Windows XP
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@Xyro said:
@Lingerance said:
@Xyro said:
Sweet, what bureaucrat-free world are you living in? Do they have any formal government there at all? I know it can't be near Europe. Can I join?It doesn't matter what level of magical technology we have. As long as desire exists, there will be trade; and where there is trade there is money; and where there is money, there will be back-breaking, mind-numbing work to get it. (For various and subjective and often figurative interpretations of "back-breaking" and "mind-numbing".)
... and to be able to actually do that they'd end up creating jobs, which to actually be pofitable would have to do something better, which is all good.My point is, though, jobs for the sake of jobs isn't a matter of good or bad, but of necessity out of the human condition. We'll never* reach the point where folks can just sit around all day with their hobbies without a paying job because the cost of living is so negligible. Technology cannot lift us out of our basic need to have neat stuff, to say nothing of the need for power and controlling others. And to have neat stuff, history has shown that humans are more than willing to devote a good third or more of their lives to doing something that doesn't necessarily matter one bit.
@Lingerance said:
The point of some technology is to make it easier or faster for a human
There will always be shit to shovel, simply because we will it to be. This is so that at the end of the week we'll be one step closer to getting the neat stuff we want or think we need.
to do a specific job, the point of other technology is to actually
replace human workers.Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me there is a certain point of technological development beyond which the work-input needed to sustain our lifestyle goes down significantly. Once we (as a society) have energy and resource production and manufacturing automated, we'll be vastly wealthy and anyone can have anything machine-produced they want. Of course, at that point, 'work' will be doing whatever is left that machines can't do, but that's not the same thing we're talking about. A society in which no-one is involved in design, production or maintainance (let alone sales, administration, etc) of anything unless they want to be does not generally have jobs as we know them.
Maynard Keynes thought that by now we'd all be working three or four day weeks, and I can see his point. I don't know about you, but it wouldn't significantly affect my standard of living to work four days a week instead of five, but it would make a huge difference to my quality of life. Unfortunately we generally don't have that choice.
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@Xyro said:
I know that reflex. It's put glass through my wrist (well, through the skin) and left me with a looker of a scar. Moral of the story: don't get into fights with frantic females wielding coffee pots.
Well, better a scarred hand than a lost eye, I guess...
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@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me there is a certain point of technological development beyond which the work-input needed to sustain our lifestyle goes down significantly. Once we (as a society) have energy and resource production and manufacturing automated, we'll be vastly wealthy and anyone can have anything machine-produced they want. Of course, at that point, 'work' will be doing whatever is left that machines can't do, but that's not the same thing we're talking about. A society in which no-one is involved in design, production or maintainance (let alone sales, administration, etc) of anything unless they want to be does not generally have jobs as we know them.
I too hope for the same Star Trek future, but unfortunately it does not match historical precedent. Unless human nature somehow undergoes a radical shift in perspective and priority (which, who knows, may happen), we'll always be faced with the disparities caused by heritage and hierarchy and power consolidation and enclaves of disenfranchisement. The uneven landscape of luxury generates motivation of both inhuman sacrifice of the lower class and cynical maintenance of the status quo by the upper class. Thus, we have soul crushing jobs et al despite all our technological advances.Maynard Keynes thought that by now we'd all be working three or four day weeks, and I can see his point. I don't know about you, but it wouldn't significantly affect my standard of living to work four days a week instead of five, but it would make a huge difference to my quality of life. Unfortunately we generally don't have that choice.
Consider: the great civilizations of the past had numerous slaves to "automate" their tasks, and yet only the rich and powerful enjoyed luxury and leisure. Even when our new slave are mechanical, untiring, and super intelligent, I don't see how or why the ways of man would suddenly change.
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@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me there is a certain point of technological development beyond which the work-input needed to sustain our lifestyle goes down significantly.
Yes, but there's always going to be that guy who works harder for a bigger slice of the pie. Maybe technology means we can get all our "work done" in 3 hours instead of 8 every day... you know there's going to be the self-motivated type-A personality who spends the other 5 hours optimizing his 3. Which leads to him getting more money, and more clients. So now the one guy working 8 hours a day is making all the money, and everybody else working 3 has zero clients. What's their solution? Work more! Now everybody's working 8 hours a day again and you've changed jack.
The only way to change the above equation is by redistribution of wealth, which we've all learned by now is a very very bad idea.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Once we (as a society) have energy and resource production and manufacturing automated, we'll be vastly wealthy and anyone can have anything machine-produced they want.
You can't machine-generate prime lakeside real-estate. There will always be a "have", who lives in the nice Lake Washington lot with a private dock, and the "have not" who lives on the 17th floor of an inner-city.
Look, even if you took the communist ideal to its extension and subdivided the entire earth into 6 billion exactly-equal squares of land, some of those squares will be inherently more valuable than others. (And a large percentage will be utterly useless.) A 3D printer or Star Trek replicator isn't going to change that.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
A society in which no-one is involved in design, production or maintainance (let alone sales, administration, etc) of anything unless they want to be does not generally have jobs as we know them.
I always wondered how the Star Trek society was able to build and maintain starships.
