First of all, a reporter is not, cannot be an objective observer, just as you cannot in any meaningful way observe a subatomic particle without altering it. The act of observation is inextricable from participation; truth whether in the realm of physics or sociology. Read the works of Douglas Hofsteder for a detailed analysis of how this is so.
What Jack's trying to point out is that a cameraperson in Jerusalem could just as easily (and most likely did) find and film Palestinians praying, weeping and genuinely sympathizing with the pain all Americans feel. It's just that the images of the inhuman dupes celebrating "made better copy" to borrow the old newspaperman's phrase.
In no way am I trying to say (as I think Jack is) that there's a media conspiracy for one adjenda or another. I do not watch television, but have found myself spending a good deal more time in front of it this week. Outside of NPR, I have yet to see or hear a segment on how Muslim families, Americans who like all of us are shocked, shaken, and scared by this tragedy, are also facing death threats and hate crimes. The "spin" Jack is so concerned about is indeed dangerous to some of our fellow Americans. The unwashed masses of America do not read/., do not listen to NPR, do not *like* people of a different race than themselves, and are always happy to take "justice" into their own hands. Images of Palestinians rejoicing ought to have been balanced with images of the many Arabs shocked and appalled at the tragedy they witness half a world away. That, in my mind would have been more responsible journalism. Journalists have the power to shape public opinion in very profound ways, and as the comic book adage goes, "with that power comes great responsibility".
It is too easy to turn to government as a lever to get something you want implemented. Restrain yourself, do it the right way (get other real people to work with you).
Which is really exactly my point.
[RANT] I'm starting to think it's insanity trying to make a nuanced point on/.; no matter what you say, someone's going to pidgeonhole you one way or another. First I say that government mandating IPv6 is the wrong direction and AC yells at me for being a Dittohead, against any government regulation. I explain my point, that I'm not against all gov't regulation, just where it's going to cause more harm than good. Then AC tells me not to rely on the government for everything.
[/RANT]
Actually, I think you make an excellent point, and I didn't know that in the beginning Beta was not technically superior (I was six when the video wars were at their peak). I'm only familiar with the current incarnation, which is pretty damn good. No touching a DVD, but excellent for a tape.
Anyway, we've gotten way off topic, but thanks for at least something to do on a slow Tuesday.
Let's talk shades of grey; just because a government mandate isn't the answer doesn't mean the "free market" is. Government regulation rarely has anything to do with what "the people" want. Sometimes that's a good thing; people want to be able to buy guns and shoot their neighbor because "his dog keeps pooping in my yard". I think gun control is an excellent example of government regulation. The government should stick to issues it's good at though, and government is *not* good at technology.
Tech moves too fast, and yes, adoption is market-driven. The market doesn't always come up with the best solution (*cough* Betamax *cough* BeOS) but it muddles through. The people that know & understand the issue are aware of the problem, and are working on a way to fix it. NAT buys us some time until IPv6 or whatever comes along. But the Government saying all broadcasts must be in HDTV hasn't helped; I doubt mandating 20% of all internet traffic being on IPv6 would help either.
Telling others to grow up is not exactly intellectual discourse. You don't know who the hell I am. Did you even bother to read my bio? That'll give you a small clue.
Government Regulation is *NOT* the answer! Where would we be if government regulated Token Ring networking? Government regulation is inherantly out of date. Didn't you read that article on Be the other day? The fellow prosecuting the Microsoft case didn't even have an email address! Government regulation hasn't helped HDTV either; that's been in place for years in Japan, and a while in the US, and few if anyone bothers with it, because they don't see much of it. I'm a widescreen buff, and I love it, and a lot of my friends who've seen a DVD on a real widescreen are very impressed. Once the pricepoint comes down a little further you'll see a lot more adoption.
On the networking side, I'd like to see IPv6 take off, but not by a government mandate! Saints preserve us.
jaz
Time Warner Triad NC Area anecdotal, OT, blah blah
on
Code Red Refunds?
