So, maybe they'll have to leave the legendary "Axis of Evil" to join the "Axis of Somewhat Evil" or maybe just the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really As Just Generally Disagreeable"?
The problem is, that Han says the bit about making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs in response to Ben asking him if it was a fast ship.
Knowing shortcuts around Kessel is great, but it doesn't tell you how fast you'll get to Alderan.
Of course, maybe Han never made it through high school and doesn't know that a parsec is a measure of distance. How many people today, here on earth, think that a pound and a gram measure the same thing?
The data belongs to the company, not the individual (the company is paying them to produce the data). As a sysadmin, you are working as a representative of the company. If it takes scaring a user with the thought of losing the company's data that he is responsible for, then so be it.
It's better to scare them with a faux-data loss than to have to deal with the finger pointing when there is a real data loss. I can guarantee you, that individual will do everything they can to blame the sysadmins for whatever failure caused the data loss. That, anyway, is on your personal CYA arena. There's also the economic impact to the company when the data is lost.
If your lucky, you'll have policy from management that says people are individually responsible for the data they work with - if it's lost, and it wasn't on a shared/backed-up area, then they are responsible for the loss. On the other hand, if it IS on backup, but can't be restored - then it's your problem!
His writing the article now is the proverbial "peeing on his tree"... by publishing now, this little area is "his". If somebody else published the same thing while he was doing his experiments... well, then it wouldn't be his any more.
PhD candidates do this often - they'll publish a preliminary paper on their research topic to keep other people from taking it as a research topic. This is, in effect, peeing on their tree (their research topic) so they can complete their thesis without getting trumped.
I'm not sure why, though, someone already with their PhD would do this.
Another possibility could be that this was intentionally done - using a painting technique called "roll-over perspective". In this technique, you use different vanishing points for objects that are actually in parallel. If done well, when you view the painting from "proper" distance, you get a feeling of great space.
It relies on the fact that you can only focus on certain parts of the painting at one time, so in the major areas of focus, everything is basically in correct perspective. But if you stand too far away (or the image is made too small on your screen) it doesn't look right.
If the image on the BBC website were done at a large scale, say on a wall, it would probably look really cool and effectively portray a real sense of the size of the thing.
While IANAE (Engineer), I do not believe the support towers need to necessarily be built perpendicular to the plane of the suspended cables. I've seen small bridges where the supports were done at a 45 degree angle to this plane. It's possible that such a skewing might help mitigate oscillations and reduce the stresses on the towers.
Think about this... you hold out your arms straight in front of you and someone is pulling on them. You can probably keep from falling over if you stagger your feet from front to back. Maybe they are doing this to help support the longer stretches.
Then again the artist probably just doesn't have a clue and thinks it looks better to show SOME perspective, even if it's wrong!
And if you know anything about business, any publicity is good publicity.
hmmm.. Ask Arthur Anderson if the publicity they've gotten over their consulting work for Enron is "good publicity".
Read the words "remember"... it's in Arabic too (tathekirou), and I suppose that is Chinese or maybe Korean on the left.... not quite sure what political meaning that is.
It's saying "remember... what happened when we couldn't translate all those cell phone calls that Echelon intercepted", or something like that!
When I was in the army, having a set of bolt-cutters was very handy! Great way to score free beer and a few dollars when people lost the keys or combo to their wall-lockers.
I imagine they would have great uses at college too!
If you're in the continental US, try http://www.bigzoo.com. It's like a prepaid card, but with no card. I've used it for about 2 years very happily!
In certain communities they have local access numbers, and when you use that, it's 2.9c/minute. Otherwise, it's 1-888.. and it's 3.9c/minute. International rates are great too. I was calling England last fall for 4.5c/minute!
One nice feature is that if you call from specified numbers (home, cellphone, etc), it will assume it's you (if you want it to) and it will not ask for your PIN.
Also they just recently added "family tree" (stupid name) speed dialing. So, I put all my favorite people as 1-1-1, 1-1-2, etc. So, I dial 10 digits to get the local number, and 3 digits to reach my friends.
"New wealth can always be created in a myriad of ways (mining gold as one example, you put in labor and get out a *hard* commodity) without anyone neccesarily losing out."
That scenario is only NOT zero-sum if you consider the short term. But looking long-term, the only thing that is not zero-sum seems to be sunshine and creativity.
