You do realize that there's no such thing as "white light", that what we perceive as "white" is actually a combination of colours.
What this thing does is reflecting only light from three narrow wavelength bands in Red, Green and Blue, and absorbing all the other colours. This also means that, unlike what is written in the article, this screen DOES reflect part of the white light from other light-sources, but only that small part which is at the same wavelengths as the R, G and B from the projectors.
Since the project emits 100% of its light in those bands, and ambient light consists of maybe 99% light outside those bands.
The screen appears black because only 1% of ambient light is reflected (dunno if it's really 1%, but that's the theory of it)
Okay, let us start with the beginning: A) Do you have other users using your system (and I don't mean your hypothetical non-geek girlfriend) B) Can you trust these users not to run this kind of thing?
If (A) = Yes and (B) = No : If you are, i think you need to learn a bit more about Linux very very urgently, being sysadmin to a "public" server is not something to undertake lightly.
In all other cases : relax, you're unlikely to get hit by this exploit at short notice. If you are running a standard distribution, check for available updates for that distro, if you are running something like Gentoo, compiling a fixed kernel shouldn't be too difficult.
In short : anyone who is truly at direct risk from this should already know enough to react appropriately. This is a *local* exploit, so script-kiddies cannot 0wn your machine using this across the internet, unless they've already broken into the machine. Even if they have, the worst they can do is crash it, they cannot give themselves elevated privileges and do any real damage.
And about the Windows "Update": If this were a Windows issue, it would probably be classed "Like, totally non-critical" and be fixed months later in a fixpack, as no remote exploit or privilege escalation is involved...
Yep, and they were off by a factor 20, whereas the Venus method allowed 18th century astronomers to calculate the distance to within about 10% of the correct value.
Let me see : Mandrake are putting out a software package that contains more software then Microsoft's entire product portfolio, they're doing it at a much, much lower price then Microsoft, *and* they're making a profit doing so...
MS couldn't produce Notepad for the cost Mandrake has producing MDK-linux, can you say "commoditisation"? Then you might realise why Microsoft is running shit-scared of Linux...
Open Source is, for Mandrake, truly a profitable industry, because they are making a (small, but real) profit, the big profits in this case go to the purchasers of Linux, who don't have to shell out oodles of cash again and again for what is, in essence, a non-core expense for anybody not directly in the software-business. The profits aren't gone, they're just elsewhere...
Pray tell me, how do you get an old, donated scanner to work under WindowsXP when the only drivers that exist are Windows98-drivers which won't work under XP?
Answer (well, in my case anyway): attach the scanner to a linux-box, access it using Sane and use the TWAIN-sane frontend under Windows to access the scanner on the windows box...
While new hardware tends to be better supported under Windows because the producers write drivers for it, old hardware tends to be *better* supported under Linux.
No, but they are way way more spherical than any pebbles on earth.
Secondly, it isn't random physical phenomena we're talking about here.
Yes it is, rocky object colliding with each other in the wind is about as random as it gets...
Third, why do you assume the rock fragments were of variable size and shape?
Because it is the most logical starting point, I mean, why wouldn't they be variable (By this, I mean "considerably more variable than we see in the spherules", not "rocks smaller than an atom to larger than mount Everest".
As we can plainly see, there is an abundance of material on the surface of Mars that is neither similar in size or shape.
Indeed there are, but these spherules are inside the layered material and are eroding out of it (presumably because they are made out of tougher material than the surrounding stuff), so the other stuff lying around is less relevant (and probably mostly rocks thrown out by the many meteroite impacts in the neighbourhood, or meteorites themselves).
similarly sized particles are going to behave similarly as the conditions of the surface change
I agree, but this only explains (more or less) why they would all be similar in size, it doesn't explain the spherical nature (they may not be perfectly spherical, but they are very close)
Nobody is shouting anything, and I fail to see how mysticism plays any role here whatsoever
I'm sorry, this was just a reaction to your short and pretty "handwavy" answer to my previous post. The frog was a kind of CowboyNealish and feeble attempt at humor.
The differences between the planets is anything but minor.
Here we disagree, while I agree that they are not the same, they are not off by a huge amount, meaning that the physics will act more or less the same, which to me means that if you propose a mechanism that acts fundamentally different then it does on earth, you should be prepared to give some rasoning beyond "well, it ain't exactly the same there".
