Umm... Physicists in the US have been working on this for a long time. There was a laser at Lawrence Berkeley doing these experiments back in the early 90's and I worked on it at Los Alamos then as well.
There are some big problems with it as a reactor design. Needless to say you have to get the tritium pellet positions just so inside a large laser. Figuring out how to do that with a *lot* of spherical pellets is non-trivial. And that's assuming they can make a self-sustaining system. (Something that I tend to doubt a lot - although I became rather cynical about the whole approach)
My personal feeling is that at least in the US, most of those working on this were former weapons physicists. The physics is basically the same. They got to keep their jobs and work on the same sort of thing by bringing up the fabled "alternative energy" mantra. But I honestly doubt it'll ever pay off as an energy source.
Great way to refine the physics of nuclear weapons though.
Actually the government does fund contingency planning for asteroids. I had a friend working on that project at Los Alamos for a while. They were doing damage calculations for different kinds of asteroids, calculating predictions of occurrence, and calculating missile feasibility for dealing with them.
While getting hit by planes wasn't, after abundant warnings and an attempted destruction by terrorists a few years earlier, it shouldn't have been the shock it was. The problem is that we as a culture are reactive rather than proactive.
The difference is that this disaster has been widely expected. When I lived in Louisiana everyone talked about this in matter of fact terms. In fact most expected things to be far worse. Just be grateful it wasn't a cat 4 or cat 5 storm that hit a bit further west. I remember talking to the guy in charge of disaster planning for the state back in the 1980's. I asked what happens if a hurricane goes over Lake Pontchartrain. He said almost everyone dies because there is no way out of the city and no time to evacuate a few million people.
This was in the 1980's.
Everyone has known this would happen eventually but pretended it wouldn't.
I understand that for the people there this is of no comfort and we have to turn our hearts to them. I agree we should. But it was like 9/11 when many people had been trying to warn the public for years and everyone turned a deaf ear. Typically these sorts of things are well known about in advance years earlier. What's tragic isn't just the people killed and displaced. What's tragic is that this could have been prevented by not building up an area in which we knew this would happen.
We should be grateful that most of the predictions didn't happen. Because it easily could have been much, much worse.
Exactly why people live in a city below sea level with the ocean on one side, a lake on the other, and a swamp on the other in a major hurricane area makes no sense to me. It is a city that has sentimental value but little practical value. I'll predict that no one will insure any buildings in New Orleans. People ought to condemn as many buildings as possible and let people move.
And immediately people would have a bad impression of OSX because it didn't work well on the hardware they happened to have.
There's no way Apple could do this without actually ensuring that drivers work and all the rest. Further, why on earth would Apple want to sell a $120 product for $20? Hello?
Except that graphics and especially graphics acceleration aren't handled quite right. This is especially true of 3D features. Yet OSX makes pretty extensive use of this and looks to be increasing its use in the future. So for those things VMWare will do poorly (if it runs right at all) This is why, for instance, VMWare doesn't do so well with games.
Running it under VMWare (assuming you have a system that supports SSE3) will be a slow experience for many applications I suspect. Yeah most programs will run fine. But I'd not want to run iMovie or FCP.
I'm not sure that's true. The US took off economically in the postwar period when we also dominated science. I think science dominance has a lot to do with economic success.
That's not to say I'm not happy the rest of the world is investing in science. The more the better in my book.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. Microsoft's best strength is in focusing in on important features. Like their developers and the things their enterprise clients need the most. I think OSX overall is a better OS, but Apple hasn't fared as well in focusing in on developers and the things businesses clamor for. (i.e. the problems still around with Windows networking on the OSX)
To be fair a lot of Apple's APIs have been moving targets as Apple's tried to make OSX more mature. But I do think it is much easier for developers on Windows, although Apple is trying and I give them big kudos for that.
I have to confess that I went into physics after seeing all the cool labs in movies. Of course real labs didn't much look like the Hollywood versions. But I worked a Los Alamos for a while and fulfilled my dream. I suspect that just focusing more on science and making it positive would do wonders. There is that CBS show Numbers. But I tried watching it once and after some horrendous abuse of the uncertainty principle and chaos principle to some FBI agents I could never watch it again. (And reportedly they actually had some mathematicians as consultants!?!)
Actually I take that back. Apparently the little nib in the middle of the scrollbar can be a button. So you have four. But most people will probably have that mapped to being equivalent to clicking the scroll wheel. In Safari for instance that opens a new tab on the link you click on. Apple also doesn't allow per application settings which would be more important with the fewer buttons than say an Intellimouse. The new Intellimouse has a tilt ability to the scroll wheel. I don't know how ergonomic that is but it means the Apple mouse has fewer abilities than most other mice.
Which is very unfortunate. I was very excited until I read that. I have Expose all windows and Expose application's windows to the left and right extra buttons on my Intellimouse. It's very useful - especially while programming. I really wish I had an extra one for Dashboard as well. With Apple's mouse you only get one extra button for Expose or Dashboard. Not too good in my opinion.
