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User: Raffaello

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  1. Re:Will it be cold tomorrow? on Still More on Global Warming · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since the design of TMI required human operators, the possiblity of operator incompetence was a built in part of the design of TMI. However, the designers failed to implement a system that made it impossible for operator incompetence to cause a catastrophic failure. That's bad engineering. There were insufficient fail-safe mechanisms, which guaranteed that, given sufficient time, there would eventually be a catastophic failure .

    BTW, "bad science" should read "bad engineering," because no one disputes the basic science of nuclear plants - there's no disagreement as to whether fission reactors can produce electricity via steam turbines. There is very legitimate disagreement as to whether it is possible to engineer such a plant so that no operator incompetence can possibly have catastrophic effects.

  2. Re:Sounds good... on Build Your Own Database-Driven Website · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Perl-like? It's C-like, if anything"

    And what sort of syntax does Perl have, lisp-like?
    Perl has C-like syntax, so Perl-like is the same as C-like (i.e., it's easier for a machine to read than a human, so it sucks).

    For doesn't-really-suck syntax, one has to look at something like Dylan, or SmallTalk, IMHO.

  3. Re:Paying more, getting less on A Better Finder? · · Score: 1

    Or you could just get PathFinder now:

    PathFinder is a cocoa Finder replacement, and is really quite nice.

  4. Re:Evil bit support on A Better Finder? · · Score: 1

    Yes, but under KDE, does KDE *remember* which application you set to edit that particular file next time you double click it?

    Under Mac OS X, it does.

  5. Re:Evil bit support on A Better Finder? · · Score: 1

    " should also point out that the problem with the extension approach is that all files of a given type are always opened by one application. That is not necessarily what the user wants to do."

    This is not true under Mac OS X, which does use file extension to determine which application(s) may open a file.

    Under Mac OS X the user can set the application to open on a per file basis, and can set a default as well. You can have 10 different jpegs each open with a different application when you double click them.

  6. Re:Typical SuSE on SuSE may drop out of UnitedLinux · · Score: 1

    "Some people confuse long term strategies with ethics, but the goal is always profit, otherwise it wouldn't be business but charity"

    Any long term strategy must include a means to maintain business partner and customer trust *years* down the road. That means is ethical behavior. Ethics is the foundation of any long term strategy.

    A company needs a code of behavior that allows it to be trusted 10 years down the road, and not reviled as a sleazey pariah that no one will do business with, or buy from. Businesses only lose sight of ethics when they have no real long term strategy, and all plans are focused on the short term bottom line.

  7. Re:X11 Beh. on Significant Interactivity Boost in Linux Kernel · · Score: 1

    "That's absurd. That assumes the profit motive is primary."

    Only if you want to eat regular, or pay the rent, etc.

    " Real humans have done, do, and will continue to do creative acts for reasons other than profit."

    Yes, they do. But when one model of intellectual property precludes the for-profit possibility, it's going to lose in the real world of jobs, bills, rent, and raising kids.

    " Raising a child, perhaps the ultimate creative act, is a loss-making endeavor unless you assume you own the child and can put it to work (I've done the math, not even assuming the child will care for you when you are old makes it profit-making). "

    Rearing children isn't an act of selfless generosity - it's an act of complete selfishness. It's the only way we get to live for more than a single, short life-span. Granted, we're not making exact duplicates, but sexual reproduction, with all it's flaws, is still the only game in town for us animals. People have children not to gain wealth; animals have offspring not to get more food. Rather, it is the other way around - people gain wealth in order to have children. Those who don't are simply not represented in the next generation and have been erased from the game.

    You have a false and rigid sense of identity. See yourself not just as the body you are, and it's social identity, but the genetic information that gave rise to you, and you'll understand why rearing children is just as selfish as seeking profit.

    Your whole post flows from a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship of economics to biology.

  8. Re:The Tao of Linux on Significant Interactivity Boost in Linux Kernel · · Score: 1

    "Oh I get it, Tao is all about putting two contradictory phrases in the same sentance."

