I disagree that capacitors and transistors are too advanced, or at least NEED to be taught in an advanced way. The goal is not necessarily to teach them how to design complex circuits, but to get them familiar with the ways the components interact.
Anecdote: I was building projects using transistors and SCRs as early as 6th grade. This included layout and chemical etching of my own circuit boards.
Let's see how many of the projects I can remember doing...
- Soil moisture sensor. Using a cut piece of double sided circuit board as a probe, connected to a small battery operated circuit that measured the resistance between the two sides. When the resistance rose above an adjustable threshold (via potentiometer) an LED would turn on to let you know the plat needed watering.
- "Concentration" game - an SCR and buzzer were used to make a game where you passed a metal loop over a bend metal wire without them touching. Once the two parts touched, completing a circuit, the SCR would latch on and the buzzer would sound until the reset button was pressed. I recall this project also used a voltage regulator.
- "Hide & Seek" game (aka the most annoying thing on the planet. Great for young students!). A set of transistors (4 as I recall) connected with a series of resistors and capacitors would periodically sound a short beep out of a small PC speaker. Duration, tone and period of the sound were adjustable by selecting the component values. As a bonus we were encouraged to find items at home to hide the circuit in - I used a hollowed out video cassette (switch under the flap) and hid in in my dad's video collection, complete with fake label:)
- 4-digit electronic keypad switch. A series of buttons were wired to transfer charge between a series of capacitors, and ultimately to an SCR that would latch a relay to control whatever you wanted to hook up to it. Combination was set by wiring the buttons differently.
- Roulette wheel. A series of LEDs (in a circular pattern) was connected to a small collection of ICs that would cycle them around and stop on one. I honestly don't recall what the ICs were, though:(
- Parallel port PC interface: Control up to eight 120V-10Amp relays via the PC's parallel port. (Included writing "driver" software)
- EQ meter. Build a resistor/diode network that, when fed an (amplified) audio source, caused a row of LEDs to light up according to the music volume.
You can't destroy the torrent before putting the image online, because it's not steganography. You're not embedding the torrent data in an existing image, you're converting the torrent data into a visual representation.
The images just look like random colored patterns when viewed normally. =Smidge=
MOST blogs copy and paste (often verbatim) other blogs. It's a crapshoot whether they actually add anything of their own to the story. Only a fraction of them will actually expand on the news with useful commentary or additional information.
I've ranted on this before, and in the spirit of not repeating myself I'll simply link to it.
Okay, this may not help but then again it might...
I dug up an old Laser 128 (Apple II compatible) with no working software and was able to get it working using the following method. I don't know if your machine has a compatible feature, though.
In short: using a second machine (In my case, running Win98) and a homebrew serial cable, configure the machine to be revived to treat serial port input as keyboard input, then keyboard input direct into memory (like a DEBUG prompt) - If you can do that then the rest of the procedure might actually work with compatible software.
The support machine "types" the software directly into the host machine's memory and executes it. In the link above, you start with a ProDOS image which then gets written to disk so you can boot the machine normally. =Smidge=
I don't consider "being the character" to be the totality of immersive gaming. It's simply the level at which you get focused on the game.
By that definition, Tetris is very immersive for some people.
For me, the Descent series was highly immersive. To this day I'll play it and catch myself leaning in my chair trying to look around corners and such. To a lesser extent many FPSes I've played have at least some quality of immersion in that respect.
Although I don't find RPGs immersive at all, and I can't recall every being engaged with any game's dialog to the degree that I identify with the characters.
So really I think it's more than just feeling involved in the story - just feeling involved at all is enough. =Smidge=
I was warned that car batteries can explode if you short-circuit them in this way.
All batteries have internal resistance which naturally limits the amount of current, and therefore power, they can put out. They are unlikely to "explode" in the same way a firecracker explodes... at least from the chemistry alone.
What can happen, though, is the high power draw form shorting a battery will cause a LOT of heat generation. The stuff inside the battery expands with this heat, maybe even vaporizes, and if the battery casing is relatively inflexible it could burst. Bursting is not *quite* the same as exploding.
