While the cost of electrics may not be plummeting quickly, the cost of Gas keeps going ever higher as our supplies dwindle.
We were paying nearly $1.50 a liter last year and have been paying about $0.90 a liter this year. In which universe is that 'keeping going ever higher'?
Our Civic cost about half of what a Volt is predicted to cost, and gets 30-45 miles per Canadian gallon. You'd need to drive a heck of a lot of miles, or see massive increases in the price of gas, to make up for the difference in price between the two.
In Europe gas is over 9 bucks a gallon since forever, and nobody is in need of electric cars.
Yeah, gas was around $10 a gallon in the UK when I emigrated... it may well be more now. Of course British electrical generating capacity is about to collapse as they haven't even started to build the large number of plants required to replace those that will be shut down in the next few years, so buying an electric car there would be insane.
I mean if you want something so fast that AMD doesn't even make it, only Intel does, go for it otherwise there's a darn good reason why AMD has been "losing" and isn't out of business yet. Their chips are better speed for the price in most cases!
Haven't AMD's recent profits come from a) ATI and b) Intel?
Their chips are lower priced for the same speed because that's the only way they can sell them. If AMD could make faster CPUs than Intel's, they'd be charging $1000+ as well.
Obviously that's good for us, because you can get a decent AMD system for less than Intel at the same performance level, but their low prices certainly aren't keeping them in business... I'm pretty sure that everyone at AMD wishes they could be selling their chips for twice as much.
My reaction was "Oh, shoot, I was going to go and get Syberia next week." and then "Oh, cool, I can still get Syberia."
Agreed... I just want to see what new stuff they'll have for sale.
That said, I have all my installers on my server and backed up on a second PC, so I didn't have to worry that I'd lost the games I'd paid for. I might have felt differently otherwise!
So in some strange way, the iPad may bring netbooks back. At least temporarily.
The iPad may bring netbooks back? Why, did the iPad steal them? Mine still seems to be on my table, so perhaps the iPad missed it when it broke in.
More seriously, a quick look at Google shows that netbook sales are predicted to only grow by 20% this year after only growing 70% last year, and to only total about five times as many sales as the iPad. So I'm guessing that netbook manufacturers aren't worried yet.
At that point they were just cheap underpowered laptops.
And 'cheap underpowered laptops' are what a lot of us bought them for. Cheap so I don't have to justify buying one and don't have to be too upset if I lose it, small so I can carry it whenever I travel, and low-powered so the battery lasts for much longer than a typical full-size laptop.
Last I looked the local electronics store had about a third of their laptop section devoted to netbooks, so I don't see any sign that they've gone away.
That said, I'm looking forward to the era of cheap, underpowered tablets because there are a bunch of things I could use a cheap, very low power Linux machine for around the house where a netbook is still too expensive and power-hungry.
I can't tell if you are serious or being sardonic.
About which part? Linux has been a perfectly usable desktop OS for a couple of years; I don't even remember the last time I used Windows, because Linux now does pretty much everything I used to use Windows for... even playing most of my favorite Windows games.
Layers are good, but desktop firewalls are the wrong solution. Instead of blocking ports, just don't open them in the first place.
So then, how do I allow a few of the Linux machines on my network to access my server and none of the Windows machines? I either put another firewall box between the server and the network or I put a firewall on the server.
HughesNet (the former DirecWay) uses satellite(s) in a geostationary orbit, over 22,000 miles above the equator. That results in a significant delay (round trip of almost half a second), which makes regular voice conversations impractical.
Uh, I've made many calls via geostationary satellites and while the delay is mildly annoying, it's far from impractical.
Complaining about having to pay to support the poor? Then help them stop being poor!
Most taxes go to pay the salaries of government employees, who are certainly not poor.
Henry Ford knew it - when he was asked why he paid his workers more than the competition, he said "I want them to be able to buy my cars."
No, Ford paid his workers more because he wanted the best employees and he was losing vast amounts of money having to continually train new ones as the experienced employees left for jobs that paid better.
Do you really think that Ferrari pay the guy who bolts the doors on enough to buy a Ferrari?
Maybe whole-plane parachutes? I'd take that before a transparent one any day.
They exist; they're just so heavy and so unlikely to be useful that no-one is willing to take the performance hit for installing such a system on an airliner. If I remember correctly, the proposed system I saw some years ago for a 747 required 14 large parachutes spread around the plane.
Plus you're more likely to scare people off by doing so than gain new passengers; who wants to fly on an airline which is so scared of their planes crashing that they fit parachutes to them?
What I wonder is if you make a conventional CPU out of SiC, you can operate it at a far higher clock because it won't melt itself, thus enabling high performance CPUs or perhaps 3D integration.
--PeterM
I'm not quite sure that I really want my laptop's CPU running at 2500C under load...
This would be bad for everyone except the select few at the top of the industry who are collaborating to profit off of re-selling new devices to everyone.
SELinux and AppArmor are not as great as you think; they are understood well enough that hackers can defeat them, and they are deployed on enough systems that hackers write their exploits so these protections are defeated.
