It's like I'm looking at a forum with a bunch of 60+ Republicans in it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Just because you can't comprehend why another person would choose a different option from you on a poll, it doesn't mean the poll was rigged. Just because it's different and you can't get used to it doesn't mean that no one else can. Grow up.
That's certainly one aspect of the Gnome 3/Gnome Shell hate, but that's not why I dislike it. I'm one of those people who shrugs when they change the UI. I don't care much, unless they make something nearly impossible, like how they've messed up window handling with multi-window apps like GIMP.
I disliked Gnome 3.0 because they stopped working on Gnome 2 while Gnome 3.0 was still very buggy and freeze-prone and sometimes not fast enough. I get pissed off when my computer freezes and I lose anything from seconds to minutes of work. Gnome 3.2 fixed a lot of that, but it's not there yet. I happen to like the direction that Gnome Shell is taking in terms of UI design. I know that they're aware of the problems and are working on them and I hope they will get there by 3.4 or 3.6. Maybe 3.6 will be super stable and snappy and have tons of great extensions. Maybe not.
Whatever happens I think 2011 will be remembered as yet another year of lost opportunities for the Linux desktop.
I'm not too happy about Gnome 3 either and it has made me Switch to Windows 7 as my primary OS, but I think it's unfair to say that nobody uses it considering the fact that the three major desktop distros all rely on it in one form or another.
I don't really give a crap about the user interface as long as it allows me to do everything I need and as long as it allows my programs to be fast and responsive. Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell are not there. Gnome Shell has a neat user interface, but it's a little bit slow sometimes and it freezes too often and there are tens of tiny bugs that needs fixing. A lot of those should be fixed in Gnome 3.4. We'll see. I log into an Xfce session when I need speed and stability.
By the way, I've ditched Chrome and switched back to FF again because it runs faster on my computers (YMMV).
I think a survey should be taken if we really believe that a Higgs particle exists.
That's not how science works. Science is about collectively investigating different models in the quest for one that fits with experimental data. Ideally a single scientist with a better model ought to be able to overthrown the consensus of the global community. In practice that sort of thing often takes a long time. Einstein famously won his Nobel prize for his down to earth discoveries about the photoelectric effect, not for relativity, because back then a lot of the science community hadn't had time to absorb it.
What if a Higgs effect is made up of hundreds of particles that when considered in whole look like Higgs?
That means that the Higgs boson exists. Just like you exist, despite the fact that you consist of smaller parts...
Because our anthropomorphic models predict the particle does not mean we will find it in nature.
That's actually true.
Gravity is a similar concept, but very useful despite not knowing what gravity is.
We know that gravity, at least on a macroscopic level, is a sort of warping in space-time, caused by the presence of mass. That's a good enough description that we can say that we know what gravity is in terms of space-time and mass. It's probably not the ultimate explanation for gravity, but it is an explanation. Ask yourself this: do we have the ultimate explanation for anything?
I guess that depends in what country you live. In my country metals are recycled. And that is for all. It is a mgniute cheaper to recycle them instead of refining ores.
You mean steel, aluminium, gold and silver? Sure. They're recycled in many countries. The long term goal ought to be to recycle everything, but we're nowhere near there yet.
That is a misleading "calculation". When all power comes from wind, wind will produce no CO2 at all. Right now however the wind mills are transported with ordinary CO2 producing means. To break it down to grams per kWh makes no real sense either as the amount of CO2 involved is fixed and the amount of energy produced depends on the actual lifetime and yield.
The same arguments could be used for nuclear power. Nobody really knows how long a nuclear plant can be operated economically. Existing plants are very economical, because their construction cost have long since been payed off. People back in the 1970's guessed that they would run for 40 years, but nowadays they're expected to run for 60 years or more. I've heard nuclear engineers claim new plants will last 100+ years (which sounds like a desperate attempt to save an unprofitable technology if you ask me, but I don't know).
