Agreed theories about a companion star seem odd in that there is no evidence for a companion star, but twin stars are not "remarkably identical" -- the galaxy is populated by all sorts of mix-n-match stellar bodies.
Ahoy. FWIW: I have just posted a podcast on this article, with commentary on the actual published paper. Although I tried to get the scientists of record to answer some questions, I'm sorry to say they declined.
The interesting thing about this study is that the human brain cells appeared to behave much more like mouse brain cells than they did like human brain cells.
I just posted a podcast on this topic (see::overclocked), there are many reasons for Microsoft to split up, and many investors were disappointed when it didn't happen before.
There are good technical reasons to break up the company, as well as good financial reasons. Look where Microsoft's stock price has been for the past few years... right where it is now. Now Microsoft as a whole doesn't gain a whole lot from upward movement of the stock price, but it's very important to employee retention in a world where stock options are a key component of compensation, and Google's stock is going through the ceiling.
But simply decoupling the software groups from each other will enable each to move more quickly and more effectively.
So whether it's actually broken into distinct entities, or whether Microsoft simply tries to unravel the unhealthy entanglement between unrelated divisions, this has to be seen as a good move on Microsoft's part.
Whether that's good for the rest of us... hard to say.
And perhaps the most pertinent note: Courtney Love's speech was a broad evaluation of the recording industry, only one small part of which was a summary of how the math works against artist, which summary might or might not be originally derived from Albini's publication. Note that Albini's article is NOT about MP3, digital rights, or how technology might break the vicious circle that artists find themselves in -- it was about being f*cked over by the recording industry. For Love, that was simply a brief rationale for why artists should be interested in the technologies she discussed before Digital Hollywood.
Based on a slashdot note well over a year ago, I was intrigued with bilbo's product and bought one. A few notes:
it is a cheaply produced product that reeks of russian manufacture;
the set of drivers that came with it crashed my computer fiercly. fortunately, it just turned out that they sent me the wrong one, and i was able to download a fix from their website;
the pedals did not have consistent action -- one required a slightly different touch to get it to work right;
accordingly i never really trained my feet to make use of them. they are now junk in my tech junk room.
Now I have just placed an order for a twiddler -- found from a link off tiqit, separate note in slashdot today -- which I hope to receive in about two weeks. I'll let you know how it fares.
What particular discoveries are you talking about? Alternating Current? Transmission of information by radio waves? These are fundamental building blocks of modern technology, but they did not change the very ground rules of science itself. I did not mean to belittle your hero; I am a great fan of Tesla myself! Tesla had some astonishing discoveries, among them being the cordless transmission of electricity, that we have not successfully reinvented since he refused to use the US Patent office, and did not otherwise communicate his understanding.
But those discoveries that we have been able to use, while important, are just several among countless crucial steps on the road of technological advancement.
The following three comments really hit the nail on the head:
I hate the Windows and Mac GUIs precisely because they try to make things easy... and most of the things I do on a day-to-day basis are quite complicated.
The Linux philosophy is that easy things are quite hard...
The last thing we need is a zillion Windows programmers bringing their braindead user interfaces into Linux.
The first comment typefies the folks who use Linux, who developed Linux, and who continue to develop for Linux. I have no problem with it. Windows sucks -- to my way of thinking -- not because of it's user interface flaws, and of course it has them, but because it interferes with the complicated things I might want to do with my computer. We are in agreement.
The second comment is the reason why Linux is not (yet?) ready to serve as a single-user mainstream OS. I couldn't have put it better.
The third comment expresses the bigotry that disturbs, and saddes me.
Here are several questions that I answer yes to, and the command line bigots probably do not:
Do you want a great single-user operating system that your grandma and your six year old can both use?
Do you want an OS that allows the intricacies of the filesystem and the kernal to be hidden from the ignorant user, yet fully available to the advanced user?
Do you want an OS wherein the command line interface is strictly optional: the average user could quite happily never use it?
Do you want an OS that makes your computer as reliable and as useable as any other home appliance, yet still as open to modification as Linux is now?
Do you want your OS to boot quickly and cleanly?
I answer yes to these questions, and I think that Linux, or some variant of it, has the capacity to be that OS. Or maybe the new Mac OSX will. Or maybe it will be Be. I certainly don't think that anything coming out of Microsoft will ever do any of these things properly. Microsoft has a huge vulnerability because they have taken their customers for granted for too long. The fact is, their crappy OS and their increasinly crappy software are going to sink them. So who will step in to serve the common folk?
If it is to be Linux, we need the people who have been trained to take the average computer user into consideration.
