Oh, my bad guys, I forgot that the thing their calling SpaceShipOne isn't supposed to be one, only 100km. Perhaps NotQuiteSpaceShip would have been a better name. Anyways, even at 100km I would think that re-entry like conditions would be encountered and you'd need the high angle of attack.
I'm just a lowly undergrad of physics, but won't they need more than just a heat shield on leading edges? Any aero-eng guys out there? I slow to landing speed as you come out of orbit I think you have to come in at a fairly high angle of attack so that you present a large cross-section to the air, and let the drag slow you down. That is why the space shuttles underbelly is all thermo-shield.
Also, IMHO the ship looks like some high-school science project with way to much duct-tape with the leading edges done the way they have it.
I see of/. Canada called socialist in our politics. This seems to be the counterproof. Why does the electronics store need my address postal code and phone number when I buy a gizmo? If I'm going to give you marketing information, you give me something in exchange. Simply business.
I don't agree that it is a hidden menu. Is the right click on the desktop more hidden than the start->control panel of win9*? Why select a file, then go to the edit menu, then to 'edit filename', if I can select and then select edit on the same spot of the screen?
Within 20 seconds of first using the system the user will try single click, double click, click pause, look for something on the toolbar, and then try the right button. But in every other use the right button will be quicker than any other option (that it isn't easy to get accidental file renames) because the user probably used the mouse to select the file in the first place.
What would be nice to see would be an adaptible file manager. Say if after a certain cutoff number of file renames, then if the ratio of times you just changed the name, or just the extension dominates, it throws up a dialog asking you if you want it to default to just selecting that region of the filename.
Okay I'm not a Gnome fan (I use KDE, just think it looks nicer not because of lots of costumization). But it took years of development to get the level of basic functionality they have now.
It's not that it takes years to come up with these little ideas, its that years have been spent in getting core glitches fixed and keeping up with the latest MS 'improvements'. It's going to be the small things, like using right click on the desktop to get common desktop settings changed that makes things a lot easier for the user. I don't know how many people I've had to tell that settings->control panel -> whatever too. That is a really hidden menu.
Clicking on what you want to change and getting reasonable options is non-trivial. There is a lot of heirachy that needs to be decided on, you can't just throw random dialogs at the user and make them try to find the option themselves. That is what these new features are about, trying to guess the users request.
For a good latex guide: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/englis h/lshort.pdf 145 pages, has pretty much everything you need to know.
The only think I haven't found documented(perhaps it can't be done) is using greek symbols with accents on them, the accents always end up on one side or the other of the symbol. Sometimes there is both an a comma and an acute on the same symbol. You have to go to math mode, but then the language stuff doesn't work. ergh.
Other than that though, latex is by far the best text/math formater I've used. Once I figured out the basic commands I could type the code almost as fast as plain text. Eat your heart out MS.
For wysiwyg you can also use xdvi although it's not interactive. When you compile the code it will automatically update itself to the new.dvi file.
True autoconfig helps. But if your coding something small, like a little data averaging program, but need some system calls lets say to figure out what files are present to be averaged, do you really want to have a makefile and use autoconfig etc.?
Tools should exist to provide functionality, not as a work around for lack of standardization. It makes sense that you need different tools to go from *nix to windows. But sense *nix and *BSD are largely the same OS, standardization makes sense. Especially between the different linux distros as the arguement that linux isn't unix that is popular with BSD guys wouldn't explain these differences. Not trying to flame any BSD guys, have a lot of respect for the OS and the effort that they put into the community.
Another example of differences between systems is what exactly you get when you make a bash command. One system rm -r -f blah and rm blah -r -f works another insists on having the flags only before, or only after.
Some sftp just outputs the filenames transfered, another it shows percent completed as its working. Wish they all did as sometimes I'm dealing with a supercomputer that tends to go down alot(which is a really bad idea by the way) and transferring 200Mb of data around, which can be in 5Mb files. Really would be nice not to have to wait around for 30 secs to see if the connection is active.
