There's an easy answer: Seismic and Geological apps. In other words, oil R&D runs HEAVILY on Solaris, and despite Landmark and GeoFrame trying to get their stuff moved to Linux, I don't see it happening too quickly.
Quite honestly, I don't think I'd want to switch to an all-Linux (or mostly-Linux) shop. Solaris is a far more well _designed_ platform to run a company on than Linux.
As for Oracle, well this is only the beginning. I can't imagine too many shops will switch over for another year or two, but when it happens--it'll happen in a big way.
As an amateur astronomer (or at least the son of an amateur astronomer), this is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. As someone who is trying to change the environment, it's even dearer. This brings my to my rant of the day:
Why do I look downtown at 3:00am, and see the 50 story high-rises lit up like bloody christmas trees??!!! There are more lights in one building like that than a square mile of low-density residential (i.e. houses), and with no one at all to see them except for the security guards, they're 90% turned on. That's the sort of thing that makes me wonder why I bother even trying.
Um, have you payed with optical fibre at all? It's entirely unlike thicknet (coax) cable.
It's quite possible to bend optical cable to that small of a diameter. On the other hand, they warn you about it endlessly. Only the chronically stupid should have to worry about this.
1) IBM already has the king of hearts and a pair of queens of spades on the table. Everyone can see that SCO is bluffing, unless they can pull triple tens or jacks.
2) SCO has bet everything they have. There's no getting out of it now. If they fold, they might as well just shoot themselves in the head at the table.
SCO has bluffed garbage, and nobody backed down from them. They're up shit creek with nowhere left to paddle.
Hmm. I thought the W2k cert. was comparable to a B1 level. I could be wrong though. Trusted Solaris was actually given a B1 before the CC levels were formalised. RBAC is a part of Solaris, and a mandatory part of Trusted Solaris. (In fact, it's an effective replacement for the root user.)
People said that about speakers too. Heavier construction meant less vibration-induced distortion.
So one company poured concrete in the base of their speakers. Even after the reason for their weight became clear, people actually still believed that they were the best speakers for that very fact alone.
1) Sufficient octane rating (and remember that higher octane ONLY EVER HELPS YOU if you advance your timing, or you engine has computer-controlled advance)
2) Sufficient quality
Then hell yeah! I'm continually amazed by people who don't understand that higher octane doesn't make them go faster. I guess the take-home lesson is that people are morons.
Anecdote time. About 15 years ago (ack!), a friend of mine spent a summer sampling gas for the government, here in Alberta (Canada, folks). What she found was that it was very typical for a Shell station to get Esso gas delivered in a Husky truck. The tank drivers would fill up with whoever had gas nearby, and sell it as demands required, and the gas companies had worked out some formal agreements along those lines.
She also found that there was absolutely no practical difference between any refinerys' gas at a given octane rating, with the ONE exception of a certain company's leaded gas, which had an unacceptable level of particulates in it. (Leaded gas was still available to farmers only back then. Don't know about now)
So find the octane you need, put it in, and run it.
First of all in case you missed it: SuSE Linux running on specific IBM hardware is certified at EAL2. Win2000 was certified at the much higher EAL4, but only under some fairly restrictive circumstances.
Now realistically, EAL4 IS a restrictive certification! Trusted Solaris8 is EAL4 certified. Most default Unix installs might barely pass EAL2. What good is it then?
Read the C|Net article and you'll find that IBM is pursuing EAL3 and EAL4 for SuSE Linux next. That's a Good Thing, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is being able to sell to defense contractors for secure (but not secret or top-secret) level requirements.
Practically speaking though, the different levels, while increasingly restrictive, aren't a scale of security goodness. They serve different effective purposes. Do you WANT an EAL4 system on your desktop? Probably not. Do you want it in your server room? There's a good chance, yeah. Do you want an EAL7 system for anything at all? Unless you're the NSA, probably not. This is an OS designed from the ground up with peer review at every stage (architecture, design, implementation) and independent verification on top of that. It is utterly restrictive--you wouldn't be able to put a web browser on an EAL7 system (or more to the point, you wouldn't be allowed to write and install one for the system without breaking the certification). This is the software that runs the shuttle and nuclear bases.
