Next Question, then: Does IM have an open standard that can be impleneted on every available platofrm? Is there a single (set of) standard(s) for exchanging messages using IMs?
Okay, so what I am to understand is that there are enough features available in IM systems to duplicate POP (and possibly IMAP) mail, which leads you to say:
IM has the potential to replace email because there really isn't anything email provides that IM can't. Even syncronous communication.
No, the question is, what does IM provide that email does not? Do IM systems provide a better way to avoid spam/UCE without the use of whitelists? Does IM provide better user authentication and trust tokening? Is there an IM standard that allows every person with IM (of any flavor) to communicate seamlessly with every other person with IM (of any other flavor)? Do IM clients allow for custom filters, chain-of-custody, timestamping, aggregation of messages, etc? Without affermative answers to these concerns, I see no reason to drop email in favor of IM.
Well, there I go again, showing my ignorance of IM. Nevertheless, IM is meant to be synchronous communication, and most people use it only in this way. It is also meant to be ephemeral, unless there is an IM out there that allows for me to keep all previous messages (or not), arranged in a coherent, logical way, as I can email messages.
I just can't really see email going away, especially not in favor of IM. Emails true usefulness, the thing that makes it a 'killer app' is that it is asynchronous. Unlike IM, when I send someone an email, it is unnecessary for them to be online, or have their IM client running in order to receive my message. Their email server is more than happy to hold their email for them until they can get it, and allows them to respond when they can.
Additionally, it's not like IM is spam-free. A quick google search reveals a growing business in providing anti-spam tools to IM users, so I doubt that making email more IM-like will help, though I do see some limited use of whitelists to be beneficial.
Businesses however, can never get away with using whitelists, or even most blacklists to reduce the amount of spam they have to deal with. I know that at our company, we cannot block nearly the number of netblocks that we would like to, as we need communicate with customers almost exclusively by email, and cannot afford to lock out potential buyers for any reason.
The solution to the spam problem is not an easy one, especially not for businesses, but small steps forward are made all the time, in better pattern matching, address lookup, etc that one day will (hopefully) allow for spam to be stopped, or at least to stem the tide...
For what it's worth, Optimoz' piemenus page attributes them to "Don Hopkins, who introducted in 1974 the use of gestural motions to execute context-menu like functions..."
The trick is to use keys that the browser has not already (probably) bound to shortcuts. For instance, the UK Goverment Standard on ACCESSKEYs specifies that designers should use the following:
S skip navigation
1 home page
2 what's new page
3 site map
4 to the search facility on the site
5 frequently asked questions (F A Qs)
6 help page/facility
7 complaints procedure
8 terms and conditions (including privacy statement)
9 feedback page
0 the menu page of accesskeys detailing the accesskeys are being used within the website and the information or services they link to.
What I would really like to see is a good method for binding ACCESSKEYs to Alt+Left Arrow and Alt+Right Arrow for / navigation.
You are right, though,. PostgreSQL: 7 is really full-featured and powerful. However, I think that the drop column issue is a problem and so I do all my prototyping on MySQL.
It looks like one of the developers is currently working on that, starting with ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP NOT NULL, according to the To Do list.
