Trust me, University IT professionals have been complaining about this since it was requested. And I promise you, all federal money that has been taken by universities is already budgeted -- and approved -- for other purposes. If the federal government wishes to provide the funding for creating, installing, and maintaining an incredibly complex system like that which they are requesting, then universities may actually try to create such a system.
As it is, how can the FBI expect universities to manage a network tapping system that the FBI itself can't even manage?
I'm a bit perplexed as to why you would infer that I have not been exposed to a college economics course. Got an A, thank you.
There is plenty of housing in these areas. They're building entire neighborhoods of overpriced housing, and banks are providing loans to people who simply cannot afford it. They're one paycheck away from foreclosure.
My point is that the economic model for housing is flawed. Either in that it is too easily manipulated, or that the normal rules of supply/demand simply aren't enough to calculate a fair price. Homes aren't a luxury (although some obviously are), they're a necessity. IF supply/demand were enough to regulate housing prices on their own, then housing prices should naturally follow income level curves over the same time period. They do not. In fact, the trends are almost opposite. Add to this the fact that foreclosure rates are at an all-time high in this country, and I think it's pretty clear that there's at least localized ridiculousness going on in the housing market.
Of course, the argument of affordable housing has an obvious relationship with the argument of adequate income. If a market is saturated, then how could housing prices increase by 40% without a significant increase in median income? Our tax laws are based on the assumption that only 25%-33% (depending on state) of our income is being spent on housing. I challenge anyone to produce more than 5% of the population that can claim that their housing costs are only 25% of their income.
But in the area that I'm referring to, this is not the case. There is plenty of housing available... They're building entire neighborhoods while you blink. However, the people being approved for the loans to purchase these homes are a single paycheck away from foreclosure.
On another note, in the middle of this ridiculous bubble, I have a friend who just sold his house after 192 days on market. And that was at a perfectly reasonable price.
There's something very wrong with the economic model. It's almost like supply/demand is woefully incomplete.
"Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality, Diligence, Courage, Valor, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, and Loyalty. All qualities no amount of science will bring back. But all in short supply in a world that claims there's no God."
For a country that's over 75% Christian, I sure don't see a lot of that going around...
Where on earth are people getting the idea that "all" content will become free?
I cannot see this as a logical extension of Google's product.
The only arguments I've seen that intrigue me are, if you want to keep something to yourself, you should never place it on a broadcast medium such as the Internet. Books are still a broadcast medium, they just have a pay-once-per-infinite-use charge.
> Who has said that? They are copying books. Period. If they had then put them on the net, that would have been ANOTHER type > of copyright infringement.
Actually, they are purchasing books. I'm absolutely free to copy any portion of a book that I own onto my personal computer for my purposes, whether I'm reviewing it, quoting it, citing it, or simply writing a portion of it in an email signature. In fact, I'm pretty sure that 99% of the sigs on Slashdot are copyrighted work.
As long as they're not reproducing the entire work for profit, or more subtly, as long as they're not reproducing the entire work to cause the copyright holder to lose profit, then there is no legal case against them.
Lemme put it another way: Until a copyright holder can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that properly citing their work on the internet causes them a loss of profit, then there is no argument.
Just because it's how things are does not imply that it's honest.
Supply and demand can't justify why houses in some non-city regions in California went up by over %40 last year alone, with no increase in average wages, or decrease in other commodity prices.
You tell me why a house that was built for $50,000 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation), after 20 years of abuse and wear and tear, is selling for $385,000??
And no, the schools in the neighborhood aren't worth it.
Actually, it's one of the most commen techniques sound engineers use.
In live sound, most engineers will put a high-pass filter on every channel of their mixer, and 'tune' it so that removes unwanted bass frequencies from that instrument. This is done to dramatically reduce feedback, and to keep the mix from sounding too 'muddy'. Low frequencies only need to be reproduced by bass instruments -- Kick drum, low tom, bass guitar, keyboards, etc. Everything else has no purpose down there.
In recording studios, engineers will be very careful with bass frequencies because of distortion. Nyquist theorem puts a limit on upper reproducable frequencies, but it says nothing about the dynamic range. Bass frequencies can easily take up the entire dynamic range of your recording if you're not careful, leaving no room left in the 16/24/32 bit for the rest of your sound. In analog gear, this may produce an acceptable distortion, but digital clipping distortion is one of the most horrendous artifacts you can produce, and can cause serious damage to your equipment.
