Thank you for using the cluebat, although I think you could've whacked a little more.
Anyway, one question remains: is a regular ISP without evil root certificates installed able to read the URLs your browser is requesting? These can be quite destructive to anyone's privacy. In the textbook case of a totalitarian government it's certainly unhealthy to have the state-owned ISP knowing what you searched on Google or read on Wikipedia...
There's a limit on how far air cooling can go on any given class of equipment, where a different cooling medium is simply more effective and efficient. Low noise systems may be at the forefront, but it's just not feasible to increase air cooling in servers and data centers beyond a certain point, as air can't carry away as much energy as water. Server hardware will get to a point where even a freezing cold tornado is insufficient to cool all equipment.
Could be many reasons, the space requirements for large air currents, the need of having puny fragile human engineers around the machines sometimes or simply because air is much more difficult to cool down than water. Whatever the reason, being able to stack many HDDs on top of each other without overheating them is possibly interesting.
As long as you know the energy consumption and seriously considered possible alternatives, you're absolved:)
I like my screen totally flicker-free and I'd sacrifice color accuracy and display reaction times for that. My notebook display is fast enough for FPS gaming and the fact that people from the left and right of me can't see squat on my screen is actually very welcome for gaming with friends...
I think your wattmeter is broken, seriously and not kidding. You won't find a single CRT-based appliance with a screen larger than 19" consuming noticeably less than 90-100 Watts. No, no and no, sorry.
Compare this spec sheet picked at random from the Sony US website. Stated consumption of 160W in operation for a run-of-the-mill 36" CRT model. Feel free to pull up some more specs from other manufacturers to prove me wrong, but the 27" model of the same series still uses 130W in operation. And that's a marketing sheet from Sony, so I don't think they're exaggerating their energy usage.
If your 27" CRT-TV really uses less than 50W, make sure your space-time-continuum is in working condition, because it seems out of tune with the rest of the world's.
What's much more interesting than that is the fact that most Sony LCD TV sets actually use MORE power than their comparable sized CRT counterparts. You wouldn't believe that, but Sony tells me that a high-end 32" model uses 155W in operation, a 40" model even 200W. That's a bit shocking, so I've to thank you for your trollish post, because I learned something new that way. Feel free to scoot around their or another manufacturer's website to find some more real world numbers.
50W for a larger CRT is still preposterous, sorry.
Now for the PSU stand-by consumption: I'll post a photo of my old AMD 1800+ system with the wattmeter aside, if you really want to. It has a standard Enermax PSU and draws 35W with all LED blinkenlights except for ones from the NIC dark. Maybe it's damaged, but it clearly gives off warmth and a barely audible hum.
And get some manners dude, don't try to be that rude to real people within striking distance of your nose. Your offhanded remarks were uncalled-for and you know that.
Supermarkets don't survive by saving energy, they have to sell their goods. Top opening freezers with a huge lid probably discourages people from taking items out and into their carts, just like closed doors and half-blocked aisles do. Buyer's psychology is a huge part of it and I think it's cheaper to waste some electricity to sell more goods.
Especially when you're trying to make profit from impulse buying which could be hindered by the simple needed movement of the door. Nonetheless, some supermarkets over here use freezers with sliding lids on top made of glass, which probably makes a good compromise on goods presentation and energy saving. Sliding doors should be best in avoiding air currents, anyway.
I think one of these products (or similar) would be much better suited to the task: http://www.gumstix.com/. They are a lot cheaper, more configurable and should be able to run unmodified kernels, which is a big plus concerning reliability and security. It lacks the design case from a Nano, but maybe that's acceptable in this application.
If you compare the energy consumption of CRTs and LCDs in everyday use, you'll find astounding results. Or perhaps not so astounding, as the CRT is sucking 150W or more, while your LCD consumes less than 40W - or 60W if you've got a larger screen.
Now you know why many companies are throwing out / have thrown out long ago their CRTs and why it's dumb to pick them up for even less than 10 dollars: larger CRTs may be cheap to buy, but they eat into your wallet through 2-3 years. For fellow geeks who use their computer for 10 hours a day, that's some serious cash burned per year. And baby seals and pet whales killed, of course.
Most decent notebooks use 40W-60W total when under load, while older desktops routinely have PSUs that eat 30W in the *off*-state (computer powered down, but cable plugged in). A wattmeter ($15) and a calculator ($5) can do so much more for your wallet (and those pooooooooor baby seals) than switching to CF lamps and changing the background of that damn CRT to black.
Common energy hogs in the average home (in case you haven't taken care of some of these already)
- the fridge. There are models that use 140kwh per year available, yours probably uses 300 or more - the freezer. same here, but when upgrading, consider a top-opening freezer. As cold air stays down, it's much more energy conserving than front-opening models - lighting: use CFLs wherever convenient and LED replacements where there's not enough room for CFLs or switching cycles are important
But those are costing money. Here are some savings for free: - the VCR, radio or TV: some waste 15-20W or more for doing nothing than blinking 12:00 - get a e-meter and a power strip with a simple on/off switch. - washer and dryer: these appliances sometimes waste 20W or more when just being plugged in. Mine does and it's not a cheap one, either. That's right, 20W energy drain for nothing, no clock, no blinkenlights, nothing, just the plug in the socket. E-meter and then pull the plug when not using them, problem solved. - the desktop PC. As mentioned above, most PSUs use 35W for nothing when the computer is supposedly in the off-state. The same for some peripherals, although they use 5-10W at most. Switchable power strip takes care of that - and have all peripherals plugged together so one switch really turns them all off: powered USB-hub, printer, scanner, speaker, screen and everyting else.
