"But there already is a huge difference in the number of miles per year that Americans drive, vs. Europeans. Typically, Americans drive about 12,000 miles per year. Europeans drive about 12,000 KILOMETERS per year."
Of course you're right. But as far as I'm concerned, yes, that really is because the average commute in Europe in a lot shorter than it is in the USA. America is a lot bigger and a lot more spread out than the average European country. For instance, there are plenty of cities in Europe that border on other cities; I had never seen that before I came to Europe.
As for the Sunday drives, they do that over here too -- despite the high gas taxes. If a person has a (nice) car, the high fuel prices still aren't high enough to stop people having their fun. Sunday traffic jams in the Netherlands are becoming normal (sigh).
BTW, since the average American commute is longer than in Europe, IMO this also means that raising US gasoline taxes to the level that they are in the Netherlands (or higher) would harm the US economy a lot more than it does the Dutch economy. But, don't get me wrong: AFAIC, raising fossil fuel taxes is ultimately the answer... just as long as it's done as part of a plan that includes an alternative (like bio-fuel).
"I am a proponent of HUGE tax increases on gasoline. Push it up to the $6 level."
Too simple. As I see it, suddenly raising gasoline tax like that would be kind of a 'stick' approach -- a 'big stick' approach. Wouldn't it be smarter to use a smaller stick in combination with a carrot?
For instance, if a government were to start by raising taxes on fossil fuels while giving big tax incentives for bio-fuels, then they could get the ball rolling without harming the economy. They could also throw in big tax incentives for people who buy cars and trucks that use bio-fuel instead of fossil fuel. Then, as things would begin to shift over the years, they could continue to raise the taxes on fossil fuels ever higher, while eventually eliminating the old tax incentives for bio-fuels.
As an example, I live in the Netherlands and over here the tax on gasoline is already a whopping 75%. If you're lucky you might have to pay only EUR 1.25 per liter for normal unleaded, which, at the current exchange rate, equates to $ 5.53 a gallon. Do these prices make a difference on how much people drive around here? No. Okay, why not? Simply because they aren't being given any alternatives. (Does this sound like the Dutch government has a plan? I don't think so).
Whoever wrote this was obviously hallucinating. As long as Microsoft continues to make applications for Windows only, the OS will matter. It's called a monopoly: it's the key to Microsoft's success and they'll do almost anything to keep it that way.
"A problem encountered during final preparations of the Ariane 5 ECA launcher has resulted in a postponement of the dual-satellite mission scheduled for this evening.
A new date will be announced in the next few hours."
I've worked in places where all the administrator's desks are out in the open and there's almost no security, and I've worked in places where they all have offices that are locked with key cards.
I have to say that in the first case everybody's desk is usually nice and tidy at the end of the day (no expensive hard-/software lying around), while in the second case there's often a tendency to leave the place a mess: "Hell, the door's locked anyway, right?" Maybe, but this isn't good either. For instance, it's a lot easier to loose things this way.
Besides, the most important thing is that your data is kept on the servers and that they do get their own office that can be locked: the server room. It's also better to have official places to store expensive hard-/software -- not just to leave it in people's offices. And, you can always lock your desk.
Having said all that, I'd still hate to loose my own office. It's so much easier to have a private conversation with the manager from another department if all you have to do is close the door behind you. But, if they want to take that away from you, well... then when they come to you, they won't have any privacy either.
"Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power, which is beginning to mature...."
And the faster the price of oil goes up, the sooner those alternative energy sources will mature. Seriously, they've been plenty mature for quite a while now, even though the technology is always being improved. However, on price alone (and not counting the cost of the environmental consequences), they're always going to be more expensive than cheap oil. That's always been the problem with alternative energy sources in our market-driven economy...
(Unless, of course, somebody can come up with something really radical, like a cheap, 99% efficient solar cell based on a very high-temperature superconductor or something. Hell, even 50% would be great!).
It's good for open source, it's good for Novell and it's good for the New Zealand government. After all, open source software may not come with any licensing fees, but somebody still has to install it, make sure it all works as expected and maintain it for you afterwards. Also, a lot of people had their doubts as to whether Novell's new open source business plan was going to work. Hell, I used to be a CNE and just a short while ago I thought M$ had pretty much succeeded in making the company irrelevant. Now it looks like I may have been wrong about that. You think maybe it'd be smart to start studying for some of their exams again? Just to add some color to your CV, of course.;-)
Sounds like a nice idea, but for some reason I just can't feel any enthusiasm for anything Microsoft does these days; only irritation and anger. In this case, there are bound to be strings attached that will make this new book-searching service of theirs pretty much useless to non-Windows users. Everything always has to tie into their monopoly product. That's their core business strategy and that's the way it'll remain until something (Linux?) or someone (Google?) succeeds in making Windows irrelevant.
