You have misunderstood. It's not the Microsoft window update doing its job as it is keeping ALL your software up to date. Windows update does not update all those other piece of software you have, e,g., java, flash, firefox, adobe pdf reader, virus scanner &c. Instead, each piece of software some unique mechanism (or none at all) to keep itself updated.
There is no common infrastructure to do this automatically. I don't expect MS to update my flashplayer, but I would enjoy some kind of help like a master list of update-sites and repositories to check the software against. Unfortunately, it would open up some kind of security can of worms too. But then again, vulnerable software is also a security can of worms.
I particularly loathe those crapplets which load up automatically and exist only to look for updates. They don't just check and go away, no they stay loaded all the time. Can't they make some sort of cron task?
I am a systems engineer (no, not a computer tech, the other kind) and I am sick and tired of all the belly aching from software when you ask for even the simplest linear algebra. If I want to say, multiply a matrix times a vector, they want me to spell it all out for them. Asking for solving a linear set of equations using Guassian elimination or Cholesky &c and it is suddenly a major million dollar undertaking. God help you if you want something advanced like singular value decomposition.
No matter that libraries like LAPACK for this have existed for over 30 years. Open up Golub and VanLoan. Why should I need to re-explain this stuff?
The problem, as I see it, is that there is insufficient overlap between domains. The systems people could do with learning a bit more about software and the software people need to understand the domain. Software is not just software. You should see the crackpot monstrosities that are written from insufficient understanding of the higher level structure. I'd rather have the engineers write the numerical/math code and leave the user interface to the pure software guys.
No doubt, BLAS and LAPACK are kind of awkward when used from C or C++.
An engaging professor is worth a lot. A good professor can make a dull subject come alive. A boring one can do the opposite.
Also, there are many flavors of math so you might want to sample to see what suits you. I would suggest a course in "linear algebra". Linear algebra has very low prerequisites - basically arithmetic - there are no "limits" to be taken. It is very useful for almost everything technical and it offers exposure to theorem and proofs. Plus you can use Octave (or Matlab) to try out programming with vectors and matrices and get some hands-on experience with the concepts.
For the sake of argument, I will suppose that your ISP gives you IPv6. What makes you think they'll give you more than one working address? Verizon and Comcast are known for their greed an ineptitude. For competition you need at least 3 viable choices.
Sales tax sucks because it slows down the velocity of money. You pay sales tax whenever the dollar circulates which could be many times in a year.
The income tax (while it has the really annoying forms and loss of privacy problems) is assessed on your net profit and once per year. Sales tax is on total sales revenue.
You could do a value added tax (VAT) which is not as bad as straight sales, but it still clobbers commerce and especially high volume business.
As far as fairness goes, the higher the income, the lower the percentage people pay in sales taxes. It's just empirically the way it works out (although there are solid reasons for it).
I hate the sales tax. It's my least favorite kind.
Let's do the math. From that fount of knowledge that is wikipedia, the US grid is about 4 thousand terawatts. That's 4*10^15 W.
So say we want over 4 times that, like 20*10^15 W to give 4 times the power of the US grid.
Power is energy divided by time. 1 femtosecond is 10^(-15) sec. Let energy in joules be E, power in watts be P and time in seconds be T, then
E = P*T So the energy of power 20*10^15 W times times time 10^(-15) is just 20 Joules.
Say it takes 1 sec to pump the laser, that's an average power of 20W. Of course the laser pumping isn't 100% efficient, and 1 sec might not be the exact right time, it's still feasible. It's only the equivalent energy of having the light bulb lit for a few seconds.
And there are plenty of news sources that are not the interweb: - your friends and cow-orkers - radio - newspaper
If they haven't gotten the news about the digital TV transition, how important can the news possibly be to these people? Turning off the signal is the only way to get them to notice. And if they still don't notice after that, why would they care? It's not like they are trying to watch TV.
No, jrothwell97 is right. The British do not consider themselves to be European. My British SO's family get indignant when you say they are Europeans. Thus, for the British, Continental is European.
The Swedes, on the other hand, do consider themselves European, but not continental (despite the Scandinavian peninsula being attached through Finland to Russia).
> So does Firefox. IE7 and Firefox are basically equal in terms of features,...
I was not aware that Firefox was pre-installed with every Windows machine. *That* is the "feature" which matters here.
The difference is that you have to actively download firefox. Someone who downloaded it before is not going to be very afraid of downloading the new one. Someone who just uses whatever is there, will keep using what is there.
Insert key - the editor "brief" mapped this to yank C-Y in emacs lingo or paste ^V in CUA. It made some sort of sense as "insert" could be construed as "insert the junk i just wiped out". And it was actually useful.