This is the main reason that all A/D converters in audio gear have some high-pass filter in front of them. Only sensitive measurement equipment needs to be able to record frequencies that low. In special effect audio, those low frequencies are added in artificially after the soundtrack has been mixed.
As far as the contra-bassoon is concerned, the lowest frequency that can be produced is fairly low, but the instrument does not produce a lot of energy at this frequency. Our brains fill in this low frequency when it hears all of the upper harmonics. The same is true for tympani (which is a truly bizarre phenomena), and the low-G string on a violin.
Yes, he's sure about that. Cancellation comes from phase differences, which come from two sources being different distances away from a reciever. As long as all sources are the same distance from the reciever, you will always get positive reinforcement.
It doesn't have to show evolution false to coexist. It has to show evolution to be false in order for evolution not to be accepted as scientific fact.
In the meantime, any imagined sort of Intelligent Design (as pertains to how human life came to be on this planet) has to include the theory of evolution, or refute it, before science has to have anything to do with it.
What actually bugs me is that people that believe in Creationism (not necessarily ID) seem to think that science vs religion is some sort of chess game. If that's the case, then science is still waiting for religion to make a move that doesn't involve tossing all the pieces in the trash.
I personally feel that science is really about continually discovering more rules to the game, whereas religion tends to not want to play at all.
And just what is a Christian view of God? Are you saying that there's no room for interpretation amongst Christians? Are you saying that this scientist has the same Christian view as the rabid fundamentalist that blows up abortion clinics?
How dare you presume that there's a litmus test for Christianity...
Can you please prove (using religion, of course) religion? I mean, for something that claims to be The Truth, surely it can demonstrate that it is, itself, The Truth?
Now, I imagine that just about everyone reading this is thinking: This is just a perfect example of all the anti-religion BS that's going around." You keep telling yourself that. And while you're at it, say that Science is invalid because it can be proven. And that proving religion is BS.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that Science is becoming anti-religion, it's that religion has always been anti-anything-else. Religion is a handy tool that we can use to better feel secure with our lives, and then (optionally) use that understanding to some end. It does not provide The Truth and never will, though it _can_ give Faith, and that's usually good enough. Too many people are losing sight of that and are proclaiming God is Science/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy.
I find it interesting that there is even a debate about evolution at all.
In science, if even a single case is discovered that refutes a theory, then the entire theory has to be discarded. Of course, no scientist will throw out previous data if their theory is proven wrong or incomplete, so we start over again and see if we can come up with a new theory that can explain the anomolous data. Just look at the progression of mechanics: When Einstein developed his theory of Relativity, we had to acknowledge that Newton was wrong. Something else was fundamentally in charge of the nature of motion and dynamics. Of course, we still use Newton's theories because they are a useful approximation for just about any concievable real-world problem -- but they're still wrong!!
When data was discovered that routinely refuted the religious 'theory' of creation, that theory must be thrown out. Evolution is a meta-theory that supports real-life, repeatable experiments and observations. Until Intelligent Design can actually, scientifically show that there is observable, recreatable data (stories in a book are neither credible history, nor observable data) that refutes Evolution, then there is no debate to be had.
In other words, Intelligent Design has never shown the theory of Evolution to be false under any pretense. Every argument I've heard in favor of Intelligent Design is a blatant straw-man fallacy, and has no right to even be heard in debate without being ridiculed.
So in other words, we don't know, and we can't make comparisons.
Until it's determined exactly what procedures MS goes through when it loads files, we can't make any comparisons. Of course, we could go through OO's code and see exactly what it does.
All I can tell from reading just about ever post so far is that the following possibilities seem likely: Windows likely pre-loads a portion of the Excel dll's at startup. Excel likely loads just the portion of the file it needs to display at any given time. Excel's format likely contains a large amount of meta-data so that it isn't required to ever scan the entire file. OO Calc likely does not attempt to load pieces of its binary into memory until it is executed. OO Calc likely attempts to load the entire data set into accessible memory upon startup.
So all we can conclude from ANY of this is that there was likely a completely different design that went into OO vs Excel. It seems that the OO developers felt that it was more important to have the data available in memory than to leave it on the disk and view a small subset of the sheet. Apples and Oranges...
