You obviously weren't in Southern California this morning at 5:07 am Pacific time... I thought it was an earthquake 'cause the house kept shaking for five seconds after the boom hit.
What major technical flaws of Windows does Mandrake have? I've been using it since 8.2, and I've never had those kinds of technical issues with it. The only real pain in the ass I've continually had to fight is dependency hell, which is inevitable if your RPM source doesn't happen to have a package you want.
The only way Mandrake emulates Windows in the look and feel of things, which you can completely rewrite in Configure your Desktop -> Look & Feel if you wish. As a server, it is powerful and stable. Drakconf gives you the option of a GUI. Shorewall makes configuring your firewall a breeze. After you choose a mirror for security updates, a full update is just 'urpmi.update -a; urpmi --update --auto-select -y --force' away (Note: --force just means default answer to questions is yes, not to force installation).
Honestly, what's so horrible about Mandrake? (Except for what seems to have happened after their merge into Mandriva - $50 for the version that doesn't have gcc or a media player? wtf?)
You've got which nuke was untested confused. The first bomb used in combat, on Hiroshima, was the Uranium gun bomb - It was the first and only of it's kind ever built (because it had such a low efficiency and was so dangerous to it's owners). The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was the same type as the device that was tested in New Mexico - a Plutonium implosion bomb.
Also, it would not have taken months to create another nuclear weapon. After the sucessful use of both designs, the creation of weapons was an engineering task. The nuclear reactors at Hartford and the separators at Oak Ridge, TN were separating/synthesizing enough Uranium and Plutonium for several bombs every month. A second plutonium bomb core was available on Aug. 13, ready to be shipped to Tinian Island.
"which could explain that while 3D has existed in various forms for the last 60 years, it's rare to see a wide released feature film."
People have been taking stereogram pictures for a hundred and sixty years. As soon as emulsions were discovered that are fast enough to allow you to take one picture and move the camera, photographers started taking stereos. It's quite neat to see an ancient tintype of some ruffian in the old west in all 3 dimensions...
Dateline before they had calendars: Lions, other predators could kill proto-humans venturing into the grasslands. Best to just stay in the trees.
Dateline 1492: High seas, storms in enormous Atlantic ocean could sink Columbus's ships before he can get across it and to China. Let's just stay in Europe, kay?
Dateline 1849: More crap than I can list could happen to you on your way to Oregon and California - Best to just stay back east where it's safe.
My point is, playing it safe and being absolutely terrified of risks makes it certain that you won't go anywhere new. Imagine if 1967-Nasa got replaced by 2005-Nasa just before the Apollo 1 disaster. By early 1970, the commission would have completed it's review. By 1973, the first unmanned Apollo to go around the moon would be launched. After spending 3 more years confirming that the astronauts won't get a life-threatening dose of radiation, a manned apollo circumnavigates the moon. By the time we land, the first TRS-80's are hitting the shelves.
On a different note, I have a solution to the enormous problem of getting stuff out of our gravity well: Send up enough to capture a small NEO that's already out of it. Get it into a stable orbit about 600 miles up. You've now got millions of tons of metals, silicates, and oxides to work with.
About half of all searches through Google are from WinXP. The implication is, that if MS controls ~90% of computers, that they have failed to convince roughly 4 out of every 10 of their users to upgrade from previous versions.
Thus, MS is screwed no matter what they do:
Continue trying to support old and broken Windows platforms, some of which (9x) had absolutely no concept of security.
They drop support for old platforms and try to force users to buy the new versions. Many people who didn't buy XP fall into the categories of A) Use their computer for light web browsing, e-mail, and maybe music, and/or B) They refuse the buy a version that phones home like XP and presumably Vista.
If they choose door #1, they will ultimately destroy themselves trying to secure the versions of their products that run on a fundamentally insecure base. They know this.
If they choose door #2, the A group users will continue to use their existing platform for as long as possible. When MS's lack of support finally burns them, they will jump ship and migrate to Linux/Mac (which are more than capable for light E-Mail, Web, music, the occasional document, etc) because their old PII is incapable of running XP, let alone Vista. The group B users will probably grudgingly upgrade and keep an eagle eye out for any escape route. They know this too.
Ultimately, because of this effect, MS will see a huge loss of market share because thier current business strategy (Provide the minimum quality of software needed to keep users from jumping ship) fails in the face of mature competitors (Linux, Mac, Solaris (?)). Then they will be forced to clean their platform up and take their place alongside other vendors. Competition is wonderful.
Microsoft undoubtedly knows all of this, and is trying to delay it as long as possible by trying to find a less-unacceptable mix of options 1 and 2. Eventually, they will have to start weaning users off of old platforms. This is it.
Mmm... them too. You're right. But that's another problem. Of late, it's become very fashionable for media outlets to tell everyone to 'get out and VOTE' and equally fasionable to berate people for not doing so. The result is ignorant votes as voters decide on things that they don't have a clue about beyond retarded 10-second soundbites on TV.
