What about applications such as Theatre and studio lighting that often explicitly require the color temperature and dimming abilities of incandescent bulbs.
Although many high-intensity theatre lights IIRC don't use incandescent bulbs, virtually all Par cans do. How does the legislation deal with this? Will venues have to re-fit with (expensive and impractical) LED Pars, or is there an exemption built in for this?
This is something that's worried me about the OLPC project from the get go. I get the distinct feeling that it was an idea that didn't get all the way thought through. For instance, laptop initiatives in the US and the rest of the developed world have had a very spotty record of success, and although you can't compare apples to oranges, I'm a bit concerned.
For instance, what exactly is the educational value of a network-aware paint application? Considering that the most commonly used applications are paint, calculator, and write, a full-fledged PC might be a bit overkill for what they're being used for.
And although the usual rebuttal to my argument is that the laptops will eventually find a niche, and develop new roles, I do wish that the software bundle were a bit more comprehensive, or that some good high-quality "free as in speech" textbooks could be developed and bundled with the machines to make them a bit more viable off the shelf. The notion of reading wikipedia to learn to fish also seems a bit naive, and almost condescending.
Fortunately, the light at the end of the tunnel is that the OLPCs are a mass-produced single-design using an open platform, so if things don't go well at the start, we can change the software to make them more suitable for what they're being used for.
Unfortunately, any criticism of the OLPC project gets moderated as troll.
I seem to remember reading somewhere the last time NanoSolar was mentioned on/. that the company was quoted as saying that their variable costs are approximately $0.55 per watt of solar panel produced.
They, of course, have fairly considerable start-up costs to recoup, and want to make some sort of profit.
Heck.... bringing $1/watt solar panels to the market (and still making a profit) have these guys destined to become ridiculously, and insanely wealthy, whilst doing a huge service to humanity.
The technology's legit, and I'm really excited to see how it's going to be used in coming years.
I was with you right up until "that was the only one in which I got a B, and I was absolutely furious." Get a grip, man.
But...anyway.... you could have handled the situation much better yourself. There's a reason that organizations such as universities are organized hierarchically.
If the Professor is giving you a problem, go to his boss, who will in all likelihood be an accomplished computer scientist himself. If that doesn't help, go to his boss, or even straight to the dean. The assignment was clearly not worth a failing grade, and overloading functions should be something that could be easily explained to somebody with no prior CS background, and is a rather simple concept to grasp as long as you explain it properly. (Also, don't immediately take an "I'm right, he's wrong" attitude -- be as diplomatic and humble as possible!)
If the TA gives you a problem, you can complain to her advisor. Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a grad student quite like an angry advisor.
As long as you whine, bitch, and complain to the right people, you just might actually get something accomplished, even though it might be frustrating at times. Doing it on slashdot is most certainly not going to solve *ANYTHING*.
It'll also be nice it it handles transparent PNGs properly with nothing more than an tag--like how IE/5 Mac did almost eight fucking years ago. [wikipedia.org] Here's how much progress they had made as of 6/2006. [slashdot.org] (Yeah, it's been a while, and maybe they've fixed that, but c'mon.... it was 2006!) Too bad they lined up the Mac guys against a wall and shot them, ensuring that it would take almost a decade to get that one feature into IE/Win.
Apart from transparent PNGs and that beautiful ColorSync support, Mac IE didn't have a whole lot going for it. It had its own set of weird non-standards-compliant quirks apart from the regular IE, which made it an absolute nightmare for both users and developers. Once Microsoft realized that it couldn't even remotely keep up with Firefox and Safari, they made the responsible decision, and killed the ailing product.
This is called "no single point of failure". 25 servers with one down= 24 still working...
Mainframes tend to be at least triply-redundant in virtually every single component. Any event that would bring down a "good" mainframe (eg. server room hit by asteroid) would almost certainly bring down all 25 replacement servers as well.
Just like the mainframe, a datacentre also has "single points of failure" depending upon the network connectivity, power distribution, fire prevention etc....
It makes sense if you think about it. If your printer is a replacement, you already have a USB cable so there's no sense in you having another. Having gone through a fair few printers (They just die from use) since USB became the standard connection, I'm kinda glad. There are only so many uses for USB A-B cables.
Inkjets do indeed tend to break easily, especially cheap ones. (Some of HP's expensive ones have a rather strong proclivity to die early as well.)
Old Laser printers, on the other hand, tend to last forever. I've had the same HP Laserjet 5P since 1995, and even with heavy daily use, it's showing no signs of breaking or becoming obsolete. As an added bonus, the toner cartridges can last for years on end depending upon how much you print.
It was a rather expensive printer in its day, but it's undoubtedly paid for itself many times over.
