Probably not. Those images were the work of a graphic artist somewhere, so AOL does have the copyright to them. They are well within their rights to have GAIM remove them.
This ruling just means that AOL doesn't own the words "You've Got Mail", etc... They still own the rights to most of the rest of the stuff (as they should, since they developed it).
C dating compares the ratio of the C14 and C12 isotopes of carbon in the sample to the ratio found commonly in nature. Nitrogen never enters the picture.
Actually, nitrogen DOES enter the picture. C14 undergoes beta decay (change neutron to proton and electon) to become N14. However, this nitrogren would then float off and become part of the atmosphere, or do something else insignificant. C14 never changes to C12.
The point is that C12 is stable, while C14 is constantly being changed to N14. Since you know the typical ratio of C12/C14, given the ratio for a sample, you can determine the age.
I wonder if anyone else understood The Onion refernece? I showed that one to a friend once and he almost pissed himself laughing. Too bad they don't archive those...
Maybe I should have been more specific before. This is taken from the tutorial introduction...
Is parallel programming difficult? Many programmers complain that architecture dependencies, confusing notations, difficult correctness verification, and burdensome overhead make parallel programming seem tedious and arduous. These barriers cast doubt on the practicality of parallel programming, despite its many potential benefits.
Compositional C++ (CC++) was designed to alleviate the frustrations of parallel programming by adding a few simple extensions to the sequential language C++. It is a strict superset of the C++ language so any valid C or C++\ program is a valid CC++ program. Conversly, many classes of parallel CC++ programs can be simply rewritten as equivalent sequential programs. For these classes of programs, the developement path can be very similar to that of the equivalent sequential program. This compatibility with the C and C++ languages facilitates the transition to the task of parallel programming for users knowledgeable in those languages.
CC++ extends C++ with the following eight constructs:
blah blah blah
Despite the simplicity and the small number of extensions, the conjunction of these constructs, when combined with C++, results in an extremely rich and powerful parallel programming notation.
The richness of this language is reflected in its suitability to a wide spectrum of applications. In fact, CC++ integrates many seemingly disparate fields:
blah blah blah
All of the object-oriented features of C++ are preserved in CC++. These features (especially generic classes and inheritance mechanisms) promote the reuse of code, structure, and verification arguments. Thus, CC++ provides an excellent framework for the developement of libraries and for the use of software templates in program construction. This reuse is especially important and useful in the context of parallel programming.
We've shown pretty easily that we can bring down the MS test site. So why aren't people doing this to www.microsoft.com?
-ElJefe
Re:Typical Bigotry...Give MS a fair shot...
on
CrackThisBox Updates
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· Score: 1
I do agree with you on most of this. It's nice to see a neutral opinion on/. once in a while.
However, I do have a problem with your last statement. Yes, Microsoft is a business just trying to make money. But the means to this end have to be questioned. It's pretty hard to deny (even from an objective point of view) that Microsoft is trying to achieve a monopoly. Their "enhancement" of existing technology, copying of other programs, and necessary upgrades make them cross the line from greedy to evil.
(the above is an example of why never to read Slashdot when drunk)
First of, let me just say that this is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard of. But that's not what worries me...
The post on Slashdot mentions that there is a patent pending for this (although I didn't see it in the article). I think this is a bit silly now, but could in theory give them a monopoly on all e-mail sent between planets. Just think about what would happen if we made a base on the moon: you wouldn't be able to send e-mail because they would have the patent. Depending on the wording (and lawyers), it could even cover all e-mail send via radio waves.
With regards to uptime, it might be interesting to write a script that automatically pings it once in a while (say,every minute) and logs the results, just to see how often it's actually working (and to make sure that they don't reboot it every night)...
There's no set rule stating that life has to evolve in Earth-like conditions. However, the rate of chemical reactions is directly dependant on temperature. The actual formula for figuring out the rates is a bit complicated (unless you memorized the powers of "e"), but the simple rule of thumb is that the rate doubles for each increase of 10 degress Celcius.
This means that in a cold environment (for example, Titan), chemical reactions would take place extremely slowly. On the other hand, in a hot environment (Mercury, Venus, a campfire), reactions take place quickly. See also: combustion.
