Google's made up of people, people often have opinions. Google is in a special position in that they're so powerful that they can afford to let their opinions shine through.
Hardly. If any company is competent enough to protect itself from technology-based industrial espionage, it's Google, and whatever financial risks there are don't outweigh the value of the entire Chinese market.
When they entered China and agreed to censor searches, they said it was in a hope that it would move things in the right direction in China etc. What it seems, that no one expected, was that they actually meant it.
Polarized glasses leak like hell unless you sit in exactly the right spot and look exactly the right direction - or at least they did last time I tried them.
It's been a looong time since I spent time in virtual worlds like these (remember Alphaworld?), but one of the things that I really liked was the scale of it all. Acre upon acre of elaborately constructed buildings and artwork - no people anywhere in sight, but so what? I liked it, in a "walking alone in the mountains" kind of way. Introverts need places to be, too.
For SL, if the kink has moved away to their own island, and left all the glorious monuments behind, I'm more attracted to it than ever! Never could get it to work adequately on Linux, though.
In general, this would matter and does matter (hint: the further north in the country you come from, the more careful should you be with what you eat when on vacation!). But for a hospital infection, not so much I think.
> and is not portrayed as the norm for the hospitals.
Oh, but of course it is. If not, they would all clamor for socialized medicine!
(fwiw, I worked in a hospital kitchen for many years, driving food to the wards. Unpleasant smells were very rare, and I never saw soiled bedsheets in the corners.)
Hear, hear. As I said, I have trouble believing we get less antibiotics from our doctors.
Maybe the reason is better hygiene routines at hospitals and nursing homes? I know we have all pretty much followed in George Bush's footsteps and started cleaning our hands with alcohol gels, when entering public places like nursery homes or schools/universities. The little wipes and dispensers are everywhere. Much as we are admonished to wash our hands, I guess nurses get it twice as much - and of course, it would be a matter of professional pride for them.
I might be wrong, but I think maybe being a (registered) nurse is somewhat more of a high-status profession here.
This is the case for most countries, the USA is peculiar in still allowing advertisements for things you can't even legally buy (without a prescription). This is far from something revolutionary Norwegian - in fact, I don't think they have banned advertising targeted against doctors yet, something which would be a nice and progressive thing.
This is a weird story in other ways. I don't know any Norwegian doctors that would recommend Tylenol, since that is a North American brand very few people have heard of here. It is called paracet here. And are we really that stingy on the antibiotics? I've never heard of anyone being refused it (but I haven't heard of anyone explicitly requesting it either)
> (a leftover relic from the mainframe era that needed to die over a decade ago)
No no no. Binary coded decimal is necessary and useful. When you divide 1 by 10, you should get 0.1, not 0.10000000000000001 (which is what you get if you for instance open up a python interpreter and ask for 1.0 / 10.0).
Monetary amounts, and currency conversion rates are examples of something you should never, ever use standard binary floats for.
Fact: Many major databases use some form of BCD for representing currency values. Enough so that IBM added a dedicated decimal FPU for their power6 series - it's so common on business database servers that it actually saves a lot.
> Can you provide a link? There are a lot of those very large windmills here, but at any one time it looks like about half of them are standing still (damaged? maintenance?) I can't seem to find any unbiased figures. Google seems to favor sites by either Al Gore fans or GW-hoax believers.
No, if you need the source to be compatible with your ideology, I don't think I can help you. I don't know my way around planet denialism much.
"Was Belgium thinking of having nuclear weapons? How about Finland? They are even building a new nuclear reactor right now."
I don't know. Not all countries are eager to admit such things, but Sweden and Switzerland have. Other countries which we know have used their civilian programs as cover for weapon production are Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Taiwan, and Iraq, not to mention France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, South Africa, the countries that actually succeeded in making a bomb.
I did not say nuclear had all the funding. It had way more, I don't see you arguing that.
Think about all the "dual-use" technologies that have been so immensely valuable to the world, then imagine those resources being used directly towards making valuable things for the world, instead of just as a fortunate side-effect of making new toys for generals. One of the best things you cite in your list, Arpanet, was even based on more than a little deception to gain access to those bottomless dual-use funds (the whole notion that routing would "continue functioning after a nuclear attack" was BS, and Arpanet pioneers have admitted today that they knew it).
I don't think that's the way things ought to work.
What if we got a little blasphemous, and instead called Eniac, Haber-Bosch, Arpanet and all the space program related inventions testaments to the efficiency of government projects? Because that's what they were. There's no magic to military government projects that make their projects more efficient and productive - quite the opposite if you ask me.
