Yes, I accept for the sake of argument all of Paul's points... apart from one: cost.
We are currently seeing rising oil prices as our production of oil reaches a physically-determined peak (peak oil). Oil is a non-renewable resource which we use up. As it depletes, eventually we reach a maximum production level after which production declines and if demand remains high (which it does) prices increase. Hence why oil is currently at its highest price ever.
The same will happen with nuclear. Our estimates of nuclear cost are based around our current low demand for nuclear energy. As supply increases dramatically as governments attempt to switch to nuclear due to peak oil, so the cost of nuclear increases. Uranium is also a non-renewable resource faced with the same fate as oil. We will reach peak uranium production and prices will rise dramatically.
THE answer is with renewables which don't face physically-determined production peaks. Yes, we need a *lot* of solar and wind power, but that's what we have to do. And yes, we'll also have to reduce our demand for energy.
I have a Pentium M ULV (ultra low voltage) 1GHz laptop (much faster than a 1GHz desktop, more like 1.6GHz) which is fantastic. It draws 10... count them 10W of power on average with the screen turned off. With screen on, it draws 14W. But I don't need the screen, because I have it connected to a 19" flat screen drawing another 30W.
So, with my external wireless keyboard and mouse included (with rechargeable batteries) I have a 19" desktop drawing just 40W of power.
Oh, and I use one of those little wallsocket things that tells me how many watts I'm drawing. That's how I know.
I leave it turned on 24-7. No need to turn it off at all.
And now, I'm going to use a neat little gizmo to turn my USB 2 port into a second VGA port, and then have another 18.1" monitor (which draws about 30 watts).
Four months ago I decided to switch my laptop from Windows to *nix so I could have the same OS on my laptop and home server, following various security breaches (read:hacked to death) on the server in the past.
After failing with FreeBSD and various small Linux distros which I wanted to install off a USB drive rather than CD, I finally decided on Fedora Core 3. Results:
- video, audio, mouse, trackpad, keyboard work
- annoying problems ejecting USB drives where it says it can't eject because its being used, even though it isn't (intentionally anyway)
- got wifi working after about an hour's work
- took over 2 weeks to get the winmodem working, following many emails and patches and various other bits and bobs. God knows how my gran would ever be able to get that working!
- tried to get the pen-tablet bit working, but gave up after an hour. may try again in the future, but to be honest i dont use it much anyway
- can't get sleep/suspend/hibernate to work. *very* annoying. spent about 3 hours or so with no luck.
- can't get it so when I put a monitor in the VGA port I can toggle between that one, the laptop one and both together. haven't spend much time on this yet though, but *very* annoying
- gui woes. originally just used gnome but installed kde for kate (php editing) and konqueror because gnome's file browser is so terrible and unconfigurable. but i still have to run gnome because kde keeps crashing on me, can't get it to work
- openoffice doesn't open Access.mdb files. Very annoying. openoffice 2 beta keeps crashing and giving annoying 'recover file' dialog at startup
- less polish than windows
- programs, such as a file manager or firefox take longer to load than with windows
- program updates: I use yum to install all FC3 updates. but i only want updates which are security related - how can I set this? doesn't seem to be a way at all. also, on dial-up, its *extremely* annoying to have to download an entire program just for a minor update, rather than simply downloading a patch. This is a *major* problem for me as downloads take an age, and yum keeps wanting to yum more and more
- copy and paste doesn't always work, e.g. if i copy something in firefox then close firefox and paste in some other app there's nothing in the clipboard
So, in general, on my laptop, Windows was a better choice and there's no way I'd recommend Linux to my gran yet. In fact, I bought my girlfriend an iBook this month, and she loves it. And I also love the way you just close the lid and boom, its asleep. open, and its away. none of that yet with my linux.
Dog darn it... I stopped the install process and now I can't get the bloody thing to work again. Every time I try it just doesn't notice the usb drive there. Definitely bed time now though
What I did (and it seems to have worked so far, at least to boot) is download the img.gz file, un gz'ed it, then:
dd if=c:\documents\downloads\boot.img\boot.img of=\\.\e: bs=1440k
It took about 2 minutes to finish then told me:
87+1 records in
87+1 records out
There weren't any errors displayed:)
I'll let you know how the rest of the install goes... although I should really be going to bed soon!
