My SO interns at one of the most respected building law firms in Boston. They have recently computerised - only one computer is connected to the internet (via a dial-up modem). Each morning a secretary prints out the emails for the partners and associates, who dictate there responses. The dictaphone tapes then go back out to the seccies and, well you can guess the rest. Luckily the firm she will be starting with back home in London is rather more clued up.
The senior partner at my mother's firm boasts that he never plugs his laptop into the mains "because that's how you get viruses".
The sad thing is these people end up as judges and then sit through computer crime and intellectual property cases...
I too am forced to use IDL on a regular basis and absolutely loathe it. The remote sesning frontend, ENVI, is better though. At least RSI release IDL and ENVI for linux (binary, x86 only of course.)
One of the chaps here is evaluating PDL and is very impressed, I'll take a look at it myself sometime.
For another use of linux at NASA check out AirMSIR. Although it's not mentioned on the page, the instrument is controlled using linux with RT extensions. Still didn't stop it from missing the target on the fieldwork I was doing in Kansas last month though...:-(
Chrysler (oh sorry that's German now. Maybe they'll start producing real cars)
Chevrolet
Oldsmobile
Buick
Pontiac
Lincoln
etc. etc.
You really have to have lived here (the US) to realise what utterly crap, 1950s engineering the US manufacturers try to pass of as cars. No wonder all the car-owners I know drive Toyota/Honda/VW/Volvo/Saab/BMW/Merc etc...
Oh and half of them can't even drive properly - they can only drive automatics like disabled people and little old ladies...
As far as DVD is concerned you can do it already. Check out DVDripper for a start. However, this only really works with software DVD. If you use hardware DVD, the unencoded stream doesn't even usually hit the framebuffer of the video card - it gets fed straight into the video encoder (the bit between the framebuffer and the monitor). You can't get at it without a hardware hack.
On another note, anyone who knows about DVD and in particular the Matrox DVD add-on (based on the Zoran chipset) please go to LiViD. We need help.
Oooh! Oooh! I love quizzes! I'll try these (and I promise I haven't looked at the answers...
1.We know how spherical bodies cool off from black-body radiation, and we can therefore put an upper limit on the age of the Earth. This limit is too low for evolution to have happened. (Lord Kelvin raised this one.)
The Earth has an internal source of heat - natural radioactive decay.
2.Suppose a superior specimen arose in a population. His superior traits would be diluted in his children, diluted further in theirs, and soon would become imperceptible. What role then can natural selection have? (In Darwin's time heritage was considered to be continuous.)
Traits are controlled by genes which are either present or not - no 'dilution' involved. Individuals with superior traits are more likely to breed succesfully and pass on those genes.
3.In South America there is an extremely large flower of a type evolution claims is descended from one pollinated by a moth. But the moth to pollinate this would have to have a 14 inch toungue, clearly impossible! (The moth, predicted by Darwin and thought impossible, later turned up.)
Hmm. The moth and flower evolved in step?
4.Evolution requires animals in the distant past to have spread from one continent to another, for example marsupials moving between South America and Australia in the distant past, making voyages that are ludicrous. How? (This eventually became a problem for geology...)
Continental drift.
5.We see many examples of altruistic behaviour in real life. How is this possible under evolution?
Altruism is social behaviour to protect a genetic population - genes matter more than individuals.
6. A population of plants was selectively bred for certain traits. For a while it worked well, and then the rate of modification slowed dramatically. From that population they tried breeding in multiple directions, but the easiest was to breed back to the ancestral population! Doesn't this inertia show evolution to be impossible? (This was the last serious scientific challenge.)
Oooh, bit hard this one. I would guess this has something to do with mutations being more common when you have a diverse gene pool to start off with. Once you have a homogenous gene pool you're less likely to, um (wave hands desperately), um, I don't know. Why?
Carbon dating? Are you on crack or something? Carbon-14 has a halflife of 5730 years which effectively means you can date samples up to about 50,000 years old. OCR carbon dating (which is more accurate) has been used on samples up to 35,000 years old.