For large scale energy production there wont be panles but reflectors and thermal plants;D
Maybe. Your guess is probably about as good as anyone's at this early stage. I'd bet on some form of printed thin film solar cell because I think someone will come up with one that can be produced at a very high rate (area per unit of time).
Lead and copper, to name two. Copper will probably be economically recyclable soon owing to it's high value, but AFAIK it's far from clear that we'll be able to recycle enough of the materials in the turbines to make it as clean as future nuclear technologies, although I bet it's possible to make it cleaner than our current nuclear industry.
The current nuclear industry is a total non-starter anyway because the power is twice as expensive as power from natural gas and it takes over a decade to build a 3rd gen plant and several decades to break even. Investors tend to want to make a profit before they die, so it's not gonna happen unless the government funds it.
There's also the CO2 aspect. Wind power leads to emissions of about 10 g/kWh. Nuclear power (3rd gen) leads to emissions of about 3 g/kWh. These may seem negligible at today's level of use, but imagine a world of 10 billion people with air conditioning, electric cars, high speed trains and middle class consumption levels and those 10 g/kWh may begin to look like a serious downside.
It's impossible to say anything about solar because nobody knows what type of solar panel will win.
Ill-rational? Oh dear. Leave science ( and written communication ) to those capable of said tasks.
There is nothing irrational about being against the most dangerous, polluting and expensive method of boiling water ever conceived.
Hear, hear.
Coal* mining and burning has to stop. It's deadly and dirty.
The fastest way of displacing coal at present is to build natural gas plants and wind turbines, so that should be our current industrial focus. Solar will play an increasingly important role as solar technology gets cheaper and more effective.
But none of these come close to nuclear in terms of safety and environmental performance. It's hard to beat the inherent power of E = mc^2. Gas emits CO2. Solar and wind rely on the mining of huge amounts of toxic materials, much of which will have to be deposited in underground storages unless we develop ways of recycling it. (Does that sound familiar?) Nuclear is both cleaner and safer because it relies on mining of small amounts of toxic material.
If we could develop a nuclear reactor that could be produced on production lines in factories and shipped out to the customers in shipping containers nuclear could not only be the cleanest and safest alternative, but also the cheapest.
I've often wondered, when creating a solar panel (or wind turbine or any other "green" power source) for a particular purpose, does someone actually work out the net emissions saving?
I think most companies probably do a back of the envelope assessment at least (any engineer with half a brain would do that because it's interesting), but as you can imagine it is a difficult and seemingly intractable problem that requires a theoretical understanding and skills that most engineers don't have and most companies don't really look for when they hire people.
Okay, but smartphones and tablets were niche markets (at best) 10 years ago. Maybe power-efficient passive displays will enable a niche market to grow.
For example solar-powered (or perhaps indoor light powered) advertisement and signage might become a big thing. Why solar powered? Well, in many places getting grid power to a sign can be difficult or expensive for bureaucratic/regulatory reasons.
There's a faint inner voice in my head that speaks words as I read them, or write them. I would imagine that my speech circuitry would light up on a brain scan, but maybe not as strongly or extensively as when I'm listening or speaking.
I'm a fast reader, and I read upside down pretty fast too (comes in handy from time to time), so I don't think I'm compensating for a lack of visual processing.
Chrony Capitalism coupled with inflation really has created a system where money comes out of the void, shoots to the top and by the very existence of that new money being created causes the money other people hold to decline in value.
Does inflation benefit the rich? Generally speaking no. If prices rise, the value of money decreases and the main victims are people with big fortunes. People who owe money, which is most people, tend to gain because inflation effectively pays off their loans.
The problem from an ordinary person's point of view is not the inflation on the way up. That's the nice part with plentiful job opportunities and loans that pay for themselves. The problem is the lack of inflation, or even deflation, that happens after the bubble inevitably bursts. Then the tables turn completely and begin to favor the rich and destroy the poor.
