Indeed. Somewhere in my basement I have a 1960 Scientific American that spells it all out. The article has remarkably realistic renderings of an Apollo capsule and also a Shuttle.
As I recall, the same article also details the energy requirements to get to Mars. The trick there is that if you land on Mars, you need Mars-escape-energy to get home.
(a) You need within epsilon of escape velocity. In fact, both lunar-height orbit and escape velocity are both a bit over 40,000 km/h. I believe that the Apollo missions achieved somewhat higher than escape velocity.
(b) "Escape velocity" is a measure of the energy you need to get that far from earth. Even if you go "straight up" you need the same energy.
A lot harder. You can reach orbit at about 25,000 km/hr. Escape velocity, which is necessary to reach the moon, is 40,000 km/hr.
Because energy is proportional to the square of velocity, that's about 2.5 times as much energy.
But it gets worse - since liftoff weight is dominated by fuel and propulsion, that's 2.5 times as much weight. etc.
Then, when you re-enter the earth's atmosphere, you have 2.5 times as much energy to burn. Simple ballistic re-entry techniques won't work for this; you need aerodynamic negative lift to sweep a big arc while you're re-entering.
Of course all these problems were addressed in 1969, but it was a massive undertaking. Much more massive than just sticking a tin can with an asbestos heat shield on top of an ICBM booster.
Linux is evolving. Distros with reproductive advantage will flourish, while others will die out. Interbreeding, fostered by the GPL, means that advantageous features are spread among the distros while disadvantageous ones wither away.
I see no reason to believe that some sort of centralized design and control would result in more effective development.
The world, and Americans in particular, seems addicted to corporation-controlled entertainment, be it music, video, or sports. There are alternatives, but I think you're overly optimistic to think that the public will overcome its addiction simply in reaction to this particular authoritarian measure.
Two different maladies are commonly referred to as skin cancer: melanoma and carcinoma.
Melanoma is deadly. Carcinoma is not something you want, but is generally not life-threatening.
There's a very strong positive correlation between sunlight exposure and Carcinoma. Not so melanoma.
A recent large study showed an inverse correlation between sunlight exposure and melanoma. Previous studies showed weak positive, or grouped all skin cancers together.
I don't think that anybody argues that skin-peeling burns are bad for you, but many experts are moderating previous advocacy of total sun-avoidance.
"Posting anonymously "... I don't think so. No matter. Thanks for responding.
I won't go tit-for-tat.
Your Paradigms are very nice speakers. Part of the reason Paradigm, and several other Canadian manufacturers like Energy, Szabo, PSB, Camber, were so successful is that the National Research Council of Canada built a big psychoacoustic research facility. Budget cuts have since seriously curtailed this facility but not before it helped spawn a number of outstanding manufacturers.
There's a tremendous amount of scientific psychoacoustic literature. My testimonial on the matter is as useless as yours. As far as I'm aware, there are no controlled experiments that show that anybody can tell the difference between correctly functioning CD players.
Note that this does not prove there is no difference. Science cannot prove this; nor can it prove that there aren't little green gremlins in my attic. But anything lacking scientific evidence or any justifiable theory qualifies as paranormal.
Large differences may indeed be obvious. For example, tube amplifiers sound different from solid state. That's because tube amplifiers introduce audible distortion within their operating limits. And considerably different distortion from solid state when both are operated outside their limits.
Some "audiophile" equipment introduces distortions that are similarly obvious. I know of two sorts of experiments to measure which is more accurate: one is to compare to the original source. Another, used heavily in analog-vs-digital, is to digitally record the output of the turntable, tube amp, whatever, and play back the recording against the original. Guess what? No percievable difference.
My comment on your Precious Paradigms was gratuitous sarcasm. It pertained to an irrelevant component of the discussion.
If you must know, I have a Brand-X DVD player, a Technics stereo (not surround-sound) amplifier, and Paradigm Studio Monitors. At least that's my main system.