Edit: actually I guess they moved away with that in the new movie, since it has things like devastating divorces, forcing Bones to find a new job. Presumably, that means it has a similar economy to ours and not that bullcrap "money doesn't exist in the 23rd century" thing Roddenberry was trying to shove down our throats.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
it wouldn't significantly affect my standard of living to work four days a week instead of five, but it would make a huge difference to my quality of life. Unfortunately we generally don't have that choice.
Sure you do. If you are talented enough, you can start your own business, or negotiate your hours with your employer. (Unless you're in a Union, in which case collective bargaining removes that ability.)
If you're not talented enough, you can jump jobs to one with a dumber boss who doesn't realize how untalented you are, then negotiate your hours with him.
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@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
The idea there, and usually inherit in technological utopian vision, is that cooks and engineers and doctors were cooks and engineers and doctors because they wanted and liked to be cooks and engineers and doctors. And apparently, Bolians really like working blue collar jobs. Hey wait. Blue collar? Is that a joke? Did I just get a 20 year old Star Trek joke?A society in which no-one is involved in design, production or maintainance (let alone sales, administration, etc) of anything unless they want to be does not generally have jobs as we know them.
I always wondered how the Star Trek society was able to build and maintain starships.
Anyway, the whole idea is bunk because whimsical interest cannot produce experts or engineers, only dedicated hard work does. And how can you support a culture of hard work when no work is needed to be done? Working hard takes a lot of discipline and training and practice. People don't just dedicate themselves to a cause on a whim, they must be built up for it. (Summer vacations of my youth taught me that I'd be a lazy bum if I could, but fortunately instead I've got a job which motivates me to take pride in my work, and so I work hard.)
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Xyro, Blakey>
I'm not talking about any future as near ours as the Star Trek-verse. If anything, they seem a bit less rich than their seventies creators. The point is simply that wealth is absolute, not relative, and if we're rich enough, we can all have everything material that we want. No, the earth doesn't have enough real estate for everyone to have a prime continent to themselves - but the galaxy does. If the resources for something are effectively unlimited in their availability, and the production of it requires no (or negligible) sentient input, then that item is essentially free to produce.
I'm tempted to define work in the sense we're talking about here as doing those things that are necessary for survival, and to do something productive out of choice, because you enjoy it, is not work. Obviously, in any society, some things will be in more or less limited supply; only one person (or at most, what, a dozen or so people) can fuck one girl at the same time, but working towards an end like that is not the same sort of 'work' in an economic sense.
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@Xyro said:
Anyway, the whole idea is bunk because whimsical interest cannot produce experts or engineers, only dedicated hard work does.
... and yet we have hobbiest inventors, developers and occasionally scientists, who can produce many interesting things. For example Alexander Bell invented the telephone while his primary occupation was teaching his not-yet, but deaf, wife how to speak.
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@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
The point is simply that wealth is absolute, not relative
Ah, there's the rub, those are the words I'm looking for. This is what I disagree with. To a certain practical extent, yes, wealth is absolute, and there are thresholds after which you don't have to worry about your next meal, your clothes, your shelter. In many modern cultures, these thresholds have essentially been effectively surpassed. You usually can't get a meal for totally free, but you can certainly buy fast food for next to nothing. Nevertheless, I work to earn far, far, far more than I really need just for the bare essentials. Why? Because my perception of wealth is relative. If all I wanted out of life was safe shelter and warm food, and even some other creature comforts, then well, I've already got it made. (Not take this for granted!! It's a blessing!) I'm willing to bet most of you are in the same boat. Yet we still work! Why? For better houses, better computers, more comfort, status symbols, etc. Wealth in its essence is relative. The value of luxury is relative. By the nature of our collective actions, it will always be an uphill battle to achieve the amount of wealth we want. And again, this is nothing to say of humanity's lust for power and control, which makes the talk of technological utopia even more dismal. We don't need to be bound to our desire, yet pretty much all of choose to be. And so we keep working for The Man. And so it will be even when the robots do the dirty work.
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@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
No, the earth doesn't have enough real estate for everyone to have a prime continent to themselves - but the galaxy does.
Until each of those planets gains enough population that, whoops! I guess there's not enough space for everybody to have prime real estate anymore. And now... taadaa... you're once again back when you began.
But in any case, you're way into space-head "the singularity is coming!" future now. I don't like to hypothetical that far.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Obviously, in any society, some things will be in more or less limited supply; only one person (or at most, what, a dozen or so people) can fuck one girl at the same time, but working towards an end like that is not the same sort of 'work' in an economic sense.
VR will solve this long before we're settling the galaxy.
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@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
No, the earth doesn't have enough real estate for everyone to have a prime continent to themselves - but the galaxy does.
Until each of those planets gains enough population that, whoops! I guess there's not enough space for everybody to have prime real estate anymore. And now... taadaa... you're once again back when you began.Hmm, what burning the whole planet, flattening it down, and using concrethe or whatever to make every single Grid Field REALLY identical to any other?
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@bannedfromcoding said:
@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
No, the earth doesn't have enough real estate for everyone to have a prime continent to themselves - but the galaxy does.
