Hmm. What if I'm a member of two groups? Would it be possible to have one node act as a "trust broker" intermediary between two disparate groups of trusted individuals. If so, then this could even be a way to help eliminate spam.
Say Harold wants to send me a message. Harold is in the same group as Mary, who is in the same group as John who is in the same group as April, who is in my group. So I trust Harold through that chain of trust and so I can collaborate/accept e-mail from him through that chain.
I don't know enough people or have enough computers to test out how a long chain would work with this software.
the management team will never work again in corporate America
If only that were true. Unfortunately, private enterprise does a poor job of recognizing a loser manager when it sees one. Even if you take your company into the toilet, you've got experience and a bunch of connections to get that next job.
Junkyard Wars: The Video Game. Learn basic physics as you compete against an opponent to build a monster machine. Just don't forget to test your engine before competition.
Rough Science: The survivor challenge. Can you make a working record player out of just coconuts?
This show is as good as junkyard wars, just no competition. Watch as real scientists pretend to be the Professor and make radios, clocks, or soap from materials found on the island. It's on Discovery Science Channel.
Considering that a 100,000 word novel fits in around 300-350 k, you can get around 4 full size text novels on a floppy. That's more than most people will write in a lifetime. That's why I'm questioning the value of compressing files. And I'm not even necessarily questioning the value of a compressed file, I'm just saying that losing 8k out of the middle of a compressed file makes it useless, where as losing 8k out of the middle of a file that preserves the text let's you get at the rest of the text.
Here's the experiment I did. I zipped and lha'ed a web page. Then I opened the file up in a hex editor and replaced 16 characters out of the middle of the file to simulate a lost sector. Some utilities wouldn't decompress the files at all because they failed crc checks. Those that did had errors scattered throughout the document. While only 16 bytes had been altered in the file, there were easily a hundred errors in each file. Now instead of 16 bytes going bad in the original, imagine if 8k had gone bad. Much more than 8k would be altered.
Yes, your number 1 is exactly what I've been looking for. Store it uncompressed by default and if someone really wants to save a few kilobytes on a 10 page paper, give them the option.
Number 2 should actually be implemented at the operating system level. Most of the time, Windows will happily write to a bad sector of a floppy with no errors. It's only when the file is read back in that the errors become apparent. I haven't used bad floppies on a mac or linux box to know how they handle it.
An open office file is a zipped XML archive. This is a big advantage for OO over MS Office.
I forgot to ask: Why is it a big advantage? I will grant you that an uncompressed XML file is an advantage, but why is a zipped archive an advantage? Just because it shrinks the file? You can store 3 uncompressed text novels(100,000 words) on one floppy, more than most people will ever write in their lifetime, so space can't be much of an issue with text files.
In long documents, the edited text is usually in a separate part of the file. There's a small amount of binary data separating it. Yes, it does mean the user has to cut and paste and of course reapply all formatting, but the text is there and is better than nothing, which is what you get from OOo.
So stop using the most ubiquitous storage medium there is?
Telling the user to either save the file twice or use a different storage medium doesn't solve the underlying problem. Because text data is not stored as text, it becomes incredibly difficult to retrieve partial text data when the underlying medium is damaged. All media can become corrupt and damaged, floppy, hd, and yes even cdroms. Storing text data as anything other than text adds a layer of complexity to the recovery process.
It also makes it more difficult to view the file in another program. If I don't have something that can read a word 2000 file, I can always pop open any text editor and get the data without the formatting.
If I don't have a program that can read an openoffice file, I first have to know what compression is used, find a program that can uncompress it, then open it in a text editor. Again, that's completely unnecessary. I have yet to see a justifiable reason for compressing the data. My two little "I like to read slashdot" files came in at 4.5 kb for Open Office and 9 kb for word 2000. That's not enough difference to justify the space saving.
I know this is slightly offtopic, but at least if something happens to a Word document, you can open it in a basic text editor and get the text out of it. Have you looked at an OpenOffice file? I believe they are stored as compressed files which means that if one part of the file becomes corrupt, like a sector on a floppy, it becomes impossible to get the original text back.
