Generally, menus aren't for putting stuff in textboxes, they're for going to the preferences or save or something, which doesn't require any input except in the dialog box that pops up.
Well who'd have thought it.
However, it can be useful to understand where the input focus goes once you end your interaction with the menu. In the Apple way, it remains with the application you had selected unless the menu operation is to close the application.
In the Windows/Linux way, where does the focus go? Remembering of course that the use-case under discussion is one where you want to interact with an application that doesn't currently have input focus.
But with non-Macs, the Window automatically becomes active when you click on its menu (or in my case, when you move over the menu--I use old Unix-style focus-on-hover).
This is true, though I'd be interested to see where the input focus goes when you complete your menu selection. Is it indeterminate or in the first, of any, input field?
Mine scrolls if I'm just vaguely on the right-side sometimes. Doesn't require being in the bar, though that could be something in xorg.conf
Mmmm, not a linux user so can't comment. Wait a mo while I fire up parallels to check XP.....
... Nope, you have to be in the bar to scroll. And of course, the bigger the page, the smaller the scrolling control. Interestingly, all of the Mac trackpad commands work within XP so double-tap is right click, two-finger wipe gives scrolling.
And yes, I am generally working in small windows all over the screen. It's called instant messaging and having lots of terminals open.
Not trolling but surely if you want to select a menu on a window you want that window to be active? I can see that extra click can be an additional step but it doesn't strike me as a big deal.
But why don't the laptops actually have a right click *button*? I don't want one button. I want two. And I don't want an external mouse, because that requires moving my hands rather far from the keyboard. With a trackpad below the keyboard, I can operate the mouse with my thumbs.
It's funny but I'm the other way raoound, I really can't get used to a two-button trackpad on a non-Apple laptop.
On my MacBook if I want to right click I tap with two fingers and if I want to scroll I drag with two fingers, either vertically or horizontally.
On my Thinkpad (work), right click isn't so bad, though I still find I double-tap and wonder why I don't get the context menu, but scrolling's a complete bastard. I have to position exactly in that little vertical or horizontal bar thing and then click and drag? Blech, horrid.
Thanks for the background. It's good to know that generally there's nothing wierd going on. And not having a registry to get corrupted is always a bonus.
Here's where discussion on/. gets horribly hard to read and follow...
The corporate I work far has all it's business apps written in Java. Theoretically there's nothing to stop them switching to OSX.
The company I work for uses 3rd party apps which are not written in Java; they are written by ISVs, in highly optimized C and C++, and they still may take hours to run a simulation.
There are no Mac versions, and we wouldn't be rebuying such an expensive software for Mac anyway. So while your company might be OK, my company can't just move to another OS.
Sounds like fairly specialised stuff then, and not the kind of thing that would be run by the vast majority of corporate "grunts". On windows?
I'm sure there are hundreds of businesses that fall into one camp or another. A car mechanic down the street runs his DOS-based billing database (FoxPro likely) and would be totally lost if I suggest that he moves to Mac. Even Windows XP may be not an option for him, who knows how old his stuff is.
Then he's got other much more serious problems than what corporate desktop he should be using. Digressing of course, but he does have backups and a plan for getting at his data should his system fail. Not being funny but there are always going to be those who are locked into a platform because of the applications themselves.
Besides, on unrelated note, as some posters already said - with Macs we would lock ourselves into Apple ecology even more than with any Windows lock-in that people talk about. With Macs you have to buy from only one vendor, and pay whatever that vendor wants. That is not acceptable with hardware (you do have choices already,) and is barely acceptable with software (you may have a choice occasionally.)
So what's the alternative? Now that Ubuntu is effectively productising Linux I suppose that's a possibility.
Have you tried OWA recently? I realise it's not the argument I was making but it works extremely well.
I had to Google for OWA, and I discovered that it stands for some Microsoft Webmail. No, I never used it, and we don't have many MS servers (nor Exchange), and it would be a nice day when we have none. We use SquirrelMail, and it is adequate for a traveling employee - but not as convenient as our current Thunderbird clients are.
