You missed the part where they've found evidence that most humans have Neanderthal genes.
I always wondered why the assumption was genocide, when human communities tend to favor marriage to members of adjacent groups, and by most accounts I've read, Neanderthals would have been almost indistinguishable from anatomically modern humans, anyway. It just always seemed to make the most sense that the Neanderthals would have simply been absorbed by the larger group.
I remember Passages. You start on the left side of the screen, move towards the right, then die. You get double the score if you choose to have a partner, but your score is irrelevant. That had a glimmer of meaning -- a brief comment on mortality. It had the weight of a typical New Yorker cartoon.
Chain World, from the article, is simply stupid. Religious mysticism is stupidity and confusion. Deliberately cultivating mysticism is deliberately cultivating stupidity and confusion. The entire set-up is intended to subtract meaning, not add it. It's entirely appropriate, though it isn't pointed out, that they use a flash drive for Chain World. Flash drives wear out.
The whole thing sounds like Rohrer forgot about the competition until the day before, then spent an hour throwing together a Minecraft mod, and spent the drive there trying to think up a speech.
ISPs usually explain how to set DNS in their initial setup instructions. The settings are easily accessible from the connection status indicator visible in any GUI on any OS. It's no more difficult than dialing a telephone. Anyone can do it in seconds.
Furthermore, with my Cadillac insurance plan, my visit to the medical doctor cost me nothing directly. No copay, no deductible, and no co-insurance.
As I understand, medical providers in the US charge ludicrously high fees for simple procedures and inexpensive materials when the patient has a "Cadillac insurance plan", as a way of financing medical procedures for the many more patients who have little or no health insurance.
Last time I checked MS was a software development firm, and did work with linux.
You'd think that this was common knowledge. Every company for which I've worked used a mix of Windows and Linux; of necessity efforts are made to make them work together.
Sometimes I wonder how many Slashdotters actually work in IT.
Because the argument that space exploration led to many useful spinoff technologies implies that space exploration was more likely to produce useful spinoff technologies than other projects that might have been chosen.
That's exactly it. I keep seeing arguments that the space program was justified by all the spinoff technologies. There's a similar argument, with more sinister implications, that most technical innovation comes from war.
The real lesson, it seems to me, is that if you provide lots of resources for solving a big technical problem, you're likely to solve that problem and invent a lot of other useful things along the way. And if that's the case, why not choose a big technical problem that we have a clear practical need to solve? That way, we may accomplish something important, whether or not there are any useful spinoff technologies.
There are plenty of good candidates for a big technical problem worth solving. Global climate stabilization comes to mind, or the related problem of sustainable energy production.
That's pretty much the entire point of Circles. When you post anything, you can decide whether to make it completely public, limited to your list of connections, or limited to one or more of your Circles. It seems that the default is 'limited' -- i.e, all your connections, but not public.
It's a good idea, overall. The UI is imperfect -- selecting the target for a post is in a separate menu, so it's not obvious who your current target audience is, and selecting from the menu is a little awkward. I'm hoping they improve on that.
I keep thinking that the single best feature of Google+ is the absence of Zynga.
I deleted my Facebook account because of my disgust with Facebook's passive-aggressive hostility towards privacy controls, but I'd stopped using Facebook long before, because I was sick of the perpetual spam to sign up for games for which the gameplay consisted almost solely of spamming people to sign up for them.
Apparently, Microsoft is pushing the use of HTML5 and Javascript for UI elements in Windows 8. It's looking like the future of Javascript is fairly bright.
It's a first semester course, introducing elementary concepts in programming such as variables, data types, control structures, and input and output. Any programming language which has those standard features and isn't too far from the mainstream of programming languages really ought to fit the bill, and the simpler, the better.
The introductory course in programming I took used C++, but really, most of the material was in pseudocode; the idiosyncracies of C++ were a distraction, for the most part.
Re:How about "when software is named by assholes"
on
When Software Offends
·
· Score: 1
It's been made clear that their commitment to sexism pre-empts their commitment to FLOSS.
It turns out I missed about half the first article, where it explained the reasoning on both sides in more detail.
For some reason, I was thinking of encrypted documents as existing in the defendants mind, not as physical documents -- just in digital form, not printed on paper.
You do understand, though, that new servers are being purchased and put online all the time, and that for precisely the reason you mention, one hesitates to load them on day one with a FOUR YEAR OUT OF DATE operating system (and one whose support ends in less than 3 years from now).
