A couple of months back, a friend of mine told me a story about the apollo moon shots. Either a programmer or an engineer was working on some data for a particular problem involving distances. The number seemed off to him so he called his supervisor over and asked why the number seemed so strange. The supervisor told him that they were measuring distances in earth radii because you would be unlikely to accidentaly use the number in the wrong place and it also made people more cautious with their calculations.
Ok, I'm giving up the ability to moderate this discussion because this needs to be said.
NVida *IS NOT* violating the GPL by releasing a binary only driver. They are not distributing a kernel with their closed source driver linked in or anything remotly resembling it. Every manufacturer that I have been to that has closed source linux drivers has not distributed a kernel with their code linked in.
The *END USER* download the module. The *END USER* loads the module. The company is distributing their code, not a bundle as would be in a linux distribution. It is arguable that even having a distribution that has binary drivers distributed with it STILL doesn't violate the GPL because the binary blob isn't linked with the kernel until the module is loaded, by the end user.
I personaly think that binary drivers are silly, I can't imagine what sort of IP protects how to interface with most hardware, but the fact remains that the user is linking the binary code to their copy of the kernel and the whole binary code violates the terms of the GPL is silly because the GPL specifcly only covers distribution.
IANAL blah blah blah. I have read the GPL, LGPL, and most of the relevant sections of US copyright law though.
This varies in the states. In most of the country, if you have the right to own a weapon (IE not a convicted felon) you have the right to carry that weapon with a couple exceptions: Establishments that serve alcohol, courthouses, primary/secondary schools, establishments where the owner does not want you carrying a a weapon, etc.
While you have the right to carry a weapon, in most places the modern general consensus is you do not have the right to conceal that fact that you have a weapon (although many states are implementing concealed carry permits where you are allowed provided you pass a background check and get training).
The laws in most localities specify a maximum length before a pocket-knife becomes a weapon, often about 3in. If you have a blade that excedes that length, you are not allowed to conceal it while carrying it. A katana, being essentially a really long knife in the law's eyes, can be carried, but not hidden. Again, there will be some variation by specific local, but in general there is nothing wrong with carrying a katana , or broad sword, or rapier, just don't conceal it.
First, also see onerous_cowards message. Second, at the risk of feeding the trolls.
Which group is trying to build such a launch facility?
Adaptive optics used in telescopes aren't dealing with high power, very high powers have a tendency to destroy optics. What will/can you use as a reference beam to calibrate your adaptive optics? Also, they don't have to deal with thousands of large distortions caused by the turbulence of your rocket exhaust. Presumably your reaction mass would absorb well at the frequency of your lasers, your rocket exhaust will be mostly opaque to your lasers.
Technically when you say linear accelerator you can mean a steam catapult, realisticly, you will still have trouble flinging something fast enough to reach a half-mile or so. Have you tried to build a barel 1/8mi long that can fling a useful load (50t) in the air? Barrel wobble on pumpkin cannons is a difficult problem solve. I could go on. Making any sort of vertical or near vertical linear accellerator is a tremendously difficult problem.
As for powering the space elevator, if they power it with lasers/pv panels, yes there will be some large amount of ineffiency. Other methods of beamed power do exist that do not suffer the same problems of near visible lasers. High power microwaves, for instance, can be generated with about 85% efficiency and using a rectenna, turned into dc at near 100% efficiency.
As for using only a tiny fraction of the reaction mass in a conventional rocket, try looking at the rocket equations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_eq uation any vehicle that relies on throughing a portion of it's mass backwards to cause forward motion obeys this equation. Increasing the exaust velocity does decrease the constant factor, however the equation is still exponential. If you studied CS, think back to analysis of algorithms, a n^2 algorithm with a small constant is still worse than a n algorithm with a large multiplier.
As for this being the best approach, bring numbers and equations.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_eq uation for a far more detailed explaination of why it's exponential than I'd care to give. The short answer is you start with a mass (the fueled rocket) and you start throwing mass backwards at as high a velocity as you can. You are accellerating a decaying fraction of the rockets mass in the direction you want to go. For the same quantity of reaction mass at the beginning you get a much smaller change in velocity. If you would like more than my handwaving, read the link.
