Fuel Cells. Of course a Mr Fusion would be nice but in the mean time fuel cells, then next nano process fuel cells are the most likely critters. Possibly even more promising near future source for a better power-to-weight ratio would be mini turbine powered generators. Of course for less portable applications conventional CAT gensets and capacitor banks might work pretty well.
It is defensive in the same way Gatling and Mini-guns are. That is the damn thing and its ammo or in this case its power source will be too heavy to be portable enough for effective use as a non mechanized ie: infantry assault weapon. Of course mount the critter on a rolling, floating or flying platform and it makes a pretty good offensive weapon as well. However it is well founded classical military logic that the infantry is the root of any offensive action. All other weapons systems are seen as defensive support for the infantry, even those like tanks or air power that are used to "soften" up the enemy first.
"When you buy music you but the media, not the content. You dont own the song, you never did. When you buy a CD, you dont get free LPs and cassettes."
While you do not own the rights to distribute the music you do own that particular copy and your rights extend past the media it is contained upon. You need to read a bit on First Sale and Fair Use.
"There is no way an issue like abortion can be "solved"."
Effective and acceptable conception prevention that would actually be used and could not be defined by opponents as just another form of abortion like most of the more effective methods available today. Objective and realistic acceptance of the sexuality of all people including those who are not of legal age. Realist forms of education of people especially those of lesser experience or mental ability. Cultural acceptance of non intercourse type of sexual activity, ie: masturbation, oral, and "petting" types of activity, once again especially for those not of legal adult status.
I know most all of this would be opposed by the same persons that oppose abortion. However the arguments about the sanctity of life taken by abortion is addressed. If such methods were actually in place the incident of abortion would be so low as to defuse the abortion debate itself. I am also aware that issues of disease transmission are not entirely addressed by what I suggest, however incidents of such could be quite effectively reduced via these methods. To put it as simply as possible it could be stated as:
A.Humans are sexual animals, they almost always become sexually aware well before they of legal age or maturity. B.They will be sexually curious, and usually active before they are legally responsible adults. C.Self enforced abstinence is not a natural answer or we would have been extinct long ago. D.Human sexuality and its expression is natural not unnatural.
While there are some technological hurdles like conception and disease prevention and educational methods, they are realistically addressable in the near term. The real obstacles here are cultural acceptance of sexuality, again especially the sexuality of those not of legal adult status. There are several reasons for this cultural bias, one is completely understandable and solvable, some others are well illogical and will be very difficult to resolve. A parents concern for the welfare of their children is very understandable. Issues of unplanned pregnancy or STD's that can screw up many peoples lives is a valid concern for parents. These can be addressed via technology and education very effectively in the foreseeable future. The really tough problems with the cultural bias is rooted in the institutional and personal interpretations or religious texts that were written hundreds or sometimes of thousands of years ago. That these texts had very detailed instructions as to what was proper expression of human sexuality should not be unexpected. That those instructions were formed by decisions on the best survival methods for the technology at the time is to be expected. The instructions were usually even very logical and thus relevant for the technology of the time. They were almost always focused on maximum reproduction and minimum mortality rates, disease prevention, and stability in the society.
That we should have a set of instructions for our own civilization is completely logical. That we should continue to use those adopted by a civilization hundreds or thousands of years in our past is not logical and is in fact an exercise in insanity. It is illogical to expect changes in outcome without without changes in input, if we keep doing the same old stuff and having the same old arguments we should expect to keep getting the same results. I will agree that the cultural situation at hand is an absurdism. I also agree that there is no sure and enlightened path to the future that resolves these issues. It could very well be that a few hundred years from now the Christian and the Islamic fundamentalists will rule the world by a set of 12th century edicts and still be slaughtering each other and burning and beheading heretics like me. I do suspect though that to do so they will have to stall or regress most science and technology. Do able I guess it seems many are already trying to effect such change. Still given the logic at the base of the scientific method and the obvious benefits of technology advancements I tend to be a bit optimistic that they will continue the slow but mostly forward momentum in the enlightenment of all our cultures.
"The top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. If that isn't "sharing the wealth," then socialism is much nastier than I thought."
This type of quote is the reason for the colloquialism about there being "Three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics. Yea good old "earned income" otherwise known as "wages, tips, other compensation". This is why many business owners pay themselves next to nothing in wages and take the income in ways that are tax avoidable, it is the same reason many CEO's prefer to work for peanuts and stock options. How about capital gains taxes, since this is where the top % make their real gains in wealth? What is the top rate now, 15% or so? And the 15% only applies to the part that exemptions and loopholes have not excluded/hidden. How about the sleazy off shore corporate registration and banking setups? Either you are just a sucker for propaganda or part of the problem. Break the system and we all frickin pay, but if/when it happens those who are seen as the agents of causation are the ones who will pay the most, for a change. Kinda lends a different meaning to the term "you break it you buy it" doesn't it?
You know when I first tried Beryl I though that it was going to be just eye candy stuff that I would tire of quickly and then turn off. However many of the features have turned out to be much more natural and intuitive and thus more useful that anything else I have used. Most of the spinning cube clips on MySpace actually do a great injustice to Beryl by focusing mainly on the flashier but on the less useful features. I am pretty certain that the exact type of view manager you specify does exist for Beryl in the latest SVN versions anyway. It is an "Extra" called "Mini-Viewport". However I found this specific extra to not be stable on my system, at this time anyway, and thus turned it back off, it is off by default as are all iffy extras/features.
