What about the perfectly reflexive sail? Having two such sails poiting against each other, the ping pong of the light particles would cause acceleration for both sides.. but who, to the hell, will pay for it?
(Assuming identical sails) of course the net momentum gain of the (closed) system is 0. The photons will become increasingly redshifted as the sails gain velocity away from each other (and the centre of mass). It is left as an exercise to the reader (I can't be bothered) to work out whether the energy lost by the photons can account for the energy gained by the sails.
Things like ad-aware, antivirus and personal firewall do have a role here, but it makes me sick thinking I am going to have to install/update all that shit on a pda.
For a WiFi/GPRS handheld or smartphone then firewalling the direct connection(s) to the outside world may be needed. The rest (anti-spyware, AV etc) could be hosted on the PC to which the device is synchronised, and run automagically (or on demand) when you connect. Then they can be updated by whatever means your desktop AV updates (assume broadband/corporate LAN and it gets even easier).
Chris
IIRC WinXP will overwrite the boot loader during the setup program without a choice (which would probably only confuse newbs). XP doesn't overwrite it regularly - only when set up.
As such, people install XP first then put Linux on after, and put GRUB/LILO in the boot loader's place.
That makes sense (and you explained it better than either the SuSE manual or Linux in a Nutshell). It's what I did - after fighting with 2 versions of partition magic to shrink the NTFS XP partition. This involved putting the drive from the laptop in the desktop and running PMagic under 98, then loosing the ability to boot either Windows or Linux on the desktop - both needed reinstalling.
Must be, because even for a casual user, the fact that Toshiba notebooks need a Windows application to adjust BIOS settings is really stupid design. This is in my experience, anyway.
That was one of the things that stopped me getting a tosh. Though I haven't yet sorted Linux drivers (if they exist) for the volume buttons on my Presario 2500, this is minor compared the toshiba stuff. They aren't always too keen on "up"grading your windows version either.
It was something like this
c:
cd program~1\blabla\
del/s *.*
And that's why I combine them into 1 line:
deltree/y c:\windows\history etc. in my autoexec for those rare times I am forced to use ie (e.g. recently paypal wouldn't let me register using netscape 7.1, despite allowing all cookies).
By the way, they more than made up for it with Windows 2000 and XP, based on the NT kernel--I can't even imagine all these people here who still use Windows 98 in their minds to gauge Windows.
My main machine is 98SE/SuSE8.2, my laptop is XP/SuSE8.2 (very nice on a compaq pressario 2600). I could have put XP on the main machine, but I'm still glad I didn't (and xp won't run transport tycoon! The only crashes I get are when the northbridge overheats because I took the fan off so I could fit a quieter one - then never got the quiet one. At work I still use NT4, and had an ME machine (long story) until it died a couple of weeks ago.
My answer was, essentially that the original poster's comments were a complete non-sequitur; a filtering package for an obscure operating system will do jack shit as far as filtering in schools and libraries.
That'll be the "obscure operating system" that 1/2 the posts here are saying is ideal for use in schools and libraries, will it?
While this could reduce the volume of SPAM, it is not necessarily the correct process for reduction.
I agree - but the money/environmental aspect is (a) more comprehensible to the luser who can't secure his system or find someone to do it for them, and (b) more likely to be encouraged by non nerds - there's often government backing for energy saving drives.
I'm really hoping that the "zombie" systems are disconnected by ISPs to reduce the amount of spam mailing systems out there.
So how much could spam be reduced by people shutting down their PCs overnight/when they're at work?
Even if you haven't got a malware-infested machine you money too so the only downside is the wait for the PC to boot - 1-2 minutes for my machines. Never mind the emissions reduction.
If you're still using something less than Windows 2000, you should spend the $100 to upgrade to at least 2000. It's been four years now--you don't still use a Linux kernel from four years ago, do you? Sometimes I wonder why there are so many stupid "BSOD" jokes (I haven't seen a BSOD in five years), then I see that a lot of people here still haven't gotten off the 9x line like most everyone else has.
The only times have a BSOD on my 98 machine (built just over a year ago) is when the northbridge gets too hot (I took the noisy fan off and haven't got round to fitting a decent one). That's about 4 times in a year.
