It seems to me that its about high efficiency, not low power. Merely having a low power chip does not help a supercomputer if you need that many more of them to get the same performance.
I used squirrelmail exclusively for about 1 year before I dropped it out of frustration. My job description also requires that I occasionally handle end-user tech support and I can say that Squirrelmail has always been problematic.
The #1 problem is that it chokes when the number of messages in a folder becomes large, which is all to common these days with the volume of spam, mailing lists, notifications, etc. A common symptom is the inability to login, which requires administrative action or use of another email client to "drain the wound". Secondary issues include improper handling of IMAP errors -- some errors are transient or temporary failures and should be retried, but instead SM prints a cryptic message resulting in yet another call to tech support; also some features and extensions have been chronically broken (sent subfolders) or have a terrible implementations (rbl and spam filters) or rely on ugly hacks to get client-side functionality to run on the server (gpg keys). There are also some quirks, like how the messages which match multiple filter conditions result in incorrect new-message counts for non-terminal matching conditions. Finally I could complain about how the interface sucks, e.g., its difficult to open multiple windows because the frame set names collide. There were also some strange things that I could never quite figure out, like how "Delete and Move Next / Prev" would sometimes move unpredictably either forward or backward in time. And generally, I got really frustrated by how slow everything was due to the http lag (even with the server on the local network), especially when there were a lot of messages to review.
That said Squirrelmail is a very successful app, and a lot of folks use it. But I've been hoping for something better for a long time. For now I've given up completely on webmail (gmail is not an option for professional use). For a while I used Evolution, and now Thunderbird.
I personally like the solar tower they are building in australia (mentioned on slashdot some months ago) -- dead simple design, common materials, operates 24/7, and the only solution with a net positive effect on the environment (greenhouse gas produced in its construction are reclaimed by the integrated greenhouse within the first two years of operations).
according to a new federal law, The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (passed in Dec 2003) you are entitled to a free comprehensive credit report yearly. The big three have an official website at www.annualcreditreport.com (no link b/c they reject unofficial referals) where you can claim your report. (though its not available yet for the mid and eastern states, it will be by the end of 2005).
hmm.. seems like it would be easy to detect if one person was carrying multiple cards, by proximity and/or correlation with other sensor data (visual, weight, etc).
Teachers have to record unexcused absence, its the law. those numbers get reported to the state and for every student missing, the school gets less money. the gov't is also responsibile for enforcement of truancy law -- not the school.
So there are some benefits on a technical level; easier to detect deadbeat parents, easier to track attendence records, therefore better budget controls and more accurate use of taxpayers money, and 5 minutes more instruction time per class since the teacher does not have to track attendance by hand.
Now its true that there is a risk of abuse of personal freedom. Tracking bathroom use patterns might be an example of that. However I don't think its automatically all bad.
The most interesting aspect of electronic accounting systems, in my opinion, is that it forces us, as a society, to take an honest look at our own standards and really decide if we believe in them or not. The reason these tracking systems are uncomfortable is that we are living a lie. Everyone drives over the speed limit sometimes, so is it really such a bad thing? We create regulations which we don't really believe in, and then apply them inconsistently. I think that is what makes so many people uncomfortable with the government; that the system is fundamentally dishonest. Automated tracking and enforcement systems give us an opportunity to see what is really happening, and then to decide what our values really are. Its not going to be easy, but I think its long overdue.
Not wearing a seatbelt already increases the risk of death to the passenger by an order of magnitude. Surely the additional threat of personal bankruptcy is not much more compelling. I don't think the tune would change. Then again, this behavior is hardly logical, so perhaps you are right.
The large optics and high maintenance costs are a thing of the past. Modern lighthouse fixtures, which can sometimes be found bolted on the outside of historic lighthouses, are very compact (e.g. the one at point arena is only 40 pounds), efficient, and have better visibility to boot.
people already do collect the stuff and sell it at a profit... in china. but they don't deal with the toxic stuff; and that is where recycling gets really expensive. hopefully this will encourage manufacturers even more to use non-toxic materials.
"""Don't even get me started on people who wind up "needing" a disabled spot through fault of their own (e.g., morbidly obese)."""
Actually its a self-fullfilling prophecy... The same people who can't stand to walk more than 10 feet to the store are the same ones who end up fat, depressed, diabetic and die young.
Personally I don't give two bits about people abusing the permit. I intentionally don't take the closests spots, 1) its not worth the stress, circling like a vulture looking for a place to open up, 2) its easier to get in and out of the car when you are not crammed in with everyone and their monster SUV, and 3) my legs work perfectly fine and I intend to keep them that way, thank you.
there are, however, some people who are quite proficient at typing on both qwerty and dvorak; its just a matter of keeping up your skills consistently in both worlds. the two are not mutually exclusive -- however personally I don't have any good reason to allocate the mental resources to knowing both layouts. in the early days I could type both ways pretty well, the only real problem was forgetting which mode was currently active (e.g. after a long typing break) and accidentally producing a stream of jibberish.