Moreover, your depiction of the processes that take place here on Earth is similarly flawed... pebbles don't form in streams at the kind of altitudes that are remotely comparable to Mars.
Again, I disagree with the "are not remotely comparable".
If you're going to throw stones at the conjectures others have on geological processes on other planets, it would behoove you to have a better grasp on those that take place on your own.
I'm sorry, are you saying no pebbles are formed in mountain rivers? Or are we again diagreeing on what constitute "comparable surroundings"? I will concede that we cannot rule out that these objects were formed in a way similar to what you describe, I would argue that, excluding the frog joke, my other possible explanations are considerably more likely...
Anyway, the spectrometric data from the rovers should provide good evidence of the actual formation process, so this will all likely be resolved in a couple of months
Please explain to me how a basically random physical phenomenon operating on rock fragments of variable size & shape will result in the formation of perfectly spherical objects which are all very close to each other in size?
Answer : it wouldn't
Shouting "but this is Mars, you can't just compare it to Earth" isn't going to help, we're talking physics here, not some kind of mysticism...
It's not because the planet is a little different from Earth (and let's face it : the differences are relatively minor, with gravity, air pressure, temperature and chemical composition actually being very very close to Earth's):
Gravity: 1/3 of Earth Air Pressure : 1-10% of air pressure in the high mountains (where pebbles form in streams) Temperature : 150-290K on Mars, 250-300K on Earth (again, high up in the mountains) Chemical composition : mainly basaltic rocks, lots of those on Earth too...
Mars is actually the planet which is most like Earth in the whole solar system (not Venus, which is only alike in size, but not in environmental properties).
Simple : the physics isn't different on Mars, so if the physical basis of the processes is understood (which it is in the case of grain & pebble formation), we can know what to expect (which in this case would be relatively similar things).
Besides : have you looked at the pictures? These spherules are not round because of abrasion or erosion, they are clearly round because they formed that way (either as molten droplets solidifying, or through some sort of deposition process). Rounded pebbles are "rounded", not "perfectly spherical" like these spherules.
Until we get info on their chemical composition, we don't know what caused them, but erosion into "spherules" is one of the least likely explanations.
Most likely, in order of decreasing likelyhood: - Solidified droplets of molten rock (from impact or volcano) - Chemical concretions in standing water (above or below ground) - Chemical concretions of biological origin - Eggs of a Martian Rock-frog - wind/water erosion of angular stones
Nope, the bits submitted by Alan Cox were submitted under the GPL, and are his copyright. Since until now the XFree86 license was compatible with the GPL, there was no problem distributing a "program" which contains bits with the XFree86-license and GPL'd bits in one package, but if the license of the XFree86-licensed bits becomes incompatible, the GPL'd bits must be removed.
Alan Cox doesn't have to "request" anything, since he never gave his copyright over to the rest of the Xfree86 people.
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, Mozilla went through a license change and they had to get approval from each and every code author (and had to remove some bits where they couldn't get approval)...
is the advertising clause incompatible with the GPL?
Answer : Yes
More specifically: it is incompatible with clause 6 of the GPL, part of which reads:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
Since their advertising clause is "imposing further restrictions" it is incompatible with the GPL.
Even more, Clause 2 of the GPL itself forbids redistribution of GPL'd code as part of a "Program" which also contains parts with licenses incompatible with the GPL.
Since parts of the current XFree86 are actually licensed under the GPL, the Xfree86 guys have two options: a) remove all GPL-licensed code from XFree86 b) get approval from all authors of GPL-licensed code in XFree86 for a re-licensing of their code.
Considering that Alan Cox has already clearly indicated he will not accept relicensing of his code under something other than the GPL, legally the FXree86 people are already obliged to remove all Alan Cox's code from their relicensed XFree86 before distributing it...
The GPL isn't viral, if they release something which contains parts that are GPL'd, and other parts that are incompatible, those incompatible parts don't become GPL, but they do have to either remove the GPL'd parts, or relicense the incompatible parts under a different, compatible license (which may or may not be the GPL itself).
If they don't, they open themselves up for a lawsuit from the copyright-holders of the GPL'd code (which will probably be the FSF in many cases).
And this is why the Distro's don't want to touch XFree86 4.4, as soon as they distribute it, they themselves are doing the same, illegal, thing that XFree86 itself would be doing, and they would be open to lawsuits...