The problem here was to date the rocks - and there's a bunch of ways to do this: magnetostratigraphy, cyclostratigraphy etc. For really old rocks (like these) you can use Argon-40/Argon-39 or Potassium-40/Argon-40 dating. I've got to go to the library this afternoon so I'll check then.
Could you refer me to some of the studies that 'prove' C-14 dating to be 'extremely flawed'? They must have passed me by... And as you say, it is easier to believe what someone tells you than to do the work yourself - so why don't you do the work yourself? No one is stopping you from disproving the theory behind this announcement. But you do have to dismiss it in a coherent and logical way in order to have your opinions taken seriously - simply dismissing it as 'crap' is not good enough.
As many others have pointed out - experiments like this are not proof of the theory of evolution through natural selection - they are merely evidence. The theory is just that - a theory, just like relativity and quantum mechanics for which there is no proof, merely evidence. However, there is plenty of evidence in favour of evolution through natural selection, relativity and QED and very little against so I'll go with them for the time being.
Why do 99% of American refuse to see their liberties being eroded right out from under them?
They do see their liberties being eroded but they simply don't care. Given that 99% of American can be kept happy as a pig in shit with a nice big 401(k), a couch to sit their fat asses on, a fucking huge cable TV and a bag of Doritos why should they care about such outmoded concepts as "essential freedoms", "democracy" and "natural law"?
Well sorry mate but I don't really see what you're whining about. If you're as good as you say you are you could be making £60K in the UK to start off with. Check out some of the big banks etc in London. If, for some bizarre reason, you want to stay in the US, just deal with it.
The scientific journal publication system is ripe for overhaul. I submitted a manuscript to a journal that shall remain nameless in February this year. Four weeks ago they contacted me to say that the Copyright Transfer form (yes, you have to give them your copyright before they consider publishing) had gone missing and could I please send another one; of course the manuscript was still sitting on the editor's desk. Last week I heard that the paper had been sent to a sub-editor who's job it will be to send copies (that I had to make) to reviewers for peer review. Sometime in early 2000 I will probably get reviewer's comments and amendments. I will then resubmit these and here nothing for another six months. If all goes to schedule the paper _may_ be published by late 2000 - two years after I did the original research. And for all this the journal will charge me (or rather NASA and therefore the US taxpayer) an exorbitant sum - $115 per page and $700 for each colour plate - and as my research area is satellite imagery I can't help but use a lot of colour.
A subscription to this journal, I might add, costs several hundred dollars per year and of course it does not pay any of its reviewers (like most academic journals, it is considered an 'honour' to be asked to review a manuscript.)
Someone, somewhere is making a lot of money out of the whole journal scam.
Echelon is employed in the US. It's illegal for a US agency such as NSA to routinely spy on US communications but not for British GCHQ to do so, but guess what, GCHQ shares all it's information with NSA...
With respect to pollution of children's morals scripturally speaking "it would be better if a millstone be hung around his neck and he be cast into the sea". (paraphrased from New Testament)
Now, now, you should know full well that it's blasphemy to paraphrase the Word of the Lord - you should only quote directly.
3. Worse yet is the argument that since the kids who wish to can get access to such filth anyway why fight it? Let's apply that absurd argument to drugs: Since kids can get drugs anyway (if they really wanted to) let's legalize drugs.
Many might think that legalisation and regulation of the drug trade would be a more efficient way of controlling drug abuse than the largely ineffective War on Drugs.
1. Europe is in much worse shape morally and politically. So who cares if the USA is the laughing stock of them.
By what measure? The rates of murder, gun-related violence, teenage pregnancy and HIV infection are all much higher in the US than in Europe. The behaviour of the US president and the cynical pork-barrelling of Congress makes the petty corruptions of the European Commision seem amateurish by comparison.
To consider pornography as free speech is a relatively new invention sanctioned by a liberal packed Supreme Court which has usurped the constitutional rights of the US Citizens to govern themselves.
But the Supreme Court is explicitly defined in the Constitution as the final arbiter of constitutional issues. Therefore, any ruling of the Supreme Court is, by definition, constitutional; it cannot 'usurp constitutional rights' as it alone (according to the constitution) interprets what the constitution really means (of course some might argue that this is a fundamental failing of the entire constitutional system.) If you don't agree with this, I suggest you propose an amendment to the constitution that strips the Supreme Court of its supremacy. I would be interested to hear what you propose in its place... Who are you to presume what the founding fathers meant when they drafted the constitution and the Bill of Rights? The writers of the constitution knew very well that people like you would speculate on what various parts of the constitution "meant" and try to enforce their own views. That is why they instituted the Supreme Court in the first place.
I too believe that this country, and possibly all of Western human society is undergoing a moral decline, fueled by material excess, anti-intellectualism, a love of luxury over adventure, a glorification of monetary success at all costs, self-interest and an ever lower-brow culture (in which I do not include South Park, a clever satire in many ways) and a truly pathetic trend towards whiny self-absorption (those awful 'Chicken Soup' books and all the pop psychology that creeps into conversation - my pet hate is 'closure.')
Unlike you, however, I also believe in democracy and freedom to let people live their lives as they see fit providing they don't infringe on other people's rights. Now, one might argue that R-rated movies will lead to disturbed people who go around infringing others rights by, e.g. killing/raping them, and therefore violent/sexual moview should be banned. Following this line of argument we should ban drink as it leads to fighting, cars as they lead to mass deaths on the road (incidentally many, many more Americans are killed on the road than from drug overdoses yet we have yet to see a 'War on Asshole Drivers') etc., etc.
You, as with so many Christians, believe that those who are areligious (such as myself) are also ammoral. Personally, I cannot understand how someone can be so bereft of their own morals, that they have to get them out of a book instead.
Talking to my friends in the UK, they told me that the newspapers there were absolutely full of the Kennedy story. Trouble was, none of my friends had ever heard of him. I've been living in the US for three years and I had never heard of him. Neither myself or my friends are ignorant of world news either: if you want a drunken argument on the impact of the Euro on bond markets or the Taiwan-China situation we're the people to come to. I also heard a quote on CNN: 'this will be as big a blow to generation X (whoever they are) as the death of president Kennedy was to the baby boom generation.'
So two questions:
Why are the UK media so obsessed with a minor celebrity that the majority of the UK public have never even heard of? (they did the same thing with that Simpson bloke)
How can anyone truly believe that the death of this guy can bear any comparison to the assasination of JFK?
Well, Übermensch means 'superman' and was originally coined by Neitzche and later incorporated into the Nazi philosophy - much as the swastika was. Although Neitzche had some pretty dodgy ideas (although I think claims that he was a raving antisemite are overblown) and seems to attract a fair share of knuckle-draggers, he was no nazi.
A few weeks ago/. reported on a computer libel case in the UK. This was taken as an immediate invitation by lots of US-based trolls to lambast the UK for an alleged lack of protection of freedom of speech, this would never happen in the US, 1st amendment, guns rights, we bailed you out in the last war etc., etc.
Where ARE you all now? Clearly Harvard should have nothing to fear as the 1st Amendment should protect it. Or maybe you're too embarrassed to realise what the 1st amendment is: a poorly-worded declaration of nothing much, open to the befuddled interpretation of every senile justice who bribes his way into the Supreme Court and every bored libel case juror dumb enough to not figure out how to evade jury service.
SUSE, being a German company, would presumably file for an IPO in Frankfurt, rather than New York. The SEC is powerful but I hardly think it's powers extend to regulating non-US stock markets...
I concur. KDE looks very promising. The document generation features and the auto-generation of all the GNU autoconf stuff are really nice features.
Ando of course it isn't just limited to producing KDE-specific applications, you have a choice of KDE apps, QT apps (which would be portable to Windows) and generic C/C++ apps.
Doesn't this just do the same thing as RDS? RDS skips on to the next transmitter when you get in range and will also cut in to whatever your listening if a traffic or weather report comes in on a different station, display the station name and a few other clever things.
Come to think of it I've never seen an RDS radio in the US. Maybe it doesn't exist here.
