As some others have already noted, this does not prove anything. Negative numbers are only available through definition, if they are defined at all. However, there's no need to have them (then you just can't use the "normal" math you learn at school).
The "normal" axioms used in everyday math are the following (not necessarily in that order - and please forgive me if some of the translations are wrong):
I. Calculation laws
We assume there is an operation + and *, which operate on elements of some set S, and the result of which is in the set S.
These define a few basic properties about the operations + and *, and how they work together. We still have no idea what the objects a, b and c are on which they operate.
4. Zero: There exists an element 0 such that 0+a=a for all a. 5. One: There exists an element 1 such that 1*a=a for all a.
Now we have two defined elements in the set S. Actually, though rarely mentioned, we need additionally to assume that 0 is not 1, because the set {0} with 0=1 would fulfill all the requirements above and below.
Now we can ask what is 1+1? We could define 1+1=1, and get a Boolean algebra. Or we might have 1+1=2 and 2+1=0, which would be summing mod 3.
6. Opposite number: For every a there is an x such that a+x=0.
This still doesn't require "negative" numbers. In the latter example above, the opposite number of 1 would be 2, since (by definition) 2+1=0.
7. Inverse number: For every a not equal to 0 there is an x such that a*x=1.
In the case of natural numbers, this would force us to adopt rational numbers, but otherwise it's still not necessary. In the above example the inverse number of 1 is 1 because 1*1=1 and the inverse of 2 is 2, since 2*2 = (1+1)*2 = 1*2+1*2 = 2+2 = (1+1)+2 = 1+(1+2) = 1+0 = 1.
II. Ordering relations
For every a, b and c holds: 1. either a<b, a=b or a>b 2. if a<b and b<c then a<c 3. a<b is equivalent with a+c<b+c 4. if a>0 and b>0 then a*b>0
This requires us to expand our number set. The above example would be contradicting at least axiom II.3, since, if we say that 0<1<2, then 2=1+1<2+1=0, which is a contradiction.
At this point axioms I.1-I.5 make necessary all natural numbers (0, 1, 2,...), I.6 makes negative numbers necessary, and I.7 makes rational numbers necessary. But what about real numbers?
They are clinched in a very interesting way (which can also be formulated in different ways):
III. Completeness axiom
1. Every bounded set has a smallest upper bound and a largest lower bound.
Take, for instance, the set T={1,3,7}. In this case all the numbers 7, 15 and 543632 are upper bounds for the set (because all elements of the set are less or equal to them), but 7 is the smallest possible upper bound.
Then take the set T={x|x^2<2} (the set of all numbers for which x^2<2). It's clear that it is bounded, but if you take any rational q for an upper limit, you have q^2>2, and so you can find a smaller q', q^2>q'^2>2. Therefore the lowest upper bound cannot be a rational number, and we must "fill in" the gaps left by rational number with the irrational numbers.
That's a short preview of how real numbers are (or can be - there are alternative ways) defined. The point is that only after you pick your axioms can you really say what you have or have not. You don't need to pick the axioms above - for instance congruence calculations (calculations mod some integer m) are very useful - and in fact your equation a^3+b^3 = (a+b)(a^2-ab+b^2) is true also in this case, even though there aren't any explicit "negative" numbers defined!
[Note that there may be minute errors in the above - it's been several years since I played with the axioms last time.]
There is, but it doesn't have the info either. I guess they spider their sites quite often. They've even taken the info off of their previousYear-EndZeitgeists (assuming the data was there).
However, some other country versions still have them: cauk
Considering Tokamak based fusion plants will almost certainly not be commercially viable in the near future ITER seems like a waste of money
Define 'near'. ITER is supposed to produce 10 times as much energy as is consumes, so it will be a viable power plant. Will fusion energy be more expensive for the next 50 years than fossil fuels are today? Very probably. But what about when you've burnt all the fossil fuels (at the current rate around 50-150 years)? Fusion will be very commercially viable then. If you don't R&D things beforehands, you'll have a major energy crisis on your hands soon...
Of course there are different tools for different needs, but Word and Latex are meant to fulfill the same need - making articles, reports, books etc. They work with different design principles - Word is WYSIWYG, while in Latex you type the content and Latex formats it - but they're designed for the same thing. And when writing something, Latex simply makes it better looking.
