Should the state get to charge people $500,000 every two years for operating a business without toxic waste?
Just because computers do not emit any waste while they are running, that does not make them "green". One has to consider their impact on the environment in other ways. It takes massive amounts of energy and all kinds of nasty materials to produce electronic equipment. It also takes a fair amount of energy to run and cool those computers, and that energy does not come from clean sources (yet). Then there is the issue of disposal and waste when perfectly functional machines are typically sent to the landfill. Fortuneately some companies are stepping up to the plate to handle this issue, but most people simply toss that old computer and monitor.
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the
other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government
conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has
accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make
the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of
the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less
letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
"fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments
will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a
deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the
silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th"
with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be
dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid
to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor
trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze
drem vil finali kum tru!
Jello is basically gelatin, sugar, food coloring and flavoring.
Gelatin is processed cow lard. Sugar is the crytalline extract of sugar cane (usually). The food coloring and flavoring are God-knows-what chemicals that have the desired effect and do not immediately impact human physiology. Long-term effects are debatable.
It is a tool. Plain and simple. My children will spend as much time learning how to use the computer as they do learning how to use a drill press, stove, etc. They will have at least a basic level of skill on how to use all of the tools I have. If they choose to pursue it more, fine. Just as long as they maintain balance in their activities.
I wonder... does an orbit from a launch in the Southern Hemisphere go in the opposite direcion from an orbit launched in the Northern? Kinda like a toilet bowl?
I see that right-handed bias is again rearing its ugly head. Perhaps another patent could be issued for a left handed version. But, I guess that would be obvious.
Actually, unit tests should be written to break someone else's code. You should never do final testing on your own code. Ideally, you hand your code off to someone whose job it is to stress and break code. At least have someone else help to think up the test cases.
That's becuase you probably wanted to get the car registered, for which you do need to provide that information. No license tag makes driving a legally dicey endeavor.
My neighbor's kid just bought an old Mustang with money he saved up from mowing yards. He plans on fixing it up over the next year so that when he does get his license, he can have a decent ride. He's 14 years old and he does not even have a learner's permit. He paid the salesman $50 to drive it to his house with the dealer plates on it. Granted, this was from a used lot, but I doubt the law differentiates between used and new dealers.
Um...no. To buy a car (at least here in the states) you do not need a driver's license. You do not even need insurance. All you need is the money and a birthday at least 18 years ago (less if you have a co-signer). You do need a license and insurance to register your car so you can get a license tag and drive it on the road (legally), but you can legally own a car without a driver's license.
But I agree that the customer has to take some responsibility. But there are (in my opinion) many more cases where the product I buy is not working correctly and I am folloing the instructions. The root cause of this is generally the fact that customer service rep training is usually done after the product is released instead of as the final stages of development. They know all the stupid stuff that people do and also know some not-so-stupid oddball configurations that their customers may use that the development team is not aware of. A company I used to work for could have saved quite a bit, if they had only had their CS people play with it before releasing it.
ISA is not an extension of the PCI bus. ISA preceded PCI. ISA never had a controller, but was rather an extension of the 8086 external bus. Reads and Writes to the bus were controlled by the address and IO lines of the CPU. ISA "controllers" are simply bridges which provide access to the ISA bus through a PCI bus. The ISA bus itself is just a collection of wires and trancievers, no smarts. The PCI bus actually has some smarts and provides some basic services such as memory space translation and resource conflict avoidance.
Windows is simply the development environment, along with Solaris (I think). The memory leaks come from bad code which has nothing to do with Windows. The tools are basically wrappers around the typical GNU stuff (gcc,gdb,etc.). Not everything can be blamed on Microsoft.
Then there was the network connection: a modem would raise manufacturing costs by about ¥3,000-¥4,000 a console but most executives agreed that US gamers, at least, would pay no more than $199 (£140).
Well, this is particularly annoying. I hate it when journalists throw in all kinds of different units, apparantly at random. And how the hell did pounds come into the picture. She didn't use them before in the article.
