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Comment Freedom vs slavery (Score 1) 815

Lol. In Linux or free unix desktop land you're a slave to software dependencies and chasing down half-assed solutions to common desktop application type tasks. On my mac, I spend a total of about 1 hour per 18 months on operating system upgrades. I've been there, done that, and will GLADLY pay the software licensing cost to get what I want done with a minimum of fucking about.

On my Mac I run Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 12.04 and I love the freedom to run whatever software I can. Now if Adobe were to port Photoshop CS to Linux, and drop the price, I and many other Linux users would use it too. Because I can't afford CS for OS X I'll try both CinePaint and Krita for deep color editing of my photos. I am willing to give up a little tyme maintaining my system for freedom to do what I want. Giving up freedom is what makes you a slave, not the other way around.

Falcon

Comment Fukushima (Score 3, Informative) 482

Fukushima's problem was caused by flooding in the basement where diesel generators were.

Not according to Kirk Sorensen, a nuclear technologist who operates the site energyfromthorium.com who for Forbes wrote the article Explainer: What Caused The Incident At Fukushima-Daiichi. At first he writes "The tsunami destroyed the diesel generators that provide power to drive the pumps that circulate the water coolant through the reactor that removes decay heat." But a bit later he writes generators ran "until their day tanks emptied" of diesel fuel. If emergency generators were running then they could have been refueled. The hard part would of been finding the people who were willing to put their lives at risk. However anyone who supports nuclear power should be so willing, if they aren't willing to put their own lives at risk why do they support putting other people's lives at risk?

All of the mentioned things could potentially cause enough problems in nuclear plants, but they would need to huge (like >7.75 magnitude earthquake *directly* under the reactor)

The title of the article Earthquake threat to nuclear reactors far higher than realized sums it up pretty well. Risk from earthquake is up to 24 tymes higher than previously thought.

people should be smart enough to shutdown the reactor & do other preparations in time as hurricanes can be detected way earlier than tsunamis/earthquakes.

And what of tornadoes? They aren't as predicable as hurricanes. And at specific points they strike they are more powerful than hurricanes.

The biggest reason I oppose nuclear power though is because nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

If all energy subsidies were dropped, including for fossil fuels and nuclear power then geothermal, solar, wind, and other clean(er) energy sources would be more cost competitive. Coal get tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Without government loan guaranties Wall Street would not finance nuclear power. And if fossil fuels had to pay all of it's costs, instead of passing on external cost to others, their cost would be higher.

Falcon

Comment Linux, Macs, and MS Windows (Score 1) 815

What specifically do you need to do that Linux does not do? MS Office isn't an answer, it is a specific application suite. The functions it does can be done by OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

While I don't "work" in IT, I am disabled and have disability income, I volunteer for Freegeek Twin Cities. There we take in donated PCs, test them, and build new PCs from good parts that meet our minimum standards. We then install Xubuntu 12.04 and sell them at low cost to those who can not otherwise afford PCs. As of yet I have not come across a software need that Linux can not do. The closest I know of is editing photos and graphic design. If Blender, CinePaint, GIMP, or Inkscape can not do what needs to be done then it is possible to install Photoshop CS5 using WINE.

Ooh, I just thought of something, run XCode to develop for iOS.

Falcon

Comment Re:I'll second that. (Score 1) 815

I used to be a GNUStep proponent as well. But in the end it was the lack of apps that killed it. Well not killed it but put it in life support. If you want GIMP you have GTK+ as a dependency, same thing goes for Inkscape. Applications rule put simply. Otherwise you could just use a regular window manager.

There are CinePaint and Krita to replace GIMP with. To tell the truth I've been waiting 15 year for GIMP to edit in at least 16 bits per color channels and it still does not.

Falcon

Comment GNUSTEP (Score 1) 815

Ubuntu is being moved to Window Maker as it's X11 window manager. It provides "integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment".

Honestly, GNOME 2 was a poor DE particularly compared to KDE3, and GNOME 3 just became more unusable, while reducing already minimal functionality.

As for which desktop environment is better, that is purely a personal matter of preference. Right now I use both KDE and Unity in Ubuntu 12.04 as well as Xubuntu 12.04. Soon I plan to install Linux Mint and use Cinnamon and KDE along with MATE. I also plan to install Arch Linux. I'll try all these out then decide which ones I will use regularly.

Falcon

Comment Re:Only LG? Not Samsung? (Score 2) 195

i have not experienced any of the problems others have with Apple gear beyond the cyclical obsolesence problems where Apple not only renders software obsolete, but their hardware as well.

I have not experienced this "cyclical obsolesence" of Apple products. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro r3.1 (Santa Rosa). It was released in the summer of 2007, and shortly thereafter is when I bought it. So in a few months my laptop will be 6 years old. Currently I have 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installed. I can install both Lion and Mountain Lion, the next 2 Mac OSes, to replace 10.6 but I don't want to. Actually because Apple is starting to act similar to MS, requiring Mountain Lion to be installed by downloading it from the app store and not providing it on disc, I may never buy another Apple product. I may by another Mac laptop but I don't think so.

Falcon

Comment Re:Mildly annoying (Score 1) 195

You're confused. It wasn't the $199 Wing Wang Wong China Special that had problems working with Linux. It was the Retina Macbook.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple_mbpr_linux&num=1

I think you have that backwards. It was the Linux devs. that had the onus of providing compatibility; not Apple.

That is difficult if Apple does not release what is needed to write drivers. In this case though it's an NVidia graphics system that isn't working right, and NVidia will not release the code it uses for Linux developers to write drivers. It has only been lately that NVidia has started releasing it's own binary blobs for Linux. And those don't work well.

