I was similarly converted to Apple, but I keep a linux box around and use it quite frequently. But thanks to the Mac, I now do everything in GNUStep.
I'm actually amazed that OS X hasn't spurred a renaissance for GNUStep. I figured all the "I like MacOS, but I don't want to pay for Apple hardware" weenies would be hard at work getting around this by using GNUStep as a basis for their Free take-off of OS X instead of sticking with Gnome and KDE (both of which are just Free take-off of Windows in my book).
I assume the desktop widgets you speak of were in Mac OS classic, along with a lot of other MacOS features that haven't been re-introduced until recently.
If that is the case, how far back do they go? Do they predate the BeOS system, where you could literally drag widgets from one application to a container? It wasn't as configurable as, say, Konfabulator, but the ease-of-use for the end user was excellent. You could, for example, put a Google Search control on your desktop (or in a container window full of these widgets, etc.) by going to Google in the web browser, pressing a keyboard command to display widget anchor points, draggin the anchor point for the browser window's display view to wherever you want it, and resizing it to fit the search too. No programming needed. =D
Bluetooth is incredibly low power, and operates on a different frequencly from WLAN. Also, the peer-to-peer style network topology means that two BT networks in the same area will share the bandwidth rather than interfere with each other.
You'd have to get a lot of devices into a small area before interference would become a big problem.
It varies from school to school, so I can't speak for anyone else, but my comprehensive fee (room and board included) was about $24,000 annually. I don't remember how much of that was tuition.
My linux box is a P-233MMX with a Chips & Technologies graphics adapter and 64MB of RAM. Needless to say, the definition of 'lightweight' seems to have left me behind - FireFox is supposed to be lightweight, but when I am forced to use it I discover that it takes so long to render pages that it can make any connection feel like dialup.
I've been using WindowMaker because it's the most lightweight thing I can find that I don't consider ugly as sin, but I would like to have something that does more than just draw boxes around my xTerms.
Has anyone else tried this on a similarly low-power computer? Is it really lightweight, or is it just "lighter-weight?"
I'd actually like to see this feature go away in general. At best, I see the 'desktop' of most GUIs as nothing other than a broken shelf. (a note to other Apple folks out there - I also consider the OS X shelf to be a broken shelf.)
Not true! Due to the way humans percieve light and dark, the point at which we cease to see detail in light areas in an image is generally about the point where the image (whether a standard photo or a digital one) ceases to be able to encode any more information. On the other hand, when something looks black to us, you can frequently much with the exposure (or brightness, if digital) and contrast to bring out a surprising amount of detail.
This effect is actually even worse in digital photography. CCD pixels act like "buckets", and when they fill up they begin to spill into neighboring pixels. As an extreme example, if you shine a laser beam on a CCD the spot it produces in the image will be much larger than the area the laser beam actually hit.
In other words, unless they were handing the images in Huygens in a very unusual way, too dark is *MUCH* better than too bright.
If the images are too light on purpose, it is simply because it's easier for humans to see detail in light (but not overexposed) areas of an image.
1. Dumb linux down so people who don't want to learn the details of how computing works (a.k.a. almost everybody) are going to feel comfortable switching.
2. Keep linux the way it is, keep OSS in its niche, and leave the future of computing in the hands of Microsoft and Apple.
(Note that it is perfectly reasonable to have a consumer version of linux and geek version of linux. Apple has even succeeded in having both of them be the same thing.)
But this vernacular concept of "the theory of evolution" paves the way for so many misconceptions of evolution. We need to make a distinction between dispute about the conflict between whether species do change over time or if all species are as they were when they were created (the law of evolution vs. pure creationism, or intelligent design), and the argument over the mechanism by which that happens (which isn't getting much dispute - if you believe that species do change, there aren't really many competing theories over how this happens), and the argument over this system's terminal point - i.e., was life created and then it evolved to produce humans, or did life slowly form out of the primordial ooze.
And the problem is, this argument is very hard to handle in the public space, especially w/r/t what is being taught in schools, precisely because most people do not make a linguistic distinction, resulting in most people I know not really understanding the various sides and angles of the argument well enough to be intellectually capable of forming a reasoned opinion on it.
