It's funny because BSA was actually what I first thought of when I saw the story.
Did anyone actually read the article?!
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I know anything that isn't explicity anti-MS is heresy, but here we go. . .
I don't see anywhere where he has said Linux is failed in the article. He's merely pointing out a fact that most of us know: Linux is fantastic for servers, but "not ready for prime time" when it comes to the broad-based desktop market. Like it or not, Linux is still harder to use than Windows for a huge percentage of the population. While I don't agree with his characterization of the command-line stuff as an "archane vocabulary," there is some merit to the point that a lot of people can't handle the command line. Overall, I find it a well-balanced article about facts: Redhat was pushing Linux as a replacement for Windows on everyone's home and office desk. It just hasn't reached that point. His point seems to be that it doesn't even NEED to reach that point because it's gaining so much ground in the server market.
The Red Herring article brings up a good point: Do consumers really want a combination console gaming system and PVR? While it sounds like a good idea at first, they bring up the point that recording a show is a VERY disk-intensive operation. How will this affect game play?
Perhaps if you don't record and play at the same time, but this seems like an un-realistic expectation. . .
But, that little inline filter is typically in the box on the side of your house. While it may be marginally legal to split lines inside your own house, it's well over the line to break into the cable company's box . . .
From a purely educational view, it's not clear that college is the right choice. I would contend, however, that it is. I think that, while you may be able to do a good (or great) job as a low-level Sys Admin now, without formal education, you may never be able to advance beyond the lower levels of the industry. This comes both from the ideas that society has ("If you went to college, you must be smarter") and, also, the fact that most (good) colleges teach you how to think and learn. While I am in no way trying to downplay the importance of real world experience (it is VERY important), I think that, if you know how to learn, it will GREATLY aid you in the future (i.e. you may know everything about systems now, but who's to say that you're going to be able to learn about new stuff in the future).
Secondly, it is my belief that college is even more important in non-academic ways. College teaches you how to act in social situations, and I think a strong majority of people who go to college will remember it as one of the best social experience of their lives (I certainly do).
As far as a major, I think you should major in something you're interested in. As I said, the ability to learn is the really important thing that most people learn in college. Say what you will about Microsoft, but their hiring policies are right on in my book ("we don't care how much you know, as long as you're smart").
I really don't see how this bill should be surprising to anyone. There are already age limits on what people can see in movies (admittedly this is not law, but virtually all movie theaters follow this policy). It seems to me that there is nothing inherintly wrong with a system that limits kid's exposure to violent content. Again, this is sortta like the 'R' rating: it's not saying that kids can't see it, it's just saying that their parents have some ability to control and limit their exposure to it.
While I'll admit that sometime violence can be used constructively in films (and games), I think it would be nearly impossible to convince me that the violence in GTA3 is constructive. Now, this is not saying that they shouldn't be able to make this game (that's what makes this country great- they can). . . I'm just saying that parents should have the ability to determine for themselves if their kids are exposed to it. . .
Allright. I agree this guy should have known the difference between KDE/GNOME and Linux. But, to be honest with you, I could see where he's coming from. In the world of Windows, there IS no difference between operating system and a desktop enviornment (since DOS was officially killed). Now, his example was admittedly a poor one, since you can change your desktop enviornment every week with Linux (if you want), but him using KDE got me thinking: how easy is it to remove Konquerer from KDE? Now, it's certainly doable, but how much functionality do you lose?
You'd think so, wouldn't ya? But, the trouble is that you have to do your correction on an object VERY NEAR to the object you are trying to observe. This is because the atmosphere does different things at different parts of the sky and, in general, the part of the sky where it is doing the same thing is relatively small (less than 1 degree, often). They talk about an "isoplanatic patch" all the time, and that's basically the chunk of sky over which the atmospheric behavior is the same (within some errors).
Adaptive/Active optics can work in two ways. One way is to use a bright (and it has to be damn bright) star near the target that one's hoping to look at. Then, by seeing how the atmosphere distorts this (supposedly point-source) star, we can adjust the mirror to compensate. There are different ways to do this that involve just moving the image around or re-shaping the mirror altogether, but I won't go into that here. The trouble with this plan is that it's hard to find a star bright enough in the part of the sky that you happen to be observing. It has to be damn bright, since you have to read out the CCD several times a second in order to compensate for the atmosphere fast enough. The second method uses a sodium-type laser that excites a layer in the atmosphere very high up (i.e. above most of the clouds/water vapor/crap). This behaves as a sort of artificial bright star that one can have anywhere in the sky.
The Center for Adaptive Optics (at UCSC) has a decent simple explanation here.
All of this aside, this will probably NOT render HST obsolete any time soon, since this is rediculously hard to do and has yet to really be done convincingly in any large-scale way, as people at my institution are finding out.
But what if I point out that the/. story talks (at the end) about how the EULA is more difficult to read than 1040 forms AND I link to the article that has a GRAPH. ooooo. . . graphs. . .
Wow! That's incredible timing! That was just YESTERDAY (and in the newspaper today). I'd point to some vast, right-wing conspiracy, but I don't know exactly what they would be conspiring to do. . .
