This is starting to sound like the arguments my car freak friends have about standard versus automatic transmissions. What they don't seem to get is that drivers like me don't care about optimum performance, we just want to get from point A to point B. In fact, I gave up my car and started using public transportation because I hated dealing with car maintenance and I happen to be fortunate enough to live in an area where I can get away without one.
The average computer user wants to do his job, which often has very little to do with the computer. That 10 minutes you refer to is better spent doing something else. You and I may find that ridiculous, but we're in the minority.
These studies are based on how average users (not your average Slashdot reader) use their computer systems. We can rail all we want to about "dumbing down" the interface, but in the end we don't really count. We'll learn the new way far more readily than the average folks will learn our way.
If all problems in NP are efficiently solvable, then *all* cryptographic algorithms (public key or symmetric)
Not one-time pads. They're uncrackable without time-travel and/or rubber-hose cryptography. If the key is the size of the message or larger, there's nothing to attack, period.
Interesting. Ximian on RH 7.1 on a 300 MHz 128 MB with a craptacious RIVA 128 is very usable after some tuning. Here's what I did:
Upgrade the kernel to a release with the new VM subsystem. This had a small, but noticeable improvement.
Type service --listall. Notice that I am running a mod-perl and mod-php enabled Apache, Postgresql, and Zope on a desktop box. Swear at self for a while, then turn off unneeded crap.
Reduce my desktop to one virtual desktop with one workspace.
Notice that medusa is eating a major portion of my CPU time. Upgrade medusa, problem is gone. I can't tell if I even need this service. It was part of nautilus at one point, but rpm -q --whatrequires medusa comes up empty.
I've lost a bit of functionality, but the system is at least as useable as it is with Windows 9x on it. I use it as my main e-mail and web surfing machine, saving the Athlon for more mission critical stuff like Diablo II and Civ3.
I don't think that the space shuttle was ever designed for a horizontal takeoff in any of its myriad design phases. At one point in time, most of the engines were supposed to be on what became the external tank/SRM stack and this booster also landed horizontally (I believe it was manned as well.) It was killed when it became obvious that the cost of this kind of system would never fly in Congress. The nice thing about this system, in twenty-twenty hindsight, was that there would be no SRMs, thus no O-rings, and no Challenger.
The bad thing was that there would be many more moving parts, and the Russians have showed us that rockets with lots of engines are hard to produce. See any source on the N-1.
There was an Enterprise (a frigate, I think) in what became the US Navy during the Revolutionary War. It was a lucky ship, and the name has been considered lucky since. Considering that the WWII carrier was at one point the only US aircraft carrier operating in the Pacific (the rest were damaged or sunk), the reputation sort of stuck.
I would not be at all suprised to see the Navy commission another Enterprise, even if it's a patrol craft, when they finally retire the Big E. Sailors are a superstitious lot.
Remember the Soviet Union? They tried going to the moon, but failed. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore.
Oh come on. I'm as big a space technology backer as there is, but this is like predicting the fall of Canada because no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup recently. I would think that the internal contradictions of the Soviet system, along with our huge military spending in the 80s had a hell of a lot more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than their failed Moon program did. We were basically so rich that we could afford to light money on fire, and they foolishly believed that they had to keep up with the Joneses. It was like some giant potlach feast between nuclear powers.
We can't build the Apollo hardware anymore. Although we have the plans (contrary to urban legend), it all uses obsolete technology that isn't made anymore. It would be cheaper and faster to design and build a new lunar vehicle than clone late 60s technology at this point.
Has anyone worked out the mass of a lunar transfer and landing vehicle that would take off from the highest orbit the shuttle can reach? I'm assuming the shuttle would not tag along. Or even better, with a Soyuz tagging along as an Earth re-entry vehicle? The Soyuz was designed to go to the moon and it's still being built.
Much like those Christian aid workers just fed them? The Taliban seemed real appreciative of their acts. They even gave them an all-expense paid vacation for a while to show how much they appreciated them.
The fact of the matter is that the extremists will interfere with the delivery of aid if they believe that doing so will accomplish their goals. (This applies to all sides in this mess, not just the Taliban.) The Taliban and the Northern Alliance have both interfered with Red Cross/Crescent and Doctors Without Borders on a regular basis.
Simple solutions don't work for complex problems. This applies just as much to "feed them" as it does to "bomb them into oblivion."
Work is not a place to make friends, its a place to make money, the more allies you have on your team, the more money YOU make.
Have you considered doing something you enjoy for a living? I'm sensing some bitterness here.
But what do I know, I work for a non-profit. We don't waste time backstabbing for raises here, there are more important things on the agenda. If you want to measure success by the size of a paycheck, then I guess I'm a failure. Funny, I seem to be enjoying the ride.
