I would love to have all registry-stuff and advanced system-settings in windows to only be accessible from the CLI... Then most idiots would stop screwing it up all the time...
Linux is a fragmented construct of programs, so great suggestion to get everyone to use linux.
Is it... Linux is a quite stable kernel, that might come in some smaller variations but still... Distributions are a fragmented construct of programs, but so is Windows or OSX.. A computer is not much worth without 3'rd party developers..
OSX, that so many people shout about that it's the easiest OS to use, is a unix system that uses lots of the same things are the linux-distributions are using... Like CUPS for printing, GCC for compiling, Samba for browsing windows-shares.. They have a total of 30-40 GPL'ed software packages in there...
It's not where the software comes from that can be confusing, it's how it's packages.. And i agree that there are some distributions that are crap, but there are some that are really nice...
There are many things that are easier to understand with the GUI but the CLI in linux is here to stay, sorry.
And there are many things that are easier to do with a CLI..
A GUI is good in some instances... in some instances a CLI is easier...
Example #1 Describe to a person how to move say 50 files around in a specific way and between each move of a file it should be renamed and permissions changed.. In a GUI you would have to list each file and the new name of the file and what permissions to set. Also you would have to explain how the permission settings worked etc. If using a CLI you could just write down the commands for him to execute and he would just paste them into his terminal.
Example #2 A user needs support and the engineer on the other side of the line needs some more information from the system. Expert writes down a few commands that will gather the needed information from the system in a easy way for the user. User sends in the archive generated from the executed commands.
These tasks are usually not the same all the time so to be able to modify the commands from instance to instance is really powerful here instead of having some generic way of collecting stuff... And in most instances it's not only files that are needed but the output from the programs... Sending screenshots of 10+ windows manually can be quite tedious.
Example #3 A user goes to a forum to find a solution to problem X. The task is checking 30 views in a GUI. Viewing each screenshot is tedious enough, actually posting each screenshot will be hell.. Using a shell the user can execute prewritten commands and verifying the output in a simple way.
It's good for both novices and experts.. But novices lacks the knowledge to get the full power of the CLI, but that does not remove the usefulness for them, like the ones i wrote above.
A right-click&delete 1 pixel to high can delete your whole windows-installation so the problem is? Seen this a few times when users never really read when stuf pop's up on the screen.. "Just hit 'Ok' to get rid of the irritating warning"
Another fun thing... click a bit too fast and start dragging, like most touch-pads do from time to time, can move your whole windows folder into c:\temp or similar..
Idiots screw up systems every day...
And who knows what you get when your super awesome smart shell loop isn't escaped properly on a filename with a space, quotes or apostrophe in the name.
I usually check the output from the script before actually doing anything dangerous... With a GUI you cannot even do that..
Well... there are tons of stuff that is just impossible to implement a GUI for...... Use the correct tool for the job i would say...
Another thing about command-lines is that it's much faster to work with them, when you know what you are doing, since you dont have to move your hands back and forth to the mouse when you are selecting different text-boxes and typing in them..
I have been spending [too much] time in a few window-machines (win2k3) at work and they are just impossible to work with in any sane way..... Cleaning up the registry of a bad migration was hell... First searching in an extremely bad designed interface and then modifying and adding registry-keys manually with keyboard + mouse is terrible... If i would have had a simple command-line interface where i could do searches and setting values it would have been so much easier.. Sure this is not the regular end-user scenario, but still i'm an end-user..
Another thing that is just perfect for a CLI is when unpacking archives and moving files around... ex: # unrar x../archives/myarchive.rar; mv unpacked-folder newname fire off and wait for it to finish.. Copying all images from a folder (tree structure) that have been added the last 2 weeks: # find ImageFolder -type f -ctime -14 -exec -exec cp {}/somewhere/to/copy/them;
Some things ARE easier to do from a CLI... Some things are easier to do from a GUI... Why ignore that? Just because some people don't want to learn how to use the CLI is no reason why to have it removed. Even Microsoft has finally realized that with their powershell.
Nope... Here in sweden, where he's also from, you pay into an pensions-fund that you save for yourself. Usually when you get a job the company is allowed to pay X amount of money per year into your fund and if you switch jobs you still keep that money..
Also, we get a pension from the goverment but this you will only survive without anything extra really..
Another thing we have here in sweden is that you can file for a sort of debt cleanup... this is only for people that will never be able to pay off the money in any timely fashion and will result in that all debts will be cleared out from you. But it will also require you to live on a minimal amount of money (think it's something like 3500SEK + rent for your apartment (must be approved and minimal).. You are also required not to gather any more debts for 5-10 years or so, and if you do you will get back everything... Everything that you earn above those amounts will be divided between the parties you own money... Think it's also a good way to prevent companies from overloaning money to people that cant clearly pay off the debts they already own...... But all this is on a case by case basis...
Well, don't think it's good to abolish it all together... But a big rewrite is definitely needed..
I agree that the fashion industry is a bit different... But the car-industry does use quite a bit of patents...
