chilli

just to add, if you read this you will be better equipped to discuss it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion - Inertial confinement is the actual type I studied back then, I remember that much. Sustaining a reaction is exactly what happens in a thermonuclear bomb (h-bomb) which uses fission to start a fusion reaction - but there is no confinement so the thing blows itself apart - in a way like a supernova does to a star (analogy - not the same process). Yes a star burns because gravity keeps the thing together (provides confinement). Ironically the larger the star the quicker it burns out, gravity is higher and the thing burns hotter and runs out of fuel quicker

fusion can be started using high power lasers but because there is no easy way to contain it, it can't be sustained - I remember doing one of my uni projects on it but it was a while ago, I guess things may have changed and maybe I forgot the details. yeah but the point I'm making is ZPE has a real meaning in physics, is there a real theory for extracting vast energy (that isn't crackpot) and if so how is it supposed to work, in theory?

but if ZPE as an energy source is made up, that's kinda accademic lol - are you saying it's real? If so can someone explain to me how it works well, actually as far as I understand it, those problems are related - you can't keep it going if you can't contain it properly. It's the latter that's the problem to solve, keeping it going is not the core issue, luckily the Sun does a good job of that too but it uses lots of space around it and immense gravity to contain it lol

I think a lot of people jump on it because some of their stuff sucks and is rammed down our throats in an "integrated and bundled" way MS browsers, you only have to think of all the grief "quirks mode" has caused to want to use something else PS: does FF3 beta have the Firebug plugin available and if so, does it work ok?

I think you guys are talking about a different ZPE from me, or is it something in Sci-Fi stories? can't even master Fusion, you say that like it's easy lol - fusion can be started, containment is the problem isn't it - I'd rather they took their time and got the containment right before selling the design to countries with large populations looking for cheap sources of energy, regardless of safety lol

ZPE is the ground state of a quantum system - it's not to do with atoms that have stopped moving (that's actually absolute zero temperature). accelerators like this mostly mash large hadrons - oh wait lol, mash hadrons in a large accelerator in order to experiment at higher energy levels - i.e. at conditions closer to the big bang and the start of the universe. one of the key ideas is symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking, such as that of the Weak force and W and Z Bosons. In search of unified theories and the GUT, scientists hope that they will further unit forces and particles at ever higher energies, revealing the true nature and relationship between the myriad of particles and the forces of the universe - or something like that so, bigger and larger accelerators will continue to be built - perhaps until one day we go up in a puff of smoke

when you say LHC are you talking Large Hadron Collider?

We use internet radio - got a squeezebox 3 in the front room hooked up to the stereo (great sound!) and I also listen will at work with the headphones on, lots of good stations out there - so many in fact I've probably listened to 1% - what's Costa Rica station about? It's a local station for that area I presume?

Bit of a long shot I guess but does anyone have or know someone who has an Ultima down in the South East who might kindly show a keen enthusiast sometime and possibly even take out for a 5 minute blat?

when I say a stash of cash what I mean is that what you invest you have to be prepared to lose. If you're only investing very small amounts the returns are going to be small too. Keeping it at the small amateur level is not that risky and I'm sure you could earn enough to buy extra beer etc but if you want to make a lot you might be investing a lot too, that's all I mean by that I know a guy who does it on the small amateur scale based on public data only and he does earn some beer tokens out of it from time to time. He does it mainly for fun, what he gambles he can afford to lose. Whether it's a good return for the time invested, I'm not that sure. Guess it depends on what you can earn in your regular career vs. how much you value your spare time vs. how much you enjoy it vs. how good you are at trading. Long term, property investment is a pretty good bet I think - regardless of the market fluctuations, long term property values go up and up and up I don't know any good books on it. Perhaps start with the basics, learn your iceburg from your stealth etc PS: not all jobs are straightforward 9-5 what about consultants, contractors, self employed - and then there's performance related pay, stock options, dividends and so on. Thought about starting a business? anyway good luck with it. I'm not trying to be negative, just painting a realistic picture. Thinking that most people can't be bothered or are too safe is probably a little naive (IMHO) - you'd be surprised what a proportion of the average joe public will do when there's any real certainty of making £££!

tempting but since it runs well on cheap generic and ubiquitous x86 hardware, sparc based platforms seems less appealing these days, unless you're doing something a little fancy and require the latest cutting edge of something. Especially with the prominence of virtualisation technology allowing windows, solaris, other unix and linux to coexist on the same platform

lol, oh really? well I'm running it here on x86_64 and it's actually outperforming both windoze and linux 64 - so Slowaris is perhaps a bit ironic - especially since performance and scalability are where solaris is very strong.

that's fine, we can agree to disagree on that. remember though - there's no free lunch. What I mean is for every one guy getting rich there's 9 poor saps losing money (and that could easily be you as a beginner) - if you think you're going to be better than the people who do it seriously then why not, maybe you will be the one taking the cream things like property or long term investments are different, you spread the risk and reward over a longer time span. I mean managed funds and this sort of thing are not rocket science but as others have said, ultimately you're going to need to start by getting a decent FA and possibly a stash of cash to invest

oh, no I didn't mean my inner knowledge of how the systems work or frigging the 1/2p rounding like that guy in superman lol just the data available to proper trading houses, which is different to that available to the general public. This level 2 data is a service you pay for. From what I've been told by people who know way more than I do about it, this data is a prerequisite if you're serious about trading and kinda differentiates professionals from dablers and amatures. It's worth pointing out there are a bazillion different ways to trade and invest - I guess this thread is a little vague in that area. For serious day traders who expect to go home at the end of a day trading quids up, these guys don't mess around, it's serious often full time business - like I say, it's a job!