From all the info I've seen regarding the matter, ODF and OOXML are two document standards. One was written by committee and has the support of multiple companies, organizations, and individuals. The other is written by a monopoly and has support of no one except MS and their paid shills.
That's not exactly a fair assessment. Microsoft's name-recognition alone carries quite a lot of weight with companies, organizations, and individuals.
Although I don't particularly like Microsoft, if two salesmen were trying to sell me their product, Microsoft being represented by a highly experienced and highly paid sales rep, and ODF being represented by RMS, I'd be pretty likely to sway toward Microsoft, even if ODF was a marginally better product.
As an American recently moved to the UK, I can easily say that, although the British media is generally much, much better that that of the US, most British newspapers are absolute shite.
Newspapers in Britain on par with the likes of the New York Post (eg. The Sun and The Daily Mail) are held in high regard, whereas Americans generally accept tabloids as inexpensive entertainment that can be easily purchased via subway station or grocery checkout (which is a completely fair, and accurate assessment).
On the other hand, The New York Times, Washington Post, and the like, are actually decently respectable media outlets that, though respected, are generally ignored by the general public in favor of whatever is mentioned in church, or on the telly.
It's a bit of a paradox. (You could also consider the fact that the Brits aren't exactly held in very strong regard in the international community, unless being compared to America...)
And yes. I will 100% blame the media for the fact that George Bush somehow still has a 25% approval rating. How the hell does a quarter of the population believe that this man is doing an acceptably good job? No matter which political ideology you subscribe to, he's been a miserable failure on all accounts. Also that a quarter of the US population doesn't believe in Global Warming (not that it's necessarily caused by human activity, but that it's happening at all!!)
They probably aren't buying CDs either, DVD-Audio and SACDs.
I hate to be a troll, but do those really exist? It seems like the selection of movies released on LaserDisc is better than the number of albums on DVDA or SACD.
Music doesn't really benefit all that greatly from multichannel audio or an increased bitrate. The current CD bitrate is high enough that human hearing shouldn't be able to tell the difference between anything with a higher bitrate (There are 'proper' double-blind studies to back up this claim), and live music isn't performed in a manner that really benefits at all from multichannel audio.
Personally, I think that we need a new standard for CD audio that does one thing: Provides song/artist data directly on the disc, whilst maintaining backward-compatability with existing CDs.
If anything, we need the RIAA (yes, that evil, menacing organization) to institute some sort of volume normalization levels so that we can properly utilize the dynamic range of current recording mediums. Modern music has gotten louder, which has resulted in quite a lot of "clipping", resulting in an overall distortion of the sound wave. This is a way in which the RIAA can use its muscle to institute a measure that will ultimately benefit both consumers and musicians. Any sound technician on the planet will confirm that this is indeed a big problem.
This would be a massively positive move for people who spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi gear, but refuse to give money to stores that only offer compressed music -- they could finally take advantage of legal digital downloads.
For serious?
If you've got thousands of dollars to toss around on audio equipment, you're seriously going to be stingy enough to illegally download music on the principle that you don't want to pay the $2-$3 more it costs to buy the physical CD?
I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the lamest excuses for pirating music that I've ever heard.
To be fair, I actually can tell the difference between a 128kbps and a 192kbps MP3 when listening to certain pieces of music with a pair of decently nice headphones. 'Quieter' pieces, and most classical music don't do all that well under low-bitrate MP3 compression -- however, a 256kbps VBR MP3 (Amazon) is virtually indistinguishable from the original CD, whereas AAC (iTunes) is purportedly an even better codec.
Lossless audio is a waste of bandwidth, and frankly not worth the extra expense to the consumer.
However, if some music store wants to offer FLAC downloads for twice the price, I'm sure the audiophiles will be all over it, just like those $400 volume knobs.
(My prediction: The "They Might Be Giants" model of online distribution will become increasingly popular over the next few years, which will cut the music stores and record labels out entirely. As an added bonus, I'm sure a bunch of the bands will offer FLAC versions for a modest extra fee to appease their audiences.)
The Russian rockets only have similar demonstrated reliability to the shuttle.
No. That's just plain wrong
Soyuz has been flying since the 60s, and the spacecraft has had 5 major revisions. There hasn't been a single crew fatality on the 4 most recent.
There *have* been two major accidents on the more recent models, neither of which resulted in any fatalities.
One of Souyz 18a's boosters failed to fully separate during launch, which triggered a safety mechanism to fully disengage the capsule from the rocket. Although the 21g acceleration felt by the crew must have been painful to say the least, everyone on board survived.
Soyuz T-10-1's booster caught fire while it was on the pad and about to launch. The capsule's Launch Escape System was activated by radio command (the fire had burned through cables to manually activate the LES), and the capsule separated from the booster a mere two seconds before it exploded. Both crew were injured, but survived.
