I have looked at the data. There were a total of 4 events in only one of the three experiments. The data that seemed to say that the Higgs existed also looked a lot like systematic error. I want to see the Higgs discovered but I do not like it when people jump the gun.
From what I have heard, unless the luminosity of Run II at Fermilabs increases drastically they will not have a high enough cross section to find the Higgs, assuming it exists. We can only hope they do find it so that we don't have to wait until we receive data from the LHC.
Quick answers: Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM, and superior marketing. Intel is basically a household name, whereas AMD is still thought as the nockoff brand. So long as consumers believe that Intel is the real thing, therefore it must be better, and AMD is just a copy, therefore worse, then the big names will not support AMD processors.
No modern Linux distro would be caught with such a clunky setup. It would *immediately* be flamed for being too hard to install.
Actually, Debian still has a rather pathetic installation program. They are working on it, but it still wasn't there for Potato. One thing I must say about installing Debian though, after dealing with Mandrake 7 and RedHat 7.1 installations, I found that Debian was much more flexable during the installation. Of course that is part of what makes it so hard and considered a poor design.
That was one of the Unix design philosophies. There was a point where the design philosophy was to include as many things as they could into one program, ie sendmail.
Frankly, Evolution is a really nice program. Since 0.15 I have had no problems with it, not with Tasks or mail or anything, it just works. It crashed once on me with 0.15, but 0.16 hasn't crashed at all on me.
Linux needs a group ware suite. Linux needs integration between components. Why, because it makes life easier for the user. Just as Konquerer has integrated web browsing with a graphical shell, what Nautilus is trying to do, or integrating compatibilities between the different aspects of office suite software. Some things need to be meshed because it makes sense.
My mistake about the units.
The coriolis force is F = 2*m*v X Omega, where X denotes a cross product.
m is the mass of the object
v is a vector denoting the dirction and magnitude of the movement of the object
Omega is the vector perpendicular to the rotation and has equal magnitude.
The human body is actually very sensitive to this. Even on earth the coriolis force really isn't very large.
Um, 6400km is the radius of the earth, not the radius of the tether.
Actually the exact radius of the earth depends on the angle from which you take the measurement.
Equatorial radius of the earth = 6378.388 km
Polar radius of the earth = 6356.912 km
Also, if you look again I was saying 1/6 earth standard gravity.
We no longer have the same urgent need for a space program that we had when we first developed it. NASA was never *just* about idle scientific curiosity. It was about developing the technologies needed for national defense and showing that technical superiority off to the rest of the world, for the sake of national prestige and it's accompanying international influence.
True, that was its initial goal, goals change. We have ICBMs, we have spy satellites, we have gps and ways of communicating with troops via satellite. As new national defence issues arrise that need NASA then they have access to it, but instead of mothballing everything because NASA was originally created for military and defence issues ithas been able to adapt to become a huge foundation for scientific research.
The private sector is generally a realm of many choices and lots of decisions. Government usually does not give you much choice. In the private sector I have a decision whether or not to support a non-profit scientific organization seeking to land on the moon.
The problem is that funding fundamental reseach that does not have direct economic gain, whether through products or important patents, runs into the prisoners dilema. By having a government that forces us to pay for things that are benifitial for all of society, ie schools, infrastructure, fundamental reseach, so they actually move forward. It is the lack of having strings from the private sector attached to them that allows them to do an okay to excellent job. Sure some of these programs are not getting the desired results, but imagine the social retardation if public schools relied on private sector money with strings attached, like forcing advertisements in class.
Some things should not funded on the basis of whether they can turn a (short term) profit. With the exception of Watson Crick Labs, the amount of fundamental and theoretical science being done in the private sector is pathetic. The studying of quasars and black holes has no economic return until our society can actually go to those places. Poster sales of cool space phenominon will not fund the Hubble Space Telescope.
Turn NASA over to the private sector and space exploration will die until China or Russia shame our government into funding it. Unfortunately once that happens, there are several possibilites, none of which are very good.
A public NASA is recreated, all designs needed are either completely out of date or patented. Rebuild from the ground up.
