I'm surprised, but don't folks here use things like food co-ops and buyers clubs or swap clubs? Even municipal organized mass yard sale weekends* fall under this sort of discount sales from "mobs". I know food co-ops are quite common,I've belonged to several, all they are is a group of folks -"the mob"- who band together to get wholesale costs on food and assorted other grocery items. The difference here is the chinese version is more of a flash mob, but it isn't as well organized or structured from the description.
* we had one recently here,a multi mile organized and sanctioned locally giant yard sale. Quite fun taking half a day off and bargain shopping, and I actually saw a lot of "new" items that people put out, with multiples of each.
Thinking on this, seems like a group of people might organize around the web (in whatever numbers, hundreds to thousands?)in order to get deals on stuff, say the latest "must have" video card or something. All agree to be represented by the whizzbang vidcard buyers club, then start contacting vendors looking for a better quote than what they normally have, as long as you buy x-so many to make it worth their while. How about something like garnering linux support for hardware, you tell the vendor if they release such and such good open driver, you will buy so many new peripherals from them. It would have to be a big number probably, but seems like it might work better than the current begging and anarchy method.
That's pretty good with a fat tired bike! That bike I had at the time wasn't stock, only the frame(real dang heavy compared to today's bikes) because I liked soft metal, regular carbn steel, so I could bend it back to shape if needs be. Everything else was custom/expensive/tweaked. I would tune the wheels so the weight of the stem would make it rock after release from on top (bike in a rack) for around 5 minutes or so. I'd even mike the wheel and crank bearings and choose from a big pile to get balance and size closer.
The bikes you can get now I am *amazed* with, they are outstanding.
my nick combined with alzheimers to create a made up word that fit in with the "IIRC" part. I can't remember if that stretch of road was 45 or 55 now, either way was passing cars fast. I *do* remember the 70 part, *precisely* because I knew years later-like now-I would get a chance to tell the story. I mean, how many bicyclists get pulled over by a cop car for speeding?
I was passing cars *fast*, riding down the center line betwen the two lanes. t-totally completely bonkers nuts. Was going to work, it was around 7 long twisty miles downhill to work (you know, more or less descending), then in the afternoon an terrible 7 mile climb back home when I was already tired from working in an orchard all day. I was laid down over the bars, tucked in for that run, I did it every day but usually I braked some and stayed in my lane, that day I just went for it,you know how you just get feeling *good* ands things are flowing smooth? In the groove? whatever the saying is now. I just went for it zooooom! big fun! It was the cops radar gun, you'd have to question him, he said 70, but I think it was the second fastest I have ridden on a bike. I hit another LONG hill once with little traffic and built up a dang good clip, again, passing cars in the middle. I was a biking fiend back then, and shortly after the radar incident I moved and opened a bicycle shop, were I also built one of the first prototype "mountain bikes", although it wasn't called that then and there weren't any for sale anyplace..
Anyay, it's my story from my youth and I am sticking to it! Got a few more stupid human tricks I fortunately lived through,. another time perhaps...
...I got pulled over for *speeding* in a 45 (IIRC, zogheimerz now) zone on my ten speed, an old varsity I had worked on. Radar gun had me at 70(that I remember), downhill of course. The cop and me were both laffin like crazy, he's like "boy, you know how fast you wuz goin?" I'm like "nope, but it sure was fun passin them cars!". No ticket, I got a "warning"...
Glad to see a boomer break another record! yaaaa US!1!!1leben
I'd pay for a good search engine...
on
Get Played. Get Paid.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...by the year, some reasonable fee, IF, there was a toggle to filter out commercial ads/spam sites.
All major distros install fine now, so what is left is how they deal with your hardware, that is the #1 important part now that really needs to be "fixed" in linux land, any distro. Any distro out there can function as a web surfer, email client and word processor,all that crap works now just fine, but how about printing and other various USB devices? How about all the other do-dads that the vendors are pushing now that come either USB or to a lesser extent firewire? I've been on a search for the best distro with the best hardware detection AND configuration. It not only has to find and see the device, said device MUST repeat MUST become functional within a few clicks or it is "broken". I am no longer buying more hardware trying to find the magic combination of distroX and add-ons. I am no longer playing with distros because this or that desktop window manager has "cool new features" and they now offer a thousand new semi functional applications. That is irrelevant, it is already "good enough". Fix the dang bugs! Make what is already out there "just work".
People want to know how to "make money" with open source? Frikkin easy to answer that one. Offer a distro that actually installs and configs external devices flawlessly. That's worth paying for. Your monitor gets nailed, sound WORKS first time every time, printers work, cams work, and etc. That stuff. Not half assed semi-works and have to haunt google for weeks to find the magic incantantion.
All the other stuff,IMO, perpetual fast release cycle beta broken ware.
