I live in Quebec where this is a constant issue (yes, most folks here are francophone, it's not just for the tourists, and no everyone doesn't also know English.)
The law's are pretty basic - in companies where there are 50 or more employees French is the language. Only after lots of paperwork & pressure can one have a chance at an exemption and even then there has to be a program for francicization [sp?].
Everything has to be done or availiable in French (this includes software!) - all other languages are officially of secondary importance. Yes this is not popular amongst many folks , I'm not debating it, I'm just reporting it.
Socially things are much simpler. Generally conversations are held in whatever language the majority of the participants are comfortable in. Should someone in the conversation (and this means not only those talking but those expected to be included in the listening) not speak a language folks will try to avoid their non-language. Sometimes this is not possible/practicable so a pal will be helpful and try to keep the non-lingual up to speed on the parts of the conversation they're not getting. Occasionially even that's not possible (everyone is too involved, it too hard to translate & keep up, etc.) so one has to infer what is being said, ask the occasionial question, rely on the goodwill of others and assume they'll bring you back into the conversation when appropriate.
This is a fairly well established set of customs anywhere there are multiple languages in usuage, either in the community or in the workplace. It may be confusing & off-putting to most US'ers who expect a unilingual environment but it's pretty much to be expected in most of the world.
What can you do as an lingual-outsider in your office? First politely ask folks to remember that you don't speak their language & to please try and include you. Generally your making a strong effort to learn the predominant language will make this a friendly request and not an imperialist one.
Second understand that to your co-workers this is their mother-tongue and it can be tiring to work in a second language. While work-related stuff may need to be translated the quick comment-in-passing is often just not worth the effort to these folks, or it may not even make sense if translated (ever try to explain a bit of US word-play or pop-culture-trivia to a non-native? It works the same way for them to you.)
Unfortunately oftentimes being left out of this chat-'n-joke byplay can make one feel like an outsider, or distrustful of what was being said; but honestly it is unrealistic to demand everything be in one language when most folks are comfortable in another. As long as you can impress on folks they need to include you to some extant and must include you when it's relevant then you should be ok.
Third, consider your choice of work environments. You don't go to work in a Chinese resturaunt & assume they'll work in English, don't work for a francophone company & assume they'll switch to English for you. There seems to have been some honest effort made to use more English but if it's not gonna happen then start floating that resume...
Finally, make pals with the poor [insert 3rd language here] who works in one foreign tongue & lives in another...
Darwin is the core of Apple's Mac OS X but it's Open Source, BSD-compatible & runs on x86 as well as PowerPC. Indeed Apple has made special effort to release Darwin for x86, it's not just by happenstance.
Thus the original very cogent point that Plex86 could be ported to Darwin running on x86. No where was mentioned MacOS X or PowerPC (though they've been brought up many times in other places recently.)
I agree that this would indeed be very interesting, if only for the surrealism.
Who could have predicted 5 years ago that Jobs would return to Apple, have a coup & take over the company, then have Apple buy Next, Open Source the core of their OS, build in BSD-compatibility, make it backwards-compatible with the notoriously idiosyncratic MacOS then release it. To then put an emultor on top of this whole series of suprises would be frosting*.
Please folks, before you invest the effort into posting please read what the original poster says & not what you guessed from a quick scan.
* Yes there's VirtualPC etc. but they're MacOS-only and just not as neat as Plex86 though they're arguably more stable & more polished, as well as technically much more sophisticated.
Elaborately constructed, full of fun buzzwords, even a link thrown in for good measure. A 10-pointer! It's not precisely originial but well enough executed to excuse that.
-- Michael
Gee, this beats that whole "Stallman" thing (heh, I bet there's *still* folks who believe there's a real "RMS" person!)
> By working at specific frequencies, work cycles and high voltages it might be possible to reduce resistance.
Yeah, & if I tap my heels together three times...
Nope, you're still there. Sorry, wishing don't make it so.
Then we get to:
> I believe that Tesla, as the brilliant man he was, knew exactly what he was doing with his Wardenclyffe coil. He didn't have the theoretical quantum physics explanation for what he designed, but he had the practical knowledge to make it work.
>There's a story about Tesla lighting up lightbulbs 100 miles away using such a system. I prefer not to give much credit to this, but I believe Tesla wouldn't fail.
