What is the assessed risk of catastrophic failure during a shuttle mission, now that the CAIB has investigated the matter? About 2%. What was the assessed risk of a catastrophic failure during a shuttle mission before the CAIB? About 2%
The risk --even the assessed risk-- has not changed at all. NASA is simply chosing to be less courageous now. Why? Did anyone claim that the Columbia disaster was due to recklessness in NASA? I've never heard such a claim. Space travel is dangerous. We have astronauts who choose to accept the risks and achieve for mankind that which cannot be done on Earth. To date, the greatest achievement of these heroic men and women is the Hubble Space Telescope. Now NASA won't return, because they can't get there with significantly less than the 2% risk they've always dealt with before. Instead, they will sit back as one of the greatest scientific instruments ever created wastes away and burns up in the atmosphere, before its time. No risk, no reward. No guts, no glory.
Well, NASA *could* design an HST mission that follows the guidelines of the Columbia Accident Report, but they are choosing not to. Besides, every astronaut I've heard from has stated their willingness to take the risk for the sake of Hubble. They love it almost as much as we (astronomers) do.
As someone pointed out in another thread, The DMCA explicitly excludes "fair-use" situations, such as decrypting a legally-purchased DVD for personal use. The DMCA does not apply to non-infringing uses of deCSS.
I think you're forgetting that Qt and KDE are separate projects. KDE didn't "write a new toolkit to do everything", they took an existing toolkit (Qt) and built a DE based on it.
Oh, I get it! You put "K"'s in place of "C"'s! Because many KDE apps have names that begin with K! Ha! Ha! Ha! Wooh! I wonder why no one's ever made that joke before? It's just...so...hilarious!
I smell a "+5, Funny" coming your way, mister oh-so-clever-with-the-joke-that-isn't-even-close-t o-being-old-yet!
Dude, you replied to the wrong message. I was responding to someone who claimed that a parsec was the distance at which the Sun subtends an angle of 1 arcsec. My post had nothing (directly) to do with the whole "Kessel Run" thing; I was correcting someone who was totally wrong about the real definition of parsec.
How is it possible that they need to develop safety procedures for a mission they've already performed four times? It smacks of an excuse, especially considering this was leaked within two days of Bush's plan.
If Linux wasn't growing, it could only be said to be growing if there weren't thousands of developers and users (I find it funny that you say testers).
No, there's an important distinction between testers and users. Linux is not a company, so it doesn't care how many users they are, in the sense that mere users of linux do nothing to help it develop and survive. Testers of linux, however, are contributing, so they count.
It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope
Agreed, but the bigger shame is that NASA is so unwilling to continue supporting even this one. HST has been its biggest public success since Apollo, and they just can't wait to see it splash into the Pacific. Mind boggling.
Yeah, let's hope so. Although the marketing blurb ("the code was first developed by students at Stanford") sounds pretty sketchy to me. But hey, who the hell listens to marketing blurbs?
Forget the legalities, I'm sure they're withing their _RIGHTS_ to take the research and move it into a compoany
No, don't forget the legalities. I am NOT sure they are within their rights. The GPL grants modification and redistribution rights subject to conditions that I am sure we are all familiar with. Sounds like this company is showing blatant disregard for those conditions, or at least treading on very thin ice. There's no way they can patent code that is derived from GPL'd code, unless the patent is made available under a non-restrictive (i.e., GPL-compatible) license.
Wow, and to attempt this with gcc, that most venerable of the GNU products? These guys have cajones.
It has a vague promise, but I would like to *see* KDE running on GTK+. The choice has to be made now, and there is no GTK-KDE *now*.
You don't understand. The KDE proposal sugests that UL include both Qt and GTK libraries, it says nothing about trying to "port" KDE to GTK, which is a completely ridiculous prospect.
If I was to start developing a closed source application (I could, if I lost my day job or whatever) Qt would not be an option for me. Only the big/medium size ones with steady income can afford it.