Total cost: 3 switchable power strips for $3 each and an e-meter ($15). Savings in the first year almost $100 or more, convenience and standard of living lost: zero.
Apples claims of only wanting to "ensure the best possible user experience" by locking out SDK and user created software, they're no more credible than HP when they say the same about the chips and DMCA-spiked firmware in their ink cartridges.
This is because foreign code may not only affect stability and "user experience" but the monopoly you have on that hardware. And reducing the monopoly means commodization of some sort and that's what Apple hates more than anything: fixed, exclusive, expensive 2-year contracts, secrecy around new products, higher-than-expected prices, strict limits on the user (changing the battery? a memory card?) - it's all oriented around their central marketing aim of being in THE special position among all hard- and software manufacturers.
People are buying it, Apple is profitable like nothing and has a crowd of fans silencing all critics - it seems to work, I admit.
I have quite some respect for their marketing and product strategy - they are doing everything right from a shareholder's perspective. (Stock inflation for unreal expectations is not that important)
But don't make the mistake to consider Apple a corporation totally different from its arch rival Microsoft. They're following a different path, but their goal is comparable. If Apple's and MSFT's market shares were reversed, we had the same problems with Mac OS than we have with Windows right now, except their design and safety record wouldn't suck half as bad. But concerning anti-competitive maneuvers, vendor lock-in amd user restrictions, they'd be just the same.
Please don't confuse any "webserver" with a potentially full-blow apache. Answering GET requests by streaming out plaintext html files is accomplished by freshman's programming examples - having a real webserver is much much more.
Given that the iPhone is running some variety of MacOS X, it's highly likely that we see the full potential of this thing unlocked pretty soon. Having a fairly standardized environment, a fairly powerful CPU and a sleek form factor is good.
Being turing-complete isn't good enough for the real world of computing. Any PCL printer is, but do you see anyone here breaking out the champagne over that?
A Safari user running Vista should show up as Vista, because it is. This case should be entirely clear: a downloaded browser doesn't change the OS it's running under.
A Mac user running Vista in a virtual machine or Boot Camp should also show up as Vista, because I guess it IS Vista after all. Same as before: whatever that Mac user did, he or she presumably bought a valid Vista license and uses it for casual webbrowsing, for whatever reasons they have.
Although the people in the second and third case you mentioned *also* bought and use MacOS, they don't show up in that website's statistics. I would argue this is still fine, because it shows the actual user preference in browsing this or other websites.
MacOS is in these cases reduced to a host OS in the same way as ie. VMware: they bought a license, but it's not what they actually use in front of them. Sure, it's running in the background, but for whatever reasons, it's not their first choice in browsing.
These statistics therefore pretty accurately follow actual Windows Vista usage patterns and thanks to Microsoft's paranoid activation scheme it's possible to strongly correlate using Vista with having a valid license for it, therefore having paid money to MS (or caused the company to pay it).
For the usual car-themed analogy: it doesn't matter if you visit McDonalds by car or on foot, you're a McD customer nonetheless.
So far the statistical side of the argument, now for the common sense part: the latest MSIE, version 7, is also available for Windows XP. Windows XP licenses are cheaper, XP installations are smaller, faster and more responsive. Whatever advantages Vista may have over XP, they're wasted when running it inside Boot Camp or VMware on a Mac just to surf these stubborn websites that refuse to display anything on non-MSIE browser.
I wouldn't say there are no reasons to run Vista instead of XP in a hosted or virtual environment used for mere webbrowsing, but I think the chances people plop down $130 (Vista) instead of $50 (XP) to have a Vista-themed IE7 in their Boot Camp are infinitesimally slim.
Don't underestimate the costs associated with switching from one major OS to another, in terms of learning, time and probability of making mistakes. Even if MacOS would present a net gain in safety, stability and usabilty in the long term, regular people are risk-avoidant as usual. Also, for some the learning and risk costs are much higher than for you or me, so it may very well be a rational choice for them to keep the OS they're used to.
And don't underestimate different tastes - some people really really liked the Windows XP "luna" theme. It sounds preposterous, but it's true. There are strange people out there and they're probably the majority.
When you say "Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study."
do you mean "Correlation between installed Vista machines and Vista http headers does not exist"?
If you said yes, please re-read basic statistics 101, basic mathematics 101 and basic common sense 001.
There is *of course* a correlation between *installed* machines of a certain type and machines *identifying* as such. Any other claim is ridiculous given the undisputable fact that machine IDs are not generated randomly upon installation. Even if 90 or 99 percent of Vista users changed their IDs to display "MacOS TWELVE", it would *still* matter in terms of correlation between Vista installations and Vista http-IDs.