I don't care one bit if they release two or three times a year if the stuff doesn't work (Hi Fedora!), I prefer one good solid release once in awhile, a year or two, with just security updates, that's plenty. I don't need 5 CDs full of broken ware,90% of which I and the vast bulk of the computing public will never, ever use, I want one CD with some normal apps and ****superb hardware detection and installation****. That's the killer make it or break it "app" for me now. Beyuond that, sure, have it offered, but stick to one cd tops for a basic install, and everything on that CD works. If it doesn't stick it elsewhere and label it truthfully as alphaware.
I'll see how the reviews go on this latest suse, the forums tell the tale.
Have someone take a picture of you sitting down surrounded by all your legit CDs. Be giving the camera the finger. Snail mail that picture to the RIAA with an explanation, what you said, you stopped buying CDs when they started suing the customers. You could go through your collection, pick out the "artists" who are represented down the line by the RIAA, and send them the same letter.
If it was me, I'd add in if they just dropped prices down to really really cheap they could pick business back up. There is NO reason for them to be charging what they charge for stamped disks anymore besides greed and (drug and alcohol induced most likely) insanity.
Personally, I just stopped buying disks except very very cheap and used and not very many of them either. I just don't care anymore, I flip on the FM if I want music, I like oldies geezer rock anyway, plenty of that on OTA radio.
When CDs hit and they didn't drop prices and charged the same as cassettes or 8 tracks, well, I just went FU to them in my mind, I will not support gougers like that, and,like you, stopped buying. They have *yet* to drop prices, and no way in hell does it cost them as much to make copies as they used to, it is just a tiny fraction of what costs used to be, yet they think people are supposed to keep paying the same prices?? What for? Computers have gone from three thousand to three hundred dollars in roughly the same time frame that CDs have gone from $15 dollars to $15 dollars. What's wrong with that picture?
The biggest problem with "capital" today is that private for profit central banks create it out of thin air and more or less control it, and a lot of that control consists of favoritism, cronyism, running massive scams and a huge amount of social engineering by the "elite".
We need to go back to (honestly elected) governments creating it and having *the idea of it as portable representations of true wealth* be returned by being "backed" by quantifiable tangibles, something that can be openly disclosed and serve as a transparent and honest indicator about how much the ecoomy really "grew", as opposed to what we have now, which is how much credit they can push on the population and in which direction, with them as the creditors from their printed up scam "money".
My idea would be an immediate freeze on new capital being printed or data entryed into existence, followed by a fast review of the previous fiscal year's top 100 traded commodities/"things", because they represent wealth creation as opposed to wealth re-arrangment and social engineering by controlling the capital supply. Then compare those numbers to the previous year to that, and you can easily get a proportional representation of how much "new" capital to place into circulation. then you follow that rule to the penny. You create no more than you deserve, and you never create less than what you as a society actually made.
This avoids deflation and inflation completely, and puts everyone in the same boat as regards "producers"-the more producers and wealth creators we have, as opposed to everything else,the "wealth rearrangers", the better. It also allows business and society to evolve, some industries and commodities drop off the list, others get added, etc. We use 100 because the decimal system is easy to parse for anyone, our percentage system is based on it, the current "money" scheme is based on it, and 100 gives a wide enough sample to be indicitive of current business in general.
..I'll plug Austrumi, similar size at 50 megs, 2.6 kernel, loads right to RAM and ejects the disk (freeing up the optical drive), and now comes with enlightenment 17 as the stock windows manager.
I just recently updated from 4 to 5 and did some updates and now gnome is totally hosed. My repo list is fairly conservative, updates-released, extras, and livna. I checked on fedora forums last night and apparently it has bitten some more folks as well. What seemed to happen is loss of PNG support (maybe something else as well), which means a lot of icons don't show up and some of the gnome apps simply don't work. It be real, real ugly, I know it is the worst I have seen with any of my linux installs. I'm still finding more stuff that is broken. I think I will be forced to reinstall or go with something else at this point.
I think fast release cycles are *too fast*. Once a year ought to be fast enough. 2-3 releases.....I don't see a need anymore, we have a ton of functionality, what needs to be there is stable and secure functionality. Teh grand supreme fedora overlords council might want to think on that some.
Good point. Would have to check HP specs to see actually how loud it really is. But ya, liquid cooling is very quiet. Myself with older (beat-on) ears I guess I am not as sensitive to fan noise anymore, this box sitting next to me has 4 fans and I barely notice it. My meatspace work is so loud computers seem like a big nothing.
...really, that is a great idea, I am going to look into it. Currently I have a too-large chair that I got just because it would crank up high enough to use on my home made desk like experience-but it's built for serious large 'boss class' humans. It's just too big. Maybe I can adapt a normal car seat to the frame of this thing.
The other thing I was thinking of is an old barber chair! Those things are really comfy, too, and are really adjustable.
Way way WAY cool! Neat stuff man, you guys rock! I want one of the mr. bonesbots to do my tractor work for me, can he drive yet? When he isn't driving, he can stalk the garden as a scarecrow!
