I mean, are you going to remember what "Browser 8472" would mean?
That whenever you use it you'll get painfully sucked into fluidic space to serve as nutritional snacks to many-legged monsters that make even the Borg quake in their stylish yet affordable boots?
...oh, wait, I think that description was already reserved for IE. Never mind. Move along.
Has anyone else noticed that Scientific American has suffered some serious Omni-fication in the past couple of years?
Yeah....it's gotten worse, but not quite bad enough to be called sensationalist crap like Omni. But it's certainly awful enough to have made me switch to
American Scientist. The Sigma Xi publication delivers some kick-ass articles on all facets of scientific research, focusing mainly (in my view) on physics, math, and meta-research on scientific methods with some astronomy and life sciences thrown in. Lots of CS, too. Comes highly recommended despite its US-centric name.
Even if MS bundles this with the XBox2, they will have problems getting producers to adopt it. Movie producers and retailers will be very hesitant to put two different and mututally exclusive copies of the same movie on the shelf at the same time, in nearly the same packaging.
True, asking for cross-compatibility between HD-DVD standards is way too optimistic... however, even if Microsoft's standard is not adopted, all they have lost are the development costs for putting the technology on XBoX, nothing more. The potential gains (telling movie execs that "we have X thousand boxes already purchased by consumers that use our standard! Why not leverage on that headway?") are big, though.
Backwards compatibility == good, definitely. Still, the extra money I'd need plunk down on T2 Extreme Edition (being obssessive and all:), and then three years later on whatever format T2 Mega-Super Collector's Turbo Edition comes on, will irk me on some level. Ah well.
Hmmm. This also got me thinking...would Microsoft bundle this with XBoX 2, even if it weren't a fully adopted standard at that point? It makes a lot of sense in regards of their ambition to be the biggest home entertainment producer. It would also help in encouraging the adoption of this new HD-DVD standard of theirs, as all console gamers get the feature bundled in their new sparkly gaming box.
So now there are two proposals for new blue-laser formats and one for an enhanced version of the current red-laser DVD, and then Microsoft adds its fingers to the pie with this new thing. I had hoped HD-DVD would not be another format debacle (Betamax/VHS, DVD-/+RW, etc.) but it seems it's going to be even worse than usual
My other worry is that the proposed HD-DVD standards are baby steps, too small to make upgrading for me cost-effective. Why add to the storage capacity of DVDs one magnitude, when you could wait two years and possibly (probably?) get a media format that will increase your storage capacity a thousandfold. Or as a pipe dream, eliminate overlapping media formats -- I'd have no need for DVDs if I could buy digital copies of what is now put on separate DVD disks, and store that content on my hard drive. Same for music CDs. It would save an awful lot of shelf space and eliminate the need to buy n separate players for n separate storage media. But of course, these things have always been geared to maximise company profits and not consumer satisfaction. Shame.
on my dad's 15inch tibook, text I think looks horrible, it antialiases in a manner that makes some letters look like the bottom row of the eye test card, is there a setting or something to fix this?
At least in OS X, under System Preferences - General there is a "Font smoothing style" pull-down box, playing with the options there might help. NB: the changed preference doesn't take effect until you boot/login again (IIRC).
Making a call within the same operator can be half the price of calling to another operator. One operator has one area code, so you know how much the call will cost you.
IIRC this feature of financially "binding" customers to their existing networks (or encouraging e.g. families to use the same operator) is under investigation as a possibly illegal marketing strategy. 5 minutes of googling didn't help in finding a reference, but I recall reading about it in the paper here. So it could be merely a temporary anomaly in mobile pricing.
I don't know about you, but your grammar is certainly on drugs...
Or perchance, it's your attention span that's on drugs? Grammar Nazi away my grammar, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. And while at it, read what I posted more carefully. I said:
[...] speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec [...]
Speed at the end. Speed of the payload at the end of the cable. Not "speed of the end of the cable." Distance 120,000 km. Average speed estimated at conservative 3 kph. 120,000 divided by 3 equals 40,000 seconds total travelling time. That's just over 11 hours.
As for your claim that it's not a rocket, well, that's debatable. Who says it's a vertical monorail train? There have been several propulsion methods proposed. I got my info
here. Not the most scientific of sources, but at least my claim holds a source, unlike your ramblings. (Jeez, 120kph as top speed....any modern rapid rail transit system beats that, and they have stuff like air drag to factor in. Did you pull that number out of thin air, pardon the pun?)