Of course, in America, no one pays a tax to use the roads, nope, there are no Highway Taxes or Tollbooths in America. Americans don't pay Cigarette and Cigarette Use Tax, Dry-cleaning solvent taxes and license fees, Electricity Distribution Tax and Invested Capital Taxes, Electricity Invested Capital Tax, Gas Revenue Invested Capital Tax, Water Company Invested Capital Tax, Electricity Excise Tax, Energy Assistance Charges (electricity and natural gas distributors), Gas Revenue Tax,
Liquor Taxes, Oil and Gas Production Assessment,
Telecommunications Excise Tax, Telecommunications Infrastructure Maintenance Fees, Tobacco Product Tax, Gaming taxes, Bingo Tax and License Fees, Charitable Games Tax and License Fees, Coin-Operated Amusement Device and Redemption Machine Tax, Pull Tabs and Jar Games Tax and License Fees, Racing Privilege Tax, Riverboat Gambling Tax, Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax,
Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax, Sports Facilities Authority Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax, Motor Fuel Taxes, Environmental Impact Fee and Underground Storage Taxes, Motor Fuel Use Tax, Income Tax -- Individuals, Personal Property Replacement Tax, Income Tax --Business (including corporations, estates, trusts, exempt organizations, partnerships and S corporations), Employers Withholding Income Tax, Personal Property Replacement Tax, Sales Tax, Automobile Renting Occupation and Use Taxes, Local Automobile Renting Occupation and Use Taxes, Manufacturer's Purchase Credit, Replacement Vehicle Taxes, County Replacement Vehicle Tax, Municipal Replacement Vehicle Tax, Retailers' Occupation Tax, Service Occupation Tax, Service Use Tax, Use Tax, Home Rule County Taxes, Home Rule Municipal Taxes, Mass Transit District Taxes, Special County Retailers' Occupation Tax for Public Safety, Tire User Fee, Vehicle Use Tax, Coin-Operated Amusement Device and Redemption Machine Tax, Property Tax, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Assessor Training Stipends, Assessor Performance Stipends,
Chief County Assessment Officer Salary Reimbursements, County Treasurer Stipends, Real Estate Transfer Tax, Hotel taxes, etc...
To Americans, people from other countries whining about how easy Americans have it and how we should shut up is just thinly veiled jealousy.
Okay, so I'm gonna get modded down, flamed, and called a troll for this, but who cares, it's just Karma, right?
a lot of homeless people know me -- i can't remember half of thier names but they don't mind because i talk to them. one of them, a vietnam veteran, recently gave me is VA card which entitles him to his welfare and health benefits. disabled, homeless, and not in communication with relatives. he sees no reason to live and gave me this card hoping someone would remember him.
You just summed it all up there. First, you take the time to talk to (and help?) the folks in your communtiy, as it should be.
Second, you say this one guy is not in contact with his relatives. That is not my problem. Personally, I don't give a shit about that guy, but you do. Good! I do give a shit about people in my community, and try to help out where I can. However, I could help out a good bit more, and in a way that actually made a difference to the people in need if I wasn't paying so much extortion mon^H^H^H tax to fund a bunch of beureaucrats and middle managers. Which would you prefer?
Let me tell you something about the 'reality' of welfare in America: It is a system that robs me (as a taxpayer) to supposedly 'help' someone who can't/won't go down to WalMart and get $10.00/hr stocking shelves. Instead, it provides office jobs for a bunch of career yes-men (and yes-women) and allows the Government to point to the project as either a success in need of more funding to make the final push, or a failure due to lack of funding, whichever the lie du jour is.
The sole function of a beureaucracy is to maintain and expand that beureaucracy.
\A*pol"o*gist\, n. [Cf. F. apologiste.] One who makes an apology; one who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a cause, or an institution; especially, one who argues in defense of Christianity.
Sorry, try again. I did not write "in defense" of anything, so you will have to come up with a better perjorative.
Patriotism, racism... What is the difference. It is just another way to define differences between people so we do not feel bad when the screw and abuse them.
Patriotism: n. Love of and devotion to one's country.
Nationalism: n. the conviction that the culture and interests of your nation are superior to those of any other nation
Just like a knee-jerk anti-American wank to not even know the terms he is using.
Early one spring morning in 1946, Clarence Hoke was holding forth in his chemistry class at West Side High School in Newark, New Jersey.
"Glass is actually a liquid." the North Carolina native told us in his soft Southern tones. "You can tell that from the stained glass windows in old cathedrals in Europe. The glass is thicker on the bottom than it is on the top."
Now, more than half a century later, that is the only thing I can actually remember being taught in high school chemistry. I didn't really believe it then, and I don't believe it now.
In the years that followed, I came across the same story every now and then. Most often it popped up in college textbooks on general chemistry. And now, thanks to the Internet, our Museum has received dozens of inquiries about whether or not this is true. Most people seem to want to believe it.