The solution? I don't know, but I think it would be some sort of holistic approach to regulation. Deregulating the economy rule by rule has proven to be a recipe for recurring disaster. Every time you remove a rule you open up a new and previously unknown possibility to game the system and create a bubble.
My OS journey has been Windows 3.11, 95, 98, ME (yes - it came with some really stable and fast drivers for my hardware), 2000, XP, Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, Windows 7.
The reason for the Windows XP to Ubuntu 8.04 switch was that Gnome 2 and Compiz allowed me to optimize my workflow in a way which just isn't possible on Windows XP.
The reason for the Ubuntu 9.10 to Windows 7 switch was that I don't like Unity and I found that Windows 7, while far from perfect, allows you to work almost as effectively and seemed much more future proof.
I would buy a Mac, but I can't really justify the cost at the moment.
As for Linux I'm hoping that Ubuntu + Gnome Shell is going to improve over time and catch up and overtake Windows 8. There's room for more on my HDD and I'm one of those people who adapt quickly. I don't care which buttons you have on which side of which window border, how big or small the icons are (within reasonable boundaries) and other arbitrary design decisions. Give me a rock stable, fast and powerful interface that lends itself to developing effective work flow habits, on top of an OS that works with all my hardware and I'll be there.
Much of that may happen, but the idea of convergence into one device is not happening. We're seeing more and more different sorts of devices with time, not fewer and fewer.
It should be a single click for those (and only those) who open new terminal windows a lot. Opening a video player should be a single click for those who use their Gnome Shell box as an entertainment center. Opening a web browser and navigating to facebook.com should be a single click for those who uses their Gnome Shell box as a social networking center.
This is one of the main failures of the vanilla (no extensions) Gnome Shell UI. There's no way to streamline stuff that you do often. There's no way to do it with the mouse and no way to do it with the keyboard. The text search doesn't adapt to which apps you open the most often.
Can this be fixed? Sure. You can tack on Gnome Do and Cairo Dock or whatnot. You can write extensions or install the few that exist. All I'm saying is that vanilla Gnome Shell is either broken or not done yet and that's not good considering that they have abandoned Gnome 2.
Maybe you should give Xubuntu and Lubuntu a try. I've never tried them until now, but this comment thread made me do it.
Xubuntu, under Virtualbox: After a ridiculously quick and painless installation process you have a desktop that runs reasonably fast in a VM and looks similar to an early version of Mac OS X.
Lubuntu, under Virtualbox: Takes 9.5 minutes to install. This is on a low-end laptop. Looks a bit like Windows XP.
Based on a brief look both Xubuntu and Lubuntu seem to have pretty much everything you need, including OpenShot. Lubuntu does not come with the Software center by default, but it's available in the repositories.
Does your computer that can't boot from USB or DVD have 1 GB of RAM? I'm asking because that's part of the recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu 11.10:
1 GHz CPU (x86 processor (Pentium 4 or better)) 1 GiB RAM (system memory) 15 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach) 800 by 600 screen resolution Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media Internet access is helpful
The RAM requirement is pretty steep compared to the rest of the requirements. Most 1 GHz P4:s probably shipped with 128 or 256 MB of RAM. Computers with 15 GB of HDD space typically had 64 or 128 MB of RAM.
I think it's reasonable to assume that any computer that is able to run the Unity desktop in 2012 will be able to boot from DVD or USB. It wouldn't surprise me if they increase the CPU requirement to a 1.5 GHz Pentium M or equivalent.
This is a nitpick post, but Unity actually uses Gnome 3. You're probably thinking of Gnome Shell, which is the standard UI in Gnome 3.
I just deleted something a long rant from this post. Here's the TL;DR version:
Gnome Shell is a cool tech demo/alpha which shows a lot of promise and might become something great in a couple of year's time. It's so cool that I can't bring myself to dislike it as much as I probably should.