For copyright... Lets make it "until you cannot prove that you have made less than 5 times the invested money or 5 years, whatever comes first.". Commercial use of the content could be restricted to 15 years or something like that but for all non-profit use it's free for all. Also lets make any work that is not available to buy in your market free to copy for non-profit 1 year after public release. For each copyright-infringement that a company files they would be required to present proof of the above... If done commercially then they don't need to prove anything, but they could be required to try and make a deal with the other company before being able to file a lawsuit.. Maybe, for companies like Disney that does have some things like Donald the duck that is more of a brand than a pure copyright issue it could be possible to register some things are branding that would prevent any commercial use as long as that brand is used by the company.. Ie you could not register the movie "The green lantern" as a brand but you could register the character "Green Lantern" as a brand.
For patents... Just make it harder to fine a patent.. Make it impossible to patent ideas that can spawn by a couple of people in that area of expertise in a couple of hours... (one-button checkout patent that amazon got anyone?) Make them time/profit restricted too.. Make it possible for the company that filed the patent to make money of it.. Lets say, review period 2 years.. If they have made less than 10 times of the provable amount of money they invested they get another 2 years....
Also the licencing-fee for the patent should to be attached to the patent, ie the same fee for anyone that might want it, if they don't broker a special contract.... And the license-fee should include both per use and company wide licenses. Also they should be required to pay 1% of the company wide license amount per year to the patent-office. That should take care of all the crap patents that are filed but no resources to review..
With these rules i could accept even more strict rules about patent/copyright-infringement...
There are just too many things that prevents you from using the desktop in a sane way with multiple windows... Also that idiotic slit-list dont-start-a-new-window-but-bring-the-already-running-to-the-front, and it's been impossible to deactivate..
Second thing... It's idiotic to have the menu-bar on the top of the screen.. especially when you are have multiple windows that are not running in full-screen...
My dad is running Unity on his system and for him it's perfect.. No need to explain what programs are and that you can have multiple instances of the same program running...
So i don't like using it myself but i do see some benefits in there for some users... But this is also a good thing with the linux-desktop.. If you don't like it then switch...
Just to name a few of the features that i want.. - Multimonitor.. - unity sucks here.. gnome3 does have some issues. Have not tried KDE4 - Session saving. - not available in Unity or Gnome3 as far as i know - Good integration with pulseaudio - that works all the time, not just sometimes.. - unity and gnome3 does deliver a bit, but do still have issues - Compiz type management of windows. (using only window and desktop overview) - available in both KDE4 and Gnome3, unity does have big issues since they seem to just focus on the eyecandy - Be able to customize it a bit more than changing border type and color.. - unity has allot to catch up with. KDE4 is limited to - Not use tons of resources... Yes, computers are fast today but i prefer a usable and fast UI over eyecandy.. - neither unity, kde4 or gnome3 comes even close here.. My own preference would be Gnome3 for performance vs usability, but it still do have issues depending on what driver you are using.. the free ati driver seems to be the most stable one, but also the slowest. - Be stable with more than a limited amount of drivers. - Have not seen any crashes with unity, but both KDE4 and Gnome3 do have issues.
So to sum it up... Neither KDE4, Gnome3 or Unity works the way i want so i switched to xfce + compiz and with a minimal configuration it got it the way i wanted with less important features missing...
But this is also the power of the linux-desktop, if something does not work the way you want it just switch to something that does.
Think i will switch to Gnome3 when/if it gets better theme-management and session-saving and a bit more configurable workspace-configuration. Would also be nice with getting default-options for open new window when adding icons to the slit-list and also the possibility to remove the need to go to desktop overview to start applications that are not added to the slit... And the final nail in the coffin for Gnome3 is possibly a permanent task-bar that does not hide.. too easy to miss notifications with that idiotic forced autohide..
** The issues i mention here are from the last time i tried the different window-managers. Things might have changed since then...
China wants to be able to bring down any page they want - Already done by the US. China wants to sensor the net - Already done by the US.
If all countries would get a say in how things are run the bad stuff will not get implemented, and also the larger countries usually have a veto they can use for the really bad crap that might be brought up...
If it was so bad with the UN why has not the world gone to shit yet? The UN has a military spending of about $8Billion and about 100k troops and military personnel.
Was not copyright supposed to protect 'works of art intended for sale to prevent unauthorized copies to be sold in it's place'? Even the name says something about it's intentions... 'copy' & 'rights' ie the rights to copy.
From wikipedia:
Copyright initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing; the contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them. Copyrights are said to be territorial, which means that they do not extend beyond the territory of a specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement. Today, however, this is less relevant since most countries are parties to at least one such agreement. While many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized through international copyright agreements, copyright laws of most countries have some unique features.[2] Typically, the duration of copyright is the whole life of the creator plus fifty to a hundred years from the creator's death, or a finite period for anonymous or corporate creations. Some jurisdictions have required formalities to establishing copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.
I fail to see how pure reports and letters could, or or even should, be protected by copyright.
My thought on copyrights..