These two incidents actually demonstrate the inherent safety of Souyz over the Shuttle. In spite of chatestrophic mechanical failures, and lax safety standards, the crew were able to walk away from the incident in both cases. Also, given the rocket/capsule's disposable nature, replacement of the vehicle wasn't such a big deal (whereas the US has 3 shuttles at the moment, and couldn't build another if they wanted).
The Shuttle, on the other hand, doesn't have any sort of favorable modes of failure during launch or landing, in which the crew even has a faint chance of survival. Think of it as a ship without a lifeboat. Rockets and space travel are inherently dangerous, and the fact that the Shuttle doesn't have any sort of realistic escape mechanism is downright foolish.
Feel free to send me my 20 whenever you get the chance. What sort of transistors are these? MOSFETs? BJTs? N-channel, P-channel? I like them all.
Although I'm sure you're joking, the number of transistors manufactured as discrete components (ie. something big enough to pick up and solder to a circuit board) is insignificantly small compared to the total number manufactured (most of which are "printed" onto an IC).
For instance, a quad-core pentium contains 820 million transistors, which makes me think that the 3-billion per second figure might actually be too small.
Also: The "Virtual Tube" DSP amps do not sound the same, regardless of what a tone-deaf Electrical Engineer says.
That's more likely because the DSP wasn't programmed properly. A transistor *should* in theory be able to replicate any sound within its frequency range. My guess is that the DSPs aren't correctly accounting for distortions caused by the tubes.
On the other hand, "pro sound" tends to shy away from tube amps these days, because transistor amps have gotten good enough not to be noticeably different, and (more importantly), their gear is usually subject to extremely rough handling that a rack full of glass tubes simply couldn't withstand.
While on the topic, if you're considering Linux, but are scared about the interface differences of learning OpenOffice, and the option is upgrading to Office 2007 on your Windows box, then the easier interface migration will be to Linux with OpenOffice, because Office 2007 is WAAAY more different than OpenOffice. I give MS kudos for finally having the balls to change the Office UI, but a smack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper for messing it up so badly. I thought the idea was to move the most frequently used bits into the ribbon bar, not the least-likely. Guess I was wrong on that one. *sigh*
Although it's true that OpenOffice is quite different from Office Pre-2007, it's poorly-designed, and offers very little additional functionality as a compromise. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I prefer AbiWord to the OpenOffice writer for the sole reason that it's simplistic, and has a nice, well-thought-out GUI.
I'm also happy to use Apple's Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. All are massively different from Office, but have the added bonus of actually being genuinely better products, with considerable additional functionality to warrant a new GUI. Numbers is particularly brilliant, in that most of the commonly-used options from Excel's Format Cell dialog are on the toolbar -- and nothing else.
I also happen to quite like the new Office GUI. Although I agree that a few weird features made their way onto the control strip, lots of new (and useful!) features made their way into the applications that tied very nicely into the new GUI, whilst a good amount of old 'cruft' was quietly removed, or tucked away into the menus. This more than justified the redesign, and I would say that most Office users are very happy with the upgrade, once they've been using it for a week or so.
Migrating to OpenOffice on the other hand, leaves you with a loss of functionality, and a poorly-designed UI that feels quite rough around the edges. Although Firefox did a good job of looking and feeling like a native Windows application, OoO feels like a sloppy port of a Java app. The fonts don't match, the icons don't look quite right, and the pieces simply just don't fit together properly (to use an old/. cliche, it looks like the interior of a Lada). Functionality that you'd expect to see in Office just isn't there, and there's absolutely zero new innovation to compensate for this fact. If OpenOffice wants to provide considerably less functionality than MS Office, then it should at least have a simpler and cleaner GUI.
These comments more or less also apply to the GIMP and Blender, although both of those applications *have* indeed made considerably strides in improving their user user experience, even though they too aren't quite there yet. OpenOffice today, I daresay is a *worse* application than when it was under Sun's guidance as StarOffice.
Like Mozilla did a few years ago, I expect that somebody will inevitably fork OpenOffice, and create a lightweight simplistic version of the suite, adding a simplistic GUI, and tearing out all of the unnecessary cruft to produce an application that is easily digestible to the general public.
Hmmm... Weird. Although I primarily use VLC on Mac/Unix, I generally find its performance to be hands-down the best out there, and that it will play files that the native players (WMP, Quicktime, etc.) refuse to play. It sounds to me like you've got some sort of conflict, or a buggy graphics driver. I use it quite extensively, and can seriously state that I've never had it crash while playing an uncorrupted file. Of course, support for Windows Media and Real are a bit dodgy for obvious reasons...
The other nice bit about VLC is that it plays just about every format under the sun without additional codecs, on every platform under the sun as well.
