However it seems that the packaging for this new engine is also far smaller than the breed of ion propulsion, and will greatly increase the thrust available to a spacecraft. Its not clear yet whether that will be an order of magnitude increase, or something smaller. But it does appear to be enough to open-up exploration of the solar system with travel times lower than what we currently endure.
It flags some messages in my SENT folders as Junk Mail.
All of my remote Sent Items folders are display with "Sender" in the listing... not "Recipient". I have to move the messages to my local Sent folder to see who I sent those messages to. If I tell it to store sent mail to the server folder instead, then it displays properly... but my local Sent folder now displays Sender instead of Recipient.
Needless to say, searching for Sent messages on tbird is next-to-useless because the results often just show my name.
If I change the columns to display, it changes them for all the other mail folders. Showing both Sender and Recipient for all folders is rather crowded (and to be honest, just stupid).
In 1.5 on OS X, it pops-up a large context menu while I'm trying to resize column widths (they pop-up while I'm still dragging the left mouse-button).
I used to have two different bundles of older mail (one from Netscape, the other from Mozilla 6.x) that I intended to import. As of version 1.0, tbird on OS X would not import these even if I pointed to where the profile folder were. Mail.app found them and imported them with no problems.
Going back to tbird to try 1.5, it refused to import anything from Mail.app (even though they use the same format, mbox) until I manually renamed and dragged the individual mbox files directly into tbird's profile folder.
Mail.app subscribed to all the folders on my IMAP service as soon as I pointed it in that direction. But tbird only picked up the Inbox, and I had to reconfigure the account to use an "INBOX." prefix in addition to manually subscribing to Sent, Draft, etc.
This is one of those applications that gives me a strong emotional impression: Indifference to my needs.
In some circles aluminium is more commonly known as congealed electricity.
Some companies understand this, and are beginning to make metalic (not H2) fuel cells with exceedingly high power densities using zinc or aluminum fuel.
But funny (and wrong) as it is, that really seems to be the attutide around Linux desktops. Mash up a bunch of narrowly-defined standards and 1,000 different combinations, and let the end-users choose between those collections of standards.
End-users won't respond to a shell-game of SMB-ADC-PDC-USB1.0-USB1.1-USB2.0-FAT-VFAT-EXT2-EXT 3-DCOP-DBUS-sh-csh-bash-802.11a-802.11b-802.11g-ND IS-etc-etc...
End-users (and most techies) are application-oriented and always begin by specifying an application platform: Mac OS and Windows.
"Linux" doesn't exist in this application decision-space, except as a mirage to certain technorati.
Mac OS X maybe - but both Fireox/Mozilla/Thunderbird and Mono run on OS X.
OS X definately. Its been that way for years now: People are going to OS X instead of Linux, or they are moving away from Linux for their desktop//notbook needs.
Certainly the Mozilla and OpenOffice stuff will meet great success. They are end-user focused, with well-rounded (dare I say "commercial"?) programming methodologies in their work cultures.
How many GNU/Linux distros profile the behavior of their customers in use-case documents? Mindfully map-out user roles and prioritize the tasks they need/want to perform with the product? I'd say none of the desktop distros do this, because it immediately leads to analysis that highlight core distro features as inappropriate. "Download and Install Application from ISV." Is the answer to that essential use-case to create a monstrous, monolithic, centralized software database with myriad 'floating' APIs that most ISVs can't even begin to rely on? How about making the user cope with dependency problems?
Even most techies don't want to deal with that crap.
And as a result, most techies don't recommend Linux to their friends, family and colleagues. Application developers, never knowing just what toolset they can count on being in a *nix system, still mainly stick to the MS and Apple platforms.
But that's just being shifty and fickle when it comes to standards. GNUists berate MS for not following the standard-du-jour. But now MS is playing that game too, turning it around on us. The former uses a few standards to needle MS, but they'll lose because MS is now using standards like chess pieces.
Throwing dozens of technical standards in users' faces and expecting them to make sense of it won't get desktop distros very far. They cannot continue to insist that their distros be structured for the enthusiast and expect to succeed in the wider market. They cannot continue to aim for the end-user but deliver enthusiast goods.
Bundle all the necessary little standards under a broader single standard like 'LSB Desktop', including ABIs, while drawing a sharp distinction between what is always supplied with the OS and what are extra services and apps. Most of latter stuff should come packaged with only one dependency 'LSB Desktop 1.0' and each package has to supply all other needs in a self-contained manner.
