Impressive thinking and writing for a 13 year old, assuming that it's mostly his work (always a question with school science projects). However, see a detailed analysis of why claiming some kind of breakthrough is wrong: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JmlMNqVPKlsJ:uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html%20http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html
Very brief cliffs: 1) He measured open circuit voltage with no load, which tells you nothing about actual power that it can produce under load 2) Broken theory: sum of the outputs over time is simply the sum of the individual outputs, and will be maximized by having all individual outputs at the optimal angle
I've used desktop and server Linux for years, and likewise Windows 2000 and XP for years. I think my 2 sons and I both adjusted at least as easily to a Linux desktop as I did when I tried Vista. It seems likely that Win7 will also require a significant adjustment.
And our group at work moved a few months ago from Office 2003 to Office 2007. We're not power users of Office, but moderately frequent users, and are still figuring out how to do some things that were easy in Office 2003. I've found the learning curve easier in learning Open Office and other open source office suites than in moving from MS Office 2003 to 2007.
I don't know about Basel but I'm certain these guys know they would face serious legal/criminal action if they didn't know for sure it was safe.</quote>
You mean like the wall street investment bankers were deterred from taking undue risks and even committing fraud by these same considerations?
I don't think we should underestimate the likelihood of corporate officials being willing to take big risks when they see the possibility of company profits translating to big salaries and bonuses for themselves. I'm not saying that such projects shouldn't be undertaken. And I don't want regulatory and lawsuit-driven strangulation of any projects with possible environmental impact.
Still, relying on sane decision making by corporations is no substitute for appropriate oversight.
How many viruses have you caught in your years of running antivirus software on *nix? I mean ones that were capable of infecting the *nix system, not Windows viruses.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to re "the password manager". In any case, KeePass is in the Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) repositories, and is trivial to install. I don't know if that was the case for older Ubuntu versions.
Guess I should note that "update-manager -c" may not see the new version as available until after the release, so updating beforehand may require manual editing of sources, etc. It's the easy way if updating after release date, though.
I'll probably just upgrade early. I've not had any problems running a late pre-release version and just continuing to update so that I eventually wind up with the final release.
Instead of manually updating repositories I think that running "update-manager -c" is the recommended method. As I recall it takes care of details like updating repositories, and updating apt in the proper sequence.
Interesting post. The implication, assuming that an alien society followed a similar path to us in developing their technology, is that SETI is looking for signals from a relatively short period in their history. Otherwise, they will have likely moved to the use of signals undetectable to SETI.
So, if that relatively short period occurred the number of years ago that electromagnetic radiation requires to traverse the distance between us, we might detect something with SETI. Otherwise, not.
Surely you jest. If that were the case you'd see huge payments to executives regardless of company performance, and highly paid executives of declining companies keeping their jobs while firing large numbers of low-level employees to save money. Even if finally dismissed, executives would get enormous severance packages regardless of how well-deserved their dismissal.
Interesting post, avoiding the extremes of "the sky is falling" on the one hand or "anything that I pretend isn't there will go away" on the other. Thinking about the real consequences of global warming and cost/benefit of various options isn't done enough.
I do wonder about your statement about the paucity of evidence for variation in solar radiation. I recall that there is some controversy about temperature records, with the effects of increased urbanization/urban heat island effects, and possible lower reliability and quantity of temperature records going back decades or hundreds of years. Probably we still have reliable enough evidence to support that global warming is taking place.
However, it is more difficult to measure solar radiation than air or ocean temperatures. For how long have we had good records? Given an 11 year sunspot cycle, how many other cycles might a typical star be subject to, perhaps with much longer cycles? Might we be near a peak of a much longer cycle where the curve of solar output is high but not changing rapidly? If so, how long would it for the oceans to absorb as much heat as they can before starting to dissipate as much heat as they absorb, and reaching a steady state where their temperatures no longer are increasing?
I am neither a climatologist nor a scientist, I just wonder how far back we have good data on solar radiation levels, and whether it isn't likely that this is a much greater component of the cause of global warming than is generally suggested.
I agree with the comments above in response to this post.
I don't agree with modding the post troll. If you disagree with a legitimate post counter it with arguments like the posters above, don't try to stifle honest discussion by abusing mod powers.
Interesting that you say that. I used to work at a data center using Omniback/Data Protector. They had problems with the db on several occasions that required hours of downtime. Went to logging backups only at the directory level instead of file level, as otherwise the db got too big and caused too many problems.
Possibly HP has since changed the db backend or else those in charge of backups at that data center didn't know how to configure things properly.
Good point about the convenience of LDAP and centralized authentication, though I'm not sure how I'd like having root login be dependent on LDAP.
As for the sudoers file being mangled, using visudo should check for correct syntax and not let you save the changes if they would render it nonfunctional.
I don't quite get the almost universal hostility to what you've said, either. Maybe all the Gaim developers post on Slashdot.
I get that it's free software and most haven't paid anything for it. But gratuitous obnoxiousness on the part of the developers doesn't seem to bode well for this project long-term. If they don't care about their users then eventually most people will move to a project where the developers do care.
I don't think I'll hold my breath now waiting for webcam and voice chat support.
