Dark Matter is a theoretical concept we as to yet have not seen or detected. Thus, it does seem similar to "ether" and serves the same purpose, albeit fitting much more nicely into explanations.
I prefer the equally possible explanation -- that gravity is not linear, and performs differently at large distances than it does at small ones. This can explain the effect of dark matter without all the flubberyjubbery of matter that can't be seen and can't be detected.
True that. Admitting uncertainty is the first step of science..."we don't know for sure why this is, so we'll propose a hypothesis, test it, and if the results don't clarify anything, we'll propose another one."
I don't know why people are shocked, or take it as a sign of supernatural causes every time a scientist "isn't sure." They're never sure. If they were sure, they wouldn't be scientists. Science takes a certain amount of confidence in a possibility, but being "sure" is the first step towards fudging data that's inexplicable. The universe is infinitely large and thus infinitely complex, and we'd only been empirically studying it for a few thousand years. Most of our in-depth insights have taken place in the past 200 years, and many clarifications and exceptions have taken place in the past 50, and even the past 20.
Scientists have a notoriously matter-of-fact attitude that leads some people to believe that science believes itself to be infallible. It doesn't. But due to the need for strict controls, even on language, to avoid confusion between scientists, even false and preposterous assumptions need to be stated matter-of-factly. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers...they just claim to have some very realistic (and repeatable) ones.
Well, the label is an identifier, not an advertisement. If your car is a piece of shit and says "Bill's Used Cars," Bill's not making any money. Same with ratty old Nikes.
When I bought my car, it came with a sticker on it. They gave me shitty service. I put a "Sucks!" sticker after their logo. I felt better.
But the inverse works, too. Some very bad people can do some very good things in committee. Some companies can do nice things in the interest of making money (such as AOL subsidizing the cost to produce Winamp and Mozilla).
Hating an organization JUST because it's an organize is stupid. If a corporation does things you like, it is in your interest to try and go with them wherever you can. I deal with this all the time...we have a supplier that has really high managed hosting rates, and despite OWNING a managed hosting business myself, we went with that supplier -- because they really helped us out last year.
Back on topic, Rio makes money on these things. Buying up a ton of them, Rio makes a ton of money. Who loses? CompactFlash manufacturers, is who....and not, I'm sure, by a whole lot since no company (the real market for compactflash micro drives) would ever okay the purchase and destruction of a ton of mp3 players.
I just say, "Yeah honey, I've always thought your tits were too small and saggy. I say you get a second job and fix them up nice. Get me a beer."
See, it's like a lottery. The coolness of the remote possibility of success is worth the probability of losing, and having to sleep on the couch for a week.
Well, here's the thing. I do carry a balance -- my Visa rate is lower than the cost of personal loans and I put my laptop on it. But I realized that my easily accessible revolving credit, thanks to both the Visa and the Discover, was well over $20,000. Meaning I looked bloated on paper and if god forbid something happened to my cards, I'd have to fight with two companies over a huge sum. I had to cancel one or the other, the Discover had a bigger rate, was acceptable at fewer places and would not let me lower my available credit below $5000, so I had to drop it.
I replaced it with a nice $2000 limit AmEx Blue card (for auto emergencies). The card has a super low rate, but really I got it because I am impressed by shiny objects. And that hologram sure is shiny.
If I remember correctly, rental houses pay a great deal more for their stock than you, the home viewer. And they're guaranteed to buy a certain high number of new releases at this higher price thanks to the ever-so-popular "In stock Guarantee" they offer their client. Even considering that these video rental houses sell their overstock cheaper than new movies to customers, the film production companies are still making out very well.
"P2P" could be very lucrative for the publishing houses if they get their deals right. Some will hold out, sure...but this is not that different from the VOD services offered by cable companies, and those have proven to be very profitable.
This is what you get when you outsource your cancellations department to a copy of Eliza.
