The latest stable version is still E16. E17 has been in development for longer than I can remember. However, the SVN snapshots of E17 (like 16.9999 or something similar) have been reported to be useful. I haven't run E in quite a long time, though, so I can't say for sure.
On an individual level, sure it will happen. Probably lots of times. But at an institutional level, it's a lot harder to get away with. Those insurance company lawyers and executives care about the law enough to make sure that genetic discrimination isn't part of any official policy. And realistically, any unofficial policy of genetic discrimination would eventually be found out too. Not that it wouldn't hurt people in the mean time, but a whistle blower will always eventually come along.
If penalties are stiff enough for violating genetic discrimination laws, the insurance companies will make sure that the genetic information never comes close to anyone in charge of policy decisions. Of course, if there are very little penalties or a low chance of getting caught, then you're right, they will practically ignore the law. Just like everyone else (speeding, jaywalking, etc.)
The shortcut thing bothers me too. I'd love to be able to assign Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] to increase and decrease font size (I got used to those years ago in MSO), but I cannot in OOo.
My other gripe about OOo is that the presenter component is really slow when presenting. Flipping slides can take several seconds, so it's really hard to move skip back and forward in a presentation. Somehow, PowerPoint manages to be able to flip slides really fast. I don't know if it caches something or if OO is just doing something inefficient.
But there's no MSO for Linux, so I don't have much of a choice, even if I wanted to dump a bunch of money on it.
It's not just apathy -- most people don't see a need for encrypting stuff. Either it's "I'm not important enough" or a belief that it's not really possible to eavesdrop on Internet communications.
I had this conversation with my father over Christmas. I was trying to encourage him to digitally sign (PGP) his emails and how that would enable other people to send him encrypted emails. He wanted to know why, if eavesdropping on the Internet was so common, can't you go Google for people willing to sell you sniffed data. I couldn't come up with a good answer, because I don't think I've ever even heard of a rogue admin at a Tier 1/2 ISP doing that sort of thing. The closest I've heard of is the government slurping all data and doing who knows what with it, but probably not selling it.
So, if I was a nefarious businessperson who wanted to find out the confidential dealings of my competitors just by listening to their Internet traffic, is that even realistic? Are there people/groups out there that do that? Is it necessarily even illegal for an ISP to packet dump and then sell the data? If not, why don't they do that -- or maybe they do?
I know it's a theoretical possibility, but for many people it's way too theoretical to bother worrying about it. Some hard information would be helpful.
The Firefox install I have on my Windows machine at work gets updates all the time, and my account isn't a local admin. In fact, I just started it, and it applied updates from the last time it was running. I also used the "check for updates" menu item to find that there was another version available (I don't usually use that machine, which is why there were so many updates).
It is running XP. Maybe this is a Vista/7 problem? Or maybe it's because I installed Firefox using the user account, so that account has write access to the files?
30 meter resolution is itself an approximation. SRTM data is usually formatted in a geographic grid with a post spacing of 1 arc second. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the post spacing in meters varies from cell to cell (SRTM, like DTED, is usually distributed in files containing 1 degree by 1 degree of data). For example, the cell with Mt. Rainier in it (w122/n46) has a vertical (north-south) post spacing of 30.98 meters and a horizontal (east-west) post spacing of 21.52 meters. The horizontal post spacing is smaller because the cell is so far north of the equator.
I agree on the absurd pricing. I got a Kindle for Christmas, and even though I'm in the US, I haven't paid for an e-book on it yet. I've searched for several I'm interested in, but they're either not available as an e-book, or their price is comparable to a real paperback book. Sometimes, the paperbacks are cheaper than the e-books, like if you buy a set of 3 in a series.
If Amazon wants the Kindle to be a real success, they better make it easier to get into the buying e-books market. It doesn't make sense (to me) to pay the same amount for an e-book as a real book.
