I play video games (time allowing) so I have nothing against them.
But if I play a game for 10 hours and have fun, having an unfixable bug at 11 hours doesn't render the first 10 hours fun. Sure, I will be disappointed that I can no continue to enjoy the game, but it doesn't nullify the previous enjoyment nor does it mean that the first 10 hours was wasted as the parent implied.
Besides, I, like most other people out there, use Wikipedia not for scientific research, but to broaden my perspective on the various subjects out there which old fashioned books are "out of the scope" to provide insight for.
But if it's not good enough to be used a research citation (not necessarily scientific) why would you want to learn something from it. If an encylcopedia doesn't have credibility or accuracy it's pretty piss-poor.
"Hey wikipedia says that Canada is a small island island nation. That may not be good enough for research paper on tropical islands, but sounds like a good article to read to broaden my knowledge about Canada."
Playing computer games is not an investment. It's fun and not a bad way to chill for a couple hours, but it is no more an investment than watching T.V.. An investment implies that at somepoint you be rewarded by receiving some form of returns.
Was the 8-hours you spent playing the game before it crashed fun? If yes, than playing a competitor's game wouldn't have made a difference. If no, why are you spending time playing things that are no fun?
The promise of missile defence is to make massive nuclear attack obsolete as a weapon of war. I think that is a worthwhile goal.
Uh, no. If the US developed successful and then released the technical details so that other countries could build missile defence systems, THEN that would show that MD would make nuclear attacks obsolete.
If only country has missile defence it increases the risk of war and thusly nuclear war.
There's a huge double standard in society's views on how men and women dress. Men have all shorts of leeway, but as soon as a women stops wearing ankle-length skirts she's "asking for attention".
A neighbour of mine used to mow the lawn in a speedo on hot summer days. No problem, no fuss. But if my neighbour had been an attractive lady, no doubt people like you would be staring over your fence, because obviously she was dressing like that you .
Maybe it's because THEY feel good in the clothes. Or maybe because THEY think they look good. Or maybe because it's just friggin warm. Chances are it has absolutely nothing to do with YOU.
Next you're going to say that if women don't want to be stared at they should all wear burkas, right?
That's true. But that's also true for Linux. I do exactly what you say: I write code and compile on my x86 Linux box
Which doesn't help the people who use Windows on the desktop, does it?
What about the software requires a specific OS?
Sometimes it's stuff like the GUI not being sufficiently isolated from the computational code. Sometimes it is probably portable, but the time to port and test would take more time than any gains in performance. Or it's closed source and commercial
Look, I use and like Linux and Linux clusters for HPC apps. I personally would never voluntarily touch a windows cluster. Windows clusters can't do anything a Linux can. However, a windows cluster may be, for some people some of the time, a better choice. Be it because of timing, training, or software restraints.
What will MS/Windows do for me? How will they save me time or $?
For many researchers, it will offer a familiar environment. It means you can test stuff on your desktop then just upload it to the the server and it works. That's BIG. The main selling point of Sun for HPC clusters is that the Solaris OS on the desktop is __exactly_ the same as the Solaris on the server.
What will they offer that doesn't already exist or is not in the works?
I've seen companies that had originally developed scientific/engineering tools for a Windows environment, and then later decide to parallelize them. Rather than start from scratch with a Unix port, they just modify the existing Windows app. If you're a researcher using that software you need a windows cluster.
For using just using clusters as giant batch processing and that don't use parallel programming, they'll need a windows cluster if they're application was originally written for windows.
I've seen researchers get bogged down ernormously in learning how to use a Unix cluster. Instead of doing research, they spent large chunks of time learning a new OS.
The US system is horribly mismananged I would guess.
Up here, I can make a round trip Ottawa-Kingston via train for $45. The same by car would run $40-50 at current gas prices. Not to mention, saving 400km in wear and tear on the car, which would be another $100-$120 or so in hidden costs.
people in germany and france HATE english (not all of them, of course), and most of them refuse to learn and speak it
Funny you say that, because I travelled through France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy only being able to english and very, very weak french. Yet somehow I've had no problem communicating, usually because the person I'm talking to speaks English.