Unless it is in a quote, all units should be converted to the same system. I see reporters mix gallons with liters and pounds with kilos all the time. I guess they don't remember their high school chemistry or physics lessons very well. Either that or they really want to flex their character set and type the '¥' character. How often does one get to do that?
The way I see it, there are still some problems. The heat still has to be moved off the chip, presumably via a heatsink. I guess this technology will help make the cores a bit cooler and therefore be able to run faster. The system that these are in will suffer because of the increased heat. And given the power consumption of Peltier devices, I think that researchers are better off trying to reduce the heat generation through better materials and design rather than strapping a fridge onto the thing. So to simplifiy - generate less not move more
Re:direct links to the movie that is damn funny
on
Park Wars Released
·
· Score: 1
I liked it up to the point where they stopped with the movie soundtrack. The turkey droids were pretty damn funny.
I have NOT read the article because of the whole req reg thing.
Just log on as user slashdot2000 and password slashdot2000. Or create a GWBush@whitehouse.gov account (password:nosecandy). There really is no need to use any real information.
Software developers need real estate to keep open all kinds of windows at the same time. I like to have the code editor, a console, a debugger, and a target window open at the same time. Too little space and you cannot see anything and you end up flipping from one window to the other.
Mechanical engineers also like big screens so they can see the whole part that they are designing. Otherwise they have to pan all over the place, which is distracting.
Animators could probably keep an output window open without covering up their design tool.
Execs like to have pretty presentations to display on cutting edge hardware to show their prowess and impress the client.
Home users need one so they can watch their downloaded p0rn from the couch, which has its advantages.
Put Unix on there (even worse interface even w/ X) and you've got yourself an expensive paper-weight.
From the users perspective, yes. However, by porting unix to the PDA, they have opened a door for other developers. I bet someone is already working to get a better user interface to run on this. Thus the product improves and eventually the new architecture becomes useable. Much as unix on the PC. The introduction of better interfaces has expanded the popularity of unix to the desktop. I'm sure the same will happen for palm and handheld computers. This is just the beginning of a project, not the end.
The biggest problem here is the puddles. Specificly, where can they form? On land, the sun's rays (espcialy in the primordial thin atmosphere) easily destroy the chemicals nessary. In water, the solution is easily diluted and broken up
See step 4
Self-sustaining reactions beget simple blobs capable of segregating chemicals (always useful in reactions).
Basic cell walls, which are easy to make synthetically, can isolate chemicals from the environment. Puddles in caves are shielded from direct sunlignt. The bottom of the sea on a hydrothermal vent is another good spot for brewing life. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways for life to form.
I believe life is no accident. It is as inevitable as sunshine. That is to say, given the right conditions, it will happen. I also believe that the conditions that create life are also nothing out of the ordinary. Just because we have not seen it does not mean it is not there. It also does not mean that it IS there either. So I keep my mind open to the possibility that we are unique in the universe. But discovery after discovery reduces the probability that we are alone.
It is a matter of semantics, but compilers typically convert a high level language into assembly which is then assembled into the binary machine code.
Common practice where I work is to call programs that convert assembly into machine code assemblers, and programs that convert high level source (C,Fortran) into machine code compilers. Interpreters are the third way to get text to turn into machine code, although they are usually based on compilers (script->C source->object).
Summary
Assemblers - 1 to 1 conversion of keywords to object code
Compilers - keywords often result in many lines of object code
Interpreters - statements are compiled and run as they are being entered.
Tell the auditor to send you a copy of the document which mentions this agreement and also has your signature on the bottom. Company policies do not apply because you are no longer an employee.
Step 2 - If there is any questionable language, spend $100 or so and talk to a lawyer.
Setp 3 - If you are in the clear, post a message on that board and tell the story. I would recommend doing it in a non-inflammatory way to avoid looking like a vindictive ex-employee.
Most companies have non-compete agreements where you agree not to talk to "the competition" about your company's products or services. But as long as you discuss working conditions and personal conflicts (typical reason for leaving) you should be fine.
