A mathematician, the Hungarian lover of numbers Paul Erdos once said, is a
device for converting coffee into theorems.
Erdos himself was a device for converting speed into theorems.
Ironically he lived to be 83 years old,
prolifically creating new math until the very
end.
Like all of Erdos's friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking.
In 1979, Graham bet Erdos $500 that he couldn't stop taking amphetamines
for a month. Erdos accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for
thirty days. After Graham paid up--and wrote the $500 off as a business
expense--Erdos said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't
get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece
of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set
mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and
mathematics was the better for it. - Paul Hoffman,
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
My guess is that more mathematicians use amphetamines than is
commonly acknowledged. This is how some older mathematicians try to keep
their "edge".
For a fraction of 1/2 billion, the Army could fund whatever cleanup or
new features are needed in OpenOffice.org, etc. to satisfy their
requirements. And then they'd have the software free forever after, and
of course the rest of the world would benefit from it also. And it
would create the jobs needed to perform this development. Everyone
(except Microsoft) would win: taxpayers pay less, and the economy gets
a boost with these new jobs.
Sadly, it seems instead that it's all going to Microsoft. The money
will probably mostly go to pad their $40 billion (or whatever it is
now) in the bank.
Triple-clicking the location bar in Windows
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC3 Is Out
·
· Score: 4, Informative
First, there are two pref's I have set up in user.js so that the
first click that brings focus to the location bar selects all.
Without this I'd go nuts, since I like to press "s" and have
slashdot immediately appear, "sc" for sciencenewsdaily, etc.. This solves half of my problem.
Now for the heart of my complaint. In Mozilla 1.2 and before, once
you had focus on the location bar, double-clicking the location bar
selected all, just as it does in Internet Explorer and numerous other
Windows apps that have boxes for file names and URLs.
In Mozilla 1.3, the behavior was changed to: double-click selects a
"word", and triple click selects all. The philosophy being, the
location bar is like a mini text editor, so it should work like an
editor. See
this Usenet thread. (Frankly, the "word" that is selected after
double-clicking has never been of much use to me.)
The problem is, I think (this is my theory) there is something
fundamental in Windows where "triple-click" is not a real operating system
event, like double-clicking, so some other kludge is used to time the
clicks. Or maybe Windows XP or the mouse
driver is just broken, I don't
know. But anyway if I have the mouse speed set for fast clicking, I can't get
triple-click to work at all. If I set the mouse speed slow, I can
triple-click as long as I click not too slow and not too fast, but you
have to get the timing just right. Half the time it seems I get
it wrong and have to try again. And I hate having to set the mouse
speed slow because that screws up what I'm used to with other apps.
I know this isn't the right forum for bug reports - I've been meaning
to study this problem in more detail, logging Windows events and times
so I can make a convincing case and write up a useful bug report, but
time has just been slipping by and I'm afraid the final release (an
important one from what I hear) will happen before this can be properly
addressed. I will try though, I promise.:)
Am I just being fanatically nitpicky, or does this bother anyone
else? (Well, at least I got it off my chest...:)
If management is convinced that their sales force needs to collect
500 data points on each prospective customer...
You may have said "500" as hyperbole, but when we were
trying to help on one Fortune 500 company (which shall remain nameless,
and I can't name their product because you'll know who they are...)
replace a legacy ERP system, I was shocked to find that the database
record for each customer had over 300 data fields, slowly accumulated
over a period of 30 years. Some of them no one knew what they were for
anymore, but the majority actually had some obscure purpose in some
dusty corner of their bloated bureaucracy. Each department predicted
dire consequences if they lost their data fields, so the majority ended
up being retained, with several hundred thousand lines of new code
written on top of the modern system to effectively emulate their old
one. It cost $millions to do this. This company was hurting badly
because their profits were being eaten up by bureaucratic overhead as
their market share migrated to the cheaper products of lean, efficient
Asian companies. They're still hurting today, and I don't think they'll
be Fortune 500 much longer.
Maybe they'll start to teach kids the truth now?
on
Incas Used Binary?
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
If you do a Google search, most school kids seem to have been taught to think like
Jared
(PPT presentation; sorry):
I admire Bill gates. He Donates Millions to charity and computers to
schools like ours. He invented computers and programs to make Our lives Easier.
However there are a few independent thinkers like
Danielle
who want to set things straight:
Many think that Bill Gates invented computers, but he actually invented
the computer language called Binary Code.
Buy from Apple, and you'll end up having to pay SCO a license fee (they
wish). Did you read the article? BSD (which OSX is based on) is next.
"I asked about the lawsuit between AT&T and BSDI. That lawsuit was not
ended by a judgment, it was settled between the parties, and the
settlement was in large part confidential. SCO, which I presume is the
legal inheritor of the AT&T side of the settlement, claims some aspects
of the settlement have not been enforced but would not describe it
further. SCO has not yet looked into whether, in its opinion, the free
BSDs legally are derivative of the Unix sources. I assume if SCO can
get a handle on the Linux situation, it'll go after the free BSDs next."