In that light, what would a fair competition between the two applications entail? I would imagine that testing it's ability to sort or sum all the cells in the sheet would be an interesting test. Presumably, if the assertions I've listed above are true, then Excel will have to spend its time accessing the disk eventually. Of course, even this test can be skewed if Excel uses some kind of hardware acceleration to process the data that OO doesn't use because whoever compiled the binary didn't use that particular optimization. In any case, I would be just as skeptical of this test than I am of the first. It's incomplete and there is no control to compare to.
Re:Children, grow up and admit that OSS isn't perf
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
·
· Score: 1
Nice Straw-man...
People who make speed comparisons are usually making them with regards to some aspect of the OS itself, i.e. some aspect of the linux kernel vs. however we presume MS does it in their latest OS. There are no studies out there that say "Linux is faster than MS" or vice-versa. If there are, they should be ignored or at least heavily scrutinized.
To compare some applications' startup times with arguments about which OS is 'faster' is a classic straw-man argument that I despise seeing. The reason why the/. crowd says these kinds of things in their arguments is because they READ THEM HERE!!!
Anyone who thinks less of people who defend Linux should really think about why the Linux community is so defensive in the first place. They have to put up with arguments like this that should be ignored. It's hard to not get upset and defensive when you are presented with one of the most unethical forms of debate tactics ever created.
So far, I haven't seen a single post stating that OpenOffice is faster than MSOffice. All I've seen is people defending their opinion that the difference is not nearly as drastic as the article made it out to seem. In fact, I've seen several posts explaining how to make OO start up faster. It is not obvious that the author of the article has even attempted to try to figure out if there's anything in his control he could have done to level the playing field.
If you want a real argument to debate, here's one: "OO is better than MSOffice because it IS bloated." If you can provide a non-straw-man argument to support this, whether you agree with it or not, then we forgive you.
He's not giving you an excuse. He's giving you a fact.
The real problem is not happening today. The issue is what happens in 10 years when your grandmother has all of her letters and documents stuck in a closed proprietary format, and MS has been found guilty of some huge accounting scandal and folds, no longer supporting Office 97? How is she going to be able to access all her files on her new computer her grandson just bought her because her old motherboard fried?
The answer is, she doesn't. It's lost. We have a word for this -- Encryption.
However, if the source for the document format was open, then all it takes is ONE enlightened programmer to produce a free tool to convert the documents to whatever new open format is currently the trend.
OK, so let's conservatively assume that the angle of dispersion from the mirror is the same as that from the sun -- 0.5 degrees. If this is the case, then at 100 feet, a point source would subtend an area approximately 0.44^2 = 0.19 ft^2. This is fairly negligible given that we would have to integrate over the entire surface of the 1 sqr. foot mirror to determine the actual intensity.
The interesting question is not regarding the angle subtended by the sun, but rather the effects of diffusion as the sun's rays pass through a square aperture. Remember, diffusion is what makes the edges of shadows soft -- even with a mathematically perfect point source. The smaller you make the mirrors, the more you must battle with the effects of diffusion on your intensity at a given distance.
You guys seem to be mixing up your definitions a bit. Lasers, LEDs, and just about everything else in the known universe produce heat. Heat is simply the transfer of thermal energy. If the temperature goes up, then the molecules of the object have more energy.
In fact, incandescent light sources rely on this. They increase the temperature of a filiment to the point where the molecules bounce off eachother so hard they knock electrons into a higher energy level, when an electron falls back down to a stable level, it emits a photon.
It just so happens that we are particularly sensitive to infrared light in a specific way -- we interpret these frequencies as being 'hot'. This probably developed through evolution so that we don't do stupid things like touch the pretty fire. If this is your definition of emitting heat, then sure... only light sources that emit infrared light will be emitting heat. This applies to any light source.
But remember, UV will burn you a lot faster than IR, even though you can't really feel it until it's too late. By this definition, if the light can be absorbed by something, then the temperature of that object must go up. In other words, if it's emitting photons that will be absorbed, it's emitting heat. Since practically nothing is 100% reflective or translucent, this definition works.
Of course, all of these light sources 'produce' heat due to their inefficiencies. When the materials that make up the light source get hot enough, chances are they will start emitting infrared on their own. We will feel this as heat.
Note that this has nothing to do with physically touching the light source, which would be a heat transfer by conduction, not radiation.
