Come on people, there's SIX BILLION humans on this planet. Quit thinking your religion and customs are the only ones that count.
It's admirable to give the poor a special Christmas, but then comes the quandries. Why didn't you do it during some other time of year? Why only do it during the (incorrect) birthday of Jesus? How poor is poor?
Actually,
as Christmas is a big holiday where gifts are given (in the Christian world at least), that's where this comes up most readily, -and- it was on topic as per the discussion. Christianity and Christian customs aren't the only ones that count, of course, however they are the ones currently being discussed. And I see no quandries here.
I do actually give charitably year-round, not just during Christmas time. As my parents don't buy my brother and I presents year-round (as was my example) we of course don't give gifts in such large quantities year-round. We don't only do it during the celebrated (although not technical) birthday of Jesus. As an aside, President's day is mostly arbitrary as well, so are a great many of the United States' holidays, and I would presume a greater portion of other nations' holidays
I believe poor is any quality of life that is below my own, at least in the sense of who I can feel okay with helping out. If poor today happens to be someone without bus fair, I'll help them out. If tomorrow poor is someone who needs $10 for lunch or what not, then why not?
Aren't you doing it because you're afraid of going to Hell, or selfishly trying to guarantee a way for yourself into Heaven?
No, I gave that Christmas because my parents were trying to teach my brother and I a lesson, one which was well recieved by both of us: give for the sake of giving. I don't fear going to hell, and I don't believe one can "buy a ticket" into heaven. God doesn't play some silly merit/demerit game with us, if He really is God, then what good can I do to match Him? Heh, even the best I could offer is worthless to Him, I couldn't give a God who made everything, anything new. No, heaven is a gift of God's grace, assuming you believe it's there in the first place. And yes, this is a Christian and Messianic Jewish belief. Orthodox Jews still believe that they need to earn their way into heaven, because they -are- afraid of going to hell.
I can assure you that there were no selfish intents when we "gave our Christmas away" to a family that wasn't going to have one.
And lastly, I wasn't trying to promote a spirit of "one-upmanship" as you put it, I'm sorry if I came off that way. I was merely trying to show that the empasis shouldn't be on glowfish and Roomba's, but on giving. I'm not bragging on the fact that I did anything, in fact, I had no say whatsoever with regard to what we did, and if I -did- have a say, I would probably have done as most kids, and chosen to keep my presents to myself!
One of my closest friends in 3rd grade was Jewish, and I'm sure today he'd help a friend in need too. From your post you almost make it sound as though charity and thoughtfulness is irrellevant to Jewish people. I know you didn't mean this, but yeah, what -does- the day have to do with it? So what if I chose Christmas as my example, I wasn't limiting charity to that day, you were.
I'm sorry if I offended you, that honestly wasn't my goal here, I was merely ranting on the commercialization of Christmas here in the US. From the tone of your post I must've struck a nerve, so for that I apologize. However, I don't apologize for the "Hurry and get your Christmas ornaments 2 months in advance!" advertisements and the garbage we're subjected to as a pre-holiday.
Thanks for not simply flaming me and posting a mostly civil reply.
I don't care to comment on the "Christmas shopping season", I feel you did a fairly good job of summing that up. What I do want to mention is my fondest childhood "Christmas shopping" memory.
My brother and I had gotten greedy, and asked for several hundred dollars worth of stuff (each) for Christmas, and we were both just little kids (not even teens yet), and so my parents decided to teach us the true meaning behind Christmas giving.
That Christmas they informed us, we weren't going to have "Christmas". The money that would have normally been spent on us that season would still be spent, but on toys for someone else. Through our Church my parents were made aware of a certain family that wouldn't be affording Christmas this year: no gifts for the children of an unemployed father. We knew their ages, and a few other things about them, and my parents sent my brother and I out with our Christmas money to buy this family gifts. We spent all of it, some $200 worth of toys, clothes, and other sundry items to brighten their holiday. We all helped wrap the gifts, and although there were many tears shed that first night we found out we had "lost our Christmas", by the end it was among the most exciting things I'd ever done.
That Christmas an entirely unaware family found a bunch of giftwrapped presents at our Church with their names on them. Because it was all co-ordinated through our pastor, the family never found out who it was that gave them the gifts, my brother and I never said a word about it.
A few weeks later a gift was given to us by our Pastor; it was a giant card that the children of the family had drawn on and signed, with a heartfelt thank-you from their parents.
Isn't that the Christmas spirit? Giving without getting anything in return? I remember a story, we call it the Christmas story, where a Man supposedly paid a great price for a bunch of folks that didn't know Him. I don't know whether you think that Jesus existed or not, but if we're going to name a holiday after Him, shouldn't we at least get the event straight?
It isn't about buying gifts for everyone you know, it isn't even just about "'tis better to give than it is to recieve". It's about a little baby's birth, and a big gift given to everyone.
Sure, you may think it's just a story. But I like my story better than the Macy's Santa Claus, and November 1st "Christmas specials". It all makes me sick, but that's what we do best isn't it? We market things. So, whether you're Christian, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, or Confused: this holiday may land on a winter solstice, but that isn't why we give gifts. Give a gift, but make it count. Not to you, but to whomever you're giving it to.
Yeah, and even after refreshing your browswer since July 10th, for the sole purpose of finding this announcement, you -still- couldn't get a first post? That's just pathetic.
