[Lotus Notes is] also terrible at handling multiple users on the same workstation.
Huh? OK, so I develop in this thing and know it pretty well, but this is intro stuff. On the box I'm working on, I have three different versions of Lotus Notes, and eight different identities I toggle between in each version. The "locations" tell Lotus notes the identity of the user, the location of the mail file, the type of connection (LAN, modem, off-line etc.) and so on. You can create as many locations as necessary, and switching between these identities is as easy as "File:: Mobile:: Choose current location". I've never used an app that was *better* at handling several users on a single workstation.
For example, it's really hard getting sales people to keep corporate contact information up-to-date once they've started keeping their contact info in Notes. It's easy for them, they can replicate to their desktop and access the info while they're on the road. It's free form, so they can add comments. Great for sales-people. Sucks for billing when the client has moved and the sales guy who knows about it can't be bothered to update the "real" client database.
Au contraire: there's just one thing to look out for when designing Lotus Notes applications that need to be integrated in a wider environment: Windows rich text and Lotus Notes rich text do not play well together. Other than that, you can use plain text files, OLE, COM, XML, ODBC, manual or automatic, ad-hoc or scheduled, to synch up - you name it. The data is as structured as you want it to be. And if it isn't... hey - don't blame the tool:)
The user interface stands out amongst the rest of Windows applications, 'cos it isn't a Windows application, at least it doesn't look like the design team have read the Windows UI manual.
That would be because it isn't a Windows app. It's a 16/32-Windows / Mac / Unix app, and consistent in itself over all those platforms. It's also been around since 1989, so it predates any Windows UI mandates.
However it does do some nice things, but it still sucks big time as an email client.
How exactly? Out of the box, it's unusual, but also has some unusual benefits. The main thing I appreciate is that even just as an email client, it's infinitely flexible - just adapt & extend as desired, in the easy-to-use RAD environment.
I'm not saying that Lotus Notes doesn't suck - but at least slam it for the right reasons:)
So maybe someone has already made a comment on this guy, if only to say that it's not reeealy "Speculative Fiction", but aside from my favourites, William Gibson, Ian M. Banks, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett (no, not the discworld ones (even though they're worth reading too (why, they practically read themselves)), I mean the two SF onces he did), he's my absolute favourite (... er, as it were).
The blurb on his book regularly contain one critic's comment: "A sort of drinking man's HG Wells" - which hits the nail on the head.... Apart from being irreverent, chaotic, probably drunk, and the story consisting almost entirely of deus-ex-maccinas, he also has some interesting ideas as to how the world works - almost, it seems, in spite of himself.
You're right: I was emphasising the "predictive" element of the tool - which is not its intention. I find it kind of hair-raising, though, that telesurgery is being contemplated at all over a network with variable latency (which is no problem for Quake, unless you're a pro and your pay cheque depends on it:) , combined with the postulation that "we can get a handle on it, with *this* nifty tool". Maybe the word "telesurgery" is simply what made this article newsworthy at all.
Right - the surgeon doesn't need to know exactly what went wrong with the network. But I would also say that she doesn't need to have a guitar twanging in her ear the whole time, either. What shocked me was these admittedly neat tools being suggested for telesurgery of all things. If ping jitter is a problem on the network you are using, then giving ergonomically fantastic feedback on the quality of the connection isn't going to change anything: the network is just not good enough. If I were a doctor (even more so as a patient) I would definitely want the equivalent of a dedicated, redundant point-to-point copper or fiber line between doc and patent, with a fixed latency, zero jitter, not shared with anyone, not subject to external influence short of a physical break of all redundant lines. Making apparent the reliability of what the surgeon is seeing is necessary of course, but not specifically the ping times. This is like a new device for measuring the degree of failure of the breaks on a Formula-1 racing car. "They fail?" - "Oh yes. Actually, continuously, to a certain degree." - "Ah. Better not drive it then, eh?"
My kind of overstated title refers to the false physical analogy. Translating ping times and jitter into sound gives the illusion of being able to get a feeling for the network, exactly like leaning on a table and wobbling it. The thing is, it's not the same thing. It is not only amusingly erronous, but also dangerously so, in this particular case.
--
"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought, thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward." (translation: I like your sig. And no, I'm not trying to talk your legs off:)
testing a network in this way is near enough to useless to make no difference.