Here an example of what I mean. I opened Word and Writer and made a simple file using the default settings. The file said, "I like to read slashdot." In the word file, in addition to all the binary date, you can actually see the words. In the writer document all you get is binary data and some xml info. There's no way to actually see the text in the document in the default install.
I work for a university and it is not uncommon for students to save their files on floppies. When those floppies go bad, I can get most of a file back for them, losing only the data in the bad sector. Sometimes they just lose a paragraph or two. This would be impossible with the default OpenOffice format. Just coming off exams, I saw this about 5 times in the past two weeks. Usually they have backups at home, but not always, and the stress can really get to some people.
Word's next version will probably have this same problem, based on what I've heard about file formats. Wordperfect has it too; they use a special character instead of the space character to separate words. You can get the text, but you have to do a lot of search and replaces on it to get the spaces back.
Knowledge can not be stolen, it can be gained and used.
Hmm. So taking something that isn't yours, doesn't belong to you, belongs to someone else and the rightful owner didn't want you to have it isn't theft?
It does. I plugged it in, windows xp found it immediately as a removable drive and I could add and remove files from it as easily as putting them on a floppy. No reboots, no installing software, it just worked.
Or do you mean that you should be able to just copy music files into a specific location and have it automatically find them? It might be able to do that, I was going to play around with it later.
I just got mine a couple of days ago. The MyFi has a range of about 6 feet, which as I understand it is a limit that has more to do with FCC rules than actual hardware. It works just fine in my car, provided I use the power adapter, which I'd do anyway on long trips. On short trips I just toss the unit in the backseat with no troubles. Our car has always had bad reception.
I have experienced none of the problems you did. The sync manager installed nicely, automatically brought the firmware up to date with no problems.
Yes, the sync interface is a little clunky. But not having anything to compare it to, I don't know if it is better or worse than other portables out there. After I used it a couple of times I got used to it.
There will be a usb 2.0 version out this summer and anyone purchasing now will get a free update to the new unit. As I understand it, they'll send you a fedex/ups mailer for the return.
And I will completely agree with you on customer service. I had a small problem signing up (I think a result of having two logins on their forums, but I'm not sure.) and their response to my e-mail was under 30 minutes. I made a joke about not wanting to order two by mistake and they immediately checked to make sure that was the case, something I didn't expect given how I phrased it.;) Tim at Neuros was just great to work with. I'd rather spend a little more and get great customer service.
Then the question becomes, why not just listen to it on the radio? People want to "own" the music to make a statement about their tastes. To identify themselves with the product.
1) Time shifting. The radio station may not play the song when you want to listen to it.
2) Having the song on your player will make a statement about your tastes. Take out your player and say "Hey, listen to this," and play the latest thing from Britney. 6 months later, who cares? You're on to either a different singer or a different song. So having the music at your fingertips will have the same cachet as having the album.
And furthermore, if people don't listen to their old music, what's the point in making it expire?
Well I never said Microsoft was logical.;) But seriously, one reason to have it expire is as a hedge against future technology which could break the encryption. What takes 2 months to factor today will take 2 minutes in 5 years. Or something like that.
The other reason for having it expire is that it locks you in to the Microsoft program. Really like that album? Then you'll be a source of revenue as long as you live.
It could also be Microsoft tossing a bone to the music industry, essentially saying to them "Come and use our system and we'll protect your rights. Ignore Apple, they let their users listen to your music forever." The expiration feature may not be for the end user, it may be for Microsoft's music partners. And we all know how logical the RIAA is.
I didn't say the average user was dumb. In many ways, quite the opposite. I think they'd be smart enough to realize that a lot of the music they buy is ephemeral in nature, so renting it for a few months is probably the better deal for them.
As far as nostalgia goes, yes, you are right. But I still that experience is more common among people who really, really care about their music than for the majority of people. As you point out, the album was originally purchased for a reason other than to get the big hit song on it.