Not only do you need a life, you need to get better at not having one!
Of course hackers are in need of a logo. We are a disparate group of loosely knit geeks who all have a common passion. I believe also that any true hacker will readily admit ESR's contributions to our community, and possession of the title of "hacker" himself, perhaps I'd even go so far as to call him an "Alpha-hacker".
What's to prevent us from clinging to some logo that we can use to at least superficially identify other people as like-minded. If I'm sitting at a cyber-cafe and see a glider taped to some guy's laptop as he surfs some C, I'm going to recognize that I'm looking at someone who just might be a hacker. This is not a "status symbol" in the real world, in fact most people in the real world will never acknowledge ESR's hacker logo unless someone does something Really Big And Stupid while publically displaying it.
And why not the glider? We're hackers, we all know who JohnConway is, and what fun his Game of Life is. I'm willing to bet half of us have had an infatuation with it at some point or another, and half of that has even written their own little implementation of the thing.
If you don't like the logo, go for the spirit and choose a Up-Left glider, or a Cross (although that might be taken religiously), or you could be really cryptic and slap a 3rd-generation glider on the back of your T-Shirt (a 6th-generation "pump" looks pretty good too).
Sure there will be posers, but as they say, "You will know them by their works". If the code doesn't back up the glider, then just laugh and show them what real "elite" hacking looks like.
Just my 2 cents worth, I like ESR's logo, and will probably be putting a glider of some form on my website in the near future. Just to set myself apart that little bit more.
Well, I'm not Praeluceo, but as his girlfriend. Yes, I know there will be many comments of "no way," "geeks don't have girlfriends," and the like, but it's true! Don't ask how I put up with him. Even I don't know! ^_~
He likes medium liquid flow type pens, with his favorite as some $20 metallic pen. And he -hates- ballpoint pens, which I can understand as I'm not a very big fan either.
Now since I have extraordinarily small writing, I am a fan of pens with a 0.3 non-felt tip. The only problem is, I can't find any outside of Japantown, SF! I am currently well stocked with Pilot's Hi-Tec.3 pens in various colors. I also like my fountain pen with a narrow calligraphy nib, but that's only for writting special things in which I am forced to write big.
In case no one noticed, we're both really big on pens.
Umm, hello? This is a good time for the "Insensitive Clod" trademark. I currently have my desktop, a server, and -2- other fully functional computers. I don't need all this, I also volunteer my time at FreeGeek, a place that builds computers, and then gives them away to low-income folks.
I'm currently in the process of refitting my old server to give to a friend who is a single mom, living in some -very- low income government funded housing. For $10/mo she can get dial-up, on dialup I downloaded hundreds of mp3's off napster when it was around. For the additional $30 she can get a paid Kazaa account. I fail to see the point in your argument.
The internet isn't restricted to people with "luxury" cash anymore.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you here. As a college 200 level Chemistry student, I wrote every lab report I did in OOo (1.0.1 and.3). I have never had a problem expressing complex formulas, setting up tables of calculations, or any other formatting. I would -not- use WordPad for my lab reports. OpenOffice.org also worked well for writing essays and other such papers. No, I didn't use complex headers/footers or such. However I have opened documents with tables and they generally open fine. I also have opened such odd things as SVG files from Publisher, embeded in a PowerPoint file, and been able to edit the SVG -grouped- graphic entirely. All the way down to entering the group and editing the elements. The biggest trouble I've had with OpenOffice.org has been with a rather large document I wrote up (20 pages) that used footers. OOo couldn't render them in the 1.0.x versions very well at all, the 1.1 beta was believe it or not, worse! Now, before you smugly fire-up MS Office and not think about switching, consider this. I made my footers in MSOffice to begin with, and every time I open it they look a little different, the way I have automatic and manual numbering is something MSOffice has a terrible time with, and it keeps reverting my manual numbers and lettered pages to the automatic ones. I don't feel this is a failure on the part of OOo, I believe this is a failure in the way MSOffice creates footers.
As a bonus note, I'm the Media Team Lead at my Church, and we have been using OpenOffice.org Impress (I love being the Team Lead) for every presentation shown on the projector since 1.0.1 came out. I've had very few problems with this setup, no more than when we first started using PowerPoint so many years ago. On top of that, when someone brings in a true PowerPoint file to project for something they're doing, I hardly ever have any trouble rendering it as true as the RealThing (TM).
In fact, the biggest complain is Impress has too many features! it has several more transitions available over MSOffice, and so when someone sets up random transitions for text fields, OpenOffice.org does funny things that look terrible sometimes, but it's only doing that because that's an option in OOo, whereas it isn't in MS PowerPoint.
No, OpenOffice.org doesn't have absolutely every single feature Microsoft Office has, and it may not be 100% compatible. But I dare to say that Microsoft doesn't have every single feature ours has, and get this, it's 0% compatible. Granted they don't have to be as they are the standard, but if you're going to choose one, why not choose the one that gives you options? If you can't use it for your current documents, well, give it a go the next revision. If you can though, arguing features isn't going to get you anywhere.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I forgot #4:
4) Your theoretical yield would be 254 lbs, which means I probably did one of my above calculations wrong, which means someone will post to correct me.
Upon reading my post, lets try moving the decimal point over one, so you get 125090.728 moles of NaCl, which would yield (theoretically) 25.4 lbs.
Yeah, that looks about right.
