Taken together, it's entirely possible that Galileo would soon become uncontrollable and crash somewhere like Eurpoa, where we may one day send probes to search for life. Because Galileo was not sterilized before launch, it would contaminate wherever it ended up, and could cast doubt of any future test results from expeditions there.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
(BTW, they banned "food waste disposal" devices too. Like that has made any dent at all. Sure, you're house won't pass inspection with one in the kitchen, but there's nothing preventing installation post-inspection. [food waste mucks up the water treatment processes.])
This is insane. I bet they have an absolute fit whenever anyone flushes a toiletful of feces.
You can get FM modulators for use in car stereos, usually sold in order to install XM/Sirius receivers. They're a bit pricey ($50-$70 last time I checked) compared to the FM transmitters (I have the iRock with the DC power input and almost never have problems with interference). They're like the TV modulators you can get to hook up consoles and DVD players to older TVs. Pull out the deck, run the antenna into the modulator, then plug the modulator into the back of the deck. It may require some cutting of wires and power hookups though.
Of course this is only applicable if you want to plug it into your car, not J. Random Driver's car that you happen to be riding in.
You do realize that the 49G can operate in algebraic mode, don't you?
In fact, the documentation is written entirely assuming algebraic mode, enraging engineers and other professionals who had used HP calculators for years...
Now master/slave is the same, for most people it's a harmless technical term. But because IT pretty much is ibiquious now, (as apposed to 10 years ago), it's only a matter o time before someone (who might have been a slave) get's exposued to this terminology (be it through work/ learning about pc's). It's not that we should try and change or censor these things, it's about educating people on the differences.
You seem to be proposing a singularly one-sided type of "education". What's wrong with the idea that a former slave learning about PCs should be educated that the terminology is technically correct and not an endorsement of any social system?
Beleive it or not but use of gendered language is actually quite influencial on how we perceive attributes and sterotypes of technology to be. Quite alot of people have commented on the use of blatant sexual metaphors in egineering sciences, this is an old issue.
Whatever. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been largely discredited by now. The original research was fatally flawed, and it should be obvious that the Inuit, for example, likely specialized to the extent that they did about snow because they deal with it so much. Any group, especially a group focused on a technical discipline, will develop the needed terminology to get the job done.
As far as sexual metaphors go, the physical similarities are obvious, and I think the metalepsis is unavoidable. I don't see applicable sexual metaphors as offensive, myself. It's one of the basic facts about our biology and that of many other living things. I am bemused by the fact that many times it is those who assert the need for acceptance of and harmony with nature who are the very ones that complain about such terminology.
I wonder what you think about the fact that in the case of USB, for example, typically it is the cable which has male connectors on both ends, while the devices with female connectors merely use the cable (and by extension, the "male") to get the real work done, an exact role-reversal of the stereotype I assuming you are complaining about.
Engineers get their jobs done by making analogies, by figuring out ways to reuse components, and in the case of computers, often by literally inventing their own languages. Is such sapience only allowed when referring entirely to abstract and artificial constructs? Mnemonic devices are often endorsed by teachers and other authority figures; are they to be banned when one turns out to offend some random prude by its similarity to an unavoidable fact of anatomy? If this trend continues, any technical document will necessarily become a pleonastic mess.
I doubt calling an interface a trade center jack, because it contains 2 collapsable cicuits triggered, by a fast moving taliban controler, would receive the ambivilence that the master/slave connector does.
You are describing a specific event. The master-slave relationship is a concept which can apply equally to many situations. As many have pointed out, the Platonic universal of a master-slave relationship inheres perfectly in the IDE interface.
Really, this is the main problem with the proposal that we should sanitize language. Those who would be the sanitizers often suffer from a sort of ideological egotism, assuming that every term in every discipline refers to their own individual pet issues. Sorry, but they don't. Not always.
The master slave argument is bound to elicit pretty strong feeling in many subgroups, just because the majority of readers on slashdot are white males, does not mean that everyone shares the same ambivilence or distance from such issues as apartheid and racism.
I think that if you are concerned about societal effects, you would do well to concern yourself with the metonymy that children derive from existing social order at a very young age. Fix the division of labor and the social stereotypes will fix themselves. Whitewash America's tombs and they will still stink, and the odor will be represented in speech no matter how many circumlocutions are necessary (e.g., many express schadenfreude without ever knowing the word).
I started playing "Slouching Towards Bedlam" yesterday evening and I'm quite impressed. The way it handles computer interfaces is quite innovative although it might fall a tiny bit short of realistic.
