I'm not going to make the argument that 4 million people dead is horrific, and that we need to do better. But equating that with a world war? You do realize that estimates for those killed in World War II range from 60-70 million? The Congo conflict is off by an order of magnitude from that.
The tank war in Europe is not quite so cut and dried as you make out; certainly by late war the Germans had some of the best tank designs (although a 10 to 1 kill ratio is pretty extreme). But earlier in the war, some US and especially Soviet tanks were at least their match. The Soviets built one of the finest tanks of the war: the T-34, which was far superior to anything the Germans had at the time. Only when Panthers and Tigers started to come into play did the Germans have something that was better (The Soviets up-gunned the T-34 after that, which made it nearly the match of the German designs). Likewise, the US designs were actually very competitive in the early-mid years of the war (in fact their light tanks were some of the best in World War 2). You are correct, however, in that in the last year or two of the conflict the M4 Sherman tanks the US relied on were heavily outclassed.
The Nokia N800 isn't a phone. It's a small web tablet (the size of a large phone or PDA) that runs Linux (not Symbian). It also, unfortunately, doesn't have a PIM suite or a lot of the features that would be necessary for use as a full-time PDA. I believe that's true no matter where you purchase it.
Isn't it odd how that works? When I was an undergrad (which wasn't all that long ago), I loved video/computer games and would spend as much free time as possible playing them. Now that I'm working on a computer all day, I would much rather go do something outside when I get off work. I actually have more free time now than when I was in school, but I do almost no gaming anymore...
According to the article, they had a second stage failure which lead to vehicle loss. If I remember correctly, that was about the same place the last Space-X failed; they had a problem with first stage separation / second stage ignition. Also, this isn't the first time Iran has attempted to launch a rocket which has failed. So its hardly fair to say "The Iranians managed to successfully launch a rocket" (which they didn't) "and Space-X is 0 for 3".
I have to disagree here. Standing on your feet all day, and traversing the length of a convention multiple times (he said spanning a quarter to two miles) will really wear you out. Its a whole different ball game than running a marathon (which I've also done). You may not be as physically exhausted at the end, but you'll still be tired, and have sore feet/legs. That said, I think the real value of a Segway at a convention would be for people like event coordinators, whose job is to rush from one end of the grounds to the other every 5 minutes. The Segway does have some uses, its just that most are niche uses.
Actually the Mythbusters revisited that one, and discovered that thawed vs. un-thawed does indeed matter. Their first test was flawed; if I remember correctly they fired into a concrete wall and watched the bounceback of the fragments, but the wall was strong enough that all the chickens just disintegrated equally. In the revisit, however, they fired through a series of glass plates set up back to back, and the thawed chicken could only shatter one or two plates, while the frozen chicken blew through every plate and kept going.
As someone else replying to you pointed out, part of the reason better technology hasn't given better gas mileage is power. Modern cars make a lot more of it than they used to, while still having respectable mileage. A lot of it, however, is weight. The safety features, noise dampening, etc. on modern cars adds a LOT of weight. For instance, the Honda CRX from the late 80's / early 90's weighed 1800 pounds. That's slightly lighter than today's Lotus Elise, which is considered an incredibly light vehicle. It's much lighter than the current civic at 2700 pounds, much less my saab 9-3 at 3000 (which still isn't that heavy; a modern Mustang weighs in at nearly 2 tons).
Wasn't that malfunction not actually a problem with the robotic aspect of the weapon, but mechanical though? According to this article http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12812&feedId=online-news_rss20,
it looks like a shell exploded in the breach, causing an uncontrollable chain fire. Not a problem with the robotics.
Isn't VxWorks actually a monolithic kernel? I've developed a fair amount on both VxWorks and QNX, and while QNX is most definitely a microkernel, I don't think VxWorks is. Wikipedia seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vxworks.
Ugh, I hope the avionics VxWorks platform is different from the standard 6.x VxWorks... that OS is a train wreck. I've seen the source, and its frightening. Even some of the basic stuff like file I/O is buggy...
I might be more inclined to be on the lexicon's side if it were full of facts they'd researched themselves or something. But perusing their site shows an awful lot of stuff copied directly from the books. More than I would be able to in good conscience call Fair Use. I'm not quite sure how this relates to the Church of Scientology or Baseball stats/facts though. In both of those cases most of the information is available in forms other than those published by the CoS or MLB. You can do original research to get that information, if you so desire. But it seems that all of the information in this lexicon is yanked in some form or another straight from the book. Perhaps summarized or condensed a bit, but theres even a fair bit that is a direct quote.
Off the top of my head, the first thing that comes to mind were the printer drivers for my samsung printer. Of course, being a binary driver, you have to compile the stubs for your kernel before it can be used, which is a pain (especially when upgrading the kernel later). Now I realize that its not Ubuntu's fault, as are most of the packaging problems (and I've run into more, although many of those involve wanting a newer version of the software than exists in the repository). Its been pointed out that if.deb files were created properly by the software writers, they could be used as an installer. Unfortunately, there isn't a universal installer that works on any linux distro, so you have to scrounge every once in a while when you find an odd piece of software:-).
That is true; its largely not Ubuntu's fault. It can still be annoying though, and I can still wish:-). And its still unfortunately the thing that keeps me from recommending it to relatives as their primary OS (well, that and their games won't run). I have to say though, it does work beautifully on my grandparents machine, where all they do is check e-mail and browse the internet. I set them up with a locked down box that allows them the features they need, and they're in great shape.
Out of curiosity, what games are there that are decent for the PS3? I have both a Wii and a 360, and have tons of games for those (Metroid, Zelda, Paper Mario, Bioshock, Halo, etc.) but I haven't seen much for the PS3 thus far that's interested me. Have there been some releases that I've missed that have made the PS3 more attractive? I've thus far avoided it because of the lack of games, but if that's turning around...
Is amarok really that good? The last time I used it a couple of months ago, I wasn't particularly impressed with it; it just seemed like a generic media player. Is there some functionality I missed that makes it really cool?
It certainly worked in my case; I bought the album for ~5 bucks (I'd never really listened to their music before, and wasn't sure if I'd like it, but wanted to provide some encouragement for the distribution model). I ended up liking the music, and bought another 2 of their albums off of Amazon. And if they release a non-boxed set version of in rainbows, I might pick that up as well (I'm old fashioned I guess; I like having physical copies of my media).
I thought I remember reading that EMI approached Apple with the idea of DRM free tracks, not the otehr way around. It's been a while, so I can't say for sure, but that seems to have been one of the debate points when this whole thing started.
I dunno, people trot out this argument every time the debate of Linux ease of use rears its head, and I'm not entirely sure I agree. I use Ubuntu (and a couple other distros) regularly, and Windows, and OS X. I have to say that the various Linux distros, Ubuntu included, are the harder to install software on, even everyday software. The problem is that while the packages in the repository are easy to install, many pieces of software still don't exist in the repository. With Windows or OS X, you just find the program you want, download the installer /.app, and off you go. With Ubuntu, if the package doesn't exist, it gets considerably more painful. Painful to the point that I don't think your average user would be willing to put up with it. I think the repository system is great, I just wish that there were decent installers for when it fails. Then there are things like printer drivers. I think that adding a new printer is something that a regular user might be expected to do, but I don't think I'd expect a regular user to be able to use the command line to configure and install the supplied driver.
Overall, installing software on Ubuntu isn't too bad. But there are still lots of cases that could cause problems for the average user, that the competing OS's don't generally suffer from.
Even in the 18-24 year old and hard core game crowds, I have to say that the Wii seems to still have a high appeal. I fall solidly into both categories, and so do many of my friends. And guess what, most of us have Wiis too, and really enjoy them. Yes, many of the "hardcore" games aren't on the system, and most of us have a 360 or a gaming PC (or both) for games like Halo 3 or Half Life 2 Orange box. But that doesn't mean the Wii doesn't get its play time. We all grew up playing classic games like the Metroid series, Zelda, Mario, etc. And those series are still big draws for most gamers; One of my friends is a hardcore Halo and WoW addict, and yet the moment a new Zelda game comes out he drops everything to play it. Not to mention that when we all get together, we don't play Halo, or Gears of War, or whatever else is hot on the xbox or PS3. We yank out Mario Strikers, or Raving Rabbids, or even Wii sports and have a blast. Not to mention that many of us enjoy playing video games with girlfriends or wives, and trust me, the Wii is far more likely to draw them to the TV than Halo ever is.
Eh, lots of products exist to make life more convenient; I have no problem with another one. And there are times when using a laptop that this could be useful, especially if you're traveling or something and theres no desk handy.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, what? How does Green Hills enter into this? Green Hills makes their own RTOS; did you mean WindRiver?
I'm not going to make the argument that 4 million people dead is horrific, and that we need to do better. But equating that with a world war? You do realize that estimates for those killed in World War II range from 60-70 million? The Congo conflict is off by an order of magnitude from that.
The tank war in Europe is not quite so cut and dried as you make out; certainly by late war the Germans had some of the best tank designs (although a 10 to 1 kill ratio is pretty extreme). But earlier in the war, some US and especially Soviet tanks were at least their match. The Soviets built one of the finest tanks of the war: the T-34, which was far superior to anything the Germans had at the time. Only when Panthers and Tigers started to come into play did the Germans have something that was better (The Soviets up-gunned the T-34 after that, which made it nearly the match of the German designs). Likewise, the US designs were actually very competitive in the early-mid years of the war (in fact their light tanks were some of the best in World War 2). You are correct, however, in that in the last year or two of the conflict the M4 Sherman tanks the US relied on were heavily outclassed.
The Nokia N800 isn't a phone. It's a small web tablet (the size of a large phone or PDA) that runs Linux (not Symbian). It also, unfortunately, doesn't have a PIM suite or a lot of the features that would be necessary for use as a full-time PDA. I believe that's true no matter where you purchase it.
Isn't it odd how that works? When I was an undergrad (which wasn't all that long ago), I loved video/computer games and would spend as much free time as possible playing them. Now that I'm working on a computer all day, I would much rather go do something outside when I get off work. I actually have more free time now than when I was in school, but I do almost no gaming anymore...
I'm a little confused here; how does DST help this situation? It doesn't affect the winter months at all.
According to the article, they had a second stage failure which lead to vehicle loss. If I remember correctly, that was about the same place the last Space-X failed; they had a problem with first stage separation / second stage ignition. Also, this isn't the first time Iran has attempted to launch a rocket which has failed. So its hardly fair to say "The Iranians managed to successfully launch a rocket" (which they didn't) "and Space-X is 0 for 3".
Thanks, I was looking for that option and for some reason couldn't find it.
I have to disagree here. Standing on your feet all day, and traversing the length of a convention multiple times (he said spanning a quarter to two miles) will really wear you out. Its a whole different ball game than running a marathon (which I've also done). You may not be as physically exhausted at the end, but you'll still be tired, and have sore feet/legs.
That said, I think the real value of a Segway at a convention would be for people like event coordinators, whose job is to rush from one end of the grounds to the other every 5 minutes. The Segway does have some uses, its just that most are niche uses.
Actually the Mythbusters revisited that one, and discovered that thawed vs. un-thawed does indeed matter. Their first test was flawed; if I remember correctly they fired into a concrete wall and watched the bounceback of the fragments, but the wall was strong enough that all the chickens just disintegrated equally. In the revisit, however, they fired through a series of glass plates set up back to back, and the thawed chicken could only shatter one or two plates, while the frozen chicken blew through every plate and kept going.
As someone else replying to you pointed out, part of the reason better technology hasn't given better gas mileage is power. Modern cars make a lot more of it than they used to, while still having respectable mileage. A lot of it, however, is weight. The safety features, noise dampening, etc. on modern cars adds a LOT of weight. For instance, the Honda CRX from the late 80's / early 90's weighed 1800 pounds. That's slightly lighter than today's Lotus Elise, which is considered an incredibly light vehicle. It's much lighter than the current civic at 2700 pounds, much less my saab 9-3 at 3000 (which still isn't that heavy; a modern Mustang weighs in at nearly 2 tons).
Wasn't that malfunction not actually a problem with the robotic aspect of the weapon, but mechanical though? According to this article http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12812&feedId=online-news_rss20, it looks like a shell exploded in the breach, causing an uncontrollable chain fire. Not a problem with the robotics.
Isn't VxWorks actually a monolithic kernel? I've developed a fair amount on both VxWorks and QNX, and while QNX is most definitely a microkernel, I don't think VxWorks is. Wikipedia seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vxworks.
Am I missing something here, or is this just copied directly from Engadget? You'd think they could at least provide the link to the original story...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/21/japan-toying-with-idea-of-cellphone-sommeliers/
Ugh, I hope the avionics VxWorks platform is different from the standard 6.x VxWorks... that OS is a train wreck. I've seen the source, and its frightening. Even some of the basic stuff like file I/O is buggy...
