There is no choice for a good video card. There are tons of choices. And even quite old ones.
For a 3D, generally NVidia cards will go. Specially if you wanna play the few, unfortunately, OpenGL games that go on Linux. However if you are doing some thing like scientific work where you need some tough 3D stuff, forget about TNTs and GeForces. They are good, fast, but the NVidia's hacks are miserable when you come out of the game arena. Conflicts happen, frequently you fall into segfaults and more curious, NVidias are horribly slow with some apps. Well, it's NVidia's fault, some standards should be followed anyway. In the "scientific" case, even a Voodoo3 will do a much better job rather than the latest GeForce. Maybe others will do the bad work but I didn't test any.
And if your taste are 2D graphics, then things get worser. NVidia and late 3Dfx make only an average quality 2D system. They work relatively fast but quality is HORRIBLE. Well, if you have something to do with design. The more professional you are the worse it comes. In this case even many modern AGP cards get 0 in comparation to their old PCI sisters. Till now people use Diamond's like FireGL for graphics, as colours are much more perfect on them than its modern counterparts. Only recently I saw one ATI Rage AGP card where I could get right into design tasks without thinking too much about how the thing is set up. On NVidia I always get things wrong. On Voodoo I always curse their reddish mess.
So you may try to get an "ideal card". Ok, my question: What you wanna do?
Well is East America still in place? Aren't you seeing cracks on the walls. Hasn't your roof flyed away? Isn't you car laying inside a crack?
Because that is a MOVE. NSA publishing a security system? Think, that's first the setting of a standard. NSA is entering as a player of the security market. A big one. Second it is a risk. NSA is showing its strenghts and weaknesses to everyone. Third NSA is a security arbitrer. Someone will get up and others get real burned on this move. And fourth, NSA makes the security wars more intricted and complex than before. Right now it is not only NSA vs MI*/MOSSAD/FAPSI. This goes farther than old government pitty fights. NSA may be giving a weapon to mobs and terrorists. Or maybe be giving a weapon organisations to figth these rough groups. What will come from this, only the Future will know.
Anyway NSA made a huge move into the pedestal. It is putting itself as one of the biggest security players in the world. From now on we will have to look at NSA when talking about security. Its governmental status was already heavy-weight. Now it starts getting earthquake.
These guys should take a cold shower before writing such stuff. Linux is not Windows. And better not to pretend to be it. Linux is ANOTHER OS. Write it up in your head. But if you want fire let's go...
Occasionally I had to deal recently with one distro by hand... That was necessary for some very fine tuning. So I know what goes on such thing like RedHat or Mandrake. Now tell me if I can find this on Windows:
A few window managers for different tastes and skills.
Several programs that practically cover the whole Internet set of "classical" services. Also with an offer of variants for different tastes and skills.
Several "non-standard" Internet apps.
Several languages for development. It seems that now only BASIC is the big missing player here. Everything else is already there. Together with several development tools.
Several instruments for document processing. Only one thing is still missing. A good, professional Office set. But it seems that soon OpenOffice will fill this hole. Anyway, no talk about "l-i-n-r-f-t-d". StarOffice does its job quite well. After propper install.
Several graphic tools. Here there seems to exist a few clear missing zones, specially on vector graphics and 3D.
At least two DBMS systems go - MySQL and Postgres.
Several mathematical tools. Some quite advanced.
And many more...
And this goes, on Mandrake, in two disks. Bloat? Yes. It is bloat. But not because it goes on two disks but because of the apps classification and organisation. That's the real problem that we face. Till now, the way packets are classified/organised is quite raw. And it is an headache for users to get into that HUGE tree and look for each app they will install. Here we need clearly another approach. Maybe to divide the tree over a few separate trees to allow a better visual approach.
But anyway, the article is wrong from start. To install Mandrake you don't forcefully need the second disk...
And what concerns one smart guy talking about notepads on Windows. I don't want IE. Not it's not that I don't like it. I DON'T need it! On a computer without Internet connections IE is the same as an elephant in my bathtube. And that's the property of Microsoft. Everytime you'll be sure to find tiny notepad and heavyweight IE after every install... And many other things... On Linux I can't get rid only of one single thing: the kernel.
Again it seems that we are seeing probes being sent to "less interesting places"...
Personly I think that the place may risk to be relatively disappointing. But that also depends how far it wiil be from Syrtis. Near Syrtis there are some interesting forms called "black sands" or "black spots". Craters seem to have some "plastic" morphology in general. A few dark currents seem to be spotted on the North, but that's more Syrtis. The farer from Syrtis the most desertic and unfeatured it looks. Sand dunes seem to rule there, so let's hope that Herbert was not having visions from Mars while writing his book:)...
Curious. This place seems one of the less shot by MOC. At least on the present level of published pictures...
Good new word - grabber. Some one that grabs programs...
Well, there is one thing that people may not be remarking. Many programs become popular not because the developer gets an eye on them but users tell so. "Oh there is this new XXXXX prog out there. I grabbed it and it seems cool. Yeah it is quite alpha but I think it's a good idea for this, this and this." And the developers, system integrators, sysadmins go after that program to see if it's worth a look.
Note I'm not talking about users/developers. I'm talking about people with nearly zero knowledge about programming. There is a growing horde of them on Linux. And there is a new class, small but ambitious, that tries to look around, more than most users do. Grabbers are a known class in Windows world. There is even a black Grabbers elite that uses ready exploits for their less ethical work. But Grabbers don't end here. They are a huge class, as important as hackers. And they are hugely varied. There is a special group of visual Grabbers. People that collect programs on 2D/3D graphics processment. And they are great collectors. Some of these archives go over the Gigs. These people may not be the front line of development. But they surely are one of the most important supply lines as they show where we should go.