Until each of those planets gains enough population that, whoops! I guess there's not enough space for everybody to have prime real estate anymore. And now... taadaa... you're once again back when you began.Hmm, what burning the whole planet, flattening it down, and using concrethe or whatever to make every single Grid Field REALLY identical to any other?
That must have been what the Covenant were doing with Reach.
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@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me there is a certain point of technological development beyond which the work-input needed to sustain our lifestyle goes down significantly. Once we (as a society) have energy and resource production and manufacturing automated, we'll be vastly wealthy and anyone can have anything machine-produced they want. Of course, at that point, 'work' will be doing whatever is left that machines can't do, but that's not the same thing we're talking about. A society in which no-one is involved in design, production or maintainance (let alone sales, administration, etc) of anything unless they want to be does not generally have jobs as we know them.
Um, Limits to Growth anyone? Unless we manage to find a way to make fusion energy work, there are real hard-and-fast limits on that. Currently, we're powered by an endowment of fossil fuels that will peak this century (oil now or soon, gas a little after, coal this century) and not a few of the minerals we're building Utopia with are already near or past peak. There's a pile of uranium we can use for nuclear fission but that's also likely to peak this century if we displace our coal use with it (unless the fabled breeder reactors can ever be made viable). Oh, and unless we magic up unlimited energy for powering desalination systems everywhere, there's the water limitation too.
Does your optimism extend to taking us off-planet, maybe in a few centuries? If not, I can't see how it's going to work without a pretty drastic drop in population :/
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@rosko said:
Um, Limits to Growth anyone? Unless we manage to find a way to make fusion energy work, there are real hard-and-fast limits on that. Currently, we're powered by an endowment of fossil fuels that will peak this century (oil now or soon, gas a little after, coal this century) and not a few of the minerals we're building Utopia with are already near or past peak.
Peak this, peak that. I've been hearing about peak oil my entire fucking life. At this point, I basically feel it's like the boy who cried wolf.
@rosko said:
(unless the fabled breeder reactors can ever be made viable).
They're viable right now. We just can't build them because wimps won't let us. (Both the "environmentalists" who oppose nuclear anything* and the national security wags concerned that it could be used to produce bomb materials.)
@rosko said:
Oh, and unless we magic up unlimited energy for powering desalination systems everywhere, there's the water limitation too.
Yeah... again, Malthus called wolf on that one literally centuries ago.
@rosko said:
Does your optimism extend to taking us off-planet, maybe in a few centuries? If not, I can't see how it's going to work without a pretty drastic drop in population :/
The quickest way to drop the population is to raise the standard of living. Countries with high standards of living have naturally low birthrates. (Naturally, meaning, the government didn't threaten to kill your kids or have you sterilized.) Hell, Japan is going entering a crisis right now because it's birth rate is too low.
Anytime I see somebody trying to scare me like you are, I always have to wonder: what's their angle? So... what's your angle?
*) Unless it's an x-ray or MRI to save their life. They don't oppose that.
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@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
The wolf came in the end :)Um, Limits to Growth anyone? Unless we manage to find a way to make fusion energy work, there are real hard-and-fast limits on that. Currently, we're powered by an endowment of fossil fuels that will peak this century (oil now or soon, gas a little after, coal this century) and not a few of the minerals we're building Utopia with are already near or past peak.
Peak this, peak that. I've been hearing about peak oil my entire fucking life. At this point, I basically feel it's like the boy who cried wolf.
@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
Not one of the trialled breeder reactors has been viable to date; it may yet happen, but it turns out that it's harder than they thought it would be. Not fusion energy hard, though, so it might still happen this side of 2050... maybe. But you're right about political problems being part of why nuclear energy in general isn't more widely used, and also about luddites who suddenly go quiet when they need some of that high tech stuff.(unless the fabled breeder reactors can ever be made viable).
They're viable right now. We just can't build them because wimps won't let us. (Both the "environmentalists" who oppose nuclear anything* and the national security wags concerned that it could be used to produce bomb materials.)
*) Unless it's an x-ray or MRI to save their life. They don't oppose that.
@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
So, some long-dead guy once said something about it, and it hasn't happened to us yet, so... it's wrong? And yet, there seems to be some concern about it this century.Oh, and unless we magic up unlimited energy for powering desalination systems everywhere, there's the water limitation too.
Yeah... again, Malthus called wolf on that one literally centuries ago.
@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
Agreed, to a point. But raising high birthrate countries' standards of living to equal the USA or Japan would require more resources than we have on this planet. Better to find a point somewhat lower than that instead.Does your optimism extend to taking us off-planet, maybe in a few centuries? If not, I can't see how it's going to work without a pretty drastic drop in population :/
The quickest way to drop the population is to raise the standard of living. Countries with high standards of living have naturally low birthrates. (Naturally, meaning, the government didn't threaten to kill your kids or have you sterilized.) Hell, Japan is going entering a crisis right now because it's birth rate is too low.
@blakeyrat said:
Anytime I see somebody trying to scare me like you are, I always have to wonder: what's their angle? So... what's your angle?