Tell me you're just trolling because you know as well as everyone else on this site that the total number of Vista users changing their http IDs are between zero and twenty worldwide and those are probably web developers checking their site's compatibility.
Please don't repeat that thing over and over - it's getting old already. Maybe there are websites that reject Safari, but websites that reject Firefox or anything else based on the Gecko HTML engine are so damn stupid they're worth ignoring.
Come on, Firefox has 15 percent market share among the general internet population and much much more among even halfway tech literate people - if you shut these out, you can shut down your site as well.
Face it: only the stupidest dork webmasters still shut out Firefox and if they do, they deserve to be their only visitor once in a while. The microsoft.com domain and their ActiveX plugins is an exception, but we laugh at them as well.
If you honestly have to set your user agent to WindowsMSIE to visit some websites, think about voting with your wallet or feet or mouse or whatever - and avoid those websites. Shutting out the 5 percent Macs and the 15 percent Firefoxes, sheesh, teach them a lesson for Gods sake. If you disguise your browser ID, you reinforce their stupidity, so simply don't.
I wasn't saying killing prairie dogs or whatever animal you consider varmint is morally depraved, BUT I consider it absolutely unethical to watch videotaped killings for fun and pleasure.
I will not crusade for plague rights, I'll not even consider banning videotaped animal killing, because freedom and freedom of speech is much more important to me. Killing varmint is a neccessary thing for some areas and it's not more or less ethical than eating steaks. (Which I do regularly). BUT recording this killing in minute detail and selling it as funny entertainment is morally bankrupt in my eyes and I'll look down upon anyone who actually buys this video for watching pleasure.
People are still free to do what they must and to do what they like, but I have the right to dislike them if I consider their actions disgusting. I won't stop them from doing, but I sure as hell won't make friends, either.
Two points: flapping arms will not work in low gravity, low viscosity environments, ie. air in a space station. Candles don't work there, either. For the why, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader:)
A blowtorch should work, but I think I'd stick to glowy LEDs disguised as candles. And I think a kind of elastic band harness is what astronauts are using when doing The Thing - and while condoms should work containing the male by-products, you'd have a hard time trying to contain those of the female counterpart. You'd have to invent a way to remove floating fluid contamination anyway, as people sneeze and cough sometimes.
I guess a small air current directed against a non-critical absorbing surface might help. It improves oxygen transfer anyway.
Why exactly should YOU be allowed to post on Slashdot in your freetime while others are sweating and toiling night and day just to have some bread on their tables?
Why exactly am I allowed to own a car while others can't even afford a pair of shoes?
I think the best solution is to take away all personal property and rights, so everyone has the same level. After all, it worked so incredibly well in Cuba, the USSR and the rest of the eastern bloc. I mean, everyone was so happy to be there!
To cite a personal song favorite of mine: "to grind the mountains to the level of the valleys
to cut the trees to the level of the grass
to asphalt the land in the name of equality"
Never talk about why should anyone be allowed to do X, because that's none of our business. Talk about - and reason - why anyone should NOT be allowed to do X - and "equality" or "morals" have no grounds in that discussion, the only thing you can ever use as an argument is
"Does person A's activity X harm the freedom of others more, than it would harm to forbid A and everyone else this activity?"
Laws in free countries should be a black-list of forbidden activities, not a whitelist, a closed enumeration of what's acceptable and what's not.
still OT: May I direct you to the lovely video series Prarie dog be gone, where they videotape their sniping of prairie dogs? Not ordinary sniping, but.50 BMG rifles, with the hits and subsequent splattering recorded in extreme close-up and slow-motion.
Their site includes promotional youtube video links, so you can experience first hand how total and utter moral depravity looks like. Free speech is still more important, but that's just my personal opinion, I guess. But these are the cases where I have to think some minutes if that's really really true. Even the Bumfight series was more humane than that...
Money grubbing corps, of course. "Being greedy with no regard for quality of life" is a tough accusation and a wrong one as well. The problem lies with the actual definition of "quality of life" being different for each and everyone of us. It's impossible to produce a set of rules based on a thing as "quality of life" without directly hurting the quality of life of a small or large subset of the population.
This is the reason people feel better living in a capitalistic (greedy) system than in a socialist world: no body of authority can measure quality of life and is therefore doomed to make mistakes trying to mandate it anyway. What's worse, it's all too easy and appealing to standardize the people themselves instead, leading to all the sorry states of living we saw in socialist states.
Please accept that freedom means being free to poison and hurt oneself, with tobacco, alcohol, stupidness or fast food. Companies, fast food chains and even drug dealers simply follow this freedom. No one is forced to buy hamburgers or cigarettes - as well as forced to not execercise. Please keep it that way, I don't want to be forced to work, exercise or eat healthy, thank you. Because you'd need forced labor camps and forced re-education to produce that..
I wouldn't blame it on malice, but rather a commercial-darwinistic selection:
Those restaurants and brands that follow this procedure were much more successful than all the others and outgrew them in the long run.
