Typically when a company buys a new PC, they get to specify the OS from short list -- XP home, XP Professional, and apparently more varieties of Vista than anyone is likely to be able to keep straight. Until relatively recently W2K, W2K professional, and Windows 98 would have been on the list as well.. (Yes the pricing for each and every one will be different). It's only home users that buy a box off the shelf who get the one-size-fits-all OEM OS with no idea of its cost and no real choice.
Even a home user can buy a custom specified PC over the internet with their choice of OS, and, I think -- although I haven't tried it -- from some vendors without an OS if they really want it that way.
What the original poster seems to be saying is that most companies will buy their boxes with Windows XP professional for quite a while. Could well be.
Our old friend Clippy is also an example of taking conrol away from the user. I don't know about you, but I tend to be really leary of installing Clippy's cousins in my cars.
ABS is a clear example of something -- I'm not sure what. It works fine on the test track. But real world data says that it does not appear to prevent or mitigate accidents. AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY. I think that the most charitable interpretation is that ABS adds cost and complexity to vehicles without much payoff.
What could possibly go wrong with vehicle alcohol detectors? Answer -- lots. For example, will bartenders, painters, and workers in chemical industries who work with ethanol and similar compounds be unable to drive home from work? How about something more sinister? You and your significant other are curled up in the living room finishing a second bottle of wine. There is a knock on the door. Your neighbor yells "Get in your Toyota and get the hell out of here. The creek is rising... fast"... Whoopsie.
***Because I remember, about two years ago, attending a users group where Microsoft presented the findings of their office UI research. They gathered statistics on which options were clicked most often and least often, whether people used the mouse or the keyboard, how many times they did each operation, etc. I was under the mistaken impression that Microsoft used this research in designing the ribbon. I also thought that it went through several stages of multi-million dollar usability testing.***
I don't know about anyone else, but I've read assertions roughly like this about every MS product since Windows 3. The results have been one mediocre or worse user interface after another including the deservedly much reviled Clippy.
Maybe it's different this time. I hope so, actually. But you have to understand that at this point in time, assertions about well designed MS UIs are not going to have a lot of credibility with anyone whose memory extends back very far.
In point of fact Bill Gates didn't used to be (publically at least) a fan of software patents. His position in 1991 was that patents exclude competitors and lead industry to stagnation.
Aside from the possibility that Gates just thinks (or thought at any rate) software patents are a bad idea, this is not a suprising position. Microsoft has deep pockets and distributes enough software to fill the Mediterranean Basin. It's a good bet that they would be willing to sacrifice their own patent pool for in order to be free of the constant threat of successful multi-million dollar (or more) lawsuits from some clown who has managed to patent binary arithmetic or the use ampersands in code.
The full quotation "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete stand-still today. The solution is patent exchanges and patenting as much as we can. A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
*** Does that mean that God is a good programmer?***
Sure -- if your think that making random changes to code then turning the result over to the test organization to see if they work is good programming practice. If you are patient enough, you can surely get decent code that way, but your record of on-time delivery of acceptable products is likely to be poor. Fortunately for God, there is no biblical evidence that he/she has schedule milestones to meet.
***At what point does our loathing of Microsoft and our support of OSS equate to a massive economic loss to our own nation?
At what point do American supporters of OSS achieve a shot to their own shared national foot?***
Is this not essentially the same argument we heard three decades ago when consumers on the coasts started buying smaller, cheaper, higher quality Japanese cars instead of the gas hungry, shoddily built, creations from Detroit that cornered like buckboards? It's not MY fault that Detroit didn't start delivering cars that (sort of) met my needs until the 1990s. The American Automobile industry wasn't killed by its consumers or competitors. It commited suicide.
It's likewise not MY fault that Microsoft is not delivering superior products with accessible source code at reasonable prices. If Microsoft's perception of its long term self interest is flawed (and I think it is) why blame the messengers?
RFID Disruptive? Maybe. But it isn't the technology that is the problem. It's applying it intelligently which seems to me more a management problem than an IT problem. But yeah, I'll buy that it RFID is going to cause a lot of IT people to work 16 hour days learning to deal with its quirks.
Web services? Maybe as much a decade from being ready for prime time. The only disruption will be to folks who are crazy enough to be early implementors of this partially baked concept. Yes, there are a few folks who need this or can use this today. More power to them. But implementing this stuff before bandwidth, latency, defective caching, and probably a bunch of other things that no one has thought are resolved is going to be painful -- for the implementors (who deserve the pain) and the users (who don't).