First off, I should say that I really really like IE (yes. . . I know. . . flame on). That said, I can see no difference in the speed at which 0.9.9 renders pages compared to IE. The problem with Mozilla in windows is that it actually appears slower than IE when you bring it up, but YOU KNOW that has to be because IE is loaded in memory. Once you can convice the general public to leave the little Mozilla icon in their system tray (and, hence, have it loaded in memory), I really don't see that IE is going to be able to compete without some MAJOR improvements.
Hawkings, using quantum theory, showed that you will eventualy make it out of the hole via the emmision of one part of a particle/anti-particle pair(Hawking radiation). But the only information about you that will be conserved will be again be your mass, angular momentium and charge, so your not coming out the way you went in.
This is something that I hear ALL the time: that Hawking radiation lets some matter escape from a black hole. In actuallity, the particle/antiparticle pair are created (via the QM fluxuations of empty space) OUTSIDE the event horizon. One of the pair goes past the event horizon and the other (just barely) escapes. This is Hawking Radiation.
By definition, you cannot escape from a gravitational potential unless you can reach the escape velocity. Since, once you pass the event horizon, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, it is impossible to escape. Period.
And, the rocket WILL reach 7 miles/sec (or whatever) . . . it just doesn't reach it near the Earth's surface. Otherwise, the rocket CANNOT escape the Earth's gravitational potential. Even if you are exerting a force, the force of Earth's graviation (or a Black Hole's or whatever) can still be greater and hold you in.
First off, this type of thing is not what the "real science" is about. It's just the PR stuff that seems to grab the front page. True, the color of the universe isn't going affect anyone (really), but you must admit that it's a pretty cool idea.
Secondly, there are very few things (especially in the academic fields) that are "useful" to the general public. The same argument could be made about art, music, or basically anything else other than food production, medicine, etc. . .
To quote Henri Poincare: "[The scientist does] not study science because it is useful to do so... [but rather] studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living..."
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. . . and if you want to do adminstration from a campsite. . . but really, Slashdot shouldn't be giving press to such blatant homophobes . . .
OH! BSA not BSA!
It's funny because BSA was actually what I first thought of when I saw the story.
I know anything that isn't explicity anti-MS is heresy, but here we go. . .
I don't see anywhere where he has said Linux is failed in the article. He's merely pointing out a fact that most of us know: Linux is fantastic for servers, but "not ready for prime time" when it comes to the broad-based desktop market. Like it or not, Linux is still harder to use than Windows for a huge percentage of the population. While I don't agree with his characterization of the command-line stuff as an "archane vocabulary," there is some merit to the point that a lot of people can't handle the command line. Overall, I find it a well-balanced article about facts: Redhat was pushing Linux as a replacement for Windows on everyone's home and office desk. It just hasn't reached that point. His point seems to be that it doesn't even NEED to reach that point because it's gaining so much ground in the server market.
The Red Herring article brings up a good point: Do consumers really want a combination console gaming system and PVR? While it sounds like a good idea at first, they bring up the point that recording a show is a VERY disk-intensive operation. How will this affect game play?
Perhaps if you don't record and play at the same time, but this seems like an un-realistic expectation. . .
Hmmmmm. . . my main thought is that I was disagreeing with your number just to disagree. . . perhaps I was too subtle. . .
As if you could EVER get 100% of readers (hell, even 85%) to agree on anything?
I really think that 85% is too high. I mean, it really seems that something significantly lower would be a more realistic number.
:-)
A friend of my worked with a guy named Brian Iglay. So, his email address was "biglay@ . . . "
That entertained us for a while.
But, that little inline filter is typically in the box on the side of your house. While it may be marginally legal to split lines inside your own house, it's well over the line to break into the cable company's box . . .
From a purely educational view, it's not clear that college is the right choice. I would contend, however, that it is. I think that, while you may be able to do a good (or great) job as a low-level Sys Admin now, without formal education, you may never be able to advance beyond the lower levels of the industry. This comes both from the ideas that society has ("If you went to college, you must be smarter") and, also, the fact that most (good) colleges teach you how to think and learn. While I am in no way trying to downplay the importance of real world experience (it is VERY important), I think that, if you know how to learn, it will GREATLY aid you in the future (i.e. you may know everything about systems now, but who's to say that you're going to be able to learn about new stuff in the future).
Secondly, it is my belief that college is even more important in non-academic ways. College teaches you how to act in social situations, and I think a strong majority of people who go to college will remember it as one of the best social experience of their lives (I certainly do).
As far as a major, I think you should major in something you're interested in. As I said, the ability to learn is the really important thing that most people learn in college. Say what you will about Microsoft, but their hiring policies are right on in my book ("we don't care how much you know, as long as you're smart").
This is an interesting follow-up to the /. story on here a little while ago about problems in schools in the Northwest US.
I really don't see how this bill should be surprising to anyone. There are already age limits on what people can see in movies (admittedly this is not law, but virtually all movie theaters follow this policy). It seems to me that there is nothing inherintly wrong with a system that limits kid's exposure to violent content. Again, this is sortta like the 'R' rating: it's not saying that kids can't see it, it's just saying that their parents have some ability to control and limit their exposure to it.
