I think you should watch Mythbusters, they TOTALLY debunked this myth by using a variety of guns: none of them produced any appreciable effects in terms of the target being propelled backwards.
On a somewhat unrelated note, why don't these tests ever include MMORPGs
as much as that would be nice, unless your MMPORG allows you to record/playback a demo, it would be impossible to make any meaningful comparisons between runs and/or different cards.
...is often more important than code elegance: if you have LOTS of users looking at your product (because it has the features they need) it's going to be very likely that you'll be noticed by more developers, which will bring more features, that will bring more users and so on.
If you try to have a 'perfect' 1.0 you'll never make it, software, by its own nature, is never really 'perfect', there's ALWAYS a better way to do things, especially when new developers come onboard with new ideas and so on. The key is to know when to push for features and when to push for elegance.
I doubt that the kernel would be where it's at today if 'elegance' was the only driver. Of course as time goes by and the software matures it becomes more and more elegant usually (if the design was good in the first place), but you can't expect things to be that way from the beginning if you want anybody to actually get work done with it.
It really drives me nuts when I see open source projects get bogged down in years of 'refactoring' because 'this will enable us to give you the features you really need' only to re-release basically the same product (with very small user visible changes) after 3 years and then go on another cycle of 'refactoring' because in the meantime 'ohhh shiny!!!' new ideas of how to do things 'really' right came up.
Also, again, please stop telling me to 'if you don't like it, code it yourself': I code at work already all day, and like to do other things with my spare time, I'd rather give $70 to Adobe for Photoshop Elements 3.0 than suffer with the Gimp's limitations, it's just way more cost effective for me, and I assume for tons of others giving how much money Adobe is making.
It's also quite sad how a cheap (in $$$) program like Elements is SO much more leaps and bounds better than something that the FOSS community has been working on for so many years.
Although the reverse is usually true for server apps (Apache, PostgreSQL, perl, php, etc. etc.) when it comes to applications the average user actually is exposed to, the FOSS community doesn't fare that well in general (Firefox is a notable exception).
I *wish* netflix was available here, the way things are going we might end up getting only Blockbuster which, for more 'niche' movies, is really not very good:(
users DO NOT CARE if your code is 'elegant' and 'easier to mantain', users WANT THINGS TO WORK whether or not they are 'elegant' or 'adequate'.
I stopped using Konqueror ages ago because it just had way too many incompatibilities with sites I visited, I know the sites were non-standard, likely poorly written or written with IE in mind, but if I need them to do my work, I'll find a web browser that renders them properly.
It's really easy for an OSS project to get caught up in 'elegance' and just keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting things to make it 'clean' or 'modular' code-wise, while the users get fed up with the glacial features development pace and move on to OS/X or Win32 because they actually need to USE the product rather than look at the pretty code.
I assume 'clean room' was implied when he said he did things by the book.
Team A is writing a spec which is basically a glorified description of how the tool/component works: I don't think there's anything legally objectionable in putting down on paper how something works (as in, I give it this input, it gives me this output).
it means that Team A uses the product you want to reverse-engineer and writes as complete of a spec of it as possible, team B then creates the app from the spec without using the original app at all.
As long as somebody provided him with a complete BK spec he could've created his client without ever having used BK at all.
Seems the guy hasn't made any effort to work with the Gimp people, even when they contacted him.
I am not privy to the exchange(s) between the guy and the Gimp devs: I remember reading Sven posting on the guy's blog that he thought it was 'unfortunate' that he released the hack in this way and that he should've done it the way he had asked (basically via the proper channels). Given this maybe the guy felt that talking with the devs was kind of pointless.
The Gimp developers know a lot of people want a PS-similar interface. It's been talked about for years.
exactly, and it's never been done because they are happy with the interface as it is, regardless how many people think it sucks and it's a barrier to a more ubiquitous Gimp adoption.
It's software developed by people 'scratching an itch' for something they want
I am fully aware of that, hey, I've done it myself;) and that's why I'm saying: this guy had an itch (he wanted a Gimp UI more similar to PS), he scratched it and released his modifications so other with the same itch could benefit. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that from the point of view of 'free software development', the whole 'due process' angle is in some way like trying to put some limits on that freedom!
It's as if the Gimp devs said 'yeah, we released things under a license that allows you to do this, BUT, you really should not exercise your rights and instead partecipate in xyz committee that might or might not decide that your itch is worth scratching'.
Should the Gimp be re-released under a GPL-but-need-a-committee-approval-before-modifying -it license then?
