There's nothing wrong with questioning the kid or examining the device - that's just common sense. But there is exactly zero reason to arrest the kid once it's clear that it's nothing but a blinking T-Shirt. It's not a "hoax device", it's a blinking T-shirt.
I think the point of arresting her was to determine if it was a bomb or a blinking light.
You may think so, but it doesn't fit the facts. If she was simply arrested to determine if it was a bomb or a blinking lights, why would she only be released on bail? Why did it take more than five minutes? Why was she charged with carrying a "hoax explosive device", when it clearly wasn't?
I do not know why they chose to arrest her, but I do know that it was not simply to "determine if it was a bomb or a blinking light".
That is to say, if we declare that anyone wearing a "suspicious" breadboard is obviously too stupid to be a terrorist, then logically the smart terrorists will start wearing breadboards to do their bombings.
You obviously haven't thought this through. This is endless recursion. Because you could just as well assume that even smarter terrorists start hiding their circuit boards again, because it's now declared that smart terrorists wear exposed breadboards. Now what will the even smarter terrorists do? And the smarter than even smarter terrorists?
Actually, people have researched issues like this (from a psychological perspective). And the result is that just about no-one is playing this game to a level deeper than 1 (the smart terrorists). Which is just as good, because it's a pile of shit anyway.
You do not find bombs by playing stupid mind-games, you find them by looking for them. Fine, if someone walks around with some leds on their hoodie, ask them what it is. You've done your job now. I'm sure even MIT-students should be able to dumb this down to the level of an average security guard? Having learned something new about both electronics and fashion, you should now leave the girl alone. If you instead choose to put her at gunpoint, then jail, charged with having a "hoax explosive device", you loose, unless it's Boston.
More importantly, the ratio of security guards to people who could potentially carry a bomb at an airport, is pretty low. I'm not against guards investigating if they find something they find suspicious, no matter how obvious it is to someone else that it's not a threat. But once something is determined not to be a threat, MOVE ON! Check the next passenger! Find another suspicious person! Don't waste your energy on harassing people with bad sense of fashion endlessly, instead, do what you are paid to do: find the terrorists! Thank you!
Hrmmmm.... looking at the "device" from the images on the link makes me think the police overreacted. Come on now.... holding her at gunpoint?
I disagree, I think that even to people involved with electronics it could look like something threatening. I think the police did their job and this Star Simpson person was pretty stupid to try that. Talk about no common sense.
I disagree. No matter how insane, lunatic, post-911 trigger-happy, gun-touting, soldier of fortune-reading, shoe-size iq, moron of an airport security guard you are, you should be able to recognize the following facts:
Circuit boards are not bombs
Even normal devices such as a cell-phone or playstation contains circuit boards.
Batteries are not bombs
Many devices contain batteries. Putting the battery on the outside does not make the device more dangerous.
Putty is not a bomb
Sure, a bomb can look like putty, but a bomb can also easily be made to look like something else, such as fruit, or a camera
A bomb can also be hidden inside something, such as a jacket or a bag
That's why we have bomb detectors
And it's also why it's usually better looking for people acting suspicious, than people carrying unusual items
Even if you see someone with a device you believe is suspicious, unless the person also acts very suspiciously (such as by running away when questioned) it is better to remain calm and investigate, rather than immediately put the person at gunpoint
Just because you have proven yourself to be an idiot, doesn't mean that you should be able to put just about anyone with IQ above their shoe-size in jail, for having a "hoax explosive device".
...unfortunately, I'm obviously wrong about all the above!
Moores law stays fixed because the industry invests enough research dollars--and not one dollar more-- to keep it at that rate. Their entire economic model is built on this.
What makes you say that? What about competition? If you knew "the other guys" were striving to exactly meet Moore's law, wouldn't you try to beat it?
Beating Moores law can only be done by the semiconductor companies, not the companies building end-user products from chips other companies creates. These companies know about Moores law, and start planning their products so that they know that at least one of the semiconductor companies will have a product that fits their need in e.g. 16 months. While having a chip available 3 months earlier is nice, it doesn't really matter much, since it (a) screws up planning, and (b) most likely is too expensive to use in a consumer product. Since the IT/technology-sector is often a relatively long chain of suppliers and buyers, selling to each other, untill you finally reach the end-user, Moores law is the yardstick that is used for all planning that needs to be done.
