The point is, it's an option, and folks like yourself never have to use it. Besides, at least the KDE folks are doing more interesting things than changing color schemes and moving menu items around every release...:)
As for browser tabs, I find them pretty useful. Yes, I'm only doing a single thing at a given moment, but they allow me to scan a news site like Slashdot, clicking to open interesting articles in new tabs, then peruse through them at my leisure, without "losing my place" when the phone rings or there's another interruption.
The real benefit to apptabs will be the ability to open several programs as one, which will be tremendously useful to programmers, multimedia folks, and others who generally have a mess of programs open to do a single job, but switch projects repeatedly throughout the day, especially contractors, who need to keep things straight while they're working for, and interacting with, multiple clients.
One desktop icon opening everything I need for a project without having to script a custom startup icon or tweak those scripts as the project progresses? I like that!:)
Tossing out the TV would save a lot of marriages. Folks don't talk anymore, they drool into the tube for hours on end. Plus, people see things on TV, decide they need that in their life, and throw away perfectly good relationships because of some cheesy screenwriting. Of course, it doesn't help marrying someone for superficial reasons...like Ron White says, you can buy a bigger rack, but you can't fix stupid.:) ~ As for the topic, I'd go with archival CD/DVDs (read-only) for the things you can't print, they're popular enough now that even if the disk warps or is otherwise obsolete, there should be someone around who will still have the ability to extract information from them. Might want to toss in a pack of baseball cards or something else that will accumulate in value during that time, just to pay for it, though. lol
Had a maxtor 80G die about a month ago. Didn't even realize what it was, every 1/2 hour or so a single, quiet "chirp" would sound. Just above audible, more like background noise, it took me maybe 2 weeks to nail it down as not just my imagination or a bird flying by outside.
Being notably lazy, chalked it up to a dying fan (3 + CPU fan), and put it on my lengthy to-do list. Finally the noise started to increase to the point of slightly annoying, but still was up in the 10+ minute range, long enough that I'd give up hunting for it after a while. I decided I'd deal with it once it was steady enough to isolate.
And it did. Problem was, when it was finally making the noise every couple minutes, I restarted the system, and got that beloved "click, click, click" that is undeniably bad (the kind that makes your power supply freak out). Needless to say, it didn't boot.
The good news was, it was an old drive, I was basically using it to boot and a partition of it as a swap drive. Everything of remote value on it had been copied off it long ago (it's 8 years old, it wasn't entirely a shock that it died).
The bummer was that it died like it did. I've seen plenty of drives die, but either you get plenty of clear warning (after the first one), or they just fail. I've never had one "chirp" so delicately for so long. It lasted at least 2 months since it started, running nearly 24/7. The drive itself showed nothing aside from the usual wear you'd expect after such a long run.
It wasn't that it died, it was that it caught me off-guard the way it did, mixed with the realization that sometimes I'm a little too lazy...
Because, as Encyclopedia Dramatica clealy states, "There are no girls on the internet". So it's insightful, because someone's 'nerd rush' has allowed them insight into their feminine side.
An easy to clean board and disposable wax pencil work pretty good. Depending on your lab, a hanger for the board on the lab window will help keep contaminates in/out of the lab, while allowing you to check your notes as needed. Paper and lab books run the risk of bringing things in/out of the lab, and constantly sterilizing items has it's own problems.
The best solution, of course, is to use a provided, sealed system, linked to your own system outside the lab area. Upload your info (matlab formulas, previous data, etc.) into the lab, use them during the experiment, then download the results into your system for later analysis.
Same here. The mouse is a killer with RSI after a while, but the keyboard only bugs me if I'm typing for a couple solid hours. Linux helps a lot, letting me configure things so when it does start to become a problem, I'm not totally knocked out, or forced to suffer to finish a project. Of course, micro-softheads can't admit that their billion dollar company is getting it's tail kicked by free software, so they have to spam IT sites with comments that don't even address the question.
Speaking of the question, I haven't found anything useful all-around for such things. Each system has it's quirks, some go haywire in certain types of noise environments, others are geared towards a certain system, (Mac), and their ports don't perform as well under a different set of common commands (such as Unix or Windows). Plus, as someone else alluded to, some are good for command use, while others tend to be better for dictation.
So, still, a decade after these things appeared, it's a matter of trial and error for your particular situation. Unfortunately, because this stuff is so heavily patented, there's unlikely to be little improvement in the future, as only a limited number of people are working on these systems, and the lawyers are getting more done than the designers.
