And corporations like to keep things simple. Why have two distributions (one for the desktops, one for the servers) when one could do the job? This is where Ubuntu outshines.
The last time I looked, two or more is actually rather common, and not just Linux. I don't run the Windows server distributions as my desktop OS, even though they have similar (or identical) cores. The same thing for Apple. It's an apples/oranges argument. I really don't need office applications/games/etc. on my servers, but I don't need server applications on my desktops. You need capabilities for a server that you may - and in most cases, most definitely - not want on an office desktop. Businesses are rather used to this, because it is simpler. My own experience has been that there's a "standard" desktop that IT will support, and then there's the servers. They don't have to be identical, because it's often the case that the server people aren't the ones supporting the desktops, and vice versa.
At some point, it might be useful to think of other methods of landing probes. Not all of the scientifically interesting areas are going to be near easy-to-land on sites, free of large rocks or unexpected features. In order to get to them, probes are going to have to land on rough terrain, or be able to move there. Which ought to pose some nice challenges for the engineers designing these probes.
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived.
Which have also jumped markedly in price. Corn, wheat, and rice are all running at record or near-record highs in their prices. So your other libations will also jump in price.
Try the Baen Free Library over at Baen.com They have a lot of the old SF authors, as well as many of the newer ones. Doesn't cost you anything, and if you find an author you like, you can buy them. No DRM.
Getting back to the topic, let's not forget his voice work in "Cats & Dogs" as the Mastiff in charge.
Well, that too.:-D However, there are large areas of the US (I live in the center of one) where due to population sparsity as well as government regulations, cell phone towers simply do not exist - and won't for the foreseeable future. As you also pointed out, people want cable/DSL. "Wireless broadband" has turned out to have some problems as well, so the wires aren't going to disappear soon. I sat through one of the early demo's of speech recognition technology, and heard the prediction that "within the next 5 years" this would mean that we wouldn't have to use keyboards to work on a computer. It's been twenty years, and I still have to use one, and I keep hearing that it'll be gone within the next 5 years.
FTA: First, it seems, there is a core technology requirement: there must be some enduring advantage in the old technology that is not entirely supplanted by the new.
This is what keeps a lot of "old" technology going. Over the past 30 years, I've seen the predicted demises of printed books, keyboard-entry word processing, land-line phone systems, and so on. Yet, each of them seems to still be chugging along. e-books are here, but, as it turns out they have lacks when it comes to the readability and portability, as well as being usable in many environments. Keyboard entry word processing was supposed to have been supplanted long since by voice recognition technology, which is another technology which always seems to be "5 or 10 years away". Cell phones were supposed to supplant all land-line phones, but it turns out there are places you can't get a signal, and you can also do a lot of other things with that land line that you can't do with a cell. Each of these supposed supplantive technologies turned out to have issues that the "old" tech didn't have. It doesn't mean that the new wasn't useful, but in terms of supplanting the old, it didn't happen.
All I'm doing is suggesting you remove your foot from your mouth. BTW, it wasn't just math that put a man on the moon - it was technology. There is a difference between not needing or desiring every new piece of technology and "not wanting to learn."
The older generations, 40+ have no concept of technology and most of them don't want to.
Yup, any day now you youngsters are going to figure out how to put a man on the moon! I also hear tell that some of you think it's possible to send moving pictures using radio waves. Durn kids! Stop reading those pulp magazines, they'll rot your brains!
After offering the job to two others, who turned it down flat because it didn't pay enough, he then re-arranged the job and dropped the salary by 10-12K and hired a fresh-out. Personally I never thought it had to do with managerial or supervisor experience (that was never requested)--he probably decided he didn't want to pay a fee to the employment agency that I had been sent through. He just wanted something cheaper.
This isn't a situation limited to IT. A long time ago I interviewed for one job, and thought I had it nailed. I didn't get it. A friend of mine who worked there told me that I'd "asked for too much money." I had to scratch my head about that, since I didn't think I was being unreasonable! As it turns out, my friend told me that this company liked to hire young, inexperienced people right out of college for a pittance. Of course, the problem was that as soon as those people realized they couldn't live on that salary, they were out the door! Which was what drove my friend to eventually leave. As he told me, "I got tired of having my shop down for half the year, because we were busy either training the new people, or looking for them. We'd get 6 months of work out of them before they left, and we'd have to start all over again. I just couldn't get it through to HR that we were better off hiring people at a living salary, and keeping them, than what we were doing."
