NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels Sep. 25, 2006
A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years.
The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or smaller than at the present time. Recent warming is forcing species of plants and animals to move toward the north and south poles.
Image right: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows average temperatures from 2001-2005 compared to a base period of temperatures from 1951-1980. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA
The study used temperatures around the world taken during the last century. Scientists concluded that these data showed the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.36 Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years.
"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and warm the surface. Some greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, occur naturally, while others are due to human activities.
Image left: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows a progression of changing global surface temperatures from 1880 to 2005, the warmest ranked year on record. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and dark blue indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to view animation. Credit: NASA
The study notes that the world's warming is greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is larger over land than over ocean areas. The enhanced warming at high latitudes is attributed to effects of ice and snow. As the Earth warms, snow and ice melt, uncovering darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, a process called a positive feedback. Warming is less over ocean than over land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there.
Hansen and his colleagues in New York collaborated with David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of UCSB to obtain comparisons of recent temperatures with the history of the Earth over the past million years. The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments.
Image left: Data from this study reveal that the Earth has been warming approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years. Credit: NASA
One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature c
Load speed is one area worth noting because of the improvements over previous releases. Launching the Office Suite installed on winXP Home SP2, with the program's "Quick Starter" feature disabled, produced the following results: OpenOffice Writer loaded in 10 seconds. The Spreadsheet (OO Calc) in 11 seconds. The Powerpoint-like presentations module (Impress): 9 seconds. OO Base (a new database program): 5 seconds. With Quick Starter enabled: OO Write: 3 seconds. OO Calc: 7.5 seconds. OO Impress: 6 seconds. OO Base: 2 seconds.
I figure there should also be some sort of moderation system apart from money, so that good ideas that lack funding can get the attention needed to attract said funding.
Yeah, it needs a great moderation system... let's have Taco design it!!
10 posts in, and already TWO references to throwing people in jail for:
1. Not making old information publicly available 2. Quoting a presidential candidate
It occurs to me that we should probably be focussing our efforts on defeating the terrorist threats and shoring up our economy rather than on one another for having a different opinion than ourselves....then again, this *IS* slashdot...
George and Colin are both descendants of King Edward I ("Longshanks") and Elanor de Castilie. OF their two children, George is a descendant of Princess Elizabeth Plantagenet, while Colin is a descendant of King Edward II.
SIMIndiana IS A SIMDESK ENHANCED TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICE
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2. Use of Proprietary Software STI hereby grants the Licensee a non-exclusive, non-transferable, personal, non-sublicensable license ("License") to use the object code version of the proprietary STI and third-party software, as applicable, provided through this website (the "Software") for internal personal or internal business use, in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may not sublicense or otherwise distribute or share the Software or any part of the Software under any circumstances.
3. Title and Proprietary Information Except for the limited license granted above, all rights, title and interest in and to the Software and all related documentation and materials, including all intellectual property rights, are retained by STI and its third party suppliers. The Licensee acknowledges that the Software was developed by STI and its third party suppliers at great expense and contains valuable trade secrets. The Licensee agrees to preserve the confidential nature of STI's trade secrets and the proprietary information contained in the Software by retaining and using the Software in trust and confidence and not disclosing it to third parties.
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I, too, switched from RH9 to FC1, though I did a complete wipe/reinstall. I had no issues with the install. HOWEVER...
Being quite the LINUX n00b, I have always had trouble with RH/Fedora not having (what *I* consider to be) acceptable multimedia applications built into the distro. Also, being a n00b, the issue isn't figuring out how to install them, it's figuring out what apps to install.
So... I too switched to SuSE, am running 9.1, and having no issues.
Best of luck to the RH/Fedora group - no hard feelings, I have just found SuSE to be more tailored to my skills and needs out-of-the-box.
Re:"The computer you want always costs $5000".
on
The FragBook
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I have herd that XPHome functions better under gamming loads than Pro. Is this true?
...someone with a 4-digit ID is asking the/. crowd for Windows tech support...