If I put 2000 on it I would still want 98 for games, so I would end up with 98/2000/Linux on there - guess which one I wouldn't use.
Are popups still as bad a scourge on the Web as they were circa 2002? Worse? Anyone using (or supporting) unaltered IE care to comment?
Popups don't seem as bad as they were - otherwise I would find a way to install a popup blocker (or more likely Mozilla) despite the the policies. For some reason even the hosts file on this NT4 setup is ignored.
Hmm... Yeah... Except Word did not support connectors properly, IIRC. May have changed in more current versions, but I'm pretty sure at least Word97 didn't have that, and only way to have connectors was to embed Powerpoint object.
Possibly - I don't tend to use connectors. I find them too limiting (but then I tend to use powerpoint as a diagramming tool (for sketches of hardware) rather than for flowcharts, org charts and presentations. You should be able to run connectors to corners though.
Just checked and you're right, however if you draw the sketch including connectors in powerpoint and paste into word as a "picture" the connectors are reduced to lines, but still look the same.
In case you haven't guessed I don't like embedding - partly because this (work) machine is slow and short on RAM.
And same goes for graphics. Never ever use MS Word drawing functions for, well, for anything really. You can never be quite sure what happens if you for example resize the image... Or type more text into a textbox... Or breathe...
Always insert Powerpoint slide into the document. Unless you really need something Powerpoint can't do of course, in which case you should use whatever actual drawing program you need to.
If you make your word drawing a "drawing" (insert|picture|drawing) it resizes as well as an embedded powerpoint presentation, with less bloat. It's the same drawing engine after all.
At the time nobody used it for anything but a spreadsheet, now they use thier spreadsheet for database and crude DTP.
Perhaps part of the problem has been for poor layup capability of Word. If Word had been like AmiPro (early windows word processor which had great layup capability from day one), perhaps things would be different.
AmiPro (3.1 for win3.1) is still better at the "crude layup" tasks than word97 (and IIRC has a better equation editor). WordPro brings this up to the 32-bit age and is less bloated (file formats and app itself) than word. Openoffice is coming along fast, but I would still pick Smartsuite 9.5 for serious stuff (and freelance is a half-way decent drawing package as well as a presentation tool).
I also work at a printer. Crappy sent in files are a real problem, even though we wouldn't touch a Word or Excel doc with a 10 foot pole, our artists don't even have MS office installed
It's not just crappy files - it's inherent to the software - The xl interpretation of WYSIWYG is that (subtly) different screen settings mean a different printed result. We had to keep an old machine up just to print a regular report because otherwise the bosses complained that the graphs looked "wrong" because the hatchings didn't quite match the previous reports.
Does anyone happen to know the date of the printed issue of New Scientist that this appears/will appear in? Would it be the last week in March or the first week in April?
It'll be the last week in March one (dated 25th I think). I've got a subscription, so it dropped though my door yesterday.
Eliminating all ".zip" attachments, and also ".dll", ".exe", ".scr", ".pif", ".com", and ".bat" seems to do the trick. These are the ones that are either auto-executed by the horrid built-in Windows email clients or are commonly used by people who need an education in how to safely send files.
In many companies that might work, but when you have to send out a patch for a piece of 1-off code (that or something like it happens every couple of weeks for a few of us here) how else are you supposed to do it?
A CD in the post is too slow (internationally), so that's not an option. I have had to copy data to my MP3 player and email (or FTP) from home recently.
Don't blindly advocate blocking archives and executables at the door until there's a solution to this. Now blocking html email - that would be a good idea. As I've found out recently on a colleagues machine it's possibly for an accidentally malformed html email to crash outlook when opening in the preview pane (have to use outlook at work).
Your supervisor was half right, in the pre ATX days flipping the switch off really turn it off and no current was flowing through the circuits but would still be earth grounded. now in the post AT world this is a no no because even if the PC is switched off +5V (and +3.3V too?) is still flowing through the circuits.
Then you should get a real power supply with a real mains switch on the back. Or make up an earthing lead.
can only guess that picks an e-mail address at random from some list (address book, mayhaps?) and says it comes from there.