If you dig the gold out of the ground now, it is not available to be dug out later in the future. So by taking it now, you've deprived someone in the future of the chance to dig it out and make wealth with it. That makes is zero-sum.
This scenario works with nearly any natural resource. It seems "unlimited" at first, and it appears wealth can be created with it, but in the long run, it is not unlimited and by consuming it now, it is not consumable in the future. Cut down a forest now and it generates money now, but is gone. Make a profit hiding nuclear waste in a cave now, but someone later will have to spend money to clean it up.
Just my 2 cents... and an amateur study of economics.
You may not need an unobstructed view. While the electron beam goes in a fairly linear fashion, once the phoshpor is lit, the light is emitted as if it's a point-source, in all directions.
While I'm guessing, he's watching the light from the monitor, and contstucting a stream of pixel intensity/colors from the light that is emitted by each pixel as it's illuminated. Since the light goes in all directions, this doesn't rely on having a complete image "projected" on a wall - it simply needs to see the light patterns, from which it can decode a series of pixels. These are then arranged in a grid until a recognizeable image is seen.
If you could look at the monitor with high speed photography, only one pixel is being illuminated by the electron gun at a time. And while the phosphor continues to glow for a period of time after being hit, it will be brightest upon being hit.
The scan pattern of the gun is already known, so you could in theory, watch (at high speed) for the changes in the light color and intensity in the glow of the room to find out the order of the colors as the pixels are hit - you have a long stream of pixel colors and intensities.
Here's where the number crunching comes in. You try to arrange this stream of pixels into a 1280x1024 (or whatever resolution) grid until you get a recognizable image. Et voila!
In the case of embedded fonts and PDF's, an easy solution is to generate a PS file first, then use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller to make a PDF. I do this all the time to make Arabic PDFs.
An easy way to make a PS is to install a printer driver that supports PS, such as HP Laserjet IV PS so that it prints to file. Workds like a charm!
I think the problem is that most people are rarely recipients of the pro-bono, or even the good work that lawyers do.
My guess is that most people manage to make it through their lives without dealing with a lawyer. The see stuff on TV and hear stories from their friends.
For those who do, the first experience with a lawyer is probably when their spouse is divorcing them, or someone is suing them. This leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and this is what they tell their friends about.
Its the same thing with dentists. People don't generally care for dentists because going to see one usually hurts. And this is in spite of the fact that the dentist is doing something good for you.
I really like the part about notifying the riverboat consulate of the "impending whoopin'". I never thought I'd live to see "whoopin'" in a legal document! We live in such interesting times!
Just imagine what would happen if they were trying to pass gun-control legislation.
News Flash: 3 Senators will killed and 7 were seriously injured today when a pro-gun control Senator attempted to demonstrate how easy it is to defeat a trigger lock, load a gun and then fire it. "I was just showing that if a dumb person like me can figure out how to do illegal things in the Senate chambers, then our even dumber subjects.. er uh, constituents could commit acts just as illegal!", said the senator. "It is imperative that we make it illegal to have anything that might allow someone to do somethign illegal.
Let's face it, in the name of National Security, even the 1st and 4th ammendments can be suspended (for us USians).
In the face of that, I doubt that a software license agreement would enjoy greater immunity from National Security considerations than the 1st ammendment.
If somehow the Navy did distribute the binary or a system containing the binary, I doubt the recipient would have much luck in suing the Navy over GPL violations to get the source.
"We are currently in the arbitration process and trying to resolve this matter under the MPAA guidelines," the studio...
It will be interesting to see if "MPAA Guidelines" and laws like the DMCA will be used by MPAA members against each other, rather than us consumers. I have visions of a pack of wolves turning on its weaker members in a gory bloodbath.
At least then we could get rid of the whole "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" nonsense. When your house is made of transparent concrete, you could throw all the stones you like!
It might be something like, "those living in transparent concrete houses shouldn't drive wrecking balls"!
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/axis.shtml
The problem is, that Han says the bit about making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs in response to Ben asking him if it was a fast ship.
Knowing shortcuts around Kessel is great, but it doesn't tell you how fast you'll get to Alderan.
Of course, maybe Han never made it through high school and doesn't know that a parsec is a measure of distance. How many people today, here on earth, think that a pound and a gram measure the same thing?
