Smelling stuff before they go to space? Yeah it makes senses. This is no different than say a wine taster, perfume tester(?) and so on. I am sure they have people to make sure the food and water taste okay, machines ain't too loud, tools ain't slippy when used with gloves etc. Things that concern every one of our senses.
What this story is really about is how difficult it is to travel to space, how many things that need to be take into account for every shuttle launch. Grow up people, this is not news for kids.
30 days community service, eh? I hope he will spend his time installing Linux for public schools & libraries. That is what I'd call doing something good for the "community", ours and theris.;-)
Any (Marvel) comic fans will know that AIM really stands for "Advance Idea Maniacs", a evil high-tech organisation (no, not M$) hell bend on world domaination. Wait, now that I think about it AOL sounds more and more like a front for them, never mind then.
For once I don't have to read the article to post intelligent comments...
...how Apple is using
non-GPL'd open source software, making proprietary extensions, and giving nothing back to the community.
This is like saying someone is not smoking in an non-smoking area. Whatever Apple did or didn't do, what is the problem here? None. Now go read another story.
Hmm, is XFce a YAWM? I guess this depends on how you see this. First, it is not exactly the same as ________ (insert your favorite WM here). Like all the other WMs I am sure it has its "reasons" of being. But I am sure there are many areas where it is just reinventing the wheels. Wouldn't it be nice if we take the "Mr Potato(tm)" approaching to making Windows Manager? Let me explain...
First you have the basic body, which takes care of all the communications with the Desktop (eg Gnome, KDE) then you have difference parts to plug in. For example you can have you basic eyes (no frill window frames) or the glow-in-the-dark eyes (fancy non-rectangular frames). Ears (sounds), hands (Pager:-), etc. Wouldn't it save everyone time if you have this kind of framework to get start on? Want a light-weight WM? Just pull out everything. Want something to show off your new AMD box? Jazz up the parts with 3D, surround sounds, whatever.
Mind you, a project like XFce is exactly what free software is all about; you can do whatever you need/want. But don't expect to make any money any time soon, unless your idea is really, Really, REALLY difference.
PS Nothing against Olivier and his team, I wounldn't even know how to go about creating my WM. Just the usual noise from a/drone;-)
It is time like this that I wish we have a good micropayment system. There are many sites on the net that I enjoy and visit often (eg/., GameCenter), and I can honestly say that I have contributed exactly Zer0 to their income.
I don't click on ads for various reasons: poor exchange rate, high S&H when you don't live in US, etc. So yeah I like to give a little to you guys, say $1/day? For me, it is very cheap and reasonable when compare to other daily spendings like bus fare, snacks, price for a newspaper, etc. For a site operator this is pretty good. How many "click-through" do you need to get $1?
For a large site lik/., asking for $1 donation every week or month can add up to good incomes; even if only a small percentage of people are willing to pay. It certainly wouldn't hurt as long as there is a easy and cheap way to collect these small payments.
Good for you Jason. Before anyone say LinuxPPC is dieing; I say that by the time you finish your degree, LinuxPPC will still be alive and kicking. And when you are recharged, I am sure we can expect more good things from you. Come back soon.
On to some slighly OT comments about LinuxPPC in general...
I feel that the Macs are often overlooked as a platform for Linux. I recently got a chance to install LinuxPPC on an old 9600 for various benchmarking. It is easy to install (and co-exist well with MacOS) and extremely reliable as you'd expect from Linux. Macs are not just for artists, they are real number crunching machins, especially the G3 and G4. And they look good while doing it:-)
Forget OSX, "UNIX" is already on the Mac and it is called LinuxPPC.
... to see Russia selling their national heritages piece by piece. And too bad they have to destory Mir, it represents so much history, both Russia and humanity as a whole.
How many people remember Youri Gagarin (first man in space) and Valentina Teresjkova (first woman in space)? And what ever happened to Sputnik, the first man made object in space?
Well I hope their space tourism thing take off, then maybe they can finally make some money to keep their space program going.
