I was one of three Americans in my class in the Econ department. It was a top-20 Econ department back then, and definitely competitive. Their ranking declined after I got there, but it wasn't my fault. No, really, I had nothing to do with it!
Don't know much about your field, but I suspect that they'd have looked a bit harder at you if you wanted a spot among the foreign geniuses in their Ph.D program.
I only got into the Statistics MS program because they didn't have the same high standards for that that they had for their Ph.Ds, and maybe my advisor put in a good word for me.
Some of Purdue's graduate programs are big deals in their fields.
"contempt of court", which is a construct, I think, not present in any other modern law system.
Contempt of court is based on the assumption that the courts are not contemptible. The courts have been doing their best, for decades now, to undermine that assumption.
Their corporate motto is ``do no evil'', and we've all applauded that, but this is such a great thing that I think we could give them a pass on at least one evil act.
Maybe they could do something really evil to Microsoft, and then we could say: ``Well, you digitized Harvard's library, so we'll let it pass this time.''
Re: How would you cooperate with law enforcement?
on
Computer Forensics
·
· Score: 1
Yes, I wasn't totally joking (posting from my other ID). If it's important enough to call the cops, it's important enough to get your lawyer involved. If it's your business, he can help you get the cops to take action (maybe) and help deal with the insurance company's lawyers. Most of all, he can reduce the chances of you doing something stupid.
If you're an employee, you can bet that the corp's lawyers are going to be involved, and they are going to be safeguarding the corp's interests, at your expense, if need be. Remember, if you haven't paid the lawyer out of your own pocket, he doesn't represent you, and is not on your side, no matter what he may imply. If the corp has their lawyers present when you make a statement to the cops, you are not represented by council! If the corp needs a lawyer, so do you.
I shudder to think that this means that there are so few remaining survivors that a pay out is financially feasible for Union Carbide.
Well, it has been 20 years. I'd expect a fair number of them to have died in that period, accident or no. Remember, the affected area was a slum, full of poor people, with poor nutrition and healthcare.
As I recall, the management and engineers of the plant were Indian citizens: while corporate policy doubtless played a part, so did they.
Yes, it's unacceptable that Union Carbide followed the Indian norm and didn't do anything for the victims of its carelessness. It was Indian law which allowed that.
All that just so no one says: ``Heartless , irresponsible multinatinal.''
I've had my fair share of stuff stolen, and it's never been a janitor.
I don't think I've ever had anything stolen at the office. I've been a janitor, too.
If the janitors think they have a soft job with high pay, they aren't going to jeapordize it by stealing a laptop or a paper off your desk.
If they figure that they wouldn't get screwed any worse elsewhere, I guess the situation would be different.
The point here is that the janitors are just like you: if they're feeling screwed, they are a lot more likely to compromise their personal standards when tempted. Bear in mind that your excellent employer may contract janitorial services from a contractor who screws his employees.
I wonder if the piezo actuator would be more reliable than spinning drives? I also wonder what would happen if you outfitted a traditional, spinning drive with ``many, many read:write heads''? That should speed things up just as much as shaking the drive, I would think.
By 5000 to 3000 BC average global temperatures reached their maximum level during the Holocene and were 1 to 2 Celsius warmer than they are today. Climatologists call this period the Climatic Optimum. During the climatic optimum many of the Earth's great ancient civilizations began and flourished. In Africa, the Nile River had three times its present volume, indicating a much larger tropical region.
From 3000 to 2000 BC a cooling trend occurred. This cooling caused large drops in sea-level and the emergence of many islands (Bahamas) and coastal areas that are still above sea-level today. A short warming trend took place from 2000 to 1500 BC, followed once again by colder conditions. Colder temperatures from 1500 - 750 BC caused renewed ice growth in continental glaciers and alpine glaciers, and a sea-level drop of between 2 to 3 meters below present day levels.
The period from 750 BC - 900 AD saw warming up to 150 BC. Temperatures, however, did not get as warm as the Climatic Optimum. During the time of Roman Empire (150 BC - 300 AD) a cooling began that lasted until about 900 AD. At its height, the cooling caused the Nile River (829 AD) and the Black Sea (800-801 AD) to freeze.
The period 900 - 1200 AD has been called the Little Climatic Optimum. It represents the warmest climate since the Climatic Optimum. During this period, the Vikings established settlements on Greenland and Iceland. The snow line in the Rocky Mountains was about 370 meters above current levels. A period of cool and more extreme weather followed the Little Climatic Optimum. A great drought in the American southwest occurred between 1276 and 1299. There are records of floods, great droughts and extreme seasonal climate fluctuations up to the 1400s.
From 1550 to 1850 AD global temperatures were at their coldest since the beginning of the Holocene. Scientists call this period the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the average annual temperature of the Northern Hemisphere was about 1.0 degree Celsius lower than today. During the period 1580 to 1600, the western United States experienced one of its longest and most severe droughts in the last 500 years. Cold weather in Iceland from 1753 and 1759 caused 25 % of the population to die from crop failure and famine. Newspapers in New England were calling 1816 the year without a summer.
Those who don't know history will only repeat the bad parts of it.