Falcon

Comment Re:Mildly annoying (Score 3, Interesting) 195

If this guy wants to sue, then power to him. I suppose he's standing on principle. But I'll pick more serious issues in my life to worry about.

And if it is a serious issue for a user? Bad displays can and do interfere with the work of graphic artists. Then again said artists should be using an external display for work. I own a MacBook Pro, I'm typing on it now. I am also a photographer, I used to develop film in a darkroom, but recently got a digicam so I'm looking for a new monitor. Now if my display did not work properly I would definitely go after the business I bought it from, and not the manufacturer.

Falcon

Comment Re:They should sue LG instead (Score 1) 195

LG was the manufacturer of the defective screen

They should sue LG instead of Apple

I am no apple fanbois, it's just that if the defective part came from LG, why not home in to the manufacturer, instead of the seller?

Why Apple and not LG? Because Apple was selling a product it knew was defective. It is Apple's responsibility to make sure it's products work. Apple then should have went to LG about it. Apple used to have a pretty good rep about the quality of it's products but it this case they failed.

Falcon

Comment Re:Only if you include non-US nuclear power plants (Score 1) 482

But how many of those 23 are likely to get hit by a giant tsunami?

Are you saying Fukushima never would have happened if there was not a tsunami? Hurricanes would not be ablet to damage a nuclear power plant enough? Tornadoes can't either? How about earthquakes?

I heard quite a few tymes the Fukushima disaster could never happen in the US because the US did not use it's design. Well golly there are 23 that do use it in the US.

Falcon

Comment Re:California power crisis of 2000 and 2001 (Score 1) 482

And why would generators all of a sudden have to raise their price as soon as this deregulation occurred?

It wasn't all of a sudden. From the wiki article:
Drought, delays in approval of new power plants,[6] and market manipulation decreased supply. This caused 800% increase in wholesale prices from April 2000 to December 2000.

TFA also says partial deregulation legislation passed in 1996. There were at least 2 years between when legislation was signed and when the crisis started. However I guess you never had to suddenly start using AC. When everyone suddenly turns their AC on there is a sudden demand for energy. And yes, I am saying the CA government is responsible for the crisis. It interfered in a market and that usually causes unpleasant things to happen. When people are not concerned about how much they have to pay for something they will not be conservative in it's use. But those who sell have to pay for what they do sell, and if the price they pay is higher than what they can sell for that is bad for them, and everyone else involved.

I'm pretty sure the energy traders walked through that door on their own accord,

A door the CA government created with bad regulations. Notice I said "bad regulations", I am not against totally regulations, especially when there is a government created monopoly, such as energy distribution. I am okay with splitting the ownership of generating capacity with the ownership of the power cables, and pipes, that provide the energy. I favor regulations or laws requiring whoever owns the cables to allow independent energy producers to tap into the cables. If I have the money and I want to build a wind farm, I want to be able to tap into the electrical grid. And as long as I can do so safely I should be allowed to. Same goes for solar farms, tidal generators, and geothermal power plants.

Falcon

Comment Re:California power crisis of 2000 and 2001 (Score 1) 482

Enron and the crisis they caused and profited from were a result of deregulation.

What happened in CA was not deregulation, can't you read? And understand what you did read? Not allowing energy sellers to raise prices is regulating energy. Not allowing companies to own generators and distribute that energy is regulating energy. Of course that does not make sense to nincompoops. Requiring seller to sell at below cost is regulating. It's not hard to understand.

Falcon

Comment Re:That's an unfair dismissal of a serious issue. (Score 1) 482

From that webpage: "The culprit seems to be sudden drops in air pressure that create internal hemorrhaging, but the precise cause is still a mystery." And: "Collisions are evidently a problem as well, though to what extent is also still unclear."

Sudden drop in pressure? Well I can partially understand that, my own ears pop when pressure drops. So perhaps siting wind genies can take bats into account. Another possibility is having sound generators around genies that repels bats. Play the sounds at night. Of course treehuggers offers their own suggestion, to shut down genies on nights when the wind is low.

However apparently coal mining also harms bats. Here's a.pdf titled Salazar Announces Guidelines to Protect Endangered Indiana Bat from Surface Coal Mining Impacts. Of course those are in Indiana. Well also apparently there's an Indiana bat, that's in West Virginia: Coal Mining in West Virginia: Guidelines for Protecting the Indiana Bat (Myotis sodalis) [.pdf]. And what of bats' habitat, isn't mining destroying it?

So the question as regards bats are concerned then is, which is worse for bats, coal fired power plants or wind generators?

Falcon

Comment wind is also horrible as a primary energy source (Score 1) 482

Why do you focus on one "primary energy source" instead of using different sources? I want solar where appropriate, wind where appropriate, and geothermal where appropriate. I also want government to stop all energy subsidies.

That is my strongest reason for opposing large subsidies it -- it does not work in the large, and oh yeah, that complete unfairness of stealing from one person to subsidize another

Guess what? Someone above provided this , External Costs of Coal Plants, however I already have this: International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI). Energy Subsidies Favor Fossil Fuels Over Renewables. And of course there's this:
Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Coal and other fossil fuels are massively subsidized. As is nuclear power. Here's Rep Edward Markey bragging My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!' . Oops, it appears the video is not there now. At least it's not playing for me when it used to. In the video though he says coal, nuclear power, and corn based ethanol get Billions of dollars each in subsidies.

Falcon

Comment Re:"...hatred of seeing windmills on the horizon.. (Score 1) 482

I actually think that a wind farm looks really cool.....especially when they are sitting out in the middle of "wide open nothing" that would normally not have anything interesting to see.....

Same here. I can't make up my mind whether a wind gennie looks better off the coast, in the middle of a prairie, or on a mountain top. They all look awesome.

Falcon

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