Exactly my point. You can use them very good for things they are designed to do. They are not so good in calculating a nuclear explosion but that is not the normal use case for a netbook.
- They are cheap - They normally run hours without a recharge - They are small and lightweight so it's easy to carry them around - For most day by day tasks they are good enough - They boot fast, so it's more or less like using a real notebook (I mean these paper pencil things)
The bad things are: - The screen is too small to do big tasks - They cannot be used for complex calculation problems - They have not enough storage for your torrented movie collection
But the important thing is, netbooks are gadgets. They are cheap and they are good at the tasks they are designed to do. They are not fully fledged work machines. But hey, a fun car is not a truck either.
Literally there is no real difference between these two terms. However, it is an indicator on what you want to emphasize. For example, pellet and fact are called reasoners, while Jess or Bossam are called rule engines.
As long as they are not showing the tool to the public, I do not believe they build a system which promises that. However, there have been lots of research in this area and there are methods to convert queries into horn-clauses so you can query knowledge bases. I designed a method in my master thesis which does similar things, however it was laid out to be performed by humans.
As ingredients for such a system you need - a knowledge base filled with facts (you can use OWL for it if you want or a rule based approach) - a reasoner (e.g. something like pellet) - a rule engine (e.g. something like Jess) - a method which understands simple English query sentences.
The really hard part is the knowledge base, because it is lots of work. And an automated approach which can understand written documents and classify them correctly would be great, but I doubt that they found a solution for this problem.
This problem includes: - How to handle uncertainty? - What to do with contradicting knowledge? - What to do with temporal aspects in that knowledge?
However, if they built a tool which can answer question of one single domain of knowledge, this is nothing new. Such machines exist now for a long time. They can be helpful, but there is nothing exciting about them.
If you have an election and the votes are collected on paper the voting can be confidential, free, and equal. And to guarantee these three aspects counting has to be public and a possible recounting in public must be possible. With a computer you loose this correction criteria, because they count in an not observable manner and manipulations cannot be excluded. The only feature you get from a voting machine is, that the results can be presented faster. However, I do not understand why this is an advantage for a democracy. Fast results only mean that they become just one news among other. But they are of great importance for a democracy therefore it is more than ok when the whole Sunday evening is devoted to the election.
I agree that spending money on education is better than giving it to failing companies. However, social systems are not there for leisure purposes. They were implemented to provide some safety so people can concentrate on their work, their education and supporting their children. If you are in constantly fear to loose your health insurance just because the company you are working for is failing or the insurance company is bankrupt, you will not be able to concentrate on your job.
These welfare systems in Europe are mostly designed in a way to protect people's basic rights [http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html]. In this context I refer to article 22-26.
Therefore I must disagree with you in the point that extensive social programs are a waste of money. However, social systems which make people lazy and powerless are not designed very well. Therefore these systems have to foster education and give them a kick in the ass, so they start working again. And such models work as long as working gives you more benefit than hanging around.
Also I want to add, that spending money on space research is not a waste of money. Spending money on military power beyond self defense is however in my opinion a waste of money. Because keeping other countries or populations under our thumb results in anger and hatred, which result in violent behavior, so we need more power to suppress this violence, which results in more anger and hatred. Such power-based approaches were often used by imperial states and at the time an empire was no longer able to suppress their opponents they collapse.
Therefore I prefer peace made on the basis of mutual agreement.
46% of world wide investments in military is required to keep the Russians of the EUs lawn? I don think so not including the money invested by the EU itself. Furthermore German forces have the largest number of tanks in Western Europe and the east side (the evil Russians) have lost most of its conventional potential in the past years. Also countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Baltic states do now belong to the Western military pact.
So it would be foolish to attack the West. Also for what reason shall they do so? Attacking their biggest gas and oil customer doest not look like a good idea. And they are not propagating their twisted implementation of communism. They have discontinued the use of that system.
Here is an interesting link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures]
It shows that the EU is spending 6 times more money on military than the Russian. And believe me, I live in Europe and I am not frightened by Russian or some terrorists for that matter.
However, I agree that a space program is normally contributing to technological development and progress. And it allows the human spirit to thrive.
And my argument was not stop the space program, but to stop the stupid military funding. Invest your money in the future not in the protection of access to limited resources, which will be gone anyway. This would also be beneficial for the US. I really think that 700 Billion US$ is really too much. Hey the next player (EU) uses 300 Billion US$ and these two are allies.