Instead of messing around with setting up special server stuff, why not just use PGP/MIME to sign your outgoing emails? Works the same, but doesn't require changing server software. Of course, it still requires changing everyone's client software and behavior (at least over time), so it has all the drawbacks pointed out by the other response. However, I feel it's more in line with the "dumb network" ideal of the Internet -- the smarts on how to handle email at the edges. And, once everyone has a PGP/GPG key, we can (finally!) start sending encrypted emails to normal people.
...developing a faster kernel is a much easier problem than developing a fun, usable desktop environment.
While I agree with tulcod's response -- kernel development is usually much harder than desktop development. However, there is one important difference. A faster kernel is a measurable goal. While you might be able to make a "fun, usable desktop environment" for a single person, and maybe even for a good percentage of the population, you will never, ever satisfy everybody. Half the people want more options and more control and half want a simpler, less cluttered interface. Some people want freedom, others want to lock it down. Some people want blue, others want brown. Some people want menus, others want icons. If you're doing your job well, you can compromise enough to make everyone satisfied, if not completely happy, but that's really hard to do. A faster kernel seems easy by comparison.
Personally, I think Gnome is going too far down the simplification road. Every release it seems they take away more features and options. This last they struck at GDM (the login screen). Before that, they nerfed session management. A few releases earlier they took away screen saver control. And I'm still annoyed that I can't have different backgrounds on different desktops, and I that's been broken since Gnome 2.0!
Of course, I'm just kibbitzing, not bringing code.
Heh, agreed, same here:) Maybe one of these days Gnome will push me over the edge and make me write my own WM.
Due process? You're not going to jail. Your life and liberty aren't being threatened, only your Internet connection. It would be "administrative", like revoking your driver's license.
Except you don't need an Internet license (yet), so this would be the Federal government telling private businesses (ISPs) that they cannot do business with a group of people. Nasty, but it has been done in some forms before, such as background checks for gun purchases and the no fly list. But those were done in the name of public safety. I don't know how much "public safety" there could be in someone downloading the latest Disney movie.
Generally, I would think that the Federal government doesn't even have to power to restrict Internet usage like that. However, they'd probably claim that the Internet is multi-state and you can buy things using the Internet, so they can regulate it as "inter-state commerce". I wouldn't be surprised to see some Supreme Court cases come out of it, but unfortunately, as a treaty, ACTA may carry significant weight.
Maybe it's time to start a grassroots campaign against ACTA. Something like how ACTA is an attempt "to take your Internet connection away for downloading music, movies, and TV shows from the Internet". I seriously doubt we'll here anything negative on the mainstream media about ACTA. It will be presented as for everyone since will enable studios to sell you more movies and music. They'd love to sell you their wares right now, but without ACTA it's just too dangerous. </sarcasm>
So, if I decide to have my surgery in a hospital that has big screen TVs in every room and hot swimsuit models giving massages and sponge baths, that's OK, as long as the hospital charges everyone the same rate? And based on #9, the insurance company would have to pay?
This example is a little extreme, but who would essentially set the prices for various procedures? Arguably, one hospital could employ better doctors than another -- could they charge higher prices? Would an insurer be justified in requiring that the patient go to a more cost effective hospital? Would it matter based on the procedure -- setting a broken leg versus complicated brain surgery?
These are all tough questions. I don't think the current bill of "lets make everyone buy health insurance -- that'll fix everything" will actually solve any real problems.
I don't really know what the answer is. I do like your idea of divorcing health plans from employers. There's really no reason to get your health insurance through your job. Free, reliable health care for everybody seems like a great idea, but so does free cars, clothing, houses, and food. And I don't know how to deliver any of those things. The best I can do is Free Software, but that doesn't seem to translate very well into meat-space.
The free market sucks in many ways, especially for those who do not have money. But it does do a pretty decent job of motivating people without a lot of difficult to manage bureaucracy. Yes, there are problems, and yes, people get trampled upon. Those that argue "why shouldn't the poor get healthcare" could just as easily say "why shouldn't the poor get food?" Should we be pushing for "grocery store reform" so that food is handed out equally to everyone?
