In the past year, three of my friends' home Windows XP boxes died due to trojans, viruses and that other phenomenon where if you simply use XP for a few months it slows down to a crawl for no other apparent reason.
I convinced them to switch to Linux by demonstrating it on my Dell laptop (first it was Suse 10.1, now it's Ubuntu Edgy).
However, in two out of three cases, they have found the systems too difficult to learn to use daily (even using Gnome, one managed to accidentally rearrange the desktop panels and remove buttons so they couldn't find a way to start applications anymore without me going in and fixing it), and upgraded their desktop PC to a Mac. They both use the Linux PC's, but have essentially relegated them to network storage tasks only, as that was easy as pie to set up in Ubuntu. They do, however, run linux on their older laptops exclusively now, as all they do on those is browse the net and update timetables in spreadsheets and other mundane stuff.
They said the Macs were also a pain in the butt to do anything interesting with - but on the other hand the Mac ran their Skype dual phones without a hitch, worked with their multifunction printer, worked with their video camera - and every bit of hardware that they had accumulated from their windows PC.
Whilst Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop, it's not ready for theirs. And whilst the likes of Linus Torvalds has a point to make when they say KDE is more configurable and less insulting to the intellect compared with Gnome, the real world consists of people who have enough uses for their intellect already and want a PC that is absolutely dead simple to use from the word go.
For two out of three of my friends who tried linux, they needed a system that boots up, gives them a desktop which simply says "Go", brings up a menu that says "Office, Internet Browser, Email, Games, Music, Pictures and Video", with no submenus, saves everything to their desktop or a folder on the desktop, and that's it. None of them was aware that the desktop was a subfolder of their home folder (they saved stuff there, and couldnt find it anymore).
Additionally, they have had similar problems even with OS X.
I think destkops need to come out of the box with two modes (basic, expert) or something - such that in basic mode, the whole thing is locked down, almost like a kiosk mode. Make it so simple a four year old can use it - and then you will find that every adult will use it.
Culture confers a survival advantage, as has been shown between monkey populations, where handed down methods of gathering sweet sap using sticks instead of one's finger led to decreased mortality and better survival through famine throughg improved yield.
Religion is the cultural expression of the belief in the supernatural, and as such acts as a moderating and organizing force. It has demonstrably improved survival throughout history - more recently by the very fact that religious observance results in more offspring by not using contraception.
As for belief in the supernatural per se (spirituality) giving an evolutionary edge would be difficult to prove. It may well have a beneficial effect in dire circumstances and crises - possibly by reducing suicidality.
Is this the influence, or evidence of a spiritual dimension? No more or less than a rock, or an eyeball or mathematics itself is the evidence of the same.
This scientific research doesn't answer those questions, but rather seeks to expose another human weakness.
Safari does slow the system a bit. If you use it for a while, you will find you start to feel a little bloated, and it becomes more and more difficult to offload all that pizza and cola after it's been digested, partly because Safari has so little roughage, there's not much for your system to work with to get it moving.
My advice would be to take a little extra fibre in your diet - maybe some bran on your breakfast or eat some apples and maybe a pear or two.
On the other hand, it's better than IE, which, while not slowing your system, causes nausea, vomiting and vertigo.
Firefox, as the name suggests, is very spicy and will really get your system running. Definitely the cure for a sluggish system, but doesn't go all that well with apples. Nicer in a taco shell or on toast.
But consumers don't wear chastity belts, are much looser and would easily accommodate an apple. Much harder to penetrate a corporation - have to try it with a thin client or something like that - an apple would just get crushed.
This of course, leading to 2011's legal dilemma: Is it copyright infringement to "view" a copyrighted work?
Which of course, leads to 2021's legal dilemma: Is it an antitrust infringement to "copyright" a work? Since by doing so, the publisher forces some people to break the law, and unfairly competes with those who sell the originals of their work, such as performing musicians, painters, etc?
If I wanted to concentrate on a job over things like family and a social life, I would go to med school.
How true - but at least in medicine, you always have a job, no matter what (aside from criminal charges!), and as such, if people really want, they don't have to work 6 days a week and take their work home, except perhaps during the first 2 or 3 years of work. The pay easily accommodates less work - people just have to choose that path. Problem with medicine is it's addictive (pardon the pun) - it's easy to get drawn into the game and want to get better and better at it.
However, the competitiveness of the US is more complex than number of jobs vs. number of students. The fundamental problem is that, whereas US dominance was previously based on having lots and lots of friends and doing business with them, it is now the case that the US economic model is one of dependency on non-friends, even enemies, whilst at the same time grumbling about having to do business with them.