You never have any guarantee a feature will be present unless you're either willing to code it yourself or pay someone to do so.
exactly, that's why after several years of trying to work with Gimp and being frustrated by its lack of progress (when it comes to features people actually need, like a PS-like UI, adjustment layers, better color tools, etc.) I took my money and bought Photoshop Elements 3 which, together with my PS5 LE, does everything I need for now. When the new CS comes out, if they'll have the $299 upgrade path from Elements 3 I might even get that.
A development model based on 'scratching an itch' is fine for an emergent OS, with Linux coming more and more in the mainstream users expect to be listened to, catered to and most of all respected, and not told to 'code it or shut up'.
In this case the non-free software world is better: PS is not #1 because it sucks, PS is #1 because it's the best, otherwise PSP and others would take its place. Gimp has really no competition in the free software world and so it can just rest on its laurels and have the whole 'we are the devs and WE put in what WE like, users should shut up or code' attitude.
He's not violating the law, just unwritten rules of etiquette; It's polite to try to cooperate before forking.
I'm not the guy, so I don't really know his motivations, but he might have felt that 'do first, ask for permission later' was best in this case to create buzz about this issue.
it's that it seems he may have changed parts which didn't have to be changed in order to achive what he did
if that's the case, and it could be done better, somebody will do it better (if they so decide). If the Gimpshop guy won't (or won't be able to) mantain his modifications, hey, whatever, people will just go back to 'mainstream' Gimp which by then, likely, will have some option to achieve the same functionality I bet. It could also happen that some devs who'd have liked to PS-ize Gimp as much as possible (but couldn't) will join his effort and there will be a 'true' fork.
What exactly do you base this on? The Gimp developer who posted seemed quite open to the idea.
I base my opinion over many years of resistance by the Gimp developers when asked to make Gimp more like PS (the whole 'Gimp is not PS' thing) and their priorities within Gimp itself (spending who knows how much time on Script-Fu and successors when an extremely basic and extremely useful function like adjustment layers was not worked on).
Obviously when faced with LOTS of users cheering this modification the Gimp developers will be a lot more open to the idea than if a lone developer asked for this feature through the 'proper channels'.
It's not that I think Gimp devs are evil, far from it, it's just that sometimes it seems they think their way is the 'best way' and people should just follow their lead (if I had a dime for every complaint about Gimp not having only one window I'd be rich by now for example).
This is entirely their prerogative, them being the ones who do the work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is what the users would like, given the huge cheers this very simple mod generated for example.
It would be nice if the Gimp devs listened to some experienced PS folks (not me, I'm no expert) who could point them in the right direction in terms of features users REALLY want vs features that the devs want.
the gimpshop guy by the gimp developers: they chose a license for Gimp that allows this kind of modification, the guy was definitely within his rights to go ahead with it whether or not Sven (or others) would've preferred him to 'work with them and not fork things'.
Rather than focusing about his 'rude' modus operandi Gimp developers should notice the HUGE positive reaction to his modification by 'normal users': if instead of sitting in their ivory tower and going on about 'Gimp is not PS, we won't change how the UI operates' the Gimp devs listened to users who have been begging for a PS-like UI for YEARS there wouldn't have been any need for a fork (they've also been beggin for adjustment layers as well, but who knows when that will happen).
I thought that this is what Open Source is all about: if you don't like it, fix it and release it (like this guy did).
If he had 'followed due process' he'd just have been ignored because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'. This seems like a case of damned if you do (you shouldn't fork the gimp) and damned if you don't (you're not a coder, so you have no right to complain).
the fish sure is not that good with Italian-English translations: I really doubt this is an April Fool's joke btw, here is a stab at fixing what the fish came up with
============
According to the union, in the ID badges there is an instrument meant to control the movements of the workers
"spy Microchip for workers" the Cgil union denounces Mediaset by LUCA FAZZO
MILAN - Hardly twenty days ago the Guarantor for the privacy had warned people against the usage of instruments that control the movement of workers from a distance [remotely]. It was now discovered that the company founded from the Prime Minister employs the microchips in their ID cards. Yesterday morning Mediaset and three societies controlled by it (Videotime, Rti andIndustrial Electronics) have been denounced by the Cgil [it's an union] for antitrade-union behavior in the Job Court of Milan.
The leadership of Mediaset is accused of having inserted in the new ID badges with magnetic band, distributed to the end of 2004 to approximately 2.500 workers, an Rfid microcircuit. This is a last generation chip that's usually used to control the movements of goods and objects (it is an Rfid chip, for example, that enables the Telepass system to work [this is a toll booth automatic collection system available on Italian freeways]) but that Mediaset applies instead to persons: in this way, according to the union, Mediaset could follow live and also store [for later data mining] all the movements of its employee in the workplace. [thus creating] some sort of Big Brother that is in a position of being able to track every step workers take.