I mean, for God's sake, more than 50% of voters in November 2004 thought that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda. No doubt a sizeable fraction still do. The people are unwilling to educate themselves and the politicians have no interest in an educated electorate, despite all the BS they spew to the contrary while around elementary schools and little kids. They don't want constituents who can think for themselves, because people who think for themselves aren't so easily led and decieved.
If the media would stop hounding everyone to vote and denigrating those who don't, then people who care would educate themselves about the relevant issues and vote knowlegably and the idiots would stay at home.
(OT: Is anyone else having problems staying logged in?)
Rather than reinventing the wheel, here's a link to another post of abuses. Also, did you consider that since the "Patriot" act allows the government to deny prisoners their right to an attorney, right to a speedy trial, and the right to know the charges against them, and allows them to be held indefinetly and incommunicado, you're not supposed to KNOW about abuses?
Despite what the media wants you to believe, we are winning the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq and we are WINNING the war.
If we were winning the war, then the number of suicide bombers in Baghdad would be decreasing rather than increasing. As I said, this is turning into another Vietnam which will again demonstrate that technology CANNOT defeat an enemy who has the power of his convictions. We lost ~60000 men in Vietnam, the Vietcong lost more than 2 million - yet we left in shame.
The root cause of Islamic hatred toward America and the west is our success and our rejection if Islam.
You didn't read anything I wrote, did you? Osama bin Laden has called for and gotten Jihad against America because American soldiers are stationed in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca. HE FRACKING SAYS SO. If America withdraws it's forces from Saudi Arabia, he'll end the Jihad!!! But as I said, we won't do that for obvious reasons. Furthermore, if rejecting Islam was the reason that Osama hates us, then shouldn't he also be waging war on China?
We can remedy this in two ways, by killing or capturing all Islamic terrorists or by converting to Islam. The terrorists know that if they lose in Iraq then it's all over for them, that's why foreign terrorists from all over the middle east are pouring into Iraq. This is the terrorists' last stand and we will prevail.
Kill or capture all Islamic terrorists? Sure - just like each retaliatory strike by Israel against Hamas prevents violence rather than inciting more of it. Converting to Islam? Simply not going to happen. Removing our troops from the Holy Land of Mecca just like Osama wants? Not going to happen either. If it weren't for oil, we wouldn't give a flying damn about the middle east. Either we prop up corrupt dictatorships for oil and have to live with terrorists or we stop sucking the oil tit. It's obvious which we're choosing.
Fortunantly we have a president now who couldn't care less what the American left and the American media say about him. They can keep calling him Hitler day and night, they can yell at him until they are blue in the face just like they did to Reagan. Bush has convictions - he knows he's doing the right thing, it doesn't matter to him one bit what vocal fringe lunatics think.
Bush is doing the 'right thing?' Was he doing the right thing when he 'fixed the facts around the policy' of war with Iraq? When he failed to fire Rove and Libby for exposing Valery Plame becasue her husband exposed his lie about the Niger yellowcake? When he entered Iraq with no plan to exit? Don't delude yourself - Bush didn't invade Iraq because Saddam is a nasty meanie person. He invaded Iraq because Iraq has 1/4 of the world's oil reserves, and his advisors would rather enrich their former employers than invest 200 billion dollars in alternative energy.
How has the 'Patriot' act affected me? It has affected me because I am not willing to wait for someone to declare Martial Law before I decide that my rights are being screwed over now.
I have a mousepad with "smash head here" written on it. But, seriously...
One of Osama's stated goals is to destroy, through holy war, America (the Great Satan). One of the things that made us great was our Constitution, that great document which protects our freedoms. Yet here goes the House of Representatives, doing exactly what bin Laden wants: Taking away our freedom. In fact, doing the one thing that Osama can never do. The only question I really want answered is, "House of Representatives: Who the heck are you representing?" Because I don't believe that the majority of America, let alone 60% of us, want the government to be able to get search warrants without a judge's consent. To force us to keep quiet about a search. To invade the privacy of our medical and library records.
And I don't want to hear any BS about 'it will only be used on/against terrorists.' This government, like any other, has abused/abuses almost every power it was ever given. And you think they'll pass up something as juicy, and so easy, and so incredibly tempting to abuse as this? Look at RICO. It was passed so the cops could bust meetings of mobsters. Now it's routinely used against groups of garden-variety criminals.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H L Mencken. Terrorism is a complex problem. We have to pull off a considerable juggling act: We have to try and defend ourselves against terrorists. We also have to make sure that we have a nation that is free and worth defending when we're done. We have to find and assauge the root cause of the hatred, because as Vietnam and now Iraq have demonstrated, superior technology can't defeat a foe with the power of conviction in his beliefs. And we have to reign in our collective ego, and not be too proud to admit that Iraq is a lost cause and that we should leave. And so far, our government is only keeping one ball in the air. The "Patriot" act is an answer that is clear, simple, and dead wrong.
