Software profits are typically high - MS makes around 80% on Windows and Office, though it loses money on almost everything else. Hardware profits are typically low - Dell makes a little over 5%, Apple has an profit margin of around 12%.
Anyway, comparing Apple (a hardware company that also sells a little software to suport its' hardware sales) to MS (a software copmany that loses money selling a little hardware in an attempt to extend its' software monopoly) is like comparing apples to orangutans.
"I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence"."
I was born in the '50s, and I distinctly remember discussions of global warming in school in the '60s. There was a knowledge then that CO2 was being added to the atmosphere and the physics of it trapping heat. Since then, we have built up a tremendous ampount of evidence about accelerating global increases in temperature and CO2.
There was, after some extreme cold winters in the 70s and early 80s, discussions in the press speculating about the coming ice age and how it was due to arrive any millenium now. There was also discussion on how quickly an ice age could emerge (apparently some scientists believe that once the tipping point is reached, it can come pretty quickly, though I don't know if quickly is decades or centuries in that context.). But the mainstream science correctly dimissed the few cold spells as not predictive of any long term trends.
Here's how "loser pays" played out in a case involving a friend and co-worker of mine a while back. His father died, and the estate was sued in a palimony suit by the deceased's "girlfriend" who had known the father for less than a year. My friend lived in Chicago and his father in Florida. He had to hire a Florida attorney, who advised him that if the plaintiff won even a single dollar, he would have to pay her court costs and lawyer fees in the $10's of thousands. Since the estate was only worth 5 figures, he was advised to settle, and did, for almost half of the estate.
Your changing languages. That's like saying there's more than one way of saying something, so I can't copy the data in the phone book in English, but I can in French. Once you choose a language, there may indeed be only one or a few ways to code something in that language, so it would not be copyrightable in spite of the fact that it would have been different in a different language.
It is possible to write a comment that's copyrightable, and it's possible to write one that's not. Not just anything you write is copyrightable, it has to be original, creative. And if there's only one or a few ways to say something, it's not copyrightable. E.G. just because you write a phone book, doesn't mean I can't copy it. Information is not copyrightable, only the unique expression is. If you use your own fonts and graphics, you can copyright that form, but alphabetical order is not copyrightable. The same for simple comments in code, or header files that conform to some standard interface.
In the case of Yellowstone, though, the red zone might include most of the country, if not the world. Last time it erupted, it directly destroyed thousands of square miles of territory. It also covered large swaths of the West and MidWest with feet-thick layers of ash, not to mention what all that ash in the atmosphere would do to reverse global warming.
The MS Word program probably does not handle it in such a simple, linear fashion. So, defining those tags would probably mean MS would have to reverse engineer their own program, rather than just memory-dumping it.
"Why not use WINE?" From what I understand, the WINE and ReactOS teams work closely together, so improvements in one will often lead to improvements in the other
I don't know where you're from, but around here, construction jobs are considered skilled. And, especially where unions have some influence, the pay's not too bad either.
and I've had Word documents crash and burn because the simple act of cutting and pasting in numbered lists can silently create new styles that are exactly the same as the copied style. Word only displays about 8 styles in its' little style dialog, though it can hold up to 255. When you get above 255 styles, Word gets very confused.
It's not a more efficient thermal cycle or a more efficient dynamo. It is a new source of power - waste heat. OK, waste heat has been used before, usually for direct heating, but not for this kind of electricity production in utility power plants.
The real value in shifting consumption to off-peak times is that the utility doesn't have to spend quite as much building new plants to meet the increasing demand. They pass some of this savings on to the customer as an incentive to use available capacity at night. It's not that there's extra energy at night, though there is some excess generating capacity available, it's that there is NO extra capacity avilable on a hot summer day. And they are doing more than just overcooling at night, they're storing "free" wind energy at night as well as using "free" wind energy during peak times. They overcool when the wind is blowing so that they can allow the temperature to swing a little if the wind dies down during the heat of the day.
Energy IS stored by cooling something down (below ambient). It's the potential of the temperature difference that counts.
More "power" (I think you mean energy) can be stored by making ice, but if you only need more normal above-freezing temperatures, it actually takes more energy to make the ice in the first place. You can shift peaks, but you will use more total energy in the process, since storing will always require a bigger temperature difference than immediate use, and there will be losses. If you're using "free" wind energy, you're still better off using more total energy, since it's clean and cheap compared to burning fossil fuels.