However, I do agree that its interface can be a bit awkward, especially if you have to deal with the playlist controller. Of course, it's certainly not worse than WMP, whose interface I've *never* understood properly. Microsoft just needs to bite the bullet, and redesign it, or even just blatantly rip off the iTunes GUI.
So, no. I'm not blindly recommending VLC for the sole reason that it's open-source (the GIMP, Blender, and OpenOffice crowd tend to do this quite a lot). I generally and truthfully find it to be one of the best media players out there due to its performance, versatility, stability, and cross-platform support that simply doesn't exist anyplace else.
1) If existing OS: run complete antivirus scan and clean existing install, fix everything. Then run a GOOD antivirus scanner (I like Kaspersky), and do it right.
2) Format system disk.
#2 makes #1 completely redundant, doesn't it?
6) Replace MS MediaPlayer with Media Player Classic.
Or use VLC. It's 10 times better unless you need to play Windows Media files, which, to be fair, you should almost never need to do.
7) Do not install any further MS software 8) Ever. 9) Seriously, not ever.
Office isn't half bad. Microsoft software doesn't exactly contain the touch of satan, and I feel pretty confident that they know their own OS pretty well. For starters, most users are quite fond of Office.
11) Oh yeah, don't install too many Adobe apps, either, and keep as much crap from auto-starting as possible (Adobe gamma, Adobe Reader starter, etc.).
Although I'd encourage you to find your own PDF reader/writer, graphic designers are going to find this one somewhat difficult. Adobe Gamma is somewhat necessary, considering that Windows doesn't have proper color management built in. (Not sure what the situation is like these days, since I use a Mac for anything that requires strict adherence to color profiles). I don't like Adobe all that much, but they're not *THAT* bad, apart from the Reader. Their products also don't have any real competition amongst other Windows-based apps. If you need them, you're stuck with them. (The GIMP is *not* a valid substitute for Photoshop no matter how much you'd like it to be!)
What it comes down to is: don't install superfluous crap. If you legitimately need an app, please by all means install it.
But the GPL has been "tested" in court, while Paint.NET's current license has, I assume, not been yet. Also there are organizations that will help you in court if it's a GPL violation. So in part it's a matter of practicality, not principle.
That, my friend, is FUD. Even though it's a tactic generally condemned by the Free Software, RMS and his FSF cronies occasionally drag it out to promote their cause.
Free and Open-Source software is fantastic, although too-liberal licenses can often leave developers with a somewhat bad taste in their mouths for reasons such as this. The Paint.Net source code was released expressly for academic purposes, and it's a shame to see the license being abused in such a manner.
I'd love if some sort of creative commons license for source code could be developed so that developers could easily choose how they would like their software to be used/modified/redistributed. Although a completely free license is "perfect", developers have more than a few reasons not to go the whole way....
To be completely fair, I have *NEVER* heard of the GUI layer of OS X failing. Ditto for Windows.
Linux is finally getting there, thanks to Xorg taking the reigns after useful progress on XFree slowly ground to a halt... But still, the fact that X is still as quirky as it is doesn't lend it all that much credit. It's really a paradox, because X so incredibly advanced in some areas, and is completely lacking in basic functionality in others.
On the other hand, I really have started to like the Linux GUI. For one thing, I like the way the desktop and file manager are set up on Xfce and Gnome a lot better than OS X. The Finder is still not where it needs to be in terms of functionality, and after 6 years, I *still* can't decide if I like the dock. On the other hand, in Xfce, everything is simple, works as you expect it to, and still lets you get at all of the nitty-gritty functionality offered by a "true" Unix system. If only the Ubuntu people could find the OSS holy grail, and work on providing the sort of convergence that has made Apple famous all these years. Drag-and-drop (or I'd even just settle for a decent cut & paste) would be a great place to start.
During MRI imaging data is coming in from the scanner at 10MSamples/Sec at 24bit accuracy up to 32 separate channels, that's a significant amount of data to be processed, having a mouse pointer and a GUI interface is just not needed, Linux just more efficient.
Yes.... that IS a lot of data.
And running a GUI should have nothing to do with it. A reasonably modern computer shouldn't incur all too much of a performance hit by running a GUI layer. Linux + Xfce makes a great lightweight desktop that should be very familiar to Windows users, and shouldn't incur all that much of a CPU hit on any recent sytem. Also, considering that a Medical MRI is an inherently visual system, it sort of makes sense to have some sort of GUI in place, even if it is only a simple one.
My biggest concern, like you mentioned, is that Windows simply isn't a stable system. Hotfixes, service packs, etc... all cause huge issues. On the other hand, a good single-purpose Unix installation should work indefinitely without any routine maintenance required.