The concept is that of "continuity". We are surrounded by it, we are so used to it that we don't perceive it as such anymore: objects do not simply appear out of thin air, or disappear with/without a puff of smoke. Objects do have edges, but they are well-defined and predictable. For example: my table stops *there* [stares at table], right at the edge, and will continue to do so until further notice. If at some point it no longer stops *there*, e.g. because someone moved it, or it broke, then I probably will be able to tell why. In addition, I can judge the permenance of objects in the physical word with a good degree of certainty: I can tell the difference between a good, solid table, and a wonky one.
Networks are different: they go down for no apparent reason, suddenly, and without warning. They can be more or less robust, but I will not be able to tell how robust a network is with a couple a pings.
The physical-world analogy of that which is being proposed in this article is the following: A surgeon knows from experience that her hands occasionally just disappear, and then reappear again a while later. She personally doesn't know why this is, but has gotten used to it. During surgery, it is bad for her hands to disappear. So, before performing surgery, she waves her hands about, shakes them, wrings them, and it they're still there, it'll probably be okay.
Great. The point is that what the surgeon needs to know about the network (or in the analogy, her hands), is *why* it disappears, and under what circumstances. Only then will surgery be able to be performed with a calculable degree of risk. So: build a dedicated network, with guaranteed ping times, zero jitter, et cetera. Then, once you have gained some faith that your network is reliable, by all means test it before using it, but do not rely on some arcane hand-waving to judge if it's good enough or not. If there is any reason that any parameters of a network may change during tele-surgery - like some PFY firing up Kazaa - then it's simply not good enough for the task.
One thing I was trying to work out was the difference in materials. Think of it this way: a hypodermic needle is definitely way bigger than a single cell (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to draw blood through it), and yet it slides through flesh like butter (often even painlessly, because the network of nerves is actually quite coarse). On the other hand, try to slide it through rock, and you won't get very far. Assume an indestructable needle, and you would get through, but it would take a lot of energy. One thing I can't work out is bone, but I would estimate that especially compared to rock, it's really quite splooshy as well. The other thing is the speed... basically, when somethng hits a body, then depending almost exclusively on the consistency of the body, it absorbs a certain amount of energy. The speed merely affects how the absorbtion tales place. Imagine the following: push a nail firmly against a heavy wooden board. Depending on how the board is held / framed, you might just break the frame, or splinter the board. If you shoot the nail at the board, however, you may very well simply punch a hole in the board without much affecting anything else. The amount of energy absorbed by the board will certainly not be identical for the two cases, but it will be approximately in the same ballpark. Now figure a supersonic nail, and the board will probably be punched through, leaving a clean hole. In the situation described in the article, I figure that someting even the size of a hypo (on end, not sideways of course) may well pass through a body without causing much damage. Anything as small as a cell, you may not even notice. And the speed would mean that as you say, the energy would be absorbed almost exclusively in the form of heat.
Anyway: what I'm saying is that a human body would absorb far, far less energy from a body passing through it than a similarly sized section of rock, because the "sack of dirty water" is very soft, not at all resillient, tastes faintly of pork, and goes very well with Fava beans and Chianti. (Sorry - all this talk of human bodies... it was either Mr. Lecter or pr0n:)
I figure it this way: the article was talking about a body the size of a human cell, going at some outrageous speed. If a single one of your red blood cells suddenly decided to go an a supersonic hiatus (or, I don't know, maybe an aunt died, and it inherited a bundle of momentum) it would rip through the wall of whatever artery it was in at the time, continue through your body, and escape through the skin. Question is, what kind of hole would it leave behind? I would think a sort-of cell-sized one, and the hole wouldn't last for long, because the rubbery substance your body is made of would just splooch, microscopically, back in place. The hole almost certainly wouldn't be big enough, nor last long enough, for other blood cells to follow: i.e., it wouldn't bleed.
All in all, you probably wouldn't even feel it, or if you did, it'd be a sort of "huh? what was that? oh well, must be getting old" sort of feeling. As for the seismic trace: that was several kilometers of decidedly non-sploochy stuff.
On the other hand, I don't *really* have a clue (as you probably gathered), and it might just be an explanation, finally, for spontaneous human combustion.
It is difficult today to remember how intimidating computers were for non-technical people in the early 1980s [...]
