The article assumes that the we cannot get rid of paper because of paper's advantages in reading and composition/designing. It ignores the advantages of paperless technology accrued during transfer and for reference purposes.
I work for a company that produces intranets for franchise companies. They realize huge savings in printing and shipping costs by making their dozens of manuals and ad materials available through their intranets. If the sub-organizations want hard copies they can print them. That's the shipping savings. However, the savings in printing costs are not simply transfered to the end user, because the end user only prints a small fraction of these documents, because they are there for reference not cover to cover reading.
Documents that are hand read by every end user do not lend themselves well to paperless technology. However, documents that must be made available for use but in actuality are only used occasionally and even then in a piecemeal fashion, can generate significant savings if distributed through paperless means rather than traditional routes.
The parent is a completely inaccurate depiction of the modern video game industry. All game companies sell their hardware at a relatively steep loss. They make their money on selling the license to develop games for their hardware.
If Java or a similar technology allowed software to be run cross platform, then two things would most likely happen. First, hardware prices would increase because the game companies would need to make a profit on them since licensing won't work with open specifications and toolkits. Second, game prices would drop because of the removal of two major associated costs: porting and license fees.
The increase in hardware prices and drop in software prices would probably balance out overall and the only real effect noticed by the consumer would be a greater variety of available games for their chosen console.
The human brain is surprisingly adept at adapting to changes in sensory input. There was a fairly famous experiment in which a neurobiologist wore a pair of glasses that turned the views upside down. It was living hell on him for two weeks (he wore them 24 hours a day) and then he woke up and could see absolutely normally. The brain rewired itself to switch the views back to what was usable. When the researcher took off the glasses after that, his vision was upside down just like it had been before the glasses. It took two weeks for his vision to switch back after taking off the glasses.
I don't have the reference info with me, but someone could probably find it fairly easily.
I agree. FindFast is the evil death nazi of windows systems. A few years back I had a computer that would grind to a halt every two hours on the dot for almost five minutes. If I was in something system intensive like a game, the machine would crash. When I saw findfast mentioned on a website, I disabled it and amazingly my computer worked. What is the point of tools that cripple your system for a benefit that they don't even tell you about?
Two things: First, the poster said he named them after the 'elements on the periodic table'. Isotopes are neither elements nor on the periodic table. Second, I assume that the poster meant the atomic number (sequential integers from 1 to 111) and not atomic weight.
The interesting part of the firefly thing was that all of the fireflys in a particular region of the jungle in Thailand (I think that was it) would start flashing right after sunset. Every night it only took about half an hour for all of the fireflys across hundreds of miles of jungle to be perfectly in sync with their flashing. Small world: I had a math professor in college who was good friends with the mathematician who did the research and wrote the paper on the firefly phenomenon.
I guess it's more a question of timeshifting vs archiving. I can see the use of a TiVo for archiving the episodes of a few shows that you really liked. It really does have VCRs beat solidly on that point.
However, besides taping the Sci-Fi Channel's Dune mini series, I virtually never use my VCR for anything but one shot time shifting. I.e., I'm going out for the night so I tape some show to watch the next day. I don't have any problem taping over that once I watch it.
There's just nothing on TV that I would like to archive, so in my case TiVo doesn't offer much more than a VCR except in price.
I own a VCR and not a Tivo (or anything similar) for very simple reasons that I think apply to a lot of other people as well.
A VCR costs about $100 and can play the stack of tapes I have sitting next to my TV. If I want to record something I buy a six hour tape for $2 and I'm good to go.
A Tivo on the other hand costs a couple hundred dollars and can only play back what you personally recorded on it. This means that the Tivo only has utility to people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV. That makes the big assumption of there being anything on TV worth recording at all. I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year. Once was to tape Buffy while I was at a concert, and the other time was to tape some CNN footage on Sept 11.
Just my $.02 on why I'll probably never get a Tivo, no matter how many whiz-bang features get added to it.
This article doesn't present anything more than the now cliched "well if just one percent of stars have planets and one percent of those are in a habitable zone and . .."
The only original take is that those 'one percents' are getting replaced with percentages actually based in reality.
Speculations like this used to be popular because astronomy was nowhere near the technology needed to actually see planets out there. If I remember correctly, the first true proof of planets around other stars occurred around 1995 when these first gas giants started to be detected.
With the detection methods getting better every year though, it's only a matter of time before we can directly detect terrestrial sized planets around other stars. That's the point where these statistical guesses get kind of silly.
"I bet there's a thousand planets out there!"