The lack of development for Gnome 2 made me switch to Windows 7. Since I'm not doing serious work in Ubuntu nowadays, I've stopped posting helpful advice and solutions at the Ubuntu forums. All things considered it's probably a net loss to the community and I don't know if future versions of Gnome Shell will make up for it. Keep in mind that Windows 8 and Mac OSX are moving targets and it's not clear that Gnome Shell will ever catch up.
AFAIK nobody has seriously claimed that the E-Cat violates the laws of thermodynamics per se. Here are the three main skeptical claims that I have encountered:
Some have claimed that it is highly unlikely ("impossible") that physics as we understand it would allow a low energy nuclear reaction. They don't claim that you can't fuse nickel and hydrogen and unleash the nuclear energy stored inside. They do claim that you can't do it at low temperatures.
Some have claimed that while low energy nuclear reactions may be possible, any machine that produces useful amounts of power would also produce lethal levels of gamma radiation which could only be shielded by decimeters or meters of shielding, compared to the millimeters or centimeters in the E-Cat.
Some have claimed that the inventors should simply not be trusted because of their prior actions.
The reactor (or con machine depending on what you think) looks to be inside a hangar, not a shipping container. See picture. Most of the stuff seems to metal.
There's no way to debunk this just by looking at the machine. Scientists and engineers have been doing just that for months. Looking. It's either a really good scam, a really expensive and foolish mistake, or an actual cold fusion machine.
If you believe that cold fusion is possible you should not dismiss this machine based just a picture.
As a layman I personally think that cold fusion can be explained by experiment error. I could very well be wrong. I will say this: I would not invested a penny in this venture I was offered to do so at this moment.
I would imagine that if one were to drill channels with a certain amount of precision one could presumably calculate and put error bar on how much that would weaken the rock. So yeah, of course it would weaken it. But you could probably predict by how much.
Now, the standard way of extracting deep geothermal heat, if I understand it correctly, is to drill two holes some distance apart and then detonate explosives at the bottom of each hole in order to create cracks so that water can flow from one to the other. You then pump in cold water through one hole and pump out hot water from the other.
There is anecdotal evidence that this method may make earthquakes more common...
I googled "lucid dreaming skeptic" and was unable to find anyone claiming that it is not a real phenomenon, except a reference to some article from 1959. I also found an article from 1991 that gives an overview of the science up to then: Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?.
The reason why there isn't more research on lucid dreaming could be that lucid dreaming is not recognized as a problem by those who experience it.
Rockets do not really use a significant amount of energy in and of themselves at the rate that we're launching them. The fuel cost share of the total cost of a space launch is completely insignificant. The space shuttle consumed 20 TJ of energy per launch. For comparison your average car consumes 1-2 TJ per year.
It would be quite possible to produce all the hydrogen needed for a few launches per year locally around the space launch facility using wind turbines and photovoltaics to electrolyze seawater and keep the hydrogen cool while it is in storage.
That's true. Finland has what could be described as the world's best public school system and is in a good position to build a modern tech industry centered around Helsinki, or rather to improve on the one they already have.
The grandfather post probably refers to illiterate refugees from Africa and the Middle East, although I doubt that your average cleaning firm would hire someone who can't read.
Most non-disabled people probably agree. Why else would people ever use text messaging/IM when there are perfectly fine and cheap voice services that are widely available?
That said, I can see it being useful in the privacy of your own car if they can get it to work in such a noisy environment.
That's true, but on the other hand many of these products only sell to enthusiasts and therefore work as a sort of tutorial for people who want to learn how to design and build stuff. A person can study the design files for this thing and learn something about circuit design and PCB design.
Perhaps we'll eventually see big teams that develop complex FOSS hardware projects for consumer or commercial applications. Maybe one day a team of developers will beat the iPhone the same way that Firefox beat Microsoft Explorer. There is absolutely nothing stopping that from happening except the general lack of understanding about how to get a sufficiently big and stable cash stream going for a FOSS project, and the general difficulties of setting up small-scale profitable production of physical devices.