However there are several features in Beryl I have found to be just as useful or more so and have been damn stable for me. The closest to what you describe is the "Scale" feature in the "Window Management" settings manager group. Pressing the F8 key for all viewports or the F9 for the current viewport only causes the current widows to fade out and all appropriate windows to be all displayed scaled on your clean desktop. You can also designate a hot corner of the screen to engage this feature via the mouse.
The "planar" or as I prefer the "Ring" task switchers can be used to display all windows in a single viewport or in all viewports("cube" sides). As I noted I really like the "Ring" switcher, when called with "Super-Ctrl-Tab" keys this fades away the current window and displays all windows from all viewports in a 3D ellipse and cycles through them bringing one to the foreground and active state with each Tab press, release and you are switched to the app in the foreground at that time. Another handy feature is the "kicker" taskbar "Extra" called "Window Previews" that displays a live mini window of whatever taskbar item you hover your mouse over.
All these "Window Management" and "Extras" window/task display methods have one common and very handy feature. The items displayed are live or dynamically updating mini versions of the actual window instead of a simple icon or snapshot. This is really handy if you need to to check on say a download or compiler progress, etc with minimum effort or distraction.They all have seemingly endless configuration options to tweak things just how you want them.
There are many other features that I would not want to give up anymore.The "Visual Effect" "Opacity-Brightness-Saturation" feature makes it really easy to check on something behind the current window with just my mouse wheel and the Alt key. With the Super key and N key I can toggle the "Accessibility" feature "Negative" and give my eyes a break by inverting the current windows display colors. With the "Accessibility" feature "Input Zoom Enabled" I can easily zoom in and out on any application and still have unfettered control of my mouse and keyboard. The "Visual Effects" feature "Trail Focus" dims widows based on time since last focus, neater than you would think, as it reduces distractions. I am sure the "Window Management" feature "Group & Tab Windows" is going to the feature I have been waiting for as soon as I get the time to tweak it out.
As for the "cube" and transformations/ distortions, I run a 16:9 ratio here on a 20" Samsung SN204BW. I usually run 8 viewports so instead of a cube I actually have an octagonal 3D configuration. This SVN version I am running supports up to 16 viewports though some earlier ones did 32 or more. In addition you can specify up to 16 desktops. So one can have up to 16x16 or 256 individual workspaces though I don't know how useful such a number would be, it would defiantly make for a huge pager. I don't use a pager, I simply have one desktop and flip through the 8 viewports with my mousewheel or "Ctrl-Alt-arrow keys". I actually do very little of that and usually use the taskbar or "Ring" switcher to find, checkon or switch to a window. Though I have been known to occasionally press both mouse buttons and shout wheee as I zoom out, spin and roll the octagonal "cube" crazily about. Try the latest SVN version and don't be too quick to give up on it you might just find a lot of stuff you like.
"It's as simple as all that. And since I play at least two games that utilize OpenGL and I like the OpenGL screensavers, I have to vote "no" to the current 3D desktops...or at least to Beryl since that is the only one I have tried. If/when there is a 3D desktop that will coexist with my other 3D stuff, then I'm down with it."
Odd that you have come to this decision. My favorite screensaver is the openGL 3D Molecule renderer. I have found it to to be especially entertaining when the "Water Effect ie: Rain" plugin of Beryl is running concurrently. As for games I don't really do much gaming but when I occasionally run GL-117 a 3D openGL flight game I have found that left clicking the Beryl icon in the KDE kicker system tray - "Select Window Manager" and simply selecting to switch to KWin or Metacity for the duration of the game does help with performance somewhat, I am not sure what menu/icon item to use in Gnome or XForce. Of course regardless of desktop manager you could also start a new x-session to run the game in and just switch back to an uninterrupted Beryl in the current session when done. You can of course also automate these methods via a shell script and have the game icon/menu item do any of this in one click.
This is not to say that Beryl will co-exist nicely with the myriad of 3D apps/games out there, I just don't have the exposure to them all to know. What I do know is it plays nice or is easy to bypass/negate such issues with the stuff I use. Please note I have been running the latest SVN of Beryl for sometime now cause I find that the older more developed features that I use the most are also the most stable in the SVN releases. I hope the merge back with Compiz does not slow down progress too much. Of course I am all for stability but I have actually found Beryl to be more stable and a better performer that Compiz on my rather aged box, Asus P4 S533-E | Intel P4 2.2ghz/2gb SDRAM | nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256mb | openSuse 10.2 |nVidia Driver & XGL. The only glitch I have at this time is an occasional -once or twice per 8 hours of use- frame remnant left on the screen by a drop down menu when the system is very busy. This is simple to fix with a reload of Beryl, right click-left click - 15 seconds and all is pretty and shiny again.
"Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price."
Seems almost? Hello! This would be funny if it were not so painful. If the American people ever manage to wrestle control of their nation from the corporate oligarchy this last decade may very well be recorded in history as the most corrupt since the days of the railroad barons. If we cannot manage reclamation of control such things are going to get a whole lot worse before they break. A disaster which is an inevitable end in a nation where a minority groups greed and corruption run reckless over the will and common interests of the majority of the populace.
Over the years I have heard several people quote some old Scottish monarchist, whose name I forget just now, who rattled on about how democracies were predestined to fail due to the ability of the people to vote themselves endless benefits with no responsibilities. Oh for want of a rope...sorry, back on topic. This I guess could be true in a straight up democracy, however we in the USA are supposed to be living in a representative republic which is designed to negate such excesses. Somehow the Republic has been damaged or at least it's principles have been subverted by those at the top of the economic and political food chain. What is really appalling is that many of these entities are not even real persons, in fact not even Americans. What is so ironic is that the failure of this nation might very well happen through the lack of honest democratic process. Had enough yet folks? I would really like to see this corrected via pressure on our representatives before it get so bad that worse methods are employed by very angry people.
