man there had it down. Said to stop with the overly complicated stuff, to force people to wallow in the big picture, but give them clear, concise and to the point "*_task_*" orientation. The task. The thing you are trying to DO with the computer, NOT "the computer". Most people do not care a whit about the entire computer, they are interested in some specific tasks, some apps. In other words, if mashing the button don't cut it, them help pages you turn to -ON- the machine , like right there, should be extensive enough and clear enough to get the problem fixed in the bulk of the cases they are referenced for. That's more or less what PJ said too reading around the lines. MAN pages are written by and for sysadmins.amateur orprofessional, they don't cut it for this purpose.
I think there's probably a lot ofinfo on the web already in "howtos" and "tips" and "found workarounds", just that it'sa bear to find them. A way to have documentation collated and automagically updated to your systems "help me plz" feature would be a good thing. I know that "docs" get updated, but they are pretty darn slow, I look every few days to see if there'sanew release for ANY docs using APT and upgrade them, and they are pitiful few. There's a lot out there, and the LDP has a ton of stuff, but..... but..... but it's just "not there". The desktop is good enough, the apps mostly are good enough, the reliability is good enough, fixing a problem as a noob is dismal. I think the package updating is a non issue, it's clickable now as long as you know where to look for wherever they got downloaded to. I guess folks are used to "on the desktop" as a default their "other OS" used a lot, but it'snot that hard to find "user home" and check there either. It would be nice for a universal installer and packager though, you would think at least on that one issue it could become cross-distro compatable somehow without anyone's feelings getting hurt and some more cooperation there.
Back to "task oriented". That's it. Teach the tasks, not the system at first. Make it painless as possible to find help for glitches, updated documentation JUST as important as updated code, and maybe a little cooperation on the packaging and installing. In fact, would make a nice poll and discussion, which way of installing apps is the best and why, etc. I would be interested in a discussion like that just to see if there'senough commonality that a single "way" could be found to ( + - ) agree on.
Or not... it don't really matter, the license and obvious bent of linux taken as a whole is sort of a fun anarchy, so who really cares....
You got it, it's called conditioning or brainwashing. they do it to the cops and military until they are conditioned them selves, then they pass it on to "civvies".
The special forces are all getting chipped soon, then the nations police forces, so when it comes your turn, they will say "WE got chipped, it's legal and you must do it!!" Might take a few years, but it's coming.
Right up above, in another post the oft repeated by thoroughly wrong "driving is a privelege and not a right". That's BS, but the entire nation got conditioned into it, now it's accepted that you DON'T have a freedom to travel without their permit or "permission". Ridiculous? Nope, just the one step at a time deal. Would you apply for your "speech" permit? Ridiculous? Most states you need a "permit" for your second amendment "right". Well, if you need the state's permission, it sure ceased to be a "right", yet it's "the law" almost everywhere in some form or another, only one state, vermont, has followed the "born-with right" concept there. What's the difference? The numbering in the constitution? 1-2-3-4, the order in which they strip them doesn't matter as much as they HAVE been doing it and once gone, it stays gone. The goons will just take the easier ones first, that's all. That's what they have been doing. A "permit" to travel, to drive your property on a public road, a road you partially own by being the "public" and pay for via fuel taxes anyway, yet you need a "permit" for your "born-with right to travel" and everyone eats it up, because that right got stripped gradually and turned into needing "their permission".
One at a time freedoms get stripped, people excuse it, they get wishy washy on it, society wimps out, eventually like in all other despotic regimes down through history, you wake up one day and you have no more rights, you are their chattel, and you wonder why it happened, how it snuck up on you. "You" being a generic of course. It's because people just REFUSE to follow through with a normal extrapolation of causalities, events, and provocations. They will not put 2+2 together, they fall into the now cliched "cognizant dissonance" state. It's not that they can't see it, they don't WANT to see it, they pull a turbo ostrich head in the sand, if it's pointed out to them they will vehemently deny the obvious, all the way into absurdity.
Just since I've been a kid we've have lost a TON of rights, now we even put up with "random checkpoints" stuff I was taught in school was only done in places like soviet union or east germany. It was something to revile against,. to thank ourselves and congratulate ourselves we didn't live under such a regime and culture of brutality and exploitation. but now we put up with it, every excuse in the book, but the fact remains, it's now "the LAW" and the US public meekly submits. We wimp out.. Now it's "normal" and the dudes in blue (or black) willingly just "follow ze orders" and "swear an oath to the constitution", yet hardly any of them know it, understand it, or see how they are being used to force the people into obedience to the state.
And this "the people"? More concerned with entertainments mostly, and way too scared to do much about it, they will even put up with obvious vote hijacking and fraud, and with having a controlled parroting media mostly. They put up with hijacked money, stolen labor, rigged elections, wars created by a single tin pot dictator, "executive orders" and never ending and overlapping "national state of emergency" decrees, confiscation of property on a whim, the denial of even a right to property in a lot of cases, obvious and overt bribery being how the nations political business is done, and on and on and on.
It all happened one step at a time, though, not all at once, never enough to get the people alarmed and disgusted enough to "just say no" back at them.
It's sorta sad, but really, you can sort of understand it when you see they will make an example of anyone who dares actually say "no" to illegalities being
and if they are convinced they have ACCURATE code, are probably waiting for such a time as a massive coordinated attack is launched, cyber attack just being one of the facets. Small exploits for training and practice, sure, anything really spiffy they might find they will hold in check until needed-if they trust the sploit that is.
China has even created an entire new military wing of the PLA devoted entirely to cyber warfare, and they are giving it a long range importance equal to air force, land forces, navy, etc.
Now, to be fair, we don't know that MS gave them accurate code, they could have well given them some NSA (whoever, don't matter) doctored stuff that has a lot of nifty backdoors in it as well, we just don't know. I would guess that the state intel agencies in those two countries would be suspicious of it and audit heck out of it anyway before assuming it's completely legit. In fact, even if they hacked in and stole it they would still need to be suspicious of it, as letting it get "stolen" could be a variation on the false flag dodge as well, it's a great way to instill credibility in something if you can be persuaded you have aquired the real deal, so it's equally credible to think of offering the false deal as bait-sort of a honeypot kinda- and letting it get "stolen".
... it was put on the southside for a variety of reasons, and they knew in advance that the northern suburbs were going to grow faster. And what you said about airports is true, think about that again, WHY did they put it where it got put? Who was over there in that area before? Lotta po bros that's who, not much political or economic power-at that time.
I mean, this has been discussed just so many times on atlanta TV and talk radio there and in the news. There's alos been a lot of talk about building a new airport north of the city, etc, but it's way too expensive now, I doubt they'll do it anytime in the foreseable future, but then again I haven't followed atlanta news all that much for around 5 years now either, it could be in the planning stages now for all I know. I live closer to choochoo vile in TN than atlanta and get their TV statiosn more clearly, so that's what I watch now.
That's what unions are for, so you DON'T have to accept poverty level wages. You negotiate with increasing your productivity, working with management to institute changes that you can see will be of a benefit to all concerned, and by collective bargaining with your peers.
We don't have a real economic crisis, what we have is a totally skewed artificially distorted economic system now that is geared primarily to re-arrange productive *wealth ownership* into fewer and fewer hands, leaving "the poor" as scapegoats and in a position to have their vote "bought" by politicians and political parties who promise them "free money" taken from other people, whom themselves are poor or at best middle class. Very wealthy people pay little in real taxes, what with incorporating, saying their vehicles are the corporations, their buidlings, a lot of times their homes, using trusts, etc, it's nuts. they emply legions of accountants and lawyers to hide and obfuscate really what they make and got. We could reduce that too easily with quid pro quo tariffs and a modest national sales tax, so no one has to dodge them, and everyone has to pay *something*.
I think it's better to just make a better wage, and so far, unions have shown that is the best technique as long as they can stay real in their expectations. Same goes for management, just stay real, and things will go along a lot smoother.
In fact, I think it would be cool if all these white collar IT folks formed an INTERNATIONAL white collar union, so that no one would be in danger of getting shafted, but everyone could work and make a living wage. different subject, but I think the idea has some merit to it.
The roads are "subsidized" by the fuel tax, about as cost effective and fair as can be arranged, IMO. Original cost was heavily subsidised of course, primarily to serve as national defense roads (the interstates) and because the US is just such a big country geographically, and because we buiklt cars here early on in mass quantities and we had a lot of handy cheap oil. connections, just happened ais all, we are an individual vehicle centered society, despite what a few million daily train commuters think, they are in a severe minority in this nation. And when we use the roads more, we buy more fuel, your "road fees" go up proportionately. Seems fair. Myself, I am poor, live rural, just yesterday I was discussing with my girlfriend to reduce our trips "to town" to once every two weeks instead of once a week, to save gas and wear and tear on the old vehicle. It's getting to that point now. Sorta scary really, to do that to save 10$ because 10$ is critical.
I also think all roads need to have clear cut divisions for types of traffic, commercial trucks, passenger vehicles, wheeled transport human powered, and pedestrian, as much as possible to give a CHOICE on travel. that would help as well I think. I myself long time ago gave up bicylcing very much because it just got too stupid and dangerous in town, and this is from someone who used to own a bicycle shop. Sucks. but reality for a lot of people because the roads are setup for motor vehicles ONLY.
Back to wages, engage in collective bargaining, negotiate yourself a living wage. Picking some number out of the air for a minimum wage hasn't worked, although granted it's an attempt, and I think over all it has more benefits than not, but beyond that-unionize. It works once your union is large enough. You get "power" then. Georgia in particular is woefully lacking and quite dismal in effective unions, part of the lower average wages here are from that very reason, and since the mid 90's, quite realistically, the HUGE influx of totally illegal aliens has diluted the blue collar pool of workers to such an extent that it has caused massive problems, not only with wages dropping, but with property taxes rising for building new and unnecessary schools, the bankrupting of most local hospitals, the increases needed in the various state agencies like police and fire, and etc. Wages drop, cost
... better history lesson and linkages than what I provided, most interesting. the part about the early hardware is very good, and I had once known that but had forgotten it, and it IS a critical part of the discussion.
