Well, I don't know about you, but if one of my machines was rooted because of an unpatched vulnerability, I really wouldn't care at what level the vulnerability was - OS or application, the result is the same.
Furthermore, if a Linux distributor packages an application with their distro, then to my mind, they are responsible for it. If RedHat's apache has a remote root exploit, that's RedHat's look-out, just as for IIS and Microsoft. They have access to the source, they have had ample opportunity to audit it. By including the application, that implies they are happy with it.
Don't think that's fair? Think that there's too much stuff in the average distro to be able to check it all? Well, then, include less stuff - get it down to the point where you *can* check it all.
Speaking as a Physics graduate, I've never seen 10^12 used, except in old text books. Certianly in my course (graduated '97) billion was always10^9. I can't imagine that that's not the case here, too. (I'm in the UK, btw)
[Stupid slashcode, not allowing the sup tag - I thought this was a tech site...]
Just to address point 5, in what way is.net subscription-based?
Granted, my experience of.net is limited to development work using the.net Framework, but that is essentially just Microsoft's answer to Java and the JDK. There's absolutely nothing subscription-based about it, it's just a technology for developing software.
True, there was talk a while back about having web-enabled subscription software,which may have come under the blanket term of ".net stuff", but that's not what.net is really about.
While you're in there, have a quick look at the crash dump settings - iirc, default behaviour is to dump a log on crash anyway.
That said, I've used XP Pro on my home machine since late last year, and it's been fine, with very few crashes (all traceable to Creative's crappy NVidia-based drivers; I stick with the reference ones now)
That's true enough, but if you're designing an enterprise system, you're going to want to use whatever's best.
A more comprehensive set of tests may have shown that, in fact, Windows 2003 Server is best, at least ignoring cost, licensing, etc. Without making this "apples and oranges" comparison, you don't know.
I support open source as much as the next person, but I also support using the best tool for the job.
Two things. Firstly, in the majority of cases, that's simply not true. Remember that we're talking about serious business software here, not a small-time e-commerce website.
Secondly, even if it were true, so you hire two guys and they write it for you in a year. Cool. Or, you pay your money, get it now, and have someone spend a couple of weeks implementing it. You're up and running now, not in a year's time. That translates directly into increased earnings - after all, you're only doing this in the first place because it's going to improve your business.
The laws also benefit me. If people can't make a living producing creative works, then few will, thus reducing the amount available to me.
Copyright laws (as they were intended to be) benefit all; so everyone should pay.
(Yes, I'm ignoring the continual extensions to the term - but if more people knew what was going on, I suspect that such extensions would be harder to lobby for, which comes back to education...)
Judging from some of the comments and attitudes that are prevalent here, I think a lot of people need to be told what copyright is, and what it's supposed to do.
If nothing else, how can you possibly make an informed argument against something if you don't know exactly what you're arguing against? (Or for, for that matter)
I must say that the nature of ~ 80% of the posts here is completely misinformed crap!
You're being rather generous there.
I have a degree in Physics, and the amount of utter tripe regurgitated here whenever there's a science-related article is astounding and frankly upsetting. I'm not just talking about people getting subtle matters of cutting-edge stuff wrong - I mean fundamental misconceptions on the sort of stuff I learnt at school, let alone college or university.
Mind you, the same happens with programming-related stories. I've been a professional programmer for a little over four years, and was an amateur for a lot longer before that. The signal to noise ratio is much better than in science stories, but some of the misconceptions are still shocking.
It's got to the point that I barely do much more than skim the front page most days. A shame, really, as I've been here for quite a while, as my uid should tell you.
the hacker doesnâ(TM)t have a vested interest in whether the computer crashes
More to the point, they're not surrounded by people who have a vested interest in seeing that it doesn't.
Re:Something wrong with the numbers
on
C&W Bails Out
·
· Score: 1
The attitude that "its just a write-down, its no big deal" is just wrong.
Oh, I didn't say it wasn't a big deal - I just pointed out that it wasn't real cash that they'd lost.