FYI, we use a normal keyboard, and don't switch the keys, use stickers or any of that crap. Dvorak will teach you true touchtyping, which is at least half the reason its faster.
There are problems with dvorak layout, though -- one is that you will completely "unlearn" qwerty within a couple of years and when you are unfortunately forced to use a "normal" console, it will feel like someone is sticking a chopstick up your nose and swirling it around in your brain. The other is with shared systems, because OS programmers are too stupid to realize that when a user logs out, the keyboard layout needs to switch back to the system default, which can range from mere annoyance to a liability (e.g., when your coworker can't login to the server to fix a problem, you'll get a call in the middle of the night asking how to type "password" in dvorak, (uh, that would be "ra;;,osh").
I should add that, as a long time computer user (~10 years), I have suffered from occasional tendonitis in my right hand. This manifests itself as pain along the tendons on the back of the hand caused by an inflammation of the tendon sheathing. Usually its not a problem, but its aggravated by pressure while the hand is at a -90 degree angle (e.g., doing pushups, handstands or pushing hard against a wall). Also using my old Toshiba laptop will cause it to flare up, in large part, I'm sure, due to the "dot" pointer (in fact, now that I think of it, my first experience of tendonitis was around the same time I got that laptop...). My treatment is to wear a reinforced wrist brace to force the hand to stay in neutral position, after which it goes away within ~48 hours. I can still use the computer while wearing the brace. After an incident, I'll wear the brace while sleeping for the next week or more as a preventative measure; also I, like many people, tend to sleep with my wrists flexed, which perpetuates the problem.
Each time an inflammation occurs, the body responds by generting scar tissue, which makes it very difficult to make the problem disappear completely, which underscores the importance of taking preventative measures, and also explains why CTS resulting from inflammation-related RSI generally requires surgery to treat. With respect to RSI, most people will experience tendonitis long before CTS, if ever (and in many cases, I suspect without consulting a medical professional, mistake tendonitis for CTS).
CTS is caused by at least a dozen different things including RSI, mechanical stress/pressure, vibration, excessive use of non-ergonomic hand positions, genetic predisposition, complications of pregnancy, and tumors/scar tissue formation. CTS has been recorded in medical history long before the invention of computers.
The "Carpal Tunnel" refers to a physical region of the wrist, literally a tunnel, that nerves run through. "CT Syndrome" refers to the situation where those nerves (esp. the so called median nerve) are under excess pressure resulting in pain, burning sensation, and loss of muscle control. The pressure is caused by swelling, excess fluids in the body / improper drainage, an unusally small carpal tunnel (women are more like to have this characteristic), or an obstruction such as a tumor or scar tissue.
"Activation of the wrong nerves" as you describe is likely related to RSI, the side effects of which include CTS, as well as tendonitis, other joint/tissue problems, and neurological problems (e.g., focal distonia in extreme cases). CTS in general is a much larger issue, and RSI is also a more complex issue than nerve control, as it includes quality-of-life/work aspects such as stress, proper training/equipment, proper and early medical treatment, and the recent tendency towards excessivly sendentary lifestyles (IIRC, after approx 20 minutes of remaining in one position, the cells in the body begin to physically reform their structure to adapt permamently to that position, which is why you should take frequent breaks).
Its important to file worker's comp claims against your employer, especially if they are lazy about RSI training. A friend of mine was awarded >$5000 from an RSI injury doing tech work. If it happens enough, the company will eventually realize that they will save money by training their employees properly.
All too often, especially males, will not consult a health professional regarding their problems, which just perpetuates the negligence. Big techie employers, e.g. academic labs, etc, tend to be more vigilent about this kind of stuff, in part because they have such deep pockets...
hm, what about math-mode? is quark (or whatever) reasonably compenent at this (and possible to do without mousing)? (the only reason I use tex, er, latex actually).
some of the upscale theaters here have assigned seating, but those places are rare. the only one I've been to was the howard huges center in LA (where I saw The Aviator, coincidentally). tickets there were $14, about 50% more than the current standard price.
the mathematical definition of an infinite series is one which is defined for any arbitrarily large, finite number of terms. proofs of limits, continuity, etc all work the same way - by induction on a unbounded sequence of increasing finite representations.
so, you are correct in that for any finite number of terms there will be a -1 at the end of the series and therefore 1 = 0 does not follow.
however the original post is not a proof by contradiction because its really not a mathematically sound construction at all. it is, however, amusing.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that its about high efficiency, not low power. Merely having a low power chip does not help a supercomputer if you need that many more of them to get the same performance.
I used squirrelmail exclusively for about 1 year before I dropped it out of frustration. My job description also requires that I occasionally handle end-user tech support and I can say that Squirrelmail has always been problematic.