Riiiigghhttt. Like I said, no carnations in the airport please.
I'm gonna go doing something constructive now & I think it's time for your basket-weaving class..
Couple of problems with Tesla's idea of pumping electricity directly through the aether:
Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)
Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law but almost anything would mess with this & cause it to vary: trees, streams, underground streams, wet/dry soil, weather (do not operate in a shower!) and that's well before we get to things like buildings, walls, metal-objects, etc.
Hazardous local environment. At the energies Tesla was talking every metallic object nearby would be carrying a hefty charge. Touching any of these could well be hazardous: Local fence-wires would sizzle with charge, metal doors could be deadly. I have no idea what this much radiated energy over a long period would do to local biological activity but the simple random shocks alone couldn't be good.
Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed. Good grounds would be difficult, power is DC, the supply would vary wildly. Furthermore parts of motors & other devices would be receiving charge almost randomly. I can't imagine trusting something as basic as an elevator winch motor under these conditions much less microelectronics like my digital watch, cellphone, etc.
Look, Tesla is a fascinating (and tragic) character but some of his ideas, were, well, impracticable.
I used to work with Tesla coils almost daily & let me tell you they are not a good solution. Indoors and at comparatively low power they were hazardous & required care to operate, scaled up and put into The Real World they'd have been regularly deadly. Not deadly as in once-a-year power-main-fell-on-somebody or Little-Bobby-put-a-hairpin-in-the-socket-&-zapped- himself deadly but random step in a puddle & die deadly, sit between two angled metals walls & fry deadly, metal-fillings in your jaw grow warm & make you ill deadly.
ps For all of those automatically saying we should re-study Tesla's idea & going for the 'underdog': there's a cult out there waiting for you & no I don't want any carnations in the airport.
Since 1993 there's been a free standards-compliant worldwide internet to fax service at tpc.int. It allows one to send plain-text or with-specific-attachment-types email to phone-number@tpc.int. This will get automagically converted to a fax & sent out via a participating member's local system.
While it's not the scale of the discussion it's certainly out there & working.
Are you sure you want the competition? What if she likes him more then you?
-- Michael
Of course, you _could_ expand your sexuality then what if *you* like him more then her?...
(I really hate it when some armchair theorist starts spouting their latest theory prefaced with "Everyone knows" then procedes to publically drool)
In reality NASA spent a great deal of time researching the optimal crew size for high-stress envirinments and determined that 3 is the optimal number. All of the material is publically availiable & applied in a wide range of disciplines from physchiatry to business management.
Moderators: It was harsh but this fellow was trying to pull a fast one. Making up information is *not* cool and folks *should* get called on it.
Believe it or not Radio Shack has a pretty good series of one panel kits full of mounted electrical components & springs for running wires. The manuals are decently written and are understandable by most youngsters. They can usually do a fairly large number of projects with each kit and most of the projects are fairly interesting.
Yes, many of the projects can be duplicated with something pre-made from the local store but heck, there's nothing like doing it yourself & impressing one's parents ( parents - you claimed you liked the clay ashtrays - now get ready to go bonkers over the photoelectric light switch!)
As a non-parent, not-a-big-kid-fan these are great gifts. The kids really do seem to appreciate them, I get to feel I'm doing something good, and aside from the occasional "come look at what I made" it keeps the rugrats out from underfoot while the adults visit. Remember, toys are unisex & they're just as good for your niece as well as your nephew!
Here's the link (not embedded 'cause/. would break it):
Document. Document document document. Use the whatever and write/elaborate on the FAQ, manuals, etc.
Debug. Try out the features & discover what works & what doesn't work. Go through the code and attempt to fix the problems.
Support. Lots of groups could use someone to help handle their administrivia, clean up their website, write some PR stuff, whatever.
Of course out of this you get some real skills, lots of hands-on project experience, and are exposed to a wide variety of real-world code & coding styles.
Wow - Herbert S. Zim. I spent a summer at the Museum of Science in Boston when I was 16 cataloguing books and Zim's were easily some of the most popular ("Z65" under their unusual cataloguing system.) Zim's are always good but there are undoubtably newer ones out there geared for kids too. Check your local library's Children's Librarian or call a school for ideas.
