Oh god, don't remind me. That is, in my mind, the biggest weakness of rapid prototyping. You get an interface, sometimes a whole product mocked up to "is that how you like it, mr beeblebrox?" level, and suddenly your boss / project manager / client is thinking "wow, it's nearly finished!" followed by the inevitable "well, that works, let's just use that!"
And then they blame you when they realise that the prototype is actually a flaky piece of s#!t because all it was designed to do was pretend to be the product they wanted. Gah!
According to TFA, they can't because they need intact cells, and they'll all have burst from the freezing process. The only thing the freezing process will destroy is the baby mammoth's inner monologue...
Yeah, try running this similar program in a Windows user account: OK, I'm tired, but - was that sarcasm or are we talking Windows 3.1?
Of course if you were to go like so...
int main(int argc, char **argv) { while(1)/* create pen to draw invisible pink unicorn */ CreatePen(PS_NULL, 1, RGB(255, 200, 200)); return 0xb00b5; } ...then I seem to recall causing interesting lockups...:)
Really? So, I guess that means that Windows is the best OS, because its the most popular. Actually, for his definition of "best", yes it does. Windows is widely used due to familiarity, good hardware support, and a massive existing user base (which means an easy supply of soft-lifted or unlicensed copies for people too cheap to buy it). If you credit people with buying what THEY feel is the best fit for their needs (and not what you want them to use due to your own idealistic crusade) then yes, Windows is the best, and has been for a long time.
However, current installed base only gives us a moving average of 'best'. The adoption rate is also important. If the number of Vista installs (not purchases, a large proportion of windows installs are unlicensed) is growing faster than the number of XP installs, then Vista is better than XP. If the number of Ubuntu installs is growing faster than either, then it is better than them.
For your definition of best, which I would assume is along the lines of "best FOR ME", then whatever you use is best, until you find something better. Same logic, smaller sample size.
I think he's saying Ubuntu is at the expense of the other distros. FTFA:
One final thing that I would like to point out is that with the exception of PCLinuxOS (based on Mandriva), RPM based distros are solid, but unfortunately, they lack hand-holding for beginners. Okay, now why do you care? Because the growth of Linux as a collective whole is simply not happening with your distributions any longer. Yes, you will always have your existing collective. But at the same time, recruiting new users will become increasingly more difficult with each passing year. He's saying that easy, accessible distros that don't require high-priest knowledge are driving the expanding Linux desktop installation base. And it's true, even if he does condescendingly refer to hand-holding. As the compulsory/. car analogy, "Cars with readily accessible fuel filler caps continue to drive vehicle market growth. Cars which require a torque wrench and an angle grinder to refuel are solid, but unfortunately, they lack the hand-holding for beginners to refuel."
I used to be the guy who did cool stuff. Now I'm jaded and just fix broken stuff while playing Desktop Tower Defense for the better portion of the day. I hate you for describing me perfectly.
As a vegetarian, I've never understood why sheep, cows, pigs etc. are OK to eat, but cats and dogs aren't? I'd guess it's a combo of the cute-n-fwuffy factor and the fact that (so I've heard) carnivores don't taste as good as and/or are more toxic than herbivores. Are there any other significant reasons?
Oh, and cloning would, as you say, keep the taste exactly the same, barring accidents and DNA damage.:P Wouldn't it be better to use time-honoured methods to breed for flavour?:P
And when people (not many, but certainly some) people lose their private keys through accident or misadventure? Either they cease to officially exist, or they can identify themselves through existing, insecure means. The former is obviously not acceptable, but the latter breaks the whole system wide open because it's then only as secure as the weakest link, ie. the initial identification process.
I'm not saying you're on the wrong track, but this problem seems to me to be typical of the concept of identification as a whole, rather than any particular implementation of such.