Red Hat's end of life for the 5.x series is in three years. However, RHEL 6.0 was released in November 2010, and RHEL 5.6 was released in January 2011, so describing CentOS 5.6 as four years out of date doesn't seem accurate. Also, Red Hat ends support for RHEL 5.x in three years, but if an enterprise is using CentOS on its servers, it's obviously foregoing direct support from Red Hat.
The point is that if you're choosing an enterprise edition of Linux, it's presumably because having the latest point release of everything is not your highest priority. There are differences between RHEL 5.6 and 6.0, such that for some applications, it may make sense to choose 5.6 over 6.0. I doubt the differences between 5.6 and 6.0 are as great as the differences between RHEL and CentOS on the one hand and Debian on the other, so the claim that lots of enterprises are switching to different distributions because CentOS 6.0 was delayed seems dubious.
Also, RHEL and clones are not only suited for servers. RHEL is not even marketed only for servers; there are Desktop and Workstation licenses. And guess what. Support for Sandy Bridge video found in new desktops and laptops didn't even appear until 6.1.
6.1 makes an absolutely dandy platform for practically any linux user, whether using oldish hardware, or today's current hardware. There is a category of enthusiast who gets off on reinstalling every 6 months or 1 year, but for most linux users, they would be well served with something that will be supported for the next 6 years!
Of course you can set up a workstation or a laptop with CentOS or RHEL, and that would be the better choice in some cases. However, many Linux users do choose a more volatile distribution for personal use, and there are good reasons to make that choice, but the assumptions one makes about managing updates for a volatile Linux distribution on a personal computer do not apply to a more conservative distribution on a mission-critical server -- in particular, you don't immediately update to the latest point release of an application without testing, and you may not update at all unless there were security flaws or bugs that actually caused problems in practice.
This isn't Ubuntu, or Fedora, or ArchLinux, or any of the other Linux distributions primarily designed for desktops, developer workstations, or technically adept hobbyists. This is CentOS we're talking about, which like RHEL on which it is based, is designed for enterprise servers. From what I've seen, servers are set up with a stable version of a server-oriented distribution, and there's no full distribution upgrade unless the server is decommissioned and repurposed.
What, is someone going to be seriously injured by using these cables? I've understood 'illegal' to mean a violation of criminal law, not just a civil matter like a breach of contract or a trademark violation?
Months ago, I was just finishing up my first run through a study guide for the RHCE, based on the 5.x series of RHEL, when I read that RHEL 6.0 had just been released, and at the same time, that the certification program was reworked to be based upon RHEL 6. The natural approach for self-study on a budget was to use CentOS, especially as that is the preferred Linux distribution for my employer, and for most jobs I've seen that specify familiarity with a particular Linux distribution.
I was about to download Scientific Linux, which has had a 6.0 version out for a while now -- given that it shares the goal of binary compatibility, I don't expect it to be very different.
The underlying problem here is with capitalism, which is characterized by a single-minded focus on profits.
Seeking profits is rational, in both the sense of being reasonable, and in the sense of being something that can be definitely measured, and this is why capitalism was genuinely an improvement upon previous economic systems. Profit can be understood as a measure of efficiency: after all the work, are there more resources available than there were at the start of the process? Markets allow for the use of money as a measure of profits, and thus as a measure of efficiency. This works in common sense, and should certainly make sense to engineers.
The primary problem is that capitalism uses profit as the *only* rational test of whether something is worth doing, whereas human beings want more from life than simply having more resources at the end of a process than at the beginning. There is also the secondary problem, that since profit is measured with money, there are tricks you can play with manipulating money to make it look like you've generated profits when you really haven't.
What we really need is a political-economic system in which profit is considered important, but not the only rational measure of success.
While there will always be imperfect implementations of standards, an imperfect implementation of a standard is a bug which you report and can hope to be addressed sooner or later. It's quite different to the problem with Web browsers that were designed to deliberately subvert standards -- failure to adhere to standards for such browsers is literally a feature, not a bug.
I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of the reflexive nationalism. The benefits of science and open-source technology can be shared by everyone, everywhere, and the more wide these things are shared, the more they grow.
Sure, I'd like to see better technical education in the US, and an environment more friendly to innovation, but I'd like to see that everywhere.
Yes. I was working through the Tunnelbroker.net "IPv6 Certification" exercises, and needed a registrar that offered IPv6 glue. GKG.net was at the top of a list of alternatives to GoDaddy.com that offered IPv6 glue.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed the part where they've found evidence that most humans have Neanderthal genes.
I always wondered why the assumption was genocide, when human communities tend to favor marriage to members of adjacent groups, and by most accounts I've read, Neanderthals would have been almost indistinguishable from anatomically modern humans, anyway. It just always seemed to make the most sense that the Neanderthals would have simply been absorbed by the larger group.
I remember Passages. You start on the left side of the screen, move towards the right, then die. You get double the score if you choose to have a partner, but your score is irrelevant. That had a glimmer of meaning -- a brief comment on mortality. It had the weight of a typical New Yorker cartoon.
Chain World, from the article, is simply stupid. Religious mysticism is stupidity and confusion. Deliberately cultivating mysticism is deliberately cultivating stupidity and confusion. The entire set-up is intended to subtract meaning, not add it. It's entirely appropriate, though it isn't pointed out, that they use a flash drive for Chain World. Flash drives wear out.
The whole thing sounds like Rohrer forgot about the competition until the day before, then spent an hour throwing together a Minecraft mod, and spent the drive there trying to think up a speech.
Deep down?
ISPs usually explain how to set DNS in their initial setup instructions. The settings are easily accessible from the connection status indicator visible in any GUI on any OS. It's no more difficult than dialing a telephone. Anyone can do it in seconds.
Furthermore, with my Cadillac insurance plan, my visit to the medical doctor cost me nothing directly. No copay, no deductible, and no co-insurance.
As I understand, medical providers in the US charge ludicrously high fees for simple procedures and inexpensive materials when the patient has a "Cadillac insurance plan", as a way of financing medical procedures for the many more patients who have little or no health insurance.
Last time I checked MS was a software development firm, and did work with linux.
You'd think that this was common knowledge. Every company for which I've worked used a mix of Windows and Linux; of necessity efforts are made to make them work together.
Sometimes I wonder how many Slashdotters actually work in IT.
Because the argument that space exploration led to many useful spinoff technologies implies that space exploration was more likely to produce useful spinoff technologies than other projects that might have been chosen.
That's exactly it. I keep seeing arguments that the space program was justified by all the spinoff technologies. There's a similar argument, with more sinister implications, that most technical innovation comes from war.
The real lesson, it seems to me, is that if you provide lots of resources for solving a big technical problem, you're likely to solve that problem and invent a lot of other useful things along the way. And if that's the case, why not choose a big technical problem that we have a clear practical need to solve? That way, we may accomplish something important, whether or not there are any useful spinoff technologies.
There are plenty of good candidates for a big technical problem worth solving. Global climate stabilization comes to mind, or the related problem of sustainable energy production.
It's weird. The labor cost of passing out the tiny snacks must exceed the cost of the tiny snacks.
Perhaps the tiny portions mean that most of the snacks are completely consumed, simplifying waste cleanup.
That's pretty much the entire point of Circles. When you post anything, you can decide whether to make it completely public, limited to your list of connections, or limited to one or more of your Circles. It seems that the default is 'limited' -- i.e, all your connections, but not public.
It's a good idea, overall. The UI is imperfect -- selecting the target for a post is in a separate menu, so it's not obvious who your current target audience is, and selecting from the menu is a little awkward. I'm hoping they improve on that.
I keep thinking that the single best feature of Google+ is the absence of Zynga.
I deleted my Facebook account because of my disgust with Facebook's passive-aggressive hostility towards privacy controls, but I'd stopped using Facebook long before, because I was sick of the perpetual spam to sign up for games for which the gameplay consisted almost solely of spamming people to sign up for them.
Apparently, Microsoft is pushing the use of HTML5 and Javascript for UI elements in Windows 8. It's looking like the future of Javascript is fairly bright.
It's a first semester course, introducing elementary concepts in programming such as variables, data types, control structures, and input and output. Any programming language which has those standard features and isn't too far from the mainstream of programming languages really ought to fit the bill, and the simpler, the better.
The introductory course in programming I took used C++, but really, most of the material was in pseudocode; the idiosyncracies of C++ were a distraction, for the most part.
It's been made clear that their commitment to sexism pre-empts their commitment to FLOSS.
It turns out I missed about half the first article, where it explained the reasoning on both sides in more detail.
For some reason, I was thinking of encrypted documents as existing in the defendants mind, not as physical documents -- just in digital form, not printed on paper.
I hate it when I find myself flip-flopping.
I am no lawyer, but the argument that this is a fifth amendment issue seems strong to me.
How is allowing the defendant to keep the password private a meaningful concession? The password has no value if the hard drive has been decrypted.
You do understand, though, that new servers are being purchased and put online all the time, and that for precisely the reason you mention, one hesitates to load them on day one with a FOUR YEAR OUT OF DATE operating system (and one whose support ends in less than 3 years from now).
Red Hat's end of life for the 5.x series is in three years. However, RHEL 6.0 was released in November 2010, and RHEL 5.6 was released in January 2011, so describing CentOS 5.6 as four years out of date doesn't seem accurate. Also, Red Hat ends support for RHEL 5.x in three years, but if an enterprise is using CentOS on its servers, it's obviously foregoing direct support from Red Hat.
The point is that if you're choosing an enterprise edition of Linux, it's presumably because having the latest point release of everything is not your highest priority. There are differences between RHEL 5.6 and 6.0, such that for some applications, it may make sense to choose 5.6 over 6.0. I doubt the differences between 5.6 and 6.0 are as great as the differences between RHEL and CentOS on the one hand and Debian on the other, so the claim that lots of enterprises are switching to different distributions because CentOS 6.0 was delayed seems dubious.
Also, RHEL and clones are not only suited for servers. RHEL is not even marketed only for servers; there are Desktop and Workstation licenses. And guess what. Support for Sandy Bridge video found in new desktops and laptops didn't even appear until 6.1.
6.1 makes an absolutely dandy platform for practically any linux user, whether using oldish hardware, or today's current hardware. There is a category of enthusiast who gets off on reinstalling every 6 months or 1 year, but for most linux users, they would be well served with something that will be supported for the next 6 years!
Of course you can set up a workstation or a laptop with CentOS or RHEL, and that would be the better choice in some cases. However, many Linux users do choose a more volatile distribution for personal use, and there are good reasons to make that choice, but the assumptions one makes about managing updates for a volatile Linux distribution on a personal computer do not apply to a more conservative distribution on a mission-critical server -- in particular, you don't immediately update to the latest point release of an application without testing, and you may not update at all unless there were security flaws or bugs that actually caused problems in practice.
This isn't Ubuntu, or Fedora, or ArchLinux, or any of the other Linux distributions primarily designed for desktops, developer workstations, or technically adept hobbyists. This is CentOS we're talking about, which like RHEL on which it is based, is designed for enterprise servers. From what I've seen, servers are set up with a stable version of a server-oriented distribution, and there's no full distribution upgrade unless the server is decommissioned and repurposed.
What, is someone going to be seriously injured by using these cables? I've understood 'illegal' to mean a violation of criminal law, not just a civil matter like a breach of contract or a trademark violation?
Months ago, I was just finishing up my first run through a study guide for the RHCE, based on the 5.x series of RHEL, when I read that RHEL 6.0 had just been released, and at the same time, that the certification program was reworked to be based upon RHEL 6. The natural approach for self-study on a budget was to use CentOS, especially as that is the preferred Linux distribution for my employer, and for most jobs I've seen that specify familiarity with a particular Linux distribution.
I was about to download Scientific Linux, which has had a 6.0 version out for a while now -- given that it shares the goal of binary compatibility, I don't expect it to be very different.
Not long afterwards, the widow died of brain cancer from using a mobile phone.
The underlying problem here is with capitalism, which is characterized by a single-minded focus on profits.
Seeking profits is rational, in both the sense of being reasonable, and in the sense of being something that can be definitely measured, and this is why capitalism was genuinely an improvement upon previous economic systems. Profit can be understood as a measure of efficiency: after all the work, are there more resources available than there were at the start of the process? Markets allow for the use of money as a measure of profits, and thus as a measure of efficiency. This works in common sense, and should certainly make sense to engineers.
The primary problem is that capitalism uses profit as the *only* rational test of whether something is worth doing, whereas human beings want more from life than simply having more resources at the end of a process than at the beginning. There is also the secondary problem, that since profit is measured with money, there are tricks you can play with manipulating money to make it look like you've generated profits when you really haven't.
What we really need is a political-economic system in which profit is considered important, but not the only rational measure of success.
While there will always be imperfect implementations of standards, an imperfect implementation of a standard is a bug which you report and can hope to be addressed sooner or later. It's quite different to the problem with Web browsers that were designed to deliberately subvert standards -- failure to adhere to standards for such browsers is literally a feature, not a bug.
I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of the reflexive nationalism. The benefits of science and open-source technology can be shared by everyone, everywhere, and the more wide these things are shared, the more they grow.
Sure, I'd like to see better technical education in the US, and an environment more friendly to innovation, but I'd like to see that everywhere.
GKG.net. I chose them originally because they offered IPv6 glue. There was no waiting; it was available as soon as I'd registered my domain name.
Yes. I was working through the Tunnelbroker.net "IPv6 Certification" exercises, and needed a registrar that offered IPv6 glue. GKG.net was at the top of a list of alternatives to GoDaddy.com that offered IPv6 glue.