To bloat the end file size by reencoding the data as base64, of course.
This is MS we're talking about. It's about making things loss of data easier. Wait, that's not right. It's about making it impossible to get things done.
Damnit, I'm trying to parrot Gates and Ballmer, but I just can't seem to get it right, someone help me.
He implied no such thing. He implied that smart people need to breed more.
And, while I know plenty of rich idiots and lots and lots of poor geniuses, I have to assume that you need to be smart in one way or another to get rich under your own power.
Completely off-topic.
Point is: do you have any children? I don't, and I know that I'm intelligent (pretty arrogant about it, too). Am I going to fuck to save the human race?
No.
I mean, why? I don't have kids, nor do I intend to. Why should I care what kind of world my non-existant children grow up in?
Meanwhile, the world's being taken over by lawyers and morons; gossip-queens and businessmen with rigid objects inserted roughly and firmly up their rectal crevasses. I don't want to raise kinds in that environment anyway.
There are at least fifty unclassified floating nuclear power stations around the world today. They're called Navy aircraft carriers.
Not to mention the hundered or so location-classified nuclear submarines floating about. Not Boomers, though those are generally nuclear powered as well. Nuclear spy subs, armed with simple chemical warheads.
(Note: I'm an ex Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate, and my statements are about as authoritative on this as you're going to get on Slashdot)
There have been no nuclear power accidents on navy vessels. None. And I would not be surprised if the powerstations are of a modified naval design. There are a number of ex navy engineers floating around and while they're not allowed to give away operational secrets (amount of fuel, specific design, etc) to civies, there's no regulation about designing a derivative plant, as long as the important things are changed.
Which, of course, you'd have to do to change from a nuke drive plant to a nuke amp-only plant. Different torque, heat, pressure requirements.
"When" there's a meltdown is a misnomer. Anymore, you don't get to put a nuclear design into production with any cutting of the corners (the number one cause of design failure is not building exactly to design). Modern fission plant designs are "Walk-away safe", meaning that the can run, unmanned, until their fuel runs out.
Additionally, if anything goes out of tolerance - the steam getting too hot, the coolant clogging, a sensor going out, anything - the mediator rods drop and the heavy water is flushed for normal water, then drained (effectively shutting the plant down until it can be "manually" restarted).
And don't count on some inscrupulous company deciding to surreptitiously cut corners and build under spec; the threat of meltdown on land is too great for any company to take. Threatening it on water is *far* worse, even with the salt in the water.
Which brings the question of your concern. A large volume of stagnant seawater (about 100 galons per gram of radioactive material for a full-on meltdown) is sufficient to break alpha and beta radiation down to non-dangerous levels in the space of a few years. For alpha, the salts capture the neutrons pretty readily becoming heavy but low-radiation isotopes, while the neutrons' kinetic energy is distributed by the movement of said salt ions (ie: the atoms don't shatter because of the weak lattices formed between salt ions and water ions). Something similar happens with beta radiation, but causing some greater problems; trace amounts of posionous chemicals are produced in the process. Since the actual mass involved is so big to so small, the ppm count is low, but it's still potentially problematic.
Meanwhile, in the ocean, you don't have stagnant water, you have moving water. Kinda like moving in a pool cools you off more quickly, the motion of the water helps to finish the fallout before it reaches your shores.
In short: I wouldn't worry about a well-off-shore plant melting down, and even if it did, the fallout would hardly be global. I would, however, want it a few miles away from *my* coast, just in case.
Somehow, I don't believe that if a true quantum processor was built, it would have an x86 instruction set (the data is just too different).
Now, if they're just talking about ultrafine-process chipmaking, say nanotube arrangement or something of the like, I'd say it's plausable. But calling it Quantum, then running windows on it just makes me think "Photoshopped".
GNOME and KDE are not linux. They're Window Managers.
Easy to use GUI design is not eschewed by Linux writers, they simply never have been within the scope of the project.
