Well, it may be a bit of a stretch, but I can think of at least one company with an awful lot of money that has good reason to make sure SCO doesn't die before their lawsuits are settled...
(Re)Building world just keeps the base system up to date. The currently recommended procedure includes a script for updating etc, which can be somewhat daunting if you've made significant local changes to the files there, but works well overall.
If you're only worried about security patches, I generally configure cvsup to follow a specific release, e.g. RELENG_6_2, as opposed to following the -STABLE branch, e.g. RELENG_6. That gets me all of the security and errata updates for that specific release, but I don't have to worry about any significant underlying system changes catching me by surprise, and it keeps the/etc pain in check. (And if you want to jump to a later version to get certain new features, that is still an option too.)
For keeping ports/packages (including X, perl, gnome, etc.) up to date, update your/usr/ports tree, and check out the portupgrade package. Granted, my last experience with FreeBSD is a little dated at this point. Perhaps they've replaced portupgrade with something newer, but that should at least give you a starting point.
Also, as another user pointed out, you can generally update 'world' independently of your installed ports/packages, although I've never personally attempted to update my world across a major version jump.
The only time I ever have cash on me is when I've just gone to happy hour at the Mountain Sun. It's the only place I can think of that doesn't take credit/debit cards (friggin' hippies) and they have an ATM right in the back. Why else would I ever have cash with me?
The difference of course, is that the thousands of little satellites won't magically regrow into independent full size satellites, like Mickey's broom. Rather, they will remain as little tiny satellite pieces, all still more or less following the satellite's current trajectory, i.e. about to deorbit (and significantly slower than 25,000 mph).
Which is exactly what the people shooting at this satellite want to happen...
Lawsuits will always exist wherever there is money. You don't have to have a valid complaint or even a reasonable expectation that you will win in order to sue somebody. If there's enough money there, and somebody can come up with a halfway believable story about how it should have been their money, then there will always be people willing to file a lawsuit, regardless of how outlandish their claims are, whether because they've actually deluded themselves into believing they have a legitimate complaint, or because they are willing to gamble on getting an easy settlement or a gullible judge or jury.
Unfortunately, no matter what field you're in, it seems that money attracts slimeballs, and much as I may dislike them, I have a hard time faulting lawyers or law schools for meeting the demand.
There is no reason at all that the tractors, trucks, factory equipment, etc that are currently burning regular gas or diesel, could not instead be burning ethanol, making the entire process truly carbon neutral.
No reason at all, aside from the fact that at best estimates they would only have about 10-15% of the fuel they produced left over after they used it to fuel all of their vehicles, which would seriously cut into their profit margins, and make ethanol production a much less lucrative business. Let's also not forget the tanker trucks that haul ethanol around, either. Unlike petroleum products, ethanol is very sensitive to water, and can't easily be transported long distances by pipeline.
I'd love to see some legislation saying that any farmers who receive subsidies for growing corn for ethanol (or who sell their corn to companies that get the subsidies) can only get government money if at least x% (where x > 50) of the fuel that they use in growing the corn is a biofuel of some sort, but I don't think it would happen because then somebody would have to admit how much of a crock our current ethanol initiative is.
1) None of the corn used for ethanol production is edible.
That may be true, but it's also extremely misleading. The fields where that corn was grown could be (and in many cases was until growing corn for ethanol become so popular) used to grow edible foods.
2) Food prices have gone up because the cost of the fuel used to transport them has gone up.
...and because the supply has gone down, in part due to farmers who used to grow other crops switching over to corn because it is so much more profitable.
3) The future of ethanol isn't corn anyway, it'll almost certainly be bio-engineered plants.
That is yet to be seen, but the OP was specifically talking about corn ethanol, which is currently produced by the truckload, heavily subsidized by the government, and heavily promoted by the auto manufacturers as a "green" fuel, despite the fact that we know that we don't gain anything from it.
I think it is due to the different branches (sects?) of Islam, just as there are some very basic differences in scriptural interpretations between e.g. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. I do know this is not anything new, though. If you look at some of the old Muslim architecture in Southern Spain, for example, (particularly in and around Granada) you will find that because their culture didn't allow any kind of portraits as decoration, they instead developed incredibly intricate carvings and geometric patterns for decorating their palaces and places of worship.
