Posts by C 2

RE:Let's have it then

okay it's 127.0.0.1 ... there's no place like 127.0.0.1

RE: Proof aliens exist

My mistake I had presumed that the cities that the US bombed were a lot more populous. So I revise my previous estimate. Going from the wikipedia article it looks like between 150,000 and 246,000 perished in that attack. Then you can add in 200,000+ from Chernobyl, although some estimates are much higher.

So while I may have been inaccurate in my first post, this is still many times the number of people who have perished from any other source of energy we use, except possibly hydroelectric, where dam failures can wipe out entire valleys.

My point remains Valid that nuclear is far more dangerous than other 'human activities' as the consequences have not played out. We still have thousands of years to go just to conatin the deadly waste products.

We also have to contend with the very high risk of some hothead pushing the button (again) and nuking one or more cities.

As for environmental damage, all the nuclear testing has destroyed on entire island, and who knows how many hundreds of square miles of land, along with all the creatures and plants.

Solar is still a better answer, especially plants that can perform at 70% or more of their capacity at night.

RE: But there's one serious drawback...

Ah, but one form of solar DOES work at night .. you missed it by about 30 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCGVTYtJEFk

Some proposed variants of this design can run for 6 DAYS on stored heat at over 3/4 of their rated output.

@bazza, but "renewables" WILL do it and quite easily too

Just an FYI people, if you want to know exactly how viable solar is, it would only take something like 2% of the worlds uninhabitable deserts to supply humanity's energy needs. Solar updraft towers which have been ignored for 30 years are safer and more reliable than even hydroelectric, and use about the same land area.

Geothermal is another huge energy source that has been almost completely ignored, and is also fully capable of suppling our (relatively small) energy needs easily for the foreseeable future, thousands of years at-least.

So WHY exactly are we having an energy crises?!

A) big fossil fuel companies do their level best to make us all think that 'alternative energy' are wacky, infeasible and expensive. Its called advertising, oh, and the stupid amounts of money spent on lobbying. In reality a few alternate forms of energy are only about 20% more expensive than the subsidized coal and oil sources in use today.

B) the oil/gasoline companies and futures investors LOVE IT when the prices go up, so they limit supply to accomplish this, OR they just by futures contracts up and don't sell till they get a big fat profit. However since peak oil production was in 2007 they don't have to limit this artificially (much) anymore. Also I think the greedy bastards that buy futures contracts should be required to STORE what they've 'bought' (and pay taxes on it) this would put a damper on the prices at the pump.

cheers,

C

This is also known as 'double tap'

Rule #2 of Zombieland - Double Tap. You think it's dead (technically it was before you shot it), one more makes 100% sure.

.. that is if pile driving some deserving beancounter with a vehicle can be called a "tap".

RE: paradigms shifting

I think I can hear them shifting too! It's that grinding noise you hear when someone is learning how to use a stick shift, right?

I'm actually tweaking a new install of Debian 6 right now, its nice.

The Ubuntu software center definitely has performance problems though, after you've installed a half dozen or so apps it starts slowing down, a lot. After a dozen more its queuing up somewhere where you can't see it and takes several minutes to install one app, with a local repository. I got frustrated with it and went back to Synaptic which still works great.

Although for polish and speed nothing has trumped PCLinuxOS, the kernel is compiled using the BFS scheduler. I don't know what kind of magic went into BFS, but its even fairly snappy on a laptop with a 1.6ghz Via C7 (yuck, I won't be getting another one of those).

Yes, but

They can't do without 'planned obsolescence' .

See the 'Story of Stuff' and you'll understand.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Agreed

And its not just senior citizens either! Many people don't get computers all that well, they have other areas of expertise .. and yah some of them are just idiots. Sometimes perfectly competent people are in a hurry and get zapped, it often costs far more in wasted time than "$40 to $60". These a**wipes should have been fined at least 10 times what they were.

Maybe the punishment should include some mobster style 'incentive' to behave. Various appendages could be removed without anesthesia.

I despise people who cause this much stress,wasted time and frustration on a daily basis. Its not just a scam, its also extortion.

</rant>

hear hear!

"some dumb gun-juggling-burger-monkey has traipsed into the woods and ..."

Pure poetic gold, I am going to have to find multiple homes for this phrase.

RE: Double the bays with 2.5" chasiss x 1/4 of the storage density

If you've been paying attention its more like triple the drive bays, and 1/2 the storage density.

There's more FAIL to this

.. software out there will still only be compiled for x86, and x86-64. It will take quite some time to get your favorite non-MS apps on the new platform, some may never be ported.