... this reminds me of one of my favourite bits of "latter-day aracana": Back in the olden days, when small computers were bigger than large cars, Managers of large companies introducing the behemoths were on occasion given (children's) Ladybird books, specifically the one titled "The Computer" as a primer. (Come to think of it - I wonder who had the means to put them through the embarassement...)
erm... because it would take a veritable shitload of certificates that would have to be installed, and kept updated, on every single MS system out there?
How about an ID-list, with a unique ID for each control, and a sporadically-synchronised list of revoked IDs?... means that the app that did the synching would have to be robust, because if you had to void it...:)
Familiar problem. One of the things I like about my Casio WQV-3 "Wristcam" (digicam-in-a-watch) is that it (being a watch and all) sensibly puts a timestamp on each image. (On an aside - considering it doesn't have a flash, it makes identification of the pitch-black night shots at all possible, at least:)
I have to appreciate the way the article has a hair-raising exaggeration...
[...] in fact your every memory and experience [...]
... right next to Our Old Friends...
[...] engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab [...]
For those who can't be bothered to read the article (my advice: don't), a short summary: in a couple of years (like, five) 1-TB hard drives will cost ~USD300. A new trademark, "MyLifeBits", which is basically a (gasp) *searchable* database can be filled with everyPhotoYouEverTake, everySoundYouEverHear, everyTextYouEverRead (yadda yadda) as a kind of, er, diary. (For the yougsters: a "diary" is a private, dead-tree blog).
No word on how you are supposed to get the information in there... which would sort of be the interesting bit, dontchathink? What is this? MS anti-FUD?
(no, actually I'm having a *great* day)
Re:HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna
on
Fanwing Planes?
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's 20 grams of lift per watt, or 1600kg for an 80 kW engine - total. Compare that to your data of the Cessna, ~126kW for ~1200kg (or ~800kg for 80kW), and it comes out to about double. Feh. I was expecting factor 10 or so:)
... he said, and started scribbling in his notebook. "That's pee-you-bee-emm-ee-dee, right?"
Okay, so I'm aware of not being in possession of all the facts, but if I'm trying to sell something that someone else is giving away for free, I would call that "being pretty SOL". If someone else in the same situation tries to cause the free source to be legislated into oblivion, I would call that "quite some bloody nerve".
How much is the taxpayer saving on this, and where is that money going instead? Is it legitimate for a gov't agency to disseminate scientific papers, a) if they are gathering them anyway, because they are using them themselves, and b) at low cost for the agency, and the cost of an internet connection for the user? Or rather - how can that be construed as illegitimate? I can understand that the publishers are pissed, but to stand up on their hind legs and claim that pay-per-use (and yes that's into our pockets) is in any way at all better - and to keep a straight face... wow.
Bill Wyman-the-journalist was at Salon.com at one point and left there to take the position of Arts Editor at the AJC.
I didn't know that. Nor do I know what percentage of Bill-Wyman-the-journalist's articles are specifically on music, either. But it's a bit of a moot point. It is eminently possible that a rock dude such as Bill-Wyman-the-musician might want to try his hand at writing the odd article some time, from his particular point of view. In this case, his name would be weighty amongst the Bill-Wyman-the-musician aficionados, i.e., worth a lot of money. Were I a fan, I would probably go out of my way to purchase the rag the article were in, and I would also be sorely pissed if I bought a paper/'zine in the mistaken belief that it contained an article written by the musician only to discover it was written by the journalist. OK, amongst the music lovers, this would probably become known soon enough (and become a standing joke of some sort), and I admit that Bill-Wyman-the-journalist has a nice turn of phrase in expressing his outrage, but now that I've got some grasp on the situation in hand, it seems a bit peevish to me.
Maybe you are acquanted with the Michael Jackson who writes about booze. This subject matter is far enough away from music, IMHO, that there is little danger of him being confused with the Michael Jackson of whom it is said that he is essentially immortal because his plastic surgeons have enough spare parts for another dozen. If, however, I were to open my daily rag and see an article about something music-related signed "Michael Jackson", I would expect to see some notice that that no, it wasn't ol' Jacko, but some Michael-Jackson-the-journalist who wrote it, if that was the case. Wouldn't you?
Would you like to write a clarification anytime you write your name on anything just because some celebrity has the same name?