...1) you must stick to either kde, *box, gnome, etc. which users are not going to want to do
I disagree. You do NOT have to stick to a single one of these... in fact, I regularly bounce back and forth depending upon the work I'm doing - oh, and I just stick to a shell whenever I care more about speed than eye candy.
2) distributions must have a SINGLE standard window manager
I believe they all do have a single 'standard' or 'default' WM, while offering alternative options.
Some investors may still mistakenly believe Microsoft's desktop applications business -- namely Microsoft Office -- is at stake in the fight against Linux. But Linux faces an uphill battle there, at least over the next few years, given that Microsoft commands more than 90% of the market share in that arena.
OOo is fighting an uphil battle here. Should they focus on 100% compoatibility or implementation of the next 'killer app' inside of an office SW suite?
I, personally, believe that adoption by businesses will come through adding of VALUE and USEFUL FEATURES vs. Compatibility. After all, we can always make a migration tool to migrate the documents into a new format, if the value delivered by the new suite equates to a dollar savings (or revenue generation).
A few pieces of advice from an experienced "upper manager":
1. Make sure all suggestions are positioned from the perspective of how they will help the company achieve increased revenue, reduced costs, or a strategic advantage IN YOUR CORE BUSINESS. Management could give a shit about technology - until you translate it into dollars that they can count.
2. Be ready to back up your suggestions with FACT. Best to get your middle managers to help you with this, as they will know better than you what upper management will view as factual information.
3. DO NOT discuss technical details, even if they ask. Simply state that you'd be happy to put together a timeline, staffing plan, and budget regarding the necessary effort to implement your suggestion if they'd like to see it.
4. Be SURE to tie your suggestions to other business initiatives. It's unlikely that they'd move to implement something unless it can be tied to the company's current direction in spending.
Lastly, be sure to point out something positive about your team/group/department and it's leadership. You'll come across as a team player who is NOT just looking for personal glory, which will give them more reason to believe your suggestion has merit and has been thought out.
Hundreds of posts thus far, and absolutely NO one has thought to email her or give her a call to find out why she's closing it down? I'm going to drop her an email, and we'll see what response I get back.
CowboyNeal, let's get on the interview thing. Definately a must-have.
When the cost of maintainence becomes greater than the cost of replacement.
...minus the value derived from the benefits of the technology improvements on the replacement.
I'm sure there's a mathematical equation here, allowing for assumptions, that would allow us to calculate when the value of maintaining the existing telescope is outweighed by the value expected from the replacement...
Come on, this is/.... ONE of you guys should be able to throw something together for this.
The point is obvious to all, except apparently you. Insightful? LOL!! Oh, and to ensure I don't get a shitload of 'offtopic' mods: Lindows is some Operating system or something that nobody cares about, especially my mom.
Yes, the point does appear to be obvious to all...except you... and that is, I was trying to point out that I saw a funny trend in the original posts.
I was actually extremely suprised to see this listed as insightful as well - funny, yes - offtopic, yes... I assume the mods thought that by pointing out something funny about a series of replies, I had discovered an 'insightful' way of looking at the conversation.
As for the slam on Lindows, I am sorry you feel that way. I believe it's a very good quality product, and commend the effort of it's development staff and management on it's recent improvements.
There ARE ways of getting a list of files that match a certain extension from within the GUI (like other people have pointed out, using the Search/Find tool), but what he actually said was correct, and does not deserve your sarcastic bashing. Your post should not have been modded 'offtopic', but rather 'flamebait'.
Sorry... it was honestly intended to be FUNNY... do you not see humor in a bunch of (presumably) skilled techies telling a guy how to copy 'a bunch of mp3's' to a floppy? FORGET the rest of it, whether clicking on 'this' or typing 'that' will work. The humor factor was the whole point of my post. I saw humor in that, and if you didn't, I appologize. However, obviously some readers saw it from the same perspective, and got a laugh.
Do you realize there are now at least 5 responses telling you how to copy 'all of the *.mp3 files in a directory to a floppy'.
I realize that the mp3 format may be used for things BESIDES individual songs ripped from CDs or downloaded, but the VAST majority of mp3 files are exactly this.
