If you ever used or in that particular case tried to use a plane toilet on a long distance flight or when you traveled in a brand new ICE 3 (German high speed train) after the first month of its deployment, than you know how such exception looks and smells like.
However, I guess they will not built vacuum toilets, because this would require a lot of energy to create the vacuum and therefor the classic morning routine of a million people could crash the net as it is hard to predict when they finish and press the button.
I am waiting for the news: Atlantis landed successfully for the last time. All other last time message are just useless. Just hope they get back safely in that flea trap.
* Last time Astronauts leaving shuttle and entering ISS * Last time reentering the shuttle * Last time use of a space toothbrush on a shuttle * Last time use of shuttle toilet * Last time farted on the shuttle * Last time hit by a pillow after farting in the shuttle * Last time energy bar picked from astronaut A consumed by astronaut B as a revenge action due to the fart thing earlier
If you have no product (as the US automobile industry) than no one will buy it. So you should have people for marketing, but the CEO or at least the CTO or the person responsible for research and development should be an engineer. You need also someone who is able to find out what the customer wants, one who is able to find out what the customer needs, and one who can combine this and send the right information to the engineers and the marketing department.
The usual geek is a socially handicapped person (by definition). However, there are most likely computer scientists which are able to talk to strangers in an acceptable way and do all that social stuff most./ (including myself) do nothing about. Especially in practice;-)
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are studies which combine engineering and business in a 50/50 approach. So it is not like computer science plus a minor in business, but a light CS + half MBA. Same applies to engineers. I do not know if such studies are available in the US, but I guess so. While search the web these studies might be called "information systems", "business informatics" or "industrial engineer".
In the end I doubt that this will chance much as long as short term benefits are more important than long term benefits. And personal benefits for the management are more important than benefits for the company. Recently I read a report which stated that in Germany (and I doubt that it is any different in the US) the salaries for the management guys in big companies increased by 20% while the rest only got an increase of 2.2%.
And your wallet never ran out of electricity. And it worked in an elevator or some other place with now cell phone coverage. And it is secure and your trades are not monitored. No one is sending you an advertisement for a dentist after buying candy twenty times in a row.
Seriously, how delusional can someone get with crack or what every they are smoking? The wallet as a cash carrying device will not go out of business anytime soon. But, I can understand that Paypal wants to have it that way in the future as this would imply that they can make a fortune out of it. What me puzzles is. When all transactions are done via a company and they get money from every transaction than that is some sort of a tax. I cannot do business without paying some strange company for nothing. So maybe central banks of the world should issue such system as a replacement for paper money. Cost free for the users of the money just like it is with the current money.
I don't like paying taxes to companies. It doesn't feel right.
Yes indeed this is very strange. As Slashdot being an US website, it might be that this nuclear is cool thing is very popular among US-citizens or at least US-geeks. I really wonder why. Maybe they believe in big centralized plants, factories etc. just like in the dystopias of modern Sci-Fi. Maybe a country with windmills and solar panels does not look very powerful. Maybe it is also a male thing. Big is good;-) I don't know. This is pure speculation.
Germany will need to save energy. To do so new technology has to be developed. This not only applies to current uses of electricity, but also on replacing fuel in cars and replacing cars as an inefficient transport system for densely populated areas. True there will be some set backs and it might be possible that the world economy will become problems. However, I think the biggest problem for the world economy is the accumulation of large amounts of money in a few hands. Right now the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve are printing money to support the present economy. This will lead automatically to the next bubble. This is much more dangerous than any reduced growth of the German economy due to higher energy prices.
Which part of renewable sources do you not understand. We are not replacing nuclear plants by coal or gas plants. We replace old coal plants by new more efficient coal and gas plants. Preferably in combination with heat production for households and the industry.
BTW: the problem in Japan was not the tsunami, it was the greedy company operating the plants which caused the disaster. German energy companies are greedy too. That's why the had a small explosion of oxyhydrogen gas in plant in Germany just a year ago. Completely without a tsunami or earthquake just by bad practice.