Cost effective Wind Power (Kilowatts/Construction costs) would mean the end of middle east conflict, global warming, rural poverty in developing countries, lung disease in Beiging.
We're agreed that cost-effective wind power would be a good thing, however unlikely it may be. I'm not sure that I agree with your list of miracles it would cause.
the end of middle east conflict,
Does that mean that you think the Muslims are fighting the Jews and Christians for oil? Better think again: they've been killing each other, and us, since about 624 AD.
global warming,
You might be right on this one, but us Northenerslike global warming.
rural poverty in developing countries,
Wish you were right on this. It should help, but poverty is caused more by government corruption and lawlessness than by lack of infrastructure. Given good government, Uganda would soon be more like Canada than Uganda. Unfortunately, no one knows how to ``give'' good government.
lung disease in Beiging. This one we can agree on.
What was it Gandhi said? ``First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.''
We're definitely past the first stage, and it sounds as if we've skipped right over the second and third stages with Adobe.
Seriously, we're on the radar screen of a company which has never shown any interest in anything which wasn't strictly proprietary. This isn't even the beginning of the end, but it's a big change in the right direction.
... some FCC rules prevent completely OS firmware drivers.
Let's assume you're right. Your point would be irrelevant, since they aren't being asked to open-source, but to make their closed source firmware freely distributable.
Fairbanks is very conservative, in a libertarian way, the Bush is conservative but Democrat, Anchorage is lower-48-style conservative, but Juneau and Sitka are predominantly Left Coast wacky liberal (wacky liberal is different from merely liberal). I live in Juneau; it's like being in San Francisco. Except for the salaries, but that's another story.
If Slashdot is a representative sample, that's true. On the other hand, I'm not sure I know any left-wing techs in real life. Some libertarians, but no lefties, and I live in the most left-wing town in Alaska.
Is it really so that techs are liberal? Why would that be if so?
we know that god as a deity that controls humans is false and that HELL doesnt exist...
If you can prove that, by all means share with the rest of us. The general consensus is that there isn't any proof for either side of the argument, so you'd be doing a great service by setting us all straight.
I won't be holding my breath, of course: better minds than yours have tried and failed at this.
... the US sent men to the moon in the late 60's and the entire spacecraft had less computer power then a 486 computer... And they need to improve current technology?
Well, there's always room for improvement. I'm sure they'd like to send more men up with less rocket booster than we could do 40 years ago. I bet they've already caught up to where we were in the '60s; after all, they've been making ICBMs for a long time now, they claim.
As for the instrumentation, they make a lot of chips in China, but I think they're all consumer-grade, not radiation-hardened. Nowadays they should be able to collect a lot more data on the ship and its performance than we could get during the Apollo era.
[man with cart] Bring out yer dead!
[Man with OS slung over his shoulder] 'ere's one!
[FreeBSD, slung over shoulder] But I'm not dead yet!
[Man with cart] 'e sez e's not dead.
[Man with OS] Don't mind 'im, what does he know?
[Man with cart] Well... I can't take 'im 'til Netcraft confirms it, can I now?
[FreeBSD] Netcraft? Netcraft! Well, that bloody does it!
FreeBSD jumps off the second man's shoulder and begins to club both men, vigorously.
It's a nice thought, but I think that the evidence is a little weak: we have a Linuxworld article, a Novell engineer's blog, and a Harvard academic blathering about disruptive technologies.
It could happen that MS will become a niche player, but if I had to bet money, I'd bet on MS surviving with a large market share. There's jsut too many people who have budgets to justify, and the one thing that Libre software can't help you do is squander money.
Thing are looking up down there
on
Exploring Antarctica
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Nearly 100 years ago (1913?), Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) placed a newpaper ad:
"Men Wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success."
Nowadays, we can tell them: ``safe return probable''. That's progress.
I enjoy spending summers in the high arctic; I think I could go for a summer or two in the high antarctic. Anyone need a statistician on the ground there for a summer? Winters are right out, though: I've spent quite enough time in the dark.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know much about your field, but I suspect that they'd have looked a bit harder at you if you wanted a spot among the foreign geniuses in their Ph.D program.
I only got into the Statistics MS program because they didn't have the same high standards for that that they had for their Ph.Ds, and maybe my advisor put in a good word for me.
Some of Purdue's graduate programs are big deals in their fields.
So, Wine is really Wad: Wine is a duplicator?
Maybe they should just give in and let folks call it an emulator.
Contempt of court is based on the assumption that the courts are not contemptible. The courts have been doing their best, for decades now, to undermine that assumption.
Maybe they could do something really evil to Microsoft, and then we could say: ``Well, you digitized Harvard's library, so we'll let it pass this time.''
If you're an employee, you can bet that the corp's lawyers are going to be involved, and they are going to be safeguarding the corp's interests, at your expense, if need be. Remember, if you haven't paid the lawyer out of your own pocket, he doesn't represent you, and is not on your side, no matter what he may imply. If the corp has their lawyers present when you make a statement to the cops, you are not represented by council! If the corp needs a lawyer, so do you.