** it is my opinion that the mechanical aspects of the speakers you use have the greatest effect of the sound rather than the electronics. **
Too true... Although another interesting aspect that most people (even audiophiles) don't realize, is that when you start diving into the realm of truly professional high-power loudspeakers, sound quality drops through the floor. The loudspeakers you listen to at just about any concert or movie theater rely completely on digital crossover and equalizer processing in order to compensate for their ridiculously horrid natural response. These crossover processing boxes can cost upwards of $10k to $20k. Plus to realize their full potential, you need to buy seperate amplifier components, for which the subwoofers can draw upwards of 3000W per speaker!
Just proof again that the audiophiles rarely think about systems outside of their little niche. For the cost of some audiophile setups, you could run an entire concert venue.
I don't think anyone with half a brain is arguing that they are doing the 'right thing' when they illegally download music.
I think that most people here are arguing against the claims that they are destroying the music industry. The point you seem to be misplacing is that all of the studies that are quoted (and ignored by the *IAA) show that individuals who download music are more likely to buy more ligitimate albums/movies, thus HELPING the industry and creating more revenue.
What people here really want is to be granted amnesty for their petty thefts and not be sued for $75,000 because they typed out the word "Metallica" and clicked a button.
The point is that the *IAA has no basis in obvious fact or research for the losses they claim. Nor can they can't produce a compelling argument to show that their industry is suffering groundbreaking losses.
It's my personal opinion as a classically trained musician that people rarely use a P2P application to ever download a piece of 'music'. But that's just my snobbiness. If Bach loses some revenue, I'm pretty sure he won't miss it.
Now if the LA Philharmonic has to disband because their losses in CD sales means that they can't afford to pay their first-chair players, then I may change my mind. If it means that Britney Spears makes $50 million less next year because that money became spread out among lesser known artist, or, heaven forbid, the LA Philharmonic, then I could care less. She's not getting paid to produce albums, she's getting paid to suffer the idolitry of teenagers and horny Linux-Geeks.
And what would be the problem with putting these materials at the SOURCE of the pollution, rather than placing them at a location where they are only likely to pick up a miniscule amount?
I think a pollution catcher right at my exhaust would be more effective, even if it does decrease my fuel economy by 5%. Then, even the increased fule consumption would be cleansed as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me, University IT professionals have been complaining about this since it was requested. And I promise you, all federal money that has been taken by universities is already budgeted -- and approved -- for other purposes. If the federal government wishes to provide the funding for creating, installing, and maintaining an incredibly complex system like that which they are requesting, then universities may actually try to create such a system.
As it is, how can the FBI expect universities to manage a network tapping system that the FBI itself can't even manage?
I'm a bit perplexed as to why you would infer that I have not been exposed to a college economics course. Got an A, thank you.
There is plenty of housing in these areas. They're building entire neighborhoods of overpriced housing, and banks are providing loans to people who simply cannot afford it. They're one paycheck away from foreclosure.
My point is that the economic model for housing is flawed. Either in that it is too easily manipulated, or that the normal rules of supply/demand simply aren't enough to calculate a fair price. Homes aren't a luxury (although some obviously are), they're a necessity. IF supply/demand were enough to regulate housing prices on their own, then housing prices should naturally follow income level curves over the same time period. They do not. In fact, the trends are almost opposite. Add to this the fact that foreclosure rates are at an all-time high in this country, and I think it's pretty clear that there's at least localized ridiculousness going on in the housing market.
Of course, the argument of affordable housing has an obvious relationship with the argument of adequate income. If a market is saturated, then how could housing prices increase by 40% without a significant increase in median income? Our tax laws are based on the assumption that only 25%-33% (depending on state) of our income is being spent on housing. I challenge anyone to produce more than 5% of the population that can claim that their housing costs are only 25% of their income.
But in the area that I'm referring to, this is not the case. There is plenty of housing available... They're building entire neighborhoods while you blink. However, the people being approved for the loans to purchase these homes are a single paycheck away from foreclosure.
On another note, in the middle of this ridiculous bubble, I have a friend who just sold his house after 192 days on market. And that was at a perfectly reasonable price.
There's something very wrong with the economic model. It's almost like supply/demand is woefully incomplete.
"Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality, Diligence, Courage, Valor, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, and Loyalty. All qualities no amount of science will bring back. But all in short supply in a world that claims there's no God."
For a country that's over 75% Christian, I sure don't see a lot of that going around...
Where on earth are people getting the idea that "all" content will become free?
I cannot see this as a logical extension of Google's product.
The only arguments I've seen that intrigue me are, if you want to keep something to yourself, you should never place it on a broadcast medium such as the Internet. Books are still a broadcast medium, they just have a pay-once-per-infinite-use charge.