Too bad, too. Imagine what could be done if people weren't restrained by their typing speed, and could just pour out their thoughts as they came to them. Well, I mean productive people...
Probably interesting to watch, but something of a waste. The moon's close enough we could study an area carefully (for minerals and features and other details), then when we know it's composition well, we put a nuke up there, and we'll get much more helpful information about it, as well as be able to select the damage threshold more exactly. Less variation in the results is better, correct?
Roughly speaking, a 220lb spacecraft at a million miles an hour would be 6-1/2 kilotons, about 1/2 the energy of Hiroshima, except of course, it would distribute that energy directly into the ground, not in an air burst. It wouldn't even make the news, from an earthquake point of view, they're measured in thousands of megatons. To eyeball it, take a look at "Minor Scale", it's a little smaller, 4.8 ktons, but wikipedias got a decent picture of the detonation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Scale
My guess is the moon probably still gets impacts like this on occasion, so wasting a spacecraft might be redundant.
Yes, walk outside tomorrow, and get a crapload of packages from yourself from the future, with a note "store these for me, k?" Maybe some UPS discount if they can deliver the package "anytime", cutting down on the number of stops they have to make. You know, saving money and all. Meanwhile, you're getting all these random packages for yourself 20 years from now.
Of course, with Icahn really pushing this, there's no real reason for MS to come back with a stellar offer. Look at them walking in to buy yahoo for peanuts. Should be telling, if they do, icahn is embarrassed by it. If they do, and icahn's still pushing hard, start looking into whatever side deals MS might have made with icahn through proxies. Wouldn't put it past MS to offer a good deal for show, then buy yahoo for peanuts once they signed on a patsy.
Either way, if yahoo can't fight this somehow, they're done. Nobody that has a clue is going to stick around hoping MS gets this one right. If people wanted to play with MS, hotmail and others would have been an automatic winner, and this wouldn't even be an issue.
As with a previous poster, I hope this puts a nice dent in their wallet, and burns them all. Not just because MS needs a rung kicked out, but as an example to other companies that buying out the competition in order to destroy what made it competition, is a stupid idea.
Amateurs! Just stick 'em to the wall or headboard when you're done. Then you don't even need to break the mood while you grab one. And nothing turns a woman on more than a row of used condoms flapping against her face during the act. Especially the ones that have been used enough that there's a distinct "thump" from dried remnants of past occasions. Nothing says you care about your lovers more than having them labeled and arranged in alphabetical order by name, either.
Of course, this is Slashdot, so maybe putting your own name on them might make you look a little egotistic!:)
>>Somebody will call me an idiot for considering the laws of optics instead of pure scifi as on other threads - but due to having a highly elliptical orbit the things spend some time grazing the atmosphere so air resistance is actually a factor. Big solar panels would slow it down and it would deorbit more quickly and require more fuel to stay up there.
Idiot.:) True though.
>>As a result they have a nuclear power source, most likely similar to that on the soviet Kosmos series that performed the same role.
Not really. The solar panels would be blocked by the earth a significant amount of time each orbit, which would require more batteries charging faster to keep the whole mess from slowly bleeding power. That means the solar panes would have to be significantly larger the closer you orbited. Design and weight issues probably make nuclear a better option. Also, last thing you want is to lose your eyes in the sky during an engagement because some piece of space junk just tore a hole through your panels. Nuclear systems can be protected better, which is also far more important the closer you are to the planet, as years of space exploration debris make orbiting objects virtual pincushions.
>>The highly ellipical orbit is so that they can get close to take high resolution images.
It's to save fuel. You can get/stay close, but you're going to be burning through fuel at an enormous rate. On the other hand, an elliptical orbit allows you to move the focal point of your trajectory outside where most people would assume it was. This allows you to follow/lag the planet as it orbits the sun, using earth's gravity well to propel your spacecraft. Basically, you keep aiming for where the planet will be, using the earth's mass to slingshot you around each time as both objects arrive and "pass" each other.
>>The theoretical resolving power of a perfect lens at a given wavelength is determined by distance - so it does not matter how good the optics are the closer you get the better the image you can get.
