Because cold fusion tries to generate more energy than it takes.
No, it doesn't. Cold fusion, if it works, generates energy by fusing light nuclei to form heavier ones. It's the same basic process as what occurs in an H-bomb or in the Sun.
I'm not saying that cold fusion actually works, just that it doesn't necessarily violate thermodynamics (as far as I can tell).
It's a pity that people think the word 'where' means 'where' instead of 'why' these days.
Yes, 'where' means 'where', and 'why' means 'why'.
'Wherefore' is a different word. You can tell by the extra 4 letters at the end.
No, it's not commonly used these days; probably the vast majority of uses are quoting that line from "Romeo and Juliet". ("art" and "thou" aren't very common either, but people don't seem to have much trouble with them.)
If you're interested (or even if you're not), the word "wherefore" is closely related to "therefore", which is still in common use.
I'm not going to argue that anyone who doesn't know what "wherefore" means is illiterate, but don't you think knowing what is means is better than not knowing what it means?
Robert Scheer wrote a column for the L.A. Times claiming that the US Government made a $43 million gift to the Taliban. Compare his column to the actual atatement from the State Department, which makes it clear that the aid (which was mostly in the form of wheat) was given directly to the people of Afghanistan, bypassing the Taliban. The only remotely Taliban-friendly thing in the statement was a brief mention of the Taliban's decision to ban poppy cultivation; the aid was partly intended to help the farmers affected by the ban.
I have very few good things to say about the Bush administration. This is one of them.
Probably the same time they stop looking like middle eastern gentlemen at a time when the country gets attacked by them. Right or wrong, looks (and appearence) play a great role in identifying suspects. If the attack were carried out by middle aged, caucasion males with pension plans linked to a Mexico bank account, I would EXPECT to be at least questioned.
If the authorities think that I look like the specific person who committed a specific crime, I would certainly expect them to question me.
If I happen to share some similarities to the suspect and to a few million other people of the same ethnic group, that's a very different thing.
If Mike Hawash was arrested because there were valid reasons to suspect that he was involved in a specific illegal act, that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself (aside from any problems in the way the case was handled). If he was arrested because he looks middle eastern, that's simply racism. I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm responding to what the previous poster wrote, not necessarily to the facts of the case.
I've been using CVS for a while now, after switching over from RCS. I use it mostly for my own projects, so coordinating with other developers hasn't been an issue.
If you're not interested in the internals of CVS, stop reading now.
Technically, I think a major drawback of CVS is that the directory and file structure of a CVS repository is an exact mirror of the directory and file structure of a working copy. For each working file, there's a corresponding "history file" in the repository, whose name is the name of the working file with ",v" appended. Wit this structure, CVS does a great job with operations like updating files in place and adding new files and directories. With the "Attic" directory, it even does a decent job when files are deleted, but that's an add-on to the underlying structure, and it's just a little bit ugly.
If you want to rename a file (or, equivalently, move it from one directory to another), you've got a problem. There's no "cvs rename" operation. You can copy the file to its new name and delete the old one, but then you've lost the history from before the renaming. Or you can go into the CVS repository itself and rename or move the history file (I've done this myself), but then old views of the file have the new name, and you can't get a consistent copy of an old release. (Besides, mucking around in the CVS repository risks clobbering things in ways that you can't do if you go through the CVS interface, and it should never be necessary.)
I wonder how difficult it would be to redesign CVS so the repository structure doesn't have to mirror the structure of a working copy. The repository would still be a collection of history files, each of which contains a copy of a working file and all its history information (diffs, log entries, timestamps, revision numbers etc.) -- but the mapping from a history file in the repository to the name and location of the corresponding working file would be stored explicitly, not as the name and location of the history file. Then a file renaming would just be stored as a transaction in the history file, like any other modification.
When you do a "cvs checkout" or "cvs update", CVS's job would be a little more difficult. Currently, it's simple for CVS to find all the history files corresponding to working files in the current directory; just grab all the history files in the corresponding directory in the repository. With my proposed change, the mapping is much less obvious; CVS might, for example, have to scan the entire repository looking for history files whose *current* working name corresponds to the desired directory. This probably calls for some kind of database.
So each history file in the repository would correspond to some working file in the project, but it would retain its identity as the name is changed and the file is moved from one directory to another.
This wouldn't require many changes to the existing interface (other than the addition of "cvs rename" and "cvs move" commands). It could probably be done in a way that's backwards compatible with existing CVS repositories. And as long as history files are storing information about transactions other than file modifications, they could also store things like permissions, symlinks, and even arbitrary user-defined metadata.
I suspect this has been thought of before, and probably even implemented in systems other than CVS.
Certainly post-mortem investigations showed that Bush probably did actually win the plurality of votes in Florida.
