Actually, GTA3 for xbox is less than 1gig (I believe it was around 750meg) and Vice City was around 1.5meg.
So the GTA series could have been done technically on GameCube.
The two things don't necessarily follow. I don't have access to the XBox disc in order to verify what you're saying, but assuming it's correct, it doesn't necessarily mean that the game would fit onto a GameCube disc.
The reasons for this are potentially many, including the size of the GameCube compiled code and included libraries that need to be put onto the disc, and the possibility that the developer may not be able to take advantage of the same level of media data compression on the GameCube as on the XBox (while still maintaining the desired framerate and responsiveness).
I'm not saying that what you're claiming is completely false -- it may very well be that they could find a way to put GTA3 onto a GameCube disc -- simply that you can't really determine that just from looking at the Xbox filesizes (assuming, again, that your memory is correct).
I can buy that, although I can't find such a file on the GTA:VC disc.
However, the audio alone takes up roughly 2.4GB of space on the PS2 disc. This could, admittedly, probably be compressed to save space, however it still appears to me that when you include the cutscenes, models, and other media data for the game, it still takes far more than 1.5GB of space on the PS2 disc.
I would say that the GameCube disc size is at the very least a big disincentive to porting a game like GTA:VC to the GameCube.
Gamecube disks hold only roughly 1.5GB of data. Here is what a quick scan of the GTA3 and GTA:VC DVDs for the PS2 claim under some disc scanning:
GTA3: 4 640 997 376 bytes
GTA:VC: 4 667 004 928 bytes
I think you have your reason right there as to why there isn't a GameCube version of either title.
If you want to blame someone for this, blame Nintendo -- in an era when their competitors were releasing consoles that could handle ~8GB discs, they came out and released a console that can only handle ~1.5GB per disc. To me, that just seems extremely short-sighted.
I couldn't care less about what it costs for the traditional 12 day of Christmas. What I really want to know is what it costs to buy the Bob and Doug Mackenzie 12 Days of Christmas!
After all, in their version they have some actually useful stuff, like french toast, back bacon, toques, comic books, and beer!
Only a hoser would want "Lords a Leaping" and "Swans a Swimming":) .
When it comes right down to it, this technology just isn't the pricing sweet spot yet for widespread adoption. At the moment, you're better off getting a Tivo
I'd like to love the Tivo, but it's availability worldwide is really quite narrow -- according to their own FAQ, they're only available in the US and the UK. Sony's unit, OTOH, is selling currently only in Japan (or will when it launches).
Those potential buyers in Japan _might_ be better off getting a Tivo, but as they aren't available in Japan, I don't think that's going to be an option.
(I've been wanting to buy a Tivo pretty much since they were released, but I live in Canada. I've been tempted for some time to import one from the US, but I'm not sure how valuable that will be without its listings service).
OK, aybe what others wrote about console games outselling those for PCs is true, I don't know. But whenever I am at a shop I can see that there are more PC titles on shelves than console titles.
That's just an optical illusion. Sure PC games take up more shelf space -- do you see how HUGE their boxes are these days?
Compare that to a PS2, Gamecube, or XBox title, which comes in a standard plastic DVD case which is small, compact, and protects your games well. They also have a whole lot less airspace in them.
Of course, maybe in the stores you go into the PC games take up more shelf space because they're not selling, wheras the console games are just flying off the shelves:).
You cannot do the same thing with a console, you play through the adventure and that is it.
That's not going to be true for too much longer. The recently released SOCOM II for the PlayStation 2, for example, allows you to download new mission content to a PS2 equipped with a hard drive.
The only thing holding up the system as yet is that the PS2 Hard Drive isn't due to hit shelves outside Japan until Spring 2004.
(Hard drive setup for gaming, that is. Those of us with the PS2 Linux Kit already have a hard drive, but not the necessary software to make it accessible from game titles).
Games aren't like any other piece of software, in that, as a class of software, they exhibit two qualities that most other software doesn't:
Most people who play games on their computers (or consoles or whatever) want/have significantly more than one game. Constrast this with operating systems, office suites, or web browsers, where a typical user will have one, maybe two. But they might have 20 - 30 games (or more).
Game as software typically have a much shorter lifespan than any other type of software. An office suite or a web browser might go through dozens of revisions over the span of a decade, being reworked to improve upon its deficiencies, and improve it for new eras in computing. But games typically get tired after a year or two -- you might have a few minor patches, and maybe one or two "add-on packs", but after that you pretty much have to bring out something new, designed more or less from the ground up.
