I remember from spellchecking some html documents a while back ago that aspell is at least aware of html. I do not know how well it works with other kinds of documents.
The rss reading capability i do not like at all. That should be implemented as an extension.
An RSS-reader is using the http protocol to download and parse an XML document. This is what web browsers to. So leaving that functinality out would be meaningless in my oppinion.
Then there's the fact that he can give everyone one set of instructions on how to configure it. That also probably saves him time.
Yes, in the short term. But it teaches his users nothing, so when there are changes or upgrades all the users need to be told again the new steps they need to do to make it work again. And when something goes wrong, the user will be totally lost and have no clue whatsoever what to do to help himself.
On the other hand Mr. Gates thinks that the future is streaming and storing videos on the harddrive, and that the WMV format is ideal for this, and also very consumer friendly. And it will integrate excellently with all PCs. (As long as the PC is running Windows(TM) of course. But in the future alle PCs will be running windows, so that's not an issue.)
What is worse than 30 months without sex? 30 months in a small closed environment, where others have sex, but you don't get any.
Man, that would get me frustrated beyond reason. And the realisation of this is why I understand why NASA is doing this.
Actually, 30 months without sex, I think I could do it if I were on such a mission. Because I would be mentally prepared for this. I know the other crewmembers are not having sex either. And the sex fixation in our siciety would not be there on a daily basis. Of course, I would expect periods of frustration. But I don't think it would be a major problem.
When there is no potential for sex, when there is no constant reminder of sex around you, it is much easier to live without it. But if others in your crew are having sex, and you don't get any. That would really make things difficult.
Of course, drugs that temporary kill libido would be very welcome too.
I liked the old CD player. A simplistic player for playing CD's, instead of the bloated mediaplayer that replaced it, adding nothing but taking up much more space on the screen. (No, the skin wasn't very helpful)
I don't want a mediacenter kind of application, with everything in one. I want to be able to control the different medias individually, with different and individual controls, and at the same time if i wish to. The mediaplayer has never allowed me this kind of control.
On the other hand, I'm mostly using Linux anyway, so why am I complaining?
It's convenient. Beats having to go to the store to deliver the pictures, or to deliver them over net, and then go to pick them up later, or having them mailed.
It's instant. I can print it now, and give my friend a copy before he/she leaves the house.
It's full control. As a control freak, I like the ability to print, adjust and try again. To get it just right. You won't get that consistency from the cheap stores.
It's cheap. It's even cheaper in the stores, ok. But I am not printing a lot of photos, and the few I do print is not going to seriously affect my budget in any way. A weeks food budget is way more than I will spend on ink cartridges. And if I get the need to print a lot of photo's I can still go to the local store.
Flexibility. I can bring the printer with me on holiday. Wherever I am, I can in a matter of minutes produce my very own personal postcard and send it to some friends.
If budget is first, then buying a photo printer is not good advice. But if it's convenience, flexibility and control you want, then a printer is a great thing.
Oh... and about durability of the prints. If the pictures start to fade... I can instantly make a new print. The digitally stored originals will not fade.
it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software.
Absolutely. I've always thought that there's too much talk about open source, and not enough talk about open standards.
Some governments, like the swedish, have already adopted a policy where all government information will be accessible through open standard formats. This guarantees that nobody needs to buy a certain platform in order to be able to get official information.
In my oppinion this is much more important for free competition, and freedom to chose your own solutions, that open source will ever be.
What if some company would find a smart way to pay the users for the use of their CPU cycles?
I can't see direct payment working, since what they would be able to pay would not be very much per person, and probably not to keep people interested.
But what if someone made a MMOG of some type, where people could play online for nothing but the cost of the CPU also working on some distributed computing.
Also you could get additional 'upgrades' in the game by leaving the program running when not playing.
I see this is a win-win-win situation, free games for the user, sales point for the console maker, computational work for the researchers. Provided of course that the value of the work done is enough to pay for continued development and maintance of the game and its servers.
Ideally, such sails should be as big as possible, to maximise the amount of sunlight collected, and as reflective as possible, because a photon bouncing off a perfectly reflective sail produces twice as much thrust as one absorbed by a non-reflective sail.
So, the photon hits the sail with the speed of light. And leaves the sail again at the speed of light. The energy transfered to the sail from this action comes from..... where???
is worrying online marketers and Web site publishers who feel that the changing consumer attitude towards cookies is harming cookie usefulness and unfairly lumping them with spyware and viruses.
And all this time I thought it was the use of cookies in marketing, tracking user habits etc. that harmed the usefulness of cookies.
Everybody seems to take for granted that if you travel back in time, you end up on the same spot as you left, or at least some place on earth.
It's very convenient, but is there any logic behind this? What reference point in the universe decides where you end up?
