you know, he gets more airtime than spiderman, for sure... and he comes fully insured! Parker is probably harder to get coverage for than Jackie Chan...
...Yet if you step back, you realize that in a free country, there is no way a project of this sort could go ahead, unless it was such an immense and overwhelmingly positive step, a necessity...
precisely why we didn't fight the stupid war with iraq, right? because there were dissedents to the damn thing? or, erm, the vietnam war? or maybe anything that ever had anything to do with Native Americans? etc?
man... and US people complains of being called hypocrites...
so you are saying that to become spider-man, i just need a lot of tiny hair in my palms / fingers, right?
I'll start working on that right now! who can wait that few years before this stuff is commercially available, when you can produce it safely* and natually?
being the largest antenna and its SET IN THE ground - how they turn this thing? two things can happen:
1) they turn it very very slowly - a lot of the 24 hr is wasted pointing the dish 2) they don't turn it and wait until the dish points in the right place - a lot of the 24 hr is wasted waiting
there is a different between "critisize a dam because it was built for the wrong reasons" and "critisizing a dam because it was built shitty." I agree that they probably could have done a better job at building it and really wish the corruption isn't so bad in china, but I do not question that the intention to build it in the first place was a good one. the costs (especially environmental and archeological) is very heavy, nonetheless i think the benefits outweight them.
But supporters denied these charges and pointed out how the lives and property of those 15 million people living downstream would be improved from the reduction of devastating floods and from the extra electricity supply, which is expected to stimulate the local economy, provide more jobs and improve the standard of living.
man, at least give both sides of the story? i mean for crying out loud it was the same page...
Anyhow, I tell you what I know; my ancidotal evidence is that many who relocated because of government construction projects were compensated. now, i admit that china is not a perfect place and corruption has its way more often than not; but so is every beurocratic society; i mean it's not like the 9/11 funds are distributed approporiately 100% of the time?
i mean, i know there are problems, but regardless, I say the benefits outweight the (albeit heavy) costs.
there are views that wind-farms have some pretty serious environmental impacts for the petty power they generate (comparatively); the crux of the argument is the blades are extremely fast and kills a lot of birds in the area. (you don't see this on TV - but the blades are 200ft long! so even under 1rpm, they turn very fast for their size).
And of course if you want to go the "three-gorges was so beautiful!" route, driving across windfarm country isn't exactly a "contact with nature" experience...
Your statement "power-outages are worse there than CA" doesn't tell me a whole lot.
Maybe not, but CA is already the worst power-strapped state in the US. I can't exactly compare to Africa and have you relate to it now, can I?
Back when I lived in china, we had candles in the kitchen drawer, because power-outages were a monthly event during summer (and i lived in the city!). When that happens, all the lights in the district went out, and the fans quiets down, and everybody goes out to the balcony to look at stars, get bit by mosquitos, and fan their hand-fans profusely.
if you had homework that you havn't finished yet? well tough fucking luck because you either do it under the candle or you wait it out. And yes, people *complains* about CA power availability.
Not to mention that CA already set up the world's largest wind-farm. I don't know, but i can't harly consider that to be not having an impact on the environment. But of course - it's in the US so it's ok if it kills halfs the birds that dares fly through. And hey! it even makes discovery channel as one of the most exciting engineering achievements in the world! how exciting.
didn't want to unload this on you - because i am not precisly replying to your question, but I get quite tired of listening to people who never knew what a power-outage is to complain about "what a shame" because they rode a tour ship through the three-gorges as if that really justified keeping the place so they, on vacation, can have some place exotic to go and take pictures.
erm... 1/3 of power requirements in china is, ahem, what, insignificant in your book? what do you propose they do? buy hamster mills? connect all the population into a computer simulation and harvest bioelectricity? (actually, in hind sight - the harvesting bioelectricity thing might make a good movie)
you'd be surprised how much infrastructure stuff is going on in china right now. highways are beginning to connect most metropolitan areas to one another, new airports are springing into existance (ever compare the new shanghai airport (pudong) with the old (hongqiao)?
Since the dam holds so much potential in the roadblock to china's industrial and economical future (seriously - power-outages are worse there than CA) - I wouldn't call it an "show of pride." That kind of stuff would be probably be exemplified by the maglev rail in shanghai.