I'm not trying to scare anyone; I was simply asking where the resources for this robot-driven Utopia were going to come from when we don't have enough to keep the current party going past the end of this century. I certainly didn't mean to poke your open wound like that!
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@rosko said:
The wolf came in the end :)
You sick pervert. Those videos are awful, and disgusting, and wheredidyougetthemI'vebeenlookingforthemforages, and you should be ashamed!
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@rosko said:
The wolf came in the end :)
Oh for crying out loud... how about a spoiler warning, jackass? I was going to watch that tonight.
@rosko said:
So, some long-dead guy once said something about it, and it hasn't happened to us yet, so... it's wrong? And yet, there seems to be some concern about it this century.
Yeah, he's been consistently wrong for 180+ years, but I'm sure things'll flip-flop and he'll be right any... moment... now...
@rosko said:
But raising high birthrate countries' standards of living to equal the USA or Japan would require more resources than we have on this planet.
Do you have any evidence for that? Lemme guess, you're just assuming it, or taking it on faith, or echoing it because Greenpeace told you about it, right?
Look, nobody's going to claim the US is efficient. (Although, if you index our energy usage by our GDP we're not even remotely as bad as the eurotrash believes.) But you're claiming here that if you took the cleanest, most efficient first-world society, it would be physically impossible for the current world population to live at their level? Nah, I'm not buying it. Do you know how empty the damned world is, despite our best efforts so far? North America alone can feed over 4 billion people. (We don't, because of various reasons, but that's well within our capabilities.)
@rosko said:
I'm not trying to scare anyone;
Ok...
@rosko said:
I was simply asking where the resources for this robot-driven Utopia were going to come from when we don't have enough to keep the current party going past the end of this century.
"I'm not trying to scare anyone! NOW LISTEN TO MY SCARY DOOMSDAY PROPHECY!" That's basically how that sentence reads in my mind.
@rosko said:
I certainly didn't mean to poke your open wound like that!
My open wound is human beings who think so little of their fellow human beings that they've always convinced we're on the edge of killing everybody off. We're not. We've never been. Stop reading hack sci-fi writers, they put that in their lazy-ass stories to score quick points, not because there's any basis in reality.
The world is measurably better right now than it has ever been in history. The percentage of people living below starvation level has never been smaller in all of recorded history. The number of resource reserves found are going up faster than we can dig the crap up. (There's *more* oil reserves now than there were 50 years ago-- even taking into account all of the stuff we've burned!) While you're griping about pollution and the environment, fewer people are clearcutting forest than ever before, there's no lead in the air like there was for an 60+ year period, the ozone layer has either healed itself (or we've discovered its 'hole' was a natural phenomenon in the first place). Even LA looks less smoggy.
Things are getting better, every day, in every way. Despite your doom and gloom stories, there's no reason to believe your children or grandchildren will live in a world worse than ours.
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@bannedfromcoding said:
Long and narrow flat screwdriver being held by a co-worker who gesticulates wildly when talking combined with a spinal reflex to cover yourself with your hand when you see something flying in your direction.
You then put the fucking screwdriver through the fucking bastard's eye, right?
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@blakeyrat said:
North America alone can feed over 4 billion people. (We don't, because of various reasons, but that's well within our capabilities.)
The trouble with that is that there are many things within, or nearly within, our capabilities. It's just that the public wants new cellphones so most technology resources focus on that instead because it's what makes money.
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@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
No, not Greenpeace, but I'm surprised you would be unaware of the concept of ecological footprints.But raising high birthrate countries' standards of living to equal the USA or Japan would require more resources than we have on this planet.
Do you have any evidence for that? Lemme guess, you're just assuming it, or taking it on faith, or echoing it because Greenpeace told you about it, right?
@blakeyrat said:
Look, nobody's going to claim the US is efficient. (Although, if you index our energy usage by our GDP we're not even remotely as bad as the eurotrash believes.) But you're claiming here that if you took the cleanest, most efficient first-world society, it would be physically impossible for the current world population to live at their level? Nah, I'm not buying it. Do you know how empty the damned world is, despite our best efforts so far? North America alone can feed over 4 billion people. (We don't, because of various reasons, but that's well within our capabilities.)
Sure... assuming a fossil fuel-driven agricultural system whereby about 10 calories of fossil fuels provides 1 calorie of food (on the high side probably, but even if you discount that by 50% it's 5:1). With fossil fuels becoming harder to get at, that means changing the way we grow food. Of course, the whole world doesn't have to eat like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore...@blakeyrat said:
@rosko said:
Crikey, that's a pretty fragile interpretation. Perhaps it might help if I clarify "the current party" as being "dig/pump up lots of easy-to-access energy and resources, and blow a chunk of it on useless crap that the TV ads tell us to buy", and the end of the party as "work harder to collect/capture energy, recycle some resources, and not buy-and-discard so much useless crap". Hardly a doomsday prophecy, I'd say.I was simply asking where the resources for this robot-driven Utopia were going to come from when we don't have enough to keep the current party going past the end of this century.
"I'm not trying to scare anyone! NOW LISTEN TO MY SCARY DOOMSDAY PROPHECY!" That's basically how that sentence reads in my mind.