But if this health care insurance bill is what America wants, it is what America will get. I just hope that the Federal government doesn't collapse too badly, or that if it does, the result isn't too bloody.
The author mentioned that on BSD the `ldd' app is a C app that does basically what the Linux shell script `ldd' does. The Solaris `ldd' is also an app, so I can't verify that it's the same as on BSD, but setting LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS=1 before running an application does cause ldd like output, so I would suspect the same rules apply under Solaris as described in the article.
It's not just the "something expensive in a small box", it's to prevent a customer from sneaking a small package into their pocket and walking out with it. It's a lot easier to see a bulging plastic package than something tiny that just wraps the device.
$ time units -v '1234 kiloinch' miles
1234 kiloinch = 19.47601 miles
1234 kiloinch = (1 / 0.051345219) miles
real 0m0.046s user 0m0.040s sys 0m0.008s
That didn't take to long at all!
Seriously, the metric system has a lot going for it in some ways, but is harder in others. For example, while 10 is a great multiplier (since we tend to think in base 10), it doesn't have a lot of factors. For example, dividing by 3 doesn't work so well. Sure, you and I know that 1/3 meter is 33.33333 cm, but that's not as easy as 1/3 foot being 4 inches. 5280 (the number of feet in a mile) is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 and a lot more. Not that a 15th of a mile comes up a lot, but if it does, you can be assured that it's exactly 352 feet!
The metric system units are also more calibrated to scientific use than everyday use. The meter is too long and the gram is too light (the liter is about right). Other things, like degrees Celsius are too big (not to mention as arbitrary as Fahrenheit). And metric time never really took off -- you still have seconds, minutes, hours, etc.
All in all, the metric system is optimized for scientific work where conversions between units happen more often, and knowing that 100 million micrograms is.1 kilograms is useful. But it doesn't work so well for common, human scale use.
I don't think there was a crease in that set of images. It appeared like it because the left edge of the right image was near the edge of the scanner, and didn't get a lot of data (maybe? I'm not really sure about that). I think this tutorial is more about how to combine two scanned images that are each part of the full image. Notice how control points were dropped that indicate that the images share an overlap. They aren't two separate pages, just a left and right portion of the same page/image.
As to the "magic" that removed what looks like a book crease, I'm fairly new to Hugin, so I don't really know all the details, but I think the "stitcher" program that puts together all the images doesn't use a "first available" method (like stacking pictures on top of each other), but actually uses the dynamic range properties of each image in an area to determine what to put in the final picture. Thus, because the image "underneath" had better dynamic range than the image "on top", that information contributed to the final product. The preview window (with the artifact) doesn't do that, most likely because it's too computationally difficult to do on the fly.
That said, I've found that this can make output product appear blurry if the alignment isn't spot on. I don't know if there's a way to disable this compositing feature and go with a simpler first available method.
As to the original question, Hugin may be very useful because it allows you to straighten out pictures taken at a skew. It probably even allows you to straighten parts of the image in relation to others (like part of the page bending to the inside of the book). The disadvantage is that it doesn't seem very automated, so it may take some time to layout control points and do the processing. An advanced user may be able to figure out how to use the underlying tools (autosift, nona, enblend, etc) to do the work in an automated script, though.
That may be true, but the people in charge will usually take the equivalent amount of money from the general fund that would have been spent on roads and spend it on something else. So, in effect, the hypothetical gas tax increase does pay for something else. Kind of like how many states have lottery systems that help pay for education. Except that then they lowered the amount of money that comes from the general fund, so that the amount of money going to education remains the same.
Note: I'm not arguing that any money is being mis-spent. Only that dedicated funding doesn't always mean an increase in the amount of money to spend on that item.
Why do you think that the Linux way of doing things is so different from other operating systems? Fundamentally, there's not much difference between a Windows hardware driver and a Linux kernel module. Both talk to the kernel and are run in kernel space. This is why driver problems on Windows can cause BSODs and why MS has gotten fanatical about vendors getting their drivers inspected/approved/signed by MS.
