There are cruel ways to raise and slaughter cattle, and there are humane ways. Similarly , there are cruel ways to send animals into space, and humane ways. I'm not saying scientists should become PETA freaks, more that they should hold a higher respect for their fellow living creatures. For the guy below me, that includes plants - we should respect natural genomes and not splice in jellyfish genes etc.
We have a cable modem service here too. There is one provider, it peaks around 7M and is capped at 20 gigs, throttled down to 64k (yes, dialup speed) once the cap is reached. That cost $60AUD/month. They recently expanded the plans (yes, there was one provider with one plan for quite a while) which are just as pathetic. Luckily the competition regulators opened up the exchanges and the smaller players have been installing adsl2+(theoretical 24M, realistic 8-12M) with decent plans for a while now, all this election buzz is tied up with the former monopoly trying to muscle in on these smaller players, schmoozing for favourable legislation because they're losing customers left and right.
They've worked with Cedega to bring 100% compatibility and official support. It also works on wine and crossover if you're happy with no official support. There is nothing misleading in the announcement, they never claimed to do more than this, which is all you need to get it running on linux or intel-based macs.
How depressing that such a great event was tainted by the cruel inhumanity that infects science. Cruelty to animals (and humans) in the name of science taints all of the achievements it brings. If only we had the insight to attempt to ensure her survival. It's so much harder to celebrate such an event when it is tainted with premeditated slaughter.
I agree that the article was terrible but the complaint seems justified. His wife isn't alone in having troubles with them. For one, I stumbled across this class action lawsuit, as well as some anecdotal evidence from ex customer service employees stating most of their members didn't realise they were signed up, and 99% of calls to their office were people trying to get off their program. If only he'd avoided the mangled technical explanation the issue he had might be clearer.
Yeah sure, but at least they are being held to some sort of standard. What's the current qualification to be a Wiki editor? I think you need an IP address, hardly any reassuredness about quality there. This is obviously a good idea, and your hangups about incompetent students are misplaced. Hell, at least they're not going to be vandals.
So SI can use base 24 for hours, base 60 for minutes and seconds yet can't handle base 2 for bits? As for your 'against' list, let's look.
- Evil, evil hard drives Yep, they started it.
- Bandwidth-related hardware: Like hard drives, this didn't used to be the case.
- DVD media - HD-DVD media - Blu-Ray media If CDs can do it right, why not these?
-Most (not all) USB stick-style flash storage devices So there are still some honest players left in that market.
-Digital cameras' resolution No big issue, as they usually refer unambiguously to millions of pixels in their documentation, unlike HDDs, flash sticks etc.
- CPU clockrate - Latency Both measure time, not bits or bytes. No issue there.
So all that needs to happen is harddrive, optical and flash media manufacturers come in line with what the rest of the entire industry has been doing for decades, and there is no issue. It just makes sense to use base two in computing, like it makes sense to use base sixty in time measurements.
I bet most slashdotters also knew HDD GBs were different
Yes, we know hard drive manufacturers were the first in the computer industry to disingenuously alter the meaning of first megabyte then gigabyte, and then the horrific SI kibibyte came out and we collectively have been howling in protest for about a decade. My solution? Don't mess with the roots of words by mangling them so hideously and you might have had a better reception. As it stands, that SI prefix will never be accepted by any proud computer geek. Just deal with the fact that the suffix bit or byte alters the SI definition of kilo, mega, giga, peta etc. See? That wasn't so hard now was it? Ever computer nerd for the last 50 odd years has managed it, I think scientists should be smart enough to handle it too.
Luckily then they are COMPUTING PREFIXES AND NOT SI UNITS OF MEASURE.
The clash of computing engineers and scientists on slashdot makes this the best place for these discussions. Everyone gets so worked up! You can shout without getting modded troll! Everyone is right! You're inconsistent! NO YOU ARE!
Face it, computer geeks are stubborn bastards. Kibibyte my arse, YOU should change to kidigram DAMMIT!
Yeah, you're right. The last thing Wikipedia needs is a bunch of college educated students making edits under the supervision of professors. It is assuredly the death knell for any wiki.
True, but then often the further one goes in a field, the less they keep track of what is assumed knowledge. So you end up with highly proficient technical people who can't explain anything without taking half an hour. I guess there's a peak in the middle where you both know something and can still explain it succinctly, but look at me I'm rambling on trying to convey a very simple premise. By my theory then, I must be either an incompetent or highly advanced behavioural analyst. Take your pick.
I wouldn't be too quick to allow random faceless unaccountable editors to partially grade students. The difficulties are tremendous, what happens to the kid who wrote, lets say a web comic review just to get it rapidly deleted by an overzealous admin? I would think something like this is nearly impossible to grade with any satisfaction due to the arbitrary nature of editing and reverts. A good idea would be having the students work on and be graded on a wiki run by the school, giving them experience with a controlled wiki environment. Then simply conduct the wikipedia classes as an extension of this, but only grade the school wiki contributions.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, just whatever you do, don't use mv.
