So true. The ODF support in MS Office continues to be dismal! Even simple documents written in LibreOffice have various problems when opened in Office (I occasionally try it to see if there is any progress). I am totally convinced this is intentional. LibreOffice opens MS Office documents with far better fidelity, than MS Office opens LibreOffice documents. Microsoft could easily fix this, but it will never do so, because it wold not be in their interests. ODF support for them is just a tick box item to get past some governement procurement rules. Actual users, if they try it will soon give up with it, falsely convinced that ODF is a crap format.
As a German company, it should be very easy for them to handle payments by all European customers as standard SEPA bank transfers. The commission should be lower, and the money arrives the next day at the latest.
>First, we don't know how to protect humans from Cosmic radiation on even a short voyage, let alone a super long 300 year voyage.
Actually we do. A few meters of water or other hydrogen-rich substance. Very low-tech, but heavy. But a generational spaceship would inevitably be heavy, and would need a very large reservoir of water anyway. The water would not have to be hauled up from Earth, there is plenty of it in the outer solar system, in icy moons. Possibly even in our own Moon. By the time building generational starships becomes feasible, accessing extraterrestrial water resources is probably routine.
>The _only_ time an energy inefficient light source is wasting energy is when you are not heating the house. For most of the UK population, that's about 1/4 of the time.
But it is quite a bit more than that in countries south of UK! Especially if you have air conditioning, the traditional light bulbs put you in the absurd situation of using energy both to heat and cool the room at the same time... Another thing is that the light bulbs in typical lighting fixtures are inefficient as heaters. Most of the heat goes and stays near the ceiling, which is not where most people spend their time. Even ignoring that, direct electric heating is usually more expensive than other heat sources. (This of course depends on where you live).
By the way, I'm from Finland, so from my point of view the UK is one of those balmy southern European countries. And I have gradually replaced most of the bulbs in my house with compact fluorescents and LEDs. The latter have come down in price in recent years, and solve the worst annoyance of compact fluorescents: they turn instantly on with full power.
>Too many companies have learned this lesson the hard way, launching invasive new services that have triggered class action lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and media firestorms.
Shouldn't that read "Too few companies have learned..."? Otherwise the problem would not exist.
Anyway, I think this can only be fixed by legislation. Companies have too much monetary incentive for privacy violation to do anything else than token improvements. "Industry self-regulation" is nothing but newspeak for "foxes guarding the henhouse".
Were I live (Italy) we switched to DGTV some time ago, and last time I checked, Teletext was working just fine
Same thing in Finland. It is actually still quite popular, many years after the digital switch-over. If you have your TV already on, it is the fastest way to peek at the latest headlines or weather report. Another popular application seems to be horse racing scores. Kiosks selling bets almost always have a TV constantly showing Teletext at the relevant page. Works without any net connection.
A nice result of the Teletext limitations is that the pages show just the data without fancy formatting, and whoever creates the content must make the best of the limited space, choosing words carefully. This means the system is really very efficient for the reader, you don't have to wade over fluff... (unfortunately because of the way the pages are rotated in the transmission, you may have to wait a bit until your page comes up, unless your receiver implements good caching. Old implementations did not, and that made reading slow.).
The you mention are plausible extrapolations from the state of technology in the 1990's, not "unobtainium", although we now know the time table was way too optimisitic, as usual. As noted by another poster, the thousands of small windmills were aknowledged to be a bad idea even within the books (their inventor Sax Russell attends a conference on terraforming, where one paper accounts for the warming effects of various methods, and dismisses the windmills).
As for solar warming, remember the terraforming also tapped geothermic (areothermic?) energy (the "moholes"), and collected more solar energy than the surface area of Mars allows by the use of space mirrors (the "soletta" of the books).
The "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great future history that lays out a credible way the Mars colonisation could play out, including the inevitable revolt against the megacorporations.
Enjoyed it last summer. The books were written in the early 1990's, evidenly with the best knowledge about Mars available then. At times it feels like the author had visited the place in person... There is no technobable, no miracle technology, this is hard sci-fi at its hardest. But much of the story is really about social effects, the tensions between early Mars settlers, newcomers, people who want to terraform Mars and those that desire to preserve it, and the corporations that just want to extract maximum profits from Mars. Earth future history is also explored with the unexpected discovery of a life-prolonging treatment (who gets it?), and an environmental crisis caused by volcanism in the Antarctic (a huge flood, but not fashionably by global warming).
...you don't have to fight internal politics of a giant corp, you get the excitement and energy of a new start up working on something cool, and best of all, you rid yourselves off that Elop.
And you get hit by a ton of patent lawsuits, if it looks like you will be succesful:-(
In Finland, every publisher is required by law to submit a copy of every printed work published in the country (not just books, but newspapers and magazines as well) to the National Library and a few other university libraries (so the system has redundancy). This has been going on since 1829. I suppose many other countries have similar laws.
I guess the biggest one is a much cheaper track: Just a concrete through, which probably does not have to be built to as exacting tolerances as a maglev track. Heavy rain might be an interesting problem to handle. The track cannot have too large drainage holes in it, otherwise the lift disappears.
