I really wish space exploration were more advanced. To hell with "economic" and "business" reasons for exploring space, were human beings and there's more to life than money.
I really wish some other governments had backed crewed space exploration...
What resonates with my cynicism-addled brain about the current American programme (apart from the fact that it could be cut at one fell swoop of the politician's pen, especially when we've all forgotten about Iraq) is what they're proposing to do with that dinky-toy Crew Exploration Vehicle. They talk about designing methane/oxygen engines for refuelling at Mars or the moons of the outer planets. They are not seriously expecting us to believe that human beings are going all the way to Mars (let alone Europa or Titan) in that soft drinks can of a spacecraft? The Moon maybe, but I can't see it going any further.
If we are to believe them, I want to see some proper spacecraft. I want to see how they're going to do on-orbit assembly of vehicles and refuelling.
I really want this stuff to work, and to be sustainable and sucessful, but somehow, when I sober up, and look at the pretty renderings on NASA's web site, and read the over-optimistic press releases, I can't help but think it's all smoke and mirrors.
Making it look pretty is the easy part. That's what all you artsy people who don't know about coding are for. The GNUstep people have done the clever/important/hard part, i.e. the coding.
Quit whinging and get out your drawing tools.
Oh, and by the way, I have my own personal build of GNUstep on my Slackware box here. There is a version of emacs ported to the GNUstep GUI. It is API compatible with OSX, that is you can compile it on OSX and it looks just like an OSX application.
My point? It's there already. It just needs a bit of spit and polish.
Honestly, if the sheep would stop buying crippled music, the crippled-music industry would die in less than 10 days. baa baa
I run Linux exclusively at home. cdparanoia doesn't care about "copy protection." I buy and listen to what I like. I also go to many live concerts.
The last thing I downloaded was in the days of Napster. It was "I'm the Urban Spaceman" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band which I already have on 7-inch vinyl but no longer have the record player upon which to play it and hence rip it.
What really matters is having a good quality signal in the first place from which to encode into the format you require.
Losslessly-compressed (or uncompressed) CD quality audio is a nice starting point, I find. Yes, I can hear the difference between low bit rate MP3 and OGG/Vorbis and CD.
Lossy compression introduces "artifacts" into the signal, much in the same way as JPEG compression does with images. If you have an MP3 file and wish to convert it to another lossy format, the signal you're starting from already contains artifacts and is missing other data which will be emphasised in the new signal following the conversion. If you've heard an MP3 that has been uncompressed and recompressed a couple of times it sounds absolutely terrible, dull and hissy.
I've been listening to some old analogue cassettes recently, having only listened to digital music for months. It's amazing how bad it sounds. I'm glad things have moved on.
However, they days of lossy compression are nearing an end, thankfully. Flash memory is very cheap nowadays, and fat Internet connections are becoming ubiquitous. There is no need for lossy compression any more. We don't need to make the files that small.
And there was me thinking that using differing styles of brackets when nested was merely to emphasise the distinction as a convenience to the reader rather than a strict grammatical requirement...
But India has always put tight controls on sexually-related material. I don't know if they have a decency/obscenity code that webmasters need to follow. But certainly there is next to no production of porn-related material (especially when compared to Japan and US).
India was ruled^H^H^H^H^Hoppressed by us puritanical British for hundreds of years. It's still illegal to be a poofter in India, or to attempt to commit suicide, and they still have the death penalty. And they make a very good cup of tea.
The task is monumental and our goals are sometimes unrealistic, but the world (in terms of computing infrastructure anyways) would be a far far better place with a significant market share of Linux (as in the double digits).
The world would be a better place with a significant market share of any sophisticated, well-designed and mature modern OS (i.e. anything other than Windows).
I'm losing my youthful idealism and exuberance now. In the past I advocated Linux and tried to help people to use it, but it as in vain. Nowadays, when people complain about their PCs and talk about buying a new one, I suggest buying a Mac. When technically-profficient people talk to me, I suggest Linux or BSD in passing, but I don't conciously advocate it. People like to whinge and complain, but it's too much hard work for them to learn something new.
The people who switch are the ones with a compelling reason. Most people do not have a compelling reason. They're used to dealing with Windows' inadequacies (time and money spent protecting it and fixing it).
It's very difficult to convince someone to switch unless they actually use something different and enjoy the experience. Most people will not try anything different. They will not invest the time or effort. They will not belive you, for the most part.