Suppose I could run a netstat, or a ls on the file repeatedly or something, but again that is a work around solution. Not to mention that netstat would be hard to get to work as TCP sockets stay open for a system specific time after a failure, some 30sec some 10min, which makes it fun to code a socket program on a system where it's 10min. Run doesn't work, change a line recompile, wait 10min before you can bind a new socket to the port, argh. (TCP standards do say a socket should stay open for a while to try to ensure data transfer, but they never specified how long)
This should help the guys that actually code down at the X-window level a lot. You will be 'sure' that your skills are transferable between systems, and confident that they aren't going to change relative to each other.
One thing that always annoys me with programming for linux and unix is that include files are always in a different spot. I've spent days hunting for something(yes I know about whereis and assorted utils) only to find out it's name had an x infront of it, whereas on the other system it didn't or it was in another directory. Something stupid like/etc/bin/include/graphics/opengl.
Or one system uses opengl and the other mesa for example, and then your completely lost. The arguement that if you new the systems you were coding for better you would be fine, is ignorant as most people use standard libraries like opengl, sockets.h etc, because they aren't supposed to need to know much about the other os for it to work. Anyways, if the X guys standardize things like the directory structure, and procedure interfaces(although I think there are standards for these) it will make things much easier for us linux at home, unix at work guys.
Can't remember the exact quote, but it's something like 'if your system lets anyone use it, than it can be used by anyone'. Ie if people can use it, than people that shouldn't be able too, will find a way too.
Standard response to standard attacks? Sounds like someone's played too much Mike Tyson's punchout. If he tries to do a stack overflow, I log it as a possible attack, then I give him a power punch and his pants fall down.
Seriously, though the vast majority of attacks are of a common variety. The average hacker is a stupid high-school student that thinks it is cool, and has found a hacking website that tells him how to do it.
The problem with security is that it makes you think your secure. If people have passwords they can tell someone else their's and all the ssh updates in the world won't help you. How many of you can honestly say they have never given anyone else there password for anything? Simple things like forgetting your work some where and giving someone your password to email it to you is a bigger security risk, than a dozen highschool hackerz.com readers.
I'm a computational physics guy. When I started we didn't have terms. So a couple weeks into the job we go shopping for computers for me and another new guy, at the universities used computer store. We get a 166 with an ancient 14 in monitor and a 400 celery with 19 inch monitor. We work it out between us that I get the 400 with the crappy monitor, and he gets the big monitor(because he mainly does the plotting of the code I run) with the crappy processor.
Well what do you know? I get the crappy processor with the crappy monitor. So I'm running 20M dollars worth of supercomputers, from a term with a harddrive to small to install gcc on! Plus you can't use the internet, because modzilla takes a good minute to load, and 20 sec per webpage.
Add to that, that due to firecode we are not allowed to lock our cubicle space at night, and so stuff keeps getting stolen. When you need 100 pounds of text books and papers to work, you can't exactly take them home with you each night!
What's more is I was given admin responsiblity on the dept distributed system. I'm installing new software, and configuring it, all of a sudden I can't log in as root. One of the other prof's grad students decided that I didn't need root to admin the system, so he changed the password on me! His supervisor, which was the guy that gave my the job of admining the system, just says oh well, and I can't do anything. This is after putting off my research so I could read through 200 pages of tech manual, and tinker with the system for 2 weeks. Ergh.
It seems to me that they are giving themselves a six month window, as in the earthquake will happen between now and Sept 5. How is that going to help the people that live there? I can't quit my job, go on vacation for six months and then go back. I need to know a week or so in advance so I can leave right before, and come back right after.
I understand how this can help with the logistics of preparing aid. However, since a lot of earthquakes happen on major fault lines, couldn't you save the scientists time and just bring the aid to cities say 100 km from these sites.
I've seen aerial photos of LA in my earth sciences class, and had to laugh. You could see the fault line going through the city. You could also see right on the fault line, a huge cloverleaf onramp, elementary and secondary school, fire dept, earthquake response, and hospital. Now I know you want to be close to the problem, but you don't want to become the problem!
Please don't put any more fire depts. on the fault, I'd like live fireman to put out the fires and rescue me, signed Joe Los Angelian.
Hey hubbles lens is(or at least was a month or so ago) the smoothest man made object. We're talking about polishing a lense so that the surface bumps are smaller than transistors, and the shape is near perfect over a 10 meter or 30 meter diameter. That is where a lot of the money will go.