I'd suggest you misunderstand Windows users as a whole. Apple users? They love Apple. Linux users usually love either the ideal of open source, or their particular distro. But Windows users? They couldn't give a rat's. They use Windows because it's what came with the PC, and because it works with all their games and mp3s and pron and stuff. I've very seldom met a Windows enthusiast - and the few I've met have been that way as a self-defense against all the retarded zealotry that's been shoved in their face over the years (Yes, iKoolaid-drinkers, I'm looking at you!)
The only reason I can see a Windows-er downmodding an anti-Windows or pro-something-else post is that it's ad hominem against anyone not using the poster's $flavourofchoice.
So long as Lunix remains a third-tier OS which an average user has no chance of installing, the numbers are irrelevant. Try it. I installed Ubuntu on the weekend and it went off without a hitch. The hardest bit was... actually there was no 'hardest bit' unless you count pasting a line in/etc/fstab to enable ntfs-3g so I could write to my NTFS data drive, and that took 10 seconds and a google for "write ntfs ubuntu". No more "RTFM" or "if you can't figure that out you're not smart enough to run linux". Out of the box it worked with both ethernet ports on the motherboard (one of which has NEVER worked properly under Windows XP), my graphics card (I had to click on a "yes, use the non-FOSS drivers" dialogue then it was all peachy), my SATA drives (which XP wouldn't detect without a 3.5" driver disk during the install, first time I'd used one in years), onboard sound etc.
An hour later I'd installed beryl (more and better eye candy than I've seen on either Vista or OSX), installed wine, and was logged in to WoW without a start menu or paperclip in sight. The one time I did manage to break something (didn't install graphics drivers before installing beryl) a boot into recovery mode fixed everything in 2 minutes.
It's also pretty disgusting how Apache, Lunix's so-called "killer app", can't even install correctly without requiring a manually fix. Eh?...regardless, Apache / PostgreSQL / MySQL / whatever may be compelling server apps, but the killer app for me was replacing my broken grey copy of Windows XP with an OS that performs equally well, and is better in every single way to my old OS. I've bagged Linux for years because it took so much more stuffing around to set up and maintain than XP did, but that ain't the case any more.
If you really wanted to sit down and build yourself something that would be highly efficient, you'd use a chording keyboard on the one hand, a pointer with gesture support on the other hand, and never take your hands off either until you were ready to step away from your machine. This is how most games work. Fast reactions require the same well thought-out, intuitive controls that good workflow requires. Interestingly, it's also how Blender works; maybe it's the source of the great "I can't use Blender, its interface sucks" / "Once you learn it Blender > All" divide?
Hell, I have perfectly good eyesight (with contacts) and maybe 10% of the time CAPTCHAs are too munted for me to read. Often the problem is that it's not clear whether it's alpha or alphanumeric, or whether it's case sensitive, and there's a badly distorted O/0 or 1/I/l.
Regardless, CAPTCHAs will obviously have to evolve* to cover current 'hard problems' in AI as state of the art improves and 'hard' turns into 'not so hard'.
* or wait, should that be 'be intelligently designed'?:P
Personally, I'm grateful to them for making Vista so expensive in terms of upgrade price and hardware requirements. Without the added push I'd have stayed with Windows instead of switching to Ubuntu / Beryl (which looks much prettier than Aero, IMO). And without that push, I'd never have found out that it 'just works' at least as well as Windows does (at least for my hardware, maybe I was lucky), and can run WoW (my only Windows-specific app) through WiNE, with almost no tweaking, at a higher frame rate than in Windows. Only been running a day so far, but I can't see me going back.
Watch. Ambush. Tank trap. Even better:
1) Go to nearest Mexican restaurant.
2) Order large plate of nachos, eat nachos.
3) Siesta for a while.
4) Tank runs out of fuel.
5) Locate tank, proceed to teabag tank repeatedly while yelling "LOL PWNT WHOZ THE BIATCH NOW!"
As you said, pretty much all wartime machinery (only exception that springs to mind is land mines) needs to be backed by humans or it fails. Rapidly.