On the plus side some 2.3million malware flotsam will be left hanging :)

My answer is still that after XP, I'm switching to Linux. Because Linux runs on more platforms than the so called engineers at Microsoft have likely ever heard of, and it always will.

What's more NT 4 had a usable GUI, not this bloated slow and convoluted nightmare that MS has dumped on us starting with Vista. Even if it had security holes you could sail a cruise ship through, sideways. Several years ago I found that if I copied the executables for the User Manager and Server Manager to an XP box on the same LAN (not domain, no trust either) that I could merrily manage any of the above with NO domain credentials what-so-ever. Yes it was patched and updated to the max.

Security holes don't get any bigger than that.

MS Cloud services ?

Again? Didn't we have an instance last week where MS cloud services screwed the pooch .. AGAIN. They can't seem to keep their own servers from barfing all over the place. They also swing between locking people out of their own email, or just letting anyone at it.

The DOI has my vote for DUMB, and not just your everyday dumb, this is stupidity on a scale I have never seen. Come on, they are concerned that Google's cloud services ARE secure?! WTF?!

The whole idea that they are outsourcing web based email suggests to me that they are *completely incompetent* and are unable to host their own external email .. OR they are so damned lazy that the thought never crossed their minds.

Seriously I work at a small town library (county gov't) and WE are looking at slapping together an email server for internal and external use, sans MS software. Sheesh! Oh and BTW there are at least a few Linux based email servers that FULLY support Outlook.

LOL @ whyfirefoxisblocked.com

Oh good, it filters out the loser web sites for me!

So their philosophy extended is if I don't clink on some stupid ad when I go to a web site then I'm stealing?! Get real, and grow up. How petty and stupid can people get?!

Seriously I have a hosts file installed from MVPS AND Ad-block. It doesn't matter if I use Internet Exploiter, soap Opera, or my favorite Firefox (v3.5x BTW), I don't see any of the retarded ads that I'm never going to click on. Most especially those disturbing stretch mark animations that make me want to hurl or any other gross, offensive, or disturbing Internet ads.

... Oh! That reminds me I haven't updated my hosts file in a while.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

The status page can never be right..

because Skype uses YOUR computer and internet connections as "supernodes". If you want to try an experiment install it on a laptop, and connect said laptop do your DSL modem. Turn the laptop firewall on and make sure there is no NAT or other firewall. Then sit back and watch the CPU/RAM usage skyrocket .. what you aren't making a call? It'll peg your connection too.

What Skype does is not allowed by the policies of many businesses and government organizations. Its buried in the EULA, but basically Skype's EULA says, in so many words, that they'll use as much of your computing and bandwidth resources as they want for whatever they want. That would be to route calls, as many as your connection and computer can handle. Of course a good router or firewall makes it entirely too difficult for a bunch of connections from other NAT protected computers so most people don't notice.

Read the EULA carefully, our IT department did and had to remove it from several laptops.

UpDATED vs. UpGRADED

I'll agree with the UPGRADE part, but I was talking about updates.

Even OSS has updates, albeit generally fewer and more effective ones than vendors of closed source software.

We've got about 30 Win7 machines at work...

Win 7 is nearly as big of a POS as Vista, it just has more shiny. Also it seems MS has found ways to break yet MORE apps, and who is the sick bastard who keeps 're-designing' the UI?!

Seriously, I'm pretty sure it takes about 4 times as much clicking and twice as much thought to get anything done!! You'd think MS doesn't WANT anyone to get things done with windows.

It bluescreens more than XP ever did, at least they don't take as long to boot up as Vista does.

From the perspective of our IT dept, Linux is starting to look more attractive for many functions, especially ones where functionality, stability or security is needed.

RE: "Can you do a mail merge from a source database blah blah...

As a matter of fact *I CAN*! Oh, BTW Access isn't a real database, its more like MS "Works" in the respect that it does, barely. Even a paltry 100,000 records can easily kill it or hang it up for 10 minutes trying to find something. Oh, and I only have v3.2.0.

And BTW Open Office can access more databases and files than I even knew existed, clear back to "D the Data Language" for DOS .. Mail-merge THAT!

Speaking of geeks ...

Keep up the good work.

This is the kind of thinking that keeps ones company moving along as a major competitor for a long time to come.

Also keeps you in high regard with the people that count, and the propeller heads and uni students, and others who live on the cutting bleeding edge of drama don't.

Carry on!

Well said!

I don't think I could have stated ANY of those things better!!

Cheers!

C