"OpenSuSE (like Fedora) is a "demo version" of SuSE Linux."
That's not quite so, what openSuse and Fedora Core are could best be defined as community supported development projects, ie: test beds. That they are not distributed with legally complicated things like full media support does not set them apart from the d/l version's of Mandriva or any version of Ubuntu or Debian that I am aware of. As for the stand alone issue, the case of code migration between licensed copy/ paid support support versions and free versions should be a good compromise between rapid development and stability. Though I do have to say Novell has managed to muddy this up quite a bit. I don't really know about how the seamless migration issue with Ubuntu because I would not use such paid support myself. I can see where some would see such either defining the free versions as demos or even for the cynical types as a bait and switch setup.
I do know that I have used free d/l versions of both Suse and Fedora for quite some time now and never considered either as "demos". I always considered them to be base versions that I could, with a little elbow grease, add features to that could not be included in the distro due to legal patent/licensing issues. Of as in the case of the copy of Suse 9.0 I bought I could get most of that stuff included on the install media and go a bit lighter on the elbow grease. But as long as one has a fast internet connection one has only to add the repositories, update and install whatever they want. As one who only recently got quasi-broadband (satellite) access I do understand the plight of people on dial-up, for these folks a full licensed version of a distro like Mandriva, Suse or Redhat might very well payoff as might a update by disc subscription.
All in all I have usually found free versions of Suse and now openSuse to be the most polished initial install and the most stable overall. There are not very of the top 20 distro's that I have not installed at one time or the other. Slackware has always been the most stable initially but by the time I got it nearly as usable Suse it was not usually as stable and was still missing a lot of handy tools. I have usually had a tough time with Debian for some reason or the other. Fedora stability and usability has been spotty at best and no where near Suse level. Mandrake/Mandriva has been typically feature rich, but at least 5% of the stuff usually just did not work and I more often than not I had stability issues with the distro. With Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, I have to say they were all pretty simple and clean installs that seemed to be stable initially, but I was left wondering "wheres the beef", as they are missing the GUI admin tools you would find on Suse or Mandrake. This lack of GUI admin tools in fact is a pretty common issue with most other distros. I guess it is apparent that I kinda prefer Suse, actually openSuse now, as I do not see myself buying into SLED. I can agree with your point about differentiation issues with opeSuse and Fedora, from the perspective that I hope Novell don't muck openSuse all up with MS code contamination or distro isolation from GPLv3 incompatibilities. For now openSuse still works best for me, tomorrow we will see. I am still pleased as punch to see the huge number of distros evolving in parallel. I see this as a healthy thing. Ahh variety, ain't it wonderful!
"Not exactly what the/. headline implies, though."
Ahh Grasshopper, naw, really? With a UID of (872511) your not exactly new here. So I guess you must actually have a life. But just so you know, wink, wink, such is pretty common here,and getting more so every day. Remember this in a few weeks when the same topic is submitted again.;)
"One last statistic that is also interesting. The bottom 40% now "pay" a negative percentage of individual income taxes. And the bottom 60% combined pay less than 1%. That means the top 40% pay over 99% of individual income taxes.
I think these inconvenient facts show that your statements are the real propaganda, ignorance and prattling truisms."
Unless objectively applied to a well defined and specific question statistics are less than useless, hence the colloquialism about there being "Three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics. Yea good old "earned income" otherwise known as "wages, tips, other compensation". This is why many business owners pay themselves next to nothing, and why many CEO's prefer to work for peanuts and stock options. How about capital gains taxes, since this is where the top % make their real gains in wealth? What is the top rate now, 15% or so? And the 15% only applies to the part that exemptions and loopholes have not excluded/hidden. How about the sleazy off shore corporate registration and banking setups? Either you are just a sucker for propaganda or part of the problem. Break the system and we all frickin pay, but those who are seen as the agents of causation are the ones who will pay the most, for a change. Kinda lends a different meaning to the term "you break it you buy it" doesn't it?
"you do know that 79% of the tax burden is carried by the top 20% of income earners, right?"
You mean those folks that hold the vast majority of the assets? Sure just cherry pick a single statistic from a single source and proclaim 'look what I know, you dip shits didn't know this did you, huh, huh?'. Look the issue here is just how out of balance things can get EITHER way before it breaks the system. The balance right now grossly favors those at the top of the economic food chain. If it continues to the point of breakdown just what do you think the fate of the top x% will be? In the end it is in everyones interest to not break the frickin system.
"Maybe for once we should stop being partisan"
Yea, thats rich, considering the drivel to from the "conservative" party I have listened with great restraint, and admittedly often with amusement, for most my life. Can you make a clear argument just using common sense instead of falling back on a single cherry picked statistic form BillO's list of "facts" to throw at a liberal---remember you have to use this word in with a dirty slur pretext or voice. Don't take this to mean I am a just another sheep in the Democratic flock, which in contrast to the Republican flock, is actually more like a herd of cats anyway. I will say I like many others are sick of the "good cop - bad cop" routine the two parties have used so successfully for so many years. So exactly whose drivel is it you like best? Oh thats right you like to quote the "fiducially conservative ones", hehehe, yea.