I'm just waiting for the RL 2.0 patch when they're going to remove DKs. Hopefully by then they'll fix the bug where no matter how much water I drink I still don't have enough mana to cast fireball... also add some more graveyards, the corpse run is a bish and none of my friends have rez yet. >.>
And, there has been research that shows men have more variation in intelligence (but lower average intelligence), meaning that at any given point, the ends of the bell curve should be prodominately male. Interesting. Just from personal observation it's the opposite, at least in technical fields - there are many more 'pretty good' guys than 'pretty good' girls involved in tech, but on the other hand the few girls we do get are way above average aptitude. I'd guess it's because girls in general don't seem so attracted to technical careers, meaning only the ones with high natural ability (who thus find it easy) are interested.
You probably aren't programming anything that requires math. Try 3D graphics programming - you need a lot of linear algebra, and some calculus if you're doing any kind of shading. Physics simulations require more differential equations than you can shake a stick at. Lossy compression requires frequency analysis and coordinate transforms. Of course, making business database front ends doesn't require much in the way of maths... *sigh*:/
Pedantic, I know, but... it's kWh, not kw/h. The unit 'Watt' has a capital letter, even when abbreviated, because it is named after James Watt, a steam pioneer. The unit kW, or kilowatt, is a measure of power, i.e. work per unit time. Multiplying by a time value in hours gives kilowatt hours (kW * h, kWh), a convenient unit of energy given that we often measure power in kilowatts and time in hours. One kilowatt hour is the energy used by a one-kilowatt device in one hour, and is equal to 3.6 megajoules.
In other words, your boss could save the company about fifty bucks a day in lost productivity if he made sure you didn't turn off your computer when you went home at night. I dunno about you, but in my case... no. I shut my machine down every night in part to save power, but also because the bootup process in the morning gives me a chance to get my brain into working order, to page out the waking-up and hugging-girlfriend and dodging-traffic and getting-to-work code and page in the god-I-hate-coldfusion and is-it-lunchtime-yet code. If I left it on, I'd spend 5 mins more reading slashdot or news.com every morning, but I'd get to work at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh god, don't remind me. That is, in my mind, the biggest weakness of rapid prototyping. You get an interface, sometimes a whole product mocked up to "is that how you like it, mr beeblebrox?" level, and suddenly your boss / project manager / client is thinking "wow, it's nearly finished!" followed by the inevitable "well, that works, let's just use that!"
And then they blame you when they realise that the prototype is actually a flaky piece of s#!t because all it was designed to do was pretend to be the product they wanted. Gah!
For project development, that is. My GF assures me elsewhere, size does matter...
Of course if you were to go like so... int main(int argc, char **argv) { while(1)
However, current installed base only gives us a moving average of 'best'. The adoption rate is also important. If the number of Vista installs (not purchases, a large proportion of windows installs are unlicensed) is growing faster than the number of XP installs, then Vista is better than XP. If the number of Ubuntu installs is growing faster than either, then it is better than them.
For your definition of best, which I would assume is along the lines of "best FOR ME", then whatever you use is best, until you find something better. Same logic, smaller sample size.
...never did manage to finish DTD "The 100"
As a vegetarian, I've never understood why sheep, cows, pigs etc. are OK to eat, but cats and dogs aren't? I'd guess it's a combo of the cute-n-fwuffy factor and the fact that (so I've heard) carnivores don't taste as good as and/or are more toxic than herbivores. Are there any other significant reasons?
:P Wouldn't it be better to use time-honoured methods to breed for flavour? :P
Oh, and cloning would, as you say, keep the taste exactly the same, barring accidents and DNA damage.
Great call. "If I've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to see."
And when people (not many, but certainly some) people lose their private keys through accident or misadventure? Either they cease to officially exist, or they can identify themselves through existing, insecure means. The former is obviously not acceptable, but the latter breaks the whole system wide open because it's then only as secure as the weakest link, ie. the initial identification process.
I'm not saying you're on the wrong track, but this problem seems to me to be typical of the concept of identification as a whole, rather than any particular implementation of such.