Yesterday, when the news broke, Mediaset reacted with "astonishment". "Twice - the representatives of Mediaset said - we have reassured the union verbally and in writing on the use of these technologies. It's simply a chip that facilitates the movement of people within the company buildings. We call a proximity chip: the doors open on their own when workers approach without them having to swipe their cards, and the parking lot barriers will raise automatically as well. Even if, and we aren't implying that this is what happening, these technologies could enable remote monitoring, Mediaset would not be interested to use them that way. As far as we know this same technology has been used in other places/companies without any problems.
But the representatives of the Cgil [trade union] within Mediaset, evidently, have not been convinced of the harmlessness of this electronic device. And they denounced [legally, they filed papers] the company for violation of article 28 of law 300 of 1970 of the Charter of the Workers. The law expressly prohibits the remote monitoring of the workers' activities by means of audiovisual systems or other equipment; and it is this particular article, according to the union representatives, that would be infringed by the introduction of this new ID card.
"The ID that was introduced last year and that was delivered to every employee, enables remote monitoring of what they do in the workplace", this can be read in the legal papers signed from lawyers Mario Fezzi, Stefano Chiusolo and Maurizio Borali. And further: "badges containing Rfid chips enable the employer to reconstruct the movements of every employee during the entire working day. With such a system it would be possible to know how long a worker spent at their workplace, how much time they have spent in the bathroom or in the canteen or at the water cooler [coffee machine in the original], which and how many coworkers they became in contact with, how long they spent on the union premises, if they participated or not to the trade-union assemblies, etc ".
In order to sweep away doubts about the real purposes of the innovation, the lawyers of the union state, it would have been enough that Mediaset made public a list of the antennas placed inside the offices and other locations that detect the "presence" of workers carrying the new ID badges. The leadership of Mediaset, however - according to the legal papers filed by the union - has always refused to supply this information.
to get the same effect you'd basically have to flatten all the layer under the filter layer, *then* apply the filter to the resulting and go from there. Obviously as soon as you need to modify anything 'under' the filter layer you're basically SOL and you'd have to do everything from scratch once again.
It'd be quite nice to be able to do filters non-destructively and hopefully with a mask, the same way as it's already nice having adjustment layers.
I mean, if you really want to there is *always* a workaround to the features PS (Elements and CS) has that the gimp has not (flatten the layers, duplicate the resulting, apply the filter/color/whatever to it, etc. etc.) but that doesn't mean it's going to be fun (or easy, if you talk about things like the healing brush, the highlights/shadow adjustments etc. which, unlike CYMK, *every* user has a use for).
and they've been asked for several years already but evidently the gimp developers don't care about them enough to provide them.
I've heard rumours that the next version of CS will have *filters* in layers (meaning, you can create an 'unsharp maks' layer) which will make PS even more powerful.
Let's not even talk about the full PS, the Gimp has quite a way to go to become comparable to even Elements 3.0 in terms of functionality unfortunately.
but it did lose some focus with all the downloadable 'official' units released post core contingency, IMHO a few of them were not as balanced as the original game and created more problems than they solved.
For example in a tournament game years ago (can't believe I still remember this!) on one of the islands map I was Core and had total control of the seas and air and was building up for a final strike against the Arm player: however he invested all the little he had left in building the downloadable Arm amphibious units (can't quite remember the name right now) and he totally cleared me up with them: even the biggest Core ships, laser batteries and dragon teeth were no match for them.
Now, it's not that I'm saying it was unbalanced b/c I lost, heck, I lost many other games to excellent players, it's just that that particular match showed that there was just no point anymore in using the Navy on water maps, since those amph units were way more powerful (and cheap to build).
I really don't think that if Chris Taylor had still been at Cavedog such a unit would've been made available (and for ARM only!) since the 'original' game (and to a certain extent CC) was so extremely well balanced.