>Why do people even waste their time on this idea. WHY DO WE NEED SPACE ELEVATORS? Why do people waste their time trying to make a 10GHz processor? Why do we *NEED* computers that fast?
>For all the engineers here: why would you want to build a cable tens of thousands of miles long out of >currently UNAVAILABLE materials (unobtanium) to slowly ratchet up one payload at a time? As another poster said, we research unobtanium to make it obtanium. Carbon fiber was once unobtainium.
>It's a horrid idea, and it STILL takes just as much actual energy to put anything in orbit...just it does >so pathetically slowly. Negative. Assuming 100% effiency in converting electricity to kinetic energy, it takes ~4KWhrs to accelerate a kg to orbital velocity. If you have to take your fuel with you, you have to accellerate the fuel as well leading to an exponentially increasing ammount of fuel required to move the final mass. Using the space elevator and electromechanical "lifters" you don't take any fuel and electric motors are ~85% efficient.
>The plan is to use PHOTOVOLTAIC PANELS to receive the energy being beamed from the ground. That is a >patheticaly slow method of energy conversion considering the payload still has to receive the equivalent >energy of being accelerated to several miles/second! Speed of energy conversion really doesn't have anything to do with... anything really. All they need is a sufficient area of Photovoltaic panels somewhere that the energy can be reliably transmitted to the lifter.
>There's a simple and really OBVIOUS idea that has been on the drawing board for at least a decade. It would >involve a heck of a lot less work, be likely much simpler and cheaper, and be flat out cool.
>Instead of building just a few lasers to beam the energy, lets make a whole bunch of them and use the >latest electrically powered pulse laser technology being developed for the joint strike fighter. Our >spacecraft is just a payload module with stabiliers BOLTED to a block of inert material. A very short and >simple linear accelerator kicks the spacecraft about half a mile into the air, high enough for all the >lasers spread across the industrial plant infrastructure to 'see' it. Space elevators have been on the drawing board for longer and neither of us is truely qualified to judge simplicty and cost of the competing schemes. If this is truely simpler/cheaper where are the groups trying to *DO* it? Also, the efficiency of the best lasers available is ~30% http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng992 13.htm ignoring obvious constraints such as the proper frequency to go though the atmosphere and be absorbed at the recieving end. There is no such thing as a *SIMPLE* linear accelerator that can kick something up a half mile into the air and deal with weather. Tracking the craft is probably solvable, but focusing several thousand high power lasers through the atmosphere *AND* dealing with the distortions from other lasers probably isn't.
>Pulses of light vaporize the fuel in a sequence such that the shock wave of superheated vaporized gas is >planar : basically a rocket engine without needing: Taking your fuel (or more properly reaction mass) negates much of the benefit of leaving your energy source on the ground.
>A nozzle pumps, combustion chambers, volatile fuel, electrical systems, elaborate control systems and >sensors, just enormouse amounts of hardware gets taken out of the spacecraft and left sitting on the >ground. Sure, there's a LOT more delicate hardware left sitting on the ground...WHERE IT BELONGS. The laser >launch system would be designed for almost continuous duty, launching one capsule after another all day >long. Spacecraft would be MUCH simpler, and with a lower cost of launch could be made MUCH more cheaply as >well. After all, why bo
As other's have said, temerature is a property of matter. Specificly the average kinetic energy of a sample's molecules. Using this definition, the temperature of space near earth is actually quite high due to the solar wind and other particles whipping around at fantastic speeds. This doesn't mean, however, that there is much energy in absolute terms up there.
Not that I don't think both parties use all the dirty tricks they can to stay in power, but I recently read a game theory paper that analyzed political systems. It claimed that our two party system arises from the "Winner takes all" form of elections. In such a system, multiple parties start out, but power and mindshare get concentrated into the winning parties. Eventually, 2 parties remain. Parlimentary systems, on the other hand, where each party gets representation based on the number of votes. Power can't get concentrated into just a few parties because all are represented. This can be viewed as both fortunate and unfortunate. On the fortunate side, the loosing party gets representation. On the unfortunate side, as anyone who has ever served on a commitee knows, commitees can have difficulty taking decisive action when necissary.
