If a black hole is created and remains stable anywhere on earth, you won't even have time to scream "Oh, shit!" before your molecular structure is torn apart.
So, no sense in worrying about an event that you will not notice is happening and will never be able to remember.
But grammar nitpicking aside, why would it be sad if the other planets were sterile, exactly? What difference would that _actually_ make to us, here on Earth?
It would mean that the question "Is there life anywhere other than Earth?" will not have found a positive answer within our reach. Because it's possible there is none, finding life will be the only way to get ourselves a definitive answer. And if we don't find any in the Solar System... Well, than this possibility of a definitve answer will be a lot further away from us.
This Slashdot story has more potential for talk about ardware hacking, physics babbling, paranoia nursing and 2AM-James-Bond-action than anything I've read here in months. I don't mind a link to a store in a story this intriguing.
So far, the ISS has always only be filled up to the number of people that can be immediately evacuated with the always-attached escape vehicle. Now, we're filling it up more? I understand this is an emergency, but imagine the ISS gets hit by space junk and 3 people can go back to earth while the other have to wave goodbye on the ISS and die?
If you leave the astronauts in the damaged shuttle which is likely to burn up, you put them at a much higher risk than having them inside the ISS for a little while (we're looking at maybe a month or two until another Shuttle or several Soyuz flights get them off) that might suffer debris bombardment.
IMHO, this is an excellent plan which uses the only safe harbor we have in Space, the ISS, in case of an emergency on a spaceship. Granted, not on every shuttle mission would you be able to get to the ISS before it's too late, but hell, this is way better than no backup plan at all.
If the product is difficult to use, they will make more money off support. If it's rock-solid and completely intuitive, their revenues will crumble. Am I making any sense?
Do you honestly think it's possible to make a product so that the majority of office working idiots will not find something to cry for help about?
Since Python is about the only language I know very well, I find this fascinating. But it also reminds me of the.NET development suite, where the way you write your code in any language doesn't matter, since it all become one machine code. So if you think you can do something more memory efficient in C# than in VB.NET - well, no. So the bottom line is, the quality will depend on the quality of the converter, and that's not so cool. Adding layers between code and machine code is not the best way IMHO.
What's interesting is the United States Air Force has the following: [...]
Does your Air Force hold the power over any military actions in space as well as in the air? Is NASA purely non-military? I'd like to know what the rules are over there on the other side of the planet.
This is a _proposal_ by the United States, so if you want to go and cry blue murder (which I think _is_ appropriate), don't take it to the UN, take it where it belongs - to the Bush administration.
When I'd read the headline, I thought this was going to be a good article. But it completele misses the point it should be making.
What the article should be saying: "FOSS isn't exactly going to help by its main virtue, which is the ability to review the source code, if nobody can understand it. There has even been that recent event encouraging coders to hide mailicious code in harmless-looking code. FOSS's code should be well-written and clear to understand. Although you cannot expect Joe Average to understand OpenOffice's innards, the barrier for him to come to an understanding should be as low as possible."
What the article is saying: "ZOMFG, Leenux is 2 l33t 4 me, make it clicky-clicky, plzkthx!!!!111one-eleven"
There was a young man from the East
Who unwillingly served as a feast,
For his ship, it did fall
To the planet of Trall
Near a ravenous bug-blatter beast.
I'm quite impressed with this Slashdot article, not because of TFA, nor because of its content.
But I am surprised how many of you realize the problems that your society is having (Yes, I am adressing US citizens). We, in Europe, often speak about those issues of freedom being taken away in the name of a so-called War on Terror, and we see the same roots of the problem, being the media providing bread-and-games distraction, partial/idealistic education and other things. But, I have come to realize, we unfairly generalize the US citizens, as if all of you didn't realize what's going on. But then, I see stuff like Sorry Everybody, and I am reminded that lots of you don't like the system either. And most of the comments on this article (which have been modded up) express an understanding of what is going wrong.
People - you have to do something!. I am not in the position to be lecturing you (since I am but a 19-year-old German student), but I wonder how come that so many of you see the problems, and yet Nothing Ever Happens. I wonder if it is because there's no way for the "extraparliamentary opposition" (read up on the German one) to express itself, or because there simply is no movement which unites people who feel like you do, and like I do, too. What I see is a great potential for protest, but only in places like Slashdot does it become aparent.
There really is no important bottom line to this. It's what I perceive and what I wonder about.
I just came form the CeBit, where dozens of proud Microsoft representants were showing Windwows Vista, Office 2007 and of course the IE 7 ("We've got these 'tabs' now!" - yes, they said that).
I convinced one of them to open the ACID2 test in the IE7 (Google was blocked and he told me to use MSN Search, but I fired up Seekport). It was the worst rendering of the ACID2 I've ever seen. The entire screen was red, except for a few lines and dots here and there, and scrollbar in the nothing way over to the right.