Think about it, our earth is spinning around it's axis, the earth is revolving around the sun, and our solar system is moving at high speed through space together with the rest of our galaxy.
'Here' ten years ago is in a cosmic perspectice physically nowhere near 'here' today.
So without any reference point, where do you end up after travelling back in time? And if there is a cosmic spatial reference point, what is it?
Even the molecules in your body has large been changes the last ten years, so they can't be a really good reference point either?
In my opinion time travel does not make sense on more levels than just the grandfather paradox.
Lets say that at t = 0 your father is alive. And you go back to t = -10 to kill him. Let's say, further, that you kill him. So at t = -10 your father is dead. Then at t = 0 your dad is dead. This is a contradiction by hypothesis. The logic here is valid, so some premise must fail.
Okay, the logic is valid. But is your mapping of reality into the domain of logic valid?
I find that very often when people try to prove something using logic in this way, they make errors when setting up the logical prepositions. The logic may be sound, but it's based on wrong prepositions. And in this case, I think the representation of this complex problem is way to simple.
There's a correlation between brain size and intelligence. But that doesn't mean a big brain is necessarily smarter than a smaller brain. It just means that statistically it has a higher probability of being smarter.
There are a lot fo other factors, like the connectivity, the density of neurons, the chemical and hormonal balance and so forth.
Also in some cases there might be conflicts between different abilities. For example, someone with a very good memory might have trouble interpreting the content of the memory, because understanding does not mean perfect memory but the ability to classify and categorize. You need to group together memories to do that, and being able to separate different memories means you might not be very good at grouping them.
Reading the article I found nothing about what is bad with Linux. All the critic is about the development process. It's like he doesn't understand how this process can create a good result, therefore the result can't be good.
Not if the days on this planet are really loooong?
What I mean is, are we talking two earth days here? Which would mean this planet is really moving, or are we talking two of the planets days? Which would mean this planet is revolving quite slowly.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember from spellchecking some html documents a while back ago that aspell is at least aware of html. I do not know how well it works with other kinds of documents.
The rss reading capability i do not like at all. That should be implemented as an extension. An RSS-reader is using the http protocol to download and parse an XML document. This is what web browsers to. So leaving that functinality out would be meaningless in my oppinion.
Here's an even better Mac/PC/Linux video. Truth hurts.
Didn't hurt at all. Just funny. ;)
Then there's the fact that he can give everyone one set of instructions on how to configure it. That also probably saves him time.
Yes, in the short term. But it teaches his users nothing, so when there are changes or upgrades all the users need to be told again the new steps they need to do to make it work again. And when something goes wrong, the user will be totally lost and have no clue whatsoever what to do to help himself.
On the other hand Mr. Gates thinks that the future is streaming and storing videos on the harddrive, and that the WMV format is ideal for this, and also very consumer friendly. And it will integrate excellently with all PCs. (As long as the PC is running Windows(TM) of course. But in the future alle PCs will be running windows, so that's not an issue.)
What is worse than 30 months without sex? 30 months in a small closed environment, where others have sex, but you don't get any.
Man, that would get me frustrated beyond reason. And the realisation of this is why I understand why NASA is doing this.
Actually, 30 months without sex, I think I could do it if I were on such a mission. Because I would be mentally prepared for this. I know the other crewmembers are not having sex either. And the sex fixation in our siciety would not be there on a daily basis. Of course, I would expect periods of frustration. But I don't think it would be a major problem.
When there is no potential for sex, when there is no constant reminder of sex around you, it is much easier to live without it. But if others in your crew are having sex, and you don't get any. That would really make things difficult.
Of course, drugs that temporary kill libido would be very welcome too.
Neither enhances my CD-listening experience in any way.
Also it is somewhat beside the point, because you don't need a mediaplayer to add this functionality.
I liked the old CD player. A simplistic player for playing CD's, instead of the bloated mediaplayer that replaced it, adding nothing but taking up much more space on the screen. (No, the skin wasn't very helpful)
I don't want a mediacenter kind of application, with everything in one. I want to be able to control the different medias individually, with different and individual controls, and at the same time if i wish to. The mediaplayer has never allowed me this kind of control.
On the other hand, I'm mostly using Linux anyway, so why am I complaining?
How come this is called a death ray? It's more like a death cone, isn't it?
It's convenient. Beats having to go to the store to deliver the pictures, or to deliver them over net, and then go to pick them up later, or having them mailed.
It's instant. I can print it now, and give my friend a copy before he/she leaves the house.
It's full control. As a control freak, I like the ability to print, adjust and try again. To get it just right. You won't get that consistency from the cheap stores.
