Having lived in NY when it wasn't - 1970s -> 1980s - I actually prefer it this way. You can keep, just not bare and conceal.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to recall handguns being banned in New York, unless one was involved in the diamond trade. As for the rest, New York (the state) has some of the most restrictive, and quite frankly unnecessarily, gun laws in the USA.
No, I'm afraid you're mistaken in your recollections of Newton's Second Law. There are many ways to express it mathematically:
Force=mass*acceleration (note: both Force and acceleration are vectors, while mass is a scalar)
Force=dp/dt (differential change in momentum with respect to time)
Perhaps you were confusing force with kinetic energy:
T=(1/2)mass*(velocity^2)
Consider studying more physics and someday others will call you an "actual physicist" too.
I guess that I'm one of those people you don't get then. My own reason for refusing to start the LOTR trilogy (having focussed more on Asimov's _Foundation_ trilogy/series in my youth) until after I've seen all three LOTR movies is so that I can actually enjoy the movies without criticizing them for the parts that were necessarily left out.
I learned to do this after reading and thouroughly enjoying Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Oddessey II as a boy, then seeing the total hack job that Hollywood did to such a great story years later. All of my favorite parts, and many of my favorite characters didn't even appear in the movie version.
Don't blame "the MTV Generation" rather blame Hollywood for their stupid rules which apparently constrain artists like Peter Jackson. It sounds as if he's forbidden from releasing a movie much longer than three hours long. This is a shame as more time is apparently needed to do LOTR justice on the silver screen.
The reason that the Uranium-235 gun-type bomb, used on Hiroshima, was never tested prior to use, was that its workings were generally regarded as simple, and virtually fool-proof. In contrast, the Plutonium core implosion bomb design detonated at Alamagordo and over Nagasaki, required a great deal of high-precision engineering, and a lot of tricky physics regarding the implosion shockwave generated by the conventional explosives surrounding the plutonium core. With so many potential points of failure, the Army wanted a test of the design, prior to including it in the arsenal.
The yield of the largest Soviet Thermonuclear test was 50 Megatons. However, the US, which was estimating Soviet bomb yield via analysis of fallout particles, estimated the yield at 57 Megatons. Since the Cold War was on, the Soviets weren't about to tell the Americans that they overestimated.
The yield of the largest US test was 15 Megatons, this was the Castle Bravo shot, detonating the first "dry Hydrogen" bomb on the Southern end of Bikini in 1954. Previous thermonuclear bombs needed to be filled, and topped off during the bomber flight, with liquid deuterium. The bomb used in Castle Bravo, named Shrimp, used Lithium Deuteride, a dry powder, instead of liquid deuterium. This made it much easier to store, transport and arm than earlier thermonuclear bombs.
First of all, I've never served in any branch of the military, much less combat. However, having played my share of first person shooters, I really must say that it's poor training for actual infantry operations, etc. The main problem is that when you're playing a FPS, your not moving, and not keeping track of what's exposed to incoming fire.
In contrast, paintball teaches all of the same skills of small unit infantry combat as FPS, and in addition, you train your "muscle memory" in regards to shouldering your gun (yeah, the military call 'em rifles, but I have trouble calling my paintball gun a "marker."), aiming, coordinating movement and taking cover from incoming fire.
If the US military's game, I'm sure there are quite a few weekend rec ball players out there who wouldn't mind playing the part of the Iraqi Army on some huge paintball field in West Texas or Arizona. However, this scenario risks the possibility that a rag-tag band of college paintball geeks totally decimate the 4th Infantry, so I could see why the military might not want to go for this.
Re:Starve record companies, not artists.
on
Chained Melodies
·
· Score: 1
Why should we even care about the RIAA's charts? They are only one of many means of marketing the music that the music industry wants to sell. The only reason that radio is still important is that it's cheap to own a radio, and therefore most people do. When the internet is equally as cheap to access, it will become the dominant means of information distribution.
For example, if my MP3 player automatically searched for new tracks from the artists that I've told it I like, and automatically updated itself with these tracks. I'd have no reason to listen to the radio for "new music."