Now, being somewhat earthquake-prone is (i think) one of the reasons why they built a gravity dam; it's blocking water just by its weight. I am concerned about the quality of the build - but that is different from concern about the intention to build it. There are no plausible alternatives currently, you see. Besides, if Japan's nuclear powerplant can survive through the recent (last week) 7.0 earthquake, I'd think the technology is there to keep a dam steady.
wtf are you talking about. Besides huang-he (the other really long river in china), yangtze is one river that kills a lot of people and destroys many homes because it floods and changes courses constantly. since the ancient times, farmers that depended on it loved it (irrigation) and hated it (floods often) because of this.
Heck, I was in Nanjin (city with several million population) back when when it *almost* flodded. The water was some 10 meters higher than the ground near the port! damn good thing all the sandbags held, because otherwise a LOT of people would have died - myself probably one of them.
if I had to move because I'd be saving people's lives? well fuck, wouldn't you? Btw, did you know that when shit like this happens (government forces you to move), they pay you a whole lot of money, at least in chinese standards? I am not personally familiar with that particular province, but in nanjin and shanghai, when farmers were kicked from their lands (when building new airport / new highway / mag-lev train / etc), the farmers got a LOT of cash for their land - in fact many of them are off to quite a good living, even better than some of the city-folks.
btw; most man-made channels silt. there are specific ships that dig those out. read about them. the technology is there. and don't forget that yangtze is a lot bigger than mississipi; so percentage-wise the silting should not be as bad.
btw; i mentioned it in another post but i say it again here - partly I think the government believes that this will become like the great-wall, etc, where they are creating a new legacy; at least thats what i think they thinks about when confronted with destroying the archeological stuff that lies the river's side.
Maybe, but you have got to realize how badly they need the power.
1.4 BILLION people. consider.
And do you really think it's possible to have China start to rely heavily on nuclear power, without the US getting nervous? Heck, the US is twitchy enough as it is.
So, yes, three-gorges is a beautiful place, but if this allows that many people to afford heat in the winter, or lights under which to read, so be it.
Otoh, I really think the current party do partly hope that the dam will turn out to be like the great-wall - legendary, etc. To that I go "huh?"
side-note: Tibet will get its natural gas deposit pumped next, probably...
last side-note: The one thing I thought that was kinda unfortunate is that three-gorges is purely a gravity dam, which might not be necessary considering that the place of the thing, after all, is a GORGE...
i agree. that was the most difficult thing to get used to. I didn't have so much problem because i used the cursor keys (yes yes, not *true* geek, fine).
but in other apps cut/paste etc would fudge one over too (for example ctrl-c / ctrl-v are mapped to ctrl-i and ctrl-. respectively).
You can train yourself to get past it, but not the easiest.
I have been convincing myself to re-learn qwerty by doing "float-typing" (don't know what's you'd call that), i.e. don't give a damn about the homerow, and the thumb-only-hits-space typing methodology that I think is holding everyone back.
The "home-row" would roughly become (from left pinky to right pinky)
a/s, e, r, t, b/space [left-hand] n/space, h, u, i, o/p [right-hand]
the homerow roughly corresponds to the dvorak homerow, but stuff that has consecutive s and a, or o and p, would require finger shifts. almost like a piano, i guess.
we'll see. that may turn out to be the ultimate solution in the end. or neurological interface
is that with games you are honing your center vision, able to track more objects in a limited field of view. however, this would mean you have lower peripheral vision capabilities.
i mean, brain only has this much computation power, spending a lot of time staring straight into the screen in front of you would certainly hone a different type of ability than, say, soccer, where you'd better be aware of the guy behind you who would probably put a leg in your crouch in risk of a red card but toss you out of the gene-pool?
no i did not elaborate as much as i could on this theory - i am feeling sleepy - so finding more evidence to support this theory is left as an excercise to the reader.
that's the problem. you can't buy dvorak keyboards anywhere reasonable - and certainly not with the same selection of split boards / tiny boards / wireless boards, etc, so the easiest way is to set the keymapping (this can be done in windows and linux alike - i have no idea about macs, however, though i assume no problems).
this means that you may have to rearrange some keys on the keyboard, but once you start to touchtype you don't need to do even that (besides laptop keys are notoriously easy to break); To me this is the more elegant* way to do things, because while you can map a standard qwarty board to whatever you want, if your board was hardwired dvorak, when you want to type, say, german, you are fsck'd (see below for more details).
