I know there have been a few sites that I have decided not to buy from simply because the site looked unprofessional and I wasn't sure I could really trust the site to A: not steal my information, or B: actually deliver what I buy.
What makes you think that: 1. Scammers build unprofessional looking sites (infact I suspect that an unprofessional looking site is _less_ likley to be a scammer because scammers are pretty good at looking professional since it helps them part your cash from you). 2. You are less likley to be conned by someone talking to you over the phone (some scammers are very good at talking you into buying *more* stuff you don't want... can you say "extended warranties"?).
Personally I prefer to read all the information on a site (and possibly email them for more information) and buy in my own time rather than (potentially) being pressured into buying over the phone.
However, I do think this is potentially a good thing for technophobes who want to speak with a real person. And from the vendor's point of view, I suspect the "call to sale conversion ratio" will be higher than the "click to sale conversion ratio" and so it may well be worth paying the higher price Google will no doubt charge (and hopefully pass on to those of us who use AdSense).
Of course, if you're shopping around for DSL in Britain, I'd avoid the company being advertised in your sig (PlusNet). I used them for about a week, and I got nothing but bad service and FUD Newspeak from the customer services.
I did shop around - PlusNet have provided me with an excellent service for the past 3 years. Very little downtime and whilest I've never had to phone their tech support they have responded to my tech support tickets that I've entered via their website in quite a fast and very technically knowledgable way.
Only applications like Gizmo http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and many other ones (which I don't use) connect to the International Standard-compliant Protocol known as SIP.
Indeed - I'm using sjPhone (closed source unfortunately) under Linux with Asterisk.
However, in the UK at least I think the protocol choice isn't the main issue holding back the adoption of VoIP. In order to get an internet connection you need to either get a cable modem (NTL or Telewest) or a DSL connection (any number of ISPs running over BT lines). The problem is that if you get a DSL connection you _have_ to pay for a POTS service too - for most people there's no point in using a VoIP service because they're already being forced to pay a subscription for a POTS line in order to get their internet connection and VoIP to PSTN gateways aren't really any cheaper per minute for domestic calls (i.e. not international) than BT.
Until everyone can get a decent internet connection from any ISP without being required to hand over a wadge of cash to BT for a POTS line as well then I don't see VoIP taking off.
(For the record, I won't get an internet connection from NTL because then I'm stuck with their ISP who's quality of service is absolutely abysmal).
But every time you talk to someone outside that network, you'll be using IPv4. Who is going to be the first one to switch to the IPv6 internet? No-one. Everyone needs to change at once. And I think that's why many say it's just not going to happen. Why don't you start using an external IPv6 address and get back to me.
I'm afraid you're talking crap - I use IPv6 on my internal network *and* over the Internet, it coexists quite happilly with IPv4. Enabling IPv6 support on a system does _not_ require leaving the IPv4 network. If you have both protocols enabled then IPv6 will be preferred when it is available on both ends (since the DNS lookup you make to find the remote server's address will return both A and AAAA records) but if one end doesn't do IPv6 then the IPv4 address will be used.
The problem here is an economic one, not a technological one: 1. Why should the content provider invest in rolling out IPv6 addresses to their servers (there is an administration cost in running an additional protocol) when 100% of their clients have IPv4 addresses (the number with IPv6 addresses is not important here if it is significantly less than 100%) 2. Why should the ISPs invest in rolling out IPv6 networks if 100% of the content on the internet is accessible over IPv4? 3. Why should the consumer grade DSL router manufacturers bother to include native IPv6 support in their hardware if the ISPs aren't going to support it?
Most of the end-users neither know nor care about IPv6, but if the ISPs provided native IPv6 connectivity, the customers' DSL routers provided IPv6 support and their OSes shipped with IPv6 enabled by default (Fedora Core does this, as does OSX... sadly XP doesn't) then the customer wouldn't need to care about it because it would just automagically work - IPv6 does autoconfiguration our of the box.
So whilest there are economic reasons why businesses won't be inclined to change without everyone else changing, there is no technical reason why anyone can't support IPv6 without everyone else changing.
I think what the MS guy is complaining about is that once you make your own personal changes, then the product is no longer supported by the vendor.
Well, if your changes go upstream then in *will* be supported by the vendor at no extra cost. In any case this seems like a bogus arguement because the choice is between FOSS (you can make changes but they might be unsupported) and closed software (you can't make changes at all) - clearly FOSS gives the greater freedom and closed software has no advantage.
primarilly in that if the company you had support from goes out of business or stops supporting that software you can still go out and find someone else to support it or even manage the thing internally
More importantly (since there's no chance of MS going out of business any time soon), if RedHat don't want to do some bespoke modifications to the software for you (for a reasonable price) you can find someone who will do the modifications (and support them), or you can modify and support it yourself. Compared this to the closed environment where if the software doesn't do what you need then you have no recourse but to get the author to modify it (you try getting someone like MS to make a modification to their software for a single customer).