Oh, who cares? If you want to develop and distribute closed source apps, why don't you do it on Windows? In case you didn't notice, the Linux culture values freedom. [Note that this does not include most "enterprise" software development, which is typically for internal use only. In this case, they can simply use the Free Edition of Qt. As long as they never distribute the code, they don't have to abide by the GPL.]
I'm talking about the fact that there are several ground-based observatories that consist of multiple telescopes (Keck, Magellan, VLT, LBT), and that one of the goals of this design is interferometry. None of these telescopes is currently planning on doing optical interferometry, because it's just too hard. They're all working on infrared interferometry, and even that is very difficult to accomplish. Especially with mirrors mounted independently, as all except the LBT are.
Sounds to me like UserLinux is completely turning its back on Free-as-in-Speech, in favor of Free Beer. What's wrong with expecting companies to pay a nominal developer fee for use of an excellent API for proprietary software? They should be used to that, and I think they would understand and accept the value of the investment. By all accounts, Qt is a far superior toolkit to Gtk, and you get commercial support to boot. Plus, there's the incentive for the companies to actually contribute back to the community by GPL'ing their apps (since they would then avoid the Qt fee). Gtk may be free beer, but you get what you pay for.
This issue really clearly demonstrates the difference between the "Open Source" and "Free Software" philosophies. I generally respect and admire Mr. Perens, but I can't help feeling that he is selling out here, and selling the rest of us short, in a way.
To call angular resolution "image clarity" is greatly oversimplifying things.
I wouldn't say greatly. Angular resolution is how well one can distinguish small angular sizes in the image. It is strongly related to the concept of image "sharpness" or "clarity".
The atmosphere does pose a problem, but building the telescopes at higher elevations can greatly reduce distortion.
Yeah, and with adaptive optics, you do even better, like I said.
Extremely high angular resolution can be achieved on earth by linking up several telescopes.
VLBI is great for radio telescopes, but even regular, non-VLB interferometry is very difficult in the infrared, and all but impossible (with current tech) in the optical.
Space telescopes are great, but until it becomes cheaper to get large telescopes into orbit or on the moon nothing beats the basement bargain earth telescope.
To quote one of my professors from grad school: "did you think about that?" Do you seriously believe that a "basement bargain earth telescope" cannot be outperformed by HST, SST, et al.?
FYI, space telescopes don't have onboard propellant. If you use propellant, pretty soon the telescope has an "atmosphere" of gas around it, and some of this will condense on the optics. This is Very Bad (tm). Instead, they manipulate internal gyros for attitude adjustment, but have no translational maneuvering ability. In fact, HST needs periodic visits from a space shuttle, in order to boost it back into a higher orbit (it's in such a low orbit, that it decays over the years due to slight atmospheric drag).
Only angular resolution (a.k.a. "image clarity"), spectral coverage, and aperture size matter, really. Angular resolution is generally better from space because of the lack of atmospheric distortions (but with adaptive optics, ground telescopes are closing the gap). Spectral coverage is better in space, at least for those regions of the spectrum for which the atmosphere is not transparent (including big chunks of the IR spectrum, which Spitzer will address nicely). Aperture size is better from the ground, because it is so much cheaper to build big telescopes on Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the assessed risk of catastrophic failure during a shuttle mission, now that the CAIB has investigated the matter? About 2%. What was the assessed risk of a catastrophic failure during a shuttle mission before the CAIB? About 2%
The risk --even the assessed risk-- has not changed at all. NASA is simply chosing to be less courageous now. Why? Did anyone claim that the Columbia disaster was due to recklessness in NASA? I've never heard such a claim. Space travel is dangerous. We have astronauts who choose to accept the risks and achieve for mankind that which cannot be done on Earth. To date, the greatest achievement of these heroic men and women is the Hubble Space Telescope. Now NASA won't return, because they can't get there with significantly less than the 2% risk they've always dealt with before. Instead, they will sit back as one of the greatest scientific instruments ever created wastes away and burns up in the atmosphere, before its time. No risk, no reward. No guts, no glory.