Best gift for a youngster getting started in astronomy: Your time (actually it's the best gift - period.)
Best tools? Warm clothing, a pair of binoculars (ask if you can borrow some friend or relatives the first few times out) and enthusiasm. One of the spinny-sky-maps (square of cardboard holding a rotatable circular sky map, adjust it to show tonight's sky by date & time) is nice to have too at the beginning.
Show you daughter the constellations then learn where their names come from, the stories behind those characters. These make great bedtime stories even if you're paraphrasing from a 'grown-up book' and it wows kids to connect them to the outside. Don't forget there are other traditions: Native American sky stories are wonderful.
Consider taking your daughter on a trip to a Planetarium (ok - I'm biased here - volunteered for one for 8 years.) Any decent science education center will have some astronomy exhibits. Make 'catching the mistakes' on TV shows & movies a sport with your daughter.
Since she's young there won't be a lot of late night viewing but you can make it a special treat. A trip out into the countryside, a good warm meal, then an half-hour with Mom & Dad out in a field looking at the stars; *her* time. Bring a big blanket & thermos of hot cocoa so you all can huddle up while watching. If she has some other little friends of a similar bent invite them & their parents for a special "Kid's Star Party".
Other gear: DON'T go buying an expensive telescope the first time out, particularly a refractor. Binoculars are preferable the first few times and can be used for other hobbies as she grows. If her interest remains consider getting her a telescope later on but even then a reflector is usually a better deal & much more portable. Books are *always* a good investment, check your local library & kids book store.
Finally, connect astronomy into other things in her life. The light from stars can be connected to the light from cut crystal which can be connected to an inexpensive prism you get for her. Compare driving to a market to driving to the Moon, or to Mars. Discuss various weights in various places, discuss things like why the ISS stays up, etc. Check some kids science books for simple science projects to do on a rainy day.
Last, with the ISS solar panels up it's now *much* more visible. Consider checking a web site for it's visible times from your area & see if you two can spot it.
What's your take on Apple putting a BSD-layer in their forthcoming Mac OS X? What effect do you see this having on the BSD community & your own distribution in particular?
Re: Pushing another... - get the OS to non-geeks!
on
BSD to Leapfrog Linux?
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· Score: 2
"I get the impression that MacOS X is being marketed as a serving solution, not a desktop operating environment."
You've a misimpression. Apple is first & foremost a desktop company.
Apple is really first & foremost, secondmost, and thirdmost a desktop company. With Mac OS X they finally have a viable server offering but that clearly has not been their focus. Indeed I can't for the life of me figure out where you got your misimpression. They did initially ship an OS X server but that's been dormnant & waiting to be supplanted by the upcoming full release of OS X. I bet they're hoping to move into the server space but clearly that's not their first target.
Apple's competition is consumer WinX and to a much (much) lessor extent consumer Linux et al. That's why everyone compares them. Server space tomorrow, but it's desktop today.
Drivers. Market share. Mind share. More eyes on the code. An alternative open-source BSDish OS with different solutions & services to compare & contrast with. Bringing a large (LARGE) set of vendors porting products to a BSD-based system.
Macs are a popular consumer PC. They've been one of the bestselling boxes for the past two years after a long decline.
Macs are popular in the publishing, design, & graphics professionial communities. They offer features (color matching etc.) that are required to those communities.
Linux is still not a consumer product. The skills required to install & maintain a Linux box still exceed those of MS WinX or Apple MacOS.
Linux applications are much more un-integrated then comparable WinX or MacOS applications. It's trivial to cut-'n-paste something between apps on those platforms (esp. in the Mac) without concern - not so on Linux.
Consumer-oriented applications for the Mac far exceed those for Linux. Ranging from MS Office 2001 to genealogy, personal-finance & cross-stitch applications Macs offer more choices that are more easily availiable/installed then Linux ones.
Mac OS X is more then "just another Unix" or even "another BSD". It is backwards compatiable with the existing large installed base of Mac applications and has the support of those software developers.
Mac OS X does offer some features that differ it from other Unixes.
Mac OS X has the Display PDF system replacing X Window.
Mac OS X has Apple's new Aqua GUI.
Mac OS X has a standardized configuration system that is easily the 'friendliest' in the industry.
Mac OS X is based on the well-proven, widely respected OpenStep technologies.
