Jet-A also more closely resembles kerosene than it does Gasoline.
It burns rather slowly, and generally not explosively. Granted, if a tank full of jet fuel ignites, it's definitely a very bad thing, but it'll take more than a few minutes to burn.
An airship full of Hydrogen gas will combust almost instantaneously.
You also have the issue of public perception. The Hindenberg disaster was a fairly horrific spectacle (big explosion, people running around on fire, etc....). This is why we've spent billions (trillions?) fighting a war on "terror," despite the fact that the odds of being killed by a terrorist in America in the past 10 years is about the same as being struck by lightning. 9/11 was very.....graphic.
If these guys actually *do* have a legitimate process for accomplishing this, there's still a great deal of Science and Engineering work that remains to be done. It's a lot harder to make that sort of thing profitable from day one.
It's clever, but XVideo in the open source world is much better.
I'm sorry.... are you defending X?
You do realize that we only got the ability to switch resolutions without killing the entire desktop a few years ago. Cut & Paste is only finally beginning to reach a state of usefulness.
I suppose the video layer might be alright (I don't have enough experience to say), but X was an absolute mess until just a few years ago.
Windows may suck, but X11 has traditionally been one of the absolute worst things about Unix.
KDE3 was bloated to a fault, and had an unhealthy obsession with identical-looking blue toolbar icons. It was also due for an architectural revamp.
GNOME started going down the "less is more" minimalistic path a few years ago, encouraged by Apple's similar philosophy that seemed to go over well with consumers. Unfortunately, many feel that they stripped a bit too much out (still, I prefer this approach, and was a rabid Xfce user for quite some time).
KDE4 on the other hand, doesn't feel like it was designed with a minimalistic philosophy in mind. Granted, there was a clear and commendable goal to cut out most of the cruft from KDE3, but it currently still feels a bit incomplete
What you describe sounds suspiciously like KDE exactly as it is, but with a gnome-like skin on top.
Come on. QT isn't "better" than GTK, nor is GTK "better" than QT.
Although it'd be nice to unify the two projects, they have extremely different mindsets. While KDE is set on becoming as feature-rich as possible (sometimes to a fault), the GNOME folks like to keep things as simple as possible (sometimes to a fault).
Also, nobody ever said that GNOME or GTK can't be lightweight. I'd personally like to see the essential parts of the GNOME suite stripped down, and incorporated into Xfce like was done when Mozilla transitioned from SeaMonkey to Firefox. XFce is easily the most noticably fast and "snappy" desktop environment I've used in years. It looks pretty nice too.
Honestly, I think its in the best benefit of both projects for the other one to exist. If you want to, you can run KDE apps in Gnome and vice versa. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, and it keeps a little competition going.
Binding one language to another is also a messy affair, and C++ isn't terribly popular for Unix apps outside of the KDE world. The two projects *have* come together on issues where the two projects already had some common ground (See freedesktop.org)
You do know that Lightroom runs on both Windows and Mac, right?
Actually, though, one of my favorite things about Lightroom is that it automatically makes backups of your database.
One of my least favorite things about it is that I've had to use these backups on several occasions, because the 'working' database became corrupted. Aperture apparently isn't much better in this regard.
In any event, shame on you for not making backups! If your livelihood depends on your data, there's absolutely no excuse not to.
I mentioned IRV because it's the best-known of the preferential voting systems. The Condorcet method is probably the most "ideal" of the methods, but suffers from being overly complicated.
Approval voting is certainly a nice compromise, by virtue of being extremely simple, though I'm not quite sure if it would have some unintended consequences.
"Second Life is not a game," Dwight replied authoritatively. "It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn't have points or scores; it doesn't have winners or losers."
The difference now is that McCain is guilty of some pretty serious flip-flopping himself.
George Bush, on the other hand, "believes the same thing on Thursday that he did on Tuesday, regardless of what happened on Wednesday." (Stephen Colbert)
The best hope we have of ditching the (current) two parties would be to reform the current election system, and support IRV or priority-based voting.
