When are they going to realise complexity is like the cancer they've got. It's not a small thing, something to be tided up, it is THE thing they're suffering with.
Windows is like a house of cards made from million decks, so many co-dependancies. It's why Vista has taken so long and will continue to cause problems.
The only thing to do is 'rip it up and start again' but they can't do that because of 1) time 2) losing customers by the millions along the way, so they carry on regardless and hope for the best.
Apple was in the same situation with Copland and it almost killed them too. Eventually they bit the bullet, trashed it (re-used some sections and ideas), provided the carbon bridge for transition/migration, and bought in proven code (BSD/Mach) and just worked on the GUI experience. This rescued them with literally months to spare before the big bad complexity monster ate them up. Genius, IMO.
Surely, at this late stage, they're can be no doubt that *nix won the OS wars?
Is there a solar panel that can produce anything like 5kWh/m2/day?
I don't dispute your figures but harnessing all those joules is a different matter entirely AFAIK. If it weren't we'd being doing it already?
I read somewhere that no solar cell has ever produced more energy than was put into making it in the first place (think of mining and processing raw materials, then manufacture and delivery with finite life span). I may be wrong but I've seen that idea a few times, maybe you know more? Maybe the tech needs to improve but it will all take time. It's a question of EROEI
From reading a bit I see solar EROEIs run from about 1 to 10 for certain designs. So that is a net energy gain. Or emergy as it seems to be called. However keeping the dust of these things in the outback or desert may require enormous water use that would have to be factored in too.
I'm not an expert on these things but the more you read the harder it seems to become. The laws of thermodynamics work against us all the time.
In other words, I'm not entirely sure that wind power is going to solve our energy crisis.
Yup, this is exactly the problem that we all face. Under the most optimistic light it seems renewable or alternative energy could provide humanity with around 20-25% of the total energy requirement. The rest has to come from nuclear or fossil fuels. Both of these will ultimately decline (oil peaking around now, gas peaking 2008-2012, uranium peaking within a few decades) and we're going to be up the creek without the proverbial.
In terms of nuclear fuel and waste, I strongly question whether it is morally right to leave waste products with a half-life of 250,000 years just because we want to play a game when we're bored. I think it's kind of weird your late night Halo session leaves a legacy that lasts for geological periods of time. Is that really worth it? I know what future generations will say.
I like living in a capitalist society but capitalism only works when the customer-base exhibits self-control and intelligence before handing money over for any goods or service - unfortunately, 95% of the populace are brainless cattle...
The same thing also applies to democracy (if you still believe America actually has democracy) - when the majority of the voters believe and support lies because they are (deliberately) misinformed its not an effective way to manage a country.
It won't go up anymore (certainly when measured against inflation).
They are victims of complexity and are powerless to prevent a decline from todays position. Just look at the chart since 2000 - it's fading away. Vista won't save it, XBox won't save it, Ballmer won't save it, NET won't save it.
Things change and the golden age of MS is in the past.
Bill's 977,924,402 shares represents 9.13% of Microsoft.
I think if they all went to market the same day and everyone knew they were Bill's, you'd see tanking. Typical daily volumes are around 1-2m shares. Putting a billion shares through the market would take weeks and cause a freefall in price.
They are certainly declining. The (effective) departure of its figurehead will not be seen as good news by the markets either regardless of what it may or may not mean.
I think this about him too. He's not stupid - he knows Windows isn't that good and that his wealth is largely undeserved. It's a recipe for guilt.
I'm glad he does the charity stuff though and hope he manages to give most of his money away.
One thing people don't really appreciate is that Gates' wealth is (to a certain extent) unavailable to him. If he pulled that much money out of MSFT the share price would tank and he would lose big-time.
In England it was 50p a go. The other games used to cost 10p so it was 5x more expensive.
The economics that went through our heads was this: want do we want - 50p for 30 minutes (reasonably skilled arcade players) or 50p for 20 seconds of animation?
This came to my local arcade and I was convinced it was the future of gaming. And then I played it. The scenes took a while to load and the user interaction part wasn't always obvious. You got virtually nothing for your money and everyone hated it for that. We all went back to Mr Do, Asteroids, and Astro Blaster very quickly and then they took it away. Hadn't thought about it since then. Don't see how a HD version is going to improve the clunky gameplay.