Mac OS X's core is the first major consumer OS to be open-sourced (Darwin.)
And as noted before, Mac OS X has the ability to run existing Mac OS applications.
Mac OS X is due out in a few weeks from Apple as a shipping product. Many of the same features Mac OS X has are in development on other platforms but few are as advanced as Mac OS X offers and are from a patchwork of vendors.
Nick, you're right, Apple's Mac OS X may offer you nothing personally or professionially. On the other hand a large set of persons (equal to a large percentage of the existing unix userbase) are poised to start using Unix, many of them folks who've never been in this space before. All other apects aside that is very interesting and very relevant.
Mac OS X already has "support from Quark, Adobe, Macromedia, Kinetix and so on."
Indeed it can run all of the traditionial Mac OS applications as well as any ported specifically to OS X.
From the user's point of view aside from a somewhat different interface Mac OS X will run all of the same applications it always has. Some things like Control Panels & Extensions may not operate (it *is* a different OS after all) but applications have no problems.
ER, the 128 MB RAM etc. system requirements were for the beta version. Like most other OS's (Linux included) the final Mac OS X release will be smaller, faster, and with less of a footprint then the development versions. This has already been shown in the releases subsequent to beta 1. This isn't Apple boosterism, it's just how development versions are untuned and final ones are polished.
As to price, OS X should run comfortably on the MSRP US$799 'Indigo' IMacs. While you may not have that cash laying around it's not a bad price for the hardware one gets (15" Sony monitor, PowerPC, fast Ethernet, Modem, etc.)
As to Intel x86 support, no one has yet to describe a viable way for Apple to sell this & not cut their own throat. 1000th repetition:Apple is a hardware company - they make their money on hardware - they couldn't survive as an OS house. OS X may well exist on x86 (& Alpha) but until there's profit in it don't look for it to come out of the labs.
You're going to have several constraints ripping 1000's of CD's to MP3s.
Physically loading the CD's into the readers. The cycle for retrieve CD, open CD, remove disk, insert disk into drive, retrieve CD, replace in box, refile box is slow & complex. I don't know of any system that automates this for jewel-box CD's; all autoloaders *I* know require the CD's be first loaded into special magazines which of course makes them pointless.
Reading the CD into the system. Even with fast drives we're talking several minutes of time to read in each CD. Bus bandwidth would also come into play - I'm betting that SCSI would be the way to go here.
Converting the CD audio to MP3s. Here you finally have a straight-forward read-compute-write process.
All three processes would be best tuned to each other. Given that the only means I'm aware of actually getting the CD's into readers is manually then one can assume a hard limit of loading & reading any CD is going to be about 5 minutes under best-case hardware conditions (fast SCSI reader etc.)
Since a single load-person could likely service two readers alternately this would make a work station. This work station would then produce 2 CD-datasets every 5 minutes. Assuming about six hours of loading per day one would achieve around 144 CD's of data loaded per station per day.
Assuming two CPU's per station (1 CD-ROM/1 CPU) one would have 20 minutes to process each CD over 24 hours in order to keep pace. As I believe this rate is achieviable with a current fast system then you have a well tuned solution.
Workstations consisting of 1 load person with two fast PC's = ~140 CD's per day processed
No need for custom hardware, no need for clustering, all off-the-shelf stuff.
First Mir isn't a single unit - it's a complex of modules. The modules are connected together tightly but they weren't designed to take any serious shearing force; that wouldn't happen in their environment. Their masses are also very awkwardly distributed - I expect any strong thrust would result in severe stresses as different parts of the ship accelerate unequally due to their greatly differing masses.
Check here for an Mir architecture overview:
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/mir.html
Second Mir has a lot of mass, far more then a typical communications satellite. I doubt one, or two, or maybe even three ascent stages would be sufficient to boost Mir into an appropriate orbit. I don't know of multiple stages ever having been used in an ascent situation, much less any available in a reasonable timeframe.
Third is the control issue. Most communications satellites are spun to give them gyroscopic stability during thier ascent. I doubt this would be possible with Mir from either a structural integrity aspect or finding an appropriate axis-mounting aspect. This complexity would be compounded by the need for multiple ascent units required and transitioning between their various stabilization motions.
So - could it be done?