The gist would be that you could vote 1) Nader (only as an example!!!!) 2) Obama 3) McCain 4) Paul
If you wanted Nader to win, but would be happy with Obama, and *really* didn't want Ron Paul in office. If Nader fails to reach a simple majority, your vote goes to Obama. If he fails to reach a simple majority, it goes to McCain, and so on and so forth.
Personally, I'm pretty irked at Obama about this, but it's not going to change how I vote. Looking at the bigger picture, Obama's got a whole lot more going for him than against.
The EFF announced a new round of court cases today to challenge this law, which should hopefully make it through to the Supreme Court, where the law is almost certain to be struck down, even with a conservative majority of justices.
I would take that Toms Hardware article with a huge grain of salt.
Their tests simulated a usage pattern that is pretty rare in practice, especially for a portable device. Although certain applications do indeed require long, sustained transfers, most data transfers are spontaneous and sporadic (which is where flash memory shines, thanks to the nearly-zero seek times).
To make a shameful car analogy, a long sustained transfer is like driving on the highway. You get pretty good mileage, even with an "inefficient" petrol engine.
Unfortunately, we don't always drive on the highway, and a typical usage pattern involves lots of stopping and going. Due to the rotational inertia of the platters, HDDs and Optical disks are inherently inefficient in this regard, as the disk either has to be kept 'idling' or spun up from rest whenever access is required. These effects can be reduced via caching or by reducing the rotational velocity to match streaming/continuous data (eg. a video DVD), but flash memory seems to have a pretty clear advantage here.
This snippet from the article destroys virtually all of their credibility;
Could Tomâ(TM)s Hardware be Wrong?
No, our results are definitely correct.
Although I believe their data, any scientist needs to keep an open mind for any inaccuracies or potential flaws in their methodologies that may be present. Computer hardware reviews are no exception to this.
I'm also wary of leaving any media to sit for 10 years. Longevity isn't a terribly strong point these days....
Why can't it be sent up in the automated transfer vehicle, or on top of another rocket? Is it really that big?
Either way, there's currently a bill working its way through the system that would give NASA the money to launch it. Given the amount of money that's already been spent, it would look very bad on their part not to.
No they didn't. Buran made its first test flight a few months before the fall of the Soviet Union. Three additional orbiters were under construction at the time.
The Buran program ended because the R&D was prohibitively expensive, and Russia had much bigger fish to fry in the early 1990s.
Granted, it would have been nice if the remaining orbiters were kept in a building with a stable roof, but I suppose there's no point dwelling on all that now, even though I really would like to see it fly one more time....
I'm not a huge sci-fi reader, but also never really found what I read to be all that difficult.
'Dune' is a great place to start out. I was never able to get through the sequals, but the original is a classic. Possibly a bit advanced and cynical, but definitely on the 'required reading' list. The Sci-Fi channel miniseries is also excellent.
Another obvious recommendation is The Hitchhikers Guide series. They're easy, they're funny, and unfortunately not strictly sci-fi. Either way, I'd have a hard time thinking of reasons not to read something by Douglas Adams.
On the fantasy end of things (more my tastes, and still closely related to SF), I'd strongly recommend His Dark Materials, LoTR (if you can manage to get through the first 250 pages), and anything by Terry Pratchett.
If your sons have any interest in The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, I'd highly recommend starting early, as the average lifespan of the typical human is only just barely long enough to cram them all in (I jest, but seriously.... if you follow the user-submitted reviews of the books on Amazon, the readers get fewer and angrier as the series goes on with seemingly no end in sight).
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Jet-A also more closely resembles kerosene than it does Gasoline.
It burns rather slowly, and generally not explosively. Granted, if a tank full of jet fuel ignites, it's definitely a very bad thing, but it'll take more than a few minutes to burn.
An airship full of Hydrogen gas will combust almost instantaneously.
You also have the issue of public perception. The Hindenberg disaster was a fairly horrific spectacle (big explosion, people running around on fire, etc....). This is why we've spent billions (trillions?) fighting a war on "terror," despite the fact that the odds of being killed by a terrorist in America in the past 10 years is about the same as being struck by lightning. 9/11 was very.....graphic.
If you really want to throw them in a tizzy, do it in Whitespace (BF implemented using spaces, tabs, and carriage returns.)
