Well, I have been wanting to setup a webpage, if for no other reason than to learn about the whole thing. Only thing was I had no idea what I wanted to put up. I didn't want to do one of those nasty "this is ME!" pages with my hobbies, pets, family pictures, blah, blah (what ARE you people thinking when you do that?). I now know what I will do. I will put up anti-scientology pages and work towards the goal of getting my pages, with lots of links to the good anti-$cientology pages and information - up on the first page of any google search on "scientology". Perhaps others could also help in this regard.
Put gratuitous links to anti-scientology pages into your pages, regardless of what you pages are actually about. Put as many links for casual browsers to come across as possible to help people get the REAL scoop on $cientology.
I also have all their "censored/copywrited" bullcrap docs on their Theta crap sci-fi. I intend to make them generally available too. Just another way for people to get the stuff that drives those $ci-clowns nutty.
The net result being slowing the earth's rotation more swiftly than it is naturally slowing. Perhaps it will also affect the moon's orbit and even the earth's orbit around the sun.
Yeah, it sucks, but you have to break a few eggs...
The cost-benefit analysis indicates that a Redmond strike would kill all 2 of the non-M$ lackey/employees while wiping out ALL the Redmonites. The equation definitely favors letting the strike happen.
I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...
If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...
On some Air Force bases, one is not permitted to access yahoo, snotmail, outside pop servers, etc, while on duty and with military computers. They have proxy servers that attempt to restrict access to such sites. It also attempts to block access to "questionable" websites (any site with the word "sex" in it, even if it is a biology/scientific site, gets blocked - there are a lot of other sites that sporadically suprize me with a message about not being authorized to access this site and my ip has been logged). Nonetheless, I STILL access my outside pop mail servers - I simply find the chink in the proxy armor and get my mail anyway. Usually, the same tricks I use to get to my mail also works for other incorrectly blocked sites (with a "bad" keyword associated with its URL).
You are not supposed to connect any computer to the network that isn't registered and thus authorized either (no personal laptops allowed without special permission). I am able to connect anyway and make it appear that my laptop is my authorized desktop machine. Of course, I am in a somewhat privaledged position - being the supervisor of an IT subgroup on the base - and I know how the system works, what is techinically not allowed and knowing how to foil most of the blocks. It is doable to get around restrictions on accessing personal email, etc. It just might take a certain amount of tinkering and experimentation.
Uh, Mandrake defaults to KDE, so I would assume that makes KDE part of the original install.
In any case, I never liked the/opt thing. I see NO reason why it is better to slap on a new directory like that instead of just installing, say, kde2 into/usr/kde2, or kde3 into/usr/kde3, etc. Then you get the same "benefit" of/opt but without that silly extra, hanging-out-there-by-itself directory.
I have java installed in its own/usr/jre directory, and would prefer kde be in its own/usr/kde directory (instead of scattered around/usr,/usr/lib,/usr/include, etc. Just don't give me/opt.
Those are really REALLY old screenshots. They look NOTHING like OS/2 Warp, Warp Connect, or Warp 4 (the last real release). Those screenshots gives one the incorrect impression that the GUI was crude and ugly. It was most assuredly not. The GUI on OS/2 was fantastic, with features that are still unmatched by any other GUI on Macs, windoze, or linux. Pity, that.
Gad...I didn't think people did all that physical manipulation of AOL CDs anymore. I thought we'd all switched to watching the lovely "light show" produced by placing the little guys in our microwaves and letting rip.
The light show is less work and is purty to boot. Why waste time physically manhandling them?
Don't worry praedor, you are still on my TODO list:)
Thank GAWD! If I were a coder, or even had the time to teach myself (I am working on a thesis in molec. biology, not computer programming) I WOULD offer myself to handle it. Unfortunately, I am a plain ole enduser that needs certain functionality to do my basic day-to-day writing. The ONLY writing I do that doesn't include references these days is in emails.
Lyx IS powerful but damn, it is NOT all that user friendly. I just do not have the time right now to learn the ins and outs of latex (or all the oddball quirks of Lyx). I just want to write and move on to the next experiment.
The problem with opensource/free software development is precisely because it is so volunteer-driven that work is rarely completed or focused on a polished product. Everyone wants to do the "cool" coding, or "scratch an itch" which all too often merely means: code something that works but is NOT user friendly, attractive, or otherwise appealing to the a wider audience.