So basically, let's quit this damned pissing match. EAL2 is good for some things, EAL4 for others, and so forth.
Stars may be few and far between, but they do exist. All I'm saying is that producers could probably make MORE money by making better movies with unknown actors who got paid a reasonable salary. (and laugh in the face of anyone who demanded $10M to make a movie).
As for the theatres, I didn't mean to imply that they were out to rip anyone off. I know how crappy of a deal they have, but if production costs were a tenth of what they currently are, then the reels would be cheaper to the theatres, and they could make a living on cheaper tickets and cheaper popcorn, and more people would go to the movies!
Look, I think it comes down to this: The movie industry seems to be working very hard at making themselves obsolete. Rather than fighting technology tooth and nail to avoid piracy, they would be better served by making themselves more attractive and relevant. If no one gives a shit about the crap movies that are getting made, no one will go to the movies--but they might download them if they have nothing better to do.
Too many industries are rotting from the inside, and trying hard to survive by fighting against all of the outside attacks, no matter how large or small they are.
First of all, you're looking at a really tiny handful of musicians. Count the number of musicians who make more than a few thousand dollars of profit, and you're into the range of about 25 people, maybe 50.
Secondly, even most of them don't really make all THAT much money. Britney Spears made millions--most of which will go pay off the advance she was given, as well as the LOAN from the label to make her CDs. Musicians--even the highest of the high--have to pay for their own studio costs, band costs, mixing costs, packaging, and promotion. When someone is made into a star, it's done so entirely on credit.
1) The MPAA would recoup its investment MUCH faster by encouraging people to come to the movies more often, and by reducing costs. How can they do this?
a) Reduce ticket prices. Lower tickets mean more movie-goers.
b) Quit paying the stars so fucking much money!!! Ben Affleck made TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS for Gigli, one of FOUR movies released this year that he starred in. In other words, he made roughly one THOUSAND times as much as a skilled professional with a post-secondary education. (Notice that the MPAA site doesn't link to any stars' opinions--just the grips and the stuntmen, making a thousandth as much as the stars)
c) QUIT MAKING MOVIES THAT SUCK BADLY!!!
How many times do you need to hear it? How many brainless sequels to brainless movies do you need to make before it sinks in that you SUCK, and that your movies SUCK?
Imagine this: A movie where stars are treated as skilled employees and paid roughly $200,000/year (hey, their careers aren't as long as some of ours--they deserve higher salaries for that), the writers are required to come up with original and innovative ideas to earn their pay, and the tickets are $5/seat, with affordable popcorn.
Why they might actually make a profit, and DESPITE all of the file sharing (that doesn't take away a single ticket sale), get people out to the movies.
As an aside, you might ask how does this NOT relate to the RIAA?
1) The RIAA actually is hurting (some) from filesharing. Most people are as happy with a burned MP3 as they are the original quality song, whereas nobody would seriously miss a good theathre movie just because they had a really crappy camcorder copy they can watch on their TV.
2) The artists don't get paid millions--they get paid SHIT. They get about a tenth as much as the tech staff, instead of a thousand times as much.
"4 out of 10 movies don't recoup their investment because they suck."
Correct.
"4 out of 10 movies are going to suck."
INCORRECT!!!
9 out of 10 movies are going to suck. 5 of those 9 will actually make a profit, despite that. (and the tenth, that one movie that doesn't suck, isn't likely at all to make back its costs)
You're right of course--at least to a certain point.:-)
One has to assume some base knowledge on the part of their reader, unless you're teaching completely basic knowledge. (This is true both within a given field, and in a general sense.) If you explain every single term, then you'll have to explain all the terms you used in your explanation, and suddenly you're a complete dictionary and University course rolled into one.
