This is hardly new stuff; binary pulsar systems have been discovered and used in the past to help corroborate general relativity's prediction of gravitational waves. The classic example is the Taylor-Hulse binary pulsar (PSR 1913+16). Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics (Will, 1981) even has an entire section (Chapter 12, "Binary Pulsar") devoted to the topic, and the sci.physics.relativity FAQ certainly has plenty to say on the subject.
When it came out, this was immediately hailed as one of the worst games ever created. (And the reaction wasn't purely based on its violence; Computer Gaming World gave Grand Theft Auto 3 five stars, but Postal 2 zero.)
It reminds me of when Loki announced that it would be making a Linux port of Postal (short before they went out of business, what a shock). Postal wasn't as bad a game as Postal 2, but how are you going to make a splash in Linux games by porting bad games, or at the very least games that are highly unimpressive?
Nobody really finds this anything but unbelievably tedious, do they? Don't Finns have anything better to do with their time? Like, sit very still and not do anything?
It does indicate incredible naivete. That the guy actually thought he would be able to get through the entire project just shows he wasn't thinking things through.
Further, I think it's also ironic that collective folks who enjoy pointing out FUD from companies that they don't like (say, SCO) don't recognize when they're using FUD themselves. "... by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law"? Oh, please.
Let's get the facts straight
on
ISS Fender Bender
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· Score: 3, Interesting
All they heard on the ISS was a noise. Checks for external damage haven't found anything yet. Surely you hear hear the occasional weird noise in your apartment/house; that doesn't mean it was hit by a meteor, does it?
In a sense, you have to kind of be glad this is happening. Sooner or later, for better or worse, GPL was going to be legally put to the test -- that is inevitable. The way it stands now, as the antagonist we have SCO, a company whose claims are getting more and more ludcrious and desperate as time goes on, and the primary defender of GPL (only because it was outright sued by SCO) is IBM, a company now with a deep commitment to Linux, and which is known for its absolutely excellent legal team, deep pockets, and total lack of fear when it comes to defending itself against lawsuits.
In a sense, you really could not ask for better conditions under which to have GPL tested. SCO will no longer continue to exist as a separate, viable company in a few years.
Probably the most reliable way to defeat the spammer business model is to use a whitelisting mail filter technique like TMDA. Spammers rely on 1. cheap and easy bulk email delivery (for them, at least) and 2. access to your mailbox by default. That doesn't work if mail is not delivered by default with a whitelisting system -- in that case, their mail waits in limbo for a confirmation response that will never come.
Don't forget tiny nuclear reactors in trains, cars, appliances, and toothbrushes. That ideal is shown in a lot of '50s consumer media, but never got anywhere. Imagine the shitfit that would cause in antinuke types.
Arnold's character survives the original Predator. It's as much a win as the Alien is; only one human survives, but the threat is killed. And Alien Resurrection was so terribly it doesn't even deserve to get scores counted.
That would be take:-). Shortly after the Big Bang, whole atoms couldn't form since the photon destiny was way too high -- if a nucleus captured an electron (practically all H and He at that time), it would almost immediately be knocked out. And vice versa: the mean free path of a photon was tiny because it would always encounter nuclei or electrons. When things cooled down sufficiently, photons could travel free and atoms could form and expect to stay around. The transition where this occurred is called decoupling, and happened when the cosmic background dropped to about 3000 K and happened ~10^13 s, or somewhere between 100 000 y and 1 000 000 yr, after the Big Bang itself. This is where the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation we see today originally was originated, and marked the end of the radiation era and the matter era, the latter being the one we live in today.
You know, the ancient Greeks had the basic idea long before Dalton. Their arguments were obviously not based on experimentation, but they were reasonably compelling philosophical arguments why there must be elementary bits of matter. And that was a lot longer than 200 years ago.
Having computational power comparable or even surpassing that of the human brain is a long, long way from having artificial intelligence. It's not horsepower you have, it's what you do with it.
Let's not forget that when you're sworn in to testify in a court, you put your hand on a Bible. And the phase "so help me God" ends the Presidential oath of office. There's a lot of ground to cover here.
Let's keep in mind that such an asteroid striking the atmosphere would do very little damage other than a spectacular lightshow. This kind of thing happens all the time; don't let the recent media hype over the recent asteroid probabilities (which were all well under the background probability anyway!) lead you astray. Without comprehensive programs, it's inevitable that the geometry of orbital mechanics means we'll tend to find these near-misses after, not before they hit, anyway.
