Seriously, what I'd like Ellison to do, is really support openoffice. Improvements, cleanups, Java exorcism, and fonts...
Larry, everybody thinks Bill has more money than you! Bill is a household name, and nobody (outside of the techies) knows who you are. You can compensate with big yachts and planes and adventures, but you'll never be as big as Billy until you destroy the MS lockin... Office!
Started really using Linux around 1997... I started with Caldera. Back then it took me a week to get a mouse to work. Since then, I've used Redhat, Suse, and Ubuntu.
I haven't had to compile a kernel or mess with any xconfig files for about 6 years now. Basically, you just stick in an Ubuntu CD and turn the computer on.. it's easier than installing windows, becuase you don't have to enter a 16 character random value correctly.
Popped in an Ubuntu 10.04 the other day, and wow.. they paid someone to come up with pretty colors and readable fonts. It's there, in terms of useablility and ease of install.
Linux distros have come a LONG LONG way since 1996.
I would agree with you that Windows has come a long way since the days of plugging a machine into the network and getting instantly owned thru default open ports.... but I still won't network a windows box. Why take the risk?
The big point is, people can also charge at home. In the garage. When the car isn't doing anything anyways. Or, at work, in the parking lot. When the car isn't doing anything anyways.
A stop at the gas station requires you to drive to the gas station, sit around useless, handle cash or credit card or debit card transaction, and expose yourself to the risk of giant sugary caffienated fountain soda.
There's plastics that are coal derived... Melamine can be synthesized from coal products... Phenolic... other stuff.. Steel uses iron ore, coal, and limestone. Ceramics? Don't need petroleum for those, been doing it for 1000's years.
I'm getting sick of people saying that modern life is dependent on petroleum. Sure.. things won't be as easy, but we can make all sorts of things, and won't be giving up all the technological developments of the last century just by switching feedstocks!
This will not drive us back to the middle ages, in the middle ages, we didn't have electricity!
Reducing petrol use in transport, even by only 50% will increase the amount of "easy oil" available for use as chemical precursors for the stuff that can't easily be made from coal or fresh biomass.
Agriculture scares me the most because modern ag pretty much involves turning diesel into meat. But we can make changes here, too.. there's no reason we cant farm electrically, we're already using electricity for irrigation. What scares me the most is a ill-considered switch to biofuels as we could quickly starve ourselves trying to grow massive quantities of fuel from food crops.
This stuff isn't rocket science and I'm getting more and more angry about the lack of political will to start adapting rather than burying our heads in the sand.
Given the fact that most companies I've worked in lately have had more manager types than actual producers, the most popular language I've seen is PHB.
Yeah, I've been thinking lately that we're still using animal or plant based power.. just very old animals or plants. It's this paralytic american technosissyism. We need to go back to the moon, so we can claim we're capable of things becuase "they can put a man on the moon." Then we need to start doing shit. Quickly.
Well, I guess that came out a little disjointed. I'm very upset about a lot of stuff, and this blowout sorta put me over the edge.
The scale of the accident doesn't change the ethics, but the scale of the consequences should change the levels of redundancy applied. 11 people were killed. And there's a runaway continuing well destroying fisherys.
Given the scale of the consequences, maybe we should demand this sort of system should be set up intrinsically safe... so the well collapses in on itself in a total loss of control scenario. I don't know if this is even possible. If it isn't, maybe we need to take a look at deepwater drilling and accellerate our shift away from petroleum.
I think we know a lot about why it happened. They were running with a damaged BOP, they replaced the mud with seawater and the cement job failed. Had the BOP worked, this would've likely would've been prevented, 11 people would still be alive.
People are regularly killed, governments are overthrown for oil, etc, etc, I don't think it's outrageous for someone to suspect they might have tried to save the well for economic purposes.
We need to fix the regulatory environment, becuase companies will always race to the bottom to maximize the ROI, even if they're wildly popular.
People have a right to be angry about this, even if they don't understand it at a technical level. I don't think angry people are why we don't have better parties regulating, it's becuase of a classic ethical failure in government, (beer and hooker --scratch that-- coke and hooker parties with industry) and people like us for some reason have had our heads in the sand about the risks inherrent here.