The vast majority of GTK/Gnome apps are not part of GNOME desktop. The libraries try to make it easy to follow the HiG, but some people will just insist on doing things as they're used to, no matter what.
Sorry, can't dig up any examples now, I'll get back to you.
> The carbon footprint of making one 60m high wind turbine is approximately the same as the carbon footprint said wind turbine will save in fossil fuel in its lifetime.
Meh, I'm undoing all my mods in this thread just to reply, but no matter: Are you sure those countries weren't thinking about nukes when they built them? Sweden did in fact build their reactors in order to be able to build nukes, plans which they fortunately ditched.
If frickin' Sweden thought about it, you can bet the others did as well.
That is, in essence, why much of the environmental movement is so mad at nuclear. It's not about meltdown. It's because for fifty years, nuclear power research had all the funding, and nuclear plants all the subsidies, because they were really "dual use". What could we have had if all that money had been sunk into wind, or geothermal? What the environmentalist movement says is essentially "you've had your chance, military pigs!" (but there are also pro-nuclear environmentalists who say something to the effect of "but it's sunk costs, and there are promising things within reach!")
> I wish Android partners would give up on being what David Pogue calls an iPhone wannabe [nytimes.com], and focus on the real promise of small mobile devices.
That worked so well for Windows CE, eh? Plenty of keyboards there.
I want something with two screens, that can be flipped towards each other when not in use to protect against scratches, etc. Like the Nintendo DS. And for you, they could make a software keyboard on the lower one. It wouldn't be any more cramped trying to type on.
Slashdot Mirror
Google's made up of people, people often have opinions. Google is in a special position in that they're so powerful that they can afford to let their opinions shine through.
They have gone on record saying that they will either pull out, or deliver uncensored searches. That's a bit more than a vague threat.
Hardly. If any company is competent enough to protect itself from technology-based industrial espionage, it's Google, and whatever financial risks there are don't outweigh the value of the entire Chinese market.
When they entered China and agreed to censor searches, they said it was in a hope that it would move things in the right direction in China etc. What it seems, that no one expected, was that they actually meant it.
> it's pretty hard to beat a centralized socialist economy when it comes to mass production using low-skilled labor.
For one thing, China hardly is that anymore. For another, it's probably wrong...
Polarized glasses leak like hell unless you sit in exactly the right spot and look exactly the right direction - or at least they did last time I tried them.
A gander? As in a male goose?
Hey, you never know with that thing.
It's been a looong time since I spent time in virtual worlds like these (remember Alphaworld?), but one of the things that I really liked was the scale of it all. Acre upon acre of elaborately constructed buildings and artwork - no people anywhere in sight, but so what? I liked it, in a "walking alone in the mountains" kind of way. Introverts need places to be, too.
For SL, if the kink has moved away to their own island, and left all the glorious monuments behind, I'm more attracted to it than ever! Never could get it to work adequately on Linux, though.
That is an option for most cases I know. I know the fixed point decimal type of Ada works this way, and probably the one in COBOL as well.
But I assume the database vendors know what they are doing, and they seem to assume true floating point decimal is needed, not just fixed point.
For more than you would ever want to know about the issue, I recommend Mike Cowlishaw's FAQ:
http://speleotrove.com/decimal/decifaq.html
Tell that to accountants.
In general, this would matter and does matter (hint: the further north in the country you come from, the more careful should you be with what you eat when on vacation!). But for a hospital infection, not so much I think.
> and is not portrayed as the norm for the hospitals.
Oh, but of course it is. If not, they would all clamor for socialized medicine!
(fwiw, I worked in a hospital kitchen for many years, driving food to the wards. Unpleasant smells were very rare, and I never saw soiled bedsheets in the corners.)
Hear, hear. As I said, I have trouble believing we get less antibiotics from our doctors.
Maybe the reason is better hygiene routines at hospitals and nursing homes? I know we have all pretty much followed in George Bush's footsteps and started cleaning our hands with alcohol gels, when entering public places like nursery homes or schools/universities. The little wipes and dispensers are everywhere. Much as we are admonished to wash our hands, I guess nurses get it twice as much - and of course, it would be a matter of professional pride for them.
I might be wrong, but I think maybe being a (registered) nurse is somewhat more of a high-status profession here.
This is the case for most countries, the USA is peculiar in still allowing advertisements for things you can't even legally buy (without a prescription). This is far from something revolutionary Norwegian - in fact, I don't think they have banned advertising targeted against doctors yet, something which would be a nice and progressive thing.