***
It is easy to understand why the myth persists. It does have a certain appeal. Glass and the glassy state are often described by noting their similarities with liquids. So good teachers, such as Mr. Hoke was, like to quote the story about the windows. As is the case with liquids, the atoms making up a glass are not arranged in any regular order-and that is where the analogy arises. Liquids flow because there are no strong forces holding their molecules together. Their molecules can move freely past one another, so that liquids can be poured, splashed around, and spilled. But, unlike the molecules in conventional liquids, the atoms in glasses are all held together tightly by strong chemical bonds. It is as if the glass were one giant molecule. This makes glasses rigid so they cannot flow at room temperatures. Thus, the analogy fails in the case of fluidity and flow.
***
There are at least four or five reasons why the myth doesn't make sense.
Some years ago, I heard a remark attributed to Egon Orowan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Orowan had quipped that there might, indeed, be some truth to the story about glass flowing. Half of the pieces in a window arc thicker at the bottom, he said, but, he added quickly, the other half are thicker at the top. My own experience has been that for earlier windows especially, there is sometimes a pronounced variation in thickness over a distance of an inch or two on individual
fragments. That squares with the experience of conservators and curators who have handled hundreds of panels. Although the individual pieces of glass in a window may be uneven in thickness, and noticeably wavy, these effects result simply from the way the glasses were made. Presumably, that would have been by some precursor or variant of the crown or cylinder methods.
One also wonders why this alleged thickening is confined to the glass in cathedral windows. Why don't we find that Egyptian cored vessels or Hellenistic and Roman bowls have sagged and become misshapen after lying for centuries in tombs or in the ground? Those glasses are 1,000-2,500 years older than the cathedral windows.
Speaking of time, just how long should it take theoretically-for windows to thicken to any observable extent? Many years ago, Dr. Chuck Kurkjian told me that an acquaintance of his had estimated how fast-actually, how slowly-glasses would flow. The calculation showed that if a plate of glass a meter tall and a centimeter thick was placed in an upright position at room temperature, the time required for the glass to flow down so as to thicken 10 angstrom units at the bottom (a change the size of only a few atoms) would theoretically be about the same as the age of the universe: close to ten billion years. Similar calculations, made more recently, lead to similar conclusions. But such computations are perhaps only fanciful It is questionable that the equations used to calculate rates of flow are really applicable to the situation at hand.
***
This brings us to the subject of viscosity. The viscosity of a liquid is a measure of its resistance to flow-the opposite of fluidity, Viscosities are expressed in units called poises. At room temperature, the viscosity of water, which flows readily, is about 0.01 poise. Molasses has a viscosity of about 500 poises and flows like... molasses. A piece of once proud Brie, left out on the table after all the guests have departed, may be found to have flowed out of its rind into a rounded mass. In this sad state, its viscosity, as a guess, would be about 500,000 poises.
In the world of viscosity, things can get rather sticky. At elevated temperatures, the viscosities of glasses can be measured, and much practical use is made of such measurements. Upon removal from a furnace, ordinary glasses have a consistency that changes gradually from that of a thick house paint to that of putty, and then to that of saltwater taffy being pulled on one of those machines you see on a boardwalk. To have a taffy-like viscosity, the glass would still have to be very hot and would probably glow with a dull red color.
At somewhat cooler temperatures, pieces of glass will still sag slowly under their own weight, and if they have sharp edges, those will become rounded. So, too, will bubbles trapped in the glass slowly turn to spheres because of surface tension. All this happens when the viscosity is on the order of 50,000,000 poises, and the glasses are near what we call their softening points.
Below those temperatures, glasses have pretty well set up, and by the time they have cooled to room temperature, they have, of course, become rigid. Estimates of the viscosity of glasses at room temperature run as high as 10 to the 20th power Scientists and engineers may argue about the exact value of that number, but it is doubtful that there is any real physical significance to a viscosity as great as that anyway. As for cathedral windows, it is hard to believe that anything that viscous is going to flow at all.
It is worth noting, too, that at room temperature the viscosity of metallic lead has been estimated to be about 10 to the11th power, poises, that is, perhaps a billion times less viscous-or a billion times more fluid, if you prefer than glass. Presumably, then, the lead caming that holds stained glass pieces in place should have flowed a billion times more readily than the glass. While lead caming often bends and buckles under the enormous architectural stresses imposed on it, one never hears that the lead has flowed like a liquid.
***
When all is said and done, the story about stained glass windows flowing-just because glasses have certain liquid-like characteristics-is an appealing notion, but in reality it just isn't so.