Sure, there are problems with Latex, it doesn't interoperate as seamlessly(?) with other apps, and in some rare cases it can be a pain when Latex decides to place something stupidly, but on the whole, the outcome is much better looking that with Word.
Re:PP looks like crap - no vid card can change tha
on
Accelerated PowerPoint?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
My chief complaint about Powerpoint has always been that while I sit here with a computer capable of rendering Lord of the Rings-style special effects, when I do a presentation it looks like build-your-own-greeting-card software circa 1996. There's just no excuse for it. it's not that hard to make things look nice instead of like crap.
What I've always wondered is why Word, having been in "development" for around a decade, still by default makes articles that look like crap compared to TeX/Latex, which has been around since 1985!
Yeah, you can say that Word makes a decent job at the typesetting if you haven't compared them much. But after reading a few articles in default Latex typesetting, an article in default Word typesetting is pure horror to your eyes. The text just pops out of an article collection, and not for its benefit.
What many people don't realize is that typesetting is not just about putting words one after another in a line. As Wikipedia says: "Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in an aesthetic form on paper or some other media" (emphasis mine). Word simply hasn't got a clue when it comes to aesthetics.
A good example is line justification: Word (as far as I can tell) simply crams as many words on a line as possible (and most often even hyphenation isn't on, though this can arguably be blamed on the user). The extra space is put equally between the words and the last line of a paragraph is never justified. Latex, on the other hand, tries to find line breaks which look good on a whole, avoids hyphenating when not needed, adds more space after punctuation marks, and justifies the last line of the paragraph if it's almost as wide as the paragraph. Also for instance a consecutive f and i are combined into a ligature. Simply put: it looks better.
The total is a sum of many small things, that Word just doesn't even try to handle (at least by default, I doubt at all). I'm not saying that I know much about typography, but I sure can tell what looks good and what doesn't, and it sure as hell isn't rocket science.
I reported it 9 months ago. After waiting a good 6 months and getting no word back, let alone seeing a fix, I just added a hack.
That is odd. I've sent one minor bug report and a few suggestions to them, and every time I've first received an automatic confirmation of receiving the email and within a few days a reply. Maybe the message got stuck somewhere, and should be re-reported?
Of course, I'd like to see what the people who call Google a great, loving, standards-obeying company would say to the fact that Google can't handle application/xhtml+xml either?
Well, if you've found a bug in Google, why don't you report it instead of making a hack and whining on Slashdot? That sounds like such a big, clear bug and quite easy to fix that they'd surely be interested.
We know there is 1 planets/moons with life and serveral unknown. Our very palimerary evidence suggests volcanoes are twice as common as life.
You can't use the Earth as a data point for existance of life alone, because Earth has no option of being dead: if the Earth was dead, we would not be here wondering about it.
I am hoping someone resolves the issue of whether gravity travels at the speed of light or near it, or whether gravity travels instantly.
As you yourself mentioned, the jury is still out on this one.
The general consensus of the scientific world is that gravity probably travels at the speed of light, but the important point is that no-one has been able to measure it. Einstein's theory predicts that gravity travels at the speed of light, but if some experiment shows the speed to be something else, then the theories have to be though out again.
A little over a year ago, a group claimed having measured the speed of gravity to be close to that of light, but many have disputed the study as having measured another physical effect, not the speed of gravity.
I have no idea what studies the article mentioned in the grandparent post refers to, as I haven't heard anything about it before, and the article doesn't have any references. Though I haven't researched the subject, I wouldn't hold it very reliable. If somebody had reliably measured the speed of gravity by 1998, it would certainly be in general knowledge of the scientific world.
While measuring the speed of gravity is an important step in science, I wouldn't hold my breath for it to provide FTL communication. The most probable outcome of the measurements will be to confirm it to be very close to the speed of light. However, gravity is a very troublesome force also regarding the unification of forces and making the Theory of Everything, so knowing the speed of gravity for a fact would help along a lot.
With people so used to draconian license terms from traditional Windows software, why not have the GPL as another licensing agreement to have to look through? Technically not exactly accurate, but who really reads the things anyway?
Exactly because of that. Nobody reads them.
Anybody who bothers with them will just see it's the GPL and go "Doh! I don't have to accept this." Everybody else just sees it as being another crappy windowish have-to-accept-the-license-to-continue window.