What this guy needs is a "freshman shooters course". Every FAQ, HOWTO, Guide for Lamers states that the most dangerous process is the key exchange. If you don't trust the channel don't exchange keys. JUST DON'T DO IT!!! Grab a disquette, write the key, pick an envelope and send it to Alice's Aunt in the name of your dog. That's if you and Alice are thousands of kilometers apart and you are damn paranoid. On smaller distances it is much simpler. On local networks it should not be a great problem. Depends on the sysadmin and your colleagues but hey, Alice is a desk away... If you are a sysadmin it SHOULDN'T be a problem. If this doesn't happen then what are you administering?
That's the main problem. Key trnasfer. And this is the same problem as transferring and storing cypher books, passwords and many other things. In the rest SSH has shown that problems drop several orders of magnitude.
Now a problem. Why do I need a third party here? I need thrid parties only for a very specific set of problems. I can come to Alice and drop the key in her computer. Now in cases of extreme paranoidism I may ask a third party to do that job for me. For example, I know that Alice's Uncle is really angered for kicking his car. And I still remember what he said about me and Alice with that old rifle in my nose. But I do trust that Alice's Aunt will deliver her my diskette...
Other case is chenging info with a party I do know too much. For example a commercial transaction with some e-shop. We may use a third party we trust to process our transactions.
However, in these two cases we have a problem. We should trust the third parties. And the level of trust depends on how good I know them, if the channel between me and them is secure and what do I need them for. Interknowledge is something quite relative. We see many third parties in e-commerce and even don't know a thing about them. It does not matter too much if we just wanna buy a computer and we don't want our credit/debit card numbers being stollen. The problem of the channel gets up to the same level as Alice's problem. What if someone intercepts this "certificates" and keys? In the end, the need. Do I need them for e-commerce? Sure. For my local network. No thanks! Wanna come? Cool, where's the AK-47? It's our private property and no one has a damn to do here. I can myself run over the workstations and exchange the keys...
Besides there is a problem of centralization. Certifications are a form of centralization. What may happen when huge corps, states, mobs, large and small nets, individuals and computers will be tighten to such a thing? Forcing certifications over everything is the biggest error possible. That will break exactly the fundament of public key encryption, that each individual has the possibility to set its own key for private exchange of information. Such move will be the revival of such things like CLIPPER...
The issua of the existence of water in the Jovian Moons was solved long ago. Since Voyager, a large segment of the scientific community came into the conclusion that is a main component of most Moons and specially Europa. Later other evidence showed that water plays a very specific role in the formation of most satellites beyond Jupiter. There is even a phenomena generally called "water volcanism" that suggests that water acts in certain planets, much the same way as we see volcanism in our Hawaian volcanos. This is still under question as all we have is pictures of Triton showing something similar to this.
Anyway it was a long time question wether this water had a presence in liquid form. At the beginning only Europe suggested such a phenomena. Densities are so low in this planet that many strongly suggested that Europe was mostly a "water world". Besides its "glass-like" surface gave a weight in these argumentations. Ganymede, Calisto and other planets beyond Jupiter were considered to possess water but in "dirty-forms", that means strongly mixed with minerals.
Now the findings seem to cast a new light on the formation of the Solar System. It seems that water is playing a bigger and more fundamental role in its formation. Somehow this suggests the lack of water as an "exclusion" rather than a rule. The Moon, Mercury or Venus become more "outsiders" rather than players in thsi game.
The starter of this thread is a clear Troll. I wonder what his provocative porpose is. Even he deforms our posts to state how right he is. For example, the reference on this lake. He speaks about the "living graveyard" in Chelaybinsk. I state about the existence of a highly polluted region in Chelyabinsk which I know some people name it as the "zhivoi mogilnik" - living graveyard. Mogilnik is graveyard in Russian and nuclear waste dumps are named as "Yadernye Mogilniki" - Nuclear Graveyards. From the spill the place became known as the Zhivoi Mogilnik as the damn stuff is right inside a forest region, with a lake on it. tftp states correctly the existence of a polluted lake near Chelyabinsk. Now the Troll replies to me,ignores tftps reference to the lake, but refers that he states all good and well in Chelyabinsk City. Where THE HELL I talked about the city????
In his site there is a reference that he lost his memory till the beginning of the 70's. And that he didn't even remember he was a professor.
His work on US atomic weapons WAS secret? Cool, so what this has to do with Chernobyl then? Why he needs permission to talk about Chernobyl? Clearence to bash the Soviets is still secret? To avoid offending ex-foes?
A pitty I don't have my library nearby. I would recomend you a few things on Chernobyl that explain much more than your xenophoby. Still written in Soviet times and much less pleasant then you may think. But less fantastic than your professor tales. And there, party bosses are not sweetly treated btw. Oh yeah, need Russian to read it...
Look. I once heard about the radiation near the core. Now, I don't remember the dose. But I still remember that no one would get there more than 20 meters. To the INSIDE! And I remember that in the first days, the core was so hot that it nearly burned the helicopter in the "death fly" mission where a pilot went into his sure death (an officer btw). So how your dear had three guys sent there... Besides these "don't say anything". Give me a break ok? They would pick your dear professor Zoller and give him a excursion over the core. He asked for it didn't he?
"Get in the car. Shut up..." - What a Troll
And he is talking about KGB Ukraine... Brrr... You even cry THE HELL over them and they start bbbbbb, bbbbb.
Then Zoller should have a damn shake on his brains. If someone was talking then about shooting someone then it surely were not the workers.
There was PANICK everywhere. Even I saw this stuff a year later. You talk to some damn jerks and they start panicking. And these guys have fat bellies and take some harsh decisions sometimes. But talking "Chernobyl" was the same as saying "boo". And not because there was a KGB man behind them. One should see to get the picture. You say Chernobyl. Chernobyl what damn Chernobyl, there is no Chernobyl, yes there is, or maybe not, and what is Chernobyl? THAT DAMN CHERNOBYL!!!! Oh ah...