Not in radio but with television, my dad was a radio and radar tech guy during ww2, then after he got out, and went into mainframes on the hardware side. But on the side at home he always had a shop and was an enthusiast,did repairs and sold fixed junkers and whatnot,and because of his geekiness and skills and interest, we were the first people in our neighborhood to have a television, and it was common for the living room to be jam packed with many neighbors and relatives to watch some shows often on this teeny I *think* it was a 9 inch philco. "Paying" for broadcasting is five ways, government and redistribution of general tax monies, advertising, and like you said the hardware sales, subscription, and outright private subsisdy as some sort of community give away by the broadcaster on his nickle. ME, I like advertising merthod and community give away by volunteers. Hardware it's now into passing laws to restrict it, which I think is in long term error, why we have this discussion on hacking hardware, it's no longer needed to subsidise hardware because the technology is out there now, and cheap, so that shouldbn't bbe required. I think the law is bogus there. that leaves subscription, which weith a hard wired model works better, but with over the air random broadcasting I think is sorta dumb and won't work without highly restrictve laws in place. Advertising has been proven to work well enough for funding, and I don't really want government run broadcasting, because quite frankly I do not trust them to have a monopoly or near monopoly on such a valuable and important media. I also don't support automatic rubber stamping of "granted licenses" because fr4ankly the only ones they deny are newcomers, and the old megacorps are now carved in stone, they can do most anything and still stay on the air. In particular I am most incensed over all the major networks almost complete lack of third party candidates and partys with their "news", because it tends to perpetuate the "two parties we have now" moreso than what it should be based on their merits and deficiencies. Having two monopolies that control 98% of the political "market" is just about as bad as one monopoly, espeically when there is little practical difference in the long run over how the country is run and managed and how the government stays accountable to the people. Always been a news junky, so it's easy for me to see and state that it's obvious a "status quo",to keep the mega rich richer by controlling the info feed, ie, subtle but quite effective brainwashing. There isn't as much a left/right bias with the networks as an "established billionaires point of view" bias. Just for that I think the major networks ought to have all their licenses yanked and give the spectrum to someone else to use, and tough noogies on their investments. That's just me of course and an opinion, but it sure would be nice if it happened....
I lived over 15 years in atlanta metro, rode MARTA quite a bit,it has plusses and minuses. You've pointed out a plus, but there are minuses too (last I was riding it). Such as non 24 hour service (example, the state says don't drink and drive, yet bars are allowed to stay open past when MARTA is running). That also discriminates against tax payers and citizens who do business in off hours, night shift workers, etc, and makes it impossible for a lot of people to use it even if they wanted to. And here's another critical minus, it's subsidised severely by people outside MARTA'sservice area who will almost *never* use it, and it's a big part of the cost of running it. MARTA's fares are around one dollar *under* true costs. If they were funded fairly upfront and then have the users pay for it at the true rates it would be a... err "more fair fare".
I say it would be a lot more cost effective if they really tried to get universal broadband out to everyone using these tax payers funds, rather than further insisiting on over crowding the cities, either from cars or mass transit of people. the way to eliminate congestion is to..eliminate congestion! Stop creating the artificial need for more people being forced to travel into and through major urban areas. We are atthe point in time with technology and business that the "need" for over centralised choke points in commerce and government is being propped up out of a state of inertia mostly. The never ending construction on atlanta metros roads for example, tends to nullify any improvements because there's always some place that is a bottleneck. People moved to the suburbs to get away from the downtown area, it's time to really take the next stepand de centralise the urban areas. Eliminate the so called "need to travel" and you won't need as much "urban transit" schemes like expensive train systems and more roads. And just "getting to hartsfield" is nuts, they quite simply built the airport on the wrong side of town, they KNEW that in advance, the bulk of the traffic that uses hartsfield comes from the north side, and they knew that way back when, but it was a political decsion to put in on the southside, for some obvious reasons given the nature of atlanta politics. That created a severe artifical "congestion" in traffic patterns that didn't need to happen in the first place, but then they needed the "solution" of more rail and roads. Government is responsible for helping to create a problem that they then used as an excuse for 'the solution". It's cuckoo, Heglian, and obvious.
--already being developed, the fighting armed robot. They are starting with just surveillance and whatnot, but quickly got to the point in the article and through the hemming and hawing they dropped Raytheon's name, which is a good indicator to me of an example of a "extreme violence is highly profitable" corporation.
I think it's a valid concern, because you know they will keep developing these things all the way, I have expected it.
There's already enough trouble dealing with human guards and police in the civilian sector if they get incensed or follow illegal orders and go mad dog on you. In strict military terms it's alwas been thus because the objective is to "kill the other guys" basically and any accidents are classed off as "collateral damage". We barely have any sort of reasonable expectation anymore of arguing a differing point of view in the civilian world, exploring what might be a mistake in intent or circumstances, before getting maced, beat or shot, but not with a robot, you won't get that. Binary. Won't really matter which OS it's running because even when it's running "well" it will still be dumb as a rock, they aren't even close to having the intelligence a good guard dog has, let alone a human. But, they are well past "close enough" to make them mobile and armed, a pretty dangerous situation, IMO. They won't wait for AI to equal just the mundane functionality, not when "collateral damage is almost always acceptable" is their over all mindset on achieving objectives. These sorts of robots won't be able to do the critical reasoning necessary to be effective in all cases, and you can bet that there will be a lot of cases of "collateral damage" with them once they are armed and programmed for aggression.
In the military it's a no brainer for them,of course, it's just a smart tank sort of logical progression, various sizes. And predator is getting closer to the concept on the aerial platform, and cruise missiles I think could be classed as almost fully robotic in nature, and are in widespread use now, as are all the other complex "fire and forget" type munitions.
...and be de-legitmizing certain aspects of the culture and practice in "law" of stealing at gunpoint (eventually) monies that are called "property taxes" that go to fund and support and generationally perpetuate what are in essence subsidised "farm teams" for the - for profit professional team sports "leagues".
There is simply no rational explanation for it any longer, anyone who can't see the vast sums and importance given to professional sports leagues "farm teams" in the public schools simply isn't looking hard enough or objectively enough. It needs to crack, be broken, that aspect of property tax waste and criminal abuse has no place in any sort of free and rational society or in any society that has absolute needs for the hard sciences and math, along with the other academic pursuits. It's a pure theft is all it is. Stealing. Wrongness. Instead, what needs to be done is to force public schools to emphasize "learning" over sports (in particular I mean the traditional professional type team sports), and you will see a marked difference in the normal academic pursuits. Younger people can still "play" those sports, just make it paid for by them or their parents exclusively,at faciliities they construct and maintain, separate from the schools and from separate funding that they -the sports "enthusiasts" or "fans' voluntarily contribute to. Or,better yet, if this is so valuable to them and society,maybe they can get "their teams" to slash professional athelete's pays and the owner's pays and have *them guys* pay for it. That goes triple for publically funded sports stadiums as well. Absurdities. Bread and circuses. Delibarate dumbing down.
Our socieity's addicitions to "bread and circuses" is obscene, IMO. Entertainments have a place, but they shouldn't be at the top of the list, especially inside the public lower level schools. They can still play, get exercise, have fun, but enough's enough on dbeing in denial that there is no serious chronic financial exploitation going on here, or over-emphasized outright addictions leading to irrational behavior.
Look at any local "news" around the nation. "news", what's "new and very important, ie, you need to know this". What is "local news"? A mixture of some local round the town news, cool, useful, the weather info, cool, useful, then SPORTS??? Every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, one third of the non commercial time is "sports" coverage, almost entirely of sports covereage of professional city/regional "teams" or the semi pro "college" teams. Its nuts! Oh me oh my, our kids aren't getting enough math or science!!1!! I WONDAH WHY?
Our society as a whole doesn't respect any sort of academic pursuit compared to "professional team sports" and leading to that is the quite obvious brainwashing and inducements to children to get them addicted as soon as possible. Anything academic is WAY down the list. You get "everynight at THE_BIG_GAME", and once a year the results from the national spelling bee.
I liked sports, played everything I could as a kid, but even then I saw it was ridiculous and I didn't put it over academic studies. I was amazed back then at people's addictions to it, even more amazed now, as it has just gotten of more "importance" somehow to our society it appears.
Best thing people can do to get math and science of more interest to young people,is to not only turn off the tv,but to stop doing that team sports nonsense completely. Just say no, there are thousands of other academic and recreational and physcially challenging pursuits out there. I mean...really.. it's embrassing, I am embrassed for my nation... you just can meet so many people who can rattle off their "teams" best players and what the scores were last year at which game and certain plays and whatnot-yet they cannot identify other nations on a globe, can't recall the name of their representative in congress, have never even heard of important laws passed or what they mean, have no apparent grasp of their own history.. and on and on. There's millions a
I saw it and read it completely differently. Well, except one part I'll get to we agree on.
I guess people are interpretating this according to their pre conceived "religiously held" beliefs.
Think on this, as an exercise taken from a generic macro evolutionist's standpoint. What are the odds of exact species arising at the same time on two different planets? Beyond practical chance? I think so. That indicates either poof simultaneous creation (or real dang close), or purposeful "seeding" or "cultivation".
Wouldn't the huge variance in natural selection come into play if it was true "random chance"? Of course, we still don't have exact "organisms" to compare****, but these preliminary findings over the past little while (the methane gas lately, more indications of water, etc) indicates that perhaps that "life" didn't evolve either place, but was seeded at both. There is good speculation that it-life- started at one or the other and got flung over the space fence, OR simultaneoulsy arrived somehow at both places, OR not just one or the other but both at the same time..
Also, no where in the bible (to become specific) does it preclude the possibility of life on other planets, simple or complex. I think too many have this vague notion that someone told them this as "fact", but it's just not there, basically, it's not addressed much,it's just not,it doesn't say yay or nay on it, the bible is more the allegorical and historical representation of "man's" history "on earth" primarily, not "the universe's" or even "another planet's" history, first by oral traditions, then eventually written down and translated to somewhat but not complete obscurity, IMO, over so many generations so that given it's hard to tell what is accurate, but the kernel of the storiy(ies) is still there, and it's remarkably similar all over our planet in many cultures and writings.
Almost all cultures with a good verifiable ancient record keeping system have stories of "other beings" and of "the whopper dang flood that sucked pretty bad" and of "weird large creatures that roamed the planet" early in *man's" history, and not all mammalian like "ice age" type animals, but pretty good descriptions of what were undoubtly reptile type animals as well. Funny they mostly all have that, unless one is to assume they were seriously advanced archeologists way back then, at least equivalent to 18th century representations that we are familiar with. Me, I am skeptical of that, very skeptical, it assumes a complexity of society there is little evidence of, my best guess is they had direct empirical evidence, because they were so non-chalant and matter of fact in their reportings of it.
Why would all these records have similar if there wasn't a large grain of truth there? Why would dissimilar cultures that had little contact with each other way, way, way back come up with other "life forms" in their own cultures early historical records?
