Unfortunately, you're paying for the privilege to tinker with the OS with the requirement to tinker with it for even the advertised features to work.
E.g. with PR1.2, I needed to replace libpulse to get Skype calls to work. The camera's exposure controls still don't work with a custom ISO setting.
Opening your device shouldn't be seen as a cheap way to get out of actually supporting it.
Yes, it's a powerful device, hardware wise (except for the omission of a compass *facepalm*..). Its software though really brings it to its knees, leading to sluggish UI responsiveness and general bad performance. That and the occasional weird bug and Nokia's support politics doesn't make it a very usable portable computer.
Sure other cellphones are limited in comparison, but what they do usually works as intended.
Oh no, the N900 is no Android phone, its OS no Android clone.
It's a phone with real, open (for the most part), root access by design Linux system with multitasking and everything. And let me tell you, Linux is _not_ ready for the cellphone.
Yes, why is it that we invest so much energy in figuring out obviously (due to its need to be figured out) flawed technology?
Sure, we get good at it, but what's the point?
Aren't you bitter. Of course people act the way that gets them the most favorable response. For women that is provoking the man's desire to protect them, for men it's meeting the woman's desire to feel protected.
Very much simplified of course, but it seems that's an important underlying principle in mating behavior - it's much more about instinct than logic. 80/20 rule applies, obviously.
Plate techtonics explain what happened reasonably well. That it's regarded to be a complete enough theory to bet the planet's water supply on is new to me.
We have done tasks equivalent to burying a few hundred tons of radioactive waste in 5000m depth, with no acceptable margin of error? This is not exploring the Titanic, sorry.
To be clear, I do not condone continuing to rely on our limited supply of non-renewable resources like uranium;-P
Last I heard the abyssal plains aren't very well explored. Yet we can say they haven't changed in billions of years?
Okay, let's say that is true - what are the costs of such an undertaking? What you describe has, to my knowledge, never been done. It sounds like an enormous undertaking, with a price tag that should be added to the price of nuclear power. Do you think that would still allow for competitive prices on the free market?
Why do we have to keep investing in this technology, that might currently be the only way to meet energy demands, but isn't viable as a long term solution? (risks in operating the plants, finite uranium deposits, price to the national economy)
I admit, I didn't read that far. There's a lot of information in there that I lack the time to research right now.
What I was referring to was the second paragraph:
[..]the waste needs to be isolated for a period of time until it no longer poses a hazard. [..] or thousands of years for high-level wastes from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons reprocessing
The line you quoted doesn't have any quotations associated with it. Maybe it is clear by all the information preceding it, I don't know.
What I do know is that at least in my country, neither side of the argument cares a lot for facts. The pro-nuclear side downplays the risks in face of hardly a year going by without some reactor having to shut down due to supposedly harmless technical problems, while going on about nuclear power having no CO2 emissions. Never did they try to educate on some 20 or so year period after which the waste becomes relatively harmless. Why not?
Of course, the contra-nuclear side is no better, using people's emotions for their cause and acting holier-than-thou. All in all, neither side has any compelling arguments, neither side uses facts. I trust neither, and when you tell me there is such an argument that makes sense and would put the advantage on the pro-nuclear side, I have to wonder why it's not being used.
Compared to Paypal, it's not easy. It requires multiple steps, a PIN and a TAN, it also only works for payments in Euro. Compared to just your email address and password when using Paypal, without having to worry about currencies.
If anything, I'm afraid it will make people turn against Wikileaks. After all, if the moneytransfer and booksellings overlords think Wikileaks is bad, they must be on to something.
Common knowledge? Far from it. One 90s style website with complains ranging from "meh" to "omg" in no particular order won't change that.
Is there a viable alternative? The obvious benefits of using Paypal won't change, it's just so convenient to pay people that way, making it in the sellers best interest to accept Paypal payments.
Of course, there should be an alternative, a non-profit one at best. Kind of like Flattr. But to my knowledge, there isn't.
Of course it's not journalism - whoever called it journalism? Except in order to protect the sources of course.
