It's not fair to point out problems with time units in the metric system - they were just left as they were, and since US uses (thank God) the same time units it doesn't matter for the purposes of moving to the metric system.
As for the rest of your post - yes there are natural interpretations that can be assigned to the old English units, but it doesn't mean they're just meaningful. For instance freezing point of water is much more intuitive and practical reference point than a "cold winter in Gdansk" or a body temperature of one slightly overheated dude.
And for me, the most maddening aspect of the US measurements is the multiplicity of units that can not be easily interconverted: feet and miles for starters, liquid ounces and gallons, etc. That's just plain inconvenient, which is exactly what the British themselves have realized some time ago and switched.
And while the decimal English units are being used in some specialized areas the vast majority of the consumer and construction products use fractions. One has to constantly convert between 13/16th and 5/8th or such. One would think this would make our population math buffs, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.
Now this is an iffy theory at best. Instead of an extended argument, I'll just suggest one example - Venus. It has a very dense cloud cover that reflects most of the sunlight (tire smoke will absorb a lot more), yet the surface of the plane is insanely hot and chemically reactive. How it got to be this way is not clear, but this certainly shows that a reflective atmosphere doesn't always result in cooler conditions.
I've read through parts of it briefly (skipping a lot). It's quite entertaining. There was an anonymous mailing list about this project. They've talked John Young into being the frontman for the site (domain name registration, basic contact, etc.). After that there's endless self-congratulating discussion about how cool things are going to be. Since there is no real technical discussion shown it appears that they were not in the process of actually developing anything. Although they claim to have a huge number of leaked documents in store already, no evidence of that was given. Instead, this degenerated into overly ambitious and suspect fundrasing effort.
At that point John Young pointed out that instead of trying to raise millions on empty promises, they should do the actual implementation and work hard for a year or two on a shoe-string budget to prove that they are real. As a sarcastic ploy he suggested that if their goal is to fleece CIA (which is most likely to cough up $5M they're trying to raise), than they should ask for more. Astonishingly enough they took the joke seriously, and said they'll try:)
And John posted their mailing list discussion to the public (without the real names/addresses, which he said will come next), accusing them of simply being a scam to raise money.
Why? Because a defected spy was assassinated? That's part of the spy game - defectors frequently end up on a hit list, especially if they continue to be involved in the shady affairs. While I certainly think the whole affair is barbaric, it's hardly unusual. Perhaps the method of poisoning is, but that should raise more curiosity than alarm.
As mitochondrial DNA is inherited strictly along the female, it's entirely likely that both of the studies are correct: the initial divergence occurred 500k years ago, followed by mixing of (male) Neanderthal genome into H. sapiens 30k years ago.
>Sanctions only seem to work if the people in charge of the target country give a damn about the citizenry or economy. If all they care about is being in control, rather than being in charge of a nation that actually has some prestige, they'll just siphon off the country's own supplies to make up the difference.
Common, we're talking about politicians here. With almost no exceptions they all care more about being in control rather than nations prestige. Sanctions work only if they threaten the internal power of the aforementioned politician - either by electorial or more extreme means.
Great reference! Here's a part that resonated particularly strong for me:
With the threat of communism looming, Hitler's government persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to authorize several emergency powers in the Reichstag Fire Decree, which (among other things) suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights. The Decree enabled Hitler to have the Communist Party's offices raided and its representatives arrested, effectively neutering them as a political force.
Much of the todays retoric refers to the these periods of German history as seeming madness, but it's sobering to see how this was achieved by deliberate and remarkably familiar steps of media compains, FUD and pacts with specialized interest groups (i.e. Catholic church). I wish these aspects of history were more emphasized in schools, instead of devoting time to praises of the past kings.
It's getting harder and harder to find open wifi spots that one can use while on the road. And I am not talking sinister stuff, I am talking plain'ol check my e-mail, check the news kind of access.
Part of the reason are the computer-savvy advisors like you whose only recommendation is to lock down the network. The whole thing. Immediately.
Perhaps you could've instead recommended him to secure his LAN while providing limited net access for others. This way there may be a chance that down the road all of us won't be forced to pay outrageous fees for basic network access like we already have to in the airports.