The cost of putting something like that on the moon would be extraordinary. How much weight, how many journeys? How would it be assembled - there's manyears of work there? It would have too be fairly big to produce a sustainable crop of food or produce oxygen. There's a long list of things like radiation, low gravity, temp extremes that make small things very difficult and expensive to solve. And it's going to have to be paid for by taxation. Politically near enough impossible I would think. The He3 story could make it a commercial venture but I'm not sure a large firm would spend billions to get small risky energy returns. The first steps would be seen as commercial suicide due to the expense.
well, guess what, I sold and took profits and am waiting on the sidelines waiting to jump back in. PMs (or any stock don't go straight up y'know). I still believe in $1000 gold for the end of the year. I'm guessing we'll find support at $525-550, only time will tell. The fundamentals haven't changed any and it should be understood that the gold market can be terribly manipulated by the dumping of paper contracts. This I suspect has been happening today. The traders make money which ever way - short or long. The USD index is up quite a bit (meaning that the dollar has found strength from somewhere) but I feel it can't be sustained. When the USD and oilprice move (downward and upward respectively) we'll see the PoG pick up again. It's a buying opportunity when we hit the bottom of the move.
I liked your comment but/. is an impossible audience for that kind of thinking. You're mainly talking to American technologists who believe that a techno-fix exists for all problems. They will be the last people in the world to see that this isn't true and will always dump on the messenger for it.
Personally I was brought up on sci-fi stories and used to think that we would colonise the stars someday. I no longer think this is possible. Even a moonbase I regard as highly unlikely and the idea of living on Mars for me belongs to 1950's style sci-fi. To me, sadly, the future of mankind looks more like NOLA post-Katrina than Star Trek. But every culture and civilisation has it's fantasies and dreams and these are ours.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess would be another 3 iterations of 'Doze wouldn't even be possible. It would grind to a halt before that.
now that's a shell!
You'd have to be high calibre to fix Microsoft. 0.45 should do it.
When are they going to realise complexity is like the cancer they've got. It's not a small thing, something to be tided up, it is THE thing they're suffering with.
Windows is like a house of cards made from million decks, so many co-dependancies. It's why Vista has taken so long and will continue to cause problems.
The only thing to do is 'rip it up and start again' but they can't do that because of 1) time 2) losing customers by the millions along the way, so they carry on regardless and hope for the best.
Apple was in the same situation with Copland and it almost killed them too. Eventually they bit the bullet, trashed it (re-used some sections and ideas), provided the carbon bridge for transition/migration, and bought in proven code (BSD/Mach) and just worked on the GUI experience. This rescued them with literally months to spare before the big bad complexity monster ate them up. Genius, IMO.
Surely, at this late stage, they're can be no doubt that *nix won the OS wars?
widdle games
:-)
Perv!
Is there a solar panel that can produce anything like 5kWh/m2/day?
I don't dispute your figures but harnessing all those joules is a different matter entirely AFAIK. If it weren't we'd being doing it already?
I read somewhere that no solar cell has ever produced more energy than was put into making it in the first place (think of mining and processing raw materials, then manufacture and delivery with finite life span). I may be wrong but I've seen that idea a few times, maybe you know more? Maybe the tech needs to improve but it will all take time. It's a question of EROEI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI
From reading a bit I see solar EROEIs run from about 1 to 10 for certain designs. So that is a net energy gain. Or emergy as it seems to be called. However keeping the dust of these things in the outback or desert may require enormous water use that would have to be factored in too.
I'm not an expert on these things but the more you read the harder it seems to become. The laws of thermodynamics work against us all the time.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/stor y/0,,1791356,00.html
This article doesn't mention the 500 years limit - although I'm not sure how reprocessing really works (I'm no expert). Also note the thorium problem.
If it's got a 250,000 year half life, then who cares? It's barely radioactive.
I suppose that's true but would you really want to be near it? Many tonnes are still going to make for a good amount of radiation.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/stor y/0,,1791356,00.html
Oh. It's worse than I thought. Read that and comment.
Yup, this is exactly the problem that we all face. Under the most optimistic light it seems renewable or alternative energy could provide humanity with around 20-25% of the total energy requirement. The rest has to come from nuclear or fossil fuels. Both of these will ultimately decline (oil peaking around now, gas peaking 2008-2012, uranium peaking within a few decades) and we're going to be up the creek without the proverbial.
In terms of nuclear fuel and waste, I strongly question whether it is morally right to leave waste products with a half-life of 250,000 years just because we want to play a game when we're bored. I think it's kind of weird your late night Halo session leaves a legacy that lasts for geological periods of time. Is that really worth it? I know what future generations will say.