Microsoft seems sure that consumers will find renting music more desirable than owning it. Personally, I think they're crazy
Don't think like an audiophile, think like the average person.;) Seriously, how often do most people listen to albums they bought as little as 5 years ago? Most music is bought by young people and it's flavor of the month. How many people who bought "Baby One More Time" still listen to it?
That's one of the reasons (poor college students being the other big one) that used cd stores spring up. We buy an album for one song, listen to that one song for 6 months then go on to the next flavor.
Audiophiles are different. We really want to own the music, but for most people this will be much better.
A lot of the technical issues that we care about simply don't matter to the average case.
Did anyone else using Firebird.6 have problems with the jhtml link? First it asked me what to use to open the file, so I told it firebird. This opened a new browser window instead of a new tab (I had middle clicked) and the new window was empty.
So I closed Firebird and went back to/. and clicked on the link again and then it opened just fine.
Yes, greater than or equal to twice the value of the previous coin is what you need for the greedy algorithm to work. So the suggested 1-3-9-30 would also work.
For *decades*. Two dollar bills have been around for a very long time. I remember one of my great grandfathers would always give us kids a two dollar bill for our birthday. Doesn't sound like much until you realize he had a lot of great-grandkids.
Exactly. Sears and JC Penney's charge you your state sales tax when you order from their catalog and have it delivered by UPS. They have for decades. How is ordering from a print catalog different from ordering from an electronic catalog?
Thanks for the explanation. I always forget it. So where would something like KDE or Gnome go? They help me interact with a multi-user system, either the computer itself or X, which is a client/server architecture. But they are also programs that help manage and alter a system in multi-user mode. If I compile them myself, should the go in local? As a newbie, I'm not sure how these distinctions are determined.
I'm not trying to be a troll or anything, but I think these questions help point out why many people think the file structure is complicated.
In Windowsland, it's a little easier. Everything thing that isn't windows should go in Program Files. Sure, the name isn't very descriptive, but it is one place. Unfortunately, Windows itself breaks this. Some little applications that ship with the os are in c:\windows or c:\winnt while others are under Program Files.
Same with shared libraries. There are really only 3 places a dll should go: in the program's directory with the executable, system, or system32. And system is being slowly phased out. I suppose there's soon be a system64 or something though.
I'm not completely stupid, but I found the linux file structure difficult to learn; I still have trouble knowing off the top of my head where everything is. find and locate are my friends.;) I also work more in windows, so that makes a big difference.
I am glad you said that, sir. A long HEX string to represent an Outlook "identity"? Why not just name it the name of the identity, or the numerical order in which it was created? For that matter; why not put the danmed thing with the rest of the users' "Application Data" for chrissake?
Yes, that's a real os problem there. Good thing Mozilla doesn't put all your information into a randomly named directory. Sheesh. (Ok, so it may not be random, but it's different on every machine I've ever used; I haven't bothered to look up their method of determining the name of that folder. You can change it; that's just the default. But that doesn't stop it from being a funny practice that needlessly complicates matters.)
Now we're fundamentally limited to 20 additional drives/partitions - including network mounted filesystems - in our "easy to use" filesystem design. Is it any wonder NTFS now has the functionality to mount volumes as paths?
Yeah, it's a good thing that Windows hasn't used unc names since at least win95 and NT 4. Oh, wait a minute, they have. Typing \\server\directory is sooo much more difficult than/mtn/server/directory.
Now we move on to "Program Files". What an oxymoron that is! Half the installed application gets dumped into \Windows\System anyways, which forces you to go through "DLL Hell" trying to uninstall any application.
Yeah, I hate it when an os has all these shared libraries living in different directories and programs require a specific library. I never know if it's in/bin,/sbin,/usr/bin,/usr/sbin,/opt/bin or some other place.
But wait - Win2k and XP have moved it to the oh-so-simple to find (not to mention making so much sense) location of "\Windows\Application Data\Username\My Documents".
So, have you ever used w2k and xp or have I just been trolled? I guess c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\my documents is too difficult? That's the default location and has been for several years.
So I guess my question is, did I just get trolled?