Whoah, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that Americans are lazy, just that for whatever reason Europeans tend to speak multiple languagues. The parent thought that very few Europeans can use the English internet, I just think the original poster may be surprised how many actually speak english.
That doesn't have anything to do with being rich or poor
It does. In the lower income population, higher income is uncommon/rare and even high school education is not certain. Parents of kids are more likely to be indifferent or even hostile to education. Kids living in these families are far, far less likely to excel academically. They don't have the parental/community support structures, and they've been raised to place little value on education.
Whereas, in middle or upper class populations, higher education is much more prevalent and kids are more likely to understand the importance of education.
There was a study someone mentioned to me the other day, discussing parents who raised their kids saying "when you go to university" vs "if you go to university". The kids who heard "when" were far more likely to actually go.
And if lower income kids are getting the message "you'll never go to university" or "education is worthless", how well do you think they'll do? Simply giving them a ticket to a private school is not going to fix the problem.
Only a couple of million of these users have adequate enough english skills to even read english sites
Right, because there's only a couple million people in the United Kingdom....
And unlike Americans, who typically speak one (maybe 2) languages, it is far more common to speak two languages and often 3 or 4. English is commonly used in places like France and Germany.
You mean the elections last fall that had the West denouncing the Ukranian election system because Yuschenko didn't win? When both US government and media both spun the angle that Ukraine was a corrupt, despotic nation? All because the West's favoured candidate, Yuschenko, didn't win. The same Yuschenko that is charged with defrauding the Ukrainian national bank and a score of other crimes?
I fail to see how Georgia is a sign of US involvment? A massively corrupt government and electoral system led to an internal revolt. The US supported Shevardnadze right up until the very end.
Right dismiss someone because of a years old moniker they chose as a joke.
I'm sure they loved working together to build their workers' paradise.
They never got the chance to. The US tried to dictate how they should live, and the population obviously didn't like that. If the US hadn't gotten involved, Vietnam wouldn't have inherited a ruined economy, destroyed infrastructure, or 2+ million casualties. I can't see how they wouldn't have been better off if left to determine their own fate.
That the US stopped supporting the South Vietnamese government is not in question. What you have a hard time understanding is that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing for the South Vietnamese.
We're still toppling regimes now but they tend to be dictators and get replaced by representative governments
Right, like providing military aid to countries like Columbia, Turkey, and Indonesia. Or by taking a confrontational stance towards Venezelua, simply because their government is looking after its people's interests instead of the interests of foreign business.
South Vietnam was the side that the US was allied with
No shit. Of the two sides though, the successive South Vietnamese regimes far surpassed the communists in brutality and attrocities. They had little to no popular support amongst the population. Whole and massive offensives of the SV/US forces were _within_ territories already controlled by the SV/US. These campaigns were against the communist forces but directly against the civilian population, either to subdue or displace them.
The US has been supporting state sponsored terrorism for the past fifty years. Supporting coups in South/Latin America, providing "counter insurgency" arms to dictators who have no popular support and rule solely because the US props them up, supporting trade partners in acts of aggression (e.g. military aid to Indonesia to subdue East Timor).
Slashdot Mirror
Except, we don't bitch about making Harlequin romance more appealing to men
That's a silly statement. If you look at the whole wide range of range of books, there's huge numbers of books aimed at every possible demographic.
If you look at computer games, uh no.
I play video games (time allowing) so I have nothing against them.
But if I play a game for 10 hours and have fun, having an unfixable bug at 11 hours doesn't render the first 10 hours fun. Sure, I will be disappointed that I can no continue to enjoy the game, but it doesn't nullify the previous enjoyment nor does it mean that the first 10 hours was wasted as the parent implied.