BUT, it's very important (and not always easy) to correctly judge that level of knowledge. It's hard to imagine that anyone on/. doesn't know what Linux is, and so we don't describe that term every time we use it. It's somewhat easier to imagine that not everyone knows what RPM is, and so we define it, right? Well, not necessarily. Again, context plays a role--this time, the very context of the article. If I was writing an article about the latest version of RPM, then I'd probably define it. If I was making a comment about RPM packages being available for the think I was writing about, then I probably wouldn't bother definining RPM since it's ancilliary information--it's not core to the primary understanding of the article.
Furthermore, there's the implied information that can help decide whether or not to define a term. If someone writes, "the latest version of GIMP is out! There are a lot of features the advanced graphics designers will appreciate" then I may not know what GIMP is, but I've got an idea that it's a package (or tool, or breadbag) for graphics design. If that tweaks my interest, then I can look farther.
Now having said all of this, I have to confess that I missed a HUGE clue at the very very very beginning of the article. The first word of the subject was "DEVELOPERS:" and I missed it (shame!).
Still, the point remains: Watch your posts, and make sure there's enough information for the _typical_ audience to understand _enough_ to make a decision about whether or not to investigate further.
"You probably have relatives who have complained about you using technical words to describe something to do with their computer, haven't you?"
Not really, no. However, part of my job is to make sure that people acceptably understand what I'm telling them, even if the details are beyond them. I make it a point of pride in helping anyone with computers that I avoid blinding them with the vernacular.
So maybe all that REALLY means is that I'm a bit touchy about the subject.:-)
The problem is the scale of the lawyer's cut. $48 million? One has to ask how many lawyers there were actually working on the case (i.e. real, hard work), what their expenses were, and what the (real) time put in was.
I'm willing to bet the end result is in excess of $300 net per man-hour of work. Consider that that's roughly FIVE TO TEN TIMES what most other highly skilled professions draw as a salary.
Do they deserve to be compensated? Of course! Just not to this extreme.
Oooh, an SCSA. That certainly gives you great authority on Sun's internal workings.
I'm a SCSA, a SCNA, and an enterprised-certified service engineer. My company is a Sun Strategic Partner. This means FUCK ALL as far as either technical knowledge (which it's supposed to indicate), or internal business knowledge.
So after my rant about "ooh, I'm an SCSA and I know all about Sun," let me proceed to some useful data.
1) Sun has seen some hard times. They know it, we know it, MS knows it.
2) For Sun to respond RIGHT NOW to some of these problems, they would have had to plan for it about six months to two years ago.
3) They have.
Watch for the new machines, likely to come out later this month. They will show you a degree of price/performance that you haven't seen from Sun in quite a while. After drooling for a while on those boxes, remember this final point:
Sun's core business is not in workstations; it's in mid-high end servers, and they are STOMPING IBM and HP in that market. (And Linux still isn't any more of a blip on the map than Microsoft--but they are being watched carefully.)
OK, this is just a minor vent here. Feel free to ignore it if you want.
I didn't understand a single bit of what the original post was saying. Why? Because there was no context!
Now because of it's nature, I don't expect to deeply comprehend every article on/.. I'm not a developer, so deep coding articles whiz past me. I don't have a problem with that--articles on biotech and/or legal intricacies most certainly go past other people who don't have the background in those fields.
But seriously, would it kill the poster to include the tiny little fact that gcj stands for "Gnu Compiler for Java?" Those words would have established a context for the article, and given TONS of information about what the remaining stuff was all about.
As I said, a minor rant--but a really common problem on/..
"In terms of health, people say marijuana does less damage than all that tar and chemicals they put in cigarettes. Some people say it's even less addictive than tobacco, though I would not know."
I can answer these two issues.
Pot has roughly twelve times (!!!) the tar of tobacco. That's bad!
On the other hand, here in Canada the worst of the chronic medical pot smokers aren't likely to go through a 'pack' of joints a day. One guy who is repeatedly on the news smokes I believe 4-6 joints/day. The net tar intake is probably the same as a relatively heavy (tobacco) smoker.