US economic superiority is now underpinned by its military activities and decreasing control of diminishing, and possibly soon to be obsolete, oil reserves. It's an unfortunate and risky approach. If those arms fail (which it seems they are), then what will be exposed is an economy based on printing money and gambling at the Wall Street Casino. When done in excess (which it is), the economy eventually collapses, with society following soon after. And the usual course of events follows.
Essentially, America has to reinvent herself and become the forward thinking, open minded and friendly nation that she once was. There has to be a return to nation building and saving instead of exporting jobs and living on debt. That and about a 1000 other motherhood statements.
Nations do this stuff all the time - launch stuff into space, conduct research - it's called progress.
What differs is the reaction of other countries. It doesn't matter what a country like Iran does, the US will always point and say to everyone "see, they're naughty, they should go sit in the corner, can I start throwing rocks at them now, can I, can I??"
The BBC is the trumpet of the British Government, and as such, will always inflame something like this, because it's Iran.
The real question I have is, why are they really after Iran? Why were they really after Iraq?
Weapons of mass destruction? Yeah right. Sounds like something out of "Wag the Dog".
I agree with you, but these same people have done worse for even weaker moral arguments - but that'd be very off-topic. There are a few points to be made:
Strictly speaking, it is not really ethical to mandate any medical treatment on anyone, since coercion of this kind goes against the principle of autonomy (and yet the UN and US sanction this abroad quite commonly). Therefore, whilst the vaccine should be offered freely at schools and everywhere, like all medical care (IMHO), nobody should be in any way discriminated against if they say no - this includes the children and their legal guardians, but also schools which hold views against vaccinations for any reason.
Anyone arguing that people are going to have sex because they think they won't be getting cancer, is deluding themselves, as people have sex anyway. The only thing that stops people having sex is lack of opportunity (since when is that ever the case!) or their family and cultural upbringing.
These right-wing 'Christians' have got to wake up and realize that if they want anyone to buy their propaganda, it has to be based in fact and reason. People aren't buying any old crap-for-religion anymore, when there are so many easier (and often better) alternatives - and before their very eyes they see how well people do without.
Merck, like most drug companies (or almost any other company), doesn't give a hoot about the social impact of its business.
All of the interested groups in this debate are all a bunch of corrupt sods, so none of this is very surprising.
If parents don't want to give the vaccine to their kids, then fine. They will wake up one morning and find their daughter has left them for a better life.
Maybe years ago she started off with thick glasses, pigtails and braces - head buried in books and always to be found in the library - but that was when she was young. The watchful eye would spot the beauty underneath. Anyone with foresight knew that eventually the braces would come off and she'd get herself some contact lenses.
Now, however, she has grown up - curvaceous, intelligent, attractive, witty and humorous. She can seduce you anytime, but if you're not in the mood for it, she'll take you up on an intellectual conversation, or handle all your arguments and after all the huffing and puffing she's still your friend, reliable as ever.
She watches what she eats and likes the same food as you - she is any shape you want, whatever you're after. Somehow she knows your tastes - and knows how not to bore you.
She's more than some kind of blonde bimbo you picked up in a drunken state the night before, screws you, steals your passport and credit card and is gone before you wake up in the morning.
But most of all, she doesn't charge for the experience - she's your babe, not a whore you bought at a computer store.
"A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking."
Wow! Mobile police offices - must need a lot of horsepower to tow that thing!
Water has been extensively studied, and fluid mechanics is a pretty well explored field, so I think water is well suited for the experiments. The thing that could be a problem as I see it is the speed of the system. The heavier the substance is, the greater force needed to change its direction, and the thing will be slower as a result.
I remember a great article in the British Medical Journal about a randomized, double-blinded crossover study using placebos, where the investigators tested the effectiveness of parachutes on statisticians. Needless to say it was a roaring success.
They have proven very useful in the medical field with respect to fluid logic ventilators, and possibly more sophisticated surgical equipment (aside from drills and saws which commonly are driven by compressed air). Many portable ventilators are commonly available which have no electronic parts to speak of and run on the pressurized air or oxygen that goes with the patient during transfer. More modern ones generate small amounts of electricity to power logic curcuits to achieve smoother or more configurable ventilation modes. Improving fluid logic to avoid this electronic dependency would be quite interesting whilst still keeping size down.
Just how water could play a part in ventilators escapes me, but such things as washing machines, dish washers and other appliances could benefit from not needing to use electricity.
I think the interest in this stuff, thankfully, goes beyond the cold war.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not autotakeoff as well...?