In fact there was an article here on Slashdot a while back talking about how Mathematicians looking at an old Mosque think that the 15th or 16th century Muslims may have discovered certain geometric constructs that were not discovered by Western mathematitians until the mid 20th century.
Laptops (even carefully used ones) also take more more of a beating than a desktop system, so their life expectancy is less. A desktop can run for 10 years with occasional upgrades if your needs are not too demanding (my parents current home PC is a PIII that I originally got in 1997 or 1998 and it's still going strong). I've yet to have owned a laptop that needed to be upgraded before it started to show significant physical signs of age- loose power adapter plug or bad charging circuits, busted hinges or case, missing keys, etc. Three years seems to be about the limit (for me) of how far you can get on a laptop before it needs to be replaced. Unless you're a hardcore gamer (in which case, you're probably not after a laptop anyway) it's not too hard to buy a computer that will last you three years without upgrades.
Probably because in the end they don't really care whether one or the other wins out. Whether they had an actual business reason to choose HD-DVD over Blu-Ray or were just doing it to spite Sony, there's nothing stopping them from retiring the HD-DVD addon and selling a Blu-Ray addon next month. It may suck for the rest of the HD-DVD camp, but for Microsoft it makes perfect sense. Why should they gamble the success of their game platform over an HD format that they have no real investment in?
you are violation of the two-party recording laws of your state
That is, of course, only if you live in one of the fifteen or so states that have two-party recording laws. The rest of the states have one-party recording laws, so as long as one of the people in the conversation (i.e. you) knows that it is being recorded, you would not be in violation of the law.
It is now hoped that the plant will be conserved and that selling seeds can generate revenue for people living nearby, as well as allowing gardeners across the world to own their very own self-destructing Malagasy palm tree.
I'm not interested unless it's at least 90 years old. Sorry, I just don't have that kind of patience.
There was an article in Wired a while back about this guy that went over his stride and how it differs from a traditional runner. Both his running style and his muscular structure are substantially different than a typical sprinter. If I remember correctly, his amputation was the result of a congenital condition - he was born missing one of the bones in his lower legs, so it's fairly likely that he's never had a "regular" stride. Although they seem to contradict each other, both multiplexo and abigsmurf are mostly correct. For a typical sprinter, all of the downward momentum of their foot hitting the ground is essentially wasted. This is compensated for by two things - first, runners have very strong calf muscles that they use to push off at the beginning of a stride, and second, a stride that attempts to minimize the amount of downward energy that is lost. As you and multiplexo pointed out, Oscar can't use his calf muscles to push off, so he has to put that energy there in the beginning of his stride. Compared to a typical sprinter, he has significantly stronger thigh muscles, and his stride is designed to put as much downward force as possible into the blades in order to get a strong push off. At the end of the stride, because his carbon fiber (?) feet are so good at returning the energy put into them into his stride, the end result is that more of the muscle energy expended has been converted into forward motion, even though the breakdown of how much energy comes from different muscles is different.
I guess where it gets tricky is in trying to figure out what "fair" actually means. In Oscar's case, the amount of energy returned by his feet is limited by the materials technology that went into making, and not by his running form. His ability to run fast is the product of the amount of energy he can put into his prosthetics (primarily thigh strength) and his ability to direct that energy into forward motion (stride) as opposed to bouncing up and down on the track like a giant human pogo stick. A traditional sprinter's speed also comes from the amount of energy his leg muscles can produce, although it is spread throughout the whole leg. But in addition to trying to maximize the amount of energy that is transferred into forward motion, they also have to minimize the amount that is lost in hitting the ground. In short, every runner has to worry about 3 things (and yes, I realize that I may not be using all these terms according to their strict definitions):
maximize power generated
minimize power dissipated through impact
maximize forward momentum generated from remaining power
For most people, all three of those are ultimately limited by their training and natural talent. In this case, however, the second factor is only limited by technology and the amount of money he is willing to spend. So I'm not even sure that it's just a matter of saying that X% is acceptable, but no higher, because that amount is going to vary from one athlete to another anyway.
For what it's worth, the article quoted Oscar's trainer as saying "If they think it's such an advantage, why aren't they lining up for the same surgery?" and I tend to agree with him. But I think there is a valid point to the IOC's decision, even if I don't entirely agree with it. By the way, this is all half remembered from a magazine article I probably read six months ago, so I may have made some mistakes. If in doubt, feel free to look it up...
For the most part this seems like a halfway decent list, but one of his comments really sent my bullshit meter screaming:
In fact, the great programmer will be the one talking your ear off about a new technology that you haven't even heard of, explaining to you why you must use it in your business, even if none of your staff knows how to use it. Even if it's a technology he doesn't know how to use yet. I'm sorry, but these are the guys who you absolutely do not want to have around.
Sorry, no. I'm a little behind on my theophysics research.
More seriously, since you seemed to miss the point of my joke, while you did answer my question, you didn't really answer it in the context of why I posed it to the OP. OP had claimed that god could not stand up to simple logical reasoning because either god was created, which would lead to a recursive question of where that person came from, or "he just exists, you may not question that".
So yes, matter came from energy. But that doesn't answer the question, because now somebody has to explain where the energy came from. It doesn't matter whether you are dealing with god or dealing with the big bang. Either way you have the same dilemma. Either way, you can trace the chain back (if there is one) but sooner or later, you end up at a point where you are dealing with some entity that either materialized out of nothing of its own accord, or has always "just been there". Apparently the OP can logically accept that if the initial quantity is matter or energy, but not if the initial quantity is god.
Bill Clinton - Not very remarkable in politics, but not too bad - mostly made a fool of himself in the Lewinsky affair... And to the rest of the world those prosecuting him were the greater fools. Caused the term "Oral Office" to be invented.
I think that was the impression of a lot of people here, too. I never cared much for him or his policies, but the Republicans certainly dragged themselves to a new low with their efforts to discredit him.
except for the fact that it was reported that someone got 0 (zero) votes.. when voters said they did vote for the guy. which tells you there is a problem..
Yes there is a problem. But let's think about this for a second. Diebold bashing aside, which seems to you like a more likely cause? 1) There is some sort of corporate conspiracy to discredit Ron Paul as a candidate. 2) Somebody (either the voter or the tabulator) doesn't know how to work the machines properly.
I lived in Chicago during the 2000 election. Some ridiculous number (like 15%, I think) of votes in Cook County weren't counted because the voter either failed to select a candidate for president, or selected more than one. To put that in perspective, the last two elections were decided by a margin smaller than the number of votes that weren't counted in one county due to voter error. And if you work in the tech industry at all, you know how many "computer problems" turn out to be operator error... So you'll forgive me if I don't immediately assume that the machine was at fault here.
While people are correct that it is slightly easier to type on a proper keyboard,
Talk about an understatement. I went to an AT&T store recently to play around with one, and it took me two minutes just to type "slashdot.org" into the Safari web browser. Maybe my thumbs are just too fat, but I can't imagine how anyone could type anything useful on one of these devices. If I was on the market for a new smartphone, I'd be much more interested in a Treo. If I was going to do any typing on it at all, I would gladly give up the extra screen space for a keyboard with an actual tactile surface.
If you want a nice phone, get an unlocked Nokia N95-3;
Yeah, because I have $700 just laying around to throw at a phone. I have a nice phone that cost me $0. It doesn't have a camera, GPS, or any of that other stuff that you mention, but it is a nice phone, and I didn't have to spend 2 years worth of cell phone bills on it.
There was lots and lots and lots and lots of energy. God came from the energy. He then created matter. Which by the way also answers your question as to why we still have matter left.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it may be a bit of a stretch, but I can think of at least one company with an awful lot of money that has good reason to make sure SCO doesn't die before their lawsuits are settled...
(Re)Building world just keeps the base system up to date. The currently recommended procedure includes a script for updating etc, which can be somewhat daunting if you've made significant local changes to the files there, but works well overall.
/etc pain in check. (And if you want to jump to a later version to get certain new features, that is still an option too.)
/usr/ports tree, and check out the portupgrade package. Granted, my last experience with FreeBSD is a little dated at this point. Perhaps they've replaced portupgrade with something newer, but that should at least give you a starting point.
If you're only worried about security patches, I generally configure cvsup to follow a specific release, e.g. RELENG_6_2, as opposed to following the -STABLE branch, e.g. RELENG_6. That gets me all of the security and errata updates for that specific release, but I don't have to worry about any significant underlying system changes catching me by surprise, and it keeps the
For keeping ports/packages (including X, perl, gnome, etc.) up to date, update your
Also, as another user pointed out, you can generally update 'world' independently of your installed ports/packages, although I've never personally attempted to update my world across a major version jump.
Having cash?
The only time I ever have cash on me is when I've just gone to happy hour at the Mountain Sun. It's the only place I can think of that doesn't take credit/debit cards (friggin' hippies) and they have an ATM right in the back. Why else would I ever have cash with me?
The difference of course, is that the thousands of little satellites won't magically regrow into independent full size satellites, like Mickey's broom. Rather, they will remain as little tiny satellite pieces, all still more or less following the satellite's current trajectory, i.e. about to deorbit (and significantly slower than 25,000 mph).
Which is exactly what the people shooting at this satellite want to happen...
Lawsuits will always exist wherever there is money. You don't have to have a valid complaint or even a reasonable expectation that you will win in order to sue somebody. If there's enough money there, and somebody can come up with a halfway believable story about how it should have been their money, then there will always be people willing to file a lawsuit, regardless of how outlandish their claims are, whether because they've actually deluded themselves into believing they have a legitimate complaint, or because they are willing to gamble on getting an easy settlement or a gullible judge or jury.
Unfortunately, no matter what field you're in, it seems that money attracts slimeballs, and much as I may dislike them, I have a hard time faulting lawyers or law schools for meeting the demand.
How strange. I suddenly have this mental image of a number of state highway workers trying to decide how to dispose of a beached whale.
No reason at all, aside from the fact that at best estimates they would only have about 10-15% of the fuel they produced left over after they used it to fuel all of their vehicles, which would seriously cut into their profit margins, and make ethanol production a much less lucrative business. Let's also not forget the tanker trucks that haul ethanol around, either. Unlike petroleum products, ethanol is very sensitive to water, and can't easily be transported long distances by pipeline.
I'd love to see some legislation saying that any farmers who receive subsidies for growing corn for ethanol (or who sell their corn to companies that get the subsidies) can only get government money if at least x% (where x > 50) of the fuel that they use in growing the corn is a biofuel of some sort, but I don't think it would happen because then somebody would have to admit how much of a crock our current ethanol initiative is.
That may be true, but it's also extremely misleading. The fields where that corn was grown could be (and in many cases was until growing corn for ethanol become so popular) used to grow edible foods.
That is yet to be seen, but the OP was specifically talking about corn ethanol, which is currently produced by the truckload, heavily subsidized by the government, and heavily promoted by the auto manufacturers as a "green" fuel, despite the fact that we know that we don't gain anything from it.
I think it is due to the different branches (sects?) of Islam, just as there are some very basic differences in scriptural interpretations between e.g. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. I do know this is not anything new, though. If you look at some of the old Muslim architecture in Southern Spain, for example, (particularly in and around Granada) you will find that because their culture didn't allow any kind of portraits as decoration, they instead developed incredibly intricate carvings and geometric patterns for decorating their palaces and places of worship.
In fact there was an article here on Slashdot a while back talking about how Mathematicians looking at an old Mosque think that the 15th or 16th century Muslims may have discovered certain geometric constructs that were not discovered by Western mathematitians until the mid 20th century.
Or with one, for that matter...
Laptops (even carefully used ones) also take more more of a beating than a desktop system, so their life expectancy is less. A desktop can run for 10 years with occasional upgrades if your needs are not too demanding (my parents current home PC is a PIII that I originally got in 1997 or 1998 and it's still going strong). I've yet to have owned a laptop that needed to be upgraded before it started to show significant physical signs of age- loose power adapter plug or bad charging circuits, busted hinges or case, missing keys, etc. Three years seems to be about the limit (for me) of how far you can get on a laptop before it needs to be replaced. Unless you're a hardcore gamer (in which case, you're probably not after a laptop anyway) it's not too hard to buy a computer that will last you three years without upgrades.
You're right, that would never work. I mean it's not like there are any competing smartphones out there with an open SDK, right?
Probably because in the end they don't really care whether one or the other wins out. Whether they had an actual business reason to choose HD-DVD over Blu-Ray or were just doing it to spite Sony, there's nothing stopping them from retiring the HD-DVD addon and selling a Blu-Ray addon next month. It may suck for the rest of the HD-DVD camp, but for Microsoft it makes perfect sense. Why should they gamble the success of their game platform over an HD format that they have no real investment in?