Writing big games as Open Source typically doesn't work out for the above two reasons. Developers want to sink their time into software development projects that are going to be somewhat lasting -- something they can contribute to over long periods of time, and continually refine.
But you can only refine a game so much. I'm sure there are all sorts of optimizations you can add to Pac Man, but no matter how much you debug it and modify its routines, in the end it's still the same game, and won't ever hold the same popularity it did in the early 80's. Pac Man with cutting edge graphics is still Pac Man. Gamers want something new to play -- constantly and consistently.
Most Open Source developers, in my experience, want to work on more important software -- stuff that will be useful to people for years to come, to which they can add new features and continually improve upon. Games simply don't fit will into this sort of development model.
(Plus, of course, I completely agree with all the previous posters who pointed out that artists and musicians/audio engineers are typically exceedingly difficult to find for Open Source development. Heck, for my project I once asked a graphic artist I knew who owed me a favour to put together four 40x40 icon graphics -- and they refused because I wasn't going to pay them (nevermind the fact that the week before I starred in their art film for nothing...grumble grumble grumble...)).
I wonder when Square will finally have the dignity to put the Final Fantasy name down for good. Capcom is bad, but Square somehow is becoming worst in their desire to never ever let go of FF. Though their games are much higher quality, it irks me that fans still give these games at much credit that they do since they really are nothing impressive. I'll be amazed when I see an FF game do something new, and not just pretty graphics and FMV. I wonder if FF had no FMV, if as many people would buy it...
I wonder if movie theatres stopped showing movies, if anyone would continue to go.
Think about your argument for a minute. The movie-going experience hasn't really changed in the last 100 years -- you go, sit in a seat, eat popcorn or junior mints or whatever, and watch and listen. And that's it.
And yet, roughly 100 years later, movies are more popular than ever. And to think that in that time all they've "innovated" was adding voice and colour!
People (myself included) keep buying the Final Fantasy series not for the gaming qualities of the series, but for the story. It's the experience that matters with the FF titles -- and every time I finish one of them, the experience has been worth it. It's not a game you can just pickup from time to time and play a bit, like, say, the Grand Turismo series, or pretty much any sports game -- anymore than you can watch just the first 15 minutes of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars now and then.
I personally find that the Final Fantasy titles take a very balanced approch to game elements vs. story elements. If you got rid of the story elements altogether, of course few people would want to buy the games -- the story is, after all, the entire point!
...the rights of the dead buried people that they're digging up?
What about the rights of the "fakes" to not be buried under a marker with someone elses name?
I won't pretend to know the answer to that one, but I do know that when I'm dead and gone, I'd hate to think that 200 years from now I might be under a stone marked "Bill Gates":).
Just out of curiousity, how about Sturgeon class (when there were stil some around)?
Unfortunately, I don't really know. My data comes from a CF declassified submarine briefing I got to sit in on last week. They mentioned the old Oberon class subs in passing, but that was about it -- the briefing was primarily about the Victoria class subs.
I am, unfortunately, far from an expert on submarines!:) But if anybody knows the answer to your question, I'd certainly be interested in hearing it too!
Why don't nuclear subs have batteries to run silently too? And why do they need them, is the nuke plant noisy?
That's probably a question for Janes Defence Weekly:).
I'm hardly an expert on nuclear submarines, but I'd hazard a guess that there would be a potential issue of over-charging the batteries. You can't really readily stop and start the reaction, so you have to somehow use the energy they produce. You can _control_ the reaction, but taking it completely offline is probably a time-consuming procedure you don't want to undertake.
Thus, I imagine they control the reaction such that they generate more-or-less exactly what they need at any given timeframe. This is probably easier and more efficient than the stop-start-stop nature of the diesel generators on a diesel-electric sub.
Oh, and for anyone wondering, the Victoria class diesel-electric subs have two main batteries (as I mentioned previously), consisting of 240 cells each. There are charged by two 1400 kwh diesel generators.
Overall, not the kind of batteries you're going to power your laptop off of (unless you're using it on the sub...:) ).
Actually the noise from the reactor of a modern, quality nuclear sub is less than you might think. Most of the noise problems from subs come from the sub itself, the shape, the screws, or both. The US Los Angeles subs and the new Virgina subs are amazingly quiet, despite being nuclear.
I just saw one of the Los Angeles class subs. They are indeed impressive machines.
I'm not trying to slight the US's nuclear subs. They're obviously not rusty old junk buckets making a racket that any old fishing trawler can pick-up. They're exceedingly advanced machines.