Linux is a kernel. It's a connection layer to provide an easy-to-use framework for developers to write software for a large number of programs with little to no source code modification.
GNU/Linux is a little more. Now you've got a command line and several utilities - an interface - which linux doesn't have at all when alone.
RedHat, Debian, etc, these are full on graphical operating systems, which integrate a linux kernel, gnu utilities, x, a window manager, and lots and lots of peripheral software.
That all defined, I can slide back to your comments. Ease of Use is a concept defined by how seamlessly a system is integrated. Given that a user understands what a mouse is and how it works, an "easy to use" interface should feel natural to someone who does not need to unlearn how they interact with computers (granny).
OSS developers focusing on a linux platform have not failed in this; for integration to work well, the work MUST be split up. GUI developers writing front-ends and frameworks, while CLI developers make utilities and tools. In this manner, you can have people working independantly to add functionality.
From experience, I know CLIs are easier to debug. Nothing gets one more frustrated that having to debug the cause of a seg fault for four hours in your business code only to find out that it was a memory vacuum in your interface code.
Similarly, a GUI which only needs to call a CLI application is easier to debug than a full-blown integrated GUI; echo the command rather than running the app, and start debugging.
This kind of separation of layers was the first thing I learned in C++, and it applies well.
Meanwhile, this kind of separation leaves Linux to do things you simply _can't_ do in Windows or OS X.
A good example is Knoppix. The fundamentals of Knoppix are that it's a "live" operating system with all the bells and whistles on a CD or DVD. This is made possible due to several linux-only ideas.
One is the mounting of a block compressed virtual disc image. Yes, I reallize that Macs have the dmg, but it works differently; dmg's are well and good, but can't be mounted at boot time. They are also not literal disc images that have been block-compressed; you couldn't, for example, block decompress them directly onto a partition (so that you could access that partition without decompressing, and have it behave exactly as the image would).
Another is Hotplug (Boot-time autoconfiguration). Windows has something similar, but it's far slower and usually a pain in the ass when there's new hardware. Meanwhile, it's not even necessary for Macs (PCMCIA, Firewire and USB are handled by a separate type of daemon).
Third is UnionFS. How can you have a working operating system on a read-only media? Simple remap everything onto a unified system with RAM or other writable media backing writes. The CD has the permanent system stuff while the rest is stored on whatever you prefer. Latest version even takes a moment to check the hotplug logs for a USB thumb drive with previously stored data on it. You basically end up with a desktop environment you can carry around with you.
Now. Here's the funny thing. I use windows, generally. At my job I am ill-permitted to use anything else, and at my home, I find that it is often simpler to use windows for most tasks. I also have a Blueberry G3 that I picked up from eBay as a "I wanna see if I can teach myself to repair OSX" toy (successful experiments so far). I don't have a linux box. Mostly 'cos I can make a linux box out of any of the intel PCs if needs be.
Essentially, my love for linux lay not in its ease of use - a place that it's been approaching at better and better speeds since my first enc
You know, unpopular research is still research. I am somewhat reluctant to think that a professor has fudged his data just to satisfy racial prejudices.
Just what shocks me is that - in general, mind you, not in specific - my stupid cousin from South Carolina is right, in part, about his prejudices.
Now, before you go lynching me in protest, I said in general. I know idiots from China and PhDs from Africa. When you select a group for averages - especially something as general as a racial or gender population - you're going to get some wild deviations from the average.
What does it mean, for all practicality? Nothing. Maybe a refined genetic selection process for future guided breeding processes (substitute a gene here, splice in some DNA there...).
What I'd really like to see is this guy (or someone else obsessed with IQ points) do this kind of testing versus actual DNA. You know, figure out which genes are smart and which are not. This racial/gender shit is kinda useless and impractical, but the research methods could be applied to DNA and fine-toothed with a few computers until we know which sequences mean "smart as hell".
Now that I have my video recorder, which watches tedious television for me so I don't have to, I wonder what would happen if I cross-connected it to my electric monk...
