Have you never read his line of books titles "The three ??? and..." ? He mentioned the usage of very low frequencies to produce fear as well, and this *was* quite a long time ago...
Until the Oil Grab (sorry, "Gulf War II") started. The Economist had headings like " A sad but necessary war", and fully supported the UK war effort. The related articles were truly disgusting, and I haven't read it since.
...when you've got a father who's a physisist. With all his heart:)
We (brother, father, and myself) were lying in the sun on the beach, half asleep, when my brother (who also did Physics) said "I wonder how much these fluffy white clouds actually weigh." So my father (also half-asleep) worked it out, mentioning that we all surely can doze better with all these tons floating serenely above us...
On a different point - why the heck are you people all so interested in Elephants? Ever seen any outside of some zoo? (I have, but I'm asking *you*). Me, I use Texans as a weight unit. Such as: "my car weighs as much as two texans." (it does, too!)
I don't get it. What's this about "training people on word processors"? Surely a word processor is not difficult to use? Definitively not difficult enough to actually teach at a university, instead of throwing the handbook at the students and telling them to read it.
No, you want to teach the CS students exactly that - CS. What is a compiler? What makes it tick? How do you write one? How do data structures work? What's a microkernel, and is it a good idea?
You need to teach basic concepts. Teaching people how to use certain software will be perfectly worthless in ten years.
Teaching them "How to use Word/Access/PowerPoint/whatever" is not something a university should do. Leave this to some or other trainer found in the yellow pages, if you honestly think you can't learn it from a book instead.
Do you need a financial reason for everything? Goodness, in this case feel free to sit on your ass and collect money thanks to some or other patent.
Going to the moon would be fascinating. Who KNOWS what we would find up there? What we could do by creating a nice big moon base? Just the astronomy would be awesome.
Heck, I'd sell myself into slavery for a two-month hotel vacation up there. Oh, wait, thanks to taxes I already am in slavery...
Like hell the Virii are getting smarter. The OS is getting dumber.
No, I'm not mindlessly bashing MS (yet), but when last did you see a good, hard, solid virus in assembly code? I keep seeing scripts floating about the net, using major security holes, instead of something obscure. And they're getting big and bloated, too.
Well, the DVDs in PAL format stink. Seems that they were simply not capable of getting rid of the combing effect, and thus all movement looks terrible.
Meaning, after buying the DVDs (and, yes, I did), you have to turn them into DivX, running them through a bunch of filters. Looks much better afterwards! If I can do this on my little PC, what's wrong with the producers?
Re:but it's more humane!
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 1
Heh - should we say that it's a pity the chickens fired from this cannon are deep-frozen?
Live might be more fun: cluckBAM cluckBAM cluckBAM
So South Korea is distrubuting propaganda about their hated opponent again, which is also spread by the USA (who also hate NK).
And we can see this is pretty obvious.
So... why, exactly, is this news?
Re:What's that other Internet Explorer thing again
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 1
Ergh. I have to admit to still being pissed off a bit about the 'Firebird' name. See, we use the Firebird DB at work, and the Mozilla browser as a front-end.
Getting an email along the lines "Firebird has a problem" is going to be painful...
And compared to job opportunities, growth and general well-off-being, Berlin is a major dump compared to Munich. The Berlin position used to be a punishment for moronic politicians, and thus you still find Germanys worst up there. And they cost a LOT of money.
I should know. I used to live in Berlin (as a freelance programmer), and my brother still does. I'm in Munich now, and my brother is seriously considering coming down here, too, although he likes Berlin itself.
I have seen lots and lots of super-special-extra-designed computer tables. They all share one thing: lack of desk space.
I don't know about you, but I bury my work space with books, notes, papers, memos, calculators, cups, pens, rulers, speakers, CDs, food, wristwatch, PDAs, several laptops, more books... As do my cow-orkers. Especially the paper notes seem important to us programmers.
And I can just see the new VirtualCubicle (tm). These things, standing in endless rows...ugh.
At the end of the day, I need a simple, good chair, and a huge desk. The bigger, the better. Nothing fancy at all.
Why don't I ever hear of Firebird here? Run under Linux, runs under Windoze, stable, fast, has everything you'd ever want from a DB. And it's Open Source.
Instead I keep hearing about MySQL. MySQL here, MySQL there, MySQL finally has transaction management, wheeee.
Bah. Just finished a longish article from some Czech company which compared Oracle and Firebird for their non-trivial systems, and chose Firebird.
Ciao, Klaus
PS: Yeah, off-topic. PPS: No relation to Firebird. PPPS: Yes, I use it a LOT, including at work.
Please don't overdo it.
on
BSDs to be Merged
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
The last couple of years, April 1st always turned into a churn of nonsensical stories, most of them very obviously april fool jokes.
Don't overdo it like this! It's just plain boring and unfunny. Slide in a weirdo little story, which only turns out to be obvious nonsense if you look at it again. That Gentoo bit was a nice one;)
But now April 1st has come (and over here, gone), and you can stop now.
"War as the only resolution" blah-di-blah. That's just stupid politician-talk, making use of the current anti-war feelings in Germany.
In reality, the game was endangered from the day it came out, and we all here in Germany knew that. See, there's this stupid law to make sure that there are no violent games out there...displaying force against humans or even humanoids.
Except for a few politicians, we are pretty irritated by it, seeing as we are perfectly able to distinguish between shooting at a human as opposed to clicking a mouse button while looking at colorful little dots.
Okay, so I'm an old fart, but I clearly remember what NASA said the Space Shuttle would do. You know, things like a fleet with >200 missions per years, very low launch costs, stuff like that. As we all know, they didn't quite succeed.
Now I see another idea from NASA: a smaller version of the space shuttle. No cargo capacity, 4 people only, and all the inherent dangers of the shuttle again.
Hmpf.
Let's look at what they say in more detail:
* "The new spacecraft's primary function will be to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station"
Cool. We can all see that the ISS is a major waste of money. And the new plane can't be used to bring cargo up, only people. Sounds Useful!
* "and serve as a lifeboat if the station has to be evacuated."
The ISS already has a lifeboat. A Soyuz. Much safer than a shuttle, I might add. Cheaper, too.
* "land like a plane upon its return to earth."
Instead of using much safer methods like parachutes? What, exactly, is the *point* in flying this thing down to earth like Buck Rogers?
* "although it will be able to carry cargo in an emergency."
Mhm. Hey, John, shift up a little so we can stick this six-pack in the corner, okay?
* "The craft will be cheaper and easier to prepare than the current space shuttle"
Isn't this the exact same argument NSAS had for building the shuttle? Didn't it fail miserably? Think it might happen again?
* "The Orbital Space Plane system will give us the flexibility needed to safely and efficiently get crew to and from orbit and to provide crew rescue and logistical support to the International Space Station"
As opposed to the current shuttle - right?
* "Provide a safer lifeboat option than the current Soyuz craft"
What, exactly, makes this thing safer than a capsule coming down on a parachute? It is vastly more complex, has a much more difficult way of returning, and has any amount of failure points.
* "Have better orbit manoeuvrability"
Okay, I'm not a rocket scientist. But how would you do this? Bigger maneuver engines?
* "President George W Bush has already asked the US Congress for about $1bn to fund the project - the request was made before the Columbia disaster."
Is this actually true? I keep reading about the prez cutting NASA back a lot. Several times. After the accident he used the opportunity for some nice PR and said that he'll get money for NASA. Which he now did. Afterwards. Perhaps they meant "Challenger" instead of "Columbia"?
I don't normally rant on NASA, but they really did turn into a bunch of bureaucrats quite some time ago.
Example: Microsoft has some damn good programmers (no, really!). But in a company of MS's size, they don't stand a chance. In the same way, NASA has some brilliant people - struggling in a huge, bureaucratic mess.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you never read his line of books titles "The three ??? and..." ?
He mentioned the usage of very low frequencies to produce fear as well, and this *was* quite a long time ago...
I used to read The Economist a *lot*.
Until the Oil Grab (sorry, "Gulf War II") started. The Economist had headings like " A sad but necessary war", and fully supported the UK war effort.
The related articles were truly disgusting, and I haven't read it since.
And who leads the world in the creation and sale of these lovely toys? And refused to sign a landmine ban?
Go USA! Gods own country, my ass!
...when you've got a father who's a physisist. With all his heart :)
We (brother, father, and myself) were lying in the sun on the beach, half asleep, when my brother (who also did Physics) said "I wonder how much these fluffy white clouds actually weigh."
So my father (also half-asleep) worked it out, mentioning that we all surely can doze better with all these tons floating serenely above us...