Should not be subjected to copyright: - Letter intended for one single person. Should be protected by privacy-laws. - Surveillance camera or home-video from a stationary camera. Should be protected by privacy-laws until they might be classified as something else. - Report describing some events. Not a work of art just a fact-listing description of events. - Nothing created by the government. *Maybe*: If created by the government all citizens of the country should have a license to copy, distribute and re-license - Anything that's not intended for distribution to the public.
Should be protected by copyright: - Works of art intended for distribution and sale to the public.
*To remember if ever filing a lawsuit against an insurance company*
In this contract they only restrict liability against 'acts of god' but i have not seen any proof that a god exists.. Judge, can you please order company X to provide evidence of: A: That a god exists B: That a god did indeed cause the incident C: That the laws of physics where cancelled the day of the incident and it was all controlled by some omnipotent lifeform.
Oh, please. Trying to equate the dangers of wind power with nuclear is just plain silly. As silly as the rest of your argument.
Silly?? I was just trying to put it into perspective... All type of power-generation will cause accidents, and the point was that nuclear power still is the one that has the smallest amount of death's and also releases allot less radiation than coal-plants, that everyone is now switching to when nuclear is shut down...
The benefits of thorium reactors are. - Less waste.. 96-98% fuel-efficient compared to the current plants that have 3-5%.. - Can reuse a small part of the already produced waste from the current reactors... - No pollution compared to oil/coal/natural gas and other bio-fuels.. - Much safer than current technologies since no risk of a melt-down. No need to be near water for cooling (floods/tsunamis etc). If an failure occurs the molten salt is dumped into passively cooled automatically, ie no need for that the plant has power to run the cooling-equipment etc.. - The spent fuel cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons..
- For fuel we can use already mined thorium. Think the stuff the USA buried, because they had not use for it, would last us a few hundred years..... for uranium-233 we can actually use the spent fuel-rods that we have gotten from the old nuclear plants we have... We could even start putting in all the old waste and using it up in the thorium reactor to get rid of almost all the old junk, and still generating power from it..... A thorium reactor produces about 3% of the waste an old nuclear reactor does....
About places that can store things for 300 years... hmm... not too hard to build something that can last for 300 years... Look at the pyramids... they have lasted for ~5000 years..... vessels that can be put into a structure like that has already been produced.. Digging into solid rock, like we are doing today to find a place to store all the current radioactive waste is already on the way..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle Fission product wastes Nuclear fission produces radioactive fission products which can have half-lives from days to greater than 200,000 years. According to some toxicity studies,[13] the thorium cycle can fully recycle actinide wastes and only emit fission product wastes, and after a few hundred years, the waste from a thorium reactor can be less toxic than the uranium ore that would have been used to produce low enriched uranium fuel for a light water reactor of the same power. Other studies assume some actinide losses and find that actinide wastes dominate thorium cycle waste radioactivity at some future periods.[14]
So to sum it up... If we where to build thorium reactors we could get rid of all the hundred of thousand tons of old nuclear waste we have already produced that will stay radioactive for centuries to come... and still manage to produce the power we need and then get a smaller amount of material we only need to care about for 300 years.... So WHY NOT??
Well, even wind-power has more death's per kWh produced than nuclear power, with the current old reactors..... so what do you deem safe??
That's great theory. And it's the same line that's been used to con people for the past 50 years.
Well, 50 years ago this tech was just in it's infancy... Today we actually have quite a bit more knowledge... Building a completely safe power-plant of any kind is impossible.. But i can say that the risks involved are minimal and the enviromental impact would be minimal in case of a failure..... Read the following text.. an do watch the actual video that i posted and you might get a clue...
The problem with the current reactors is that they require active cooling, and as soon as that break down all hell breaks loose.. With a thorium reactor you only need passive cooling in the event of an emergency shutdown... Even if all power where just cut off to the whole plant it would not go critical since it works via a sort of safety valve... Bottom of the reactor you have a outlet, as long as this outlet is cooled via external pumps etc it will stay closed, but as soon as that cooling fails the plug will melt and drain all material down to passively cooled tanks where the material will solidify..
Next thing is also the way the thorium reactor functions.. It's all a liquid that is pumped.... liquids can take allot more beating than solid fuelrods, and even if some pipe would fail you would just get a high-temperature liquid pouring out and then solidifying as it cools.. With today's nuclear plants if the control-rods would get stuck and you where unable to stop the reaction you would go into a meltdown scenario..
Next thing.. With a thorium based reactor you also have the possibility to shut it down instantly and bring it back online very quickly... With today's plants it will take at least weeks but more probably month's before a plant can be put back onto the grid... Having this functionality it would be used far more often since it would not totally cripple the energy production.. Ie, you can be more overcautious with a plant like that than with today's plants..
The reason why we have today's reactors is due to the demand for material for nuclear weapons... Now when we don't need them why continue on the same path? The current reactors will only use up about 3-4% of the rods before they need to be changed... With a thorium reactor you end up with about 95-98% number instead.. Also the material that comes out of a thorium reactor only needs to be in safe storage for around 300 years instead of 10000 years as it is with today's reactors..