...the monopolist plumbers have already received lotsa billions of dollars to rollout high speed networks all over, to the premises, and apparently failed to do so adequately. Now they want more money..for what again? Both ends of the internet are paid for with the model we have now, they want some additional middleman fees..just because they can and can threaten to choke off traffic. Screw that! Instead of them getting more money, how about they get sued to provide what they already got paid to build?
All new computers come with a huge amount of blank space on their hard drives. The (shipping with XP) vendors should just install the various major browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Sea Monkey, and etc) and be done with it. Put icons on the desktop for all of them, let joe customer decide what they like. And if MS squawks, threatens them with this or that, tape the squawking,document it, and give that info to the DOJ. Enough's long been enough on the desktop browser monopoly deal there.
nukes just keep the concentrated money in the hands of the already bilionaires, and there has yet to be released a *true* satudy of what an end to end cost of building and running a nuke really costs. As it is now, without costing in factors like decommissioning and armed guards 24/7 for the next millenia, they are *barely* more cost effective than coal, even coal plants with scrubbers, etc. Nukes were pushed as a stealth military budget in order to get weapons grade stuff, they have never been all that good a deal. they make"hot", that's it, just "hot", and we have a ton of other places to get "hot". Hecks windchimes man it is right now this second 99 F where I am and it ain't technically summer yet.
As to adding your name to a list or whatever, again, demand pushes the investors, larger scale means economies of scale in manufacturing costs. As to whether mine is paid off or not, hell ya! The first time the grid went down and I kept power I considered it paid off from the sheer convenience factor, as in running my propane furance fan in january when it was pretty cold and nasty out, the grid goes down frequently around here right when you really want to *keep* power, like ice storms or thunderstorms, etc. Can you put a price on that, or way down south when a big storm hits and the heat is actually at the critical point for a lot of people? Just being able to run some fans and see the news and weather on the TV and maybe pull some well water out is a huge bonus IMO.
I not only have grid, and solar(yes I do all my own work and all my stuff was new), but I also own two different fuel generators and a small wind turbine, I want *guaranteed* electric, I require my radios and computers and water well and some lights to function at a minimum, and that means not relying on one source. I also have a year and half worth of "stored solar"-firewood, and a years worth of propane, at all times. I backup my data like most doodz here, have redundant computers, store food and water(enough to carry me much further than most people), have the ability to produce all my food if I had to, have a medkit the rival of most third world local hospitals, grow a ton of my own food already, have a greenhouse for year round production, and etc. I obviously don't live in the city (although I did for 15 years, Atlanta,you can have it, benefits are no way in hell comparable to the detriments and expense of urban living, IMO, it is too expensive, too crime ridden, too filthy, too loud..just too, too much. The money wasn't worth it to me so I moved. Wish I had done it sooner.)
And because of these reasons, I *don't trust* the government or big business to have my welfare and well-being in mind when they are "deciding" issues. I don't trust "the deciders" anymore. I know I can't compete with the entrenched multibillion dollar transnational corporations, so I work around them the best I can, and I think in the future a wiseman will do similar, because if you don't, you are basing (betting, you are actually gambling) 100% (nearly) of your life health and welfare in politicians and billionaires hands.
You really trust them bozos? Notice the wonderful katrina response? Notice all the wonderful corporate scandals that still go on year after decade after generation? I am old enough to have listened to them "live" saying "they will clean up washington!" and "clean up corporate scandals that rip people off!" and assorted BS for going on near half a century now, I think that is more than enough time to keep falling for that "trust them" part. My immediate relatives, the previous generation, my folks and grandparents, lost BIGTIME in the last great depression when the government and big business ripped them off by getting them to believe their long term lies. They pull something like this every other generation or two, I call it the big lie and big con, and you'll see it happen again. Yes you will and probably soon, too. Want an example of how this works, when you can see it start to unravel? Right now delta is trying to weasel o
by clean power that is exactly what I meant, well regulated power, good for the electronics.
no law says data centers have to be placed in the middle of expensive high rise towers in large cities, in fact, some of the larger ones being built right now are going out in the sticks in dedicated buildings, the new googleplex, etc. It's nuts to cry poverty when you insist on the highest rent. If your center is large enough, you can get the lines to it.
Again, not sure what you are saying, that alternatve energy doesn't work or it doesn't scale up? Are you calling over 2 megawatt apiece wind turbines non-large scale? You need more than that? One megawatt towers are common now and the larger ones are going in, and they frequently go in as "farms" with dozens of the towers in one place, some of them able to handle all the electrical needs of entire decent sized cities. I would call that large scale, guess you won't or don't..to each their own. Here's one just lately, in LA, a new wind project will be furnishing one fifth the total power needs there..but I guess that isn't significant, huh? As to "enough real estate", well, you slap them in right outside the big cities, they are doing it all over.
