Well obviously not all blanket statements are stupid, otherwise the statement "all blanket statements" would also be stupid, but it wouldn't be since it would be correct - a paradox.
Since he didn't explicitly say "all" in the statement about blanket statements, we should assume that he realised this and just meant "most". Perhaps he then just left that for the reader to deduce - being the most logic interpretation.
If a human was more powerful than a turing machine, and hence could solve the halting problem, then surely this would mean we could never understand our own brain? (because as soon as we could, then the halting problem kicks back in)
> If you use Debian, and forget your root password, wtf do you do if you can't bypass it in init 1? I have only forgotten my root password on one test server ONCE. Once is usually enough to break you of that habit.
I don't follow - you do exactly like you say, and boot off a floppy and delete the entry in/etc/password. Why's that hard?
>What mathematical topics should we be teaching to >budding computer scientists? What mathematics do >you actually use or need, working in the computer >industry?
This seems to be two seperate questions.
A knowledge of quantum mechanics is very highly regarded by many scientists.
I personally would say it should be taught to those who want ot know it.
I worked on large systems for large companies. However I never got to meet anyone that actually used the product. We were on the forth revision of software by the time I left.
I was basically the main coder. I was pretty good at my job, but I would get 100 page technical specs, 70 pages of which would describe how on the front page this dolphin would swim from one side to the other. On a company intranet. sigh.
Several years later I saw the said company at a careers fair. I mentioned that I wrote quite a lot of their intranet, and how it was doing. They said there were still many problems with it - and I wasn't surprised.
The trouble was that I had to go through my boss, who went through the company bosses, who went through the top level managers. The end users weren't consulted at all.
Also everyone wanted to see results _now_, requiring fast development.
My dad was the head of a union of a very large company. He successfully beat back the management time after time, and rarely lost.
One piece of advice he gave me was to never say no.
If they ask for a drug test, do not just say no. If you do, then you are being uncoopperative, and they can leverage that against you.
The trick is to say sure you will, in return for X, where X is something that sounds reasonable, but that they cannot meet. Alternatively make X something that protects higher interests.
Whether you agree with unions etc, I cannot deny my dad was very good at it - so I take his advice seriously.
Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a
on
Gnome 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Personally - better integration with kde.
Merge of sound systems. The might have to wait until there is a clear winner. esd isn't as good as arts. But arts has features that overlap but alsa is trying to achieve, and also overlaps with the forwarding-X-sound-server thing we heard about a few days ago. Getting that mess all cleared up will be _very_ nice.
Bridge between dcop and the gnome equiv. (Actually I'm not sure it has an equivalent. Bonobo is the equivalent to kpart I thing.. I get confused)
Talking about the start notification... In the new kde I've noticed on a dual head display (not xinerama) loading konqueror on the second head causes it to actually show on the first head, leaving the throbber on the second head throbbing for the secs.
Re:Any more information on the physics?
on
Columbia Coverage
·
· Score: 1
I worked in a research department for the m.o.d for a few months, and was talking to some of the top researchers in the country. Of course I didn't let such an oportunity go to waste, and threw tons of questions like this at them.
I'm just a student, and so retelling what I remember...
A space elevator would have to be made from a material not yet invented. The cable would be many kilometers thick, and would not be the same thickness from top to bottom. If I remember correctly, it would be much thicker in the middle.
There is a proposed site for the cable - somewhere in the atlantic ocean I think, where hurricanes are very rare, and it is out of shipping lanes. (i.e. no excuse for anyone to be anywhere near it unless they are going to the elevator.)
The cable would have to be incrediably strong, and incrediably light. If you cut the elevator at the base, it would fly off into outerspace. If you cut it somewhere in the middle, then the top half would fly out, and the bottom half would fall to earth really really slowly. You have to remember that is it many kilometers thick, and very very light. It would fall like a feather.
Being so thick etc, the 'loaded' weight would be neglible compared to the unloaded weight.
There have been various ideas on how to climb it. The obvious way is like real elevators. More exotic were various ways with electromagnets - unfortunetly my understanding became zero around here...
There were also ways you could fire things up in middle, then when they hit the top, use that energy to power the top... I don't really remember those bits tho..
I remember thinking that amount of material needed would be incrediable, so personally I don't think it would ever be feasible.
In a science fiction book I remember reading years ago, man created huge spider-like robots that would hunt down metorites, attach themselves to them, and mine them, spinning out long threads, then attaching the threads to create long elevators like this.
Fair enough. I agree with everything you said, and to be honest I don't really care either way. Either way I'll just get it from cvs, get all the illegal codecs, and compile in support for everything.;)
From the url you post: -----
While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if: (i) the person is not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject, (ii) experts in the field disagree on this issue. (iii) the authority was making a joke, drunk, or otherwise not being serious -----
I would say the debian-legal team is fairly qualified. I'm not sure point 2 really applies. Point 3 doesn't.