This might be a good idea, if they can figure out how to supply electricity to power the flying train. Tricky, because there is no ground contact, unlike a regular train, and the track itself does not propel it forward, like a maglev track does. Otherwise it has to carry its fuel, which might negate the advantages of the idea.
Exactly what I was about to post! He is a character that is foremost an engineer. Professor Calculus is from the Tintin series by Herge (in the French language originals he is named Tournesol), and the character is supposedly based on the great real-life inventor and explorer Auguste Piccard (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Piccard )
On the other hand, most of the characters in the article were unknown to me (a Finn), so continentalocentrism cuts both ways.
As an owner of a plot of land in one of the cities mentioned as beneficiaries, the article made my day... That ought to take care of my retirement fund:-).
During my latest 64-bit Mandriva Linux upgrade, I accidentally nuked the previous 64-bit plugin beta version, and I was dismayed to find Adobe no longer provided it on their site. After this/. article I rushed to the site to grab it just in case some corporate strategist makes it unavailable again... Works fine with Mandriva 2010.1 on Pentium D @3.2Ghz (don't laugh, I got the board cheap and the performance is more than adequate for my needs). Much better than the 32-bit plugin version with nspluginwrapper.
Not sure if I should thank them or not, though. Giving something, then capriciously taking it away, then giving it again would be bad behaviour in a real human.
"Half-assed hologram taken"? I wonder if you have seen a real, well-made hologram of a person? They are spooky in their combination of 3D, extremely high resolution (almost infinite, in fact) and absence of motion and color. Nothing else is like them ("death masks", casts of a deceased persons faces, might come closest).
You are probably right, but it still does not answer the question. The lump of lead is still much cheaper, so there has to be a good justification for using funds on the gold and platinum, instead of more or better instrumentation, more propellant, or other such costs of the project.
(There is also a PR angle: the use of such classic luxury materials sounds extravagant to taxpayers...)
Suppose for very important standards, the governement (probably would have to be several, " a coalition of the willing") would buy all patents relating to it, and freeing them as far as said standard is concerned (costly, but less so than a minor war, for example).
There is precedent: Daguerrotype and the French governement. From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype) Instead of Daguerre obtaining a French patent, the French government provided a pension for him.[6] In Britain, Miles Berry, acting on Daguerre's behalf, obtained a patent for the daguerreotype process on August 14, 1839. Almost simultaneously, on August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift “Free to the World.”
If what you say is true, my interest in Blu-ray dropped to zero. It means the format is useless for storing user-generated HD content so that it can be conveniently played back by off-the-shelf consumer equipment, like DVD does for SD content. In other words, kills the use-case of sending clips of grandchildren playing to grannies, in a format they can play conveniently. Or an amateur theatre group filming and distributing their show?
Am I missing something? Sony cannot be that stupid? Do they really want Blu-ray to be authored by serious professionals only?
Slashdot Mirror
So true. The ODF support in MS Office continues to be dismal! Even simple documents written in LibreOffice have various problems when opened in Office (I occasionally try it to see if there is any progress). I am totally convinced this is intentional. LibreOffice opens MS Office documents with far better fidelity, than MS Office opens LibreOffice documents. Microsoft could easily fix this, but it will never do so, because it wold not be in their interests. ODF support for them is just a tick box item to get past some governement procurement rules. Actual users, if they try it will soon give up with it, falsely convinced that ODF is a crap format.
As a German company, it should be very easy for them to handle payments by all European customers as standard SEPA bank transfers. The commission should be lower, and the money arrives the next day at the latest.
2. The Lord of the Flies
Two books that can hardly be more different. One heroic, the other demonstrating why human societies eventually screw themselves up...
Actually we do. A few meters of water or other hydrogen-rich substance. Very low-tech, but heavy. But a generational spaceship would inevitably be heavy, and would need a very large reservoir of water anyway. The water would not have to be hauled up from Earth, there is plenty of it in the outer solar system, in icy moons. Possibly even in our own Moon. By the time building generational starships becomes feasible, accessing extraterrestrial water resources is probably routine.
Is there some fundamental reason why ion engines cannot have a higher thrust, assuming you have the energy available (like from a nuclear reactor)?
But it is quite a bit more than that in countries south of UK! Especially if you have air conditioning, the traditional light bulbs put you in the absurd situation of using energy both to heat and cool the room at the same time... Another thing is that the light bulbs in typical lighting fixtures are inefficient as heaters. Most of the heat goes and stays near the ceiling, which is not where most people spend their time. Even ignoring that, direct electric heating is usually more expensive than other heat sources. (This of course depends on where you live).
By the way, I'm from Finland, so from my point of view the UK is one of those balmy southern European countries. And I have gradually replaced most of the bulbs in my house with compact fluorescents and LEDs. The latter have come down in price in recent years, and solve the worst annoyance of compact fluorescents: they turn instantly on with full power.
The Google stuff works better on Firefox anyway. Or on Chrome.
Shouldn't that read "Too few companies have learned ..."? Otherwise the problem would not exist.