Also, in order to be able to move about and interact with it's environment, you need some combination of phases (solid, liquid, and gas). Too cold, and you end up with a living ice cube that can't do anything besides sit there. Too hot, and your life form evaporates and diffuses through the air.
Now, with that said, there isn't any good reason to presume that life has to be exactly like us. They could use ammonia instead of water, silicon instead of carbon, etc. (Actually, the results aren't exactly the same, but it's still possible)
I think I paid way too much attention in biology and chemisty last year... -ElJefe
Believe it or not, they do (sometimes). Here at school (Caltech), they gave away copies of NT Workstation 4.0 and Visual Studio 6.0 to anyone that wanted them. I wasn't about to pass up a chance to get free stuff, so I grabbed a copy of each...
-ElJefe
New Study Finds College Binge Drinking To Be A Bla
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Return of The Onion
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· Score: 1
Check this out, it's pretty funny. http://www.frognet.net/~wentwrth/beowulf/
Starring: President Bill Clinton as Beowulf Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (and Pope John Paul II) as Hrothgar Cookie Monster as Grendel Michelle Pfeiffer as Grendel's mother Boris Yeltsin as Wiglaf Godzilla as the Fire Dragon Hillary Clinton as Wealhtheow The A-Team as Beowulf's thanes David Letterman as the guys in the Geat castle
Let's have a show of hands: how many of you have actually seen a Beowulf cluster? Where I work (Caltech's CACR), we have a 114-node system, and it's pretty damn big. You can't just have all of the nodes packed densly: you need to be able to access the backs for networking, power, etc. It takes up a pretty sizeable amount of floor, and reaches up to the (rather high) ceiling.
Here's a couple of pictures. The one up top is just one side of it.
These guys want to make one that's over 100 times as big! Can you imagine the network cable nightmare? Not to mention the power requirements. Makes you feel sorry for the technician that has to set it up.
The other big problem with a large cluster is network latency. You can reduce the effects of this by passing larger packets of info, but there's still a limit that you reach. Just because you make something 100 times bigger doesn't mean it'll be 100 times better.
I also think that the software configuration would play a major role in the efficiency. I'd rather trust trained scientist (not me; I'm just a student), who's been working with large-scale parallel machines for years to set this up, not some tech guys who thought it'd be a neat idea. But maybe I'm just pessimistic.
Still perfectly happy with my 1-node PII... -ElJefe
Yeah, but like the graphical version for windows, it's probably going to run really slow. It used to take me 30 hours to process one data unit; now that I've switched to the graphicless one, it takes about 10. I'd imagine that this would run even slower, since it looks like it's doing more stuff, AND it's written in Java...
Helium is a light element, and consequently has a high average velocity. Because of this, there's a finite probabilty that in a given time period, some achieve escape velocity and go flying into space. This is why small astronomical bodies (like the moon) have no atmosphere at all, and large bodies (Jupiter, Saturn) that have a high escape velocity still have lots of hydrogen and helium. So yes, we are losing helium.
The question is how fast are we losing it? The earth has been around for a few billion years (2-3, I think). This is plenty of time for it to lose most of the helium that it will ever lose. The amount of helium would decrease asymptotically, meaning that at at t->infinity, the concentration of helium -> 0 (it probably goes like exp(-t), but I'm not sure). Two billion is pretty close to infinity (for all intents and purposes), so the rate of change in helium concentration now is negligible.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know of a less restricted tournament?
Yes, I believe it's called "The LA Freeway system".
-ElJefe
I'm surprised no one else posted this yet.
Scroll down a bit. It's the second "News in Brief" article.
-ElJefe
You continue to mock the perfectly legitimate practice of maintainence by demon-summoning. This displeases my master greatly.
-ElJefe
Lord of Evil and Consumer of Processor Time
Probably not. Those images were the work of a graphic artist somewhere, so AOL does have the copyright to them. They are well within their rights to have GAIM remove them.
This ruling just means that AOL doesn't own the words "You've Got Mail", etc... They still own the rights to most of the rest of the stuff (as they should, since they developed it).