I expect radio, particularly FM radio, to be the continuing pawn of the music industry until it dies. If we want to see the revolution in new music and new distribution, we have to build the distribution networks and outlets ourselves.
Both Jerimiah and The Stand owe quite a bit to George R. Steward's Earth Abides. EA was first published in 1949 and tells the story of a 1950's America ravaged by a new viral plague that spares only a few people. Much like The Stand the population cross section of the survivors is completely random. However, Earth Abides is truly a gem when it comes to realism; Steward obviously thought very critically about how a world like this would function, and pulls no punches. He includes everything from population spikes of vermin like rats and mice (caused by the plentiful supply of food left behind in grocery stores) to the psychological effects of a culture developed mainly on scavenging all needed items from a past technology level they can't fully re-create.
For all of this though, Steward tells a very moving story full of complex human characters that one can relate to. His future is "struggling with hope," but that hope is definitely still there. Well worth the read, if you have any interest in this sort of plot line. (I usually don't and enjoyed it immensely.)
I won't argue that this technology is useful for hard drives; obviously everyone likes larger hard drives. However, you miss the point when you advocate merely providing a constant power source. OK, that solution works somewhat for today, if you're using a desktop or a server-type system. For laptops and portables, however, "Spintronics" would be a real boon: zero boot time, zero latency when returning from sleep mode and no power consumption while in sleep mode. As a laptop user, I'd pay for those features.
After reading on the Phoenix Project website that they plan to use liquid hydrogen (as opposed to hydrogen fuel cells) their claim of increased safety lacks merit. We have only to look at the Challenger catastrophe to realize that liquid hydrogen is an extremely volatile and flammable element. Substituting one highly flammable fuel for another does not increase safety.
I hate commercials on TV, but they have to pay for the content. Therefore, I stopped watching, but I don't complain about it - there's no point. Who likes popups? You could use technology to circumvent them, but this is unethical at best.
Unethical? What about the fact that I'm the one paying to download their advertisement? Since I'm the one paying for my connection to the Internet, and all of the traffic on that connection, I have the right to decide what content is appropriate on that connection. If I decide to block useless ads and popups that's entirely my right.
In general, I think that companies which try all of these very annoying advertising strategies are ultimately wasting their time and money. They should go read the Cluetrain Manifesto and get a clue.
I've only ever used CBs in the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois), but my family and scout troop never had a problem finding a quiet channel to use for our own communication. As late as 1999 we used CB communication to assist in keeping our drivers alert and, if we were traveling in a convoy of vehicles, to keep everybody in one group on the road.
My experience has always been that the "dirty, foul-mouthed truckers" (who also run hidiously overpowered, illegally amplified CBs) tend to concentrate around CB channel 19. If you go a couple channels either way on the dial, you'll find a nice quiet station, with at most a couple people talking on it. BTW, channel 9 is the emergency channel, usually monitored by the State Highway Patrol, so don't use it unless you really have an emergency!
You might be sleeping comfortably one night when suddenly your sleep is disturbed by
a mosquito biting you. If you have strong worldly concern, strong desire for comfort, you
will be very annoyed at being bitten by the mosquito. Just being bitten, by just one
mosquito. It is nothing dangerous, nothing that can cause any serious disease.
Actually, this is totally incorrect in some parts of the world. The Anopheles mosquito carries Malaria, and transmits it to humans when it bites them. Also, mosquitoes are known to carry other diseases such as West Nile Virus. While I do agree with many of the tenets of Buddhism, this statement is ironic in light of the fact that many of the world's large Buddhist populations live in areas where malaria is prevalent (e.g. India, Indonesia, and SE Asia.
#3) An ICBM is not designed to loft a large-size payload. A set of MIRVs, while very heavy, is relatively
compact.
#4) More to the point, an ICBM is not designed to deliver a payload to space. It is designed to deliver a payload to earth. Why do you think that Alan Shepard's flight lasted only 15 minutes? Because he was sitting on top of a Redstone ICBM.
First of all, the Redstone rocket, used in the first two Mercury missions was not an ICBM, prior to its use by NASA, the Redstone was referred to as the "tactical Redstone," meaning that it was a tactical (deployed on, or close to, the battlefield) rather than a strategic ICBM.