* i say elegant because this removes the dependency of keyboard with OS. there is a layer in the keyboard driver / handler / blah that does a mapping of key pressed (0xABC) to a character (alphanumeric / control / whatever, or something in japanese, even). modifying this translation layer is more universal but does have the side-effect of making BIOS etc difficult. Yes even if you had a hardwired dvorak you can translate it to german / whatever with this layer too, but that means you have to make your own table. not fun in unix, and even less fun (is it even possible?) in windows.
anyways - the other downside is that for some input methods, like say japanese / chinese, you can't match a dvorak map to it, so it's still qwerty. however with those languages, dvorak is not designed to be the most suitable anyhow, so i am not complaining that much.
Does anyone else find the gesture/mouse benefits to outweigh the headache of learning zero-force typing?
no, I feel the pain for the over 300 dollars deficit in my wallet for such a keyboard.
Seriously though - I would LOVE to try one, but affordability is definitely not one of its good traits. Anybody knows a place where you can rent one for a week? in japan, possibly?
otoh, while not having had any touchstream experience, I can speak from the perspective of a dvorak user - which is the pain of having to resort back to qwerty anywhere else. Not so much a problem for me now, but if you work in IT and needs to troubleshoot people's computers - forget it. (I read stuff like "after you learn dvorak you can revert back to qwerty and be fluent in both" which I am finding out is total bullshit - as much as I like the dvorak layout - switching to qwerty on the fly is not easy)
Not to mention in places such as BIOS and the such, you don't even have the OPTION to configure a dvorak keyboard...
Similar things I predict for touchstream users - you will go to another computer and wave your hand jedi-like and nothing happens and it will cause a ton of frustration. Heck, just imagine going between work and home. Having big trouble affording one, No way in a billion years I can afford two... I will wait for neurological interfaces instead - well, if we are not already batteries / control modules inside the matrix already.
How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?
From my experience, CEOs usually have very very fine assistants.
Hey, maybe she is actually very technically capable, and consciously activated the erase-all-data feature just so have an excuse to talk to you, give you a chance to ask for her extension etc. =)
*granted, it's still lower than background radiation temperature usually - but non-zero.
it satisfy the definition of a blackbody and would emit blackbody radiation. At least, by the laws / theories of known physics.
In fact, black holes have been called "the perfect blackbody," no?
You can say that the blackbody radiation from the black hole is actually hawkings radiation, etc. But I think the official word is that the blackbody radiation is manifested as hawkings radiation, or produced via hawkings radiation, or somesuch - for one they two share the exact same spectrum**
** not quite sure on this. correct me if you would.
Now, one thing that nobody seem to have touched on is the fact that a evaporating black hole destroys information, which cannot be allowed in the current view of physics. This opens barrels of cans of worms for physics, and gravistar is one of the solutions that came out to help out on the "information loss" part of the theory.
In the end, even you'd have to agree that WE DON'T KNOW. and no, the author doesn't know for sure either. He can say a lot about how high-energy collisions are happening in upper atmosphere, but we don't know that they are, and we sure as hell don't simulate that kind of environment in a collider (much more concentrated particle beams, anyone?).
so, while maybe by what we know right now, black hole evaporates (let's just ignore information theory for a minute there), but the fact is we don't know that for sure, and I might sound like a sissy to say that we should wait until we can outrun a possible blackhole swallowing up earth (as unlikely as that might be), but fsck - i think it's better to be sissy than be looking for trouble that can get everyone killed, yes?
why? because we don't even KNOW if there are such things as blackholes. evidence only remotely suggest that there are very dense bodies that has a diameter smaller than event horizon for our universe, but if they are singularities or not, that's questionable.
in another words, we don't know if the space really contract into a singularity - because for one, a singularity causes all kinds of problems for all kinds of theories.
Just a few monthes ago people were expressing immense interest in gravistars (I forgot the name) where instead of collapsing completely into a singularity, after the neutron stage the space being crushed will exhibit strong force outward (due to some quantum mechanics thing) where it would balance out into a "shell" or somesuch - though the shell diameter is still smaller than the event horizon.
IF the above turned out to be true, though - no blackbody radiation (as the radiation will gets trapped onto the shell) and no dissipation, which means the end of earth, etc.
Even if they are really singularities, if they emit black-body radiation is merely a theory by hawkings. We simply don't know if regular laws of phisics holds up at singularity level (that's the reason we call them a singularity, after all).
Man... I know nobel prize is a million bux and all, but risking the entire human race on it seems kinda sketchy.
I never thought there are real "mad scientist" types out there. I guess I got proven wrong on this.
It goes something like having a F-15 (later maybe something different, but right now F-15 is one of the only (the only?) plane with a thrust-to-weight ratio > 1) pull an arc up with full afterburn, when the plane hits the operating ceiling and then some - this is something rediculous like 110,000 ft or 150,000 ft, I forgot - release a rocket-based missile that will go LEO (lower earth orbit) and down a satelite in such an orbit.