Because I would trust a pilot who is IN the plane with me more than some guy on the ground who will live longer than me if he crashes the plane.
In the past year, three of my friends' home Windows XP boxes died due to trojans, viruses and that other phenomenon where if you simply use XP for a few months it slows down to a crawl for no other apparent reason. I convinced them to switch to Linux by demonstrating it on my Dell laptop (first it was Suse 10.1, now it's Ubuntu Edgy). However, in two out of three cases, they have found the systems too difficult to learn to use daily (even using Gnome, one managed to accidentally rearrange the desktop panels and remove buttons so they couldn't find a way to start applications anymore without me going in and fixing it), and upgraded their desktop PC to a Mac. They both use the Linux PC's, but have essentially relegated them to network storage tasks only, as that was easy as pie to set up in Ubuntu. They do, however, run linux on their older laptops exclusively now, as all they do on those is browse the net and update timetables in spreadsheets and other mundane stuff. They said the Macs were also a pain in the butt to do anything interesting with - but on the other hand the Mac ran their Skype dual phones without a hitch, worked with their multifunction printer, worked with their video camera - and every bit of hardware that they had accumulated from their windows PC. Whilst Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop, it's not ready for theirs. And whilst the likes of Linus Torvalds has a point to make when they say KDE is more configurable and less insulting to the intellect compared with Gnome, the real world consists of people who have enough uses for their intellect already and want a PC that is absolutely dead simple to use from the word go. For two out of three of my friends who tried linux, they needed a system that boots up, gives them a desktop which simply says "Go", brings up a menu that says "Office, Internet Browser, Email, Games, Music, Pictures and Video", with no submenus, saves everything to their desktop or a folder on the desktop, and that's it. None of them was aware that the desktop was a subfolder of their home folder (they saved stuff there, and couldnt find it anymore). Additionally, they have had similar problems even with OS X. I think destkops need to come out of the box with two modes (basic, expert) or something - such that in basic mode, the whole thing is locked down, almost like a kiosk mode. Make it so simple a four year old can use it - and then you will find that every adult will use it.
Don't they know that if you pick at it, it will never get better?
Culture confers a survival advantage, as has been shown between monkey populations, where handed down methods of gathering sweet sap using sticks instead of one's finger led to decreased mortality and better survival through famine throughg improved yield.
Religion is the cultural expression of the belief in the supernatural, and as such acts as a moderating and organizing force. It has demonstrably improved survival throughout history - more recently by the very fact that religious observance results in more offspring by not using contraception.
As for belief in the supernatural per se (spirituality) giving an evolutionary edge would be difficult to prove. It may well have a beneficial effect in dire circumstances and crises - possibly by reducing suicidality.
Is this the influence, or evidence of a spiritual dimension? No more or less than a rock, or an eyeball or mathematics itself is the evidence of the same.
This scientific research doesn't answer those questions, but rather seeks to expose another human weakness.
Film at 11...
I for one welcome our new month-of-bug overlords.
And boy, was she disappointed after being told she'd be getting a hard disk!
Safari does slow the system a bit. If you use it for a while, you will find you start to feel a little bloated, and it becomes more and more difficult to offload all that pizza and cola after it's been digested, partly because Safari has so little roughage, there's not much for your system to work with to get it moving.
My advice would be to take a little extra fibre in your diet - maybe some bran on your breakfast or eat some apples and maybe a pear or two.
On the other hand, it's better than IE, which, while not slowing your system, causes nausea, vomiting and vertigo.
Firefox, as the name suggests, is very spicy and will really get your system running. Definitely the cure for a sluggish system, but doesn't go all that well with apples. Nicer in a taco shell or on toast.
Anyway, excuse me while I finish my breakfast.
But consumers don't wear chastity belts, are much looser and would easily accommodate an apple. Much harder to penetrate a corporation - have to try it with a thin client or something like that - an apple would just get crushed.
This of course, leading to 2011's legal dilemma: Is it copyright infringement to "view" a copyrighted work?
Which of course, leads to 2021's legal dilemma: Is it an antitrust infringement to "copyright" a work? Since by doing so, the publisher forces some people to break the law, and unfairly competes with those who sell the originals of their work, such as performing musicians, painters, etc?
It's certainly romantic, kind of - a bit like a fake pic of Bush and Osama in bed together that was floating around a few years ago.. ewwww!
Maybe the vulnerability they share is "that they both run in Windows".
