I find your friends party interesting except for one problem. I've never heard of it. It doesn't matter how good your message is or how concrete your platform. When it comes down to it a political party requires a fair amount of capital to operate competitively. Not accepting donations from special interest groups or corporations may work well on the small scale but nationally or even provincially you just can't get the message out to enough people (ironically all those comertials actually do build a leval of trust with the public). It sounds nice but my advice to your friend is if he even wants the party to challange for any seats he should switch to a policy of allowing corporate or special interest donations but with a relatively low cap so no entity can exert undue influence. BTW back to my point of never having heard of the party does it have a webpage? Good Luck
I've tried that in simulation and while it does work it works VERRYYYYYYY slowly (I seem to remember after 1000 simulation I was upto pi+-0.02) If you want an actual algorithm try a fourier transformation with (pi^2)/8= (1 + 1/9 + 1/25 + 1/44 +... + 1/n^2 for all odd n. I garantee you this will converge much faster than the monte carlo method. It also actually has a chance of getting more digits than your calculator (though I've never tried this algorithm on a computer) and you can actually be pretty sure that a number is correct once the numbers a couple decimal places down have stopped changing quickly. Enjoy!
Like the Earth would just happen to be that nice looking from space. This just goes to prove that we didn't land on the moon because we didn't even make it into space because if we did we would have ordinary ugly pictures of the earth rather than these that were obviously done by an artist. Now excuse me but my tinfoil hat is starting to get smelly and it's tiem to change it. Now don't think I'm paranoid or anything but I don't think the government is spying on me with satellites I mean they didn't even make it into space! I need it to protect me from cancer due to the radiowaves randomly bouncing off clouds the government filled with metals and chemicals to control the weather and bounce off signals to simulate satellites (they can't launch anything into space of course). Well goodbye I hope the intelligent immortal mainframes at the FBI logging my keystrokes don't decide this is unamerican or anything and steal my heart to put into Dick Cheyney!
Then again I just started on the Foundation series again so that might change shortly:)
Either way in the foreword in the newer Foundation Asimoc writes James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy-- virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible-- but the stories povide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas
Not sure if that is completely consistent with Dune but my personal belief in in strong, likable, and interesting characters (ie not Annican) are necessary. Along with that goes a consistent plot and science to back it up. The science can't become the center of the story with endless detail nor can it make you gag with inconsistencies... Oh how I wept when Frank Herbert had Waff freeze something at -275 Kelvin!
Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.
Did you watch the same John Doe I did? All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!? Is it a popular show? Maybe I don't know the numbers, but I have never heard it refered to as a good show. Firefly is a good show, it may not be popular among a wide audience but I'vwe seen very few bad reviews. The advantage of John Doe over Firefly is John Doe has one essentially 1-1/2 dimensional main character and a couple of subcharacters with relatively plot lines so you don't have to get into it. Firefly on the other hand has a pile of major multi-dimensional characters with complex plot lines. When it comes down to it Firefly can never be wildly popular, it's just too complex, too many characters and a too involved plot. Was Babylon 5 widly popular or is Buffy? No, both have a very dedicated audience but never had huge numbers, they were just too involved for the average viewer. Name a single widly popular show with more than a few complex main characters. X-files had 2, the origional Star Trek had about 4, Seinfeld had 4. Firefly is just too complicated not to mention the episodes were out of order on top of it making even harder to get into to ever be popular but this doesn't mean it won't be good.
I agree with your point when talking about computing science students. But it is important to remember that we are the minority. You don't need to know how to program to use an Office app, the level of understanding of of the code of even the most basic program required to make better use of it is completely impractical even for programmers. Have you even looked at the source code for emacs? The vast majority of users have absolutely no need to see the source code of the app they're using. To not allow educational institutions to use propietary software on the grounds that they can't see the source is not only extremely short sighted in cutting off students from a wealth of useful software but exactly the kind of blind fanaticism that hurts the open source movement. Lying to yourself by ignoring the facts to perpetuate your point of view helps absolutely no one.
I saw a couple minutes of that Fox special a couple days ago. One of the most hillarious parts was when they showed a photo with the vanishing crosshair to prove the photos were faked and on the vey same photo you could see the another crosshair with a partially faded crosshair demonstrating the effect you were taking about perfectly!
Multiple desktops! This is one of my favorite features with *nix systems, anytime you're running more than a few apps using one desktop even with minimizing gets just plain unmanagable this is one feature I'm very M$ glad has learned from *nix.
I too am a compsci major and I have found that I cannot code in windows anymore. The linux environment is simply too well equiped for programming not to mention how much I use ssh to use labs remotely. That being said I still find myself constantly wondering how to do task X, what do I use to uncompress this (yeah I know man pages and the gui acn do it also), how do I install this, and why I haven't I had sound for over a week:)
But I often have the "Ah shit I am in Linux, now I need to reboot to windows before I can do this" moment."