·
· Score: 1
I have good and bad to say about them. First of all, my service was absolutly terrible during the peak two weeks. After the "fixed" "random search" version of code red came around, my connection went down and didn't come back reliably until I got on the phone with them two weeks (and two diablo2 HC characters -- I'm not a fast learner) later. Once I had them on the phone, I had to convince them that YES I had reset the 'modem', YES (both of) my network cards worked, and that YES I had patched my system so I was not the cause of the problem. Once I got past that, the tech put me on hold for twenty minutes while she discussed the situation with someone remotely clueful. Finally, she came back on and said "we have been getting a lot of complaints from your area, we'll send a tech out to take a look. And we'll credit your account for the time you've been down." I had never asked for that, but think it was entirely appropriate. By that evening, everything was fine (and has been, despite the ?still? continual default.ida? requests).
I have been pretty much end-to-end impressed with TWC's service, despite the fact that cable in my area is VERY popular. The incumbent local carrier (*cough*BellSouth) absolutely bites; no concept of quality customer service in the face of crisis. The TWC rep pretty much walked me through the basics, and then got someone to help her that had a grasp of the big picture. They got the problem fixed, *and* made me happy to boot.
'nuff rambling,
jaz
I would have thought that the high-energy collisions of the protons with the hull of the ISS would have neccessitated a shelter of some sort. Apparantly not. Two of the new crew were out swimming in protons yesterday.
The 007 franchise for PS and N64 is very different from the straight up shooter, at least at the 007 difficulty level. In the "agent" mode, it's very easy to get through the game just runing around and blasting anything that moves (with the exclusion that you can't blast anything in a white lab coat). In my eyes, the first difficulty level just so you can get an idea of what you're supposed to do and where to go.
Once you get to the upper difficulty levels of the game (particularly the 00 Agent level) It's much more about accomplishing the objectives assigned you than killing everyone you see. Most of the time, you must avoid confrontation at all costs, and/or kill without making noise i.e. with your fists. This makes it very exciting and challenging, although only once; once you compelte a level, you don't ususally play it over and over (unlike diablo:)). This franchise is the essentially the ONLY fps game I enjoy, due to this more cerebral nature.
Of course, it includes "football" and the other variations, such as ctf for multiplayer, so it's not *that* different from what's come before.
>Actually, one other thing that could help is for the ISP's to use short lease DNSand keep everyones IP address changing. >That would at least make things a little more difficult for crackers.
The trojan reports the port it's listening on to an IRC channel. What's to stop it broadcasting its current IP?
>Oh, and for people who think this is just a MS problem so linux users don't have to worry, if they get enough computers, >they can start attacking backbone segments. Then everyone gets shut out.
DDOS' suck for everyone, remember two weeks ago when we couldn't get onto/. because of a DDOS? I had to *gasp* work! To get back ontopic, some linux distros are almost as bad Microsloth products as far as out-of-the-box security goes. I mean, there was a time when intalling linux was *shocker* difficult. You actually had to do some *oh no!* reading. Now Joe Sixpack's a linux admin, and goes frolicking around/etc/inetd.conf removing all those ugly comment hashes. Course, the windoze code doesn't run, but there's such an assload of buffer overflow exploits some cracker can depants his machine fast.
Clunk, Clunk, my $0.02 jaz
Hollywood's marketers have caught up with BWP
on
Lo-Tech Cinema
·
· Score: 1
I saw on teevee last night a flashy, qwik-cut advertisement for BWP. It probably cost twice what the movie did. It almost catches the creepiness that made BWP a great movie, but it was much cooler at J-Kub's house on a 21" monitor before it was released (NOTE TO MIAA: Seeing this movie for free directly led to my paying an outrageous amount of dough to see it in a theatre. This is a clue, please take this one, it's free! --or get one somewhere). I'm shocked that Jon would be raging on about how geeks found something great and now HW is pimping it out for the masses.;-)
I don't care too much, since I'm already into the Next Big Thing. I'll find it weeks before the cattle catch up. The Megacorps can follow along right behind me if they like. It's not like they have a clue where we're going ('course, I don't either, but that's what makes life fun). They just follow up behind geek.culture innovations as best they can in a reactive mode. I don't think any other "net-setters" are looking over their shoulders either. Bitching about what the rest of the world is doing is pointless; that's no way to live your own life.
