True, but if you check out the articles linked, they are doing the optimizations for speed at the expense of quality. So they are making the graphic quality of Q3 look like crap in order to bump up the benchmarks.
The drivers check to see if the program calling them has the string "uake3" in the name. If it does, they use a certain set of internal quality settings. If it doesn't, they use a different set of internal quality settings.
What they are doing is having the video cards cut corners just for Q3 to make the benchmarks run better.
The moon shot was a controlled risk with a controlled lifespan. They had three options to get man to the moon and took the one that was most likely to work safely and quickly. High-risk stuff bit them in the ass with Apollo 1 when they realized they were working too fast. The other two options would have required much more technology.
Meanwhile, the X-33 selected was the HIGHEST risk of the three. They could have built a simpler craft that didn't have the composite fuel tanks and all of the cool feature.
They also stripped features out to lower the cost. The Gemini and Apollo craft were supposed to paraglide down. They couldn't get it to work, so they just used parachutes instead.
They also had abundant funding to throw away research if necessary. This is a luxury that current NASA doesn't have.
Jerry Pournelle is a SF writer who plays well with the political circles. He's pragmatic and realistic. His name has been bandied about with respect to NASA administrator once or twice.
He also won't touch the position with a 10 foot pole. Why? Probably because he'd have to make too many extremely hard decisions with consequences. He'd cut things that the rest NASA wouldn't want to cut. And he wouldn't want to deal with all of the existing NASA crap.
First thing I checked after I saw the story on slashdot was nasa watch..;)
I suspect that the ISS has potential to get better. Think about it this way. It costs a crapload of money to build the station well enough so it's barely usable. The problem right now was getting that all together. So the cost of doing ANYTHING interesting with perminant space habitation was a crapload of money.
Now, 4 years down the road, what's the cost of doing something else interesting with perminant space habitation? One shuttle mission, some astronaut time, and the construction of one module. 1/20-1/100 of the cost of the space station. You can run that project on the same timeline as an average successful probe project. 2 years of hardcore work, then you watch as the probe does its stuff. These things slide into the budget with much greater ease than the repeated chunks of NASA budget that the ISS has been taking over the past 20 years, with the deliverables finally in place.
The next administrator for NASA, I hope, is somebody with both practical knowlege and vision. They need to have the vision to discover the realm of possibility. They need to have the practical knowlege to know that the best way is to make small steps, tiny projects, things that can be done easily, that advance the larger goal of humanity leaving the planet. Of creating projects that produce delivarables in a 2-3 year timeframe so that the next guy to administer NASA can't cancel them before they produce deliverables, so that the work isn't lost.
The problem is that spending on breakthrough, high-risk stuff has gotten NASA nowhere. It killed the X-33 program.
What we need is a reliable and efficent SSTO. Right now, we can build it. It will have 1/4 the cargo capacity of the shuttle, and a marked improvement in costs. It wouldn't be the wonder vehicle that the shuttle was supposed to be. It won't replace the shuttle. It would be run like a cargo airliner. Go from the airport to a point in orbit, drop off cargo, go back. Rinse and repeat, once a week.
The problem is that NASA can't afford the shuttle AND something else. This wouldn't be a problem if we had the infrastructure to make it work. Jerry Pournelle think we need zero-prebreathe suits, so that going outside the space station is as simple as going out of an arctic research station. I personally think an inflatable construction shack in orbit would work well, too. We need a second space station, so we don't disrupt the science experiments with all of that hammering. We need an orbital transfer vehicle to take cargo from one part of orbit to another. And we need construction worker astronauts, not just engineer astronauts.
What do we have already? Well, we have one space station that we might be able to get some engineering effort out of to build the second one. But NASA would probably end up redesigning everything because that's the way they work. We'd need new spacesuits -- NASA keeps cutting the funding on new space suit research. We don't have an orbital transfer vehicle. NASA cut the transhab, which would have provided us with the engineering knowlege to make large inflatable structures in space.
And, the new orbital transport would result in a LOT of NASA engineers at KSC being laid off, which is not a pleasant thought, either.
And furthermore, every 4 years, you run the risk of a change in administration. Which means that 4 years down the road, all of your sponsors could dissapear. The NASA administrator could get replaced by someone with a different vision. Congressional priorities could change. The president may be different. All of this will destroy the carefully planned more-than-4-year-plan for the eventual US dominance of space.
