Is a polar orbit useful for anything other than military payloads? If they can get a 1.5 tonne payload into a polar orbit, how massive a payload can they get into a more non-polar LEO?
The Space Shuttle's delta wing design was based on a requirement from the military that it be capable of polar orbit. But they've never used it for that. If they'd just told the military to get lost, they could have used a better design. Sigh.
Ad-hoc extension of programming language syntax is a bad thing. Just ask anyone that's had to debug or maintain someone else's hardcore FORTH programs that use BUILD/DOES to do just that.
Having a well-defined syntax is a good thing. Plus, if the syntax is extensible, you can't write a general parser for the language, which makes it harder to write compilers and other sorts of source-processing tools.
Pluris offered a scalable multi-terabit router back in 2001. Avici offered something somewhat similar (but not as good, in my biased opinion), and AFAIK it is still available.
can't read review without accepting cookie?
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
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· Score: 1
Tried reading the review, all I get from their web server is "Session initialisation failed". Is this another web site that requires cookies? I don't mind that too much when I'm buying something, but why should I have to accept a cookie to read a news article or a review?
I really hope Linus will change his mind and will finally start using CVS or Subversion like the rest of the GNU and Free Software community does.
Better yet, if a free software source control system were to provide the features he needs, which are not currently available in CVS or Subversion.
Linux development is very decentralized, so Bitkeeper is much better suited to it than CVS or Subversion. The CVS and Subversion models are by their nature oriented toward having a single central repository, though there is a project to provide a wrapper for Subversion to support a decentralized model.
Reportedly arch has a model more like Bitkeeper, but I haven't tried it. I use CVS at work, and Subversion for my personal projects.
and be warned that Dag Wieers and Axel Thim (atrpms) are in a pissing match over Dag obsoleting at least one of Axel's packages for naming it "wrong".
Personally, I don't give a flying f*$# about Axel's packages, because although he does prove SRPMs and.spec files, he refuses to make his custom scripts needed to rebuild the packages available. He won't even answer email on this subject. It's a shame, because he does usually seem to do a pretty good job of packaging, but I often need to rebuild things.
The whole point of RHEL is that it has a long release cycle. If you want a distribution that is quick to adopt new kernels, use something other than RHEL.
Good job PayPal in not making payments to anonymous recipients.
This had NOTHING to do with payments to anonymous recipients. Paypal doesn't provide any means whereby anonymous recipients could receive money.
If Paypal doesn't like the aims of the Freenet project, perhaps they may be within their legal rights to drop the account. But it's certainly not very ethical. Suppose other major corporations behaved the same way...
"Sorry, sir, McDonalds will not sell you hamburgers because of your registered political party."
"No, you can't buy a Ford automobile because records show that you have donated money to the ACLU."
"Because you protested the war, you can't open a checking account with Bank of America."
"SBC has disonnected your telephone service because you've written software that is released under the GPL."
Do you want to live in that world? Or do you want corporations to have to treat individuals in a nondiscriminatory fashion?
[I'm obviously not claiming that the corporations I've named have any such policies; they were chosen arbitrarily as examples.]
Google (the noun has been verbed, isn't that horrible?)
Trademarks can't be nouns, so as a trademark, "Google" is an adjective. Verbing an adjective seems even more horrible than verbing a noun.
I'm skeptical of the predicted dates...
on
Nano Body Building
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm skeptical of the predicted dates because technological advances are usually either much later than predicted, or else show up completely unexpected. And since nanotech medical is expected...
Still, I hope they're right. I'm 40 now, and if I start taking better care of myself, I might actually make it to 2025.
My biggest health problem has been obesity, and I've managed to lose about 65 pounds since September 2003 on a low-carb diet. I've still got at least 50 lbs. to go, or 85 lbs. according to my doctor. He says for my height (6'0") I should weigh 185, but I weighed more than that when I was in high school and was in good condition.
Anyhow, if I can get down to a reasonable weight, and keep the pounds off, I think I'll have a much better chance of living long enough to take advantage of these nanotech advances.
You know in my day DOS3.3 still fit on one 1.44 floppy!