hmmm, interesting question. I think it's heading that way but it's not there yet for the average home user. It's got a graphical installer and the Java Desktop Environment is essentially Gnome and you can use KDE instead no problems. So installing is not a big deal, so long as your hardware is supported. I think when it comes to administering the system, it's different enough from Linux to create a headache at times. In fact it's progressing so much it's even pretty different from Unix that it came from, in certain areas. the documentation is excellent thought, as is the design. Open Solaris has a growing community behind it. biggest problem areas are going to be hardware support and learning to do the regular tasks like control services and install software. support for dvd and audio and all that, probably not that great - certainly not as good as Ubuntu but then that's designed as a consumer Os really. however Solaris can run linux binaries out of the box. Solaris also has containers (fancy zones), predictive self healing services, dtrace (kernel and system tracing without rebuilding anything!), and ZFS is the first zetabyte file system, a true 128 file system (first of it's kind I believe, but I could be wrong there). so in summary I'd say it's still very much a hardcore server / developer platform, probably not for the faint hearted - but watch this space, in a year or two with the open community behind it, it could get a whole lot more accessible just to add, for developers like me (especially working with Java and Java EE) it's a godsend, I only wish I'd discovered it sooner! Sun Java, Glassfish, mysql (now backed/owned by Sun), Netbeans etc all out of the box in SXDE (Solaris Express Developer Edition) make it a perfect platform for development and scalable servers alike

it's nice to see people using other OSes anyway, if there was a poll for opinions on windows I wonder how it would score these days I've not personally used ubuntu yet but I hear good stuff about it, it comes with open jdk? we use centos and fedora and some slackware, as well as windows and the aforementioned solaris at work

hey, I never said any of the "actual code" made it into Linux, I mean that's pretty daft anyway isn't it. Wasn't part of the point about GNU (GNU not Unix) to get away from certain 'licensing' issues in the first place! I'm talking conceptually, architecturally and design wise... "In 1991, Torvalds began to work on a non-commercial replacement for MINIX while he was attending the University of Helsinki.[8] This eventually became the Linux kernel." The point here being it was actually _designed_ (consciously) as a replacement for Minix - that's not the same as simply replacing x for y is it anyway, this is no place for OS wars. Solaris (unix in general) and linux are not the same and I know which one I'd pick for features and scalability at this point in time

I work in software but amongst other things we do financial systems for the London Stock Exchange (their trading systems) and various Equity traders. When I joined I assumed that I'd naturally get into trading a some point, especially with the insider info I've got. But, the surprising thing is very few people here do that, most see it as a risk (and the more you know the more you see it). I guess there are more secure ways to make money. To be a proper trader you really need to pay money to get hold of the detailed stock info. For a amature gamble at it, i know a few people who do ok speculatively by picking companies that do well over time. It's no sure fire route to becoming rich, to do well you need to be clever, lucky and plenty of time to work it (like a full time job). You might be better in a career at it where you get to play with someone elses money perhaps - having said that you could be lucky, but for every 1 success story remember there will be 100 or 1000 failure stories you won't read about. It's like anything, if it was easy everyone would be doing it and then the market would adjust accordingly anyway.

lol actually I'm not so sure he would, it's closer to that than full unix and I think most people familiar with both would agree. Either way it's true that there are linux scalability issues that are handled better by more full blown unix'es, of which Solaris is probably going to be the strongest player. hpux is dead in the water and aix is costly. BSD variants are the other strong contenders but I don't see the same momentum, IMHO of course

I have to agree with that, I've got the same and it's a great bumber but very low - be careful with it or you could end up catching it and tearing it off!

yeah, I've done the same here (and at home). Got vmware server 2.0 running it quite nicely. Using open solaris sxde 10 for development - so I do use the gui as well as the command line. Linux is the host Os though, only coz it's easy/lightweight to install. I can see Solaris could significantly gain in strength in the market in the future, there is little to compete with it and especially as hardware steps up to multiple cpus per chip. Linux can't scale in the same way. Remember, Linux is essentially derived from cut down Unix, Minix. Considering switching our products to it, using Glassfish clustering. Features like dtrace are excellent, it's ahead of the rest in many areas and if it gains momentum in the open community it could really do well. Especially now Sun bought mysql too, what an excellent development and server platform anyway, not to get off topic, good to know other people are using Solaris, if I get stuck I've got someone to PM now lol

bugger, I would have had these, too slow lol

ahhh forget linux, you should try Solaris 10 - it rocks lol - just thought I'd throw that in there for fun

hell yeah!

"other colours" is not a colour lol, you can't pitch _all_ other colours against black and then say therefore black isn't the most popular colour - that actually makes no sense at all