the life in Antarctica didn't begin there. It began in a more hospitable climate and adapted itself to those conditions over millions of years.
Panspermia is the very old idea that life can get seeded throughout
the universe, as some now think Earth life may have first originated
on Mars, and been seeded here via meteorites that originated on Mars.
Weird. Encryption devices are not just controlled, but they are
classed as "munitions" under US law.
Peter Junger, a professor of law, who taught a course,
"computers and the law", has an account of the steps he took
to make sure he could demonstrate an encryption program to
his students -- when he couldn't guarantee that none of them
were foreign students. This
first article is quite interesting. And there are
a number of interesting followups. Go to RISKS search page
and search for "Junger".
And here is another RISKS article entitled
My life as an international arms courier.
It is quite long -- but it is hilarious.
Matt Blaze, the author, worked for AT&T, and wanted to take a
new phone scrambler, to show some colleagues on a business
trip to Europe. He decided he would try to go through the
proper channels to take this device with him. Here are some of his final comments...
My conclusion from all this is that it just isn't possible for an
individual... Even having gone through
the process now, I still have no idea how to obtain, let alone file,
the proper forms... Technically
speaking, everyone with a laptop disk encryption program who travels
abroad is in violation of the law... Had I just put my telephone in
my suitcase without telling anyone instead of calling attention to
myself by trying to follow the rules, chances are no one would have
noticed or cared.
Unfortunately, however, these absurd rules carry the full force of
law, and one ignores them only at the risk of being prosecuted for
international arms trafficking... At the same time, anyone who is aware
of and who tries to follow the regulations is made to jump through
pointless hoops that are so obscure that even the people charged with
enforcing them don't know quite what to make of them.
My memory is playing tricks on me. My memory is that he was quietly
lead to cool his heels in a locked holding room, that he described
hearing the footfalls of a guy who looked like Joe Friday, whose
first words to him were, "So, are you the guy with the bomb?"
Mind you, these articles are from 1993 and 1995. Will you
write up your experiences for us?
Okay, here is
an article indicating how powerful the
Dragon is. Six million transistors, which the article says
makes it as powerful as a 486. That may be an underestimate.
The original Pentium was about 3.1 million transistors
according to sandpile.
6 million transistors is something like a tenth of the a P4,
a sixth of the K7, two-sevenths of a VIA cyrix III.
Here in Southern Ontario we have a toll expressway with no
toll-takers, and no toll-booths. Vehicles can exit or enter the
expressway at speed. Transponders are required for trucks, but
are optional for passenger vehicles. For vehicles without transponders
the system takes a picture of the liscence plate. People don't like
paying, of course, but it is very convenient.
Locals don't like that a new,
very conservative, "business friendly" provincial administration
came in, and sold the newly completed project to a private consortium,
for a song. But that is another story. Here is a history.
Everybody knows == A failure of imagination
on
Ozone Hole Splits in Two
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Everybody knows that any ozone hole data means nothing. Including the data that termed it a hole in the first place.
I believe my math geek friends would characterize this as, "proof by assertion"?
You aren't making this assertion from knowledge.
Your assertion is coming from your intuition. Everybody
doesn't know this. I don't know this. Neither do a lot
of climate experts. Neither do you. You don't have knowledge.
You have a belief about the ozone hole -- based on your intuition.
Well intuition failed us when it came to the ozone hole.
Recently, it was disclosed that a large hole in the ozone layer
appears once a year over the South Pole. The researchers had first
detected this hole approximately 8 years ago by tests done at the
South Pole itself.
Why did they wait 8 years to disclose this disturbing fact? Because
the satellite that normally gives ozone levels had not reported any
such hole and the researchers could not believe that the satellite's
figures could be incorrect. It took 8 years of testing before they
felt confident enough to dispute the satellite's figures.
And why did the satellite fail to report this hole? Because it
had been programmed to reject values that fell outside the "normal"
range!
What happened here is that intuition failed.
Intuition failed the physicists who specified the sanity filters.
And, I would argue, that intuition failed you too.
Stallman received a
$240,000 USD grant from the MacArthur foundation in 1990 -- the so-called "genius" grants.
In 2001 he shared the Takeda award, with Linus Torvalds, and Ken Sakamura. Stallman's
share was worth approximately $268,000.
It says here that
Stallman also received the Grace Hopper award from the ACM, in 1991.