BUT! Lithium is nasty stuff. If a lithium battery bursts, exposing the lithium directly to the air, then you might get some real pyrotechnics going. =Smidge=
The problem is this description doesn't match the known properties of carbon dioxide very well.
Let's say we take a position at the bottom of the thermocline - which varies wildly depending on location and season, but for argument's sake let's say 500 meters and about +4C? You've got 48 atmospheres pressure at that point.
Every phase diagram I can find says carbon dioxide should be a liquid at that point, not a solid. You'd need a pressure of about 5,000 atmospheres - over 50,000 meters of ocean water - to have solid CO2 at +4C.
Anything you see on TV should be treated as entertainment, not scientific fact. Even (and perhaps especially) documentaries/"science shows." =Smidge=
There are already a few laws and several incentives programs for dark-skies compliant exterior lighting in my area. The government and public utilities are taking it pretty seriously.
If all the anecdotal accounts of air travel are anything to go by, planes spend so much time grounded due to weather, mechanical problems, sitting on the tarmac for hours after boarding and/or before unboarding, etc... or flights cut short due to diversions that they hardly spend any time flying and thus burning fuel.
It's not just a shitty way to travel, is a shitty and environmentally friendly way to travel! =Smidge=
You really don't seem to grasp how this works in other industries.
(Disclosure: My only assumption here is that the scope of the auditor's responsibility is clearly defined. If it isn't, then the auditor is just asking for a lawsuit.)
If it can be demonstrated that the cause of failure was outside the scope of the auditor's contract, then he would not be held liable. For example, the auditor would probably not be responsible for the locks on the doors to the data center - so if someone breaks in and steals the servers, it's not his problem.
If it can be demonstrated that any potential security holes the auditor did not address were unknown at the time, then he is very likely (although perhaps not certainly) off the hook as well. It suspect would depend on a number of factors that a court would have to figure out. As long as the audit can be shown to have been conducted in good faith with proper methods and the best information available at the time, he should be covered. (Again, unless his contract writer phoned it in and scope of responsibility was poorly defined.)
If, however, the quality of the audit or preventative measures were poor, then the auditor SHOULD be liable. Why should he not be? If you hire an inspector to certify a new bridge, and he does not do his job, then he should be liable for it.
This is also why I said the chain of liability should extend further up the line. If there is an undiscovered flaw in the operating system that the auditor didn't know about, then why isn't the OS vendor liable for it?
The way I see it, there is only a very, very narrow set of circumstances where "shit happens" is a legitimate excuse, especially in the digital security field where so few variables are uncontrolled.
Compared to, say, bridges - where things like weather or geologic activity or deliberate attacks may be approximated or anticipated but never fully planned for, hence safety factors. =Smidge=
So in other words, if the bank can demonstrate that the cert authority didn't do its job properly, the cert auth can be held liable?
Sounds about right to me.
I'd like to see the certs creep up the line of development. Software used for high security applications should be certified at the developer level, and the installation and implementation of that software should be certified at the implementation level.
To continue the bridge analogy: The contractor needs to be licensed and insured, just as the inspector needs to make sure the materials and methods used are up to spec. Are developers held responsible for the quality of their products? =Smidge=
But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier.
Own dogs much?
They fight, too. Even when far away from their homes or if there's no food or anything around to seemingly fight over. They can still break out in nasty, bloody fights. They'll do it just to establish dominance.
If two dogs get along on first meeting it's likely because they've been so thoroughly domesticated and behaviorally trained. Much like a more socially educated person won't immediately lash out at another human. =Smidge=
In my opinion, one of the biggest hurdles keeping Linux our of the domestic desktop market is the developers apparently can't put themselves in the shoes of the average user. In my personal experience they tend to hold the end user in contempt, but I realize that this is a fairly small sample of the community...
Like it or not, Windows and OSX have set standards for interface and functional transparency. It may not sit well with developers that they can't micromanage what the OS is doing, but the average user just doesn't give a shit and is unwilling if not incapable of tweaking the OS to accomplish otherwise simple tasks.