The mplayer authors did not write all the code. That is one of the problems. And even if they did, you can still have problems with patents (again, as in this case) which invalidate the GPL (The GPL is very clear in this case)
You're quick switch to swearing is very akin to the mplayer guys. What's wrong with just discussing this, and then coming to a conclusion?
The inclusion of libavcodec already causes legal problems.
Also your idea of researching the subject by looking at the mplayer license is slightly flawed in that that is what is being called into question.
Have a quick look through the mailing list (although its hard I admit with all the abuse they throw at each other - I hate that).
Also have a look at the other posts in this thread. A lot of them are offtrack, but there are some points in there.
Looking closely at licenses may appear to be anal, and it is a pain in the arse, but it's healthy to do so.
Btw, what exactly was I slandering? The fact that there is arguing on a fairly visible list about the license means companys wouldn't touch it with a barge pole until it is cleared up. Valid or not.
I fail to see why "appeal to authority" is a flawed argument.
I would, starting with zero knowledge, expect a professional plumber to have better knowledge about plumbing than bob down the road.
The fact that the mplayer people say that it is fully GPL'ed does not necessarily make it so.
Who would know more about law between some programmers and a legal team? Hmm, let me see...
As for gentoo - it's good to hear they ignore nonsense like licenses. I'll recommend it to my company next time they are looking for the best way to get sued.
As it stands, you cannot get a legal binary. Trying to get round it by distributing just the code doesn't fix it.
If the problem was just that some of the plugins are bad, then they could try to do that. Indeed the current debian package tries to hack out all the "bad" code and do this.
Having different packages optimised for different machines is dead easy, and no problem.
The first thing they teach you if you ever do a business course is that the first sign of trouble in a company is when everyone starts agreeing with each other. Same for coding projects, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Well obviously not all blanket statements are stupid, otherwise the statement "all blanket statements" would also be stupid, but it wouldn't be since it would be correct - a paradox.
Since he didn't explicitly say "all" in the statement about blanket statements, we should assume that he realised this and just meant "most". Perhaps he then just left that for the reader to deduce - being the most logic interpretation.
That $25 for the adapter. It's another £30 for the memory ($50 or so I think that is)
If a human was more powerful than a turing machine, and hence could solve the halting problem, then surely this would mean we could never understand our own brain? (because as soon as we could, then the halting problem kicks back in)
How would know if it was a nuke or avalanche or both if the devices to detect both are the same?
Heh, my apologies. I did in indeed misspell it.
> If you use Debian, and forget your root password, wtf do you do if you can't bypass it in init 1? I have only forgotten my root password on one test server ONCE. Once is usually enough to break you of that habit.
/etc/password. Why's that hard?
I don't follow - you do exactly like you say, and boot off a floppy and delete the entry in
Jeez what kind of work have you been doing?
I'm still at uni and already I've worked in places that needed karman filters and extended karman filters.
The article says:
>What mathematical topics should we be teaching to >budding computer scientists? What mathematics do >you actually use or need, working in the computer >industry?
This seems to be two seperate questions.
A knowledge of quantum mechanics is very highly regarded by many scientists.
I personally would say it should be taught to those who want ot know it.
The most interesting course I've ever done is Quantum Computing.
A very interesting but very difficult course.
I worked on large systems for large companies. However I never got to meet anyone that actually used the product. We were on the forth revision of software by the time I left.
I was basically the main coder. I was pretty good at my job, but I would get 100 page technical specs, 70 pages of which would describe how on the front page this dolphin would swim from one side to the other. On a company intranet. sigh.
Several years later I saw the said company at a careers fair. I mentioned that I wrote quite a lot of their intranet, and how it was doing. They said there were still many problems with it - and I wasn't surprised.
The trouble was that I had to go through my boss, who went through the company bosses, who went through the top level managers. The end users weren't consulted at all.
Also everyone wanted to see results _now_, requiring fast development.
Anyway, I've rambled enough.
My dad was the head of a union of a very large company. He successfully beat back the management time after time, and rarely lost.
One piece of advice he gave me was to never say no.
If they ask for a drug test, do not just say no. If you do, then you are being uncoopperative, and they can leverage that against you.
The trick is to say sure you will, in return for X, where X is something that sounds reasonable, but that they cannot meet. Alternatively make X something that protects higher interests.
Whether you agree with unions etc, I cannot deny my dad was very good at it - so I take his advice seriously.
Personally - better integration with kde.
Merge of sound systems. The might have to wait until there is a clear winner. esd isn't as good as arts. But arts has features that overlap but alsa is trying to achieve, and also overlaps with the forwarding-X-sound-server thing we heard about a few days ago. Getting that mess all cleared up will be _very_ nice.