And like I said, solar is going in all over as well, and is neat because so many people can take advantage of it and it scales like crazy. It's happening, whether you like it or not, seems *millions and millions* of people are going to it all over the planet, most all the dealers are backlogged with orders and installs. And some of the larger investors in alternative energy are now nations that are dependent on foreign source of energy and see the alternatives as long range cost effective, so they are directly investing with public money and/or offering subsidies to private corporations to help speed up adoption. Examples there are Japan, China, Germany, India..but what do they know, eh? Even stodgy old oil soaked usa is doing it....
As to solar not being cost effective, or quoting some "payback" period,which is a huge variable, here's a challenge I have yet to have any internet alternative energy debunker "expert" meet, so here's *your* chance: write back when you can point to your personal grid electric supplier for your house (I need a URL to look at it where they offer this) that you use or could use in your area, that will give you a ten or twenty year guaranteed priceing contract, so much a kilowatt hour carved in stone. There's your challenge. Non corporate, joe homeowner normal "electric bill". With the alternatives you can purchase and own, with a ten to thirty year warranty, this is a verifiable figure you can get a firm price on *today*.
When you can provide that, you have a point and can start throwing around figures for comparison, without it, it is pure guesswork with no data to back it up on what a so-called "payback" period is. You can *guess* based on your current rates, that's about it. something weird could happen tomorrow to the energy markets, poo, vast price rises. I've seen it happen, particularly during OPEC embargo. Or perhaps another california enron price manipulation scam..you never know. If the stuff you own is installed at home..well there ya go, it's there. It's not perfect-nothing is, but it gets closer to this ownership deal which most folks think is a good idea, like payoff the house, payoff the car, payoff the furniture, etc, not "rent" forever. Myself being a geek and always wanting power, I long ago aquired and paid of a modest solar rig, and it's still running fine. It doesn't do all my power-yet-but eventually it will and in the meantime even if the grid goes kerflooey for some reason I have an immediate "good enough" amount of power to run some critical things around the old abode here. I got less into it then a lot of people have in their big screen TVs and home "entertainmnet" c
..many people now maintain their own long term "sealed in a can" seed storage, myself included. I always keep quite a bit of various garden seed packed away, a lot of them are in number #10 enameled cans just for this exact purpose like in the article.
Google for "heirloom seens, long term storage", you can find companies that sell seeds packed into cans for long shelf life. You can do it yourself too, it's not that hard to make sealed containers with like CO2 flooded in there, etc. It's a common technique in the survival/preparedness communities.
Really, no offense but you are woefully ignorant of the status of "alternative energy". It works, going in all over, at 10 watt to the multi mega watt levels. Wind power is not almost equal to the cost of coal generated electricity. solar is still higher, but if all you have is a hut sitting out in the hot sun...you think it's cheaper to put in conventional? really? Isn't that part of the article I linked, conventional costs *more* in a lot of cases?
The last place we lived as caretakers was fully solar PV powered, the main owners house at 7,000 square feet and our rig. They ran full upscale upper middle class fully electric everything from it, and total cost including labor for install was around what a reasonable car costs today, which compared to the cost of the house was a few percent. The cost could have been dropped a lot with homeowner sweat equity in the install, and that is US full "what the market will bear" cost on hardware and labor.
There are wind generators out there now putting out more than two megawatts, and home owner sized wind rigs are in the multi kilowatt range now and solar you can get any size you want. I know I lacked for nothing, full desktop computers, etc, refrigerator,freezer,run the washing machine, etc, all normal stuff. When the entire rest of the local area went down for a *week* from an ice storm we missed absolutely nothing, zero, didn't even know the grid power was down until I saw the local street lights in the distance wern't on. I mean..can't beat it with two sticks. it's clean power, too, better than grid supplied.
While you are doubting, others are doing, run some google searches and get up to speed on the subject. There are new factories going in all over the planet to expand production of solar PV (because it is selling like crazy because it "just works") and every doubling of manufacturing output is dropping the price 20% (economy of scale). There are new concentrator PV panels coming to market soon and a plethora of new battery tech.
And as to "UPS", well dang vern that is a primary part of alternate energy rigs, having your own battery bank and smart chargers and inverters, all that is a big UPS system that is modular and has some solar PV or wind charger hooked to it.
In a lot of the developing world, they are skipping conventional and expensive and now old-fashioned ast century tech infrastructure roll-out and going to the next generation tech, decentralised (and alternative energy, solar, etc) electric power and wireless networks instead of fixed wires. Here is an article on what India is doing to bring electricity to the 1/2 billion people that don't have it yet.
And just because apple puled out doesn't mean any number of other tech giants aren't going in. Intel, IBM, MS, HP etc, etc are all dropping serious folding cash into India right now. Apple is one of the few that *aren't*. Apple has pulled some lame biz decisions in the past, this is probably one of them, IMO.
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You can go to the *Varsity hotdog stand* in atlanta and find 20 good coders any lunchtime, and maybe some nanotech guys, chemists, etc.
I think you haven't been to atlanta in a long time....