So far I'm intrigued enough by the concept to try to beat the puzzle(s); other works of IF often seem far too contrived. My only annoyance is that some idiot posted a spoiler of what I'm guessing will be a major plot point on r.g.i-f with no warning. I've declared a personal moratorium on reading anything related to games I haven't played to my satisfaction yet.
(3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands;
I've found Dvorak to perform far better on the "alternating hands" metric. All the vowels are on the left-hand side, and 3/5ths of the consonants are on the right. I can get a nice little rhythm going, very trancelike.
Fry: So, you're telling me they broadcast commercials into peoples' dreams? Leela: Of course! Fry: But how is that possible? Prof.: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain, just like this liquid gets into this egg.
% Farnsworth holds up an egg, and injects a needle (filled with yellow % fluid) into it. That very second, the egg explodes, pelting everyone % at the table with egg-yolk.
Prof.: [unphased] Although, in reality it's not liquid, but gamma radiation. Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing. Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games... on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and bananas and written on the sky ... but not in dreams. No siree. Bender: Quit squawking, fleshwad. Nobody's _forcing_ you to buy anything. Amy: Yeah, I mean, we all had commercials in our dreams, but you don't see us running out to buy brand-name merchandise at low, low prices.
% Amy's comment leaves the crew pondering for a minute. They all burst % out of their seats at once, and out of the room. Later, at the "Alien % Overlord & Taylor" mall...
The November
2003 issue of Wired has an article about artificial sweeteners, tagatose in
particular. I was strongly disappointed to find that the article only
mentioned stevia once, in
passing, and that it was not included in their chart of sweeteners. I
would expect Wired, of all
publications, to want to be all over something so subversive.
I'm even more disappointed to see no mention of it in this Slashdot discussion.
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for Linux?
Linux was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of Linux being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our servers are going for Linux use. Linux is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good Linux on
servers and good Linux on PCs.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with Linux. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing BSD when they get to be serious about programming.
With Linux, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
BSD, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of Linux is it's simple; and the beauty of BSD
is that it's all there.
What really got me was the bit where one of their "engineers" was explaining how the "system test" is merely the normal POST. I'm currently in the process of writing a very simple inventory / cash flow management system for my employer, and I started building strict integrity checks and reports into it as one of my first steps. Meanwhile, the people making our voting machines can't be bothered?
While reading through the interview, I noticed such bizarre and nonsensical statements as:
Looking Red Hat's recent press releases and web site lately, it reveals a new, stronger effort to shift focus further into the Enterprise and leaving Red Hat Linux to the hands of the community for the home/desktop market while leaves a "hole" in the previous target of Red Hat at the "Corporate Desktop market".
At the end of the day, we have seen patents being so "duh, brain dead", that many have said that writing software is almost impossible anymore. What a solution for this issue OSS software should find, to ensure a future that is not striked by lawsuits left and right?
Once, you started a C++ wrapper for GTK+, but then the project got sterile.
Do you feel that Linux is replacing Unix slowly but steadily, or do they follow parallel and different directions in your opinion?
I said to myself, "This article must be by Eugenia Loli-Queru", looked to the byline, and lo and behold I was correct. The local rag is more respectable, which is saying a lot, considering that they routinely misspell the names of cities in front page headlines and such. Even JeffK makes more sense than Eugenia.
When I took one of those annoying required pre-standardized test things in high school, the teacher in charge was reading off the rules. "If your calculator has wireless communication capabilities they must be blocked for the duration of the test... Ha ha. Does anyone here have anything like that?"
I raised my hand. "Um, me."
So she had to go inspect the electrical tape I had placed over my HP48's infrared port. Not that it would have done much good if I was the only one in the room with that calculator...
Slashdot Mirror
You drive >= 15mi to rent movies? Where do you live?
You can get FM modulators for use in car stereos, usually sold in order to install XM/Sirius receivers. They're a bit pricey ($50-$70 last time I checked) compared to the FM transmitters (I have the iRock with the DC power input and almost never have problems with interference). They're like the TV modulators you can get to hook up consoles and DVD players to older TVs. Pull out the deck, run the antenna into the modulator, then plug the modulator into the back of the deck. It may require some cutting of wires and power hookups though.
Of course this is only applicable if you want to plug it into your car, not J. Random Driver's car that you happen to be riding in.
You do realize that the 49G can operate in algebraic mode, don't you?
In fact, the documentation is written entirely assuming algebraic mode, enraging engineers and other professionals who had used HP calculators for years...
You seem to be proposing a singularly one-sided type of "education". What's wrong with the idea that a former slave learning about PCs should be educated that the terminology is technically correct and not an endorsement of any social system?