The biggest difference is that on Linux, someone can change the kernel functions that the driver calls, requiring changes to the driver code. I suppose on Windows this can happen to, but it's much less likely to, since it means making a lot of drivers not work anymore with no easy way to fix them.
Of course, keep in mind that on both Windows and Linux there are lots of userspace drivers (like printers and scanners). Linux can even have userspace filesystem drivers (I'm not sure about Windows).
While it's lots of fun to make fun of right wing crazies, it should be noted that this case is taking place in San Francisco, California, one of the most liberal places in the country. Just further proof that stupidity knows no political or ideological boundaries.
Were you using ClearCase on Windows? It's definitely an order of magnitude slower on Windows than it is on Linux. On Linux, it seems to be about as fast as the NFS mounts. We typically don't store anything local on our UNIX machines, so even snapshot views (the "check your view out to a local place on the HD") would be over NFS, and those have their own problems (like long update times). However, on Windows, snapshot views are the only way to get anything done. I'm not sure if it's a problem with the ClearCase driver or a problem with Windows internals (making too many calls or something).
However, ClearCase does tend to get slower over time as you accumulate more branches, labels, etc. There doesn't seem to be any way to overcome this problem. Even obsoleting old branches doesn't seem to have a noticeable effect. I think this is because they are still there, even if they are read only. But we don't want to delete them, because it would mean losing that history.
ClearCase also has a steep learning curve (probably more than git). It took our group a couple years to get a good process working (along with scripts). Now, we chug along pretty well, even if it's not always efficient. We know the drawbacks and what to avoid, and it's rare to have major problems anymore. I think our group would benefit from a distributed model like git (if nothing else, I've heard it's fast), but changing systems is very difficult, expensive, and time consuming. That, and the only reason we use ClearCase is because it's the Corporate Standard, so I don't think we could get away from it even if we had the time, money, and people.
Can you tell the difference if you don't know if the food is organic or not? A lot of things go into how you perceive the taste of something, especially something subjective like how well you like it.
For example, once I was drinking with some friends, one of who was drinking an expensive beer. He wouldn't touch the cheap stuff. So, while he was out for a minute, the rest of us switched the rest of his beer with an equal amount of cheap beer that happened to look very similar. When he got back, he didn't realize what we'd done until we told him (and gave him the rest of his expensive beer, of course). The point is, he didn't perceive the difference because he didn't know about it. He expected it to be good, so it was good.
If you expect organic food to taste better, then it will taste better.
Of course, I don't expect even a blind taste test to change anyone's habits. My friend still drinks expensive beer, and if you get more pleasure out of organic food, even if it's just because your perception, then more power to you!
Not to disagree with you, because the user's data is very important, but if the system gets trashed or exploited, it is very likely that the user's data will be destroyed as well.
It would be nice if it was easier for a general user to create sub accounts (or something similar) for the photo editor, web browser, mail reader, etc. This way, the photo editor could write to the photos, but the web browser, which might be compromised, could not. I don't know if there's anything like this at all that could be used in Linux (or Windows, for that matter). The closest I could think of would be multiple actual accounts, but that would be tricky to set up correctly and most users don't have access to make new users.
That's great that you can have a book you purchased on two of your devices (really, that is a nice feature). However, is it possible to lend a DRM'd book from your Kindle to someone else's Kindle? That's what the OP was asking for. In real life, I can lend a physical book to someone else. While they have the book, I can't read it. Is it possible to do the same with a Kindle? I suspect not.
It may not be reasonable to expect that feature. I can imagine that websites would quickly spring up to help people lend and borrow books all over the world. But it's an interesting thing to think about.
Slashdot Mirror
The latest stable version is still E16. E17 has been in development for longer than I can remember. However, the SVN snapshots of E17 (like 16.9999 or something similar) have been reported to be useful. I haven't run E in quite a long time, though, so I can't say for sure.