Why not separate GPL programs by NOT having any legal junk? You don't need to accept the GPL, so don't force it on the user. I'd rather just install and use the program, without any of the legal muck.
The licensee shall be deemed as having accepted the terms and conditions of this Agreement by the occurrence of the first of the following events:
- (i) loading the Software by any or all means, notably, by downloading from a remote server, or by loading from a physical medium;
Even without the download clause, what I don't like about this license is that you have to accept it. The GPL specifically says that to use the software, you do not need to accept the GPL:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
That's a major part I like in the GPL - it's not an EULA (though some programs stupidly splash it in your face with an "I Accept" button the first time the program is run). If you don't like it, you can still use the software. It's only if you wish to do things normally forbidden by law (copying, modifying) that you have to accept the GPL.
To me this sounds like a clear case of "technology X is really cool. Let's find some reason to include it in product Y." Which often means that product Y becomes much more complicated than it needs to be.
How about first looking for a list of browser "needs" so to speak.
I'd say this is more like saying "I'm capable of adding this kind of stuff (and will be doing it anyway as part of research), do people have any itches we could scratch at the same time?"
Machine learning could be one of the things that will make browsing a better experience, and therefore it's nice to see somebody experimenting with it. Often you just can't imagine how useful some feature can be before you've used it for a while. Nothing will (hopefully) be added to the main branch before it has been tried and tested and deemed useful.
I've always thought Microsoft made the best keyboards and mice, but second-rate everything else. Turns out that they also deserve credit for making content sites.
Paranoid? Probably, but still take everything with a grain of salt, especially when there can be second motives for journalism. One "good" story doesn't make a magazine reputable.
Moving windows isn't that important, I agree, but it is quite annoying not being able to have Firefox running on both screens.
That's true, it's actually a second downside of the setup. I use Galeon on my primary screen and Mozilla on the second. However, I'd imagine that you could just create another Mozilla profile and use that on the second screen (if Firefox supports profiles).
(Okay, I'm just guessing. I've never used the profiles and see them more as a nuisance than a benefit..)
I had the same thing. I'd once managed to destroy a FAT header by overwriting it, but I could restore it by copying the beginning part from an identical other drive.
The next time when re-installing Linux, however, I suddenly realized that I had just several times overwritten the whole data part of my drive C:.
The first thought was one of horror while a cold dread spread over me. All those years of collecting useful programs, making a complete DOS system, were gone...
After a few seconds, it was replaced by a warm, fulfilling sensation of happiness and freedom. I've never looked back...:-)
(Fortunately, my own data was on drive D, and only the programs and OS were lost. Not that I've had much use for the data either, but it's a nice record of history.)
I use a multihead setup, and I just don't see the appeal in having two seperate hermetically sealed environments on my desk.
Two words: virtual desktops.
I always get terribly claustrophobic when using a Windows system - there just isn't space to do anything. On my machine when I want more space I just flick the mouse and I have a new, clean desktop. I often do some task until it becomes tiring, and just leave it open. When I feel like it I just return to that desktop. I typically have at any time some 5-30 browser windows open on different desktops. (I've recently started using tabs, but I like to hold only closely related things in one window.)
With the current setup I have two screens, both of which have an 8x2 grid of desktops at my disposal. Very often some 10-25 of those 32 are in use (currently for instance 14 of then have windows open).
Why would not you want the ability to... use the same keyboard and mouse effortlessly on the monitors?
I can use the same keyboard and mouse on both monitors. I just hit alt-tab and the cursor switches to the other screen.
Why would not want to be able to copy and paste between the monitors?
Copy-paste works flawlessly between the screens. (This most likely would NOT be the case if I was running two different X servers, but both screens are currently run by the same server.)
With xinerama I can run gimp with one monitor showing the fullsized image and the other zoomed in for editing.
I typically prefer to work on one display, while the second one has "real-time" stuff like email and IRC open, plus a few extra terminals. My 21" primary display generally has enough space on it for working, and if it gets cluttered, I just flick my wrist and have a new desktop at my disposal.
Really, the only downside of the setup is that you can't move windows from one screen to the other. I've considered using something like xmove, but it seems rather a hassle running everything through it. However, once you get used to working with two separate screens, you want to move windows between the screens quite rarely. I recall wishing for that feature only once or twice in the last few months, and even then it was only a matter of convenience - I just had to close the program and start it on the other screen.