There are HUGE differences in what happens after a nuclear bomb detonates and a nuclear plant does emergency releases...
The material that are released during a emergency venting of a nuclear plant releases material with a very short halflife... The material that is released after a nuclear bomb detonates has both the things with a short half-life and things with not such a short half-life..
Ie, after a nuclear plant fails you should could see a spike,1-3 years, in related deaths... With a nuclear bomb you will have long-term radiation-exposure... A nuclear bomb affects a much wider population due to fallout and it's hard to evacuate the whole area. A failing nuclear plant has a quite limited spread and it's much easier to evacuate that specific area.
nuclear tech... Just because we put the word nuclear does not mean it is unsafe... MRI machines where initially named NMRI but because of the responses it would have gotten they just removed the N (as in nuclear)...
There are many types of reactors... The types that are operated today can result in incidents like the ones in Chernobyl or Fukushima... When we developed those reactors they also had a goal of producing plutonium for weapons... If we rethink the strategy now and use thorium reactors they are much cleaner and safer than today's reactors, and with the added bonus that it cannot go critical... it's physically impossible.. Bottom of the reactor they have a hole that they chill so they get a salt-plug.. If power goes out or the temperature goes up then the plug melts and the molten thorium drains out into cooling-chambers (all passively cooled) and the reaction stops... If someone notices that something has gone wrong they can stop the plant very fast check the problem and if they found it was an incorrect stop they can start it up again in a very short timespan... Ie, using the safety features will be more common since they would not require the plant to be shut down for a few months before they can start it again etc..
Well, the coal-plants don't result in such an accident... They spew out radioactive material continuously... Also they produce quite allot of hazardous waste..
as a prevous commenter wrote..
Solar is expensive to clean up, too. Either we need to find a way of processing and recycling old solar cells, or they need to be stored in a dry place indefinitely. The arsenic (from doping or from GaAs substrate panels) can contaminate groundwater.
And if we get large amount of arsenic in our ground-water we are probably more screwed than the Fukushima incident..
Even if very little electricity is produced directly from oil it does have a direct influence on the oil usage.. If electricity was cheap as hell more electric cars would be made thereby reducing oil-usage..It would become more const-beneficial to use electric trains instead of diesel engines and so on...
(Numbers are from 2008) About 36% of the world energy comes from oil... fuel for vehicles, burning for electricity or to heat homes etc.. About 26% of the world energy comes from coal... About 21% from natural gas..
Oil and coal are also have the highest death's per kWh..
Even if the reactors that where built 20-50 years ago are unsafe we can build safe reactors today.
A problem with the current reactors are that they are all built close to the coast since they need cooling-water, and this places them in hams way of tsunamis etc.
Supposedly one that does not kill us. "Better" is not just a matter of engineering; it's about having the basic sense not to do anything that will render our habitat useless.
A better nuclear-plant like a thorium reactor does not go critical. It does not risk the same problems as the old reactors that where built during the 50-80'ies.. The problem with nuclear power is not safety, it's the inability for people to accept development of them since they think all nuclear devices are harmful without actually having an idea of what is safe or not and this is causing the politicians to stop accepting new, safer, reactors to be built and we are stuck with the old ones since we still need the power from them...
Even if a dam breaks and thousands die, the land itself can be used again somehow. Contrary to that, Chernobyl (and most surely Fukushima) are off limits to mankind now.
And what happens with farm-land when a dam breaks... top-soil gets washed away, houses demolished, peopled killed. - Power to rebuild the houses. - Power to transport new top-soil back to the farm-land..
With Chernobyl it was gross human error that caused the tragedy.. Turning off the safety systems and pushing the stuff well pasts it's limits is not safe... People have already started to move back to the surrounding areas that has dropped to safe levels... The actual Chernobyl plant will probably be unsafe for some time (300-600 years).. But this accident was due to grossly incompetent people and a plant that was not maintained as it should..
Even if you burn something, it is possible to devise a close cycle where you plant, absorb CO2 and then release it again by burning wood, which is far better than just burning oil or dealing with the uncontrollable: radioactive reactors.
The problem is that we could never grow enough trees to facilitate the energy-demands... But the biggest parts to make something like that sustainable.. - Fuel for the machines and trucks for chop the trees down, transport to the plant and then transport the ashes away from the plant.. - Risks for the workers.. People in this line of work today have quite high injury/death rates.
The pro about a thorium reactor is that as soon as you stop the proton beam it will stop power-generation.. Ie, it cannot go into a melt-down state... http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html
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I would love to have all registry-stuff and advanced system-settings in windows to only be accessible from the CLI... Then most idiots would stop screwing it up all the time...
Agree, but PowerShell has a long way to go until it will reach the same level of maturity as most *nix systems.
What Microsoft did when they saw people wanting a CLI was to reinvent the wheel, again.. Some things good and some things bad came out of it..
Linux is a fragmented construct of programs, so great suggestion to get everyone to use linux.
Is it... Linux is a quite stable kernel, that might come in some smaller variations but still...
