the Pacific side of Russia, I think most of them would be ok with "fishing" the Barents Sea.
The downside is that this would lead to a price war, if the Russian king crab were put on the global market, which would further negatively affect the Alaskan crab fleet.
Slashdot Mirror
SCO may have 326 lines of code IF the judge in the Novell case say that the rights to the code were transferred to SCO via the Amended Purchase Agreement.
August 6, 1997 - Apple and Microsoft announce $150MIL investment of Microsoft in Apple.
February 7, 1997 - Steve Jobs returns to Apple
June 27, 1997 - Bill Gates sends email explaining threats made to Apple of pulling the plug on Office for Mac.
August 6, 1997 - Apple and Microsoft announce $150 investment of Microsoft in Apple.
What happened between June 27 and August 6?
One, new drugs come out ALL of the time. It is impossible for a doctor to know every new drug out there, even with continuing education. These commercials, along with the "pharmaceutical companies bribes" and "pharm babes"(cute drug reps), serve a purpose in educating doctors as well as consumers.
Two, doctors don't know all of the existing drugs before they graduated from medical school, did their residency, etc. They don't have full knowledge of the thousands of drugs that were out there, they were too busy studying where things are in the body, and accepted ways to fix them.
Three, NEVER count on a M.D. for drug information. They have VERY little pharmacology training, and almost no knowledge on drug interactions. That is what pharmacists are for. Doctors prescribe drugs to keep you alive, pharmacists stop them from killing you.
Media Center may be "winning the war", but it's more like the first volley. The real battle hasn't begun, because no one is REALLY serious about it.
AppleTV is a still-born idea. For $300 more, you can get a fully functional mini that can do everything the AppleTV can do(ok...it can't do component video out, but it has a DVI port...you add the DVI-HDMI cable), and is still a functional computer. Add a an Eyetv 250, and it's a DVR. Granted, this all costs money, but about the same as a "comparable" Windows Media box.
The products, so far, a little more than attempts to enter the market. Most home users don't want things that connect to other things, wirelessly or otherwise, they just want one thing they can sit down in front of, plug in their video camera/digital camera, have it suck out the content, and put it one the screen. Also, they can put in a DVD/CD, have it rip the media, and be able to watch the movie. Finally, they want something that they don't need to pay for TV content they can get free(or have already paid for from the cable/satellite company), and record on their DVR. They want it in HD(if that was the original resolution), not "near" the resolution.
DirecTv's version of the TiVO OS(version depends on hardware)doesn't include an FTP server, like the "real" TiVO OS does(vs. 7). Secondly, DirecTv also disables the network port in software. So, there's no easy way to get content off.
That's for official support. There are hacks available that allow you to enable the network port(if you have one, otherwise you need to buy a USB ethernet adapter), start a telnet/ftp server, so you can transfer things off via command line. AFAIK, it won't support Tivo2Go. Also, you'll need a tool to crack the encryption(which are available) to be able to view the media file.
All that said, I have used a Firewire capture device, and iMovie, to transfer content off of my DirecTv TiVO. There are a number of decent devices available for under $200(which is probably what you'll spend for the hacks...not including your time spent). I used a Canopus ADVC55, or you can use the Elgato Eye250. I got pretty good results, though it's not "original" content quality.
Responses to the three problems:
/.ers sitting in their ivory towers expounding on "DRM is wrong", most iPod users either don't know that Apple really has control of their music, or, they're willing to put up with it to have the convenience of "owning" music they download.
Vendor Lock: Why would Apple want to make it easy for you to use their product on another device? Apple isn't selling iPods to sell songs/tv shows/movies, they're selling songs/tv shows/movies to sell iPods. Other than
Pricing scheme: the failure of Napster 2.0 and the lacking business of Rhapsody show, subscription services are not the preferred method of getting music online. Using your Ramones example, you buy the whole catalog from iTMS for $150, you have it, theoretically if you use good backup practices, forever(or until Apple turns off the authentication server for the iTMS, and you reformat your computer to lose the "authorization"). If you belong to a subscription service, you pay $15 a month. If you have it a year, when that year is up, $180 is gone and you are left with nothing.
"The Long Tail": First of all, this is true of any brick and mortar store as well. They can only carry so much, even the second hand stores. However, what I like about iTMS, is the breadth of their catalog. I can hear a song I haven't heard in a long time, download it from iTMS, and have it in a minute. Usually, I can't go to your normal "big box" store, where CDs are cheapest, and find what I'm looking for. Most small music stores won't even have it. Plus, that's a 30 minute trip. It's more convenient to download from the comfort of my couch.
Why not make it until death of the artist(or all group members)? Or, in case of sale of rights, a fixed period(like 10 years). If they were desperate enough to sell them, or stupid enough as in the case of Sir Paul, the buyer would have a fixed time in which to benefit. Why would you buy a catalog, unless to profit from it in the short term(except buying the Beatles catalog)?