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Well, if each selection of 6 numbers had a 1 in 56 chance of winning the jackpot and that cost me a dollar, then spending 60 bucks pretty much guarantees that I'll win the jackpot. I could still lose of course, but such a loss would be unlikely.
I assumed people would realize that 1 ticket costs a buck.
if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
So if I told you there'd be a 2% chance of death everytime you drove your car, you'd drive to work every day? Odds are you'd be dead in under a year. Better take the bus.;)
If there were a two percent chnce yould die from taking cough syrup, would you tough out a sore throat or take the cough syrup. A plain sore throat is a minor irritation that goes away on its own compared to a small chance of death.
At the other end of the spectrum, if there were a 2% chance of death as a complication to a heart transplant, you'd laugh off the risk because without the heart transplant you're dead anyway.
Odds are about more than just pure percentages. You have to weigh the costs and the benefits.
Ok, so if the true destruction odds are 1:56.5, that means that over time, 1 out of every 56.5 flights the shuttle will be destroyed. That's a 1.7% chance of catastrophic failure. Because as we've seen, there are no survivors. Those actually seem a little high. What are the odds of other methods of space travel?
Odds must be taken in context and with the benefits and outcomes weighed against each other.
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
If I were told that my child had a 1 in 56.5 chance of getting a fatal genetic disease, I'd certainly think twice before have a child, and I'd definitely have any possible screening tests done.
In *your* opinion, the risk of death to people you don't know (probably) is low enough to justify letting them volunteer for a mission. Their spouses may think an almost 2% chance of death is far too high.
Regardless of the political motivation behind it, an examination does need to be made, and the risks adequately explored.
As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000. I had trouble getting an exact figure, but I think that's a conservative estimate of troop numbers and the 129 is an official DoD number from a couple of weeks ago. One place said there 110,000 troops around the Quwait border alone. So the chancces of getting killed in this latest ware were 1:1162. Pretty slim.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. What if I'm a member of two groups? Would it be possible to have one node act as a "trust broker" intermediary between two disparate groups of trusted individuals. If so, then this could even be a way to help eliminate spam.
Say Harold wants to send me a message. Harold is in the same group as Mary, who is in the same group as John who is in the same group as April, who is in my group. So I trust Harold through that chain of trust and so I can collaborate/accept e-mail from him through that chain.
I don't know enough people or have enough computers to test out how a long chain would work with this software.
the management team will never work again in corporate America
If only that were true. Unfortunately, private enterprise does a poor job of recognizing a loser manager when it sees one. Even if you take your company into the toilet, you've got experience and a bunch of connections to get that next job.
Junkyard Wars: The Video Game. Learn basic physics as you compete against an opponent to build a monster machine. Just don't forget to test your engine before competition.
Rough Science: The survivor challenge. Can you make a working record player out of just coconuts?
This show is as good as junkyard wars, just no competition. Watch as real scientists pretend to be the Professor and make radios, clocks, or soap from materials found on the island. It's on Discovery Science Channel.
Unfortunately, none of these games are real.
Considering that a 100,000 word novel fits in around 300-350 k, you can get around 4 full size text novels on a floppy. That's more than most people will write in a lifetime. That's why I'm questioning the value of compressing files. And I'm not even necessarily questioning the value of a compressed file, I'm just saying that losing 8k out of the middle of a compressed file makes it useless, where as losing 8k out of the middle of a file that preserves the text let's you get at the rest of the text.
Here's the experiment I did. I zipped and lha'ed a web page. Then I opened the file up in a hex editor and replaced 16 characters out of the middle of the file to simulate a lost sector. Some utilities wouldn't decompress the files at all because they failed crc checks. Those that did had errors scattered throughout the document. While only 16 bytes had been altered in the file, there were easily a hundred errors in each file. Now instead of 16 bytes going bad in the original, imagine if 8k had gone bad. Much more than 8k would be altered.
That's my only beef.
Cool. I got moderated as a troll because I had the audacity to question the effectiveness of the darling program in certain situations.
;)
I have finally arrived.