Additionally, for a techie, an open system is easier to debug since you can look at what's _actually_ happening instead of just having a black box and a spec saying what it's _supposed_ to do (which probably doesn't match what it's actually doing).
In my last job I did a fair amount of bugfixing work in the kernel (mainly networking stuff), which just wouldn't be possible under Windows - under Windows if the kernel's broken then you're basically stuffed, you're not even guaranteed a way to fix it in the future because it's completely up to MS whether they fix the problem. In the FOSS world, if there is a problem which is affecting you you can either fix it yourself or pay someone else to fix it.
He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell.
Uh, I dunno what he's been smoking...
1. The code is open, you can change it as much as you want (it just might not get adopted upstream) 2. If you make a good patch to fix a bug then it usually does get pulled in upstream (either by the packager, or by the author - if it gets to the author then *all* the packagers get it) 3. Tied in with (2), if you join the project that's developing a piece of software and submit code then (assuming the code is of a good quality) that code usually goes into the trunk of the project and then filters down to all of the packagers.
I've written bugfixes, enhancements and completely new chunks of code for the kernel, squid, etc. This code is packaged by most of the distributors and I've never paid them a penny. I've also worked on projects such as MythTV (i.e. stuff that's not usually packaged by third parties) and my code is in the trunk there too. Again, I've not paid anyone to incorporate my code.
It is in the interest of the developers, distributors and their customers to incorporate high quality patches. And even if they don't, that doesn't take away your ability to modify a project for your own use.
the conditions up there in and around the ISS that researchers take advantage of ("zero" gravity, et al) can be recreated on earth for research purposes
How exactly do you create a long term microgravity environment on earth?
If you steal it, you will just strengthen their argument that piracy is a threat that must be countered by any means necessary. The correct reaction is to not obtain the music by any means.
And how exactly do they tell the difference between someone stealing it and someone not buying it? Infact, they can't - they just equate a drop in sales to an increase in piracy.
and it's too easy to break a program and not know how you broke it.
I get this problem with _all_ systems. The difference is that (as a techie) it's easier for me to debug a problem under linux because I don't have to deal with a black box where it's impossible to see what's going on in the middle. Very often with closed systems, if something breaks there's very little you can do to debug it and you probably end up wiping the system and starting from scratch.
For instance, I have had a Windows PC since around 1998. I have never ever had to actually call a support line on software issues other than problems registering shareware.
Congratulations - I've been using Linux for about the same length of time and have never called a support line.
Even on the server side, things like IIS are not that difficult to configure. SQLServer is more of a pain, but that's true of all database systems.
I'm not wholly sure what your point is - Apache is dead easy to configure, as is Postgres.
These are issues that Microsoft are trying to use as ammo against the total-cost-of-ownership estimates between Linux and Windows.
And it's notable that pretty much the only TCO reports which come out in favor of Windows are the ones funded by Microsoft...
In my experience, whilest on any system you may end up spending a long time figuring out how to solve a problem or get it to do something non-trivial, under a FOSS system you usually come out with a solution (even if this involves modifying the software) whereas under a closed system you often come out with the realisation that what you were trying to do isn't possible with that system.
Certainly, debugging a problem is a lot easier if you can look at what's _actually_ happening inside some software (or indeed the kernel) rather than just having some spec (if that) which says what's _supposed_ to be happening. Additionally, Linux has a lot more tools available for debugging problems.
The cd takes advantage of a feature in Windows and installs software in the background without your knowledge. No court would find Sony not liable for damagaes caused because the user didn't disable autorun.
By that reasoning, if I wrote a virus and emailed it to a bunch of people who ran it then it would be considered their fault and I would be innocent since I hadn't forced them to run it, I only supplied them with the malware (which I probably disguised as something they wanted).
I think you'll find you're wrong (and there have been enough arrests of virus/trojan writers, who under your interpretation are innocent, to prove this)
Whatever folks may say about "The Evil Empire," this a true gift of philanthropy. Let's give a hand to Bill Gates...
Almost any time a large company donates to charity it's because they will get publicity out of it - i.e. there are commercial reasons. Also, the constant charity efforts from Microsoft always seem to me to be an effort to buy back their soul, which is fine until you realise that they haven't stopped selling their soul yet. If they want to appear more ethical, how about stopping the unethical business practices first? I'd be interested to see how much money Microsoft make from charities, etc, who buy their licences - I'd be willing to bet that MS probably receive more money from charities than they ever give.