Thinking back, I do recall another memorable remark by Mr. Hoke. One day, our self-appointed class clown sat senselessly pounding a book on his desk at the back of the room. "Great day in the mawnin', son! " shouted Hoke. "Stop slammin' your book on the desk. Use your head!" That was good advice-no matter how you read it.
Reprinted with permission from Dr. Robert Brill, brillrh@cmog.org
I would also really like to see this as well. I am considering building a ColdFusion CMS / Blog System, and would be most interested in what people liked and disliked about different CMS systems.
How about the 100's of bugs fixed and and performance increases? Isn't that worth something?
Sure, it's worth something, but I don't think it is worth a whole version number. Aren't incremental version numbers for optimizations and bugfixes? If not, why have them at all.
Netscape 6 was really just something that was put out to show where Netscape was going. It had a lot of bugs yet, and wasn't optimised, so really couldn't be used productively. Netscape needs to distance themselves from that now and show that this one is ready for prime time. It really is off another completely different branch, instead of adding patches to 6.2.1, so I say it deserves a number increase.
So, you are saying that, in essence, the version number jump is a PR move, to distance themselves from the slack-ass job they did with Mozilla 0.9.4?
So, Netscape has released another 'productized' version of Mozilla. Big deal. Let's take a look at the Exciting New Features it has:
tabbed browsing: congratulations! You're the last non-M$ browser to do so...
favicon.ico support: now there's something to base X.0 release on
'click to search': ooh, just like Opera!
And a couple other minor GUI tweaks. I'm not saying that Netscape isn't making progress (okay, so I am), but is this really worth a whole version number?
"A different technology, under development at the University at Buffalo in New York, promises to provide a nanoscale sensor capable of reading ever-smaller bits of data. The sensor could result in DVD movie storage on small devices or even a supercomputer the size of a wristwatch, UB officials told NewsFactor."
Somebody please explain to me how nanoscalar sensors in storage devices will result in a wristwatch sized 'supercomputer'? Wristwatch mounted storage might be nice, though...
Okay, I am happy to see so much traffic concerning this document, and the only thing I will say to anyone who slammed it or me, is that it is in no way done, it is version 0.09, meaning that I tinkered with it a bunch, but in no way intend anyone to take any of it seriously yet. However, I do appreicate al lthe ideas, criticisms, comments, flames and offers of translation help. I expect to release several new versions in the coming weeks, and will probably announce them here if I can. Hopefully over the next few weeks/months I can get the most henious FUD in it all weeded out and smoothed down to the point that some serious work can be done on it. Anyone who would like to see this document evolve into something truly useful, please drop me a line and sned me your contributions.
***********************************************
Jon Tillman
LINUX USER: #141163
ICQ: 4015362
http://www.eruditum.org
jon@eruditum.org
***********************************************
Help Jon build a network!
Looking for giveaway computers & parts
Current Need: Tape Drive & PI/PII processors
Email me to find out how you can help
***********************************************
Damn I suck...
so much for good first impressions....
hows about that sig again, perhaps in human-readable format:
***********************************************
Jon Tillman
LINUX USER: #141163
ICQ: 4015362
http://www.eruditum.org
jon@eruditum.org
***********************************************
Help Jon build a network!
Looking for giveaway computers & parts
Current Need: Tape Drive & PI/PII processors
Email me to find out how you can help
***********************************************
It really sucks to see this kind of thing even taking place. What happened to a *NIX world in which (as long as you didn't care about X/Open:)) you got to choose the desktop/window manager you used? I am not saying that you can't still do that, but it is fairly obvious that this is the direction that WM devel under Linux is going. I assume that is in part due to the media, and part due to the new users that the same media coverage is bringing in, users who have never had that kind of choice, who thought "themes" were kick-ass...
It seems that the idea has infected everyone involved, right down to the developers, that there will only be one desktop for Linux eventually...
***********************************************
Jon Tillman
LINUX USER: #141163
ICQ: 4015362
http://www.eruditum.org
jon@eruditum.org
***********************************************
Help Jon build a network!
