Indeed, I use PINE as my daily mail client. I just don't need some fancy, overblown GUI monster which hogs most of my screen and eats away precious memory.
Funnily enough, even my s/o uses PINE instead of one of those cuddly, oh-so-user-friendly programs. Although she's no computer geek at all, she prefers ctrl-this and ctrl-that over aim-and-click.
You must have some strange definition of "quite happily"... Since running SuSE9.3 with the (back then) latest KDE, my laptop became dog slow cause its 256MB are always almost filled. Switching off the most unnecessary services (both, KDE and system services) didn't help much, though, but things at least got gradually better.
As a sidenote, SuSE9.3 war the last SuSE for me, although I was using it since old SuSE4.x days. For my own part, I welcome my new Debian overlords.
50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.
Now compare it to the energy density of Hydrogen compared to gasoline, and you will see what? (Oh, and mind you, we're talking about combustion engines -- not nuclear fusion. Just in case you let yourself be fooled by absolute numbers placed out of context again...)
Ever used so-called "bio diesel" (RME) instead of mineral-oil based diesel? Spotted a difference in consumption and gave a thought where that difference originated from?
Btw, hydrogen production is easy. We have plenty of deserts on this planet with hot sunny days, which are just perfect for all-solar powered hydrogen fabs. Just pump (even used) water there.
The problems were rather storage and transport of H2, which just doesn't like to be kept imprisoned and leaked out of the bottle. If that pellet stuff is working as advertised, that problem is solved.
So you'd be willing to take a 25%-33% pay cut to work shorter shifts? It's not about productivity, it's about being there for a lot of jobs.
You're missing the point.
Typical white collar jobs are *not* about sustained work outputting certain goods like a robot. Your power company is an example for that. The generators run all the time, it's not like we need slaves in treadmills for that these days (although with the rising oil prices we might get back to that...)
Same goes for the chef and the checkout guy.
I work in research. Paying me by the hour is basically a stupid thing, because there are days where I just sit there and don't come to the right conclusion, and others where I'm the most productive work horse you could imagine. In general, it evens out, so the pay-by-the-hour stuff works more or less in favor of both.
What, however, would be far more sensible is being paid by the project with a given deadline. Noone cares *when* you work and how much, as long as you meet the given deadline (or have a really, really good excuse for not being able to do the job). BTDT, and to me this is a far more realistic and appropriate paying model. It doesn't force me to get up at ridicule hours (which in term force me to go to bed during my most productive hours which happen to be between 10pm and 4am) just because some dipstick in the past defined that working hours have to be 9-to-5.
You, in term, seem to be entirely stuck to the 9-to-5 scenario as you're not able to imagine shifting hours where people actually work, when they work best. Of course there are jobs, where people demand attention all the time. Take your chef, for instance, or the supermarkez cashier. OTOH, there are people who *love* to get up at 5am and work from 6-12. Others love to go to bed at 6am and work from 10pm to 4am. So get rid of the fixed time schedule, productivity will rise, and in the end you even could think about reducing working hours from 8h to 6h while *not* cutting back on income -- which of course will never happen for obvious reasons.
Seriously though, the European 35-hour week is a disaster, they're having to get rid of it because they can't compete. Doesn't help that they just want to strike instead though.
What 35-hour week are you dreaming of? It was a wet dream of the unions back in the 1980s.
We used to have 38,5h/week in Germany, but this was gradually eroded during the last years of recession and now is around 41-42h/week.
Am I more productive now? Do I effectively contribute 4 additional hours of work per week? Not at all, cause in my very job I have times where 12h/day don't seem enough -- and others, where I just keep on reloading Slashdot.
Ever compared the productivity of a part-time employee who works like 4-5 hours a day (8-to-1, 9-to-1) with the productivity of a regular employee? You might be amazed to see that the part-time employee performs *at least* as much work as the regular employee, if not more.
So why stick to 8-10 hour shifts just because that was the working hours 100 years ago, even though it's completely brainless and not suiting modern "thinking jobs"?
Europe has decided to tax the hell out of gasoline, a decision the government can undo should there be a need
No, they can't. The money from that is cross-financing governmental retirement insurance and who knows what else. Plus, it's also subsidizing public transportation.
It is rather naive to think that the government could "undo" taxes whenever they want, especially if major parts of the budget rely on it. For example, in Germany mineral oil tax is the third biggest revenue after income tax and sales tax. (For those who don't believe this: check it out here)
This applies to driving automobiles as well. The roads aren't free.