I still think that if licensing issues were solved and he had complete control TA2 would be great! Despite it being quite old it's still IMHO the best RTS around... if you don't agree, which recent games are in your book better than TA?
on windows as well, you just need to go in the installation directory, then in the Plugins subdirectory and remove EVERYTHING BUT these 3 files (just move them somewhere else so you can put them back if you have a problem)
EWH32.api Search5.api Search.api
after I did that and disabled the splash screen Acrobat reader 7 loads up nearly instantaneously on XP. I'm not taking credit for this, I found this tip somewhere I can't quite remember right now and it surely works!
heh, I've driven motorbikes only in Europe before coming here to North America, believe me, intersections over here are nothing at all like intersections over there: first of all the roads are usually way wider and secondly you rarely have cars parked right all the way up to the cross street that prevent you from seeing who's coming until it's already too late.
I did manage to drive motorbikes over there for 5 years without accidents (and many thousands of miles) but there have been quite a few times where if I had been 10 feet in front or 10 feet behind I'd have been hit.
I have used many different distributions (started with one of the very first Slackwares in 2000-2001, stayed with them for a while then moved on to a now defunct German distro, then another defunct one, then Debian, then RH7.x, RH9 and now finally FC3) and the glacial pace of Debian development was what caused me to switch to RH.
Most of the things I needed were in unstable (at the time it was potato I think), and unstable was breaking various odds and ends on a weekly basis and I didn't trust it at all so I ended up jumping ship onto RedHat and have never really looked back.
It kind of sucks, as I did like the idea of using Debian, but when it started getting in the way of me being able to work (aka, things I needed were not available for it) I really had no choice but to stop using it.
Every time I brought the issue up with a debian person I'm always told that 'everybody uses unstable anyways so I should do it as well' which is kind of weird, as when most of your user base is using your 'break at will' branch vs your 'stable' one it should be obvious there is a problem.
Good luck to the debian folks anyways, although I have the feeling it's a bit late to be closing the barn door...
it's not the torque, it's the power-to-weight ratio which doesn't have anything to do with how absolutely heavy the bike is. Actually a lighter bike can get you out of tight spots more easily, it being easier to move around and having less inertia.
> Have you driven a big bike (>1000cc) and a small bike (500cc) on the same mountain roads?
I have owned for several years a 50cc moped (extra light, extra small) a 2-stroke 125cc bike (very light, it was one of those 'MotoGP lookalikes') and a 4-stroke 600cc (Honda CBR) which is midsize I'd say. I haven't really noticed any difference in how tight they were able to take turns at speed besides the ones related to the 600cc having a lot better (read: thicker and with a softer compound) tires than the other two. Actually driving the 125cc in some cases was more fun as it being extremely light you could throw it around quite a bit.
> Heaver bikes tend to keep going more
well, yes, if you suddendly pull the clutch at speed a heavier bike will keep going longer, this still doesn't have anything to do with the bike needing 'acceleration' to push against the 'oncoming wind': it's all about frontal cross section and engine power.
And to the guy above who wondered about what accidents I've 'heard about', the vast majorities of accidents friends of mine were into (besides ones where driver error is to blame) have been of these varieties
- t-boning a car that didn't stop at an intersection: braking distance is a heck more important than acceleration here (lighter bike = better, also b/c you can throw it around more). Acceleration here *could* help but in real life situations (very low visibility on the crossing road) it wouldn't make too much of a difference.
- being sideswiped by a car that didn't stop at an intersection: as much as acceleration would theoretically help if you can see it coming, in practice the car comes out of nowhere and bam, you're down
- hitting a car that passes you and turns right in front of you, again, braking distance is way more important
- oil/gravel on the road causing you to wipe out in a corner: no acceleration can save you from this one
To the other guy that said
> Yeah, but how far you fly and how hard you land depend a lot on how much momentum gets transferred to you vs the bike.
Although what you said is true, the difference between a 200lb and a 500lb bike when you're talking about a 3000+lb car is IMHO negligible. If you're talking about an SUV it's even more negligible, plus the heavier the bike the harder it is to throw around, which makes things even riskier (swerving to avoid that concealed pothole is that much harder if your bike *really* wants to keep going straight).
not sure why I even bother but anyways here's some Physics 101 for you:
F = m * a (Newton's 2nd law) doesn't have anything to do with drag.
D (force due to drag) = 0.5 * Cd (drag coefficient) * ro (density of the fluid) * A (frontal area) * v^2 (square of the velocity of the object relative to the fluid) is the equation you should be thinking about.
In fact the equation that you referenced implies that a very, very, very, very light bike would let you experience a much higher 'acceleration' than a very heavy bike (which is pretty much common knowledge).
Slashdot Mirror
I think you should watch Mythbusters, they TOTALLY debunked this myth by using a variety of guns: none of them produced any appreciable effects in terms of the target being propelled backwards.