That's hardly what I was arguing. But to answer your question: if my name were "X B Trivial", and I were a journalist in the field of say auto racing, amongst others, and the next Formula-1 racing champ once Michael retires was called "X B Trivial", then yes, I would consider it common courtesy to note, when signing my articles on Formula-1 racing, that I was not the X-B-Trivial of Formula-1 driving fame, but merely the one of Formula-1 journalism fame. If I was signing articles on belly button lint I would not consider it necessary, not would I consider it necessary anywhere else. Common courtesy, that's all.
Anyway, the lawyers are objecting to Bill Wyman the journalist using his given name on the byline of the articles he writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and, I suppose, any other publication for which he writes). Not because he owns any domain name relating to the name Bill Wyman.
This action strikes me as even more outlandish and insidious [...]
Considering that this is not about domain names, I actually find it quite a bit less insidious.
If I were to read an article say on computers by one "Steve Jobs" in some rag or other, I would definitely welcome some clarification as to whether this was "the" Steve Jobs, or just "a" Steve Jobs - especially if it wasn't "the" Steve Jobs.
In this case, I'm sure there were quite a few readers who believed that Bill-Wyman-the-bass-player had suddenly taken up the pen - and think it rather stupid of Bill-Wyman-the-journalist that he hadn't put in some clarification on his own, sooner - especially when writing about music.
This shows quite clearly why it's not smart to release outdated software under the GPL, suddenly a new market comes along and it's not outdated anymore.
Hmmm, good point. One could argue that it's not their core business - they make PC games, not any other suff - but I guess that yes, they missed making a buck on this particular port. On the other hand, would they have ported it at all if the source was still exclusively in their hands?
All in all, I would think that ID get a better return with the current modus operandi: goodwill from the hacker cummunity, insight from the mods other people make, a good rep overall: i.e., not just the hacking community - ports like this make it into mainstream, and if Joe Streetman knows any game dev company other than EA et al, it'll probably be ID.
Right. (did you even see the movie "Clockwork" - the one with John Cleese, not the orange one?)
And I implicitly emphasise the social aspect when I use the terms 'left' and 'right'. The former being "whatever rocks your boat", the latter "if-the-good-lord-had-wanted-boys-to-have-long-hai r-he-would-have-given-them-long-hair - lock up that hippie." (for instance).
Styopa - yes, I am guilty of oversimplification, and believe that my original comment should never have been moderated "insightful". I was just tossing an idea around, and am gratified to see it ripped apart along the seams. Thus do I learn. ("Woody Harrelson interpretation of the elections".. heh.)
However, I do have an issue with your suggestion:
If you pass the test, you can vote.
The problem I see as that it is always the ones who get to vote who also get to formulate the test. This results in a kind of "grandfather principle".
The original article stated that elections in the US do not adequately reflect the will of the voters. This is an entirely different issue, but does carry the implication that the voters, as they are, are just fine. I agree with this. The people (and all the people) are the sovereign, instead of a king, dictator, oligarchy, or even an enfranchised majority - it's one of the basic tenets of democracy. As for the language - I would hate to see the US go down the path of bigotry observed for instance today in Turkey (Kurdish) or in the past in Ireland (Gaelic). The US almost adopted German as a common language at some point in its history, it has always been a country of immigrants. Spanish, Chinese, Yiddish, Hebrew are languages that come to mind as potential official second languages of the US - for official documents etc. - let alone the string of American Indian languages. In principle: Just because they don't speak English, they aren't stupid, and if they are stupid, then enlighten them rather than disenfranchise them. If the original grandfather principle had not been abolished, do you think there would be a black middle class of any kind today?
Fact is, Nazi Germay was a planned economy, not in any way a free market. As opposed to Russia, the government didn't outright take over ownership of most factories, but it was made certain that they produced what the party commanded in many other ways. Some of those involved making some of the owners rich. I don't think that was by being in any way "free-wheeling" way, but by being useful for The Party.
That the workers got "fucked" is very typical for leftist totalitarian regimes.
Gorimek - yes, I got caught up in my rhetoric. Quite apart from it being flawed, I am not sure that the concept of 'left'/'right' has any validity at all, i.e., denotes something in the real world. So, out of interest - do you think there is any way of characterising 'leftist' and 'rightist' totalitarian regimes (and just in what manner workers are, er, shagged by them)?
Your characterizations of the 'right' and the 'left' are simplistic and nieve
Yup.
What are your characterisations of the 'right' and the 'left', Omnifarious?
