If someone actually does do Rendezvous with Rama, they'd better do it right. The thing about that book-- and the thing that has always made me love Clarke's writing-- is that it captures the wonder and fear in an almost palpable way. But the fear part is hard for movie people to get right. It's the fear of the unknown. Not the fear of some big, drooling monster like Hollywood loves to put in the films. Rendezvous with Rama captured the weirdness of an alien species, and to my knowledge, Arthur C. Clarke is the only writer, next to Stanislaw Lem, who toys with the idea that actually communicating with aliens may not be possible.
Somehow I'm reminded of the movie Cube, which did the fear of the unknown with people lost in an 'alien' structure pretty well.
Furthermore if the 115mm cd's were first to the market most CD players would have a 115mm depression to support them even better. But no space for the 120 mm version. We'd be stuck with the maximum of 115 mm.
I've read before (can't site it) that in previous ages, time wasn't thought of as linear but as recycling seasons (Pagan?), such as the "circle of life" and nothing more.
Are you sure you aren't talking about the future instead of the past?
Point is we are largely technology enthusiasts... and there is nothing in intel integrated graphics to be enthusiastic about. Their drivers yes... but the chips themselves... hell no.
I'm sure there is a wide spectrum of technology enthusiasm here. Sheer computational power is not always the most desirable thing. Many people also care about factors like power consumption, small size, low price and low noise, in addition to open specs and source.
Hell, even Intel's crappy integrated graphics work better in xorg than ATI.
For very strange values of 'crappy'. Intel chips have opensource drivers, unlike those of ATI or NVidia, and most of them are already incorporated into official releases of Linux and Xorg. Intel's graphics chips may not be powerful enough for heavy gaming, but that should not be an issue for Linux users anyway. The Core 2 fiasco is a shame though.
What does being weird have to do with innocence? This seems like the past when it was easy to blame the black or the poor, no matter which way the evidence pointed. What's really weird IMHO is a murder case without a body.
So it's still possible for a law to fail. We haven't tested the law of gravity everywhere in the universe.
This was pretty much my point. There are no absolute facts in science. However, even the term 'theory' is reserved for well established and tested ideas, such as Special Theory of Relativity, which we take for granted in practice. For example 'string theories' should not be called theories as long as they have no testable predictions, until then they are merely models or conjectures.
Any thing that saves us time will NOT increase the time we spend with one or the other. Instead we will keep the same ratio of time spent working vs time spent with our family.
Also, it seems that we have to produce more and more to maintain exponential economic growth, or else the universe will implode, with cats and dogs living together.
As to what's an acronym or not, The earlier discussion indicates that there are at least two active meanings for it in modern speech, but there are still some cases that seem to fall into the cracks here. What about non-written languages or syllable-based writing systems. Is a collection of initial syllables an acronym (in the strictest sense), an initialism, or some third kind of thing? I guess we have a few in English, too. 'Satcom', and my personal favorite 'modconamlit' ("modern/contemporary American literature") spring to mind as I write this. It seems to me that these are about halfway in between. *shrug*
IMHO, acronyms don't have to be initialisms, since for example 'radar' is often used to illustrate the idea. I also recall reading about Chinese/Japanese syllable-based acronyms, though of course they may be just similar constructs with a different name.
I agree, and I don't claim to know the exact linguistic definition of 'word'. I was trying to explain the meaning of 'acronym' based on its literal translation, which of course is not the best kind of argument;) The original point of this thread being, what exactly is an acronym? I've learned that it's a special case of abbreviations, the kind you can pronounce "as a word" instead of spelling it out. I may be wrong, in which case I'm left wondering what else it might mean.
By that logic, "icy" is not a word, because it sounds the same as the letters IC. On the other hand, if "icy" is a word, then "eyebeehem" could just as well be a word.
'IC' is not the same thing as 'icy', even if they are pronounced roughly the same way. In my original post I said
It could be argued that a word must be pronounceable as a single entity, rather than each letter separately.
Meaning if you're talking about the word 'icy', it involves the letters I, C and Y. You pronounce it as 'icy' rather than I-C-Y, so it's a word in this sense. 'IC' has nothing to do with this, since it's missing the Y.
The -nym suffix means 'word', like in synonym. Acronym means 'extreme word'. It could be argued that a word must be pronounceable as a single entity, rather than each letter separately. Thus 'IBM' is not a word, though it's an abbreviation (and more precisely, an initialism).
If you're not sure what kind of abbreviation you're talking about, it's correct to just say 'abbreviation' since it covers all of these situations. Acronyms and initialisms are special cases of abbreviation, with some overlap between them (e.g. NATO).
What you are talking about in your post is the difference between "black hat" and "white hat" hackers, which, although most crackers are probably black hat, the two terms are not synonymous as I understand them. Also note that there can be black hat hackers who are not crackers. For instance, you could write adware or spyware without being a cracker, although malware that exploits security flaws may be more effective.
I agree. There are different kinds of computer enthusiast/expert, and it's useful to have different labels for them, rather than trying to lump them all together as 'hackers'. For example, I would say Linus Torvalds is a hacker, but I wouldn't say it in a mainstream media because people might confuse it with 'cracker'.
I imagine the constructive kind of hacker is called something like 'professional' or 'expert' in mainstream media. There seems to be an assumption that a very skilled person has to channel that skill through a narrowly defined, society-approved occupation -- otherwise it's either worthless tinkering or evil crax0ring.
