Nowadays we have Free and Open Source Software that is "free and in speech and beer", better quality, more flexible, more useful and more user-friendly than Microsoft's stuff.
There is no excuse for helping yourself to Microsoft's software, other than ignorance and laziness, especially in education, where being a virus vector and consumer of Project documents are not primary concerns.
Yes! I thought so. You go on to talk about ARES, and confirm what my gut feeling was.
Maybe the era of commercial space exploitation (other than communication satellites) is actually dawning. Hopefully some international competition will stir things up too. The future of the human race is too valuable to be left in the hands of small-minded bureaucrats:-)
Heh:-) My cynicism gets the better of me. In 18 years, I'll be 50. The rate time goes past now, it'll be the blink of an eye. I don't seem to be making a good job of my life so far.
I'd say it's an excellent occupation for retirees. After all, anything that fills your time that doesn't involving driving around at 45 miles per hour in your Nissan Micra on the public highway, or taking all lunch-hour to cash your pension at the post office, is surely a benefit to society.
The article says they plan to start building in in 2010. That's only 3 years away. They haven't got anything to put that kind of gear on the moon at present. How do they intend to have a vehicle ready by then?
Despite their commitment to mac and linux compatibility on their audio streaming, the iPlayer only runs on windows, disappointing as I'm sure even us mac users pay our licence fees.
From the article, "The BBC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to explore ways of developing its digital services,"... and... "To ensure that the BBC is able to embrace the creative challenges of the digital future, we need to forge strategic partnerships with technology companies and distributors for the benefit of licence payers."
I put it in my journal, but no one commented at the time...
...and you'd be quite right. I used to work at a nuclear powerstation, where PMP stood for Plant Modification Proposal. We used to have literally hours of fun "pimping."
In fact, when one of my colleagues was off sick, not only did I get to write PMPs as usual, I got to manage the whole pimp system for an entire week!
...and another thing. I'm British. When I say "we" I mean "we humans," not Americans. I'm not saying that exploring space should be entirely up to you Americans, merely acknowledging the great work and sacrifice some of you have put in.
And yes, I agree, your country is terribly 200-year-ago when it comes to social policy.
These are all problems of Human Nature. Nobody "wants" to solve them, for all kinds of reasons. People flourish when there is a positive goal to work towards, however.
Perhaps GW should have overthrown the likes of Robert Mugabe instead of Saddam Hussein?
We need to explore. These things may look futile just now, but I assert that it is stupid to write off an entire avenue of research and exploration because people of limited imagination can see no benefit at present.
Political problems are never solved by sitting around for decades and centuries examining individual clauses in agreements and arguing over wording and punctuation.
Africa will have it's day, as soon as human greed is done with China and India.
In the mean time, while the petty dictators and politicians squabble over the decaying present, some of us would like something to look forward too. We'd prefer not to have to look for it in the bottom of a bottle of malt whisky.
And with a long-range, focused, ambitious programme for human involvement in space exploration that will take us to all the major planets in our solar system, pushing science and technology for the benefit of the whole human race.
What's double-triple-funny and ironic is that this was done under laws that this government brought in, eroding centuries-old civil liberties and legal precedent, to bolster their War on Terror. You know, the old argument that "terrorist suspects" don't have the same "rights" as everyone else, so you have nothing to fear. The laws were never going to be used against white middle-class^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hho nest, hard-working members of the public.
Ho hum.
As for the computers being insecure, this is the British Public Sector we're talking about here.
However, non o matter how modern or fast a system, it runs like a sloth.
My mileage is different to yours.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for years now, and yes, very old version were slow. When 2.0.x came out, I noticed an improvement. I've just installed 2.1.0 and it feels so much faster (although I haven't done very much with it yet).
My PeeCee is antedeluvian by slashdot gamer geek standards. It's an Athlon XP2000+ (1.67GHz, 32-bit) with 512MB of ECC RAM and lots of Western Digital hard disks. I am running Slackware 11 with a home-compiled 2.6.19.1 kernel and the latest Java from Sun (OOo uses Java, so it goes).
I can compile in my jail, encode MP3s, browse teh Intarweb and run OpenOffice.org quite comfortably, all at the same. (Note that I adblock the flash animations on web pages these days because they consume 30-40% CPU).
Coming home at 1am may be shameful to some anally-retentive types (even if you're quiet). Mowing your lawn in a style which they find offensive (stripes going the wrong way) might also be considered shameful. Having a car that is more than 2 years old might be considered shameful.
I used to live somewhere (flats in a "nice" town in Essex) where the neighbours made me park my car behind a Range Rover so that they didn't have to look at it.
Well, I've been living in England for 10 years, and from what I can see, the public education system here is atrocious, especially where social topics are concerned, and from what I hear of America, what they call "education" there you could probably get from children's TV and Marvel comics.