I know, I just wanted to point out to the guy above me that saying Linux isn't ready for the masses because upgrading to a completely new kernel requires some manual intervention for certain apps to work correctly is at least as silly as what I said.
Pretty much the same argument as upgrading to WinXP for command-line completion (except, of course, that upgrading from Win200 to WinXP costs money, whereas upgrading to a new version of a linux distro doesn't automatically cost anything.)
Yes, it's ready for the masses, but the masses shouldn't be installing their own kernels, they should wait for the distro's to provide them with install CD's, and you can be pretty sure that this stuff wil work there...
Could you please point me to the click-n-drool option button in Windows2000 that allows me to enable command-line completion? What, I have to manually edit the registry? D00d, Windoze isn't ready for the masses...
AFAIK, it stands for "inter", or "in between", as in "the network in between networks" or "the network connecting networks". This assumption appears to be corroborated by the use of the word "intranet" for an "inside" network (where intra == inside)
Yeah, but not even Nokia's engineers could see the difference between original Nokia batteries and the "fake" batteries without opening them up, and official Nokia-dealers were selling these batteries as original Nokia, so Nokia isn't entirely in the clear...
Or maybe landing on another planet 100 million miles away is just bloody difficult. Most other spacecraft have been orbiters, or even just fly-by's, not easy by any means, but considerably easier than landing something onto a planet...
Remember the spectacular successes too : Viking 1&2, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor...
Actually, no. You'd have to wait at least the time to receive *one* character, because that would be the only way to know if you received it or not, so 20 times faster is correct here...
Tolkien had a virulent hate for allegories, and in interview after interview insisted that LOTR is NOT an allegory of any specific event. The only part where he conceded some specific link was the link between the scouring of the Shire and the industrialisation of his home town when he was a child.
Actually, it's JRR Tolkien himself who split up LOTR into 6 "books", which were actually published as 3 volumes. Just open up the paper version of LOTR you undoubtedly have lying around, and you'll see this is the case...
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that there's no such thing as "white light", that what we perceive as "white" is actually a combination of colours.
What this thing does is reflecting only light from three narrow wavelength bands in Red, Green and Blue, and absorbing all the other colours. This also means that, unlike what is written in the article, this screen DOES reflect part of the white light from other light-sources, but only that small part which is at the same wavelengths as the R, G and B from the projectors.
Since the project emits 100% of its light in those bands, and ambient light consists of maybe 99% light outside those bands.
The screen appears black because only 1% of ambient light is reflected (dunno if it's really 1%, but that's the theory of it)
Okay, let us start with the beginning:
A) Do you have other users using your system (and I don't mean your hypothetical non-geek girlfriend)
B) Can you trust these users not to run this kind of thing?
If (A) = Yes and (B) = No : If you are, i think you need to learn a bit more about Linux very very urgently, being sysadmin to a "public" server is not something to undertake lightly.
In all other cases : relax, you're unlikely to get hit by this exploit at short notice. If you are running a standard distribution, check for available updates for that distro, if you are running something like Gentoo, compiling a fixed kernel shouldn't be too difficult.
In short : anyone who is truly at direct risk from this should already know enough to react appropriately. This is a *local* exploit, so script-kiddies cannot 0wn your machine using this across the internet, unless they've already broken into the machine. Even if they have, the worst they can do is crash it, they cannot give themselves elevated privileges and do any real damage.
And about the Windows "Update": If this were a Windows issue, it would probably be classed "Like, totally non-critical" and be fixed months later in a fixpack, as no remote exploit or privilege escalation is involved...
Yep, and they were off by a factor 20, whereas the Venus method allowed 18th century astronomers to calculate the distance to within about 10% of the correct value.
Reference:
Greeks
First thing that came to my mind was to fill in the following in Google:
"johan svendsen" composer
The top two links pointed to a biography of this guy. Links to CD-sales aren't that odd for a musician either I would say...
Let me see : Mandrake are putting out a software package that contains more software then Microsoft's entire product portfolio, they're doing it at a much, much lower price then Microsoft, *and* they're making a profit doing so...
MS couldn't produce Notepad for the cost Mandrake has producing MDK-linux, can you say "commoditisation"? Then you might realise why Microsoft is running shit-scared of Linux...