Just tried the same method on Gnome (Ubuntu). Works the same as you've described it on Windows. Of course, since I usually organize programs into different virtual desktops it won't work so well unless you have tasks from all desktops set to show in the task bar.
One other thing that I've also noticed: I love tabbed browsing but hate opening a new tab and having every page that I've tabbed be frozen until the page that is opening finishes.
The article seemed pretty vague to me about how they're making the workstations more secure. A brief bit about keeping the OS patched, anti-virus, pki, Active Directory and such. Didn't sound like anything unusual, or not done by most larger companies.
They just are more exposed due to the lack of a firewall. How this is better I'm not sure. Of course even with a firewall we have lots of virus attacks at my place of employment, but some protection from a firewall is still better than none.
If you want to go to more trouble you can write your own script, add to/etc/init.d, create symlinks in the rc.d directories for different runlevels or use chkconfig to do so.
Since Fedora versions become the basis for RHEL you'd think that there would be a supported way to migrate. I think though, that they take a subset of what's in Fedora for RHEL, so maybe that's what makes it hard.
For most of us the tipping point where we would prefer stability over the latest and greatest stuff hasn't been reached for workstation use. I run a personal server with FC3, but have thoughts about playing with CentOS on it. But for a workstation it'll be a while before I'd consider RHEL over Fedora unless I was administering a lot of them and found the tools for doing so to be notably superior.
Mandrake will be fine. With all respect to the parent poster, there is a big difference between either Mandrake or RH (free version is now Fedora) from 2-3 years ago and what they are now.
Really it's a big diff from then to now for any Linux distro due to newer kernel, libraries, better Gnome or KDE desktop, etc. Fedora is ok too, just a bit more trouble to get multimedia working (takes a few extra steps) and requires downloading a new rpm every time you upgrade the kernel if you have an ntfs formatted drive that you need to access.
The easy to use Debian variants, like Kanotix, Ubuntu, and Mepis are good also, so if you don't like Mandrake one of those would probably be your best bet. I've not done Slackware, but my impression is that it's probably better for a more experience Linux user unless you really want to get into the nitty gritty of Linux config right off.
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Impressive thinking and writing for a 13 year old, assuming that it's mostly his work (always a question with school science projects). However, see a detailed analysis of why claiming some kind of breakthrough is wrong: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JmlMNqVPKlsJ:uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html%20http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html
Very brief cliffs: 1) He measured open circuit voltage with no load, which tells you nothing about actual power that it can produce under load 2) Broken theory: sum of the outputs over time is simply the sum of the individual outputs, and will be maximized by having all individual outputs at the optimal angle
Exactly.
I've used desktop and server Linux for years, and likewise Windows 2000 and XP for years. I think my 2 sons and I both adjusted at least as easily to a Linux desktop as I did when I tried Vista. It seems likely that Win7 will also require a significant adjustment.
And our group at work moved a few months ago from Office 2003 to Office 2007. We're not power users of Office, but moderately frequent users, and are still figuring out how to do some things that were easy in Office 2003. I've found the learning curve easier in learning Open Office and other open source office suites than in moving from MS Office 2003 to 2007.
I don't know about Basel but I'm certain these guys know they would face serious legal/criminal action if they didn't know for sure it was safe.</quote>
You mean like the wall street investment bankers were deterred from taking undue risks and even committing fraud by these same considerations?
I don't think we should underestimate the likelihood of corporate officials being willing to take big risks when they see the possibility of company profits translating to big salaries and bonuses for themselves. I'm not saying that such projects shouldn't be undertaken. And I don't want regulatory and lawsuit-driven strangulation of any projects with possible environmental impact.
Still, relying on sane decision making by corporations is no substitute for appropriate oversight.
How many viruses have you caught in your years of running antivirus software on *nix? I mean ones that were capable of infecting the *nix system, not Windows viruses.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to re "the password manager". In any case, KeePass is in the Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) repositories, and is trivial to install. I don't know if that was the case for older Ubuntu versions.
Guess I should note that "update-manager -c" may not see the new version as available until after the release, so updating beforehand may require manual editing of sources, etc. It's the easy way if updating after release date, though.
I'll probably just upgrade early. I've not had any problems running a late pre-release version and just continuing to update so that I eventually wind up with the final release.
Instead of manually updating repositories I think that running "update-manager -c" is the recommended method. As I recall it takes care of details like updating repositories, and updating apt in the proper sequence.
Interesting post. The implication, assuming that an alien society followed a similar path to us in developing their technology, is that SETI is looking for signals from a relatively short period in their history. Otherwise, they will have likely moved to the use of signals undetectable to SETI.
So, if that relatively short period occurred the number of years ago that electromagnetic radiation requires to traverse the distance between us, we might detect something with SETI. Otherwise, not.
Surely you jest. If that were the case you'd see huge payments to executives regardless of company performance, and highly paid executives of declining companies keeping their jobs while firing large numbers of low-level employees to save money. Even if finally dismissed, executives would get enormous severance packages regardless of how well-deserved their dismissal.
Err...ummm....I guess you have a point.
