People have just a certain amount of time to allocate to leisure and today internet and computer gaming is competing with music and movies. Compare this to the 50's where there was music, movies and some get-together with friends. Computers was something you saw in the movies. And music was something you played when you got together with friends.
Another issue is that almost all music produced the last 50 years are available on CD today, often in the form of collections "Best of..." and so on. The music industry makes less money from these collections than from new records, but the audience has so much to select from that they can get music for just about any taste already. New music has to be smashing and crossing the borders of what's considered good taste to get out. Just consider last year's winners of the european song contest; Lordi. Not the usual flashy pop music... And not what you really expect at an event that mostly results in bland pop music or ballads. Funny thing is that most winners there has never taken off to get REALLY big, with the exception of ABBA.
The point is - The music industry has to accept that the way things have been going before with perpetual growth is over. It's time to settle for a stagnant market and adapt to that. It's likely that not all large record labels will survive.
In general, software installations at industrial plants has to have a lifetime of decades. This means that even if the software selected isn't the cheapest initially it may prove to be the cheapest in the long run since it will have to be stable. Each unplanned stop of a large plant due to an undefined malfunction will take time and cause costs in the million dollar class.
One way to safeguard against data storms to some extent is to create network segmentation so that a malfunction in one part of the plant is less likely to affect the operation of another part of the plant. In some cases it may even be necessary to consider if a certain functionality actually shall be computer controlled or not. Cooling pumps of a nuclear reactor could be one such feature. This doesn't exclude computer monitoring of the devices, but a computer malfunction shall never be able to disrupt the core stability.
To err is human, but using computers you can really mess things up.
A lot of chatting around i.hate.ms and so on, but will Montserrat get any money back from the use of the domain.ms? Considering that they have had a hard time with their volcano they should get something at least to support the community. The effect of the volcano they have had could be considered as bad as if 40 to 50% of the US had to be evacuated.
But on the other hand - the volcano may be good for tourism - and now they have a modern airport too.
Anyway, this volcano has caused some devastation and a few deaths. On the positive side - the deaths has been very few, but there are other volcanos that are known to behave in the same way that are more likely to be the cause of a higher death toll. One such volcano is Vesuvius in Italy. It has been dormant since the 1940's and considering that it has had regular outbreaks about every 70 years it is not unlikely that it will have an outbreak during our lifetime. The question is - will there be any warning before the eruption, or will it be an explosive eruption with short notice? Pompeii and Herculaneum are two rather important warning signs. Pyroclastic flows are about the worst things that can occur from a volcano since they are unpredictable and very fast. Flying rocks are fast and dangerous too, but they aren't having the same blanketing effect as the pyroclastic flows. Lava, which most of us associate with volcanos is bad, but it's liquid and often rather slow, so it's predictable and can be avoided but it will destroy anything in it's path.
Many 4-year olds can actually grasp a lot. In that age they can understand more than you think and they absorb knowledge as a sponge, even if it's unwanted knowledge or not.
Of course - they are better off learning concrete science than they are of abstract concepts, since abstract concepts almost always requires good understanding of the written word and mathematics.
Any 4-year old should be able to grasp the use of a hammer and a crowbar, even if that may cause some interesting (or annoying) results.
HDMI seems to me as an invention from the DRM industry. DVI may have some drawbacks, but in general it works. And the lack of audio in DVI isn't a real problem. The sound system support in the screens are usually of rather low quality and built-in speakers aren't usually of any better quality either.
Most quality-aware users will route the sound to a good amplifier and good speakers. The users with higher demand goes for THX equipment.
when I have 100Mbps (OK, uplink limited to 10Mbps). But that's fiber to a switch in the basement of the apartment complex where I live and a TP outlet in my apartment.
For xDSL users the upper limit is 24Mbps for the downlink here...
another Windows after Vista? If you see what M$ says Vista is the Ultimate OS...
OK, we have heard that before...
