Depends on your mindset. You probably wouldn't find it so, since you're used to VS, but a lot of UNIX coders use emacs and are extremely productive. Put them in something like eclipse or VS and their productivity would slow to a crawl.
Personally, I've never learned it - I'm a sysadmin first and a coder second, so I went the vi route. Because of that, I find it hard to use IDE's because I haven't found a single one with vi keybindings.
I've used anjuta, netbeans, VS, and (way back in the day) some of borland's tools. Borland was a good option back in the dos/win3.x days, but I have no idea how it is now. Netbeans runs like crap on my P133 laptop (I'm not blaming netbeans for this, mind you). VS... well, it just feels icky to me... I can't really say why I don't like it, but the interface just bugs me. Anjuta is all right, but lack of vi keybindings always sends me back to vim.
Spend long enough in one particular tool and you'll get used to it and learn to be productive in it (unless it's just horribly broken). I'm sure if I forced myself to use it enough, I'd become a VS wizard. Of course, I do all my programming for UNIX or java so it ain't gonna happen.
Well, look at it this way. Say voyager detects some as-yet unknown phenomenon out there beyond the elliptical. Something like unexpected amounts of interstellar radiation or changes in the solar wind that don't match current expectations. That's good data for physicists. Then, in 2016-2020, when kupier express gets out there with the snowballs, we can compare data. More data never hurts. By the time the kupier express gets there, the voyagers will have reached end of life. I'm assuming the scientists working with it now are very well trained to move into a position where the main job is to decode and interpret probe data. Say, from the kupier express, for example. The equipment and techniques required to tune in on a tiny signal from that far out in space will have that much more time to be fine-tuned. At the moment, I doubt the benefit from transferring these guys to the kupier mission outweighs the benefit from leaving them where they're at. Of course, selling the voyager project off to the ESA or some other space agency that will share the data with the rest of the world would be just as good. Somebody else gets experience playing with the probes, we save $4M/year. Scrapping the voyager project when this part of the mission has been so long anticipated seems like a waste of a good opportunity to me.
IANAA (I am not an accountant) but I used to do the books for my old computer shop, so I know a bit about it. I may be wrong on this one, though. YMMV.
Generally, when you purchase something, it goes down in your books at cost, and stays at the value you purchased it at. Another account keeps track of the depreciation - it's calculated differently depending on what it is, but generally it's a curve. The lowest spot on the curve is at the end of useful life, when the value recorded for the machine minus the depreciation is the amount you've estimated you can salvage it for.
If you're buying a piece of equipment at the end of a lease, it's the same thing. You move it into an asset account at the value of what you purchased it for, and start depreciating it. The main difference here is that you're probably only going to have the machine for a short time, so your depreciation is very fast.
Bear in mind that to people who don't work with accounting methods, they don't make any sense. It's all based on 14th century financial theories and it takes some training to figure out exactly what's what. The methods are standardized though, so it's always roughly the same for every company (barring international differences).
Maybe, but it's not going to be there for years. By keeping up with the voyager probes, we get some of that data _now_ rather than later. Besides, I'm assuming you're talkin' about the pluto-kupier express, which NASA can't seem to decide if they'll really launch, and will be travelling in the plane of the solar system. Voyager 1 (and maybe 2, I'm not sure) is leaving the plane. Who knows, maybe the data supplied by the voyagers will give astronomers new ideas on how the solar system was formed - it's not like we've sent anything as sophisticated as the voyager probes in that direction before.
Read the first link you posted - the guy starts out sounding reasonably intelligent until he starts making assertions without proof and then goes on about how the CIA is used to keep the petrochemical companies on top. No wonder he offers the challenge - people like that never admit they're wrong, no matter what proof you give them.
It's people like that who keep hemp from being considered as a serious crop in the U.S.
In science, you have to back up your theories with evidence, and all your work is under constant peer review. Someone might come out tomorrow proving that your work is incorrect, and have a better theory.
In Christianity, you accept things based on faith. Proof doesn't enter the equation - it can't, since the whole point of the religion is to have faith. Having faith despite proof is what the game's all about.
