Only if you measure "decent" by today's standards. In 1983, A Commodore 64 cost $400, a Tandy CoCo $199, a Texas Instruments 99/4A $100, and a Sinclair ZX81 $49, according to this page.
There is an experiment planned for the International Space Station for studying cosmic rays impacting with a target. It's called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. It uses the same kind of detectors being built at the LHC (but smaller). According to the original plans, it should have been sent to the ISS already on a shuttle (I think the instruments are all finished and waiting in a warehouse somewhere), but after the shuttle accidents it was delayed. I don't know the status now, or whether it will ever fly at all.
It's not nearly as large as what you are proposing, though...
[...]the 'while' returns the loop position to the 'case 6:' point which is where, as far as C is concerned, the do-loop began.
No, it returns to the 'case 0:' point where the 'do {' is. (Otherwise the loop wouldn't be executed count times, and somehow I think this Duff guy would have thought of that...)
As far as I know and have read, the directive only deals with circumvention protection for cop[y]right related issues
That's very interesting, because in Norway the directive is being implemented with a law that will (among other things) make illegal creating MP3s of legally bought "copy protected" CDs. Also software able to break copy protection will become illegal, whatever it is used for ("copyright related" or not).
Do you have a source for the claim that the directive only deals with copyright related issues? If true, it seems the Norwegian government is interpreting the directive in a stricter sense than it has to.
I think this article may be based on a misunderstanding. The paper in question is here, with the title The RHIC fireball as a dual black hole (my bold).
If I understand this correctly, the dual is meant in the sense of the "AdS/CFT-correspondence", which is a mathematical correspondence, or "duality" between a gravitational theory (which may contain black holes) and a "Gauge theory", which is the kind of theory that is used to describe quarks, electrons etc.
The duality means that calculations on black holes may (possibly) be used to understand certain things about this "fireball", but it doesn't mean that the fireball is actually a black hole.
Both the client and the server "run software", so that doesn't distinguish them. However, the client is the software that makes a connection to the server. With your terminology, it would be the "server" that requests a connection to the "client", which doesn't sound very logical.
I use tons of Open Source on my Mac, and I have never needed to compile anything. I usually get them from OpenDarwin via WebDAV.
"I use tons of Open Source on my RedHat, and I have never needed to compile anything. I usually get them from RedHat via ftp." Well, that's not quite true. But it might be. I'm sure OpenDarwin doesn't provide packages for everything on freshmeat, or sourceforge, or whatever...
Mac software comes with all the dependencies inside the.app file.
It doesn't sound like a good solution to force all users to download all the gnome libraries (or Qt, or X11 for that matter) for all applications that depend on it. A better solution would be to check what's available on your system and only download the necessary dependencies. And: That's what apt does! So, a solution already exists, but again, only software that's available in some apt repository works in this way, similarly to how only software packaged the right way may be installed effortlessly on the Mac.
That is *not* acceptable for the average end user. Take a look at Mac OS X. They got it right. You download the DMG, it mounts as a folder, you copy the "program" (really a folder that the OS makes look like a file) to your Applications directory. Done.
Well, normally you have to use an installer even though the method you describe (copy.app folder to Applications) was the way Apple intended it to work.
However, this is beside the point. To install a typical Free/Open Source program on Mac OS X, you normally have to recompile it! And sometimes even that doesn't work, because the coders used linux-only features that are not available on the BSD-based Mac OS X.
If you install software made (packaged) for Mac OS X, it's easy. But if you use Fedora and install software made (packaged) for Fedora, that's easy too. Or if you use Debian and install software made (packaged) for Debian.
It's when you want to install something not "natively" available for your distro/OS you run into problems. (Yes, those problems should be solved, but they are hard...)
An identical one! That's right, the Mozilla control will implement the IWebBrowser and DWebBrowserEvents interfaces that Microsoft have already defined for Internet Explorer.
Since the Mozilla control implements exactly the same API, it will mean that developers can take existing IE code and port it, sometimes in a matter of minutes!
The aim is to free computer makers to sell Windows bundled with rival audiovisual software
I think Microsoft's answer should be "We ain't going to bundle sh*t."
Since when is Microsoft a computer maker? The idea is that OEMs should be able to bundle Windows with the media player etc. of their choice (Microsoft's or compeditors'). The OEMs would typically compare quality and price of different products and install the best. Why would this be a bad thing?
The Amiga also used the 680x0 CPUs, and moreover, Microsoft made a version of BASIC (AmigaBasic) for the early versions of the Amiga's OS. The first CPU in the series, the 68000, had 32-bit address registers but only used the 24 least significant bits. However, it was always clear that later CPUs would use all 32 bits, and the unused bits were marked as reserved in all specs.
