Gravity at the ISS is about nine tenths of that on Earth surface. Yet, ISS is on orbit, what causes the conditions of weightlessness on board. Try to jump to get on an Earth orbit for a while -- you feel weightlessness during that, but you are still in the gravity field of g = 9.81 m/s2.
Have you ever, while having your eyes closed, felt the position of a pointy object several contimeters distant from you face, especially from your forearm? I did and many people know that feeling. I have no idea whether this is an electrostatic field or what, or if it has anything common with... sharks, but it is probably quite a common phenomenon. I do not really know why I have not seen it described anywhere in the literature.
I still dispute your implication that KDE/GNOME/FreeSofware is an unaesthetic pile of crap. My Konqueror/FreeBSD rendering is significantly better than that Internet Explorer crap I have to use at work.
I did not imply something like that, I do not know why you interpreted it so. I did not mention Windows simply because I almost do not know it, and I do not care about it. I prefer Linux GUI as a generally much nicer and technically better than that in Windows. Fonts are rendered nicer too, in my opinion. Still, if kerning was more supported, it would be even better. And some GTK applications are getting to use it, so it probably goes in the good direction.
I do not know what do you mean by kerning, but kerning is not just a variable font width.
I tried three popular browsers - Firefox 1.5/FC, IE/Windows XP, Konqueror 3.4.2/Mandriva and, despite enlarging the fonts, in no one I had found any kerning.
I used Bitstream Vera Sans in GIMP and Gedit and there was kerning, and then the identical font in Kedit 3.4.2, and there was not any kerning.
So the only environment in these three in which I found apps that used kerning was GTK, what I admitedly did not expect, and still one of the more popular GTK apps - Firefox 1.5, did not have it.
I just tried on another system Konqueror in Mandriva distro - KDE 3.4.2, and the browser did not have kerning too, or at least I did not found any in the particular font. I do not know what is the reason, it might perhaps be some that particular font issue.
One of the problems with serifs on computer screens is that the screens have low resolution. A blurry san-serif font might look yet more blurry with serifs. Also the blurry screen is one of the reasons for the font being larger, and viewed at the larger distance, which are exactly the reasons for using sans serif that you have just given.
When the computer screen DPI improves, and screens can be held in hand as books, serif fonts will perhaps get used more often on the computer screens also.
Gnome and KDE supporting kerning and rendering text in both directions is one thing, applications supporting it is another. Gnome menus are kerned, but when I tried Firefox on the same system, the text was not kerned, even that the font was probably providing kerning info, because Inkscape could kern the text using the same font.
I just tried a recent version of Inkscape with Bitstream Vera Sans, and it was kerning the text. Then I configured Firefox with the same font, and it was not kerning the text. I do not know if the reason is some misconfigured fonts, or some option somewhere that must be set, but anyway, in a current Linux distro, a current version of Firefox was displaying pages with a not kerned text.
Kerning, that is aligning of individual pairs of letters, is one of the basic concepts in typography. Still, a typical KDE/GNOME/whatever editor/browser is pretty likely to have no kerning at all. It can have translucent background and jumping rubbery icons, and no kerning. This gives that chaotic, uneven look to typical computer typography, and can make the text harder to read.
Kerning is SO simple to implement in software, and SO effective in improving the text readability, and it is still barely used on computer displays as of now.
It's a pressure unit.
1 Pascal = 1 Newton / square meter
On Earth, an object of ~ 0.98 kg, standing on a 1 square centimeter base ( ~ an iron rod 1.3 meters long, 1.13 cm diameter ) , would exert because of its weight a pressure of about 0.1 megapascal.
Typical atmospheric pressure ~ 1013 hPa = about 0.1 MPa too.
1GPa is 10000 as much as in these examples (i. e imagine the same iron rod 13 km long).
By the way, compare the first two examples, and you'll see that an astronaut in a vacuum might feel not very comfortable.
1. But you need to knowledge to find the configuration file, etc. that a linux
user might not have. It's a GUI app, is not it?
The default timeout seems also to be quite unusual.
2. The security system does not surely write
"Sorry!" and then fades the screen;)
The real brain has content - the instinct,
the way of learning from experience, and the knowledge learned from the experience. It's a bit
like a computer -- there must be at leat some
sensible bootstrap code that knows
how to populate the circuits with other code and data. What about the `bootstrap' in the simulation?
Is it only a random net of randomly initialized
neocortical columns? Would not it be a bit like
a huge net of random, though primitively adaptive, gates, that ones calls a processor?
It is surely an interesting research, and I know
that even primitive neural nets were used to model
quite well some brain disorders etc, but --
"news flash" -- I suppose we are very
far from anything being a good brain simulator,
and the sci--hype won't help this much.