I'd rather use linux, but need to run Adobe Acrobat (not the reader, the full version). Damn thing doesn't work under Wine/CrossOffice (as far as I could tell). So that leaves me with virtualization option. What's the easiest option to get it to run? VMware?
And this is just an illustration of what some posts here are claiming: virtualization is a very crude way of solving a problem that many applications aren't programmed to support existing OSs & hardware setups.
>You and Carter might wish that Bush was re-elected because there is a war going on, but the fact of the matter is that the Doomocrats just aren't appealing to most Americans. True enough, however it may be that in 2008 votes will go not to the "appealing" party, but to the least appaling one.
Well perhaps you're forgetting the provisions of plan R, sir. Warrants, searches and arrests can be done in secret, so if they screw up, we won't have to know about it.
>They are one of the 800 lb gorillas on the block, yet unlike RIAA/MPAA/Apple/MS etc. who sue individuals, they are working constantly to get sued so that they can help set precedent.
If the intent is really just to set a precedent, there's no point of doing it with so much cash on board. It's much safer to assist a smaller company that's being sued - that limits your risks to a relatively modest net worth of that small company.
I think the reasoning is different - Google is trying to do undertake large-scale, sensible projects that have been previously hapered for legal/polictical reasons. They are doing this with an understanding that they can 1. make profit off these projects 2. wrestle their way through the lawsuits (which, by the way, would also require massive undertaking on the plaintiffs' side, hence will be less likely).
While overall, I think this is a positive development, it pains me to think that it takes Googol dollars to make it possible to deliver sensible services.
This is what's confusing to me. There were plenty of good window managers before KDE and Gnome came about, and it seems like most of the world has forgotten them. But being free of the extra weight, they're just as good, if not better today.
I use a stripped down configuration of WindowMaker (no window borders, extensive key bindings), which clearly allows me to use the mouse only when it really makes sense. It's so obviously faster, I am surprised why it isn't a standard practice to go through such customization steps.
The real value of Gnome/KDE is of course in the libraries and applications that use them, but it's a mystery to me how quickly linux community has lost track of separation between window manager and everything else. It's not WindowsXP yet, but that's definitely the direction. Perhaps educating users (and your geek friends) on the importance of separation and choice at every level of architecture is the proper thing to do.
What's an OED? Also, I always found that subtle emphasis embedded in the text can be very helpful for comprehending what's being said. Reading across the page to get the gist of it, and then drilling down to details if necessary is a useful thing to do. Traditionally, I guess, one would write something like a summary paragraph. Are there studies of modern alternatives?
The performance demands may not be driving the market, but there's surely plenty of hardware and software features that they could explore. For instance, until recently, consumer sound cards didn't support digital audio inputs/outputs. That drove me to buy a new soundcard. There's also a ton of functionality they could provide in terms of recording/mixing/ripping/etc. Creative could've improved their sales have they been quick to provide consumer with such tools, but they were too keen on protecting the record companies. For instance, my Audigy sound card can play DVD audio, but will shut off digital out when doing so. My stereo system is hooked up to that digital out, but Creative says I shouldn't be listening to it there. So I don't feel sorry for them - in my opinion, they could do much better job.
I also thought that government was getting carried away serving its own selfish interests, but then majority voted to reelect Bush. So the people have spoken. Now shut up and buy another DVD.
This is Massachusetts, so cough up your cash to pay for what's supposed to be municipal wireless, then enoy a friendly tunnell toll or a horrendous cab surcharge to get to the city, and do your best to support the Big Dig.
Once you take your company public, things like this become public knowledge. He shouldn't be touchy about that. He may have scorned their remarks about his wife - involving family members is not really kosher, although once again, you should' be surprised at this if you bring your wife to a political fund raser.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfair - Javalobby is a community forum that has existed for ages. Don't bash it if you don't know what it is.
Well, IMHO the added resolution doesn't make a difference .. 62 or 63 degrees? It's well within the measurement error of your window thermometer.
It's not fair to point out problems with time units in the metric system - they were just left as they were, and since US uses (thank God) the same time units it doesn't matter for the purposes of moving to the metric system.
