The ion engine is good for efficiency, but very bad for any human exploration. It takes years to get the spacecraft up to speed (and SMART-1 didn't have any fuel for landing). The Moon is only a few days travel using chemical rockets, so I don't think Orion could get much use from it. Sending payloads in advance may be worth doing, especially when going to Mars and beyond.
I actually did the maths as part of my degree's dissertation. Generally speaking, the g-forces are far too high for any reasonable sized linear accelerator. But the main problem I found was the air resistance. You have to make the "gun"'s exit high enough that air resistance has a minimal effect, because essentially anything travelling at 7km/s (LEO velocity) is going to experience severe heating/compression. It's like a meteor, but in reverse.
One idea I came up with was to build it on Mauna Kea due to it's very gentle slope and high peak altitude. However, the mountain simply isn't high enough to avoid serious problems with air resistance.
The gun idea would be quite good from many sites in orbit, e.g. lagrange points, and even on the Moon. For non fragile payloads, a space based linear accelerator could be very efficient as long as the energy could be taken from SPSs (Solar Power Satellites).
The main problem with any type of orbital launch is delivering the energy from a source to where it is needed. Essentially the gun ideas are good because they avoid having to waste energy on carrying fuel.
This argument has an element of risk associated with it.
Often with risk, if you remove the most obvious risk, then you open up other types of risk to move in and replace it. For example, in the UK most playgrounds' concrete were replaced with soft foam to prevent kids hurting themselves. This removed the most obvious risk of kids falling onto a hard surface. The problem was that the accidents didn't diminish significantly. The reason for this is that other risks replaced the original risk of falling onto a hard surface. The parents would stand further away thinking their kids were safer. Swings themselves suddenly became a lot more dangerous as the parents weren't close enough to stop their kids from wandering in the path of one.
So to make a sweeping generalisation about piracy killing the PC games industry is extremely short sighted. Personally, I think it was easier to copy games in the 80s and 90s than today. So we need to look at what the difference is between then and now. I believe it's all related to the social interactions that go on within online games on the internet. Most social type games (MMOs, RPGs etc) tend to have subscription content. It's a vicious circle for some people as they often have many friends that they do not want to "lose" by not paying their subscription. Of course nothing stops people communicating outside the game, but often the game is what connects people together that wouldn't normally have anything in common to talk about.
It's the social games that are to blame, not the piracy of single player games.
Many people do home video and photo editing at home. Many offices have publishing or media departments. Many people play games with intensive graphics at home. Almost every family has a digital camera or some sort of video camera.
I've had to fix a fair number of computers from friends, and none of them do any video/photo editing. Most offices get their media published by other companies that specialise in that. And games don't even use dual core cpus right now, there's no performance enhancement for dual core cpu's. Yes everyone has a digicam, but if you ever look at people's albums online there's usually no editing done.
They are if you are working with graphics, which is a pretty common thing these days. These activities are definitely in the mainstream of computer use. Look how many DVDs are being produced each year. Look at how many magazines there are on the shelves, and glossy corporate brochures and annual reports. We live in a graphic-intensive world.
Yes but how many media companies are there compared to other types? Also, even those media companies will have 90% of computers not having any graphics programs on them. Sales, accounts, support are all significant additions to the core development.
This is often said, but how true is it really? I don't see many people who restrict their computing activities to just word processing and email. While other people use their machines for heavy-duty gaming and graphics, and almost never use a word processor. There is this assumption of superiority among many geeks that nobody else needs power. Perhaps that is part of the problem - many people don't do powerful tasks that they really want to do, because they have been sold systems not powerful enough, due to this assumption? We see with software like iMovie, that once average users are given the tools they need, they start doing things that were previously reserved for "power users."
I know a lot of people that just use their computers to write up reports for uni, or just to browse the internet. I even know one lady that only uses her computer for buying things on ebay. Believe it or not, most people don't sit in front of their computer all day. Your argument makes no sense as you claim that people don't buy high end systems. They usually get roped into buying them, but they don't upgrade.
When I talk of mainstream I mean the average person that buys a computer for home or office use. Generally I would say that expensive graphics programs aren't maintstream. I would think that games, web browsing and light "office" use is all that most people use. None of those programs really benefit from dual core. Perhaps Vista will change all that.