No Germans do not like nuclear power since the Chernobyl accident. Even before that, they did not like it very much. But since then between 60% to 80% of the population do not like that power source. The exit by 2022 was already in place by a previous law from the previous government. The big thing is, the present government changed that plan to 203x and no changed it back after the accident in Japan, because they lost many regional elections. So the conservative government just tried out to be more popular. However, it didn't work, as everyone knows they are just liars.
Nuclear power became very unpopular after the Chernobyl accident. This lead to a nuclear power plant exit strategy in 2001 implemented by the red-green coalition (liberal and progressive) government. The exit date was around 2020/2022. Just recently the autumn 2010 the black-yellow coalition (conservatives) changed that plan to something in the 2030ies. then the Japanese had that bid disaster and the black-yellow coalition became very, very unpopular, because of their recent gift for the energy oligopoly. So in panic they changed it back to 2022. The only difference is, that seven old plants and one new one (which was broken for years now) are offline. The old one are so secure that you can built you own Fukushima-accident in Germany with a sport plane.
However, it is very interesting to hear that there are so many people telling Germany: You don't make it. It is not possible to switch. Lets say your're right. We never know until we've tried. But, when you are wrong then what will you do?
Hey France we where exporting more energy to other countries including your country. Now we will sell you less energy. Especially in summer that is a problem for you when the nuclear plants cannot produce peak output because of the water shortage.
But I bet that this comment of yours is not from France at all. I know French people they are neither jerks nor stupid. And yes it is stupid to claim that Germany was importing more energy than it is exporting. And we will see next year if Germany has a positive or negative balance.
In urban areas public transport is very effective, fast and low on energy consumption. however, it has to be subsidized, because car travel is subsidized a lot. Plus, people do not count all cost for the car when they compare it with public transport, but only the gas.
For midrange distances you can use trains (at least in Europe) they are save, fast and you can relax or work while you ride.
The only area where public transport does not work very well is the country side. There cars can be more usable.
However, car travel in Europe is the source for one third of CO2 emissions, one third comes from households and one from the industry. In all areas you could reduce energy consumption. For housing use insulation. It keeps the house cold in summer and warm in winter. You do not need air conditioning any more. You can use solar collector to heat you water which will reduce the energy consumption again.
We already have so called plus energy homes. Meaning a house which produces more energy than it consumes.
I thought Idiocracy is just a movie, but when we really have to sell a sustainable way of life with coolness, I start to doubt that. On the other hand, this would make Europeans pretty cool compared to people from the US.;-)
Wow, I thought, somebody did a descend evaluation of GnomeShell and Unity. So I followed the link. Some may think, this was my first mistake. but then I read the article and the first words were "This morning I decided to play with the Fedora based Gnome3". Well super this is news? I played with Gnome3 on Ubuntu weeks ago. Oh yes I didn't post results of that playing and so nobody considered this news.
To be honest the memory figures look strange to say the least. He compares different applications in combination with different desktop shells and oh wonder he gets arbitrary memory usage results. The best is, the author points out some of the flaws of his approach. So there is no information in the article, beside that "nick" fiddled around with Gnome3.
For a real test you have first define a set of goals, questions and metrics and then perform tests according to the test method. You could test productivity. But to do so, you need people to play around with it for a week or two to learn the new UI and adapt to it. You could check how the memory usage of the application changes over a longer period of time. And then you can only check if the use increases over time which implies a memory leak. Other things can be difficult, as unity is a Compiz plugin and GnomeShell runs separate which implies a different architecture and therefor different usage results in ps or top.
You could also test the responsiveness of the system under load (as this is a important property for users). Or you can start up the system and check how much memory is already in use (free). But the desktop should be configured completely the same. And when nautilus is running in configuration A then it must also run in configuration B. If you use a desktop image, it has to be the same image on all machines/test sets, same resolution, color depth etc. The kernel version, X11 version all should be the same. In short you have to test it on Ubuntu X.Y and use all three desktop variants. You also should test this with other distributions and of course you should test it on different hardware. but always you have to start with an installation without desktop environment, then add the designated thing to the system make the tests and then go to the next version.