I like thunderbird and use it for usenet but have stuck with mail.app for IMAP usage.
For OWA how about Google's suite. All web enabled products.
Back to the point of Apple replacing Wintel on the corporate desktop, 98% of my working day is spent in email, calendar, web, spreadsheet and word processor. I use MS project (spit) now and then and Clearcase and ClearQuest which are either available on linux/osx or can be used in a browser. Give me Project on a server I can access through a remote remote desktop and I don't care what my client platform is.
Because first you need to find a computer user who "just wants email/browsing/office and access to some apps through a browser".
The grand parent was talking about the corporate market and so was I. You're correct about the home market, but not a locked down business.
Among home users this excludes games; among corporate users this excludes most of business software that is out there (assuming MS Office for Mac is procured and tested for compatibility.) Training of the employees is a problem as well. Myself, I have an old PowerBook 5300ce somewhere, and it still works, but when I tried to use it the experience was far from intuitive. That was with MacOS 9.x IIRC, I can't say if the modern OSX is more Windows-like (to appease the Windows users.)
The corporate I work far has all it's business apps written in Java. Theoretically there's nothing to stop them switching to OSX.
In other words, nobody is interested in the limited choice that you offer. But you are not the first to offer it; a number of "thin computing" companies, starting with Sun, tried to promote this concept.
Except that it wasn't what I was suggesting.
They all failed so far, because hardly any modern app (like Outlook 2007) can run in a browser. In a pinch you can use Webmail, but it is light years behind the native, local code. If you own a computer you might as well use it to its full potential.
Have you tried OWA recently? I realise it's not the argument I was making but it works extremely well. Even using Safari. And like I said, I wasn't suggesting a thin client.
...most programs don't need an installer or uninstaller (drop the program icon to trash & empty usually removes the program...
And the odd applications that do require an installer I tend to look on with some level of suspicion. So what are you doing and why? How do I uninstall you when I decide I don't want you any more?
TextWrangler has some method of enabling command line tools which doesn't have an equivalent disable which leaves me feeling edgy about what kind of cruft can be left behind. Not that OSX cares either way, I just get a touch of OCD about untidy systems.
Agreed on most of that. Gateway don't do much business that I've seen in the UK, although I'm not in corporate purchasing so my view is limited to what I see on the ground. I suspect we're a bit gunshy when it comes to a supplier that just dumped the whole market and took its toys home. Dell are losing ground to HP and, IIRC, Acer. It seems they're starting to reap the benefits of some truly shocking customer service.
I suppose an interesting question would be if you just want email/browsing/office and access to some apps through a browser, why not use something like a Mac Mini?
Try V for vendetta. Though Alexa Davalos was pretty hot in Riddick, I don't recall the shaven head thing.
And before I get modded off topic, only on Slashdot would discussion of two foxy chicks be off topic.
Because they are experts at spinning things like this. Look at Blair's reply, he quotes a survey which found that a majority were in favour of ID cards - he's saying "you got 27000, I've got 27000000".
Although on that basis, close to half the population don't care about ID cards. So where do their votes count?
The public don't help themselves on sites like this. Look at the number of frivolous petitions that get requested - all nicely displayed on the site to show they are listening, to everyone and no-one.
Notice also that the petition to bring back Fox Hunting currently has 30000 signatories. Puts the ID card petition in another bad light (IMO).
That's an inherent weakness of this kind of approach though isn't it? Or is it a srength, I'm not sure. On one hand it allows people to raise issues, on the other it allows trivial or personal issues to be raised.
The only "petition" that matters to a politician is an election.
With the parties centralising and extreme views being less of a vote winner than before, does it really make a difference to the electorate? OK, so it's a different set of snouts in the trough, but what do we see that's different?
Simple, really. As a poster noted earlier, No2ID pointed out that this was a great way to introduce "fire and forget" activism. No need to go picketing in crap British weather, no need for civil disobedience, no need to leave the comfort of your armchair... one click and, hey, you've protested, cup of tea, please.
Nice and cheap then. No need for police overtime or tidying up afterwards.
I disagree that ignoring the ID-Card petition "is hardly a big deal". Ignoring a petition with 27,000 signatures or 1.5 million is a symptom of the same problem, and it is a huge deal: the UK government does not like the idea of democracy.
On reflection, you're correct. It's not the number its the act.
The reaction [dailymail.co.uk] by a senior UK government minister to the idea that citizens can set up their own polls is indicative of their utter contempt for the notion that citizens should be able to so easily and publicly have their say: it was "unbelievable", he said, that someone in the government could have possibly come up with the idea, concluding that "The person who came up with this idea must be a prat." The Transport select committee chairman was equally dismissive, and said [lse.co.uk]: "I think it (the online petition) was daft. I don't know what under-16 year-old employment scheme they have got in Number 10, but they should revise it. If you entirely represent the thing in a negative way of course people are going to say 'I don't want to do that'."
Although to be fair, it's hard to see how much of the suggested road tax legislation could be presented in a positive light. I'm solidly behind the reduction of use of private cars but recognise that there needs to be a carrot as well as a stick.
Ever since, it's been quite clear that any such petitions will be ignored, and I rather suspect that the site will no longer allow the public to create petitions in the future. The focus by the government in dealing with these petitions has been on mitigating what is seen as a PR disaster rather than a victory for democratic participation, so it's time to engineer some consent [wikipedia.org]. They've made quite clear that they fully intend to go ahead with trial runs of the road tolls, and this letter about Blair arguing for ID-Cards illustrates, yet again, that the public need to be managed.
Which is a sad state of affairs, mainly because voting one lot out only brings the other lot, with the same attitudes, back in.
If there was ever a clearer example of just how much politicians don't like citizens meddling in their affairs, this is it.
But this time we don't have the poll tax riots to enjoy on TV.
Ignoring a petition from 27thousand out of a population of 60million ish is hardly a big deal IMHO and says more about how little people understand the issue and care either way than it does about democracy in action.
If one were to look for a better example of democracy being stifled, it was the "sinister" road tolls petition - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ with a total of 1.6 million people signed up. The original government response was more or less "who cares how many people sign it, it's still not going to make a difference to policy. I wonder how that one will end.
So my question is, why would you put this site up for people to raise petitions, if you don't plan to pay any attention to the petitions people put on it?
I'm sure there's a way to disable the Vista prompt, but I don't know what it is. In any case, Windows would tend to hide that deep in some configuration area -- I would hope to at least see a "don't ask me again" checkbox, but I doubt it.
Just wait until SP1 comes out when you'll be able to select varying levels of annoyance ranging from "I'm going to throw this fucking computer out of the window" to "your system has just been pwned".
Say I buy a computer without an operating system and put Windows Vista on it. That copy of Vista, which was seperate to the hardware, is now locked to the hardware that it is installed on. If I buy a new computer, again without and operating system, I cannot transfer my license from the original PC to the new one, I have to buy a new copy of the operating system. I can wipe the hard drive of the original computer clean so that no traces of Microsoft OS' are there but I can't install it on a new PC.
I believe that tends to depend on the version you buy. At one point the EULA for the full version said that but I believe that MS recanted than and made installs unlimited.In fact now that I think of it, it was originally reinstall on one new system but that was expanded to unlimited but only one copy installed at a time.
Now the OEM version is a different story and that is tied to the hardware on which it's first installed. Assuming of course VISTA still has an OEM version.
Neutron absorption occurs in fusion reactors (and is the reason that fusion reactors are still radioactive). Proton absoption occurs in fusion reactors too -- H ions are simply protons when they fuse.
I take it you mean fission not fusion?
And yes, I did mean isotopes as in adding neutrons creates a different isotope. However, the level of study I covered did make it clear that the s and r processes result in the formation of different elements, not just different isotopes, but doesn't make it clear how the conversion of neutrons to protons occurs.
IANAP (I am not a physicist) but I have studied some astronomy including reactions in stars.
Up to the iron group, fusion reactions are exothermic but produce increasingly less energy, so the higher the mass of the resulting element, the more reactions are needed to produce the energy required to sustain a star.
Reactions beyond the iron group are endothermic so require energy from the star to complete.
The other way elements are produced in stars is the addition of neutrons to already existing atoms, hence increasing their atomic mass and producing a different element. IIRC, the energy required to do this is high and exists only in stars.
There are two types of this reacton, slow and fast. Slow happens in the normal course of events of star evolution where fast happens in the seconds of life during and after a supernova. Elements such as uranium are produced during the fast process. From this, I think these guys have replicated one of the slow/fast addition processes rather than what we tend to call fusion.
Colour me skeptical but Illuminous is hardly a word that's in common usage unlike pages, keynote, spotlight, aperture (OK, a bit closer), finder, aqua, cocoa, carbon (that's enough, Ed,...) so the the codename alone sounds a bit suspect.
Having said that, I'll be interested to see some form of consistency resulting from the white/brushed metal wars.
Not perfectly. My MacBook has had the odd funny five minutes if you try to resume before it's suspended completely and the only time I hibernated it, it had a very worrying brainfart. No more than three problems over three months but it's not 100%.
I had very similar problems with XP on my wife's HP laptop. Bastard thing wouldn't do hibernate or sleep reliably. Ever.
Then I changed the screen from the default showing the available users/logged in user and apps running etc. and it was fine thereafter. There was something about that screen and the check it did on running apps which barfed windows regardless of what it as recovering from - hibernate or suspend - and I never did find out what it was.
Now she uses a newer laptop and it has the same default screen with no problems at all.
Interestingly, Apple sneaked hibernate support into 10.4.4, I think it was, but I've only used it once and it lost the plot completly. The mouse worked but not the keyboard so I couldn't log in. A couple of hibernate/restarts got it back but I had visions of needing to reinstall to resolve it...
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Tried to open it in Preview on OSX. That's the first time I've seen my MacBook grind to a halt.
OK, so it gains focus. Does it pop forward, i.e. in front of any other windows, as well?
Generally, menus aren't for putting stuff in textboxes, they're for going to the preferences or save or something, which doesn't require any input except in the dialog box that pops up.
Well who'd have thought it.
However, it can be useful to understand where the input focus goes once you end your interaction with the menu. In the Apple way, it remains with the application you had selected unless the menu operation is to close the application.
In the Windows/Linux way, where does the focus go? Remembering of course that the use-case under discussion is one where you want to interact with an application that doesn't currently have input focus.
But with non-Macs, the Window automatically becomes active when you click on its menu (or in my case, when you move over the menu--I use old Unix-style focus-on-hover).
This is true, though I'd be interested to see where the input focus goes when you complete your menu selection. Is it indeterminate or in the first, of any, input field?
Mine scrolls if I'm just vaguely on the right-side sometimes. Doesn't require being in the bar, though that could be something in xorg.conf
Mmmm, not a linux user so can't comment. Wait a mo while I fire up parallels to check XP.....
... Nope, you have to be in the bar to scroll. And of course, the bigger the page, the smaller the scrolling control. Interestingly, all of the Mac trackpad commands work within XP so double-tap is right click, two-finger wipe gives scrolling.
And yes, I am generally working in small windows all over the screen. It's called instant messaging and having lots of terminals open.
Not trolling but surely if you want to select a menu on a window you want that window to be active? I can see that extra click can be an additional step but it doesn't strike me as a big deal.
But why don't the laptops actually have a right click *button*? I don't want one button. I want two. And I don't want an external mouse, because that requires moving my hands rather far from the keyboard. With a trackpad below the keyboard, I can operate the mouse with my thumbs.
It's funny but I'm the other way raoound, I really can't get used to a two-button trackpad on a non-Apple laptop.
On my MacBook if I want to right click I tap with two fingers and if I want to scroll I drag with two fingers, either vertically or horizontally.
On my Thinkpad (work), right click isn't so bad, though I still find I double-tap and wonder why I don't get the context menu, but scrolling's a complete bastard. I have to position exactly in that little vertical or horizontal bar thing and then click and drag? Blech, horrid.
Well we could stop worrying about global warming for a while.
Thanks for the background. It's good to know that generally there's nothing wierd going on. And not having a registry to get corrupted is always a bonus.
Here's where discussion on /. gets horribly hard to read and follow...
The corporate I work far has all it's business apps written in Java. Theoretically there's nothing to stop them switching to OSX.
The company I work for uses 3rd party apps which are not written in Java; they are written by ISVs, in highly optimized C and C++, and they still may take hours to run a simulation. There are no Mac versions, and we wouldn't be rebuying such an expensive software for Mac anyway. So while your company might be OK, my company can't just move to another OS.
Sounds like fairly specialised stuff then, and not the kind of thing that would be run by the vast majority of corporate "grunts". On windows?
I'm sure there are hundreds of businesses that fall into one camp or another. A car mechanic down the street runs his DOS-based billing database (FoxPro likely) and would be totally lost if I suggest that he moves to Mac. Even Windows XP may be not an option for him, who knows how old his stuff is.
Then he's got other much more serious problems than what corporate desktop he should be using. Digressing of course, but he does have backups and a plan for getting at his data should his system fail. Not being funny but there are always going to be those who are locked into a platform because of the applications themselves.
Besides, on unrelated note, as some posters already said - with Macs we would lock ourselves into Apple ecology even more than with any Windows lock-in that people talk about. With Macs you have to buy from only one vendor, and pay whatever that vendor wants. That is not acceptable with hardware (you do have choices already,) and is barely acceptable with software (you may have a choice occasionally.)
So what's the alternative? Now that Ubuntu is effectively productising Linux I suppose that's a possibility.
Have you tried OWA recently? I realise it's not the argument I was making but it works extremely well. I had to Google for OWA, and I discovered that it stands for some Microsoft Webmail. No, I never used it, and we don't have many MS servers (nor Exchange), and it would be a nice day when we have none. We use SquirrelMail, and it is adequate for a traveling employee - but not as convenient as our current Thunderbird clients are. I like thunderbird and use it for usenet but have stuck with mail.app for IMAP usage.
For OWA how about Google's suite. All web enabled products.
Back to the point of Apple replacing Wintel on the corporate desktop, 98% of my working day is spent in email, calendar, web, spreadsheet and word processor. I use MS project (spit) now and then and Clearcase and ClearQuest which are either available on linux/osx or can be used in a browser. Give me Project on a server I can access through a remote remote desktop and I don't care what my client platform is.
Because first you need to find a computer user who "just wants email/browsing/office and access to some apps through a browser".
The grand parent was talking about the corporate market and so was I. You're correct about the home market, but not a locked down business.
Among home users this excludes games; among corporate users this excludes most of business software that is out there (assuming MS Office for Mac is procured and tested for compatibility.) Training of the employees is a problem as well. Myself, I have an old PowerBook 5300ce somewhere, and it still works, but when I tried to use it the experience was far from intuitive. That was with MacOS 9.x IIRC, I can't say if the modern OSX is more Windows-like (to appease the Windows users.)
The corporate I work far has all it's business apps written in Java. Theoretically there's nothing to stop them switching to OSX.
In other words, nobody is interested in the limited choice that you offer. But you are not the first to offer it; a number of "thin computing" companies, starting with Sun, tried to promote this concept.
Except that it wasn't what I was suggesting.
They all failed so far, because hardly any modern app (like Outlook 2007) can run in a browser. In a pinch you can use Webmail, but it is light years behind the native, local code. If you own a computer you might as well use it to its full potential.
Have you tried OWA recently? I realise it's not the argument I was making but it works extremely well. Even using Safari. And like I said, I wasn't suggesting a thin client.
...most programs don't need an installer or uninstaller (drop the program icon to trash & empty usually removes the program...