On a somewhat unrelated note, why don't these tests ever include MMORPGs
as much as that would be nice, unless your MMPORG allows you to record/playback a demo, it would be impossible to make any meaningful comparisons between runs and/or different cards.
...is often more important than code elegance: if you have LOTS of users looking at your product (because it has the features they need) it's going to be very likely that you'll be noticed by more developers, which will bring more features, that will bring more users and so on.
If you try to have a 'perfect' 1.0 you'll never make it, software, by its own nature, is never really 'perfect', there's ALWAYS a better way to do things, especially when new developers come onboard with new ideas and so on. The key is to know when to push for features and when to push for elegance.
I doubt that the kernel would be where it's at today if 'elegance' was the only driver. Of course as time goes by and the software matures it becomes more and more elegant usually (if the design was good in the first place), but you can't expect things to be that way from the beginning if you want anybody to actually get work done with it.
It really drives me nuts when I see open source projects get bogged down in years of 'refactoring' because 'this will enable us to give you the features you really need' only to re-release basically the same product (with very small user visible changes) after 3 years and then go on another cycle of 'refactoring' because in the meantime 'ohhh shiny!!!' new ideas of how to do things 'really' right came up.
Also, again, please stop telling me to 'if you don't like it, code it yourself': I code at work already all day, and like to do other things with my spare time, I'd rather give $70 to Adobe for Photoshop Elements 3.0 than suffer with the Gimp's limitations, it's just way more cost effective for me, and I assume for tons of others giving how much money Adobe is making.
It's also quite sad how a cheap (in $$$) program like Elements is SO much more leaps and bounds better than something that the FOSS community has been working on for so many years.
Although the reverse is usually true for server apps (Apache, PostgreSQL, perl, php, etc. etc.) when it comes to applications the average user actually is exposed to, the FOSS community doesn't fare that well in general (Firefox is a notable exception).
I *wish* netflix was available here, the way things are going we might end up getting only Blockbuster which, for more 'niche' movies, is really not very good :(
users DO NOT CARE if your code is 'elegant' and 'easier to mantain', users WANT THINGS TO WORK whether or not they are 'elegant' or 'adequate'.
I stopped using Konqueror ages ago because it just had way too many incompatibilities with sites I visited, I know the sites were non-standard, likely poorly written or written with IE in mind, but if I need them to do my work, I'll find a web browser that renders them properly.
It's really easy for an OSS project to get caught up in 'elegance' and just keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting things to make it 'clean' or 'modular' code-wise, while the users get fed up with the glacial features development pace and move on to OS/X or Win32 because they actually need to USE the product rather than look at the pretty code.
I assume 'clean room' was implied when he said he did things by the book.
Team A is writing a spec which is basically a glorified description of how the tool/component works: I don't think there's anything legally objectionable in putting down on paper how something works (as in, I give it this input, it gives me this output).
it means that Team A uses the product you want to reverse-engineer and writes as complete of a spec of it as possible, team B then creates the app from the spec without using the original app at all.
As long as somebody provided him with a complete BK spec he could've created his client without ever having used BK at all.
otherwise I doubt the kids will play enough for the study to get any sort of meaningful results.
Seems the guy hasn't made any effort to work with the Gimp people, even when they contacted him.
;) and that's why I'm saying: this guy had an itch (he wanted a Gimp UI more similar to PS), he scratched it and released his modifications so other with the same itch could benefit. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that from the point of view of 'free software development', the whole 'due process' angle is in some way like trying to put some limits on that freedom!
g -it license then?
I am not privy to the exchange(s) between the guy and the Gimp devs: I remember reading Sven posting on the guy's blog that he thought it was 'unfortunate' that he released the hack in this way and that he should've done it the way he had asked (basically via the proper channels). Given this maybe the guy felt that talking with the devs was kind of pointless.
The Gimp developers know a lot of people want a PS-similar interface. It's been talked about for years.
exactly, and it's never been done because they are happy with the interface as it is, regardless how many people think it sucks and it's a barrier to a more ubiquitous Gimp adoption.
It's software developed by people 'scratching an itch' for something they want
I am fully aware of that, hey, I've done it myself
It's as if the Gimp devs said 'yeah, we released things under a license that allows you to do this, BUT, you really should not exercise your rights and instead partecipate in xyz committee that might or might not decide that your itch is worth scratching'.