We pay the private sector even more money than we are currently paying NASA, because now they know they can turn a profit and can set any price.
The Libertarian view on scientific funding DOES NOT WORK because it relies on donations, which, even they admit, cannot drive an economy.
It is interesting that when most powerful societies start to crumble it begins with an usurping of power and quickly followed with not funding scientific research, espeically NON-PROFITABLE research. Let's see here, Bush stole the election, NASA thinking of privatizing, fusion energy research being cut drastically, and particle research begging for money.
Although Chocky2 has some good points about the torque needed and such he forgot some other problems with the tether idea.
Centripetal force, which is what the tether idea is based on, is F= v^2/r, where v is the tangential velocity and r is the radius from the center of mass. Now assuming that the rockets are roughly the same weight as the module the tether is going to be, of course, twice that length. I haven't read "The Case for Mars" yet, even though a lot of my friends keep pushing it on my, so I am not sure if Zubrin goes over the minumual radius needed to prevent people from getting sick from the radial motion. I have read papers on that though, and the tangential velocity needed is rather large, in fact it is impractial. I have heard of the Translife experiment, but mice are much smaller animals, with their center of gravity much closer to the ground, so the radius needed for mice is much much smaller than the radius needed for you average human.
Just a sample calculation. Let us say that the radius needed to prevent someone from getting sick is 1/30 the radius of earth, which is ~6400 km. And we want 1/6 g.
1/6 g * 1/30 * 6400000 = v^2
v = 420 m/s = 1.5E7 m/hr
When you have large velocities on a long tether you really have to worry about the strength of the tether. It has to hold up against the initial acceleration. On top of that the constant centrifugal (which is real in the frame of reference on either end of the tether) along with it being constantly weakened by the bombardment of radiation. The tether would have to be HUGE, not just really really long but also very thick.
It really isn't practical for anything really large, sorry.
True people rent cars instead of buying them for several reasons. Usually because then they have a new car every 2 years and don't have to deal with fixing it when it starts to break down.
There is a problem with comparing cars to operating systems though. The bottom line is that not only is Linux free, but so are all of the upgrades, and you can upgrade to a brand new version over the net. Instead of having to go out and buy a new version and re-install their machine.
Using Windows XP is sort of like renting a car. Sure you get a new one every 1-2 years. But you have to go into the dealership to replace it and you are constantly paying. Linux would be a car that you don't pay for, it fixes itself and makes itself new everytime a new model is available.
Unfortunately, I agree that there are too many sheep out there though, and MS probably won't get tubed over this.
True, they used diskless workstations, SunRays to be exact. Some say they are just glorified x-terms, but having used one I would say that they are much more than that. First they have a smart card port, ergo the school or workplace can switch their id cards to smart cards, thereby creating an easier way to logon to the systems. In the case of a school, where computer labs are for everyones use, it allows for customization of desktop and software. A large Sun server is a lot more reliable than Windows boxes, and replacing a broken SunRay is cheaper than replacing a broken/out-of-date PC. Although the PC may be faster, Sun servers, and therefore the SunRays, aren't exactly slow, and they need replacing less often as the article mentioned.
Basically, what I am getting to is that it is perfectly legit to compair PCs vs SunRays in this situation. It is the way Sun is trying to get businesses to move. Cheaper, more reliable, more secure, and the performance hit is not significant for what most people do.
The FTC is set up to protect the consumer. Monopolistic business practices have to be a concern for FTC because unregulated monopolies have been shown to be bad for the economy and for the public. Therefore if previous data shows that a company routinely uses anti-competitive business practices then the FTC should investigate, if not take action, especially if the business has been declaired a monopoly.
True, banks and marketing companies have obsene amount os information, but they have competition. MS holds ~90% of the desktop market, they control all of the data and have no competition. That is the difference.
As for the rant, you infered that other companies need to stop complaining and start coding better. I was pointing out that it really doesn't matter how good you code, if MS doesn't want it to work they will break it. It has happened in the past, and until something happens to prevent them from doing it, it will happen in the future. Now that MS is putting in sections about allowing MS to install and remove any software from the computer into their EULAs this has the possibility for MS to do even more damage.