    Only if your mind is still a slave to the Law of the Excluded Middle.

  9. Re:Nader being a spoiler on Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States · · Score: 1

    Believe this if it helps you sleep, but anyone who can do simple arithmetic knows that Nader is responsible for Bush being in the White House.

  10. Re:MATH THEORY on Plan for Spam, Version 2 · · Score: 1

    Yes, you have missed something. The word "the" would not appear *predominantly* in either spam or good emails. Therefore, the word "the" would have a neutral liklihood (say, .4) for spamhood, and a neutral liklihood for real mail.

    The filter Graham wrote concentrates on tagging mail that *both* has a high liklihood of being spam, because it contains words or terms (header items, IP addresses, etc.) that only or almost only appear in spam, and has low liklihood of being real mail, because it doesn't contain the terms that only appear in my real mail.

  11. Re:spews.org problems need to be addressed on Plan for Spam, Version 2 · · Score: 1

    I had a similar experience with my ISP. One day, I was suddenly unable to receive email from certain people who I knew were not spammers. But my ISP was convinced that they were. They never told me why exactly, but I'm pretty sure they just happened to be coming from the wrong block of IP addresses.

    I actually had to reroute all of my mail through a different account in order to continue normal email communication with family members at work!

    Lesson: any filtering done by the ISP must be overridable by individual subscribers, or their supposed email service is worthless.

  12. Re:Why can't we have legal restrictions on spam? on Plan for Spam, Version 2 · · Score: 1

    You are mistaken. Anti spam (i.e., unsolicited commercial email) laws already exist, and they are not a violation of the First Amendment.

    Why? Because the First Amendment does not guarantee anyone the right to express him/herself at the cost of others. Bulk email is *not* paid for by the sender. It is paid for by all the recipients individually, and their ISPs. The costs are processor resources, and disk space, which are not at all insignificant, as unsolicited commercial email (spam) sent to US email accounts is now 40% of the total volume ! For some large companies, it is more than half!

    If you watched the video of the conference (or attended) you'd realize that spam is actually threatening the financial survival of some ISPs, because of the added costs of dealing with mail that no one asked for.

    When bulk snail mail is sent, the sender pays. When a person or organization goes door to door, they pay (for canvassers, literature etc.) Recipients do not pay, and that's why these are valid exercises of free speech.

    However, if you went door to door every day, and wrote your commercial message on the front page of everyone's daily paper with a sharpie, you would be arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for vandalism, destruction of property (and probably being a public nuisance). Why? Again, because those newspapers are *not* yours, and the First Amendment does not give you the right to express your message *at the cost of others*.

  13. Re:On top of Linux!!? on Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux? · · Score: 1

    Stability, yes, but the BSD subsystem of Mac OS X is an *optional* install. Although Mac OS X runs on a Mach microkernel, the BSD tools in /bin and /usr/bin are not necessary for the proper functioning of the system. Realize that I am not talking about the Developer Tools, which is yet another separate and optional install, but he core BSD subsytem. (See http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Darwin/ GettingStarted/PortingUNIX/compiling/Installing__p ment_Tools.html)

    Most Mac OS X users will never see, or use the BSD subsystem, and may not even have it installed; The "tons of software" that runs on BSD will never be used by most Mac users, nor will it be ported for them, just for a handfull of unix savvy technophiles.

    So Apple did not choose a Mach/BSD core for Mac OS X because of the the ability to port unix software. Popular Mac software is written by the likes of Adobe and Microsoft (and Apple too) and it isn't ported from unix versions. There's plenty of software for the Mac (look at VersionTracker's Mac OS X section sometime) and the most popular Mac software has never, and could never run on *nix because it was all written to Mac APIs (Core Services, Carbon, and Cocoa), and for Mac OS X's Aqua, not X11 and/or BSD Unix.

    You could make the argument that Mach/BSD was chosen in part because of the availability of familiar, time tested unix development tools, but end users never see these, just as they never see any other unix ports.