Yes, your number 1 is exactly what I've been looking for. Store it uncompressed by default and if someone really wants to save a few kilobytes on a 10 page paper, give them the option.
Number 2 should actually be implemented at the operating system level. Most of the time, Windows will happily write to a bad sector of a floppy with no errors. It's only when the file is read back in that the errors become apparent. I haven't used bad floppies on a mac or linux box to know how they handle it.
An open office file is a zipped XML archive. This is a big advantage for OO over MS Office.
I forgot to ask: Why is it a big advantage? I will grant you that an uncompressed XML file is an advantage, but why is a zipped archive an advantage? Just because it shrinks the file? You can store 3 uncompressed text novels(100,000 words) on one floppy, more than most people will ever write in their lifetime, so space can't be much of an issue with text files.
In long documents, the edited text is usually in a separate part of the file. There's a small amount of binary data separating it. Yes, it does mean the user has to cut and paste and of course reapply all formatting, but the text is there and is better than nothing, which is what you get from OOo.
So stop using the most ubiquitous storage medium there is?
Telling the user to either save the file twice or use a different storage medium doesn't solve the underlying problem. Because text data is not stored as text, it becomes incredibly difficult to retrieve partial text data when the underlying medium is damaged. All media can become corrupt and damaged, floppy, hd, and yes even cdroms. Storing text data as anything other than text adds a layer of complexity to the recovery process.
It also makes it more difficult to view the file in another program. If I don't have something that can read a word 2000 file, I can always pop open any text editor and get the data without the formatting.
If I don't have a program that can read an openoffice file, I first have to know what compression is used, find a program that can uncompress it, then open it in a text editor. Again, that's completely unnecessary. I have yet to see a justifiable reason for compressing the data. My two little "I like to read slashdot" files came in at 4.5 kb for Open Office and 9 kb for word 2000. That's not enough difference to justify the space saving.
I know this is slightly offtopic, but at least if something happens to a Word document, you can open it in a basic text editor and get the text out of it. Have you looked at an OpenOffice file? I believe they are stored as compressed files which means that if one part of the file becomes corrupt, like a sector on a floppy, it becomes impossible to get the original text back.
Here an example of what I mean. I opened Word and Writer and made a simple file using the default settings. The file said, "I like to read slashdot." In the word file, in addition to all the binary date, you can actually see the words. In the writer document all you get is binary data and some xml info. There's no way to actually see the text in the document in the default install.
I work for a university and it is not uncommon for students to save their files on floppies. When those floppies go bad, I can get most of a file back for them, losing only the data in the bad sector. Sometimes they just lose a paragraph or two. This would be impossible with the default OpenOffice format. Just coming off exams, I saw this about 5 times in the past two weeks. Usually they have backups at home, but not always, and the stress can really get to some people.
Word's next version will probably have this same problem, based on what I've heard about file formats. Wordperfect has it too; they use a special character instead of the space character to separate words. You can get the text, but you have to do a lot of search and replaces on it to get the spaces back.
Knowledge can not be stolen, it can be gained and used.
Hmm. So taking something that isn't yours, doesn't belong to you, belongs to someone else and the rightful owner didn't want you to have it isn't theft?
It does. I plugged it in, windows xp found it immediately as a removable drive and I could add and remove files from it as easily as putting them on a floppy. No reboots, no installing software, it just worked.
Or do you mean that you should be able to just copy music files into a specific location and have it automatically find them? It might be able to do that, I was going to play around with it later.
I just got mine a couple of days ago. The MyFi has a range of about 6 feet, which as I understand it is a limit that has more to do with FCC rules than actual hardware. It works just fine in my car, provided I use the power adapter, which I'd do anyway on long trips. On short trips I just toss the unit in the backseat with no troubles. Our car has always had bad reception.
;) Tim at Neuros was just great to work with. I'd rather spend a little more and get great customer service.
I have experienced none of the problems you did. The sync manager installed nicely, automatically brought the firmware up to date with no problems.
Yes, the sync interface is a little clunky. But not having anything to compare it to, I don't know if it is better or worse than other portables out there. After I used it a couple of times I got used to it.
