I wonder if anybody's got a model worked out yet to explain how a narrow planar beam gets generated.
relativistic beaming or aberration. if an object, emitting light isotropically (equally in all directions) is traveling very fast (close to the speed of light) relative to the observer, the emitted light appears to be 'beamed' forward in the direction that the emitting particle is traveling. the faster the emitting object is traveling, the narrower the beam.
the featured article doesn't mention it, but i imagine this is the explanation for the beaming of this radio emission.
The fragmentation of Linux distros has nothing to do with it being slowly accepted as a mainstream OS; lack of specialized apps, shaky hardware support and the usual suspects are to blame for that.
is this still true? in my experience it isn't. i've installed ubuntu on a dozen or more very different computers (old laptops without cd-drives to brand new dell pcs) now and i've been amazed at how well it 'just worked'. the install is brainless, and once its running you have a full featured computer system complete with multimedia apps, office software, etc. i typically just have to spend a few minutes installing java plugins and mp3 support, but there are now packages http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ which do that automatically too.
that's the beauty of the linux community. if there's something you need, chances are someone has provided it and a quick google search will get you there. that's the utility of all of the different distros. as has been said, most of them serve very specific purposes. for the non-linux user words like redhat or ubuntu are synonymous with linux anyway, so there probably isn't even any confusion.
i will say, the one thing that i still feel is missing on linux is support for gaming. there are some capable open source games out there (warsow is a fun UT type multiplayer shooter) and some games have linux installers (i had to resort to installing neverwinter nights) but when a new commercial game comes out linux users are left high and dry. good thing i have my 360.
i had the same experience last week trying to order a few computers for our university physics department. the higher education section of their site doesn't include any open source configurations, and when we asked for pc's with ubuntu they said they couldn't sell them to us. they did sell us systems with freedos installed though.
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I wonder if anybody's got a model worked out yet to explain how a narrow planar beam gets generated.
relativistic beaming or aberration. if an object, emitting light isotropically (equally in all directions) is traveling very fast (close to the speed of light) relative to the observer, the emitted light appears to be 'beamed' forward in the direction that the emitting particle is traveling. the faster the emitting object is traveling, the narrower the beam. the featured article doesn't mention it, but i imagine this is the explanation for the beaming of this radio emission.
is this still true? in my experience it isn't. i've installed ubuntu on a dozen or more very different computers (old laptops without cd-drives to brand new dell pcs) now and i've been amazed at how well it 'just worked'. the install is brainless, and once its running you have a full featured computer system complete with multimedia apps, office software, etc. i typically just have to spend a few minutes installing java plugins and mp3 support, but there are now packages http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ which do that automatically too.
that's the beauty of the linux community. if there's something you need, chances are someone has provided it and a quick google search will get you there. that's the utility of all of the different distros. as has been said, most of them serve very specific purposes. for the non-linux user words like redhat or ubuntu are synonymous with linux anyway, so there probably isn't even any confusion.
i will say, the one thing that i still feel is missing on linux is support for gaming. there are some capable open source games out there (warsow is a fun UT type multiplayer shooter) and some games have linux installers (i had to resort to installing neverwinter nights) but when a new commercial game comes out linux users are left high and dry. good thing i have my 360.
i had the same experience last week trying to order a few computers for our university physics department. the higher education section of their site doesn't include any open source configurations, and when we asked for pc's with ubuntu they said they couldn't sell them to us. they did sell us systems with freedos installed though.
...ted kennedy has proposed legislation to provide more funding for space travel