  14. Re:No calories? on For Those Long Coding Sessions: The Food Patch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, carbohydrates, protein, and fatty acids are macronutrients, that is, nutrients your body needs in fairly large amounts (protein 30g/day, carbohydrates 250g/day, fatty acids 100g/day or thereabouts). These patches only contain micronutrients, that is, nutrients we only need in sub gram amounts (e.g., vitamin C 65mg/day - 500mg/day depending on which authotity you believe, and what stresses you're under).
    So I really don't see how these patches could be a complete solution, although they might be useful for replacing lost electrolytes like potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium. When you're engaged in physical exertion for long periods of time though, you really need macronutrients. This is why marathon runners and triathletes drink sports beverages and/or eat power bars. In addition to the electrolyes in, lets say gatorade, you also get a load of sugar (carbohydrates) for energy. These patches would only help with half the problem, and the smaller half at that.
    Maybe they just expect that with the right micronutrient balance and some hormones the field soldiers will burn their own body fat for energy. Then when they do get some down time, they eat a meal rich in protein (for muscle/tissue repair), carbohydrate (to replace muscle and liver glycogen stores), and fatty acids (to replenish body fat stores, for repair and growth of nerves/neurons, and for various hormone precursors, etc.)

  15. Re:That's ludicrous on Microsoft Ordered to Carry Java · · Score: 1

    What do you mean "findings only." Do you know what the term "finding" means?

    A civil court "finding of fact" is a legally binding determination of what actually happened. If not overturned (and they rarely are) then all subsequent appeals must be based on this factual record. It also serves as an essentially undenible basis of fact for other lawsuits.

    So If Sun was specifically named in the finding of fact as a victim of MS's illegal abuse of it's windows monopoly, then that's what happened as far as legal proceedings are concerned. Courts start with this as given, and then determine what was the extent of financial damage, etc. But they don't review whether MS illegally harmed Sun. It's considered a legally incontrovertible given. Hence the term "finding of *fact*."

  16. Re:I dont get this... on Microsoft Ordered to Carry Java · · Score: 1

    Not quite. MS tried to get a review of the ruling itself (not just the penalties) but they were shot down. On appeal the findings of fact and law were upheld, but the penalties imposed by Jackson were not.

  17. Re:Unfair on Microsoft Ordered to Carry Java · · Score: 1

    Monopoly market power is, by legal definition, the ability to price products without regard to the price of cometetitors' offerings.

    So, yes, lack of vulnerability to market forces *is* a part of being a legal monopoly.

    In this discussion, it's useful to know what a monopoly is in legal terms. Hint: it doesn't mean you have no competition whatsoever. It does mean that your competition is so marginal in the market, that they don't affect your pricing, so you can ask, and get, excessive prices for your wares.

  18. Re:One Problem: on Mac OS X 10.2.2 Update Available · · Score: 2, Funny

    RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

    (and no, I don't buy the post hoc redefinition of the acronym as "Independent.")

    So, if the disks are not inexpensive, by definition, it isnt RAID. Using expensive disks to do RAID largely defeats the purpose of RAID.

    Note also, that so called RAID level 0 isn't really RAID either, since there is no redundancy.

  19. Re:Physics is not for dumb people on Theoretical Physics Breakthrough or Hoax? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You miss the point entirely. The OP wasn't merely engaging in semantic games. The word "atom" does in fact mean "irreducible." However, no one in physics really thinks that atoms are irreducible. The term is simply a hold over from a time when theorists thought that atoms were the smallest unit of matter.

    The term universe, however, does in fact mean, "all that is." Full stop. Period. If you hypothesized universe admits of anything outside of it, it is, in fact, not a universe, but part of a universe.

    In other words, the term universe still means, "all that is." The word atom stopped meaning "irreducible" more than a century ago.

    Those who subscribe to a theory of multiple universes believe that they are separate and distinct and cannot interact with each other (hence their designation as universes, not parts of a larger univers). But as these other universes can't interact with each other, they cannot interact with us. Thus, they cannot be experimented on, and their very existence must always remain a matter of pure conjecture.

