Domain: radix.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to radix.net.
Comments · 28
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Re:Temperature
Sea ice has a minimal affect on sea level. So anything about more or less sea ice is to a first order irrelevant to global sea level.
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/04/ice-and-sea-level.htmlhttp://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.html
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In terms of the ice, there are five identifiable reservoirs, only one
of which is expected to be able to have catastrophic effects on sea
level. They are sea ice, mountain glaciers, the Greenland ice sheet,
the East Antarctic ice sheet, and the West Antarctic ice sheet. The one
expected to be potentially catastrophic is West Antarctica.
Catastrophic is taken to mean meters of sea level in a few hundred years
or less.First, why can't the other four be catastrophic? Sea ice cannot
change sea level much. That it can do so at all is because sea ice is
not made of quite the same material as the ocean. Sea ice is much
fresher than sea water (5 parts per thousand instead of about 35). When
the ice melts (pretend for the moment that it does so instantly and
retains its shape), the resultant melt water is still slightly less
dense than the original sea water. So the meltwater still 'stands' a
little higher than the local sea level. The amount of extra height
depends on the salinity difference between ice and ocean, and
corresponds to about 2% of the thickness of the original ice floe. For
30 million square kilometers of ice (global maximum extent) and average
thickness of 2 meters (the Arctic ice is about 3 meters, the Antarctic
is about 1), the corresponding change in global sea level would be 2
(meters) * 0.02 (salinity effect) * 0.10 (fraction of ocean covered by
ice), or 4 mm. Not a large figure, but not zero either. My thanks to
chappell@stat.wisc.edu (Rick Chappell) for making me work this out.
---As an indicator of other things 1 year sea ice thickness is relevant on a second order. It is an indicator of the local winter average temperature. Local temperature changes are not global. I say that this indicator of a more cold winter shows an increased polar air circulation which is actually a positive indicator for global warming in general.
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Ice expansion
The snow and ice in the antarctic (south pole) are well above sea level. The snow stacks up as it falls to the ground. This vertical storage is a much bigger factor than density changes with temperature.
Imagine a glass of water with 2 ice cubes in it. This represents the situation you're imagining - and in this case the water level doesn't change much when the ice melts. The Arctic (North Pole) is just ice floating on water and follows this example.
The Antarctic (South Pole) is a proper continent, with ground and dirt and such. A better model for this is a glass stacked to the brim with ice but only has water to the halfway point. The melting ice will surely cause the water level to rise. The overall volume of water decreases, but the level of the water increases as it runs off the higher points.
The ice sheets of Greenland and Canada, as well as salinity effects complicate a rigorous examination. Someone with much more time and talent than I has already done the math:
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.html
Short answer:
South Pole: definite effect.
North Pole: much smaller effect. -
It does change sea level... a little
Actually, no. Sea level will still rise: though only by a little. The water from the ice is less dense than the sea water around it because the sea ice typically contains less salt. Hence, more floats up above the water than bouyancy would suggest, which reduces the water level as it gets frozen, and increases the water level when the ice melts again.
Search for 'salinity' in http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.html -
Boy, hook line and sinker...
I'm surprised so many people fall for that one.
You know what would happen if we removed just 3% of the heat from your body? You'd die. Your new body temperature would be about room temperature, and you'd go into hyperthermic shock.
Or try this little thought experiment: Heat a NeBFe magnet up to 300 degrees C on an electric burner. Cool it down. It's still magnetized. Heat it back up to 300 degrees C again. Then move it to an oven and keep heating it to 310 degrees C. Then it will be demagnetized.
But don't worry, the oven only contributed 3.3% of the heat.
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
The world is like a magnet in an oven. It was already close to the tipping point. And that's normal. It usually stays close, but not above, the tipping point. All it takes is a small additional push it beyond that point. We're lucky enough natural phenomina like forest fires haven't done so already, or have given us a few years of sunscreen by spewing ash into the upper atmosphere. We're just tempting fate by making it all the more easy and likely for them to do so.