But right now your point does not hold simply because the size of the market is increasing and revenues are also increasing.
As long as you keep putting out better electronics components at a lower price, the market will keep increasing. As Moore's law continues to do its work, new products will be made possible, and because the people who makes new gadgets first tend to profit, the market will ensure that new products are made. Here is a chronological list of some of these gadgets that almost overnight went from unthinkable (or at least hugely expensive) to normal household items: the calculator, the PC, the gaming console, the luggable PC, the CD-player, the pocket gaming console, the mobile phone, the DVD-player, the laptop, the digital camera, the mp3-player, the GPS.
20 years ago, people didn't even see the "car entertainment system" as having a place in science fiction. Today you find them in the bargain bin in the supermarket. And it exists purely because of Moores law.
You're assuming that in 10 years they'll have made no optimizations to python?
Is that such an unreasonable assumption to have? There are plenty of ways to make python dramatically faster. None of them has happened so far, with excuses ranging from backwards compatibility, to user-friendliness, cleanness of code, or too much work. If you want a faster python, don't hold your breath, instead either switch language, or just be happy that even if python isn't particularly fast, at least it is particularly nice.
but even the currently less popular ruby is getting more than twice as fast at basically everything in the next version.
But Ruby is also slower than python, so all the obvious optimizations aren't all done yet. Besides, it's always dangerous to talk about the "next version". Where's parrot (for perl)?
No, Python is still going to be slow. And so is Ruby. A 50% or 100% increase in speed doesn't really matter much, when it's already orders of magnitude slower than C. That isn't necessarily bad, or even something that needs excuses. Throughout the history of computing (well, since the invention of Fortran and LISP), there has always been a market for nice slow languages, as well as ugly fast languages. This isn't unique to 2007, or 2017, and we don't need to invent reasons for slow languages to exist, such as concurrency (although there are slow languages invented with concurrency in mind too). Slow languages exist because they are useful. People will always keep inventing useful languages that are slow, and people will always continue to use something if it's useful, even if it's slow!
Are they rated for 20 nanometers, or 0.2 microns? Because they aren't the same. 1 micron is 1000 nanometers.
While this distinction seem important, it really isn't. Most people who are getting sick from bad water, is not getting sick from viruses. Most people getting sick from water aren't even getting sick from bacteria, they get sick from parasites. Furthermore, bacteria and viruses aren't usually swimming alone in the water. Usually they cling to each other, or to other particles, forming what is known as "biofilms". Thus, even a filter with larger pores will filter out most of the harmful organisms, even if the pores are much larger then the organisms you look out for.
A water filter that has smaller pores need more time (or pumping force) to filter the same amount of water. There is no silver bullet. Your filter is either good, or fast. You can't have both.
And saying your filter is "good for 4000 liter" is completely useless. Does it mean 4000 liters of already-clean tap-water, 4000 liter of somewhat unsafe water, or 4000 liter of disgusting feces? Does it mean that after 4000 liter the filter is completely clogged, or does it mean that after 4000 liter the filter is only half as effective in letting water through as when it was new? Besides, what maintenance does the filter need in order to be useful for 4000 liter? Can additional maintenance prolong the life even further?
But there's more. Chemical treatment (e.g. iodine) kills small organisms (e.g. viruses) fast, but takes a long time to kill the larger parasites. So by combining a large-pored (i.e. fast, cheap) filter with chemical treatment (2-5 drops of bleach per liter, or iodine pills if you don't like to taste bleach), you get the best of both worlds: fast and safe.
Do you really think the media thinks every hurricane is going to be the big one, or do you think it's more like they're putting in their predictions for this being the big one, so that if/when it does go big, they can say "see, you heard it here first, folks! we said it was gonna be big 6 months before it showed up on NOAA's radar..."?
None of the above. I believe they predict the worst, so that they can sell more newspapers (or get higher Nielsen-ratings, or whatever the media cares about these days).
The suits weren't skintight, they captured the moisture after evaporation.
Yes, but how would they offload the waste heat, since the warm moist air couldn't just blow away into the atmosphere?