Also, throw in a few physicists at about 80k a year, a IT guy, 60k a year, a janitor, a tour guide, a few technitians salarys for 20 years. Not to mention if something big goes wrong, your going to have to fly in experts to Chile or where ever. They aren't going to want to drop what there doing unless you pay them really well.
An atomic force microscope can image at the atomic scale. It is made from a rod and a piezoelectric crystal(the same type of stuff that's in a barbeue starter). The price tag on those is about 1M, I know a lab with 3 of these guys. To get a top notch small scale lab going your looking at 1-10M. The data from the telescope will be used by hundreds of researchers.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, my bad guys, I forgot that the thing their calling SpaceShipOne isn't supposed to be one, only 100km. Perhaps NotQuiteSpaceShip would have been a better name. Anyways, even at 100km I would think that re-entry like conditions would be encountered and you'd need the high angle of attack.
Also, IMHO the ship looks like some high-school science project with way to much duct-tape with the leading edges done the way they have it.
I see of /. Canada called socialist in our politics. This seems to be the counterproof. Why does the electronics store need my address postal code and phone number when I buy a gizmo? If I'm going to give you marketing information, you give me something in exchange. Simply business.
Within 20 seconds of first using the system the user will try single click, double click, click pause, look for something on the toolbar, and then try the right button. But in every other use the right button will be quicker than any other option (that it isn't easy to get accidental file renames) because the user probably used the mouse to select the file in the first place.
What would be nice to see would be an adaptible file manager. Say if after a certain cutoff number of file renames, then if the ratio of times you just changed the name, or just the extension dominates, it throws up a dialog asking you if you want it to default to just selecting that region of the filename.
It's not that it takes years to come up with these little ideas, its that years have been spent in getting core glitches fixed and keeping up with the latest MS 'improvements'. It's going to be the small things, like using right click on the desktop to get common desktop settings changed that makes things a lot easier for the user. I don't know how many people I've had to tell that settings->control panel -> whatever too. That is a really hidden menu.
Clicking on what you want to change and getting reasonable options is non-trivial. There is a lot of heirachy that needs to be decided on, you can't just throw random dialogs at the user and make them try to find the option themselves. That is what these new features are about, trying to guess the users request.
For a good latex guide: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/englis h/lshort.pdf
.dvi file.
145 pages, has pretty much everything you need to know.
The only think I haven't found documented(perhaps it can't be done) is using greek symbols with accents on them, the accents always end up on one side or the other of the symbol. Sometimes there is both an a comma and an acute on the same symbol. You have to go to math mode, but then the language stuff doesn't work. ergh.
Other than that though, latex is by far the best text/math formater I've used. Once I figured out the basic commands I could type the code almost as fast as plain text. Eat your heart out MS.
For wysiwyg you can also use xdvi although it's not interactive. When you compile the code it will automatically update itself to the new
Tools should exist to provide functionality, not as a work around for lack of standardization. It makes sense that you need different tools to go from *nix to windows. But sense *nix and *BSD are largely the same OS, standardization makes sense. Especially between the different linux distros as the arguement that linux isn't unix that is popular with BSD guys wouldn't explain these differences. Not trying to flame any BSD guys, have a lot of respect for the OS and the effort that they put into the community.
Another example of differences between systems is what exactly you get when you make a bash command. One system rm -r -f blah and rm blah -r -f works another insists on having the flags only before, or only after.
Some sftp just outputs the filenames transfered, another it shows percent completed as its working. Wish they all did as sometimes I'm dealing with a supercomputer that tends to go down alot(which is a really bad idea by the way) and transferring 200Mb of data around, which can be in 5Mb files. Really would be nice not to have to wait around for 30 secs to see if the connection is active.
Suppose I could run a netstat, or a ls on the file repeatedly or something, but again that is a work around solution. Not to mention that netstat would be hard to get to work as TCP sockets stay open for a system specific time after a failure, some 30sec some 10min, which makes it fun to code a socket program on a system where it's 10min. Run doesn't work, change a line recompile, wait 10min before you can bind a new socket to the port, argh. (TCP standards do say a socket should stay open for a while to try to ensure data transfer, but they never specified how long)
One thing that always annoys me with programming for linux and unix is that include files are always in a different spot. I've spent days hunting for something(yes I know about whereis and assorted utils) only to find out it's name had an x infront of it, whereas on the other system it didn't or it was in another directory. Something stupid like /etc/bin/include/graphics/opengl.