Seems to me that his "law" has been faltering since 2002. I remember back to Q1 2001 you could buy a 3 GHZ chip (533 FSB) from intel and it it's not exactly been doubled since then. Multicores are just (in my view) like having a multiprocessor machine from way back, but now they're putting two cores together which doesn't double speed for most things that need it. There's a few programs that can take advantage of dual core, but from what I can tell they are all fairly specialist, not exactly mainstream.
And don't forget that the driving factor for Graphics cards is the home market, which tends to put pressure on people to buy a fast cpu (because without a fast cpu a top of the line gpu is partially crippled).
The other market is business, but they only upgrade hardware when software upgrades make them. From Office 95 to Office 2000 saw massive improvements, but since Office 2000 I haven't seen great steps as there really isn't that much more a business would want from that type of product. So a machine running Office 2000 can probably run Office XP fine, and doesn't need upgrading.
I'd say that in 95, 100Mhz chips were the norm, and in 2000 1000Mhz chips were. Then in 2005 3Ghz chips became the norm. So I see computers in 2000 being able to run most software that runs in 2005, but that doesn't seem possible for 95>2000
Ground (Earth) based telescopes are almost (if not better) than Hubble in certain wavelengths due to fairly recent technologies. The key ones being Adaptive Optics and Interferometry, which have allowed for astronomers to compensate/eradicate most of the problems associated with the atmosphere. 10 years ago these technologies were mostly theory, and 20 years ago there was no-one that would take the ideas seriously. We really have come a long way since Hubble was on the dtrawing board, and I don't think we need space based telescopes for most areas of astronomy. Of course there are a few wavebands that we cannot observe properly on Earth, but it's not the case that space telescopes are superior. In fact, the next generation telescopes (ALMA, OWL, ELT etc) will most likely surpass the JWST in the frequencies they can observe.
Astronomers generally refer to space telescopes as complementary to ground telescopes. But we won't be building telescopes like ALMA, OWL etc on the Moon because of the difficulty in assembling them on Earth. They need a lot of space and materials (both to house and to construct, which is a problem for the limited space on rockets) and optical telescopes need their mirrors cleaning. I just don't see us building large telescopes on the Moon when we can get almost the same results from having space telescopes and ground based ones that complement each other.
The only way I see us building Lunar telescopes is if we find a cheap way to launch the building blocks. If we manage this though, we would open up a lot more possibilities, such as building the telescope on Mars. The South Pole would be a good place as it has: free water (as in not tied up in rocks like the Moon)/rocket fuel (with a decent power source) and has a lot more gravity than the Moon (which would be a lot better for long stays). Most people would say we shouldn't go so far due to the long trips for astronauts, but the ISS currently has around 6 months stays for crews with no problem.
Freshwater ice is less dense than fresh water (which is less dense than salt water). As the ice melts it occupies a smaller volume (which is of course why ice floats). The difference is a fairly significant percentage and may explain the sea level drop. This in turn is evidence of large amounts of fresh water forming in the arctic and this leads to the theory behind slowing the gulf stream down.
So there's really two processes going on here. One is the melting of glaciers (mostly on Greenland) which results in freshwater being deposited in the oceans (and leads to the gulf stream slowing). The other is the melting of seawater ice. I'm guessing that the seawater ice is responsible for more of the melt than the freshwater ice. This would still lower sea level as the density of seawater is obviously more than seawater ice (or the damn icebergs would sink...). So my conclusion, half arsed as it sounds, is that seawater ice is melting at a much faster rate than the freshwater ice from glaciers. I'm sure someone can do the calc to compare the density changes between both types of ice and the rate at which you need to melt one in order to counter the other.
The key point I think is that freshwater ice melting is from land based ice masses (which add to sea level) and seawater ice is from sea based ice masses (like most of the polar cap ~95% according to that web site i referenced earlier, and doesn't add to sea level - in fact it looks like it lowers sea level).
It's close compared to the size of the Galaxy. And it's also within our solar neighbourhood.
As distances to stars go, it's very close. The closest being 4 light years away. The density is also quite low and have to take into account binary/trinary systems which account for roughly half of all star systems.
First thing, everyone I've known has always logged in as Administrator. Most without realising.
Secondly, VB runtimes are from the 90s, there's very few programs out there now that need runtimes. For example, if I go to download.com and pick the some of the most popular software to download and install, it will always just work. There's no messing around with runtimes. Sure there's shareware, but you don't usually have to register shareware until the time limit runs out. There's also plenty of freeware available. So really all a user needs to do is locate the file, from there anyone with very basic computer knowledge can click "next" etc.
A basic Linux user can *only* use automatic tools like SMART, and therefore they can miss out on software that does not exist within their repositries. Mp3 playback in most linux distros has to be hacked in using dodgy repositries.
The rpm's are only useful if you can actually find the right one for your distro, and they are usually named in a "type of code" that an average user won't understand.
Here's an example. Say I want dvd burning software. Maybe a friendly linux person says " Go to www.rpmfind.net and just do a search". So I go there and type "dvd burn" in the search box and what comes up? This: " Found 1090 RPM for dvd" Package Summary Distribution Download libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for cooker libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.rpm libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.sparc.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for sparc libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.sparc.rpm libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for i586 libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.rpm libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.ppc.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for ppc libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.ppc.rpm libdvdread3-devel-0.9.4-5mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva 2006.0 for x86_64 libdvdread3-devel-0.9.4-5mdk.i586.rpm . . . libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.ppc.html Shared library for the Ogle DVD player Mandriva devel cooker for ppc libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.ppc.rpm libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.i586.html Shared library for the Ogle DVD player Mandriva 2006.0 for i586 libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
I don't even know what all that means or why it decided to not include the word "burn" in the search. I assume you need to add a "+", but there's no way to expect a user to understand that.
Enterprise is a different argument altogether, but it highlights the "knowledge gap" between users and computer experts. Many people I know have no real grasp of how computers to work, and to them I am an expert. They do not realise that I am no expert, as they lack the knowledge to see that. The problem with linux is that the people who advocate it believe it's easy for them and so it's easy for all. I know for a fact from my own experience that I cannot actually USE linux properly. I can barely install it without problems.
For example: I want to install some software that requires compiling. So I install Fedora in a VM, but forget to add development tools during setup. Installation goes ok but whenever I tried to add any tools, the program would hang. No error message, it would just stop responding. Killing it and trying again produced the same problem. So only solution I could figure out was to wipe it and start again.
Anyway back to the dvd burning. Putting "dvd burn software linux" into google comes up with http://www.burnworld.com/software/cdrburning/linux.htm which is good. However, the first free software listed (2nd down on the list) is XCD Roast. I click download and get given a.tar.gz which contains source code. Somehow I don't think Mr Joe Bloggs wants to read the source code when he doesn't even know
Linux is too difficult to install anything for the average person. So now the linux zealot shouts debian or ubuntu as the perfect answer.... But they are both useless for a normal person. How can you expect them to type all the commands in? They don't even know what the terminal is and if they do manage to somehow find it and type everything in correctly, they probably wont know what any of the inevitable error messages mean.
But the main hurdle is information propagation to the user. In windows a person can search on the web to find a program, download it, and install it simply by double (or single) clicking on icons. That doesn't happen in linux. It's a dead end. You have to install something based on what processor and distro you have and even then it's confusing. There's many places to get.deb files for debian but the proper way to install those is usually to use apt. However, whichever method you use, you cannot install the program using a gui solely. Often you have to edit your repositories which is no easy task.
Linux: Search internet, download file and search for install guide for your distro, follow instructions to install program, wonder why the program doesn't work because you either: Weren't logged in as root, Have a hardware conflict, Have a software conflict, Don't have the relevant dependancies, Don't have development tools installed (e.g. a compiler), Don't realise the program is full of critical bugs that prevent it from doing the most basic thing it says it can do, Don't realise/understand how to configure the config files, Have no idea that you have to run the program using the command line with relevant switches/arguments.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, "Of Mice and Men" banned? I read that at secondary school!
Also, if you click on Satanic Verses, google prints this:
*Your search - intitle:satanic intitle:verses inauthor:rushdie - did not match any documents.*
That was a good game.
The ion engine is good for efficiency, but very bad for any human exploration. It takes years to get the spacecraft up to speed (and SMART-1 didn't have any fuel for landing). The Moon is only a few days travel using chemical rockets, so I don't think Orion could get much use from it. Sending payloads in advance may be worth doing, especially when going to Mars and beyond.
I actually did the maths as part of my degree's dissertation. Generally speaking, the g-forces are far too high for any reasonable sized linear accelerator. But the main problem I found was the air resistance. You have to make the "gun"'s exit high enough that air resistance has a minimal effect, because essentially anything travelling at 7km/s (LEO velocity) is going to experience severe heating/compression. It's like a meteor, but in reverse.
One idea I came up with was to build it on Mauna Kea due to it's very gentle slope and high peak altitude. However, the mountain simply isn't high enough to avoid serious problems with air resistance.
The gun idea would be quite good from many sites in orbit, e.g. lagrange points, and even on the Moon. For non fragile payloads, a space based linear accelerator could be very efficient as long as the energy could be taken from SPSs (Solar Power Satellites).
The main problem with any type of orbital launch is delivering the energy from a source to where it is needed. Essentially the gun ideas are good because they avoid having to waste energy on carrying fuel.
Neptunism was the precursor to Plutonism :/ Why don't we call Pluto, Neptune?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunism
This argument has an element of risk associated with it.
Often with risk, if you remove the most obvious risk, then you open up other types of risk to move in and replace it. For example, in the UK most playgrounds' concrete were replaced with soft foam to prevent kids hurting themselves. This removed the most obvious risk of kids falling onto a hard surface. The problem was that the accidents didn't diminish significantly. The reason for this is that other risks replaced the original risk of falling onto a hard surface. The parents would stand further away thinking their kids were safer. Swings themselves suddenly became a lot more dangerous as the parents weren't close enough to stop their kids from wandering in the path of one.
So to make a sweeping generalisation about piracy killing the PC games industry is extremely short sighted. Personally, I think it was easier to copy games in the 80s and 90s than today. So we need to look at what the difference is between then and now. I believe it's all related to the social interactions that go on within online games on the internet. Most social type games (MMOs, RPGs etc) tend to have subscription content. It's a vicious circle for some people as they often have many friends that they do not want to "lose" by not paying their subscription. Of course nothing stops people communicating outside the game, but often the game is what connects people together that wouldn't normally have anything in common to talk about.
It's the social games that are to blame, not the piracy of single player games.
Many people do home video and photo editing at home. Many offices have publishing or media departments. Many people play games with intensive graphics at home. Almost every family has a digital camera or some sort of video camera. I've had to fix a fair number of computers from friends, and none of them do any video/photo editing. Most offices get their media published by other companies that specialise in that. And games don't even use dual core cpus right now, there's no performance enhancement for dual core cpu's. Yes everyone has a digicam, but if you ever look at people's albums online there's usually no editing done. They are if you are working with graphics, which is a pretty common thing these days. These activities are definitely in the mainstream of computer use. Look how many DVDs are being produced each year. Look at how many magazines there are on the shelves, and glossy corporate brochures and annual reports. We live in a graphic-intensive world. Yes but how many media companies are there compared to other types? Also, even those media companies will have 90% of computers not having any graphics programs on them. Sales, accounts, support are all significant additions to the core development. This is often said, but how true is it really? I don't see many people who restrict their computing activities to just word processing and email. While other people use their machines for heavy-duty gaming and graphics, and almost never use a word processor. There is this assumption of superiority among many geeks that nobody else needs power. Perhaps that is part of the problem - many people don't do powerful tasks that they really want to do, because they have been sold systems not powerful enough, due to this assumption? We see with software like iMovie, that once average users are given the tools they need, they start doing things that were previously reserved for "power users." I know a lot of people that just use their computers to write up reports for uni, or just to browse the internet. I even know one lady that only uses her computer for buying things on ebay. Believe it or not, most people don't sit in front of their computer all day. Your argument makes no sense as you claim that people don't buy high end systems. They usually get roped into buying them, but they don't upgrade.
When I talk of mainstream I mean the average person that buys a computer for home or office use. Generally I would say that expensive graphics programs aren't maintstream. I would think that games, web browsing and light "office" use is all that most people use. None of those programs really benefit from dual core. Perhaps Vista will change all that.
I think putting 2 cores into 1 cpu is just a cheat really as it's similar to multiprocessor systems which have existed for a long time.
Seems to me that his "law" has been faltering since 2002. I remember back to Q1 2001 you could buy a 3 GHZ chip (533 FSB) from intel and it it's not exactly been doubled since then. Multicores are just (in my view) like having a multiprocessor machine from way back, but now they're putting two cores together which doesn't double speed for most things that need it. There's a few programs that can take advantage of dual core, but from what I can tell they are all fairly specialist, not exactly mainstream.
And don't forget that the driving factor for Graphics cards is the home market, which tends to put pressure on people to buy a fast cpu (because without a fast cpu a top of the line gpu is partially crippled).