Are these cans suitable to contain fat and acids
that might be in the juice (as opposed to usual
minear water)?
Ditto for the white paint? Is the latter highly
water--resistant and washable?
Can the whole appliance be easily cleaned, including the valves?
Is the electrical circuit insulated properly
to work in a device that might spill liquids?
Anyway, whether it is ready for a long, safe and reliable use or not, it's an interesting project for fun and learning. Mixing scents instead and transmitting them by pipes to some 4--channel fans would perhaps make a nice scent and wind card:D
One can say "only a 1 or 2 deg. Celsius". In fact, first it is a mean temperature, second, the climate might turn out to on the verge of some major deterministic chaos state.
As an example, during the so called Little Ice Age the global temperature dropped by about 1 deg. C, but it caused the following: (from Wikipedia)
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
The chaotic nature of weather patterns might, in turn, hypothetically cause that some very small change causes a major switch, i. e. in sea currents. I do not know if anyone now either predicts or excludes for sure any such event, though.
So, concluding, I think that we do not really know how much serious to the climate the global warming is.
Sound cards are common these days. Their recording noise can be used as a random number generator, does not it?
So let's write the software and make a grid to test it;D
BTW, yesterday I have supposed that one guy did receive ESP, too;D Seriously, that guy had written some insightful comments, but perhaps this is their somewhat "drifting" style. So many people though "prom" while reading the story and perhaps he got influenced:D
Taking into account the launching rocket, the whole setup is not fully reusable. And the shuttle is indeed very bulky. If they get rid once of the launching rocket or make it smaller, the reusable ships might possibly become a relatively cheap and comfortable way of traveling to the Earth orbit.
Yeah dear babbler, "space shuttle" in Polish is sometimes called "prom kosmiczny" for some reason, so perhaps you received some ESP while writing your babbling.
Slashdot Mirror
Gravity at the ISS is about nine tenths of that on Earth surface. Yet, ISS is on orbit, what causes the conditions of weightlessness on board. Try to jump to get on an Earth orbit for a while -- you feel weightlessness during that, but you are still in the gravity field of g = 9.81 m/s2.
sorry, i have mistaken these two words
Have you ever, while having your eyes closed, felt the position of a pointy object several contimeters distant from you face, especially from your forearm? I did and many people know that feeling. I have no idea whether this is an electrostatic field or what, or if it has anything common with... sharks, but it is probably quite a common phenomenon. I do not really know why I have not seen it described anywhere in the literature.
Does Google have a secret controlled gossip leakage department staffed with PhDs? ;)
I still dispute your implication that KDE/GNOME/FreeSofware is an unaesthetic pile of crap. My Konqueror/FreeBSD rendering is significantly better than that Internet Explorer crap I have to use at work.
I did not imply something like that, I do not know why you interpreted it so. I did not mention Windows simply because I almost do not know it, and I do not care about it. I prefer Linux GUI as a generally much nicer and technically better than that in Windows. Fonts are rendered nicer too, in my opinion. Still, if kerning was more supported, it would be even better. And some GTK applications are getting to use it, so it probably goes in the good direction.
I do not know what do you mean by kerning, but kerning is not just a variable font width.
I tried three popular browsers - Firefox 1.5/FC, IE/Windows XP, Konqueror 3.4.2/Mandriva and, despite enlarging the fonts, in no one I had found any kerning.
I used Bitstream Vera Sans in GIMP and Gedit and there was kerning, and then the identical font in Kedit 3.4.2, and there was not any kerning.
So the only environment in these three in which I found apps that used kerning was GTK, what I admitedly did not expect, and still one of the more popular GTK apps - Firefox 1.5, did not have it.
That's what I called barely supported.
I just tried on another system Konqueror in Mandriva distro - KDE 3.4.2, and the browser did not have kerning too, or at least I did not found any in the particular font. I do not know what is the reason, it might perhaps be some that particular font issue.
In Java, lacking kerning support for text layout was a bug that lasted until the version 1.6, that is yet experimental: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do;:YfiG? bug_id=4339577
Anyway, it's nice that the kerning is getting supported, thanks for the info.
One of the problems with serifs on computer screens is that the screens have low resolution. A blurry san-serif font might look yet more blurry with serifs. Also the blurry screen is one of the reasons for the font being larger, and viewed at the larger distance, which are exactly the reasons for using sans serif that you have just given.
When the computer screen DPI improves, and screens can be held in hand as books, serif fonts will perhaps get used more often on the computer screens also.
Gnome and KDE supporting kerning and rendering text in both directions is one thing, applications supporting it is another. Gnome menus are kerned, but when I tried Firefox on the same system, the text was not kerned, even that the font was probably providing kerning info, because Inkscape could kern the text using the same font.