I manage an old serial-line powered by SCO OpenServer last modified in the mid-90s. About once every 4 or 5 years, we replace a drive in the RAID array, but apart from that, the system has *never* had a software problem. Say what you like about the evils of SCO, but I couldn't possibly justify spending the time any money to replace a system that's been working at nearly 100% for over 10 years.
The *very* non-technical staff in the office also like it quite a lot better than the GUI Windows system that was supposed to replace it.
*nix + X11 should be the standard for medical equipment. Windows is simply a poor choice for the task.
Even if the risk of an explosion and large-scale contamination might be minimal due to the reactor's design, an accident would most likely melt the core, rendering the plant permanently useless.
Given the current shortage of radioisotopes, I'd hurry along with the repairs, but would keep the damn thing closed until they're done for fear of losing the plant altogether. Ration the radioisotopes if needed until it's done.
Also, start planning to construct a new plant so that this situation doesn't occur again.
Well, that's just dandy if you're an American. But if you lived in Taiwan, South Korea or Israel, or Japan then America having the ability to shoot down ICBMs might come in handy.
No. It wouldn't. All of those countries live right next door to their enemies. An ICBM would hardly be necessary to inflict devastating damage upon any of them.
North Korea has enough conventional artillery pointed at South Korea to level Seoul in a manner of minutes (and vice versa). China has a big enough army to march over Taiwan and Japan simultaneously, and would very likely win by sheer numbers alone without much of a fight.
And attacking Israel is simply a bad idea. The response provoked by a nuclear attack upon Israel would be a hundred times more severe than the initial attack.
Slashdot Mirror
What about applications such as Theatre and studio lighting that often explicitly require the color temperature and dimming abilities of incandescent bulbs.
Although many high-intensity theatre lights IIRC don't use incandescent bulbs, virtually all Par cans do. How does the legislation deal with this? Will venues have to re-fit with (expensive and impractical) LED Pars, or is there an exemption built in for this?
This is something that's worried me about the OLPC project from the get go. I get the distinct feeling that it was an idea that didn't get all the way thought through. For instance, laptop initiatives in the US and the rest of the developed world have had a very spotty record of success, and although you can't compare apples to oranges, I'm a bit concerned.
For instance, what exactly is the educational value of a network-aware paint application? Considering that the most commonly used applications are paint, calculator, and write, a full-fledged PC might be a bit overkill for what they're being used for.
And although the usual rebuttal to my argument is that the laptops will eventually find a niche, and develop new roles, I do wish that the software bundle were a bit more comprehensive, or that some good high-quality "free as in speech" textbooks could be developed and bundled with the machines to make them a bit more viable off the shelf. The notion of reading wikipedia to learn to fish also seems a bit naive, and almost condescending.
Fortunately, the light at the end of the tunnel is that the OLPCs are a mass-produced single-design using an open platform, so if things don't go well at the start, we can change the software to make them more suitable for what they're being used for.
Unfortunately, any criticism of the OLPC project gets moderated as troll.
I seem to remember reading somewhere the last time NanoSolar was mentioned on /. that the company was quoted as saying that their variable costs are approximately $0.55 per watt of solar panel produced.
They, of course, have fairly considerable start-up costs to recoup, and want to make some sort of profit.
Heck.... bringing $1/watt solar panels to the market (and still making a profit) have these guys destined to become ridiculously, and insanely wealthy, whilst doing a huge service to humanity.
The technology's legit, and I'm really excited to see how it's going to be used in coming years.
No, but it would be easy enough either to simply hang on the wires, or perch on top of a utility pole.
I was with you right up until "that was the only one in which I got a B, and I was absolutely furious." Get a grip, man.
But...anyway.... you could have handled the situation much better yourself. There's a reason that organizations such as universities are organized hierarchically.
If the Professor is giving you a problem, go to his boss, who will in all likelihood be an accomplished computer scientist himself. If that doesn't help, go to his boss, or even straight to the dean. The assignment was clearly not worth a failing grade, and overloading functions should be something that could be easily explained to somebody with no prior CS background, and is a rather simple concept to grasp as long as you explain it properly. (Also, don't immediately take an "I'm right, he's wrong" attitude -- be as diplomatic and humble as possible!)
If the TA gives you a problem, you can complain to her advisor. Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a grad student quite like an angry advisor.
As long as you whine, bitch, and complain to the right people, you just might actually get something accomplished, even though it might be frustrating at times. Doing it on slashdot is most certainly not going to solve *ANYTHING*.
Apart from transparent PNGs and that beautiful ColorSync support, Mac IE didn't have a whole lot going for it. It had its own set of weird non-standards-compliant quirks apart from the regular IE, which made it an absolute nightmare for both users and developers. Once Microsoft realized that it couldn't even remotely keep up with Firefox and Safari, they made the responsible decision, and killed the ailing product.