"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -- Abba Eban.
"Most Democrats echoed that support but said they were concerned the law could allow citizens' civil liberties to be infringed." translate(BS, ENGLISH) == "The 43 Democrats who voted in favor secretly oppose it but have no spine or willpower to say so."
"While the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism initiatives have helped avert additional attacks on our soil, the threat has not receded," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Of course not, dumbass. The threat will not recede until we (the Infidels) remove our troops from the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia) because that's exactly what Osama expicitly stated! But America won't do that and we all know why.
"The House debate included frequent references to the attacks earlier in the day, two weeks after larger London blasts that killed 56, including four suicide bombers." Hmmm... could it be that THIS is what the London blasts were about?
Ugh... I am disgusted with this government beyond words.
I meant that even though their current driver download doesn't support your card, do you still have the previous one that did? It appears you do. Also, I too once had a problem with making Nvidia's accelerated drivers work with Linux. When you tried to use the old accelerated drivers, did your screen either get to the desktop then lockup when you did anything or hang on the white screen that says "Nvidia?" It kept doing that to me, and I found out that it needed to compile it's own kernel interface module. Does that help?
As for X/Kde eating 36% CPU idling on 1.5Ghz+ machines, I've got no explanation. Did you try ps aux to see if there's something crazy in the background? One possible explanation is that if you run kded and then unplug a USB card reader, kded starts eating huge amounts of cpu trying to get to the reader.
X eats 1/3 of your CPU drawing the screen? I'm running KDE right now, and X/KDE eat next to no CPU time. Unless of course it's redrawing the screen, when you'd presumably *want* it to use as much CPU as it can get so it'll finish up... Also, even if Nvidia doesn't support your card anymore, do you have the hardware drivers for it? That might be part of the problem.
And I'm using an aging 1.57 Ghz Athlon with 256MB of ram. ps aux shows X, Konsole and Konqueror consuming a combined 2% cpu, about as much as my mp3 player. Did you try Linux on a Pentium-150?
BTW, if you want Konqueror to start in about 1.5 seconds, tell KDE to preload an instance. Konqueror -> Configure -> Settings -> Performance
The 1.4% refers to the fraction of the Uranium in Little Boy that underwent fission before the weapon disassembled. Fat Man was something like 10% (can't find it in the Nuclear Weapons FAQ at 1 AM...). This was one of the reasons that Little Boy was the only gun-type bomb ever built.
Fine - put a webcam on top of my monitor. I'll tape a picture of my room in front of it.
Hell, if it comes down to it, you can get a CRT, take the monitor apart, and record the unavoidably analog signals that drive the electron guns! Will the monitor self-destruct if you disassemble it? Fine, I'll set the monitor face-down on a scanner and have a script single-step the movie and then re-integrate the frames.
Dear facist idiots in Hollywood: Nothing, I repeat NOTHING, that you can do will stop a sufficiently determined user from duplicating a movie. And it only takes one, who then gives it to the others. But keep trying - it'll be most amusing to see you destroy yourselves trying to do the impossible.
(Assuming this isn't a prank) Dear asshole: Next time you're going to post spoilers, either give a fracking warning or post a link rather than plaintext. And who modded this jerk up?
Huh? Water doesn't start breaking apart until 5000* F, and it boils away at only 212. And applying high speed alternating electric fields to water is called a microwave oven... Con.
I just graduated high school in Southern California. Our campus was designed for ~1500 students and we have ~3000 (Our student parking lots are being consumed by portables). My perspective is:
1) If you wanted, your school day could already last 8 hours: from 7am to 3pm. That covers 7 classes (55min each) + 15min brunch + 45min lunch. Most, including myself, opted for 6 classes going from either 7 to 2 or 8 to 3.
2) Don't worry about english - we have to take 4 years of it. 3 years of the generic stuff, then splitting to the classes for people who like english and those who hate it. Couldn't agree more about math though - only 2 years mandatory, and most kids go buy a TI-83 or 92 when they're in geometry (Kids, you don't need that $150 calculator until you get to pre-calc and they make you use inverse matrices).
3) Probably a good idea. IIRC they waive the foreign language requirement if you can demonstrate proficiency in a second language beforehand.
4) Absolutely! Rather than teachers for English 9, English 10, English 11, have teachers for English-beginning, English-intermediate, and English-advanced...
As for failing students, don't tell that to the principal at my elementary school (arrived when I was in 3rd). If I'd known what a PHB was at the time, I'd have definetly recognized her as one. If we promote everyone, even if they failed, we'll look smarter!
5) I wasn't one of the people who got in trouble, so I can't comment on this...