Get OVER wanting to code ONLY the cool stuff and grow up, realize that sometimes tedious coding is required (a MUST) to put polish on a product. Get over coding in a "cool" wizbang feature and make it useable and friendly even when it means less fun.
Do the fun coding, sure, but accept reality - that not all the coding that NEEDS to be done is cool but it still must be done. Do it. That is part of being an adult, accepting that everything that needs doing isn't all a party, nor should it all be a big party.
Commercial software developers don't have this problem. The boss says "code this" and you do it and it gets done and you end up with a good product that people can use and WANT to use.
Here we go again. I am once again going to mention something that NO ONE seems to understand is IMPORTANT in a wordprocessor. CITATIONS and REFERENCE HANDLING.
There is NOTHING that really separates one of these wordprocessors (abiword, kword, openoffice/staroffice) from one another. They ALL do the same sorts of things in the same ways...but not a one of them has something a real professional writer REQUIRES. None of them has what ALL college students (and many highschool kids) REQUIRES: an ability to handle citations and build reference pages.
Word and Wordperfect have this on Macs and Windoze via third party apps like EndNote, because the processors were designed so apps like EndNote could seamlessly become part of the wordprocessor (for all practical purposes). Endnote adds its own menubar entry so you can insert citations into your text as you go and then it AUTOMATICALLY generates correctly formatted reference page(s) based on user selection.
There is one and ONLY one "wordprocessor" app in linux/unix that can handle this well and that is Lyx. Lyx is IT. The ONLY show in town for any student or professional writer who needs to cite references in their writings. This is ALL scientists and ALL college students and anyone else who wants/needs to write serious research papers. You MUST cite references or your paper is unfounded heresay, yet NO wordprocessor project is even TRYING to add this capability to their app.
Obviously, none of the projects is interested in any professional writers. Their targets would appear to be letter writers and writers of any work that needs no support (fiction). This is fine, such as it is, but no one gets through this life without having to write SOME papers that require citations and reference pages damnit! If you actually have managed to avoid this then your degree must be astrology or basket weaving.
Someone on ANY of these projects: OpenOffice, Abiword, Koffice...provide either a pipe (like Lyx uses to communicate with the most excellent Pybliographic) so third party apps can work seamlessly with your wordprocessors and insert citation markers and handle reference page generation OR add this capability directly into your wordprocessors! Hell, OpenOffice/StarOffice is PARTWAY there but they dropped the ball BIGTIME. OpenOffice/StarOffice actually has what it calls a bibliography database but it is totally useless. All it will do is store whatever you enter into it MANUALLY. Then, it wont use this database to allow you to insert references/citations into a document, no, it just holds the information uselessly. Go that ONE extra step and make the bibliography database USEFUL: it should be able to import and export all the major citation formats (bibtex, refer, pubmed) and there should a menu item in the wordprocessor that talks directly to this database and will allow the writer to insert citations. At the end, you should be able to hit a "create reference page(s)" button and have staroffice/openoffice add a formatted set of reference pages to the ass-end of the finished document just like Endnote plus Word or Wordperfect will!
I mean, c'mon! Quit focusing on toy writing and add something that hardcore researchers and all college students require. If Lyx can do it, so can the more user-friendly wordprocessors like Kword, Abiword, OpenOffice, etc.
Because of this fatal failing in ALL available linux WYSIWYG wordprocessors, I have to keep Lyx around so I can do my real writing, leaving the rare note or letter to Kword or OpenOffice. What a waste. A nice, BIG app that is kept around just for simplistic writing. Lyx is OK but damnit, I want and need to write, not learn a programming language (latex). My job is to do biological research, not learn programming or hundreds of obscure latex commands just to publish. Lyx and I get by but there needs to be more options for the research paper writer/college student/scientist.
And as it turns out, research shows that 7 is the max number of digits easily remembered by subjects in studies of short-term memory. Short-term memory is, of course, the pathway one generally needs to traverse to produce long-term memories.