The #1 problem is that it chokes when the number of messages in a folder becomes large, which is all to common these days with the volume of spam, mailing lists, notifications, etc. A common symptom is the inability to login, which requires administrative action or use of another email client to "drain the wound". Secondary issues include improper handling of IMAP errors -- some errors are transient or temporary failures and should be retried, but instead SM prints a cryptic message resulting in yet another call to tech support; also some features and extensions have been chronically broken (sent subfolders) or have a terrible implementations (rbl and spam filters) or rely on ugly hacks to get client-side functionality to run on the server (gpg keys). There are also some quirks, like how the messages which match multiple filter conditions result in incorrect new-message counts for non-terminal matching conditions. Finally I could complain about how the interface sucks, e.g., its difficult to open multiple windows because the frame set names collide. There were also some strange things that I could never quite figure out, like how "Delete and Move Next / Prev" would sometimes move unpredictably either forward or backward in time. And generally, I got really frustrated by how slow everything was due to the http lag (even with the server on the local network), especially when there were a lot of messages to review.
That said Squirrelmail is a very successful app, and a lot of folks use it. But I've been hoping for something better for a long time. For now I've given up completely on webmail (gmail is not an option for professional use). For a while I used Evolution, and now Thunderbird.
hopefully this app will work better than a certain other webmail named after a rodent with a big bushy tail.
here is the link... http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/
I personally like the solar tower they are building in australia (mentioned on slashdot some months ago) -- dead simple design, common materials, operates 24/7, and the only solution with a net positive effect on the environment (greenhouse gas produced in its construction are reclaimed by the integrated greenhouse within the first two years of operations).
according to a new federal law, The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (passed in Dec 2003) you are entitled to a free comprehensive credit report yearly. The big three have an official website at www.annualcreditreport.com (no link b/c they reject unofficial referals) where you can claim your report. (though its not available yet for the mid and eastern states, it will be by the end of 2005).
oh, *that* choicepoint... well at least we know that the data stolen was 99% inaccurate. right?
the global population growth is expected to stop at around 10 billion.
brand dilution.
hmm.. seems like it would be easy to detect if one person was carrying multiple cards, by proximity and/or correlation with other sensor data (visual, weight, etc).
Teachers have to record unexcused absence, its the law. those numbers get reported to the state and for every student missing, the school gets less money. the gov't is also responsibile for enforcement of truancy law -- not the school.
So there are some benefits on a technical level; easier to detect deadbeat parents, easier to track attendence records, therefore better budget controls and more accurate use of taxpayers money, and 5 minutes more instruction time per class since the teacher does not have to track attendance by hand.
Now its true that there is a risk of abuse of personal freedom. Tracking bathroom use patterns might be an example of that. However I don't think its automatically all bad.
The most interesting aspect of electronic accounting systems, in my opinion, is that it forces us, as a society, to take an honest look at our own standards and really decide if we believe in them or not. The reason these tracking systems are uncomfortable is that we are living a lie. Everyone drives over the speed limit sometimes, so is it really such a bad thing? We create regulations which we don't really believe in, and then apply them inconsistently. I think that is what makes so many people uncomfortable with the government; that the system is fundamentally dishonest. Automated tracking and enforcement systems give us an opportunity to see what is really happening, and then to decide what our values really are. Its not going to be easy, but I think its long overdue.
Not wearing a seatbelt already increases the risk of death to the passenger by an order of magnitude. Surely the additional threat of personal bankruptcy is not much more compelling. I don't think the tune would change. Then again, this behavior is hardly logical, so perhaps you are right.
The large optics and high maintenance costs are a thing of the past. Modern lighthouse fixtures, which can sometimes be found bolted on the outside of historic lighthouses, are very compact (e.g. the one at point arena is only 40 pounds), efficient, and have better visibility to boot.
people already do collect the stuff and sell it at a profit... in china. but they don't deal with the toxic stuff; and that is where recycling gets really expensive. hopefully this will encourage manufacturers even more to use non-toxic materials.
"""Don't even get me started on people who wind up "needing" a disabled spot through fault of their own (e.g., morbidly obese)."""
Actually its a self-fullfilling prophecy... The same people who can't stand to walk more than 10 feet to the store are the same ones who end up fat, depressed, diabetic and die young.
Personally I don't give two bits about people abusing the permit. I intentionally don't take the closests spots, 1) its not worth the stress, circling like a vulture looking for a place to open up, 2) its easier to get in and out of the car when you are not crammed in with everyone and their monster SUV, and 3) my legs work perfectly fine and I intend to keep them that way, thank you.
Agreed. This article belongs in the YBO section ("Your Business Online...").
...is not a technology problem, its a personal psychology problem.