Goog could do that and give eBay a hurtin'
I'm surprised, but don't folks here use things like food co-ops and buyers clubs or swap clubs? Even municipal organized mass yard sale weekends* fall under this sort of discount sales from "mobs". I know food co-ops are quite common,I've belonged to several, all they are is a group of folks -"the mob"- who band together to get wholesale costs on food and assorted other grocery items. The difference here is the chinese version is more of a flash mob, but it isn't as well organized or structured from the description.
* we had one recently here,a multi mile organized and sanctioned locally giant yard sale. Quite fun taking half a day off and bargain shopping, and I actually saw a lot of "new" items that people put out, with multiples of each.
Thinking on this, seems like a group of people might organize around the web (in whatever numbers, hundreds to thousands?)in order to get deals on stuff, say the latest "must have" video card or something. All agree to be represented by the whizzbang vidcard buyers club, then start contacting vendors looking for a better quote than what they normally have, as long as you buy x-so many to make it worth their while. How about something like garnering linux support for hardware, you tell the vendor if they release such and such good open driver, you will buy so many new peripherals from them. It would have to be a big number probably, but seems like it might work better than the current begging and anarchy method.
That's pretty good with a fat tired bike! That bike I had at the time wasn't stock, only the frame(real dang heavy compared to today's bikes) because I liked soft metal, regular carbn steel, so I could bend it back to shape if needs be. Everything else was custom/expensive/tweaked. I would tune the wheels so the weight of the stem would make it rock after release from on top (bike in a rack) for around 5 minutes or so. I'd even mike the wheel and crank bearings and choose from a big pile to get balance and size closer.
The bikes you can get now I am *amazed* with, they are outstanding.
my nick combined with alzheimers to create a made up word that fit in with the "IIRC" part. I can't remember if that stretch of road was 45 or 55 now, either way was passing cars fast. I *do* remember the 70 part, *precisely* because I knew years later-like now-I would get a chance to tell the story. I mean, how many bicyclists get pulled over by a cop car for speeding?
I was passing cars *fast*, riding down the center line betwen the two lanes. t-totally completely bonkers nuts. Was going to work, it was around 7 long twisty miles downhill to work (you know, more or less descending), then in the afternoon an terrible 7 mile climb back home when I was already tired from working in an orchard all day. I was laid down over the bars, tucked in for that run, I did it every day but usually I braked some and stayed in my lane, that day I just went for it,you know how you just get feeling *good* ands things are flowing smooth? In the groove? whatever the saying is now. I just went for it zooooom! big fun! It was the cops radar gun, you'd have to question him, he said 70, but I think it was the second fastest I have ridden on a bike. I hit another LONG hill once with little traffic and built up a dang good clip, again, passing cars in the middle. I was a biking fiend back then, and shortly after the radar incident I moved and opened a bicycle shop, were I also built one of the first prototype "mountain bikes", although it wasn't called that then and there weren't any for sale anyplace..
Anyay, it's my story from my youth and I am sticking to it! Got a few more stupid human tricks I fortunately lived through,. another time perhaps...
...I got pulled over for *speeding* in a 45 (IIRC, zogheimerz now) zone on my ten speed, an old varsity I had worked on. Radar gun had me at 70(that I remember), downhill of course. The cop and me were both laffin like crazy, he's like "boy, you know how fast you wuz goin?" I'm like "nope, but it sure was fun passin them cars!". No ticket, I got a "warning"...
Glad to see a boomer break another record! yaaaa US!1!!1leben
...by the year, some reasonable fee, IF, there was a toggle to filter out commercial ads/spam sites.
All major distros install fine now, so what is left is how they deal with your hardware, that is the #1 important part now that really needs to be "fixed" in linux land, any distro. Any distro out there can function as a web surfer, email client and word processor,all that crap works now just fine, but how about printing and other various USB devices? How about all the other do-dads that the vendors are pushing now that come either USB or to a lesser extent firewire? I've been on a search for the best distro with the best hardware detection AND configuration. It not only has to find and see the device, said device MUST repeat MUST become functional within a few clicks or it is "broken". I am no longer buying more hardware trying to find the magic combination of distroX and add-ons. I am no longer playing with distros because this or that desktop window manager has "cool new features" and they now offer a thousand new semi functional applications. That is irrelevant, it is already "good enough". Fix the dang bugs! Make what is already out there "just work".
People want to know how to "make money" with open source? Frikkin easy to answer that one. Offer a distro that actually installs and configs external devices flawlessly. That's worth paying for. Your monitor gets nailed, sound WORKS first time every time, printers work, cams work, and etc. That stuff. Not half assed semi-works and have to haunt google for weeks to find the magic incantantion.
All the other stuff,IMO, perpetual fast release cycle beta broken ware.