Okay, so there's quite a bit stopping that from happening, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people find ways to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like I'm looking at a forum with a bunch of 60+ Republicans in it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Just because you can't comprehend why another person would choose a different option from you on a poll, it doesn't mean the poll was rigged. Just because it's different and you can't get used to it doesn't mean that no one else can. Grow up.
That's certainly one aspect of the Gnome 3/Gnome Shell hate, but that's not why I dislike it. I'm one of those people who shrugs when they change the UI. I don't care much, unless they make something nearly impossible, like how they've messed up window handling with multi-window apps like GIMP.
I disliked Gnome 3.0 because they stopped working on Gnome 2 while Gnome 3.0 was still very buggy and freeze-prone and sometimes not fast enough. I get pissed off when my computer freezes and I lose anything from seconds to minutes of work. Gnome 3.2 fixed a lot of that, but it's not there yet. I happen to like the direction that Gnome Shell is taking in terms of UI design. I know that they're aware of the problems and are working on them and I hope they will get there by 3.4 or 3.6. Maybe 3.6 will be super stable and snappy and have tons of great extensions. Maybe not.
Whatever happens I think 2011 will be remembered as yet another year of lost opportunities for the Linux desktop.
I'm not too happy about Gnome 3 either and it has made me Switch to Windows 7 as my primary OS, but I think it's unfair to say that nobody uses it considering the fact that the three major desktop distros all rely on it in one form or another.
I don't really give a crap about the user interface as long as it allows me to do everything I need and as long as it allows my programs to be fast and responsive. Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell are not there. Gnome Shell has a neat user interface, but it's a little bit slow sometimes and it freezes too often and there are tens of tiny bugs that needs fixing. A lot of those should be fixed in Gnome 3.4. We'll see. I log into an Xfce session when I need speed and stability.
By the way, I've ditched Chrome and switched back to FF again because it runs faster on my computers (YMMV).
I think a survey should be taken if we really believe that a Higgs particle exists.
That's not how science works. Science is about collectively investigating different models in the quest for one that fits with experimental data. Ideally a single scientist with a better model ought to be able to overthrown the consensus of the global community. In practice that sort of thing often takes a long time. Einstein famously won his Nobel prize for his down to earth discoveries about the photoelectric effect, not for relativity, because back then a lot of the science community hadn't had time to absorb it.
What if a Higgs effect is made up of hundreds of particles that when considered in whole look like Higgs?
That means that the Higgs boson exists. Just like you exist, despite the fact that you consist of smaller parts...
Because our anthropomorphic models predict the particle does not mean we will find it in nature.
That's actually true.
Gravity is a similar concept, but very useful despite not knowing what gravity is.
We know that gravity, at least on a macroscopic level, is a sort of warping in space-time, caused by the presence of mass. That's a good enough description that we can say that we know what gravity is in terms of space-time and mass. It's probably not the ultimate explanation for gravity, but it is an explanation. Ask yourself this: do we have the ultimate explanation for anything?
I guess that depends in what country you live.
In my country metals are recycled. And that is for all. It is a mgniute cheaper to recycle them instead of refining ores.
You mean steel, aluminium, gold and silver? Sure. They're recycled in many countries. The long term goal ought to be to recycle everything, but we're nowhere near there yet.
That is a misleading "calculation". When all power comes from wind, wind will produce no CO2 at all. Right now however the wind mills are transported with ordinary CO2 producing means.
To break it down to grams per kWh makes no real sense either as the amount of CO2 involved is fixed and the amount of energy produced depends on the actual lifetime and yield.
The same arguments could be used for nuclear power. Nobody really knows how long a nuclear plant can be operated economically. Existing plants are very economical, because their construction cost have long since been payed off. People back in the 1970's guessed that they would run for 40 years, but nowadays they're expected to run for 60 years or more. I've heard nuclear engineers claim new plants will last 100+ years (which sounds like a desperate attempt to save an unprofitable technology if you ask me, but I don't know).