Through a mechanism known as "this book is a work of fiction". Another option would be active cooling with fans and cooling ribs. I'm sure you could think of other options too.
Results 1 - 10 of about 558 for "apt-get hell". (0.30 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 16,000 for "rpm hell". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 208,000 for "dll hell". (0.07 seconds)
btw. see how much longer it takes google to even come up with the list for apt-get,.30 seconds! That proves something for sure.
Yeah. It proves that it's a little used search query, and therefore isn't already cached.
As for the results, it shows that there are more people who are writing on the Internet (directly, or through gateways to mailing-lists, forums, etc), who are complaining about "dll hell" then "apt-get hell". There are several ways to explain this:
The phrase "dll hell" is the oldest, most well-known, and original phrase. Someone who needs to complain about "rpm hell" or "apt-get hell" might also feel the need to explain their use of the phrase with reference to the well-known phrase "dll hell".
Linux users might bitch about their package management system in other ways than using the phrases "rpm hell" or "apt-get hell". If that's the case, it won't be counted in the above experiment. On the other hand, "dll hell" is an almost universally known phrase, and would almost always be present when a windows user bitches about it.
There are many more users of windows than linux. Among linux-users, there are more people using rpm-based than apt-get-based distributions.
Linux users have more pressing problems to bitch about than their package-management system. Even assuming (wrongly) that rpm or apt-get is seriously broken, a much larger problem for the majority of users is getting non-packaged software to work (multimedia, wireless internet, etc...)
Even if the dll-hell problem was solved by now (which it mostly is), lots of pages on the web seems to survive eternally (only not the stuff one needs). So lots of archives of mailing-lists from the 80's and 90's could contribute to some of the "dll hell" hits.
The "dll hell" problem is the biggest of the above-mentioned problems
Personally, I would go for a combination of all of the above.
And telling a newbie to go into BIOS setup to change settings is likely to scare the crap out of them.
And the newbie would be right.
Installing debian on a windows system should also scare the crap out of a newbie. He will loose all his old files (including family photos), even if this "win32-loader" allows him to keep his worthless bookmarks.
While I have nothing against trying to convince people to try linux, I have something against the people who will try just about anything, including outright lying, in order to make people switch.
I thought with Qt going into GPL Gnome reached version 3 and isnt able to login anymore, because the user dont has to anymore? I thought Gtk vs. Qt is over... and we all know what won?
Their brightests minds work in research. If all you need is to chunk out some software good enough for just about every business on earth to standardize on it, a run-of-the-mill code-monkey will do the job just fine. All you need is a monopoly.
The GP wasn't talking about taking away the "automaticness" of copyright. He was talking about taking away from "them" the right to copyright a work, as a natural response to "them" wanting to take away "our" right to fair use.
But to get back to your question: No. Patents must be examined by a patent examiner. Copyrights merely need registration, which should be quick and pain-free. Sure, all governments I know would probably use this as a golden opportunity to get some "free" taxation, but even governments have limits to their greediness.
Besides, almost anyone can afford a patent too. It's just that for most people, it's useless to own a patent. What you really need to get money from your invention is a business idea (a good one too), and stamina to carry it out. The patent may help you in this quest, but by itself, it's pretty worthless.
Sure it can. The christian God, being that he is almighty, or even all-knowing, is a logical impossibility. So in order to have a God that is not a contradiction in terms, you would have to settle for this description: someone very powerful, and who has a lot of knowledge. Even that isn't good enough. Most christians also believe God loves everyone. Well, if he's so powerful, and knows so much, why isn't he protecting us more from evil? So again we have to reduce a bit, and choose one or more of the following alternatives: God doesn't know much about our suffering, he is powerless to reduce it, or he just doesn't care much about us.
What remains is a concept so far removed from what most christians believe in, that I believe I've already made my case. Only by replacing logic with faith, can christians continue to believe in God, but in that case, why are you asking for proof?
Any battery will explode if a serious enough malfunction occurs, the question is what you consider "serious".
Batteries are typically used in portable devices. Thus they can never be 100% protected from damage. It would be pretty bad if the batteries in you ipod in your pocket decided to explode because of the impact you got in a car crash. Sure, car crashes are bad for you, but explosions even worse, at least when they're next to your skin.