I know only too well what the last couple of years has done to their share price. At the end of 2000, it was up around £15 a share. At its lowest point a few months ago, it was about 30p. Last time I checked (this morning), it was a little over £1.
One thing worth remembering, though, is that C&W didn't borrow any money to fund those purchases - they just burnt through (most of) what they had in the bank. In that sense, yes, they have lost money. The point I was making, though, is that they have not lost it in operating costs. They are in some trouble financially, but nowhere near as much as that £6bn figure makes it sound.
Re:Something wrong with the numbers
on
C&W Bails Out
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The £6bn loss includes write-downs on the values of some of their purchases; they haven't actually lost that much cash.
If the fee started at $1 after fifty years and doubled every 2-3 years after...then at 50 years it's $1, at 52 it's $2, at 54 it's $4, and so on. At 70 years, it's $1024 - still within the reach of an individual, if they really care.
And if they're not dead already. Increasing the fee in this manner might encourage companies to release works, but the original artist, in most cases, is going to be long past caring. Don't forget that that's 50 years after the creation of the work. Even if you're just 20 when you create it, you don't start paying until you're 70. By the time it hits $1k, you're 90 years old...
A "DVD screener" is a pre-release copy of a film sent to reviewers, etc on DVD. These are (of course) sometimes leaked - I've seen a copy of a DVD screener for the film "Ghost Ship".
It was normal DVD quality, but just the film with no extras, and every so often, the picture switched to black and white, and a message appeared across the bottom of the screen telling you to call a number if you'd rented or purchased it. It wasn't too annoying, but probably worth the rental fee to avoid.
As a scientist I assume you use VB for similiation
I sincerely hope not. One thing you absolutely need when running large number-crunching jobs is speed, and in that respect, VB simply doesn't cut it.
There's a reason why (as of a few years ago) most numerical simulation work in Physics was done in Fortran - it's fast. I have personally performed simulation runs that took a day or more to complete, on the best hardware available to me at the time, and that's strictly small-time stuff. Sure, this PC is a lot faster than that machine was, but as available power increases, so too does the complexity of the tasks performed. I would have loved to have cranked up some of my starting parameters (size, number of particles, etc), but couldn't, precisely because the runs were already taking so long.
Languages like VB, Java, etc are excellent in their place, but that place is not in performing serious number crunching.
an objects gravity is "centered" at it's center, thus the gravitational force at the center of the earth is infinite (r = 0)
No.
As others have pointed out, that formula is applicable only for "point masses", masses that are small compared to the distance r. As you move beneath the surface of the Earth, it can be shown (see any basic Physics text book) that the gravitational force drops off linearly with distance.
The gravitational force at the centre of any body is zero, not infinite.
A few years ago, I started a PhD in plasma physics, studying the high speed electron transport effects in short pulse, high intensity laser-plasma interactions. You are of course quite correct in your assertion that this sort of laser fires extremely brief pulses.
In plamsa physics, such a pulse is used to rapidly (read, near-instanteously) heat the surface of a target. The rapid heating causes the surface to ablate, which in turn causes the rest of the target to be compressed and heated. Get it right, and fusion ocurrs.
Quite apart from the physical reasons why you'd use a short pulse, the ultimate goal here is to create a viable method of producing energy. The more energy you put in at the start (by using a "long" laser pulse), the more you have to get out in the long run to make it worthwhile.
When I was still on my PhD (before I got bored and quit), we had a working z-pinch in the basement. As dramatic as it would have been for the lights to dim, there were no outward signs when it was fired:-)
Slashdot Mirror
How many of those are OS level?
Well, I don't know about you, but if one of my machines was rooted because of an unpatched vulnerability, I really wouldn't care at what level the vulnerability was - OS or application, the result is the same.
Furthermore, if a Linux distributor packages an application with their distro, then to my mind, they are responsible for it. If RedHat's apache has a remote root exploit, that's RedHat's look-out, just as for IIS and Microsoft. They have access to the source, they have had ample opportunity to audit it. By including the application, that implies they are happy with it.