Actually, this isn't a free press issue either. IIRC, you are allowed to record whatever you want on your own private property. This includes phone conversations and video of whatever happens on the property.
Also, when on public property, there is no right to privacy (The right to privacy is also not explicitly stated in the constitution or any of the amendments as many people believe. It is, according to case law, implied however.) The dash cams are recording you while you and the officer are both on public property (the roads).
Note, I do think that privacy should be explicitly protected and very probably in the constitution.
If you record your own property, you do not need to notify anyone that you are recording (think video surveilance of stores.)
IANAL, however I have had the benefit of 20+ years of hanging around police officers at home. The exact limits of where you do and do not have the right to privacy and what forms of surveilance are legal will probably vary somewhat by state. YMMV
If you don't like vi(m) then, *cough* DON'T USE IT! I could say exactly the same things about emacs. It's all a personal choice, I for one can't stand the non-vi model of editing.
As for intuitivness, maybe I don't want every keystroke bound to some rediculous command.
-ms
-- C-u followed by a character which is neither a digit nor a minus sign has the special meaning of "multiply by four."
Ok, I'll respond to the troll. Ignoring all arguments about ethics, buisness and whatnot, even if we spend all our resources/money on projects here on earth the world cannot support 6.6bln people at a first world level.
Take copper for instance, an average first world person consumes over 300KG of copper per year. WE ARE GOING TO RUN OUT! Silver is another precious metal that is used in everything from electronics to photograph to medicine. 1 troy ounce of silver costs near $9.50US. This is up from $7US about a year ago. The cost is going up BECAUSE WE ARE RUNNING OUT. If you truly want to bring the whole world up to first world levels we need new sources for things like metals, ALL of them. The Earth is getting tired, we have used all the easy resources and there aren't enough deposits projected to begin to bring everyone up to the standard of living that we enjoy. We need to get to the resources in space before we no longer have the resources to go anywhere.
Now, a side note. If we can move our heavy industry to orbit and use materials that are already in space (asteroids) we can quit makeing such a d@mn mess of our planet. Do you know the environmental impact of mining metals? Between the giant holes in the ground, the massive amount of energy expended in processes such as smelting and the chemicals necissary to tease metal out of lower and lower grade ore? It's truly horrifying. In space we have all the free, uninterruptable solar energy we could need. Smelting would just requre a big mirror to focus sunlight on an asteroid. Sending down finished products is essentially free. Many asteroids are free metal that do not need to be chemically reduced. The benefits are amazing when you sit down and research them a little.
Also, I'm not challenging that all OSes are non-turing complete. First OSes aren't gennerally machines unto themselves nor programming languages, with the possible exception of emacs;) In reality, nothing is truly turing complete because of the assumption of infinite memory. Even relaxing the definition to include machines with finite memory, I still think that it is improper to try and shoehorn operating systems into this classification scheme, again with the possible exception of emacs.
On further reflection, it may be that the person you are speaking of refered to NAND as turing complete because, given an infinite number of nand gates wired correctly, you can construct a turing machine. Personally, I find the argument weak, but I can see where he is comming from. I think the better statement, if more pedantic, would be along the lines of "NAND gates are all that is required to build a turing machine"
Note: I'm not trying to be hostile in posts, please don't interpret it that way.
Read the first line, it is a fairly good explaination of turing complete. It is also entirely inconsistent with adding a proviso about anything including arithmetic.
I would dearly love to see some justification other than "Someone smarter than me once told me".
-- Are problems are mostly behind us, now all we have to do is fight the solutions
Airplanes actually have lower fuel consumption per passenger mile than most cars when you are travelling alone. Between 50 and 100 miles per gallon compared to between 22 and 45 for most cars. See the following link:
depending on the state of repair of your car, its actually safer to leave it running while you fill up (in terms of explosion, not necisarily jumping out of your car and accidentily leaving it in gear)
Unless you have some serious bad electrical problem that only happens when the car is running or flame comming out of your exaust pipe, you aren't likely to blow anything up. However, when starting your car you have a big electrical motor starting and other such nice things happening.