Sorry, but Linux is still a big fat No. I am not even going to go into the reasons why; they are all glaringly obvious. Linux on the desktop is a great goal, and I am actively working on it and advocating it to the more computer-savvy people I know. But let's be realistic here - all the people I have convinced to try it out have had to call me for help with something once a day at first, dropping to once a week after a month, and the amount of help they need continues to drop logarithmically.
The fact of the matter is, Linux won't be ready for the dekstop until the user has no need to know that the command line even exists, for any reason whatsoever. Nor will it be ready until the user has no need to know the name of their computer's package management system, for any reason whatsoever. Nor will it be ready until the user has no need to know wheter xxx frob is installed, or whether they are using devfs, or the difference between GNOME and KDE, or anything like that.
And until we have one (and exactly one) "linux base install" that all popular distributions meet, and (assuming we don't want to just give up on one of the two major DE's) both GNOME and KDE resolve their differences and agree to use the same standard dialogs (or have their apps call the other's standard dialogs when on a system that uses the other one), and some major rethinking of the kind that went into producing NEXTSTEP and it's line happens to Linux, Linux will be nowhere near being ready for the desktop.
Seriously, people. Get your heads out of the sand. Thinking that "better == good" is not going to get Linux onto the desktop any sooner; it's just going to retard its progress.
This was my initial belief, but I looked up the definition online and the definition as used in biology was this: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." According to this definition, at least, you can't separate the theory of evolution from that of natural selection. Looking up "natural selection" seems to confirm this, "evolution" is just short for "Darwin's theory of evolution", and it seems to me that natural selection, as the sole basis for the origin of human life, is far from scientific fact.
There's a lot of misinformation out there, and you're going to find a lot of it online. The fact of the matter is, evolution can't possibly be synonymous with Darwin's theory of natural selection, because scientists had been actively trying to figure out how evolution works long before Darwin was on the scene. Look up Lamarckian Evolution to read up on an older competing theory for how evolution works. It was still fairly popular as recently as 100 years ago.
In fact, there is some more recent research showing that there might be Lamarckian elements to evolution, which would necessitate the replacement of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with a new one. Let's sincerely hope that the law and the theory are separate entities, because otherwise we're going to have to come up with a new word.
I really don't know what to think about this sticker.
On one hand, I actually like it. It isn't pushing Creationism or anything like that, it is simply stating that something is a theory, and implying that all theories should be approached with skepticism, no matter how well-established they are. Given that skepticism is basically the foundation of all science (after all, why would we search for new theories if we thought the ones we had were all correct), I would say that this sticker is, in reality, a big win for the promotion of a scientifically-minded population.
On the other hand, the people who wrote the copy for this sticker are clearly not very knowledgeable about science, and are misinforming the kids because of it. The fact of the matter is, evolution is a fact of nature, a law, and we are surrounded by proof that it exists (I don't look like my parents, animal breeding) just as much as we are by proof that gravity exists. The theory is the model we use for what causes it - natural selection in this case. This is a big loss for science, because no matter how many times the textbook explains law, theory, and hypothesis, the kids are going to see this misuse of the word theory in the front of their books, and it's going to confuse some of them.
And the fact of the matter is, I don't think that any school board that lacks a basic understanding of the cirriculum should be frobbing the cirriculum.
Heh, I tried one in the store. The graphics were nice, I'll grant it that. but after you consider in the controls and the price, the N-Gage couldn't compete against the GB Color as a gaming platform.
I don't know whether it makes it more or less funny that I can honestly say I have mentioned the N-Gage to quite a few people and gotten the response, "What's an N-Gage?" Even some gamers.
Wait, this article says that the story about psychotropic chemicals in lettuce is apparently based on shaky evidence at best (namely, that there is a chemical in fresh lettuce that smells like opium), and that no medical studies have ever been able to find any effects.
Eh, Comcast will likely learn their lesson in a couple years when G4 fails miserably (Really, I don't even know any hardcore gamers who like their programming.) and someone else comes out with a TechTV-like channel that ends up being rather successful.