It needs to "just work." If you need to use the command line, it's broken for desktop use. If you need to manually edit a file, it's broken for desktop use. If an essential component for some software is not included and must be installed and configured separately, it's broken for desktop use. (That last one is a big, big problem for Linux!)
For all the faults Microsoft has with their software, at least they did the research and learned how Joe Shmoe uses a computer and designed to the lowest common denominator. That's how they ended up on top. =Smidge=
While I agree with the overall sentiment, there's one serious caveat in your example here:
"You cannot justify charging 15$ to make a DVD copy of a movie when I can make the same copy, at the same quality level, for one cent. And when I purchase your DVD, from my point of view, I am paying somebody 15$ for making a copy for me. That's good, if your DVD is a luxury item. But for a common economy good? Not working."
What you are doing is copying the data, not the physical DVD. It's the physical DVD that costs the bulk of that $15 price: The DVD itself (which is pressed, not burned onto a generic writable media as your version would be) with the silk-screened label, the plastic case and the outer jacket at a minimum. Even a blank DVD will cost you about 20 cents.
This is not to suggest the physical media market isn't obsolete - but if you're going to complain about the costs you need to at least compare apples to apples: When you buy a DVD, you physically have a DVD. =Smidge=
I own two cars (one is technically an antique but not currently insured as such), 29, single male with one major accident on the record (both vehicles totaled) and I'm still only paying about $4,000/year. Compare to your $5,400.
Fuel use is pretty high too, though you didn't specify how far your commute was. If you can ride a bike, though, it couldn't have been THAT far!
My office relocated recently, so I don't have a proper year's worth of data for my new fuel usage... but extrapolating what I have at $3.00 per gallon (Currently about $2.20) I expect to pay just under $1,000 this year in fuel. Compare to your $7,000.
What kind of vehicle were you driving, anyway? =Smidge=
Um... yeah, and that (perceived) value of the BMW is why people pay high prices for them.
The difference is, people can shop around for a car they feel is a good value for their money. You can't shop around for public services as easily.
I have to agree with the grandparent: As a taxpayer, the focus should be on what we as citizens get for our tax money, not how much we pay in taxes. =Smidge=
Actually the comparison is rather apt. You have a system that they are reluctant to replace. A good deal of those COBOL systems still run on 70's era hardware, although advances in virtualization are helping there a lot.
The industry has no choice since they cannot force MS to supply XP. What if MS doesn't?
How many times has MS buckled under industry pressure to keep offering XP already? At least twice, but I haven't really been counting. They might do it in an indirect manner ("downgrades") but they only do that to obscure how many people are actually buying their latest product.
If they don't? There might be a lawsuit in there somewhere. Moving to *nix is one possible alternative: If a company will be FORCED to change their *anything*, why would they so readily go with the vendor that just screwed them over? The hurdle is getting them to change at all - once you're past that there is no guarantee they'll change to what you want.
Especially if their applications aren't compatible. If Win7 isn't backwards compatible with applications and drivers written for XP, they'll have to rewrite everything... and at that point they could pretty easily rewrite it for any other platform.
The industry can't force MS to supply XP, but MS can't force the industry to use Win7 either. MS can give their biggest customers what they want or lose them as customers, just like they have been doing. MS will offer XP until there are so few XP users left they can afford to flip them off entirely. NT 4 was supported until three years ago. 2000 is going to be supported until at least the end of 2010. Windows 3.1 was supported up until last November - lasted over 16 years.
Also, one key problem here is the phrase "better tech" - is Vista really better than XP? In ways that businesses really care about? "Newer" is not a synonym for "better." =Smidge=
This is, of course, precisely the reason so many big companies still use COBOL, right?
Legacy is a powerful force in industry. It is often perceived that the cost of maintaining the old systems is less than the cost of replacing it, especially when you consider compatibility, debugging, reliability, down time, retraining, infrastructure upgrades, policy changes, etc. etc.
Here's your choice: Stick with what you have. Although it can be a real pain in the ass, at least you're used to it after all these years and can handle the quirks to keep things running. OR you can spend a whole lot of money to scrap everything and start over with a totally new setup that's one big question mark all around, especially when the vendor's reputation is losing ground.