It's cheap. It's even cheaper in the stores, ok. But I am not printing a lot of photos, and the few I do print is not going to seriously affect my budget in any way. A weeks food budget is way more than I will spend on ink cartridges. And if I get the need to print a lot of photo's I can still go to the local store.
Flexibility. I can bring the printer with me on holiday. Wherever I am, I can in a matter of minutes produce my very own personal postcard and send it to some friends.
If budget is first, then buying a photo printer is not good advice. But if it's convenience, flexibility and control you want, then a printer is a great thing.
Oh... and about durability of the prints. If the pictures start to fade... I can instantly make a new print. The digitally stored originals will not fade.
it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Absolutely. I've always thought that there's too much talk about open source, and not enough talk about open standards. Some governments, like the swedish, have already adopted a policy where all government information will be accessible through open standard formats. This guarantees that nobody needs to buy a certain platform in order to be able to get official information. In my oppinion this is much more important for free competition, and freedom to chose your own solutions, that open source will ever be.
What if some company would find a smart way to pay the users for the use of their CPU cycles?
I can't see direct payment working, since what they would be able to pay would not be very much per person, and probably not to keep people interested.
But what if someone made a MMOG of some type, where people could play online for nothing but the cost of the CPU also working on some distributed computing.
Also you could get additional 'upgrades' in the game by leaving the program running when not playing.
I see this is a win-win-win situation, free games for the user, sales point for the console maker, computational work for the researchers. Provided of course that the value of the work done is enough to pay for continued development and maintance of the game and its servers.
Maybe when the Pentium VI 10GHz Powerbook comes out, it'll have a screen that can be rolled up and put into your pocket?
Nah, won't ever happen.Since it's black and white Microsoft won't allow it. No blue screen possible, you see.
Thanx, that makes some sense.
This red shift always happens when a photon is reflected by a perfect mirror?
With 40M cards exposed, what's the probability that my card will be exploited?
Ideally, such sails should be as big as possible, to maximise the amount of sunlight collected, and as reflective as possible, because a photon bouncing off a perfectly reflective sail produces twice as much thrust as one absorbed by a non-reflective sail.
So, the photon hits the sail with the speed of light. And leaves the sail again at the speed of light. The energy transfered to the sail from this action comes from ..... where???
is worrying online marketers and Web site publishers who feel that the changing consumer attitude towards cookies is harming cookie usefulness and unfairly lumping them with spyware and viruses.
And all this time I thought it was the use of cookies in marketing, tracking user habits etc. that harmed the usefulness of cookies.
Wasn't Oliver Cromwell's brain something like twice the size of a normal man?
So his brain weigthed around 160 kg?
(sorry)Everybody seems to take for granted that if you travel back in time, you end up on the same spot as you left, or at least some place on earth.
It's very convenient, but is there any logic behind this? What reference point in the universe decides where you end up?
Think about it, our earth is spinning around it's axis, the earth is revolving around the sun, and our solar system is moving at high speed through space together with the rest of our galaxy.
'Here' ten years ago is in a cosmic perspectice physically nowhere near 'here' today.
So without any reference point, where do you end up after travelling back in time? And if there is a cosmic spatial reference point, what is it?
Even the molecules in your body has large been changes the last ten years, so they can't be a really good reference point either?
In my opinion time travel does not make sense on more levels than just the grandfather paradox.
Lets say that at t = 0 your father is alive. And you go back to t = -10 to kill him. Let's say, further, that you kill him. So at t = -10 your father is dead. Then at t = 0 your dad is dead. This is a contradiction by hypothesis. The logic here is valid, so some premise must fail.
Okay, the logic is valid. But is your mapping of reality into the domain of logic valid?
I find that very often when people try to prove something using logic in this way, they make errors when setting up the logical prepositions. The logic may be sound, but it's based on wrong prepositions. And in this case, I think the representation of this complex problem is way to simple.
Noone understood this, but it sounded so profound they mod'ed it 'interesting' anyway.
"The emperor has such nice clothes!"
There's a correlation between brain size and intelligence. But that doesn't mean a big brain is necessarily smarter than a smaller brain. It just means that statistically it has a higher probability of being smarter.
There are a lot fo other factors, like the connectivity, the density of neurons, the chemical and hormonal balance and so forth.
Also in some cases there might be conflicts between different abilities. For example, someone with a very good memory might have trouble interpreting the content of the memory, because understanding does not mean perfect memory but the ability to classify and categorize. You need to group together memories to do that, and being able to separate different memories means you might not be very good at grouping them.
Reading the article I found nothing about what is bad with Linux. All the critic is about the development process. It's like he doesn't understand how this process can create a good result, therefore the result can't be good.
Not if the days on this planet are really loooong?
What I mean is, are we talking two earth days here? Which would mean this planet is really moving, or are we talking two of the planets days? Which would mean this planet is revolving quite slowly.