And they start talking. A picture of powerless bosses. Of scientists seeing the Irrational coming out of that building. Of officers running to volunteer death. Of people running away from Prypyat in confusion. Of builders working like Hell to close the sarcophagus. Of party bosses trying to close the truth.
And you see that poor bastard. trying to wipe out from his own memory all this. Not because of a point gun. Because he saw something he can't understand. Something he can't live with. A nightmare that overcomes all his life. Something like if God came to this hard comunnist and said Hi! Its Me! That's what I saw 15 kilometers from Chernobyl.
But no one has ever told about your point guns. On the contrary. Your hellish KGB officers seemed to desire to put point-gun someone in Kiev...
Not so dandy in a place near it... Besides your common knowledge is quite xenophobic no matter the good manners. And there are no fences now... So you could take some more care on your sources.
No. I'm being a funny bastard but I was referring to high-precision missiles. If you know how this stuff works then you'll need a sattelite showing the coordinate system and pictures of the place. A half-meter resolution would be exactly the minimum to achieve such task. This way you can detect windows, doors, chimneys and other details that may be important for damage calculation.
Ok Troll me. But dear feminist Moderator. I am not bashing my ex-wife as a woman. No. In fact she deserves a missile for something much worser.
Well why notto make YOUR site? In the eve of Internet there were lots of sites studying Mars images. Truly many cared for Mars Face and similar things. But there were others who went on hunting more things than just Fussy Faces. There were more scientific or less scientific sites. Many spoke about the history of Mars, the possibility of water, life or even our dear little green men.
However this was all gone. By 95%. First because people either got tired or suffered some desillusions. Second because some pedestal people decided that this was too bad for their "Science". I got caught twice in this one. First by kicking me out of Yahoo. A year later, by smartly wipe out my presence in every main Web index. Some people were kicked out by getting so much hard flame and dirty spam that they got tired of fighting. Some got caught in a smart campaign of Mars bashing - "Elvis leaves the stage and Big Foot is in" as we saddly commented.
So you may try to do your site. But be warned. Things are not so simple as they seem.
Besides I have site on Internet. An horrible and primitive site. What i managed to do after the third time of being downed (this third one due to some damn sysadmin who knocked the server completely). But I will not tell where it is...
No, not even the human eye is advanced enough to see these things. First these craters are small. Sometimes there is a need to enalrge the image to get a better picture to analyse. Second, these images are shadows of gray. The latest MOC images have 256 gradations of it. But the human eye can generally see 32 of them. A more trained one may see a little more, but I heard that there is a limit that no one can see above 60 gradations. So you have to apply colorization or sharp the image or to use other tools to rise the perception of the picture. Sometimes, these tools are confusing. You get artifacts features caused either by the filter you use, noise, camera limitations, bad lighting conditions or everything together.
Besides these craters are horribly unnoticeable. One caught me in the 4th day of checking one and the same place. It was so wiped out, that only the disturbance of sedimentary layers in the place, showed me the possibility of its presence. And only after superenhancing the image, taking a damn care to avoid artifact creation, I managed to see it in full.
So you see, not one system or the other are perfect. Both are more perfect than being single used...
You don't see the point here? Crater classification is needed to create the historical map of Mars. Till now many analysis are made in the "pick-frame" method. You pick several frames through some method of selection. You analyse them nd throw a conclusion. Good and Bad. In my experience I saw a few times when NASA splitted a very good one, confunding a landscape formation with other just by ignoring some frames.
A systematic selection of craters will allow to form a more strightforward picture of the landscape. This work is massive. And computers, here, have several drawbacks to achieve this. Craters may have some common and well seen morphologies. But they also have a lot of individual traces that no computer will ever detect. Some of these traces can be quite confusing. For example a wiped out crater occurs to be more recent than its nearly preserved neighbor. Funny, but it does occur.
Right now it is possible that this clickwork is quite raw. But still is the right step to go. We need that map. Or else we will keep seeing hordes of investigators claiming that this place is that old, no it is that new or it's an alien face...
I think you are damn wrong. Yes it is real possible that some people, and including some jerks inside NASA (Hi!) will do try to throw away this work. But also they have thrown away tons of very scientific work away. Meanwhile there are other people who may care so this tthing will not treated this way.
1) Unions... Unions? UNIONS????? GET ME THAT BFG9000!!!!
I'm not a boss. I'm more inclined for a damn commy. But Unions? Damn Hell with these Unions. Pay the tax and see guys drinking and your salary shrinking...
2) You miss one point. Workers with less scientific preparation are sometimes a good thing to pick. These people are still out of stereotypes and some erroneous visions yu may have get during your life. I once saw children, picking up Mars raw frames and pointing to things I couldn't see. I saw people without any knowledge about Geology but having knowledge in a field like archeology pointing to very WEIRD things in Mars. I don't wanna state we have aliens there. But I do tell you that are quite wierd things in Mars...
If you had properly read their site then you will see that these analysis will be submitted to review. Maybe I wasn't too clear so:
Frankly if properly analysed by a community of researchers, this work will DO have some scientific value.
On the rest, if you don't get a hint about the story of Moon and Mars, go to those dusty shelves and get some historical knowledge, at least. And don't speak about Science before doing this. And BESIDES I am not talking of metaphors but of a theory that some old thinkers try to keep alive. Sometimes in very UNSCIENTIFIC ways.
"I think its kind of insulting to be handing out work to volunteers that has no scientific value"
Frankly if properly analysed, this work will DO have some scientific value. Science is not an activity for dusty shelves and old professors in glasses 1cm. thick. Anyway, some of these guys do also present very uniscientific ideas about our Universe. Let's start by the statement that Mars is, somehow, a second Moon. It was realtively stupid but now it is a sceintific enormity to state such. However many hot heads come up, drop 80% of evidence of not being worth for a glance and write the most stupid History of Mars nayone has ever heard.