Questionable surveying methods aside, it is not difficult to imagine companies aren't too keen to jump on board.
XP is old. And MS would love to retire it, but the industry is getting fed up with their shenanigans. The individual homeowner might not have the purchasing power to hurt them, but big companies with thousands of licenses do - MS will either give them what they want (which is, apparently, XP) or they will lose the customers. =Smidge=
An interesting article, although my first impression was how they originally said the world population would grow so fast that by the 1970's or so we'd be out of food. This is on par with the peak oil argument, in that there is a genuine cause for concern but it's virtually impossible to pinpoint when and how bad the problem will be.
One point I certainly do agree with, though, is the water issue. This is why I'd really like to see further developments in algae based biofuels, which do not require fresh water (and also promise an order of magnitude more fuel per acre).
I'm not saying food production will never be an issue, but to say "Biofuel production is starving third world countries" is still a baseless argument to make. =Smidge=
Biofuels do not "starve the third world." Nobody credible on the subject of biofuels has seriously advocated using food crops for fuel ("credible" includes those who are not obviously shills for the corn growers here). The crops that, so far, have shown the best potential for fuel sources are not only not food/feed crops, but they can be grown on land that is otherwise unsuitable for food crops.
And maybe if we spent just a portion of our food providing efforts reforming their lands and teaching them to grow and maintain their own food, not only would they be better off in the long run but you'd create jobs where they are desperately needed.
So enough with the "starving the third world" nonsense. There is zero credibility in that argument. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
No! "Continue Editing" not "Submit!" Arg...
Please forgive the typos in the above post.
=Smidge=
I disagree that capacitors and transistors are too advanced, or at least NEED to be taught in an advanced way. The goal is not necessarily to teach them how to design complex circuits, but to get them familiar with the ways the components interact.
Anecdote: I was building projects using transistors and SCRs as early as 6th grade. This included layout and chemical etching of my own circuit boards.
Let's see how many of the projects I can remember doing...
- Soil moisture sensor. Using a cut piece of double sided circuit board as a probe, connected to a small battery operated circuit that measured the resistance between the two sides. When the resistance rose above an adjustable threshold (via potentiometer) an LED would turn on to let you know the plat needed watering.
- "Concentration" game - an SCR and buzzer were used to make a game where you passed a metal loop over a bend metal wire without them touching. Once the two parts touched, completing a circuit, the SCR would latch on and the buzzer would sound until the reset button was pressed. I recall this project also used a voltage regulator.
- "Hide & Seek" game (aka the most annoying thing on the planet. Great for young students!). A set of transistors (4 as I recall) connected with a series of resistors and capacitors would periodically sound a short beep out of a small PC speaker. Duration, tone and period of the sound were adjustable by selecting the component values. As a bonus we were encouraged to find items at home to hide the circuit in - I used a hollowed out video cassette (switch under the flap) and hid in in my dad's video collection, complete with fake label :)
- 4-digit electronic keypad switch. A series of buttons were wired to transfer charge between a series of capacitors, and ultimately to an SCR that would latch a relay to control whatever you wanted to hook up to it. Combination was set by wiring the buttons differently.
- Roulette wheel. A series of LEDs (in a circular pattern) was connected to a small collection of ICs that would cycle them around and stop on one. I honestly don't recall what the ICs were, though :(
- Parallel port PC interface: Control up to eight 120V-10Amp relays via the PC's parallel port. (Included writing "driver" software)
- EQ meter. Build a resistor/diode network that, when fed an (amplified) audio source, caused a row of LEDs to light up according to the music volume.
- Various other blinkenlight projects :)
=Smidge=
You can't destroy the torrent before putting the image online, because it's not steganography. You're not embedding the torrent data in an existing image, you're converting the torrent data into a visual representation.
The images just look like random colored patterns when viewed normally.
=Smidge=
SOME blogs report quick & dirty facts.
MOST blogs copy and paste (often verbatim) other blogs. It's a crapshoot whether they actually add anything of their own to the story. Only a fraction of them will actually expand on the news with useful commentary or additional information.
I've ranted on this before, and in the spirit of not repeating myself I'll simply link to it.
Link'd.