Possibly yes. It would however require several years of development, cost a great deal of money, and not be assured of success. Since Mir has no funds left, there's little time left to make any decisions, and left in place it's a problem waiting-to-happen there is no chance of Mir being rescued for posterity.
Samples of the fungus were returned to Earth and studied. They were identified as being a common mold. Run your own search on a good engine & you'll find the details for yourself.
Aside from this, LOTS of stuff rains down onto Earth every day - tons. Some of it is large enough to harbor biological organisms & transport them to the surface. The fact that we're still here stands testamant to either the paucity of foreign material or the resiliency of our biosphere. Either way, and in spite of a few B-grade SF films, biohazards from near-space aren't a big concern these days.
(The alien Roquefort inhabiting my brain made me say this)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I live in Montreal but work in Boston. Check out the homepage if you're so interested.
The law's are pretty basic - in companies where there are 50 or more employees French is the language. Only after lots of paperwork & pressure can one have a chance at an exemption and even then there has to be a program for francicization [sp?].
Everything has to be done or availiable in French (this includes software!) - all other languages are officially of secondary importance. Yes this is not popular amongst many folks , I'm not debating it, I'm just reporting it.
Socially things are much simpler. Generally conversations are held in whatever language the majority of the participants are comfortable in. Should someone in the conversation (and this means not only those talking but those expected to be included in the listening) not speak a language folks will try to avoid their non-language. Sometimes this is not possible/practicable so a pal will be helpful and try to keep the non-lingual up to speed on the parts of the conversation they're not getting. Occasionially even that's not possible (everyone is too involved, it too hard to translate & keep up, etc.) so one has to infer what is being said, ask the occasionial question, rely on the goodwill of others and assume they'll bring you back into the conversation when appropriate.
This is a fairly well established set of customs anywhere there are multiple languages in usuage, either in the community or in the workplace. It may be confusing & off-putting to most US'ers who expect a unilingual environment but it's pretty much to be expected in most of the world.
What can you do as an lingual-outsider in your office? First politely ask folks to remember that you don't speak their language & to please try and include you. Generally your making a strong effort to learn the predominant language will make this a friendly request and not an imperialist one.
Second understand that to your co-workers this is their mother-tongue and it can be tiring to work in a second language. While work-related stuff may need to be translated the quick comment-in-passing is often just not worth the effort to these folks, or it may not even make sense if translated (ever try to explain a bit of US word-play or pop-culture-trivia to a non-native? It works the same way for them to you.)
Unfortunately oftentimes being left out of this chat-'n-joke byplay can make one feel like an outsider, or distrustful of what was being said; but honestly it is unrealistic to demand everything be in one language when most folks are comfortable in another. As long as you can impress on folks they need to include you to some extant and must include you when it's relevant then you should be ok.
Third, consider your choice of work environments. You don't go to work in a Chinese resturaunt & assume they'll work in English, don't work for a francophone company & assume they'll switch to English for you. There seems to have been some honest effort made to use more English but if it's not gonna happen then start floating that resume...
Finally, make pals with the poor [insert 3rd language here] who works in one foreign tongue & lives in another...
Darwin is the core of Apple's Mac OS X but it's Open Source, BSD-compatible & runs on x86 as well as PowerPC. Indeed Apple has made special effort to release Darwin for x86, it's not just by happenstance.
Thus the original very cogent point that Plex86 could be ported to Darwin running on x86. No where was mentioned MacOS X or PowerPC (though they've been brought up many times in other places recently.)
I agree that this would indeed be very interesting, if only for the surrealism.
Who could have predicted 5 years ago that Jobs would return to Apple, have a coup & take over the company, then have Apple buy Next, Open Source the core of their OS, build in BSD-compatibility, make it backwards-compatible with the notoriously idiosyncratic MacOS then release it. To then put an emultor on top of this whole series of suprises would be frosting*.
Please folks, before you invest the effort into posting please read what the original poster says & not what you guessed from a quick scan.
* Yes there's VirtualPC etc. but they're MacOS-only and just not as neat as Plex86 though they're arguably more stable & more polished, as well as technically much more sophisticated.
(I take it you're a bottom.)
Elaborately constructed, full of fun buzzwords, even a link thrown in for good measure. A 10-pointer! It's not precisely originial but well enough executed to excuse that.