They're not related! They have nothing in common!
Why the hell do people bring this crap up? Do christians believe they'll convert people by it? Are non-christians just wanting to be assholes? What the hell?
Ack, my bad, I should check my email more often for when people reply to my messages.
Debian doesn't host homepages for package projects. Most of the time, you don't need them - most packages are just one developer, and the package pages on debian supply the minimal amount of information to submit bug reports and whatnot.
X is a huge project though, and this is the web site of the "X Strike Force" - i.e. the guys who maintain the X packages for debian.
You can get to it from debian's site by clicking 'people', scrolling WAY down to Branden Robinson, and clicking on the link to his homepage. You might remember him being mentioned on slashdot when he went up for debian maintainer.
Anyway, it's legit, so I'd say 'straight from the horse's mouth' is pretty accurate. Would be nice if the package page on debian had a link to it though.
Basically, it's just like others have said - they're waiting on sarge to be released. But this is straight from the horses' mouth, so to speak.
It's changed a bit from what it used to be - namely, after sarge being released they were going to wait until the modular version of X was released. They've changed that to say they'll be moving to the monolithic tree and gradually going modular (with a couple exceptions that are modular already in debian).
Note that if you hunt around, they are working on the X.org packaging and testing - it's not in the main repositories, but you can get the beta stuff now if you look for it. Might be something to try on a spare workstation.
Actual dumb terminals often have a connected printer, activated (I assume, given there's only the serial connection to the computer) by escape codes.
The parent was probably referring to one of those. I'm not sure on the mechanics (I'm old enough to have owned junk dumb terminals, but not to have used them in a business setting), but that's the only thing I could imagine he could be talking about.
E-Machines power supplies are flaky, though - back when I used to run a computer shop, I must have had a dozen of 'em before I junked 'em.
In general, you won't see a problem with them - the failure rate is a tad higher than normal, but the chances are still in your favor. Just don't add any electric-happy devices or you're asking for trouble.
Depending on the model, make sure you keep it somewhere cool (i.e. away from heat vents) and where it can get airflow. Some of them have a real heat dissipation problem - HP pavillions and compaqs have the same thing. If you open the case and it's a jumbled mess, then you have a potential meltdown on your hands.
Some of us like gimp. Some of us don't. If you don't like it, change it yourself, submit a feature request, or buy/pirate photoshop and be done with it.
Just pointing out, if you had tried these things in the late 1770's, you would not have been protected under the bill of rights; The constitution wasn't written until the 1780's, and the bill of rights was ratified over the next few years.
Basically, the problem is that if you were able to tweak the settings of your transmitter chip, you could do things the device wasn't manufactured for, some of which may cause interference and whatnot. This is perfectly fine - if you have a license from the FCC for such things, but if you don't, you're SOL. Thus, by making the firmware binary only, it's difficult enough to tweak those parameters that it counts as a manufactured device, just like a toy walkie talkie does, and the manufacturer bears the responsibility for the device. This way you don't have to pay a ton of money for an FCC license just to talk to your access point.
While I agree in principle, these are for wireless cards (I didn't read the article, but that's what the headline says). You can't release the firmware for these things. It's not an issue with the company's secrets or anything, it's FCC regulations.
If you had the firmware source, you could change the frequency and other aspects of the transmitted signal. The FCC doesn't allow manufacturers to make these parameters tweakable.
Back during the imlib mess raster made the decision not to support the GNOME hints (from what I remember - this was years ago). Sawmill became the default window manager, gdk-pixbuf was born, and that was the end of the Enlightenment-GNOME relationship.
I can't say if it's been added back since. Sure, GNOME apps will run on anything, but for the best operation the window manager needs to support GNOME hints.
I only paid mild attention as I couldn't stand DR14+ enlightenment anyway. I had switched to fvwm and then switched to sawmill (which eventually because sawfish over a name dispute).
I'm sure if you look in the GNOME mailing lists for 1999 and 2000 you'll see what I'm talkin' about.