It seems that you either A) don't really understand the arguments or B) overestimate the public.
Average Joe computer user may not really understand that Passport or other services are optional. Sure they need to connect to the internet to get a Passport account but that doen't mean that they understand that it is completely unnecesary. The average user will connect to the net using whatever is listed on the desktop, if you don't believe me then just look at who has the fastest growing ISP out there (MSN) and before AOL was stripped from the desktop THEY were the fastest. If there is a wizard that runs people through MSN and signing up for a Passport account then most people will do that. This bundling without giving options is what got MS labeled a monopoly.
...what's wrong with the other companies? Can't they write code anymore? What is wrong with MS, can't they write code, especially patches, that doesn't break specific non-MS programs that used to work perfectly. Funny how the programs that are usually broken are ones that MS doesn't like, i.e. CCMail, Lotis Notes, WordPerfect conversions etc... It has been shown in the past that MS purposefully breaks compatability to force their own products, this hurts the customer by limiting choice. By breaking connectivity and not allowing other 3rd parties from integrating their products the customer loses because of lack of competition.
I actually worked with the documentation team at Sun Microsystems. They are actually fairly well funded, and their documentation at docs.sun.com wins awards, especially the Solaris team, for the amount of useful information and examples. Also now that docs.sun.com has a decent web server in the background it isn't slower than syrup. As of last year they even added a tunable guide, the last major professional UNIX to publish this information.
To be exact, according to dpkg it has 37 dependencies. Of course, those have dependencies also.
I know that I will get flamed for this, but that is why I use Debian GNU/Linux. Figuring out dependencies stops becoming my job.
apt-get update
apt-get install nautilus
Done.
Anthrax may not be all that effective because it is very hard to distribute but that doesn't mean that A) it should be ignored and B) that we should dismiss the potential danger of other biological weapons. If small pox were to be re-introduced in several cities at once, that could have a devistating effect on the population. Everyone after (I believe it is) 1975 are not immunized against it. It is possible that the Taliban may have gotten a former Soviet scientist from some lab in Kazakstan or Uzbekistan who had a vial of the stuff.
Anyway, the several reports of anthrax have caused quite a panic in Florida. Accoriding to NPR one pharmacy normally only fill 20 perscriptions of the antibiotic that is used to fight anthrax daily, and they have seen that climb to 300! Salon magazine has a decent article about the Anthrax scare.
Actually I was just visiting the Matrix Graphics site and their new Millenium G200 MMX has quad display capabilities at 1920x1600 16 million color resolutions. Sure it costs $800+, but if you are willing to spend the money on 4 lcd screens then what is another $800?
Actually, I think that CGA was first. Also, MGA is what is currently being used by Matrox products and I can guarentee that my G400 Max can do a lot more with its MGA than CGA, EGA, or VGA, especially considering it can do 2048x1536 True Color.
Matrix has been using MGA for quite a while. I know that their original Millenium products were MGA, and I was look at them in '96. It is actually quite powerful, especially in the OpenGL area.
Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Snowmass conference (I was studying in St. Petersburg, Russia), so I my information from the conference comes from fellow students in Uriel's Army (People from Snowmass would understand).
Anyway, the Next Linear Collider (NLC) is very important for many reasons. Here are a few.
It is a multinational effort. The High Energy Physics (HEP) physicists know that the US government will not foot the entire bill. The HEP budget in the US will only increase by 0.6% (Physics Today June 2001)this year, so after ~3% inflation, thats a 2.4% decrease in spending power. We are hoping for funding from Japan and the EU. This type of physics already ignores boarders, but a multinationally funded collider will only help.
It will increase our knowledge of physics and the universe. The finding of the Higgs Boson, and perhaps other particles, will shed some light on what are the proper paths theorists should begin to look at.
