I do not see any possible way to build enough capacity by 2015 to keep running air conditioners in cities.
Then maybe the United States can finally adopt space-age 1970s technology used in the rest of the world and properly insulate their houses. I don't know about the city centers but in the suburbs houses are often built with methods that went out of style in Germany decades ago - wood constructions with thin walls, no insulation and sometimes even single-pane windows appear to be acceptable.
Now, you don't need to go to the German extreme (houses are about 250,000 bucks and up and are considered a lifetime investment) but putting some thermal insulation requirements into building codes could already drastically remove the need for air conditioning. Mandate at least a layer of mineral wool between the facade/roof and the rooms, get single-pane windows off the market and teach people to ventilate intermittently with all windows fully opened for a few minutes*. That way you can minimize** heat exchange between the houses and the surrounding, thus minimizing the need for air conditioning.
It's not like passive heat management is rocket science.
* Where appropriate. Some climates seem to make continuous ventilation the better option, but I'm not sure.
** Okay, not really minimize - but aerated concrete houses are much more expnsive than wood with mineral wool so it's a compromise for markets where houses are considered short-time investments.
But that would mean you'd have to put in more than the absolute bare minimum of RAM required to run the firmware. That's like giving someone free RAM. I mean, it's just user upkeep cost and user experience that's impacted so why should the manufacturer care?
Good manufacturers, of course, don't ask themselves that question.
You could, of course, just use a receiver that uses its own EPG. Those usually get you better results anyway (at least in a civilized setting where program lineups don't change hourly - but in that case even overnight downloading is useless).
Additionally, by equating pedophiles with child molesting murderers (as is commonly the case) and even dehumanizing them (as the media also love to do) we don't exactly contribute to the less stable ones keeping a grip on themselves.
Why can't the big bad terrorists do smething useful for once and wipe out a couple boulevard magazines? That would make the world a better place for everyone.
its not hard to understand the terrorist mind; when you are pushed and have NOTHING (perceived) left - you do what you feel 'needs' to be done to right a major wrong.
Remember that the difference between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is perspective. Been pretty long since the tree of liberty has been refreshed and someone who got the short end of the stick might be a history buff...
Somehow, we've taken self-incrimination and made it mandatory.
Welcome to the German Democratic Republic where you'd rather rat out your girlfriend to the state than, have your life screwed over by them.
Seriously, between this story and other "sex is evil" stories one hears from the States they sound like a mix between the GDR (you can and will be surveilled at any time and everyone might report you to the authorities for unideological behavior) and some kind of ultra-Puritan hell. It seems a wonder babies even exist on that side of the pond.
I know that there are a lot of people in the States who aren't moralist cardboard cutouts but someone really should point out to the others that Europe acknowledges the existence of sex and still hasn't devolved into anarchy. Italy doesn't count.
One more thing: It doesn't matter whether Y is a vowel or not; it simply doesn't occur that often in some languages. For example, it's actually the third least common letter in the German alphabet, before X and Q. (Source: Wikipedia citing Albrecht Beutelspacher, Kryptologie, 7th edition, ISBN 3-8348-0014-7, p. 10) Having it smack dab in the middle of the keyboard is pretty useless - observe the German standard layout, where the Y and Z keys have been switched.
For comparison, in English the Y appears almost 500 times as often as in German (1.974% vs. 0.04% of the alphabet) whereas the Z is more common in German (1.13% vs. 0.074%).
The Dvorak layout simply doesn't work that well for non-English languages, hence localized (and even more obscure) layouts like NEO have been created.
German, sometimes. German has A E I O U Ä Ö Ü and Y, but Y can be a vowel or a consonant depending on context and it's only counted by a vowel by most people because it's most often used as an Ü allophone. Still, some people learn in school that Y is not a vowel... But then again, school has always lagged behind current science by 30 to 50 years.
An example for consonant use of Y would be "Yacht", which means exactly what you think it does.
Selling localized versions in those markets might help. It doesn't matter that the Chinese version of Awesome Game 2: Electric Boogaloo is 80% cheaper when I can't even read the menu screen.
Well, read the third story here. Even though the USPTO's hiring standards ought to have changed, there's probably still a lot of patent examinators without any or much formal CS training that have to examine IT patents. An engineering degree probably won't help you see that a given patent actually covers all uses of Dijkstra's algorithm or applies to all smartphones even though it was registered in 2007 (and thus should be subject to former art).