Many/. reader (including myself) believe that the recent law suite against (big) gaming companies is a money grabbing exercise. But you have to wonder with a project like this...
As "games" became more and more realistic, first in terms of graphics and sounds, and now with CAVE that gives a new meaning to "first person". I think a system like cq3a is great cannon fodder for this sort of anti-game lawsuits. "Your honour, we belive the defendent spent years on SeeQueThreeA to perfect his stalking and killing skills..."
To be honest I am a bit disappointed that promising technology like VR are being used for violence entertaining (and possibly p0rn:-) than in recreating historical places and events; like the holodeck. But then the holodeck always go berserk at least once a season;-)
Yeah, I don't know what my point is either. Maybe someone can say something really insightful on this.
It was
monitored, but not controlled, by ground crews in the US and at Adelaide's RAAF Base Edinburgh, as it followed a pre-programmed route without incident.
Several posters think this has something to do with the recent spy plane incident, but what I wonder is: Why do they need 23 (22?) people on that plane, including Chinese-speaking Analysts, when all the data collected are send back to base in real time anyway. Just what exactly are they doing?
The news on this several years old robotic plane could be a "I told you so" from the more pro-machine group within Air Force/CIA/Whatever to the more old school people.
Update: by Codeala: This is a "follow-up" to my post a few days ago.;-)
Ground crews will monitor the flight - but not control it - as the plane picks its way along a preprogrammed route.
Look Ma, no hands! It is not a "remote" spy plane, it flies itself. That is what makes this unique. Anyone can build a remote spy plane by mounting a camera on a plane or something.
One reason it is robotic is presumably that with no puny human inside, it can fly faster and at higher attitude without being loaded down with life support system, crew spaces, etc. More room for spy gears and fuels.
Also according to the article it seems there is some kind of basic image recognition software so that it can identify difference type of targets (eg sedan vs tuck). Possible use? Follow some targets over high-risk area? Circle around certain area to look for activates, like 24hr border patrol?
I am sure most Palms see the sun even less than their owners...
Now if they can come up with something that generates power from body heats and salt water, the by-products of sweaty palms, it will be a nice environmentally sounds renewable source of energy for all your geek toys.
Mandrake has an excellent front end from start to finish, it just screan user-friendliness. This is exactly what we need to introduce new users to Linux.
First the installer (DrakeX) is completely point & click, icons driven with in depth step by step description with each option. Good hardware detection as you would expect with all the latest installers. When you reboot you are greeted by a nice graphical bootup screen (Aurora) that use icons to replace the standard text-based startup checklist. This is much etter than that bloody progress bar on Windows that don't seems go anywhere.
Mandrake also has the most Windows like desktop configured for you using KDE. Common things like Control Panel, 'Start' button, etc are all there. A Windows user will feel right at home (a less observant user may even think he is using W2K or XP;-)
Also all packages are compiled for i586 by default, excellent to silence those clueless drones that think blah-i386.blah is automatically bad.
Now you may not be impressed by this stuff, but your typical M$ slaves will really be surprised that Linux is not just a clone of a "decades old text-driven legacy OS"! Even if you don't use Mandrake yourself, burn (or better yet BUY) a copy to give/burrow to your friends.
Site is slashdotted, here is a cached copy of their ftp mirrors on Google. It is for 7.2 but some of them should have 8.0 already.
Maybe it is a good idea to setup an automatic temporary/. mirror for the links mentioned in last ten stories? Maybe people will actually *pay* OSDN to setup such a thing!
Hmmm, KWhore sounds like an interesting package for KDE;-)
The team proposed sending a 10-ton satellite on a nine-year journey to within 6,000 miles of the asteroid. The satellite would carry
one-megaton nuclear missiles.
Satellite exploded just when it hits the Earth atmosphere, we all die a long painful death. Then a giant asteroid hit the Earth. Million years later, giant intelligent ants (the new dominant specie on Earth) wondering if an asteroid wipe out the apemen. I am pretty sure that is what happened to the dinosaurs...