Our only hope for a cool NASA is a space race with China.
I'm not sure if I should say "Yah" or "Holy crap"
on
Goldin to Retire from NASA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm not sure what I should think.
On one hand, Goldin has done some good things. And he did some difficult things that needed to be done.
On the other hand, he's done some crappy things. He cut down NASA expendatures too much.
The problem is, nobody wants to be the NASA administrator. He would have been replaced now, but nobody wants his job. I know that Jerry Pournelle, deizen of Byte Magazine, famed Science Fiction writer, and often advisor to congress, turned the possibility of that position down (rumors were flying he was in the running).
The problem is that NASA, while it enjoys bipartisan support, is always on the chopping block. Most of the expendatures have to go to the different NASA centers that have to remain there for NASA to get congressional support. The infrastructure for the shuttle MUST get funding, and enough of it, or else safety will slip, we'll loose another shuttle, and heads will roll. It's also the only available craft for returning cargo to the earth, construction tasks in orbit, lifting space station parts, etc. It does too many things to have an easy replacement.
Whoever takes his role will have more hard decisions, trouble because of Sept 11-related extra funding, etc.
If I don't live to see men on Mars in my lifetime, I'm going to be pissed. If I'm alive to see a time when space isn't inhabited by humans, I'm going to be pissed.
Re:XSL is truly a mistake. Beware.
on
W3C Recommends XSL
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually, there is some great usages for XSLT and XSL.
The thing that people are forgetting is that XSLT has been a W3C Rec for a long while. They are just recomending XSL now.
XSLT has many uses that just the DOM doesn't have. With XSLT, you can specify a smaller number of canned transforms to take a completely abstract set of XML tags to a viewable form in your browser.
An example of this would be an XML document to describe a program:
<PROGRAM>
<NAME>Blah</NAME>
<PLATFORM>Linux 3.0</PLATFORM>
<DESCRIPTION>This program sucks</DESCRIPTION>
</PROGRAM>
Now, tell me, what would a CSS style sheet to properly render this data look like? Sure, you can make the NAME, PLATFORM, and DESCRIPTION tags paragraph level and make them different colors, but that's not helping. With XSLT tree transforms, you can provide a relitively simple scheme for rendering things more like:
Name: Blah
Platform: Linux 3.0
Description: This program sucks
Now, you CAN do that in DOM, but then you will have to provide source code, most likely in JavaScript, to transform the tree. And then the users who surf with JavaScript turned off because all of the OTHER things it can do, like pop up windows at annoying moments, etc. XSLT just transforms XML documents, nothing more. Once we have good support for XSLT in web browsers, I suspect it will become a very useful tool.
Now, as for XSL, that's probably a good thing. Sure, there'll be a delay before people actually can handle the formatting objects. But XSL has a more complete formatting model that's useful for more than just webpages. I'm less familiar with it. I suspect they could have added similar functionality to CSS, but this way, your entire formatting process is usable just through transforming an XML tree. This way, you don't need to write all of the CSS parsing code, you just use your DOM. This also means you can embed XSL/XSLT code in a single XML file without any of that messy CDATA stuff.
Of course, I think that you could also say that making a whole formatting system around XML parsers is about as useful as making a whole OS around OOP messaging syntax. But the biggest generator of XSL code will probably be future word processors converting the style sheets to XML/XSL code.
I think they were stealing pages from the future of the DEC Alpha (It also was to have the northbridge integrated). It actually makes sense to do a good northbridge inside of the CPU, especially because that's the part that, if it isn't right, causes the most trouble. Via knows that story well, as they always manage to get beaten for raw chipset performance, if all things are equal otherwise.
The best part about this is they don't have to wory as much about developing SMP chipsets. Via doesn't generally bother with making SMP chipsets. So if they are going to develop their own SMP chipsets, they might as well make it easier on themselves while they are integrating the northbridge anyways.
I just want one of those systems with 4 or 8 CPUs and a boatload of RAM. Does anybody know what the various OS support will be like?
You also have to remember that you can make things very much worse with Acupuncture. Part of Acupuncture's mistique is the placebo effect. You convince yourself that you've gotten better.
Now this is all fine and good if you have really gotten better. But if you think you are fine even when you aren't, and keep going on as if nothing's wrong, you'll end up with a massive case of RSI, worse than if you had done absolutely nothing.