And THC is not addictive. Period. Nicotine is. Period. End of discussion.
Hmm. I'd take minor issue with the stronger beer statement. With some care, an imperial stout (typically 7+%) or a barleywine (8-13%!!! but ferociously difficult to make) are some of the finest beers out there.
But for most beers, most of the time, you're right.
Actually, nope. You're getting a history of their position over the time that the shutter is open, relative to the (changing) position of the camera over the same time.
That seems to be the crux of his argument. I don't thing it actually has any relevance to math or physics, though.
Install Gentoo without knowing what you're doing, and surprise surprise--it's not necessarily better.
Gentoo is NOT a distro for everyone, folks! It takes work, understanding, and patience to get it working, and working optimally. If you don't have the understanding or patience, or don't want to put the work into it, then stick with Debian, or some lesser distro.:-) (OK OK, some _other_ distro--I at least admit to being a Debian bigot:-)
Seriously, Gentoo reminds me of SunOS kernel tweaking in the bad old days. Someone would find a stat that approximately related to a given performance claim. Then they'd tune the kernel to improve that stat, without realising that
a) They'd broken the relationship between the stat and the performance it was supposed to be measuring, and
b) They'd slowed down the rest of the system horribly.
I would strongly expect that Gentoo is faster (maybe significantly, i.e. on the realm of 10-25%) than other distros under certain circumstances, most notably under very careful install and setup. However, the 'generic' defaults that RedHat and others come up with to address most of the population just aren't that bad.
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There's an easy answer: Seismic and Geological apps. In other words, oil R&D runs HEAVILY on Solaris, and despite Landmark and GeoFrame trying to get their stuff moved to Linux, I don't see it happening too quickly.
Quite honestly, I don't think I'd want to switch to an all-Linux (or mostly-Linux) shop. Solaris is a far more well _designed_ platform to run a company on than Linux.
As for Oracle, well this is only the beginning. I can't imagine too many shops will switch over for another year or two, but when it happens--it'll happen in a big way.
As an amateur astronomer (or at least the son of an amateur astronomer), this is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. As someone who is trying to change the environment, it's even dearer. This brings my to my rant of the day:
Why do I look downtown at 3:00am, and see the 50 story high-rises lit up like bloody christmas trees??!!! There are more lights in one building like that than a square mile of low-density residential (i.e. houses), and with no one at all to see them except for the security guards, they're 90% turned on. That's the sort of thing that makes me wonder why I bother even trying.
Um, have you payed with optical fibre at all? It's entirely unlike thicknet (coax) cable.
It's quite possible to bend optical cable to that small of a diameter. On the other hand, they warn you about it endlessly. Only the chronically stupid should have to worry about this.
You're forgetting two points in your card game.
1) IBM already has the king of hearts and a pair of queens of spades on the table. Everyone can see that SCO is bluffing, unless they can pull triple tens or jacks.
2) SCO has bet everything they have. There's no getting out of it now. If they fold, they might as well just shoot themselves in the head at the table.
SCO has bluffed garbage, and nobody backed down from them. They're up shit creek with nowhere left to paddle.
"...SCO is simply undermining its credibility..."
They have credibility??!!! Wow!
News to me. I've been defending them for a while, but I gave up three weeks ago. Now I'm gathering wood for the funeral pyre.
Hmm. I thought the W2k cert. was comparable to a B1 level. I could be wrong though. Trusted Solaris was actually given a B1 before the CC levels were formalised. RBAC is a part of Solaris, and a mandatory part of Trusted Solaris. (In fact, it's an effective replacement for the root user.)
For gods' sake man, take some damned responsibility for your actions!
Get back there and finish the job!
People said that about speakers too. Heavier construction meant less vibration-induced distortion.
So one company poured concrete in the base of their speakers. Even after the reason for their weight became clear, people actually still believed that they were the best speakers for that very fact alone.