Other than some games or having to talk to someone on MSN (not for a few months) I pretty much have this urge finally kicked unless I want to print something...
I feel one major pitfall of X is the inability to change the resolution of the X-Server without shutting it down. This is also a major problem of games in Linux as many games simply don't run well at resolutions most people like to work at. Either way with alternatives if thay can achieve compatibility over networks I think some competition could be a great bonus to the *nix community.
In the past forest fires wouldn't of really made a difference other than a momentary blip. The problem is that with all our consumption of fossil fuels we're adding carbon to the carbon cycle. Carbon that has been out of circulation in the form of fossil fuels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. For the the current situation we know the carbon levels are higher than normal it's as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, or more precisely (current carbon) + (carbon that has been out of circulations for a VERY long time) = (greater than current carbon). The forests have absorbed a lot of this excess carbon but the problem is that they are just displacing it temorarily, and when they burn that carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. True we don't have a great idea of what it was like in the past (as far as I know) but the fact is that we are resonably sure about what we are doing. Given what may happen to the environment if we are right it is imperative that we take action to avoid this problem rather than sit around and whine that the science isn't exact enough to warrent the damage to our economy while we continue to see the environment degrade around us.
Re:AltaVista vs. Google: speed and relevance shoot
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Altavista Renewed
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No, I do not have a receipt. I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium size belt.
Perhaps I should rephrase that. I'm referring to computing power available for scientific computation in universities. This information comes from my brother who is completing a masters in physics and has intensive computing demands and is well in touch with the computing demand. The university I attend does not have as bad a situation as most but the fact remains that there ARE american universities with more computing power than is available to the combined scientific community in Canadian universities.
This is really being done also as sort of a protest due to the lack of supercomputing power in Canada. There are universities in the US that have more computing power than all of Canada combined.
We hope the downtime will be relatively minimal, but DNS may be a little slower to catch up. It better be I don't know how long I can last with out slashdot, I'm going to start going through withdrawl! *starts shaking* Just a few more hours... just a few more hours.. just a few more hours...
Slashdot Mirror
I find your friends party interesting except for one problem. I've never heard of it. It doesn't matter how good your message is or how concrete your platform. When it comes down to it a political party requires a fair amount of capital to operate competitively. Not accepting donations from special interest groups or corporations may work well on the small scale but nationally or even provincially you just can't get the message out to enough people (ironically all those comertials actually do build a leval of trust with the public). It sounds nice but my advice to your friend is if he even wants the party to challange for any seats he should switch to a policy of allowing corporate or special interest donations but with a relatively low cap so no entity can exert undue influence. BTW back to my point of never having heard of the party does it have a webpage? Good Luck
and later ported to Windows and Linux (which never made it past beta stage)
Sure it's not always the most user friendly and has a lot of development ongoing but I think we can still consider Linux to be past Beta!
I've tried that in simulation and while it does work it works VERRYYYYYYY slowly (I seem to remember after 1000 simulation I was upto pi+-0.02) If you want an actual algorithm try a fourier transformation with ... + 1/n^2 for all odd n. I garantee you this will converge much faster than the monte carlo method. It also actually has a chance of getting more digits than your calculator (though I've never tried this algorithm on a computer) and you can actually be pretty sure that a number is correct once the numbers a couple decimal places down have stopped changing quickly. Enjoy!
(pi^2)/8= (1 + 1/9 + 1/25 + 1/44 +
Like the Earth would just happen to be that nice looking from space. This just goes to prove that we didn't land on the moon because we didn't even make it into space because if we did we would have ordinary ugly pictures of the earth rather than these that were obviously done by an artist. Now excuse me but my tinfoil hat is starting to get smelly and it's tiem to change it. Now don't think I'm paranoid or anything but I don't think the government is spying on me with satellites I mean they didn't even make it into space! I need it to protect me from cancer due to the radiowaves randomly bouncing off clouds the government filled with metals and chemicals to control the weather and bounce off signals to simulate satellites (they can't launch anything into space of course). Well goodbye I hope the intelligent immortal mainframes at the FBI logging my keystrokes don't decide this is unamerican or anything and steal my heart to put into Dick Cheyney!
Just post a link to one of those suckers on /. we'll see who won't die in a minute!!
You are right, she is darn close which might explain why all three won the hugo (nebula?) awards.
I agree Robinson is good but no where near a Frank Herbert. One other place I disagree with you though, she... is a he!!
Then again I just started on the Foundation series again so that might change shortly :)
Either way in the foreword in the newer Foundation Asimoc writes
James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy-- virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible-- but the stories povide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas
Not sure if that is completely consistent with Dune but my personal belief in in strong, likable, and interesting characters (ie not Annican) are necessary. Along with that goes a consistent plot and science to back it up. The science can't become the center of the story with endless detail nor can it make you gag with inconsistencies... Oh how I wept when Frank Herbert had Waff freeze something at -275 Kelvin!
