Personally, I think we should all write in this style. A real Story-of-Mel style.
Hawt.
Seriously. The world might not be made better for it. But *I* might be made better for it.
When Congress writes anti-spam/anti-spyware laws in this style, and the FBI enforces them, with judges reading sentences in i-am-bic pentameter, humanity will be restored (whatever THAT means).
[Now, watch slashdot's formatter totally f this up]
That's obviously the car on the Gnome desktop. Damn it! Why won't people learn that posting screenshots of new distros makes no sense if they all use the KDE/Gnome/XFCE/Fluxbox/your_preferred_WM_here paradigm?
This is the reason why meteoroids are below freezing (instead of glowing red hot) after they landed on earth - they don't have time to heat up through friction.
Your essential point is correct, but as long as we're all being pedantic physics gits, let me point out that friction as usually talked about has little to do with the heating of objects entering planetary atmospheres at high speeds. It's really a non-adiabatic heating of the gas itself because of shock-wave effects out in front of the objects. In fact, whereas friction is usually taken to act tangentially to an object's surface, even gas which isn't moving relative to the object will still heat dramatically because of the shock wave pushed out in front of the object./end pedantry
Re:the silent mac minority
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
OK, OK. Anecdotes are fun, and sometimes useful. But here's are some that may seem to counter yours (too, just a story). Generalizations are always iffy.
Our research group uses lots of USB keys, partially because we have lots of people in our group, but also because some of us *cough, cough* tend to lose theirs. Of three major brands of USB keys, they all work initially with XP, with OSX, and with linux (KDE, XFCE, command-line, whatever). About eight of the ten or so keys, though, have eventually failed on the OSX machines around here, though still work just fine for XP and linux. I don't know which OS/filesystem causes it, or if the OSX machines just don't push out the voltage necessary to operate these USB devices properly after a while, or what.
Also, plugging in my dad's digital cameras and my girlfriend's into OSX has never failed to bring up easy dialogues to transfer pictures, etc. But they've never failed on XP (without installing drivers) nor on linux (again, drivers are already in the system, and there are no problems).
Here, I'll fix that for you. It doesn't make any sense otherwise:
Sure, require your stupids to write "properly." Sure, hit them over the head if they don't. But having it affect their math grade doesn't make any sense.
As an example of how far we have fallen in the past century or two, I found it illuminating to read the letters that American infantrymen sent home to their families during the old Indian campaigns. These were boys, often only in their teens, mere footsoldiers, and yet the quality of their writing was substantially greater than what most college graduates are capable of in our time. Some of those letters were pure prose, and the emotional impact was significant. That's because they were taught well, and held to a standard, a standard that has been flagging for the past century or more.
While I agree with the vast majority of your post (both spirit and content), I was actually shocked at how poor was the writing of those (including officers) in the Lewis and Clark expedition. The spelling and grammar were almost uniformly atrocious. It could not be excused by the differing backgrounds of the explorers: not only were the writings pretty poor by any standards; nor were they consistent between the men; but the individuals' writings were self-inconsistent.
Perhaps the education of the soldiers was vastly better (or more standard) sixty and eighty years after L & C.
That article pretty much sucks for communicating anything that the scientist is doing. I won't remedy that, but I'll say this: I audited a biophysics class two semesters ago, and the astounding complications of what goes on in cells was a real eye-opener. Of course, I'd learned about chemical pathways, and mitochondria, etc., before, but the class showed how damned complicated and *fast* everything is at the cellular scale.
The professor used this analogy: think of filling a football/soccer (your choice) stadium with ping-pong balls, and paint just two of those balls orange. Then hire some bulldozers to push the balls around randomly and continuously for several decades. How often will the orange balls collide with each other? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Maybe only once in a decade? Now envision the stadium scaled down to the size of a cell, with the ping-pong balls now being your average-sized molecule important for some process (chunks of amino acids, say). These will be moving around randomly due to Brownian motion, chemical gradients, etc. How often will two given molecules interact? Probably several times per second. THAT's how amazingly extreme cellular processes are.
It's that sort of analogy (sorry it wasn't about cars, but we could probably work those in somehow) that the article should have had. This stuff is complicated, and requires VERY efficient computation. Kudos to the researchers, and pfft! to the author of the article.
Yes, staying logged in all the time, and running as a priveleged user is convenient, for a while. Once your machine is compromised, however, the convenience goes out the window, and the pain begins.
If people continue to run as admins, and with limited security, their computers WILL become infected with all sorts of nasties. How convenient is it to have to remedy this? How convenient is it to lose work? Booksmarks? Emails? Family photographs? Then it is up to the family's IT person to fix things, and that is decidedly NOT convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
how many slashbots are there that can actually gaze at their navel without having to grab their belly at with both hands and yank?
I guarantee there are more of those than slashbots who have to pull someone *else's* belly off of their own to do a bit of navel-gazing.
such monstrosities as the poodle and chiahuaia.
And some spellings. Although, to be fair, that is an interesting chia-pet you came up with there.
Personally,
I think we should all write in this style.
A real Story-of-Mel style.
Hawt.
Seriously. The world
might not be made better for it.
But *I* might be made better for it.
When Congress writes anti-spam/anti-spyware laws
in this style, and the FBI enforces them,
with judges reading sentences in
i-am-bic pentameter,
humanity will be restored
(whatever THAT means).
[Now, watch slashdot's formatter totally f this up]
I'd kill to have a program that makes terminal output sound like it does in the movies!
Yes. Then you'd very quickly be snuffed out by everyone who has to be anywhere near you.
Here's what it looks like: pic
That's obviously the car on the Gnome desktop. Damn it! Why won't people learn that posting screenshots of new distros makes no sense if they all use the KDE/Gnome/XFCE/Fluxbox/your_preferred_WM_here paradigm?
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0962-8436(1997082 9)352%3A1358%3C1129%3ARGK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 (at least originally by Mr. Anderson).
Pornography is an unrealistic representation of sex [...]
Not if you're doing it right. Hold on, I think the pizza guy is here.
"Most bone growth occurs at night, study finds"
Every adolescent human male finds this out. Beavis and Butthead did a research project on it, too, if I remember correctly.
Cute. You think it's an impending or threateningly useable neologism?
Now I can't decide whether you had a good point or not.
Just pass the torch man!
Not the thing to say when talking about pitch-soaked wood products.
This is the reason why meteoroids are below freezing (instead of glowing red hot) after they landed on earth - they don't have time to heat up through friction.
/end pedantry
Your essential point is correct, but as long as we're all being pedantic physics gits, let me point out that friction as usually talked about has little to do with the heating of objects entering planetary atmospheres at high speeds. It's really a non-adiabatic heating of the gas itself because of shock-wave effects out in front of the objects. In fact, whereas friction is usually taken to act tangentially to an object's surface, even gas which isn't moving relative to the object will still heat dramatically because of the shock wave pushed out in front of the object.
OK, OK. Anecdotes are fun, and sometimes useful. But here's are some that may seem to counter yours (too, just a story). Generalizations are always iffy.
Our research group uses lots of USB keys, partially because we have lots of people in our group, but also because some of us *cough, cough* tend to lose theirs. Of three major brands of USB keys, they all work initially with XP, with OSX, and with linux (KDE, XFCE, command-line, whatever). About eight of the ten or so keys, though, have eventually failed on the OSX machines around here, though still work just fine for XP and linux. I don't know which OS/filesystem causes it, or if the OSX machines just don't push out the voltage necessary to operate these USB devices properly after a while, or what.
Also, plugging in my dad's digital cameras and my girlfriend's into OSX has never failed to bring up easy dialogues to transfer pictures, etc. But they've never failed on XP (without installing drivers) nor on linux (again, drivers are already in the system, and there are no problems).
Ass kissers who apply double standards at Slashdot are in no short coming.
I think I have figured out what you're saying, but it's much more fun to pretend that you're writing really bad Japanglish ads for hardcore pr0n.
That looks like a double-amputee, you sick, sick person! Fetishes for every-body!
See subject.
Go to it, boys and girls! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=6466901
Here, I'll fix that for you. It doesn't make any sense otherwise:
Sure, require your stupids to write "properly." Sure, hit them over the head if they don't. But having it affect their math grade doesn't make any sense.
As an example of how far we have fallen in the past century or two, I found it illuminating to read the letters that American infantrymen sent home to their families during the old Indian campaigns. These were boys, often only in their teens, mere footsoldiers, and yet the quality of their writing was substantially greater than what most college graduates are capable of in our time. Some of those letters were pure prose, and the emotional impact was significant. That's because they were taught well, and held to a standard, a standard that has been flagging for the past century or more.
While I agree with the vast majority of your post (both spirit and content), I was actually shocked at how poor was the writing of those (including officers) in the Lewis and Clark expedition. The spelling and grammar were almost uniformly atrocious. It could not be excused by the differing backgrounds of the explorers: not only were the writings pretty poor by any standards; nor were they consistent between the men; but the individuals' writings were self-inconsistent.
Perhaps the education of the soldiers was vastly better (or more standard) sixty and eighty years after L & C.
The well and the computer are not mutually exclusive. (Unless the kids in the village decide to throw the computer down the well, of course.)
Actually, I think that's termed inclusivity.
That article pretty much sucks for communicating anything that the scientist is doing. I won't remedy that, but I'll say this: I audited a biophysics class two semesters ago, and the astounding complications of what goes on in cells was a real eye-opener. Of course, I'd learned about chemical pathways, and mitochondria, etc., before, but the class showed how damned complicated and *fast* everything is at the cellular scale.
The professor used this analogy: think of filling a football/soccer (your choice) stadium with ping-pong balls, and paint just two of those balls orange. Then hire some bulldozers to push the balls around randomly and continuously for several decades. How often will the orange balls collide with each other? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Maybe only once in a decade? Now envision the stadium scaled down to the size of a cell, with the ping-pong balls now being your average-sized molecule important for some process (chunks of amino acids, say). These will be moving around randomly due to Brownian motion, chemical gradients, etc. How often will two given molecules interact? Probably several times per second. THAT's how amazingly extreme cellular processes are.
It's that sort of analogy (sorry it wasn't about cars, but we could probably work those in somehow) that the article should have had. This stuff is complicated, and requires VERY efficient computation. Kudos to the researchers, and pfft! to the author of the article.
I know I'd much rather have my cat's farts smell like wintergreen than, well, cat poop.
Thanks a bloody lot. I've just suddenly started thinking about that gum I swallowed yesterday.
Seriously. This is perhaps one of the best posts I've ever seen on Slashdot.
I doubt this will convince anyone, but...
Yes, staying logged in all the time, and running as a priveleged user is convenient, for a while. Once your machine is compromised, however, the convenience goes out the window, and the pain begins.
If people continue to run as admins, and with limited security, their computers WILL become infected with all sorts of nasties. How convenient is it to have to remedy this? How convenient is it to lose work? Booksmarks? Emails? Family photographs? Then it is up to the family's IT person to fix things, and that is decidedly NOT convenient.
Maybe thousands of years from now, people will think that Steve Colbert was the son of God.
Son? Why limit the possibilities?!?
http://www.theregister.com/2006/11/01/vista_delaye d_until_20007/