(using an molecular weight of NaCl of 58.5 mol/g, and atomic weight of Na of 35 mol/g.)
Ah well, I've always been bad at math, it still isn't a DIY though, it takes a -lot- of heat to do that. And Chlorine gas is erm, rather toxic, and something you don't want to be producing several pounds of.
1) Take your table salt, about 100 lbs of it. 2) Break the ionic bonding between the Cl and the Na (heat of formation being 395.5 kJ/mol) by heating it (2650907.2831789 moles) with 10.48E8 kJ. 3) You then end up with Na+ + Cl- (ish), and can use electolysis to combine them back together.
In conclussion, buy it off eBay, extracting sodium from salt is not a DIY project.
I don't know about anyone else in here, but I actually plan on trying to implement this. We all seem to be overlooking one great big niche here: servers. I run an AMD K6-II as my server, it has a single stick of 128 MB RAM. It also has an old 4 MB video card in an AGP 2x slot, that means I can add 4 MB of 132 MHz RAM, totalling my physical RAM out to 132 MB. No, that isn't very much, but hey, do I run X on my server? No. Do I have a video card sitting in my AGP slot? Yes. Is there a legitimate reason -not- to use that card for something at least? NO!!!
Sure, my desktop has 512 MB RAM, and 64 MB VRAM, I don't need to dip into that extra RAM, but for my server, that's 4 more MB that I have available now before I have to access a terribly slow swap file. Besides, isn't this the main use of *NIX anyway, webserving? All modern PCs have AGP slots now, if you run your own server, and it has a PII or newer, chances are good it has AGP support, at -least- 1x. Chances are also good you have a video card lying around. So why not do something cool with it, rather than collect dust?
So the situations described are perfectly ok and understandable within a democratic republic? Or are you simply being pedantic? What exactly, beyond a simple syntactic discrepancy are you trying to point out?
Okay, the above poster was incorrect, we are not a "Democratic Republic" that's an oxymoron. This nation (being the USA) is a Constitutional Republic (Article IV. Section 4, U.S. Constitution). I don't know where you went to school, or if they even bother teaching Constitutional Law in public schools anymore, but I'm afraid you are misguided in thinking the masses have a "right" to vote into office their officials. We choose electors, who in turn are educated men, who -elect- our leaders. That is the spirit of a Republic, Democracy is "mob rule" whereas a Republican form of government is not. This is not a "simple syntatic discrepancy" as you so put it. This is what has seperated our nation from other totaltarianistic governments for the past 200+ years: Limited Representation. We have a representative form of government. We are considered "Constitutional" because the foundation of our government lies upon our Constitution, and its execution. We are a Republic because certain courses of action can never be followed, no matter what the current popular opinion is leaning toward. This has a very real implication: "The rights of no individual or group can ever be removed or diminished (because that group may be currently unpopular (for whatever reason)), regardless of how many people vote to do so. In a Republic, even if the vote is 250 million to 1, that one cannot be thrown into slavery. In a pure democracy 51% of the men can vote the other 49% back into slavery if they wish."
I know this post is most likely off-topic, but I find a substantial understanding of the way our government works to be an indisposable tool in thwarting abuses withing our government. I believe that if anything, our government has been attempting to ignore the fact that it is a "Republic" for the sake of enjoying the powers enabled by being a "democracy".
Lest we forget, our own government in the 1928 US Army manual (run fortune for a few hours, it's bound to pop-up in there) stated that a Democracy is, "A government of the masses. Authority derived
through mass meeting of any, for direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic--negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon delibaration or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."
A democracy where you only get to pick the decision maker, but can't effect any direction afterwords (unless you are a rich corporation), where the individual vote is a mere symbol and does not directly elect the winner, where you only hear anything about two candidates out of eight or more, and where those two candidates simply lie about their intentions. What would you call this kind of democracy?
I call this kind of "democracy" a Republic, and so did our founding fathers, and so does every elected official. Get a clue.
No, the USA was supposed to be a Constitutional Republic, get your international politics right before rambling.
It's a brainwash? No, it's a reminder. Like teaching children their letters or common expressions. A little reciting of a pledge to your nation helps instill the fact that your nation, and her God are important. Brainwashing would be a touch different, sorry.
I pledge allegiance to the flag,
Of the United States of America,
And to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation, Under God,
Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
...Indivisible... we sound awfully divided right now? I for one see this as a Bad Thing(TM), and can only hope that as this ruling moves its way up through our system of checks and balances that it will get overturned. It's been all of 9 and a half months, and we've already entirely lost our national "unity" and return to fundamental beliefs. I'm sure next they'll be saying that my local Community College which sports an "One nation under God" poster in most of the buildings will be required to take down their patriotic motifs due to it being an infringement upon "separation yadda yadda".
I think that if Christians cannot be allowed to openly practice most of their beliefs on public property, and if Christian ideals such as "don't kill" and "don't commit adultery" can't be present in publicly sponsored schools. Then likewise the religion of "evolution" should also be regulated, and banned from our education system. I for one do not wish for my children to be indoctrinated at an early age with such cock-eyed ideas as the world took billions of years to form. Especially since the great majority of modern school text books contain "facts" regarding our planet's evolution that have been disproven in the scientific community.
Ah, but it's only us, the intolerant right-wing Christian theists who aren't included in that freedom of religion everyone else enjoys. I see.
