Since scientific and engineering literature is almost always published in SI now, even not having the Yanks on board doesn't really matter to the rest of the world.
It's very annoying. If they announced it as a feature of Linux slashdot would have dozens of articles about why it is the Best Thing EVAR, but because MS done good it is just dismissed as RAM-hogging.
On the topic of corruption, I've used OO.o to rescue a friend's document that was corrupted. It was a research project write up, he saved it in only one place. He learnt a valuable lesson in backing up (with the half hour of ohshitohshitohshit) without any long term harm.
But yes, my production environment is a mix of Office 2003 and Office 2007, and I run Office 2008. Compatibility problems are rife, especially with equations.
Sexual selection is obviously a part of 'natural' selection.
Nonsense. Take a classic example; the peacock's tail. This has absolutely no purpose in terms of adapting the peacock to its environment (natural selection) but it does greatly help it attract a mate (sexual selection, in this case selective females).
The tail is in fact an outright hindrance to the peacock, but the fact that he can bear it at all suggests that he is a good individual to successfully father children. This is a kind of unfakeable demonstration of fitness. Arguably this would subordinate it to natural selection, but it's still a distinct process (would the tail have arisen if female peacocks weren't selective?).
Sexual selection, as well as a little kin selection, are possibly the cause of philanthropy in humans ("look how strong an individual I am, look what I can afford to do, have my babies!").
In short it's a very interesting field, and well worth reading up on if you can spare the time. It is only one of the many forms of selection which could potentially drive evolution (though not all are accepted fully e.g. group selection.)
Then when Joe-Idiot gets a virus, it's probably his own fault because he bypassed the safety barrier and thus you can throw him off if his IP starts spamming or trying to infect others.
Most ISP terms of service allow them to do this already. If they actually tried to enforce it, they wouldn't have any customers left.
How are you going to follow the receiving money? Suppose they are making a botnet. They're then likely to sell it on to organised crime, the Kremlin or others known to engage in DDoS attacks. This is not the kind of transaction published in the FT.
In addition, if the botnet is used, someone will probably trigger this botnet from a throwaway client hacked into an unsecured wireless network or just using a network at a coffee shop. Steal a netbook and load Linux on it, and no problem. Organised crime probably have their own anonymized distribution channels.
They could have a small app that's just a GUI front-end for a command line ftp request, with static links to a place to download the latest Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome etc.
The links wouldn't break because those companies would be foolish to let them.
If they were feeling really adventurous they could build a mini apt style application and fetch the latest list of browsers with their source ftps directly from MS (or an independent server if people are feeling paranoid) at first boot.
This would all be transparent to the user, so they just get a dialog asking which browser they'd want to use, possibly with a little spiel by the provider.
the media companies are not losing any income when someone pirates something
[citation needed]
Seriously, I don't believe this. I'd believe they're losing less than they claim. But taking the example that people who pirate spend as much or more than others do, this could be explained if they have a higher demand for the goods, which drives them to increase their piracy, but keep the same ratio of pirate-to-legitimate.
If you invent a better quality, speed, performance and reliability format and still it fails to *win the war* you failed.
You neglected a very important factor; cost. People aren't willing to pay arbitrary amounts for tech.
Which is not to say that you're wrong, it just gives a hint as to why you're right. Sony seems to by-and-large miss-judge the balance between quality and cost.
Wow, I don't know what you've done to your Vista but somehow or other you've monged it thouroughly.
1. Mine actually does this. In fact, the behaviour you suggest for default is...erm...the OS default. It's only if you click the "remember this choice" button that it changes. 2. They are slow, though that did improve witht he service pack. 3. I've shared arbitrary folders as writeable. I use it to mount my entire C drive from my Mac. 4. Or you could right-click->Properties->Sharing. Your call. You can't take the long way round and then blame MS for it. 5. I've never done this, so no comment. 6. This is the most annoying thing. Seems like every time you boot the computer you have to reboot it! But this is a flaw with Windows vs. Linux etc, not with Vista in specific. 7. Again, this is not something I've had a problem with (as in, my behaviour has never been restricted by it) but it may be true. 8. A lot of this was driven by the device manufacturers. See the Creative vs. Daniel_K fiasco, discussed here a while ago. 9. Most times I boot the PC I don't run into UAC. It does trigger too often (e.g. when changing user settings) but it doesn't really bug me much more than a privileges elevation in Linux. 10. I actually like the Network and Sharing center. It's a central interface for networking activities. I wish Ubuntu had one by default. 11&12. Yeah, but again, these are criticisms of Windows vs. *nix and the average consumer doesn't seem to care.
I've had no problems with Vista, or at least none that weren't caused by Creative.
