If I lived on a farm with access to the fuel, I would love to have a kilowatt generator for $1000 to supplement my electricity use.
Put together a long-lived 5kW "any liquid fuel" generator for $1500 right now. Use a Changfa 195 single-cylinder low speed diesel engine coupled to a 5kW ST generator. The motor and generator will run you about $1000 and you'll need couplers, adapters and to build a solid frame for mounting. This is much heavier than the typical Honda generator, but is less expensive, longer lasting (the Honda will last for about 600 hours, this should last for 20,000 to 50,000 hours between rebuilds), highly field maintainable, is quieter (1800 RPM one cylinder instead of 3600 RPM one or two cylinder), and runs on just about any fuel.
It ought to look a little like one of these rigs when you're done. You could also do a 10kW version using a bigger motor (1115) and generator head for about $2500.
Assuming we're still talking about farm use, plant cottonseed or rapeseed on 20 acres, buy a cheap oil press ($400, use the same motor and coupling to drive it) and run the genset on the oil. For even lower maintenance and possibly making a little money on the side (but more up front cost), make biodiesel from the oil first.
But most criminals and terrorists are too stupid to...
It is a mistake to attribute stupidity to either terrorists or criminals. When the DEA monitors traffic from offshore drug traffickers, almost all of the traffic is encrypted. Even emails to girlfriends. The DEA characterized drug traffickers as highly sophisticated and disciplined users of encryption technology.
If you actually believe that terrorists are stupid (instead of tragically misguided), then you're seriously underestimating their ability to carry out their goals.
The difficulty with small scale fusion isn't making it happen. That's been done many, many times. The difficulty with small scale fusion (and all fusion) is making it produce power (more power extracted from the reaction than put into the reaction).
That's where Pons and Fleishman got hosed. They claimed a 300% power surplus without experimental verification. This announcement is different from that for several reasons.
1) These guys are specifically not claiming excess power. 2) They're claiming to have lots of high-energy neutrons. 3) This is actually the announcement of a second group of scientists repeating the experiment and successfully verifying the results of the first group.
In short, this announcement is nothing like the cold fusion debacle of the late '80s.
It is not testable is that it is based on many one-time events, for starters:
1. The creation of life
First, this group of theories are in an area of science called "biogenesis", and are not related to the theory of natural selection. Second, the scientists working on these questions are not even slightly upset that their field isn't as widely supported as evolutionary scientists. They're having far too much fun finding evidence for the various possibilities.
2. The absorption of mitochondria into eukaryotes 3. The absorption of chloroplasts into plant cells
These events are also not a part of the theory of natural selection, though the line is getting a little blurry.
Also, you seem to have talked yourself into an interesting hypothesis: if something only happened once, then there's no testable evidence that it ever happened. I can think of many things that have happened only once that leave plenty of evidence behind.
Can you?
Finally, it's not so important that a theory be repeatably testable, so much as falsifiable. Currently, there are almost no evolutionary observations that the theory of natural selection does not explain (including the nature of DNA, cross-species genetic comparisons, the extensive fossil record, etc.). The few that remain unexplained only serve to refine the theory and do not "disprove" anything. Wishful thinking of anti-science advocates nonwithstanding.
The rest of your post (and "Darwin's Black Box") falls on the same point.
You were right the first time. There was a misunderstanding.
I thought that you were saying that content providers (of which my company is one) and similar "end users" were paying too little to expect neutral access to the networks. I dispute only that specific claim.
I apologize for the confusion and withdraw my accusation about your ethics. I don't know enough about CLEC/ILEC internal operations to make any conclusive statements on that subject.
One interesting thing that I do observe is that the CLEC's in my area (West LA) seem to be paying more for access to the ILEC than I do for "equivalent" service. The CLEC can give me better quality of service (in fact, that's the only reason I see to go with the CLEC) but how can the ILEC be selling to it under cost to the CLEC and then sell it for even less to final customers? Are they making it up on volume?
That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats.
That's interesting. Prior to this, the only people I'd heard of who didn't like municipal wifi were companies who wouldn't be able to charge you $20/day for access at Starbucks (et. al.) Next time I move, the presence of municipal wifi will be a major attractor. I love the ability to sit down in a park or in a coffee shop or wherever I am that I might otherwise be just waiting, and be on the net right away, while only having to keep track of one inexpensive account.
As a completely unrelated aside, who do you work for?
A lot of these small companies just want to live off the backs of the existing telcos - they don't have to invest in building and running the network, but they demand ultra-cheap rates and no committment to invest in the infrastructure.
Your statement implies that for one reason or another, you feel that the rates I'm being charged are too low. Care to justify your position? Do you feel that the rates I'm being charged are inadequate to maintain the integrity of the network infrastructure?