Distributions are a fragmented construct of programs, but so is Windows or OSX.. A computer is not much worth without 3'rd party developers..
OSX, that so many people shout about that it's the easiest OS to use, is a unix system that uses lots of the same things are the linux-distributions are using... Like CUPS for printing, GCC for compiling, Samba for browsing windows-shares.. They have a total of 30-40 GPL'ed software packages in there...
It's not where the software comes from that can be confusing, it's how it's packages.. And i agree that there are some distributions that are crap, but there are some that are really nice...
There are many things that are easier to understand with the GUI but the CLI in linux is here to stay, sorry.
And there are many things that are easier to do with a CLI..
A GUI is good in some instances... in some instances a CLI is easier...
Example #1
Describe to a person how to move say 50 files around in a specific way and between each move of a file it should be renamed and permissions changed..
In a GUI you would have to list each file and the new name of the file and what permissions to set. Also you would have to explain how the permission settings worked etc.
If using a CLI you could just write down the commands for him to execute and he would just paste them into his terminal.
Example #2
A user needs support and the engineer on the other side of the line needs some more information from the system.
Expert writes down a few commands that will gather the needed information from the system in a easy way for the user.
User sends in the archive generated from the executed commands.
These tasks are usually not the same all the time so to be able to modify the commands from instance to instance is really powerful here instead of having some generic way of collecting stuff... And in most instances it's not only files that are needed but the output from the programs... Sending screenshots of 10+ windows manually can be quite tedious.
Example #3
A user goes to a forum to find a solution to problem X. The task is checking 30 views in a GUI. Viewing each screenshot is tedious enough, actually posting each screenshot will be hell..
Using a shell the user can execute prewritten commands and verifying the output in a simple way.
It's good for both novices and experts.. But novices lacks the knowledge to get the full power of the CLI, but that does not remove the usefulness for them, like the ones i wrote above.
A right-click&delete 1 pixel to high can delete your whole windows-installation so the problem is? Seen this a few times when users never really read when stuf pop's up on the screen.. "Just hit 'Ok' to get rid of the irritating warning"
Another fun thing... click a bit too fast and start dragging, like most touch-pads do from time to time, can move your whole windows folder into c:\temp or similar..
Idiots screw up systems every day...
And who knows what you get when your super awesome smart shell loop isn't escaped properly on a filename with a space, quotes or apostrophe in the name.
I usually check the output from the script before actually doing anything dangerous... With a GUI you cannot even do that..
If you really insist..
Right-click on c:\windows\ and select delete
Idiots can screw up any system using a CLI or GUI.
Well... there are tons of stuff that is just impossible to implement a GUI for...... Use the correct tool for the job i would say...
Another thing about command-lines is that it's much faster to work with them, when you know what you are doing, since you dont have to move your hands back and forth to the mouse when you are selecting different text-boxes and typing in them..
I have been spending [too much] time in a few window-machines (win2k3) at work and they are just impossible to work with in any sane way..... Cleaning up the registry of a bad migration was hell... First searching in an extremely bad designed interface and then modifying and adding registry-keys manually with keyboard + mouse is terrible... If i would have had a simple command-line interface where i could do searches and setting values it would have been so much easier.. Sure this is not the regular end-user scenario, but still i'm an end-user..
Another thing that is just perfect for a CLI is when unpacking archives and moving files around... ../archives/myarchive.rar; mv unpacked-folder newname /somewhere/to/copy/them;
ex:
# unrar x
fire off and wait for it to finish..
Copying all images from a folder (tree structure) that have been added the last 2 weeks:
# find ImageFolder -type f -ctime -14 -exec -exec cp {}
Some things ARE easier to do from a CLI... Some things are easier to do from a GUI... Why ignore that? Just because some people don't want to learn how to use the CLI is no reason why to have it removed. Even Microsoft has finally realized that with their powershell.
Nope... Here in sweden, where he's also from, you pay into an pensions-fund that you save for yourself. Usually when you get a job the company is allowed to pay X amount of money per year into your fund and if you switch jobs you still keep that money..
Also, we get a pension from the goverment but this you will only survive without anything extra really..
Another thing we have here in sweden is that you can file for a sort of debt cleanup... this is only for people that will never be able to pay off the money in any timely fashion and will result in that all debts will be cleared out from you. But it will also require you to live on a minimal amount of money (think it's something like 3500SEK + rent for your apartment (must be approved and minimal).. You are also required not to gather any more debts for 5-10 years or so, and if you do you will get back everything... Everything that you earn above those amounts will be divided between the parties you own money...
Think it's also a good way to prevent companies from overloaning money to people that cant clearly pay off the debts they already own...... But all this is on a case by case basis...
Well, don't think it's good to abolish it all together... But a big rewrite is definitely needed..
I agree that the fashion industry is a bit different... But the car-industry does use quite a bit of patents...