I therefore suggest the following two tests for battery safety (for now):
Severely damage the casing (such as by driving a nail through it, or subjecting it to an anvil and a sledgehammer for a few hundred blows). If it catches fire, explodes, or leaks significantly dangerous substances to hospitalize you if exposed, it's dangerous
Hold the battery in an open flame for at least 10 minutes. If it explodes, it's dangerous.
That's what I mean by saying energy density is dangerous. Modern batteries contain so much energy that it's very hard to imagine something that wouldn't fail these two tests. And even if you protect them by a very solid shell, you're still going to get worst case once in a while. I'm not saying that we should go back to using alkalines only, but people should be aware of the dangers. Batteries are not toys anymore.
And for good reason. "Services" produces no significant value multiplier to time. Money (actual monetary value, not fiat paper) comes from value multipliers to time.
Nation of industry = wealth, nation of services = bankruptcy.
Quite the opposite, I would say. Services means specialization, and is therefore one of the cornerstones of civilization, without services, I even doubt money would exist.
When everybody is a farmer, everybody starves. To increase productivity, we need specialization. Specialization means that only some people farm, while other people can produce other goods (such as farming equipment), and someone can specialize in other services (selling and transporting farming equipment and farming products, give advice (e.g. veterinaries, agrologists), and so on. If it wasn't for services, there could be no other specialization, because everyone who was not a farmer would starve, unless he was able to sell his products directly to all the farmers in the vicinity.
Even then, everybody can't be an expert on everything. For a car mechanic, it's probably more time-efficient to fix a few extra cars, and pay a shoemaker to fix his shoes, than to attempt to do it himself. Similarly, it's probably more time-efficient for the shoemaker to fix a few more shoes, so he can afford to take his date to a nice restaurant, than to attempt to recreate the same culinary excellence and expensive atmosphere at home. And so on...
Anything that contains lots of energy in a small and compact volume, is dangerous. Explosives, and modern batteries, are really not that different. Both contain a huge amount of energy, in a comparatively small area. As battery technology improves, batteries will become even more dangerous.
With old heavy duty, or alkaline batteries, the worst that could happen was usually a leak. While annoying, it usually didn't pose any dangers. Modern batteries catch fire and explode. Eventually, we'll probably have a nuclear powerplant inside our mp3-players, at which time, they will hopefully include some additional safeguards, such as a fuse. But all modern batteries (lithium, lithium-ion, lithium-polymer) will explode or catch fire, if there's a serious enough malfunction.
I've never seen a manual with the windows CD that accompanies most new computers. They may have a short Getting Started guide, or something like that. But contrary to what you may think, that is not the same as a manual. A manual is something that includes everything you need to know. The Getting Started guide contains enough to get you started, as well as some marketing fluff.
And while MSDN is mainly targeted at developers, it also contains lots of information useful to normal computer users that don't program. As far as I know, it's the closest thing to a manual for Windows that I've seen. At least from Microsoft.
Finally, if reading and editing text is so hard for normal computer users, how come even non-technical people like John C. Dvorak is able to write a new article every month? Actually, the Internet is flooded with people who are able to use a computer to read and write text to each other, but have failed to learn basic spelling. Given that that's the case, I can't see how you can consider it to be so hard for users to edit text. Text is a perfectly adequate medium that is easy to understand for anyone above the age of 8. We surely didn't leave the 286 because text was considered inadequate, we left it because more cost-effective alternatives appeared.
Wonderful way to configure a system! Instead of using the system itself, you open your browser and google it. No need for a manual anymore, I'll just google how to program my VCR (by completing circuits with various wires)! Excellent!
Uh, yeah, this is the 21st century. Computers haven't had manuals for decades. Tell me, where is your windows manual? On MSDN.com? Is it even useful compared to google? Anyway, what's wrong with google? (Also, I choose to ignore your absurdity of completing circuits with wires to program a VCR. While I agree most VCRs aren't easy to program, none that I know of require you to manually solder wires to do it, and anyway, it's not relevant to this discussion)
And those comments in the file will be oh so helpful when I can't remember where said file is located.
grep -r [comment]/etc
You haven't used Windows much; configuration options haven't really changed for quite a while. IIS4 is very similar to configuring IIS6 or 7 (although there are obviously new features in the newer versions).
