Creating a competing "open standard" with backwards compatibility for MS docs to an "open standard" with no backwards compatibility for MS doc.
In a word, Bullshit.
First of all, a new document can't really be backward compatible with a previous document, but rather with the program. The new MS Office program is backward compatible with the older MS document formats, to the extent that it can open and save those old formats properly (which is usually pretty good, but not perfect). Clearly, OOXML is not compatible with earlier versions of MS Office.
Second, if you insist on attributing backwards compatibility between document formats, the new format must be able to hold all of the old format plus a set of optional components. OOXML does not do this in a compatible way. The format of the file's new XML content is completely different than previous binary version, and also different than their last XML format
Third, tags of the ilk "treat-1900-as-a-leap-year" or "layout-footnotes-like-word-5.0" don't really provide compatibility, refering to undocumented and/or mistaken behaviors, and confusing the roles of document content and program behavior.
Did you guys read the original comment? He says that he runs Mandriva on it with the Compiz eye candy turned on and it runs fine. (XP should run OK on it, too, I've run XP acceptably well on as little as a 900Mhz Pentium with 512 megs) So no, it's not the hardware by itself, it's the inefficient software.
It only takes minutes if you're making it on the re-writeable photorefractive polymers, of which this new one is an improvement. If you're using plain old film to make a non-re-writeable hologram, then it takes about as long as it takes your film to expose.
That is a ridiculously low figure for a transcontinental maglev train. I doubt they'd get as far as New York to Jersey for that amount. How much did Boston's big dig cost?
. . . the Transcontinental Railroad was probably a project on the same scale as a Transcontinental Maglev. The government helped the railroads along with some prize money, loans, right of ways, etc. but it was not a government project to the extent the Interstate Highway system was.
Unfortunately, the only thing the American Indians have left for the government to give to such a project are casinos. A decent destination, but not a path.
(and no, they're not Native Americans. I was born in Texas, that makes me a native Texan and a native American, but I'm not part of the aboriginal or indigent population.)
I agree with what you say, but I want to clarify a couple of points.
You talk about liability of building contractors and architects, and also about liability of car manufacturers. Those are three different things (in the USA, anyway).
Product liability is absolute. It doesn't matter if you run into an unforeseeable problem, you are still liable for it. Architects, and consulting engineers like the one I work for as an HVAC engineer and project manager, are held to a standard of reasonable professional care, that is, what would a typical, careful, professional have done. That leaves alot more room for forgiveable error, which is reasonable, since, for example, it is not possible to make a prototype and test it like a manufacturer can do with a mass-produced article.
I am not sure about all the liabilities of a construction contractor, but it includes the responsibility for safety on the jobsite, methods and sequences, which are not usually part of the architect's liabilities (if they are, the architect's liability insurer will have a harsh word with the architect about their specs).
IANAL, so if it's important, consult a lawyer in your particular jurisdiction.
"For what it's worth, because of the fact that I tend to be politically conservative, *I too* am sick of what's happened to this country in the last several years . . . "
There, fixed that for you.
Record budget deficits, record federal debt, starting an unprovoked war in Iraq while ignoring the real threat in Afghanistan/Pakistan, immigration "reform" amnesty, unwarranted wiretaps, extra-jurisdictional prisons, torturing suspects, etc., the Bush administration's record is far from conservative.
Existing vaccines have proven efficacy but also have a high incidence of adverse side-effects.
and
Through the success of the global eradication campaign, smallpox was finally pushed back to the horn of Africa and then to a single last natural case, which occurred in Somalia in 1977. A fatal laboratory-acquired case occurred in the United Kingdom in 1978. The global eradication of smallpox was certified, based on intense verification activities in countries, by a commission of eminent scientists in December 1979 and subsequently endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 1980.
It's time to eliminate the existing laboratory stocks. The terrorists don't yet have the ability to recreate the virus from scratch.
CO2 is commonly pumped underground to help retrieve hard-to-get oil from underground oil deposits. Unfortunately, they typcially manufacture the CO2 nearby, so it doesn't reduce greenhouse gases at all. If they could use flue gases from coal fired plants for this, it might be worth it. But the hard part is getting the CO2 to the right location, so I don't hold out promise for that.
And as far as the fact that it may someday come up, methane (natural gas) is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and we go to great lengths to get it out of the ground. If we put the CO2 in those deep geological formations, we would be no worse off than we were previously.