And yes, you can pick my post apart, and say how I'm wrong on this, I have my facts wrong on that, or that I'm not defending my stance clearly. Perhaps not, but, as they say, "The truth is out there". Do try not to fall into the same pit of "closed-mindedness" atheists enjoy saying most Christians have fallen into, if you aren't openminded enough to honestly consider what I have said, and study up on it, how can you deride me for my beliefs without you yourself being closed-minded?
It is also said, "The fool says in his heart 'there is no God'....for the time will come when people will not endure sound belief, but they will gather to themselves teachers after their own lusts. And they will not listen to the truth, and will rather listen to fables."
It's interesting how you insist on meeting these posts anonymously, afraid to risk something are we?
Ah well, such is life, the creep who defends murder posts as an anonymous coward while speaking of such things as "enlightenment".
Now, don't get me wrong, murdering murderers is wrong too. Two wrongs and all that jazz. I do think it should be illegal, and I don't see much sense in obeying a law which mandates murder en masse, but I'm just me. And you can mod me down all you like, I know I'm in the minority here.
I just wish all you open-minded folks would actually open your mind, and not just repeat all the same regurgitated mess you've been fed all these years.
I'm not an accountant, and I don't know much about what NASA's done in the past. But I know we owe velcro, teflon, nylon, and tang to them. So why can't NASA just retain rights to these products, and divert 15% of the income the brands that "own" them back to NASA? They came up with this stuff. Then again, it'd be kind of hard to tax "velcro usage". Maybe when they come up with some great new groundbreaking product or device, they could sell it to the private sector for inane amounts of money? NASA is smart enough to provide its own income, I mean come on, they could build a "Tourism Wing" to the ISS and sell tickets there for $15 million a pop, that'd fix a lot of budget problems wouldn't it? I think it'd be cool to walk into a giftshop myself and buy a jar of "Real Moon Dust, courtesy of NASA Commercial Flight Dept." Just a few thoughts here, can't NASA see their gadgets, services (who else has reusable space-worthy craft? Or as much experience sending junk into space).
I'm just your J.R. Random letting you know how my switch from AT&T @home to ATTbi went. At around 3:30 am on Sunday my @home connection died, I know this because that is when my last minute ftp of MDK 8.1 CD 1 died. I woke up, and every site my browser pointed to was an instruction site letting me know my new configuration info, so I changed my router's information, shut off the router and my cable modem for a few seconds, and then reapplied power. Presto, 30 seconds later I was back online. No problems with any of the computers behind my router.
A few things I noticed right off the bat was that my previous @home connection gave my computer a dns entry that was static, and -could- be used to host a site, it followed the convention of hostname.city.state.home.com. But now my computer's "url" doesn't seem to make any sense, and rather than being associated with my current IP address, it links me to some control panel of sorts, however the last I checked it wasn't really complete offering a few tools, but no UI.
Secondly, I read up on AT&T's website, noting that my parents' user@home.com e-mail account would now be user@attbi.com, which is not nearly as easy to remember, or to give out, and that all mail sent to @home would not be redirected, but rather rejected. Unfortunately, any mail sent to their old account returns the following:
This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:
HEIALMBOS.MHRIH
Isn't that helpful? I was hoping it would at least advise the sender to change the hostname of the e-mail address. Secondly, AT&T@home previously placed a 650 KB/s downstream, and 128 KB/s upstream cap on our connection. However now on attbi we have 1.5 Mb down (which after running a speedtest I found to hover around 1.1 and 1.2 Mb/s) and again 128 KB/s upstream. This is a nice change for us, although I am aware other users didn't have such a cap.
Also, @home previously offered webspace with each account, which was 10 Mb. Now it seems they have modified their service to include 60 Mb of webspace, I never used this feature before, but have activated it now in anticipation of a backup site for my regular page. As of yet their "df" command in the web-based control panel still says I have 10240 Kb free, but I'm assuming that's either a limitation of the webpanel, or they haven't upgraded the servers yet.
Additionally, their user management page is -completely- redesigned, making itself much more intuitive, and helpful, not to mention easy to use. I attempted to get an e-mail address with our @home service, but it had been taken by someone else previously, and then deleted, rendering it unusable because AT&T won't reactivate e-mail accounts after they have been deleted. However, with the switch, all the "dead" e-mail addresses are now available, and I was able to successfully activate my preferred address. On the same note, we were previously allowed 7 total fixed addresses, but now we are only allowed 5 simultaneous addresses, I say this is a good thing though, because before when you deleted an address, you didn't get credit back to create any more, but now you can "rename" a user account, so I renamed my old one, to the desired username without changing the number of e-mail's we're using. The @home service limited the password length on accounts to a maximum of 9 characters, and a minimum of 6, this was -very- limiting. The new attbi service allows the standard 8-16 character password, which is very handy.
Overall I am pleased with our change in service, and although other people have experienced DNS, and login errors, I had zero issues with the change-over, and can only hope, in my case at least, it is a permanent change. My loss of a domain is hardly earth-shattering, and as far as I know, once attbi gets stabilized, their IP's will again become semi-static like it was before. I can't speak for others, I know some people in California who once used @home and are now on juno. My transition was smooth, and my service has gone from pretty good to even better. But as they say, YMMV.
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All irrelevant if you are Jewish.
Come on people, there's SIX BILLION humans on this planet. Quit thinking your religion and customs are the only ones that count.