I wonder if young Sebastion is being protected from cell phone users? Someone call Youth Services and get someone other there pronto!
Mrs Turgid teaches English at a UK comprehensive school. She says that the things some of the kids have on their cellphones would make The Hun blush. Her own son does not have a cell phone (he's 12) and he will not be getting one, although he wants one and, "it has to have a colour screen."
Yes, but the French are smelly. British people are not. French people use Linux and nuclear power. The British run Windows and burn gas and oil to make elecricity. The French are proud of their culture. Britain tries to be like America.
Back in the 90s when I was a teenager, my father, who was only in his 50s or so at the time, told me that he wasn't driving anymore because he was afraid someone would intentionally crash into him for the insurance money or something (I only half paid attention because I thought he was being rediculously paranoid.
Nowadays they have an Intarweb PDA-type thingy and they can put your reg. no. in and see straight away who your car is registered to, if it is untaxed and who your insurance is with, and so on. I assume that if the car comes up as uninsured, or anything, or if the reg. doesn't match the make, model and colour of car, you're nicked sunshine. Or at least, on the "right-wing-indignant-smug-people-watching-chavs-a nd-nerdowells-getting-lifted-by-the-traffic-cops!" TV programmes, that's what happens.
While it is fun to lay the blame outside of Linux, the community should really be looking at the product provided and working out how to make it deployable for every one of the 6.2bn folks on the planet if it is going to get the pervasive desktop deployment that some seem to be looking for.
I've been using Linux as my primary (and only at home) OS since 1996, and I code on it for a living now.
I know this argument sounds reasonable, that "the community" should put in "more effort" to make Linux pervasive on the desktop, but it hasn't worked this way, and will not.
"The Community," in the guise of various volunteers and companies, (e.g. Ubuntu) have done a lot already, and this pervasive adoption hasn't happened, and it won't.
People will not just use Linux because they don't want to. They don't care. They are not interested. They like Windows because it comes on their computers by default, "everyone else uses it," they didn't see how much it cost, and it looks pretty, even though underneath it's pretty ropey.
"We" (whoever that is) should stop wasting our valuable time casting pearls before swine. OK, that's maybe a bit harsh, but the work has been done now (shiny user-friendly distros and Microsoft-compatible apps), it is up to them to take it if they want it.
What is far more important to me, and I suspect most of "us", is a healthy and diverse hardware and software ecosystem where everyone can play and compete, through open standards so that no one is left out if they don't want to be, and healthy progress can proceed.
"We" do not need Linux (as only one flabour of *nix) to be pervasive, to replace one monoculture with another. It would be better if everyone ran a better OS (i.e. not Windows) but that isn't going to happen.
"We" should be quietly confident and work to improve "our" software, and when any of the Heathens feel ready to convert, we should offer them our patient and friendly support.
If they don't want to convert, respect their decision, whether is is due to ignorance, laziness, fear, legitimate need or personal taste.
Blowing-up a large object into many small ones would increase the surface area per unit mass. Would this not accelerate burn-up in the atmosphere? Would it be enough?
Do you know about Hypertransport? Do you know how important multi-CPU AMD motherboards are about to become?
While intel's multi-core processors are choking on a single frontside bus, with an AMD system, you just need to plug in another CPU, GPU, physix processor, vector processor or whatever and get more (not less) memory bandwidth per processor and a linear increase in processing power.
By 2008, I expect 4-socket AMD motherboards will be common place amongst consumers, never mind enthusiasts.
Intel will have hot, slow, high frequency 8-core space heaters choking in a single socket.
Slashdot Mirror
I really wish space exploration were more advanced. To hell with "economic" and "business" reasons for exploring space, were human beings and there's more to life than money.
I really wish some other governments had backed crewed space exploration...
What resonates with my cynicism-addled brain about the current American programme (apart from the fact that it could be cut at one fell swoop of the politician's pen, especially when we've all forgotten about Iraq) is what they're proposing to do with that dinky-toy Crew Exploration Vehicle. They talk about designing methane/oxygen engines for refuelling at Mars or the moons of the outer planets. They are not seriously expecting us to believe that human beings are going all the way to Mars (let alone Europa or Titan) in that soft drinks can of a spacecraft? The Moon maybe, but I can't see it going any further.