Unless you want to keep that party going, which means something has to come out of the global budget, like... the food some people are eating now because of the Green Revolution that hangs on the availability of cheap and easy-to-access fossil fuels. That's where my original question about where the energy/resources for dave's robotic Utopia was coming from.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Thief^ said:
I suspect they're moving because of "Windows 2000: Extended Support until 13 July 2010"
I have nothing to add, other than: that is HILARIOUS. "Oh shit, guys, we have a month before our support ends! We better get started doing those upgrades we were talking about in 2004."
Wait, doesn't XP support end some time soon too? Moving from one sinking ship to the next...
Edit: Oh, mainstream support has already ended, yeah. I suppose if they were still using 2000, then even something that will get security fixes until 2014 seems like an improvement.
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@rosko said:
No, not Greenpeace, but I'm surprised you would be unaware of the concept of ecological footprints.
I'm not unaware of it, I just don't find it that compelling.
The thing that environmentalists always fail to take into account is that humans invent stuff. Malthus didn't take into account fertilizer and crop yield improvements, just like that Wiki page doesn't take into account future technologies. Now, I understand *why* they don't do it (because predicting what will be invented, when, and what impact it will have is nearly impossible), but as long as they're not doing it, I don't buy *any* of these doom and gloom studies. And so far, history has shown me that my viewpoint is correct.
Look, I'm not denying this: when resources get more scarce, things get more expensive. Which makes it the perfect place for some genius to invent a brilliant new technology to make it cheaper again.
I mean, hell, if Greenpeace had been around in the 18th century, we'd all be whinging on about "peak whale oil". HEY GUESS WHAT GUYZ? When whale oil got expensive, dozens of technologies came about to replace it! (At least in the US, the damned Brits were still killing whales well into the 1950s.)
@rosko said:
Sure... assuming a fossil fuel-driven agricultural system whereby about 10 calories of fossil fuels provides 1 calorie of food (on the high side probably, but even if you discount that by 50% it's 5:1). With fossil fuels becoming harder to get at, that means changing the way we grow food.
Ok, so we fucking change it. This is exactly what I'm on about. You make it sound as if "changing the way we grow food" is some herculean impossible task, but the reality is we've already done it a half-dozen times in recorded history, and doing it again isn't a big deal... we're not all going to starve because farmers are retardedly stubborn, which appears to be your argument. (Hell, farmers embrace technology more than most demographics in the US.)
@rosko said:
Crikey, that's a pretty fragile interpretation. Perhaps it might help if I clarify "the current party" as being "dig/pump up lots of easy-to-access energy and resources, and blow a chunk of it on useless crap that the TV ads tell us to buy", and the end of the party as "work harder to collect/capture energy, recycle some resources, and not buy-and-discard so much useless crap". Hardly a doomsday prophecy, I'd say.
Oh now we're getting into the hippy shit.
@rosko said:
Unless you want to keep that party going, which means something has to come out of the global budget, like... the food some people are eating now because of the Green Revolution that hangs on the availability of cheap and easy-to-access fossil fuels.
Or we'll just invent a better way to do it, like we have before over and over again.
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Long time lurker first time poster.
I just wanted to sum up this thread because the progression is amazing...
Page 1:- My company is moving from Win2000 to XP.
- Haha, Windows sucks. Use Linux.
- Haha, Linux sucks. We're all going to die.
Page 2:- Flaming over different distros and security in OSes
- Morbs and Lingerance inseminate the topic with a discussion on the question "What is a utopia?" based on LinuxRulez's off the cuff joke/remark
- Are utopias dystopias?
Page 3:- Can we have innovation without work?
- The planet will die and so will we all.
And that, gentleman and bastards, is why I love reading this forum.
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@Cintax said:
Long time lurker first time poster.
I just wanted to sum up this thread because the progression is amazing...
Page 1:- My company is moving from Win2000 to XP.
- Haha, Windows sucks. Use Linux.
- Haha, Linux sucks. We're all going to die.
Page 2:- Flaming over different distros and security in OSes
- Morbs and Lingerance inseminate the topic with a discussion on the question "What is a utopia?" based on LinuxRulez's off the cuff joke/remark
- Are utopias dystopias?
Page 3:- Can we have innovation without work?
- The planet will die and so will we all.
And that, gentleman and bastards, is why I love reading this forum.Somehow you missed the subthread about the carafe attack.
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and now for something completely different:
I like sausages!
With that said, I think the default image viewer on Windows really does blow goats. Linux has a far better default image viewer. However, it will cost you twice as much in support fees as there are less Linux gurus in the world than Windows ones. (Can you actually be a Windows Guru?)
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Great thread, nonetheless.
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@Cintax said:
And that, gentleman and bastards, is why I love reading this forum.
I agree! :)@Mole said:Linux has a default
I disagree. >:(@Mole said:However, it will cost you twice as much in support fees as there are less Linux gurus in the world than Windows ones.
How much is image viewer support these days, anyway? Once I was contracted to be an image viewer support technician, but it only paid ¤20 currency units.
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@Cintax said:
the progression is amazing...