I don't care one bit if they release two or three times a year if the stuff doesn't work (Hi Fedora!), I prefer one good solid release once in awhile, a year or two, with just security updates, that's plenty. I don't need 5 CDs full of broken ware,90% of which I and the vast bulk of the computing public will never, ever use, I want one CD with some normal apps and ****superb hardware detection and installation****. That's the killer make it or break it "app" for me now. Beyuond that, sure, have it offered, but stick to one cd tops for a basic install, and everything on that CD works. If it doesn't stick it elsewhere and label it truthfully as alphaware.
I'll see how the reviews go on this latest suse, the forums tell the tale.
Have someone take a picture of you sitting down surrounded by all your legit CDs. Be giving the camera the finger. Snail mail that picture to the RIAA with an explanation, what you said, you stopped buying CDs when they started suing the customers. You could go through your collection, pick out the "artists" who are represented down the line by the RIAA, and send them the same letter.
If it was me, I'd add in if they just dropped prices down to really really cheap they could pick business back up. There is NO reason for them to be charging what they charge for stamped disks anymore besides greed and (drug and alcohol induced most likely) insanity.
Personally, I just stopped buying disks except very very cheap and used and not very many of them either. I just don't care anymore, I flip on the FM if I want music, I like oldies geezer rock anyway, plenty of that on OTA radio.
When CDs hit and they didn't drop prices and charged the same as cassettes or 8 tracks, well, I just went FU to them in my mind, I will not support gougers like that, and,like you, stopped buying. They have *yet* to drop prices, and no way in hell does it cost them as much to make copies as they used to, it is just a tiny fraction of what costs used to be, yet they think people are supposed to keep paying the same prices?? What for? Computers have gone from three thousand to three hundred dollars in roughly the same time frame that CDs have gone from $15 dollars to $15 dollars. What's wrong with that picture?
The biggest problem with "capital" today is that private for profit central banks create it out of thin air and more or less control it, and a lot of that control consists of favoritism, cronyism, running massive scams and a huge amount of social engineering by the "elite".
We need to go back to (honestly elected) governments creating it and having *the idea of it as portable representations of true wealth* be returned by being "backed" by quantifiable tangibles, something that can be openly disclosed and serve as a transparent and honest indicator about how much the ecoomy really "grew", as opposed to what we have now, which is how much credit they can push on the population and in which direction, with them as the creditors from their printed up scam "money".
My idea would be an immediate freeze on new capital being printed or data entryed into existence, followed by a fast review of the previous fiscal year's top 100 traded commodities/"things", because they represent wealth creation as opposed to wealth re-arrangment and social engineering by controlling the capital supply. Then compare those numbers to the previous year to that, and you can easily get a proportional representation of how much "new" capital to place into circulation. then you follow that rule to the penny. You create no more than you deserve, and you never create less than what you as a society actually made.
This avoids deflation and inflation completely, and puts everyone in the same boat as regards "producers"-the more producers and wealth creators we have, as opposed to everything else,the "wealth rearrangers", the better. It also allows business and society to evolve, some industries and commodities drop off the list, others get added, etc. We use 100 because the decimal system is easy to parse for anyone, our percentage system is based on it, the current "money" scheme is based on it, and 100 gives a wide enough sample to be indicitive of current business in general.
..I'll plug Austrumi, similar size at 50 megs, 2.6 kernel, loads right to RAM and ejects the disk (freeing up the optical drive), and now comes with enlightenment 17 as the stock windows manager.
I just recently updated from 4 to 5 and did some updates and now gnome is totally hosed. My repo list is fairly conservative, updates-released, extras, and livna. I checked on fedora forums last night and apparently it has bitten some more folks as well. What seemed to happen is loss of PNG support (maybe something else as well), which means a lot of icons don't show up and some of the gnome apps simply don't work. It be real, real ugly, I know it is the worst I have seen with any of my linux installs. I'm still finding more stuff that is broken. I think I will be forced to reinstall or go with something else at this point.
I think fast release cycles are *too fast*. Once a year ought to be fast enough. 2-3 releases.....I don't see a need anymore, we have a ton of functionality, what needs to be there is stable and secure functionality. Teh grand supreme fedora overlords council might want to think on that some.
Good point. Would have to check HP specs to see actually how loud it really is. But ya, liquid cooling is very quiet. Myself with older (beat-on) ears I guess I am not as sensitive to fan noise anymore, this box sitting next to me has 4 fans and I barely notice it. My meatspace work is so loud computers seem like a big nothing.
...really, that is a great idea, I am going to look into it. Currently I have a too-large chair that I got just because it would crank up high enough to use on my home made desk like experience-but it's built for serious large 'boss class' humans. It's just too big. Maybe I can adapt a normal car seat to the frame of this thing.
The other thing I was thinking of is an old barber chair! Those things are really comfy, too, and are really adjustable.
..maybe check out HP's new air cooling rig instead.
Way way WAY cool! Neat stuff man, you guys rock! I want one of the mr. bonesbots to do my tractor work for me, can he drive yet? When he isn't driving, he can stalk the garden as a scarecrow!