Virtual Servers? Sure, why not? How big a deal is it? I have no idea. What happens when two virtual machines try to share a device that requires several commands to perform one logical operation? That can't work, can it? Is there some sort of uber-OS that moderates that?
Advanced graphics processing? You're kidding right. Sure, it's a big deal. For about 3% of the users. Who cares about advanced graphics for reading e-Mail, POS, writing Word Docs or even web browsing? I must be missing something here.
Mobile security? A problem? You bet. Solutions that are any damn good. color me skeptical. But that's just a gut reaction. Maybe it's just a matter of learning to use the right existing technologies in the right way. A second coat of skeptical if you don't mind. First one is dry.
Maybe, but one of the few times I ever went to the effort to hack a binary was to modify one of those games to get around that sort of authentication scheme. I, at least, found to it be far more aggravating than Captchas are today.
***I think the big thing to happen to security in 2007 is Windows Vista. With increasing adoption, we will really get to see whether all the rewrites, new features, and bugfixes dramatically improve security.***
I'd like to think that Vista does dramatically improve security. Lord knows, there is room for dramatic improvements. But Microsoft is not loudly trumpeting improved Vista security as they (mistakenly) did Windows XP security. That leads me to believe that their own assessment might well be that the improvements are underwhelming.
Maybe you don't use them, but it's a safe bet that there are people who still do -- probably to communicate with some elderly, but essential box that no one has looked at for a decade because it just worked -- up til Vista anyway. Oh well. I suppose they'll just have to go second best and use Linux which DOES support IPX.(and I believe Appletalk as well).
***but some of us will still be happily running Windows freakin 95 because it does what we need. I think there really isn't much more they can add to Windows that people actually need.***
With a number of exceptions like those who need USB that works or to deal with large files, you're probably right. But don't expect to convince self-appointed IT experts. Those guys (they are mostly male) are busy leading Homo technica on a guided tour of one of the world's larger and more unpleasant swamps. It may have another shore. And things may even be really nice there. But I suspect it'll be quite a while before we find out because it looks to me like they are really, really lost and seem to be travelling more or less parallel to the shore. It can take a long time to get out of a swamp that way.
***I don't know what other people look for in cars, but my priorities run something like this: Price (within my budget), runs well, safety, good mileage, maneuverability, bells and whistles, overall appearance***
A couple of additions:
1. The vehicle must be significantly smaller than my house.
2. The vehicle controls must be comprehensible (I think it unlikely that Windows will be a major step toward that goal).
3. I must be able to drive the thing without taking my eyes off the road/mirrors. (A GUI -- any GUI -- is a step toward this how?)
BTW, This week I've had to take evasive action to avoid three different and distinct halfwits with cell phones plastered to their skulls driving SUVs outside the marked lanes. I can't wait til these beauties get Windows On Wheels. Can we just go back to drunks? Their driving skills may have been impaired, but at least they had driving skills.
Y'know what? There is a whole library in this town full of books I haven't read and CDs I haven't listened to, and VHS tapes I haven't watched. I need this DRM nonsense like I need an infection of antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus.
So, I think I'll just do my damndest to avoid buying ANYTHING that implements or requires DRM... Starting with Windows Vista. I probably won't succeed 100%, but I think I can come close. If enough folks join me in this, maybe we can convince "them" to either abandon DRM or come up with DRM technologies that are not a monumental PITA.
***The problem is, taking into account inflation, in constant dollars, oil costs less today than it did 30 years ago. Yes, even at $4/gallon. So the project is still not worth doing.***
No problem. Oil will probably be six or eight dollars a gallon -- in current dollars -- soon enough. (Soon as in a few decades, not soon as in next April]. Like Mark Twain is supposed to have said about land -- they've quit making it.
And don't be suprised if there is a short term jump in oil prices for us in the US in a few years. China and Japan are eventually going to get tired of supporting the US dollar which is probably going to fall by maybe 30%. At that point, my guess is that the oil producing countries are going to stop pricing oil in dollars and switch to a "market basket" of currencies. The result will be that the price of oil to US consumers will go up significantly.
