Yeah... we could call the new legislation "Ban Idiotic Titles in Congressional Hearings".

Interesting, but I believe my statement would stand true even if that wasn't the case.

Right.

Nuclear power doesn't seem to be economically viable without government subsidies. The free market includes irrational actors, and too many people fear anything nuke-you-lar. At the same time, for the same reasons, most governments seem to be avoiding it -- it's bad for elections.

Agrarian society isn't going to happen willingly. Thriving civilizations don't decrease their energy usage. (Collapse of civilization would get us there, I suppose, but that's generally not a deliberate choice...)

Which leaves global warming.

I'm just one big ray of sunshine, aren't I?

I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days. Since I know you're staunchly against government funding of such, and I suspect it's impossible for any free civilization to deliberately curtail its energy use, I guess that leaves global warming, right?

(I'm stirring the pot, yes. :) )

Interesting. You definitely think differently than I do when it comes to maps and directions and the like. It might be revealing to explore this kind of thing more, but unfortunately a Slashdot subthread isn't the best place for that. :)

Interesting. I hate having forward-up; I want a fixed map. But I also use the system differently than how you describe your use. I carry the map in my head and use the electronic map display to update my mental map. Even if I don't know the area, I want to have an idea of my route and the immediate surroundings. Having the map spin around disorients me: When I try to update my mental map, the on-screen map will have likely changed orientation and so I have to work harder to re-align mental with screen.

For turn warnings, I listen to audio and look at the next turn indicator at the top of the display. My GPS has a fairly easy to see arrow.

It would appear we use the system differently. It sounds like I'm more interested in the overall map than you.

It's common for people to describe themselves/others as having a good/bad "sense of direction". Different people have different skills. I generally seem to have a good sense of direction. I always have a mental map of my surroundings. How about yourself? I'm wondering if how we like to use GPSes reflects our own sense of the physical world.

You may want to look up some of the shuttle history. Carrying out experiments in space was not the original idea. That was what the space station was for.

The original concept was a smaller vehicle, intended to move people and small cargo back and forth between a permanent manned space station. It was truly intended as a *shuttle*. It was intended for frequent launches; hence the interest in a reusable vehicle. Heavier payloads were intended for conventional rocket designs (some kind of Saturn evolution).

But then funding was cut. Getting a new heavy lift booster, a space station, *and* a shuttle was not going to happen.

At the same time, the Air Force got involved. The AF needs the ability to launch spy satellites in to polar orbits. By working together, the thought was that STS could be kept alive. But polar orbits are harder to reach, and spy satellites are big and heavy. That meant a much larger vehicle. So the shuttle design evolved into what it is today.

But then the Air Force realized that the compromise design was lousy, and decided to stick with conventional rockets. SLC-6 was never used.

As a result, NASA was stuck with something of a white elephant. The shuttle was trying to be too many things at once. It wasn't the small, cheap "bus" that was originally conceived, but it also wasn't a cost-effective heavy launcher.

It's a shame; some really brilliant technology and engineering went into the program. But when the design goals are conflicting and ever-changing, no amount of engineering skill can compensate.

I thought you were an eternal Doctor Who...

Yah, and all the processing was done on the central host end.

Contrast this to the web paradigm, where all the data lives on servers, most of the processing happens on the servers, the servers just send a page description to your browser, and then send what you enter back to the server. That's totally different.

Oh, wait... ;-)

You obviously never used an old mini or mainframe that took minutes or tens of minutes to boot. 5 to 10 was a big improvement! ;-)

My old Tandy 1000 SL, which was basically an 8086 IBM-PC compatible design, had the DOS kernel and COMMAND.COM in ROM. It appeared as "C:" -- the machine had no hard disk. So despite only having a floppy disk, turn it on, and the OS was ready in a second or two. It was nice.

Actually, I *did* look at the project page. Which states, in its entirety, "lf is a command-line tool to list files in a terse format, sorted by file extensions. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior." It makes no mention of printing the extensions separately, nor of stripping them from the file names.

You're sort-of right in that I didn't look at the screen shot. I assumed the prose description on the web page would describe all the salient features. I see now that assumption was a bad one.

Suggestion for prose description:
lf is a command-line tool to list files. It is similar in concept to ls(1), but groups by file extension. Each line begins with an extension, followed by the base file names without extension. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior.

I did read "tersely", but I didn't see how the traditional ls(1) format could be any more terse: It already prints only the file names and nothing else. It didn't occur to me that you're breaking up the file names.

Suggestion:

lf(1): Like ls(1) but groups by extension, printed separately.

FYI: The -X switch to GNU ls(1) already does this.

Uhhh... unless they're using some new calendar I'm unfamiliar with, the first quarter is about two-thirds over. The fact that they're using the future tense for something which is already mostly gone makes me wonder just how well informed this article is.

Care to explain why/how? For those of us who aren't aware?

Again, it's a panic thing. People panic and try to use the (regular) brakes to stop the car. There are already ways to recover from a stuck accelerator: "Shift to neutral" and "turn ignition switch to OFF" being the most obvious. But when people are panicked because their car is accelerating out of control, they don't think clearly.

Plus, I think using the emergency brake would be a poor idea. The e-brake is typically the rear wheels only and lacks anti-lock; if it's the foot pedal variety it also typically lacks any fine control. That's a recipe for rear wheel lock-up, fish tailing, and loss of control.

You're still probably driving inappropriately. The idea that you'll never get there because you needed to shave tens of microseconds for a lane change is... unlikely. And, ironically, people with that attitude are actually a big part of the traffic problem. If people drove properly everyone would get there faster. (See: http://trafficwaves.org/) But too many people either don't understand or don't care. Tragedy of the commons.

Heh, something like that is actually a safety feature in some cars already, and They(TM) are considering making it mandatory. Accelerator override: Where if you press the brake, it cancels the accelerator. This is done because there are legit scenarios where the accelerator pedal can get suck. The big one is floor-mat-stuck-under-the-pedal. People panic and try to use the brakes to stop the car, and that's not always as effected as one would like.

Whether or not it's worth the costs in loss of control you describe, I dunno.

Semi-related: It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.