I can get 2-3 hours of reasonable battery life on my Sony Viao F-series laptop, per battery.
Look for the laptops with multiple battery slots. My F-series has a second battery slot if you take out the floppy drive. If you feel like buying extra batteries, you can generally have a virtually infinate battery life.
Note that most of the laptops with excessively long battery lives tend to be micro-small, which doesn't seem nice for coding on the run. So you may have to make comprimizes.
Of course, the good question is... Will this be a case where Apple and HP drop support publically and the issue dissapears (And then quietly reappears 6 months later in a different form) or the case where Apple and HP drop support publically and it just goes on as if nothing happened (Like Adobe's dropping support of suing for Acrobat-Crackers);)
Well, it would be kinda pointless to port it over to Linux, actually. Mostly because BeFS, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS all have similar functionality already.
That, and a lot of the neato extra features are only useful for the AtheOS shell and would be pretty useless under Linux.
You also have to note that the people from the Phoenix Project are what I'd categorize as whackos who have a certain amount of potential to be right.
I can construct a pretty good case for a hydrogen economy, but I'm a programmer, dreamer, and write SF occasionally in the evenings. Dreaming and actually doing it are two different things. But that was mostly a grab for money, mindshare, and book sales and shouldn't be confused as fact.
So I have a lot of reasons to disbeleve the guests' claims.
First, you would have a hard time refitting an existing aircraft to be hydrogen fueled. I'd rate it as impossible. You need fuel lines that can handle cryogenic temperatures. You need to replace the whole fuel-tank assembly. You need to replace the entire engine. Along with that, a lot of other systems and fluids will need to be changed.
The fuel tank sizes need to be changed. Hydrogen has a LOT of energy, but it's not especially dense.
You'd also have to change the current petrol-based fuel distribution system. Might I mention that, despite the Hindenberg disaster being more related to the design of the craft rather than the use of hydrogen, hydrogen is much less safe to deal with than petrol-based fuels.
Plus, there are exactly zero hydrogen fueled aircraft in existence. This is for a reason. During the cold war, some pretty intelligent folks tried to make it work, and failed.
It IS somewhat likely that hydrogen would avoid the exact circumstances that brought about the world trade center crash. But there are problems.
For one, the aircraft will have a nasty tendancy to explode. One of the reasons why the Chalenger disaster was so bad was because the entire hydrogen tank, filled with liquid hydrogen, evaporated very fscking fast, blowing the top and bottom off the tank and atomizing it. Then it burned very quickly.
Hydrogen is very light. So in the case of massive fuel leakage, most of the hydrogen would float upwards and leave the area relitively quickly. If you can keep it from forming a fuel-air-explosive.
I consider that more of a way for scientists to get more funding for hydrogen experiments than anything else. Sure it might be nicer if you crash into a building, but there's so many other things that can go horibly wrong. The only hydrogen powered craft in existence are rockets, which do not have anything CLOSE to an airliner level of reliability. There are not any production-grade hydrogen-powered jet engines.
"Both the UK and US versions will play on a Windows PC and both let a PC CD burner make a copy onto a blank CD."
"Copying using home CD recorders is variable, with the US CD giving a "no disk" message on some recorders."
So this is lovely! The US version is still rippable. Except on the "consumer" home CD recorders that pay the royalties to the RIAA anyways because the only thing they were usable for was copying other CDs.
This is even more fscked than at first glance.;)
It's just the German version. German geeks: your mission is clear. Buy and return as many NSuck CD's as possible!;)
Everybody buy a copy of the CD. And then return it a few days later, complaining that it doesn't work on your computer or CD player. Go to another store, rinse, repeat.
If enough people did this a few times, all of the sudden, the return rate would be abnormally high on the CD. All of the sudden, the record industry would see this as troublesome and reconsider copy protected CDs.
I have often thought about that the:= vs. = and == vs = issue.
And, really, either way you look at it, it's as orthogonal as possible.
For == to be comparison means that it is similar to !=. Both are nice two character operators, and also parallel =, etc. are the exceptions in this case. This also means that, with = be assignment, +=, -=, etc. are orthogonal.
:= is more mathematically correct, because assignment has little to do with equality, so that makes things more explicit. Then = is what it means, and is orthogonal with . However, then you have to make # the not equal operator if you want the not equals to be similar in form, or you have to use either or !=. This also means that the += operators should be +:= to be unambiguous.