Thank you so much... its actually worked!
At least, I did the dd then stuck the usb drive in the PC and it booted from it and has given me a debian install screen "press f1 for help or enter to boot" great!
Thanks CptnHarlock. I tried your cunning plan, and I'd seen rawrite before but in the docs it only mentioned floppy dries... and when I tried it and I said drive 'e' it spewed out:
"Drive was E; must be A or B"
So... looks like it won't work. Unless there's a way to make ti appear as A or B instead, perhaps? More ideas?
Gee, thanks, hadn't thought of that one.
Come on.. how hard can it be to put the.img file onto a USB drive. There must be a Windows appliction to do that out there SOMEWHERE???!!! Its not like its technically impossible - there's obviously a Linux application that can do it.
Here's why this is so important to me: most new computers, especially laptops, don't come with (internal) floppy drives. Mine doesn't have an (internal) CD drive either. I've got a big 512MB USB drive though. And a broadband Internet connection. All I want to do is install Linux... please....
Okay... so finally I was going to take the linux plunge with this. I don't want to use a CD okay, so don't go and suggest I do. I want to boot from a usb drive with a minimal install and download packages i want over the net.
I want to gunzip the boot.img.gz directly onto my usb drive and then boot from that. As per the instructions at: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.ht ml
But how the hell do i get the boot.img.gz onto the usb drive? I could do it if I was already running linux apparently, but I'm not. Any ideas? I can gunzip it fine, but I need to write it directly to the usb drive. From what I can find, there's no program which can currently do that in windows. Th e catch 22 is that i would need linux first to do it.
If anyone can please,please help tell me how to write the.img to a usb drive using windows then please please do! That's currently the only thing stopping me using linux.
This player is extremley similar to my Muzio (www.muzio.co.kr) player, which also has an OLED display (in fact, Jens one looks like the same one running on slightly updated software). Same button combination too. The Muzio is great - 512MB memory, line-in, direct MP3 encoding, FM radio, voice recording. BUT big drawback - the OLED display is shockingly bad. You can hardly see it at all, when at full brightness, in bright sunlight. Very annoying. Apart from this, I'd recommend the Muzio, but the Jen looks more stylish... and you get a free mirror!!!
Slashdot Mirror
My computer draws just 15W of power, and my screen 20W. I suggest you get a more energy efficient computer.
... which doesn't mean that there's unlimited supply.
The same will happen with nuclear. Our estimates of nuclear cost are based around our current low demand for nuclear energy. As supply increases dramatically as governments attempt to switch to nuclear due to peak oil, so the cost of nuclear increases. Uranium is also a non-renewable resource faced with the same fate as oil. We will reach peak uranium production and prices will rise dramatically.
THE answer is with renewables which don't face physically-determined production peaks. Yes, we need a *lot* of solar and wind power, but that's what we have to do. And yes, we'll also have to reduce our demand for energy.
I have a Pentium M ULV (ultra low voltage) 1GHz laptop (much faster than a 1GHz desktop, more like 1.6GHz) which is fantastic. It draws 10... count them 10W of power on average with the screen turned off. With screen on, it draws 14W. But I don't need the screen, because I have it connected to a 19" flat screen drawing another 30W.
So, with my external wireless keyboard and mouse included (with rechargeable batteries) I have a 19" desktop drawing just 40W of power.
Oh, and I use one of those little wallsocket things that tells me how many watts I'm drawing. That's how I know.
I leave it turned on 24-7. No need to turn it off at all.
And now, I'm going to use a neat little gizmo to turn my USB 2 port into a second VGA port, and then have another 18.1" monitor (which draws about 30 watts).
10+30+30 = 70 Watts total.
BTW, its the Acer Travelmate C111TCi.