Unless things move to optical or biological I would think that future cooling of CPU/GPU etc might very well be by immersion in a high dielectric fluid or vapor such as HCFC compounds. For instance where I work we have several Trane chillers that have the motors, about 400hp 480v 3phase, cooled by running them in the same evap side cycle refrigerant fluid/vapor as the compressor vane assembly.
So if one placed the CPU or for that fact the whole dang mother assembly in a hermetically sealed vessel one could simply dump the heat via an external condenser. I am not even sure a compressor would be required if one immersed the entire assembly in fluid and the external casing had sufficient surface area to dissipate the heat the whole thing might work via convection currents in the fluid or with the assistance of a small pump for circulation. Of course the use of a full or even cascaded refrigeration cycle with compressor, condenser and expansion device might be worth it to get lower operating temps for higher end systems. Something with capacity of a small window unit AC should be adequate for a pretty serious system and not really all that expensive a solution.
Another approach might be to use solid state cooling devices cold side bonded one side of the chip and build the chips in a cubical or other appropriate geometric assembly with heat sink sides on the exterior surfaces then simply fan cool those. Though condensation issues might be a problem here unless the cold sides were all well sealed.
"We do, Doodley do,doodley do,doodley do, What we must, Muddily must, muddily must, muddily must, Muddily do, Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, Until we bust, Bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust."
from the preface of Wampeters, Foma & Granfallons by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
One of the few people I would have ever considered giving up lifespan equal to double the time I could spend with them in conservation over a frosty bottle of Markers. Hope you have a good time in eternity ya ole rascal. So it goes...
"Besides, whats the use of finding a space buffalo if we can't kill it, eat it's flesh, wear it's skin, and turn the land it used to live on into farmland?"
Heck the way things are headed here it seems we would be more likely hunt it to extinction for sport then turn the real estate into mined out wasteland, tract housing, strip malls, airports, golf courses, off road vehicle parks, highways and parking lots. I would have included manufacturing facilities but we would most likely have outsourced all that to the Chinese Borg.
"Do you SEE those ads? I'm on page two, which weighs in at 136kb."
Actually I only see those masked as "articles", of course I am running Adblock Plus and NoScript, two handy tools which I intend to keep using for obvious reasons;)
Just hide the dang display in a closet until the audits over. For most of us arguing cost benefit issues with bean counters is kinda like wrestling with pigs. You will get probably get aggravated and nasty before it is over and the best you will usually accomplish is to annoy them, though it is more likely they will enjoy themselves at your expense.
"Those rules would really, really slow me down, especially the never-cut-one-wire: if it's romex, and live, it's a pain to cut one wire at a time and you're as likely to meet disaster trying to strip the insulation off the middle of a wire run than just cutting it."
I guess this would explain the missing chunks in you linesmans, strippers or whatever.;)
"Luckily I live in a very dry environment, so my skin surface resistance is in excess of 5M"
Yea being in and arid situation may help some. But don't trust that a spot check your skin resistance is a consistent indicator of what kind of circuit you could make. Just a slight bit of salt from dried sweat or of high mineral content dirt and it is at next to nothing. Plus once an initial arc event has occurred all such is out the window anyway. If nothing else remember the 100% cotton suggestion, poly blends melt to you, cotton burns off quickly. I don't generally wear FR stuff unless I have cotton below it, and if I sweat very much it still bothers me - rashes and such. Another gottcha is jewelery like rings, wrist watches, neck chains, redneck belt buckles and such, this type of stuff will get ya hurt.
I work now with mostly control and communication power levels less than 24v x a few amps at best. I can tell you that even cutting into live control/comm circuits while not usually a serious health hazard is still not a good idea from an equipment and getting home on time perspective. I do have plenty of past experience with 480V 3phase AC and up to 1200 VDC on equipment with common current levels or horsepower in the hundreds and sometimes thousands. Been bit many times by 120v, 277v even 7000+VDC ignition circuits a few times, one of the worst hits I ever took was from static not even working just goofing on the kids trampoline. Worked around pretty serious gauss mag fields and RF sources. As my luck has been the current levels and or path/exposure did not kill me or obviously maim me. However I do have pretty annoying floaters in lens of my eyes, very likely from the numerous arc flashes I have been exposed to. Who knows what kind of neurological damage I have done to myself that may well not show up until retirement age.
I don't mean to sound all preachy like one of those safety seminar folks. But all it takes is one incident with enough power and your life is all fracked up, outright ruined or simply over. I am 50 now and have been working with serious electrical and mechanical stuff since I was a kid. Somewhat due to luck or fear but mostly due to plain old respect for the stuff I made it to 50 mostly whole and have managed not to maim or kill anyone else either. I have however had friends, good men, not unusually reckless men, just folks that made that one slip, did "what it takes", cut that one corner to get the job done "in time". I know a few that are pretty fracked up, and a couple that are simply gone now. It ain't worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
"So it was written."
And "so it goes..." KV Jr
Wabi-Sabi
matthew
Fuel Cells. Of course a Mr Fusion would be nice but in the mean time fuel cells, then next nano process fuel cells are the most likely critters. Possibly even more promising near future source for a better power-to-weight ratio would be mini turbine powered generators. Of course for less portable applications conventional CAT gensets and capacitor banks might work pretty well.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
It is defensive in the same way Gatling and Mini-guns are. That is the damn thing and its ammo or in this case its power source will be too heavy to be portable enough for effective use as a non mechanized ie: infantry assault weapon. Of course mount the critter on a rolling, floating or flying platform and it makes a pretty good offensive weapon as well. However it is well founded classical military logic that the infantry is the root of any offensive action. All other weapons systems are seen as defensive support for the infantry, even those like tanks or air power that are used to "soften" up the enemy first.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"When you buy music you but the media, not the content. You dont own the song, you never did. When you buy a CD, you dont get free LPs and cassettes."
