That's an amusing slip I made.
Progeny Progeny Progeny Progeny.
Progeny Progeny Progeny Progeny.
Maybe that should be the slashdot
punishment for misspellings and
such - you lose a point of karma
until you go to the "virtual blackboard"
and write the correct version 50 times.
Also a problem for lunar tourists
on
Lightning Research
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Reminds me of when the Apollo 12 mission to the moon
was struck by lightning shortly after liftoff.
Here's an article including pictures. Pretty amazing that the spacecraft's electronics survived this and they still managed to go to the moon after rebooting everything. Here's an item from the RISKS digest about one of the reasons why that worked.
The article linked to makes it sound that way, but if you have an electronic measurement for force (which is what the "electronic kilogram" is - see
the excellent page posted by aktbar), and you have other
standards for the meter (certain number of wavelengths of a certain light) and second (certain vibration of some molecule, I'd have to look up the details), then F=ma (force = mass times acceleration) lets you derive the kilogram. (in units terms, Newtons = kilograms times (meters per second squared) - if you have newtons, meters, and seconds, then you get kilograms).
"Sheeze, why not just define it as 1.498e20 atoms of carbon"
This approach has also been investigated. See the Avogadro Group or an article summarizing it. These things boil down to what you can measure more accurately.
I'm all for Linux companies trying to focus
on things that will be profitable. We all
know there has been a shortage of that.
As for Prodigy, they have per-incident
support (which strikes me as a doable, though
not glamorous, business). And they have
their pay-for-apt-get thingie (or their version
of the Red Hat Network, or whatever you call
it). I'm not so much opposed to that concept,
it just seems that a lot of people are doing it
poorly, rather than actually making the
concept work (no experience with the Prodigy
one in particular).
The slogan "imminent death of the net
predicted" is one I know from usenet, but
it applies here. Instead of asking
whether non-commercial sites are the
majority, ask whether they are growing.
And whether they are cool, informative,
etc. I mean, I doubt we need a zillion
different people all providing stock
quotes and weather - I don't see a problem
if that kind of thing is owned by a few
big companies. But are the small sites
finding it harder to make it than in 1995?
I'm guessing not - the small and cheap to
run hobbyist site
isn't affected by what is happening to banner
ad prices. Just to pick a random example I
ran across recently, Hippo World has everything you ever wanted to know about the hippopotamus.
OK, every time I say "IDE seems good enough
for me", there is a SCSI enthusiast who
cringes in horror. Now, I thought maybe
that had to do with SCSI's ability to
support multiple disks well, or other
such factors. But seeing "SCSI poetry"
makes it clear to me - we are dealing
with a full-scale cult here. Hide the
wimmin and chillin, folks.
Well, not that I know him well, but I've certainly
seen Dirk's quotes and interviews and such
on XFree86. The part I liked about this release
was seeing his email address linked in the
press release - how many "big cheese departs"
press releases have that on them? (At first I
thought they had omitted the obligatory "to
pursue personal interests" but on second look
it is there).
Think of all the subversive uses:
Looking up someone's skirt, corporate
spying, stealing valuable intellectual property.
And on top of that it is popular among those
dangerous "geek" types. Obviously we need
a DMCA ("digital motorized control act") for
these little guys.
Yeah, I frequently have the "oh, just another NYTimes article, guess I'll skip it unless it
seems really interesting" reaction (things like
partners or cypherpunks/cypherpunks are easy enough
but they do tend to change over time).
I don't really understand why the NYTimes has this
system (when they started I assumed it was a prelude
to charging $$$ for access, but now, are they trying
to get demographic data for advertisers or something?).
But I'm also curious about why slashdot goes
ahead and links to the articles so often.
The Washington Post and other good papers are
online and can be linked freely, no logins involved.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an amusing slip I made.
Progeny Progeny Progeny Progeny.
Progeny Progeny Progeny Progeny.
Maybe that should be the slashdot
punishment for misspellings and
such - you lose a point of karma
until you go to the "virtual blackboard"
and write the correct version 50 times.
Reminds me of when the Apollo 12 mission to the moon was struck by lightning shortly after liftoff. Here's an article including pictures. Pretty amazing that the spacecraft's electronics survived this and they still managed to go to the moon after rebooting everything. Here's an item from the RISKS digest about one of the reasons why that worked.
"They balance it against gravity to measure it?"
The article linked to makes it sound that way, but if you have an electronic measurement for force (which is what the "electronic kilogram" is - see the excellent page posted by aktbar), and you have other standards for the meter (certain number of wavelengths of a certain light) and second (certain vibration of some molecule, I'd have to look up the details), then F=ma (force = mass times acceleration) lets you derive the kilogram. (in units terms, Newtons = kilograms times (meters per second squared) - if you have newtons, meters, and seconds, then you get kilograms).
"Sheeze, why not just define it as 1.498e20 atoms of carbon"
This approach has also been investigated. See the Avogadro Group or an article summarizing it. These things boil down to what you can measure more accurately.
I'm all for Linux companies trying to focus on things that will be profitable. We all know there has been a shortage of that.
As for Prodigy, they have per-incident support (which strikes me as a doable, though not glamorous, business). And they have their pay-for-apt-get thingie (or their version of the Red Hat Network, or whatever you call it). I'm not so much opposed to that concept, it just seems that a lot of people are doing it poorly, rather than actually making the concept work (no experience with the Prodigy one in particular).
Hope they make it, in one form or another.
The slogan "imminent death of the net predicted" is one I know from usenet, but it applies here. Instead of asking whether non-commercial sites are the majority, ask whether they are growing. And whether they are cool, informative, etc. I mean, I doubt we need a zillion different people all providing stock quotes and weather - I don't see a problem if that kind of thing is owned by a few big companies. But are the small sites finding it harder to make it than in 1995? I'm guessing not - the small and cheap to run hobbyist site isn't affected by what is happening to banner ad prices. Just to pick a random example I ran across recently, Hippo World has everything you ever wanted to know about the hippopotamus.
OK, every time I say "IDE seems good enough for me", there is a SCSI enthusiast who cringes in horror. Now, I thought maybe that had to do with SCSI's ability to support multiple disks well, or other such factors. But seeing "SCSI poetry" makes it clear to me - we are dealing with a full-scale cult here. Hide the wimmin and chillin, folks.
Well, not that I know him well, but I've certainly
seen Dirk's quotes and interviews and such
on XFree86. The part I liked about this release
was seeing his email address linked in the
press release - how many "big cheese departs"
press releases have that on them? (At first I
thought they had omitted the obligatory "to
pursue personal interests" but on second look
it is there).
Think of all the subversive uses:
Looking up someone's skirt, corporate
spying, stealing valuable intellectual property.
And on top of that it is popular among those
dangerous "geek" types. Obviously we need
a DMCA ("digital motorized control act") for
these little guys.
Yeah, I frequently have the "oh, just another NYTimes article, guess I'll skip it unless it seems really interesting" reaction (things like partners or cypherpunks/cypherpunks are easy enough but they do tend to change over time).
I don't really understand why the NYTimes has this system (when they started I assumed it was a prelude to charging $$$ for access, but now, are they trying to get demographic data for advertisers or something?). But I'm also curious about why slashdot goes ahead and links to the articles so often. The Washington Post and other good papers are online and can be linked freely, no logins involved.