Still, if you like Xinerama, then by all means use it! It's all about choise.:-)
Using a dual-head aware window manager (I use Openbox 2.3, they dropped multihead in favour of Xinerama in 3.x) you get pretty much what you describe, except that you switch screen by moving your mouse.
You don't need a window manager for that, simply configuring your X without Xinerama support and setting the second screen on the right (or some other) side of the first one will perform just that. (You may need a dualhead aware window manager to manage them, or start a separate window manager for each one as I do.)
However, I specifically didn't want moving from one screen to the other with the mouse, because I want to use virtual desktops (or whatever they're called) on both screens. Moving the mouse to the edge of a screen now switches the desktop on that screen, not the screen the mouse is on.
Actually, it's really not much different at all. You run different XServers with different InputDevice sections in their configurations, and you're on.
Except that Linux doesn't very easily know how to handle multiple separate keyboards on one computer. That's the point.
Not relating directly to the above, but I think this may interest some people:
When I got a dualhead card, I knew that I wanted two separate desktops, between which I can switch with a hotkey, not by scrolling the mouse to the other display (I wanted to use virtual desktops on both). I was astounded that I could find absolutely no way of doing this, and no references to it on the Net.
The best I could do was make the screens separate and stop the mouse from going from the edge of one display to another, but then I found no way of moving the pointer to the other screen.
After a few months I found a suitable function call in the X libraries and wrote a small program, switchscreen, to switch between the displays. Now I've got two totally separate desktops between which I can move with a simple alt-tab.
You can read the details for configuring your X system like this in the README file included in the package.
Heh, there was once a time where I had three mice (only 1 cursor though) - I had a normal PS2 mouse plugged in, an old COM port (I think.. never been too sure what port it was) mouse and a wireless USB mouse all plugged in at the same time, and they could all control the cursor.
This bit's talking about having four displays, four keyboards and four mice, where each mouce/keyboard pair controls a separate desktop/display. Completely different thing from just sticking a few more InputDevice-sections in the XF86Config.
Yep. I was astounded by the $6.45 in Sweden. Here in Finland (right next to it) I'd say that a typical rate would be around 1-2 euros an hour (the only price I could find on the net was 1,70e/h, about $2/h).
However, it would seem that the type of net cafes differ from country to country. Here in Finland I don't know really of any place where the "main thing" is getting a net connection (excluding a small net-oriented library in the center of Helsinki, where access is free). However, some cafes have Internet terminals (or even WiFi) which can often be used for free while you're in the cafe. I've heard a proverb once that in Finland the coffee costs money but the Internet is free, while everywhere else the 'Net costs but the coffee is free.
I guess this is pretty technically cool, but as a user of a desktop system (aren't we all?) I'm not actually sure of how this would benefit me. Would I, for example, be more efficient in my job using this?
Have you checked out the video demo of using Looking Glass? It looks pretty slick, and while it's hard to say whether in its present form it would make a better desktop, it certainly shows that a 3D desktop could potentially be in many ways better than the modern 2D desktops.
The current projects like Looking Glass and Metisse aren't meant for large-scale use immediately. They are experiments in what a 3D desktop could offer, and whether it could provide a better user experience. In the future typical desktop computers will have more and more CPU/GPU power to spare, so speding it on the user interface is only beneficial.
After seeing the Looking Glass demo above, I'd say that anybody claiming straight out that a 3D desktop is of no use whatsoever is pretty short-sighted. Who knows, maybe Looking Glass will become the next killer desktop? Maybe a 3D desktop is a bad idea and counter-productive? These projects are made specifically to find that out.
IMDB User Comments: Michael Moore is a traitor to his country
Another interesting point are the ratings for the movie from US viewers and non-US viewers. In both the most commonly voted ratings are 10 and 1 (after those 9 and 8), accounting for about 85% of all votes. I've never seen such a divided set of ratings for any movie.
Still more interesting is that of US viewers give 57% give a rating 10, 27% give 1. Of non-US viewers 80% give 10, 8% give 1.
Everybody can draw their own conclusions from this, but I'd say this is one movie worth seeing - though with a grain of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
As some others have already noted, this does not prove anything. Negative numbers are only available through definition, if they are defined at all. However, there's no need to have them (then you just can't use the "normal" math you learn at school).