Of course, the Microsoftie was quick to say, it's all only beta...
Even when login in as Administrator, applications you launch run with least-privliges. If an applicatin or operation requires administrator rights to invoke, a "consent" dialog will appear asking the user if it is ok to launch that application or invoke whatever privleged operation was requested.
Which renders the login as Administrator rather useless, because I will still be bugged with "Do you really want to blow your nose now?" messages.
But as has been correctly observed, that is the users' fault, and Microsoft is merely reacting to it. Only they opt for more parenting instead of forcing users to learn the first bit about security. (And please spare me, I _can_ tell my grandma why she shouldn't run stuff as Admin. It's _not_ too difficult for Joe Average.)
...may enable power plants to use the same Uranium another time, but all the processes involved in this "recycling" increase the volume of nuclear waste by a factor of >15! Because it's not just the Uranium itself, it's the glass containers into which the nuclear liquids are molten etc. pp.
So, unless you happen to have a huge desert in the middle of your country where you can dump nuclear waste without anyboding giving a damn, this "recycling" process is a joke.
[comparison of free information and free guns and drugs]
Information, when defined as facts that objectively state the truth, is not something that any government has any moral justification of denying to their citizens.
It may be justified to restrict access to guns (because killings might ensue) or to drugs (because deaths may ensue), because such measures aim at protecting the citizens from their own faults. I say that this may be justified, since I myself do not totally agree with it.
However, restricting information is a totally different thing. The government's motivation behind this is not to protect the citizens from their own folly, but to protect the government from the justified wrath of the people that have been oppressed and lied to for decades. Which is not a goal I am willing to respect.
So, it somewhat silly that you would argue that MS performs a "complete ground up rewrite", all while advocating MacOS X, which is a complete slut for legacy code.
Maybe his argumentation was wrong, but the simple fact is: BSD/Darwin/OS X never needed a rewrite - they work really well to this day, as you can see on Apples all over the globe. Windows' code, however, should have been dumped, printed on toilet paper and nailed to the church door as a bad example at the time Windows ME was released at the very latest.
Slashdot Mirror
If a black hole is created and remains stable anywhere on earth, you won't even have time to scream "Oh, shit!" before your molecular structure is torn apart.
So, no sense in worrying about an event that you will not notice is happening and will never be able to remember.
But grammar nitpicking aside, why would it be sad if the other planets were sterile, exactly? What difference would that _actually_ make to us, here on Earth?
It would mean that the question "Is there life anywhere other than Earth?" will not have found a positive answer within our reach. Because it's possible there is none, finding life will be the only way to get ourselves a definitive answer. And if we don't find any in the Solar System... Well, than this possibility of a definitve answer will be a lot further away from us.
This Slashdot story has more potential for talk about ardware hacking, physics babbling, paranoia nursing and 2AM-James-Bond-action than anything I've read here in months. I don't mind a link to a store in a story this intriguing.
You just let the heat dissipate through radiators outside the station.
...which is that they will find lots of holes that will compel Microsoft to delay even further!
So far, the ISS has always only be filled up to the number of people that can be immediately evacuated with the always-attached escape vehicle. Now, we're filling it up more? I understand this is an emergency, but imagine the ISS gets hit by space junk and 3 people can go back to earth while the other have to wave goodbye on the ISS and die?
If you leave the astronauts in the damaged shuttle which is likely to burn up, you put them at a much higher risk than having them inside the ISS for a little while (we're looking at maybe a month or two until another Shuttle or several Soyuz flights get them off) that might suffer debris bombardment.
IMHO, this is an excellent plan which uses the only safe harbor we have in Space, the ISS, in case of an emergency on a spaceship. Granted, not on every shuttle mission would you be able to get to the ISS before it's too late, but hell, this is way better than no backup plan at all.
If the product is difficult to use, they will make more money off support. If it's rock-solid and completely intuitive, their revenues will crumble. Am I making any sense?
Do you honestly think it's possible to make a product so that the majority of office working idiots will not find something to cry for help about?
Since Python is about the only language I know very well, I find this fascinating. But it also reminds me of the .NET development suite, where the way you write your code in any language doesn't matter, since it all become one machine code. So if you think you can do something more memory efficient in C# than in VB.NET - well, no.
So the bottom line is, the quality will depend on the quality of the converter, and that's not so cool. Adding layers between code and machine code is not the best way IMHO.
What's interesting is the United States Air Force has the following: [...]
Does your Air Force hold the power over any military actions in space as well as in the air? Is NASA purely non-military? I'd like to know what the rules are over there on the other side of the planet.
This is a _proposal_ by the United States, so if you want to go and cry blue murder (which I think _is_ appropriate), don't take it to the UN, take it where it belongs - to the Bush administration.
When I'd read the headline, I thought this was going to be a good article. But it completele misses the point it should be making.