On an individual level, sure it will happen. Probably lots of times. But at an institutional level, it's a lot harder to get away with. Those insurance company lawyers and executives care about the law enough to make sure that genetic discrimination isn't part of any official policy. And realistically, any unofficial policy of genetic discrimination would eventually be found out too. Not that it wouldn't hurt people in the mean time, but a whistle blower will always eventually come along.
If penalties are stiff enough for violating genetic discrimination laws, the insurance companies will make sure that the genetic information never comes close to anyone in charge of policy decisions. Of course, if there are very little penalties or a low chance of getting caught, then you're right, they will practically ignore the law. Just like everyone else (speeding, jaywalking, etc.)
The shortcut thing bothers me too. I'd love to be able to assign Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] to increase and decrease font size (I got used to those years ago in MSO), but I cannot in OOo.
My other gripe about OOo is that the presenter component is really slow when presenting. Flipping slides can take several seconds, so it's really hard to move skip back and forward in a presentation. Somehow, PowerPoint manages to be able to flip slides really fast. I don't know if it caches something or if OO is just doing something inefficient.
But there's no MSO for Linux, so I don't have much of a choice, even if I wanted to dump a bunch of money on it.
It's not just apathy -- most people don't see a need for encrypting stuff. Either it's "I'm not important enough" or a belief that it's not really possible to eavesdrop on Internet communications.
I had this conversation with my father over Christmas. I was trying to encourage him to digitally sign (PGP) his emails and how that would enable other people to send him encrypted emails. He wanted to know why, if eavesdropping on the Internet was so common, can't you go Google for people willing to sell you sniffed data. I couldn't come up with a good answer, because I don't think I've ever even heard of a rogue admin at a Tier 1/2 ISP doing that sort of thing. The closest I've heard of is the government slurping all data and doing who knows what with it, but probably not selling it.
So, if I was a nefarious businessperson who wanted to find out the confidential dealings of my competitors just by listening to their Internet traffic, is that even realistic? Are there people/groups out there that do that? Is it necessarily even illegal for an ISP to packet dump and then sell the data? If not, why don't they do that -- or maybe they do?
I know it's a theoretical possibility, but for many people it's way too theoretical to bother worrying about it. Some hard information would be helpful.
The Firefox install I have on my Windows machine at work gets updates all the time, and my account isn't a local admin. In fact, I just started it, and it applied updates from the last time it was running. I also used the "check for updates" menu item to find that there was another version available (I don't usually use that machine, which is why there were so many updates).
It is running XP. Maybe this is a Vista/7 problem? Or maybe it's because I installed Firefox using the user account, so that account has write access to the files?
30 meter resolution is itself an approximation. SRTM data is usually formatted in a geographic grid with a post spacing of 1 arc second. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the post spacing in meters varies from cell to cell (SRTM, like DTED, is usually distributed in files containing 1 degree by 1 degree of data). For example, the cell with Mt. Rainier in it (w122/n46) has a vertical (north-south) post spacing of 30.98 meters and a horizontal (east-west) post spacing of 21.52 meters. The horizontal post spacing is smaller because the cell is so far north of the equator.
I agree on the absurd pricing. I got a Kindle for Christmas, and even though I'm in the US, I haven't paid for an e-book on it yet. I've searched for several I'm interested in, but they're either not available as an e-book, or their price is comparable to a real paperback book. Sometimes, the paperbacks are cheaper than the e-books, like if you buy a set of 3 in a series.
So for now, I have several public domain books (http://www.freekindlebooks.org/) I can read.
If Amazon wants the Kindle to be a real success, they better make it easier to get into the buying e-books market. It doesn't make sense (to me) to pay the same amount for an e-book as a real book.
Instead of messing around with setting up special server stuff, why not just use PGP/MIME to sign your outgoing emails? Works the same, but doesn't require changing server software. Of course, it still requires changing everyone's client software and behavior (at least over time), so it has all the drawbacks pointed out by the other response. However, I feel it's more in line with the "dumb network" ideal of the Internet -- the smarts on how to handle email at the edges. And, once everyone has a PGP/GPG key, we can (finally!) start sending encrypted emails to normal people.
