Funny. I remember when PeachText was the cats pajamas, but then WordStar prevailed and went on to rule the roost for a fair bit. Then there was that "Enable" crap - never mind that. I always thought that WordPerfect kind of ripped off WordStar because it also used the "K" formatting codes, but then so did Word, at least under the hood, for the first part of its existence. Funny thing was that each in its own time, there was typically one dominant player. The only time there seemed to be any real competition was the short period in the late 90's when Lotus Smart Suit almost surpassed Office - it was in my opinion, a better product. (I have boxes of install disks of all of the above mentioned somewhere, by the way, big floppies, little floppies and CD's). I recall that a key factor was that the USG (especially DoD) settled on MS Office at about the time Lotus might otherwise have prevailed, and provided impetus through some key policy mandates to standardize on MS file formats. Perhaps if OASIS Open Document Format had come along a little earlier (and the vendors had incentives to adopt them, there's the rub) DoD would not have universally mandated MS Office. That's always bothered me by the way...it almost seemed at the time that the USG colluded with MS to throw the massive weight of the Federal Government to in effect (if not intent) suppress competition. I would love to see a future smart Ph.D. candidate student do a rigorous dissertation on the subject someday when the heat dies down, following the policy and the money trails.
Agree. I lasted exactly one boot cycle with Unity and simply switch back to Gnome on the second boot by selecting "Classic Ubuntu" at the bottom of the login screen as default. Bam. Problem solved. Now let's hope Gnome 3, when it comes out, doesn't screw that up.
Not just that; but I would not be surprised if accidents do not go up at camera locations. I've noticed that in the VA-DC-MD area intersections with red light cameras tend to have extremely short yellow cycles. This results in motorists either slamming on the brakes at the yellow, or the accelerator to clear the intersection in a panic. Similarly, motorists tend to brakes suddenly on detecting any device array that appears to be speed trap. I wonder how may sudden brake incidents occur during lightening storms as lightening flashing are mistaken for camera strobes. In DC, speed traps usually follow the frequent random speed limit changes. Lets call a spade a spade. These devices have nothing to do with public safety. They are simply taxes in disguise.
Also, ISS is substantially inside Earth's magnetosphere so enjoys significant radiation/solar wind protection. Mars mission won't. But no simulations are perfect. Key is whether sufficiently useful given cost.
Nearly all Americans are taught metric measures beginning in grade school (I was in the 60's), and continuously throughout their education. We have used, and continue to use, the metric system across a large number of fields since the 1800's, where it has been useful, and makes sense. Where it doesn't matter, who cares? As someone who has lived and traveled in European and Asian countries that, of course, use the metric system, for at least 1/5th of my life, I can tell you that for certain purposes our traditional measurements are simply more intuitive. I completely understand Centigrade/Celcius, for example. But Fahrenheit is simply superior in conveying relative temperature comfort for humans. Zero is about as cold as I ever want to be, and 100 is my limit for hot. 50's are right on for me (I prefer a little cool). Anywhere in-between I can easily imagine where I stand. I get meters completely (hey, about a yard), but there's no equivalent to foot, which is a very good measure for humans to quickly and intuitively get. How do we humans tend to naturally measure distance over ground? We pace it off. We use kilo's all the time, but a pound just feels more natural. A slender young woman is about a hundred. As I reached my 50's I began to push 200. As "arbitrary" measures go, traditional measurements just seem a lot less arbitrary. Bottom line, don't worry about it damn Borg. I'm sure we'll be assimilated eventually.
A bit arcane and moot, I know, but AvGas was just high octane gasoline used in piston and prop aircraft. Jets, including turboprops, use jet fuel (such as Jet-A, JP-4, JP-5, -8, etc.) which is more refined, closer to kerosene.
When SR-71 first launched we were communicating and coordinating the event via 75 baud TTY using crypto keys loaded on single Hollerith punch cards, hitting the "figures" or "letters" keys in succession as we paused in our thoughts to keep from dropping synch and having to start all over (when we weren't "streaming" pre-punched tape loads). Now we may perhaps fly physically a bit slower (though probably not on average...and do you know how fast an X-37B zooms?), but the comms sure do blaze over IP in comparison, and arguably a lot more secure (arithmetically at least).
When 1984 came and went I thought, "thank God we never arrived at the 'Big Brother' that Orwell warned us against." The truth is that we did, but in the more subtile and perniciously nuanced form of political correctness. The overall effect is the same.
Problem is when all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail. "Climate Change" advocacy comes chiefly from the left, and therefore the nail, predictably, is more socialism.
"Climate change" is such a clever slogan because climate, almost by definition, is and has always been changing. So far, so good. It should be unsurprising, however, that skepticism is evoked when any idea, especially a scientific theory, is so passionately embraced by political movements spawned to both advance the theory and "solve" the expected ill. Yes, propaganda can be targeted for good or ill intent, but when it becomes so loud, obnoxious, and ubiquitous that it attempts to discourage all legitimate debate, intentions matter little regardless how pure and saintly the proponents. Sorry to say I just come equipped with activist warning lights. When it comes to the depth of our understanding of systems so complex and paradoxically subtle as climate, ham-handed political "solutions" are far more likely to spawn unknown and unintended consequences than mitigation to ascribed risks.