Supersymmetry (SUSY, MSUGRA, etc...). This is the field that I am currently working in. I won't go into the nitty gritty details, instead explain to why some might find it interesting. If any of the flavors of supersymmtry are proven this provides strong evidence towards the leading string theories. Unfortunately we need a MINIMUM of 500 GeV to find the supersymmetric partners, and 800 GeV to have any cross section of the supersymmetric partners of the quarks.
Particle physics is not excatly thriving in the US right now. Maybe because we cannot come down and explain in simplistic terms what we are doing. If it is going to survive we need to do something big. Nothing big has occured since 1994 when the Top Quark (see sig) was discovered. The blips of the Higgs that CERN reported are shakey at best and currently RUN II at Fermilabs does not have the luminosity needed to find the Higgs.
If you live in the US please contact your congressmen and tell them that you support the creation of the NLC.
If you are in Europe, especially Germany, please contact your representatives and tell them that you support Tesla (the competing design for the NLC, the European design).
the amount of money spent on fusion research is trivial
Extremely trivial considering that according to Physics Today President Bush's budget cuts nuclear energy research by 29.4%. Of course that article was in June, who knows how much more he plans to take out for other projects? Cutting a budget by over 1/4 tends to send the message that it is not considered important.
I am about ready to get my BS in Physics and I have talked with some of the professors that I work with in High Energy Physics about the possibility of fusion. There is another problem that they mentioned that you forgot, which is that after a while the containment area of the tokomak becomes highly radioactive and very weak after being bombarded with stray high energy particles. Basically after a while the entire containment area has to be replaced, and the old one put in a hazardous waste area. With a large tokomak that is a lot of radioactive metal to have to deal with.
Um, you completely missed the point. We are not going to Mars to check if it is economically viable for mining.
We are going to Mars because that is the first step to becoming an interplanetary society.
We are going to Mars because it is like the Earth and can tell us more about our planet, and other planets in general. The scientific data that could be gathered from Mars is quite large.
We are going to Mars because it is cool. NASA needs something big to turn the heads of the population. They need public support.
Why should we NOT go to a NEA?
Space mining at this point in time is unrealistic. From designing the equiptment to do the mining, to transporting the material. It is extremely expensive, and not profitable at this point in time. If it was I gaurentee that companies would be seriously looking into it.
Fly-bys of random NEA's are useful, but not nearly as useful as information from/on planets.
The public could care less about flying next to a random non-comet rock. In fact, it might even hurt NASA's image doing things that the public might consider a "waste" of public money.
There is a huge push for Mars because the public is interested in it, and the Government is interested in it. In general they are not interested in NEAs. Successful big missions to Mars will provide NASA with the support it needs to do more minor missions like fly-bys of NEAs.
They want to continue to control the distrubution. The best way to to that is to deal with a format that is in the hands of one company and one set of OSs. Of course they will realize later that they will be fscked in the end by Microsoft.
The poster mnordstr gave some ideas for replacements for office but missed one that I consider very important, WordPerfect. The WordPerfect Suite has been on par with MS for quite a while now. In fact, MS copied the interface from, what was at the time Novell, WordPerfect Suite 6 and Claris Works. And yes, QuattroPro has finally recovered from the beating that it took from Excel 95 and 97. Oh, and they have a Linux version.
Outlook does more than suck at times. It destroys productivity by being an insecure application.
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I have looked at the data. There were a total of 4 events in only one of the three experiments. The data that seemed to say that the Higgs existed also looked a lot like systematic error. I want to see the Higgs discovered but I do not like it when people jump the gun.
From what I have heard, unless the luminosity of Run II at Fermilabs increases drastically they will not have a high enough cross section to find the Higgs, assuming it exists. We can only hope they do find it so that we don't have to wait until we receive data from the LHC.
Quick answers: Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM, and superior marketing. Intel is basically a household name, whereas AMD is still thought as the nockoff brand. So long as consumers believe that Intel is the real thing, therefore it must be better, and AMD is just a copy, therefore worse, then the big names will not support AMD processors.
No modern Linux distro would be caught with such a clunky setup. It would *immediately* be flamed for being too hard to install.