Trust me on this one. Demand is increasing. Reserves are not keeping up with demand. (And they are probably largely fictional anyway) The same methods that correctly predicted the peak of US Oil production in the 1970s, say that world oil production is at or near its peak.
There are plenty of alternative energy sources and by and large I expect that the demise of cheap oil is not going to mean the end of humanity. But I'd enjoy your SUV and power boat now, cause you may not be able to afford to run them in 2030.
Oh yeah, and the price that you are comparing with today's price is a peak price caused by the 1979 Iranian revolution. Prices in 2006 exceeded that level for a while without any particular crisis. They will probably exceed it by a lot if our pathetic excuse for a leader in Washington continues to play chicken with Iran and to do every conceivable thing to inflame the anti-western islamic fanatics who are much closer than most people think to being able to severly impact Persian Gulf petroleum exports.
Might want to look into investing in a scummy pond somewhere. Might be a better bet than the latest Web 2.7 (or whatever we're up to) tech stock wonder.
***Sure, just like there's nothing unethical about businesses flying politicians out to tropical resorts for a luxurious relaxing vacation, so they can 'clear their mind' before making a potentially rash decision on the upcoming legislation that happens to involve that same company.***
I'd suggest that giving away laptops would be more akin to a ski area inviting members of a leislative committee out to look at the area, before voting on a bill that would hobble future expansion of the area. i.e. factfinding.
Do you find it objectionable that media folks who cover the automobile industry are often provided with demo vehicles? Of course, the auto folks have to give the vehicles back. The bloggers apparently don't. But a laptop -- even a classy one -- costs a hell of a lot less than a new car. (And I don't think you can run Vista on a unclassy laptop).
Note that free rides don't prevent NPR's Magliozzi brothers from saying dreadful things about manufacturers (and General Motors products in particular) with some frequency. So there is some evidence that media folks are harder to buy than politicians.
Lord knows, I'm no fan of Microsoft nowadays. I think most Vista customers are people who will end up wishing that they'd walked away from Microsoft software back in 2006-7-8 when it was relatively easy to do so. But there is absolutely nothing unethical about putting a product in the hands of folks who have an audience and might say something nice about it. It's not dishonest. It's not an abuse of monopoly. It's not, so far as I know, illegal. And it's not wrong.
Since Vista might not run all that well on some of these folks old A21M Thinkpads or whatever, sending out CDs might be a bit risky. Especially given the general flakiness of laptop hardware. Getting a harvest of blogger comments about how Vista refused to install or installed, but ate six directories containing a new novel is really a dubious marketing investment. Since Microsoft is awash in profts from its unchecked monopoly practices, why not give away laptops along with the OS?
***It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.***
Maybe for (some) individuals.
For many organizations, it's more like if we have six months to do a job, we'll take nine. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, it'll take 24. If we are given 24 months for the same job, it'll most likely never be finished.
Observation: scheduling a 10 hour task as one hour on 10 different days may get the job done early -- not because spreading the work out is more effcient. It isn't. But because the obvious way to do the task often is not the optimal way. Stretching the job out may allow time for the realization to filter through to the forebrain that there is a REALLY simple way to do this job. This works better for individuals than organizations.
Something that is fairly obvious, but not much discussed is that there is a good reason that complex tasks are frequently late or butchered to fit the scheduled time. It has to do with the non-linearity of scheduling. Suppose we have two tasks that we estimate will take one day each. But neither is all that easy to estimate. So we finish task A in half the scheduled time (hurray!). But task B is misestimated by the same RELATIVE amount in the other direction (Boo!). It takes two days. Total time is not 2 days, it is 2.5 days. In a really complex job, the scheduling uncertainties are likely to be huge. The liklihood is that the project will be late. Because of the non-linearity, scheduling using best guesses will almost certainly produce an overoptimistic schedule.
***It is, that said, an exceptionally stupid rule; the Prius gets a huge benefit from the all-electric mode, and that ought to be included in the mileage calculations***
It very well may be included. The article summary omits a couple of words -- namely "some of"-- from the sentance in the article that says. "Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results under the present system" The article is not specific about what driving will not be counted.
My guess (and it is a guess) is that they will try to end the test with the battery in the same charge state that it started the test and won't count 'borrowed' miles that come from running on the battery and not restoring the charge.