However, if you run a decibel test between a Los Angeles class sub and one of the Canadian Forces Victoria class diesel electric subs, the Victoria class scores better. They have their own issues, of course (the Victoria class subs needing a whole lot of work to make them seaworthy for one thing:P)
Yeah, until you need to recharge your batteries, everybody in the north atlantic hears you, and a P-3C comes along and sinks your ass.
Note that you can also charge such subs while in dock, by running cabling to a charge port (no kidding!).
Obviously, you need to pick and choose what types of missions you use such subs for. As I mentioned, they aren't for long-duration underwater missions. They serve a different purpose than nuclear subs serve.
And BTW, the Canadian Forces routinely detects the US Los Angles-class nuclear subs while they're supposedly running in "quiet" mode:).
Diesel submarines have batteries that last for years. What do they use?
Having just attended a Canadian Forces Naval briefing on this very topic, I'm glad you asked:).
Naval subs use massive "wet" batteries, something akin to what your car uses, except exceptionally massive, typically filling two large-ish rooms. They are exceptionally heavy.
Note that diesel-electric submarines are only rated to run for aat most two weeks between charges. They have to surface to run their diesel engines in order to recharge their batteries, as the diesel engines need clean air for the combustion, and need to be able to vent their exhaust gasses.
This is a disadvantage over nuclear submarines, which can stay down for months at a time. The benifit of them, however, is that diesel-electric subs are quite a bit more silent than their nuclear counterparts:).
AFAIK, SCO is only challenging the GPL within the US court system. Regardless of the outcome, the US doesn't dictate license validity to the rest of the world -- only their own country.
And so far as I am aware, many (although certainly not all...) kernel and other core Linux developers live outside the US.
I think it's time for these developers to rise up and smack SCO within their own countries. If SCO is redistributing their work outside the confines of the license the copyright holders provide it under, SCO is in violation. And if developers in enough countries where SCO does business file lawsuits, SCO's going to have to hire a massive army of lawyers to deal with all of them, hitting SCO's coffers.
I know that if SCO were to start redistributing any of my GPL'd code under another license without my prior permission, I'd be hauling them into Canadian court to answer for their actions.
As far as what is typical in the industry - typically the inventor gets nothing but name recognition. If the invention makes the company a million, they tend to treat you better, but it still shows as zip on your paycheck (except your raises may be slightly higher than usual for awhile)
That's not been my experience (at least not theoretically -- my last employer filed two patents for things I invented, and then fired me for no reason).
Many high-tech companies at least really want their employees to invent and patent things, as it can bring the companies big money through licensing and litigation against the competition.
Unless ones employment contraact specifically states that they're expected to create patentable items, however, most tech employees will simply do the work they're expected to do, and never go that extra mile to create patentable works.
As such, such companies offer incentives to encourage employees to create as much patentable inventions as possible. As noted elsewhere in this thread, my former employer had a decent such incentive -- although in my case, it didn't do me much good, as shortly before the patents were actually filed with the patent office, as mentioned above, the company let me go (even though I was the only person in the history of my development team to have a patent application, never mind two. Indeed, in hindsight the patent filing actually hurt my career at my former place of employment, for reasons I won't go into here). And then they stiffed me on paying the bonuses they liked to tout to employees.
Bastards. But regardless of my sorry situation, many high tech employers with patent portfolios find that it's good policy to create a reward system for inventors, as it helps encourage patentable inventions. Otherwise, why bother when you can just work 60 hours a week on the boring stuff your manager assigns to you?;)
For my two patent applications for inventions I created while working for a company associated with the size "Big" and the colour "Blue", which they've filed in two countries, I was permently laid off.
The unnamed company in question had (at the time at least) a policy where inventors were awarded $2500 US for each successful patent. When I was "surplussed", they decided not to pay up. After making a fuss, they finally decided to pay me $1500 US for both (that is, $1500 US in total).
So count yourself lucky, even if it is $1 -- you still have your job!
Recycling aluminum makes sense, as it's one of the few items that actually gets stronger as you recycle it. Many people don't realize, however, that in many jurisdictions beverage cans aren't made of aluminum -- their bodies are often extruded steel, with only the top being aluminum. However, steel recycles well too, so this isn't really a major problem. Indeed, steel is typically the most often recycled material.
Recycling isn't just about making new material out of old material, or minimizing the impact on the original material source -- a very important part of recycling is minimizing landfill input. Far too many jurisdictions are facing problems finding new, suitable landfill space. The situation here in Toronto is a good example -- every day, over 150 extra-large garbage transport trucks make a round-trip from Toronto to a landfill in Michigan.