There are several reasons why you might believe you hear a difference between two CD players. One is purely psychological. You know there's a difference so you hear one. That's why blind testing is important. Similarly if you know which is which and are testing your parents' ability to discriminate, you'll contaminate their judgement. That's why double blind testing is in order.
There are any number of uncontrolled variables that could cause you subjectively to prefer one system over another. You will not perceive a level difference of 0.5 dB, but the louder one will sound much fuller than the quieter.
Insulting my equipment is a fallacy knows as "special pleading." Look it up. I'm talking about scientific evidence, not my (or your) subjective impressions.
You also go on to argue that room acoustics and speaker placement matter. Of course they do. No argument from me. But irrelevant. We're talking about whether CD players sound different, not whether your Precious Paradigms produce better sound in one location or another.
Anyway, you've simply reasserted indignantly a fact not in evidence - that you can hear the difference between two correctly functioning CD players.
Audiophiles believe in paranormal phenomena that cannot be verified by any scientific process.
So this guy's player sounded better after he replaced the caps, resistors, power supply? He could tell by listening to it? With how much - a day - interval between the two auditions?
One of two things happened - he made no discernible difference and only imagines he improved the equipment. Or he made it much, much worse, and likes the distortions he introduced.
Correctly functioning players - even the cheapest - have such low noise, low distortion, and flat frequency response within the human audio spectrum that nobody has yet been able to demonstrate - in double-blind level-matched synchronized A/B comparisons - that they can tell the difference.
If you want to improve your stereo performance, concentrate on the "I/O" devices - speakers, monitors, and microphones. They introduce many orders of magnitude more color than the electronic components.
The GPU has lots of separate processing elements that operate independently. It also supports floating-point vector operations. Quite a different animal from yer-average-x86.
The U.S. rail network is huge, with tens of thousands of level crossings, and millions of miles of unfenced track. It simply isn't practical to run at more than about 130 kph on such lines.
Years ago, the U.S. decided to pour infrastructure money into the interstate highway system, not rail lines. I'm ambivalent about whether or not that was the right choice. We all love to hate cars and trucks, and they are less efficient than trains, but building fenced lines with elevated crossings would be an astronomical expense.
Canada ran the "Turbo" in the Montreal-Toronto corridor for many years. It simply took out too many animals and cars and trucks, in addition to being stopped too often for rail maintenance. And it was only a 200 kph train, I think.
This is remarkable only because of the tacit assumption that businesses should be in the continuous process of updating.
Computers are appliances. Like cars, refrigerators, and furnaces, computers don't change their function (at least in a typical business application) throughout their lifetime so why should they be replaced or updated if they ain't broke?
XP offers the same essential platform as Win2K. Would I replace my car to get new chrome? As a consumer I might, but as a business owner, I don't think so.
4 Of, pertaining to, or using digits DIGIT sb. 3; spec. applied to a computer
which operates on data in the form of digits or similar discrete elements
(opp. analogue computer).
Analog
B adj. analogue (U.S. analog) computer, a computer which operates with
numbers represented by some physically measurable quantity, such as weight,
length, voltage, etc. (cf. DIGITAL a. 4). Also, analogue device, machine,
etc. Hence analogue computing, computing by this process.
Sorry, I don't understand your corrections to my statements.
I used "digital" and "analog" as synonyms for "discrete" and "continuous."
I said that Emacs [by virtue of being almost always in insert mode] makes you escape each and every one of the more common navigation operations [using control- meta- or esc- multi-key contortions].
While I agree that hidden state is generally undesirable in a UI,
(a) I do not agree that Emacs is modeless
(b) I do not agree that Emacs is easy to learn
(c) The HCI dogma to which you refer is largely based on the same assumptions that I elaborated with respect to mice: primates who have previously been trained to use Wordpad find editors like Wordpad easier to learn.
They're not winning. I receive several hundred spams a day, and a couple get through. The pain of training my spam filter is much smaller than the pain of using an unlisted email address.
I use Spamassassin, specially configured to learn properly, but Bogofilter is easier to set up and appears to work just as well. In my experience, these two work far better than any of the other spam filters that have been touted here.