On the other side. How do you want people to get more acquainted with Science. Teaching them long lessons without practice? Well, this method is dangerous, but in time it may teach people on how to deal with Science. And every beginner has a right to be wrong. I would say this is good but unsufficient. Craters are not only those that you may see at first glance. Mars has a very complex History of craterization.
The palimpsest craters and the nearly wiped craters are some of the most important for age classification. This allows to provide a real picture of the age of Mars landscape. Recently some other things came into the game, the "crater-deformed" landscape. Structures, mainly in sedimented regions, that still retain traces of anciant craterization. These ones are the most hard to detect. Only the circular deposition of sediments, and some deformations on soil still show that we are in presence of craters.
All these ones can only be find through image processing. And oh my! Here the work is HUGE. Image processment allows mostly to remark the details of landscape. And we are not looking for craters in the right place but exactly in very wrong places. A wiped out crater in a edge of a cliff will give you a hint on how old such cliff is. Another crater in a sedimentary region will show how long sediments covered the landscape. And there is no common law to ease this task.
Meanwhile this classification is not bad at all. However I doubt that NASA will get any good on it. They are too stuck to their ideas of old dry Mars check a few things about ages. For example, I wondered how old they would call such crater like the pedestal crater in Janssen's Crater. At the beginning I thought that the thing was a "post-water" crater. In fact the study of very small craters showed that the thing hit Janssen's while still a sea. And it kept being such for much longer. The signature of small, nearly wiped and mostly invisible craters showed a very long period for the presence of water. An that Janssen still holds a lot of its morphology of that period.
Btw. Till now, water runs from a few places there. It oesn't live too long in the surface but it is there, underground, in the millions of liters.
Your professor is quite interesting. I don't wanna bash the guy for this but still I think it is quite important. I know the Hell it is for not remembering a thing of what you did five minutes ago... Truly my trauma managed to be overcomed after some monthes. Five years later it was all gone. Truly it is a Hell to not remember a few things of the past.
"In 1984 he moved to the University of Washington in Seattle as a Professor of Chemistry where he still works. Within two years of arriving in Seattle, he suffered a serious auto accident in which he suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury that has removed much of his memory of both the past, and day-to-day functions. Because he had to learn how to teach Freshman Chemistry with out having a memory himself, he devoted his time to learning how to teach in a different way. He learned to teach Chemistry using a computer and the Computer program PowerPoint,. Since then, he has produced over 500 computer slides for teaching Freshman Chemistry. These slides are now used with the Silberberg Freshman Chemistry book (McGraw Hill), since then, all major textbooks also have obtained computer slides, which the students love!"
Now how can he recount his experience in Chernobyl? Besides his work is not so secret as you sound:
"His work also has been with the measurement of RadioIsotopes in the environment from atmospheric weapons testing and reactor accidents such as Chernobyl in the Former Soviet Union.
All this in:
http://faculty.washington.edu/~zoller/biograph.h tm
There is a special page about his trauma and how he overcomes it. Tough guy I may say.
From 7 am to 7 pm, 355 days a year and no vacation? What's so big on this. Does this makes his LEDs better? I know LOTS of people, in well known "lazy" Russia working 12-16 hours a day. From 10 am to 11 pm, 1pm to 4am, 7pm to 7am. Or like "dusk to dawn" (HEY we are not vampires! It's just no one BOTHERS you). And many work one, two, three years without vacations, on holidays and Sundays. On the screen I am seeing the reflection of one guy with 6 years work in a row (oh daaaaamn! Yeap, need vacation!..)
Yeah fellow Japanese and Chinese are traditional workaholists. But frankly I believe that our fellow americans and europeans have also such epidemy catching their lifes... At least some friends say things like "sorry I'm in the 14th hour, going to sleep". So I don't think that workaholism will made his LEDs shine brighter...
Black and white? Well i saw several pictures and films on Chernobyl. They are both in colour and black and white. I still remember that the "dead fly" above the reactor was done in colour for clear reasons.
Besides your babbling doesn't add nothing Hell new to what most people know. Only how bad is the KGB and the soviets. Let me tell you one thing. Yes, there were times when people were forced point gun into death - II World War. Soldiers in panick, whole divisions retiring, camp prisioners were forced back to fight by the NKVD, somehow, the organisation before KGB. But that was in Stalin times. Later, when Stalin died, those who came to power, were some of those who were forced to do many things point gun in the past. And the first thing they did was to shot the main "point-gunner" of the country, NKVD's boss Lavrenty Beria.
Since then no one was forced at point gun to do something. Yes, there was no real freedom, people still lived in communist chaos. But "point-guns" ended in the Hot Summer of 53. Ask any Russian and he will tell you this.
In Chernobyl there were thousands of volunteers or comanded workers. Some knew, others not, the whole dimension of the tragedy. But everyone knew that the problem was very serious. Too hard to not to see this in those days.
Besides there was the problem that radiation is an invisible killer. Under such a situation you may get something even if you know and are warned about the dangers. Some high officers got their dose btw. There are some films on these "liquidator" workers. It shows guys working on the run. Many are seen with radiation suits, white or yellow uniforms and masks. But not all follow the rules. Some have their torses open and white suits bandged around. I noted one construction worker with his mask over his head. Everyone sweeting, dirt, tired and crying Hell at each other. Talks clearly go about running against time, trying to make the sarcophagus as fast as possible. On certain section, a huge robot is working on implanting whole concrete blocks in one side of the building. Helicopters pass the sarcophagus at speed and drop some stuff to inside. Does this fits with your people sent "at point gun" into the unknown?
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There is no choice for a good video card. There are tons of choices. And even quite old ones.
For a 3D, generally NVidia cards will go. Specially if you wanna play the few, unfortunately, OpenGL games that go on Linux. However if you are doing some thing like scientific work where you need some tough 3D stuff, forget about TNTs and GeForces. They are good, fast, but the NVidia's hacks are miserable when you come out of the game arena. Conflicts happen, frequently you fall into segfaults and more curious, NVidias are horribly slow with some apps. Well, it's NVidia's fault, some standards should be followed anyway. In the "scientific" case, even a Voodoo3 will do a much better job rather than the latest GeForce. Maybe others will do the bad work but I didn't test any.
And if your taste are 2D graphics, then things get worser. NVidia and late 3Dfx make only an average quality 2D system. They work relatively fast but quality is HORRIBLE. Well, if you have something to do with design. The more professional you are the worse it comes. In this case even many modern AGP cards get 0 in comparation to their old PCI sisters. Till now people use Diamond's like FireGL for graphics, as colours are much more perfect on them than its modern counterparts. Only recently I saw one ATI Rage AGP card where I could get right into design tasks without thinking too much about how the thing is set up. On NVidia I always get things wrong. On Voodoo I always curse their reddish mess.
So you may try to get an "ideal card". Ok, my question: What you wanna do?
Well is East America still in place? Aren't you seeing cracks on the walls. Hasn't your roof flyed away? Isn't you car laying inside a crack?
Because that is a MOVE. NSA publishing a security system? Think, that's first the setting of a standard. NSA is entering as a player of the security market. A big one. Second it is a risk. NSA is showing its strenghts and weaknesses to everyone. Third NSA is a security arbitrer. Someone will get up and others get real burned on this move. And fourth, NSA makes the security wars more intricted and complex than before. Right now it is not only NSA vs MI*/MOSSAD/FAPSI. This goes farther than old government pitty fights. NSA may be giving a weapon to mobs and terrorists. Or maybe be giving a weapon organisations to figth these rough groups. What will come from this, only the Future will know.
Anyway NSA made a huge move into the pedestal. It is putting itself as one of the biggest security players in the world. From now on we will have to look at NSA when talking about security. Its governmental status was already heavy-weight. Now it starts getting earthquake.
These guys should take a cold shower before writing such stuff. Linux is not Windows. And better not to pretend to be it. Linux is ANOTHER OS. Write it up in your head. But if you want fire let's go...
Occasionally I had to deal recently with one distro by hand... That was necessary for some very fine tuning. So I know what goes on such thing like RedHat or Mandrake. Now tell me if I can find this on Windows:
A few window managers for different tastes and skills.
Several programs that practically cover the whole Internet set of "classical" services. Also with an offer of variants for different tastes and skills.
Several "non-standard" Internet apps.
Several languages for development. It seems that now only BASIC is the big missing player here. Everything else is already there. Together with several development tools.
Several instruments for document processing. Only one thing is still missing. A good, professional Office set. But it seems that soon OpenOffice will fill this hole. Anyway, no talk about "l-i-n-r-f-t-d". StarOffice does its job quite well. After propper install.
Several graphic tools. Here there seems to exist a few clear missing zones, specially on vector graphics and 3D.
At least two DBMS systems go - MySQL and Postgres.
Several mathematical tools. Some quite advanced.
And many more...
And this goes, on Mandrake, in two disks. Bloat? Yes. It is bloat. But not because it goes on two disks but because of the apps classification and organisation. That's the real problem that we face. Till now, the way packets are classified/organised is quite raw. And it is an headache for users to get into that HUGE tree and look for each app they will install. Here we need clearly another approach. Maybe to divide the tree over a few separate trees to allow a better visual approach.
But anyway, the article is wrong from start. To install Mandrake you don't forcefully need the second disk...
And what concerns one smart guy talking about notepads on Windows. I don't want IE. Not it's not that I don't like it. I DON'T need it! On a computer without Internet connections IE is the same as an elephant in my bathtube. And that's the property of Microsoft. Everytime you'll be sure to find tiny notepad and heavyweight IE after every install... And many other things... On Linux I can't get rid only of one single thing: the kernel.
Again it seems that we are seeing probes being sent to "less interesting places"...
:)...
Personly I think that the place may risk to be relatively disappointing. But that also depends how far it wiil be from Syrtis. Near Syrtis there are some interesting forms called "black sands" or "black spots". Craters seem to have some "plastic" morphology in general. A few dark currents seem to be spotted on the North, but that's more Syrtis. The farer from Syrtis the most desertic and unfeatured it looks. Sand dunes seem to rule there, so let's hope that Herbert was not having visions from Mars while writing his book
Curious. This place seems one of the less shot by MOC. At least on the present level of published pictures...
Good new word - grabber. Some one that grabs programs...
Well, there is one thing that people may not be remarking. Many programs become popular not because the developer gets an eye on them but users tell so. "Oh there is this new XXXXX prog out there. I grabbed it and it seems cool. Yeah it is quite alpha but I think it's a good idea for this, this and this." And the developers, system integrators, sysadmins go after that program to see if it's worth a look.
Note I'm not talking about users/developers. I'm talking about people with nearly zero knowledge about programming. There is a growing horde of them on Linux. And there is a new class, small but ambitious, that tries to look around, more than most users do. Grabbers are a known class in Windows world. There is even a black Grabbers elite that uses ready exploits for their less ethical work. But Grabbers don't end here. They are a huge class, as important as hackers. And they are hugely varied. There is a special group of visual Grabbers. People that collect programs on 2D/3D graphics processment. And they are great collectors. Some of these archives go over the Gigs. These people may not be the front line of development. But they surely are one of the most important supply lines as they show where we should go.