Have you actually investigated how much small companies pay to telcos for network access? Even if I'm hoping for cheap rates, I'm not getting them. Not by european standards at least (where the speeds are 5x for the same price).
In summary, you're completely full of crap and probably a shill besides.
If that network is so critical, then why is it so vulnerable???
What difference does that make?!?
Your question is vague. I submit two alternative questions:
Q1: What difference should that make in the prosecution of the case? A1: None.
Q2: What difference should that make to hospital IT behavior? A2: Lots.
Critical networks that don't need to connect to the internet should not be connected to the internet. If automated patching of these machines is deemed necessary (shouldn't be, since they're no longer connected to the internet), the solution would be to make certain that they are protected by firewalls that do not accept incoming requests at all.
Just because it's "vulnerable", does that give you the right to mess with it?
TOPLink is the old faithful ORM with great features.
Oh. My. God.
You actually mentioned it's name. TOPLink was the most hated of the ORM offerings we did in our ORM evaluation in 2001, and came back to reclaim the worst offering again in 2003! Hibernate trounced it in ease of development, stability, predictability, performance...
In the original evaluation, the TOPLink metadata editor corrupted it's own XML metadata repository no fewer than 20 times in the week I spent trying to port our demo app over. Eventually, I started doing full backups of the metadata directory after mapping each class so that I'd only lose an hour or two of work when it next decided to wipe itself out.
Then we actually got into trying to make the application work. TOPLink turned out to be so intrusive into our class heirarchy that we had to abandon the idea of keeping ORM-specific artifacts separate from the DAO's and ended up throwing it all in together.
By this point, I had also started evaluating Hibernate, and except for some annoying problems related to deletion order, it basically worked within two days. To top it off, Hibernate, in which we were able to identify some clear SQL inefficiencies, was running 100% to 200% faster than TOPLink.
The only reason it got re-evaluated again in 2003 was that the new dev VP had heard from someone that TOPLink was the only ORM provider on the block. To this day, I have no idea how he managed to reconcile that statement with the fact that we'd been actually using Hibernate for two years, but in our re-evaluation, TOPLink still came out on bottom. They had done some work on the metadata editor, but their whole approach to the problem was so much more intrusive than Hibernate...
If they merged the two projects that would be good.
Only if you mean that they should completely threw out TOPLink and started selling Hibernate instead. If they actually manage to talk Gavin King into using any of the TOPLink code, I will personally fork Hibernate that night. However, based on what I know of Gavin, it would be extremely unlikely that they could talk him into such a proposition. He's extremely convinced that his way is the best way. What's better: he's right most of the time.
I've always been partial to the name "Jefe" for the JBoss fork. It's got the "J", the "boss/controller" semantic, and there's a number of hysterical movie references to work with :
"Would you say I have a plethora of EJB's Jefe?" "Oh yes, El Guapo, you have a plethora." "Do you know what a plethora is Jefe?"...
The "smart glasses" that react to your eye motion certainly would be a lot more expensive, so I suspect that will have to wait until the "2nd generation" is released...
20/10 is the theoretical focusing limit of a normally sized human eye. That's the diffraction limit, where the light that diffracts through your pupil (this diffraction is the change of the light from the theoretical beam into a cone) prevents further improvements in perceived resolution.
Doctors tend to talk about 20/15, 20/12.5 (or just 20/12) and 20/10. 20/5 just isn't going to happen to your bare eye (your eye without magnifying optics).
i just did freelance consulting work with an influential investment banker here in NY. He's in his 50s, and he had the procedure done 6-7 years ago by Tiger Woods' doctor (for those unaware, Tiger Woods had his vision enhanced to 20/15 or 20/10 in order to give himself a golfing advantage). All of which to say is that he can't see now.
But Tiger Woods can still see very, very well without any further correction. So what's the difference between them?
The difference is that your friend didn't take his doctor's advice, and was a poor candidate for laser correction because his vision was not stable and was in the process of degrading. So the surgery corrected his vision at that moment and his eyes continued to change.
Wealthy people seem to be more prone to these kinds of errors in judgement and an "investment banker in NY" would seem to qualify him with brass knobs.
My eyes have been stable since I was 18. Left eye great (20/15), right eye not so great (20/80 w/ astigmatism). Turns out I'm a very good candidate for long-term improvement from laser surgery. I'm now in the process of saving up money for correcting the single eye.
The technology is still improving so I always tell my friends they might want to hold off on "getting etched" unless they just can't stand the contacts anymore. Might as well get the best possible correction.
Somewhat true. Decent advice anyway.