It takes weeks to crawl up there, I shouldn't think braking would be much of an issue.
Uh...the crack you're smoking must be sub-standard. Calculating that the cable reaches about one-third of the way to the moon (or about three times around the globe) and that speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec, estimating with average speed at a conservative 3 kph the trip to the end of the cable will take about 12 hours.
Heck, with that sort of momentum, the craft will reach Mars in your estimated time of weeks!
Why waste precious momentum? Just time your ascent so you slingshot off the end of the cable
Well, I for one would think one would use the elevator for more than deep space exploration, e.g. setting satellites onto a geostationary orbit. This would involve coming to a dead stop, or at least slowing down considerably.
As for the asteroid counterweight, that's merely from what I've read and from the need to tether the cable onto something (think of tetherball; tensile cable rules OK) that's already available in space, as opposed to hauling the counterweight payload into space the normal (costly) way.
I think the only other consideration is, once operational how do you balance the wieght of the payload on the elevator + the fact that it moves (i.e increaces or decreaces with altitude
Considering the caliber of the object the cable would need to be tethered to (an asteroid-sized lump of matter) and that the maximum distance payload will travel on the cable is just one-third of the way to the moon, any payload weight changes are negligible. I'd be more interested in hearing how braking of the payload is accomplished, since the speed generated by the maglev propulsion/centripetal force/etc. that moves the payload up the cable will be quite a nifty pace. 10 kps or such. Yowza.
A nice article on space elevators without the fancy scientific buzzwords can be found here
You can also construct the cable in a satellite that's on geosynchronous orbit. Molecular construction both ways, so that one end lowers itself to earth, while another grows into space and towards the space station acting as the elevator end point.
As for space elevators in general, not only does the construction pose significant obstacles, but the reality of having a tensile cable stretched from earth to the sky (literally) introduces interesting variables. Back-up plans in case a plane flies smack into the cable? Effects of wind, lightning, hurricanes? What happens if the cable snaps below geosynchronous orbit? Anyway, sure, problems abound, but there's something very exciting about the idea of building something as massive as a space elevator will be.
On the other hand, Converting American shoe sizes to their Continental European equivalents would make the number on the president's IQ test results smaller than the one on the sole of his shoe.
I was comfortable in OS X, and tweaked everything I could see, but reading through the Missing Manual book turned up all sorts of features I would never have stumbled upon or actively researched.
Exactly my experience re the book. I didn't need it to explain me the ins and outs of using sudo or ls, but the stuff on UI tweaking, aliases, networking etc. provided a few "I didn't know you could do that, too!" moments. The "Where'd It Go?" dictionary at the end was very useful for a Win-2-Mac switcher like me.
IMHO this book is best for people who have used mac before and some computer experience.
So how about us experienced computer users that have recently switched to a Mac?
I have the Missing Manual 2nd edition reviewed here, and while it is a good book, it's still written for an experienced Mac user. I bought it as the best of bad alternatives, while searching for a book that didn't spend 20 pages explaining the concept of a file system and double-clicking ("Mac OS X for Dummies" etc.) or jump straight into Cocoa programming or such "advanced" topics.
IOW, I need a book called The Definitive OS X Manual For The Recent Switcher With Copious Experience In Every Other OS In Existence. Any recommendations?
I have yet to see the xml come out of the dark ages, and until it decides to define exactly what it is or what it wants to be, I don't think it will.
D'oh. What is the nature of the alphabet? To provide a common set of basic symbols from which to build the contents of a natural language.
XML is a meta-language; it is specifically designed so that you, the user/code monkey/designer can define exactly what it is in terms of your projects. Unlike Java or other programming languages, XML is as free from in-built semantics as possible (i.e. "formless" as you put it) because it was meant to be that way! It's not a programming language, it's an alphabet.
As for the uses of XML, I see a few things where it would be and is of great use:
storing representation-free data (i.e. same data could be imported into several programs that would then draw a graph, present a table, or devise a representational dance based on it)
an easily interpreted configuration/etc. language building blocks; readable by humans, operatable by machines, structured by definition
protocol languages in the lieu of SOAP
And then there's the usual suspects: multichannel publishing, information sharing a la Amazon Associates, etc. XML bends to all these shapes, that's what makes it so beautiful.