Open Source is, for Mandrake, truly a profitable industry, because they are making a (small, but real) profit, the big profits in this case go to the purchasers of Linux, who don't have to shell out oodles of cash again and again for what is, in essence, a non-core expense for anybody not directly in the software-business. The profits aren't gone, they're just elsewhere...
Sure you can see it, you just won't "resolve" it. Remember, it'll be visible as a tiny dot of light.
By your reasoning, we shouldn't be able to see any stars, because they are too "small" to see...
A light-emitting or reflecting object against a black background can be visible even if it's very very small...
Pray tell me, how do you get an old, donated scanner to work under WindowsXP when the only drivers that exist are Windows98-drivers which won't work under XP?
Answer (well, in my case anyway): attach the scanner to a linux-box, access it using Sane and use the TWAIN-sane frontend under Windows to access the scanner on the windows box...
While new hardware tends to be better supported under Windows because the producers write drivers for it, old hardware tends to be *better* supported under Linux.
So, this is cuts both ways...
Excellent idea, why don't we start with Cuba? ;-)
No, but they are way way more spherical than any pebbles on earth.
Yes it is, rocky object colliding with each other in the wind is about as random as it gets...
Because it is the most logical starting point, I mean, why wouldn't they be variable (By this, I mean "considerably more variable than we see in the spherules", not "rocks smaller than an atom to larger than mount Everest".
Indeed there are, but these spherules are inside the layered material and are eroding out of it (presumably because they are made out of tougher material than the surrounding stuff), so the other stuff lying around is less relevant (and probably mostly rocks thrown out by the many meteroite impacts in the neighbourhood, or meteorites themselves).
I agree, but this only explains (more or less) why they would all be similar in size, it doesn't explain the spherical nature (they may not be perfectly spherical, but they are very close)
I'm sorry, this was just a reaction to your short and pretty "handwavy" answer to my previous post. The frog was a kind of CowboyNealish and feeble attempt at humor.
Here we disagree, while I agree that they are not the same, they are not off by a huge amount, meaning that the physics will act more or less the same, which to me means that if you propose a mechanism that acts fundamentally different then it does on earth, you should be prepared to give some rasoning beyond "well, it ain't exactly the same there".
Again, I disagree with the "are not remotely comparable".
I'm sorry, are you saying no pebbles are formed in mountain rivers? Or are we again diagreeing on what constitute "comparable surroundings"? I will concede that we cannot rule out that these objects were formed in a way similar to what you describe, I would argue that, excluding the frog joke, my other possible explanations are considerably more likely...
Anyway, the spectrometric data from the rovers should provide good evidence of the actual formation process, so this will all likely be resolved in a couple of months
Please explain to me how a basically random physical phenomenon operating on rock fragments of variable size & shape will result in the formation of perfectly spherical objects which are all very close to each other in size?
Answer : it wouldn't
Shouting "but this is Mars, you can't just compare it to Earth" isn't going to help, we're talking physics here, not some kind of mysticism...
It's not because the planet is a little different from Earth (and let's face it : the differences are relatively minor, with gravity, air pressure, temperature and chemical composition actually being very very close to Earth's):
Gravity: 1/3 of Earth
Air Pressure : 1-10% of air pressure in the high mountains (where pebbles form in streams)
Temperature : 150-290K on Mars, 250-300K on Earth (again, high up in the mountains)
Chemical composition : mainly basaltic rocks, lots of those on Earth too...
Mars is actually the planet which is most like Earth in the whole solar system (not Venus, which is only alike in size, but not in environmental properties).
That's jellyfish, humans are about 70% water (and 30% bullshit...)
Simple : the physics isn't different on Mars, so if the physical basis of the processes is understood (which it is in the case of grain & pebble formation), we can know what to expect (which in this case would be relatively similar things).
Besides : have you looked at the pictures? These spherules are not round because of abrasion or erosion, they are clearly round because they formed that way (either as molten droplets solidifying, or through some sort of deposition process). Rounded pebbles are "rounded", not "perfectly spherical" like these spherules.
Until we get info on their chemical composition, we don't know what caused them, but erosion into "spherules" is one of the least likely explanations.