My bottom line is "smoke=fire", as I am a skeptic by nature, and I am *most* skeptical of those who simply insist that "smoke" = "in 100% of the cases, there is absolutely no chance of fire whatsoever".
IMO, there's something to it (yes, I am of the faith most ridiculed here),but I really have found there's a lot to it just applying what science we really have (not what we think we have), and part of that - to me- simply must include the anecdotal testimony of "those that were there",our ancestors and their best attempts to keep some sort of historical and scientific records using the best techniques they had at the time; and as we have no handy time machine for checking other than archaeological records,and translations from ancient scripts, and the ability to look back and realise some times you have no adequate words to describe something just completely outside your capacity or general societal level of comprehension, you are lead to..consider them pretty good pieces of evidence.. You -any culture with designs on communicating with the future- can make an att
...in the beginning, didn't even have commercials! The radio spectrum was more closely held to be a public commons, with a public benefit. Broadcasts were more a free service in the sense of they were donated by the companies on their nickle. Later on commercials started slipping in, now these various broadcasters get to "own" a slice of spectrum,apparently forever and forever and forever, and their relicensing hearings are a COMPLETE SCAM, a mere rubber stamp job. It's apparently illegal to run your own non commercial very low power radio station, even on a totally unused piece of the spectrum. And to just listen, to use a wireless receiver? To my mind, you broadcast it out at random into the ether, then anyone may listen if they have the equipment. It is NOT the same as illegally hooking up a wire, then you have touched, altered property that is not yours, it's anothers, but over the air broadcasts to my way of thinking are open to reception. Of course, the courts and companies don't agree, but what else is new when a public "thing" gets sold to a private for-profit concern, turned into a "private" thing? To me, there's the theft in the first place. Just to get MY permission as a joe tax payer, part owner of all the spectrum around me, at a minimum your boradcast should be available to me to receive. If you want to make money, ask for donations of sell stuff. IF you wish to broadcast commercials to garner a cash flow that MIGHT lead to profits, that is your right to do that, and I don't see the government should interfere there as well, YOUR choice of programming and how many and what commercials you may transmit for that "license" to "own" some of the EM spectrum, untilsuch a time as your relicensing comes back up, and we need REAL hearings, not this joke we have now with industry insiders licensing other industry insiders..
That's my take on it.
Story, long time ago when cable first started, you didn't even need a box, just the cable. I moved into an aprtment that had a coax hanging out of the wall. Now I had a TV, and normal rabbit ears, but the reception sucked, and I was not able to get a normal antenna, as I didn't own this apartment. I had not purchased the cable networks offerings, but I DID feel it was my choice to screw that coax on and see if the longer wire that went out the wall and up the wall and "over yonder" some place might somehow improve my over the air reception, as it was the closest thing to having an outdoor aerial. Much to my surprise, I got cable feed, and it WASN'T connected, but it ran parallel to a connected cable. I guess induction did it somehow. Now, I would NOT have physcially screwed that together to the for-pay feed, or climbed the pole and hooked myself or anything of that sort, to me, that was and is illegal. But I saw no illegalities in receiving the signal. I rented the apartment, there was the wire, it worked, no physical connection, I did nothing to get the reception, it just "was there".. Eventually the cable company came and moved all the wires and I lost feed,so be it, so I went back to fuzzy rabbit ears.
There's the difference. There's physcially hijacking someone's property, then there's recieving a broadcast that is transmitted "at random" down from the sky, using a granted monopoly piece of the spectrum that is part mine anyway. They are not some sort of tight aiming it to individual people, they broadcast it out in a WIDE spread that hits everyone basiclaly under a huge area. It's as random as their altitude can get in the "down" direction.
Basically, I am tired of the government saying it can just take MY property and sell it, then saying it's OK for this private company to sell me my property back. I fully realise it's expensive to run a satellite and launch it and etc, but, we already figured out that advertising is "enough" to make incredible profits for broadcasters, I have no idea, but the sum totality of over the air broadcasting profits since the beginning of the radio age has to be into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
... I believe this is the closest you can get, not an emulator but a branch off the original OSX project. They have OS that runs on either PPc machines and on x86. There was some schisming a ways back, and I think there's an "offical" apple branch as well, and I do not know which is better or "more pure" or "low on carbs" or whatever the beef is.. or whatever, I just know they exist. this one has the nifty GNU in the front of it.
..the sun is fusion power. Capable of transforming a piece of dirt into a never ending supply of cellulose,a remarkable good fuel and source of raw materials for manufacturing, and in the water, the sun is capable of making vast quantitites of clean burning hydrogen from blue green algae. And the sun's fusion power is the main impetus for our winds, which asre harnessable now, current technology is almost break even with coal burning there.
We can do a lot more, it's just not being done, because primarily the alternatives lend themselves to being a cost that can be paid off, and it's also a major DE-centralising effort, and those two factors interfere severely with the status quo of the current business model of over-centralization and a never ending check to bigenergycorp.
Man made fusion isn't here yet, when it happens, swell, let'scheck it out, see if it works and can be made safe and reliable, in the meantime I think we should start really working on a transitional model away from rapidly declining oil fields, many of which have already passed peak production and are in decline, in roughly a 70 year time frame of useage and exploitation. We simply cannopt ignore hard numbers. Just this week royal dutch shell had to admit they were fudging their figures dramatically by 1/5th of their proven reserves. Umm, that's a lot... I would *wager* the other guys have done similar, just not caught yet.
We can't wait until we run out is the bottom line, when it gets to the point that it takes x-amount BTUs of energy in to get the same amount of BTUs out with oil extraction, refining and delivery, then it won't matter how much oil is left underground, you could through all the printed up money in the world at it and you still wouldn't get anything from it.
And then we'll be up a severe ^&^*& creek with NO paddles, a leaky canoe and crocodiles staring at us from the bank.
And china and india and south america and africa and south east asia with their billions of people are *just now* really entering an oil consumption/demand period of their existence that we in the already completely industrialised world have been in the past century almost. Demand in the next decade is going to tripe at least, if not quadruple. Where's the oil going to come from? think tanks? Politicians mouths?
Bottom line, there ain't enough oil for this whole deal to go along how it is now, just ain't there, not happening. We need to stop talking about it and do it, even if the alternatives aren't "perfect" yet, neither is the possibility of running out and fighting major global wars over dwindling supplies of oil a "perfect" solution either, and wishing for back yard fusion reactors is just that..wishing. We have to use the alternatives we have thought up already, all of them, or we are gonna be STUCK.
I'm one of the few people on/. who's made some sort of move to try and do my part, I'm a geek, I use and dig "no powah", I understand that, and I also understand that if I don't do something personally I'm a hypocrite at this point, so, several years back I got solar PV, windgenny, use renewable fuel -wood- , am gradually switiching over my appliances to much more efficient, and will do more as I can, but it's gonna take everyone on the planet doing it, not waiting for this "they" guy to do it, because "they" aren't doing it, they are talking about it and burning oil for the most part, and we can't do that much past the current younger generation's (kids in grade/junior high school now) entry into productive adulthood, based on every figure I have seen from a variety of sources. This is a short time period we are staring at. We have pretty snazzy geological exploration tools now, we basically know where the oil is and how much is left, and it's a relatively low amount if you figure the human race is gonna want and need a lot more of controllable and useable energy for the next..forever.
We can use the oil to help us transition NOW, or we can "eat our seed corn" now, and forget about the future, that's the only two options we have realistically.
... "Sorry to bring politics into this but it is strange to me that the party of Teddy Roosevelt - who practically invented conservation politics - is being so thick headed about this problem)... I TOTALLY agree, way back when I was an activist in conservation, and I was amazed that the R party was so..against it, that they preferred short term maximised profits as a business model over long term stability and wise use of resources and maintaining a "clean-er" environment. That made me stop and think, even though I worked volunteer for them for some other reasons..(I didn't trust LBJ and I DID trust goldwater) and then the corruption and lies and war profiteering run by the eastern establishment feudalistic wing of the R party got to me finally and made me stop supporting the R party. I flip flopped for decades, R to D back to R and finally I said heck with it, neither party is a functional party anymore beyond an organized crime cartel, they are grown too fat, corrupt and moribund. They cause the problems, they certainly don't solve any...
I support third party candidates or Independents now. Lately I have been looking at Aaron Russo of the L party as whom I might vote for this upcoming election. Not sure yet, but so far he's sounding good to me the last few times I have heard him interviewed.
...the spinoff from the x files, had aircraft being hijacked in a conspiracy for despotic takeover in the US by connected "insiders".
hmmm The aircraft get flown into buildings in NYC, and to accomplish the task they used remote control..
hmmm just like global hawk, which had it's first "official" successful flight very close to 9-11. If anyone remembers the details better, feel free to correct me.
Rather a nice coincidence there and "prophetic" sort of event. Oh ya, too bad the whitewash commission didn't ask condi rice why she warned willie brown not to fly that day. wonder how she knew... Hmm, funny, they didn't ask why the joint chiefs of staff cancelled their meetings there either. And come to think of it, ashcroft stopped flying commercial right before 9-11.
side issues.
As to the weather, hell ya it's weird. anyone who cvan't see that needs to go outside, the weather AIN'T been normal the past several years. And I don't have a URL handy, but I've seen pictures taken of the arctic showing massive melting in areas that were frozen solid for umpteen lotsa years. And it don't matter to me which side wins the arguments, because BOTH sides are correct, we have cyclical weather changes, and man sure does effect the weather from our industrialization. All one needs to do there is NOT live in any big city, then drive in, see the air take on colors, then watch weather maps as fronts approach big cities, see them change. Now extrapolate that around the planet,add in the amazon fires and the forest fires in the US every summer now, add in the huge coal burning facilities going online in asia, etc, etc yep, we cause climate change. IMO, it's more than the tame "skeptic" scientists claim,the ones with their political agendas, and it's less than the more extreme enviros with a political agenda claim, but it's for sure happening.
--we had a big discussion about this just last week, I got some good leads, vectorlinux looked the best to me so far/matter of opinion, I haven't tried any of them so far. Another one called rule linux looked good too. I'm trying to find a good gui linux for much older comoputers as well, and the thread/article was aboutMS setting up with refurb people in the third world with copies of older windows OS on old boxes. Lead me to ask (well, I rant really %^) )is there anything like 95 that would work on antiques, got those responses. 8 megs ram is pushing it, from what I saw 32 is a realisitc bottom limit, although some claim 16. That's what "they" say though. I personally have never gotten a distro to install on less than 64 worth a darn,if at all, but I've only tried a handful too, all mostly newer ones, oldest I ever ran isn't that old, RH 7.1.