***That should be 3.4mm, BTW, which is 0.134 inches.***
And your source for that is... what? Not that I know different, but 34mm per year is much more consistent with a lowlying Island becoming unihabitable over a human lifetime. It's in the ballpark for several different websites (which may be quoting each other for all I know.) And it's not at all an unreasonable value AFAICS for an island that is actually sinking.
Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor is surrounded by levees several meters high because it sank several feet in the 1920s and 1930s due purportedly to oil that was pumped out from under it. Whatever the reason, the good sized island was stable up until the 1920s, then started sinking into Los Angeles Harbor which was inconvenient as there was a lot of infrastructure including a shipyard on top of it. It was stabilized, but below the high tide level, by the 1950s.
There are a number of reasons that an island can take it into its head to sink -- plate tectonic related motions, for example. Or compaction of underlying sediment. From what little I can find out about Lohachara, the problems seem to be very low elevation, subsidence, and quite possibly erosion with global warming a probably distant fourth.
Not to minimize the potential problems of global warming, but sea level rises associated with global warming so far are measured in inches, and not very many of them. So few inches in fact that it isn't even 100% certain that sea levels have changed at all. It's difficult to measure sea level changes of a few inches because the sea moves up and down all the time on its own due to tides and storms. It doesn't help that many places are locally rising or sinking on their own for a variety of reasons.
It's a bit of a stretch to believe that a phenomenon that is (so far) too small to even measure with confidence could erase an island big enough to have a substantial population. It's a bit hard to tell because of the "noise", but it looks like the total sea level rise in the 20th Century was maybe 4-6 inches... at most.
So what really happened to this island? Who knows -- either erosion or local sinking one suspects.
Wikipedia has a long article on global warming href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise" >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise.
And here's an article that says that the Sundabaran Islands of which Lohachara is (was?) a member are sinking at 3.4cm (about 1.4 inches) a year which is maybe 20 times the estimated rate of sea level rise from global warming. href="http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/tig er.html">http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/ tiger.html
***And well, saying that WIndows is bad because almost all viruses are designed for them is like saying that houses are bad, because thieves might try to break in...***
No, Windows is a target because it is widely used and vulnerable.
Windows is bad because there are so many obscure ways to hide malware and restart it on subsequent boots.
Good post, but may be a moot point with current cellphone technology.
My frequently faulty memory tells me that somewhere -- probably here on slashdot -- in the last year or so there is a link to an article about a test of cell phones on aircraft in flight. At low altitude the cell phone worked fine. At higher altitudes -- above a few thousand feet -- connections were not so good.
Here's a link to an article (not the one I had in mind) about some 2003 tests in the vicinity of London, Ontario using several different cell phones and both metal an fabric skinned aircraft. Bottom line: Cell phones work pretty well at low altitudes, but the liklihood of a usable connection drops off rapidly with increasing altitude. At 8000 feet, the liklihood of connecting and conducting a conversation is below 10%. If their lower altitude results apply at higher altitudes, they project the liklihood of a connection at 20000 ft to be pretty close to zero. http://physics911.net/projectachilles.htm. They also discuss the handover issue and seem to conclude that at 500mph, there isn't enough time in each cell to complete the handovers necessary for call continuity. At least that's what I think they are saying.
***If it made more "sense" to have the brain in the chest, we would have brains in our chests. It's just pointless to argue with mother nature when it comes to design. You can probably point to some kinks that specific species are still working out, but anything this universal is so damn near optimal that it's awe-inspiring.***
Mother nature doesn't necessarily come up with optimal designs, just non-lethal ones. "Tradition" has a lot of influence. In the case of heads and brains, our (hypothetical) bilateran ancestor probably was a segmented animal with a tendancy to merge the segments at one end into a specialized structure with things like eyes, mouth's et al slapped together from pre-existing structures. As a result, chordates, arthropods, mollusks, and various kinds of "worms" all have their heads on one end of the body.
At least that's what most people think is the reason for the architecture shared by many (not all) phyla. The fossil evidence from the time period where the various phyla probably diverged is scant and not entirely helpful.
Yes, if there were an enormous advantage to locating the brain in the torso, it'd probably be there. But if the advantage is small, and getting to that arrangement involves a number of steps with no particular advantage, it might very well never happen.
