would be choice. Which they've "nullified" by quashing the innovations that each project has made over the last year. I'm noting to say which manager I prefer[1] but let me just say that Linux is all about choice. RedHat, in removing that choice, has proved themselves once again to the Microsoft of the Linux world. If I wanted to subsume my options under whatever some corporate entity wanted I'd use XP or MacOS.
[1] Because every time I say that "KDE rules and Gnome is the ugliest piece of crap I've ever seen" a flameware erupts.
So I expect we'll be seeing cures (instead of therapies) for schizophrenia and the like any day now, since they have this wireless network? Perhaps the physics department will formulate a ToE, thanks to the wirelessness of their computers? Or maybe the Philosophy department, with a big assist from the wireless network, will come up with a proof of God?
Wireless network is far less radical than networking itself and even that didn't change the fundamental teacher-student nature of universities. Get over yourself.
So Darthmouth just spent $10 million updating a perfectly functional network. Does this improve the education the students get? Does it improve the research the professors do? Does it improve the environment? The economy? Does it cause peace to reign throughout the world?
No.
But hey, it's wireless so it must be the bee's knees.
is the WEP-enabled 802.3 compatibility layer that will optimize the window polarization diffusion. OTOH, you really have to love the 25 micron fabrication process for the sub-floor insulating layer as well as the silicon-eroded conduction density valences. I was talking with the kids and they feel that the biased temperature inversion lattices and Java insertion sorts embedded in the bathroom towels are going to rock.
My wife said to stop being stupid and use my money to buy food for homeless people, but that seems like a waste to me. Any thoughts?
This book is destined to become a classic
on
Programming PHP
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It redefines the paradigm of online programming. Programming PHP, like PHP itself, marks a watershed in programming history. Generations from now technology historians will divide the time line into two periods: PPHP (Pre-PHP) and PPHP (Post-PHP). The PHP language, just like the book describing it, is beyond compare. Coupled together they have created a force for Good that rivals Superman, God and Scooby Doo all rolled into one. My next child is going to be named "PHP Programming Lastname".
The great power of Open Source is choice. For any given itch, there are a multitude of different scratches on Sourceforge in various stages of feature implementation. It has always been possible to download 2 or 3 of these that, together, are adequate to solve nearly any problem. That's why I've always been a supporter of of so-called "splinter" projects from forked source bases.
But now the two great camps of UI development, KDE and Gnome have conspired together to merge their underlying implementations. This is a terrible thing because it reduces choice in the community. Furthermore, Mono is a reimplementation of.Net which makes Linux look like an also-ran.
I think KDE and Gnome should go in totally different, incompatible directions. That's the only way to maintain Linux solidarity.
What about the Moz mail interface speed. Admittedly, I'm running on an ancient machine here (P5200) but the browser runs fine for me, even with multiple (5+) tabs. The the mail client is consistently dog-slow, even right after a restart. It sometimes takes me upwards of a minute from the moment I click "compose" to the moment I start typing the body (after filling in the necessary headers).
What the hell is it doing that it needs to run that slow?
It's a stupid show. Don't get me wrong, I love robots. These aren't those--these are RC vehicles. That's pretty boring, when you think about it. Would I rather see AI's doing battle, pitting intelligence and strategy vs intelligence and strategy with a smattering of loud sounds and cool weapons? Or would I rather see a high-tech version of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots?
However, I would have been willing to endure the misnomer in the title for the chance to see the engineering and problem-solving involved. Except that the announcing...oh my dear god, the terrible announcing. There are several levels they could have chosen. Calm and relatively sedate (regular televised sports). Hyped and taking themselves seriously (like WWF). Hyped and not serious (Junkyard Wars). Instead, they chose hyped, not taking themselves seriously, but thinking they are the funniest thing on the planet. Of course, that's a Zappa for ya.
that Linux is apparently beneath their contempt. Do they know something we don't know?
(To those tempted to reply that "they know it's secure", I'd like to point out that assumed security without testing is exactly what keeps getting MS in trouble)
You draw crowds. You sell CDs. You get web hits. Congratulations, you are a success.
What were you expecting? To be a hit new sensation sweeping the nation? Guess what, that doesn't happen (anymore) without selling out. Be content with what you have.
Fred lays out the data that was, even then, industry wisdom. According to the research IBM did, an average programmer can maintain 3 existing projects or work on 1 new one. But that's just an average. If the programmer is under 30 he can only maintain 1 (or be one of 3 junior programmers on a new project). If under 25 he is only fit to write documentation.
The electrons in a copper wire travel a few centimeters a minute. Before trying to appear knowledgeable, it helps to start by actually being knowledgeable.
