Lots of great ideas. While we're on the topic of KDE I'd like to day something that just occurred to me: the panel has (or had; I have on obsolete version) two little bars at each end that you can use to make the panel slide over to one side of the screen. These would be better omitted and replaced with right-click options and/or a mouse gesture like in Opera and OptiMoz. As it is, if you move your mouse to the lower-left corner or the screen to click on the K button, it makes the panel slide. This isn't good.
And the top Windows UI improvment im my book: move the contents of the Programs menu to the top level, and categorize them. And have a favorites menu for programs you use often so you don't have to go through the deep hierarchy.
If I read the article correctly (and it isn't very well written, so I could be wrong), they just take all the format and presentation information out. If you have something boldface in your document, it doesn't get noted in the XML file. However, the only real way to find out for sure just what this XML is like is to see one of the XML files---and they don't look like they're going to make it that easy.
Anyway, Office has a ridiculously complicated format. Any XML that it generates will most likely be a nightmare even if they don't try to make it that way.
Perhaps I should clarify what I was trying to say. A huge amount of NASA budget goes to space shuttle related costs. I think that people should support efforts to develop cheaper LEO launch solutions so that NASA can ditch the shuttles and divert the money to research that may not pay off soon, like the materials research you spoke of (I love materials research), which is what I think NASA should be doing---not fussing over orbital launch vehicles.
I'm sorrt for being ambiguous in my original comment.
Does "flexible" include ignoring launch parameters and blowing up manned vehicles? I watched that happen. Fuck flexible.
If you're referring to the Challenger explosion, then I should probably say that there were repeated objections from plenty of people saying that it was too cold to launch, but somewhere in the beauraucracy somebody decided that they would launch anyway for political reasons. The same beaureaucracy buried complaints about the shuttle safety which culminated in Columbia's disaster.
And an important part of making this innovation easier is to have some open software that supports all this stuff, well, in a fairly fast and cross-platform way. Gecko is such a piece of software, and Mozilla is mainly a big way of testing new innovations and Gecko. The real browsers meant for people to use are not Mozilla, but they can be based on Gecko.
That does sound really cool. I imagine that you could do the same thing with XUL and use it with Mozilla (or a derived browser) fairly easily. The only reason I wouldn't do that is because I jealously guard my screen real estate. Every pixel is precious....
Would it be terribly hard to madify the main widget toolkits like Qt and GNOME to use things other than X as the display systems? Then we could let people take their pick of systems---just the way it should be on a system that prides itself on having such a large assortment of window managers.
I would recommend either Discover magazine or Scientific American. Discover has good science reporting in easy simple terms (when compared to Scientific American) but still gets slightly fluffy ocasionally. Scientific American, my favorite magazine, always has some exciting science stories which offer plenty of detail and manage to avoid going over or under my head (your milage, and head, may vary).
As far as I know, AFM is good for minute things and it is becoming even more important with the development of nanodrives like IBM's Millipede project. If the design is flawed, does that mean that there will be improvements or that AFM will stop progressing? If there will be improvements from this, it sounds like a good thing. I wonder if this could do anything to help AFM observe and manipulate objects at smaller scales.
The most exciting thing I can see using AFM is using it in Micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS), which are pretty much just printed onto a chip like your ordinary integrated circuit. I just want to know: will this help or hinder AFM devices?
So [...] would be inappropriate, but 'girls banging their dogs' is Ok.??
That is presupposing that if spams were to advocate those things, the pro-internet-free speechers (myself included) would stop fighting for free speech. That is ridiculous. We'd train our spam filters to move those spams to the spam folder. (Don't have a spam filter? You might try using POPfile.)
If China manages to crank these out cheaply the way they do with plastic action figures, they may be able to sell a lot to people who want something fast enough for their purposes but most of all cheap.
This is probably quite offtopic, but is it too improbable that the ISP itself might have done illegal software stuff? I know that it is certainly expedient to have a crack for Winzip if you want to put it on a bunch of computers and don't want to be bothered by the nag screen....
Impressive. One thing, though: it's been a year or two since I last read Friday, but I think I remember a reference to a "skyhook", and a "beanstalk". I'm not sure if that was referring to a space elevator or not, but I think it might have been. Still, they didn't play a major part in the story, so you're still right.