(On the one hand, it is definitely a good idea to defferentiate in a bit more depth, but on the other, the 'left'/'right' distinction is employed so often that it still needs to be formulated - hence my question)
Slashdot Mirror
- [Lotus Notes is] also terrible at handling multiple users on the same workstation.
Huh? OK, so I develop in this thing and know it pretty well, but this is intro stuff. On the box I'm working on, I have three different versions of Lotus Notes, and eight different identities I toggle between in each version. The "locations" tell Lotus notes the identity of the user, the location of the mail file, the type of connection (LAN, modem, off-line etc.) and so on. You can create as many locations as necessary, and switching between these identities is as easy as "FileI've never used an app that was *better* at handling several users on a single workstation.
- For example, it's really hard getting sales people to keep corporate contact information up-to-date once they've started keeping their contact info in Notes. It's easy for them, they can replicate to their desktop and access the info while they're on the road. It's free form, so they can add comments. Great for sales-people. Sucks for billing when the client has moved and the sales guy who knows about it can't be bothered to update the "real" client database.
Au contraire: there's just one thing to look out for when designing Lotus Notes applications that need to be integrated in a wider environment: Windows rich text and Lotus Notes rich text do not play well together. Other than that, you can use plain text files, OLE, COM, XML, ODBC, manual or automatic, ad-hoc or scheduled, to synch up - you name it.The data is as structured as you want it to be.
And if it isn't
- The user interface stands out amongst the rest of Windows applications, 'cos it isn't a Windows application, at least it doesn't look like the design team have read the Windows UI manual.
That would be because it isn't a Windows app. It's a 16/32-Windows / Mac / Unix app, and consistent in itself over all those platforms. It's also been around since 1989, so it predates any Windows UI mandates.- However it does do some nice things, but it still sucks big time as an email client.
How exactly? Out of the box, it's unusual, but also has some unusual benefits. The main thing I appreciate is that even just as an email client, it's infinitely flexible - just adapt & extend as desired, in the easy-to-use RAD environment.I'm not saying that Lotus Notes doesn't suck - but at least slam it for the right reasons
So maybe someone has already made a comment on this guy, if only to say that it's not reeealy "Speculative Fiction", but aside from my favourites, William Gibson, Ian M. Banks, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett (no, not the discworld ones (even though they're worth reading too (why, they practically read themselves)), I mean the two SF onces he did), he's my absolute favourite (... er, as it were).
... Apart from being irreverent, chaotic, probably drunk, and the story consisting almost entirely of deus-ex-maccinas, he also has some interesting ideas as to how the world works - almost, it seems, in spite of himself.
The blurb on his book regularly contain one critic's comment: "A sort of drinking man's HG Wells" - which hits the nail on the head.
Why, thank-you :)
:) , combined with the postulation that "we can get a handle on it, with *this* nifty tool". Maybe the word "telesurgery" is simply what made this article newsworthy at all.
You're right: I was emphasising the "predictive" element of the tool - which is not its intention.
I find it kind of hair-raising, though, that telesurgery is being contemplated at all over a network with variable latency (which is no problem for Quake, unless you're a pro and your pay cheque depends on it
Right - the surgeon doesn't need to know exactly what went wrong with the network. But I would also say that she doesn't need to have a guitar twanging in her ear the whole time, either. What shocked me was these admittedly neat tools being suggested for telesurgery of all things. If ping jitter is a problem on the network you are using, then giving ergonomically fantastic feedback on the quality of the connection isn't going to change anything: the network is just not good enough. If I were a doctor (even more so as a patient) I would definitely want the equivalent of a dedicated, redundant point-to-point copper or fiber line between doc and patent, with a fixed latency, zero jitter, not shared with anyone, not subject to external influence short of a physical break of all redundant lines. Making apparent the reliability of what the surgeon is seeing is necessary of course, but not specifically the ping times.
:)
This is like a new device for measuring the degree of failure of the breaks on a Formula-1 racing car. "They fail?" - "Oh yes. Actually, continuously, to a certain degree." - "Ah. Better not drive it then, eh?"
My kind of overstated title refers to the false physical analogy. Translating ping times and jitter into sound gives the illusion of being able to get a feeling for the network, exactly like leaning on a table and wobbling it. The thing is, it's not the same thing. It is not only amusingly erronous, but also dangerously so, in this particular case.
--
"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought, thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
(translation: I like your sig. And no, I'm not trying to talk your legs off
testing a network in this way is near enough to useless to make no difference.