The biggest cause of explosion/fire at gas stations is getting in and out of your car as you fill up. Getting in and out can cause static build up and then when you reach for the pump handle, a spark in the fume laden air that was recently in your gas tank.
monkey to man is a terrible analogy/metaphore for macro-evolution. Common ancestor to monkey and also man is what macro-evolution is about. pro or anti macro evolution, please get it right.
As the sister comment points out, this probably varies from state to state. I just purchased a car. My loan came from a credit union. The car belongs to them, they have the title and it is in their name. When I make my last payment on the loan, they sign the title over to me. I'm sure it will be different in other locations and with other financial institutions. For example, a buy here/pay here may use some form of contract akin to what is called a "land contract" in realty where under the terms of the contract I make payments and live on/use the property in question but until the last payment I do not actually recieve a title.
check your/etc/adjtime file as a prior responce by an AC suggested. Linux and maybe unix in general trys to correct for periodic drift of your hardware clock. Depending on how far off your clock was when you last set the time (in linux) it writes a value that in an ideal world would be the amount of drift over a period of time that your clock experienced (assuming it was originally correct) see the manpages for hwclock and adjtimex
I just set my/etc/adjtime file to zeros or some such.
The octane rating was an arbitrary scale much like the farenheight(sp) scale. When they began testing fuels for things like auto-ignition in ICEs, they thought iso-octane was the hardest to auto-ignite. Later they discovered things like benzene and toluene were even harder to ignite, having octane ratings near 106. Also, the "octane" rating at a fuel pump is not necissarily the original scale. There is a new method that is not based on the octane molecule at all. I suggest some googleing.
The DOJ is not asking that a law be broken. The case (which decides whether or not infringement is actually occuring) hasn't been settled. The people doing the suing have asked for an injunction (basicly stop what you are doing until we figure this out, no implication of guilt or innocence). The Federal government, as a major user of the service, has filed a brief with the court that basicly says "This will inconvienence a lot of people and the case hasn't been decided yet, lets not inconvienence them until it is". Anybody can file such a document, if IBM had all its employees on Blackberries, they would be as justified and capable of doing so.
Blackberries are not illegal, they are currently in a patent disput. The issue has not been settled as to wether or not they infringe on the patents.
Most guns are not illegal (In the United States, local laws apply). If I feel like getting a Federal Firearms License I can legaly purchase and own fully automatic weapons. Many guns are RESTRICTED, that is not the same as illegal.
Killing is not illegal, I will ignore the trite answer of we kill farm animals all the time and restrict myself to members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Doctors pull the plug on life support all the time. Abortion, (depending on where you define the fetus as becoming human) happens every day. Killing someone in defense of your life or someone elses is not illegal. Murder is illegal.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am tired of catagorical(sp?) statements that are false on the face of them. This isn't to defend the US government, it is to try and increase the S/N. I know, its a loosing battle.
Don't confuse the language with the implementation. Just because C# in Visual Studio targets MSIL doesn't mean someone can't write a compiler to target say x86 native code. There are plenty of Java compilers that target a specific processor rather than the JVM.
Using CDE and KDE for comparison to windows is like using a cement truck and a limo (respecively) for a comparison with an econo-box. CDE is slow and bulky and I'm not sure why anyone uses it (unlike the cement truck) and KDE has all the creature comforts well integrated, but it's accelleration is not exactly snappy. There are a number of window managers that run the range, things like blackbox and twm are the sports-cars that give up all the glitz and gizmos for speed, my personal favorite is fvwm2 with themes, which I think is like a nice sedan with a big engine, speed when you want it but not so austere as BlackBox and still much faster than the larger window managers.
ymmv
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A couple of months back, a friend of mine told me a story about the apollo moon shots. Either a programmer or an engineer was working on some data for a particular problem involving distances. The number seemed off to him so he called his supervisor over and asked why the number seemed so strange. The supervisor told him that they were measuring distances in earth radii because you would be unlikely to accidentaly use the number in the wrong place and it also made people more cautious with their calculations.