-ElJefe
C dating compares the ratio of the C14 and C12 isotopes of carbon in the sample to the ratio found commonly in nature. Nitrogen never enters
the picture.
Actually, nitrogen DOES enter the picture. C14 undergoes beta decay (change neutron to proton and electon) to become N14. However, this nitrogren would then float off and become part of the atmosphere, or do something else insignificant. C14 never changes to C12.
The point is that C12 is stable, while C14 is constantly being changed to N14. Since you know the typical ratio of C12/C14, given the ratio for a sample, you can determine the age.
ElJefe
I wonder if anyone else understood The Onion refernece? I showed that one to a friend once and he almost pissed himself laughing. Too bad they don't archive those...
-ElJefe
Maybe I should have been more specific before. This is taken from the tutorial introduction...
Is parallel programming difficult? Many programmers complain that architecture dependencies, confusing notations, difficult correctness verification, and burdensome overhead make parallel programming seem tedious and arduous. These barriers cast doubt on the practicality of parallel programming, despite its many potential benefits.
Compositional C++ (CC++) was designed to alleviate the frustrations of parallel programming by adding a few simple extensions to the sequential language C++. It is a strict superset of the C++ language so any valid C or C++\ program is a valid CC++ program. Conversly, many classes of parallel CC++ programs can be simply rewritten as equivalent sequential programs. For these classes of programs, the developement path can be very similar to that of the equivalent sequential program. This compatibility with the C and C++ languages facilitates the transition to the task of parallel programming for users knowledgeable in those languages.
CC++ extends C++ with the following eight constructs:
blah blah blah
Despite the simplicity and the small number of extensions, the conjunction of these constructs, when combined with C++, results in an extremely rich and powerful parallel programming notation.
The richness of this language is reflected in its suitability to a wide spectrum of applications. In fact, CC++ integrates many seemingly disparate fields:
blah blah blah
All of the object-oriented features of C++ are preserved in CC++. These features (especially generic classes and inheritance mechanisms) promote the reuse of code, structure, and verification arguments. Thus, CC++ provides an excellent framework for the developement of libraries and for the use of software templates in program construction. This reuse is especially important and useful in the context of parallel programming.
-ElJefe
I've never used it, but I think something similar already exists (I could be wrong, since I didn't read the link from the story yet).
Compositional C++
-ElJefe
...is a way to limit the number of lines (like counting the <br> tags)...
-ElJefe
We've shown pretty easily that we can bring down the MS test site. So why aren't people doing this to www.microsoft.com?
-ElJefe
I do agree with you on most of this. It's nice to see a neutral opinion on /. once in a while.
However, I do have a problem with your last statement. Yes, Microsoft is a business just trying to make money. But the means to this end have to be questioned. It's pretty hard to deny (even from an objective point of view) that Microsoft is trying to achieve a monopoly. Their "enhancement" of existing technology, copying of other programs, and necessary upgrades make them cross the line from greedy to evil.
(the above is an example of why never to read Slashdot when drunk)
-ElJefe
Why is this moderated down? This person has several valid points. If you're a moderator, please to to bring it back to at least 1...
-ElJefe
First of, let me just say that this is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard of. But that's not what worries me...
The post on Slashdot mentions that there is a patent pending for this (although I didn't see it in the article). I think this is a bit silly now, but could in theory give them a monopoly on all e-mail sent between planets. Just think about what would happen if we made a base on the moon: you wouldn't be able to send e-mail because they would have the patent. Depending on the wording (and lawyers), it could even cover all e-mail send via radio waves.
Scary...
-ElJefe
With regards to uptime, it might be interesting to write a script that automatically pings it once in a while (say,every minute) and logs the results, just to see how often it's actually working (and to make sure that they don't reboot it every night)...
-ElJefe
There's no set rule stating that life has to evolve in Earth-like conditions. However, the rate of chemical reactions is directly dependant on temperature. The actual formula for figuring out the rates is a bit complicated (unless you memorized the powers of "e"), but the simple rule of thumb is that the rate doubles for each increase of 10 degress Celcius.