It's admirable to give the poor a special Christmas, but then comes the quandries. Why didn't you do it during some other time of year? Why only do it during the (incorrect) birthday of Jesus? How poor is poor?
Actually,
as Christmas is a big holiday where gifts are given (in the Christian world at least), that's where this comes up most readily, -and- it was on topic as per the discussion. Christianity and Christian customs aren't the only ones that count, of course, however they are the ones currently being discussed. And I see no quandries here.
I do actually give charitably year-round, not just during Christmas time. As my parents don't buy my brother and I presents year-round (as was my example) we of course don't give gifts in such large quantities year-round. We don't only do it during the celebrated (although not technical) birthday of Jesus. As an aside, President's day is mostly arbitrary as well, so are a great many of the United States' holidays, and I would presume a greater portion of other nations' holidays
I believe poor is any quality of life that is below my own, at least in the sense of who I can feel okay with helping out. If poor today happens to be someone without bus fair, I'll help them out. If tomorrow poor is someone who needs $10 for lunch or what not, then why not?
Aren't you doing it because you're afraid of going to Hell, or selfishly trying to guarantee a way for yourself into Heaven?
No, I gave that Christmas because my parents were trying to teach my brother and I a lesson, one which was well recieved by both of us: give for the sake of giving. I don't fear going to hell, and I don't believe one can "buy a ticket" into heaven. God doesn't play some silly merit/demerit game with us, if He really is God, then what good can I do to match Him? Heh, even the best I could offer is worthless to Him, I couldn't give a God who made everything, anything new. No, heaven is a gift of God's grace, assuming you believe it's there in the first place. And yes, this is a Christian and Messianic Jewish belief. Orthodox Jews still believe that they need to earn their way into heaven, because they -are- afraid of going to hell.
I can assure you that there were no selfish intents when we "gave our Christmas away" to a family that wasn't going to have one.
And lastly, I wasn't trying to promote a spirit of "one-upmanship" as you put it, I'm sorry if I came off that way. I was merely trying to show that the empasis shouldn't be on glowfish and Roomba's, but on giving. I'm not bragging on the fact that I did anything, in fact, I had no say whatsoever with regard to what we did, and if I -did- have a say, I would probably have done as most kids, and chosen to keep my presents to myself!
One of my closest friends in 3rd grade was Jewish, and I'm sure today he'd help a friend in need too. From your post you almost make it sound as though charity and thoughtfulness is irrellevant to Jewish people. I know you didn't mean this, but yeah, what -does- the day have to do with it? So what if I chose Christmas as my example, I wasn't limiting charity to that day, you were.
I'm sorry if I offended you, that honestly wasn't my goal here, I was merely ranting on the commercialization of Christmas here in the US. From the tone of your post I must've struck a nerve, so for that I apologize. However, I don't apologize for the "Hurry and get your Christmas ornaments 2 months in advance!" advertisements and the garbage we're subjected to as a pre-holiday.
Thanks for not simply flaming me and posting a mostly civil reply.
I don't care to comment on the "Christmas shopping season", I feel you did a fairly good job of summing that up. What I do want to mention is my fondest childhood "Christmas shopping" memory.
My brother and I had gotten greedy, and asked for several hundred dollars worth of stuff (each) for Christmas, and we were both just little kids (not even teens yet), and so my parents decided to teach us the true meaning behind Christmas giving.
That Christmas they informed us, we weren't going to have "Christmas". The money that would have normally been spent on us that season would still be spent, but on toys for someone else. Through our Church my parents were made aware of a certain family that wouldn't be affording Christmas this year: no gifts for the children of an unemployed father. We knew their ages, and a few other things about them, and my parents sent my brother and I out with our Christmas money to buy this family gifts. We spent all of it, some $200 worth of toys, clothes, and other sundry items to brighten their holiday. We all helped wrap the gifts, and although there were many tears shed that first night we found out we had "lost our Christmas", by the end it was among the most exciting things I'd ever done.
That Christmas an entirely unaware family found a bunch of giftwrapped presents at our Church with their names on them. Because it was all co-ordinated through our pastor, the family never found out who it was that gave them the gifts, my brother and I never said a word about it.
A few weeks later a gift was given to us by our Pastor; it was a giant card that the children of the family had drawn on and signed, with a heartfelt thank-you from their parents.
Isn't that the Christmas spirit? Giving without getting anything in return? I remember a story, we call it the Christmas story, where a Man supposedly paid a great price for a bunch of folks that didn't know Him. I don't know whether you think that Jesus existed or not, but if we're going to name a holiday after Him, shouldn't we at least get the event straight?
It isn't about buying gifts for everyone you know, it isn't even just about "'tis better to give than it is to recieve". It's about a little baby's birth, and a big gift given to everyone.
Sure, you may think it's just a story. But I like my story better than the Macy's Santa Claus, and November 1st "Christmas specials". It all makes me sick, but that's what we do best isn't it? We market things. So, whether you're Christian, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, or Confused: this holiday may land on a winter solstice, but that isn't why we give gifts. Give a gift, but make it count. Not to you, but to whomever you're giving it to.
Yeah, and even after refreshing your browswer since July 10th, for the sole purpose of finding this announcement, you -still- couldn't get a first post? That's just pathetic.
Not only do you need a life, you need to get better at not having one!
Of course hackers are in need of a logo. We are a disparate group of loosely knit geeks who all have a common passion.
I believe also that any true hacker will readily admit ESR's contributions to our community, and possession of the title of "hacker" himself, perhaps I'd even go so far as to call him an "Alpha-hacker".
What's to prevent us from clinging to some logo that we can use to at least superficially identify other people as like-minded. If I'm sitting at a cyber-cafe and see a glider taped to some guy's laptop as he surfs some C, I'm going to recognize that I'm looking at someone who just might be a hacker. This is not a "status symbol" in the real world, in fact most people in the real world will never acknowledge ESR's hacker logo unless someone does something Really Big And Stupid while publically displaying it.
And why not the glider? We're hackers, we all know who JohnConway is, and what fun his Game of Life is. I'm willing to bet half of us have had an infatuation with it at some point or another, and half of that has even written their own little implementation of the thing.
If you don't like the logo, go for the spirit and choose a Up-Left glider, or a Cross (although that might be taken religiously), or you could be really cryptic and slap a 3rd-generation glider on the back of your T-Shirt (a 6th-generation "pump" looks pretty good too).
Sure there will be posers, but as they say, "You will know them by their works". If the code doesn't back up the glider, then just laugh and show them what real "elite" hacking looks like.
Just my 2 cents worth, I like ESR's logo, and will probably be putting a glider of some form on my website in the near future. Just to set myself apart that little bit more.
Well, I'm not Praeluceo, but as his girlfriend. Yes, I know there will be many comments of "no way," "geeks don't have girlfriends," and the like, but it's true! Don't ask how I put up with him. Even I don't know! ^_~ He likes medium liquid flow type pens, with his favorite as some $20 metallic pen. And he -hates- ballpoint pens, which I can understand as I'm not a very big fan either. Now since I have extraordinarily small writing, I am a fan of pens with a 0.3 non-felt tip. The only problem is, I can't find any outside of Japantown, SF! I am currently well stocked with Pilot's Hi-Tec .3 pens in various colors. I also like my fountain pen with a narrow calligraphy nib, but that's only for writting special things in which I am forced to write big.
In case no one noticed, we're both really big on pens.
After that solar flare, I think the only aliens orbiting SGR 1900 +14 are of the charred variety.
Umm, hello? This is a good time for the "Insensitive Clod" trademark. I currently have my desktop, a server, and -2- other fully functional computers. I don't need all this, I also volunteer my time at FreeGeek, a place that builds computers, and then gives them away to low-income folks.
I'm currently in the process of refitting my old server to give to a friend who is a single mom, living in some -very- low income government funded housing. For $10/mo she can get dial-up, on dialup I downloaded hundreds of mp3's off napster when it was around. For the additional $30 she can get a paid Kazaa account. I fail to see the point in your argument.
The internet isn't restricted to people with "luxury" cash anymore.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you here. As a college 200 level Chemistry student, I wrote every lab report I did in OOo (1.0.1 and .3). I have never had a problem expressing complex formulas, setting up tables of calculations, or any other formatting. I would -not- use WordPad for my lab reports. OpenOffice.org also worked well for writing essays and other such papers. No, I didn't use complex headers/footers or such. However I have opened documents with tables and they generally open fine. I also have opened such odd things as SVG files from Publisher, embeded in a PowerPoint file, and been able to edit the SVG -grouped- graphic entirely. All the way down to entering the group and editing the elements. The biggest trouble I've had with OpenOffice.org has been with a rather large document I wrote up (20 pages) that used footers. OOo couldn't render them in the 1.0.x versions very well at all, the 1.1 beta was believe it or not, worse! Now, before you smugly fire-up MS Office and not think about switching, consider this. I made my footers in MSOffice to begin with, and every time I open it they look a little different, the way I have automatic and manual numbering is something MSOffice has a terrible time with, and it keeps reverting my manual numbers and lettered pages to the automatic ones. I don't feel this is a failure on the part of OOo, I believe this is a failure in the way MSOffice creates footers.
As a bonus note, I'm the Media Team Lead at my Church, and we have been using OpenOffice.org Impress (I love being the Team Lead) for every presentation shown on the projector since 1.0.1 came out. I've had very few problems with this setup, no more than when we first started using PowerPoint so many years ago. On top of that, when someone brings in a true PowerPoint file to project for something they're doing, I hardly ever have any trouble rendering it as true as the RealThing (TM). In fact, the biggest complain is Impress has too many features! it has several more transitions available over MSOffice, and so when someone sets up random transitions for text fields, OpenOffice.org does funny things that look terrible sometimes, but it's only doing that because that's an option in OOo, whereas it isn't in MS PowerPoint.
No, OpenOffice.org doesn't have absolutely every single feature Microsoft Office has, and it may not be 100% compatible. But I dare to say that Microsoft doesn't have every single feature ours has, and get this, it's 0% compatible. Granted they don't have to be as they are the standard, but if you're going to choose one, why not choose the one that gives you options? If you can't use it for your current documents, well, give it a go the next revision. If you can though, arguing features isn't going to get you anywhere.
It actually ties up two numbers for 60 days.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I forgot #4:
4) Your theoretical yield would be 254 lbs, which means I probably did one of my above calculations wrong, which means someone will post to correct me.
Upon reading my post, lets try moving the decimal point over one, so you get 125090.728 moles of NaCl, which would yield (theoretically) 25.4 lbs.