This is just a publicity campaign, nothing to see here, move along.
I'm still wondering. I have no idea how many hours from GMT EDT would be. I am not even sure that there are not multiple zones that use the EDT acronym. Like Eastern Dagestan Time, or something.
It'd be rather more useful if times were quoted in UTC or with a quoted offset rather than using a (to most of the world) fairly meaningless acronym...
Seriously, the idea of pushing electricity on to the grid is all about giving and getting from the commons, and the assumption that even at VERY low usage periods, the demand is most definitely > 0. So while you may not need it, someone else does (at that very moment), and all you do is effectively sell it to that person, with the grid as the market, with only transmission losses incurred.... and the best part is that the transmission costs could be very low if the "buyer" of your energy were very close to you. No batteries required!
Grid demand fluctuates very drastically - whilest demand is never zero, it can be well below the potential supply. If you're using nuclear, coal, oil, gas, etc then you can adjust the amount of electricity you produce in order to match the demand closely. If you're using wind, solar, wave, etc then you produce a fixed amount of power which is determined by the weather conditions - if that's above your demand then it either has to be wasted or stored.
At the moment, the uncontrollable power generation systems are balanced by the controllable ones (when your wind turbines are generating lots of power and your demand is low then you can turn down the output of the nuclear and fossil power stations to compensate). This is only possible because the uncontrollable power sources make up only a small proportion of total capacity.
Even so, we still have pumped hydroelectric storage systems to cope with peak demand, which is quite inefficient. (Soak up excess power from the grid by pumping water up to a higher reserviour and then when the demand outstrips supply let the water drive turbines to provide the extra power).
2) back onto the general grid and selling it to someone else.
Again, only works if wind power is a small proportion of the grid's capacity. If a large chunk of the grid's capacity is wind power then you'll be wasting power during low demand, high production periods and you'll outstrip the supply during high demand, low production periods. Whereas, if you use the uncontrollable power generation systems, such as wind power, to crack water for use in cars and fuel cells and controllable sources such as fission to supply the grid then you don't need to deal with these problems.
Additionally, if you're using the power to crack water then you don't need to care what kind of wave you get out of the wind turbines, whereas a lot of effort has to go into converting the wave form into something that can be driven back into the grid.
Don't underestimate the problems with storing hydrogen. It's pesky and diffuses through everything.
True, but it's still easier than storing electricity.
There's another use of windmill power that requires no fancy conversion electronics, or fancy electrolysis setups. Run whatever horrible waveform you get out of your alternator on a stick into a big old resistor that gets hot. This is cost-effective for me (in a rural setting) to heat my home with now, versus using diesel (heating oil)
But that suggestion is only useful for less than half of the year (depending where you live) when you actually need to heat your home. During the summer there's still quite a lot of wind which would be going to waste.
Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil.
Indeed, and I don't think anyone (apart from a few nutty greens) would suggest otherwise.
There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.
Fission is a good alternative to fossil fuels, produces energy in a large quantity and is in many respects less polluting (if only because you seal up the waste and store it instead of pumping it into the atmosphere). Modern fission reactors are also very safe.
In the long run, fusion looks promising (especially since the politicians have now stopped arguing about where to build ITER) but still a way off Orbital solar arrays also have a lot of potential - even more so if we get our finger out and set up a moon base since much of the structure of the satellites could be manufactured on the moon and then launched relatively inexpensively with mass drivers. This stuff isn't science fiction - it _can_ be done if the investment is made. Sadly the people in power seem to be happy to blindly burn fossil fuels until we have completely run out. I guess today's politicians are safe in the knowledge that they won't be in power when the shit hits the fan.
Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power
Infact, wind power should be better suited to hydrogen generation than generation of grid electricity. Generating electricity for the grid has problems since wind is unpredictable so you can't have your wind farms match the current demand on the grid. For hydrogen generation this doesn't matter since you can just adjust the amount of hydrogen you generate depending on how much electricity your wind farm is generating and then _store_ the excess hydrogen, which you can then use during the periods when you don't have enough wind to meet demand directly. Storing hydrogen is much less of a problem than storing electricity.
Maybe this is what the future holds for us - use predictable power generation systems (fisson, hydro, tide, fusion and orbital solar arrays) for electricity generation and less predictable (e.g. wind) for hydrogen generation, where the hydrogen can be used in cars and most things that currently contain high capacity batteries such as laptops.
Too many who aren't even aware of any of this because they are too distracted by mass entertainment.