I went to find my house (which is about 7 years old) Not only is it not there but neither is the road! To Microsoft's credit they overlay the sat picture with a relatively up to date map. But that means our area is covered by a pretty old map as well. I've been hearing the same thing from a lot of people. Not exactly a positive way to generate buzz. At this point I doubt I'd even consider Microsoft's offering for anything. Google's images were limited. But they were at least somewhat up to date.
Now if just someone would publish something on the Dish PVR. I'm sure it's written in Java, and judging by when the hard drive spins up late at night, I'm betting its running Linux with a late night Cron task cleaning things up.
I've been frustrated with RDC at times, although I don't think you can run multiple instances under Windows either. I believe you can run multiple instances if you make a copy of RDC. (I've not tried that so don't quote me) I frequently use VNC. It's not as fast as RDC at some thing, but at other things like scrolling is much faster for odd reasons.
Microsoft has announced a new version of Entourage that will fix all the problems. I can't speak to that nor the release date. Some people have sworn to me about Evolution, the Novell Exchange client for Linux. It is also available as a binary for OSX. You might consider trying that, although you loose some Mac feel.
I've never had trouble with Office documents, although I only use passwords occasionally. I've actually found for some things, such as versioning comments, that the Mac version is superior to the PC version. I certainly prefer Word on the Mac as opposed to Word on the PC. The sidebar on Windows for Office really bugs me.
The other thing to consider is that for certain branches of computer use the Mac is cheaper. Consider for example the price of XCode versus Visual Studio. XCode is free with OSX. Yet Office is "free" with many Windows boxes, but it's fairly cheap for OSX and many sellers give discounts for OSX. Likewise iLife is frequently built in on many Apple boxes. For some people that makes a difference. (For others it is irrelevant) It all really depends upon what you are doing.
Note that the MySQL performance is a bit of a mixed bag. Apple decided to tweak a code that improved reliability of MySQL with most hard drives. The downside is slower performance. Whether this was the right thing to do is arguable. There are arguments on both sides. However it is the case that with many HDs mySQL is more unreliable. Of course I suspect for most people using mySQL that doesn't matter.
NETBIOS or DOMAIN names work unreliably, unfortunately. I've found using IP addresses with an Applescript that mounts them at login the most reliable way to do it. This mainly appears to be a problem with XP SP2 boxes for reasons I've never been able to figure out.
Slashdot Mirror
My second gen is still going strong as well. After a lot of hard use. I *almost* want it to break down so I can grab a new one... (grin)
Umm... Physicists in the US have been working on this for a long time. There was a laser at Lawrence Berkeley doing these experiments back in the early 90's and I worked on it at Los Alamos then as well.
There are some big problems with it as a reactor design. Needless to say you have to get the tritium pellet positions just so inside a large laser. Figuring out how to do that with a *lot* of spherical pellets is non-trivial. And that's assuming they can make a self-sustaining system. (Something that I tend to doubt a lot - although I became rather cynical about the whole approach)
My personal feeling is that at least in the US, most of those working on this were former weapons physicists. The physics is basically the same. They got to keep their jobs and work on the same sort of thing by bringing up the fabled "alternative energy" mantra. But I honestly doubt it'll ever pay off as an energy source.
Great way to refine the physics of nuclear weapons though.
Actually the government does fund contingency planning for asteroids. I had a friend working on that project at Los Alamos for a while. They were doing damage calculations for different kinds of asteroids, calculating predictions of occurrence, and calculating missile feasibility for dealing with them.
While getting hit by planes wasn't, after abundant warnings and an attempted destruction by terrorists a few years earlier, it shouldn't have been the shock it was. The problem is that we as a culture are reactive rather than proactive.
The difference is that this disaster has been widely expected. When I lived in Louisiana everyone talked about this in matter of fact terms. In fact most expected things to be far worse. Just be grateful it wasn't a cat 4 or cat 5 storm that hit a bit further west. I remember talking to the guy in charge of disaster planning for the state back in the 1980's. I asked what happens if a hurricane goes over Lake Pontchartrain. He said almost everyone dies because there is no way out of the city and no time to evacuate a few million people.
This was in the 1980's.
Everyone has known this would happen eventually but pretended it wouldn't.
I understand that for the people there this is of no comfort and we have to turn our hearts to them. I agree we should. But it was like 9/11 when many people had been trying to warn the public for years and everyone turned a deaf ear. Typically these sorts of things are well known about in advance years earlier. What's tragic isn't just the people killed and displaced. What's tragic is that this could have been prevented by not building up an area in which we knew this would happen.
We should be grateful that most of the predictions didn't happen. Because it easily could have been much, much worse.
Exactly why people live in a city below sea level with the ocean on one side, a lake on the other, and a swamp on the other in a major hurricane area makes no sense to me. It is a city that has sentimental value but little practical value. I'll predict that no one will insure any buildings in New Orleans. People ought to condemn as many buildings as possible and let people move.
Um, that was the point of his comment wasn't it?
And immediately people would have a bad impression of OSX because it didn't work well on the hardware they happened to have.
There's no way Apple could do this without actually ensuring that drivers work and all the rest. Further, why on earth would Apple want to sell a $120 product for $20? Hello?