Incidentally, the most fun cancellation experience I've ever had was when I tried to cancel my Discover card. The guy made me an offer which was, honestly, very good, and I would have gone with it had I not already consolidated all my debt onto a different card. I told him I wasn't interested. He asks "Why aren't you interested in getting a better deal?" I said, "Look, I agree with you that it's a better deal. But now you're trying to sell me on it, and in the process you're making me feel stupid. I'd rather not do business with a company that tries to make me feel stupid, I'm just an asshole like that." I was cancelled and off the phone in fifteen seconds.
Nowadays, you just gotta be rude, man. It saves you a lot of hassle. Being polite to phone folks is playing right into their hands. Fuck it, you'll never see or hear this guy again, insult him and his entire worldview if it gets him off your phone a little quicker. The sanity you save might be your own.
Oh, that would work, but it would be APPEASING the spammers. Modern government can't open the door of appeasement. No, far better to raid some third world software development house that has nothing to do with spam, kick the shit out the bastards and hope it stands as a warning to everybody else.
Well, what the hell else does she have to do? Most of the "security experts" I've met do exactly that, plus a little firewall setup and maybe some reading on Symantec.com. And really, that's all it takes. Be proactive, keep your head down, be skeptical, be willing to research and perform a few stupid steps, and you're 90% as well off as some ultra-paranoid security think tank with 10% of the effort.
The security industry is such a crock. It's founded entirely on FUD (hence why there's anti-virus software for macs, pocket pcs and other platforms that don't have problems with viable in-the-open viruses). Computer security itself is actually very simple:
Update your software, to prevent known bugs from becoming problems.
Make sure you know and control all the entry points to your computer so others can't exploit things you don't know about (e.g. use a separate hardware firewall, don't trust floppies, don't buy software from weird guys on the street).
Be wary of everything. Don't give your information until you're sure you trust who you're giving it to. Don't open a file unless you trust who you got it from. Even then, don't trust an email you weren't expecting if it doesn't seem like something your associate would send you.
Finally, don't trust anything anybody on the internet says. It might be true...but you're better off looking into it yourself OUTSIDE of the internet. You know what they say: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. A simple phone call would prove that your Nigerian scammer is, in fact, a scammer. Make the call.
I think it's funny how Linux fans give a smaller percentage to Macs, while Mac folks give a smaller percentage to Linux. Funny because, even while we rage against Microsoft making up statistics to make itself look good, we do exactly the same shit.
By the by, the percentage of OS broken down on my laptop is 50% Windows, 50% Fedora Core 2, 100% Mac OS X. I'll wait for you to do the math.
Of course, you should remember that those connotations probably don't exist in Japanese, and that's who they use the word they use.
Symbolism from one country doesn't always work in another...a creative writing teacher from Mexico once told me a story about the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." In Mexico, the word for eggs (juevos) is also a slang term for a man's testicles...so when he heard that phrase for the first time as a boy, he replied "But that's where God put them!"
I'll consider it, but a Textpad macro wouldn't be a great format. If I did post something, it'd be this database migrator I wrote...which does all that I mentioned and more.
Oh, they'll figure out who did it. It just might take them a while, since when they're interrogating suspects they can only ask questions in the form of an answer.
Interrogator: This man leaked the ending of the Ken Jennings winning streak.
Suspect: It wasn't me!
Interrogator: *sigh* For the last time, it's "Who is "not me?""
I came home the other day and there was a message on my answering machine from James Earl Jones. It was eerie -- he talked for like three minutes about how my DSL was now activated and who I should call if I had any trouble, but the poor digital quality of the answering machine meant he sounded just like Vader. I expected him to say some shit about "You don't know the power of the Broadband" or "Obi Wan never told you what happened to your cablemodem."
Of course he did, unless you believe that "Magic Blaster" theory Oliver Stone was touting...