In 1998 he shared the Electronic Frontier
Foundation's Pioneer award with Linus Torvalds. And in 1999 he
received the Yuri Rubinski Award. I don't know if these awards
have any cash component.
Even though he is not a polished
presence, he may be able to supplement his savings with speaker's
fees. Google tells me he was chosen for the "EECS CITRIS distinguished series", next month. I wonder whether it offers
more than a token honorarium?
But if you really are worried about human rights and communism, then capitalist free trade is the best way to do something about it. After all, that strategy buried the Soviet Empire and freed its captive peoples, many of whom want to join democratic Western organizations like NATO and the EU.
Odd. If free trade frees people, why won't the USA drop its
trade restrictions with Cuba? Cuba is a lot smaller than China.
Maybe poorer per capita too? You would think that freeing up
trade sanctions with Cuba would be more effective than freeing
up trade with China. It is a contradiction.
Was it really free trade that caused the collapse of the old
Soviet Union? Or was it economic brinksmanship on the part of
the Reagan administration? They knew that if the USA started
spending money like crazy on expensive, blue-sky weapons research,
like the SDI, which was conservatively estimated to cost $3 trlllion
dollars. Sure, SDI seemed totally unworkable. But the USSR couldn't
be sure of that. They had to try and match the US effort, and their
economy just wasn't strong enough to match the effort.
That doesn't sound like free trade to me at all.
If you think free trade frees people how effective do you think
it is proving at freeing the people of America's client states?
Is this article a reflection of a
feeling among the Chinese leaders that a domestic it industry,
with domestically produced chips, leaves them with more choices
if the west gets serious about imposing trade sanctions?
I struggled through that People's daily article. China is a big place - it is pretty amazing they can't find journalists and translators with a better command of English.
The birth of "Dragon Chip" is considered a landmark on the road for the development of national sci-tech industry. Nevertheless, people are worried about it, thinking that though the "Dragon Chip" is designed on our own it will fall into the trap of foreign intellectual property rights provided it is compatible with that of the others. Dr Sun of the VIA Tech., the only chip-maker in the world able to match with the Intel was ever worried, since the old-brand manufacturers of the Intel CPU entered early into the market, applied and acquired many patent rights it was very difficult for the newcomers to make a detour away from these patents. Moreover, the Intel's monopoly of the market has made it to turn out an actual standard-maker in the market.
The article claims that Dr Sun, the big cheese at Taiwanese manufacturer VIA, is the only person able to challenge Intel. Okay, VIA is a successful outfit. And, if you count in their motherboard and other products, maybe they are bigger competition to Intel than AMD? But AMD shouldn't really be ignored.
In her autobiographical book "Red China Blues" Canadian journalist Jan Wong has a brief chapter where she described interviewing Mao Zedong's grandson. He was, IIRC, the only descendant to bear Mao's name. And he was a big loser. Dim-witted. Incredibly spoiled. Someone with no accomplishments of his own. What did he want to do with his life? Well, he thought he would like to go to University in America, where he would study "Mao Zedong thought".
Mao Zedong thought! I would be amazed if there was a single University in the States where you could major in "Mao Zedong thought".
What is my point? One has to wonder whether China is a parochial, insular nation, where many interpret the rest of the world through the distorting lense of widely held prejudices. This article suggests this, as does Wong's anecdote.
If you are interested in China, I am going to recommend Wong's book.
Wong is a extremely gifted writer. She is funny too.
Okay, I have read the article twice now, and I still can't feel sure that I know whether or not this chip is an intel clone.
What's more important is that the CPU of the PC market is based on the Intel's framework of X86 and so it's quite easy to fall into the intellectual property right trap the Intel laid out, whereas the Shuguang "Soaring Dragon" Sever is based on the RISC structure, a totally another standard. Therefore, it will not fall into the intellectual property right trap.
I don't see this as meaningful, because lots of PR types here in the
west have wanted to associate their CISC products
with the buzz surrounding RISC and claimed that while their chips
were CISC, they had "RISC-like elements".
Interesting how this article takes cracks at the oppressive western
notion of intellectual property... I thought China offically
agreed to respect intellectual property?
Otherwise everybody starting from your future college to your employer will question about the gap in your education.
School is expensive though. Even if you are going to a University
with a modest tuition there is still residence, or reasonable
equivalent. Who would be pushy if you say you needed to take time
to earn money to afford school? Even if your family is rolling in dough your parents might believe it is "character-building"
to make you pay your own way.
