So, in other words, Linux was installed not for business or technical reasons but because the next guy has it so we should have it too and people are talking about it so we should get one and so on.
Linux is all grown up! Finally it is behaving in the marketplace the way real money behaves -- soon, CIOs everywhere will be propounding their 'Linux strategy' and writing articles in trade rags about 'how a switch to Linux allowed us to give our clients a competitive edge'. Heck, they already are! Then in 10 years, we'll be reading about how 'evaluating Linux alternatives forms a major part of our strategy for cutting the soaring costs of server farms' and so on and the cycle will go on.
I love the way the writer of the BBC article completely failed to notice that the issue was not 'whether China censors' but 'whether the BBC would shut up about censorship for five seconds please'.
The dialectic basically seems to be:
Some Chinese Bloggers: "Man, the BBC keeps harping on about this shit. And BBC interviewers tend to be excessively confrontational and persistent." BBC Journalist: "Oho! You say there is no censorship in China?? Well I guess AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL must be wrong then, eh? Eh??"
If I were given to making mean, snide remarks, I would say that the BBC's remit is to be the voice of the British people, and if that means being arrogant, politically correct, and ever ready to force narrow definitions of acceptable behavior on the rest of the world, then... well...
But I am not given to such nasty remarks. No, I am an angel, a lovely angel:)
In the article, it says that the 'ki' in 'Kiswahili' means 'language'. It doesn't, it's one of those noun class prefixes that are characteristic of bantu language in general and have no formal semantic payload. It must have taken the journalist a real conscious effort to make a mistake that size.
In other news, though, Swahili is an awfully fragmented language, split into zillions of dialects with only a small core of 'standard' Swahili speakers (if indeed anybody really speaks 'standard' Swahili). Creating a meaningful dictionary would at least involve annotating entries with the dialect they belong to and whether they are likely to be permanent words.
Now, to be fair, you're not really 'stating the obvious' so much as 'ranting about something that has freaked you out for some strange reason internal to yourself', are you?
they have some very complex spreadsheets, but I don't think any use macros
That's utterly adorable. I'm sorry but it is:)
By my estimates, OO 2.0 is probably a suitable MS-Office replacement for about 95-98% of users out there
Well, that's a reflection of your experience. By _my_ estimates, OOo is a good enough replacement for 'everyone who does not use Excel much', which in the finance industry means the cleaning and catering staff. And there is much more to Excel than just the fact that it includes all of VB...
Replacing just Word would probably be pretty easy, though.
How exciting is jumping from a plain going to be?? At least try jumping from some kind of mound or hillock, you posers. You know, a knoll or something.
Unless... the plain is right next to a HUGE VAST ABYSS... that must be it!
The truly diabolical Apple plan is the one where they ship iPods with non-replaceable batteries, fragile screens etc etc and thus poison the minds of consumers against mobile music players -- thus preventing competitors from entering the market!
It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader.
Nature has many ways to deliver a warning. The bright stripes of the coral snake, for instance, warn us of its poison. The yellow markings of the wasp warn us that if we touch it it could sting us. And sentences like the above warn us that the discussion may be just a teensy bit over-focused on The Destiny Of Free Software And The Slaying Of The Redmond Ogre.
Ah, Mother Nature, your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze:)
Sure ASP.NET may not be the right tool for every job, but then again what is?
Duct tape!
GI Samurai holds the answer
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
Excellent 1970's SF movie Sengoku Jieitai (released in the West as GI Samurai, for some bizarre reason -- it contains no GIs) contains a long battle sequence between hundreds of 16th century soldiers (many with spears) and a group of modern soldiers who have a tank.
I am horrified and depressed by this anti-free-speech initiative, UNLESS 'deviant' means 'furry', in which case I am right behind these brave defenders of the constitution.
'Cause there's nothing worse than googling for 'round, firm, tanned buttocks' or whatever, and on the page of images that you get there's a picture of a poorly-drawn cartoon fox spanking a goth rabbit.
Not that I ever google for terms like that, obviously. That'd be utterly pathetic.