The latest refinement appears to be the "no cutting" or "pure laser" systems that are just appearing in clinics. These don't require the slicing of the cornea, presumably because the laser can be accurately focused to disrupt cells at specific locations within the corneal material. The lack of slicing means less scar tissue and fewer possible complications, but may require more correction.
As for the "best possible correction", the wavefront scanners reveal higher order defects and pretty much allow for full correction now. All that's changing is how the correction is applied to the cornea.
The other company doing "optimized" optics seems to just grind a lense based on scans. So does that mean you have to hold your eyes steady?
No. These scanners are the wavefront scanners, which I've seen "up-close" quite recently. You put your head in a machine and you look at a target to keep your eye in basically the same position, but if you move your eye a little, the machine will compensate. If you move your eye a lot, the machine aborts the scan and the technician asks you do try again.
If you can produce it with the Gimp (which you obviously cannot when needing CMYK [...] )
A CMYK plugin is here. It's just a simple starting point, and the jury is out on whether it infringes Adobe's patents (but apparently, Adobe has not patented CMYK per se, but some of the color transform algorithms, so it's quite possible that the GIMP could reach the same destination from a different path).
Hey, "Lilo & Stitch" was a very good traditionally animated feature, IMHO. It was almost to the quality of Pixar's earlier offerings. Granted, "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" have substantially raised the bar since then.
But then, "Lilo & Stitch" only supports the contention that even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone. To extend the analogy, "Lilo & Stitch 2" is evidence that a blind and stupid dog will then proceed to bury the bone and forget where he put it
These are certainly interesting points, but they rely on highly pulicized facts about the laws in an area. It's not hard to know that florida lets people have concealed weapons and georgia doesn't.
You're right, and I was only commenting on the generalization that criminals don't do any risk assessment.
Also do you have the stats for that british figure.
I don't have any of my normal library with me right now (I just moved), so no. Would be good to have a link that I could substantiate my claim with, though, so I'll do some looking this afternoon.
Unfortunately many criminals have poor impulse control and critical reasoning... it's doubtful that they would consider something like this when it would mean having to travel somewhere else and delay their crime.
Except that when Florida passed it's concealed carry weapons law, muggings and robberies in Florida dropped while there was a coincident increase in muggings and robberies in the Georgia and Alabama counties closest to Florida. Criminologists are still debating the full significance of that data, but it appears that some fraction of criminals decided that it was too risky to face a legally owned gun when trying to take someone's wallet or cash register contents and moved to where that chance of encountering a gun was lower.
Another enterprising group of criminals in Florida discovered a way to make certain that their victims didn't have guns and started attacking people in rental cars (presumably tourists from out of state or out of country who couldn't possibly have a "resident only" CCW license). These attacks were specifically mentioned in the passage of laws in many states that prohibit rental cars from placing any distinguishing marks on the cars.
Still another datapoint is that when British criminals break into a home, it appears that they prefer to make certain the residents are in the home. In the US, criminals make substantial efforts to make certain that the residents have left before breaking and entering. This effect is further exaggerated in parts of the country where citizen gun ownership is prevalent (Texas). The conclusion I draw from this is that gun ownership rates do have an affect on criminal behavior, though I will concede that other factors may also be influencing these behavior.
While I agree with your basic assessment of average criminal intelligence, it appears that they do exhibit limited powers of rational decision making and risk awareness, specifically around the possibility of their victims being able to fight back.
Regards, Ross
Re:Dreamworks vs. Disney vs. Pixar
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Disney Buys Pixar
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· Score: 1
You have scored the most childish of the stories high and the mature ones low.
That's a really interesting comment. What makes it most interesting to me is that the ones I rated highly, I found to have more mature content, while the ones I rated low, I found to have less for adults to enjoy.
This speaks to deep differences of opinion about what makes for mature humor. I'm not sure the issue is quite as straightforward as the other response (that you've equated pop-culture references with mature jokes), though that may be part of it. I suspect that you don't get or don't like or get ironic and/or subtle humor. Most of the ones I rated low were "hit you over the head" humor, slapstick, crotch-impacts, etc. while many that I rated high were loaded with double entendre, more enduring cultural references, etc.
The more I think about it, your comments about "Lilo and Stitch" and "A Bug's Life" lead me to believe that you're probably about 14 or 15 years old. In my experience, there's a really cool transition in adolescent development when subtle jokes start to become funny. But just before then, the kid jokes seem childish and the adult jokes just don't make sense. Some people miss this development, and become people whose company I can't stand, but I'm hoping that you're not older than that and this awakening is a part of your future.
If you are an adolescent, I'd recommend waiting a few years and going back to the movies I've rated highly again. You may suprise yourself by enjoying "Lilo and Stitch" the second time around.