- My company is moving from Win2000 to XP.
- The planet will die and so will we all.
Which part is amazing? Sounds like a logical conclusion to me.
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@rosko said:
They're viable right now. We just can't build them because wimps won't let us. (Both the "environmentalists" who oppose nuclear anything*
*) Unless it's an x-ray or MRI to save their life. They don't oppose that.
There's nothing "nuclear" about x-rays or MRI (MRI is a really powerful magnet).
I'm no "environmentalist" but I see many legitimate issues:
-- The nuclear power industry has a terrible track record with regard to general maintenance. They also have a lousy track record when it comes to basic honesty (things like lying and covering up problems).
-- The sales pitch is that nuclear power is suposed to deliver clean cheap power, but does neither. Every nuclear power plant ever built has been VERY expensive (which is passed directly to the consumer in the form of higher electricity prices), and, while they don't produce air polution they do produce radioactive waste that we still don't know how to dispose of. France, which has been a leader in the use of nuclear power is already starting to experience this very real problem, as buried nuclear waste is starting to leak out into the ground at several disposal sites around the country, including one that is close to some famous vineyards, because we still don't know how to build a container that will last for hundreds of years (or even 40 or 50 years).
-- What problem are we trying to solve? There's plenty of coal and only 1% of electricity in the US is generated using oil as fuel. Yes, burning coal generates some pretty nasty air pollution. There are ways to reduce it to nearly zero, but the coal burners don't want to implement it because it's "too expensive". So instead of spending money on cleaning up coal, we'll spend it on something that generates waste that is even worse in the long term.
-- The Obama administration has proposed $8 BILLION in loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry. This is the most telling of all. Nuclear power is so risky and so likely to be unprofitable that banks won't lend them any money unless someone else guarantees that they will get their money back.
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@El_Heffe said:
-- The nuclear power industry has a terrible track record with regard to general maintenance. They also have a lousy track record when it comes to basic honesty (things like lying and covering up problems).
And the coal industry doesn't?
@El_Heffe said:-- The sales pitch is that nuclear power is suposed to deliver clean cheap power, but does neither. Every nuclear power plant ever built has been VERY expensive (which is passed directly to the consumer in the form of higher electricity prices), and, while they don't produce air polution they do produce radioactive waste that we still don't know how to dispose of. France, which has been a leader in the use of nuclear power is already starting to experience this very real problem, as buried nuclear waste is starting to leak out into the ground at several disposal sites around the country, including one that is close to some famous vineyards, because we still don't know how to build a container that will last for hundreds of years (or even 40 or 50 years).
But radioactive waste can be contained. You're committing the out of sight out of mind fallacy. Just because coal's pollutant is released into the atmosphere does not mean it's gone away. In the atmosphere it's a greenhouse gas and it produces acid rain. Not to mention affecting the lung health of everyone in the area. Additionally, 3 years ago a study showed that coal ash causes MORE nuclear exposure than nuclear power plants.
@El_Heffe said:-- What problem are we trying to solve? There's plenty of coal and only 1% of electricity in the US is generated using oil as fuel. Yes, burning coal generates some pretty nasty air pollution. There are ways to reduce it to nearly zero, but the coal burners don't want to implement it because it's "too expensive". So instead of spending money on cleaning up coal, we'll spend it on something that generates waste that is even worse in the long term.
And how exactly do you propose to clean up coal? You can reduce coal's emissions a little, sure, but at the end of the day, it's still going to be releasing tons of greenhouse gases and causing acid rain. Additionally, mining coal is a massive undertaking which is very hazardous to your health. Coal mine collapses are common, as are coal related diseases like black lung. Coal mining also destroys mountains which can potentially be used for wind farms down the line when the wind tech catches up.
@El_Heffe said:-- The Obama administration has proposed $8 BILLION in loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry. This is the most telling of all. Nuclear power is so risky and so likely to be unprofitable that banks won't lend them any money unless someone else guarantees that they will get their money back.
That may have more to do with the fact that the US has tried to reboot our nuclear industry countless times and then reneged on that promise. Why would you loan money to the nuclear inidustry if the next president might change their mind and halt all construction on the power plant? It's a massive risk due to politics alone.
Here's the thing. Nuclear power is not perfect; no one claims it is. But if it's anything, it's certainly the lesser of two evils.
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@El_Heffe said:
There's nothing "nuclear" about x-rays or MRI (MRI is a really powerful magnet).
That's a public relations success right there. Exactly why they renamed it from NMRI. (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.) Not only does MRI technology use radiation, BUT YOU DRINK IT. (That said, it's non-ionizing radiation, but good luck getting the general public to figure out the difference.) The radioisotopes are exactly what the magnet is detecting. If you didn't drink any before your MRI scan, the scan would be a featureless grey blob. Like Utah.
@El_Heffe said:
-- The nuclear power industry has a terrible track record with regard to general maintenance.
In Russia, yes. In the US? No. In the US Navy? No. In France (where a significant percentage of power is nuclear)? No.