No, they didn't. The headlines and the first few paragraphs of the news articles about the investigations certainly implied that, but if you read down a few paragraphs, you'll find that Gore would most likely have won if all the valid votes had been counted in accordance with Florida election law. If everyone who was legally entitled to vote had actually been allowed to do so, Gore's margin would have been even larger.
Yes, this is off-topic and redundant; moderate away.
F*** off and die [...] Gore [...] Bush [...] intellect [...] Carter [...] stupid piece of sh**!!!!
I really hate it when foul-mouthed semi-literate anonymous idiots like that say things that I agree with. AC, do us all a favor and stop making us look bad.
Just do your job, ignore the kiddie porn, and get on with your life.
Ignore the kiddie porn? Ignore clear evidence of a felony?
What if you recognized one of the children in the photos? What if you (accidentally or otherwise) ran across a photograph of your neighbor's child, your niece or nephew, your son or daughter, being sexually abused? Would you just ignore it and get on with your life? If not, why would it make any difference if the children in the photographs are strangers?
Ok, maybe you don't think child pornography should be a crime. What if you ran across photographs that provided evidence of bank robberies? Murder? Rape?
Something like the AppLeS Parameter Sweep Template software might suit your needs. I've never used it myself, but it looks like it might be close to what you're looking for.
See here for other projects from the GRAIL lab at SDSC and UCSD.
The election is not "long gone". The administration it installed is still in power. It's the same administration that introduced the so-called U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which happens to be the topic of this thread.
(BTW, I just checked the record of my postings to Slashdot. It only shows me about the last year and half; in that time, I have not mentioned the 2000 election until this thread. I believe I mentioned it once before; it was topical there as well.)
No, I don't think the fact that you did or didn't vote for GWB is particularly relevant to this discussion.
I have one more question, in case you're still reading this, and I'm asking it because I'm genuinely curious about the answer. You referred to me as a "conspiracy nut". Is that because you think I'm wrong, because you think I'm right but "get over it" anyway, or is it something else?
basically the time to whine and act outraged was back then. If enough people had done this, maybe things would be different. But they're not different, they're the way they are so you need to get over it.
Thanks for the advice. My answer is no.
[...] That's the price you pay for being a conspiracy nut in a world that just doesn't care anymore.
Perhaps you hang out with a different set of people than I do. A lot of us still do care about it.
The following is not necessarily directed at you.
I find it ironic that a lot of the people telling me to "get over it" are the same people who spent 8 years denying the legitimacy of Clinton's presidency (and some of them are still doing so).
No, but there is a general window in which your peers will allow you to harp on it. That window has been closed now for quite some time.
I have difficulty understanding that attitude; perhaps you can help me.
We had a coup d'etat in this country. It was relatively non-violent as such things go, but it installed an illegitimate administration that had actually lost the election.
That administration is still in power.
Just when did that window close? When would it have closed if the situation had been reversed (if Gore were in the White House even though Bush won the election)?
... though I'm a Democrat I think Bush won Florida...
I don't.
Consider the thousands of people who were illegally denied the right to vote because a private company incorrectly listed them as felons. (There was probably no way to recover those votes after the election.)
Consider the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, a Republican-sponsored mob that deliberately interfered with the vote count.
Consider the unambiguous overvotes that would have been counted in Gore's favor if Florida's election law ("clear intent of the voter") had been followed. (This is probably the clearest indication that Gore won the election.)
This CNN article is typical of the reports on the NORC recount study. The headline and the first few paragraphs tell you that Bush still would have won -- but if you read the entire article you'll find that they examined several possible scenarios, some of favored Bush and some of which favored Gore.
We've been told repeatedly, by people who should know better, that we should just "get over it". We do need to move on (there's no realistic hope of correcting the results of the 2000 election) but I will not "get over it". There is no statute of limitations for stealing a Presidential election.
I just tried to post a response to this, consisting entirely of "Steal Slashcode, but add a functionality to prevent dupes?" (A dumb joke, but a joke nevertheless.)
It told me, "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."
The functionality is there, it just needs a little work.
For comparison, the TeraGridbackplane, running between hubs in Los Angeles and Chicago, is supposed to have a capacity of 40 Gb/s. No speed records yet; they're just sending the first test packets.
That's about 3000 kilometers. Assuming lightspeed transmission, there could theoretically be something like 40 or 50 megabytes of data at a time in transit.
Slashdot Mirror
Because cold fusion tries to generate more energy than it takes.
No, it doesn't. Cold fusion, if it works, generates energy by fusing light nuclei to form heavier ones. It's the same basic process as what occurs in an H-bomb or in the Sun.
I'm not saying that cold fusion actually works, just that it doesn't necessarily violate thermodynamics (as far as I can tell).
Not when people use it as a way of measuring one's intelligence.
So because some people are overly critical, it's not better to know what the word means than not to know what it means?
I don't believe you meant that.
It's a pity that people think the word 'where' means 'where' instead of 'why' these days.
Yes, 'where' means 'where', and 'why' means 'why'.
'Wherefore' is a different word. You can tell by the extra 4 letters at the end.
No, it's not commonly used these days; probably the vast majority of uses are quoting that line from "Romeo and Juliet". ("art" and "thou" aren't very common either, but people don't seem to have much trouble with them.)
If you're interested (or even if you're not), the word "wherefore" is closely related to "therefore", which is still in common use.
I'm not going to argue that anyone who doesn't know what "wherefore" means is illiterate, but don't you think knowing what is means is better than not knowing what it means?
What happens if I report a bug that I didn't find?
The link didn't work (I probably forgot a closing quote). The State Department's statement is here. It's from May 17, 2001.
Ah, the old $43 million lie.
Robert Scheer wrote a column for the L.A. Times claiming that the US Government made a $43 million gift to the Taliban. Compare his column to the actual atatement from the State Department, which makes it clear that the aid (which was mostly in the form of wheat) was given directly to the people of Afghanistan, bypassing the Taliban. The only remotely Taliban-friendly thing in the statement was a brief mention of the Taliban's decision to ban poppy cultivation; the aid was partly intended to help the farmers affected by the ban.
I have very few good things to say about the Bush administration. This is one of them.
I bet you cringe when you hear a joke about 9/11 too.
You're damned right I do.
Probably the same time they stop looking like middle eastern gentlemen at a time when the country gets attacked by them. Right or wrong, looks (and appearence) play a great role in identifying suspects. If the attack were carried out by middle aged, caucasion males with pension plans linked to a Mexico bank account, I would EXPECT to be at least questioned.
If the authorities think that I look like the specific person who committed a specific crime, I would certainly expect them to question me.
If I happen to share some similarities to the suspect and to a few million other people of the same ethnic group, that's a very different thing.
If Mike Hawash was arrested because there were valid reasons to suspect that he was involved in a specific illegal act, that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself (aside from any problems in the way the case was handled). If he was arrested because he looks middle eastern, that's simply racism. I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm responding to what the previous poster wrote, not necessarily to the facts of the case.
I've been using CVS for a while now, after switching over from RCS. I use it mostly for my own projects, so coordinating with other developers hasn't been an issue.
If you're not interested in the internals of CVS, stop reading now.
Technically, I think a major drawback of CVS is that the directory and file structure of a CVS repository is an exact mirror of the directory and file structure of a working copy. For each working file, there's a corresponding "history file" in the repository, whose name is the name of the working file with ",v" appended. Wit this structure, CVS does a great job with operations like updating files in place and adding new files and directories. With the "Attic" directory, it even does a decent job when files are deleted, but that's an add-on to the underlying structure, and it's just a little bit ugly.
If you want to rename a file (or, equivalently, move it from one directory to another), you've got a problem. There's no "cvs rename" operation. You can copy the file to its new name and delete the old one, but then you've lost the history from before the renaming. Or you can go into the CVS repository itself and rename or move the history file (I've done this myself), but then old views of the file have the new name, and you can't get a consistent copy of an old release. (Besides, mucking around in the CVS repository risks clobbering things in ways that you can't do if you go through the CVS interface, and it should never be necessary.)
I wonder how difficult it would be to redesign CVS so the repository structure doesn't have to mirror the structure of a working copy. The repository would still be a collection of history files, each of which contains a copy of a working file and all its history information (diffs, log entries, timestamps, revision numbers etc.) -- but the mapping from a history file in the repository to the name and location of the corresponding working file would be stored explicitly, not as the name and location of the history file. Then a file renaming would just be stored as a transaction in the history file, like any other modification.
When you do a "cvs checkout" or "cvs update", CVS's job would be a little more difficult. Currently, it's simple for CVS to find all the history files corresponding to working files in the current directory; just grab all the history files in the corresponding directory in the repository. With my proposed change, the mapping is much less obvious; CVS might, for example, have to scan the entire repository looking for history files whose *current* working name corresponds to the desired directory. This probably calls for some kind of database.
So each history file in the repository would correspond to some working file in the project, but it would retain its identity as the name is changed and the file is moved from one directory to another.
This wouldn't require many changes to the existing interface (other than the addition of "cvs rename" and "cvs move" commands). It could probably be done in a way that's backwards compatible with existing CVS repositories. And as long as history files are storing information about transactions other than file modifications, they could also store things like permissions, symlinks, and even arbitrary user-defined metadata.
I suspect this has been thought of before, and probably even implemented in systems other than CVS.
Cool, a gruntled postal worker.
Certainly post-mortem investigations showed that Bush probably did actually win the plurality of votes in Florida.