What I miss is the old versions of E, before the overlaying desktops (or whatever they're called). Back in the day I had a lot of people interested in linux just because of E - _nothing_ looked cooler at the time, and not too much does nowdays. I'm running fvwm now but would gladly switch to something like that if it wasn't older than dirt.
The sun is a very large fusion reactor and has no containment whatsoever, other than its own gravity. Magnetic shielding of a sort occurs due to our magnetosphere, and physical shielding occurs because of our atmosphere (IIRC, the ionosphere and ozone layers are crucial in this point).
Most of the fusion designs I've read about (I"m a computer guy, but physics interests me) use magnetic containment in addition to physical shielding. They're also a lot smaller than the sun. The pysical shielding does get bombarded by radiation, but that's what it's there for, really - it gets bombarded instead of the operators.
Generally your worries with radiation are alpha, beta, and gamma rays. Alpha and beta are both stopped easily (paper will stop alpha rays, and tin foil will stop beta rays). I'm not sure how much gamma radiation gets put off by fusion, but we've dealt with that at fission plants and can shield it relatively easily (think concrete and lead - gamma rays are essentially extremely short-wavelength light, and they interact with atomic nuclei). A properly built fusion plant (once we build them) will be perfectly fine to be around during normal operation.
As far as clean and safe, most people are talking about waste products and the possible consequences of accidents. As far as waste, only the containment vessels are dangerous - the metal absorbes neutrons and whatnot and becomes radioactive. So, we have to find a place to bury some steel plates every now and again - not a big deal, unless you're an extreme environmentalist. The fuel waste is helium, which is only dangerous if you try to substitute it for air. With fission, of course, the waste is highly radioactive and there's a lot more of it than there would be with fusion, but not as much as people think - nuclear reactors don't need very much fuel when compared to say, coal or gas plants.
As far as accidents, all designs for fusion reactors I'm aware of are incapable of an explosion. If any factor of the reaction goes wrong - too much fuel, too little fuel, wrong temperature, etc. - the reaction stops. With a fission reactor, the worst case scenario is a meltdown (like chernobyl) or a gas release (can't remember the plant name offhand - it was in the pacific northwest).
We know fusion would be clean and safe because even though we haven't produced any working plants, we know the physics behind it very well. Fusion bombs require fission bombs to start the reaction (thermonuclear bombs are designed this way), so explosions are impossible (although, even fission plants are incapable of exploding like a nuclear bomb - bomb design is very, very different). The waste products from fusion reactors are harmless, except for the shielding, and the shielding isn't going anywhere - unlike the possibility of gas release with archaic fission reactor designs.
Fission is safe - for certain quantities of safe, anyway. Disasters are very unlikely and usually of limited scope - but of course, theoretically it can be extremely nasty when stuff goes wrong. It's certainly cleaner than most of our current technologies and has less environmental impact. But fission can't shake the stigma it has, so we'll likely not develop it much more than we have now. Fusion will be safer and cleaner, but it's not quite here yet so we have to make do.
Everything in japan has corporate decals on it - it's a cultural thing.
I remember walking around in a (pseudo-)mall in okinawa thinking, "I hope this isn't a picture of what america will look like in the future." Marketing men gone mad.
Actually, according to a technet article (yeah, microsoft documentation, I know) from 1996 or so, DVD was just a made-up acronym that didn't stand for anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on your mindset. You probably wouldn't find it so, since you're used to VS, but a lot of UNIX coders use emacs and are extremely productive. Put them in something like eclipse or VS and their productivity would slow to a crawl.
Personally, I've never learned it - I'm a sysadmin first and a coder second, so I went the vi route. Because of that, I find it hard to use IDE's because I haven't found a single one with vi keybindings.
I've used anjuta, netbeans, VS, and (way back in the day) some of borland's tools. Borland was a good option back in the dos/win3.x days, but I have no idea how it is now. Netbeans runs like crap on my P133 laptop (I'm not blaming netbeans for this, mind you). VS... well, it just feels icky to me... I can't really say why I don't like it, but the interface just bugs me. Anjuta is all right, but lack of vi keybindings always sends me back to vim.