In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to use the 8 most significant bits of an address register for something else... The result: AmigaBasic never worked on Amigas with 68020 and later CPUs that had memory above the magical 0x00FFFFFF limit, unless you used a tool to remap (or disable) the memory above this address.
What is even more stricking is that it's coming from a woman.
While we are on the topic of Scandinavian female matematicians, there is an interview in New Scientist with Norwegian mathematics professor Ragni Piene where she discusses why there are so few women mathematicians.
According to the BBC (who are based in London...), the London power failure affected more than just the underground:
Businesses and homes in Brixton, Battersea and London Bridge were plunged into darkness and police said 270 sets of traffic lights went out. St Thomas's Hospital, in south-east London was among those which had to rely on back-up power generators.
If the water in clouds was in vapor form, you wouldn't be able to see it, since water vapor is transparent. Remember, there is water vapor in the air everywhere around you.
A cloud is formed when water vapor in the air condenses beacuse the temperature drops. The water in clouds is in the form of small water droplets and ice crystals.
The GRID is a project that started at CERN (The guys who invented the WWW) to analyse data from the Large Hadron Collider experiment(s).
It's actually one specific implementation of distributed computing, but apparently the name "Grid" caught on to the public and press, and so the term has become a general name for distributed computing projects.
Someone needs to explain to me how the EU can enforce American companies to collect a tax for the EU.
My guess is that this is something the American companies choose to do because it actually benefits their customers. You see, the European customers (who are European citizens) have to pay the sales tax (VAT) anyway, so it's easier for them to do this through the company where they buy the goods rather than having the goods stopped in customs, and extra fees added for customs processing etc.
Here is an article about how much trouble the collecting of Norwegian VAT is causing for Norwegian citizens. (Note: Norway is not a member of the EU, but probably has pretty much the same laws regarding sales tax anyway.) If American companies could collect the tax on purchase instead, this would be incredibly much simpler for Norwegians buying stuff from the USA...
When was the Big Bang theory proven and the guesstimation of 11 billion years determined to be fact?
What would you approve as a "proof" of the Big Bang "theory" anyway? There are no observations that contradict the theory, even though scientists have been looking for them for nearly a century. How much longer do they have to keep looking until you accept it as a fact?
Anyway, the figure 11 billion years is infact not quite correct - as reported recently on Slashdot, the WMAP satellite has measured the age of the universe to be 13.7 billion years +/- 1%.
People who don't read the article (and let's face it, that's most of us, right?), are certain to be confused by the quoted text. The submitter apparently left out this important sentence:
What is interesting for astronomers is that the nebula is colder than the microwave radiation which pervades all of space.
The microwave background radiation is "this radiation" the next sentence refers to.
> Norway is not a member of the EU so they won't be affected.
You didn't read the story very carefully, did you? Quoting from above: "Norway has introduced
legislation similar to the European Unions directive on copyright, making it illegal to circumvent any copyright protection".
Ok, I forgive you, since that quote is as far as I know not quite correct. But Norway is obliged to implement the EU directive by the EEA (European Economic Area) agreement between Norway and the EU.
Here is a Norwegian article about how the ruling in the case against DVD-Jon will not affect similar cases in the future, because of these new laws, according to renowned Norwegian law professor Jon Bing. The article also mentions that the implementation of the EU directive will be done within about 6 months.
Re:Forget bigger numbers, how about smaller words?
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See: Apple Cuts Off Linux iPod Users
There is an experiment planned for the International Space Station for studying cosmic rays impacting with a target. It's called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. It uses the same kind of detectors being built at the LHC (but smaller). According to the original plans, it should have been sent to the ISS already on a shuttle (I think the instruments are all finished and waiting in a warehouse somewhere), but after the shuttle accidents it was delayed. I don't know the status now, or whether it will ever fly at all.
It's not nearly as large as what you are proposing, though...
[...]the 'while' returns the loop position to the 'case 6:' point which is where, as far as C is concerned, the do-loop began.
No, it returns to the 'case 0:' point where the 'do {' is. (Otherwise the loop wouldn't be executed count times, and somehow I think this Duff guy would have thought of that...)
>>I'm not interested in the opinion of the submitter [...]
>If I actually want to see technology news, rather than opinion from the off, I read The Register [...]
Yes, because as we all know, El Reg never shows their opinion in their news stories...
That's very interesting, because in Norway the directive is being implemented with a law that will (among other things) make illegal creating MP3s of legally bought "copy protected" CDs. Also software able to break copy protection will become illegal, whatever it is used for ("copyright related" or not).
Do you have a source for the claim that the directive only deals with copyright related issues? If true, it seems the Norwegian government is interpreting the directive in a stricter sense than it has to.