Ever notice these promotions carry a disclaimer of this sort? It dosn't matter what they say on a commercial (I know, it sucks, but that's life in the USofA). What matters is what it says in the "Official Rules" of the promotion/contest/etc. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the phrases "Harrier Jet" and "7,000,000 points" don't appear anywhere in the rules.
Now, that's not to say he couldn't sue them for the discrepency between the advertisements and the Official Rules, but the liability of PepsiCo in that case is quite a bit smaller.
*Still* no client for my Linux/PPC machine. Ever hear "build it and they will come?" OPEN SOURCE AND WE WILL PORT! Who gives a rat's ass if there's a pretty java client? The sum_bitch could be rendering Episode II for all we know. I ain't havin' it! *grumble*
I was reading the mass-storage Ask Slashdot thread this morning; somone posted this link there. Apparently, someone submitted the link back in as a news article. Here's a link with good debunking material from that previous thread. So is that all well and good? We know now we won't be buying into their 90GiB chip, much less a new video card from these clowns, right?
But! I spent some time reading their "forum" section. This is a truly frightening place; there seem to be three or four posts daily asking for corroborative links, which are responded to by "avatars" flaming the bejeezus out of the querant. I'm bothered by this; I'm so used to/.'s freewheeling, the-ones-that-know-tell-everyone-else-what-the-rea l-deal-is nature of slashdot forums. The conscensus of this/. forum is to dismiss it; this is a joke or publicity stunt. In fact it isn't. These guys take themselves very seriously, and are openly hostile to any and all references to actual (peer-reviewed) research.
Ask Ed Gehrman what he's experienced with this site. He's posted several comments on their site, but then gets childishly (and publicly) ridiculed by the maintainers of the forum, not on the merit of his posts, but the size of his genitalia, literacy, family, etc. This from the supposed CS/EE's, makers of Tommorow's Tommorrow's Technology who can't even spell "teraherz" or "dialectrics" (sic).
I sent Ed a link to Third Voice, and did a touch of debunking myself. If we all went to the site & tore apart their claims, perhaps we can rescue the idiots who're listening to their claims (and sending $$ and equipment to further research, believe it or not. I saw the posts on the forum today).
Anyway, that's my perfect scenario, now that this snake oil operation as once again resurfaced on/.: what if 1000's of/.ers descend on their little party armed with facts and reason... "what a wonderful world it would be..."
So go forth, my fellow Knights of Reason and Heroines of Truth (or vice/versa:) ). Take up your expertise, your passion, your wit, and take these goons to task! Yield no quarter, take no prisoners, kick ass, forget names, and have fun with it!
You got it pally. The Linux community is nothing if not responsive.
Yes, all you Linux-lovers out there, we've got what you've been waiting for all this time! Run, don't walk to freshmeat.net and download BSOD-0.01.i386.rpm! Simply type rpm -ivh BSOD-0.01.i386.rpm and Blammo! Your once-reliable server will intermittently crash, displaying the famous Blue Screen Of Death you've longed for since you got that Red Hat 6.0 CD! But we haven't left the linux way behind, oh no! This puppy is ultra-customizable! Won't the guy in the next cubicle be jealous of your Mauve Screen Of Death? I hear the Khaki Screen of Death is all the rage in Paris! Next time your kernel panics (don't hold your breath) you'll be crashin' in style!