6) You mean like how my school found more than a million dollars to completely redo the entire football field, yet we have to share books in science class and don't even *have* a class set for French? *bashing head on desk* Even AP Calc didn't have quite enough for everybody (And to add insult to injury, my seat in my science class made me watch the damn field being rebuilt).
7) Me? I hated PE... took the mandatory 2 years and then good riddance. I haven't gotten fat since I left either, and I managed to get into slightly better shape on my own. But I eat fast food *maybe* once or twice a month. The other stuff I eat isn't all that healthy either, but it's not fast food - it actually does have some nutritional value too.
8) I dunno. The graduation requirements are supposed to be the minimum needed. I took the minimum amount of English and PE classes, but took both science and math all 4 years. If someone wants to just squeak by and be mediocre, fine. It's a waste of effort (and usually tax money) to try and educate someone who doesn't want to be educated.
9) Absolutely!
10) When you pay most (not all, but most) teachers a little more than Blue Barrel pays the garbage man, what do you expect? And in California, you've also got the teacher's union to deal with. You'd think that teaching would be a highly respected and well-paid job (As I believe it is in eastern Asia), but not in the USA...
The problem is that many of these (particularly 1 and 10) need lots of money. Schools that already have money generally don't have too many problems that they can't deal with (building new facilities and maintaining old ones, hiring new teachers, getting computers, etc). Since most school funding comes from local property taxes, the schools that most need these reforms are the ones most desperately in need of the money to do it. That, and many schools that do have the money misallocate it (My high school doesn't need a frackin metal detector, it needs a new books!!!).
Oh, yeah... 11) Fix the massive cultural failure where being smart is considered *uncool*.
Assuming antiatoms exhibit the same properties at normal atoms (ie carbon is diamagnetic, therefore anticarbon is diamagnetic), you could in principle form an antimatter solid or liquid made of antiatoms that are diamagnetic and suspend it in a magnetic field (Lithium and Beryllium have susceptibilities of ~6 X 10^-5).
On the other hand, you'll never get much acceleration this way: Each tesla of magnetic field will generate about 3-5 M/S^2 of repulsion in those materials, which is how much acceleration you get before they bottom out. That and it compounds the massive energy inefficency of synthesizing antimatter with that of fusion of the resulting antihydrogen...
If you assume the information is stored in a square (not unreasonable), then 5 Megabits of information is roughly a 2200x2200 array of dots. If it covers one square centimeter of your thumb, that's 220 dots per millimeter.
If I took a picture of you where your head and feet occupied opposite ends of the frame using an 8x10 large-format camera, I still wouldn't be able to read your fingernails. The best picture camera lenses and Ilford Pan-f 50 film can both resolve around 200 lines/mm. Assuming that you're 2 meters tall, you'd be.25m tall on film and your 1cm fingernail would be 1.25mm on a side and represented by 180-250 pixels.
So assuming you stop long enough for me to take a picture using a camera so large it'd be impossible to hide (occupying a cubic foot and weighing at least 20 pounds) and stay perfectly still during an exposure at least several seconds long, I'll be about 70 times short of the # of pixels needed to read your fingernails (Despite a picture so sharp I'd literally be able to count every hair on your head). Or alternatively, I could read them if you let me focus my enormous large-format camera on an area 5 inches wide.
Now consider the cameras you encounter everyday: They are small format, 35mm or high-res digital capturing 1/100 as many pixels as large format film, placing them 7000 times below the needed detail. Unless they are wide open, diffraction will degrade the image to 100 lp/mm or less.
And even if a high enough resolution sensor of any kind were possible, to keep diffraction low enough you'd need a lens half a foot wide. No need to fear camera phones stealing your personal information from your fingernails (or from a CD, for that matter).
I'm dreaming about Slashdot now... I mean, there isn't really anyone that stupid, is there? Then again, the bounds some people (Like this lawsuit-happy astrologer) will go to to protect their (what, exactly?) are virtually unlimited...
On the other hand... since he's been harassing Northrup-Grumann, d'ya suppose that a test warhead might accidently fall on his business? One can hope... And since it's 7/4, no one will notice one more explosion:)
Ah, and others ask what the "smash head here" on my mousepad is for...
Energy production WRT fusion power: We've gone from energy out/energy in ratios of.000001 in the Stellarator reactors in the 60's and 70's to.3 and.4 today. We ARE making progress.
Space travel: We had functioning nuclear rockets in the 60's (NERVA). Basic idea: Pass liquid hydrogen over superhot fission reactor, capture energy from explosive vaporization. But do you have any idea what happens to environmentalists when you say the word 'nuclear' to them? They froth at the mouth. Not that there aren't real drawbacks (a nuclear rocket exploding within the atmosphere being the main one).