For copyright... Lets make it "until you cannot prove that you have made less than 5 times the invested money or 5 years, whatever comes first.". Commercial use of the content could be restricted to 15 years or something like that but for all non-profit use it's free for all. Also lets make any work that is not available to buy in your market free to copy for non-profit 1 year after public release. For each copyright-infringement that a company files they would be required to present proof of the above... If done commercially then they don't need to prove anything, but they could be required to try and make a deal with the other company before being able to file a lawsuit.. Maybe, for companies like Disney that does have some things like Donald the duck that is more of a brand than a pure copyright issue it could be possible to register some things are branding that would prevent any commercial use as long as that brand is used by the company.. Ie you could not register the movie "The green lantern" as a brand but you could register the character "Green Lantern" as a brand.
For patents... Just make it harder to fine a patent.. Make it impossible to patent ideas that can spawn by a couple of people in that area of expertise in a couple of hours... (one-button checkout patent that amazon got anyone?)
Make them time/profit restricted too.. Make it possible for the company that filed the patent to make money of it.. Lets say, review period 2 years.. If they have made less than 10 times of the provable amount of money they invested they get another 2 years....
Also the licencing-fee for the patent should to be attached to the patent, ie the same fee for anyone that might want it, if they don't broker a special contract.... And the license-fee should include both per use and company wide licenses. Also they should be required to pay 1% of the company wide license amount per year to the patent-office. That should take care of all the crap patents that are filed but no resources to review..
With these rules i could accept even more strict rules about patent/copyright-infringement...
Tabs in terminal-windows are perfect... it's like screen but with the possibility to dock/undock terminals to different windows...
Unity sucks for developers, most of the time...
There are just too many things that prevents you from using the desktop in a sane way with multiple windows... Also that idiotic slit-list dont-start-a-new-window-but-bring-the-already-running-to-the-front, and it's been impossible to deactivate..
Second thing... It's idiotic to have the menu-bar on the top of the screen.. especially when you are have multiple windows that are not running in full-screen...
My dad is running Unity on his system and for him it's perfect.. No need to explain what programs are and that you can have multiple instances of the same program running...
So i don't like using it myself but i do see some benefits in there for some users... But this is also a good thing with the linux-desktop.. If you don't like it then switch...
Just to name a few of the features that i want..
- Multimonitor.. - unity sucks here.. gnome3 does have some issues. Have not tried KDE4
- Session saving. - not available in Unity or Gnome3 as far as i know
- Good integration with pulseaudio - that works all the time, not just sometimes.. - unity and gnome3 does deliver a bit, but do still have issues
- Compiz type management of windows. (using only window and desktop overview) - available in both KDE4 and Gnome3, unity does have big issues since they seem to just focus on the eyecandy
- Be able to customize it a bit more than changing border type and color.. - unity has allot to catch up with. KDE4 is limited to
- Not use tons of resources... Yes, computers are fast today but i prefer a usable and fast UI over eyecandy.. - neither unity, kde4 or gnome3 comes even close here.. My own preference would be Gnome3 for performance vs usability, but it still do have issues depending on what driver you are using.. the free ati driver seems to be the most stable one, but also the slowest.
- Be stable with more than a limited amount of drivers. - Have not seen any crashes with unity, but both KDE4 and Gnome3 do have issues.
So to sum it up... Neither KDE4, Gnome3 or Unity works the way i want so i switched to xfce + compiz and with a minimal configuration it got it the way i wanted with less important features missing...
But this is also the power of the linux-desktop, if something does not work the way you want it just switch to something that does.
Think i will switch to Gnome3 when/if it gets better theme-management and session-saving and a bit more configurable workspace-configuration. Would also be nice with getting default-options for open new window when adding icons to the slit-list and also the possibility to remove the need to go to desktop overview to start applications that are not added to the slit... And the final nail in the coffin for Gnome3 is possibly a permanent task-bar that does not hide.. too easy to miss notifications with that idiotic forced autohide..
** The issues i mention here are from the last time i tried the different window-managers. Things might have changed since then...
China wants to be able to bring down any page they want - Already done by the US.
China wants to sensor the net - Already done by the US.
If all countries would get a say in how things are run the bad stuff will not get implemented, and also the larger countries usually have a veto they can use for the really bad crap that might be brought up...
If it was so bad with the UN why has not the world gone to shit yet? The UN has a military spending of about $8Billion and about 100k troops and military personnel.
yes, since the larger countries can usually veto any insane request..
It will make the water hydrophobic and it will all just go poof..
Was not copyright supposed to protect 'works of art intended for sale to prevent unauthorized copies to be sold in it's place'? Even the name says something about it's intentions... 'copy' & 'rights' ie the rights to copy.
From wikipedia:
Copyright initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing; the contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them. Copyrights are said to be territorial, which means that they do not extend beyond the territory of a specific state unless that state is a party to an international agreement. Today, however, this is less relevant since most countries are parties to at least one such agreement. While many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized through international copyright agreements, copyright laws of most countries have some unique features.[2] Typically, the duration of copyright is the whole life of the creator plus fifty to a hundred years from the creator's death, or a finite period for anonymous or corporate creations. Some jurisdictions have required formalities to establishing copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.
I fail to see how pure reports and letters could, or or even should, be protected by copyright.