You've obviously never used a pair of high power binoculars inside. You're right about the lens, but most of these "lenses" aren't wavelength specific, if any are. They're far more likely to cover a fairly large range of wavelengths, even if they're marketed as just infrared, ultraviolet, etc. In those cases, the theoretical perfects are meaningless. Most of these aren't single lens systems anyway, even the older ones used multiple and movable lensing systems, as flexibility is often the real design goal, far above perfection. You could design a lens that can count the hairs on your head, but if it only has the ability to view that resolution, you're pretty much hosed for 99% of your missions. Same for single use systems, such as optical or wavelength-specific viewers.
And getting close isn't always a good idea. The recent Chinese gaming is a good example. If close was a panacea, they'd be designing these things to rip through the atmosphere at incredible speeds, essentially doing a kind of reentry every so often. If their orbits were designed correctly they wouldn't necessarily even burn that much fuel, they'd just take forever to complete each orbit as they restored momentum. Would be a little unnerving to see fireballs tear through the sky every couple minutes, but like everything else, I suppose we'd even adapt to the sonic booms.
Nope, the whole idea of spy satellites is stealth. Everyone knows they're up there, but they're used with the idea that you'll either forget about them, assume they're pointed elsewhere, or screw up somehow. Having them flash through the sky on a regular basis would only enhance the measures you'd take to cover your tracks, and no resolution can correct for that.
Oh, and most of them are more geared towards communications intercepts anyway, picking up handhelds and other local command communication devices. Photos are good, but knowing what your enemy is going to do next is much more fun.:)
We could have the best of both worlds, and buy a ton of "generic brand" tinfoil at the store. Made in China, it likely contains enough lead in a single sheet to protect you from any radiological nasties that satellite might spew.:)
>>Once again, considering most people don't know how to work computers beyond clicking icons it's a shade too much to ask to get them to run anything that isn't specifically the program they want to run.
That's because after a decade of MS Windows, most people are terrified that if they do anything more with their computer than what they've been shown by their local guru, it will crash, burn, and take all their information with it when it goes. I'd argue that most people WOULD like to use their computers more, and would, provided they didn't live in fear of the system that cost them a lot of money, falling apart on them. It's an overused cliche, but would people spend as much time in their cars, dare to drive as far as most people tend to do these days, if their cars were designed with the kind of reliability and trust MS products inspire?
On the other hand, until MS figures out a way to completely lock Linux/FOSS out of the market, it will continue to bleed users. Maybe just a fraction of MS's massive user base, but each of those users influences the user base around them, and it's not a question of if MS will lose it's dominance, but when. And certainly, the fact that MS continues to tell their customers they shouldn't try Linux because they're too dumb to use Linux, probably isn't the best marketing scheme in the long run. It works when the user base is young and naive, such as it was back in the 80's up to the mid-90's, when most people didn't have a computer, and if they did, it was the "family" computer, but today, when they are practically throw away items, the idea that you need to baby your system gets a little ridiculous. At some point, most people will decide that their computer should perform to a certain standard, and once that thought adheres, it's only a matter of time before they'll be looking to alternatives.
Not to worry, most of them don't hold stock in MS, except in the form of some retirement account they get a quarterly statement about, if that. The pro-MS stock folks tend to be those poor MCSEs whose jobs would evaporate if they didn't have a company like MS pumping out crap software that keeps them employed doing reinstalls, defrags, and infection scans all day. Anything that looks negative for MS is bound to incite a reaction from these folks. That's the reason for all the "Linux fanboy" snipes, it's a matter of prosopopoeiae, in removing the burden of admitting a weakness, by presenting your problem(s) as your adversary's viewpoint. (Most Linux users do go through a fanboy stage, but it doesn't last long, at which point if you even bother to look over to the MS/Windows world, you just scratch your head and wonder why so many people continue to pay billions for software that does the same thing (or less than) you do for free. Then you go back to using your computer, and don't think about it for a while again.)
And worse, many of them cannot even be held to that standard, as the vocal ones seem to be those folks who have just completed their first few computer classes, and think they're about to make billions with their new knowledge. Can't really blame them if they react badly to the idea that by the time they get certified, MS might not be the powerhouse they've been led to believe. Or the older ones that just don't feel like they should have to bother and learn something new after they've spent years figuring out the strangeness in MS's core products.
Nobody likes the rug pulled out from under them, but it's sometimes amusing to read comments from so many "stock traders" about MS, while the rest of the stock market barely pays attention to a company that's been essentially flat for almost a decade now. At least, it's amusing for me, I'd rather put my money in companies I know, use, and generally believe in. It's not always a good bet, but at least I'm not depending on the opinion of someone's shill. I work too damn hard to drop that money into somebody else's fantasies.