Well, NASA *could* design an HST mission that follows the guidelines of the Columbia Accident Report, but they are choosing not to. Besides, every astronaut I've heard from has stated their willingness to take the risk for the sake of Hubble. They love it almost as much as we (astronomers) do.
As someone pointed out in another thread, The DMCA explicitly excludes "fair-use" situations, such as decrypting a legally-purchased DVD for personal use. The DMCA does not apply to non-infringing uses of deCSS.
download kopete without getting the rest of the damn kdenetwork package.
Here ya go:
Clicky
Don't forget that in addition to the commercial edition and the GPL edition, you can also license Qt under the QPL.
I think you're forgetting that Qt and KDE are separate projects. KDE didn't "write a new toolkit to do everything", they took an existing toolkit (Qt) and built a DE based on it.
They are very similar. The differneces are best discovered by trying them both out.
?
t o-being-old-yet!
Oh, I get it! You put "K"'s in place of "C"'s! Because many KDE apps have names that begin with K! Ha! Ha! Ha! Wooh! I wonder why no one's ever made that joke before? It's just...so...hilarious!
I smell a "+5, Funny" coming your way, mister oh-so-clever-with-the-joke-that-isn't-even-close-
KDE does not run only on Linux, it also runs on the BSD's, Solaris, and (just recently and still in development) Mac OS X.
Dude, you replied to the wrong message. I was responding to someone who claimed that a parsec was the distance at which the Sun subtends an angle of 1 arcsec. My post had nothing (directly) to do with the whole "Kessel Run" thing; I was correcting someone who was totally wrong about the real definition of parsec.
So, like, chill.
a parsec is a unit of distance, specifically the distance at which our sun would appear to be 1 arcsecond
;)
Uh, no. A parsec is the distance of a star at which its parallax angle (as seen from the Earth) is one arcsecond.
parallax arcsecond.
Glad I could help
How is it possible that they need to develop safety procedures for a mission they've already performed four times? It smacks of an excuse, especially considering this was leaked within two days of Bush's plan.
Only on Slashdot will you find a word like Sisyphean.
;)
Searched the web for Sisyphean: Results 1 - 10 of about 13,000.
Hmmm...
If Linux wasn't growing, it could only be said to be growing if there weren't thousands of developers and users (I find it funny that you say testers).
No, there's an important distinction between testers and users. Linux is not a company, so it doesn't care how many users they are, in the sense that mere users of linux do nothing to help it develop and survive. Testers of linux, however, are contributing, so they count.
Don't forget, we have ways of mitigating the crappy atmosphere. Without adaptive optics, there would be no point in making these gigantic telescopes. With AO, they will most definitely rock.
It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope
Agreed, but the bigger shame is that NASA is so unwilling to continue supporting even this one. HST has been its biggest public success since Apollo, and they just can't wait to see it splash into the Pacific. Mind boggling.
Yeah, let's hope so. Although the marketing blurb ("the code was first developed by students at Stanford") sounds pretty sketchy to me. But hey, who the hell listens to marketing blurbs?
Forget the legalities, I'm sure they're withing their _RIGHTS_ to take the research and move it into a compoany
No, don't forget the legalities. I am NOT sure they are within their rights. The GPL grants modification and redistribution rights subject to conditions that I am sure we are all familiar with. Sounds like this company is showing blatant disregard for those conditions, or at least treading on very thin ice. There's no way they can patent code that is derived from GPL'd code, unless the patent is made available under a non-restrictive (i.e., GPL-compatible) license.
Wow, and to attempt this with gcc, that most venerable of the GNU products? These guys have cajones.
It has a vague promise, but I would like to *see* KDE running on GTK+. The choice has to be made now, and there is no GTK-KDE *now*.