I'm guessing they're nervous about the integrity of the casing and cement, that will be put under more stress when they try to plog the thing up from the top.
Whole thing is terrible, I can't believe we drill w/o a way to fix pipes down there or deal with a blowout. This was bound to happen.
Why'd this get modded troll, it's wrong, but I wouldn't call it troll.
I don't think they can just stop it becuase (at least in my understanding) the riser's not rated for the ultimate pressures the reservior can produce, even in good condition, and the riser has a big kink in it coming out of the BOP. The worst leak site where they're pulling from is actually where the riser tore in half. If they plugged it, it'd blow out at the kink, or maybe somewhere inaccessable and worse.
I don't think we ought to be drilling unless we can make the whole process intrinsically safe against inacessible underwater lost wells like this.
Yeah. And you don't hear anyone in Congress or Obama screaming about changing federal law and going after them for more than their contractual obiligations. I wonder why not?
I'm not prepared to accept the consequences of a completely out of control well.. like a lost wellhead. We shouldn't be drilling down there until we can do it in an intrinisically safe manner.. that means, technology has to work to keep the well open, not technology has to work to close the well (like the current BOP systems)
As bad as this is, it could have been even worse.
Openoffice causes me trouble occasionally when I've got a document with a lot of figures in it. The worst is when I accidently try to edit a picture, and it crashes because it can't find a Java VM. In my experience... Openoffice has been a little bloaty and a little crashy sometimes, generally at the worst of times. (big report that I'm just about done with)
I'm running OO 2.4 at work, 3.1 at home.. I'm scared to upgrade at work until I've got time to really sit with it.
I don't run OO because its free, I run it because it runs on Linux.
I am willing to pay for software to run on Linux... I am running Cadsoft Eagle for board layout, and Varicad for mechanical. I probably spend more time in front of OpenOffice than both these put together, so getting something that could make me look better and improve efficiency wouldn't be a bad deal.
I'm also nervous about what Oracle is going to do with OpenOffice... I'd like to see them take it on and improve it, maybe fund some good fonts. Maybe do some tearing up and fixing up for stability and speed. But I'm not sure our definitions of "improve" would be the same, and I'm not at all sure I trust Oracle anyways.
How much would it take to put this guy in deep freeze or drug induced coma while all the so-called patents run out... oh.. yeah copyright, oh shit. I hope the cryopumps hold out for awhile..
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, what I'd like Ellison to do, is really support openoffice. Improvements, cleanups, Java exorcism, and fonts...
Larry, everybody thinks Bill has more money than you! Bill is a household name, and nobody (outside of the techies) knows who you are. You can compensate with big yachts and planes and adventures, but you'll never be as big as Billy until you destroy the MS lockin... Office!
Started really using Linux around 1997... I started with Caldera. Back then it took me a week to get a mouse to work. Since then, I've used Redhat, Suse, and Ubuntu.
I haven't had to compile a kernel or mess with any xconfig files for about 6 years now. Basically, you just stick in an Ubuntu CD and turn the computer on.. it's easier than installing windows, becuase you don't have to enter a 16 character random value correctly.
Popped in an Ubuntu 10.04 the other day, and wow.. they paid someone to come up with pretty colors and readable fonts. It's there, in terms of useablility and ease of install.
Linux distros have come a LONG LONG way since 1996.
I would agree with you that Windows has come a long way since the days of plugging a machine into the network and getting instantly owned thru default open ports.... but I still won't network a windows box. Why take the risk?
Isn't there a song about this? Don't they also respect the college dean?
A stop at the gas station requires you to drive to the gas station, sit around useless, handle cash or credit card or debit card transaction, and expose yourself to the risk of giant sugary caffienated fountain soda.
I wonder if anyone's considered using a large set of networked computers (volunteers) as a gamma ray telescope.
Maybe they could put those engineers, rigs and workers in place checking and reinforcing existing infrastructure?
You could've just stoped at "California Wants.."
I'd take the guys word for it. If anyone is capable of servicing the nation...
This country started going to hell in a handbasket when we replaced a trained nuclear engineer/sub driver with an actor that made people feel good.
