Universe being big might make life more likely, but it also makes it much LESS likely that any possibly intelligent life happens to be poking around in these parts of this ordinary galaxy.
And making assumption that Earth is "an ordinary planet" is probably quite wrong, if you stop to think about it. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis. Even if you think Earth is ordinary, there ought to be no need to remind you about the timescales, it took a billion years for life to start, and three more to get us. That's long time for something to go seriously wrong, or just differently enough that intelligent life does not arise.
Maybe not a total nutcase, but perhaps we should say "easily influenced" or something...
You wouldn't have made much of a skeptic anyway if pic that blurry makes you into a believer, it looks same as all the other UFO shots do, and shares a common feature too: it's so fuzzy that the grainy blotch that's supposed to be a flying saucer might be anything at all. Unfortunately, when you've got whole spectrum of "anything" at your disposal, alien spacecraft tend to be in the part with lowest probability. Occam's Razor, and all that.
Why doesn't anyone have a crystal clear picture showing a craft that's at least identifiable as artificial, if not extraterrestrial? If _they_ would be here, and don't want to be seen, why would they be buzzing around in immediately alien looking vessels instead of constructing plane or helicopter look-a-likes?
Yeah, sure, cells are self-multiplying and self-repairing, the problem lies within that "capable of adapting" part, because it means they're also self-modifying over long timescales.
Even if hypothetical aliens planted first primitive lifeforms on Earth three or four billion years ago, and included a message of some kind in them, you can bet your ass off that any remains of whatever was encoded in there has long, long, long, long ago been lost to random evolutionary processes.
If Microsoft, or Mozilla Foundation, or $SOFTWARE_VENDOR chooses to include public domain or BSD licensed code into their application, they're from thereon just as much responsible for any holes it may create in that app as if they'd written it themselves.
When you're creating a piece of software from smaller modules you check that they're safe whether particular code comes from Microsoft Employee 12323154, anonymous patch in bugzilla, libpng folks or $WHATEVER, and if you don't, then it's your fault, whichever it was, simple, right?
The drawback, of course, is that most anticancer drugs target tumors based on their rapid growth.
If hibernation doesn't affect tumors that might be an upside, though. All the bad side effects of anticancer drugs are because they also end up targeting every other cell type that divides fast.
If you could put the patient into hibernation and it would slow down growth of normal cells, but leave tumor growing rapidly you could pump him full of anti-division cytotoxins and not have serious side effects.
Maybe I'm not following here, but muscle and bone don't just evaporate, right? The loss is trough body noticing lack of need and adjusting, however in hibernation metabolism is already much slower which would automatically lead to slower muscle and bone loss as well.
Bone loss is gravity affected and so not something you can easily study on Earth, but do animals that hibernate lose a significant amount of muscle mass due to inactivity?
1. Radiation shielding on long term voyages seems to be a real bear of a problem for manned spaceflight to the planets. It might be feasable to put a bunch of shielding around a small compartment with a hybernaut where it wouldn't be feasable to shield all the working and sleeping areas for an awake astronaut.
While shielding smallish hibernation area would indeed be easier than doing it for the full ship, there might be a negative effect too.
It seems logical that the hibernation itself would actually make you more suspectible to the radiation damage since your cells are working slower, the time it takes before they can fix themselves or autodestruct if that's no longer possible would be much longer while in hibernation, leading to more tissue damage and bigger probability of cancer...
No idea how shielding vs. increased vulnerability would even out though.
Programs: libpng users including mozilla, konqueror, various e-mail clients, generally lots. Also reports that some versions of IE are vulnerable to some of the problems.
I don't know if pngfilt.dll includes libpng code, but if it doesn't, then they've apparently managed to make same mistakes on their own.
And the/. crowd wonders why ordinary computer users won't run Linux as a desktop/laptop OS...
Why's that, then? Because it's possible for techies to tell each others how to change some obscure kernel parameters so they can be sure it works across all distros, etc? How horrible, BURN this Linux thing down before every computer user with know-how can customize his machines internals!