As for passwords, I have a handful of nondictionary "words" that I recycle with variations (replacing this or that letter with special characters or numbers). Thus, though I have a base of perhaps 5 passwords, with the variations it becomes more along the lines of 15 to 20. The main problem I have is that most of my passwords have to be replaced once a month. It IS easy for people to forget passwords when they have to be long, contain "weird" characters, and change every 30 days or so. I don't know what the best answer to this is but it is a difficulty people have. I see MANY coworkers writing their new password on sticky notes which then go somewhere in or on their desks (mine goes in my fanny pack which never leaves my side - until I get the password down cold, then it is trashed).
So, when I've had sexual discussions with women over email, where we tell each other what we want to do to each other...that is binding? OK, fine by me. I can't wait to start fulfilling these contractual obligations.
IF Lindows loses, they should turn around and immediately call their product "Windows Linux" or something that STILL incorporates "windows" in it but clearly delineates itself from M$ Windoze. M$ may have fits but in the end they WILL lose in trying to prevent the use of the common word "windows" in a non-M$ os product.
Any/. moderator: This is off on a tangent so don't nail me as off-topic. I KNOW it is heading that way, but...The problem you mention about open source development is only true for a few, small, hardcore coders. For big development projects like KDE or Gnome and the related arenas of their office suites, the problem isn't "tweak it enough and it's good enough", the real problem with opensource development in these projects is that it is still too free. By this, I mean that the coders doing the work only want to do the "cool" and "fun" stuff. Doing the boring but absolutely necessary little sh*t to put a nice finish on the project isn't done because no one volunteers to do it. THAT is the problem...volunteers. No, no. You want to work on this or that project, then there should be some agreed upon authority that can ASSIGN projects for people to do. You don't think it will be exciting? Tough, it HAS to be done nonetheless. After it is done you can do something cool and exciting.
This problem doesn't exist in the commercial software arena. Your boss says do this and you do it. Sometimes the coding is cool, sometimes tedious, boring, and SEEMINGLY unimportant. It is NOT unimportant. It is necessary to make a fully finished product that is easy to use and attractive to users. I can't recall all the times I've suggested a REALLY good capability be added, or tool be added to this or that app only to be told that, essentially, it wasn't cool enough to want to spend time working on it. Bullsh*t. Bad attitude, bad way to run things. My suggestions have always been based on some of the great things one finds in good commercial software. They are part of what makes that software so good but because it doesn't involve glamorous, elite hacking and coding, it just wont get done.
Fix the bullcrap "volunteers but only for the cool coding" crap in opensource development and the apps, including and in particular the office apps, will get MUCH better.
I've got it and it is...OK. It is slow as molasses, however. To run the quicktime plugin (or windoze media) you have to wait for the wineserver to start and then for the app to start. Lots of swapping going on there.
It IS nice that for now we can have quicktime working on linux but it is not THE answeer. THE answer is for frickin' Apple to release the goddamn specs for the codec. If Apple wants to compete for providing internet media (this goes for M$ or anyone else too) then you have to use widely available standards so that no one is locked out because they use this or that OS. The frickin' OS shouldn't matter one bit.
If you want to provide a media service on the OPEN and NONPROPRIATORY internet, then use open standards or fully publish your codecs so developers can produce apps to VIEW your media.
Consider this: it appears that M$ will have to release a fixpak/security pak for a bunch of apps while for me with linux (and people using BSD, etc) all we need to do is install the new zlib - which was available virtually at the same time the POTENTIAL vulnerability was discovered/released. Then, all *nix people need do is restart whatever net-connected app/server they were running that uses zlib and it is fixed. No replacing apps with fixed apps, just replace the lib without ever rebooting.
You will eventually receive a big security fix from M$ that replaces whole applications AND have to reboot to make it work.
So, two comparisons can be made between the free-os users and the M$ slaves: 1) fixes are produced and available immediately for free-os people but it will be a while before M$ figures out what to do, and 2) simply installing the new lib and, perhaps, restarting a couple applications is all it takes for a fix for the free-oses but M$ users will have to replace whole applications and reboot.
Deserts are fragile ECOSYSTEMS. They are not wastelands open for complete exploitation. Covering fragile deserts with solar arrays is not any better than covering most openspace with wind turbines. There is a place for each type of technology but it is NOT OK to eliminate desert ecosystems, great plains ecosystems, etc, so that miles and miles of turbines or collectors can be built (and the access roads and other infrastructure necessary to maintain and use them).