...), I.6 makes negative numbers necessary, and I.7 makes rational numbers necessary. But what about real numbers?
The "normal" axioms used in everyday math are the following (not necessarily in that order - and please forgive me if some of the translations are wrong):
I. Calculation laws
We assume there is an operation + and *, which operate on elements of some set S, and the result of which is in the set S.
1. Commutativity: a+b=b+a, a*b=b*a
2. Associativity: a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c, a*(b*c)=(a*b)*c
3. Distributive law: a*(b+c)=a*b+a*c
These define a few basic properties about the operations + and *, and how they work together. We still have no idea what the objects a, b and c are on which they operate.
4. Zero: There exists an element 0 such that 0+a=a for all a.
5. One: There exists an element 1 such that 1*a=a for all a.
Now we have two defined elements in the set S. Actually, though rarely mentioned, we need additionally to assume that 0 is not 1, because the set {0} with 0=1 would fulfill all the requirements above and below.
Now we can ask what is 1+1? We could define 1+1=1, and get a Boolean algebra. Or we might have 1+1=2 and 2+1=0, which would be summing mod 3.
6. Opposite number: For every a there is an x such that a+x=0.
This still doesn't require "negative" numbers. In the latter example above, the opposite number of 1 would be 2, since (by definition) 2+1=0.
7. Inverse number: For every a not equal to 0 there is an x such that a*x=1.
In the case of natural numbers, this would force us to adopt rational numbers, but otherwise it's still not necessary. In the above example the inverse number of 1 is 1 because 1*1=1 and the inverse of 2 is 2, since 2*2 = (1+1)*2 = 1*2+1*2 = 2+2 = (1+1)+2 = 1+(1+2) = 1+0 = 1.
II. Ordering relations
For every a, b and c holds:
1. either a<b, a=b or a>b
2. if a<b and b<c then a<c
3. a<b is equivalent with a+c<b+c
4. if a>0 and b>0 then a*b>0
This requires us to expand our number set. The above example would be contradicting at least axiom II.3, since, if we say that 0<1<2, then 2=1+1<2+1=0, which is a contradiction.
At this point axioms I.1-I.5 make necessary all natural numbers (0, 1, 2,
They are clinched in a very interesting way (which can also be formulated in different ways):
III. Completeness axiom
1. Every bounded set has a smallest upper bound and a largest lower bound.
Take, for instance, the set T={1,3,7}. In this case all the numbers 7, 15 and 543632 are upper bounds for the set (because all elements of the set are less or equal to them), but 7 is the smallest possible upper bound.
Then take the set T={x|x^2<2} (the set of all numbers for which x^2<2). It's clear that it is bounded, but if you take any rational q for an upper limit, you have q^2>2, and so you can find a smaller q', q^2>q'^2>2. Therefore the lowest upper bound cannot be a rational number, and we must "fill in" the gaps left by rational number with the irrational numbers.
That's a short preview of how real numbers are (or can be - there are alternative ways) defined. The point is that only after you pick your axioms can you really say what you have or have not. You don't need to pick the axioms above - for instance congruence calculations (calculations mod some integer m) are very useful - and in fact your equation a^3+b^3 = (a+b)(a^2-ab+b^2) is true also in this case, even though there aren't any explicit "negative" numbers defined!
[Note that there may be minute errors in the above - it's been several years since I played with the axioms last time.]
There is, but it doesn't have the info either. I guess they spider their sites quite often. They've even taken the info off of their previous Year-End Zeitgeists (assuming the data was there).
However, some other country versions still have them: ca uk
Get them while you can...
Considering Tokamak based fusion plants will almost certainly not be commercially viable in the near future ITER seems like a waste of money
Define 'near'. ITER is supposed to produce 10 times as much energy as is consumes, so it will be a viable power plant. Will fusion energy be more expensive for the next 50 years than fossil fuels are today? Very probably. But what about when you've burnt all the fossil fuels (at the current rate around 50-150 years)? Fusion will be very commercially viable then. If you don't R&D things beforehands, you'll have a major energy crisis on your hands soon...
Notepad is not Word is not QuarkXPress.