The good thing, I suppose, would be to make:= be the assignment and then make == the equality comparison, to make things crystal clear.
Java makes the = vs. == error harder to do by the simple requirement that an if () take a boolean value instead of an int or bool.
The best solution would be to switch to a unicode character set for programming, so that you could make everything perfectly regular and orthogonal. But that just plain sucks because you would need more keys on the keyboard or weird character combinations and the source would be a bitch to deal with.
The main thing is that we can also collect cell samples over time to return some biodiveristy later on.
The advantage to cloning a dead nearly-extinct animal is that you return that dead animal's genes back into the pool. This can preserve the status quo. Over time, if we DNA-bank merely troubled species before they are even midly or severely in danger of extinction, we can give species a little more diversity to prevent them from dying out, once the situation gets critical. Captive breeding programs often have 100-200 specimens left to work with. If we also have 1000-2000 old DNA samples from when the animal was more frequent, that might mean the difference between extinction and survival.
The danger here is that we really do not fully understand the cloning process. If we carelessly apply these techniques to endangered species, we could hasten their decline. What if the clones cary some factor we don't quite understand, created by cloning, that makes them too weak to survive in the wild. Given the rules of gene flow, it can quickly cripple the species.
Actually, outside of deliberately confusing syntax, the relitive terseness of a langue really doesn't matter.
For example, is it more or less readable to have a
begin
do something
end
vs. a
{
do something
}
?
Both are equally readable, one just takes fewer keystrokes.
When you compare C to Pascal, you see how in every case, C is much more terse, but still, for the most part, readable.
And there are things like..
x++ or x += 2
instead of:
x:= x+1 or x:= x+2
Granted, there are annoying idioms that hurt the readability of the code. The (a?b:c) construction sometimes falls into this range. Using x = (++a) + (b--) sort of idioms also falls into this range. But most of those are abuses of the language and not regularly intentional coding strategies.
I suspect that you couldn't get enough advertising revenues to recoup a $20/month fee unless the game was equipped with an electric shock device that physically forced you into purchasing advertiser's products.
Especially given that rates for advertising are falling.
I just retired a set of $20 computer speakers (i.e. the movers killed them) so I'm thinking of applying my own advice and getting some good new speakers for my computer.
My personal advice goes along these lines:
First, 4.1 speakers are only good for games and merely OK for DVDs. Eventually, DVD-Audio/SACD/something else will make 5.1 sound for the masses possible. Right now, unless you are going to be doing gaming, just get a 2.1 setup. 4.1 doesn't have the center channel required for a proper DVD movie experience.
Second, there are advantages to properly constructed computer speakers. Generally computer speakers won't mess with your monitor if they are placed right up against it. They also tend to be nice and compact.
Third, there are great price and performance advantages to using non-computer speakers. A good audio setup will be weighted with a flatter, more realistic frequency response and work especially well with music. And they are generally more boom-for-the-buck then the high-end computer speakers. You often-times get 5.1 out of them, instead of 4.1. This can be a good thing, especially if you can get everything to work together, because you can get the center channel along with the 4 corner speakers. You need at least three speakers in front of you, preferebly five, to be able to accurately position sounds.
Fourth, both cheap stereo equipment and most computer speakers are heavily tuned for specific sounds. They give you thudding bass sounds so that you feel like you are getting your money's worth, but, once you get past that, have a really crappy sound. And they'll say they have a 15Hz-30KHz or better frequency range, with 200 Watts of power, when you really are getting about 20-30 watts of power, with great response and clarity in the 15Hz-1KHz range, and muddy the rest of the way.
If you are really wanting to blow some money, go to a musical instrument store and pick up a set of studio monitors. You will pay $500-1500, or maybe even more, but they will have a crystal-clear, completely flat, frequency response across the entire audible range. In today's computer-centric studios, they even make shielded monitors that won't mess up your monitors.
Best bet, get a good quality walkman and a CD with some music you like. Then run it through the various speaker systems in the store. Your ears will tell you what you should purchase. If you can't tell the difference between an $80 set and a $120 set, get the $80 set. It's probably the only way to do things.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but if you check out the articles linked, they are doing the optimizations for speed at the expense of quality. So they are making the graphic quality of Q3 look like crap in order to bump up the benchmarks.
Not really.
The drivers check to see if the program calling them has the string "uake3" in the name. If it does, they use a certain set of internal quality settings. If it doesn't, they use a different set of internal quality settings.