For large scale energy production there wont be panles but reflectors and thermal plants ;D
Maybe. Your guess is probably about as good as anyone's at this early stage. I'd bet on some form of printed thin film solar cell because I think someone will come up with one that can be produced at a very high rate (area per unit of time).
Lead and copper, to name two. Copper will probably be economically recyclable soon owing to it's high value, but AFAIK it's far from clear that we'll be able to recycle enough of the materials in the turbines to make it as clean as future nuclear technologies, although I bet it's possible to make it cleaner than our current nuclear industry.
The current nuclear industry is a total non-starter anyway because the power is twice as expensive as power from natural gas and it takes over a decade to build a 3rd gen plant and several decades to break even. Investors tend to want to make a profit before they die, so it's not gonna happen unless the government funds it.
There's also the CO2 aspect. Wind power leads to emissions of about 10 g/kWh. Nuclear power (3rd gen) leads to emissions of about 3 g/kWh. These may seem negligible at today's level of use, but imagine a world of 10 billion people with air conditioning, electric cars, high speed trains and middle class consumption levels and those 10 g/kWh may begin to look like a serious downside.
It's impossible to say anything about solar because nobody knows what type of solar panel will win.
Ill-rational? Oh dear. Leave science ( and written communication ) to those capable of said tasks.
There is nothing irrational about being against the most dangerous, polluting and expensive method of boiling water ever conceived.
Hear, hear.
Coal* mining and burning has to stop. It's deadly and dirty.
The fastest way of displacing coal at present is to build natural gas plants and wind turbines, so that should be our current industrial focus. Solar will play an increasingly important role as solar technology gets cheaper and more effective.
But none of these come close to nuclear in terms of safety and environmental performance. It's hard to beat the inherent power of E = mc^2. Gas emits CO2. Solar and wind rely on the mining of huge amounts of toxic materials, much of which will have to be deposited in underground storages unless we develop ways of recycling it. (Does that sound familiar?) Nuclear is both cleaner and safer because it relies on mining of small amounts of toxic material.
If we could develop a nuclear reactor that could be produced on production lines in factories and shipped out to the customers in shipping containers nuclear could not only be the cleanest and safest alternative, but also the cheapest.
*You meant coal, right?
I've often wondered, when creating a solar panel (or wind turbine or any other "green" power source) for a particular purpose, does someone actually work out the net emissions saving?
That's called a life-cycle assessment.
I think most companies probably do a back of the envelope assessment at least (any engineer with half a brain would do that because it's interesting), but as you can imagine it is a difficult and seemingly intractable problem that requires a theoretical understanding and skills that most engineers don't have and most companies don't really look for when they hire people.
Okay, but smartphones and tablets were niche markets (at best) 10 years ago. Maybe power-efficient passive displays will enable a niche market to grow.
For example solar-powered (or perhaps indoor light powered) advertisement and signage might become a big thing. Why solar powered? Well, in many places getting grid power to a sign can be difficult or expensive for bureaucratic/regulatory reasons.
There's a faint inner voice in my head that speaks words as I read them, or write them. I would imagine that my speech circuitry would light up on a brain scan, but maybe not as strongly or extensively as when I'm listening or speaking.
I'm a fast reader, and I read upside down pretty fast too (comes in handy from time to time), so I don't think I'm compensating for a lack of visual processing.
Does inflation benefit the rich? Generally speaking no. If prices rise, the value of money decreases and the main victims are people with big fortunes. People who owe money, which is most people, tend to gain because inflation effectively pays off their loans.
The problem from an ordinary person's point of view is not the inflation on the way up. That's the nice part with plentiful job opportunities and loans that pay for themselves. The problem is the lack of inflation, or even deflation, that happens after the bubble inevitably bursts. Then the tables turn completely and begin to favor the rich and destroy the poor.
The solution? I don't know, but I think it would be some sort of holistic approach to regulation. Deregulating the economy rule by rule has proven to be a recipe for recurring disaster. Every time you remove a rule you open up a new and previously unknown possibility to game the system and create a bubble.