Most input from human to computer is digital - selecting from a menu of items; selecting a particular window; clicking OK; entering text, etc.
Some input is analog - like drawing a picture. Some is analog but maybe gratuitously so - like dragging or resizing a window.
Mice are great for analog input, and not so great for digital.
So why are mice used so much? Because it is easy to train primates to whack the right paddles to perform certain well-defined tasks. Not because such an interface is most efficient for an adept user.
It is true that Windows has a hideous alternate digital input method using tab and enter. That's equivalent to unary.
It is not clear to me that *any* current keyboard input convention is as efficient as it might be. Certainly not Emacs, which makes you escape the ordinary thing you do (navigating) in order to facilitate something you do less often (inserting stuff at a new place).
All these ergonomic issues are amenable to evaluation by experiment, but the easy-to-implement experiments all involve short learning periods and previously unexposed subjects. Or, worse still, subjects who have already been exposed to a particular way of doing things. Such naive experiments will tend always to support "use a mouse, just like Windows."
The Mac architecture is and will continue to be proprietary. That means MacOS will not run on commodity PCs and Macs will not run Windows.
Current Mac users are whining because their existing software won't work on new models. That's because their existing software is proprietary and closed-source. In an open-source world, CPU architecture is a minor issue.
Linux continues to be the standard open-source OS for both commodity and Mac hardware. Why would this change?
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Somewhere in my basement I have a 1960 Scientific American that spells it all out. The article has remarkably realistic renderings of an Apollo capsule and also a Shuttle.
As I recall, the same article also details the energy requirements to get to Mars. The trick there is that if you land on Mars, you need Mars-escape-energy to get home.
(a) You need within epsilon of escape velocity. In fact, both lunar-height orbit and escape velocity are both a bit over 40,000 km/h. I believe that the Apollo missions achieved somewhat higher than escape velocity.
(b) "Escape velocity" is a measure of the energy you need to get that far from earth. Even if you go "straight up" you need the same energy.
"Seriously, I'm asking how much harder."
A lot harder. You can reach orbit at about 25,000 km/hr. Escape velocity, which is necessary to reach the moon, is 40,000 km/hr.
Because energy is proportional to the square of velocity, that's about 2.5 times as much energy.
But it gets worse - since liftoff weight is dominated by fuel and propulsion, that's 2.5 times as much weight. etc.
Then, when you re-enter the earth's atmosphere, you have 2.5 times as much energy to burn. Simple ballistic re-entry techniques won't work for this; you need aerodynamic negative lift to sweep a big arc while you're re-entering.
Of course all these problems were addressed in 1969, but it was a massive undertaking. Much more massive than just sticking a tin can with an asbestos heat shield on top of an ICBM booster.
Linux is evolving. Distros with reproductive advantage will flourish, while others will die out. Interbreeding, fostered by the GPL, means that advantageous features are spread among the distros while disadvantageous ones wither away.
I see no reason to believe that some sort of centralized design and control would result in more effective development.
Darl's response to this one is a story about a pregnant cow. It makes no sense, but it is Darl's answer. I'll paraphrase:
If A sells B a pregnant cow, and neither is aware of the pregnancy, who owns the calf?
"people generally don't want to buy crap (tm)"
The world, and Americans in particular, seems addicted to corporation-controlled entertainment, be it music, video, or sports. There are alternatives, but I think you're overly optimistic to think that the public will overcome its addiction simply in reaction to this particular authoritarian measure.
On the contrary, it devalues the child. Someone so gifted should do something more worthwhile than MS hack training.
To win, to have fun, to learn something, to promote oneself, to promote awareness.
What's the point of your favourite form of entertainment?
By the way, here's Waterloo's entry.
"Source?"
Fair question. Here's a popular press account of a study of melanoma survival, which isn't quite the same thing as the result I paraphrased. I'll think I'll have to visit the library to find actual studies.
Two different maladies are commonly referred to as skin cancer: melanoma and carcinoma.
Melanoma is deadly. Carcinoma is not something you want, but is generally not life-threatening.