My favorite HR screwup was when we'd specifically recruited someone. They were highly skilled, able to hit the ground running, someone who would fill a position we desperately needed filled. Two weeks went by without seeing their application. My boss called them to ask why they hadn't applied, and was told "I did! I dropped it off right after we talked!" A quick phone call to HR found it was there - they'd "filed it" because the person "wasn't qualified for the position." Some really nasty things got said, and after that, all applications for our department came directly to us!"
I don't know if you can say "always will be" 30 years in the future, but I'll admit it seems that way. I remember the same stories back in the 70's, and yes, we were supposed to be building our first commercial fusion plants right about now.
I have to wonder if other approaches, or a look at possibly some new ones wouldn't be a better idea. It seems that the constant with that 30 years is that it always involves "a bigger tokamak than we have now."
When broadband becomes available? This is likely to be never, unless forced by a state or federal regulators. The sad fact is that the less population density, the less likely it is that any company is going to invest in the infrastructure needed to bring broadband into that area. Fiber or wire costs, as does the various switches, repeaters, and so on. If you have to run long distances to serve a few hundred people, then it's a losing proposition. For example, the area I currently live in has an average village size of 500 people, and there's a minimum of 12 miles between villages. I'm fortunate enough to have access to DSL, but that only came in two years ago, and is very limited as to where it runs. Cable system? The local cable company has trouble just getting basic service to people, and has no plans on adding Internet service to their mix. No, none of the major cable firms have any interest in expanding into this area, since there aren't enough people to make it worth their while. Wireless? Forget it. We (due to various regulations) don't have cell towers, and the chances of ever getting any cell service here ranges from slim to none. Satellite is an option, but having been an installer of those systems in the past, it's not a great answer. It's expensive, has weather issues, high lag times, and depends on getting a clear line of sight - which can be a major problem in some areas.
This area is not unique with these problems. I know, because I've lived in various places around this country. You can find a lot of rural areas with the same problems. It's great when you live near a population center and can have a choice of broadband providers, or get broadband. But if you don't, your choices rapidly become spending a lot of money on a somewhat satisfactory system, or dial-up. That is not likely to change anytime soon.
Exactly. Most computers these days are in the hands of people who do not understand that the hardware and the OS are separate items. Which is why the average computer user doesn't see the cost of Windows - it's built into their purchase price. They might choose Linux over Windows if they were forced to buy the OS separately from the hardware.
That said, there are moves into the retail market by Linux computers. They have the advantage of being significantly cheaper than the equivalent Windows versions. I've found that if you give most people the choice between computers, they'll take the cheap one every time. If it can browse the web, check their e-mail, play their music, and so on, they're happy.
So, clearly, cancer does not work the same way in humans and mice.
You're mistaking treatment with mechanisms. It turns out the basic mechanisms in cancer development are similar across species. The complete picture is still not known - which is why the "War on Cancer" turns out to have not produced the "cures" that were expected back in the seventies. Cancer is a generic term, covering a wide range of individual and different diseases. Understanding the biology behind it is what has been a slow, painstaking process.
A lot of cancers appear in senescence. That is, as a given organism gets older, it is more likely to develop cancer. For a human, that's in their latter 40's and 50's. For a mouse, it's around 15 months. In a population, there is going to be genetic diversity. One of the "problems" you point out, that drugs that work well with mice don't always work well with humans, can be traced to the fact that the mice used are genetically identical (they're bred that way), while humans aren't. That means that a single dosage (x amount per Kg), you will have a range of potential reactions - some people will react well, some won't at all, and some will show toxicity.
The nice thing about using fish has been pointed out. You can use a lot of them, they have a short lifespan, and you can even use a genetically diverse population. This is very useful when attempting to determine the effects of something on cancer development and incidence.
If Vista is so terrible, how come every single retail shop sells it first and foremost?
Umm, pretty much because Microsoft is forcing them to. And, yes, Microsoft does get to say when you can or can't sell something.
OEMs don't get forced into buying Vista after all, and it's not like Macs aren't selling either so it's clearly not just a Windows thing.