What they are doing is having the video cards cut corners just for Q3 to make the benchmarks run better.
The moon shot was a controlled risk with a controlled lifespan. They had three options to get man to the moon and took the one that was most likely to work safely and quickly. High-risk stuff bit them in the ass with Apollo 1 when they realized they were working too fast. The other two options would have required much more technology.
Meanwhile, the X-33 selected was the HIGHEST risk of the three. They could have built a simpler craft that didn't have the composite fuel tanks and all of the cool feature.
They also stripped features out to lower the cost. The Gemini and Apollo craft were supposed to paraglide down. They couldn't get it to work, so they just used parachutes instead.
They also had abundant funding to throw away research if necessary. This is a luxury that current NASA doesn't have.
There is one that I know of.
Jerry Pournelle is a SF writer who plays well with the political circles. He's pragmatic and realistic. His name has been bandied about with respect to NASA administrator once or twice.
He also won't touch the position with a 10 foot pole. Why? Probably because he'd have to make too many extremely hard decisions with consequences. He'd cut things that the rest NASA wouldn't want to cut. And he wouldn't want to deal with all of the existing NASA crap.
First thing I checked after I saw the story on slashdot was nasa watch.. ;)
I suspect that the ISS has potential to get better. Think about it this way. It costs a crapload of money to build the station well enough so it's barely usable. The problem right now was getting that all together. So the cost of doing ANYTHING interesting with perminant space habitation was a crapload of money.
Now, 4 years down the road, what's the cost of doing something else interesting with perminant space habitation? One shuttle mission, some astronaut time, and the construction of one module. 1/20-1/100 of the cost of the space station. You can run that project on the same timeline as an average successful probe project. 2 years of hardcore work, then you watch as the probe does its stuff. These things slide into the budget with much greater ease than the repeated chunks of NASA budget that the ISS has been taking over the past 20 years, with the deliverables finally in place.
The next administrator for NASA, I hope, is somebody with both practical knowlege and vision. They need to have the vision to discover the realm of possibility. They need to have the practical knowlege to know that the best way is to make small steps, tiny projects, things that can be done easily, that advance the larger goal of humanity leaving the planet. Of creating projects that produce delivarables in a 2-3 year timeframe so that the next guy to administer NASA can't cancel them before they produce deliverables, so that the work isn't lost.
The problem is that spending on breakthrough, high-risk stuff has gotten NASA nowhere. It killed the X-33 program.
What we need is a reliable and efficent SSTO. Right now, we can build it. It will have 1/4 the cargo capacity of the shuttle, and a marked improvement in costs. It wouldn't be the wonder vehicle that the shuttle was supposed to be. It won't replace the shuttle. It would be run like a cargo airliner. Go from the airport to a point in orbit, drop off cargo, go back. Rinse and repeat, once a week.
The problem is that NASA can't afford the shuttle AND something else. This wouldn't be a problem if we had the infrastructure to make it work. Jerry Pournelle think we need zero-prebreathe suits, so that going outside the space station is as simple as going out of an arctic research station. I personally think an inflatable construction shack in orbit would work well, too. We need a second space station, so we don't disrupt the science experiments with all of that hammering. We need an orbital transfer vehicle to take cargo from one part of orbit to another. And we need construction worker astronauts, not just engineer astronauts.
What do we have already? Well, we have one space station that we might be able to get some engineering effort out of to build the second one. But NASA would probably end up redesigning everything because that's the way they work. We'd need new spacesuits -- NASA keeps cutting the funding on new space suit research. We don't have an orbital transfer vehicle. NASA cut the transhab, which would have provided us with the engineering knowlege to make large inflatable structures in space.
And, the new orbital transport would result in a LOT of NASA engineers at KSC being laid off, which is not a pleasant thought, either.
And furthermore, every 4 years, you run the risk of a change in administration. Which means that 4 years down the road, all of your sponsors could dissapear. The NASA administrator could get replaced by someone with a different vision. Congressional priorities could change. The president may be different. All of this will destroy the carefully planned more-than-4-year-plan for the eventual US dominance of space.
Our only hope for a cool NASA is a space race with China.
I'm not sure what I should think.
On one hand, Goldin has done some good things. And he did some difficult things that needed to be done.
On the other hand, he's done some crappy things. He cut down NASA expendatures too much.