The "invisible hand" favors best-selling products with no malice included on any part of the market. If the adverse effects of said products surface long after consumption then it is possible to have the market optimize for products having adverse effects but short-term selling points. This is no call for state-controlled socialism, as I like being able to choose my poison, no matter if it's alcohol, tobacco or a bar of candy.
The instant consumers realized the effects of fast-food restaurants AND voted with their wallets, even the mighty restaurant chains moved at high-subsonic speeds: McDonalds and Burger King quickly introduced entire product lines aimed at the health-conscious customer, from salads to fat-reduced meals and precise calorie accounting and disclosure. However, they'll drop these product lines the instant they lose traction with the customers, as they're not meant to be welfare agencies but being a profitable venue.
(BTW those companies that tried to combine public welfare with being profitable venues were out-grown by just-profitable companies.)
Please re-read TFA, it clearly says (and refers to evidence) that calories from fructose != calories from glucose.
Given that the human body is one of the most complex systems we have ever encountered, it's not surprising that in many instances the logical "X in = X out" doesn't apply. Anyone who has ever tried controlled, as scientific as possible dieting can tell that eating the same amount X calories per day every day for months produce wildly varying results in the same person, even if said person keeps constant environments and exercise regimes.
The dreaded "4 months after dieting" plateau is one of the most commonly observed effects the body regulation system has on calorie processing: assume a set amount of calories below the keep-weight limit is calculated and then properly accounted for during several months. The first week nothing happens, then weight loss begins as expected, increases in speed but pretty abruptly tapers off after about 4 months. It doesn't matter much from what weight this process started, how much below keep-weight level the calorie intake was (as long as it's above real starvation) - after about 4 months and/or 10 percent weight loss, the weight loss comes to a complete stop or progresses much much slower than before.
This happens no matter if the calorie intake is kept constant or decreased corresponding to the reduced calorie needs of a reduced-weight body.
This probably happens because the body cuts off all energy expenditures it regards as "unneeded in the current situation". Heart and brain functions probably remain constant, but muscle tension will lower, body temperature regulated lower, unneccessary activities subconsciusly reduced etc.. In effect, this will be observed as slower walking speed than before, higher preference for warm clothing or warmer environments, being more easily tired, needing more sleep, preferring to watch TV instead of going out clubbing, keeping one's hands still instead of fidgeting around with a pencil and many other things.
Imagine a person being fed by gastro-intestinal tube, but able to live an otherwise normal life. The food is administered electronically and contains everything the person needs, is adapted to varying body weight but nonetheless controlled to contain a constant amount of calories. No matter if that person gets 2000 calories per day for months, their weight or habits will change.
You realize that subscribing Slashdot viewers get to see a story early? Several minutes up to half an hour earlier than everyone else, so they have more than enough time to prepare a comment if they want to sit around pressing F5 once in a while...
You're advocating a tiered energy storage system to maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages (including costs) of different mediums.
We've been using a system like this for years in our computers and it looks promising to get this on cars.
Fast capacitors, slower capacitors, NiMH/Li battery (most hybrids use NiMH), gasoline/diesel/ethanol/natural gas/whatever tank. Sounds nice and plausible and I remember hearing that at least BMW is planning on incorporating capacitors in their hybrid model of the X5. They may not do that for efficiency reasons but for faster sprints, but it's going to be interesting, though.
Not pure FUD, as for example DDOS attacks can be quite effective when abusing an "unreliable" feature. When the goal is disrupting the avaiability of a given resource, unreliable systems are as bad as insecure ones.
The European Unity is a beautiful goal, agreed, but the European Union (tm) is not, at least not in the way it is and becoming to be right now. Replacing several moderately functioning free democracies with an authoritarian, barely-controlled superstate is a political folly of historic proportions. The jokes about the "EUSSR" certainly have their merits, because the EU parliament has no power over anything the EU does - and the EU commission can rule almost completely independent of everything and everyone else.
The EU commission is formed by the commission president. The president is voted upon by the "elite electorate" consisting of all EU member states' premier ministers. And afterwards, the EU commission can produce any law in any of its member states by issuing a "directive". The elected parliaments of the members can now only decide on fringe parts of the actual implementations of EU directives, but not the general spirit of them.
A multi-ethnic superstate, effetively decided upon by a committee of 15, elected through several proxy layers away from the public, that can pass any law and claim any jurisdictive competence over the member states that it likes to - yes that surely sounds a bit like Stalinist system. Even more so, as it currently polices "good will" and mandates "the best your own good". Oligarchic, powerful nanny state run by barely elected 15 people. Sorry, but that's a lot like a dictatorship to me, therefore I'm against it and with anyone who damages that institution.
The European Unity is a formidable goal, but so were all goals set forth by socialist regimes. The actual implementation and everyday life were oppression, coercion, autocracy and economically damaging policies.
PS I don't think you deserve a flamebait mod. What you expressed is a disputed opinion, not a trolling attempt.
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Thank you for using the cluebat, although I think you could've whacked a little more.