Bridge between dcop and the gnome equiv. (Actually I'm not sure it has an equivalent. Bonobo is the equivalent to kpart I thing.. I get confused)
Thats all I can think of..
Talking about the start notification... In the new kde I've noticed on a dual head display (not xinerama) loading konqueror on the second head causes it to actually show on the first head, leaving the throbber on the second head throbbing for the secs.
I worked in a research department for the m.o.d for a few months, and was talking to some of the top researchers in the country. Of course I didn't let such an oportunity go to waste, and threw tons of questions like this at them.
I'm just a student, and so retelling what I remember...
A space elevator would have to be made from a material not yet invented. The cable would be many kilometers thick, and would not be the same thickness from top to bottom. If I remember correctly, it would be much thicker in the middle.
There is a proposed site for the cable - somewhere in the atlantic ocean I think, where hurricanes are very rare, and it is out of shipping lanes. (i.e. no excuse for anyone to be anywhere near it unless they are going to the elevator.)
The cable would have to be incrediably strong, and incrediably light. If you cut the elevator at the base, it would fly off into outerspace. If you cut it somewhere in the middle, then the top half would fly out, and the bottom half would fall to earth really really slowly. You have to remember that is it many kilometers thick, and very very light. It would fall like a feather.
Being so thick etc, the 'loaded' weight would be neglible compared to the unloaded weight.
There have been various ideas on how to climb it. The obvious way is like real elevators. More exotic were various ways with electromagnets - unfortunetly my understanding became zero around here...
There were also ways you could fire things up in middle, then when they hit the top, use that energy to power the top... I don't really remember those bits tho..
I remember thinking that amount of material needed would be incrediable, so personally I don't think it would ever be feasible.
In a science fiction book I remember reading years ago, man created huge spider-like robots that would hunt down metorites, attach themselves to them, and mine them, spinning out long threads, then attaching the threads to create long elevators like this.
Agreed. In fact this was one of the drives of Berlin.
Making sure you read the eula seems like a good thing...
...
"Oh sorry you called you about an available job, I mistook you for a telemarketter..... What do you mean no longer available..."
Fair enough. I agree with everything you said, and to be honest I don't really care either way. Either way I'll just get it from cvs, get all the illegal codecs, and compile in support for everything. ;)
From the url you post:
-----
While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to
support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to
authority is inappropriate if:
(i) the person is not qualified to have an expert
opinion on the subject,
(ii) experts in the field disagree on this issue.
(iii) the authority was making a joke, drunk, or
otherwise not being serious
-----
I would say the debian-legal team is fairly qualified. I'm not sure point 2 really applies. Point 3 doesn't.
The mplayer authors did not write all the code. That is one of the problems. And even if they did, you can still have problems with patents (again, as in this case) which invalidate the GPL (The GPL is very clear in this case)
You're quick switch to swearing is very akin to the mplayer guys. What's wrong with just discussing this, and then coming to a conclusion?
The inclusion of libavcodec already causes legal problems.
Also your idea of researching the subject by looking at the mplayer license is slightly flawed in that that is what is being called into question.
Have a quick look through the mailing list (although its hard I admit with all the abuse they throw at each other - I hate that).
Also have a look at the other posts in this thread. A lot of them are offtrack, but there are some points in there.
Looking closely at licenses may appear to be anal, and it is a pain in the arse, but it's healthy to do so.
Btw, what exactly was I slandering? The fact that there is arguing on a fairly visible list about the license means companys wouldn't touch it with a barge pole until it is cleared up. Valid or not.
I fail to see why "appeal to authority" is a flawed argument.
I would, starting with zero knowledge, expect a professional plumber to have better knowledge about plumbing than bob down the road.
The fact that the mplayer people say that it is fully GPL'ed does not necessarily make it so.
Who would know more about law between some programmers and a legal team? Hmm, let me see...
As for gentoo - it's good to hear they ignore nonsense like licenses. I'll recommend it to my company next time they are looking for the best way to get sued.
As it stands, you cannot get a legal binary.
Trying to get round it by distributing just the code doesn't fix it.
If the problem was just that some of the plugins are bad, then they could try to do that. Indeed the current debian package tries to hack out all the "bad" code and do this.
Having different packages optimised for different machines is dead easy, and no problem.
Agreed.
The first thing they teach you if you ever do a business course is that the first sign of trouble in a company is when everyone starts agreeing with each other. Same for coding projects, etc.
Won't work, as mentioned lots of times above.
Who moderated this up? Jeez, you think that if there was a simple solution then perhaps the debian-legal team would have come up with it.
Read some of the other posts. As other people have pointed out, this probably wouldn't fly.
Steve jobs tried it, and was persuaded it wouldn't work. Go read the other posts for more info.
I think it's more of:
a) The debian-legal people have quite a lot of respect from a lot of people, and a lot of credibility.
b) As it stands, you have ZERO credibility.