Well, they did defer over a billion dollars from last quarter to shore up their numbers this time. Perhaps the newbies overlook MS's monetary position, but I'd say most Linux users are far more aware of MS's financial situation than the 80%+ of the world that uses MS Windows. It's kind of goes with the territory, we usually have to work within a MS framework, most of the Linux news sites carry MS-related information, etc.
MS has a lot of money. In recent years, MS has spent a whole lot of that money, both current revenue as well wealth accumulated in 30+ years of operations. If you look at it in that light, while it might be financially minor for MS to blast through tens of billions in the last couple years, it's got to be a ego blow to folks like Gates, to have to spend decades of earnings to shore up faith in a stock that has almost complete market penetration.
Knock out the hedging, and reduce the value of their dividend to sustainable levels, and MS isn't losing money, but it becomes a much less attractive company. MS probably recognizes that a good portion of their market saturation is related to their perceived market position. With "normal" levels of cash reserves, "normal" dividends, and only minor market success with other products, MS might find itself in the position of watching others steal the headlines. As the 800 lb gorilla, people look to see what you're saying. As IBM found out the hard way, once you lose that position, you risk being tossed back in the bucket with the other small fish, perhaps even forgotten.
Not that MS will be forgotten, but "unpopular" monopolies that don't seem to be making buckets of money tend to be stepped on pretty hard eventually. Standard Oil wasn't broken up during it's heyday, but as it's influence began to wane, partially due to it's abuse of it's monopoly. The pro-MS folks are arguing that the cash reserves are diminishing to inspire investors, but they stop short of arguing that MS should reverse it's current position, use it's massive revenue stream to allow it to operate with considerable debt. 14 billion in revenue buys a whole lot of credit. That's how many companies operate, btw.
So, perhaps even MS's biggest fans understand that MS cannot maintain it's dominance forever, that it's positive cash balance not only prevents interest costs, but is there to shore up for the day that MS might actually need to compete on a more level playing field.
Vista provides something for the OEMS after years of market saturation. Most users are happy enough with XP. Linux users (myself), tired of MS's half-baked software and "rights" ramblings long ago. Vista seems to be less than adequate for most users, seems to be alpha quality in some respects. That's fine, because it means the OEMs will get the early adopters now, and then as the "new", or more likely "vista upgrade" arrives, they'll benefit from both the early adopters, as well as the seasoned users, during their hardware cycles. This will likely placate the OEMs for the next year or so. Also, it's a whole lot easier to push people into upgrades if you can make them beleive that they're not just slow to upgrade, but way behind, a whole two OSs! They'll never notice that they've ended up right where they'd be if MS would have simply finished Vista, after the massive trash and rewrite thing mere months before Vista was put on sale.
Not entirely sure I buy the bit about it being a mistake, but perhaps he could have avoided the whole deal if he wasn't so eager to paint F/OSS advocates as amateurs. As a journalist, commentator, analyst, or whatever he's supposed to be, he lives on his reputation. Maybe next time, he might value his reputation (i.e., paycheck) enough to check BOTH SIDES of the argument in an unbiased manner. Maybe spend some time with a psychologist, examining why he has an innate desire to see the little guy lose, a community of volunteers destroyed by a failing corporate interest, and puppies being tortured.
Either way, he'd like it all to go away? After insulting millions of F/OSS users? I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon Daniel, sorry. The apology is a nice start, the roman catholic rosary is another option, and a whole lot of honest stories about how this community has built itself up from what many have said was a shaky foundation, to become a force even mighty MS has found itself bending to. Maybe some NICE ARTICLES about the people who have worked so hard to make sure that the code is clean, and so on.
You wanna win your respect back? The apology is a pleasant change, now get to work earning respect!
>>>If thunderclouds can accelerate radiation energy, how come I never heard of people died in places where there are lots of thuderstorm activities due to radiation overdose?
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, it's an option, and folks like yourself never have to use it. Besides, at least the KDE folks are doing more interesting things than changing color schemes and moving menu items around every release... :)
As for browser tabs, I find them pretty useful. Yes, I'm only doing a single thing at a given moment, but they allow me to scan a news site like Slashdot, clicking to open interesting articles in new tabs, then peruse through them at my leisure, without "losing my place" when the phone rings or there's another interruption.
