This is why my company is starting a move to Linux
on
The End is Nigh for XP
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· Score: 5, Interesting
My company builds custom video display systems for TV news, weather, and digital signage. I've always been running a Microsoft shop because we could deploy new designs the fastest. We don't need eye candy, just a stable and compatible OS that we can build on.
Our favorite used to be Windows 2000 Pro, because it didn't spend a lot of time getting in our way of booting up and running automated applications.
Then, Microsoft pulled Windows 2000 last year. So we moved to XP Pro..after some pain in getting rid of most of the "were Microsoft, and we are going to think for you" eye candy and automated autoconfig BS, we again had a stable OS to build on, or so we thought.
But having been burned, we started one of our new digital signage projects last year based on Slackware Linux...and we are quite happy with it. Yes it took longer, but we don't have to worry about MS pulling the rug out from under us. We don't have to worry about losing our development investment with Linux.
Apple's Steve jobs pulled a similar stupid stunt when he pulled the plug on the Power PC and all the development around it. We had built products around that too, but after having our products rendered useless by Apple's decision, (not once but twice, remember Nubus?) we'll never ever develop for Apple ever again.
What MS doesn't get about companies like mine is that there is no way we'd ever build a dedicated box or appliance application on Vista. The premise is a joke. If MS had any sense left, they'd keep XP around so that the OEM market had something to work with that wasn't just a collection of glorified myopic and incompatible eye candy.
I've been in Meteorology since 1978. I don't
put any faith in the IPCC report whatsoever.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during
the '92 campaign that "its the economy,
stupid".
I (and many others far smarter than I am)
say that on the subject of Global Warming:
"its the SUN, stupid"
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear
fireball, millions of times the mass of
earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One
hundred and nine Earths would be required to
fit across the Sun's disk, and its interior
could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total
luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats
386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts,
but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can't just ignore that kind of power.
But a lot of researchers do, and simply
dismiss our solar irradiance and it's
variability out of hand. It muddles up the GHG modeling study they are doing when you throw extra energy into the system.
The total luminous energy output
(visible, IR) received by earth from the sun
is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000)
watts. Now lets just say the sun increases
its output by 0.1% as its been measured to
do. (And its gotten way more active this
century.) That dumps an extra
174,000,000,000,000 watts into our
atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
Note: In the graph above, the low
flatline from 1645-1715 is the
Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually
no sunspots, where the historical reports
from the northern hemisphere tell a story of
dramatic climate change: harsh winters,
cools summers, crop failures, famine and
disease.
Now lets put 174 trillion watts
into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a
hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to
200 trillion watts or about the same amount
of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton
nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion
watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine that approximate amount of
extra energy being added to earth's
atmosphere every second by small increases
in the suns output that have been documented
to exist.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is
the average total power consumption of the
human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets
atmospheric energy balance with that if we
squeezed all the power we made that year
together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
I'm a meteorologist in California, and here the state climatologist has uncovered something very interesting. "Benchmark" weather stations in the Sierra Nevada don't follow the warming rend that many other stations do. These benchmark stations hav ben around since the 1890's and are far from urbanization. They show a net cooling, statewide, of about 0.1 degree over the last century while others closer o habitation show a marked rised.
Add to the fact that we have a very active sun right now, with lots of sunspots and solar events, and that can account for far more change than any human intervention.
Ever hear of the "Maunder Minimum" ? From Wikipedia: The Maunder Minimum is the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715 A.D., when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. It is named after the later solar astronomer E.W. Maunder who discovered the dearth of sunspots during that period by studying records from those years. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, for example, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000-50,000 spots.
Also of note during that time, The Thames river in England stayed frozen well into summer and in new England, early settlers saw snow in July in the early 1700's.
My point is that its all about cycles, and humans are but a fly speck on an elephants butt in effecting change compared to our suns energy.
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Our favorite used to be Windows 2000 Pro, because it didn't spend a lot of time getting in our way of booting up and running automated applications.
Then, Microsoft pulled Windows 2000 last year. So we moved to XP Pro..after some pain in getting rid of most of the "were Microsoft, and we are going to think for you" eye candy and automated autoconfig BS, we again had a stable OS to build on, or so we thought.
But having been burned, we started one of our new digital signage projects last year based on Slackware Linux...and we are quite happy with it. Yes it took longer, but we don't have to worry about MS pulling the rug out from under us. We don't have to worry about losing our development investment with Linux.
Apple's Steve jobs pulled a similar stupid stunt when he pulled the plug on the Power PC and all the development around it. We had built products around that too, but after having our products rendered useless by Apple's decision, (not once but twice, remember Nubus?) we'll never ever develop for Apple ever again.
What MS doesn't get about companies like mine is that there is no way we'd ever build a dedicated box or appliance application on Vista. The premise is a joke. If MS had any sense left, they'd keep XP around so that the OEM market had something to work with that wasn't just a collection of glorified myopic and incompatible eye candy.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that "its the economy, stupid".
I (and many others far smarter than I am) say that on the subject of Global Warming: "its the SUN, stupid"
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun's disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can't just ignore that kind of power. But a lot of researchers do, and simply dismiss our solar irradiance and it's variability out of hand. It muddles up the GHG modeling study they are doing when you throw extra energy into the system.
The total luminous energy output (visible, IR) received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. Now lets just say the sun increases its output by 0.1% as its been measured to do. (And its gotten way more active this century.) That dumps an extra 174,000,000,000,000 watts into our atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
See the plot of Solar Irradiance from NOAA data hereg if
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.
Data source for graph: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_f orcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
Note: In the graph above, the low flatline from 1645-1715 is the Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually no sunspots, where the historical reports from the northern hemisphere tell a story of dramatic climate change: harsh winters, cools summers, crop failures, famine and disease.
Now lets put 174 trillion watts into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine that approximate amount of extra energy being added to earth's atmosphere every second by small increases in the suns output that have been documented to exist.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is the average total power consumption of the human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets atmospheric energy balance with that if we squeezed all the power we made that year together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
Yeah, its the sun, stupid.
I'm a meteorologist in California, and here the state climatologist has uncovered something very interesting. "Benchmark" weather stations in the Sierra Nevada don't follow the warming rend that many other stations do. These benchmark stations hav ben around since the 1890's and are far from urbanization. They show a net cooling, statewide, of about 0.1 degree over the last century while others closer o habitation show a marked rised. Add to the fact that we have a very active sun right now, with lots of sunspots and solar events, and that can account for far more change than any human intervention. Ever hear of the "Maunder Minimum" ? From Wikipedia: The Maunder Minimum is the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715 A.D., when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. It is named after the later solar astronomer E.W. Maunder who discovered the dearth of sunspots during that period by studying records from those years. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, for example, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000-50,000 spots. Also of note during that time, The Thames river in England stayed frozen well into summer and in new England, early settlers saw snow in July in the early 1700's. My point is that its all about cycles, and humans are but a fly speck on an elephants butt in effecting change compared to our suns energy.