Definitely been my experience too, with one glaring exception - iMacs. Anyone with a tower or laptop seems to know at least a little about what they're doing, but it's been my experience with iMac users that they're just as clueless as anyone else
An anecdote does not a statistic make:). But still. I'm a happy owner of a new iMac despite being a CS grad student with years of experience running various shades of Unix, Linux, and Windows. I wanted an iMac because, yes, I found them cute, but also because I'm tired of twiddling with the innards of my computer ever so often. It looks rad, works like a dream, and has a pretty BSD-based OS -- what more can a geek ask for?
Just by being there, we could destroy a biological system that has evolved in isolation for billions of years.
And vice versa -- if there's a carbon-based ecosystem on Mars that's in some way compatible with us, the chances are there could also be something that could kill us effectively. Uber-Ebola that's 1000% more contagious, or perhaps an exponentially growing omnivorous organism that devours everything on its path. Cue in on $BAD_SCIFI/DISASTER_BLOCKBUSTER come true.
If you have to worry about Microsoft dropping support for your bra, then I think you've got a bit too personal of a relationship with them...
Well, should some small-breasted people want to achieve an illusion of bigger boobs in the year 2010, buying a piece of Microsoft bloatware might be the only viable option short of surgery:). "With Microsoft InternetBra XP^2 can you not only surf the Net at the convenience of your underwear, but it also increases cup size by at least 2 sizes! (Limitations apply; see warranty.)"
Great. Looks like Window-ish operating system. So now not only does my desktop crash, but my wristwatch, pen, and glasses, too. What next -- my bra suddenly losing its support? My shoes suddenly detaching from their soles due to an outdated device driver? The first user that walks into a wall after getting the blue screen of death on the HUD should sue:).
On the less negative side, there is potential for coolness. My Mac is already Bluetooth-capable so after donning all this electronics, I could watch DVDs with the HUD while on the can, or write on a pad in bed with the pen motions captured and translated into an electronic document. Whoa.
I mean, space exploration is great, but so is making sure that everyone has food to eat.
The piddling money we use on space exploration cannot even begin to solve the world's hunger problem. However, there's the odd chance the said space exploration will sometime in the future solve the world hunger problem (from results in zero-gravity growth experiments to terraforming). That slim chance is certainly better than that offered by e.g. our military. I doubt its enormous budget will in any way affect world hunger except negatively.
The one-button mouse is more ergonomic, comfortable, and efficient that all this hullabaloo about multiple button mice is older then last week's dishwaster (and needs to be thrown out with it just as well.)
Amen. After switching from a 5-button mouse to a 1-button one recently, the only thing I've been sort of missing is the scroll wheel. As a "power user" I don't use the mouse that much anyway, so all those extra buttons were dormant for 98% of the time, at worst a nuisance. At least one of my hands is on the keyboard always (insert obligatory pr0n joke), so why not use it, instead of futzing with extra buttons.
Very true; having worked for the government, I can say that there are some very dim bulbs in the mix. However, I'd rather trust the government to assign the burly Marines properly than to keep up with the esoteric field of security patching -- an art form at its best, nigh unto impossible at worst.
Maybe they will be disabled -- in fact, I think that to be a likely scenario, disabling being done much in the same manner as the disabling of electronic anti-theft badges in DVDs etc. happen at the counter.
I'm thinking they'll at least wake up to the disabling problem the first time an employee at one of their warehouses wears a tagged item of clothing where the tag is still functional and messes up their inventory system by her mere presence. "Wait! That shirt was shipped months ago! Why is it back on the premises?! Where is it?"
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah....it's gotten worse, but not quite bad enough to be called sensationalist crap like Omni. But it's certainly awful enough to have made me switch to American Scientist. The Sigma Xi publication delivers some kick-ass articles on all facets of scientific research, focusing mainly (in my view) on physics, math, and meta-research on scientific methods with some astronomy and life sciences thrown in. Lots of CS, too. Comes highly recommended despite its US-centric name.