I would always favor social welfare over a space plane in this decade. However, the USA are using so much money on their military, so it would be more useful to cut on military expenses for space flight. But first the current president has to cleanup the mess Bush made. BTW. in France and Germany the state is spending most of its money on social/welfare aspects instead of investing too much money in weapons. This is very reasonable because violence can not be stopped by more violence.
And I really cannot understand why previous post is moderated insightful. I like space science very much, but I wouldn't trade the well being of my fellow citizens for a space plane.
I've read the above article and then the German highway toll system come in my mind. It works in a similar way. However, it is only used for trucks right now, but the system can do more.
First, all trucks need a special computer unit built-in for booking. However, because not all trucks have such system and of course to check if everything was booked in the right way, they installed cameras on mostly every on and off ramp.
These cameras read license plates and detect if the vehicle is really a truck or a normal car. They also detect if the truck has one or more trailers, because more trailer cost you more money.
The company running the toll system, also sells tracking information to companies and they can detect traffic jams. Theoretical they could also offer traffic jam prediction, but I am not sure if this would be legal. Also it is possible to calculate the average speed of vehicles. And I guess it is only a question of time that the state realizes this feature and uses it instead of speed traps.
Also, the German minister of the interior, Mr. Schaeuble, (he reminds me sometimes of Dr. Strangelove) already thought about using the tracking data of this highway system to track people movements to capture terrorists of course. Luckily this idea was dismissed of other ministers so no total road observation right now.
There is a nice video on nova on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTXIzaxfox4
It looks like the Cubix is a Gentoo clone. This is really a strange choice for a end-user Linux. While Gentoo might be fun to play with, it is definitely not designed for every tom, dick and harry.
However, when all Cubans now start to play with Linux on this level, they will become the future hacker, cracker, and sysadmin elite, while in other countries people get stuck with their toasters and the cryptic toast manual.
The point is, that this is not about racism. Its about classism. It just appears to be black people in the US. In Germany they are Turkish or from East Germany. In France they are from Algeria. In the UK they are from India, Pakistan or any other place they conquered and plundered decades ago.
And another example. In Germany, we have polish people. They belong mainly to the lower class. However in Poland itself they distribute over all classes. And because people would not get smarter when you move them eastwards, I assume this has something to do with the class they belong to.
The point is, the real problem here is that lower class children are not becoming upper class parents. And you can see this at the US at the skin color, because a large group of poor people are black. However being poor is not their fault. It is induced by the economic and social system in the US. Also this classism is present in all capitalistic states and is not only a US problem.
However a few countries are better in closing the gap than the US, UK or Germany.
In the US black people are over represented in the lower class. This means, the percentage of black people belonging to the lower class in relation to all black people in the US is high than compared to the whole US society.
In the lower class it is more common that young especially young male humans have an interest in gaming. This does not mean that in other classes young male do not game. It just says that the possibility that you like gaming and additionally do it quite often, increases when you are in a lower class.
In Europe you get similar results. In Germany for example you can make the same analysis and you will get as a result: Turkish people are unrepresented in the gaming industry. But over represented in the gamers league.
The cause is quite similar. If you are poor you get worse education. This is a institutional problem. Means schools treat you different when you are poor then when you are rich. So you get bad grades, which isn't helpful in getting to university or college.
At least their is a way out of it. The Scandinavian found it. They help every kid. And they help the parents. But they are not on the "competition trip" like the USA, UK or Germany.
The ESA has a low budget compared to the NASA. The major difference is that they do things slowly and step by step. They do one big project (like the ATV development), but a lot of research and engineering is done in smaller missions. And they try to use platforms. For example the Venus Express probe reused the design of Mars Express. They also have a lot "get things cheaper" projects. And they cancelled many expensive projects, which was seen as a set back for Europe at that time. For example the Hermes project. The Ariane 5 launcher was designed to carry Hermes, but as Hermes never got build Ariane became the work horse of Arianespace. So in this point they just got lucky.
I've read some of the comments here and I see there is a favor for Obama. Therefore I thought it might be interesting to give an outside view of the situation. The reputation of the USA has been damaged by the present administration. This is not only based on the stupid Iraq adventure, it is also based on being ignorant, acting volatile, and short term egoistic thinking. Ignorant, because the US government claimed to lead the "free world" (what ever that may be) and in the next action they ignore their allies. In addition the US government is preoccupied by the securing resources for the USA, but only with a short term thinking. Natural resources are limited and they should be shared between all human beings. But instead of thinking ahead and proposing new ideas, they even rejected good ideas by other nations or federations of states.