I like that! My version is quite similar, with a minor improvement.
As we use many different programs to layout, archive, and read
files, we require file formats that do not depend on any one program.
Please send all documents saved as.TXT (plain text
format). This is an open standard, and one that all word processors can
read. It also saves to a smaller file size, and is better for archiving
as it contains no proprietary code.
In MS Word, Your.DOC files can be saved as.TXT as follows.
1. Open your document
2. Go to the 'File' menu
3. Select 'Save As'
4. In the dialog box, type a new name for
your document if desired, then in the 'Save As Type' drop down
menu, choose 'TXT Plain Text'.
5. Click 'Save'
6. You're done!
You may also click the 'Options' button in the 'Save As' dialog box and
choose '.TXT Plain Text Format' for the drop down menu "Save Word files
as". This reminds you to save them as.TXT files.
In other word processors and page layout programs, you may be able to
'Export' your open file as.TXT.
So, Word is smart enough to do WYSIWYG (on your printer). Why is
this a problem? Crappier apps will scrunch the fonts or have lines
running off the margins.
The problem is that it can make collaboration impossible. A few
years ago we emailed a 40-page.doc to a client to review a detailed
spec proposal. We had a phone conference set up with a bunch of people,
and some peoples' docs were 39 pages long, others 42 pages. It became
so hopelessly confusing trying to figure out where in the document
people were talking about that we cancelled the meeting until a physical
copy could be faxed to everyone.
Now we would send out pdf instead of fax, but I think you can
understand my point. Actually pdf is kind of nice - sometimes I secretly
use LaTeX if I'm going to be the only maintainer, and people always
comment on how polished it looks. No one's ever said that about my Word
docs, although I admit I'm probably not the most proficient Word expert.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned
GNUWin II. I've burned a few for my friends and my son's friends, and
they're always amazed it's free. It's not Linux but it gets
people exposed painlessly to the Linux "flavor" and certainly has everything
needed (OpenOffice.org etc.) for schoolwork plus some games for the
kiddies (everyone like Tux Racer). I really should burn a couple
dozen of these and just leave them out at the next PTA meeting.
Oh, I forgot to add that I just hope the poor software industries that
had this $10.97 billion stolen from them were able to recover it from their insurance
companies. I mean, they had theft insurance, didn't they?
The other subjective view is where they attribute the reported 1%
decline to their own efforts.
Actually it was probably "calculated" very carefully. See, if
their current budget permits them to decrease piracy by 1%, then they'll
need a 40 times budget increase to eliminate piracy altogether.
Good job security.
In 2001, piracy cost the worldwide software industry precisely $10.97
billion in lost revenue
according to the BSA
(well, rounded to the nearest $10 million anyway). Wow, that's a lot of money. Big incentive
there for them to escalate their efforts 40 fold, to just purge the
world of this horrible evil once and for all.
What is the BSA's budget anyway? I couldn't
find it on their website.
Why the hell shouldn't something that *I* created, exist for my lifetime
as *MY* personal property and then pass on to my heirs or go to my grave
with me if I want? What innate *RIGHT* does society at large have over
*PERSONAL* property, I.P. or real? What next, when a person dies
(relatives or no) everyone in the area just loots their house and squats
on the property?
If you want to consider it *YOUR* personal property, then keep it to
yourself. Don't release it to the public. As soon as you expose it to
the world, you have released information bits into the wild, and you are
imposing a burden on society by forcing them to be extra careful about
what they do with those bits, which now become hard to get rid of
completely. There are so many of these bits out there, that the other
members of society have to go out of their way, expending time and legal
effort, to determine which they can use and which they can't use, and in
what way, and what bits "belong" to whom. The copyright laws give you
the privilege to impose this burden on society for a limited period of
time, in order to profit from it and be compensated for your work
producing it. After that, you no longer have that privilege.
So, keep everything you create to yourself and your heirs. *PLEASE*.
Do not expose your creations to me. Thank you.
Re:Instead...
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Fine, who cares, let them! For god's sake, they're fooling no one. In
addition, they should incorporate sales tax INTO the price so that the
price you see is the price you pay. If an article is $4, it's $4! No
change necessary!
Give it up, you will never ever see logical
pricing that doesn't require loose change.
$19.99 may not fool you or me, but subliminally many people perceive
it quite differently from $20. It begins with a "1". "In the teens"
seems easier to justify psychologically than $20 for an impulse buy.
Everyone knows about the trick but it still works
in spite of that. It's very obvious but at
the same time
very subtle, and it works because most people think with their
emotions rather than logic. Marketeers know this, and we will see
this trick done until the end of time. And then
there are gasoline prices - I don't recall ever seeing one that didn't end in 9/10 of a penny.