Anyway, one question remains: is a regular ISP without evil root certificates installed able to read the URLs your browser is requesting? These can be quite destructive to anyone's privacy. In the textbook case of a totalitarian government it's certainly unhealthy to have the state-owned ISP knowing what you searched on Google or read on Wikipedia...
Any possibility of snooping in this manner?
There's a limit on how far air cooling can go on any given class of equipment, where a different cooling medium is simply more effective and efficient. Low noise systems may be at the forefront, but it's just not feasible to increase air cooling in servers and data centers beyond a certain point, as air can't carry away as much energy as water. Server hardware will get to a point where even a freezing cold tornado is insufficient to cool all equipment.
Could be many reasons, the space requirements for large air currents, the need of having puny fragile human engineers around the machines sometimes or simply because air is much more difficult to cool down than water. Whatever the reason, being able to stack many HDDs on top of each other without overheating them is possibly interesting.
As long as you know the energy consumption and seriously considered possible alternatives, you're absolved :)
I like my screen totally flicker-free and I'd sacrifice color accuracy and display reaction times for that. My notebook display is fast enough for FPS gaming and the fact that people from the left and right of me can't see squat on my screen is actually very welcome for gaming with friends...
I think your wattmeter is broken, seriously and not kidding. You won't find a single CRT-based appliance with a screen larger than 19" consuming noticeably less than 90-100 Watts. No, no and no, sorry.
Compare this spec sheet picked at random from the Sony US website. Stated consumption of 160W in operation for a run-of-the-mill 36" CRT model. Feel free to pull up some more specs from other manufacturers to prove me wrong, but the 27" model of the same series still uses 130W in operation. And that's a marketing sheet from Sony, so I don't think they're exaggerating their energy usage.
If your 27" CRT-TV really uses less than 50W, make sure your space-time-continuum is in working condition, because it seems out of tune with the rest of the world's.
What's much more interesting than that is the fact that most Sony LCD TV sets actually use MORE power than their comparable sized CRT counterparts. You wouldn't believe that, but Sony tells me that a high-end 32" model uses 155W in operation, a 40" model even 200W. That's a bit shocking, so I've to thank you for your trollish post, because I learned something new that way. Feel free to scoot around their or another manufacturer's website to find some more real world numbers.
50W for a larger CRT is still preposterous, sorry.
Now for the PSU stand-by consumption: I'll post a photo of my old AMD 1800+ system with the wattmeter aside, if you really want to. It has a standard Enermax PSU and draws 35W with all LED blinkenlights except for ones from the NIC dark. Maybe it's damaged, but it clearly gives off warmth and a barely audible hum.
And get some manners dude, don't try to be that rude to real people within striking distance of your nose. Your offhanded remarks were uncalled-for and you know that.
Supermarkets don't survive by saving energy, they have to sell their goods. Top opening freezers with a huge lid probably discourages people from taking items out and into their carts, just like closed doors and half-blocked aisles do. Buyer's psychology is a huge part of it and I think it's cheaper to waste some electricity to sell more goods.
Especially when you're trying to make profit from impulse buying which could be hindered by the simple needed movement of the door. Nonetheless, some supermarkets over here use freezers with sliding lids on top made of glass, which probably makes a good compromise on goods presentation and energy saving. Sliding doors should be best in avoiding air currents, anyway.
If you read e-meter as the scientology-mock-up instead of an abbreviation for "electricity meter", you've definitely watched too much Slashdot :)
I think one of these products (or similar) would be much better suited to the task: http://www.gumstix.com/. They are a lot cheaper, more configurable and should be able to run unmodified kernels, which is a big plus concerning reliability and security. It lacks the design case from a Nano, but maybe that's acceptable in this application.
If you compare the energy consumption of CRTs and LCDs in everyday use, you'll find astounding results. Or perhaps not so astounding, as the CRT is sucking 150W or more, while your LCD consumes less than 40W - or 60W if you've got a larger screen.
Now you know why many companies are throwing out / have thrown out long ago their CRTs and why it's dumb to pick them up for even less than 10 dollars: larger CRTs may be cheap to buy, but they eat into your wallet through 2-3 years. For fellow geeks who use their computer for 10 hours a day, that's some serious cash burned per year. And baby seals and pet whales killed, of course.
Most decent notebooks use 40W-60W total when under load, while older desktops routinely have PSUs that eat 30W in the *off*-state (computer powered down, but cable plugged in). A wattmeter ($15) and a calculator ($5) can do so much more for your wallet (and those pooooooooor baby seals) than switching to CF lamps and changing the background of that damn CRT to black.
Common energy hogs in the average home (in case you haven't taken care of some of these already)
- the fridge. There are models that use 140kwh per year available, yours probably uses 300 or more
- the freezer. same here, but when upgrading, consider a top-opening freezer. As cold air stays down, it's much more energy conserving than front-opening models
- lighting: use CFLs wherever convenient and LED replacements where there's not enough room for CFLs or switching cycles are important
But those are costing money. Here are some savings for free:
- the VCR, radio or TV: some waste 15-20W or more for doing nothing than blinking 12:00 - get a e-meter and a power strip with a simple on/off switch.