I, for one, would love to see a channel that runs documentaries on stuff like the life of Babbage and the development of the IBM 360. I'd even buy digitcal cable for it.
It's not expensive, but $150 doesn't seem like Rollback Prices for what you get. A nice microcontroller or all-in-one embedded computer.
Granted, you have to pay quite a bit extra ($180) to get the kit with a power supply (gotta have one of those), and a CompactFlash card (also gotta have one of those. 8MB RAM(or 16 if you get the $165 version) is going to fill up quickly.)
Right. But if we're talking fuel cells, you're still most likely going to be much less efficient because you have twice as many energy conversions with hydrogen fuel cells (chemical -> thermal -> kinetic -> electric -> chemical -> electric -> kinetic) as with burning gasoline in the car (chemical -> thermal -> kinetic). I am no engineer, but it seems to me like the hydrogen generation process and the fuel cell cars would have to be amazingly well engineerd to be as effient as a gasoline car.
On top of that, cars are a fair piece cleaner than our existing power plant infrastructure (at least in the USA), so it's going to also take a whole lot of 1/2%s in the realm of cleanliness to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles result in less pollution, too.
Of course, you don't hear about this. You see, the big bucks (energy industry) wants a hydrogen economy really badly because in a hydrogen economy, we are still just as dependent on their ability to burn fossil fuels. If you pay attention, it's Detroit and Big Oil that is funding the hydrogen research, while real alternatives that might actually result in a cleaner planet seem to be relegated to academia.
(Note: I'm not saying hydrogen can't possibly be cleaner; I'm just saying the technology is nowhere near being there yet, and I personally doubt that fuel cell only vehicles will ever be a great option from an envrionmental standpoint.)
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I was similarly converted to Apple, but I keep a linux box around and use it quite frequently. But thanks to the Mac, I now do everything in GNUStep.
I'm actually amazed that OS X hasn't spurred a renaissance for GNUStep. I figured all the "I like MacOS, but I don't want to pay for Apple hardware" weenies would be hard at work getting around this by using GNUStep as a basis for their Free take-off of OS X instead of sticking with Gnome and KDE (both of which are just Free take-off of Windows in my book).
I assume the desktop widgets you speak of were in Mac OS classic, along with a lot of other MacOS features that haven't been re-introduced until recently.
If that is the case, how far back do they go? Do they predate the BeOS system, where you could literally drag widgets from one application to a container? It wasn't as configurable as, say, Konfabulator, but the ease-of-use for the end user was excellent. You could, for example, put a Google Search control on your desktop (or in a container window full of these widgets, etc.) by going to Google in the web browser, pressing a keyboard command to display widget anchor points, draggin the anchor point for the browser window's display view to wherever you want it, and resizing it to fit the search too. No programming needed. =D
Bluetooth is incredibly low power, and operates on a different frequencly from WLAN. Also, the peer-to-peer style network topology means that two BT networks in the same area will share the bandwidth rather than interfere with each other.
You'd have to get a lot of devices into a small area before interference would become a big problem.
It varies from school to school, so I can't speak for anyone else, but my comprehensive fee (room and board included) was about $24,000 annually. I don't remember how much of that was tuition.
My linux box is a P-233MMX with a Chips & Technologies graphics adapter and 64MB of RAM. Needless to say, the definition of 'lightweight' seems to have left me behind - FireFox is supposed to be lightweight, but when I am forced to use it I discover that it takes so long to render pages that it can make any connection feel like dialup.
I've been using WindowMaker because it's the most lightweight thing I can find that I don't consider ugly as sin, but I would like to have something that does more than just draw boxes around my xTerms.
Has anyone else tried this on a similarly low-power computer? Is it really lightweight, or is it just "lighter-weight?"
I'd actually like to see this feature go away in general. At best, I see the 'desktop' of most GUIs as nothing other than a broken shelf. (a note to other Apple folks out there - I also consider the OS X shelf to be a broken shelf.)
How can the guys from ESA and NASA extract much information from blurred images?
You obviously don't watch CSI.
Better to bright than too dark...
