Well I agree that 'Red Hat Database' is no doubt a more marketable name. But without it being any different than PostgreSQL in any way, I still don't see the point.
Hmm. In one sentence, he clearly states the point, then in the next, claims he doesn't see it. Odd.
In any case, I doubt "Red Hat Database" is no different from "PostgreSQL". PostgreSQL is an SQL server, whereas Red Hat Database will be a Linux distribution that includes PostgreSQL, among other things. They're not renaming it any more than they're renamed GCC by distributing it in a box marked "Red Hat Linux"...
One species toxic poison is another's basic building block. Ten million years from now, the species on Earth may bemoan the fact that we didn't produce and release enough DDT into the ecosphere...:)
Whoops! My apologies -- I missed the "moon" in "Jupiter moon rock" while reading your message. You wouldn't find one from Europa, as it's icy and would just melt, but I suppose you could find one from another of Jupiter's moons, one of the rocky ones. My bad...
Has anyone noticed that when NASA needs funding for some project these days that rocks are found that somehow found their way to the earth.
Well, considering that NASA always needs funding, any statement of the form "When NASA needs funding for some project these days, X occurs." is going to be true. For example, "Has anyone noticed that when NASA needs funding for some project these days that hurricanes start forming in the Atlantic?" This observation, although certainly true, does not prove that Atlantic hurricanes are caused by NASA scientists seeking funding. Correlation does not indicate causality.
These are identifyed by their particular structure and composition based on our knowledge of the indegionus rocks known to exist on these moons and planets, even though no one has ever been there or seen one, and no samples have ever been brought back by any means.
First of all, it's flat out false that we've never seen rocks on other planets. In fact, I think at this point there are no rocky planets that we haven't at least seen the rocks of. True, we haven't brought any samples back except from the Moon, but you don't need to bring a sample back to determine chemical composition. Learn to use a spectroscope...
I might find a Jupiter moon rock in my back yard. It will have been tossed here by some astoriod collision. How will I identify the markings?
Look for a small tag on the bottom labeled "Made on Jupiter". It's painfully obvious at this point you know so little about astrophysics that you couldn't possibly have a reasonable opinion on the subject -- for your information, no, it is not possible for you to find a rock from Jupiter in your backyard, tosssed here by some asteroid collision -- any asteroid that somehow managed to make it through Jupiter's impressive atmosphere without being incinerated completely would splash into an ocean of liquid hydrogen deep enough to sink most planets in -- no Jovian rocks would be tossed anywhere during this splashdown.
I think we spent more money making the movie Waterworld than we did making the failed Mars mission. They both bombed, but I consider the latter money better spent...
Why is it that they always point to oxygen and/or water as proof of life?
Huh? Who is "they"? I know of no scientist who has ever claimed that life on some other world has been proven, much less used the existence of oxygen and/or water as the basis for this "proof".
Isn't it possible for life to exist without one or the other? (I mean, just because we need it is not proof.)
Sure, but they would need some sort of alternative biochemistry. This is possible, but when we discover worlds where our own biochemistry is possible, we find this a lot more exciting...
Anaerobic organisms exist on Earth, why not elsewhere?
Anaerobic organism on Earth still require oxygen, they just don't require molecular oxygen (O2). Getting by with no oxygen at all (meaning not only no O2 but no other molecules requiring the element oxygen in their composition) may or may not be possible, but would certainly be quite a bit more difficult. Kind of like trying to get by without carbon -- in theory it could be done, hence speculation into silicon based life, but in fact carbon and oxygen are some of the most versatile elements (chemically speaking) in existence -- getting by without them would be pretty damn hard...
I don't understand why we always assume that the life must be oxygen-based.
Err, we don't. We just get excited when we discover oxygen because we know of lifeforms that use oxidants, whereas anything else doesn't really mean anything to us...
I'm no biology/space major, but isn't it a bit presumptous to expect extraterristerial life to rely on photosynthesis, even within our own galaxy?
No, it's not presumptuous. Sunlight is one of the easiest sources of energy to exploit and pretty much guarenteed to be available on any planet that isn't frozen solid. Sure, there are other possible sources of enegry (thermo and chemosynthesis come to mind), but expecting life on some planet to have evolved these while passing up on photosynthesis entirely is like expecting the roulette wheel to come up 27 27 times in a row. Sure, it could happen, and given a large enough universe, probably has, but for every planet with life but no photosynthesis there are probably a million with it. (Note: 90% of statistics are made up.:)
Who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere?