Curiously, another pricing trick that is
done in some cases -
especially "wholesale" or "factory outlet" type places - is to do the
opposite - price it at some oddball amount _other_ than $19.99, like
$18.54 or $21.43. This appeals to bargain-hunters who are looking for
"deals" and are suspicious of the.99 trick. An oddball price can give
them the psychological impression that the vendor is cutting the price to the bone, down to
the last penny they can trim.
Yet another ploy, that works with rich
people buying luxury items, is to purposely price something with round numbers. You don't often
see a
painting in an art gallery, or a high-fashion
designer dress, priced at $2399.99 -
it would almost make it seem "cheap" to some of these people. A round number like $2400
makes it seem more sophisticated, and nitpicking about price or
using cheap pricing tricks is beneath these
people.
"Taxes not included" is done to make things seem cheaper and more
competitive, again a subtle psychological trick to get the customer to
cross that fragile threshold of deciding to purchase while maximizing
their profits. Once at the cash register, when the real amount hits
home, that borderline psychological decision has already been made and
the customer is now emotionally committed to the purchase. And the listed
price is going to be $19.99 anyway, whether it cost the vendor $10 or
$12, taxes included or not, so why should the vendor forfeit the extra
tax money?
And then there are those "deals" in TV ads or web sites that seem
cheap until they add in the shipping and "handling" charge. That's a whole discussion in itself.
There is one thing I've always wondered about - taxes are always including
for certain items like gasoline, alcohol, or cigarettes. In Massachusetts
I recall it is or used to be $.47 per gallon. So I wonder why gas stations don't
advertise "$1.09 9/10 plus tax" instead of "$1.56 9/10". Is there a law
prohibiting this or something? I would almost like to see it done this
way because it would make people painfully aware of the money they're
paying to the government.
"My Google search failed..."
OK, found it.
This is the DrinkOrDie warez case. Sabuj Pattanayek was sentenced
to 41 months on
July 2, 2002, so he couldn't have "served" it yet.
But again this is a little different from downloading audio recordings.
As I have mentioned
elsewhere,
I challenge anyone to find a court case that
has been successful against an individual holding copies of music for
non-commercial personal use. The AHRA makes such copying immune to
allegations of copyright infringement (IMO of course).
And notwithstanding nitpicks about the precise definition of "analog" and "digital",
the intent of Congress when they passed the law was clear as I
point out
here.
A student in North Carolina spent 41 months in prison for copyright infringement.
My Google search failed to turn up anything about this case except in
reference to the RIAA email itself. Without knowing more details, this
is probably a grossly distorted scare tactic. I find it hard to believe
that someone spent 41 months in prison for P2P downloading. If the case
is even real, I'd bet it would be for something extreme like profiting
from selling counterfeit CDs or something, and would be completely
irrelevant to the average P2P user.
People who knowingly mislead by
presenting only a small part of the picture and
purposely withholding the rest of the relevant
facts to suit their agenda are, in my book, scumbags.
The article says 300,000 stars were captured in 3.1 arcminutes. Let's see, assuming uniform
distribution of them:
a = angle subtended by capture (radians) = 2*pi*3.1/(360*60) =.000901
b = area of capture on a sphere of radius 1 =approx= a^2 =.0000008118
c = fraction of entire sphere = b/(4*pi) =.0000000646
d = number of visible stars in entire sky = 300000/c = 4,643,000,000,000
So that means almost 5 trillion stars are visible by Hubble in the
entire sky. That's a lot of stars to catalog. (Assuming I didn't err like they did
in the $97 trillion RIAA calculation... someone pls double check and flame me
if appropriate.)
From Wikipedia:
"Paramount owns a copyright to the official dictionary and other
canonical descriptions of the language. Some people dispute the
validity of Paramount's claim of copyright on the language itself..."
When you waste^H^H^H^H^Hinvest your time learning the Klingon
language, just remember that Paramount owns it, and you'd better use it
in ways they approve of or else risk their ire.
I would say it would be better, and far more interesting, to spend
that time learning Navajo or some other real but endangered language.
Unfortunately these languages do not have the monied commercial hype
behind them. Paramount just loves the free
publicity generated by the Klingon-speaking geek image.
Maybe I read it wrong, but the interview seems
to give the impression that
Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and
Durability compliance
is primarily concerned with keeping the disk in sync with memory.
Q. Is it easier to maintain ACID principles with pure RAM?
A. Yes. This makes ACID almost trivial.
...
Q. Does writing the data to disk add some of the same problems of synchronization and ordering that led to the development of the ACID principles?
Q. If you use the disk only for backups, then things are much easier than before. It's when you store data on disk that you are still manipulating on disk that you need the ACID principles.