Well far too many laws are just quietly slipped under the radar so unless people are _really_ interested and go out and actively investigate what's going on in politics all the time they probably never even knew the law was being passed. (This is nothing to do with being "too distracted" - it's simply that there has been very little publicity). A good example is the EUCD, which seems to have had almost no press at all.
Indeed it is - and humans are often not trusted to do things in safety critical applications. However, many people (myself included) have trouble accepting the idea that a computer will always know better than a trained person. And infact there are examples where a computer has got things wrong and there has been no way for someone to override systems (there have been fly-by-wire crashes caused by this problem).
I guess what I'm saying is that whatever the system there should always be a way to override it (unless it's performing an operation that a human could not perform) - whether that be a pilot overriding a computer that's getting things wrong, or a copilot overriding a real pilot who's getting things wrong.
how to put evolution into effect when creating a microchip or a computer program
You might want to look up genetic algorithms. Although one of the problems with them is that it can be very difficult to know *why* the resulting algorithm works so it's not usually suitable for safety critical applications.
it is not. If it were very common then we would have likely picked up a signal by now if they were within a few hundred light years.
First of all you should remember that you can't use the absence of evidence to disprove something (only to show that it may be less likely). Second, you hit it right on the head when you said "we would have likely picked up a signal.
Whether we're going to pick up a signal depends on a lot of factors. For example: how common is common? the universe is a *big* place, even if there are a reasonable number of civilisations in our galaxy they could be spaced quite thinly. What makes us so sure a civilisation is going to use radio (at the moment)? We have only been transmitting radio signals capable of being detected at interstellar distances for a very short time when compared to the scale of evolution and there's no guarantees how long we will keep using radio - if we find a better method of communication we'll ditch radio in favor of it. Even assuming we stick with radio signalling for 1000 years, that's still a _really_ short window of opportunity.
They have succeeded in dumbing down science and engineering enough for the average Phil and Sally to understand. Of course, then your average Phil and Sally understand nothing, yet think they are masters in such fields.
I think they've got a good balance - true, they don't perform rigorous scientific experiments, but clearly they never intended the show to do that (and have you any idea how long and potentially boring it would be for them to do the experiments properly?).
I mainly watch it to see the interesting engineering solutions they come up with to a problem - much the same reason as I watch Scrapheap Challenge. It's important to remember that they are engineers, not scientists.
Yes yes, but the US military is trying to *help* these people. I guess it isn't their fault they are too simple to understand.
I've got to say thay is possibly one of _the_ most arrogant things I've ever read. Just because _you_ think your helping doesn't mean _they_ think your helping.
And who gets to make the choice as to whether "help" is provided? An outside country like the US who constantly insists on sticking their nose in everyone else's business or the people themselves?
Having seen the outcome of some of the "help" that has been provided to various countries by the west over the past few decades, I can't say it's always (often?) resulted in a better situation than was there originally.
I'm sure if the rest of the world invaded the US to free you from your oppressive government then there would be a few people in the US objecting too.
Seriously, there are lots of views in the world - blowing people up to "help" them conform to your world view is the stupidest thing ever (can you say "crusades?"). How is this different from extremists flying a couple of planes into your buildings? The "help" given to Iraq has resorted in many many more civillian deaths than any terrorist attack against the west.
Saying you don't need that freedom because today's hardware can't take advantage of it is incredibly short-sighted.
When exactly did I say that? I think if you re-read my post you will see that I said the idea of _not_ having a physical medium for HDTV quality content (which is what Bill seems to be suggesting) doesn't seem practical in the short term since there's no sane way to transfer the data over current internet connections. Saying "we don't need freedom" is *not* the same as "we'd like freedom but the technology that will give us that freedom won't be at all practical for a few more years".
And frankly, if a product can't do what I need then I won't buy it coz it's useless to me - many of the "copy protected" optical disks that are being claimed to be CDs won't let you rip them, and won't play in CD-ROM drives and car stereos, etc. Now given that I almost exclusively listen to music when using the computer or in the car this makes those CDs pretty much useless to me so I don't buy them.
At the moment this debate sparked by Bill is _nothing_ to do with freedoms and _everything_ to do with practicality - if there is a very restrictive option on the market at the moment and a free option which won't be useful for 5 years then what do you think is going to happen?
Slashdot Mirror
I know there have been a few sites that I have decided not to buy from simply because the site looked unprofessional and I wasn't sure I could really trust the site to A: not steal my information, or B: actually deliver what I buy.
What makes you think that:
1. Scammers build unprofessional looking sites (infact I suspect that an unprofessional looking site is _less_ likley to be a scammer because scammers are pretty good at looking professional since it helps them part your cash from you).
2. You are less likley to be conned by someone talking to you over the phone (some scammers are very good at talking you into buying *more* stuff you don't want... can you say "extended warranties"?).