Now, I say you are partly right because AFAIK positional satelites are not LEO (slightly higher, but nowhere near geosync). augmentation satelites (WAAS, etc) seem to be geosync though - now that I think about it.
but anyway, my military science knowledge has been getting rusty and i am lazy to check, so if somebody knew better, please correct me.
However, having sat there going through the "this-is-how-you-print-more-than-one-copy" instructions that seem to take, an average, of 2 hours each session, in which case I would explain the same steps a minimum of seven times so that they don't ask again*- no, I DON'T think I would have tried my luck with linux.
not to mention this was back several years ago, when KDE / GNOME was nowhere near where it is right at this moment. Actually, GNOME wasn't even a project then, now that I think about it.
Hell, the ENTIRE organization shared a 56k modem! ONE 56k modem! (finally moved to a DirectTV 400kbps satelite connection after I left - maybe paid for by my salary?) I am not kidding about the technical-backwateredness here. Though, to the credit of the IT dept, it ran a lot smoother than you'd think a 1-man IT team could make an organization run.
*you are probably thinking - this person is exaggerating! sadly (really, SADLY) I am not. I seriously wish that I was, though.
For an organization of about 100 (maybe more) people, there was exactly ONE IT admin, plus one intern like myself.
Sad thing is, though, neither MS nor OSS, to me, provides the best solution - because non-profits are usually so cash strapped - which turns to be people-strapped, time-strapped, etc.
I remember back then we tried to set up a whole slew of services (this was before MS BackDoor erm BackOffice) came out - and tried to put almost the entire line of MS servers onto one NT4 machine. needless to say, the thing would crap out just sitting there idle. (and these were donated software. sorry to say but MS has been donating to non-profits for a loooong time, for good or bad)
With that kind of instability (and we can't afford shiny new dells, so we get all the systems either custom build very cheaply, or get donated used ones), MS servers won't do. Maybe now it's better, but with the kind of system requirements, I seriously doubt we can run XP / 2k Servers.
However, i don't really think linux would really do either - because user-support is the rest of the spent time when the IT group (the 1.5 person - one admin and the part-time intern) isn't fiddling with junk. And I just can't see any possibility in training 75 year old gradma's (seriously - some of them really were!) to do any new computing technology within any kind of resonable timeframe. I am sorry to say, guys, KDE and GNOME is not the easiest to figure out, and certainly not the easiest to teach. The UI design does not follow a strict standards across OSS software (okay, to me anyway), so that causes a lot of problems.
I personally think that if Apple gave us a huge slew of over-stocked iMacs, we'd been all set. I think macs tend to last a lot longer than PCs (average life span, anyway - maybe it's due to the higher per-unit cost?), but doesn't degrade into pitifulness nearly as fast; even right now the first-gen iMacs, I think, are still usable. And yes, Macs are more intuitive UI-wise.
But that never happened, so when I left, the lone IT admin was still holding back the fire, in the most endless, swamped way...
Okay, I am sure that was related somehow, though not sure HOW exactly.
that a company named "Reliance" is experiencing so much problems.
OTOH - I believe that China has about the same per-capital annual income, and a LOT of people are totting around cellphones.
I know this because in china the manners are a lot worse than the US (despite how low-life you think the "non-silent-ringer" people are, I'll just say "you havn't been to china yet.")
But, well, at least it gives a good grasp of market penetration. despite how annoying it is.
ahem - back on subject - so, anyway, I don't think the annual income will be a problem, but I personally thinks that a SUBSIDIZED PHONE would be. I think if you don't subsidize the phone, then people will buy one and hold onto it (as an asset), because they can afford the lower monthly and don't have to cancel if something bad happens. It seems that this is what most chinese cell-phone holders do - they get a phone for a mass amount, hold onto it for like 5 years (plans to, anyhow), and SMS like crazy because it's cheaper than actually calling.
Yes you do lower the "entrance barrier" if you subsidize the phones, but when people look at the inflated monthly price, much fewer would consider getting one in the first place, despite how convinience it is.
(short side note - subsidizing phone is NOT the same as an individual saving up money for a few monthes and buy a non-subsidized phone because in the non-subbed senario, the monthly rate is lower so if you hold onto the old phone you will be spending a lot less money in the long run whereas in the subbed senario, holding onto a old phone only means you are increasing the phone companies' profits) anyhow, not necessarily good for the phone manufactures, but we are talking about the cellphone company so...