Err, that's actually one of the three basic axioms of science (the second as I learned them):
[1] Nature is lawful -- things happen in accord with the laws of nature. Since science is in the business of discovering the laws of nature, we presuppose this -- it would be pointless to try to discover the laws of nature if they don't exist.
[2] The laws of nature are universal -- they apply any place, any time. If this were not true, the scientific method would be useless, since experienments would not tell you anything except what was true in that lab at that time -- they would tell you nothing about what to expect tomorrow or in Miami.
[3] The laws of nature are understandable by us. This has to be true or the whole scientific enterprise is pointless and doomed to failure.
Those are the axioms of science. If any one of them is not true, science is an utter pointless waste of time. If you don't believe it's an utterly pointless waste of time, you probably have faith in these principles.
So, who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere? Science does. To say otherwise is to be literally unscientific...
The problem is, that advice is completely useless. There are usually NO tools that you NEED to use -- for any proposed tool, there is usually an alternate solution that involves using different tools other than that one. But you have to use SOME tools, so ordinarily, you end up using tools that you didn't strictly speaking need to use. The question you have to answer is which tools should I use, given that I must use some tools but there are no particular ones I need to use. Under these circumstances (which is about 99% of the time), you simply can't follow that advice (only use what you need), you must in fact decide to use tools you could have solved the problem without.
Check http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html, the link they keep leaving in my webserver logs. To make a long story short, they do support a "noarchive" option in the "robots" META tag that tells them not to cache your pages, but it's an opt-out rather than opt-in thing, that is, they cache you unless you tell them not to.
I've had that thought before -- but I haven't seen evidence of it on the ODP. On the other hand, it is true that how good any particular section is depends on the editors, some are better than others. Some categories are so much better than any other portal it's amazing, other places I find myself going to Yahoo. Your milage varies depending on which part of the site you're on.
Hmmph. Sounds like a rationalization. If it actually helped, you'd find them on economy cars looking for a high MPG rating, rather than on cars trying to be "sporty". (Reminds me of the old commercial, "There's no such thing as a four-door sports car, right?" The correct answer is: "Right!")
That's a silly reason to read/., a better reason is so that you don't have to read the mainstream news at all! With/. you don't have to sift through all the boring, irrelevant crap about who shot who, who switched political parties, etc. I mean, who really cares what Jim Jeffords does or what Trent Lott or Tom Daschle has to say about it? What have they coded lately? What part of your operating system are they responsible for? If nothing, then what could possibly be newsworthy about them?
Heh! You know what kind of monster you get by putting a 300 hp engine into a tiny frame like that? It may not be pretty, but it goes like hell (which is what the GLH in the old Dodge Omni GLH stood for -- that's where they put a sports car engine into a Dodge Omni -- didn't look like a sports car but is sure accelerated like one)! I don't know how or where you'd put a 300 hp engine in a Chevette, but if you managed it, you could certainly trounce any other car in town in the traditional quarter-mile, and I don't care what other cars happen to be in your town (unless some other bright-boy in town has stuck a 400 hp engine in a Geo Metro or something)...
A better analog for what you're trying to say is it's rather like putting a spoiler on a street car. I mean, come on, yes a spoiler really helps your handling when you're doing 150 mph down the track, but of what use is it on that car you drive around town at 30-45 mph, or occasionally get out of the freeway and open up to 70? Get real...
because Lucifer is a english work, the other three are from ancient languages, or at least based on them
Err, "Lucifer" is Latin. It means "light bringer". The name was sometimes applied to the "morning star" (Venus, when seen in the morning, as opposed to the "evening star", same planet in the evening).
The cute part about this is, in the end of Revelations, the arisen Jesus says "I am the morning star", which could be reasonably translated into Latin as saying "I am Lucifer."
Err, more than that in the case of Rome. If you count the Byzantines (and there's no reason you shouldn't -- the fact that the richer, eastern half of the empire got tired of the problems of supporting the western half and split does not make it any less a continuation of the same empire), we're talking over 2000 years, from 753 BC (I'm aware this exact date is controversial but it's in the ballpark in any case) to 1453 CE. That's 2206 years (or thereabouts).