But hey, maybe the bulk of Linux developers don't want that. That's cool. As I pointed out originally, Linux already does two out of three, and maybe that's all it should try to do.
Well, Tesla was true genius: the kind of mind that perceives past the confines of possible and impossible. However, also like true genius, he was unable to codify or communicate his most interesting discoveries in any significant way. Thus, he is a footnote in history.
Einstein articulated a theory that changed the way the world thinks about matter, about time, about space, about motion. It was a relatively simple shift that was due to happen, and Einstein was the first to rigorously "do the math." Nonetheless, this quite legitimately earned for him the status as celebrity scientist.
In our pop-culture media-driven world, this celebrity status also made his image universally known, and a graphic representation of "Advanced Science."
So rave about Tesla all you want, pretty boy, but Tesla didn't change the world, and quantum logic will.
When I first started reading the into blurb I thought it said a video screen had been shamelessly integrated into the game.
I wish they had the honesty to actually say that. (The word was seamlessly.) But pinball is about physics and mechanics. The "subject matter" of a pinball game is laughingly irrelevant, and all the best pinball designers know this. Sure, it should attract the eye across the game room -- that's why they usually feature impossibly busty women. But to become a popular machine, they have to have game elements that challenge the intuitions of kinetics and the skills of rhythm and timing that real pinball players have developed.
I see three main reasons to use a computer, and Linux scores two out of three:
1) As a hobby. People who are working on the developing Linux itself, or developing applications for Linux, or simply using Linux to learn and grow familiar with Unix in general are, to my way of thinking, doing so purely for the love of it. Nothing wrong with that, and it's an excellent vehicle.
2) As a server. The above group of people have made Linux a damn fine Unix flavor, one that competes in the marketplace.
3) As a personal computer. Linux is probably no worse than any other flavor of Unix, but when the command line bigots decry people who simply want to use a computer to get work done or to have fun in a trouble free way as imbeciles unworthy of consideration, they necessarily opt Linux out of contention in this area. I don't have to study to use a toaster. I don't have to study to use a playstation. I don't have to study to use a Mac. And, given the general familiarity with technology, I don't have to study to use Windows. What Windows programmers bring to the table are years of established intuitions about how to make Personal Computers can work for the person. It has nothing to do with the quality of their technical skills -- as many have pointed out there are excellent Windows programmers and there are dolts, and the dolts will get no further in the Linux community than they do anywhere else. But it has everything to do with their instincts about making applications that work for people.
Can Linux branch into this third functional area of computer use? It can if people who want to use it as a personal computer contribute toward the evolution of the OS and its apps. Not all people who think this way are Windows programmers, and not all Windows programmers think this way, but there is a very strong correlation.
Personally, I think there is a lot of potential for progress ahead of Linux here, and I welcome anyone who can genuinely contribute to making the Linux box a machine that will work for the single user.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed theories about a companion star seem odd in that there is no evidence for a companion star, but twin stars are not "remarkably identical" -- the galaxy is populated by all sorts of mix-n-match stellar bodies.
Ahoy. FWIW: I have just posted a podcast on this article, with commentary on the actual published paper. Although I tried to get the scientists of record to answer some questions, I'm sorry to say they declined.
The interesting thing about this study is that the human brain cells appeared to behave much more like mouse brain cells than they did like human brain cells.
The podcast is here: overclocked.libsyn.com.
I just posted a podcast on this topic (see ::overclocked), there are many reasons for Microsoft to split up, and many investors were disappointed when it didn't happen before.
There are good technical reasons to break up the company, as well as good financial reasons. Look where Microsoft's stock price has been for the past few years... right where it is now. Now Microsoft as a whole doesn't gain a whole lot from upward movement of the stock price, but it's very important to employee retention in a world where stock options are a key component of compensation, and Google's stock is going through the ceiling.
But simply decoupling the software groups from each other will enable each to move more quickly and more effectively.
So whether it's actually broken into distinct entities, or whether Microsoft simply tries to unravel the unhealthy entanglement between unrelated divisions, this has to be seen as a good move on Microsoft's part.
Whether that's good for the rest of us... hard to say.
And perhaps the most pertinent note: Courtney Love's speech was a broad evaluation of the recording industry, only one small part of which was a summary of how the math works against artist, which summary might or might not be originally derived from Albini's publication. Note that Albini's article is NOT about MP3, digital rights, or how technology might break the vicious circle that artists find themselves in -- it was about being f*cked over by the recording industry. For Love, that was simply a brief rationale for why artists should be interested in the technologies she discussed before Digital Hollywood.
Now I have just placed an order for a twiddler -- found from a link off tiqit, separate note in slashdot today -- which I hope to receive in about two weeks. I'll let you know how it fares.