True, but I have certainly used windows more than I would like. Fortunately (but unfortunately for this discussion), I have not used IIS. On the other hand, I can assure you that I prefer/etc to the registry.
Reminds me of my second year calculus class at university. The professor would start at the left side of the blackboard writing formulas and talking to the blackboard. As he moved to the right, he held the eraser in his left hand and would erase the formulas on the left. You only had the space between his two hands to read the formulas. Of course his body was in the middle which made it more challenging.
Sounds like you need some girls in your class. I was always annoyed by the girls who would write down everything the teacher would write on the blackboard. Only, instead of just writing it down, they used multiple colors, edited it for sanity, added extra illustrations, and probably added an index and a table of contents while they were at it. They would always yell whenever the teacher grabbed the eraser and moved towards the blackboard.
Anyway, with such a teacher as you describe here, they would probably be a necessity.
Damn. I think people don't listen to themselves sometimes. They get it into their heads that something is going to be hard, and so they won't ever try it out, even when it wouldn't be any harder than what they're doing now. Maybe it's the "Devil You Know" aspect, but I somehow doubt it.
People absolutely do not listen to themselves. I remember I overheard a customer in a small health-food shop once (most slashdot users probably know that health-food shops is the place they sell just about any kind of snake-oil elixirs to gullible customers). Anyway, here's the conversation he had with the cashier:
Customer: Ohh, [Product X], I've seen so many commercials for this so I believe it really works.
Cashier: Uhm, yeah
Customer: Yes, I've seen so many commercials for [Product X] that I really think it must work. Which size do you recommend?
Cashier: The largest gets you most pills per [money unit]
Customer: Ok.
I left the shop just shaking my head. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not gullible too, or that I'm not influenced by commercials, but this customer was fucking saying out loud, twice, that the reason he believed in the product, was the number of commercials he'd seen. Which pretty much proves that the speach center of the brain must somehow actively bypass the frontal lobe where analytical thought occurs.
I remember changing icon order or the way Windows Explorer was listing folder content and getting phones like "you broke my computer, now I need to reinstall Windows".
Shame on you. You shouldn't destroy your friends computers!
No it isn't. Linux configuration is a google away, and you can leave comments in the text-files so you remember what you changed. Windows configuration with the GUI always changes, so even if you used to know how to do it, you will always find that it now needs a completely different approach for no good reason, meaning that even google won't help much. And you can't leave comments in the files you've changed.
Think of an old cartoon where you had a foreground plane, an action plane and a background plane. It may look something like that, but of course, the real world has more in it than those three planes, so some things won't be in focus.
How many "planes" the real world consists of is irrelevant. Unless you're doing extreme close-ups, using tele lenses, or wide-aperture light-sensitive lenses, a small, fixed number of films for a small fixed number of "planes" will be just fine. Remember, a normal, cheap camera, such as a disposable one, usually has fixed focus, and the pictures are still ok. And even in the few cases that you can't make it work, when you have the budget of a big-time movie, you can certainly fix those with digital effects, if you don't just change the script instead.
Slashdot Mirror
You may think so, but it doesn't fit the facts. If she was simply arrested to determine if it was a bomb or a blinking lights, why would she only be released on bail? Why did it take more than five minutes? Why was she charged with carrying a "hoax explosive device", when it clearly wasn't?
I do not know why they chose to arrest her, but I do know that it was not simply to "determine if it was a bomb or a blinking light".
You obviously haven't thought this through. This is endless recursion. Because you could just as well assume that even smarter terrorists start hiding their circuit boards again, because it's now declared that smart terrorists wear exposed breadboards. Now what will the even smarter terrorists do? And the smarter than even smarter terrorists?
Actually, people have researched issues like this (from a psychological perspective). And the result is that just about no-one is playing this game to a level deeper than 1 (the smart terrorists). Which is just as good, because it's a pile of shit anyway.
You do not find bombs by playing stupid mind-games, you find them by looking for them. Fine, if someone walks around with some leds on their hoodie, ask them what it is. You've done your job now. I'm sure even MIT-students should be able to dumb this down to the level of an average security guard? Having learned something new about both electronics and fashion, you should now leave the girl alone. If you instead choose to put her at gunpoint, then jail, charged with having a "hoax explosive device", you loose, unless it's Boston.