I believe artists are entitled to keep the rights to their works for their lifetime. They made it, so they should be able to benefit from it. However, they shouldn't be able to put their great-grandchildren through school 45 years after they die. That's what wills and trust funds are for.
HeLLLOOOOOOOO NURSE!!!
"The RFID tags are contained in throwaway paper labels attached to, but not embedded in" the clothing.
Buy garment, remove RFID tag. Hopefully, it will be on one of the easily removed tags that you cut off anyway.
CDs only have a few decent tracks on them(no more than 6...hence being worth $6). The only benefit they have is being an archival copy of the song, which I can rip from over and over again.
The other benefit to a CD is I can "discover" an artist's other music(the "whole CD is artwork argument), in addition to the popular stuff I hear on the radio/Sirius. However, with notable exceptions, the fluff that takes up the other 8 - 10 tracks on current CDs is not worth the extra $12 over the $2 for the two songs I bought online.
Don't fight the market. CDs will be dead soon. Online distribution is the way of the present and future. If artists want you to buy entire works, put a couple of the non-single songs on the net for free for a limited time. If you want people to discover your work, either get your stuff on the radio, or put it out there for free, just like the "indie"/struggling up-and comers do.
Metallics would be better than non in a razor blade. They could probably do titanium alloy(6/4?), which would stay sharp a lot longer than the steels they use now. The manufacturer would, unnecessarily, jack up the price though.
In defense of carbon fiber, they do cut F1 tires pretty well, so maybe they would work? However, carbon's biggest advantage, light weight, isn't really needed, unless they get to the 20+ blades.
Ford currently owns Aston Martin and Jaguar(purchased in 1994 and 1989).
Aston Martin makes "super cars"(ex. the Vanquish S), Jags are expensive cars with quality control problems.
Ford did not own Lamborghini.
It was Chrysler, who was responsible for the creation of the Diablo(Lee Iococca said the door sills on the Countach were too wide). You are correct that Chrysler raided some of the technology(ex. brakes on the Viper), however Chrysler sold off their interest in Lamborghini due to difficult financial circumstances(which lead to the Daimler "merger").
Lamborghini is currently owned by VW.
It's not that he became lazy or too old, the problem is George Lucas isn't that great of a director(from the actor's point of view), and even worse as a script writer.
Lucas' direction, as described by many of the actors he's worked with, is limited to "More". He can't help actors tap into feelings, the way that the "Great directors"(Spielberg, Scorcese, Ron Howard, etc.) can. That led to very flat acting, with little emotion, as exampled by New Hope, and the three prequels. Notice the "best films" of the Star Wars saga were directed by someone else(Irving Kerschner for Empire and Richard Marquand for Jedi).
Compounding the issue is Lucas' inablility to write a script that gives people decent lines to work with. New Hope was completely written by Lucas, and TPM was almost a George-only work as well, but, luckily, a script doctor was brought in to clean it up at the last minute. It is rumored that others helped with the scripts on AoTC and RotS. Again, the screenplays for Empire and Jedi were both written by someone else(Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan for Empire, and Kasdan for Jedi). The best way to sum up Lucas' scripts is to quote Sir Alec Guiness on why Obi-Wan should be killed off in ANH, "What I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines."
Don't bother. I had the same idea after I compared the DVDs(Special Edition cleaned up) to my copy of the THX widescreen.
If you want to do it, here's how. First of all, you need to defeat the Macrovision protection. It's illegal to sell such devices, or discuss how to do it(something called the DMCA). Funnily enough, LaserDiscs had no such copy protection*hint hint*, but I digress. Without doing that, the colors are going to be horribly off, and you're going to get a really dark image. Secondly, you're going to need an analog to dv converter. I used a Canopus external box, though I think ATI All-in-Wonder cards are capable. Since I had a Mac, I used the Canopus into iMovie, which worked, but the resulting image was bad since I didn't get past the Macrovision. Once I had the footage archived, I turned it into a DVD using iDVD, though there are lots of similar Windows applications.
You spend $200 for the Canopus analog converter(not to mention about $100 for a Macrovision decrypter), plus 3-4 hours per film capturing and editing, a few hours for rendering and burning to DVD.
It's not ridiculous.
The problem lies in the fact that they used a third party wireless adapter. People buy Macs for a number of reasons, one of which being integration(the "Everything just works" argument). No one buys a wireless adapter for a Mac laptop, because they all come with one. If the Airport Extreme card stops working, almost all Mac users will either send it to Apple or take it to an Apple Store/Authorized Apple Service Center to be replaced.
Is OS X 100% secure? If you use a undocumented hack, on a third party wireless adapter, that's known to EXACTLY TWO people, no.
Is OS X 100% secure to the average user? Yes(so far).
"Accidentally deleted" probably means "we had a hardware failure and we're too cheap to recover everything".