There's a very strong positive correlation between sunlight exposure and Carcinoma. Not so melanoma.
A recent large study showed an inverse correlation between sunlight exposure and melanoma. Previous studies showed weak positive, or grouped all skin cancers together.
I don't think that anybody argues that skin-peeling burns are bad for you, but many experts are moderating previous advocacy of total sun-avoidance.
"Consumer amps can easily be bested through ABX by the way (this doesn't seem to be contested at all)."
Show me the scientific article.
"Posting anonymously " ... I don't think so. No matter. Thanks for responding.
I won't go tit-for-tat.
Your Paradigms are very nice speakers. Part of the reason Paradigm, and several other Canadian manufacturers like Energy, Szabo, PSB, Camber, were so successful is that the National Research Council of Canada built a big psychoacoustic research facility. Budget cuts have since seriously curtailed this facility but not before it helped spawn a number of outstanding manufacturers.
There's a tremendous amount of scientific psychoacoustic literature. My testimonial on the matter is as useless as yours. As far as I'm aware, there are no controlled experiments that show that anybody can tell the difference between correctly functioning CD players.
Note that this does not prove there is no difference. Science cannot prove this; nor can it prove that there aren't little green gremlins in my attic. But anything lacking scientific evidence or any justifiable theory qualifies as paranormal.
Large differences may indeed be obvious. For example, tube amplifiers sound different from solid state. That's because tube amplifiers introduce audible distortion within their operating limits. And considerably different distortion from solid state when both are operated outside their limits.
Some "audiophile" equipment introduces distortions that are similarly obvious. I know of two sorts of experiments to measure which is more accurate: one is to compare to the original source. Another, used heavily in analog-vs-digital, is to digitally record the output of the turntable, tube amp, whatever, and play back the recording against the original. Guess what? No percievable difference.
My comment on your Precious Paradigms was gratuitous sarcasm. It pertained to an irrelevant component of the discussion.
If you must know, I have a Brand-X DVD player, a Technics stereo (not surround-sound) amplifier, and Paradigm Studio Monitors. At least that's my main system.
There are several reasons why you might believe you hear a difference between two CD players. One is purely psychological. You know there's a difference so you hear one. That's why blind testing is important. Similarly if you know which is which and are testing your parents' ability to discriminate, you'll contaminate their judgement. That's why double blind testing is in order.
There are any number of uncontrolled variables that could cause you subjectively to prefer one system over another. You will not perceive a level difference of 0.5 dB, but the louder one will sound much fuller than the quieter.
Insulting my equipment is a fallacy knows as "special pleading." Look it up. I'm talking about scientific evidence, not my (or your) subjective impressions.
You also go on to argue that room acoustics and speaker placement matter. Of course they do. No argument from me. But irrelevant. We're talking about whether CD players sound different, not whether your Precious Paradigms produce better sound in one location or another.
Anyway, you've simply reasserted indignantly a fact not in evidence - that you can hear the difference between two correctly functioning CD players.
Audiophiles believe in paranormal phenomena that cannot be verified by any scientific process.
So this guy's player sounded better after he replaced the caps, resistors, power supply? He could tell by listening to it? With how much - a day - interval between the two auditions?
One of two things happened - he made no discernible difference and only imagines he improved the equipment. Or he made it much, much worse, and likes the distortions he introduced.
Correctly functioning players - even the cheapest - have such low noise, low distortion, and flat frequency response within the human audio spectrum that nobody has yet been able to demonstrate - in double-blind level-matched synchronized A/B comparisons - that they can tell the difference.
If you want to improve your stereo performance, concentrate on the "I/O" devices - speakers, monitors, and microphones. They introduce many orders of magnitude more color than the electronic components.
Novell can still file for summary judgement. They asked to amend their motion for dismissal to a motion for summary judgement.
The motion for dismissal and the amendment were denied. However, Novell can still file for summary judgement.
There are (at least) two separate issues: (a) were the copyrights transferred to SCO; and (b) did Novell claim not with malice.
