If he is capable of reading some of these posts, Archimedes must be revolving in his grave.
Anything floating in water displaces a volume of water EXACTLY equivalent to its own weight. If ice melts, the part that was above the water is exactly equal to the reduction in volume, and there is exactly no change in the water level.
On the other hand, if the non-floating ice on Antarctica or Greenland melts, since it wasn't displacing any water, the ocean levels will rise. And there is a LOT of ice on Antarctica.
The melting of floating ice makes little difference to sea temperature since it is water at close to 0 degrees, but melting glacial ice generally runs off into warmer water, causing sea temperature reduction with potentially catastrophic effects (e.g. stopping of the Gulf Stream).
No, you are suggesting it. I am not. The other difference is, I was posting on-topic and you aren't. I was also actually trying to make a serious point about the human race, which is that in fact we seem to vest our greatest efforts in things that are "virtual". And it gets modded funny...
What are the established churches but ways of making real money out of virtual worlds? The clergy get paid for exploring, reporting on, and handling virtual goods in, a spiritual realm that is actually invisible and whose existence is unproven. At least with online games, the players can experience the virtual environment.
I guess you could say the same thing about much of commercial law, the stock market,and insurance. And there is more money in all these things than in being a real producer or creator.
Only way to stop drug smuggling
on
TAM 5 Has landed
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· Score: 3, Funny
Satellite guided self navigating smart missiles equipped to detect those sneaky little model aircraft and zap them right out of the sky...but wait, the armaments industry will need to get involved:
Model aircraft engine $50
As above to JAN spec with testing $15000
Model aircraft fuselage $50
As above, built by Lockheed, say $25000
Home made navigation system $1000
As above, built by Martin Marietta... oh, just make the whole thing a round $100000.
Yes, folks, the threat from model aircraft carrying drugs could kickstart the entire US tech economy, just like Star Wars was going to in the 80s.
No, major industries in Europe in general are not subsidised. Farming is, and so is infrastructure (intended to even out living standards across the EU, this can be regarded as a progressive tax on better off areas.). The myth that Airbus Industrie was subsidised is frequently put about, but actually AI received start up loans which were paid back. It's been a good investment for the governments that contributed to it.
Re:sounds like: indeed they are...
on
LWCE Wrapup
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· Score: 1
I could write at length about that...but who would read it? The truth is a great deal more complex. It's worth making three short points:
Victorian upper class attitude to young children - Dodgson was part of the culture
Parents always present
Everybody knew what he was doing- his pictures were publicly exhibited.
Like most geeks, Dodgson had some major hangups, but they were not as crude as you seem to want to make out.
Re:sounds like: indeed they are...
on
LWCE Wrapup
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· Score: 1
Quite right. And as a fan of the work of the Reverend Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, who was a hot stuff mathematician as well as a great fantasy writer, I'm delighted Sun is going to to be giving him prominence in this way.
For the few who don't know, Dodgson was in some ways the Douglas Adams of his day - the ideas in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are as linked to cutting edge science of the day, and as riddled with social comment, as the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Dodgson was also a 19th C uber-geek, being a photographer of the sort that made his own photographic plates. In the absence of databases, he developed a cross referencing system for all his correspondence so he could keep track of everything. I guess he was born about a hundred and fifty years too early, but for which he would probably have been something like Chief Scientist at Google. He's a wonderful choice for names for elements of Sun's new desktop paradigm.
This is one of the most sensible, hype-free essays - because it is, virtually, an essay - about cosmology. Too many journalists go apeshit over ideas like infinite universes and present them as if they were completely mainstream cosmology. This seems to be a very balanced account. (And the point about Thomas Kuhn is very well made. I had to stop and think about it, then I found I was in complete agreement.)
We need competent journalists and technical writers to explain cutting edge science to us just as, though we hate to admit it, we need competent marketing and sales people to sell software.
It's not a parody, merely a burlesque. And it's a derivative work. But if you can show me the work being infringed, I will gladly give you credit...except that negative moderation means I shan't be repeating this bit of Friday lunchtime nonsense any time soon.
In England water striders are known as water boatmen. Boatman=person operating small scull boat for short distance water transport. This suggests that the "sculling" action has been recognised for a long time.
Sometimes it takes a lot of scientific training to work out things country people have known for a long time - digitalis, willow bark, cowpox, and all those interesting rain-forest rmedies the drugs companies are "patenting".