-- Michael
Gee, this beats that whole "Stallman" thing (heh, I bet there's *still* folks who believe there's a real "RMS" person!)
> By working at specific frequencies, work cycles and high voltages it might be possible to reduce resistance.
Yeah, & if I tap my heels together three times...
Nope, you're still there. Sorry, wishing don't make it so.
Then we get to:
> I believe that Tesla, as the brilliant man he was, knew exactly what he was doing with his Wardenclyffe coil. He didn't have the theoretical quantum physics explanation for what he designed, but he had the practical knowledge to make it work.
>There's a story about Tesla lighting up lightbulbs 100 miles away using such a system. I prefer not to give much credit to this, but I believe Tesla wouldn't fail.
Riiiigghhttt. Like I said, no carnations in the airport please.
I'm gonna go doing something constructive now & I think it's time for your basket-weaving class..
Mac OS X & BSD
I'm curious about how the BSD folks view the impending couple million new users they've got heading their way when MacOS X is released.
Please, no Mac-rants, they're trite & off-topic. I just wanna know about the question.
- Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)
- Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law but almost anything would mess with this & cause it to vary: trees, streams, underground streams, wet/dry soil, weather (do not operate in a shower!) and that's well before we get to things like buildings, walls, metal-objects, etc.
- Hazardous local environment. At the energies Tesla was talking every metallic object nearby would be carrying a hefty charge. Touching any of these could well be hazardous: Local fence-wires would sizzle with charge, metal doors could be deadly. I have no idea what this much radiated energy over a long period would do to local biological activity but the simple random shocks alone couldn't be good.
- Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed. Good grounds would be difficult, power is DC, the supply would vary wildly. Furthermore parts of motors & other devices would be receiving charge almost randomly. I can't imagine trusting something as basic as an elevator winch motor under these conditions much less microelectronics like my digital watch, cellphone, etc.
Look, Tesla is a fascinating (and tragic) character but some of his ideas, were, well, impracticable.I used to work with Tesla coils almost daily & let me tell you they are not a good solution. Indoors and at comparatively low power they were hazardous & required care to operate, scaled up and put into The Real World they'd have been regularly deadly. Not deadly as in once-a-year power-main-fell-on-somebody or Little-Bobby-put-a-hairpin-in-the-socket-&-zapped- himself deadly but random step in a puddle & die deadly, sit between two angled metals walls & fry deadly, metal-fillings in your jaw grow warm & make you ill deadly.
ps For all of those automatically saying we should re-study Tesla's idea & going for the 'underdog': there's a cult out there waiting for you & no I don't want any carnations in the airport.
While it's not the scale of the discussion it's certainly out there & working.
Are you sure you want the competition? What if she likes him more then you? -- Michael Of course, you _could_ expand your sexuality then what if *you* like him more then her?...
BZZZZzzzzzttt! Thank you for playing, try again.
(I really hate it when some armchair theorist starts spouting their latest theory prefaced with "Everyone knows" then procedes to publically drool)
In reality NASA spent a great deal of time researching the optimal crew size for high-stress envirinments and determined that 3 is the optimal number. All of the material is publically availiable & applied in a wide range of disciplines from physchiatry to business management.
Moderators: It was harsh but this fellow was trying to pull a fast one. Making up information is *not* cool and folks *should* get called on it.
Yes, many of the projects can be duplicated with something pre-made from the local store but heck, there's nothing like doing it yourself & impressing one's parents ( parents - you claimed you liked the clay ashtrays - now get ready to go bonkers over the photoelectric light switch!)
As a non-parent, not-a-big-kid-fan these are great gifts. The kids really do seem to appreciate them, I get to feel I'm doing something good, and aside from the occasional "come look at what I made" it keeps the rugrats out from underfoot while the adults visit. Remember, toys are unisex & they're just as good for your niece as well as your nephew!
Here's the link (not embedded 'cause /. would break it):
http://www.radioshack.com/category.asp?catalog%5Fn ame=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F009%5F001%5F000%5F 000&Page=1
- Document. Document document document. Use the whatever and write/elaborate on the FAQ, manuals, etc.
- Debug. Try out the features & discover what works & what doesn't work. Go through the code and attempt to fix the problems.