(Han shooting first was what made his character. Having him shoot at the same time reduces the effectiveness of his story and makes his change from self righteous smuggler to selfless statesman less impressive)
Oh please. The only advantage Star Wars geeks have over Star Trek geeks is that they (okay, we) can get laid. Chicks dig Star Wars too. Maybe not as much or on as visceral a level, but come on -- every girl has swooned over Han, Luke or Lando. Play your cards right, don't mention the names and species of each alien in Mos Eisley cantina, and you're in.
I know exactly what you are talking about. My point is, if you can make a clever little report in Access in 5 minutes, you can make a more robust report in Visual Studio.NET in 10 minutes. As opposed to several hours doing it all by hand.
Seriously...VS.NET has a visual database layout engine that's better than Access and the ability to bind datasets retrieved from this engine to just about any control you can think of, visually, without writing a line of code if you don't want to. If you do want to, you have speed and complete flexibility on your side. Between Server Explorer and the DataGrid control, there is no reason a regular coder should be using Access.
On the other hand, writing the code to make a database connection and display a window in ASM would take you several days. The instruction set and tools provided are much too primitive for such specialized high level use. Do you see the difference? If you can do something in a more robust manner by taking an extra ten minutes, you should probably do it. If it will take an extra hour, you might want to do it. But taking days is pure stupidity...I can't even believe you made the comparison. But perhaps you didn't realize that VS.NET had Access-like tools, in which case what I posted would have seemed pretty absurd to you, as well.
Yes, it exists. Yes, it's on par with Access. But it's also a pile of shit and if I catch you using it, I'll punch you in the neck. Bad PowerBuilder apps make bad Access apps look like fucking Photoshop. I'm dealing with one right now that has a function which pops up a grey box with the top half of an OK button in it. Clicking the OK button crashes the machine. What the fuck kind of RAD tool lets you build faster, buggier interfaces?
Get you a C# book and start reading. I understand the desire for lightweight database access...but you're better off with the flexibility of DataBinding in ADO.NET (and most of the db tools in the.NET GUI are pretty good...we had a developer who didn't know SQL and he did all his stuff in the IDE, it was almost as good as what I'd write as a 5 year Transact "veteran").
Without problems, you're right. But the changes aren't that great. We do primary development on MS SQL Server (it's easier than Sybase, because Sybase doesn't tell you the syntax of the proc you just wrote is wrong or references non existant fields or tables until you RUN the script. MS has a pre-processor) and I'm the guy who makes sure things run on Sybase. Basically, I do all the compatibility work in a single Textpad Macro. It's actually sort of simple:
1) Strip out the SET statements referencing ANSI_NULLS 2) Convert Niladic function names (e.g. CURRENT_USER -> USER) 3) Add Set DATE_FORMAT mdy, because the default in Sybase is ymd. 4) Find strings unicode strings and strip off the N' 5) Make sure all JOINS have their ON clause directly after themselves...MS lets you nest them, which I think makes for a better looking statement 6) Make sure the retarded VB developer didn't declare all his variables "@foo AS Integer", illegal syntax with illegal datatypes that MS SQL Server would fix for you. 7) Fix the IDENTITY syntax (basically, removing the step and start-at values) on CREATE TABLE 8) Remove ADD CONSTRAINTS that are really defaults or primary keys, and move them to ALTER TABLE ADD DEFAULTs 9) UNION ALL statements don't have column names during parsing in Sybase, so you can't do ORDER BY id_name, you have to do ORDER BY column_number. I think this is cleaner anyway, and it lets you change the name of the column more easily (can be important with ADO.NET, when mapping datasets) 10) Table variables don't work so hot in Sybase. I just create temp tables with hashmark names, same idea with a little less performance.
And I think that's it. Not that bad, really, and the script you end up with is comaptible with both MS SQL Server AND Sybase! I just finished a program that (unlike MS SQL Server) doesn't add crap like this to its scripts, thus making it trivial for us to port our apps back and forth.
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Like that extreme propulsion system that drives comets?
Dark Matter is a theoretical concept we as to yet have not seen or detected. Thus, it does seem similar to "ether" and serves the same purpose, albeit fitting much more nicely into explanations.