Also, tell your manager/supervisor what is going on and that they may be contacted by your former employer. That way they are prepared if the call does come.
Oops! Forgot to mention that I was playing devil's advocate here. I for one think that companies need to rethink their business models. This applies to software, movies, literature - anything that can be digitized. The emphasis should not be on the creation of content, but it's use. A previous thread mentioned that movies are an event. The money can be made there.
Software is similar. As computing devices become commodities, so will the code that runs on it. Software used to push hardware to the limit as we rushed into the age of the Graphical interface. Now that that has been done, there is no major push for faster hardware. There also is no major push for new software. What more does a user need? A 3D paper clip? Support for a new file type? Once people have what they need, it is hard to convince them to buy a new version of an old tool that does essentially the same thing.
The question is - How do software engineers, actors, musicians, writers, etc. make a living if their creations are forced into the public domain by the fact that they are digital? I don't know the answer to the question, but I know it isn't in "content protection".
P.S. One of the reasons I love DeCSS was the fact that I could filter out the 15 minutes of Disney advertisements on the DVD I purchased for my kid. When a company forces the to watch something, they should not be suprised when the people find a way around it.
Until I copy the e-document to my local drive and check it back in with the library. Free document at no cost.
Problem not solved.
This is a very tricky issue. Inexpensive duplication of information will reduce the income potential information providers, perhaps to the point of deterring production.
How many people would go to to the theatre to see a movie if they already downloaded/copied and viewed it at home? A few movies with cool special effects, probably, but some very good movies do not have elaborate effects. There would be less incentive to see them on the big screen where the providers can collect money.
The solution is in the middle somewhere. The average guy has to give up some of his rights and the big companies have to give up some of their control. Otherwise Jonny Haxor is going to rip his movies off of a russian website and Omni Consumer Products is going to charge everyone else a mer-minute viewing charge, even while they watch the now-mandatory 20 minutes of promotions.
Slashdot Mirror
Offtopic nitpick...
Should the state get to charge people $500,000 every two years for operating a business without toxic waste?
Just because computers do not emit any waste while they are running, that does not make them "green". One has to consider their impact on the environment in other ways. It takes massive amounts of energy and all kinds of nasty materials to produce electronic equipment. It also takes a fair amount of energy to run and cool those computers, and that energy does not come from clean sources (yet). Then there is the issue of disposal and waste when perfectly functional machines are typically sent to the landfill. Fortuneately some companies are stepping up to the plate to handle this issue, but most people simply toss that old computer and monitor.
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!
"Windows is dial-up, and Linux is broadband--a niche market."
Let the rants/flames begin!
Jello, what is that stuff, seriously?
Jello is basically gelatin, sugar, food coloring and flavoring.
Gelatin is processed cow lard. Sugar is the crytalline extract of sugar cane (usually). The food coloring and flavoring are God-knows-what chemicals that have the desired effect and do not immediately impact human physiology. Long-term effects are debatable.
It is a tool. Plain and simple. My children will spend as much time learning how to use the computer as they do learning how to use a drill press, stove, etc. They will have at least a basic level of skill on how to use all of the tools I have. If they choose to pursue it more, fine. Just as long as they maintain balance in their activities.
I wonder... does an orbit from a launch in the Southern Hemisphere go in the opposite direcion from an orbit launched in the Northern? Kinda like a toilet bowl?
Argh! Sounds like a job for www.BadAstronomy.com
I wonder if ICANN will release new top level domains for the major bodies. Imagine the rush for sex.moon.
I see that right-handed bias is again rearing its ugly head. Perhaps another patent could be issued for a left handed version. But, I guess that would be obvious.
The "Antlered Animal" looks like a crude version of Bullwinkle. Does this mean that the other drawings were part of a cosmic comic strip?
Actually, unit tests should be written to break someone else's code. You should never do final testing on your own code. Ideally, you hand your code off to someone whose job it is to stress and break code. At least have someone else help to think up the test cases.
That's becuase you probably wanted to get the car registered, for which you do need to provide that information. No license tag makes driving a legally dicey endeavor.
My neighbor's kid just bought an old Mustang with money he saved up from mowing yards. He plans on fixing it up over the next year so that when he does get his license, he can have a decent ride. He's 14 years old and he does not even have a learner's permit. He paid the salesman $50 to drive it to his house with the dealer plates on it. Granted, this was from a used lot, but I doubt the law differentiates between used and new dealers.
owning a car requires a drivers license
Um...no. To buy a car (at least here in the states) you do not need a driver's license. You do not even need insurance. All you need is the money and a birthday at least 18 years ago (less if you have a co-signer). You do need a license and insurance to register your car so you can get a license tag and drive it on the road (legally), but you can legally own a car without a driver's license.
But I agree that the customer has to take some responsibility. But there are (in my opinion) many more cases where the product I buy is not working correctly and I am folloing the instructions. The root cause of this is generally the fact that customer service rep training is usually done after the product is released instead of as the final stages of development. They know all the stupid stuff that people do and also know some not-so-stupid oddball configurations that their customers may use that the development team is not aware of. A company I used to work for could have saved quite a bit, if they had only had their CS people play with it before releasing it.
ISA is not an extension of the PCI bus. ISA preceded PCI. ISA never had a controller, but was rather an extension of the 8086 external bus. Reads and Writes to the bus were controlled by the address and IO lines of the CPU. ISA "controllers" are simply bridges which provide access to the ISA bus through a PCI bus. The ISA bus itself is just a collection of wires and trancievers, no smarts. The PCI bus actually has some smarts and provides some basic services such as memory space translation and resource conflict avoidance.
Windows is simply the development environment, along with Solaris (I think). The memory leaks come from bad code which has nothing to do with Windows. The tools are basically wrappers around the typical GNU stuff (gcc,gdb,etc.). Not everything can be blamed on Microsoft.
Then there was the network connection: a modem would raise manufacturing costs by about ¥3,000-¥4,000 a console but most executives agreed that US gamers, at least, would pay no more than $199 (£140).
Well, this is particularly annoying. I hate it when journalists throw in all kinds of different units, apparantly at random. And how the hell did pounds come into the picture. She didn't use them before in the article.
Unless it is in a quote, all units should be converted to the same system. I see reporters mix gallons with liters and pounds with kilos all the time. I guess they don't remember their high school chemistry or physics lessons very well. Either that or they really want to flex their character set and type the '¥' character. How often does one get to do that?
I'm just making mountians out of molehills.
The way I see it, there are still some problems. The heat still has to be moved off the chip, presumably via a heatsink. I guess this technology will help make the cores a bit cooler and therefore be able to run faster. The system that these are in will suffer because of the increased heat. And given the power consumption of Peltier devices, I think that researchers are better off trying to reduce the heat generation through better materials and design rather than strapping a fridge onto the thing. So to simplifiy - generate less not move more
I liked it up to the point where they stopped with the movie soundtrack. The turkey droids were pretty damn funny.
I have NOT read the article because of the whole req reg thing.
Just log on as user slashdot2000 and password slashdot2000. Or create a GWBush@whitehouse.gov account (password:nosecandy). There really is no need to use any real information.
Software developers need real estate to keep open all kinds of windows at the same time. I like to have the code editor, a console, a debugger, and a target window open at the same time. Too little space and you cannot see anything and you end up flipping from one window to the other.
Mechanical engineers also like big screens so they can see the whole part that they are designing. Otherwise they have to pan all over the place, which is distracting.
Animators could probably keep an output window open without covering up their design tool.
Execs like to have pretty presentations to display on cutting edge hardware to show their prowess and impress the client.
Home users need one so they can watch their downloaded p0rn from the couch, which has its advantages.
Put Unix on there (even worse interface even w/ X) and you've got yourself an expensive paper-weight.
From the users perspective, yes. However, by porting unix to the PDA, they have opened a door for other developers. I bet someone is already working to get a better user interface to run on this. Thus the product improves and eventually the new architecture becomes useable. Much as unix on the PC. The introduction of better interfaces has expanded the popularity of unix to the desktop. I'm sure the same will happen for palm and handheld computers. This is just the beginning of a project, not the end.
The biggest problem here is the puddles. Specificly, where can they form? On land, the sun's rays (espcialy in the primordial thin atmosphere) easily destroy the chemicals nessary. In water, the solution is easily diluted and broken up
See step 4
Self-sustaining reactions beget simple blobs capable of segregating chemicals (always useful in reactions).
Basic cell walls, which are easy to make synthetically, can isolate chemicals from the environment. Puddles in caves are shielded from direct sunlignt. The bottom of the sea on a hydrothermal vent is another good spot for brewing life. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways for life to form.
I believe life is no accident. It is as inevitable as sunshine. That is to say, given the right conditions, it will happen. I also believe that the conditions that create life are also nothing out of the ordinary. Just because we have not seen it does not mean it is not there. It also does not mean that it IS there either. So I keep my mind open to the possibility that we are unique in the universe. But discovery after discovery reduces the probability that we are alone.
It is a matter of semantics, but compilers typically convert a high level language into assembly which is then assembled into the binary machine code.
Common practice where I work is to call programs that convert assembly into machine code assemblers, and programs that convert high level source (C,Fortran) into machine code compilers. Interpreters are the third way to get text to turn into machine code, although they are usually based on compilers (script->C source->object).
Summary
Assemblers - 1 to 1 conversion of keywords to object code
Compilers - keywords often result in many lines of object code
Interpreters - statements are compiled and run as they are being entered.
Tell the auditor to send you a copy of the document which mentions this agreement and also has your signature on the bottom. Company policies do not apply because you are no longer an employee.
Step 2 - If there is any questionable language, spend $100 or so and talk to a lawyer.
Setp 3 - If you are in the clear, post a message on that board and tell the story. I would recommend doing it in a non-inflammatory way to avoid looking like a vindictive ex-employee.
Most companies have non-compete agreements where you agree not to talk to "the competition" about your company's products or services. But as long as you discuss working conditions and personal conflicts (typical reason for leaving) you should be fine.
Also, tell your manager/supervisor what is going on and that they may be contacted by your former employer. That way they are prepared if the call does come.
Oops! Forgot to mention that I was playing devil's advocate here. I for one think that companies need to rethink their business models. This applies to software, movies, literature - anything that can be digitized. The emphasis should not be on the creation of content, but it's use. A previous thread mentioned that movies are an event. The money can be made there.
Software is similar. As computing devices become commodities, so will the code that runs on it. Software used to push hardware to the limit as we rushed into the age of the Graphical interface. Now that that has been done, there is no major push for faster hardware. There also is no major push for new software. What more does a user need? A 3D paper clip? Support for a new file type? Once people have what they need, it is hard to convince them to buy a new version of an old tool that does essentially the same thing.
The question is - How do software engineers, actors, musicians, writers, etc. make a living if their creations are forced into the public domain by the fact that they are digital? I don't know the answer to the question, but I know it isn't in "content protection".
P.S. One of the reasons I love DeCSS was the fact that I could filter out the 15 minutes of Disney advertisements on the DVD I purchased for my kid. When a company forces the to watch something, they should not be suprised when the people find a way around it.
Until I copy the e-document to my local drive and check it back in with the library. Free document at no cost.
Problem not solved.
This is a very tricky issue. Inexpensive duplication of information will reduce the income potential information providers, perhaps to the point of deterring production.
How many people would go to to the theatre to see a movie if they already downloaded/copied and viewed it at home? A few movies with cool special effects, probably, but some very good movies do not have elaborate effects. There would be less incentive to see them on the big screen where the providers can collect money.
The solution is in the middle somewhere. The average guy has to give up some of his rights and the big companies have to give up some of their control. Otherwise Jonny Haxor is going to rip his movies off of a russian website and Omni Consumer Products is going to charge everyone else a mer-minute viewing charge, even while they watch the now-mandatory 20 minutes of promotions.