There could be something to this theory. Flowering plants originates at about the same time dinosaurs conked out. And to aid pollination by insects, the plants started making high octane fuels (nectar, is almost pure sugar) and the co-evolution of insects and flowering plants raced ahead. There could be something to it, but still we would need more positive evidence. We still have to explain the iridium layer in sediments too.
An apocryphal story claims that when the Japanese started aping the American way of doing things and they use a thesaurus to name their companies. Thus they founded companies with names like Ordinary Motors and Common Oil!
So, now the Chinese are aping the Japanese method and renamed the thinkpad the ideapad?
Looks like they will use simple plane mirror heliostats to concentrate the radiation to boil water to run steam turbines. Excess heat will be used to melt salt and store it underground and that heat will be drawn during the night and overcast days. Looks like it is a question of break even periods and investment costs. But so is every solar plant of every technology.
Still our transportation sector still relies too heavily on imported oil and this technology too would not do much to alleviate it, by itself.
It cant do it. Because it is impossible to really document everything in WinXP. The code is the document. It is cobbled together and grew organically for some 20 years of spaghetti development. So they just cant do it, even if they wanted to.
We need a good way to store electricity because solar power is intermittent.
The flywheel battery is not yet ready for transportation applications. Not crash resistant. But for domestic and office use one can bury this 10 feet below ground to
"contain" it in the event of failure. A cheap solar cell installation and a reliable
storage system will take many homes to reduce their load on the grid.
Despite all that, our transportation sector still relies too heavily on imported oil. Till we find a solution to that, we will be sending billions of dollars to marginally stable
dictatorial nations for our oil.
We can reduce oil imports by 30% if we capture the methane from farm waste, reduce odor pollution, and get organic fertilizer too. Plug in hybrids can relieve another 30% of the load on oil imports.
But the oil producers cut the oil price and make the investors bail out and then raise the
oil prices again. We need dedicated investors who will stay in wait for a real long time
in the oil-replacement technologies.
Though stories of breakthrough in solar cell technology is running almost like a cron job
in slashdot, this time it is slightly better because this time it is shipping already.
It is not a story about what a technology that is 5, 10 or 20 years from the market.
I have always appreciated the self deprecating humor and the jolly view of things indicated by that unix tool, Yet Another Compiler Compiler. I wish someone would name their solar cell,
yet another solar cell, just for the kicks.
I find that the summary uses "penny size" to describe the size of the chip. Slashdot Standard Units Manual, clearly states that the preferred units for length is football fields,
(as in my bookshelf is 0.01 football fields wide).
Similarly preferred units data size is libraries of congress (as in sigfile in/. should be less than 80 femto libraries of congress)
For weight it is locomotives. As in "The sun weighs 3.72 tera locomotives)
And for flow rate it is Amazon river. The new regulations reduced the maximum flow rate for shower heads from 1.6 atto amazons to 1.2 atto amazons.
For volume the preferred units is number of Earths that could be stuffed into it. As in "The asteroid Gzibpat has the volume of 0.1 micro Earths.
So please recalculate the volume of the chip in Earths and resubmit the story.
If someone uses a public computer to access their private data, typing in their user names and passwords and don't know how to clear the browser's cache and other private data they deserve everything they get. People should know what is private and what is public and why things are behind authentication access control screens. People who think they are safe because they killed the browser instance, would have left their mail accounts bank accounts and other things vulnerable too. The malefactor has these tempting fruits, they are not going to be trudging through the hard disk looking for useless stuff.
It is no different from leaving the house open and blaming the manufacturer of your dining table manufacturer for not protecting against this possible scenario.
Tell me about it. I post some really insightful comment in slashdot and somescum cut and paste it and post it as their own insight in other fora and blogs.
Certified that this comment is not a cut and paste of another poster's comment. Well, as far as I know. And I don't know much.
There are many closed source vendors who would like to get just a piece of MSFT's market share. It would be foolish for the open-standards advocates not to include them in the big tent. Don't antagonize these people whose interests are aligned with ours.
Who's left that thinks like that? Sun, Apple, IBM, HP, Sharp, Sony and everyone
Oracle is a big player who is gunning for a slice of MSFT in the server dbase markets. Quickbooks, Peachtree, many many accounting, corporate software (CRM, inventory management, shipping/tracking) vendors all are quite apprehensive about having to play by MSFT's rules and they are worried about MSFT using its monopoly power in Office software to muscle in on their turf. It is in their interests to see MSFT's profit margins in Office software trimmed, because it is that profit margin that is the fountainhead of all MSFT's misdeeds. They would gladly join the Open Standards fight but they wont join the Open Software fight.