TiVo came up with a novel, innovative product and basically created the market for DVRs
Coming up with a novel, innovative product and marketing it does not by itself meet the requirements of inventiveness supposedly necessary for getting a valid patent.
I agree with the sentiment that the locations of those cheap houses are not usually an option, telecommuting or not. However, I bought my first house for $54,500 at a time that was making around $20,000. and my loan was at the low (for the time) interest rate of 12.125%. I didn't have a student loan, but I did have car expenses and a one year old child. So save some money for a down payment and take the plunge. Having said that though, make sure you're not in a one-company town that's about to lay off hordes of people, that happened to my brother and he lost a big hunk of change on the devalued property values.
Where I work we are required to log off or reboot before leaving for the day, and turn the monitor OFF but keep the computer ON for just the reasons you mention.
I always wondered if they couldn't figure out how to boot the machine up at night over the network for updates, etc. and shut it back off. I'd really rather be a little greener and save the energy (especially on a hot Monday morning when the A/C has been off over a hot summer weekend). Though from a relative cost standpoint, the electricity use is minor.
just replying to myself to correct a number: 1,000 kW
x 12 hours/day
x 261 days
equals >> 3,132,000 kWh per year > 3,132,000 kWh
x 0.08 $/kWh
equals 250,000+/- $/year
10k workstations
x 100 watts each
equals 1,000 kW ========== 1,000 kW
x 12 hours/day
x 261 days
equals 3,132 kWh per year =================== 3,132 kWh
x 0.08 $/kWh
equals 250,000+/- $/year
The above assumes that the computers run at 100W while idle, but they probably use closer to 25 watts while idle. In addition you should be able to sleep them or hibernate them and save more. The above also assumes that the incremental cost of electricity is 8 cents per kWh (In the Chicago area, which has high rates, it's probably around 5 or 6 cents per kWh). You may have an overall higher cost when you include fees for metering and service, etc., but you are already paying that just for your daytime use. You probably have lower hourly costs than I guessed, especially as most commercial rates can give you a break for usage in off-peak hours.
My guess is that you'll be spending less than $10,000 per month to keep those PCs on overnight, or 1$ per workstation per month. If you have 10,000 workstations, you're probably spending 6 figures a month on your electricity bill already. So for a relatively minor cost, you can leave your machines on overnight to push updates, virus scan, etc.
Still, it's better for the environment to be able to turn off as much as possible. Though with today's weather, the extra heat would be welcome and would not cost anything if you have electric heat.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just have an rfid on each package?
Even at $0.02 per tag, that would significantly impact the price or profit of a lot of small items, not even counting the initial cost of creating the infrastucture.
Slashdot Mirror
In a word, Bullshit.
First of all, a new document can't really be backward compatible with a previous document, but rather with the program. The new MS Office program is backward compatible with the older MS document formats, to the extent that it can open and save those old formats properly (which is usually pretty good, but not perfect). Clearly, OOXML is not compatible with earlier versions of MS Office.
Second, if you insist on attributing backwards compatibility between document formats, the new format must be able to hold all of the old format plus a set of optional components. OOXML does not do this in a compatible way. The format of the file's new XML content is completely different than previous binary version, and also different than their last XML format
Third, tags of the ilk "treat-1900-as-a-leap-year" or "layout-footnotes-like-word-5.0" don't really provide compatibility, refering to undocumented and/or mistaken behaviors, and confusing the roles of document content and program behavior.
Did you guys read the original comment?
He says that he runs Mandriva on it with the Compiz eye candy turned on and it runs fine. (XP should run OK on it, too, I've run XP acceptably well on as little as a 900Mhz Pentium with 512 megs) So no, it's not the hardware by itself, it's the inefficient software.
I wouldn't try Vista on it, but XP runs fine on my laptop with a 1.6Ghz Pentium M and 512MB memory. The Celeron processor might be another matter.
It only takes minutes if you're making it on the re-writeable photorefractive polymers, of which this new one is an improvement.
If you're using plain old film to make a non-re-writeable hologram, then it takes about as long as it takes your film to expose.
sorry, strike indigent, should be indigenous.
can't count on spellcheck for everything.
That is a ridiculously low figure for a transcontinental maglev train. I doubt they'd get as far as New York to Jersey for that amount.
How much did Boston's big dig cost?
I agree with what you say, but I want to clarify a couple of points.
You talk about liability of building contractors and architects, and also about liability of car manufacturers. Those are three different things (in the USA, anyway).