The same thing also applies to democracy (if you still believe America actually has democracy) - when the majority of the voters believe and support lies because they are (deliberately) misinformed its not an effective way to manage a country.
sell that stock.
It won't go up anymore (certainly when measured against inflation).
They are victims of complexity and are powerless to prevent a decline from todays position. Just look at the chart since 2000 - it's fading away. Vista won't save it, XBox won't save it, Ballmer won't save it, NET won't save it.
Things change and the golden age of MS is in the past.
that's 3m or three months average, not daily.
Quick google reveals:
Bill's 977,924,402 shares represents 9.13% of Microsoft.
I think if they all went to market the same day and everyone knew they were Bill's, you'd see tanking. Typical daily volumes are around 1-2m shares. Putting a billion shares through the market would take weeks and cause a freefall in price.
MS may not be irrelevant but look at their market price
= l&q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=my&l=off&z
They are certainly declining. The (effective) departure of its figurehead will not be seen as good news by the markets either regardless of what it may or may not mean.
I think this about him too. He's not stupid - he knows Windows isn't that good and that his wealth is largely undeserved. It's a recipe for guilt.
I'm glad he does the charity stuff though and hope he manages to give most of his money away.
One thing people don't really appreciate is that Gates' wealth is (to a certain extent) unavailable to him. If he pulled that much money out of MSFT the share price would tank and he would lose big-time.
Web-disadvantaged groups
Like AOL browser running on Windows ME? I'm trying to think of worse . . .
In England it was 50p a go. The other games used to cost 10p so it was 5x more expensive.
The economics that went through our heads was this: want do we want - 50p for 30 minutes (reasonably skilled arcade players) or 50p for 20 seconds of animation?
Hey! Don't give away the secrets - it took me £30 to get that good!
those aren't real classics - they're all 2nd generation classics. The real classics:
..
Space Invaders, Galaxians, AstroBlaster, Defender, PacMan, Space Panic, Mr Do, Phoenix, Moon Cresta . . .
All from about 78-81.
Try telling that to the kids of today!
This came to my local arcade and I was convinced it was the future of gaming. And then I played it. The scenes took a while to load and the user interaction part wasn't always obvious. You got virtually nothing for your money and everyone hated it for that. We all went back to Mr Do, Asteroids, and Astro Blaster very quickly and then they took it away. Hadn't thought about it since then. Don't see how a HD version is going to improve the clunky gameplay.
What was it that Martin Luther King said? Something like "We have smart bombs but dumb leaders".
I think this could apply here.
Closed biosystems to sustain human life have not succeeded so far. Biosphere 2 began to run low on oxygen and so wasn't really self-sustaining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
The cost of putting something like that on the moon would be extraordinary. How much weight, how many journeys? How would it be assembled - there's manyears of work there? It would have too be fairly big to produce a sustainable crop of food or produce oxygen. There's a long list of things like radiation, low gravity, temp extremes that make small things very difficult and expensive to solve. And it's going to have to be paid for by taxation. Politically near enough impossible I would think. The He3 story could make it a commercial venture but I'm not sure a large firm would spend billions to get small risky energy returns. The first steps would be seen as commercial suicide due to the expense.
Awwww, possibly ;-)
I call it 'realism' though.
well, guess what, I sold and took profits and am waiting on the sidelines waiting to jump back in. PMs (or any stock don't go straight up y'know). I still believe in $1000 gold for the end of the year. I'm guessing we'll find support at $525-550, only time will tell. The fundamentals haven't changed any and it should be understood that the gold market can be terribly manipulated by the dumping of paper contracts. This I suspect has been happening today. The traders make money which ever way - short or long. The USD index is up quite a bit (meaning that the dollar has found strength from somewhere) but I feel it can't be sustained. When the USD and oilprice move (downward and upward respectively) we'll see the PoG pick up again. It's a buying opportunity when we hit the bottom of the move.
We'll see, but I still made some money.
I liked your comment but /. is an impossible audience for that kind of thinking. You're mainly talking to American technologists who believe that a techno-fix exists for all problems. They will be the last people in the world to see that this isn't true and will always dump on the messenger for it.
Personally I was brought up on sci-fi stories and used to think that we would colonise the stars someday. I no longer think this is possible. Even a moonbase I regard as highly unlikely and the idea of living on Mars for me belongs to 1950's style sci-fi. To me, sadly, the future of mankind looks more like NOLA post-Katrina than Star Trek. But every culture and civilisation has it's fantasies and dreams and these are ours.