Just like we know what happens to a magnet when it reaches it's curie temperature, we also know approximately what happens to this planet when the CO2 concentration gets past a certain point -- many CO2 reserviors "tip" in a cascading dominoe effect. The ocean spits out CO2, arable landmass decreases due to desertifications and the vegitation burns. Permafrost and deep ocean clathrates unload methane into the atmosphere. Just about every carbon sink on the planet is set to dump right back into the atmosphere. Like so many phonon-battered magnetic domains, the positive feedback leads to a fast (geologically) shift in conditions, which leads to a big biosphere dieoff. It doesn't matter how small a push man was responsible for, if that's the push that upset the balance and put it past the tipping point. If anything we should be pushing in the opposite direction by fostering sinks.
http://www.bestofmaui.com/rush.html -
Re:Singing
I believe the word you are looking for is castrato.
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Re:Mankind is insignificant, yet doesn't realize i
The first source you're quoting has nothing to do with whether or not humans cause a dominant CO2 rise in the atmosphere - it's just very long term trends: "what's going to happen to the Earth." It basically says "yah, the Earth's screwed in about half a billion years." This is ballpark what we knew already - planetary habitable zones migrate outward, and we're on the inner edge.
The second source stems all of its criticism of whether or not humans are causing the CO2 rise on a poor criticism - saying "ocean warming causes CO2 increase, so how do we know the CO2 increase is causing ocean warming, and not the reverse?" The answer to that is simple: we have a coherent model for warming due to CO2 emission. We do not have a coherent model for warming of the oceans causing CO2 emission. Occam's Razor chooses the first: the second requires an additional mechanism for generating ocean warming.
Actually, the second explanation ("ocean warming is caused by some unknown mechanism, which leads to a CO2 increase in the atmosphere") requires even more work than that: it also requires machinery to link the CO2 increase caused by ocean warming to that emitted by humans. The airborne fraction: that is, the fraction of CO2 emitted by humans that we see as an increase in atmospheric CO2 - has stayed pretty constant over 5 year averages.
Oh, and I saved my most damning point for last: you see, you can determine where the CO2 is coming from by looking at the isotopic composition of the CO2 in the atmosphere, and see if it looks like the isotopes from fossil fuels, or other sources (like the ocean). They're from fossil fuels.
The carbon dioxide rise is anthropogenic. There is no scientific debate about this fact anymore. -
Did you take chemistry in college?
Equilibrium processes?
We WERE at equilibrium. We have added a new substantial source of CO2, and we are now moving to a new higher equilibrium concentration. Tehjabsolute levels of
BTW, your volcanic CO2 numbers are very, very wrong. Anthropogenic CO2 emissins are more than two orders of magnitde heigher than volcanic emissinons. Total natural emissions of CO2 are about a norderof magnitude higher than anthropogenic inputs. Adnanthropogenic inputs are changing the equilibrium.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=160
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
This folloing info is from the second URL
>From its preindustrial level of about 280 ppmv (parts per million
by volume) around the year 1800, atmospheric carbon dioxide rose to
315 ppmv in 1958 and to about 358 ppmv in 1994 [Battle] [C.Keeling]
[Schimel 94, p 43-44]. All the signs are that the CO2 rise is
human-made:
* Ice cores show that during the past 1000 years until about the year
1800, atmospheric CO2 was fairly stable at levels between 270 and
290 ppmv. The 1994 value of 358 ppmv is higher than any CO2 level
observed over the past 220,000 years. In the Vostok and Byrd ice
cores, CO2 does not exceed 300 ppmv. A more detailed record from
peat suggests a temporary peak of ~315 ppmv about 4,700 years ago,
but this needs further confirmation. [Figge, figure 3] [Schimel 94,
p 44-45] [White]
* The rise of atmospheric CO2 closely parallels the emissions history
from fossil fuels and land use changes [Schimel 94, p 46-47].
* The rise of airborne CO2 falls short of the human-made CO2 emissions.