;)
slashdot addition is perfectly normal, though.
there are, however, some people who are quite proficient at typing on both qwerty and dvorak; its just a matter of keeping up your skills consistently in both worlds. the two are not mutually exclusive -- however personally I don't have any good reason to allocate the mental resources to knowing both layouts. in the early days I could type both ways pretty well, the only real problem was forgetting which mode was currently active (e.g. after a long typing break) and accidentally producing a stream of jibberish.
FYI, we use a normal keyboard, and don't switch the keys, use stickers or any of that crap. Dvorak will teach you true touchtyping, which is at least half the reason its faster.
There are problems with dvorak layout, though -- one is that you will completely "unlearn" qwerty within a couple of years and when you are unfortunately forced to use a "normal" console, it will feel like someone is sticking a chopstick up your nose and swirling it around in your brain. The other is with shared systems, because OS programmers are too stupid to realize that when a user logs out, the keyboard layout needs to switch back to the system default, which can range from mere annoyance to a liability (e.g., when your coworker can't login to the server to fix a problem, you'll get a call in the middle of the night asking how to type "password" in dvorak, (uh, that would be "ra;;,osh").
I should add that, as a long time computer user (~10 years), I have suffered from occasional tendonitis in my right hand. This manifests itself as pain along the tendons on the back of the hand caused by an inflammation of the tendon sheathing. Usually its not a problem, but its aggravated by pressure while the hand is at a -90 degree angle (e.g., doing pushups, handstands or pushing hard against a wall). Also using my old Toshiba laptop will cause it to flare up, in large part, I'm sure, due to the "dot" pointer (in fact, now that I think of it, my first experience of tendonitis was around the same time I got that laptop...). My treatment is to wear a reinforced wrist brace to force the hand to stay in neutral position, after which it goes away within ~48 hours. I can still use the computer while wearing the brace. After an incident, I'll wear the brace while sleeping for the next week or more as a preventative measure; also I, like many people, tend to sleep with my wrists flexed, which perpetuates the problem.
Each time an inflammation occurs, the body responds by generting scar tissue, which makes it very difficult to make the problem disappear completely, which underscores the importance of taking preventative measures, and also explains why CTS resulting from inflammation-related RSI generally requires surgery to treat. With respect to RSI, most people will experience tendonitis long before CTS, if ever (and in many cases, I suspect without consulting a medical professional, mistake tendonitis for CTS).
CTS is caused by at least a dozen different things including RSI, mechanical stress/pressure, vibration, excessive use of non-ergonomic hand positions, genetic predisposition, complications of pregnancy, and tumors/scar tissue formation. CTS has been recorded in medical history long before the invention of computers.
The "Carpal Tunnel" refers to a physical region of the wrist, literally a tunnel, that nerves run through. "CT Syndrome" refers to the situation where those nerves (esp. the so called median nerve) are under excess pressure resulting in pain, burning sensation, and loss of muscle control. The pressure is caused by swelling, excess fluids in the body / improper drainage, an unusally small carpal tunnel (women are more like to have this characteristic), or an obstruction such as a tumor or scar tissue.
"Activation of the wrong nerves" as you describe is likely related to RSI, the side effects of which include CTS, as well as tendonitis, other joint/tissue problems, and neurological problems (e.g., focal distonia in extreme cases). CTS in general is a much larger issue, and RSI is also a more complex issue than nerve control, as it includes quality-of-life/work aspects such as stress, proper training/equipment, proper and early medical treatment, and the recent tendency towards excessivly sendentary lifestyles (IIRC, after approx 20 minutes of remaining in one position, the cells in the body begin to physically reform their structure to adapt permamently to that position, which is why you should take frequent breaks).
Its important to file worker's comp claims against your employer, especially if they are lazy about RSI training. A friend of mine was awarded >$5000 from an RSI injury doing tech work. If it happens enough, the company will eventually realize that they will save money by training their employees properly.
All too often, especially males, will not consult a health professional regarding their problems, which just perpetuates the negligence. Big techie employers, e.g. academic labs, etc, tend to be more vigilent about this kind of stuff, in part because they have such deep pockets...
hm, what about math-mode? is quark (or whatever) reasonably compenent at this (and possible to do without mousing)? (the only reason I use tex, er, latex actually).
some of the upscale theaters here have assigned seating, but those places are rare. the only one I've been to was the howard huges center in LA (where I saw The Aviator, coincidentally). tickets there were $14, about 50% more than the current standard price.
the mathematical definition of an infinite series is one which is defined for any arbitrarily large, finite number of terms. proofs of limits, continuity, etc all work the same way - by induction on a unbounded sequence of increasing finite representations.
:)
so, you are correct in that for any finite number of terms there will be a -1 at the end of the series and therefore 1 = 0 does not follow.
however the original post is not a proof by contradiction because its really not a mathematically sound construction at all. it is, however, amusing.