There will be a usb 2.0 version out this summer and anyone purchasing now will get a free update to the new unit. As I understand it, they'll send you a fedex/ups mailer for the return.
And I will completely agree with you on customer service. I had a small problem signing up (I think a result of having two logins on their forums, but I'm not sure.) and their response to my e-mail was under 30 minutes. I made a joke about not wanting to order two by mistake and they immediately checked to make sure that was the case, something I didn't expect given how I phrased it.
Then the question becomes, why not just listen to it on the radio? People want to "own" the music to make a statement about their tastes. To identify themselves with the product.
;) But seriously, one reason to have it expire is as a hedge against future technology which could break the encryption. What takes 2 months to factor today will take 2 minutes in 5 years. Or something like that.
1) Time shifting. The radio station may not play the song when you want to listen to it.
2) Having the song on your player will make a statement about your tastes. Take out your player and say "Hey, listen to this," and play the latest thing from Britney. 6 months later, who cares? You're on to either a different singer or a different song. So having the music at your fingertips will have the same cachet as having the album.
And furthermore, if people don't listen to their old music, what's the point in making it expire?
Well I never said Microsoft was logical.
The other reason for having it expire is that it locks you in to the Microsoft program. Really like that album? Then you'll be a source of revenue as long as you live.
It could also be Microsoft tossing a bone to the music industry, essentially saying to them "Come and use our system and we'll protect your rights. Ignore Apple, they let their users listen to your music forever." The expiration feature may not be for the end user, it may be for Microsoft's music partners. And we all know how logical the RIAA is.
I didn't say the average user was dumb. In many ways, quite the opposite. I think they'd be smart enough to realize that a lot of the music they buy is ephemeral in nature, so renting it for a few months is probably the better deal for them.
As far as nostalgia goes, yes, you are right. But I still that experience is more common among people who really, really care about their music than for the majority of people. As you point out, the album was originally purchased for a reason other than to get the big hit song on it.
Microsoft seems sure that consumers will find renting music more desirable than owning it. Personally, I think they're crazy
;) Seriously, how often do most people listen to albums they bought as little as 5 years ago? Most music is bought by young people and it's flavor of the month. How many people who bought "Baby One More Time" still listen to it?
Don't think like an audiophile, think like the average person.
That's one of the reasons (poor college students being the other big one) that used cd stores spring up. We buy an album for one song, listen to that one song for 6 months then go on to the next flavor.
Audiophiles are different. We really want to own the music, but for most people this will be much better.
A lot of the technical issues that we care about simply don't matter to the average case.
Did anyone else using Firebird .6 have problems with the jhtml link? First it asked me what to use to open the file, so I told it firebird. This opened a new browser window instead of a new tab (I had middle clicked) and the new window was empty.
/. and clicked on the link again and then it opened just fine.
So I closed Firebird and went back to
Yes, greater than or equal to twice the value of the previous coin is what you need for the greedy algorithm to work. So the suggested 1-3-9-30 would also work.
Since when have the States had Twos?
For *decades*. Two dollar bills have been around for a very long time. I remember one of my great grandfathers would always give us kids a two dollar bill for our birthday. Doesn't sound like much until you realize he had a lot of great-grandkids.
Exactly. Sears and JC Penney's charge you your state sales tax when you order from their catalog and have it delivered by UPS. They have for decades. How is ordering from a print catalog different from ordering from an electronic catalog?
Thanks for the explanation. I always forget it. So where would something like KDE or Gnome go? They help me interact with a multi-user system, either the computer itself or X, which is a client/server architecture. But they are also programs that help manage and alter a system in multi-user mode. If I compile them myself, should the go in local? As a newbie, I'm not sure how these distinctions are determined.
;) I also work more in windows, so that makes a big difference.
I'm not trying to be a troll or anything, but I think these questions help point out why many people think the file structure is complicated.
In Windowsland, it's a little easier. Everything thing that isn't windows should go in Program Files. Sure, the name isn't very descriptive, but it is one place. Unfortunately, Windows itself breaks this. Some little applications that ship with the os are in c:\windows or c:\winnt while others are under Program Files.