More importantly, the ratio of security guards to people who could potentially carry a bomb at an airport, is pretty low. I'm not against guards investigating if they find something they find suspicious, no matter how obvious it is to someone else that it's not a threat. But once something is determined not to be a threat, MOVE ON! Check the next passenger! Find another suspicious person! Don't waste your energy on harassing people with bad sense of fashion endlessly, instead, do what you are paid to do: find the terrorists! Thank you!
I disagree. No matter how insane, lunatic, post-911 trigger-happy, gun-touting, soldier of fortune-reading, shoe-size iq, moron of an airport security guard you are, you should be able to recognize the following facts:
Beating Moores law can only be done by the semiconductor companies, not the companies building end-user products from chips other companies creates. These companies know about Moores law, and start planning their products so that they know that at least one of the semiconductor companies will have a product that fits their need in e.g. 16 months. While having a chip available 3 months earlier is nice, it doesn't really matter much, since it (a) screws up planning, and (b) most likely is too expensive to use in a consumer product. Since the IT/technology-sector is often a relatively long chain of suppliers and buyers, selling to each other, untill you finally reach the end-user, Moores law is the yardstick that is used for all planning that needs to be done.
As long as you keep putting out better electronics components at a lower price, the market will keep increasing. As Moore's law continues to do its work, new products will be made possible, and because the people who makes new gadgets first tend to profit, the market will ensure that new products are made. Here is a chronological list of some of these gadgets that almost overnight went from unthinkable (or at least hugely expensive) to normal household items: the calculator, the PC, the gaming console, the luggable PC, the CD-player, the pocket gaming console, the mobile phone, the DVD-player, the laptop, the digital camera, the mp3-player, the GPS.
20 years ago, people didn't even see the "car entertainment system" as having a place in science fiction. Today you find them in the bargain bin in the supermarket. And it exists purely because of Moores law.
Is that such an unreasonable assumption to have? There are plenty of ways to make python dramatically faster. None of them has happened so far, with excuses ranging from backwards compatibility, to user-friendliness, cleanness of code, or too much work. If you want a faster python, don't hold your breath, instead either switch language, or just be happy that even if python isn't particularly fast, at least it is particularly nice.
But Ruby is also slower than python, so all the obvious optimizations aren't all done yet. Besides, it's always dangerous to talk about the "next version". Where's parrot (for perl)?
No, Python is still going to be slow. And so is Ruby. A 50% or 100% increase in speed doesn't really matter much, when it's already orders of magnitude slower than C. That isn't necessarily bad, or even something that needs excuses. Throughout the history of computing (well, since the invention of Fortran and LISP), there has always been a market for nice slow languages, as well as ugly fast languages. This isn't unique to 2007, or 2017, and we don't need to invent reasons for slow languages to exist, such as concurrency (although there are slow languages invented with concurrency in mind too). Slow languages exist because they are useful. People will always keep inventing useful languages that are slow, and people will always continue to use something if it's useful, even if it's slow!
While this distinction seem important, it really isn't. Most people who are getting sick from bad water, is not getting sick from viruses. Most people getting sick from water aren't even getting sick from bacteria, they get sick from parasites. Furthermore, bacteria and viruses aren't usually swimming alone in the water. Usually they cling to each other, or to other particles, forming what is known as "biofilms". Thus, even a filter with larger pores will filter out most of the harmful organisms, even if the pores are much larger then the organisms you look out for.
A water filter that has smaller pores need more time (or pumping force) to filter the same amount of water. There is no silver bullet. Your filter is either good, or fast. You can't have both.
And saying your filter is "good for 4000 liter" is completely useless. Does it mean 4000 liters of already-clean tap-water, 4000 liter of somewhat unsafe water, or 4000 liter of disgusting feces? Does it mean that after 4000 liter the filter is completely clogged, or does it mean that after 4000 liter the filter is only half as effective in letting water through as when it was new? Besides, what maintenance does the filter need in order to be useful for 4000 liter? Can additional maintenance prolong the life even further?