Personally I prefer to read all the information on a site (and possibly email them for more information) and buy in my own time rather than (potentially) being pressured into buying over the phone.
However, I do think this is potentially a good thing for technophobes who want to speak with a real person. And from the vendor's point of view, I suspect the "call to sale conversion ratio" will be higher than the "click to sale conversion ratio" and so it may well be worth paying the higher price Google will no doubt charge (and hopefully pass on to those of us who use AdSense).
Of course, if you're shopping around for DSL in Britain, I'd avoid the company being advertised in your sig (PlusNet). I used them for about a week, and I got nothing but bad service and FUD Newspeak from the customer services.
I did shop around - PlusNet have provided me with an excellent service for the past 3 years. Very little downtime and whilest I've never had to phone their tech support they have responded to my tech support tickets that I've entered via their website in quite a fast and very technically knowledgable way.
Only applications like Gizmo http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and many other ones (which I don't use) connect to the International Standard-compliant Protocol known as SIP.
Indeed - I'm using sjPhone (closed source unfortunately) under Linux with Asterisk.
However, in the UK at least I think the protocol choice isn't the main issue holding back the adoption of VoIP. In order to get an internet connection you need to either get a cable modem (NTL or Telewest) or a DSL connection (any number of ISPs running over BT lines). The problem is that if you get a DSL connection you _have_ to pay for a POTS service too - for most people there's no point in using a VoIP service because they're already being forced to pay a subscription for a POTS line in order to get their internet connection and VoIP to PSTN gateways aren't really any cheaper per minute for domestic calls (i.e. not international) than BT.
Until everyone can get a decent internet connection from any ISP without being required to hand over a wadge of cash to BT for a POTS line as well then I don't see VoIP taking off.
(For the record, I won't get an internet connection from NTL because then I'm stuck with their ISP who's quality of service is absolutely abysmal).
But every time you talk to someone outside that network, you'll be using IPv4. Who is going to be the first one to switch to the IPv6 internet? No-one. Everyone needs to change at once. And I think that's why many say it's just not going to happen. Why don't you start using an external IPv6 address and get back to me.
I'm afraid you're talking crap - I use IPv6 on my internal network *and* over the Internet, it coexists quite happilly with IPv4. Enabling IPv6 support on a system does _not_ require leaving the IPv4 network. If you have both protocols enabled then IPv6 will be preferred when it is available on both ends (since the DNS lookup you make to find the remote server's address will return both A and AAAA records) but if one end doesn't do IPv6 then the IPv4 address will be used.
The problem here is an economic one, not a technological one:
1. Why should the content provider invest in rolling out IPv6 addresses to their servers (there is an administration cost in running an additional protocol) when 100% of their clients have IPv4 addresses (the number with IPv6 addresses is not important here if it is significantly less than 100%)
2. Why should the ISPs invest in rolling out IPv6 networks if 100% of the content on the internet is accessible over IPv4?
3. Why should the consumer grade DSL router manufacturers bother to include native IPv6 support in their hardware if the ISPs aren't going to support it?
Most of the end-users neither know nor care about IPv6, but if the ISPs provided native IPv6 connectivity, the customers' DSL routers provided IPv6 support and their OSes shipped with IPv6 enabled by default (Fedora Core does this, as does OSX... sadly XP doesn't) then the customer wouldn't need to care about it because it would just automagically work - IPv6 does autoconfiguration our of the box.
So whilest there are economic reasons why businesses won't be inclined to change without everyone else changing, there is no technical reason why anyone can't support IPv6 without everyone else changing.
I think what the MS guy is complaining about is that once you make your own personal changes, then the product is no longer supported by the vendor.
Well, if your changes go upstream then in *will* be supported by the vendor at no extra cost. In any case this seems like a bogus arguement because the choice is between FOSS (you can make changes but they might be unsupported) and closed software (you can't make changes at all) - clearly FOSS gives the greater freedom and closed software has no advantage.
primarilly in that if the company you had support from goes out of business or stops supporting that software you can still go out and find someone else to support it or even manage the thing internally
More importantly (since there's no chance of MS going out of business any time soon), if RedHat don't want to do some bespoke modifications to the software for you (for a reasonable price) you can find someone who will do the modifications (and support them), or you can modify and support it yourself. Compared this to the closed environment where if the software doesn't do what you need then you have no recourse but to get the author to modify it (you try getting someone like MS to make a modification to their software for a single customer).
Additionally, for a techie, an open system is easier to debug since you can look at what's _actually_ happening instead of just having a black box and a spec saying what it's _supposed_ to do (which probably doesn't match what it's actually doing).