Looking for giveaway computers & parts
Current Need: Tape Drive & PI/PII processors
Email me to find out how you can help
***********************************************
Slashdot Mirror
Next Question, then: Does IM have an open standard that can be impleneted on every available platofrm? Is there a single (set of) standard(s) for exchanging messages using IMs?
Okay, so what I am to understand is that there are enough features available in IM systems to duplicate POP (and possibly IMAP) mail, which leads you to say:
IM has the potential to replace email because there really isn't anything email provides that IM can't. Even syncronous communication.
No, the question is, what does IM provide that email does not? Do IM systems provide a better way to avoid spam/UCE without the use of whitelists? Does IM provide better user authentication and trust tokening? Is there an IM standard that allows every person with IM (of any flavor) to communicate seamlessly with every other person with IM (of any other flavor)? Do IM clients allow for custom filters, chain-of-custody, timestamping, aggregation of messages, etc? Without affermative answers to these concerns, I see no reason to drop email in favor of IM.
Well, there I go again, showing my ignorance of IM. Nevertheless, IM is meant to be synchronous communication, and most people use it only in this way. It is also meant to be ephemeral, unless there is an IM out there that allows for me to keep all previous messages (or not), arranged in a coherent, logical way, as I can email messages.
I just can't really see email going away, especially not in favor of IM. Emails true usefulness, the thing that makes it a 'killer app' is that it is asynchronous. Unlike IM, when I send someone an email, it is unnecessary for them to be online, or have their IM client running in order to receive my message. Their email server is more than happy to hold their email for them until they can get it, and allows them to respond when they can.
Additionally, it's not like IM is spam-free. A quick google search reveals a growing business in providing anti-spam tools to IM users, so I doubt that making email more IM-like will help, though I do see some limited use of whitelists to be beneficial.
Businesses however, can never get away with using whitelists, or even most blacklists to reduce the amount of spam they have to deal with. I know that at our company, we cannot block nearly the number of netblocks that we would like to, as we need communicate with customers almost exclusively by email, and cannot afford to lock out potential buyers for any reason.
The solution to the spam problem is not an easy one, especially not for businesses, but small steps forward are made all the time, in better pattern matching, address lookup, etc that one day will (hopefully) allow for spam to be stopped, or at least to stem the tide...
By admitting to using this package, you are publicly admitting to running as root on console. This may not be a wise thing to do with your real name.
except for those of us that run Mozilla from our /home directories, that is....
For what it's worth, Optimoz' piemenus page attributes them to "Don Hopkins, who introducted in 1974 the use of gestural motions to execute context-menu like functions..."
The trick is to use keys that the browser has not already (probably) bound to shortcuts. For instance, the UK Goverment Standard on ACCESSKEYs specifies that designers should use the following:
What I would really like to see is a good method for binding ACCESSKEYs to Alt+Left Arrow and Alt+Right Arrow for / navigation.
Lots of good ACCESSKEY info can be had here.
You are right, though,. PostgreSQL: 7 is really full-featured and powerful. However, I think that the drop column issue is a problem and so I do all my prototyping on MySQL.
It looks like one of the developers is currently working on that, starting with ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP NOT NULL, according to the To Do list.
Of course, in America, no one pays a tax to use the roads, nope, there are no Highway Taxes or Tollbooths in America. Americans don't pay Cigarette and Cigarette Use Tax, Dry-cleaning solvent taxes and license fees, Electricity Distribution Tax and Invested Capital Taxes, Electricity Invested Capital Tax, Gas Revenue Invested Capital Tax, Water Company Invested Capital Tax, Electricity Excise Tax, Energy Assistance Charges (electricity and natural gas distributors), Gas Revenue Tax, Liquor Taxes, Oil and Gas Production Assessment, Telecommunications Excise Tax, Telecommunications Infrastructure Maintenance Fees, Tobacco Product Tax, Gaming taxes, Bingo Tax and License Fees, Charitable Games Tax and License Fees, Coin-Operated Amusement Device and Redemption Machine Tax, Pull Tabs and Jar Games Tax and License Fees, Racing Privilege Tax, Riverboat Gambling Tax, Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax, Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax, Sports Facilities Authority Hotel Operators' Occupation Tax, Motor Fuel Taxes, Environmental Impact Fee and Underground Storage Taxes, Motor Fuel Use Tax, Income Tax -- Individuals, Personal Property Replacement Tax, Income Tax --Business (including corporations, estates, trusts, exempt organizations, partnerships and S corporations), Employers Withholding Income Tax, Personal Property Replacement Tax, Sales Tax, Automobile Renting Occupation and Use Taxes, Local Automobile Renting Occupation and Use Taxes, Manufacturer's Purchase Credit, Replacement Vehicle Taxes, County Replacement Vehicle Tax, Municipal Replacement Vehicle Tax, Retailers' Occupation Tax, Service Occupation Tax, Service Use Tax, Use Tax, Home Rule County Taxes, Home Rule Municipal Taxes, Mass Transit District Taxes, Special County Retailers' Occupation Tax for Public Safety, Tire User Fee, Vehicle Use Tax, Coin-Operated Amusement Device and Redemption Machine Tax, Property Tax, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Assessor Training Stipends, Assessor Performance Stipends, Chief County Assessment Officer Salary Reimbursements, County Treasurer Stipends, Real Estate Transfer Tax, Hotel taxes, etc...
