I have a problem with the summary: "apparently designed to steal industrial secrets and disrupt operations". That seems just unutterably stupid. Any sane malefactor would do one or the other, not both. If I were in the business of stealing secrets, I wouldn't go around waving a big flag saying "LOOK AT ME, I'M A FUCKING SPY". Duh.
Agreed, but your analogy is flawed - to be "pissed" in English-speaking countries (as opposed to American;-P), means to be under the affluence of incohol.
The trouble is, the people who whine most about having to use Linux, OpenOffice or just about anything else tend to be the people who haven't achieved a basic level of competence with the platform or package of their "choice" (such as it is). They just whine more loudly than the people who have the basic skills necessary to just get on with their jobs.
Not to mention, OpenOffice's Presentation sucks, don't know Impress, never used (will look into).
In two sentences you have succinctly informed us that you are a complete and utter fool. OpenOffice's presentation utility is Impress. And anyone who has used Powerpoint will have no trouble using the other. Sure, the buttons may not be in the same places, but if you are so inflexible as to be unable to cope with that, then you're unemployable.
It also has shiny templates so the incompetent can flash images and text without actually disseminating any useful information.
Isn't that its primary purpose? I.e. to give the audience some wallpaper to fixate on to make it look like they're awake? Back when I was a schoolboy, we had ceiling fans for that purpose, and at least they kept us cool in summer. Powerpoint doesn't even do that.
and Openoffice version which apparently wasn't able to run presentations, I don't know who's to blame here.
I don't know what version of OpenOffice doesn't handle presentations; I've been using it since it was StarOffice, and it does them (including importing/exporting Powerpoint files) just fine.
I would have thought OOo would be a killer app for most denizens of cube farms. There isn't much (if anything) that MSOffice does that OpenOffice doesn't. Ummm, except for taking up 1/3 of the screen with that ribbon-bar, that is...
That's nothing. My 4-year-old MacBook under OS X 10.6.4 with Firefox 3.6.9 takes 27858.3ms to complete it.:-P
Yes it is slow, but with the combination of add-ons that I run, it renders pages the way I like, and this is more important to me than quibbling about a few milliseconds in a benchmark test.
The malware, well that's surely a point in Ubuntu's favor, for now.
Well, unfortunately the writers of most malware won't give us the source, so we can't just do a recompile, but you could try running it under Wine if you really need it.
Getting Linux into users hands with convenient, easy-to-use installers, providing support, etc. = Not Valuable
I can see how this might be a perception, but it's not reasonable. Lots of good C programmers are quite poor at systems administration. Maintaining a distro can be a horrible task, since you are essentially being sysadmin for a completely unknown system. The situation is made worse when programmers who write the source code you're implementing capriciously change things around (or break them) for no beter reason than to fit some trendy philosophical notion of how it should work.
I once went down the path of Linux From Scratch, and the experience was a worthwhile learning for a single-purpose system. But doing that for a desktop box is just stupid, since it's just too much work to keep all its components up to date. Now, Ubuntu is emphatically NOT my distribution of choice (that is currently Arch), but anyone who is prepared to undertake the task of maintaining any comprehensive distro long-term deserves a round of applause.
And that qualifies for banning a teen for the rest of his life from going to U.S.?
Well, on the other hand, there are other places to visit. I am approaching my 50s and although I have spent many years moving from one country to another, have never yet visited the US. I can imagine a number of reasons to do so, but none so immediately pressing that I feel the need to submit to being treated as a criminal by their immigration officials.
The funny thing is, a US citizen (which I am not) can call his president whatever he wants - a characteristic shared with many members of the so-called Western world. I have made a practice of calling British and Australian politicians by much less charitable terms than "prick" for several decades, and (so far) I haven't had any visits from men in dark suits and sunglasses...
For the rest of the world, notes are a life saver.
I've taken a few examinations where the student was permitted to take in a single sheet of paper. He could write whatever he wanted on it, no matter how big or small. I think this is a good way to go - it forces you to recognise the difference between things you need to actually know and details that are not so easily remembered but are otherwise significant.
I've done a number of subjects at university where I have been able to throw out the entirety of the semester's notes and retain those single sheets of paper from assessments.
You're all looking at the problem the wrong way around. It should be simple enough to design a test that doesn't need a calculator. The devices are great if you need numeric "answers" to a given problem, but in any kind of assessment there's no need for this. The students can leave their result as an expression, which is actually more meaningful in that it makes it clearer to the examiner as to how the student arrived at it.
The student shouldn't need to show that he can substitute values in an expression to arrive at a numeric answer. Any idiot can push a few buttons to do that, so it's just wasting time.