Any disk with some normal windows enhancing tools/utilities. It needs to have zone alarm, ad aware, antivir, mozilla suite and open office for starters. I got one (similar to list) for making my give-away freebie boxes at least marginally better.
I'm not much of a windows guy, anyone else with good stuff that might flesh out a disk?
Besides that, user friendly distros, one of each would be nice.
That actually would be nice at the library, a dedicated computer that was setup to burn free software to a disk, they could charge like a dollar a cd or something, Not even have a keyboard, just a mouse, you click on your selections and it's burned to order.
I get this done at my local whitebox dude's (real young but savvy kid), he's a nice enough guy, with a broadband connect, he burns me stuff when I ask him, I shoot him a couple ~ three bucks a disk for that service. BTW, he puts zone alarm and open office on the new XP boxes that go out his door as a matter of course. His latest favorite to fool around with last I talked to him was the knoppix security release.
they needed to identify WHAT computers had all these infections on them, ya know, name the devil, and we all know what that is. I am more usually presented with a better written BBC piece, this one was a cop-out and a fluff piece. It's what I expected, but until this "the masses" get it hammered into their heads that it's MS that is the problem and their "computar" maybe we'll see a bit more variety in the market place in the desktop/home user arena. People say "wah, whine, kvetch, MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN!" when what they mean in most cases is MS IS BROKEN ON THEIR COMPUTER. I would have rather seen a factual breakdown by OS and architecture mentioned. People just have to have it hammered at them again and again and again until they get it that "Microsoft" is NOT the computer, just like AOL is NOT the internet. I've seen too many people who think like that out in meatworld. They don't know any better, because no one tells them, and the media constantly reinforces that. It's like politics, how long in a western nation would they put up with only mentioning a single political party? That wouldn't fly, and it's way past time they - the media- stop insisiting that MS ="all things computer and internet", which is the obvious allusion you see time and again. If people don't see the choices all the time, of course they'll think that's the only thing on the menu.
Tell ya something else, too, MS being on all these machines and being borked all the time is going to result in some draconian "internet security" laws being passed unless the stranglehold mindshare can be broken.
..use this? Be compiling and what not on one side, running the compiled code or working on writing on the other? Seems like one practical use. Or having one of the sides be for casually being on the net, while the other side is more open in admin mode for working, or are they both as vulnerable?
.. and earlier didn't have that option for most practical purposes. Ya laid a stack of records on the spindle and played them in order. Two generations earlier they had squat to play "artificial" music, you played an instrument or sang or listened to someone else. I know if we had had it, we would have used "shuffling". Closest I can remember is clicking ahead on 8 tracks. As to the younger generation stupider? OF COURSE, that's the ONLY thing has been handed down over the millenia, every culture. BOTH the younger/older both think the other is stupid and nuts and doesn't know anything and versey visa. That's from the "what else is new?" department....
My dad laid that on me heavy, UNTIL my aunt, his older sister, showed me a picture of him in a FREEKIN ZOOT SUIT. That shut him up!
That's why I pay no nevermind to earrings and green hair and whatnot now, because I remember ME in a Nehru shirt and "head boots" and I remember all the girls looked like one of three things, indian gypsy princesses, mary tyler moore lookin squares, or greaser big hair gals popping gum!
couple of points, I was referring to the first home desktop buyers and users, those were mucho expensive machines, BUT, it really made it take off much more so than with businesses, primarily from access to the internet. I am talking non commercial applications, just "use" by the masses. As to effort, a friend of mine has a completely portable plug n play system runs his entire cabin. Literally run the array out on it'sown frame, rollin the combo charger/converter and battery bank, plug it in, you got two 120 VAC outlests. His whole weekend cabin run sson that, took like 15 minutes to set it up from rolling off the pickup truck he delivered it with, I helped him set it up. I mean, it can be pretty darn easy, you can't make blanket statements that it's all that hard. Installing my battery bank took a couple hours, installing the panels a half an hour for my little rig. It's normal, not much weirder than doing minor repairs on your auto or building a small backyard whatever, a mower and tool shed from a kit say. Yes, SOME people will nver lift a finger to dojack squat for themselves, but most people I know will engage in this "work" dealfor any interest you can imagine once they dfeel like it. It goes up from rool it off the truck and plug in and use the juice to whatever you want there, but that's almost a strawman now, any homeowner can get the whole thing done and tied to the first or second mortgage, and in that aspect it's no more a hassle or difficult than deciding yes/no whether you want an extra bathroom over here or over there in your home beyond the normal multiple bathrooms, if it's being built. It can be roughly the same price as one more bathroom. somepeoplewould want the other bathroom,others think they can maybe struggle by with three bathrooms and a nice alternate energy rig. Just depends. I agree it needs to be more "usual" to see it and want it for it to be getting any better, so THAT is why I keepwriting all these posts, if nerds won't do it, we are gonna be stuck in the future sometime, I do predicteth. It needs to be done MORE in my opinion. I try to show folks it's "there" and counteract FUD, it's the best I can do, do it myself, show people in meatworld and show them in cyber world, I can't do anything else.
On the energy front, I think you might be behind the times in your thinking over how many people have alternative energy systems installed NOW It's a lot more since I built a passive thermosiphon solar room heater back in the 70s and sold it. It's funny but the day I built the bulk of it was the same exact day a lot of my friends and aquaintances went over to protest some nuke plant, I said "better to show by example", and I followed through. I'm trying to do a little civic duty here is all. Inside the united states it's well into the hundreds of thousands of homes now have some form of alternative energy, and it's definetly a growth industry, with many large commercial manufacturers doing the supplying, companies like Siemens, BP, etc.. Around the world, like I said before, more watts went online with wind power than with natural gas powered systems the past two years now (that's a BIG number), and it's just becoming more popular. Just that little factoid dispels a lot of FUD out there. Note, a lot of those systems are commercial bulk electric suppliers as well, not just "hobbyist wacko green homeowners". Solar is going in all over the second and third world, because it's cheaper *right now*, more cost effective taking fuel supplies and delivery costs into consideration, to install a lot of solar then to build from scratch large conventional energy facilities and to build all the grid infrastructure where it hasn't existed before. Here in the US we already have the bulk of the grid built, but we aren't the entire planet. And like I pointed out, even in the US there are still a lot of places that don't have grid service yet, but perhaps you just never saw those places, but they exist outside of every urban area once you get a modicum of distance away, like my example of just 15 miles
..combined with XP, what is a sort of thumbnail average cost if you went to just go buy them at the software store? I honestly don't know, haven't been in any store for quite awhile that sells that stuff to look at it. Wouldn't it be hundreds of dollars? You can get a *new* (small, but new and works) computer with open office and a good OS for the same price methinks. MS wants around the same loot for two pieces of software. No brainer to me and for most people if they could SEE that on the shelf in the store. Like, joe paycheck is perusing the aisles, he sees he can get a new box, plus the goodies for the same or maybe even less than what two boxed disks cost from MS to stick on his (probably much older) machine at home. Hmm...
I think the "linux desktop" is ready, just needs to come with more OEM installs from the box vendors. People need to see side by side identical boxes on the retail shelf (not just online at walmart.com), one has windows and no MS office, the other has a linux distro and has open (star whatever) office, and it SHOULD be at least 100$ cheaper there, the vendors shouldn't offer it at the same price obviously. People need to really see what it costs to keep running windows everything.
I would agree that insulation beyond the average "norm" be it an earth bermed structure or just a better designed and constructed home is way, way, WAY more "cost effective" now than any other dollar spent. Totally agreed, I think they shouldn't even give mortgages on new constructed R-18 homes anymore, at least new construction, they are energy hog homes, ridiculous, IMO. That needs to at least double, IMO. That's a law and side issue there,increase the building code inspectable requirements is what I think should happen there, that or scrap building codes entirely, but that's a different subject, they mostly exist now and every aspect of your home has to followsome sort of freaking code, it COULD be made it a law that a much higher minimum standard insulation level was required. Different subject entirely.
I am fully in favor of "superinsulation". I worked on one built from scratch, another highly modified, and quite a few seriously modified as to "more". Buck for buck, can't be beat with nuthin.
I disagree on the "totally out in the sticks" scenario,really depends on what you mean by totally, I looked at quite afew cab9ns and small homes last summer for sale that had no grid ties whatsoever, most of them weren't that far from the nearest pole and "civilization", just a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile further down the road from where "normal" people live and work and commute, but they were all a heckuva lot cheaper than a similar cabin just up the street. There are still many rural areas that have good roads, near to the city for commuting, but say- someone with some land sells off pieces. The land fronts the good road, but some of the pieces are out back, some distance from that road, call it the one mile further. One mile isn't that far to go driving when you are driving (random commute distance here) like 15 miles into town anyway. BUT, not paying to have those power poles put in, which is a common expense developments have to pay anyway (it ain't free from joe power company), saves you that loot that in some cases that you would be paying anyway, either directly yourself, or the developer pays it and it's passed on to you via the mortgage, you just don't see that exact cost, just the over-all cost. It's like the hidden OS cost in computers, you just eat it whether you want it or not. Another example of do it yourself over a "tie in" with the utilities, they charge serious folding scratch once you get just a little ways from where the poles are now, on a pole by pole basis, and it's a high cost per pole.
Where I am now, just the tie in to the county water and sewer is 5 grand. You can put in a well and small septic for near that(relativly speaking, variables there of course). And if your county tie in is further than just like a 100 feet to the street, say it's down the block in the development a 1/4 mile or more, you have to pay for the trenching and pipework anyway, PLUS the big fee the county charges for the tie in, PLUS the monthly bill forever, ie, PLUS it's never paid off.. You are now maybe at 8 grand or more, in a very common suburban setting. Your two choices then are, own your water and sewer, or lease it forever, about the same install cost.
I see "owning" your energy as just as normal and practical as owning your home rather than renting, owning your car rather than leasing, owning your furniture rather than renting, etc, just as about the same. I just would rather own as much as possible and not rent it. There's no payback whatsoever on renting, and you never own it, therefore you can't have full use of the property in question, you can't change it or alter it usually when you are renting (again, generally speaking now). With rented/leased energy, you have little control, you AREN'T allowed much in the way of using your brains and using new technologies in altering that scenario, because joe megaenergycorp owns it, and they won't let you mess with their system. At best you can alter your usage rates via selective appliance changes, etc, but after that, you have contracturally
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man there had it down. Said to stop with the overly complicated stuff, to force people to wallow in the big picture, but give them clear, concise and to the point "*_task_*" orientation. The task. The thing you are trying to DO with the computer, NOT "the computer". Most people do not care a whit about the entire computer, they are interested in some specific tasks, some apps. In other words, if mashing the button don't cut it, them help pages you turn to -ON- the machine , like right there, should be extensive enough and clear enough to get the problem fixed in the bulk of the cases they are referenced for. That's more or less what PJ said too reading around the lines. MAN pages are written by and for sysadmins.amateur orprofessional, they don't cut it for this purpose.