There's a pool in a neighborhood with kids. The risk is that the kids fall in.
Do you build a fence around each house to keep the kids in, or a fence around the pool to keep kids out?
If you say the latter, you're thinking coasean economics. Why? Because, for the same societal benefit, you're adding fewer costs. It's what's called "Socially Efficient".
Having explicit porn sites restricted to a TLD is a very smart way of doing this (granted, it's not being done smartly; $60/name is excessive).
Problem comes in the definition of pornographic. In legalese, most people get tetchy about this.
Ok, pornographic: adj. depiction of sexual acts or sexual parts for the purposes of sexual arousal.
There we are. That keeps merely "offensive" and controversial material, and artistic nudity out of it.
Unfortunately, I'm not the law, politicians rarely ever define anything in the public interest, and ICANN is a large group of captured bureaucrats.
Do I think it's ok for.xxx to exist? Sure. I'm not blocking off any TLDs.
To tell the truth, though, I have no idea what Bush's objection to a dot-ex-ex-ex domain would be. I meaan, unless he doesn't understand what a domain is...
Ok, count the number of bodies in the solar system.
Now, count how many lines you'd have to draw to connect them all. Multiply that by two.
There you go. That's how many times you have to: Calculate the gravity affecting object n from object i. Sum up all force vectors from objects i. Multiply sum force by time interval (should be small to produce small errors) to generate acceleration. Multiply acceleration by time interval and add to velocity vector. Multiply velocity vector and add to position. move to next object. When all objects have been calculated, rinse and repeat.
Keep in mind, this won't <i>tell</i> you anything, but it will give you a model by which you can test out proposed paths. Advanced calculus is needed to tell you how to do it. You know, or intution. Hey, you could probably even use black-box genetic programming to nuzzle the course in the right direction.
Granted, it means making a vector arithmetic system for momentarily calculating the forces on all astral bodies in the solar system (as well as finding the theoretical average pull from extrasolar bodies), then placing these in an array and calculating, on a once-per-frame (30th second) period with estimation of actual limit, of the movement of all solar bodies.
But, I mean, that's what computers are for. You could probably even calculate all proposed launch dates in paralell with a good enough computer. Hell, *I* could probably do it...
Wait.. why am I not?
Hey, does anyone have detailed orbital data on the objects in the solar system, including the average mass/path of the rocks in the asteroid belt and the locations/velocities of all comets in the system?
For each e-mail address you regiester with Blue Frog, they create a honey pot account and seed the internet with it.
Each spam that honey pot gets is entered into a database, based on links contained, ip address sourced from, etc.
Humans look over the databased data, using it to find out who the source of common spams are (not the spammer, but the company who hired them).
Then, for each spam from that company found in a honey pot, a complaint is programmatically sent from the BlueFrog software that sits on the honey pot owner's client computer.
Essentially, it's a set of software that allows you to complain about spam in an organized way without actually having to do the investigation, etc yourself. Further, since it keeps all information to just the honey pots' data, if the spamming company decided that your complaint is evidence that you want more spam, they get complained against further. The more users that are members of the Blue Community, the more damaging this is to the offending company.
Spamming is cheap, and virtually without risk. Essentially, this is a legal way to shift reality so that it's more risky to pay a spammer for your advertising.
Yes it's legal. No, it's not spamming the spammers. They only get one complaint per spam recieved. You'd do it yourself, given the time to do so. Meanwhile, you've explicitly installed a piece of software to do it for you. If that breaks their server, well they probably shouldn't be sending so much goddamn spam.
GUI was Xerox. Apple and MS got it from the same source, and were, in fact, working together at the time. About a week before Mac was released, Microsoft's Windows was released in Japan on the NEC computer, a bitch-slap to Steve's partnership with Bill up till then.
Meanwhile, even if MS did invent most or all of the technology behind the iPod, Apple did what Willie Gates didn't, which is to integrate all of it into a single system.