Cannot see the point of the Segway. Actually, there are lots of older people with limited mobility (arthritis etc.) who are not completely disabled. My father, for instance, who can walk about a mile, slowly (he is over 80) and would not be seen dead in a wheelchair. In fact, he has a lot of difficulty getting into and out of cars. Besides, he doesn't need a wheelchair. In the small town he lives in, there is relatively little sidewalk traffic during the day and he could easily get right round the town on a Segway. A golf cart or battery wheelchair is not the answer for people like him. A Segway would give them mobility with dignity (OK, didn't work for Bush Junior, but I bet his father would have more success with it.)
Why not sell the software and an add on keyboard for PDAs? I agree the stylus makes them less than ideal calculators, but wouldn't a decent HP style add on keyboard with adequate size keys not only make a nicer calculator, but also add better numeric input to PDAs? Then you would have a calculator with decent display, lots of memory, usually Bluetooth (export graphs into Word and Excel?)
In fact, why not go the whole hog and have a data acquisition module as well? A pocket datalogger that collected the data, modelled the function, did the statistics, and output the data into a report on a PC. Leverage almost all of HPs technologies into a well integrated product.
If you read the blurb, you will see a lot of references to "edge of network". The Sun concept seems to be to offer everything from the big boxes in the server room with lots of processors, out to the little boxes at the network edge doing low cost things. To compete on price over the whole site, the network edge boxes can run Linux on commodity hardware. The attraction becomes a unified adminstration system across everything from the big database server to the smallest print server and remote office email box. And I thought that was what Sun was working on.
The companies that are very skilled at scalability, reliability and networking (Sun and IBM) have one asset compared to Microsoft: their knowledge tends to flow from the top down rather than the bottom up. As IT becomes completely commoditised, that could be a big advantage in corporates. Ask youself the question: would you prefer to have your sewerage system designed and installed by the utility company or by a clerk from Home Depot? Microsoft, in these terms, is like a maker of pedestal basins who is trying to move into the big sewer market. Sun is like the sewerage company thinking about making pedestal basins. They are having to learn not to over-engineer, but they start off knowing the system requirements. They have a greater chance of getting everything to fit properly. At the moment, the maker of pedestal basins keeps experiencing leaks each time he tries to connect downstream. This is causing a certain amount of customer dissatisfaction. Perhaps they're even saying "when we buy our next house, I want to be sure the utility company did the plumbing".
The garbled Reuters (close company) I think is trying to say that SuSE is not public. It's an AG. It's German. It doesn't have to be bought by anyone. It may well be a sales benefit in the German speaking world for a US company to have a local business partner. Patriotism is not limited to Americans, you know.
Sun has also always had a strong Indian connection and it is unsurprising that it should leverage that.
The "Sun is doomed" crowd closely resemble the "Apple is doomed" crowd. They seem to think being a mere $12G player in a huge industry is somehow a guarantee of failure. Depends. Spreading your alliances, being perceived as more rest-of-world friendly than Microsoft, being good at big tin that has to run with low outage, these could be good strategic positioning.
And the short-term opinion of the NYSE on this counts for precisely zilch. (as does the instant opinion of the typical/. reader, me included.) Stock exchanges are not able to make rapid long term evaluation of strategic decisions by enterprises. If they were, they would be economic analysts, not traders.
If there is any left for export, they can't really be that good. There is a certain level of production beyond which a real craft beer is just not possible anymore, and if a half decent salesman can't get rid of the lot in a 20 mile radius, something is seriously wrong.
Consider cause and effect. It may be that people with excellent biochemistry live longer, and as a side effect they can continue to drink beer. People with bad biochemistry may have shorter life expectancy associated with lower alcohol tolerance. You would need to do some rather intrusive tests on identical twins for a very long time to make an open and shut case.
Yes, it is bad English and bad slashdot. It should read something like:
MySQL had a small stand where no doubt people asked questions in a structured query language that was not 100% ANSI SQL compatible while the true believers in PostgreSQL stood by hurling fecal matter and shouting through bullhorns that MySQL was a vastly inferior product.