SELinux and Apparmor can't do much if you have an exploit that allows you to execute arbitrary code inside the kernel (which I believe this does). But they'll certainly stop the kind of random buffer overflow exploit that's been the most common avenue of remote attack.
Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Indeed, that's what makes this particularly weird: if they'd said 'we're shutting down, buy all you can this weekend', I'd have picked up about $100 worth of games from my wishlist.
So this doesn't make sense unless either they're just revamping the site and thought it would create a buzz around the Internet, or it's been forced on them suddenly by outside forces (e.g. a sudden change of management policy).
Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular. They probably had trouble making much money since they didn't make a whole lot each sale (at least half, maybe more, of the price goes to the publisher) and there just weren't the numbers.
Except according to another site, they were one of the most profitable components of their parent company. Of course that might be a lie, but they basically had to pay for a server, people to remove DRM from old software, and download bandwidth, so it wouldn't surprise me if true.
One thing I've noticed in recent weeks is a significant slowdown of the site, so either they were getting a lot more customers or switched to a less powerful server to save money... hard to tell which.
As I understand it, Valve claims to have put unlocked installers for all of its own games in escrow to be opened once Valve goes Chapter 7. So if you've backed up your downloaded game, the unlocked installer will install it for you.
At best that would cover Valve's games. While I own most of them, these days the majority of Steam games I own are from other companies who wouldn't do such a thing.
This is called "prejudice". In most circles it's considered a negative thing.
I'm surprised you didn't go all the way and call them a racist.
Back in the real world, perhaps they just don't want to have hundreds of dollars worth of games tied to an online account that Valve can shut down at any time.
Slashdot Mirror
While the cost of electrics may not be plummeting quickly, the cost of Gas keeps going ever higher as our supplies dwindle.
We were paying nearly $1.50 a liter last year and have been paying about $0.90 a liter this year. In which universe is that 'keeping going ever higher'?
Our Civic cost about half of what a Volt is predicted to cost, and gets 30-45 miles per Canadian gallon. You'd need to drive a heck of a lot of miles, or see massive increases in the price of gas, to make up for the difference in price between the two.
In Europe gas is over 9 bucks a gallon since forever, and nobody is in need of electric cars.
Yeah, gas was around $10 a gallon in the UK when I emigrated... it may well be more now. Of course British electrical generating capacity is about to collapse as they haven't even started to build the large number of plants required to replace those that will be shut down in the next few years, so buying an electric car there would be insane.
I mean if you want something so fast that AMD doesn't even make it, only Intel does, go for it otherwise there's a darn good reason why AMD has been "losing" and isn't out of business yet. Their chips are better speed for the price in most cases!
Haven't AMD's recent profits come from a) ATI and b) Intel?
Their chips are lower priced for the same speed because that's the only way they can sell them. If AMD could make faster CPUs than Intel's, they'd be charging $1000+ as well.
Obviously that's good for us, because you can get a decent AMD system for less than Intel at the same performance level, but their low prices certainly aren't keeping them in business... I'm pretty sure that everyone at AMD wishes they could be selling their chips for twice as much.
My reaction was "Oh, shoot, I was going to go and get Syberia next week." and then "Oh, cool, I can still get Syberia."
Agreed... I just want to see what new stuff they'll have for sale.
That said, I have all my installers on my server and backed up on a second PC, so I didn't have to worry that I'd lost the games I'd paid for. I might have felt differently otherwise!
So in some strange way, the iPad may bring netbooks back. At least temporarily.
The iPad may bring netbooks back? Why, did the iPad steal them? Mine still seems to be on my table, so perhaps the iPad missed it when it broke in.
More seriously, a quick look at Google shows that netbook sales are predicted to only grow by 20% this year after only growing 70% last year, and to only total about five times as many sales as the iPad. So I'm guessing that netbook manufacturers aren't worried yet.
At that point they were just cheap underpowered laptops.
And 'cheap underpowered laptops' are what a lot of us bought them for. Cheap so I don't have to justify buying one and don't have to be too upset if I lose it, small so I can carry it whenever I travel, and low-powered so the battery lasts for much longer than a typical full-size laptop.
Last I looked the local electronics store had about a third of their laptop section devoted to netbooks, so I don't see any sign that they've gone away.
That said, I'm looking forward to the era of cheap, underpowered tablets because there are a bunch of things I could use a cheap, very low power Linux machine for around the house where a netbook is still too expensive and power-hungry.
I can't tell if you are serious or being sardonic.
About which part? Linux has been a perfectly usable desktop OS for a couple of years; I don't even remember the last time I used Windows, because Linux now does pretty much everything I used to use Windows for... even playing most of my favorite Windows games.
Layers are good, but desktop firewalls are the wrong solution. Instead of blocking ports, just don't open them in the first place.
So then, how do I allow a few of the Linux machines on my network to access my server and none of the Windows machines? I either put another firewall box between the server and the network or I put a firewall on the server.