The concept is that of "continuity". We are surrounded by it, we are so used to it that we don't perceive it as such anymore: objects do not simply appear out of thin air, or disappear with/without a puff of smoke. Objects do have edges, but they are well-defined and predictable. For example: my table stops *there* [stares at table], right at the edge, and will continue to do so until further notice. If at some point it no longer stops *there*, e.g. because someone moved it, or it broke, then I probably will be able to tell why. In addition, I can judge the permenance of objects in the physical word with a good degree of certainty: I can tell the difference between a good, solid table, and a wonky one.
Networks are different: they go down for no apparent reason, suddenly, and without warning. They can be more or less robust, but I will not be able to tell how robust a network is with a couple a pings.
The physical-world analogy of that which is being proposed in this article is the following:
A surgeon knows from experience that her hands occasionally just disappear, and then reappear again a while later. She personally doesn't know why this is, but has gotten used to it. During surgery, it is bad for her hands to disappear. So, before performing surgery, she waves her hands about, shakes them, wrings them, and it they're still there, it'll probably be okay.
Great. The point is that what the surgeon needs to know about the network (or in the analogy, her hands), is *why* it disappears, and under what circumstances. Only then will surgery be able to be performed with a calculable degree of risk. So: build a dedicated network, with guaranteed ping times, zero jitter, et cetera. Then, once you have gained some faith that your network is reliable, by all means test it before using it, but do not rely on some arcane hand-waving to judge if it's good enough or not. If there is any reason that any parameters of a network may change during tele-surgery - like some PFY firing up Kazaa - then it's simply not good enough for the task.
Heh. (So much for "empathic" physics).
SEWilco - I screwed my head back on now - thanks for the enlightenment.
One thing I was trying to work out was the difference in materials. Think of it this way: a hypodermic needle is definitely way bigger than a single cell (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to draw blood through it), and yet it slides through flesh like butter (often even painlessly, because the network of nerves is actually quite coarse). ... basically, when somethng hits a body, then depending almost exclusively on the consistency of the body, it absorbs a certain amount of energy. The speed merely affects how the absorbtion tales place.
... it was either Mr. Lecter or pr0n :)
On the other hand, try to slide it through rock, and you won't get very far. Assume an indestructable needle, and you would get through, but it would take a lot of energy.
One thing I can't work out is bone, but I would estimate that especially compared to rock, it's really quite splooshy as well. The other thing is the speed
Imagine the following: push a nail firmly against a heavy wooden board. Depending on how the board is held / framed, you might just break the frame, or splinter the board. If you shoot the nail at the board, however, you may very well simply punch a hole in the board without much affecting anything else. The amount of energy absorbed by the board will certainly not be identical for the two cases, but it will be approximately in the same ballpark. Now figure a supersonic nail, and the board will probably be punched through, leaving a clean hole.
In the situation described in the article, I figure that someting even the size of a hypo (on end, not sideways of course) may well pass through a body without causing much damage. Anything as small as a cell, you may not even notice. And the speed would mean that as you say, the energy would be absorbed almost exclusively in the form of heat.
Anyway: what I'm saying is that a human body would absorb far, far less energy from a body passing through it than a similarly sized section of rock, because the "sack of dirty water" is very soft, not at all resillient, tastes faintly of pork, and goes very well with Fava beans and Chianti.
(Sorry - all this talk of human bodies
I figure it this way: the article was talking about a body the size of a human cell, going at some outrageous speed. If a single one of your red blood cells suddenly decided to go an a supersonic hiatus (or, I don't know, maybe an aunt died, and it inherited a bundle of momentum) it would rip through the wall of whatever artery it was in at the time, continue through your body, and escape through the skin. Question is, what kind of hole would it leave behind? I would think a sort-of cell-sized one, and the hole wouldn't last for long, because the rubbery substance your body is made of would just splooch, microscopically, back in place. The hole almost certainly wouldn't be big enough, nor last long enough, for other blood cells to follow: i.e., it wouldn't bleed.
All in all, you probably wouldn't even feel it, or if you did, it'd be a sort of "huh? what was that? oh well, must be getting old" sort of feeling.
As for the seismic trace: that was several kilometers of decidedly non-sploochy stuff.
On the other hand, I don't *really* have a clue (as you probably gathered), and it might just be an explanation, finally, for spontaneous human combustion.