Actually, Debian still has a rather pathetic installation program. They are working on it, but it still wasn't there for Potato. One thing I must say about installing Debian though, after dealing with Mandrake 7 and RedHat 7.1 installations, I found that Debian was much more flexable during the installation. Of course that is part of what makes it so hard and considered a poor design.
That was one of the Unix design philosophies. There was a point where the design philosophy was to include as many things as they could into one program, ie sendmail.
Frankly, Evolution is a really nice program. Since 0.15 I have had no problems with it, not with Tasks or mail or anything, it just works. It crashed once on me with 0.15, but 0.16 hasn't crashed at all on me.
Linux needs a group ware suite. Linux needs integration between components. Why, because it makes life easier for the user. Just as Konquerer has integrated web browsing with a graphical shell, what Nautilus is trying to do, or integrating compatibilities between the different aspects of office suite software. Some things need to be meshed because it makes sense.
My mistake about the units.
The coriolis force is F = 2*m*v X Omega, where X denotes a cross product.
m is the mass of the object
v is a vector denoting the dirction and magnitude of the movement of the object
Omega is the vector perpendicular to the rotation and has equal magnitude.
The human body is actually very sensitive to this. Even on earth the coriolis force really isn't very large.
Um, 6400km is the radius of the earth, not the radius of the tether.
Actually the exact radius of the earth depends on the angle from which you take the measurement.
Equatorial radius of the earth = 6378.388 km
Polar radius of the earth = 6356.912 km
Also, if you look again I was saying 1/6 earth standard gravity.
True, that was its initial goal, goals change. We have ICBMs, we have spy satellites, we have gps and ways of communicating with troops via satellite. As new national defence issues arrise that need NASA then they have access to it, but instead of mothballing everything because NASA was originally created for military and defence issues ithas been able to adapt to become a huge foundation for scientific research.
The private sector is generally a realm of many choices and lots of decisions. Government usually does not give you much choice. In the private sector I have a decision whether or not to support a non-profit scientific organization seeking to land on the moon.
The problem is that funding fundamental reseach that does not have direct economic gain, whether through products or important patents, runs into the prisoners dilema. By having a government that forces us to pay for things that are benifitial for all of society, ie schools, infrastructure, fundamental reseach, so they actually move forward. It is the lack of having strings from the private sector attached to them that allows them to do an okay to excellent job. Sure some of these programs are not getting the desired results, but imagine the social retardation if public schools relied on private sector money with strings attached, like forcing advertisements in class.
Some things should not funded on the basis of whether they can turn a (short term) profit. With the exception of Watson Crick Labs, the amount of fundamental and theoretical science being done in the private sector is pathetic. The studying of quasars and black holes has no economic return until our society can actually go to those places. Poster sales of cool space phenominon will not fund the Hubble Space Telescope.
Turn NASA over to the private sector and space exploration will die until China or Russia shame our government into funding it. Unfortunately once that happens, there are several possibilites, none of which are very good.
The Libertarian view on scientific funding DOES NOT WORK because it relies on donations, which, even they admit, cannot drive an economy.
It is interesting that when most powerful societies start to crumble it begins with an usurping of power and quickly followed with not funding scientific research, espeically NON-PROFITABLE research. Let's see here, Bush stole the election, NASA thinking of privatizing, fusion energy research being cut drastically, and particle research begging for money.
Although Chocky2 has some good points about the torque needed and such he forgot some other problems with the tether idea.
Centripetal force, which is what the tether idea is based on, is F= v^2/r, where v is the tangential velocity and r is the radius from the center of mass. Now assuming that the rockets are roughly the same weight as the module the tether is going to be, of course, twice that length. I haven't read "The Case for Mars" yet, even though a lot of my friends keep pushing it on my, so I am not sure if Zubrin goes over the minumual radius needed to prevent people from getting sick from the radial motion. I have read papers on that though, and the tangential velocity needed is rather large, in fact it is impractial. I have heard of the Translife experiment, but mice are much smaller animals, with their center of gravity much closer to the ground, so the radius needed for mice is much much smaller than the radius needed for you average human.
