Mac OS X works well with Windows machines on a network - it will mount Windows shares and you can use shared printers. The other way is just as easy, you can enable Windows file- and printer-sharing with a click in the Sharing control panel of System Preferences. Another option ist an external hard disk - it should be formatted with FAT32, because Mac OS X can read NTFS, but cannot write to it.
IMHO the best anecdote about the different attitudes towards space technology in the U.S. and Russia is the bit about the writing utensils: when early astronauts/kosmonauts found out that ballpoint pens fail in microgravity, the U.S. spent a comparatively large amount of time and money to devise a pen that would actually work in an oribiting spacecraft (the famous "space pen"). The Russians thought about the matter for a moment and decided to use pencils instead.
For clarification, NASA did not develop the space pen, a some company (don't remember which) did that for free, and the Russians now use it, too. At first, the U.S. used pencils, too, but sharpening pencils creates dust which never settles in microgravity, and graphite conducts electricity. That could potentially create problems.
Aside from that, your are right. If I remember correctly, the German air force still has some operational MIG 29s left from the GDR, and those bird do have a reputation of being very robust and reliable (for a fighter aircraft).
You are absolutely correct. Although there is water on the moon, it is innaccesable. It would be much easier to get it from Jupiter, obviously. 120 million miles of space is a much smaller barrier than 1 mile of rock. I don't want there to be the same barrier between us though, so please reply and tell me what you think of this.
There could be easily accessible water on the moon, ice from comet impacts at the bottom of craters that are never exposed to sunlight. But this isn't proven yet and it would not be much in any case. If I remember correctly, the Saturn rings are mostly ice - that would be the easiest way to get lots of water, if there are big, soldid chunks of it. You could fix a large, nuclear-powered drive to it - that could use part of the ice chunk as reaction mass to move it to any place in the solar system you like.
If I remember correctly, Jupiter-size gas giants usually don't have a solid surface, because they mostly consist of light gases like hydrogen and helium - those are the most abundant elements ind the universe. Earth and the other small planets in the solarsystem have lost most of these light elements, because their gravity is not high enough to prevent them escaping into space. Only the hydrogen that is chemically bonded to heavier elements, like in water, has not been lost.
Life forms in those gas giants - if they exist - would probably be very different from terran life. A gas giant has at most a very small solid core, where the pressure is so high that even hydrogen would be solid. I don't think anything could survive there. Possibly something could live in the upper atmosphere where the pressure is not so high that it crushes everything. I don't know if such life forms could ever develop any technology. If they ever attempted space travel, their problems would be daunting - not only escaping the gravity of their planet, but even constructing a ship that can contain their high-pressure atmosphere in a vacuum.
But gas giants in the solar system have a lot of moons, some bigger than Earth's moon. If those extrasolar planets have moons too - we don't have the technology to find them yet - they would probably be able to support life under Earth-like conditions.
Stefan
I don't think this question is bashing Perl or Python - I understood it more like "What is not right with academic language research that it has so little impact on practical, everyday languages?" That this argument also applies to C just reinforces the point.
Sorry, that's nonsense. No accelerator we can build has anywhere near enough energy to create a black hole. Probably would need one the size of the solar system.
Yes, I think they determined its mass (about 50.000 sun masses) by observing its effect on the galaxy it sits in. I don't think it has a larger gravitational pull than other black holes of the same mass - if it had, it would look like a larger supermassive black hole of several million sun masses. If I understood the article right, this BH gobbles up mass at the same rate as a black hole of millions of sun masses. Matter falling into a BH is accelerated by the gravitational pull to tremendous speeds and is heated up to very high temperatures. You cannot see the black hole itself, but matter falling into it is very visible - especially in the x-ray spectrum.
I think, this particualar black hole swallows so much matter, because there is enough matter there. Most supermassive black holes probably already have consumed most matter in their vincinity.
I think it's a safe bet that Apple has a x86 version somewhere, as a hedge against Motorolos apparent inability to come out with faster PPC processors, but I don't think they will ever release a MacOS that runs on a normal PC. Apple is basically a hardware manufacturer, its software sales make up only a small part of its revenue. For that reason they will always tie their OS to their proprietary hardware. That hardware may be built around an Intel processor some day, but it will still be their design, different from standard PC architecture.
Gravity waves supposedly are created by changing gravitational fields, as electromagnetic waves are created by changing magnetic/electric fields. AFAIK they have not yet been successfully detected, because gravity is so weak - only really monumental changes in gravitational fields, like collapsing stars and the like create gravity waves that are strong enough for us to detect. There have been observations that seem to indicate that gravity waves do exist, IIRC a system of two pulsars orbiting each other and losing energy consistent with the predicted transmission of gravity waves.
But gravity waves travel with c, I have seen nothing (except in SF) indicating that they are FTL.
ETs don't need to read Asimov to arrive at these or similar rules for AIs, since they are normal safety principles just applied to robotics. Any machine should be constructed in a way that it
1. does not harm the user.