"ordinary computer user" would do that with a nice graphical configuration app that came with his distribution, or selected "laptop" as install option. The existence of lower level somewhere does not concern them, they don't need to know one even exists. You think there isn't greasy system level behind OSX's or Windows' shiny cover?
Could the system use a good deal of reform? Absolutely. Is a capitilist driven system superior to a state run system? Most definately.
Hard do say, considering there isn't or hasn't been a full capitalist system in existence. Ever.
Oh, and I thought you supported patents? Now you claim you're supporting capitalism? Please try to make your mind, it's one or the other, you can't have both at once. You DO realize they're contradictory claims, right? Patents and other government dictated artificial limitations on market have no place at all in free market, they are running totally against all it's princibles.
(Poster glances nervously about, wondering if it's silver bullets, a wooden stake thru the heart, or cruxifiction that is supposed to kill the Easter Bunny.)
You clearly don't have any idea about how hard the horrible Easter Bunny is to kill. It takes ALL of those, and decapitation to boot, after which you need to burn the pieces.
Things may look dim, but the patent directive still has few gears to pass trough - including the parliament, who didn't take to them very well last time, and who are probably pissed at being walked over by the council byrocrats...
No, this is exactly like traditional insurance. They know Linux violates patents, and are gambling on whether or not there will be lawsuits based on those patents. Most violated patents are never brought to court.
Microsoft already does it. Only, being Microsoft, they do it backwards and pay for catching bad guys who exploit the bugs in their software, instead of paying for fixing them damn bugs.
While Mozilla (and especially Firefox) is not strictly GNOME application, you really can't say it isn't one either, not any more.
It didn't use the file selector, because the consensus was that the old one sucked, FF1.0 will probably, now that the new one is here. It follows the GTK theme in looks, follows GNOME button order, it can even pull some things from gconf, like proxy settings.
Sigh. You bitch about people who believe there is "only one way" and then you launch into your own flamewar about "the ONLY WAY, my way". Could you get any more contradictory?
That is to say that these desktop environments are lacking those qualities that make using Linux such a dream: elegance, interoperability with other programs and environments, clean non-interactive interfaces, human-readable config files, modularity, granularity, and choice.
Elegance and interoperability are what they where designed to give you over other software, and so far IMHO they do it very well. "Non-interactive interface" is an oxymoron (even CLI is interactive), human-readable config files, modularity, granularity, choice? Check, all still here.
The interface must be efficient to use (for example tab-completion in the file selector, a feature that is now disabled by default - no typing allowed!)
I agree that the text input box should be there by default, it's what made the old file selector absolutely rock even though it was ugly and not very usable with mouse. There's a bug open on it and it's not WONTFIXed or anything so there's hope.
And for Nautilus - WHY is it so politically incorrect to allow "open in the same window" as a configuration parameter???
You'll be delighted to know there's an option in development version, so it'll be there in 2.8.
Oh, and when the file selector presents a list of files, why is it that GNOME 2.6 is unable to jump to files beginning with "w" when I hit the "w" button?
ctrl-f, though I agree that it too might be sensible thing to have without having to push any keys...
This leaves Gnome chasing the lowest of the "Low Value" users -- grandmas, factory workers, and anyone else who somehow avoided a PC for the last 20 years and have very limited needs (web and email).
No. Gnome is chasing business desktop. Folks who haven't avoided PC's, but are already used to management making decisions for them. Kind of PC's that are already locked down, and where lack of knobs is a big bonus for the administratos who don't need to fix things those knobs break.
I don't buy the "it's different so folks will NEVER be able to learn it" argument, though. Someone made a good point with "it looks different enough you immediately expect it to behave differently", and even some of us Unix geeks prefer it, the knobs are down there in command line if you ever need them, no need to have 'em at top.
Does Gnome have such a simple checkbox, that would remove all objections?
YES! Gnome devs are listening, and there is now a fricking checkbox for you, feel free to find another miniscule non-issue to make a huge noise over, and stop FUDing about this one.
Turning gconf-editor "more graphical" without reducing the amount of options it can handle would just turn it even harder to use.