It does provide some interesting input for journalists though, things they maybe wouldn't have legal access to otherwise. That makes it a part of the journalistic process and justifies giving it that legal status. Watching the government can't be bad, it makes officials more accountable among other things. Protecting the sources is essential for that.
They have put of deciding on a permanent storage facility because they know:
It's very hard to tell how stable a location will be over the time required for nuclear waste storage
It would be very, very expensive. No politician would like that on their term, that would be political suicide
Nuclear plant operators pay only a fraction of the cost that nuclear energy actually costs, leaving the rest for the tax payers to pay. Storing the waste alone is infinitely expensive due to the infinite time and cost of storing it, and a sustainable price tag for nuclear energy would thus be € infite/kWh.
I don't get why people get so emotional when it comes to power sources, especially nuclear power.
That's no way to get anywhere. Every current power source has issues and drawbacks, but come on, can't really argue with nuclear being the most prohibitively expensive in the long term (storing of nuclear waste for an infinite amount of time), can you?
It's not like mining coal or uranium or creating a water plant's reservoir doesn't kill wildlife. Or that any other form of powerplant doesn't create noise pollution. Sure they don't work everywhere, but that's hardly an argument not to use them where they do.
Water Power: Used as about 8% of our current energy. Requires rerouting nature's streams, and in some cases local life (both wild and not). Given plenty of water and gravity, "green".
The reservoir created when building those dams produce a huge amount of methane, producing more greenhouse gas per MW than modern coal plants. Not green.
Solar Power: Used as less than 2% of our current energy. Needs a bunch of nasty stuff like arsenic, chromium, lead to make the panels. Given increases in technology and panel recycling, "green"
In it's current state, correct. Maybe some further research and development makes it more viable, one can't really tell. There aren't many alternatives though, yet.
Nuclear Power: Used at about 20% of our current energy. Requires nuclear material. High energy to waste ratio. Given good waste storage practices, "green".
Nuclear power is extremely expensive, if you count its impact on the national economy, the infinite cost of storing dangerous waste infinitely, and especially the cost when something does go wrong - which has a probability of non-zero. Huge amounts of money that could be invested in truly sustainable power sources.
It is not a no-brainer. Tidal power plants might work, but I wouldn't exactly call it proven. Traditional river water power plants have the above mentioned drawbacks. Nuclear too.
Nuclear weapons aren't dangerous, and even can help prevent war, but only when they are in the hands of people who are loathe to use them. So long as they act as nothing but deterrents, they are fine. Not saying we might not be better off without them, but when they play only a deterrence role there's no problem.
They're harmless as long as they're just lying around, sure. But there has to be a system in place for their use, wouldn't be much of a deterrent otherwise. And those systems cannot be perfect, there will be and have been grave errors of judgement, occasions where a nuclear strike was way too likely for anybody's comfort level. Things happen, people make errors, and wielding that much destructive force the probability for errors needs to be zero. And it isn't.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, is something good for everyone. Modern reactors are very safe. It is a good way to cheaply supply a lot of energy, and a society needs energy to improve quality of life.
Nuclear energy is not cheap. A large part of its costs are paid for by taxes and don't directly show up on the power bill, so it appears cheap. It puts a large burden on a nation's economy, lots of money that could be better spent on researching viable alternatives imho.
Also, the current "solution" of nuclear waste disposal has a price tag of infinity, as the disposal sites have to be monitored and maintained for an infinite amount of time.
The security concerns for nuclear weapons also apply to nuclear plants, making the reactors, no matter how safe, not safe enough. The cost of something going wrong cannot be overestimated.
Pirates are bad now? There are some who at least thought they were the good guys, good intentions being what they are, and pirated their nation's enemies, i.e. privateers. Maybe Somalian pirates started out that way too, though it seems they're all about material values now.
Slashdot Mirror
How did you like transferring your SMS to the N900?
Unfortunately, you're paying for the privilege to tinker with the OS with the requirement to tinker with it for even the advertised features to work.
E.g. with PR1.2, I needed to replace libpulse to get Skype calls to work. The camera's exposure controls still don't work with a custom ISO setting.