Of course there are different tools for different needs, but Word and Latex are meant to fulfill the same need - making articles, reports, books etc. They work with different design principles - Word is WYSIWYG, while in Latex you type the content and Latex formats it - but they're designed for the same thing. And when writing something, Latex simply makes it better looking.
Sure, there are problems with Latex, it doesn't interoperate as seamlessly(?) with other apps, and in some rare cases it can be a pain when Latex decides to place something stupidly, but on the whole, the outcome is much better looking that with Word.
My chief complaint about Powerpoint has always been that while I sit here with a computer capable of rendering Lord of the Rings-style special effects, when I do a presentation it looks like build-your-own-greeting-card software circa 1996. There's just no excuse for it. it's not that hard to make things look nice instead of like crap.
What I've always wondered is why Word, having been in "development" for around a decade, still by default makes articles that look like crap compared to TeX/Latex, which has been around since 1985!
Yeah, you can say that Word makes a decent job at the typesetting if you haven't compared them much. But after reading a few articles in default Latex typesetting, an article in default Word typesetting is pure horror to your eyes. The text just pops out of an article collection, and not for its benefit.
What many people don't realize is that typesetting is not just about putting words one after another in a line. As Wikipedia says: "Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in an aesthetic form on paper or some other media" (emphasis mine). Word simply hasn't got a clue when it comes to aesthetics.
A good example is line justification: Word (as far as I can tell) simply crams as many words on a line as possible (and most often even hyphenation isn't on, though this can arguably be blamed on the user). The extra space is put equally between the words and the last line of a paragraph is never justified. Latex, on the other hand, tries to find line breaks which look good on a whole, avoids hyphenating when not needed, adds more space after punctuation marks, and justifies the last line of the paragraph if it's almost as wide as the paragraph. Also for instance a consecutive f and i are combined into a ligature. Simply put: it looks better.
The total is a sum of many small things, that Word just doesn't even try to handle (at least by default, I doubt at all). I'm not saying that I know much about typography, but I sure can tell what looks good and what doesn't, and it sure as hell isn't rocket science.
I reported it 9 months ago. After waiting a good 6 months and getting no word back, let alone seeing a fix, I just added a hack.
That is odd. I've sent one minor bug report and a few suggestions to them, and every time I've first received an automatic confirmation of receiving the email and within a few days a reply. Maybe the message got stuck somewhere, and should be re-reported?
Of course, I'd like to see what the people who call Google a great, loving, standards-obeying company would say to the fact that Google can't handle application/xhtml+xml either?
Well, if you've found a bug in Google, why don't you report it instead of making a hack and whining on Slashdot? That sounds like such a big, clear bug and quite easy to fix that they'd surely be interested.
We know there is 1 planets/moons with life and serveral unknown. Our very palimerary evidence suggests volcanoes are twice as common as life.
You can't use the Earth as a data point for existance of life alone, because Earth has no option of being dead: if the Earth was dead, we would not be here wondering about it.
I am hoping someone resolves the issue of whether gravity travels at the speed of light or near it, or whether gravity travels instantly.
As you yourself mentioned, the jury is still out on this one.
The general consensus of the scientific world is that gravity probably travels at the speed of light, but the important point is that no-one has been able to measure it. Einstein's theory predicts that gravity travels at the speed of light, but if some experiment shows the speed to be something else, then the theories have to be though out again.
A little over a year ago, a group claimed having measured the speed of gravity to be close to that of light, but many have disputed the study as having measured another physical effect, not the speed of gravity.
I have no idea what studies the article mentioned in the grandparent post refers to, as I haven't heard anything about it before, and the article doesn't have any references. Though I haven't researched the subject, I wouldn't hold it very reliable. If somebody had reliably measured the speed of gravity by 1998, it would certainly be in general knowledge of the scientific world.
While measuring the speed of gravity is an important step in science, I wouldn't hold my breath for it to provide FTL communication. The most probable outcome of the measurements will be to confirm it to be very close to the speed of light. However, gravity is a very troublesome force also regarding the unification of forces and making the Theory of Everything, so knowing the speed of gravity for a fact would help along a lot.
With people so used to draconian license terms from traditional Windows software, why not have the GPL as another licensing agreement to have to look through? Technically not exactly accurate, but who really reads the things anyway?
Exactly because of that. Nobody reads them.
Anybody who bothers with them will just see it's the GPL and go "Doh! I don't have to accept this." Everybody else just sees it as being another crappy windowish have-to-accept-the-license-to-continue window.