So one important thing to do in the next four years would be rebuilding the reputation of the US. This is not an easy task. You need someone with experience. And in that point I would vote for Clinton. She had delivered concrete concepts (beside the TV speeches), but Obama didn't. He is definitively the more charismatic candidate, but from my point of view this is not important.
If you look in the history of Clinton, you know she has a (social) liberal background, which very much needed if the US want to catch up with social standards of other industrialized countries (like Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Swiss). For example public health care, schooling, unemployment insurance, etc.).
In addition I think she is the better diplomat, but Obama did not have much opportunity to show his ability here.
The arguments in the article are not very sound. First, a loss in home/private OS market does not result in a grow in the business/corporation market. Not in number of sold copies nor in cash earned. But you could argument, that as more and more people who do decisions in IT departments, know Linux. Therefore they start to promote the system in their company. This will result in a loss of market share in the corporate market. You could argument that all other companies are frightened by this "communistic system" and therefore they do not adopt even if they should. This would hold Linux a little bit back in the US. But as far as I know capitalists, they would even sell their grandmother to the bugs. So why should they not take Linux if it is useful.
Second, he argues, that this is holding back the US. To be honest. Who cares? Most people live not in the US. They life somewhere else, even in countries and regions where software patents do not exist. Every time Microsoft says something about IP, I could say I don't care, because these monopolies do not exist here (Europe) and will never exist. And as far as I know China and India don't care about these US-monopolies too. Not to forget South America and Africa. All continents which great growth levels in computer and Linux usage.
A friend of mine tried to buy a Dell notebook in Germany. First she didn't want to buy a machine with Vista, but that was not possible online. The only choises were Vista or pay more for Vista. At the end she decided to go with Vista and replace it with XP later. After ordering they called her and told her that the machine she selected the other day is no longer available (but still available in the shop). And they really asked her to choose another more expensive notebook. She denied and got it managed to get the Vista thing replaced as well. The cause for not offering this option online was, that Dell prefers to sell Vista. Strange service.
A day later they debited the amount directly (well this is a normal way to pay things in Germany, instead of using credit cards) for both notebooks. She got really angry and canceled the whole thing. Which means both orders and went down to the Mac shop to buy a MacBook which costs here 100 EUR more, but she got the device with her specs right from the shelf.
A yes the cause for ordering a Dell was, so she could have Ubuntu pre-installed, but this option is not available in Germany. So I guess. Selling Ubuntu looks like a good advertising strategy to me, but they are not really interested in selling it.
First of all, we do not know why the bees die out. And yes, it can become a serious problem for some plants we eat and therefore a problem for us. But till now, I have seen some more promising theories about that.
A) Bees die out because of the changing climate. As they are really sensible to temperature this seems very possible. Also a lot of plants start growing early and the bees wake up too late for them. So they get not enough food or the wrong one.
B) Bees have a problem with some genetic engineered plants and polls. This would at least correlate with the lower impact on Europe.
Well it is obvious that we cannot produce the required amount of energy out of biomass or solar energy (including wind and water). A solution can only be to reduce the energy footprint of our major systems: transportation, heating, production and communication.
Beside the fact, that cars consume a lot of energy during production (so when they run longer, this is better for the environment), they also use a lot of materials. Iron is widely available, but other materials, like copper, are rare. In addition to that they need a lot of space to park and to move. This space has to be created and maintained, which is also costly (in resources and energy). Concrete needs cement and lime, which require a lot of energy in production. So a solution for this sector should be more efficient than cars. In cities this can be streetcars, which are even more efficient than buses. In regions with low population density, this solution will not work. Therefore cities should be prefered over the country side. Also a more dense living should be encouraged. But this could lead to ugly cities. This must be prevented, because otherwise humans go mad. A good solution is the use of houses with 4-6 floors (you do not need elevators in such houses at least not in all), plus parks and decentralized supply systems (e.g. supermarkets).
The next system to optimize is housing. Houses must be insulated. Today we can build low energy houses with almost no extra cost. Zero energy houses or houses which produce more energy than they consume are also possible, but more expensive today. So the housing problem is not a technological problem, but a political problem. To give you some figures. An average German house consumes only 1/5 of a US-house and even that amount is still too high. This is because not all houses in Germany use modern heating systems (99.x% efficiency) and insulation. Most houses have 10-20 year old (or even older) heating systems.