Killing migratory birds IS a big deal, by the way. People like to claim how benign solar collectors and wind turbines are but ignore the fact that it takes a LOT of them and it consumes openspace and wildlife habitat and kills wildlife.
Answer? You build a little of each INCLUDING reactors and dump oil/coal-fired powerplants entirely.
When you start getting out to Jupiter and beyond, the Sun is not a viable power source. For deep space you MUST have nuclear power. There is NO deep space probe that isn't nuclear powered. None. You want to get to the outer solar system efficiently and quickly, then you want/need nuclear. Also, solar isn't worth squat to astronauts on the Martian surface. Inefficient. You send a portable nuclear power plant (no, no it CANNOT meltdown damnit!) and have LOADS of power available to keep you alive and warm AND producing fuel for a return trip.
True space travel and exploration will require nuclear power if you are heading outward.
A nuclear rocket as all the proper designs are laid out CANNOT have a meltdown. You CANNOT have a Chernobyl-style accident with a nuclear rocket. We are not talking Orion either - that is a nuclear bomb rocket. A nuclear rocket is merely a nuclear core hot enough to vaporize whatever fuel you choose to pump through it. It could be water, producing high-pressure steam. It is NOT automatic that a nuclear core MUST be able to meltdown (ala Chernobyl). Nuclear power doesn't automatically mean "meltdown potential".
If there is a problem with a nuclear rocket launch, you don't need to blow it up. Actually you don't want to. You simply shutdown the engine and parachute it down for recovery and repair and try again. There is no volatile, explosive fuel to worry about (that is the only reason chemical rockets are destroyed if they have problems. Don't want a big, explosive bomb landing on anyone. It is even too dangerous to shut them down and parachute them down. They can still blow up. Not so with a nuclear rocket. They are SAFER than chemical rockets.
Correct, for the most part. I was going to make your post. I would add a minor correction, however. The amount of the genome made up of viral-DNA is more in the low double digit percentage. If you count retrotransposable elements, VERY closely related to retroviruses (like LINE1 elements) the number of those alone is 17%. Throw in Alu elements, SINES, Ty elements...you are talking a not-insignificant portion of the genome.
Ah yes, the bird-killing wind turbines. You want all the open space possible to be packed with migratory bird-killing wind turbines? Instead of looking out over a beautiful, majestic rolling plain or valley, seeing trees and rolling meadows you sell 150 ft white towers with the bodies of dead birds scattered about their bases.
Wind can play a big part of Germany's energy plans because Germany is small, doesn't have much left by way of wide open space that needs protecting. The US is, of course, huge with lots of space that should be protected from development before it is wrecked with structures and roads. The US is also more energy-intensive (Germany doesn't have any deserts where air conditioning 24 hrs a day (ok, in the dry desert areas swamp coolers are a more intelligent choice) for a significant portion of the year is a requirement. It doesn't have hot, incredibly humid areas like Louisiana where air conditioning is necessary to both cool and reduce humidity in the home. Germany doesn't have some 250 million people.
It is VERY possible to create inherently safe reactors that CANNOT, NO MATTER WHAT, meltdown. It is VERY possible to reduce the radioactive waste significantly AND safely encase it in "glass" for long-term storage such that it can't enter the water systems no matter what. If you do what France does, you end up with waste that has a max halflife of only a couple hundred years instead of thousands of years like we produce. You use fast breeder reactors that produce their own fuel and you refine the waste to recycle the useable fuel - this leaves you with minor, short halflife waste that is useless for making weapons and can be safely stored without worrying about ancestors a thousand years hence stumbling upon it. By then it will be long inert.
Once again, the Pavlovian knee-jerk reaction occurs with any sentence that contains the "n" word in it. Unthinking, emotional-not-logical-or-reasoned response. Nuclear power is a bigger part of our energy future, NOT a smaller part. That is a fact of life. We are not going to ever go back to some never-existent agrarian lifestyle where all was peaceful and quiet and perfectly clean of all waste. Fact of life.