Why not separate GPL programs by NOT having any legal junk? You don't need to accept the GPL, so don't force it on the user. I'd rather just install and use the program, without any of the legal muck.
Even without the download clause, what I don't like about this license is that you have to accept it. The GPL specifically says that to use the software, you do not need to accept the GPL:
That's a major part I like in the GPL - it's not an EULA (though some programs stupidly splash it in your face with an "I Accept" button the first time the program is run). If you don't like it, you can still use the software. It's only if you wish to do things normally forbidden by law (copying, modifying) that you have to accept the GPL.
To me this sounds like a clear case of "technology X is really cool. Let's find some reason to include it in product Y." Which often means that product Y becomes much more complicated than it needs to be.
How about first looking for a list of browser "needs" so to speak.
I'd say this is more like saying "I'm capable of adding this kind of stuff (and will be doing it anyway as part of research), do people have any itches we could scratch at the same time?"
Machine learning could be one of the things that will make browsing a better experience, and therefore it's nice to see somebody experimenting with it. Often you just can't imagine how useful some feature can be before you've used it for a while. Nothing will (hopefully) be added to the main branch before it has been tried and tested and deemed useful.
I've always thought Microsoft made the best keyboards and mice, but second-rate everything else. Turns out that they also deserve credit for making content sites.
Check out this post.
Paranoid? Probably, but still take everything with a grain of salt, especially when there can be second motives for journalism. One "good" story doesn't make a magazine reputable.
You only copied the first page of the two-page article. Why don't you just go read it for yourself (no reg. required).
Save the whales.
Feed the hungry.
Free the mallocs.
Moving windows isn't that important, I agree, but it is quite annoying not being able to have Firefox running on both screens.
That's true, it's actually a second downside of the setup. I use Galeon on my primary screen and Mozilla on the second. However, I'd imagine that you could just create another Mozilla profile and use that on the second screen (if Firefox supports profiles).
(Okay, I'm just guessing. I've never used the profiles and see them more as a nuisance than a benefit..)
I had the same thing. I'd once managed to destroy a FAT header by overwriting it, but I could restore it by copying the beginning part from an identical other drive.
:-)
The next time when re-installing Linux, however, I suddenly realized that I had just several times overwritten the whole data part of my drive C:.
The first thought was one of horror while a cold dread spread over me. All those years of collecting useful programs, making a complete DOS system, were gone...
After a few seconds, it was replaced by a warm, fulfilling sensation of happiness and freedom. I've never looked back...
(Fortunately, my own data was on drive D, and only the programs and OS were lost. Not that I've had much use for the data either, but it's a nice record of history.)
I use a multihead setup, and I just don't see the appeal in having two seperate hermetically sealed environments on my desk.
... use the same keyboard and mouse effortlessly on the monitors?
:-)
Two words: virtual desktops.
I always get terribly claustrophobic when using a Windows system - there just isn't space to do anything. On my machine when I want more space I just flick the mouse and I have a new, clean desktop. I often do some task until it becomes tiring, and just leave it open. When I feel like it I just return to that desktop. I typically have at any time some 5-30 browser windows open on different desktops. (I've recently started using tabs, but I like to hold only closely related things in one window.)
With the current setup I have two screens, both of which have an 8x2 grid of desktops at my disposal. Very often some 10-25 of those 32 are in use (currently for instance 14 of then have windows open).
Why would not you want the ability to
I can use the same keyboard and mouse on both monitors. I just hit alt-tab and the cursor switches to the other screen.
Why would not want to be able to copy and paste between the monitors?
Copy-paste works flawlessly between the screens. (This most likely would NOT be the case if I was running two different X servers, but both screens are currently run by the same server.)
With xinerama I can run gimp with one monitor showing the fullsized image and the other zoomed in for editing.
I typically prefer to work on one display, while the second one has "real-time" stuff like email and IRC open, plus a few extra terminals. My 21" primary display generally has enough space on it for working, and if it gets cluttered, I just flick my wrist and have a new desktop at my disposal.
Really, the only downside of the setup is that you can't move windows from one screen to the other. I've considered using something like xmove, but it seems rather a hassle running everything through it. However, once you get used to working with two separate screens, you want to move windows between the screens quite rarely. I recall wishing for that feature only once or twice in the last few months, and even then it was only a matter of convenience - I just had to close the program and start it on the other screen.