Assuming...
1) Sufficient octane rating (and remember that higher octane ONLY EVER HELPS YOU if you advance your timing, or you engine has computer-controlled advance)
2) Sufficient quality
Then hell yeah! I'm continually amazed by people who don't understand that higher octane doesn't make them go faster. I guess the take-home lesson is that people are morons.
Anecdote time. About 15 years ago (ack!), a friend of mine spent a summer sampling gas for the government, here in Alberta (Canada, folks). What she found was that it was very typical for a Shell station to get Esso gas delivered in a Husky truck. The tank drivers would fill up with whoever had gas nearby, and sell it as demands required, and the gas companies had worked out some formal agreements along those lines.
She also found that there was absolutely no practical difference between any refinerys' gas at a given octane rating, with the ONE exception of a certain company's leaded gas, which had an unacceptable level of particulates in it. (Leaded gas was still available to farmers only back then. Don't know about now)
So find the octane you need, put it in, and run it.
First of all in case you missed it: SuSE Linux running on specific IBM hardware is certified at EAL2. Win2000 was certified at the much higher EAL4, but only under some fairly restrictive circumstances.
Now realistically, EAL4 IS a restrictive certification! Trusted Solaris8 is EAL4 certified. Most default Unix installs might barely pass EAL2. What good is it then?
Read the C|Net article and you'll find that IBM is pursuing EAL3 and EAL4 for SuSE Linux next. That's a Good Thing, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is being able to sell to defense contractors for secure (but not secret or top-secret) level requirements.
Practically speaking though, the different levels, while increasingly restrictive, aren't a scale of security goodness. They serve different effective purposes. Do you WANT an EAL4 system on your desktop? Probably not. Do you want it in your server room? There's a good chance, yeah. Do you want an EAL7 system for anything at all? Unless you're the NSA, probably not. This is an OS designed from the ground up with peer review at every stage (architecture, design, implementation) and independent verification on top of that. It is utterly restrictive--you wouldn't be able to put a web browser on an EAL7 system (or more to the point, you wouldn't be allowed to write and install one for the system without breaking the certification). This is the software that runs the shuttle and nuclear bases.
So basically, let's quit this damned pissing match. EAL2 is good for some things, EAL4 for others, and so forth.
Stars may be few and far between, but they do exist. All I'm saying is that producers could probably make MORE money by making better movies with unknown actors who got paid a reasonable salary. (and laugh in the face of anyone who demanded $10M to make a movie).
As for the theatres, I didn't mean to imply that they were out to rip anyone off. I know how crappy of a deal they have, but if production costs were a tenth of what they currently are, then the reels would be cheaper to the theatres, and they could make a living on cheaper tickets and cheaper popcorn, and more people would go to the movies!
Look, I think it comes down to this: The movie industry seems to be working very hard at making themselves obsolete. Rather than fighting technology tooth and nail to avoid piracy, they would be better served by making themselves more attractive and relevant. If no one gives a shit about the crap movies that are getting made, no one will go to the movies--but they might download them if they have nothing better to do.
Too many industries are rotting from the inside, and trying hard to survive by fighting against all of the outside attacks, no matter how large or small they are.
First of all, you're looking at a really tiny handful of musicians. Count the number of musicians who make more than a few thousand dollars of profit, and you're into the range of about 25 people, maybe 50.
Secondly, even most of them don't really make all THAT much money. Britney Spears made millions--most of which will go pay off the advance she was given, as well as the LOAN from the label to make her CDs. Musicians--even the highest of the high--have to pay for their own studio costs, band costs, mixing costs, packaging, and promotion. When someone is made into a star, it's done so entirely on credit.
OK, it's fairly simple stuff here.