It should also be noted that in the case of the western empire, the "fall" of Rome on 476 CE wasn't much of an event for the people living in Rome at the time. It now meant they were now being ruled by a German they rarely saw rather than an Italian they rarely saw. Most of them would be puzzled by the modern notion that some empire-shattering event took place that year. The Western Roman Empire did not fall so much as slowly fade away.
Regarding Japanese culture, it should be noted that the Japanese reinvent themselves regularly. They go through periods of isolation followed by periods of rapid change, during those periods of change they quickly and wholeheartly steal ideas from whatever culture they're in contact with. Of course, they do this more for some cultures than others. They adopted quite a bit from Chinese culture after their first contact with the Chinese. They've adopted considerably less from American culture, but still quite a bit. Of course, it's vaguely amusing to note how often Americans take a look at the superficial things that they've adopted from western culture in general (which includes a lot more than America) and conclude (a) Japanese culture is as shallow and superficial as American culture, and (b) that the Japanese are adopting American culture to such an extent that they're loosing their own. It should also be noted that since the Japanese have always harvested whatever things appealed to them from whatever culture they come into contact with, they would be giving up their own cultural traditions by not adopting everything they like from western cultures. The cool thing about the Japanese is they always manage to do this while hanging on to their own core. Modern Japanese culture is a beautiful blend today because of this. Most other cultures could learn a great deal by studying how the Japanese successfully integrate new ideas into their culture while retaining their cultural identity. [For one excellent example, compare the number of people in Japan who are both Shinto and Buddhist with the number of people in Europe who are both Pagan and Christian. The Japanese actually hang on to their culture, unlike Europeans who regularly discard it, which is why we don't have the kind of rich culture they do.]
You Americans keep amazing me...
First a giant trial about Microsoft's monopoly and then they simply grant a company a monopoly for several years??
What amazes me is that there are idiots out there who find it somehow surprising that NOT EVERY AMERICAN AGREES ON ANYTHING, and that therefore "our" actions are not always consistent. (Well, DUH!)
Not everyone thinks a Microsoft monopoly is bad. And not everyone thinks a VeriSign monopoly is good.
Endrin, if this sort of pluralism and disagreement amazes you and seem out of place, then I'm certainly glad I don't live in whatever country you do. I'd hate to live in a place where this sort of thing is unusual...
One thing to keep in mind. In much of Europe, if you drive a hundred miles in any direction, you're quite likely to find yourself among people who speak another language. Learning multiple languages is a good idea.
For me, living near dead center North America, I can drive over a thousand miles in any direction you want, and be guarenteed that whoever I run into will speak English quite well.
Studying foreign languages is a fun but relatively useless hobby for me. I know a little French and a little Japanese, but my odds of running into someone who speaks either (much less speaks English less well than I speak their language) makes these not particularly practical skills. They let me understand a bit more anime than most, that's about it...
It should mean business as usual. VeriSign already has control of the.com namespace, so this isn't a change in any way. It just means they get to keep it.
Oh gods, it hasn't been that long, has it? That was my favorite video for a long time. I don't remember what year it was, though. 88? Or was it even earlier? Hmmph. I was probably hacking 6502 assembly language code at the time...
Actually, the earliest Greek astronomers were pretty evenly divided in their beliefs about geocentric vs. heliocentric cosmology. They eventually came down on the side of geocentric based on the evidence, not intuition.
You see, if the earth moved around the sun rather than the other way around, we would be closer to certain constellations at certain times of the year, and furthest from them 6 months later. (Which is indeed the case.)
Now, there are wonderful things like parallax and such that let you determine if this is indeed the case. When one is closer to the constellation, it should cover a larger angle of the sky, i.e. it should appear bigger, with it's stars further separated! And 6 months later, it should be smaller. This is all, of course, assuming the earth moves around the sun. If the reverse was true, constellations would remain constant in size.
Having noted this, the greeks looked at the constellations and noted they did not appear to change in size at all. Thus, the evidence clearly supported the geocentric view over the heliocentric view.
Now, one of the last greeks to continue to cling to the heliocentric model in spite of the evidence pointed out that, if the stars were really really really far away, it could be that the change is parallax would be too small to see. But others (correctly) pointed out that this was a post hoc explanation to try to save the theory, and really had no evidence to support it. Thus, heliocentric cosmology fell to the wayside until new evidence came along, much much later...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. In one sentence, he clearly states the point, then in the next, claims he doesn't see it. Odd.