To Americans, people from other countries whining about how easy Americans have it and how we should shut up is just thinly veiled jealousy.
Okay, so I'm gonna get modded down, flamed, and called a troll for this, but who cares, it's just Karma, right?
a lot of homeless people know me -- i can't remember half of thier names but they don't mind because i talk to them. one of them, a vietnam veteran, recently gave me is VA card which entitles him to his welfare and health benefits. disabled, homeless, and not in communication with relatives. he sees no reason to live and gave me this card hoping someone would remember him.
You just summed it all up there. First, you take the time to talk to (and help?) the folks in your communtiy, as it should be.
Second, you say this one guy is not in contact with his relatives. That is not my problem. Personally, I don't give a shit about that guy, but you do. Good! I do give a shit about people in my community, and try to help out where I can. However, I could help out a good bit more, and in a way that actually made a difference to the people in need if I wasn't paying so much extortion mon^H^H^H tax to fund a bunch of beureaucrats and middle managers. Which would you prefer?
Let me tell you something about the 'reality' of welfare in America: It is a system that robs me (as a taxpayer) to supposedly 'help' someone who can't/won't go down to WalMart and get $10.00/hr stocking shelves. Instead, it provides office jobs for a bunch of career yes-men (and yes-women) and allows the Government to point to the project as either a success in need of more funding to make the final push, or a failure due to lack of funding, whichever the lie du jour is.
The sole function of a beureaucracy is to maintain and expand that beureaucracy.
Is it perhaps that only a small percentage of your country has the brains to read and write never mind get online.
Lets face it Iraq will probably be catching up with the US next (theirs got to be a reason you want to go to war with them).
That gets a +1? How very cute...
Mind the spaces. Correct link:- 09 -10-008-26-NW-SW
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002
\A*pol"o*gist\, n. [Cf. F. apologiste.] One who makes an apology; one who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a cause, or an institution; especially, one who argues in defense of Christianity.
Sorry, try again. I did not write "in defense" of anything, so you will have to come up with a better perjorative.
Thanks for playing though!
Patriotism, racism... What is the difference. It is just another way to define differences between people so we do not feel bad when the screw and abuse them.
Patriotism: n. Love of and devotion to one's country.
Nationalism: n. the conviction that the culture and interests of your nation are superior to those of any other nation
Just like a knee-jerk anti-American wank to not even know the terms he is using.
Robert H. Brill, Research Scientist
The Corning Museum of Glass
July, 2000
Early one spring morning in 1946, Clarence Hoke was holding forth in his chemistry class at West Side High School in Newark, New Jersey.
"Glass is actually a liquid." the North Carolina native told us in his soft Southern tones. "You can tell that from the stained glass windows in old cathedrals in Europe. The glass is thicker on the bottom than it is on the top."
Now, more than half a century later, that is the only thing I can actually remember being taught in high school chemistry. I didn't really believe it then, and I don't believe it now.
In the years that followed, I came across the same story every now and then. Most often it popped up in college textbooks on general chemistry. And now, thanks to the Internet, our Museum has received dozens of inquiries about whether or not this is true. Most people seem to want to believe it.