If you are not planning to work -- somehow you have the dough to travel
around the world, or try to put together an album, or something, my
advice would be to keep a journal, a disciplined one. Summarize it.
Take pictures. If you paint pictures, include colour photo-copies.
If you read serious books, review them, keep a reading log, write
down what you learned from them, what questions you had.
Serious volunteering, at a food bank, homeless shelter, women's
shelter. These could be really illuminating experiences. Experiences
that could answer the criticism that your year off was a holiday,
a waste of time. Particularly if you do some homework, do some
reading, do some writing, about what the experience meant to you.
When I was a youngster I knew a smart gal who wasn't sure what she
wanted to do with her life. So she approached a bunch of people
she respected, and asked them, if they could only recommend one book,
what would it be? Then she read them -- even if they weren't things
she would ever have considered. (Her list only had one duplicate --
Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib".)
As for approaching your first year -- I have some advice there too.
I was a teaching assistant. Most of my students had a much higher
average coming from high school than I had -- around 95%. A fair
number of them had the misfortune of being head and shoulders the
smartest kids in their class. Misfortune? Yup. Some students are
so obviously bright that they get breaks. They get to coast. High
school isn't enough of a challenge for them. They get to slack off,
and not do their homework. Maybe their teachers overlooked lapses
on their part, because they felt it reflected poorly on themselves?
Whatever.
Coming to a large University was a big adjustment for them.
Unfortunately, at a big University, your teachers don't know your
rep, and everyone else had also been the smartest kind in their
class. It seemed to me that less brilliant, less articulate
students, students who couldn't coast, came to University already
used to giving their education a fuller effort.
If you are used to coasting in high school taking a year off, meeting
some real people, sounds like a good idea. Take the advice someone
else offered, and take a couple of college night courses.
It will help you determine if you really are prepared.
There have been other, longer, discussions here this year that have
addressed this issue. They are worth looking for.
Some of those comments from earlier discussions addressed how much
room a young person should allow for falling in love. Don't let
falling in love interfere with graduating. But college will be the
last time in your life when you are surrounded by trim, fit,
attractive, single people. As you get older you will probably find
your standards of fitness and attractiveness will relax. But
singleness will remain important. After you graduate, you will
enter a world where you will be much less sure that the people you
meet are single.
In high school, and university, you may know people who have been
"going steady" since grade nine. But a lot of them are basically
stil single too. Even if they seem happy, if they don't have
shared debt, children, or tangible property, like a house or a car,
maybe they are still relatively single?
If you are still in high school now is the time to have your first
love -- and likely your first romantic disappointment. Whatever you
do, don't put it off until after you graduate. Your first romantic
disappointment? A lot of people don't cope well with that. They
do wild things, like blow all their dough, or mope around. If you
are still living at home, in a loving household, your parents won't
let your moping grow too destructive. And if you blow all your money,
it is only your allowance, or your income from your part-time job.
Your parent will still feed you. If you feel compelled to blow
all your dough when you already have a mortgage, you can do yourself
far more damage. You can run through your retirement savings.
You can put your children's nutrition at risk. So budget time for
being open to love now.
One more peice of advice. If you haven't read Richard Feynman's
"Surely you are joking Mr Feynman", go read it. I particularly
recommend the chapter he devoted to the sabbatical he took in
Brazil, and the conclusions he reached about how science education
can go wrong.
I don't know if the big online retailers actually care about affiliate programs or not. If they do, then stealware is intolerable. Otherwise, the programs are useless.
I think I can offer a case history that answers this question.
I have a buddy who has a small site
that offers a legitimate service. She works hard at providing this
service, and gets a small trickle of money, from banner ads, just a
bit more than she would need to break even.
Chapters was the bookstore chain with the largest number of
storefronts in Canada. They also had a large online bookstore.
She was an affiliate. Their rule was that they would not mail
her a check until their bookkeeping showed that she had earned $100
worth of bounty. After more than a year of being an affiliate she was
within a couple of bucks of getting her first check.
Then Chapters was bought out by Indigo, the second largest Canadian
bookstore chain, but the one with deeper pockets. They had their
own affiliate program. She was an affiliate of Indigo as well.
But Indigo did not transfer in her Chapters bounty. No did they
cashout her $99. They just kept it.
If chapters had gone bankrupt, and Indigo purchased the name
and inventory from the receivers, they would not have been
obliged to honour the outstanding bounties. But, officially,
it was a merger.