I think the real significance of the line you quote is that this is the only time in the movie anyone feels sorry for all the robots that get killed. A point that is lost in the 'translated' version.
WTF is this, what happened to the Microsoft I knew that delivered products and listened to feedback and invented little things like reusable components and even kinda sorta slew the mighty ogre of IBM? How did it get infected with the belief that manipulating the market and brand is it's core business? How did it forget how to create software and listen to users, and learn to focus on strategic acquisition and shit?
Oh, wait, it was Ballmer. And being big. But mainly Ballmer.
Hey, in 10 year's time, when MS is in recievership, I wonder who the Ballmer of Google will be?
Hmm, I think now I'm too busy enjoying the greater speed and stability (and toys) of Opera to wrestle another FF release to the mat.
Note to the people who were ranting about open source in the 'Opera is free' article: I am just expressing an opinion. Here's how you deal with that: you read it, you think, 'well well, that's that guy's opinion', you move on. There's no need to get angry. It's not a contest, it's not a jihad, it's not a playground argument. It's just some guy making a remark. There, see how much less stressful it is when you think of it like that?
...you'd know the name is from Minamoto Yoshitsune 's childhood nickname. The point being that he had a cuuute nickname as a child but grew up to be a ferocious warrior; the idea is that this is just a baby robot and one day there will be much cooler ones.
It's nothing to do with 'wakaru'. 'Maru' is not a suffix for male names but a term of endearment / admiration; it can also be applied to women, buildings, weapons and ships although only the latter usage is still active.
The actual name was 'ushiwakamaru', meaning 'little calf' or something.
I wanted Opera's speed and stability and (to a lesser degree) some of its features -- but the fact that I would have to go to the hassle of getting a license and remembering the number and installing it on various machines kept me using FF (and IE for a few odd tasks that require speed, don't ask).
Well, as the vast majority of OS installations in existance run as single-user installations, that doesn't sound like too much of an issue.
Time-sharing systems with multiple interactive users at one time were the environment that Unix grew up in, and I suppose the Linux community still thinks in those terms even now that most Linux machines are either single-user desktops or webservers. But it's not a particularly important role any more.
This isn't the first time someone has tried to get rid of sines and cosines, and use squared distances to avoid a square root later. In my day, we ALL did that.
I'm talking about the world of game programming up until about 1995 (and maybe beyond). When you're drawing a dungeon on a 386, or steering a sprite to point at a target on the Amiga, or, lord help you, writing Corncob 3D, you don't have time to find sines and do square roots. Sure, you can build tables in advance, but when you only have 640k main memory, that's a last resort.
Hence the need for a whole way of calculation that I suppose isn't used now...
To 'site' is to place something such as a building or an event on a given piece of land: 'We sited the new airport on reclaimed ground to the north of the city."
To 'cite' is to refer to a document: 'The mayor cited reports that showed that the airport was unneccessary.'
Neither word is appropriate in the context of the summary. 'Claimed' or 'asserted' would have been better.
The editor was probably trying, in an adorably muddled way, to write the word 'cite'. He didn't do very well. He should probably get a pat on the head anyway. At least he tried. At least he _seems_ to have picked a word of some kind, even though it wasn't the right word, even though he couldn't really write it... he tried.
I wonder if these numbers are adjusted for infation?
From Page 8, Paragraph 2
Whatever the answer, it's clear who pays for it. You do. You pay in the form of vastly higher drug prices and health-care insurance. Americans spent $179 billion on prescription drugs in 2003. That's up from... wait for it... $12 billion in 1980. That's a 13% hike, year after year, for two decades.
Assuming they already adjusted for inflation, 12 Billion in 1980 to 179 billion in 2003 would be about 12.5%
Hmm... well, according to my calculations and allowing for rounding to the nearest integer, it looks like they _did_ adjust for inflation, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
So, in other words, Linux was installed not for business or technical reasons but because the next guy has it so we should have it too and people are talking about it so we should get one and so on.