For a fuel that has an incredible energy density yet is completely safe to handle, look no further than nuclear isomers: the atomic nucleus equivalent of electrons in excited states. Tantalum 180m (the second most stable isomer) can hold 900 billion joules of energy per kilogram. An incredible source of energy - but there's about 1 kilogram of it on earth, current methods of pumping Tantalum into the excited state are grossly inefficient, there is no known way to make it drop back, and when it does the energy is 1nm gamma rays. We'll find a way, though - we always do.
I found that a little suspicious when I first saw it a few months ago. So I followed the little link at the top of that page to their FAQ. Choice quote:
"Additionally HP-UX, Linux, NetApp NetCache, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days"
A similar comparison with any major commercial UNIX will yield a great many such features (like working SMP support, journalled filesystems, NUMA support, logical volume management, realtime support, etc).
Numa support? Does that mean it plays the Numa Numa Dance every time it starts or something? Sounds like a neat feature:)
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously weren't in Southern California this morning at 5:07 am Pacific time... I thought it was an earthquake 'cause the house kept shaking for five seconds after the boom hit.
What major technical flaws of Windows does Mandrake have? I've been using it since 8.2, and I've never had those kinds of technical issues with it. The only real pain in the ass I've continually had to fight is dependency hell, which is inevitable if your RPM source doesn't happen to have a package you want.
The only way Mandrake emulates Windows in the look and feel of things, which you can completely rewrite in Configure your Desktop -> Look & Feel if you wish. As a server, it is powerful and stable. Drakconf gives you the option of a GUI. Shorewall makes configuring your firewall a breeze. After you choose a mirror for security updates, a full update is just 'urpmi.update -a; urpmi --update --auto-select -y --force' away (Note: --force just means default answer to questions is yes, not to force installation).
Honestly, what's so horrible about Mandrake? (Except for what seems to have happened after their merge into Mandriva - $50 for the version that doesn't have gcc or a media player? wtf?)
You've got which nuke was untested confused. The first bomb used in combat, on Hiroshima, was the Uranium gun bomb - It was the first and only of it's kind ever built (because it had such a low efficiency and was so dangerous to it's owners). The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was the same type as the device that was tested in New Mexico - a Plutonium implosion bomb.
Also, it would not have taken months to create another nuclear weapon. After the sucessful use of both designs, the creation of weapons was an engineering task. The nuclear reactors at Hartford and the separators at Oak Ridge, TN were separating/synthesizing enough Uranium and Plutonium for several bombs every month. A second plutonium bomb core was available on Aug. 13, ready to be shipped to Tinian Island.
See the Nuclear Weapons FAQ for more (8.1.5 on additional bombs).
Dateline before they had calendars: Lions, other predators could kill proto-humans venturing into the grasslands. Best to just stay in the trees.
Dateline 1492: High seas, storms in enormous Atlantic ocean could sink Columbus's ships before he can get across it and to China. Let's just stay in Europe, kay?
Dateline 1849: More crap than I can list could happen to you on your way to Oregon and California - Best to just stay back east where it's safe.
My point is, playing it safe and being absolutely terrified of risks makes it certain that you won't go anywhere new. Imagine if 1967-Nasa got replaced by 2005-Nasa just before the Apollo 1 disaster. By early 1970, the commission would have completed it's review. By 1973, the first unmanned Apollo to go around the moon would be launched. After spending 3 more years confirming that the astronauts won't get a life-threatening dose of radiation, a manned apollo circumnavigates the moon. By the time we land, the first TRS-80's are hitting the shelves.
On a different note, I have a solution to the enormous problem of getting stuff out of our gravity well: Send up enough to capture a small NEO that's already out of it. Get it into a stable orbit about 600 miles up. You've now got millions of tons of metals, silicates, and oxides to work with.
Thus, MS is screwed no matter what they do:
If they choose door #1, they will ultimately destroy themselves trying to secure the versions of their products that run on a fundamentally insecure base. They know this.
If they choose door #2, the A group users will continue to use their existing platform for as long as possible. When MS's lack of support finally burns them, they will jump ship and migrate to Linux/Mac (which are more than capable for light E-Mail, Web, music, the occasional document, etc) because their old PII is incapable of running XP, let alone Vista. The group B users will probably grudgingly upgrade and keep an eagle eye out for any escape route. They know this too.
Ultimately, because of this effect, MS will see a huge loss of market share because thier current business strategy (Provide the minimum quality of software needed to keep users from jumping ship) fails in the face of mature competitors (Linux, Mac, Solaris (?)). Then they will be forced to clean their platform up and take their place alongside other vendors. Competition is wonderful.
Microsoft undoubtedly knows all of this, and is trying to delay it as long as possible by trying to find a less-unacceptable mix of options 1 and 2. Eventually, they will have to start weaning users off of old platforms. This is it.
Mmm... them too. You're right. But that's another problem. Of late, it's become very fashionable for media outlets to tell everyone to 'get out and VOTE' and equally fasionable to berate people for not doing so. The result is ignorant votes as voters decide on things that they don't have a clue about beyond retarded 10-second soundbites on TV.