Slashdot Mirror
it looks like windows on the bottom-part (task bar) and Mac on the top part (menu)... it must be... linux!
ahem... certainly not designed with normal people (i.e. those still operating on 800x600, like my parents only until a few monthes ago) in mind.
you know, he gets more airtime than spiderman, for sure... and he comes fully insured! Parker is probably harder to get coverage for than Jackie Chan...
precisely why we didn't fight the stupid war with iraq, right? because there were dissedents to the damn thing? or, erm, the vietnam war? or maybe anything that ever had anything to do with Native Americans? etc?
man... and US people complains of being called hypocrites...
so you are saying that to become spider-man, i just need a lot of tiny hair in my palms / fingers, right?
I'll start working on that right now! who can wait that few years before this stuff is commercially available, when you can produce it safely* and natually?
*safely - wear goggles.
being the largest antenna and its SET IN THE ground - how they turn this thing?
two things can happen:
1) they turn it very very slowly - a lot of the 24 hr is wasted pointing the dish
2) they don't turn it and wait until the dish points in the right place - a lot of the 24 hr is wasted waiting
anybody knows?
there is a different between "critisize a dam because it was built for the wrong reasons" and "critisizing a dam because it was built shitty." I agree that they probably could have done a better job at building it and really wish the corruption isn't so bad in china, but I do not question that the intention to build it in the first place was a good one. the costs (especially environmental and archeological) is very heavy, nonetheless i think the benefits outweight them.
Anyhow, I tell you what I know; my ancidotal evidence is that many who relocated because of government construction projects were compensated. now, i admit that china is not a perfect place and corruption has its way more often than not; but so is every beurocratic society; i mean it's not like the 9/11 funds are distributed approporiately 100% of the time?
i mean, i know there are problems, but regardless, I say the benefits outweight the (albeit heavy) costs.
sorry. am in a afternoon nappy mood.
there are views that wind-farms have some pretty serious environmental impacts for the petty power they generate (comparatively); the crux of the argument is the blades are extremely fast and kills a lot of birds in the area. (you don't see this on TV - but the blades are 200ft long! so even under 1rpm, they turn very fast for their size).
And of course if you want to go the "three-gorges was so beautiful!" route, driving across windfarm country isn't exactly a "contact with nature" experience...
Maybe not, but CA is already the worst power-strapped state in the US. I can't exactly compare to Africa and have you relate to it now, can I?
Back when I lived in china, we had candles in the kitchen drawer, because power-outages were a monthly event during summer (and i lived in the city!). When that happens, all the lights in the district went out, and the fans quiets down, and everybody goes out to the balcony to look at stars, get bit by mosquitos, and fan their hand-fans profusely.
if you had homework that you havn't finished yet? well tough fucking luck because you either do it under the candle or you wait it out. And yes, people *complains* about CA power availability.
Not to mention that CA already set up the world's largest wind-farm. I don't know, but i can't harly consider that to be not having an impact on the environment. But of course - it's in the US so it's ok if it kills halfs the birds that dares fly through. And hey! it even makes discovery channel as one of the most exciting engineering achievements in the world! how exciting.
didn't want to unload this on you - because i am not precisly replying to your question, but I get quite tired of listening to people who never knew what a power-outage is to complain about "what a shame" because they rode a tour ship through the three-gorges as if that really justified keeping the place so they, on vacation, can have some place exotic to go and take pictures.
erm...
1/3 of power requirements in china is, ahem, what, insignificant in your book? what do you propose they do? buy hamster mills? connect all the population into a computer simulation and harvest bioelectricity? (actually, in hind sight - the harvesting bioelectricity thing might make a good movie)
you'd be surprised how much infrastructure stuff is going on in china right now. highways are beginning to connect most metropolitan areas to one another, new airports are springing into existance (ever compare the new shanghai airport (pudong) with the old (hongqiao)?
Since the dam holds so much potential in the roadblock to china's industrial and economical future (seriously - power-outages are worse there than CA) - I wouldn't call it an "show of pride." That kind of stuff would be probably be exemplified by the maglev rail in shanghai.
Now, being somewhat earthquake-prone is (i think) one of the reasons why they built a gravity dam; it's blocking water just by its weight. I am concerned about the quality of the build - but that is different from concern about the intention to build it. There are no plausible alternatives currently, you see. Besides, if Japan's nuclear powerplant can survive through the recent (last week) 7.0 earthquake, I'd think the technology is there to keep a dam steady.
wtf are you talking about. Besides huang-he (the other really long river in china), yangtze is one river that kills a lot of people and destroys many homes because it floods and changes courses constantly. since the ancient times, farmers that depended on it loved it (irrigation) and hated it (floods often) because of this.