You can use nspluginwrapper to run 32 bit flash inside 64 bit Firefox. Home page here - http://www.gibix.net/dokuwiki/en:projects:nsplugin wrapper.
Interesting post, avoiding the extremes of "the sky is falling" on the one hand or "anything that I pretend isn't there will go away" on the other. Thinking about the real consequences of global warming and cost/benefit of various options isn't done enough.
I do wonder about your statement about the paucity of evidence for variation in solar radiation. I recall that there is some controversy about temperature records, with the effects of increased urbanization/urban heat island effects, and possible lower reliability and quantity of temperature records going back decades or hundreds of years. Probably we still have reliable enough evidence to support that global warming is taking place.
However, it is more difficult to measure solar radiation than air or ocean temperatures. For how long have we had good records? Given an 11 year sunspot cycle, how many other cycles might a typical star be subject to, perhaps with much longer cycles? Might we be near a peak of a much longer cycle where the curve of solar output is high but not changing rapidly? If so, how long would it for the oceans to absorb as much heat as they can before starting to dissipate as much heat as they absorb, and reaching a steady state where their temperatures no longer are increasing?
I am neither a climatologist nor a scientist, I just wonder how far back we have good data on solar radiation levels, and whether it isn't likely that this is a much greater component of the cause of global warming than is generally suggested.
I agree with the comments above in response to this post.
I don't agree with modding the post troll. If you disagree with a legitimate post counter it with arguments like the posters above, don't try to stifle honest discussion by abusing mod powers.
Do I think that corporate types would ever pick such a name? wii
Interesting that you say that. I used to work at a data center using Omniback/Data Protector. They had problems with the db on several occasions that required hours of downtime. Went to logging backups only at the directory level instead of file level, as otherwise the db got too big and caused too many problems.
Possibly HP has since changed the db backend or else those in charge of backups at that data center didn't know how to configure things properly.
Good point about the convenience of LDAP and centralized authentication, though I'm not sure how I'd like having root login be dependent on LDAP.
As for the sudoers file being mangled, using visudo should check for correct syntax and not let you save the changes if they would render it nonfunctional.
Just "sudo passwd root" to enable root. Or "sudo -i" to start a root shell any time you want.
Problem solved.
Looks interesting, but only if you run Windows. The web site says PhotoMesa only runs on Windows.
Mercury seemed nice when I tried it, but I couldn't get notification via sound or a visual cue when it was backgrounded and I received a new message.
Maybe I didn't set something up right. I didn't work that hard at trying to find an answer.
I don't quite get the almost universal hostility to what you've said, either. Maybe all the Gaim developers post on Slashdot.
I get that it's free software and most haven't paid anything for it. But gratuitous obnoxiousness on the part of the developers doesn't seem to bode well for this project long-term. If they don't care about their users then eventually most people will move to a project where the developers do care.
I don't think I'll hold my breath now waiting for webcam and voice chat support.
Just tried the same method on Gnome (Ubuntu). Works the same as you've described it on Windows. Of course, since I usually organize programs into different virtual desktops it won't work so well unless you have tasks from all desktops set to show in the task bar.
You said it. The crashes are really annoying.
One other thing that I've also noticed: I love tabbed browsing but hate opening a new tab and having every page that I've tabbed be frozen until the page that is opening finishes.
Better threading would really be nice.
The article seemed pretty vague to me about how they're making the workstations more secure. A brief bit about keeping the OS patched, anti-virus, pki, Active Directory and such. Didn't sound like anything unusual, or not done by most larger companies.
They just are more exposed due to the lack of a firewall. How this is better I'm not sure. Of course even with a firewall we have lots of virus attacks at my place of employment, but some protection from a firewall is still better than none.
You can use /etc/rc.local.
/etc/init.d, create symlinks in the rc.d directories for different runlevels or use chkconfig to do so.
If you want to go to more trouble you can write your own script, add to
But the simple way is to just add to rc.local.
Since Fedora versions become the basis for RHEL you'd think that there would be a supported way to migrate. I think though, that they take a subset of what's in Fedora for RHEL, so maybe that's what makes it hard.
For most of us the tipping point where we would prefer stability over the latest and greatest stuff hasn't been reached for workstation use. I run a personal server with FC3, but have thoughts about playing with CentOS on it. But for a workstation it'll be a while before I'd consider RHEL over Fedora unless I was administering a lot of them and found the tools for doing so to be notably superior.
Mandrake will be fine. With all respect to the parent poster, there is a big difference between either Mandrake or RH (free version is now Fedora) from 2-3 years ago and what they are now.
Really it's a big diff from then to now for any Linux distro due to newer kernel, libraries, better Gnome or KDE desktop, etc. Fedora is ok too, just a bit more trouble to get multimedia working (takes a few extra steps) and requires downloading a new rpm every time you upgrade the kernel if you have an ntfs formatted drive that you need to access.
The easy to use Debian variants, like Kanotix, Ubuntu, and Mepis are good also, so if you don't like Mandrake one of those would probably be your best bet. I've not done Slackware, but my impression is that it's probably better for a more experience Linux user unless you really want to get into the nitty gritty of Linux config right off.