However, both the Atlas rocket, used by John Glenn's and later Mercury flights, and the Titan II rocket used for the Gemini missions were originally designed as ICBMs. The Titan II's on-board computer even included the trajectory necessary to launch a Gemini capsule into space as one of its standard pre-programmed trajectories. To say that "ICBMs are not designed to deliver payloads to orbit" is grossly inaccurate.
If you look at the way that things have been going lately with regards to content distribution, it's easy to imagine
precipitous and draconian scenarios involving unreasonable restrictions for set-top boxes. Take, for example,
"standard" set-top boxes such as Tivo and ReplayTV. What would happen if conservative legislators passed a law
requiring manufacturers of those devices to screen programs against a "black list" and refuse to show certain
material?
If the US legislature ever passed such a law civil libertarians would sue to have it revoked for being in blatant violation of the First Amendment. While it's true that Free Speech is facing a challenge from coporate power right now, the battle is neither won or lost yet, but is in the process of being fought. If history is any guide, the battle to preserve Free Speech is pretty much never ending. However, the Supreme Court has a very good track record of maintaining the sanctity of the First Amendment.
Congress can pass all the laws they want, but ultimately, only the Constitutional ones stick on the books (or the ones whose Constitutionality remains unchallenged.)
Yeah, the new machines can all boot from their CD-ROMs. However, one of the principal benefits of linux is (was?) that it ran on just about anything from an old 386 on up to the latest and greatest systems. Unless something is done to support an alternative for "vintage" hardware, linux has lost one of its advantages of fitting a kernel on a floppy and booting it on virtually any system. This feature is near to my heart, as most of my systems are now very geriatric (486/75, Pentium 150, 166, Cyrix 233, and the latest, a Pentium III/500)
I recall a documentary on PBS a number of years ago that dealt with the effects of swing-shift work on employees. IIRC, it was an episode of either NOVA or The Brain.
The reserchers were looking specifically at workers in a mid-western mining operation (I think it was a Bauxite strip-mine). The results of the study showed that the workers were more alert, and slept less on the job if their shifts were rotated in the order days, afternoons, midnights, days, rather than the industry standard days, midnights, afternoons. This "new" shift rotation pattern caused productivity at the mine to jump by 22%, which caught the attention of Management. The workers were happy that they were getting better sleep and the accident rate at the mine dropped sharply.
The researchers also found that lengthening the amount of time spent in each segment of the cycle to 3 or 4 weeks, rather than the usual 2 weeks, also improved the efficiency and restedness of the workers.
When I was entering college (1993), my father advised me to keep up with my daily sleep, since "you can't regain the sleep that you lose." His college education was in biology and human physiology, back in the late 1960's, so the information is potentially that old. I suspect that medical researcher's have known something about this phenomenon for years, and that this is just a continution or follow up study.
Hopefully though, people, especially academia and the technology fields will start taking this seriously, and try to accomodate the fact that we need adequate sleep (and a little recreation) to function at optimum levels of congnition and mental efficiency.
"The fact that Corel is so badly fucked is due to Linux. It just happens that Corel used to work under realworld principles of making money, whereas the
opensource companies have been fortunate enough to have opensource rules, where you'll make money for services about 10 years in the future, and
now that it is losing money, it is judged by those principles; Corel should get out now before it gets screwed any more."
Corel was getting pretty badly bloodied by Microsoft (and others, e.g. Adobe) long before it ever got involved with Linux. As I recall, back about 1997 or so, capturing the Linux market was supposed to halt the decline of Corel, after Word Perfect Office pretty much lost out to MS Office. It's too bad too. Word Perfect was originally the best word processing app on the planet, but Microsoft pretty much stole its basic UI and prceeded to crush any company that owned Word Perfect (Word Perfect, Novell, Corel) by undercutting its prices and bundling Office with Windows for free. I hope that Corel or someone else continues to Support Word Perfect 8 for Linux, at least, since it's one of the better word processing apps for Linux. (Yeah, EMACS might be more powerful as an editor, but always formatting in TeX sucks!)