Did she start using the network drive after that? THAT would be the real test of success!
Just because the title is "systems engineer" doesn't mean we don't do "social engineering" too!
It's not unethical.
The data belongs to the company, not the individual (the company is paying them to produce the data). As a sysadmin, you are working as a representative of the company. If it takes scaring a user with the thought of losing the company's data that he is responsible for, then so be it.
It's better to scare them with a faux-data loss than to have to deal with the finger pointing when there is a real data loss. I can guarantee you, that individual will do everything they can to blame the sysadmins for whatever failure caused the data loss. That, anyway, is on your personal CYA arena. There's also the economic impact to the company when the data is lost.
If your lucky, you'll have policy from management that says people are individually responsible for the data they work with - if it's lost, and it wasn't on a shared/backed-up area, then they are responsible for the loss. On the other hand, if it IS on backup, but can't be restored - then it's your problem!
What is that saying... copy one person and it's called plagarism.. copy 30 and it's called research.
His writing the article now is the proverbial "peeing on his tree"... by publishing now, this little area is "his". If somebody else published the same thing while he was doing his experiments... well, then it wouldn't be his any more.
PhD candidates do this often - they'll publish a preliminary paper on their research topic to keep other people from taking it as a research topic. This is, in effect, peeing on their tree (their research topic) so they can complete their thesis without getting trumped.
I'm not sure why, though, someone already with their PhD would do this.
Another possibility could be that this was intentionally done - using a painting technique called "roll-over perspective". In this technique, you use different vanishing points for objects that are actually in parallel. If done well, when you view the painting from "proper" distance, you get a feeling of great space.
h tm
It relies on the fact that you can only focus on certain parts of the painting at one time, so in the major areas of focus, everything is basically in correct perspective. But if you stand too far away (or the image is made too small on your screen) it doesn't look right.
A great example and better explanation of this is on John Hagan's website on painting techniques, http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/advanced/persp.
If the image on the BBC website were done at a large scale, say on a wall, it would probably look really cool and effectively portray a real sense of the size of the thing.
While IANAE (Engineer), I do not believe the support towers need to necessarily be built perpendicular to the plane of the suspended cables. I've seen small bridges where the supports were done at a 45 degree angle to this plane. It's possible that such a skewing might help mitigate oscillations and reduce the stresses on the towers.
Think about this... you hold out your arms straight in front of you and someone is pulling on them. You can probably keep from falling over if you stagger your feet from front to back. Maybe they are doing this to help support the longer stretches.
Then again the artist probably just doesn't have a clue and thinks it looks better to show SOME perspective, even if it's wrong!
And if you know anything about business, any publicity is good publicity. hmmm.. Ask Arthur Anderson if the publicity they've gotten over their consulting work for Enron is "good publicity".
Read the words "remember"... it's in Arabic too (tathekirou), and I suppose that is Chinese or maybe Korean on the left .... not quite sure what political meaning that is.
It's saying "remember... what happened when we couldn't translate all those cell phone calls that Echelon intercepted", or something like that!
When I was in the army, having a set of bolt-cutters was very handy! Great way to score free beer and a few dollars when people lost the keys or combo to their wall-lockers.
I imagine they would have great uses at college too!
If you're in the continental US, try http://www.bigzoo.com. It's like a prepaid card, but with no card. I've used it for about 2 years very happily!
In certain communities they have local access numbers, and when you use that, it's 2.9c/minute. Otherwise, it's 1-888.. and it's 3.9c/minute. International rates are great too. I was calling England last fall for 4.5c/minute!
One nice feature is that if you call from specified numbers (home, cellphone, etc), it will assume it's you (if you want it to) and it will not ask for your PIN.
Also they just recently added "family tree" (stupid name) speed dialing. So, I put all my favorite people as 1-1-1, 1-1-2, etc. So, I dial 10 digits to get the local number, and 3 digits to reach my friends.
"New wealth can always be created in a myriad of ways (mining gold as one example, you put in labor and get out a *hard* commodity) without anyone neccesarily losing out."
That scenario is only NOT zero-sum if you consider the short term. But looking long-term, the only thing that is not zero-sum seems to be sunshine and creativity.
If you dig the gold out of the ground now, it is not available to be dug out later in the future. So by taking it now, you've deprived someone in the future of the chance to dig it out and make wealth with it. That makes is zero-sum.