While you do not own the rights to distribute the music you do own that particular copy and your rights extend past the media it is contained upon. You need to read a bit on First Sale and Fair Use.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html [theadvocates.org]
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
"There is no way an issue like abortion can be "solved"."
Effective and acceptable conception prevention that would actually be used and could not be defined by opponents as just another form of abortion like most of the more effective methods available today. Objective and realistic acceptance of the sexuality of all people including those who are not of legal age. Realist forms of education of people especially those of lesser experience or mental ability. Cultural acceptance of non intercourse type of sexual activity, ie: masturbation, oral, and "petting" types of activity, once again especially for those not of legal adult status.
I know most all of this would be opposed by the same persons that oppose abortion. However the arguments about the sanctity of life taken by abortion is addressed. If such methods were actually in place the incident of abortion would be so low as to defuse the abortion debate itself. I am also aware that issues of disease transmission are not entirely addressed by what I suggest, however incidents of such could be quite effectively reduced via these methods. To put it as simply as possible it could be stated as:
A.Humans are sexual animals, they almost always become sexually aware well before they of legal age or maturity.
B.They will be sexually curious, and usually active before they are legally responsible adults.
C.Self enforced abstinence is not a natural answer or we would have been extinct long ago.
D.Human sexuality and its expression is natural not unnatural.
While there are some technological hurdles like conception and disease prevention and educational methods, they are realistically addressable in the near term. The real obstacles here are cultural acceptance of sexuality, again especially the sexuality of those not of legal adult status. There are several reasons for this cultural bias, one is completely understandable and solvable, some others are well illogical and will be very difficult to resolve. A parents concern for the welfare of their children is very understandable. Issues of unplanned pregnancy or STD's that can screw up many peoples lives is a valid concern for parents. These can be addressed via technology and education very effectively in the foreseeable future. The really tough problems with the cultural bias is rooted in the institutional and personal interpretations or religious texts that were written hundreds or sometimes of thousands of years ago. That these texts had very detailed instructions as to what was proper expression of human sexuality should not be unexpected. That those instructions were formed by decisions on the best survival methods for the technology at the time is to be expected. The instructions were usually even very logical and thus relevant for the technology of the time. They were almost always focused on maximum reproduction and minimum mortality rates, disease prevention, and stability in the society.
That we should have a set of instructions for our own civilization is completely logical. That we should continue to use those adopted by a civilization hundreds or thousands of years in our past is not logical and is in fact an exercise in insanity. It is illogical to expect changes in outcome without without changes in input, if we keep doing the same old stuff and having the same old arguments we should expect to keep getting the same results. I will agree that the cultural situation at hand is an absurdism. I also agree that there is no sure and enlightened path to the future that resolves these issues. It could very well be that a few hundred years from now the Christian and the Islamic fundamentalists will rule the world by a set of 12th century edicts and still be slaughtering each other and burning and beheading heretics like me. I do suspect though that to do so they will have to stall or regress most science and technology. Do able I guess it seems many are already trying to effect such change. Still given the logic at the base of the scientific method and the obvious benefits of technology advancements I tend to be a bit optimistic that they will continue the slow but mostly forward momentum in the enlightenment of all our cultures.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"The top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. If that isn't "sharing the wealth," then socialism is much nastier than I thought."
This type of quote is the reason for the colloquialism about there being "Three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics. Yea good old "earned income" otherwise known as "wages, tips, other compensation". This is why many business owners pay themselves next to nothing in wages and take the income in ways that are tax avoidable, it is the same reason many CEO's prefer to work for peanuts and stock options. How about capital gains taxes, since this is where the top % make their real gains in wealth? What is the top rate now, 15% or so? And the 15% only applies to the part that exemptions and loopholes have not excluded/hidden. How about the sleazy off shore corporate registration and banking setups? Either you are just a sucker for propaganda or part of the problem. Break the system and we all frickin pay, but if/when it happens those who are seen as the agents of causation are the ones who will pay the most, for a change. Kinda lends a different meaning to the term "you break it you buy it" doesn't it?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
You know when I first tried Beryl I though that it was going to be just eye candy stuff that I would tire of quickly and then turn off. However many of the features have turned out to be much more natural and intuitive and thus more useful that anything else I have used. Most of the spinning cube clips on MySpace actually do a great injustice to Beryl by focusing mainly on the flashier but on the less useful features. I am pretty certain that the exact type of view manager you specify does exist for Beryl in the latest SVN versions anyway. It is an "Extra" called "Mini-Viewport". However I found this specific extra to not be stable on my system, at this time anyway, and thus turned it back off, it is off by default as are all iffy extras/features.
However there are several features in Beryl I have found to be just as useful or more so and have been damn stable for me. The closest to what you describe is the "Scale" feature in the "Window Management" settings manager group. Pressing the F8 key for all viewports or the F9 for the current viewport only causes the current widows to fade out and all appropriate windows to be all displayed scaled on your clean desktop. You can also designate a hot corner of the screen to engage this feature via the mouse.
