The New York Jets, Joan Jett, Jet The Band, and Jet's Pizza are also not jets. Jet Blue and The Jetsons are under review. Jet Clampett is a misspelling, and Jethro Tull doesn't understand the question.
Since most journals are still published on paper or PDF, with editors who want a consistent look, yes it does matter. More importantly, it's very hard to make complex equations in Word that are numbered correctly. Nobody will cite your paper if they can't read the equations.
Well, users should want it. It's not just about having one password, but also aggregating all your personal data into an account that you control and can easily share between sites. Unfortunately, most successful internet business models hinge on building and mining a silo of user data.
You're right though. Most people don't care about their data, and it's a minor hassle to create an account at every site du jour. Maybe when trustworthy authorities get involved with authenticating ID attributes (this person is allowed to buy alcohol, etc.) people will start to care about OpenID.
The problem I had with the ending of Snow Crash was an entire chapter of Hiro recapping the whole plot while he rode on his motorcycle (or something). It was a Scooby Doo ending, and it seems to be one of Stephenson's weak points as a writer. He just hasn't figured out how to handle plot exposition without having a long monologue. Even though he seems to have avoided putting the climax reveal in a monologue since Snow Crash, everything I've read by him has long sections where characters do almost nothing but lecture each other.
Also, you have to trust your compiler, which you *had* to get from someone else.
Nah, I wrote my own compiler directly in machine code. I didn't trust my keyboard manufacturer either, so I tapped out Morse code on a homemade key. I made the BIOS out of coconuts, but that was just because that douchebag Gilligan said it couldn't be done.
I certainly don't think KDE 4.0 was a mistake beyond calling it "4.0" which led a bunch of idiots to expect something "finished", and that despite the up-front warnings that it wasn't finished.
A bunch of idiots? Seriously? A release is a version that is complete with no known showstopper bugs. There is absolutely no reasonable excuse for the KDE team to have released what they had. They were nowhere near a release, and apparently still aren't. I don't think this was an eager, early release. I think this was a PR move to bring some attention back to the aging project, and the KDE team should be ashamed for deceiving the community.
We've been waiting for KDE 4 for years, and I think you're way out of line insulting people who were surprised to find that the long-awaited release was still missing many basic components.
Then why don't you write the chapter, and publish it in PDF on (your|a) website?
Because PDF's published on your website don't look as impressive on a CV as chapters contributed to a textbook. Most professors are fairly altruistic about dissemination of knowledge, but they still have to think of their careers.
Some institutions also have rules about what can be posted publicly. In my university, we're not allowed to post PDF's of introductory lab books that were written by the department, because the books are also sold in the university bookstore. The university is also fighting us about posting video lectures, so our administration is pretty backwards.
Research is not a commodity resource that can just be doled out to the most important projects. People initiate and work on projects that interest them and that match the skills in which they have the most expertise. Besides, this looks like a student project, maybe even for a class. There is probably nothing these people could have done in sixteen weeks to advance the state of user interfaces which have been active research topics for decades yet remain esoteric.
But see, you need a giant car so you can put more flags on it. If you have a tiny car with only one or two flags and "Support the troops" bumper stickers, how will people know how patriotic you are?
Our universal constants seem to produce more of these than most the other possible variations. There may be variations where "interesting" universes exist, but they are relatively rare combinations according to the models.
Here's the thing. These results are based on mathematical models which were derived from, and verified by, rough observations of our world. These models only worked if they contained a few fundamental constants (magic numbers?) which were determined by empirical data. As the models exist, they predict events in our world with amazing accuracy, but they only apply to our world. Let me make that clear. Physical models do not tell us about what this world is; rather, they give us tools to predict how things in this world will behave. There is no deeper truth contained in physical models, and as such they bear absolutely no meaning with regards to imaginary worlds. If there was a different universe it would almost certainly need it's own physics, worked out with observations in that world. Working out the consequences of the models with different fundamental constants might be a very interesting exercise in applied mathematics, but it is not physics. The fact that the models are so chaotic just means we need better models, not that our universe is somehow fantastically improbable. In fact, it is 100% likely to exist.
Disclaimer: I'm an experimental physicist, so I'm biased towards reality.
If someone talks to a "technical support" help line, they should just shut up and do what support say, if they know it all then the why the heck did they call in the first place?
Maybe because Comcast has accidentally deactivated my cable modem every 6-8 weeks for the past year and I have to call to have it reactivated. I telecommute, so I'm losing work time until they fix it, then I've already been on hold for half an hour by the time I talk to someone, so I'm simply not in the mood for "which lights are blinking?" Not only that, but I know that they are reading from a script with no understanding when they tell me to unplug/replug the telephony modem which has a battery.