I think there's probably a lot ofinfo on the web already in "howtos" and "tips" and "found workarounds", just that it'sa bear to find them. A way to have documentation collated and automagically updated to your systems "help me plz" feature would be a good thing. I know that "docs" get updated, but they are pretty darn slow, I look every few days to see if there'sanew release for ANY docs using APT and upgrade them, and they are pitiful few. There's a lot out there, and the LDP has a ton of stuff, but..... but..... but it's just "not there". The desktop is good enough, the apps mostly are good enough, the reliability is good enough, fixing a problem as a noob is dismal. I think the package updating is a non issue, it's clickable now as long as you know where to look for wherever they got downloaded to. I guess folks are used to "on the desktop" as a default their "other OS" used a lot, but it'snot that hard to find "user home" and check there either. It would be nice for a universal installer and packager though, you would think at least on that one issue it could become cross-distro compatable somehow without anyone's feelings getting hurt and some more cooperation there.
Back to "task oriented". That's it. Teach the tasks, not the system at first. Make it painless as possible to find help for glitches, updated documentation JUST as important as updated code, and maybe a little cooperation on the packaging and installing. In fact, would make a nice poll and discussion, which way of installing apps is the best and why, etc. I would be interested in a discussion like that just to see if there'senough commonality that a single "way" could be found to ( + - ) agree on.
Or not... it don't really matter, the license and obvious bent of linux taken as a whole is sort of a fun anarchy, so who really cares....
Here is another story at findlaw. another more in depth look, citing previous cases and courts findings. This writers take is that it IS a "broad sense" case, and he cites his reasons for that opinion. Me, I think a better test case could have been found, but, in modern soviet USA, "best test cases" find YOU!
You got it, it's called conditioning or brainwashing. they do it to the cops and military until they are conditioned them selves, then they pass it on to "civvies".
The special forces are all getting chipped soon, then the nations police forces, so when it comes your turn, they will say "WE got chipped, it's legal and you must do it!!" Might take a few years, but it's coming.
Right up above, in another post the oft repeated by thoroughly wrong "driving is a privelege and not a right". That's BS, but the entire nation got conditioned into it, now it's accepted that you DON'T have a freedom to travel without their permit or "permission". Ridiculous? Nope, just the one step at a time deal. Would you apply for your "speech" permit? Ridiculous? Most states you need a "permit" for your second amendment "right". Well, if you need the state's permission, it sure ceased to be a "right", yet it's "the law" almost everywhere in some form or another, only one state, vermont, has followed the "born-with right" concept there. What's the difference? The numbering in the constitution? 1-2-3-4, the order in which they strip them doesn't matter as much as they HAVE been doing it and once gone, it stays gone. The goons will just take the easier ones first, that's all. That's what they have been doing. A "permit" to travel, to drive your property on a public road, a road you partially own by being the "public" and pay for via fuel taxes anyway, yet you need a "permit" for your "born-with right to travel" and everyone eats it up, because that right got stripped gradually and turned into needing "their permission".
One at a time freedoms get stripped, people excuse it, they get wishy washy on it, society wimps out, eventually like in all other despotic regimes down through history, you wake up one day and you have no more rights, you are their chattel, and you wonder why it happened, how it snuck up on you. "You" being a generic of course. It's because people just REFUSE to follow through with a normal extrapolation of causalities, events, and provocations. They will not put 2+2 together, they fall into the now cliched "cognizant dissonance" state. It's not that they can't see it, they don't WANT to see it, they pull a turbo ostrich head in the sand, if it's pointed out to them they will vehemently deny the obvious, all the way into absurdity.
Just since I've been a kid we've have lost a TON of rights, now we even put up with "random checkpoints" stuff I was taught in school was only done in places like soviet union or east germany. It was something to revile against,. to thank ourselves and congratulate ourselves we didn't live under such a regime and culture of brutality and exploitation. but now we put up with it, every excuse in the book, but the fact remains, it's now "the LAW" and the US public meekly submits. We wimp out.. Now it's "normal" and the dudes in blue (or black) willingly just "follow ze orders" and "swear an oath to the constitution", yet hardly any of them know it, understand it, or see how they are being used to force the people into obedience to the state.
And this "the people"? More concerned with entertainments mostly, and way too scared to do much about it, they will even put up with obvious vote hijacking and fraud, and with having a controlled parroting media mostly. They put up with hijacked money, stolen labor, rigged elections, wars created by a single tin pot dictator, "executive orders" and never ending and overlapping "national state of emergency" decrees, confiscation of property on a whim, the denial of even a right to property in a lot of cases, obvious and overt bribery being how the nations political business is done, and on and on and on.
It all happened one step at a time, though, not all at once, never enough to get the people alarmed and disgusted enough to "just say no" back at them.
It's sorta sad, but really, you can sort of understand it when you see they will make an example of anyone who dares actually say "no" to illegalities being
and if they are convinced they have ACCURATE code, are probably waiting for such a time as a massive coordinated attack is launched, cyber attack just being one of the facets. Small exploits for training and practice, sure, anything really spiffy they might find they will hold in check until needed-if they trust the sploit that is.
China has even created an entire new military wing of the PLA devoted entirely to cyber warfare, and they are giving it a long range importance equal to air force, land forces, navy, etc.
Now, to be fair, we don't know that MS gave them accurate code, they could have well given them some NSA (whoever, don't matter) doctored stuff that has a lot of nifty backdoors in it as well, we just don't know. I would guess that the state intel agencies in those two countries would be suspicious of it and audit heck out of it anyway before assuming it's completely legit. In fact, even if they hacked in and stole it they would still need to be suspicious of it, as letting it get "stolen" could be a variation on the false flag dodge as well, it's a great way to instill credibility in something if you can be persuaded you have aquired the real deal, so it's equally credible to think of offering the false deal as bait-sort of a honeypot kinda- and letting it get "stolen".
Here's the link, supreme court to hear the case on producing identity on demand.
... it was put on the southside for a variety of reasons, and they knew in advance that the northern suburbs were going to grow faster. And what you said about airports is true, think about that again, WHY did they put it where it got put? Who was over there in that area before? Lotta po bros that's who, not much political or economic power-at that time.
I mean, this has been discussed just so many times on atlanta TV and talk radio there and in the news. There's alos been a lot of talk about building a new airport north of the city, etc, but it's way too expensive now, I doubt they'll do it anytime in the foreseable future, but then again I haven't followed atlanta news all that much for around 5 years now either, it could be in the planning stages now for all I know. I live closer to choochoo vile in TN than atlanta and get their TV statiosn more clearly, so that's what I watch now.
That's what unions are for, so you DON'T have to accept poverty level wages. You negotiate with increasing your productivity, working with management to institute changes that you can see will be of a benefit to all concerned, and by collective bargaining with your peers.
We don't have a real economic crisis, what we have is a totally skewed artificially distorted economic system now that is geared primarily to re-arrange productive *wealth ownership* into fewer and fewer hands, leaving "the poor" as scapegoats and in a position to have their vote "bought" by politicians and political parties who promise them "free money" taken from other people, whom themselves are poor or at best middle class. Very wealthy people pay little in real taxes, what with incorporating, saying their vehicles are the corporations, their buidlings, a lot of times their homes, using trusts, etc, it's nuts. they emply legions of accountants and lawyers to hide and obfuscate really what they make and got. We could reduce that too easily with quid pro quo tariffs and a modest national sales tax, so no one has to dodge them, and everyone has to pay *something*.
I think it's better to just make a better wage, and so far, unions have shown that is the best technique as long as they can stay real in their expectations. Same goes for management, just stay real, and things will go along a lot smoother.
In fact, I think it would be cool if all these white collar IT folks formed an INTERNATIONAL white collar union, so that no one would be in danger of getting shafted, but everyone could work and make a living wage. different subject, but I think the idea has some merit to it.
The roads are "subsidized" by the fuel tax, about as cost effective and fair as can be arranged, IMO. Original cost was heavily subsidised of course, primarily to serve as national defense roads (the interstates) and because the US is just such a big country geographically, and because we buiklt cars here early on in mass quantities and we had a lot of handy cheap oil. connections, just happened ais all, we are an individual vehicle centered society, despite what a few million daily train commuters think, they are in a severe minority in this nation. And when we use the roads more, we buy more fuel, your "road fees" go up proportionately. Seems fair. Myself, I am poor, live rural, just yesterday I was discussing with my girlfriend to reduce our trips "to town" to once every two weeks instead of once a week, to save gas and wear and tear on the old vehicle. It's getting to that point now. Sorta scary really, to do that to save 10$ because 10$ is critical.
I also think all roads need to have clear cut divisions for types of traffic, commercial trucks, passenger vehicles, wheeled transport human powered, and pedestrian, as much as possible to give a CHOICE on travel. that would help as well I think. I myself long time ago gave up bicylcing very much because it just got too stupid and dangerous in town, and this is from someone who used to own a bicycle shop. Sucks. but reality for a lot of people because the roads are setup for motor vehicles ONLY.
Back to wages, engage in collective bargaining, negotiate yourself a living wage. Picking some number out of the air for a minimum wage hasn't worked, although granted it's an attempt, and I think over all it has more benefits than not, but beyond that-unionize. It works once your union is large enough. You get "power" then. Georgia in particular is woefully lacking and quite dismal in effective unions, part of the lower average wages here are from that very reason, and since the mid 90's, quite realistically, the HUGE influx of totally illegal aliens has diluted the blue collar pool of workers to such an extent that it has caused massive problems, not only with wages dropping, but with property taxes rising for building new and unnecessary schools, the bankrupting of most local hospitals, the increases needed in the various state agencies like police and fire, and etc. Wages drop, cost
... better history lesson and linkages than what I provided, most interesting. the part about the early hardware is very good, and I had once known that but had forgotten it, and it IS a critical part of the discussion.