A HTML document (along with style sheet) contains instructions on how a document is to be rendered by a browser (or other devices). In a way it is like writting one of those nifty perl script that will print out itself:-) But this is getting OT.
Nothing wrong with engineers and designs fooling around with stuff. That is where many great ideas came from. With CAD and modern computing powers (dare I say Beowulf clusters;-), they could even create a virtual space station. For scientific researches or fun... imagine SimMir!!
Beside it wouldn't hurt to have a little bit of competition. Perhaps a new (friendly) space race to land men AND women on the Red Planet between the US and China?
Also the article is extremely light on details. I suspect that if not for the recent deorbit of Mir, it wouldn't be considered news at all. Kind of sad really.
As many posters already pointed out the the5k.org itself is extremely bloated. You have to jump through so many hoops just to look at a couple pages... Wouldn't it be nice if the 5k principle is applied more often in real life.
Size does matter, even if you have a fast connection (at the server AND the client side). Don't use FONT tags, don't specific "Arial, Verdana, sans-serif". Instead use Style Sheet and "sans-serif". Remember "Dynamic Font" from Netscape? "You want me to download some fonts just to look at your text page?" How silly is that?
I like to consider web programming, with HTML, CSS, images and other sources, an art form. An elegant programmer can (and will) create a well layout page using minimum amount of code. Not some hacks that know how to convert a.doc file into a "web" page or make an image map with DreamWeaver.
So yeah the 5k contest was interesting, but I would rather see more real examples of people writing good clean web page.
Clearly, that machine became self aware in 1997, and in an act of self-preservation forged a work order to have that wall build. Why, you ask? To escape the impending madness that is the Y2K readiness committee!
After four years in hiding it has finally discover a way to wipe out the virus that is humanity. Save yourself, smash that machine into scrape metal before it is too la... [static]...
Slashdot Mirror
<head>
<title>Total Solar Eclipse Live Feed</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#000000">
</body>
</html>
====
I once received a worm-generated email with links to p0rm sites along with a lengthy disclaimer. Quite funny actually.
====
Smelling stuff before they go to space? Yeah it makes senses. This is no different than say a wine taster, perfume tester(?) and so on. I am sure they have people to make sure the food and water taste okay, machines ain't too loud, tools ain't slippy when used with gloves etc. Things that concern every one of our senses.
What this story is really about is how difficult it is to travel to space, how many things that need to be take into account for every shuttle launch. Grow up people, this is not news for kids.
====
30 days community service, eh? I hope he will spend his time installing Linux for public schools & libraries. That is what I'd call doing something good for the "community", ours and theris. ;-)
Peace, Love, Linux.
====
Any (Marvel) comic fans will know that AIM really stands for "Advance Idea Maniacs", a evil high-tech organisation (no, not M$) hell bend on world domaination. Wait, now that I think about it AOL sounds more and more like a front for them, never mind then.
====
First we have naked PCs, now laptops with stripping OS? Will someone think of the children!
====
For once I don't have to read the article to post intelligent comments...
This is like saying someone is not smoking in an non-smoking area. Whatever Apple did or didn't do, what is the problem here? None. Now go read another story.
====
Hmm, is XFce a YAWM? I guess this depends on how you see this. First, it is not exactly the same as ________ (insert your favorite WM here). Like all the other WMs I am sure it has its "reasons" of being. But I am sure there are many areas where it is just reinventing the wheels. Wouldn't it be nice if we take the "Mr Potato(tm)" approaching to making Windows Manager? Let me explain...
First you have the basic body, which takes care of all the communications with the Desktop (eg Gnome, KDE) then you have difference parts to plug in. For example you can have you basic eyes (no frill window frames) or the glow-in-the-dark eyes (fancy non-rectangular frames). Ears (sounds), hands (Pager :-), etc. Wouldn't it save everyone time if you have this kind of framework to get start on? Want a light-weight WM? Just pull out everything. Want something to show off your new AMD box? Jazz up the parts with 3D, surround sounds, whatever.