My thought on copyrights..
Should not be subjected to copyright:
- Letter intended for one single person. Should be protected by privacy-laws.
- Surveillance camera or home-video from a stationary camera. Should be protected by privacy-laws until they might be classified as something else.
- Report describing some events. Not a work of art just a fact-listing description of events.
- Nothing created by the government. *Maybe*: If created by the government all citizens of the country should have a license to copy, distribute and re-license
- Anything that's not intended for distribution to the public.
Should be protected by copyright:
- Works of art intended for distribution and sale to the public.
*To remember if ever filing a lawsuit against an insurance company*
In this contract they only restrict liability against 'acts of god' but i have not seen any proof that a god exists.. Judge, can you please order company X to provide evidence of:
A: That a god exists
B: That a god did indeed cause the incident
C: That the laws of physics where cancelled the day of the incident and it was all controlled by some omnipotent lifeform.
Oh forgot..
Oh, yes. That's right. In theory it can be built. But the funny fact that it hasn't comes right back into play. It's that old human factor again.
It has been tested... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
China is planning to build a number of them.. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
Oh, please. Trying to equate the dangers of wind power with nuclear is just plain silly. As silly as the rest of your argument.
Silly?? I was just trying to put it into perspective... All type of power-generation will cause accidents, and the point was that nuclear power still is the one that has the smallest amount of death's and also releases allot less radiation than coal-plants, that everyone is now switching to when nuclear is shut down...
The benefits of thorium reactors are.
- Less waste.. 96-98% fuel-efficient compared to the current plants that have 3-5%..
- Can reuse a small part of the already produced waste from the current reactors...
- No pollution compared to oil/coal/natural gas and other bio-fuels..
- Much safer than current technologies since no risk of a melt-down. No need to be near water for cooling (floods/tsunamis etc). If an failure occurs the molten salt is dumped into passively cooled automatically, ie no need for that the plant has power to run the cooling-equipment etc..
- The spent fuel cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons..
- For fuel we can use already mined thorium. Think the stuff the USA buried, because they had not use for it, would last us a few hundred years..... for uranium-233 we can actually use the spent fuel-rods that we have gotten from the old nuclear plants we have... We could even start putting in all the old waste and using it up in the thorium reactor to get rid of almost all the old junk, and still generating power from it..... A thorium reactor produces about 3% of the waste an old nuclear reactor does....
About places that can store things for 300 years... hmm... not too hard to build something that can last for 300 years... Look at the pyramids... they have lasted for ~5000 years..... vessels that can be put into a structure like that has already been produced.. Digging into solid rock, like we are doing today to find a place to store all the current radioactive waste is already on the way..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
Fission product wastes
Nuclear fission produces radioactive fission products which can have half-lives from days to greater than 200,000 years. According to some toxicity studies,[13] the thorium cycle can fully recycle actinide wastes and only emit fission product wastes, and after a few hundred years, the waste from a thorium reactor can be less toxic than the uranium ore that would have been used to produce low enriched uranium fuel for a light water reactor of the same power. Other studies assume some actinide losses and find that actinide wastes dominate thorium cycle waste radioactivity at some future periods.[14]
So to sum it up... If we where to build thorium reactors we could get rid of all the hundred of thousand tons of old nuclear waste we have already produced that will stay radioactive for centuries to come... and still manage to produce the power we need and then get a smaller amount of material we only need to care about for 300 years.... So WHY NOT??
Well, even wind-power has more death's per kWh produced than nuclear power, with the current old reactors..... so what do you deem safe??
That's great theory. And it's the same line that's been used to con people for the past 50 years.
Well, 50 years ago this tech was just in it's infancy... Today we actually have quite a bit more knowledge... Building a completely safe power-plant of any kind is impossible.. But i can say that the risks involved are minimal and the enviromental impact would be minimal in case of a failure..... Read the following text.. an do watch the actual video that i posted and you might get a clue...
The problem with the current reactors is that they require active cooling, and as soon as that break down all hell breaks loose.. With a thorium reactor you only need passive cooling in the event of an emergency shutdown... Even if all power where just cut off to the whole plant it would not go critical since it works via a sort of safety valve... Bottom of the reactor you have a outlet, as long as this outlet is cooled via external pumps etc it will stay closed, but as soon as that cooling fails the plug will melt and drain all material down to passively cooled tanks where the material will solidify..
Next thing is also the way the thorium reactor functions.. It's all a liquid that is pumped.... liquids can take allot more beating than solid fuelrods, and even if some pipe would fail you would just get a high-temperature liquid pouring out and then solidifying as it cools.. With today's nuclear plants if the control-rods would get stuck and you where unable to stop the reaction you would go into a meltdown scenario..
Next thing.. With a thorium based reactor you also have the possibility to shut it down instantly and bring it back online very quickly... With today's plants it will take at least weeks but more probably month's before a plant can be put back onto the grid... Having this functionality it would be used far more often since it would not totally cripple the energy production.. Ie, you can be more overcautious with a plant like that than with today's plants..
