I'd rather say it was Hardy's hypothesis, although from what I know of his character, he was probably not a sexist or prone to any other form of bigotry; He was an atheist and [most likely] a homosexual, and was therefore very much an 'outsider' himself in his times)
There simply weren't very many women in math 100 years ago.
And while I'm on the topic, it is interesting to note that Stockholm University was one of the first universites to give a chair in mathematics to a woman; The great Sonya Kovalevskaya.
Perhaps. But history shows that technological advances *are* in general desirable
Advances of technology in general are desireable. The step from there to saying that -all- new technology is in general is desireable is a big one.
It's easy to have a skewed view of history, since the advances that tend to be remembered are the ones that did catch on and survive.
For instance, the advent of nuclear power in the 50's lead to the predicting of some that there would be a nuclear power plant in every home. This is both technologically possible and in many cases useful, but it was not found desireable.
For every new technology, there are far more uses that are found undesireable than desireable. And I belive this is one of the undesireable ones. Wealth is a primitive concept. People like money, as it's a tangible form of wealth. I don't think that's likely to change much over time, it's too primitive.
Just another example of people who think that just because something is technically possible and perhaps even practical in some cases, that is somehow automatically considered desireable.
Most people don't want this. Not now, probably not ever.
Credit cards have been around a long time too.. now wouldn't it be practical not to have to lug that heavy card around?
Why not have credit card numbers tattooed onto the card holder? That's been technically possible for a long time, and it could also be practical in some cases.
Good question. Basically people don't think/too lazy to translitterate the letters properly.
Some places have the forethought to register both: Munich in Germany has registered both "munchen.de" and "muenchen.de". (But it's really a u with an umlaut)
I ran a beta here at work, and an ex-girlfriend and a couple dead grandparents appeared. Then I saw George Clooney. It was wild, man.
Yeah.. George Clooney is only in the latest version, though. All in all, I wouldn't say it's worth the upgrade, even if the old one only had russian-language support.
Just to diverge, I'd like to represent the non-english speaker view here.
In most of the languages with 'funny accents' like umlauts, these characters often have a completely different pronounciation, and are often considered to be a completely different letter than without the 'accent'.
Simply 'brushing off the dirt' and removing the 'accent' thus changes the word. Sometimes with wierd results. Just ask someone from the town of Moensteraas, Sweden. Their website contains mostly municipal information intended for swedes, but due to the restrictions of DNS, the name is instead spelt 'monsteras', which means 'monster-carcass' in Swedish.
Obviously, these people would be happier spelling it with umlauts on the o, and a ring over the a.
I disagree.. SVG and PDF are rather different. PDF is very much a replacement for postscript (not as a printer interface language, but rather as a document format) Like Postscript, PDF can be used to describe graphics and shapes, and that's why EPS was developed.
SVG is rather an XML-ification of the capabilities of EPS. And if I were Adobe, I'd support it; EPS is a cumbersome format to work with, since it requires a full postscript-interpreter implementation to read. EPS has suffered as a result; Few desktop apps have proper support for it.
As noted by others, SVG can be handled with existing XML libraries. It's much simpler for third-parties to implement. Full SVG support in OpenOffice is just a question of time, for instance.
The case isn't going into oral arguments, rather there will be a presentation of oral arguments on IBM:s two motions to compel discovery and SCO:s single motion to compel. This will lead to a ruling on the motions, nothing else.
What we can hope for here is that IBM's motions to compel will be upheld, and SCO will be ordered to provide details on exactly -what- they claim was illegaly put into Linux, within a set time frame.
An interesting note on the GNU vs. Unix issue is that the GNU coding standardsspecifically state that GNU code should avoid any similarities to Unix code.
I doubt that the Linux kernel could claim to strictly adhere to all the GNU standards, but it's definetly a good counterargument to SCO:s claims that GNU/Linux programmers don't give a damn about copyright issues.
As an employee at a swedish university, I appreciate the swedish laws on the subject: I own the copyright on everything, even the stuff I do at work.
I even own the patent rights if I invent anything, even if I did it within a government funded university project. (If you receive private funding, you probably have a contractual agreement waiving some or all of your patent rights, though)
If Microsoft takes you to court for abusing the license, tell them and prove to them that you followed the link, and that there were no applicable license restrictions.
Another example of "DO NOT take legal advice from/.".
To begin with; it's quite different depending on which kind of Intellectual Property we're talking about: If it's copyright, the absence of a license does not mean you're allowed to copy it freely, rather it means you are NOT allowed to copy or redistribute it, as stipulated by copyright law.
If the IP is a patent which is what this is all about, this means nothing whatsoever.
The fact that a patent holder has not defended the patent rights granted to them in the past, has no effect on future patent enforcement. A patent holder is not required to defend his patent (unlike trademarks), can license to anyone he or she wants, with any licensing conditions he or she wants. And they can change these licensing conditions whenever they want unless they have a contract with the licensee stating otherwise.
If I cheer because IBM is huge, I lose the right to complain when MS squashes some small developer under the weight of a thousand lawyers.
That's ridiculous.. You're saying that if one approves of using legal force in a fair case (which SCO started, remember?) that makes it wrong to disapprove when legal force is used in an unfair way?
Litigation is like war; In both cases "might makes right" more often than we like, but most would agree that war is still justified sometimes, and sometimes not.
(I'll abstain from mentioning particular examples as not to start a flamewar)
Re:What? No mention of the IBM CGA card
on
Video Card History
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· Score: 1
Actually, I'd say one of the far too -many- circumstances where PC hardware could be broken by software.
But I'd say it's much more of a software problem. The operating system should NOT allow direct hardware access to any software except the ones that know what they're doing (read: device drivers).
Note that even with a decent operating system, it is sometimes still possible to physically screw up hardware with a bad driver. (Like the recent debacle with Mandrake screwing up LG drives, even if the fault wasn't as much in the device driver as in the drive firmware)
Plenty of ways.. but to mention one: Hardware installation.
With Windows every hardware manufacturer and his dog are out there to make sure that the installation will work for 95% of the windows users.
In linux, it MIGHT be simple.. if kudzu (if you're using Redhat) detects and configures the hardware correctly. But this is not always the case. Nor are drivers always available.
Upgrade the kernel? Edit/etc/modules.conf? Forget about it: Average joe-blow user can not, will not, and should not have to do that kind of stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather say it was Hardy's hypothesis, although from what I know of his character, he was probably not a sexist or prone to any other form of bigotry;
He was an atheist and [most likely] a homosexual, and was therefore very much an 'outsider' himself in his times)
There simply weren't very many women in math 100 years ago.
And while I'm on the topic, it is interesting to note that Stockholm University was one of the first universites to give a chair in mathematics to a woman;
The great Sonya Kovalevskaya.
I'm impressed by the sweedish girls at Stockholm University.
:-)
:-)
I'm not.. Dang, I think I'll have to switch departments..
BTW: I've seen some pretty hot chicks from NTNU too, ya know.. Bit stupid though..
I wouldn't really agree with that..
But it does seem true that math is "the young man's game".
(To quote the great mathematician GH Hardy)
Some of history's great mathematicians never lived to see their 30th birthday. Galois, and Abel for instance.
There are counterexamples, of course, the chemist Joel Hildebrand published his last research paper at over 100 years of age.
Perhaps. But history shows that technological advances *are* in general desirable
Advances of technology in general are desireable.
The step from there to saying that -all- new technology is in general is desireable is a big one.
It's easy to have a skewed view of history, since the advances that tend to be remembered are the ones that did catch on and survive.
For instance, the advent of nuclear power in the 50's lead to the predicting of some that there would be a nuclear power plant in every home. This is both technologically possible and in many cases useful, but it was not found desireable.
For every new technology, there are far more uses that are found undesireable than desireable. And I belive this is one of the undesireable ones. Wealth is a primitive concept. People like money, as it's a tangible form of wealth. I don't think that's likely to change much over time, it's too primitive.
Just another example of people who think that just because something is technically possible and perhaps even practical in some cases, that is somehow automatically considered desireable.
Most people don't want this. Not now, probably not ever.
Credit cards have been around a long time too.. now wouldn't it be practical not to have to lug that heavy card around?
Why not have credit card numbers tattooed onto the card holder? That's been technically possible for a long time, and it could also be practical in some cases.
Would anyone suggest this? Why not? Same reasons.
1. Most users, by the very definition of the term, do not develop software.
2. $2000 USD is practically nothing in terms of software development costs.
Why monsteras instead of moensteraas?
Good question. Basically people don't think/too lazy to translitterate the letters properly.
Some places have the forethought to register both:
Munich in Germany has registered both "munchen.de" and "muenchen.de".
(But it's really a u with an umlaut)
I ran a beta here at work, and an ex-girlfriend and a couple dead grandparents appeared. Then I saw George Clooney. It was wild, man.
Yeah.. George Clooney is only in the latest version, though.
All in all, I wouldn't say it's worth the upgrade, even if the old one only had russian-language support.
Just to diverge, I'd like to represent the non-english speaker view here.
In most of the languages with 'funny accents' like umlauts, these characters often have a completely different pronounciation, and are often considered to be a completely different letter than without the 'accent'.
Simply 'brushing off the dirt' and removing the 'accent' thus changes the word. Sometimes with wierd results.
Just ask someone from the town of Moensteraas, Sweden.
Their website contains mostly municipal information intended for swedes, but due to the restrictions of DNS, the name is instead spelt 'monsteras', which means 'monster-carcass' in Swedish.
Obviously, these people would be happier spelling it with umlauts on the o, and a ring over the a.
I disagree.. SVG and PDF are rather different.
PDF is very much a replacement for postscript (not as a printer interface language, but rather as a document format) Like Postscript, PDF can be used to describe graphics and shapes, and that's why EPS was developed.