The problem is, nobody wants to be the NASA administrator. He would have been replaced now, but nobody wants his job. I know that Jerry Pournelle, deizen of Byte Magazine, famed Science Fiction writer, and often advisor to congress, turned the possibility of that position down (rumors were flying he was in the running).
The problem is that NASA, while it enjoys bipartisan support, is always on the chopping block. Most of the expendatures have to go to the different NASA centers that have to remain there for NASA to get congressional support. The infrastructure for the shuttle MUST get funding, and enough of it, or else safety will slip, we'll loose another shuttle, and heads will roll. It's also the only available craft for returning cargo to the earth, construction tasks in orbit, lifting space station parts, etc. It does too many things to have an easy replacement.
Whoever takes his role will have more hard decisions, trouble because of Sept 11-related extra funding, etc.
If I don't live to see men on Mars in my lifetime, I'm going to be pissed. If I'm alive to see a time when space isn't inhabited by humans, I'm going to be pissed.
Actually, there is some great usages for XSLT and XSL.
The thing that people are forgetting is that XSLT has been a W3C Rec for a long while. They are just recomending XSL now.
XSLT has many uses that just the DOM doesn't have. With XSLT, you can specify a smaller number of canned transforms to take a completely abstract set of XML tags to a viewable form in your browser.
An example of this would be an XML document to describe a program:
<PROGRAM>
<NAME>Blah</NAME>
<PLATFORM>Linux 3.0</PLATFORM>
<DESCRIPTION>This program sucks</DESCRIPTION>
</PROGRAM>
Now, tell me, what would a CSS style sheet to properly render this data look like? Sure, you can make the NAME, PLATFORM, and DESCRIPTION tags paragraph level and make them different colors, but that's not helping. With XSLT tree transforms, you can provide a relitively simple scheme for rendering things more like:
Name: Blah
Platform: Linux 3.0
Description: This program sucks
Now, you CAN do that in DOM, but then you will have to provide source code, most likely in JavaScript, to transform the tree. And then the users who surf with JavaScript turned off because all of the OTHER things it can do, like pop up windows at annoying moments, etc. XSLT just transforms XML documents, nothing more. Once we have good support for XSLT in web browsers, I suspect it will become a very useful tool.
Now, as for XSL, that's probably a good thing. Sure, there'll be a delay before people actually can handle the formatting objects. But XSL has a more complete formatting model that's useful for more than just webpages. I'm less familiar with it. I suspect they could have added similar functionality to CSS, but this way, your entire formatting process is usable just through transforming an XML tree. This way, you don't need to write all of the CSS parsing code, you just use your DOM. This also means you can embed XSL/XSLT code in a single XML file without any of that messy CDATA stuff.
Of course, I think that you could also say that making a whole formatting system around XML parsers is about as useful as making a whole OS around OOP messaging syntax. But the biggest generator of XSL code will probably be future word processors converting the style sheets to XML/XSL code.
I have to say it's impressive.
I think they were stealing pages from the future of the DEC Alpha (It also was to have the northbridge integrated). It actually makes sense to do a good northbridge inside of the CPU, especially because that's the part that, if it isn't right, causes the most trouble. Via knows that story well, as they always manage to get beaten for raw chipset performance, if all things are equal otherwise.
The best part about this is they don't have to wory as much about developing SMP chipsets. Via doesn't generally bother with making SMP chipsets. So if they are going to develop their own SMP chipsets, they might as well make it easier on themselves while they are integrating the northbridge anyways.
I just want one of those systems with 4 or 8 CPUs and a boatload of RAM. Does anybody know what the various OS support will be like?
You also have to remember that you can make things very much worse with Acupuncture. Part of Acupuncture's mistique is the placebo effect. You convince yourself that you've gotten better.
Now this is all fine and good if you have really gotten better. But if you think you are fine even when you aren't, and keep going on as if nothing's wrong, you'll end up with a massive case of RSI, worse than if you had done absolutely nothing.
I can get 2-3 hours of reasonable battery life on my Sony Viao F-series laptop, per battery.
Look for the laptops with multiple battery slots. My F-series has a second battery slot if you take out the floppy drive. If you feel like buying extra batteries, you can generally have a virtually infinate battery life.
Note that most of the laptops with excessively long battery lives tend to be micro-small, which doesn't seem nice for coding on the run. So you may have to make comprimizes.