Back when the US was busy blowing up bin Laden's empty camp in Pakistan and pharmaceutical factories in Sudan, I was talking with one of my friends who had been in the Navy regarding the events. He was complaining about the high cost of such cruise missile attacks. I pointed out that the guidance system was the most expensive part and making it reusable would save the military millions of $$$. However, according to my friend, the military is more concerned that the enemy would come into possession of the missile's electronics than the cost of disposable missiles. The fear is that a missile could be shot down on it's return leg. Thus it's far better to frag the electronics along with the warhead.
I know that orbits and plans are not that simple, Way way more complex, and mathmatical.
Yes, they are, I was giving the "executive summary" since I was pressed for time, and both of my orbital dynamics and mechanics textbooks are in storage. If you'd like a source, check out Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars or the Mars Society's website
Due to the configuration of their orbits, and the fact that the Martian year is roughly twice that of Earth's, a launch window to Mars opens every two years. The actual trip takes around 6 months, one way. Thus, a typical manned mission would take 6 months getting to Mars, spend 18 months exploring the Martian surface while waiting for their return launch wind ow to open, and 6 months to travel back to Earth.
I think that we need to get back to older attitudes regarding death, i.e. it happens and it's inevitable. American culture, in particular is very squeamish about the topic of natural death and dying (as opposed to violent death, which we splatter on our TV and theater screens nightly). Really, there comes a point when the human body can no longer repair itself. At that point, the person should have the option of going into a hospice program to manage any pain that they have, and die naturally with a minimum amount of suffering for both them and their families.
[...]and THEN a possible sea change in DC politics to a more corp. friendly 'hands off business' environment next Jan. So don't hold your breath.
The last big anti-trust break-up was AT&T, which took place IIRC in 1984. Ronald Reagan, conservative, fan of "trickle down" economics, and friend to Big Business was in office at the time. The other great "trust buster" was Theodore Roosevelt. Under his Republican administration, the railroad monopolies were broken, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted.
Based on a reading of history, I'd say that Microsoft has more to fear from the Republicans than it does from the Democrats. Since this lawsuit was pursued by a Democratic administration, Microsoft doesn't have a political prayer. Keep in mind, also, that the Judicial branch is at least nominally separate from the Executive branch. Once the case has been set in motion, a new president can't "call a halt" to the case, especially if it is an appeal.
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Having lived in NY when it wasn't - 1970s -> 1980s - I actually prefer it this way. You can keep, just not bare and conceal.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to recall handguns being banned in New York, unless one was involved in the diamond trade. As for the rest, New York (the state) has some of the most restrictive, and quite frankly unnecessarily, gun laws in the USA.
No, I'm afraid you're mistaken in your recollections of Newton's Second Law. There are many ways to express it mathematically:
Force=mass*acceleration (note: both Force and acceleration are vectors, while mass is a scalar)
Force=dp/dt (differential change in momentum with respect to time)
Perhaps you were confusing force with kinetic energy:
T=(1/2)mass*(velocity^2)
Consider studying more physics and someday others will call you an "actual physicist" too.
I guess that I'm one of those people you don't get then. My own reason for refusing to start the LOTR trilogy (having focussed more on Asimov's _Foundation_ trilogy/series in my youth) until after I've seen all three LOTR movies is so that I can actually enjoy the movies without criticizing them for the parts that were necessarily left out.
I learned to do this after reading and thouroughly enjoying Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Oddessey II as a boy, then seeing the total hack job that Hollywood did to such a great story years later. All of my favorite parts, and many of my favorite characters didn't even appear in the movie version.
Don't blame "the MTV Generation" rather blame Hollywood for their stupid rules which apparently constrain artists like Peter Jackson. It sounds as if he's forbidden from releasing a movie much longer than three hours long. This is a shame as more time is apparently needed to do LOTR justice on the silver screen.
The reason that the Uranium-235 gun-type bomb, used on Hiroshima, was never tested prior to use, was that its workings were generally regarded as simple, and virtually fool-proof. In contrast, the Plutonium core implosion bomb design detonated at Alamagordo and over Nagasaki, required a great deal of high-precision engineering, and a lot of tricky physics regarding the implosion shockwave generated by the conventional explosives surrounding the plutonium core. With so many potential points of failure, the Army wanted a test of the design, prior to including it in the arsenal.