"Actually, there are 1422. We can just count them now."
I had a win98/mdk8.1 dual boot that died similarly. I didn't tweak the mandrake settings at all. All I used it for was tinkering around with perl and c++. One day it refused to boot into mandrake anymore, claiming that the partitions were damaged. I tried using the mandrake install (Disk Drake I think) to reinstall mandrake just in the partition it was already in, but the utility claimed the partitions were completely fscked and wanted to format the entire hard drive.
Thankfully, I was still able to boot into windows and was able to get all my files off before wiping the drive.
Now it dual boots Windows and RH7.2. Two months and no problems at all.
As I get older, I start to judge books by how thin they are. Who has the time to page through a thousand pages of verbose crap. I gained this bias after building an Access 97 application based on the "Access 97 Bible". 1500 pages!!! Who has the time?
It really depends on the book. I got the Linux Programming Bible a couple weeks ago and it is great, though weighing in at well over a thousand pages. But to relate it to your point, it's good because it acts like the small books. There's a 150 pages on Shell Programming, then 150 on C, then 150 on Perl, then 150 on C++, etc.
On the other hand, like you I learned Access 97 from one of those behemoths - I think it was one of the QUE series. That was a highly unproductive nightmare.
I agree that a lot of corporate culture likes the '$600 of software' on each computer, but they don't like actually paying for it. In fact, most of the time they never really paid $600 for the $600 of software. It came preloaded or in a bulk licensing scheme that knocked half the price off.
Free software can beat down this door by price tagging itself at a price equivalent to the commerical software, but only charging nominal fees in reality.
Those same corporate drones that like saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer' would absolutely love to be saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer, but I cut a deal to get it for $50.'
Wow. I have been with her four years, so this blunt jab actually shifted my perception a bit. The weird thing about losing someone after that long is that you still think of yourself as part of a 'we' even though you are now entirely an 'I'. I feel strangely free yet the freedom is strangely painful.
My fiancee is a neurobiologist. Not a marine biologist but close enough for government work. She just dumped me and I have officially turned to vodka for support. I would have first checked out the article but it has apparently been slashdotted. Therefore there is no solution but the alkihall solution. Cheers all, may your luck be better than mine,
stipe42
I've got a counter question then. I read quite a lot about Linux before I actually took the step of installing it and trying to use it instead of Windows. Before the install, I had assumed that Gnome apps and KDE apps only ran on Gnome and KDE respectively. Obviously this is not the case. What then is the difference between KDE apps and Gnome apps? Just an idle question.
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
Slashdot Mirror
The article assumes that the we cannot get rid of paper because of paper's advantages in reading and composition/designing. It ignores the advantages of paperless technology accrued during transfer and for reference purposes.
I work for a company that produces intranets for franchise companies. They realize huge savings in printing and shipping costs by making their dozens of manuals and ad materials available through their intranets. If the sub-organizations want hard copies they can print them. That's the shipping savings. However, the savings in printing costs are not simply transfered to the end user, because the end user only prints a small fraction of these documents, because they are there for reference not cover to cover reading.
Documents that are hand read by every end user do not lend themselves well to paperless technology. However, documents that must be made available for use but in actuality are only used occasionally and even then in a piecemeal fashion, can generate significant savings if distributed through paperless means rather than traditional routes.
stipe42
The parent is a completely inaccurate depiction of the modern video game industry. All game companies sell their hardware at a relatively steep loss. They make their money on selling the license to develop games for their hardware.
If Java or a similar technology allowed software to be run cross platform, then two things would most likely happen. First, hardware prices would increase because the game companies would need to make a profit on them since licensing won't work with open specifications and toolkits. Second, game prices would drop because of the removal of two major associated costs: porting and license fees.
The increase in hardware prices and drop in software prices would probably balance out overall and the only real effect noticed by the consumer would be a greater variety of available games for their chosen console.
stipe42
The human brain is surprisingly adept at adapting to changes in sensory input. There was a fairly famous experiment in which a neurobiologist wore a pair of glasses that turned the views upside down. It was living hell on him for two weeks (he wore them 24 hours a day) and then he woke up and could see absolutely normally. The brain rewired itself to switch the views back to what was usable. When the researcher took off the glasses after that, his vision was upside down just like it had been before the glasses. It took two weeks for his vision to switch back after taking off the glasses.
I don't have the reference info with me, but someone could probably find it fairly easily.
stipe42
Can't you see the superbowl ads now?