Back in the 50s and 60s, rockets were a relatively new and unproven technology, but since nobody had any better ideas on how to put a man on the moon back then, NASA accepted the risk. It was cutting edge technology, but NASA were pioneers, so of course that's what they were doing.
Now they want to go back, but I wouldn't call rockets cutting edge technology anymore: the space elevator is. Yes, the space elevator requires a crucial component that we're not able to manufacture yet, but we're very close and if this project were given the same budget and time frame for completion as the current moon project, we'd have something we could build on after the project is over: not just another entry in the history books.
IMO, the main reason M$ introduced the registry was to make it harder for people to copy Windows programs that were already installed from one Windows PC to the next. In this they succeeded, but they also created a monster in the process. Of course there were better solutions to this problem, but remember that when they decided to go with the registry, viruses and worms, etc. were not nearly as much a problem as they are today. Also, this was back in the days when Bill Gates still thought that the Internet was never going to amount to a hill of beans.
Well doesn't this just make you happy you're a nerd instead of one of these idiots:
... A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes...
A lot of these folks may be more successful that we are, but in the end nearly all of them have to deal with computers at least some of the time and then they're completely helpless. Ha! >:->
"There is no doubt that whatever Microsoft will be offering vis-à-vis MSN, and how MSN goes forward, it is going to be strongly integrated back into the whole Windows platform,"
If that's true it's fine with me, because it'll never work. Windows Vista has huge hardware requirements and most people just won't want to upgrade regardless. Just look at how many people today haven't yet upgraded to Windows XP and it's been around since 2001. If all those MSN Web-apps are only going to be available to Vista users, everybody else will simply stay with Google. Finally, M$ will loose it's stranglehold on the market.
However, if things really do pan out this way, where will this leave the open source community? If Google becomes the next Microsoft, it'll be due in part to the massive mountain of hardware that their services are built upon. How can the open source community offer an alternative to that?
Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
Yeah, right. Tool$ to allow people to organize the world's information the Micro$oft way. According to you guys, any business involving computers that has the potential to generate more than a billion dollars without requiring Windows is a wrong that urgently needs to be set right.
Which means I'll be old and gray before I ever wear a pair of glasses with this stuff or own a car that has a windshield with it -- even if it's a potentially cheap solution.
My memories of Windows 95 are hardly fond. My worst one involves getting Windows 95 OS/R2 installed and configured on some VP's IBM ThinkPad 600. Not even IBM could get it to work properly! Eventually, I got it to work, but only after having spent over a month, including two all-nighters at the office, installing the damned thing over and over and over again. There were so many devices crammed into that laptop, each one wanting its own interrupt, that Windows 95 could hardly handle it.
Eventually, I got it to work, although I'm not sure how, so I made an image backup just in case. The VP received his laptop, but then complained bitterly that it would crash on him every few hours. Yeah, well duh: it's Windows! What did he expect? Join the club. Ungrateful bastard.
To top it all off, some other VP, having heard of my success with the ThinkPad 600, came by later to have me fix his. Great. Well, at least I had that image backup, right? Wrong. It didn't work, even though his laptop was exactly the same model and revision number. I still have no explanation for this. I'd start it up after copying the image to it and it would have exactly the same device and registry problems that I had before getting it right. This kind of thing was never a problem on the Compaq and Toshiba laptops -- just on the IBM ThinkPad 600. I swore never to use an IBM ThinkPad again.
Fast forward to the present. Guess what kind of a laptop I have now? An IBM ThinkPad A21m. And I'm actually happy with it. So, what changed my mind? Simple:
Indeed. For decades, spending on public education in the States has been far below what it is in Europe. For as long as I can remember, the only people who can afford a good education in the States are people with money... lots of it. Sure, there are plenty of people with an education in the States and no all of them are rich. But, the problem is, on average, there just aren't not enough of them. It's almost as if the Republicans planned it this way all along. By making a proper education unattainable for most, you get a rich, educated elite on one side, and a poor, uneducated mass on the other, who, coincidentally, are easily manipulated with things like televangalism, advertising and election propaganda. It just takes a little extra money in the right places.