You're just quoting scare-lines off the Greenpeace propaganda. The US nuclear industry has never had a fatality related to a nuclear power plant. (To clarify: there have been fatalities in experimental plants, and there have been the kind of fatalities that can happen in any large industrial plant, but none specifically related to the nuclear reactor.) The US Navy, which uses hundreds of reactors *in little underwater cigar tubes* and *ships in 30' swells* has a similarly perfect safety record.
Three Mile Island, the most common scare case among idiots, released less radiation into the water than a chest x-ray does. Contrary to what you've probably read, Three Mile Island is evidence of how *good* nuclear safety is, it's a situation where almost everything went wrong simultaneously, and there were still zero fatalities, and less radiation in the environment than a coal-burning plant releases each hour.
Oh yah, your precious coal power? The alternative to nuclear? Those release radiation into the atmosphere, with zero regulation and no containment requirements. At least with a nuclear plant, *you know where the radiation is*. (And it's not flying around in the upper atmosphere.)
@El_Heffe said:
They also have a lousy track record when it comes to basic honesty (things like lying and covering up problems).
Again: in Russia.
@El_Heffe said:
-- The sales pitch is that nuclear power is suposed to deliver clean cheap power, but does neither. Every nuclear power plant ever built has been VERY expensive (which is passed directly to the consumer in the form of higher electricity prices), and, while they don't produce air polution they do produce radioactive waste that we still don't know how to dispose of. France, which has been a leader in the use of nuclear power is already starting to experience this very real problem, as buried nuclear waste is starting to leak out into the ground at several disposal sites around the country, including one that is close to some famous vineyards, because we still don't know how to build a container that will last for hundreds of years (or even 40 or 50 years).
I not going to argue that nuke plants aren't expensive, or that radioactive waste is easy to store. But they're still superior to burning coal in pretty much every respect except cost-- again, with a nuke plant, at least you know where the radiation is. Nuclear plants aren't viable to replace, say, hydro or wind power. Or even gas plants. But we should be working post-haste to replace all our shitty coal plants, no matter how "scrubbed" they are they're never going to approach the cleanliness of any other solution.
The thing that anti-nuke activists seem to mention is that the alternative to building nuke plants is opening more coal plants and burning more black shit. Is that *really* what you want? Really!? Let's spend some time thinking about the big picture here. (Remember: wind and solar are useless for providing base load.)
@El_Heffe said:
-- What problem are we trying to solve? There's plenty of coal and only 1% of electricity in the US is generated using oil as fuel. Yes, burning coal generates some pretty nasty air pollution. There are ways to reduce it to nearly zero, but the coal burners don't want to implement it because it's "too expensive". So instead of spending money on cleaning up coal, we'll spend it on something that generates waste that is even worse in the long term.
Coal mining is orders of magnitude more dangerous than working on a nuke plant. Or, hell, mining uranium for that matter, if only because of the scale involved. Mining coal kills people. And not in a vague "pollution might kill us in 20 years!" handwaving way, but literally kills people every year.
Yah, it can be cleaned, but you're still going to get your radioactive waste (assuming they figure out how to scrub and concentrate that) and in much *higher* quantities than a nuke plant. So if that's what you're afraid of, coal scrubbers aren't going to solve your problem.
There's also the carbon neutrality problem, to wit: coal burning isn't even remotely close to neutral. In fact, it's about as far from carbon neutral as you can get. So if global warming is what you're pissing your pants over, well that doesn't solve your problem either.
To say that nuclear is worse than coal "in the long term" is... I don't even know how to react to that. I don't think even Greenpeace would back you up on that one.
@El_Heffe said:
-- The Obama administration has proposed $8 BILLION in loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry. This is the most telling of all. Nuclear power is so risky and so likely to be unprofitable that banks won't lend them any money unless someone else guarantees that they will get their money back.
Yah, Bush did the same thing. (Hey, both Bush and Obama agree on the same power generation method, GEE DO YOU THINK MAYBE IT IS WORTHWHILE!?) But the problem isn't the loan guarantees, the problem is the judicial system and the ability for environmentalist lobbying groups to hold up construction indefinitely. The loan guarantees aren't to make the plants profitable, the loan guarantees are to keep the companies trying to build plants interested despite all the decades of bullshit they have to go through.
Loan guarantees can't prevent NIMBY, and the President can't stop State-level civil lawsuits with legislation.
It's disgusting to me when France, FRANCE!!!! Bureaucratic, anal, welfare-state France!!!!! can build nuclear plants, but we in the US can't. That should make all of us deeply ashamed.
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@blakeyrat said:
It's disgusting to me when France, FRANCE!!!! Bureaucratic, anal, welfare-state France!!!!! can build nuclear plants, but we in the US can't. That should make all of us deeply ashamed.
I'm not disagreeing with you that it should be easier to build a nuke plant in the US, but we've got more plants and get more power from nukes than France. It's only as a proportion of their total power generation where they surpass us.US: 104 plants, 101,119MW, 19.7% of output
France: 59 plants, 63,473MW, 76.2% of output
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@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
I'd be interested to know how much in each case comes from plants constructed within the last, say, 10 or 20 years.It's disgusting to me when France, FRANCE!!!! Bureaucratic, anal, welfare-state France!!!!! can build nuclear plants, but we in the US can't. That should make all of us deeply ashamed.