The "planar" or as I prefer the "Ring" task switchers can be used to display all windows in a single viewport or in all viewports("cube" sides). As I noted I really like the "Ring" switcher, when called with "Super-Ctrl-Tab" keys this fades away the current window and displays all windows from all viewports in a 3D ellipse and cycles through them bringing one to the foreground and active state with each Tab press, release and you are switched to the app in the foreground at that time. Another handy feature is the "kicker" taskbar "Extra" called "Window Previews" that displays a live mini window of whatever taskbar item you hover your mouse over.
All these "Window Management" and "Extras" window/task display methods have one common and very handy feature. The items displayed are live or dynamically updating mini versions of the actual window instead of a simple icon or snapshot. This is really handy if you need to to check on say a download or compiler progress, etc with minimum effort or distraction.They all have seemingly endless configuration options to tweak things just how you want them.
There are many other features that I would not want to give up anymore.The "Visual Effect" "Opacity-Brightness-Saturation" feature makes it really easy to check on something behind the current window with just my mouse wheel and the Alt key. With the Super key and N key I can toggle the "Accessibility" feature "Negative" and give my eyes a break by inverting the current windows display colors. With the "Accessibility" feature "Input Zoom Enabled" I can easily zoom in and out on any application and still have unfettered control of my mouse and keyboard. The "Visual Effects" feature "Trail Focus" dims widows based on time since last focus, neater than you would think, as it reduces distractions. I am sure the "Window Management" feature "Group & Tab Windows" is going to the feature I have been waiting for as soon as I get the time to tweak it out.
As for the "cube" and transformations/ distortions, I run a 16:9 ratio here on a 20" Samsung SN204BW. I usually run 8 viewports so instead of a cube I actually have an octagonal 3D configuration. This SVN version I am running supports up to 16 viewports though some earlier ones did 32 or more. In addition you can specify up to 16 desktops. So one can have up to 16x16 or 256 individual workspaces though I don't know how useful such a number would be, it would defiantly make for a huge pager. I don't use a pager, I simply have one desktop and flip through the 8 viewports with my mousewheel or "Ctrl-Alt-arrow keys". I actually do very little of that and usually use the taskbar or "Ring" switcher to find, checkon or switch to a window. Though I have been known to occasionally press both mouse buttons and shout wheee as I zoom out, spin and roll the octagonal "cube" crazily about. Try the latest SVN version and don't be too quick to give up on it you might just find a lot of stuff you like.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"It's as simple as all that. And since I play at least two games that utilize OpenGL and I like the OpenGL screensavers, I have to vote "no" to the current 3D desktops...or at least to Beryl since that is the only one I have tried. If/when there is a 3D desktop that will coexist with my other 3D stuff, then I'm down with it."
Odd that you have come to this decision. My favorite screensaver is the openGL 3D Molecule renderer. I have found it to to be especially entertaining when the "Water Effect ie: Rain" plugin of Beryl is running concurrently. As for games I don't really do much gaming but when I occasionally run GL-117 a 3D openGL flight game I have found that left clicking the Beryl icon in the KDE kicker system tray - "Select Window Manager" and simply selecting to switch to KWin or Metacity for the duration of the game does help with performance somewhat, I am not sure what menu/icon item to use in Gnome or XForce. Of course regardless of desktop manager you could also start a new x-session to run the game in and just switch back to an uninterrupted Beryl in the current session when done. You can of course also automate these methods via a shell script and have the game icon/menu item do any of this in one click.
This is not to say that Beryl will co-exist nicely with the myriad of 3D apps/games out there, I just don't have the exposure to them all to know. What I do know is it plays nice or is easy to bypass/negate such issues with the stuff I use. Please note I have been running the latest SVN of Beryl for sometime now cause I find that the older more developed features that I use the most are also the most stable in the SVN releases. I hope the merge back with Compiz does not slow down progress too much. Of course I am all for stability but I have actually found Beryl to be more stable and a better performer that Compiz on my rather aged box, Asus P4 S533-E | Intel P4 2.2ghz/2gb SDRAM | nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256mb | openSuse 10.2 |nVidia Driver & XGL. The only glitch I have at this time is an occasional -once or twice per 8 hours of use- frame remnant left on the screen by a drop down menu when the system is very busy. This is simple to fix with a reload of Beryl, right click-left click - 15 seconds and all is pretty and shiny again.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price."
Seems almost? Hello! This would be funny if it were not so painful. If the American people ever manage to wrestle control of their nation from the corporate oligarchy this last decade may very well be recorded in history as the most corrupt since the days of the railroad barons. If we cannot manage reclamation of control such things are going to get a whole lot worse before they break. A disaster which is an inevitable end in a nation where a minority groups greed and corruption run reckless over the will and common interests of the majority of the populace.
Over the years I have heard several people quote some old Scottish monarchist, whose name I forget just now, who rattled on about how democracies were predestined to fail due to the ability of the people to vote themselves endless benefits with no responsibilities. Oh for want of a rope...sorry, back on topic. This I guess could be true in a straight up democracy, however we in the USA are supposed to be living in a representative republic which is designed to negate such excesses. Somehow the Republic has been damaged or at least it's principles have been subverted by those at the top of the economic and political food chain. What is really appalling is that many of these entities are not even real persons, in fact not even Americans. What is so ironic is that the failure of this nation might very well happen through the lack of honest democratic process. Had enough yet folks? I would really like to see this corrected via pressure on our representatives before it get so bad that worse methods are employed by very angry people.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"OpenSuSE (like Fedora) is a "demo version" of SuSE Linux."