700GB was definitely over a couple of disks, probably a RAID box. If you lose a RAID controller in SOME(not most or all) brands of RAID boxes, it's very difficult to rebuild the map. I saw an NStor RAID box lose a controller, and it was impossible to recover.
I wonder of how much was recovered was from tape? 12GB of unread email probably means "we didn't have a backup of the 12GB", though that's a LOT of email to be missing.
There are some "Official" Star Wars actors in the movie.
Included in the cast:
Zach Jensen: Jedi Master Kit Fisto (Episode 2)
AND
Jeremy Bulloch: BOBA FETT!!!! Ok...he won't play Boba Fett in this movie.
This is Slashdot, we live on righteous indignation.
If this account by the FBI is true, Rombom(Rambam, whatever)did a really horrible thing to the witness and his family. Was it worthy of the public arrest? Even Al Capone got to go quietly.
The sad thing is such shakedowns happen all of the time. When the FBI does it, it's called "gathering evidence". When a PI does, it's called "witness tampering". The difference? One has a REAL badge.
No, SCO is claiming that parts of System V AND Dynix/AIX were copied into Linux. Since Dynix and AIX are derivative works of Unix, which they own the rights to the source code, they own the rights to Dynix and AIX via the Project Monterrey contract.
First of all, SCO needs to prove that they IN FACT own the rights to the Unix source code(the Novell case), and then they need to prove the derivative works part of the contract with IBM. Finally, they need to prove that the only way the code ended up in Linux was by direct copying of Unix/Dynix/AIX. Since they can't point to where things have been copied, Judge Wells slapped them upside the head.
As for destroying evidence, claiming, "they didn't know better" is not a legal excuse. SCO, if correct, would have a leg to stand on if this can be proved that IBM deliberately destroyed evidence. However, as many have pointed out, cleaning up your desktops is something everyone does. Probably some manager got an email from some higher up that said, "Hey, we're getting sued for copying stuff into Linux, so have everybody delete all of their copies so it doesn't happen again." IBM would have access to these emails, IF THEY EXIST.
Apple's stock price seems to be more volatile than Dell, HP/Compaq, etc. Every five minutes there's some "expert" saying Apple is "dying", "going to be sold to ____(Sun, M$, Chucky Cheese, etc.)", "has a virus...no wait, we mean trojan(it doesn't work yet...and you need to enter your password when it does)" and traders freak. Right now, Apple's in limbo with the anticipated switch in the Pro machines to Woodcrest chips, as well as M$'s "ipod-killer", and Apple's supposed inability to get a Video iPod, which hasn't even been announced yet, on shelves by the "important Back-to-School season".
As we've seen with crude oil prices, there is a lot of "feeling" in stock prices that isn't directly tied to real company value/profits.
Token study proposals, in an election year, that in their wildest dreams will do nothing to improve rolling brown/blackouts, or lessen fossil fuel consumption(coal-burning power plants), are a waste of time and government money. This is nothing more than pandering to their constituency, trying to put "I'm Green" credibility in their election platform. It's no better than gay marriage ban and flag burning ban amendments(if you live in a red state) that fail to muster even a majority in the Senate.
Cutting energy consumption, at least of fossil-based fuels, is not going to be accomplished in a day. However, intelligent energy and natural resource policy has escaped the current administration and Congress, and they should not be patted on the back for a job well done when they have accomplished next to nothing.
From the passed bill:
"Section 1:
Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, through the Energy Star program, shall transmit to the Congress the results of a study analyzing the rapid growth and energy consumption of computer data centers by the Federal Government and private enterprise."
In other words, the House wants a study done by the EPA to determine the "rapid growth" and energy consumption of data centers. There were no riders, nothing tacked on to the final, passed, version.
What's the point? Is it going to stop data center expansion? Is the federal government going to subsidize cooler, more efficient processors or servers? What about desktop machines, or is that a different bill? I can just imagine people in Congress saying, "Lord of the Rings was a good movie, but thank god WETA is in New Zealand, I feel cooler already."*note sarcasm*
For a country that is so anti-environment(I laughed when I saw the current issue of Newsweek's cover "The Greening of America"), we are wasting opportunities to get on the right track. Our government needs to stand up for the environment, not pass stupid bills authorizing the study of server room temperatures. The four who voted against this bill were right, this "study" is a waste of money.
I'm glad someone mentioned Deadliest Catch! I love that show!
As a country seemingly lacking in AVAILABLE natural resource(oil in Siberia under miles of permafrost in inhospitable conditions isn't available), this could be a boon for the Russian economy. Also, with the introduction of crab quotas, there are a lot of out of work crab boat captains and crew in Alaska. Since they run so close to the Pacific side of Russia, I think most of them would be ok with "fishing" the Barents Sea.
The downside is that this would lead to a price war, if the Russian king crab were put on the global market, which would further negatively affect the Alaskan crab fleet.