Indeed, good example. Although lot of the 1960's stuff wasn't exactly rocket science....for example, the Saturn V's had a problem with instabilities building up on the face of the combustion plate due to the pattern of holes that the fuel/oxidiser was sprayed through. In the end they got a bunch of blank combustion plates and drilled holes at random until they found one that worked without blowing the rocket to smithereens....or at least worked for the eight minutes or so that it took to get to orbit.
1: The police are funded by the taxpayer - if they can save the money then taxpayers have more to spend on imaginary things like belief-in-house-prices. According to the businessmen and politicians this is a Good Thing. The economists and mathematicians disagree.
2: The police are in the business of keeping us safe and secure. Given the choice of a *nix based system and Windows where would you want your criminal (or otherwise) record stored?
ISBN numbers are made out of a series of numbers identifying the language, publisher, imprint and title/edition. The last digit is the mod 11 of the sum of the numbers, each multiplied by a weighting digit based on its position in the string. To make a barcode you have three different image patterns for each digit. The last six are all represented by type "R". The first one is not represented, except for defining a pattern of "L" and "G" types for the first six numbers, and encoding itself in the process. Interesting programming exercise in the language of your choice.
So all you have to do is reverse engineer the method used and you're there..although I suspect Apple's system is somewhat more technically challenging.
Precisely. Couldn't agree more. We don't need to fight these gruppets in the same way that we don't need to fight the creationists. They're irrelevant. We've got something better and free...let them carry on all they want, I'm quite happy with my superior and patent free OS thank you very much. If people want to pay for it let them, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort protecting the stupid from the greedy.
No, but it does cut down vibration - I've lost count of the number of times my internet has skipped because of my clumsy leaden-footed flatmates barging past...
If a tonne of TNT goes "Boom!", and six tonnes goes "Booooooom!" (etc) then to type this noise out would take 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 o's.
RTFM. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's a good habit to get into. I do all sorts of web stuff for my flatmates' band, and you have to read stuff very carefully to make sure you're OK with the T&C.
That's actually kind of scary...the self proclaimed rules of academic rigour, as defined by Wikipedia (whilst not a definitive source, one that's certainly trusted by a large number of laymen*) do not allow the existence of and/or referal to any "work of god" other than in fiction.
*...or woman. Or person. "Layman" is, however, the quickest to type and retain the meaning. And yes, I know, this footnote took longer, but it just goes to show I thought about it. Pedant..
It's worthy of Randall Munroe though. Seriously. I really hope it's him and Slashdot will get xkcd'd for a change. Is that the correct grammatical form for xkcd'd? xkcd-ed? How do you do accents over the e on this thing?
Oh come on people, parent was the most insightful thing that's been said.
MS release Vista: Derided by all and sundry, including many of their own fans. MS release Windows 7 which, whilst not ideal (ie not *nix based) appears to be what Vista should have been. Vista users given W7 for free.
Exactly, it's a SP. That's why it's come out on virtually the same timescale, a year or so rather than several years.
Good luck to them. They'll need it. They've just set a precedent (in the public eye) of giving the new OS away for free....like certain other OS's.......except you can't fix this one yourself without lawyers getting involved...still, baby steps.....
Agreed. If true, it's actually a very interesting choice. In the UK we train our soldiers slightly differently, there's a little less gung-ho. Not much less, but a little, and outside of the basic training they're also taught to think about what they're ordered to do a little more.
Neither of the two options necessarily makes a better soldier, it's just two different approaches, and Starship Troopers takes both to extremes. If you're a smart soldier you'll learn from it in the same way as you'd learn from Machiavelli or SunTzu. If you're not....hell, it's a good story and good propaganda.
One of the more interesting asides on/. recently, and incidentally, meteorites rock. And metal.
Simple. Stop calling them distro's. Call them Customisations, or hyper-hacks or whatever. Just something to point out that they're effectively just lovingly crafted hacks on the same basic principle. It's the whole point. You CAN do that, so people do, and we celebrate it. And argue and bitch and whine mercilessly, but just try suggesting that there is an "Official" version of Linux+whateverGUI etc etc!
