Don't recall which match it was, but yesterday I saw (or thought I saw) a very definite mark left in the chalk by a ball that was called "out" by Hawkeye. The line wasn't just nicked, either; it looked in by a good 3 cm or so.
For televised matches, I'd find a slow-motion replay of the actual point a lot more convincing than the schematic representation they use now.
And unless you have a similar political bent, you'd never notice it. At least until someone who did have such a bent brought it to your attention. Of course if it's FOSS you could fix the problem right away, with or without the cooperation of the original developer(s)...
there just may need to be a power plant, or a chemical refinery, or any other of a large number of the usual items that trigger "OMGWTFNIMBYAAUGH" reactions from the enviro-nutjobs, NEAR to population centers so that we RESPONSIBLY reduce the transportation and delivery costs Indeed. In your neighborhood, then?
The only advantage is they're free. That's not even their most important advantage, as far as I'm concerned. Above that I would rank: No license hassles (or down-time resulting therefrom), no forced but unnecessary upgrades, no embedded spyware/nagware, and the availability of source so that the product can be supported in-house (or by a third party) if the original vendor poops out or becomes uncooperative.
If only there were an operating system that was controlled by its users and never manipulated them that way. Oh, and it would be really cool if it were free and came with source code.
Actually, ants are the least of your worries. It's been pointed out by security specialists that container ships are an ideal way for terrorists to bring in the parts of nuclear weapons.
Worse yet, The Terrorists are right now working on transporter beams that they will surely use to wreak havoc all around us. Our only hope to combat this threat is to completely forfeit what remains of our civil liberties and tithe ever more of our incomes to the burgeoning security partnership of government and industry, whose only interest is vigilance for our protection.
It also wouldn't hurt to invade another country or two.
this is exactly why Linux will never be able to really replace either Windows or Mac OS X for desktop usage. Actually, this is software evolution in action, and it's a good thing. Over time, one of these forks will likely wither away, while the other (or an even newer one) becomes dominant. Ultimately you'll end up with code that is well-optimized to prevailing user needs, with room still left for niche communities. A much more vibrant model than the "take it or leave it" you get with proprietary software, certainly.
The whole KDE vs Gnome debate is one of the things that keeps Windows on PCs. I doubt that very much. Most novice users are going to go with whichever one is installed with their initial config, and never look back. The angst among Windows users over XP vs. Vista seems a lot deeper.
Posted as AC because of Linux and OSS zealots. Silly... We're really quite nonviolent, and not nearly as dangerously nonconformist as you seem to think. Just enjoying the fresh air out here.
So where is this pressure dome and "speculated" water? I'd like to know because I'm interested in building a golf course there. Can I grow real grass, or is it just speculated grass that grows with speculated water? Is the speculated water in some convenient location, like a nearby lake or babbling brook?
And the O2 and CO2 in the pressure dome... Will I have to ship that in from Earth? Thank goodness that can't be very expensive.
And please don't tell me about getting O2 from mineral oxides; that takes a huge amount of energy (and more oxygen than you'll get back, if you're burning anything to heat your rocks).
Seriously... There are a lot of otherwise fairly smart people who yearn so strongly for their SF to come true that they willingly forget all of the science and engineering they know and lose touch with reality. Some things just don't happen not because they're impossible, but because they're not economically feasible. Unfortunately, lunar and planetary colonization may just be one of those things.
Tax prep software... Well, you've got me there (although there's always Wine). On the other hand, OpenOffice and the GIMP more than meet my needs for what others might use MS Office and Photoshop for (although people accustomed to PS often complain about GIMP's interface). Frequently use Pan for Usenet, XMMS for music, mplayer for video, and of course Firefox. Availability of games - or at least the popular, modern ones - may be a problem for those who are into them, but that's not an issue for me.
Money spent on software in the past 5 years? Zip.
No spyware, no malware, no crapware, no vendor manipulation, and an OS and apps that belong to you and not the other way around? Priceless!
I was about to ask that same question. I'm using Linux "on the desktop" right now as I write this, as I have for years. What is it about my desktop that isn't "ready for the desktop"? If anything, my friends using Windows have had to deal with more overall crap, and most of them would acknowledge as much (but not switch, of course).
I suspect that that this "not ready for the desktop" meme that I see constantly being reinforced is just part of the FUD campaign that Microsoft and its stakeholders have waged for years. It doesn't matter that experienced Linux users know it's a load of crap if they can keep their own customers too afraid to try it.
I've also noticed lately that posts like this one get modded down pretty quickly, now that there are companies that perform this service for a fee. Let's see if it happens this time...
Didn't say I liked the name, just found it curious that engineers of all people would make that their overriding criterion. As for me, I use it quite a bit and never even considered not doing so because of the name.
And yes, I would use your Shitting Dick Nipples software if it did what I need done better and more cost-effectively than the alternatives. But I'm just a rebel, I guess.