Heck, I was in Nanjin (city with several million population) back when when it *almost* flodded. The water was some 10 meters higher than the ground near the port! damn good thing all the sandbags held, because otherwise a LOT of people would have died - myself probably one of them.
if I had to move because I'd be saving people's lives? well fuck, wouldn't you? Btw, did you know that when shit like this happens (government forces you to move), they pay you a whole lot of money, at least in chinese standards? I am not personally familiar with that particular province, but in nanjin and shanghai, when farmers were kicked from their lands (when building new airport / new highway / mag-lev train / etc), the farmers got a LOT of cash for their land - in fact many of them are off to quite a good living, even better than some of the city-folks.
btw; most man-made channels silt. there are specific ships that dig those out. read about them. the technology is there. and don't forget that yangtze is a lot bigger than mississipi; so percentage-wise the silting should not be as bad.
btw; i mentioned it in another post but i say it again here - partly I think the government believes that this will become like the great-wall, etc, where they are creating a new legacy; at least thats what i think they thinks about when confronted with destroying the archeological stuff that lies the river's side.
Maybe, but you have got to realize how badly they need the power.
1.4 BILLION people. consider.
And do you really think it's possible to have China start to rely heavily on nuclear power, without the US getting nervous? Heck, the US is twitchy enough as it is.
So, yes, three-gorges is a beautiful place, but if this allows that many people to afford heat in the winter, or lights under which to read, so be it.
Otoh, I really think the current party do partly hope that the dam will turn out to be like the great-wall - legendary, etc. To that I go "huh?"
side-note: Tibet will get its natural gas deposit pumped next, probably...
last side-note: The one thing I thought that was kinda unfortunate is that three-gorges is purely a gravity dam, which might not be necessary considering that the place of the thing, after all, is a GORGE...
i agree. that was the most difficult thing to get used to. I didn't have so much problem because i used the cursor keys (yes yes, not *true* geek, fine).
but in other apps cut/paste etc would fudge one over too (for example ctrl-c / ctrl-v are mapped to ctrl-i and ctrl-. respectively).
You can train yourself to get past it, but not the easiest.
I have been convincing myself to re-learn qwerty by doing "float-typing" (don't know what's you'd call that), i.e. don't give a damn about the homerow, and the thumb-only-hits-space typing methodology that I think is holding everyone back.
The "home-row" would roughly become (from left pinky to right pinky)
a/s, e, r, t, b/space [left-hand]
n/space, h, u, i, o/p [right-hand]
the homerow roughly corresponds to the dvorak homerow, but stuff that has consecutive s and a, or o and p, would require finger shifts. almost like a piano, i guess.
we'll see. that may turn out to be the ultimate solution in the end. or neurological interface
is that with games you are honing your center vision, able to track more objects in a limited field of view. however, this would mean you have lower peripheral vision capabilities.
i mean, brain only has this much computation power, spending a lot of time staring straight into the screen in front of you would certainly hone a different type of ability than, say, soccer, where you'd better be aware of the guy behind you who would probably put a leg in your crouch in risk of a red card but toss you out of the gene-pool?
no i did not elaborate as much as i could on this theory - i am feeling sleepy - so finding more evidence to support this theory is left as an excercise to the reader.
that's the problem. you can't buy dvorak keyboards anywhere reasonable - and certainly not with the same selection of split boards / tiny boards / wireless boards, etc, so the easiest way is to set the keymapping (this can be done in windows and linux alike - i have no idea about macs, however, though i assume no problems).
this means that you may have to rearrange some keys on the keyboard, but once you start to touchtype you don't need to do even that (besides laptop keys are notoriously easy to break); To me this is the more elegant* way to do things, because while you can map a standard qwarty board to whatever you want, if your board was hardwired dvorak, when you want to type, say, german, you are fsck'd (see below for more details).
* i say elegant because this removes the dependency of keyboard with OS. there is a layer in the keyboard driver / handler / blah that does a mapping of key pressed (0xABC) to a character (alphanumeric / control / whatever, or something in japanese, even). modifying this translation layer is more universal but does have the side-effect of making BIOS etc difficult. Yes even if you had a hardwired dvorak you can translate it to german / whatever with this layer too, but that means you have to make your own table. not fun in unix, and even less fun (is it even possible?) in windows.
anyways - the other downside is that for some input methods, like say japanese / chinese, you can't match a dvorak map to it, so it's still qwerty. however with those languages, dvorak is not designed to be the most suitable anyhow, so i am not complaining that much.
no, I feel the pain for the over 300 dollars deficit in my wallet for such a keyboard.
Seriously though - I would LOVE to try one, but affordability is definitely not one of its good traits. Anybody knows a place where you can rent one for a week? in japan, possibly?
otoh, while not having had any touchstream experience, I can speak from the perspective of a dvorak user - which is the pain of having to resort back to qwerty anywhere else. Not so much a problem for me now, but if you work in IT and needs to troubleshoot people's computers - forget it. (I read stuff like "after you learn dvorak you can revert back to qwerty and be fluent in both" which I am finding out is total bullshit - as much as I like the dvorak layout - switching to qwerty on the fly is not easy)
Not to mention in places such as BIOS and the such, you don't even have the OPTION to configure a dvorak keyboard...
Similar things I predict for touchstream users - you will go to another computer and wave your hand jedi-like and nothing happens and it will cause a ton of frustration. Heck, just imagine going between work and home. Having big trouble affording one, No way in a billion years I can afford two... I will wait for neurological interfaces instead - well, if we are not already batteries / control modules inside the matrix already.
From my experience, CEOs usually have very very fine assistants.
Hey, maybe she is actually very technically capable, and consciously activated the erase-all-data feature just so have an excuse to talk to you, give you a chance to ask for her extension etc. =)
Aww shutup and let me daydream.
due to the fact that a black hole has
1) mass
2) a non-zero temperature*,
*granted, it's still lower than background radiation temperature usually - but non-zero.
it satisfy the definition of a blackbody and would emit blackbody radiation. At least, by the laws / theories of known physics.
In fact, black holes have been called "the perfect blackbody," no?
You can say that the blackbody radiation from the black hole is actually hawkings radiation, etc. But I think the official word is that the blackbody radiation is manifested as hawkings radiation, or produced via hawkings radiation, or somesuch - for one they two share the exact same spectrum**
** not quite sure on this. correct me if you would.
Now, one thing that nobody seem to have touched on is the fact that a evaporating black hole destroys information, which cannot be allowed in the current view of physics. This opens barrels of cans of worms for physics, and gravistar is one of the solutions that came out to help out on the "information loss" part of the theory.
In the end, even you'd have to agree that WE DON'T KNOW. and no, the author doesn't know for sure either. He can say a lot about how high-energy collisions are happening in upper atmosphere, but we don't know that they are, and we sure as hell don't simulate that kind of environment in a collider (much more concentrated particle beams, anyone?).
so, while maybe by what we know right now, black hole evaporates (let's just ignore information theory for a minute there), but the fact is we don't know that for sure, and I might sound like a sissy to say that we should wait until we can outrun a possible blackhole swallowing up earth (as unlikely as that might be), but fsck - i think it's better to be sissy than be looking for trouble that can get everyone killed, yes?
why? because we don't even KNOW if there are such things as blackholes. evidence only remotely suggest that there are very dense bodies that has a diameter smaller than event horizon for our universe, but if they are singularities or not, that's questionable.
in another words, we don't know if the space really contract into a singularity - because for one, a singularity causes all kinds of problems for all kinds of theories.
Just a few monthes ago people were expressing immense interest in gravistars (I forgot the name) where instead of collapsing completely into a singularity, after the neutron stage the space being crushed will exhibit strong force outward (due to some quantum mechanics thing) where it would balance out into a "shell" or somesuch - though the shell diameter is still smaller than the event horizon.
IF the above turned out to be true, though - no blackbody radiation (as the radiation will gets trapped onto the shell) and no dissipation, which means the end of earth, etc.
Even if they are really singularities, if they emit black-body radiation is merely a theory by hawkings. We simply don't know if regular laws of phisics holds up at singularity level (that's the reason we call them a singularity, after all).
Man... I know nobel prize is a million bux and all, but risking the entire human race on it seems kinda sketchy.
I never thought there are real "mad scientist" types out there. I guess I got proven wrong on this.
US did develop a satelite missile:
It goes something like having a F-15 (later maybe something different, but right now F-15 is one of the only (the only?) plane with a thrust-to-weight ratio > 1) pull an arc up with full afterburn, when the plane hits the operating ceiling and then some - this is something rediculous like 110,000 ft or 150,000 ft, I forgot - release a rocket-based missile that will go LEO (lower earth orbit) and down a satelite in such an orbit.
Now, I say you are partly right because AFAIK positional satelites are not LEO (slightly higher, but nowhere near geosync). augmentation satelites (WAAS, etc) seem to be geosync though - now that I think about it.
but anyway, my military science knowledge has been getting rusty and i am lazy to check, so if somebody knew better, please correct me.
yes yes I know what you are trying to say.
However, having sat there going through the "this-is-how-you-print-more-than-one-copy" instructions that seem to take, an average, of 2 hours each session, in which case I would explain the same steps a minimum of seven times so that they don't ask again*- no, I DON'T think I would have tried my luck with linux.
not to mention this was back several years ago, when KDE / GNOME was nowhere near where it is right at this moment. Actually, GNOME wasn't even a project then, now that I think about it.
Hell, the ENTIRE organization shared a 56k modem! ONE 56k modem! (finally moved to a DirectTV 400kbps satelite connection after I left - maybe paid for by my salary?) I am not kidding about the technical-backwateredness here. Though, to the credit of the IT dept, it ran a lot smoother than you'd think a 1-man IT team could make an organization run.
*you are probably thinking - this person is exaggerating! sadly (really, SADLY) I am not. I seriously wish that I was, though.
I worked for a non-profit organization once.
For an organization of about 100 (maybe more) people, there was exactly ONE IT admin, plus one intern like myself.
Sad thing is, though, neither MS nor OSS, to me, provides the best solution - because non-profits are usually so cash strapped - which turns to be people-strapped, time-strapped, etc.
I remember back then we tried to set up a whole slew of services (this was before MS BackDoor erm BackOffice) came out - and tried to put almost the entire line of MS servers onto one NT4 machine. needless to say, the thing would crap out just sitting there idle. (and these were donated software. sorry to say but MS has been donating to non-profits for a loooong time, for good or bad)
With that kind of instability (and we can't afford shiny new dells, so we get all the systems either custom build very cheaply, or get donated used ones), MS servers won't do. Maybe now it's better, but with the kind of system requirements, I seriously doubt we can run XP / 2k Servers.
However, i don't really think linux would really do either - because user-support is the rest of the spent time when the IT group (the 1.5 person - one admin and the part-time intern) isn't fiddling with junk. And I just can't see any possibility in training 75 year old gradma's (seriously - some of them really were!) to do any new computing technology within any kind of resonable timeframe. I am sorry to say, guys, KDE and GNOME is not the easiest to figure out, and certainly not the easiest to teach. The UI design does not follow a strict standards across OSS software (okay, to me anyway), so that causes a lot of problems.
I personally think that if Apple gave us a huge slew of over-stocked iMacs, we'd been all set. I think macs tend to last a lot longer than PCs (average life span, anyway - maybe it's due to the higher per-unit cost?), but doesn't degrade into pitifulness nearly as fast; even right now the first-gen iMacs, I think, are still usable. And yes, Macs are more intuitive UI-wise.
But that never happened, so when I left, the lone IT admin was still holding back the fire, in the most endless, swamped way...
Okay, I am sure that was related somehow, though not sure HOW exactly.
that a company named "Reliance" is experiencing so much problems.
OTOH - I believe that China has about the same per-capital annual income, and a LOT of people are totting around cellphones.
I know this because in china the manners are a lot worse than the US (despite how low-life you think the "non-silent-ringer" people are, I'll just say "you havn't been to china yet.")
But, well, at least it gives a good grasp of market penetration. despite how annoying it is.
ahem - back on subject - so, anyway, I don't think the annual income will be a problem, but I personally thinks that a SUBSIDIZED PHONE would be. I think if you don't subsidize the phone, then people will buy one and hold onto it (as an asset), because they can afford the lower monthly and don't have to cancel if something bad happens. It seems that this is what most chinese cell-phone holders do - they get a phone for a mass amount, hold onto it for like 5 years (plans to, anyhow), and SMS like crazy because it's cheaper than actually calling.
Yes you do lower the "entrance barrier" if you subsidize the phones, but when people look at the inflated monthly price, much fewer would consider getting one in the first place, despite how convinience it is.
(short side note - subsidizing phone is NOT the same as an individual saving up money for a few monthes and buy a non-subsidized phone because in the non-subbed senario, the monthly rate is lower so if you hold onto the old phone you will be spending a lot less money in the long run whereas in the subbed senario, holding onto a old phone only means you are increasing the phone companies' profits) anyhow, not necessarily good for the phone manufactures, but we are talking about the cellphone company so...
okay, end rant.