I on the other hand recommended that they do use open source software.
Um, I'd also like to add some wireless speakers, but the the coal from the Titanic seems a bit macabre.
./ this is how rumors get started!
So there's coal from the Titanic in wireless speakers? Tsk, tsk
Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.
Did you watch the same John Doe I did? All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!? Is it a popular show? Maybe I don't know the numbers, but I have never heard it refered to as a good show. Firefly is a good show, it may not be popular among a wide audience but I'vwe seen very few bad reviews. The advantage of John Doe over Firefly is John Doe has one essentially 1-1/2 dimensional main character and a couple of subcharacters with relatively plot lines so you don't have to get into it. Firefly on the other hand has a pile of major multi-dimensional characters with complex plot lines. When it comes down to it Firefly can never be wildly popular, it's just too complex, too many characters and a too involved plot. Was Babylon 5 widly popular or is Buffy? No, both have a very dedicated audience but never had huge numbers, they were just too involved for the average viewer. Name a single widly popular show with more than a few complex main characters. X-files had 2, the origional Star Trek had about 4, Seinfeld had 4. Firefly is just too complicated not to mention the episodes were out of order on top of it making even harder to get into to ever be popular but this doesn't mean it won't be good.
I agree with your point when talking about computing science students. But it is important to remember that we are the minority. You don't need to know how to program to use an Office app, the level of understanding of of the code of even the most basic program required to make better use of it is completely impractical even for programmers. Have you even looked at the source code for emacs? The vast majority of users have absolutely no need to see the source code of the app they're using. To not allow educational institutions to use propietary software on the grounds that they can't see the source is not only extremely short sighted in cutting off students from a wealth of useful software but exactly the kind of blind fanaticism that hurts the open source movement. Lying to yourself by ignoring the facts to perpetuate your point of view helps absolutely no one.
I saw a couple minutes of that Fox special a couple days ago. One of the most hillarious parts was when they showed a photo with the vanishing crosshair to prove the photos were faked and on the vey same photo you could see the another crosshair with a partially faded crosshair demonstrating the effect you were taking about perfectly!
Multiple desktops!
This is one of my favorite features with *nix systems, anytime you're running more than a few apps using one desktop even with minimizing gets just plain unmanagable this is one feature I'm very M$ glad has learned from *nix.
Please
Use your power for good
I too am a compsci major and I have found that I cannot code in windows anymore. The linux environment is simply too well equiped for programming not to mention how much I use ssh to use labs remotely. That being said I still find myself constantly wondering how to do task X, what do I use to uncompress this (yeah I know man pages and the gui acn do it also), how do I install this, and why I haven't I had sound for over a week:)
But I often have the "Ah shit I am in Linux, now I need to reboot to windows before I can do this" moment."
Other than some games or having to talk to someone on MSN (not for a few months) I pretty much have this urge finally kicked unless I want to print something...
You have to appreciate the irony of using lego to make impossible structures!
The scrary part with that CD was when I suddenly realized I was when I realized how much I was enjoying it!
I feel one major pitfall of X is the inability to change the resolution of the X-Server without shutting it down. This is also a major problem of games in Linux as many games simply don't run well at resolutions most people like to work at. Either way with alternatives if thay can achieve compatibility over networks I think some competition could be a great bonus to the *nix community.
I still don't know how to set up my printer :)
In the past forest fires wouldn't of really made a difference other than a momentary blip. The problem is that with all our consumption of fossil fuels we're adding carbon to the carbon cycle. Carbon that has been out of circulation in the form of fossil fuels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. For the the current situation we know the carbon levels are higher than normal it's as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, or more precisely (current carbon) + (carbon that has been out of circulations for a VERY long time) = (greater than current carbon). The forests have absorbed a lot of this excess carbon but the problem is that they are just displacing it temorarily, and when they burn that carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere. True we don't have a great idea of what it was like in the past (as far as I know) but the fact is that we are resonably sure about what we are doing. Given what may happen to the environment if we are right it is imperative that we take action to avoid this problem rather than sit around and whine that the science isn't exact enough to warrent the damage to our economy while we continue to see the environment degrade around us.
How did THAT get there????
I'm not sure but don't you want to switch now?
No, I do not have a receipt. I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium size belt.
Perhaps I should rephrase that. I'm referring to computing power available for scientific computation in universities. This information comes from my brother who is completing a masters in physics and has intensive computing demands and is well in touch with the computing demand. The university I attend does not have as bad a situation as most but the fact remains that there ARE american universities with more computing power than is available to the combined scientific community in Canadian universities.
This is really being done also as sort of a protest due to the lack of supercomputing power in Canada. There are universities in the US that have more computing power than all of Canada combined.
We hope the downtime will be relatively minimal, but DNS may be a little slower to catch up.
It better be I don't know how long I can last with out slashdot, I'm going to start going through withdrawl!
*starts shaking*
Just a few more hours... just a few more hours.. just a few more hours...