Am I wrong? Maybe. But then, explain to me how George Bush got elected... TWICE!! It took a lot of ignorant people to make that happen -- a lot of people who have never been taught how to think for themselves (except, perhaps, when it comes to their money).
Sorry, I was referring to the space elevator (stupid of me not to have mentioned that). You are correct in that the edge of space is considered to be at 100 km altitude, but the space elevator has to go a lot higher up than that: all the way up to geosynchronous orbit (35,785 km) and beyond. They figure it's got to be about 100,000 km long (with counterweights at the end), or else the Earth's rotational speed will not generate enough centrifugal force in the structure (a tether in the shape of a ribbon) to keep it from falling back to Earth. This is especially important if you want to use it for hauling heavy loads of freight up from the Earth.
... With this method they can produce nanotube sheets at up to seven meters per minute,...
Assuming the product eventually exceeds 100 GPa, at this rate it would take over 27 years to produce a 100,000 km ribbon in one piece. Since that timescale would be impractical, I figure they should aim for at least a meter per second, which would allow them to do it in a little over three years instead. On the other hand, they could also, for example, set up 30 production lines to work at the current speed, run them all for about a year and then glue the segments together using the extra length for overlap. However, that would add extra volume and make it heavier (remember that the first ribbon has to go up on a rocket).
Cattle ranchers in the western United States were already not very happy with the re-introduction of wolves to certain areas, so I don't think they'll be giving this idea a very warm welcome. And what about elephants? They eat a lot and they're so big that they pretty much go where they want. The farmers will be worried about that.
Forthermore, nobody really knows why the North American megafauna disappeared. Scientists used to think that the woolly mammoth went extinct because of human encroachment, but later studies indicated that it probably had more to do with climate change. Could that also be the case for their North American counterparts? There weren't many people around back then and eradicating all lions and elephants from the continent would seem like a pretty tall order.
Slashdot Mirror
"But there already is a huge difference in the number of miles per year that Americans drive, vs. Europeans. Typically, Americans drive about 12,000 miles per year. Europeans drive about 12,000 KILOMETERS per year."
Of course you're right. But as far as I'm concerned, yes, that really is because the average commute in Europe in a lot shorter than it is in the USA. America is a lot bigger and a lot more spread out than the average European country. For instance, there are plenty of cities in Europe that border on other cities; I had never seen that before I came to Europe.
As for the Sunday drives, they do that over here too -- despite the high gas taxes. If a person has a (nice) car, the high fuel prices still aren't high enough to stop people having their fun. Sunday traffic jams in the Netherlands are becoming normal (sigh).
BTW, since the average American commute is longer than in Europe, IMO this also means that raising US gasoline taxes to the level that they are in the Netherlands (or higher) would harm the US economy a lot more than it does the Dutch economy. But, don't get me wrong: AFAIC, raising fossil fuel taxes is ultimately the answer... just as long as it's done as part of a plan that includes an alternative (like bio-fuel).
"I am a proponent of HUGE tax increases on gasoline. Push it up to the $6 level."
Too simple. As I see it, suddenly raising gasoline tax like that would be kind of a 'stick' approach -- a 'big stick' approach. Wouldn't it be smarter to use a smaller stick in combination with a carrot?
For instance, if a government were to start by raising taxes on fossil fuels while giving big tax incentives for bio-fuels, then they could get the ball rolling without harming the economy. They could also throw in big tax incentives for people who buy cars and trucks that use bio-fuel instead of fossil fuel. Then, as things would begin to shift over the years, they could continue to raise the taxes on fossil fuels ever higher, while eventually eliminating the old tax incentives for bio-fuels.
As an example, I live in the Netherlands and over here the tax on gasoline is already a whopping 75%. If you're lucky you might have to pay only EUR 1.25 per liter for normal unleaded, which, at the current exchange rate, equates to $ 5.53 a gallon. Do these prices make a difference on how much people drive around here? No. Okay, why not? Simply because they aren't being given any alternatives. (Does this sound like the Dutch government has a plan? I don't think so).
Nothing to see, nothing to remove.
Move along now...
Whoever wrote this was obviously hallucinating. As long as Microsoft continues to make applications for Windows only, the OS will matter. It's called a monopoly: it's the key to Microsoft's success and they'll do almost anything to keep it that way.
... I have work to do. As things stand, I already have enough distractions to deal with.
This just in from the Arianespace website:
"A problem encountered during final preparations of the Ariane 5 ECA launcher has resulted in a postponement of the dual-satellite mission scheduled for this evening.