If I understand this correctly, the dual is meant in the sense of the "AdS/CFT-correspondence", which is a mathematical correspondence, or "duality" between a gravitational theory (which may contain black holes) and a "Gauge theory", which is the kind of theory that is used to describe quarks, electrons etc.
The duality means that calculations on black holes may (possibly) be used to understand certain things about this "fireball", but it doesn't mean that the fireball is actually a black hole.
Both the client and the server "run software", so that doesn't distinguish them. However, the client is the software that makes a connection to the server. With your terminology, it would be the "server" that requests a connection to the "client", which doesn't sound very logical.
"I use tons of Open Source on my RedHat, and I have never needed to compile anything. I usually get them from RedHat via ftp." Well, that's not quite true. But it might be. I'm sure OpenDarwin doesn't provide packages for everything on freshmeat, or sourceforge, or whatever...
It doesn't sound like a good solution to force all users to download all the gnome libraries (or Qt, or X11 for that matter) for all applications that depend on it. A better solution would be to check what's available on your system and only download the necessary dependencies. And: That's what apt does! So, a solution already exists, but again, only software that's available in some apt repository works in this way, similarly to how only software packaged the right way may be installed effortlessly on the Mac.
Well, normally you have to use an installer even though the method you describe (copy .app folder to Applications) was the way Apple intended it to work.
However, this is beside the point. To install a typical Free/Open Source program on Mac OS X, you normally have to recompile it! And sometimes even that doesn't work, because the coders used linux-only features that are not available on the BSD-based Mac OS X.
If you install software made (packaged) for Mac OS X, it's easy. But if you use Fedora and install software made (packaged) for Fedora, that's easy too. Or if you use Debian and install software made (packaged) for Debian.
It's when you want to install something not "natively" available for your distro/OS you run into problems. (Yes, those problems should be solved, but they are hard...)
Here you are: Mozilla ActiveX Control
Not just a similar API
An identical one! That's right, the Mozilla control will implement the IWebBrowser and DWebBrowserEvents interfaces that Microsoft have already defined for Internet Explorer.
Since the Mozilla control implements exactly the same API, it will mean that developers can take existing IE code and port it, sometimes in a matter of minutes!
In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to use the 8 most significant bits of an address register for something else... The result: AmigaBasic never worked on Amigas with 68020 and later CPUs that had memory above the magical 0x00FFFFFF limit, unless you used a tool to remap (or disable) the memory above this address.
While we are on the topic of Scandinavian female matematicians, there is an interview in New Scientist with Norwegian mathematics professor Ragni Piene where she discusses why there are so few women mathematicians.
According to the BBC (who are based in London...), the London power failure affected more than just the underground:
A cloud is formed when water vapor in the air condenses beacuse the temperature drops. The water in clouds is in the form of small water droplets and ice crystals.
It's actually one specific implementation of distributed computing, but apparently the name "Grid" caught on to the public and press, and so the term has become a general name for distributed computing projects.
At least, that's how I believe the story went...
My guess is that this is something the American companies choose to do because it actually benefits their customers. You see, the European customers (who are European citizens) have to pay the sales tax (VAT) anyway, so it's easier for them to do this through the company where they buy the goods rather than having the goods stopped in customs, and extra fees added for customs processing etc.
Here is an article about how much trouble the collecting of Norwegian VAT is causing for Norwegian citizens. (Note: Norway is not a member of the EU, but probably has pretty much the same laws regarding sales tax anyway.) If American companies could collect the tax on purchase instead, this would be incredibly much simpler for Norwegians buying stuff from the USA...
When was the Big Bang theory proven and the guesstimation of 11 billion years determined to be fact?
What would you approve as a "proof" of the Big Bang "theory" anyway? There are no observations that contradict the theory, even though scientists have been looking for them for nearly a century. How much longer do they have to keep looking until you accept it as a fact?
Anyway, the figure 11 billion years is infact not quite correct - as reported recently on Slashdot, the WMAP satellite has measured the age of the universe to be 13.7 billion years +/- 1%.
People who don't read the article (and let's face it, that's most of us, right?), are certain to be confused by the quoted text. The submitter apparently left out this important sentence:
The microwave background radiation is "this radiation" the next sentence refers to.
You didn't read the story very carefully, did you? Quoting from above: "Norway has introduced legislation similar to the European Unions directive on copyright, making it illegal to circumvent any copyright protection".
Ok, I forgive you, since that quote is as far as I know not quite correct. But Norway is obliged to implement the EU directive by the EEA (European Economic Area) agreement between Norway and the EU.
Here is a Norwegian article about how the ruling in the case against DVD-Jon will not affect similar cases in the future, because of these new laws, according to renowned Norwegian law professor Jon Bing. The article also mentions that the implementation of the EU directive will be done within about 6 months.
However, for more details, you would have to look it up in a book on number theory or something like that.