So... back to the genius part - you just had some (presumably) computer gurus explain how to take a directory full of 3-4 meg (average) sized files, and copy them onto a floppy disk.
LOL!!
Oh, and to ensure I don't get a shitload of 'offtopic' mods, I'm typing this from my parent's machine... with a fresh copy of Lindows 4.0 installed... and they are already enjoying it.
In this project, management should have given the customer the old "Fast, cheap and good - You pick two, let us define the third, and we'll deliver.". Apparently everyone's forgetting that, while this customer is all about timeline, they may have been able to compromise on features or cost - and if they were able to obtain some compromise, they'd have budget to throw more resources at it, or the ability to cut back the amount of work to fit with the budget / resources at hand.
In the off chance the customer isn't willing to compromise anywhere, it's time to tell them that your company is in business to make money, just like they are, and ask them if they'd sell their widgets to their best customer (or ANY customer) below cost just to keep the customer. Chances are, they'd reply 'No, because then they'd just want it even further below cost on the next order'.
So, you then carefully explain to them that the labor of your employees is equivelant to their widgets. If they're still not willing to offer any compromise, you dump the client. You'll do considerably less damage to your reputation by NOT accepting an unreasonable contract than by accepting it and failing to deliver.
As for the employee perspective of this situation, you have management and sales people that don't understand how to do their own jobs. Would they tolerate this level of incompetence from you? Of course not. So, don't tolerate it from them. Escallate it to senior management. If this IS senior management, bail on the company before it goes under.
Re:Mozilla "Classic" isn't dead yet / other commen
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I completely concur that using 1.4 as the latest 'stable' makes sense, until the 1.5/2.0 version becomes tried and accepted as stable.
Release version numbering should follow major changes in the base code. The specifics listed thus far in this discussion reflect that this will be the case with Mozilla in it's next release (*Disclaimer* - I didn't spend time researching them myself, so I'm basing this comment on earlier comments in this discussion and understanding of Mozilla's development in general).
A classic example is Redhat, of course. With versions 6 and 7, the *.0 release was widely considered stable and tested enough for the typical end-user, but not for 'enterprise level' deployment, esp. on the server side. I have read many comments (and agree) that most businesses waited for a version *.1, *.2, or *.3 before migrating, giving the time necessary to fix any unforseen issues that didn't appear in normal testing.
I concur that a move to a version number of 2.0 is warranted when the change is made to Firebird. The 'refined, heavily tested' version cannot be made available until after the initial release (into production environments - testing will NEVER be able to account for all possible situations).
I'd bring copies of ALL OS CDs I could get my hands on:
DOS 5.X - 6.22 *Windows 3.11 for Workgroups Win95, 98, 98_SE, ME, 2KPro, 2KServer, XP **The 'latest' Mandrake and RedHat CDs
Standard productivity software:
MS Office (probably 95 or 97 due to the 'older hardware' statement) **OOo (latest)
Utilities:
Anti-virus various disk utilities...but I think I'd be more inclined to ensure I had a spare floppy drive, a 1-2 Gig IDE drive (older machine BIOS limitation is usually at 2 Gig, as well as several OS limitations), an OLD, cheap ISA video card, a phillips head screw driver, and some tools.
This entire kit could be loaded into a small case that could easily be carried around or packed in my gear, and if these things wouldn't fix the issues, the target machine would probably be cheaper to replace than repair. Also, my goal would be to make the machine FUNCTIONAL again, not necessarily to optimize video performance (hence no focus on drivers) or speed the machine up (hence no additional RAM, PROC upgrades, etc.)
* - Yes, I know Windows 3.11 is not an OS... ** - Generally, even older versions of other distros could be upgraded to one of these distros w/o data loss, and the HW could handle the load
I was sorely disappointed after all the buzz about Nemesis being similar to 'Wrath of Kahn'. It held NONE of the dramatic acting, and none of the sheer POWER of that movie.
