When a Microsoft engineer fixes a minor defect, makes something faster or better, makes an API more functional and complete, how do they "ship" that software to me? I know the answer and so do you... The software sits in a source code control system for a minimum of two years (significantly longer for some of the early Longhorn code). At some point, the product that the fix is a part of will "ship" meaning that CD's will be pressed and delivered to customers and OEM's. In best case scenarios, the software will reach end users a few months after the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) date. In many cases, particularly for users working in large corporations, they won't see the software for a year or more post RTM...
While this is true of major software releases and service packs, it's certainly not true of critical updates, is it? And besides, software on the scale of Longhorn or Office 2006 is vastly different than a point-and-click problem on a web page.
At the end of the day Apple would act just like MS if it was in their position (and I'm not saying you would necessarily prefer Apple to be giving the 'DRM crap'). But all companies will be evil. Just the way of things.
IIRC, the 'Anonymous Coward' option was brought in for those who did not wish to be identified, including whistle blowers, those on the inside, etc. If the AC posts could be tied to a particular account, then that's just an obvious way to find out who made the post. That's not good if what you're posting could get you in trouble, and those are just the kinds of posts that would definitely add spice to a thread.
And it's got almost no heat capacity - heat passes through it almost as if it weren't there.
Not quite. A low heat capacity means it doesn't store up much heat. That's why you can cool a hot glass down quickly when you run it under cool water. But glass is a pretty good thermal insulator, meaning it has a low thermal conductivity. Heat doesn't travel through it very efficiently.
Don't be silly. The person in question was a civil servent, there's no way anyone in actual government would resign over anything up to and including murder. Plus, he was simply moved to another department and never admitted any substantial fault, failure or responsibility.
Thank goodness. I was worried I was going to have to re-think my world view.
From the Guardian:"The disruption is the latest in a line of government technology failures and follows last week's resignation of the head of the Child Support Agency, part of Mr Johnson's empire, after the disastrous introduction of an EDS system contributed to only one in eight parents receiving the correct amount."
Wait a minute... a government official resiged over a major failure in his department? I wish that would happen here...
You see, there are always flaws in the system. Those that pirate keys just build big lists and if your key ends up on the list, even if you've purchased a valid copy, it's up to you to prove your innocence. That just doesn't seem right.
Let me get this straight: you are saying it's unfair that these people who have hacked keys for the game don't take into account the fact that they will be bumping legitimate buyers from playing? How shocking! I mean, the nerve of it!
If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?
Simple: divert Democrat votes to this third party so less suspicion will be cast on the Republicans. As long as the % of votes for the major parties stayed within the error bounds of previous polls, hardly anyone would look for irregularities. This exact same pattern has been noted in other elections.
Using your logic, I'm suspicious of the Boston Red Sox miracle. I mean, everything went so perfectly.
Here in Arizona, my ballot was about double the size of a letter-size sheet of paper, and was full on both sides of selections to make. These included President, Senator, Representative (all at the federal level), then state representatives, local representatives, local school board officials, then several huge columns of which judges we wanted to get rid of, and lastly all the statewide Propositions. All the results for all these different selections are tallied in one night.
Just a thought: Why don't you hold your federal elections separately from your local elections? So that day, you'd be voting for a president, senator (federal) and congressman (federal).
By the time backup media that is large enough to back up your current hard drive is cheap, you will have upgraded to a new hard drive with a capacity such that it will no longer be practical to back up with that media.
How about:
The available size of inexpensive, removable backup storage media will always be insufficient to conveniently backup one's data.
It's not excatly clear in the article, but my take on it is that the system will not necessarily be 'self-updated', but rather maintained and updated by a sysadmin remotely. To the office users, these updates would appear 'automagically', perhaps, but they would not be self-updating systems in the strict sense of the term.
WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against individual file sharers?
Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians' ability to earn a living?
Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale. -- WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are successful? How would that change culture?
Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save.
What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.
Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.
His underlying assumption is that there is an objective, true reality Out There (which an encyclopedia should approximate). This was a commonly held view during the Age of Reason, which IIRC is usually dated from around 1700 to about 1905.