***In fact, just about the only thing in our modern lives that doesn't trace back to either the space program or "big public science" (like the web coming from CERN) is Tang!***
Some truth to that, but an overstatement. Automobiles -- almost entirely commercial development. The transistor -- Bell labs, likewise Unix. Antibiotics -- mostly commercial (but widespread availability of the second major antibiotic, penicillin, was made possible by the US Army)
OTOH. basic R&D for Jet aircraft (and the aircraft industry in general) has been almost entirely government funded. And the Internet started as DARPA undertaking.
Government funded science and engineering has a very good record overall. But AFAICS the civilian space program hasn't been much of a contributor.
***Sunglasses, smoke detectors, and cordless drills, however, ARE three spinoffs from the space program.***
Sunglasses???? Invented by the Chinese in the 12 Century. In wide use in the US before World War II. Polarized sunglasses maybe? Invented in the mid 1930s. see URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunglasses
Smoke detectors? Invented around 1900. The modern ionization based detector (not the only kind) might derive some technology from the civilian space program (a reference would be nice), but surely more from the nuclear weapons programs.
Cordless drills. Obviously not the drill itself. Electric drills have been around since the 19th Century. The batteries? Probably invented in Mesopotamia before the birth of Christ. The civilian space program could have made some contributions to modern battery technology, but if I had to make a bet, I'd guess that military and commercial products made most of the significant contributions. Got a reference that might educate me?
***. One only has to look at the fruits of the space program (from computers to microwave ovens to Tang).***
The space program did not develop Tang. NASA bought it at the grocery store just like anyone else who wanted it could and did.
Microwave ovens are based on WWII military technology and were in commercial use before NASA even existed.
The military did in fact put a lot of money into early digital computer development -- some of it for space applications. But NASA was not a major source of funding for digital computer development. The oil companies who needed supercomputers for seismic analysis were a lot bigger contributor to digital computer technology than the civilian space program.
(And Teflon and Velcro didn't come from the space program either).
I think the civilian space program has probably made some significant contributions to the engineering of custom materials although I couldn't cite examples. But all in all, the civilian space program hasn't had a very high payoff in technology development.
Slashdot Mirror
Even a home user can buy a custom specified PC over the internet with their choice of OS, and, I think -- although I haven't tried it -- from some vendors without an OS if they really want it that way.
What the original poster seems to be saying is that most companies will buy their boxes with Windows XP professional for quite a while. Could well be.
ABS is a clear example of something -- I'm not sure what. It works fine on the test track. But real world data says that it does not appear to prevent or mitigate accidents. AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY. I think that the most charitable interpretation is that ABS adds cost and complexity to vehicles without much payoff.
What could possibly go wrong with vehicle alcohol detectors? Answer -- lots. For example, will bartenders, painters, and workers in chemical industries who work with ethanol and similar compounds be unable to drive home from work? How about something more sinister? You and your significant other are curled up in the living room finishing a second bottle of wine. There is a knock on the door. Your neighbor yells "Get in your Toyota and get the hell out of here. The creek is rising ... fast" ... Whoopsie.
I don't know about anyone else, but I've read assertions roughly like this about every MS product since Windows 3. The results have been one mediocre or worse user interface after another including the deservedly much reviled Clippy.
Maybe it's different this time. I hope so, actually. But you have to understand that at this point in time, assertions about well designed MS UIs are not going to have a lot of credibility with anyone whose memory extends back very far.
Aside from the possibility that Gates just thinks (or thought at any rate) software patents are a bad idea, this is not a suprising position. Microsoft has deep pockets and distributes enough software to fill the Mediterranean Basin. It's a good bet that they would be willing to sacrifice their own patent pool for in order to be free of the constant threat of successful multi-million dollar (or more) lawsuits from some clown who has managed to patent binary arithmetic or the use ampersands in code.
The full quotation "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete stand-still today. The solution is patent exchanges and patenting as much as we can. A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
Sure -- if your think that making random changes to code then turning the result over to the test organization to see if they work is good programming practice. If you are patient enough, you can surely get decent code that way, but your record of on-time delivery of acceptable products is likely to be poor. Fortunately for God, there is no biblical evidence that he/she has schedule milestones to meet.
Is this not essentially the same argument we heard three decades ago when consumers on the coasts started buying smaller, cheaper, higher quality Japanese cars instead of the gas hungry, shoddily built, creations from Detroit that cornered like buckboards? It's not MY fault that Detroit didn't start delivering cars that (sort of) met my needs until the 1990s. The American Automobile industry wasn't killed by its consumers or competitors. It commited suicide.