True, but money in bank accounts is not necessarily dead. In the normal operation of the economy banks that money would be lent out and used. Money in stocks has also effectively be lent to businesses and used to fund operations.
Of course, the whole point of the current crisis is that this is no longer true as the banks are either too indebted or too spooked to lend.
You should see what we've done in the United Kingdom. Our resident financial wizards, the Brown/Darling axis, have decided to force our banks to borrow from the state at 12%. In addition to this, to...erm...diversify their books, the banks are to be forced by the FSA to buy government bonds at 4%.
The federal government of your United States is pumping money into failed business models. Consumers are far more likely to efficiently channel that money into the growth industries of the future than the government is.
Having said that, I don't actually believe the claimed economics of the bail-out. You can't spend your way out of a recession. Also, it is not desirable to tax that dollar as much as possible, as the whole point of the bail-out is to inject money into the real economy, and tax does not do this.
The only bits of Keynesianism that might work are pouring money into useful infrastructure that will help reduce costs of business growth. In America, however, your imbalanced Senate will ensure the money goes to building bridges to nowhere instead of revamping, for example, urban transport and communications networks, where the money is needed most.
There are further complications in a country as indebted as my home United Kingdom, where consumers have made the only rational choice and used bail-out money to pay off their debts. This does nothing to boost the economy in the short (spending) or long (infrastructure) term, though it will re-balance our economy a bit in the medium term.
People with no technology knowledge whatsoever use Facebook, and she probably has access to a computer somewhere else or else has still has the system from before Ubuntu connected.
Or alternatively, she could have set up the Facebook account and been unable to access it, with friends and relatives informing her of the mindless abuse she's been getting.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm British, albeit young, and I work in kilos.
But you're right, most Brits weigh themselves in stone. God knows what they are...
I'm British, living in London, so I'm quite aware of the situation here.
Though the pint has survived mostly because it's a nice amount of beer. The Irish use it too. Who knows, maybe it'll spread into the continent?
You mean the US, Myanmar and Libya?
Since scientific and engineering literature is almost always published in SI now, even not having the Yanks on board doesn't really matter to the rest of the world.
Vista=cosy?
It's very annoying. If they announced it as a feature of Linux slashdot would have dozens of articles about why it is the Best Thing EVAR, but because MS done good it is just dismissed as RAM-hogging.
Professors, especially ones in real subjects at good schools, tend to have very little time in my experience.
On the topic of corruption, I've used OO.o to rescue a friend's document that was corrupted. It was a research project write up, he saved it in only one place. He learnt a valuable lesson in backing up (with the half hour of ohshitohshitohshit) without any long term harm.
But yes, my production environment is a mix of Office 2003 and Office 2007, and I run Office 2008. Compatibility problems are rife, especially with equations.
Sexual selection is obviously a part of 'natural' selection.
Nonsense. Take a classic example; the peacock's tail. This has absolutely no purpose in terms of adapting the peacock to its environment (natural selection) but it does greatly help it attract a mate (sexual selection, in this case selective females).
The tail is in fact an outright hindrance to the peacock, but the fact that he can bear it at all suggests that he is a good individual to successfully father children. This is a kind of unfakeable demonstration of fitness. Arguably this would subordinate it to natural selection, but it's still a distinct process (would the tail have arisen if female peacocks weren't selective?).
Sexual selection, as well as a little kin selection, are possibly the cause of philanthropy in humans ("look how strong an individual I am, look what I can afford to do, have my babies!").
In short it's a very interesting field, and well worth reading up on if you can spare the time. It is only one of the many forms of selection which could potentially drive evolution (though not all are accepted fully e.g. group selection.)
It was also done as part of Children in Need one year here. All of the scratch and sniff slots smelt of mothballs.
Then when Joe-Idiot gets a virus, it's probably his own fault because he bypassed the safety barrier and thus you can throw him off if his IP starts spamming or trying to infect others.
Most ISP terms of service allow them to do this already. If they actually tried to enforce it, they wouldn't have any customers left.
How are you going to follow the receiving money? Suppose they are making a botnet. They're then likely to sell it on to organised crime, the Kremlin or others known to engage in DDoS attacks. This is not the kind of transaction published in the FT.
In addition, if the botnet is used, someone will probably trigger this botnet from a throwaway client hacked into an unsecured wireless network or just using a network at a coffee shop. Steal a netbook and load Linux on it, and no problem. Organised crime probably have their own anonymized distribution channels.
You forgot arguably the biggest driver of evolution; sexual selection.
But then, this is slashdot, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
Bush hasn't been found guilty either.
