Is this really the case? Last time I sat through astronomy in college they still seemed to make a lot of the "concurrent development" theory. Has that been shown wrong recently?
The problem is (or so I believe, never having taken an astronomy course in my life) that the Earth has a large amount of iron in its core - whereas the moon has almost no iron. If the Earth and moon coalesced out of the same matter at the same time, you'd expect them to have a similar composition.
The easiest way to explain the difference was to claim that the Earth was hit by another object which sloughed off part of the surface, leaving the core largely unchanged. The problem has been getting the timing and mass right: this simulation shows that it had to be about a Mars-sized object at a specific time - any bigger or smaller, or at a different time, and you need multiple collisions to obtain the Earth and moon as we see them today.
-dair (like I say, not an astronomer - just going by what I read in the paper this morning)
Every heard of something called a "surface-to-air-missile"?
I'm not an expert, but I think this might be out of range of a typical SAM. A quick search on Google turns up the Akash (max ceiling 18km) and the Hawk (max ceiling 9km). The only thing I could find that could reach 30km (i.e., 100,000 feet) was something called a BOMARC, which appeared to have a reputation as being a bit unreliable.
I would guess if future versions of the wing could get up over 100,000 feet then they'd be pretty much untouchable. It would be a lot cheaper than the '"space bomber" idea the US are currently floating - although quite a bit slower to reach the target, it could presumably circle overhead until required.
Also, I'd say that the cost factor of having such a complicated system for such a small payload would make it impractical.
Well assuming it can return to base unharmed, it'd be completely reuseable (aside from the mass used as a payload:-).
I have suggested that BeOS use a linux bootloader and then it would boot fine on the G3 and G4 machines, however this suggestion is always countered with the statement that "linux booting on G3 and G4 macs is illegal"
Sorry, I don't believe it.
As plastik55 says, the basic hardware bootstrapping is done with OF. Information about particular devices is available from Darwin. The idea that it's somehow illegal to use this information is a bit implausible, unless you entered into a contract to say you wouldn't - but I doubt that applies to Be.
-dair (IANAL, but I doubt the person from Be who told you this was either)
Re:Funny or not, it really makes you think...
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good
Uniformity in protocols is good, uniformity in implementation is bad.
This is exactly why cell phones are so popular in Europe/Asia - there's an incredible diversity of handsets available, all of which have different features and trade-offs between (say) battery life and weight.
But underneath they all talk the same language - you can send an SMS message from pretty much anywhere in Europe and you know it'll get through to a handset thousands of miles away. The fact that it 'just works' is testament to how useful it is to have standardised protocols for communicating between different implementations.
So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.
I don't think it is - the problem is finding the best protocol to use to let computers talk to each other. The OS is several levels above this, and standardising on the OS is like standardising on a singe type of cell phone.
Case in point, the net - since every system converged on TCP/IP, life has gotten a whole lot easier. Standardising on a protocol like that allows you to pick the OS that's best for the job, and not be forced into one particular OS just because it's the only one you can use to communicate with everyone else.
Heh... I don't know about Microsoft overrunning alternate OSes, but they could just do what Apple did to BeOS.
Which is to say, they could change the way every computer boots, so that it is impossible to make an alternate operating system for it...
Hmm, you're forgetting that Linux ran/runs just fine on these machines (the B&W G3s). Apple was never under an obligation to support Be, and if Be weren't willing to do the work to bring up their OS on somebody else's hardware then that was their decision.
Be's story that it was all Apple's fault may have had more to do with getting passed over in favour of NeXT and receiving a large cash injection from Intel...
I can't remember which of the aliens on the Simpsons said it...
It was Kang:
Kang: Abortions for all.
crowd boos
Kang: Very well, no abortions for anyone.
crowd boos
Kang: Hmm... Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
crowd cheers and waves miniature flags
One of the halloween episodes I think - the one where Kang impersonated Dole and the other alien impersonated Clinton.
I don't think that they are available anymore. Last time I checked the only way to get the Developer Tools was by purchasing OS X. Once the public beta ended, so did free access to the Developer tools.
The tools are at http://connect.apple.com/. If you're not an ADC member, sign up for the free on-line program, log in, and look in the Download Software/Mac OS X section. They've been up there since June 12th.
It's a 136Mb download, so if you're not on broadband then picking up a retail copy of Mac OS X is the easiest way to get them on CD - the tools CD isn't shipped with new systems, but it's in the box if you buy it at retail.
?Tote> I'll still say I find that hard to belive. That says that spinning the DVD is hardly drawing any power at all, when it is probably the biggest power hog in the system. I'll have to try it myself. I'm flying from Chicago to Boston Sunday, so I'll have a chance to give it a whack.
Are you running on OS X when you're testing? Its power management support is somewhat broken at the moment, so you can expect a reduced battery life there no matter what you're doing.
The article about MS leaving winXP RC1 on the web wasn't particularily clear what it meant by code. I assume they mean the binary distribution of winXP
They do.
Also as far as copyright issue with the leaked code, would MS have any protection in this case or is it required that there be minimal protection of the IP before any of the laws apply?