Not in radio but with television, my dad was a radio and radar tech guy during ww2, then after he got out, and went into mainframes on the hardware side. But on the side at home he always had a shop and was an enthusiast,did repairs and sold fixed junkers and whatnot,and because of his geekiness and skills and interest, we were the first people in our neighborhood to have a television, and it was common for the living room to be jam packed with many neighbors and relatives to watch some shows often on this teeny I *think* it was a 9 inch philco. "Paying" for broadcasting is five ways, government and redistribution of general tax monies, advertising, and like you said the hardware sales, subscription, and outright private subsisdy as some sort of community give away by the broadcaster on his nickle. ME, I like advertising merthod and community give away by volunteers. Hardware it's now into passing laws to restrict it, which I think is in long term error, why we have this discussion on hacking hardware, it's no longer needed to subsidise hardware because the technology is out there now, and cheap, so that shouldbn't bbe required. I think the law is bogus there. that leaves subscription, which weith a hard wired model works better, but with over the air random broadcasting I think is sorta dumb and won't work without highly restrictve laws in place. Advertising has been proven to work well enough for funding, and I don't really want government run broadcasting, because quite frankly I do not trust them to have a monopoly or near monopoly on such a valuable and important media. I also don't support automatic rubber stamping of "granted licenses" because fr4ankly the only ones they deny are newcomers, and the old megacorps are now carved in stone, they can do most anything and still stay on the air. In particular I am most incensed over all the major networks almost complete lack of third party candidates and partys with their "news", because it tends to perpetuate the "two parties we have now" moreso than what it should be based on their merits and deficiencies. Having two monopolies that control 98% of the political "market" is just about as bad as one monopoly, espeically when there is little practical difference in the long run over how the country is run and managed and how the government stays accountable to the people. Always been a news junky, so it's easy for me to see and state that it's obvious a "status quo",to keep the mega rich richer by controlling the info feed, ie, subtle but quite effective brainwashing. There isn't as much a left/right bias with the networks as an "established billionaires point of view" bias. Just for that I think the major networks ought to have all their licenses yanked and give the spectrum to someone else to use, and tough noogies on their investments. That's just me of course and an opinion, but it sure would be nice if it happened....
I lived over 15 years in atlanta metro, rode MARTA quite a bit,it has plusses and minuses. You've pointed out a plus, but there are minuses too (last I was riding it). Such as non 24 hour service (example, the state says don't drink and drive, yet bars are allowed to stay open past when MARTA is running). That also discriminates against tax payers and citizens who do business in off hours, night shift workers, etc, and makes it impossible for a lot of people to use it even if they wanted to. And here's another critical minus, it's subsidised severely by people outside MARTA'sservice area who will almost *never* use it, and it's a big part of the cost of running it. MARTA's fares are around one dollar *under* true costs. If they were funded fairly upfront and then have the users pay for it at the true rates it would be a... err "more fair fare".
..eliminate congestion! Stop creating the artificial need for more people being forced to travel into and through major urban areas. We are atthe point in time with technology and business that the "need" for over centralised choke points in commerce and government is being propped up out of a state of inertia mostly. The never ending construction on atlanta metros roads for example, tends to nullify any improvements because there's always some place that is a bottleneck. People moved to the suburbs to get away from the downtown area, it's time to really take the next stepand de centralise the urban areas. Eliminate the so called "need to travel" and you won't need as much "urban transit" schemes like expensive train systems and more roads. And just "getting to hartsfield" is nuts, they quite simply built the airport on the wrong side of town, they KNEW that in advance, the bulk of the traffic that uses hartsfield comes from the north side, and they knew that way back when, but it was a political decsion to put in on the southside, for some obvious reasons given the nature of atlanta politics. That created a severe artifical "congestion" in traffic patterns that didn't need to happen in the first place, but then they needed the "solution" of more rail and roads. Government is responsible for helping to create a problem that they then used as an excuse for 'the solution". It's cuckoo, Heglian, and obvious.
I say it would be a lot more cost effective if they really tried to get universal broadband out to everyone using these tax payers funds, rather than further insisiting on over crowding the cities, either from cars or mass transit of people. the way to eliminate congestion is to
Here's the link to the Wired article about it
I think it's a valid concern, because you know they will keep developing these things all the way, I have expected it.
There's already enough trouble dealing with human guards and police in the civilian sector if they get incensed or follow illegal orders and go mad dog on you. In strict military terms it's alwas been thus because the objective is to "kill the other guys" basically and any accidents are classed off as "collateral damage". We barely have any sort of reasonable expectation anymore of arguing a differing point of view in the civilian world, exploring what might be a mistake in intent or circumstances, before getting maced, beat or shot, but not with a robot, you won't get that. Binary. Won't really matter which OS it's running because even when it's running "well" it will still be dumb as a rock, they aren't even close to having the intelligence a good guard dog has, let alone a human. But, they are well past "close enough" to make them mobile and armed, a pretty dangerous situation, IMO. They won't wait for AI to equal just the mundane functionality, not when "collateral damage is almost always acceptable" is their over all mindset on achieving objectives. These sorts of robots won't be able to do the critical reasoning necessary to be effective in all cases, and you can bet that there will be a lot of cases of "collateral damage" with them once they are armed and programmed for aggression.
In the military it's a no brainer for them,of course, it's just a smart tank sort of logical progression, various sizes. And predator is getting closer to the concept on the aerial platform, and cruise missiles I think could be classed as almost fully robotic in nature, and are in widespread use now, as are all the other complex "fire and forget" type munitions.
...and be de-legitmizing certain aspects of the culture and practice in "law" of stealing at gunpoint (eventually) monies that are called "property taxes" that go to fund and support and generationally perpetuate what are in essence subsidised "farm teams" for the - for profit professional team sports "leagues".
There is simply no rational explanation for it any longer, anyone who can't see the vast sums and importance given to professional sports leagues "farm teams" in the public schools simply isn't looking hard enough or objectively enough. It needs to crack, be broken, that aspect of property tax waste and criminal abuse has no place in any sort of free and rational society or in any society that has absolute needs for the hard sciences and math, along with the other academic pursuits. It's a pure theft is all it is. Stealing. Wrongness. Instead, what needs to be done is to force public schools to emphasize "learning" over sports (in particular I mean the traditional professional type team sports), and you will see a marked difference in the normal academic pursuits. Younger people can still "play" those sports, just make it paid for by them or their parents exclusively,at faciliities they construct and maintain, separate from the schools and from separate funding that they -the sports "enthusiasts" or "fans' voluntarily contribute to. Or,better yet, if this is so valuable to them and society,maybe they can get "their teams" to slash professional athelete's pays and the owner's pays and have *them guys* pay for it. That goes triple for publically funded sports stadiums as well. Absurdities. Bread and circuses. Delibarate dumbing down.
Our socieity's addicitions to "bread and circuses" is obscene, IMO. Entertainments have a place, but they shouldn't be at the top of the list, especially inside the public lower level schools. They can still play, get exercise, have fun, but enough's enough on dbeing in denial that there is no serious chronic financial exploitation going on here, or over-emphasized outright addictions leading to irrational behavior.
Look at any local "news" around the nation. "news", what's "new and very important, ie, you need to know this". What is "local news"? A mixture of some local round the town news, cool, useful, the weather info, cool, useful, then SPORTS??? Every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, one third of the non commercial time is "sports" coverage, almost entirely of sports covereage of professional city/regional "teams" or the semi pro "college" teams. Its nuts! Oh me oh my, our kids aren't getting enough math or science!!1!! I WONDAH WHY?
Our society as a whole doesn't respect any sort of academic pursuit compared to "professional team sports" and leading to that is the quite obvious brainwashing and inducements to children to get them addicted as soon as possible. Anything academic is WAY down the list. You get "everynight at THE_BIG_GAME", and once a year the results from the national spelling bee.
I liked sports, played everything I could as a kid, but even then I saw it was ridiculous and I didn't put it over academic studies. I was amazed back then at people's addictions to it, even more amazed now, as it has just gotten of more "importance" somehow to our society it appears.
Best thing people can do to get math and science of more interest to young people,is to not only turn off the tv,but to stop doing that team sports nonsense completely. Just say no, there are thousands of other academic and recreational and physcially challenging pursuits out there. I mean...really.. it's embrassing, I am embrassed for my nation... you just can meet so many people who can rattle off their "teams" best players and what the scores were last year at which game and certain plays and whatnot-yet they cannot identify other nations on a globe, can't recall the name of their representative in congress, have never even heard of important laws passed or what they mean, have no apparent grasp of their own history.. and on and on. There's millions a
I saw it and read it completely differently. Well, except one part I'll get to we agree on.
I guess people are interpretating this according to their pre conceived "religiously held" beliefs.
Think on this, as an exercise taken from a generic macro evolutionist's standpoint. What are the odds of exact species arising at the same time on two different planets? Beyond practical chance? I think so. That indicates either poof simultaneous creation (or real dang close), or purposeful "seeding" or "cultivation".
Wouldn't the huge variance in natural selection come into play if it was true "random chance"? Of course, we still don't have exact "organisms" to compare****, but these preliminary findings over the past little while (the methane gas lately, more indications of water, etc) indicates that perhaps that "life" didn't evolve either place, but was seeded at both. There is good speculation that it-life- started at one or the other and got flung over the space fence, OR simultaneoulsy arrived somehow at both places, OR not just one or the other but both at the same time..
Also, no where in the bible (to become specific) does it preclude the possibility of life on other planets, simple or complex. I think too many have this vague notion that someone told them this as "fact", but it's just not there, basically, it's not addressed much,it's just not,it doesn't say yay or nay on it, the bible is more the allegorical and historical representation of "man's" history "on earth" primarily, not "the universe's" or even "another planet's" history, first by oral traditions, then eventually written down and translated to somewhat but not complete obscurity, IMO, over so many generations so that given it's hard to tell what is accurate, but the kernel of the storiy(ies) is still there, and it's remarkably similar all over our planet in many cultures and writings.
Almost all cultures with a good verifiable ancient record keeping system have stories of "other beings" and of "the whopper dang flood that sucked pretty bad" and of "weird large creatures that roamed the planet" early in *man's" history, and not all mammalian like "ice age" type animals, but pretty good descriptions of what were undoubtly reptile type animals as well. Funny they mostly all have that, unless one is to assume they were seriously advanced archeologists way back then, at least equivalent to 18th century representations that we are familiar with. Me, I am skeptical of that, very skeptical, it assumes a complexity of society there is little evidence of, my best guess is they had direct empirical evidence, because they were so non-chalant and matter of fact in their reportings of it.
Why would all these records have similar if there wasn't a large grain of truth there? Why would dissimilar cultures that had little contact with each other way, way, way back come up with other "life forms" in their own cultures early historical records?