I'd like to know what the term "isolated" means in this context. Obviously, not geographically, since apparently these elephants can be found in the same habitat as the other two species.
Is it possible that the article meant that species one is found in
savannah areas, that species two is found in forest areas, and that
species three is found in both savannah and forest ares -- without
meaning that their areas overlap?
I myself am skeptical of these findings. There are no details given as to the distinctions in the DNA between the different species. Does anyone know what the cut-off point is for defining a species by DNA?
Can't interbreed isn't it? We discussed elephants and
mammoths
a couple of months ago. I found that there hobbyists who cross
lions with tiger, and various other kinds of cats.
And there are others who cross zebras with donkeys, and
other horselike animals. Just like mules, the cross between
horses and donkeys, the offspring are infertile.
All other things being equal, if Kazaa (et al) had not done all of this, assuming that their customers really do purchase CDs (which I will happily concede) then their numbers would have placed them somewhere on the list of affiliates.
Agreed.
A numerically meaningful place on the list.
Agreed.
But if they steal units from other affiliates then they artificially inflate their own numbers are deflate other affiliates'.
I thought this too, at first. But if Amazon only broke out the
bounties given to KaZaA, Morpheus, etc, for the purchase of CDs,
videos and DVDs, you still get a useful number. KaZaA and Morpheus
claim the bounty on any CD puchased online from anyone who downloaded
their software.
Many people, including, if I understood her properly, Janis Ian,
believe that downloading music online is one step many music fans
use prior to making an online CD purchase. Music industry types have
claimed that the music stores near colleges and universities have
experienced a drop in sales, due to downloading music, because that
client base had a greater access to the internet.
It has been pointed out that that client base also has a greater
access to online means of purchasing their CDs online.
So, learning the total number of CD's purchased by someone who
has used morpheus, even once, is the stat we want, not whether
the user clicked through a banner on a KaZaA site.
All this excitement over nothing. I snipped this
official explanation from Wednesday's
RISKS digest.
This one sounded too far out, so I checked with the local Greek consulate.
(My question to them was "is this a hoax?", quoting the Web page referenced
in RISKS-22.23.) Here is their reply. I hope this clears the air a bit.
After we received your e-mail we have forwarded it to the Press
Office of the Greek Embassy in Ottawa. They have informed us they
are aware of these articles but they are not accurate. The New
Greek Law has banned all games that can be used for gambling or modified for gambling purposes even if they exist in private
spaces (Only Casinos are excluded from the banning). However
neither foreign tourists neither Greek citizens will be
prosecuted when they use cell phones with games , or lap tops
in which games are installed or any portable game consoles for
example:play stations, gameboys, x-box etc, since these games
cannot be modified for gambling and furthermore the owner doesn't
insert coins or credit cards in order to continue using them. We
hope that this answers your question.
Does the Intel486(TM) processor, 80486DX4 have a clock multiplier?
The Intel486(TM) processor, 80486DX4 has clock doubling and tripling. CLKMUL on the 80486DX4 allows this to happen. When held high, it performs clock tripling. When held low it performs clock doubling. The Intel486(TM), 80486DX2 has internal clock doubling. Possible Symptoms: Looking for clock speed.
This question came up in another slashdot discussion, a couple of
months ago.
"Columbus proved the earth was round" (astronomers did this centuries before, and even measured the diameter of the planet, of which data Columbus was quite ignorant)
Make that about 2200 years ago.
Erastothenes of Samos,
also credited with the sieve for Prime numbers, measured the
diameter of the Earth using trigonometry.
I'd like to bring back an old analogy I once heard with Clipper Ships and Galleons. Both were shipping and both had piracy problems on the high seas. The Galleons had armaments and even more heavily armed escorts, perpared to fight off any pirates. The Clipper Ships were simply FAST, and couldn't be attacked or boarded by pirates. Both were viable shipping models, and both got the cargo there. But the armed escort of the Galleon did *nothing* beyond make sure the cargo got there. The speed of the Clipper made sure the cargo got there, plus it got there faster, delighting the customer.
I don't know what your analogy has to do with fighting Palladium.
Should we dismiss your analogy if it is built on bogus information?
First, I suspect you will find that the period of
the galleondidn't overlap with the period of the clipper ship.
So the two different kinds of saliing ships never competed
with one another.
You say the clipper, "couldn't be attacked or boarded by pirates"?