Ok, I'm giving up the ability to moderate this discussion because this needs to be said.
NVida *IS NOT* violating the GPL by releasing a binary only driver. They are not distributing a kernel with their closed source driver linked in or anything remotly resembling it. Every manufacturer that I have been to that has closed source linux drivers has not distributed a kernel with their code linked in.
The *END USER* download the module. The *END USER* loads the module. The company is distributing their code, not a bundle as would be in a linux distribution. It is arguable that even having a distribution that has binary drivers distributed with it STILL doesn't violate the GPL because the binary blob isn't linked with the kernel until the module is loaded, by the end user.
I personaly think that binary drivers are silly, I can't imagine what sort of IP protects how to interface with most hardware, but the fact remains that the user is linking the binary code to their copy of the kernel and the whole binary code violates the terms of the GPL is silly because the GPL specifcly only covers distribution.
IANAL blah blah blah. I have read the GPL, LGPL, and most of the relevant sections of US copyright law though.
-ms
This varies in the states. In most of the country, if you have the right to own a weapon (IE not a convicted felon) you have the right to carry that weapon with a couple exceptions: Establishments that serve alcohol, courthouses, primary/secondary schools, establishments where the owner does not want you carrying a a weapon, etc.
While you have the right to carry a weapon, in most places the modern general consensus is you do not have the right to conceal that fact that you have a weapon (although many states are implementing concealed carry permits where you are allowed provided you pass a background check and get training).
The laws in most localities specify a maximum length before a pocket-knife becomes a weapon, often about 3in. If you have a blade that excedes that length, you are not allowed to conceal it while carrying it. A katana, being essentially a really long knife in the law's eyes, can be carried, but not hidden. Again, there will be some variation by specific local, but in general there is nothing wrong with carrying a katana , or broad sword, or rapier, just don't conceal it.
http://www.liftport.com/papers/SE_Roadmap_v1beta.p df page 3 in the credits. Your source is helping the competition...
First, also see onerous_cowards message. Second, at the risk of feeding the trolls.
q uation any vehicle that relies on throughing a portion of it's mass backwards to cause forward motion obeys this equation. Increasing the exaust velocity does decrease the constant factor, however the equation is still exponential. If you studied CS, think back to analysis of algorithms, a n^2 algorithm with a small constant is still worse than a n algorithm with a large multiplier.
Which group is trying to build such a launch facility?
Adaptive optics used in telescopes aren't dealing with high power, very high powers have a tendency to destroy optics. What will/can you use as a reference beam to calibrate your adaptive optics? Also, they don't have to deal with thousands of large distortions caused by the turbulence of your rocket exhaust. Presumably your reaction mass would absorb well at the frequency of your lasers, your rocket exhaust will be mostly opaque to your lasers.
Technically when you say linear accelerator you can mean a steam catapult, realisticly, you will still have trouble flinging something fast enough to reach a half-mile or so. Have you tried to build a barel 1/8mi long that can fling a useful load (50t) in the air? Barrel wobble on pumpkin cannons is a difficult problem solve. I could go on. Making any sort of vertical or near vertical linear accellerator is a tremendously difficult problem.
As for powering the space elevator, if they power it with lasers/pv panels, yes there will be some large amount of ineffiency. Other methods of beamed power do exist that do not suffer the same problems of near visible lasers. High power microwaves, for instance, can be generated with about 85% efficiency and using a rectenna, turned into dc at near 100% efficiency.
As for using only a tiny fraction of the reaction mass in a conventional rocket, try looking at the rocket equations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_e
As for this being the best approach, bring numbers and equations.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_eq uation for a far more detailed explaination of why it's exponential than I'd care to give. The short answer is you start with a mass (the fueled rocket) and you start throwing mass backwards at as high a velocity as you can. You are accellerating a decaying fraction of the rockets mass in the direction you want to go. For the same quantity of reaction mass at the beginning you get a much smaller change in velocity. If you would like more than my handwaving, read the link.