- washer and dryer: these appliances sometimes waste 20W or more when just being plugged in. Mine does and it's not a cheap one, either. That's right, 20W energy drain for nothing, no clock, no blinkenlights, nothing, just the plug in the socket. E-meter and then pull the plug when not using them, problem solved.
- the desktop PC. As mentioned above, most PSUs use 35W for nothing when the computer is supposedly in the off-state. The same for some peripherals, although they use 5-10W at most. Switchable power strip takes care of that - and have all peripherals plugged together so one switch really turns them all off: powered USB-hub, printer, scanner, speaker, screen and everyting else.
Total cost: 3 switchable power strips for $3 each and an e-meter ($15). Savings in the first year almost $100 or more, convenience and standard of living lost: zero.
Apples claims of only wanting to "ensure the best possible user experience" by locking out SDK and user created software, they're no more credible than HP when they say the same about the chips and DMCA-spiked firmware in their ink cartridges.
This is because foreign code may not only affect stability and "user experience" but the monopoly you have on that hardware. And reducing the monopoly means commodization of some sort and that's what Apple hates more than anything: fixed, exclusive, expensive 2-year contracts, secrecy around new products, higher-than-expected prices, strict limits on the user (changing the battery? a memory card?) - it's all oriented around their central marketing aim of being in THE special position among all hard- and software manufacturers.
People are buying it, Apple is profitable like nothing and has a crowd of fans silencing all critics - it seems to work, I admit.
I have quite some respect for their marketing and product strategy - they are doing everything right from a shareholder's perspective. (Stock inflation for unreal expectations is not that important)
But don't make the mistake to consider Apple a corporation totally different from its arch rival Microsoft. They're following a different path, but their goal is comparable. If Apple's and MSFT's market shares were reversed, we had the same problems with Mac OS than we have with Windows right now, except their design and safety record wouldn't suck half as bad. But concerning anti-competitive maneuvers, vendor lock-in amd user restrictions, they'd be just the same.
Please don't confuse any "webserver" with a potentially full-blow apache. Answering GET requests by streaming out plaintext html files is accomplished by freshman's programming examples - having a real webserver is much much more.
Given that the iPhone is running some variety of MacOS X, it's highly likely that we see the full potential of this thing unlocked pretty soon. Having a fairly standardized environment, a fairly powerful CPU and a sleek form factor is good.
Being turing-complete isn't good enough for the real world of computing. Any PCL printer is, but do you see anyone here breaking out the champagne over that?
A Safari user running Vista should show up as Vista, because it is.
This case should be entirely clear: a downloaded browser doesn't change the OS it's running under.
A Mac user running Vista in a virtual machine or Boot Camp should also show up as Vista, because I guess it IS Vista after all.
Same as before: whatever that Mac user did, he or she presumably bought a valid Vista license and uses it for casual webbrowsing, for whatever reasons they have.
Although the people in the second and third case you mentioned *also* bought and use MacOS, they don't show up in that website's statistics. I would argue this is still fine, because it shows the actual user preference in browsing this or other websites.
MacOS is in these cases reduced to a host OS in the same way as ie. VMware: they bought a license, but it's not what they actually use in front of them. Sure, it's running in the background, but for whatever reasons, it's not their first choice in browsing.
These statistics therefore pretty accurately follow actual Windows Vista usage patterns and thanks to Microsoft's paranoid activation scheme it's possible to strongly correlate using Vista with having a valid license for it, therefore having paid money to MS (or caused the company to pay it).
For the usual car-themed analogy: it doesn't matter if you visit McDonalds by car or on foot, you're a McD customer nonetheless.
So far the statistical side of the argument, now for the common sense part: the latest MSIE, version 7, is also available for Windows XP. Windows XP licenses are cheaper, XP installations are smaller, faster and more responsive. Whatever advantages Vista may have over XP, they're wasted when running it inside Boot Camp or VMware on a Mac just to surf these stubborn websites that refuse to display anything on non-MSIE browser.
I wouldn't say there are no reasons to run Vista instead of XP in a hosted or virtual environment used for mere webbrowsing, but I think the chances people plop down $130 (Vista) instead of $50 (XP) to have a Vista-themed IE7 in their Boot Camp are infinitesimally slim.
Don't underestimate the costs associated with switching from one major OS to another, in terms of learning, time and probability of making mistakes. Even if MacOS would present a net gain in safety, stability and usabilty in the long term, regular people are risk-avoidant as usual. Also, for some the learning and risk costs are much higher than for you or me, so it may very well be a rational choice for them to keep the OS they're used to.
And don't underestimate different tastes - some people really really liked the Windows XP "luna" theme. It sounds preposterous, but it's true. There are strange people out there and they're probably the majority.
When you say "Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study."
do you mean "Correlation between installed Vista machines and Vista http headers does not exist"?
If you said yes, please re-read basic statistics 101, basic mathematics 101 and basic common sense 001.