Paper recycling is often more successful that people think -- however, you have to remember that there are different tiers of paper recycling. Paper recycling has been occuring for decades inside papermills -- trimmings and leftovers from the manufacture of high-grade paper are re-used in the manufacture of low-grade paper products.
On the consumer front, paper recycling is often useful when you're recycling it into other fibre products (as opposed to using it to make more paper).
And like metals, in a landfill situation, paper doesn't readily decompose. It is, however, still a very large portion of overall landfill input. Keeping it down through reducing use and recycling the material you do use helps to keep the landfill demons at bay.
I'm not saying I'm an MS-apologist, but shouldn't decisions based on taxpayer money usually be based on cost analysis? A Blanket policy against MS, without allowing for a competitive bidding process or even alternative analysis doesn't seem right.
Nobody is preventing Microsoft from putting in a bid in this case. The requirements simply specify that the products must be Open Source Software.
Personally, I don't see any problem with an organization specifying certain features or requirements in their software. Source availiability is no exception.
As such, all Microsoft needs to do to fit into the requirements are to make their products Open Source. Problem solved.
Yes, but not for the reason you're probably assuming. I've been "on the road" the last few days, and as I don't own a laptop (and don't carry my own keyboard around), I'm unable to use my personal system, so I've been forced to use QWERTY-based keyboards for my last several posts. Ugh! Can't wait to get behind my own keyboard again!!!
How do you find them? What is your profession? (what do you primarily do on these keyboards).
I'm a software developer/computer scientist. And you really on't need to find a specific Dvorak keyboard -- you can re-map an existing keyboard by moving the keycaps around, and then selecting the Dvorak keyboard keymap in your OS. Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Windows, and all other major (and many not-so-major) OSs come with out-of-the-box support for Dvorak keyboards.
My primary keyboard is an old Honeywell WN-101 -- but my favorites for such remapping remain the old IBM "clicky" keyboards.
This is off-topic now -- IIRC there was a Slashdot topic on Dvorak keyboards a few weeks back which can answer all your questions. HTH!
My project recently celebrated its first year o being Open Source (http://www.jsyncmanager.org. While I've been working on this project for the last 6 years now, it's only been in the last year that I've had to deal with other people working with my code, and managing their efforts. A few things I've learned along the way which might be helpful:
The people who work with you on your project are volunteers, so you have to treat them as such. Sometimes they'll have more important things to do than work on your project, which can, at times, make deadlines a difficult thing to enforce. It alos means you have to show appereciation for their efforts -- if they don;t feel they're getting something out of their time, they'll drop whatever they're working on and leave the project.
Expect at least 75% of the people who offer to help to end up doing absolutely nothing. I've had lots of people with great ideas and apparant energy offer to help with my project. I'll take the time to get them setup with the various permissions and resources, and may then never hear from them again (some of the more polite ones will appologise for not being able to be active in the project). Don't take it personally -- when people aren;t getting paid, sometimes their excitement at joining an interesting project outweights their actual desire to do any work:).
If someone leaves your project, regardles of wether they contributed anything or not, thank them for taking the time to join in the first place. Even non-contributors have their hearts in the right place.
Try to build up a solid core of developers, and then delegate. If at all possible, put different people in charge of different areas, giving them as much creative control as possible. Make these people you "leiutenants". This is particularily important for those development areas you either aren;t good at, or simply aren't interested in.
In my project, my core strengths are with the base synchronization protocol stack and engine -- the really low-level stuff. That's my domain. Some of the things that hold no interest to me include the user interface portions of the project. Thus, I put someone in charge of UI development, giving them full creative control (although I'n known to offer feedback:) ). I found someone who is an expert on UI design, and leave them to their task.
Build a community, and build bridges to other development communities that may find your project useful in their own projects. You never know where it might take you, or who might discover your project through another project. The jSyncManager (my project), for example, has ties to the jUSB Project, and OpenOffice.org'q Glow Groupware Client. Scratch their backs, and they'll scratch yours (and if your project needs an open, platform-neutral Palm handheld data synchronization facility, let me know:) ).
Become a shameless promoter of your project. Bring aboard someone who knows a thing or two about marketing. Write up press releases every time you meet a significant milestone, or make a significant release, and send them out into the wild through every channel you know (just don't abuse them -- no spamming via e-mail or newsgroups, as that just pisses people off),
Write good documentation. Better yet, get a volunteer who can write good documentation:).
Have fun, and make sure your volunteers are having fun as well. Share the credit and prestige with everyone who makes a contribution, no matter how small or insignificant. Make sure people are doing the types of work they want to do as much as possible.