Prolly got your address from someone else's Lookout address book.
When Swen was doing the rounds I was getting dozens of "you sent a virus" bounces per hour - to my webmail account. Many of them still had the virus attached. I had a rough idea who was infected, but couldn't be sure.
Sadly true. Any they are going to be spamming the hell out of the rest of us with all the malware that spammers sneak onto their unpatched, unmaintained systems.
I'm nowhere near the only person I know who has a 98 box (now Linux dual boot) that is malware free and has been since I built it a year ago.
My old machine ran for years on 95OSR2 (and still does if I want it to). It's more stable than most XP machines I've used, and had 1 virus (got in before the definitions had been updated by solomon's) and 1 piece of spyware in those 6 years.
Have you thought about what happens if the ice near the North Pole melts? Compare it to having an icecube melting in a glass of water. The level of water will not, I repeat, will not rise.
Not much maybe, but the part that is currently above the surface will be spread out instead of concentrated in one small area. Much of the worry about (Northern hemisphere) melting is not concerned with the Arctic ice sheet (for the reasons you describe), but the Greenland ice sheet (which is, strangely enough, on top of Greenland). Also there is a large amount of water tied up in glaciers globally. Whether or not you think the Antarctic ice sheet is melting is open to debate - personally based on the evidence I have seen (though mostly a couple of years ago) I think it is.
Slashdot Mirror
(Assuming identical sails) of course the net momentum gain of the (closed) system is 0. The photons will become increasingly redshifted as the sails gain velocity away from each other (and the centre of mass). It is left as an exercise to the reader (I can't be bothered) to work out whether the energy lost by the photons can account for the energy gained by the sails.
Chris
For a WiFi/GPRS handheld or smartphone then firewalling the direct connection(s) to the outside world may be needed. The rest (anti-spyware, AV etc) could be hosted on the PC to which the device is synchronised, and run automagically (or on demand) when you connect. Then they can be updated by whatever means your desktop AV updates (assume broadband/corporate LAN and it gets even easier). Chris
As such, people install XP first then put Linux on after, and put GRUB/LILO in the boot loader's place.
That makes sense (and you explained it better than either the SuSE manual or Linux in a Nutshell). It's what I did - after fighting with 2 versions of partition magic to shrink the NTFS XP partition. This involved putting the drive from the laptop in the desktop and running PMagic under 98, then loosing the ability to boot either Windows or Linux on the desktop - both needed reinstalling.
That was one of the things that stopped me getting a tosh. Though I haven't yet sorted Linux drivers (if they exist) for the volume buttons on my Presario 2500, this is minor compared the toshiba stuff. They aren't always too keen on "up"grading your windows version either.
c:
cd program~1\blabla\
del
And that's why I combine them into 1 line: /y c:\windows\history etc. in my autoexec for those rare times I am forced to use ie (e.g. recently paypal wouldn't let me register using netscape 7.1, despite allowing all cookies).
deltree
That wouldn't be a tosh rescue disk would it? they're meant for stupid people, and automagically formatting is a "feature".
>Last I heard that was a standard feature of XP's bootloader.
My XP/Linux dual boot machine runs fine with grub - XP has never complained or broken it - yet.
My main machine is 98SE/SuSE8.2, my laptop is XP/SuSE8.2 (very nice on a compaq pressario 2600). I could have put XP on the main machine, but I'm still glad I didn't (and xp won't run transport tycoon! The only crashes I get are when the northbridge overheats because I took the fan off so I could fit a quieter one - then never got the quiet one. At work I still use NT4, and had an ME machine (long story) until it died a couple of weeks ago.
That'll be the "obscure operating system" that 1/2 the posts here are saying is ideal for use in schools and libraries, will it?
I agree - but the money/environmental aspect is (a) more comprehensible to the luser who can't secure his system or find someone to do it for them, and (b) more likely to be encouraged by non nerds - there's often government backing for energy saving drives.
So how much could spam be reduced by people shutting down their PCs overnight/when they're at work? Even if you haven't got a malware-infested machine you money too so the only downside is the wait for the PC to boot - 1-2 minutes for my machines. Never mind the emissions reduction.