There is *of course* a correlation between *installed* machines of a certain type and machines *identifying* as such. Any other claim is ridiculous given the undisputable fact that machine IDs are not generated randomly upon installation. Even if 90 or 99 percent of Vista users changed their IDs to display "MacOS TWELVE", it would *still* matter in terms of correlation between Vista installations and Vista http-IDs.
Tell me you're just trolling because you know as well as everyone else on this site that the total number of Vista users changing their http IDs are between zero and twenty worldwide and those are probably web developers checking their site's compatibility.
Please don't repeat that thing over and over - it's getting old already. Maybe there are websites that reject Safari, but websites that reject Firefox or anything else based on the Gecko HTML engine are so damn stupid they're worth ignoring.
Come on, Firefox has 15 percent market share among the general internet population and much much more among even halfway tech literate people - if you shut these out, you can shut down your site as well.
Face it: only the stupidest dork webmasters still shut out Firefox and if they do, they deserve to be their only visitor once in a while. The microsoft.com domain and their ActiveX plugins is an exception, but we laugh at them as well.
If you honestly have to set your user agent to WindowsMSIE to visit some websites, think about voting with your wallet or feet or mouse or whatever - and avoid those websites. Shutting out the 5 percent Macs and the 15 percent Firefoxes, sheesh, teach them a lesson for Gods sake. If you disguise your browser ID, you reinforce their stupidity, so simply don't.
I wasn't saying killing prairie dogs or whatever animal you consider varmint is morally depraved, BUT I consider it absolutely unethical to watch videotaped killings for fun and pleasure.
I will not crusade for plague rights, I'll not even consider banning videotaped animal killing, because freedom and freedom of speech is much more important to me. Killing varmint is a neccessary thing for some areas and it's not more or less ethical than eating steaks. (Which I do regularly). BUT recording this killing in minute detail and selling it as funny entertainment is morally bankrupt in my eyes and I'll look down upon anyone who actually buys this video for watching pleasure.
People are still free to do what they must and to do what they like, but I have the right to dislike them if I consider their actions disgusting. I won't stop them from doing, but I sure as hell won't make friends, either.
Two points: flapping arms will not work in low gravity, low viscosity environments, ie. air in a space station. :)
Candles don't work there, either. For the why, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader
A blowtorch should work, but I think I'd stick to glowy LEDs disguised as candles. And I think a kind of elastic band harness is what astronauts are using when doing The Thing - and while condoms should work containing the male by-products, you'd have a hard time trying to contain those of the female counterpart. You'd have to invent a way to remove floating fluid contamination anyway, as people sneeze and cough sometimes.
I guess a small air current directed against a non-critical absorbing surface might help. It improves oxygen transfer anyway.
Why exactly should YOU be allowed to post on Slashdot in your freetime while others are sweating and toiling night and day just to have some bread on their tables?
Why exactly am I allowed to own a car while others can't even afford a pair of shoes?
I think the best solution is to take away all personal property and rights, so everyone has the same level. After all, it worked so incredibly well in Cuba, the USSR and the rest of the eastern bloc. I mean, everyone was so happy to be there!
To cite a personal song favorite of mine:
"to grind the mountains to the level of the valleys
to cut the trees to the level of the grass
to asphalt the land in the name of equality"
Never talk about why should anyone be allowed to do X, because that's none of our business. Talk about - and reason - why anyone should NOT be allowed to do X - and "equality" or "morals" have no grounds in that discussion, the only thing you can ever use as an argument is
"Does person A's activity X harm the freedom of others more, than it would harm to forbid A and everyone else this activity?"
Laws in free countries should be a black-list of forbidden activities, not a whitelist, a closed enumeration of what's acceptable and what's not.
still OT: May I direct you to the lovely video series Prarie dog be gone, where they videotape their sniping of prairie dogs? Not ordinary sniping, but .50 BMG rifles, with the hits and subsequent splattering recorded in extreme close-up and slow-motion.
Their site includes promotional youtube video links, so you can experience first hand how total and utter moral depravity looks like. Free speech is still more important, but that's just my personal opinion, I guess. But these are the cases where I have to think some minutes if that's really really true. Even the Bumfight series was more humane than that...
Money grubbing corps, of course. "Being greedy with no regard for quality of life" is a tough accusation and a wrong one as well. The problem lies with the actual definition of "quality of life" being different for each and everyone of us. It's impossible to produce a set of rules based on a thing as "quality of life" without directly hurting the quality of life of a small or large subset of the population.
This is the reason people feel better living in a capitalistic (greedy) system than in a socialist world: no body of authority can measure quality of life and is therefore doomed to make mistakes trying to mandate it anyway. What's worse, it's all too easy and appealing to standardize the people themselves instead, leading to all the sorry states of living we saw in socialist states.
Please accept that freedom means being free to poison and hurt oneself, with tobacco, alcohol, stupidness or fast food. Companies, fast food chains and even drug dealers simply follow this freedom. No one is forced to buy hamburgers or cigarettes - as well as forced to not execercise. Please keep it that way, I don't want to be forced to work, exercise or eat healthy, thank you. Because you'd need forced labor camps and forced re-education to produce that..