It's likewise not MY fault that Microsoft is not delivering superior products with accessible source code at reasonable prices. If Microsoft's perception of its long term self interest is flawed (and I think it is) why blame the messengers?
Web services? Maybe as much a decade from being ready for prime time. The only disruption will be to folks who are crazy enough to be early implementors of this partially baked concept. Yes, there are a few folks who need this or can use this today. More power to them. But implementing this stuff before bandwidth, latency, defective caching, and probably a bunch of other things that no one has thought are resolved is going to be painful -- for the implementors (who deserve the pain) and the users (who don't).
Virtual Servers? Sure, why not? How big a deal is it? I have no idea. What happens when two virtual machines try to share a device that requires several commands to perform one logical operation? That can't work, can it? Is there some sort of uber-OS that moderates that?
Advanced graphics processing? You're kidding right. Sure, it's a big deal. For about 3% of the users. Who cares about advanced graphics for reading e-Mail, POS, writing Word Docs or even web browsing? I must be missing something here.
Mobile security? A problem? You bet. Solutions that are any damn good. color me skeptical. But that's just a gut reaction. Maybe it's just a matter of learning to use the right existing technologies in the right way. A second coat of skeptical if you don't mind. First one is dry.
Maybe, but one of the few times I ever went to the effort to hack a binary was to modify one of those games to get around that sort of authentication scheme. I, at least, found to it be far more aggravating than Captchas are today.
I'd like to think that Vista does dramatically improve security. Lord knows, there is room for dramatic improvements. But Microsoft is not loudly trumpeting improved Vista security as they (mistakenly) did Windows XP security. That leads me to believe that their own assessment might well be that the improvements are underwhelming.
Maybe you don't use them, but it's a safe bet that there are people who still do -- probably to communicate with some elderly, but essential box that no one has looked at for a decade because it just worked -- up til Vista anyway. Oh well. I suppose they'll just have to go second best and use Linux which DOES support IPX.(and I believe Appletalk as well).
With a number of exceptions like those who need USB that works or to deal with large files, you're probably right. But don't expect to convince self-appointed IT experts. Those guys (they are mostly male) are busy leading Homo technica on a guided tour of one of the world's larger and more unpleasant swamps. It may have another shore. And things may even be really nice there. But I suspect it'll be quite a while before we find out because it looks to me like they are really, really lost and seem to be travelling more or less parallel to the shore. It can take a long time to get out of a swamp that way.
A couple of additions:
1. The vehicle must be significantly smaller than my house.
2. The vehicle controls must be comprehensible (I think it unlikely that Windows will be a major step toward that goal).
3. I must be able to drive the thing without taking my eyes off the road/mirrors. (A GUI -- any GUI -- is a step toward this how?)
BTW, This week I've had to take evasive action to avoid three different and distinct halfwits with cell phones plastered to their skulls driving SUVs outside the marked lanes. I can't wait til these beauties get Windows On Wheels. Can we just go back to drunks? Their driving skills may have been impaired, but at least they had driving skills.
So, I think I'll just do my damndest to avoid buying ANYTHING that implements or requires DRM ... Starting with Windows Vista. I probably won't succeed 100%, but I think I can come close. If enough folks join me in this, maybe we can convince "them" to either abandon DRM or come up with DRM technologies that are not a monumental PITA.
Either will be fine with me.
No problem. Oil will probably be six or eight dollars a gallon -- in current dollars -- soon enough. (Soon as in a few decades, not soon as in next April]. Like Mark Twain is supposed to have said about land -- they've quit making it.
And don't be suprised if there is a short term jump in oil prices for us in the US in a few years. China and Japan are eventually going to get tired of supporting the US dollar which is probably going to fall by maybe 30%. At that point, my guess is that the oil producing countries are going to stop pricing oil in dollars and switch to a "market basket" of currencies. The result will be that the price of oil to US consumers will go up significantly.
Trust me on this one. Demand is increasing. Reserves are not keeping up with demand. (And they are probably largely fictional anyway) The same methods that correctly predicted the peak of US Oil production in the 1970s, say that world oil production is at or near its peak.
There are plenty of alternative energy sources and by and large I expect that the demise of cheap oil is not going to mean the end of humanity. But I'd enjoy your SUV and power boat now, cause you may not be able to afford to run them in 2030.
