ACK. 23 years old and also waiting for the next manned space mission...
Did you read the mission logs for the Apollo missions?
They are *really* interesting. Just start reading, you'll read them to the end, I assure you:)
Even though they are just notes reconstructed from the radio traffic with some bits thrown in from other sources, they're addicting. And very thrilling (much more than all other travelogues, IMHO).
Just step in where things get commercial. Do not, however, invade peoples privacy, constrain the freedom of information and our right to access information because of the greed of some big companies. Sadly, the world is different.
Nowadays, the privacy of a person is much less important than the right for companies to make a profit off everything.
Am I one of the few ones here who thinks that draconic, consumer (citizen!)-restricting copyright laws are much more invading than e.g. tax laws?
people in those countries are smart enough to realize that having such a critical sector of their economy controlled by the gnomes of Redmond is a bad idea.
Well, soon this critical sector will be controlled by the GNOMEs...:)
There is a bigger issue here: how does society function when there's not enough useful work to go around? I don't think abandoning OSS is the solution, though.
I think this is the most interesting comment so far.
What we have today in every area is this run-away condition of everyone trying to overtake every other one (on every level - states, companies and also individuals), leading to an overall acceleration which itselfs leads to 'work harder to keep up', which leads to.... a disaster?
That's the problem. We're not farmers who trade in a steady-state economy.
What's the answer? The current trend of anarcho-capitalism? Certainly not. Communism? Certainly not. But what?...
...an extension only! Hey, ok, then I have a proposal! An universal plugin system to be able to implement all these things *without* adding much bloat (except the API for plugins) to firefox. Wasn't modularity a prerequisite for good and lean software design?!
This is essentially the question about the "stability of the solar system".
Google for that, or if you're too lazy to do it, here is a very short summary of what you can get by reading a bit:
- According to newton, every body with mass sees a force from each other body. A so called N-body-problem. (You should know that already =:)
- The orbits of all gravitating bodies (sun, planets, moons, asteroids, spacecraft etc.) in the solar system are chaotic, i.e. a small change (for example a displacement in the estimated position) will grow exponentially into a big change, maybe the crash of two objects.
- BUT: The orbits may be bounded. I.e. they wobble in a chaotic way, but do not cross certain values. Of course, everyone hopes that this is the case:)
Now, earth remained relatively impact free for the past billions of years, i.e. the past billions of numbers of orbits around the sun! - "relatively" since there are many impact craters on earth today, you can even visit some of them:) But no object the size of a small moon impacted earth, else we would not be here.
Of course, people think about the reason why earth orbits so undisturbed since a long time. There're models that describe the more massive bodies in the solar system (jupiter, saturn) as vacuum cleaners for asteroids. But don't ask me about that, I'm not a scientist (yet), just a student.
There is no reason to believe that the current system will be stable or that starting rockets spaceprobes or even walking around on earth (since you're also one of the above-mentioned bodies!) won't change if saturn and jupiter crash in a billion years!
No, I don't think so, but maybe they repackaged this essentially scientific mission as 'the asteroid destroyer'. By arguing that the mission helps to save mankind by deflecting hazardous objects, they'll get funding and support from the general public.
Since it is disappointing what most people think of space exploration, do not consider this "repackaging" improbable.
No trying to troll, but It seems that corante.com is not a very good source for matter-of-fact reportage. (RTFA if you want to know what I'm talking about).
It says "Filtered Daily.", but I think it's going a bit too far.
pps: it WAS funny and harmless how the fusion reaction is portrayed as a miniature sun in the movie, complete with coronal mass ejections threatening doc ock's control of the reaction... perhaps that is vaguely educational too, fusion's connection with the sun shown as a visual parable, to portray it that way
OMG! Have you really lowered the education standard for the general public *that much*?:|
Identifying the optimal settings can actually be non-trivial.
True. No task for a human. Tedious work.
But have you heard of this, a genetic optimizer for the compile time optimization parameters to GCC?
Oh and to start dreaming about new features: Maybe GCC can implement such a feature to find the best optimization parameters for each function which is being compiled?:)
*SIGH*:) No, it's about "free as in _free_ beer". If you go to a festival and get free beer, e.g. because a company is advertising that particular sort of beer. Compare free beer to software which is free in the sense that you can download it for no cost, but probably without source code or no right to do something useful with the source code. Many small windows utilities were (are?) distributed in this form. The whole thing about free (beer)/free (freedom) came from 'RMS' Richard M. Stallman, the hated and loved head of the GNU project.
To read about his definition of 'free software', look here.