I'm getting sick of people saying that modern life is dependent on petroleum. Sure.. things won't be as easy, but we can make all sorts of things, and won't be giving up all the technological developments of the last century just by switching feedstocks!
This will not drive us back to the middle ages, in the middle ages, we didn't have electricity!
Reducing petrol use in transport, even by only 50% will increase the amount of "easy oil" available for use as chemical precursors for the stuff that can't easily be made from coal or fresh biomass.
Agriculture scares me the most because modern ag pretty much involves turning diesel into meat. But we can make changes here, too.. there's no reason we cant farm electrically, we're already using electricity for irrigation. What scares me the most is a ill-considered switch to biofuels as we could quickly starve ourselves trying to grow massive quantities of fuel from food crops.
This stuff isn't rocket science and I'm getting more and more angry about the lack of political will to start adapting rather than burying our heads in the sand.
(pointy head boss)
Sweet. The SPLAT Pad. I want one!
MIcrosoft has a mobile business??
How about interesting tails of Natalie Portman?
Well, I guess that came out a little disjointed. I'm very upset about a lot of stuff, and this blowout sorta put me over the edge.
Given the scale of the consequences, maybe we should demand this sort of system should be set up intrinsically safe... so the well collapses in on itself in a total loss of control scenario. I don't know if this is even possible. If it isn't, maybe we need to take a look at deepwater drilling and accellerate our shift away from petroleum.
People are regularly killed, governments are overthrown for oil, etc, etc, I don't think it's outrageous for someone to suspect they might have tried to save the well for economic purposes.
We need to fix the regulatory environment, becuase companies will always race to the bottom to maximize the ROI, even if they're wildly popular.
People have a right to be angry about this, even if they don't understand it at a technical level. I don't think angry people are why we don't have better parties regulating, it's becuase of a classic ethical failure in government, (beer and hooker --scratch that-- coke and hooker parties with industry) and people like us for some reason have had our heads in the sand about the risks inherrent here.
Anyways, I'll get off my rant.
Whole thing is terrible, I can't believe we drill w/o a way to fix pipes down there or deal with a blowout. This was bound to happen.
You haven't really arrived in business when you get subpeonaed by congress.
Why'd this get modded troll, it's wrong, but I wouldn't call it troll. I don't think they can just stop it becuase (at least in my understanding) the riser's not rated for the ultimate pressures the reservior can produce, even in good condition, and the riser has a big kink in it coming out of the BOP. The worst leak site where they're pulling from is actually where the riser tore in half. If they plugged it, it'd blow out at the kink, or maybe somewhere inaccessable and worse. I don't think we ought to be drilling unless we can make the whole process intrinsically safe against inacessible underwater lost wells like this.
Yeah. And you don't hear anyone in Congress or Obama screaming about changing federal law and going after them for more than their contractual obiligations. I wonder why not?
I'm not prepared to accept the consequences of a completely out of control well.. like a lost wellhead. We shouldn't be drilling down there until we can do it in an intrinisically safe manner.. that means, technology has to work to keep the well open, not technology has to work to close the well (like the current BOP systems) As bad as this is, it could have been even worse.
I'm running OO 2.4 at work, 3.1 at home.. I'm scared to upgrade at work until I've got time to really sit with it.
I don't run OO because its free, I run it because it runs on Linux. I am willing to pay for software to run on Linux... I am running Cadsoft Eagle for board layout, and Varicad for mechanical. I probably spend more time in front of OpenOffice than both these put together, so getting something that could make me look better and improve efficiency wouldn't be a bad deal.
I'm also nervous about what Oracle is going to do with OpenOffice... I'd like to see them take it on and improve it, maybe fund some good fonts. Maybe do some tearing up and fixing up for stability and speed. But I'm not sure our definitions of "improve" would be the same, and I'm not at all sure I trust Oracle anyways.
How much would it take to put this guy in deep freeze or drug induced coma while all the so-called patents run out... oh.. yeah copyright, oh shit. I hope the cryopumps hold out for awhile..
I have to take a walk get some fresh air and pizza. I almost had a seizure reading TFA. I probably would've if I'd had a better GPU!