My OS journey has been Windows 3.11, 95, 98, ME (yes - it came with some really stable and fast drivers for my hardware), 2000, XP, Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, Windows 7.
The reason for the Windows XP to Ubuntu 8.04 switch was that Gnome 2 and Compiz allowed me to optimize my workflow in a way which just isn't possible on Windows XP.
The reason for the Ubuntu 9.10 to Windows 7 switch was that I don't like Unity and I found that Windows 7, while far from perfect, allows you to work almost as effectively and seemed much more future proof.
I would buy a Mac, but I can't really justify the cost at the moment.
As for Linux I'm hoping that Ubuntu + Gnome Shell is going to improve over time and catch up and overtake Windows 8. There's room for more on my HDD and I'm one of those people who adapt quickly. I don't care which buttons you have on which side of which window border, how big or small the icons are (within reasonable boundaries) and other arbitrary design decisions. Give me a rock stable, fast and powerful interface that lends itself to developing effective work flow habits, on top of an OS that works with all my hardware and I'll be there.
Much of that may happen, but the idea of convergence into one device is not happening. We're seeing more and more different sorts of devices with time, not fewer and fewer.
It should be a single click for those (and only those) who open new terminal windows a lot. Opening a video player should be a single click for those who use their Gnome Shell box as an entertainment center. Opening a web browser and navigating to facebook.com should be a single click for those who uses their Gnome Shell box as a social networking center.
This is one of the main failures of the vanilla (no extensions) Gnome Shell UI. There's no way to streamline stuff that you do often. There's no way to do it with the mouse and no way to do it with the keyboard. The text search doesn't adapt to which apps you open the most often.
Can this be fixed? Sure. You can tack on Gnome Do and Cairo Dock or whatnot. You can write extensions or install the few that exist. All I'm saying is that vanilla Gnome Shell is either broken or not done yet and that's not good considering that they have abandoned Gnome 2.
Maybe you should give Xubuntu and Lubuntu a try. I've never tried them until now, but this comment thread made me do it.
Xubuntu, under Virtualbox: After a ridiculously quick and painless installation process you have a desktop that runs reasonably fast in a VM and looks similar to an early version of Mac OS X.
Lubuntu, under Virtualbox: Takes 9.5 minutes to install. This is on a low-end laptop. Looks a bit like Windows XP.
Based on a brief look both Xubuntu and Lubuntu seem to have pretty much everything you need, including OpenShot. Lubuntu does not come with the Software center by default, but it's available in the repositories.
Does your computer that can't boot from USB or DVD have 1 GB of RAM? I'm asking because that's part of the recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu 11.10:
1 GHz CPU (x86 processor (Pentium 4 or better))
1 GiB RAM (system memory)
15 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach)
800 by 600 screen resolution
Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media
Internet access is helpful
The RAM requirement is pretty steep compared to the rest of the requirements. Most 1 GHz P4:s probably shipped with 128 or 256 MB of RAM. Computers with 15 GB of HDD space typically had 64 or 128 MB of RAM.
I think it's reasonable to assume that any computer that is able to run the Unity desktop in 2012 will be able to boot from DVD or USB. It wouldn't surprise me if they increase the CPU requirement to a 1.5 GHz Pentium M or equivalent.
This is a nitpick post, but Unity actually uses Gnome 3. You're probably thinking of Gnome Shell, which is the standard UI in Gnome 3.
I just deleted something a long rant from this post. Here's the TL;DR version:
Gnome Shell is a cool tech demo/alpha which shows a lot of promise and might become something great in a couple of year's time. It's so cool that I can't bring myself to dislike it as much as I probably should.
The lack of development for Gnome 2 made me switch to Windows 7. Since I'm not doing serious work in Ubuntu nowadays, I've stopped posting helpful advice and solutions at the Ubuntu forums. All things considered it's probably a net loss to the community and I don't know if future versions of Gnome Shell will make up for it. Keep in mind that Windows 8 and Mac OSX are moving targets and it's not clear that Gnome Shell will ever catch up.