That's not quite so, what openSuse and Fedora Core are could best be defined as community supported development projects, ie: test beds. That they are not distributed with legally complicated things like full media support does not set them apart from the d/l version's of Mandriva or any version of Ubuntu or Debian that I am aware of. As for the stand alone issue, the case of code migration between licensed copy/ paid support support versions and free versions should be a good compromise between rapid development and stability. Though I do have to say Novell has managed to muddy this up quite a bit. I don't really know about how the seamless migration issue with Ubuntu because I would not use such paid support myself. I can see where some would see such either defining the free versions as demos or even for the cynical types as a bait and switch setup.
I do know that I have used free d/l versions of both Suse and Fedora for quite some time now and never considered either as "demos". I always considered them to be base versions that I could, with a little elbow grease, add features to that could not be included in the distro due to legal patent/licensing issues. Of as in the case of the copy of Suse 9.0 I bought I could get most of that stuff included on the install media and go a bit lighter on the elbow grease. But as long as one has a fast internet connection one has only to add the repositories, update and install whatever they want. As one who only recently got quasi-broadband (satellite) access I do understand the plight of people on dial-up, for these folks a full licensed version of a distro like Mandriva, Suse or Redhat might very well payoff as might a update by disc subscription.
All in all I have usually found free versions of Suse and now openSuse to be the most polished initial install and the most stable overall. There are not very of the top 20 distro's that I have not installed at one time or the other. Slackware has always been the most stable initially but by the time I got it nearly as usable Suse it was not usually as stable and was still missing a lot of handy tools. I have usually had a tough time with Debian for some reason or the other. Fedora stability and usability has been spotty at best and no where near Suse level. Mandrake/Mandriva has been typically feature rich, but at least 5% of the stuff usually just did not work and I more often than not I had stability issues with the distro. With Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, I have to say they were all pretty simple and clean installs that seemed to be stable initially, but I was left wondering "wheres the beef", as they are missing the GUI admin tools you would find on Suse or Mandrake. This lack of GUI admin tools in fact is a pretty common issue with most other distros. I guess it is apparent that I kinda prefer Suse, actually openSuse now, as I do not see myself buying into SLED. I can agree with your point about differentiation issues with opeSuse and Fedora, from the perspective that I hope Novell don't muck openSuse all up with MS code contamination or distro isolation from GPLv3 incompatibilities. For now openSuse still works best for me, tomorrow we will see. I am still pleased as punch to see the huge number of distros evolving in parallel. I see this as a healthy thing. Ahh variety, ain't it wonderful!
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Not exactly what the /. headline implies, though."
;)
Ahh Grasshopper, naw, really? With a UID of (872511) your not exactly new here. So I guess you must actually have a life. But just so you know, wink, wink, such is pretty common here,and getting more so every day. Remember this in a few weeks when the same topic is submitted again.
Wabi-Sabi
matthew
"One last statistic that is also interesting. The bottom 40% now "pay" a negative percentage of individual income taxes. And the bottom 60% combined pay less than 1%. That means the top 40% pay over 99% of individual income taxes.
I think these inconvenient facts show that your statements are the real propaganda, ignorance and prattling truisms."
Unless objectively applied to a well defined and specific question statistics are less than useless, hence the colloquialism about there being "Three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics. Yea good old "earned income" otherwise known as "wages, tips, other compensation". This is why many business owners pay themselves next to nothing, and why many CEO's prefer to work for peanuts and stock options. How about capital gains taxes, since this is where the top % make their real gains in wealth? What is the top rate now, 15% or so? And the 15% only applies to the part that exemptions and loopholes have not excluded/hidden. How about the sleazy off shore corporate registration and banking setups? Either you are just a sucker for propaganda or part of the problem. Break the system and we all frickin pay, but those who are seen as the agents of causation are the ones who will pay the most, for a change. Kinda lends a different meaning to the term "you break it you buy it" doesn't it?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Hey you know what by your logic we should just kill off the bottom 80% and everything would be just lovely.
Wabi-Sabi
matthew
"you do know that 79% of the tax burden is carried by the top 20% of income earners, right?"
.html
You mean those folks that hold the vast majority of the assets? Sure just cherry pick a single statistic from a single source and proclaim 'look what I know, you dip shits didn't know this did you, huh, huh?'. Look the issue here is just how out of balance things can get EITHER way before it breaks the system. The balance right now grossly favors those at the top of the economic food chain. If it continues to the point of breakdown just what do you think the fate of the top x% will be? In the end it is in everyones interest to not break the frickin system.
"Maybe for once we should stop being partisan"
Yea, thats rich, considering the drivel to from the "conservative" party I have listened with great restraint, and admittedly often with amusement, for most my life. Can you make a clear argument just using common sense instead of falling back on a single cherry picked statistic form BillO's list of "facts" to throw at a liberal---remember you have to use this word in with a dirty slur pretext or voice. Don't take this to mean I am a just another sheep in the Democratic flock, which in contrast to the Republican flock, is actually more like a herd of cats anyway. I will say I like many others are sick of the "good cop - bad cop" routine the two parties have used so successfully for so many years. So exactly whose drivel is it you like best? Oh thats right you like to quote the "fiducially conservative ones", hehehe, yea.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
read...
