I imagine you mean every mouthful of water contains a molecule that was at some point in human urine, not that every individual molecule has at some point been in human urine. From a quick Google search there are maybe 1.4 * 10^21 liters of water on earth. A human might output 1.5 liters of urine per day. A human living for 70 years would output around 25,000 liters. Another Google search gives a guesstimate that about 100 billion people have ever been born. Total species urine output over all of time would then be (much less than) 25,000 * 100 billion liters = 2.5 * 10^15 liters, which is itself far less than the amount of water on earth.
If you found the vandalism so distressing, why didn't you take some time out of your busy schedule to fix it before you came back here?
I'm not sure, but I think the GP found it funny instead of distressing (I did, at least) that the article would get vandalized at such an appropriate time for this thread. I agree, they should have removed it themselves--perhaps they did and their/. and Wikipedia user names are different.
For suggestion, bug report, and support forums, I agree. For general purpose, game discussion, and chit chat forums, I don't. There's something to be said in allowing users an outlet for their nerdy discussions, and in allowing them to provide their own tech support, completely apart from developer considerations.
Yes, I know. Troubleshooting Windows doesn't often involve the command line (of course, sometimes it does) while troubleshooting Linux very often does. Certainly in some tasks like the ones you mentioned the differences are very superficial.
If only.... Maybe we should hit the recipients who fell for it? Naw....
I had to give some phone tech support today to somebody who installed random internet toolbars and eventually complained to me about their machine running so slowly. It's not like they're a bad person, terrible at their job (the opposite, really), they're just terrible at maintaining a computer. I suppose it's a little more serious when you have sensitive information on your machine.
Earlier today I was also reading an article written by a coder who rederived Atan2. To me that's similar--the article was about 3D graphics, and the guy should have known about Atan2, especially if he's gonna play the expert by writing an article. Analogously, these government employees should known about bad email attachments.
I suppose my point is people make mistakes. It's easier to be annoyed at stupid people's mistakes and think the Atan2 guy's mistake was less serious just because it's more technical. But, virtually everyone is stupid compared to someone else, so that extra annoyance is arbitrary.
Well, the relevant quote is "There's no such thing as 'secure' any more", which isn't quite the same as the NSA saying "we are not secure but we believe X's network is."
You're suggesting Linux as a solution to people who click on random email attachments? Aside from software compatibility issues, these people are probably barely capable of doing what they do on Windows, which they use at home and can ask other people about, and are already used to. Imagine yourself offering phone tech support to these people during the switchover, trying to talk them through a simple command line task. Personally, that thought makes me cringe.
Author’s Note: These opinions are my own. I'm one of the original folks that started the Subversion project, but no longer work on it. These thoughts do not reflect the official position of either the Subversion project or the Apache Software Foundation, which are located here on the ASF blog.
Subversion has reached the realm of Mature software — it’s yesterday’s technology, not cool or hip to work on anymore. It moves slowly. It is developed almost entirely by engineers working for corporations that need it or sell support for it. Alpha-geeks consider software like this “dead”, but the fact is that something like half of all corporate programmers use Subversion as their SCM (depending on which surveys you read.) This is a huge userbase; it may not be sexy, but it’s entrenched and here for the long haul.
Subversion isn’t unique in this position. It sits alongside other mature software such as Apache HTTPD or the GCC toolchain, which are famous projects that are similarly developed by corporate interests. There’s a tricky line to walk: none of these corporations “own” these projects. They understand that they’re acting as part of a consortium. Each interest sends representatives to the open source project, contributes code, and allows their engineers to participate in the full consensus-based evolution of the software. IBM, Apple, Google, and numerous other companies have figured out how to do this correctly:
1. Let your engineers know what’s important to work on.
2. Let them participate individually in the community process as usual.
3. Profit. 98% of the time the corporations eventually get the features they want.
Today, however, we have a great counterexample of how not to participate in an open source project. Subversion was initially funded and developed by CollabNet; today at least two other companies — Elego and WANdisco — are employing numerous engineers to improve Subversion, and are just as vested in selling support and derivative products. CollabNet and Elego continue to function normally in the community, but WANdisco recently seems to have lost its marbles. Last week, they put out a press release and a CEO blogpost making some crazy statements.
It’s clear that the WANdisco CEO — David Richards — is frustrated at the slow pace at which Subversion is improving. But the two posts are simply making outrageous claims, either directly or via insinuation. David seems to believe that a cabal is preventing Subversion from advancing, and that “debate” is the evil instrument being used to block progress. He believes users are crying for the product to be improved, that the Subversion developers are ignoring them, and his company is now going to ride in on a white horse to save the project. By commanding engineers to Just Fix things, he’ll “protect the future”of Subversion, “overhauling” Subversion into a “radical new” product.
Is this guy for real? It sounds like someone read my friend Karl's book and created a farce of “everything you’re not supposed to do” when participating in corporate open source.
Even weirder, he’s accusing developers of trying game statistics by creating lots of
I couldn't point to specific political ideologies I disagree with without rewatching some of his show. That's not to say I didn't have reasons to strongly dislike him when I originally formed that opinion; I've just labeled him mentally as unimportant and "garbage collected" most of my thoughts towards him. I'm sure his shows are online--try watching one and you might see what we mean.
Also, even Star Trek has its fair share of mad scientists which need to be curbed by gallant, no nonsense space cowboys.
Yes and no. Out of over 500 episodes and 10 movies, the only stereotypical mad scientist that comes to mind is Soran from Generations, the 7th movie. He needs to be stopped by Kirk, who's very much the biggest "space cowboy" of any of the series, teamed with Picard, who's quite respectable. The Vidiians, a recurring enemy race on Voyager, have their mad scientist moments I suppose, but their motivation is survival instead of evil.
Of course if I'm forgetting some examples, I'd be happy to hear about them:).
Alrighty. I think without a candid interview asking him about his intentions about the law you mean (health care, I think), it's tough to say. Perhaps he thought it was constitutional, or that its constitutionality should be sorted out by the judiciary instead of him--I dunno. And certainly there are examples of people with great academic degrees not having a clue (the opposite would be utterly remarkable, from the number of such people). Like most things, degrees are just an indicator of ability. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not.
You didn't compare it to a president with poor academic qualifications, which is needed for such an example to support your point (that "common sense and real life experience... are more important" than intelligence, to a president).
I often wish in science stories reporters were barred from doing anything but quoting experts. It wouldn't sell nearly as well, but it'd be a lot more accurate. (Yes, you can misquote people.)
Are botanists surprised? The article doesn't justify that with any of its quotes, either. It seems reasonable professional botanists were aware of the problem's approximate magnitude and would see this as entirely reasonable. It's just a massive amount of work to test on the order of 1,000,000 items for uniqueness.
So, the title "World's Plant Life Far Less Diverse Than Thought" seems bogus and is probably just there to grab your attention.
Germany almost conquered Europe during WWII. That's an impressive feat of administration. Don't get me wrong, the Nazis were horrific, but bringing them up actually reinforces how smart people can be highly effective administrators.
Could you give some specific examples of Obama's presidency demonstrating how he's not a good candidate for president, comparing those examples to a president who had poor academic qualifications?
Calling Palin dumb is only half the story. She's an administrative disaster waiting to happen, but she's quite smart when it comes to playing to her supporters. That's why she's dangerous: she has the ability to stir up (the generally stupid) masses to support her. In every other way I've seen, she's an idiot, but in that important way, she's very smart. I thank God she seems divisive enough not to become president.
I'd say the "basic foundation" of VB.NET is OOP and interaction with a GUI. I guess both '80's BASIC and VB.NET are imperative languages instead of a functional language like Lisp or weirder languages like Prolog, but still, I don't see how they're similar in any other meaningful way....
But I agree, BASIC hate is kinda like MS hate in that it's socially convenient for nerds to do so, above and beyond whatever reasoning there might be to back up that hate.
That explains why I don't really like 3D movies. I could never quite put my finger on it until now, but the focal distance is completely wrong. Things are sharp that shouldn't be. Is there a reason some 3D movies have a "plane" effect, where there's only a few planes in which action takes place? It's like sprites were placed at different z-depths, sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
MOD PARENT UP
MOD PARENT DOWN
I imagine you mean every mouthful of water contains a molecule that was at some point in human urine, not that every individual molecule has at some point been in human urine. From a quick Google search there are maybe 1.4 * 10^21 liters of water on earth. A human might output 1.5 liters of urine per day. A human living for 70 years would output around 25,000 liters. Another Google search gives a guesstimate that about 100 billion people have ever been born. Total species urine output over all of time would then be (much less than) 25,000 * 100 billion liters = 2.5 * 10^15 liters, which is itself far less than the amount of water on earth.
Calling Wikipedia not neutral because a bit of blatant vandalism was on a page for a few minutes seems like overkill.
If you found the vandalism so distressing, why didn't you take some time out of your busy schedule to fix it before you came back here?
I'm not sure, but I think the GP found it funny instead of distressing (I did, at least) that the article would get vandalized at such an appropriate time for this thread. I agree, they should have removed it themselves--perhaps they did and their /. and Wikipedia user names are different.
For suggestion, bug report, and support forums, I agree. For general purpose, game discussion, and chit chat forums, I don't. There's something to be said in allowing users an outlet for their nerdy discussions, and in allowing them to provide their own tech support, completely apart from developer considerations.
Yes, I know. Troubleshooting Windows doesn't often involve the command line (of course, sometimes it does) while troubleshooting Linux very often does. Certainly in some tasks like the ones you mentioned the differences are very superficial.
If only.... Maybe we should hit the recipients who fell for it? Naw....
I had to give some phone tech support today to somebody who installed random internet toolbars and eventually complained to me about their machine running so slowly. It's not like they're a bad person, terrible at their job (the opposite, really), they're just terrible at maintaining a computer. I suppose it's a little more serious when you have sensitive information on your machine.
Earlier today I was also reading an article written by a coder who rederived Atan2. To me that's similar--the article was about 3D graphics, and the guy should have known about Atan2, especially if he's gonna play the expert by writing an article. Analogously, these government employees should known about bad email attachments.
I suppose my point is people make mistakes. It's easier to be annoyed at stupid people's mistakes and think the Atan2 guy's mistake was less serious just because it's more technical. But, virtually everyone is stupid compared to someone else, so that extra annoyance is arbitrary.
Well, the relevant quote is "There's no such thing as 'secure' any more", which isn't quite the same as the NSA saying "we are not secure but we believe X's network is."
You're suggesting Linux as a solution to people who click on random email attachments? Aside from software compatibility issues, these people are probably barely capable of doing what they do on Windows, which they use at home and can ask other people about, and are already used to. Imagine yourself offering phone tech support to these people during the switchover, trying to talk them through a simple command line task. Personally, that thought makes me cringe.
Well, the ZueS trojan doesn't seem to run on Linux. There's also Unix's standard execute file permission to consider.
[Note: The summary's second link seems to be getting slashdotted, so I'm copying its contents to a comment here. The words are not my own.]
This entry was posted by Ben Collins-Sussman on Monday, 3 January, 2011
Author’s Note: These opinions are my own. I'm one of the original folks that started the Subversion project, but no longer work on it. These thoughts do not reflect the official position of either the Subversion project or the Apache Software Foundation, which are located here on the ASF blog.
Subversion has reached the realm of Mature software — it’s yesterday’s technology, not cool or hip to work on anymore. It moves slowly. It is developed almost entirely by engineers working for corporations that need it or sell support for it. Alpha-geeks consider software like this “dead”, but the fact is that something like half of all corporate programmers use Subversion as their SCM (depending on which surveys you read.) This is a huge userbase; it may not be sexy, but it’s entrenched and here for the long haul.
Subversion isn’t unique in this position. It sits alongside other mature software such as Apache HTTPD or the GCC toolchain, which are famous projects that are similarly developed by corporate interests. There’s a tricky line to walk: none of these corporations “own” these projects. They understand that they’re acting as part of a consortium. Each interest sends representatives to the open source project, contributes code, and allows their engineers to participate in the full consensus-based evolution of the software. IBM, Apple, Google, and numerous other companies have figured out how to do this correctly:
Today, however, we have a great counterexample of how not to participate in an open source project. Subversion was initially funded and developed by CollabNet; today at least two other companies — Elego and WANdisco — are employing numerous engineers to improve Subversion, and are just as vested in selling support and derivative products. CollabNet and Elego continue to function normally in the community, but WANdisco recently seems to have lost its marbles. Last week, they put out a press release and a CEO blogpost making some crazy statements.