An idea that has become popular recently is Bayesian spam filtering. I wonder, could something similar be applied to web pages? Someone at a filtering company would feed a program a big list of web sites that are either "legitimate" or "bad", and they would be classified based on word probablility, then reclassified if the program makes an error. With the program trained like this, people could surf the web further training the software, and eventually it could be pretty effective.
I hope that the filtering companies don't manage to do this. I'm saying it only out of curiosity.
OTOH, an automated tool like the ones the article is about might be a good parenting tool, as long as it's not leaned on. Kind of like the windows administrator installing his event log monitor, and then he immediately quits reading his event logs. Why? He's still gotta look at them every now and then, doesn't he?
As someone who has been behind an internet filter, I'd have to say that these things just aren't effective. Sure, they block goatse.cx, but you can bet that they won't be able to keep up with all the mirrors that trolls keep putting up. They tend to have double standards; they'll block personal pages that simply quote from unblocked pages. They'll block a page on preventing exploitation of yourself (cexx.org), but they won't block a graphic discussion of masturbation techniques (I'm using a real example, but from just one filter. Other filters have other examples).
Filters just plain don't work. Far better, I think, would be software that just keeps logs and scans them periodically for interesting sites, and reports the results to the parents. It might fit with your idea of talking to your kids.
I do. It is a list of users and bandwidth for an ISP, so it needs to be fast but it doesn't need to be particularly large. I only use a database to handle concurrency issues and such. This sounds great for my purposes.
I have an idea, an I'm not sure if it is done already or not. The idea is that NASA may be someuse to someone with its half completed projects if they immediately release all their designs, data, everything, to the public domain. Then perhaps somebody could salvage it.
But how would Bush and co. decide to get to Mars? Would they do it the smart way, or the stupid one-time-only way? The smart way, I believe, is to first get a cheap way of getting to orbit. Once you have cheap orbital launch capability, then you focus on bigger goals. I would go for the moon first, and set up a small base or something. But they could try going directly to Mars.
But I think it's more likely that if the government wants to race to Mars, they'll just make some gargantuan rocket costing billions of dollars (a few days of US military spending) and send it to Mars, then they'll stop for a few more decades just like the Apollo program.
Slow and steady wins the space race in the long run.
There was an article on slashdot a while back with some very good (almost too good to be true) news: an upcoming version of Office will use an XML based format. Unfortunately it will probably be a nightmarish parody of good XML, if MS doesn't use some nonstandard version of XML (they're already calling anything with the.html extension "Microsoft HTML Document" on my computer).
I've been wondering for a while now, would it be possible for a program to do this interpreting machine code and optimizing at runtime, then spit out the new binary? This would be good for, say, major releases of software like Mozilla (perhaps a bad example since it is mostly written in XUL and JavaScript) or glibc.
Do you know if it's possible/practical, and if there is any software for this sort of thing?
Wouldn't it be possible to have a single computer with two sets of monitors/keyboards? It would be like a dumb X client except that it only takes one computer.
I seem to remember Sun or SGI doing something like this with one of their workstations. Could it be done with PCs?
Try southwestern Nebraska in the summer. It stands out as a contrast to livelier places where I would much rather be. If you don't like the weather, wait a few months.
Try any continental place that is in a big rain shadow, and the weather will be less exciting than great big lakes.
That said, I seem to remember that the earth simulator is not just another weather prediction computer, but is for other large scale (but more manageable) things.
If you're a pervert who wants child porn, go to freenet. It can't be easily blocked without blocking all of freenet, and the courts don't widely know about it (yet). If the ISP blocks that, just try an arms race of circumvention measures like the fine folks at Peacefire are doing (for non-porn related reasons).
I think that
/gov/nsa$ _
would be cool in a low-key sort of way. Imagine if a movie got something with computers right! Although
/gov/nsa# _
would certainly be cooler.
Slashdot Mirror
And the top Windows UI improvment im my book: move the contents of the Programs menu to the top level, and categorize them. And have a favorites menu for programs you use often so you don't have to go through the deep hierarchy.
Anyway, Office has a ridiculously complicated format. Any XML that it generates will most likely be a nightmare even if they don't try to make it that way.
I'm sorrt for being ambiguous in my original comment.