You have no idea of what an OEM agreement is, do you? Yes, OEMs are forced into buying Vista. Either that, or they forfeit all the nice marketing support, pricing, and other goodies that Microsoft gives - and that amounts to a lot of money. Think I'm kidding? Just try to buy an XP computer from Dell or HP after June 30'th. That's the cut-off date set by Microsoft for OEM sales.
So giving away product increases sales? If the sale price is zero how do you make money?
Because you're overlooking an important point. You're talking about the "product" existing in two different formats. One, the electronic version, is being given away. The other, the "dead tree" version, is being sold. The production costs of the first are minimal compared to the second. There is also a real difference in the user experience and quality between the two. Giving away the first product leads to interest in it, and increases the likelihood of someone purchasing the second product.
Publishers already "give away" their product. Go to any library, and you can check out a book "for free." This can lead to interest in a given author, and make the people who read the "free" book look for, and purchase, other books by that author. This is well-known, and has been for years. The only difference is that it is now being extended to electronic media. In effect, the "free" stuff is a loss-leader. You're not making your money off the free stuff, but to increase the sales of the stuff you are making money from.
He's not the first author to notice that "giving away" (quotes intended) your books via the Internet leads to increased sales. This might be called an extension of what Baen discovered several years ago. Let people read your books "for free," don't stick restrictions on them, and quite a number of them will end up purchasing those books and others by the author.
I think he's one of the first to really show that encouraging "piracy" actually leads to increased book sales. Obviously, you have to be a good writer in the first place - if your stuff sucks, it doesn't matter whether you give it away or not - but if you are, it'll encourage people to read what you're writing, and buy your books. Somehow, I think that this will get lost on the "suits" at the major publishers, though.
we want to move forward, to adopt a standard -give some time to deprecated formats by supporting them till some time (a deadline), and provide conversion tools for free.
Yes, we'd like to have a standard, and one which is readable for a long period of time - which is the point of the whole ODF standard in the first place. The problem with the proprietary formats is that they have every reason to change and a considerable number of reasons to drop support for "deprecated" formats.
I used to work for a medical transcription unit, and we generated over 250K documents annually. It is a non-trivial exercise to convert those documents from one format to another. That doesn't include the loss of formatting which occurs, and there are instances where the formatting is important. This loss occurs even when moving between versions of the same software - just take a Word 97 document and translate it to 2K and then to 2003, and you'll see it.
Your idea is feasible if it's a one-time function. That is, there is a standard format which will be used for a considerable length of time, and you need to translate your older documents into that standard. If you're going to have to do it ever two or three years, it's going to be a non-starter.
When I lived in an urban area, I never went near a library. I could get broadband, there were lot of bookstores, and there were movie rental places on almost every corner. A couple of years ago I moved to a very rural area and rediscovered the joy of going to a library. There was no broadband in the area. The nearest bookstore was 75 miles away. The local video rental had about 150 titles. So any option to use the Internet, buy books, or rent movies was limited, to put it mildly. Then I visited the library. Broadband connection. Books to choose from, and if they didn't have it, they could get it. A huge selection of movie titles. All for free!
I still live in this area, and we now have broadband, but the book stores are still far away, and movie rental options still suck. So I still visit my local library regularly. I get to check out books, and if I do like them, I'll go ahead and order them from one of the on-line retailers for a personal copy. If I don't like it, I'm only out some time.
In this area at least, the library is a valuable resource, and one that's there when you need it. If you don't have the money, or thing like broadband, bookstores, or movie rentals simply aren't there, the library is. Even if you aren't in need of it now, it doesn't mean it's irrelevant or useless.
How much non-renewable energy does it take to produce each solar tree
If that were the only energy concern, then you'd have a point. It probably does take more energy in the beginning to produce it. However, the better (and more relevant) measure is total energy consumpption over its lifespan. That is, compare the manufacturing energy + energy use from grid + maintenance (replacement bulbs, etc.) over its projected lifepan to a standard lighting system. If it turns out that the overall energy used is less than that of a standard one, you come out ahead. You could also do cost analysis, but any pilot system has a much higher cost than production systems.