In my last job I did a fair amount of bugfixing work in the kernel (mainly networking stuff), which just wouldn't be possible under Windows - under Windows if the kernel's broken then you're basically stuffed, you're not even guaranteed a way to fix it in the future because it's completely up to MS whether they fix the problem. In the FOSS world, if there is a problem which is affecting you you can either fix it yourself or pay someone else to fix it.
He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell.
Uh, I dunno what he's been smoking...
1. The code is open, you can change it as much as you want (it just might not get adopted upstream)
2. If you make a good patch to fix a bug then it usually does get pulled in upstream (either by the packager, or by the author - if it gets to the author then *all* the packagers get it)
3. Tied in with (2), if you join the project that's developing a piece of software and submit code then (assuming the code is of a good quality) that code usually goes into the trunk of the project and then filters down to all of the packagers.
I've written bugfixes, enhancements and completely new chunks of code for the kernel, squid, etc. This code is packaged by most of the distributors and I've never paid them a penny. I've also worked on projects such as MythTV (i.e. stuff that's not usually packaged by third parties) and my code is in the trunk there too. Again, I've not paid anyone to incorporate my code.
It is in the interest of the developers, distributors and their customers to incorporate high quality patches. And even if they don't, that doesn't take away your ability to modify a project for your own use.
the conditions up there in and around the ISS that researchers take advantage of ("zero" gravity, et al) can be recreated on earth for research purposes
How exactly do you create a long term microgravity environment on earth?
If you steal it, you will just strengthen their argument that piracy is a threat that must be countered by any means necessary. The correct reaction is to not obtain the music by any means.
And how exactly do they tell the difference between someone stealing it and someone not buying it? Infact, they can't - they just equate a drop in sales to an increase in piracy.
and it's too easy to break a program and not know how you broke it.
I get this problem with _all_ systems. The difference is that (as a techie) it's easier for me to debug a problem under linux because I don't have to deal with a black box where it's impossible to see what's going on in the middle. Very often with closed systems, if something breaks there's very little you can do to debug it and you probably end up wiping the system and starting from scratch.
For instance, I have had a Windows PC since around 1998. I have never ever had to actually call a support line on software issues other than problems registering shareware.
Congratulations - I've been using Linux for about the same length of time and have never called a support line.
Even on the server side, things like IIS are not that difficult to configure. SQLServer is more of a pain, but that's true of all database systems.
I'm not wholly sure what your point is - Apache is dead easy to configure, as is Postgres.
These are issues that Microsoft are trying to use as ammo against the total-cost-of-ownership estimates between Linux and Windows.
And it's notable that pretty much the only TCO reports which come out in favor of Windows are the ones funded by Microsoft...
In my experience, whilest on any system you may end up spending a long time figuring out how to solve a problem or get it to do something non-trivial, under a FOSS system you usually come out with a solution (even if this involves modifying the software) whereas under a closed system you often come out with the realisation that what you were trying to do isn't possible with that system.
Certainly, debugging a problem is a lot easier if you can look at what's _actually_ happening inside some software (or indeed the kernel) rather than just having some spec (if that) which says what's _supposed_ to be happening. Additionally, Linux has a lot more tools available for debugging problems.
I wish Firefox added more cutting edge stuff. MS will win the war if this is what is going to compete against IE 7.
:)
Will IE7 feature Clippy too? "It looks like you're downloading a virus, would you like help installing it?"
Being serious, IE7 is still not standards complient and still doesn't support XHTML.
The cd takes advantage of a feature in Windows and installs software in the background without your knowledge. No court would find Sony not liable for damagaes caused because the user didn't disable autorun.
By that reasoning, if I wrote a virus and emailed it to a bunch of people who ran it then it would be considered their fault and I would be innocent since I hadn't forced them to run it, I only supplied them with the malware (which I probably disguised as something they wanted).
I think you'll find you're wrong (and there have been enough arrests of virus/trojan writers, who under your interpretation are innocent, to prove this)
Whatever folks may say about "The Evil Empire," this a true gift of philanthropy. Let's give a hand to Bill Gates...
Almost any time a large company donates to charity it's because they will get publicity out of it - i.e. there are commercial reasons.
Also, the constant charity efforts from Microsoft always seem to me to be an effort to buy back their soul, which is fine until you realise that they haven't stopped selling their soul yet. If they want to appear more ethical, how about stopping the unethical business practices first?
I'd be interested to see how much money Microsoft make from charities, etc, who buy their licences - I'd be willing to bet that MS probably receive more money from charities than they ever give.
This is just a publicity campaign, nothing to see here, move along.