The real benefit to apptabs will be the ability to open several programs as one, which will be tremendously useful to programmers, multimedia folks, and others who generally have a mess of programs open to do a single job, but switch projects repeatedly throughout the day, especially contractors, who need to keep things straight while they're working for, and interacting with, multiple clients.
One desktop icon opening everything I need for a project without having to script a custom startup icon or tweak those scripts as the project progresses? I like that! :)
Tossing out the TV would save a lot of marriages. Folks don't talk anymore, they drool into the tube for hours on end. Plus, people see things on TV, decide they need that in their life, and throw away perfectly good relationships because of some cheesy screenwriting. Of course, it doesn't help marrying someone for superficial reasons...like Ron White says, you can buy a bigger rack, but you can't fix stupid. :)
~
As for the topic, I'd go with archival CD/DVDs (read-only) for the things you can't print, they're popular enough now that even if the disk warps or is otherwise obsolete, there should be someone around who will still have the ability to extract information from them. Might want to toss in a pack of baseball cards or something else that will accumulate in value during that time, just to pay for it, though. lol
Had a maxtor 80G die about a month ago. Didn't even realize what it was, every 1/2 hour or so a single, quiet "chirp" would sound. Just above audible, more like background noise, it took me maybe 2 weeks to nail it down as not just my imagination or a bird flying by outside.
Being notably lazy, chalked it up to a dying fan (3 + CPU fan), and put it on my lengthy to-do list. Finally the noise started to increase to the point of slightly annoying, but still was up in the 10+ minute range, long enough that I'd give up hunting for it after a while. I decided I'd deal with it once it was steady enough to isolate.
And it did. Problem was, when it was finally making the noise every couple minutes, I restarted the system, and got that beloved "click, click, click" that is undeniably bad (the kind that makes your power supply freak out). Needless to say, it didn't boot.
The good news was, it was an old drive, I was basically using it to boot and a partition of it as a swap drive. Everything of remote value on it had been copied off it long ago (it's 8 years old, it wasn't entirely a shock that it died).
The bummer was that it died like it did. I've seen plenty of drives die, but either you get plenty of clear warning (after the first one), or they just fail. I've never had one "chirp" so delicately for so long. It lasted at least 2 months since it started, running nearly 24/7. The drive itself showed nothing aside from the usual wear you'd expect after such a long run.
It wasn't that it died, it was that it caught me off-guard the way it did, mixed with the realization that sometimes I'm a little too lazy...
Plus, if said student's annoyed with your harassing behavior, they're far more willing and able to jab that atropine needle into your heart.
Of course, they might "accidentally" wiggle it about a bit, too...
Because, as Encyclopedia Dramatica clealy states, "There are no girls on the internet". So it's insightful, because someone's 'nerd rush' has allowed them insight into their feminine side.
Wait, Will Smith isn't real?!!
An easy to clean board and disposable wax pencil work pretty good. Depending on your lab, a hanger for the board on the lab window will help keep contaminates in/out of the lab, while allowing you to check your notes as needed. Paper and lab books run the risk of bringing things in/out of the lab, and constantly sterilizing items has it's own problems.
The best solution, of course, is to use a provided, sealed system, linked to your own system outside the lab area. Upload your info (matlab formulas, previous data, etc.) into the lab, use them during the experiment, then download the results into your system for later analysis.
Same here. The mouse is a killer with RSI after a while, but the keyboard only bugs me if I'm typing for a couple solid hours. Linux helps a lot, letting me configure things so when it does start to become a problem, I'm not totally knocked out, or forced to suffer to finish a project. Of course, micro-softheads can't admit that their billion dollar company is getting it's tail kicked by free software, so they have to spam IT sites with comments that don't even address the question.
Speaking of the question, I haven't found anything useful all-around for such things. Each system has it's quirks, some go haywire in certain types of noise environments, others are geared towards a certain system, (Mac), and their ports don't perform as well under a different set of common commands (such as Unix or Windows). Plus, as someone else alluded to, some are good for command use, while others tend to be better for dictation.
So, still, a decade after these things appeared, it's a matter of trial and error for your particular situation. Unfortunately, because this stuff is so heavily patented, there's unlikely to be little improvement in the future, as only a limited number of people are working on these systems, and the lawyers are getting more done than the designers.
Too bad, too. Imagine what could be done if people weren't restrained by their typing speed, and could just pour out their thoughts as they came to them. Well, I mean productive people...