- Support. Lots of groups could use someone to help handle their administrivia, clean up their website, write some PR stuff, whatever.
Of course out of this you get some real skills, lots of hands-on project experience, and are exposed to a wide variety of real-world code & coding styles.Wow - Herbert S. Zim. I spent a summer at the Museum of Science in Boston when I was 16 cataloguing books and Zim's were easily some of the most popular ("Z65" under their unusual cataloguing system.) Zim's are always good but there are undoubtably newer ones out there geared for kids too. Check your local library's Children's Librarian or call a school for ideas.
Best tools? Warm clothing, a pair of binoculars (ask if you can borrow some friend or relatives the first few times out) and enthusiasm. One of the spinny-sky-maps (square of cardboard holding a rotatable circular sky map, adjust it to show tonight's sky by date & time) is nice to have too at the beginning.
Show you daughter the constellations then learn where their names come from, the stories behind those characters. These make great bedtime stories even if you're paraphrasing from a 'grown-up book' and it wows kids to connect them to the outside. Don't forget there are other traditions: Native American sky stories are wonderful.
Consider taking your daughter on a trip to a Planetarium (ok - I'm biased here - volunteered for one for 8 years.) Any decent science education center will have some astronomy exhibits. Make 'catching the mistakes' on TV shows & movies a sport with your daughter.
Since she's young there won't be a lot of late night viewing but you can make it a special treat. A trip out into the countryside, a good warm meal, then an half-hour with Mom & Dad out in a field looking at the stars; *her* time. Bring a big blanket & thermos of hot cocoa so you all can huddle up while watching. If she has some other little friends of a similar bent invite them & their parents for a special "Kid's Star Party".
Other gear: DON'T go buying an expensive telescope the first time out, particularly a refractor. Binoculars are preferable the first few times and can be used for other hobbies as she grows. If her interest remains consider getting her a telescope later on but even then a reflector is usually a better deal & much more portable. Books are *always* a good investment, check your local library & kids book store.
Finally, connect astronomy into other things in her life. The light from stars can be connected to the light from cut crystal which can be connected to an inexpensive prism you get for her. Compare driving to a market to driving to the Moon, or to Mars. Discuss various weights in various places, discuss things like why the ISS stays up, etc. Check some kids science books for simple science projects to do on a rainy day.
Last, with the ISS solar panels up it's now *much* more visible. Consider checking a web site for it's visible times from your area & see if you two can spot it.
Except of course it's a Mach 3.0 kernel, etc. My question stands as-is.
What's your take on Apple putting a BSD-layer in their forthcoming Mac OS X? What effect do you see this having on the BSD community & your own distribution in particular?
You've a misimpression. Apple is first & foremost a desktop company.
Apple is really first & foremost, secondmost, and thirdmost a desktop company. With Mac OS X they finally have a viable server offering but that clearly has not been their focus. Indeed I can't for the life of me figure out where you got your misimpression. They did initially ship an OS X server but that's been dormnant & waiting to be supplanted by the upcoming full release of OS X. I bet they're hoping to move into the server space but clearly that's not their first target.
Apple's competition is consumer WinX and to a much (much) lessor extent consumer Linux et al. That's why everyone compares them. Server space tomorrow, but it's desktop today.
That's a LOT of stuff to be bringing.
- Macs are a popular consumer PC. They've been one of the bestselling boxes for the past two years after a long decline.
- Macs are popular in the publishing, design, & graphics professionial communities. They offer features (color matching etc.) that are required to those communities.
- Linux is still not a consumer product. The skills required to install & maintain a Linux box still exceed those of MS WinX or Apple MacOS.
- Linux applications are much more un-integrated then comparable WinX or MacOS applications. It's trivial to cut-'n-paste something between apps on those platforms (esp. in the Mac) without concern - not so on Linux.
- Consumer-oriented applications for the Mac far exceed those for Linux. Ranging from MS Office 2001 to genealogy, personal-finance & cross-stitch applications Macs offer more choices that are more easily availiable/installed then Linux ones.
- Mac OS X is more then "just another Unix" or even "another BSD". It is backwards compatiable with the existing large installed base of Mac applications and has the support of those software developers.
- Mac OS X does offer some features that differ it from other Unixes.
- Mac OS X has the Display PDF system replacing X Window.