Yes, I think so, too... Consider also that most games are made to run well on modem (or ISDN). That means that their data rate should also be no problem and should not add significant latency: If you take 5ms (as above) for arrival of the first byte. Of course, more data than a single byte has to be send. So take, let's say 10kB (and that is *much* information) per player - much more than you can push over ISDN if you want multiple frames per second. That's 1ms additional latency per player for a central server scheme. Now multiply that with the number of players (say 10). Summa summarum 15ms.
15ms. 67 updates per second. I think your keyboard/mouse will have higher latency and/or jitter.
Nope. A patent should cover a reasonable amount of invention.
It is another questions if patents should be granted at all. I'm not so sure nowadays.
And this has nothing to do with hating microsoft. IBM, which is certainly loved by 90% of all linux user, patented (and probably) patents similar things. The patent that covers order of the keyboard LEDs comes to mind... though that might also be an urban legend. In any case, there are no good or bad companies, if it looks profitable for them, they'll patent things.
Sorry, but here in germany at least, some providers read traffic already. One of the biggest providers in germany sent out threatening letters to filesharing users that they use 'this and that program' and that they should stop using it because it violates copyright law. This was at least what the well known german computer magazine c't wrote a year ago or so.
The provider reading your IP traffic. Nice. IMHO even worse than reading your eMail because this includes everything.
Ahh and I'm sending this post through this particular provider:)
Nope. I read that, but I was wondering why they are explicitely stating that it can connect to "hotspots built by T-Mobile". Why should they mention it at all if they are standards compliant?!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're speaking of geostationary satellites which require such a high orbit.
But if you have a system of non-stationary satellites (like the 'Iridium' project), only a few msec will be added by satellite access.
ACK. 23 years old and also waiting for the next manned space mission...
:)
:)
Did you read the mission logs for the Apollo missions?
They are *really* interesting. Just start reading, you'll read them to the end, I assure you
Even though they are just notes reconstructed from the radio traffic with some bits thrown in from other sources, they're addicting. And very thrilling (much more than all other travelogues, IMHO).
Yo can read them here:
Apollo 8 Flight Journal
and here
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal or
google: apollo journals.
I'd read them in this order, first the flight journal for an orbiter-only mission, then the apollo 11 surface journal
Hey, that's amazing, a post in a _VI vs EMACS_ discussion (!!) which is both funny and well-balanced!
Kudos to you!
This is also my opinion.
Just step in where things get commercial. Do not, however, invade peoples privacy, constrain the freedom of information and our right to access information because of the greed of some big companies. Sadly, the world is different.
Nowadays, the privacy of a person is much less important than the right for companies to make a profit off everything.
Am I one of the few ones here who thinks that draconic, consumer (citizen!)-restricting copyright laws are much more invading than e.g. tax laws?
people in those countries are smart enough to realize that having such a critical sector of their economy controlled by the gnomes of Redmond is a bad idea.
:)
Well, soon this critical sector will be controlled by the GNOMEs...
There is a bigger issue here: how does society function when there's not enough useful work to go around? I don't think abandoning OSS is the solution, though.
...
I think this is the most interesting comment so far.
What we have today in every area is this run-away condition of everyone trying to overtake every other one (on every level - states, companies and also individuals), leading to an overall acceleration which itselfs leads to 'work harder to keep up', which leads to.... a disaster?
That's the problem. We're not farmers who trade in a steady-state economy.
What's the answer? The current trend of anarcho-capitalism? Certainly not. Communism? Certainly not. But what?
...an extension only!
Hey, ok, then I have a proposal!
An universal plugin system to be able to implement all these things *without* adding much bloat (except the API for plugins) to firefox.
Wasn't modularity a prerequisite for good and lean software design?!
This is essentially the question about the "stability of the solar system".
:)
:)
Google for that, or if you're too lazy to do it, here is a very short summary of what you can get by reading a bit:
- According to newton, every body with mass sees a force from each other body. A so called N-body-problem. (You should know that already =:)
- The orbits of all gravitating bodies (sun, planets, moons, asteroids, spacecraft etc.) in the solar system are chaotic, i.e. a small change (for example a displacement in the estimated position) will grow exponentially into a big change, maybe the crash
of two objects.
- BUT: The orbits may be bounded. I.e. they wobble in a chaotic way, but do not cross certain values. Of course, everyone hopes that this is the case
Now, earth remained relatively impact free for the past billions of years, i.e. the past billions of numbers of orbits around the sun!
- "relatively" since there are many impact craters on earth today, you can even visit some of them
But no object the size of a small moon impacted earth, else we would not be here.
Of course, people think about the reason why earth orbits so undisturbed since a long time.
There're models that describe the more massive bodies in the solar system (jupiter, saturn) as vacuum cleaners for asteroids. But don't ask me about that, I'm not a scientist (yet), just a student.