Caps-lock - just remap it to a control key. It's easy to do in Linux and Windows. It's a very fixable misfeature. But then sometimes I have to use someone else's computer...
Num-lock - I agree. In 1983 they had a cheap keyboard without a numerical keypad, why are we suffering this atrocity 25 years later? I don't use the numberpad because you never know what stupid mode it's in. Is there a way to force number-mode all the time? In Linux (both console and X) and windows too? It's nice to be able to trust your keys.
Scroll-lock, SysRq/Printscreen, Break/Pause - why do these buttons exist and why does nearly nothing use them? SysRq is at least useful in Linux with the magic SysRq key logic.
And the university system in the US isn't all that great either. Sure, there's the top tier of research universities, e.g., MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, UofI, CalTech &c. But there are a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier ones which are pretty mediocre institutions.
People come to the US because it is one of the few systems in the business of selling an education. Many other countries run their universities for their own people and only sponsor a few foreigners. It's easier for a german guy to get into a US university than a US person to go to Germany. Plus English is the common language so many will do a stint in the US to get better exposure. So it's not always that the US school is so great - it's that you can get accepted into it.
It's not powerpoint the software's fault (although I am not a big fan of it) that such briefings are so lousy. It's the format. Having bulleted slides as your format makes it very difficult to convey complicated information. Using a better piece of software than powerpoint won't help that.
The problem, as I see it, is that you want to present two or three complicated parts and then explain their interrelation, but then you can't fit it all into one neat slide.
A paper or article can discuss much more complicated things than a powerpoint presentation can simply because you can see more text and figures at one time in the article. This makes it useful to refer back and you can describe the complex interaction of parts.
Slashdot Mirror
how hard is it to keep your green card in your wallet?
It's very hard. They took away my green card when I became a US citizen.
Web 2.0 is a crock. You know the ".0" version is always bug ridden. Just patch it and release 2.1 already.
Now if we could only ban "v6".
You have misunderstood. It's not the Microsoft window update doing its job as it is keeping ALL your software up to date. Windows update does not update all those other piece of software you have, e,g., java, flash, firefox, adobe pdf reader, virus scanner &c. Instead, each piece of software some unique mechanism (or none at all) to keep itself updated.
There is no common infrastructure to do this automatically. I don't expect MS to update my flashplayer, but I would enjoy some kind of help like a master list of update-sites and repositories to check the software against. Unfortunately, it would open up some kind of security can of worms too. But then again, vulnerable software is also a security can of worms.
I particularly loathe those crapplets which load up automatically and exist only to look for updates. They don't just check and go away, no they stay loaded all the time. Can't they make some sort of cron task?
If I had mod points, I'd mod you as a troll.
I am a systems engineer (no, not a computer tech, the other kind) and I am sick and tired of all the belly aching from software when you ask for even the simplest linear algebra. If I want to say, multiply a matrix times a vector, they want me to spell it all out for them. Asking for solving a linear set of equations using Guassian elimination or Cholesky &c and it is suddenly a major million dollar undertaking. God help you if you want something advanced like singular value decomposition.
No matter that libraries like LAPACK for this have existed for over 30 years. Open up Golub and VanLoan. Why should I need to re-explain this stuff?
The problem, as I see it, is that there is insufficient overlap between domains. The systems people could do with learning a bit more about software and the software people need to understand the domain. Software is not just software. You should see the crackpot monstrosities that are written from insufficient understanding of the higher level structure. I'd rather have the engineers write the numerical/math code and leave the user interface to the pure software guys.
No doubt, BLAS and LAPACK are kind of awkward when used from C or C++.
An engaging professor is worth a lot. A good professor can make a dull subject come alive. A boring one can do the opposite.
Also, there are many flavors of math so you might want to sample to see what suits you. I would suggest a course in "linear algebra". Linear algebra has very low prerequisites - basically arithmetic - there are no "limits" to be taken. It is very useful for almost everything technical and it offers exposure to theorem and proofs. Plus you can use Octave (or Matlab) to try out programming with vectors and matrices and get some hands-on experience with the concepts.
For the sake of argument, I will suppose that your ISP gives you IPv6. What makes you think they'll give you more than one working address? Verizon and Comcast are known for their greed an ineptitude. For competition you need at least 3 viable choices.
You could just retcon the BC dates. Set 0 AD = 1 BC, and -N AD = 1-N BC for N > 0. That way you can start from 0 AD and leave today's date the same.
Vodka? No wonder windows 7 sucks. You make a martini with gin.
>> this means no readdressing problems when you suddenly decide 2 completely independent networks need to talk to each other.
What if one of those independent networks is running IPv4? Fail.
And that is why IPv6 continues to lose.
Sales tax sucks because it slows down the velocity of money. You pay sales tax whenever the dollar circulates which could be many times in a year.