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Well, I have been wanting to setup a webpage, if for no other reason than to learn about the whole thing. Only thing was I had no idea what I wanted to put up. I didn't want to do one of those nasty "this is ME!" pages with my hobbies, pets, family pictures, blah, blah (what ARE you people thinking when you do that?). I now know what I will do. I will put up anti-scientology pages and work towards the goal of getting my pages, with lots of links to the good anti-$cientology pages and information - up on the first page of any google search on "scientology". Perhaps others could also help in this regard.
Put gratuitous links to anti-scientology pages into your pages, regardless of what you pages are actually about. Put as many links for casual browsers to come across as possible to help people get the REAL scoop on $cientology.
I also have all their "censored/copywrited" bullcrap docs on their Theta crap sci-fi. I intend to make them generally available too. Just another way for people to get the stuff that drives those $ci-clowns nutty.
The net result being slowing the earth's rotation more swiftly than it is naturally slowing. Perhaps it will also affect the moon's orbit and even the earth's orbit around the sun.
So there.
Yeah, it sucks, but you have to break a few eggs...
The cost-benefit analysis indicates that a Redmond strike would kill all 2 of the non-M$ lackey/employees while wiping out ALL the Redmonites. The equation definitely favors letting the strike happen.
I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...
If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...
On some Air Force bases, one is not permitted to access yahoo, snotmail, outside pop servers, etc, while on duty and with military computers. They have proxy servers that attempt to restrict access to such sites. It also attempts to block access to "questionable" websites (any site with the word "sex" in it, even if it is a biology/scientific site, gets blocked - there are a lot of other sites that sporadically suprize me with a message about not being authorized to access this site and my ip has been logged). Nonetheless, I STILL access my outside pop mail servers - I simply find the chink in the proxy armor and get my mail anyway. Usually, the same tricks I use to get to my mail also works for other incorrectly blocked sites (with a "bad" keyword associated with its URL).
You are not supposed to connect any computer to the network that isn't registered and thus authorized either (no personal laptops allowed without special permission). I am able to connect anyway and make it appear that my laptop is my authorized desktop machine. Of course, I am in a somewhat privaledged position - being the supervisor of an IT subgroup on the base - and I know how the system works, what is techinically not allowed and knowing how to foil most of the blocks. It is doable to get around restrictions on accessing personal email, etc. It just might take a certain amount of tinkering and experimentation.
Uh, Mandrake defaults to KDE, so I would assume that makes KDE part of the original install.
In any case, I never liked the /opt thing. I see NO reason why it is better to slap on a new directory like that instead of just installing, say, kde2 into /usr/kde2, or kde3 into /usr/kde3, etc. Then you get the same "benefit" of /opt but without that silly extra, hanging-out-there-by-itself directory.
I have java installed in its own /usr/jre directory, and would prefer kde be in its own /usr/kde directory (instead of scattered around /usr, /usr/lib, /usr/include, etc. Just don't give me /opt.
Use the fish translation [altavista.com] if you don't understand German.
What do I use to translate the fish translation? Is there a pidgeon english-to-english translator out there?
Those are really REALLY old screenshots. They look NOTHING like OS/2 Warp, Warp Connect, or Warp 4 (the last real release). Those screenshots gives one the incorrect impression that the GUI was crude and ugly. It was most assuredly not. The GUI on OS/2 was fantastic, with features that are still unmatched by any other GUI on Macs, windoze, or linux. Pity, that.
Gad...I didn't think people did all that physical manipulation of AOL CDs anymore. I thought we'd all switched to watching the lovely "light show" produced by placing the little guys in our microwaves and letting rip.
The light show is less work and is purty to boot. Why waste time physically manhandling them?
Don't worry praedor, you are still on my TODO list :)
Thank GAWD! If I were a coder, or even had the time to teach myself (I am working on a thesis in molec. biology, not computer programming) I WOULD offer myself to handle it. Unfortunately, I am a plain ole enduser that needs certain functionality to do my basic day-to-day writing. The ONLY writing I do that doesn't include references these days is in emails.
Lyx IS powerful but damn, it is NOT all that user friendly. I just do not have the time right now to learn the ins and outs of latex (or all the oddball quirks of Lyx). I just want to write and move on to the next experiment.
The problem with opensource/free software development is precisely because it is so volunteer-driven that work is rarely completed or focused on a polished product. Everyone wants to do the "cool" coding, or "scratch an itch" which all too often merely means: code something that works but is NOT user friendly, attractive, or otherwise appealing to the a wider audience.