Oh yeah, and the price that you are comparing with today's price is a peak price caused by the 1979 Iranian revolution. Prices in 2006 exceeded that level for a while without any particular crisis. They will probably exceed it by a lot if our pathetic excuse for a leader in Washington continues to play chicken with Iran and to do every conceivable thing to inflame the anti-western islamic fanatics who are much closer than most people think to being able to severly impact Persian Gulf petroleum exports.
Might want to look into investing in a scummy pond somewhere. Might be a better bet than the latest Web 2.7 (or whatever we're up to) tech stock wonder.
I'd suggest that giving away laptops would be more akin to a ski area inviting members of a leislative committee out to look at the area, before voting on a bill that would hobble future expansion of the area. i.e. factfinding.
Do you find it objectionable that media folks who cover the automobile industry are often provided with demo vehicles? Of course, the auto folks have to give the vehicles back. The bloggers apparently don't. But a laptop -- even a classy one -- costs a hell of a lot less than a new car. (And I don't think you can run Vista on a unclassy laptop).
Note that free rides don't prevent NPR's Magliozzi brothers from saying dreadful things about manufacturers (and General Motors products in particular) with some frequency. So there is some evidence that media folks are harder to buy than politicians.
Since Vista might not run all that well on some of these folks old A21M Thinkpads or whatever, sending out CDs might be a bit risky. Especially given the general flakiness of laptop hardware. Getting a harvest of blogger comments about how Vista refused to install or installed, but ate six directories containing a new novel is really a dubious marketing investment. Since Microsoft is awash in profts from its unchecked monopoly practices, why not give away laptops along with the OS?
Maybe for (some) individuals.
For many organizations, it's more like if we have six months to do a job, we'll take nine. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, it'll take 24. If we are given 24 months for the same job, it'll most likely never be finished.
Observation: scheduling a 10 hour task as one hour on 10 different days may get the job done early -- not because spreading the work out is more effcient. It isn't. But because the obvious way to do the task often is not the optimal way. Stretching the job out may allow time for the realization to filter through to the forebrain that there is a REALLY simple way to do this job. This works better for individuals than organizations.
Something that is fairly obvious, but not much discussed is that there is a good reason that complex tasks are frequently late or butchered to fit the scheduled time. It has to do with the non-linearity of scheduling. Suppose we have two tasks that we estimate will take one day each. But neither is all that easy to estimate. So we finish task A in half the scheduled time (hurray!). But task B is misestimated by the same RELATIVE amount in the other direction (Boo!). It takes two days. Total time is not 2 days, it is 2.5 days. In a really complex job, the scheduling uncertainties are likely to be huge. The liklihood is that the project will be late. Because of the non-linearity, scheduling using best guesses will almost certainly produce an overoptimistic schedule.
It very well may be included. The article summary omits a couple of words -- namely "some of"-- from the sentance in the article that says. "Hybrids will be hit harder because the new test eliminates some of the all-electric driving that helped them produce impressive results under the present system" The article is not specific about what driving will not be counted.
My guess (and it is a guess) is that they will try to end the test with the battery in the same charge state that it started the test and won't count 'borrowed' miles that come from running on the battery and not restoring the charge.
And your source for that is ... what? Not that I know different, but 34mm per year is much more consistent with a lowlying Island becoming unihabitable over a human lifetime. It's in the ballpark for several different websites (which may be quoting each other for all I know.) And it's not at all an unreasonable value AFAICS for an island that is actually sinking.
Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor is surrounded by levees several meters high because it sank several feet in the 1920s and 1930s due purportedly to oil that was pumped out from under it. Whatever the reason, the good sized island was stable up until the 1920s, then started sinking into Los Angeles Harbor which was inconvenient as there was a lot of infrastructure including a shipyard on top of it. It was stabilized, but below the high tide level, by the 1950s.
There are a number of reasons that an island can take it into its head to sink -- plate tectonic related motions, for example. Or compaction of underlying sediment. From what little I can find out about Lohachara, the problems seem to be very low elevation, subsidence, and quite possibly erosion with global warming a probably distant fourth.
It's a bit of a stretch to believe that a phenomenon that is (so far) too small to even measure with confidence could erase an island big enough to have a substantial population. It's a bit hard to tell because of the "noise", but it looks like the total sea level rise in the 20th Century was maybe 4-6 inches ... at most.