...the monopolist plumbers have already received lotsa billions of dollars to rollout high speed networks all over, to the premises, and apparently failed to do so adequately. Now they want more money..for what again? Both ends of the internet are paid for with the model we have now, they want some additional middleman fees..just because they can and can threaten to choke off traffic. Screw that! Instead of them getting more money, how about they get sued to provide what they already got paid to build?
All new computers come with a huge amount of blank space on their hard drives. The (shipping with XP) vendors should just install the various major browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Sea Monkey, and etc) and be done with it. Put icons on the desktop for all of them, let joe customer decide what they like. And if MS squawks, threatens them with this or that, tape the squawking,document it, and give that info to the DOJ. Enough's long been enough on the desktop browser monopoly deal there.
nukes just keep the concentrated money in the hands of the already bilionaires, and there has yet to be released a *true* satudy of what an end to end cost of building and running a nuke really costs. As it is now, without costing in factors like decommissioning and armed guards 24/7 for the next millenia, they are *barely* more cost effective than coal, even coal plants with scrubbers, etc. Nukes were pushed as a stealth military budget in order to get weapons grade stuff, they have never been all that good a deal. they make"hot", that's it, just "hot", and we have a ton of other places to get "hot". Hecks windchimes man it is right now this second 99 F where I am and it ain't technically summer yet.
As to adding your name to a list or whatever, again, demand pushes the investors, larger scale means economies of scale in manufacturing costs. As to whether mine is paid off or not, hell ya! The first time the grid went down and I kept power I considered it paid off from the sheer convenience factor, as in running my propane furance fan in january when it was pretty cold and nasty out, the grid goes down frequently around here right when you really want to *keep* power, like ice storms or thunderstorms, etc. Can you put a price on that, or way down south when a big storm hits and the heat is actually at the critical point for a lot of people? Just being able to run some fans and see the news and weather on the TV and maybe pull some well water out is a huge bonus IMO.
I not only have grid, and solar(yes I do all my own work and all my stuff was new), but I also own two different fuel generators and a small wind turbine, I want *guaranteed* electric, I require my radios and computers and water well and some lights to function at a minimum, and that means not relying on one source. I also have a year and half worth of "stored solar"-firewood, and a years worth of propane, at all times. I backup my data like most doodz here, have redundant computers, store food and water(enough to carry me much further than most people), have the ability to produce all my food if I had to, have a medkit the rival of most third world local hospitals, grow a ton of my own food already, have a greenhouse for year round production, and etc. I obviously don't live in the city (although I did for 15 years, Atlanta,you can have it, benefits are no way in hell comparable to the detriments and expense of urban living, IMO, it is too expensive, too crime ridden, too filthy, too loud..just too, too much. The money wasn't worth it to me so I moved. Wish I had done it sooner.)
And because of these reasons, I *don't trust* the government or big business to have my welfare and well-being in mind when they are "deciding" issues. I don't trust "the deciders" anymore. I know I can't compete with the entrenched multibillion dollar transnational corporations, so I work around them the best I can, and I think in the future a wiseman will do similar, because if you don't, you are basing (betting, you are actually gambling) 100% (nearly) of your life health and welfare in politicians and billionaires hands.
You really trust them bozos? Notice the wonderful katrina response? Notice all the wonderful corporate scandals that still go on year after decade after generation? I am old enough to have listened to them "live" saying "they will clean up washington!" and "clean up corporate scandals that rip people off!" and assorted BS for going on near half a century now, I think that is more than enough time to keep falling for that "trust them" part. My immediate relatives, the previous generation, my folks and grandparents, lost BIGTIME in the last great depression when the government and big business ripped them off by getting them to believe their long term lies. They pull something like this every other generation or two, I call it the big lie and big con, and you'll see it happen again. Yes you will and probably soon, too. Want an example of how this works, when you can see it start to unravel? Right now delta is trying to weasel o
Maybe that technique was useful to quickly kill off insect infestations, but keep the grains still viable.
by clean power that is exactly what I meant, well regulated power, good for the electronics.
no law says data centers have to be placed in the middle of expensive high rise towers in large cities, in fact, some of the larger ones being built right now are going out in the sticks in dedicated buildings, the new googleplex, etc. It's nuts to cry poverty when you insist on the highest rent. If your center is large enough, you can get the lines to it.
Again, not sure what you are saying, that alternatve energy doesn't work or it doesn't scale up? Are you calling over 2 megawatt apiece wind turbines non-large scale? You need more than that? One megawatt towers are common now and the larger ones are going in, and they frequently go in as "farms" with dozens of the towers in one place, some of them able to handle all the electrical needs of entire decent sized cities. I would call that large scale, guess you won't or don't..to each their own. Here's one just lately, in LA, a new wind project will be furnishing one fifth the total power needs there..but I guess that isn't significant, huh? As to "enough real estate", well, you slap them in right outside the big cities, they are doing it all over.
http://www.gepower.com/about/press/en/2006_press/0 60506b.htm
And like I said, solar is going in all over as well, and is neat because so many people can take advantage of it and it scales like crazy. It's happening, whether you like it or not, seems *millions and millions* of people are going to it all over the planet, most all the dealers are backlogged with orders and installs. And some of the larger investors in alternative energy are now nations that are dependent on foreign source of energy and see the alternatives as long range cost effective, so they are directly investing with public money and/or offering subsidies to private corporations to help speed up adoption. Examples there are Japan, China, Germany, India..but what do they know, eh? Even stodgy old oil soaked usa is doing it....