Taken together, the ocean and the terrestrial vegetation and soils
must currently be a net sink of CO2 rather than a source [Melillo,
p 454] [Schimel 94, p 47, 55] [Schimel 95, p 79] [Siegenthaler].
* Most "new" CO2 comes from the Northern Hemisphere. Measurements
in Antarctica show that Southern Hemisphere CO2 level lags behind
by 1 to 2 years, which reflects the interhemispheric mixing time.
The ppmv-amount of the lag at a given time has increased according
to increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. [Schimel 94, p 43]
[Siegenthaler]
* Fossil fuels contain practically no carbon 14 (14C) and less carbon
13 (13C) than air. CO2 coming from fossil fuels should show up in
the trends of 13C and 14C. Indeed, the observed isotopic trends
fit CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. The trends are not compatible
with a dominant CO2 source in the terrestrial biosphere or in the
ocean. If you shun details, please skip the next two paragraphs.
* The unstable carbon isotope 14C or radiocarbon makes up for roughly
1 in 10**12 carbon atoms in earth's atmosphere. 14C has a half-life
of about 5700 years. The stock is replenished in the upper atmosphere
by a nuclear reaction involving cosmic rays and 14N [Butcher,
p 240-241]. Fossil fuels contain no 14C, as it decayed long ago.
Burning fossil fuels should lower the atmospheric 14C fraction (the
`Suess effect'). Indeed, atmospheric 14C, measured on tree rings,
dropped by 2 to 2.5 % from about 1850 to 1954, when nuclear bomb
tests started to inject 14C into the atmosphere [Butcher, p 256-257] -
Re:Global Warming!Go to http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.basics.html. It's a pretty good article on the basics. One thing to remember about the anti-global warming. They'll cherry pick to their hearts content. They'll take quotes out of context, trumpet a few voices, some of which aren't even climatologists, over the consensus as to global warming. You'll notice this about all pseudoscience, whether it's Intelligent Design, UFO "research" or anti-Global Warming.
The climatological community, you know, those guys whose field is climate (and consequently climate change) have no doubts as to global warming. Yes, they are not yet certain as to what extent non-human forces play into this, but the evidence is there that there has been a large increase in green house gasses in the last two centuries which corresponds to the recent warming trend. Furthermore, as we gain more knowledge of recent climate history, the more it looks like recent events are not simply some sort of natural fluctuations.
But even if, as the anti-global warming crowd essentially suggest, the vast majority of climate experts are a pack of morons or evil political operatives trying to destroy the economy, the fact is that global warming is happening and that with it will come some very important consequences.
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Re:co2 emissions from volcanos
Actually, I realized that I should have said "3Gt", because only half of the CO2 goes into the atmosphere. Here's just an example - or, you can search for "CO2" and "Gt", and you'll get more pages than you could ever possibly read.
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Re:And actually, slightly lessThe difference in density between ice and water is manifested in the ice that is above the water line. Grab yourself a tall clear glass, fill it half way with water and add a big ice cube. Mark the water line. Come back in an hour once the ice cube melts and check the water line. It will be in exactly the same place.
Then do the same experiment with saltwater rather than fresh water. This is closer to the real situation. The ice, by melting to fresh water, will reduce the density of the salty water and cause it to fill slightly (about 2% of the ice volume for sea ice and ocean water) more space.
Of course, the ice on land is the major player. There is enough ice on land to raise sea levels by about 70 meters.
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.htm
l ---- Sig or not to sig, that is the question.
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Quit trying to freeze us out!I think this is a lousy idea.
Where I lived, a return to the long-term global average temperature (about 5C warmer than now) would be great. It might turn North Africa into a greenbelt again, too, just like it used to be. That would really help with the famines there! I know change is rough on everyone, but the poor dirt farmers would be a lot better off with an extra growing season. I really think that global warming is just too good to be true.