If you truly believe Open Software is the best way to have good software, you would not ask for anything more than Open Standards. That is enough for us to win.
Supporters of open source should tone down the rhetoric about it and fight for open standards.
It's hard for me to understand what this means
Security through obscurity does not work. You know it, I know it and most slashdotters and security professionals know it. But still some non engineers in the top management don't buy it. Many top politicians don't buy it. Selling closed/proprietary software as "more secure" works for them.
Blocking open source as "insecure" works there. Now we are in a no-win situation. Either explain and prove them wrong and thus antagonize them, (these top dogs don't like to be proven wrong) or leave them alone and get blocked by them.
In the case of open standards, it is much more difficult to argue against it. That is why even MSFT is coming out with, "ours is also an open standard" line. That is why I was asking people not to get into open/close source argument and give the other side less foot hold.
Let us face a pragmatic reality. There are many closed source vendors who would like to get just
a piece of MSFT's market share. It would be foolish for the open-standards advocates not to include them in the big tent. Don't antagonize these people whose interests are aligned with ours.
Let us not confuse the issue. Open Standards are common minimum goal for all advocates of open source software, new comers promoting closed software, free software and new entrants selling software. Let us not play into the hands of advocates of walled gardens, established players desperately clinging to straws by conflating the two. If the public and government officials confuse between the two, the other side can argue against Open Source to defeat Open Standards.
Supporters of open source should tone down the rhetoric about it and fight for open standards. If open source is better, as they believe, it will win if the playing field is level. What levels the field is open standards. Same is true about the free/paid software issue.
We should not fall for the well engineered PR spin of conflating these two.
X15 was not a jet plane. It is a rocket plane caried in the belly of a bomber, gets dropped at altitude and flies in a prabolic trajectory reaching Mach 6.7 at the altitude of 100,000 ft or so and glides back to land on skis. It was once piloted by Neil Armstrong before he joined the astronaut core.
I am not blaming the coffee maker maker or MSFT. I am just pointing it out to MSFT customers who are doing the software equivalent of buying replacement carafes at inflated prices so as to be backward compatible with the existing infrastructure.
I vaguely recall MSFT had to outsource load balancing to Akamai which used Linux boxes to redistribute the incoming traffic at some point in the past. Looking at Netcraft.com, it shows some subdomains of microsoft.com resolved to Linux boxes before the year 2000. So it is able to get out of the sandbox now? Is that the main story?
Just think. Why do replacement carafe for you coffee make costs 12.99 + shipping and handling and three weeks of wait time, while a new coffee maker costs only 14.99? vendor lock.
Why does the replacement battery for iPod was once priced at 79$? vendor lock.
Have you compared the cost of replacement battery, cable, charger, bulb of anything proprietary with standard compliant versions of the same thing?
There could be a million businesses, happy with MSFT experience, happy with the price MSFT is charging. Still the very same companies would be better off, if they can tell MSFT to go fly a kite when its interests are different from MSFT's interests. Just imagine how MSFT sales force will treat you if you can show them how easily you can switch to Linux and how they will treat you if they know
that you are not going to be able to switch to Linux no matter what. It makes business sense
to keep your options open, and reduce dependency on any of your vendors. Especially when the vendor is an 800lb gorilla with shady business practices in the past.
The SP1 release candidate will have to be uninstalled before applying the final code in 2008, Microsoft warned as it also issued an odd caution on the subject. "After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1," another support document read.
I have heard phone support script humanoid robots demand that I turn off the modem and router and wait for 30 seconds before switching them on. Kind of made sense, something like make sure all capacitors are fully discharged and the machines are really truly off.
In India there is a popular belief that if an AirConditioner is turned off one must wait for three minutes before turning it on. One technician hand waved about the compressor might be at some odd point in the cycle and suddenly making it run would "break" the shaft. Did not believe him. But in the last trip I find that all the A/C are connected to the grid through "voltage stabilizers" that have a delay timer to prevent the machine from being turned on too soon!
Now MSFT takes the cake! Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why? The pagefile is still thinking SP1 is running? The MSFT DRM software has to call in and tell Redmond that SP1 has been really uninstalled and get a confirmation back? Or uninstalled bits of SP1 is considered to be an radioactive waste and they must be beamed to Jupiter to be buried?
The upside, according to Microsoft, is that all applications that currently run properly on Windows Vista will continue to work on Vista SP1.
What the heck is going on here? That applications wont break is an upside? Wasn't the biggest selling point of MSFT has been the compatibility with the existing installed base?