Well, I can dream, anyway :)
...developing a faster kernel is a much easier problem than developing a fun, usable desktop environment.
While I agree with tulcod's response -- kernel development is usually much harder than desktop development. However, there is one important difference. A faster kernel is a measurable goal. While you might be able to make a "fun, usable desktop environment" for a single person, and maybe even for a good percentage of the population, you will never, ever satisfy everybody. Half the people want more options and more control and half want a simpler, less cluttered interface. Some people want freedom, others want to lock it down. Some people want blue, others want brown. Some people want menus, others want icons. If you're doing your job well, you can compromise enough to make everyone satisfied, if not completely happy, but that's really hard to do. A faster kernel seems easy by comparison.
Personally, I think Gnome is going too far down the simplification road. Every release it seems they take away more features and options. This last they struck at GDM (the login screen). Before that, they nerfed session management. A few releases earlier they took away screen saver control. And I'm still annoyed that I can't have different backgrounds on different desktops, and I that's been broken since Gnome 2.0!
Of course, I'm just kibbitzing, not bringing code.
Heh, agreed, same here :) Maybe one of these days Gnome will push me over the edge and make me write my own WM.
Due process? You're not going to jail. Your life and liberty aren't being threatened, only your Internet connection. It would be "administrative", like revoking your driver's license.
Except you don't need an Internet license (yet), so this would be the Federal government telling private businesses (ISPs) that they cannot do business with a group of people. Nasty, but it has been done in some forms before, such as background checks for gun purchases and the no fly list. But those were done in the name of public safety. I don't know how much "public safety" there could be in someone downloading the latest Disney movie.
Generally, I would think that the Federal government doesn't even have to power to restrict Internet usage like that. However, they'd probably claim that the Internet is multi-state and you can buy things using the Internet, so they can regulate it as "inter-state commerce". I wouldn't be surprised to see some Supreme Court cases come out of it, but unfortunately, as a treaty, ACTA may carry significant weight.
Maybe it's time to start a grassroots campaign against ACTA. Something like how ACTA is an attempt "to take your Internet connection away for downloading music, movies, and TV shows from the Internet". I seriously doubt we'll here anything negative on the mainstream media about ACTA. It will be presented as for everyone since will enable studios to sell you more movies and music. They'd love to sell you their wares right now, but without ACTA it's just too dangerous. </sarcasm>
So, if I decide to have my surgery in a hospital that has big screen TVs in every room and hot swimsuit models giving massages and sponge baths, that's OK, as long as the hospital charges everyone the same rate? And based on #9, the insurance company would have to pay?
This example is a little extreme, but who would essentially set the prices for various procedures? Arguably, one hospital could employ better doctors than another -- could they charge higher prices? Would an insurer be justified in requiring that the patient go to a more cost effective hospital? Would it matter based on the procedure -- setting a broken leg versus complicated brain surgery?
These are all tough questions. I don't think the current bill of "lets make everyone buy health insurance -- that'll fix everything" will actually solve any real problems.
I don't really know what the answer is. I do like your idea of divorcing health plans from employers. There's really no reason to get your health insurance through your job. Free, reliable health care for everybody seems like a great idea, but so does free cars, clothing, houses, and food. And I don't know how to deliver any of those things. The best I can do is Free Software, but that doesn't seem to translate very well into meat-space.
The free market sucks in many ways, especially for those who do not have money. But it does do a pretty decent job of motivating people without a lot of difficult to manage bureaucracy. Yes, there are problems, and yes, people get trampled upon. Those that argue "why shouldn't the poor get healthcare" could just as easily say "why shouldn't the poor get food?" Should we be pushing for "grocery store reform" so that food is handed out equally to everyone?
But if this health care insurance bill is what America wants, it is what America will get. I just hope that the Federal government doesn't collapse too badly, or that if it does, the result isn't too bloody.