That is, of course, only if you live in one of the fifteen or so states that have two-party recording laws. The rest of the states have one-party recording laws, so as long as one of the people in the conversation (i.e. you) knows that it is being recorded, you would not be in violation of the law.
I'm not interested unless it's at least 90 years old. Sorry, I just don't have that kind of patience.
I guess where it gets tricky is in trying to figure out what "fair" actually means. In Oscar's case, the amount of energy returned by his feet is limited by the materials technology that went into making, and not by his running form. His ability to run fast is the product of the amount of energy he can put into his prosthetics (primarily thigh strength) and his ability to direct that energy into forward motion (stride) as opposed to bouncing up and down on the track like a giant human pogo stick. A traditional sprinter's speed also comes from the amount of energy his leg muscles can produce, although it is spread throughout the whole leg. But in addition to trying to maximize the amount of energy that is transferred into forward motion, they also have to minimize the amount that is lost in hitting the ground. In short, every runner has to worry about 3 things (and yes, I realize that I may not be using all these terms according to their strict definitions):
- maximize power generated
- minimize power dissipated through impact
- maximize forward momentum generated from remaining power
For most people, all three of those are ultimately limited by their training and natural talent. In this case, however, the second factor is only limited by technology and the amount of money he is willing to spend. So I'm not even sure that it's just a matter of saying that X% is acceptable, but no higher, because that amount is going to vary from one athlete to another anyway.For what it's worth, the article quoted Oscar's trainer as saying "If they think it's such an advantage, why aren't they lining up for the same surgery?" and I tend to agree with him. But I think there is a valid point to the IOC's decision, even if I don't entirely agree with it. By the way, this is all half remembered from a magazine article I probably read six months ago, so I may have made some mistakes. If in doubt, feel free to look it up...
Sorry, no. I'm a little behind on my theophysics research.
More seriously, since you seemed to miss the point of my joke, while you did answer my question, you didn't really answer it in the context of why I posed it to the OP. OP had claimed that god could not stand up to simple logical reasoning because either god was created, which would lead to a recursive question of where that person came from, or "he just exists, you may not question that".
So yes, matter came from energy. But that doesn't answer the question, because now somebody has to explain where the energy came from. It doesn't matter whether you are dealing with god or dealing with the big bang. Either way you have the same dilemma. Either way, you can trace the chain back (if there is one) but sooner or later, you end up at a point where you are dealing with some entity that either materialized out of nothing of its own accord, or has always "just been there". Apparently the OP can logically accept that if the initial quantity is matter or energy, but not if the initial quantity is god.
They copied it from the email signature of a Diebold employee: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/0726256
The original quote has been attributed to a number of people.
I think that was the impression of a lot of people here, too. I never cared much for him or his policies, but the Republicans certainly dragged themselves to a new low with their efforts to discredit him.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
Yes there is a problem. But let's think about this for a second. Diebold bashing aside, which seems to you like a more likely cause?
1) There is some sort of corporate conspiracy to discredit Ron Paul as a candidate.
2) Somebody (either the voter or the tabulator) doesn't know how to work the machines properly.
I lived in Chicago during the 2000 election. Some ridiculous number (like 15%, I think) of votes in Cook County weren't counted because the voter either failed to select a candidate for president, or selected more than one. To put that in perspective, the last two elections were decided by a margin smaller than the number of votes that weren't counted in one county due to voter error. And if you work in the tech industry at all, you know how many "computer problems" turn out to be operator error... So you'll forgive me if I don't immediately assume that the machine was at fault here.
Talk about an understatement. I went to an AT&T store recently to play around with one, and it took me two minutes just to type "slashdot.org" into the Safari web browser. Maybe my thumbs are just too fat, but I can't imagine how anyone could type anything useful on one of these devices. If I was on the market for a new smartphone, I'd be much more interested in a Treo. If I was going to do any typing on it at all, I would gladly give up the extra screen space for a keyboard with an actual tactile surface.
Yeah, because I have $700 just laying around to throw at a phone. I have a nice phone that cost me $0. It doesn't have a camera, GPS, or any of that other stuff that you mention, but it is a nice phone, and I didn't have to spend 2 years worth of cell phone bills on it.
There was lots and lots and lots and lots of energy. God came from the energy. He then created matter. Which by the way also answers your question as to why we still have matter left.