A new date will be announced in the next few hours."
a slim and stylish nicotine inhaler.
Okay, this wouldn't really be smoking, but at least it wouldn't bother me as much.
I've worked in places where all the administrator's desks are out in the open and there's almost no security, and I've worked in places where they all have offices that are locked with key cards.
I have to say that in the first case everybody's desk is usually nice and tidy at the end of the day (no expensive hard-/software lying around), while in the second case there's often a tendency to leave the place a mess: "Hell, the door's locked anyway, right?" Maybe, but this isn't good either. For instance, it's a lot easier to loose things this way.
Besides, the most important thing is that your data is kept on the servers and that they do get their own office that can be locked: the server room. It's also better to have official places to store expensive hard-/software -- not just to leave it in people's offices. And, you can always lock your desk.
Having said all that, I'd still hate to loose my own office. It's so much easier to have a private conversation with the manager from another department if all you have to do is close the door behind you. But, if they want to take that away from you, well... then when they come to you, they won't have any privacy either.
Microsoft does it again. Revolutionary technology from our friends in Redmond!
"Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power, which is beginning to mature. ..."
And the faster the price of oil goes up, the sooner those alternative energy sources will mature. Seriously, they've been plenty mature for quite a while now, even though the technology is always being improved. However, on price alone (and not counting the cost of the environmental consequences), they're always going to be more expensive than cheap oil. That's always been the problem with alternative energy sources in our market-driven economy...
(Unless, of course, somebody can come up with something really radical, like a cheap, 99% efficient solar cell based on a very high-temperature superconductor or something. Hell, even 50% would be great!).
It's good for open source, it's good for Novell and it's good for the New Zealand government. After all, open source software may not come with any licensing fees, but somebody still has to install it, make sure it all works as expected and maintain it for you afterwards. Also, a lot of people had their doubts as to whether Novell's new open source business plan was going to work. Hell, I used to be a CNE and just a short while ago I thought M$ had pretty much succeeded in making the company irrelevant. Now it looks like I may have been wrong about that. You think maybe it'd be smart to start studying for some of their exams again? Just to add some color to your CV, of course. ;-)
Sounds like a nice idea, but for some reason I just can't feel any enthusiasm for anything Microsoft does these days; only irritation and anger. In this case, there are bound to be strings attached that will make this new book-searching service of theirs pretty much useless to non-Windows users. Everything always has to tie into their monopoly product. That's their core business strategy and that's the way it'll remain until something (Linux?) or someone (Google?) succeeds in making Windows irrelevant.
Back in the 50s and 60s, rockets were a relatively new and unproven technology, but since nobody had any better ideas on how to put a man on the moon back then, NASA accepted the risk. It was cutting edge technology, but NASA were pioneers, so of course that's what they were doing.
Now they want to go back, but I wouldn't call rockets cutting edge technology anymore: the space elevator is. Yes, the space elevator requires a crucial component that we're not able to manufacture yet, but we're very close and if this project were given the same budget and time frame for completion as the current moon project, we'd have something we could build on after the project is over: not just another entry in the history books.
IMO, the main reason M$ introduced the registry was to make it harder for people to copy Windows programs that were already installed from one Windows PC to the next. In this they succeeded, but they also created a monster in the process. Of course there were better solutions to this problem, but remember that when they decided to go with the registry, viruses and worms, etc. were not nearly as much a problem as they are today. Also, this was back in the days when Bill Gates still thought that the Internet was never going to amount to a hill of beans.
Well doesn't this just make you happy you're a nerd instead of one of these idiots:
... A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes ...
A lot of these folks may be more successful that we are, but in the end nearly all of them have to deal with computers at least some of the time and then they're completely helpless. Ha! >:->
"There is no doubt that whatever Microsoft will be offering vis-à-vis MSN, and how MSN goes forward, it is going to be strongly integrated back into the whole Windows platform,"
If that's true it's fine with me, because it'll never work. Windows Vista has huge hardware requirements and most people just won't want to upgrade regardless. Just look at how many people today haven't yet upgraded to Windows XP and it's been around since 2001. If all those MSN Web-apps are only going to be available to Vista users, everybody else will simply stay with Google. Finally, M$ will loose it's stranglehold on the market.
However, if things really do pan out this way, where will this leave the open source community? If Google becomes the next Microsoft, it'll be due in part to the massive mountain of hardware that their services are built upon. How can the open source community offer an alternative to that?