On a different point - why the heck are you people all so interested in Elephants? Ever seen any outside of some zoo? (I have, but I'm asking *you*).
Me, I use Texans as a weight unit. Such as: "my car weighs as much as two texans." (it does, too!)
I don't get it. What's this about "training people on word processors"?
Surely a word processor is not difficult to use? Definitively not difficult enough to actually teach at a university, instead of throwing the handbook at the students and telling them to read it.
No, you want to teach the CS students exactly that - CS. What is a compiler? What makes it tick? How do you write one? How do data structures work? What's a microkernel, and is it a good idea?
You need to teach basic concepts. Teaching people how to use certain software will be perfectly worthless in ten years.
Teaching them "How to use Word/Access/PowerPoint/whatever" is not something a university should do. Leave this to some or other trainer found in the yellow pages, if you honestly think you can't learn it from a book instead.
So WHAT?
Do you need a financial reason for everything? Goodness, in this case feel free to sit on your ass and collect money thanks to some or other patent.
Going to the moon would be fascinating. Who KNOWS what we would find up there? What we could do by creating a nice big moon base? Just the astronomy would be awesome.
Heck, I'd sell myself into slavery for a two-month hotel vacation up there. Oh, wait, thanks to taxes I already am in slavery...
Like hell the Virii are getting smarter. The OS is getting dumber.
No, I'm not mindlessly bashing MS (yet), but when last did you see a good, hard, solid virus in assembly code? I keep seeing scripts floating about the net, using major security holes, instead of something obscure.
And they're getting big and bloated, too.
Bah.
Really. The savings will be passed on to us?
Interesting stuff in your pipe, my friend.
Not only will not a single saved penny go in our direction, we wouldn't be allowed to remove these tags AT ALL.
Nope. Not interested. But thanks for asking.
Ciao,
Klaus
PS: My bet is that they'll try again next year, with less PR. Anf again, and again, until they make it.
Well, the DVDs in PAL format stink. Seems that they were simply not capable of getting rid of the combing effect, and thus all movement looks terrible.
Meaning, after buying the DVDs (and, yes, I did), you have to turn them into DivX, running them through a bunch of filters. Looks much better afterwards! If I can do this on my little PC, what's wrong with the producers?
Heh - should we say that it's a pity the chickens fired from this cannon are deep-frozen?
Live might be more fun: cluckBAM cluckBAM cluckBAM
So South Korea is distrubuting propaganda about their hated opponent again, which is also spread by the USA (who also hate NK).
And we can see this is pretty obvious.
So... why, exactly, is this news?
Ergh. I have to admit to still being pissed off a bit about the 'Firebird' name. See, we use the Firebird DB at work, and the Mozilla browser as a front-end.
Getting an email along the lines "Firebird has a problem" is going to be painful...
And compared to job opportunities, growth and general well-off-being, Berlin is a major dump compared to Munich. The Berlin position used to be a punishment for moronic politicians, and thus you still find Germanys worst up there. And they cost a LOT of money.
I should know. I used to live in Berlin (as a freelance programmer), and my brother still does. I'm in Munich now, and my brother is seriously considering coming down here, too, although he likes Berlin itself.
So, IT-wise, Munich is much bigger than Berlin.
I have seen lots and lots of super-special-extra-designed computer tables.
They all share one thing: lack of desk space.
I don't know about you, but I bury my work space with books, notes, papers, memos, calculators, cups, pens, rulers, speakers, CDs, food, wristwatch, PDAs, several laptops, more books...
As do my cow-orkers. Especially the paper notes seem important to us programmers.
And I can just see the new VirtualCubicle (tm). These things, standing in endless rows...ugh.
At the end of the day, I need a simple, good chair, and a huge desk. The bigger, the better. Nothing fancy at all.
Ciao,
Klaus
May I suggest a simple fix:
ZAPWorks great, I use it a lot.
And Games.Slashdot is suddenly a lot easier on the eyes...
Actually, it *is* a nice way, as she's trying to prove her geekness to us.
;)
See, a 'Shrieking Geek' is a monster in Steve Jacksons "Munchkin" card game (highly recommended, btw). Surely you knew this?
Ciao,
Klaus
>After the crisis is over...
This is a War On Terrorism. It'll probably last a lot longer than its highly successful cousin, the War On Drugs.
Bah. Read '1984', especially the part about the never-ending war.
Yup, the XBox doesn't bluescreen.