My bottom line is "smoke=fire", as I am a skeptic by nature, and I am *most* skeptical of those who simply insist that "smoke" = "in 100% of the cases, there is absolutely no chance of fire whatsoever".
IMO, there's something to it (yes, I am of the faith most ridiculed here),but I really have found there's a lot to it just applying what science we really have (not what we think we have), and part of that - to me- simply must include the anecdotal testimony of "those that were there",our ancestors and their best attempts to keep some sort of historical and scientific records using the best techniques they had at the time; and as we have no handy time machine for checking other than archaeological records,and translations from ancient scripts, and the ability to look back and realise some times you have no adequate words to describe something just completely outside your capacity or general societal level of comprehension, you are lead to..consider them pretty good pieces of evidence.. You -any culture with designs on communicating with the future- can make an att
...in the beginning, didn't even have commercials! The radio spectrum was more closely held to be a public commons, with a public benefit. Broadcasts were more a free service in the sense of they were donated by the companies on their nickle. Later on commercials started slipping in, now these various broadcasters get to "own" a slice of spectrum,apparently forever and forever and forever, and their relicensing hearings are a COMPLETE SCAM, a mere rubber stamp job. It's apparently illegal to run your own non commercial very low power radio station, even on a totally unused piece of the spectrum. And to just listen, to use a wireless receiver? To my mind, you broadcast it out at random into the ether, then anyone may listen if they have the equipment. It is NOT the same as illegally hooking up a wire, then you have touched, altered property that is not yours, it's anothers, but over the air broadcasts to my way of thinking are open to reception. Of course, the courts and companies don't agree, but what else is new when a public "thing" gets sold to a private for-profit concern, turned into a "private" thing? To me, there's the theft in the first place. Just to get MY permission as a joe tax payer, part owner of all the spectrum around me, at a minimum your boradcast should be available to me to receive. If you want to make money, ask for donations of sell stuff. IF you wish to broadcast commercials to garner a cash flow that MIGHT lead to profits, that is your right to do that, and I don't see the government should interfere there as well, YOUR choice of programming and how many and what commercials you may transmit for that "license" to "own" some of the EM spectrum, untilsuch a time as your relicensing comes back up, and we need REAL hearings, not this joke we have now with industry insiders licensing other industry insiders..
That's my take on it.
Story, long time ago when cable first started, you didn't even need a box, just the cable. I moved into an aprtment that had a coax hanging out of the wall. Now I had a TV, and normal rabbit ears, but the reception sucked, and I was not able to get a normal antenna, as I didn't own this apartment. I had not purchased the cable networks offerings, but I DID feel it was my choice to screw that coax on and see if the longer wire that went out the wall and up the wall and "over yonder" some place might somehow improve my over the air reception, as it was the closest thing to having an outdoor aerial. Much to my surprise, I got cable feed, and it WASN'T connected, but it ran parallel to a connected cable. I guess induction did it somehow. Now, I would NOT have physcially screwed that together to the for-pay feed, or climbed the pole and hooked myself or anything of that sort, to me, that was and is illegal. But I saw no illegalities in receiving the signal. I rented the apartment, there was the wire, it worked, no physical connection, I did nothing to get the reception, it just "was there".. Eventually the cable company came and moved all the wires and I lost feed,so be it, so I went back to fuzzy rabbit ears.
There's the difference. There's physcially hijacking someone's property, then there's recieving a broadcast that is transmitted "at random" down from the sky, using a granted monopoly piece of the spectrum that is part mine anyway. They are not some sort of tight aiming it to individual people, they broadcast it out in a WIDE spread that hits everyone basiclaly under a huge area. It's as random as their altitude can get in the "down" direction.
Basically, I am tired of the government saying it can just take MY property and sell it, then saying it's OK for this private company to sell me my property back. I fully realise it's expensive to run a satellite and launch it and etc, but, we already figured out that advertising is "enough" to make incredible profits for broadcasters, I have no idea, but the sum totality of over the air broadcasting profits since the beginning of the radio age has to be into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
... I believe this is the closest you can get, not an emulator but a branch off the original OSX project. They have OS that runs on either PPc machines and on x86. There was some schisming a ways back, and I think there's an "offical" apple branch as well, and I do not know which is better or "more pure" or "low on carbs" or whatever the beef is.. or whatever, I just know they exist. this one has the nifty GNU in the front of it.
Gnu-Darwin
..the sun is fusion power. Capable of transforming a piece of dirt into a never ending supply of cellulose,a remarkable good fuel and source of raw materials for manufacturing, and in the water, the sun is capable of making vast quantitites of clean burning hydrogen from blue green algae. And the sun's fusion power is the main impetus for our winds, which asre harnessable now, current technology is almost break even with coal burning there.
/. who's made some sort of move to try and do my part, I'm a geek, I use and dig "no powah", I understand that, and I also understand that if I don't do something personally I'm a hypocrite at this point, so, several years back I got solar PV, windgenny, use renewable fuel -wood- , am gradually switiching over my appliances to much more efficient, and will do more as I can, but it's gonna take everyone on the planet doing it, not waiting for this "they" guy to do it, because "they" aren't doing it, they are talking about it and burning oil for the most part, and we can't do that much past the current younger generation's (kids in grade/junior high school now) entry into productive adulthood, based on every figure I have seen from a variety of sources. This is a short time period we are staring at. We have pretty snazzy geological exploration tools now, we basically know where the oil is and how much is left, and it's a relatively low amount if you figure the human race is gonna want and need a lot more of controllable and useable energy for the next..forever.
We can do a lot more, it's just not being done, because primarily the alternatives lend themselves to being a cost that can be paid off, and it's also a major DE-centralising effort, and those two factors interfere severely with the status quo of the current business model of over-centralization and a never ending check to bigenergycorp.
Man made fusion isn't here yet, when it happens, swell, let'scheck it out, see if it works and can be made safe and reliable, in the meantime I think we should start really working on a transitional model away from rapidly declining oil fields, many of which have already passed peak production and are in decline, in roughly a 70 year time frame of useage and exploitation. We simply cannopt ignore hard numbers. Just this week royal dutch shell had to admit they were fudging their figures dramatically by 1/5th of their proven reserves. Umm, that's a lot... I would *wager* the other guys have done similar, just not caught yet.
We can't wait until we run out is the bottom line, when it gets to the point that it takes x-amount BTUs of energy in to get the same amount of BTUs out with oil extraction, refining and delivery, then it won't matter how much oil is left underground, you could through all the printed up money in the world at it and you still wouldn't get anything from it.
And then we'll be up a severe ^&^*& creek with NO paddles, a leaky canoe and crocodiles staring at us from the bank.
And china and india and south america and africa and south east asia with their billions of people are *just now* really entering an oil consumption/demand period of their existence that we in the already completely industrialised world have been in the past century almost. Demand in the next decade is going to tripe at least, if not quadruple. Where's the oil going to come from? think tanks? Politicians mouths?
Bottom line, there ain't enough oil for this whole deal to go along how it is now, just ain't there, not happening. We need to stop talking about it and do it, even if the alternatives aren't "perfect" yet, neither is the possibility of running out and fighting major global wars over dwindling supplies of oil a "perfect" solution either, and wishing for back yard fusion reactors is just that..wishing. We have to use the alternatives we have thought up already, all of them, or we are gonna be STUCK.
I'm one of the few people on
We can use the oil to help us transition NOW, or we can "eat our seed corn" now, and forget about the future, that's the only two options we have realistically.
... "Sorry to bring politics into this but it is strange to me that the party of Teddy Roosevelt - who practically invented conservation politics - is being so thick headed about this problem)... I TOTALLY agree, way back when I was an activist in conservation, and I was amazed that the R party was so..against it, that they preferred short term maximised profits as a business model over long term stability and wise use of resources and maintaining a "clean-er" environment. That made me stop and think, even though I worked volunteer for them for some other reasons..(I didn't trust LBJ and I DID trust goldwater) and then the corruption and lies and war profiteering run by the eastern establishment feudalistic wing of the R party got to me finally and made me stop supporting the R party. I flip flopped for decades, R to D back to R and finally I said heck with it, neither party is a functional party anymore beyond an organized crime cartel, they are grown too fat, corrupt and moribund. They cause the problems, they certainly don't solve any...
I support third party candidates or Independents now. Lately I have been looking at Aaron Russo of the L party as whom I might vote for this upcoming election. Not sure yet, but so far he's sounding good to me the last few times I have heard him interviewed.
...the spinoff from the x files, had aircraft being hijacked in a conspiracy for despotic takeover in the US by connected "insiders".
hmmm The aircraft get flown into buildings in NYC, and to accomplish the task they used remote control..
hmmm just like global hawk, which had it's first "official" successful flight very close to 9-11. If anyone remembers the details better, feel free to correct me.
Rather a nice coincidence there and "prophetic" sort of event. Oh ya, too bad the whitewash commission didn't ask condi rice why she warned willie brown not to fly that day. wonder how she knew... Hmm, funny, they didn't ask why the joint chiefs of staff cancelled their meetings there either. And come to think of it, ashcroft stopped flying commercial right before 9-11.
side issues.
As to the weather, hell ya it's weird. anyone who cvan't see that needs to go outside, the weather AIN'T been normal the past several years. And I don't have a URL handy, but I've seen pictures taken of the arctic showing massive melting in areas that were frozen solid for umpteen lotsa years. And it don't matter to me which side wins the arguments, because BOTH sides are correct, we have cyclical weather changes, and man sure does effect the weather from our industrialization. All one needs to do there is NOT live in any big city, then drive in, see the air take on colors, then watch weather maps as fronts approach big cities, see them change. Now extrapolate that around the planet,add in the amazon fires and the forest fires in the US every summer now, add in the huge coal burning facilities going online in asia, etc, etc yep, we cause climate change. IMO, it's more than the tame "skeptic" scientists claim,the ones with their political agendas, and it's less than the more extreme enviros with a political agenda claim, but it's for sure happening.
--we had a big discussion about this just last week, I got some good leads, vectorlinux looked the best to me so far/matter of opinion, I haven't tried any of them so far. Another one called rule linux looked good too. I'm trying to find a good gui linux for much older comoputers as well, and the thread/article was aboutMS setting up with refurb people in the third world with copies of older windows OS on old boxes. Lead me to ask (well, I rant really %^) )is there anything like 95 that would work on antiques, got those responses. 8 megs ram is pushing it, from what I saw 32 is a realisitc bottom limit, although some claim 16. That's what "they" say though. I personally have never gotten a distro to install on less than 64 worth a darn,if at all, but I've only tried a handful too, all mostly newer ones, oldest I ever ran isn't that old, RH 7.1.