There's no way I'm going in front of our Engineering Review Board for a product called "The Gimp", no matter how much money it's going to save. Your engineering board should make it explicit that a fashionable name trumps functionality and cost-effectiveness when it comes to software procurement. In fact, I dare them to.
Several years ago I was playing with some iterative and least squares approaches to predicting (American) football scores and rating teams. It worked pretty well, but one thing stood out: When you use only the scores from previous games and home/visiting status as inputs to the model, you hit a pretty hard floor of about 2 touchdowns (13 or 14 points) for your standard error. That error includes the "hidden variables" that you mention, as well as the fundamental randomness of the game.
It also implies that any statistical predictions you do are going to be off by 7 or more points 62% of the time, 14 or more about 32% of the time, and 28 or more about 5% of the time. That's worth considering when betting against a spread...
The problem I have with the term "bias" is that it's going to apply to any source of news and information that attempts to present some context, background, and interpretation into its reportage. The stripped, "unbiased" news merely reports what this or that political figure says, without any clue about where they're really coming from. When the media tries to do this, they not only fail to paint an accurate picture of what's going on, they often outright mislead.
Motivations are important in politics. If the authors of the "Clean Air Act" are actually backed by polluter interests, or if the "Patriot Act" actually does nothing but strip us of rights and liberties that real patriots fought and gave their lives for, then that case needs to be made. I've had enough of news media that constantly give disingenuous and manipulative politicians the benefit of the doubt by merely transcribing what they say, or allowing them to put their labels on things unchallenged. They're little more than PR agencies then.
When I was in graduate school in the mid '90's I thought Parallelism would be the next big thing. Needless to say I was a bit early on that prediction. Had a company in the early 90s dedicated to heterogeneous parallel computing in what we now call genomics and proteomics. Despite the ongoing boom in DNA sequencing and analysis, it was hard at the time to interest either end-users or (especially) investors in distributed processing. Most worried that it was overkill, or that the computations would somehow be out of their control. How times change...
In this case, "success" means that local monopolies are continuing to make money on existing infrastructure without having to reinvest any of it into new infrastructure. Bingo. The White House (and Congress, for that matter) talks to telecomm CEOs and lobbyists, and they tell them, "We're great!". Together, as in so many other areas, they make their own reality.
Just because something is horribly painful doesn't mean we should avoid it. Words to live by, if ever there were!
But seriously... H2S is a highly poisonous gas, so I would heartily recommend avoiding it whenever you have the option. Fortunately we can smell it at concentrations far below what it takes to do us harm in a brief exposure.
Because, in the next 5 years, Linux will really be ready for prime time. Trust me. Heh heh... You're funny.
Decided over 5 years ago that Windows wasn't worth the disk space it was taking up on my dual-boot machine; haven't had a minute of regret. Total spent of software: $0. Spyware, malware, crapware: 0. Problems requiring tech support: 0. Downtime: 0. Knowing my machine is working for me and not someone else's recurrent revenue model: Priceless.
You can keep your "prime time"; just don't let go of those ankles.
That's the same rhetoric that's been said by the anti-MS crowd for the past 10 years. What makes the next 5 any different? Nothing related to the virtues of the respective operating systems, unfortunately. Some of us have an endearingly hopeful, albeit often misguided, faith in human reason. For better or worse, though, most of us will pony up for whatever MS is offering in much the same way that we reelected Bush in 2004.
This setback for DHS is a very good and important thing. What I'd really like to see, though, is about 100,000 citizens converging on their local airport and taking it back through the sheer weight of their numbers.
but I would guess it's Tc-99 residue from a Tc-99m scan Could also be I-131 if the cat had thyroid cancer or hyperthyroidism. My girlfriend's cat went through that a little over a year ago and was "hot" for days. Didn't make it, though, sadly...
Store the hydrogen at atmospheric pressure in a large, oblong balloon-like vessel, and strap your vehicle underneath it. You not only have a fuel source, but you have buoyancy as well and can soar above the traffic. We'd finally have those flying cars they've been promising us.
Slashdot Mirror
At Wimbledon you could have chalk for the lines
Don't recall which match it was, but yesterday I saw (or thought I saw) a very definite mark left in the chalk by a ball that was called "out" by Hawkeye. The line wasn't just nicked, either; it looked in by a good 3 cm or so.
For televised matches, I'd find a slow-motion replay of the actual point a lot more convincing than the schematic representation they use now.
...are a true geek. I salute you.
If only there were an operating system that was controlled by its users and never manipulated them that way. Oh, and it would be really cool if it were free and came with source code.
Too much to wish for, I know...
Actually, ants are the least of your worries. It's been pointed out by security specialists that container ships are an ideal way for terrorists to bring in the parts of nuclear weapons.
Worse yet, The Terrorists are right now working on transporter beams that they will surely use to wreak havoc all around us. Our only hope to combat this threat is to completely forfeit what remains of our civil liberties and tithe ever more of our incomes to the burgeoning security partnership of government and industry, whose only interest is vigilance for our protection.