Mainframes tend to be at least triply-redundant in virtually every single component. Any event that would bring down a "good" mainframe (eg. server room hit by asteroid) would almost certainly bring down all 25 replacement servers as well.
Just like the mainframe, a datacentre also has "single points of failure" depending upon the network connectivity, power distribution, fire prevention etc....
Inkjets do indeed tend to break easily, especially cheap ones. (Some of HP's expensive ones have a rather strong proclivity to die early as well.)
Old Laser printers, on the other hand, tend to last forever. I've had the same HP Laserjet 5P since 1995, and even with heavy daily use, it's showing no signs of breaking or becoming obsolete. As an added bonus, the toner cartridges can last for years on end depending upon how much you print.
It was a rather expensive printer in its day, but it's undoubtedly paid for itself many times over.
That's not exactly a fair assessment. Microsoft's name-recognition alone carries quite a lot of weight with companies, organizations, and individuals.
Although I don't particularly like Microsoft, if two salesmen were trying to sell me their product, Microsoft being represented by a highly experienced and highly paid sales rep, and ODF being represented by RMS, I'd be pretty likely to sway toward Microsoft, even if ODF was a marginally better product.
As an American recently moved to the UK, I can easily say that, although the British media is generally much, much better that that of the US, most British newspapers are absolute shite.
Newspapers in Britain on par with the likes of the New York Post (eg. The Sun and The Daily Mail) are held in high regard, whereas Americans generally accept tabloids as inexpensive entertainment that can be easily purchased via subway station or grocery checkout (which is a completely fair, and accurate assessment).
On the other hand, The New York Times, Washington Post, and the like, are actually decently respectable media outlets that, though respected, are generally ignored by the general public in favor of whatever is mentioned in church, or on the telly.
It's a bit of a paradox. (You could also consider the fact that the Brits aren't exactly held in very strong regard in the international community, unless being compared to America...)
And yes. I will 100% blame the media for the fact that George Bush somehow still has a 25% approval rating. How the hell does a quarter of the population believe that this man is doing an acceptably good job? No matter which political ideology you subscribe to, he's been a miserable failure on all accounts. Also that a quarter of the US population doesn't believe in Global Warming (not that it's necessarily caused by human activity, but that it's happening at all!!)
I hate to be a troll, but do those really exist? It seems like the selection of movies released on LaserDisc is better than the number of albums on DVDA or SACD.
Music doesn't really benefit all that greatly from multichannel audio or an increased bitrate. The current CD bitrate is high enough that human hearing shouldn't be able to tell the difference between anything with a higher bitrate (There are 'proper' double-blind studies to back up this claim), and live music isn't performed in a manner that really benefits at all from multichannel audio.
Personally, I think that we need a new standard for CD audio that does one thing: Provides song/artist data directly on the disc, whilst maintaining backward-compatability with existing CDs.
If anything, we need the RIAA (yes, that evil, menacing organization) to institute some sort of volume normalization levels so that we can properly utilize the dynamic range of current recording mediums. Modern music has gotten louder, which has resulted in quite a lot of "clipping", resulting in an overall distortion of the sound wave. This is a way in which the RIAA can use its muscle to institute a measure that will ultimately benefit both consumers and musicians. Any sound technician on the planet will confirm that this is indeed a big problem.
For serious?
If you've got thousands of dollars to toss around on audio equipment, you're seriously going to be stingy enough to illegally download music on the principle that you don't want to pay the $2-$3 more it costs to buy the physical CD?
I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the lamest excuses for pirating music that I've ever heard.
To be fair, I actually can tell the difference between a 128kbps and a 192kbps MP3 when listening to certain pieces of music with a pair of decently nice headphones. 'Quieter' pieces, and most classical music don't do all that well under low-bitrate MP3 compression -- however, a 256kbps VBR MP3 (Amazon) is virtually indistinguishable from the original CD, whereas AAC (iTunes) is purportedly an even better codec.
Lossless audio is a waste of bandwidth, and frankly not worth the extra expense to the consumer.
However, if some music store wants to offer FLAC downloads for twice the price, I'm sure the audiophiles will be all over it, just like those $400 volume knobs.
(My prediction: The "They Might Be Giants" model of online distribution will become increasingly popular over the next few years, which will cut the music stores and record labels out entirely. As an added bonus, I'm sure a bunch of the bands will offer FLAC versions for a modest extra fee to appease their audiences.)
The Russian rockets only have similar demonstrated reliability to the shuttle.
No. That's just plain wrong
Soyuz has been flying since the 60s, and the spacecraft has had 5 major revisions. There hasn't been a single crew fatality on the 4 most recent.
There *have* been two major accidents on the more recent models, neither of which resulted in any fatalities.