Product liability is absolute. It doesn't matter if you run into an unforeseeable problem, you are still liable for it.
Architects, and consulting engineers like the one I work for as an HVAC engineer and project manager, are held to a standard of reasonable professional care, that is, what would a typical, careful, professional have done. That leaves alot more room for forgiveable error, which is reasonable, since, for example, it is not possible to make a prototype and test it like a manufacturer can do with a mass-produced article.
I am not sure about all the liabilities of a construction contractor, but it includes the responsibility for safety on the jobsite, methods and sequences, which are not usually part of the architect's liabilities (if they are, the architect's liability insurer will have a harsh word with the architect about their specs). IANAL, so if it's important, consult a lawyer in your particular jurisdiction.
Excellent points
"For what it's worth, because of the fact that I tend to be politically conservative, *I too* am sick of what's happened to this country in the last several years . . . "
There, fixed that for you.
Record budget deficits, record federal debt, starting an unprovoked war in Iraq while ignoring the real threat in Afghanistan/Pakistan, immigration "reform" amnesty, unwarranted wiretaps, extra-jurisdictional prisons, torturing suspects, etc., the Bush administration's record is far from conservative.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/ and It's time to eliminate the existing laboratory stocks. The terrorists don't yet have the ability to recreate the virus from scratch.
CO2 is commonly pumped underground to help retrieve hard-to-get oil from underground oil deposits. Unfortunately, they typcially manufacture the CO2 nearby, so it doesn't reduce greenhouse gases at all. If they could use flue gases from coal fired plants for this, it might be worth it. But the hard part is getting the CO2 to the right location, so I don't hold out promise for that.
And as far as the fact that it may someday come up, methane (natural gas) is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and we go to great lengths to get it out of the ground. If we put the CO2 in those deep geological formations, we would be no worse off than we were previously.
I agree with the sentiment that the locations of those cheap houses are not usually an option, telecommuting or not.
However, I bought my first house for $54,500 at a time that was making around $20,000. and my loan was at the low (for the time) interest rate of 12.125%. I didn't have a student loan, but I did have car expenses and a one year old child.
So save some money for a down payment and take the plunge. Having said that though, make sure you're not in a one-company town that's about to lay off hordes of people, that happened to my brother and he lost a big hunk of change on the devalued property values.
A little off topic, maybe, but I would say that this graph may represent our nearsightedness more than an actual rate of change.
Thanks for the information
Where I work we are required to log off or reboot before leaving for the day, and turn the monitor OFF but keep the computer ON for just the reasons you mention.
I always wondered if they couldn't figure out how to boot the machine up at night over the network for updates, etc. and shut it back off. I'd really rather be a little greener and save the energy (especially on a hot Monday morning when the A/C has been off over a hot summer weekend). Though from a relative cost standpoint, the electricity use is minor.
just replying to myself to correct a number:
1,000 kW
x
12 hours/day
x
261 days
equals
>> 3,132,000 kWh per year > 3,132,000 kWh
x
0.08 $/kWh
equals
250,000+/- $/year
10k workstations
x
100 watts each
equals
1,000 kW
==========
1,000 kW
x
12 hours/day
x
261 days
equals
3,132 kWh per year
===================
3,132 kWh
x
0.08 $/kWh
equals
250,000+/- $/year
The above assumes that the computers run at 100W while idle, but they probably use closer to 25 watts while idle. In addition you should be able to sleep them or hibernate them and save more.
The above also assumes that the incremental cost of electricity is 8 cents per kWh (In the Chicago area, which has high rates, it's probably around 5 or 6 cents per kWh). You may have an overall higher cost when you include fees for metering and service, etc., but you are already paying that just for your daytime use. You probably have lower hourly costs than I guessed, especially as most commercial rates can give you a break for usage in off-peak hours.
My guess is that you'll be spending less than $10,000 per month to keep those PCs on overnight, or 1$ per workstation per month.
If you have 10,000 workstations, you're probably spending 6 figures a month on your electricity bill already.
So for a relatively minor cost, you can leave your machines on overnight to push updates, virus scan, etc.
Still, it's better for the environment to be able to turn off as much as possible. Though with today's weather, the extra heat would be welcome and would not cost anything if you have electric heat.
YMMV, heating, A/C, etc. may affect results.
Do they really still use Bowden cables for actuation on a totally electronically controlled aircraft?
Just asking.