The other market is business, but they only upgrade hardware when software upgrades make them. From Office 95 to Office 2000 saw massive improvements, but since Office 2000 I haven't seen great steps as there really isn't that much more a business would want from that type of product. So a machine running Office 2000 can probably run Office XP fine, and doesn't need upgrading.
I'd say that in 95, 100Mhz chips were the norm, and in 2000 1000Mhz chips were. Then in 2005 3Ghz chips became the norm. So I see computers in 2000 being able to run most software that runs in 2005, but that doesn't seem possible for 95>2000
Ground (Earth) based telescopes are almost (if not better) than Hubble in certain wavelengths due to fairly recent technologies. The key ones being Adaptive Optics and Interferometry, which have allowed for astronomers to compensate/eradicate most of the problems associated with the atmosphere. 10 years ago these technologies were mostly theory, and 20 years ago there was no-one that would take the ideas seriously. We really have come a long way since Hubble was on the dtrawing board, and I don't think we need space based telescopes for most areas of astronomy. Of course there are a few wavebands that we cannot observe properly on Earth, but it's not the case that space telescopes are superior. In fact, the next generation telescopes (ALMA, OWL, ELT etc) will most likely surpass the JWST in the frequencies they can observe.
Astronomers generally refer to space telescopes as complementary to ground telescopes. But we won't be building telescopes like ALMA, OWL etc on the Moon because of the difficulty in assembling them on Earth. They need a lot of space and materials (both to house and to construct, which is a problem for the limited space on rockets) and optical telescopes need their mirrors cleaning. I just don't see us building large telescopes on the Moon when we can get almost the same results from having space telescopes and ground based ones that complement each other.
The only way I see us building Lunar telescopes is if we find a cheap way to launch the building blocks. If we manage this though, we would open up a lot more possibilities, such as building the telescope on Mars. The South Pole would be a good place as it has: free water (as in not tied up in rocks like the Moon)/rocket fuel (with a decent power source) and has a lot more gravity than the Moon (which would be a lot better for long stays). Most people would say we shouldn't go so far due to the long trips for astronauts, but the ISS currently has around 6 months stays for crews with no problem.
I think in a round about way, yes.
i ndexseawater.htm
Freshwater ice is less dense than fresh water (which is less dense than salt water). As the ice melts it occupies a smaller volume (which is of course why ice floats). The difference is a fairly significant percentage and may explain the sea level drop. This in turn is evidence of large amounts of fresh water forming in the arctic and this leads to the theory behind slowing the gulf stream down.
However most ice on oceans is from seawater: "Sea ice, formed in saltwater, accounts for about 95 percent of ice found in the oceans. Ice covers about three percent of the world's water surface." - http://pao.cnmoc.navy.mil/pao/Educate/OceanTalk2/
So there's really two processes going on here. One is the melting of glaciers (mostly on Greenland) which results in freshwater being deposited in the oceans (and leads to the gulf stream slowing). The other is the melting of seawater ice. I'm guessing that the seawater ice is responsible for more of the melt than the freshwater ice. This would still lower sea level as the density of seawater is obviously more than seawater ice (or the damn icebergs would sink...). So my conclusion, half arsed as it sounds, is that seawater ice is melting at a much faster rate than the freshwater ice from glaciers. I'm sure someone can do the calc to compare the density changes between both types of ice and the rate at which you need to melt one in order to counter the other.
The key point I think is that freshwater ice melting is from land based ice masses (which add to sea level) and seawater ice is from sea based ice masses (like most of the polar cap ~95% according to that web site i referenced earlier, and doesn't add to sea level - in fact it looks like it lowers sea level).
http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=shot%20in%20th e%20face
For infallable evidence of the conspiracy see the first result.
Two words to prove you wrong:
Fidel Castro.
I remember when it was 22 pounds a Megabyte. And now it's 85 Megabytes a pound. I believe I was ripped off :(
i think you mean this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung
:]
I hope
Yeah the bext way I've found is to use a combination of free scanners.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20665
It's close compared to the size of the Galaxy. And it's also within our solar neighbourhood.
As distances to stars go, it's very close. The closest being 4 light years away. The density is also quite low and have to take into account binary/trinary systems which account for roughly half of all star systems.
First thing, everyone I've known has always logged in as Administrator. Most without realising.