As for the rest of your post - yes there are natural interpretations that can be assigned to the old English units, but it doesn't mean they're just meaningful. For instance freezing point of water is much more intuitive and practical reference point than a "cold winter in Gdansk" or a body temperature of one slightly overheated dude.
And for me, the most maddening aspect of the US measurements is the multiplicity of units that can not be easily interconverted: feet and miles for starters, liquid ounces and gallons, etc. That's just plain inconvenient, which is exactly what the British themselves have realized some time ago and switched.
And while the decimal English units are being used in some specialized areas the vast majority of the consumer and construction products use fractions. One has to constantly convert between 13/16th and 5/8th or such. One would think this would make our population math buffs, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.
Now this is an iffy theory at best. Instead of an extended argument, I'll just suggest one example - Venus. It has a very dense cloud cover that reflects most of the sunlight (tire smoke will absorb a lot more), yet the surface of the plane is insanely hot and chemically reactive. How it got to be this way is not clear, but this certainly shows that a reflective atmosphere doesn't always result in cooler conditions.
I've read through parts of it briefly (skipping a lot). It's quite entertaining. There was an anonymous mailing list about this project. They've talked John Young into being the frontman for the site (domain name registration, basic contact, etc.). After that there's endless self-congratulating discussion about how cool things are going to be. Since there is no real technical discussion shown it appears that they were not in the process of actually developing anything. Although they claim to have a huge number of leaked documents in store already, no evidence of that was given. Instead, this degenerated into overly ambitious and suspect fundrasing effort. :)
At that point John Young pointed out that instead of trying to raise millions on empty promises, they should do the actual implementation and work hard for a year or two on a shoe-string budget to prove that they are real. As a sarcastic ploy he suggested that if their goal is to fleece CIA (which is most likely to cough up $5M they're trying to raise), than they should ask for more. Astonishingly enough they took the joke seriously, and said they'll try
And John posted their mailing list discussion to the public (without the real names/addresses, which he said will come next), accusing them of simply being a scam to raise money.
Are you sure he isn't just referring to the redshift ? This would have nothing to do with the types of starts observed.
Why? Because a defected spy was assassinated? That's part of the spy game - defectors frequently end up on a hit list, especially if they continue to be involved in the shady affairs.
While I certainly think the whole affair is barbaric, it's hardly unusual. Perhaps the method of poisoning is, but that should raise more curiosity than alarm.
I've added some more informative tags to the video. Nice site, thanks! Youtube is just one step away from myspace, and imeem is quite refreshing.
As mitochondrial DNA is inherited strictly along the female, it's entirely likely that both of the studies are correct: the initial divergence occurred 500k years ago, followed by mixing of (male) Neanderthal genome into H. sapiens 30k years ago.
>Sanctions only seem to work if the people in charge of the target country give a damn about the citizenry or economy. If all they care about is being in control, rather than being in charge of a nation that actually has some prestige, they'll just siphon off the country's own supplies to make up the difference.
Common, we're talking about politicians here. With almost no exceptions they all care more about being in control rather than nations prestige. Sanctions work only if they threaten the internal power of the aforementioned politician - either by electorial or more extreme means.
Great reference! Here's a part that resonated particularly strong for me:
With the threat of communism looming, Hitler's government persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to authorize several emergency powers in the Reichstag Fire Decree, which (among other things) suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights. The Decree enabled Hitler to have the Communist Party's offices raided and its representatives arrested, effectively neutering them as a political force.
Much of the todays retoric refers to the these periods of German history as seeming madness, but it's sobering to see how this was achieved by deliberate and remarkably familiar steps of media compains, FUD and pacts with specialized interest groups (i.e. Catholic church). I wish these aspects of history were more emphasized in schools, instead of devoting time to praises of the past kings.
It's getting harder and harder to find open wifi spots that one can use while on the road. And I am not talking sinister stuff, I am talking plain'ol check my e-mail, check the news kind of access.
Part of the reason are the computer-savvy advisors like you whose only recommendation is to lock down the network. The whole thing. Immediately.
Perhaps you could've instead recommended him to secure his LAN while providing limited net access for others. This way there may be a chance that down the road all of us won't be forced to pay outrageous fees for basic network access like we already have to in the airports.