There really should be an open platform that allows the public to review freshly issued patents and send in counter-arguments (prior art, existing technology that makes the invention obvious etc.) to potentiella trigger a reexamination. Of course, this platform would be used for corporate idea warfare within five minutes of it opening...
Microsoft used its monopoly position to FORCE OEMs to not bundle other browsers (or lose their big discount.) THIS is wrong. Including a browser in the OS and using its functionality is NATURAL.
It sure is. But it also means that people are compelled to use the browser you bundled simply because it's always there. The rules are different when you're a monopolist as even something you throw in as a convenience feature could severely impact markets.
In this case Microsoft should't even be hit too hard - MSHTML will still be in the OS simply out of neccessity; it's simply the web browser GUI that gets axed. The only thing that would really break are badly programmed applications that ignore the default browser setting and directly call iexplore.exe.
Otherwise why would KDE and GNOME both include a browser? Trying to make Microsoft remove a part of the operating system (which after all is a way for a user to operate a computer, and includes the UI) is complete bullshit.
So essentially any program that ships on a Windows install DVD is sacrosanct for all times because it's part of the base install? If not, who decides which programs are neccessary for a modern operating system and which aren't? If we go by the classical OS definition, not even a GUI is required for an operating system; a mere hardware abstraction layer with process scheduling would suffice. We could go for an ISO standard, but that would require a committee and five years of deliberation time (plus ISO has been shown to be bribable).
It's possible to use Windows productively without using Internet Explorer so I'd guess having IE as part of the base install is not really necessary, especially as OEMs will bundle either IE or other browsers when building their systems.
I don't buy the argument that it's acceptable because they are a monopoly. Either fine the shit out of them,
Useless. If the EU whips up fines large enough to destroy Microsoft it'd either get hit by sanctions via WIPO or Microsoft would simply withdraw from the EU and work doubly hard to ensure its monopoly in other parts of the world - and complete incompatibility with all open standards to force Europe to import Windows anyway. If the fines even get through; Microsoft would make sure that the appeals suit would take decades.
invoke the corporate death penalty,
Impossible; Microsoft is not a European company and the EU is unlikely to take over the USA anytime soon. The EU can attack Microsoft's local subsidiaries but that's scarcely going to kill the corp - and, again, would probbly create bad consequences as the USA wouldn't appreciate such actions against one of the government's larger sponsors.
or leave them alone.
Which essentially means they can do whatever they want because the US government is bought off and nobody else has the power to outright destroy them. That's not a terribly good idea as Microsoft still controls the desktop OS market and is known to put any monopolies it has to their fullest use. Having Microsoft dictate the terms of desktop computing is not going to help the European IT industry in any way so there's little incentive to let it happen.
I don't mind interfering with their ability to lie, cheat, and steal, but interfering with their ability to legitimately do business (e.g. put together a modern operating system with the features users now expect) is simply not acceptable.
Completely stopping their business is okay but restricting it is wrong? By that logic, judges shouldn't issue restraining orders anymore because everyone should be either completely free or dead.
It's not like nobody would buy Windows anymore because it doesn't come with a browser. Every OEM will bundle something so for virtually everyone Windows still does come with one and the rest
Someone has to design those stupid proprietary conectors. It's not easy to design a connector that is finicky to use, unreliable and unneccessarily expensive.
However, the R&D was already mostly done. Russia knew which directions to go and which to avoid as they could learn from others. It's similar to research - one team develops a new theory with years of work; afterwards others need only a miniscule fraction of that time to extract knowledge about the topic from the paper.
The USSR did rapidly "upgrade" themselves but then again that's something Germany did in the Fifties as well - it's easy to do with determination, control, money and a blank slate. And, especially, prior knowledge of what to do.
The impressive R&D part was the Space Race (and, less awesome, the nuclear arms race), where the USA and the USSR had their best minds competing with each other over a field neither had much prior knowledge about.
All too true... and... the question as asked is not even rational. Is the objective really configuring Windows? Why isn't the objective setting up a system which can do general task types A, B, and C with a minimum of fuss?