It's kind of strange to see the media labeling this as the nearest miss so far. When, uh, lots of asteroids, huge, big, medium-sized, small, and dust-sized have hit in the past.
The problem with this suggestion is that the focus then comes on exactly what the task lists are and what they mean. Consultant fees based on performance become very problematic when you've agreed to do task A, and then your client comes back and says they didn't like it and would rather have it be done another way, greatly increasing (perhaps even doubling in the worst case) the total amount of work required on the consultant's end. Then your only options are buckling in and doing all the extra work or bailing on the contract and getting paid nothing for your efforts.
In cases where the task list can be clearly itemized, you already have detailed specs to go from, and you have an escape clause governing how much extra you'll be paid in the event that the client changes his mind (even then a neutral arbiter will probably be required, adding to the fees), then maybe a fixed fee would make sense. But in the real world, such situations are quite rare; you're much better off negotiating an hourly rate.
I was thinking someone might comment on that, but decided against following the entire thought through in my original post. They did lose, but obviously are none the worse for wear. But that's in sharp contrast to IBM's case, where they flat out won -- no lost and then slap on the wrist, no lost and then thumbed their noses at or ignored the authorities, but unequivocally triumphed.
I suspect SCO's strategy was much like what the new guy in prison is supposed to do: Go nuts and beat somebody up your first day, and people will treat you with respect. They want to wring licensing fees out of people, so they need to get a big, powerful company to bow down to their threats. For some strange reason they chose IBM, a company not exactly known for their reluctance to litigate (unlike Microsoft, IBM actually defended itself against antitrust claims from the government and won).
It's clear now that the strategy isn't working; IBM isn't having any of it, and while it certainly has generated some concern and doubt in the business community, SCO isn't going to be collecting any significant royalties anytime soon (in fact they're not even prepared to yet). But when your cards are on the table and you've only got the road ahead of you, I suppose you have to see it through, even if you realize you have a bad hand.
I wonder if SCO will even exist as a distinct company five years from now. I suspect not.
The role of the media has long since been entertainment and titillation, rather than information. If it's bad, frightening, panic-indusing, worrying, or rabble-rousing, they'll print it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is hardly new stuff; binary pulsar systems have been discovered and used in the past to help corroborate general relativity's prediction of gravitational waves. The classic example is the Taylor-Hulse binary pulsar (PSR 1913+16). Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics (Will, 1981) even has an entire section (Chapter 12, "Binary Pulsar") devoted to the topic, and the sci.physics.relativity FAQ certainly has plenty to say on the subject.
When it came out, this was immediately hailed as one of the worst games ever created. (And the reaction wasn't purely based on its violence; Computer Gaming World gave Grand Theft Auto 3 five stars, but Postal 2 zero.)
It reminds me of when Loki announced that it would be making a Linux port of Postal (short before they went out of business, what a shock). Postal wasn't as bad a game as Postal 2, but how are you going to make a splash in Linux games by porting bad games, or at the very least games that are highly unimpressive?
I got a pair of transparent playing cards.
I don't think we have the technology!
Would would people have thought that the claims of being DOS attacked were lies in the first place? Nobody thought so the first time around ...
Nobody really finds this anything but unbelievably tedious, do they? Don't Finns have anything better to do with their time? Like, sit very still and not do anything?
It does indicate incredible naivete. That the guy actually thought he would be able to get through the entire project just shows he wasn't thinking things through.
Further, I think it's also ironic that collective folks who enjoy pointing out FUD from companies that they don't like (say, SCO) don't recognize when they're using FUD themselves. "... by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law"? Oh, please.
All they heard on the ISS was a noise. Checks for external damage haven't found anything yet. Surely you hear hear the occasional weird noise in your apartment/house; that doesn't mean it was hit by a meteor, does it?
In a sense, you have to kind of be glad this is happening. Sooner or later, for better or worse, GPL was going to be legally put to the test -- that is inevitable. The way it stands now, as the antagonist we have SCO, a company whose claims are getting more and more ludcrious and desperate as time goes on, and the primary defender of GPL (only because it was outright sued by SCO) is IBM, a company now with a deep commitment to Linux, and which is known for its absolutely excellent legal team, deep pockets, and total lack of fear when it comes to defending itself against lawsuits.
In a sense, you really could not ask for better conditions under which to have GPL tested. SCO will no longer continue to exist as a separate, viable company in a few years.
Probably the most reliable way to defeat the spammer business model is to use a whitelisting mail filter technique like TMDA. Spammers rely on 1. cheap and easy bulk email delivery (for them, at least) and 2. access to your mailbox by default. That doesn't work if mail is not delivered by default with a whitelisting system -- in that case, their mail waits in limbo for a confirmation response that will never come.