I think this was a reasonable piece of writing (for what it is), and I for one am proud to see it here on/.. I read the article (which some folks whose posts have been moderated up apparently didn't...) and it's certainly not being modest about M$'s products. BeBoxer is exactly right when he says this article is for the PHBs. BB makes a good point that another way of looking at the Sun system is that the fact that you *can* page out kernel memory during board swaps using a "quiesence" period is a damn nice piece of engineering. Whomever wrote this is certainly been trained in the ways of FUD.
But, to make use of this ability, you've pretty much gotta be a Sun outfit. I'm an old mac-head, so I know how much it sucks to be beholden to a single company hardware-wise. My PCI powermac represents a breakthrough for Apple just to use an industry-standard expansion bus. Then it took forever to get to the point where I really can use commodity goods, because the Mac third party manufacturers really didn't like competing with PeeCee suppliers and their down-to-earth prices.
In sum, the article is a piece of marketing crapola, spinning the problem away from Seattle like a top. It also makes its point in response to a pretty serious problem that reflects quite poorly on M$ products (not that I *knew* eBay was down; is there a slashbox I can set up to keep me appraised?). After reading this, I'm eagerly anticipate what they can come up with in response to ExploreZip/ZippedFiles!:P
Ok, sent the link to my pops and brother, both peeaichdee chemists. Here's my dad's response, pretty much verbatim. Enjoy knowing the truth, ya'll. jaz Beez,
(Arrgh...) There were only a few howlers in that Mars story. A major one, though, is the suggestion that bacterial methane might "power" a Mars colony in an atmosphere that contains "no" oxygen. (Whatcha gonna burn it with?) Actually the martian atmosphere doesn't have "no" oxygen, but it's a little scarce: something like 0.1% if I remember right, which is actually enough for a pretty high redox potential, but not a good bet as a fuel burner. Also, in spite of the subhead, the bugs don't "make hydrogen and nitrogen" - which requires Big Bang/ stellar core conditions respectively - nor could they possibly "use hydrogen and nitrogen to make methane" without the intervention of alchemy.
I'd be more impressed about the "martian conditions" if their petrie dishes had been bathed in UV and whiffed with ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and OH radicals like actual martian soil (that's why it has no organics left) and held at 200 - 250 K temperatures.
Finally, they're going to have trouble with that methane-powered rocket back to Earth without an oxidizer. Of course, they could use (faint) solar power to make oxygen out of (scarce) water, - but then why not just use the hydrogen from that as fuel instead of methane?
All of which is not to say that I don't love the breakthrough news. But you gotta watch that MSNBC. Would you trust them for news of a new PC virus?
--asbestos shields engaged-- GhettOS...erm... MacOS doesn't have priority management built into the system (at least up to Sys8, don't know about OSX) because it doesn't really *do* multiprogramming (at least not preemptively). However if you're using CPU Doubler, you could tweak priority levels using a "Customized" setup. Of course, since one process can monopolize/wreck the whole system, I would not recommend running any cycle-eaters (SETI or RC5) while you're doing real work. Kick off the client when you're done working on the system. Better yet, join the linuxPPC mac daddies. Email me for more info on CPUx2; if enough interest is there, I'll post info at slac.com.
NT users can change the priority through the Task Manager. There's only a choice of Low, Normal, High, and Realtime (Winamp is my only RT app;-) but the client does run itself as "Normal" by default. Switching the client to Low makes it get out of the way so context switches/screen repainting doesn't bog down.
SETI@Home (by default) runs with normal priority under NT, so I've already noticed a response degradation (context switching, screen repainting both slower) within five minutes of installing; that's unacceptable on my work machine. RC5 automatically sets itself to low priority (nice -19 under Linux). Obviously the RC5 client is more mature, so I'm a bit spoiled as far as my cycle-eater processes go...