But there's more. Chemical treatment (e.g. iodine) kills small organisms (e.g. viruses) fast, but takes a long time to kill the larger parasites. So by combining a large-pored (i.e. fast, cheap) filter with chemical treatment (2-5 drops of bleach per liter, or iodine pills if you don't like to taste bleach), you get the best of both worlds: fast and safe.
None of the above. I believe they predict the worst, so that they can sell more newspapers (or get higher Nielsen-ratings, or whatever the media cares about these days).
Through a mechanism known as "this book is a work of fiction". Another option would be active cooling with fans and cooling ribs. I'm sure you could think of other options too.
Yeah. It proves that it's a little used search query, and therefore isn't already cached.
As for the results, it shows that there are more people who are writing on the Internet (directly, or through gateways to mailing-lists, forums, etc), who are complaining about "dll hell" then "apt-get hell". There are several ways to explain this:
Personally, I would go for a combination of all of the above.
And the newbie would be right.
Installing debian on a windows system should also scare the crap out of a newbie. He will loose all his old files (including family photos), even if this "win32-loader" allows him to keep his worthless bookmarks.
While I have nothing against trying to convince people to try linux, I have something against the people who will try just about anything, including outright lying, in order to make people switch.
Their brightests minds work in research. If all you need is to chunk out some software good enough for just about every business on earth to standardize on it, a run-of-the-mill code-monkey will do the job just fine. All you need is a monopoly.
The GP wasn't talking about taking away the "automaticness" of copyright. He was talking about taking away from "them" the right to copyright a work, as a natural response to "them" wanting to take away "our" right to fair use.
But to get back to your question: No. Patents must be examined by a patent examiner. Copyrights merely need registration, which should be quick and pain-free. Sure, all governments I know would probably use this as a golden opportunity to get some "free" taxation, but even governments have limits to their greediness.
Besides, almost anyone can afford a patent too. It's just that for most people, it's useless to own a patent. What you really need to get money from your invention is a business idea (a good one too), and stamina to carry it out. The patent may help you in this quest, but by itself, it's pretty worthless.
Sure it can. The christian God, being that he is almighty, or even all-knowing, is a logical impossibility. So in order to have a God that is not a contradiction in terms, you would have to settle for this description: someone very powerful, and who has a lot of knowledge. Even that isn't good enough. Most christians also believe God loves everyone. Well, if he's so powerful, and knows so much, why isn't he protecting us more from evil? So again we have to reduce a bit, and choose one or more of the following alternatives: God doesn't know much about our suffering, he is powerless to reduce it, or he just doesn't care much about us.
What remains is a concept so far removed from what most christians believe in, that I believe I've already made my case. Only by replacing logic with faith, can christians continue to believe in God, but in that case, why are you asking for proof?
Batteries are typically used in portable devices. Thus they can never be 100% protected from damage. It would be pretty bad if the batteries in you ipod in your pocket decided to explode because of the impact you got in a car crash. Sure, car crashes are bad for you, but explosions even worse, at least when they're next to your skin.
I therefore suggest the following two tests for battery safety (for now):
That's what I mean by saying energy density is dangerous. Modern batteries contain so much energy that it's very hard to imagine something that wouldn't fail these two tests. And even if you protect them by a very solid shell, you're still going to get worst case once in a while. I'm not saying that we should go back to using alkalines only, but people should be aware of the dangers. Batteries are not toys anymore.
Quite the opposite, I would say. Services means specialization, and is therefore one of the cornerstones of civilization, without services, I even doubt money would exist.
When everybody is a farmer, everybody starves. To increase productivity, we need specialization. Specialization means that only some people farm, while other people can produce other goods (such as farming equipment), and someone can specialize in other services (selling and transporting farming equipment and farming products, give advice (e.g. veterinaries, agrologists), and so on. If it wasn't for services, there could be no other specialization, because everyone who was not a farmer would starve, unless he was able to sell his products directly to all the farmers in the vicinity.
Even then, everybody can't be an expert on everything. For a car mechanic, it's probably more time-efficient to fix a few extra cars, and pay a shoemaker to fix his shoes, than to attempt to do it himself. Similarly, it's probably more time-efficient for the shoemaker to fix a few more shoes, so he can afford to take his date to a nice restaurant, than to attempt to recreate the same culinary excellence and expensive atmosphere at home. And so on...