I'm confused. I actually haven't used MySQL much, and someone else
can clarify its current ACID compliance. My application involves
multiuser financial transactions. When making my DB selection a couple
of years ago, at that time
it was claimed that MySQL had some
ACID deficiencies that
made me nervous. I settled on PostgreSQL, which I'm very happy with.
But there's a lot more to ACID than just keeping RAM and disk in sync, and I
don't see how RAM would make ACID that
much easier, and certainly not
"almost trivial". You still have all the
transactional semaphores, record
locking, potential deadlocks, rollbacks, etc. to worry about. In
fact I don't see why you wouldn't just have the RAM pretend to be a disk
and be done with it, since the disk version already has stable software. Then, if it is important
to increase performance further,
RAM-specific code optimization
could be done over time, but slowly
and carefully.
I'm sorry - I really don't want to get into a religious war here, but the interview didn't
do much to
bolster my confidence in MySQL for mission-critical financial stuff. Educate
me.
Contrary to what the RIAA wants you to believe, it appears that
making a copy of an audio recording may be perfectly legal in the US, even
if you don't own the original recording, as long as it is for
noncommercial purposes. The reason for this is the Audio Home Recording
Act (AHRA).
Since 1992, the U.S. Government has collected a tax on all digital
audio recorders and blank digital audio media manufactured in or
imported into the US, and gives the money directly to the RIAA
companies, which is distributed as royalties to recording artists,
copyright owners, music publishers, and music writers:
In exchange for those royalties, a special exemption to the copyright
law was made for the specific case of audio recordings, and as a result
*all* noncommercial copying of musical recordings by consumers is now
legal in the US, regardless of media:
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of
copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a
digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an
analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the
noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making
digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
From House Report No. 102-873(I), September 17, 1992:
"In the case of home taping, the [Section 1008] exemption protects all
noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical
recordings."
From House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992:
"In short, the reported legislation [Section 1008] would clearly
establish that consumers cannot be sued for making analog or digital
audio copies for private noncommercial use."
Therefore, when you copy an MP3 the royalties have already been paid for
with tax dollars in accordance with the law. If you are a musician
whose recordings are publicly distributed, then you are entitled to your
share of these royalties by filing a claim under Section 1006 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1006.html).
Napster tried to use this law to defend their case, and the court ruled
this law did not apply to them because they are a commercial company.
But as a consumer it seems to me you are perfectly within your rights
when you make a copy for noncommercial private use.
"Funny, it seemed rather real to those of us sitting in the Athena cluster this week"
"...rather real..." "...those of us..." Oh, the humanity! Spare me while I puke. So the photos were taken there, so what?
You were terrorized by a couple of hundred (if that many) toy figures? What's next,
Wellesley College's computer center invaded by Barbie dolls? Gimme a break.
So you freshman had your lame little laugh, this is nothing compared to my day.
Now I get it, it's a playlist pattern analyzer. What with all the hype on the
page that doesn't explain what it does, at first I thought this was a
miraculously advanced AI program that would pick out the common themes in all the
music I like best, then synthesize a new stream of music like nothing I've
ever heard, a brand new composition tailored exactly to my personal
taste, that to me would be the most beautiful music in the world
possible. But it just plays existing songs. Oh well, back to fantasizing
about OggSynth...
OK, I'm sure it's a useful program and that they've done a great job, and I'll try it out. But please,
couldn't they have just explained it in plain English?
3. I got a "double rebate" in December for a monitor at Microcenter,
advertised as such in their flyer, and was given different two rebate
forms. But each rebate required the original bar code. After several
phone calls, they finally said to send in a copy of it for one of the
rebates (and the customer service rep said many people were calling
about this) and "keep a copy of all paperwork", but I've yet to see
either of the rebates.
Well, well. Is this just a coincidence, or what? I just received the
following regarding the $26 part of my "double rebate", although they
don't mention the 2nd one for $20, that had the copy of the
UPC code. Remember, this was purchased around
Dec. 15th. At least I saved the flyer from Micro Center and all
paperwork if I want to pursue this.
From: "customerservice@teg-online.com"
To: [ortholattice]
Subject: Offer Status Update
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 23:06:03 -0400
[note backdating in body of email, mismatching header]
[ortholattice]
[address deleted]
Xxxxxxxx, MA yyyyy-zzzz
Dear [ortholattice],
Thank you for participating in the following promotional offer:
Monitors 719BF & 719BF-BK $26 @Micro Center
Your Personal Reference Number is: Cxxxxxxx [deleted]
We are pleased to advise that your entry is being processed and has been
qualified. Please allow for 10-12 weeks for the delivery of your
check/product.
If you have further questions after that time frame on your submission,
please visit us on the web at www.expressgroup.com. There, you will be
able to view the status of your submission by using your personal
reference number listed above.
Sincerely,
The Express Group
Printing, Distribution, Fulfillment
(OK, now this is really off-topic but here's the MYSTERY OF THE DAY:
What the heck is Six_Degrees_CmdrTaco?
Why is my handle in this list along with 7300 others? Does anyone else here
recognize their handle on this list?)
1. You pay sales tax on the rebated amount, but you don't get it the
sales tax back. (Does the state get this money, or does the vendor keep
it?)
2. If you buy several rebated items and forget to do a separate
transaction for each one, you will only have one "orginal receipt"
required by each rebate. But if insist on a separate credit card
transaction for each item, the people impatiently waiting behind you in
line are, well, not appreciative.
3. I got a "double rebate" in December for a monitor at Microcenter,
advertised as such in their flyer, and was given different two rebate
forms. But each rebate required the original bar code. After several
phone calls, they finally said to send in a copy of it for one of the
rebates (and the customer service rep said many people were calling
about this) and "keep a copy of all paperwork", but I've yet to see either of the rebates.
4. Sometimes the warranty policy requires you have the original receipt, not
a copy. But you've sent the original to the rebate center.
5. With the bar code cut off, you lose the opportunity to refund/exchange the
item in most places.
6. And finally the whole thing is such a PITA - wasted postage,
wasted time, uncertainty and doubt that you dotted every i and crossed
every t required by the form. With no guarantee that you'll get
anything back unless you are prepared to keep meticulous records and
make many phone calls, waiting on hold for ages,
trying to trace down "lost" rebate submissions.
The reason why no one has tried to make a *good* distribution is that
the set of people capable of making distributions (call this set A) is
not a representative sample of the population of people who need a
*good* distribution. Members of set A tend to be just fine with using
command lines and writing printer magicfilters.
The members of set A you are talking
about are those who put together Debian, Gentoo, etc. I'm
happy to leave these people alone and let them contribute in their own way.
I don't expect them to ever have a distribution usable by the general public,
just as I don't expect expect the Linux kernel to ever have a built-in fancy
GUI interface. This doesn't mean their contributions aren't extremely valuable.
For the most part the writer is talking the commercial distributions,
Redhat et. al. We are paying them to do this, and they need to pay more
attention to this. I pay them for this and I don't think they are doing
their job. Although they are getting better at it, they still aren't taking
this seriously enough and are only hurting themselves.
This problem is *hard* to solve.
Parts of it are and parts of it aren't. Many of the issues the
writer brought up are just sloppiness that ends up alienating newbies. I
have brought up a number of these kinds of issues with Redhat support,
sometimes over and over, and it is hard to get them to pay attention and not just email you back a
canned response. I want them to pay attention not because I personally
have trouble with the installation, but because I know others will. I
want the product to succeed because I want Linux to succeed. And, ok,
also because I happen to also be a Redhat stockholder.
There's no rush to solve this problem.
In the long run, Linux will succeed. The only problem is, as John
Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run, we're all dead."
Slashdot Mirror
Erdos himself was a device for converting speed into theorems. Ironically he lived to be 83 years old, prolifically creating new math until the very end.
My guess is that more mathematicians use amphetamines than is commonly acknowledged. This is how some older mathematicians try to keep their "edge".
BTW have you computed your Erdos Number?
Sadly, it seems instead that it's all going to Microsoft. The money will probably mostly go to pad their $40 billion (or whatever it is now) in the bank.
Now for the heart of my complaint. In Mozilla 1.2 and before, once you had focus on the location bar, double-clicking the location bar selected all, just as it does in Internet Explorer and numerous other Windows apps that have boxes for file names and URLs.
In Mozilla 1.3, the behavior was changed to: double-click selects a "word", and triple click selects all. The philosophy being, the location bar is like a mini text editor, so it should work like an editor. See this Usenet thread. (Frankly, the "word" that is selected after double-clicking has never been of much use to me.)
The problem is, I think (this is my theory) there is something fundamental in Windows where "triple-click" is not a real operating system event, like double-clicking, so some other kludge is used to time the clicks. Or maybe Windows XP or the mouse driver is just broken, I don't know. But anyway if I have the mouse speed set for fast clicking, I can't get triple-click to work at all. If I set the mouse speed slow, I can triple-click as long as I click not too slow and not too fast, but you have to get the timing just right. Half the time it seems I get it wrong and have to try again. And I hate having to set the mouse speed slow because that screws up what I'm used to with other apps.
I know this isn't the right forum for bug reports - I've been meaning to study this problem in more detail, logging Windows events and times so I can make a convincing case and write up a useful bug report, but time has just been slipping by and I'm afraid the final release (an important one from what I hear) will happen before this can be properly addressed. I will try though, I promise. :)
Am I just being fanatically nitpicky, or does this bother anyone else? (Well, at least I got it off my chest...:)
You may have said "500" as hyperbole, but when we were trying to help on one Fortune 500 company (which shall remain nameless, and I can't name their product because you'll know who they are...) replace a legacy ERP system, I was shocked to find that the database record for each customer had over 300 data fields, slowly accumulated over a period of 30 years. Some of them no one knew what they were for anymore, but the majority actually had some obscure purpose in some dusty corner of their bloated bureaucracy. Each department predicted dire consequences if they lost their data fields, so the majority ended up being retained, with several hundred thousand lines of new code written on top of the modern system to effectively emulate their old one. It cost $millions to do this. This company was hurting badly because their profits were being eaten up by bureaucratic overhead as their market share migrated to the cheaper products of lean, efficient Asian companies. They're still hurting today, and I don't think they'll be Fortune 500 much longer.
Buy from Apple, and you'll end up having to pay SCO a license fee (they wish). Did you read the article? BSD (which OSX is based on) is next. "I asked about the lawsuit between AT&T and BSDI. That lawsuit was not ended by a judgment, it was settled between the parties, and the settlement was in large part confidential. SCO, which I presume is the legal inheritor of the AT&T side of the settlement, claims some aspects of the settlement have not been enforced but would not describe it further. SCO has not yet looked into whether, in its opinion, the free BSDs legally are derivative of the Unix sources. I assume if SCO can get a handle on the Linux situation, it'll go after the free BSDs next."
As we use many different programs to layout, archive, and read files, we require file formats that do not depend on any one program.
Please send all documents saved as .TXT (plain text
format). This is an open standard, and one that all word processors can
read. It also saves to a smaller file size, and is better for archiving
as it contains no proprietary code.
In MS Word, Your .DOC files can be saved as .TXT as follows.
1. Open your document
2. Go to the 'File' menu
3. Select 'Save As'
4. In the dialog box, type a new name for your document if desired, then in the 'Save As Type' drop down menu, choose 'TXT Plain Text'.
5. Click 'Save'
6. You're done!
You may also click the 'Options' button in the 'Save As' dialog box and choose '.TXT Plain Text Format' for the drop down menu "Save Word files as". This reminds you to save them as .TXT files.
In other word processors and page layout programs, you may be able to 'Export' your open file as .TXT.
The problem is that it can make collaboration impossible. A few years ago we emailed a 40-page .doc to a client to review a detailed
spec proposal. We had a phone conference set up with a bunch of people,
and some peoples' docs were 39 pages long, others 42 pages. It became
so hopelessly confusing trying to figure out where in the document
people were talking about that we cancelled the meeting until a physical
copy could be faxed to everyone.
Now we would send out pdf instead of fax, but I think you can understand my point. Actually pdf is kind of nice - sometimes I secretly use LaTeX if I'm going to be the only maintainer, and people always comment on how polished it looks. No one's ever said that about my Word docs, although I admit I'm probably not the most proficient Word expert.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned GNUWin II. I've burned a few for my friends and my son's friends, and they're always amazed it's free. It's not Linux but it gets people exposed painlessly to the Linux "flavor" and certainly has everything needed (OpenOffice.org etc.) for schoolwork plus some games for the kiddies (everyone like Tux Racer). I really should burn a couple dozen of these and just leave them out at the next PTA meeting.
Oh, I forgot to add that I just hope the poor software industries that had this $10.97 billion stolen from them were able to recover it from their insurance companies. I mean, they had theft insurance, didn't they?
Actually it was probably "calculated" very carefully. See, if their current budget permits them to decrease piracy by 1%, then they'll need a 40 times budget increase to eliminate piracy altogether. Good job security.
In 2001, piracy cost the worldwide software industry precisely $10.97 billion in lost revenue according to the BSA (well, rounded to the nearest $10 million anyway). Wow, that's a lot of money. Big incentive there for them to escalate their efforts 40 fold, to just purge the world of this horrible evil once and for all.
What is the BSA's budget anyway? I couldn't find it on their website.
If you want to consider it *YOUR* personal property, then keep it to yourself. Don't release it to the public. As soon as you expose it to the world, you have released information bits into the wild, and you are imposing a burden on society by forcing them to be extra careful about what they do with those bits, which now become hard to get rid of completely. There are so many of these bits out there, that the other members of society have to go out of their way, expending time and legal effort, to determine which they can use and which they can't use, and in what way, and what bits "belong" to whom. The copyright laws give you the privilege to impose this burden on society for a limited period of time, in order to profit from it and be compensated for your work producing it. After that, you no longer have that privilege.
So, keep everything you create to yourself and your heirs. *PLEASE*. Do not expose your creations to me. Thank you.
Give it up, you will never ever see logical pricing that doesn't require loose change.
$19.99 may not fool you or me, but subliminally many people perceive it quite differently from $20. It begins with a "1". "In the teens" seems easier to justify psychologically than $20 for an impulse buy. Everyone knows about the trick but it still works in spite of that. It's very obvious but at the same time very subtle, and it works because most people think with their emotions rather than logic. Marketeers know this, and we will see this trick done until the end of time. And then there are gasoline prices - I don't recall ever seeing one that didn't end in 9/10 of a penny.
Curiously, another pricing trick that is done in some cases - especially "wholesale" or "factory outlet" type places - is to do the opposite - price it at some oddball amount _other_ than $19.99, like $18.54 or $21.43. This appeals to bargain-hunters who are looking for "deals" and are suspicious of the .99 trick. An oddball price can give
them the psychological impression that the vendor is cutting the price to the bone, down to
the last penny they can trim.
Yet another ploy, that works with rich people buying luxury items, is to purposely price something with round numbers. You don't often see a painting in an art gallery, or a high-fashion designer dress, priced at $2399.99 - it would almost make it seem "cheap" to some of these people. A round number like $2400 makes it seem more sophisticated, and nitpicking about price or using cheap pricing tricks is beneath these people.
"Taxes not included" is done to make things seem cheaper and more competitive, again a subtle psychological trick to get the customer to cross that fragile threshold of deciding to purchase while maximizing their profits. Once at the cash register, when the real amount hits home, that borderline psychological decision has already been made and the customer is now emotionally committed to the purchase. And the listed price is going to be $19.99 anyway, whether it cost the vendor $10 or $12, taxes included or not, so why should the vendor forfeit the extra tax money?
And then there are those "deals" in TV ads or web sites that seem cheap until they add in the shipping and "handling" charge. That's a whole discussion in itself.
There is one thing I've always wondered about - taxes are always including for certain items like gasoline, alcohol, or cigarettes. In Massachusetts I recall it is or used to be $.47 per gallon. So I wonder why gas stations don't advertise "$1.09 9/10 plus tax" instead of "$1.56 9/10". Is there a law prohibiting this or something? I would almost like to see it done this way because it would make people painfully aware of the money they're paying to the government.
But again this is a little different from downloading audio recordings. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I challenge anyone to find a court case that has been successful against an individual holding copies of music for non-commercial personal use. The AHRA makes such copying immune to allegations of copyright infringement (IMO of course). And notwithstanding nitpicks about the precise definition of "analog" and "digital", the intent of Congress when they passed the law was clear as I point out here.
My Google search failed to turn up anything about this case except in reference to the RIAA email itself. Without knowing more details, this is probably a grossly distorted scare tactic. I find it hard to believe that someone spent 41 months in prison for P2P downloading. If the case is even real, I'd bet it would be for something extreme like profiting from selling counterfeit CDs or something, and would be completely irrelevant to the average P2P user.
People who knowingly mislead by presenting only a small part of the picture and purposely withholding the rest of the relevant facts to suit their agenda are, in my book, scumbags.
a = angle subtended by capture (radians) = 2*pi*3.1/(360*60) = .000901
.0000008118
.0000000646
b = area of capture on a sphere of radius 1 =approx= a^2 =
c = fraction of entire sphere = b/(4*pi) =
d = number of visible stars in entire sky = 300000/c = 4,643,000,000,000
So that means almost 5 trillion stars are visible by Hubble in the entire sky. That's a lot of stars to catalog. (Assuming I didn't err like they did in the $97 trillion RIAA calculation... someone pls double check and flame me if appropriate.)
When you waste^H^H^H^H^Hinvest your time learning the Klingon language, just remember that Paramount owns it, and you'd better use it in ways they approve of or else risk their ire.
I would say it would be better, and far more interesting, to spend that time learning Navajo or some other real but endangered language. Unfortunately these languages do not have the monied commercial hype behind them. Paramount just loves the free publicity generated by the Klingon-speaking geek image.
I'm confused. I actually haven't used MySQL much, and someone else can clarify its current ACID compliance. My application involves multiuser financial transactions. When making my DB selection a couple of years ago, at that time it was claimed that MySQL had some ACID deficiencies that made me nervous. I settled on PostgreSQL, which I'm very happy with.
But there's a lot more to ACID than just keeping RAM and disk in sync, and I don't see how RAM would make ACID that much easier, and certainly not "almost trivial". You still have all the transactional semaphores, record locking, potential deadlocks, rollbacks, etc. to worry about. In fact I don't see why you wouldn't just have the RAM pretend to be a disk and be done with it, since the disk version already has stable software. Then, if it is important to increase performance further, RAM-specific code optimization could be done over time, but slowly and carefully.
I'm sorry - I really don't want to get into a religious war here, but the interview didn't do much to bolster my confidence in MySQL for mission-critical financial stuff. Educate me.
Since 1992, the U.S. Government has collected a tax on all digital audio recorders and blank digital audio media manufactured in or imported into the US, and gives the money directly to the RIAA companies, which is distributed as royalties to recording artists, copyright owners, music publishers, and music writers:
In exchange for those royalties, a special exemption to the copyright law was made for the specific case of audio recordings, and as a result *all* noncommercial copying of musical recordings by consumers is now legal in the US, regardless of media:
The intent of Congress was clear when this law was passed (http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1993-01From House Report No. 102-873(I), September 17, 1992:
From House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992: Therefore, when you copy an MP3 the royalties have already been paid for with tax dollars in accordance with the law. If you are a musician whose recordings are publicly distributed, then you are entitled to your share of these royalties by filing a claim under Section 1006 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1006.html)Napster tried to use this law to defend their case, and the court ruled this law did not apply to them because they are a commercial company. But as a consumer it seems to me you are perfectly within your rights when you make a copy for noncommercial private use.
"...rather real..." "...those of us..." Oh, the humanity! Spare me while I puke. So the photos were taken there, so what? You were terrorized by a couple of hundred (if that many) toy figures? What's next, Wellesley College's computer center invaded by Barbie dolls? Gimme a break. So you freshman had your lame little laugh, this is nothing compared to my day.
There is no "Stanley Blitzer" at MIT. You guys have been had.
OK, I'm sure it's a useful program and that they've done a great job, and I'll try it out. But please, couldn't they have just explained it in plain English?
Well, well. Is this just a coincidence, or what? I just received the following regarding the $26 part of my "double rebate", although they don't mention the 2nd one for $20, that had the copy of the UPC code. Remember, this was purchased around Dec. 15th. At least I saved the flyer from Micro Center and all paperwork if I want to pursue this.
From: "customerservice@teg-online.com"
To: [ortholattice]
Subject: Offer Status Update
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 23:06:03 -0400
[note backdating in body of email, mismatching header]
4/14/03 &nbs p; &n bsp; &nbs p; &n bsp; &nbs p; &n bsp; [sic]
[ortholattice]
[address deleted]
Xxxxxxxx, MA yyyyy-zzzz
Dear [ortholattice],
Thank you for participating in the following promotional offer:
Monitors 719BF & 719BF-BK $26 @Micro Center
Your Personal Reference Number is: Cxxxxxxx [deleted]
We are pleased to advise that your entry is being processed and has been
qualified. Please allow for 10-12 weeks for the delivery of your
check/product.
If you have further questions after that time frame on your submission,
please visit us on the web at www.expressgroup.com. There, you will be
able to view the status of your submission by using your personal
reference number listed above.
Sincerely,
The Express Group
Printing, Distribution, Fulfillment
(OK, now this is really off-topic but here's the MYSTERY OF THE DAY: What the heck is Six_Degrees_CmdrTaco? Why is my handle in this list along with 7300 others? Does anyone else here recognize their handle on this list?)
1. You pay sales tax on the rebated amount, but you don't get it the sales tax back. (Does the state get this money, or does the vendor keep it?)
2. If you buy several rebated items and forget to do a separate transaction for each one, you will only have one "orginal receipt" required by each rebate. But if insist on a separate credit card transaction for each item, the people impatiently waiting behind you in line are, well, not appreciative.
3. I got a "double rebate" in December for a monitor at Microcenter, advertised as such in their flyer, and was given different two rebate forms. But each rebate required the original bar code. After several phone calls, they finally said to send in a copy of it for one of the rebates (and the customer service rep said many people were calling about this) and "keep a copy of all paperwork", but I've yet to see either of the rebates.
4. Sometimes the warranty policy requires you have the original receipt, not a copy. But you've sent the original to the rebate center.
5. With the bar code cut off, you lose the opportunity to refund/exchange the item in most places.
6. And finally the whole thing is such a PITA - wasted postage, wasted time, uncertainty and doubt that you dotted every i and crossed every t required by the form. With no guarantee that you'll get anything back unless you are prepared to keep meticulous records and make many phone calls, waiting on hold for ages, trying to trace down "lost" rebate submissions.
The members of set A you are talking about are those who put together Debian, Gentoo, etc. I'm happy to leave these people alone and let them contribute in their own way. I don't expect them to ever have a distribution usable by the general public, just as I don't expect expect the Linux kernel to ever have a built-in fancy GUI interface. This doesn't mean their contributions aren't extremely valuable.
For the most part the writer is talking the commercial distributions, Redhat et. al. We are paying them to do this, and they need to pay more attention to this. I pay them for this and I don't think they are doing their job. Although they are getting better at it, they still aren't taking this seriously enough and are only hurting themselves.
This problem is *hard* to solve.
Parts of it are and parts of it aren't. Many of the issues the writer brought up are just sloppiness that ends up alienating newbies. I have brought up a number of these kinds of issues with Redhat support, sometimes over and over, and it is hard to get them to pay attention and not just email you back a canned response. I want them to pay attention not because I personally have trouble with the installation, but because I know others will. I want the product to succeed because I want Linux to succeed. And, ok, also because I happen to also be a Redhat stockholder.
There's no rush to solve this problem.
In the long run, Linux will succeed. The only problem is, as John Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run, we're all dead."