Could I just point out that "laserjet" and "color laserjet" are trade marks of Hewlett Packard, not Xerox, and that the wax printer process from Tektronix is completely different? The "jet" bit is used generically across HPs imaging products. (No, I don't work for HP, but I do work for a document output consultancy)
Interesting reference to the churches
on
LinuxTag Show Report
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Churches need infrastructure and that infrastructure could well be Linux.
Three years ago I discovered that our local charity had just spent badly needed funding on installing Novell on the server (actually a good choice in the circumstances) and NT4 on all their workstations. They felt they had no choice because all their workers needed access to the finance system. Although they got education discount for Windows, it was still a significant slice of budget.
It's now 3 years later. Is it possible to run mainstream integrated accounts suites like Peachtree, Sage or MYOB on Linux? Because, if so, that could be the killer app for small charities and churches. OO/SO is now beginning to get really good application integration (I really think I can recommend SO6.1 to businesses when it's released).
This really annoys me. People boast of freedom, but when I was a child we actually had far more freedom in many things than modern children. I expect the childhood mortality rate was slightly higher as a result of accidents, and definitely higher because of the lack of modern medical techniques, but I'm not sure it was really significant. The pressure on parents to insulate children from reality, on the other hand, is significant. It may be true that it is mostly bad parents that fail to teach their children to look after themselves, but I am not convinced that attempts to legislate against people coming to harm from their own stupidity will end anywhere other than in a reduced quality of life for everyone. The fact that people look at what this guy has done and instantly start thinking about how he might be sued is a very sad reflection on society.
However, before we all go and look at the river for the last time before they close off the attractive nuisance with a non-slip concrete cover, how difficult can it be to put a padlock on the main switch? And perhaps a few PIR sensors around the raised portion coupled to an alarm coupled to a PA that tells the unwanted visitor to keep off and go away?
I can understand that legislation was needed in a day when landowners were not above putting out traps for human beings that strayed onto their land. I can understand that if the local ogre puts up a gingerbread house in the backyard with the intention of attracting children to the cookpot, this must be stopped. But in my probably insufficiently humble opinion, there comes a point at which it should be the sole responsibility of parents to ensure that when children are old enough to climb, hammer, saw, cut, pull levers, drive cars etc., and if they cannot do this then the children should be taken into care. There seems to be more and more legislation trying to turn us all into passive consumers the moment we walk out of the door of our large corporate jobs, and I do not like it. People like this guy who actually do interesting things should be encouraged, not made to worry about being litigated against.
Reminds me of my first microscopy class at U. The Zeiss phase-contrast oil-immersion scopes cost the equivalent of over $20000 at today's prices and they gave them to 18 and 19 year olds (almost all male) to use. The only things that ever got broken were the 2c cover glasses. It made me appreciate German engineering.
Modern languages tend to have less inflected grammars than older languages. That is a benefit for statistical methods because individual words do not change significantly. But how would this work for Latin, Greek and other highly inflected languages? Anyone who knows "The Turn of the Screw" (Britten version) will remember:
malo: I had rather be
malo: in an apple tree
malo: than a naughty boy
malo: in adversity
based on four very distinct meanings of malo, in which the word endings put the stem of the word in context, but unfortunately the same word endings are used for different things.
Not that I'm trying to rubbish the work, because I actually think that statistical methods are close to the fuzzy way that we actually try and make out foreign languages. I just wonder what the limits are.
Douglas Adams did a lot of evangelising for Apple. I should think an elevator that asks "Where do you you want to go today?" probably infringes on Adams' copyright. Apple should sue MS on his behalf. Besides, iElevator 1.0 will look cooler, use less power, and it will actually work from day one instead of crashing through the basement every time someone prsses the wrong button on the cellphone.
Slashdot Mirror
Anything floating in water displaces a volume of water EXACTLY equivalent to its own weight. If ice melts, the part that was above the water is exactly equal to the reduction in volume, and there is exactly no change in the water level.
On the other hand, if the non-floating ice on Antarctica or Greenland melts, since it wasn't displacing any water, the ocean levels will rise. And there is a LOT of ice on Antarctica.
The melting of floating ice makes little difference to sea temperature since it is water at close to 0 degrees, but melting glacial ice generally runs off into warmer water, causing sea temperature reduction with potentially catastrophic effects (e.g. stopping of the Gulf Stream).
No, you are suggesting it. I am not. The other difference is, I was posting on-topic and you aren't. I was also actually trying to make a serious point about the human race, which is that in fact we seem to vest our greatest efforts in things that are "virtual". And it gets modded funny...