If you were to insist on the efficiency of photosynthesis as a yardstick for viability, nobody bould bother farming anything at all. The simple fact is that yes, the photosynthetic process is by its very nature not usually very efficient, but it is good enough.
Add that to the fact that farming of algae is comparatively easy, cheap and scalable and you have a winner.
There was an article a few months back that showed that you need certain enzimes produced by some specific bacteria, to digest algae.
It depends on the type of algae. For instance, macroalgae (such as seaweeds) are pretty much similar to any other kind of plant, in that the cellulose portion of it whistles straight out of your exhaust-pipe unless you happen to be a goat, which has bacteria secreting cellulase in his rumen.
Lots of phytoplankton are pretty much digestible, though I guess diatoms (which have silica cell walls) might be a bit problematic.
I'm not sure if you're joking; one time in the '70s, when I was a teenager, I sat with Yehudi Menuhin on a train, where the violinist spent most of the trip absorbed in a score. He told me he often did this, and got as much pleasure out of it as he did from actually hearing the music. I was never one of the best of his students, but learning to emulate this was one of the best things I ever did.
Clerk: "You're not holding it right.. here let me show you"
Exactly. When a felon's engaged in his gainful employment, he doesn't need to be browsing Facebook on his iPhone. A cheap Nokia burner-phone should be sufficient. It's just a matter of paying attention to the job in hand. If he doesn't, then he deserves to get caught.
It DOES mean that companies like Naxos who make money selling CDs of classical music will loose sales (not that that's a bad thing IMO)
Naxos buys up lots of quality recordings that would never otherwise see the light of day, and releases them to the consumer at budget prices (typically less than 1/3 of the price of a "big-label" CD) which are comparable to the real cost of production and distribution, with a minimal margin. If you want to "go after" any label, leave Naxos alone - they're doing good work.
Slashdot Mirror
Even "manbearpig" would've been a better choice.
:-|
That would have been an excellent choice for Microsoft Exchange...
I have a problem with the summary: "apparently designed to steal industrial secrets and disrupt operations". That seems just unutterably stupid. Any sane malefactor would do one or the other, not both. If I were in the business of stealing secrets, I wouldn't go around waving a big flag saying "LOOK AT ME, I'M A FUCKING SPY". Duh.
Agreed, but your analogy is flawed - to be "pissed" in English-speaking countries (as opposed to American ;-P), means to be under the affluence of incohol.
The trouble is, the people who whine most about having to use Linux, OpenOffice or just about anything else tend to be the people who haven't achieved a basic level of competence with the platform or package of their "choice" (such as it is). They just whine more loudly than the people who have the basic skills necessary to just get on with their jobs.
Not to mention, OpenOffice's Presentation sucks, don't know Impress, never used (will look into).
In two sentences you have succinctly informed us that you are a complete and utter fool. OpenOffice's presentation utility is Impress. And anyone who has used Powerpoint will have no trouble using the other. Sure, the buttons may not be in the same places, but if you are so inflexible as to be unable to cope with that, then you're unemployable.
It also has shiny templates so the incompetent can flash images and text without actually disseminating any useful information.
Isn't that its primary purpose? I.e. to give the audience some wallpaper to fixate on to make it look like they're awake? Back when I was a schoolboy, we had ceiling fans for that purpose, and at least they kept us cool in summer. Powerpoint doesn't even do that.
and Openoffice version which apparently wasn't able to run presentations, I don't know who's to blame here.
I don't know what version of OpenOffice doesn't handle presentations; I've been using it since it was StarOffice, and it does them (including importing/exporting Powerpoint files) just fine.
I would have thought OOo would be a killer app for most denizens of cube farms. There isn't much (if anything) that MSOffice does that OpenOffice doesn't. Ummm, except for taking up 1/3 of the screen with that ribbon-bar, that is...
The whole point of 64-bit is to address more memory than you can afford, so your CPU usage is irrelevant. :-)
Crome 7.0.517.5 dev - 19849.5ms
:-P
That's nothing. My 4-year-old MacBook under OS X 10.6.4 with Firefox 3.6.9 takes 27858.3ms to complete it.
Yes it is slow, but with the combination of add-ons that I run, it renders pages the way I like, and this is more important to me than quibbling about a few milliseconds in a benchmark test.
The malware, well that's surely a point in Ubuntu's favor, for now.
Well, unfortunately the writers of most malware won't give us the source, so we can't just do a recompile, but you could try running it under Wine if you really need it.
