A truly innovative power source would be a laptop with an integrated steam engine. You could just insert pieces of coal in a slot and the laptop would run fine for a while. There could even be a whistle and a exhaust pipe:) And when you're out in the wilderness and your battery runs out, you just chop down a tree and you've got power for a long time to come...
Why not send a manned mission to Venus? This planet is sending far too few people on interplanetary missions. I can't believe we still don't have a functioning lunar base!
How is this planet going to survive on its own? IMO, we really need to start building settlements on other planets.Mars is probably a better choice than venus though, because of the somewhat less harsh atmospheric and temperature conditions.
Nasa and Esa and the other ones are not daring enough. They should be given bigger budgets. Space is the future of the human race.
Kevin J Anderson has his own style of writing, which I think is clearly visible in all of his works, at least those I've read. Unfortunately it is not very well suited to the Dune novels.
I've read all of Frank's original novels, house Atreides and house Harkonnen, and some other works by Kevin J Anderson. I really enjoyed Frank Herbert's original books - creative ideas, a complex plot with layer upon layer upon layer... Kevin J Anderson, in contrast, is very predictable. The house * books (at least the two I read) are not at all as deep as Frank's books, imo. The characters are very predictable, and the story is very evenly paced - no sudden twists or surprises. It feels very plastic and directed, not at all as real and convincing as Frank made it.
But compared to Frank Herbert, few sf authors stand a chance, so I guess it's easy to be a little too harsh on Kevin J Anderson. While not at all on Frank's level, his books can be enjoyable.
I hope they don't continue do reuse Frank's ideas over and over again forever... his original books (not only the dune books, but also the jesus incident, the lazarus effect, etc.) were great and don't deserve to be treated in that way:)
If you have a slower machine like my 366 MHz G3-based iBook, MacOS X isn't going to be fast enough. 10.1 wasn't, and I doubt 10.2 is. I haven't heard of any dramatic speed improvements.
But there is a nice solution: use Linux with MacOnLinux (http://www.maconlinux.org). It is very nice. It allows you to run MacOS 9 as a linux application, either in a window in Xfree86 (slow), or fullscreen (very fast), and as long as you don't play graphically demanding games, it's almost as fast as running "pure" MacOS. and if MacOS crashes, you just restart mol:)
I use MacOS mainly for school work (have to have Ms office, sorry open source puritans, but openOffice is just not good enough yet) and do everything else in linux. Then I use netatalk (linux appletalk daemons) to move files to and from my linux partitions. Works flawlessly.
I also use netatalk to print from macos. MacOS has never supported my printer (hp deskjet 600) but linux does. I make MacOS believe it is a laserwriter 8 (generic postscript, basically) and use apsfilter to convert the postscript to HP PCL. It works very nicely, and is a good example of the Power Of Open Source Software, imho:)
Try mol if you have an older mac, it's very useful.
I have a 4x iomega burner with an usb connection. I'd happily overclock it if it weren't for the speed limit of the usb port - usb burners are just incapable of burning faster than 4x afaik.
But I'm pretty sure it would work apart from that, usb-storage always identifies the burner as a 6x burner,so there would be at least some speed to gain...
Thanks to all the developers and package maintainers who have made this possible. Making a Linux distribution run smoothly is not easy work, especially not when it's one of the better, more thought-through distributions.
I've been using Debian since Hamm (2.0) now and I've always loved its simplicity, dpkg/apt, and the structure and sheer neatness of it all. I'm running unstable right now, so the release of Woody does not mean that I will do some massive upgrade, but it is still a good thing that it's finally complete.
Now, if I only had a fast connection I could download those cd images and burn them at once... being a modem user sucks:(
Ok, so intel have made transistors that are 3 atoms big.
And the transistors will get smaller and smaller as always. But for a transistor to work, electrons has to be able to flow through it, right? And it must be able to alter its conductivity as well. So how small can these transistors actually be? How would a transistor work if it was smaller than 3 atoms - or even smaller than 1 atom?
Anybody can teach himself programming and be an average programmer with some talent.
But with that talent and a serious programmer's education, the same person can be a great programmer.... some things you just can't learn on your own.
IMHO, the choice depends on how much programming means to you. Do you want to spend the majority of your life programming - or is it just a hobby among others? If so, history may be a better choice...
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So true. It is simply beautiful.