They (Berman & Crew) keep screwing up by trying to tell a sci-fi story rather than telling a HUMAN story. The REAL issue is, they try to focus on too many characters at once, at the expense of the story. When the series (TNG) was running, I LOVED all the character-building episodes. They'd pick out one character, and base the entire episode around that character, with the rest of the crew in 'fringe' roles, which added continuity.
I personally think to retire the Trek series would be a serious mistake. The things Trek 'stands for' still exist. The opportunities to tell incredible stories are immense - if for no other reason, than because they don't have to spend any amount of time detailing the history behind the characters anymore. I would recommend they take the time to examine classic literature (for story ideas), and classic films (for editing), pay more for the 'movie' crew (director, editors, etc.) than the cast (to improve attention to STORY rather than EFFECTS), and get back to telling simpler, more human stories.
Slashdot Mirror
NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels
Sep. 25, 2006
A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years.
The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or smaller than at the present time. Recent warming is forcing species of plants and animals to move toward the north and south poles.
Image right: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows average temperatures from 2001-2005 compared to a base period of temperatures from 1951-1980. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA
The study used temperatures around the world taken during the last century. Scientists concluded that these data showed the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.36 Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years.
"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and warm the surface. Some greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, occur naturally, while others are due to human activities.
Image left: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows a progression of changing global surface temperatures from 1880 to 2005, the warmest ranked year on record. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and dark blue indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to view animation. Credit: NASA
The study notes that the world's warming is greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is larger over land than over ocean areas. The enhanced warming at high latitudes is attributed to effects of ice and snow. As the Earth warms, snow and ice melt, uncovering darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, a process called a positive feedback. Warming is less over ocean than over land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there.
Hansen and his colleagues in New York collaborated with David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of UCSB to obtain comparisons of recent temperatures with the history of the Earth over the past million years. The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments.
Image left: Data from this study reveal that the Earth has been warming approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years. Credit: NASA
One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature c
From the article:
Load speed is one area worth noting because of the improvements over previous releases. Launching the Office Suite installed on winXP Home SP2, with the program's "Quick Starter" feature disabled, produced the following results: OpenOffice Writer loaded in 10 seconds. The Spreadsheet (OO Calc) in 11 seconds. The Powerpoint-like presentations module (Impress): 9 seconds. OO Base (a new database program): 5 seconds. With Quick Starter enabled: OO Write: 3 seconds. OO Calc: 7.5 seconds. OO Impress: 6 seconds. OO Base: 2 seconds.
Yeah, it needs a great moderation system... let's have Taco design it!!
10 posts in, and already TWO references to throwing people in jail for:
...then again, this *IS* slashdot...
1. Not making old information publicly available
2. Quoting a presidential candidate
It occurs to me that we should probably be focussing our efforts on defeating the terrorist threats and shoring up our economy rather than on one another for having a different opinion than ourselves.
George and Colin are both descendants of King Edward I ("Longshanks") and Elanor de Castilie. OF their two children, George is a descendant of Princess Elizabeth Plantagenet, while Colin is a descendant of King Edward II.
Is that explicit enough?
Yes... until the war's been over a few years. Articles like these just might prove useful.
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SimDesk Technologies, Inc. (or "We," "Us," "Our," "STI") offers user ("Licensee," "Your," "You") a certain online and/or downloadable (as applicable) applications including software such as word processing, data management, spreadsheet, personal scheduling, data communications, e-mail and other services under the terms set forth below. The Service includes the provision of the Software (as defined below) and Your storage of data, files, email or other information on STI's servers. Such Service and storage are subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
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From the desktopos.com link:
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Unfortunately the site is currently experiencing Technical Difficulties, please check in 24 hours.
In the mean time go to DesktopOS.net
ummmm... the Titanic is *part* of the rubbish my friend.
I, too, switched from RH9 to FC1, though I did a complete wipe/reinstall. I had no issues with the install. HOWEVER...
Being quite the LINUX n00b, I have always had trouble with RH/Fedora not having (what *I* consider to be) acceptable multimedia applications built into the distro. Also, being a n00b, the issue isn't figuring out how to install them, it's figuring out what apps to install.