Perhaps because one of the tasks implicitly requires Windows. Just because someone is a senior with little computer experience doesn't mean they're not completely dependent on some Win-only software that might not work well under Wine. One of the requirements is "using Windows". That's a pretty clear requirement and not particularly ludicrous. The OP detailed a scenario where the users have little but not no computer knowledge. We're talking about people who do know the basics of using a Windows PC and probably have memorized a few things, for instance where to find My Documents. Put them in front of a Ubuntu box and they'll wonder why the interface doesn't work like they have memorized.
Even though once again Windows's one-size-fits-all approach falls flat on its face, "it's impossible to configure Windows for elderly people so you must use Linux and it'd be a waste of time to discuss any other options" is neither an insightful nor a helpful answer. It might be difficult to do this with Windows but that's why this non-Ask Slashdot exists in the first place.
Any experience with how well Wine works in that environment? My parents rely on Outlook and various windows games of the casual variety; unless those work flawlessly and transparently they wouldn't accept a non-Windows OS. And no, I don't think that "let's just replace those with roughly similar software" would fly.
Note that it says on the outside of the box that OS X can only be installed on Apple computers -- thus that restriction would be valid even in Germany where EULAs are held to be unenforcable, as the issue with EULAs is that the buyer was not notified of them prior to purchase and a label on the outside of the box would do exactly that.
"Apple hardware only" is presented to the user prior to purchase and should actually be enforcable.
Hence I don't live my life according to any religious tenets (besides generally-good stuff like "killing is usually bad"). As I said, the distinction is mostly semantic. I say "might be" wherever you say "no" but act mostly the same.
I actually do distinguish between "does (a) god exist" and "can we tell whether (a) god exists", as well as "is it possible to tell whether (a) god exists". The second I would answer with a "no" as the time, although of course if suddenly a 3x3x0.1 km stone tablet saying "I'M BACK - JHWH" appeared in downtown New York that might be a counter-argument -- so the third I would answer with "direct interaction from the side of the god in question might make a likely answer possible". As for the first, it is technically invalidated by the second as it's impossible to answer without any data, but I tend to be skeptic so I go with "it's unlikely".
Now one could argue that I might as well go with "no" -- it certainly would not be much of a change. For this particular question the difference between my stance and that of an theist is mostly semantic: They ignore (let's apply this to Christianism since that should be familiar ground to most users) God because they assume he doesn't exist. I ignore him because it's less work but I acknowledge that I may very well be wrong in doing so (just as likely as I'm right, probably).
However, in real life, one must take a practical stance to decide one's actions and ideas, which would be that God doesn't exist or does exist.
Or both or neither. Could be "exists but not as we think", "did exist but doesn't anymore", "something like that exists but it's not God" or any number of variations.
In the end agnostics decide that the question can't (currently|ever) be meaningfully answered, so they don't attempt to and ignore the whole thing. Some even argue that the question itself does not make sense. The question does not need to be answered; humans don't operate with binary logic and one can live their live in a way that never relies on an answer to that question... And, of course, if you do not accept the question as meaningful you simply cannot answer it as "does God exist" equals to "does X exist for an undefined X".
For me the second one gives five results where they refer to Hubbard on various topics, one about a Hubbard Management System and one that refers to one Virgil Hubbard. Excerpts:
Granted, the hubbard quote alluded to in the last one, "[A computer is] An electronic machine for making calculations, storing and analyzing information fed into it, and controlling machinery automatically", is one of the less subversive things that man has written.
Actually, as appendix A states, he copied it from the Oxford American Dictionary. So... yeah. The appendix itself is rather tame, though; essentially Hubbard talks about how computers are awesome before drowning in his own particular brand of marketing bullshit-speak: "The datum here is that power is proportional to the speed of particle flow. This is the real secret behind the prosperity which can arise in connection with a computer operation."
Of course, Ron. Of course.
You should really take the whole "corporations are people" thing to its conclusion: There are no differences between corporations and regular citizens, period. Corporations get a voting right (one vote per corporation), can apply for unemployment benefits when they have no customers (up to the maximum rate for one person and only after they've liquidated their assets) and are punished like a regular person - that means imprisonment and in some states capital punishment are possible.
Hey, the jail industry will like it and it certainly would be interesting to see, say, every single employee of Microsoft getting locked up for several months.