Not true! Due to the way humans percieve light and dark, the point at which we cease to see detail in light areas in an image is generally about the point where the image (whether a standard photo or a digital one) ceases to be able to encode any more information. On the other hand, when something looks black to us, you can frequently much with the exposure (or brightness, if digital) and contrast to bring out a surprising amount of detail.
This effect is actually even worse in digital photography. CCD pixels act like "buckets", and when they fill up they begin to spill into neighboring pixels. As an extreme example, if you shine a laser beam on a CCD the spot it produces in the image will be much larger than the area the laser beam actually hit.
In other words, unless they were handing the images in Huygens in a very unusual way, too dark is *MUCH* better than too bright.
If the images are too light on purpose, it is simply because it's easier for humans to see detail in light (but not overexposed) areas of an image.
Two options:
1. Dumb linux down so people who don't want to learn the details of how computing works (a.k.a. almost everybody) are going to feel comfortable switching.
2. Keep linux the way it is, keep OSS in its niche, and leave the future of computing in the hands of Microsoft and Apple.
(Note that it is perfectly reasonable to have a consumer version of linux and geek version of linux. Apple has even succeeded in having both of them be the same thing.)
But this vernacular concept of "the theory of evolution" paves the way for so many misconceptions of evolution. We need to make a distinction between dispute about the conflict between whether species do change over time or if all species are as they were when they were created (the law of evolution vs. pure creationism, or intelligent design), and the argument over the mechanism by which that happens (which isn't getting much dispute - if you believe that species do change, there aren't really many competing theories over how this happens), and the argument over this system's terminal point - i.e., was life created and then it evolved to produce humans, or did life slowly form out of the primordial ooze.
And the problem is, this argument is very hard to handle in the public space, especially w/r/t what is being taught in schools, precisely because most people do not make a linguistic distinction, resulting in most people I know not really understanding the various sides and angles of the argument well enough to be intellectually capable of forming a reasoned opinion on it.
Sorry, but Linux is still a big fat No. I am not even going to go into the reasons why; they are all glaringly obvious. Linux on the desktop is a great goal, and I am actively working on it and advocating it to the more computer-savvy people I know. But let's be realistic here - all the people I have convinced to try it out have had to call me for help with something once a day at first, dropping to once a week after a month, and the amount of help they need continues to drop logarithmically.
The fact of the matter is, Linux won't be ready for the dekstop until the user has no need to know that the command line even exists, for any reason whatsoever. Nor will it be ready until the user has no need to know the name of their computer's package management system, for any reason whatsoever. Nor will it be ready until the user has no need to know wheter xxx frob is installed, or whether they are using devfs, or the difference between GNOME and KDE, or anything like that.
And until we have one (and exactly one) "linux base install" that all popular distributions meet, and (assuming we don't want to just give up on one of the two major DE's) both GNOME and KDE resolve their differences and agree to use the same standard dialogs (or have their apps call the other's standard dialogs when on a system that uses the other one), and some major rethinking of the kind that went into producing NEXTSTEP and it's line happens to Linux, Linux will be nowhere near being ready for the desktop.
Seriously, people. Get your heads out of the sand. Thinking that "better == good" is not going to get Linux onto the desktop any sooner; it's just going to retard its progress.
This was my initial belief, but I looked up the definition online and the definition as used in biology was this: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." According to this definition, at least, you can't separate the theory of evolution from that of natural selection. Looking up "natural selection" seems to confirm this, "evolution" is just short for "Darwin's theory of evolution", and it seems to me that natural selection, as the sole basis for the origin of human life, is far from scientific fact.
There's a lot of misinformation out there, and you're going to find a lot of it online. The fact of the matter is, evolution can't possibly be synonymous with Darwin's theory of natural selection, because scientists had been actively trying to figure out how evolution works long before Darwin was on the scene. Look up Lamarckian Evolution to read up on an older competing theory for how evolution works. It was still fairly popular as recently as 100 years ago.
In fact, there is some more recent research showing that there might be Lamarckian elements to evolution, which would necessitate the replacement of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with a new one. Let's sincerely hope that the law and the theory are separate entities, because otherwise we're going to have to come up with a new word.