*sigh* This discussion reminds me of my attempts to explain how 'bandwidth' is not the same thing as data rate, and once again it's mainstream media where the two are equated. I want to stress the fact that it's useful to have different words for different things. Otherwise we could just say 'ugh' all the time, and try to extract the meaning from the context.
I've tried to advocate the idea that you can actually turn off your phone when you want to be left alone. Then I get complaints from friends and family who expect me to be available all the time. It's nuts. I understand the point of availability in certain kinds of work, but for social life I would like people to loosen up a little.
*BSD is for People who Love *nix; Linux is for People who Hate Windows
I just wanted to point out that I use Linux because I like Linux. I wonder if it's possible for people in general to prefer X solely for the properties of X, instead of how it is related to Y.
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Somehow I'm reminded of the movie Cube, which did the fear of the unknown with people lost in an 'alien' structure pretty well.
Capacitance is a physical phenomenon, and so is laser.
Now that's logical!
It's the "worse case" as the /. story pointed out, but not the worst :D
Are you sure you aren't talking about the future instead of the past?
I think they were originally spelled Al-Gore-Rhythms, methods for precise timing of Internet traffic.
It should be sentenced to Death by SKU-SKU. BTW, kudos for using 'acronym' in its correct meaning.
I'm sure there is a wide spectrum of technology enthusiasm here. Sheer computational power is not always the most desirable thing. Many people also care about factors like power consumption, small size, low price and low noise, in addition to open specs and source.
I'll rather take the 16 year old model, please. :-P
For very strange values of 'crappy'. Intel chips have opensource drivers, unlike those of ATI or NVidia, and most of them are already incorporated into official releases of Linux and Xorg. Intel's graphics chips may not be powerful enough for heavy gaming, but that should not be an issue for Linux users anyway. The Core 2 fiasco is a shame though.
I thought his brother was Raul?
I'm sure it was Ramon, Hans's father. After all, the killer filesystem was developed for a communist OS ;)
What does being weird have to do with innocence? This seems like the past when it was easy to blame the black or the poor, no matter which way the evidence pointed. What's really weird IMHO is a murder case without a body.
This was pretty much my point. There are no absolute facts in science. However, even the term 'theory' is reserved for well established and tested ideas, such as Special Theory of Relativity, which we take for granted in practice. For example 'string theories' should not be called theories as long as they have no testable predictions, until then they are merely models or conjectures.
The law of gravity is just a theory. If you don't like it, feel free to go jump off a cliff.
Also, it seems that we have to produce more and more to maintain exponential economic growth, or else the universe will implode, with cats and dogs living together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth#Criti cism
IMHO, acronyms don't have to be initialisms, since for example 'radar' is often used to illustrate the idea. I also recall reading about Chinese/Japanese syllable-based acronyms, though of course they may be just similar constructs with a different name.
I agree, and I don't claim to know the exact linguistic definition of 'word'. I was trying to explain the meaning of 'acronym' based on its literal translation, which of course is not the best kind of argument ;) The original point of this thread being, what exactly is an acronym? I've learned that it's a special case of abbreviations, the kind you can pronounce "as a word" instead of spelling it out. I may be wrong, in which case I'm left wondering what else it might mean.
'IC' is not the same thing as 'icy', even if they are pronounced roughly the same way. In my original post I said
It could be argued that a word must be pronounceable as a single entity, rather than each letter separately.Meaning if you're talking about the word 'icy', it involves the letters I, C and Y. You pronounce it as 'icy' rather than I-C-Y, so it's a word in this sense. 'IC' has nothing to do with this, since it's missing the Y.
How can it be 'email' when it's light going through a fiber? (Hmm... I think someone should write a song about this... come on baby light my fiber!)
I also long for the days when capitals in the middle of iWords were considered incorrect spelling.
The -nym suffix means 'word', like in synonym. Acronym means 'extreme word'. It could be argued that a word must be pronounceable as a single entity, rather than each letter separately. Thus 'IBM' is not a word, though it's an abbreviation (and more precisely, an initialism).
If you're not sure what kind of abbreviation you're talking about, it's correct to just say 'abbreviation' since it covers all of these situations. Acronyms and initialisms are special cases of abbreviation, with some overlap between them (e.g. NATO).
I agree. There are different kinds of computer enthusiast/expert, and it's useful to have different labels for them, rather than trying to lump them all together as 'hackers'. For example, I would say Linus Torvalds is a hacker, but I wouldn't say it in a mainstream media because people might confuse it with 'cracker'.
I imagine the constructive kind of hacker is called something like 'professional' or 'expert' in mainstream media. There seems to be an assumption that a very skilled person has to channel that skill through a narrowly defined, society-approved occupation -- otherwise it's either worthless tinkering or evil crax0ring.
*sigh* This discussion reminds me of my attempts to explain how 'bandwidth' is not the same thing as data rate, and once again it's mainstream media where the two are equated. I want to stress the fact that it's useful to have different words for different things. Otherwise we could just say 'ugh' all the time, and try to extract the meaning from the context.
I've tried to advocate the idea that you can actually turn off your phone when you want to be left alone. Then I get complaints from friends and family who expect me to be available all the time. It's nuts. I understand the point of availability in certain kinds of work, but for social life I would like people to loosen up a little.
I hope you used the scanner part while on the printer. Lonely Slashdotters want pictures.
I just wanted to point out that I use Linux because I like Linux. I wonder if it's possible for people in general to prefer X solely for the properties of X, instead of how it is related to Y.