There are cruel ways to raise and slaughter cattle, and there are humane ways. Similarly , there are cruel ways to send animals into space, and humane ways. I'm not saying scientists should become PETA freaks, more that they should hold a higher respect for their fellow living creatures. For the guy below me, that includes plants - we should respect natural genomes and not splice in jellyfish genes etc.
We have a cable modem service here too. There is one provider, it peaks around 7M and is capped at 20 gigs, throttled down to 64k (yes, dialup speed) once the cap is reached. That cost $60AUD/month. They recently expanded the plans (yes, there was one provider with one plan for quite a while) which are just as pathetic. Luckily the competition regulators opened up the exchanges and the smaller players have been installing adsl2+(theoretical 24M, realistic 8-12M) with decent plans for a while now, all this election buzz is tied up with the former monopoly trying to muscle in on these smaller players, schmoozing for favourable legislation because they're losing customers left and right.
The grimmest state is Tasmania, but most of the time we forget its there so SA wins.
They're just diversifying which whores get on their site.
They've worked with Cedega to bring 100% compatibility and official support. It also works on wine and crossover if you're happy with no official support. There is nothing misleading in the announcement, they never claimed to do more than this, which is all you need to get it running on linux or intel-based macs.
"I swear Officer, I didn't kill all those people, the sharpshooter killed them..."
I think it's more of a test to see how many times someone will answer '[Allow] or [Deny]' before their head explodes.
Let us all spare a thought today for Laika.
I agree that the article was terrible but the complaint seems justified. His wife isn't alone in having troubles with them. For one, I stumbled across this class action lawsuit, as well as some anecdotal evidence from ex customer service employees stating most of their members didn't realise they were signed up, and 99% of calls to their office were people trying to get off their program. If only he'd avoided the mangled technical explanation the issue he had might be clearer.
You mean firewater?
Yeah, you're fitting the curve wrong. it's more logarithmic, so expect it to last at least an episode or two before cancellation.
Terminator, Robocop, the Matrix and a decades worth of Gundam just made it through the censors last weekend and now everyones shitting themselves.
Yeah sure, but at least they are being held to some sort of standard. What's the current qualification to be a Wiki editor? I think you need an IP address, hardly any reassuredness about quality there. This is obviously a good idea, and your hangups about incompetent students are misplaced. Hell, at least they're not going to be vandals.
So SI can use base 24 for hours, base 60 for minutes and seconds yet can't handle base 2 for bits? As for your 'against' list, let's look.
- Evil, evil hard drives
Yep, they started it.
- Bandwidth-related hardware:
Like hard drives, this didn't used to be the case.
- DVD media
- HD-DVD media
- Blu-Ray media
If CDs can do it right, why not these?
-Most (not all) USB stick-style flash storage devices
So there are still some honest players left in that market.
-Digital cameras' resolution
No big issue, as they usually refer unambiguously to millions of pixels in their documentation, unlike HDDs, flash sticks etc.
- CPU clockrate
- Latency
Both measure time, not bits or bytes. No issue there.
So all that needs to happen is harddrive, optical and flash media manufacturers come in line with what the rest of the entire industry has been doing for decades, and there is no issue. It just makes sense to use base two in computing, like it makes sense to use base sixty in time measurements.
Yes, we know hard drive manufacturers were the first in the computer industry to disingenuously alter the meaning of first megabyte then gigabyte, and then the horrific SI kibibyte came out and we collectively have been howling in protest for about a decade. My solution? Don't mess with the roots of words by mangling them so hideously and you might have had a better reception. As it stands, that SI prefix will never be accepted by any proud computer geek. Just deal with the fact that the suffix bit or byte alters the SI definition of kilo, mega, giga, peta etc. See? That wasn't so hard now was it? Ever computer nerd for the last 50 odd years has managed it, I think scientists should be smart enough to handle it too.
The clash of computing engineers and scientists on slashdot makes this the best place for these discussions. Everyone gets so worked up! You can shout without getting modded troll! Everyone is right! You're inconsistent! NO YOU ARE!
Face it, computer geeks are stubborn bastards. Kibibyte my arse, YOU should change to kidigram DAMMIT!
Yeah, you're right. The last thing Wikipedia needs is a bunch of college educated students making edits under the supervision of professors. It is assuredly the death knell for any wiki.
Fo'shizzle.
True, but then often the further one goes in a field, the less they keep track of what is assumed knowledge. So you end up with highly proficient technical people who can't explain anything without taking half an hour. I guess there's a peak in the middle where you both know something and can still explain it succinctly, but look at me I'm rambling on trying to convey a very simple premise. By my theory then, I must be either an incompetent or highly advanced behavioural analyst. Take your pick.
I wouldn't be too quick to allow random faceless unaccountable editors to partially grade students. The difficulties are tremendous, what happens to the kid who wrote, lets say a web comic review just to get it rapidly deleted by an overzealous admin? I would think something like this is nearly impossible to grade with any satisfaction due to the arbitrary nature of editing and reverts. A good idea would be having the students work on and be graded on a wiki run by the school, giving them experience with a controlled wiki environment. Then simply conduct the wikipedia classes as an extension of this, but only grade the school wiki contributions.
[Citation Needed]
It's 9,9,9,9,9,9 when discussing 42.
Apparently, he was a royal prince in exile.