.htm which is good. However, the first free software listed (2nd down on the list) is XCD Roast. I click download and get given a .tar.gz which contains source code. Somehow I don't think Mr Joe Bloggs wants to read the source code when he doesn't even know
Secondly, VB runtimes are from the 90s, there's very few programs out there now that need runtimes. For example, if I go to download.com and pick the some of the most popular software to download and install, it will always just work. There's no messing around with runtimes. Sure there's shareware, but you don't usually have to register shareware until the time limit runs out. There's also plenty of freeware available. So really all a user needs to do is locate the file, from there anyone with very basic computer knowledge can click "next" etc.
A basic Linux user can *only* use automatic tools like SMART, and therefore they can miss out on software that does not exist within their repositries. Mp3 playback in most linux distros has to be hacked in using dodgy repositries.
The rpm's are only useful if you can actually find the right one for your distro, and they are usually named in a "type of code" that an average user won't understand.
Here's an example. Say I want dvd burning software. Maybe a friendly linux person says " Go to www.rpmfind.net and just do a search". So I go there and type "dvd burn" in the search box and what comes up? This:
" Found 1090 RPM for dvd"
Package Summary Distribution Download
libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for cooker libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.rpm
libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.sparc.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for sparc libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.sparc.rpm
libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for i586 libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.i586.rpm
libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.ppc.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva devel cooker for ppc libdvdread3-devel-0.9.6-1mdk.ppc.rpm
libdvdread3-devel-0.9.4-5mdk.i586.html Libdvdread library headers Mandriva 2006.0 for x86_64 libdvdread3-devel-0.9.4-5mdk.i586.rpm
.
.
.
libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.ppc.html Shared library for the Ogle DVD player Mandriva devel cooker for ppc libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.ppc.rpm
libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.i586.html Shared library for the Ogle DVD player Mandriva 2006.0 for i586 libdvdcontrol9-0.9.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
I don't even know what all that means or why it decided to not include the word "burn" in the search. I assume you need to add a "+", but there's no way to expect a user to understand that.
Enterprise is a different argument altogether, but it highlights the "knowledge gap" between users and computer experts. Many people I know have no real grasp of how computers to work, and to them I am an expert. They do not realise that I am no expert, as they lack the knowledge to see that. The problem with linux is that the people who advocate it believe it's easy for them and so it's easy for all. I know for a fact from my own experience that I cannot actually USE linux properly. I can barely install it without problems.
For example: I want to install some software that requires compiling. So I install Fedora in a VM, but forget to add development tools during setup. Installation goes ok but whenever I tried to add any tools, the program would hang. No error message, it would just stop responding. Killing it and trying again produced the same problem. So only solution I could figure out was to wipe it and start again.
Anyway back to the dvd burning. Putting "dvd burn software linux" into google comes up with http://www.burnworld.com/software/cdrburning/linux
Linux is too difficult to install anything for the average person. So now the linux zealot shouts debian or ubuntu as the perfect answer.... But they are both useless for a normal person. How can you expect them to type all the commands in? They don't even know what the terminal is and if they do manage to somehow find it and type everything in correctly, they probably wont know what any of the inevitable error messages mean.
.deb files for debian but the proper way to install those is usually to use apt. However, whichever method you use, you cannot install the program using a gui solely. Often you have to edit your repositories which is no easy task.
But the main hurdle is information propagation to the user. In windows a person can search on the web to find a program, download it, and install it simply by double (or single) clicking on icons. That doesn't happen in linux. It's a dead end. You have to install something based on what processor and distro you have and even then it's confusing. There's many places to get
So to sum up here's the process:
Windows: Search internet, download file, double click and follow onscreen instructions. Idiot proof.
Linux: Search internet, download file and search for install guide for your distro, follow instructions to install program, wonder why the program doesn't work because you either:
Weren't logged in as root,
Have a hardware conflict,
Have a software conflict,
Don't have the relevant dependancies,
Don't have development tools installed (e.g. a compiler),
Don't realise the program is full of critical bugs that prevent it from doing the most basic thing it says it can do,
Don't realise/understand how to configure the config files,
Have no idea that you have to run the program using the command line with relevant switches/arguments.
But then if you cut the cable in half before the procdeeding edge has time to travel to the other end?
It didn't work. The system interfered with the street lights. They started modifying the lamps but then I guess gave up as the system was abandoned.
I can't remember if it was more than just one company that tried it, but Norweb did in my area.
argh thats too much irony for my head to use :]
I thought your post was really funny. Why did it get modded redundant? :(