How much CO2 did Mt. St. Helens vent last eruption? How does that compare to the CO2 from power generation? This link claims that human CO2 inputs are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the natural output of CO2, and that that tips the balance towards increasing CO2 levels.
I really don't believe that idea, but just in case there is something to it, I say: go burn something. I'm sick of shivering!
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Distributed Power Systems+ plus+
Humm, seems to me that the root of the problem is that the general public, business, and industry is dependant on "the grid"(like duh). What I mean is each of us is dependant on power generation and delivery systems which are out of our individule control.(ok, so)...
Please keep in mind that had we spoke in person you would not have had the opportunity to observe my poor spelling, it's my message and not my grammer that you aught pay attention to.
To demonstrate, smaller co-op type wind farms would place more of the power generation in closer proximity to the loads. Reducing vulnerability to falures at the generation sources and transmission grid(s). They would provide jobs in construction and maintainance, and stabalize prices for power from a near-constant, free, renewable, and clean source.
Rather than investing in more Dirty Coal fireing plants that rob us all of our non-renewable natural resources; Instead of pushing the envelope with contriversal nuclear power, how about simply start utilizing our existing fision reactor, The Sun, in more direct methods? Such as Solar, which is about as direct as you can get at ~20% effeciency. Wind is probably the best solution powered near-directly by the sun aswell. Hydro-electric is already being extensively utilized, relying on the evaporative powers of the sun to circulate water to the highest peaks. If you think about it, coal and oil resources are also powered by the sun, which grew the plants that eventually turned into "fosil"-fuels. I wonder just how effecient this very-non-direct use of sunlight is. My guess, about 0.02% or less. Even Solar power starts to look a whole lot better put this way.
Or how about smarter tansportation that would actually Help correct this and many other problems that we are currently facing (Oil dependency, pollution, corruption, wars)... This T-Zero and other Electric Vehicles could aid grid overloading, utilize nightly power over-production provide clean reliable and FUN daily transportation producing zero emmissions and using zero oil. period. Check out their White Papers. and What's New area (especially the ev-based vehicle-to-grid demonstration project)! I know it's a little pricy, how about the GM EV1 with an MSRP of less than $40K, in low volume production (Oh ya, if it had ever been for sale). There we go, More Jobs again... And Imagin how the cost would come down if we built 100,000 of them here at home.
And for all of you that are going to diss on electric cars, keep in mind that you know nothing about them. They have power and range, and are very effecient at 80% to 90% from the outlet. Batteries are recyclable and safe.
Hybrids are not Electric cars. Gas cars are brute force machines, their ICE's only push, Friction breaks slow them down. Hybrids are the "Missing Links". They Push just the same, but are capable of "Recycling Kinetic Energy", however all power originates from the gassoline. EV's are the Answer, The Push even harder, Regenerate Better, use about 1/4 the energy, and produce Zero Emissions. Infinite MPG.
To Bring this full circle, I can make my own electricity, and more of us should. It shines down on us each day and blows above our homes durring each of our lifetimes. Build something usefull to our children, not more problems.
L8r
Ryan- Starve a terrorist, drive an electric vehicle.
- I love plugging in! Do you like pumping gas?
- Would you drive your car if the exhaust came out of the steering wheel?
- Sorry about your "GAS PROBLEM".
- It's not Electric if you Can't Plug It In.
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Re:Gee Flat
I'd hesitate to say it's a "bright scale" in and of itself. The intervals between tones are the same in F# as in C#, which is why the whole circle-of-fifths thing works in the first place. The brightness or moodiness of the scale is entirely dependent on the range and tonal qualities of the instrument on which it's played - try it on a piano, and one doesn't really sound brighter than the other.
And besides, everyone knows that D minor is the saddest of all keys. -
Re:From what Ive read ...
This is not completely true. Even if everybody burned coal completely in there power plants the efficiency would still be about 10% higher and be much cleaner because of economies of scale.
This talks about the conversion. -
Re:This is good
26%? Maybe if it's spinning at a constant speed. Maybe. But it's much lower for regular driving. As for a turbine used in industrial power generation it is actually higher than 40% (normal limit of Carnot's engine) due to all the various heat extraction devices.