The *nix client's been up for a while now. Unfortunately, there's no source, so those of us with muscular PPCs can't compile it on our own. The news is that the M$ and MacOS (ghettOS) clients are up. It's/.ed right now, refusing my connection. (plenty of spare cycles on my NT box at work...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
What Jack's trying to point out is that a cameraperson in Jerusalem could just as easily (and most likely did) find and film Palestinians praying, weeping and genuinely sympathizing with the pain all Americans feel. It's just that the images of the inhuman dupes celebrating "made better copy" to borrow the old newspaperman's phrase.
In no way am I trying to say (as I think Jack is) that there's a media conspiracy for one adjenda or another. I do not watch television, but have found myself spending a good deal more time in front of it this week. Outside of NPR, I have yet to see or hear a segment on how Muslim families, Americans who like all of us are shocked, shaken, and scared by this tragedy, are also facing death threats and hate crimes. The "spin" Jack is so concerned about is indeed dangerous to some of our fellow Americans. The unwashed masses of America do not read /., do not listen to NPR, do not *like* people of a different race than themselves, and are always happy to take "justice" into their own hands. Images of Palestinians rejoicing ought to have been balanced with images of the many Arabs shocked and appalled at the tragedy they witness half a world away. That, in my mind would have been more responsible journalism. Journalists have the power to shape public opinion in very profound ways, and as the comic book adage goes, "with that power comes great responsibility".
jaz
Which is really exactly my point.
[RANT] /.; no matter what you say, someone's going to pidgeonhole you one way or another. First I say that government mandating IPv6 is the wrong direction and AC yells at me for being a Dittohead, against any government regulation. I explain my point, that I'm not against all gov't regulation, just where it's going to cause more harm than good. Then AC tells me not to rely on the government for everything.
I'm starting to think it's insanity trying to make a nuanced point on
[/RANT]
Actually, I think you make an excellent point, and I didn't know that in the beginning Beta was not technically superior (I was six when the video wars were at their peak). I'm only familiar with the current incarnation, which is pretty damn good. No touching a DVD, but excellent for a tape.
Anyway, we've gotten way off topic, but thanks for at least something to do on a slow Tuesday.
jaz
Let's talk shades of grey; just because a government mandate isn't the answer doesn't mean the "free market" is. Government regulation rarely has anything to do with what "the people" want. Sometimes that's a good thing; people want to be able to buy guns and shoot their neighbor because "his dog keeps pooping in my yard". I think gun control is an excellent example of government regulation. The government should stick to issues it's good at though, and government is *not* good at technology.
Tech moves too fast, and yes, adoption is market-driven. The market doesn't always come up with the best solution (*cough* Betamax *cough* BeOS) but it muddles through. The people that know & understand the issue are aware of the problem, and are working on a way to fix it. NAT buys us some time until IPv6 or whatever comes along. But the Government saying all broadcasts must be in HDTV hasn't helped; I doubt mandating 20% of all internet traffic being on IPv6 would help either.
Telling others to grow up is not exactly intellectual discourse. You don't know who the hell I am. Did you even bother to read my bio? That'll give you a small clue.
jaz
Government regulation is inherantly out of date. Didn't you read that article on Be the other day? The fellow prosecuting the Microsoft case didn't even have an email address!
Government regulation hasn't helped HDTV either; that's been in place for years in Japan, and a while in the US, and few if anyone bothers with it, because they don't see much of it. I'm a widescreen buff, and I love it, and a lot of my friends who've seen a DVD on a real widescreen are very impressed. Once the pricepoint comes down a little further you'll see a lot more adoption.
On the networking side, I'd like to see IPv6 take off, but not by a government mandate! Saints preserve us.
jaz
I have good and bad to say about them. First of all, my service was absolutly terrible during the peak two weeks. After the "fixed" "random search" version of code red came around, my connection went down and didn't come back reliably until I got on the phone with them two weeks (and two diablo2 HC characters -- I'm not a fast learner) later. Once I had them on the phone, I had to convince them that YES I had reset the 'modem', YES (both of) my network cards worked, and that YES I had patched my system so I was not the cause of the problem. Once I got past that, the tech put me on hold for twenty minutes while she discussed the situation with someone remotely clueful. Finally, she came back on and said "we have been getting a lot of complaints from your area, we'll send a tech out to take a look. And we'll credit your account for the time you've been down." I had never asked for that, but think it was entirely appropriate. By that evening, everything was fine (and has been, despite the ?still? continual default.ida? requests).