1) The MPAA would recoup its investment MUCH faster by encouraging people to come to the movies more often, and by reducing costs. How can they do this?
a) Reduce ticket prices. Lower tickets mean more movie-goers.
b) Quit paying the stars so fucking much money!!! Ben Affleck made TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS for Gigli, one of FOUR movies released this year that he starred in. In other words, he made roughly one THOUSAND times as much as a skilled professional with a post-secondary education. (Notice that the MPAA site doesn't link to any stars' opinions--just the grips and the stuntmen, making a thousandth as much as the stars)
c) QUIT MAKING MOVIES THAT SUCK BADLY!!!
How many times do you need to hear it? How many brainless sequels to brainless movies do you need to make before it sinks in that you SUCK, and that your movies SUCK?
Imagine this: A movie where stars are treated as skilled employees and paid roughly $200,000/year (hey, their careers aren't as long as some of ours--they deserve higher salaries for that), the writers are required to come up with original and innovative ideas to earn their pay, and the tickets are $5/seat, with affordable popcorn.
Why they might actually make a profit, and DESPITE all of the file sharing (that doesn't take away a single ticket sale), get people out to the movies.
As an aside, you might ask how does this NOT relate to the RIAA?
1) The RIAA actually is hurting (some) from filesharing. Most people are as happy with a burned MP3 as they are the original quality song, whereas nobody would seriously miss a good theathre movie just because they had a really crappy camcorder copy they can watch on their TV.
2) The artists don't get paid millions--they get paid SHIT. They get about a tenth as much as the tech staff, instead of a thousand times as much.
Just a minor correction.
"4 out of 10 movies don't recoup their investment because they suck."
Correct.
"4 out of 10 movies are going to suck."
INCORRECT!!!
9 out of 10 movies are going to suck. 5 of those 9 will actually make a profit, despite that. (and the tenth, that one movie that doesn't suck, isn't likely at all to make back its costs)
You're right of course--at least to a certain point. :-)
/. doesn't know what Linux is, and so we don't describe that term every time we use it. It's somewhat easier to imagine that not everyone knows what RPM is, and so we define it, right? Well, not necessarily. Again, context plays a role--this time, the very context of the article. If I was writing an article about the latest version of RPM, then I'd probably define it. If I was making a comment about RPM packages being available for the think I was writing about, then I probably wouldn't bother definining RPM since it's ancilliary information--it's not core to the primary understanding of the article.
One has to assume some base knowledge on the part of their reader, unless you're teaching completely basic knowledge. (This is true both within a given field, and in a general sense.) If you explain every single term, then you'll have to explain all the terms you used in your explanation, and suddenly you're a complete dictionary and University course rolled into one.
BUT, it's very important (and not always easy) to correctly judge that level of knowledge. It's hard to imagine that anyone on
Furthermore, there's the implied information that can help decide whether or not to define a term. If someone writes, "the latest version of GIMP is out! There are a lot of features the advanced graphics designers will appreciate" then I may not know what GIMP is, but I've got an idea that it's a package (or tool, or breadbag) for graphics design. If that tweaks my interest, then I can look farther.
Now having said all of this, I have to confess that I missed a HUGE clue at the very very very beginning of the article. The first word of the subject was "DEVELOPERS:" and I missed it (shame!).
Still, the point remains: Watch your posts, and make sure there's enough information for the _typical_ audience to understand _enough_ to make a decision about whether or not to investigate further.
"You probably have relatives who have complained about you using technical words to describe something to do with their computer, haven't you?"
:-)
Not really, no. However, part of my job is to make sure that people acceptably understand what I'm telling them, even if the details are beyond them. I make it a point of pride in helping anyone with computers that I avoid blinding them with the vernacular.
So maybe all that REALLY means is that I'm a bit touchy about the subject.
Hmm.
The problem is the scale of the lawyer's cut. $48 million? One has to ask how many lawyers there were actually working on the case (i.e. real, hard work), what their expenses were, and what the (real) time put in was.
I'm willing to bet the end result is in excess of $300 net per man-hour of work. Consider that that's roughly FIVE TO TEN TIMES what most other highly skilled professions draw as a salary.
Do they deserve to be compensated? Of course! Just not to this extreme.