2. does what you want it to do
3. does not destroy itself during normal operation
But can a real AI be constructed in a way that it obeys these laws and still be useful? Since we don't have any AIs, we cannot know if it is possible to make one that is specifically limited in this way.
These terms have nothing to do with each other, a republic can be a democracy, but it does not have to be, a democracy is not necessarily a republic. A republic is a state that has no king or other hereditary head of state. A dictatorship is a republic too, the old soviet union was a republic (or more accurately, a federation of republics). But a kingdom can be a democracy - there are several in Europe, most notably the UK - their Kings do not have any legislatory power, only ceremonial functions.
Do you really think, everbody should have access to tanks, fighter aircraft, nuclear weapons,...? This would very probably sooner or later result in a military dictatorship of those with the most money, who could build the biggest army. You are the one who failed to think this through.
But the difference here is that the Washington Post is a big newspaper with lots of money - they would laugh off Apple's threat to sue. And Apple would look really bad if they tried to stifle the press. On the other hand, who cares if some rumor site on the web is forced to pull back an article - except for some Slashdot readers? Life isn't fair and big companies sure as hell aren't.
I think Apple's solution to this problem was described in a recent article on maccentral.com. If a user tries to change a setting that needs root permission to change, the configuration tool asks for the admin password, transparently logs in as root in the background, does the necessary changes and logs out again. No need to manually log off and login as admin to make changes in the conbfiguration, like on a nt box. Stefan
No, BlueTooth will not do that - it is very short ranged. BlueTooth is suited for wireless peripherals and the like. This new cell phone standard, UMTS will give you broadband wireless connections, but you will have to wait some years for that... Stefan
ISDN works well for me - but I live in Germany. You can say much against the german Telekom, but they did a good job of supporting ISDN. I have two 64kBit channels that can be combined for Internet access, or I can surf with 64k and leave the other channel free for phone use. Monthly cost is twice that of an analog line, but I effectively get two lines. And while 64kBit/s doesn't seem a big improvement over a 56k modem, it is noticeably faster - partly due to the lower latency of an ISDN line compared to a modem, I think. On the other hand, you cannot get a cable modem over here - the cable TV network is hopelessly outdated and must be upgraded to support a return channel. Our beloved Telekom has only recently been forced to sell of the TV cable network, and they evidently had no interest in upgrading it. But you can at least get ADSL now in most cities. Stefan
A company here in Germany tried free distance calls with commercial breaks - they died within a few months... I guess there are still some kinds of advertisement that are just too annoying.
I would LOVE to see Delphi for Linux. Currently I mostly use Delphi on Windows. I have done some small projects on Linux with the standard Unix tools, and frankly, I find them clumsy, antiquated and difficult to use. I think they can be quite efficient, but they have a very steep learning curve at least. Correct me, if I'm wrong, but I also don't think that there is currently a development environment for Linux that has so many easy to use and well integrated components for UI development, database connectivity and about anything else a developer for business applications needs.
Slashdot Mirror
Mac OS X works well with Windows machines on a network - it will mount Windows shares and you can use shared printers.
The other way is just as easy, you can enable Windows file- and printer-sharing with a click in the Sharing control panel of System Preferences.
Another option ist an external hard disk - it should be formatted with FAT32, because Mac OS X can read NTFS, but cannot write to it.
Stefan
For clarification, NASA did not develop the space pen, a some company (don't remember which) did that for free, and the Russians now use it, too. At first, the U.S. used pencils, too, but sharpening pencils creates dust which never settles in microgravity, and graphite conducts electricity. That could potentially create problems.
Aside from that, your are right. If I remember correctly, the German air force still has some operational MIG 29s left from the GDR, and those bird do have a reputation of being very robust and reliable (for a fighter aircraft).
Stefan
There could be easily accessible water on the moon, ice from comet impacts at the bottom of craters that are never exposed to sunlight. But this isn't proven yet and it would not be much in any case. If I remember correctly, the Saturn rings are mostly ice - that would be the easiest way to get lots of water, if there are big, soldid chunks of it. You could fix a large, nuclear-powered drive to it - that could use part of the ice chunk as reaction mass to move it to any place in the solar system you like.
Stefan
If I remember correctly, Jupiter-size gas giants usually don't have a solid surface, because they mostly consist of light gases like hydrogen and helium - those are the most abundant elements ind the universe. Earth and the other small planets in the solarsystem have lost most of these light elements, because their gravity is not high enough to prevent them escaping into space. Only the hydrogen that is chemically bonded to heavier elements, like in water, has not been lost. Life forms in those gas giants - if they exist - would probably be very different from terran life. A gas giant has at most a very small solid core, where the pressure is so high that even hydrogen would be solid. I don't think anything could survive there. Possibly something could live in the upper atmosphere where the pressure is not so high that it crushes everything. I don't know if such life forms could ever develop any technology. If they ever attempted space travel, their problems would be daunting - not only escaping the gravity of their planet, but even constructing a ship that can contain their high-pressure atmosphere in a vacuum. But gas giants in the solar system have a lot of moons, some bigger than Earth's moon. If those extrasolar planets have moons too - we don't have the technology to find them yet - they would probably be able to support life under Earth-like conditions. Stefan
I don't think this question is bashing Perl or Python - I understood it more like "What is not right with academic language research that it has so little impact on practical, everyday languages?" That this argument also applies to C just reinforces the point.