The reason why we have today's reactors is due to the demand for material for nuclear weapons... Now when we don't need them why continue on the same path? The current reactors will only use up about 3-4% of the rods before they need to be changed... With a thorium reactor you end up with about 95-98% number instead.. Also the material that comes out of a thorium reactor only needs to be in safe storage for around 300 years instead of 10000 years as it is with today's reactors..
There are HUGE differences in what happens after a nuclear bomb detonates and a nuclear plant does emergency releases...
The material that are released during a emergency venting of a nuclear plant releases material with a very short halflife...
The material that is released after a nuclear bomb detonates has both the things with a short half-life and things with not such a short half-life..
Ie, after a nuclear plant fails you should could see a spike,1-3 years, in related deaths... With a nuclear bomb you will have long-term radiation-exposure...
A nuclear bomb affects a much wider population due to fallout and it's hard to evacuate the whole area. A failing nuclear plant has a quite limited spread and it's much easier to evacuate that specific area.
nuclear tech... Just because we put the word nuclear does not mean it is unsafe... MRI machines where initially named NMRI but because of the responses it would have gotten they just removed the N (as in nuclear)...
There are many types of reactors... The types that are operated today can result in incidents like the ones in Chernobyl or Fukushima...
When we developed those reactors they also had a goal of producing plutonium for weapons... If we rethink the strategy now and use thorium reactors they are much cleaner and safer than today's reactors, and with the added bonus that it cannot go critical... it's physically impossible..
Bottom of the reactor they have a hole that they chill so they get a salt-plug.. If power goes out or the temperature goes up then the plug melts and the molten thorium drains out into cooling-chambers (all passively cooled) and the reaction stops... If someone notices that something has gone wrong they can stop the plant very fast check the problem and if they found it was an incorrect stop they can start it up again in a very short timespan... Ie, using the safety features will be more common since they would not require the plant to be shut down for a few months before they can start it again etc..
Well, the coal-plants don't result in such an accident... They spew out radioactive material continuously... Also they produce quite allot of hazardous waste..
as a prevous commenter wrote..
Solar is expensive to clean up, too. Either we need to find a way of processing and recycling old solar cells, or they need to be stored in a dry place indefinitely. The arsenic (from doping or from GaAs substrate panels) can contaminate groundwater.
And if we get large amount of arsenic in our ground-water we are probably more screwed than the Fukushima incident..
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Even if very little electricity is produced directly from oil it does have a direct influence on the oil usage..
If electricity was cheap as hell more electric cars would be made thereby reducing oil-usage..It would become more const-beneficial to use electric trains instead of diesel engines and so on...
(Numbers are from 2008)
About 36% of the world energy comes from oil... fuel for vehicles, burning for electricity or to heat homes etc..
About 26% of the world energy comes from coal...
About 21% from natural gas..
Oil and coal are also have the highest death's per kWh..
reference http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
Even if the reactors that where built 20-50 years ago are unsafe we can build safe reactors today.
A problem with the current reactors are that they are all built close to the coast since they need cooling-water, and this places them in hams way of tsunamis etc.
Supposedly one that does not kill us. "Better" is not just a matter of engineering; it's about having the basic sense not to do anything that will render our habitat useless.
A better nuclear-plant like a thorium reactor does not go critical. It does not risk the same problems as the old reactors that where built during the 50-80'ies.. The problem with nuclear power is not safety, it's the inability for people to accept development of them since they think all nuclear devices are harmful without actually having an idea of what is safe or not and this is causing the politicians to stop accepting new, safer, reactors to be built and we are stuck with the old ones since we still need the power from them...
Even if a dam breaks and thousands die, the land itself can be used again somehow. Contrary to that, Chernobyl (and most surely Fukushima) are off limits to mankind now.
And what happens with farm-land when a dam breaks... top-soil gets washed away, houses demolished, peopled killed.
- Power to rebuild the houses.
- Power to transport new top-soil back to the farm-land..
With Chernobyl it was gross human error that caused the tragedy.. Turning off the safety systems and pushing the stuff well pasts it's limits is not safe...
People have already started to move back to the surrounding areas that has dropped to safe levels... The actual Chernobyl plant will probably be unsafe for some time (300-600 years).. But this accident was due to grossly incompetent people and a plant that was not maintained as it should..
Even if you burn something, it is possible to devise a close cycle where you plant, absorb CO2 and then release it again by burning wood, which is far better than just burning oil or dealing with the uncontrollable: radioactive reactors.
The problem is that we could never grow enough trees to facilitate the energy-demands... But the biggest parts to make something like that sustainable..
- Fuel for the machines and trucks for chop the trees down, transport to the plant and then transport the ashes away from the plant..
- Risks for the workers.. People in this line of work today have quite high injury/death rates.
Death-rates by energy-source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Some information about thorium reactors: http://theweek.com/article/index/213611/could-thorium-make-nuclear-power-safe
The pro about a thorium reactor is that as soon as you stop the proton beam it will stop power-generation.. Ie, it cannot go into a melt-down state... http://energyfromthorium.com/lftradsrisks.html