I'm normally as anti-union as anyone could possibly be, but I have to wonder if some sort of Artists' Equity could produce a standard "scale" contract that at least keeps the most odious provisions of the standard music industry extortion agreements, er contracts, to a minimum. Isn't this what the Screen Actors Guild and Actors' Equity were formed to do?
I'd like to see the score of an article at the time the moderation I'm metamoderating was done.
A slightly interesting post at +3 shouldn't be awarded yet another point, so in that case an 'interesting' moderation would be unfair
I've thought about this too, but there are problems. I read in nested mode and I tend to wait until I've read all of the articles on a page before I submit my moderations. That means there can be quite a delay from when I moderate a comment and when I actually submit the moderation. In the meantime, the 6.02e23 other moderators have modded the comment to +4, when I only thought it warranted a +2. Are slow readers to be penalized for their "late" moderations?
I think you'd have to look at some of the stuff the U.S. Army's been working on for training. It's probably partially hype, but some infatrymen came out of the Gulf War claiming that the training was more difficult than actual combat. Of course, the training probably assumed competent leadership on both sides of the conflict.
Anyway, my point (I did have a point when I started this post, I think) is that since most modern casualties are caused by "splash" damage from arty and whatnot, the Army's training program has probably worked out some of what you're after. The rest of it might come from some of the "smart" infantry weapons they've been working on, since they incorporate some VR and heads-up tech. I don't think any of that stuff is production grade yet. At any rate, it will be used to really kill people a long time before you and I can use it to play games.
Furthermore, no good can be served by preventing outside bags because a would-be-terrorist would simply leave, put a weapon in the bag, and come back.
I don't think it's that simple. It was not clear to me whether or not they would allow any bag back in the hall, whether vendor logoed or not. A one way flow of bags puts a damper on this strategy.
Forgive my cynicism, but do you have any citations? I would like to read the studies in question. I long ago stopped believing anything about global warming and/or ozone depletion that isn't peer reviewed (by scientists, not activists (of any stripe)). Both extremes of the debate spend more time scoring rhetorical points than doing science, as far as I can tell.
I'm more than willing to believe that the ozone "hole" is a complex natural phenomenon that humans may have very little to do with. I spent a few years studying Earth Science before I switched to computers, so I have a small inkling as to just how complex this system is. Show me the studies and let me read what the experts have to say. Then I have a chance of forming an informed opinion.
You don't help your argument trying to score a few points by blaming the government for the supposed inaccuracies in current climate models. Would industry funded research be any more accurate or trustworthy?
I think many people find 3rd person combat confusing, myself included.
This is exactly why I never got into Jedi Knight. It was too hard for me to figure out the 3rd person views for the lightsaber battles. Maybe, I'm just lame, but I've avoided most 3rd person view "shooters" since. I guess the only exception would be Diablo 2.
Put a tether between the spent upper stage of the rocket, and the crew module, and spin the thing like a bolo.
I think North American actually proposed doing this very thing for a Mars flyby using the Apollo CSM in the 70's. I'm having trouble finding a link though. I also think an extra supply module was used for the other end of the tether, since they would need to extend the life of the capsule by quite a long time to make it to Mars and back. The idea was killed in favor of the Shuttle, as I recall.
Is it just me or is Civ3 incredibly difficult? I play Civ2 on King level usually (second-most difficult) and I lost last night in Cheiftan mode in Civ3 (the easiest). Has anyone else noticed this?
I'm just getting started, but Sid mentioned this in an interview. If you try to play Civ 3 using Civ 2 strategies, you will get your butt kicked. Despite the visual similarities, it is a different game. So far, I like it.
Just to let you know, I've got an Alienware 1.1 T-Bird. I love it, but it's anything but quiet. There's more fans in the thing than the rest of my boxes combined!
I've built most of my boxes prior to this one, and I have to say I'm impressed with the stability. Not having to tweak BIOS settings 'til I'm blue in the face is easily worth a couple of hundred bucks in the long run. Of course, I'm a programmer, and we know that programmers should not be trusted with screwdrivers anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
...but this one goes to eleven!
This is why I like OSX... The command line's still there, it's just... resting!
The average computer user wants to do his job, which often has very little to do with the computer. That 10 minutes you refer to is better spent doing something else. You and I may find that ridiculous, but we're in the minority.
These studies are based on how average users (not your average Slashdot reader) use their computer systems. We can rail all we want to about "dumbing down" the interface, but in the end we don't really count. We'll learn the new way far more readily than the average folks will learn our way.
Not one-time pads. They're uncrackable without time-travel and/or rubber-hose cryptography. If the key is the size of the message or larger, there's nothing to attack, period.
I've lost a bit of functionality, but the system is at least as useable as it is with Windows 9x on it. I use it as my main e-mail and web surfing machine, saving the Athlon for more mission critical stuff like Diablo II and Civ3.
Omigod, you mean the Borg assimilated the French ? Someone alert Paris!