"But my corporation is supposed to shield me from legal repercussions!" - "That's why we're locking up all employees and not just the executives."
Jury service would be interesting, though. Just imagine fitting a huge megacorp with tens of thousands of employees into the jury booth.
Slashdot Mirror
Then maybe the United States can finally adopt space-age 1970s technology used in the rest of the world and properly insulate their houses. I don't know about the city centers but in the suburbs houses are often built with methods that went out of style in Germany decades ago - wood constructions with thin walls, no insulation and sometimes even single-pane windows appear to be acceptable.
Now, you don't need to go to the German extreme (houses are about 250,000 bucks and up and are considered a lifetime investment) but putting some thermal insulation requirements into building codes could already drastically remove the need for air conditioning. Mandate at least a layer of mineral wool between the facade/roof and the rooms, get single-pane windows off the market and teach people to ventilate intermittently with all windows fully opened for a few minutes*. That way you can minimize** heat exchange between the houses and the surrounding, thus minimizing the need for air conditioning.
It's not like passive heat management is rocket science.
* Where appropriate. Some climates seem to make continuous ventilation the better option, but I'm not sure.
** Okay, not really minimize - but aerated concrete houses are much more expnsive than wood with mineral wool so it's a compromise for markets where houses are considered short-time investments.
But that would mean you'd have to put in more than the absolute bare minimum of RAM required to run the firmware. That's like giving someone free RAM. I mean, it's just user upkeep cost and user experience that's impacted so why should the manufacturer care?
Good manufacturers, of course, don't ask themselves that question.
You could, of course, just use a receiver that uses its own EPG. Those usually get you better results anyway (at least in a civilized setting where program lineups don't change hourly - but in that case even overnight downloading is useless).
Additionally, by equating pedophiles with child molesting murderers (as is commonly the case) and even dehumanizing them (as the media also love to do) we don't exactly contribute to the less stable ones keeping a grip on themselves.
Why can't the big bad terrorists do smething useful for once and wipe out a couple boulevard magazines? That would make the world a better place for everyone.
Remember that the difference between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is perspective. Been pretty long since the tree of liberty has been refreshed and someone who got the short end of the stick might be a history buff...
Welcome to the German Democratic Republic where you'd rather rat out your girlfriend to the state than, have your life screwed over by them.
Seriously, between this story and other "sex is evil" stories one hears from the States they sound like a mix between the GDR (you can and will be surveilled at any time and everyone might report you to the authorities for unideological behavior) and some kind of ultra-Puritan hell. It seems a wonder babies even exist on that side of the pond.
I know that there are a lot of people in the States who aren't moralist cardboard cutouts but someone really should point out to the others that Europe acknowledges the existence of sex and still hasn't devolved into anarchy. Italy doesn't count.
One more thing: It doesn't matter whether Y is a vowel or not; it simply doesn't occur that often in some languages. For example, it's actually the third least common letter in the German alphabet, before X and Q. (Source: Wikipedia citing Albrecht Beutelspacher, Kryptologie, 7th edition, ISBN 3-8348-0014-7, p. 10) Having it smack dab in the middle of the keyboard is pretty useless - observe the German standard layout, where the Y and Z keys have been switched.
For comparison, in English the Y appears almost 500 times as often as in German (1.974% vs. 0.04% of the alphabet) whereas the Z is more common in German (1.13% vs. 0.074%).
The Dvorak layout simply doesn't work that well for non-English languages, hence localized (and even more obscure) layouts like NEO have been created.
German, sometimes. German has A E I O U Ä Ö Ü and Y, but Y can be a vowel or a consonant depending on context and it's only counted by a vowel by most people because it's most often used as an Ü allophone. Still, some people learn in school that Y is not a vowel... But then again, school has always lagged behind current science by 30 to 50 years.
An example for consonant use of Y would be "Yacht", which means exactly what you think it does.
Selling localized versions in those markets might help. It doesn't matter that the Chinese version of Awesome Game 2: Electric Boogaloo is 80% cheaper when I can't even read the menu screen.
Well, read the third story here. Even though the USPTO's hiring standards ought to have changed, there's probably still a lot of patent examinators without any or much formal CS training that have to examine IT patents. An engineering degree probably won't help you see that a given patent actually covers all uses of Dijkstra's algorithm or applies to all smartphones even though it was registered in 2007 (and thus should be subject to former art).