The author mentioned that on BSD the `ldd' app is a C app that does basically what the Linux shell script `ldd' does. The Solaris `ldd' is also an app, so I can't verify that it's the same as on BSD, but setting LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS=1 before running an application does cause ldd like output, so I would suspect the same rules apply under Solaris as described in the article.
It's not just the "something expensive in a small box", it's to prevent a customer from sneaking a small package into their pocket and walking out with it. It's a lot easier to see a bulging plastic package than something tiny that just wraps the device.
Quickly, convert from 1234 kiloinch to miles!
$ time units -v '1234 kiloinch' miles
1234 kiloinch = 19.47601 miles
1234 kiloinch = (1 / 0.051345219) miles
real 0m0.046s
user 0m0.040s
sys 0m0.008s
That didn't take to long at all!
Seriously, the metric system has a lot going for it in some ways, but is harder in others. For example, while 10 is a great multiplier (since we tend to think in base 10), it doesn't have a lot of factors. For example, dividing by 3 doesn't work so well. Sure, you and I know that 1/3 meter is 33.33333 cm, but that's not as easy as 1/3 foot being 4 inches. 5280 (the number of feet in a mile) is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 and a lot more. Not that a 15th of a mile comes up a lot, but if it does, you can be assured that it's exactly 352 feet!
The metric system units are also more calibrated to scientific use than everyday use. The meter is too long and the gram is too light (the liter is about right). Other things, like degrees Celsius are too big (not to mention as arbitrary as Fahrenheit). And metric time never really took off -- you still have seconds, minutes, hours, etc.
All in all, the metric system is optimized for scientific work where conversions between units happen more often, and knowing that 100 million micrograms is .1 kilograms is useful. But it doesn't work so well for common, human scale use.
Now those freeloaders are given a choice: a pirated OS and paid-for AV, or a paid-for OS and a free AV.
Or they could choose a free OS with no need for AV and plenty of free software. But that's the kind of a crazy idea that I'm sure would never work.
I don't think there was a crease in that set of images. It appeared like it because the left edge of the right image was near the edge of the scanner, and didn't get a lot of data (maybe? I'm not really sure about that). I think this tutorial is more about how to combine two scanned images that are each part of the full image. Notice how control points were dropped that indicate that the images share an overlap. They aren't two separate pages, just a left and right portion of the same page/image.
As to the "magic" that removed what looks like a book crease, I'm fairly new to Hugin, so I don't really know all the details, but I think the "stitcher" program that puts together all the images doesn't use a "first available" method (like stacking pictures on top of each other), but actually uses the dynamic range properties of each image in an area to determine what to put in the final picture. Thus, because the image "underneath" had better dynamic range than the image "on top", that information contributed to the final product. The preview window (with the artifact) doesn't do that, most likely because it's too computationally difficult to do on the fly.
That said, I've found that this can make output product appear blurry if the alignment isn't spot on. I don't know if there's a way to disable this compositing feature and go with a simpler first available method.
As to the original question, Hugin may be very useful because it allows you to straighten out pictures taken at a skew. It probably even allows you to straighten parts of the image in relation to others (like part of the page bending to the inside of the book). The disadvantage is that it doesn't seem very automated, so it may take some time to layout control points and do the processing. An advanced user may be able to figure out how to use the underlying tools (autosift, nona, enblend, etc) to do the work in an automated script, though.
That may be true, but the people in charge will usually take the equivalent amount of money from the general fund that would have been spent on roads and spend it on something else. So, in effect, the hypothetical gas tax increase does pay for something else. Kind of like how many states have lottery systems that help pay for education. Except that then they lowered the amount of money that comes from the general fund, so that the amount of money going to education remains the same.
Note: I'm not arguing that any money is being mis-spent. Only that dedicated funding doesn't always mean an increase in the amount of money to spend on that item.