Should the Gimp be re-released under a GPL-but-need-a-committee-approval-before-modifyin
You never have any guarantee a feature will be present unless you're either willing to code it yourself or pay someone to do so.
exactly, that's why after several years of trying to work with Gimp and being frustrated by its lack of progress (when it comes to features people actually need, like a PS-like UI, adjustment layers, better color tools, etc.) I took my money and bought Photoshop Elements 3 which, together with my PS5 LE, does everything I need for now. When the new CS comes out, if they'll have the $299 upgrade path from Elements 3 I might even get that.
A development model based on 'scratching an itch' is fine for an emergent OS, with Linux coming more and more in the mainstream users expect to be listened to, catered to and most of all respected, and not told to 'code it or shut up'.
In this case the non-free software world is better: PS is not #1 because it sucks, PS is #1 because it's the best, otherwise PSP and others would take its place. Gimp has really no competition in the free software world and so it can just rest on its laurels and have the whole 'we are the devs and WE put in what WE like, users should shut up or code' attitude.
He's not violating the law, just unwritten rules of etiquette; It's polite to try to cooperate before forking.
I'm not the guy, so I don't really know his motivations, but he might have felt that 'do first, ask for permission later' was best in this case to create buzz about this issue.
it's that it seems he may have changed parts which didn't have to be changed in order to achive what he did
if that's the case, and it could be done better, somebody will do it better (if they so decide). If the Gimpshop guy won't (or won't be able to) mantain his modifications, hey, whatever, people will just go back to 'mainstream' Gimp which by then, likely, will have some option to achieve the same functionality I bet. It could also happen that some devs who'd have liked to PS-ize Gimp as much as possible (but couldn't) will join his effort and there will be a 'true' fork.
What exactly do you base this on? The Gimp developer who posted seemed quite open to the idea.
I base my opinion over many years of resistance by the Gimp developers when asked to make Gimp more like PS (the whole 'Gimp is not PS' thing) and their priorities within Gimp itself (spending who knows how much time on Script-Fu and successors when an extremely basic and extremely useful function like adjustment layers was not worked on).
Obviously when faced with LOTS of users cheering this modification the Gimp developers will be a lot more open to the idea than if a lone developer asked for this feature through the 'proper channels'.
It's not that I think Gimp devs are evil, far from it, it's just that sometimes it seems they think their way is the 'best way' and people should just follow their lead (if I had a dime for every complaint about Gimp not having only one window I'd be rich by now for example).
This is entirely their prerogative, them being the ones who do the work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is what the users would like, given the huge cheers this very simple mod generated for example.
It would be nice if the Gimp devs listened to some experienced PS folks (not me, I'm no expert) who could point them in the right direction in terms of features users REALLY want vs features that the devs want.
the gimpshop guy by the gimp developers: they chose a license for Gimp that allows this kind of modification, the guy was definitely within his rights to go ahead with it whether or not Sven (or others) would've preferred him to 'work with them and not fork things'.
Rather than focusing about his 'rude' modus operandi Gimp developers should notice the HUGE positive reaction to his modification by 'normal users': if instead of sitting in their ivory tower and going on about 'Gimp is not PS, we won't change how the UI operates' the Gimp devs listened to users who have been begging for a PS-like UI for YEARS there wouldn't have been any need for a fork (they've also been beggin for adjustment layers as well, but who knows when that will happen).
I thought that this is what Open Source is all about: if you don't like it, fix it and release it (like this guy did).
If he had 'followed due process' he'd just have been ignored because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'. This seems like a case of damned if you do (you shouldn't fork the gimp) and damned if you don't (you're not a coder, so you have no right to complain).
vancouver (and the whole lower mainland) works perfectly at the highest level of detail (they look like aerial photos more than satellite)
pretty cool, thanks for posting the link!
the fish sure is not that good with Italian-English translations: I really doubt this is an April Fool's joke btw, here is a stab at fixing what the fish came up with
============
According to the union, in the ID badges there is an
instrument meant to control the movements of the workers
"spy Microchip for workers"
the Cgil union denounces Mediaset
by LUCA FAZZO
MILAN - Hardly twenty days ago the Guarantor for the privacy had warned people against the usage of instruments that control the movement of workers from a distance [remotely]. It was now discovered that the company founded from the Prime Minister employs the microchips in their ID cards. Yesterday morning Mediaset and three societies controlled by it (Videotime, Rti andIndustrial Electronics) have been denounced by the Cgil [it's an union] for antitrade-union behavior in the Job Court of Milan.