Of course, the good question is... Will this be a case where Apple and HP drop support publically and the issue dissapears (And then quietly reappears 6 months later in a different form) or the case where Apple and HP drop support publically and it just goes on as if nothing happened (Like Adobe's dropping support of suing for Acrobat-Crackers) ;)
Well, it would be kinda pointless to port it over to Linux, actually. Mostly because BeFS, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS all have similar functionality already.
That, and a lot of the neato extra features are only useful for the AtheOS shell and would be pretty useless under Linux.
You also have to note that the people from the Phoenix Project are what I'd categorize as whackos who have a certain amount of potential to be right.
I can construct a pretty good case for a hydrogen economy, but I'm a programmer, dreamer, and write SF occasionally in the evenings. Dreaming and actually doing it are two different things. But that was mostly a grab for money, mindshare, and book sales and shouldn't be confused as fact.
So I have a lot of reasons to disbeleve the guests' claims.
First, you would have a hard time refitting an existing aircraft to be hydrogen fueled. I'd rate it as impossible. You need fuel lines that can handle cryogenic temperatures. You need to replace the whole fuel-tank assembly. You need to replace the entire engine. Along with that, a lot of other systems and fluids will need to be changed.
The fuel tank sizes need to be changed. Hydrogen has a LOT of energy, but it's not especially dense.
You'd also have to change the current petrol-based fuel distribution system. Might I mention that, despite the Hindenberg disaster being more related to the design of the craft rather than the use of hydrogen, hydrogen is much less safe to deal with than petrol-based fuels.
Plus, there are exactly zero hydrogen fueled aircraft in existence. This is for a reason. During the cold war, some pretty intelligent folks tried to make it work, and failed.
It IS somewhat likely that hydrogen would avoid the exact circumstances that brought about the world trade center crash. But there are problems.
For one, the aircraft will have a nasty tendancy to explode. One of the reasons why the Chalenger disaster was so bad was because the entire hydrogen tank, filled with liquid hydrogen, evaporated very fscking fast, blowing the top and bottom off the tank and atomizing it. Then it burned very quickly.
Hydrogen is very light. So in the case of massive fuel leakage, most of the hydrogen would float upwards and leave the area relitively quickly. If you can keep it from forming a fuel-air-explosive.
I consider that more of a way for scientists to get more funding for hydrogen experiments than anything else. Sure it might be nicer if you crash into a building, but there's so many other things that can go horibly wrong. The only hydrogen powered craft in existence are rockets, which do not have anything CLOSE to an airliner level of reliability. There are not any production-grade hydrogen-powered jet engines.
No, what you will see is more like the movies...
;)
There's product placement, AND a fee.
If you want security, you'll have to do it yourself, I think.
This means, use PGP and don't rely on the SSL/TLS security of your mail server.
The simple fact is that, unless you are dealing with money, it's too much trouble to properly set up TLS/SSL for a server.
And yes, both ends need to support encryption for it to work.
I mean, most websites do not use TLS/SSL, so why should most mail servers?
"Both the UK and US versions will play on a Windows PC and both let a PC CD burner make a copy onto a blank CD."
;)
;)
"Copying using home CD recorders is variable, with the US CD giving a "no disk" message on some recorders."
So this is lovely! The US version is still rippable. Except on the "consumer" home CD recorders that pay the royalties to the RIAA anyways because the only thing they were usable for was copying other CDs.
This is even more fscked than at first glance.
It's just the German version. German geeks: your mission is clear. Buy and return as many NSuck CD's as possible!
Quick.. Everybody steal a page from Scientology!
Everybody buy a copy of the CD. And then return it a few days later, complaining that it doesn't work on your computer or CD player. Go to another store, rinse, repeat.
If enough people did this a few times, all of the sudden, the return rate would be abnormally high on the CD. All of the sudden, the record industry would see this as troublesome and reconsider copy protected CDs.
I have often thought about that the := vs. = and == vs = issue.
:= be the assignment and then make == the equality comparison, to make things crystal clear.
And, really, either way you look at it, it's as orthogonal as possible.
For == to be comparison means that it is similar to !=. Both are nice two character operators, and also parallel =, etc. are the exceptions in this case. This also means that, with = be assignment, +=, -=, etc. are orthogonal.
:= is more mathematically correct, because assignment has little to do with equality, so that makes things more explicit. Then = is what it means, and is orthogonal with . However, then you have to make # the not equal operator if you want the not equals to be similar in form, or you have to use either or !=. This also means that the += operators should be +:= to be unambiguous.