For comparison, I just tested kerning of Firefox and Internet Explorer under another system - Windows XP, and the text was not kerned in both cases.
I just tried a recent version of Inkscape with Bitstream Vera Sans, and it was kerning the text. Then I configured Firefox with the same font, and it was not kerning the text. I do not know if the reason is some misconfigured fonts, or some option somewhere that must be set, but anyway, in a current Linux distro, a current version of Firefox was displaying pages with a not kerned text.
Kerning, that is aligning of individual pairs of letters, is one of the basic concepts in typography. Still, a typical KDE/GNOME/whatever editor/browser is pretty likely to have no kerning at all. It can have translucent background and jumping rubbery icons, and no kerning. This gives that chaotic, uneven look to typical computer typography, and can make the text harder to read.
Kerning is SO simple to implement in software, and SO effective in improving the text readability, and it is still barely used on computer displays as of now.
It's a pressure unit. 1 Pascal = 1 Newton / square meter On Earth, an object of ~ 0.98 kg, standing on a 1 square centimeter base ( ~ an iron rod 1.3 meters long, 1.13 cm diameter ) , would exert because of its weight a pressure of about 0.1 megapascal. Typical atmospheric pressure ~ 1013 hPa = about 0.1 MPa too. 1GPa is 10000 as much as in these examples (i. e imagine the same iron rod 13 km long). By the way, compare the first two examples, and you'll see that an astronaut in a vacuum might feel not very comfortable.
2. The security system does not surely write "Sorry!" and then fades the screen ;)
3, 4 Fine :)
Yeah, KDE has it done ergonomically and nicely :)
1. Short timeout for writing passwords, what may make it difficult for some people to unlock the screen at all.
2. Stupid, delaying messages after entering the wrong password, as if the security delay by the authorization system was not enough.
3. Ugly, ugly, *ugly* logo.
4. Small, non-antialiased fonts in the password dialog, as if the screen space was so scarce when all other windows are hidden anyway.
The real brain has content - the instinct, the way of learning from experience, and the knowledge learned from the experience. It's a bit like a computer -- there must be at leat some sensible bootstrap code that knows how to populate the circuits with other code and data. What about the `bootstrap' in the simulation? Is it only a random net of randomly initialized neocortical columns? Would not it be a bit like a huge net of random, though primitively adaptive, gates, that ones calls a processor?
It is surely an interesting research, and I know that even primitive neural nets were used to model quite well some brain disorders etc, but -- "news flash" -- I suppose we are very far from anything being a good brain simulator, and the sci--hype won't help this much.
No, I did not know that such thing exists even, it was just a joke ;)
Are these cans suitable to contain fat and acids that might be in the juice (as opposed to usual minear water)? :D
Ditto for the white paint? Is the latter highly water--resistant and washable?
Can the whole appliance be easily cleaned, including the valves?
Is the electrical circuit insulated properly to work in a device that might spill liquids?
Anyway, whether it is ready for a long, safe and reliable use or not, it's an interesting project for fun and learning. Mixing scents instead and transmitting them by pipes to some 4--channel fans would perhaps make a nice scent and wind card
According to the news, the Ice Ages next week so far are hypothesized only:
Scientists are to drill the deepest hole yet under the Arctic Ocean to investigate whether global warming would plunge Europe into an ice age.
;)
One can say "only a 1 or 2 deg. Celsius". In fact, first it is a mean temperature, second, the climate might turn out to on the verge of some major deterministic chaos state.
As an example, during the so called Little Ice Age the global temperature dropped by about 1 deg. C, but it caused the following: (from Wikipedia)
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
The chaotic nature of weather patterns might, in turn, hypothetically cause that some very small change causes a major switch, i. e. in sea currents. I do not know if anyone now either predicts or excludes for sure any such event, though.
So, concluding, I think that we do not really know how much serious to the climate the global warming is.
But their research looks interesting :D
I do not really know what to exactly think about the discussion.
Sound cards are common these days. Their recording noise can be used as a random number generator, does not it?
So let's write the software and make a grid to test it ;D
BTW, yesterday I have supposed that one guy did receive ESP, too ;D Seriously, that guy had written some insightful comments, but perhaps this is their somewhat "drifting" style. So many people though "prom" while reading the story and perhaps he got influenced :D
Taking into account the launching rocket, the whole setup is not fully reusable. And the shuttle is indeed very bulky. If they get rid once of the launching rocket or make it smaller, the reusable ships might possibly become a relatively cheap and comfortable way of traveling to the Earth orbit.
Yeah dear babbler, "space shuttle" in Polish is sometimes called "prom kosmiczny" for some reason, so perhaps you received some ESP while writing your babbling.