The last problem is production (and it is connected to the transportation problem). Most goods are not produced where they are used. Also a lot of parts are delivered cross country and around the world, which requires a lot of energy. In many cases it would be cheaper to deliver the knowledge somewhere and let them build the parts there.
Another point is the lifetime of most goods. The break after a couple of years and are not designed to get fixed. This is a big problem, because a replacement is expensive (in energy terms), because the material of the broken device has to be recylced. A better solution is to fix such devices. For instance a mixer. A cheap mixer (about 14 EUR) breaks, when used, very soon. I have seen our device going out of service after 6 month (twice). We got a new one for no cost, but on the resource side we allocated three devices. If the device would be fixable, the resource allocation would be somewhere close to 1 unit.
There are more points. But I think these few give you a picture of the things which lie ahead of us. We have to change our habits. Think different:-)
As far as I know. One cause to start form scratch instead of replacing QT was, KDE is written in C++. A lot of people didn't like C++ back in these days. Also it was easier to bind different languages to C than to C++. And not to forget, the C binary interface didn't change that often as the C++ one.
3 is no option right now
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To build an ark and fly 10.5 lightyears with it is not an easy task. Right now we have problems sending people to Mars, due to radiation problems, cooling problems etc. I've read an article about required technologies for a Mars trip in the German version of the Scientific American (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) . They discussed several techniques for the shielding. None of them was really applicable. The energy supply is also a big problem. You cannot use nuclear fission (or fusion if it will work some day) because they produce heat. Heat, in space, can only be radiated. So a classic heat sink will not work, as there is no air which can mode the heat away. Every quantum of energy, produced on such ark must be radiated. This is quite tricky. Nowadays satellites are low power systems, which have to radiate only small amounts of energy. Therefore simple foil-based emitters are enough.
The next problem is. To get everything up in space. This is a very energy intensive task. As the ark must be really big. Bigger than a pleasure cruiser. Far bigger. Beside the cost, this will have a significant impact on the ecosystem on earth.
The last big problem is the life support. Projects like Earth II failed tragically. So there is work to do on this end also.
To sum it up. We need some real technological advances before we can start to build the ark. And one is to implement a working energy support for this space ship (earth), which works and cooperates with the life support system. Also we have a resource problem in other areas as well. So this has to be solved too.
This could lead to low power technology, which would at least solve problem one of the ark.
Car electric or otherwise are the inefficiency in person. They weigh between 1000 kg and 2000 kg (not counting SUVs) and are used to move 100-200kg (1-2 Persons+some extra) around. I let you do the calculus, but that is not very efficient at all. In addition to that, a decelerating vehicle has to transform movement energy into heat. Compared to that, a (modern) streetcar is able to convert the energy back into electricity. Also they utilize less mass to move one person around, can go faster in cities (60-80 km/h instead of 50-60 km/h). And they have not to bother with traffic jams.
If we want to solve our energy problem we have to do two things:
Use technologies to generate and store energy which are not harmful to nature. This includes nuclear plants. As they have two problems. a) They produce radioactive waste, we cannot handle properly and b) the usable amount of nuclear materials is also limited. Beside that, fusion will not work (at least not for another 100 years) and is also pointing in the wrong direction. Decentralized energy production make more sense.
We have to consume less energy. We are able (based on technology) to reduce our energy usage by 80%. Without loosing comfort. We have just to change some behaviors and production methods. For instance a PC consumes more energy being build, than over its lifetime. Similar things apply to cars, modern home electronic, etc.
We could save a lot of energy, when we could run our equipment longer than today. Therefore these tools have to be reparable. Recycling is a good thing, but even better is not dumping it, but repairing it.
As good as this new battery is, it is not solving our energy and resource issues.
Reminder: We run into a copper shortage, when we stay with todays technologies. Electric cars, will need even more copper. So this shortage will come sooner.
The focus shift of MS is a reaction, I assume, of the competition with Linux and other open source operation systems. These OS have a large impact on companies (i.e. Peugeot migrating 20000 machines, cities switching it Linux like Munich and Vienna). At the same time the impact on private user is not as big right now, because people fear to migrate to Linux or Macs. This fear is in most cases diffuse and can disapate when the people start thinking about their feeling.
So I conclude. MS act that way because they try to defend their standing in business applications. At the same time they think they can neglect the private users because they won't switch that easily. But this can be a problem. As right now a lot of people are refusing to switch to Vista. And if you look at the profit-chart of MS in OS business. It had its peek with Win95/Win98 and then it dropped over WinME bringing a sidewards movement. This is caused be slow migration from old to new computers, as people switch from Win98/ME to WinXP when they buy new computers.