Similarly, the reason Windows gets more use than Linux is the same. All the technology's there, integrated into a single piece of software for you. Meanwhile, Linux is a loosely connected set of bits made by developers for developers to disassemble at will. (Don't get me wrong, I'm using it right now; I'm just saying, businesses don't make money from innovation, they make it by assembling innovations into digestable products)
He didn't say it was a choice, he stated the logical extremes of pro-diaspora and pro-conservation.
Logical extremes. He's right, there will be the starts of genocide of the poorer countries, but I don't think it'll ever come to fruition. Boycotts and political action prevent that sort of thing, much the way legal action is capable of preventing most people from murdering their neighbor and pawning all his stuff.
One, maybe two companies will get a bright idea to subjugate a population and take its land, and maybe get away with it. What's interesting is that this has, in all probability, already happened. Don't you ever wonder how DeBeers got control of most of south africa? But I digress.
The truth is, as many third world countries become industrialised, everyone benefits; they trade, they develop new technologies, and they basically join the US, Canada, and much of Europe as global players in the eventual diaspora, no matter what route we take. As this happens, the tyrrany problem becomes a null issue - you can't subjugate one who can contact your peers and competitors; if they save your ass, they have loyal customers for a short while.
I'm firmly of the mind that a spreading of the human race WILL happen sooner or later. We know what's out there, more or less, and we have the technology, more or less. The rest are just engineering problems (how do I build a dome that can withstand the occasional large(1-2cm) object impact?)
Not a chance. Where d'you think I got my GBA Flash cart? I mean, while I have used it for "library" testing of commercial games (seriously... 24-hour use, I promise. Most GBA games only take that long to beat or fail to be interesting anyway...), it's also been my primary development outlet for the last year (kinda like programming for a 286 with VGA, only not as peppy, and with assembler that feels suspiciously like it's made entirely of round holes).
All of these things are available in Linux, yet somehow, it isn't as easy to use.
Microsoft brought us integration - something that Open Source can only achieve when individual projects coalesce into distributions. Ubuntu and Knoppix are good examples.
A problem I have with open source - don't get me wrong, I love most of it - is that, on the linux end of things, the standards are fracked. Debian and Red Hat - and every other distro - have their own way of doing things, and if you're going to use something that needs library dependancies, you're going to need to take that into account for EVERY target. Software for windows has a very simple system of dealing with dependancies: Just package it with your software.
Sure, it wastes space, but you've got that 80G hard drive.
Meanwhile, you've got different libraries for KDE versus Gnome, no simple ability to package everything together (I'm talking something simple, like having an icon attached to a program on the file level... this could be EASILY done with the layout of the ELF binary, but you'd have to get Linus, the Gnome team, and the KDE team to agree on just how), and no centralized way of determining what programs you have installed (really, four to six base "in-path" executable directories? Programs located wherever they see fit? Sure, there's guidelines, but - and I've been paying attention to this - they're rarely adhered to.)
And yes, I know there are REASONS for these things. And yes, I know there is one distribution with a sensible file structure.
But you are not thinking out of the box. And I don't mean conceptually. Linux is programmed for developers. I'm a developer, and I know from whence I speak. Often, it is a boon to have everything written as a console app with a GUI sandwhiched on top - in fact, I prefer it that way.
But few in the linux community code for the user (openoffice, mozilla, kde, gnome are exceptions). They're trying, but somehow the need to control everything seeps through.
Here's a tip: I've repaired a number of windows computers in my time, and the one thing I can tell you: almost no one will mess with the defaults. Doesn't matter what it is: layout, desktop arrangement, location of programs, etc. Keep the customization features limited, and put in an "advanced" mode. People like you and I will turn it on, but normal users WILL NOT TINKER.
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To bloat the end file size by reencoding the data as base64, of course.
This is MS we're talking about. It's about making things loss of data easier. Wait, that's not right. It's about making it impossible to get things done.
Damnit, I'm trying to parrot Gates and Ballmer, but I just can't seem to get it right, someone help me.