So... I too switched to SuSE, am running 9.1, and having no issues.
Best of luck to the RH/Fedora group - no hard feelings, I have just found SuSE to be more tailored to my skills and needs out-of-the-box.
Priceless.
I disagree. You do NOT have to stick to a single one of these... in fact, I regularly bounce back and forth depending upon the work I'm doing - oh, and I just stick to a shell whenever I care more about speed than eye candy.
I believe they all do have a single 'standard' or 'default' WM, while offering alternative options.
OOo is fighting an uphil battle here. Should they focus on 100% compoatibility or implementation of the next 'killer app' inside of an office SW suite?
I, personally, believe that adoption by businesses will come through adding of VALUE and USEFUL FEATURES vs. Compatibility. After all, we can always make a migration tool to migrate the documents into a new format, if the value delivered by the new suite equates to a dollar savings (or revenue generation).
A few pieces of advice from an experienced "upper manager":
1. Make sure all suggestions are positioned from the perspective of how they will help the company achieve increased revenue, reduced costs, or a strategic advantage IN YOUR CORE BUSINESS. Management could give a shit about technology - until you translate it into dollars that they can count.
2. Be ready to back up your suggestions with FACT. Best to get your middle managers to help you with this, as they will know better than you what upper management will view as factual information.
3. DO NOT discuss technical details, even if they ask. Simply state that you'd be happy to put together a timeline, staffing plan, and budget regarding the necessary effort to implement your suggestion if they'd like to see it.
4. Be SURE to tie your suggestions to other business initiatives. It's unlikely that they'd move to implement something unless it can be tied to the company's current direction in spending.
Lastly, be sure to point out something positive about your team/group/department and it's leadership. You'll come across as a team player who is NOT just looking for personal glory, which will give them more reason to believe your suggestion has merit and has been thought out.
Hundreds of posts thus far, and absolutely NO one has thought to email her or give her a call to find out why she's closing it down? I'm going to drop her an email, and we'll see what response I get back.
CowboyNeal, let's get on the interview thing. Definately a must-have.
I'm sure there's a mathematical equation here, allowing for assumptions, that would allow us to calculate when the value of maintaining the existing telescope is outweighed by the value expected from the replacement...
Come on, this is
Yes, the point does appear to be obvious to all
I was actually extremely suprised to see this listed as insightful as well - funny, yes - offtopic, yes... I assume the mods thought that by pointing out something funny about a series of replies, I had discovered an 'insightful' way of looking at the conversation.
As for the slam on Lindows, I am sorry you feel that way. I believe it's a very good quality product, and commend the effort of it's development staff and management on it's recent improvements.
Sorry... it was honestly intended to be FUNNY... do you not see humor in a bunch of (presumably) skilled techies telling a guy how to copy 'a bunch of mp3's' to a floppy? FORGET the rest of it, whether clicking on 'this' or typing 'that' will work. The humor factor was the whole point of my post. I saw humor in that, and if you didn't, I appologize. However, obviously some readers saw it from the same perspective, and got a laugh.
You, my friend, are a genius.
Do you realize there are now at least 5 responses telling you how to copy 'all of the *.mp3 files in a directory to a floppy'.
I realize that the mp3 format may be used for things BESIDES individual songs ripped from CDs or downloaded, but the VAST majority of mp3 files are exactly this.
So... back to the genius part - you just had some (presumably) computer gurus explain how to take a directory full of 3-4 meg (average) sized files, and copy them onto a floppy disk.
LOL!!
Oh, and to ensure I don't get a shitload of 'offtopic' mods, I'm typing this from my parent's machine... with a fresh copy of Lindows 4.0 installed... and they are already enjoying it.
There are three elements to management:
1. Time
2. Cost
3. Quality
In this project, management should have given the customer the old "Fast, cheap and good - You pick two, let us define the third, and we'll deliver.". Apparently everyone's forgetting that, while this customer is all about timeline, they may have been able to compromise on features or cost - and if they were able to obtain some compromise, they'd have budget to throw more resources at it, or the ability to cut back the amount of work to fit with the budget / resources at hand.