The worst part is that if I explain my problem, explain that I've tried everything on their checklist, and explain that this happens regularly, they listen politely then start right at the top of the damn list as if I hadn't said anything.
Except that it doesn't. I use Linux mostly, but I work in a physics research lab that uses exclusively* macs. We still use several G4s with OS X 10.3.9. I can't install network printers on half of them, for no apparent reason. I can't mount them using firewire on newer macs. No error messages, it just stalls.
We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program). The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it). On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough. File sharing is a pain to figure out. I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software. Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar. I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them. I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless. I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case. The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work. My advisor was so used to this that he didn't even realize he was doing it. I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window. I can't close a window that is minimized without showing it.
These are just the bad things that I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of great things that I haven't mentioned. Maybe coming from Windows I would be blown away, but in Linux all this stuff actually just works, plus all the stuff that does work on the mac. If macs work for you, great. Just realize that you're paying a 100% tax for a pretty box, and stop telling me that it just works.
Note that I'm not claiming in any way that macs can't do something. All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work." I welcome any solutions to problems that I mentioned, except solutions that include spending money.
* The computers that run our expensive research equipment are windows. It's cheaper for them to give you a computer with windows than it is to develop a cross-platform solution.
I don't have a problem with airlines allowing cellphone usage, as long as they charge $25/hour for the convenience, or the same as whatever ridiculous rate they'll charge for WiFi. Personally, I'm waiting for the credit card slot on the emergency oxygen masks.
Wouldn't it be great if all the competing services would interoperate and then you could view anything from your choice of Web service, depending upon which interface you liked best?
You have thirty (30) seconds to explain how this adds value for the shareholder, then I'm calling security. Go.
It would be great, but the dominant player in a market doesn't usually have an incentive to stop vendor lock in practices, and the companies that would benefit from customer mobility don't have the leverage to force it upstream.
The biggest problem I had with Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver was Enoch Root. Sure, he's a neat character, but having Gandalf, Jr. show up with the perfect solution every time somebody gets stuck in a jam is just lame. Maybe Stephenson plans to explain Enoch Root someday, but to me it just looks like he can't plan a story without deus ex machina.
At least he seems to have gotten away from the Scooby Doo endings where the main character spends an entire chapter recapping the plot and tying up the loose ends.
Who could have guessed that such a flawed writer would be such a joy to read? Maybe we're starving for good sci-fi writers.
because once someone is taught bafflegab, it requires so much more effort to educate them in real science.
Dear Sir,
As a bafflegabbist with twenty years of experience in the field, I feel I must take offense at your derision of bafflegabbery. I can assure you that it is a sound science, the rigor of which rivals that of phrenology, homeopathy, and sociology. Quite contrary to your implication, students of bafflegab are well prepared to embark on careers in "real science," including such diverse fields as dowsing, astral studies, and string theory. Many have been quite successful in the upper echelons of government.
Finally, your comments clearly indicate your ignorance of bafflegabbery, and of the debt you owe to the astonishing advances by those toiling daily to further our knowledge of the subject. Where do you think perpetual motion was developed? It certainly did not come from the creatures dwelling in the hollow Earth, although I will admit they helped a great deal with cold fusion. The technological advances due to bafflegabs the world over cannot be denied, and I think our disproof of special relativity speaks for itself.
I hope that you will reconsider your bigoted, vile position on baffelgab. It would be a shame if the Illuminati had to destroy you with their orbiting lasers.
Sincerely, Dr. Magnus Sungam, PhD University of The High Desert
If the govt.just wants to create jobs, they can hire a million goons to destroy stuff and hire another million people to rebuild stuff - boom, 2 million jobs created.
Who cares? I doubt that there are many lamps priced for the average consumer that are designed to last even that long. Not to mention style concerns.
There are two very real problems with a spring powered device, however. One is safety. The spring and cranking mechanism would have to be enclosed with a material strong enough to withstand the backlash when one of them breaks. Second, a (real life) spring has a nonlinear tension over it's travel, so the light will get dim before the spring has gone the full distance it can go.
I don't think those are deal breakers, but they make the device more complex than the gravity lamp.
Slashdot Mirror
The New York Jets, Joan Jett, Jet The Band, and Jet's Pizza are also not jets. Jet Blue and The Jetsons are under review. Jet Clampett is a misspelling, and Jethro Tull doesn't understand the question.
Are we finished here?
Since most journals are still published on paper or PDF, with editors who want a consistent look, yes it does matter. More importantly, it's very hard to make complex equations in Word that are numbered correctly. Nobody will cite your paper if they can't read the equations.