- Mac OS X has Apple's new Aqua GUI.
- Mac OS X has a standardized configuration system that is easily the 'friendliest' in the industry.
- Mac OS X is based on the well-proven, widely respected OpenStep technologies.
- Mac OS X's core is the first major consumer OS to be open-sourced (Darwin.)
- And as noted before, Mac OS X has the ability to run existing Mac OS applications.
- Mac OS X is due out in a few weeks from Apple as a shipping product. Many of the same features Mac OS X has are in development on other platforms but few are as advanced as Mac OS X offers and are from a patchwork of vendors.
Nick, you're right, Apple's Mac OS X may offer you nothing personally or professionially. On the other hand a large set of persons (equal to a large percentage of the existing unix userbase) are poised to start using Unix, many of them folks who've never been in this space before. All other apects aside that is very interesting and very relevant.Indeed it can run all of the traditionial Mac OS applications as well as any ported specifically to OS X.
From the user's point of view aside from a somewhat different interface Mac OS X will run all of the same applications it always has. Some things like Control Panels & Extensions may not operate (it *is* a different OS after all) but applications have no problems.
As to price, OS X should run comfortably on the MSRP US$799 'Indigo' IMacs. While you may not have that cash laying around it's not a bad price for the hardware one gets (15" Sony monitor, PowerPC, fast Ethernet, Modem, etc.)
As to Intel x86 support, no one has yet to describe a viable way for Apple to sell this & not cut their own throat. 1000th repetition: Apple is a hardware company - they make their money on hardware - they couldn't survive as an OS house. OS X may well exist on x86 (& Alpha) but until there's profit in it don't look for it to come out of the labs.
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Physically loading the CD's into the readers. The cycle for retrieve CD, open CD, remove disk, insert disk into drive, retrieve CD, replace in box, refile box is slow & complex. I don't know of any system that automates this for jewel-box CD's; all autoloaders *I* know require the CD's be first loaded into special magazines which of course makes them pointless.
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Reading the CD into the system. Even with fast drives we're talking several minutes of time to read in each CD. Bus bandwidth would also come into play - I'm betting that SCSI would be the way to go here.
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Converting the CD audio to MP3s. Here you finally have a straight-forward read-compute-write process.
All three processes would be best tuned to each other. Given that the only means I'm aware of actually getting the CD's into readers is manually then one can assume a hard limit of loading & reading any CD is going to be about 5 minutes under best-case hardware conditions (fast SCSI reader etc.)Since a single load-person could likely service two readers alternately this would make a work station. This work station would then produce 2 CD-datasets every 5 minutes. Assuming about six hours of loading per day one would achieve around 144 CD's of data loaded per station per day.
Assuming two CPU's per station (1 CD-ROM/1 CPU) one would have 20 minutes to process each CD over 24 hours in order to keep pace. As I believe this rate is achieviable with a current fast system then you have a well tuned solution.
Workstations consisting of 1 load person with two fast PC's = ~140 CD's per day processed
No need for custom hardware, no need for clustering, all off-the-shelf stuff.
Check here for an Mir architecture overview: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/mir.html
Second Mir has a lot of mass, far more then a typical communications satellite. I doubt one, or two, or maybe even three ascent stages would be sufficient to boost Mir into an appropriate orbit. I don't know of multiple stages ever having been used in an ascent situation, much less any available in a reasonable timeframe.
Third is the control issue. Most communications satellites are spun to give them gyroscopic stability during thier ascent. I doubt this would be possible with Mir from either a structural integrity aspect or finding an appropriate axis-mounting aspect. This complexity would be compounded by the need for multiple ascent units required and transitioning between their various stabilization motions.
So - could it be done?
Possibly yes. It would however require several years of development, cost a great deal of money, and not be assured of success. Since Mir has no funds left, there's little time left to make any decisions, and left in place it's a problem waiting-to-happen there is no chance of Mir being rescued for posterity.
Aside from this, LOTS of stuff rains down onto Earth every day - tons. Some of it is large enough to harbor biological organisms & transport them to the surface. The fact that we're still here stands testamant to either the paucity of foreign material or the resiliency of our biosphere. Either way, and in spite of a few B-grade SF films, biohazards from near-space aren't a big concern these days.
(The alien Roquefort inhabiting my brain made me say this)