It still smells of "looking for an excuse"
Wait, so dead chickens is alright, but dead cats aren't?
Hm. Same as food, I suppose.
Meh. Nothing to see here. Just Dvorak being useless and snarky... again...
Remember the OS-X-alike interface for google? Google calmly bowed out with that.
They're not getting their name tarnished. They're fighing this battle because they know they can cripple their opposition.
Hmmm.. ...
Step 1) Complain loudly about Google's Mail service
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit!
He implied no such thing. He implied that smart people need to breed more.
And, while I know plenty of rich idiots and lots and lots of poor geniuses, I have to assume that you need to be smart in one way or another to get rich under your own power.
Completely off-topic.
Point is: do you have any children? I don't, and I know that I'm intelligent (pretty arrogant about it, too). Am I going to fuck to save the human race?
No.
I mean, why? I don't have kids, nor do I intend to. Why should I care what kind of world my non-existant children grow up in?
Meanwhile, the world's being taken over by lawyers and morons; gossip-queens and businessmen with rigid objects inserted roughly and firmly up their rectal crevasses. I don't want to raise kinds in that environment anyway.
Although I must say that the voice of the article reeks of "Titanic"...
The article doesn't quite have it right.
There are at least fifty unclassified floating nuclear power stations around the world today. They're called Navy aircraft carriers.
Not to mention the hundered or so location-classified nuclear submarines floating about. Not Boomers, though those are generally nuclear powered as well. Nuclear spy subs, armed with simple chemical warheads.
(Note: I'm an ex Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate, and my statements are about as authoritative on this as you're going to get on Slashdot)
There have been no nuclear power accidents on navy vessels. None. And I would not be surprised if the powerstations are of a modified naval design. There are a number of ex navy engineers floating around and while they're not allowed to give away operational secrets (amount of fuel, specific design, etc) to civies, there's no regulation about designing a derivative plant, as long as the important things are changed.
Which, of course, you'd have to do to change from a nuke drive plant to a nuke amp-only plant. Different torque, heat, pressure requirements.
"When" there's a meltdown is a misnomer. Anymore, you don't get to put a nuclear design into production with any cutting of the corners (the number one cause of design failure is not building exactly to design). Modern fission plant designs are "Walk-away safe", meaning that the can run, unmanned, until their fuel runs out.
Additionally, if anything goes out of tolerance - the steam getting too hot, the coolant clogging, a sensor going out, anything - the mediator rods drop and the heavy water is flushed for normal water, then drained (effectively shutting the plant down until it can be "manually" restarted).
And don't count on some inscrupulous company deciding to surreptitiously cut corners and build under spec; the threat of meltdown on land is too great for any company to take. Threatening it on water is *far* worse, even with the salt in the water.
Which brings the question of your concern. A large volume of stagnant seawater (about 100 galons per gram of radioactive material for a full-on meltdown) is sufficient to break alpha and beta radiation down to non-dangerous levels in the space of a few years. For alpha, the salts capture the neutrons pretty readily becoming heavy but low-radiation isotopes, while the neutrons' kinetic energy is distributed by the movement of said salt ions (ie: the atoms don't shatter because of the weak lattices formed between salt ions and water ions). Something similar happens with beta radiation, but causing some greater problems; trace amounts of posionous chemicals are produced in the process. Since the actual mass involved is so big to so small, the ppm count is low, but it's still potentially problematic.
Meanwhile, in the ocean, you don't have stagnant water, you have moving water. Kinda like moving in a pool cools you off more quickly, the motion of the water helps to finish the fallout before it reaches your shores.
In short: I wouldn't worry about a well-off-shore plant melting down, and even if it did, the fallout would hardly be global. I would, however, want it a few miles away from *my* coast, just in case.
Somehow, I don't believe that if a true quantum processor was built, it would have an x86 instruction set (the data is just too different).