=Smidge=
Okay, this may not help but then again it might...
I dug up an old Laser 128 (Apple II compatible) with no working software and was able to get it working using the following method. I don't know if your machine has a compatible feature, though.
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html#Starting_from_bare_metal
In short: using a second machine (In my case, running Win98) and a homebrew serial cable, configure the machine to be revived to treat serial port input as keyboard input, then keyboard input direct into memory (like a DEBUG prompt) - If you can do that then the rest of the procedure might actually work with compatible software.
The support machine "types" the software directly into the host machine's memory and executes it. In the link above, you start with a ProDOS image which then gets written to disk so you can boot the machine normally.
=Smidge=
I don't consider "being the character" to be the totality of immersive gaming. It's simply the level at which you get focused on the game.
By that definition, Tetris is very immersive for some people.
For me, the Descent series was highly immersive. To this day I'll play it and catch myself leaning in my chair trying to look around corners and such. To a lesser extent many FPSes I've played have at least some quality of immersion in that respect.
Although I don't find RPGs immersive at all, and I can't recall every being engaged with any game's dialog to the degree that I identify with the characters.
So really I think it's more than just feeling involved in the story - just feeling involved at all is enough.
=Smidge=
There's a whole lot of mathematical fail going on here.
32e6 books * 12 oz/book * 0.0625 lb/oz * 7000 BTU/lb = 168,000,000,000 BTU = 177,249 gigajoules.
I didn't multiply by (12 oz/book) earlier, so I was off by a factor of 12. (Sorry!)
=Smidge=
If we take a book to have approximately 7000 BTU per pound when incinerated (newsprint is about 7,500) then we get 437.5 BTU per ounce.
So 1 LoC = 14,000,000,000 BTU or 14,770 gigajoules.
Finally! A heat unit LoC equivalent!
=Smidge=
I was warned that car batteries can explode if you short-circuit them in this way.
All batteries have internal resistance which naturally limits the amount of current, and therefore power, they can put out. They are unlikely to "explode" in the same way a firecracker explodes... at least from the chemistry alone.
What can happen, though, is the high power draw form shorting a battery will cause a LOT of heat generation. The stuff inside the battery expands with this heat, maybe even vaporizes, and if the battery casing is relatively inflexible it could burst. Bursting is not *quite* the same as exploding.
BUT! Lithium is nasty stuff. If a lithium battery bursts, exposing the lithium directly to the air, then you might get some real pyrotechnics going.
=Smidge=
The problem is this description doesn't match the known properties of carbon dioxide very well.
Let's say we take a position at the bottom of the thermocline - which varies wildly depending on location and season, but for argument's sake let's say 500 meters and about +4C? You've got 48 atmospheres pressure at that point.
Every phase diagram I can find says carbon dioxide should be a liquid at that point, not a solid. You'd need a pressure of about 5,000 atmospheres - over 50,000 meters of ocean water - to have solid CO2 at +4C.
Anything you see on TV should be treated as entertainment, not scientific fact. Even (and perhaps especially) documentaries/"science shows."
=Smidge=
There are already a few laws and several incentives programs for dark-skies compliant exterior lighting in my area. The government and public utilities are taking it pretty seriously.
=Smidge=
If all the anecdotal accounts of air travel are anything to go by, planes spend so much time grounded due to weather, mechanical problems, sitting on the tarmac for hours after boarding and/or before unboarding, etc... or flights cut short due to diversions that they hardly spend any time flying and thus burning fuel.
It's not just a shitty way to travel, is a shitty and environmentally friendly way to travel!
=Smidge=
You really don't seem to grasp how this works in other industries.
(Disclosure: My only assumption here is that the scope of the auditor's responsibility is clearly defined. If it isn't, then the auditor is just asking for a lawsuit.)
If it can be demonstrated that the cause of failure was outside the scope of the auditor's contract, then he would not be held liable. For example, the auditor would probably not be responsible for the locks on the doors to the data center - so if someone breaks in and steals the servers, it's not his problem.