In my view the last good Disney cartoon was Lion King and Lilo and Stitch was abysmal.
"The Lion King" was pretty good, and I give it 4/5, one notch up from "Madagascar" based on the stronger story. I still think that "Lilo and Stitch" was smarter, funnier, and an all around better story than either one.
Regards, Ross
Dreamworks vs. Disney vs. Pixar
on
Disney Buys Pixar
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No. It was like Nemo and Sharks Tale. Dreamworks decides to do a movie in the same theme as a contemporary Disney movie, but does so much much better but aimed at an older audience.
I've seen both "Finding Nemo" and "Shark Tale", and I deeply and truly wish I hadn't spent the time seeing "Shark Tale". I understand that there's room in the world for all sorts of tastes, but I honestly don't see how anyone enjoyed "Shark Tale" more than "Finding Nemo".
Antz was one of the first big non-Disney cartoons, and as such didn't do very well.
Antz earned $75 million in domestic release, even more from DVD. It's done much better than it deserves (I don't care for late Woody Allen, nor did I think much of Antz).
As an aside: until now, Pixar films have not been Disney films. Just like Miyazaki films are not Disney films. For Pixar films, Disney has been in charge of distribution (theaters and DVD's) and selling plush dolls, themed pajamas, and action figures. They haven't had a say in the movies, and that's probabaly been for the best.
The last really good Disney animated film was "Lilo and Stitch" (4/5 Disney 2002). The rest has been dreck (and I include the very successful recent "Chicken Little" in that assessment).
Here are my personal opinions on the movies of Pixar and Dreamworks Animation:
Pixar:
"Toy Story" just incredible and still fun to watch (5/5 Pixar 1995). "A Bug's Life" story, characters, great humor (young and old) (5/5 Pixar 1998). "Toy Story 2" a sequel better than the original (5/5 Pixar 1999). "Monster's Inc." more for kids than adults, still smart (4/5 Pixar 2001). "Finding Nemo" absolutely amazing (5/5 Pixar 2003). "The Incredibles" freaking awesome (5/5 Pixar 2004).
Dreamworks Animation:
"Prince of Egypt" good if you're into religious apologism... (1/5 Dreamworks 1998). "Antz" uh... well... I got nothing here. (1/5 Dreamworks 1998). "Chicken Run" off the charts hysterical (5/5 Dreamworks 2000). "The Road to El Dorado" still searching for characters, plot, etc. (1/5 Dreamworks 2000). "Shrek" damned funny, simple but solid story (4/5 Dreamworks 2001). "Spirit..." not much for adults here (2/5 Dreamworks 2002). "Shrek 2" to be gentle, abysmal (1/5 Dreamworks 2004). "Shark Tale" unfunny lowbrow humor (2/5 Dreamworks 2004). "Madagascar" had lots of laughs but the core story was weak (3/5 Dreamworks 2005). "W&G Curse of the Were-Rabbit" smart and funny (5/5 Dreamworks 2005).
I think it's interesting to note the two best animated films that Dreamworks has made (IMNSHO) were both Aardvark productions, though the relationship between the two companies was different from "Chicken Run" to "...Were-Rabbit".
Not until lately have people realised that Disney now suck and Dreamworks rocks. I call it post-Shrek:)
Have to admit, I don't see it. Well, I understand that Disney Animation hasn't done anything decent in some time, but to say that Dreamworks has put up anything truly notable is a stretch. And Pixar has made substantially better films than either of them.
Most of my interest in Paul Graham's essays is based on:
1) His writing is timely. 2) He has actually been there and done that. 3) He is a good writer (which is to say that I don't find myself copy-editing his prose).
I do disagree with some of his arguments (for example, I think that being in the same location together makes team communication MUCH more effective), but then I also find myself disagreeing with many other people who's company I enjoy, so I don't consider this a fatal flaw.
Do you know of some other bloggers writing in similar subjects who you consider to be more interesting (for whatever reason)? I'd like to expand my reading list.
Slashdot Mirror
"engaging in the same kinds of torture that the former dictator did"
That's not propaganda?
No, that's rhetoric. Propaganda is when you use a systematic means to promote your agenda (pay a newspaper to put it on the front page).
Regards,
Ross
If I lived on a farm with access to the fuel, I would love to have a kilowatt generator for $1000 to supplement my electricity use.
