No one disagrees that the earth's climate varies a great deal over any long period of time you care to look at. The question is, if the world is warming at the moment (and over a scale of tens of years, it is), then is this due to man-made causes, and is it happening far faster then it could due purely to natural causes? Furthermore, if the temperature is pushed up, will the effects become decidedly non-linear, in that the processes that regulate climate will themselves change and some (quite different ) equilibrium become the norm? The modeling and experimentation suggests that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have a warming effect, though how CO2 interacts with the various climate regulatory and feedback processes is extremely complicated and there's a great deal of work to do. The further question of altering the equilibrium state of the climate (which could be utterly disastrous for civilization, and a great many current species of life on this planet) is even trickier to answer, but there's plenty of good evidence to suggest this could happen (including in the geological record, so we know it is possible).
I am not a climate scientist, but I do know that in my own field it takes about 10 to 15 years to get really useful at anything. Therefore I am loath to make some quick contrary claim to someone who has spent many years thinking about something. Nearly everyone I have encountered who dismisses AGW is either pretty ignorant about doing science (that's fine, I am sure they are good at other things - it's unrealistic to believe scientific literacy could be universal), or are just plainly unable to contemplate or accept the changes required in the organisation of human affairs (even though these changes would also happen in the absence of global warming), or are just full of anti-environmental politics for various delusional reasons of their won.
I recall traveling in the US in 1994. A pocket knife of mine showed up in the X-ray of my carry-on. Sheepishly, I owned up to it, and got it out to hand over. "Oh that's alright Sir", the security person said, "you're allowed up to a six inch blade. This one is fine."
And that's just the tip of it. There were also very large scale mutual expulsions between Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Belarus, with several million people uprooted, and a great many deaths. Europe (mainly Eastern) was a difficult place to be after four years of total war and ethnic conflict, to put it mildly, the the rest of the world didn't give a damn (and then the same palaver was repeated within India and then China (and on a smaller scale, Palestine). The late 1940s were times of great ethnic cleansing that the West pretty much ignored after the agony of WW2.
Didn't microsoft say something like they wouldn't license windows 7 "starter" edition for netbooks with mutilcore CPUs? Maybe that's out of date, but I'm sure it was the case. But if it's true, you may be waiting a while...
Sure, that's what I was alluding to about msft's default config of vista. It's retarded, and has done immense reputational and financial damage to them (boo hoo). But it's hard to fix. About five minutes on google will do 95%.
To be fair, it's easy to configure Vista to run about as well as XP too. It's just that journalists are too thick (and don't get me started on why microsoft released vista with the default config they chose).
We could test this if Adobe released the CS suite for linux! I reckon that wins more mac seats than Office.
Agree on NeoOffice, though I only like spreadsheets in the world of office software. I haven't liked a word processor since WriteNow, which still shits on anything of the last 15 years.
Mac OS X shareware/freeware generally higher quality than in the windows or linux world, though a very subjective point.
Respectfully, I don't think that's right. Microsoft got where it is on the back of people buying the same or similar OS to the one they were running at work, since they thought that would minimise the effort required to use their computer. MS put, and will always put, huge effort into winning and holding large corporate accounts because of the multiplier into the home user market where profits are even better.
A lot of those folk discovered that they really didn't know as much as much as they thought they did since they didn't understand that their work machines were tightly managed by people with a clue. But too late, they were stuck in a windows world, throwing good money after bad. And it only takes one family member wanting to run one piece of windows-only code to sway that household's decision which way to go.
Linux is making some slight inroads into corporate roll-outs, mostly (as far as I know) in governments of one sort or another. TCO is demonstrably cheaper, plus, if nothing else, it can be used to leverage a lower price out of microsoft. But for corporate Linux roll-out, it's really 1989.
I reckon it's more to go to gnome. Running vista, things look a little different, but installing software is pretty similar, the file system places where you might find things are not quite the same, but not that much different. A lot of system tools are pretty much the same. To be fair, it is a bigger leap to gnome or kde, or to OS X. Haven't tried w7, to be honest.
The biggest asset Microsoft has, worth 10s of billions of dollars, is peoples inertia about learning something new. On the other hand, Microsoft has tried to tie buying a new OS to buying a new machine, and that's precisely where they are vulnerable. I think people are less likely to upgrade every 3 to 4 years than they used to be because generally they are pretty happy with what they have.
Your final point is the key thing here. The OS is no longer the limiting factor.
The limiting factor is that the linux ecosystem is just not complete enough for a lot of users (accounting software, games, application specific software of so many types), and running a windows VM is mostly pointless if all you do is run windows apps (good for winding back, snapshots, image management etc).
Other thing that is not mentioned enough. Lots of users have struggled for years to accumulate just enough know-how to just get by with Windows. They simply are resistant to having to learn anything new. Total change fatigue dominates the user experience. Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
The great advantage in the server market is that the people making decisions have a clue, so you see Linux win on technical merit, and do very well indeed.