>Why do people even waste their time on this idea. WHY DO WE NEED SPACE ELEVATORS?
:
Why do people waste their time trying to make a 10GHz processor? Why do we *NEED* computers that fast?
>For all the engineers here: why would you want to build a cable tens of thousands of miles long out of
>currently UNAVAILABLE materials (unobtanium) to slowly ratchet up one payload at a time?
As another poster said, we research unobtanium to make it obtanium. Carbon fiber was once unobtainium.
>It's a horrid idea, and it STILL takes just as much actual energy to put anything in orbit...just it does
>so pathetically slowly.
Negative. Assuming 100% effiency in converting electricity to kinetic energy, it takes ~4KWhrs to accelerate a kg to orbital velocity. If you have to take your fuel with you, you have to accellerate the fuel as well leading to an exponentially increasing ammount of fuel required to move the final mass. Using the space elevator and electromechanical "lifters" you don't take any fuel and electric motors are ~85% efficient.
>The plan is to use PHOTOVOLTAIC PANELS to receive the energy being beamed from the ground. That is a
>patheticaly slow method of energy conversion considering the payload still has to receive the equivalent
>energy of being accelerated to several miles/second!
Speed of energy conversion really doesn't have anything to do with... anything really. All they need is a sufficient area of Photovoltaic panels somewhere that the energy can be reliably transmitted to the lifter.
>There's a simple and really OBVIOUS idea that has been on the drawing board for at least a decade. It would
>involve a heck of a lot less work, be likely much simpler and cheaper, and be flat out cool.
>Instead of building just a few lasers to beam the energy, lets make a whole bunch of them and use the
>latest electrically powered pulse laser technology being developed for the joint strike fighter. Our
>spacecraft is just a payload module with stabiliers BOLTED to a block of inert material. A very short and
>simple linear accelerator kicks the spacecraft about half a mile into the air, high enough for all the
>lasers spread across the industrial plant infrastructure to 'see' it.
Space elevators have been on the drawing board for longer and neither of us is truely qualified to judge simplicty and cost of the competing schemes. If this is truely simpler/cheaper where are the groups trying to *DO* it? Also, the efficiency of the best lasers available is ~30% http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng992 13.htm ignoring obvious constraints such as the proper frequency to go though the atmosphere and be absorbed at the recieving end. There is no such thing as a *SIMPLE* linear accelerator that can kick something up a half mile into the air and deal with weather. Tracking the craft is probably solvable, but focusing several thousand high power lasers through the atmosphere *AND* dealing with the distortions from other lasers probably isn't.
>Pulses of light vaporize the fuel in a sequence such that the shock wave of superheated vaporized gas is
>planar : basically a rocket engine without needing
Taking your fuel (or more properly reaction mass) negates much of the benefit of leaving your energy source on the ground.
>A nozzle pumps, combustion chambers, volatile fuel, electrical systems, elaborate control systems and
>sensors, just enormouse amounts of hardware gets taken out of the spacecraft and left sitting on the
>ground. Sure, there's a LOT more delicate hardware left sitting on the ground...WHERE IT BELONGS. The laser
>launch system would be designed for almost continuous duty, launching one capsule after another all day
>long. Spacecraft would be MUCH simpler, and with a lower cost of launch could be made MUCH more cheaply as
>well. After all, why bo
As other's have said, temerature is a property of matter. Specificly the average kinetic energy of a sample's molecules. Using this definition, the temperature of space near earth is actually quite high due to the solar wind and other particles whipping around at fantastic speeds. This doesn't mean, however, that there is much energy in absolute terms up there.
Not that I don't think both parties use all the dirty tricks they can to stay in power, but I recently read a game theory paper that analyzed political systems. It claimed that our two party system arises from the "Winner takes all" form of elections. In such a system, multiple parties start out, but power and mindshare get concentrated into the winning parties. Eventually, 2 parties remain. Parlimentary systems, on the other hand, where each party gets representation based on the number of votes. Power can't get concentrated into just a few parties because all are represented. This can be viewed as both fortunate and unfortunate. On the fortunate side, the loosing party gets representation. On the unfortunate side, as anyone who has ever served on a commitee knows, commitees can have difficulty taking decisive action when necissary.