I prefer the equally possible explanation -- that gravity is not linear, and performs differently at large distances than it does at small ones. This can explain the effect of dark matter without all the flubberyjubbery of matter that can't be seen and can't be detected.
True that. Admitting uncertainty is the first step of science..."we don't know for sure why this is, so we'll propose a hypothesis, test it, and if the results don't clarify anything, we'll propose another one."
I don't know why people are shocked, or take it as a sign of supernatural causes every time a scientist "isn't sure." They're never sure. If they were sure, they wouldn't be scientists. Science takes a certain amount of confidence in a possibility, but being "sure" is the first step towards fudging data that's inexplicable. The universe is infinitely large and thus infinitely complex, and we'd only been empirically studying it for a few thousand years. Most of our in-depth insights have taken place in the past 200 years, and many clarifications and exceptions have taken place in the past 50, and even the past 20.
Scientists have a notoriously matter-of-fact attitude that leads some people to believe that science believes itself to be infallible. It doesn't. But due to the need for strict controls, even on language, to avoid confusion between scientists, even false and preposterous assumptions need to be stated matter-of-factly. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers...they just claim to have some very realistic (and repeatable) ones.
Well, the label is an identifier, not an advertisement. If your car is a piece of shit and says "Bill's Used Cars," Bill's not making any money. Same with ratty old Nikes.
When I bought my car, it came with a sticker on it. They gave me shitty service. I put a "Sucks!" sticker after their logo. I felt better.
But the inverse works, too. Some very bad people can do some very good things in committee. Some companies can do nice things in the interest of making money (such as AOL subsidizing the cost to produce Winamp and Mozilla).
Hating an organization JUST because it's an organize is stupid. If a corporation does things you like, it is in your interest to try and go with them wherever you can. I deal with this all the time...we have a supplier that has really high managed hosting rates, and despite OWNING a managed hosting business myself, we went with that supplier -- because they really helped us out last year.
Back on topic, Rio makes money on these things. Buying up a ton of them, Rio makes a ton of money. Who loses? CompactFlash manufacturers, is who....and not, I'm sure, by a whole lot since no company (the real market for compactflash micro drives) would ever okay the purchase and destruction of a ton of mp3 players.
Finally, somebody who knows how to RTFSB!
I just say, "Yeah honey, I've always thought your tits were too small and saggy. I say you get a second job and fix them up nice. Get me a beer."
See, it's like a lottery. The coolness of the remote possibility of success is worth the probability of losing, and having to sleep on the couch for a week.
The site had Dutch text, isn't that wierd?
Don't mock the TI-89. That's what they're using to serve this article.
Well, here's the thing. I do carry a balance -- my Visa rate is lower than the cost of personal loans and I put my laptop on it. But I realized that my easily accessible revolving credit, thanks to both the Visa and the Discover, was well over $20,000. Meaning I looked bloated on paper and if god forbid something happened to my cards, I'd have to fight with two companies over a huge sum. I had to cancel one or the other, the Discover had a bigger rate, was acceptable at fewer places and would not let me lower my available credit below $5000, so I had to drop it.
I replaced it with a nice $2000 limit AmEx Blue card (for auto emergencies). The card has a super low rate, but really I got it because I am impressed by shiny objects. And that hologram sure is shiny.
If I remember correctly, rental houses pay a great deal more for their stock than you, the home viewer. And they're guaranteed to buy a certain high number of new releases at this higher price thanks to the ever-so-popular "In stock Guarantee" they offer their client. Even considering that these video rental houses sell their overstock cheaper than new movies to customers, the film production companies are still making out very well.
"P2P" could be very lucrative for the publishing houses if they get their deals right. Some will hold out, sure...but this is not that different from the VOD services offered by cable companies, and those have proven to be very profitable.
This is what you get when you outsource your cancellations department to a copy of Eliza.