There is also the question about where the Linux bandwagon goes if Microsoft has the stamina to produce another major OS release after Vista. There have been arguments that Vista is the last of it's kind. From what I have recognized, Vista is a step forward from XP as NT was a step forward from W98. (ME doesn't count).
I can't help to agree. Too much hair is an inconvenience and may be the cause of sanitary problems.
Too little hair may look funny on some people, but today people doesn't really react much if you show up completely bald (but with clothes on:-) ) at work one day. Some may be surprised if your have had a hair at shoulder length or more before, or if you go from bald to shoulder-length in a day. I think that we have seen about all possible hairstyles during the years since the 70's so there is nothing new to do anymore... Punkrockers, Skinheads, Hardrockers, Monks, Synthpoppers, reggae-style a.k.a. dreadlocks, Goth and so on...
I'm still waiting for the miracle cure that can allow me to remove annoying hairs permanently. Especially irritating are the tickling nosehairs... Current cure is a tweezer...
I have also had a look at Ubuntu, and it seems to be rather friendly, but the thing that I didn't like with it was that I wasn't able to get Skype working. There may be a workaround for that, but I'll wait for Fedora 7 and see what it will provide.
I have also been looking a little at Debian Etch, and it also looks good. I think it all comes down to if you like the taste of RPM or DEB packages better...
is a requirement for all internet traffic to be unencrypted so that the agencies throughout the world can read your emails, IM and torrent downloads.
Save us from the "big brother" mentality, since then the terrorists of the world have won by letting the governments take over to make things miserable for the citizens.
A government shall serve the citizens, not the other way around. Sometimes the people in government should be taking a step back and consider what is really the consequences of the actions.
The problem of moisture accumulating in all the wrong places is a common problem, not only for space stations, but on terra firma as well.
The way to be sure that you don't get wet is to have the correct ventilation. This is easy to say but complicated to implement. One way is to configure ventilation to pass dehumidifiers and let the dry air be released in the electric compartments and allow it to leak out into the occupants space from where it is collected, cleaned and dehumidified again. On long-term space missions it will be a critical issue to re-circulate all water and not vent it into space.
Another more complex way is to seal off all electronics and use an inert gas in all electronics compartments. However, this is a very complex solution and it will certainly be hard to keep it safe and sound for a mission that will last for years.
It seems to me that they have made a tool useful for composition of haiku poems.
But is it really efficient when reading fiction? The difference between reading fiction and reading a fact book is the flow of reading. In a fiction story the reader can make different picks and speed through some parts and concentrate on other parts without losing the story. In fact books each sentence is there for a reason. (sorry fiction-writers, that's the reality biting).
Anyway this doesn't mean that the parts that one fiction reader skips is what another reader will skip and each person has his/her own view of what the scenery is, so keep on writing the backfill anyway.
that may be one way of managing things. It may just be that he tries to unbalance the presenter and see if the presenter is able to catch up. If the presenter is catching up then the idea may not be so bad after all... But the problem here is that this will be much more dependent on the presenter than the idea itself, so in the end it's not a really good filter for good/bad ideas.
This is usually the problem within any organization - people with good ideas but bad presentation skills can either develop the ideas and ask forgiveness later or forget about the whole idea unless they can get the idea to someone that's a good presenter.
It will be far better management style to actually give constructive criticism, but that is also a lot harder.
is the missing word. I wouldn't say that it is a definitive proof that yawning is contagious, but there is nothing that disproves it. The figures are at least on the right side to indicate that yawning may be contagious.
And depending on how you calculate with statistics you can get just about any answer you like. Just add to the case which time of day it was when each subject was tested and you will end up with some interesting extra results having an impact on the data.
by all those commercial messages sent instead of useful information, so any strange messages popping up in the GPS from the RDS system will be considered yet another junk information.
of patents and copyrights seems to be due for a major overhaul. It's OK to get patents for a limited time to protect your investments. On the other hand - other companies may also invest in similar or the same solution. As it is now it's first come, first served when patents are handled, which means that even though there are several different vendors for an invention, there will be only one "winner", which ultimately is bad for competition.