Four months ago I decided to switch my laptop from Windows to *nix so I could have the same OS on my laptop and home server, following various security breaches (read:hacked to death) on the server in the past. After failing with FreeBSD and various small Linux distros which I wanted to install off a USB drive rather than CD, I finally decided on Fedora Core 3. Results: - video, audio, mouse, trackpad, keyboard work - annoying problems ejecting USB drives where it says it can't eject because its being used, even though it isn't (intentionally anyway) - got wifi working after about an hour's work - took over 2 weeks to get the winmodem working, following many emails and patches and various other bits and bobs. God knows how my gran would ever be able to get that working! - tried to get the pen-tablet bit working, but gave up after an hour. may try again in the future, but to be honest i dont use it much anyway - can't get sleep/suspend/hibernate to work. *very* annoying. spent about 3 hours or so with no luck. - can't get it so when I put a monitor in the VGA port I can toggle between that one, the laptop one and both together. haven't spend much time on this yet though, but *very* annoying - gui woes. originally just used gnome but installed kde for kate (php editing) and konqueror because gnome's file browser is so terrible and unconfigurable. but i still have to run gnome because kde keeps crashing on me, can't get it to work - openoffice doesn't open Access .mdb files. Very annoying. openoffice 2 beta keeps crashing and giving annoying 'recover file' dialog at startup
- less polish than windows
- programs, such as a file manager or firefox take longer to load than with windows
- program updates: I use yum to install all FC3 updates. but i only want updates which are security related - how can I set this? doesn't seem to be a way at all. also, on dial-up, its *extremely* annoying to have to download an entire program just for a minor update, rather than simply downloading a patch. This is a *major* problem for me as downloads take an age, and yum keeps wanting to yum more and more
- copy and paste doesn't always work, e.g. if i copy something in firefox then close firefox and paste in some other app there's nothing in the clipboard
So, in general, on my laptop, Windows was a better choice and there's no way I'd recommend Linux to my gran yet. In fact, I bought my girlfriend an iBook this month, and she loves it. And I also love the way you just close the lid and boom, its asleep. open, and its away. none of that yet with my linux.
Dog darn it... I stopped the install process and now I can't get the bloody thing to work again. Every time I try it just doesn't notice the usb drive there. Definitely bed time now though
What I did (and it seems to have worked so far, at least to boot) is download the img.gz file, un gz'ed it, then: dd if=c:\documents\downloads\boot.img\boot.img of=\\.\e: bs=1440k It took about 2 minutes to finish then told me: 87+1 records in 87+1 records out There weren't any errors displayed :)
I'll let you know how the rest of the install goes... although I should really be going to bed soon!
Thank you so much... its actually worked! At least, I did the dd then stuck the usb drive in the PC and it booted from it and has given me a debian install screen "press f1 for help or enter to boot" great!
Thanks CptnHarlock. I tried your cunning plan, and I'd seen rawrite before but in the docs it only mentioned floppy dries... and when I tried it and I said drive 'e' it spewed out: "Drive was E; must be A or B" So... looks like it won't work. Unless there's a way to make ti appear as A or B instead, perhaps? More ideas?
Did I mention I only have an external CD drive and whenever I've tried to use it before I've had all kinds of problems?
Gee, thanks, hadn't thought of that one. Come on.. how hard can it be to put the .img file onto a USB drive. There must be a Windows appliction to do that out there SOMEWHERE???!!! Its not like its technically impossible - there's obviously a Linux application that can do it.
Here's why this is so important to me: most new computers, especially laptops, don't come with (internal) floppy drives. Mine doesn't have an (internal) CD drive either. I've got a big 512MB USB drive though. And a broadband Internet connection. All I want to do is install Linux... please....
I want to gunzip the boot.img.gz directly onto my usb drive and then boot from that. As per the instructions at: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.ht ml
But how the hell do i get the boot.img.gz onto the usb drive? I could do it if I was already running linux apparently, but I'm not. Any ideas? I can gunzip it fine, but I need to write it directly to the usb drive. From what I can find, there's no program which can currently do that in windows. Th e catch 22 is that i would need linux first to do it. If anyone can please,please help tell me how to write the .img to a usb drive using windows then please please do! That's currently the only thing stopping me using linux.
This player is extremley similar to my Muzio (www.muzio.co.kr) player, which also has an OLED display (in fact, Jens one looks like the same one running on slightly updated software). Same button combination too. The Muzio is great - 512MB memory, line-in, direct MP3 encoding, FM radio, voice recording. BUT big drawback - the OLED display is shockingly bad. You can hardly see it at all, when at full brightness, in bright sunlight. Very annoying. Apart from this, I'd recommend the Muzio, but the Jen looks more stylish... and you get a free mirror!!!