Don't forget tiny nuclear reactors in trains, cars, appliances, and toothbrushes. That ideal is shown in a lot of '50s consumer media, but never got anywhere. Imagine the shitfit that would cause in antinuke types.
... each household will get two concurrent high-speed connections (illegal in other states).
Arnold's character survives the original Predator. It's as much a win as the Alien is; only one human survives, but the threat is killed. And Alien Resurrection was so terribly it doesn't even deserve to get scores counted.
That would be take :-). Shortly after the Big Bang, whole atoms couldn't form since the photon destiny was way too high -- if a nucleus captured an electron (practically all H and He at that time), it would almost immediately be knocked out. And vice versa: the mean free path of a photon was tiny because it would always encounter nuclei or electrons. When things cooled down sufficiently, photons could travel free and atoms could form and expect to stay around. The transition where this occurred is called decoupling, and happened when the cosmic background dropped to about 3000 K and happened ~10^13 s, or somewhere between 100 000 y and 1 000 000 yr, after the Big Bang itself. This is where the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation we see today originally was originated, and marked the end of the radiation era and the matter era, the latter being the one we live in today.
You know, the ancient Greeks had the basic idea long before Dalton. Their arguments were obviously not based on experimentation, but they were reasonably compelling philosophical arguments why there must be elementary bits of matter. And that was a lot longer than 200 years ago.
Yes, but it's more commonly known as the atomic mass unit, amu.
Having computational power comparable or even surpassing that of the human brain is a long, long way from having artificial intelligence. It's not horsepower you have, it's what you do with it.
Let's not forget that when you're sworn in to testify in a court, you put your hand on a Bible. And the phase "so help me God" ends the Presidential oath of office. There's a lot of ground to cover here.
God help us all.
Let's keep in mind that such an asteroid striking the atmosphere would do very little damage other than a spectacular lightshow. This kind of thing happens all the time; don't let the recent media hype over the recent asteroid probabilities (which were all well under the background probability anyway!) lead you astray. Without comprehensive programs, it's inevitable that the geometry of orbital mechanics means we'll tend to find these near-misses after, not before they hit, anyway.
It's kind of strange to see the media labeling this as the nearest miss so far. When, uh, lots of asteroids, huge, big, medium-sized, small, and dust-sized have hit in the past.
The problem with this suggestion is that the focus then comes on exactly what the task lists are and what they mean. Consultant fees based on performance become very problematic when you've agreed to do task A, and then your client comes back and says they didn't like it and would rather have it be done another way, greatly increasing (perhaps even doubling in the worst case) the total amount of work required on the consultant's end. Then your only options are buckling in and doing all the extra work or bailing on the contract and getting paid nothing for your efforts.
In cases where the task list can be clearly itemized, you already have detailed specs to go from, and you have an escape clause governing how much extra you'll be paid in the event that the client changes his mind (even then a neutral arbiter will probably be required, adding to the fees), then maybe a fixed fee would make sense. But in the real world, such situations are quite rare; you're much better off negotiating an hourly rate.
I was thinking someone might comment on that, but decided against following the entire thought through in my original post. They did lose, but obviously are none the worse for wear. But that's in sharp contrast to IBM's case, where they flat out won -- no lost and then slap on the wrist, no lost and then thumbed their noses at or ignored the authorities, but unequivocally triumphed.
Does this also mean that trivial searches will take hours to complete? "Computer, find ..." "That search will take 1.6 hours to complete."
I suspect SCO's strategy was much like what the new guy in prison is supposed to do: Go nuts and beat somebody up your first day, and people will treat you with respect. They want to wring licensing fees out of people, so they need to get a big, powerful company to bow down to their threats. For some strange reason they chose IBM, a company not exactly known for their reluctance to litigate (unlike Microsoft, IBM actually defended itself against antitrust claims from the government and won).
It's clear now that the strategy isn't working; IBM isn't having any of it, and while it certainly has generated some concern and doubt in the business community, SCO isn't going to be collecting any significant royalties anytime soon (in fact they're not even prepared to yet). But when your cards are on the table and you've only got the road ahead of you, I suppose you have to see it through, even if you realize you have a bad hand.
I wonder if SCO will even exist as a distinct company five years from now. I suspect not.
The role of the media has long since been entertainment and titillation, rather than information. If it's bad, frightening, panic-indusing, worrying, or rabble-rousing, they'll print it.