Mainland Europe seems to be a bit better.
We still let our superstitions rule, though. Parents are allowed to excuse their children from certain lessons because of their "beliefs." The UK has the worst teen pregnancy problem in Europe. We still have faith schools. We bring our children up in scientific illiteracy, religious bigotry, superstition, unable to read, write and do simple arithmetic, unable to think critically. For some reason we consider this state of affairs respectable and desirable.
Could someone please remove the politics from education policy?
As long as you wear the uniform, pray to god and don't ask to many awkward questions, you're OK.
I pity those without a Scottish education. We learned about such things in our final year of primary school (age 11). And what's more, our elderly, sour-faced, authoritarian, right-wing puritanical female teacher managed not to rant too much about it being "not nice."
What is it with Western Protestant culture? Natural bodily functions are considered "bad."
Over the years I have had tonnes of programs I want to write and many times I half start them and never finish. I have also been largely allergic to scripting languages, which I wish to overcome. (I have done a few thousand lines of PERL now and a few chapters of Ruby tutorials).
I could make a long list of things, but more generally, I need to learn not to pay attention to my crippling low self-esteem which is largely responsible for my lack of achievement. I'm 32 and I've never written my own programming language.
I need to keep my depression in check too. Last year it was horrendous.
I'm going to learn Scheme and Ruby. I'm going to get my personal build system to a stage where I can make it public. I'm going to do some 3D graphics. I'm going to attempt to get Slackware ported to my UltraSPARC workstation.
So it boils down to: concentrate more, be less timid, don't listen to nay-sayers, be more industrious, read more books.
Slashdot Mirror
Mrs. Turgid teaches at a secondary school in England. The monkeys don't need proxies, they just go to google.de and search from there.
It's about choice, personal preference.
I have GNOME and KDE installed on my machines for the apps and utilities, but I use neither as a GUI. WindowMaker all the way.
Seriously, what is wrong with this guy?
Nowadays we have Free and Open Source Software that is "free and in speech and beer", better quality, more flexible, more useful and more user-friendly than Microsoft's stuff.
There is no excuse for helping yourself to Microsoft's software, other than ignorance and laziness, especially in education, where being a virus vector and consumer of Project documents are not primary concerns.
Shout loud, let the world know.
NASA is not serious in any real way.
Yes! I thought so. You go on to talk about ARES, and confirm what my gut feeling was.
Maybe the era of commercial space exploitation (other than communication satellites) is actually dawning. Hopefully some international competition will stir things up too. The future of the human race is too valuable to be left in the hands of small-minded bureaucrats :-)
Heh :-) My cynicism gets the better of me. In 18 years, I'll be 50. The rate time goes past now, it'll be the blink of an eye. I don't seem to be making a good job of my life so far.
I'd say it's an excellent occupation for retirees. After all, anything that fills your time that doesn't involving driving around at 45 miles per hour in your Nissan Micra on the public highway, or taking all lunch-hour to cash your pension at the post office, is surely a benefit to society.
The article says they plan to start building in in 2010. That's only 3 years away. They haven't got anything to put that kind of gear on the moon at present. How do they intend to have a vehicle ready by then?
Despite their commitment to mac and linux compatibility on their audio streaming, the iPlayer only runs on windows, disappointing as I'm sure even us mac users pay our licence fees.
Maybe the agreement they signed with Microsoftback in September 2006 has something to do with this?
From the article, "The BBC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to explore ways of developing its digital services," ... and ... "To ensure that the BBC is able to embrace the creative challenges of the digital future, we need to forge strategic partnerships with technology companies and distributors for the benefit of licence payers."
I put it in my journal, but no one commented at the time...
I can guess how that's pronounced...
...and you'd be quite right. I used to work at a nuclear powerstation, where PMP stood for Plant Modification Proposal. We used to have literally hours of fun "pimping."
In fact, when one of my colleagues was off sick, not only did I get to write PMPs as usual, I got to manage the whole pimp system for an entire week!
Finbar Saunders, eat your heart out.
(What could Mum and Mr. Gimlet be up to today?)
...and another thing. I'm British. When I say "we" I mean "we humans," not Americans. I'm not saying that exploring space should be entirely up to you Americans, merely acknowledging the great work and sacrifice some of you have put in.
And yes, I agree, your country is terribly 200-year-ago when it comes to social policy.
These are all problems of Human Nature. Nobody "wants" to solve them, for all kinds of reasons. People flourish when there is a positive goal to work towards, however.
Perhaps GW should have overthrown the likes of Robert Mugabe instead of Saddam Hussein?
We need to explore. These things may look futile just now, but I assert that it is stupid to write off an entire avenue of research and exploration because people of limited imagination can see no benefit at present.