One problem is that patents are filed and granted for "inventions" that has too low technical merits. By raising the standard requirements for patents this may help things a bit. One problem is also that the patent offices gets their revenue from the patents, and that doesn't help a bit. Instead that causes the patent offices to grant patents based on the fact that they get the money from it!
In today's world with software development it's a complete minefield to have patents on software. In the end it will limit the functionality of the software we use and require us to pay more for less.
When it comes to copyright, the issue is a bit more complicated. Movies and music has a rather long market lifetime, so a decades issue shouldn't be a problem here. When it comes to computer software the issue is different. In my opinion the copyright should be rendered invalid for commercial software packages whenever support for it is terminated. (Think MS-DOS, CP/M etc.) Even on movies and music there should be a "bail-out" option that allows for the copyright to be released. E.g. when the copyright holder no longer can be located with reasonable efforts.
Well - escalate by entering the phone number to the judge's office in the forms instead... Would be really interesting to overhear that conversation...
But it can in some cases be tricky when you get a really complex structure of Vectors containing Vectors containing Comparables. Not that it's impossible, but it can be a challenge.
One thing that I found in Java5 was that it lacked generics for several cases, e.g. Awt/Swing objects that were able to contain Object themselves. Not that it was a big problem, but it wouldn't have been bad to have that support there too...
Anyway - Generics is one of the best features of added to Java lately. It really helps. How I miss it when I'm programming for J2ME...
What does DoubleClick do for me? I only see it as a bandwidth waste together with many other ad servers trying to fill my hard disk with useless cookies.
Just because a lot of ad companies now are misusing the flash player it has started to get less useful, and not even flashblock helps for all cases.
<Flamebait mode OFF>
In reality most of us wouldn't care less if this was going into the ditch or not. A tip to advertisers is to try to avoid intrusive ads and keep them constricted to a reasonable frame. Intrusive ads will just pull down the usability of a web site.
And M$ shouldn't complain - they have set all the IE browsers to go to MSN by default. So any statistics provided about popularity of MSN should be considered coloured...
... that the blocker is ignorant of the reality. Just because there are incorrect parts in Wikipedia doesn't mean that the majority of the information there is incorrect.
What has to be taught is not that censorship can stop information - because it can't. It is that regardless of the information source, you must be critical and re-check that the information you get from one source can be verified from another source. And when you write anything yourself - don't forget to include the sources that you have been using, because that will help others when they are going to validate your work.
is to run Linux on all laptops and execute them all as X servers without any window managers.
Then you have a server that throws X applications onto the laptop displays where you will get just about any look&feel you like.
OK, it's crude and may require some work. The laptops may never be a really good solution anyway. Also consider the cost of additional hardware involved and you may be better off with a good projector or "standard" flat-screen LCD:s connected to a single computer with multiple graphic cards where you stretch the desktop to cover multiple monitors.
It's possible to run multiple monitors under both Linux and Windows without any problems.
for example the Ericsson AXE switches uses digital communication between the switches and that has been in place since before 1995. (Don't know the exact date, but the AXE was concieved late 70's or early 80's.)
Slashdot Mirror
And - No - I'm needing it for backup of data not for downloading and burning movies.
People have just a certain amount of time to allocate to leisure and today internet and computer gaming is competing with music and movies. Compare this to the 50's where there was music, movies and some get-together with friends. Computers was something you saw in the movies. And music was something you played when you got together with friends.
Another issue is that almost all music produced the last 50 years are available on CD today, often in the form of collections "Best of..." and so on. The music industry makes less money from these collections than from new records, but the audience has so much to select from that they can get music for just about any taste already. New music has to be smashing and crossing the borders of what's considered good taste to get out. Just consider last year's winners of the european song contest; Lordi. Not the usual flashy pop music... And not what you really expect at an event that mostly results in bland pop music or ballads. Funny thing is that most winners there has never taken off to get REALLY big, with the exception of ABBA.