I mean, for God's sake, more than 50% of voters in November 2004 thought that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda. No doubt a sizeable fraction still do. The people are unwilling to educate themselves and the politicians have no interest in an educated electorate, despite all the BS they spew to the contrary while around elementary schools and little kids. They don't want constituents who can think for themselves, because people who think for themselves aren't so easily led and decieved.
If the media would stop hounding everyone to vote and denigrating those who don't, then people who care would educate themselves about the relevant issues and vote knowlegably and the idiots would stay at home.
(OT: Is anyone else having problems staying logged in?)
If we were winning the war, then the number of suicide bombers in Baghdad would be decreasing rather than increasing. As I said, this is turning into another Vietnam which will again demonstrate that technology CANNOT defeat an enemy who has the power of his convictions. We lost ~60000 men in Vietnam, the Vietcong lost more than 2 million - yet we left in shame.
You didn't read anything I wrote, did you? Osama bin Laden has called for and gotten Jihad against America because American soldiers are stationed in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca. HE FRACKING SAYS SO. If America withdraws it's forces from Saudi Arabia, he'll end the Jihad!!! But as I said, we won't do that for obvious reasons. Furthermore, if rejecting Islam was the reason that Osama hates us, then shouldn't he also be waging war on China?
Kill or capture all Islamic terrorists? Sure - just like each retaliatory strike by Israel against Hamas prevents violence rather than inciting more of it. Converting to Islam? Simply not going to happen. Removing our troops from the Holy Land of Mecca just like Osama wants? Not going to happen either. If it weren't for oil, we wouldn't give a flying damn about the middle east. Either we prop up corrupt dictatorships for oil and have to live with terrorists or we stop sucking the oil tit. It's obvious which we're choosing.
Bush is doing the 'right thing?' Was he doing the right thing when he 'fixed the facts around the policy' of war with Iraq? When he failed to fire Rove and Libby for exposing Valery Plame becasue her husband exposed his lie about the Niger yellowcake? When he entered Iraq with no plan to exit? Don't delude yourself - Bush didn't invade Iraq because Saddam is a nasty meanie person. He invaded Iraq because Iraq has 1/4 of the world's oil reserves, and his advisors would rather enrich their former employers than invest 200 billion dollars in alternative energy.
How has the 'Patriot' act affected me? It has affected me because I am not willing to wait for someone to declare Martial Law before I decide that my rights are being screwed over now.
I have a mousepad with "smash head here" written on it. But, seriously...
One of Osama's stated goals is to destroy, through holy war, America (the Great Satan). One of the things that made us great was our Constitution, that great document which protects our freedoms. Yet here goes the House of Representatives, doing exactly what bin Laden wants: Taking away our freedom. In fact, doing the one thing that Osama can never do. The only question I really want answered is, "House of Representatives: Who the heck are you representing?" Because I don't believe that the majority of America, let alone 60% of us, want the government to be able to get search warrants without a judge's consent. To force us to keep quiet about a search. To invade the privacy of our medical and library records.
And I don't want to hear any BS about 'it will only be used on/against terrorists.' This government, like any other, has abused/abuses almost every power it was ever given. And you think they'll pass up something as juicy, and so easy, and so incredibly tempting to abuse as this? Look at RICO. It was passed so the cops could bust meetings of mobsters. Now it's routinely used against groups of garden-variety criminals.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H L Mencken. Terrorism is a complex problem. We have to pull off a considerable juggling act: We have to try and defend ourselves against terrorists. We also have to make sure that we have a nation that is free and worth defending when we're done. We have to find and assauge the root cause of the hatred, because as Vietnam and now Iraq have demonstrated, superior technology can't defeat a foe with the power of conviction in his beliefs. And we have to reign in our collective ego, and not be too proud to admit that Iraq is a lost cause and that we should leave. And so far, our government is only keeping one ball in the air. The "Patriot" act is an answer that is clear, simple, and dead wrong.
"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -- Abba Eban.
"Most Democrats echoed that support but said they were concerned the law could allow citizens' civil liberties to be infringed." translate(BS, ENGLISH) == "The 43 Democrats who voted in favor secretly oppose it but have no spine or willpower to say so."
"While the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism initiatives have helped avert additional attacks on our soil, the threat has not receded," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Of course not, dumbass. The threat will not recede until we (the Infidels) remove our troops from the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia) because that's exactly what Osama expicitly stated! But America won't do that and we all know why.
"The House debate included frequent references to the attacks earlier in the day, two weeks after larger London blasts that killed 56, including four suicide bombers." Hmmm... could it be that THIS is what the London blasts were about?
Ugh... I am disgusted with this government beyond words.