In any case, I doubt "Red Hat Database" is no different from "PostgreSQL". PostgreSQL is an SQL server, whereas Red Hat Database will be a Linux distribution that includes PostgreSQL, among other things. They're not renaming it any more than they're renamed GCC by distributing it in a box marked "Red Hat Linux"...
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Well, considering that NASA always needs funding, any statement of the form "When NASA needs funding for some project these days, X occurs." is going to be true. For example, "Has anyone noticed that when NASA needs funding for some project these days that hurricanes start forming in the Atlantic?" This observation, although certainly true, does not prove that Atlantic hurricanes are caused by NASA scientists seeking funding. Correlation does not indicate causality.
These are identifyed by their particular structure and composition based on our knowledge of the indegionus rocks known to exist on these moons and planets, even though no one has ever been there or seen one, and no samples have ever been brought back by any means.
First of all, it's flat out false that we've never seen rocks on other planets. In fact, I think at this point there are no rocky planets that we haven't at least seen the rocks of. True, we haven't brought any samples back except from the Moon, but you don't need to bring a sample back to determine chemical composition. Learn to use a spectroscope...
I might find a Jupiter moon rock in my back yard. It will have been tossed here by some astoriod collision. How will I identify the markings?
Look for a small tag on the bottom labeled "Made on Jupiter". It's painfully obvious at this point you know so little about astrophysics that you couldn't possibly have a reasonable opinion on the subject -- for your information, no, it is not possible for you to find a rock from Jupiter in your backyard, tosssed here by some asteroid collision -- any asteroid that somehow managed to make it through Jupiter's impressive atmosphere without being incinerated completely would splash into an ocean of liquid hydrogen deep enough to sink most planets in -- no Jovian rocks would be tossed anywhere during this splashdown.
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Huh? Who is "they"? I know of no scientist who has ever claimed that life on some other world has been proven, much less used the existence of oxygen and/or water as the basis for this "proof".
Isn't it possible for life to exist without one or the other? (I mean, just because we need it is not proof.)
Sure, but they would need some sort of alternative biochemistry. This is possible, but when we discover worlds where our own biochemistry is possible, we find this a lot more exciting...
Anaerobic organisms exist on Earth, why not elsewhere?
Anaerobic organism on Earth still require oxygen, they just don't require molecular oxygen (O2). Getting by with no oxygen at all (meaning not only no O2 but no other molecules requiring the element oxygen in their composition) may or may not be possible, but would certainly be quite a bit more difficult. Kind of like trying to get by without carbon -- in theory it could be done, hence speculation into silicon based life, but in fact carbon and oxygen are some of the most versatile elements (chemically speaking) in existence -- getting by without them would be pretty damn hard...
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Err, we don't. We just get excited when we discover oxygen because we know of lifeforms that use oxidants, whereas anything else doesn't really mean anything to us...
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No, it's not presumptuous. Sunlight is one of the easiest sources of energy to exploit and pretty much guarenteed to be available on any planet that isn't frozen solid. Sure, there are other possible sources of enegry (thermo and chemosynthesis come to mind), but expecting life on some planet to have evolved these while passing up on photosynthesis entirely is like expecting the roulette wheel to come up 27 27 times in a row. Sure, it could happen, and given a large enough universe, probably has, but for every planet with life but no photosynthesis there are probably a million with it. (Note: 90% of statistics are made up. :)
Who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere?
Err, that's actually one of the three basic axioms of science (the second as I learned them):
[1] Nature is lawful -- things happen in accord with the laws of nature. Since science is in the business of discovering the laws of nature, we presuppose this -- it would be pointless to try to discover the laws of nature if they don't exist.
[2] The laws of nature are universal -- they apply any place, any time. If this were not true, the scientific method would be useless, since experienments would not tell you anything except what was true in that lab at that time -- they would tell you nothing about what to expect tomorrow or in Miami.
[3] The laws of nature are understandable by us. This has to be true or the whole scientific enterprise is pointless and doomed to failure.
Those are the axioms of science. If any one of them is not true, science is an utter pointless waste of time. If you don't believe it's an utterly pointless waste of time, you probably have faith in these principles.
So, who says the rules that apply on Earth apply everywhere? Science does. To say otherwise is to be literally unscientific...
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Heh! I just now noticed how much the speech patterns of Anne Elk resemble Mojo Jojo!