> Who has said that? They are copying books. Period. If they had then put them on the net, that would have been ANOTHER type > of copyright infringement.
Actually, they are purchasing books. I'm absolutely free to copy any portion of a book that I own onto my personal computer for my purposes, whether I'm reviewing it, quoting it, citing it, or simply writing a portion of it in an email signature. In fact, I'm pretty sure that 99% of the sigs on Slashdot are copyrighted work.
As long as they're not reproducing the entire work for profit, or more subtly, as long as they're not reproducing the entire work to cause the copyright holder to lose profit, then there is no legal case against them.
Lemme put it another way: Until a copyright holder can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that properly citing their work on the internet causes them a loss of profit, then there is no argument.
Just because it's how things are does not imply that it's honest.
Supply and demand can't justify why houses in some non-city regions in California went up by over %40 last year alone, with no increase in average wages, or decrease in other commodity prices.
You tell me why a house that was built for $50,000 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation), after 20 years of abuse and wear and tear, is selling for $385,000??
And no, the schools in the neighborhood aren't worth it.
Actually, it's one of the most commen techniques sound engineers use.
In live sound, most engineers will put a high-pass filter on every channel of their mixer, and 'tune' it so that removes unwanted bass frequencies from that instrument. This is done to dramatically reduce feedback, and to keep the mix from sounding too 'muddy'. Low frequencies only need to be reproduced by bass instruments -- Kick drum, low tom, bass guitar, keyboards, etc. Everything else has no purpose down there.
In recording studios, engineers will be very careful with bass frequencies because of distortion. Nyquist theorem puts a limit on upper reproducable frequencies, but it says nothing about the dynamic range. Bass frequencies can easily take up the entire dynamic range of your recording if you're not careful, leaving no room left in the 16/24/32 bit for the rest of your sound. In analog gear, this may produce an acceptable distortion, but digital clipping distortion is one of the most horrendous artifacts you can produce, and can cause serious damage to your equipment.
This is the main reason that all A/D converters in audio gear have some high-pass filter in front of them. Only sensitive measurement equipment needs to be able to record frequencies that low. In special effect audio, those low frequencies are added in artificially after the soundtrack has been mixed.
As far as the contra-bassoon is concerned, the lowest frequency that can be produced is fairly low, but the instrument does not produce a lot of energy at this frequency. Our brains fill in this low frequency when it hears all of the upper harmonics. The same is true for tympani (which is a truly bizarre phenomena), and the low-G string on a violin.
Yes, he's sure about that. Cancellation comes from phase differences, which come from two sources being different distances away from a reciever. As long as all sources are the same distance from the reciever, you will always get positive reinforcement.
It doesn't have to show evolution false to coexist.
It has to show evolution to be false in order for evolution not to be accepted as scientific fact.
In the meantime, any imagined sort of Intelligent Design (as pertains to how human life came to be on this planet) has to include the theory of evolution, or refute it, before science has to have anything to do with it.
What actually bugs me is that people that believe in Creationism (not necessarily ID) seem to think that science vs religion is some sort of chess game. If that's the case, then science is still waiting for religion to make a move that doesn't involve tossing all the pieces in the trash.
I personally feel that science is really about continually discovering more rules to the game, whereas religion tends to not want to play at all.
Absolutely correct.
However, with no methodology for determining how close this intellectual exercise is to reality, it can only be asserted by faith, not science.
And just what is a Christian view of God? Are you saying that there's no room for interpretation amongst Christians? Are you saying that this scientist has the same Christian view as the rabid fundamentalist that blows up abortion clinics?
How dare you presume that there's a litmus test for Christianity...
I'm pretty sure that this scientist, as well as most all others, take offense at your claim that science is "The easy way out."
It's not advocated by atheists, it's advocated by scientists.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that "The easy way out" would be to believe a story in a book while ignoring overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
As a side note, I would be wary of any scientist that makes claims of blasphemy...
Can you please prove (using religion, of course) religion? I mean, for something that claims to be The Truth, surely it can demonstrate that it is, itself, The Truth?
Now, I imagine that just about everyone reading this is thinking: This is just a perfect example of all the anti-religion BS that's going around." You keep telling yourself that. And while you're at it, say that Science is invalid because it can be proven. And that proving religion is BS.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that Science is becoming anti-religion, it's that religion has always been anti-anything-else. Religion is a handy tool that we can use to better feel secure with our lives, and then (optionally) use that understanding to some end. It does not provide The Truth and never will, though it _can_ give Faith, and that's usually good enough. Too many people are losing sight of that and are proclaiming God is Science/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy.