It greenscreens. I've seen it >:)
Strange - I feel like a caller in the wilderness.
Why don't I ever hear of Firebird here? Run under Linux, runs under Windoze, stable, fast, has everything you'd ever want from a DB.
And it's Open Source.
Instead I keep hearing about MySQL. MySQL here, MySQL there, MySQL finally has transaction management, wheeee.
Bah. Just finished a longish article from some Czech company which compared Oracle and Firebird for their non-trivial systems, and chose Firebird.
Ciao,
Klaus
PS: Yeah, off-topic.
PPS: No relation to Firebird.
PPPS: Yes, I use it a LOT, including at work.
The last couple of years, April 1st always turned into a churn of nonsensical stories, most of them very obviously april fool jokes.
;)
Don't overdo it like this! It's just plain boring and unfunny. Slide in a weirdo little story, which only turns out to be obvious nonsense if you look at it again. That Gentoo bit was a nice one
But now April 1st has come (and over here, gone), and you can stop now.
Please?
Talk-time of 120min, with a stand-by of only 200?
The relation seems strange, and a stand-by of 200 is not worth much to me.
And it's waterproof! Surely there's something fishy going on...
"War as the only resolution" blah-di-blah. That's just stupid politician-talk, making use of the current anti-war feelings in Germany.
In reality, the game was endangered from the day it came out, and we all here in Germany knew that. See, there's this stupid law to make sure that there are no violent games out there...displaying force against humans or even humanoids.
Except for a few politicians, we are pretty irritated by it, seeing as we are perfectly able to distinguish between shooting at a human as opposed to clicking a mouse button while looking at colorful little dots.
Simple - not at all!
:-/
I have plenty of things keeping me busy on my PC, from old games to free software to setting up Linux *juuuust* right.
No need for a little handheld toy, especially in the current economic times
Ciao,
Klaus
I think the problem would be in the catapult range.
*thunk* tsssssssssssss *CRUNCH* works well for one mile, but get's somewhat more difficult for 250.
Okay, so I'm an old fart, but I clearly remember what NASA said the Space Shuttle would do. You know, things like a fleet with >200 missions per years, very low launch costs, stuff like that.
As we all know, they didn't quite succeed.
Now I see another idea from NASA: a smaller version of the space shuttle. No cargo capacity, 4 people only, and all the inherent dangers of the shuttle again.
Hmpf.
Let's look at what they say in more detail:
* "The new spacecraft's primary function will be to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station"
Cool. We can all see that the ISS is a major waste of money. And the new plane can't be used to bring cargo up, only people. Sounds Useful!
* "and serve as a lifeboat if the station has to be evacuated."
The ISS already has a lifeboat. A Soyuz. Much safer than a shuttle, I might add. Cheaper, too.
* "land like a plane upon its return to earth."
Instead of using much safer methods like parachutes? What, exactly, is the *point* in flying this thing down to earth like Buck Rogers?
* "although it will be able to carry cargo in an emergency."
Mhm. Hey, John, shift up a little so we can stick this six-pack in the corner, okay?
* "The craft will be cheaper and easier to prepare than the current space shuttle"
Isn't this the exact same argument NSAS had for building the shuttle? Didn't it fail miserably? Think it might happen again?
* "The Orbital Space Plane system will give us the flexibility needed to safely and efficiently get crew to and from orbit and to provide crew rescue and logistical support to the International Space Station"
As opposed to the current shuttle - right?
* "Provide a safer lifeboat option than the current Soyuz craft"
What, exactly, makes this thing safer than a capsule coming down on a parachute? It is vastly more complex, has a much more difficult way of returning, and has any amount of failure points.
* "Have better orbit manoeuvrability"
Okay, I'm not a rocket scientist. But how would you do this? Bigger maneuver engines?
* "President George W Bush has already asked the US Congress for about $1bn to fund the project - the request was made before the Columbia disaster."
Is this actually true? I keep reading about the prez cutting NASA back a lot. Several times.
After the accident he used the opportunity for some nice PR and said that he'll get money for NASA. Which he now did. Afterwards.
Perhaps they meant "Challenger" instead of "Columbia"?
I don't normally rant on NASA, but they really did turn into a bunch of bureaucrats quite some time ago.
Example: Microsoft has some damn good programmers (no, really!). But in a company of MS's size, they don't stand a chance.
In the same way, NASA has some brilliant people - struggling in a huge, bureaucratic mess.
Bah.