Opening your device shouldn't be seen as a cheap way to get out of actually supporting it.
Yes, it's a powerful device, hardware wise (except for the omission of a compass *facepalm*..). Its software though really brings it to its knees, leading to sluggish UI responsiveness and general bad performance. That and the occasional weird bug and Nokia's support politics doesn't make it a very usable portable computer.
Sure other cellphones are limited in comparison, but what they do usually works as intended.
That's a good point.
But it boils down to the question: Is computer technology inherently hard to use?
The world is hard to get, making general education necessary. I'm not so sure about computer usage though.
Oh no, the N900 is no Android phone, its OS no Android clone.
It's a phone with real, open (for the most part), root access by design Linux system with multitasking and everything. And let me tell you, Linux is _not_ ready for the cellphone.
Yes, why is it that we invest so much energy in figuring out obviously (due to its need to be figured out) flawed technology?
Sure, we get good at it, but what's the point?
Want real empowerment? Use the shitty excuse for a phone that's the N900.
Disclaimer: I own one of these beasts, and I hate it.
Aren't you bitter. Of course people act the way that gets them the most favorable response. For women that is provoking the man's desire to protect them, for men it's meeting the woman's desire to feel protected.
Very much simplified of course, but it seems that's an important underlying principle in mating behavior - it's much more about instinct than logic. 80/20 rule applies, obviously.
Given game companies' reputation, I don't get how working there could be considered to be smart.
Plate techtonics explain what happened reasonably well. That it's regarded to be a complete enough theory to bet the planet's water supply on is new to me.
;-P
We have done tasks equivalent to burying a few hundred tons of radioactive waste in 5000m depth, with no acceptable margin of error? This is not exploring the Titanic, sorry.
To be clear, I do not condone continuing to rely on our limited supply of non-renewable resources like uranium
Last I heard the abyssal plains aren't very well explored. Yet we can say they haven't changed in billions of years?
Okay, let's say that is true - what are the costs of such an undertaking? What you describe has, to my knowledge, never been done. It sounds like an enormous undertaking, with a price tag that should be added to the price of nuclear power. Do you think that would still allow for competitive prices on the free market?
Why do we have to keep investing in this technology, that might currently be the only way to meet energy demands, but isn't viable as a long term solution? (risks in operating the plants, finite uranium deposits, price to the national economy)
What I was referring to was the second paragraph:
[..]the waste needs to be isolated for a period of time until it no longer poses a hazard. [..] or thousands of years for high-level wastes from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons reprocessing
The line you quoted doesn't have any quotations associated with it. Maybe it is clear by all the information preceding it, I don't know.
What I do know is that at least in my country, neither side of the argument cares a lot for facts. The pro-nuclear side downplays the risks in face of hardly a year going by without some reactor having to shut down due to supposedly harmless technical problems, while going on about nuclear power having no CO2 emissions. Never did they try to educate on some 20 or so year period after which the waste becomes relatively harmless. Why not?
Of course, the contra-nuclear side is no better, using people's emotions for their cause and acting holier-than-thou. All in all, neither side has any compelling arguments, neither side uses facts. I trust neither, and when you tell me there is such an argument that makes sense and would put the advantage on the pro-nuclear side, I have to wonder why it's not being used.
Compared to Paypal, it's not easy. It requires multiple steps, a PIN and a TAN, it also only works for payments in Euro. Compared to just your email address and password when using Paypal, without having to worry about currencies.
If anything, I'm afraid it will make people turn against Wikileaks. After all, if the moneytransfer and booksellings overlords think Wikileaks is bad, they must be on to something.
Common knowledge? Far from it. One 90s style website with complains ranging from "meh" to "omg" in no particular order won't change that.
Is there a viable alternative? The obvious benefits of using Paypal won't change, it's just so convenient to pay people that way, making it in the sellers best interest to accept Paypal payments.
Of course, there should be an alternative, a non-profit one at best. Kind of like Flattr. But to my knowledge, there isn't.