Get OVER wanting to code ONLY the cool stuff and grow up, realize that sometimes tedious coding is required (a MUST) to put polish on a product. Get over coding in a "cool" wizbang feature and make it useable and friendly even when it means less fun.
Do the fun coding, sure, but accept reality - that not all the coding that NEEDS to be done is cool but it still must be done. Do it. That is part of being an adult, accepting that everything that needs doing isn't all a party, nor should it all be a big party.
Commercial software developers don't have this problem. The boss says "code this" and you do it and it gets done and you end up with a good product that people can use and WANT to use.
Here we go again. I am once again going to mention something that NO ONE seems to understand is IMPORTANT in a wordprocessor. CITATIONS and REFERENCE HANDLING.
There is NOTHING that really separates one of these wordprocessors (abiword, kword, openoffice/staroffice) from one another. They ALL do the same sorts of things in the same ways...but not a one of them has something a real professional writer REQUIRES. None of them has what ALL college students (and many highschool kids) REQUIRES: an ability to handle citations and build reference pages.
Word and Wordperfect have this on Macs and Windoze via third party apps like EndNote, because the processors were designed so apps like EndNote could seamlessly become part of the wordprocessor (for all practical purposes). Endnote adds its own menubar entry so you can insert citations into your text as you go and then it AUTOMATICALLY generates correctly formatted reference page(s) based on user selection.
There is one and ONLY one "wordprocessor" app in linux/unix that can handle this well and that is Lyx. Lyx is IT. The ONLY show in town for any student or professional writer who needs to cite references in their writings. This is ALL scientists and ALL college students and anyone else who wants/needs to write serious research papers. You MUST cite references or your paper is unfounded heresay, yet NO wordprocessor project is even TRYING to add this capability to their app.
Obviously, none of the projects is interested in any professional writers. Their targets would appear to be letter writers and writers of any work that needs no support (fiction). This is fine, such as it is, but no one gets through this life without having to write SOME papers that require citations and reference pages damnit! If you actually have managed to avoid this then your degree must be astrology or basket weaving.
Someone on ANY of these projects: OpenOffice, Abiword, Koffice...provide either a pipe (like Lyx uses to communicate with the most excellent Pybliographic) so third party apps can work seamlessly with your wordprocessors and insert citation markers and handle reference page generation OR add this capability directly into your wordprocessors! Hell, OpenOffice/StarOffice is PARTWAY there but they dropped the ball BIGTIME. OpenOffice/StarOffice actually has what it calls a bibliography database but it is totally useless. All it will do is store whatever you enter into it MANUALLY. Then, it wont use this database to allow you to insert references/citations into a document, no, it just holds the information uselessly. Go that ONE extra step and make the bibliography database USEFUL: it should be able to import and export all the major citation formats (bibtex, refer, pubmed) and there should a menu item in the wordprocessor that talks directly to this database and will allow the writer to insert citations. At the end, you should be able to hit a "create reference page(s)" button and have staroffice/openoffice add a formatted set of reference pages to the ass-end of the finished document just like Endnote plus Word or Wordperfect will!
I mean, c'mon! Quit focusing on toy writing and add something that hardcore researchers and all college students require. If Lyx can do it, so can the more user-friendly wordprocessors like Kword, Abiword, OpenOffice, etc.
Because of this fatal failing in ALL available linux WYSIWYG wordprocessors, I have to keep Lyx around so I can do my real writing, leaving the rare note or letter to Kword or OpenOffice. What a waste. A nice, BIG app that is kept around just for simplistic writing. Lyx is OK but damnit, I want and need to write, not learn a programming language (latex). My job is to do biological research, not learn programming or hundreds of obscure latex commands just to publish. Lyx and I get by but there needs to be more options for the research paper writer/college student/scientist.
And as it turns out, research shows that 7 is the max number of digits easily remembered by subjects in studies of short-term memory. Short-term memory is, of course, the pathway one generally needs to traverse to produce long-term memories.