Don't think that's fair? Think that there's too much stuff in the average distro to be able to check it all? Well, then, include less stuff - get it down to the point where you *can* check it all.
Even real artists have to eat, and pay bills.
They have to make any modifications to the driver public, not to the kernel.
;)
Reading comprehension, people, reading comprehension!
Speaking as a Physics graduate, I've never seen 10^12 used, except in old text books. Certianly in my course (graduated '97) billion was always10^9. I can't imagine that that's not the case here, too. (I'm in the UK, btw)
[Stupid slashcode, not allowing the sup tag - I thought this was a tech site...]
Just to address point 5, in what way is .net subscription-based?
.net is limited to development work using the .net Framework, but that is essentially just Microsoft's answer to Java and the JDK. There's absolutely nothing subscription-based about it, it's just a technology for developing software.
.net is really about.
Granted, my experience of
True, there was talk a while back about having web-enabled subscription software,which may have come under the blanket term of ".net stuff", but that's not what
Oh come on - if it doesn't explicitly tell you what platform it runs on, then you know it only runs on Windows on x86-based machines.
While you're in there, have a quick look at the crash dump settings - iirc, default behaviour is to dump a log on crash anyway.
That said, I've used XP Pro on my home machine since late last year, and it's been fine, with very few crashes (all traceable to Creative's crappy NVidia-based drivers; I stick with the reference ones now)
That's true enough, but if you're designing an enterprise system, you're going to want to use whatever's best.
A more comprehensive set of tests may have shown that, in fact, Windows 2003 Server is best, at least ignoring cost, licensing, etc. Without making this "apples and oranges" comparison, you don't know.
I support open source as much as the next person, but I also support using the best tool for the job.
Two things. Firstly, in the majority of cases, that's simply not true. Remember that we're talking about serious business software here, not a small-time e-commerce website.
Secondly, even if it were true, so you hire two guys and they write it for you in a year. Cool. Or, you pay your money, get it now, and have someone spend a couple of weeks implementing it. You're up and running now, not in a year's time. That translates directly into increased earnings - after all, you're only doing this in the first place because it's going to improve your business.
The laws also benefit me. If people can't make a living producing creative works, then few will, thus reducing the amount available to me.
Copyright laws (as they were intended to be) benefit all; so everyone should pay.
(Yes, I'm ignoring the continual extensions to the term - but if more people knew what was going on, I suspect that such extensions would be harder to lobby for, which comes back to education...)
And what exactly would be so bad about that?
Judging from some of the comments and attitudes that are prevalent here, I think a lot of people need to be told what copyright is, and what it's supposed to do.
If nothing else, how can you possibly make an informed argument against something if you don't know exactly what you're arguing against? (Or for, for that matter)
...and almost every component in it is based on the results of pure, academic research that was performed with no immediate apparent application.
The laser, for example, was a curiosity sat around in research labs for a decade or more before anyone thought of anything to do with it.
I must say that the nature of ~ 80% of the posts here is completely misinformed crap!
You're being rather generous there.
I have a degree in Physics, and the amount of utter tripe regurgitated here whenever there's a science-related article is astounding and frankly upsetting. I'm not just talking about people getting subtle matters of cutting-edge stuff wrong - I mean fundamental misconceptions on the sort of stuff I learnt at school, let alone college or university.
Mind you, the same happens with programming-related stories. I've been a professional programmer for a little over four years, and was an amateur for a lot longer before that. The signal to noise ratio is much better than in science stories, but some of the misconceptions are still shocking.
It's got to the point that I barely do much more than skim the front page most days. A shame, really, as I've been here for quite a while, as my uid should tell you.
the hacker doesnâ(TM)t have a vested interest in whether the computer crashes
More to the point, they're not surrounded by people who have a vested interest in seeing that it doesn't.
The attitude that "its just a write-down, its no big deal" is just wrong.
Oh, I didn't say it wasn't a big deal - I just pointed out that it wasn't real cash that they'd lost.