There really should be an open platform that allows the public to review freshly issued patents and send in counter-arguments (prior art, existing technology that makes the invention obvious etc.) to potentiella trigger a reexamination. Of course, this platform would be used for corporate idea warfare within five minutes of it opening...
It sure is. But it also means that people are compelled to use the browser you bundled simply because it's always there. The rules are different when you're a monopolist as even something you throw in as a convenience feature could severely impact markets.
In this case Microsoft should't even be hit too hard - MSHTML will still be in the OS simply out of neccessity; it's simply the web browser GUI that gets axed. The only thing that would really break are badly programmed applications that ignore the default browser setting and directly call iexplore.exe.
So essentially any program that ships on a Windows install DVD is sacrosanct for all times because it's part of the base install? If not, who decides which programs are neccessary for a modern operating system and which aren't? If we go by the classical OS definition, not even a GUI is required for an operating system; a mere hardware abstraction layer with process scheduling would suffice. We could go for an ISO standard, but that would require a committee and five years of deliberation time (plus ISO has been shown to be bribable).
It's possible to use Windows productively without using Internet Explorer so I'd guess having IE as part of the base install is not really necessary, especially as OEMs will bundle either IE or other browsers when building their systems.
Useless. If the EU whips up fines large enough to destroy Microsoft it'd either get hit by sanctions via WIPO or Microsoft would simply withdraw from the EU and work doubly hard to ensure its monopoly in other parts of the world - and complete incompatibility with all open standards to force Europe to import Windows anyway. If the fines even get through; Microsoft would make sure that the appeals suit would take decades.
Impossible; Microsoft is not a European company and the EU is unlikely to take over the USA anytime soon. The EU can attack Microsoft's local subsidiaries but that's scarcely going to kill the corp - and, again, would probbly create bad consequences as the USA wouldn't appreciate such actions against one of the government's larger sponsors.
Which essentially means they can do whatever they want because the US government is bought off and nobody else has the power to outright destroy them. That's not a terribly good idea as Microsoft still controls the desktop OS market and is known to put any monopolies it has to their fullest use. Having Microsoft dictate the terms of desktop computing is not going to help the European IT industry in any way so there's little incentive to let it happen.
Completely stopping their business is okay but restricting it is wrong? By that logic, judges shouldn't issue restraining orders anymore because everyone should be either completely free or dead.
It's not like nobody would buy Windows anymore because it doesn't come with a browser. Every OEM will bundle something so for virtually everyone Windows still does come with one and the rest
Perhaps American cattle can power the space elevator. After all, US Americans sure like their beef jerky.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
They fall down a flight of stairs and unfortunately break their necks.
Someone has to design those stupid proprietary conectors. It's not easy to design a connector that is finicky to use, unreliable and unneccessarily expensive.
However, the R&D was already mostly done. Russia knew which directions to go and which to avoid as they could learn from others. It's similar to research - one team develops a new theory with years of work; afterwards others need only a miniscule fraction of that time to extract knowledge about the topic from the paper.
The USSR did rapidly "upgrade" themselves but then again that's something Germany did in the Fifties as well - it's easy to do with determination, control, money and a blank slate. And, especially, prior knowledge of what to do.
The impressive R&D part was the Space Race (and, less awesome, the nuclear arms race), where the USA and the USSR had their best minds competing with each other over a field neither had much prior knowledge about.
Maybe Bruce Perens is a Twitter sockpuppet. Ever thought about that?
Perhaps because one of the tasks implicitly requires Windows. Just because someone is a senior with little computer experience doesn't mean they're not completely dependent on some Win-only software that might not work well under Wine. One of the requirements is "using Windows". That's a pretty clear requirement and not particularly ludicrous. The OP detailed a scenario where the users have little but not no computer knowledge. We're talking about people who do know the basics of using a Windows PC and probably have memorized a few things, for instance where to find My Documents. Put them in front of a Ubuntu box and they'll wonder why the interface doesn't work like they have memorized.
Even though once again Windows's one-size-fits-all approach falls flat on its face, "it's impossible to configure Windows for elderly people so you must use Linux and it'd be a waste of time to discuss any other options" is neither an insightful nor a helpful answer. It might be difficult to do this with Windows but that's why this non-Ask Slashdot exists in the first place.