As for passwords, I have a handful of nondictionary "words" that I recycle with variations (replacing this or that letter with special characters or numbers). Thus, though I have a base of perhaps 5 passwords, with the variations it becomes more along the lines of 15 to 20. The main problem I have is that most of my passwords have to be replaced once a month. It IS easy for people to forget passwords when they have to be long, contain "weird" characters, and change every 30 days or so. I don't know what the best answer to this is but it is a difficulty people have. I see MANY coworkers writing their new password on sticky notes which then go somewhere in or on their desks (mine goes in my fanny pack which never leaves my side - until I get the password down cold, then it is trashed).
So, when I've had sexual discussions with women over email, where we tell each other what we want to do to each other...that is binding? OK, fine by me. I can't wait to start fulfilling these contractual obligations.
IF Lindows loses, they should turn around and immediately call their product "Windows Linux" or something that STILL incorporates "windows" in it but clearly delineates itself from M$ Windoze. M$ may have fits but in the end they WILL lose in trying to prevent the use of the common word "windows" in a non-M$ os product.
Any /. moderator: This is off on a tangent so don't nail me as off-topic. I KNOW it is heading that way, but...The problem you mention about open source development is only true for a few, small, hardcore coders. For big development projects like KDE or Gnome and the related arenas of their office suites, the problem isn't "tweak it enough and it's good enough", the real problem with opensource development in these projects is that it is still too free. By this, I mean that the coders doing the work only want to do the "cool" and "fun" stuff. Doing the boring but absolutely necessary little sh*t to put a nice finish on the project isn't done because no one volunteers to do it. THAT is the problem...volunteers. No, no. You want to work on this or that project, then there should be some agreed upon authority that can ASSIGN projects for people to do. You don't think it will be exciting? Tough, it HAS to be done nonetheless. After it is done you can do something cool and exciting.
This problem doesn't exist in the commercial software arena. Your boss says do this and you do it. Sometimes the coding is cool, sometimes tedious, boring, and SEEMINGLY unimportant. It is NOT unimportant. It is necessary to make a fully finished product that is easy to use and attractive to users. I can't recall all the times I've suggested a REALLY good capability be added, or tool be added to this or that app only to be told that, essentially, it wasn't cool enough to want to spend time working on it. Bullsh*t. Bad attitude, bad way to run things. My suggestions have always been based on some of the great things one finds in good commercial software. They are part of what makes that software so good but because it doesn't involve glamorous, elite hacking and coding, it just wont get done.
Fix the bullcrap "volunteers but only for the cool coding" crap in opensource development and the apps, including and in particular the office apps, will get MUCH better.
"bcast and xmovie" wont play sorenson codec quicktime movies.
I've got it and it is...OK. It is slow as molasses, however. To run the quicktime plugin (or windoze media) you have to wait for the wineserver to start and then for the app to start. Lots of swapping going on there.
It IS nice that for now we can have quicktime working on linux but it is not THE answeer. THE answer is for frickin' Apple to release the goddamn specs for the codec. If Apple wants to compete for providing internet media (this goes for M$ or anyone else too) then you have to use widely available standards so that no one is locked out because they use this or that OS. The frickin' OS shouldn't matter one bit.
If you want to provide a media service on the OPEN and NONPROPRIATORY internet, then use open standards or fully publish your codecs so developers can produce apps to VIEW your media.
Consider this: it appears that M$ will have to release a fixpak/security pak for a bunch of apps while for me with linux (and people using BSD, etc) all we need to do is install the new zlib - which was available virtually at the same time the POTENTIAL vulnerability was discovered/released. Then, all *nix people need do is restart whatever net-connected app/server they were running that uses zlib and it is fixed. No replacing apps with fixed apps, just replace the lib without ever rebooting.
You will eventually receive a big security fix from M$ that replaces whole applications AND have to reboot to make it work.
So, two comparisons can be made between the free-os users and the M$ slaves: 1) fixes are produced and available immediately for free-os people but it will be a while before M$ figures out what to do, and 2) simply installing the new lib and, perhaps, restarting a couple applications is all it takes for a fix for the free-oses but M$ users will have to replace whole applications and reboot.
M$ kinda trashes itself in comparison.
...as to why "we" elected Bush, WE DIDN'T. We the people elected Gore (he won the popular vote which is us. Bush won the electoral bullshit vote.