This is a weird story in other ways. I don't know any Norwegian doctors that would recommend Tylenol, since that is a North American brand very few people have heard of here. It is called paracet here. And are we really that stingy on the antibiotics? I've never heard of anyone being refused it (but I haven't heard of anyone explicitly requesting it either)
> what sort of idiot would try to fit a message into 160 characters?
If we find the answer, twitter will finally make sense.
> (a leftover relic from the mainframe era that needed to die over a decade ago)
No no no. Binary coded decimal is necessary and useful. When you divide 1 by 10, you should get 0.1, not 0.10000000000000001 (which is what you get if you for instance open up a python interpreter and ask for 1.0 / 10.0).
Monetary amounts, and currency conversion rates are examples of something you should never, ever use standard binary floats for.
Fact: Many major databases use some form of BCD for representing currency values. Enough so that IBM added a dedicated decimal FPU for their power6 series - it's so common on business database servers that it actually saves a lot.
> Can you provide a link? There are a lot of those very large windmills here, but at any one time it looks like about half of them are standing still (damaged? maintenance?) I can't seem to find any unbiased figures. Google seems to favor sites by either Al Gore fans or GW-hoax believers.
No, if you need the source to be compatible with your ideology, I don't think I can help you. I don't know my way around planet denialism much.
> It's funny how you demand proof that they're making power, but you don't demand proof that they are.
Funny, but not surprising, considering rve believes global warming is a "hoax".
"Was Belgium thinking of having nuclear weapons? How about Finland? They are even building a new nuclear reactor right now."
I don't know. Not all countries are eager to admit such things, but Sweden and Switzerland have. Other countries which we know have used their civilian programs as cover for weapon production are Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Taiwan, and Iraq, not to mention France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, South Africa, the countries that actually succeeded in making a bomb.
I did not say nuclear had all the funding. It had way more, I don't see you arguing that.
Think about all the "dual-use" technologies that have been so immensely valuable to the world, then imagine those resources being used directly towards making valuable things for the world, instead of just as a fortunate side-effect of making new toys for generals. One of the best things you cite in your list, Arpanet, was even based on more than a little deception to gain access to those bottomless dual-use funds (the whole notion that routing would "continue functioning after a nuclear attack" was BS, and Arpanet pioneers have admitted today that they knew it).
I don't think that's the way things ought to work.
What if we got a little blasphemous, and instead called Eniac, Haber-Bosch, Arpanet and all the space program related inventions testaments to the efficiency of government projects? Because that's what they were. There's no magic to military government projects that make their projects more efficient and productive - quite the opposite if you ask me.
The vast majority of GTK/Gnome apps are not part of GNOME desktop. The libraries try to make it easy to follow the HiG, but some people will just insist on doing things as they're used to, no matter what.
Sorry, can't dig up any examples now, I'll get back to you.
> The carbon footprint of making one 60m high wind turbine is approximately the same as the carbon footprint said wind turbine will save in fossil fuel in its lifetime.
No. Not even close. Orders of magnitude wrong.
Meh, I'm undoing all my mods in this thread just to reply, but no matter: Are you sure those countries weren't thinking about nukes when they built them? Sweden did in fact build their reactors in order to be able to build nukes, plans which they fortunately ditched.
If frickin' Sweden thought about it, you can bet the others did as well.
That is, in essence, why much of the environmental movement is so mad at nuclear. It's not about meltdown. It's because for fifty years, nuclear power research had all the funding, and nuclear plants all the subsidies, because they were really "dual use". What could we have had if all that money had been sunk into wind, or geothermal? What the environmentalist movement says is essentially "you've had your chance, military pigs!" (but there are also pro-nuclear environmentalists who say something to the effect of "but it's sunk costs, and there are promising things within reach!")
> I can change font size or DPI freely in e.g. GNOME, and all dialogs scale and reflow as needed.
Almost all. There are still some application developers who insist on hard-coding sizes.
> I wish Android partners would give up on being what David Pogue calls an iPhone wannabe [nytimes.com], and focus on the real promise of small mobile devices.
That worked so well for Windows CE, eh? Plenty of keyboards there.
I want something with two screens, that can be flipped towards each other when not in use to protect against scratches, etc. Like the Nintendo DS. And for you, they could make a software keyboard on the lower one. It wouldn't be any more cramped trying to type on.
Although in my defense, when the first hit on Google for the search is urban dictionary rather than a porn site, it must be a pretty uncommon term.