I guess you could say the same thing about much of commercial law, the stock market,and insurance. And there is more money in all these things than in being a real producer or creator.
Model aircraft engine $50
As above to JAN spec with testing $15000
Model aircraft fuselage $50
As above, built by Lockheed, say $25000
Home made navigation system $1000
As above, built by Martin Marietta... oh, just make the whole thing a round $100000.
Yes, folks, the threat from model aircraft carrying drugs could kickstart the entire US tech economy, just like Star Wars was going to in the 80s.
No, major industries in Europe in general are not subsidised. Farming is, and so is infrastructure (intended to even out living standards across the EU, this can be regarded as a progressive tax on better off areas.). The myth that Airbus Industrie was subsidised is frequently put about, but actually AI received start up loans which were paid back. It's been a good investment for the governments that contributed to it.
- Victorian upper class attitude to young children - Dodgson was part of the culture
- Parents always present
- Everybody knew what he was doing- his pictures were publicly exhibited.
Like most geeks, Dodgson had some major hangups, but they were not as crude as you seem to want to make out.For the few who don't know, Dodgson was in some ways the Douglas Adams of his day - the ideas in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are as linked to cutting edge science of the day, and as riddled with social comment, as the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Dodgson was also a 19th C uber-geek, being a photographer of the sort that made his own photographic plates. In the absence of databases, he developed a cross referencing system for all his correspondence so he could keep track of everything. I guess he was born about a hundred and fifty years too early, but for which he would probably have been something like Chief Scientist at Google. He's a wonderful choice for names for elements of Sun's new desktop paradigm.
We need competent journalists and technical writers to explain cutting edge science to us just as, though we hate to admit it, we need competent marketing and sales people to sell software.
It's not a parody, merely a burlesque. And it's a derivative work. But if you can show me the work being infringed, I will gladly give you credit...except that negative moderation means I shan't be repeating this bit of Friday lunchtime nonsense any time soon.
Though they tweaked their business model, yet the bastard wouldn't go
Oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing Darl McBride
He'll be lost and gone for ever when the SEC comes for the ride.
So they fed the fire with lawsuits, fear uncertainty and doubt
Tried to set the stock a-pumping, hoped to dump and then move out
Oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing Darl McBride
He'll be floating down the river when the SEC gets into stride
Who would buy this stock for money? Not a broker with a brain
But God oft gives stacks of greenbacks to the certified insane
Oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing Darl McBride,
When the shit impacts the fanblades, you can run but you can't hide.
SCO is not an Enron, not a congressman will care
When the monster from East Fishfill has you dangling in the air
Oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing, oh my Darl-ing SCO,
For a while the joke was funny, but it's really time to go.
Sometimes it takes a lot of scientific training to work out things country people have known for a long time - digitalis, willow bark, cowpox, and all those interesting rain-forest rmedies the drugs companies are "patenting".
Cannot see the point of the Segway. Actually, there are lots of older people with limited mobility (arthritis etc.) who are not completely disabled. My father, for instance, who can walk about a mile, slowly (he is over 80) and would not be seen dead in a wheelchair. In fact, he has a lot of difficulty getting into and out of cars. Besides, he doesn't need a wheelchair. In the small town he lives in, there is relatively little sidewalk traffic during the day and he could easily get right round the town on a Segway. A golf cart or battery wheelchair is not the answer for people like him. A Segway would give them mobility with dignity (OK, didn't work for Bush Junior, but I bet his father would have more success with it.)
In fact, why not go the whole hog and have a data acquisition module as well? A pocket datalogger that collected the data, modelled the function, did the statistics, and output the data into a report on a PC. Leverage almost all of HPs technologies into a well integrated product.
The companies that are very skilled at scalability, reliability and networking (Sun and IBM) have one asset compared to Microsoft: their knowledge tends to flow from the top down rather than the bottom up. As IT becomes completely commoditised, that could be a big advantage in corporates. Ask youself the question: would you prefer to have your sewerage system designed and installed by the utility company or by a clerk from Home Depot? Microsoft, in these terms, is like a maker of pedestal basins who is trying to move into the big sewer market. Sun is like the sewerage company thinking about making pedestal basins. They are having to learn not to over-engineer, but they start off knowing the system requirements. They have a greater chance of getting everything to fit properly. At the moment, the maker of pedestal basins keeps experiencing leaks each time he tries to connect downstream. This is causing a certain amount of customer dissatisfaction. Perhaps they're even saying "when we buy our next house, I want to be sure the utility company did the plumbing".