The yield of the largest Soviet Thermonuclear test was 50 Megatons. However, the US, which was estimating Soviet bomb yield via analysis of fallout particles, estimated the yield at 57 Megatons. Since the Cold War was on, the Soviets weren't about to tell the Americans that they overestimated.
The yield of the largest US test was 15 Megatons, this was the Castle Bravo shot, detonating the first "dry Hydrogen" bomb on the Southern end of Bikini in 1954. Previous thermonuclear bombs needed to be filled, and topped off during the bomber flight, with liquid deuterium. The bomb used in Castle Bravo, named Shrimp, used Lithium Deuteride, a dry powder, instead of liquid deuterium. This made it much easier to store, transport and arm than earlier thermonuclear bombs.
First of all, I've never served in any branch of the military, much less combat. However, having played my share of first person shooters, I really must say that it's poor training for actual infantry operations, etc. The main problem is that when you're playing a FPS, your not moving, and not keeping track of what's exposed to incoming fire.
In contrast, paintball teaches all of the same skills of small unit infantry combat as FPS, and in addition, you train your "muscle memory" in regards to shouldering your gun (yeah, the military call 'em rifles, but I have trouble calling my paintball gun a "marker."), aiming, coordinating movement and taking cover from incoming fire.
If the US military's game, I'm sure there are quite a few weekend rec ball players out there who wouldn't mind playing the part of the Iraqi Army on some huge paintball field in West Texas or Arizona. However, this scenario risks the possibility that a rag-tag band of college paintball geeks totally decimate the 4th Infantry, so I could see why the military might not want to go for this.
Why should we even care about the RIAA's charts? They are only one of many means of marketing the music that the music industry wants to sell. The only reason that radio is still important is that it's cheap to own a radio, and therefore most people do. When the internet is equally as cheap to access, it will become the dominant means of information distribution.
For example, if my MP3 player automatically searched for new tracks from the artists that I've told it I like, and automatically updated itself with these tracks. I'd have no reason to listen to the radio for "new music."
I expect radio, particularly FM radio, to be the continuing pawn of the music industry until it dies. If we want to see the revolution in new music and new distribution, we have to build the distribution networks and outlets ourselves.
Both Jerimiah and The Stand owe quite a bit to George R. Steward's Earth Abides . EA was first published in 1949 and tells the story of a 1950's America ravaged by a new viral plague that spares only a few people. Much like The Stand the population cross section of the survivors is completely random. However, Earth Abides is truly a gem when it comes to realism; Steward obviously thought very critically about how a world like this would function, and pulls no punches. He includes everything from population spikes of vermin like rats and mice (caused by the plentiful supply of food left behind in grocery stores) to the psychological effects of a culture developed mainly on scavenging all needed items from a past technology level they can't fully re-create.
For all of this though, Steward tells a very moving story full of complex human characters that one can relate to. His future is "struggling with hope," but that hope is definitely still there. Well worth the read, if you have any interest in this sort of plot line. (I usually don't and enjoyed it immensely.)
I won't argue that this technology is useful for hard drives; obviously everyone likes larger hard drives. However, you miss the point when you advocate merely providing a constant power source. OK, that solution works somewhat for today, if you're using a desktop or a server-type system. For laptops and portables, however, "Spintronics" would be a real boon: zero boot time, zero latency when returning from sleep mode and no power consumption while in sleep mode. As a laptop user, I'd pay for those features.
After reading on the Phoenix Project website that they plan to use liquid hydrogen (as opposed to hydrogen fuel cells) their claim of increased safety lacks merit. We have only to look at the Challenger catastrophe to realize that liquid hydrogen is an extremely volatile and flammable element. Substituting one highly flammable fuel for another does not increase safety.
I hate commercials on TV, but they have to pay for the content. Therefore, I stopped watching, but I don't complain about it - there's no point. Who likes popups? You could use technology to circumvent them, but this is unethical at best.
Unethical? What about the fact that I'm the one paying to download their advertisement? Since I'm the one paying for my connection to the Internet, and all of the traffic on that connection, I have the right to decide what content is appropriate on that connection. If I decide to block useless ads and popups that's entirely my right.