The reason for the "don't bend the fiber" rule isn't that glass is fragile. Glass is very elastic and therefore very "bendy" in small diameters (think of fiberglass). The reason for the rule is because of how internal reflections (which is what fiber optics depends on) works. Basically the laser has to hit the inside surface of the glass fiber at a smallish angle called "Brewster's angle". (Think of looking at reflections in a puddle--as you get closer your angle increases and the reflection suddenly disappears).
This plastic optics fiber must have a higher index of refraction than glass, which increases Brewster's angle, which increases the amount of bend allowed before the signal is lost. This is no biggie, technologically speaking. The only reason it hasn't been done before is cost. Glass is very cheap and we know how to make thin strands of it already.
Nanotechnology is great for producing or maintaining machines, but I think that on the whole, I'll pass for anything in my body.
Remember Newton? F=ma ring a bell? To find the
acceleration of a nanobot, a = F/m where F is the thrust of the
propellant and m the mass of the nanobot. The thrust can be
calculated by multiplying the mass of the propellent by its
acceleration which in turn equals 2v/d (v = the final velocity and d
the atomic radius).
Plug these numbers in and you'll find that even if the propellant
consists of a single atom the forward velocity of the nanobot will be
somewhere in the region of 1/100th of the speed of light. That may
not sound like much, but even 1/1000 * 3e8 m/s = 3e5 m/s = 300 km/s =
1080000 km/h!
There's no way I'm letting one of these babies into my body...
Now that Ogg decoders can run on small hardware, we no longer face the specter of paying a modest fee for an activity we enjoy. By assuaging a tiny problem that an insignificant fraction of the world's population was having, Xiph.org has proved itself truly indispensable and they can expect a donation commeasurate with that importance to arrive soon.
Experiments are either useful or not useful. They either give the results expected (or unexpected) or they are broken. Experiments are the ultimate in utilitarianism. They cannot be "beautiful". There are no experiments in art museums. Like computer code, they are strictly workhorses with no aesthetic component at all.
You see, this is what I'm talking about. You've read Daniel Dennett's book. Wow. One book. By an armchair philosopher who's probably never seen the inside of a biolab.
Of course 1 + 1 = 2. Perhaps you could provide similarly simple and intuitive proof of evolution actually occurring in nature?
I've already mentioned what that prevailing theory is in biology: intelligent design. The complexity of life simply cannot be explained any other way.
I really do. It has great stories on Technology (as well as Windows, haha) and Science. But occasionally Slashdot goes awry, such as when they post crackpottery such as that life ring or anti-gravity claims. When they do this, I literally weep with frustration over the young minds being led astray.
I think the problem is when programmers or even science/engineering types with no knowledge of the field the article is referencing try to sound knowledgeable. I wish we could have some way of identifying people who were informed on topics that most of you have no clue about.
Such is the case today. Evolution? Are you still going on about that? Nobody seriously believes that stuff anymore, it went out with phrenology. Haven't you noticed that the main recent proponent of evolution, Richard Dawkins, hasn't even published a book in decades? The future is in intelligent design, baby.
-Quick launch
-Tabbed browsing
-Bookmark groups of tabs
-Website icons (address bar)
-Full screen mode
-Download manager
-Click to search
All seems fairly familiar from Moz. However when you actually do the download, check out the new License (not on the download page, the one in the file). It expressly forbids linking with GPL software. Yikes, what happened over there?
It seems like a negative idex of refraction would imply that light is moving faster than c through the material, but obviously this is crazy. Basically if you've ever done any electromagnetism then you'll have heard of the right-hand rule which governs the interactions of the electric and magnetic fields and the directions of their wave velocities. But for this new class of composite materials we instead get a left-hand rule, meaning that Snell's law (which governs the change of angel caused by the change of velocity of EM radiation through materials) is essentially reversed...
The really unusual thing about these materials is that they exhibit negative electric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability, never seen before in any material. There are sure to be plenty of interesting applications to follow.
He actually pretty much stopped producing content about a year ago. (During that time the charts, by far the funniest part of the site, have been updated like twice). He kept the site going "on hiatus" while he flogged the dead tree edition, but now he's out. Kind of like women who quit AFTER maternity leave time ends.
But I'll show him. I'll read the book at Barnes and Noble so he won't get a dime.
is how he can sleep at night. Despite the ravings of the Slashdot crowd, violence (especially against and among children) has grown in lockstep with video games since the introduction of the first game, PacMan. It might not be so bad if he were designing relatively harmless puzzle games like Tetris, but a game where the player virtually totes around a huge gun and blows people away is simply unconscionable.
Don't bother comparing these devices on specs, because that's not why they are being introduced. Your best bet is to avoid buying (another) DVD player until the market becomes rational. Why do I say that? Because the perfect technology already exists and nobody is exploiting it yet. Instead they are introducing fake incremental improvement after fake incremental improvement, trying to appear "innovative" and getting people to spend more and more money.