Now, if they're just talking about ultrafine-process chipmaking, say nanotube arrangement or something of the like, I'd say it's plausable. But calling it Quantum, then running windows on it just makes me think "Photoshopped".
Funny, that. I seem to remember doing this in the early nineties with VHS tapes, only in lower quality.
Linux is written for developers. Period.
X is not linux. It's a Window Server.
GNOME and KDE are not linux. They're Window Managers.
Easy to use GUI design is not eschewed by Linux writers, they simply never have been within the scope of the project.
Linux is a kernel. It's a connection layer to provide an easy-to-use framework for developers to write software for a large number of programs with little to no source code modification.
GNU/Linux is a little more. Now you've got a command line and several utilities - an interface - which linux doesn't have at all when alone.
RedHat, Debian, etc, these are full on graphical operating systems, which integrate a linux kernel, gnu utilities, x, a window manager, and lots and lots of peripheral software.
That all defined, I can slide back to your comments. Ease of Use is a concept defined by how seamlessly a system is integrated. Given that a user understands what a mouse is and how it works, an "easy to use" interface should feel natural to someone who does not need to unlearn how they interact with computers (granny).
OSS developers focusing on a linux platform have not failed in this; for integration to work well, the work MUST be split up. GUI developers writing front-ends and frameworks, while CLI developers make utilities and tools. In this manner, you can have people working independantly to add functionality.
From experience, I know CLIs are easier to debug. Nothing gets one more frustrated that having to debug the cause of a seg fault for four hours in your business code only to find out that it was a memory vacuum in your interface code.
Similarly, a GUI which only needs to call a CLI application is easier to debug than a full-blown integrated GUI; echo the command rather than running the app, and start debugging.
This kind of separation of layers was the first thing I learned in C++, and it applies well.
Meanwhile, this kind of separation leaves Linux to do things you simply _can't_ do in Windows or OS X.
A good example is Knoppix. The fundamentals of Knoppix are that it's a "live" operating system with all the bells and whistles on a CD or DVD. This is made possible due to several linux-only ideas.
One is the mounting of a block compressed virtual disc image. Yes, I reallize that Macs have the dmg, but it works differently; dmg's are well and good, but can't be mounted at boot time. They are also not literal disc images that have been block-compressed; you couldn't, for example, block decompress them directly onto a partition (so that you could access that partition without decompressing, and have it behave exactly as the image would).
Another is Hotplug (Boot-time autoconfiguration). Windows has something similar, but it's far slower and usually a pain in the ass when there's new hardware. Meanwhile, it's not even necessary for Macs (PCMCIA, Firewire and USB are handled by a separate type of daemon).
Third is UnionFS. How can you have a working operating system on a read-only media? Simple remap everything onto a unified system with RAM or other writable media backing writes. The CD has the permanent system stuff while the rest is stored on whatever you prefer. Latest version even takes a moment to check the hotplug logs for a USB thumb drive with previously stored data on it. You basically end up with a desktop environment you can carry around with you.
Now. Here's the funny thing. I use windows, generally. At my job I am ill-permitted to use anything else, and at my home, I find that it is often simpler to use windows for most tasks. I also have a Blueberry G3 that I picked up from eBay as a "I wanna see if I can teach myself to repair OSX" toy (successful experiments so far). I don't have a linux box. Mostly 'cos I can make a linux box out of any of the intel PCs if needs be.
Essentially, my love for linux lay not in its ease of use - a place that it's been approaching at better and better speeds since my first enc
You know, unpopular research is still research. I am somewhat reluctant to think that a professor has fudged his data just to satisfy racial prejudices.
Just what shocks me is that - in general, mind you, not in specific - my stupid cousin from South Carolina is right, in part, about his prejudices.
Now, before you go lynching me in protest, I said in general. I know idiots from China and PhDs from Africa. When you select a group for averages - especially something as general as a racial or gender population - you're going to get some wild deviations from the average.
What does it mean, for all practicality? Nothing. Maybe a refined genetic selection process for future guided breeding processes (substitute a gene here, splice in some DNA there...).