Actually, this isn't a free press issue either. IIRC, you are allowed to record whatever you want on your own private property. This includes phone conversations and video of whatever happens on the property.
Also, when on public property, there is no right to privacy (The right to privacy is also not explicitly stated in the constitution or any of the amendments as many people believe. It is, according to case law, implied however.) The dash cams are recording you while you and the officer are both on public property (the roads).
Note, I do think that privacy should be explicitly protected and very probably in the constitution.
If you record your own property, you do not need to notify anyone that you are recording (think video surveilance of stores.)
IANAL, however I have had the benefit of 20+ years of hanging around police officers at home. The exact limits of where you do and do not have the right to privacy and what forms of surveilance are legal will probably vary somewhat by state. YMMV
If you don't like vi(m) then, *cough* DON'T USE IT! I could say exactly the same things about emacs. It's all a personal choice, I for one can't stand the non-vi model of editing.
m l
As for intuitivness, maybe I don't want every keystroke bound to some rediculous command.
-ms
--
C-u followed by a character which is neither a digit nor a minus sign has the special meaning of "multiply by four."
http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/emacs/emacs_29.ht
Ok, I'll respond to the troll. Ignoring all arguments about ethics, buisness and whatnot, even if we spend all our resources/money on projects here on earth the world cannot support 6.6bln people at a first world level.
Take copper for instance, an average first world person consumes over 300KG of copper per year. WE ARE GOING TO RUN OUT! Silver is another precious metal that is used in everything from electronics to photograph to medicine. 1 troy ounce of silver costs near $9.50US. This is up from $7US about a year ago. The cost is going up BECAUSE WE ARE RUNNING OUT. If you truly want to bring the whole world up to first world levels we need new sources for things like metals, ALL of them. The Earth is getting tired, we have used all the easy resources and there aren't enough deposits projected to begin to bring everyone up to the standard of living that we enjoy. We need to get to the resources in space before we no longer have the resources to go anywhere.
Now, a side note. If we can move our heavy industry to orbit and use materials that are already in space (asteroids) we can quit makeing such a d@mn mess of our planet. Do you know the environmental impact of mining metals? Between the giant holes in the ground, the massive amount of energy expended in processes such as smelting and the chemicals necissary to tease metal out of lower and lower grade ore? It's truly horrifying. In space we have all the free, uninterruptable solar energy we could need. Smelting would just requre a big mirror to focus sunlight on an asteroid. Sending down finished products is essentially free. Many asteroids are free metal that do not need to be chemically reduced. The benefits are amazing when you sit down and research them a little.
Shouldn't users with admin rights, by definition, be able to create acounts of any level?
This doesn't really sound like a hole to me, but expected behavior.
Two points, I'm not the original challenger.
;) In reality, nothing is truly turing complete because of the assumption of infinite memory. Even relaxing the definition to include machines with finite memory, I still think that it is improper to try and shoehorn operating systems into this classification scheme, again with the possible exception of emacs.
Also, I'm not challenging that all OSes are non-turing complete. First OSes aren't gennerally machines unto themselves nor programming languages, with the possible exception of emacs
On further reflection, it may be that the person you are speaking of refered to NAND as turing complete because, given an infinite number of nand gates wired correctly, you can construct a turing machine. Personally, I find the argument weak, but I can see where he is comming from. I think the better statement, if more pedantic, would be along the lines of "NAND gates are all that is required to build a turing machine"
Note: I'm not trying to be hostile in posts, please don't interpret it that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_complete
Read the first line, it is a fairly good explaination of turing complete. It is also entirely inconsistent with adding a proviso about anything including arithmetic.
I would dearly love to see some justification other than "Someone smarter than me once told me".