What is this perfect technology? You've probably never heard of it, it has only been used in the field of science. It's called a TRacking Optical Laser. Used for data-collection in high data-rate/volume situations it supports the following amazing features:
2.3 TB of data storage
Guaranteed media lifetime of 300 years
Supports speeds up to 12 GB/s
Even at the low purchasing volumes seen so far, the cost is about $.10/disc and $100/player-recorder
Best of all, this device is made right here in the US of A. But you won't see it in Circuit City any time soon because the devious Japanese "engineer"ing firms have bribed Congress to hell and make sure our shelfs stay flooded with their inferior products.
As a physicist I have nothing but the utmost respect for mathematics...as a tool. Allowing ourselves to be mislead by some theoretical models is the height of foolishness, however. Making a prediction is fine, as long as it is followed up by a concrete experiment that demonstrates the math is sound. These guys are about 20 steps ahead of experiment, which makes them pretty much guaranteed wrong.
Not to be too discouraging, though, we have been messing with some closed, time-like loops in our own lab. The results have been...interesting. We've had a few particles (nothing bigger than a carbon molecule) disappear without any net gain in energy (which would be a violation of the 2nd Law) that we've been unable to explain and even one guy who claimed that one of our lost particles showed up in his bubble chamber the previous week.
Fortunately we are responsible scientists and won't breathe a word of this until we've rigorously tested it. And maybe not even then, because imagine the weapons possibilities of time travel.
Indeed. Before I was a physics genius I spent a few years becoming a chemistry genius. Eventually I gave it all up when I realized it isn't a science at all. It is more like zoology, merely a tabulation of observations made. Yes, this can be helpful for someone that needs to have a particular compound, assuming that compound has ever been seen before. But no, it isn't really a science in the sense of supporting hypotheses or making predictions.
It is not without reason that the most famous errors in the history of science have all come from the field of chemistry. Cold fusion claims came from chemists. Lowell, the man who thought he say canals on Mars, was trained as a chemist. Even Isaac Newton wasted untold years of his life on alchemy, the unscientific (and almost identical) forerunner of modern day chemistry.
When young people come to me expressing an interest in chemistry, I ask them if they enjoy mindlessly copying out lists of information. For those few that enthuse about this mundane activity I advise them to go ahead. But to everyone who recoils in horror at the boredom I imply, I tell them "get into science instead".
Slashdot Mirror
[1] Because every time I say that "KDE rules and Gnome is the ugliest piece of crap I've ever seen" a flameware erupts.
Wireless network is far less radical than networking itself and even that didn't change the fundamental teacher-student nature of universities. Get over yourself.
No.
But hey, it's wireless so it must be the bee's knees.
My wife said to stop being stupid and use my money to buy food for homeless people, but that seems like a waste to me. Any thoughts?
It redefines the paradigm of online programming. Programming PHP, like PHP itself, marks a watershed in programming history. Generations from now technology historians will divide the time line into two periods: PPHP (Pre-PHP) and PPHP (Post-PHP). The PHP language, just like the book describing it, is beyond compare. Coupled together they have created a force for Good that rivals Superman, God and Scooby Doo all rolled into one. My next child is going to be named "PHP Programming Lastname".
But now the two great camps of UI development, KDE and Gnome have conspired together to merge their underlying implementations. This is a terrible thing because it reduces choice in the community. Furthermore, Mono is a reimplementation of .Net which makes Linux look like an also-ran.
I think KDE and Gnome should go in totally different, incompatible directions. That's the only way to maintain Linux solidarity.
What the hell is it doing that it needs to run that slow?
However, I would have been willing to endure the misnomer in the title for the chance to see the engineering and problem-solving involved. Except that the announcing...oh my dear god, the terrible announcing. There are several levels they could have chosen. Calm and relatively sedate (regular televised sports). Hyped and taking themselves seriously (like WWF). Hyped and not serious (Junkyard Wars). Instead, they chose hyped, not taking themselves seriously, but thinking they are the funniest thing on the planet. Of course, that's a Zappa for ya.
(To those tempted to reply that "they know it's secure", I'd like to point out that assumed security without testing is exactly what keeps getting MS in trouble)
What were you expecting? To be a hit new sensation sweeping the nation? Guess what, that doesn't happen (anymore) without selling out. Be content with what you have.
Fred lays out the data that was, even then, industry wisdom. According to the research IBM did, an average programmer can maintain 3 existing projects or work on 1 new one. But that's just an average. If the programmer is under 30 he can only maintain 1 (or be one of 3 junior programmers on a new project). If under 25 he is only fit to write documentation.
The electrons in a copper wire travel a few centimeters a minute. Before trying to appear knowledgeable, it helps to start by actually being knowledgeable.
This plastic optics fiber must have a higher index of refraction than glass, which increases Brewster's angle, which increases the amount of bend allowed before the signal is lost. This is no biggie, technologically speaking. The only reason it hasn't been done before is cost. Glass is very cheap and we know how to make thin strands of it already.