What I'd really like to see is this guy (or someone else obsessed with IQ points) do this kind of testing versus actual DNA. You know, figure out which genes are smart and which are not. This racial/gender shit is kinda useless and impractical, but the research methods could be applied to DNA and fine-toothed with a few computers until we know which sequences mean "smart as hell".
Now that I have my video recorder, which watches tedious television for me so I don't have to, I wonder what would happen if I cross-connected it to my electric monk...
IM and e-mail integration on the level of AOL without having to bother with such bullshit...
Seriously, google's getting to be AOL for the not-stupid.
You know, I feel for those kids, but the adults... This is really the kind of shit I'd expect from humans in Pennsyltucky.
I'm in Pottstown (23 miles as the google map flies) right now. For some reason people here are a bit more... savvy? Seriously.
Ok. Situation:
.xxx to exist? Sure. I'm not blocking off any TLDs.
There's a pool in a neighborhood with kids. The risk is that the kids fall in.
Do you build a fence around each house to keep the kids in, or a fence around the pool to keep kids out?
If you say the latter, you're thinking coasean economics. Why? Because, for the same societal benefit, you're adding fewer costs. It's what's called "Socially Efficient".
Having explicit porn sites restricted to a TLD is a very smart way of doing this (granted, it's not being done smartly; $60/name is excessive).
Problem comes in the definition of pornographic. In legalese, most people get tetchy about this.
Ok, pornographic: adj. depiction of sexual acts or sexual parts for the purposes of sexual arousal.
There we are. That keeps merely "offensive" and controversial material, and artistic nudity out of it.
Unfortunately, I'm not the law, politicians rarely ever define anything in the public interest, and ICANN is a large group of captured bureaucrats.
Do I think it's ok for
To tell the truth, though, I have no idea what Bush's objection to a dot-ex-ex-ex domain would be. I meaan, unless he doesn't understand what a domain is...
Thing is, they are. Used MANY times over.
Ok, count the number of bodies in the solar system.
Now, count how many lines you'd have to draw to connect them all. Multiply that by two.
There you go. That's how many times you have to:
Calculate the gravity affecting object n from object i. Sum up all force vectors from objects i. Multiply sum force by time interval (should be small to produce small errors) to generate acceleration. Multiply acceleration by time interval and add to velocity vector. Multiply velocity vector and add to position. move to next object. When all objects have been calculated, rinse and repeat.
Keep in mind, this won't <i>tell</i> you anything, but it will give you a model by which you can test out proposed paths. Advanced calculus is needed to tell you how to do it. You know, or intution. Hey, you could probably even use black-box genetic programming to nuzzle the course in the right direction.
I'm sure they're very complex.
I don't see why that matters, though.
Granted, it means making a vector arithmetic system for momentarily calculating the forces on all astral bodies in the solar system (as well as finding the theoretical average pull from extrasolar bodies), then placing these in an array and calculating, on a once-per-frame (30th second) period with estimation of actual limit, of the movement of all solar bodies.
But, I mean, that's what computers are for. You could probably even calculate all proposed launch dates in paralell with a good enough computer. Hell, *I* could probably do it...
Wait.. why am I not?
Hey, does anyone have detailed orbital data on the objects in the solar system, including the average mass/path of the rocks in the asteroid belt and the locations/velocities of all comets in the system?
Spamming is cheap, and virtually without risk. Essentially, this is a legal way to shift reality so that it's more risky to pay a spammer for your advertising.
Yes it's legal. No, it's not spamming the spammers. They only get one complaint per spam recieved. You'd do it yourself, given the time to do so. Meanwhile, you've explicitly installed a piece of software to do it for you. If that breaks their server, well they probably shouldn't be sending so much goddamn spam.
GUI was Xerox. Apple and MS got it from the same source, and were, in fact, working together at the time. About a week before Mac was released, Microsoft's Windows was released in Japan on the NEC computer, a bitch-slap to Steve's partnership with Bill up till then.