I'm still wondering. I have no idea how many hours from GMT EDT would be. I am not even sure that there are not multiple zones that use the EDT acronym. Like Eastern Dagestan Time, or something.
It'd be rather more useful if times were quoted in UTC or with a quoted offset rather than using a (to most of the world) fairly meaningless acronym...
Seriously, the idea of pushing electricity on to the grid is all about giving and getting from the commons, and the assumption that even at VERY low usage periods, the demand is most definitely > 0. So while you may not need it, someone else does (at that very moment), and all you do is effectively sell it to that person, with the grid as the market, with only transmission losses incurred.... and the best part is that the transmission costs could be very low if the "buyer" of your energy were very close to you. No batteries required!
Grid demand fluctuates very drastically - whilest demand is never zero, it can be well below the potential supply. If you're using nuclear, coal, oil, gas, etc then you can adjust the amount of electricity you produce in order to match the demand closely. If you're using wind, solar, wave, etc then you produce a fixed amount of power which is determined by the weather conditions - if that's above your demand then it either has to be wasted or stored.
At the moment, the uncontrollable power generation systems are balanced by the controllable ones (when your wind turbines are generating lots of power and your demand is low then you can turn down the output of the nuclear and fossil power stations to compensate). This is only possible because the uncontrollable power sources make up only a small proportion of total capacity.
Even so, we still have pumped hydroelectric storage systems to cope with peak demand, which is quite inefficient. (Soak up excess power from the grid by pumping water up to a higher reserviour and then when the demand outstrips supply let the water drive turbines to provide the extra power).
2) back onto the general grid and selling it to someone else.
Again, only works if wind power is a small proportion of the grid's capacity. If a large chunk of the grid's capacity is wind power then you'll be wasting power during low demand, high production periods and you'll outstrip the supply during high demand, low production periods.
Whereas, if you use the uncontrollable power generation systems, such as wind power, to crack water for use in cars and fuel cells and controllable sources such as fission to supply the grid then you don't need to deal with these problems.
Additionally, if you're using the power to crack water then you don't need to care what kind of wave you get out of the wind turbines, whereas a lot of effort has to go into converting the wave form into something that can be driven back into the grid.
Don't underestimate the problems with storing hydrogen. It's pesky and diffuses through everything.
True, but it's still easier than storing electricity.
There's another use of windmill power that requires no fancy conversion electronics, or fancy electrolysis setups. Run whatever horrible waveform you get out of your alternator on a stick into a big old resistor that gets hot. This is cost-effective for me (in a rural setting) to heat my home with now, versus using diesel (heating oil)
But that suggestion is only useful for less than half of the year (depending where you live) when you actually need to heat your home. During the summer there's still quite a lot of wind which would be going to waste.
Either way, you'd need millions of windmills to replace the energy consumed daily in the form of oil.
Indeed, and I don't think anyone (apart from a few nutty greens) would suggest otherwise.
There is NO good mass volume alternative to oil in the near future, people should be planning accordingly. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen.
Fission is a good alternative to fossil fuels, produces energy in a large quantity and is in many respects less polluting (if only because you seal up the waste and store it instead of pumping it into the atmosphere). Modern fission reactors are also very safe.
In the long run, fusion looks promising (especially since the politicians have now stopped arguing about where to build ITER) but still a way off
Orbital solar arrays also have a lot of potential - even more so if we get our finger out and set up a moon base since much of the structure of the satellites could be manufactured on the moon and then launched relatively inexpensively with mass drivers. This stuff isn't science fiction - it _can_ be done if the investment is made. Sadly the people in power seem to be happy to blindly burn fossil fuels until we have completely run out. I guess today's politicians are safe in the knowledge that they won't be in power when the shit hits the fan.
Theoretically, they could get it from nuclear power or from wind power
Infact, wind power should be better suited to hydrogen generation than generation of grid electricity. Generating electricity for the grid has problems since wind is unpredictable so you can't have your wind farms match the current demand on the grid. For hydrogen generation this doesn't matter since you can just adjust the amount of hydrogen you generate depending on how much electricity your wind farm is generating and then _store_ the excess hydrogen, which you can then use during the periods when you don't have enough wind to meet demand directly. Storing hydrogen is much less of a problem than storing electricity.
Maybe this is what the future holds for us - use predictable power generation systems (fisson, hydro, tide, fusion and orbital solar arrays) for electricity generation and less predictable (e.g. wind) for hydrogen generation, where the hydrogen can be used in cars and most things that currently contain high capacity batteries such as laptops.
Too many who aren't even aware of any of this because they are too distracted by mass entertainment.