A brief note to those of you seeing Esperanot writen for the first time. Esperanto uses 6 accented characters -- five of which (c, g, h, j, and s) use a cricumflex ('^') over them when accented, and one of which ('u') uses a breve (a upturned half-circle). These six characters exist in non-accented versions as well.
It was recognized early in the life of Esperanto that some printers (the profession, not the peripheral) may have problems handling these characters -- they probably wouldn't have the necessary moveable type to handle them. As such, a convention was established: if a chcaracter is taken to be accented, put an 'h' after it. Thus, in place of a 'c' with a circumflex, you'd use 'ch'.
For English (and other language) speakers, this makes some sense for 'c' and 's', as they respectively make, when accented, a 'ch' and 'sh' sound. However, 'h' itself is a valid letter in Esperanto (note than note all of the 26 letters in the modern engligh alphabet are in Esperanto - there are no 'q', 'w', 'x', or 'y'), so this could become confusing. I;ve noticed that nobody posting here in Esperanto has used this convention.
A more recent convention is to use the same method, but using an 'x' instead of an 'h' as the trailing character. This works nicely as there is no 'x' in the Esperanto alphabet (its sound is represented by the lettert 'eks' instead). So in any of the other posts, where you see an 'x' in an Esperanto word, note that it's not really there -- it's just used to signify that the preceeding letter has an accent.
Finally, there is the convention I (and some others) tend to use, which is instead of using a letter at all, to append accented letters with a '^'. As this is the accent that 5 out of the 6 possible accented letters use anyhow, it's closer to the actual look of the word.
Of course, in this day and age, we aren't limited to ASCII codepages that lack some of the accented characters in Esperanto. Unicode can represent these characters nicely, but entering them on a keyboard in still a pain -- and many mail and Usenet news clients don't support it anyhow (nor do many older browsers for that matter, or older OS's that don't have Unicode support and/or fonts installed), thus the other conventions continue to thrive.
(And if you think I'm odd for knowing all of this, I'm also a guy who uses Dvorak keyboards on all his systems:) ).
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The two things don't necessarily follow. I don't have access to the XBox disc in order to verify what you're saying, but assuming it's correct, it doesn't necessarily mean that the game would fit onto a GameCube disc.
The reasons for this are potentially many, including the size of the GameCube compiled code and included libraries that need to be put onto the disc, and the possibility that the developer may not be able to take advantage of the same level of media data compression on the GameCube as on the XBox (while still maintaining the desired framerate and responsiveness).
I'm not saying that what you're claiming is completely false -- it may very well be that they could find a way to put GTA3 onto a GameCube disc -- simply that you can't really determine that just from looking at the Xbox filesizes (assuming, again, that your memory is correct).
Yaz.
I can buy that, although I can't find such a file on the GTA:VC disc.
However, the audio alone takes up roughly 2.4GB of space on the PS2 disc. This could, admittedly, probably be compressed to save space, however it still appears to me that when you include the cutscenes, models, and other media data for the game, it still takes far more than 1.5GB of space on the PS2 disc.
I would say that the GameCube disc size is at the very least a big disincentive to porting a game like GTA:VC to the GameCube.
Yaz.
Gamecube disks hold only roughly 1.5GB of data. Here is what a quick scan of the GTA3 and GTA:VC DVDs for the PS2 claim under some disc scanning:
I think you have your reason right there as to why there isn't a GameCube version of either title.
If you want to blame someone for this, blame Nintendo -- in an era when their competitors were releasing consoles that could handle ~8GB discs, they came out and released a console that can only handle ~1.5GB per disc. To me, that just seems extremely short-sighted.
Yaz.
I couldn't care less about what it costs for the traditional 12 day of Christmas. What I really want to know is what it costs to buy the Bob and Doug Mackenzie 12 Days of Christmas!
After all, in their version they have some actually useful stuff, like french toast, back bacon, toques, comic books, and beer!
Only a hoser would want "Lords a Leaping" and "Swans a Swimming" :) .
Yaz.
I'd like to love the Tivo, but it's availability worldwide is really quite narrow -- according to their own FAQ, they're only available in the US and the UK. Sony's unit, OTOH, is selling currently only in Japan (or will when it launches).
Those potential buyers in Japan _might_ be better off getting a Tivo, but as they aren't available in Japan, I don't think that's going to be an option.
(I've been wanting to buy a Tivo pretty much since they were released, but I live in Canada. I've been tempted for some time to import one from the US, but I'm not sure how valuable that will be without its listings service).
Yaz.
That's just an optical illusion. Sure PC games take up more shelf space -- do you see how HUGE their boxes are these days?