If it can be demonstrated that any potential security holes the auditor did not address were unknown at the time, then he is very likely (although perhaps not certainly) off the hook as well. It suspect would depend on a number of factors that a court would have to figure out. As long as the audit can be shown to have been conducted in good faith with proper methods and the best information available at the time, he should be covered. (Again, unless his contract writer phoned it in and scope of responsibility was poorly defined.)
If, however, the quality of the audit or preventative measures were poor, then the auditor SHOULD be liable. Why should he not be? If you hire an inspector to certify a new bridge, and he does not do his job, then he should be liable for it.
This is also why I said the chain of liability should extend further up the line. If there is an undiscovered flaw in the operating system that the auditor didn't know about, then why isn't the OS vendor liable for it?
The way I see it, there is only a very, very narrow set of circumstances where "shit happens" is a legitimate excuse, especially in the digital security field where so few variables are uncontrolled.
Compared to, say, bridges - where things like weather or geologic activity or deliberate attacks may be approximated or anticipated but never fully planned for, hence safety factors.
=Smidge=
So in other words, if the bank can demonstrate that the cert authority didn't do its job properly, the cert auth can be held liable?
Sounds about right to me.
I'd like to see the certs creep up the line of development. Software used for high security applications should be certified at the developer level, and the installation and implementation of that software should be certified at the implementation level.
To continue the bridge analogy: The contractor needs to be licensed and insured, just as the inspector needs to make sure the materials and methods used are up to spec. Are developers held responsible for the quality of their products?
=Smidge=
But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier.
Own dogs much?
They fight, too. Even when far away from their homes or if there's no food or anything around to seemingly fight over. They can still break out in nasty, bloody fights. They'll do it just to establish dominance.
If two dogs get along on first meeting it's likely because they've been so thoroughly domesticated and behaviorally trained. Much like a more socially educated person won't immediately lash out at another human.
=Smidge=
In my opinion, one of the biggest hurdles keeping Linux our of the domestic desktop market is the developers apparently can't put themselves in the shoes of the average user. In my personal experience they tend to hold the end user in contempt, but I realize that this is a fairly small sample of the community...
Like it or not, Windows and OSX have set standards for interface and functional transparency. It may not sit well with developers that they can't micromanage what the OS is doing, but the average user just doesn't give a shit and is unwilling if not incapable of tweaking the OS to accomplish otherwise simple tasks.
It needs to "just work." If you need to use the command line, it's broken for desktop use. If you need to manually edit a file, it's broken for desktop use. If an essential component for some software is not included and must be installed and configured separately, it's broken for desktop use. (That last one is a big, big problem for Linux!)
For all the faults Microsoft has with their software, at least they did the research and learned how Joe Shmoe uses a computer and designed to the lowest common denominator. That's how they ended up on top.
=Smidge=
While I agree with the overall sentiment, there's one serious caveat in your example here:
"You cannot justify charging 15$ to make a DVD copy of a movie when I can make the same copy, at the same quality level, for one cent. And when I purchase your DVD, from my point of view, I am paying somebody 15$ for making a copy for me. That's good, if your DVD is a luxury item. But for a common economy good? Not working."
What you are doing is copying the data, not the physical DVD. It's the physical DVD that costs the bulk of that $15 price: The DVD itself (which is pressed, not burned onto a generic writable media as your version would be) with the silk-screened label, the plastic case and the outer jacket at a minimum. Even a blank DVD will cost you about 20 cents.
This is not to suggest the physical media market isn't obsolete - but if you're going to complain about the costs you need to at least compare apples to apples: When you buy a DVD, you physically have a DVD.
=Smidge=
Seriously, $450/mo is a lot for insurance.
I own two cars (one is technically an antique but not currently insured as such), 29, single male with one major accident on the record (both vehicles totaled) and I'm still only paying about $4,000/year. Compare to your $5,400.
Fuel use is pretty high too, though you didn't specify how far your commute was. If you can ride a bike, though, it couldn't have been THAT far!
My office relocated recently, so I don't have a proper year's worth of data for my new fuel usage... but extrapolating what I have at $3.00 per gallon (Currently about $2.20) I expect to pay just under $1,000 this year in fuel. Compare to your $7,000.