I have been pretty much end-to-end impressed with TWC's service, despite the fact that cable in my area is VERY popular. The incumbent local carrier (*cough*BellSouth) absolutely bites; no concept of quality customer service in the face of crisis. The TWC rep pretty much walked me through the basics, and then got someone to help her that had a grasp of the big picture. They got the problem fixed, *and* made me happy to boot.
'nuff rambling,
jaz
I'm soooo disillusioned.
jaz
(NYT, registration required)e /AP-Space-S huttle.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/scienc
Anyone know what's going on?
jaz
Once you get to the upper difficulty levels of the game (particularly the 00 Agent level) It's much more about accomplishing the objectives assigned you than killing everyone you see. Most of the time, you must avoid confrontation at all costs, and/or kill without making noise i.e. with your fists. This makes it very exciting and challenging, although only once; once you compelte a level, you don't ususally play it over and over (unlike diablo :)). This franchise is the essentially the ONLY fps game I enjoy, due to this more cerebral nature.
Of course, it includes "football" and the other variations, such as ctf for multiplayer, so it's not *that* different from what's come before.
jaz
jaz
>That would at least make things a little more difficult for crackers.
The trojan reports the port it's listening on to an IRC channel. What's to stop it broadcasting its current IP?
>Oh, and for people who think this is just a MS problem so linux users don't have to worry, if they get enough computers,
>they can start attacking backbone segments. Then everyone gets shut out.
DDOS' suck for everyone, remember two weeks ago when we couldn't get onto /. because of a DDOS? I had to *gasp* work! /etc/inetd.conf removing all those ugly comment hashes. Course, the windoze code doesn't run, but there's such an assload of buffer overflow exploits some cracker can depants his machine fast.
To get back ontopic, some linux distros are almost as bad Microsloth products as far as out-of-the-box security goes. I mean, there was a time when intalling linux was *shocker* difficult. You actually had to do some *oh no!* reading. Now Joe Sixpack's a linux admin, and goes frolicking around
Clunk, Clunk, my $0.02
jaz
I don't care too much, since I'm already into the Next Big Thing. I'll find it weeks before the cattle catch up. The Megacorps can follow along right behind me if they like. It's not like they have a clue where we're going ('course, I don't either, but that's what makes life fun). They just follow up behind geek.culture innovations as best they can in a reactive mode. I don't think any other "net-setters" are looking over their shoulders either. Bitching about what the rest of the world is doing is pointless; that's no way to live your own life.
jaz
Now, that's not to say he couldn't sue them for the discrepency between the advertisements and the Official Rules, but the liability of PepsiCo in that case is quite a bit smaller.
jaz
*Still* no client for my Linux/PPC machine. Ever hear "build it and they will come?" OPEN SOURCE AND WE WILL PORT! Who gives a rat's ass if there's a pretty java client? The sum_bitch could be rendering Episode II for all we know. I ain't havin' it! *grumble*
But! I spent some time reading their "forum" section. This is a truly frightening place; there seem to be three or four posts daily asking for corroborative links, which are responded to by "avatars" flaming the bejeezus out of the querant. I'm bothered by this; I'm so used to /.'s freewheeling, the-ones-that-know-tell-everyone-else-what-the-rea l-deal-is nature of slashdot forums. The conscensus of this /. forum is to dismiss it; this is a joke or publicity stunt. In fact it isn't. These guys take themselves very seriously, and are openly hostile to any and all references to actual (peer-reviewed) research.