Yeah, that looks about right.
(using an molecular weight of NaCl of 58.5 mol/g, and atomic weight of Na of 35 mol/g.)
Ah well, I've always been bad at math, it still isn't a DIY though, it takes a -lot- of heat to do that. And Chlorine gas is erm, rather toxic, and something you don't want to be producing several pounds of.
(;
1) Take your table salt, about 100 lbs of it.
2) Break the ionic bonding between the Cl and the Na (heat of formation being 395.5 kJ/mol) by heating it (2650907.2831789 moles) with 10.48E8 kJ.
3) You then end up with Na+ + Cl- (ish), and can use electolysis to combine them back together.
In conclussion, buy it off eBay, extracting sodium from salt is not a DIY project.
I don't know about anyone else in here, but I actually plan on trying to implement this. We all seem to be overlooking one great big niche here: servers. I run an AMD K6-II as my server, it has a single stick of 128 MB RAM. It also has an old 4 MB video card in an AGP 2x slot, that means I can add 4 MB of 132 MHz RAM, totalling my physical RAM out to 132 MB. No, that isn't very much, but hey, do I run X on my server?
No.
Do I have a video card sitting in my AGP slot?
Yes.
Is there a legitimate reason -not- to use that card for something at least?
NO!!!
Sure, my desktop has 512 MB RAM, and 64 MB VRAM, I don't need to dip into that extra RAM, but for my server, that's 4 more MB that I have available now before I have to access a terribly slow swap file. Besides, isn't this the main use of *NIX anyway, webserving? All modern PCs have AGP slots now, if you run your own server, and it has a PII or newer, chances are good it has AGP support, at -least- 1x. Chances are also good you have a video card lying around. So why not do something cool with it, rather than collect dust?
Just a thought guys.
So the situations described are perfectly ok and understandable within a democratic republic? Or are you simply being pedantic? What exactly, beyond a simple syntactic discrepancy are you trying to point out?
Okay, the above poster was incorrect, we are not a "Democratic Republic" that's an oxymoron. This nation (being the USA) is a Constitutional Republic (Article IV. Section 4, U.S. Constitution). I don't know where you went to school, or if they even bother teaching Constitutional Law in public schools anymore, but I'm afraid you are misguided in thinking the masses have a "right" to vote into office their officials. We choose electors, who in turn are educated men, who -elect- our leaders. That is the spirit of a Republic, Democracy is "mob rule" whereas a Republican form of government is not. This is not a "simple syntatic discrepancy" as you so put it. This is what has seperated our nation from other totaltarianistic governments for the past 200+ years: Limited Representation. We have a representative form of government. We are considered "Constitutional" because the foundation of our government lies upon our Constitution, and its execution. We are a Republic because certain courses of action can never be followed, no matter what the current popular opinion is leaning toward. This has a very real implication: "The rights of no individual or group can ever be removed or diminished (because that group may be currently unpopular (for whatever reason)), regardless of how many people vote to do so. In a Republic, even if the vote is 250 million to 1, that one cannot be thrown into slavery. In a pure democracy 51% of the men can vote the other 49% back into slavery if they wish."
I know this post is most likely off-topic, but I find a substantial understanding of the way our government works to be an indisposable tool in thwarting abuses withing our government. I believe that if anything, our government has been attempting to ignore the fact that it is a "Republic" for the sake of enjoying the powers enabled by being a "democracy".
Lest we forget, our own government in the 1928 US Army manual (run fortune for a few hours, it's bound to pop-up in there) stated that a Democracy is, "A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting of any, for direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic--negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon delibaration or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."
A democracy where you only get to pick the decision maker, but can't effect any direction afterwords (unless you are a rich corporation), where the individual vote is a mere symbol and does not directly elect the winner, where you only hear anything about two candidates out of eight or more, and where those two candidates simply lie about their intentions. What would you call this kind of democracy?
I call this kind of "democracy" a Republic, and so did our founding fathers, and so does every elected official. Get a clue.
No, the USA was supposed to be a Constitutional Republic, get your international politics right before rambling. It's a brainwash? No, it's a reminder. Like teaching children their letters or common expressions. A little reciting of a pledge to your nation helps instill the fact that your nation, and her God are important. Brainwashing would be a touch different, sorry.
I pledge allegiance to the flag,
...Indivisible... we sound awfully divided right now? I for one see this as a Bad Thing(TM), and can only hope that as this ruling moves its way up through our system of checks and balances that it will get overturned. It's been all of 9 and a half months, and we've already entirely lost our national "unity" and return to fundamental beliefs. I'm sure next they'll be saying that my local Community College which sports an "One nation under God" poster in most of the buildings will be required to take down their patriotic motifs due to it being an infringement upon "separation yadda yadda".
Of the United States of America,
And to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation, Under God,
Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I think that if Christians cannot be allowed to openly practice most of their beliefs on public property, and if Christian ideals such as "don't kill" and "don't commit adultery" can't be present in publicly sponsored schools. Then likewise the religion of "evolution" should also be regulated, and banned from our education system. I for one do not wish for my children to be indoctrinated at an early age with such cock-eyed ideas as the world took billions of years to form. Especially since the great majority of modern school text books contain "facts" regarding our planet's evolution that have been disproven in the scientific community.
Ah, but it's only us, the intolerant right-wing Christian theists who aren't included in that freedom of religion everyone else enjoys. I see.