What rather makes a difference is what operating systems new PC's use to come with and how well marketed this OS is. I don't really see a paradigm shift here among OEM's
The paradigm shift has already occurred. 5 years ago, if you wanted to buy a desktop with Linux pre-installed, you either built it yourself, bought a custom-built from your local computer shop, or dug through the back areas of a limited number of computer suppliers. Today, I can go into a Wal-Mart and get one off the shelves, or pick up the phone and order one from any of several major OEMs. It's no longer a case of being forced to pay the "Windows tax" even if you weren't going to use Windows. What's even more impressive is the sales figures - and this is likely to grow.
This doesn't mean that I think that in 2008 Windows will collapse and Linux will supplant it. I do think that this is one of the best opportunities for Linux in quite some time. You have a series of blunders by the dominant desktop OS provider, combined with an OSS alternative that is finally easy enough, with enough applications, for the average user to use. What this means is that you're going to see Linux start to increase its user base, as well as its mindshare.
I made no such assumptions in my post. As to "everyone running around wetting themselves", you don't need everyone, just a significant portion - which is exactly what would happen.
Even if only a few people were armed, it still wouldn't change the situation. You have a very confusing situation, you have to rapidly identify who the "bad" one is - and if several people pull out weapons, that choice difficulty factor just went up, and you have to shoot accurately.
I have actually been put through situations like that. It's amazing how often people who can score perfectly on ranges can suddenly miss a point-blank shot when chaos erupts, or who will do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
My own personal opinion on gun control is that you should know what you're doing, and how to use a gun before you own one. However, the idea that "if only everyone was allowed to carry guns, this would never have happened." is pure crap.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times.
Ah, I see. In your scenario, once said gunman started in, the others would have immediately whipped out their own weapons and shot him dead, thus saving the day.
Nice fantasy. Unfortunately, reality is a far different thing. When bullets start actually flying, there is mass confusion. Great, everyone has weapons? OK, who's the bad guy? Can you identify them? Can you accurately shoot while being shot at? Can you keep your head when everyone is screaming, running around, there's a mass of people milling around or rushing by you? There is a BIG difference between that situation and whatever you can do on a nice target range or out hunting. It's something the military has known for years. Just look at the figures over the years - in some conflicts over a million rounds have been expended to kill one enemy, and up to a third of soldiers never fired their weapons in the middle of a firefight. I guarantee you every one of them had training, but in the real situation, some froze, and just about everyone's accuracy went to hell.
What would more likely have happened is a mass crossfire from panicked shooters, with a much higher death toll, and a series of murder trials after the fact.
While this is interesting, I have to wonder about the cost of these batteries. I've seen many of these stories before, about some wonderful electric vehicle that's going to replace the gas-burner real soon. Except that the batteries needed cost more than any vehicle currently on the road. But it'll be practical "as soon as we get the costs down!"
I'll get excited when someone announces a reasonably priced, high-density, quick recharge battery. Until then, I'm going to regard it as yet another prototype - an interesting idea, but one of many.
You also have honest businesses who should know better, and still make it onto spammer lists. Ziff-Davis is a good example. They were using a set of mailers whose headers would trip off a spam filter. I could deal with that, but not their behavior. I signed up for one newsletter - I did not ask for the 20 other newsletters they thoughtfully decided to send me. It took me the better part of a week to get off of most of the mailing lists, but every time I responded to something in the one newsletter I asked for, I was right back on all the lists. That's why I don't subscribe to any their stuff anymore, and yes, they are on my spam list. Yes, I know they're legitimate, they publish some well-regarded magazines, and all that. But damn, they just had to keep shoving stuff I didn't ask for at me, and the annoyance factor just got to be too much.
The loss of the astronauts serves as a reminder that exploration is dangerous - and complacency kills. In absolute terms, or even as a percentage, the exploration of space has been made with remarkably fewer deaths than other explorations. The body count for exploring the world, the seas, and the polar regions dwarfs that of space exploration.
It's when we forget just how dangerous it is, that we get sharply reminded. Even more unfortunately, when the people who sent them there forget it. Even with the best of preparation, the absolute attention to detail, something you didn't think of can go wrong, or something can go wrong anyways. It's when you did think of it, blew off something, or just didn't bother and it went wrong that it's inexcusable.
The sad reality is that people are going to die exploring space. The goal is to make sure that they don't die because the people who sent them were complacent and more interested in CYA than in doing it right. Which is the lesson to take from the shuttle tragedies.