Still, if you like Xinerama, then by all means use it! It's all about choise.
Using a dual-head aware window manager (I use Openbox 2.3, they dropped multihead in favour of Xinerama in 3.x) you get pretty much what you describe, except that you switch screen by moving your mouse.
You don't need a window manager for that, simply configuring your X without Xinerama support and setting the second screen on the right (or some other) side of the first one will perform just that. (You may need a dualhead aware window manager to manage them, or start a separate window manager for each one as I do.)
However, I specifically didn't want moving from one screen to the other with the mouse, because I want to use virtual desktops (or whatever they're called) on both screens. Moving the mouse to the edge of a screen now switches the desktop on that screen, not the screen the mouse is on.
Actually, it's really not much different at all. You run different XServers with different InputDevice sections in their configurations, and you're on.
Except that Linux doesn't very easily know how to handle multiple separate keyboards on one computer. That's the point.
Not relating directly to the above, but I think this may interest some people:
When I got a dualhead card, I knew that I wanted two separate desktops, between which I can switch with a hotkey, not by scrolling the mouse to the other display (I wanted to use virtual desktops on both). I was astounded that I could find absolutely no way of doing this, and no references to it on the Net.
The best I could do was make the screens separate and stop the mouse from going from the edge of one display to another, but then I found no way of moving the pointer to the other screen.
After a few months I found a suitable function call in the X libraries and wrote a small program, switchscreen, to switch between the displays. Now I've got two totally separate desktops between which I can move with a simple alt-tab.
You can read the details for configuring your X system like this in the README file included in the package.
Heh, there was once a time where I had three mice (only 1 cursor though) - I had a normal PS2 mouse plugged in, an old COM port (I think.. never been too sure what port it was) mouse and a wireless USB mouse all plugged in at the same time, and they could all control the cursor.
This bit's talking about having four displays, four keyboards and four mice, where each mouce/keyboard pair controls a separate desktop/display. Completely different thing from just sticking a few more InputDevice-sections in the XF86Config.
Yep. I was astounded by the $6.45 in Sweden. Here in Finland (right next to it) I'd say that a typical rate would be around 1-2 euros an hour (the only price I could find on the net was 1,70e/h, about $2/h).
However, it would seem that the type of net cafes differ from country to country. Here in Finland I don't know really of any place where the "main thing" is getting a net connection (excluding a small net-oriented library in the center of Helsinki, where access is free). However, some cafes have Internet terminals (or even WiFi) which can often be used for free while you're in the cafe. I've heard a proverb once that in Finland the coffee costs money but the Internet is free, while everywhere else the 'Net costs but the coffee is free.
Anybody else have similar experiences?
I guess this is pretty technically cool, but as a user of a desktop system (aren't we all?) I'm not actually sure of how this would benefit me. Would I, for example, be more efficient in my job using this?
Have you checked out the video demo of using Looking Glass? It looks pretty slick, and while it's hard to say whether in its present form it would make a better desktop, it certainly shows that a 3D desktop could potentially be in many ways better than the modern 2D desktops.
The current projects like Looking Glass and Metisse aren't meant for large-scale use immediately. They are experiments in what a 3D desktop could offer, and whether it could provide a better user experience. In the future typical desktop computers will have more and more CPU/GPU power to spare, so speding it on the user interface is only beneficial.
After seeing the Looking Glass demo above, I'd say that anybody claiming straight out that a 3D desktop is of no use whatsoever is pretty short-sighted. Who knows, maybe Looking Glass will become the next killer desktop? Maybe a 3D desktop is a bad idea and counter-productive? These projects are made specifically to find that out.
IMDB User Comments: Michael Moore is a traitor to his country
Another interesting point are the ratings for the movie from US viewers and non-US viewers. In both the most commonly voted ratings are 10 and 1 (after those 9 and 8), accounting for about 85% of all votes. I've never seen such a divided set of ratings for any movie.
Still more interesting is that of US viewers give 57% give a rating 10, 27% give 1. Of non-US viewers 80% give 10, 8% give 1.
Everybody can draw their own conclusions from this, but I'd say this is one movie worth seeing - though with a grain of salt.
(Note: I live in Europe.)