....which in the story is explained as "the thing is plummeting towards Jupiter!!!" as opposed to the truth: "the thing will be around here someplace, and will be pretty darn close once an orbit for the forseable future"
Thank you Clone53421, summed up technically with far more eloquence than I can usually muster on an inter-web-space.:)
Agree. The two orbits will continue to intersect if it's all in physics-land and everything is working on the same plane etc. This was, in fact, the central premise and punchline to an Arthur C Clarke short story called Jupiter V, it's very good and I recommend it. There you go, I must be right, fiction agrees with me.
It's the New Yorker, they expect a certain amount of political commentary. Katz got it in with the Creationism reference in 1999 (hence the underlining) and Munroe was making a Palin reference. Sorry. Not funny now that I've explained it.
Munroe won in my book, and not bad when he's playing an away-game. I did consider a detailed description of exactly why he wins with references and footnotes and sign it "Summer Glau", but I'm gambling that someone else will go to the effort for a +5 Funny:)
Wow - something in Slashdot that has provoked me to post for the first time in weeks...
I hate Windows. Can't stand it. Haven't used it in four years apart from when I have to at work, it's got to the stage where somebody asks my advice on "computers" and I just have to tell them that I can't do Windows anymore, I'm too out of the loop.
That said, I hated the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads too, mostly because a Mac IS a PC. So is a Linux desktop, and a Solaris, and a BSD, and a Commadore 64, and my much maligned Atari ST with the single sided double density disk drive.
So frankly, MS (I'm going to avoid the $ because for once I'm in agreement) have struck gold here. The public need to understand the difference between hardware and OS. The more the waters are muddied by advertising the better, because then papers will start printing "What is a PC...really?" articles.
The simple, long term test is whether software companies optimise their work for XP or Vista, given the choice.
In the absence of a more popular OS the developers will concentrate on the most used variant of any give group. That's the best measure at the end of the day.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, good example. Although lot of the 1960's stuff wasn't exactly rocket science....for example, the Saturn V's had a problem with instabilities building up on the face of the combustion plate due to the pattern of holes that the fuel/oxidiser was sprayed through. In the end they got a bunch of blank combustion plates and drilled holes at random until they found one that worked without blowing the rocket to smithereens....or at least worked for the eight minutes or so that it took to get to orbit.
1: The police are funded by the taxpayer - if they can save the money then taxpayers have more to spend on imaginary things like belief-in-house-prices. According to the businessmen and politicians this is a Good Thing. The economists and mathematicians disagree.
2: The police are in the business of keeping us safe and secure. Given the choice of a *nix based system and Windows where would you want your criminal (or otherwise) record stored?
3: Is "THE ECONOMY!" the new "TERRORISM!"?
Here's a close analogy:
ISBN numbers are made out of a series of numbers identifying the language, publisher, imprint and title/edition. The last digit is the mod 11 of the sum of the numbers, each multiplied by a weighting digit based on its position in the string. To make a barcode you have three different image patterns for each digit. The last six are all represented by type "R". The first one is not represented, except for defining a pattern of "L" and "G" types for the first six numbers, and encoding itself in the process. Interesting programming exercise in the language of your choice.
So all you have to do is reverse engineer the method used and you're there..although I suspect Apple's system is somewhat more technically challenging.
Precisely. Couldn't agree more. We don't need to fight these gruppets in the same way that we don't need to fight the creationists. They're irrelevant. We've got something better and free...let them carry on all they want, I'm quite happy with my superior and patent free OS thank you very much. If people want to pay for it let them, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort protecting the stupid from the greedy.
There's a good description of that kind of maneuver in "Wheelers" http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/search_results.jsp?wcp=1&quicksearch=1&cntType=&searchType=keywords&searchData=9780743429023&x=0&y=0 by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Except they use rocks fired from linear accelerators on the moon, but the same net-and-shock-absorber concept.
No, but it does cut down vibration - I've lost count of the number of times my internet has skipped because of my clumsy leaden-footed flatmates barging past...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.... ;)
How do you mod "+1 Inciteful" ?
Ok, lets try this....
If a tonne of TNT goes "Boom!", and six tonnes goes "Booooooom!" (etc) then to type this noise out would take 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 o's.
Nope. Doesn't help either.
RTFM. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's a good habit to get into. I do all sorts of web stuff for my flatmates' band, and you have to read stuff very carefully to make sure you're OK with the T&C.
Rhetoric for (perceived) comic value, but thank you. ;)
Because this is perl based, yes? (Still learning stuff)
That's actually kind of scary...the self proclaimed rules of academic rigour, as defined by Wikipedia (whilst not a definitive source, one that's certainly trusted by a large number of laymen*) do not allow the existence of and/or referal to any "work of god" other than in fiction.