"Today I went to the movies, went to the grocery store, downloaded an mp3, and helped evil hackers steal money from the hands of starving musicians."
stipe42
I agree. FindFast is the evil death nazi of windows systems. A few years back I had a computer that would grind to a halt every two hours on the dot for almost five minutes. If I was in something system intensive like a game, the machine would crash. When I saw findfast mentioned on a website, I disabled it and amazingly my computer worked. What is the point of tools that cripple your system for a benefit that they don't even tell you about?
Two things:
First, the poster said he named them after the 'elements on the periodic table'. Isotopes are neither elements nor on the periodic table.
Second, I assume that the poster meant the atomic number (sequential integers from 1 to 111) and not atomic weight.
stipe42
Anyone with modpoints is allowed to mod you down because that is also protected as a form of free speech.
Remember, your freedom to speak does not imply a requirement for anyone else to listen.
stipe42
The interesting part of the firefly thing was that all of the fireflys in a particular region of the jungle in Thailand (I think that was it) would start flashing right after sunset. Every night it only took about half an hour for all of the fireflys across hundreds of miles of jungle to be perfectly in sync with their flashing. Small world: I had a math professor in college who was good friends with the mathematician who did the research and wrote the paper on the firefly phenomenon.
stipe42
Each shuttle flight costs $x, there are $n per year.
There are $m rich guys willing to pay $y each on average to go into space.
if($x*$n<$y*$m) {
$nasa{'selfsustaining'}=true;
}
stipe42
However, besides taping the Sci-Fi Channel's Dune mini series, I virtually never use my VCR for anything but one shot time shifting. I.e., I'm going out for the night so I tape some show to watch the next day. I don't have any problem taping over that once I watch it.
There's just nothing on TV that I would like to archive, so in my case TiVo doesn't offer much more than a VCR except in price.
stipe42
A VCR costs about $100 and can play the stack of tapes I have sitting next to my TV. If I want to record something I buy a six hour tape for $2 and I'm good to go.
A Tivo on the other hand costs a couple hundred dollars and can only play back what you personally recorded on it. This means that the Tivo only has utility to people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV. That makes the big assumption of there being anything on TV worth recording at all. I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year. Once was to tape Buffy while I was at a concert, and the other time was to tape some CNN footage on Sept 11.
Just my $.02 on why I'll probably never get a Tivo, no matter how many whiz-bang features get added to it.
stipe42
The only original take is that those 'one percents' are getting replaced with percentages actually based in reality.
Speculations like this used to be popular because astronomy was nowhere near the technology needed to actually see planets out there. If I remember correctly, the first true proof of planets around other stars occurred around 1995 when these first gas giants started to be detected.
With the detection methods getting better every year though, it's only a matter of time before we can directly detect terrestrial sized planets around other stars. That's the point where these statistical guesses get kind of silly.
"I bet there's a thousand planets out there!"
"Actually, there are 1422. We can just count them now."
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
I tried the rescue option. It told me that partitions were hosed and the only option was to wipe the entire hard drive and rewrite all the partitions.
Thankfully, I was still able to boot into windows and was able to get all my files off before wiping the drive.
Now it dual boots Windows and RH7.2. Two months and no problems at all.
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
Vaporware . . . chips so small they can be inhaled.
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
It really depends on the book. I got the Linux Programming Bible a couple weeks ago and it is great, though weighing in at well over a thousand pages. But to relate it to your point, it's good because it acts like the small books. There's a 150 pages on Shell Programming, then 150 on C, then 150 on Perl, then 150 on C++, etc.
On the other hand, like you I learned Access 97 from one of those behemoths - I think it was one of the QUE series. That was a highly unproductive nightmare.
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
well that war is so terrible - lest we should grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
Free software can beat down this door by price tagging itself at a price equivalent to the commerical software, but only charging nominal fees in reality.
Those same corporate drones that like saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer' would absolutely love to be saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer, but I cut a deal to get it for $50.'
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
My fiancee is a neurobiologist. Not a marine biologist but close enough for government work. She just dumped me and I have officially turned to vodka for support. I would have first checked out the article but it has apparently been slashdotted. Therefore there is no solution but the alkihall solution. Cheers all, may your luck be better than mine,
stipe42
I've got a counter question then. I read quite a lot about Linux before I actually took the step of installing it and trying to use it instead of Windows. Before the install, I had assumed that Gnome apps and KDE apps only ran on Gnome and KDE respectively. Obviously this is not the case. What then is the difference between KDE apps and Gnome apps? Just an idle question. stipe42 www.pcwatch.com