While I'll admit that sometime violence can be used constructively in films (and games), I think it would be nearly impossible to convince me that the violence in GTA3 is constructive. Now, this is not saying that they shouldn't be able to make this game (that's what makes this country great- they can). . . I'm just saying that parents should have the ability to determine for themselves if their kids are exposed to it. . .
Have you been around any "Dr."s recently?!? Most science profs can barely put together two words!!!
Sorry. . . I'm just bitter because I've been reading journal articles all weekend. . .
Allright. I agree this guy should have known the difference between KDE/GNOME and Linux. But, to be honest with you, I could see where he's coming from. In the world of Windows, there IS no difference between operating system and a desktop enviornment (since DOS was officially killed). Now, his example was admittedly a poor one, since you can change your desktop enviornment every week with Linux (if you want), but him using KDE got me thinking: how easy is it to remove Konquerer from KDE? Now, it's certainly doable, but how much functionality do you lose?
You'd think so, wouldn't ya? But, the trouble is that you have to do your correction on an object VERY NEAR to the object you are trying to observe. This is because the atmosphere does different things at different parts of the sky and, in general, the part of the sky where it is doing the same thing is relatively small (less than 1 degree, often). They talk about an "isoplanatic patch" all the time, and that's basically the chunk of sky over which the atmospheric behavior is the same (within some errors).
Adaptive/Active optics can work in two ways. One way is to use a bright (and it has to be damn bright) star near the target that one's hoping to look at. Then, by seeing how the atmosphere distorts this (supposedly point-source) star, we can adjust the mirror to compensate. There are different ways to do this that involve just moving the image around or re-shaping the mirror altogether, but I won't go into that here. The trouble with this plan is that it's hard to find a star bright enough in the part of the sky that you happen to be observing. It has to be damn bright, since you have to read out the CCD several times a second in order to compensate for the atmosphere fast enough. The second method uses a sodium-type laser that excites a layer in the atmosphere very high up (i.e. above most of the clouds/water vapor/crap). This behaves as a sort of artificial bright star that one can have anywhere in the sky.
The Center for Adaptive Optics (at UCSC) has a decent simple explanation here.
All of this aside, this will probably NOT render HST obsolete any time soon, since this is rediculously hard to do and has yet to really be done convincingly in any large-scale way, as people at my institution are finding out.
But what if I point out that the /. story talks (at the end) about how the EULA is more difficult to read than 1040 forms AND I link to the article that has a GRAPH. ooooo. . . graphs. . .
Do I get extra points if I link to the Slashdot article that talked about this before?
Wow! That's incredible timing! That was just YESTERDAY (and in the newspaper today). I'd point to some vast, right-wing conspiracy, but I don't know exactly what they would be conspiring to do. . .
For those of you with the stomach for it, here's the preprint.
. . . that a good fraction of the regular stories are quite a bit like the April Fool's stories?
First off, I should say that I really really like IE (yes. . . I know. . . flame on). That said, I can see no difference in the speed at which 0.9.9 renders pages compared to IE. The problem with Mozilla in windows is that it actually appears slower than IE when you bring it up, but YOU KNOW that has to be because IE is loaded in memory. Once you can convice the general public to leave the little Mozilla icon in their system tray (and, hence, have it loaded in memory), I really don't see that IE is going to be able to compete without some MAJOR improvements.
Hawkings, using quantum theory, showed that you will eventualy make it out of the hole via the emmision of one part of a particle/anti-particle pair(Hawking radiation). But the only information about you that will be conserved will be again be your mass, angular momentium and charge, so your not coming out the way you went in.
This is something that I hear ALL the time: that Hawking radiation lets some matter escape from a black hole. In actuallity, the particle/antiparticle pair are created (via the QM fluxuations of empty space) OUTSIDE the event horizon. One of the pair goes past the event horizon and the other (just barely) escapes. This is Hawking Radiation.
By definition, you cannot escape from a gravitational potential unless you can reach the escape velocity. Since, once you pass the event horizon, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, it is impossible to escape. Period.
And, the rocket WILL reach 7 miles/sec (or whatever) . . . it just doesn't reach it near the Earth's surface. Otherwise, the rocket CANNOT escape the Earth's gravitational potential. Even if you are exerting a force, the force of Earth's graviation (or a Black Hole's or whatever) can still be greater and hold you in.
Wow! That's a spectacularly good answer!
First off, this type of thing is not what the "real science" is about. It's just the PR stuff that seems to grab the front page. True, the color of the universe isn't going affect anyone (really), but you must admit that it's a pretty cool idea.
Secondly, there are very few things (especially in the academic fields) that are "useful" to the general public. The same argument could be made about art, music, or basically anything else other than food production, medicine, etc. . .
To quote Henri Poincare: "[The scientist does] not study science because it is useful to do so... [but rather] studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living..."
FIRST PO- AH!!! DAMNIT!!! THAT HURTS!!!
/. Painstation has succesfully been conducted!
Excellent. The first test of the