Compare that to a PS2, Gamecube, or XBox title, which comes in a standard plastic DVD case which is small, compact, and protects your games well. They also have a whole lot less airspace in them.
Of course, maybe in the stores you go into the PC games take up more shelf space because they're not selling, wheras the console games are just flying off the shelves :).
Yaz.
That's not going to be true for too much longer. The recently released SOCOM II for the PlayStation 2, for example, allows you to download new mission content to a PS2 equipped with a hard drive.
The only thing holding up the system as yet is that the PS2 Hard Drive isn't due to hit shelves outside Japan until Spring 2004.
(Hard drive setup for gaming, that is. Those of us with the PS2 Linux Kit already have a hard drive, but not the necessary software to make it accessible from game titles).
Yaz.
Games aren't like any other piece of software, in that, as a class of software, they exhibit two qualities that most other software doesn't:
Writing big games as Open Source typically doesn't work out for the above two reasons. Developers want to sink their time into software development projects that are going to be somewhat lasting -- something they can contribute to over long periods of time, and continually refine.
But you can only refine a game so much. I'm sure there are all sorts of optimizations you can add to Pac Man, but no matter how much you debug it and modify its routines, in the end it's still the same game, and won't ever hold the same popularity it did in the early 80's. Pac Man with cutting edge graphics is still Pac Man. Gamers want something new to play -- constantly and consistently.
Most Open Source developers, in my experience, want to work on more important software -- stuff that will be useful to people for years to come, to which they can add new features and continually improve upon. Games simply don't fit will into this sort of development model.
(Plus, of course, I completely agree with all the previous posters who pointed out that artists and musicians/audio engineers are typically exceedingly difficult to find for Open Source development. Heck, for my project I once asked a graphic artist I knew who owed me a favour to put together four 40x40 icon graphics -- and they refused because I wasn't going to pay them (nevermind the fact that the week before I starred in their art film for nothing...grumble grumble grumble...)).
Yaz.
I wonder if movie theatres stopped showing movies, if anyone would continue to go.
Think about your argument for a minute. The movie-going experience hasn't really changed in the last 100 years -- you go, sit in a seat, eat popcorn or junior mints or whatever, and watch and listen. And that's it.
And yet, roughly 100 years later, movies are more popular than ever. And to think that in that time all they've "innovated" was adding voice and colour!
People (myself included) keep buying the Final Fantasy series not for the gaming qualities of the series, but for the story. It's the experience that matters with the FF titles -- and every time I finish one of them, the experience has been worth it. It's not a game you can just pickup from time to time and play a bit, like, say, the Grand Turismo series, or pretty much any sports game -- anymore than you can watch just the first 15 minutes of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars now and then.
I personally find that the Final Fantasy titles take a very balanced approch to game elements vs. story elements. If you got rid of the story elements altogether, of course few people would want to buy the games -- the story is, after all, the entire point!
Yaz.
What about the rights of the "fakes" to not be buried under a marker with someone elses name?
I won't pretend to know the answer to that one, but I do know that when I'm dead and gone, I'd hate to think that 200 years from now I might be under a stone marked "Bill Gates" :).
Yaz.
Unfortunately, I don't really know. My data comes from a CF declassified submarine briefing I got to sit in on last week. They mentioned the old Oberon class subs in passing, but that was about it -- the briefing was primarily about the Victoria class subs.
I am, unfortunately, far from an expert on submarines! :) But if anybody knows the answer to your question, I'd certainly be interested in hearing it too!
Yaz.
That's probably a question for Janes Defence Weekly :).
I'm hardly an expert on nuclear submarines, but I'd hazard a guess that there would be a potential issue of over-charging the batteries. You can't really readily stop and start the reaction, so you have to somehow use the energy they produce. You can _control_ the reaction, but taking it completely offline is probably a time-consuming procedure you don't want to undertake.
Thus, I imagine they control the reaction such that they generate more-or-less exactly what they need at any given timeframe. This is probably easier and more efficient than the stop-start-stop nature of the diesel generators on a diesel-electric sub.
Oh, and for anyone wondering, the Victoria class diesel-electric subs have two main batteries (as I mentioned previously), consisting of 240 cells each. There are charged by two 1400 kwh diesel generators.
Overall, not the kind of batteries you're going to power your laptop off of (unless you're using it on the sub... :) ).
Yaz.
I just saw one of the Los Angeles class subs. They are indeed impressive machines.
I'm not trying to slight the US's nuclear subs. They're obviously not rusty old junk buckets making a racket that any old fishing trawler can pick-up. They're exceedingly advanced machines.