Why do you think that the Linux way of doing things is so different from other operating systems? Fundamentally, there's not much difference between a Windows hardware driver and a Linux kernel module. Both talk to the kernel and are run in kernel space. This is why driver problems on Windows can cause BSODs and why MS has gotten fanatical about vendors getting their drivers inspected/approved/signed by MS.
The biggest difference is that on Linux, someone can change the kernel functions that the driver calls, requiring changes to the driver code. I suppose on Windows this can happen to, but it's much less likely to, since it means making a lot of drivers not work anymore with no easy way to fix them.
Of course, keep in mind that on both Windows and Linux there are lots of userspace drivers (like printers and scanners). Linux can even have userspace filesystem drivers (I'm not sure about Windows).
OK, it should be ready in 2184. Unless the schedule slips... :)
While it's lots of fun to make fun of right wing crazies, it should be noted that this case is taking place in San Francisco, California, one of the most liberal places in the country. Just further proof that stupidity knows no political or ideological boundaries.
Were you using ClearCase on Windows? It's definitely an order of magnitude slower on Windows than it is on Linux. On Linux, it seems to be about as fast as the NFS mounts. We typically don't store anything local on our UNIX machines, so even snapshot views (the "check your view out to a local place on the HD") would be over NFS, and those have their own problems (like long update times). However, on Windows, snapshot views are the only way to get anything done. I'm not sure if it's a problem with the ClearCase driver or a problem with Windows internals (making too many calls or something).
However, ClearCase does tend to get slower over time as you accumulate more branches, labels, etc. There doesn't seem to be any way to overcome this problem. Even obsoleting old branches doesn't seem to have a noticeable effect. I think this is because they are still there, even if they are read only. But we don't want to delete them, because it would mean losing that history.
ClearCase also has a steep learning curve (probably more than git). It took our group a couple years to get a good process working (along with scripts). Now, we chug along pretty well, even if it's not always efficient. We know the drawbacks and what to avoid, and it's rare to have major problems anymore. I think our group would benefit from a distributed model like git (if nothing else, I've heard it's fast), but changing systems is very difficult, expensive, and time consuming. That, and the only reason we use ClearCase is because it's the Corporate Standard, so I don't think we could get away from it even if we had the time, money, and people.
Can you tell the difference if you don't know if the food is organic or not? A lot of things go into how you perceive the taste of something, especially something subjective like how well you like it.
For example, once I was drinking with some friends, one of who was drinking an expensive beer. He wouldn't touch the cheap stuff. So, while he was out for a minute, the rest of us switched the rest of his beer with an equal amount of cheap beer that happened to look very similar. When he got back, he didn't realize what we'd done until we told him (and gave him the rest of his expensive beer, of course). The point is, he didn't perceive the difference because he didn't know about it. He expected it to be good, so it was good.
If you expect organic food to taste better, then it will taste better.
Of course, I don't expect even a blind taste test to change anyone's habits. My friend still drinks expensive beer, and if you get more pleasure out of organic food, even if it's just because your perception, then more power to you!
Actually with huge DNA and fingerprint databases, that's exactly what they are doing.
Not to disagree with you, because the user's data is very important, but if the system gets trashed or exploited, it is very likely that the user's data will be destroyed as well.
It would be nice if it was easier for a general user to create sub accounts (or something similar) for the photo editor, web browser, mail reader, etc. This way, the photo editor could write to the photos, but the web browser, which might be compromised, could not. I don't know if there's anything like this at all that could be used in Linux (or Windows, for that matter). The closest I could think of would be multiple actual accounts, but that would be tricky to set up correctly and most users don't have access to make new users.
That's great that you can have a book you purchased on two of your devices (really, that is a nice feature). However, is it possible to lend a DRM'd book from your Kindle to someone else's Kindle? That's what the OP was asking for. In real life, I can lend a physical book to someone else. While they have the book, I can't read it. Is it possible to do the same with a Kindle? I suspect not.
It may not be reasonable to expect that feature. I can imagine that websites would quickly spring up to help people lend and borrow books all over the world. But it's an interesting thing to think about.