I wouldn't blame it on malice, but rather a commercial-darwinistic selection:
Those restaurants and brands that follow this procedure were much more successful than all the others and outgrew them in the long run.
The "invisible hand" favors best-selling products with no malice included on any part of the market. If the adverse effects of said products surface long after consumption then it is possible to have the market optimize for products having adverse effects but short-term selling points. This is no call for state-controlled socialism, as I like being able to choose my poison, no matter if it's alcohol, tobacco or a bar of candy.
The instant consumers realized the effects of fast-food restaurants AND voted with their wallets, even the mighty restaurant chains moved at high-subsonic speeds: McDonalds and Burger King quickly introduced entire product lines aimed at the health-conscious customer, from salads to fat-reduced meals and precise calorie accounting and disclosure. However, they'll drop these product lines the instant they lose traction with the customers, as they're not meant to be welfare agencies but being a profitable venue.
(BTW those companies that tried to combine public welfare with being profitable venues were out-grown by just-profitable companies.)
Please re-read TFA, it clearly says (and refers to evidence) that calories from fructose != calories from glucose.
Given that the human body is one of the most complex systems we have ever encountered, it's not surprising that in many instances the logical "X in = X out" doesn't apply. Anyone who has ever tried controlled, as scientific as possible dieting can tell that eating the same amount X calories per day every day for months produce wildly varying results in the same person, even if said person keeps constant environments and exercise regimes.
The dreaded "4 months after dieting" plateau is one of the most commonly observed effects the body regulation system has on calorie processing: assume a set amount of calories below the keep-weight limit is calculated and then properly accounted for during several months. The first week nothing happens, then weight loss begins as expected, increases in speed but pretty abruptly tapers off after about 4 months. It doesn't matter much from what weight this process started, how much below keep-weight level the calorie intake was (as long as it's above real starvation) - after about 4 months and/or 10 percent weight loss, the weight loss comes to a complete stop or progresses much much slower than before.
This happens no matter if the calorie intake is kept constant or decreased corresponding to the reduced calorie needs of a reduced-weight body.
This probably happens because the body cuts off all energy expenditures it regards as "unneeded in the current situation". Heart and brain functions probably remain constant, but muscle tension will lower, body temperature regulated lower, unneccessary activities subconsciusly reduced etc.. In effect, this will be observed as slower walking speed than before, higher preference for warm clothing or warmer environments, being more easily tired, needing more sleep, preferring to watch TV instead of going out clubbing, keeping one's hands still instead of fidgeting around with a pencil and many other things.
Imagine a person being fed by gastro-intestinal tube, but able to live an otherwise normal life. The food is administered electronically and contains everything the person needs, is adapted to varying body weight but nonetheless controlled to contain a constant amount of calories. No matter if that person gets 2000 calories per day for months, their weight or habits will change.
You realize that subscribing Slashdot viewers get to see a story early? Several minutes up to half an hour earlier than everyone else, so they have more than enough time to prepare a comment if they want to sit around pressing F5 once in a while...
To sum your post up:
You're advocating a tiered energy storage system to maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages (including costs) of different mediums.
We've been using a system like this for years in our computers and it looks promising to get this on cars.
Fast capacitors, slower capacitors, NiMH/Li battery (most hybrids use NiMH), gasoline/diesel/ethanol/natural gas/whatever tank. Sounds nice and plausible and I remember hearing that at least BMW is planning on incorporating capacitors in their hybrid model of the X5. They may not do that for efficiency reasons but for faster sprints, but it's going to be interesting, though.
Not pure FUD, as for example DDOS attacks can be quite effective when abusing an "unreliable" feature. When the goal is disrupting the avaiability of a given resource, unreliable systems are as bad as insecure ones.
The European Unity is a beautiful goal, agreed, but the European Union (tm) is not, at least not in the way it is and becoming to be right now. Replacing several moderately functioning free democracies with an authoritarian, barely-controlled superstate is a political folly of historic proportions. The jokes about the "EUSSR" certainly have their merits, because the EU parliament has no power over anything the EU does - and the EU commission can rule almost completely independent of everything and everyone else.
The EU commission is formed by the commission president. The president is voted upon by the "elite electorate" consisting of all EU member states' premier ministers. And afterwards, the EU commission can produce any law in any of its member states by issuing a "directive". The elected parliaments of the members can now only decide on fringe parts of the actual implementations of EU directives, but not the general spirit of them.
A multi-ethnic superstate, effetively decided upon by a committee of 15, elected through several proxy layers away from the public, that can pass any law and claim any jurisdictive competence over the member states that it likes to - yes that surely sounds a bit like Stalinist system. Even more so, as it currently polices "good will" and mandates "the best your own good". Oligarchic, powerful nanny state run by barely elected 15 people. Sorry, but that's a lot like a dictatorship to me, therefore I'm against it and with anyone who damages that institution.
The European Unity is a formidable goal, but so were all goals set forth by socialist regimes. The actual implementation and everyday life were oppression, coercion, autocracy and economically damaging policies.
PS I don't think you deserve a flamebait mod. What you expressed is a disputed opinion, not a trolling attempt.