I really don't know what to think about this sticker.
On one hand, I actually like it. It isn't pushing Creationism or anything like that, it is simply stating that something is a theory, and implying that all theories should be approached with skepticism, no matter how well-established they are. Given that skepticism is basically the foundation of all science (after all, why would we search for new theories if we thought the ones we had were all correct), I would say that this sticker is, in reality, a big win for the promotion of a scientifically-minded population.
On the other hand, the people who wrote the copy for this sticker are clearly not very knowledgeable about science, and are misinforming the kids because of it. The fact of the matter is, evolution is a fact of nature, a law, and we are surrounded by proof that it exists (I don't look like my parents, animal breeding) just as much as we are by proof that gravity exists. The theory is the model we use for what causes it - natural selection in this case. This is a big loss for science, because no matter how many times the textbook explains law, theory, and hypothesis, the kids are going to see this misuse of the word theory in the front of their books, and it's going to confuse some of them.
And the fact of the matter is, I don't think that any school board that lacks a basic understanding of the cirriculum should be frobbing the cirriculum.
Heh, I tried one in the store. The graphics were nice, I'll grant it that. but after you consider in the controls and the price, the N-Gage couldn't compete against the GB Color as a gaming platform.
I remember the same fatal pronouncements for Windows CE
You must be thinking of the well-established fact that Windows CE is usually a fatal disease for electronic hardware.
I think I'm going to believe my brain, which is telling me that I most definitely did not catch a buzz off the salad I ate for lunch today.
I don't know whether it makes it more or less funny that I can honestly say I have mentioned the N-Gage to quite a few people and gotten the response, "What's an N-Gage?" Even some gamers.
Wait, this article says that the story about psychotropic chemicals in lettuce is apparently based on shaky evidence at best (namely, that there is a chemical in fresh lettuce that smells like opium), and that no medical studies have ever been able to find any effects.
Eh, Comcast will likely learn their lesson in a couple years when G4 fails miserably (Really, I don't even know any hardcore gamers who like their programming.) and someone else comes out with a TechTV-like channel that ends up being rather successful.
I, for one, would love to see a channel that runs documentaries on stuff like the life of Babbage and the development of the IBM 360. I'd even buy digitcal cable for it.
"Bare Bones Edit." Talk about an inaccurate name.
This is totally flamebait.
It's not expensive, but $150 doesn't seem like Rollback Prices for what you get. A nice microcontroller or all-in-one embedded computer.
Granted, you have to pay quite a bit extra ($180) to get the kit with a power supply (gotta have one of those), and a CompactFlash card (also gotta have one of those. 8MB RAM(or 16 if you get the $165 version) is going to fill up quickly.)
Don't forget that the fuel cell energy has to come from somewhere. You can't just dig it out of the ground like you can with fossil fuels.
Right. But if we're talking fuel cells, you're still most likely going to be much less efficient because you have twice as many energy conversions with hydrogen fuel cells (chemical -> thermal -> kinetic -> electric -> chemical -> electric -> kinetic) as with burning gasoline in the car (chemical -> thermal -> kinetic). I am no engineer, but it seems to me like the hydrogen generation process and the fuel cell cars would have to be amazingly well engineerd to be as effient as a gasoline car.
On top of that, cars are a fair piece cleaner than our existing power plant infrastructure (at least in the USA), so it's going to also take a whole lot of 1/2%s in the realm of cleanliness to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles result in less pollution, too.
Of course, you don't hear about this. You see, the big bucks (energy industry) wants a hydrogen economy really badly because in a hydrogen economy, we are still just as dependent on their ability to burn fossil fuels. If you pay attention, it's Detroit and Big Oil that is funding the hydrogen research, while real alternatives that might actually result in a cleaner planet seem to be relegated to academia.
(Note: I'm not saying hydrogen can't possibly be cleaner; I'm just saying the technology is nowhere near being there yet, and I personally doubt that fuel cell only vehicles will ever be a great option from an envrionmental standpoint.)
Geez, let's hope that the tattoo design they come up with isn't nearly as bad as their web design.
Uck! it's like the '90s all over again.