Anyway, I think this can only be fixed by legislation. Companies have too much monetary incentive for privacy violation to do anything else than token improvements. "Industry self-regulation" is nothing but newspeak for "foxes guarding the henhouse".
Same thing in Finland. It is actually still quite popular, many years after the digital switch-over. If you have your TV already on, it is the fastest way to peek at the latest headlines or weather report. Another popular application seems to be horse racing scores. Kiosks selling bets almost always have a TV constantly showing Teletext at the relevant page. Works without any net connection.
A nice result of the Teletext limitations is that the pages show just the data without fancy formatting, and whoever creates the content must make the best of the limited space, choosing words carefully. This means the system is really very efficient for the reader, you don't have to wade over fluff... (unfortunately because of the way the pages are rotated in the transmission, you may have to wait a bit until your page comes up, unless your receiver implements good caching. Old implementations did not, and that made reading slow.).
The you mention are plausible extrapolations from the state of technology in the 1990's, not "unobtainium", although we now know the time table was way too optimisitic, as usual. As noted by another poster, the thousands of small windmills were aknowledged to be a bad idea even within the books (their inventor Sax Russell attends a conference on terraforming, where one paper accounts for the warming effects of various methods, and dismisses the windmills). As for solar warming, remember the terraforming also tapped geothermic (areothermic?) energy (the "moholes"), and collected more solar energy than the surface area of Mars allows by the use of space mirrors (the "soletta" of the books).
The "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great future history that lays out a credible way the Mars colonisation could play out, including the inevitable revolt against the megacorporations. Enjoyed it last summer. The books were written in the early 1990's, evidenly with the best knowledge about Mars available then. At times it feels like the author had visited the place in person... There is no technobable, no miracle technology, this is hard sci-fi at its hardest. But much of the story is really about social effects, the tensions between early Mars settlers, newcomers, people who want to terraform Mars and those that desire to preserve it, and the corporations that just want to extract maximum profits from Mars. Earth future history is also explored with the unexpected discovery of a life-prolonging treatment (who gets it?), and an environmental crisis caused by volcanism in the Antarctic (a huge flood, but not fashionably by global warming).
...you don't have to fight internal politics of a giant corp, you get the excitement and energy of a new start up working on something cool, and best of all, you rid yourselves off that Elop.
And you get hit by a ton of patent lawsuits, if it looks like you will be succesful :-(
In Finland, every publisher is required by law to submit a copy of every printed work published in the country (not just books, but newspapers and magazines as well) to the National Library and a few other university libraries (so the system has redundancy). This has been going on since 1829. I suppose many other countries have similar laws.
I guess the biggest one is a much cheaper track: Just a concrete through, which probably does not have to be built to as exacting tolerances as a maglev track. Heavy rain might be an interesting problem to handle. The track cannot have too large drainage holes in it, otherwise the lift disappears.
Thanks, the second picture nicely answers my question about how to supply electricity to the train.
This might be a good idea, if they can figure out how to supply electricity to power the flying train. Tricky, because there is no ground contact, unlike a regular train, and the track itself does not propel it forward, like a maglev track does. Otherwise it has to carry its fuel, which might negate the advantages of the idea.
Exactly what I was about to post! He is a character that is foremost an engineer. Professor Calculus is from the Tintin series by Herge (in the French language originals he is named Tournesol), and the character is supposedly based on the great real-life inventor and explorer Auguste Piccard (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Piccard ) On the other hand, most of the characters in the article were unknown to me (a Finn), so continentalocentrism cuts both ways.
well, I will trust a German "Stiftung" more. Mainly irrational reasons based on images of German work ethic., etc. Just donated 25€
As an owner of a plot of land in one of the cities mentioned as beneficiaries, the article made my day... That ought to take care of my retirement fund :-).
During my latest 64-bit Mandriva Linux upgrade, I accidentally nuked the previous 64-bit plugin beta version, and I was dismayed to find Adobe no longer provided it on their site. After this /. article I rushed to the site to grab it just in case some corporate strategist makes it unavailable again... Works fine with Mandriva 2010.1 on Pentium D @3.2Ghz (don't laugh, I got the board cheap and the performance is more than adequate for my needs). Much better than the 32-bit plugin version with nspluginwrapper.
Not sure if I should thank them or not, though. Giving something, then capriciously taking it away, then giving it again would be bad behaviour in a real human.
"Half-assed hologram taken"? I wonder if you have seen a real, well-made hologram of a person? They are spooky in their combination of 3D, extremely high resolution (almost infinite, in fact) and absence of motion and color. Nothing else is like them ("death masks", casts of a deceased persons faces, might come closest).
(There is also a PR angle: the use of such classic luxury materials sounds extravagant to taxpayers...)
Wouldn't a lump of lead work as well and be cheaper?
There is precedent: Daguerrotype and the French governement. From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype)
Instead of Daguerre obtaining a French patent, the French government provided a pension for him.[6] In Britain, Miles Berry, acting on Daguerre's behalf, obtained a patent for the daguerreotype process on August 14, 1839. Almost simultaneously, on August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift “Free to the World.”
Am I missing something? Sony cannot be that stupid? Do they really want Blu-ray to be authored by serious professionals only?