So the computing umph needed for any given platform depends on what the system is asked to do. 128mhz may be blazing for an ordinary car. In fact, you'd be surprised how many serious SCADA systems are/have worked on really old processors and in old environments for a long time. There was a public event on the subject on or about the 2005 timeframe hosted by some agency where one of the topics of discussion was the serious number of critical infrastructure SCADA systems which at that time operated on computing platforms ranging from 8088's to 486s at the high end, using everything from DOS 3.0 to Windows 3.11 and even ME environments. I'm assuming that at least some those systems, at least in the Critical Infrastructure space, have since been upgraded (who knows?). But the reason that it was even an issue was never any concern for performance, but rather security. An 8088 on DOS with some some tight little UI written in Assembly calling a bunch of scripts may very well be more than adequate to run some, say, reservoir dam controller. It was only time to get nervous when networks began growing up all around these systems and tying things together. Off subject, but I've always thought the movie Independence Day presented a very interesting lesson that seems to be largely lost on most folk...
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny'" -Isaac Asimov...lifted from http://www.jsur.org/
Concur: "Bull." It's a sad state of modern affairs that any "study" that issues from a advocacy group goes straight to my dust bin. It's the whole "Wolf!" thing. Favorite relevant quote: "The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact!" - Huxley
Quickest upgrade so far. Took only about 20 minutes to download,and another, I want to say about another 30 minutes to complete the upgrade. No problems on the two laptops that I upgraded, my wife's old System 76 Pangolin and my old IBM T41. No evident glitches to report. Opened a few files. No problems. I'm trying to figure out what's new. Not immediately obvious.
So, were this an action by a "mean-spiited-right wing" administration, I'm sure there would be, rightly, holy hell to pay. However, since this is an action by a benign, politically correct, "progressive," administration of the political left, what's the problem?
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You got to charge the electric cars somewhere. I'm sure there'll be no problem taxing that point of consumption.
Funny. I remember when PeachText was the cats pajamas, but then WordStar prevailed and went on to rule the roost for a fair bit. Then there was that "Enable" crap - never mind that. I always thought that WordPerfect kind of ripped off WordStar because it also used the "K" formatting codes, but then so did Word, at least under the hood, for the first part of its existence. Funny thing was that each in its own time, there was typically one dominant player. The only time there seemed to be any real competition was the short period in the late 90's when Lotus Smart Suit almost surpassed Office - it was in my opinion, a better product. (I have boxes of install disks of all of the above mentioned somewhere, by the way, big floppies, little floppies and CD's). I recall that a key factor was that the USG (especially DoD) settled on MS Office at about the time Lotus might otherwise have prevailed, and provided impetus through some key policy mandates to standardize on MS file formats. Perhaps if OASIS Open Document Format had come along a little earlier (and the vendors had incentives to adopt them, there's the rub) DoD would not have universally mandated MS Office. That's always bothered me by the way...it almost seemed at the time that the USG colluded with MS to throw the massive weight of the Federal Government to in effect (if not intent) suppress competition. I would love to see a future smart Ph.D. candidate student do a rigorous dissertation on the subject someday when the heat dies down, following the policy and the money trails.
I love it! ...but then, I've been married for over 3 decades, I've raised all the kids I intend to, and won't be looking for a date any time soon!
Agree. I lasted exactly one boot cycle with Unity and simply switch back to Gnome on the second boot by selecting "Classic Ubuntu" at the bottom of the login screen as default. Bam. Problem solved. Now let's hope Gnome 3, when it comes out, doesn't screw that up.
Good thing Obama took care of that whole Patriot Act thing...
OK. Same idea. To each's own. After checking out the NN "Unity" however, I switched to "Classic" (= GNOME 3.23.1) by the second reboot.
Even better idea. Install Ubuntu. As a back-up, I have old IBM T4 with only 512 RAM and Ubuntu versions installed past 5 years. Will work just great.
Not just that; but I would not be surprised if accidents do not go up at camera locations. I've noticed that in the VA-DC-MD area intersections with red light cameras tend to have extremely short yellow cycles. This results in motorists either slamming on the brakes at the yellow, or the accelerator to clear the intersection in a panic. Similarly, motorists tend to brakes suddenly on detecting any device array that appears to be speed trap. I wonder how may sudden brake incidents occur during lightening storms as lightening flashing are mistaken for camera strobes. In DC, speed traps usually follow the frequent random speed limit changes. Lets call a spade a spade. These devices have nothing to do with public safety. They are simply taxes in disguise.
Also, ISS is substantially inside Earth's magnetosphere so enjoys significant radiation/solar wind protection. Mars mission won't. But no simulations are perfect. Key is whether sufficiently useful given cost.
So, when I'm assimilated, do I get one of those eye-piece thingies and Swiss-army hands?