True, asking for cross-compatibility between HD-DVD standards is way too optimistic... however, even if Microsoft's standard is not adopted, all they have lost are the development costs for putting the technology on XBoX, nothing more. The potential gains (telling movie execs that "we have X thousand boxes already purchased by consumers that use our standard! Why not leverage on that headway?") are big, though.
Hmmm. This also got me thinking...would Microsoft bundle this with XBoX 2, even if it weren't a fully adopted standard at that point? It makes a lot of sense in regards of their ambition to be the biggest home entertainment producer. It would also help in encouraging the adoption of this new HD-DVD standard of theirs, as all console gamers get the feature bundled in their new sparkly gaming box.
My other worry is that the proposed HD-DVD standards are baby steps, too small to make upgrading for me cost-effective. Why add to the storage capacity of DVDs one magnitude, when you could wait two years and possibly (probably?) get a media format that will increase your storage capacity a thousandfold. Or as a pipe dream, eliminate overlapping media formats -- I'd have no need for DVDs if I could buy digital copies of what is now put on separate DVD disks, and store that content on my hard drive. Same for music CDs. It would save an awful lot of shelf space and eliminate the need to buy n separate players for n separate storage media. But of course, these things have always been geared to maximise company profits and not consumer satisfaction. Shame.
At least in OS X, under System Preferences - General there is a "Font smoothing style" pull-down box, playing with the options there might help. NB: the changed preference doesn't take effect until you boot/login again (IIRC).
IIRC this feature of financially "binding" customers to their existing networks (or encouraging e.g. families to use the same operator) is under investigation as a possibly illegal marketing strategy. 5 minutes of googling didn't help in finding a reference, but I recall reading about it in the paper here. So it could be merely a temporary anomaly in mobile pricing.
Damn, just figured what went wrong. It must be I who's on drugs. I naturally meant 3 kps.
Or perchance, it's your attention span that's on drugs? Grammar Nazi away my grammar, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. And while at it, read what I posted more carefully. I said:
[...] speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec [...]
Speed at the end. Speed of the payload at the end of the cable. Not "speed of the end of the cable." Distance 120,000 km. Average speed estimated at conservative 3 kph. 120,000 divided by 3 equals 40,000 seconds total travelling time. That's just over 11 hours.
As for your claim that it's not a rocket, well, that's debatable. Who says it's a vertical monorail train? There have been several propulsion methods proposed. I got my info here. Not the most scientific of sources, but at least my claim holds a source, unlike your ramblings. (Jeez, 120kph as top speed....any modern rapid rail transit system beats that, and they have stuff like air drag to factor in. Did you pull that number out of thin air, pardon the pun?)
Uh...the crack you're smoking must be sub-standard. Calculating that the cable reaches about one-third of the way to the moon (or about three times around the globe) and that speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec, estimating with average speed at a conservative 3 kph the trip to the end of the cable will take about 12 hours.
Heck, with that sort of momentum, the craft will reach Mars in your estimated time of weeks!
Well, I for one would think one would use the elevator for more than deep space exploration, e.g. setting satellites onto a geostationary orbit. This would involve coming to a dead stop, or at least slowing down considerably.
As for the asteroid counterweight, that's merely from what I've read and from the need to tether the cable onto something (think of tetherball; tensile cable rules OK) that's already available in space, as opposed to hauling the counterweight payload into space the normal (costly) way.
Considering the caliber of the object the cable would need to be tethered to (an asteroid-sized lump of matter) and that the maximum distance payload will travel on the cable is just one-third of the way to the moon, any payload weight changes are negligible. I'd be more interested in hearing how braking of the payload is accomplished, since the speed generated by the maglev propulsion/centripetal force/etc. that moves the payload up the cable will be quite a nifty pace. 10 kps or such. Yowza.
A nice article on space elevators without the fancy scientific buzzwords can be found here
You can also construct the cable in a satellite that's on geosynchronous orbit. Molecular construction both ways, so that one end lowers itself to earth, while another grows into space and towards the space station acting as the elevator end point.
As for space elevators in general, not only does the construction pose significant obstacles, but the reality of having a tensile cable stretched from earth to the sky (literally) introduces interesting variables. Back-up plans in case a plane flies smack into the cable? Effects of wind, lightning, hurricanes? What happens if the cable snaps below geosynchronous orbit? Anyway, sure, problems abound, but there's something very exciting about the idea of building something as massive as a space elevator will be.