One of Souyz 18a's boosters failed to fully separate during launch, which triggered a safety mechanism to fully disengage the capsule from the rocket. Although the 21g acceleration felt by the crew must have been painful to say the least, everyone on board survived.
Soyuz T-10-1's booster caught fire while it was on the pad and about to launch. The capsule's Launch Escape System was activated by radio command (the fire had burned through cables to manually activate the LES), and the capsule separated from the booster a mere two seconds before it exploded. Both crew were injured, but survived.
These two incidents actually demonstrate the inherent safety of Souyz over the Shuttle. In spite of chatestrophic mechanical failures, and lax safety standards, the crew were able to walk away from the incident in both cases. Also, given the rocket/capsule's disposable nature, replacement of the vehicle wasn't such a big deal (whereas the US has 3 shuttles at the moment, and couldn't build another if they wanted).
The Shuttle, on the other hand, doesn't have any sort of favorable modes of failure during launch or landing, in which the crew even has a faint chance of survival. Think of it as a ship without a lifeboat. Rockets and space travel are inherently dangerous, and the fact that the Shuttle doesn't have any sort of realistic escape mechanism is downright foolish.
Do I smell a new meme?
Although I'm sure you're joking, the number of transistors manufactured as discrete components (ie. something big enough to pick up and solder to a circuit board) is insignificantly small compared to the total number manufactured (most of which are "printed" onto an IC).
For instance, a quad-core pentium contains 820 million transistors, which makes me think that the 3-billion per second figure might actually be too small.
That's more likely because the DSP wasn't programmed properly. A transistor *should* in theory be able to replicate any sound within its frequency range. My guess is that the DSPs aren't correctly accounting for distortions caused by the tubes.
On the other hand, "pro sound" tends to shy away from tube amps these days, because transistor amps have gotten good enough not to be noticeably different, and (more importantly), their gear is usually subject to extremely rough handling that a rack full of glass tubes simply couldn't withstand.
Although it's true that OpenOffice is quite different from Office Pre-2007, it's poorly-designed, and offers very little additional functionality as a compromise. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I prefer AbiWord to the OpenOffice writer for the sole reason that it's simplistic, and has a nice, well-thought-out GUI.
I'm also happy to use Apple's Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. All are massively different from Office, but have the added bonus of actually being genuinely better products, with considerable additional functionality to warrant a new GUI. Numbers is particularly brilliant, in that most of the commonly-used options from Excel's Format Cell dialog are on the toolbar -- and nothing else.
I also happen to quite like the new Office GUI. Although I agree that a few weird features made their way onto the control strip, lots of new (and useful!) features made their way into the applications that tied very nicely into the new GUI, whilst a good amount of old 'cruft' was quietly removed, or tucked away into the menus. This more than justified the redesign, and I would say that most Office users are very happy with the upgrade, once they've been using it for a week or so.
Migrating to OpenOffice on the other hand, leaves you with a loss of functionality, and a poorly-designed UI that feels quite rough around the edges. Although Firefox did a good job of looking and feeling like a native Windows application, OoO feels like a sloppy port of a Java app. The fonts don't match, the icons don't look quite right, and the pieces simply just don't fit together properly (to use an old
These comments more or less also apply to the GIMP and Blender, although both of those applications *have* indeed made considerably strides in improving their user user experience, even though they too aren't quite there yet. OpenOffice today, I daresay is a *worse* application than when it was under Sun's guidance as StarOffice.
Like Mozilla did a few years ago, I expect that somebody will inevitably fork OpenOffice, and create a lightweight simplistic version of the suite, adding a simplistic GUI, and tearing out all of the unnecessary cruft to produce an application that is easily digestible to the general public.
Hmmm... Weird. Although I primarily use VLC on Mac/Unix, I generally find its performance to be hands-down the best out there, and that it will play files that the native players (WMP, Quicktime, etc.) refuse to play. It sounds to me like you've got some sort of conflict, or a buggy graphics driver. I use it quite extensively, and can seriously state that I've never had it crash while playing an uncorrupted file. Of course, support for Windows Media and Real are a bit dodgy for obvious reasons...
The other nice bit about VLC is that it plays just about every format under the sun without additional codecs, on every platform under the sun as well.
However, I do agree that its interface can be a bit awkward, especially if you have to deal with the playlist controller. Of course, it's certainly not worse than WMP, whose interface I've *never* understood properly. Microsoft just needs to bite the bullet, and redesign it, or even just blatantly rip off the iTunes GUI.
So, no. I'm not blindly recommending VLC for the sole reason that it's open-source (the GIMP, Blender, and OpenOffice crowd tend to do this quite a lot). I generally and truthfully find it to be one of the best media players out there due to its performance, versatility, stability, and cross-platform support that simply doesn't exist anyplace else.
The three laws of network hardware:
1) Quality network hardware is expensive. Often frighteningly so.