Same with shared libraries. There are really only 3 places a dll should go: in the program's directory with the executable, system, or system32. And system is being slowly phased out. I suppose there's soon be a system64 or something though.
I'm not completely stupid, but I found the linux file structure difficult to learn; I still have trouble knowing off the top of my head where everything is. find and locate are my friends.
I am glad you said that, sir. A long HEX string to represent an Outlook "identity"? Why not just name it the name of the identity, or the numerical order in which it was created? For that matter; why not put the danmed thing with the rest of the users' "Application Data" for chrissake?
/mtn/server/directory.
/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /opt/bin or some other place.
Yes, that's a real os problem there. Good thing Mozilla doesn't put all your information into a randomly named directory. Sheesh. (Ok, so it may not be random, but it's different on every machine I've ever used; I haven't bothered to look up their method of determining the name of that folder. You can change it; that's just the default. But that doesn't stop it from being a funny practice that needlessly complicates matters.)
Now we're fundamentally limited to 20 additional drives/partitions - including network mounted filesystems - in our "easy to use" filesystem design. Is it any wonder NTFS now has the functionality to mount volumes as paths?
Yeah, it's a good thing that Windows hasn't used unc names since at least win95 and NT 4. Oh, wait a minute, they have. Typing \\server\directory is sooo much more difficult than
Now we move on to "Program Files". What an oxymoron that is! Half the installed application gets dumped into \Windows\System anyways, which forces you to go through "DLL Hell" trying to uninstall any application.
Yeah, I hate it when an os has all these shared libraries living in different directories and programs require a specific library. I never know if it's in
But wait - Win2k and XP have moved it to the oh-so-simple to find (not to mention making so much sense) location of "\Windows\Application Data\Username\My Documents".
So, have you ever used w2k and xp or have I just been trolled? I guess c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\my documents is too difficult? That's the default location and has been for several years.
So I guess my question is, did I just get trolled?
Read my original post. I was postulating a 2% chance of winning a jackpot, not a $10 prize.
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
;)
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Well, if each selection of 6 numbers had a 1 in 56 chance of winning the jackpot and that cost me a dollar, then spending 60 bucks pretty much guarantees that I'll win the jackpot. I could still lose of course, but such a loss would be unlikely.
I assumed people would realize that 1 ticket costs a buck.
if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
So if I told you there'd be a 2% chance of death everytime you drove your car, you'd drive to work every day? Odds are you'd be dead in under a year. Better take the bus.
If there were a two percent chnce yould die from taking cough syrup, would you tough out a sore throat or take the cough syrup. A plain sore throat is a minor irritation that goes away on its own compared to a small chance of death.
At the other end of the spectrum, if there were a 2% chance of death as a complication to a heart transplant, you'd laugh off the risk because without the heart transplant you're dead anyway.
Odds are about more than just pure percentages. You have to weigh the costs and the benefits.
Ok, so if the true destruction odds are 1:56.5, that means that over time, 1 out of every 56.5 flights the shuttle will be destroyed. That's a 1.7% chance of catastrophic failure. Because as we've seen, there are no survivors. Those actually seem a little high. What are the odds of other methods of space travel?
Odds must be taken in context and with the benefits and outcomes weighed against each other.
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
If I were told that my child had a 1 in 56.5 chance of getting a fatal genetic disease, I'd certainly think twice before have a child, and I'd definitely have any possible screening tests done.
In *your* opinion, the risk of death to people you don't know (probably) is low enough to justify letting them volunteer for a mission. Their spouses may think an almost 2% chance of death is far too high.
Regardless of the political motivation behind it, an examination does need to be made, and the risks adequately explored.
As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000. I had trouble getting an exact figure, but I think that's a conservative estimate of troop numbers and the 129 is an official DoD number from a couple of weeks ago. One place said there 110,000 troops around the Quwait border alone. So the chancces of getting killed in this latest ware were 1:1162. Pretty slim.