No, they didn't. The headlines and the first few paragraphs of the news articles about the investigations certainly implied that, but if you read down a few paragraphs, you'll find that Gore would most likely have won if all the valid votes had been counted in accordance with Florida election law. If everyone who was legally entitled to vote had actually been allowed to do so, Gore's margin would have been even larger.
Yes, this is off-topic and redundant; moderate away.
F*** off and die [...] Gore [...] Bush [...] intellect [...] Carter [...] stupid piece of sh**!!!!
I really hate it when foul-mouthed semi-literate anonymous idiots like that say things that I agree with. AC, do us all a favor and stop making us look bad.
Just do your job, ignore the kiddie porn, and get on with your life.
Ignore the kiddie porn? Ignore clear evidence of a felony?
What if you recognized one of the children in the photos? What if you (accidentally or otherwise) ran across a photograph of your neighbor's child, your niece or nephew, your son or daughter, being sexually abused? Would you just ignore it and get on with your life? If not, why would it make any difference if the children in the photographs are strangers?
Ok, maybe you don't think child pornography should be a crime. What if you ran across photographs that provided evidence of bank robberies? Murder? Rape?
!!!NUKE ALL ARABS GO AMERICA!!!
Oh, I see. You're an idiot.
Here is a large Grid project that I'm working on.
Reminds me of this site.
Which, thanks to your post, is now slashdotted.
Something like the AppLeS Parameter Sweep Template software might suit your needs. I've never used it myself, but it looks like it might be close to what you're looking for.
See here for other projects from the GRAIL lab at SDSC and UCSD.
It looks like it's only available for Pocket PC.
The election is not "long gone". The administration it installed is still in power. It's the same administration that introduced the so-called U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which happens to be the topic of this thread.
(BTW, I just checked the record of my postings to Slashdot. It only shows me about the last year and half; in that time, I have not mentioned the 2000 election until this thread. I believe I mentioned it once before; it was topical there as well.)
No, I don't think the fact that you did or didn't vote for GWB is particularly relevant to this discussion.
I have one more question, in case you're still reading this, and I'm asking it because I'm genuinely curious about the answer. You referred to me as a "conspiracy nut". Is that because you think I'm wrong, because you think I'm right but "get over it" anyway, or is it something else?
basically the time to whine and act outraged was back then. If enough people had done this, maybe things would be different. But they're not different, they're the way they are so you need to get over it.
Thanks for the advice. My answer is no.
[...]
That's the price you pay for being a conspiracy nut in a world that just doesn't care anymore.
Perhaps you hang out with a different set of people than I do. A lot of us still do care about it.
The following is not necessarily directed at you.
I find it ironic that a lot of the people telling me to "get over it" are the same people who spent 8 years denying the legitimacy of Clinton's presidency (and some of them are still doing so).
The only theft that happened was the attempted theft by Gore by lying in court with frivolous lawsuits and tampering with ballots.
Uh huh. Just one question: If it was Gore who brought "frivolous lawsuits", why was the case called "Bush v. Gore"?
No, but there is a general window in which your peers will allow you to harp on it. That window has been closed now for quite some time.
I have difficulty understanding that attitude; perhaps you can help me.
We had a coup d'etat in this country. It was relatively non-violent as such things go, but it installed an illegitimate administration that had actually lost the election.
That administration is still in power.
Just when did that window close? When would it have closed if the situation had been reversed (if Gore were in the White House even though Bush won the election)?
... though I'm a Democrat I think Bush won Florida ...
I don't.
Consider the thousands of people who were illegally denied the right to vote because a private company incorrectly listed them as felons. (There was probably no way to recover those votes after the election.)
Consider the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, a Republican-sponsored mob that deliberately interfered with the vote count.
Consider the unambiguous overvotes that would have been counted in Gore's favor if Florida's election law ("clear intent of the voter") had been followed. (This is probably the clearest indication that Gore won the election.)
This CNN article is typical of the reports on the NORC recount study. The headline and the first few paragraphs tell you that Bush still would have won -- but if you read the entire article you'll find that they examined several possible scenarios, some of favored Bush and some of which favored Gore.
We've been told repeatedly, by people who should know better, that we should just "get over it". We do need to move on (there's no realistic hope of correcting the results of the 2000 election) but I will not "get over it". There is no statute of limitations for stealing a Presidential election.
Yes, we need to move on, but I will not "get over it". There is no statute of limitations on stealing an election.
I just tried to post a response to this, consisting entirely of "Steal Slashcode, but add a functionality to prevent dupes?" (A dumb joke, but a joke nevertheless.)
It told me, "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."
The functionality is there, it just needs a little work.
For comparison, the TeraGrid backplane, running between hubs in Los Angeles and Chicago, is supposed to have a capacity of 40 Gb/s. No speed records yet; they're just sending the first test packets.
That's about 3000 kilometers. Assuming lightspeed transmission, there could theoretically be something like 40 or 50 megabytes of data at a time in transit.