The income tax (while it has the really annoying forms and loss of privacy problems) is assessed on your net profit and once per year. Sales tax is on total sales revenue.
You could do a value added tax (VAT) which is not as bad as straight sales, but it still clobbers commerce and especially high volume business.
As far as fairness goes, the higher the income, the lower the percentage people pay in sales taxes. It's just empirically the way it works out (although there are solid reasons for it).
I hate the sales tax. It's my least favorite kind.
Hiking that Appalachian trail can be tricky. I hear it goes all the way to Argentina.
Let's do the math. From that fount of knowledge that is wikipedia, the US grid is about 4 thousand terawatts. That's 4*10^15 W.
So say we want over 4 times that, like 20*10^15 W to give 4 times the power of the US grid.
Power is energy divided by time. 1 femtosecond is 10^(-15) sec.
Let energy in joules be E, power in watts be P and time in seconds be T, then
E = P*T
So the energy of power 20*10^15 W times times time 10^(-15) is just 20 Joules.
Say it takes 1 sec to pump the laser, that's an average power of 20W. Of course the laser pumping
isn't 100% efficient, and 1 sec might not be the exact right time, it's still feasible. It's only the equivalent
energy of having the light bulb lit for a few seconds.
As if network television even has news.
And there are plenty of news sources that are not the interweb:
- your friends and cow-orkers
- radio
- newspaper
If they haven't gotten the news about the digital TV transition, how important can the news possibly be to these people? Turning off the signal is the only way to get them to notice. And if they still don't notice after that, why would they care? It's not like they are trying to watch TV.
Yes. But not as bad as Hersheys.
SWMBO is from England and refuses even the Canadian made Cadbury's because it tastes "off".
A patent IS a government created monopoly.
My ideal notebook would have a 15" 4:3 aspect 1600x1200 viewing panel.
No, jrothwell97 is right. The British do not consider themselves to be European. My British SO's family get indignant when you say they are Europeans. Thus, for the British, Continental is European.
The Swedes, on the other hand, do consider themselves European, but not continental (despite the Scandinavian peninsula being attached through Finland to Russia).
>> IE survives on inertia, not quality.
> So does Firefox. IE7 and Firefox are basically equal in terms of features,...
I was not aware that Firefox was pre-installed with every Windows machine. *That* is the "feature" which matters here.
The difference is that you have to actively download firefox. Someone who downloaded it before is not going to be very afraid of downloading the new one. Someone who just uses whatever is there, will keep using what is there.
Now if they could just nail Heather with Account Services.
Insert key - the editor "brief" mapped this to yank C-Y in emacs lingo or paste ^V in CUA.
It made some sort of sense as "insert" could be construed as "insert the junk i just wiped out". And it was actually useful.
Caps-lock - just remap it to a control key. It's easy to do in Linux and Windows. It's a very fixable misfeature. But then sometimes I have to use someone else's computer...
Num-lock - I agree. In 1983 they had a cheap keyboard without a numerical keypad, why are we suffering this atrocity 25 years later? I don't use the numberpad because you never know what stupid mode it's in. Is there a way to force number-mode all the time? In Linux (both console and X) and windows too? It's nice to be able to trust your keys.
Scroll-lock, SysRq/Printscreen, Break/Pause - why do these buttons exist and why does nearly nothing use them? SysRq is at least useful in Linux with the magic SysRq key logic.
THAT song was by R. Kelly?
I DESPISE that song. It is the most annoying song I know - even worse than "MacArthur park." Although "She's having my baby" is pretty awful too.
How would a national ID card help? E.g., it's not like you need any ID card to sign up for a credit card offer.
And the university system in the US isn't all that great either. Sure, there's the top tier of research universities, e.g., MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, UofI, CalTech &c. But there are a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier ones which are pretty mediocre institutions.
People come to the US because it is one of the few systems in the business of selling an education. Many other countries run their universities for their own people and only sponsor a few foreigners. It's easier for a german guy to get into a US university than a US person to go to Germany. Plus English is the common language so many will do a stint in the US to get better exposure. So it's not always that the US school is so great - it's that you can get accepted into it.
It's not powerpoint the software's fault (although I am not a big fan of it) that such briefings are so lousy. It's the format. Having bulleted slides as your format makes it very difficult to convey complicated information. Using a better piece of software than powerpoint won't help that.
The problem, as I see it, is that you want to present two or three complicated parts and then explain their interrelation, but then you can't fit it all into one neat slide.
A paper or article can discuss much more complicated things than a powerpoint presentation can simply because you can see more text and figures at one time in the article. This makes it useful to refer back and you can describe the complex interaction of parts.
Thanks! That looks genuinely useful.