What the article should be saying: "FOSS isn't exactly going to help by its main virtue, which is the ability to review the source code, if nobody can understand it. There has even been that recent event encouraging coders to hide mailicious code in harmless-looking code. FOSS's code should be well-written and clear to understand. Although you cannot expect Joe Average to understand OpenOffice's innards, the barrier for him to come to an understanding should be as low as possible."
What the article is saying: "ZOMFG, Leenux is 2 l33t 4 me, make it clicky-clicky, plzkthx!!!!111one-eleven"
There was a young man from the East
Who unwillingly served as a feast,
For his ship, it did fall
To the planet of Trall
Near a ravenous bug-blatter beast.
(Oh yes, I wrote this all on my own!)
I'm quite impressed with this Slashdot article, not because of TFA, nor because of its content.
But I am surprised how many of you realize the problems that your society is having (Yes, I am adressing US citizens). We, in Europe, often speak about those issues of freedom being taken away in the name of a so-called War on Terror, and we see the same roots of the problem, being the media providing bread-and-games distraction, partial/idealistic education and other things.
But, I have come to realize, we unfairly generalize the US citizens, as if all of you didn't realize what's going on. But then, I see stuff like Sorry Everybody, and I am reminded that lots of you don't like the system either. And most of the comments on this article (which have been modded up) express an understanding of what is going wrong.
People - you have to do something!. I am not in the position to be lecturing you (since I am but a 19-year-old German student), but I wonder how come that so many of you see the problems, and yet Nothing Ever Happens. I wonder if it is because there's no way for the "extraparliamentary opposition" (read up on the German one) to express itself, or because there simply is no movement which unites people who feel like you do, and like I do, too. What I see is a great potential for protest, but only in places like Slashdot does it become aparent.
There really is no important bottom line to this. It's what I perceive and what I wonder about.
I never thought I'd ever find another Jazz JAckrabbit fan :D
I'd say the software wars image is LONG overdue for an update.
True, and Mono would be an enemy agent behind friendly lines.
I just came form the CeBit, where dozens of proud Microsoft representants were showing Windwows Vista, Office 2007 and of course the IE 7 ("We've got these 'tabs' now!" - yes, they said that).
I convinced one of them to open the ACID2 test in the IE7 (Google was blocked and he told me to use MSN Search, but I fired up Seekport). It was the worst rendering of the ACID2 I've ever seen. The entire screen was red, except for a few lines and dots here and there, and scrollbar in the nothing way over to the right.
Of course, the Microsoftie was quick to say, it's all only beta...
...claimed the world's best operating system for twenty-something years? Nothing ever came out of that, either.
Even when login in as Administrator, applications you launch run with least-privliges. If an applicatin or operation requires administrator rights to invoke, a "consent" dialog will appear asking the user if it is ok to launch that application or invoke whatever privleged operation was requested.
Which renders the login as Administrator rather useless, because I will still be bugged with "Do you really want to blow your nose now?" messages.
But as has been correctly observed, that is the users' fault, and Microsoft is merely reacting to it. Only they opt for more parenting instead of forcing users to learn the first bit about security. (And please spare me, I _can_ tell my grandma why she shouldn't run stuff as Admin. It's _not_ too difficult for Joe Average.)
...may enable power plants to use the same Uranium another time, but all the processes involved in this "recycling" increase the volume of nuclear waste by a factor of >15! Because it's not just the Uranium itself, it's the glass containers into which the nuclear liquids are molten etc. pp.
So, unless you happen to have a huge desert in the middle of your country where you can dump nuclear waste without anyboding giving a damn, this "recycling" process is a joke.
Information, when defined as facts that objectively state the truth, is not something that any government has any moral justification of denying to their citizens.
It may be justified to restrict access to guns (because killings might ensue) or to drugs (because deaths may ensue), because such measures aim at protecting the citizens from their own faults. I say that this may be justified, since I myself do not totally agree with it.
However, restricting information is a totally different thing. The government's motivation behind this is not to protect the citizens from their own folly, but to protect the government from the justified wrath of the people that have been oppressed and lied to for decades. Which is not a goal I am willing to respect.
...think of a Quantum Singularity-Powered Romulan Warbird when they read this?
...go stick your head in a pig!
So, it somewhat silly that you would argue that MS performs a "complete ground up rewrite", all while advocating MacOS X, which is a complete slut for legacy code.
Maybe his argumentation was wrong, but the simple fact is: BSD/Darwin/OS X never needed a rewrite - they work really well to this day, as you can see on Apples all over the globe. Windows' code, however, should have been dumped, printed on toilet paper and nailed to the church door as a bad example at the time Windows ME was released at the very latest.
Methinks thee art confusing rootkits with spyware.
It's 'thou', not 'thee'.
Methinks thy English sucks.
...as long as Netcraft doesn't confirm it!