If you're referring to the Challenger explosion, then I should probably say that there were repeated objections from plenty of people saying that it was too cold to launch, but somewhere in the beauraucracy somebody decided that they would launch anyway for political reasons. The same beaureaucracy buried complaints about the shuttle safety which culminated in Columbia's disaster.
I think NASA should get back to research.
It's a bright browser future. Have fun.
That does sound really cool. I imagine that you could do the same thing with XUL and use it with Mozilla (or a derived browser) fairly easily. The only reason I wouldn't do that is because I jealously guard my screen real estate. Every pixel is precious....
Would it be terribly hard to madify the main widget toolkits like Qt and GNOME to use things other than X as the display systems? Then we could let people take their pick of systems---just the way it should be on a system that prides itself on having such a large assortment of window managers.
I would recommend either Discover magazine or Scientific American. Discover has good science reporting in easy simple terms (when compared to Scientific American) but still gets slightly fluffy ocasionally. Scientific American, my favorite magazine, always has some exciting science stories which offer plenty of detail and manage to avoid going over or under my head (your milage, and head, may vary).
The most exciting thing I can see using AFM is using it in Micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS), which are pretty much just printed onto a chip like your ordinary integrated circuit. I just want to know: will this help or hinder AFM devices?
That is presupposing that if spams were to advocate those things, the pro-internet-free speechers (myself included) would stop fighting for free speech. That is ridiculous. We'd train our spam filters to move those spams to the spam folder. (Don't have a spam filter? You might try using POPfile.)
For example: a MAME cabinet.
This is probably quite offtopic, but is it too improbable that the ISP itself might have done illegal software stuff? I know that it is certainly expedient to have a crack for Winzip if you want to put it on a bunch of computers and don't want to be bothered by the nag screen....
Impressive. One thing, though: it's been a year or two since I last read Friday, but I think I remember a reference to a "skyhook", and a "beanstalk". I'm not sure if that was referring to a space elevator or not, but I think it might have been. Still, they didn't play a major part in the story, so you're still right.
I hope that the filtering companies don't manage to do this. I'm saying it only out of curiosity.
OTOH, an automated tool like the ones the article is about might be a good parenting tool, as long as it's not leaned on. Kind of like the windows administrator installing his event log monitor, and then he immediately quits reading his event logs. Why? He's still gotta look at them every now and then, doesn't he?
As someone who has been behind an internet filter, I'd have to say that these things just aren't effective. Sure, they block goatse.cx, but you can bet that they won't be able to keep up with all the mirrors that trolls keep putting up. They tend to have double standards; they'll block personal pages that simply quote from unblocked pages. They'll block a page on preventing exploitation of yourself (cexx.org), but they won't block a graphic discussion of masturbation techniques (I'm using a real example, but from just one filter. Other filters have other examples).
Filters just plain don't work. Far better, I think, would be software that just keeps logs and scans them periodically for interesting sites, and reports the results to the parents. It might fit with your idea of talking to your kids.
It may not be good for you, though.
I have an idea, an I'm not sure if it is done already or not. The idea is that NASA may be someuse to someone with its half completed projects if they immediately release all their designs, data, everything, to the public domain. Then perhaps somebody could salvage it.
But I think it's more likely that if the government wants to race to Mars, they'll just make some gargantuan rocket costing billions of dollars (a few days of US military spending) and send it to Mars, then they'll stop for a few more decades just like the Apollo program.
Slow and steady wins the space race in the long run.
We can hope....
Do you know if it's possible/practical, and if there is any software for this sort of thing?
Ha ha! You get to use your hands? I have to use my tongue!
I seem to remember Sun or SGI doing something like this with one of their workstations. Could it be done with PCs?
Try any continental place that is in a big rain shadow, and the weather will be less exciting than great big lakes.
That said, I seem to remember that the earth simulator is not just another weather prediction computer, but is for other large scale (but more manageable) things.
If you're a pervert who wants child porn, go to freenet. It can't be easily blocked without blocking all of freenet, and the courts don't widely know about it (yet). If the ISP blocks that, just try an arms race of circumvention measures like the fine folks at Peacefire are doing (for non-porn related reasons).
I think that
/gov/nsa$ _
would be cool in a low-key sort of way. Imagine if a movie got something with computers right! Although
/gov/nsa# _
would certainly be cooler.