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2 007/20070206/default.htm
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f5e905ce-69d8-11db-952e-00 00779e2340.html
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/povert y_and_inequality/index.html
http://www.chicagofed.org/economic_research_and_da ta/wp_abstract.cfm?pubsID=732
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03 interviewswolff.html
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?st ory_id=7055911
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v112y2002i478p c68-c73.htm
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2004/0704tilly
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18995
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11418244330 8492484.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/71954e1a-ad43-11da-9643-00 00779e2340,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http% 3A%2F%2Fnews.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F71954e1a-ad43-11da -9643-0000779e2340.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fne weconomist.blogs.com%2Fnew_economist%2Fpoverty_and _inequality%2Findex.html
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/
Unless things move to optical or biological I would think that future cooling of CPU/GPU etc might very well be by immersion in a high dielectric fluid or vapor such as HCFC compounds. For instance where I work we have several Trane chillers that have the motors, about 400hp 480v 3phase, cooled by running them in the same evap side cycle refrigerant fluid/vapor as the compressor vane assembly.
So if one placed the CPU or for that fact the whole dang mother assembly in a hermetically sealed vessel one could simply dump the heat via an external condenser. I am not even sure a compressor would be required if one immersed the entire assembly in fluid and the external casing had sufficient surface area to dissipate the heat the whole thing might work via convection currents in the fluid or with the assistance of a small pump for circulation. Of course the use of a full or even cascaded refrigeration cycle with compressor, condenser and expansion device might be worth it to get lower operating temps for higher end systems. Something with capacity of a small window unit AC should be adequate for a pretty serious system and not really all that expensive a solution.
Another approach might be to use solid state cooling devices cold side bonded one side of the chip and build the chips in a cubical or other appropriate geometric assembly with heat sink sides on the exterior surfaces then simply fan cool those. Though condensation issues might be a problem here unless the cold sides were all well sealed.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"We do,
...
Doodley do,doodley do,doodley do,
What we must,
Muddily must, muddily must, muddily must,
Muddily do,
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust,
Bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust."
from the preface of Wampeters, Foma & Granfallons
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
One of the few people I would have ever considered giving up lifespan equal to double the time I could spend with them in conservation over a frosty bottle of Markers. Hope you have a good time in eternity ya ole rascal. So it goes
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"You're still on that? I'm on 3240z, it's higher def than real life."
;)
So I guess that makes you a "Surreal Life" fan huh
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Besides, whats the use of finding a space buffalo if we can't kill it, eat it's flesh, wear it's skin, and turn the land it used to live on into farmland?"
Heck the way things are headed here it seems we would be more likely hunt it to extinction for sport then turn the real estate into mined out wasteland, tract housing, strip malls, airports, golf courses, off road vehicle parks, highways and parking lots. I would have included manufacturing facilities but we would most likely have outsourced all that to the Chinese Borg.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Do you SEE those ads? I'm on page two, which weighs in at 136kb."
;)
Actually I only see those masked as "articles", of course I am running Adblock Plus and NoScript, two handy tools which I intend to keep using for obvious reasons
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
See:
_ and_Statistics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_Damn_Lies%2C
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Just hide the dang display in a closet until the audits over. For most of us arguing cost benefit issues with bean counters is kinda like wrestling with pigs. You will get probably get aggravated and nasty before it is over and the best you will usually accomplish is to annoy them, though it is more likely they will enjoy themselves at your expense.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"Those rules would really, really slow me down, especially the never-cut-one-wire: if it's romex, and live, it's a pain to cut one wire at a time and you're as likely to meet disaster trying to strip the insulation off the middle of a wire run than just cutting it."
;)
I guess this would explain the missing chunks in you linesmans, strippers or whatever.
"Luckily I live in a very dry environment, so my skin surface resistance is in excess of 5M"
Yea being in and arid situation may help some. But don't trust that a spot check your skin resistance is a consistent indicator of what kind of circuit you could make. Just a slight bit of salt from dried sweat or of high mineral content dirt and it is at next to nothing. Plus once an initial arc event has occurred all such is out the window anyway. If nothing else remember the 100% cotton suggestion, poly blends melt to you, cotton burns off quickly. I don't generally wear FR stuff unless I have cotton below it, and if I sweat very much it still bothers me - rashes and such. Another gottcha is jewelery like rings, wrist watches, neck chains, redneck belt buckles and such, this type of stuff will get ya hurt.
I work now with mostly control and communication power levels less than 24v x a few amps at best. I can tell you that even cutting into live control/comm circuits while not usually a serious health hazard is still not a good idea from an equipment and getting home on time perspective. I do have plenty of past experience with 480V 3phase AC and up to 1200 VDC on equipment with common current levels or horsepower in the hundreds and sometimes thousands. Been bit many times by 120v, 277v even 7000+VDC ignition circuits a few times, one of the worst hits I ever took was from static not even working just goofing on the kids trampoline. Worked around pretty serious gauss mag fields and RF sources. As my luck has been the current levels and or path/exposure did not kill me or obviously maim me. However I do have pretty annoying floaters in lens of my eyes, very likely from the numerous arc flashes I have been exposed to. Who knows what kind of neurological damage I have done to myself that may well not show up until retirement age.
I don't mean to sound all preachy like one of those safety seminar folks. But all it takes is one incident with enough power and your life is all fracked up, outright ruined or simply over. I am 50 now and have been working with serious electrical and mechanical stuff since I was a kid. Somewhat due to luck or fear but mostly due to plain old respect for the stuff I made it to 50 mostly whole and have managed not to maim or kill anyone else either. I have however had friends, good men, not unusually reckless men, just folks that made that one slip, did "what it takes", cut that one corner to get the job done "in time". I know a few that are pretty fracked up, and a couple that are simply gone now. It ain't worth it.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew