Worth thinking about
on
Unix Turns 40
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not a bad retrospective, and interesting in that it illustrates some of the reasons for Unix's success: availability of source, and the ability for the user to create and replace tools easily. One wonders how those lessons might be applied not necessarily to operating systems or even computing, but to other industries and technical endeavours.
A most American sentiment, and not surprisingly endorsed by feedback. First: the rest of the world is not a sort of circle of hell into which sinners fear to be thrown. Many of us are quite happy to live here, thank you, and so presumably would be your criminals. Second: the rest of the world is not available for the free use of America. Your suggestion assumes that your exile's "country of choice" would accept him. I rather suspect they'd put him on the next flight home, with an order via diplomatic channels for America to solve her own problems in her own land.
Exactly. When we found out we were shifting to a variant of 9/80 that would mean working 8.5 hours a day, our comment was, "That'll be a nice change from 10 hours a day."
The SNS is a scientific instrument that generates beams of neutrons, which can be used to probe anything from miniscule samples to industrial materials. When fully operational, the facility is expected to host up to 2,000 international scientists annually.
Now, now, the scientists don't deserve that. Couldn't they probe lawyers instead?
From the article: "[Judge] McVeigh also rejected Amazon's efforts to defend itself by asking her to throw out e-mail evidence that may have included hearsay. She said she found it "incomprehensible... that a corporation dealing primarily in Internet commerce finds Internet communications to lack reliability."
Actually, your honor, I'd say that a corporation dealing primarily in Internet commerce would be an excellent judge of the reliability of Internet communications. As a consumer, I'm rather glad that they take a dim view of its reliability and apply the appropriate security measures -- measures to which the e-mails in question were probably not subject.
Yes, I was always confused by the message, "this film has been formatted to fit your screen". I mean, how do they know how large my screen is?;-)
Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?
on
Google Hires Vint Cerf
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's a marketing thing. Grey matter like Vint Cerf is always good for getting quotes in the press, getting keynotes, etc. At least they gave him an honest title: he's there to evangelize. If I had a few billion in market cap I'd buy Vint Cerf, too.
Ah, but you're in fact paying for things that you can't get for free: the convenience of a single site, the guarantee of content quality, the knowledge that you're supporting the producers, and the legitimacy of having legally obtained it.
Do you really need your code to run as quickly as possible? If so, by all means, use whatever coding tricks you want. Just be sure to add comments to deobfuscate.
OTOH, if fast enough is fast enough, then code clarity will pay off far more in the long run.
I'm very surprised to see such opinions expressed by the president of the ALA. I have a lot of respect for those in the field of library science (dry as it may sound, most programmers would probably love it), but Mr. Gorman's comments suggest that he has somehow failed to keep up-to-date on advances in his own field.
Regardless of his opinion of blogs -- which, like books, have both their chaff and their grain -- his criticisms of Google, and by extension digital information, are misinformed and myopic. Google hardly gives access to "random bits of information", but rather does a good job of giving access to specific bits of information. His suggestion that money be spent on books and librarians for California schoolchildren instead of digital information and search engines ignores the fact the latter benefit far more people than just a relatively few American youths.
Books and libraries are wonderful, but as far as accessibility and searchability, digital information on the Internet is infinitely superior. The finest book in the finest library in the world does me no good if someone else has signed it out, or if I can't travel to the library, or if I can't find it because whatever keywords or categories under which it may be indexed don't match the ones I have in mind. The ALA would better pursue its mission of "promot[ing] the highest quality library and information services and public access to information" by embracing digital information than by treating it with the contempt shown by its President.
It was killing me, but only when the mag strip on my card wore out, which it did every six months or so. Waiting for clerks to take a card imprint, etc. is inconvenient. I'll be happy when Step 4 goes away. I'll be even happier when steps 5 and 6 (wait for receipt to print, sign receipt) are replaced with "place thumb on biometric device" or whatever. Convenience rocks. I use a key-fob device to buy my gas, and it's really nice not having to take off my gloves and follow steps 1-4 on those chilly winter mornings.
I stopped feeling sorry for LeGuin when I read, "When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago..."
As much as I respect and admire LeGuin, I can't find any sympathy for someone who sells the rights to their work, then complains about what happens to it.
Roland Piquepaille? Isn't that the guy people bitch about, even though bitching about it gives Slashdot more reason to keep him?
More reason to keep him? That should be easy enough to fix. Just make it your policy to mod down as overrated any comment posted to a Piquepaille story that's not a Piquepaille criticism, and encourage others to do the same. I suspect that that would make his submissions of much less value to Slashdot.
Personally, I think the guy's abusing the system and that/.'s editors deserve a swift kick in the ass for not at least editing out the gratuitous links to the plagiar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "summaries".
Big deal. My Toshiba HDTV was emitting the 1.21 jigawatt international time travel power level and turned into a '56 black and white Westinghouse in a faux oak cabinet.
I would like to thank Ed Greenwood for his wonderful contributions to the game in the form of the Forgotten Realms. Truly inspirational work this stuff is, or at least was.
For those who prefer a higher level of consistency and a somewhat lower level of fantasy, HarnWorld is unparallelled as far as RPG settings go. I find it infinitely more inspiring than anything TSR/WotC has produced, FR included. Both the official (here and here) and the fan-produced material (example) is outstanding.
the REAL problem now and always has been the near infinate storage of the spent fuel and any and all material that even gets near the fuel which over time become just as radioactive and needs to be "taken care of" somehow.
A promising technology is discussed in this story.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a bad retrospective, and interesting in that it illustrates some of the reasons for Unix's success: availability of source, and the ability for the user to create and replace tools easily. One wonders how those lessons might be applied not necessarily to operating systems or even computing, but to other industries and technical endeavours.
I figure this is right up there with planning what to do with the lottery money.
Unfortunately, you still get 30GB bitcap.
A most American sentiment, and not surprisingly endorsed by feedback. First: the rest of the world is not a sort of circle of hell into which sinners fear to be thrown. Many of us are quite happy to live here, thank you, and so presumably would be your criminals. Second: the rest of the world is not available for the free use of America. Your suggestion assumes that your exile's "country of choice" would accept him. I rather suspect they'd put him on the next flight home, with an order via diplomatic channels for America to solve her own problems in her own land.
Exactly. When we found out we were shifting to a variant of 9/80 that would mean working 8.5 hours a day, our comment was, "That'll be a nice change from 10 hours a day."
Nay, 'tis not to be. Like Lance before him, he too shall continue to plague the Earth's surface.
The SNS is a scientific instrument that generates beams of neutrons, which can be used to probe anything from miniscule samples to industrial materials. When fully operational, the facility is expected to host up to 2,000 international scientists annually.
Now, now, the scientists don't deserve that. Couldn't they probe lawyers instead?
Pretty much all hate campaigns I've seen against another product just didn't work out.
Who's to say? Apple's been slamming PCs for the past twenty years. I suppose whether it's worked out or not is a matter of opinion.
From the article: "[Judge] McVeigh also rejected Amazon's efforts to defend itself by asking her to throw out e-mail evidence that may have included hearsay. She said she found it "incomprehensible ... that a corporation dealing primarily in Internet commerce finds Internet communications to lack reliability."
Actually, your honor, I'd say that a corporation dealing primarily in Internet commerce would be an excellent judge of the reliability of Internet communications. As a consumer, I'm rather glad that they take a dim view of its reliability and apply the appropriate security measures -- measures to which the e-mails in question were probably not subject.
and there are very large televisions out there ;)
;-)
Yes, I was always confused by the message, "this film has been formatted to fit your screen". I mean, how do they know how large my screen is?
It's a marketing thing. Grey matter like Vint Cerf is always good for getting quotes in the press, getting keynotes, etc. At least they gave him an honest title: he's there to evangelize. If I had a few billion in market cap I'd buy Vint Cerf, too.