- It is difficult today to remember how intimidating computers were for non-technical people in the early 1980s [...]
... this reminds me of one of my favourite bits of "latter-day aracana": Back in the olden days, when small computers were bigger than large cars, Managers of large companies introducing the behemoths were on occasion given (children's) Ladybird books, specifically the one titled "The Computer" as a primer.(Come to think of it - I wonder who had the means to put them through the embarassement
erm ... because it would take a veritable shitload of certificates that would have to be installed, and kept updated, on every single MS system out there?
... means that the app that did the synching would have to be robust, because if you had to void it ... :)
How about an ID-list, with a unique ID for each control, and a sporadically-synchronised list of revoked IDs?
- I have taken approx 2000 pictures [...]
Familiar problem. One of the things I like about my Casio WQV-3 "Wristcam" (digicam-in-a-watch) is that it (being a watch and all) sensibly puts a timestamp on each image.(On an aside - considering it doesn't have a flash, it makes identification of the pitch-black night shots at all possible, at least
- [...] engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab [...]
For those who can't be bothered to read the article (my advice: don't), a short summary: in a couple of years (like, five) 1-TB hard drives will cost ~USD300. A new trademark, "MyLifeBits", which is basically a (gasp) *searchable* database can be filled with everyPhotoYouEverTake, everySoundYouEverHear, everyTextYouEverRead (yadda yadda) as a kind of, er, diary. (For the yougsters: a "diary" is a private, dead-tree blog).No word on how you are supposed to get the information in there
What is this? MS anti-FUD?
(no, actually I'm having a *great* day)
That's 20 grams of lift per watt, or 1600kg for an 80 kW engine - total. Compare that to your data of the Cessna, ~126kW for ~1200kg (or ~800kg for 80kW), and it comes out to about double. :)
Feh. I was expecting factor 10 or so
Okay, so I'm aware of not being in possession of all the facts, but if I'm trying to sell something that someone else is giving away for free, I would call that "being pretty SOL". If someone else in the same situation tries to cause the free source to be legislated into oblivion, I would call that "quite some bloody nerve".
How much is the taxpayer saving on this, and where is that money going instead?
Is it legitimate for a gov't agency to disseminate scientific papers, a) if they are gathering them anyway, because they are using them themselves, and b) at low cost for the agency, and the cost of an internet connection for the user? Or rather - how can that be construed as illegitimate?
I can understand that the publishers are pissed, but to stand up on their hind legs and claim that pay-per-use (and yes that's into our pockets) is in any way at all better - and to keep a straight face
- Bill Wyman-the-journalist was at Salon.com at one point and left there to take the position of Arts Editor at the AJC.
I didn't know that. Nor do I know what percentage of Bill-Wyman-the-journalist's articles are specifically on music, either.But it's a bit of a moot point. It is eminently possible that a rock dude such as Bill-Wyman-the-musician might want to try his hand at writing the odd article some time, from his particular point of view. In this case, his name would be weighty amongst the Bill-Wyman-the-musician aficionados, i.e., worth a lot of money. Were I a fan, I would probably go out of my way to purchase the rag the article were in, and I would also be sorely pissed if I bought a paper/'zine in the mistaken belief that it contained an article written by the musician only to discover it was written by the journalist. OK, amongst the music lovers, this would probably become known soon enough (and become a standing joke of some sort), and I admit that Bill-Wyman-the-journalist has a nice turn of phrase in expressing his outrage, but now that I've got some grasp on the situation in hand, it seems a bit peevish to me.
Maybe you are acquanted with the Michael Jackson who writes about booze. This subject matter is far enough away from music, IMHO, that there is little danger of him being confused with the Michael Jackson of whom it is said that he is essentially immortal because his plastic surgeons have enough spare parts for another dozen. If, however, I were to open my daily rag and see an article about something music-related signed "Michael Jackson", I would expect to see some notice that that no, it wasn't ol' Jacko, but some Michael-Jackson-the-journalist who wrote it, if that was the case. Wouldn't you?
- Would you like to write a clarification anytime you write your name on anything just because some celebrity has the same name?