The core product, Windows, became bigger and more complicated, and getting updated versions became harder to get out the door.
That's because their code is all integrated instead of neatly modular. It now resembles a famous Italian dish a lot more than it should...
Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
Yeah, right. Tool$ to allow people to organize the world's information the Micro$oft way. According to you guys, any business involving computers that has the potential to generate more than a billion dollars without requiring Windows is a wrong that urgently needs to be set right.
Don't be ridiculous. It's common knowledge that this CIO guy is getting a free laptop from Microsoft.
... have applied for a patent...
Which means I'll be old and gray before I ever wear a pair of glasses with this stuff or own a car that has a windshield with it -- even if it's a potentially cheap solution.
My memories of Windows 95 are hardly fond. My worst one involves getting Windows 95 OS/R2 installed and configured on some VP's IBM ThinkPad 600. Not even IBM could get it to work properly! Eventually, I got it to work, but only after having spent over a month, including two all-nighters at the office, installing the damned thing over and over and over again. There were so many devices crammed into that laptop, each one wanting its own interrupt, that Windows 95 could hardly handle it.
Eventually, I got it to work, although I'm not sure how, so I made an image backup just in case. The VP received his laptop, but then complained bitterly that it would crash on him every few hours. Yeah, well duh: it's Windows! What did he expect? Join the club. Ungrateful bastard.
To top it all off, some other VP, having heard of my success with the ThinkPad 600, came by later to have me fix his. Great. Well, at least I had that image backup, right? Wrong. It didn't work, even though his laptop was exactly the same model and revision number. I still have no explanation for this. I'd start it up after copying the image to it and it would have exactly the same device and registry problems that I had before getting it right. This kind of thing was never a problem on the Compaq and Toshiba laptops -- just on the IBM ThinkPad 600. I swore never to use an IBM ThinkPad again.
Fast forward to the present. Guess what kind of a laptop I have now? An IBM ThinkPad A21m. And I'm actually happy with it. So, what changed my mind? Simple:
Linux.
"You reap what you sow"
Indeed. For decades, spending on public education in the States has been far below what it is in Europe. For as long as I can remember, the only people who can afford a good education in the States are people with money... lots of it. Sure, there are plenty of people with an education in the States and no all of them are rich. But, the problem is, on average, there just aren't not enough of them. It's almost as if the Republicans planned it this way all along. By making a proper education unattainable for most, you get a rich, educated elite on one side, and a poor, uneducated mass on the other, who, coincidentally, are easily manipulated with things like televangalism, advertising and election propaganda. It just takes a little extra money in the right places.
Am I wrong? Maybe. But then, explain to me how George Bush got elected... TWICE!! It took a lot of ignorant people to make that happen -- a lot of people who have never been taught how to think for themselves (except, perhaps, when it comes to their money).
Sorry, I was referring to the space elevator (stupid of me not to have mentioned that). You are correct in that the edge of space is considered to be at 100 km altitude, but the space elevator has to go a lot higher up than that: all the way up to geosynchronous orbit (35,785 km) and beyond. They figure it's got to be about 100,000 km long (with counterweights at the end), or else the Earth's rotational speed will not generate enough centrifugal force in the structure (a tether in the shape of a ribbon) to keep it from falling back to Earth. This is especially important if you want to use it for hauling heavy loads of freight up from the Earth.
From the article:
... With this method they can produce nanotube sheets at up to seven meters per minute, ...
Assuming the product eventually exceeds 100 GPa, at this rate it would take over 27 years to produce a 100,000 km ribbon in one piece. Since that timescale would be impractical, I figure they should aim for at least a meter per second, which would allow them to do it in a little over three years instead. On the other hand, they could also, for example, set up 30 production lines to work at the current speed, run them all for about a year and then glue the segments together using the extra length for overlap. However, that would add extra volume and make it heavier (remember that the first ribbon has to go up on a rocket).
Cattle ranchers in the western United States were already not very happy with the re-introduction of wolves to certain areas, so I don't think they'll be giving this idea a very warm welcome. And what about elephants? They eat a lot and they're so big that they pretty much go where they want. The farmers will be worried about that.
Forthermore, nobody really knows why the North American megafauna disappeared. Scientists used to think that the woolly mammoth went extinct because of human encroachment, but later studies indicated that it probably had more to do with climate change. Could that also be the case for their North American counterparts? There weren't many people around back then and eradicating all lions and elephants from the continent would seem like a pretty tall order.