Any disk with some normal windows enhancing tools/utilities. It needs to have zone alarm, ad aware, antivir, mozilla suite and open office for starters. I got one (similar to list) for making my give-away freebie boxes at least marginally better.
I'm not much of a windows guy, anyone else with good stuff that might flesh out a disk?
Besides that, user friendly distros, one of each would be nice.
That actually would be nice at the library, a dedicated computer that was setup to burn free software to a disk, they could charge like a dollar a cd or something, Not even have a keyboard, just a mouse, you click on your selections and it's burned to order.
I get this done at my local whitebox dude's (real young but savvy kid), he's a nice enough guy, with a broadband connect, he burns me stuff when I ask him, I shoot him a couple ~ three bucks a disk for that service. BTW, he puts zone alarm and open office on the new XP boxes that go out his door as a matter of course. His latest favorite to fool around with last I talked to him was the knoppix security release.
they needed to identify WHAT computers had all these infections on them, ya know, name the devil, and we all know what that is. I am more usually presented with a better written BBC piece, this one was a cop-out and a fluff piece. It's what I expected, but until this "the masses" get it hammered into their heads that it's MS that is the problem and their "computar" maybe we'll see a bit more variety in the market place in the desktop/home user arena. People say "wah, whine, kvetch, MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN!" when what they mean in most cases is MS IS BROKEN ON THEIR COMPUTER. I would have rather seen a factual breakdown by OS and architecture mentioned. People just have to have it hammered at them again and again and again until they get it that "Microsoft" is NOT the computer, just like AOL is NOT the internet. I've seen too many people who think like that out in meatworld. They don't know any better, because no one tells them, and the media constantly reinforces that. It's like politics, how long in a western nation would they put up with only mentioning a single political party? That wouldn't fly, and it's way past time they - the media- stop insisiting that MS ="all things computer and internet", which is the obvious allusion you see time and again. If people don't see the choices all the time, of course they'll think that's the only thing on the menu.
Tell ya something else, too, MS being on all these machines and being borked all the time is going to result in some draconian "internet security" laws being passed unless the stranglehold mindshare can be broken.
..use this? Be compiling and what not on one side, running the compiled code or working on writing on the other? Seems like one practical use. Or having one of the sides be for casually being on the net, while the other side is more open in admin mode for working, or are they both as vulnerable?
no, didn't RTA.
.. and earlier didn't have that option for most practical purposes. Ya laid a stack of records on the spindle and played them in order. Two generations earlier they had squat to play "artificial" music, you played an instrument or sang or listened to someone else. I know if we had had it, we would have used "shuffling". Closest I can remember is clicking ahead on 8 tracks.
As to the younger generation stupider? OF COURSE, that's the ONLY thing has been handed down over the millenia, every culture. BOTH the younger/older both think the other is stupid and nuts and doesn't know anything and versey visa. That's from the "what else is new?" department....
"Them *(&*^% kids nowadays, buncha lame brain degenerate weirdos, dress funny, too!"
My dad laid that on me heavy, UNTIL my aunt, his older sister, showed me a picture of him in a FREEKIN ZOOT SUIT. That shut him up!
That's why I pay no nevermind to earrings and green hair and whatnot now, because I remember ME in a Nehru shirt and "head boots" and I remember all the girls looked like one of three things, indian gypsy princesses, mary tyler moore lookin squares, or greaser big hair gals popping gum!
couple of points, I was referring to the first home desktop buyers and users, those were mucho expensive machines, BUT, it really made it take off much more so than with businesses, primarily from access to the internet. I am talking non commercial applications, just "use" by the masses.
As to effort, a friend of mine has a completely portable plug n play system runs his entire cabin. Literally run the array out on it'sown frame, rollin the combo charger/converter and battery bank, plug it in, you got two 120 VAC outlests. His whole weekend cabin run sson that, took like 15 minutes to set it up from rolling off the pickup truck he delivered it with, I helped him set it up. I mean, it can be pretty darn easy, you can't make blanket statements that it's all that hard. Installing my battery bank took a couple hours, installing the panels a half an hour for my little rig. It's normal, not much weirder than doing minor repairs on your auto or building a small backyard whatever, a mower and tool shed from a kit say. Yes, SOME people will nver lift a finger to dojack squat for themselves, but most people I know will engage in this "work" dealfor any interest you can imagine once they dfeel like it. It goes up from rool it off the truck and plug in and use the juice to whatever you want there, but that's almost a strawman now, any homeowner can get the whole thing done and tied to the first or second mortgage, and in that aspect it's no more a hassle or difficult than deciding yes/no whether you want an extra bathroom over here or over there in your home beyond the normal multiple bathrooms, if it's being built. It can be roughly the same price as one more bathroom. somepeoplewould want the other bathroom,others think they can maybe struggle by with three bathrooms and a nice alternate energy rig. Just depends. I agree it needs to be more "usual" to see it and want it for it to be getting any better, so THAT is why I keepwriting all these posts, if nerds won't do it, we are gonna be stuck in the future sometime, I do predicteth. It needs to be done MORE in my opinion. I try to show folks it's "there" and counteract FUD, it's the best I can do, do it myself, show people in meatworld and show them in cyber world, I can't do anything else.
On the energy front, I think you might be behind the times in your thinking over how many people have alternative energy systems installed NOW It's a lot more since I built a passive thermosiphon solar room heater back in the 70s and sold it. It's funny but the day I built the bulk of it was the same exact day a lot of my friends and aquaintances went over to protest some nuke plant, I said "better to show by example", and I followed through. I'm trying to do a little civic duty here is all. Inside the united states it's well into the hundreds of thousands of homes now have some form of alternative energy, and it's definetly a growth industry, with many large commercial manufacturers doing the supplying, companies like Siemens, BP, etc.. Around the world, like I said before, more watts went online with wind power than with natural gas powered systems the past two years now (that's a BIG number), and it's just becoming more popular. Just that little factoid dispels a lot of FUD out there. Note, a lot of those systems are commercial bulk electric suppliers as well, not just "hobbyist wacko green homeowners". Solar is going in all over the second and third world, because it's cheaper *right now*, more cost effective taking fuel supplies and delivery costs into consideration, to install a lot of solar then to build from scratch large conventional energy facilities and to build all the grid infrastructure where it hasn't existed before. Here in the US we already have the bulk of the grid built, but we aren't the entire planet. And like I pointed out, even in the US there are still a lot of places that don't have grid service yet, but perhaps you just never saw those places, but they exist outside of every urban area once you get a modicum of distance away, like my example of just 15 miles
..combined with XP, what is a sort of thumbnail average cost if you went to just go buy them at the software store? I honestly don't know, haven't been in any store for quite awhile that sells that stuff to look at it. Wouldn't it be hundreds of dollars? You can get a *new* (small, but new and works) computer with open office and a good OS for the same price methinks. MS wants around the same loot for two pieces of software. No brainer to me and for most people if they could SEE that on the shelf in the store. Like, joe paycheck is perusing the aisles, he sees he can get a new box, plus the goodies for the same or maybe even less than what two boxed disks cost from MS to stick on his (probably much older) machine at home. Hmm...
I think the "linux desktop" is ready, just needs to come with more OEM installs from the box vendors. People need to see side by side identical boxes on the retail shelf (not just online at walmart.com), one has windows and no MS office, the other has a linux distro and has open (star whatever) office, and it SHOULD be at least 100$ cheaper there, the vendors shouldn't offer it at the same price obviously. People need to really see what it costs to keep running windows everything.
I would agree that insulation beyond the average "norm" be it an earth bermed structure or just a better designed and constructed home is way, way, WAY more "cost effective" now than any other dollar spent. Totally agreed, I think they shouldn't even give mortgages on new constructed R-18 homes anymore, at least new construction, they are energy hog homes, ridiculous, IMO. That needs to at least double, IMO. That's a law and side issue there,increase the building code inspectable requirements is what I think should happen there, that or scrap building codes entirely, but that's a different subject, they mostly exist now and every aspect of your home has to followsome sort of freaking code, it COULD be made it a law that a much higher minimum standard insulation level was required. Different subject entirely.
I am fully in favor of "superinsulation". I worked on one built from scratch, another highly modified, and quite a few seriously modified as to "more". Buck for buck, can't be beat with nuthin.
I disagree on the "totally out in the sticks" scenario,really depends on what you mean by totally, I looked at quite afew cab9ns and small homes last summer for sale that had no grid ties whatsoever, most of them weren't that far from the nearest pole and "civilization", just a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile further down the road from where "normal" people live and work and commute, but they were all a heckuva lot cheaper than a similar cabin just up the street. There are still many rural areas that have good roads, near to the city for commuting, but say- someone with some land sells off pieces. The land fronts the good road, but some of the pieces are out back, some distance from that road, call it the one mile further. One mile isn't that far to go driving when you are driving (random commute distance here) like 15 miles into town anyway. BUT, not paying to have those power poles put in, which is a common expense developments have to pay anyway (it ain't free from joe power company), saves you that loot that in some cases that you would be paying anyway, either directly yourself, or the developer pays it and it's passed on to you via the mortgage, you just don't see that exact cost, just the over-all cost. It's like the hidden OS cost in computers, you just eat it whether you want it or not. Another example of do it yourself over a "tie in" with the utilities, they charge serious folding scratch once you get just a little ways from where the poles are now, on a pole by pole basis, and it's a high cost per pole.
Where I am now, just the tie in to the county water and sewer is 5 grand. You can put in a well and small septic for near that(relativly speaking, variables there of course). And if your county tie in is further than just like a 100 feet to the street, say it's down the block in the development a 1/4 mile or more, you have to pay for the trenching and pipework anyway, PLUS the big fee the county charges for the tie in, PLUS the monthly bill forever, ie, PLUS it's never paid off.. You are now maybe at 8 grand or more, in a very common suburban setting. Your two choices then are, own your water and sewer, or lease it forever, about the same install cost.
I see "owning" your energy as just as normal and practical as owning your home rather than renting, owning your car rather than leasing, owning your furniture rather than renting, etc, just as about the same. I just would rather own as much as possible and not rent it. There's no payback whatsoever on renting, and you never own it, therefore you can't have full use of the property in question, you can't change it or alter it usually when you are renting (again, generally speaking now). With rented/leased energy, you have little control, you AREN'T allowed much in the way of using your brains and using new technologies in altering that scenario, because joe megaenergycorp owns it, and they won't let you mess with their system. At best you can alter your usage rates via selective appliance changes, etc, but after that, you have contracturally