I never understood why spacecraft need wings if they are operating outside an atmosphere. However, if they're designed for atmospheric flight they will need wings. None of the Star Wars designs based on letters of the Roman alphabet look particularly practical or efficient. Obviously they're just a gimmick. Star Wars is junk science fiction. It's really fantasy and religious myth. Mind you, it's all good fun, and the muppet characters like Yoda are cute.
One major problem with the music business today is that the RIAA members are investing in the wrong "talent."
They "invest" tens of million of dollars in very weak boy- and girl-bands which largely appeal to young children who have no money to spend on music, and the feeble-minded of poor musical taste.
Is there any wonder that people would rather no pay for this superficial, disposable music?
If I had children and they wanted to listen to this sort of stuff, I wouldn't buy the CD, because I know that in 2-3 months time, it would be gone and forgotton : outgrown. I'd let them download the.mp3 or.ogg off the Internet.
I like my music at 44.1kHz, 16-bit stereo on a robust plastic disk, with no lossy compression. I buy quality music that I'll still be listening to in 10 and 20 years time.
For me Slackware is the best Linux distribution period. It's the first one I tried back in 1995 and I've yet to find one that's better. Slackware is compact yet comprehesive, stable, simple ans user friendly. If you're an old-timer like me and you don't mind a non-GUI installer, Slackware rules.
That is a well written and interesting history of NeXT. I remember when these things came out. They were way ahead of their time. Most "serious" business computers were 80286s with a megabyte of RAM and VGA graphics if you were lucky (640x480x16 colours). Then you had to suffer the cold inhospitabilites and primitive features of MS-DOS. The NeXT machines showed just what you could do with good hardware (i.e. not 8086 comaptable) and imaginitive software engineering. It's even more incredible that the rest of the world has only just caught up with the sophistication of NeXT. Yes, hardware is two orders of magnitude faster, but that's what a decade does for you. The software, however, is only just getting there.
NeXT Step is a shining example of what vision, Open Source UNIX, and Objective C can achieve:-)
The more I think about it, the more it seems that NASA would rather loose a few more astronauts in gung-ho frontierism and adventure that adopting a cost-effective, safe, reliable, conservative design. NASA is all about big, expensive, "shock and awe" for getting into space. NASA is one the USA's national self-worshipping tools in the spirit of the Wild West, Poineers, Cowboys and violence culture.
Quite right. The choice of the processor should be appropriate to the job in hand. Do you need high code density? Maybe go with CISC. Do you need to execute many simple instructions quickly? Go with RISC. Do you need low power? Choose something simple with a lowish clock frequency. Do you need fast floating-point? Maybe choose a DSP. Do you need to be able to program in a high-level language? Choose one with a good cross-compiler. As with everything else in life, there are no absolutes.
That would be so cool. Maybe they'll bring out a new Amiga next. At last a proper computer for everyone, with hardware-accelerated graphics, sound-sampling and multi-tasking with a cool GUI. Maybe they aren't announcing it until they've sold all the C64's? Me, I'm holding off for a while to see what happens!
This is not "flamebait", it's what's known in enlightened circles as a rhetorical question. On slashdot, of course, it goes completely over the heads of the moderators.
I'm just angry becuase the Great Unwashed sing and dance the praises of Microsoft because of all these "great new things" that have just come out that everyone else has been able to do for over 10 years, often better and usually at lower cost. They use this as an excuse to stay with Microsoft and to ignore alternatives because it's unfashionable to use UNIX-like operating systems.
The quality of the BBC's "technology" reporting leaves a lot to be desired. They refer to computer viruses as bugs and only the other day ran a top-of-page headline exclusively revealing that Microsoft Word stores document history information in.DOC files.
What I'm saying is, you're trumpeting the wonders of Microsoft as if it were something new, exciting and worthy. Well, commerciall UNIX did lead the way, open source is catching up and MS is in a poor third place. You can have nice, clean, stable, open implementations for free, or you can have inferior and expensive Microsoft-only technology. If you've been in the business longer than two years, what's the point in migrating off your superior, cheaper stuff top go with Microsoft's inferior expensive stuff? I realise this will be modded down as flamebait or troll because it's anti-Microsoft, and that is currently out of fashion around here, but those of us who are old enough to remember know what we're talking about whether you young 'uns like it or not.
Most people have had the convenience (and added stability) of equivalent free software for a decade longer than M$ has been able to provide it. Nice troll though.
That's not compression. That's shrinking the size of the pits used to store the data on the CD. This isn't new. Sony did this a couple of years ago using a blue laser. You can store 1.2GB of data on such a disk.
This is a Windows review. I don't have Windows. So far it compares the front panels of a pair of drives. So what? What the hell can you learn from that?
Slashdot Mirror
A parsec is about 3.26 light years.