Copyright applies from the moment a work is created - the author automatically holds the copyright to their works. Copyright doesn't stop you taking it if they leave it lying on the ground, it simply stops you from claiming it's yours (either your creation, or yours to sell, etc).
the PowerPC can understand M68k instructions as well (how do you think Mac OS 8 ran on it?)
The PowerPC can not understand 68K instructuions. The emulator is software, and part of the Mac OS - if you boot into another OS like Linux, there is no 68K emulator.
Everyone should have a right to tell people about events.
You're confusing your right to speak with my right to listen. You've got every right to stand on a street corner and speak your mind - you've got no right to phone me up at 3 in the morning and tell me all about it...
Think of it this way: if someone made a mass mailing detailing human rights abuses in China, would you consider it spam?
Where do you stop? Or does anyone who feels strongly about a subject have the right to fill my in-box with their opinions?
-dair
Re:Stupidity is Self Curing
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 2
For example, in some countries, many people have vitamin deficiencies that can lead to blindness (I think this is vitamin K but I can't remember). Some researchers are working on (or may have finished) corn that grows with the vitamin in it.
It's Vitamin A, and it's probably GM rice you're thinking of (for most of the countries where this is a problem, rice is one of the main foodstuffs) although I believe oil seed rape has also been modified for countries where rice is not viable.
They did this using genetics. Now go tell a few million parents that their children can grow up without blindess.
One of the main objections people raise is that farmers that grow GM crops, or have their fields inadvertently contaminated by neighbouring farmers, can find themselves with unexpected problems down the line. E.g., they may find themselves beholden to the company they bought the seed from if that company has produced so-called 'terminator' (i.e., sterile) seeds which will not themselves produce seeds that can be resown next year. Assuming farmers want to keep producing crops, they have to keep paying for the privilege.
Note I have no objection to GM foods per se, however the potential for abuse (large multinational company with a fondness for enforcing IP patents on one hand, small farmer/business on the other) is there.
-dair (although going out and destroying test fields is a fairly pointless activity - the people who have done this in the past in the UK have often trampled the wrong field by mistake)
Yeah ! but for over three or four centuries, it was proverbial that you can't escape from bastille
Actually, the Bastille spent most of its life as a comfortable prison for aristocrats (who could keep their servants, entertain guests for dinner, etc). The expense of maintaining it meant it was scheduled to be knocked down by the government, and when it was 'stormed' it only held about half a dozen inmates - a couple of forgers, a count committed at the request of his family, and a lunatic.
No "cryptic messages" -- but it does display extensions as they load (those little icons that pop up along the bottom of the screen). For better or worse, Apple does seem to believe that the user should be notified of what drivers are being loaded.
Actually, there has never been a public API for displaying these icons - they're shown by the extensions themselves rather than displayed by the OS. A couple of spare bytes in low-memory are used to hold the coordinates of the last displayed icon - each extension reads the coordinates when it gets invoked, draws its icon, and then increments the values for the next extension.
Quite a neat hack, considering that the bytes used to hold this state were appropriated from the end of the space normally used to hold the application name once the system boots.
On Mac OS X, where there are no extensions, the only visible messages are a single-line caption in the middle of the boot screen that flicks through a couple of high-level tasks ("Starting AppleTalk", etc).
Unless we invade Finland or Sweden,(with 100% coverage), we're ok. I'm sure Abdul Iraqi on his camel is surfing the web on his Nokia
Iraq obviously has more serious concerns, but several "third world" countries without a large scale public phone system are considering going straight to cellular. There's no point investing in a massive program of laying land lines/building exchanges if most people will then go and buy a phone they can carry around with them.
-dair (e.g., here in the UK public payphones cost BT a huge amount to set up - yet within the last couple of years their usage has dropped off dramatically)
Not being American I have only a vague idea who Howard Stern is, but I assume since he claims it's all in the mind he probably means Transcendental Meditation.
I just bought a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402. It has a GeForce 2 GPU, along with a DVD/CD-RW, firewire, built in ethernet, 15" display, 850MHz P3, and the VGA out port can display a completely seperate image than the LCD. All this for $2299. And with the GeForce 2 I can play games and not be hindered like my older laptops. I looked at your powerbooks, but I thought $3499 was just a bit too high. For much less I got this laptop, an 802.11b wireless AP, a wireless card for this thing, and a nice case.
True, the PowerBook is more expensive. But it does come in at 5.3lbs rather than 7.5lbs, and it's 1" thick rather than 1.6". The display is 1152x768 rather than 1024x768, you start with 256Mb/30Gb rather than 128Mb/20Gb, and the 802.11 card/aerial are hidden away under the keyboard (I assume your wireless card takes up a PC card slot and has a little aerial stub that pokes out the side).
The Toshiba looks like a nice machine though - having a CD-RW drive would be nice, and it does have 16Mb VRAM vs 8Mb.
The main thing that swung the TiBook for me was that it'll take up to 1Gb of memory (the Toshiba maxes out at 384Mb). Particularly if you're thinking of a desktop replacement, extra memory seems like one of the best ways to extend the useful life.