This is a telling moment for all the CIOs and IT managers of corporations. The biggest reason why most companies could not migrate to a competing platform (or at least platform-agnostic technologies) was because they were locked into this proprietary system and it simply costs money to remove all the hacks and remove dependencies. Now they can't dodge the cost. It is inevitable. Given that, does it make sense to pay so much to get locked into another proprietary vendor locked system again? They were fooled once into vendor lock or vendor lock crept up on them unsuspected. But now?
The MSFT strategy is clear. They must make the cost of migrating from XP to Vista will be marginally smaller than migrating from XP to platform-neutral-technology. If the IT managers fall for this trap once more they will exactly be in the same situation five years from now.
The key is open standards. We don't have to bicker among ourselves the merits and demerits of open source vs closed source, or free software with paid software or whatever. Open Standards will level the playing field. That is all we should ask for. Let us duke it out in a level field and may the better philosophy win.
The biggest challenge, according to independent software vendors and Microsoft, is getting apps to work with Vista's advanced security features, such as the User Account Control. It's designed to prevent desktop users from making changes to their system images without approval from an IT administrator. The feature operates at the kernel level and can affect the way third-party applications, including antivirus software, work.
Oh yeah, sure. MSFT dissed Linux with the Total Cost of Ownership BS. The cost of migrating applications to Linux was what had boosted the cost for Linux column. Now will Gartner re run the Total Cost of Ownership studies including the cost of migrating "XP to Vista"?
Slashdot Mirror
There could be something to this theory. Flowering plants originates at about the same time dinosaurs conked out. And to aid pollination by insects, the plants started making high octane fuels (nectar, is almost pure sugar) and the co-evolution of insects and flowering plants raced ahead. There could be something to it, but still we would need more positive evidence. We still have to explain the iridium layer in sediments too.
It is the mice that are running the simulation. The cheat code to go to the highest level is, of course, 42
So, now the Chinese are aping the Japanese method and renamed the thinkpad the ideapad?
Serves you right for not using Firefox!
Still our transportation sector still relies too heavily on imported oil and this technology too would not do much to alleviate it, by itself.
OK, I am willing enter into a non compete agreement with MSFT. Bill, where do I collect my money?
So, according to IBM, there will be demand for how many computers? seven or eight?
It cant do it. Because it is impossible to really document everything in WinXP. The code is the document. It is cobbled together and grew organically for some 20 years of spaghetti development. So they just cant do it, even if they wanted to.
Despite all that, our transportation sector still relies too heavily on imported oil. Till we find a solution to that, we will be sending billions of dollars to marginally stable dictatorial nations for our oil.
We can reduce oil imports by 30% if we capture the methane from farm waste, reduce odor pollution, and get organic fertilizer too. Plug in hybrids can relieve another 30% of the load on oil imports.
But the oil producers cut the oil price and make the investors bail out and then raise the oil prices again. We need dedicated investors who will stay in wait for a real long time in the oil-replacement technologies.
Though stories of breakthrough in solar cell technology is running almost like a cron job in slashdot, this time it is slightly better because this time it is shipping already. It is not a story about what a technology that is 5, 10 or 20 years from the market.
I have always appreciated the self deprecating humor and the jolly view of things indicated by that unix tool, Yet Another Compiler Compiler. I wish someone would name their solar cell, yet another solar cell, just for the kicks.
You forgot to add shipping and handling and express guaranteed delivery before 10:30 AM. That jacks up the price from 3.5m to 3.5b.
Similarly preferred units data size is libraries of congress (as in sigfile in /. should be less than 80 femto libraries of congress)
For weight it is locomotives. As in "The sun weighs 3.72 tera locomotives)
And for flow rate it is Amazon river. The new regulations reduced the maximum flow rate for shower heads from 1.6 atto amazons to 1.2 atto amazons.
For volume the preferred units is number of Earths that could be stuffed into it. As in "The asteroid Gzibpat has the volume of 0.1 micro Earths.
So please recalculate the volume of the chip in Earths and resubmit the story.
It is no different from leaving the house open and blaming the manufacturer of your dining table manufacturer for not protecting against this possible scenario.
Certified that this comment is not a cut and paste of another poster's comment. Well, as far as I know. And I don't know much.
If you truly believe Open Software is the best way to have good software, you would not ask for anything more than Open Standards. That is enough for us to win.
Security through obscurity does not work. You know it, I know it and most slashdotters and security professionals know it. But still some non engineers in the top management don't buy it. Many top politicians don't buy it. Selling closed/proprietary software as "more secure" works for them. Blocking open source as "insecure" works there. Now we are in a no-win situation. Either explain and prove them wrong and thus antagonize them, (these top dogs don't like to be proven wrong) or leave them alone and get blocked by them.