Enthusiasts and sysadmins wouldn't have the "freedom" to label just any mash-up of packages as "LSB Desktop". But other than that they can keep doing whatever they please with "Linux".
Like standards? Prove it: Create one that end-users can appreciate and count on.
Writing, in his blog, of last year's disappointment, he explains:
"When I asked the various people in charge what happened they kept pointing fingers at someone else until it reached full circle. Nobody could tell me why the most voted BOF proposal did not get selected. I would be happy with an honest answer even if it is "We do not want to promote open source/Mono/Novell" instead I heard a number of variations on "The problem is that `New frontiers for 6502 assembly language in the copy-editing industry had more votes'" (it didnt)."
This year's PDC, de Icaza fears, "is looking just like the last one. So it is time to get ready for a Mono meeting like we had the last time: in the middle of the hallway."
At least that has been the story so far. GNU/Linux simply isn't structured with most end users in mind (people who write/distribute apps and drivers independantly, and those who buy/download them independantly). It could be, through something like "LSB Desktop" spec, but that does not yet exist.
I think many desktop users who try "Linux" get the distinct impression that Linux enthusiasts don't care much for standards.
Plucker has been growing on me and seen increased use as of late. Its very versatile, and the format is open so I shouldn't get stuck with more eBooks having only semi-obsolete (or missing) readers on my palmtop of choice.
I forgot to mention it, but thanks for bringing it up. For that matter, a large increase in commuter bike paths would be a tremendous asset in reducing our environmental footprint.
Unfortunately cycling on many city streets isn't terribly safe. And then there are attitudes to cope with.
Global warming deserves our urgent attention but it pays to think about what nuclear power can and cannot contribute. One respected global energy scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a three-fold increase in carbon emissions between 1997 and 2100, even with an eight-fold increase in nuclear generation. If coal replaced all the nuclear generation in this scenario, carbon emissions in 2100 increase a mere 20 percent. Working the other way, if nuclear power were to replace all coal, carbon emissions would fall 20 percent. To achieve that goal, 1,000-megawatt reactors would need to be built at a rate of 85-90 plants per year this century.
Neither Schwartz nor Brand considers the weapons proliferation risks. If uranium limits force a shift to breeder technology, the amount of weapons-usable plutonium circulating in global commerce would be about 5 million kilograms per year; only 10 kilograms are needed to make a nuclear weapon.
Perhaps we will find more uranium and not require breeder technology. In that event, this scenario would require 2,000 uranium enrichment facilities around the world. If they were making fuel for pebble bed reactors, each plant would be doing about 84 percent of the enrichment necessary for producing weapons grade uranium. Suppose a plant chose to start with the pebble bed fuel and make weapons grade uranium instead -- each facility could make 875 bombs per year. Weapons grade uranium bombs, in sharp contrast to their plutonium cousins, are almost foolproof to design and require no testing, an important distinction for diplomatic intervention.
I find the arguments in this article extremely compelling. Measured over the course of decades, the risks are severe. And all to expand the apetite of overreaching consumerism in nuclear-club nations; states that are too powerful to bully away from nuclear energy with accusations of terrorism, etc. because they already acquired some A-bombs.
If nuclear energy is so indispensible then it must be available to everyone. Otherwise, a double-standard will lead to nations placing a premium on the attainment of nuclear weapons on the path to securing their energy future.
And I have to wonder; Is this hyper-consumerism based on nuclear energy, with all of the additional environmental pressures it will bring such as consumer waste, such an attractive path? The geometrically-intensified nuclear politics? The "regime-changes" among foreign populations halfway around the globe, founded on trumped-up animosity and misunderstandings?
How would this very Slashdot thread be different if, say, we had spent that vast sum of Iraq-invasion money on PV panels instead?
It Doesn't Have To Be Hydrogen, Either. Why the big monomania for one technology? I mean, besides generating hype with a futuristic-sounding buzzword?
Solar is a great way to produce biodiesel, a fuel that's available now for use in a vast array of existing vehicles. And that's just one example. BEV's are another terrific alternative (and no, I do not consider the range to be a significant hurdle at all).
I think the way H2 is presented (as a transportation fuel) is BS. For starters, the potential energy density just isn't there.
We should be driving more efficient right now. Use tax breaks and subsidies to push battery-electric cars in urban areas, and biodiesel and ethanol for the "exurbs" and long-haul vehicles.