Leaving aside the fact that he probably should be. I'm not sure what of, but there has to be something on the statute books, right?
They could have a small app that's just a GUI front-end for a command line ftp request, with static links to a place to download the latest Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome etc.
The links wouldn't break because those companies would be foolish to let them.
If they were feeling really adventurous they could build a mini apt style application and fetch the latest list of browsers with their source ftps directly from MS (or an independent server if people are feeling paranoid) at first boot.
This would all be transparent to the user, so they just get a dialog asking which browser they'd want to use, possibly with a little spiel by the provider.
the media companies are not losing any income when someone pirates something
[citation needed]
Seriously, I don't believe this. I'd believe they're losing less than they claim. But taking the example that people who pirate spend as much or more than others do, this could be explained if they have a higher demand for the goods, which drives them to increase their piracy, but keep the same ratio of pirate-to-legitimate.
If you invent a better quality, speed, performance and reliability format and still it fails to *win the war* you failed.
You neglected a very important factor; cost. People aren't willing to pay arbitrary amounts for tech.
Which is not to say that you're wrong, it just gives a hint as to why you're right. Sony seems to by-and-large miss-judge the balance between quality and cost.
PAL VHS recorded a shorter time on the same length tape
Could it be that PAL has 625 lines instead of NTSCs 525 lines?
Stainless steel alloys haven't though.
Wow, I don't know what you've done to your Vista but somehow or other you've monged it thouroughly.
1. Mine actually does this. In fact, the behaviour you suggest for default is...erm...the OS default. It's only if you click the "remember this choice" button that it changes.
2. They are slow, though that did improve witht he service pack.
3. I've shared arbitrary folders as writeable. I use it to mount my entire C drive from my Mac.
4. Or you could right-click->Properties->Sharing. Your call. You can't take the long way round and then blame MS for it.
5. I've never done this, so no comment.
6. This is the most annoying thing. Seems like every time you boot the computer you have to reboot it! But this is a flaw with Windows vs. Linux etc, not with Vista in specific.
7. Again, this is not something I've had a problem with (as in, my behaviour has never been restricted by it) but it may be true.
8. A lot of this was driven by the device manufacturers. See the Creative vs. Daniel_K fiasco, discussed here a while ago.
9. Most times I boot the PC I don't run into UAC. It does trigger too often (e.g. when changing user settings) but it doesn't really bug me much more than a privileges elevation in Linux.
10. I actually like the Network and Sharing center. It's a central interface for networking activities. I wish Ubuntu had one by default.
11&12. Yeah, but again, these are criticisms of Windows vs. *nix and the average consumer doesn't seem to care.
I've had no problems with Vista, or at least none that weren't caused by Creative.
True, but money in bank accounts is not necessarily dead. In the normal operation of the economy banks that money would be lent out and used. Money in stocks has also effectively be lent to businesses and used to fund operations.
Of course, the whole point of the current crisis is that this is no longer true as the banks are either too indebted or too spooked to lend.
You should see what we've done in the United Kingdom. Our resident financial wizards, the Brown/Darling axis, have decided to force our banks to borrow from the state at 12%. In addition to this, to...erm...diversify their books, the banks are to be forced by the FSA to buy government bonds at 4%.
So our bail-out seems to be a large tax.
I agree with you, but for different reasons.
The federal government of your United States is pumping money into failed business models. Consumers are far more likely to efficiently channel that money into the growth industries of the future than the government is.
Having said that, I don't actually believe the claimed economics of the bail-out. You can't spend your way out of a recession. Also, it is not desirable to tax that dollar as much as possible, as the whole point of the bail-out is to inject money into the real economy, and tax does not do this.
The only bits of Keynesianism that might work are pouring money into useful infrastructure that will help reduce costs of business growth. In America, however, your imbalanced Senate will ensure the money goes to building bridges to nowhere instead of revamping, for example, urban transport and communications networks, where the money is needed most.
There are further complications in a country as indebted as my home United Kingdom, where consumers have made the only rational choice and used bail-out money to pay off their debts. This does nothing to boost the economy in the short (spending) or long (infrastructure) term, though it will re-balance our economy a bit in the medium term.
For example, with OSX, Linux etc. you can install (e.g.) Opera without having to use the bundled browser at all.
Although you have to be command-line-happy to do it on the Mac.
Maybe?
People with no technology knowledge whatsoever use Facebook, and she probably has access to a computer somewhere else or else has still has the system from before Ubuntu connected.
Or alternatively, she could have set up the Facebook account and been unable to access it, with friends and relatives informing her of the mindless abuse she's been getting.
I've never heard anyone suggest how to stand up for our rights/privacy!
Oppose Lords reform.