In the case of open standards, it is much more difficult to argue against it. That is why even MSFT is coming out with, "ours is also an open standard" line. That is why I was asking people not to get into open/close source argument and give the other side less foot hold.
Let us face a pragmatic reality. There are many closed source vendors who would like to get just a piece of MSFT's market share. It would be foolish for the open-standards advocates not to include them in the big tent. Don't antagonize these people whose interests are aligned with ours.
Supporters of open source should tone down the rhetoric about it and fight for open standards. If open source is better, as they believe, it will win if the playing field is level. What levels the field is open standards. Same is true about the free/paid software issue.
We should not fall for the well engineered PR spin of conflating these two.
X15 was not a jet plane. It is a rocket plane caried in the belly of a bomber, gets dropped at altitude and flies in a prabolic trajectory reaching Mach 6.7 at the altitude of 100,000 ft or so and glides back to land on skis. It was once piloted by Neil Armstrong before he joined the astronaut core.
I am not blaming the coffee maker maker or MSFT. I am just pointing it out to MSFT customers who are doing the software equivalent of buying replacement carafes at inflated prices so as to be backward compatible with the existing infrastructure.
I vaguely recall MSFT had to outsource load balancing to Akamai which used Linux boxes to redistribute the incoming traffic at some point in the past. Looking at Netcraft.com, it shows some subdomains of microsoft.com resolved to Linux boxes before the year 2000. So it is able to get out of the sandbox now? Is that the main story?
Why does the replacement battery for iPod was once priced at 79$? vendor lock.
Have you compared the cost of replacement battery, cable, charger, bulb of anything proprietary with standard compliant versions of the same thing?
There could be a million businesses, happy with MSFT experience, happy with the price MSFT is charging. Still the very same companies would be better off, if they can tell MSFT to go fly a kite when its interests are different from MSFT's interests. Just imagine how MSFT sales force will treat you if you can show them how easily you can switch to Linux and how they will treat you if they know that you are not going to be able to switch to Linux no matter what. It makes business sense to keep your options open, and reduce dependency on any of your vendors. Especially when the vendor is an 800lb gorilla with shady business practices in the past.
Thanks, so looks like that technician was right, and this engineer is wrong. Not the first time this happened. Thanks for the info.
I have heard phone support script humanoid robots demand that I turn off the modem and router and wait for 30 seconds before switching them on. Kind of made sense, something like make sure all capacitors are fully discharged and the machines are really truly off.
In India there is a popular belief that if an AirConditioner is turned off one must wait for three minutes before turning it on. One technician hand waved about the compressor might be at some odd point in the cycle and suddenly making it run would "break" the shaft. Did not believe him. But in the last trip I find that all the A/C are connected to the grid through "voltage stabilizers" that have a delay timer to prevent the machine from being turned on too soon!
Now MSFT takes the cake! Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why? The pagefile is still thinking SP1 is running? The MSFT DRM software has to call in and tell Redmond that SP1 has been really uninstalled and get a confirmation back? Or uninstalled bits of SP1 is considered to be an radioactive waste and they must be beamed to Jupiter to be buried?
What the heck is going on here? That applications wont break is an upside? Wasn't the biggest selling point of MSFT has been the compatibility with the existing installed base?
This is a telling moment for all the CIOs and IT managers of corporations. The biggest reason why most companies could not migrate to a competing platform (or at least platform-agnostic technologies) was because they were locked into this proprietary system and it simply costs money to remove all the hacks and remove dependencies. Now they can't dodge the cost. It is inevitable. Given that, does it make sense to pay so much to get locked into another proprietary vendor locked system again? They were fooled once into vendor lock or vendor lock crept up on them unsuspected. But now?
The MSFT strategy is clear. They must make the cost of migrating from XP to Vista will be marginally smaller than migrating from XP to platform-neutral-technology. If the IT managers fall for this trap once more they will exactly be in the same situation five years from now.
The key is open standards. We don't have to bicker among ourselves the merits and demerits of open source vs closed source, or free software with paid software or whatever. Open Standards will level the playing field. That is all we should ask for. Let us duke it out in a level field and may the better philosophy win.
Oh yeah, sure. MSFT dissed Linux with the Total Cost of Ownership BS. The cost of migrating applications to Linux was what had boosted the cost for Linux column. Now will Gartner re run the Total Cost of Ownership studies including the cost of migrating "XP to Vista"?