Ask Ed Gehrman what he's experienced with this site. He's posted several comments on their site, but then gets childishly (and publicly) ridiculed by the maintainers of the forum, not on the merit of his posts, but the size of his genitalia, literacy, family, etc. This from the supposed CS/EE's, makers of Tommorow's Tommorrow's Technology who can't even spell "teraherz" or "dialectrics" (sic).
I sent Ed a link to Third Voice, and did a touch of debunking myself. If we all went to the site & tore apart their claims, perhaps we can rescue the idiots who're listening to their claims (and sending $$ and equipment to further research, believe it or not. I saw the posts on the forum today).
Anyway, that's my perfect scenario, now that this snake oil operation as once again resurfaced on /.: what if 1000's of /.ers descend on their little party armed with facts and reason... "what a wonderful world it would be..."
So go forth, my fellow Knights of Reason and Heroines of Truth (or vice/versa :) ). Take up your expertise, your passion, your wit, and take these goons to task! Yield no quarter, take no prisoners, kick ass, forget names, and have fun with it!
jaz 'guevera'
You got it pally. The Linux community is nothing if not responsive.
Good thing (for him) the PHBs don't have 3V, huh?
jaz
But, to make use of this ability, you've pretty much gotta be a Sun outfit. I'm an old mac-head, so I know how much it sucks to be beholden to a single company hardware-wise. My PCI powermac represents a breakthrough for Apple just to use an industry-standard expansion bus. Then it took forever to get to the point where I really can use commodity goods, because the Mac third party manufacturers really didn't like competing with PeeCee suppliers and their down-to-earth prices.
In sum, the article is a piece of marketing crapola, spinning the problem away from Seattle like a top. It also makes its point in response to a pretty serious problem that reflects quite poorly on M$ products (not that I *knew* eBay was down; is there a slashbox I can set up to keep me appraised?). After reading this, I'm eagerly anticipate what they can come up with in response to ExploreZip/ZippedFiles! :P
Again, thanks to Hemos for posting this.
jaz
Actually, you're not that far from Mars. It might take light a second or two to get from here to Mars. In stellar circles, that's just blinking.
Just trying to keep things in perspective. :)
jaz
Here's my dad's response, pretty much verbatim. Enjoy knowing the truth, ya'll.
jaz Beez,
(Arrgh...) There were only a few howlers in that Mars story. A major one, though, is the suggestion that bacterial methane might "power" a Mars colony in an atmosphere that contains "no" oxygen. (Whatcha gonna burn it with?) Actually the martian atmosphere doesn't have "no" oxygen, but it's a little scarce: something like 0.1% if I remember right, which is actually enough for a pretty high redox potential, but not a good bet as a fuel burner. Also, in spite of the subhead, the bugs don't "make hydrogen and nitrogen" - which requires Big Bang/ stellar core conditions respectively - nor could they possibly "use hydrogen and nitrogen to make methane" without the intervention of alchemy.
I'd be more impressed about the "martian conditions" if their petrie dishes had been bathed in UV and whiffed with ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and OH radicals like actual martian soil (that's why it has no organics left) and held at 200 - 250 K temperatures.
Finally, they're going to have trouble with that methane-powered rocket back to Earth without an oxidizer. Of course, they could use (faint) solar power to make oxygen out of (scarce) water, - but then why not just use the hydrogen from that as fuel instead of methane?
All of which is not to say that I don't love the breakthrough news. But you gotta watch that MSNBC. Would you trust them for news of a new PC virus?
Love -
Dad
I call the stuff PoetC.
jaz
GhettOS
However if you're using CPU Doubler, you could tweak priority levels using a "Customized" setup. Of course, since one process can monopolize/wreck the whole system, I would not recommend running any cycle-eaters (SETI or RC5) while you're doing real work. Kick off the client when you're done working on the system. Better yet, join the linuxPPC mac daddies. Email me for more info on CPUx2; if enough interest is there, I'll post info at slac.com.
jaz (aka Sir Postalot)
PS gratz to /. on hitting 100Megahitz.
jaz
jaz
jaz
jaz