The most recent dismissal motion speaks only to (b).
It seems to me that (a) is a matter of law rather than fact, and might well be decided by summary judgement.
The GPU has lots of separate processing elements that operate independently. It also supports floating-point vector operations. Quite a different animal from yer-average-x86.
The U.S. rail network is huge, with tens of thousands of level crossings, and millions of miles of unfenced track. It simply isn't practical to run at more than about 130 kph on such lines.
Years ago, the U.S. decided to pour infrastructure money into the interstate highway system, not rail lines. I'm ambivalent about whether or not that was the right choice. We all love to hate cars and trucks, and they are less efficient than trains, but building fenced lines with elevated crossings would be an astronomical expense.
Canada ran the "Turbo" in the Montreal-Toronto corridor for many years. It simply took out too many animals and cars and trucks, in addition to being stopped too often for rail maintenance. And it was only a 200 kph train, I think.
I block distracting ads - ones that eat real estate, blink, slow page display, or overlay what I want to read.
In contrast, I find Google's ads tasteful and well targeted. Potentially even useful. So I don't block them.
Perhaps Doubleclick should change their approach. And their name, because doubleclick already has a permanent home in my adblock battern file.
This is remarkable only because of the tacit assumption that businesses should be in the continuous process of updating.
Computers are appliances. Like cars, refrigerators, and furnaces, computers don't change their function (at least in a typical business application) throughout their lifetime so why should they be replaced or updated if they ain't broke?
XP offers the same essential platform as Win2K. Would I replace my car to get new chrome? As a consumer I might, but as a business owner, I don't think so.
Digital
Analog
I decline to correspond with you further.Sorry, I don't understand your corrections to my statements.
I used "digital" and "analog" as synonyms for "discrete" and "continuous."
I said that Emacs [by virtue of being almost always in insert mode] makes you escape each and every one of the more common navigation operations [using control- meta- or esc- multi-key contortions].
While I agree that hidden state is generally undesirable in a UI,
(a) I do not agree that Emacs is modeless
(b) I do not agree that Emacs is easy to learn
(c) The HCI dogma to which you refer is largely based on the same assumptions that I elaborated with respect to mice: primates who have previously been trained to use Wordpad find editors like Wordpad easier to learn.
They're not winning. I receive several hundred spams a day, and a couple get through. The pain of training my spam filter is much smaller than the pain of using an unlisted email address.
I use Spamassassin, specially configured to learn properly, but Bogofilter is easier to set up and appears to work just as well. In my experience, these two work far better than any of the other spam filters that have been touted here.
Most input from human to computer is digital - selecting from a menu of items; selecting a particular window; clicking OK; entering text, etc.
Some input is analog - like drawing a picture. Some is analog but maybe gratuitously so - like dragging or resizing a window.
Mice are great for analog input, and not so great for digital.
So why are mice used so much? Because it is easy to train primates to whack the right paddles to perform certain well-defined tasks. Not because such an interface is most efficient for an adept user.
It is true that Windows has a hideous alternate digital input method using tab and enter. That's equivalent to unary.
It is not clear to me that *any* current keyboard input convention is as efficient as it might be. Certainly not Emacs, which makes you escape the ordinary thing you do (navigating) in order to facilitate something you do less often (inserting stuff at a new place).
All these ergonomic issues are amenable to evaluation by experiment, but the easy-to-implement experiments all involve short learning periods and previously unexposed subjects. Or, worse still, subjects who have already been exposed to a particular way of doing things. Such naive experiments will tend always to support "use a mouse, just like Windows."
I put my number down everywhere because I want people to be able to contact me. Same reason my number's in the book.
To isolate myself would be to give in to the spammers.
The Mac architecture is and will continue to be proprietary. That means MacOS will not run on commodity PCs and Macs will not run Windows.
Current Mac users are whining because their existing software won't work on new models. That's because their existing software is proprietary and closed-source. In an open-source world, CPU architecture is a minor issue.
Linux continues to be the standard open-source OS for both commodity and Mac hardware. Why would this change?