You got that right! That was my answer to the question before I saw your post.
You've only got one life, don't waste it.
Um... calm down. Life is short enough as it is...
What particular discoveries are you talking about? Alternating Current? Transmission of information by radio waves? These are fundamental building blocks of modern technology, but they did not change the very ground rules of science itself. I did not mean to belittle your hero; I am a great fan of Tesla myself! Tesla had some astonishing discoveries, among them being the cordless transmission of electricity, that we have not successfully reinvented since he refused to use the US Patent office, and did not otherwise communicate his understanding.
But those discoveries that we have been able to use, while important, are just several among countless crucial steps on the road of technological advancement.
The following three comments really hit the nail on the head:
The first comment typefies the folks who use Linux, who developed Linux, and who continue to develop for Linux. I have no problem with it. Windows sucks -- to my way of thinking -- not because of it's user interface flaws, and of course it has them, but because it interferes with the complicated things I might want to do with my computer. We are in agreement.
The second comment is the reason why Linux is not (yet?) ready to serve as a single-user mainstream OS. I couldn't have put it better.
The third comment expresses the bigotry that disturbs, and saddes me.
Here are several questions that I answer yes to, and the command line bigots probably do not:
I answer yes to these questions, and I think that Linux, or some variant of it, has the capacity to be that OS. Or maybe the new Mac OSX will. Or maybe it will be Be. I certainly don't think that anything coming out of Microsoft will ever do any of these things properly. Microsoft has a huge vulnerability because they have taken their customers for granted for too long. The fact is, their crappy OS and their increasinly crappy software are going to sink them. So who will step in to serve the common folk?
If it is to be Linux, we need the people who have been trained to take the average computer user into consideration.
But hey, maybe the bulk of Linux developers don't want that. That's cool. As I pointed out originally, Linux already does two out of three, and maybe that's all it should try to do.
-bluejackWell, Tesla was true genius: the kind of mind that perceives past the confines of possible and impossible. However, also like true genius, he was unable to codify or communicate his most interesting discoveries in any significant way. Thus, he is a footnote in history.
Einstein articulated a theory that changed the way the world thinks about matter, about time, about space, about motion. It was a relatively simple shift that was due to happen, and Einstein was the first to rigorously "do the math." Nonetheless, this quite legitimately earned for him the status as celebrity scientist.
In our pop-culture media-driven world, this celebrity status also made his image universally known, and a graphic representation of "Advanced Science."
So rave about Tesla all you want, pretty boy, but Tesla didn't change the world, and quantum logic will.
When I first started reading the into blurb I thought it said a video screen had been shamelessly integrated into the game.
I wish they had the honesty to actually say that. (The word was seamlessly.) But pinball is about physics and mechanics. The "subject matter" of a pinball game is laughingly irrelevant, and all the best pinball designers know this. Sure, it should attract the eye across the game room -- that's why they usually feature impossibly busty women. But to become a popular machine, they have to have game elements that challenge the intuitions of kinetics and the skills of rhythm and timing that real pinball players have developed.
I see three main reasons to use a computer, and Linux scores two out of three:
1) As a hobby. People who are working on the developing Linux itself, or developing applications for Linux, or simply using Linux to learn and grow familiar with Unix in general are, to my way of thinking, doing so purely for the love of it. Nothing wrong with that, and it's an excellent vehicle.
2) As a server. The above group of people have made Linux a damn fine Unix flavor, one that competes in the marketplace.
3) As a personal computer. Linux is probably no worse than any other flavor of Unix, but when the command line bigots decry people who simply want to use a computer to get work done or to have fun in a trouble free way as imbeciles unworthy of consideration, they necessarily opt Linux out of contention in this area. I don't have to study to use a toaster. I don't have to study to use a playstation. I don't have to study to use a Mac. And, given the general familiarity with technology, I don't have to study to use Windows. What Windows programmers bring to the table are years of established intuitions about how to make Personal Computers can work for the person. It has nothing to do with the quality of their technical skills -- as many have pointed out there are excellent Windows programmers and there are dolts, and the dolts will get no further in the Linux community than they do anywhere else. But it has everything to do with their instincts about making applications that work for people.
Can Linux branch into this third functional area of computer use? It can if people who want to use it as a personal computer contribute toward the evolution of the OS and its apps. Not all people who think this way are Windows programmers, and not all Windows programmers think this way, but there is a very strong correlation.
Personally, I think there is a lot of potential for progress ahead of Linux here, and I welcome anyone who can genuinely contribute to making the Linux box a machine that will work for the single user.
-bluejack