Spend long enough in one particular tool and you'll get used to it and learn to be productive in it (unless it's just horribly broken). I'm sure if I forced myself to use it enough, I'd become a VS wizard. Of course, I do all my programming for UNIX or java so it ain't gonna happen.
Well, look at it this way. Say voyager detects some as-yet unknown phenomenon out there beyond the elliptical. Something like unexpected amounts of interstellar radiation or changes in the solar wind that don't match current expectations. That's good data for physicists.
Then, in 2016-2020, when kupier express gets out there with the snowballs, we can compare data. More data never hurts.
By the time the kupier express gets there, the voyagers will have reached end of life. I'm assuming the scientists working with it now are very well trained to move into a position where the main job is to decode and interpret probe data. Say, from the kupier express, for example. The equipment and techniques required to tune in on a tiny signal from that far out in space will have that much more time to be fine-tuned. At the moment, I doubt the benefit from transferring these guys to the kupier mission outweighs the benefit from leaving them where they're at.
Of course, selling the voyager project off to the ESA or some other space agency that will share the data with the rest of the world would be just as good. Somebody else gets experience playing with the probes, we save $4M/year. Scrapping the voyager project when this part of the mission has been so long anticipated seems like a waste of a good opportunity to me.
IANAA (I am not an accountant) but I used to do the books for my old computer shop, so I know a bit about it. I may be wrong on this one, though. YMMV.
Generally, when you purchase something, it goes down in your books at cost, and stays at the value you purchased it at. Another account keeps track of the depreciation - it's calculated differently depending on what it is, but generally it's a curve. The lowest spot on the curve is at the end of useful life, when the value recorded for the machine minus the depreciation is the amount you've estimated you can salvage it for.
If you're buying a piece of equipment at the end of a lease, it's the same thing. You move it into an asset account at the value of what you purchased it for, and start depreciating it. The main difference here is that you're probably only going to have the machine for a short time, so your depreciation is very fast.
Bear in mind that to people who don't work with accounting methods, they don't make any sense. It's all based on 14th century financial theories and it takes some training to figure out exactly what's what. The methods are standardized though, so it's always roughly the same for every company (barring international differences).
Maybe, but it's not going to be there for years. By keeping up with the voyager probes, we get some of that data _now_ rather than later.
Besides, I'm assuming you're talkin' about the pluto-kupier express, which NASA can't seem to decide if they'll really launch, and will be travelling in the plane of the solar system. Voyager 1 (and maybe 2, I'm not sure) is leaving the plane. Who knows, maybe the data supplied by the voyagers will give astronomers new ideas on how the solar system was formed - it's not like we've sent anything as sophisticated as the voyager probes in that direction before.
Except that guy's a nut.
Read the first link you posted - the guy starts out sounding reasonably intelligent until he starts making assertions without proof and then goes on about how the CIA is used to keep the petrochemical companies on top. No wonder he offers the challenge - people like that never admit they're wrong, no matter what proof you give them.
It's people like that who keep hemp from being considered as a serious crop in the U.S.
More like, "You know what would piss off the brits?"
France had good reasons for helping out in the revolutionary war. It certainly wan't altruism.
Think "French and Indian War" here.
Christianity != science
In science, you have to back up your theories with evidence, and all your work is under constant peer review. Someone might come out tomorrow proving that your work is incorrect, and have a better theory.
In Christianity, you accept things based on faith. Proof doesn't enter the equation - it can't, since the whole point of the religion is to have faith. Having faith despite proof is what the game's all about.
They're not related! They have nothing in common!
Why the hell do people bring this crap up? Do christians believe they'll convert people by it? Are non-christians just wanting to be assholes? What the hell?
Drill sergeant.
It moves - right up in your face. After a couple days, everyone jumped right out of bed when Reveille played over the crappy intercom in the hallway.
Nothing like bleeding ears and a faceful of spit to start your day.