Yes. And? You are missing the point. The point is: When rich people or other people who are able to pay for private schools separate their kids from the rest, you get bad schools for people who cannot afford the fees or who do not care where they children go to school. Even more when interested parents have the opportunity to put their children on elite schools, they do so because they want the best for their children. I would most likely act the same. So while this is completely sound from a personal perspective it is bad from a society perceptive.
First, if you separate people in the education system, they stop to understand each other. This results in a decrease of caring for each other, which results in classism which is merely the same as racism you just stop using skin color as a discriminator. the result of this is violence and other destructive behavior by those people who loose.
Second, middle to upper class people do often insist in improvements in schooling and teaching. In lower class families this is not that common (I am absolutely sure you can point out counter examples, but as in sociology one or two examples in the opposite direction do not negate the primary trend). So if you separate them, in the end poor people get bad schools, which makes them less educated, which increases potential for losing jobs, which in the end increases the potential for violence.
But beside, violence. there is also another important fact. Poor people are also humans and therefor they should have the same chances. So if a rich kid can go to university or college with C or D in its high school exam than so should be all the poor kids too. Education shall not be a thing for those who can pay for it or fight for it. Education is a human right. So beside positive effects for society. It is recommended to have an equally good developed education system for all children. And it is important to mix children from various backgrounds.
A better solution is: A public school system. Owned by the people, controlled by the people. And if some "elite" want better schools, they can donate to the public school system not only to one particular school in a nice district.
The bias is obvious. The main task of the IAEA is to promote nuclear technology. That's what they are paid for. (they also do inspections of nuclear plants according to international standards, for example to check if someone uses the stuff to build bombs) As such they cannot be neutral. To be neutral they need to have different goals. Greenpeace are environmentalists, therefore they decide mostly in favor of the environment. So both are biased. As this bias is in different directions, you assume that the truth is between both extremes.
France imports electricity every summer as the temperature of their rivers have risen so much that they have to throttle their output. Right now 22% of electricity comes from nuclear plants and 17% from renewable sources. Due to the extensive increase in the renewable sector we will be able to replace nuclear plants by 2020. The question is how many coal plants can go too. And are we able to build enough storage facilities. Right now we have to stop wind turbines when there is not enough demand for electricity.
The problem is not how many people died in a particular industry since the industrial revolution. The problem is how much damage can be caused by a technology. And nuclear technology is unsafe. We cannot make a 50 km radius around each reactor contaminated and still have enough space to life. I do not propose that every plant is going to explode, however the result of an accident can be so harmful that we are not really able to handle them. So comparing dead people in a coal mine with thousands or millions (depends on the location) of people to be relocated to other places. While in coal mining mostly coal miners are in danger and it is up to their union and the government to ensure save working conditions. Same applies to uranium miners. But the contamination of an nuclear accident effects the general public. And frankly we do not want to be radiated, because someone is not able to operate his plant safely.
Even more, we have no save storage for the waste, we have no recycling mechanism which really works (don't tell me there are concepts, they are not applicable.) Recycling facilities like La Hague or Sellafield radiate the Atlantic. So this is no option.
Beside that we have alternatives. One is hanging above our heads it is this yellow thingy it produces energy by nuclear fission. It works properly and we do not have to care about the waste for one or two billion years. Until then we can use energy supplied by that reactor.
Germany will shutdown all its nuclear plants by 2020/2030 and replace it by renewable energy. Do you think they are going back to the stone age because of that. And no they are not building coal plants to replace the nuclear plants. they go to replace old inefficient coal plants by new ones.
You have to stop to think that a nuclear plant has to be replaced by another plant with the same output. You have to build a grid and attach many wind turbines. In Europe for example, they interconnect their wind farms in the North Sea.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ever used or in that particular case tried to use a plane toilet on a long distance flight or when you traveled in a brand new ICE 3 (German high speed train) after the first month of its deployment, than you know how such exception looks and smells like.