Could you explain to me how freedom of speech protects you from libel lawsuits? Libel is not protected speech - if you call Laurence Godfrey a degenerate monkeyfister or even a 'bullying son of a bitch', and a US court decides he isn't, the court will convict you of libel and you'll pay the consequences. And I can guarantee that the damages awarded by a US court will be MUCH more than that awarded by an English court.
BTW, out of interest, what does the fact that Britain is a monarchy and the US is a republic have to do with the case in hand?
Now would that be for US gallons or UK gallons, unfortunately there's a difference...
Actually, lets scrap all this ounces, furlongs, pints, groats and pecks crap one and for all and just standardise on SI, everyone else has (well the Brits still use miles for road distances but everything else is metric).
Slashdot Mirror
The senior partner at my mother's firm boasts that he never plugs his laptop into the mains "because that's how you get viruses".
The sad thing is these people end up as judges and then sit through computer crime and intellectual property cases...
Nick
One of the chaps here is evaluating PDL and is very impressed, I'll take a look at it myself sometime.
For another use of linux at NASA check out AirMSIR. Although it's not mentioned on the page, the instrument is controlled using linux with RT extensions. Still didn't stop it from missing the target on the fieldwork I was doing in Kansas last month though...:-(
Nick
- Ford
- Chrysler (oh sorry that's German now. Maybe they'll start producing real cars)
- Chevrolet
- Oldsmobile
- Buick
- Pontiac
- Lincoln
- etc. etc.
You really have to have lived here (the US) to realise what utterly crap, 1950s engineering the US manufacturers try to pass of as cars. No wonder all the car-owners I know drive Toyota/Honda/VW/Volvo/Saab/BMW/Merc etc...Oh and half of them can't even drive properly - they can only drive automatics like disabled people and little old ladies...
Nick
On another note, anyone who knows about DVD and in particular the Matrox DVD add-on (based on the Zoran chipset) please go to LiViD. We need help.
Nick
The Earth has an internal source of heat - natural radioactive decay.
Traits are controlled by genes which are either present or not - no 'dilution' involved. Individuals with superior traits are more likely to breed succesfully and pass on those genes.
Hmm. The moth and flower evolved in step?
Continental drift.
Altruism is social behaviour to protect a genetic population - genes matter more than individuals.
Oooh, bit hard this one. I would guess this has something to do with mutations being more common when you have a diverse gene pool to start off with. Once you have a homogenous gene pool you're less likely to, um (wave hands desperately), um, I don't know. Why?
Nick
The problem here was to date the rocks - and there's a bunch of ways to do this: magnetostratigraphy, cyclostratigraphy etc. For really old rocks (like these) you can use Argon-40/Argon-39 or Potassium-40/Argon-40 dating. I've got to go to the library this afternoon so I'll check then.
Could you refer me to some of the studies that 'prove' C-14 dating to be 'extremely flawed'? They must have passed me by... And as you say, it is easier to believe what someone tells you than to do the work yourself - so why don't you do the work yourself? No one is stopping you from disproving the theory behind this announcement. But you do have to dismiss it in a coherent and logical way in order to have your opinions taken seriously - simply dismissing it as 'crap' is not good enough.
As many others have pointed out - experiments like this are not proof of the theory of evolution through natural selection - they are merely evidence. The theory is just that - a theory, just like relativity and quantum mechanics for which there is no proof, merely evidence. However, there is plenty of evidence in favour of evolution through natural selection, relativity and QED and very little against so I'll go with them for the time being.
Nick
rightshift-alt-3 on a US keyboard (under Xfree86 anyway)
Nick
Nick
Nick
Nick
- Faster TCP/IP
- binding NICs to processors
- Useable NFS - one that doesn't crash IRIX 6.5 servers and implements NFS v3
- Guaranteed rate I/O
- Finer kernel locks (this is being done already)
Filesystems/DriversA subscription to this journal, I might add, costs several hundred dollars per year and of course it does not pay any of its reviewers (like most academic journals, it is considered an 'honour' to be asked to review a manuscript.)
Someone, somewhere is making a lot of money out of the whole journal scam.