However, if you run a decibel test between a Los Angeles class sub and one of the Canadian Forces Victoria class diesel electric subs, the Victoria class scores better. They have their own issues, of course (the Victoria class subs needing a whole lot of work to make them seaworthy for one thing :P)
Yaz.
Note that you can also charge such subs while in dock, by running cabling to a charge port (no kidding!).
Obviously, you need to pick and choose what types of missions you use such subs for. As I mentioned, they aren't for long-duration underwater missions. They serve a different purpose than nuclear subs serve.
And BTW, the Canadian Forces routinely detects the US Los Angles-class nuclear subs while they're supposedly running in "quiet" mode :).
Yaz.
Having just attended a Canadian Forces Naval briefing on this very topic, I'm glad you asked :).
Naval subs use massive "wet" batteries, something akin to what your car uses, except exceptionally massive, typically filling two large-ish rooms. They are exceptionally heavy.
Note that diesel-electric submarines are only rated to run for aat most two weeks between charges. They have to surface to run their diesel engines in order to recharge their batteries, as the diesel engines need clean air for the combustion, and need to be able to vent their exhaust gasses.
This is a disadvantage over nuclear submarines, which can stay down for months at a time. The benifit of them, however, is that diesel-electric subs are quite a bit more silent than their nuclear counterparts :).
Yaz.
AFAIK, SCO is only challenging the GPL within the US court system. Regardless of the outcome, the US doesn't dictate license validity to the rest of the world -- only their own country.
And so far as I am aware, many (although certainly not all...) kernel and other core Linux developers live outside the US.
I think it's time for these developers to rise up and smack SCO within their own countries. If SCO is redistributing their work outside the confines of the license the copyright holders provide it under, SCO is in violation. And if developers in enough countries where SCO does business file lawsuits, SCO's going to have to hire a massive army of lawyers to deal with all of them, hitting SCO's coffers.
I know that if SCO were to start redistributing any of my GPL'd code under another license without my prior permission, I'd be hauling them into Canadian court to answer for their actions.
Yaz.
That's not been my experience (at least not theoretically -- my last employer filed two patents for things I invented, and then fired me for no reason).
Many high-tech companies at least really want their employees to invent and patent things, as it can bring the companies big money through licensing and litigation against the competition.
Unless ones employment contraact specifically states that they're expected to create patentable items, however, most tech employees will simply do the work they're expected to do, and never go that extra mile to create patentable works.
As such, such companies offer incentives to encourage employees to create as much patentable inventions as possible. As noted elsewhere in this thread, my former employer had a decent such incentive -- although in my case, it didn't do me much good, as shortly before the patents were actually filed with the patent office, as mentioned above, the company let me go (even though I was the only person in the history of my development team to have a patent application, never mind two. Indeed, in hindsight the patent filing actually hurt my career at my former place of employment, for reasons I won't go into here). And then they stiffed me on paying the bonuses they liked to tout to employees.
Bastards. But regardless of my sorry situation, many high tech employers with patent portfolios find that it's good policy to create a reward system for inventors, as it helps encourage patentable inventions. Otherwise, why bother when you can just work 60 hours a week on the boring stuff your manager assigns to you? ;)
Yaz.
For my two patent applications for inventions I created while working for a company associated with the size "Big" and the colour "Blue", which they've filed in two countries, I was permently laid off.
The unnamed company in question had (at the time at least) a policy where inventors were awarded $2500 US for each successful patent. When I was "surplussed", they decided not to pay up. After making a fuss, they finally decided to pay me $1500 US for both (that is, $1500 US in total).
So count yourself lucky, even if it is $1 -- you still have your job!
Yaz.
Recycling aluminum makes sense, as it's one of the few items that actually gets stronger as you recycle it. Many people don't realize, however, that in many jurisdictions beverage cans aren't made of aluminum -- their bodies are often extruded steel, with only the top being aluminum. However, steel recycles well too, so this isn't really a major problem. Indeed, steel is typically the most often recycled material.
Recycling isn't just about making new material out of old material, or minimizing the impact on the original material source -- a very important part of recycling is minimizing landfill input. Far too many jurisdictions are facing problems finding new, suitable landfill space. The situation here in Toronto is a good example -- every day, over 150 extra-large garbage transport trucks make a round-trip from Toronto to a landfill in Michigan.
Paper recycling is often more successful that people think -- however, you have to remember that there are different tiers of paper recycling. Paper recycling has been occuring for decades inside papermills -- trimmings and leftovers from the manufacture of high-grade paper are re-used in the manufacture of low-grade paper products.