(Imagine if Jobs got up there and announced Intel Macs, and then while he was demoing them, he nonchalantly fired up a copy of Windows running under VMware. Many copies of VMware would be sold.)
That would be tantamount to promoting Windows. I don't think that would help Apple's ledger, never mind what it would do to their reputations.
Its interesting that once the court cases against MS monopolism are halted, then colunmists for New York Magazine start refering to the corporation as harmless.
Got that? Government looking the other way = 'No one is afraid'.
Throwing money at politicians to get the government to ignore you apparently results in good PR.
I am probably going to get modded-down for this, but it NEEDS to be said:
More costs = more workers ~= less environmentally friendly
I have yet to see if biodiesel will ever be better for the environment considering all aspects of production.
Could you try adding more to the discussion than spouting crackpot assertions all over it?
You are about the furthest thing from an environmental or economic expert I can imagine, a fact that makes the above seem even more ridiculous.
Readers can go to NREL or biodiesel.org or numerous other sources for lifecycle studies that affirm biodiesel's positive impact. You might as well try it too, though it does appear to me you are less interested in immersing yourself in facts than you are in crapping over every topic ceaselessly with your worn-out propaganda.
Bacteria IS "carbon-life". And they might be producing carbohydrates and fats in vast quantities from geothermal energy.... but I doubt it.
Oil prices are much higher than the average American realizes. That industry is (undeservingly IMO) being subsidized quite extensively.
Hubert's Peak appears to be real, although I completely disagree with the hysterical way it is often presented. A decline in petroleum availability is bound to be at least somewhat gradual, with substitues coming online along the way. What those substitutes cannot do is maintain our current raate of consumption; They are simply not going to scale that high.
If oil really becomes "rare" then the price will skyrocket and some inventor will find a way to continue life as we know it without major concern. That is the beauty of the free market -- there is no need to subsidize any process if it isn't needed.
Now you are getting into your market-religion again. Markets do NOT operate from a magic hand, nor do they trump the laws of thermodynamics. What you are talking about is a gamble with billions of lives and the whole environment. The "Use it all til we need something else" attitude sucks, to put it mildly, and adding this kind of delusional expectation that technology will produce for any freemarket condition isn't helping.
The real bottom line (the physical one) is the sooner we curb GHG emissions the better, and that process requires political will acting on academic forsight.
It would be a shame if 2.6 came with that kind of a performance penalty.
Also, I don't think I can consider a benchmark on such an old system to be representative. The relationship in timing between the filesystem and the spinning platters themselves is bound to yield quite different results under a 2x or 3x faster CPU.
Mice are optical these days, and they work wonderfully on most fabric and leather surfaces: Just place a small optical mouse on the seat cushion beside you.
Slashdot Mirror
However it seems that the packaging for this new engine is also far smaller than the breed of ion propulsion, and will greatly increase the thrust available to a spacecraft. Its not clear yet whether that will be an order of magnitude increase, or something smaller. But it does appear to be enough to open-up exploration of the solar system with travel times lower than what we currently endure.
It flags some messages in my SENT folders as Junk Mail.
All of my remote Sent Items folders are display with "Sender" in the listing... not "Recipient". I have to move the messages to my local Sent folder to see who I sent those messages to. If I tell it to store sent mail to the server folder instead, then it displays properly... but my local Sent folder now displays Sender instead of Recipient.
Needless to say, searching for Sent messages on tbird is next-to-useless because the results often just show my name.
If I change the columns to display, it changes them for all the other mail folders. Showing both Sender and Recipient for all folders is rather crowded (and to be honest, just stupid).
In 1.5 on OS X, it pops-up a large context menu while I'm trying to resize column widths (they pop-up while I'm still dragging the left mouse-button).
I used to have two different bundles of older mail (one from Netscape, the other from Mozilla 6.x) that I intended to import. As of version 1.0, tbird on OS X would not import these even if I pointed to where the profile folder were. Mail.app found them and imported them with no problems.
Going back to tbird to try 1.5, it refused to import anything from Mail.app (even though they use the same format, mbox) until I manually renamed and dragged the individual mbox files directly into tbird's profile folder.
Mail.app subscribed to all the folders on my IMAP service as soon as I pointed it in that direction. But tbird only picked up the Inbox, and I had to reconfigure the account to use an "INBOX." prefix in addition to manually subscribing to Sent, Draft, etc.
This is one of those applications that gives me a strong emotional impression: Indifference to my needs.