The point is - The music industry has to accept that the way things have been going before with perpetual growth is over. It's time to settle for a stagnant market and adapt to that. It's likely that not all large record labels will survive.
What we are waiting for:
What we don't want:
One way to safeguard against data storms to some extent is to create network segmentation so that a malfunction in one part of the plant is less likely to affect the operation of another part of the plant. In some cases it may even be necessary to consider if a certain functionality actually shall be computer controlled or not. Cooling pumps of a nuclear reactor could be one such feature. This doesn't exclude computer monitoring of the devices, but a computer malfunction shall never be able to disrupt the core stability.
To err is human, but using computers you can really mess things up.
But on the other hand - the volcano may be good for tourism - and now they have a modern airport too.
Anyway, this volcano has caused some devastation and a few deaths. On the positive side - the deaths has been very few, but there are other volcanos that are known to behave in the same way that are more likely to be the cause of a higher death toll. One such volcano is Vesuvius in Italy. It has been dormant since the 1940's and considering that it has had regular outbreaks about every 70 years it is not unlikely that it will have an outbreak during our lifetime. The question is - will there be any warning before the eruption, or will it be an explosive eruption with short notice? Pompeii and Herculaneum are two rather important warning signs. Pyroclastic flows are about the worst things that can occur from a volcano since they are unpredictable and very fast. Flying rocks are fast and dangerous too, but they aren't having the same blanketing effect as the pyroclastic flows. Lava, which most of us associate with volcanos is bad, but it's liquid and often rather slow, so it's predictable and can be avoided but it will destroy anything in it's path.
Of course - they are better off learning concrete science than they are of abstract concepts, since abstract concepts almost always requires good understanding of the written word and mathematics.
Any 4-year old should be able to grasp the use of a hammer and a crowbar, even if that may cause some interesting (or annoying) results.
Most quality-aware users will route the sound to a good amplifier and good speakers. The users with higher demand goes for THX equipment.
For xDSL users the upper limit is 24Mbps for the downlink here...
OK, we have heard that before...
There is also the question about where the Linux bandwagon goes if Microsoft has the stamina to produce another major OS release after Vista. There have been arguments that Vista is the last of it's kind. From what I have recognized, Vista is a step forward from XP as NT was a step forward from W98. (ME doesn't count).
Too little hair may look funny on some people, but today people doesn't really react much if you show up completely bald (but with clothes on :-) ) at work one day. Some may be surprised if your have had a hair at shoulder length or more before, or if you go from bald to shoulder-length in a day. I think that we have seen about all possible hairstyles during the years since the 70's so there is nothing new to do anymore... Punkrockers, Skinheads, Hardrockers, Monks, Synthpoppers, reggae-style a.k.a. dreadlocks, Goth and so on...
I'm still waiting for the miracle cure that can allow me to remove annoying hairs permanently. Especially irritating are the tickling nosehairs... Current cure is a tweezer...
I have also been looking a little at Debian Etch, and it also looks good. I think it all comes down to if you like the taste of RPM or DEB packages better...
I wouldn't be considering paying for any patent claim unless I first know which patent(s) that I'm paying for.
Seems to me like it's SCO all over again...
Save us from the "big brother" mentality, since then the terrorists of the world have won by letting the governments take over to make things miserable for the citizens.
A government shall serve the citizens, not the other way around. Sometimes the people in government should be taking a step back and consider what is really the consequences of the actions.
The way to be sure that you don't get wet is to have the correct ventilation. This is easy to say but complicated to implement. One way is to configure ventilation to pass dehumidifiers and let the dry air be released in the electric compartments and allow it to leak out into the occupants space from where it is collected, cleaned and dehumidified again. On long-term space missions it will be a critical issue to re-circulate all water and not vent it into space.