Of course, turn it in as a printed copy.
Funny? That's bloody insightful.
Apple was profitable from Day One.
Apple used off-the-shelf components from Day One.
If these guys actually *do* have a legitimate process for accomplishing this, there's still a great deal of Science and Engineering work that remains to be done. It's a lot harder to make that sort of thing profitable from day one.
Don't forget Microsoft's Remote Desktop.
It's very fast. NX might have the advantage on Unix, but RDP is certainly a legitimately good product.
It's clever, but XVideo in the open source world is much better.
I'm sorry.... are you defending X?
You do realize that we only got the ability to switch resolutions without killing the entire desktop a few years ago. Cut & Paste is only finally beginning to reach a state of usefulness.
I suppose the video layer might be alright (I don't have enough experience to say), but X was an absolute mess until just a few years ago.
Windows may suck, but X11 has traditionally been one of the absolute worst things about Unix.
KDE3 was bloated to a fault, and had an unhealthy obsession with identical-looking blue toolbar icons. It was also due for an architectural revamp.
GNOME started going down the "less is more" minimalistic path a few years ago, encouraged by Apple's similar philosophy that seemed to go over well with consumers. Unfortunately, many feel that they stripped a bit too much out (still, I prefer this approach, and was a rabid Xfce user for quite some time).
KDE4 on the other hand, doesn't feel like it was designed with a minimalistic philosophy in mind. Granted, there was a clear and commendable goal to cut out most of the cruft from KDE3, but it currently still feels a bit incomplete
Do you think that's a fair assesment?
What you describe sounds suspiciously like KDE exactly as it is, but with a gnome-like skin on top.
Come on. QT isn't "better" than GTK, nor is GTK "better" than QT.
Although it'd be nice to unify the two projects, they have extremely different mindsets. While KDE is set on becoming as feature-rich as possible (sometimes to a fault), the GNOME folks like to keep things as simple as possible (sometimes to a fault).
Also, nobody ever said that GNOME or GTK can't be lightweight. I'd personally like to see the essential parts of the GNOME suite stripped down, and incorporated into Xfce like was done when Mozilla transitioned from SeaMonkey to Firefox. XFce is easily the most noticably fast and "snappy" desktop environment I've used in years. It looks pretty nice too.
Honestly, I think its in the best benefit of both projects for the other one to exist. If you want to, you can run KDE apps in Gnome and vice versa. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, and it keeps a little competition going.
Binding one language to another is also a messy affair, and C++ isn't terribly popular for Unix apps outside of the KDE world. The two projects *have* come together on issues where the two projects already had some common ground (See freedesktop.org)
Huh?
You do know that Lightroom runs on both Windows and Mac, right?
Actually, though, one of my favorite things about Lightroom is that it automatically makes backups of your database.
One of my least favorite things about it is that I've had to use these backups on several occasions, because the 'working' database became corrupted. Aperture apparently isn't much better in this regard.
In any event, shame on you for not making backups! If your livelihood depends on your data, there's absolutely no excuse not to.
Mod parent up. He's got quite a few good points.
I mentioned IRV because it's the best-known of the preferential voting systems. The Condorcet method is probably the most "ideal" of the methods, but suffers from being overly complicated.
Approval voting is certainly a nice compromise, by virtue of being extremely simple, though I'm not quite sure if it would have some unintended consequences.
"Second Life is not a game," Dwight replied authoritatively. "It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn't have points or scores; it doesn't have winners or losers."
"Oh, it has losers."
The difference now is that McCain is guilty of some pretty serious flip-flopping himself.
George Bush, on the other hand, "believes the same thing on Thursday that he did on Tuesday, regardless of what happened on Wednesday." (Stephen Colbert)
Honest question: Have you ever met a Hummer driver who used the metric system in everyday life?
The best hope we have of ditching the (current) two parties would be to reform the current election system, and support IRV or priority-based voting.
The gist would be that you could vote
1) Nader (only as an example!!!!)
2) Obama
3) McCain
4) Paul
If you wanted Nader to win, but would be happy with Obama, and *really* didn't want Ron Paul in office. If Nader fails to reach a simple majority, your vote goes to Obama. If he fails to reach a simple majority, it goes to McCain, and so on and so forth.