    What the OP was stating, and correctly in my opinion, is that science can say nothing about that which is not subject to experimental testing of any kind, much less verification. Multiple universes, though fascinating, must therefore remain in the domain of metaphysical speculation, not real science, because, by their very nature, they cannot ever be the subject of experimentaion. And, to the extent that they can be reached by physical experiment, they are not wholly separate, and hence, not universes, but parts of one, larger universe.

  20. Re:Gotten much better on Is Mac OS X Slow? · · Score: 1

    "The time before that it was my desktop not showing me which files were hilighted..."

    By which you mean an application called the Finder. If it acts up, you can force quit it, just like any other application. The Finder will automatically restart if you force quit it. Takes a couple of seconds, which is much faster than rebooting your computer.

    Mac OS X is very stable. If you find yourself thinking you need to restart for a glitch of some sort, you may not have tried the simpler, and quicker solution of force quitting the offending process. This can be done from the Apple Menu - make sure to use the Dock to switch to a responsive application first or your Apple Menu may not respond properly. Or, for the Unix fans, use kill from the Terminal - I always keep Terminal running in case I need to zap the odd errant process - the Force Quit functionality only works on visible user processes.

  21. Re:Monopoly Abuse? on Microsoft takes on PDF · · Score: 1

    "Can you please explain to us how having two products that do basically the same thing competing for market share is a bad thing?"

    It's a bad thing when one of those products is pushed by a company (MS) which has been proven in Federal Court to be an illegal abuser of it's OS monopoly. MS will leverage it's monopoly market power to destroy the first product (Adobe's .pdf) in exactly the same way they leveraged their Windows monopoly to defeat Netscape.

    This is why anti trust law exists. All competition is good if and only if it takes place on a level playing field. MS has a proven record of illegally tilting the playing field.

  22. Re:It's not the chip speed, it's the bus speed. on Pentium-Based Macs The Future of Apple? · · Score: 1

    "Do you mind explaining how my DP867 is running with PC2100 DDR right now?"

    It's running with PC2100 DDR, but it is not using the full bandwidth of that DDR memory - the bus is too slow.

    In other words, you have memory that is faster than your motherboard's/system controller's capacity to access it.

  23. Re:Not Cross Platform on LOGO Still Lives -- New Java-Based Version Released · · Score: 1

    "What an silly response."

    Sorry - should be "What a silly response," obviously. Pardon the typo.

  24. Re:Not Cross Platform on LOGO Still Lives -- New Java-Based Version Released · · Score: 1

    What an silly response. Real testing entails making sure that it runs under *all* configurations, not just "I just ran it on a Mac."

    FYI, I'm running MacOS X 10.2.1 on a PowerMac G4 733 with 768 MB of RAM. And yes, I have many other Java based applications that run on this machine with no problem at all.

    For an example of a truly cross platform Java based educational application see:

    http://drjava.sourceforge.net/

    Which *does* run under Mac OS X 10.2, and Windows, and *nix with a recent JVM.

  25. Not Cross Platform on LOGO Still Lives -- New Java-Based Version Released · · Score: 0

    What exactly is the point of developing on a Java base if your software will not run across all platforms?

    Just downloaded and NullPointerException bombed the MacOS X 10.2 version (could'nt even *open* their own project file!). This from a project that started on the Mac. Since StarLogo is largely targeted at education, a realm where Macs are common, a Jaguar version that will actually run their own demo projects would be nice. Sheesh! Don't get me started on how long (20 seconds on a 733 MHz G4) this takes to launch. Oh, and the control panel should move with the main window when I move that, since the main window has a big blank space in it where the control panel is suppoed to live.

    A little history. The original StarLogo was developed under MCL (Macintosh Common Lisp). Common Lisp is *very* portable. All they had to do to bring it to Windows and Unix was factor out the rather primitive graphics and simple push-button GUI for platform depencencies, and recompile it using Xanalys, both for Windows and Linux. The original version was (and still is ) quite fully functional.

    Then the Java craze hit, and they spent several years porting it (unsuccessfully it would seem) to Java. Why?

    Once again we have form (Java Rulz!) over substance (a proven Common Lisp system).