Ah, but you're in fact paying for things that you can't get for free: the convenience of a single site, the guarantee of content quality, the knowledge that you're supporting the producers, and the legitimacy of having legally obtained it.
Do you really need your code to run as quickly as possible? If so, by all means, use whatever coding tricks you want. Just be sure to add comments to deobfuscate.
OTOH, if fast enough is fast enough, then code clarity will pay off far more in the long run.
I'm very surprised to see such opinions expressed by the president of the ALA. I have a lot of respect for those in the field of library science (dry as it may sound, most programmers would probably love it), but Mr. Gorman's comments suggest that he has somehow failed to keep up-to-date on advances in his own field.
Regardless of his opinion of blogs -- which, like books, have both their chaff and their grain -- his criticisms of Google, and by extension digital information, are misinformed and myopic. Google hardly gives access to "random bits of information", but rather does a good job of giving access to specific bits of information. His suggestion that money be spent on books and librarians for California schoolchildren instead of digital information and search engines ignores the fact the latter benefit far more people than just a relatively few American youths.
Books and libraries are wonderful, but as far as accessibility and searchability, digital information on the Internet is infinitely superior. The finest book in the finest library in the world does me no good if someone else has signed it out, or if I can't travel to the library, or if I can't find it because whatever keywords or categories under which it may be indexed don't match the ones I have in mind. The ALA would better pursue its mission of "promot[ing] the highest quality library and information services and public access to information" by embracing digital information than by treating it with the contempt shown by its President.
4.) Swipe downward
That Step 4 was just killing me!
It was killing me, but only when the mag strip on my card wore out, which it did every six months or so. Waiting for clerks to take a card imprint, etc. is inconvenient. I'll be happy when Step 4 goes away. I'll be even happier when steps 5 and 6 (wait for receipt to print, sign receipt) are replaced with "place thumb on biometric device" or whatever. Convenience rocks. I use a key-fob device to buy my gas, and it's really nice not having to take off my gloves and follow steps 1-4 on those chilly winter mornings.
The most interesting biodiesel process I've seen so far is Biox's. Their process is actually cost-competitive with existing petroleum.
I believe this one should be from the "damning with faint praise" department.
I stopped feeling sorry for LeGuin when I read, "When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago..."
As much as I respect and admire LeGuin, I can't find any sympathy for someone who sells the rights to their work, then complains about what happens to it.
Surely Slashdot is above the uneducated synonymity between the internet and "the Web."
We're not above it, and don't call us Shirley.
Roland Piquepaille? Isn't that the guy people bitch about, even though bitching about it gives Slashdot more reason to keep him?
/.'s editors deserve a swift kick in the ass for not at least editing out the gratuitous links to the plagiar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "summaries".
More reason to keep him? That should be easy enough to fix. Just make it your policy to mod down as overrated any comment posted to a Piquepaille story that's not a Piquepaille criticism, and encourage others to do the same. I suspect that that would make his submissions of much less value to Slashdot.
Personally, I think the guy's abusing the system and that
Big deal. My Toshiba HDTV was emitting the 1.21 jigawatt international time travel power level and turned into a '56 black and white Westinghouse in a faux oak cabinet.
I would like to thank Ed Greenwood for his wonderful contributions to the game in the form of the Forgotten Realms. Truly inspirational work this stuff is, or at least was.
For those who prefer a higher level of consistency and a somewhat lower level of fantasy, HarnWorld is unparallelled as far as RPG settings go. I find it infinitely more inspiring than anything TSR/WotC has produced, FR included. Both the official (here and here) and the fan-produced material (example) is outstanding.
the REAL problem now and always has been the near infinate storage of the spent fuel and any and all material that even gets near the fuel which over time become just as radioactive and needs to be "taken care of" somehow.
A promising technology is discussed in this story.
Free ET cartridge with every purchase.
Not all of it; just a few pages each. Thank God this one went out of copyright before congress extended it, or it might not have become such a hit.