Linux is all grown up! Finally it is behaving in the marketplace the way real money behaves -- soon, CIOs everywhere will be propounding their 'Linux strategy' and writing articles in trade rags about 'how a switch to Linux allowed us to give our clients a competitive edge'. Heck, they already are! Then in 10 years, we'll be reading about how 'evaluating Linux alternatives forms a major part of our strategy for cutting the soaring costs of server farms' and so on and the cycle will go on.
Yay!
I love the way the writer of the BBC article completely failed to notice that the issue was not 'whether China censors' but 'whether the BBC would shut up about censorship for five seconds please'.
The dialectic basically seems to be:
Some Chinese Bloggers: "Man, the BBC keeps harping on about this shit. And BBC interviewers tend to be excessively confrontational and persistent."
BBC Journalist: "Oho! You say there is no censorship in China?? Well I guess AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL must be wrong then, eh? Eh??"
If I were given to making mean, snide remarks, I would say that the BBC's remit is to be the voice of the British people, and if that means being arrogant, politically correct, and ever ready to force narrow definitions of acceptable behavior on the rest of the world, then... well...
But I am not given to such nasty remarks. No, I am an angel, a lovely angel
You are quite right about the 'ki' of course, thank you for correcting me.
In the article, it says that the 'ki' in 'Kiswahili' means 'language'. It doesn't, it's one of those noun class prefixes that are characteristic of bantu language in general and have no formal semantic payload. It must have taken the journalist a real conscious effort to make a mistake that size.
In other news, though, Swahili is an awfully fragmented language, split into zillions of dialects with only a small core of 'standard' Swahili speakers (if indeed anybody really speaks 'standard' Swahili). Creating a meaningful dictionary would at least involve annotating entries with the dialect they belong to and whether they are likely to be permanent words.
alt.fading.usenet.dwindles.declines.ain't-what-it
alt.remote.past.!dead.!gone.!forgotten
alt.sacred.format.preserve.continue.cherish
alt.noble.cry.resound.ring.echo:
"alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb!"
I dunno, they're incredibly hard to hit.
Now, to be fair, you're not really 'stating the obvious' so much as 'ranting about something that has freaked you out for some strange reason internal to yourself', are you?
they have some very complex spreadsheets, but I don't think any use macros
:)
That's utterly adorable. I'm sorry but it is
By my estimates, OO 2.0 is probably a suitable MS-Office replacement for about 95-98% of users out there
Well, that's a reflection of your experience. By _my_ estimates, OOo is a good enough replacement for 'everyone who does not use Excel much', which in the finance industry means the cleaning and catering staff. And there is much more to Excel than just the fact that it includes all of VB...
Replacing just Word would probably be pretty easy, though.
like people who race cars or jump from plains
How exciting is jumping from a plain going to be?? At least try jumping from some kind of mound or hillock, you posers. You know, a knoll or something.
Unless... the plain is right next to a HUGE VAST ABYSS... that must be it!
wow... those extreme sports guys are awesome.
We assume a spherical cow of uniform density!
To be honest, this is handy not just in maths but in many life situations.
The truly diabolical Apple plan is the one where they ship iPods with non-replaceable batteries, fragile screens etc etc and thus poison the minds of consumers against mobile music players -- thus preventing competitors from entering the market!
I am in awe.
It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader.
Nature has many ways to deliver a warning. The bright stripes of the coral snake, for instance, warn us of its poison. The yellow markings of the wasp warn us that if we touch it it could sting us. And sentences like the above warn us that the discussion may be just a teensy bit over-focused on The Destiny Of Free Software And The Slaying Of The Redmond Ogre.
Ah, Mother Nature, your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze
Sure ASP.NET may not be the right tool for every job, but then again what is?
Duct tape!
Excellent 1970's SF movie Sengoku Jieitai (released in the West as GI Samurai, for some bizarre reason -- it contains no GIs) contains a long battle sequence between hundreds of 16th century soldiers (many with spears) and a group of modern soldiers who have a tank.
The spearmen beat the tank.
I am horrified and depressed by this anti-free-speech initiative, UNLESS 'deviant' means 'furry', in which case I am right behind these brave defenders of the constitution.
