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Okay, I'll bite...

Although light from the "nearby" supernova travels at the speed of light towards earth, the shockwave from matter of the supernova which potentially destroyed this formation travels slower (think like the supernova generated lightning and thunder). When the supernova blew, it sent light towards earth and a shockwave towards the "pillars" (at least this is what is suggested by the latest picture).

FWIW, the bbc has a better article on this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6246333. stm

In the BBC article, it seems to indicate more detailed observations of a "shell-shaped" cloud of hot dust near the pillars being heated by a exploding star. Using data from the telescope they were able to infer the temperature of the dust and match it to a supernova. I'm guessing they predicted the speed of the shockwave and noted that it would take about 1000 years to destroy this formation given the recent observation, but since the distances to both are "astronomical", we see what it was doing 7000 years ago, so if the shockwave speed prediction is correct, it will have already happened and we are just waiting for the light from this event that probably already happened to reach us.

A quick google search shows that Nicholas Flagey (the scientist quoted) has an article on this type of stuff (in french, for those that read french http://www.ias.u-psud.fr/www/data/document/01/004_ FORM.PDF ).

If you are really, really interested, apparently there is a scheduled talk on this given by Mr Flagey at caltech on Jan 16th
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/seminars/

that was a good try... but these people werent completely dumb though since there is a sweet authentication page which shows up here,here,here,hereandhere:))

Urmphf, last I checked, at Sorbonne you study humanities, not computer science. Maybe you're thinking of Jussieu or Orsay?

Waiting for a DVD to rip.

So:

Go buy any old digital camera and try to download the pics on a RedHat system.

Go buy a DVD-R and try to burn a disc.

Go to any old website showing media (RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media) and see how successful you are at viewing content.

Buy a Firewire DV Video Camera and see how successful you are in getting the video off and editing it.

Try to visit a site that's made for IE.
Go to the store and buy a game. (I'll give you these -- VmWare and other solutions are a serious bitch to setup, and don't work well except in certain Distros)

Buy a PDA and get it to synch up.

Your network card doesn't work, find somebody you know willing to come over and fix it. (Huh? If the card is broken, even your God(s) ain't/aren't gonna fix it.)

>The steps to do any of the above in Windows are very easy

Uhhh, sure... I mean, I mean, if you want to have every two or three DVDs come out as coasters (happens with Prassi Primo DVD for me) sure. Or if you want to use crappy outdated camera software that just lets you easily download one picture at a time through a slow ass serial connection, great (Fuji MX-1200). I've never done DV, but Kino doesn't look too hard. Or you can try Cinerella, which seems more full featured and easier.

>When a DVD-Burner manufacturer is swamped with "Uhh where's the Linux Drivers?"

DVD-R in linux doesn't use "drivers", unless you count the built in generic SCSI support built in linux (since well before DVD was available for most PCs) as a "driver". Try saying that about windows. Especially windows 9x...

HTH. And take it from me, there's NO software in windows that lets you use a Celeron 300 to burn DVD-R at 2x and surf the 'net at the same time.

Linux's motto should be "Spend some time now -- Then do more, quicker".

Why not just write a macro and save it either on your network drive (if you have one) or on a floppy.

Better yet, why not spend a little time learning to use LaTeX? If you're a grad student in a technical field, it's worth investing the time in learning a heavier-weight document preparation system.

If you're partial to a GUI front-end, I've had good experiences with Lyx. TeXmacs also looks interesting, but I haven't played with it yet.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Long answer: no, unless there are tools for converting TeX/METAFONT fonts to Adobe Type 1 (not merely PostScript; Type 1 is a specially structured subset of PS) or TrueType. I haven't heard of any. It's more likely that there exist tools to make a set of bitmap (BDF/PCF) fonts from a METAFONT font, but that's not quite the same.

I think you're missing the point. For X screen fonts, you don't want Type 1 PostScript or TrueType fonts, you want well-crafted bitmaps that have been designed for screen display. I don't know about your machine, but on my system, Type 1 and TrueType fonts (other than Microsoft's Web fonts, which were specifically designed for screen display) look awful. Only the bitmap fonts (and Microsoft Web fonts) are readable and acceptable for everyday use. I leave PostScript fonts to gv.

The mf program translates METAFONT format (MF) source files into GF (font raster) and TFM (TeX Font Metrics) files; GF files must be processed by gftopk to produce PK (packed font raster) files. xmbdfed, however, can import PK or GF font files and produce BDF files.

For a neat example of PK fonts in use as screen fonts, check out TeXmacs, which gives you a really nice looking WYSIWYG display (better than anything else I've ever seen running under X). TeXmacs uses fairly large font sizes, however; I'm not sure if you can get legible PK fonts at smaller sizes (for, say, a terminal window).

(By the way, the Type 1 Utils are not GPLed, but are freely available for use or modification (provided you maintain the existing copyright notices), and can be found on Eddie Kohler's Web site. If you want Debian packages, an ancient (pre-Eddie) version is available from the main archives (t1utils), with the current version (t1utils-ek) available from this site (as source, unless you have a PowerPC machine).)

I've never used it but apparently TeXmacs might do what you want. I don't know what formats it can import though.

The machine:

I recently bought this machine and installed Mandrake 7.0. It has been working for the past four days without a problem. The only problem is I'm trying to get the on-board sound card (using AC'97 compatible via82cxxx module) to work but without success (yet). The TV card using xawtv works with overlay using 2.3.99pre9 kernel.

I have spent the last week searching for information on various items on hardware and linux information. An interesting sites about linux and the Athlon which I have just found (will be applying some of these advice tonight):

Looking at the links on the first link, there is mention of optimisation flags that you can used to speed up some application for the Athlon under linux. Cool!