A truly innovative power source would be a laptop with an integrated steam engine. You could just insert pieces of coal in a slot and the laptop would run fine for a while. There could even be a whistle and a exhaust pipe :) And when you're out in the wilderness and your battery runs out, you just chop down a tree and you've got power for a long time to come...
Why not send a manned mission to Venus? This planet is sending far too few people on interplanetary missions. I can't believe we still don't have a functioning lunar base!
How is this planet going to survive on its own? IMO, we really need to start building settlements on other planets.Mars is probably a better choice than venus though, because of the somewhat less harsh atmospheric and temperature conditions.
Nasa and Esa and the other ones are not daring enough. They should be given bigger budgets. Space is the future of the human race.
Kevin J Anderson has his own style of writing, which I think is clearly visible in all of his works, at least those I've read. Unfortunately it is not very well suited to the Dune novels.
:)
I've read all of Frank's original novels, house Atreides and house Harkonnen, and some other works by Kevin J Anderson. I really enjoyed Frank Herbert's original books - creative ideas, a complex plot with layer upon layer upon layer...
Kevin J Anderson, in contrast, is very predictable. The house * books (at least the two I read) are not at all as deep as Frank's books, imo. The characters are very predictable, and the story is very evenly paced - no sudden twists or surprises. It feels very plastic and directed, not at all as real and convincing as Frank made it.
But compared to Frank Herbert, few sf authors stand a chance, so I guess it's easy to be a little too harsh on Kevin J Anderson. While not at all on Frank's level, his books can be enjoyable.
I hope they don't continue do reuse Frank's ideas over and over again forever... his original books (not only the dune books, but also the jesus incident, the lazarus effect, etc.) were great and don't deserve to be treated in that way
If you have a slower machine like my 366 MHz G3-based iBook, MacOS X isn't going to be fast enough. 10.1 wasn't, and I doubt 10.2 is. I haven't heard of any dramatic speed improvements.
:)
:)
But there is a nice solution: use Linux with MacOnLinux (http://www.maconlinux.org). It is very nice. It allows you to run MacOS 9 as a linux application, either in a window in Xfree86 (slow), or fullscreen (very fast), and as long as you don't play graphically demanding games, it's almost as fast as running "pure" MacOS.
and if MacOS crashes, you just restart mol
I use MacOS mainly for school work (have to have Ms office, sorry open source puritans, but openOffice is just not good enough yet) and do everything else in linux. Then I use netatalk (linux appletalk daemons) to move files to and from my linux partitions. Works flawlessly.
I also use netatalk to print from macos. MacOS has never supported my printer (hp deskjet 600) but linux does. I make MacOS believe it is a laserwriter 8 (generic postscript, basically) and use apsfilter to convert the postscript to HP PCL. It works very nicely, and is a good example of the Power Of Open Source Software, imho
Try mol if you have an older mac, it's very useful.
I saw a book called "MP3 with Winamp" that was about 200 pages. Talk about misallocated resources...
I have a 4x iomega burner with an usb connection. I'd happily overclock it if it weren't for the speed limit of the usb port - usb burners are just incapable of burning faster than 4x afaik.
But I'm pretty sure it would work apart from that, usb-storage always identifies the burner as a 6x burner,so there would be at least some speed to gain...
Should have bought a firewire unit instead.
At last!
:(
Thanks to all the developers and package maintainers who have made this possible. Making a Linux distribution run smoothly is not easy work, especially not when it's one of the better, more thought-through distributions.
I've been using Debian since Hamm (2.0) now and I've always loved its simplicity, dpkg/apt, and the structure and sheer neatness of it all. I'm running unstable right now, so the release of Woody does not mean that I will do some massive upgrade, but it is still a good thing that it's finally complete.
Now, if I only had a fast connection I could download those cd images and burn them at once... being a modem user sucks
The Evangelion series is great, probably the best anime I've seen :) It's very nice that they are going to release Death + Rebirth and End of Eva...
So much for ethics...
And the transistors will get smaller and smaller as always. But for a transistor to work, electrons has to be able to flow through it, right? And it must be able to alter its conductivity as well. So how small can these transistors actually be? How would a transistor work if it was smaller than 3 atoms - or even smaller than 1 atom?
But with that talent and a serious programmer's education, the same person can be a great programmer.... some things you just can't learn on your own.
IMHO, the choice depends on how much programming means to you. Do you want to spend the majority of your life programming - or is it just a hobby among others? If so, history may be a better choice...