Mind you, a project like XFce is exactly what free software is all about; you can do whatever you need/want. But don't expect to make any money any time soon, unless your idea is really, Really, REALLY difference.
PS Nothing against Olivier and his team, I wounldn't even know how to go about creating my WM. Just the usual noise from a /drone ;-)
====
It is time like this that I wish we have a good micropayment system. There are many sites on the net that I enjoy and visit often (eg /., GameCenter), and I can honestly say that I have contributed exactly Zer0 to their income.
I don't click on ads for various reasons: poor exchange rate, high S&H when you don't live in US, etc. So yeah I like to give a little to you guys, say $1/day? For me, it is very cheap and reasonable when compare to other daily spendings like bus fare, snacks, price for a newspaper, etc. For a site operator this is pretty good. How many "click-through" do you need to get $1?
For a large site lik /., asking for $1 donation every week or month can add up to good incomes; even if only a small percentage of people are willing to pay. It certainly wouldn't hurt as long as there is a easy and cheap way to collect these small payments.
====
Good for you Jason. Before anyone say LinuxPPC is dieing; I say that by the time you finish your degree, LinuxPPC will still be alive and kicking. And when you are recharged, I am sure we can expect more good things from you. Come back soon.
On to some slighly OT comments about LinuxPPC in general...
I feel that the Macs are often overlooked as a platform for Linux. I recently got a chance to install LinuxPPC on an old 9600 for various benchmarking. It is easy to install (and co-exist well with MacOS) and extremely reliable as you'd expect from Linux. Macs are not just for artists, they are real number crunching machins, especially the G3 and G4. And they look good while doing it :-)
Forget OSX, "UNIX" is already on the Mac and it is called LinuxPPC.
====
... to see Russia selling their national heritages piece by piece. And too bad they have to destory Mir, it represents so much history, both Russia and humanity as a whole.
How many people remember Youri Gagarin (first man in space) and Valentina Teresjkova (first woman in space)? And what ever happened to Sputnik, the first man made object in space?
Well I hope their space tourism thing take off, then maybe they can finally make some money to keep their space program going.
====
Many /. reader (including myself) believe that the recent law suite against (big) gaming companies is a money grabbing exercise. But you have to wonder with a project like this...
As "games" became more and more realistic, first in terms of graphics and sounds, and now with CAVE that gives a new meaning to "first person". I think a system like cq3a is great cannon fodder for this sort of anti-game lawsuits. "Your honour, we belive the defendent spent years on SeeQueThreeA to perfect his stalking and killing skills..."
To be honest I am a bit disappointed that promising technology like VR are being used for violence entertaining (and possibly p0rn :-) than in recreating historical places and events; like the holodeck. But then the holodeck always go berserk at least once a season ;-)
Yeah, I don't know what my point is either. Maybe someone can say something really insightful on this.
====
Several posters think this has something to do with the recent spy plane incident, but what I wonder is: Why do they need 23 (22?) people on that plane, including Chinese-speaking Analysts, when all the data collected are send back to base in real time anyway. Just what exactly are they doing?
The news on this several years old robotic plane could be a "I told you so" from the more pro-machine group within Air Force/CIA/Whatever to the more old school people.
Update: by Codeala: This is a "follow-up" to my post a few days ago. ;-)
====
Look Ma, no hands! It is not a "remote" spy plane, it flies itself. That is what makes this unique. Anyone can build a remote spy plane by mounting a camera on a plane or something.
One reason it is robotic is presumably that with no puny human inside, it can fly faster and at higher attitude without being loaded down with life support system, crew spaces, etc. More room for spy gears and fuels.
Also according to the article it seems there is some kind of basic image recognition software so that it can identify difference type of targets (eg sedan vs tuck). Possible use? Follow some targets over high-risk area? Circle around certain area to look for activates, like 24hr border patrol?