I've worked with ice storage systems and other peak time-shifting strategies before, and I can say that they are in use. But they're not common because of the first cost. Energy efficiencies like state of the art lighting, better insulation, and heat recovery should probably be considered first.
In my experience (as an HVAC engineer that has to occassionally design around the rates) most commercial/industrial accounts pay more at peak times than off-peak, possibly different rates at different times of the year, and they also incur a demand charge for the peak kW demand of the month. The demand charge is often equal to or greater than the energy use charges, thus encouraging energy storage during off-peak times. Unfortunately, during construction the emphasis is on construction costs, not long-term costs. After all, if they can't build it with the money they've borrowed, it won't get built at all. The fact that it would save money in the long run doesn't appeal to someone who is struggling just to stay within their budget.
Although AT&T might not yet be "almost" a monopoly, I stand by my thought that the trend towards consolidation is not good.
The local land lines ("last mile") is a natural monopoly, which needs regulation. Where I live, SBC bought the local phone company, and then bought AT&T. AT&T owns the local (monopoly) cable company. Maybe not a perfect monopoly; seeing as I have satellite. SBC/Yahoo (now AT&T) has the largest share of internet providers around here. And with the possible demise of net neutrality, they may very well be able to extend that share and lock it in. AT&T has only one of the large cell phone services, but they can use their leverage in other services to try to extend their share.
If the trends continue, AT&T may end up with a preponderent share of all of the choices available.
You didn't really disagree with much of what I said, but I think you're being optimistic to state that consolidation is necessary to remain viable while saying that competition is flourishing.
Slashdot Mirror
Software profits are typically high - MS makes around 80% on Windows and Office, though it loses money on almost everything else.
Hardware profits are typically low - Dell makes a little over 5%, Apple has an profit margin of around 12%.
Anyway, comparing Apple (a hardware company that also sells a little software to suport its' hardware sales) to MS (a software copmany that loses money selling a little hardware in an attempt to extend its' software monopoly) is like comparing apples to orangutans.
People, please! Weather is NOT synonymous with climate.
"I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence"."
I was born in the '50s, and I distinctly remember discussions of global warming in school in the '60s. There was a knowledge then that CO2 was being added to the atmosphere and the physics of it trapping heat. Since then, we have built up a tremendous ampount of evidence about accelerating global increases in temperature and CO2.
There was, after some extreme cold winters in the 70s and early 80s, discussions in the press speculating about the coming ice age and how it was due to arrive any millenium now. There was also discussion on how quickly an ice age could emerge
(apparently some scientists believe that once the tipping point is reached, it can come pretty quickly, though I don't know if quickly is decades or centuries in that context.). But the mainstream science correctly dimissed the few cold spells as not predictive of any long term trends.
Here's how "loser pays" played out in a case involving a friend and co-worker of mine a while back. His father died, and the estate was sued in a palimony suit by the deceased's "girlfriend" who had known the father for less than a year. My friend lived in Chicago and his father in Florida. He had to hire a Florida attorney, who advised him that if the plaintiff won even a single dollar, he would have to pay her court costs and lawyer fees in the $10's of thousands. Since the estate was only worth 5 figures, he was advised to settle, and did, for almost half of the estate.
Your changing languages. That's like saying there's more than one way of saying something, so I can't copy the data in the phone book in English, but I can in French. Once you choose a language, there may indeed be only one or a few ways to code something in that language, so it would not be copyrightable in spite of the fact that it would have been different in a different language.
It is possible to write a comment that's copyrightable, and it's possible to write one that's not. Not just anything you write is copyrightable, it has to be original, creative. And if there's only one or a few ways to say something, it's not copyrightable. E.G. just because you write a phone book, doesn't mean I can't copy it. Information is not copyrightable, only the unique expression is. If you use your own fonts and graphics, you can copyright that form, but alphabetical order is not copyrightable. The same for simple comments in code, or header files that conform to some standard interface.
Old faithful is much less periodic than it was 25 years ago.
In the case of Yellowstone, though, the red zone might include most of the country, if not the world. Last time it erupted, it directly destroyed thousands of square miles of territory. It also covered large swaths of the West and MidWest with feet-thick layers of ash, not to mention what all that ash in the atmosphere would do to reverse global warming.