What this guy needs is a "freshman shooters course". Every FAQ, HOWTO, Guide for Lamers states that the most dangerous process is the key exchange. If you don't trust the channel don't exchange keys. JUST DON'T DO IT!!! Grab a disquette, write the key, pick an envelope and send it to Alice's Aunt in the name of your dog. That's if you and Alice are thousands of kilometers apart and you are damn paranoid. On smaller distances it is much simpler. On local networks it should not be a great problem. Depends on the sysadmin and your colleagues but hey, Alice is a desk away... If you are a sysadmin it SHOULDN'T be a problem. If this doesn't happen then what are you administering?
That's the main problem. Key trnasfer. And this is the same problem as transferring and storing cypher books, passwords and many other things. In the rest SSH has shown that problems drop several orders of magnitude.
Now a problem. Why do I need a third party here? I need thrid parties only for a very specific set of problems. I can come to Alice and drop the key in her computer. Now in cases of extreme paranoidism I may ask a third party to do that job for me. For example, I know that Alice's Uncle is really angered for kicking his car. And I still remember what he said about me and Alice with that old rifle in my nose. But I do trust that Alice's Aunt will deliver her my diskette...
Other case is chenging info with a party I do know too much. For example a commercial transaction with some e-shop. We may use a third party we trust to process our transactions.
However, in these two cases we have a problem. We should trust the third parties. And the level of trust depends on how good I know them, if the channel between me and them is secure and what do I need them for. Interknowledge is something quite relative. We see many third parties in e-commerce and even don't know a thing about them. It does not matter too much if we just wanna buy a computer and we don't want our credit/debit card numbers being stollen. The problem of the channel gets up to the same level as Alice's problem. What if someone intercepts this "certificates" and keys? In the end, the need. Do I need them for e-commerce? Sure. For my local network. No thanks! Wanna come? Cool, where's the AK-47? It's our private property and no one has a damn to do here. I can myself run over the workstations and exchange the keys...
Besides there is a problem of centralization. Certifications are a form of centralization. What may happen when huge corps, states, mobs, large and small nets, individuals and computers will be tighten to such a thing? Forcing certifications over everything is the biggest error possible. That will break exactly the fundament of public key encryption, that each individual has the possibility to set its own key for private exchange of information. Such move will be the revival of such things like CLIPPER...
The issua of the existence of water in the Jovian Moons was solved long ago. Since Voyager, a large segment of the scientific community came into the conclusion that is a main component of most Moons and specially Europa. Later other evidence showed that water plays a very specific role in the formation of most satellites beyond Jupiter. There is even a phenomena generally called "water volcanism" that suggests that water acts in certain planets, much the same way as we see volcanism in our Hawaian volcanos. This is still under question as all we have is pictures of Triton showing something similar to this.
Anyway it was a long time question wether this water had a presence in liquid form. At the beginning only Europe suggested such a phenomena. Densities are so low in this planet that many strongly suggested that Europe was mostly a "water world". Besides its "glass-like" surface gave a weight in these argumentations. Ganymede, Calisto and other planets beyond Jupiter were considered to possess water but in "dirty-forms", that means strongly mixed with minerals.
Now the findings seem to cast a new light on the formation of the Solar System. It seems that water is playing a bigger and more fundamental role in its formation. Somehow this suggests the lack of water as an "exclusion" rather than a rule. The Moon, Mercury or Venus become more "outsiders" rather than players in thsi game.
The starter of this thread is a clear Troll. I wonder what his provocative porpose is. Even he deforms our posts to state how right he is. For example, the reference on this lake. He speaks about the "living graveyard" in Chelaybinsk. I state about the existence of a highly polluted region in Chelyabinsk which I know some people name it as the "zhivoi mogilnik" - living graveyard. Mogilnik is graveyard in Russian and nuclear waste dumps are named as "Yadernye Mogilniki" - Nuclear Graveyards. From the spill the place became known as the Zhivoi Mogilnik as the damn stuff is right inside a forest region, with a lake on it. tftp states correctly the existence of a polluted lake near Chelyabinsk. Now the Troll replies to me,ignores tftps reference to the lake, but refers that he states all good and well in Chelyabinsk City. Where THE HELL I talked about the city????
In his site there is a reference that he lost his memory till the beginning of the 70's. And that he didn't even remember he was a professor.
His work on US atomic weapons WAS secret? Cool, so what this has to do with Chernobyl then? Why he needs permission to talk about Chernobyl? Clearence to bash the Soviets is still secret? To avoid offending ex-foes?
A pitty I don't have my library nearby. I would recomend you a few things on Chernobyl that explain much more than your xenophoby. Still written in Soviet times and much less pleasant then you may think. But less fantastic than your professor tales. And there, party bosses are not sweetly treated btw. Oh yeah, need Russian to read it...
Look. I once heard about the radiation near the core. Now, I don't remember the dose. But I still remember that no one would get there more than 20 meters. To the INSIDE! And I remember that in the first days, the core was so hot that it nearly burned the helicopter in the "death fly" mission where a pilot went into his sure death (an officer btw). So how your dear had three guys sent there... Besides these "don't say anything". Give me a break ok? They would pick your dear professor Zoller and give him a excursion over the core. He asked for it didn't he?
"Get in the car. Shut up..." - What a Troll
And he is talking about KGB Ukraine... Brrr... You even cry THE HELL over them and they start bbbbbb, bbbbb.
Then Zoller should have a damn shake on his brains. If someone was talking then about shooting someone then it surely were not the workers.
There was PANICK everywhere. Even I saw this stuff a year later. You talk to some damn jerks and they start panicking. And these guys have fat bellies and take some harsh decisions sometimes. But talking "Chernobyl" was the same as saying "boo". And not because there was a KGB man behind them. One should see to get the picture. You say Chernobyl. Chernobyl what damn Chernobyl, there is no Chernobyl, yes there is, or maybe not, and what is Chernobyl? THAT DAMN CHERNOBYL!!!! Oh ah...