Deserts are fragile ECOSYSTEMS. They are not wastelands open for complete exploitation. Covering fragile deserts with solar arrays is not any better than covering most openspace with wind turbines. There is a place for each type of technology but it is NOT OK to eliminate desert ecosystems, great plains ecosystems, etc, so that miles and miles of turbines or collectors can be built (and the access roads and other infrastructure necessary to maintain and use them).
Killing migratory birds IS a big deal, by the way. People like to claim how benign solar collectors and wind turbines are but ignore the fact that it takes a LOT of them and it consumes openspace and wildlife habitat and kills wildlife.
Answer? You build a little of each INCLUDING reactors and dump oil/coal-fired powerplants entirely.
When you start getting out to Jupiter and beyond, the Sun is not a viable power source. For deep space you MUST have nuclear power. There is NO deep space probe that isn't nuclear powered. None. You want to get to the outer solar system efficiently and quickly, then you want/need nuclear. Also, solar isn't worth squat to astronauts on the Martian surface. Inefficient. You send a portable nuclear power plant (no, no it CANNOT meltdown damnit!) and have LOADS of power available to keep you alive and warm AND producing fuel for a return trip.
True space travel and exploration will require nuclear power if you are heading outward.
A nuclear rocket as all the proper designs are laid out CANNOT have a meltdown. You CANNOT have a Chernobyl-style accident with a nuclear rocket. We are not talking Orion either - that is a nuclear bomb rocket. A nuclear rocket is merely a nuclear core hot enough to vaporize whatever fuel you choose to pump through it. It could be water, producing high-pressure steam. It is NOT automatic that a nuclear core MUST be able to meltdown (ala Chernobyl). Nuclear power doesn't automatically mean "meltdown potential".
If there is a problem with a nuclear rocket launch, you don't need to blow it up. Actually you don't want to. You simply shutdown the engine and parachute it down for recovery and repair and try again. There is no volatile, explosive fuel to worry about (that is the only reason chemical rockets are destroyed if they have problems. Don't want a big, explosive bomb landing on anyone. It is even too dangerous to shut them down and parachute them down. They can still blow up. Not so with a nuclear rocket. They are SAFER than chemical rockets.
Correct, for the most part. I was going to make your post. I would add a minor correction, however. The amount of the genome made up of viral-DNA is more in the low double digit percentage. If you count retrotransposable elements, VERY closely related to retroviruses (like LINE1 elements) the number of those alone is 17%. Throw in Alu elements, SINES, Ty elements...you are talking a not-insignificant portion of the genome.
Ah yes, the bird-killing wind turbines. You want all the open space possible to be packed with migratory bird-killing wind turbines? Instead of looking out over a beautiful, majestic rolling plain or valley, seeing trees and rolling meadows you sell 150 ft white towers with the bodies of dead birds scattered about their bases.
Wind can play a big part of Germany's energy plans because Germany is small, doesn't have much left by way of wide open space that needs protecting. The US is, of course, huge with lots of space that should be protected from development before it is wrecked with structures and roads. The US is also more energy-intensive (Germany doesn't have any deserts where air conditioning 24 hrs a day (ok, in the dry desert areas swamp coolers are a more intelligent choice) for a significant portion of the year is a requirement. It doesn't have hot, incredibly humid areas like Louisiana where air conditioning is necessary to both cool and reduce humidity in the home. Germany doesn't have some 250 million people.
It is VERY possible to create inherently safe reactors that CANNOT, NO MATTER WHAT, meltdown. It is VERY possible to reduce the radioactive waste significantly AND safely encase it in "glass" for long-term storage such that it can't enter the water systems no matter what. If you do what France does, you end up with waste that has a max halflife of only a couple hundred years instead of thousands of years like we produce. You use fast breeder reactors that produce their own fuel and you refine the waste to recycle the useable fuel - this leaves you with minor, short halflife waste that is useless for making weapons and can be safely stored without worrying about ancestors a thousand years hence stumbling upon it. By then it will be long inert.
Once again, the Pavlovian knee-jerk reaction occurs with any sentence that contains the "n" word in it. Unthinking, emotional-not-logical-or-reasoned response. Nuclear power is a bigger part of our energy future, NOT a smaller part. That is a fact of life. We are not going to ever go back to some never-existent agrarian lifestyle where all was peaceful and quiet and perfectly clean of all waste. Fact of life.