The same thing will happen to Vista. And as companies are the key figures in such migration process MS is focusing on them.
Slashdot Mirror
You should switch companies.
Exactly my point. You can use them very good for things they are designed to do. They are not so good in calculating a nuclear explosion but that is not the normal use case for a netbook.
The good things about netbooks are:
- They are cheap
- They normally run hours without a recharge
- They are small and lightweight so it's easy to carry them around
- For most day by day tasks they are good enough
- They boot fast, so it's more or less like using a real notebook (I mean these paper pencil things)
The bad things are:
- The screen is too small to do big tasks
- They cannot be used for complex calculation problems
- They have not enough storage for your torrented movie collection
But the important thing is, netbooks are gadgets. They are cheap and they are good at the tasks they are designed to do. They are not fully fledged work machines. But hey, a fun car is not a truck either.
Literally there is no real difference between these two terms. However, it is an indicator on what you want to emphasize. For example, pellet and fact are called reasoners, while Jess or Bossam are called rule engines.
You also might want to look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoner
As long as they are not showing the tool to the public, I do not believe they build a system which promises that. However, there have been lots of research in this area and there are methods to convert queries into horn-clauses so you can query knowledge bases. I designed a method in my master thesis which does similar things, however it was laid out to be performed by humans.
As ingredients for such a system you need
- a knowledge base filled with facts (you can use OWL for it if you want or a rule based approach)
- a reasoner (e.g. something like pellet)
- a rule engine (e.g. something like Jess)
- a method which understands simple English query sentences.
The really hard part is the knowledge base, because it is lots of work. And an automated approach which can understand written documents and classify them correctly would be great, but I doubt that they found a solution for this problem.
This problem includes:
- How to handle uncertainty?
- What to do with contradicting knowledge?
- What to do with temporal aspects in that knowledge?
However, if they built a tool which can answer question of one single domain of knowledge, this is nothing new. Such machines exist now for a long time. They can be helpful, but there is nothing exciting about them.
If you have an election and the votes are collected on paper the voting can be confidential, free, and equal. And to guarantee these three aspects counting has to be public and a possible recounting in public must be possible. With a computer you loose this correction criteria, because they count in an not observable manner and manipulations cannot be excluded. The only feature you get from a voting machine is, that the results can be presented faster. However, I do not understand why this is an advantage for a democracy. Fast results only mean that they become just one news among other. But they are of great importance for a democracy therefore it is more than ok when the whole Sunday evening is devoted to the election.
I agree that spending money on education is better than giving it to failing companies. However, social systems are not there for leisure purposes. They were implemented to provide some safety so people can concentrate on their work, their education and supporting their children. If you are in constantly fear to loose your health insurance just because the company you are working for is failing or the insurance company is bankrupt, you will not be able to concentrate on your job.
These welfare systems in Europe are mostly designed in a way to protect people's basic rights [http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html]. In this context I refer to article 22-26.
Therefore I must disagree with you in the point that extensive social programs are a waste of money. However, social systems which make people lazy and powerless are not designed very well. Therefore these systems have to foster education and give them a kick in the ass, so they start working again. And such models work as long as working gives you more benefit than hanging around.
Also I want to add, that spending money on space research is not a waste of money. Spending money on military power beyond self defense is however in my opinion a waste of money. Because keeping other countries or populations under our thumb results in anger and hatred, which result in violent behavior, so we need more power to suppress this violence, which results in more anger and hatred. Such power-based approaches were often used by imperial states and at the time an empire was no longer able to suppress their opponents they collapse.
Therefore I prefer peace made on the basis of mutual agreement.
46% of world wide investments in military is required to keep the Russians of the EUs lawn? I don think so not including the money invested by the EU itself. Furthermore German forces have the largest number of tanks in Western Europe and the east side (the evil Russians) have lost most of its conventional potential in the past years. Also countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Baltic states do now belong to the Western military pact. So it would be foolish to attack the West. Also for what reason shall they do so? Attacking their biggest gas and oil customer doest not look like a good idea. And they are not propagating their twisted implementation of communism. They have discontinued the use of that system. Here is an interesting link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures] It shows that the EU is spending 6 times more money on military than the Russian. And believe me, I live in Europe and I am not frightened by Russian or some terrorists for that matter. However, I agree that a space program is normally contributing to technological development and progress. And it allows the human spirit to thrive. And my argument was not stop the space program, but to stop the stupid military funding. Invest your money in the future not in the protection of access to limited resources, which will be gone anyway. This would also be beneficial for the US. I really think that 700 Billion US$ is really too much. Hey the next player (EU) uses 300 Billion US$ and these two are allies.