As to solar not being cost effective, or quoting some "payback" period,which is a huge variable, here's a challenge I have yet to have any internet alternative energy debunker "expert" meet, so here's *your* chance: write back when you can point to your personal grid electric supplier for your house (I need a URL to look at it where they offer this) that you use or could use in your area, that will give you a ten or twenty year guaranteed priceing contract, so much a kilowatt hour carved in stone. There's your challenge. Non corporate, joe homeowner normal "electric bill". With the alternatives you can purchase and own, with a ten to thirty year warranty, this is a verifiable figure you can get a firm price on *today*.
When you can provide that, you have a point and can start throwing around figures for comparison, without it, it is pure guesswork with no data to back it up on what a so-called "payback" period is. You can *guess* based on your current rates, that's about it. something weird could happen tomorrow to the energy markets, poo, vast price rises. I've seen it happen, particularly during OPEC embargo. Or perhaps another california enron price manipulation scam..you never know. If the stuff you own is installed at home..well there ya go, it's there. It's not perfect-nothing is, but it gets closer to this ownership deal which most folks think is a good idea, like payoff the house, payoff the car, payoff the furniture, etc, not "rent" forever. Myself being a geek and always wanting power, I long ago aquired and paid of a modest solar rig, and it's still running fine. It doesn't do all my power-yet-but eventually it will and in the meantime even if the grid goes kerflooey for some reason I have an immediate "good enough" amount of power to run some critical things around the old abode here. I got less into it then a lot of people have in their big screen TVs and home "entertainmnet" c
..many people now maintain their own long term "sealed in a can" seed storage, myself included. I always keep quite a bit of various garden seed packed away, a lot of them are in number #10 enameled cans just for this exact purpose like in the article.
Google for "heirloom seens, long term storage", you can find companies that sell seeds packed into cans for long shelf life. You can do it yourself too, it's not that hard to make sealed containers with like CO2 flooded in there, etc. It's a common technique in the survival/preparedness communities.
Really, no offense but you are woefully ignorant of the status of "alternative energy". It works, going in all over, at 10 watt to the multi mega watt levels. Wind power is not almost equal to the cost of coal generated electricity. solar is still higher, but if all you have is a hut sitting out in the hot sun...you think it's cheaper to put in conventional? really? Isn't that part of the article I linked, conventional costs *more* in a lot of cases?
The last place we lived as caretakers was fully solar PV powered, the main owners house at 7,000 square feet and our rig. They ran full upscale upper middle class fully electric everything from it, and total cost including labor for install was around what a reasonable car costs today, which compared to the cost of the house was a few percent. The cost could have been dropped a lot with homeowner sweat equity in the install, and that is US full "what the market will bear" cost on hardware and labor.
There are wind generators out there now putting out more than two megawatts, and home owner sized wind rigs are in the multi kilowatt range now and solar you can get any size you want. I know I lacked for nothing, full desktop computers, etc, refrigerator,freezer,run the washing machine, etc, all normal stuff. When the entire rest of the local area went down for a *week* from an ice storm we missed absolutely nothing, zero, didn't even know the grid power was down until I saw the local street lights in the distance wern't on. I mean..can't beat it with two sticks. it's clean power, too, better than grid supplied.
While you are doubting, others are doing, run some google searches and get up to speed on the subject. There are new factories going in all over the planet to expand production of solar PV (because it is selling like crazy because it "just works") and every doubling of manufacturing output is dropping the price 20% (economy of scale). There are new concentrator PV panels coming to market soon and a plethora of new battery tech.
And as to "UPS", well dang vern that is a primary part of alternate energy rigs, having your own battery bank and smart chargers and inverters, all that is a big UPS system that is modular and has some solar PV or wind charger hooked to it.
In a lot of the developing world, they are skipping conventional and expensive and now old-fashioned ast century tech infrastructure roll-out and going to the next generation tech, decentralised (and alternative energy, solar, etc) electric power and wireless networks instead of fixed wires. Here is an article on what India is doing to bring electricity to the 1/2 billion people that don't have it yet.
http://www.dawn.com/2006/06/14/int6.htm
And just because apple puled out doesn't mean any number of other tech giants aren't going in. Intel, IBM, MS, HP etc, etc are all dropping serious folding cash into India right now. Apple is one of the few that *aren't*. Apple has pulled some lame biz decisions in the past, this is probably one of them, IMO.