So what really happened to this island? Who knows -- either erosion or local sinking one suspects.
Wikipedia has a long article on global warming href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise" >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise.
And here's an article that says that the Sundabaran Islands of which Lohachara is (was?) a member are sinking at 3.4cm (about 1.4 inches) a year which is maybe 20 times the estimated rate of sea level rise from global warming. href="http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/tig er.html">http://membrane.com/global_warming/notes/ tiger.html
No, Windows is a target because it is widely used and vulnerable.
Windows is bad because there are so many obscure ways to hide malware and restart it on subsequent boots.
Good post, but may be a moot point with current cellphone technology.
My frequently faulty memory tells me that somewhere -- probably here on slashdot -- in the last year or so there is a link to an article about a test of cell phones on aircraft in flight. At low altitude the cell phone worked fine. At higher altitudes -- above a few thousand feet -- connections were not so good.
Here's a link to an article (not the one I had in mind) about some 2003 tests in the vicinity of London, Ontario using several different cell phones and both metal an fabric skinned aircraft. Bottom line: Cell phones work pretty well at low altitudes, but the liklihood of a usable connection drops off rapidly with increasing altitude. At 8000 feet, the liklihood of connecting and conducting a conversation is below 10%. If their lower altitude results apply at higher altitudes, they project the liklihood of a connection at 20000 ft to be pretty close to zero. http://physics911.net/projectachilles.htm. They also discuss the handover issue and seem to conclude that at 500mph, there isn't enough time in each cell to complete the handovers necessary for call continuity. At least that's what I think they are saying.
Mother nature doesn't necessarily come up with optimal designs, just non-lethal ones. "Tradition" has a lot of influence. In the case of heads and brains, our (hypothetical) bilateran ancestor probably was a segmented animal with a tendancy to merge the segments at one end into a specialized structure with things like eyes, mouth's et al slapped together from pre-existing structures. As a result, chordates, arthropods, mollusks, and various kinds of "worms" all have their heads on one end of the body.
At least that's what most people think is the reason for the architecture shared by many (not all) phyla. The fossil evidence from the time period where the various phyla probably diverged is scant and not entirely helpful.
Yes, if there were an enormous advantage to locating the brain in the torso, it'd probably be there. But if the advantage is small, and getting to that arrangement involves a number of steps with no particular advantage, it might very well never happen.
Some truth to that, but an overstatement. Automobiles -- almost entirely commercial development. The transistor -- Bell labs, likewise Unix. Antibiotics -- mostly commercial (but widespread availability of the second major antibiotic, penicillin, was made possible by the US Army)
OTOH. basic R&D for Jet aircraft (and the aircraft industry in general) has been almost entirely government funded. And the Internet started as DARPA undertaking.
Government funded science and engineering has a very good record overall. But AFAICS the civilian space program hasn't been much of a contributor.
***Sunglasses, smoke detectors, and cordless drills, however, ARE three spinoffs from the space program.***
Sunglasses???? Invented by the Chinese in the 12 Century. In wide use in the US before World War II. Polarized sunglasses maybe? Invented in the mid 1930s. see URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunglasses
Smoke detectors? Invented around 1900. The modern ionization based detector (not the only kind) might derive some technology from the civilian space program (a reference would be nice), but surely more from the nuclear weapons programs.
Cordless drills. Obviously not the drill itself. Electric drills have been around since the 19th Century. The batteries? Probably invented in Mesopotamia before the birth of Christ. The civilian space program could have made some contributions to modern battery technology, but if I had to make a bet, I'd guess that military and commercial products made most of the significant contributions. Got a reference that might educate me?
The space program did not develop Tang. NASA bought it at the grocery store just like anyone else who wanted it could and did.
Microwave ovens are based on WWII military technology and were in commercial use before NASA even existed.
The military did in fact put a lot of money into early digital computer development -- some of it for space applications. But NASA was not a major source of funding for digital computer development. The oil companies who needed supercomputers for seismic analysis were a lot bigger contributor to digital computer technology than the civilian space program.
(And Teflon and Velcro didn't come from the space program either).
I think the civilian space program has probably made some significant contributions to the engineering of custom materials although I couldn't cite examples. But all in all, the civilian space program hasn't had a very high payoff in technology development.