I would always favor social welfare over a space plane in this decade. However, the USA are using so much money on their military, so it would be more useful to cut on military expenses for space flight. But first the current president has to cleanup the mess Bush made. BTW. in France and Germany the state is spending most of its money on social/welfare aspects instead of investing too much money in weapons. This is very reasonable because violence can not be stopped by more violence. And I really cannot understand why previous post is moderated insightful. I like space science very much, but I wouldn't trade the well being of my fellow citizens for a space plane.
I've read the above article and then the German highway toll system come in my mind. It works in a similar way. However, it is only used for trucks right now, but the system can do more. First, all trucks need a special computer unit built-in for booking. However, because not all trucks have such system and of course to check if everything was booked in the right way, they installed cameras on mostly every on and off ramp. These cameras read license plates and detect if the vehicle is really a truck or a normal car. They also detect if the truck has one or more trailers, because more trailer cost you more money. The company running the toll system, also sells tracking information to companies and they can detect traffic jams. Theoretical they could also offer traffic jam prediction, but I am not sure if this would be legal. Also it is possible to calculate the average speed of vehicles. And I guess it is only a question of time that the state realizes this feature and uses it instead of speed traps. Also, the German minister of the interior, Mr. Schaeuble, (he reminds me sometimes of Dr. Strangelove) already thought about using the tracking data of this highway system to track people movements to capture terrorists of course. Luckily this idea was dismissed of other ministers so no total road observation right now.
Ehm, you won't be free when switching from a Microsoft monopoly to an Apple monopoly. So I hope Obama will support free software.
There is a nice video on nova on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTXIzaxfox4 It looks like the Cubix is a Gentoo clone. This is really a strange choice for a end-user Linux. While Gentoo might be fun to play with, it is definitely not designed for every tom, dick and harry. However, when all Cubans now start to play with Linux on this level, they will become the future hacker, cracker, and sysadmin elite, while in other countries people get stuck with their toasters and the cryptic toast manual.
The point is, that this is not about racism. Its about classism. It just appears to be black people in the US. In Germany they are Turkish or from East Germany. In France they are from Algeria. In the UK they are from India, Pakistan or any other place they conquered and plundered decades ago. And another example. In Germany, we have polish people. They belong mainly to the lower class. However in Poland itself they distribute over all classes. And because people would not get smarter when you move them eastwards, I assume this has something to do with the class they belong to. The point is, the real problem here is that lower class children are not becoming upper class parents. And you can see this at the US at the skin color, because a large group of poor people are black. However being poor is not their fault. It is induced by the economic and social system in the US. Also this classism is present in all capitalistic states and is not only a US problem. However a few countries are better in closing the gap than the US, UK or Germany.
In the US black people are over represented in the lower class. This means, the percentage of black people belonging to the lower class in relation to all black people in the US is high than compared to the whole US society. In the lower class it is more common that young especially young male humans have an interest in gaming. This does not mean that in other classes young male do not game. It just says that the possibility that you like gaming and additionally do it quite often, increases when you are in a lower class. In Europe you get similar results. In Germany for example you can make the same analysis and you will get as a result: Turkish people are unrepresented in the gaming industry. But over represented in the gamers league. The cause is quite similar. If you are poor you get worse education. This is a institutional problem. Means schools treat you different when you are poor then when you are rich. So you get bad grades, which isn't helpful in getting to university or college. At least their is a way out of it. The Scandinavian found it. They help every kid. And they help the parents. But they are not on the "competition trip" like the USA, UK or Germany.
The ESA has a low budget compared to the NASA. The major difference is that they do things slowly and step by step. They do one big project (like the ATV development), but a lot of research and engineering is done in smaller missions. And they try to use platforms. For example the Venus Express probe reused the design of Mars Express. They also have a lot "get things cheaper" projects. And they cancelled many expensive projects, which was seen as a set back for Europe at that time. For example the Hermes project. The Ariane 5 launcher was designed to carry Hermes, but as Hermes never got build Ariane became the work horse of Arianespace. So in this point they just got lucky.