Of course the sciences have moved on since then and many people now believe that understanding the role of the observer is integral to any understanding of reality-- that the two are somehow forever entwined. My personal belief is that whether or not an objective reality is Out There somewhere, all that we can know is our perceptions of it, and the only knowledge that we can actually share with each other is discussions of those perceptions. Which is generally sufficient for daily tasks.
That's nice, except that wikipedia is attempting to become a reference work, not an international discussion forum. The question of whether there is an objective reality is moot in many cases, especially those that are similar to that discussed by the authour. Facts such as dates, places, etc., where known, should be correct if one wants a reference work to be taken seriously.
If all you're interested in is a little topical background, perhaps it's ok, but I prefer my reference works to more factually correct than your average Dan Brown novel.
I'm beginning to have serious concerns about the integrity of the world's data. NASA's old data is deteriorating faster than they can archive it. CD's will only last for 20 years or so, DVD's probably less. What forms of PERMANENT (T> 100y) data storage are available to us? Is all of our digitil information doomed to be lost?
"Engineering a shell that could survive a measly H2 explosion no big huhu, cobber."
What about a LEO re-entry? I wasn't suggesting that I didn't think it could be made acceptably safe. I just think that dismissing the risks is foolish.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
When a Microsoft engineer fixes a minor defect, makes something faster or better, makes an API more functional and complete, how do they "ship" that software to me? I know the answer and so do you... The software sits in a source code control system for a minimum of two years (significantly longer for some of the early Longhorn code). At some point, the product that the fix is a part of will "ship" meaning that CD's will be pressed and delivered to customers and OEM's. In best case scenarios, the software will reach end users a few months after the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) date. In many cases, particularly for users working in large corporations, they won't see the software for a year or more post RTM...
While this is true of major software releases and service packs, it's certainly not true of critical updates, is it? And besides, software on the scale of Longhorn or Office 2006 is vastly different than a point-and-click problem on a web page.
At the end of the day Apple would act just like MS if it was in their position (and I'm not saying you would necessarily prefer Apple to be giving the 'DRM crap'). But all companies will be evil. Just the way of things.
One documentary went so far as to compare corporations to psychopaths.
IIRC, the 'Anonymous Coward' option was brought in for those who did not wish to be identified, including whistle blowers, those on the inside, etc. If the AC posts could be tied to a particular account, then that's just an obvious way to find out who made the post. That's not good if what you're posting could get you in trouble, and those are just the kinds of posts that would definitely add spice to a thread.
yes but that marble ain't blue it's more aqua marine ...and this marble has a chip in it...
And it's got almost no heat capacity - heat passes through it almost as if it weren't there.
Not quite. A low heat capacity means it doesn't store up much heat. That's why you can cool a hot glass down quickly when you run it under cool water. But glass is a pretty good thermal insulator, meaning it has a low thermal conductivity. Heat doesn't travel through it very efficiently.
Don't be silly. The person in question was a civil servent, there's no way anyone in actual government would resign over anything up to and including murder. Plus, he was simply moved to another department and never admitted any substantial fault, failure or responsibility.
Thank goodness. I was worried I was going to have to re-think my world view.
From the Guardian:"The disruption is the latest in a line of government technology failures and follows last week's resignation of the head of the Child Support Agency, part of Mr Johnson's empire, after the disastrous introduction of an EDS system contributed to only one in eight parents receiving the correct amount."
Wait a minute... a government official resiged over a major failure in his department? I wish that would happen here...
"Binary compatability is a dead horse, and needs to cease being beaten on."
Ri-ight. And what planet have you been living on?
Of course, you can have more registers without having a 64-bit address space, but that's too complex for most people.
Doing that would break x86 compatibility. The whole advantage of AMD64 is that the architecture maitains full x86 compatibilty.
You see, there are always flaws in the system. Those that pirate keys just build big lists and if your key ends up on the list, even if you've purchased a valid copy, it's up to you to prove your innocence. That just doesn't seem right.