Separate, "advanced preferences" application is what's needed here, not dumbing down the editor, and there already are few of those, gtweakui and gnome-extra-settings for example.
First reusable orbital vehicle that could deliver cargo: America - the space shuttle
Space shuttle is not reusable. Sure, it was intended to be one, but that's not how it turned out.
Something that basically needs to be broken to pieces and rebuilt before it can be used again does not qualify as "reusable" by any stretch of imagination.
No, you didn't miss that part, because it's not there. You did, however, miss the old (and correct) saying about winning side writing the history.
Oh, and this may not be in books yet, but last time America took over other countries by military force to spread their way of life happened in 2001-2003, you might have heard about these small countries called "Afghanistan" and "Iraq".
if i had the money... i'd do it in a heart beat... talk about ridiculously cool. what besides going to Mars (which won't happen for 20 more years atleast) would top it?
Well, lots of things would beat a single orbit around the moon. Say, actual moon base, longer-term stay on larger space habitat, could you imagine living in a hollowed-out, 10km diameter asteroid?
Stuff on Earth (well, in Earth) that would get close, underwater resort in a beautiful location. Maybe even mobile one... big ass yacht might be boring but big ass underwater "yacht"? Count me in!
You can keep it, I won't touch iTunes with a ten-foot pole ever again.
Maybe it fits nicely and works well in OS X, but the Windows version of iTunes is ugly, looks and behaves differently than any other app in the desktop, and same goes for running it in Linux. That's matter of taste, of course, the real problem is that it's SLOW, I mean, changing a song takes about a second on 2GHz machine, what the hell are they smoking?
If you like the dynamic playlists of iTunes and have any geek blood left in you, try wxMusik, what could possibly beat doing SQL queries into your music library?
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Universe being big might make life more likely, but it also makes it much LESS likely that any possibly intelligent life happens to be poking around in these parts of this ordinary galaxy.
s . Even if you think Earth is ordinary, there ought to be no need to remind you about the timescales, it took a billion years for life to start, and three more to get us. That's long time for something to go seriously wrong, or just differently enough that intelligent life does not arise.
And making assumption that Earth is "an ordinary planet" is probably quite wrong, if you stop to think about it. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesi
Maybe not a total nutcase, but perhaps we should say "easily influenced" or something...
You wouldn't have made much of a skeptic anyway if pic that blurry makes you into a believer, it looks same as all the other UFO shots do, and shares a common feature too: it's so fuzzy that the grainy blotch that's supposed to be a flying saucer might be anything at all. Unfortunately, when you've got whole spectrum of "anything" at your disposal, alien spacecraft tend to be in the part with lowest probability. Occam's Razor, and all that.
Why doesn't anyone have a crystal clear picture showing a craft that's at least identifiable as artificial, if not extraterrestrial? If _they_ would be here, and don't want to be seen, why would they be buzzing around in immediately alien looking vessels instead of constructing plane or helicopter look-a-likes?
Yeah, sure, cells are self-multiplying and self-repairing, the problem lies within that "capable of adapting" part, because it means they're also self-modifying over long timescales.
Even if hypothetical aliens planted first primitive lifeforms on Earth three or four billion years ago, and included a message of some kind in them, you can bet your ass off that any remains of whatever was encoded in there has long, long, long, long ago been lost to random evolutionary processes.
It doesn't matter who wrote what.
If Microsoft, or Mozilla Foundation, or $SOFTWARE_VENDOR chooses to include public domain or BSD licensed code into their application, they're from thereon just as much responsible for any holes it may create in that app as if they'd written it themselves.
When you're creating a piece of software from smaller modules you check that they're safe whether particular code comes from Microsoft Employee 12323154, anonymous patch in bugzilla, libpng folks or $WHATEVER, and if you don't, then it's your fault, whichever it was, simple, right?
The drawback, of course, is that most anticancer drugs target tumors based on their rapid growth.
If hibernation doesn't affect tumors that might be an upside, though. All the bad side effects of anticancer drugs are because they also end up targeting every other cell type that divides fast.