Nick
Echelon is employed in the US. It's illegal for a US agency such as NSA to routinely spy on US communications but not for British GCHQ to do so, but guess what, GCHQ shares all it's information with NSA...
I just don't think they could compete...
Nick
Now, now, you should know full well that it's blasphemy to paraphrase the Word of the Lord - you should only quote directly.
Many might think that legalisation and regulation of the drug trade would be a more efficient way of controlling drug abuse than the largely ineffective War on Drugs.
By what measure? The rates of murder, gun-related violence, teenage pregnancy and HIV infection are all much higher in the US than in Europe. The behaviour of the US president and the cynical pork-barrelling of Congress makes the petty corruptions of the European Commision seem amateurish by comparison.
But the Supreme Court is explicitly defined in the Constitution as the final arbiter of constitutional issues. Therefore, any ruling of the Supreme Court is, by definition, constitutional; it cannot 'usurp constitutional rights' as it alone (according to the constitution) interprets what the constitution really means (of course some might argue that this is a fundamental failing of the entire constitutional system.) If you don't agree with this, I suggest you propose an amendment to the constitution that strips the Supreme Court of its supremacy. I would be interested to hear what you propose in its place... Who are you to presume what the founding fathers meant when they drafted the constitution and the Bill of Rights? The writers of the constitution knew very well that people like you would speculate on what various parts of the constitution "meant" and try to enforce their own views. That is why they instituted the Supreme Court in the first place.
I too believe that this country, and possibly all of Western human society is undergoing a moral decline, fueled by material excess, anti-intellectualism, a love of luxury over adventure, a glorification of monetary success at all costs, self-interest and an ever lower-brow culture (in which I do not include South Park, a clever satire in many ways) and a truly pathetic trend towards whiny self-absorption (those awful 'Chicken Soup' books and all the pop psychology that creeps into conversation - my pet hate is 'closure.')
Unlike you, however, I also believe in democracy and freedom to let people live their lives as they see fit providing they don't infringe on other people's rights. Now, one might argue that R-rated movies will lead to disturbed people who go around infringing others rights by, e.g. killing/raping them, and therefore violent/sexual moview should be banned. Following this line of argument we should ban drink as it leads to fighting, cars as they lead to mass deaths on the road (incidentally many, many more Americans are killed on the road than from drug overdoses yet we have yet to see a 'War on Asshole Drivers') etc., etc.
You, as with so many Christians, believe that those who are areligious (such as myself) are also ammoral. Personally, I cannot understand how someone can be so bereft of their own morals, that they have to get them out of a book instead.
Nick
So two questions:
Why are the UK media so obsessed with a minor celebrity that the majority of the UK public have never even heard of? (they did the same thing with that Simpson bloke)
How can anyone truly believe that the death of this guy can bear any comparison to the assasination of JFK?
Well, Übermensch means 'superman' and was originally coined by Neitzche and later incorporated into the Nazi philosophy - much as the swastika was. Although Neitzche had some pretty dodgy ideas (although I think claims that he was a raving antisemite are overblown) and seems to attract a fair share of knuckle-draggers, he was no nazi.
Nick
Where ARE you all now? Clearly Harvard should have nothing to fear as the 1st Amendment should protect it. Or maybe you're too embarrassed to realise what the 1st amendment is: a poorly-worded declaration of nothing much, open to the befuddled interpretation of every senile justice who bribes his way into the Supreme Court and every bored libel case juror dumb enough to not figure out how to evade jury service.
Nick
Nick
Nick
Ando of course it isn't just limited to producing KDE-specific applications, you have a choice of KDE apps, QT apps (which would be portable to Windows) and generic C/C++ apps.
Nick
Come to think of it I've never seen an RDS radio in the US. Maybe it doesn't exist here.
Nick
BTW, out of interest, what does the fact that Britain is a monarchy and the US is a republic have to do with the case in hand?
Nick
Nick
Actually, lets scrap all this ounces, furlongs, pints, groats and pecks crap one and for all and just standardise on SI, everyone else has (well the Brits still use miles for road distances but everything else is metric).
Nick