Anything that contains lots of energy in a small and compact volume, is dangerous. Explosives, and modern batteries, are really not that different. Both contain a huge amount of energy, in a comparatively small area. As battery technology improves, batteries will become even more dangerous.
With old heavy duty, or alkaline batteries, the worst that could happen was usually a leak. While annoying, it usually didn't pose any dangers. Modern batteries catch fire and explode. Eventually, we'll probably have a nuclear powerplant inside our mp3-players, at which time, they will hopefully include some additional safeguards, such as a fuse. But all modern batteries (lithium, lithium-ion, lithium-polymer) will explode or catch fire, if there's a serious enough malfunction.
I've never seen a manual with the windows CD that accompanies most new computers. They may have a short Getting Started guide, or something like that. But contrary to what you may think, that is not the same as a manual. A manual is something that includes everything you need to know. The Getting Started guide contains enough to get you started, as well as some marketing fluff.
And while MSDN is mainly targeted at developers, it also contains lots of information useful to normal computer users that don't program. As far as I know, it's the closest thing to a manual for Windows that I've seen. At least from Microsoft.
Finally, if reading and editing text is so hard for normal computer users, how come even non-technical people like John C. Dvorak is able to write a new article every month? Actually, the Internet is flooded with people who are able to use a computer to read and write text to each other, but have failed to learn basic spelling. Given that that's the case, I can't see how you can consider it to be so hard for users to edit text. Text is a perfectly adequate medium that is easy to understand for anyone above the age of 8. We surely didn't leave the 286 because text was considered inadequate, we left it because more cost-effective alternatives appeared.
Uh, yeah, this is the 21st century. Computers haven't had manuals for decades. Tell me, where is your windows manual? On MSDN.com? Is it even useful compared to google? Anyway, what's wrong with google? (Also, I choose to ignore your absurdity of completing circuits with wires to program a VCR. While I agree most VCRs aren't easy to program, none that I know of require you to manually solder wires to do it, and anyway, it's not relevant to this discussion)
grep -r [comment] /etc
True, but I have certainly used windows more than I would like. Fortunately (but unfortunately for this discussion), I have not used IIS. On the other hand, I can assure you that I prefer /etc to the registry.
Sounds like you need some girls in your class. I was always annoyed by the girls who would write down everything the teacher would write on the blackboard. Only, instead of just writing it down, they used multiple colors, edited it for sanity, added extra illustrations, and probably added an index and a table of contents while they were at it. They would always yell whenever the teacher grabbed the eraser and moved towards the blackboard.
Anyway, with such a teacher as you describe here, they would probably be a necessity.
People absolutely do not listen to themselves. I remember I overheard a customer in a small health-food shop once (most slashdot users probably know that health-food shops is the place they sell just about any kind of snake-oil elixirs to gullible customers). Anyway, here's the conversation he had with the cashier:
Customer: Ohh, [Product X], I've seen so many commercials for this so I believe it really works.
Cashier: Uhm, yeah
Customer: Yes, I've seen so many commercials for [Product X] that I really think it must work. Which size do you recommend?
Cashier: The largest gets you most pills per [money unit]
Customer: Ok.
I left the shop just shaking my head. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not gullible too, or that I'm not influenced by commercials, but this customer was fucking saying out loud, twice, that the reason he believed in the product, was the number of commercials he'd seen. Which pretty much proves that the speach center of the brain must somehow actively bypass the frontal lobe where analytical thought occurs.
Shame on you. You shouldn't destroy your friends computers!
No it isn't. Linux configuration is a google away, and you can leave comments in the text-files so you remember what you changed. Windows configuration with the GUI always changes, so even if you used to know how to do it, you will always find that it now needs a completely different approach for no good reason, meaning that even google won't help much. And you can't leave comments in the files you've changed.
How many "planes" the real world consists of is irrelevant. Unless you're doing extreme close-ups, using tele lenses, or wide-aperture light-sensitive lenses, a small, fixed number of films for a small fixed number of "planes" will be just fine. Remember, a normal, cheap camera, such as a disposable one, usually has fixed focus, and the pictures are still ok. And even in the few cases that you can't make it work, when you have the budget of a big-time movie, you can certainly fix those with digital effects, if you don't just change the script instead.