In the off chance the customer isn't willing to compromise anywhere, it's time to tell them that your company is in business to make money, just like they are, and ask them if they'd sell their widgets to their best customer (or ANY customer) below cost just to keep the customer. Chances are, they'd reply 'No, because then they'd just want it even further below cost on the next order'.
So, you then carefully explain to them that the labor of your employees is equivelant to their widgets. If they're still not willing to offer any compromise, you dump the client. You'll do considerably less damage to your reputation by NOT accepting an unreasonable contract than by accepting it and failing to deliver.
As for the employee perspective of this situation, you have management and sales people that don't understand how to do their own jobs. Would they tolerate this level of incompetence from you? Of course not. So, don't tolerate it from them. Escallate it to senior management. If this IS senior management, bail on the company before it goes under.
I completely concur that using 1.4 as the latest 'stable' makes sense, until the 1.5/2.0 version becomes tried and accepted as stable.
Release version numbering should follow major changes in the base code. The specifics listed thus far in this discussion reflect that this will be the case with Mozilla in it's next release (*Disclaimer* - I didn't spend time researching them myself, so I'm basing this comment on earlier comments in this discussion and understanding of Mozilla's development in general).
A classic example is Redhat, of course. With versions 6 and 7, the *.0 release was widely considered stable and tested enough for the typical end-user, but not for 'enterprise level' deployment, esp. on the server side. I have read many comments (and agree) that most businesses waited for a version *.1, *.2, or *.3 before migrating, giving the time necessary to fix any unforseen issues that didn't appear in normal testing.
I concur that a move to a version number of 2.0 is warranted when the change is made to Firebird. The 'refined, heavily tested' version cannot be made available until after the initial release (into production environments - testing will NEVER be able to account for all possible situations).
Heh. Imagine trying to give a 'special' $10 tip for a particularly special dancer... a roll of U.S. quarters.
I concur...
...but I think I'd be more inclined to ensure I had a spare floppy drive, a 1-2 Gig IDE drive (older machine BIOS limitation is usually at 2 Gig, as well as several OS limitations), an OLD, cheap ISA video card, a phillips head screw driver, and some tools.
I'd bring copies of ALL OS CDs I could get my hands on:
DOS 5.X - 6.22
*Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
Win95, 98, 98_SE, ME, 2KPro, 2KServer, XP
**The 'latest' Mandrake and RedHat CDs
Standard productivity software:
MS Office (probably 95 or 97 due to the 'older hardware' statement)
**OOo (latest)
Utilities:
Anti-virus
various disk utilities
This entire kit could be loaded into a small case that could easily be carried around or packed in my gear, and if these things wouldn't fix the issues, the target machine would probably be cheaper to replace than repair. Also, my goal would be to make the machine FUNCTIONAL again, not necessarily to optimize video performance (hence no focus on drivers) or speed the machine up (hence no additional RAM, PROC upgrades, etc.)
* - Yes, I know Windows 3.11 is not an OS...
** - Generally, even older versions of other distros could be upgraded to one of these distros w/o data loss, and the HW could handle the load
I was sorely disappointed after all the buzz about Nemesis being similar to 'Wrath of Kahn'. It held NONE of the dramatic acting, and none of the sheer POWER of that movie.
They (Berman & Crew) keep screwing up by trying to tell a sci-fi story rather than telling a HUMAN story. The REAL issue is, they try to focus on too many characters at once, at the expense of the story. When the series (TNG) was running, I LOVED all the character-building episodes. They'd pick out one character, and base the entire episode around that character, with the rest of the crew in 'fringe' roles, which added continuity.
I personally think to retire the Trek series would be a serious mistake. The things Trek 'stands for' still exist. The opportunities to tell incredible stories are immense - if for no other reason, than because they don't have to spend any amount of time detailing the history behind the characters anymore. I would recommend they take the time to examine classic literature (for story ideas), and classic films (for editing), pay more for the 'movie' crew (director, editors, etc.) than the cast (to improve attention to STORY rather than EFFECTS), and get back to telling simpler, more human stories.