Well far too many laws are just quietly slipped under the radar so unless people are _really_ interested and go out and actively investigate what's going on in politics all the time they probably never even knew the law was being passed. (This is nothing to do with being "too distracted" - it's simply that there has been very little publicity). A good example is the EUCD, which seems to have had almost no press at all.
This is slightly off-topic, but I was wondering if anyone is aware of any generic web-frontends for MySQL?
How about http://www.phpmyadmin.net/?
The same is of course true for the brain.
Indeed it is - and humans are often not trusted to do things in safety critical applications. However, many people (myself included) have trouble accepting the idea that a computer will always know better than a trained person. And infact there are examples where a computer has got things wrong and there has been no way for someone to override systems (there have been fly-by-wire crashes caused by this problem).
I guess what I'm saying is that whatever the system there should always be a way to override it (unless it's performing an operation that a human could not perform) - whether that be a pilot overriding a computer that's getting things wrong, or a copilot overriding a real pilot who's getting things wrong.
how to put evolution into effect when creating a microchip or a computer program
You might want to look up genetic algorithms. Although one of the problems with them is that it can be very difficult to know *why* the resulting algorithm works so it's not usually suitable for safety critical applications.
it is not. If it were very common then we would have likely picked up a signal by now if they were within a few hundred light years.
First of all you should remember that you can't use the absence of evidence to disprove something (only to show that it may be less likely). Second, you hit it right on the head when you said "we would have likely picked up a signal.
Whether we're going to pick up a signal depends on a lot of factors. For example: how common is common? the universe is a *big* place, even if there are a reasonable number of civilisations in our galaxy they could be spaced quite thinly. What makes us so sure a civilisation is going to use radio (at the moment)? We have only been transmitting radio signals capable of being detected at interstellar distances for a very short time when compared to the scale of evolution and there's no guarantees how long we will keep using radio - if we find a better method of communication we'll ditch radio in favor of it. Even assuming we stick with radio signalling for 1000 years, that's still a _really_ short window of opportunity.
They have succeeded in dumbing down science and engineering enough for the average Phil and Sally to understand. Of course, then your average Phil and Sally understand nothing, yet think they are masters in such fields.
I think they've got a good balance - true, they don't perform rigorous scientific experiments, but clearly they never intended the show to do that (and have you any idea how long and potentially boring it would be for them to do the experiments properly?).
I mainly watch it to see the interesting engineering solutions they come up with to a problem - much the same reason as I watch Scrapheap Challenge. It's important to remember that they are engineers, not scientists.
MythBusters is a bit smarter than Brainiac.
:)
s/a bit/a lot/
Although notably a fair number of the Brainiac experiments were already performed on Mythbusters so I suspect Sky are watching Mythbusters for ideas.
I watch Brainiac for the stupidity and Mythbusters for the interesting engineering work.
Yes yes, but the US military is trying to *help* these people. I guess it isn't their fault they are too simple to understand.
I've got to say thay is possibly one of _the_ most arrogant things I've ever read. Just because _you_ think your helping doesn't mean _they_ think your helping.
And who gets to make the choice as to whether "help" is provided? An outside country like the US who constantly insists on sticking their nose in everyone else's business or the people themselves?
Having seen the outcome of some of the "help" that has been provided to various countries by the west over the past few decades, I can't say it's always (often?) resulted in a better situation than was there originally.
I'm sure if the rest of the world invaded the US to free you from your oppressive government then there would be a few people in the US objecting too.
Seriously, there are lots of views in the world - blowing people up to "help" them conform to your world view is the stupidest thing ever (can you say "crusades?"). How is this different from extremists flying a couple of planes into your buildings? The "help" given to Iraq has resorted in many many more civillian deaths than any terrorist attack against the west.
Saying you don't need that freedom because today's hardware can't take advantage of it is incredibly short-sighted.
When exactly did I say that? I think if you re-read my post you will see that I said the idea of _not_ having a physical medium for HDTV quality content (which is what Bill seems to be suggesting) doesn't seem practical in the short term since there's no sane way to transfer the data over current internet connections. Saying "we don't need freedom" is *not* the same as "we'd like freedom but the technology that will give us that freedom won't be at all practical for a few more years".
And frankly, if a product can't do what I need then I won't buy it coz it's useless to me - many of the "copy protected" optical disks that are being claimed to be CDs won't let you rip them, and won't play in CD-ROM drives and car stereos, etc. Now given that I almost exclusively listen to music when using the computer or in the car this makes those CDs pretty much useless to me so I don't buy them.
At the moment this debate sparked by Bill is _nothing_ to do with freedoms and _everything_ to do with practicality - if there is a very restrictive option on the market at the moment and a free option which won't be useful for 5 years then what do you think is going to happen?