'Cause there's nothing worse than googling for 'round, firm, tanned buttocks' or whatever, and on the page of images that you get there's a picture of a poorly-drawn cartoon fox spanking a goth rabbit.
Not that I ever google for terms like that, obviously. That'd be utterly pathetic.
Now if you'll excuse me...
OMG WTF
Hey, at least I checked 'No Karma Bonus'. That should count in my favor, surely?
I think the real significance of the line you quote is that this is the only time in the movie anyone feels sorry for all the robots that get killed. A point that is lost in the 'translated' version.
WTF is this, what happened to the Microsoft I knew that delivered products and listened to feedback and invented little things like reusable components and even kinda sorta slew the mighty ogre of IBM? How did it get infected with the belief that manipulating the market and brand is it's core business? How did it forget how to create software and listen to users, and learn to focus on strategic acquisition and shit?
Oh, wait, it was Ballmer. And being big. But mainly Ballmer.
Hey, in 10 year's time, when MS is in recievership, I wonder who the Ballmer of Google will be?
Hmm, I think now I'm too busy enjoying the greater speed and stability (and toys) of Opera to wrestle another FF release to the mat.
Note to the people who were ranting about open source in the 'Opera is free' article: I am just expressing an opinion. Here's how you deal with that: you read it, you think, 'well well, that's that guy's opinion', you move on. There's no need to get angry. It's not a contest, it's not a jihad, it's not a playground argument. It's just some guy making a remark. There, see how much less stressful it is when you think of it like that?
It's nothing to do with 'wakaru'. 'Maru' is not a suffix for male names but a term of endearment / admiration; it can also be applied to women, buildings, weapons and ships although only the latter usage is still active.
The actual name was 'ushiwakamaru', meaning 'little calf' or something.
I wanted Opera's speed and stability and (to a lesser degree) some of its features -- but the fact that I would have to go to the hassle of getting a license and remembering the number and installing it on various machines kept me using FF (and IE for a few odd tasks that require speed, don't ask).
I am now using Opera.
Good.
It is single user.
Well, as the vast majority of OS installations in existance run as single-user installations, that doesn't sound like too much of an issue.
Time-sharing systems with multiple interactive users at one time were the environment that Unix grew up in, and I suppose the Linux community still thinks in those terms even now that most Linux machines are either single-user desktops or webservers. But it's not a particularly important role any more.
This isn't the first time someone has tried to get rid of sines and cosines, and use squared distances to avoid a square root later. In my day, we ALL did that.
I'm talking about the world of game programming up until about 1995 (and maybe beyond). When you're drawing a dungeon on a 386, or steering a sprite to point at a target on the Amiga, or, lord help you, writing Corncob 3D, you don't have time to find sines and do square roots. Sure, you can build tables in advance, but when you only have 640k main memory, that's a last resort.
Hence the need for a whole way of calculation that I suppose isn't used now...
'siting'?
To 'site' is to place something such as a building or an event on a given piece of land: 'We sited the new airport on reclaimed ground to the north of the city."
To 'cite' is to refer to a document: 'The mayor cited reports that showed that the airport was unneccessary.'
Neither word is appropriate in the context of the summary. 'Claimed' or 'asserted' would have been better.
The editor was probably trying, in an adorably muddled way, to write the word 'cite'. He didn't do very well. He should probably get a pat on the head anyway. At least he tried. At least he _seems_ to have picked a word of some kind, even though it wasn't the right word, even though he couldn't really write it... he tried.
I wonder if these numbers are adjusted for infation?
From Page 8, Paragraph 2
Whatever the answer, it's clear who pays for it. You do. You pay in the form of vastly higher drug prices and health-care insurance. Americans spent $179 billion on prescription drugs in 2003. That's up from
Assuming they already adjusted for inflation, 12 Billion in 1980 to 179 billion in 2003 would be about 12.5%
Hmm... well, according to my calculations and allowing for rounding to the nearest integer, it looks like they _did_ adjust for inflation, doesn't it?
HTH.