***
It is easy to understand why the myth persists. It does have a certain appeal. Glass and the glassy state are often described by noting their similarities with liquids. So good teachers, such as Mr. Hoke was, like to quote the story about the windows. As is the case with liquids, the atoms making up a glass are not arranged in any regular order-and that is where the analogy arises. Liquids flow because there are no strong forces holding their molecules together. Their molecules can move freely past one another, so that liquids can be poured, splashed around, and spilled. But, unlike the molecules in conventional liquids, the atoms in glasses are all held together tightly by strong chemical bonds. It is as if the glass were one giant molecule. This makes glasses rigid so they cannot flow at room temperatures. Thus, the analogy fails in the case of fluidity and flow.
***
There are at least four or five reasons why the myth doesn't make sense.
Some years ago, I heard a remark attributed to Egon Orowan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Orowan had quipped that there might, indeed, be some truth to the story about glass flowing. Half of the pieces in a window arc thicker at the bottom, he said, but, he added quickly, the other half are thicker at the top. My own experience has been that for earlier windows especially, there is sometimes a pronounced variation in thickness over a distance of an inch or two on individual
fragments. That squares with the experience of conservators and curators who have handled hundreds of panels. Although the individual pieces of glass in a window may be uneven in thickness, and noticeably wavy, these effects result simply from the way the glasses were made. Presumably, that would have been by some precursor or variant of the crown or cylinder methods.
One also wonders why this alleged thickening is confined to the glass in cathedral windows. Why don't we find that Egyptian cored vessels or Hellenistic and Roman bowls have sagged and become misshapen after lying for centuries in tombs or in the ground? Those glasses are 1,000-2,500 years older than the cathedral windows.
Speaking of time, just how long should it take theoretically-for windows to thicken to any observable extent? Many years ago, Dr. Chuck Kurkjian told me that an acquaintance of his had estimated how fast-actually, how slowly-glasses would flow. The calculation showed that if a plate of glass a meter tall and a centimeter thick was placed in an upright position at room temperature, the time required for the glass to flow down so as to thicken 10 angstrom units at the bottom (a change the size of only a few atoms) would theoretically be about the same as the age of the universe: close to ten billion years. Similar calculations, made more recently, lead to similar conclusions. But such computations are perhaps only fanciful It is questionable that the equations used to calculate rates of flow are really applicable to the situation at hand.
***
This brings us to the subject of viscosity. The viscosity of a liquid is a measure of its resistance to flow-the opposite of fluidity, Viscosities are expressed in units called poises. At room temperature, the viscosity of water, which flows readily, is about 0.01 poise. Molasses has a viscosity of about 500 poises and flows like... molasses. A piece of once proud Brie, left out on the table after all the guests have departed, may be found to have flowed out of its rind into a rounded mass. In this sad state, its viscosity, as a guess, would be about 500,000 poises.
In the world of viscosity, things can get rather sticky. At elevated temperatures, the viscosities of glasses can be measured, and much practical use is made of such measurements. Upon removal from a furnace, ordinary glasses have a consistency that changes gradually from that of a thick house paint to that of putty, and then to that of saltwater taffy being pulled on one of those machines you see on a boardwalk. To have a taffy-like viscosity, the glass would still have to be very hot and would probably glow with a dull red color.
At somewhat cooler temperatures, pieces of glass will still sag slowly under their own weight, and if they have sharp edges, those will become rounded. So, too, will bubbles trapped in the glass slowly turn to spheres because of surface tension. All this happens when the viscosity is on the order of 50,000,000 poises, and the glasses are near what we call their softening points.
Below those temperatures, glasses have pretty well set up, and by the time they have cooled to room temperature, they have, of course, become rigid. Estimates of the viscosity of glasses at room temperature run as high as 10 to the 20th power Scientists and engineers may argue about the exact value of that number, but it is doubtful that there is any real physical significance to a viscosity as great as that anyway. As for cathedral windows, it is hard to believe that anything that viscous is going to flow at all.
It is worth noting, too, that at room temperature the viscosity of metallic lead has been estimated to be about 10 to the11th power, poises, that is, perhaps a billion times less viscous-or a billion times more fluid, if you prefer than glass. Presumably, then, the lead caming that holds stained glass pieces in place should have flowed a billion times more readily than the glass. While lead caming often bends and buckles under the enormous architectural stresses imposed on it, one never hears that the lead has flowed like a liquid.