Actually I'm using IMAP with their intermediate account: One-time fee of $15 for lifetime access, although bandwidth use must remain moderate.
In some circles aluminium is more commonly known as congealed electricity.
Some companies understand this, and are beginning to make metalic (not H2) fuel cells with exceedingly high power densities using zinc or aluminum fuel.
Oh, what a neat idea!
But funny (and wrong) as it is, that really seems to be the attutide around Linux desktops. Mash up a bunch of narrowly-defined standards and 1,000 different combinations, and let the end-users choose between those collections of standards.
T 3-DCOP-DBUS-sh-csh-bash-802.11a-802.11b-802.11g-ND IS-etc-etc...
End-users won't respond to a shell-game of SMB-ADC-PDC-USB1.0-USB1.1-USB2.0-FAT-VFAT-EXT2-EX
End-users (and most techies) are application-oriented and always begin by specifying an application platform: Mac OS and Windows.
"Linux" doesn't exist in this application decision-space, except as a mirage to certain technorati.
Mac OS X maybe - but both Fireox/Mozilla/Thunderbird and Mono run on OS X.
OS X definately. Its been that way for years now: People are going to OS X instead of Linux, or they are moving away from Linux for their desktop//notbook needs.
Certainly the Mozilla and OpenOffice stuff will meet great success. They are end-user focused, with well-rounded (dare I say "commercial"?) programming methodologies in their work cultures.
How many GNU/Linux distros profile the behavior of their customers in use-case documents? Mindfully map-out user roles and prioritize the tasks they need/want to perform with the product? I'd say none of the desktop distros do this, because it immediately leads to analysis that highlight core distro features as inappropriate. "Download and Install Application from ISV." Is the answer to that essential use-case to create a monstrous, monolithic, centralized software database with myriad 'floating' APIs that most ISVs can't even begin to rely on? How about making the user cope with dependency problems?
Even most techies don't want to deal with that crap.
And as a result, most techies don't recommend Linux to their friends, family and colleagues. Application developers, never knowing just what toolset they can count on being in a *nix system, still mainly stick to the MS and Apple platforms.
But that's just being shifty and fickle when it comes to standards. GNUists berate MS for not following the standard-du-jour. But now MS is playing that game too, turning it around on us. The former uses a few standards to needle MS, but they'll lose because MS is now using standards like chess pieces.
Throwing dozens of technical standards in users' faces and expecting them to make sense of it won't get desktop distros very far. They cannot continue to insist that their distros be structured for the enthusiast and expect to succeed in the wider market. They cannot continue to aim for the end-user but deliver enthusiast goods.
Bundle all the necessary little standards under a broader single standard like 'LSB Desktop', including ABIs, while drawing a sharp distinction between what is always supplied with the OS and what are extra services and apps. Most of latter stuff should come packaged with only one dependency 'LSB Desktop 1.0' and each package has to supply all other needs in a self-contained manner.
Enthusiasts and sysadmins wouldn't have the "freedom" to label just any mash-up of packages as "LSB Desktop". But other than that they can keep doing whatever they please with "Linux".
Like standards? Prove it: Create one that end-users can appreciate and count on.
Very telling entry from Miguel's own blog.
What's on display here isn't even remotely close to a cooperative spirit to further a community standard. It is more of a Cold War.
ECMA? Who cares... ECMA trying to set the direction of C# and CLR is like steering a truck with a flea.
and when they move operating systems,
To Mac OS X.
At least that has been the story so far. GNU/Linux simply isn't structured with most end users in mind (people who write/distribute apps and drivers independantly, and those who buy/download them independantly). It could be, through something like "LSB Desktop" spec, but that does not yet exist.
I think many desktop users who try "Linux" get the distinct impression that Linux enthusiasts don't care much for standards.
Plucker has been growing on me and seen increased use as of late. Its very versatile, and the format is open so I shouldn't get stuck with more eBooks having only semi-obsolete (or missing) readers on my palmtop of choice.
What happened to riding your bike in the city?
I forgot to mention it, but thanks for bringing it up. For that matter, a large increase in commuter bike paths would be a tremendous asset in reducing our environmental footprint.
Unfortunately cycling on many city streets isn't terribly safe. And then there are attitudes to cope with.
I find the arguments in this article extremely compelling. Measured over the course of decades, the risks are severe. And all to expand the apetite of overreaching consumerism in nuclear-club nations; states that are too powerful to bully away from nuclear energy with accusations of terrorism, etc. because they already acquired some A-bombs.