Let me get this straight: you are saying it's unfair that these people who have hacked keys for the game don't take into account the fact that they will be bumping legitimate buyers from playing? How shocking! I mean, the nerve of it!
And this would be a good idea why?
Because you obviously have a hell of a time accurately counting up all the votes for everything from president to local dog catcher.
Has anyone done a comparison of the battleground states won by Bush and whether they used electronic voting machines or not?
If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?
Simple: divert Democrat votes to this third party so less suspicion will be cast on the Republicans. As long as the % of votes for the major parties stayed within the error bounds of previous polls, hardly anyone would look for irregularities. This exact same pattern has been noted in other elections.
Using your logic, I'm suspicious of the Boston Red Sox miracle. I mean, everything went so perfectly.
Sure, your logic follows... except that the World Series took place in full view of a television audience of about 30 million nation-widewide . If it weren't for that small quibble, I'd say your logic was good...
Here in Arizona, my ballot was about double the size of a letter-size sheet of paper, and was full on both sides of selections to make. These included President, Senator, Representative (all at the federal level), then state representatives, local representatives, local school board officials, then several huge columns of which judges we wanted to get rid of, and lastly all the statewide Propositions. All the results for all these different selections are tallied in one night.
Just a thought:
Why don't you hold your federal elections separately from your local elections? So that day, you'd be voting for a president, senator (federal) and congressman (federal).
...Henceforth, It shall be called Bill's Law:
By the time backup media that is large enough to back up your current hard drive is cheap, you will have upgraded to a new hard drive with a capacity such that it will no longer be practical to back up with that media.
How about:
The available size of inexpensive, removable backup storage media will always be insufficient to conveniently backup one's data.
It's not excatly clear in the article, but my take on it is that the system will not necessarily be 'self-updated', but rather maintained and updated by a sysadmin remotely. To the office users, these updates would appear 'automagically', perhaps, but they would not be self-updating systems in the strict sense of the term.
WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against individual file sharers?
Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians' ability to earn a living?
Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale.
--
WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are successful? How would that change culture?
Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save.
What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.
Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.
Amen.
His underlying assumption is that there is an objective, true reality Out There (which an encyclopedia should approximate). This was a commonly held view during the Age of Reason, which IIRC is usually dated from around 1700 to about 1905.
Of course the sciences have moved on since then and many people now believe that understanding the role of the observer is integral to any understanding of reality-- that the two are somehow forever entwined. My personal belief is that whether or not an objective reality is Out There somewhere, all that we can know is our perceptions of it, and the only knowledge that we can actually share with each other is discussions of those perceptions. Which is generally sufficient for daily tasks.
That's nice, except that wikipedia is attempting to become a reference work, not an international discussion forum. The question of whether there is an objective reality is moot in many cases, especially those that are similar to that discussed by the authour. Facts such as dates, places, etc., where known, should be correct if one wants a reference work to be taken seriously.
If all you're interested in is a little topical background, perhaps it's ok, but I prefer my reference works to more factually correct than your average Dan Brown novel.
Additionally, they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs and to encourage chickens to take exercise.
Oh, so the chickens will be going on holiday then? That's nice...
I'm just wondering how advantageous it is, and whether it breaks anything/makes them more difficult to use.
Are there any similarities between this and what IBM does on their mainframes?
I'm beginning to have serious concerns about the integrity of the world's data. NASA's old data is deteriorating faster than they can archive it. CD's will only last for 20 years or so, DVD's probably less. What forms of PERMANENT (T> 100y) data storage are available to us? Is all of our digitil information doomed to be lost?
Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.
Right.
The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.
You are far too ignorant for words.
The American people voted for a president that presided over an economy that produced a record current account deficit, a record trade deficit, a record budget deficit and a national debt of such proportions that the IMF says they threaten the world economy.
Who ever said all that Americans ever care about is money?
"Engineering a shell that could survive a measly H2 explosion no big huhu, cobber."
What about a LEO re-entry? I wasn't suggesting that I didn't think it could be made acceptably safe. I just think that dismissing the risks is foolish.