In general, I think that companies which try all of these very annoying advertising strategies are ultimately wasting their time and money. They should go read the Cluetrain Manifesto and get a clue.
I've only ever used CBs in the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois), but my family and scout troop never had a problem finding a quiet channel to use for our own communication. As late as 1999 we used CB communication to assist in keeping our drivers alert and, if we were traveling in a convoy of vehicles, to keep everybody in one group on the road.
My experience has always been that the "dirty, foul-mouthed truckers" (who also run hidiously overpowered, illegally amplified CBs) tend to concentrate around CB channel 19. If you go a couple channels either way on the dial, you'll find a nice quiet station, with at most a couple people talking on it. BTW, channel 9 is the emergency channel, usually monitored by the State Highway Patrol, so don't use it unless you really have an emergency!
You might be sleeping comfortably one night when suddenly your sleep is disturbed by a mosquito biting you. If you have strong worldly concern, strong desire for comfort, you will be very annoyed at being bitten by the mosquito. Just being bitten, by just one mosquito. It is nothing dangerous, nothing that can cause any serious disease.
Actually, this is totally incorrect in some parts of the world. The Anopheles mosquito carries Malaria, and transmits it to humans when it bites them. Also, mosquitoes are known to carry other diseases such as West Nile Virus. While I do agree with many of the tenets of Buddhism, this statement is ironic in light of the fact that many of the world's large Buddhist populations live in areas where malaria is prevalent (e.g. India, Indonesia, and SE Asia.
#3) An ICBM is not designed to loft a large-size payload. A set of MIRVs, while very heavy, is relatively compact.
#4) More to the point, an ICBM is not designed to deliver a payload to space. It is designed to deliver a payload to earth. Why do you think that Alan Shepard's flight lasted only 15 minutes? Because he was sitting on top of a Redstone ICBM.
First of all, the Redstone rocket, used in the first two Mercury missions was not an ICBM, prior to its use by NASA, the Redstone was referred to as the "tactical Redstone," meaning that it was a tactical (deployed on, or close to, the battlefield) rather than a strategic ICBM.
However, both the Atlas rocket, used by John Glenn's and later Mercury flights, and the Titan II rocket used for the Gemini missions were originally designed as ICBMs. The Titan II's on-board computer even included the trajectory necessary to launch a Gemini capsule into space as one of its standard pre-programmed trajectories. To say that "ICBMs are not designed to deliver payloads to orbit" is grossly inaccurate.
If the US legislature ever passed such a law civil libertarians would sue to have it revoked for being in blatant violation of the First Amendment. While it's true that Free Speech is facing a challenge from coporate power right now, the battle is neither won or lost yet, but is in the process of being fought. If history is any guide, the battle to preserve Free Speech is pretty much never ending. However, the Supreme Court has a very good track record of maintaining the sanctity of the First Amendment.
Congress can pass all the laws they want, but ultimately, only the Constitutional ones stick on the books (or the ones whose Constitutionality remains unchallenged.)
Yeah, the new machines can all boot from their CD-ROMs. However, one of the principal benefits of linux is (was?) that it ran on just about anything from an old 386 on up to the latest and greatest systems. Unless something is done to support an alternative for "vintage" hardware, linux has lost one of its advantages of fitting a kernel on a floppy and booting it on virtually any system. This feature is near to my heart, as most of my systems are now very geriatric (486/75, Pentium 150, 166, Cyrix 233, and the latest, a Pentium III/500)
I recall a documentary on PBS a number of years ago that dealt with the effects of swing-shift work on employees. IIRC, it was an episode of either NOVA or The Brain.
The reserchers were looking specifically at workers in a mid-western mining operation (I think it was a Bauxite strip-mine). The results of the study showed that the workers were more alert, and slept less on the job if their shifts were rotated in the order days, afternoons, midnights, days, rather than the industry standard days, midnights, afternoons. This "new" shift rotation pattern caused productivity at the mine to jump by 22%, which caught the attention of Management. The workers were happy that they were getting better sleep and the accident rate at the mine dropped sharply.