Incidentally, the most fun cancellation experience I've ever had was when I tried to cancel my Discover card. The guy made me an offer which was, honestly, very good, and I would have gone with it had I not already consolidated all my debt onto a different card. I told him I wasn't interested. He asks "Why aren't you interested in getting a better deal?" I said, "Look, I agree with you that it's a better deal. But now you're trying to sell me on it, and in the process you're making me feel stupid. I'd rather not do business with a company that tries to make me feel stupid, I'm just an asshole like that." I was cancelled and off the phone in fifteen seconds.
Nowadays, you just gotta be rude, man. It saves you a lot of hassle. Being polite to phone folks is playing right into their hands. Fuck it, you'll never see or hear this guy again, insult him and his entire worldview if it gets him off your phone a little quicker. The sanity you save might be your own.
Oh, that would work, but it would be APPEASING the spammers. Modern government can't open the door of appeasement. No, far better to raid some third world software development house that has nothing to do with spam, kick the shit out the bastards and hope it stands as a warning to everybody else.
The security industry is such a crock. It's founded entirely on FUD (hence why there's anti-virus software for macs, pocket pcs and other platforms that don't have problems with viable in-the-open viruses). Computer security itself is actually very simple:
Update your software, to prevent known bugs from becoming problems.
Make sure you know and control all the entry points to your computer so others can't exploit things you don't know about (e.g. use a separate hardware firewall, don't trust floppies, don't buy software from weird guys on the street).
Be wary of everything. Don't give your information until you're sure you trust who you're giving it to. Don't open a file unless you trust who you got it from. Even then, don't trust an email you weren't expecting if it doesn't seem like something your associate would send you.
Finally, don't trust anything anybody on the internet says. It might be true...but you're better off looking into it yourself OUTSIDE of the internet. You know what they say: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. A simple phone call would prove that your Nigerian scammer is, in fact, a scammer. Make the call.
I think it's funny how Linux fans give a smaller percentage to Macs, while Mac folks give a smaller percentage to Linux. Funny because, even while we rage against Microsoft making up statistics to make itself look good, we do exactly the same shit.
By the by, the percentage of OS broken down on my laptop is 50% Windows, 50% Fedora Core 2, 100% Mac OS X. I'll wait for you to do the math.
Of course, you should remember that those connotations probably don't exist in Japanese, and that's who they use the word they use.
Symbolism from one country doesn't always work in another...a creative writing teacher from Mexico once told me a story about the phrase "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." In Mexico, the word for eggs (juevos) is also a slang term for a man's testicles...so when he heard that phrase for the first time as a boy, he replied "But that's where God put them!"
I'll consider it, but a Textpad macro wouldn't be a great format. If I did post something, it'd be this database migrator I wrote...which does all that I mentioned and more.
Oh, they'll figure out who did it. It just might take them a while, since when they're interrogating suspects they can only ask questions in the form of an answer.
Interrogator: This man leaked the ending of the Ken Jennings winning streak.
Suspect: It wasn't me!
Interrogator: *sigh* For the last time, it's "Who is "not me?""
I came home the other day and there was a message on my answering machine from James Earl Jones. It was eerie -- he talked for like three minutes about how my DSL was now activated and who I should call if I had any trouble, but the poor digital quality of the answering machine meant he sounded just like Vader. I expected him to say some shit about "You don't know the power of the Broadband" or "Obi Wan never told you what happened to your cablemodem."
Of course he did, unless you believe that "Magic Blaster" theory Oliver Stone was touting...
(Han shooting first was what made his character. Having him shoot at the same time reduces the effectiveness of his story and makes his change from self righteous smuggler to selfless statesman less impressive)
Oh please. The only advantage Star Wars geeks have over Star Trek geeks is that they (okay, we) can get laid. Chicks dig Star Wars too. Maybe not as much or on as visceral a level, but come on -- every girl has swooned over Han, Luke or Lando. Play your cards right, don't mention the names and species of each alien in Mos Eisley cantina, and you're in.
May the force be with you.