Getting Linux into users hands with convenient, easy-to-use installers, providing support, etc. = Not Valuable
I can see how this might be a perception, but it's not reasonable. Lots of good C programmers are quite poor at systems administration. Maintaining a distro can be a horrible task, since you are essentially being sysadmin for a completely unknown system. The situation is made worse when programmers who write the source code you're implementing capriciously change things around (or break them) for no beter reason than to fit some trendy philosophical notion of how it should work.
I once went down the path of Linux From Scratch, and the experience was a worthwhile learning for a single-purpose system. But doing that for a desktop box is just stupid, since it's just too much work to keep all its components up to date. Now, Ubuntu is emphatically NOT my distribution of choice (that is currently Arch), but anyone who is prepared to undertake the task of maintaining any comprehensive distro long-term deserves a round of applause.
No, that's for Mr. Stallman's kids.
And that qualifies for banning a teen for the rest of his life from going to U.S.?
Well, on the other hand, there are other places to visit. I am approaching my 50s and although I have spent many years moving from one country to another, have never yet visited the US. I can imagine a number of reasons to do so, but none so immediately pressing that I feel the need to submit to being treated as a criminal by their immigration officials.
The funny thing is, a US citizen (which I am not) can call his president whatever he wants - a characteristic shared with many members of the so-called Western world. I have made a practice of calling British and Australian politicians by much less charitable terms than "prick" for several decades, and (so far) I haven't had any visits from men in dark suits and sunglasses...
For the rest of the world, notes are a life saver.
I've taken a few examinations where the student was permitted to take in a single sheet of paper. He could write whatever he wanted on it, no matter how big or small. I think this is a good way to go - it forces you to recognise the difference between things you need to actually know and details that are not so easily remembered but are otherwise significant.
I've done a number of subjects at university where I have been able to throw out the entirety of the semester's notes and retain those single sheets of paper from assessments.
You're all looking at the problem the wrong way around. It should be simple enough to design a test that doesn't need a calculator. The devices are great if you need numeric "answers" to a given problem, but in any kind of assessment there's no need for this. The students can leave their result as an expression, which is actually more meaningful in that it makes it clearer to the examiner as to how the student arrived at it.
The student shouldn't need to show that he can substitute values in an expression to arrive at a numeric answer. Any idiot can push a few buttons to do that, so it's just wasting time.
That was informative? Looks like someone should stick to generic American beers - completely indistinguishable from urine.
Because obviously nothing is going to go wrong eating home grown pond scum.
If you ever eat sushi-nori, you'll be eating a marine equivalent of seaweed "pond scum". Personally, I like it.
If you were to insist on the efficiency of photosynthesis as a yardstick for viability, nobody bould bother farming anything at all. The simple fact is that yes, the photosynthetic process is by its very nature not usually very efficient, but it is good enough.
Add that to the fact that farming of algae is comparatively easy, cheap and scalable and you have a winner.
There was an article a few months back that showed that you need certain enzimes produced by some specific bacteria, to digest algae.
It depends on the type of algae. For instance, macroalgae (such as seaweeds) are pretty much similar to any other kind of plant, in that the cellulose portion of it whistles straight out of your exhaust-pipe unless you happen to be a goat, which has bacteria secreting cellulase in his rumen.
Lots of phytoplankton are pretty much digestible, though I guess diatoms (which have silica cell walls) might be a bit problematic.
I'm not sure if you're joking; one time in the '70s, when I was a teenager, I sat with Yehudi Menuhin on a train, where the violinist spent most of the trip absorbed in a score. He told me he often did this, and got as much pleasure out of it as he did from actually hearing the music. I was never one of the best of his students, but learning to emulate this was one of the best things I ever did.
Clerk: "You're not holding it right.. here let me show you"
Exactly. When a felon's engaged in his gainful employment, he doesn't need to be browsing Facebook on his iPhone. A cheap Nokia burner-phone should be sufficient. It's just a matter of paying attention to the job in hand. If he doesn't, then he deserves to get caught.
Most classical music is played through elevator speakers world-wide.
No, a very small cross-section of the repertoire is thus played.
It DOES mean that companies like Naxos who make money selling CDs of classical music will loose sales (not that that's a bad thing IMO)
Naxos buys up lots of quality recordings that would never otherwise see the light of day, and releases them to the consumer at budget prices (typically less than 1/3 of the price of a "big-label" CD) which are comparable to the real cost of production and distribution, with a minimal margin. If you want to "go after" any label, leave Naxos alone - they're doing good work.
I don't think the RIAA represents all that many classical producers.
You couldn't be more wrong. Try Sony, EMI, Decca, RCA, just for a start... full list here.