Probably interesting to watch, but something of a waste. The moon's close enough we could study an area carefully (for minerals and features and other details), then when we know it's composition well, we put a nuke up there, and we'll get much more helpful information about it, as well as be able to select the damage threshold more exactly. Less variation in the results is better, correct?
Roughly speaking, a 220lb spacecraft at a million miles an hour would be 6-1/2 kilotons, about 1/2 the energy of Hiroshima, except of course, it would distribute that energy directly into the ground, not in an air burst. It wouldn't even make the news, from an earthquake point of view, they're measured in thousands of megatons. To eyeball it, take a look at "Minor Scale", it's a little smaller, 4.8 ktons, but wikipedias got a decent picture of the detonation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Scale
My guess is the moon probably still gets impacts like this on occasion, so wasting a spacecraft might be redundant.
Yes, walk outside tomorrow, and get a crapload of packages from yourself from the future, with a note "store these for me, k?" Maybe some UPS discount if they can deliver the package "anytime", cutting down on the number of stops they have to make. You know, saving money and all. Meanwhile, you're getting all these random packages for yourself 20 years from now.
Exactly, it's a business. The problem is, after the merger, either intentionally or through...market forces...it won't be.
Of course, with Icahn really pushing this, there's no real reason for MS to come back with a stellar offer. Look at them walking in to buy yahoo for peanuts. Should be telling, if they do, icahn is embarrassed by it. If they do, and icahn's still pushing hard, start looking into whatever side deals MS might have made with icahn through proxies. Wouldn't put it past MS to offer a good deal for show, then buy yahoo for peanuts once they signed on a patsy.
Either way, if yahoo can't fight this somehow, they're done. Nobody that has a clue is going to stick around hoping MS gets this one right. If people wanted to play with MS, hotmail and others would have been an automatic winner, and this wouldn't even be an issue.
As with a previous poster, I hope this puts a nice dent in their wallet, and burns them all. Not just because MS needs a rung kicked out, but as an example to other companies that buying out the competition in order to destroy what made it competition, is a stupid idea.
This is /. Static partners aren't a problem.
Amateurs! Just stick 'em to the wall or headboard when you're done. Then you don't even need to break the mood while you grab one. And nothing turns a woman on more than a row of used condoms flapping against her face during the act. Especially the ones that have been used enough that there's a distinct "thump" from dried remnants of past occasions. Nothing says you care about your lovers more than having them labeled and arranged in alphabetical order by name, either.
:)
Of course, this is Slashdot, so maybe putting your own name on them might make you look a little egotistic!
Two words for ya: Jimmy Hoffa
>>Sig: Most Vista haters on this site have a lot in common with Young Earth Creationists.
:)
They believe in something greater than the almighty dollar?
>>Somebody will call me an idiot for considering the laws of optics instead of pure scifi as on other threads - but due to having a highly elliptical orbit the things spend some time grazing the atmosphere so air resistance is actually a factor. Big solar panels would slow it down and it would deorbit more quickly and require more fuel to stay up there.
:) True though.
:)
Idiot.
>>As a result they have a nuclear power source, most likely similar to that on the soviet Kosmos series that performed the same role.
Not really. The solar panels would be blocked by the earth a significant amount of time each orbit, which would require more batteries charging faster to keep the whole mess from slowly bleeding power. That means the solar panes would have to be significantly larger the closer you orbited. Design and weight issues probably make nuclear a better option. Also, last thing you want is to lose your eyes in the sky during an engagement because some piece of space junk just tore a hole through your panels. Nuclear systems can be protected better, which is also far more important the closer you are to the planet, as years of space exploration debris make orbiting objects virtual pincushions.
>>The highly ellipical orbit is so that they can get close to take high resolution images.
It's to save fuel. You can get/stay close, but you're going to be burning through fuel at an enormous rate. On the other hand, an elliptical orbit allows you to move the focal point of your trajectory outside where most people would assume it was. This allows you to follow/lag the planet as it orbits the sun, using earth's gravity well to propel your spacecraft. Basically, you keep aiming for where the planet will be, using the earth's mass to slingshot you around each time as both objects arrive and "pass" each other.
>>The theoretical resolving power of a perfect lens at a given wavelength is determined by distance - so it does not matter how good the optics are the closer you get the better the image you can get.