I've read some of the comments here and I see there is a favor for Obama. Therefore I thought it might be interesting to give an outside view of the situation. The reputation of the USA has been damaged by the present administration. This is not only based on the stupid Iraq adventure, it is also based on being ignorant, acting volatile, and short term egoistic thinking. Ignorant, because the US government claimed to lead the "free world" (what ever that may be) and in the next action they ignore their allies. In addition the US government is preoccupied by the securing resources for the USA, but only with a short term thinking. Natural resources are limited and they should be shared between all human beings. But instead of thinking ahead and proposing new ideas, they even rejected good ideas by other nations or federations of states.
So one important thing to do in the next four years would be rebuilding the reputation of the US. This is not an easy task. You need someone with experience. And in that point I would vote for Clinton. She had delivered concrete concepts (beside the TV speeches), but Obama didn't. He is definitively the more charismatic candidate, but from my point of view this is not important.
If you look in the history of Clinton, you know she has a (social) liberal background, which very much needed if the US want to catch up with social standards of other industrialized countries (like Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Swiss). For example public health care, schooling, unemployment insurance, etc.).
In addition I think she is the better diplomat, but Obama did not have much opportunity to show his ability here.
The arguments in the article are not very sound. First, a loss in home/private OS market does not result in a grow in the business/corporation market. Not in number of sold copies nor in cash earned. But you could argument, that as more and more people who do decisions in IT departments, know Linux. Therefore they start to promote the system in their company. This will result in a loss of market share in the corporate market. You could argument that all other companies are frightened by this "communistic system" and therefore they do not adopt even if they should. This would hold Linux a little bit back in the US. But as far as I know capitalists, they would even sell their grandmother to the bugs. So why should they not take Linux if it is useful.
Second, he argues, that this is holding back the US. To be honest. Who cares? Most people live not in the US. They life somewhere else, even in countries and regions where software patents do not exist. Every time Microsoft says something about IP, I could say I don't care, because these monopolies do not exist here (Europe) and will never exist. And as far as I know China and India don't care about these US-monopolies too. Not to forget South America and Africa. All continents which great growth levels in computer and Linux usage.
A friend of mine tried to buy a Dell notebook in Germany. First she didn't want to buy a machine with Vista, but that was not possible online. The only choises were Vista or pay more for Vista. At the end she decided to go with Vista and replace it with XP later. After ordering they called her and told her that the machine she selected the other day is no longer available (but still available in the shop). And they really asked her to choose another more expensive notebook. She denied and got it managed to get the Vista thing replaced as well. The cause for not offering this option online was, that Dell prefers to sell Vista. Strange service.
A day later they debited the amount directly (well this is a normal way to pay things in Germany, instead of using credit cards) for both notebooks. She got really angry and canceled the whole thing. Which means both orders and went down to the Mac shop to buy a MacBook which costs here 100 EUR more, but she got the device with her specs right from the shelf.
A yes the cause for ordering a Dell was, so she could have Ubuntu pre-installed, but this option is not available in Germany. So I guess. Selling Ubuntu looks like a good advertising strategy to me, but they are not really interested in selling it.
First of all, we do not know why the bees die out. And yes, it can become a serious problem for some plants we eat and therefore a problem for us. But till now, I have seen some more promising theories about that.
A) Bees die out because of the changing climate. As they are really sensible to temperature this seems very possible. Also a lot of plants start growing early and the bees wake up too late for them. So they get not enough food or the wrong one.
B) Bees have a problem with some genetic engineered plants and polls. This would at least correlate with the lower impact on Europe.
Well come to North Germany in summer, it will be rainy and cool. And its just a view hours away. ;-)
Well it is obvious that we cannot produce the required amount of energy out of biomass or solar energy (including wind and water). A solution can only be to reduce the energy footprint of our major systems: transportation, heating, production and communication.
:-)
Beside the fact, that cars consume a lot of energy during production (so when they run longer, this is better for the environment), they also use a lot of materials. Iron is widely available, but other materials, like copper, are rare. In addition to that they need a lot of space to park and to move. This space has to be created and maintained, which is also costly (in resources and energy). Concrete needs cement and lime, which require a lot of energy in production. So a solution for this sector should be more efficient than cars. In cities this can be streetcars, which are even more efficient than buses. In regions with low population density, this solution will not work. Therefore cities should be prefered over the country side. Also a more dense living should be encouraged. But this could lead to ugly cities. This must be prevented, because otherwise humans go mad. A good solution is the use of houses with 4-6 floors (you do not need elevators in such houses at least not in all), plus parks and decentralized supply systems (e.g. supermarkets).