Political problems are never solved by sitting around for decades and centuries examining individual clauses in agreements and arguing over wording and punctuation.
Africa will have it's day, as soon as human greed is done with China and India.
In the mean time, while the petty dictators and politicians squabble over the decaying present, some of us would like something to look forward too. We'd prefer not to have to look for it in the bottom of a bottle of malt whisky.
With safe, cheap access to Earth orbit.
With a permanent human presence on the Moon.
With human exploration of Mars.
And with a long-range, focused, ambitious programme for human involvement in space exploration that will take us to all the major planets in our solar system, pushing science and technology for the benefit of the whole human race.
Sorry, I've been at the malt whisky.
I'd have thought the opposite. Fair point, though.
...or Scotland, if you can stand the rain, cold wind, sarcasm, fried food and alcoholism.
What's double-triple-funny and ironic is that this was done under laws that this government brought in, eroding centuries-old civil liberties and legal precedent, to bolster their War on Terror. You know, the old argument that "terrorist suspects" don't have the same "rights" as everyone else, so you have nothing to fear. The laws were never going to be used against white middle-class^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hho nest, hard-working members of the public.
Ho hum.
As for the computers being insecure, this is the British Public Sector we're talking about here.
However, non o matter how modern or fast a system, it runs like a sloth.
My mileage is different to yours.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for years now, and yes, very old version were slow. When 2.0.x came out, I noticed an improvement. I've just installed 2.1.0 and it feels so much faster (although I haven't done very much with it yet).
My PeeCee is antedeluvian by slashdot gamer geek standards. It's an Athlon XP2000+ (1.67GHz, 32-bit) with 512MB of ECC RAM and lots of Western Digital hard disks. I am running Slackware 11 with a home-compiled 2.6.19.1 kernel and the latest Java from Sun (OOo uses Java, so it goes).
I can compile in my jail, encode MP3s, browse teh Intarweb and run OpenOffice.org quite comfortably, all at the same. (Note that I adblock the flash animations on web pages these days because they consume 30-40% CPU).
They ran the residents committee. I get a new, better job and left the area.
They were cheap little flats inhabited by pretentious petty-minded middle-aged failures.
Who defines "shameful behaviour?"
Coming home at 1am may be shameful to some anally-retentive types (even if you're quiet). Mowing your lawn in a style which they find offensive (stripes going the wrong way) might also be considered shameful. Having a car that is more than 2 years old might be considered shameful.
I used to live somewhere (flats in a "nice" town in Essex) where the neighbours made me park my car behind a Range Rover so that they didn't have to look at it.
No. I leave that to people from Kent. They are an order of magnitude worse on that count.
Are Scottish educated on sarcasm? :P
Yes, it is deeply ingrained in the national character. That and cantankerousness. Oh, and being miserable. And cynical. And frequently drunk.
Well, I've been living in England for 10 years, and from what I can see, the public education system here is atrocious, especially where social topics are concerned, and from what I hear of America, what they call "education" there you could probably get from children's TV and Marvel comics.
Mainland Europe seems to be a bit better.
We still let our superstitions rule, though. Parents are allowed to excuse their children from certain lessons because of their "beliefs." The UK has the worst teen pregnancy problem in Europe. We still have faith schools. We bring our children up in scientific illiteracy, religious bigotry, superstition, unable to read, write and do simple arithmetic, unable to think critically. For some reason we consider this state of affairs respectable and desirable.
Could someone please remove the politics from education policy?
As long as you wear the uniform, pray to god and don't ask to many awkward questions, you're OK.
I pity those without a Scottish education. We learned about such things in our final year of primary school (age 11). And what's more, our elderly, sour-faced, authoritarian, right-wing puritanical female teacher managed not to rant too much about it being "not nice."
What is it with Western Protestant culture? Natural bodily functions are considered "bad."
Over the years I have had tonnes of programs I want to write and many times I half start them and never finish. I have also been largely allergic to scripting languages, which I wish to overcome. (I have done a few thousand lines of PERL now and a few chapters of Ruby tutorials).
I could make a long list of things, but more generally, I need to learn not to pay attention to my crippling low self-esteem which is largely responsible for my lack of achievement. I'm 32 and I've never written my own programming language.
I need to keep my depression in check too. Last year it was horrendous.
I'm going to learn Scheme and Ruby. I'm going to get my personal build system to a stage where I can make it public. I'm going to do some 3D graphics. I'm going to attempt to get Slackware ported to my UltraSPARC workstation.
So it boils down to: concentrate more, be less timid, don't listen to nay-sayers, be more industrious, read more books.
I worked for a large and powerful supermarket chain. The two rules of customer service were:
Rule 1: The customer comes first.
Rule 2: Without customers we are nothing.
Old web browsers used to know about gopher. You just started the "URL" with gopher: instead of http: IIRC.