The leadership of Mediaset is accused of having inserted in the new ID badges with magnetic band, distributed to the end of 2004 to approximately 2.500 workers, an Rfid microcircuit. This is a last generation chip that's usually used to control the movements of goods and objects (it is an Rfid chip, for example, that enables the Telepass system to work [this is a toll booth automatic collection system available on Italian freeways]) but that Mediaset applies instead to persons: in this way, according to the union, Mediaset could follow live and also store [for later data mining] all the movements of its employee in the workplace. [thus creating] some sort of Big Brother that is in a position of being able to track every step workers take.
Yesterday, when the news broke, Mediaset reacted with "astonishment". "Twice - the representatives of Mediaset said - we have reassured the union verbally and in writing on the use of these technologies. It's simply a chip that facilitates the movement of people within the company buildings. We call a proximity chip: the doors open on their own when workers approach without them having to swipe their cards, and the parking lot barriers will raise automatically as well. Even if, and we aren't implying that this is what happening, these technologies could enable remote monitoring, Mediaset would not be interested to use them that way. As far as we know this same technology has been used in other places/companies without any problems.
But the representatives of the Cgil [trade union] within Mediaset, evidently, have not been convinced of the harmlessness of this electronic device. And they denounced [legally, they filed papers] the company for violation of article 28 of law 300 of 1970 of the Charter of the Workers. The law expressly prohibits the remote monitoring of the workers' activities by means of audiovisual systems or other equipment; and it is this particular article, according to the union representatives, that would be infringed by the introduction of this new ID card.
"The ID that was introduced last year and that was delivered to every employee, enables remote monitoring of what they do in the workplace", this can be read in the legal papers signed from lawyers Mario Fezzi, Stefano Chiusolo and Maurizio Borali. And further: "badges containing Rfid chips enable the employer to reconstruct the movements of every employee during the entire working day. With such a system it would be possible to know how long a worker spent at their workplace, how much time they have spent in the bathroom or in the canteen or at the water cooler [coffee machine in the original], which and how many coworkers they became in contact with, how long they spent on the union premises, if they participated or not to the trade-union assemblies, etc ".
In order to sweep away doubts about the real purposes of the innovation, the lawyers of the union state, it would have been enough that Mediaset made public a list of the antennas placed inside the offices and other locations that detect the "presence" of workers carrying the new ID badges. The leadership of Mediaset, however - according to the legal papers filed by the union - has always refused to supply this information.
to get the same effect you'd basically have to flatten all the layer under the filter layer, *then* apply the filter to the resulting and go from there. Obviously as soon as you need to modify anything 'under' the filter layer you're basically SOL and you'd have to do everything from scratch once again.
It'd be quite nice to be able to do filters non-destructively and hopefully with a mask, the same way as it's already nice having adjustment layers.
I mean, if you really want to there is *always* a workaround to the features PS (Elements and CS) has that the gimp has not (flatten the layers, duplicate the resulting, apply the filter/color/whatever to it, etc. etc.) but that doesn't mean it's going to be fun (or easy, if you talk about things like the healing brush, the highlights/shadow adjustments etc. which, unlike CYMK, *every* user has a use for).
and they've been asked for several years already but evidently the gimp developers don't care about them enough to provide them.
I've heard rumours that the next version of CS will have *filters* in layers (meaning, you can create an 'unsharp maks' layer) which will make PS even more powerful.
Let's not even talk about the full PS, the Gimp has quite a way to go to become comparable to even Elements 3.0 in terms of functionality unfortunately.
but it did lose some focus with all the downloadable 'official' units released post core contingency, IMHO a few of them were not as balanced as the original game and created more problems than they solved.
For example in a tournament game years ago (can't believe I still remember this!) on one of the islands map I was Core and had total control of the seas and air and was building up for a final strike against the Arm player: however he invested all the little he had left in building the downloadable Arm amphibious units (can't quite remember the name right now) and he totally cleared me up with them: even the biggest Core ships, laser batteries and dragon teeth were no match for them.
Now, it's not that I'm saying it was unbalanced b/c I lost, heck, I lost many other games to excellent players, it's just that that particular match showed that there was just no point anymore in using the Navy on water maps, since those amph units were way more powerful (and cheap to build).
I really don't think that if Chris Taylor had still been at Cavedog such a unit would've been made available (and for ARM only!) since the 'original' game (and to a certain extent CC) was so extremely well balanced.