Honestly. Where'd that one come from?
Whatever. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been largely discredited by now. The original research was fatally flawed, and it should be obvious that the Inuit, for example, likely specialized to the extent that they did about snow because they deal with it so much. Any group, especially a group focused on a technical discipline, will develop the needed terminology to get the job done.
As far as sexual metaphors go, the physical similarities are obvious, and I think the metalepsis is unavoidable. I don't see applicable sexual metaphors as offensive, myself. It's one of the basic facts about our biology and that of many other living things. I am bemused by the fact that many times it is those who assert the need for acceptance of and harmony with nature who are the very ones that complain about such terminology.
I wonder what you think about the fact that in the case of USB, for example, typically it is the cable which has male connectors on both ends, while the devices with female connectors merely use the cable (and by extension, the "male") to get the real work done, an exact role-reversal of the stereotype I assuming you are complaining about.
Engineers get their jobs done by making analogies, by figuring out ways to reuse components, and in the case of computers, often by literally inventing their own languages. Is such sapience only allowed when referring entirely to abstract and artificial constructs? Mnemonic devices are often endorsed by teachers and other authority figures; are they to be banned when one turns out to offend some random prude by its similarity to an unavoidable fact of anatomy? If this trend continues, any technical document will necessarily become a pleonastic mess.
You are describing a specific event. The master-slave relationship is a concept which can apply equally to many situations. As many have pointed out, the Platonic universal of a master-slave relationship inheres perfectly in the IDE interface.
Really, this is the main problem with the proposal that we should sanitize language. Those who would be the sanitizers often suffer from a sort of ideological egotism, assuming that every term in every discipline refers to their own individual pet issues. Sorry, but they don't. Not always.
I think that if you are concerned about societal effects, you would do well to concern yourself with the metonymy that children derive from existing social order at a very young age. Fix the division of labor and the social stereotypes will fix themselves. Whitewash America's tombs and they will still stink, and the odor will be represented in speech no matter how many circumlocutions are necessary (e.g., many express schadenfreude without ever knowing the word).
So far I'm intrigued enough by the concept to try to beat the puzzle(s); other works of IF often seem far too contrived. My only annoyance is that some idiot posted a spoiler of what I'm guessing will be a major plot point on r.g.i-f with no warning. I've declared a personal moratorium on reading anything related to games I haven't played to my satisfaction yet.
Maybe this is their editorial commentary about Fark.com...
Fry: So, you're telling me they broadcast commercials into peoples'
... on buses and
... but not in dreams. No siree.
dreams?
Leela: Of course!
Fry: But how is that possible?
Prof.: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain, just like this
liquid gets into this egg.
% Farnsworth holds up an egg, and injects a needle (filled with yellow
% fluid) into it. That very second, the egg explodes, pelting everyone
% at the table with egg-yolk.
Prof.: [unphased] Although, in reality it's not liquid, but gamma
radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And
in magazines. And movies. And at ball games
milk cartons and t-shirts and bananas and written on the sky
Bender: Quit squawking, fleshwad. Nobody's _forcing_ you to buy
anything.
Amy: Yeah, I mean, we all had commercials in our dreams, but you
don't see us running out to buy brand-name merchandise at low,
low prices.
% Amy's comment leaves the crew pondering for a minute. They all burst
% out of their seats at once, and out of the room. Later, at the "Alien
% Overlord & Taylor" mall...
Here's something I posted on my site recently:
I'm even more disappointed to see no mention of it in this Slashdot discussion.
And thank you: I hadn't wept for mine until reading that.
Wrong. It was based partly off of creator Scott Adams's experiences at Pacific Bell.
You should have gone to the police. "He won't accept legal tender yet he still claims a debt."
But it is quite rare now to come across an old-old-style $20.
Linux was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of Linux being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our servers are going for Linux use. Linux is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good Linux on servers and good Linux on PCs.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with Linux. They'll want a real system and will end up doing BSD when they get to be serious about programming.
With Linux, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With BSD, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of Linux is it's simple; and the beauty of BSD is that it's all there.
What really got me was the bit where one of their "engineers" was explaining how the "system test" is merely the normal POST. I'm currently in the process of writing a very simple inventory / cash flow management system for my employer, and I started building strict integrity checks and reports into it as one of my first steps. Meanwhile, the people making our voting machines can't be bothered?
I raised my hand. "Um, me."
So she had to go inspect the electrical tape I had placed over my HP48's infrared port. Not that it would have done much good if I was the only one in the room with that calculator...