And they start talking. A picture of powerless bosses. Of scientists seeing the Irrational coming out of that building. Of officers running to volunteer death. Of people running away from Prypyat in confusion. Of builders working like Hell to close the sarcophagus. Of party bosses trying to close the truth.
And you see that poor bastard. trying to wipe out from his own memory all this. Not because of a point gun. Because he saw something he can't understand. Something he can't live with. A nightmare that overcomes all his life. Something like if God came to this hard comunnist and said Hi! Its Me! That's what I saw 15 kilometers from Chernobyl.
But no one has ever told about your point guns. On the contrary. Your hellish KGB officers seemed to desire to put point-gun someone in Kiev...
Not so dandy in a place near it... Besides your common knowledge is quite xenophobic no matter the good manners. And there are no fences now... So you could take some more care on your sources.
No. I'm being a funny bastard but I was referring to high-precision missiles. If you know how this stuff works then you'll need a sattelite showing the coordinate system and pictures of the place. A half-meter resolution would be exactly the minimum to achieve such task. This way you can detect windows, doors, chimneys and other details that may be important for damage calculation.
Ok Troll me. But dear feminist Moderator. I am not bashing my ex-wife as a woman. No. In fact she deserves a missile for something much worser.
Well why notto make YOUR site? In the eve of Internet there were lots of sites studying Mars images. Truly many cared for Mars Face and similar things. But there were others who went on hunting more things than just Fussy Faces. There were more scientific or less scientific sites. Many spoke about the history of Mars, the possibility of water, life or even our dear little green men.
However this was all gone. By 95%. First because people either got tired or suffered some desillusions. Second because some pedestal people decided that this was too bad for their "Science". I got caught twice in this one. First by kicking me out of Yahoo. A year later, by smartly wipe out my presence in every main Web index. Some people were kicked out by getting so much hard flame and dirty spam that they got tired of fighting. Some got caught in a smart campaign of Mars bashing - "Elvis leaves the stage and Big Foot is in" as we saddly commented.
So you may try to do your site. But be warned. Things are not so simple as they seem.
Besides I have site on Internet. An horrible and primitive site. What i managed to do after the third time of being downed (this third one due to some damn sysadmin who knocked the server completely). But I will not tell where it is...
Now I only need a missile...
Where is the house of my ex-wife?
No, not even the human eye is advanced enough to see these things. First these craters are small. Sometimes there is a need to enalrge the image to get a better picture to analyse. Second, these images are shadows of gray. The latest MOC images have 256 gradations of it. But the human eye can generally see 32 of them. A more trained one may see a little more, but I heard that there is a limit that no one can see above 60 gradations. So you have to apply colorization or sharp the image or to use other tools to rise the perception of the picture. Sometimes, these tools are confusing. You get artifacts features caused either by the filter you use, noise, camera limitations, bad lighting conditions or everything together.
Besides these craters are horribly unnoticeable. One caught me in the 4th day of checking one and the same place. It was so wiped out, that only the disturbance of sedimentary layers in the place, showed me the possibility of its presence. And only after superenhancing the image, taking a damn care to avoid artifact creation, I managed to see it in full.
So you see, not one system or the other are perfect. Both are more perfect than being single used...
You don't see the point here? Crater classification is needed to create the historical map of Mars. Till now many analysis are made in the "pick-frame" method. You pick several frames through some method of selection. You analyse them nd throw a conclusion. Good and Bad. In my experience I saw a few times when NASA splitted a very good one, confunding a landscape formation with other just by ignoring some frames.
A systematic selection of craters will allow to form a more strightforward picture of the landscape. This work is massive. And computers, here, have several drawbacks to achieve this. Craters may have some common and well seen morphologies. But they also have a lot of individual traces that no computer will ever detect. Some of these traces can be quite confusing. For example a wiped out crater occurs to be more recent than its nearly preserved neighbor. Funny, but it does occur.
Right now it is possible that this clickwork is quite raw. But still is the right step to go. We need that map. Or else we will keep seeing hordes of investigators claiming that this place is that old, no it is that new or it's an alien face...
I think you are damn wrong. Yes it is real possible that some people, and including some jerks inside NASA (Hi!) will do try to throw away this work. But also they have thrown away tons of very scientific work away. Meanwhile there are other people who may care so this tthing will not treated this way.
1) Unions... Unions? UNIONS????? GET ME THAT BFG9000!!!!
I'm not a boss. I'm more inclined for a damn commy. But Unions? Damn Hell with these Unions. Pay the tax and see guys drinking and your salary shrinking...
2) You miss one point. Workers with less scientific preparation are sometimes a good thing to pick. These people are still out of stereotypes and some erroneous visions yu may have get during your life. I once saw children, picking up Mars raw frames and pointing to things I couldn't see. I saw people without any knowledge about Geology but having knowledge in a field like archeology pointing to very WEIRD things in Mars. I don't wanna state we have aliens there. But I do tell you that are quite wierd things in Mars...
If you had properly read their site then you will see that these analysis will be submitted to review. Maybe I wasn't too clear so:
Frankly if properly analysed by a community of researchers, this work will DO have some scientific value.
On the rest, if you don't get a hint about the story of Moon and Mars, go to those dusty shelves and get some historical knowledge, at least. And don't speak about Science before doing this. And BESIDES I am not talking of metaphors but of a theory that some old thinkers try to keep alive. Sometimes in very UNSCIENTIFIC ways.
"I think its kind of insulting to be handing out work to volunteers that has no scientific value"
Frankly if properly analysed, this work will DO have some scientific value. Science is not an activity for dusty shelves and old professors in glasses 1cm. thick. Anyway, some of these guys do also present very uniscientific ideas about our Universe. Let's start by the statement that Mars is, somehow, a second Moon. It was realtively stupid but now it is a sceintific enormity to state such. However many hot heads come up, drop 80% of evidence of not being worth for a glance and write the most stupid History of Mars nayone has ever heard.