And the odd applications that do require an installer I tend to look on with some level of suspicion. So what are you doing and why? How do I uninstall you when I decide I don't want you any more?
TextWrangler has some method of enabling command line tools which doesn't have an equivalent disable which leaves me feeling edgy about what kind of cruft can be left behind. Not that OSX cares either way, I just get a touch of OCD about untidy systems.
Agreed on most of that. Gateway don't do much business that I've seen in the UK, although I'm not in corporate purchasing so my view is limited to what I see on the ground. I suspect we're a bit gunshy when it comes to a supplier that just dumped the whole market and took its toys home. Dell are losing ground to HP and, IIRC, Acer. It seems they're starting to reap the benefits of some truly shocking customer service.
I suppose an interesting question would be if you just want email/browsing/office and access to some apps through a browser, why not use something like a Mac Mini?
Try V for vendetta. Though Alexa Davalos was pretty hot in Riddick, I don't recall the shaven head thing. And before I get modded off topic, only on Slashdot would discussion of two foxy chicks be off topic.
Because they are experts at spinning things like this. Look at Blair's reply, he quotes a survey which found that a majority were in favour of ID cards - he's saying "you got 27000, I've got 27000000".
Although on that basis, close to half the population don't care about ID cards. So where do their votes count?
The public don't help themselves on sites like this. Look at the number of frivolous petitions that get requested - all nicely displayed on the site to show they are listening, to everyone and no-one. Notice also that the petition to bring back Fox Hunting currently has 30000 signatories. Puts the ID card petition in another bad light (IMO).
That's an inherent weakness of this kind of approach though isn't it? Or is it a srength, I'm not sure. On one hand it allows people to raise issues, on the other it allows trivial or personal issues to be raised.
The only "petition" that matters to a politician is an election.
With the parties centralising and extreme views being less of a vote winner than before, does it really make a difference to the electorate? OK, so it's a different set of snouts in the trough, but what do we see that's different?
Simple, really. As a poster noted earlier, No2ID pointed out that this was a great way to introduce "fire and forget" activism. No need to go picketing in crap British weather, no need for civil disobedience, no need to leave the comfort of your armchair ... one click and, hey, you've protested, cup of tea, please.
Nice and cheap then. No need for police overtime or tidying up afterwards.
I disagree that ignoring the ID-Card petition "is hardly a big deal". Ignoring a petition with 27,000 signatures or 1.5 million is a symptom of the same problem, and it is a huge deal: the UK government does not like the idea of democracy.
On reflection, you're correct. It's not the number its the act.
The reaction [dailymail.co.uk] by a senior UK government minister to the idea that citizens can set up their own polls is indicative of their utter contempt for the notion that citizens should be able to so easily and publicly have their say: it was "unbelievable", he said, that someone in the government could have possibly come up with the idea, concluding that "The person who came up with this idea must be a prat." The Transport select committee chairman was equally dismissive, and said [lse.co.uk]: "I think it (the online petition) was daft. I don't know what under-16 year-old employment scheme they have got in Number 10, but they should revise it. If you entirely represent the thing in a negative way of course people are going to say 'I don't want to do that'."
Although to be fair, it's hard to see how much of the suggested road tax legislation could be presented in a positive light. I'm solidly behind the reduction of use of private cars but recognise that there needs to be a carrot as well as a stick.
Ever since, it's been quite clear that any such petitions will be ignored, and I rather suspect that the site will no longer allow the public to create petitions in the future. The focus by the government in dealing with these petitions has been on mitigating what is seen as a PR disaster rather than a victory for democratic participation, so it's time to engineer some consent [wikipedia.org]. They've made quite clear that they fully intend to go ahead with trial runs of the road tolls, and this letter about Blair arguing for ID-Cards illustrates, yet again, that the public need to be managed.
Which is a sad state of affairs, mainly because voting one lot out only brings the other lot, with the same attitudes, back in. If there was ever a clearer example of just how much politicians don't like citizens meddling in their affairs, this is it.