I know exactly what you are talking about. My point is, if you can make a clever little report in Access in 5 minutes, you can make a more robust report in Visual Studio .NET in 10 minutes. As opposed to several hours doing it all by hand.
Seriously...VS.NET has a visual database layout engine that's better than Access and the ability to bind datasets retrieved from this engine to just about any control you can think of, visually, without writing a line of code if you don't want to. If you do want to, you have speed and complete flexibility on your side. Between Server Explorer and the DataGrid control, there is no reason a regular coder should be using Access.
On the other hand, writing the code to make a database connection and display a window in ASM would take you several days. The instruction set and tools provided are much too primitive for such specialized high level use. Do you see the difference? If you can do something in a more robust manner by taking an extra ten minutes, you should probably do it. If it will take an extra hour, you might want to do it. But taking days is pure stupidity...I can't even believe you made the comparison. But perhaps you didn't realize that VS.NET had Access-like tools, in which case what I posted would have seemed pretty absurd to you, as well.
Oh what, you mean PowerBuilder?
.NET GUI are pretty good...we had a developer who didn't know SQL and he did all his stuff in the IDE, it was almost as good as what I'd write as a 5 year Transact "veteran").
Yes, it exists. Yes, it's on par with Access. But it's also a pile of shit and if I catch you using it, I'll punch you in the neck. Bad PowerBuilder apps make bad Access apps look like fucking Photoshop. I'm dealing with one right now that has a function which pops up a grey box with the top half of an OK button in it. Clicking the OK button crashes the machine. What the fuck kind of RAD tool lets you build faster, buggier interfaces?
Get you a C# book and start reading. I understand the desire for lightweight database access...but you're better off with the flexibility of DataBinding in ADO.NET (and most of the db tools in the
When I first started using Sybase, I thought the same thing you did. I even did a google on "Sybase sucks."
22 results.
So then I googled for "SQL server sucks."
70 results.
Finally, to be fair to Open Source, I did a query on "MySQL Sucks."
599 records found and I agree with all of them. But hey, at least you get the source to that pile of shit.
BTW, "PostgreSQL Sucks?" 17 records, man. And they're all about installation on Windows, which actually blows.
Without problems, you're right. But the changes aren't that great. We do primary development on MS SQL Server (it's easier than Sybase, because Sybase doesn't tell you the syntax of the proc you just wrote is wrong or references non existant fields or tables until you RUN the script. MS has a pre-processor) and I'm the guy who makes sure things run on Sybase. Basically, I do all the compatibility work in a single Textpad Macro. It's actually sort of simple:
1) Strip out the SET statements referencing ANSI_NULLS
2) Convert Niladic function names (e.g. CURRENT_USER -> USER)
3) Add Set DATE_FORMAT mdy, because the default in Sybase is ymd.
4) Find strings unicode strings and strip off the N'
5) Make sure all JOINS have their ON clause directly after themselves...MS lets you nest them, which I think makes for a better looking statement
6) Make sure the retarded VB developer didn't declare all his variables "@foo AS Integer", illegal syntax with illegal datatypes that MS SQL Server would fix for you.
7) Fix the IDENTITY syntax (basically, removing the step and start-at values) on CREATE TABLE
8) Remove ADD CONSTRAINTS that are really defaults or primary keys, and move them to ALTER TABLE ADD DEFAULTs
9) UNION ALL statements don't have column names during parsing in Sybase, so you can't do ORDER BY id_name, you have to do ORDER BY column_number. I think this is cleaner anyway, and it lets you change the name of the column more easily (can be important with ADO.NET, when mapping datasets)
10) Table variables don't work so hot in Sybase. I just create temp tables with hashmark names, same idea with a little less performance.
And I think that's it. Not that bad, really, and the script you end up with is comaptible with both MS SQL Server AND Sybase! I just finished a program that (unlike MS SQL Server) doesn't add crap like this to its scripts, thus making it trivial for us to port our apps back and forth.