There is no reason to believe that the current system will be stable or that starting rockets spaceprobes or even walking around on earth (since you're also one of the above-mentioned bodies!) won't change if saturn and jupiter crash in a billion years!
No, I don't think so, but maybe they repackaged this essentially scientific mission as 'the asteroid destroyer'.
By arguing that the mission helps to save mankind by deflecting hazardous objects, they'll get funding and support from the general public.
Since it is disappointing what most people think of space exploration, do not consider this "repackaging" improbable.
Maybe this sounds childish, but I'm really amazed what now is out of earth's orbit and (still) working:
- The 2 rovers and numerous orbiters @ Mars
- Cassini/Huygens @ Saturn
- Both Voyager missions at the edge of the solar system
- Rosetta
etc.pp.!
No trying to troll, but It seems that corante.com is not a very good source for matter-of-fact reportage. (RTFA if you want to know what I'm talking about).
It says "Filtered Daily.", but I think it's going a bit too far.
Isn't there a better source availabe?
pps: it WAS funny and harmless how the fusion reaction is portrayed as a miniature sun in the movie, complete with coronal mass ejections threatening doc ock's control of the reaction...
:|
perhaps that is vaguely educational too, fusion's connection with the sun shown as a visual parable, to portray it that way
OMG! Have you really lowered the education standard for the general public *that much*?
Identifying the optimal settings can actually be non-trivial.
:)
True. No task for a human. Tedious work.
But have you heard of this, a genetic optimizer for the compile time optimization parameters to GCC?
Oh and to start dreaming about new features: Maybe GCC can implement such a feature to find the best optimization parameters for each function which is being compiled?
*SIGH* :)
No, it's about "free as in _free_ beer". If you go to a festival and get free beer, e.g. because a company is advertising that particular sort of beer.
Compare free beer to software which is free in the sense that you can download it for no cost, but probably without source code or no right to do something useful with the source code. Many small windows utilities were (are?) distributed in this form.
The whole thing about free (beer)/free (freedom) came from 'RMS' Richard M. Stallman, the hated and loved head of the GNU project.
To read about his definition of 'free software', look here.
ACK. I think someone should mod you up.
Yes, I think so, too...
Consider also that most games are made to run well on modem (or ISDN). That means that their data rate should also be no problem and should not add significant latency:
If you take 5ms (as above) for arrival of the first byte. Of course, more data than a single byte has to be send. So take, let's say 10kB (and that is *much* information) per player - much more than you can push over ISDN if you want multiple frames per second. That's 1ms additional latency per player for a central server scheme. Now multiply that with the number of players (say 10). Summa summarum 15ms.
15ms. 67 updates per second. I think your keyboard/mouse will have higher latency and/or jitter.
I see it this way:
Software patents are laws in the software world - laws which you can buy if you have enough money!
Not that laws are not bought nowadays in other fields, but I have a problem with explicitely allowing that!
Nope.
A patent should cover a reasonable amount of invention.
It is another questions if patents should be granted at all. I'm not so sure nowadays.
And this has nothing to do with hating microsoft. IBM, which is certainly loved by 90% of all linux user, patented (and probably) patents similar things. The patent that covers order of the keyboard LEDs comes to mind... though that might also be an urban legend.
In any case, there are no good or bad companies, if it looks profitable for them, they'll patent things.
Yes...
And it's even doubtful
- if the database uses SQL as it's query language
- is relational
- can handle the load without crashing
Same thing as when the American Government prints some more green ones.
Not exactly. Since when has the movie industry the same rights as the US government?
Can I pay with movies in the supermarket?
Maybe the movie industry essentially *wants* to print money, but that's not their task...
The EU?
:)
Sorry, but here in germany at least, some providers read traffic already.
One of the biggest providers in germany sent out threatening letters to filesharing users that they use 'this and that program' and that they should stop using it because it violates copyright law. This was at least what the well known german computer magazine c't wrote a year ago or so.
The provider reading your IP traffic. Nice. IMHO even worse than reading your eMail because this includes everything.
Ahh and I'm sending this post through this particular provider
Hi!
:)
A quote from you:
Multi-language support by design, which lets some complicated languages like C, C++ and Fortran
So it is possible to run C++ (not C#) on Mono?
Please tell me about it, then I'm VERY interested
Anyway, your work looks nice!
Nope.
I read that, but I was wondering why they are explicitely stating that it can connect to "hotspots built by T-Mobile". Why should they mention it at all if they are standards compliant?!
BTW, I now RTFA.
[...] will connect to cellular and wireless hotspots built by T-Mobile[...]
Hehehe...
There is paperdisk to do exactly such things. Includes redundancy so that you can stain your data prints without losing data (hopefully).
/. crowd :)
However, this is an old patented windows crippleware application, therefore not suited for the