Umm. Can I tell you a feature of sailing ships? They depend on the
wind. No wind, the sailing ship just sit there, drifting. It is called being
becalmed. A becalmed ship is extremely vulnerable to being boarded.
Now maybe by "galleon" you merely meant, big old slow merchant ship
that is not a clipper. Maybe you think I am being really pedantic.
But picking the wrong metaphors can really wound a good cause.
Consider the story of Ken Keyes Jr.book
"The 100th Monkey". The intent behind Keyes book was
to work toward disarmament and world peace. But, rather than think
this was a worthwhile cause, in and of itself, he hitched his
fight to a crazy analogy based on a bogus account of a psychic phenomenon that he took seriously. It made him look ridiculous
and considerably undermined his argument...
The fraud is a particularly interesting one, but it is off-topic.
During one of their rambles in the meeting, one of the lead "licensing" people actually said, "...and we can't do Linux on the desktop". (We've already successfully implemented Linux in replacment of several Windows servers).
When I asked why (our users run the basic Office apps, with standard email (no Exchange), and all their work is done through a telnet app to an HP-UX server)... no one could give a single reason other than "everyone else uses Windows".
So, what would have happened if you had mentioned the in-house
success with linux?
I don't know your corporate culture. I am not trying to 2nd guess you.
But you were invited to this meeting in order to make the most
useful contribution you could, weren't you?
Re:these lan camers suck for security...
on
LAN Camera Review
·
· Score: 2
why don't you just use some small normal webcam with very long cable instead of these, cheaper and smaller...
There was a long discussion of the distance limits on USB connections,
here on slashdot,
not too long ago. I just looked for it, couldn't find it though.
Anyhow, the answer to your question is that the maximum length of a
USB cable is just a couple of meters. You could chain together a
bunch of USB hubs. Five IIRC -- giving you a distance of 15 metres IIRC.
But you have to power those hubs, so you are no farther ahead.
Some of use use these nify things called batteries.
A lithium ion battery on one of those puppies and a transmitter make them cool.
This
table says all four of them consume more than half a dozen
watts. The D-link, the "wireless" one, consumes 6.5 watts. How big a battery did you have in mind, and how often did you plan to replace it
with a charged one?
The axis one runs linux. Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of those?
... their one big problem... water vapor is a green house gas.
Well, yes. But I am not quite sure I follow your argument.
Plus, if you are living in a dry climate... and you start pumping out tons of water vapor from all of the new clean cars in your city, pretty soon it's going to be muggy, miserable, and it will effect the local environment.
Am I missing something? Won't internal combustion produce nearly
as much water vapour? Burning petroleum fractions, ethanol, biomass, produces H2O doesn't it? Burning methane would produce CO2 and 4x H2O, wouldn't it?
So, if you want to reduce your addition of H2O, you have to reduce
the number of your trips.
There's a simple solution, condense the water vapor out of your exhaust and store the water in a collection tank. It can be electrolyzed later to reclaim the hydrogen.
Do you see an advantage in shipping this condensed water back to a
hydrogen production facility, rather than just using locally available
water?
The CBC had a segment on
Jane Siberry. Siberry was able to leave Warners, and start up her own company. In this interview she described having to
let all her employees go. At the time of this interview
her company was run out of her spare bedroom.
She described how time consuming it was to answer her own phones.
Too often people phoning her company to place an order feel amazingly
lucky to have reached the artist herself, and want to have an
extended conversation.
Interesting -- here is a link to an article on current non-lethal weapon research.
There was some stuff in the news a few years ago, about a concept
for a device that would fire two co-linear lasers, strong enough
to ionize two parallel columns of air. Then a "non-lethal" electric
shock was transmitted to the target person. IIRC.
Slashdot Mirror
Panspermia is the very old idea that life can get seeded throughout the universe, as some now think Earth life may have first originated on Mars, and been seeded here via meteorites that originated on Mars.
Peter Junger, a professor of law, who taught a course, "computers and the law", has an account of the steps he took to make sure he could demonstrate an encryption program to his students -- when he couldn't guarantee that none of them were foreign students. This first article is quite interesting. And there are a number of interesting followups. Go to RISKS search page and search for "Junger".
And here is another RISKS article entitled My life as an international arms courier . It is quite long -- but it is hilarious. Matt Blaze, the author, worked for AT&T, and wanted to take a new phone scrambler, to show some colleagues on a business trip to Europe. He decided he would try to go through the proper channels to take this device with him. Here are some of his final comments...
