>> True, but for every Einstein there are a number of individuals who actually are crazy and whose theories actually are asinine. There is a reason that papers are peer reviewed.
Yeah. You must be talking about me. I have a lot of assinine theories.
I have to agree. The last paragraph in particular. After reading about Theoden at the beginning of the two towers as an old broken man under the control of Sauruman the last paragraph in that chapter is an incredible contrast. He is portrayed as having new life breathed into him as he leads his men into what is the most important battle of their lives.
"Eomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first eored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Theoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins...."
Soon after Farscape was canceled we bought a house. I didn't even bother to get cable when we moved. It just didn't seem worth it. I can honestly say that I have watched less than 10 hours of TV (not counting my DVDs and such) since March. I can't say I miss it. There was just nothing worth giving up my time for anymore and definitely nothing worth spending $40/month for.
Of course I'll have to have someone tape the Farscape mini-series for me. =)
"...the fact is most people are poor at breaking down tasks..."
This has been my observaion as well. I used to teach beginning programming at a local University and I have to say that it was amaizing how many people had problems thinking through what needed to be done to accomplish a thing as simple as swapping two integers. I'd try and get them to talk about the steps that would need to be taken. I'd have them transfer two objects between two hands. They'd do that fine. I'd then ask them to break it down into steps and they were at a loss. Problem decomposition was something that many individuals simply had no experience with.
The data in a Unix file is present as long as a program has it open or there is at least one hard link to that file. So, one can delete a file that a program has open and the file will disappear from the directory structure but the program will still have access to the data in that file until it closes it or the program terminates.
Yeah, like I said, I haven't used HPUX but I'll certainly believe you. =) We've apprently been using OpenServer with Unify Data Server for something like 10 years. SCO sucks....Unify sucks....but once things are entrenched it's hard to talk people into switching. Unify has dropped SCO support and wants to charge us full price to switch to the Linux version. It looks like our office is probably just going to go without support. No one in our organization makes decissions in a timely manner so it'll probably be years before anyone makes a choice. It sucks.....I need to find a new job.
Oh...we use SCO OpenServer on our database server because that's what our company runs. I've never had anyone tell me that they like "like" using it though. It's the single shittiest Unix I've used. Although my experienced is limited to Solaris, OpenBSD, and even though it isn't technically Unix I'll also include Linux in that list. I haven't used Unixware but OpenServer sucks in a bad way.
When the wheat kernel is processed to make white flower what they do is take out the portion of the kernel (the wheat germ) that is good for you. The only reason this is done is because the germ contains a lot of moisture and therefore whole wheat flour doesn't have as long a shelf life as processed and bleached flours. What your left with is basicly sugar and nutritionally useless.
Re:For the love of God, don't start the Wheel of T
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This is my take on Jordan as well. The WoT got stale. I put it down in the middle of book 7 and haven't picked it up since. Every now and again I feel the urge to pickup where I left off but then I slap myself not wanting to commit to a series that looks as if it will go on for most of the rest of my life and never actually get anywhere. Describing it as a vortex that is difficult to escape is accuarate in my view
Yeah. There were plenty of bureaucrats spinning things to look all nice and happy there too. I remember specifically the politocol officer that was sent to Sheridan.
Let's just hope that Cheney or Bush or whoever doesn't redirect the planetary defense grid back onto Earth.
>> Little sod keeps hitting shortcut keys I never knew existed....
Isn't that the truth? My daughter has been finding these key combinations since she was about 14 months old or so. One day a few months ago she spent some time pounding on my wife's keyboard. When my wife flipped on the monitor there where over 50 xterms open.
While leaders in the government may not always do what we want them to do, we DO ultimatly have control via the Vote. If we REALLY want to, we can vote evey single person in office Out, and replace them with people more in line with our views.
I keep trying but it's all the other idiots who keep getting in the way. =)
Re:Family Tree Tech support: Wood for the fire....
on
Family Tech Support
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· Score: 1
It's perfect. Be there at 5:00. Leave the hay at home please.......
=)
Re:Family Tree Tech support: Wood for the fire....
on
Family Tech Support
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· Score: 1
I just bought a house and am in the process of moving......
Do those of you out there who've had experience with Red Hat's support find it worth paying for? My experience with other companies has been that support does little more than make the high up muckety-mucks think that their asses are covered. How does Red Hat stack up?
I'll agree with this. Most of the problems with Windows I've seen have been the result of buggy video/sound drivers. A lot of vendors don't care/pay close enough attention. MS is still partially to blame though. I can even give them some slack for problems with drivers. But third party, user-space software should not be able to bring the OS down. The kernel or whatever should be able to protect itself better. I haven't used XP at all yet though so I suppose they could have improved this. But earlier versions of windows did not do to great a job of keeping user space programs under control.