The researchers also found that lengthening the amount of time spent in each segment of the cycle to 3 or 4 weeks, rather than the usual 2 weeks, also improved the efficiency and restedness of the workers.
When I was entering college (1993), my father advised me to keep up with my daily sleep, since "you can't regain the sleep that you lose." His college education was in biology and human physiology, back in the late 1960's, so the information is potentially that old. I suspect that medical researcher's have known something about this phenomenon for years, and that this is just a continution or follow up study.
Hopefully though, people, especially academia and the technology fields will start taking this seriously, and try to accomodate the fact that we need adequate sleep (and a little recreation) to function at optimum levels of congnition and mental efficiency.
"The fact that Corel is so badly fucked is due to Linux. It just happens that Corel used to work under realworld principles of making money, whereas the opensource companies have been fortunate enough to have opensource rules, where you'll make money for services about 10 years in the future, and now that it is losing money, it is judged by those principles; Corel should get out now before it gets screwed any more."
Corel was getting pretty badly bloodied by Microsoft (and others, e.g. Adobe) long before it ever got involved with Linux. As I recall, back about 1997 or so, capturing the Linux market was supposed to halt the decline of Corel, after Word Perfect Office pretty much lost out to MS Office. It's too bad too. Word Perfect was originally the best word processing app on the planet, but Microsoft pretty much stole its basic UI and prceeded to crush any company that owned Word Perfect (Word Perfect, Novell, Corel) by undercutting its prices and bundling Office with Windows for free. I hope that Corel or someone else continues to Support Word Perfect 8 for Linux, at least, since it's one of the better word processing apps for Linux. (Yeah, EMACS might be more powerful as an editor, but always formatting in TeX sucks!)
Back when the US was busy blowing up bin Laden's empty camp in Pakistan and pharmaceutical factories in Sudan, I was talking with one of my friends who had been in the Navy regarding the events. He was complaining about the high cost of such cruise missile attacks. I pointed out that the guidance system was the most expensive part and making it reusable would save the military millions of $$$. However, according to my friend, the military is more concerned that the enemy would come into possession of the missile's electronics than the cost of disposable missiles. The fear is that a missile could be shot down on it's return leg. Thus it's far better to frag the electronics along with the warhead.
I know that orbits and plans are not that simple, Way way more complex, and mathmatical.
Yes, they are, I was giving the "executive summary" since I was pressed for time, and both of my orbital dynamics and mechanics textbooks are in storage. If you'd like a source, check out Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars or the Mars Society's website
Due to the configuration of their orbits, and the fact that the Martian year is roughly twice that of Earth's, a launch window to Mars opens every two years. The actual trip takes around 6 months, one way. Thus, a typical manned mission would take 6 months getting to Mars, spend 18 months exploring the Martian surface while waiting for their return launch wind ow to open, and 6 months to travel back to Earth.
I think that we need to get back to older attitudes regarding death, i.e. it happens and it's inevitable. American culture, in particular is very squeamish about the topic of natural death and dying (as opposed to violent death, which we splatter on our TV and theater screens nightly). Really, there comes a point when the human body can no longer repair itself. At that point, the person should have the option of going into a hospice program to manage any pain that they have, and die naturally with a minimum amount of suffering for both them and their families.
Yes, I've also heard of parted (partition editor).
My friends who use Red Hat (I run Slackware) say that it ships with Red Hat 6.
[...]and THEN a possible sea change in DC politics to a more corp. friendly 'hands off business' environment next Jan. So don't hold your breath.
The last big anti-trust break-up was AT&T, which took place IIRC in 1984. Ronald Reagan, conservative, fan of "trickle down" economics, and friend to Big Business was in office at the time. The other great "trust buster" was Theodore Roosevelt. Under his Republican administration, the railroad monopolies were broken, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted.
Based on a reading of history, I'd say that Microsoft has more to fear from the Republicans than it does from the Democrats. Since this lawsuit was pursued by a Democratic administration, Microsoft doesn't have a political prayer. Keep in mind, also, that the Judicial branch is at least nominally separate from the Executive branch. Once the case has been set in motion, a new president can't "call a halt" to the case, especially if it is an appeal.