This scenario works with nearly any natural resource. It seems "unlimited" at first, and it appears wealth can be created with it, but in the long run, it is not unlimited and by consuming it now, it is not consumable in the future. Cut down a forest now and it generates money now, but is gone. Make a profit hiding nuclear waste in a cave now, but someone later will have to spend money to clean it up.
Just my 2 cents... and an amateur study of economics.
You may not need an unobstructed view. While the electron beam goes in a fairly linear fashion, once the phoshpor is lit, the light is emitted as if it's a point-source, in all directions.
While I'm guessing, he's watching the light from the monitor, and contstucting a stream of pixel intensity/colors from the light that is emitted by each pixel as it's illuminated. Since the light goes in all directions, this doesn't rely on having a complete image "projected" on a wall - it simply needs to see the light patterns, from which it can decode a series of pixels. These are then arranged in a grid until a recognizeable image is seen.
I don't think it's like the movie stuff.
If you could look at the monitor with high speed photography, only one pixel is being illuminated by the electron gun at a time. And while the phosphor continues to glow for a period of time after being hit, it will be brightest upon being hit.
The scan pattern of the gun is already known, so you could in theory, watch (at high speed) for the changes in the light color and intensity in the glow of the room to find out the order of the colors as the pixels are hit - you have a long stream of pixel colors and intensities.
Here's where the number crunching comes in. You try to arrange this stream of pixels into a 1280x1024 (or whatever resolution) grid until you get a recognizable image. Et voila!
In the case of embedded fonts and PDF's, an easy solution is to generate a PS file first, then use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller to make a PDF. I do this all the time to make Arabic PDFs.
An easy way to make a PS is to install a printer driver that supports PS, such as HP Laserjet IV PS so that it prints to file. Workds like a charm!
It's called a fireplace, and chopping wood from the forest on your property. Of course, there's the problem of having a forest for everyone!
Bit you can also take an extra step, and have animals eat grass (growing on water & sunlight), then burn the dung they produce!
I think the problem is that most people are rarely recipients of the pro-bono, or even the good work that lawyers do.
My guess is that most people manage to make it through their lives without dealing with a lawyer. The see stuff on TV and hear stories from their friends.
For those who do, the first experience with a lawyer is probably when their spouse is divorcing them, or someone is suing them. This leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and this is what they tell their friends about.
Its the same thing with dentists. People don't generally care for dentists because going to see one usually hurts. And this is in spite of the fact that the dentist is doing something good for you.
I really like the part about notifying the riverboat consulate of the "impending whoopin'".
I never thought I'd live to see "whoopin'" in a legal document! We live in such interesting times!
Just imagine what would happen if they were trying to pass gun-control legislation.
News Flash: 3 Senators will killed and 7 were seriously injured today when a pro-gun control Senator attempted to demonstrate how easy it is to defeat a trigger lock, load a gun and then fire it. "I was just showing that if a dumb person like me can figure out how to do illegal things in the Senate chambers, then our even dumber subjects.. er uh, constituents could commit acts just as illegal!", said the senator. "It is imperative that we make it illegal to have anything that might allow someone to do somethign illegal.
Anti-drug sessions could be just as entertaining!
Let's face it, in the name of National Security, even the 1st and 4th ammendments can be suspended (for us USians).
In the face of that, I doubt that a software license agreement would enjoy greater immunity from National Security considerations than the 1st ammendment.
If somehow the Navy did distribute the binary or a system containing the binary, I doubt the recipient would have much luck in suing the Navy over GPL violations to get the source.
I think the amount we send out is probably insignificant compared to the amount of dust and junk that rains down on us from space.
Does anyone know how much that is anyway?
"Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=2, Total=4"?
I have to admit... 4 seems a bit high. I don't think my post was THAT good... In fact now that I've had some sleep, it's looking "less" good.
Don't me wrong, I do like to see my well thought-out comments moderated well. But this one was not one of those!
It will be interesting to see if "MPAA Guidelines" and laws like the DMCA will be used by MPAA members against each other, rather than us consumers. I have visions of a pack of wolves turning on its weaker members in a gory bloodbath.
At least then we could get rid of the whole "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" nonsense. When your house is made of transparent concrete, you could throw all the stones you like!
It might be something like, "those living in transparent concrete houses shouldn't drive wrecking balls"!