Uri Geller didn't hold the camera. Or post the video to YouTube, for that matter.
I'd suggest you misunderstand Windows users as a whole. Apple users? They love Apple. Linux users usually love either the ideal of open source, or their particular distro. But Windows users? They couldn't give a rat's. They use Windows because it's what came with the PC, and because it works with all their games and mp3s and pron and stuff. I've very seldom met a Windows enthusiast - and the few I've met have been that way as a self-defense against all the retarded zealotry that's been shoved in their face over the years (Yes, iKoolaid-drinkers, I'm looking at you!)
The only reason I can see a Windows-er downmodding an anti-Windows or pro-something-else post is that it's ad hominem against anyone not using the poster's $flavourofchoice.
An hour later I'd installed beryl (more and better eye candy than I've seen on either Vista or OSX), installed wine, and was logged in to WoW without a start menu or paperclip in sight. The one time I did manage to break something (didn't install graphics drivers before installing beryl) a boot into recovery mode fixed everything in 2 minutes. It's also pretty disgusting how Apache, Lunix's so-called "killer app", can't even install correctly without requiring a manually fix. Eh?
Hell, I have perfectly good eyesight (with contacts) and maybe 10% of the time CAPTCHAs are too munted for me to read. Often the problem is that it's not clear whether it's alpha or alphanumeric, or whether it's case sensitive, and there's a badly distorted O/0 or 1/I/l.
:P
Regardless, CAPTCHAs will obviously have to evolve* to cover current 'hard problems' in AI as state of the art improves and 'hard' turns into 'not so hard'.
* or wait, should that be 'be intelligently designed'?
Personally, I'm grateful to them for making Vista so expensive in terms of upgrade price and hardware requirements. Without the added push I'd have stayed with Windows instead of switching to Ubuntu / Beryl (which looks much prettier than Aero, IMO). And without that push, I'd never have found out that it 'just works' at least as well as Windows does (at least for my hardware, maybe I was lucky), and can run WoW (my only Windows-specific app) through WiNE, with almost no tweaking, at a higher frame rate than in Windows. Only been running a day so far, but I can't see me going back.
...paired...par... The word you're looking for is 'pared' / 'pare'. Not a flame, just FYI.1) Go to nearest Mexican restaurant.
2) Order large plate of nachos, eat nachos.
3) Siesta for a while.
4) Tank runs out of fuel.
5) Locate tank, proceed to teabag tank repeatedly while yelling "LOL PWNT WHOZ THE BIATCH NOW!"
As you said, pretty much all wartime machinery (only exception that springs to mind is land mines) needs to be backed by humans or it fails. Rapidly.
...sorry, too easy, couldn't resist...
I'm just waiting for the RL 2.0 patch when they're going to remove DKs. Hopefully by then they'll fix the bug where no matter how much water I drink I still don't have enough mana to cast fireball... also add some more graveyards, the corpse run is a bish and none of my friends have rez yet. >.>
Why bother, these days? Unless you're living in the past, I remember waiting up until 3am to see if I'd ranked up... ah, the old days! ^^
You probably aren't programming anything that requires math. Try 3D graphics programming - you need a lot of linear algebra, and some calculus if you're doing any kind of shading. Physics simulations require more differential equations than you can shake a stick at. Lossy compression requires frequency analysis and coordinate transforms. Of course, making business database front ends doesn't require much in the way of maths... *sigh* :/
Pedantic, I know, but... it's kWh, not kw/h. The unit 'Watt' has a capital letter, even when abbreviated, because it is named after James Watt, a steam pioneer. The unit kW, or kilowatt, is a measure of power, i.e. work per unit time. Multiplying by a time value in hours gives kilowatt hours (kW * h, kWh), a convenient unit of energy given that we often measure power in kilowatts and time in hours. One kilowatt hour is the energy used by a one-kilowatt device in one hour, and is equal to 3.6 megajoules.