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And corporations like to keep things simple. Why have two distributions (one for the desktops, one for the servers) when one could do the job? This is where Ubuntu outshines.
The last time I looked, two or more is actually rather common, and not just Linux. I don't run the Windows server distributions as my desktop OS, even though they have similar (or identical) cores. The same thing for Apple. It's an apples/oranges argument. I really don't need office applications/games/etc. on my servers, but I don't need server applications on my desktops. You need capabilities for a server that you may - and in most cases, most definitely - not want on an office desktop. Businesses are rather used to this, because it is simpler. My own experience has been that there's a "standard" desktop that IT will support, and then there's the servers. They don't have to be identical, because it's often the case that the server people aren't the ones supporting the desktops, and vice versa.
At some point, it might be useful to think of other methods of landing probes. Not all of the scientifically interesting areas are going to be near easy-to-land on sites, free of large rocks or unexpected features. In order to get to them, probes are going to have to land on rough terrain, or be able to move there. Which ought to pose some nice challenges for the engineers designing these probes.
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived.
Which have also jumped markedly in price. Corn, wheat, and rice are all running at record or near-record highs in their prices. So your other libations will also jump in price.
Try the Baen Free Library over at Baen.com They have a lot of the old SF authors, as well as many of the newer ones. Doesn't cost you anything, and if you find an author you like, you can buy them. No DRM.
Getting back to the topic, let's not forget his voice work in "Cats & Dogs" as the Mastiff in charge.
Maybe because the US cell phone market sucks?
Well, that too. :-D However, there are large areas of the US (I live in the center of one) where due to population sparsity as well as government regulations, cell phone towers simply do not exist - and won't for the foreseeable future. As you also pointed out, people want cable/DSL. "Wireless broadband" has turned out to have some problems as well, so the wires aren't going to disappear soon. I sat through one of the early demo's of speech recognition technology, and heard the prediction that "within the next 5 years" this would mean that we wouldn't have to use keyboards to work on a computer. It's been twenty years, and I still have to use one, and I keep hearing that it'll be gone within the next 5 years.
FTA: First, it seems, there is a core technology requirement: there must be some enduring advantage in the old technology that is not entirely supplanted by the new.
This is what keeps a lot of "old" technology going. Over the past 30 years, I've seen the predicted demises of printed books, keyboard-entry word processing, land-line phone systems, and so on. Yet, each of them seems to still be chugging along. e-books are here, but, as it turns out they have lacks when it comes to the readability and portability, as well as being usable in many environments. Keyboard entry word processing was supposed to have been supplanted long since by voice recognition technology, which is another technology which always seems to be "5 or 10 years away". Cell phones were supposed to supplant all land-line phones, but it turns out there are places you can't get a signal, and you can also do a lot of other things with that land line that you can't do with a cell. Each of these supposed supplantive technologies turned out to have issues that the "old" tech didn't have. It doesn't mean that the new wasn't useful, but in terms of supplanting the old, it didn't happen.
All I'm doing is suggesting you remove your foot from your mouth. BTW, it wasn't just math that put a man on the moon - it was technology. There is a difference between not needing or desiring every new piece of technology and "not wanting to learn."
The older generations, 40+ have no concept of technology and most of them don't want to.
Yup, any day now you youngsters are going to figure out how to put a man on the moon! I also hear tell that some of you think it's possible to send moving pictures using radio waves. Durn kids! Stop reading those pulp magazines, they'll rot your brains!
Now get off my lawn!
After offering the job to two others, who turned it down flat because it didn't pay enough, he then re-arranged the job and dropped the salary by 10-12K and hired a fresh-out. Personally I never thought it had to do with managerial or supervisor experience (that was never requested)--he probably decided he didn't want to pay a fee to the employment agency that I had been sent through. He just wanted something cheaper.
This isn't a situation limited to IT. A long time ago I interviewed for one job, and thought I had it nailed. I didn't get it. A friend of mine who worked there told me that I'd "asked for too much money." I had to scratch my head about that, since I didn't think I was being unreasonable! As it turns out, my friend told me that this company liked to hire young, inexperienced people right out of college for a pittance. Of course, the problem was that as soon as those people realized they couldn't live on that salary, they were out the door! Which was what drove my friend to eventually leave. As he told me, "I got tired of having my shop down for half the year, because we were busy either training the new people, or looking for them. We'd get 6 months of work out of them before they left, and we'd have to start all over again. I just couldn't get it through to HR that we were better off hiring people at a living salary, and keeping them, than what we were doing."