This means that in a cold environment (for example, Titan), chemical reactions would take place extremely slowly. On the other hand, in a hot environment (Mercury, Venus, a campfire), reactions take place quickly. See also: combustion.
Also, in order to be able to move about and interact with it's environment, you need some combination of phases (solid, liquid, and gas). Too cold, and you end up with a living ice cube that can't do anything besides sit there. Too hot, and your life form evaporates and diffuses through the air.
Now, with that said, there isn't any good reason to presume that life has to be exactly like us. They could use ammonia instead of water, silicon instead of carbon, etc. (Actually, the results aren't exactly the same, but it's still possible)
I think I paid way too much attention in biology and chemisty last year... -ElJefe
Believe it or not, they do (sometimes). Here at school (Caltech), they gave away copies of NT Workstation 4.0 and Visual Studio 6.0 to anyone that wanted them. I wasn't about to pass up a chance to get free stuff, so I grabbed a copy of each...
-ElJefe
My personal favorite is New Study Finds College Binge Drinking To Be A Blast. But maybe I'm just biased because I'm in college.
Check this out, it's pretty funny.
http://www.frognet.net/~wentwrth/beowulf/
Starring:
President Bill Clinton as Beowulf
Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (and Pope John Paul II) as Hrothgar
Cookie Monster as Grendel
Michelle Pfeiffer as Grendel's mother
Boris Yeltsin as Wiglaf
Godzilla as the Fire Dragon
Hillary Clinton as Wealhtheow
The A-Team as Beowulf's thanes
David Letterman as the guys in the Geat castle
Let's have a show of hands: how many of you have actually seen a Beowulf cluster? Where I work (Caltech's CACR), we have a 114-node system, and it's pretty damn big. You can't just have all of the nodes packed densly: you need to be able to access the backs for networking, power, etc. It takes up a pretty sizeable amount of floor, and reaches up to the (rather high) ceiling.
Here's a couple of pictures. The one up top is just one side of it.
These guys want to make one that's over 100 times as big! Can you imagine the network cable nightmare? Not to mention the power requirements. Makes you feel sorry for the technician that has to set it up.
The other big problem with a large cluster is network latency. You can reduce the effects of this by passing larger packets of info, but there's still a limit that you reach. Just because you make something 100 times bigger doesn't mean it'll be 100 times better.
I also think that the software configuration would play a major role in the efficiency. I'd rather trust trained scientist (not me; I'm just a student), who's been working with large-scale parallel machines for years to set this up, not some tech guys who thought it'd be a neat idea. But maybe I'm just pessimistic.
Still perfectly happy with my 1-node PII... -ElJefe
Then turn off those stories in your preferences. Or just ignore them (like I do to most Linux stories).
-ElJefe
... do you think it will be until people start complaing that the source isn't available?
-ElJefe
Yeah, but like the graphical version for windows, it's probably going to run really slow. It used to take me 30 hours to process one data unit; now that I've switched to the graphicless one, it takes about 10. I'd imagine that this would run even slower, since it looks like it's doing more stuff, AND it's written in Java...
-ElJefe
All of the "___ is not Linux" articles reminded me of this.
-ElJefe
Video e-mail - users can take a photo of themselves at the terminal and attach it to an e-mail.
Oh, good. I was just thinking today that checking my e-mail wasn't slow enough already...
-ElJefe
Just a few comments on helium:
Helium is a light element, and consequently has a high average velocity. Because of this, there's a finite probabilty that in a given time period, some achieve escape velocity and go flying into space. This is why small astronomical bodies (like the moon) have no atmosphere at all, and large bodies (Jupiter, Saturn) that have a high escape velocity still have lots of hydrogen and helium. So yes, we are losing helium.
The question is how fast are we losing it? The earth has been around for a few billion years (2-3, I think). This is plenty of time for it to lose most of the helium that it will ever lose. The amount of helium would decrease asymptotically, meaning that at at t->infinity, the concentration of helium -> 0 (it probably goes like exp(-t), but I'm not sure). Two billion is pretty close to infinity (for all intents and purposes), so the rate of change in helium concentration now is negligible.
God, I love calculus and hand-waving...
-ElJefe