Well, users should want it. It's not just about having one password, but also aggregating all your personal data into an account that you control and can easily share between sites. Unfortunately, most successful internet business models hinge on building and mining a silo of user data.
You're right though. Most people don't care about their data, and it's a minor hassle to create an account at every site du jour. Maybe when trustworthy authorities get involved with authenticating ID attributes (this person is allowed to buy alcohol, etc.) people will start to care about OpenID.
The problem I had with the ending of Snow Crash was an entire chapter of Hiro recapping the whole plot while he rode on his motorcycle (or something). It was a Scooby Doo ending, and it seems to be one of Stephenson's weak points as a writer. He just hasn't figured out how to handle plot exposition without having a long monologue. Even though he seems to have avoided putting the climax reveal in a monologue since Snow Crash, everything I've read by him has long sections where characters do almost nothing but lecture each other.
Also, you have to trust your compiler, which you *had* to get from someone else.
Nah, I wrote my own compiler directly in machine code. I didn't trust my keyboard manufacturer either, so I tapped out Morse code on a homemade key. I made the BIOS out of coconuts, but that was just because that douchebag Gilligan said it couldn't be done.
-Roy Hinkley
I certainly don't think KDE 4.0 was a mistake beyond calling it "4.0" which led a bunch of idiots to expect something "finished", and that despite the up-front warnings that it wasn't finished.
A bunch of idiots? Seriously? A release is a version that is complete with no known showstopper bugs. There is absolutely no reasonable excuse for the KDE team to have released what they had. They were nowhere near a release, and apparently still aren't. I don't think this was an eager, early release. I think this was a PR move to bring some attention back to the aging project, and the KDE team should be ashamed for deceiving the community.
We've been waiting for KDE 4 for years, and I think you're way out of line insulting people who were surprised to find that the long-awaited release was still missing many basic components.
Then why don't you write the chapter, and publish it in PDF on (your|a) website?
Because PDF's published on your website don't look as impressive on a CV as chapters contributed to a textbook. Most professors are fairly altruistic about dissemination of knowledge, but they still have to think of their careers.
Some institutions also have rules about what can be posted publicly. In my university, we're not allowed to post PDF's of introductory lab books that were written by the department, because the books are also sold in the university bookstore. The university is also fighting us about posting video lectures, so our administration is pretty backwards.
Research is not a commodity resource that can just be doled out to the most important projects. People initiate and work on projects that interest them and that match the skills in which they have the most expertise. Besides, this looks like a student project, maybe even for a class. There is probably nothing these people could have done in sixteen weeks to advance the state of user interfaces which have been active research topics for decades yet remain esoteric.
having a flag day
But see, you need a giant car so you can put more flags on it. If you have a tiny car with only one or two flags and "Support the troops" bumper stickers, how will people know how patriotic you are?
Our universal constants seem to produce more of these than most the other possible variations. There may be variations where "interesting" universes exist, but they are relatively rare combinations according to the models.
Here's the thing. These results are based on mathematical models which were derived from, and verified by, rough observations of our world. These models only worked if they contained a few fundamental constants (magic numbers?) which were determined by empirical data. As the models exist, they predict events in our world with amazing accuracy, but they only apply to our world. Let me make that clear. Physical models do not tell us about what this world is; rather, they give us tools to predict how things in this world will behave. There is no deeper truth contained in physical models, and as such they bear absolutely no meaning with regards to imaginary worlds. If there was a different universe it would almost certainly need it's own physics, worked out with observations in that world. Working out the consequences of the models with different fundamental constants might be a very interesting exercise in applied mathematics, but it is not physics. The fact that the models are so chaotic just means we need better models, not that our universe is somehow fantastically improbable. In fact, it is 100% likely to exist.
Disclaimer: I'm an experimental physicist, so I'm biased towards reality.
They aren't more evolved than you, they just have better phones in Japan.
If someone talks to a "technical support" help line, they should just shut up and do what support say, if they know it all then the why the heck did they call in the first place?
Maybe because Comcast has accidentally deactivated my cable modem every 6-8 weeks for the past year and I have to call to have it reactivated. I telecommute, so I'm losing work time until they fix it, then I've already been on hold for half an hour by the time I talk to someone, so I'm simply not in the mood for "which lights are blinking?" Not only that, but I know that they are reading from a script with no understanding when they tell me to unplug/replug the telephony modem which has a battery.
The worst part is that if I explain my problem, explain that I've tried everything on their checklist, and explain that this happens regularly, they listen politely then start right at the top of the damn list as if I hadn't said anything.
looking at my nice OS X GUI after looking at my Gnome desktop all day at work makes my eyes feel better.