1997, a 166MHz P1 on a 2GB hard disk, slackware, 2.0.0 kernel. Ran fvwm. Worked very nicely. Mostly I was doing website design, using nedit and netscape. they were the days!
when the preferences can set fonts that override the fonts specified in the page (which firefox can do) then i will be happy with chrome. fucked if i'm going to look at some dipshit's site in Times...
Cisco has a license with CSIRO. They got that when they acquired Radiata to develop WLAN chipsets. Radiata was (largely) spun out of a colloboration between Macquarie Uni and CSIRO to commercialize OFDM.
Patent applies to OFDM. That is not used by.11b. It was first used by.11a (technically,.11a was approved before.11b, but equioment was made and sold long before because it was much easier to do), then.11g.
You're exactly right. There's so much crapware out there, and dodgy apps that don;t install in the recommended way or place (and even require admin privileges to be useful). Linux and mac devs seem to much more respectful of doing the right thing by the OS.
A major benefit of the Vists/Windows7 line is that it is either going to force those devs to fix their lazy ways, or piss off. A good thing.
Which is the quiet Unicomp model? I have a couple of Customizer 104/105s, but I can't use one at home because it's just too noisy (incidently, I've been using the new Apple keyboard lately, which couldn't be more different, but actually it's pretty good and my error rate is very low, as with the Customizer).
Relax. It will never pass. It's simply being offered as a carrot to an independent Senator with pro-censorship leanings to get his vote in the Senate on other matters (which the Government needs to pass legislation, as it doesn't have a majority in the Senate). No one in the Government is going to die in a ditch over this, it's just a strategic move, and buys a bit of time. Said Senator has no chance of being re-elected at the next Federal election (most likely late 2010). All this is simple politics, plus the Government gave the job of shepherding this through Parliament to a real dingbat (whom plenty of people in the Government would like to see humiliated and discarded).
Slashdot Mirror
Somehow, just somehow, I think the climate science guys have considered your points and built what's relevant into the models. Jeez, just maybe.
Your problem is you think everyone's an idiot.
Except, it's just you. Your last para give you away as a crank and someone who cannot be reasoned with. A standard delusionist, in other words.
Try getting worked up about the things you actually know something about.
No one disagrees that the earth's climate varies a great deal over any long period of time you care to look at. The question is, if the world is warming at the moment (and over a scale of tens of years, it is), then is this due to man-made causes, and is it happening far faster then it could due purely to natural causes? Furthermore, if the temperature is pushed up, will the effects become decidedly non-linear, in that the processes that regulate climate will themselves change and some (quite different ) equilibrium become the norm? The modeling and experimentation suggests that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have a warming effect, though how CO2 interacts with the various climate regulatory and feedback processes is extremely complicated and there's a great deal of work to do. The further question of altering the equilibrium state of the climate (which could be utterly disastrous for civilization, and a great many current species of life on this planet) is even trickier to answer, but there's plenty of good evidence to suggest this could happen (including in the geological record, so we know it is possible).
I am not a climate scientist, but I do know that in my own field it takes about 10 to 15 years to get really useful at anything. Therefore I am loath to make some quick contrary claim to someone who has spent many years thinking about something. Nearly everyone I have encountered who dismisses AGW is either pretty ignorant about doing science (that's fine, I am sure they are good at other things - it's unrealistic to believe scientific literacy could be universal), or are just plainly unable to contemplate or accept the changes required in the organisation of human affairs (even though these changes would also happen in the absence of global warming), or are just full of anti-environmental politics for various delusional reasons of their won.
I recall traveling in the US in 1994. A pocket knife of mine showed up in the X-ray of my carry-on. Sheepishly, I owned up to it, and got it out to hand over. "Oh that's alright Sir", the security person said, "you're allowed up to a six inch blade. This one is fine."
The Poles (and everyone else in Europe) always hates the Gypsies. With great racist fervour.
And that's just the tip of it. There were also very large scale mutual expulsions between Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Belarus, with several million people uprooted, and a great many deaths. Europe (mainly Eastern) was a difficult place to be after four years of total war and ethnic conflict, to put it mildly, the the rest of the world didn't give a damn (and then the same palaver was repeated within India and then China (and on a smaller scale, Palestine). The late 1940s were times of great ethnic cleansing that the West pretty much ignored after the agony of WW2.
I don't suppose you could point to some websites using SVG so one could check it out?
Didn't microsoft say something like they wouldn't license windows 7 "starter" edition for netbooks with mutilcore CPUs? Maybe that's out of date, but I'm sure it was the case. But if it's true, you may be waiting a while...
erm, that should be "not hard to fix".
Sure, that's what I was alluding to about msft's default config of vista. It's retarded, and has done immense reputational and financial damage to them (boo hoo). But it's hard to fix. About five minutes on google will do 95%.