SVG is rather an XML-ification of the capabilities of EPS. And if I were Adobe, I'd support it; EPS is a cumbersome format to work with, since it requires a full postscript-interpreter implementation to read. EPS has suffered as a result; Few desktop apps have proper support for it.
As noted by others, SVG can be handled with existing XML libraries. It's much simpler for third-parties to implement. Full SVG support in OpenOffice is just a question of time, for instance.
Sure..
Right here for the IBM case and here's the RedHat one.
The case isn't going into oral arguments, rather there will be a presentation of oral arguments on IBM:s two motions to compel discovery and SCO:s single motion to compel. This will lead to a ruling on the motions, nothing else.
What we can hope for here is that IBM's motions to compel will be upheld, and SCO will be ordered to provide details on exactly -what- they claim was illegaly put into Linux, within a set time frame.
But the case isn't over by a long shot.
This is your server running on Windows XP..
*cracks egg*
(Sorry.. too obvious?)
Possibly..possibly not..
OS X was based off NEXTSTEP, which was based on Mach, which was a completely new kernel, with BSD ported to it.
But compared to Linux, i'd say it's less of a stretch to say that OS X is UNIX than Linux.
I don't mind if they go after Apple.. just one more company joining in the fun of beating SCO up.
"The more yarn you pull out the more you see," according to McBride.
Yup... Paranoia's like that.
An interesting note on the GNU vs. Unix issue is that the GNU coding standards specifically state that GNU code should avoid any similarities to Unix code.
I doubt that the Linux kernel could claim to strictly adhere to all the GNU standards, but it's definetly a good counterargument to SCO:s claims that GNU/Linux programmers don't give a damn about copyright issues.
As an employee at a swedish university, I appreciate the swedish laws on the subject:
I own the copyright on everything, even the stuff I do at work.
I even own the patent rights if I invent anything, even if I did it within a government funded university project.
(If you receive private funding, you probably have a contractual agreement waiving some or all of your patent rights, though)
How about that?
If Microsoft takes you to court for abusing the license, tell them and prove to them that you followed the link, and that there were no applicable license restrictions.
/.".
Another example of "DO NOT take legal advice from
To begin with; it's quite different depending on which kind of Intellectual Property we're talking about:
If it's copyright, the absence of a license does not mean you're allowed to copy it freely, rather it means you are NOT allowed to copy or redistribute it, as stipulated by copyright law.
If the IP is a patent which is what this is all about, this means nothing whatsoever.
The fact that a patent holder has not defended the patent rights granted to them in the past, has no effect on future patent enforcement. A patent holder is not required to defend his patent (unlike trademarks), can license to anyone he or she wants, with any licensing conditions he or she wants.
And they can change these licensing conditions whenever they want unless they have a contract with the licensee stating otherwise.
Given Microsofts history of skirting around verdicts and legal agreements, how long will this format be valid?
How long before MS switches to either a new markup scheme, or introduces undocumented 'features'?
It's the machines that count the votes that count!
(ask Dubya)
If I cheer because IBM is huge, I lose the right to complain when MS squashes some small developer under the weight of a thousand lawyers.
That's ridiculous.. You're saying that if one approves of using legal force in a fair case (which SCO started, remember?) that makes it wrong to disapprove when legal force is used in an unfair way?
Litigation is like war; In both cases "might makes right" more often than we like, but most would agree that war is still justified sometimes, and sometimes not.
(I'll abstain from mentioning particular examples as not to start a flamewar)
Actually, I'd say one of the far too -many- circumstances where PC hardware could be broken by software.
But I'd say it's much more of a software problem. The operating system should NOT allow direct hardware access to any software except the ones that know what they're doing (read: device drivers).
Note that even with a decent operating system, it is sometimes still possible to physically screw up hardware with a bad driver.
(Like the recent debacle with Mandrake screwing up LG drives, even if the fault wasn't as much in the device driver as in the drive firmware)
These seem like a nice alternative to being locked into a lengthy contract, or for people who only need a cell phone for a short period of time.
I'd say it sounds quite wasteful, even if the phone is recyclable.. (how many will recycle it?)
There are alternatives to lengthy contracts, such as prepaid accounts.
And there are alternatives for people who need a phone for a short period: Renting.
I'll just chalk this all down as another symptom that some people can't get the idea that waste is BAD.
Is there anyway I can moderate this entire story -1: Flamebait?
Uh.. then what's it for?
Plenty of ways.. but to mention one:
/etc/modules.conf? Forget about it: Average joe-blow user can not, will not, and should not have to do that kind of stuff.
Hardware installation.
With Windows every hardware manufacturer and his dog are out there to make sure that the installation will work for 95% of the windows users.
In linux, it MIGHT be simple.. if kudzu (if you're using Redhat) detects and configures the hardware correctly. But this is not always the case. Nor are drivers always available.
Upgrade the kernel? Edit