Besides, I, like most other people out there, use Wikipedia not for scientific research, but to broaden my perspective on the various subjects out there which old fashioned books are "out of the scope" to provide insight for.
But if it's not good enough to be used a research citation (not necessarily scientific) why would you want to learn something from it. If an encylcopedia doesn't have credibility or accuracy it's pretty piss-poor.
"Hey wikipedia says that Canada is a small island island nation. That may not be good enough for research paper on tropical islands, but sounds like a good article to read to broaden my knowledge about Canada."
invested in a competitors game
Playing computer games is not an investment. It's fun and not a bad way to chill for a couple hours, but it is no more an investment than watching T.V.. An investment implies that at somepoint you be rewarded by receiving some form of returns.
Was the 8-hours you spent playing the game before it crashed fun? If yes, than playing a competitor's game wouldn't have made a difference. If no, why are you spending time playing things that are no fun?
The promise of missile defence is to make massive nuclear attack obsolete as a weapon of war. I think that is a worthwhile goal.
Uh, no. If the US developed successful and then released the technical details so that other countries could build missile defence systems, THEN that would show that MD would make nuclear attacks obsolete.
If only country has missile defence it increases the risk of war and thusly nuclear war.
Huh? When did I say that?
There's a huge double standard in society's views on how men and women dress. Men have all shorts of leeway, but as soon as a women stops wearing ankle-length skirts she's "asking for attention".
A neighbour of mine used to mow the lawn in a speedo on hot summer days. No problem, no fuss. But if my neighbour had been an attractive lady, no doubt people like you would be staring over your fence, because obviously she was dressing like that you .
Maybe it's because THEY feel good in the clothes. Or maybe because THEY think they look good. Or maybe because it's just friggin warm. Chances are it has absolutely nothing to do with YOU.
Next you're going to say that if women don't want to be stared at they should all wear burkas, right?
That's true. But that's also true for Linux. I do exactly what you say: I write code and compile on my x86 Linux box
Which doesn't help the people who use Windows on the desktop, does it?
What about the software requires a specific OS?
Sometimes it's stuff like the GUI not being sufficiently isolated from the computational code. Sometimes it is probably portable, but the time to port and test would take more time than any gains in performance. Or it's closed source and commercial
Look, I use and like Linux and Linux clusters for HPC apps. I personally would never voluntarily touch a windows cluster. Windows clusters can't do anything a Linux can. However, a windows cluster may be, for some people some of the time, a better choice. Be it because of timing, training, or software restraints.
What will MS/Windows do for me? How will they save me time or $?
For many researchers, it will offer a familiar environment. It means you can test stuff on your desktop then just upload it to the the server and it works. That's BIG. The main selling point of Sun for HPC clusters is that the Solaris OS on the desktop is __exactly_ the same as the Solaris on the server.
What will they offer that doesn't already exist or is not in the works?
I've seen companies that had originally developed scientific/engineering tools for a Windows environment, and then later decide to parallelize them. Rather than start from scratch with a Unix port, they just modify the existing Windows app. If you're a researcher using that software you need a windows cluster.
For using just using clusters as giant batch processing and that don't use parallel programming, they'll need a windows cluster if they're application was originally written for windows.
I've seen researchers get bogged down ernormously in learning how to use a Unix cluster. Instead of doing research, they spent large chunks of time learning a new OS.
A scientist isn't likely going to write his own app for a super computer
Yes, actually they. Frequently
You do realize super computers are EXTREMLY costly?
A modern cluster is cheap.
he would hire someone that could make it work the best
Har, on a university professor's grant money?
A canal does not two landmasses make
Um, North America and South America are two seperate continents. The fact that there used to be a land bridge between them does not make them on.
There used to be a land bridge between Africa and Asia, likewise now separated by a canal. Are Afrive and Asia therefore on big continent?
I think you're thinking about Quebec.
Even the Super Economy advanced-purchase heavy-change-penalty adult return fare Ottawa-Kingston is $60
Okay, admittedly that's using an ISIC student card. $60 still isn't too bad.