Another more complex way is to seal off all electronics and use an inert gas in all electronics compartments. However, this is a very complex solution and it will certainly be hard to keep it safe and sound for a mission that will last for years.
But is it really efficient when reading fiction? The difference between reading fiction and reading a fact book is the flow of reading. In a fiction story the reader can make different picks and speed through some parts and concentrate on other parts without losing the story. In fact books each sentence is there for a reason. (sorry fiction-writers, that's the reality biting).
Anyway this doesn't mean that the parts that one fiction reader skips is what another reader will skip and each person has his/her own view of what the scenery is, so keep on writing the backfill anyway.
This is usually the problem within any organization - people with good ideas but bad presentation skills can either develop the ideas and ask forgiveness later or forget about the whole idea unless they can get the idea to someone that's a good presenter.
It will be far better management style to actually give constructive criticism, but that is also a lot harder.
And depending on how you calculate with statistics you can get just about any answer you like. Just add to the case which time of day it was when each subject was tested and you will end up with some interesting extra results having an impact on the data.
by all those commercial messages sent instead of useful information, so any strange messages popping up in the GPS from the RDS system will be considered yet another junk information.
One problem is that patents are filed and granted for "inventions" that has too low technical merits. By raising the standard requirements for patents this may help things a bit. One problem is also that the patent offices gets their revenue from the patents, and that doesn't help a bit. Instead that causes the patent offices to grant patents based on the fact that they get the money from it!
In today's world with software development it's a complete minefield to have patents on software. In the end it will limit the functionality of the software we use and require us to pay more for less.
When it comes to copyright, the issue is a bit more complicated. Movies and music has a rather long market lifetime, so a decades issue shouldn't be a problem here. When it comes to computer software the issue is different. In my opinion the copyright should be rendered invalid for commercial software packages whenever support for it is terminated. (Think MS-DOS, CP/M etc.) Even on movies and music there should be a "bail-out" option that allows for the copyright to be released. E.g. when the copyright holder no longer can be located with reasonable efforts.
Well - escalate by entering the phone number to the judge's office in the forms instead... Would be really interesting to overhear that conversation...
One thing that I found in Java5 was that it lacked generics for several cases, e.g. Awt/Swing objects that were able to contain Object themselves. Not that it was a big problem, but it wouldn't have been bad to have that support there too...
Anyway - Generics is one of the best features of added to Java lately. It really helps. How I miss it when I'm programming for J2ME...
What does DoubleClick do for me? I only see it as a bandwidth waste together with many other ad servers trying to fill my hard disk with useless cookies.
Just because a lot of ad companies now are misusing the flash player it has started to get less useful, and not even flashblock helps for all cases.
<Flamebait mode OFF>
In reality most of us wouldn't care less if this was going into the ditch or not. A tip to advertisers is to try to avoid intrusive ads and keep them constricted to a reasonable frame. Intrusive ads will just pull down the usability of a web site.
And M$ shouldn't complain - they have set all the IE browsers to go to MSN by default. So any statistics provided about popularity of MSN should be considered coloured...
What has to be taught is not that censorship can stop information - because it can't. It is that regardless of the information source, you must be critical and re-check that the information you get from one source can be verified from another source. And when you write anything yourself - don't forget to include the sources that you have been using, because that will help others when they are going to validate your work.
Then you have a server that throws X applications onto the laptop displays where you will get just about any look&feel you like.
OK, it's crude and may require some work. The laptops may never be a really good solution anyway. Also consider the cost of additional hardware involved and you may be better off with a good projector or "standard" flat-screen LCD:s connected to a single computer with multiple graphic cards where you stretch the desktop to cover multiple monitors.
It's possible to run multiple monitors under both Linux and Windows without any problems.
for example the Ericsson AXE switches uses digital communication between the switches and that has been in place since before 1995. (Don't know the exact date, but the AXE was concieved late 70's or early 80's.)