That's hardly what I was arguing.But to answer your question: if my name were "X B Trivial", and I were a journalist in the field of say auto racing, amongst others, and the next Formula-1 racing champ once Michael retires was called "X B Trivial", then yes, I would consider it common courtesy to note, when signing my articles on Formula-1 racing, that I was not the X-B-Trivial of Formula-1 driving fame, but merely the one of Formula-1 journalism fame. If I was signing articles on belly button lint I would not consider it necessary, not would I consider it necessary anywhere else. Common courtesy, that's all.
- Anyway, the lawyers are objecting to Bill Wyman the journalist using his given name on the byline of the articles he writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and, I suppose, any other publication for which he writes). Not because he owns any domain name relating to the name Bill Wyman.
Considering that this is not about domain names, I actually find it quite a bit less insidious.This action strikes me as even more outlandish and insidious [...]
If I were to read an article say on computers by one "Steve Jobs" in some rag or other, I would definitely welcome some clarification as to whether this was "the" Steve Jobs, or just "a" Steve Jobs - especially if it wasn't "the" Steve Jobs.
In this case, I'm sure there were quite a few readers who believed that Bill-Wyman-the-bass-player had suddenly taken up the pen - and think it rather stupid of Bill-Wyman-the-journalist that he hadn't put in some clarification on his own, sooner - especially when writing about music.
Anyway. Thus do we differ.
- This shows quite clearly why it's not smart to release outdated software under the GPL, suddenly a new market comes along and it's not outdated anymore.
Hmmm, good point. One could argue that it's not their core business - they make PC games, not any other suff - but I guess that yes, they missed making a buck on this particular port. On the other hand, would they have ported it at all if the source was still exclusively in their hands?All in all, I would think that ID get a better return with the current modus operandi: goodwill from the hacker cummunity, insight from the mods other people make, a good rep overall: i.e., not just the hacking community - ports like this make it into mainstream, and if Joe Streetman knows any game dev company other than EA et al, it'll probably be ID.
Right. (did you even see the movie "Clockwork" - the one with John Cleese, not the orange one?)
i r-he-would-have-given-them-long-hair - lock up that hippie." (for instance).
And I implicitly emphasise the social aspect when I use the terms 'left' and 'right'. The former being "whatever rocks your boat", the latter "if-the-good-lord-had-wanted-boys-to-have-long-ha
Weeeee am I biased.
However, I do have an issue with your suggestion:
- If you pass the test, you can vote.
The problem I see as that it is always the ones who get to vote who also get to formulate the test. This results in a kind of "grandfather principle".The original article stated that elections in the US do not adequately reflect the will of the voters. This is an entirely different issue, but does carry the implication that the voters, as they are, are just fine. I agree with this. The people (and all the people) are the sovereign, instead of a king, dictator, oligarchy, or even an enfranchised majority - it's one of the basic tenets of democracy.
As for the language - I would hate to see the US go down the path of bigotry observed for instance today in Turkey (Kurdish) or in the past in Ireland (Gaelic). The US almost adopted German as a common language at some point in its history, it has always been a country of immigrants. Spanish, Chinese, Yiddish, Hebrew are languages that come to mind as potential official second languages of the US - for official documents etc. - let alone the string of American Indian languages.
In principle: Just because they don't speak English, they aren't stupid, and if they are stupid, then enlighten them rather than disenfranchise them.
If the original grandfather principle had not been abolished, do you think there would be a black middle class of any kind today?
- Fact is, Nazi Germay was a planned economy, not in any way a free market. As opposed to Russia, the government didn't outright take over ownership of most factories, but it was made certain that they produced what the party commanded in many other ways. Some of those involved making some of the owners rich. I don't think that was by being in any way "free-wheeling" way, but by being useful for The Party.
Gorimek - yes, I got caught up in my rhetoric. Quite apart from it being flawed, I am not sure that the concept of 'left'/'right' has any validity at all, i.e., denotes something in the real world. So, out of interest - do you think there is any way of characterising 'leftist' and 'rightist' totalitarian regimes (and just in what manner workers are, er, shagged by them)?That the workers got "fucked" is very typical for leftist totalitarian regimes.
- Your characterizations of the 'right' and the 'left' are simplistic and nieve
Yup.What are your characterisations of the 'right' and the 'left', Omnifarious?
(On the one hand, it is definitely a good idea to defferentiate in a bit more depth, but on the other, the 'left'/'right' distinction is employed so often that it still needs to be formulated - hence my question)
- [...] you never get paradoxical results when there are only 2 choices.
Heh, right.... my word - that would be a reason to institutionalise it