On the other side. How do you want people to get more acquainted with Science. Teaching them long lessons without practice? Well, this method is dangerous, but in time it may teach people on how to deal with Science. And every beginner has a right to be wrong. I would say this is good but unsufficient. Craters are not only those that you may see at first glance. Mars has a very complex History of craterization.
The palimpsest craters and the nearly wiped craters are some of the most important for age classification. This allows to provide a real picture of the age of Mars landscape. Recently some other things came into the game, the "crater-deformed" landscape. Structures, mainly in sedimented regions, that still retain traces of anciant craterization. These ones are the most hard to detect. Only the circular deposition of sediments, and some deformations on soil still show that we are in presence of craters.
All these ones can only be find through image processing. And oh my! Here the work is HUGE. Image processment allows mostly to remark the details of landscape. And we are not looking for craters in the right place but exactly in very wrong places. A wiped out crater in a edge of a cliff will give you a hint on how old such cliff is. Another crater in a sedimentary region will show how long sediments covered the landscape. And there is no common law to ease this task.
Meanwhile this classification is not bad at all. However I doubt that NASA will get any good on it. They are too stuck to their ideas of old dry Mars check a few things about ages. For example, I wondered how old they would call such crater like the pedestal crater in Janssen's Crater. At the beginning I thought that the thing was a "post-water" crater. In fact the study of very small craters showed that the thing hit Janssen's while still a sea. And it kept being such for much longer. The signature of small, nearly wiped and mostly invisible craters showed a very long period for the presence of water. An that Janssen still holds a lot of its morphology of that period.
Btw. Till now, water runs from a few places there. It oesn't live too long in the surface but it is there, underground, in the millions of liters.
Your professor is quite interesting. I don't wanna bash the guy for this but still I think it is quite important. I know the Hell it is for not remembering a thing of what you did five minutes ago... Truly my trauma managed to be overcomed after some monthes. Five years later it was all gone. Truly it is a Hell to not remember a few things of the past.
h tm
"In 1984 he moved to the University of Washington in Seattle as a Professor of Chemistry where he still works. Within two years of arriving in Seattle, he suffered a serious auto accident in which he suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury that has removed much of his memory of both the past, and day-to-day functions. Because he had to learn how to teach Freshman Chemistry with out having a memory himself, he devoted his time to learning how to teach in a different way. He learned to teach Chemistry using a computer and the Computer program PowerPoint,. Since then, he has produced over 500 computer slides for teaching Freshman Chemistry. These slides are now used with the Silberberg Freshman Chemistry book (McGraw Hill), since then, all major textbooks also have obtained computer slides, which the students love!"
Now how can he recount his experience in Chernobyl? Besides his work is not so secret as you sound:
"His work also has been with the measurement of RadioIsotopes in the environment from atmospheric weapons testing and reactor accidents such as Chernobyl in the Former Soviet Union.
All this in:
http://faculty.washington.edu/~zoller/biograph.
There is a special page about his trauma and how he overcomes it. Tough guy I may say.
From 7 am to 7 pm, 355 days a year and no vacation? What's so big on this. Does this makes his LEDs better? I know LOTS of people, in well known "lazy" Russia working 12-16 hours a day. From 10 am to 11 pm, 1pm to 4am, 7pm to 7am. Or like "dusk to dawn" (HEY we are not vampires! It's just no one BOTHERS you). And many work one, two, three years without vacations, on holidays and Sundays. On the screen I am seeing the reflection of one guy with 6 years work in a row (oh daaaaamn! Yeap, need vacation!..)
Yeah fellow Japanese and Chinese are traditional workaholists. But frankly I believe that our fellow americans and europeans have also such epidemy catching their lifes... At least some friends say things like "sorry I'm in the 14th hour, going to sleep". So I don't think that workaholism will made his LEDs shine brighter...
Black and white? Well i saw several pictures and films on Chernobyl. They are both in colour and black and white. I still remember that the "dead fly" above the reactor was done in colour for clear reasons.
Besides your babbling doesn't add nothing Hell new to what most people know. Only how bad is the KGB and the soviets. Let me tell you one thing. Yes, there were times when people were forced point gun into death - II World War. Soldiers in panick, whole divisions retiring, camp prisioners were forced back to fight by the NKVD, somehow, the organisation before KGB. But that was in Stalin times. Later, when Stalin died, those who came to power, were some of those who were forced to do many things point gun in the past. And the first thing they did was to shot the main "point-gunner" of the country, NKVD's boss Lavrenty Beria.
Since then no one was forced at point gun to do something. Yes, there was no real freedom, people still lived in communist chaos. But "point-guns" ended in the Hot Summer of 53. Ask any Russian and he will tell you this.
In Chernobyl there were thousands of volunteers or comanded workers. Some knew, others not, the whole dimension of the tragedy. But everyone knew that the problem was very serious. Too hard to not to see this in those days.
Besides there was the problem that radiation is an invisible killer. Under such a situation you may get something even if you know and are warned about the dangers. Some high officers got their dose btw. There are some films on these "liquidator" workers. It shows guys working on the run. Many are seen with radiation suits, white or yellow uniforms and masks. But not all follow the rules. Some have their torses open and white suits bandged around. I noted one construction worker with his mask over his head. Everyone sweeting, dirt, tired and crying Hell at each other. Talks clearly go about running against time, trying to make the sarcophagus as fast as possible. On certain section, a huge robot is working on implanting whole concrete blocks in one side of the building. Helicopters pass the sarcophagus at speed and drop some stuff to inside. Does this fits with your people sent "at point gun" into the unknown?