Put together a long-lived 5kW "any liquid fuel" generator for $1500 right now. Use a Changfa 195 single-cylinder low speed diesel engine coupled to a 5kW ST generator. The motor and generator will run you about $1000 and you'll need couplers, adapters and to build a solid frame for mounting. This is much heavier than the typical Honda generator, but is less expensive, longer lasting (the Honda will last for about 600 hours, this should last for 20,000 to 50,000 hours between rebuilds), highly field maintainable, is quieter (1800 RPM one cylinder instead of 3600 RPM one or two cylinder), and runs on just about any fuel.
It ought to look a little like one of these rigs when you're done. You could also do a 10kW version using a bigger motor (1115) and generator head for about $2500.
Assuming we're still talking about farm use, plant cottonseed or rapeseed on 20 acres, buy a cheap oil press ($400, use the same motor and coupling to drive it) and run the genset on the oil. For even lower maintenance and possibly making a little money on the side (but more up front cost), make biodiesel from the oil first.
Regards,
Ross
What page and book please.
For a description of D&D alignment? (This is assuming you're still asking about the origin of the term "Lawful Evil")
I first read about it in the chapter on NPC's in the D&D Basic set (Red Box) about 25 years ago. How about a Wikipedia article on the topic?
Regards,
Ross
But most criminals and terrorists are too stupid to...
It is a mistake to attribute stupidity to either terrorists or criminals. When the DEA monitors traffic from offshore drug traffickers, almost all of the traffic is encrypted. Even emails to girlfriends. The DEA characterized drug traffickers as highly sophisticated and disciplined users of encryption technology.
If you actually believe that terrorists are stupid (instead of tragically misguided), then you're seriously underestimating their ability to carry out their goals.
Regards,
Ross
Too bad he most of the country voted for him. You lost. Twice.
The real tragedy here is that you also lost. Twice.
But you still don't realize it.
Regards,
Ross
P.S. Not that Kerry was that much better. I so wish that McCain wins the Republican primary. He's a candidate that I'd vote for in a minute.
The difficulty with small scale fusion isn't making it happen. That's been done many, many times. The difficulty with small scale fusion (and all fusion) is making it produce power (more power extracted from the reaction than put into the reaction).
That's where Pons and Fleishman got hosed. They claimed a 300% power surplus without experimental verification. This announcement is different from that for several reasons.
1) These guys are specifically not claiming excess power.
2) They're claiming to have lots of high-energy neutrons.
3) This is actually the announcement of a second group of scientists repeating the experiment and successfully verifying the results of the first group.
In short, this announcement is nothing like the cold fusion debacle of the late '80s.
Regards,
Ross
It is not testable is that it is based on many one-time events, for starters:
1. The creation of life
First, this group of theories are in an area of science called "biogenesis", and are not related to the theory of natural selection. Second, the scientists working on these questions are not even slightly upset that their field isn't as widely supported as evolutionary scientists. They're having far too much fun finding evidence for the various possibilities.
2. The absorption of mitochondria into eukaryotes
3. The absorption of chloroplasts into plant cells
These events are also not a part of the theory of natural selection, though the line is getting a little blurry.
Also, you seem to have talked yourself into an interesting hypothesis: if something only happened once, then there's no testable evidence that it ever happened. I can think of many things that have happened only once that leave plenty of evidence behind.
Can you?
Finally, it's not so important that a theory be repeatably testable, so much as falsifiable. Currently, there are almost no evolutionary observations that the theory of natural selection does not explain (including the nature of DNA, cross-species genetic comparisons, the extensive fossil record, etc.). The few that remain unexplained only serve to refine the theory and do not "disprove" anything. Wishful thinking of anti-science advocates nonwithstanding.
The rest of your post (and "Darwin's Black Box") falls on the same point.
Regards,
Ross
You were right the first time. There was a misunderstanding.
I thought that you were saying that content providers (of which my company is one) and similar "end users" were paying too little to expect neutral access to the networks. I dispute only that specific claim.
I apologize for the confusion and withdraw my accusation about your ethics. I don't know enough about CLEC/ILEC internal operations to make any conclusive statements on that subject.
One interesting thing that I do observe is that the CLEC's in my area (West LA) seem to be paying more for access to the ILEC than I do for "equivalent" service. The CLEC can give me better quality of service (in fact, that's the only reason I see to go with the CLEC) but how can the ILEC be selling to it under cost to the CLEC and then sell it for even less to final customers? Are they making it up on volume?
Regards,
Ross
That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats.
That's interesting. Prior to this, the only people I'd heard of who didn't like municipal wifi were companies who wouldn't be able to charge you $20/day for access at Starbucks (et. al.) Next time I move, the presence of municipal wifi will be a major attractor. I love the ability to sit down in a park or in a coffee shop or wherever I am that I might otherwise be just waiting, and be on the net right away, while only having to keep track of one inexpensive account.
As a completely unrelated aside, who do you work for?