This aside though, the point of my original comment wasn't exactly attacking Microsoft because of these problems. More specifically, it was attacking the prevalence of the attitude that "Computers are supposed to break. That's just what they do." I think that that's wrong. And I think that a lot software/hardware vendors including Microsoft have spent a lot of time nurturing that attitude as to not be blamed when their products fail.
Probably, yes. But it could happen. I'm not going to begin to assume that we know everything there is to know about mathematics. I did say that I wasn't going to hold my breath.
> And we already have a solution for the travelling salesman problem.
You're correct. I should have been more precise. I should have said that we could find an optimal solution to the problem in something closer to linear time. Again, I'm not going to to hold my breath.
>> Er, no. Java is compiled into an intermediate form, just like every other scripting language such as Perl, Python, etc. Calling that "machine code" shows an ignorance of programming in real assembly language. Java bytecodes are just a numeric version of the Java language.
It is most certainly "machine code". It is just not the "machine code" that runs natively on the processor. A virtual machine is just as much of a machine as computer hardware. Look at any computer science text book that studies programming languages and you'll see that. From the perspective of the compiler designer there is no difference.
Now will code compiled for a virtual machine run as fast as code compiled to run on the native hardware? Probably not. At least not now. In the future who knows? We could find a way to solve the halting problem and traveling sales person too. It could happen.....I'm not going to hold my breath though.
The reason people don't report bugs is because people expect their computers not to work correctly all the time. I've met a number of people whose computers lock up on a daily basis. They think nothing of it. They just cycle the power and continue on their merry way. Bill's right. It is a sociological phenomenon. The PC industry with Microsoft at the center has programmed consumers to think it's okay when their product fails. It's far more cost effective than fixing the problem.
My wife tells me this constantly and is proved wrong every time she walks into my office and sees two or three of us watching one person at the keyboard working some magic. =)
Where I went to school the CS professors gave out 'A's and 'B's just because it was less work. They rarely graded any work anyway. It was little more than a way to keep from getting complaints. There were one or two good ones but for the most part it was the single laziest bunch of bastards I've ever seen. It really depressed those of us who worked hard.
Slashdot Mirror
>> True, but for every Einstein there are a number of individuals who actually are crazy and whose theories actually are asinine. There is a reason that papers are peer reviewed.
Yeah. You must be talking about me. I have a lot of assinine theories.
I have to agree. The last paragraph in particular. After reading about Theoden at the beginning of the two towers as an old broken man under the control of Sauruman the last paragraph in that chapter is an incredible contrast. He is portrayed as having new life breathed into him as he leads his men into what is the most important battle of their lives.
"Eomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first eored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Theoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins...."
Now that's good stuff.
Soon after Farscape was canceled we bought a house. I didn't even bother to get cable when we moved. It just didn't seem worth it. I can honestly say that I have watched less than 10 hours of TV (not counting my DVDs and such) since March. I can't say I miss it. There was just nothing worth giving up my time for anymore and definitely nothing worth spending $40/month for.
Of course I'll have to have someone tape the Farscape mini-series for me. =)
This has been my observaion as well. I used to teach beginning programming at a local University and I have to say that it was amaizing how many people had problems thinking through what needed to be done to accomplish a thing as simple as swapping two integers. I'd try and get them to talk about the steps that would need to be taken. I'd have them transfer two objects between two hands. They'd do that fine. I'd then ask them to break it down into steps and they were at a loss. Problem decomposition was something that many individuals simply had no experience with.
The data in a Unix file is present as long as a program has it open or there is at least one hard link to that file. So, one can delete a file that a program has open and the file will disappear from the directory structure but the program will still have access to the data in that file until it closes it or the program terminates.
Agreed, we moved right after Farscape ended and didn't get cable at our new place. I don't think I've watched more than six total hours of TV since.
Yeah, like I said, I haven't used HPUX but I'll certainly believe you. =) We've apprently been using OpenServer with Unify Data Server for something like 10 years. SCO sucks....Unify sucks....but once things are entrenched it's hard to talk people into switching. Unify has dropped SCO support and wants to charge us full price to switch to the Linux version. It looks like our office is probably just going to go without support. No one in our organization makes decissions in a timely manner so it'll probably be years before anyone makes a choice. It sucks.....I need to find a new job.
=)
Oh...we use SCO OpenServer on our database server because that's what our company runs. I've never had anyone tell me that they like "like" using it though. It's the single shittiest Unix I've used. Although my experienced is limited to Solaris, OpenBSD, and even though it isn't technically Unix I'll also include Linux in that list. I haven't used Unixware but OpenServer sucks in a bad way.