I'd rather use linux, but need to run Adobe Acrobat (not the reader, the full version). Damn thing doesn't work under Wine/CrossOffice (as far as I could tell). So that leaves me with virtualization option. What's the easiest option to get it to run? VMware?
And this is just an illustration of what some posts here are claiming: virtualization is a very crude way of solving a problem that many applications aren't programmed to support existing OSs & hardware setups.
Oh, I can see it now... .. *clippy appears* ... "I think you meant www.microsoft.com, redirecting" :)
www.mozilla.org
I hear our president gets them for free, with his morning coffee :)
>You and Carter might wish that Bush was re-elected because there is a war going on, but the fact of the matter is that the Doomocrats just aren't appealing to most Americans.
True enough, however it may be that in 2008 votes will go not to the "appealing" party, but to the least appaling one.
Well perhaps you're forgetting the provisions of plan R, sir.
Warrants, searches and arrests can be done in secret, so if they screw up, we won't have to know about it.
>They are one of the 800 lb gorillas on the block, yet unlike RIAA/MPAA/Apple/MS etc. who sue individuals, they are working constantly to get sued so that they can help set precedent.
If the intent is really just to set a precedent, there's no point of doing it with so much cash on board. It's much safer to assist a smaller company that's being sued - that limits your risks to a relatively modest net worth of that small company.
I think the reasoning is different - Google is trying to do undertake large-scale, sensible projects that have been previously hapered for legal/polictical reasons. They are doing this with an understanding that they can 1. make profit off these projects 2. wrestle their way through the lawsuits (which, by the way, would also require massive undertaking on the plaintiffs' side, hence will be less likely).
While overall, I think this is a positive development, it pains me to think that it takes Googol dollars to make it possible to deliver sensible services.
This is what's confusing to me. There were plenty of good window managers before KDE and Gnome came about, and it seems like most of the world has forgotten them. But being free of the extra weight, they're just as good, if not better today.
I use a stripped down configuration of WindowMaker (no window borders, extensive key bindings), which clearly allows me to use the mouse only when it really makes sense. It's so obviously faster, I am surprised why it isn't a standard practice to go through such customization steps.
The real value of Gnome/KDE is of course in the libraries and applications that use them, but it's a mystery to me how quickly linux community has lost track of separation between window manager and everything else. It's not WindowsXP yet, but that's definitely the direction. Perhaps educating users (and your geek friends) on the importance of separation and choice at every level of architecture is the proper thing to do.
You'd think so, but then we've read about anyone from real terrorists to CIA operatives get nabbed through tracking plain ol' cell phones!
What's an OED?
Also, I always found that subtle emphasis embedded in the text can be very helpful for comprehending what's being said. Reading across the page to get the gist of it, and then drilling down to details if necessary is a useful thing to do. Traditionally, I guess, one would write something like a summary paragraph. Are there studies of modern alternatives?
The performance demands may not be driving the market, but there's surely plenty of hardware and software features that they could explore.
For instance, until recently, consumer sound cards didn't support digital audio inputs/outputs. That drove me to buy a new soundcard. There's also a ton of functionality they could provide in terms of recording/mixing/ripping/etc.
Creative could've improved their sales have they been quick to provide consumer with such tools, but they were too keen on protecting the record companies. For instance, my Audigy sound card can play DVD audio, but will shut off digital out when doing so. My stereo system is hooked up to that digital out, but Creative says I shouldn't be listening to it there.
So I don't feel sorry for them - in my opinion, they could do much better job.
I also thought that government was getting carried away serving its own selfish interests, but then majority voted to reelect Bush. So the people have spoken. Now shut up and buy another DVD.
This is Massachusetts, so cough up your cash to pay for what's supposed to be municipal wireless, then enoy a friendly tunnell toll or a horrendous cab surcharge to get to the city, and do your best to support the Big Dig.
Once you take your company public, things like this become public knowledge. He shouldn't be touchy about that. He may have scorned their remarks about his wife - involving family members is not really kosher, although once again, you should' be surprised at this if you bring your wife to a political fund raser.