What kind of vehicle were you driving, anyway?
=Smidge=
Um... yeah, and that (perceived) value of the BMW is why people pay high prices for them.
The difference is, people can shop around for a car they feel is a good value for their money. You can't shop around for public services as easily.
I have to agree with the grandparent: As a taxpayer, the focus should be on what we as citizens get for our tax money, not how much we pay in taxes.
=Smidge=
Perhaps if you understood what's "dirty" about coal power, the term "clean coal" would make more sense.
=Smidge=
Actually the comparison is rather apt. You have a system that they are reluctant to replace. A good deal of those COBOL systems still run on 70's era hardware, although advances in virtualization are helping there a lot.
The industry has no choice since they cannot force MS to supply XP. What if MS doesn't?
How many times has MS buckled under industry pressure to keep offering XP already? At least twice, but I haven't really been counting. They might do it in an indirect manner ("downgrades") but they only do that to obscure how many people are actually buying their latest product.
If they don't? There might be a lawsuit in there somewhere. Moving to *nix is one possible alternative: If a company will be FORCED to change their *anything*, why would they so readily go with the vendor that just screwed them over? The hurdle is getting them to change at all - once you're past that there is no guarantee they'll change to what you want.
Especially if their applications aren't compatible. If Win7 isn't backwards compatible with applications and drivers written for XP, they'll have to rewrite everything... and at that point they could pretty easily rewrite it for any other platform.
The industry can't force MS to supply XP, but MS can't force the industry to use Win7 either. MS can give their biggest customers what they want or lose them as customers, just like they have been doing. MS will offer XP until there are so few XP users left they can afford to flip them off entirely. NT 4 was supported until three years ago. 2000 is going to be supported until at least the end of 2010. Windows 3.1 was supported up until last November - lasted over 16 years.
Also, one key problem here is the phrase "better tech" - is Vista really better than XP? In ways that businesses really care about? "Newer" is not a synonym for "better."
=Smidge=
This is, of course, precisely the reason so many big companies still use COBOL, right?
Legacy is a powerful force in industry. It is often perceived that the cost of maintaining the old systems is less than the cost of replacing it, especially when you consider compatibility, debugging, reliability, down time, retraining, infrastructure upgrades, policy changes, etc. etc.
Here's your choice: Stick with what you have. Although it can be a real pain in the ass, at least you're used to it after all these years and can handle the quirks to keep things running. OR you can spend a whole lot of money to scrap everything and start over with a totally new setup that's one big question mark all around, especially when the vendor's reputation is losing ground.
Questionable surveying methods aside, it is not difficult to imagine companies aren't too keen to jump on board.
XP is old. And MS would love to retire it, but the industry is getting fed up with their shenanigans. The individual homeowner might not have the purchasing power to hurt them, but big companies with thousands of licenses do - MS will either give them what they want (which is, apparently, XP) or they will lose the customers.
=Smidge=
An interesting article, although my first impression was how they originally said the world population would grow so fast that by the 1970's or so we'd be out of food. This is on par with the peak oil argument, in that there is a genuine cause for concern but it's virtually impossible to pinpoint when and how bad the problem will be.
One point I certainly do agree with, though, is the water issue. This is why I'd really like to see further developments in algae based biofuels, which do not require fresh water (and also promise an order of magnitude more fuel per acre).
I'm not saying food production will never be an issue, but to say "Biofuel production is starving third world countries" is still a baseless argument to make.
=Smidge=
*facepalm*
Biofuels do not "starve the third world." Nobody credible on the subject of biofuels has seriously advocated using food crops for fuel ("credible" includes those who are not obviously shills for the corn growers here). The crops that, so far, have shown the best potential for fuel sources are not only not food/feed crops, but they can be grown on land that is otherwise unsuitable for food crops.
And maybe if we spent just a portion of our food providing efforts reforming their lands and teaching them to grow and maintain their own food, not only would they be better off in the long run but you'd create jobs where they are desperately needed.
So enough with the "starving the third world" nonsense. There is zero credibility in that argument.
=Smidge=
Those tanks will, presumably, be placed on top of soil somewhere. :)
=Smidge=