***
When all is said and done, the story about stained glass windows flowing-just because glasses have certain liquid-like characteristics-is an appealing notion, but in reality it just isn't so.
Thinking back, I do recall another memorable remark by Mr. Hoke. One day, our self-appointed class clown sat senselessly pounding a book on his desk at the back of the room. "Great day in the mawnin', son! " shouted Hoke. "Stop slammin' your book on the desk. Use your head!" That was good advice-no matter how you read it.
Reprinted with permission from Dr. Robert Brill, brillrh@cmog.org
I would also really like to see this as well. I am considering building a ColdFusion CMS / Blog System, and would be most interested in what people liked and disliked about different CMS systems.
How about the 100's of bugs fixed and and performance increases? Isn't that worth something?
Sure, it's worth something, but I don't think it is worth a whole version number. Aren't incremental version numbers for optimizations and bugfixes? If not, why have them at all.
Netscape 6 was really just something that was put out to show where Netscape was going. It had a lot of bugs yet, and wasn't optimised, so really couldn't be used productively. Netscape needs to distance themselves from that now and show that this one is ready for prime time. It really is off another completely different branch, instead of adding patches to 6.2.1, so I say it deserves a number increase.
So, you are saying that, in essence, the version number jump is a PR move, to distance themselves from the slack-ass job they did with Mozilla 0.9.4?
RC1 is out, and has tabbed browsing in Konquerer.t a1 .html
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.1be
Thanks so much for your concern though.
So, Netscape has released another 'productized' version of Mozilla. Big deal. Let's take a look at the Exciting New Features it has:
And a couple other minor GUI tweaks. I'm not saying that Netscape isn't making progress (okay, so I am), but is this really worth a whole version number?
no comprende quiot. Perhaps you should quiet down...
"A different technology, under development at the University at Buffalo in New York, promises to provide a nanoscale sensor capable of reading ever-smaller bits of data. The sensor could result in DVD movie storage on small devices or even a supercomputer the size of a wristwatch, UB officials told NewsFactor."
Somebody please explain to me how nanoscalar sensors in storage devices will result in a wristwatch sized 'supercomputer'? Wristwatch mounted storage might be nice, though...
Okay, I am happy to see so much traffic concerning this document, and the only thing I will say to anyone who slammed it or me, is that it is in no way done, it is version 0.09, meaning that I tinkered with it a bunch, but in no way intend anyone to take any of it seriously yet. However, I do appreicate al lthe ideas, criticisms, comments, flames and offers of translation help. I expect to release several new versions in the coming weeks, and will probably announce them here if I can. Hopefully over the next few weeks/months I can get the most henious FUD in it all weeded out and smoothed down to the point that some serious work can be done on it. Anyone who would like to see this document evolve into something truly useful, please drop me a line and sned me your contributions.
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Jon Tillman
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jon@eruditum.org
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Damn I suck...
so much for good first impressions....
hows about that sig again, perhaps in human-readable format:
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Jon Tillman
LINUX USER: #141163
ICQ: 4015362
http://www.eruditum.org
jon@eruditum.org
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Help Jon build a network!
Looking for giveaway computers & parts
Current Need: Tape Drive & PI/PII processors
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It really sucks to see this kind of thing even taking place. What happened to a *NIX world in which (as long as you didn't care about X/Open :)) you got to choose the desktop/window manager you used? I am not saying that you can't still do that, but it is fairly obvious that this is the direction that WM devel under Linux is going. I assume that is in part due to the media, and part due to the new users that the same media coverage is bringing in, users who have never had that kind of choice, who thought "themes" were kick-ass...
It seems that the idea has infected everyone involved, right down to the developers, that there will only be one desktop for Linux eventually...
***********************************************
Jon Tillman
LINUX USER: #141163
ICQ: 4015362
http://www.eruditum.org
jon@eruditum.org
***********************************************
Help Jon build a network!
Looking for giveaway computers & parts
Current Need: Tape Drive & PI/PII processors
Email me to find out how you can help
***********************************************