2) If reliability is even remotely important to you, the expense is easily worth it.
3) Failure to comprehend #2 will almost inevitably cost you your job.
#2 makes #1 completely redundant, doesn't it?
Or use VLC. It's 10 times better unless you need to play Windows Media files, which, to be fair, you should almost never need to do. Office isn't half bad. Microsoft software doesn't exactly contain the touch of satan, and I feel pretty confident that they know their own OS pretty well. For starters, most users are quite fond of Office.Although I'd encourage you to find your own PDF reader/writer, graphic designers are going to find this one somewhat difficult. Adobe Gamma is somewhat necessary, considering that Windows doesn't have proper color management built in. (Not sure what the situation is like these days, since I use a Mac for anything that requires strict adherence to color profiles). I don't like Adobe all that much, but they're not *THAT* bad, apart from the Reader. Their products also don't have any real competition amongst other Windows-based apps. If you need them, you're stuck with them. (The GIMP is *not* a valid substitute for Photoshop no matter how much you'd like it to be!)
What it comes down to is: don't install superfluous crap. If you legitimately need an app, please by all means install it.
That, my friend, is FUD. Even though it's a tactic generally condemned by the Free Software, RMS and his FSF cronies occasionally drag it out to promote their cause.
Free and Open-Source software is fantastic, although too-liberal licenses can often leave developers with a somewhat bad taste in their mouths for reasons such as this. The Paint.Net source code was released expressly for academic purposes, and it's a shame to see the license being abused in such a manner.
I'd love if some sort of creative commons license for source code could be developed so that developers could easily choose how they would like their software to be used/modified/redistributed. Although a completely free license is "perfect", developers have more than a few reasons not to go the whole way....
To be completely fair, I have *NEVER* heard of the GUI layer of OS X failing. Ditto for Windows.
Linux is finally getting there, thanks to Xorg taking the reigns after useful progress on XFree slowly ground to a halt... But still, the fact that X is still as quirky as it is doesn't lend it all that much credit. It's really a paradox, because X so incredibly advanced in some areas, and is completely lacking in basic functionality in others.
On the other hand, I really have started to like the Linux GUI. For one thing, I like the way the desktop and file manager are set up on Xfce and Gnome a lot better than OS X. The Finder is still not where it needs to be in terms of functionality, and after 6 years, I *still* can't decide if I like the dock. On the other hand, in Xfce, everything is simple, works as you expect it to, and still lets you get at all of the nitty-gritty functionality offered by a "true" Unix system. If only the Ubuntu people could find the OSS holy grail, and work on providing the sort of convergence that has made Apple famous all these years. Drag-and-drop (or I'd even just settle for a decent cut & paste) would be a great place to start.
Yes.... that IS a lot of data.
And running a GUI should have nothing to do with it. A reasonably modern computer shouldn't incur all too much of a performance hit by running a GUI layer. Linux + Xfce makes a great lightweight desktop that should be very familiar to Windows users, and shouldn't incur all that much of a CPU hit on any recent sytem. Also, considering that a Medical MRI is an inherently visual system, it sort of makes sense to have some sort of GUI in place, even if it is only a simple one.
My biggest concern, like you mentioned, is that Windows simply isn't a stable system. Hotfixes, service packs, etc... all cause huge issues. On the other hand, a good single-purpose Unix installation should work indefinitely without any routine maintenance required.
I manage an old serial-line powered by SCO OpenServer last modified in the mid-90s. About once every 4 or 5 years, we replace a drive in the RAID array, but apart from that, the system has *never* had a software problem. Say what you like about the evils of SCO, but I couldn't possibly justify spending the time any money to replace a system that's been working at nearly 100% for over 10 years.
The *very* non-technical staff in the office also like it quite a lot better than the GUI Windows system that was supposed to replace it.
*nix + X11 should be the standard for medical equipment. Windows is simply a poor choice for the task.
Even if the risk of an explosion and large-scale contamination might be minimal due to the reactor's design, an accident would most likely melt the core, rendering the plant permanently useless.
Given the current shortage of radioisotopes, I'd hurry along with the repairs, but would keep the damn thing closed until they're done for fear of losing the plant altogether. Ration the radioisotopes if needed until it's done.
Also, start planning to construct a new plant so that this situation doesn't occur again.
No. It wouldn't. All of those countries live right next door to their enemies. An ICBM would hardly be necessary to inflict devastating damage upon any of them.
North Korea has enough conventional artillery pointed at South Korea to level Seoul in a manner of minutes (and vice versa). China has a big enough army to march over Taiwan and Japan simultaneously, and would very likely win by sheer numbers alone without much of a fight.
And attacking Israel is simply a bad idea. The response provoked by a nuclear attack upon Israel would be a hundred times more severe than the initial attack.