Just a sample calculation. Let us say that the radius needed to prevent someone from getting sick is 1/30 the radius of earth, which is ~6400 km. And we want 1/6 g.
1/6 g * 1/30 * 6400000 = v^2
v = 420 m/s = 1.5E7 m/hr
When you have large velocities on a long tether you really have to worry about the strength of the tether. It has to hold up against the initial acceleration. On top of that the constant centrifugal (which is real in the frame of reference on either end of the tether) along with it being constantly weakened by the bombardment of radiation. The tether would have to be HUGE, not just really really long but also very thick.
It really isn't practical for anything really large, sorry.
True people rent cars instead of buying them for several reasons. Usually because then they have a new car every 2 years and don't have to deal with fixing it when it starts to break down.
There is a problem with comparing cars to operating systems though. The bottom line is that not only is Linux free, but so are all of the upgrades, and you can upgrade to a brand new version over the net. Instead of having to go out and buy a new version and re-install their machine.
Using Windows XP is sort of like renting a car. Sure you get a new one every 1-2 years. But you have to go into the dealership to replace it and you are constantly paying. Linux would be a car that you don't pay for, it fixes itself and makes itself new everytime a new model is available.
Unfortunately, I agree that there are too many sheep out there though, and MS probably won't get tubed over this.
True, they used diskless workstations, SunRays to be exact. Some say they are just glorified x-terms, but having used one I would say that they are much more than that. First they have a smart card port, ergo the school or workplace can switch their id cards to smart cards, thereby creating an easier way to logon to the systems. In the case of a school, where computer labs are for everyones use, it allows for customization of desktop and software. A large Sun server is a lot more reliable than Windows boxes, and replacing a broken SunRay is cheaper than replacing a broken/out-of-date PC. Although the PC may be faster, Sun servers, and therefore the SunRays, aren't exactly slow, and they need replacing less often as the article mentioned.
Basically, what I am getting to is that it is perfectly legit to compair PCs vs SunRays in this situation. It is the way Sun is trying to get businesses to move. Cheaper, more reliable, more secure, and the performance hit is not significant for what most people do.
The FTC is set up to protect the consumer. Monopolistic business practices have to be a concern for FTC because unregulated monopolies have been shown to be bad for the economy and for the public. Therefore if previous data shows that a company routinely uses anti-competitive business practices then the FTC should investigate, if not take action, especially if the business has been declaired a monopoly.
True, banks and marketing companies have obsene amount os information, but they have competition. MS holds ~90% of the desktop market, they control all of the data and have no competition. That is the difference.
As for the rant, you infered that other companies need to stop complaining and start coding better. I was pointing out that it really doesn't matter how good you code, if MS doesn't want it to work they will break it. It has happened in the past, and until something happens to prevent them from doing it, it will happen in the future. Now that MS is putting in sections about allowing MS to install and remove any software from the computer into their EULAs this has the possibility for MS to do even more damage.
It seems that you either A) don't really understand the arguments or B) overestimate the public.
...what's wrong with the other companies? Can't they write code anymore?
Average Joe computer user may not really understand that Passport or other services are optional. Sure they need to connect to the internet to get a Passport account but that doen't mean that they understand that it is completely unnecesary. The average user will connect to the net using whatever is listed on the desktop, if you don't believe me then just look at who has the fastest growing ISP out there (MSN) and before AOL was stripped from the desktop THEY were the fastest. If there is a wizard that runs people through MSN and signing up for a Passport account then most people will do that. This bundling without giving options is what got MS labeled a monopoly.
What is wrong with MS, can't they write code, especially patches, that doesn't break specific non-MS programs that used to work perfectly. Funny how the programs that are usually broken are ones that MS doesn't like, i.e. CCMail, Lotis Notes, WordPerfect conversions etc... It has been shown in the past that MS purposefully breaks compatability to force their own products, this hurts the customer by limiting choice. By breaking connectivity and not allowing other 3rd parties from integrating their products the customer loses because of lack of competition.