I meant that even though their current driver download doesn't support your card, do you still have the previous one that did? It appears you do. Also, I too once had a problem with making Nvidia's accelerated drivers work with Linux. When you tried to use the old accelerated drivers, did your screen either get to the desktop then lockup when you did anything or hang on the white screen that says "Nvidia?" It kept doing that to me, and I found out that it needed to compile it's own kernel interface module. Does that help?
As for X/Kde eating 36% CPU idling on 1.5Ghz+ machines, I've got no explanation. Did you try ps aux to see if there's something crazy in the background? One possible explanation is that if you run kded and then unplug a USB card reader, kded starts eating huge amounts of cpu trying to get to the reader.
X eats 1/3 of your CPU drawing the screen? I'm running KDE right now, and X/KDE eat next to no CPU time. Unless of course it's redrawing the screen, when you'd presumably *want* it to use as much CPU as it can get so it'll finish up... Also, even if Nvidia doesn't support your card anymore, do you have the hardware drivers for it? That might be part of the problem.
And I'm using an aging 1.57 Ghz Athlon with 256MB of ram. ps aux shows X, Konsole and Konqueror consuming a combined 2% cpu, about as much as my mp3 player. Did you try Linux on a Pentium-150?
BTW, if you want Konqueror to start in about 1.5 seconds, tell KDE to preload an instance. Konqueror -> Configure -> Settings -> Performance
The 1.4% refers to the fraction of the Uranium in Little Boy that underwent fission before the weapon disassembled. Fat Man was something like 10% (can't find it in the Nuclear Weapons FAQ at 1 AM...). This was one of the reasons that Little Boy was the only gun-type bomb ever built.
Fine - put a webcam on top of my monitor. I'll tape a picture of my room in front of it.
Hell, if it comes down to it, you can get a CRT, take the monitor apart, and record the unavoidably analog signals that drive the electron guns! Will the monitor self-destruct if you disassemble it? Fine, I'll set the monitor face-down on a scanner and have a script single-step the movie and then re-integrate the frames.
Dear facist idiots in Hollywood: Nothing, I repeat NOTHING, that you can do will stop a sufficiently determined user from duplicating a movie. And it only takes one, who then gives it to the others. But keep trying - it'll be most amusing to see you destroy yourselves trying to do the impossible.
(Assuming this isn't a prank) Dear asshole: Next time you're going to post spoilers, either give a fracking warning or post a link rather than plaintext. And who modded this jerk up?
Huh? Water doesn't start breaking apart until 5000* F, and it boils away at only 212. And applying high speed alternating electric fields to water is called a microwave oven... Con.
I just graduated high school in Southern California. Our campus was designed for ~1500 students and we have ~3000 (Our student parking lots are being consumed by portables). My perspective is:
1) If you wanted, your school day could already last 8 hours: from 7am to 3pm. That covers 7 classes (55min each) + 15min brunch + 45min lunch. Most, including myself, opted for 6 classes going from either 7 to 2 or 8 to 3.
2) Don't worry about english - we have to take 4 years of it. 3 years of the generic stuff, then splitting to the classes for people who like english and those who hate it. Couldn't agree more about math though - only 2 years mandatory, and most kids go buy a TI-83 or 92 when they're in geometry (Kids, you don't need that $150 calculator until you get to pre-calc and they make you use inverse matrices).
3) Probably a good idea. IIRC they waive the foreign language requirement if you can demonstrate proficiency in a second language beforehand.
4) Absolutely! Rather than teachers for English 9, English 10, English 11, have teachers for English-beginning, English-intermediate, and English-advanced...
As for failing students, don't tell that to the principal at my elementary school (arrived when I was in 3rd). If I'd known what a PHB was at the time, I'd have definetly recognized her as one. If we promote everyone, even if they failed, we'll look smarter!
5) I wasn't one of the people who got in trouble, so I can't comment on this...
6) You mean like how my school found more than a million dollars to completely redo the entire football field, yet we have to share books in science class and don't even *have* a class set for French? *bashing head on desk* Even AP Calc didn't have quite enough for everybody (And to add insult to injury, my seat in my science class made me watch the damn field being rebuilt).
7) Me? I hated PE... took the mandatory 2 years and then good riddance. I haven't gotten fat since I left either, and I managed to get into slightly better shape on my own. But I eat fast food *maybe* once or twice a month. The other stuff I eat isn't all that healthy either, but it's not fast food - it actually does have some nutritional value too.
8) I dunno. The graduation requirements are supposed to be the minimum needed. I took the minimum amount of English and PE classes, but took both science and math all 4 years. If someone wants to just squeak by and be mediocre, fine. It's a waste of effort (and usually tax money) to try and educate someone who doesn't want to be educated.
9) Absolutely!
10) When you pay most (not all, but most) teachers a little more than Blue Barrel pays the garbage man, what do you expect? And in California, you've also got the teacher's union to deal with. You'd think that teaching would be a highly respected and well-paid job (As I believe it is in eastern Asia), but not in the USA...