Here's a good place to start. -
Re:Alternative options
Actually, with equal distance travelled, the fossil fuels burned to power the electric car will produce more pollution.
I would be glad to read source material that you would use to support that statement.
I take it that in effect you are stating that the total pollution generated by the (average) fossil fuel power plant to generate the electricity required for the electric vehicle I described (or an average electric vehicle, to be consistent) to be propelled one mile (or whatever arbitrary distance) is greater than the amount of pollution generated by the (average) internal combustion engine propelling the (average) gas-powered vehicle one mile (or identical arbitrary distance)? If I have misinterpreted your position, please accept my apologies.
I have searched for information that would support your position (or my possibly mangled interpretation of it) without success except for one statement offered without support at an anti-environmental legislation website.
My guess was based on a fair amount of reading I have done of articles that can be found in many places with a google search on keywords like ev fossil fuel power plant yielding results, such as this, that lead me to disagree with your statement, or at least for me to find it too general to effectively apply.
If you are including total production/delivery costs of the respective power sources, I would continue to disagree with your statement. -
Re:Konqueror is not a MUA/newsreader/HTML editor!
Konqueror seems to be as fast as Opera at rendering pages (but no in-gui ads!)
Well, I use Opera and I don't have any in-gui ads. I actually *gasp* paid for it. It's worth it.
Best of all, Konqueror is *just* a web browser, which is something all the other browser projects should come to terms with.
Well, when WWW browsers started out, they were intended to be a universal client to access http, ftp, gopher, and wais servers. Some even included pop and smtp clients as well as nntp clients.
While some (you presumably included) may consider a browser hanging onto the client ability for these protocols a burden, I consider it a useful feature. I like that my browser can still access gopher especially. -
Come slashdotters, so your true colours!
Join me in my quest to build my own electric car. I have been inspired by a television show to throw some motors and some batteries into an old car and race around in it for as long as possible before it self-destructs.
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EV versus ICE
Every time the subject of electric vehicles comes up on
/., someone always spouts off nonsense about how EVs are not as good for the environment as a modern gas car. So I'd better post this link and ask people to read it first. It's entitled "Debunking the Myth of EVs and Smokestacks" by Chip Gribben of Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, D.C. To sum up a few points:
1) ICE cars use gasoline (duh) while EV's are fuel neutral. As long as it can be converted to electricity, the EV will run on it. This includes coal, oil, natural gas, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc.
2) Emissions controls on power plants are much more sophisticated than the automotive catalytic converter. Also, they are constantly monitored to make sure they are working properly. Not every place does emissions checks on cars and even then it's only once a year.
3) Power plants are much more efficient at using fuel than car engines. The theoretical maximum efficiency of a heat engine is 40%. It is much easier for a large stationary PP to get close to that number. An ICE car? Forget it. Not even close. -
Re:Medical Software
COBOL? Not so long ago, I worked at a company where the main application was coded in MUMPS. Read more about this scariness here .
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According to S.P.(U.T.U.)M.How, then, do we apply this strategic analysis concept to our enemy du jour: the Spammer?
First, we must translate the Five Spheres (or Rings) of the enemy system into modern Net.War counterparts:
- Sphere 5: Fielded forces-- throwaway AOL accounts, hired consultants, dedicated spam domains
- Sphere 4: Population-- Spam-related customers, support employees (secretaries, etc.)