In my day, DOS 3.3 fit on a single 143K floppy, and left 126K of that for user files! It was a nice improvement over the earlier versions (DOS 3.1, 3.2, and 3.2.1), which only supported 116K floppies.
DOS 3.3 was also an improvment over many of its successors in that it allowed long filenames and sparse files. Not bad for an 8-bit 1 MHz machine in 1980. Microsoft didn't catch up until the mid-1990s.
And nobody leaves their BT clients open longer than it takes to download a file
Maybe you don't, but that doesn't mean that nobody does.
When I downloaded fc2test3, I got it in just over an hour, but I left the BT client running for another 12 hours, and the stats show that it uploaded almost 10x as much as it downloaded.
Why not put it on a P2P network like eDonkey?
Nothing is stopping you, or anyone else, from putting it on any P2P network you like.
Really, Bittorrent seems like a poor solution to a problem better solved by real P2P software.
Bittorrent was designed to solve the problem of distributing files that are in high demand. It does this better than most other P2P software, so I'd conclude that Bittorrent is an excellent solution.
you can place two sheets of A4 side-by-side and they will equal an A3 sheet exactly, and two sheets of A3 will equal an A2.
So? The same is true of many of the non-metric sizes. You can place two sheets of A side-by-side and they will equal a B sheet exactly, and two sheets of B will equal a C, and so on up to E at least. (I've never seen F, but presumably it would be the size of two Es.)
If you're going to brag about a feature, at least brag about the part that is better. With metric paper sizes, the described relationship exists, and the paper sizes all share the same aspect ratio, so you can reduce or enlarge to different paper sizes without having to worry about the margins.
Subversion works quite well, but it uses the central repository model, so it doesn't do the same things BitKeeper does. That said, Subversion is an excellent replacement for CVS. It is almost a drop in replacement, and has file rename/move versioning and atomic commits. It doesn't yet automate repeated merges, but the use of properties makes it easier to track the necessary information. And tagging and branching are almost instantaneous, since they only have to add a small amount of metadata rather that touching every file in the repository.
For a project as large/distributed as Linux, BitKeeper may well be the right thing. For a smaller project where a single central repository is acceptable, Subversion is great. I've converted all my projects from CVS to Subversion, and am pushing my employer to switch as well.
Agreed! Imagine if there were several patented forms of written language, and you were required to buy special licensed reading glasses that decoded your book. You'd need different glasses for each publisher, and you would not be allowed to make your own glasses, nor to publish your own books without licensing a special publishing system. The idea sounds so outrageously unreasonable that no one would be willing to put up with it, yet this is exactly what Microsoft, Apple, Real, and the media companies are doing to us with digital media.
Everyone should read Stallman's essay The Right to Read. When I first saw it, I thought it was so implausible that there was no need to worry about it. But since then I've observed much of the groundwork for this dystopia being laid. It is absolutely vital that consumers be educated to reject commercial technologies that take away their rights (including fair use), and instead prefer free and open technologies such as Dirac (assuming that it doesn't run into patent problems).
The Sourceforge page says that Dirac uses arithmetic coding.
Aren't there patents on arithmetic coding? I thought that was
the problem with using JBIG for bilevel images, and why most
free compressors use Huffman coding or the like.
The fact that Rambus owns some patents does not in any way obligate memory vendors to license those patents, or to produce any particular amount of product using them. If Rambus had a contract with a particular memory vendor, and the vendor failed to meet their obligations under the contract, Rambus would have grounds to sue them for breach of contract, but this is not an antitrust issue.
Slashdot Mirror
An HP-12C! After 23 years, they're still in production. Go down to your local office supply megastore and buy one.
I recommend against the newer "12C Platinum". Get the standard model.
The Space Shuttle's delta wing design was based on a requirement from the military that it be capable of polar orbit. But they've never used it for that. If they'd just told the military to get lost, they could have used a better design. Sigh.
Having a well-defined syntax is a good thing. Plus, if the syntax is extensible, you can't write a general parser for the language, which makes it harder to write compilers and other sorts of source-processing tools.