My favorite HR screwup was when we'd specifically recruited someone. They were highly skilled, able to hit the ground running, someone who would fill a position we desperately needed filled. Two weeks went by without seeing their application. My boss called them to ask why they hadn't applied, and was told "I did! I dropped it off right after we talked!" A quick phone call to HR found it was there - they'd "filed it" because the person "wasn't qualified for the position." Some really nasty things got said, and after that, all applications for our department came directly to us!"
I don't know if you can say "always will be" 30 years in the future, but I'll admit it seems that way. I remember the same stories back in the 70's, and yes, we were supposed to be building our first commercial fusion plants right about now.
I have to wonder if other approaches, or a look at possibly some new ones wouldn't be a better idea. It seems that the constant with that 30 years is that it always involves "a bigger tokamak than we have now."
When broadband becomes available? This is likely to be never, unless forced by a state or federal regulators. The sad fact is that the less population density, the less likely it is that any company is going to invest in the infrastructure needed to bring broadband into that area. Fiber or wire costs, as does the various switches, repeaters, and so on. If you have to run long distances to serve a few hundred people, then it's a losing proposition. For example, the area I currently live in has an average village size of 500 people, and there's a minimum of 12 miles between villages. I'm fortunate enough to have access to DSL, but that only came in two years ago, and is very limited as to where it runs. Cable system? The local cable company has trouble just getting basic service to people, and has no plans on adding Internet service to their mix. No, none of the major cable firms have any interest in expanding into this area, since there aren't enough people to make it worth their while. Wireless? Forget it. We (due to various regulations) don't have cell towers, and the chances of ever getting any cell service here ranges from slim to none. Satellite is an option, but having been an installer of those systems in the past, it's not a great answer. It's expensive, has weather issues, high lag times, and depends on getting a clear line of sight - which can be a major problem in some areas.
This area is not unique with these problems. I know, because I've lived in various places around this country. You can find a lot of rural areas with the same problems. It's great when you live near a population center and can have a choice of broadband providers, or get broadband. But if you don't, your choices rapidly become spending a lot of money on a somewhat satisfactory system, or dial-up. That is not likely to change anytime soon.
Exactly. Most computers these days are in the hands of people who do not understand that the hardware and the OS are separate items. Which is why the average computer user doesn't see the cost of Windows - it's built into their purchase price. They might choose Linux over Windows if they were forced to buy the OS separately from the hardware.
That said, there are moves into the retail market by Linux computers. They have the advantage of being significantly cheaper than the equivalent Windows versions. I've found that if you give most people the choice between computers, they'll take the cheap one every time. If it can browse the web, check their e-mail, play their music, and so on, they're happy.
So, clearly, cancer does not work the same way in humans and mice.
You're mistaking treatment with mechanisms. It turns out the basic mechanisms in cancer development are similar across species. The complete picture is still not known - which is why the "War on Cancer" turns out to have not produced the "cures" that were expected back in the seventies. Cancer is a generic term, covering a wide range of individual and different diseases. Understanding the biology behind it is what has been a slow, painstaking process.
A lot of cancers appear in senescence. That is, as a given organism gets older, it is more likely to develop cancer. For a human, that's in their latter 40's and 50's. For a mouse, it's around 15 months. In a population, there is going to be genetic diversity. One of the "problems" you point out, that drugs that work well with mice don't always work well with humans, can be traced to the fact that the mice used are genetically identical (they're bred that way), while humans aren't. That means that a single dosage (x amount per Kg), you will have a range of potential reactions - some people will react well, some won't at all, and some will show toxicity.
The nice thing about using fish has been pointed out. You can use a lot of them, they have a short lifespan, and you can even use a genetically diverse population. This is very useful when attempting to determine the effects of something on cancer development and incidence.
If Vista is so terrible, how come every single retail shop sells it first and foremost?
Umm, pretty much because Microsoft is forcing them to. And, yes, Microsoft does get to say when you can or can't sell something.
OEMs don't get forced into buying Vista after all, and it's not like Macs aren't selling either so it's clearly not just a Windows thing.