When the wheat kernel is processed to make white flower what they do is take out the portion of the kernel (the wheat germ) that is good for you. The only reason this is done is because the germ contains a lot of moisture and therefore whole wheat flour doesn't have as long a shelf life as processed and bleached flours. What your left with is basicly sugar and nutritionally useless.
This is my take on Jordan as well. The WoT got stale. I put it down in the middle of book 7 and haven't picked it up since. Every now and again I feel the urge to pickup where I left off but then I slap myself not wanting to commit to a series that looks as if it will go on for most of the rest of my life and never actually get anywhere. Describing it as a vortex that is difficult to escape is accuarate in my view
Yeah. There were plenty of bureaucrats spinning things to look all nice and happy there too. I remember specifically the politocol officer that was sent to Sheridan.
Let's just hope that Cheney or Bush or whoever doesn't redirect the planetary defense grid back onto Earth.
That's been my thought for months. The parallels to Pres. Clark are astounding. Now all we have to do is wait to be liberated. =)
>> Little sod keeps hitting shortcut keys I never knew existed....
Isn't that the truth? My daughter has been finding these key combinations since she was about 14 months old or so. One day a few months ago she spent some time pounding on my wife's keyboard. When my wife flipped on the monitor there where over 50 xterms open.
She's two today. =)
While leaders in the government may not always do what we want them to do, we DO ultimatly have control via the Vote. If we REALLY want to, we can vote evey single person in office Out, and replace them with people more in line with our views. I keep trying but it's all the other idiots who keep getting in the way. =)
It's perfect. Be there at 5:00. Leave the hay at home please.......
=)
I just bought a house and am in the process of moving......
How big is the truck?
Do those of you out there who've had experience with Red Hat's support find it worth paying for? My experience with other companies has been that support does little more than make the high up muckety-mucks think that their asses are covered. How does Red Hat stack up?
Try pinfo. =)
I read it in a post above. It's pretty slick and is more or less lynx for info pages.
I'll agree with this. Most of the problems with Windows I've seen have been the result of buggy video/sound drivers. A lot of vendors don't care/pay close enough attention. MS is still partially to blame though. I can even give them some slack for problems with drivers. But third party, user-space software should not be able to bring the OS down. The kernel or whatever should be able to protect itself better. I haven't used XP at all yet though so I suppose they could have improved this. But earlier versions of windows did not do to great a job of keeping user space programs under control.
This aside though, the point of my original comment wasn't exactly attacking Microsoft because of these problems. More specifically, it was attacking the prevalence of the attitude that "Computers are supposed to break. That's just what they do." I think that that's wrong. And I think that a lot software/hardware vendors including Microsoft have spent a lot of time nurturing that attitude as to not be blamed when their products fail.
> The halting problem is provably unsolvable.
Probably, yes. But it could happen. I'm not going to begin to assume that we know everything there is to know about mathematics. I did say that I wasn't going to hold my breath.
> And we already have a solution for the travelling salesman problem.
You're correct. I should have been more precise. I should have said that we could find an optimal solution to the problem in something closer to linear time. Again, I'm not going to to hold my breath.
>> Er, no. Java is compiled into an intermediate form, just like every other scripting language such as Perl, Python, etc. Calling that "machine code" shows an ignorance of programming in real assembly language. Java bytecodes are just a numeric version of the Java language.
It is most certainly "machine code". It is just not the "machine code" that runs natively on the processor. A virtual machine is just as much of a machine as computer hardware. Look at any computer science text book that studies programming languages and you'll see that. From the perspective of the compiler designer there is no difference.
Now will code compiled for a virtual machine run as fast as code compiled to run on the native hardware? Probably not. At least not now. In the future who knows? We could find a way to solve the halting problem and traveling sales person too. It could happen.....I'm not going to hold my breath though.
The reason people don't report bugs is because people expect their computers not to work correctly all the time. I've met a number of people whose computers lock up on a daily basis. They think nothing of it. They just cycle the power and continue on their merry way. Bill's right. It is a sociological phenomenon. The PC industry with Microsoft at the center has programmed consumers to think it's okay when their product fails. It's far more cost effective than fixing the problem.
>Programming is not a spectator sport.
My wife tells me this constantly and is proved wrong every time she walks into my office and sees two or three of us watching one person at the keyboard working some magic. =)
And fluoride is documented as being more toxic than lead. =)
The Toxic Effects of Fluoride
Where I went to school the CS professors gave out 'A's and 'B's just because it was less work. They rarely graded any work anyway. It was little more than a way to keep from getting complaints. There were one or two good ones but for the most part it was the single laziest bunch of bastards I've ever seen. It really depressed those of us who worked hard.