Ack, my bad, I should check my email more often for when people reply to my messages.
Debian doesn't host homepages for package projects. Most of the time, you don't need them - most packages are just one developer, and the package pages on debian supply the minimal amount of information to submit bug reports and whatnot.
X is a huge project though, and this is the web site of the "X Strike Force" - i.e. the guys who maintain the X packages for debian.
You can get to it from debian's site by clicking 'people', scrolling WAY down to Branden Robinson, and clicking on the link to his homepage. You might remember him being mentioned on slashdot when he went up for debian maintainer.
Anyway, it's legit, so I'd say 'straight from the horse's mouth' is pretty accurate. Would be nice if the package page on debian had a link to it though.
See here for info on why it's not in unstable.
Basically, it's just like others have said - they're waiting on sarge to be released. But this is straight from the horses' mouth, so to speak.
It's changed a bit from what it used to be - namely, after sarge being released they were going to wait until the modular version of X was released. They've changed that to say they'll be moving to the monolithic tree and gradually going modular (with a couple exceptions that are modular already in debian).
Note that if you hunt around, they are working on the X.org packaging and testing - it's not in the main repositories, but you can get the beta stuff now if you look for it. Might be something to try on a spare workstation.
From the second link:
ASTRO-FOIL reflective foil insulation consists of two layers of polyethylene bubble film sandwiched between two layers of 99.9% pure aluminum foil,
That extra 0.1% is the RFID tags.
Actual dumb terminals often have a connected printer, activated (I assume, given there's only the serial connection to the computer) by escape codes.
The parent was probably referring to one of those. I'm not sure on the mechanics (I'm old enough to have owned junk dumb terminals, but not to have used them in a business setting), but that's the only thing I could imagine he could be talking about.
E-Machines power supplies are flaky, though - back when I used to run a computer shop, I must have had a dozen of 'em before I junked 'em.
In general, you won't see a problem with them - the failure rate is a tad higher than normal, but the chances are still in your favor. Just don't add any electric-happy devices or you're asking for trouble.
Depending on the model, make sure you keep it somewhere cool (i.e. away from heat vents) and where it can get airflow. Some of them have a real heat dissipation problem - HP pavillions and compaqs have the same thing. If you open the case and it's a jumbled mess, then you have a potential meltdown on your hands.
Do you read complete sentences? There's a purpose behind commas and conjunctions.
I believe I said change it yourself, submit a feature request, or use photoshop.
If you can't change it yourself, than obviously that's not the option for you, right?
Who is forcing you?
Some of us like gimp. Some of us don't. If you don't like it, change it yourself, submit a feature request, or buy/pirate photoshop and be done with it.
No, that man is an editor for reason.
It was an in-person interview.
Just pointing out, if you had tried these things in the late 1770's, you would not have been protected under the bill of rights; The constitution wasn't written until the 1780's, and the bill of rights was ratified over the next few years.
Note the poster said the coal mining unions were proud of getting the death toll down to 30/year. In the past it has been much, much higher.
We covered some of the coal mining reforms in a history class I took. Looking references up in google is left as an exercise for the reader.
The madwifi FAQ - they state the reason for the binary only HAL.
The specific regulation is here
Basically, the problem is that if you were able to tweak the settings of your transmitter chip, you could do things the device wasn't manufactured for, some of which may cause interference and whatnot. This is perfectly fine - if you have a license from the FCC for such things, but if you don't, you're SOL. Thus, by making the firmware binary only, it's difficult enough to tweak those parameters that it counts as a manufactured device, just like a toy walkie talkie does, and the manufacturer bears the responsibility for the device. This way you don't have to pay a ton of money for an FCC license just to talk to your access point.
While I agree in principle, these are for wireless cards (I didn't read the article, but that's what the headline says). You can't release the firmware for these things. It's not an issue with the company's secrets or anything, it's FCC regulations.
If you had the firmware source, you could change the frequency and other aspects of the transmitted signal. The FCC doesn't allow manufacturers to make these parameters tweakable.