On the consumer front, paper recycling is often useful when you're recycling it into other fibre products (as opposed to using it to make more paper).
And like metals, in a landfill situation, paper doesn't readily decompose. It is, however, still a very large portion of overall landfill input. Keeping it down through reducing use and recycling the material you do use helps to keep the landfill demons at bay.
Yaz.
Yup, I can see this now...
Yaz.
Nobody is preventing Microsoft from putting in a bid in this case. The requirements simply specify that the products must be Open Source Software.
Personally, I don't see any problem with an organization specifying certain features or requirements in their software. Source availiability is no exception.
As such, all Microsoft needs to do to fit into the requirements are to make their products Open Source. Problem solved.
Yaz.
Yes, but not for the reason you're probably assuming. I've been "on the road" the last few days, and as I don't own a laptop (and don't carry my own keyboard around), I'm unable to use my personal system, so I've been forced to use QWERTY-based keyboards for my last several posts. Ugh! Can't wait to get behind my own keyboard again!!!
Yaz.
I'm a software developer/computer scientist. And you really on't need to find a specific Dvorak keyboard -- you can re-map an existing keyboard by moving the keycaps around, and then selecting the Dvorak keyboard keymap in your OS. Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Windows, and all other major (and many not-so-major) OSs come with out-of-the-box support for Dvorak keyboards.
My primary keyboard is an old Honeywell WN-101 -- but my favorites for such remapping remain the old IBM "clicky" keyboards.
This is off-topic now -- IIRC there was a Slashdot topic on Dvorak keyboards a few weeks back which can answer all your questions. HTH!
Yaz.
My project recently celebrated its first year o being Open Source (http://www.jsyncmanager.org. While I've been working on this project for the last 6 years now, it's only been in the last year that I've had to deal with other people working with my code, and managing their efforts. A few things I've learned along the way which might be helpful:
In my project, my core strengths are with the base synchronization protocol stack and engine -- the really low-level stuff. That's my domain. Some of the things that hold no interest to me include the user interface portions of the project. Thus, I put someone in charge of UI development, giving them full creative control (although I'n known to offer feedback :) ). I found someone who is an expert on UI design, and leave them to their task.
Build a community, and build bridges to other development communities that may find your project useful in their own projects. You never know where it might take you, or who might discover your project through another project. The jSyncManager (my project), for example, has ties to the jUSB Project, and OpenOffice.org'q Glow Groupware Client. Scratch their backs, and they'll scratch yours (and if your project needs an open, platform-neutral Palm handheld data synchronization facility, let me know :) ).
I hope this helps!
Yaz.
A brief note to those of you seeing Esperanot writen for the first time. Esperanto uses 6 accented characters -- five of which (c, g, h, j, and s) use a cricumflex ('^') over them when accented, and one of which ('u') uses a breve (a upturned half-circle). These six characters exist in non-accented versions as well.
It was recognized early in the life of Esperanto that some printers (the profession, not the peripheral) may have problems handling these characters -- they probably wouldn't have the necessary moveable type to handle them. As such, a convention was established: if a chcaracter is taken to be accented, put an 'h' after it. Thus, in place of a 'c' with a circumflex, you'd use 'ch'.
For English (and other language) speakers, this makes some sense for 'c' and 's', as they respectively make, when accented, a 'ch' and 'sh' sound. However, 'h' itself is a valid letter in Esperanto (note than note all of the 26 letters in the modern engligh alphabet are in Esperanto - there are no 'q', 'w', 'x', or 'y'), so this could become confusing. I;ve noticed that nobody posting here in Esperanto has used this convention.
A more recent convention is to use the same method, but using an 'x' instead of an 'h' as the trailing character. This works nicely as there is no 'x' in the Esperanto alphabet (its sound is represented by the lettert 'eks' instead). So in any of the other posts, where you see an 'x' in an Esperanto word, note that it's not really there -- it's just used to signify that the preceeding letter has an accent.
Finally, there is the convention I (and some others) tend to use, which is instead of using a letter at all, to append accented letters with a '^'. As this is the accent that 5 out of the 6 possible accented letters use anyhow, it's closer to the actual look of the word.
Of course, in this day and age, we aren't limited to ASCII codepages that lack some of the accented characters in Esperanto. Unicode can represent these characters nicely, but entering them on a keyboard in still a pain -- and many mail and Usenet news clients don't support it anyhow (nor do many older browsers for that matter, or older OS's that don't have Unicode support and/or fonts installed), thus the other conventions continue to thrive.
(And if you think I'm odd for knowing all of this, I'm also a guy who uses Dvorak keyboards on all his systems :) ).
Yaz.