Well I guess that's me told then. :-)
I never understood why spacecraft need wings if they are operating outside an atmosphere. However, if they're designed for atmospheric flight they will need wings. None of the Star Wars designs based on letters of the Roman alphabet look particularly practical or efficient. Obviously they're just a gimmick. Star Wars is junk science fiction. It's really fantasy and religious myth. Mind you, it's all good fun, and the muppet characters like Yoda are cute.
Yes, but you can also use OpenOffice.org, which is free as in beer.
They "invest" tens of million of dollars in very weak boy- and girl-bands which largely appeal to young children who have no money to spend on music, and the feeble-minded of poor musical taste.
Is there any wonder that people would rather no pay for this superficial, disposable music?
If I had children and they wanted to listen to this sort of stuff, I wouldn't buy the CD, because I know that in 2-3 months time, it would be gone and forgotton : outgrown. I'd let them download the .mp3 or .ogg off the Internet.
I like my music at 44.1kHz, 16-bit stereo on a robust plastic disk, with no lossy compression. I buy quality music that I'll still be listening to in 10 and 20 years time.
For me Slackware is the best Linux distribution period. It's the first one I tried back in 1995 and I've yet to find one that's better. Slackware is compact yet comprehesive, stable, simple ans user friendly. If you're an old-timer like me and you don't mind a non-GUI installer, Slackware rules.
NeXT Step is a shining example of what vision, Open Source UNIX, and Objective C can achieve :-)
Is there any lesson we can learn?
I agree. The attitudes must be bold, inspired and inspiring.
However, conservative, safe engineering practices are needed. Do not confuse enthusiasm with foolhardiness.
My point is that NASA seems too preoccupied with brash, impressive, expensive shows of power than with actually achieving practical results.
They could have achieved far more with far less expense and far less loss of life if they'd taken small, conservative, incremental steps.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that NASA would rather loose a few more astronauts in gung-ho frontierism and adventure that adopting a cost-effective, safe, reliable, conservative design. NASA is all about big, expensive, "shock and awe" for getting into space. NASA is one the USA's national self-worshipping tools in the spirit of the Wild West, Poineers, Cowboys and violence culture.
A gallon of milk? That's 8 pints isn't it? How can you use all that before it goes off?
Quite right. The choice of the processor should be appropriate to the job in hand. Do you need high code density? Maybe go with CISC. Do you need to execute many simple instructions quickly? Go with RISC. Do you need low power? Choose something simple with a lowish clock frequency. Do you need fast floating-point? Maybe choose a DSP. Do you need to be able to program in a high-level language? Choose one with a good cross-compiler. As with everything else in life, there are no absolutes.
That would be so cool. Maybe they'll bring out a new Amiga next. At last a proper computer for everyone, with hardware-accelerated graphics, sound-sampling and multi-tasking with a cool GUI. Maybe they aren't announcing it until they've sold all the C64's? Me, I'm holding off for a while to see what happens!
It's because 't ain't supported :-)
Try looking outside the USA.
And that wasn't "offtopic" either.
This is not "flamebait", it's what's known in enlightened circles as a rhetorical question. On slashdot, of course, it goes completely over the heads of the moderators.
How can you tell what colour someone is at the other end of a web browser?
Yes :-)
I'm just angry becuase the Great Unwashed sing and dance the praises of Microsoft because of all these "great new things" that have just come out that everyone else has been able to do for over 10 years, often better and usually at lower cost. They use this as an excuse to stay with Microsoft and to ignore alternatives because it's unfashionable to use UNIX-like operating systems.
The quality of the BBC's "technology" reporting leaves a lot to be desired. They refer to computer viruses as bugs and only the other day ran a top-of-page headline exclusively revealing that Microsoft Word stores document history information in .DOC files.
What I'm saying is, you're trumpeting the wonders of Microsoft as if it were something new, exciting and worthy. Well, commerciall UNIX did lead the way, open source is catching up and MS is in a poor third place. You can have nice, clean, stable, open implementations for free, or you can have inferior and expensive Microsoft-only technology. If you've been in the business longer than two years, what's the point in migrating off your superior, cheaper stuff top go with Microsoft's inferior expensive stuff? I realise this will be modded down as flamebait or troll because it's anti-Microsoft, and that is currently out of fashion around here, but those of us who are old enough to remember know what we're talking about whether you young 'uns like it or not.
Most people have had the convenience (and added stability) of equivalent free software for a decade longer than M$ has been able to provide it. Nice troll though.
Photoshop? The GIMP?
That's not compression. That's shrinking the size of the pits used to store the data on the CD. This isn't new. Sony did this a couple of years ago using a blue laser. You can store 1.2GB of data on such a disk.
This is a Windows review. I don't have Windows. So far it compares the front panels of a pair of drives. So what? What the hell can you learn from that?