On the other hand, Borg food probably improved by several orders of magnitude...
rm -rf / home/luser1
I've come close myself, but just caught it before I hit enter. Fast typists sometimes get burned by this one.
Now this may be feeding the trolls, but how is this different from the following?
rm -rf /
deltree C:\Windows
The bad thing was that there would be many more moving parts, and the Russians have showed us that rockets with lots of engines are hard to produce. See any source on the N-1.
I would not be at all suprised to see the Navy commission another Enterprise, even if it's a patrol craft, when they finally retire the Big E. Sailors are a superstitious lot.
Oh come on. I'm as big a space technology backer as there is, but this is like predicting the fall of Canada because no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup recently. I would think that the internal contradictions of the Soviet system, along with our huge military spending in the 80s had a hell of a lot more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union than their failed Moon program did. We were basically so rich that we could afford to light money on fire, and they foolishly believed that they had to keep up with the Joneses. It was like some giant potlach feast between nuclear powers.
Has anyone worked out the mass of a lunar transfer and landing vehicle that would take off from the highest orbit the shuttle can reach? I'm assuming the shuttle would not tag along. Or even better, with a Soyuz tagging along as an Earth re-entry vehicle? The Soyuz was designed to go to the moon and it's still being built.
The fact of the matter is that the extremists will interfere with the delivery of aid if they believe that doing so will accomplish their goals. (This applies to all sides in this mess, not just the Taliban.) The Taliban and the Northern Alliance have both interfered with Red Cross/Crescent and Doctors Without Borders on a regular basis.
Simple solutions don't work for complex problems. This applies just as much to "feed them" as it does to "bomb them into oblivion."
Have you considered doing something you enjoy for a living? I'm sensing some bitterness here.
But what do I know, I work for a non-profit. We don't waste time backstabbing for raises here, there are more important things on the agenda. If you want to measure success by the size of a paycheck, then I guess I'm a failure. Funny, I seem to be enjoying the ride.
I'm normally as anti-union as anyone could possibly be, but I have to wonder if some sort of Artists' Equity could produce a standard "scale" contract that at least keeps the most odious provisions of the standard music industry extortion agreements, er contracts, to a minimum. Isn't this what the Screen Actors Guild and Actors' Equity were formed to do?
nVidia? I thought AMD was setting the world on fire...
..and Apple, and IBM, and RedHat, and Amazon... Hell, no wonder we have global warming! The planet's on fire from all this innovation!
I've thought about this too, but there are problems. I read in nested mode and I tend to wait until I've read all of the articles on a page before I submit my moderations. That means there can be quite a delay from when I moderate a comment and when I actually submit the moderation. In the meantime, the 6.02e23 other moderators have modded the comment to +4, when I only thought it warranted a +2. Are slow readers to be penalized for their "late" moderations?
Anyway, my point (I did have a point when I started this post, I think) is that since most modern casualties are caused by "splash" damage from arty and whatnot, the Army's training program has probably worked out some of what you're after. The rest of it might come from some of the "smart" infantry weapons they've been working on, since they incorporate some VR and heads-up tech. I don't think any of that stuff is production grade yet. At any rate, it will be used to really kill people a long time before you and I can use it to play games.
I don't think it's that simple. It was not clear to me whether or not they would allow any bag back in the hall, whether vendor logoed or not. A one way flow of bags puts a damper on this strategy.
The policy is still stupid, though.
I'm more than willing to believe that the ozone "hole" is a complex natural phenomenon that humans may have very little to do with. I spent a few years studying Earth Science before I switched to computers, so I have a small inkling as to just how complex this system is. Show me the studies and let me read what the experts have to say. Then I have a chance of forming an informed opinion.
You don't help your argument trying to score a few points by blaming the government for the supposed inaccuracies in current climate models. Would industry funded research be any more accurate or trustworthy?
This is exactly why I never got into Jedi Knight. It was too hard for me to figure out the 3rd person views for the lightsaber battles. Maybe, I'm just lame, but I've avoided most 3rd person view "shooters" since. I guess the only exception would be Diablo 2.
I think North American actually proposed doing this very thing for a Mars flyby using the Apollo CSM in the 70's. I'm having trouble finding a link though. I also think an extra supply module was used for the other end of the tether, since they would need to extend the life of the capsule by quite a long time to make it to Mars and back. The idea was killed in favor of the Shuttle, as I recall.
Apparently the school that produced the Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor installer has a few more graduates.
I'm just getting started, but Sid mentioned this in an interview. If you try to play Civ 3 using Civ 2 strategies, you will get your butt kicked. Despite the visual similarities, it is a different game. So far, I like it.
I've built most of my boxes prior to this one, and I have to say I'm impressed with the stability. Not having to tweak BIOS settings 'til I'm blue in the face is easily worth a couple of hundred bucks in the long run. Of course, I'm a programmer, and we know that programmers should not be trusted with screwdrivers anyway.