...or woman. Or person. "Layman" is, however, the quickest to type and retain the meaning. And yes, I know, this footnote took longer, but it just goes to show I thought about it. Pedant..
*
It's worthy of Randall Munroe though. Seriously. I really hope it's him and Slashdot will get xkcd'd for a change. Is that the correct grammatical form for xkcd'd? xkcd-ed? How do you do accents over the e on this thing?
Oh come on people, parent was the most insightful thing that's been said.
MS release Vista: Derided by all and sundry, including many of their own fans. MS release Windows 7 which, whilst not ideal (ie not *nix based) appears to be what Vista should have been. Vista users given W7 for free.
Exactly, it's a SP. That's why it's come out on virtually the same timescale, a year or so rather than several years.
Good luck to them. They'll need it. They've just set a precedent (in the public eye) of giving the new OS away for free....like certain other OS's.......except you can't fix this one yourself without lawyers getting involved...still, baby steps.....
Not forgetting the fact that God (take your pick) doesn't meet the notability criteria...
Direct evidence they do: http://the-martians.co.uk/upgrade/
:D
There go all my karma points, but it was worth it
So basically he's found a way to Googlebomb his own reputation. Hardly new.
Agreed. If true, it's actually a very interesting choice. In the UK we train our soldiers slightly differently, there's a little less gung-ho. Not much less, but a little, and outside of the basic training they're also taught to think about what they're ordered to do a little more.
/. recently, and incidentally, meteorites rock. And metal.
Neither of the two options necessarily makes a better soldier, it's just two different approaches, and Starship Troopers takes both to extremes. If you're a smart soldier you'll learn from it in the same way as you'd learn from Machiavelli or SunTzu. If you're not....hell, it's a good story and good propaganda.
One of the more interesting asides on
Simple. Stop calling them distro's. Call them Customisations, or hyper-hacks or whatever. Just something to point out that they're effectively just lovingly crafted hacks on the same basic principle. It's the whole point. You CAN do that, so people do, and we celebrate it. And argue and bitch and whine mercilessly, but just try suggesting that there is an "Official" version of Linux+whateverGUI etc etc!
....which in the story is explained as "the thing is plummeting towards Jupiter!!!" as opposed to the truth: "the thing will be around here someplace, and will be pretty darn close once an orbit for the forseable future"
:)
Thank you Clone53421, summed up technically with far more eloquence than I can usually muster on an inter-web-space.
Agree. The two orbits will continue to intersect if it's all in physics-land and everything is working on the same plane etc. This was, in fact, the central premise and punchline to an Arthur C Clarke short story called Jupiter V, it's very good and I recommend it. There you go, I must be right, fiction agrees with me.
It's the New Yorker, they expect a certain amount of political commentary. Katz got it in with the Creationism reference in 1999 (hence the underlining) and Munroe was making a Palin reference. Sorry. Not funny now that I've explained it.
:)
Munroe won in my book, and not bad when he's playing an away-game. I did consider a detailed description of exactly why he wins with references and footnotes and sign it "Summer Glau", but I'm gambling that someone else will go to the effort for a +5 Funny
Wow - something in Slashdot that has provoked me to post for the first time in weeks...
I hate Windows. Can't stand it. Haven't used it in four years apart from when I have to at work, it's got to the stage where somebody asks my advice on "computers" and I just have to tell them that I can't do Windows anymore, I'm too out of the loop.
That said, I hated the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads too, mostly because a Mac IS a PC. So is a Linux desktop, and a Solaris, and a BSD, and a Commadore 64, and my much maligned Atari ST with the single sided double density disk drive.
So frankly, MS (I'm going to avoid the $ because for once I'm in agreement) have struck gold here. The public need to understand the difference between hardware and OS. The more the waters are muddied by advertising the better, because then papers will start printing "What is a PC...really?" articles.
The simple, long term test is whether software companies optimise their work for XP or Vista, given the choice. In the absence of a more popular OS the developers will concentrate on the most used variant of any give group. That's the best measure at the end of the day.
To be honest I've not read every post in detail, but surely we're missing the point here?
What they're saying is that the internet can be used as an early-warning system which, to a certain extent, renders the attack itself.