If we are to believe them, I want to see some proper spacecraft. I want to see how they're going to do on-orbit assembly of vehicles and refuelling.
I really want this stuff to work, and to be sustainable and sucessful, but somehow, when I sober up, and look at the pretty renderings on NASA's web site, and read the over-optimistic press releases, I can't help but think it's all smoke and mirrors.
Making it look pretty is the easy part. That's what all you artsy people who don't know about coding are for. The GNUstep people have done the clever/important/hard part, i.e. the coding.
Quit whinging and get out your drawing tools.
Oh, and by the way, I have my own personal build of GNUstep on my Slackware box here. There is a version of emacs ported to the GNUstep GUI. It is API compatible with OSX, that is you can compile it on OSX and it looks just like an OSX application.
My point? It's there already. It just needs a bit of spit and polish.
If this patch got into the tree, I'd switch to windows the exact same day.
So you wouldn't try Solaris or FreeBSD, both of which have official nVidia binary drivers? See the nVidia web site.
Forth programmer he is ? .
Thanks for that.
Isn't that the right you give up with a salaried position?
Not here in the UK, or other EU countries I suspect.
You Americans really have terrible employment laws and conditions.
Honestly, if the sheep would stop buying crippled music, the crippled-music industry would die in less than 10 days. baa baa
I run Linux exclusively at home. cdparanoia doesn't care about "copy protection." I buy and listen to what I like. I also go to many live concerts.
The last thing I downloaded was in the days of Napster. It was "I'm the Urban Spaceman" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band which I already have on 7-inch vinyl but no longer have the record player upon which to play it and hence rip it.
It seems a waste to me. Portable players are not limited by the quality of the MP3s, in most cases.
And my point is, why throw away data and make format shifting disappointing if you don't have to?
I don't do online music stores either. I go to independent (where possible) music shops and buy CDs. I go to lots of live concerts.
What really matters is having a good quality signal in the first place from which to encode into the format you require.
Losslessly-compressed (or uncompressed) CD quality audio is a nice starting point, I find. Yes, I can hear the difference between low bit rate MP3 and OGG/Vorbis and CD.
Lossy compression introduces "artifacts" into the signal, much in the same way as JPEG compression does with images. If you have an MP3 file and wish to convert it to another lossy format, the signal you're starting from already contains artifacts and is missing other data which will be emphasised in the new signal following the conversion. If you've heard an MP3 that has been uncompressed and recompressed a couple of times it sounds absolutely terrible, dull and hissy.
I've been listening to some old analogue cassettes recently, having only listened to digital music for months. It's amazing how bad it sounds. I'm glad things have moved on.
However, they days of lossy compression are nearing an end, thankfully. Flash memory is very cheap nowadays, and fat Internet connections are becoming ubiquitous. There is no need for lossy compression any more. We don't need to make the files that small.
I buy CDs and rip to FLAC.
Ultimately, the customer will be dissatisfied with anything they have a hand in producing, because it will be limited by their own immediate needs.
...and their own imagination.
Can someone please inscribe this on a granite tablet and install it in the British Museum for all to see?
And there was me thinking that using differing styles of brackets when nested was merely to emphasise the distinction as a convenience to the reader rather than a strict grammatical requirement...
This is the Mother Ship calling. Your scouting mission on Planet Earth has been terminated due to your complete incompetence. Prepare to beam up.
But India has always put tight controls on sexually-related material. I don't know if they have a decency/obscenity code that webmasters need to follow. But certainly there is next to no production of porn-related material (especially when compared to Japan and US).
India was ruled^H^H^H^H^Hoppressed by us puritanical British for hundreds of years. It's still illegal to be a poofter in India, or to attempt to commit suicide, and they still have the death penalty. And they make a very good cup of tea.
The task is monumental and our goals are sometimes unrealistic, but the world (in terms of computing infrastructure anyways) would be a far far better place with a significant market share of Linux (as in the double digits).
The world would be a better place with a significant market share of any sophisticated, well-designed and mature modern OS (i.e. anything other than Windows).
I'm losing my youthful idealism and exuberance now. In the past I advocated Linux and tried to help people to use it, but it as in vain. Nowadays, when people complain about their PCs and talk about buying a new one, I suggest buying a Mac. When technically-profficient people talk to me, I suggest Linux or BSD in passing, but I don't conciously advocate it. People like to whinge and complain, but it's too much hard work for them to learn something new.