Most likely, in order of decreasing likelyhood:
- Solidified droplets of molten rock (from impact or volcano)
- Chemical concretions in standing water (above or below ground)
- Chemical concretions of biological origin
- Eggs of a Martian Rock-frog
- wind/water erosion of angular stones
Try this one:
multidesk
Simple, elegant and does what it's supposed to. I can even use it in combination with win2vnc, as it can make windows "sticky"
Nope, the bits submitted by Alan Cox were submitted under the GPL, and are his copyright. Since until now the XFree86 license was compatible with the GPL, there was no problem distributing a "program" which contains bits with the XFree86-license and GPL'd bits in one package, but if the license of the XFree86-licensed bits becomes incompatible, the GPL'd bits must be removed.
Alan Cox doesn't have to "request" anything, since he never gave his copyright over to the rest of the Xfree86 people.
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, Mozilla went through a license change and they had to get approval from each and every code author (and had to remove some bits where they couldn't get approval)...
Answer : Yes
More specifically: it is incompatible with clause 6 of the GPL, part of which reads:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
Since their advertising clause is "imposing further restrictions" it is incompatible with the GPL.
Even more, Clause 2 of the GPL itself forbids redistribution of GPL'd code as part of a "Program" which also contains parts with licenses incompatible with the GPL.
Since parts of the current XFree86 are actually licensed under the GPL, the Xfree86 guys have two options
a) remove all GPL-licensed code from XFree86
b) get approval from all authors of GPL-licensed code in XFree86 for a re-licensing of their code.
Considering that Alan Cox has already clearly indicated he will not accept relicensing of his code under something other than the GPL, legally the FXree86 people are already obliged to remove all Alan Cox's code from their relicensed XFree86 before distributing it...
The GPL isn't viral, if they release something which contains parts that are GPL'd, and other parts that are incompatible, those incompatible parts don't become GPL, but they do have to either remove the GPL'd parts, or relicense the incompatible parts under a different, compatible license (which may or may not be the GPL itself).
If they don't, they open themselves up for a lawsuit from the copyright-holders of the GPL'd code (which will probably be the FSF in many cases).
And this is why the Distro's don't want to touch XFree86 4.4, as soon as they distribute it, they themselves are doing the same, illegal, thing that XFree86 itself would be doing, and they would be open to lawsuits...
I know, I just wanted to point out to the guy above me that saying Linux isn't ready for the masses because upgrading to a completely new kernel requires some manual intervention for certain apps to work correctly is at least as silly as what I said.
Pretty much the same argument as upgrading to WinXP for command-line completion (except, of course, that upgrading from Win200 to WinXP costs money, whereas upgrading to a new version of a linux distro doesn't automatically cost anything.)
Yes, it's ready for the masses, but the masses shouldn't be installing their own kernels, they should wait for the distro's to provide them with install CD's, and you can be pretty sure that this stuff wil work there...
Could you please point me to the click-n-drool option button in Windows2000 that allows me to enable command-line completion? What, I have to manually edit the registry? D00d, Windoze isn't ready for the masses...
Soooo... you wouldn't want me to say he had a MIDI interface connected to the USB Bus of his PC Computer? ;-)
AFAIK, it stands for "inter", or "in between", as in "the network in between networks" or "the network connecting networks". This assumption appears to be corroborated by the use of the word "intranet" for an "inside" network (where intra == inside)
Yeah, but not even Nokia's engineers could see the difference between original Nokia batteries and the "fake" batteries without opening them up, and official Nokia-dealers were selling these batteries as original Nokia, so Nokia isn't entirely in the clear...
Or maybe landing on another planet 100 million miles away is just bloody difficult. Most other spacecraft have been orbiters, or even just fly-by's, not easy by any means, but considerably easier than landing something onto a planet...
Remember the spectacular successes too : Viking 1&2, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor...
Bart
Actually, no. You'd have to wait at least the time to receive *one* character, because that would be the only way to know if you received it or not, so 20 times faster is correct here...
Tolkien had a virulent hate for allegories, and in interview after interview insisted that LOTR is NOT an allegory of any specific event.
The only part where he conceded some specific link was the link between the scouring of the Shire and the industrialisation of his home town when he was a child.
Africa may be many things, but "Cool" isn't one of them. If you want Cool, go to Antarctica...
Actually, it's JRR Tolkien himself who split up LOTR into 6 "books", which were actually published as 3 volumes. Just open up the paper version of LOTR you undoubtedly have lying around, and you'll see this is the case...