To be fair, it's easy to configure Vista to run about as well as XP too. It's just that journalists are too thick (and don't get me started on why microsoft released vista with the default config they chose).
I want an option to mandate websites appear using certain fonts, and those fonts only. Firefox has this feature. It is required before I swap.
We could test this if Adobe released the CS suite for linux! I reckon that wins more mac seats than Office.
Agree on NeoOffice, though I only like spreadsheets in the world of office software. I haven't liked a word processor since WriteNow, which still shits on anything of the last 15 years.
Mac OS X shareware/freeware generally higher quality than in the windows or linux world, though a very subjective point.
Respectfully, I don't think that's right. Microsoft got where it is on the back of people buying the same or similar OS to the one they were running at work, since they thought that would minimise the effort required to use their computer. MS put, and will always put, huge effort into winning and holding large corporate accounts because of the multiplier into the home user market where profits are even better.
A lot of those folk discovered that they really didn't know as much as much as they thought they did since they didn't understand that their work machines were tightly managed by people with a clue. But too late, they were stuck in a windows world, throwing good money after bad. And it only takes one family member wanting to run one piece of windows-only code to sway that household's decision which way to go.
Linux is making some slight inroads into corporate roll-outs, mostly (as far as I know) in governments of one sort or another. TCO is demonstrably cheaper, plus, if nothing else, it can be used to leverage a lower price out of microsoft. But for corporate Linux roll-out, it's really 1989.
I reckon it's more to go to gnome. Running vista, things look a little different, but installing software is pretty similar, the file system places where you might find things are not quite the same, but not that much different. A lot of system tools are pretty much the same. To be fair, it is a bigger leap to gnome or kde, or to OS X. Haven't tried w7, to be honest.
The biggest asset Microsoft has, worth 10s of billions of dollars, is peoples inertia about learning something new. On the other hand, Microsoft has tried to tie buying a new OS to buying a new machine, and that's precisely where they are vulnerable. I think people are less likely to upgrade every 3 to 4 years than they used to be because generally they are pretty happy with what they have.
Your final point is the key thing here. The OS is no longer the limiting factor.
The limiting factor is that the linux ecosystem is just not complete enough for a lot of users (accounting software, games, application specific software of so many types), and running a windows VM is mostly pointless if all you do is run windows apps (good for winding back, snapshots, image management etc).
Other thing that is not mentioned enough. Lots of users have struggled for years to accumulate just enough know-how to just get by with Windows. They simply are resistant to having to learn anything new. Total change fatigue dominates the user experience. Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
The great advantage in the server market is that the people making decisions have a clue, so you see Linux win on technical merit, and do very well indeed.
do their writings include the signatures on their slave buying contracts?
dude, lighten up. nobody's perfect.
1997, a 166MHz P1 on a 2GB hard disk, slackware, 2.0.0 kernel. Ran fvwm. Worked very nicely. Mostly I was doing website design, using nedit and netscape. they were the days!
when the preferences can set fonts that override the fonts specified in the page (which firefox can do) then i will be happy with chrome. fucked if i'm going to look at some dipshit's site in Times...
Well, actually it's a form of organizing your society, not a form of government. But you are on the right track...
I'll send the comrades around later with some brochures for you to look at.
Cisco has a license with CSIRO. They got that when they acquired Radiata to develop WLAN chipsets. Radiata was (largely) spun out of a colloboration between Macquarie Uni and CSIRO to commercialize OFDM.
Patent applies to OFDM. That is not used by .11b. It was first used by .11a (technically, .11a was approved before .11b, but equioment was made and sold long before because it was much easier to do), then .11g.
You're exactly right. There's so much crapware out there, and dodgy apps that don;t install in the recommended way or place (and even require admin privileges to be useful). Linux and mac devs seem to much more respectful of doing the right thing by the OS.
A major benefit of the Vists/Windows7 line is that it is either going to force those devs to fix their lazy ways, or piss off. A good thing.
Oh, yeah, I found it. The Customizer 101 comes in either buckling spring or rubber dome mechanism. Have you tried the latter?
Which is the quiet Unicomp model? I have a couple of Customizer 104/105s, but I can't use one at home because it's just too noisy (incidently, I've been using the new Apple keyboard lately, which couldn't be more different, but actually it's pretty good and my error rate is very low, as with the Customizer).
Relax. It will never pass. It's simply being offered as a carrot to an independent Senator with pro-censorship leanings to get his vote in the Senate on other matters (which the Government needs to pass legislation, as it doesn't have a majority in the Senate). No one in the Government is going to die in a ditch over this, it's just a strategic move, and buys a bit of time. Said Senator has no chance of being re-elected at the next Federal election (most likely late 2010). All this is simple politics, plus the Government gave the job of shepherding this through Parliament to a real dingbat (whom plenty of people in the Government would like to see humiliated and discarded).