Well there's your problem!
At least you didn't have to go down to the legal department. Apparently that's where they keep the Bloh Jaabs (tm).
Except that it doesn't. I use Linux mostly, but I work in a physics research lab that uses exclusively* macs. We still use several G4s with OS X 10.3.9. I can't install network printers on half of them, for no apparent reason. I can't mount them using firewire on newer macs. No error messages, it just stalls.
We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program). The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it). On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough. File sharing is a pain to figure out. I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software. Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar. I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them. I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless. I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case. The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work. My advisor was so used to this that he didn't even realize he was doing it. I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window. I can't close a window that is minimized without showing it.
These are just the bad things that I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of great things that I haven't mentioned. Maybe coming from Windows I would be blown away, but in Linux all this stuff actually just works, plus all the stuff that does work on the mac. If macs work for you, great. Just realize that you're paying a 100% tax for a pretty box, and stop telling me that it just works.
Note that I'm not claiming in any way that macs can't do something. All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work." I welcome any solutions to problems that I mentioned, except solutions that include spending money.
* The computers that run our expensive research equipment are windows. It's cheaper for them to give you a computer with windows than it is to develop a cross-platform solution.
I don't have a problem with airlines allowing cellphone usage, as long as they charge $25/hour for the convenience, or the same as whatever ridiculous rate they'll charge for WiFi. Personally, I'm waiting for the credit card slot on the emergency oxygen masks.
Orson Scott Card.
You're fired.
(Although I've been waiting too long for the final Alvin Maker book. Come on Orson!)
Wouldn't it be great if all the competing services would interoperate and then you could view anything from your choice of Web service, depending upon which interface you liked best?
You have thirty (30) seconds to explain how this adds value for the shareholder, then I'm calling security. Go.
It would be great, but the dominant player in a market doesn't usually have an incentive to stop vendor lock in practices, and the companies that would benefit from customer mobility don't have the leverage to force it upstream.
The biggest problem I had with Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver was Enoch Root. Sure, he's a neat character, but having Gandalf, Jr. show up with the perfect solution every time somebody gets stuck in a jam is just lame. Maybe Stephenson plans to explain Enoch Root someday, but to me it just looks like he can't plan a story without deus ex machina.
At least he seems to have gotten away from the Scooby Doo endings where the main character spends an entire chapter recapping the plot and tying up the loose ends.
Who could have guessed that such a flawed writer would be such a joy to read? Maybe we're starving for good sci-fi writers.
I do. It would go right next to the $40,000 FTIR on my desk. That's why you should have studied physics.
because once someone is taught bafflegab, it requires so much more effort to educate them in real science.
Dear Sir,
As a bafflegabbist with twenty years of experience in the field, I feel I must take offense at your derision of bafflegabbery. I can assure you that it is a sound science, the rigor of which rivals that of phrenology, homeopathy, and sociology. Quite contrary to your implication, students of bafflegab are well prepared to embark on careers in "real science," including such diverse fields as dowsing, astral studies, and string theory. Many have been quite successful in the upper echelons of government.
Finally, your comments clearly indicate your ignorance of bafflegabbery, and of the debt you owe to the astonishing advances by those toiling daily to further our knowledge of the subject. Where do you think perpetual motion was developed? It certainly did not come from the creatures dwelling in the hollow Earth, although I will admit they helped a great deal with cold fusion. The technological advances due to bafflegabs the world over cannot be denied, and I think our disproof of special relativity speaks for itself.
I hope that you will reconsider your bigoted, vile position on baffelgab. It would be a shame if the Illuminati had to destroy you with their orbiting lasers.
Sincerely,
Dr. Magnus Sungam, PhD
University of The High Desert
Physically staying 27 until I die from something other then natural causes.
I vote for asphyxiation by breasts.
No no, Satan honors his contracts.
If the govt.just wants to create jobs, they can hire a million goons to destroy stuff and hire another million people to rebuild stuff - boom, 2 million jobs created.
Apparently you don't keep up with the news.
wear out after 10-20 years
Who cares? I doubt that there are many lamps priced for the average consumer that are designed to last even that long. Not to mention style concerns.
There are two very real problems with a spring powered device, however. One is safety. The spring and cranking mechanism would have to be enclosed with a material strong enough to withstand the backlash when one of them breaks. Second, a (real life) spring has a nonlinear tension over it's travel, so the light will get dim before the spring has gone the full distance it can go.
I don't think those are deal breakers, but they make the device more complex than the gravity lamp.