How true - but at least in medicine, you always have a job, no matter what (aside from criminal charges!), and as such, if people really want, they don't have to work 6 days a week and take their work home, except perhaps during the first 2 or 3 years of work. The pay easily accommodates less work - people just have to choose that path. Problem with medicine is it's addictive (pardon the pun) - it's easy to get drawn into the game and want to get better and better at it.
However, the competitiveness of the US is more complex than number of jobs vs. number of students. The fundamental problem is that, whereas US dominance was previously based on having lots and lots of friends and doing business with them, it is now the case that the US economic model is one of dependency on non-friends, even enemies, whilst at the same time grumbling about having to do business with them.
US economic superiority is now underpinned by its military activities and decreasing control of diminishing, and possibly soon to be obsolete, oil reserves. It's an unfortunate and risky approach. If those arms fail (which it seems they are), then what will be exposed is an economy based on printing money and gambling at the Wall Street Casino. When done in excess (which it is), the economy eventually collapses, with society following soon after. And the usual course of events follows.
Essentially, America has to reinvent herself and become the forward thinking, open minded and friendly nation that she once was. There has to be a return to nation building and saving instead of exporting jobs and living on debt. That and about a 1000 other motherhood statements.
Nations do this stuff all the time - launch stuff into space, conduct research - it's called progress.
What differs is the reaction of other countries. It doesn't matter what a country like Iran does, the US will always point and say to everyone "see, they're naughty, they should go sit in the corner, can I start throwing rocks at them now, can I, can I??"
The BBC is the trumpet of the British Government, and as such, will always inflame something like this, because it's Iran.
The real question I have is, why are they really after Iran? Why were they really after Iraq?
Weapons of mass destruction? Yeah right. Sounds like something out of "Wag the Dog".
If parents don't want to give the vaccine to their kids, then fine. They will wake up one morning and find their daughter has left them for a better life.
I dunno, but a Linux babe...
Maybe years ago she started off with thick glasses, pigtails and braces - head buried in books and always to be found in the library - but that was when she was young. The watchful eye would spot the beauty underneath. Anyone with foresight knew that eventually the braces would come off and she'd get herself some contact lenses.
Now, however, she has grown up - curvaceous, intelligent, attractive, witty and humorous. She can seduce you anytime, but if you're not in the mood for it, she'll take you up on an intellectual conversation, or handle all your arguments and after all the huffing and puffing she's still your friend, reliable as ever.
She watches what she eats and likes the same food as you - she is any shape you want, whatever you're after. Somehow she knows your tastes - and knows how not to bore you.
She's more than some kind of blonde bimbo you picked up in a drunken state the night before, screws you, steals your passport and credit card and is gone before you wake up in the morning.
But most of all, she doesn't charge for the experience - she's your babe, not a whore you bought at a computer store.
I swear this has to be one of the funniest comments I've read on slashdot in months!
Still in tears from the stomach pain - I think I just laughed myself into a hernia
Maybe more like..
Patent wars.. You seek patent wars!... Begun, they have.. hmmm... Take you to them I will.. yesss... Good entertainment... come!
Or for those of you in Australia,
Don't Drink Drive, it's a detergent, you bloody idiot!
"A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking."
Wow! Mobile police offices - must need a lot of horsepower to tow that thing!
Water has been extensively studied, and fluid mechanics is a pretty well explored field, so I think water is well suited for the experiments. The thing that could be a problem as I see it is the speed of the system. The heavier the substance is, the greater force needed to change its direction, and the thing will be slower as a result.
I remember a great article in the British Medical Journal about a randomized, double-blinded crossover study using placebos, where the investigators tested the effectiveness of parachutes on statisticians. Needless to say it was a roaring success.
I wonder what would happen to the birthrate in first world countries.
They have proven very useful in the medical field with respect to fluid logic ventilators, and possibly more sophisticated surgical equipment (aside from drills and saws which commonly are driven by compressed air). Many portable ventilators are commonly available which have no electronic parts to speak of and run on the pressurized air or oxygen that goes with the patient during transfer. More modern ones generate small amounts of electricity to power logic curcuits to achieve smoother or more configurable ventilation modes. Improving fluid logic to avoid this electronic dependency would be quite interesting whilst still keeping size down.
Just how water could play a part in ventilators escapes me, but such things as washing machines, dish washers and other appliances could benefit from not needing to use electricity.
I think the interest in this stuff, thankfully, goes beyond the cold war.
Hard to pin down a source on this. The article cites another blog, which points to an article in Japanese.
Would be hard to pin down anything that size, let alone where it came from!
I am sure that soon, on ebay, there will be heaps of them for sale. Then the opportunity to overpay and give to the poor will be there for everyone :)