And yes, you can pick my post apart, and say how I'm wrong on this, I have my facts wrong on that, or that I'm not defending my stance clearly. Perhaps not, but, as they say, "The truth is out there". Do try not to fall into the same pit of "closed-mindedness" atheists enjoy saying most Christians have fallen into, if you aren't openminded enough to honestly consider what I have said, and study up on it, how can you deride me for my beliefs without you yourself being closed-minded?
It is also said, "The fool says in his heart 'there is no God'....for the time will come when people will not endure sound belief, but they will gather to themselves teachers after their own lusts. And they will not listen to the truth, and will rather listen to fables."
It's interesting how you insist on meeting these posts anonymously, afraid to risk something are we? Ah well, such is life, the creep who defends murder posts as an anonymous coward while speaking of such things as "enlightenment". Now, don't get me wrong, murdering murderers is wrong too. Two wrongs and all that jazz. I do think it should be illegal, and I don't see much sense in obeying a law which mandates murder en masse, but I'm just me. And you can mod me down all you like, I know I'm in the minority here. I just wish all you open-minded folks would actually open your mind, and not just repeat all the same regurgitated mess you've been fed all these years.
+2 Morality
I'm not an accountant, and I don't know much about what NASA's done in the past. But I know we owe velcro, teflon, nylon, and tang to them. So why can't NASA just retain rights to these products, and divert 15% of the income the brands that "own" them back to NASA? They came up with this stuff. Then again, it'd be kind of hard to tax "velcro usage". Maybe when they come up with some great new groundbreaking product or device, they could sell it to the private sector for inane amounts of money? NASA is smart enough to provide its own income, I mean come on, they could build a "Tourism Wing" to the ISS and sell tickets there for $15 million a pop, that'd fix a lot of budget problems wouldn't it? I think it'd be cool to walk into a giftshop myself and buy a jar of "Real Moon Dust, courtesy of NASA Commercial Flight Dept." Just a few thoughts here, can't NASA see their gadgets, services (who else has reusable space-worthy craft? Or as much experience sending junk into space).
I'm just your J.R. Random letting you know how my switch from AT&T @home to ATTbi went. At around 3:30 am on Sunday my @home connection died, I know this because that is when my last minute ftp of MDK 8.1 CD 1 died. I woke up, and every site my browser pointed to was an instruction site letting me know my new configuration info, so I changed my router's information, shut off the router and my cable modem for a few seconds, and then reapplied power. Presto, 30 seconds later I was back online. No problems with any of the computers behind my router.
A few things I noticed right off the bat was that my previous @home connection gave my computer a dns entry that was static, and -could- be used to host a site, it followed the convention of hostname.city.state.home.com. But now my computer's "url" doesn't seem to make any sense, and rather than being associated with my current IP address, it links me to some control panel of sorts, however the last I checked it wasn't really complete offering a few tools, but no UI.
Secondly, I read up on AT&T's website, noting that my parents' user@home.com e-mail account would now be user@attbi.com, which is not nearly as easy to remember, or to give out, and that all mail sent to @home would not be redirected, but rather rejected. Unfortunately, any mail sent to their old account returns the following:
This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:
HEIALMBOS.MHRIH
Isn't that helpful? I was hoping it would at least advise the sender to change the hostname of the e-mail address. Secondly, AT&T@home previously placed a 650 KB/s downstream, and 128 KB/s upstream cap on our connection. However now on attbi we have 1.5 Mb down (which after running a speedtest I found to hover around 1.1 and 1.2 Mb/s) and again 128 KB/s upstream. This is a nice change for us, although I am aware other users didn't have such a cap.
Also, @home previously offered webspace with each account, which was 10 Mb. Now it seems they have modified their service to include 60 Mb of webspace, I never used this feature before, but have activated it now in anticipation of a backup site for my regular page. As of yet their "df" command in the web-based control panel still says I have 10240 Kb free, but I'm assuming that's either a limitation of the webpanel, or they haven't upgraded the servers yet.
Additionally, their user management page is -completely- redesigned, making itself much more intuitive, and helpful, not to mention easy to use. I attempted to get an e-mail address with our @home service, but it had been taken by someone else previously, and then deleted, rendering it unusable because AT&T won't reactivate e-mail accounts after they have been deleted. However, with the switch, all the "dead" e-mail addresses are now available, and I was able to successfully activate my preferred address. On the same note, we were previously allowed 7 total fixed addresses, but now we are only allowed 5 simultaneous addresses, I say this is a good thing though, because before when you deleted an address, you didn't get credit back to create any more, but now you can "rename" a user account, so I renamed my old one, to the desired username without changing the number of e-mail's we're using. The @home service limited the password length on accounts to a maximum of 9 characters, and a minimum of 6, this was -very- limiting. The new attbi service allows the standard 8-16 character password, which is very handy.
Overall I am pleased with our change in service, and although other people have experienced DNS, and login errors, I had zero issues with the change-over, and can only hope, in my case at least, it is a permanent change. My loss of a domain is hardly earth-shattering, and as far as I know, once attbi gets stabilized, their IP's will again become semi-static like it was before. I can't speak for others, I know some people in California who once used @home and are now on juno. My transition was smooth, and my service has gone from pretty good to even better. But as they say, YMMV.
Score 1: Repetitive Information Fodder