Pluris offered a scalable multi-terabit router back in 2001. Avici offered something somewhat similar (but not as good, in my biased opinion), and AFAIK it is still available.
Tried reading the review, all I get from their web server is "Session initialisation failed". Is this another web site that requires cookies? I don't mind that too much when I'm buying something, but why should I have to accept a cookie to read a news article or a review?
They are totally unrelated flaws.
Linux development is very decentralized, so Bitkeeper is much better suited to it than CVS or Subversion. The CVS and Subversion models are by their nature oriented toward having a single central repository, though there is a project to provide a wrapper for Subversion to support a decentralized model.
Reportedly arch has a model more like Bitkeeper, but I haven't tried it. I use CVS at work, and Subversion for my personal projects.
The whole point of RHEL is that it has a long release cycle. If you want a distribution that is quick to adopt new kernels, use something other than RHEL.
If Paypal doesn't like the aims of the Freenet project, perhaps they may be within their legal rights to drop the account. But it's certainly not very ethical. Suppose other major corporations behaved the same way...
- "Sorry, sir, McDonalds will not sell you hamburgers because of your registered political party."
- "No, you can't buy a Ford automobile because records show that you have donated money to the ACLU."
- "Because you protested the war, you can't open a checking account with Bank of America."
- "SBC has disonnected your telephone service because you've written software that is released under the GPL."
Do you want to live in that world? Or do you want corporations to have to treat individuals in a nondiscriminatory fashion?[I'm obviously not claiming that the corporations I've named have any such policies; they were chosen arbitrarily as examples.]
I didn't think we were being particularly subtle about that, such that it would need explanation.
Still, I hope they're right. I'm 40 now, and if I start taking better care of myself, I might actually make it to 2025.
My biggest health problem has been obesity, and I've managed to lose about 65 pounds since September 2003 on a low-carb diet. I've still got at least 50 lbs. to go, or 85 lbs. according to my doctor. He says for my height (6'0") I should weigh 185, but I weighed more than that when I was in high school and was in good condition.
Anyhow, if I can get down to a reasonable weight, and keep the pounds off, I think I'll have a much better chance of living long enough to take advantage of these nanotech advances.
DOS 3.3 was also an improvment over many of its successors in that it allowed long filenames and sparse files. Not bad for an 8-bit 1 MHz machine in 1980. Microsoft didn't catch up until the mid-1990s.
When I downloaded fc2test3, I got it in just over an hour, but I left the BT client running for another 12 hours, and the stats show that it uploaded almost 10x as much as it downloaded.
Nothing is stopping you, or anyone else, from putting it on any P2P network you like. Bittorrent was designed to solve the problem of distributing files that are in high demand. It does this better than most other P2P software, so I'd conclude that Bittorrent is an excellent solution.If you're going to brag about a feature, at least brag about the part that is better. With metric paper sizes, the described relationship exists, and the paper sizes all share the same aspect ratio, so you can reduce or enlarge to different paper sizes without having to worry about the margins.
For a project as large/distributed as Linux, BitKeeper may well be the right thing. For a smaller project where a single central repository is acceptable, Subversion is great. I've converted all my projects from CVS to Subversion, and am pushing my employer to switch as well.
Everyone should read Stallman's essay The Right to Read. When I first saw it, I thought it was so implausible that there was no need to worry about it. But since then I've observed much of the groundwork for this dystopia being laid. It is absolutely vital that consumers be educated to reject commercial technologies that take away their rights (including fair use), and instead prefer free and open technologies such as Dirac (assuming that it doesn't run into patent problems).
The Sourceforge page says that Dirac uses arithmetic coding. Aren't there patents on arithmetic coding? I thought that was the problem with using JBIG for bilevel images, and why most free compressors use Huffman coding or the like.
[I've used other Plextor products and been happy with them.]
The fact that Rambus owns some patents does not in any way obligate memory vendors to license those patents, or to produce any particular amount of product using them. If Rambus had a contract with a particular memory vendor, and the vendor failed to meet their obligations under the contract, Rambus would have grounds to sue them for breach of contract, but this is not an antitrust issue.