Here's a simple test. Run DoomIII under VMWare and regularly. Compare the speeds.
Except that graphics and especially graphics acceleration aren't handled quite right. This is especially true of 3D features. Yet OSX makes pretty extensive use of this and looks to be increasing its use in the future. So for those things VMWare will do poorly (if it runs right at all) This is why, for instance, VMWare doesn't do so well with games.
Running it under VMWare (assuming you have a system that supports SSE3) will be a slow experience for many applications I suspect. Yeah most programs will run fine. But I'd not want to run iMovie or FCP.
I'm not sure that's true. The US took off economically in the postwar period when we also dominated science. I think science dominance has a lot to do with economic success.
That's not to say I'm not happy the rest of the world is investing in science. The more the better in my book.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. Microsoft's best strength is in focusing in on important features. Like their developers and the things their enterprise clients need the most. I think OSX overall is a better OS, but Apple hasn't fared as well in focusing in on developers and the things businesses clamor for. (i.e. the problems still around with Windows networking on the OSX)
To be fair a lot of Apple's APIs have been moving targets as Apple's tried to make OSX more mature. But I do think it is much easier for developers on Windows, although Apple is trying and I give them big kudos for that.
I have to confess that I went into physics after seeing all the cool labs in movies. Of course real labs didn't much look like the Hollywood versions. But I worked a Los Alamos for a while and fulfilled my dream. I suspect that just focusing more on science and making it positive would do wonders. There is that CBS show Numbers. But I tried watching it once and after some horrendous abuse of the uncertainty principle and chaos principle to some FBI agents I could never watch it again. (And reportedly they actually had some mathematicians as consultants!?!)
Actually I take that back. Apparently the little nib in the middle of the scrollbar can be a button. So you have four. But most people will probably have that mapped to being equivalent to clicking the scroll wheel. In Safari for instance that opens a new tab on the link you click on. Apple also doesn't allow per application settings which would be more important with the fewer buttons than say an Intellimouse. The new Intellimouse has a tilt ability to the scroll wheel. I don't know how ergonomic that is but it means the Apple mouse has fewer abilities than most other mice.
Which is very unfortunate. I was very excited until I read that. I have Expose all windows and Expose application's windows to the left and right extra buttons on my Intellimouse. It's very useful - especially while programming. I really wish I had an extra one for Dashboard as well. With Apple's mouse you only get one extra button for Expose or Dashboard. Not too good in my opinion.
I went to find my house (which is about 7 years old) Not only is it not there but neither is the road! To Microsoft's credit they overlay the sat picture with a relatively up to date map. But that means our area is covered by a pretty old map as well. I've been hearing the same thing from a lot of people. Not exactly a positive way to generate buzz. At this point I doubt I'd even consider Microsoft's offering for anything. Google's images were limited. But they were at least somewhat up to date.
Interesting. If you can mount it though I assume you can copy the MPEG-2 files?
Too bad there's not a XFS driver for the Mac.
Now if just someone would publish something on the Dish PVR. I'm sure it's written in Java, and judging by when the hard drive spins up late at night, I'm betting its running Linux with a late night Cron task cleaning things up.
I suspect they coded in Obj-C which is a little more robust on the Mac. I know it is available for Linux. But not in a terribly elegant fashion.
Sadly many companies develop ActiveX based web programs. I've never quite figured out why.
I've been frustrated with RDC at times, although I don't think you can run multiple instances under Windows either. I believe you can run multiple instances if you make a copy of RDC. (I've not tried that so don't quote me) I frequently use VNC. It's not as fast as RDC at some thing, but at other things like scrolling is much faster for odd reasons.
Microsoft has announced a new version of Entourage that will fix all the problems. I can't speak to that nor the release date. Some people have sworn to me about Evolution, the Novell Exchange client for Linux. It is also available as a binary for OSX. You might consider trying that, although you loose some Mac feel.
I've never had trouble with Office documents, although I only use passwords occasionally. I've actually found for some things, such as versioning comments, that the Mac version is superior to the PC version. I certainly prefer Word on the Mac as opposed to Word on the PC. The sidebar on Windows for Office really bugs me.
The other thing to consider is that for certain branches of computer use the Mac is cheaper. Consider for example the price of XCode versus Visual Studio. XCode is free with OSX. Yet Office is "free" with many Windows boxes, but it's fairly cheap for OSX and many sellers give discounts for OSX. Likewise iLife is frequently built in on many Apple boxes. For some people that makes a difference. (For others it is irrelevant) It all really depends upon what you are doing.
Note that the MySQL performance is a bit of a mixed bag. Apple decided to tweak a code that improved reliability of MySQL with most hard drives. The downside is slower performance. Whether this was the right thing to do is arguable. There are arguments on both sides. However it is the case that with many HDs mySQL is more unreliable. Of course I suspect for most people using mySQL that doesn't matter.
NETBIOS or DOMAIN names work unreliably, unfortunately. I've found using IP addresses with an Applescript that mounts them at login the most reliable way to do it. This mainly appears to be a problem with XP SP2 boxes for reasons I've never been able to figure out.