Of course it's not journalism - whoever called it journalism? Except in order to protect the sources of course.
It does provide some interesting input for journalists though, things they maybe wouldn't have legal access to otherwise. That makes it a part of the journalistic process and justifies giving it that legal status. Watching the government can't be bad, it makes officials more accountable among other things. Protecting the sources is essential for that.
Proliferation concerns are antiquated?
..not as I do.
Not following ones own advise does not make the advise any worse. Those things should be judged by their content, not by messengers.
Nuclear plant operators pay only a fraction of the cost that nuclear energy actually costs, leaving the rest for the tax payers to pay. Storing the waste alone is infinitely expensive due to the infinite time and cost of storing it, and a sustainable price tag for nuclear energy would thus be € infite/kWh.
I don't get why people get so emotional when it comes to power sources, especially nuclear power.
That's no way to get anywhere. Every current power source has issues and drawbacks, but come on, can't really argue with nuclear being the most prohibitively expensive in the long term (storing of nuclear waste for an infinite amount of time), can you?
Wind Power: [...]
It's not like mining coal or uranium or creating a water plant's reservoir doesn't kill wildlife. Or that any other form of powerplant doesn't create noise pollution. Sure they don't work everywhere, but that's hardly an argument not to use them where they do.
Water Power: Used as about 8% of our current energy. Requires rerouting nature's streams, and in some cases local life (both wild and not). Given plenty of water and gravity, "green".
The reservoir created when building those dams produce a huge amount of methane, producing more greenhouse gas per MW than modern coal plants. Not green.
Solar Power: Used as less than 2% of our current energy. Needs a bunch of nasty stuff like arsenic, chromium, lead to make the panels. Given increases in technology and panel recycling, "green"
In it's current state, correct. Maybe some further research and development makes it more viable, one can't really tell. There aren't many alternatives though, yet.
Nuclear Power: Used at about 20% of our current energy. Requires nuclear material. High energy to waste ratio. Given good waste storage practices, "green".
Nuclear power is extremely expensive, if you count its impact on the national economy, the infinite cost of storing dangerous waste infinitely, and especially the cost when something does go wrong - which has a probability of non-zero. Huge amounts of money that could be invested in truly sustainable power sources.
It is not a no-brainer. Tidal power plants might work, but I wouldn't exactly call it proven. Traditional river water power plants have the above mentioned drawbacks. Nuclear too.
Nuclear weapons aren't dangerous, and even can help prevent war, but only when they are in the hands of people who are loathe to use them. So long as they act as nothing but deterrents, they are fine. Not saying we might not be better off without them, but when they play only a deterrence role there's no problem.
They're harmless as long as they're just lying around, sure. But there has to be a system in place for their use, wouldn't be much of a deterrent otherwise. And those systems cannot be perfect, there will be and have been grave errors of judgement, occasions where a nuclear strike was way too likely for anybody's comfort level. Things happen, people make errors, and wielding that much destructive force the probability for errors needs to be zero. And it isn't.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, is something good for everyone. Modern reactors are very safe. It is a good way to cheaply supply a lot of energy, and a society needs energy to improve quality of life.
Nuclear energy is not cheap. A large part of its costs are paid for by taxes and don't directly show up on the power bill, so it appears cheap. It puts a large burden on a nation's economy, lots of money that could be better spent on researching viable alternatives imho.
Also, the current "solution" of nuclear waste disposal has a price tag of infinity, as the disposal sites have to be monitored and maintained for an infinite amount of time.
The security concerns for nuclear weapons also apply to nuclear plants, making the reactors, no matter how safe, not safe enough. The cost of something going wrong cannot be overestimated.
Wow, you think 99% would make an effort to figure out the owner of a device, instead of just going with "Yay, free gadget!"? Cool.
Pirates are bad now? There are some who at least thought they were the good guys, good intentions being what they are, and pirated their nation's enemies, i.e. privateers. Maybe Somalian pirates started out that way too, though it seems they're all about material values now.
You can reasonable expect people to follow unenforcable and not universally accepted laws? Seriously?