But this time we don't have the poll tax riots to enjoy on TV.
Ignoring a petition from 27thousand out of a population of 60million ish is hardly a big deal IMHO and says more about how little people understand the issue and care either way than it does about democracy in action.
If one were to look for a better example of democracy being stifled, it was the "sinister" road tolls petition - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ with a total of 1.6 million people signed up. The original government response was more or less "who cares how many people sign it, it's still not going to make a difference to policy. I wonder how that one will end.
So my question is, why would you put this site up for people to raise petitions, if you don't plan to pay any attention to the petitions people put on it?
I'm sure there's a way to disable the Vista prompt, but I don't know what it is. In any case, Windows would tend to hide that deep in some configuration area -- I would hope to at least see a "don't ask me again" checkbox, but I doubt it.
Just wait until SP1 comes out when you'll be able to select varying levels of annoyance ranging from "I'm going to throw this fucking computer out of the window" to "your system has just been pwned".
You heard it here first.
Say I buy a computer without an operating system and put Windows Vista on it. That copy of Vista, which was seperate to the hardware, is now locked to the hardware that it is installed on. If I buy a new computer, again without and operating system, I cannot transfer my license from the original PC to the new one, I have to buy a new copy of the operating system. I can wipe the hard drive of the original computer clean so that no traces of Microsoft OS' are there but I can't install it on a new PC.
I believe that tends to depend on the version you buy. At one point the EULA for the full version said that but I believe that MS recanted than and made installs unlimited.In fact now that I think of it, it was originally reinstall on one new system but that was expanded to unlimited but only one copy installed at a time.
Now the OEM version is a different story and that is tied to the hardware on which it's first installed. Assuming of course VISTA still has an OEM version.
Errrrr....
Once locked into an atom, I'm pretty sure neutrons become stable - when free they have a half-life of around 630 seconds.
Neutron absorption occurs in fusion reactors (and is the reason that fusion reactors are still radioactive). Proton absoption occurs in fusion reactors too -- H ions are simply protons when they fuse.
I take it you mean fission not fusion?
And yes, I did mean isotopes as in adding neutrons creates a different isotope. However, the level of study I covered did make it clear that the s and r processes result in the formation of different elements, not just different isotopes, but doesn't make it clear how the conversion of neutrons to protons occurs.
IANAP (I am not a physicist) but I have studied some astronomy including reactions in stars.
Up to the iron group, fusion reactions are exothermic but produce increasingly less energy, so the higher the mass of the resulting element, the more reactions are needed to produce the energy required to sustain a star.
Reactions beyond the iron group are endothermic so require energy from the star to complete.
The other way elements are produced in stars is the addition of neutrons to already existing atoms, hence increasing their atomic mass and producing a different element. IIRC, the energy required to do this is high and exists only in stars.
There are two types of this reacton, slow and fast. Slow happens in the normal course of events of star evolution where fast happens in the seconds of life during and after a supernova. Elements such as uranium are produced during the fast process. From this, I think these guys have replicated one of the slow/fast addition processes rather than what we tend to call fusion.
As I say, IANAP but that's what I remember.
Cool. Thanks for that.
Having said that, I'll be interested to see some form of consistency resulting from the white/brushed metal wars.
Not perfectly. My MacBook has had the odd funny five minutes if you try to resume before it's suspended completely and the only time I hibernated it, it had a very worrying brainfart. No more than three problems over three months but it's not 100%.
Then I changed the screen from the default showing the available users/logged in user and apps running etc. and it was fine thereafter. There was something about that screen and the check it did on running apps which barfed windows regardless of what it as recovering from - hibernate or suspend - and I never did find out what it was.
Now she uses a newer laptop and it has the same default screen with no problems at all.
Interestingly, Apple sneaked hibernate support into 10.4.4, I think it was, but I've only used it once and it lost the plot completly. The mouse worked but not the keyboard so I couldn't log in. A couple of hibernate/restarts got it back but I had visions of needing to reinstall to resolve it...