You have no idea of what an OEM agreement is, do you? Yes, OEMs are forced into buying Vista. Either that, or they forfeit all the nice marketing support, pricing, and other goodies that Microsoft gives - and that amounts to a lot of money. Think I'm kidding? Just try to buy an XP computer from Dell or HP after June 30'th. That's the cut-off date set by Microsoft for OEM sales.
So giving away product increases sales? If the sale price is zero how do you make money?
Because you're overlooking an important point. You're talking about the "product" existing in two different formats. One, the electronic version, is being given away. The other, the "dead tree" version, is being sold. The production costs of the first are minimal compared to the second. There is also a real difference in the user experience and quality between the two. Giving away the first product leads to interest in it, and increases the likelihood of someone purchasing the second product.
Publishers already "give away" their product. Go to any library, and you can check out a book "for free." This can lead to interest in a given author, and make the people who read the "free" book look for, and purchase, other books by that author. This is well-known, and has been for years. The only difference is that it is now being extended to electronic media. In effect, the "free" stuff is a loss-leader. You're not making your money off the free stuff, but to increase the sales of the stuff you are making money from.
He's not the first author to notice that "giving away" (quotes intended) your books via the Internet leads to increased sales. This might be called an extension of what Baen discovered several years ago. Let people read your books "for free," don't stick restrictions on them, and quite a number of them will end up purchasing those books and others by the author.
I think he's one of the first to really show that encouraging "piracy" actually leads to increased book sales. Obviously, you have to be a good writer in the first place - if your stuff sucks, it doesn't matter whether you give it away or not - but if you are, it'll encourage people to read what you're writing, and buy your books. Somehow, I think that this will get lost on the "suits" at the major publishers, though.
we want to move forward, to adopt a standard -give some time to deprecated formats by supporting them till some time (a deadline), and provide conversion tools for free.
Yes, we'd like to have a standard, and one which is readable for a long period of time - which is the point of the whole ODF standard in the first place. The problem with the proprietary formats is that they have every reason to change and a considerable number of reasons to drop support for "deprecated" formats.
I used to work for a medical transcription unit, and we generated over 250K documents annually. It is a non-trivial exercise to convert those documents from one format to another. That doesn't include the loss of formatting which occurs, and there are instances where the formatting is important. This loss occurs even when moving between versions of the same software - just take a Word 97 document and translate it to 2K and then to 2003, and you'll see it.
Your idea is feasible if it's a one-time function. That is, there is a standard format which will be used for a considerable length of time, and you need to translate your older documents into that standard. If you're going to have to do it ever two or three years, it's going to be a non-starter.
When I lived in an urban area, I never went near a library. I could get broadband, there were lot of bookstores, and there were movie rental places on almost every corner. A couple of years ago I moved to a very rural area and rediscovered the joy of going to a library. There was no broadband in the area. The nearest bookstore was 75 miles away. The local video rental had about 150 titles. So any option to use the Internet, buy books, or rent movies was limited, to put it mildly. Then I visited the library. Broadband connection. Books to choose from, and if they didn't have it, they could get it. A huge selection of movie titles. All for free!
I still live in this area, and we now have broadband, but the book stores are still far away, and movie rental options still suck. So I still visit my local library regularly. I get to check out books, and if I do like them, I'll go ahead and order them from one of the on-line retailers for a personal copy. If I don't like it, I'm only out some time.
In this area at least, the library is a valuable resource, and one that's there when you need it. If you don't have the money, or thing like broadband, bookstores, or movie rentals simply aren't there, the library is. Even if you aren't in need of it now, it doesn't mean it's irrelevant or useless.
How much non-renewable energy does it take to produce each solar tree
If that were the only energy concern, then you'd have a point. It probably does take more energy in the beginning to produce it. However, the better (and more relevant) measure is total energy consumpption over its lifespan. That is, compare the manufacturing energy + energy use from grid + maintenance (replacement bulbs, etc.) over its projected lifepan to a standard lighting system. If it turns out that the overall energy used is less than that of a standard one, you come out ahead. You could also do cost analysis, but any pilot system has a much higher cost than production systems.