AFAIK nobody has seriously claimed that the E-Cat violates the laws of thermodynamics per se. Here are the three main skeptical claims that I have encountered:
Some have claimed that it is highly unlikely ("impossible") that physics as we understand it would allow a low energy nuclear reaction. They don't claim that you can't fuse nickel and hydrogen and unleash the nuclear energy stored inside. They do claim that you can't do it at low temperatures.
Some have claimed that while low energy nuclear reactions may be possible, any machine that produces useful amounts of power would also produce lethal levels of gamma radiation which could only be shielded by decimeters or meters of shielding, compared to the millimeters or centimeters in the E-Cat.
Some have claimed that the inventors should simply not be trusted because of their prior actions.
The reactor (or con machine depending on what you think) looks to be inside a hangar, not a shipping container. See picture. Most of the stuff seems to metal.
There's no way to debunk this just by looking at the machine. Scientists and engineers have been doing just that for months. Looking. It's either a really good scam, a really expensive and foolish mistake, or an actual cold fusion machine.
If you believe that cold fusion is possible you should not dismiss this machine based just a picture.
As a layman I personally think that cold fusion can be explained by experiment error. I could very well be wrong. I will say this: I would not invested a penny in this venture I was offered to do so at this moment.
I would imagine that if one were to drill channels with a certain amount of precision one could presumably calculate and put error bar on how much that would weaken the rock. So yeah, of course it would weaken it. But you could probably predict by how much.
Now, the standard way of extracting deep geothermal heat, if I understand it correctly, is to drill two holes some distance apart and then detonate explosives at the bottom of each hole in order to create cracks so that water can flow from one to the other. You then pump in cold water through one hole and pump out hot water from the other.
There is anecdotal evidence that this method may make earthquakes more common...
I googled "lucid dreaming skeptic" and was unable to find anyone claiming that it is not a real phenomenon, except a reference to some article from 1959. I also found an article from 1991 that gives an overview of the science up to then: Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?.
The reason why there isn't more research on lucid dreaming could be that lucid dreaming is not recognized as a problem by those who experience it.
Rockets do not really use a significant amount of energy in and of themselves at the rate that we're launching them. The fuel cost share of the total cost of a space launch is completely insignificant. The space shuttle consumed 20 TJ of energy per launch. For comparison your average car consumes 1-2 TJ per year.
It would be quite possible to produce all the hydrogen needed for a few launches per year locally around the space launch facility using wind turbines and photovoltaics to electrolyze seawater and keep the hydrogen cool while it is in storage.
That's true. Finland has what could be described as the world's best public school system and is in a good position to build a modern tech industry centered around Helsinki, or rather to improve on the one they already have.
The grandfather post probably refers to illiterate refugees from Africa and the Middle East, although I doubt that your average cleaning firm would hire someone who can't read.
Most non-disabled people probably agree. Why else would people ever use text messaging/IM when there are perfectly fine and cheap voice services that are widely available?
That said, I can see it being useful in the privacy of your own car if they can get it to work in such a noisy environment.
That's true, but on the other hand many of these products only sell to enthusiasts and therefore work as a sort of tutorial for people who want to learn how to design and build stuff. A person can study the design files for this thing and learn something about circuit design and PCB design.
Perhaps we'll eventually see big teams that develop complex FOSS hardware projects for consumer or commercial applications. Maybe one day a team of developers will beat the iPhone the same way that Firefox beat Microsoft Explorer. There is absolutely nothing stopping that from happening except the general lack of understanding about how to get a sufficiently big and stable cash stream going for a FOSS project, and the general difficulties of setting up small-scale profitable production of physical devices.
Okay, so there's quite a bit stopping that from happening, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people find ways to do it.
Call me when it does Hungarian...