The good thing, I suppose, would be to make
Java makes the = vs. == error harder to do by the simple requirement that an if () take a boolean value instead of an int or bool.
The best solution would be to switch to a unicode character set for programming, so that you could make everything perfectly regular and orthogonal. But that just plain sucks because you would need more keys on the keyboard or weird character combinations and the source would be a bitch to deal with.
The main thing is that we can also collect cell samples over time to return some biodiveristy later on.
The advantage to cloning a dead nearly-extinct animal is that you return that dead animal's genes back into the pool. This can preserve the status quo. Over time, if we DNA-bank merely troubled species before they are even midly or severely in danger of extinction, we can give species a little more diversity to prevent them from dying out, once the situation gets critical. Captive breeding programs often have 100-200 specimens left to work with. If we also have 1000-2000 old DNA samples from when the animal was more frequent, that might mean the difference between extinction and survival.
The danger here is that we really do not fully understand the cloning process. If we carelessly apply these techniques to endangered species, we could hasten their decline. What if the clones cary some factor we don't quite understand, created by cloning, that makes them too weak to survive in the wild. Given the rules of gene flow, it can quickly cripple the species.
Actually, outside of deliberately confusing syntax, the relitive terseness of a langue really doesn't matter.
:= x+1 or x := x+2
For example, is it more or less readable to have a
begin
do something
end
vs. a
{
do something
}
?
Both are equally readable, one just takes fewer keystrokes.
When you compare C to Pascal, you see how in every case, C is much more terse, but still, for the most part, readable.
And there are things like..
x++ or x += 2
instead of:
x
Granted, there are annoying idioms that hurt the readability of the code. The (a?b:c) construction sometimes falls into this range. Using x = (++a) + (b--) sort of idioms also falls into this range. But most of those are abuses of the language and not regularly intentional coding strategies.
I suspect that you couldn't get enough advertising revenues to recoup a $20/month fee unless the game was equipped with an electric shock device that physically forced you into purchasing advertiser's products.
Especially given that rates for advertising are falling.
I just retired a set of $20 computer speakers (i.e. the movers killed them) so I'm thinking of applying my own advice and getting some good new speakers for my computer.
My personal advice goes along these lines:
First, 4.1 speakers are only good for games and merely OK for DVDs. Eventually, DVD-Audio/SACD/something else will make 5.1 sound for the masses possible. Right now, unless you are going to be doing gaming, just get a 2.1 setup. 4.1 doesn't have the center channel required for a proper DVD movie experience.
Second, there are advantages to properly constructed computer speakers. Generally computer speakers won't mess with your monitor if they are placed right up against it. They also tend to be nice and compact.
Third, there are great price and performance advantages to using non-computer speakers. A good audio setup will be weighted with a flatter, more realistic frequency response and work especially well with music. And they are generally more boom-for-the-buck then the high-end computer speakers. You often-times get 5.1 out of them, instead of 4.1. This can be a good thing, especially if you can get everything to work together, because you can get the center channel along with the 4 corner speakers. You need at least three speakers in front of you, preferebly five, to be able to accurately position sounds.
Fourth, both cheap stereo equipment and most computer speakers are heavily tuned for specific sounds. They give you thudding bass sounds so that you feel like you are getting your money's worth, but, once you get past that, have a really crappy sound. And they'll say they have a 15Hz-30KHz or better frequency range, with 200 Watts of power, when you really are getting about 20-30 watts of power, with great response and clarity in the 15Hz-1KHz range, and muddy the rest of the way.
If you are really wanting to blow some money, go to a musical instrument store and pick up a set of studio monitors. You will pay $500-1500, or maybe even more, but they will have a crystal-clear, completely flat, frequency response across the entire audible range. In today's computer-centric studios, they even make shielded monitors that won't mess up your monitors.
Best bet, get a good quality walkman and a CD with some music you like. Then run it through the various speaker systems in the store. Your ears will tell you what you should purchase. If you can't tell the difference between an $80 set and a $120 set, get the $80 set. It's probably the only way to do things.
Problems with your idea (sory)
Try drinking distilled water from the store. It doesn't quite taste right because of the lack of mineral content. That's what you'd be drinking.
On the other hand, they've been using the fuel cells to produce water for the space shuttle, so you can get used to it.