What rather makes a difference is what operating systems new PC's use to come with and how well marketed this OS is. I don't really see a paradigm shift here among OEM's
The paradigm shift has already occurred. 5 years ago, if you wanted to buy a desktop with Linux pre-installed, you either built it yourself, bought a custom-built from your local computer shop, or dug through the back areas of a limited number of computer suppliers. Today, I can go into a Wal-Mart and get one off the shelves, or pick up the phone and order one from any of several major OEMs. It's no longer a case of being forced to pay the "Windows tax" even if you weren't going to use Windows. What's even more impressive is the sales figures - and this is likely to grow.
This doesn't mean that I think that in 2008 Windows will collapse and Linux will supplant it. I do think that this is one of the best opportunities for Linux in quite some time. You have a series of blunders by the dominant desktop OS provider, combined with an OSS alternative that is finally easy enough, with enough applications, for the average user to use. What this means is that you're going to see Linux start to increase its user base, as well as its mindshare.
I made no such assumptions in my post. As to "everyone running around wetting themselves", you don't need everyone, just a significant portion - which is exactly what would happen.
Even if only a few people were armed, it still wouldn't change the situation. You have a very confusing situation, you have to rapidly identify who the "bad" one is - and if several people pull out weapons, that choice difficulty factor just went up, and you have to shoot accurately.
I have actually been put through situations like that. It's amazing how often people who can score perfectly on ranges can suddenly miss a point-blank shot when chaos erupts, or who will do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
My own personal opinion on gun control is that you should know what you're doing, and how to use a gun before you own one. However, the idea that "if only everyone was allowed to carry guns, this would never have happened." is pure crap.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times.
Ah, I see. In your scenario, once said gunman started in, the others would have immediately whipped out their own weapons and shot him dead, thus saving the day.
Nice fantasy. Unfortunately, reality is a far different thing. When bullets start actually flying, there is mass confusion. Great, everyone has weapons? OK, who's the bad guy? Can you identify them? Can you accurately shoot while being shot at? Can you keep your head when everyone is screaming, running around, there's a mass of people milling around or rushing by you? There is a BIG difference between that situation and whatever you can do on a nice target range or out hunting. It's something the military has known for years. Just look at the figures over the years - in some conflicts over a million rounds have been expended to kill one enemy, and up to a third of soldiers never fired their weapons in the middle of a firefight. I guarantee you every one of them had training, but in the real situation, some froze, and just about everyone's accuracy went to hell.
What would more likely have happened is a mass crossfire from panicked shooters, with a much higher death toll, and a series of murder trials after the fact.
While this is interesting, I have to wonder about the cost of these batteries. I've seen many of these stories before, about some wonderful electric vehicle that's going to replace the gas-burner real soon. Except that the batteries needed cost more than any vehicle currently on the road. But it'll be practical "as soon as we get the costs down!"
I'll get excited when someone announces a reasonably priced, high-density, quick recharge battery. Until then, I'm going to regard it as yet another prototype - an interesting idea, but one of many.
You also have honest businesses who should know better, and still make it onto spammer lists. Ziff-Davis is a good example. They were using a set of mailers whose headers would trip off a spam filter. I could deal with that, but not their behavior. I signed up for one newsletter - I did not ask for the 20 other newsletters they thoughtfully decided to send me. It took me the better part of a week to get off of most of the mailing lists, but every time I responded to something in the one newsletter I asked for, I was right back on all the lists. That's why I don't subscribe to any their stuff anymore, and yes, they are on my spam list. Yes, I know they're legitimate, they publish some well-regarded magazines, and all that. But damn, they just had to keep shoving stuff I didn't ask for at me, and the annoyance factor just got to be too much.
The loss of the astronauts serves as a reminder that exploration is dangerous - and complacency kills. In absolute terms, or even as a percentage, the exploration of space has been made with remarkably fewer deaths than other explorations. The body count for exploring the world, the seas, and the polar regions dwarfs that of space exploration.
It's when we forget just how dangerous it is, that we get sharply reminded. Even more unfortunately, when the people who sent them there forget it. Even with the best of preparation, the absolute attention to detail, something you didn't think of can go wrong, or something can go wrong anyways. It's when you did think of it, blew off something, or just didn't bother and it went wrong that it's inexcusable.
The sad reality is that people are going to die exploring space. The goal is to make sure that they don't die because the people who sent them were complacent and more interested in CYA than in doing it right. Which is the lesson to take from the shuttle tragedies.