I find it interesting that there is even a debate about evolution at all.
In science, if even a single case is discovered that refutes a theory, then the entire theory has to be discarded. Of course, no scientist will throw out previous data if their theory is proven wrong or incomplete, so we start over again and see if we can come up with a new theory that can explain the anomolous data. Just look at the progression of mechanics: When Einstein developed his theory of Relativity, we had to acknowledge that Newton was wrong. Something else was fundamentally in charge of the nature of motion and dynamics. Of course, we still use Newton's theories because they are a useful approximation for just about any concievable real-world problem -- but they're still wrong!!
When data was discovered that routinely refuted the religious 'theory' of creation, that theory must be thrown out. Evolution is a meta-theory that supports real-life, repeatable experiments and observations. Until Intelligent Design can actually, scientifically show that there is observable, recreatable data (stories in a book are neither credible history, nor observable data) that refutes Evolution, then there is no debate to be had.
In other words, Intelligent Design has never shown the theory of Evolution to be false under any pretense. Every argument I've heard in favor of Intelligent Design is a blatant straw-man fallacy, and has no right to even be heard in debate without being ridiculed.
So in other words, we don't know, and we can't make comparisons.
Until it's determined exactly what procedures MS goes through when it loads files, we can't make any comparisons.
Of course, we could go through OO's code and see exactly what it does.
All I can tell from reading just about ever post so far is that the following possibilities seem likely:
Windows likely pre-loads a portion of the Excel dll's at startup.
Excel likely loads just the portion of the file it needs to display at any given time.
Excel's format likely contains a large amount of meta-data so that it isn't required to ever scan the entire file.
OO Calc likely does not attempt to load pieces of its binary into memory until it is executed.
OO Calc likely attempts to load the entire data set into accessible memory upon startup.
So all we can conclude from ANY of this is that there was likely a completely different design that went into OO vs Excel. It seems that the OO developers felt that it was more important to have the data available in memory than to leave it on the disk and view a small subset of the sheet. Apples and Oranges...
In that light, what would a fair competition between the two applications entail? I would imagine that testing it's ability to sort or sum all the cells in the sheet would be an interesting test. Presumably, if the assertions I've listed above are true, then Excel will have to spend its time accessing the disk eventually. Of course, even this test can be skewed if Excel uses some kind of hardware acceleration to process the data that OO doesn't use because whoever compiled the binary didn't use that particular optimization. In any case, I would be just as skeptical of this test than I am of the first. It's incomplete and there is no control to compare to.
Nice Straw-man...
/. crowd says these kinds of things in their arguments is because they READ THEM HERE!!!
People who make speed comparisons are usually making them with regards to some aspect of the OS itself, i.e. some aspect of the linux kernel vs. however we presume MS does it in their latest OS. There are no studies out there that say "Linux is faster than MS" or vice-versa. If there are, they should be ignored or at least heavily scrutinized.
To compare some applications' startup times with arguments about which OS is 'faster' is a classic straw-man argument that I despise seeing. The reason why the
Anyone who thinks less of people who defend Linux should really think about why the Linux community is so defensive in the first place. They have to put up with arguments like this that should be ignored. It's hard to not get upset and defensive when you are presented with one of the most unethical forms of debate tactics ever created.
So far, I haven't seen a single post stating that OpenOffice is faster than MSOffice. All I've seen is people defending their opinion that the difference is not nearly as drastic as the article made it out to seem. In fact, I've seen several posts explaining how to make OO start up faster. It is not obvious that the author of the article has even attempted to try to figure out if there's anything in his control he could have done to level the playing field.
If you want a real argument to debate, here's one: "OO is better than MSOffice because it IS bloated."
If you can provide a non-straw-man argument to support this, whether you agree with it or not, then we forgive you.
Well, I guess we can't fault a company that puts in 270%
He's not giving you an excuse. He's giving you a fact.
The real problem is not happening today. The issue is what happens in 10 years when your grandmother has all of her letters and documents stuck in a closed proprietary format, and MS has been found guilty of some huge accounting scandal and folds, no longer supporting Office 97? How is she going to be able to access all her files on her new computer her grandson just bought her because her old motherboard fried?
The answer is, she doesn't. It's lost. We have a word for this -- Encryption.