Stefan
Sorry, that's nonsense. No accelerator we can build has anywhere near enough energy to create a black hole. Probably would need one the size of the solar system.
Stefan
Yes, I think they determined its mass (about 50.000 sun masses) by observing its effect on the galaxy it sits in. I don't think it has a larger gravitational pull than other black holes of the same mass - if it had, it would look like a larger supermassive black hole of several million sun masses. If I understood the article right, this BH gobbles up mass at the same rate as a black hole of millions of sun masses. Matter falling into a BH is accelerated by the gravitational pull to tremendous speeds and is heated up to very high temperatures. You cannot see the black hole itself, but matter falling into it is very visible - especially in the x-ray spectrum.
I think, this particualar black hole swallows so much matter, because there is enough matter there. Most supermassive black holes probably already have consumed most matter in their vincinity.
Stefan
I think it's a safe bet that Apple has a x86 version somewhere, as a hedge against Motorolos apparent inability to come out with faster PPC processors, but I don't think they will ever release a MacOS that runs on a normal PC. Apple is basically a hardware manufacturer, its software sales make up only a small part of its revenue. For that reason they will always tie their OS to their proprietary hardware. That hardware may be built around an Intel processor some day, but it will still be their design, different from standard PC architecture.
Stefan
But gravity waves travel with c, I have seen nothing (except in SF) indicating that they are FTL.
Stefan
1. does not harm the user.
2. does what you want it to do
3. does not destroy itself during normal operation
But can a real AI be constructed in a way that it obeys these laws and still be useful? Since we don't have any AIs, we cannot know if it is possible to make one that is specifically limited in this way.
Stefan
These terms have nothing to do with each other, a republic can be a democracy, but it does not have to be, a democracy is not necessarily a republic.
A republic is a state that has no king or other hereditary head of state. A dictatorship is a republic too, the old soviet union was a republic (or more accurately, a federation of republics). But a kingdom can be a democracy - there are several in Europe, most notably the UK - their Kings do not have any legislatory power, only ceremonial functions.
Stefan
Do you really think, everbody should have access to tanks, fighter aircraft, nuclear weapons, ...? This would very probably sooner or later result in a military dictatorship of those with the most money, who could build the biggest army. You are the one who failed to think this through.
But the difference here is that the Washington Post is a big newspaper with lots of money - they would laugh off Apple's threat to sue. And Apple would look really bad if they tried to stifle the press. On the other hand, who cares if some rumor site on the web is forced to pull back an article - except for some Slashdot readers? Life isn't fair and big companies sure as hell aren't.
I think Apple's solution to this problem was described in a recent article on maccentral.com. If a user tries to change a setting that needs root permission to change, the configuration tool asks for the admin password, transparently logs in as root in the background, does the necessary changes and logs out again. No need to manually log off and login as admin to make changes in the conbfiguration, like on a nt box. Stefan
No, BlueTooth will not do that - it is very short ranged. BlueTooth is suited for wireless peripherals and the like. This new cell phone standard, UMTS will give you broadband wireless connections, but you will have to wait some years for that... Stefan
ISDN works well for me - but I live in Germany. You can say much against the german Telekom, but they did a good job of supporting ISDN. I have two 64kBit channels that can be combined for Internet access, or I can surf with 64k and leave the other channel free for phone use. Monthly cost is twice that of an analog line, but I effectively get two lines. And while 64kBit/s doesn't seem a big improvement over a 56k modem, it is noticeably faster - partly due to the lower latency of an ISDN line compared to a modem, I think. On the other hand, you cannot get a cable modem over here - the cable TV network is hopelessly outdated and must be upgraded to support a return channel. Our beloved Telekom has only recently been forced to sell of the TV cable network, and they evidently had no interest in upgrading it. But you can at least get ADSL now in most cities. Stefan
That primary sppedup vanishes on modern processors - these generally do multiplications as fast as additions.
They use Macs, because Macs simply look better than a boring Windows Box.
Small correction here: CoS is not forbidden in Germany, it has just been denied the status of a religious organization.
A company here in Germany tried free distance calls with commercial breaks - they died within a few months...
I guess there are still some kinds of advertisement that are just too annoying.
I would LOVE to see Delphi for Linux. Currently I mostly use Delphi on Windows. I have done some small projects on Linux with the standard Unix tools, and frankly, I find them clumsy, antiquated and difficult to use. I think they can be quite efficient, but they have a very steep learning curve at least.
Correct me, if I'm wrong, but I also don't think that there is currently a development environment for Linux that has so many easy to use and well integrated components for UI development, database connectivity and about anything else a developer for business applications needs.