Back during the imlib mess raster made the decision not to support the GNOME hints (from what I remember - this was years ago). Sawmill became the default window manager, gdk-pixbuf was born, and that was the end of the Enlightenment-GNOME relationship.
I can't say if it's been added back since. Sure, GNOME apps will run on anything, but for the best operation the window manager needs to support GNOME hints.
I only paid mild attention as I couldn't stand DR14+ enlightenment anyway. I had switched to fvwm and then switched to sawmill (which eventually because sawfish over a name dispute).
I'm sure if you look in the GNOME mailing lists for 1999 and 2000 you'll see what I'm talkin' about.
What I miss is the old versions of E, before the overlaying desktops (or whatever they're called). Back in the day I had a lot of people interested in linux just because of E - _nothing_ looked cooler at the time, and not too much does nowdays. I'm running fvwm now but would gladly switch to something like that if it wasn't older than dirt.
The sun is a very large fusion reactor and has no containment whatsoever, other than its own gravity. Magnetic shielding of a sort occurs due to our magnetosphere, and physical shielding occurs because of our atmosphere (IIRC, the ionosphere and ozone layers are crucial in this point).
Most of the fusion designs I've read about (I"m a computer guy, but physics interests me) use magnetic containment in addition to physical shielding. They're also a lot smaller than the sun. The pysical shielding does get bombarded by radiation, but that's what it's there for, really - it gets bombarded instead of the operators.
Generally your worries with radiation are alpha, beta, and gamma rays. Alpha and beta are both stopped easily (paper will stop alpha rays, and tin foil will stop beta rays). I'm not sure how much gamma radiation gets put off by fusion, but we've dealt with that at fission plants and can shield it relatively easily (think concrete and lead - gamma rays are essentially extremely short-wavelength light, and they interact with atomic nuclei). A properly built fusion plant (once we build them) will be perfectly fine to be around during normal operation.
As far as clean and safe, most people are talking about waste products and the possible consequences of accidents. As far as waste, only the containment vessels are dangerous - the metal absorbes neutrons and whatnot and becomes radioactive. So, we have to find a place to bury some steel plates every now and again - not a big deal, unless you're an extreme environmentalist. The fuel waste is helium, which is only dangerous if you try to substitute it for air. With fission, of course, the waste is highly radioactive and there's a lot more of it than there would be with fusion, but not as much as people think - nuclear reactors don't need very much fuel when compared to say, coal or gas plants.
As far as accidents, all designs for fusion reactors I'm aware of are incapable of an explosion. If any factor of the reaction goes wrong - too much fuel, too little fuel, wrong temperature, etc. - the reaction stops. With a fission reactor, the worst case scenario is a meltdown (like chernobyl) or a gas release (can't remember the plant name offhand - it was in the pacific northwest).
We know fusion would be clean and safe because even though we haven't produced any working plants, we know the physics behind it very well. Fusion bombs require fission bombs to start the reaction (thermonuclear bombs are designed this way), so explosions are impossible (although, even fission plants are incapable of exploding like a nuclear bomb - bomb design is very, very different). The waste products from fusion reactors are harmless, except for the shielding, and the shielding isn't going anywhere - unlike the possibility of gas release with archaic fission reactor designs.
Fission is safe - for certain quantities of safe, anyway. Disasters are very unlikely and usually of limited scope - but of course, theoretically it can be extremely nasty when stuff goes wrong. It's certainly cleaner than most of our current technologies and has less environmental impact. But fission can't shake the stigma it has, so we'll likely not develop it much more than we have now. Fusion will be safer and cleaner, but it's not quite here yet so we have to make do.
Nuclear vessels?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Everything in japan has corporate decals on it - it's a cultural thing.
I remember walking around in a (pseudo-)mall in okinawa thinking, "I hope this isn't a picture of what america will look like in the future." Marketing men gone mad.
Actually, according to a technet article (yeah, microsoft documentation, I know) from 1996 or so, DVD was just a made-up acronym that didn't stand for anything.