I'm not disagreeing with you that it should be easier to build a nuke plant in the US, but we've got more plants and get more power from nukes than France. It's only as a proportion of their total power generation where they surpass us.US: 104 plants, 101,119MW, 19.7% of output
France: 59 plants, 63,473MW, 76.2% of output
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@blakeyrat said:
@El_Heffe said:
There's nothing "nuclear" about x-rays or MRI (MRI is a really powerful magnet).
That's a public relations success right there. Exactly why they renamed it from NMRI. (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.) Not only does MRI technology use radiation, BUT YOU DRINK IT.
Are you sure you're thinking of an MRI scan here? I can't think how drinking something radioactive would be remotely useful for an MRI scan, whereas it's more normal for (say) a PET scan.
Ingesting stable substance which may have been obtained from a nuclear reactor helps with some MRI scans, but the device itself generates and detects radio waves.
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Aye.
@blakeyrat said:
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
"Nuclear" refers to the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, that Resonate Magnetically, from which an Image is obtained.
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@__moz said:
@blakeyrat said:
@El_Heffe said:
There's nothing "nuclear" about x-rays or MRI (MRI is a really powerful magnet).
That's a public relations success right there. Exactly why they renamed it from NMRI. (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.) Not only does MRI technology use radiation, BUT YOU DRINK IT.
Are you sure you're thinking of an MRI scan here? I can't think how drinking something radioactive would be remotely useful for an MRI scan, whereas it's more normal for (say) a PET scan.
Ingesting stable substance which may have been obtained from a nuclear reactor helps with some MRI scans, but the device itself generates and detects radio waves.
Not as sure as I was before reading the Wikipedia article. But here are the facts as I know them:
1) MRI used to be called NMRI, with the N stading for nuclear.
2) At least some types of MRI scans require the patient to drink non-ionizing radiation.
3) The above story about renaming the scan due to people disliking the word "nuclear" comes from a MRI technician.
So...
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It's "nuclear" because it's the nucleus of the atoms that's doing the resonating.
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It's "nuclear" because it takes pictures of your innards, figuratively rendering you transparent, or "clear". Also, it was new when it came out.
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@blakeyrat said:
2) At least some types of MRI scans require the patient to drink non-ionizing radiation.
The stuff you drink (or however you ingest it) doesn't contain the radiation the detector looks for. That is created by the scanner firing some radio waves at you in the presence of a huge magnetic field, and your body (and almost everything else inside the detector) firing radio waves back an instant later.
My only experience of MRI scanners is having undergone one a few years ago. The only preparation I had to do for it was to take my watch off.
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As a species, we worry too much about radiation anyway. OK, on an individual level relatively high levels of radiation exposure may be a bad thing, but as a species, mutation inducement is no bad thing. Negative mutations will weed themselves out, and positive mutations are, well, positive.
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@blakeyrat said:
2) RedHat 6.2. Fine; maybe Corel was just a bad choice, let's try this. Installed after much struggling. Sound card didn't work. Checked the "supported hardware" list, it lists SoundBlaster 128s, but hey guess what? It lied. About 3 hours of back-and-forth on my (working) Mac with friends over the internet before I got a fucking network connection on a bog-standard DHCP configuration.
I interrupt and necro old bits of this thread to bring you a major nostalgia moment from something like 2000.
That's how I got started with Linux... using a RH derivative which had the same problem. Turned out RH 6.x had a major bug with auto installation of sound and networking - if it did the networking first, you wouldn't get sound. I can't remember exactly what the cause was as it didn't show up as an interrupt conflict or anything obvious, but the trick was to uninstall network, install soundcard, reinstall network.
I found THAT out after something like 6 months of configuration, kernel recompiles etc. Should have just switched distros but at least the learning process was worth it.
Ahh those were the days... of head-to-desk-banging wtf frustration.
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@Nyquist said:
That's how I got started with Linux... using a RH derivative which had the same problem. Turned out RH 6.x had a major bug with auto installation of sound and networking - if it did the networking first, you wouldn't get sound. I can't remember exactly what the cause was as it didn't show up as an interrupt conflict or anything obvious, but the trick was to uninstall network, install soundcard, reinstall network.
And to think someone at Red Hat headquarters looked at this and said, "eh. Good enough, ship it." Unbelievable.
@Nyquist said:
at least the learning process was worth it.
Liar.
I do appreciate Courage Wolf, however.
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@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
It's disgusting to me when France, FRANCE!!!! Bureaucratic, anal, welfare-state France!!!!! can build nuclear plants, but we in the US can't. That should make all of us deeply ashamed.
I'm not disagreeing with you that it should be easier to build a nuke plant in the US, but we've got more plants and get more power from nukes than France. It's only as a proportion of their total power generation where they surpass us.US: 104 plants, 101,119MW, 19.7% of output
France: 59 plants, 63,473MW, 76.2% of output
@Wikipedia said:
Others, such as Belgium, are planning to decommission all of their nuclear power stations.
:( we can't do anything decent here