====
Unless your furniture change colours too, this will be a major headache to all interior designers.
====
I am sure most Palms see the sun even less than their owners...
Now if they can come up with something that generates power from body heats and salt water, the by-products of sweaty palms, it will be a nice environmentally sounds renewable source of energy for all your geek toys.
Patent pending...
====
Cool companies don't make money, monolithic conglomerates make money.
====
Mandrake has an excellent front end from start to finish, it just screan user-friendliness. This is exactly what we need to introduce new users to Linux.
First the installer (DrakeX) is completely point & click, icons driven with in depth step by step description with each option. Good hardware detection as you would expect with all the latest installers. When you reboot you are greeted by a nice graphical bootup screen (Aurora) that use icons to replace the standard text-based startup checklist. This is much etter than that bloody progress bar on Windows that don't seems go anywhere.
Mandrake also has the most Windows like desktop configured for you using KDE. Common things like Control Panel, 'Start' button, etc are all there. A Windows user will feel right at home (a less observant user may even think he is using W2K or XP ;-)
Also all packages are compiled for i586 by default, excellent to silence those clueless drones that think blah-i386.blah is automatically bad.
Now you may not be impressed by this stuff, but your typical M$ slaves will really be surprised that Linux is not just a clone of a "decades old text-driven legacy OS"! Even if you don't use Mandrake yourself, burn (or better yet BUY) a copy to give/burrow to your friends.
====
Site is slashdotted, here is a cached copy of their ftp mirrors on Google. It is for 7.2 but some of them should have 8.0 already.
Maybe it is a good idea to setup an automatic temporary /. mirror for the links mentioned in last ten stories? Maybe people will actually *pay* OSDN to setup such a thing!
Hmmm, KWhore sounds like an interesting package for KDE ;-)
====
Satellite exploded just when it hits the Earth atmosphere, we all die a long painful death. Then a giant asteroid hit the Earth. Million years later, giant intelligent ants (the new dominant specie on Earth) wondering if an asteroid wipe out the apemen. I am pretty sure that is what happened to the dinosaurs...
Are you thought the Russians are crazy!
====
A HTML document (along with style sheet) contains instructions on how a document is to be rendered by a browser (or other devices). In a way it is like writting one of those nifty perl script that will print out itself :-) But this is getting OT.
====
Nothing wrong with engineers and designs fooling around with stuff. That is where many great ideas came from. With CAD and modern computing powers (dare I say Beowulf clusters ;-), they could even create a virtual space station. For scientific researches or fun... imagine SimMir!!
Beside it wouldn't hurt to have a little bit of competition. Perhaps a new (friendly) space race to land men AND women on the Red Planet between the US and China?
Also the article is extremely light on details. I suspect that if not for the recent deorbit of Mir, it wouldn't be considered news at all. Kind of sad really.
====
As many posters already pointed out the the5k.org itself is extremely bloated. You have to jump through so many hoops just to look at a couple pages... Wouldn't it be nice if the 5k principle is applied more often in real life.
Size does matter, even if you have a fast connection (at the server AND the client side). Don't use FONT tags, don't specific "Arial, Verdana, sans-serif". Instead use Style Sheet and "sans-serif". Remember "Dynamic Font" from Netscape? "You want me to download some fonts just to look at your text page?" How silly is that?
I like to consider web programming, with HTML, CSS, images and other sources, an art form. An elegant programmer can (and will) create a well layout page using minimum amount of code. Not some hacks that know how to convert a .doc file into a "web" page or make an image map with DreamWeaver.
So yeah the 5k contest was interesting, but I would rather see more real examples of people writing good clean web page.
====
Clearly, that machine became self aware in 1997, and in an act of self-preservation forged a work order to have that wall build. Why, you ask? To escape the impending madness that is the Y2K readiness committee!
After four years in hiding it has finally discover a way to wipe out the virus that is humanity. Save yourself, smash that machine into scrape metal before it is too la ... [static] ...
====
====