You've obviously never used a pair of high power binoculars inside. You're right about the lens, but most of these "lenses" aren't wavelength specific, if any are. They're far more likely to cover a fairly large range of wavelengths, even if they're marketed as just infrared, ultraviolet, etc. In those cases, the theoretical perfects are meaningless. Most of these aren't single lens systems anyway, even the older ones used multiple and movable lensing systems, as flexibility is often the real design goal, far above perfection. You could design a lens that can count the hairs on your head, but if it only has the ability to view that resolution, you're pretty much hosed for 99% of your missions. Same for single use systems, such as optical or wavelength-specific viewers.
And getting close isn't always a good idea. The recent Chinese gaming is a good example. If close was a panacea, they'd be designing these things to rip through the atmosphere at incredible speeds, essentially doing a kind of reentry every so often. If their orbits were designed correctly they wouldn't necessarily even burn that much fuel, they'd just take forever to complete each orbit as they restored momentum. Would be a little unnerving to see fireballs tear through the sky every couple minutes, but like everything else, I suppose we'd even adapt to the sonic booms.
Nope, the whole idea of spy satellites is stealth. Everyone knows they're up there, but they're used with the idea that you'll either forget about them, assume they're pointed elsewhere, or screw up somehow. Having them flash through the sky on a regular basis would only enhance the measures you'd take to cover your tracks, and no resolution can correct for that.
Oh, and most of them are more geared towards communications intercepts anyway, picking up handhelds and other local command communication devices. Photos are good, but knowing what your enemy is going to do next is much more fun.
We could have the best of both worlds, and buy a ton of "generic brand" tinfoil at the store. Made in China, it likely contains enough lead in a single sheet to protect you from any radiological nasties that satellite might spew. :)
>>Once again, considering most people don't know how to work computers beyond clicking icons it's a shade too much to ask to get them to run anything that isn't specifically the program they want to run.
That's because after a decade of MS Windows, most people are terrified that if they do anything more with their computer than what they've been shown by their local guru, it will crash, burn, and take all their information with it when it goes. I'd argue that most people WOULD like to use their computers more, and would, provided they didn't live in fear of the system that cost them a lot of money, falling apart on them. It's an overused cliche, but would people spend as much time in their cars, dare to drive as far as most people tend to do these days, if their cars were designed with the kind of reliability and trust MS products inspire?
On the other hand, until MS figures out a way to completely lock Linux/FOSS out of the market, it will continue to bleed users. Maybe just a fraction of MS's massive user base, but each of those users influences the user base around them, and it's not a question of if MS will lose it's dominance, but when. And certainly, the fact that MS continues to tell their customers they shouldn't try Linux because they're too dumb to use Linux, probably isn't the best marketing scheme in the long run. It works when the user base is young and naive, such as it was back in the 80's up to the mid-90's, when most people didn't have a computer, and if they did, it was the "family" computer, but today, when they are practically throw away items, the idea that you need to baby your system gets a little ridiculous. At some point, most people will decide that their computer should perform to a certain standard, and once that thought adheres, it's only a matter of time before they'll be looking to alternatives.
Not to worry, most of them don't hold stock in MS, except in the form of some retirement account they get a quarterly statement about, if that. The pro-MS stock folks tend to be those poor MCSEs whose jobs would evaporate if they didn't have a company like MS pumping out crap software that keeps them employed doing reinstalls, defrags, and infection scans all day. Anything that looks negative for MS is bound to incite a reaction from these folks. That's the reason for all the "Linux fanboy" snipes, it's a matter of prosopopoeiae, in removing the burden of admitting a weakness, by presenting your problem(s) as your adversary's viewpoint. (Most Linux users do go through a fanboy stage, but it doesn't last long, at which point if you even bother to look over to the MS/Windows world, you just scratch your head and wonder why so many people continue to pay billions for software that does the same thing (or less than) you do for free. Then you go back to using your computer, and don't think about it for a while again.)
And worse, many of them cannot even be held to that standard, as the vocal ones seem to be those folks who have just completed their first few computer classes, and think they're about to make billions with their new knowledge. Can't really blame them if they react badly to the idea that by the time they get certified, MS might not be the powerhouse they've been led to believe. Or the older ones that just don't feel like they should have to bother and learn something new after they've spent years figuring out the strangeness in MS's core products.