The gas really does cost that much though. It's about a tank of gas in either the Cavalier or Elantra I do it in frequently.
The US system is horribly mismananged I would guess.
Up here, I can make a round trip Ottawa-Kingston via train for $45. The same by car would run $40-50 at current gas prices. Not to mention, saving 400km in wear and tear on the car, which would be another $100-$120 or so in hidden costs.
people in germany and france HATE english (not all of them, of course), and most of them refuse to learn and speak it
Funny you say that, because I travelled through France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy only being able to english and very, very weak french. Yet somehow I've had no problem communicating, usually because the person I'm talking to speaks English.
Whoah, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that Americans are lazy, just that for whatever reason Europeans tend to speak multiple languagues. The parent thought that very few Europeans can use the English internet, I just think the original poster may be surprised how many actually speak english.
That doesn't have anything to do with being rich or poor
It does. In the lower income population, higher income is uncommon/rare and even high school education is not certain. Parents of kids are more likely to be indifferent or even hostile to education. Kids living in these families are far, far less likely to excel academically. They don't have the parental/community support structures, and they've been raised to place little value on education.
Whereas, in middle or upper class populations, higher education is much more prevalent and kids are more likely to understand the importance of education.
There was a study someone mentioned to me the other day, discussing parents who raised their kids saying "when you go to university" vs "if you go to university". The kids who heard "when" were far more likely to actually go.
And if lower income kids are getting the message "you'll never go to university" or "education is worthless", how well do you think they'll do? Simply giving them a ticket to a private school is not going to fix the problem.
Only a couple of million of these users have adequate enough english skills to even read english sites
Right, because there's only a couple million people in the United Kingdom....
And unlike Americans, who typically speak one (maybe 2) languages, it is far more common to speak two languages and often 3 or 4. English is commonly used in places like France and Germany.
Ukraine
You mean the elections last fall that had the West denouncing the Ukranian election system because Yuschenko didn't win? When both US government and media both spun the angle that Ukraine was a corrupt, despotic nation? All because the West's favoured candidate, Yuschenko, didn't win. The same Yuschenko that is charged with defrauding the Ukrainian national bank and a score of other crimes?
I fail to see how Georgia is a sign of US involvment? A massively corrupt government and electoral system led to an internal revolt. The US supported Shevardnadze right up until the very end.
Right, "CommieOverlord."
Right dismiss someone because of a years old moniker they chose as a joke.
I'm sure they loved working together to build their workers' paradise.
They never got the chance to. The US tried to dictate how they should live, and the population obviously didn't like that. If the US hadn't gotten involved, Vietnam wouldn't have inherited a ruined economy, destroyed infrastructure, or 2+ million casualties. I can't see how they wouldn't have been better off if left to determine their own fate.
That the US stopped supporting the South Vietnamese government is not in question. What you have a hard time understanding is that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing for the South Vietnamese.
Bush's 2nd inaugural speech
And the Carter administration was publically about human rights.
But there's a difference between talk and action.
We're still toppling regimes now but they tend to be dictators and get replaced by representative governments
Right, like providing military aid to countries like Columbia, Turkey, and Indonesia. Or by taking a confrontational stance towards Venezelua, simply because their government is looking after its people's interests instead of the interests of foreign business.
South Vietnam was the side that the US was allied with
No shit. Of the two sides though, the successive South Vietnamese regimes far surpassed the communists in brutality and attrocities. They had little to no popular support amongst the population. Whole and massive offensives of the SV/US forces were _within_ territories already controlled by the SV/US. These campaigns were against the communist forces but directly against the civilian population, either to subdue or displace them.
The US has been supporting state sponsored terrorism for the past fifty years. Supporting coups in South/Latin America, providing "counter insurgency" arms to dictators who have no popular support and rule solely because the US props them up, supporting trade partners in acts of aggression (e.g. military aid to Indonesia to subdue East Timor).