What, this jet pack?
The only times have a BSOD on my 98 machine (built just over a year ago) is when the northbridge gets too hot (I took the noisy fan off and haven't got round to fitting a decent one). That's about 4 times in a year.
If I put 2000 on it I would still want 98 for games, so I would end up with 98/2000/Linux on there - guess which one I wouldn't use.
Popups don't seem as bad as they were - otherwise I would find a way to install a popup blocker (or more likely Mozilla) despite the the policies. For some reason even the hosts file on this NT4 setup is ignored.
Possibly - I don't tend to use connectors. I find them too limiting (but then I tend to use powerpoint as a diagramming tool (for sketches of hardware) rather than for flowcharts, org charts and presentations. You should be able to run connectors to corners though.
Just checked and you're right, however if you draw the sketch including connectors in powerpoint and paste into word as a "picture" the connectors are reduced to lines, but still look the same.
In case you haven't guessed I don't like embedding - partly because this (work) machine is slow and short on RAM.
application.statusbar= "my status text "& str(count_variable)
or something like that just to be sure it hasn't hung. Set
application.statusbar=false
(IIRC) at the end to restore normal control.
It's worth knowing that the hinder file ("help file" according to MS) is less useless for VBA than for most software.
Always insert Powerpoint slide into the document. Unless you really need something Powerpoint can't do of course, in which case you should use whatever actual drawing program you need to.
If you make your word drawing a "drawing" (insert|picture|drawing) it resizes as well as an embedded powerpoint presentation, with less bloat. It's the same drawing engine after all.
Perhaps part of the problem has been for poor layup capability of Word. If Word had been like AmiPro (early windows word processor which had great layup capability from day one), perhaps things would be different.
AmiPro (3.1 for win3.1) is still better at the "crude layup" tasks than word97 (and IIRC has a better equation editor). WordPro brings this up to the 32-bit age and is less bloated (file formats and app itself) than word. Openoffice is coming along fast, but I would still pick Smartsuite 9.5 for serious stuff (and freelance is a half-way decent drawing package as well as a presentation tool).
It's not just crappy files - it's inherent to the software - The xl interpretation of WYSIWYG is that (subtly) different screen settings mean a different printed result. We had to keep an old machine up just to print a regular report because otherwise the bosses complained that the graphs looked "wrong" because the hatchings didn't quite match the previous reports.
It'll be the last week in March one (dated 25th I think). I've got a subscription, so it dropped though my door yesterday.
In many companies that might work, but when you have to send out a patch for a piece of 1-off code (that or something like it happens every couple of weeks for a few of us here) how else are you supposed to do it?
A CD in the post is too slow (internationally), so that's not an option. I have had to copy data to my MP3 player and email (or FTP) from home recently.
Don't blindly advocate blocking archives and executables at the door until there's a solution to this. Now blocking html email - that would be a good idea. As I've found out recently on a colleagues machine it's possibly for an accidentally malformed html email to crash outlook when opening in the preview pane (have to use outlook at work).
Then you should get a real power supply with a real mains switch on the back. Or make up an earthing lead.
Chris
Prolly got your address from someone else's Lookout address book.
When Swen was doing the rounds I was getting dozens of "you sent a virus" bounces per hour - to my webmail account. Many of them still had the virus attached. I had a rough idea who was infected, but couldn't be sure.
I'm nowhere near the only person I know who has a 98 box (now Linux dual boot) that is malware free and has been since I built it a year ago.
My old machine ran for years on 95OSR2 (and still does if I want it to). It's more stable than most XP machines I've used, and had 1 virus (got in before the definitions had been updated by solomon's) and 1 piece of spyware in those 6 years.
Not much maybe, but the part that is currently above the surface will be spread out instead of concentrated in one small area. Much of the worry about (Northern hemisphere) melting is not concerned with the Arctic ice sheet (for the reasons you describe), but the Greenland ice sheet (which is, strangely enough, on top of Greenland). Also there is a large amount of water tied up in glaciers globally. Whether or not you think the Antarctic ice sheet is melting is open to debate - personally based on the evidence I have seen (though mostly a couple of years ago) I think it is.