On the other hand, Converting American shoe sizes to their Continental European equivalents would make the number on the president's IQ test results smaller than the one on the sole of his shoe.
Exactly my experience re the book. I didn't need it to explain me the ins and outs of using sudo or ls, but the stuff on UI tweaking, aliases, networking etc. provided a few "I didn't know you could do that, too!" moments. The "Where'd It Go?" dictionary at the end was very useful for a Win-2-Mac switcher like me.
So how about us experienced computer users that have recently switched to a Mac?
I have the Missing Manual 2nd edition reviewed here, and while it is a good book, it's still written for an experienced Mac user. I bought it as the best of bad alternatives, while searching for a book that didn't spend 20 pages explaining the concept of a file system and double-clicking ("Mac OS X for Dummies" etc.) or jump straight into Cocoa programming or such "advanced" topics.
IOW, I need a book called The Definitive OS X Manual For The Recent Switcher With Copious Experience In Every Other OS In Existence. Any recommendations?
D'oh. What is the nature of the alphabet? To provide a common set of basic symbols from which to build the contents of a natural language.
XML is a meta-language; it is specifically designed so that you, the user/code monkey/designer can define exactly what it is in terms of your projects. Unlike Java or other programming languages, XML is as free from in-built semantics as possible (i.e. "formless" as you put it) because it was meant to be that way! It's not a programming language, it's an alphabet.
As for the uses of XML, I see a few things where it would be and is of great use:
And then there's the usual suspects: multichannel publishing, information sharing a la Amazon Associates, etc. XML bends to all these shapes, that's what makes it so beautiful.
An anecdote does not a statistic make :). But still. I'm a happy owner of a new iMac despite being a CS grad student with years of experience running various shades of Unix, Linux, and Windows. I wanted an iMac because, yes, I found them cute, but also because I'm tired of twiddling with the innards of my computer ever so often. It looks rad, works like a dream, and has a pretty BSD-based OS -- what more can a geek ask for?
And vice versa -- if there's a carbon-based ecosystem on Mars that's in some way compatible with us, the chances are there could also be something that could kill us effectively. Uber-Ebola that's 1000% more contagious, or perhaps an exponentially growing omnivorous organism that devours everything on its path. Cue in on $BAD_SCIFI/DISASTER_BLOCKBUSTER come true.
Well, should some small-breasted people want to achieve an illusion of bigger boobs in the year 2010, buying a piece of Microsoft bloatware might be the only viable option short of surgery :). "With Microsoft InternetBra XP^2 can you not only surf the Net at the convenience of your underwear, but it also increases cup size by at least 2 sizes! (Limitations apply; see warranty.)"
On the less negative side, there is potential for coolness. My Mac is already Bluetooth-capable so after donning all this electronics, I could watch DVDs with the HUD while on the can, or write on a pad in bed with the pen motions captured and translated into an electronic document. Whoa.
The piddling money we use on space exploration cannot even begin to solve the world's hunger problem. However, there's the odd chance the said space exploration will sometime in the future solve the world hunger problem (from results in zero-gravity growth experiments to terraforming). That slim chance is certainly better than that offered by e.g. our military. I doubt its enormous budget will in any way affect world hunger except negatively.
Amen. After switching from a 5-button mouse to a 1-button one recently, the only thing I've been sort of missing is the scroll wheel. As a "power user" I don't use the mouse that much anyway, so all those extra buttons were dormant for 98% of the time, at worst a nuisance. At least one of my hands is on the keyboard always (insert obligatory pr0n joke), so why not use it, instead of futzing with extra buttons.
Very true; having worked for the government, I can say that there are some very dim bulbs in the mix. However, I'd rather trust the government to assign the burly Marines properly than to keep up with the esoteric field of security patching -- an art form at its best, nigh unto impossible at worst.
Maybe they will be disabled -- in fact, I think that to be a likely scenario, disabling being done much in the same manner as the disabling of electronic anti-theft badges in DVDs etc. happen at the counter.
I'm thinking they'll at least wake up to the disabling problem the first time an employee at one of their warehouses wears a tagged item of clothing where the tag is still functional and messes up their inventory system by her mere presence. "Wait! That shirt was shipped months ago! Why is it back on the premises?! Where is it?"