It’s clear that the WANdisco CEO — David Richards — is frustrated at the slow pace at which Subversion is improving. But the two posts are simply making outrageous claims, either directly or via insinuation. David seems to believe that a cabal is preventing Subversion from advancing, and that “debate” is the evil instrument being used to block progress. He believes users are crying for the product to be improved, that the Subversion developers are ignoring them, and his company is now going to ride in on a white horse to save the project. By commanding engineers to Just Fix things, he’ll “protect the future”of Subversion, “overhauling” Subversion into a “radical new” product.
Is this guy for real? It sounds like someone read my friend Karl's book and created a farce of “everything you’re not supposed to do” when participating in corporate open source.
Even weirder, he’s accusing developers of trying game statistics by creating lots of
Here's WANdisco's press release, their CEO's first blog post, and his second blog post responding to community response.
I couldn't point to specific political ideologies I disagree with without rewatching some of his show. That's not to say I didn't have reasons to strongly dislike him when I originally formed that opinion; I've just labeled him mentally as unimportant and "garbage collected" most of my thoughts towards him. I'm sure his shows are online--try watching one and you might see what we mean.
Also, even Star Trek has its fair share of mad scientists which need to be curbed by gallant, no nonsense space cowboys.
Yes and no. Out of over 500 episodes and 10 movies, the only stereotypical mad scientist that comes to mind is Soran from Generations, the 7th movie. He needs to be stopped by Kirk, who's very much the biggest "space cowboy" of any of the series, teamed with Picard, who's quite respectable. The Vidiians, a recurring enemy race on Voyager, have their mad scientist moments I suppose, but their motivation is survival instead of evil.
:).
Of course if I'm forgetting some examples, I'd be happy to hear about them
Alrighty. I think without a candid interview asking him about his intentions about the law you mean (health care, I think), it's tough to say. Perhaps he thought it was constitutional, or that its constitutionality should be sorted out by the judiciary instead of him--I dunno. And certainly there are examples of people with great academic degrees not having a clue (the opposite would be utterly remarkable, from the number of such people). Like most things, degrees are just an indicator of ability. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not.
You didn't compare it to a president with poor academic qualifications, which is needed for such an example to support your point (that "common sense and real life experience... are more important" than intelligence, to a president).
I often wish in science stories reporters were barred from doing anything but quoting experts. It wouldn't sell nearly as well, but it'd be a lot more accurate. (Yes, you can misquote people.)
Thus, if you're an "intelligent", "free thinker", you go along with the popular media opinion that anything they sprout must be a lie
is just patently silly (even assuming you meant "spout" instead of "sprout").
Are botanists surprised? The article doesn't justify that with any of its quotes, either. It seems reasonable professional botanists were aware of the problem's approximate magnitude and would see this as entirely reasonable. It's just a massive amount of work to test on the order of 1,000,000 items for uniqueness.
So, the title "World's Plant Life Far Less Diverse Than Thought" seems bogus and is probably just there to grab your attention.
No, it's real. It's got far and away the largest viewer base of any of the new channels. Glenn Beck is real too.
This is kind of like the inverse of Santa Claus.
...not to bring up Nazis so quickly? It's melodramatic and confuses the issues.
Germany almost conquered Europe during WWII. That's an impressive feat of administration. Don't get me wrong, the Nazis were horrific, but bringing them up actually reinforces how smart people can be highly effective administrators.
Could you give some specific examples of Obama's presidency demonstrating how he's not a good candidate for president, comparing those examples to a president who had poor academic qualifications?
Calling Palin dumb is only half the story. She's an administrative disaster waiting to happen, but she's quite smart when it comes to playing to her supporters. That's why she's dangerous: she has the ability to stir up (the generally stupid) masses to support her. In every other way I've seen, she's an idiot, but in that important way, she's very smart. I thank God she seems divisive enough not to become president.
I'd say the "basic foundation" of VB.NET is OOP and interaction with a GUI. I guess both '80's BASIC and VB.NET are imperative languages instead of a functional language like Lisp or weirder languages like Prolog, but still, I don't see how they're similar in any other meaningful way....
But I agree, BASIC hate is kinda like MS hate in that it's socially convenient for nerds to do so, above and beyond whatever reasoning there might be to back up that hate.
That explains why I don't really like 3D movies. I could never quite put my finger on it until now, but the focal distance is completely wrong. Things are sharp that shouldn't be. Is there a reason some 3D movies have a "plane" effect, where there's only a few planes in which action takes place? It's like sprites were placed at different z-depths, sometimes.