And then the virus disables the desktop firewall so it can spread. What's your point?
How is a virus on someone else's machine going to disable the firewall on my machine?
HughesNet (the former DirecWay) uses satellite(s) in a geostationary orbit, over 22,000 miles above the equator. That results in a significant delay (round trip of almost half a second), which makes regular voice conversations impractical.
Uh, I've made many calls via geostationary satellites and while the delay is mildly annoying, it's far from impractical.
Complaining about having to pay to support the poor? Then help them stop being poor!
Most taxes go to pay the salaries of government employees, who are certainly not poor.
Henry Ford knew it - when he was asked why he paid his workers more than the competition, he said "I want them to be able to buy my cars."
No, Ford paid his workers more because he wanted the best employees and he was losing vast amounts of money having to continually train new ones as the experienced employees left for jobs that paid better.
Do you really think that Ferrari pay the guy who bolts the doors on enough to buy a Ferrari?
Passengers most likely won't even know the chutes are there, they'll be made far more aware of the life jackets and oxygen masks.
If you're not going to advertise the fact that your planes are fitted with parachutes, why would you install them?
Maybe whole-plane parachutes? I'd take that before a transparent one any day.
They exist; they're just so heavy and so unlikely to be useful that no-one is willing to take the performance hit for installing such a system on an airliner. If I remember correctly, the proposed system I saw some years ago for a 747 required 14 large parachutes spread around the plane.
Plus you're more likely to scare people off by doing so than gain new passengers; who wants to fly on an airline which is so scared of their planes crashing that they fit parachutes to them?
What I wonder is if you make a conventional CPU out of SiC, you can operate it at a far higher clock because it won't melt itself, thus enabling high performance CPUs or perhaps 3D integration.
--PeterM
I'm not quite sure that I really want my laptop's CPU running at 2500C under load...
This would be bad for everyone except the select few at the top of the industry who are collaborating to profit off of re-selling new devices to everyone.
Well, duh... who do you think bought the DMCA?
Fortunately, I'm not rich enough to afford 64bit hardware, but still this is not good...
An Atom-330 and motherboard costs about $80... and I think the 230 is 64-bit for a few dollars less.
SELinux and AppArmor are not as great as you think; they are understood well enough that hackers can defeat them, and they are deployed on enough systems that hackers write their exploits so these protections are defeated.
SELinux and Apparmor can't do much if you have an exploit that allows you to execute arbitrary code inside the kernel (which I believe this does). But they'll certainly stop the kind of random buffer overflow exploit that's been the most common avenue of remote attack.
Ubuntu released the patch last week. Unfortunately you don't seem to be running an Ubuntu kernel.
Tell us how great OSS is.
OSS is great... my Ubuntu machines were already patched a day before the first scare stories about this exploit appeared here on Slashdot.
Hell, they could have announced ahead of time that they were shutting down permanently, and probably gotten some kind of fire-sale/goodbye-sale revenue.
Indeed, that's what makes this particularly weird: if they'd said 'we're shutting down, buy all you can this weekend', I'd have picked up about $100 worth of games from my wishlist.
So this doesn't make sense unless either they're just revamping the site and thought it would create a buzz around the Internet, or it's been forced on them suddenly by outside forces (e.g. a sudden change of management policy).
Not because of the no DRM thing, but because all they sold was old games. Those are going to have to be budget priced, of course, and are just not as popular. They probably had trouble making much money since they didn't make a whole lot each sale (at least half, maybe more, of the price goes to the publisher) and there just weren't the numbers.
Except according to another site, they were one of the most profitable components of their parent company. Of course that might be a lie, but they basically had to pay for a server, people to remove DRM from old software, and download bandwidth, so it wouldn't surprise me if true.
One thing I've noticed in recent weeks is a significant slowdown of the site, so either they were getting a lot more customers or switched to a less powerful server to save money... hard to tell which.
Last time I checked they didn't sell Ubuntu apps. I've never bough anything from them. Looks like I never will. Oh well.
I have a bunch of their games running on Ubuntu through Wine, or using Linux executables with Gog.com data (e.g. Duke 3D).
As I understand it, Valve claims to have put unlocked installers for all of its own games in escrow to be opened once Valve goes Chapter 7. So if you've backed up your downloaded game, the unlocked installer will install it for you.
At best that would cover Valve's games. While I own most of them, these days the majority of Steam games I own are from other companies who wouldn't do such a thing.
If you have your Steam user ID and password, you can redownload all games purchased through Steam.
And how do you do that if you go to Valve's web page and it says 'Sorry, we've shut down. Have a nice life'?
Most Steam games will die shortly after Valve's servers shut down. Hopefully that won't happen, but if it does then you're toast.
Whereas even if Gog never comes back, I'll still be able to play those games for as long as Wine is capable of running Windows software.
This is called "prejudice". In most circles it's considered a negative thing.
I'm surprised you didn't go all the way and call them a racist.
Back in the real world, perhaps they just don't want to have hundreds of dollars worth of games tied to an online account that Valve can shut down at any time.