If you could put the patient into hibernation and it would slow down growth of normal cells, but leave tumor growing rapidly you could pump him full of anti-division cytotoxins and not have serious side effects.
Maybe I'm not following here, but muscle and bone don't just evaporate, right? The loss is trough body noticing lack of need and adjusting, however in hibernation metabolism is already much slower which would automatically lead to slower muscle and bone loss as well.
Bone loss is gravity affected and so not something you can easily study on Earth, but do animals that hibernate lose a significant amount of muscle mass due to inactivity?
1. Radiation shielding on long term voyages seems to be a real bear of a problem for manned spaceflight to the planets. It might be feasable to put a bunch of shielding around a small compartment with a hybernaut where it wouldn't be feasable to shield all the working and sleeping areas for an awake astronaut.
While shielding smallish hibernation area would indeed be easier than doing it for the full ship, there might be a negative effect too.
It seems logical that the hibernation itself would actually make you more suspectible to the radiation damage since your cells are working slower, the time it takes before they can fix themselves or autodestruct if that's no longer possible would be much longer while in hibernation, leading to more tissue damage and bigger probability of cancer...
No idea how shielding vs. increased vulnerability would even out though.
Programs: libpng users including mozilla, konqueror, various e-mail clients, generally lots. Also reports that some versions of IE are vulnerable to some of the problems.
I don't know if pngfilt.dll includes libpng code, but if it doesn't, then they've apparently managed to make same mistakes on their own.
And the /. crowd wonders why ordinary computer users won't run Linux as a desktop/laptop OS...
Why's that, then? Because it's possible for techies to tell each others how to change some obscure kernel parameters so they can be sure it works across all distros, etc? How horrible, BURN this Linux thing down before every computer user with know-how can customize his machines internals!
"ordinary computer user" would do that with a nice graphical configuration app that came with his distribution, or selected "laptop" as install option. The existence of lower level somewhere does not concern them, they don't need to know one even exists. You think there isn't greasy system level behind OSX's or Windows' shiny cover?
Most small fuell cells don't use hydrogen, because of inherent problems with storing gas.
They tend to use methanol.
And trying to design something incompatible hasn't stopped folks from doing cheaper knock-offs before.
Well yes, but you can afford to run on battery long enough to ask the cafe owner trough IRC or email, right?
Could the system use a good deal of reform? Absolutely. Is a capitilist driven system superior to a state run system? Most definately.
Hard do say, considering there isn't or hasn't been a full capitalist system in existence. Ever.
Oh, and I thought you supported patents? Now you claim you're supporting capitalism? Please try to make your mind, it's one or the other, you can't have both at once. You DO realize they're contradictory claims, right? Patents and other government dictated artificial limitations on market have no place at all in free market, they are running totally against all it's princibles.
(Poster glances nervously about, wondering if it's silver bullets, a wooden stake thru the heart, or cruxifiction that is supposed to kill the Easter Bunny.)
You clearly don't have any idea about how hard the horrible Easter Bunny is to kill. It takes ALL of those, and decapitation to boot, after which you need to burn the pieces.
and Japan and EU.
Not yet.
Things may look dim, but the patent directive still has few gears to pass trough - including the parliament, who didn't take to them very well last time, and who are probably pissed at being walked over by the council byrocrats...
No, this is exactly like traditional insurance. They know Linux violates patents, and are gambling on whether or not there will be lawsuits based on those patents. Most violated patents are never brought to court.
Microsoft already does it. Only, being Microsoft, they do it backwards and pay for catching bad guys who exploit the bugs in their software, instead of paying for fixing them damn bugs.
While Mozilla (and especially Firefox) is not strictly GNOME application, you really can't say it isn't one either, not any more.
2
It didn't use the file selector, because the consensus was that the old one sucked, FF1.0 will probably, now that the new one is here. It follows the GTK theme in looks, follows GNOME button order, it can even pull some things from gconf, like proxy settings.