Agreed. But, you know, with almost 1 Euro tax per liter fuel plus a cylinder-capacity-based car tax of up to 30 Euro per 0.1l depending on engine type and age plus a truck toll for those road killers weighing more than 12t, I would say that automobile drivers pretty much pay the infrastructure they use. At least in Germany.
Besides, also public transportation uses that very infrastructure. Last time I checked buses weren't using antigravity.
My s/o and I only commute 30km and 40km (i.e. 15/20km one way) per day. Although we live in an area which is known for its quite good (if not excellent) public transportation, we commute by car.
Yes, we could also use public transportation -- for the sake of extending a 15-25min travel by car to about 1-1.5h, because we don't live and work right next to the main radials of the PT network and therefore need to take and change buses.
Besides: also public transportation doesn't run with plain air. With energy prices raising also ticket prices will raise. They on average already doubled during the last 10 years -- just like fuel. So while the ticket prices *at the moment* suggest that it's cheaper than using the car, one must not forget that those ticket prices are raised on a yearly base and (at least in Germany) also heavily subsidized.
Sure, you often hear this from eco people. "Just use public transportation!". But how much would that cost, if it weren't subsidized / cross-financed through those insanely high mineral oil and eco taxes?
So it's easy to say "thank god I'm using public transportation", cause others pay parts of your ticket's price.
Btw: 1.49 EUR/liter (price we now pay in Germany) = 7.06 USD/gallon... Heck, and they complain about a mere $3/gl.
Basic installs work well but wander away from the pre-installed software and nightmare tangles often ensue.
Wait a minute, you did want to make a point for Windows here, didn't you... Cause that very same behavior is what drives Windows people insane: install something "non-standard" and in worst case the system breaks.
I tend to disagree on the configuration issues. When was the last time you indeed did configure a Windows machine from scratch? Those boxes come with Windows preinstalled and preconfigured, so obviously you don't need to set up basic things like video cards and mouse drivers. OTOH, Windows never ships with as much stuff as a generic Linux distro will slam on your hard drive -- in other words, how often do you configure a *mail server* or a *print server* for Windows?
And having installed SuSE9.3 recently, I can tell you that standard configuration takes the least time. Just let it detect your hardware settings, select what you want to install, and let it go for a few hours. It wasn't any uncomfortable than e.g. installing Windows -- especially since it didn't ask any questions during installing or asked for keypresses or anything else.
I don't believe I said that people should vote for the Democrats? Indeed a two party system is destined to converge into an identical-twin-party system, because they try to hit the majority public opinion. Having multiple parties, where no single party can get complete control, ensures that compromises will have to made across parties, and opinions.
It works only that way, if those different parties are of somewhat comparable strength, plus differ in enough points to be able to form *critical* and *objective* coalitions.
Look at the German system, for example. We do have multiple parties, of which are two dominant and two are just mere "helpers" who help the big ones to get over 50%. The others merely play any role, with the PDS being mostly an Ex-GDR phenomenon.
Now one might say: great, so the little party has influence. But in fact, that is not true as the recent "red-green" experiment (SPD and Green party) has shown. Also the other little fellow (FDP), although big in words, usually doesn't have a major influence on the political decisions.
After all, it's just about power. Losing power is bad, getting/keeping it is good. So in the end you again have a two-party system because the smaller parties -- for the sake of power -- just don't care about their former ideals anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean, of course, Windows Wista or Vindows Vista :)
...so "Zealous Zebra" will be the last? :)
Indeed, I use PINE as my daily mail client. I just don't need some fancy, overblown GUI monster which hogs most of my screen and eats away precious memory.
Funnily enough, even my s/o uses PINE instead of one of those cuddly, oh-so-user-friendly programs. Although she's no computer geek at all, she prefers ctrl-this and ctrl-that over aim-and-click.
Exactly.
As a sidenote, SuSE9.3 war the last SuSE for me, although I was using it since old SuSE4.x days. For my own part, I welcome my new Debian overlords.
Ever used so-called "bio diesel" (RME) instead of mineral-oil based diesel? Spotted a difference in consumption and gave a thought where that difference originated from?
Btw, hydrogen production is easy. We have plenty of deserts on this planet with hot sunny days, which are just perfect for all-solar powered hydrogen fabs. Just pump (even used) water there.
The problems were rather storage and transport of H2, which just doesn't like to be kept imprisoned and leaked out of the bottle. If that pellet stuff is working as advertised, that problem is solved.
Typical white collar jobs are *not* about sustained work outputting certain goods like a robot. Your power company is an example for that. The generators run all the time, it's not like we need slaves in treadmills for that these days (although with the rising oil prices we might get back to that...)
Same goes for the chef and the checkout guy.