Or one system uses opengl and the other mesa for example, and then your completely lost. The arguement that if you new the systems you were coding for better you would be fine, is ignorant as most people use standard libraries like opengl, sockets.h etc, because they aren't supposed to need to know much about the other os for it to work. Anyways, if the X guys standardize things like the directory structure, and procedure interfaces(although I think there are standards for these) it will make things much easier for us linux at home, unix at work guys.
Standard response to standard attacks? Sounds like someone's played too much Mike Tyson's punchout. If he tries to do a stack overflow, I log it as a possible attack, then I give him a power punch and his pants fall down.
Seriously, though the vast majority of attacks are of a common variety. The average hacker is a stupid high-school student that thinks it is cool, and has found a hacking website that tells him how to do it.
The problem with security is that it makes you think your secure. If people have passwords they can tell someone else their's and all the ssh updates in the world won't help you. How many of you can honestly say they have never given anyone else there password for anything? Simple things like forgetting your work some where and giving someone your password to email it to you is a bigger security risk, than a dozen highschool hackerz.com readers.
I'm a computational physics guy. When I started we didn't have terms. So a couple weeks into the job we go shopping for computers for me and another new guy, at the universities used computer store. We get a 166 with an ancient 14 in monitor and a 400 celery with 19 inch monitor. We work it out between us that I get the 400 with the crappy monitor, and he gets the big monitor(because he mainly does the plotting of the code I run) with the crappy processor.
Well what do you know? I get the crappy processor with the crappy monitor. So I'm running 20M dollars worth of supercomputers, from a term with a harddrive to small to install gcc on! Plus you can't use the internet, because modzilla takes a good minute to load, and 20 sec per webpage.
Add to that, that due to firecode we are not allowed to lock our cubicle space at night, and so stuff keeps getting stolen. When you need 100 pounds of text books and papers to work, you can't exactly take them home with you each night!What's more is I was given admin responsiblity on the dept distributed system. I'm installing new software, and configuring it, all of a sudden I can't log in as root. One of the other prof's grad students decided that I didn't need root to admin the system, so he changed the password on me! His supervisor, which was the guy that gave my the job of admining the system, just says oh well, and I can't do anything. This is after putting off my research so I could read through 200 pages of tech manual, and tinker with the system for 2 weeks. Ergh.
It seems to me that they are giving themselves a six month window, as in the earthquake will happen between now and Sept 5. How is that going to help the people that live there? I can't quit my job, go on vacation for six months and then go back. I need to know a week or so in advance so I can leave right before, and come back right after.
I understand how this can help with the logistics of preparing aid. However, since a lot of earthquakes happen on major fault lines, couldn't you save the scientists time and just bring the aid to cities say 100 km from these sites.
I've seen aerial photos of LA in my earth sciences class, and had to laugh. You could see the fault line going through the city. You could also see right on the fault line, a huge cloverleaf onramp, elementary and secondary school, fire dept, earthquake response, and hospital. Now I know you want to be close to the problem, but you don't want to become the problem!
Please don't put any more fire depts. on the fault, I'd like live fireman to put out the fires and rescue me, signed Joe Los Angelian.
Hey hubbles lens is(or at least was a month or so ago) the smoothest man made object. We're talking about polishing a lense so that the surface bumps are smaller than transistors, and the shape is near perfect over a 10 meter or 30 meter diameter. That is where a lot of the money will go. Also, throw in a few physicists at about 80k a year, a IT guy, 60k a year, a janitor, a tour guide, a few technitians salarys for 20 years. Not to mention if something big goes wrong, your going to have to fly in experts to Chile or where ever. They aren't going to want to drop what there doing unless you pay them really well. An atomic force microscope can image at the atomic scale. It is made from a rod and a piezoelectric crystal(the same type of stuff that's in a barbeue starter). The price tag on those is about 1M, I know a lab with 3 of these guys. To get a top notch small scale lab going your looking at 1-10M. The data from the telescope will be used by hundreds of researchers.