However, if the source for the document format was open, then all it takes is ONE enlightened programmer to produce a free tool to convert the documents to whatever new open format is currently the trend.
That's the argument, and it's NOT an excuse.
OK, so let's conservatively assume that the angle of dispersion from the mirror is the same as that from the sun -- 0.5 degrees. If this is the case, then at 100 feet, a point source would subtend an area approximately 0.44^2 = 0.19 ft^2. This is fairly negligible given that we would have to integrate over the entire surface of the 1 sqr. foot mirror to determine the actual intensity.
The interesting question is not regarding the angle subtended by the sun, but rather the effects of diffusion as the sun's rays pass through a square aperture. Remember, diffusion is what makes the edges of shadows soft -- even with a mathematically perfect point source. The smaller you make the mirrors, the more you must battle with the effects of diffusion on your intensity at a given distance.
You guys seem to be mixing up your definitions a bit. Lasers, LEDs, and just about everything else in the known universe produce heat. Heat is simply the transfer of thermal energy. If the temperature goes up, then the molecules of the object have more energy.
In fact, incandescent light sources rely on this. They increase the temperature of a filiment to the point where the molecules bounce off eachother so hard they knock electrons into a higher energy level, when an electron falls back down to a stable level, it emits a photon.
It just so happens that we are particularly sensitive to infrared light in a specific way -- we interpret these frequencies as being 'hot'. This probably developed through evolution so that we don't do stupid things like touch the pretty fire. If this is your definition of emitting heat, then sure... only light sources that emit infrared light will be emitting heat. This applies to any light source.
But remember, UV will burn you a lot faster than IR, even though you can't really feel it until it's too late. By this definition, if the light can be absorbed by something, then the temperature of that object must go up. In other words, if it's emitting photons that will be absorbed, it's emitting heat. Since practically nothing is 100% reflective or translucent, this definition works.
Of course, all of these light sources 'produce' heat due to their inefficiencies. When the materials that make up the light source get hot enough, chances are they will start emitting infrared on their own. We will feel this as heat.
Note that this has nothing to do with physically touching the light source, which would be a heat transfer by conduction, not radiation.
** it is my opinion that the mechanical aspects of the speakers you use have the greatest effect of the sound rather than the electronics. **
Too true... Although another interesting aspect that most people (even audiophiles) don't realize, is that when you start diving into the realm of truly professional high-power loudspeakers, sound quality drops through the floor. The loudspeakers you listen to at just about any concert or movie theater rely completely on digital crossover and equalizer processing in order to compensate for their ridiculously horrid natural response. These crossover processing boxes can cost upwards of $10k to $20k. Plus to realize their full potential, you need to buy seperate amplifier components, for which the subwoofers can draw upwards of 3000W per speaker!
Just proof again that the audiophiles rarely think about systems outside of their little niche. For the cost of some audiophile setups, you could run an entire concert venue.
I don't think anyone with half a brain is arguing that they are doing the 'right thing' when they illegally download music.
I think that most people here are arguing against the claims that they are destroying the music industry. The point you seem to be misplacing is that all of the studies that are quoted (and ignored by the *IAA) show that individuals who download music are more likely to buy more ligitimate albums/movies, thus HELPING the industry and creating more revenue.
What people here really want is to be granted amnesty for their petty thefts and not be sued for $75,000 because they typed out the word "Metallica" and clicked a button.
The point is that the *IAA has no basis in obvious fact or research for the losses they claim. Nor can they can't produce a compelling argument to show that their industry is suffering groundbreaking losses.
It's my personal opinion as a classically trained musician that people rarely use a P2P application to ever download a piece of 'music'. But that's just my snobbiness. If Bach loses some revenue, I'm pretty sure he won't miss it.
Now if the LA Philharmonic has to disband because their losses in CD sales means that they can't afford to pay their first-chair players, then I may change my mind. If it means that Britney Spears makes $50 million less next year because that money became spread out among lesser known artist, or, heaven forbid, the LA Philharmonic, then I could care less. She's not getting paid to produce albums, she's getting paid to suffer the idolitry of teenagers and horny Linux-Geeks.
And what would be the problem with putting these materials at the SOURCE of the pollution, rather than placing them at a location where they are only likely to pick up a miniscule amount?
I think a pollution catcher right at my exhaust would be more effective, even if it does decrease my fuel economy by 5%. Then, even the increased fule consumption would be cleansed as well.