Well, it has been 20 years. I'd expect a fair number of them to have died in that period, accident or no. Remember, the affected area was a slum, full of poor people, with poor nutrition and healthcare.
As I recall, the management and engineers of the plant were Indian citizens: while corporate policy doubtless played a part, so did they.
Yes, it's unacceptable that Union Carbide followed the Indian norm and didn't do anything for the victims of its carelessness. It was Indian law which allowed that.
All that just so no one says: ``Heartless , irresponsible multinatinal.''
I don't think I've ever had anything stolen at the office. I've been a janitor, too.
If the janitors think they have a soft job with high pay, they aren't going to jeapordize it by stealing a laptop or a paper off your desk.
If they figure that they wouldn't get screwed any worse elsewhere, I guess the situation would be different.
The point here is that the janitors are just like you: if they're feeling screwed, they are a lot more likely to compromise their personal standards when tempted. Bear in mind that your excellent employer may contract janitorial services from a contractor who screws his employees.
I wonder if the piezo actuator would be more reliable than spinning drives? I also wonder what would happen if you outfitted a traditional, spinning drive with ``many, many read:write heads''? That should speed things up just as much as shaking the drive, I would think.
The Earth has been warm before, and it was good.
From that link:
Those who don't know history will only repeat the bad parts of it.We're agreed that cost-effective wind power would be a good thing, however unlikely it may be. I'm not sure that I agree with your list of miracles it would cause.
the end of middle east conflict,
Does that mean that you think the Muslims are fighting the Jews and Christians for oil? Better think again: they've been killing each other, and us, since about 624 AD.
global warming,
You might be right on this one, but us Northeners like global warming.
rural poverty in developing countries,
Wish you were right on this. It should help, but poverty is caused more by government corruption and lawlessness than by lack of infrastructure. Given good government, Uganda would soon be more like Canada than Uganda. Unfortunately, no one knows how to ``give'' good government.
lung disease in Beiging.
This one we can agree on.
Electronics just aren't reliable enough to trust, particularly fancy finger-print-reading or AI-grip-recognizing electronics.
Technological fixes to social problems are usually bad ideas, and I think that this is a great example of that.
We're definitely past the first stage, and it sounds as if we've skipped right over the second and third stages with Adobe.
Seriously, we're on the radar screen of a company which has never shown any interest in anything which wasn't strictly proprietary. This isn't even the beginning of the end, but it's a big change in the right direction.
Let's assume you're right. Your point would be irrelevant, since they aren't being asked to open-source, but to make their closed source firmware freely distributable.
And, I think you're wrong.
Fairbanks is very conservative, in a libertarian way, the Bush is conservative but Democrat, Anchorage is lower-48-style conservative, but Juneau and Sitka are predominantly Left Coast wacky liberal (wacky liberal is different from merely liberal). I live in Juneau; it's like being in San Francisco. Except for the salaries, but that's another story.
Ok, it's 100% Libre, and 97.1% free.
There is a reason to distinguish between the two, and you've illustrated it beautifully. As others have pointed out, the ISO isn't the distribution.
There are reasons to complain about OpenBSD, but they don't include its ``Libre-ness'' or its quality.
If Slashdot is a representative sample, that's true. On the other hand, I'm not sure I know any left-wing techs in real life. Some libertarians, but no lefties, and I live in the most left-wing town in Alaska.
Is it really so that techs are liberal? Why would that be if so?
If you can prove that, by all means share with the rest of us. The general consensus is that there isn't any proof for either side of the argument, so you'd be doing a great service by setting us all straight.
I won't be holding my breath, of course: better minds than yours have tried and failed at this.
Ok.
``Legal concerns'' probably means their lawyers told them: ``If you do this, we won't be able to maintain the fiction that you have a case.''
``Management concerns'' probably means that management didn't think it would pump the stock up enough to make up for the lawyers jumping ship.
Well, there's always room for improvement. I'm sure they'd like to send more men up with less rocket booster than we could do 40 years ago. I bet they've already caught up to where we were in the '60s; after all, they've been making ICBMs for a long time now, they claim.
As for the instrumentation, they make a lot of chips in China, but I think they're all consumer-grade, not radiation-hardened. Nowadays they should be able to collect a lot more data on the ship and its performance than we could get during the Apollo era.
That's an oxymoron.
[Man with OS slung over his shoulder] 'ere's one!
[FreeBSD, slung over shoulder] But I'm not dead yet!
[Man with cart] 'e sez e's not dead.
[Man with OS] Don't mind 'im, what does he know?
[Man with cart] Well
[FreeBSD] Netcraft? Netcraft! Well, that bloody does it!
FreeBSD jumps off the second man's shoulder and begins to club both men, vigorously.
It could happen that MS will become a niche player, but if I had to bet money, I'd bet on MS surviving with a large market share. There's jsut too many people who have budgets to justify, and the one thing that Libre software can't help you do is squander money.
I enjoy spending summers in the high arctic; I think I could go for a summer or two in the high antarctic. Anyone need a statistician on the ground there for a summer? Winters are right out, though: I've spent quite enough time in the dark.
Plan 9 can't be all bad: they named an operating system after it.