You don't understand. The KDE proposal sugests that UL include both Qt and GTK libraries, it says nothing about trying to "port" KDE to GTK, which is a completely ridiculous prospect.
If I was to start developing a closed source application (I could, if I lost my day job or whatever) Qt would not be an option for me. Only the big/medium size ones with steady income can afford it.
Oh, who cares? If you want to develop and distribute closed source apps, why don't you do it on Windows? In case you didn't notice, the Linux culture values freedom. [Note that this does not include most "enterprise" software development, which is typically for internal use only. In this case, they can simply use the Free Edition of Qt. As long as they never distribute the code, they don't have to abide by the GPL.]
You miss the fact that using QT for proprietary apps means you'll have to pay, whereas that's not the case for Gnome.
You miss the part where you get what you pay for (clearly superior API, documentation, and tech support).
For most small or medium sized software companies that's no big deal.
Exactly! The Qt commercial license is pocket change for development companies. Glad you agree.
I'm talking about the fact that there are several ground-based observatories that consist of multiple telescopes (Keck, Magellan, VLT, LBT), and that one of the goals of this design is interferometry. None of these telescopes is currently planning on doing optical interferometry, because it's just too hard. They're all working on infrared interferometry, and even that is very difficult to accomplish. Especially with mirrors mounted independently, as all except the LBT are.
Sounds to me like UserLinux is completely turning its back on Free-as-in-Speech, in favor of Free Beer. What's wrong with expecting companies to pay a nominal developer fee for use of an excellent API for proprietary software? They should be used to that, and I think they would understand and accept the value of the investment. By all accounts, Qt is a far superior toolkit to Gtk, and you get commercial support to boot. Plus, there's the incentive for the companies to actually contribute back to the community by GPL'ing their apps (since they would then avoid the Qt fee). Gtk may be free beer, but you get what you pay for.
This issue really clearly demonstrates the difference between the "Open Source" and "Free Software" philosophies. I generally respect and admire Mr. Perens, but I can't help feeling that he is selling out here, and selling the rest of us short, in a way.
To call angular resolution "image clarity" is greatly oversimplifying things.
I wouldn't say greatly. Angular resolution is how well one can distinguish small angular sizes in the image. It is strongly related to the concept of image "sharpness" or "clarity".
The atmosphere does pose a problem, but building the telescopes at higher elevations can greatly reduce distortion.
Yeah, and with adaptive optics, you do even better, like I said.
Extremely high angular resolution can be achieved on earth by linking up several telescopes.
VLBI is great for radio telescopes, but even regular, non-VLB interferometry is very difficult in the infrared, and all but impossible (with current tech) in the optical.
Space telescopes are great, but until it becomes cheaper to get large telescopes into orbit or on the moon nothing beats the basement bargain earth telescope.
To quote one of my professors from grad school: "did you think about that?" Do you seriously believe that a "basement bargain earth telescope" cannot be outperformed by HST, SST, et al.?
FYI, space telescopes don't have onboard propellant. If you use propellant, pretty soon the telescope has an "atmosphere" of gas around it, and some of this will condense on the optics. This is Very Bad (tm). Instead, they manipulate internal gyros for attitude adjustment, but have no translational maneuvering ability. In fact, HST needs periodic visits from a space shuttle, in order to boost it back into a higher orbit (it's in such a low orbit, that it decays over the years due to slight atmospheric drag).
Guess what, troll? You can do "Alt-F, Q" in KDE too. Back to your cave, try again.
Magnification? Nobody cares about magnification.
Only angular resolution (a.k.a. "image clarity"), spectral coverage, and aperture size matter, really. Angular resolution is generally better from space because of the lack of atmospheric distortions (but with adaptive optics, ground telescopes are closing the gap). Spectral coverage is better in space, at least for those regions of the spectrum for which the atmosphere is not transparent (including big chunks of the IR spectrum, which Spitzer will address nicely). Aperture size is better from the ground, because it is so much cheaper to build big telescopes on Earth.