They already offer a no-OS option. They give you a blank hard drive and a copy of FreeDOS for you to install yourself.
The MS Word program probably does not handle it in such a simple, linear fashion. So, defining those tags would probably mean MS would have to reverse engineer their own program, rather than just memory-dumping it.
You will, though, see several other instances of such tags, for various versions of Word, Wordperfect, some of which are still in common use.
"Why not use WINE?"
From what I understand, the WINE and ReactOS teams work closely together, so improvements in one will often lead to improvements in the other
IIRC, Ma Bell wanted get out from under the monopoly regulation and they agreed to break up in order to do that.
No,
It can be patented up the wazoo.
Generally, the only requirement is to license it on RAND (reasonable and ono-discriminatory) terms.
"I cannot even conceive of using 500 minutes in a single month."
You obviously don't have a wife and a teenage daughter.
jpeg2000 was supposed to replace jpg.
MS claims that this is better quality/higher compression than jpeg, but that's only true if you don't consider jpeg2000 as jpeg.
I don't know where you're from, but around here, construction jobs are considered skilled. And, especially where unions have some influence, the pay's not too bad either.
I got one.
Plant a tree.
and I've had Word documents crash and burn because the simple act of cutting and pasting in numbered lists can silently create new styles that are exactly the same as the copied style. Word only displays about 8 styles in its' little style dialog, though it can hold up to 255. When you get above 255 styles, Word gets very confused.
It's not a more efficient thermal cycle or a more efficient dynamo. It is a new source of power - waste heat. OK, waste heat has been used before, usually for direct heating, but not for this kind of electricity production in utility power plants.
What would prevent this site from being used by the companies for astro-turfing?
The real value in shifting consumption to off-peak times is that the utility doesn't have to spend quite as much building new plants to meet the increasing demand. They pass some of this savings on to the customer as an incentive to use available capacity at night. It's not that there's extra energy at night, though there is some excess generating capacity available, it's that there is NO extra capacity avilable on a hot summer day.
And they are doing more than just overcooling at night, they're storing "free" wind energy at night as well as using "free" wind energy during peak times. They overcool when the wind is blowing so that they can allow the temperature to swing a little if the wind dies down during the heat of the day.
Energy IS stored by cooling something down (below ambient). It's the potential of the temperature difference that counts.
More "power" (I think you mean energy) can be stored by making ice, but if you only need more normal above-freezing temperatures, it actually takes more energy to make the ice in the first place.
You can shift peaks, but you will use more total energy in the process, since storing will always require a bigger temperature difference than immediate use, and there will be losses. If you're using "free" wind energy, you're still better off using more total energy, since it's clean and cheap compared to burning fossil fuels.
I've worked with ice storage systems and other peak time-shifting strategies before, and I can say that they are in use. But they're not common because of the first cost. Energy efficiencies like state of the art lighting, better insulation, and heat recovery should probably be considered first.
You're incorrect.
In my experience (as an HVAC engineer that has to occassionally design around the rates) most commercial/industrial accounts pay more at peak times than off-peak, possibly different rates at different times of the year, and they also incur a demand charge for the peak kW demand of the month. The demand charge is often equal to or greater than the energy use charges, thus encouraging energy storage during off-peak times. Unfortunately, during construction the emphasis is on construction costs, not long-term costs. After all, if they can't build it with the money they've borrowed, it won't get built at all. The fact that it would save money in the long run doesn't appeal to someone who is struggling just to stay within their budget.
Although AT&T might not yet be "almost" a monopoly, I stand by my thought that the trend towards consolidation is not good.
The local land lines ("last mile") is a natural monopoly, which needs regulation.
Where I live, SBC bought the local phone company, and then bought AT&T.
AT&T owns the local (monopoly) cable company. Maybe not a perfect monopoly; seeing as I have satellite.
SBC/Yahoo (now AT&T) has the largest share of internet providers around here. And with the possible demise of net neutrality, they may very well be able to extend that share and lock it in.
AT&T has only one of the large cell phone services, but they can use their leverage in other services to try to extend their share.
If the trends continue, AT&T may end up with a preponderent share of all of the choices available.
You didn't really disagree with much of what I said, but I think you're being optimistic to state that consolidation is necessary to remain viable while saying that competition is flourishing.