My memory is playing tricks on me. My memory is that he was quietly lead to cool his heels in a locked holding room, that he described hearing the footfalls of a guy who looked like Joe Friday, whose first words to him were, "So, are you the guy with the bomb?"
Mind you, these articles are from 1993 and 1995. Will you write up your experiences for us?
Okay, here is an article indicating how powerful the Dragon is. Six million transistors, which the article says makes it as powerful as a 486. That may be an underestimate. The original Pentium was about 3.1 million transistors according to sandpile.
6 million transistors is something like a tenth of the a P4, a sixth of the K7, two-sevenths of a VIA cyrix III.
Locals don't like that a new, very conservative, "business friendly" provincial administration came in, and sold the newly completed project to a private consortium, for a song. But that is another story. Here is a history.
I believe my math geek friends would characterize this as, "proof by assertion" ?
You aren't making this assertion from knowledge. Your assertion is coming from your intuition. Everybody doesn't know this. I don't know this. Neither do a lot of climate experts. Neither do you. You don't have knowledge. You have a belief about the ozone hole -- based on your intuition.
Well intuition failed us when it came to the ozone hole.
Here are some RISKS articles, from 1986, shortly after the ozone hole was first recognized, to back me up.
Ozone hole undetected for years due to programming error
Ozone references.
What happened here is that intuition failed. Intuition failed the physicists who specified the sanity filters. And, I would argue, that intuition failed you too.
In 2001 he shared the Takeda award, with Linus Torvalds, and Ken Sakamura. Stallman's share was worth approximately $268,000.
It says here that Stallman also received the Grace Hopper award from the ACM, in 1991. In 1998 he shared the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award with Linus Torvalds. And in 1999 he received the Yuri Rubinski Award. I don't know if these awards have any cash component.
Even though he is not a polished presence, he may be able to supplement his savings with speaker's fees. Google tells me he was chosen for the "EECS CITRIS distinguished series", next month. I wonder whether it offers more than a token honorarium?
Odd. If free trade frees people, why won't the USA drop its trade restrictions with Cuba? Cuba is a lot smaller than China. Maybe poorer per capita too? You would think that freeing up trade sanctions with Cuba would be more effective than freeing up trade with China. It is a contradiction.
Was it really free trade that caused the collapse of the old Soviet Union? Or was it economic brinksmanship on the part of the Reagan administration? They knew that if the USA started spending money like crazy on expensive, blue-sky weapons research, like the SDI, which was conservatively estimated to cost $3 trlllion dollars. Sure, SDI seemed totally unworkable. But the USSR couldn't be sure of that. They had to try and match the US effort, and their economy just wasn't strong enough to match the effort.
That doesn't sound like free trade to me at all.
If you think free trade frees people how effective do you think it is proving at freeing the people of America's client states?
Is this article a reflection of a feeling among the Chinese leaders that a domestic it industry, with domestically produced chips, leaves them with more choices if the west gets serious about imposing trade sanctions?
The article claims that Dr Sun, the big cheese at Taiwanese manufacturer VIA, is the only person able to challenge Intel. Okay, VIA is a successful outfit. And, if you count in their motherboard and other products, maybe they are bigger competition to Intel than AMD? But AMD shouldn't really be ignored.
In her autobiographical book "Red China Blues" Canadian journalist Jan Wong has a brief chapter where she described interviewing Mao Zedong's grandson. He was, IIRC, the only descendant to bear Mao's name. And he was a big loser. Dim-witted. Incredibly spoiled. Someone with no accomplishments of his own. What did he want to do with his life? Well, he thought he would like to go to University in America, where he would study "Mao Zedong thought".
Mao Zedong thought! I would be amazed if there was a single University in the States where you could major in "Mao Zedong thought".
What is my point? One has to wonder whether China is a parochial, insular nation, where many interpret the rest of the world through the distorting lense of widely held prejudices. This article suggests this, as does Wong's anecdote.
If you are interested in China, I am going to recommend Wong's book. Wong is a extremely gifted writer. She is funny too.
Okay, I have read the article twice now, and I still can't feel sure that I know whether or not this chip is an intel clone.
I don't see this as meaningful, because lots of PR types here in the west have wanted to associate their CISC products with the buzz surrounding RISC and claimed that while their chips were CISC, they had "RISC-like elements".
Interesting how this article takes cracks at the oppressive western notion of intellectual property... I thought China offically agreed to respect intellectual property?
School is expensive though. Even if you are going to a University with a modest tuition there is still residence, or reasonable equivalent. Who would be pushy if you say you needed to take time to earn money to afford school? Even if your family is rolling in dough your parents might believe it is "character-building" to make you pay your own way.
If you are not planning to work -- somehow you have the dough to travel around the world, or try to put together an album, or something, my advice would be to keep a journal, a disciplined one. Summarize it. Take pictures. If you paint pictures, include colour photo-copies. If you read serious books, review them, keep a reading log, write down what you learned from them, what questions you had.
Serious volunteering, at a food bank, homeless shelter, women's shelter. These could be really illuminating experiences. Experiences that could answer the criticism that your year off was a holiday, a waste of time. Particularly if you do some homework, do some reading, do some writing, about what the experience meant to you.
When I was a youngster I knew a smart gal who wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life. So she approached a bunch of people she respected, and asked them, if they could only recommend one book, what would it be? Then she read them -- even if they weren't things she would ever have considered. (Her list only had one duplicate -- Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib".)
As for approaching your first year -- I have some advice there too. I was a teaching assistant. Most of my students had a much higher average coming from high school than I had -- around 95%. A fair number of them had the misfortune of being head and shoulders the smartest kids in their class. Misfortune? Yup. Some students are so obviously bright that they get breaks. They get to coast. High school isn't enough of a challenge for them. They get to slack off, and not do their homework. Maybe their teachers overlooked lapses on their part, because they felt it reflected poorly on themselves? Whatever.
Coming to a large University was a big adjustment for them. Unfortunately, at a big University, your teachers don't know your rep, and everyone else had also been the smartest kind in their class. It seemed to me that less brilliant, less articulate students, students who couldn't coast, came to University already used to giving their education a fuller effort.
If you are used to coasting in high school taking a year off, meeting some real people, sounds like a good idea. Take the advice someone else offered, and take a couple of college night courses. It will help you determine if you really are prepared.
There have been other, longer, discussions here this year that have addressed this issue. They are worth looking for.
Some of those comments from earlier discussions addressed how much room a young person should allow for falling in love. Don't let falling in love interfere with graduating. But college will be the last time in your life when you are surrounded by trim, fit, attractive, single people. As you get older you will probably find your standards of fitness and attractiveness will relax. But singleness will remain important. After you graduate, you will enter a world where you will be much less sure that the people you meet are single.
In high school, and university, you may know people who have been "going steady" since grade nine. But a lot of them are basically stil single too. Even if they seem happy, if they don't have shared debt, children, or tangible property, like a house or a car, maybe they are still relatively single?
If you are still in high school now is the time to have your first love -- and likely your first romantic disappointment. Whatever you do, don't put it off until after you graduate. Your first romantic disappointment? A lot of people don't cope well with that. They do wild things, like blow all their dough, or mope around. If you are still living at home, in a loving household, your parents won't let your moping grow too destructive. And if you blow all your money, it is only your allowance, or your income from your part-time job. Your parent will still feed you. If you feel compelled to blow all your dough when you already have a mortgage, you can do yourself far more damage. You can run through your retirement savings. You can put your children's nutrition at risk. So budget time for being open to love now.
One more peice of advice. If you haven't read Richard Feynman's "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman", go read it. I particularly recommend the chapter he devoted to the sabbatical he took in Brazil, and the conclusions he reached about how science education can go wrong.
I think I can offer a case history that answers this question.
I have a buddy who has a small site that offers a legitimate service. She works hard at providing this service, and gets a small trickle of money, from banner ads, just a bit more than she would need to break even.
Chapters was the bookstore chain with the largest number of storefronts in Canada. They also had a large online bookstore. She was an affiliate. Their rule was that they would not mail her a check until their bookkeeping showed that she had earned $100 worth of bounty. After more than a year of being an affiliate she was within a couple of bucks of getting her first check.
Then Chapters was bought out by Indigo, the second largest Canadian bookstore chain, but the one with deeper pockets. They had their own affiliate program. She was an affiliate of Indigo as well. But Indigo did not transfer in her Chapters bounty. No did they cashout her $99. They just kept it.
If chapters had gone bankrupt, and Indigo purchased the name and inventory from the receivers, they would not have been obliged to honour the outstanding bounties. But, officially, it was a merger .