Regards,
Ross
A lot of these small companies just want to live off the backs of the existing telcos - they don't have to invest in building and running the network, but they demand ultra-cheap rates and no committment to invest in the infrastructure.
Your statement implies that for one reason or another, you feel that the rates I'm being charged are too low. Care to justify your position? Do you feel that the rates I'm being charged are inadequate to maintain the integrity of the network infrastructure?
Have you actually investigated how much small companies pay to telcos for network access? Even if I'm hoping for cheap rates, I'm not getting them. Not by european standards at least (where the speeds are 5x for the same price).
In summary, you're completely full of crap and probably a shill besides.
Regards,
Ross
If that network is so critical, then why is it so vulnerable???
What difference does that make?!?
Your question is vague. I submit two alternative questions:
Q1: What difference should that make in the prosecution of the case?
A1: None.
Q2: What difference should that make to hospital IT behavior?
A2: Lots.
Critical networks that don't need to connect to the internet should not be connected to the internet. If automated patching of these machines is deemed necessary (shouldn't be, since they're no longer connected to the internet), the solution would be to make certain that they are protected by firewalls that do not accept incoming requests at all.
Just because it's "vulnerable", does that give you the right to mess with it?
No.
Regards,
Ross
TOPLink is the old faithful ORM with great features.
Oh. My. God.
You actually mentioned it's name. TOPLink was the most hated of the ORM offerings we did in our ORM evaluation in 2001, and came back to reclaim the worst offering again in 2003! Hibernate trounced it in ease of development, stability, predictability, performance...
In the original evaluation, the TOPLink metadata editor corrupted it's own XML metadata repository no fewer than 20 times in the week I spent trying to port our demo app over. Eventually, I started doing full backups of the metadata directory after mapping each class so that I'd only lose an hour or two of work when it next decided to wipe itself out.
Then we actually got into trying to make the application work. TOPLink turned out to be so intrusive into our class heirarchy that we had to abandon the idea of keeping ORM-specific artifacts separate from the DAO's and ended up throwing it all in together.
By this point, I had also started evaluating Hibernate, and except for some annoying problems related to deletion order, it basically worked within two days. To top it off, Hibernate, in which we were able to identify some clear SQL inefficiencies, was running 100% to 200% faster than TOPLink.
The only reason it got re-evaluated again in 2003 was that the new dev VP had heard from someone that TOPLink was the only ORM provider on the block. To this day, I have no idea how he managed to reconcile that statement with the fact that we'd been actually using Hibernate for two years, but in our re-evaluation, TOPLink still came out on bottom. They had done some work on the metadata editor, but their whole approach to the problem was so much more intrusive than Hibernate...
If they merged the two projects that would be good.
Only if you mean that they should completely threw out TOPLink and started selling Hibernate instead. If they actually manage to talk Gavin King into using any of the TOPLink code, I will personally fork Hibernate that night. However, based on what I know of Gavin, it would be extremely unlikely that they could talk him into such a proposition. He's extremely convinced that his way is the best way. What's better: he's right most of the time.
Regards,
Ross
I've always been partial to the name "Jefe" for the JBoss fork. It's got the "J", the "boss/controller" semantic, and there's a number of hysterical movie references to work with :
...
"Would you say I have a plethora of EJB's Jefe?"
"Oh yes, El Guapo, you have a plethora."
"Do you know what a plethora is Jefe?"
Regards,
Ross
Oh. Whoops.
The "smart glasses" that react to your eye motion certainly would be a lot more expensive, so I suspect that will have to wait until the "2nd generation" is released...
Regards,
Ross
20/10 is the theoretical focusing limit of a normally sized human eye. That's the diffraction limit, where the light that diffracts through your pupil (this diffraction is the change of the light from the theoretical beam into a cone) prevents further improvements in perceived resolution.
Doctors tend to talk about 20/15, 20/12.5 (or just 20/12) and 20/10. 20/5 just isn't going to happen to your bare eye (your eye without magnifying optics).
Regards,
Ross
i just did freelance consulting work with an influential investment banker here in NY. He's in his 50s, and he had the procedure done 6-7 years ago by Tiger Woods' doctor (for those unaware, Tiger Woods had his vision enhanced to 20/15 or 20/10 in order to give himself a golfing advantage). All of which to say is that he can't see now.
But Tiger Woods can still see very, very well without any further correction. So what's the difference between them?
The difference is that your friend didn't take his doctor's advice, and was a poor candidate for laser correction because his vision was not stable and was in the process of degrading. So the surgery corrected his vision at that moment and his eyes continued to change.
Wealthy people seem to be more prone to these kinds of errors in judgement and an "investment banker in NY" would seem to qualify him with brass knobs.