Nearly all Americans are taught metric measures beginning in grade school (I was in the 60's), and continuously throughout their education. We have used, and continue to use, the metric system across a large number of fields since the 1800's, where it has been useful, and makes sense. Where it doesn't matter, who cares? As someone who has lived and traveled in European and Asian countries that, of course, use the metric system, for at least 1/5th of my life, I can tell you that for certain purposes our traditional measurements are simply more intuitive. I completely understand Centigrade/Celcius, for example. But Fahrenheit is simply superior in conveying relative temperature comfort for humans. Zero is about as cold as I ever want to be, and 100 is my limit for hot. 50's are right on for me (I prefer a little cool). Anywhere in-between I can easily imagine where I stand. I get meters completely (hey, about a yard), but there's no equivalent to foot, which is a very good measure for humans to quickly and intuitively get. How do we humans tend to naturally measure distance over ground? We pace it off. We use kilo's all the time, but a pound just feels more natural. A slender young woman is about a hundred. As I reached my 50's I began to push 200. As "arbitrary" measures go, traditional measurements just seem a lot less arbitrary. Bottom line, don't worry about it damn Borg. I'm sure we'll be assimilated eventually.
A bit arcane and moot, I know, but AvGas was just high octane gasoline used in piston and prop aircraft. Jets, including turboprops, use jet fuel (such as Jet-A, JP-4, JP-5, -8, etc.) which is more refined, closer to kerosene.
When SR-71 first launched we were communicating and coordinating the event via 75 baud TTY using crypto keys loaded on single Hollerith punch cards, hitting the "figures" or "letters" keys in succession as we paused in our thoughts to keep from dropping synch and having to start all over (when we weren't "streaming" pre-punched tape loads). Now we may perhaps fly physically a bit slower (though probably not on average...and do you know how fast an X-37B zooms?), but the comms sure do blaze over IP in comparison, and arguably a lot more secure (arithmetically at least).
...says he, insultingly!
When 1984 came and went I thought, "thank God we never arrived at the 'Big Brother' that Orwell warned us against." The truth is that we did, but in the more subtile and perniciously nuanced form of political correctness. The overall effect is the same.
...if you ban crime, only criminals will use it.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny'" -Isaac Asimov
Problem is when all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail. "Climate Change" advocacy comes chiefly from the left, and therefore the nail, predictably, is more socialism.
"Climate change" is such a clever slogan because climate, almost by definition, is and has always been changing. So far, so good. It should be unsurprising, however, that skepticism is evoked when any idea, especially a scientific theory, is so passionately embraced by political movements spawned to both advance the theory and "solve" the expected ill. Yes, propaganda can be targeted for good or ill intent, but when it becomes so loud, obnoxious, and ubiquitous that it attempts to discourage all legitimate debate, intentions matter little regardless how pure and saintly the proponents. Sorry to say I just come equipped with activist warning lights. When it comes to the depth of our understanding of systems so complex and paradoxically subtle as climate, ham-handed political "solutions" are far more likely to spawn unknown and unintended consequences than mitigation to ascribed risks.
So the computing umph needed for any given platform depends on what the system is asked to do. 128mhz may be blazing for an ordinary car. In fact, you'd be surprised how many serious SCADA systems are/have worked on really old processors and in old environments for a long time. There was a public event on the subject on or about the 2005 timeframe hosted by some agency where one of the topics of discussion was the serious number of critical infrastructure SCADA systems which at that time operated on computing platforms ranging from 8088's to 486s at the high end, using everything from DOS 3.0 to Windows 3.11 and even ME environments. I'm assuming that at least some those systems, at least in the Critical Infrastructure space, have since been upgraded (who knows?). But the reason that it was even an issue was never any concern for performance, but rather security. An 8088 on DOS with some some tight little UI written in Assembly calling a bunch of scripts may very well be more than adequate to run some, say, reservoir dam controller. It was only time to get nervous when networks began growing up all around these systems and tying things together. Off subject, but I've always thought the movie Independence Day presented a very interesting lesson that seems to be largely lost on most folk...
I'm using it on my Mac, US English. Downloaded very first day it appeared. The only delta detected is reversion to legacy (better) icons.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny'" -Isaac Asimov ...lifted from http://www.jsur.org/
Concur: "Bull." It's a sad state of modern affairs that any "study" that issues from a advocacy group goes straight to my dust bin. It's the whole "Wolf!" thing. Favorite relevant quote: "The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact!" - Huxley
Quickest upgrade so far. Took only about 20 minutes to download ,and another, I want to say about another 30 minutes to complete the upgrade. No problems on the two laptops that I upgraded, my wife's old System 76 Pangolin and my old IBM T41. No evident glitches to report. Opened a few files. No problems. I'm trying to figure out what's new. Not immediately obvious.
So, were this an action by a "mean-spiited-right wing" administration, I'm sure there would be, rightly, holy hell to pay. However, since this is an action by a benign, politically correct, "progressive," administration of the political left, what's the problem?