Any experience with how well Wine works in that environment? My parents rely on Outlook and various windows games of the casual variety; unless those work flawlessly and transparently they wouldn't accept a non-Windows OS. And no, I don't think that "let's just replace those with roughly similar software" would fly.
Note that it says on the outside of the box that OS X can only be installed on Apple computers -- thus that restriction would be valid even in Germany where EULAs are held to be unenforcable, as the issue with EULAs is that the buyer was not notified of them prior to purchase and a label on the outside of the box would do exactly that.
"Apple hardware only" is presented to the user prior to purchase and should actually be enforcable.
Hence I don't live my life according to any religious tenets (besides generally-good stuff like "killing is usually bad"). As I said, the distinction is mostly semantic. I say "might be" wherever you say "no" but act mostly the same.
I actually do distinguish between "does (a) god exist" and "can we tell whether (a) god exists", as well as "is it possible to tell whether (a) god exists". The second I would answer with a "no" as the time, although of course if suddenly a 3x3x0.1 km stone tablet saying "I'M BACK - JHWH" appeared in downtown New York that might be a counter-argument -- so the third I would answer with "direct interaction from the side of the god in question might make a likely answer possible". As for the first, it is technically invalidated by the second as it's impossible to answer without any data, but I tend to be skeptic so I go with "it's unlikely".
Now one could argue that I might as well go with "no" -- it certainly would not be much of a change. For this particular question the difference between my stance and that of an theist is mostly semantic: They ignore (let's apply this to Christianism since that should be familiar ground to most users) God because they assume he doesn't exist. I ignore him because it's less work but I acknowledge that I may very well be wrong in doing so (just as likely as I'm right, probably).
Or both or neither. Could be "exists but not as we think", "did exist but doesn't anymore", "something like that exists but it's not God" or any number of variations.
In the end agnostics decide that the question can't (currently|ever) be meaningfully answered, so they don't attempt to and ignore the whole thing. Some even argue that the question itself does not make sense. The question does not need to be answered; humans don't operate with binary logic and one can live their live in a way that never relies on an answer to that question... And, of course, if you do not accept the question as meaningful you simply cannot answer it as "does God exist" equals to "does X exist for an undefined X".
For me the second one gives five results where they refer to Hubbard on various topics, one about a Hubbard Management System and one that refers to one Virgil Hubbard. Excerpts:
something I learned from Mr. Hubbard and it's one of the keys to our success. - Diskeeper Corporation (a file called WallStreetTranscript.pdf)
The concept of defining misunderstood words is more fully explained in The Basic Study Manual, by L. Ron Hubbard, Chapter Two: The Barriers to Study. - Fragmentation: The Condition, The Cause, The Cure
The quote is from an essay entitled What is a Computer? by L. Ron Hubbard, which is included in full in Appendix A. - Fragmentation: Introduction
Granted, the hubbard quote alluded to in the last one, "[A computer is] An electronic machine for making calculations, storing and analyzing information fed into it, and controlling machinery automatically", is one of the less subversive things that man has written.
Actually, as appendix A states, he copied it from the Oxford American Dictionary. So... yeah. The appendix itself is rather tame, though; essentially Hubbard talks about how computers are awesome before drowning in his own particular brand of marketing bullshit-speak:
"The datum here is that power is proportional to the speed of particle flow. This is the real secret behind the prosperity which can arise in connection with a computer operation."
Of course, Ron. Of course.
You should really take the whole "corporations are people" thing to its conclusion: There are no differences between corporations and regular citizens, period. Corporations get a voting right (one vote per corporation), can apply for unemployment benefits when they have no customers (up to the maximum rate for one person and only after they've liquidated their assets) and are punished like a regular person - that means imprisonment and in some states capital punishment are possible.
Hey, the jail industry will like it and it certainly would be interesting to see, say, every single employee of Microsoft getting locked up for several months.
"But my corporation is supposed to shield me from legal repercussions!" - "That's why we're locking up all employees and not just the executives."
Jury service would be interesting, though. Just imagine fitting a huge megacorp with tens of thousands of employees into the jury booth.
Lebanon?