I actually worked with the documentation team at Sun Microsystems. They are actually fairly well funded, and their documentation at docs.sun.com wins awards, especially the Solaris team, for the amount of useful information and examples. Also now that docs.sun.com has a decent web server in the background it isn't slower than syrup. As of last year they even added a tunable guide, the last major professional UNIX to publish this information.
Can corperations be "terrorized"?
Sure, MS has been doing it to many a tech company for years now.
To be exact, according to dpkg it has 37 dependencies. Of course, those have dependencies also.
I know that I will get flamed for this, but that is why I use Debian GNU/Linux. Figuring out dependencies stops becoming my job.
apt-get update
apt-get install nautilus
Done.
Anthrax may not be all that effective because it is very hard to distribute but that doesn't mean that A) it should be ignored and B) that we should dismiss the potential danger of other biological weapons. If small pox were to be re-introduced in several cities at once, that could have a devistating effect on the population. Everyone after (I believe it is) 1975 are not immunized against it. It is possible that the Taliban may have gotten a former Soviet scientist from some lab in Kazakstan or Uzbekistan who had a vial of the stuff.
Anyway, the several reports of anthrax have caused quite a panic in Florida. Accoriding to NPR one pharmacy normally only fill 20 perscriptions of the antibiotic that is used to fight anthrax daily, and they have seen that climb to 300! Salon magazine has a decent article about the Anthrax scare.
Yes you need 4 adapters to run them
Actually I was just visiting the Matrix Graphics site and their new Millenium G200 MMX has quad display capabilities at 1920x1600 16 million color resolutions. Sure it costs $800+, but if you are willing to spend the money on 4 lcd screens then what is another $800?
MGA->CGA->EGA
Actually, I think that CGA was first. Also, MGA is what is currently being used by Matrox products and I can guarentee that my G400 Max can do a lot more with its MGA than CGA, EGA, or VGA, especially considering it can do 2048x1536 True Color.
Matrix has been using MGA for quite a while. I know that their original Millenium products were MGA, and I was look at them in '96. It is actually quite powerful, especially in the OpenGL area.
Anyway, the Next Linear Collider (NLC) is very important for many reasons. Here are a few.
If you live in the US please contact your congressmen and tell them that you support the creation of the NLC.
If you are in Europe, especially Germany, please contact your representatives and tell them that you support Tesla (the competing design for the NLC, the European design).
If you live in Japan, either NLC or Tesla.
Extremely trivial considering that according to Physics Today President Bush's budget cuts nuclear energy research by 29.4%. Of course that article was in June, who knows how much more he plans to take out for other projects? Cutting a budget by over 1/4 tends to send the message that it is not considered important.
I am about ready to get my BS in Physics and I have talked with some of the professors that I work with in High Energy Physics about the possibility of fusion. There is another problem that they mentioned that you forgot, which is that after a while the containment area of the tokomak becomes highly radioactive and very weak after being bombarded with stray high energy particles. Basically after a while the entire containment area has to be replaced, and the old one put in a hazardous waste area. With a large tokomak that is a lot of radioactive metal to have to deal with.
Um, you completely missed the point. We are not going to Mars to check if it is economically viable for mining.
Why should we NOT go to a NEA?
There is a huge push for Mars because the public is interested in it, and the Government is interested in it. In general they are not interested in NEAs. Successful big missions to Mars will provide NASA with the support it needs to do more minor missions like fly-bys of NEAs.
They want to continue to control the distrubution. The best way to to that is to deal with a format that is in the hands of one company and one set of OSs. Of course they will realize later that they will be fscked in the end by Microsoft.
The poster mnordstr gave some ideas for replacements for office but missed one that I consider very important, WordPerfect. The WordPerfect Suite has been on par with MS for quite a while now. In fact, MS copied the interface from, what was at the time Novell, WordPerfect Suite 6 and Claris Works. And yes, QuattroPro has finally recovered from the beating that it took from Excel 95 and 97. Oh, and they have a Linux version.
Outlook does more than suck at times. It destroys productivity by being an insecure application.