Nobody likes the rug pulled out from under them, but it's sometimes amusing to read comments from so many "stock traders" about MS, while the rest of the stock market barely pays attention to a company that's been essentially flat for almost a decade now. At least, it's amusing for me, I'd rather put my money in companies I know, use, and generally believe in. It's not always a good bet, but at least I'm not depending on the opinion of someone's shill. I work too damn hard to drop that money into somebody else's fantasies.
Well, they did defer over a billion dollars from last quarter to shore up their numbers this time. Perhaps the newbies overlook MS's monetary position, but I'd say most Linux users are far more aware of MS's financial situation than the 80%+ of the world that uses MS Windows. It's kind of goes with the territory, we usually have to work within a MS framework, most of the Linux news sites carry MS-related information, etc.
MS has a lot of money. In recent years, MS has spent a whole lot of that money, both current revenue as well wealth accumulated in 30+ years of operations. If you look at it in that light, while it might be financially minor for MS to blast through tens of billions in the last couple years, it's got to be a ego blow to folks like Gates, to have to spend decades of earnings to shore up faith in a stock that has almost complete market penetration.
Knock out the hedging, and reduce the value of their dividend to sustainable levels, and MS isn't losing money, but it becomes a much less attractive company. MS probably recognizes that a good portion of their market saturation is related to their perceived market position. With "normal" levels of cash reserves, "normal" dividends, and only minor market success with other products, MS might find itself in the position of watching others steal the headlines. As the 800 lb gorilla, people look to see what you're saying. As IBM found out the hard way, once you lose that position, you risk being tossed back in the bucket with the other small fish, perhaps even forgotten.
Not that MS will be forgotten, but "unpopular" monopolies that don't seem to be making buckets of money tend to be stepped on pretty hard eventually. Standard Oil wasn't broken up during it's heyday, but as it's influence began to wane, partially due to it's abuse of it's monopoly. The pro-MS folks are arguing that the cash reserves are diminishing to inspire investors, but they stop short of arguing that MS should reverse it's current position, use it's massive revenue stream to allow it to operate with considerable debt. 14 billion in revenue buys a whole lot of credit. That's how many companies operate, btw.
So, perhaps even MS's biggest fans understand that MS cannot maintain it's dominance forever, that it's positive cash balance not only prevents interest costs, but is there to shore up for the day that MS might actually need to compete on a more level playing field.
Vista provides something for the OEMS after years of market saturation. Most users are happy enough with XP. Linux users (myself), tired of MS's half-baked software and "rights" ramblings long ago. Vista seems to be less than adequate for most users, seems to be alpha quality in some respects. That's fine, because it means the OEMs will get the early adopters now, and then as the "new", or more likely "vista upgrade" arrives, they'll benefit from both the early adopters, as well as the seasoned users, during their hardware cycles. This will likely placate the OEMs for the next year or so. Also, it's a whole lot easier to push people into upgrades if you can make them beleive that they're not just slow to upgrade, but way behind, a whole two OSs! They'll never notice that they've ended up right where they'd be if MS would have simply finished Vista, after the massive trash and rewrite thing mere months before Vista was put on sale.
Not entirely sure I buy the bit about it being a mistake, but perhaps he could have avoided the whole deal if he wasn't so eager to paint F/OSS advocates as amateurs. As a journalist, commentator, analyst, or whatever he's supposed to be, he lives on his reputation. Maybe next time, he might value his reputation (i.e., paycheck) enough to check BOTH SIDES of the argument in an unbiased manner. Maybe spend some time with a psychologist, examining why he has an innate desire to see the little guy lose, a community of volunteers destroyed by a failing corporate interest, and puppies being tortured.
Either way, he'd like it all to go away? After insulting millions of F/OSS users? I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon Daniel, sorry. The apology is a nice start, the roman catholic rosary is another option, and a whole lot of honest stories about how this community has built itself up from what many have said was a shaky foundation, to become a force even mighty MS has found itself bending to. Maybe some NICE ARTICLES about the people who have worked so hard to make sure that the code is clean, and so on.
You wanna win your respect back? The apology is a pleasant change, now get to work earning respect!
>>>If thunderclouds can accelerate radiation energy, how come I never heard of people died in places where there are lots of thuderstorm activities due to radiation overdose?
Um, lightning?
>>>I guess that explains why my light bulbs keep popping and the batteries in my remote controls keep going flat whenever there's stormy weather.
:)
***Occam's Razor Unsheathed***
Keep them out of the drink!
***Occam's Razor Sheathed***