It also wouldn't hurt to invade another country or two.
I think that "acts of God" applies specifically to locusts...
So where is this pressure dome and "speculated" water? I'd like to know because I'm interested in building a golf course there. Can I grow real grass, or is it just speculated grass that grows with speculated water? Is the speculated water in some convenient location, like a nearby lake or babbling brook?
And the O2 and CO2 in the pressure dome... Will I have to ship that in from Earth? Thank goodness that can't be very expensive.
And please don't tell me about getting O2 from mineral oxides; that takes a huge amount of energy (and more oxygen than you'll get back, if you're burning anything to heat your rocks).
Seriously... There are a lot of otherwise fairly smart people who yearn so strongly for their SF to come true that they willingly forget all of the science and engineering they know and lose touch with reality. Some things just don't happen not because they're impossible, but because they're not economically feasible. Unfortunately, lunar and planetary colonization may just be one of those things.
Tax prep software... Well, you've got me there (although there's always Wine). On the other hand, OpenOffice and the GIMP more than meet my needs for what others might use MS Office and Photoshop for (although people accustomed to PS often complain about GIMP's interface). Frequently use Pan for Usenet, XMMS for music, mplayer for video, and of course Firefox. Availability of games - or at least the popular, modern ones - may be a problem for those who are into them, but that's not an issue for me.
Money spent on software in the past 5 years? Zip.
No spyware, no malware, no crapware, no vendor manipulation, and an OS and apps that belong to you and not the other way around? Priceless!
I was about to ask that same question. I'm using Linux "on the desktop" right now as I write this, as I have for years. What is it about my desktop that isn't "ready for the desktop"? If anything, my friends using Windows have had to deal with more overall crap, and most of them would acknowledge as much (but not switch, of course).
I suspect that that this "not ready for the desktop" meme that I see constantly being reinforced is just part of the FUD campaign that Microsoft and its stakeholders have waged for years. It doesn't matter that experienced Linux users know it's a load of crap if they can keep their own customers too afraid to try it.
I've also noticed lately that posts like this one get modded down pretty quickly, now that there are companies that perform this service for a fee. Let's see if it happens this time...
Didn't say I liked the name, just found it curious that engineers of all people would make that their overriding criterion. As for me, I use it quite a bit and never even considered not doing so because of the name.
And yes, I would use your Shitting Dick Nipples software if it did what I need done better and more cost-effectively than the alternatives. But I'm just a rebel, I guess.
Several years ago I was playing with some iterative and least squares approaches to predicting (American) football scores and rating teams. It worked pretty well, but one thing stood out: When you use only the scores from previous games and home/visiting status as inputs to the model, you hit a pretty hard floor of about 2 touchdowns (13 or 14 points) for your standard error. That error includes the "hidden variables" that you mention, as well as the fundamental randomness of the game.
It also implies that any statistical predictions you do are going to be off by 7 or more points 62% of the time, 14 or more about 32% of the time, and 28 or more about 5% of the time. That's worth considering when betting against a spread...
Came here to say that, more or less.
The problem I have with the term "bias" is that it's going to apply to any source of news and information that attempts to present some context, background, and interpretation into its reportage. The stripped, "unbiased" news merely reports what this or that political figure says, without any clue about where they're really coming from. When the media tries to do this, they not only fail to paint an accurate picture of what's going on, they often outright mislead.
Motivations are important in politics. If the authors of the "Clean Air Act" are actually backed by polluter interests, or if the "Patriot Act" actually does nothing but strip us of rights and liberties that real patriots fought and gave their lives for, then that case needs to be made. I've had enough of news media that constantly give disingenuous and manipulative politicians the benefit of the doubt by merely transcribing what they say, or allowing them to put their labels on things unchallenged. They're little more than PR agencies then.
But seriously... H2S is a highly poisonous gas, so I would heartily recommend avoiding it whenever you have the option. Fortunately we can smell it at concentrations far below what it takes to do us harm in a brief exposure.
Decided over 5 years ago that Windows wasn't worth the disk space it was taking up on my dual-boot machine; haven't had a minute of regret. Total spent of software: $0. Spyware, malware, crapware: 0. Problems requiring tech support: 0. Downtime: 0. Knowing my machine is working for me and not someone else's recurrent revenue model: Priceless.
You can keep your "prime time"; just don't let go of those ankles.
Just another example of our patent system encouraging innovation...
This setback for DHS is a very good and important thing. What I'd really like to see, though, is about 100,000 citizens converging on their local airport and taking it back through the sheer weight of their numbers.
How about this, then:
Store the hydrogen at atmospheric pressure in a large, oblong balloon-like vessel, and strap your vehicle underneath it. You not only have a fuel source, but you have buoyancy as well and can soar above the traffic. We'd finally have those flying cars they've been promising us.
Oh, the humanity!