--
Are problems are mostly behind us, now all we have to do is fight the solutions
Airplanes actually have lower fuel consumption per passenger mile than most cars when you are travelling alone. Between 50 and 100 miles per gallon compared to between 22 and 45 for most cars. See the following link:
8 121
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=4
depending on the state of repair of your car, its actually safer to leave it running while you fill up (in terms of explosion, not necisarily jumping out of your car and accidentily leaving it in gear)
Unless you have some serious bad electrical problem that only happens when the car is running or flame comming out of your exaust pipe, you aren't likely to blow anything up. However, when starting your car you have a big electrical motor starting and other such nice things happening.
The biggest cause of explosion/fire at gas stations is getting in and out of your car as you fill up. Getting in and out can cause static build up and then when you reach for the pump handle, a spark in the fume laden air that was recently in your gas tank.
Ok, I have to do this.
"macroevolution (monkey to man, etc)"
monkey to man is a terrible analogy/metaphore for macro-evolution. Common ancestor to monkey and also man is what macro-evolution is about. pro or anti macro evolution, please get it right.
As the sister comment points out, this probably varies from state to state. I just purchased a car. My loan came from a credit union. The car belongs to them, they have the title and it is in their name. When I make my last payment on the loan, they sign the title over to me. I'm sure it will be different in other locations and with other financial institutions. For example, a buy here/pay here may use some form of contract akin to what is called a "land contract" in realty where under the terms of the contract I make payments and live on/use the property in question but until the last payment I do not actually recieve a title.
check your /etc/adjtime file as a prior responce by an AC suggested. Linux and maybe unix in general trys to correct for periodic drift of your hardware clock. Depending on how far off your clock was when you last set the time (in linux) it writes a value that in an ideal world would be the amount of drift over a period of time that your clock experienced (assuming it was originally correct) see the manpages for hwclock and adjtimex
/etc/adjtime file to zeros or some such.
I just set my
The octane rating was an arbitrary scale much like the farenheight(sp) scale. When they began testing fuels for things like auto-ignition in ICEs, they thought iso-octane was the hardest to auto-ignite. Later they discovered things like benzene and toluene were even harder to ignite, having octane ratings near 106. Also, the "octane" rating at a fuel pump is not necissarily the original scale. There is a new method that is not based on the octane molecule at all. I suggest some googleing.
The DOJ is not asking that a law be broken. The case (which decides whether or not infringement is actually occuring) hasn't been settled. The people doing the suing have asked for an injunction (basicly stop what you are doing until we figure this out, no implication of guilt or innocence). The Federal government, as a major user of the service, has filed a brief with the court that basicly says "This will inconvienence a lot of people and the case hasn't been decided yet, lets not inconvienence them until it is". Anybody can file such a document, if IBM had all its employees on Blackberries, they would be as justified and capable of doing so.
Corrections:
Blackberries are not illegal, they are currently in a patent disput. The issue has not been settled as to wether or not they infringe on the patents.
Most guns are not illegal (In the United States, local laws apply). If I feel like getting a Federal Firearms License I can legaly purchase and own fully automatic weapons. Many guns are RESTRICTED, that is not the same as illegal.
Killing is not illegal, I will ignore the trite answer of we kill farm animals all the time and restrict myself to members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Doctors pull the plug on life support all the time. Abortion, (depending on where you define the fetus as becoming human) happens every day. Killing someone in defense of your life or someone elses is not illegal. Murder is illegal.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am tired of catagorical(sp?) statements that are false on the face of them. This isn't to defend the US government, it is to try and increase the S/N. I know, its a loosing battle.
Don't confuse the language with the implementation. Just because C# in Visual Studio targets MSIL doesn't mean someone can't write a compiler to target say x86 native code. There are plenty of Java compilers that target a specific processor rather than the JVM.
Using CDE and KDE for comparison to windows is like using a cement truck and a limo (respecively) for a comparison with an econo-box. CDE is slow and bulky and I'm not sure why anyone uses it (unlike the cement truck) and KDE has all the creature comforts well integrated, but it's accelleration is not exactly snappy. There are a number of window managers that run the range, things like blackbox and twm are the sports-cars that give up all the glitz and gizmos for speed, my personal favorite is fvwm2 with themes, which I think is like a nice sedan with a big engine, speed when you want it but not so austere as BlackBox and still much faster than the larger window managers. ymmv