- Sphere 3: Infrastructure-- Primary non-rogue ISPs, Websites, ftp sites, cgi scripts, mail relays, reputation
- Sphere 2: System Essentials-- Money, bandwidth, telco access, computers
- Sphere 1: Leadership-- the SpamBoy himself, his partners and business associates
- other spammers
- ISPs, whether rogue or non-rogue
- hacker consultants
- fringe associates (Meowers, Kook Cabal)
- banks, business organizations, and other sources of economic power
- politicians
- Political power: news media (online and traditional), lawmakers, friends and acquaintances, usenet Kooks
- Economic power: cold hard cash earned both legitimately and by Spam; frivolous lawsuits (to tie up opponents' assets/time)
- Military power: Net.war capabilities of spammer's own systems (mail bombs, Usenet binary bombs); hired gun hackers; open NNTP and mail servers ripe for exploitation
- Information: Positive and Negative--> Positive: Spammer's ability to gather intel on foes; ability to adapt to changing laws, standards, and software affecting/enabling internet communication; ability to slander and defame enemies and thus provoke them to rash deeds;
- Negative: the ability to cloak himself in anonymity, pseudonymity, and false faux-open identities, thus denying his enemies that first prerequisite of strategic analysis: identification.
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Re:Out Of Politics? Yeah, Right....An aside: I am working with a group developing ways to simplify the income tax code using a computer program that will find politically neutral simplifications, taking the whole issue out of politics.
Steve B sez...:
This is impossible on its face. Every complication was put there to serve some political special interest; removing any of them is inherently a political decision.
Yeah. Brin needs to consider Von Hayek. Centralized planning is dumber, not smarter. I see a return to feudalism all right - but it's Th e Road to Serfdom
..." The thesis of The Road to Serfdom, for instance, is not simply that central planning is inefficient because it blocks the flow of information. Rather, Hayek argues that substituting government plans for individual plans requires imposing a single hierarchy of values and overriding the diverse tradeoffs individuals would prefer. "One best way"--even for education, retirement saving or health care--is a prescription for tyranny or vicious political conflict. "
The payoff for progessive government is dead bodies. The intellectual distance from the DemocRATS to the Nazis is a thin line, and it's getting narrower all the time.
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Proof that Tom Pabst is a Ranting ParanoiacWhat do you get when you combine an egomaniac with a paranoid schitzophrenic? I dunno, but it smokes french cigs and wants you to touch his monkey.
Tommy claims that the Pentium-3 1.13GHz is unstable, and he can't get benchmarks to run. Why?
Because the Pentium-3 demolishes Athlon, and costs less. So he made up this little story. Ach!As you can see, some other Hardware sites had NO problem running the 1.13GHz Pentium-3.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html? i=1290
http://www.shar kyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/cpu/pentium3_1x13g
h z/http://firingsquad.gamer s.com/hardware/p3-1133/default.asp
They even ran it on 440BX and VIA boards! Firing Squad OVERCLOCKED it. But Tommy's was broken, really, and it must be a SCANDAL for Intel.
Here's a scandal for you--AMD's stock price is going to cross Intel's this week, heading the wrong direction! No wonder Dr. Tommy is having problems!
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Re:It may be too late for open, free, streaming vi
What are you talking about? Quicktime for Linux works great!
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Re:CE year 0 == 1 B.C.
BCE and CE are used instead of BC and AD to avoid the religious connotations of Before Christ and Anno Domini. The year of our Lord is inappropriate/offensive if you are not a Christian. See http://www.radix.net/~dglenn/defs/ce.html for a discussion of the problem.
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gd alternativeI wrote a gd alternative a few years ago and continue to maintain it. Check it out at:
http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib/
It allows you to use giflib (or ungiflib) so that Ilib doesn't have the licensing issues. As long as you can get gliflib, you're good to go.
It's open source and should work on all *nix as well as win32.
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gd alternativeI wrote a gd alternative a few years ago and continue to maintain it. Check it out at:
http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib/
It allows you to use giflib (or ungiflib) so that Ilib doesn't have the licensing issues. As long as you can get gliflib, you're good to go.
It's open source and should work on all *nix as well as win32.
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gd alternativeI wrote a gd alternative a few years ago and continue to maintain it. Check it out at:
http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib/
It allows you to use giflib (or ungiflib) so that Ilib doesn't have the licensing issues. As long as you can get gliflib, you're good to go.
It's open source and should work on all *nix as well as win32.