I believe that your view on it is of a self-fulfilling nature. People used to save for retire in ways we wouldn't even think of today: kids and community (like the church and other charity groups). Now people have no concept of responsible saving or spending (again, giving to the church) because Social Security and other programs have stripped our culture of other safety nets.
I think that those "greenies" do not directly seek to increase the proportion of renewables used in the economy. Instead they want to decrease the amount of fossil fuels used by displacing oil use with wind/solar/whatever.
Ignoring that OPEC can just make fossil fuels vastly cheaper by increasing production and can keep the prices stable with that mechanism, your solution does nothing to actually decrease the use of oil in the near future.
>I've always wondered why they can't manufacture >DRAM chips with spare memory cells, the same way >that hard drives get spare sectors. Then rather >than tossing out chips for as little as one bad >bit, they can remap the bad bits to the spare cells >and still use the chip.
They actually do put on more transistors than needed. If there are flaws in one portion of memory, they can "blow fuses" to remove that portion of DRAM from what is used. This is part of the reason that DRAM is cheaper than processors; in processors it is more difficult to just discard a large portion of silicon.
Every decade or so, it seems that people choose something new to fear irrationally.
Think of all the big advances...
They feared industrialization because we'd no longer be an agrarian republic (America did, at least). Nuclear Power was going to wipe us out in a series of meltdowns. A.I./Computers were going to get us all (seen Wargames or Terminator 1, 2, 3 lately?). Filesharing was going to end the information economy, etc... Fad fears. Ignorant people feel smart and important making uninformed statements about the new intellectual topic that they clearly don't understand.
In the unlikely case that Windows actually does get pulled, the world might not be screwed as Microsoft would want us to believe.
Consider that Apple has programmed MacOS X to be easily ported to new architectures. The underlying OS, Darwin, already runs on many Intel-based machines. With this operating system for the people who lack the confidence required to try linux (most of the market) and linux and BSD for the rest, Apple would have everything to gain from releasing their OS for sale on the Intel platform. The world still might be withing Jobs reach.
Granted, trading one monopoly for another might not be the best thing to happen to the world, but Microsoft would surely try to fight its way back and a strengthened Linux would be fighting away, too.
In the alternative distantly possible case that MS removes IE from their OS in a day after being ordered to do so and prevents Apple from making such a move, at least some MS people might get nailed for lying for years about the feasibility of removing IE from their products. And with the upcoming release of Mozilla 1.0, people really might look at a non-MS browser.
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I believe that your view on it is of a self-fulfilling nature. People used to save for retire in ways we wouldn't even think of today: kids and community (like the church and other charity groups). Now people have no concept of responsible saving or spending (again, giving to the church) because Social Security and other programs have stripped our culture of other safety nets.
I think that those "greenies" do not directly seek to increase the proportion of renewables used in the economy. Instead they want to decrease the amount of fossil fuels used by displacing oil use with wind/solar/whatever.
Ignoring that OPEC can just make fossil fuels vastly cheaper by increasing production and can keep the prices stable with that mechanism, your solution does nothing to actually decrease the use of oil in the near future.
>I've always wondered why they can't manufacture
>DRAM chips with spare memory cells, the same way
>that hard drives get spare sectors. Then rather
>than tossing out chips for as little as one bad
>bit, they can remap the bad bits to the spare cells
>and still use the chip.
They actually do put on more transistors than needed. If there are flaws in one portion of memory, they can "blow fuses" to remove that portion of DRAM from what is used. This is part of the reason that DRAM is cheaper than processors; in processors it is more difficult to just discard a large portion of silicon.
Every decade or so, it seems that people choose something new to fear irrationally.
Think of all the big advances...
They feared industrialization because we'd no longer be an agrarian republic (America did, at least). Nuclear Power was going to wipe us out in a series of meltdowns. A.I./Computers were going to get us all (seen Wargames or Terminator 1, 2, 3 lately?). Filesharing was going to end the information economy, etc... Fad fears. Ignorant people feel smart and important making uninformed statements about the new intellectual topic that they clearly don't understand.
Its genetic engineering's turn to feel the heat.
A few years ago, taco salad was the fattiest item on McDonalds menu. They just use lettuce as a fat-delivery mechanism.
In the unlikely case that Windows actually does get pulled, the world might not be screwed as Microsoft would want us to believe.
Consider that Apple has programmed MacOS X to be easily ported to new architectures. The underlying OS, Darwin, already runs on many Intel-based machines. With this operating system for the people who lack the confidence required to try linux (most of the market) and linux and BSD for the rest, Apple would have everything to gain from releasing their OS for sale on the Intel platform. The world still might be withing Jobs reach.
Granted, trading one monopoly for another might not be the best thing to happen to the world, but Microsoft would surely try to fight its way back and a strengthened Linux would be fighting away, too.
In the alternative distantly possible case that MS removes IE from their OS in a day after being ordered to do so and prevents Apple from making such a move, at least some MS people might get nailed for lying for years about the feasibility of removing IE from their products. And with the upcoming release of Mozilla 1.0, people really might look at a non-MS browser.