My eyes have been stable since I was 18. Left eye great (20/15), right eye not so great (20/80 w/ astigmatism). Turns out I'm a very good candidate for long-term improvement from laser surgery. I'm now in the process of saving up money for correcting the single eye.
Regards,
Ross
The technology is still improving so I always tell my friends they might want to hold off on "getting etched" unless they just can't stand the contacts anymore. Might as well get the best possible correction.
Somewhat true. Decent advice anyway.
The latest refinement appears to be the "no cutting" or "pure laser" systems that are just appearing in clinics. These don't require the slicing of the cornea, presumably because the laser can be accurately focused to disrupt cells at specific locations within the corneal material. The lack of slicing means less scar tissue and fewer possible complications, but may require more correction.
As for the "best possible correction", the wavefront scanners reveal higher order defects and pretty much allow for full correction now. All that's changing is how the correction is applied to the cornea.
The other company doing "optimized" optics seems to just grind a lense based on scans. So does that mean you have to hold your eyes steady?
No. These scanners are the wavefront scanners, which I've seen "up-close" quite recently. You put your head in a machine and you look at a target to keep your eye in basically the same position, but if you move your eye a little, the machine will compensate. If you move your eye a lot, the machine aborts the scan and the technician asks you do try again.
Regards,
Ross
If you can produce it with the Gimp (which you obviously cannot when needing CMYK [...] )
A CMYK plugin is here. It's just a simple starting point, and the jury is out on whether it infringes Adobe's patents (but apparently, Adobe has not patented CMYK per se, but some of the color transform algorithms, so it's quite possible that the GIMP could reach the same destination from a different path).
Regards,
Ross
Economics students, anyone know a term for this sort of non-collusion collusion?
It's called tacit collusion, and it's illegal as well (though very difficult to enforce).
Regards,
Ross
Hey, "Lilo & Stitch" was a very good traditionally animated feature, IMHO. It was almost to the quality of Pixar's earlier offerings. Granted, "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" have substantially raised the bar since then.
But then, "Lilo & Stitch" only supports the contention that even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone. To extend the analogy, "Lilo & Stitch 2" is evidence that a blind and stupid dog will then proceed to bury the bone and forget where he put it
Regards,
Ross
These are certainly interesting points, but they rely on highly pulicized facts about the laws in an area. It's not hard to know that florida lets people have concealed weapons and georgia doesn't.
You're right, and I was only commenting on the generalization that criminals don't do any risk assessment.
Also do you have the stats for that british figure.
I don't have any of my normal library with me right now (I just moved), so no. Would be good to have a link that I could substantiate my claim with, though, so I'll do some looking this afternoon.
Regards,
Ross
Unfortunately many criminals have poor impulse control and critical reasoning... it's doubtful that they would consider something like this when it would mean having to travel somewhere else and delay their crime.
Except that when Florida passed it's concealed carry weapons law, muggings and robberies in Florida dropped while there was a coincident increase in muggings and robberies in the Georgia and Alabama counties closest to Florida. Criminologists are still debating the full significance of that data, but it appears that some fraction of criminals decided that it was too risky to face a legally owned gun when trying to take someone's wallet or cash register contents and moved to where that chance of encountering a gun was lower.
Another enterprising group of criminals in Florida discovered a way to make certain that their victims didn't have guns and started attacking people in rental cars (presumably tourists from out of state or out of country who couldn't possibly have a "resident only" CCW license). These attacks were specifically mentioned in the passage of laws in many states that prohibit rental cars from placing any distinguishing marks on the cars.
Still another datapoint is that when British criminals break into a home, it appears that they prefer to make certain the residents are in the home. In the US, criminals make substantial efforts to make certain that the residents have left before breaking and entering. This effect is further exaggerated in parts of the country where citizen gun ownership is prevalent (Texas). The conclusion I draw from this is that gun ownership rates do have an affect on criminal behavior, though I will concede that other factors may also be influencing these behavior.
While I agree with your basic assessment of average criminal intelligence, it appears that they do exhibit limited powers of rational decision making and risk awareness, specifically around the possibility of their victims being able to fight back.
Regards,
Ross
You have scored the most childish of the stories high and the mature ones low.
That's a really interesting comment. What makes it most interesting to me is that the ones I rated highly, I found to have more mature content, while the ones I rated low, I found to have less for adults to enjoy.
This speaks to deep differences of opinion about what makes for mature humor. I'm not sure the issue is quite as straightforward as the other response (that you've equated pop-culture references with mature jokes), though that may be part of it. I suspect that you don't get or don't like or get ironic and/or subtle humor. Most of the ones I rated low were "hit you over the head" humor, slapstick, crotch-impacts, etc. while many that I rated high were loaded with double entendre, more enduring cultural references, etc.