The problem is that many of these (particularly 1 and 10) need lots of money. Schools that already have money generally don't have too many problems that they can't deal with (building new facilities and maintaining old ones, hiring new teachers, getting computers, etc). Since most school funding comes from local property taxes, the schools that most need these reforms are the ones most desperately in need of the money to do it. That, and many schools that do have the money misallocate it (My high school doesn't need a frackin metal detector, it needs a new books!!!).
Oh, yeah... 11) Fix the massive cultural failure where being smart is considered *uncool*.
I tried ./Configure --help with OpenSSL-0.9.7g for Linux, and noticed something that might help in the output:
[[no-]zlib|zlib-dynamic]
Would it help to re[configure & compile & install] with the no-zlib option? I know it's just a bandaid, but every little bit helps, right?
Assuming antiatoms exhibit the same properties at normal atoms (ie carbon is diamagnetic, therefore anticarbon is diamagnetic), you could in principle form an antimatter solid or liquid made of antiatoms that are diamagnetic and suspend it in a magnetic field (Lithium and Beryllium have susceptibilities of ~6 X 10^-5).
On the other hand, you'll never get much acceleration this way: Each tesla of magnetic field will generate about 3-5 M/S^2 of repulsion in those materials, which is how much acceleration you get before they bottom out. That and it compounds the massive energy inefficency of synthesizing antimatter with that of fusion of the resulting antihydrogen...
If you assume the information is stored in a square (not unreasonable), then 5 Megabits of information is roughly a 2200x2200 array of dots. If it covers one square centimeter of your thumb, that's 220 dots per millimeter.
.25m tall on film and your 1cm fingernail would be 1.25mm on a side and represented by 180-250 pixels.
If I took a picture of you where your head and feet occupied opposite ends of the frame using an 8x10 large-format camera, I still wouldn't be able to read your fingernails. The best picture camera lenses and Ilford Pan-f 50 film can both resolve around 200 lines/mm. Assuming that you're 2 meters tall, you'd be
So assuming you stop long enough for me to take a picture using a camera so large it'd be impossible to hide (occupying a cubic foot and weighing at least 20 pounds) and stay perfectly still during an exposure at least several seconds long, I'll be about 70 times short of the # of pixels needed to read your fingernails (Despite a picture so sharp I'd literally be able to count every hair on your head). Or alternatively, I could read them if you let me focus my enormous large-format camera on an area 5 inches wide.
Now consider the cameras you encounter everyday: They are small format, 35mm or high-res digital capturing 1/100 as many pixels as large format film, placing them 7000 times below the needed detail. Unless they are wide open, diffraction will degrade the image to 100 lp/mm or less.
And even if a high enough resolution sensor of any kind were possible, to keep diffraction low enough you'd need a lens half a foot wide. No need to fear camera phones stealing your personal information from your fingernails (or from a CD, for that matter).
I'm dreaming about Slashdot now... I mean, there isn't really anyone that stupid, is there? Then again, the bounds some people (Like this lawsuit-happy astrologer) will go to to protect their (what, exactly?) are virtually unlimited...
I wanna throw this guy off.
:)
On the other hand... since he's been harassing Northrup-Grumann, d'ya suppose that a test warhead might accidently fall on his business? One can hope... And since it's 7/4, no one will notice one more explosion
Ah, and others ask what the "smash head here" on my mousepad is for...
Energy production WRT fusion power: We've gone from energy out/energy in ratios of .000001 in the Stellarator reactors in the 60's and 70's to .3 and .4 today. We ARE making progress.
:)
Space travel: We had functioning nuclear rockets in the 60's (NERVA). Basic idea: Pass liquid hydrogen over superhot fission reactor, capture energy from explosive vaporization. But do you have any idea what happens to environmentalists when you say the word 'nuclear' to them? They froth at the mouth. Not that there aren't real drawbacks (a nuclear rocket exploding within the atmosphere being the main one).
For a fuel that has an incredible energy density yet is completely safe to handle, look no further than nuclear isomers: the atomic nucleus equivalent of electrons in excited states. Tantalum 180m (the second most stable isomer) can hold 900 billion joules of energy per kilogram. An incredible source of energy - but there's about 1 kilogram of it on earth, current methods of pumping Tantalum into the excited state are grossly inefficient, there is no known way to make it drop back, and when it does the energy is 1nm gamma rays. We'll find a way, though - we always do.
AI: Ya got me here, AI still does suck.
I found that a little suspicious when I first saw it a few months ago. So I followed the little link at the top of that page to their FAQ. Choice quote:
"Additionally HP-UX, Linux, NetApp NetCache, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days"
A similar comparison with any major commercial UNIX will yield a great many such features (like working SMP support, journalled filesystems, NUMA support, logical volume management, realtime support, etc).
:)
Numa support? Does that mean it plays the Numa Numa Dance every time it starts or something? Sounds like a neat feature