I might be more inclined to be on the lexicon's side if it were full of facts they'd researched themselves or something. But perusing their site shows an awful lot of stuff copied directly from the books. More than I would be able to in good conscience call Fair Use. I'm not quite sure how this relates to the Church of Scientology or Baseball stats/facts though. In both of those cases most of the information is available in forms other than those published by the CoS or MLB. You can do original research to get that information, if you so desire. But it seems that all of the information in this lexicon is yanked in some form or another straight from the book. Perhaps summarized or condensed a bit, but theres even a fair bit that is a direct quote.
Off the top of my head, the first thing that comes to mind were the printer drivers for my samsung printer. Of course, being a binary driver, you have to compile the stubs for your kernel before it can be used, which is a pain (especially when upgrading the kernel later). Now I realize that its not Ubuntu's fault, as are most of the packaging problems (and I've run into more, although many of those involve wanting a newer version of the software than exists in the repository). Its been pointed out that if .deb files were created properly by the software writers, they could be used as an installer. Unfortunately, there isn't a universal installer that works on any linux distro, so you have to scrounge every once in a while when you find an odd piece of software :-).
That is true; its largely not Ubuntu's fault. It can still be annoying though, and I can still wish :-). And its still unfortunately the thing that keeps me from recommending it to relatives as their primary OS (well, that and their games won't run). I have to say though, it does work beautifully on my grandparents machine, where all they do is check e-mail and browse the internet. I set them up with a locked down box that allows them the features they need, and they're in great shape.
Out of curiosity, what games are there that are decent for the PS3? I have both a Wii and a 360, and have tons of games for those (Metroid, Zelda, Paper Mario, Bioshock, Halo, etc.) but I haven't seen much for the PS3 thus far that's interested me. Have there been some releases that I've missed that have made the PS3 more attractive? I've thus far avoided it because of the lack of games, but if that's turning around...
Is amarok really that good? The last time I used it a couple of months ago, I wasn't particularly impressed with it; it just seemed like a generic media player. Is there some functionality I missed that makes it really cool?
It certainly worked in my case; I bought the album for ~5 bucks (I'd never really listened to their music before, and wasn't sure if I'd like it, but wanted to provide some encouragement for the distribution model). I ended up liking the music, and bought another 2 of their albums off of Amazon. And if they release a non-boxed set version of in rainbows, I might pick that up as well (I'm old fashioned I guess; I like having physical copies of my media).
I thought I remember reading that EMI approached Apple with the idea of DRM free tracks, not the otehr way around. It's been a while, so I can't say for sure, but that seems to have been one of the debate points when this whole thing started.
I dunno, people trot out this argument every time the debate of Linux ease of use rears its head, and I'm not entirely sure I agree. I use Ubuntu (and a couple other distros) regularly, and Windows, and OS X. I have to say that the various Linux distros, Ubuntu included, are the harder to install software on, even everyday software. The problem is that while the packages in the repository are easy to install, many pieces of software still don't exist in the repository. With Windows or OS X, you just find the program you want, download the installer / .app, and off you go. With Ubuntu, if the package doesn't exist, it gets considerably more painful. Painful to the point that I don't think your average user would be willing to put up with it. I think the repository system is great, I just wish that there were decent installers for when it fails. Then there are things like printer drivers. I think that adding a new printer is something that a regular user might be expected to do, but I don't think I'd expect a regular user to be able to use the command line to configure and install the supplied driver.
Overall, installing software on Ubuntu isn't too bad. But there are still lots of cases that could cause problems for the average user, that the competing OS's don't generally suffer from.
Even in the 18-24 year old and hard core game crowds, I have to say that the Wii seems to still have a high appeal. I fall solidly into both categories, and so do many of my friends. And guess what, most of us have Wiis too, and really enjoy them. Yes, many of the "hardcore" games aren't on the system, and most of us have a 360 or a gaming PC (or both) for games like Halo 3 or Half Life 2 Orange box. But that doesn't mean the Wii doesn't get its play time. We all grew up playing classic games like the Metroid series, Zelda, Mario, etc. And those series are still big draws for most gamers; One of my friends is a hardcore Halo and WoW addict, and yet the moment a new Zelda game comes out he drops everything to play it. Not to mention that when we all get together, we don't play Halo, or Gears of War, or whatever else is hot on the xbox or PS3. We yank out Mario Strikers, or Raving Rabbids, or even Wii sports and have a blast. Not to mention that many of us enjoy playing video games with girlfriends or wives, and trust me, the Wii is far more likely to draw them to the TV than Halo ever is.
Eh, lots of products exist to make life more convenient; I have no problem with another one. And there are times when using a laptop that this could be useful, especially if you're traveling or something and theres no desk handy.