I work in research. Paying me by the hour is basically a stupid thing, because there are days where I just sit there and don't come to the right conclusion, and others where I'm the most productive work horse you could imagine. In general, it evens out, so the pay-by-the-hour stuff works more or less in favor of both.
What, however, would be far more sensible is being paid by the project with a given deadline. Noone cares *when* you work and how much, as long as you meet the given deadline (or have a really, really good excuse for not being able to do the job). BTDT, and to me this is a far more realistic and appropriate paying model. It doesn't force me to get up at ridicule hours (which in term force me to go to bed during my most productive hours which happen to be between 10pm and 4am) just because some dipstick in the past defined that working hours have to be 9-to-5.
You, in term, seem to be entirely stuck to the 9-to-5 scenario as you're not able to imagine shifting hours where people actually work, when they work best. Of course there are jobs, where people demand attention all the time. Take your chef, for instance, or the supermarkez cashier. OTOH, there are people who *love* to get up at 5am and work from 6-12. Others love to go to bed at 6am and work from 10pm to 4am. So get rid of the fixed time schedule, productivity will rise, and in the end you even could think about reducing working hours from 8h to 6h while *not* cutting back on income -- which of course will never happen for obvious reasons.
We used to have 38,5h/week in Germany, but this was gradually eroded during the last years of recession and now is around 41-42h/week.
Am I more productive now? Do I effectively contribute 4 additional hours of work per week? Not at all, cause in my very job I have times where 12h/day don't seem enough -- and others, where I just keep on reloading Slashdot.
Ever compared the productivity of a part-time employee who works like 4-5 hours a day (8-to-1, 9-to-1) with the productivity of a regular employee? You might be amazed to see that the part-time employee performs *at least* as much work as the regular employee, if not more.
So why stick to 8-10 hour shifts just because that was the working hours 100 years ago, even though it's completely brainless and not suiting modern "thinking jobs"?
It is rather naive to think that the government could "undo" taxes whenever they want, especially if major parts of the budget rely on it. For example, in Germany mineral oil tax is the third biggest revenue after income tax and sales tax. (For those who don't believe this: check it out here)
You can't just "undo" that.
Besides, also public transportation uses that very infrastructure. Last time I checked buses weren't using antigravity.
Yes, we could also use public transportation -- for the sake of extending a 15-25min travel by car to about 1-1.5h, because we don't live and work right next to the main radials of the PT network and therefore need to take and change buses.
Besides: also public transportation doesn't run with plain air. With energy prices raising also ticket prices will raise. They on average already doubled during the last 10 years -- just like fuel. So while the ticket prices *at the moment* suggest that it's cheaper than using the car, one must not forget that those ticket prices are raised on a yearly base and (at least in Germany) also heavily subsidized.
Sure, you often hear this from eco people. "Just use public transportation!". But how much would that cost, if it weren't subsidized / cross-financed through those insanely high mineral oil and eco taxes?
So it's easy to say "thank god I'm using public transportation", cause others pay parts of your ticket's price.
Btw: 1.49 EUR/liter (price we now pay in Germany) = 7.06 USD/gallon ... Heck, and they complain about a mere $3/gl.
Onanieren macht blind!
I tend to disagree on the configuration issues. When was the last time you indeed did configure a Windows machine from scratch? Those boxes come with Windows preinstalled and preconfigured, so obviously you don't need to set up basic things like video cards and mouse drivers. OTOH, Windows never ships with as much stuff as a generic Linux distro will slam on your hard drive -- in other words, how often do you configure a *mail server* or a *print server* for Windows?
And having installed SuSE9.3 recently, I can tell you that standard configuration takes the least time. Just let it detect your hardware settings, select what you want to install, and let it go for a few hours. It wasn't any uncomfortable than e.g. installing Windows -- especially since it didn't ask any questions during installing or asked for keypresses or anything else.
You know, this now makes me think about good old Midge Ure videos...
Look at the German system, for example. We do have multiple parties, of which are two dominant and two are just mere "helpers" who help the big ones to get over 50%. The others merely play any role, with the PDS being mostly an Ex-GDR phenomenon.
Now one might say: great, so the little party has influence. But in fact, that is not true as the recent "red-green" experiment (SPD and Green party) has shown. Also the other little fellow (FDP), although big in words, usually doesn't have a major influence on the political decisions.
After all, it's just about power. Losing power is bad, getting/keeping it is good. So in the end you again have a two-party system because the smaller parties -- for the sake of power -- just don't care about their former ideals anymore.
Hubble telescope, anyone?
Write 1000 times: "It's called copyright. There is nothing like a 'copywrite'."
It's examples like these why I can't laugh about Dilbert anymore...