Meanwhile, even if MS did invent most or all of the technology behind the iPod, Apple did what Willie Gates didn't, which is to integrate all of it into a single system.
Similarly, the reason Windows gets more use than Linux is the same. All the technology's there, integrated into a single piece of software for you. Meanwhile, Linux is a loosely connected set of bits made by developers for developers to disassemble at will. (Don't get me wrong, I'm using it right now; I'm just saying, businesses don't make money from innovation, they make it by assembling innovations into digestable products)
He didn't say it was a choice, he stated the logical extremes of pro-diaspora and pro-conservation.
Logical extremes. He's right, there will be the starts of genocide of the poorer countries, but I don't think it'll ever come to fruition. Boycotts and political action prevent that sort of thing, much the way legal action is capable of preventing most people from murdering their neighbor and pawning all his stuff.
One, maybe two companies will get a bright idea to subjugate a population and take its land, and maybe get away with it. What's interesting is that this has, in all probability, already happened. Don't you ever wonder how DeBeers got control of most of south africa? But I digress.
The truth is, as many third world countries become industrialised, everyone benefits; they trade, they develop new technologies, and they basically join the US, Canada, and much of Europe as global players in the eventual diaspora, no matter what route we take. As this happens, the tyrrany problem becomes a null issue - you can't subjugate one who can contact your peers and competitors; if they save your ass, they have loyal customers for a short while.
I'm firmly of the mind that a spreading of the human race WILL happen sooner or later. We know what's out there, more or less, and we have the technology, more or less. The rest are just engineering problems (how do I build a dome that can withstand the occasional large(1-2cm) object impact?)
Not a chance. Where d'you think I got my GBA Flash cart? I mean, while I have used it for "library" testing of commercial games (seriously... 24-hour use, I promise. Most GBA games only take that long to beat or fail to be interesting anyway...), it's also been my primary development outlet for the last year (kinda like programming for a 286 with VGA, only not as peppy, and with assembler that feels suspiciously like it's made entirely of round holes).
All of these things are available in Linux, yet somehow, it isn't as easy to use.
Microsoft brought us integration - something that Open Source can only achieve when individual projects coalesce into distributions. Ubuntu and Knoppix are good examples.
A problem I have with open source - don't get me wrong, I love most of it - is that, on the linux end of things, the standards are fracked. Debian and Red Hat - and every other distro - have their own way of doing things, and if you're going to use something that needs library dependancies, you're going to need to take that into account for EVERY target. Software for windows has a very simple system of dealing with dependancies: Just package it with your software.
Sure, it wastes space, but you've got that 80G hard drive.
Meanwhile, you've got different libraries for KDE versus Gnome, no simple ability to package everything together (I'm talking something simple, like having an icon attached to a program on the file level... this could be EASILY done with the layout of the ELF binary, but you'd have to get Linus, the Gnome team, and the KDE team to agree on just how), and no centralized way of determining what programs you have installed (really, four to six base "in-path" executable directories? Programs located wherever they see fit? Sure, there's guidelines, but - and I've been paying attention to this - they're rarely adhered to.)
And yes, I know there are REASONS for these things. And yes, I know there is one distribution with a sensible file structure.
But you are not thinking out of the box. And I don't mean conceptually. Linux is programmed for developers. I'm a developer, and I know from whence I speak. Often, it is a boon to have everything written as a console app with a GUI sandwhiched on top - in fact, I prefer it that way.
But few in the linux community code for the user (openoffice, mozilla, kde, gnome are exceptions). They're trying, but somehow the need to control everything seeps through.
Here's a tip: I've repaired a number of windows computers in my time, and the one thing I can tell you: almost no one will mess with the defaults. Doesn't matter what it is: layout, desktop arrangement, location of programs, etc. Keep the customization features limited, and put in an "advanced" mode. People like you and I will turn it on, but normal users WILL NOT TINKER.
But a $100,000 car won't bring luxury to the masses.