If nuclear energy is so indispensible then it must be available to everyone. Otherwise, a double-standard will lead to nations placing a premium on the attainment of nuclear weapons on the path to securing their energy future.
And I have to wonder; Is this hyper-consumerism based on nuclear energy, with all of the additional environmental pressures it will bring such as consumer waste, such an attractive path? The geometrically-intensified nuclear politics? The "regime-changes" among foreign populations halfway around the globe, founded on trumped-up animosity and misunderstandings?
How would this very Slashdot thread be different if, say, we had spent that vast sum of Iraq-invasion money on PV panels instead?
It Doesn't Have To Be Hydrogen, Either. Why the big monomania for one technology? I mean, besides generating hype with a futuristic-sounding buzzword?
Solar is a great way to produce biodiesel, a fuel that's available now for use in a vast array of existing vehicles. And that's just one example. BEV's are another terrific alternative (and no, I do not consider the range to be a significant hurdle at all).
I think the way H2 is presented (as a transportation fuel) is BS. For starters, the potential energy density just isn't there.
We should be driving more efficient right now. Use tax breaks and subsidies to push battery-electric cars in urban areas, and biodiesel and ethanol for the "exurbs" and long-haul vehicles.
(Imagine if Jobs got up there and announced Intel Macs, and then while he was demoing them, he nonchalantly fired up a copy of Windows running under VMware. Many copies of VMware would be sold.)
That would be tantamount to promoting Windows. I don't think that would help Apple's ledger, never mind what it would do to their reputations.
Its interesting that once the court cases against MS monopolism are halted, then colunmists for New York Magazine start refering to the corporation as harmless.
Got that? Government looking the other way = 'No one is afraid'.
Throwing money at politicians to get the government to ignore you apparently results in good PR.
Could you try adding more to the discussion than spouting crackpot assertions all over it?
You are about the furthest thing from an environmental or economic expert I can imagine, a fact that makes the above seem even more ridiculous.
Readers can go to NREL or biodiesel.org or numerous other sources for lifecycle studies that affirm biodiesel's positive impact. You might as well try it too, though it does appear to me you are less interested in immersing yourself in facts than you are in crapping over every topic ceaselessly with your worn-out propaganda.
Bacteria IS "carbon-life". And they might be producing carbohydrates and fats in vast quantities from geothermal energy.... but I doubt it.
Oil prices are much higher than the average American realizes. That industry is (undeservingly IMO) being subsidized quite extensively.
Hubert's Peak appears to be real, although I completely disagree with the hysterical way it is often presented. A decline in petroleum availability is bound to be at least somewhat gradual, with substitues coming online along the way. What those substitutes cannot do is maintain our current raate of consumption; They are simply not going to scale that high.
If oil really becomes "rare" then the price will skyrocket and some inventor will find a way to continue life as we know it without major concern. That is the beauty of the free market -- there is no need to subsidize any process if it isn't needed.
Now you are getting into your market-religion again. Markets do NOT operate from a magic hand, nor do they trump the laws of thermodynamics. What you are talking about is a gamble with billions of lives and the whole environment. The "Use it all til we need something else" attitude sucks, to put it mildly, and adding this kind of delusional expectation that technology will produce for any freemarket condition isn't helping.
The real bottom line (the physical one) is the sooner we curb GHG emissions the better, and that process requires political will acting on academic forsight.
The red rain continued to appear sporadically for about two months, though most of it fell in the first 10 days, Louis and Kumar wrote.
From a meteor?? I don't think so.
Huh? I don't understand.
I thought OS X came with emacs (the version I have in Panther is 21.2.1 in fact).
It would be a shame if 2.6 came with that kind of a performance penalty.
Also, I don't think I can consider a benchmark on such an old system to be representative. The relationship in timing between the filesystem and the spinning platters themselves is bound to yield quite different results under a 2x or 3x faster CPU.
Wait a minute....
nevermind.
Being a Gen-Xer is tough, having to deal with these Force Five / Gaiking flashbacks.
Why do we need a special 'mouse surface'?
Mice are optical these days, and they work wonderfully on most fabric and leather surfaces: Just place a small optical mouse on the seat cushion beside you.
Awful slashdot article about a contrived gimmick.
I just compared the 2004 list with the one from 2005:
For 2004, only ONE title (Gish) was listed as supporting Mac and Linux. In 2005, there are no less than FOUR.
I wonder if this means that more titles overall are being released for these platforms.