The next system to optimize is housing. Houses must be insulated. Today we can build low energy houses with almost no extra cost. Zero energy houses or houses which produce more energy than they consume are also possible, but more expensive today. So the housing problem is not a technological problem, but a political problem. To give you some figures. An average German house consumes only 1/5 of a US-house and even that amount is still too high. This is because not all houses in Germany use modern heating systems (99.x% efficiency) and insulation. Most houses have 10-20 year old (or even older) heating systems.
The last problem is production (and it is connected to the transportation problem). Most goods are not produced where they are used. Also a lot of parts are delivered cross country and around the world, which requires a lot of energy. In many cases it would be cheaper to deliver the knowledge somewhere and let them build the parts there.
Another point is the lifetime of most goods. The break after a couple of years and are not designed to get fixed. This is a big problem, because a replacement is expensive (in energy terms), because the material of the broken device has to be recylced. A better solution is to fix such devices. For instance a mixer. A cheap mixer (about 14 EUR) breaks, when used, very soon. I have seen our device going out of service after 6 month (twice). We got a new one for no cost, but on the resource side we allocated three devices. If the device would be fixable, the resource allocation would be somewhere close to 1 unit.
There are more points. But I think these few give you a picture of the things which lie ahead of us. We have to change our habits. Think different
As far as I know. One cause to start form scratch instead of replacing QT was, KDE is written in C++. A lot of people didn't like C++ back in these days. Also it was easier to bind different languages to C than to C++. And not to forget, the C binary interface didn't change that often as the C++ one.
To build an ark and fly 10.5 lightyears with it is not an easy task. Right now we have problems sending people to Mars, due to radiation problems, cooling problems etc. I've read an article about required technologies for a Mars trip in the German version of the Scientific American (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) . They discussed several techniques for the shielding. None of them was really applicable. The energy supply is also a big problem. You cannot use nuclear fission (or fusion if it will work some day) because they produce heat. Heat, in space, can only be radiated. So a classic heat sink will not work, as there is no air which can mode the heat away. Every quantum of energy, produced on such ark must be radiated. This is quite tricky. Nowadays satellites are low power systems, which have to radiate only small amounts of energy. Therefore simple foil-based emitters are enough.
The next problem is. To get everything up in space. This is a very energy intensive task. As the ark must be really big. Bigger than a pleasure cruiser. Far bigger. Beside the cost, this will have a significant impact on the ecosystem on earth.
The last big problem is the life support. Projects like Earth II failed tragically. So there is work to do on this end also.
To sum it up. We need some real technological advances before we can start to build the ark. And one is to implement a working energy support for this space ship (earth), which works and cooperates with the life support system. Also we have a resource problem in other areas as well. So this has to be solved too.
This could lead to low power technology, which would at least solve problem one of the ark.
Car electric or otherwise are the inefficiency in person. They weigh between 1000 kg and 2000 kg (not counting SUVs) and are used to move 100-200kg (1-2 Persons+some extra) around. I let you do the calculus, but that is not very efficient at all. In addition to that, a decelerating vehicle has to transform movement energy into heat. Compared to that, a (modern) streetcar is able to convert the energy back into electricity. Also they utilize less mass to move one person around, can go faster in cities (60-80 km/h instead of 50-60 km/h). And they have not to bother with traffic jams.
If we want to solve our energy problem we have to do two things:
We could save a lot of energy, when we could run our equipment longer than today. Therefore these tools have to be reparable. Recycling is a good thing, but even better is not dumping it, but repairing it.
As good as this new battery is, it is not solving our energy and resource issues.
Reminder: We run into a copper shortage, when we stay with todays technologies. Electric cars, will need even more copper. So this shortage will come sooner.
The focus shift of MS is a reaction, I assume, of the competition with Linux and other open source operation systems. These OS have a large impact on companies (i.e. Peugeot migrating 20000 machines, cities switching it Linux like Munich and Vienna). At the same time the impact on private user is not as big right now, because people fear to migrate to Linux or Macs. This fear is in most cases diffuse and can disapate when the people start thinking about their feeling.
So I conclude. MS act that way because they try to defend their standing in business applications. At the same time they think they can neglect the private users because they won't switch that easily. But this can be a problem. As right now a lot of people are refusing to switch to Vista. And if you look at the profit-chart of MS in OS business. It had its peek with Win95/Win98 and then it dropped over WinME bringing a sidewards movement. This is caused be slow migration from old to new computers, as people switch from Win98/ME to WinXP when they buy new computers.
The same thing will happen to Vista. And as companies are the key figures in such migration process MS is focusing on them.