However, I guess they will not built vacuum toilets, because this would require a lot of energy to create the vacuum and therefor the classic morning routine of a million people could crash the net as it is hard to predict when they finish and press the button.
I am absolute sure that the last not very funny last shuttle comment will not be determined by any other last shuttle activity. ;-)
I am waiting for the news: Atlantis landed successfully for the last time. All other last time message are just useless. Just hope they get back safely in that flea trap.
* Last time Astronauts leaving shuttle and entering ISS
* Last time reentering the shuttle
* Last time use of a space toothbrush on a shuttle
* Last time use of shuttle toilet
* Last time farted on the shuttle
* Last time hit by a pillow after farting in the shuttle
* Last time energy bar picked from astronaut A consumed by astronaut B as a revenge action due to the fart thing earlier
If you have no product (as the US automobile industry) than no one will buy it. So you should have people for marketing, but the CEO or at least the CTO or the person responsible for research and development should be an engineer. You need also someone who is able to find out what the customer wants, one who is able to find out what the customer needs, and one who can combine this and send the right information to the engineers and the marketing department.
The usual geek is a socially handicapped person (by definition). However, there are most likely computer scientists which are able to talk to strangers in an acceptable way and do all that social stuff most ./ (including myself) do nothing about. Especially in practice ;-)
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are studies which combine engineering and business in a 50/50 approach. So it is not like computer science plus a minor in business, but a light CS + half MBA. Same applies to engineers. I do not know if such studies are available in the US, but I guess so. While search the web these studies might be called "information systems", "business informatics" or "industrial engineer".
In the end I doubt that this will chance much as long as short term benefits are more important than long term benefits. And personal benefits for the management are more important than benefits for the company. Recently I read a report which stated that in Germany (and I doubt that it is any different in the US) the salaries for the management guys in big companies increased by 20% while the rest only got an increase of 2.2%.
Well then. We have to eat jellyfish now and overfish them too. ;-)
And your wallet never ran out of electricity. And it worked in an elevator or some other place with now cell phone coverage. And it is secure and your trades are not monitored. No one is sending you an advertisement for a dentist after buying candy twenty times in a row.
Seriously, how delusional can someone get with crack or what every they are smoking? The wallet as a cash carrying device will not go out of business anytime soon. But, I can understand that Paypal wants to have it that way in the future as this would imply that they can make a fortune out of it. What me puzzles is. When all transactions are done via a company and they get money from every transaction than that is some sort of a tax. I cannot do business without paying some strange company for nothing. So maybe central banks of the world should issue such system as a replacement for paper money. Cost free for the users of the money just like it is with the current money.
I don't like paying taxes to companies. It doesn't feel right.
Yes indeed this is very strange. As Slashdot being an US website, it might be that this nuclear is cool thing is very popular among US-citizens or at least US-geeks. I really wonder why. Maybe they believe in big centralized plants, factories etc. just like in the dystopias of modern Sci-Fi. Maybe a country with windmills and solar panels does not look very powerful. Maybe it is also a male thing. Big is good ;-) I don't know. This is pure speculation.
Germany will need to save energy. To do so new technology has to be developed. This not only applies to current uses of electricity, but also on replacing fuel in cars and replacing cars as an inefficient transport system for densely populated areas. True there will be some set backs and it might be possible that the world economy will become problems. However, I think the biggest problem for the world economy is the accumulation of large amounts of money in a few hands. Right now the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve are printing money to support the present economy. This will lead automatically to the next bubble. This is much more dangerous than any reduced growth of the German economy due to higher energy prices.
Which part of renewable sources do you not understand. We are not replacing nuclear plants by coal or gas plants. We replace old coal plants by new more efficient coal and gas plants. Preferably in combination with heat production for households and the industry.
BTW: the problem in Japan was not the tsunami, it was the greedy company operating the plants which caused the disaster. German energy companies are greedy too. That's why the had a small explosion of oxyhydrogen gas in plant in Germany just a year ago. Completely without a tsunami or earthquake just by bad practice.