Personally, I'm pretty irked at Obama about this, but it's not going to change how I vote. Looking at the bigger picture, Obama's got a whole lot more going for him than against.
The EFF announced a new round of court cases today to challenge this law, which should hopefully make it through to the Supreme Court, where the law is almost certain to be struck down, even with a conservative majority of justices.
I would take that Toms Hardware article with a huge grain of salt.
Their tests simulated a usage pattern that is pretty rare in practice, especially for a portable device. Although certain applications do indeed require long, sustained transfers, most data transfers are spontaneous and sporadic (which is where flash memory shines, thanks to the nearly-zero seek times).
To make a shameful car analogy, a long sustained transfer is like driving on the highway. You get pretty good mileage, even with an "inefficient" petrol engine.
Unfortunately, we don't always drive on the highway, and a typical usage pattern involves lots of stopping and going. Due to the rotational inertia of the platters, HDDs and Optical disks are inherently inefficient in this regard, as the disk either has to be kept 'idling' or spun up from rest whenever access is required. These effects can be reduced via caching or by reducing the rotational velocity to match streaming/continuous data (eg. a video DVD), but flash memory seems to have a pretty clear advantage here.
This snippet from the article destroys virtually all of their credibility;
Could Tomâ(TM)s Hardware be Wrong?
No, our results are definitely correct.
Although I believe their data, any scientist needs to keep an open mind for any inaccuracies or potential flaws in their methodologies that may be present. Computer hardware reviews are no exception to this.
I'm also wary of leaving any media to sit for 10 years. Longevity isn't a terribly strong point these days....
We've gone from being several orders of magnitude more expensive to only being a single order of magnitude more.
Closing the final gap might take a bit of time, but I feel that we should be able to do it in time.
Similarly, I think The Wheel of Time requires a longer attention span.
Now, there's an understatement if there ever was one :-)
The rate for vice presidents shooting people in the face is also unusually high (1 in 46 or 2,174 per 100,000)
$0?
(rimshot) that's about what they're worth! (/rimshot)
Why can't it be sent up in the automated transfer vehicle, or on top of another rocket? Is it really that big?
Either way, there's currently a bill working its way through the system that would give NASA the money to launch it. Given the amount of money that's already been spent, it would look very bad on their part not to.
No they didn't. Buran made its first test flight a few months before the fall of the Soviet Union. Three additional orbiters were under construction at the time.
The Buran program ended because the R&D was prohibitively expensive, and Russia had much bigger fish to fry in the early 1990s.
Granted, it would have been nice if the remaining orbiters were kept in a building with a stable roof, but I suppose there's no point dwelling on all that now, even though I really would like to see it fly one more time....
And, when those selfish bastards are asked to choose between themselves and government programs like NASA, guess who's going to lose out?
It's not exactly "selfish" if you've been paying the tax your entire life, and ask for something in return when your time is due.
Politicians milking the system dry is selfish, but that's an entirely different argument.
Why? What are the benefits, if any at all?
Erg.
GPL is about giving to the world, and expecting something in return.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but please don't use empty rhetoric in this sort of argument.
I'm not a huge sci-fi reader, but also never really found what I read to be all that difficult.
'Dune' is a great place to start out. I was never able to get through the sequals, but the original is a classic. Possibly a bit advanced and cynical, but definitely on the 'required reading' list. The Sci-Fi channel miniseries is also excellent.
Another obvious recommendation is The Hitchhikers Guide series. They're easy, they're funny, and unfortunately not strictly sci-fi. Either way, I'd have a hard time thinking of reasons not to read something by Douglas Adams.
On the fantasy end of things (more my tastes, and still closely related to SF), I'd strongly recommend His Dark Materials, LoTR (if you can manage to get through the first 250 pages), and anything by Terry Pratchett.
If your sons have any interest in The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, I'd highly recommend starting early, as the average lifespan of the typical human is only just barely long enough to cram them all in (I jest, but seriously.... if you follow the user-submitted reviews of the books on Amazon, the readers get fewer and angrier as the series goes on with seemingly no end in sight).