Is it possible that the article meant that species one is found in savannah areas, that species two is found in forest areas, and that species three is found in both savannah and forest ares -- without meaning that their areas overlap?
Can't interbreed isn't it? We discussed elephants and mammoths a couple of months ago. I found that there hobbyists who cross lions with tiger, and various other kinds of cats. And there are others who cross zebras with donkeys, and other horselike animals. Just like mules, the cross between horses and donkeys, the offspring are infertile.
Here is an interesting link to an online book that discusses the reintroduction of extinct species.
Agreed.
Agreed.
I thought this too, at first. But if Amazon only broke out the bounties given to KaZaA, Morpheus, etc, for the purchase of CDs, videos and DVDs, you still get a useful number. KaZaA and Morpheus claim the bounty on any CD puchased online from anyone who downloaded their software.
Many people, including, if I understood her properly, Janis Ian, believe that downloading music online is one step many music fans use prior to making an online CD purchase. Music industry types have claimed that the music stores near colleges and universities have experienced a drop in sales, due to downloading music, because that client base had a greater access to the internet.
It has been pointed out that that client base also has a greater access to online means of purchasing their CDs online.
So, learning the total number of CD's purchased by someone who has used morpheus, even once, is the stat we want, not whether the user clicked through a banner on a KaZaA site.
"For some people, WWW stands for the Wild, Wild West"
From the 486 FAQ .
This question came up in another slashdot discussion, a couple of months ago.
Make that about 2200 years ago. Erastothenes of Samos, also credited with the sieve for Prime numbers, measured the diameter of the Earth using trigonometry.
Actually, wasn't the 486 DX4 the designation intel used for a 486 that ran at 3x 33MHz? DX3 would have been a less deceptive appellation.
I don't know what your analogy has to do with fighting Palladium. Should we dismiss your analogy if it is built on bogus information?
First, I suspect you will find that the period of the galleon didn't overlap with the period of the clipper ship.
So the two different kinds of saliing ships never competed with one another. You say the clipper, "couldn't be attacked or boarded by pirates"? Umm. Can I tell you a feature of sailing ships? They depend on the wind. No wind, the sailing ship just sit there, drifting. It is called being becalmed. A becalmed ship is extremely vulnerable to being boarded.
Now maybe by "galleon" you merely meant, big old slow merchant ship that is not a clipper. Maybe you think I am being really pedantic. But picking the wrong metaphors can really wound a good cause. Consider the story of Ken Keyes Jr.book "The 100th Monkey" . The intent behind Keyes book was to work toward disarmament and world peace. But, rather than think this was a worthwhile cause, in and of itself, he hitched his fight to a crazy analogy based on a bogus account of a psychic phenomenon that he took seriously. It made him look ridiculous and considerably undermined his argument...
The fraud is a particularly interesting one, but it is off-topic.
Slashdot discussed a newly recognized difference between human chimp DNA last August.
So, what would have happened if you had mentioned the in-house success with linux?
I don't know your corporate culture. I am not trying to 2nd guess you. But you were invited to this meeting in order to make the most useful contribution you could, weren't you?
There was a long discussion of the distance limits on USB connections, here on slashdot, not too long ago. I just looked for it, couldn't find it though.
Anyhow, the answer to your question is that the maximum length of a USB cable is just a couple of meters. You could chain together a bunch of USB hubs. Five IIRC -- giving you a distance of 15 metres IIRC. But you have to power those hubs, so you are no farther ahead.
The axis one runs linux. Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of those?
Well, yes. But I am not quite sure I follow your argument.
Am I missing something? Won't internal combustion produce nearly as much water vapour? Burning petroleum fractions, ethanol, biomass, produces H2O doesn't it? Burning methane would produce CO2 and 4x H2O, wouldn't it?
So, if you want to reduce your addition of H2O, you have to reduce the number of your trips.
Do you see an advantage in shipping this condensed water back to a hydrogen production facility, rather than just using locally available water?
The CBC had a segment on Jane Siberry . Siberry was able to leave Warners, and start up her own company. In this interview she described having to let all her employees go. At the time of this interview her company was run out of her spare bedroom. She described how time consuming it was to answer her own phones. Too often people phoning her company to place an order feel amazingly lucky to have reached the artist herself, and want to have an extended conversation.
There was some stuff in the news a few years ago, about a concept for a device that would fire two co-linear lasers, strong enough to ionize two parallel columns of air. Then a "non-lethal" electric shock was transmitted to the target person. IIRC.