No Germans do not like nuclear power since the Chernobyl accident. Even before that, they did not like it very much. But since then between 60% to 80% of the population do not like that power source. The exit by 2022 was already in place by a previous law from the previous government. The big thing is, the present government changed that plan to 203x and no changed it back after the accident in Japan, because they lost many regional elections. So the conservative government just tried out to be more popular. However, it didn't work, as everyone knows they are just liars.
Nuclear power became very unpopular after the Chernobyl accident. This lead to a nuclear power plant exit strategy in 2001 implemented by the red-green coalition (liberal and progressive) government. The exit date was around 2020/2022. Just recently the autumn 2010 the black-yellow coalition (conservatives) changed that plan to something in the 2030ies. then the Japanese had that bid disaster and the black-yellow coalition became very, very unpopular, because of their recent gift for the energy oligopoly. So in panic they changed it back to 2022. The only difference is, that seven old plants and one new one (which was broken for years now) are offline. The old one are so secure that you can built you own Fukushima-accident in Germany with a sport plane.
However, it is very interesting to hear that there are so many people telling Germany: You don't make it. It is not possible to switch. Lets say your're right. We never know until we've tried. But, when you are wrong then what will you do?
Hey France we where exporting more energy to other countries including your country. Now we will sell you less energy. Especially in summer that is a problem for you when the nuclear plants cannot produce peak output because of the water shortage.
But I bet that this comment of yours is not from France at all. I know French people they are neither jerks nor stupid. And yes it is stupid to claim that Germany was importing more energy than it is exporting. And we will see next year if Germany has a positive or negative balance.
In urban areas public transport is very effective, fast and low on energy consumption. however, it has to be subsidized, because car travel is subsidized a lot. Plus, people do not count all cost for the car when they compare it with public transport, but only the gas.
For midrange distances you can use trains (at least in Europe) they are save, fast and you can relax or work while you ride.
The only area where public transport does not work very well is the country side. There cars can be more usable.
However, car travel in Europe is the source for one third of CO2 emissions, one third comes from households and one from the industry. In all areas you could reduce energy consumption. For housing use insulation. It keeps the house cold in summer and warm in winter. You do not need air conditioning any more. You can use solar collector to heat you water which will reduce the energy consumption again.
We already have so called plus energy homes. Meaning a house which produces more energy than it consumes.
I thought Idiocracy is just a movie, but when we really have to sell a sustainable way of life with coolness, I start to doubt that. On the other hand, this would make Europeans pretty cool compared to people from the US. ;-)
Wow, I thought, somebody did a descend evaluation of GnomeShell and Unity. So I followed the link. Some may think, this was my first mistake. but then I read the article and the first words were "This morning I decided to play with the Fedora based Gnome3". Well super this is news? I played with Gnome3 on Ubuntu weeks ago. Oh yes I didn't post results of that playing and so nobody considered this news.
To be honest the memory figures look strange to say the least. He compares different applications in combination with different desktop shells and oh wonder he gets arbitrary memory usage results. The best is, the author points out some of the flaws of his approach. So there is no information in the article, beside that "nick" fiddled around with Gnome3.
For a real test you have first define a set of goals, questions and metrics and then perform tests according to the test method. You could test productivity. But to do so, you need people to play around with it for a week or two to learn the new UI and adapt to it. You could check how the memory usage of the application changes over a longer period of time. And then you can only check if the use increases over time which implies a memory leak. Other things can be difficult, as unity is a Compiz plugin and GnomeShell runs separate which implies a different architecture and therefor different usage results in ps or top.
You could also test the responsiveness of the system under load (as this is a important property for users). Or you can start up the system and check how much memory is already in use (free). But the desktop should be configured completely the same. And when nautilus is running in configuration A then it must also run in configuration B. If you use a desktop image, it has to be the same image on all machines/test sets, same resolution, color depth etc. The kernel version, X11 version all should be the same. In short you have to test it on Ubuntu X.Y and use all three desktop variants. You also should test this with other distributions and of course you should test it on different hardware. but always you have to start with an installation without desktop environment, then add the designated thing to the system make the tests and then go to the next version.