Remember Newton? F=ma ring a bell? To find the acceleration of a nanobot, a = F/m where F is the thrust of the propellant and m the mass of the nanobot. The thrust can be calculated by multiplying the mass of the propellent by its acceleration which in turn equals 2v/d (v = the final velocity and d the atomic radius).
Plug these numbers in and you'll find that even if the propellant consists of a single atom the forward velocity of the nanobot will be somewhere in the region of 1/100th of the speed of light. That may not sound like much, but even 1/1000 * 3e8 m/s = 3e5 m/s = 300 km/s = 1080000 km/h!
There's no way I'm letting one of these babies into my body...
Now that Ogg decoders can run on small hardware, we no longer face the specter of paying a modest fee for an activity we enjoy. By assuaging a tiny problem that an insignificant fraction of the world's population was having, Xiph.org has proved itself truly indispensable and they can expect a donation commeasurate with that importance to arrive soon.
Experiments are either useful or not useful. They either give the results expected (or unexpected) or they are broken. Experiments are the ultimate in utilitarianism. They cannot be "beautiful". There are no experiments in art museums. Like computer code, they are strictly workhorses with no aesthetic component at all.
Of course 1 + 1 = 2. Perhaps you could provide similarly simple and intuitive proof of evolution actually occurring in nature?
I've already mentioned what that prevailing theory is in biology: intelligent design. The complexity of life simply cannot be explained any other way.
I think the problem is when programmers or even science/engineering types with no knowledge of the field the article is referencing try to sound knowledgeable. I wish we could have some way of identifying people who were informed on topics that most of you have no clue about.
Such is the case today. Evolution? Are you still going on about that? Nobody seriously believes that stuff anymore, it went out with phrenology. Haven't you noticed that the main recent proponent of evolution, Richard Dawkins, hasn't even published a book in decades? The future is in intelligent design, baby.
-Tabbed browsing
-Bookmark groups of tabs
-Website icons (address bar)
-Full screen mode
-Download manager
-Click to search
All seems fairly familiar from Moz. However when you actually do the download, check out the new License (not on the download page, the one in the file). It expressly forbids linking with GPL software. Yikes, what happened over there?
It seems like a negative idex of refraction would imply that light is moving faster than c through the material, but obviously this is crazy. Basically if you've ever done any electromagnetism then you'll have heard of the right-hand rule which governs the interactions of the electric and magnetic fields and the directions of their wave velocities. But for this new class of composite materials we instead get a left-hand rule, meaning that Snell's law (which governs the change of angel caused by the change of velocity of EM radiation through materials) is essentially reversed... The really unusual thing about these materials is that they exhibit negative electric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability, never seen before in any material. There are sure to be plenty of interesting applications to follow.
But I'll show him. I'll read the book at Barnes and Noble so he won't get a dime.
is how he can sleep at night. Despite the ravings of the Slashdot crowd, violence (especially against and among children) has grown in lockstep with video games since the introduction of the first game, PacMan. It might not be so bad if he were designing relatively harmless puzzle games like Tetris, but a game where the player virtually totes around a huge gun and blows people away is simply unconscionable.
What is this perfect technology? You've probably never heard of it, it has only been used in the field of science. It's called a TRacking Optical Laser. Used for data-collection in high data-rate/volume situations it supports the following amazing features:
- 2.3 TB of data storage
- Guaranteed media lifetime of 300 years
- Supports speeds up to 12 GB/s
- Even at the low purchasing volumes seen so far, the cost is about $.10/disc and $100/player-recorder
Best of all, this device is made right here in the US of A. But you won't see it in Circuit City any time soon because the devious Japanese "engineer"ing firms have bribed Congress to hell and make sure our shelfs stay flooded with their inferior products.Not to be too discouraging, though, we have been messing with some closed, time-like loops in our own lab. The results have been...interesting. We've had a few particles (nothing bigger than a carbon molecule) disappear without any net gain in energy (which would be a violation of the 2nd Law) that we've been unable to explain and even one guy who claimed that one of our lost particles showed up in his bubble chamber the previous week.
Fortunately we are responsible scientists and won't breathe a word of this until we've rigorously tested it. And maybe not even then, because imagine the weapons possibilities of time travel.
It is not without reason that the most famous errors in the history of science have all come from the field of chemistry. Cold fusion claims came from chemists. Lowell, the man who thought he say canals on Mars, was trained as a chemist. Even Isaac Newton wasted untold years of his life on alchemy, the unscientific (and almost identical) forerunner of modern day chemistry.
When young people come to me expressing an interest in chemistry, I ask them if they enjoy mindlessly copying out lists of information. For those few that enthuse about this mundane activity I advise them to go ahead. But to everyone who recoils in horror at the boredom I imply, I tell them "get into science instead".