See the done and in-the-works gtk and gnome integration tracker bugs here http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92033 and here http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23346
Sigh. You bitch about people who believe there is "only one way" and then you launch into your own flamewar about "the ONLY WAY, my way". Could you get any more contradictory?
That is to say that these desktop environments are lacking those qualities that make using Linux such a dream: elegance, interoperability with other programs and environments, clean non-interactive interfaces, human-readable config files, modularity, granularity, and choice.
Elegance and interoperability are what they where designed to give you over other software, and so far IMHO they do it very well. "Non-interactive interface" is an oxymoron (even CLI is interactive), human-readable config files, modularity, granularity, choice? Check, all still here.
The interface must be efficient to use (for example tab-completion in the file selector, a feature that is now disabled by default - no typing allowed!)
I agree that the text input box should be there by default, it's what made the old file selector absolutely rock even though it was ugly and not very usable with mouse. There's a bug open on it and it's not WONTFIXed or anything so there's hope.
And for Nautilus - WHY is it so politically incorrect to allow "open in the same window" as a configuration parameter???
You'll be delighted to know there's an option in development version, so it'll be there in 2.8.
Oh, and when the file selector presents a list of files, why is it that GNOME 2.6 is unable to jump to files beginning with "w" when I hit the "w" button?
ctrl-f, though I agree that it too might be sensible thing to have without having to push any keys...
This leaves Gnome chasing the lowest of the "Low Value" users -- grandmas, factory workers, and anyone else who somehow avoided a PC for the last 20 years and have very limited needs (web and email).
No. Gnome is chasing business desktop. Folks who haven't avoided PC's, but are already used to management making decisions for them. Kind of PC's that are already locked down, and where lack of knobs is a big bonus for the administratos who don't need to fix things those knobs break.
I don't buy the "it's different so folks will NEVER be able to learn it" argument, though. Someone made a good point with "it looks different enough you immediately expect it to behave differently", and even some of us Unix geeks prefer it, the knobs are down there in command line if you ever need them, no need to have 'em at top.
Does Gnome have such a simple checkbox, that would remove all objections?
YES! Gnome devs are listening, and there is now a fricking checkbox for you, feel free to find another miniscule non-issue to make a huge noise over, and stop FUDing about this one.
Turning gconf-editor "more graphical" without reducing the amount of options it can handle would just turn it even harder to use.
Separate, "advanced preferences" application is what's needed here, not dumbing down the editor, and there already are few of those, gtweakui and gnome-extra-settings for example.
First reusable orbital vehicle that could deliver cargo: America - the space shuttle
Space shuttle is not reusable. Sure, it was intended to be one, but that's not how it turned out.
Something that basically needs to be broken to pieces and rebuilt before it can be used again does not qualify as "reusable" by any stretch of imagination.
No, you didn't miss that part, because it's not there. You did, however, miss the old (and correct) saying about winning side writing the history.
Oh, and this may not be in books yet, but last time America took over other countries by military force to spread their way of life happened in 2001-2003, you might have heard about these small countries called "Afghanistan" and "Iraq".
if i had the money... i'd do it in a heart beat... talk about ridiculously cool. what besides going to Mars (which won't happen for 20 more years atleast) would top it?
Well, lots of things would beat a single orbit around the moon. Say, actual moon base, longer-term stay on larger space habitat, could you imagine living in a hollowed-out, 10km diameter asteroid?
Stuff on Earth (well, in Earth) that would get close, underwater resort in a beautiful location. Maybe even mobile one... big ass yacht might be boring but big ass underwater "yacht"? Count me in!
You can keep it, I won't touch iTunes with a ten-foot pole ever again.
Maybe it fits nicely and works well in OS X, but the Windows version of iTunes is ugly, looks and behaves differently than any other app in the desktop, and same goes for running it in Linux. That's matter of taste, of course, the real problem is that it's SLOW, I mean, changing a song takes about a second on 2GHz machine, what the hell are they smoking?
If you like the dynamic playlists of iTunes and have any geek blood left in you, try wxMusik, what could possibly beat doing SQL queries into your music library?