Yes. And? You are missing the point. The point is: When rich people or other people who are able to pay for private schools separate their kids from the rest, you get bad schools for people who cannot afford the fees or who do not care where they children go to school. Even more when interested parents have the opportunity to put their children on elite schools, they do so because they want the best for their children. I would most likely act the same. So while this is completely sound from a personal perspective it is bad from a society perceptive.
First, if you separate people in the education system, they stop to understand each other. This results in a decrease of caring for each other, which results in classism which is merely the same as racism you just stop using skin color as a discriminator. the result of this is violence and other destructive behavior by those people who loose.
Second, middle to upper class people do often insist in improvements in schooling and teaching. In lower class families this is not that common (I am absolutely sure you can point out counter examples, but as in sociology one or two examples in the opposite direction do not negate the primary trend). So if you separate them, in the end poor people get bad schools, which makes them less educated, which increases potential for losing jobs, which in the end increases the potential for violence.
But beside, violence. there is also another important fact. Poor people are also humans and therefor they should have the same chances. So if a rich kid can go to university or college with C or D in its high school exam than so should be all the poor kids too. Education shall not be a thing for those who can pay for it or fight for it. Education is a human right. So beside positive effects for society. It is recommended to have an equally good developed education system for all children. And it is important to mix children from various backgrounds.
The tax code is not that long because they are not able to simplify it. They don't want to.
A better solution is: A public school system. Owned by the people, controlled by the people. And if some "elite" want better schools, they can donate to the public school system not only to one particular school in a nice district.
The bias is obvious. The main task of the IAEA is to promote nuclear technology. That's what they are paid for. (they also do inspections of nuclear plants according to international standards, for example to check if someone uses the stuff to build bombs) As such they cannot be neutral. To be neutral they need to have different goals. Greenpeace are environmentalists, therefore they decide mostly in favor of the environment. So both are biased. As this bias is in different directions, you assume that the truth is between both extremes.
France imports electricity every summer as the temperature of their rivers have risen so much that they have to throttle their output. Right now 22% of electricity comes from nuclear plants and 17% from renewable sources. Due to the extensive increase in the renewable sector we will be able to replace nuclear plants by 2020. The question is how many coal plants can go too. And are we able to build enough storage facilities. Right now we have to stop wind turbines when there is not enough demand for electricity.
The problem is not how many people died in a particular industry since the industrial revolution. The problem is how much damage can be caused by a technology. And nuclear technology is unsafe. We cannot make a 50 km radius around each reactor contaminated and still have enough space to life. I do not propose that every plant is going to explode, however the result of an accident can be so harmful that we are not really able to handle them. So comparing dead people in a coal mine with thousands or millions (depends on the location) of people to be relocated to other places. While in coal mining mostly coal miners are in danger and it is up to their union and the government to ensure save working conditions. Same applies to uranium miners. But the contamination of an nuclear accident effects the general public. And frankly we do not want to be radiated, because someone is not able to operate his plant safely.
Even more, we have no save storage for the waste, we have no recycling mechanism which really works (don't tell me there are concepts, they are not applicable.) Recycling facilities like La Hague or Sellafield radiate the Atlantic. So this is no option.
Beside that we have alternatives. One is hanging above our heads it is this yellow thingy it produces energy by nuclear fission. It works properly and we do not have to care about the waste for one or two billion years. Until then we can use energy supplied by that reactor.
Germany will shutdown all its nuclear plants by 2020/2030 and replace it by renewable energy. Do you think they are going back to the stone age because of that. And no they are not building coal plants to replace the nuclear plants. they go to replace old inefficient coal plants by new ones.
You have to stop to think that a nuclear plant has to be replaced by another plant with the same output. You have to build a grid and attach many wind turbines. In Europe for example, they interconnect their wind farms in the North Sea.
You are not really comparing stupid wars over resources with the immediate danger of a technology? Seriously. this is comparing apples with pears.