I still think that if licensing issues were solved and he had complete control TA2 would be great! Despite it being quite old it's still IMHO the best RTS around... if you don't agree, which recent games are in your book better than TA?
to remove the ad (top right corner) in windows just go in the options and uncheck the item that says 'check for updates and display messages'
on windows as well, you just need to go in the installation directory, then in the Plugins subdirectory and remove EVERYTHING BUT these 3 files (just move them somewhere else so you can put them back if you have a problem)
EWH32.api
Search5.api
Search.api
after I did that and disabled the splash screen Acrobat reader 7 loads up nearly instantaneously on XP. I'm not taking credit for this, I found this tip somewhere I can't quite remember right now and it surely works!
heh, I've driven motorbikes only in Europe before coming here to North America, believe me, intersections over here are nothing at all like intersections over there: first of all the roads are usually way wider and secondly you rarely have cars parked right all the way up to the cross street that prevent you from seeing who's coming until it's already too late.
I did manage to drive motorbikes over there for 5 years without accidents (and many thousands of miles) but there have been quite a few times where if I had been 10 feet in front or 10 feet behind I'd have been hit.
I thought I started using Slackware in 1991-1992, but looking back at my old emails it was around October 1994, my bad.
I have used many different distributions (started with one of the very first Slackwares in 2000-2001, stayed with them for a while then moved on to a now defunct German distro, then another defunct one, then Debian, then RH7.x, RH9 and now finally FC3) and the glacial pace of Debian development was what caused me to switch to RH.
Most of the things I needed were in unstable (at the time it was potato I think), and unstable was breaking various odds and ends on a weekly basis and I didn't trust it at all so I ended up jumping ship onto RedHat and have never really looked back.
It kind of sucks, as I did like the idea of using Debian, but when it started getting in the way of me being able to work (aka, things I needed were not available for it) I really had no choice but to stop using it.
Every time I brought the issue up with a debian person I'm always told that 'everybody uses unstable anyways so I should do it as well' which is kind of weird, as when most of your user base is using your 'break at will' branch vs your 'stable' one it should be obvious there is a problem.
Good luck to the debian folks anyways, although I have the feeling it's a bit late to be closing the barn door...
it's not the torque, it's the power-to-weight ratio which doesn't have anything to do with how absolutely heavy the bike is. Actually a lighter bike can get you out of tight spots more easily, it being easier to move around and having less inertia.
> Have you driven a big bike (>1000cc) and a small bike (500cc) on the same mountain roads?
I have owned for several years a 50cc moped (extra light, extra small) a 2-stroke 125cc bike (very light, it was one of those 'MotoGP lookalikes') and a 4-stroke 600cc (Honda CBR) which is midsize I'd say. I haven't really noticed any difference in how tight they were able to take turns at speed besides the ones related to the 600cc having a lot better (read: thicker and with a softer compound) tires than the other two. Actually driving the 125cc in some cases was more fun as it being extremely light you could throw it around quite a bit.
> Heaver bikes tend to keep going more
well, yes, if you suddendly pull the clutch at speed a heavier bike will keep going longer, this still doesn't have anything to do with the bike needing 'acceleration' to push against the 'oncoming wind': it's all about frontal cross section and engine power.
And to the guy above who wondered about what accidents I've 'heard about', the vast majorities of accidents friends of mine were into (besides ones where driver error is to blame) have been of these varieties
- t-boning a car that didn't stop at an intersection: braking distance is a heck more important than acceleration here (lighter bike = better, also b/c you can throw it around more). Acceleration here *could* help but in real life situations (very low visibility on the crossing road) it wouldn't make too much of a difference.
- being sideswiped by a car that didn't stop at an intersection: as much as acceleration would theoretically help if you can see it coming, in practice the car comes out of nowhere and bam, you're down
- hitting a car that passes you and turns right in front of you, again, braking distance is way more important
- oil/gravel on the road causing you to wipe out in a corner: no acceleration can save you from this one
To the other guy that said
> Yeah, but how far you fly and how hard you land depend a lot on how much momentum gets transferred to you vs the bike.
Although what you said is true, the difference between a 200lb and a 500lb bike when you're talking about a 3000+lb car is IMHO negligible. If you're talking about an SUV it's even more negligible, plus the heavier the bike the harder it is to throw around, which makes things even riskier (swerving to avoid that concealed pothole is that much harder if your bike *really* wants to keep going straight).
> But drag = mass * acceleration.
not sure why I even bother but anyways here's some Physics 101 for you:
F = m * a (Newton's 2nd law) doesn't have anything to do with drag.
D (force due to drag) = 0.5 * Cd (drag coefficient) * ro (density of the fluid) * A (frontal area) * v^2 (square of the velocity of the object relative to the fluid) is the equation you should be thinking about.
In fact the equation that you referenced implies that a very, very, very, very light bike would let you experience a much higher 'acceleration' than a very heavy bike (which is pretty much common knowledge).