Now if Apple can get off its corporate butt and bring true SMP support to OS X, then I'm sold on the upcoming dual-733 G4 systems:-)
What's missing? p-threads and MP-Tasks both work on X, on single or dual CPU machines. OK, MP-Tasks don't work within Classic, but I believe they plan to support them there at some point.
Slashdot Mirror
-dair
The easiest way to explain the difference was to claim that the Earth was hit by another object which sloughed off part of the surface, leaving the core largely unchanged. The problem has been getting the timing and mass right: this simulation shows that it had to be about a Mars-sized object at a specific time - any bigger or smaller, or at a different time, and you need multiple collisions to obtain the Earth and moon as we see them today.
-dair (like I say, not an astronomer - just going by what I read in the paper this morning)
-dair
I would guess if future versions of the wing could get up over 100,000 feet then they'd be pretty much untouchable. It would be a lot cheaper than the '"space bomber" idea the US are currently floating - although quite a bit slower to reach the target, it could presumably circle overhead until required.
Well assuming it can return to base unharmed, it'd be completely reuseable (aside from the mass used as a payload
-dair
As plastik55 says, the basic hardware bootstrapping is done with OF. Information about particular devices is available from Darwin. The idea that it's somehow illegal to use this information is a bit implausible, unless you entered into a contract to say you wouldn't - but I doubt that applies to Be.
-dair (IANAL, but I doubt the person from Be who told you this was either)
This is exactly why cell phones are so popular in Europe/Asia - there's an incredible diversity of handsets available, all of which have different features and trade-offs between (say) battery life and weight.
But underneath they all talk the same language - you can send an SMS message from pretty much anywhere in Europe and you know it'll get through to a handset thousands of miles away. The fact that it 'just works' is testament to how useful it is to have standardised protocols for communicating between different implementations.
I don't think it is - the problem is finding the best protocol to use to let computers talk to each other. The OS is several levels above this, and standardising on the OS is like standardising on a singe type of cell phone.
Case in point, the net - since every system converged on TCP/IP, life has gotten a whole lot easier. Standardising on a protocol like that allows you to pick the OS that's best for the job, and not be forced into one particular OS just because it's the only one you can use to communicate with everyone else.
-dair
Be's story that it was all Apple's fault may have had more to do with getting passed over in favour of NeXT and receiving a large cash injection from Intel...
-dair (yeah, OT)
One of the halloween episodes I think - the one where Kang impersonated Dole and the other alien impersonated Clinton.
-dair
-dair
It's a 136Mb download, so if you're not on broadband then picking up a retail copy of Mac OS X is the easiest way to get them on CD - the tools CD isn't shipped with new systems, but it's in the box if you buy it at retail.
-dair
?Tote> I'll still say I find that hard to belive. That says that spinning the DVD is hardly drawing any power at all, when it is probably the biggest power hog in the system. I'll have to try it myself. I'm flying from Chicago to Boston Sunday, so I'll have a chance to give it a whack. Are you running on OS X when you're testing? Its power management support is somewhat broken at the moment, so you can expect a reduced battery life there no matter what you're doing.
-dair
-dair
The real link is http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/.
-dair
-dair (NAL, etc)
-dair
I think she's off to the West End in London, to work in the theatre for a while.
-dair
Where do you stop? Or does anyone who feels strongly about a subject have the right to fill my in-box with their opinions?
-dair
One of the main objections people raise is that farmers that grow GM crops, or have their fields inadvertently contaminated by neighbouring farmers, can find themselves with unexpected problems down the line. E.g., they may find themselves beholden to the company they bought the seed from if that company has produced so-called 'terminator' (i.e., sterile) seeds which will not themselves produce seeds that can be resown next year. Assuming farmers want to keep producing crops, they have to keep paying for the privilege.
Note I have no objection to GM foods per se, however the potential for abuse (large multinational company with a fondness for enforcing IP patents on one hand, small farmer/business on the other) is there.
-dair (although going out and destroying test fields is a fairly pointless activity - the people who have done this in the past in the UK have often trampled the wrong field by mistake)
So perhaps not the best choice of names...
-dair
Quite a neat hack, considering that the bytes used to hold this state were appropriated from the end of the space normally used to hold the application name once the system boots.
On Mac OS X, where there are no extensions, the only visible messages are a single-line caption in the middle of the boot screen that flicks through a couple of high-level tasks ("Starting AppleTalk", etc).
-dair
-dair (e.g., here in the UK public payphones cost BT a huge amount to set up - yet within the last couple of years their usage has dropped off dramatically)
-dair
-dair
The Toshiba looks like a nice machine though - having a CD-RW drive would be nice, and it does have 16Mb VRAM vs 8Mb.
The main thing that swung the TiBook for me was that it'll take up to 1Gb of memory (the Toshiba maxes out at 384Mb). Particularly if you're thinking of a desktop replacement, extra memory seems like one of the best ways to extend the useful life.
-dair
-dair