The people who switch are the ones with a compelling reason. Most people do not have a compelling reason. They're used to dealing with Windows' inadequacies (time and money spent protecting it and fixing it).
It's very difficult to convince someone to switch unless they actually use something different and enjoy the experience. Most people will not try anything different. They will not invest the time or effort. They will not belive you, for the most part.
I wonder if young Sebastion is being protected from cell phone users? Someone call Youth Services and get someone other there pronto!
Mrs Turgid teaches English at a UK comprehensive school. She says that the things some of the kids have on their cellphones would make The Hun blush. Her own son does not have a cell phone (he's 12) and he will not be getting one, although he wants one and, "it has to have a colour screen."
Yes, but the French are smelly. British people are not. French people use Linux and nuclear power. The British run Windows and burn gas and oil to make elecricity. The French are proud of their culture. Britain tries to be like America.
See any connection?
Where did I leave my pills?
You don't see scientist sneaking into Religious schools to teach evolution.
I believe there's a quote regarding casting pearls before swine.
/me ducks.
They call it teevee.
Mod parent up.
Don't. It's propaganda pandering to the oppressors.
Back in the 90s when I was a teenager, my father, who was only in his 50s or so at the time, told me that he wasn't driving anymore because he was afraid someone would intentionally crash into him for the insurance money or something (I only half paid attention because I thought he was being rediculously paranoid.
You couldn't make it up.
He should ask the doctor for some pills.
Nowadays they have an Intarweb PDA-type thingy and they can put your reg. no. in and see straight away who your car is registered to, if it is untaxed and who your insurance is with, and so on. I assume that if the car comes up as uninsured, or anything, or if the reg. doesn't match the make, model and colour of car, you're nicked sunshine. Or at least, on the "right-wing-indignant-smug-people-watching-chavs-a nd-nerdowells-getting-lifted-by-the-traffic-cops!" TV programmes, that's what happens.
While it is fun to lay the blame outside of Linux, the community should really be looking at the product provided and working out how to make it deployable for every one of the 6.2bn folks on the planet if it is going to get the pervasive desktop deployment that some seem to be looking for.
I've been using Linux as my primary (and only at home) OS since 1996, and I code on it for a living now.
I know this argument sounds reasonable, that "the community" should put in "more effort" to make Linux pervasive on the desktop, but it hasn't worked this way, and will not.
"The Community," in the guise of various volunteers and companies, (e.g. Ubuntu) have done a lot already, and this pervasive adoption hasn't happened, and it won't.
People will not just use Linux because they don't want to. They don't care. They are not interested. They like Windows because it comes on their computers by default, "everyone else uses it," they didn't see how much it cost, and it looks pretty, even though underneath it's pretty ropey.
"We" (whoever that is) should stop wasting our valuable time casting pearls before swine. OK, that's maybe a bit harsh, but the work has been done now (shiny user-friendly distros and Microsoft-compatible apps), it is up to them to take it if they want it.
What is far more important to me, and I suspect most of "us", is a healthy and diverse hardware and software ecosystem where everyone can play and compete, through open standards so that no one is left out if they don't want to be, and healthy progress can proceed.
"We" do not need Linux (as only one flabour of *nix) to be pervasive, to replace one monoculture with another. It would be better if everyone ran a better OS (i.e. not Windows) but that isn't going to happen.
"We" should be quietly confident and work to improve "our" software, and when any of the Heathens feel ready to convert, we should offer them our patient and friendly support.
If they don't want to convert, respect their decision, whether is is due to ignorance, laziness, fear, legitimate need or personal taste.
There ends my rant for today.
Blowing-up a large object into many small ones would increase the surface area per unit mass. Would this not accelerate burn-up in the atmosphere? Would it be enough?
I've got a K6-III/450 with 128MB RAM and a TNT2 M64, running Slackware.
Do you know about Hypertransport? Do you know how important multi-CPU AMD motherboards are about to become?
While intel's multi-core processors are choking on a single frontside bus, with an AMD system, you just need to plug in another CPU, GPU, physix processor, vector processor or whatever and get more (not less) memory bandwidth per processor and a linear increase in processing power.
By 2008, I expect 4-socket AMD motherboards will be common place amongst consumers, never mind enthusiasts.
Intel will have hot, slow, high frequency 8-core space heaters choking in a single socket.