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A better analog for what you're trying to say is it's rather like putting a spoiler on a street car. I mean, come on, yes a spoiler really helps your handling when you're doing 150 mph down the track, but of what use is it on that car you drive around town at 30-45 mph, or occasionally get out of the freeway and open up to 70? Get real...
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Err, "Lucifer" is Latin. It means "light bringer". The name was sometimes applied to the "morning star" (Venus, when seen in the morning, as opposed to the "evening star", same planet in the evening).
The cute part about this is, in the end of Revelations, the arisen Jesus says "I am the morning star", which could be reasonably translated into Latin as saying "I am Lucifer."
[Things that make you go "hmmm"...]
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It should also be noted that in the case of the western empire, the "fall" of Rome on 476 CE wasn't much of an event for the people living in Rome at the time. It now meant they were now being ruled by a German they rarely saw rather than an Italian they rarely saw. Most of them would be puzzled by the modern notion that some empire-shattering event took place that year. The Western Roman Empire did not fall so much as slowly fade away.
Regarding Japanese culture, it should be noted that the Japanese reinvent themselves regularly. They go through periods of isolation followed by periods of rapid change, during those periods of change they quickly and wholeheartly steal ideas from whatever culture they're in contact with. Of course, they do this more for some cultures than others. They adopted quite a bit from Chinese culture after their first contact with the Chinese. They've adopted considerably less from American culture, but still quite a bit. Of course, it's vaguely amusing to note how often Americans take a look at the superficial things that they've adopted from western culture in general (which includes a lot more than America) and conclude (a) Japanese culture is as shallow and superficial as American culture, and (b) that the Japanese are adopting American culture to such an extent that they're loosing their own. It should also be noted that since the Japanese have always harvested whatever things appealed to them from whatever culture they come into contact with, they would be giving up their own cultural traditions by not adopting everything they like from western cultures. The cool thing about the Japanese is they always manage to do this while hanging on to their own core. Modern Japanese culture is a beautiful blend today because of this. Most other cultures could learn a great deal by studying how the Japanese successfully integrate new ideas into their culture while retaining their cultural identity. [For one excellent example, compare the number of people in Japan who are both Shinto and Buddhist with the number of people in Europe who are both Pagan and Christian. The Japanese actually hang on to their culture, unlike Europeans who regularly discard it, which is why we don't have the kind of rich culture they do.]
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First a giant trial about Microsoft's monopoly and then they simply grant a company a monopoly for several years??
What amazes me is that there are idiots out there who find it somehow surprising that NOT EVERY AMERICAN AGREES ON ANYTHING, and that therefore "our" actions are not always consistent. (Well, DUH!)
Not everyone thinks a Microsoft monopoly is bad. And not everyone thinks a VeriSign monopoly is good.
Endrin, if this sort of pluralism and disagreement amazes you and seem out of place, then I'm certainly glad I don't live in whatever country you do. I'd hate to live in a place where this sort of thing is unusual...
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For me, living near dead center North America, I can drive over a thousand miles in any direction you want, and be guarenteed that whoever I run into will speak English quite well.
Studying foreign languages is a fun but relatively useless hobby for me. I know a little French and a little Japanese, but my odds of running into someone who speaks either (much less speaks English less well than I speak their language) makes these not particularly practical skills. They let me understand a bit more anime than most, that's about it...
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You see, if the earth moved around the sun rather than the other way around, we would be closer to certain constellations at certain times of the year, and furthest from them 6 months later. (Which is indeed the case.)
Now, there are wonderful things like parallax and such that let you determine if this is indeed the case. When one is closer to the constellation, it should cover a larger angle of the sky, i.e. it should appear bigger, with it's stars further separated! And 6 months later, it should be smaller. This is all, of course, assuming the earth moves around the sun. If the reverse was true, constellations would remain constant in size.
Having noted this, the greeks looked at the constellations and noted they did not appear to change in size at all. Thus, the evidence clearly supported the geocentric view over the heliocentric view.
Now, one of the last greeks to continue to cling to the heliocentric model in spite of the evidence pointed out that, if the stars were really really really far away, it could be that the change is parallax would be too small to see. But others (correctly) pointed out that this was a post hoc explanation to try to save the theory, and really had no evidence to support it. Thus, heliocentric cosmology fell to the wayside until new evidence came along, much much later...
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