The more I think about it, your comments about "Lilo and Stitch" and "A Bug's Life" lead me to believe that you're probably about 14 or 15 years old. In my experience, there's a really cool transition in adolescent development when subtle jokes start to become funny. But just before then, the kid jokes seem childish and the adult jokes just don't make sense. Some people miss this development, and become people whose company I can't stand, but I'm hoping that you're not older than that and this awakening is a part of your future.
If you are an adolescent, I'd recommend waiting a few years and going back to the movies I've rated highly again. You may suprise yourself by enjoying "Lilo and Stitch" the second time around.
In my view the last good Disney cartoon was Lion King and Lilo and Stitch was abysmal.
"The Lion King" was pretty good, and I give it 4/5, one notch up from "Madagascar" based on the stronger story. I still think that "Lilo and Stitch" was smarter, funnier, and an all around better story than either one.
Regards,
Ross
No. It was like Nemo and Sharks Tale. Dreamworks decides to do a movie in the same theme as a contemporary Disney movie, but does so much much better but aimed at an older audience.
:)
I've seen both "Finding Nemo" and "Shark Tale", and I deeply and truly wish I hadn't spent the time seeing "Shark Tale". I understand that there's room in the world for all sorts of tastes, but I honestly don't see how anyone enjoyed "Shark Tale" more than "Finding Nemo".
Antz was one of the first big non-Disney cartoons, and as such didn't do very well.
Antz earned $75 million in domestic release, even more from DVD. It's done much better than it deserves (I don't care for late Woody Allen, nor did I think much of Antz).
As an aside: until now, Pixar films have not been Disney films. Just like Miyazaki films are not Disney films. For Pixar films, Disney has been in charge of distribution (theaters and DVD's) and selling plush dolls, themed pajamas, and action figures. They haven't had a say in the movies, and that's probabaly been for the best.
The last really good Disney animated film was "Lilo and Stitch" (4/5 Disney 2002).
The rest has been dreck (and I include the very successful recent "Chicken Little" in that assessment).
Here are my personal opinions on the movies of Pixar and Dreamworks Animation:
Pixar:
"Toy Story" just incredible and still fun to watch (5/5 Pixar 1995).
"A Bug's Life" story, characters, great humor (young and old) (5/5 Pixar 1998).
"Toy Story 2" a sequel better than the original (5/5 Pixar 1999).
"Monster's Inc." more for kids than adults, still smart (4/5 Pixar 2001).
"Finding Nemo" absolutely amazing (5/5 Pixar 2003).
"The Incredibles" freaking awesome (5/5 Pixar 2004).
Dreamworks Animation:
"Prince of Egypt" good if you're into religious apologism... (1/5 Dreamworks 1998).
"Antz" uh... well... I got nothing here. (1/5 Dreamworks 1998).
"Chicken Run" off the charts hysterical (5/5 Dreamworks 2000).
"The Road to El Dorado" still searching for characters, plot, etc. (1/5 Dreamworks 2000).
"Shrek" damned funny, simple but solid story (4/5 Dreamworks 2001).
"Spirit..." not much for adults here (2/5 Dreamworks 2002).
"Shrek 2" to be gentle, abysmal (1/5 Dreamworks 2004).
"Shark Tale" unfunny lowbrow humor (2/5 Dreamworks 2004).
"Madagascar" had lots of laughs but the core story was weak (3/5 Dreamworks 2005).
"W&G Curse of the Were-Rabbit" smart and funny (5/5 Dreamworks 2005).
I think it's interesting to note the two best animated films that Dreamworks has made (IMNSHO) were both Aardvark productions, though the relationship between the two companies was different from "Chicken Run" to "...Were-Rabbit".
Not until lately have people realised that Disney now suck and Dreamworks rocks. I call it post-Shrek
Have to admit, I don't see it. Well, I understand that Disney Animation hasn't done anything decent in some time, but to say that Dreamworks has put up anything truly notable is a stretch. And Pixar has made substantially better films than either of them.
Regards,
Ross
Most of my interest in Paul Graham's essays is based on:
1) His writing is timely.
2) He has actually been there and done that.
3) He is a good writer (which is to say that I don't find myself copy-editing his prose).
I do disagree with some of his arguments (for example, I think that being in the same location together makes team communication MUCH more effective), but then I also find myself disagreeing with many other people who's company I enjoy, so I don't consider this a fatal flaw.
Do you know of some other bloggers writing in similar subjects who you consider to be more interesting (for whatever reason)? I'd like to expand my reading list.
Regards,
Ross