Sun has also always had a strong Indian connection and it is unsurprising that it should leverage that.
The "Sun is doomed" crowd closely resemble the "Apple is doomed" crowd. They seem to think being a mere $12G player in a huge industry is somehow a guarantee of failure. Depends. Spreading your alliances, being perceived as more rest-of-world friendly than Microsoft, being good at big tin that has to run with low outage, these could be good strategic positioning.
And the short-term opinion of the NYSE on this counts for precisely zilch. (as does the instant opinion of the typical /. reader, me included.) Stock exchanges are not able to make rapid long term evaluation of strategic decisions by enterprises. If they were, they would be economic analysts, not traders.
IANAB-but craft breweries use my software.
Consider cause and effect. It may be that people with excellent biochemistry live longer, and as a side effect they can continue to drink beer. People with bad biochemistry may have shorter life expectancy associated with lower alcohol tolerance. You would need to do some rather intrusive tests on identical twins for a very long time to make an open and shut case.
MySQL had a small stand where no doubt people asked questions in a structured query language that was not 100% ANSI SQL compatible while the true believers in PostgreSQL stood by hurling fecal matter and shouting through bullhorns that MySQL was a vastly inferior product.
Could I just point out that "laserjet" and "color laserjet" are trade marks of Hewlett Packard, not Xerox, and that the wax printer process from Tektronix is completely different? The "jet" bit is used generically across HPs imaging products.
(No, I don't work for HP, but I do work for a document output consultancy)
Three years ago I discovered that our local charity had just spent badly needed funding on installing Novell on the server (actually a good choice in the circumstances) and NT4 on all their workstations. They felt they had no choice because all their workers needed access to the finance system. Although they got education discount for Windows, it was still a significant slice of budget.
It's now 3 years later. Is it possible to run mainstream integrated accounts suites like Peachtree, Sage or MYOB on Linux? Because, if so, that could be the killer app for small charities and churches. OO/SO is now beginning to get really good application integration (I really think I can recommend SO6.1 to businesses when it's released).
However, before we all go and look at the river for the last time before they close off the attractive nuisance with a non-slip concrete cover, how difficult can it be to put a padlock on the main switch? And perhaps a few PIR sensors around the raised portion coupled to an alarm coupled to a PA that tells the unwanted visitor to keep off and go away?
I can understand that legislation was needed in a day when landowners were not above putting out traps for human beings that strayed onto their land. I can understand that if the local ogre puts up a gingerbread house in the backyard with the intention of attracting children to the cookpot, this must be stopped. But in my probably insufficiently humble opinion, there comes a point at which it should be the sole responsibility of parents to ensure that when children are old enough to climb, hammer, saw, cut, pull levers, drive cars etc., and if they cannot do this then the children should be taken into care. There seems to be more and more legislation trying to turn us all into passive consumers the moment we walk out of the door of our large corporate jobs, and I do not like it. People like this guy who actually do interesting things should be encouraged, not made to worry about being litigated against.
Reminds me of my first microscopy class at U. The Zeiss phase-contrast oil-immersion scopes cost the equivalent of over $20000 at today's prices and they gave them to 18 and 19 year olds (almost all male) to use. The only things that ever got broken were the 2c cover glasses. It made me appreciate German engineering.
malo: I had rather be
malo: in an apple tree
malo: than a naughty boy
malo: in adversity
based on four very distinct meanings of malo, in which the word endings put the stem of the word in context, but unfortunately the same word endings are used for different things.
Not that I'm trying to rubbish the work, because I actually think that statistical methods are close to the fuzzy way that we actually try and make out foreign languages. I just wonder what the limits are.
Douglas Adams did a lot of evangelising for Apple. I should think an elevator that asks "Where do you you want to go today?" probably infringes on Adams' copyright. Apple should sue MS on his behalf. Besides, iElevator 1.0 will look cooler, use less power, and it will actually work from day one instead of crashing through the basement every time someone prsses the wrong button on the cellphone.
Drink deep, or drink not the Peierian spring."
I think that sums it up.