I know only too well what the last couple of years has done to their share price. At the end of 2000, it was up around £15 a share. At its lowest point a few months ago, it was about 30p. Last time I checked (this morning), it was a little over £1.
One thing worth remembering, though, is that C&W didn't borrow any money to fund those purchases - they just burnt through (most of) what they had in the bank. In that sense, yes, they have lost money. The point I was making, though, is that they have not lost it in operating costs. They are in some trouble financially, but nowhere near as much as that £6bn figure makes it sound.
The £6bn loss includes write-downs on the values of some of their purchases; they haven't actually lost that much cash.
If the fee started at $1 after fifty years and doubled every 2-3 years after ...then at 50 years it's $1, at 52 it's $2, at 54 it's $4, and so on. At 70 years, it's $1024 - still within the reach of an individual, if they really care.
And if they're not dead already. Increasing the fee in this manner might encourage companies to release works, but the original artist, in most cases, is going to be long past caring. Don't forget that that's 50 years after the creation of the work. Even if you're just 20 when you create it, you don't start paying until you're 70. By the time it hits $1k, you're 90 years old...
A "DVD screener" is a pre-release copy of a film sent to reviewers, etc on DVD. These are (of course) sometimes leaked - I've seen a copy of a DVD screener for the film "Ghost Ship".
It was normal DVD quality, but just the film with no extras, and every so often, the picture switched to black and white, and a message appeared across the bottom of the screen telling you to call a number if you'd rented or purchased it. It wasn't too annoying, but probably worth the rental fee to avoid.
Uncopyable install disks used to be the norm. Market pressure eventually forced a change.
You haven't bought many games recently, have you? I can't remember the last one that didn't use some form of copy prevention technology.
As a scientist I assume you use VB for similiation
I sincerely hope not. One thing you absolutely need when running large number-crunching jobs is speed, and in that respect, VB simply doesn't cut it.
There's a reason why (as of a few years ago) most numerical simulation work in Physics was done in Fortran - it's fast. I have personally performed simulation runs that took a day or more to complete, on the best hardware available to me at the time, and that's strictly small-time stuff. Sure, this PC is a lot faster than that machine was, but as available power increases, so too does the complexity of the tasks performed. I would have loved to have cranked up some of my starting parameters (size, number of particles, etc), but couldn't, precisely because the runs were already taking so long.
Languages like VB, Java, etc are excellent in their place, but that place is not in performing serious number crunching.
Because people moderate that sort of post without bothering to check to see if it's accurate or correct?
Besides, posts are frequently moderated up, then back down again as other people realise that they're not as good as people initially thought...
Not forgetting the almost inevitable huge final pay check and extremely healthy pension fund.
an objects gravity is "centered" at it's center, thus the gravitational force at the center of the earth is infinite (r = 0)
No.
As others have pointed out, that formula is applicable only for "point masses", masses that are small compared to the distance r. As you move beneath the surface of the Earth, it can be shown (see any basic Physics text book) that the gravitational force drops off linearly with distance.
The gravitational force at the centre of any body is zero, not infinite.
I think you'll find that saving the movies to your harddrive is a feature of the Pro version of the Quicktime player.
Indeed.
:-)
A few years ago, I started a PhD in plasma physics, studying the high speed electron transport effects in short pulse, high intensity laser-plasma interactions. You are of course quite correct in your assertion that this sort of laser fires extremely brief pulses.
In plamsa physics, such a pulse is used to rapidly (read, near-instanteously) heat the surface of a target. The rapid heating causes the surface to ablate, which in turn causes the rest of the target to be compressed and heated. Get it right, and fusion ocurrs.
Quite apart from the physical reasons why you'd use a short pulse, the ultimate goal here is to create a viable method of producing energy. The more energy you put in at the start (by using a "long" laser pulse), the more you have to get out in the long run to make it worthwhile.
When I was still on my PhD (before I got bored and quit), we had a working z-pinch in the basement. As dramatic as it would have been for the lights to dim, there were no outward signs when it was fired