Oooh, an SCSA. That certainly gives you great authority on Sun's internal workings.
I'm a SCSA, a SCNA, and an enterprised-certified service engineer. My company is a Sun Strategic Partner. This means FUCK ALL as far as either technical knowledge (which it's supposed to indicate), or internal business knowledge.
So after my rant about "ooh, I'm an SCSA and I know all about Sun," let me proceed to some useful data.
1) Sun has seen some hard times. They know it, we know it, MS knows it.
2) For Sun to respond RIGHT NOW to some of these problems, they would have had to plan for it about six months to two years ago.
3) They have.
Watch for the new machines, likely to come out later this month. They will show you a degree of price/performance that you haven't seen from Sun in quite a while. After drooling for a while on those boxes, remember this final point:
Sun's core business is not in workstations; it's in mid-high end servers, and they are STOMPING IBM and HP in that market. (And Linux still isn't any more of a blip on the map than Microsoft--but they are being watched carefully.)
OK, this is just a minor vent here. Feel free to ignore it if you want.
/.. I'm not a developer, so deep coding articles whiz past me. I don't have a problem with that--articles on biotech and/or legal intricacies most certainly go past other people who don't have the background in those fields.
/..
I didn't understand a single bit of what the original post was saying. Why? Because there was no context!
Now because of it's nature, I don't expect to deeply comprehend every article on
But seriously, would it kill the poster to include the tiny little fact that gcj stands for "Gnu Compiler for Java?" Those words would have established a context for the article, and given TONS of information about what the remaining stuff was all about.
As I said, a minor rant--but a really common problem on
Don't count on it. Yes you do filter out some of the tar, but you also lose substantial amounts of THC, which leads you to...consume more!
"In terms of health, people say marijuana does less damage than all that tar and chemicals they put in cigarettes. Some people say it's even less addictive than tobacco, though I would not know."
I can answer these two issues.
Pot has roughly twelve times (!!!) the tar of tobacco. That's bad!
On the other hand, here in Canada the worst of the chronic medical pot smokers aren't likely to go through a 'pack' of joints a day. One guy who is repeatedly on the news smokes I believe 4-6 joints/day. The net tar intake is probably the same as a relatively heavy (tobacco) smoker.
And THC is not addictive. Period. Nicotine is. Period. End of discussion.
Hmm. I'd take minor issue with the stronger beer statement. With some care, an imperial stout (typically 7+%) or a barleywine (8-13%!!! but ferociously difficult to make) are some of the finest beers out there.
But for most beers, most of the time, you're right.
That's pretty much it. Unfortunately his reasoning seems to be that we can't sum to infinity in a practical sense. Well no shit, Sherlock!
Seriously, it's an interesting idea but it doesn't seem to be supported by anything beyond hand-waving and philosophy.
Actually, nope. You're getting a history of their position over the time that the shutter is open, relative to the (changing) position of the camera over the same time.
That seems to be the crux of his argument. I don't thing it actually has any relevance to math or physics, though.
Install Gentoo without knowing what you're doing, and surprise surprise--it's not necessarily better.
:-) (OK OK, some _other_ distro--I at least admit to being a Debian bigot :-)
Gentoo is NOT a distro for everyone, folks! It takes work, understanding, and patience to get it working, and working optimally. If you don't have the understanding or patience, or don't want to put the work into it, then stick with Debian, or some lesser distro.
Seriously, Gentoo reminds me of SunOS kernel tweaking in the bad old days. Someone would find a stat that approximately related to a given performance claim. Then they'd tune the kernel to improve that stat, without realising that
a) They'd broken the relationship between the stat and the performance it was supposed to be measuring, and
b) They'd slowed down the rest of the system horribly.
I would strongly expect that Gentoo is faster (maybe significantly, i.e. on the realm of 10-25%) than other distros under certain circumstances, most notably under very careful install and setup. However, the 'generic' defaults that RedHat and others come up with to address most of the population just aren't that bad.